House of Glass

by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  The BO had also sponsored the formation of a youth organization called Young Java, and Scout groups in Solo and Jogja. It had also established a life insurance company. It remained active in social affairs, and was making clear advances. I didn’t receive any useful information from STOVIA.

  Then, three days later, I received another visit from my boss. Nervous as usual, he gave me orders to prepare a report on the education situation. I put aside my other as yet unfinished work. I went straightaway to see the director of the Department of Education and Culture. I didn’t get much out of him except the statement that his department would always be the most responsible implementer of the Ethical Policy, in accordance with the demands of these modern times, no matter whether they changed the governor-general four times in a year.

  I knew he didn’t like having to deal with a Native like me. And I was not after any statements, but data, figures, and information about what was actually happening in educational affairs. If I had been a Pure that is exactly what I would have said.

  “You should have come November last year, or even earlier, if it’s figures you wanted,” he said.

  But I insisted. He summoned the department secretary to help me. And we set off for another office, leaving behind Meneer Director and his office. As we walked along, he whispered: “This director is completely the opposite to Meneer van Aberon.”

  “Do you mean he is not paying attention to his department’s work?”

  He stopped and looked at me full of regret and suspicion.

  “I didn’t mean to say anything bad about my boss. Especially to an official of the Algemeene Secretariat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our department implements whatever policies are given to us by the government, I mean by the governor-general, in accordance with his mandate.”

  All this made me suspicious that there was something not right with this department. And supposing my suspicions were correct, what was it that was not right? As soon as we sat down opposite each other he began to tell me. The separation of the basic Native schools into Grade 1 and Grade 2 had come to a standstill. The fact was that there were not enough teachers to make the Grade 1 schools Dutch-language basic schools.

  But that couldn’t be right, I thought. Before the governor-general announced that decision, the number of available teachers and coming graduates from the teachers’ schools had been calculated. And that didn’t include the teachers who had already received a basic certificate in Dutch. And so I realized that I had been sent here as a representative of the governor-general’s lack of confidence in the director of the department.

  I asked for the figures. He tried to avoid this, always changing the topic to the amount of subsidies they had given to the Dutch-language private schools. And there would be even more of these subsidies as the number of BO and Kartini schools increased.

  “It is even the case,” the secretary continued, “that there are efforts in Semarang to set up a school for girls that will graduate Grade 1 pupils just as that girl from Jepara hoped for, exactly in accord with the ethical thinking of people such as Van Aberon, van Kollewijn, De Veenter, and the other advocates of the Ethical Policy. De Veenter has made the greatest, the most significant and important contribution. It is probable that this school will be named after him. So we will have to hand out another subsidy, just as we are doing for the trades school being set up by the Soerya Soemirat, which was established by the Eurasians, also in Semarang.”

  He still refused to give me the material I wanted.

  “Well, if you still definitely need it, give me a couple of months to get it ready for you.”

  The fact that I was not Dutch, let alone a Pure, and only Menadonese to boot, was once again making my work difficult. I had to get the information from somewhere else. But where?

  On the journey back, as I contemplated everything that had happened, I rejected my earlier suspicion that I had been given this job because of His Excellency’s lack of confidence in the department. The Algemeene Secretariat could obtain whatever information it wanted simply by issuing a formal instruction. Why did he need me? Or was I the one that my masters above were playing games with?

  Resting in a drinks stall, I asked myself whether or not I had properly understood what lay behind this new task. Perhaps I had not been keeping my eyes enough on things to do with the general life of the economy? Education! Education! I remembered now an article about the costs and benefits of teaching Dutch in the Indies. Where was that published? I couldn’t remember. I had obviously misinterpreted what my boss wanted me to analyze. This was the question that my boss had given me to analyze. And I had misunderstood.

  It seemed there were some among the colonials who thought that teaching Dutch to the Natives would cause more damage than it would do good. Children who were taught Dutch would develop more quickly because it would bring them into contact with the new horizons of the modern world. They would be able to peer into the wider world, but without the benefit of a European to guide them. The result would be that they ended up out of place among their own people, a white cock among a flock of crows. And the whiteness of the cock’s feathers would frighten the society of crows.

  Was this what the government was afraid of? If that was the case, why didn’t they review the status of the Dutch-language Chinese schools and withdraw their permits? And why did the Hwee Koan Chinese schools still insist on teaching English rather than Dutch? I had never given any thought to these issues. This was all new to me.

  As soon as I got back to my office, I set to work.

  A small group of Natives, graduates of Dutch-language primary schools, had indeed burdened the government with much additional work. All the leaders of the Native organizations spoke Dutch. Now I understood why the governor-general was worried. What would happen in ten years’ time if all these new private schools, which also taught Dutch, poured out their graduates into society? This was no simple matter!

