Child of All Nations (28 page)

“I’m furious, worried, bitter, Jean.”

“I understand. But your writings pose no danger while they remain unpublished. That’s the trouble with looking on Nijman as a god. The time had to come when you would be disappointed. He does not make the rules. He is just one man among millions upon this earth, and every one of those millions has the right to his own opinion. Why then are you angry? Why does the fact that Nijman has a different opinion offend you, upset you? He too has the right to his own opinion.”

“He was so rude, Jean. He has never been like that before.”

“You must see Kommer. He predicted this, that you would be disappointed.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He was let down earlier than you.”

“Thank you, Jean. I understand.”

Maysoroh came out looking for me. Seeing we were engaged in serious conversation, she didn’t join us but sat at a distance looking at me with questioning eyes.

“Kommer was here yesterday,” Jean said. “He was upset that his trap didn’t work. He was more upset still that you seemed disappointed with his opinions.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s Uncle Minke’s drink, May?” May left and returned carrying a tray with drinks—hot, steaming tea. Then she moved away again.

“Perhaps he is a bit rough, a bit rude even. But that doesn’t mean he is necessarily wrong, Minke. He was disappointed too that you still wanted to write for the
Soerabaiaasch Nieuws.
”

“May, let’s go to Wonokromo,” I said to her.

“I’ve got a friend coming over this afternoon, Uncle.”

After drinking what May had brought in, I excused myself. Jean Marais felt he had to limp out with me to the carriage. “Where’s your buggy?”

“I’m using a hired one, Jean.”

“Don’t be discouraged; don’t let this break you. It would be a loss to me too.”

The carriage took me back towards Wonokromo. About a hundred yards from Jean’s house, I saw Kommer. Perhaps he was going to Jean’s place. He didn’t see me, and I didn’t really want to be seen by him.

Darsam greeted me with his arm in a sling and his hand bandaged.

“Cursed bad luck, Young Master,” he complained.

“Fall off a carriage?”

He shook his head and stroked his mustache with his left hand.

“Just bad luck, Young Master, stupid luck!”

“Fall from a horse? But you don’t ride.”

“It’s all taken care of now, Young Master. It’s all in the hands of the police.”

“Police? What’s happened?”

“Fatso, Young Master, he came back. I’ll tell you later tonight, so Nyai can hear at the same time.”

On entering the house, I found Mama sitting reading the
Soerabaiaasch Nieuws.
She stopped reading and motioned me to sit down. Then: “Your friend, Child…read this.” She pushed the paper across to me.

In a big headline the news was reported:
THE DEATH OF A RABBLE
-
ROUSER
. I read the report. The person named as a rabble-rouser was Khouw Ah Soe.

This report followed:

“Don’t try to do anything about the body, Child. He has finished his work. Dying in someone else’s country, without friend or family.”

“I heard from Nijman, Ma. He seemed happy about Khouw’s death.”

Nyai Ontosoroh paid no heed to my words. She gazed into the far distance.

“He knew the danger, Ma,” I said to humor her.

“It seems anybody who has an opinion must be expelled or annihilated here in the Indies,” she said, half to herself.

Mama then bowed her head, and so did I. We paid our respects to a young foreigner a few years older than I, a lone wanderer, here in the Indies to call out to his people to rise and awaken. The danger of Japan had already touched upon China, and Japan would swallow up their country if they remained stagnant in this modern era. Any nation would be proud to have a son such as him.

Khouw Ah Soe appeared in my mind’s eye as a giant. I felt very, very small: A youth hanging onto a nyai, whose own country had been swallowed up by the Dutch for three hundred years.

Mama was the first to raise her head. It seemed she was still half thinking to herself: “Any mother would be happy to have such a son as he, even though her heart would be in turmoil.”

“He was an orphan, Ma.”

“Happy then will his parents be to have him back with them.”

The two of us sat silently, recalling all we could of that young Chinese man.

“There was once another orphan like him, like your friend. Even today he is loved by the people in the village, perhaps in all
the villages of Java, Child, even though hundreds of years have passed. He too was killed in the end like your friend. Except that he died on the battlefield. He too was brave, intelligent, clever. You know his name: Surapati—Untung Surapati.” She pronounced his name syllable by syllable, as if savoring its sound and its memory.

My thoughts moved to Untung Surapati. Mama admired him and loved him. And I felt ashamed, because all this time I had never thought of him as more than a character in a story.

“There is not a single Javanese who does not know of Untung Surapati. Every one of them loves him.”

The atmosphere of mourning was abruptly ended by the arrival of a hired carriage. Kommer jumped down and then helped Jean Marais out. The two of them came up to the house.

“Excuse us, Nyai, we’ve come after hearing of Mr. Minke’s recent unhappy experience.”

“You mean the report in the paper?”

“Newspaper report?” Kommer asked. “No, his bitter experience with Maarten Nijman.”

I quickly told Mama what had happened.

“It wasn’t the manuscript I read?” Kommer asked.

“No.”

“That one you considered was your best article ever?”

“I think,” Mama intervened, “it must have been his best. There was something he wanted to achieve with it.”

