House of Glass

by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  I was the only one left standing there openmouthed. This house was the former residence of Raden Mas Minke. I should have been happy to live there. Across the street was the governor-general’s palace. The house had spacious grounds; you felt you could breathe easily. There were big and well-maintained shade trees, all green, which refreshed the eyes. The house itself was a stone house, large and beautiful too, much more luxurious than our old house.

  You had to get rid of Raden Mas Minke in order to live in this house! Yes, you Pangemanann! I could no longer stop my conscience from accusing me.

  Ah, I replied, the government wields more power than my conscience. To hell with you all!

  Someone was laughing raucously behind me. I turned around. Pitung and Minke were laughing, pointing at me, knowingly passing glances. Ziihhh, ziihhh, ziihhh.

  “You’re starting again, Jacques!” my wife reprimanded me.

  The government has defeated both of you. Pitung, Minke, give it all up! And so I entered the house.

  That afternoon we were visited by our neighbors, who all turned out to be high officials of the Algemeene Secretariat. They were very cautious and guarded in their behavior, and in their conversation too. They all studied me as if they were watching a gecko lost among real lizards. They stayed no more than a quarter of an hour before leaving.

  Another problem arose that evening as the four of us spent our first evening there. It came from Mark. “Papa, we’re visiting Europe in three months, aren’t we?”

  “Ah, yes, Jacques. What about your leave? Will you still get that leave? Or has it been lost with your transfer to your new office?”

  The four of us had made many plans. My wife wanted to take the children to see their grandparents in Lyons. Then she wanted to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes and later go on to Rome, where she wanted to see St. Peter’s. The children would stay in Lyons, where they would go to the same school that I had attended. I planned to visit my adopted parents, with special souvenirs of the Indies. Nothing expensive, just materials used for traditional Javanese medicines, powders and so on made from leaves, roots, and skins.

  I was not at all confident that I would still get leave. And so I said nothing while they chatted gaily about all their beautiful plans.

  The next day, Sunday, Meneer L— and his wife came and stayed the night. They planned to return to Batavia on the first train the next morning. Meneer L— would go straight to the office. His wife would go back to their house.

  It was good to have Meneer L— as company. At the very least, there were many things to distract me from my own chaotic state of mind.

  Sitting out in the garden, as the afternoon wore on, it was I who began: “If you think that Java has always been defeated because the Javanese had lost all their principles due to their mad search for the sameness in everything, then you must think that if the Portuguese had approached the Javanese in a more sympathetic manner, Java could have been Catholic since the fifteenth century.”

  “You are not wrong,” he answered. “The Javanese will accept anything as long as you emphasize its sameness with what is already prevailing. As soon as they see there are clashes of principles involved, they will become suspicious and withdraw.”

  “You must have a lot of examples of this, of course,” I said, digging around for more information.

  “Of course. For example, Meneer Pangemanann, you won’t read in any of the histories about there being conflicts between Hinaya Buddhism, which was the first to arrive in Java, and Mahayana Buddhism, which came later, despite the fact that they are as different as heaven and earth. They were accommodated to each other through ancestor worship, very much the Javanese way. And so it continued, with the arrival of Hinduism, with all its forms and teachings. These accommodations have been maintained in tradition until now through the teachings of the wayang. Have you ever followed even one wayang story, Meneer?”

  “Never.”

  “Yes, you need quite a lot of time to study the main line of thought in the wayang. To understand wayang is to understand the history of the Javanese view on life and the world. To become a conscious master of the wayang world, Meneer, means to master the Javanese. The mastery of Javanese through wayang is one way to become a colonial expert. Even for a Javanese who consciously mastered wayang, able at the same time to free himself from the grip of the wayang world, it would still be a long journey for him to reconstruct himself as an independent personality, Meneer. The universe of wayang is a world of its own, which cannot be touched by modern ideas. Whether Christian, Moslem, or without religion, the Javanese have all been sucked into that universe, just as Prapanca and Tantular designed.”

  I couldn’t quite follow his lecture, even though I tried hard to understand him.

  “When the Portuguese arrived in the Moluccas, the people all rushed to become Christians without the slightest resistance. Yes, there were social historical reasons for this. All throughout their history they have been a colonized, defeated people. They have never experienced national freedom. And all this was because their country was rich in spices. They have mixed with many peoples, from nearby and far away, and never have been able to draw any benefits from these contacts with more advanced civilizations. Then, when in the second decade of the seventeenth century Jon Pietersz Coen pushed the Portuguese out of the Moluccas, they all gave up Catholicism and became Protestants, again without any resistance. They accommodated once again, even though the sources were different from Prapanca and Tantular. They adjusted themselves, accommodating to the power that came and conquered them.”

  His explanation gave rise to a strange irritation inside me. If he could speak that way about the Moluccas, then he might start saying the same things about Menado! From Catholic to Protestant. I got in first: “Can you prove what you’re saying, Meneer? Is it just a hypothesis?”

