by Multatuli
The Indonesian revolution not only gave birth to a new country; it also sparked the call for revolution in Africa, which in turn awakened ever more of the world’s colonized peoples and signaled the end of European colonial domination. Perhaps, in a sense, it could be no other way. After all, wasn’t the world colonized by Europe because of Indonesia’s Spice Islands? One could say that it was Indonesia’s destiny to initiate the decolonization process.
To Multatuli—Eduard Douwes Dekker—whose work sparked this process, this world owes a great debt.
—PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER
Translated by John H. McGlynn
1999
MAX HAVELAAR
To the much-revered memory of
Everdine Huberte, Baroness Van Wynbergen
faithful wife
heroic, loving mother
noble lady
I have often heard words of pity for the poet’s wife, and there is no doubt that, to fill that demanding post in life with dignity, a woman cannot possess too many good qualities. The most exceptional range of merits is the least of her requirements, and not even always sufficient for common happiness. Having the Muse as a third party to the most private conversations, embracing and giving succor to the poet you have for a husband when he returns to you sickened by the frustrations of his task, or seeing him go chasing after some chimera—such is the daily routine of a poet’s wife. Yes, but there are also compensations, the honors of laurels earned by the sweat of his genius, which are humbly laid at the feet of the lawful beloved wife, in the lap of the Antigone who guides the “errant blind man” through this world.
For make no mistake: nearly all Homer’s grandsons are more or less blind, in their own way. They see what we fail to see, their gaze pierces higher and deeper than ours, but they can’t see the ordinary little path right in front of them and might easily stumble and fall over the merest pebble if they had no support in traveling the valleys of prose where life resides.
—HENRY DE PÈNE
OFFICER OF THE COURT: My lord, here is the man who murdered Little Barbara.
JUDGE: That man must hang. How did he go about it?
OFFICER OF THE COURT: He cut her to bits and pickled her.
JUDGE: That was very wrong of him. He must hang.
LOTHARIO: My lord, I did not murder Little Barbara! I fed her and clothed her and cared for her. There are witnesses who will testify that I am a good man, and not a murderer.
JUDGE: Now, look here, my man, you must hang! Your conceit only aggravates your crime. It’s unseemly for a person who has, er, been accused of something to claim to be a good man.
LOTHARIO: But my lord, there are witnesses who will confirm it. And since I’m accused of murder—
JUDGE: You must hang! You cut Little Barbara to pieces, pickled her, and are pleased with yourself . . . three capital offenses! Who are you, young lady?
YOUNG LADY: I am Little Barbara.
LOTHARIO: Thank God! My lord, you can see I didn’t murder her!
JUDGE: Hmm . . . yes . . . well, well! But what about the pickling?
LITTLE BARBARA: No, my lord, he didn’t pickle me. On the contrary, he’s been very good to me. He has a noble heart!
LOTHARIO: There you have it, my lord. She says I’m a good man.
JUDGE: Hmm . . . so the third charge remains. Officer, take this man away; he must hang. He is guilty of conceit. Clerk, cite Lessing’s patriarch as case law in the grounds.
(Unpublished play)
FIRST CHAPTER1
I AM A coffee broker and live in a canal-side house at No 37 Lauriergracht. It is not my habit to write novels or suchlike, so it was some time before I could bring myself to order a few extra reams of paper and commence the work that you, dear reader, have just taken up, which you must read if you’re a coffee broker, or if you’re anything else. Not only have I never written anything resembling a novel, but I don’t even care to read the things, because I am a man of business. For years I’ve wondered what could be the use of such stuff, and I’m amazed at the shamelessness with which poets or novelists will dare to tell you some tale that never happened, and in most cases never could. In my line of work—I am a coffee broker and live in a canal-side house at No 37 Lauriergracht—I could never furnish my principal—a principal is a person who sells coffee—with a statement containing even the smallest fraction of the untruths that make up the body of poems and novels: he’d go over to Busselinck & Waterman quick as a wink. They’re coffee brokers too, but you don’t need to know their address. So I’ve always taken care not to write novels, or supply any other false statements. It has always been my observation that people who go in for such things tend to come to a bad end. I’m forty-three years old and have frequented the Exchange for twenty years, so if it’s the voice of experience you seek, I’m your man. I’ve seen more than a few houses fall! And usually, when I looked into the underlying causes, it seemed to me that the people involved had been led astray in their childhood.