  I still had not finished this job when new orders arrived. I was to analyze what lay behind the disturbances at the agricultural school in Sukabumi. Then in the teachers’ schools. It seemed there was something new going on in the hearts and minds of the high school students everywhere.

  I was no longer enjoying my work. My masters were chasing me like a great ocean wave, and everything would then crash down upon my head. Once again, for the umpteenth time, I requested that I be given an assistant and for the umpteenth time my request was refused. I put forward the argument that there was no chance that the amount of work would get less; rather it was bound to pile up even more. Monsieur R— didn’t want to know. Meanwhile, his general state of anxiety seemed to be worsening all the time.

  With all this work still unfinished, he gave me yet another problem to look at: “Now that the Boedi Oetomo has been tamed, especially with these subsidies, how do we tame the Sarekat?”

  “There is no reason to try to tame it. The Sarekat was tamed as a result of all the riots,” I answered, rather offended, as if all my earlier reports had no meaning. “They have not been able to set up even a single school, they have no institutions at all, they have not achieved anything at all, except for one factory.”

  “A factory?”

  “Yes, a talk factory, a hot air factory.”

  “I know you are tired and frustrated. What can be done? You are the only person who has been entrusted with this work. To receive such trust often brings with it heavy and difficult consequences.”

  In a tone meant to soothe my feelings, he explained that the staff of the Algemeene Secretariat was not bound by civil service regulations and could receive a salary increase of up to 75 percent in accord with the service they performed.

  “To be freed from the chaos here at the moment might be worth more than a seventy-five percent salary increase,” I answered.

  He came up to me and patted me on the back, as if I were still some minor clerk. I closed the files on my desk and got ready to leave.

 
; “Going home,” I said savagely.

  “I can’t do this work without you.”

  “I still haven’t heard anything about my leave, Meneer.”

  “Yes, well, there is more and more work to do. Native society has begun to change. It is no longer like it was five years ago, Meneer Pangemanann.”

  “We all know that. And there is more happening than just change; society is in real motion as the Natives adapt to the modern world. Native society has been penetrated by new ideas. The Native people are in motion now, changing both their own form and content. And there is no human force that can hold them back.”

  “At least we have to come up with more powerful ideas to keep them in check. And we don’t seem to have any.”

  My boss’s approach to his work, always full of worry and anxiety, was wearing me down, exhausting me. Things could not keep on like this. I was nothing more than someone he used to secure his position, prestige, and pension.

  Seeing that I wasn’t responding to what he had said, he then asked, as if nothing had happened between us: “If the Sarekat has been tamed because of psychological factors resulting from the riots, then we could no doubt do the same with the Indische Partij?” He spoke in such childlike tones, trying to say he was sorry without actually saying it.

  His childlike manner amused me. I put my briefcase back down on the desk. As I stood there, words that I had accumulated in my storehouse of knowledge all this time started flowing forth: “The Indische Partij poses no danger. It has no mass following it can mobilize. The Eurasians as a social group have never shown that they have what it takes to carry out major actions. The Natives have proved themselves in this area, whether in the villages, the plantations, even at sea. The Eurasians have no real roots in society. They are always under suspicion. In the end, the Eurasians are dependent upon the government, whether or not they oppose the government.”

  “But there are two Natives in its leadership.”

  “Very well, let’s look at those two! Both Wardi and Tjipto, aren’t they both culturally Eurasians? And politically as well?”

  “So what you are trying to say is that these three—D-W-T—are no more than three kings, alias a triumvirate, who have crowns but no kingdom?”

  Now he was tormenting my mind, this nervous wreck of a man, not just my feelings. “No,” I said, fed up.

  “You’ll explain why that’s not right, of course, Meneer.”

  “First, you know, there is really no Indische Partij. There is only D-W-T. The three of them are not kings, they are no triumvirate. They have no power or influence over anything. They, with their daring, are no more than the broadcasters of new ideas and concepts that have been unknown in the Indies so far. It was necessary to tame the Sarekat, but not the Indische Partij. It is only a shadow party,” I said, full of spirit, but frustrated, and I fired another salvo: “They are not politicians in the sense of being the wielders of power. They are just writers and journalists. Even if the Indische Partij had no members, D-W-T would still be doing the same thing. As long as somebody is reading their paper, they are happy with being able to pass on their ideas and feelings. They don’t need a mass following. Even if they had such a following, they wouldn’t know what to do with it—just like the Sarekat.”

  “But it’s not true that they have no mass following.”

  “All they have for a following is a bunch of Eurasians who have no roots in society.”

  He knew he had tormented my mind as much as he could get away with. He laughed happily, pleased to get my answers, nodding all the time. He reminded me of a white-skinned wild pig who couldn’t see anything around him except what lay directly in front. He didn’t care what I thought of him as long as I was ready to come out with my opinions.

