Max Havelaar

by Multatuli

  It was a back room in Lange-leidsche-dwarsstraat. The cellar was occupied by a trader in used goods, who sold all kinds of things: cups, saucers, furniture, old books, glassware, portraits of our national hero Van Speyk, and so forth. I was very anxious not to break anything, as in such cases people always ask for more money than the object is worth. A little girl was sitting on the doorstep, dressing her doll. I asked her if Mr. Shawlman lived there. She ran inside, and then her mother came to the door.

  “Yes sir, he lives here. Just go up the stairs to the first landing, and then up the stairs to the second landing, and then up some more stairs and you’re there, easy as pie. Run along, child, go and tell him there’s a gentleman to see him. And what name can she say, sir?”

  I said I was Mr. Drystubble, coffee broker at Lauriergracht, but that I’d announce myself. I climbed as far as she had said, and on the third landing I heard a child singing: “Daddy’s coming home soon, sweet Daddy.” I knocked, and the door was opened by a woman or lady—I wasn’t sure which. She looked very pale. Her features showed signs of fatigue, which reminded me of my wife when she’s done the laundry. She wore a loose white blouse or shirt reaching down to her knees and fastened in front with a black pin. Under that, instead of a dress or skirt, she wore what appeared to be a length of dark flowered fabric wound round her body several times, and quite tight around the hips and knees. There was no trace of the pleats, width, or amplitude proper for a lady. I was glad I hadn’t sent Frits, for her attire struck me as very unseemly, and what made it even more peculiar was her self-possessed air as she moved about, as though she weren’t in the least embarrassed. The woman didn’t seem aware of how unusual her appearance was. Nor did she seem at all abashed by my unannounced arrival. She didn’t hide anything under the table, didn’t shift any chairs, she did none of the things people usually do when a dignified-looking stranger turns up on their doorstep.

  Her hair was pulled back, Chinese fashion, and tied in a sort of knot or bun at the nape. Afterwards I discovered that she was wearing some kind of East Indian costume, which they call sarong and kebaya out there, but I found it very ugly.

  “Are you Juffrouw Shawlman?” I asked.†

  “With whom do I have the honor?” she said, in a tone as though she had expected to be addressed more respectfully.

  Now, I’m not much in favor of deference. It’s not the same with a principal, of course, and I’ve been in business for too long not to know my way around. But to my mind there was no call for exchanging civilities on a third-floor landing. So I merely said I was Mr. Drystubble, coffee broker at No 37 Lauriergracht, and that I wished to speak to her husband. After all, why beat about the bush . . .

  She motioned me to a wicker chair, and drew onto her lap a little girl who’d been playing on the floor. The lad I’d heard singing kept looking me up and down. He didn’t seem in the least shy either! He was about six years old, and likewise strangely dressed. His wide trousers reached only halfway down his thighs, and his legs were bare from there to the ankles. Very improper, I thought. “Have you come to speak to my pa?” he asked abruptly, by which I could tell at once that the child’s education left much to be desired, otherwise he’d have spoken to me more politely, but as I was somewhat nonplussed by this, and disposed to talk, I replied:

  “Yes, my little man, I have come to speak to your papa. Do you think he will be back soon?”

  “I don’t know. He’s out, looking for money to buy me a paint box.” (Frits says “watercolor set,” but I don’t. Paint is paint.)

  “Hush, dear,” the woman said. “Go and look at your picture book, or you can play the Chinese music box.”

  “But that gentleman who came here yesterday took everything away.”

  So he was disrespectful to his mother, too, and there had been “a gentleman” who’d “taken everything away”. . . a charming visit that must have been! The woman didn’t seem happy either, for she dabbed her eye furtively as she led the little girl to her brother. “There now,” she said, “go and play with Nonni.” An odd name. The boy did as he was told.

  “Well, Juffrouw,” I began, “do you expect your husband back soon?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” she replied.

  The little boy stopped playing rowboats with his sister and turned to me, saying:

  “Sir, why do you call my mama ‘Juffrouw’?”

