by Multatuli
Verbrugge said nothing.
“The returns I received today are false, too,” Havelaar continued. “The Adipati is poor. The regents of Bogor and Cianjur belong to the same family of which our Regent is the head. He has the rank of adipati, whereas the Regent of Cianjur is only a tumenggung, and yet, because Lebak isn’t suitable for coffee and consequently yields him no profits, he can’t afford to compete in pomp and ceremony with a modest demang in the Priangan uplands, who’d normally hold the stirrup for his cousins to mount their horses. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“He has only his salary, minus the advance payment he got from the government when he—you do know about that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“—when he wanted to build a new mosque, which cost a fair amount of money. Besides, he’s got a whole lot of relatives—you do know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“—he’s got a lot of relatives, who don’t really belong in Lebak, so they’re not much liked by the people, and these relatives crowd around him like a gang of thieves, squeezing him for money. True or not?”
“True,” said Verbrugge.
“And when his purse is empty, which is often the case, they take what they like from the people, in his name. Am I right?”
“Yes, you are.”
“So my information is accurate, but more about that later. The Adipati is getting old, and his fear of death is making him bestow gifts on the clergy, in hope of gaining merit. He gives a lot of money for the travel expenses of pilgrims to Mecca, who bring him back all sorts of shoddy relics, talismans, and jimats.59 True?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“Well, all this explains why he’s so poor. The Demang of Parangkujang is his son-in-law. Insofar as his pride prevents him from helping himself to other people’s property, it’s this demang—though not he alone—who curries favor with him by extorting money and goods from the poor, and by forcing people to abandon their own rice fields and work on those of the Regent. And he . . . well, I’d like to think he’d prefer to do otherwise, but necessity obliges him to stoop to this level. All this is true, isn’t it, Verbrugge?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Verbrugge, becoming increasingly impressed by Havelaar’s eagle eye.
“I could tell he had no money when he raised the subject of the collector’s accounts. As you heard me say this morning, I intend to do my duty. Injustice I will not tolerate. By God, I will not have it!”
And Havelaar sprang to his feet, having spoken in a very different tone to that of the previous day, when he swore the official oath.
“However,” he went on, “although I must do my duty, I mean to be forbearing. I don’t need to know exactly what happened in the past. But whatever happens from now on is my responsibility, and I will answer for it! I hope to remain here for a long time. As for you, Verbrugge, you do realize the greatness of our calling, don’t you? So you must realize that it should have been you telling me all those things I told you a moment ago. I know just as much about you as about the garam gelap smugglers on the south coast.60 You’re a good sort . . . I’m aware of that. But why didn’t you tell me there was so much amiss? You were the acting Assistant Resident for two months, and you’ve been a controleur for very much longer, so you must have known. Did you?”
“Mr. Havelaar, I’ve never served under anyone like you before. Forgive me for saying so, but there’s something most remarkable about you.”
“Not at all! I know I’m different from other people, but what has that got to do with it?”
“What I mean is that your opinions and ideas are so completely new.”
“No they’re not! It’s just that they’ve become obfuscated by the accursed jargon of officialdom with all those ‘I am honored’ and the substitution of ‘the government’s great satisfaction’ for one’s personal conscience. No, Verbrugge, don’t slander yourself! You have nothing to learn from me. For instance, was anything I said during the sebah this morning news to you?”
“No, not news, but you did speak differently from other people.”
“Ah, that’s because . . . my education wasn’t quite up to scratch. I say whatever comes into my head. But you were going to tell me why you resigned yourself so completely to all this misconduct in Lebak.”
“I never really thought in terms of taking initiative. Besides, it’s always been that way around here.”
“Yes, of course, I realize that! Not every man can be a prophet or an apostle . . . or we’d run out of wood to crucify them on! But you will help me put things right, I trust? I’m sure you want to do your duty.”
“Certainly! Towards you, especially. But not everyone takes such a strict attitude, or is even in favor of it, and so the next thing you know, you’re said to be tilting at windmills.”
“No! So the people who embrace Injustice—because they live off the proceeds—claim that no wrong has been done, for the sheer satisfaction of calling you and me Don Quixotes while keeping their own windmills turning. But still, Verbrugge, you needn’t have waited for me to arrive before doing your duty! Mr. Slotering was an able and honest man. He knew what went on, he disapproved of it and opposed it . . . Look!”
Havelaar took two sheets of paper from a folder and showed them to Verbrugge.
“Whose handwriting is this?” he asked.
“It’s Mr. Slotering’s handwriting.”
