by Multatuli
“No, I never promised you that! I only wanted to tell you how I met her. When I reached the end of my tale, I said: ‘What about you, Upi, what would your wish be if an angel came down from heaven, asking what you wanted?’ And she said, ‘Oh, sir, I’d pray to be taken up to heaven.’ ”
“Now isn’t that adorable?” Tina said, turning to her visitors, who may well have found it most peculiar . . .
Havelaar stood up and mopped his brow.
*The Austrian dancer Fanny Elssler (1810–84) and her rival the Swedish Marie Taglioni (1804–84) were internationally renowned theatrical ballerinas.
TWELFTH CHAPTER
“MY DEAR MAX,” Tina said, “our dessert’s so very skimpy, couldn’t you . . . you know what I mean . . . Madame Geoffrin?”77
“. . . tell you some more, as a substitute for cake? I’m devilish hoarse. It’s Verbrugge’s turn.”
“Yes, Mr. Verbrugge! Do take over from Max for a bit,” pleaded Mrs. Havelaar.
Verbrugge reflected a moment and began:
“There was once a man who stole a turkey.”
“You rascal!” Havelaar exclaimed. “You got that story from Padang! And how does it go on?”
“That’s all there is. Does anyone know the rest of it?”
“Well, I do! I ate the turkey, shared it . . . somebody else. D’you know why I was suspended at Padang?”
“They said your cash was short at Natal,” Verbrugge said.
“That wasn’t entirely untrue, but neither was it true. For a variety of reasons I’d been very careless with my accounts at Natal, so they weren’t quite up to standard. But that wasn’t at all unusual those days! The north of Sumatra was in such turmoil after the occupation of Barus, Tapus, and Singkil, and things were so unsettled that a young man with a preference for riding horses rather than counting money could hardly be blamed for failing to have his affairs as shipshape as those of an Amsterdam bookkeeper with nothing else to do. The Batak lands were in uproar and, as you are well aware, Verbrugge, anything that goes on there has repercussions in Natal. I used to sleep in my clothes in case I was urgently needed, which was quite often. They were dangerous times—shortly before my arrival there was a plot to murder my predecessor and start a revolt—and danger has a certain appeal, especially if you’re only twenty-two. This appeal can make a man unfit for office work, or for the meticulousness required for proper accounting. And besides, my head was brimming with crazy ideas . . .”
“There’s no need!” Mrs. Havelaar called to a servant.
“No need for what?”
“I’d told them to prepare an extra dish in the kitchen . . . an omelet or something.”
“Oh, so there’s no need, now that I’ve started on my crazy ideas? You naughty thing, Tina! It’s fine by me, but these gentlemen also have a say in the matter. Verbrugge, which will you have, your share of an omelet or the story?”
‘‘An awkward question for a man of good manners,” Verbrugge said.
“And I’d rather not choose either,” Duclari chimed in, “because it’s a matter between Mr. and Mrs. Havelaar and, as the French say, never poke your finger between the bark and the tree.”
“I’ll help you out, gentlemen, the omelet is . . .”
“Madam,” said Duclari, polite as ever, “the omelet is bound to be just as good as . . .”
“. . . as the story? If it’s any good, certainly! However, there’s a little problem . . .”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t any sugar yet, in the kitchen,” said Verbrugge. “Oh, do feel free to send for whatever you need from my house!”
“Oh, we have sugar, all right . . . from Mrs. Slotering. No, that’s not it. If the omelet turned out well, there wouldn’t be a problem, but . . .”
“What? Has it fallen in the fire?”
“I wish that were true! No, it can’t have fallen in the fire. It is . . .”
“Why, Tina!” Havelaar exclaimed. “What’s the matter with it?”
“It’s ethereal, Max, just like those ladies of yours in Arles! I have no omelet . . . I’ve run out of everything!”
“Well then, for goodness’ sake let’s have the story!” Duclari sighed with comical despair.
“But we do have coffee!” Tina said.