  “What else should I call her, my boy?”

  “Well . . . same as other people do! The Juffrouw lives downstairs, she sells saucers and whipping tops.”

  Now I am a coffee broker—Burden & Co, No 37 Lauriergracht— thirteen of us at the office, fourteen counting Stern, who doesn’t get paid. And even my wife is addressed as Juffrouw, and I was supposed to call that woman Mevrouw? Absolutely not! People shouldn’t give themselves airs above their station, and, what’s more, the place had been cleaned out by bailiffs the day before. So I thought Juffrouw was quite good enough for her, and I stuck to it.

  I asked her why her husband hadn’t come round to collect his parcel. She seemed to know what I was referring to, and said they’d been in Brussels, where he worked for the Indépendance, but that he’d been obliged to leave, because his articles often caused the paper to be confiscated at the French borders, and they’d returned to Amsterdam a few days ago, because Shawlman had found a position . . .

  “With Leecher, I presume,” I said.

  Yes, that was right, she said, but there had been a problem. I knew more about this than she did: he’d dropped the Aglaia, and was lazy, sickly, and a prig . . . no wonder he’d been sacked.

  And, she went on, he’d be sure to call on me one of these days. In fact, he might be on his way at that very moment to inquire after my response to his request.

  I said Shawlman should call without delay, but that he was not to ring the doorbell, as it’s tiresome for the maid. He could wait a while, I said, until the door opened for someone to leave the house. And then I departed, taking my confectionery with me, because, to be frank, I didn’t like being there. I felt ill at ease. A broker is not the same as a delivery boy, and I maintain that I dress respectably enough. I was wearing my fur-trimmed coat, and yet she was quite unperturbed, talking calmly to her children as if I wasn’t even there. Besides, she looked as if she’d been crying, and I can’t stand malcontents. And it was chilly there, and not at all inviting—because their things had been taken away, I suppose—and I’m all for coziness in the home. On my way back I made up my mind to give Bastiaans another chance, because I dislike turning a man out into the street.

  Stern’s first weekly installment has arrived. Needless to say, there’s a lot in there that I’m not keen on. But I have to abide by clause 2, and anyway it’s been approved by the Rosemeyers. I think they’re currying favor with Stern because of his uncle in Hamburg who’s in sugar.

  Shawlman had indeed called. He’d spoken with Stern, and explained the meaning of certain words and affairs that had escaped him—escaped Stern, I mean. At this point I must ask my reader to wade through the following chapters, after which I promise you something of more substance by me, Batavus Drystubble, coffee broker, Burden & Co, No 37 Lauriergracht.

  *Auguste Lafontaine (1754–1831) was a prolific German author of greatly popular sentimental, didactic novels. The suggested link between Lafontaine’s novels and tuberculosis is unclear.

  †Unlike “Miss,” “Ms.,” and “Mrs.” in contemporary English, nineteenth-century Dutch titles for women—Vrouw, Juffrouw, and Mevrouw—did not mainly reflect their marital status, but their social class. A middle-class woman, whether an unmarried shopkeeper or a coffee broker’s wife, would normally be called Juffrouw. In contrast, Mrs. Shawlman, with her aristocratic background, was presumably accustomed to being addressed as Mevrouw.

  FIFTH CHAPTER

  AROUND ten o’clock in the morning there was an unusual commotion on the high road linking the regencies of Pandeglang and Lebak.10 “High road” is perhaps rather too grand a
description of the wide footpath which, out of courtesy and for want of a better word, was called “the road.” But if you set out with a four-horse carriage from Serang, the capital of Banten, with the intention of going to Rangkasbitung, the new center of Lebak, you were bound to arrive there in the end. So it was a road. Still, you kept getting stuck in the mud, which in the Banten lowlands is heavy, clayey, and viscous, and you kept having to seek help from the inhabitants of nearby villages—not that they were very nearby, for there are few villages in those parts—but once you managed to drum up twenty or so local farmers it was usually not very long before the horses and carriages were back on track. The coachman cracked his whip, and the runners—who, I believe, would be called grooms in Europe, or rather, there is no European equivalent—those incomparable runners, then, with their short, thick whips, fell to trotting alongside the four-in-hand as before, uttering ear-shattering cries and prodding the horses under the belly to urge them on. Then you jolted along again until the dreaded moment that the carriage sank axle deep into the mud once more, and the shouting for help started all over again. You waited patiently for such assistance to arrive, and . . . jolted onwards again.