“Exactly! Well, these are rough notes, apparently on the topics he wanted to discuss with the Resident. It says here, ‘1. On rice cultivation. 2. On the dwellings of village chiefs. 3. On the collection of land taxes, etc.!!’ This last is followed by two exclamation marks. What did Mr. Slotering mean by that?”
‘‘How should I know?” Verbrugge burst out.
“Well, I do know! He means that far more money is raised through land taxes than ever finds its way into the treasury. But let me show you something we both know, because it’s written in words, not figures. Listen to this: ‘12. On the abuse of the population by regents and lesser chiefs. (On running several households at the people’s expense, etc.)’ See? You can tell that Mr. Slotering was a man who did show initiative. So you could have joined forces with him. Listen on: ‘15. That many family members and servants of native chiefs are on the payrolls whereas they don’t take any part in cultivation, so that the yields fall to them, at the expense of those doing all the work. They also lay claim illegally to rice fields that by rights belong to those who cultivate them.’
“Here’s another note, in pencil this time. Once again, clear as day: ‘The depopulation of Parangkujang is due entirely to the OUTRAGEOUS maltreatment of its people.’
“Well, what do you say? You can see that it’s not all that eccentric of me to strive for justice, can’t you? I’m not the first to do so, either.”61
“That’s true,’’ said Verbrugge. “Mr. Slotering often discussed these things with Resident Slymering.”
“And what was the result?”
“The Adipati would be called, and they’d confer.”
“Right! And then?”
“The Adipati generally denied everything. Then witnesses had to be called . . . but no one ever dares to testify against a regent . . . Oh, Mr. Havelaar, these things are so very complicated!”
Reader, by the end of my book it will be as clear to you as it was to Controleur Verbrugge why things were so complicated.
“Mr. Slotering was very annoyed,” Verbrugge continued. “He sent sharply worded letters to the chiefs.”
“I read them last night,” Havelaar said.62
“And I often heard him say that if nothing changed and if the Resident didn’t put his foot down, he’d appeal directly to the Governor-General. He told the chiefs as much at the last sebah he presided over.”
“That would have been very wrong of him. The Resident was his superior, and should on no account be passed over. And why would he do such a thing, anyway? Surely it’s fair to assume that th
e Resident of Banten would never condone Injustice and arbitrariness?”
“Not condone, no! But nobody’s waiting to lodge a complaint with the government against a chief.”
“I’d rather not bring charges against anyone at all, but if I must, then against a chief just as soon as anyone else. But there’s no question yet of bringing charges, thank goodness! I intend to call on the Adipati tomorrow. I’ll draw his attention to the wrongs of unlawful exercise of authority, especially with regard to the properties of the poor. But in the meantime I’ll help him as best I can in his difficult circumstances. So now you can see why I ordered the collector to release the money right away, can’t you? And I also intend to ask the government to forget about the advance paid to the Regent.63 And as for you, Verbrugge, I propose that you and I do our duty together, and with firmness. Gentle as long as we can be, but unflinching when we must be. You’re an honest man, I know, but you’re too reserved. From now on you must speak your mind with confidence, come what may! Shake off that diffidence of yours, my good man . . . and now, please join us for lunch. We have canned cauliflower from Holland, but it’s all plain fare, as I have to be very frugal. I’m badly behind in my finances—my trip to Europe, you know? Come here, Max . . . Goodness me, lad, how heavy you’re getting!”
Then, with Max riding on his shoulder, he stepped inside, followed by Verbrugge. Tina was waiting for them at the table laid for lunch, which, as Havelaar said, was exceedingly plain fare. Duclari, who had come to ask whether Verbrugge would be home for the midday meal, was invited to join them as well, and if you, reader, fancy a little variety in this story, please proceed to the following chapter, in which I relate what they talked about at lunch.
NINTH CHAPTER
I WOULD give a lot, reader, to know exactly how long I could afford to leave a heroine suspended in midair while I go on to describe some castle or other, without you putting my book aside in exasperation before the poor woman hits the ground. If my tale called for any such leap, I’d take the precaution of having her jump from a first-story window, and would pick a castle about which there is little to say. But for now you can rest assured: Havelaar’s house had no stories, and my heroine—good heavens! dear, loyal, unassuming Tina, a heroine?—never jumped out of a window.