  “Yes, of course. I can’t put forward all the evidence in a casual conversation like this. Perhaps one day I can write a full-scale study on this. Don’t think that it is only the peoples of the Indies who have developed this trait of accommodating, adjusting, compromising. No, Meneer. It is the trait of all peoples who throw away their principles when they come into contact with more principled peoples. The opposite happened in the Americas. The Indian peoples, when they came into contact with the more advanced and stronger Spanish, were destroyed because they were unable to find a way to compromise and accommodate. They went from defeat to defeat. From being meat eaters, they ended up living on wheat gruel, defeated and pushed onto reservations, where they were destroyed by the cruel treatment they received and by tuberculosis, because they could no longer keep themselves alive. In other words, there are two choices for a weak nation when it comes into contact with a strong one. Such a people must accommodate or flee into the jungles, where their culture and civilization then degenerate, until they fall as low as the sheep in the fields.”

  The archivist himself didn’t seem satisfied with his explanation. Perhaps he didn’t feel that his argument measured up to the scientific criteria he himself held to, so he added: “Yes, all this has to be investigated further.”

  I turned and looked over toward the road. Outside the fence, which was made of painted palings on top of a low cement wall, with hibiscus flowers planted inside, I saw two figures standing one behind the other. Both of them were women. The one in front was still. The one behind was anxiously tugging on her friend. Perhaps they were two beggars who were nervous about coming inside.

  The archivist followed my gaze. “And that is what has become of the Javanese, Meneer.”

  It seems that the two women did not know that beggars were forbidden to enter the area around the palace.

  “But as far as I can tell from my reading of the Netherlands Indies history, the Javanese always resisted, right to the bitter end of any battle,” I answered back.

  “When you start off with the wrong philosophy, Meneer, all that is left is to defend yourself. The Javanese have never gone on the offensive again
st the whites. All they have ever been able to do is put up a defense, to hold the fort. But they were always defeated, because they held to a defeated philosophy. The more their philosophy degenerated, the more they were defeated on the battlefield. The Javanese people today, Meneer, are not the same people as four hundred years ago.”

  “So what about the Javanese today?”

  “Today? All that is left is that accommodating, compromising character. They can’t even put up any kind of self-defense anymore. They have reached a dead end. There is nowhere forward for them to go anymore. It’s very sad, but they themselves don’t even understand their own situation. They can only do that by comparing themselves with other peoples. Their writings over the last hundred years are the writings of a defeated people who do not want to escape from their defeat. There is no one who will suggest that they learn from Europe. Rather they are told just to serve Europe, or they even pretend that they do not know that Europe has them in its grip. They don’t even know that, Meneer. Rather they are proud just to have a European acquaintance. Just an acquaintance! But they don’t know how to reap any benefit from that experience.”

  “You are too certain of yourself, Meneer.”

  “Yes, I get carried away sometimes.”

  “There are already Natives starting to study the European sciences.”

  “I think it is only their brains that are developing. Their mentality remains Javanese, carrying that burden of three hundred years of defeat—dispirited, frightened, submissive—or sometimes the reverse of all this, as a compensation for all these things.”

  The two women were still hovering outside the fence. Now one of them was tugging on the other, perhaps trying to get her to leave. The other refused to move, without looking at her friend. They were both looking in our direction.

  I excused myself from Meneer L—, went into the house, and telephoned the local police station to get them to get rid of the women.

  “Forgive me, if I got carried away. Maybe I do not have the personality to be a scholar,” Meneer L— went on when I returned to keep him company.

  The sun had set. Two police agents arrived and herded the women away with rubber truncheons. They did not come into our grounds. I don’t know what happened then, it was already too dark to see any distance. That night Meneer L— and his wife stayed over. They left for Betawi very, very early the next morning.

  I arrived at my new office at eight o’clock in the morning. I was taken to meet my new boss. He turned out to be a lawyer, a Frenchman educated in France, Monsieur R—.

  He greeted me unexpectedly politely, in French: “I have been looking everywhere for an experienced man who spoke Malay, had a higher education, and understood the modern languages. You are the adopted child of the chemist Monsieur De Cagnie, yes? From Lyons?” He ushered me in. “He has retired from his company now. You have heard, yes?”

  “Of course, Monsieur,” I answered. “We are actually planning to visit him when my leave in Europe comes up in three months’ time.”

  “Forget about your European leave. Come in!” and he showed me into another room. And in his southern French accent, he began to explain to me my new duties: “You are greatly needed here.” It was clear as day that I had lost my European leave. I could not imagine how disappointed my wife and children would be. And myself as well. How quickly our feelings rose and fell because of things outside our control.

  “Many people have reported that your Malay is quite good. This is just what is needed for your new work. I want to be able to ask you questions and seek your advice whenever necessary. Your new duty is very simple—all you have to do is answer my questions, not as a defendant, but as an expert. According to what I have been told, you already have years of experience in this. Most of my questions will be about the somewhat undesired activities of the educated Natives, activities outside what has been determined as allowable by the Ethical Policy.”

  My work would be no different from that I carried out as a police commissioner.