  Often, when taking that road, I fancied I would come across a carriage with passengers from the last century, stuck in the mud and forgotten. But this never happened. So I assume that everyone who ever traveled this road reached their destination eventually.

  It would be a great mistake to judge the entire high road across Java by the standards of the road through Lebak. The high road proper, with its many branches, built by order of Marshal Daendels at considerable sacrifice of life,11 is indeed a splendid piece of work, and one can only marvel at the determination of the man who, in the face of opposition from jealous rivals in Holland as well as an unwilling population and discontented chiefs, succeeded in creating something that still draws admiration, and rightly so, from every visitor today.

  There is no horse-post service in Europe, nor in England, Russia, or Hungary for that matter, that can match that of Java. Over high mountain ridges, skirting vertiginous depths, the heavily laden mail coach hurtles onward at a constant gallop. The coachman sits as if nailed to the box for hours, yes, for days at a stretch, swinging the heavy whip with an arm of iron. He can calculate exactly where and how much to rein the horses as they careen down the mountainside, when there, round the bend . . .

  “My God, the road . . . it’s gone! We’re falling down a ravine,” shrieks the inexperienced traveler. “There is no road . . . only depth!”

  Indeed, so it appears. The road curves, and just as one more gallop ahead would send the front horses flying over the edge, they turn and swing the coach round the bend. They charge up a steep slope you hadn’t seen a moment ago, and . . . the depths lie behind you. There are, on such occasions, moments when the carriage rests solely on the wheels on the outside of the curve it describes, the centrifugal force having raised the inside wheels off the ground. You need to be cold-blooded not to shut your eyes, and everyone new to traveling in Java writes home to Europe telling of the mortal perils sustained. But the old hands just laugh at their fears.

  It is not my intention, especially at the outset of my story, to occupy my reader for too long with descriptions of places, landscapes, or buildings. I’d hate to put him off with what appears to be long-windedness. Not until later, once I feel I’ve won him over, when I can tell by his look and demeanor that he cares about the heroine leaping from a fourth-floor balcony—only then shall I, in brazen defiance of the laws of gravity, leave her suspended between heaven and earth while I pour my heart out in a detailed account of the beauties of the landscape, or of a building apparently set in that landscape purely as a pretext for page after page of pontificating on medieval architecture. All those castles look the same. The style is invariably eclectic. The keep always dates from a few reigns earlier than the surrounds, which were added by some or other later king. The towers are crumbling . . .

  Dear reader, there are no towers. A tower is a figment, a dream, an ideal, an invention, an unspeakable bluff! There are only half-towers, and . . . turrets. The fanaticism behind the wish to erect towers on top of buildings dedicated to this or that saint did not last long enough for the towers to be finished, and the spire supposedly directing the faithful to heaven usually rests, several flights too low, on the massive base, recalling the thighless man at a freak show. Only turrets, and small spires on village churches, reach completion.

  It is truly unflattering to Western civilization that the ambition to create great works so often dwindles away before they can be finished. I am not referring to structures that must be completed in order to recover the investment. Anyone wanting to know exactly what I mean can go and see the cathedral of Cologne. Let him contemplate the grandiose conception of that edifice in the soul of the architect Gerhard von Riehl . . . the heartfelt faith of the people, which enabled him to lay the foundations and build on them . . . the beliefs requiring such a colossus to serve as a visible representation of invisible religious feeling . . . and let him compare that overarching ambition to the sentiments that, a few centuries later, gave birth to the moment when work was abandoned . . .

