And I answered, Modern Pitung, it seems you have forgotten what it was like in the time of your ancestors. What do you think would have happened had you criticized or attacked one of them? Even before the last word rolled off your tongue, your head would have rolled off your body. Haven’t you ever read the stories about your own ancestors? Don’t try to apply European ways to the Indies. Even the Europeans here try to imitate the methods of your ancestors when it comes to matters of justice. You are the only person in the Indies who protests about this.
But it is true that these pioneering efforts of yours have brought upon you a heavy punishment. As time wears on the Indies will get used to people being exiled; even the government will grow bored with discussing and implementing such decisions. That would have been the time for you to go into action. Even so, you made a start, and as a result a new arena has been opened wide for everyone.
You were active for six years before you were exiled; D-W-T must have been even more frustrated. They survived just a few months! Not even half a year!
And you Marko, Sandiman? Where will you go? To jail or finally to exile? he wrote.
Marko! So Raden Mas Minke did still think about those faithful followers of his. You do not know, Modern Pitung, that after you were arrested, Marko as well as Sandiman obtained no protection from anyone. Realizing that the government was about to move against him, Marko set out to establish a new, fertile kingdom elsewhere, complete with subjects. In Solo of course! Sandiman disappeared from circulation. But, Modern Pitung, I think it is Sandiman who is Marko’s dalang. He lives in the shadows. The Indische Partij could not be home for him. There is no place for a village boy there. Let me find out for you what these faithful followers of yours are doing.
With the little knowledge he learned from working with you, and a sentence or two of Dutch that he picked up from the streets, Marko began to appear all over Solo, speaking everywhere, in the town and the villages, to whoever would listen, and about anything and everything.
Being able to claim your authority, but with his own courage, he still was not able to take over the Solo branch of the Sarekat, although he became one of its foremost leaders. He is not like you, Modern Pitung; he does not have the same economic strength and the same depth of knowledge. He was forced to live both from and for the Solo Sarekat.
Your guess was right. Marko did have his special strength. And it came from his special sense of justice. He had this power because he could mobilize all his inner strength, all of it, to achieve victory for a just cause. You must not think that there was nobody in the Indies who protested at the injustice that was done against you. Samadi didn’t and Mas Tjokro didn’t, that’s true. It was only your Marko who spoke out. But he didn’t speak to the government. He spoke to the wrong audience. He didn’t yet dare put down his protests in writing to be read by everybody. Perhaps one day that is where his activities will lead him.
Very well, Modern Pitung, I will set up a special file for your loyal follower, Marko. And Marko, from this day forth you will join the others in the house of glass on my desk.
Now I studied once again Raden Mas Minke’s manuscripts. It was my impression that except for Nyai Permana, they were all connected. There was a rupture between This Earth of Mankind and Child of All Nations on the one hand and Footsteps on the other. I wasn’t sure though whether these were parts of a genuine autobiography or not. For the time being I decided to treat them as a series of interesting stories, with all their strengths and weaknesses. I decided that I would put aside some time to check out the details of the story against the reality of any relevant official documents. Actually, the decision to write down these notes of mine was also influenced by those writings, I am not afraid to admit it.
I viewed them as stories, and the first of the manuscripts mostly reflected the modernization process in the thinking of Natives at the beginning of this century. The Native way of thinking and the European way of thinking came together in this story, either in an explosion or in an accommodation.
In fact, it wasn’t really necessary to have the answer to the question of whether this was an autobiography or not. As a story with many different aspects to it, the process of change is most of all reflected in Minke, its narrator. His values change as his situation changes. There is the influence of the environment on his personality, and the impact of his personality on the environment, changes in the means of communication and the people he communicates with, the role of racial discrimination and the law as its shadow, Europe as a teacher and a destroyer.
During a discussion once with Meneer L—, he explained to me how there was an unbridgeable gap between the European and Native way of seeing the world. Europeans saw nature as something outside themselves that they wanted to subjugate. Natives saw themselves as part of nature itself. It was this difference that was the origin of all their different behavior, and it was here too that the differences could be rediscovered. Europeans want to subjugate nature. Natives want to accommodate to nature so that they are in harmony with it.
And if Meneer L— is correct, then does that mean that I can say that the character of Minke is a bridge between these two worldviews? His thought world was neither fully European nor fully Native. And the bridge itself seemed to be more weighted in Europe’s direction.
But I mustn’t make a hasty decision on this. There is still so much that I don’t know about the Natives. It seems this is a science of its own. Dr. Snouck Hurgronje had his experiment. The de la Croix family wanted to make Minke their experiment. But Minke himself seemed to have become a cultural hybrid. In Footsteps he bent again in the direction of the Natives while still standing firm with his European values. Yet when he worked and dealt with other Natives, he still did so as a cultural hybrid.
But even so, I still could not help asking myself—were these three manuscripts an autobiography? For the time being I was unable to answer this. At the very least, I think, he tried with all his might to depict how things were during the time the story took place.