“Good! Coffee on the front veranda, and let’s invite Mrs. Slotering and the girls to join us,” Havelaar said, whereupon the small gathering trooped outside.
“My guess is that she’ll decline, Max! You know she’d rather not have her meals with us either, and I can’t blame her.”
“She’ll have heard about my storytelling,” Havelaar said, “and that will have put her off.”
“Nonsense, Max, that wouldn’t bother her, she doesn’t understand Dutch. No, she told me she wants to go on running her own household, and I can understand that perfectly well. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home . . . Anyway, she strikes me as rather shy. Can you imagine, she gets the watchmen to shoo away any stranger setting foot on the premises . . .”
“I’d like to have either the story or the omelet,” Duclari said.
“So would I!” rejoined Verbrugge. “No more shilly-shallying. We’re entitled to a square meal, so I demand to hear the story about the turkey.”
“I’ve told it already,” Havelaar said. “I stole the fowl from General Vandamme, and then I . . . ate it with someone else.”
“Before that ‘someone’ went to heaven,” Tina said coyly.
“No, that’s cheating!” protested Duclari. “We need to know why you . . . seized that turkey.”
“Well, I was hungry, and General Vandamme was to blame for that, because he’d suspended me.”
“If that’s all you’re going to tell us, I’ll bring my own omelet next time,” grumbled Verbrugge.
“Believe me, that was all there was to it. He had a great many turkeys, and I had nothing. They used to drive the creatures past my door . . . I took one of them, and said to the fellow supposedly keeping an eye on them, ‘You can tell the General from me that I, Max Havelaar, am taking this turkey because I want something to eat.’ ”
“And what about the epigram?”
“Did Verbrugge mention that to you?”
“He did.”
“It had nothing to do with the turkey. I only wrote that thing because he’d suspended so many officials. There were at least seven or eight at Padang who’d been barred for various reasons, several of whom were far less remiss than I was. The Assistant Resident there had been suspended, and for an entirely different reason, I believe, from the one given officially. I don’t mind telling you this, although I can’t guarantee I’ve got all the details straight, I’m just repeating what was stated as fact in the Chinese church at Padang,78 and what may very well in fact be the truth—particularly in view of the General’s reputation. You see, he’d married his wife to win a bet, and with it a cask of wine. He often went out in the evening . . . for a stroll, let’s say. One night, apparently, in the alley near the girls’ orphanage, a supernumerary police officer by the name of Valkenaar was so convinced by the General’s incognito that he took him for an ordinary vagrant and beat him up. Not far from there lived a Miss X. Rumor had it that this Miss had given birth to a child, which . . . had vanished. It was the duty of the Assistant Resident, in his capacity as chief of police, to look into the matter, and he apparently mentioned this at a whist party hosted by Vandamme. Well, the following day he promptly received instructions to pay a visit to a certain regency where the local Controleur had been suspended for real or alleged dishonesty; the Assistant Resident was to investigate certain details on site and ‘submit a report.’ He was naturally somewhat surprised to be charged with a task that had nothing to with his regency, but the assignment could, at a stretch, be considered an honor, and as he and the General were on very friendly terms he had no reason to think of a trap. So off he went . . . I prefer to forget where to, to carry out his orders. He returned after a time, and presented a report that was no
t unfavorable for the Controleur concerned. In the meantime, however, the idea had taken hold among the public—i.e., everyone and no one—that the only motive for suspending that Controleur had been to get the Assistant Resident away from Padang so as to prevent his inquiry into the child’s disappearance, or at least to postpone it so that facts would be harder to establish. Again, I can’t vouch for the truth of this, but from what I gathered later about General Vandamme, I’m inclined to believe it. No one in Padang put it past him to do such a thing—given the depths to which his morals had sunk. Most people saw him as having only one virtue: that of courage in times of danger, and if I, having seen him face danger, believed he was at bottom a brave man, I wouldn’t be telling you all this. True, he’d put many men ‘to the sword’ in Sumatra, but people who witnessed certain events at close quarters were not impressed by his bravery,79 and, strange as it may seem, I believe he owed his fame as a warrior mainly to something we all have in common, to some extent: a liking for contrast. People are always saying: it’s true that Peter or Paul is this or that, but . . . you have to admit he’s also the other, and it’s the other that makes all the difference. And the surest means of garnering praise is to have a blatant shortcoming. Take you, Verbrugge, getting drunk every day . . .”
