Max Havelaar

by Multatuli

  Thus far, everything had gone straightforwardly and smoothly.

  But yesterday you came to my office, armed with the letter from the Resident that I had passed on to you, and began to speak of the difficulty of dealing with its contents satisfactorily. I discerned some reluctance in you to call certain things by their true name, a tendency I have pointed out to you many times before—once, recently, in the presence of the Resident—a tendency I call halfness, and which, in conversation between us, has been the subject of many a friendly warning.

  Halfness leads nowhere. Half good is no good. Half true is untrue.

  In return for one’s full salary and full rank, after swearing one’s oath distinctly and in full, one does the full measure of one’s duty.

  If one sometimes requires courage to follow through, one possesses it.

  For my part, I would not have the courage to lack such courage. Aside from the dissatisfaction with oneself that results from nonperformance—or half performance—of one’s duties, more trouble, and indeed more danger, results from the search for expedient detours—so as to avoid a collision at any price—and from the desire to “finesse” the situation, than one will ever encounter on the straight and narrow path.

  Throughout the course of a very significant affair, which is now under consideration by the government, and in which you should have been involved in your official capacity, I have tacitly allowed you to remain neutral, as it were, and have merely alluded to the business with a smile from time to time.

  For instance, when I received your recent report on the causes of famine and deprivation among the native population, and I jotted down the comment, “All this may be true, but it is not the whole truth, nor the principal truth. The root cause lies deeper,” you wholeheartedly agreed, and I did not assert my right to insist that you state that principal truth.

  I had many reasons for my lenience—for one thing, I thought it unfair suddenly to demand of you what many others, in your place, would likewise fail to do, or to force you, all at once, to give up the routine of concealment and faintheartedness, which is not so much your fault as that of the superiors to whom you reported in the past. I hoped that eventually I could lead the way, setting an example of how much simpler and easier it is to do the whole of one’s duty than to do half.

  Yet now, having had the privilege of serving as your superior for so much longer, and having offered you repeated opportunities to absorb the principles that, if I am not mistaken, will ultimately prevail,105 I would like you to adopt them; to harness the power you do not lack, but leave unused, so that you may always, to the best of your knowledge, say frankly what must be said; and, in short, to throw off completely your unmanly reluctance to take a firm stand for a good cause.

  In other words, what I now expect from you is a simple but complete account of what you believe is the reason for the difference between the prices now and those in 1853 or 1854.

  I sincerely hope that you will not interpret any phrase in this letter as meant to offend you. I trust you know me well enough by now to realize that I say what I mean, no more and no less, and at the risk of repeating myself, I assure you that my remarks have less to do with you than with the school that trained you to be a colonial administrator.

  Yet this extenuating circumstance would no longer apply if, now that you have worked with me and served the government under my authority for some time, you were to persist in the habits to which I object.

  You will have noticed that I forgo the conventional form of address The Honorable; it grated on me. Do the same, and let us show our “honor” at other times and, above all, in other ways than by cluttering up our letters with tiresome titles.

  The Assistant Resident of Lebak

  The reply to this letter contained charges against some of Havelaar’s predecessors—proof that he was not so wide of the mark when he blamed the Adipati’s misconduct in part on bad examples set in the past.

  I have run ahead of events to present this letter, in order to emphasize how little support Havelaar could expect from Controleur Verbrugge as soon as entirely different and weightier matters came up that needed to be divested of euphemisms, given that it was necessary to address this official—who was, without a doubt, a decent man—in such a circuitous manner before he’d so much as give a true statement of the prices of timber, bricks, mortar, and labor. It is clear, then, that Havelaar had to contend not only with the power of those who benefited from such crimes, but also with the diffidence of those who—even though they disapproved of such crimes as much as he did—did not feel called upon, or able, to act with the necessary courage.

