Max Havelaar

by Multatuli

  That is what I said, and I’m confident he was duly impressed, especially as Pastor Waffler had chosen as the subject of his sermon the Love of God, as shown by His rage against unbelievers, with reference to Samuel’s rebuke of Saul, see I Samuel 15:33.

  As I listened to the sermon, I kept thinking what a world of difference there is between human and divine wisdom. I have already mentioned that Shawlman’s parcel contained, along with much rubbish, a few things that stood out for their soundness of reasoning. But ah, what trifles they are compared to what someone like Pastor Waffler has to say! Not that all the credit is due to the pastor—I know Waffler, and he’s no high-flyer, believe me—no, his inspiration comes from above. The contrast was all the more marked because he touched upon certain matters also dealt with by Shawlman—whose parcel, as you’ve seen, contained much material on the Javanese and other heathens. Frits says the Javanese aren’t heathen, but as far as I’m concerned a heathen is anyone with the wrong faith. And I stick with Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, and I have no doubt every respectable reader will do likewise.

  As it was Waffler’s sermon that opened my eyes to the error of not growing coffee in Lebak, more about which later, and as I, as an honest man, would hate to deprive the reader of his money’s worth, I’ll quote some passages from the sermon that struck me as particularly apt.

  He began with a brief explanation of the love of God as attested in the book of Samuel, and very soon passed on to the main point: the conversion of Javanese and Malayers, or whatever names all those people go by. This is what he said:

  “Such, dearly beloved, was the glorious mission of Israel”—he meant the slaughter of the Canaanites—“and such is the mission of the Netherlands! No, it shall not be said that the light that shines on us is hidden under a bushel, nor that we are miserly in sharing with others the bread of eternal life. Cast your gaze upon the islands of the Indian Ocean, inhabited by millions upon millions of children of the rejected son—the rightly rejected son—of the noble, God-given Noah! They writhe in the nauseating snake pits of heathen ignorance, where they bow their black frizzy-haired heads under the yoke of self-serving priests! They worship God by invoking a false prophet, who is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord! And, dearly beloved, as though following a false prophet were not enough, there are even those among them who worship another God, nay, who worship multiple gods, gods of wood or stone that they carve in their own image: black, horrible, flat-nosed, and devilish! Indeed, dearly beloved, I can barely continue speaking on account of the tears in my eyes, for there is yet more depravity than this among the descendants of Ham! There are among them those who know no God at all, by whatever name! Who think it enough to obey the laws of civil society! Who consider a harvest song of joy over the success of their labor to be appropriate thanks to the Supreme Being who enabled their crops to ripen! Lost souls live there, my dearly beloved—if such a loathsome existence may be called living! There are those who claim that merely because they love their wife and children, and do not seize from their neighbors what is not theirs, they may enjoy a hard-earned peace of mind when they lie down to sleep at night! Does this not make you shudder? Does it not pierce your heart to think of the fate that will befall all those benighted creatures when the trumpets sound, raising the dead to divide the just from the unjust? Do you not hear—yes you do, for our reading from the Bible has shown your God to be a mighty God, and a God of righteous retribution—yes, you can hear the snapping of bones and the crackling of flames in the everlasting Gehenna where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth! There, they burn and perish not, for their punishment is everlasting! There, unquenchable tongues of flame lick the howling victims of unbelief! There, the worm gnawing at their hearts will not die, but gnaws on and on without consuming them, so that he who forsakes God will feel the heart in his breast being gnawed forever! See, how they peel the black skin off the unbaptized infant, the infant that, scarcely born, was hurled from its mother’s breast into the pool of eternal damnation . . .”

  At that point a woman fainted.

  “But, dearly beloved,” Pastor Waffler continued, “God is a God of love! He does not wish the sinner to be lost, but that he shall be redeemed with mercy, through faith, in Christ’s name! And that is why Holland has been chosen to save what may be saved of those miserable souls! That is why God, in His infinite wisdom, has granted power to a land that is small in size but great and strong through knowledge of Him—yes, power over the people of those regions, that they may be saved from hellfire by the matchless power of the Holy Gospel. Dutch vessels sail the great seas and bring civilization, religion, and Christianity to the wayward Javanese! No, we in our happy land do not seek redemption for ourselves alone: we intend to share it with the wretches on those distant shores, who are bound in fetters of unbelief, superstition, and immorality! It is to our duties in this regard that I shall devote the seventh part of my homily.”