As I tried to understand these writings, I was reminded of literature classes at high school. In my last year, my teacher gave me an assignment to read Gustave Flaubert’s “Un Coeur Simple.” It’s a pity that I was never asked to analyze a French work of the same caliber as these manuscripts. I mean the same caliber in the sense of looking at these kinds of transformations in values, world outlooks, and social life itself. Anyway, I can still say that I have been taught how to analyze a piece of writing by my teachers at school.
I don’t know whether my comments about these writings will interest the reader or not. But I think it would be a mistake not to write something as I am probably the only person in the world who has such an absolute opportunity to master these manuscripts, which do not seem to have been meant for publication.
The echoes of the Great War more and more resounded in the Indies. And I became even more interested in studying these manuscripts.
The third manuscript, which seemed more like an autobiography than the others, described the growth of the first organizations that Minke founded based on European concepts, and how they developed, the efforts to get them going, the difficulties, the victories and the defeats, and how the further development of these organizations could not be separated from the development of the press and its trials and tribulations, its successes and failures. The other thing about this manuscript was that the role of the individual, be he named Raden Mas Minke or Si Ana or Siti Ainu, was not important at all. The times guaranteed the birth, growth, and development of organizations as the vehicle for different ideas and for the ideas themselves. Of course, the individual left behind deep marks, perhaps eternal ones, on the life of these organizations, but what was more important was the role of these organizations on the modern history of the Indies, in the way they changed the Indies and its people, in accordance with the ideals that had been formulated, struggled for, and developed as the essence of these organizations’ activities.
And the
role of the former police commissioner called Pangemanann was not important either. No matter what he did to hold back the development of these organizations, he would fail. History will march on according to its own laws. Pangemanann was just the representative of the Netherlands Indies state power. The forward march of history is the movement of humanity all over the world, the life trajectory of humanity. Whoever defies history, whether a group, a tribe, a people, or an individual, will fail. Including the Netherlands Indies and I myself. I knew for certain that this is what would happen; I didn’t know when, I didn’t know whether quickly, or slowly. . . .
I don’t think I need to put down for eternity all my opinions about these manuscripts of Raden Mas Minke. The echoes of the Great War are more pressing today than the opinions of a person who will never change anything.
8
Before Wardi and Douwager left for exile in Europe, I submitted a request to escort the two exiles on their journey and then to take my European leave. But my boss did not approve the request. To forbid things is a colonial hobby that gives a pleasure of its own. It makes you feel more important and more powerful.
I could understand that. I too had experienced that feeling and would still seek to experience it again. To oppress is a part of the colonial character. And the pleasure that you obtain from oppression is even deeper than that obtained from simply forbidding. And Europeans, who come from that democratic society of theirs, after just six months of breathing the colonial air, will quickly be addicted to forbidding and oppressing, enjoying the rights once exercised by the same Native kings that they so love to insult and revile. I agree completely with what Kartini, the girl from Jepara, wrote about this.
My failure to get my leave to Europe deepened further my understanding of the colonial order. At the top, colonial power was supported by a small group of white colonial people who in their turn were supported by colonial brown people of which there was a greater range of kinds and groups. From the top going down, there were bans, oppression, orders, insults, and abuse. From the bottom going up, there were arse-licking, submission, and slavelike self-abasement. And I had my place in this order. And so anyone who heard my boss’s reply to my request would just smile. “There is so much work to do these days, Meneer. And you are not allowed to have any helpers or any replacement. You must understand, Meneer, that the work you do is new in the Indies.”
Madness! I swore inside while my lips smiled sweetly and politely. Yes, the smile must be sweet and polite, because that is how a subordinate must behave toward his superior, because that is the colonial custom we must always honor.
He also replied with a smile and I could feel the insult it expressed: Ah, you, all you do is write up excuses for arresting and exiling people, and here you are making all sorts of demands. And my smile also took on other meanings: Ah, you, all you do is use my ideas, and here you are so sparing with your generosity! If I go on holiday, you will have to do my work yourself and use your own brain. Isn’t that the real problem?
And that was the kind of conversation that took place inside me and continued to take place, haunting me still, a week, a month, and a year later. My wife had gone. My children had gone. My pangs of conscience because of the exile of the Indische Partij triumvirate had also disappeared. Strong feelings of nostalgia for the old days often came to disturb me. I wanted to work once again in the midst of fellow human beings, among and with other human beings, giving up all these documents and this thirst for blood and victims on the part of the government, giving up these documents that are without flesh and blood, and contain nothing but thoughts.
“There’s no doubt about it, the Liberals’ policies have set off amazing political developments here,” my boss said to me once, trying to encourage my enthusiasm for my work. “All kinds of organizations are springing up everywhere like mushrooms, and, you know, they remind me of a fungus too. When do you think the Menadonese will start setting up their organizations?”