  Having seen this letter, the reader may be rather less disdainful of the slavish docility of the Javanese complainant who, in the presence of his chief, cravenly withdraws his accusation, however well founded. For considering how much there is to fear, even for a European official—who may, after all, be regarded as somewhat less vulnerable to acts of vengeance—it is not hard to imagine the fate of the poor villager, far from the provincial capital, who is entirely at the mercy of those he dares to accuse of mistreatment. Is it any wonder that these poor folk, terrified of the consequences of their temerity, seek to avoid or alleviate those consequences through humble submission?

  And it wasn’t only Controleur Verbrugge who went about his work with a timidity bordering on dereliction of duty. The Jaksa, too, preferred to come to Havelaar’s house under cover of night, unaccompanied and unseen. The man responsible for preventing theft, he who was expected to catch thieves on the prowl, skulked around as if he himself were a thief in the night, in fear of capture, sneaking in through the back door, and only after making sure that Havelaar had no visitors who might later point the finger at him for performing his duties.

  Was it any wonder that Havelaar had grown sad of heart, and needed Tina more than ever to come into his study and cheer him up when she saw him sitting with his head in his hands?

  Yet the greatest obstacle he faced was not the faintheartedness of his staff, nor the cowardice that transformed those who had appealed to him for help into accessories to the crime. No, he would have seen justice done on his own if necessary, with or without assistance—yes; he’d stand up against them all, even if it meant standing up against the very people who needed justice! He knew he had influence over the people, and—if he called on those poor victims of oppression to repeat to the court, in a loud voice, what they had privately whispered to him in the hours of darkness—he knew how his authority could work upon their consciences, and knew that the power of his words could overcome their fear of vengeance by the district chief or regent. He was therefore untroubled by any concern that the men who had placed themselves under his protection would abandon their own cause. But it was so painful for him to bring charges against the poor old Adipati—that was what held him back! Yet on the other hand, he couldn’t very well give in to his reluctance, since the entire population, deprived of the justice that was their perfect right, had an equal claim to his compassion.

  His hesitation was not inspired by any fear that he would suffer for his actions. Even though he knew how much the government disliked to see charges brought against a regent, and how much easier it is for some to deprive a European official of his bread than to punish a native chief, he had special reason to believe that at that particular time such a case would be judged on different grounds from those that would ordinarily prevail. True, even without this belief, he’d still have done his duty—all the more willingly, in fact, if he had thought the risk to himself and his loved ones was greater than ever. We have already seen that he was drawn to difficulty, and that he had a penchant for self-sacrifice. Still, he believed that the lure of such a sacrifice was not present in this case, and he feared that—if circumstances ultimately compelled him to wage a serious battle against Injustice—he’d have to forgo the chivalrous pleasure of entering battle as the weaker combatant.

  Yes, this he feared. He assumed that the government was le
d by a governor-general who would be his ally, and—this was another of his idiosyncrasies—it was that assumption that kept him, longer than anything else, from taking severe measures—because he disliked the idea of taking action against injustices at a time when justice, so he thought, was on the whole faring better than usual. I told you, didn’t I, when I described his personality, that despite his keen intellect he was naive?

  Let me try to explain how Havelaar had arrived at that assumption.

  •

  Very few European readers can form an accurate idea of the moral altitude a governor-general must attain, as a human being, if he is not to fall short of his office, and I don’t believe I judge too harshly when I say that very few people, perhaps none, are equal to so exalted a task. Without going into all the necessary qualities of heart and mind, let us simply contemplate the vertiginous heights to which such a man is suddenly elevated. Yesterday he was but an ordinary citizen, today he wields power over millions of subjects. The same man who not long ago was one nameless face among many, not standing out in rank or authority, is suddenly, often without warning, raised above a multitude infinitely greater than the small circle that previously rendered him invisible, and I believe I am right in calling that height vertiginous, since it recalls the vertigo of chancing upon the edge of a gaping abyss, or the blindness that strikes when suddenly being delivered from profound darkness into glaring light. Such abrupt transitions are too much for the nerves of the eyes and brain, no matter how robust, to cope with.

