Child of All Nations (23 page)

Unease squatted in my heart; he had gone back to speaking in low Javanese. He had forgotten what class he belonged to. So why should I treat him so well? But you have resolved to become more familiar with your own people! You must understand their troubles. He is one of those fellow countrymen of yours about whom you know nothing, one of your own people, a people you say you want to write about, once you have begun to understand them.

“Of course this is your own land,” I encouraged him, and myself too.

“Five
bahu
, inherited from my parents.”

“You’re right,” I said, “I saw it noted down in the Land Office.”

“Yes, it’s registered in the Land Office.” He spoke to himself. The tension began to recede. Slowly he was returning to being a humble Javanese peasant.

“Can I visit you, Pak?” I said in an even more friendly way. His grip on the machete began to relax. I took another step forward. “If you aren’t angry with me, I’d like to know what this is all about. Who knows, perhaps I can help?” I took another step.

He didn’t answer, but turned around and headed for the house. I followed. He threw his machete down inside the house. He fetched a straw broom and swept clean the bamboo bench at the entrance.

“Please, Ndoro, this is the best I can offer.”

So I sat on the bamboo bench, adorned with a bamboo mat. He stood with hands clasped before me. He was beginning to trust me, I hoped. “All right, tell me why you are so angry,” I asked.

“Yes, Ndoro, I have already been very patient. My inheritance was five bahu—three paddy fields, two dry fields—and this house garden. Three bahu are being used by the mill. I didn’t happily rent them out but was brutally forced to do so by the mill priyayi, the village head, all kinds of officials, and God knows how many others! The land was contracted for eighteen months. Eighteen months! But now it has been two years! You have to wait until the cane stumps have all been dug out. Except if you want to put your thumbprint to another contract for the next harvest season. What’s the contract money worth anyway? You can count it up as much as you like, they never pay in full anyway. Those dogs, Ndoro…now even my dry fields—they want those too. The trees will be torn down to make way for the cane!”

“How much do you get for one bahu?” I asked, as I took my writing implements from my bag, knowing that all of Java’s peasants respected a pen. I was ready to take notes.

“Twenty-two, Ndoro,” he answered fluently. Amazing.

“Twenty-two
perak
for every bahu, for use for over eighteen months!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, Ndoro.”

“How much did you receive?”

“Fifteen perak.”

“Where did the other seven go?”

“How would I know, Ndoro? Put your thumbprint down, they said. No more than fifteen perak a bahu. Eighteen months,
they said. In reality, two years, until the cane stump and roots were dug out.”

“They dig out the roots themselves?”

“Of course, Ndoro. They don’t want to see the stumps grow and ripen again, become new cane fields again. They don’t want the farmers around here to get any leftover cane without paying, without working.”

I wrote and wrote; and it seemed that he was beginning to respect me. But I didn’t know what he really thought of me.

“Now you must listen; let me read out to you everything that you have just told me. Eh, what’s
Bapak’s
name?”

“Trunodongso, Ndoro.”

I stopped a moment on hearing that name. My grandfather had once warned me against peasants who use the name Truno. Such people, he said, are usually quick-tempered, especially when young. And sometimes they are even quicker-tempered in their old age. People choose that name hoping they will be able to maintain the spirit of their youth, to keep their strength and health right to the end. And, said my grandfather, such people usually study the martial arts before they marry. I didn’t know whether he was right or not.

“So Trunodongso is your name. Good, let me read this to you.”

I read out in Javanese what I had written and he nodded at the end of each sentence.

“This will be printed in the newspapers. All the clever and important people up there will read it. Perhaps Tuan Besar Governor-General, bupatis, residents, controllers, all of them. They will investigate all this. They will then know that there is a farmer named Trunodongso who is being forced from his land and his paddy, and is recovering only fifteen perak for each bahu that is rented by the sugar mill.”

“Wah, Ndoro.” He freed his hand from its polite clasp, ready to protest. “It’s not like that,” he began.

“You’re taking back what you’ve told me?”

“No, Ndoro, it’s all true. But I am not the only one who has received only fifteen perak. That’s all any of the farmers around here have received, Ndoro.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone, except the village officials.”

“How much did they get?”