“Me?” gasped Verbrugge, whose moderation was exemplary.
“Yes, you. It’s me making you drunk now, every day! Getting you in such a state that Duclari trips over you on the veranda in the dark. He won’t like that, but his next thought will be that he’s also seen a good side of you which he hadn’t noticed much before. And then when I come along and find you in such a . . . horizontal position, you’ll give me a pat on the arm and say: ‘Oh, but he’s such a fine, good lad really, believe me!’ ”
“That’s what I always say about Verbrugge anyway,” Duclari said, “even when he’s vertical.”
“But with less ardor and less conviction! Just think how often people say: ‘Oh, if only so-and-so took better care of his affairs, he’d be quite somebody!’ But . . . then you get the tale of how he does not take care of his affairs and how that makes him a nobody. I think I know why that is. It’s like speaking of the dead: you always hear about their good qualities, which no one ever noticed before, and that’s because the dead don’t get in anybody’s way anymore. All men are rivals, to some extent. We all like to feel ourselves above everybody else in every respect. But saying so would be bad form, and also against our own interests, as nobody would believe us even if we were telling the truth. So we have to find a roundabout way of showing superiority, and this is how we go about it. If you, Duclari, say: ‘Lieutenant Puttee’s a fine soldier, he truly is, I can’t tell you often enough what a fine soldier he is . . . but a strategist he is not . . .’ Does that sound at all familiar, Duclari?”
“I’ve never met a Lieutenant Puttee, never heard of him either.”
“Well then, invent him, and say it.”
“All right, I’ve invented him, and that’s what I said about him.”
“Do you realize what you just said? You said that you, Duclari, are an expert on strategy! I’m no better myself. Believe me, there’s no point in berating a fellow for being very bad, since the good ones among us are hardly any better! If we take perfection to be equal to zero degrees and badness to a hundred, who are we—vacillating between ninety-eight and ninety-nine as we are—to condemn someone scoring a hundred and one! Even so, I believe lots of people fall short of the hundred degrees only because of their lack of good qualities, such as the courage to be their own man.”
“How many degrees am I at, Max?”
“I’d need a magnifying glass to count them, Tina.”
“I protest!” cried Verbrugge. “Oh no, dear lady, I’m not protesting against your proximity to zero, not by any means! The thing is, we have officials being suspended, a child gone missing, a governor-general standing accused . . . Now for the rest of the drama, please!”
“Tina, do see to it that our larder is better stocked next time! No, Verbrugge, you won’t get the drama, not until I’ve done some more of my hobby-horsing about contrasts. I said that we all see our fellow men as rivals of some sort. We can’t always be criticizing—that would be too noticeable—so we shower praise on a good quality only to draw attention to the bad, which is all we care about, without appearing to be biased. If a man takes offense at my comment that his daughter is very pretty but that he is a thief, my answer will be: ‘What’s wrong? I said your daughter’s charming, didn’t I?’ Double winnings for me, you see? We’re shopkeepers, grocers, the pair of us. I poach his customers, who won’t buy raisins from a thief, and at the same time I count as a good fellow for praising my rival’s daughter.”
“No, it’s not that bad,” Duclari said. “You’re exaggerating!”