  If the very fact of being appointed to the highest office of all is usually enough to plant the seeds of ruin, even when the governor-general in question has an exceptional mind and conscience, what can we expect of those whose character, even before their appointment, was already flawed in many ways? And even if we briefly imagine that the King is always well advised before he signs his royal name on a warrant, declaring his confidence in the “loyalty, diligence, and competencies” of the appointed governor—even if we imagine that the new viceroy really is diligent, loyal, and competent—even then the question remains: is that diligence and, above all, that competence present to a degree so far above mediocrity that he can rise to the challenge of his calling?

  For the question cannot be whether a newly appointed governor-general, upon first leaving the King’s office in The Hague, already possesses the competence required by his new position . . . that is impossible! The expression of faith in his competence can be interpreted only as signifying that in a completely new place of work, at a certain stage, he will learn—in a flash of insight, as it were—what he cannot have learned in The Hague. In other words, he must be a genius, a genius capable of instantly understanding and doing what he couldn’t do or understand before. Such geniuses are rare, even among those in the King’s favor.106

  You will gather, from this talk of geniuses, that I have no wish to voice what could be said about so many high officials. Nor would I care to add pages to this book that would distract from my serious purpose by exposing me to the charge of scandalmongering. I won’t dwell, therefore, on the characteristics of particular individuals. Yet I see no objection to giving a typical medical history of the typical governor-general. First stage: vertigo; flattery-induced intoxication; narcissism; boundless self-confidence; contempt for others, especially for “old hands.” Second stage: exhaustion; fear; dejection; a craving for rest and sleep; overconfidence in the Council of the Indies; reliance on the General Secretariat; nostalgia for the country house in Holland.

  The transition from the first to the second stage is marked by dysenteric abdominal complaints, which may in fact be the cause of the transition.

  I trust that many people in the Indies will be grateful for this diagnosis. It turns out to be useful in practice, for it shows to a certainty that the patient, who would choke on a gnat in the hyperactive condition of the first stage, can later—after the dysentery!—swallow camels without protest. To state the point more clearly, an official who “accepts gifts, with no thought of personal gain”—for example, a bunch of bananas worth a few coppers—will be expelled in shame and ignominy in the first stage of the illness, but he who has the patience to wait for the second stage may, very calmly and without fear of retribution, take possession of the garden where the bananas grow, and the adjacent gardens as well . . . not to mention the surrounding houses . . . and their contents . . . and this and that and the other, ad libitum.107

  May all my readers profit from the foregoing pathologico-philosophical observations, while keeping my advice under their hats, so as not to create too much competition . . .

  Damn it all! Why must outrage and sorrow so often wrap themselves in the motley cloak of satire? Damn it, why is a teardrop so hard to understand, if not accompanied by a crooked grin? Or are my own limited talents to blame for my inability to find words to plumb the depths of the festering wound in our public administration, without borrowing my style from Punch?

  Style . . . yes! The documents before me possess it! A style that bespeaks a person of integrity, a person deserving of a helping hand! And what good did all that style do poor Havelaar? He didn’t translate his tears into crooked grins; he didn’t poke fun; he didn’t try to impress with garish colors or with jokes worthy of a hawker on a fairground . . . and what good did it do him?

  If I could write as he could, I’d write differently.

  Style? Have you heard his address to the Chiefs of Lebak? What good did it do him?

  If I could speak as he could, I’d speak differently.

  Away with friendly words, away with gentleness, sincerity, clarity, simplicity, feeling! Away with anything that smacks of Horace’s “just and resolute man”! Trumpets for me, and the sharp clash of cymbals, and hiss of rockets, and scraping of untuned strings, and here and there a word of truth, smuggled in like contraband under the din of drums and fifes!