“No one knows, Ndoro. But we do know that none of them are complaining. Never!”

“But people have the right not to rent their land if that’s what they want.”

“Yes. That is my situation, Ndoro, I don’t want to rent out my land but every day I’m threatened, taunted, insulted. Now they threaten that the lane to my house will be closed off. If you want to get to your house and land, they say, you’ll have to fly. They have already closed the channels bringing water to my paddy fields. I couldn’t farm the paddy, so I had to rent it out.”

This kind of thing was something I had never come across before. I wrote everything down. Trunodongso went on and on. All that he had been unable to say for so long was now poured out to me. I was no longer noting down just words, but the fate of who knows how many thousands, how many tens of thousands of peasant farmers like him. Perhaps this was the fate of all the sugar region’s farmers. And he was not facing just Europeans, but Natives too: village officials, civil officials, the factory officials, including Sastro Kassier no doubt. My note-taking became even more enthusiastic. And Trunodongso became even more open with me.

A girl appeared, carrying a bamboo basket, walking towards a well beside that bamboo house. She pulled up the water using a bamboo scoop and started washing some clothes in an earthenware dish.

“Is that your daughter?” I asked.

He nodded.

“How many children do you have altogether?”

“Five, Ndoro. Two boys—they’re out hoeing in the field now. The others are girls.”

“Five. May I come in and have a look around Bapak’s house?” I asked politely.

“Please come in, but it’s very dirty.”

I went inside the house. There were no windows. There was no cow or buffalo inside, but a tethering post standing in the corner indicated that a large animal had lived with the family at some other time or other.

“Where’s the cow, Pak?”

“What’s the use of a cow if you have no paddy, Ndoro? I’ve sold it.”

There was no furniture except for a big bamboo bench and a kerosene lamp hanging from a bamboo pole. In the corner lay a hoe with lumps of fresh dirt clinging to it.

I thanked God that this quick-tempered farmer had been restored to the original Trunodongso, friendly, generous with his smiles, polite, and humble, no longer hiding evil feelings.

“Where’s your wife, Pak?”

“Just left for the market, Ndoro.”

I called to the little girl doing the washing. She ran to her father. Her eyes were tired, as though she had never had her proper fill of dreams—or perhaps because she had ringworm.

“What are you cooking today.”

“Depends what Ma brings home, Ndoro, from the market,” she answered, looking into her father’s eyes.

“Look, I want to eat here tonight, yes; would you like to cook for me?”

Once more she quizzed her father with her sleepy eyes. Her father answered with a little bow of the head. Her voice was very, very polite: “Of course, Ndoro, I would be very happy to cook for Ndoro, but it’s sure to taste terrible. A village child, remember, that’s what I am.”

“So we’ll eat together tonight. How many altogether? Seven?”

“Then I must get some firewood,” Trunodongso excused himself. “But Ndoro won’t be ashamed to eat here?”

How happy was my heart to feel this family was beginning to lose its suspicion of me. I added quickly: “Is the market far from here?”

“No, Ndoro, it’s quite close,” answered Piah, the little girl. I knew in fact that the market was near Tulangan.

“Here is some money. Go and buy something. It’s up to you what you cook,” and I handed Piah two coins.

Once more the child looked up at her father. Trunodongso glanced around, pretending not to see. I put my bag down on the bench and went outside the house.

I felt a happiness blooming in my breast. I drew the free air deep into my lungs and threw out my two arms like a
garuda
about
to fly into the sky. What Kommer had said indeed seemed true: If you’re willing to pay a little attention, a whole new continent arises, with mountains and rivers, islands and waterways. I will stay upon this new continent for a while longer. Columbus was not the only person to discover a new continent. So too have I.

I strolled around outside the house. At the back, clothes were drying—clean rags, really. And he was a farmer with five bahu of his own land, including three bahu of first-class paddy fields! If he’d been able to refuse surrendering his dry fields, why hadn’t he been able to refuse handing over his paddy? His remaining dry fields were the last bastion of his livelihood. He had to defend it to the end. If he didn’t, his whole family could be turned into vagabonds.

The air streaming through the thickets of trees was truly refreshing. The freshness of the air was present, but also the staleness of life—a continent with great mountain peaks, deep chasms.

