House of Glass

by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  “What is it, Tuan?” She was startled to see my condition. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “Get me a drink.”

  She grabbed hold of me and led me back to the bed.

  “I will fetch some, Tuan. But no hard drink.”

  “Brandy! Fetch me brandy!”

  “I will bring only water, that’s all, Tuan.”

  “Do you want me to kill you? I’ll shoot . . .”

  “Then I will leave here.”

  “No, no. Bring me brandy.”

  “Water.”

  “Brandy!”

  “Water.”

  “Brandy!”

  “I want to leave here, Tuan. Give me my wages.”

  “Help me to the telephone.”

  And she helped me across. She kept hold of me while I was telephoning the doctor, somebody who knew nothing about me at all. But even though he was a doctor, he was still paid help. He had to do whatever he was told. But he would help anybody who was in my condition, whether the patient could pay or not. Only I and my friends live off other people’s suffering.

  A woman’s voice answered. Tuan doctor was not at home. I left a message, along with my address. Tuminah then took me back to my bed. She pulled the blanket over me and pulled down the mosquito net.

  If Paulette were here, or Dede . . . No, not Rientje, she would probably leave me here. What about Annelies, what would she do?

  My throat was so dry and my bladder was so full. I had to go to the toilet. How weak and feeble my body was. Were these the signs of my approaching death? My hands groped toward the edge of the bed.

  “Yes, Tuan.” I saw Tuminah wake up from her place on the floor under the bed. She pulled open the mosquito net, just like a mother looking after her favorite child.

  “I have a piss pot here, Tuan. And water.”

  “Brandy!”

  “I have had a look, Tuan. The sideboard is empty, Tuan. There is only water.”

  She helped me over to the corner of the room, where I had to go.

  “Turn off the lights!” I ordered.

  “Tuan is not embarrassed because of me, surely not, Tuan? Aren’t I the one who’s been looking after you all this time?”

  After climbing back onto my bed, I looked once again at this girl whose name I had learned only today. She was young, strong, and perhaps kindhearted.

  “How much do you get paid?” I whispered in her ear.

  “When the mistress was here—two rupiah, Tuan.”

  “What do you mean—when the mistress was here?”

  “I haven’t been paid anything since then, Tuan.”

  “God!” How many months has it been since Paulette left? How many? God! I couldn’t count anymore. . . . “Brandy!”

  “The sideboard is empty.”

  “Go to the shop! A note! Fetch pen and paper.”

  “Go to sleep, Tuan. It’s almost daylight.” She pulled the blanket over me again. She rubbed my fingers and toes. “You’re so cold, Tuan. Will I make you some herbal balm?”

  Suddenly there was the indistinct sound of voices.

  “What is it?”

  “The front door, Tuan, someone is knocking.”

  “Who is it?” Tan Boen Kim? Sarimin? Pitung? Modern Pitung? She mustn’t go. “Don’t open the door.”

  She went to leave the room. She said it was the doctor. I didn’t believe her.

  “No, don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t open the door! Noooo!”

  She went and my heart began pounding. . . .

  The doctor ordered me to stay at home for two weeks. The news reports about Rientje de Roo’s murder became fewer and fewer, then disappeared altogether.

  Tuminah was the only person to look after me. And she never relented from her refusal to give me drink. She did everything. I don’t know where she got money. The food she cooked was very plain. Sometimes there was no meat or egg or even oil. Just rice and a few greens. I amazed myself by eating so much of this goat’s food.

  The office cashier came around to the house to pay me, minus what I owed to the bank. I also asked him to arrange for money to be sent to my wife and children in the Netherlands.

  “You won’t have enough left for the doctor, Meneer,” the cashier said to me.

  He was right. I never had money troubles when Paulette was here. Not even during the early years of our marriage. Not even after our youngest was born. And now the only person who was here to help me was a village woman and even her Malay was still full of Sundanese words.

  As long as sex wasn’t involved in the relationship, said Meneer L—, one day you too would discover an extraordinary Indies woman, someone who stood head and shoulders above any man. This has been the case since ancient times, Meneer. What praise has not been heaped on the just rule of Queen Shima? And now the world finally stands in admiration of Tjuet Njak Dhien for her leadership in the Acehnese struggle against the Dutch.

  Meneer L— was bound to believe in Sanikem. I never mentioned Princess Kasiruta to him. I never talked about Siti Soendari. I never talked about Rohana Kudus from the little village of Fort de Koch in West Sumatra. The areas outside Java also gave birth to pioneering women. And here, beside me now, there was Tuminah, illiterate, from a village, understanding only the language of her mother. She has never read a book in all her life. Her education consists only of the legends of the Mahabarata and the Ramayana and the village superstitions. And she had given to me everything she knew about kindness. And she had in fact given herself as well.

  Did not life and living get stranger and stranger? Or was it I who had become so strange, to myself as well as everyone else? To heaven and to earth.

  Ah, perhaps I knew why I was so restless. I had not been doing any reading all this time. I wasn’t allowed to read. And Tuminah tore from my hands everything I started to read. The village woman was wielding more power over me every day, making me more and more dependent on her every day. Perhaps this Tuminah was like Queen Shima in ancient times, or was Queen Shima like her?