  What had gone before was the sixth part, you see. Among our duties towards those poor heathens were the following:

  1. Making ample donations in cash to the Missionary Society.

  2. Supporting the Bible Societies, to enable them to distribute Bibles in Java.

  3. Promoting prayer meetings in Harderwyk for the benefit of the colonial army recruitment center there.

  4. Composing sermons and religious songs, suitable for our soldiers and sailors to read and sing to the Javanese.

  5. Founding a society of influential men whose task would be to persuade our gracious King that:

  a) the appointment of governors, officers, and officials should be restricted to such men as may be considered steadfast in the true faith;

  b) the Javanese may be granted permission to visit the barracks, and likewise the navy and merchant vessels calling at the ports, so that through interaction with Dutch soldiers and sailors they may be prepared for the kingdom of God;

  c) the use of Bibles or religions tracts as payment for drink in taverns should be prohibited;

  d) among the requirements for granting opium licenses in Java should be that every opium den is furnished with a stock of Bibles in proportion to the expected number of visitors to the establishment, and that the landlord undertakes not to sell opium unless the client buys a religious tract as well;

  e) orders should be issued that the Javanese be brought to God by labor.

  6. Making ample donations to the Missionary Societies.

  Yes, I know I already mentioned the last item under No. 1, but he repeated it, and in the heat of his rhetoric this redundancy strikes me as quite understandable.65

  Well now, reader, did you take note of proposal 5e? Because that was what put me in mind of the coffee auctions, and of the supposed unsuitability of the soil in Lebak. It won’t come as a surprise to you that the latter point in particular has not been out of my thoughts for a moment since Wednesday evening. Pastor Waffler has read the missionaries’ accounts, so he clearly knows what he’s talking about. Well now, if he, with those reports before him and with a view to God, maintains that hard work will facilitate the conquest of the Javanese soul for the kingdom of God, then I believe it fair to say that I myself am not altogether wide of the mark in drawing the conclusion that there is no good reason not to grow coffee in Lebak. It is even conceivable that the Almighty made the soil there unsuitable for coffee for no other reason than that the effort required to replace the unsuitable soil with good soil from elsewhere will make the local population fit for redemption.

  I do hope my book will be seen by the King, and that bigger auctions will soon prove how closely the knowledge of God is linked to the interests of all respectable people. Just look how the simple, humble Waffler, without insight in human nature—the man has never set foot in the Exchange—but with the Gospel to light his path, has given me, a coffee broker, a tip which may not only benefit the Netherlands as a whole but may also enable me, if Frits takes good care—he sat fairly still in church—to retire five years earlier than
expected. Yes indeed, work, work, work, that is my motto! Work for the Javanese, that is my principle! And my principles are sacred to me.

  Is not the Gospel the greatest good? Is there anything higher than redemption? Is it not our duty, therefore, to bring redemption to all men? And if, as a means to this end, labor is required—I myself have been on the Exchange for twenty years—can we deny the Javanese peasant the work so urgently needed by his soul to avoid being consumed by flames? It would be selfish, horribly selfish, if we didn’t seize every opportunity to safeguard those poor misguided souls from the dreadful future so eloquently evoked by Pastor Waffler. It was when he mentioned the black child that the woman fainted—perhaps she had a young lad who had turned out rather dark skinned. Women are like that.

  And why wouldn’t I advocate hard work, I who am occupied with business from morning till night? Isn’t this very book—which Stern is making such an ordeal for me—proof of how eager I am for our country’s prosperity? And if I, who was christened—in the Amstel church—must toil day in, day out, is it not reasonable to demand that the Javanese roll up their sleeves and work for their salvation?

  If that society—the one set out above in 5e, I mean—comes to pass, I’ll join it. And I’ll try to get the Rosemeyers to join as well, because the interests of the sugar-bakers are equally at stake here, although they don’t seem to me to be very sound in their principles—the Rosemeyers, I mean—they have a papist maid, after all.

  In any case, I will do my duty. That is what I vowed upon returning home from the prayer meeting with Frits. The Lord will be served in my house, I’ll see to that, and with a vengeance, as I’m becoming more and more aware of how wisely everything is organized, and how lovingly we are led by God’s hand, and how dearly He wishes to preserve us for the next life—as well as for this one, because the soil of Lebak can be made perfectly suitable for growing coffee.

  *Abraham Blankaart, a character in the popular eighteenth-century Dutch epistolary novel Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart, was known for his quips and humorous turns of phrase.