“I hope that never happens,” I answered.
“But it will happen, that’s a certainty,” he countered. “And you will have even more work to do as a result, Meneer.”
“Well, if that does happen, then you can be sure I will remain loyal to the government. It won’t cause me any trouble,” I parried.
“We don’t know what is going on in the mind of the Menadonese people, your people, Meneer,” he said, chopping at me.
I tried to escape him. I couldn’t even look into his blue marblelike eyes. He talked and talked like a policeman interrogating a criminal who has just been arrested. And that is how I felt. Not being able to take this any longer, I quickly cut in: “Our people are closer to the Dutch than the other people of the Indies. We are Christians. There has never been a Christian people of the Indies who looked for trouble with the government,” I answered. “Yes, there was one Christian people in the Moluccas who fought the Company. They were even led by a priest, a European priest. But I think that was because of the Company’s own excesses. There has never been any other incident since then, has there? No, they have been just like the Menadonese, haven’t they? They have never sought to make trouble again.”
He just laughed and then began another lecture as if he were some neutral professor giving an objective explanation of some problem that was located tens of thousands of kilometers distant from himself. But in fact, these problems were represented by the papers that lay strewn across my desk in front of me then: “But in these modern times, isn’t it true that religion is no longer a guarantee of loyalty to the government?” he asked. “Ah, you understand all these things better than I, Meneer. New ideas from all over the world can make their way to the most isolated places, can touch the minds of certain individuals, and turn them into different people, nah? It is no longer religion that determines whether they will be loyal to the government or not, but people’s interests or what they see as their interests.”
I knew that I had to bring this dangerous conversation to an end. It was very true that in its time religion was also politics. The Christian peoples of the Indies did not seek conflict with the government. But Raden Mas Minke’s writings gave examples of how some people could seek conflict with their own peoples—Khouw Ah Soe and Ang San Mei, for example. It was true that one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant but it was not their religion that moved them to try to overthrow the Ching dynasty. They were motivated by something else, called nationalism.
Ah, there was no need for my head to argue myself into a corner like this. Whatever happens I will still carry out my duty as best I can. Sometimes, you know, my conscience can gallop into action and almost drive me insane. But I have been able to keep it under control so far. As time has passed by, I have learned to enjoy the colonial pleasures. I was a colonial god who could decide the fate of others. I was a free man—no wife, no children. All I had to do was send money and all was well. There was nobody to boss me anymore. The enjoyment of all pleasures was now open to me. There was no limit to what I could drink. In the office I was a little god; outside I had unlimited freedom. Every letter and word I affixed on the papers on my desk would be felt directly by the skin, flesh, bones, heart, and brain of the Native nationalists. And they probably had never even heard my name. It was only those nationalists exiled overseas who were beyond my view and observation. As long as they remained in the Indies, they also remained in the house of glass on my desk.
I wanted to say to my boss: Enough, no more. I knew that I was sinking more and more into the colonial mud, deeper and deeper. I was no longer stepping through just muddy ground, but was clearly and obviously sinking into a stinking and deep mudhole. Yes, my God, put weights on my body, on my head, so that the mud will suck me down even quicker. . . . But no, I would never speak back to my boss like that. All I would ever do is again and again swallow my words.
And you, you, my teacher, you will escape the mud. Your hands will remain clean and your heart will never cry out because of the accusations of your conscienc
e.
But what my boss said was: “Soon there will be organizations set up by the Bugis, the Toraja, Banjar, Dayak, Minang, Acehnese, and so on. And you, Meneer, what do you think will happen in the end? Perhaps there’ll be no call for me to worry about it anymore. Perhaps, yes perhaps.”
“Why not?” I asked, amazed.
And he just laughed, like an innocent little boy. And I was truly envious of him.
“Don’t worry about it for now. You have to study the ones who were influenced by Raden Mas Minke, the ones whom he brought up and pushed onto the main stage. I think that’s the kind of work you find very interesting.”
And I—this bruised and battered conscience—continued to carry out the orders of my superiors.
It was easy to guess whom he meant—Marko Kartodikromo and Sandiman. From their teacher’s manuscripts it was already clear that Sandiman was a mysterious character. Now he had disappeared from circulation. No one knew where he was. In fact, we had lost his trail altogether. It was my guess that he was in Solo and was the brains behind Marko, but I wasn’t able to prove it.
With Marko it was different again. As time went on it seemed he lived less and less in the shadow of my power. He began to appear more and more frequently in public. He talked and wrote, wrote and talked, everywhere, in town and village, in people’s homes and in the public squares.
Among the papers that were seized from the editorial offices of Medan, Braga Street 1, Bandung, were a number of Marko’s writings that had never been published. I found one of them in particular very interesting. Perhaps he himself never realized how important it was. It was about the changes that had taken place in the Indies, and in himself as the author, during the last half century.
House of Glass Page 25