“So it appears to you, because the comparison I made was rather brief and blunt. That comment about being a thief needs some glossing over. But the gist of the parable remains valid. When we can’t deny the existence of certain qualities in a person, qualities that elicit respect, reverence, or awe, it’s a relief to discover some other qualities that exempt us wholly or partially from paying the tribute. ‘I’d bow my head before such a great poet, but . . . he beats his wife!’80 See how ready we are to use the wife’s bruises as an excuse to condemn the husband? We’re even glad he’s a wife beater, which we would despise him for otherwise. If we have no choice but to admit that a man has the kind of qualities that warrant a pedestal, if we can’t claim the opposite without sounding ignorant, insensitive, or jealous, we end up saying, ‘All right then, put him on a pedestal!’ But even as he is being hoisted up, still believing us to be in awe of his excellence, we’re readying the rope that will topple him at the first opportunity. The quicker the turnover in occupants of pedestals, the more chance others have to take their place, and this is so true that we—much like the hunter shooting crows and discarding them—have made a habit of pulling down statues regardless of whether we could ever occupy the pedestals ourselves. Kappelman, who lives on sauerkraut and small beer, prides himself on his condescending remark that ‘Alexander wasn’t great . . . he was immoderate,’ even though he hasn’t the least chance of ever competing with Alexander in conquering the world.
“Whatever the case may be, I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t have taken it into their heads to consider General Vandamme to be a brave man if his bravery hadn’t offered them the contrasting phrase: ‘Ah, but his morals!’ And by the same token, his morality wouldn’t have been such an issue for all those who weren’t above criticism themselves, if it hadn’t come in so handy in mitigation of the man’s supposed bravery, which gave certain people sleepless nights. There was one quality he possessed to a truly high degree: willpower. Every decision he made was final, and was usually carried out. On the other hand—see? I have the contrast to hand, as usual—on the other hand, he was inclined to . . . take liberties with the means he employed to impose his will, and, as Van der Palm said of Napoleon—unjustly in my opinion—‘obstacles of morality never stood in his way!’ In that case, of course, it’s far easier to achieve one’s goal than if one feels bound by morality.
“The Assistant Resident in Padang, then, had written a report that was favorable to the suspended Controleur, whose suspension thus gained a shade of unfairness. The gossip mongering at Padang continued: the missing child was still the talk of the town. The Assistant Resident felt obliged to reopen the case, but before he had a chance to come up with anything, he received word of his own suspension by the governor of the west coast of Sumatra, General Vandamme, ‘for fraudulence in the execution of office.’ He was alleged to have given a distorted account of events, out of friendship or pity for the Controleur in question, and against his better judgment.
“I have not read the documents relating to this case, but I do know that the Assistant Resident had no ties whatsoever with that Controleur—after all, why else would he have been picked to conduct the investigation? I also
know that he was an honorable man, and the government thought so too, as you could tell by the fact that the suspension was quashed after the case was investigated elsewhere. The Controleur, too, was entirely rehabilitated in the end. It was the suspension of these two men that inspired me to write my epigram. I arranged for it to be placed on the General’s breakfast table by a man in his service who had previously been in mine, and this is how it went:
“The ambulant suspender who rules us by suspension, Governor John Suspend-All, the werewolf of our day, Would gladly have suspended his moral apprehension . . . But long ago he sacked it, and sent it far away.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Mr. Havelaar, but I think you were out of order there,” Duclari said.
“So do I . . . but I had to do something! Just think, I had no money and no income, and I was afraid of dying of starvation, which I very nearly did. I had practically no connections at all in Padang, and besides, I’d written to General Vandamme telling him it would be his fault if I died in misery, and that I’d accept help from no one. There were people in the interior who’d heard about my plight and invited me to stay with them, but the General wouldn’t allow me to be issued a pass. Nor was I permitted to travel to Java. I would have been fine anywhere else, and even in Padang, if it hadn’t been for the General scaring the daylights out of everybody. Apparently, his plan was for me to starve. This went on for nine whole months!”
“So how did you survive all that time? Or did General Vandamme have a lot of turkeys?”
“He did, not that it made any difference . . . you can only do a thing like that once, obviously. You wonder what I did in the meantime? Well, I wrote poetry, comedies, and things like that.”
“Could you buy rice with those things in Padang?”
“No, but I didn’t try, either. I’d rather not say how I managed to stay alive.”81
Tina touched his hand—she knew the story.
“I’ve read some lines of yours which you supposedly wrote on the back of a bill,” Verbrugge said.