Truth and common sense, I say, and I’ll stick to it. For Scripture I make an exception, of course. The error begins in the very first line of Van Alphen’s nursery rhymes: “sweet babes.” What on earth could have led that elderly gentleman to play the doting admirer of my little sister Trudy, who had pink eye, or of my brother Gerrit, who was forever fiddling with his nose? And yet he makes excuses for his verse, claiming that “each word thereof / was inspired by love.” As a child, I often thought, “I wish I could meet you someday, and if you refused to give me the marbles I’d ask you for, or my whole name—Batavus—spelled out in pastry letters, then I’d declare you a liar.” But I never met Van Alphen. He was already dead, I believe, by the time we learned from his rhymes that my father was my best friend—I preferred Pauweltje Winser, who lived next door to us on Batavierstraat—and that my little dog was so grateful. We didn’t have dogs, because they’re filthy creatures.
Nothing but lies! That’s how children are reared. Your new baby sister came from the vegetable woman in a big cabbage. All Dutchmen are brave and generous of heart. The Romans were grateful to the Batavians for sparing their lives. The Bey of Tunis was seized with colic when he heard the fluttering of the Dutch flag. The Duke of Alva was a monster. Low tide lasted a bit longer than usual—in 1672, I think it was—for the sole purpose of protecting the Netherlands. Lies! The Netherlands has stayed the Netherlands because our forefathers took care of business, and because they had the true faith. That’s all there is to it!
And later there are more lies. Little girls are angels. Whoever made that discovery never had sisters. Love is sheer bliss. Lovers flee, for some purpose or other, to the ends of the earth. But the earth has no ends, and besides, love is folly. No one can claim that my wife and I don’t live well—she’s the daughter of Burden & Co, coffee brokers—and no one can find any fault with our marriage. I am a member of the Artis Society, her shawl cost ninety-two guilders, and as for the kind of crazy love that makes you want to live at the ends of the earth, we have never felt any such thing. After our wedding, we took a jaunt to The Hague—she bought flannel there; I still wear the undershirts today—and beyond that, love has never driven us out into the world. In short, all foolishness and lies!
Is it possible that I am less happily married than the people whose love makes them waste away or tear out their hair? Do you think my household would be any better off if, seventeen years ago, I had told my girl in verse that I wanted to marry her? Balderdash! I could have done it just as well as the next man; writing verses is a craft, certainly not as hard as turning ivory. Why else would those lozenges with rhymes on their wrappers cost next to nothing? (Frits calls them “pastilles”—don’t ask me why.) You should look into the price of billiard balls!
I have nothing against rhymes as such. If you want to regiment your words, fine! But don’t say things that aren’t true. “A cold wind blew, at half past two.” Fine by me, as long it really was windy and half past two. But if it was quarter to three, then I,
who don’t regiment my words, can say, “A cold wind blew at a quarter to three.” Just because the wind in the first line blew, the rhymer must make sure the second line ends with two. It has to be half past two, or ten to two, or what have you, or else he has to stop the wind from blowing. Quarter to two is forbidden by the meter. So he makes a hash of things! Either the weather has to change, or the time does. That makes one of the two a lie.