  I had given her ten guilders. I asked her what she did with so much money.

  To pay the grocery debts, Tuan.

  Oh, God! And it was all for me. And I couldn’t give her any more. I was bankrupt for the rest of the month.

  This house, this house of Minke’s, was perhaps an accursed house. I left the house and walked to my office. My office was silent and dust covered all the furniture. Gloom filled the room. De Lange had once lain at the feet of the table after drinking poison. He had taken the easiest path to end his existence. Perhaps death was the most appealing of comrades. Perhaps. Death ended everything. But believers thought that death was in fact the beginning, the beginning of a new life in the hereafter. And my education had made me into a believer. If De Lange had chosen a new birth because he could no longer deal with this life, would he choose a new birth again because of boredom with death?

  Nicolaas Knor entered and apologized that my office was so dirty.

  “None of us dared enter without your permission,” he said. “I’ll get the papers brought in soon.”

  I sat down in my chair. And Knor came back with a pile of newspapers. He very politely placed them on my desk. On top of the pile was a big envelope addressed to me personally. I found three copies of the book Si Pitung by J. Pangemanan. I should have been happy. But no, I hadn’t the slightest desire to read even a single page. There was also another announcement in the book: Soon to be published—Nyai Painah, by Kommer. Perhaps he was the same Kommer who was Minke’s friend in Modern Pitung’s writings.

  I suddenly became interested in this Kommer. I had heard a little about this man. I quickly wrote a memorandum to be sent to Surabaya seeking more information on who this Kommer really was.

  After three hours of reading through the Malay papers, a reply arrived from Surabaya. Kommer, the journalist, had just recently died in Surabaya in an accident. One of the snakes that he kept had wrapped itself around him and crushed his arm and his backbone. He had lef
t all his animals to the Surabaya zoo.

  He had created something before he died that he could leave behind. And what about me?

  Death! Death! What was better, death or a life like this? I too can give something to the world. I called an attendant and I ordered him to put the Si Pitung books into an envelope. I wrote Raden Mas Minke’s address on the envelope and ordered him to post it off.

  Meanwhile, a representative of the Sugar Syndicate had been waiting for me in the reception area.

  He was young, slim, clean-shaven, and his face was yet unmarked by the slightest crease. He held out his hand to me, and I could see in his face all the signs of arrogance as he began his dealings with a Native.

  “People have recommended that I come and see you, Meneer. I have been trying to see you for several days now. But you have been ill. You still don’t look very well.”

  He rested his hands on the desk. He wore a ring with a big diamond surrounded by smaller stones. It sparkled with a bluish-white light and somehow stirred an empty, anguished feeling inside me.

  “You like diamonds?” he said suddenly.

  “There is something that you want to discuss?” I asked.

  He had spoken with my boss about the troubles in the sugar plantations in East, Central, and West Java. And I couldn’t follow everything he was saying. It felt as if there was a great rock banging into my forehead. He spoke for more than half an hour. I just listened, only half understanding.

  “It seems you’re not really recovered yet, Meneer. I might come back tomorrow or the day after. Excuse me.”

  He excused himself and left. And my head throbbed. Sentences rebounded back and forth inside my throat like bouncing balls. I knew that I did not have to suffer like this. Wasn’t it true that I had lost all faith in myself? Wasn’t all that was left inside me just a lava flow of lust, ready at any moment to explode into freedom? Yes, the lust for respect and reputation, that was the source of all the things that I needed so much and that oppressed me. My body was just the vehicle in which different lusts struggled for supremacy. There were no slivers of my old faith in myself there to fight back. Everything had been destroyed.

  I went home before the office closed. It was none other than Tuminah who was there to greet me. I used to always be greeted by Mark’s dog, Ivy. Who knows where that dog is now? Dead or alive, who knows? I never thought about it anymore.

  Then quite unexpectedly the young man from the Sugar Syndicate drove up in his flashy car. The carbide lamps glinted in the afternoon sun. The wheel spikes were made not from wood but from metal, and shone brightly. The nuts in the hubcap too. He came by himself, without a driver.

  “How are Madame and the children in Europe?” he asked, setting the agenda.

  Such questions could kill me now. And he would kill me with a smile on his face.

  “My colleagues in the banks in Betawi, Meneer,” he went on, ignoring my dread of all responsibility for my family, “have answered my queries about the situation. You do not have a cent deposited with any of them.”

  “Meneer!” I cried in amazement.

  “You forget who I am, Meneer, the representative of the Syndicate.”

  “So even the locked door of the bank opens for you?”

  “The main thing, Meneer, is that you do not need to worry about your family in Europe anymore. You understand, no doubt, our good intentions for you. Just send us your doctor’s bill. Everything will be taken care of. Everything will be fine, as long as you don’t leave Betawi and the Indies in these difficult times for us.”

  It was a very straightforward conversation, and proceeded in a very straightforward manner, but brought me gain that was by no means straightforward.

  As soon as his car disappeared from sight, I understood that all my faith had now completely vanished along with any illusions that I would be saved by any miracle from God. I knew for certain then that I had surrendered myself completely to the laws that governed relations between men and the laws of nature itself. I had found strength in these laws. I would never fall sick again because of the conflict between what I had been taught and the realities of life.