  The gap between Erwin von Steinbach and our architects of today is huge! I’m aware that attempts have been made to bridge this gap in recent years. In Cologne, work on the cathedral has been resumed. But will they be able to join the broken thread? Will they be able to regain in our time that which formerly made up the power of prelates and patrons? I don’t believe so. The money will doubtless be found, and money buys bricks and mortar. The artist can be paid for drawing up a plan, and so can the mason for laying the bricks. But money can’t buy the long-lost yet worthy cast of mind that made it possible for a building to be perceived as a poem, a poem in granite that spoke loudly to the people, a poem in marble, standing its ground in motionless, perpetual prayer.

  One morning, then, on the border between Lebak and Pandeglang, there was an unusual commotion. Hundreds of saddled horses filled the road, and at least a thousand people—a lot for that place—were bustling about. Among them were the village headmen and the District Chiefs of Lebak, all with their retinues. A handsome, richly caparisoned Arabian crossbreed, champing at its silver bit, intimated the presence of a higher-ranking chief. This was in fact the case. Despite his advanced age, the Regent of Lebak, Raden Adipati Karta Natta Negara,12 had left Rangkasbitung with a large following to journey the twelve- to fourteen-mile distance to the border with Pandeglang.

  A new Assistant Resident was expected, and custom, which has force of law in the Indies more than anywhere else, dictates that the official responsible for governing a regency should receive a festive welcome on arrival. Also present was the Controleur, a man of middle age who, as the next in rank, had taken charge for some months following the decease of the former Assistant Resident.

  Once the date of the new Assistant Resident’s arrival had become known, a pendopo was hastily erected and furnished with a table and some chairs. Refreshments were placed at the ready. It was in this pendopo that the Regent of Lebak and the Controleur awaited the arrival of their new superior.

  Aside from a broad-brimmed hat, an umbrella, or a hollow tree, there is no simpler representation of the idea of a roof than the pendopo. Think of four or six bamboo posts driven into the ground, connected at the top by further bamboos, and covered by a lid made of the long leaves of the water palm, called atap in those parts, and you can imagine what such a pendopo looks like. It is, as you see, as simple as can be, and served in this case merely as a base for the European and native officials come to welcome their new lord and master at the border.

  I have not expressed myself quite accurately in referring to the Assistant Resident as the Regent’s superior. For a proper understanding of what follows, a digression on the workings of governance in these regions is called for.13

  The so-called Dutch East Indies—the adjective Dutch strikes me as somewhat inaccurate, for a
ll that it has been officially adopted14—may, in terms of the relationship between the Motherland and the population, be divided into two very different parts. One part consists of tribes whose princes and princelings have acknowledged the suzerainty of the Netherlands, but where direct rule still remains to a greater or lesser degree in the hands of the native chiefs. The other part, to which the whole of Java belongs, with one very small and perhaps only putative exception, is directly subject to administration from the Netherlands. There is no question here of tribute, or levy, or alliance. The Javanese are Dutch subjects. The King of the Netherlands is their king. The descendants of their former lords and masters are Dutch officials. They are appointed, transferred, and promoted by the Governor-General, who rules in the king’s name. Criminals are judged and convicted under a law decreed in The Hague. The taxes paid by the Javanese flow into the coffers of the Netherlands.

  It is to the Dutch possessions thus constituting part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands that the following pages will, in the main, be devoted.

  The Governor-General is assisted by a council, which, however, has no power to overrule his decisions. The various branches of governance in Batavia are classified as “departments,” headed by directors, who form the link between the supreme authority of the Governor-General and the residents throughout the land. In cases of a political nature, however, the latter will appeal directly to the Governor-General.

  The title “Resident” dates from the time when the population was only indirectly ruled by the Netherlands, as overlord, for which purpose Residents were appointed to represent Dutch interests at the courts of the native princes, who were then still on their thrones. Those princes no longer exist, and the Residents of today, as regional rulers, have become the actual administrators of Dutch rule. Their circumstances have changed, but the name has remained.