And those rhymes aren’t the only things that lure our children into untruthfulness. Just go to the theater sometime and hear the lies they tell. The play’s hero is saved from drowning by a man on the verge of bankruptcy. Then he gives his savior half his fortune. That can’t be right. When I was walking along Prinsengracht the other day my hat fell into the canal, and a man dove in—Frits says “dived”—to retrieve it, for which I gave him a few stivers, and he was satisfied. I know I’d be expected to give him a little more if he had fished me out of the water instead of my hat, but certainly not half my fortune. If that were the rule, falling into the water just twice would leave you penniless. The worst thing about those theatrical spectacles: the audience is so accustomed to all the untruths that they cheer and clap and enjoy them. I once found myself wishing I could throw all the pit seats into the water, to discover whose cheers had been sincere. I, who love the truth, warn you all that I will not pay such a high salvage fee for my person. If you won’t be satisfied with less, just leave me there. Only on Sundays would I give a little more, because that’s when I wear my braided gold watch chain and a different coat.
Yes, the stage has brought many people to ruin, even more than novels. It’s all so vivid! A little gold paint and some lace cut from folded-up paper—it looks so enticing. To children, I mean, and to those who are not in business. Even when those theater people play at poverty, their plays are always full of lies. A girl whose father has gone bankrupt works to support the family. Very good. There she sits, sewing, knitting, or embroidering. But just try counting how many stitches she makes in the course of the whole act. She talks, she sighs, she goes to the window, but she does not work. To live on her earnings, her family must have modest needs. And of course, this girl is the heroine. She throws a few suitors down the stairs, all the while crying out, “Oh, Mother, oh, Mother!” so she must be a model of virtue. What kind of virtue takes a whole year to knit one pair of woolen stockings? Doesn’t all this paint a false picture of virtue, and of “working for a living”? Foolishness and lies, all of it!
Then her first love—once a clerk with a copybook, but now as rich as Croesus—turns up again all of a sudden, and marries her. Once again, lies. A man of means does not marry a girl from a bankrupt house. But even if you think an exception can be made for the stage, my objection stands—namely, that the common people’s sense of truth is corrupted, that the exception is taken for the rule, and that public morality is undermined by the custom of cheering for something on stage that any respectable broker or trader would regard as ridiculous madness out in the world. When I was married, there were thirteen of us working at the offices of my father-in-law—Burden & Co—and business was booming!
And there are still more lies in the theater. When the hero goes off, with his stiff playhouse stride, to save his oppressed homeland, why do the double doors always swing open on their own? And on top of that, how can one person speaking in verse predict what the next one is going to say, and make the rhyme easy for him? When the General says to the princess, “Too late, Your Highness, they have shut the gates,” how does he know she’s going to say, “Unsheathe your blade, then. Victory awaits!” What if, after hearing that the gates were shut, she replied that she’d wait for someone to open them, or that she’d come back another day? Where would that leave rhyme and meter? So isn’t it a pure fabrication that the General turns to the princess to inquire what she might like to do after the gates are shut? And anyway, what if the woman had been more interested in a good night’s sleep than in unsheathing anything? All lies!
And then there’s virtue’s reward! Dear, dear, dear! I’ve been a coffee broker for seventeen years—No 37 Lauriergracht—so I’ve witnessed a thing or two, but it always shocks me to the marrow to see the good, sweet truth so twisted. Virtue, rewarded? Doesn’t that turn virtue into a commodity? That’s not the way of the world, and it’s a good thing, too. For what merit would virtue have if it were rewarded? So what’s the point of all those infamous lies?
Take, for example, Lukas, our warehouseman, who used to work for Burden & Co’s father—it was the firm of Burden & Meyer back then, but the Meyers left a long time ago—now, he was a virtuous man. Not a single bean went missing, he never missed a Sunday service, and he didn’t drink. Whenever my father-in-law was out in the country, he looked after the house, and the cash box, and everything else. The bank once gave him seventeen guilders too much, and he brought it back. He’s old and gouty nowadays, and no longer of any use. Now he has nothing, because business is brisk for us, and we need young blood. So you see, I consider old Lukas remarkably virtuous, but has he been rewarded? Has a prince come along to give him diamonds, or a fairy to butter his bread? Decidedly not! Poor he is, and poor he’ll stay—that’s how it was meant to be. I can’t help him—we need young people, with business brisk as it is right now—but even if I were able to help, what would become of Lukas’s merit if he could lead an easy life in his old age? If that were possible, all ware-housemen would become virtuous, and so would everybody else, and that can’t be what God intended, because then there’d be no special reward left for the righteous in the hereafter. But on stage they twist the facts . . . all lies!