A drain carrying the dirty water from the well wound aimlessly about; ducks were scratching in the mud looking for worms. Under a bush, three chicks fought over who was the eldest. A pregnant cat—yellow-colored—slept in the sun on a pile of old leaves. A row of banana trees, not one of which had an upright trunk, leaned sleepily to one side. In the distance, Trunodongso was cutting down a tree with his machete. He chopped it up and piled the wood together in the middle of the thicket.

As I moved farther away from the house, I could see more closely the nature of the tidily farmed corn and sweet-potato fields. The border between the back-yard garden and the fields proper was marked by a row of coffee trees, thick with fruit, and protected by the umbrella of closely planted coconut palms. It seemed that this family could live off their own fields—except for clothes and sugar.

Trunodongso had disappeared into the house carrying a hand of bananas. No smoke came from the kitchen yet. At the edge of the field, where it met the mill’s cane, I found two of Trunodongso’s sons hoeing the ground. They stopped working as soon as they saw me and laid down their hoes. They showed me great respect, yet were also obviously surprised and afraid. More than that: suspicious.

“Are you Pak Truno’s sons?”

“Yes, Ndoro.” They took off their bamboo hats and threw
them on the ground. They were aged sixteen and fourteen. There were no pictures of Queen Wilhelmina back in their house—neither had finished primary school.

“This is the border with the factory’s cane?”

“Yes, Ndoro.”

“Aren’t they suspicious of you two if any cane goes missing?”

The two of them consulted with their eyes. I saw suspicion in those consultations, and fear.

“No, I’m not from the factory,” I said. Still they didn’t seem to believe, and were afraid. “I’m staying at your house at the moment. Later on we’ll eat together.” They glanced back and forth at each other again; then without answering dropped their gaze to their feet.

“You’ve never been accused of stealing cane?” I asked again.

They shot a look at me from the corners of their eyes, then their eyes consulted once more.

“Don’t really know, Ndoro,” the eldest answered.

They were still suspicious and afraid; that’s how all farmers felt towards nonfarmers. The anonymous pamphlet that my exiled teacher Magda Peters gave me had said: The peasant farmers of Java were afraid of all outsiders, because their experiences over the centuries had shown them that outsiders—individuals or groups—would thieve everything they owned. These two young boys, with hoe in hand, sickle at their feet, were afraid of me for no other reason than because I was not one of them. Because my clothes were not the kind they wore.

What that pamphlet said was exactly right. A European had written it. He knew about the Javanese peasants. And I was just now discovering this continent. I was now witnessing that bottom point in their lives: being under the sway of fear and suspicion.

If one day they should cross the limits of their fear and suspicion—so that brochure said—this group of people living under God’s sun, who aren’t used to thinking rationally, will rise up in an explosion of blind fury; they will run amok. They could explode individually or in a group. And their targets would be anyone who was not one of them, who wasn’t a peasant farmer. Such indeed was the condition of these pitiable beings who had never known the learning of the world: In no time at all their fury would be suppressed by the army, and they would be broken forever. For three hundred years! So that anyone from whatever
group who can humor and capture their hearts they will follow—in religion, to the battlefield, or to annihilation.

I remembered the pamphlet’s words well, and so as not to arouse any more fear in these boys’ hearts, I moved away. I walked back towards the house, thinking to myself along the way: Perhaps if I had not come and shown my sympathy to Trunodongso, he might have wielded his machete, cutting down whomever he could. The pamphlet had also said: They would run amok not really in self-defense, nor to attack or to take revenge, but only because they no longer knew what else to do once their last opportunity of life had been stolen.

That pamphlet’s author, Anonymous, I had to admit, was very knowledgeable. It was clear that the peasants themselves did not understand their own condition. But in that other corner of the world, in the Netherlands, people did know; they knew exactly what the situation was. They even understood the psychology of the peasantry as a class. And all this was in a pamphlet written by a Dutchman living in the Netherlands. It was true what Jean Marais had said: You study the languages of Europe to understand Europe. Through Europe you can learn to understand your own people. To study the languages of Europe does not mean you cannot speak to your own people, and that you should speak only to Europeans.