  TENTH CHAPTER

  WHERE principles are concerned, I spare no one, but I can see I’ll have to take a different tack with Stern than with Frits. And, as it seems likely that my name—the firm is Burden & Co, but I am Drystubble, Batavus Drystubble—will be associated with a book containing matters that pose a threat to the respect that every decent man and broker owes to himself, I consider it my duty to inform you of my efforts to keep Stern on the straight and narrow.

  I didn’t speak to him of the Lord—he’s a Lutheran—but I did appeal to his sentiments and sense of honor. Here’s how I went about it, and please note how convenient it is to have some knowledge of human nature. I’d heard him say “auf Ehrenwort,” and asked him what he meant by that.

  “Well,” he said, “it means that I stake my honor on the truth of what I say.”

  “That’s no small claim,” I replied. “Are you so sure you always tell the truth?”

  “Yes I am,” he declared. “I am truthful without exception. When my breast glows . . .”

  The reader can fill in the rest.

  “That’s very fine indeed,” I said warmly, playing the innocent.

  This was part of a cunning trap I had set for him, my purpose being—without running the risk of Old Stern falling into Busselinck & Waterman’s hands—to take that youngster down a peg or two, make him realize what a world of difference there is between him as a beginner—even if his father is a successful businessman—and a broker who’s been on the Exchange for twenty years. I knew he’d learnt all sorts of unsuitable poems by heart, and since all poetry contains lies, I was sure I’d soon catch him telling one. And it wasn’t long before I did. I was in the side room and he was in the suite . . . yes, we have a suite. Marie was knitting, and he said he wanted to recite something to her. I listened carefully, and when he finished I asked if he had the book containing the thing he’d just recited. He said yes and went to fetch it. It was a slim volume by someone called Heine. The next morning I handed him—Stern, I mean—the following:

  Notes on the love of truth on the part of someone who recites the following rubbish by Heine to a young girl sitting in the suite with her knitting.

  On wings of song—ah, lightly,

  Heart’s dearest, I bear thee away:

  Heart’s dearest? Marie, your heart’s dearest? Do your parents know about this, and Louise Rosemeyer? Is it right to say such a thing to a child, who might easily disobey her mother and take it into her head that she’s all grown up simply because someone calls her “my heart’s dearest”? What does it mean, anyway, to be borne away on wings of song? You don’t have wings, and neither does your poem. But even if you did have wings, would that justify making this kind of proposition to a girl who hasn’t done her confirmation yet? And even if she had, what do you mean by flying away together? Shame on you!

  A nook is beckoning brightly

  Where Ganges’ waters play.

  Well then, go there on your own, and find yourself a place to stay, but don’t take a girl who’s needed at home to help her mother with housekeeping! But you aren’t being serious! Firstly, you’ve never seen the Ganges, so you don’t know what it’s like over there. I’ll tell you what, shall I? It’s all a bunch of lies, and you’re only telling them because all this versification has turned you into a slave of rhythm and rhyme. If the first line had ended in jester, home, or minor, you’d have asked her to go with you to Chester, Rome, or China, and so on. So you can see that the itinerary you propose can’t be taken seriously, and all this is no more than silly doggerel without sense or consequence. What if that ridiculous journey actually appealed to Marie? Not to mention the uncomfortable mode of travel you suggest! Thank heaven she has too much sense to long for a country where, according to you:

  A blooming red garden is lying

  In moonlight calm and clear,

  The lotus flowers are sighing

  For thee, their sister dear.

  The violets banter and slyly

  They peep at the star-rays pale,

  The roses are whispering shyly

  Some fragrant fairy tale.

  What were you thinking of doing with Marie in that garden by moonlight, Stern? Would it be moral, respectable, decent? Do you want to make me into a laughingstock, like Busselinck & Waterman, with whom no respectable firm wants to do business because their daughter has run off and because they’re cheats? What am I supposed to say if someone at the Exchange asks me what my daughter’s up to in that red garden? Because, as I’m sure you’ll understand, nobody would believe me if I said she needed to pay a visit to those lotus flowers that, you claim, have been waiting for her all this time. And every person with any sense would laugh in my face if I were stupid enough to say: Marie is there in that red garden—why red, why not yellow or purple?—to listen to the violets gurgling and giggling, or to the roses whispering fairy-tale secrets in each other’s ears. Even if such a thing were possible, what good would it do Marie if they’re whispering so shyly that she wouldn’t understand a thing anyway? It’s just lies, silly lies. And not pretty, either, just take a pencil and draw a rose with an ear and see what you think. And what does it mean, anyway, about those fairy tales being fragrant? Shall I tell you in good, round Dutch? It means there’s something fishy about those witless fairy tales! That’s what it means!