By ending the previous chapter with the prospect of some variation in the next, I was using an oratorical trick intended not so much as a serious proposal to include a chapter with nothing but “a little variety,” but rather as a satisfying close. A writer is as vain as . . . as the next man. Speak ill of his mother or the color of his hair, tell him he has an Amsterdam accent—something no Amsterdammer will ever admit—and he might yet forgive you. But don’t dare comment on even the slightest detail of anything remotely connected to his writing . . . because that he will never forgive! So if you don’t like my book, and our paths happen to cross, just pretend we’re perfect strangers to each other.
Indeed, through the magnifying glass of my authorial vanity, even a chapter purely for the sake of variety seems to me of prime importance, not to say indispensable, and if you skipped it and weren’t properly appreciative of my book afterwards, I wouldn’t hesitate to disqualify your opinion on the grounds that you had failed to read the most essential part. For I—as a writer and a man—hold to be essential any chapter the unforgivably careless reader might prefer to skip.
I can just imagine your wife asking: “Is it any good, that book you’re reading?” and you saying—horribile auditu to me—with the eloquence so typical of the married man:
“Ahem . . . well . . . I don’t know yet.”
Well then, barbarian, read on! The most important part is just a step away. Here I am, my lips atremble as I try to gauge how many pages you’ve already turned and scan your features for the reflected glow of that splendid chapter . . .
No, I can see you haven’t reached it yet. Presently you’ll spring to your feet in high emotion, you’ll throw out your arms . . . to your wife perhaps . . .
But you don’t—you read on. I think you must have read past the splendid chapter by now, although I didn’t see you spring to your feet, nor throw out your arms . . .
As the pages under your right thumb dwindle in number, my hopes of that embrace dwindle . . . oh, I had even reckoned on a tear being shed!
And so you read on to the end of the novel, where they fall into each other’s arms, and you say with a yawn—yet another form of marital eloquence, “Well, well . . . Ahem, it’s a book that, ahem . . . Oh, the stuff they write nowadays!”
But don’t you see, monster that you are, tiger, European, reader, don’t you see that for the past hour you’ve been chewing on my spirit as if it were a toothpick? Gnawing the flesh and bones of your own kind, you cannibal! It was my soul you were munching like grass! It was my heart in that tasty morsel you swallowed! Because I poured my heart and soul into that book, I wept over the manuscript, I felt the blood draining from my veins as I wrote, I gave you all that, which you bought for a song . . . and all you can say is: Ahem!
But my reader will understand that it is not my own book that I am referring to here.
All I wish to say, then, to quote Abraham Blankaart . . .
•
“Who’s Abraham Blankaart?” asked Louise Rosemeyer, and Frits explained that he was a character in a novel,* which was just as well, as it gave me the opportunity to get up and put a stop to the reading, at least for the duration of the evening. You are aware that I’m a coffee broker—at No 37 Lauriergracht—and that my business means everything to me, so you can see why I’m not at all satisfied with what Stern has written so far. I was hoping for coffee, but what he’s come up with is . . . goodness knows what!
He’s been wasting our time with his writings at three of our weekly gatherings in a row, and, to make matters worse, the Rosemeyers think they’re good. So they say, at any rate. Whenever I venture to comment, he appeals to Louise, saying her approval means more to him than all the coffee in the world, and besides: When the heart glows, etc. (see his tirade on page such-and-such, or rather, don’t bother). So here I am, at a loss! That parcel of Shawlman’s is a proper Trojan horse. It’s having a bad influence on Frits, too. He’s been helping Stern, I notice; the allusion to Abraham Blankaart is far too Dutch for a German.64 They’re such prigs, the pair of them. This whole business is getting on my nerves. Worst of all, my agreement with Leecher is for the publication of a book about coffee auctions—something the entire country is waiting for—and now Stern has gone off on a tangent! Yesterday he said: “Don’t worry, all roads lead to Rome. Wait till you hear the end of the introduction.” So all this is only the introduction? “I promise you”—actually he said “I forespeak you,” in his German way—“that it all comes down to coffee in the end, nothing but coffee. Remember Horace,” he went on, “omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit . . . in other words, praise be to a mix of ingredients—like taking your coffee with milk and sugar, it’s that simple.”
And then I have to keep my mouth shut. Not because he’s right, but because I owe it to Burden & Co to make sure old Stern doesn’t switch to Busselinck & Waterman, who’d only treat him badly anyway, because they’re cheats.
It is to you, reader, that I pour my heart out, and I insist on proving my innocence, so that once you’ve read Stern’s scribblings—did you really read them?—you won’t pour scorn on the head of an innocent—for, I ask you, who would take it into his head to use a broker who calls him a cannibal? As it is, I can hardly pull young Stern off my book project now that things have got to the stage where Louise Rosemeyer, on leaving church—the boys always wait around for her, apparently—begs him to come to our gathering in good time so he can read us “a nice long piece” about Max and Tina.