  Outside my house and office the movement that in so many ways resembled that preceding the French Revolution glowed brighter and brighter as if it were about to reach the moment of explosion at any minute. But the difference from the period before the French Revolution was that here in the Indies no great thinkers arose. There was no concept behind all the activity, no philosophies emerged. Since the departure of Minke, there had been no Native leaders who thought about making contact with the outside world. They were like frogs cooking in the oven of their own isolation. The idea of seeking the intervention of another power never occurred to them. The struggle for leadership among them was no less vicious than that usually fought over leadership of a country. Not having any clear ideas to guide it, the movement degenerated into a race toward nihilism.

  His Excellency Governor-General Van Limburg Stirum still took no action. My boss and I had developed a plan to make him realize just how bad the situation was. But he did not awake from his indifference. The two of us had conspired to make sure that the police took action against the Native nationalists at every opportunity. But the courts were never as severe as the police themselves. We were greatly disappointed to find out later that His Excellency had actually summoned the director of the Department of Justice and instructed him not to be too harsh in any case dealing with the Native movement. There were to be no excessive sentences, every act of sabotage was to be dealt with as a normal criminal case, and every offense was to be dealt with strictly in accordance with the law.

  Two weeks later all these questions vanished from my mind. The Rientje de Roo murder trial was reopened. A day before the trial began, Sarimin decided to come to see me to reassure me: “Your name will not be mentioned, Meneer. We both might be crooks, Meneer, but there is honor among crooks too, heh?”

  People were now calling me a crook without a moment’s thought and I didn’t feel even slightly offended.

  Throughout the Indies, the newspapers set aside a lot of space for their coverage of the Rientje de Roo sensation. And it was true, I was not mentioned once. I was still a respected high official. And there were several other important names in Rientje’s diary that were not mentioned. It would not have surprised me to find out that Sarimin had made a profit from all of them. The extortionist was now no doubt rolling in money. And because of the very weak tax system in the Indies, he would be able to enjoy his money free of any accuser or accusations.

  And in the midst of the chaos arising in the wake of Van Limburg Stirum’s indifference, something quietly and calmly took place in Jogja—yes, in Jogja again. . . . And this something began a new chapter in the life of the Natives. Soerjopranoto had established a primary school and high school that completely turned its back on the government curriculum. This school, which was given the name Adi Darma, meaning “beautiful task,” consciously—let me stress that again, consciously—wanted to educate its students to refuse to be the servants of anybody, to be free and independent individuals, and to be the masters of their own lives. With the emergence of the Adi Darma school, the fate of the Boedi Oetomo was sealed. Sneevliet needn’t bother attacking it anymore.

  12

  Until several years ago the Native peoples of the Indies still resisted the power of the government with arms, with patriotism, with religion. And they were defeated every time. But during these past few years, not a single drop of blood had been spilled upon the rice paddies or the fields, the valleys or the tundra, upon land or water. This government that represented Europe now confronted a product of Europe itself—an awakening and exploding nationalism.

  In the past the Natives had offered armed resistance in the villages. Now with their nationalism they were rising in the towns and wherever large European companies were to be found.

  Europe with its capital now faced the Natives who had no capital but just their labor. Europe w
ith all its science and understanding now faced its own pupils who had more ambition than knowledge—the ambition to become a new nation. Two interests were coming into confrontation—Europe, which had lost its moorings because of the Great War, and the Natives, who were discovering themselves for the first time. And these Natives were not armed with swords and spears, nor with patriotism, and not with religion either. Today their weapons were nothing else but speech and pen.

  I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that this was a new period in the life of the Natives, the period of the birth of a new nation, with all its limitations in the area of science and understanding. And it was strange too to see a nation formed by speech and pen alone. In Europe, the formation of nations had always been by blood and sword.

  Outbreaks of unrest occurred wherever there was big European capital, perhaps more vigorous than those in France against Louis XVI. It seemed people were taking advantage of the government’s weakness because of the world war. None of it was organized by me. No, this time there was only unrest that I had not organized—the illegitimate offspring of Raden Mas Minke.

  I was so glad that Marquis and Dede were no longer at home. They were question factories that not infrequently pushed me into a corner. This new generation was sharper than my generation. They could see what lay behind reality, once they had tried to get to know that reality themselves. My generation had accepted everything that our elders told us, as if the older generation were the controller of all truth.

  And as an official I also had the typical personality of an official. I stamped as forbidden, immoral, and heathen everything that was in conflict with loyalty to the government of the Indies. People must submit and be obedient to the government as the authority approved by the Almighty Father. Otherwise the government would have collapsed long ago. But often even I could be seduced into having more down-to-earth thoughts, that the government, which seemed to stand abstractly above society and which we came to know only through feeling its actions, was nothing more than the manifestation of supreme power, yet it was still a power wielded by humans, and human error was in turn an essential feature of humankind’s own imperfection. And my children, this younger generation, paid more heed to the human character of the government—in other words, the things that weren’t right, its weaknesses, its mistakes.