  Style? He had style! He had too great a soul to drown his thoughts in the “I have the pleasures” and “your honorable selfs” and “respectfully offer for your considerations” that formed the chief indulgences of the little world in which he moved. What he wrote affected you as you read; you felt the storm driving those clouds across the sky, and what you heard had none of the tinny clatter of stage thunder. When he lit a fire with his ideas, you could feel the heat, unless you were a born clerk, or a governor-general, or an author of sickening reports on “peaceable peace.” And what good did it do him?

  So if I wish to be heard—and above all, understood!—I must write differently from Havelaar. But how?

  You see, reader, I am searching for the answer to that how? Which is why my book is such a mixed bag. It’s a book of samples: take your pick. Later on I’ll give you yellow or blue or red, whatever you desire.

  Havelaar had already detected the presence of Governors’ Disease in so many leaders—and often in lesser creatures, for there are analogous diseases among residents, controleurs, and supernumeraries, which are to the first as measles are to smallpox, and besides he had suffered from such a disease himself!—as I say, he had observed the whole pattern so many times that he knew the symptoms more or less by heart. He had found the current governor-general to be less stricken by first-stage vertigo than most of the others had been, and therefore concluded that in his case the rest of the disease would also take a different course.

  It was for this reason that Havelaar feared being the stronger party when, in the end, he would have to step forward and defend the rights of the people of Lebak.

  SIXTEENTH CHAPTER

  HAVELAAR received a letter from the Regent of Cianjur, who announced that he wished to visit his uncle, the Adipati of Lebak. This news was most unwelcome to Havelaar. He knew that the chiefs of the Priangan regencies tended to make grand displays of wealth, that the Tumenggung of Cianjur wouldn’t set out on such a journey without a retinue of many hundreds, and that all those men and horses would need food and accommodation. Yet as much as he would have liked to prevent the visit, he
couldn’t see any way to do so without offending the Adipati, whose pride would have been deeply hurt if he’d realized the visit had been canceled because of his comparative poverty. And if the visit could not be avoided, it was sure to increase the crushing burden on the population.

  It is doubtful that Havelaar’s speech had made a lasting impression on the chiefs. On many of them, it certainly had not, nor had he expected it would. Yet just as certainly, the news spread in the villages about the tuan in authority in Rangkasbitung wishing to do justice. So even if his words had lacked the power to dissuade from crime, they had nonetheless given the victims the courage to air their grievances, even if only hesitantly and in secret.

  They would come creeping through the ravine after dark, and as Tina sat in her room she was often startled by unexpected noises, and through the open window she would see shadowy figures stealing past . . . Soon she no longer grew startled, because she knew what it meant when those apparitions haunted the grounds of their house, seeking protection from her Max! Then she would beckon him, and he would get up and call the complainants into his study. Most of them came from the district of Parangkujang, where the Adipati’s son-in-law was the Chief, and although that Chief never failed to claim his share of the ill-gotten gains, it was no secret that his extortion was generally on behalf and at the behest of the Adipati. It was touching to see how much faith those poor souls had in Havelaar’s sense of honor, and how entirely they trusted him not to ask them, the next day, to repeat in public what they’d said in his study. For any one of them that would have meant bodily harm, and for many of them, death!

  Havelaar took notes on what they told him and then instructed them to return to their villages. He promised that justice would be done if they didn’t obstruct the process, or flee, as most of them intended to do. He usually went to the scene of the injustice soon afterwards—in fact, he often went there to investigate, usually by night, even before the complainant arrived back home. This took him to villages in that vast regency that were twenty hours away from Rangkasbitung, and neither the Adipati nor even Controleur Verbrugge knew that he had left the capital. His intention was to protect the complainants from the possibility of retribution and also to spare the Adipati the embarrassment of a public investigation, which under Havelaar’s authority was certain not to end with the withdrawal of the charges, as it would have in the past. He still clung to the hope that the chiefs would abandon the dangerous path they had been following for so long, in which case he would gladly claim compensation on behalf of the victims, insofar as their losses could still be made good.