But as you bought the book—or borrowed it—on the strength of its promising title, I acknowledge your claim to your money’s worth, which is why I’ll be writing a couple of chapters myself for a change. You, reader, not being a member of the Roseme
yers’ Sunday gathering, are more fortunate than I am, for I’m obliged to listen to the whole thing. So feel free to skip the chapters that reek of German histrionics and read only the parts written by me, a coffee broker and man of standing.
I was surprised to learn from Stern’s writings—he showed me the evidence in Shawlman’s papers—that coffee is not grown in the Lebak regency. This is a grave omission, and I’ll consider my efforts amply rewarded if my book prompts the government to take note of it. Shawlman’s papers suggest that the soil over there is unsuited to growing coffee. But that’s no excuse, and I maintain that we have here a case of unpardonable dereliction of duty towards the Netherlands in general and coffee brokers in particular, indeed towards the Javanese themselves, in that they have failed either to replace the soil—it’s not as if they have anything better to do—or, if this is deemed unfeasible, to send the local population off to other places with the right kind of soil for coffee.
I never say anything off the top of my head, and I do believe I speak with authority, because I’ve pondered this question at length, particularly after hearing Pastor Waffler preach on the subject of converting heathens.
That was last Wednesday evening. I want you to know, reader, that I take my fatherly duties seriously, and set great store by the moral instruction of my children. And I don’t like the way Frits’s tone and attitude have changed lately—it’s all the fault of that dratted parcel!—so I decided to give him a firm talking-to. I said:
“Frits, I’m not at all pleased with you! I’ve always set a good example, and yet you stray from the path of righteousness. You’re a prig and a pest, you write poetry, and you kissed Betsy Rosemeyer. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so don’t go kissing the Rosemeyer girls, and don’t be such a prig. Immorality brings perdition, my boy. Read the Scriptures, and mark that Shawlman fellow. He has strayed from the Lord’s path, and now he’s penniless, living in a garret . . . behold the wages of sin and misbehavior! He wrote improper articles in the Indépendance, and he dropped the Aglaia magazine on the floor. Just shows how pride comes before a fall. He doesn’t even have a watch, and his young son goes about in half a pair of trousers. Remember, your body’s a temple of the Holy Spirit, and your father has always worked hard for a living—it’s the truth—so lift your gaze heavenward and try to grow up to be a respectable broker by the time I retire to Driebergen. And do take note of all those people who ignore sound advice and trample on religion and morality, and let them be a warning to you. And don’t think you’re on a level with Stern, whose father is rich and who’ll never run out of money even if he refuses to become a broker and even if he does make the occasional blunder. Think how all wickedness is punished, think of Shawlman, who doesn’t own an overcoat and looks like a showman. Do pay attention in church, and don’t squirm about in the pew as if you were bored, boy, because . . . what is God supposed to think? The church is His sanctuary, you know. Don’t wait around for the girls after the service either, because that only undoes all the good you’ve just learnt. And don’t make Marie laugh when I’m reading from the Scriptures at breakfast. There’s no place for any of that in a respectable household. And you doodled on Bastiaans’s blotter when he didn’t turn up at the office—because of his gout, yet again—that sort of tomfoolery only keeps the others from their work, and besides, it leads to perdition, according to the word of God. That fellow Shawlman was already getting into trouble as a boy—he punched a Greek stallholder on Westermarkt . . . and look at him now: idle, pedantic, and sickly. Do stop joking around with Stern, my boy: his father’s rich, and don’t you forget it. Take no notice when he pulls faces at the bookkeeper. And when he’s scratching away at his poems after office hours, you can tell him from me that he’d do better to write and tell his father how well he’s being treated in our house, and that Marie has embroidered a pair of slippers for him with real floss silk. Why don’t you ask him—just in passing, you know—if he thinks his father’s thinking of switching to Busselinck & Waterman, and tell him they’re cheats. It’s the least we can do—steer him in the right direction, I mean—and . . . all that poetry is nonsense. Do try to behave yourself, Frits, and do as you’re told, and don’t put me to shame by pulling the maid’s skirt at the office when she brings the tea, because she’ll only drop everything, and Saint Paul says a son must never cause grief to his father. I’ve been going to the Exchange for twenty years, and I think it’s fair to say I’m respected in my niche beside the pillar. So take this warning to heart, Frits, and behave yourself now, get your hat, put your coat on, and come along with me to the prayer meeting, it’ll do you good!”