  “You must see this,” he said, groping in his pocket and taking out a page of proofs from the next De Expres. He pointed to one column. “Both His Excellency and his adjutants have made a mistake about the Indische Partij. D-W-T are different from what they think.”

  The contents of that column were quite interesting. I sat back down in my chair and read and reread the column, thinking and reflecting while my boss awaited my opinion. And he indeed seemed more and more to resemble a wild pig. A question flashed across my mind. Why was he so willing to be dependent on my opinions?

  He spoke again: “This column shows very clearly that they are not the young, overzealous university students that His Excellency and his adjutants think they are. They are already hinting about self-government, even though they have no basis for proposing it whatsoever. They would probably just stare at you openmouthed if you asked them to actually explain what this government would be like. Yet they are still hinting about it. A conceited man might just sit behind his desk and laugh at them. Not me. This is something very, very serious, even though they are still just hinting at it.”

  “So what is your opinion then?”

  “They are starting to spread around ideas that are very, very serious.”

  “They are just hinting at it; they don’t have a fully developed idea on this. And there is no ban against people stating their opinions as long as no law is broken.”

  “But this kind of talk is verging on agitation.”

  “No, not yet.”

  He shook his head, indicating his disagreement.

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Make this your work.”

  “But I have so much other work to finish yet.”

  “Leave it,” and he left the room.

  This new work was very urgent. This new development with the Indische Partij confirmed that there were new things afoot and spreading within Indies society. And what about the alliance between the Eurasians and the educated Natives? Especially in relation to this self-government that they were hinting at. No one expected this kind of development. Wasn’t it the case that the Eurasians and Natives shared no common origin or social goals?

  The Indische Partij had been established only a few weeks and its voice—and only its voice—was screeching out, scratching at the heavens. And this made me suspect that things weren’t going so well for the organization itself. Most published, as well as spoken, reactions to their views simply expressed astonishment. But I had another view. The number of Eurasians was too small. And even among this small number, it was only a very tiny segment that agreed with Douwager. In the end he had to turn to the Natives. But the vast majority of Natives took no notice because his language was different, his way of thinking was different, and he had different interests. In the end, his only hope was the educated Natives. And only very few of them took any notice either.

  I had to test out my own ideas. I had to make sure I was not exaggerating anything, because that is not acceptable in analytical work. The danger from this was clear—you would start to lose your own critical abilities, and your integrity. So I had to find a way to approach them, to meet them in flesh and blood, and not just deal with their ideas and actions.

  I had never met Douwager. Minke had introduced me once to Wardi. He didn’t seem to pay attention to what was happening around him at the time, a bit conceited, or perhaps he was one of those arrogant Natives. Maybe he just had something else on his mind and so wasn’t paying me much heed. Most small, short-bodied people are like that. They try to give their rather lightweight physiques some substance by behaving as if they were important. If he could grow any hair, he no doubt would have kept a mustache as big as his fist.

  It is possible that Wardi could have been carried away by Douwager’s stories about South Africa. If that was the case, then he had also forgotten that to leave behind your country and seek your fate in another country was the equivalent of receiving a diploma confirming your courage and ability to set out on a real adventure. The founding of a new country was the prize that went along with that diploma, and such a prize was itself a blessing that came straight from God. Without God’s blessing there could never have been a Republic of South Africa. And you, Wardi, you h
ave left only your parents and your village, not your country.

  And you, Douwager, you were a failure in South Africa, emerging not as victor but only as a prisoner of war. And you, Wardi, you also failed to graduate as a doctor. Minke may have failed too, but he at the very least succeeded in founding an empire, and pioneering real changes. And all the activities of the modern Natives will follow in his footsteps.

  I must find out just what you are made of, before I throw my weight in against you, as it might be an unequal confrontation.

  And you, Dr. Tjipto, the daydreamer! You see the world before you, on the surgeon’s table. This is the age of the triumph of imperialism, when victory always goes to the strongest. No matter how clever a person is, even if his knowledge would fill a warehouse, he still must bow down to the powerful, the victorious. It is very unwise of you to think that this mighty giant before you is like a patient, whom you can operate on without knowing what the illness is. Do you want to replace the patient’s heart with a rubber balloon? And the brain with sago porridge? This giant is not sick, is not asleep, has not fainted. Watch out, Tjipto, he might sit up and fling you away.

  I studied that column for a long time, line by line, sentence by sentence. I couldn’t find any sign that they had a clear concept of self-government. There were no signs that they were three architects who were trying to construct something. Just big words.

  And that was what made me most angry with them. It was my duty to respect anyone who had greater abilities than mine, no matter how different our positions in the world might be! But you three, you give rise to more anger than you do respect. . . .

  In accordance with what had been decreed from the throne in the Netherlands, the Indies too was preparing to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Holland’s liberation from French occupation, or more accurately, Napoleonic occupation. The government, with Governor-General Idenburg’s full blessing, had ordered that a big celebration be organized.