I, too, am virtuous, but do I seek reward? When business is going well—and it is . . . when my wife and child are healthy and I don’t have any fuss with doctors and apothecaries . . . when I can put aside a little money, year after year, for my old age . . . when I see Frits growing into a fine young man who can fill in for me, later, when I retire . . . why, then I’m well contented. But all this is the natural consequence of the circumstances, and because I take care of business. In return for my virtue, I demand nothing.
Yet the fact that I am virtuous is clear from my love of the truth. That’s my foremost quality, after religious devotion. And I hope you’re convinced of that, reader, because it’s my excuse for writing this book.
A second trait, which has just as strong a hold on me as the love of truth, is my passion for my trade. You see, I’m a coffee broker, No 37 Lauriergracht. So there you have it, reader: it’s thanks to my unimpeachable love of the truth and my nose for business that these pages were written. I’ll tell you how it all came about. As I must now leave you for the moment—I’m wanted at the Exchange—I invite you to join me again shortly for the second chapter. See you soon!
Hang on, I’ve got something for you . . . won’t take a moment . . . may come in handy . . . ah, see, here it is: my business card! “Co,” that’s me, ever since the Meyers left . . . old Burden is my father-in-law.
BURDEN & Co
COFFEE BROKERS
No 37 Lauriergracht
SECOND CHAPTER
BUSINESS has been slack at the Exchange, but the spring auction will doubtless put things right. Don’t imagine we’re at a standstill, though. At Busselinck & Waterman things are even slacker. A strange world! But nothing new to anyone with some twenty years’ experience at the Exchange. Just imagine, Busselinck & Waterman were plotting to poach Ludwig Stern from me. I don’t know how familiar you are with the Exchange, but suffice it to say that Stern is a leading coffee company in Hamburg that has always been served by Burden & Co. It was by sheer chance that I found out . . . about Busselinck & Waterman’s underhanded behavior, I mean. They were prepared to drop the brokerage fee by a quarter of a percent—undercutters, that’s what they are, nothing more, nothing less—and here’s what I did to scupper their plans. Anybody else in my position might well have written to Ludwig Stern saying that he too could offer a reduction, and that he hoped they wouldn’t forget th
eir long-standing association with Burden & Co. . . I’ve calculated that our company has made four hundred thousand guilders off Stern in the past fifty years. The connection dates from the days of the Continental System, when we smuggled colonial goods in by way of Helgoland. Well, who knows what somebody else might have written. But no, an undercutter I am not. I went to Café Polen,2 asked for a pen and paper, and wrote to him, saying:
That the considerable growth of our business, thanks largely to the numerous esteemed orders from Northern Germany . . .
It’s the truth, pure and simple!
. . . that the aforementioned growth has necessitated employing additional staff.
It’s the truth! Only last night the bookkeeper was at the office until past eleven, hunting for his spectacles.
That above all the need has arisen for respectable, well-brought-up young men to conduct our German correspondence. That there are, admittedly, plenty of German youths in Amsterdam who possess the required skills, but that a self-respecting company . . .
It’s the truth, pure and simple!
. . . mindful of the rise in frivolity and immorality among the young, and the number of fortune hunters growing by the day, and with a view to the need for proper conduct, hand in hand with proper execution of orders . . .
It’s the truth, the honest truth!
. . . that such a company—I was referring to Burden & Co, coffee brokers, No 37 Lauriergracht—cannot be too careful in the matter of engaging staff—