  From that day I had the privilege of having my own office, all for myself. There was a big cabinet filled with official documents, both public documents and private ones, about and by educated Natives. I found all my reports for the police there too. The biggest file was that on Raden Mas Minke, who had been the most active during the last six years. There were also newspaper clippings, including ones with those famous initials of the editor of Medan at the bottom, as well as clippings from French and German papers quoting from Medan. I had never seen those European newspaper reports before. Perhaps Minke never knew about any of this either.

  There was also my report of my interview with Minke, and on the submission recommending his exile were the initials of three people whom I did not know but would perhaps soon meet.

  Monsieur R— left me in this room, which was as cold as the room in the State archives. A telephone awaited me on my desk, its dial shining, not a scratch in its chrome. The walls were bare and unadorned. There was a small table in the corner, with a white tablecloth, but no flower vase. On a shelf underneath there was an instrument which I did not recognize. I went over, picked it up, and examined it. It seemed to be a simple appliance, with a fan inside, while in the front there was a kind of basket made from woven wire, which could be opened and closed. In the wire basket, and indeed among the wires themselves, there were signs of burning, as if it had been in contact with flames. I put it down when there was a knock on the door.

  An attendant in a white uniform, a rather good-looking Eurasian with sharp eyes and pointed nose, entered but seemed reluctant to salute me. He just stood there staring at me.

  “Who are you!” I snapped, offended.

  Finally he gave a little respectful nod: “Frits Doertier, Meneer, your attendant.”

  “What schooling have you had?” I asked sharply.

  He seemed embarrassed, hiding his nervousness by fixing his hair; then he finally answered: “Primary school, Meneer.”

  “Why have you entered here?” I growled again.

  He scratched his neck and tried to smile, without speaking. “Get out!” I ordered.

  He left without saluting. My colonial heart was offended.

  A few moments later there was another knock on my door. This time it was a Pure-Blood who entered, fat and not so tall. All his hair had already turned white. He also wore an all-white uniform. He nodded deeply, introducing himself: “I am in charge of housekeeping, Meneer. Nicolas Knor.”

  “Pangemanann, Meneer Knor. I am a new official here.”

  “Welcome, Meneer. I hope you like working here. Is there anything you would like me to do for you?”

  “Not yet, Meneer, perhaps later. Ah, perhaps there is one thing: Do you know Frits Doertier?”

  “Of course, Meneer.”

  “I don’t want him coming in this office.”

  “I will make sure of that, Meneer. A young boy, Meneer, still in his teens, doesn’t know proper etiquette yet.”

  He nodded very politely, excusing himself, and disappeared behind the closing door. I couldn’t help but keep staring at that big, and heavy, door. Who would appear from behind it next?

  And I was right. A moment later someone else knocked on the door, slowly and, I thought, very cautiously. I didn’t answer. Instead I moved away to a spot where I would not be seen if anyone appeared from behind the door. There was another knock. I still didn’t respond. The door handle seemed to move, then the door was pushed inward. A man wearing an all-white uniform peered into the room, stepped into the room, and shut the door behind him. He carried a feather duster in one hand and a flannel cloth in the other.

  I took a cigarette and lit it up. I blew out smoke as hard as I could. He did not move toward the document cabinet. He turned to look behind him. On seeing me watching him, he suddenly stumbled and gave an obligatory nod of respect, his face turning pale: “Good morning, Meneer.”

  “Good morning. Who told you to come in here?”

  “I’m Simon Zwijg
er, Meneer. I wanted to clean this office.”

  “Who ordered you here?” I asked.

  “It’s my daily duty, Meneer.”

  Just at that moment, the telephone on my table rang. I walked across and picked it up. Simon Zwijger’s eyes were fixed on me for a moment; then he very quickly made a show of hurriedly wiping down the cabinet. And I felt he was trying to listen in on my conversation. Monsieur R—summoned me to Room A. Straightaway.

  “Simon Zwijger,” I called to this person whose position I did not yet know. “I am leaving this office. Please leave first.”

  “But I have to clean this room first, Meneer,” he said.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, Meneer.”

  “Get out!”

  He left with a sullen look on his face. I locked the windows. And I locked the door too, and only then went to Room A.

  Several senior officials were waiting for me. Nobody showed any sign of interest in my arrival, except to appear amazed at my presence.

  “Good morning,” I began.

  No one answered. They just nodded indifferently.

  Monsieur R— stood and introduced me to them. It was then that I learned who it was that I would be working with in this sinister place. I studied each of them as they were introduced to me. It was these men who among them decided the fate of the Netherlands Indies, its people, the land, and all it contained. And now I was one of them. I later came to realize that together we were the brains behind the Netherlands Indies. The governor-general behind the wall across the way was just a bemedaled uniform who carried out what we thought up.

  Monsieur R— did not explain to me what work my colleagues did. The introductions did not take long. They were over in ten minutes. Then the meeting broke up. Only Monsieur R—, Meneer Gr—, and I remained.

  “Nah,” Monsieur R— started again. “I am sure that Meneer Pangemanann will be frequently working together with Meneer Gr—.”

  I did not know in relation to what.

  “Of course,” responded Meneer Gr—.