“I think so too,” Kommer agreed. “But Jean Marais’s comments are right; Mr. Minke’s legal position is weak. But Trunodongso’s position is weaker still. He will never be able to prove the truth of his statements, even though he is telling the truth. But I want to give you some more information about Nijman’s paper. You should have been told this long ago. Nyai, Mr. Minke, it is only natural that Nijman takes the side of sugar, because he himself lives from sugar. His paper is owned by sugar interests, funded by the sugar companies to protect the interests of the sugar lobby.”

Mama and I removed Khouw Ah Soe and Untung Surapati and Darsam from our thoughts. We also put aside Jean Marais, who was always dreamily admiring Mama.

I was impressed by Kommer’s explanation. When he was still a teenager, having just graduated from the Dutch language primary school, he went to work for the weekly paper
De Evanaar.
It was a small and insignificant paper. Its printery was owned by a sugar mill. Then he found out that the paper itself was also owned by Lord Sugar.

“I knew Mr. Mellema already twenty-five years ago,” he went on. “He arrived one day with a text he wanted printed in the paper. It attacked the attitude of the
patih
of Sidoarjo, who was putting obstacles in the way of the sugar mill’s attempts to expand the area of land it controlled. It rejected the patih’s opinion that sugar was impoverishing the region of Sidoarjo; it claimed that sugar was making the region prosperous. The patih was later moved to Bondowoso. Two years later a subdistrict head, a
camat
, argued with Mr. Mellema. The camat himself owned fifty hectares of first-class paddy fields, but he was still greedy to obtain more. A competition arose between the factory and the camat, each trying to expand their land holdings. Mr. Mellema came to the paper again, and ordered me to spy on the camat. Officially I was to go there as a reporter.”

“You did it?” Nyai Ontosoroh asked.

“I was just a low-level employee then, Nyai. I did what I was told.”

“What else were you ordered to do?”

“Just to report back on his habits and so on. I reported everything to Mr. Mellema.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. I returned to Surabaya and continued with my work at the paper. Then I received news: The camat had been replaced. It’s not clear where the old camat was moved to. All his land went to an executor and from there across to the sugar mill.”

“Did the camat die?” Nyai asked, upset.

“No one knows, Nyai.”

“You’re not being honest with me,” Mama pressed.

“After the camat disappeared, I felt I had been part of something evil too. I was disappointed in my paper. I left it and went to work for the
Surabaya Star.
The paper I left behind grew, coming out twice a week. Once it became a daily it changed its name to
Soerabaiaasch Nieuws.
But it was the same paper it is today: a creature of the sugar lobby. It must defend the interests of sugar. Anything can happen, so long as sugar remains safe! Your writings delivered you into a trap, Mr. Minke. A sugar trap!”

“Just a minute, Mr. Kommer,” Mama intervened, “I once
heard of a body that was found in the paddy fields. Gored by a buffalo, the rumors said. The Camat of Sidoarjo…?”

“I don’t know about that, Nyai; the papers never reported it.”

Mama was silent. Perhaps she was asking herself what other things there were that she didn’t know about Herman Mellema. Her face showed the signs of an unsettled heart.

“It wasn’t my intention to remind you of the late Mr. Mellema,” said Kommer, asking forgiveness.

“I understand, Mr. Kommer; excuse me,” she answered, arose, then withdrew.

We all watched Mama as she went out.

“Was she angry, do you think, Mr. Minke?” asked Kommer.

“There have been too many shocks just lately, Mr. Kommer,” I answered. “So many deaths, so many injustices, and now you bring up another matter. Too shocking—to find out that Herman Mellema did such things. I am shocked myself. It’s understandable.”

“That wasn’t my intention, Mr. Minke, truly.”

“You have only told us what you know. We should be thankful for your frankness.”

“It disappoints me too, Minke, it saddens me; not that there is such a good explanation for Nijman’s actions, but that it should bring so much hurt and bitterness with it,” Jean Marais added.

“There is nothing to regret, Jean. We would have been even more disappointed if nobody had told us. Eh, Mr. Kommer? We are truly grateful you have been prepared to tell us all this. It must have taken a lot of courage. And it was all brought about by my writings. Indeed that story of mine, the one I considered the best of all, I tore up and scattered along the road even before you had a chance to read it. But this other one, Mr. Kommer”—I opened my bag and took out the story “Nyai Surati”—“would you accept this manuscript as a souvenir of this dark day?”

“Why, Minke?” asked Jean Marais. “Do you mean for it to be put into Malay and published by Mr. Kommer?”

“No, Jean. It’s for Mr. Kommer himself. Who knows, perhaps one day Mr. Kommer will have time to go through it and change it, rewrite it, as a remembrance of our friendship, and of this day too.”

Kommer was unsure, but accepted it.

“You often go to Sidoarjo,” I added. “You can do some more research, and won’t be in a hurry, as I was. You did say you thought the story had merit, even if written like a speech?”

“Why don’t you perfect it yourself?”

“Beginning this day, Mr. Kommer, I close one book. I accept your suggestion. I will learn to see the brighter side of life. The way I am now, all my strength is being sucked away.”

“Close one book, Minke? What do you mean? You mean you’re not going to write again?”

“Yes, Jean. I must stop writing, at least for a while.”

“You’re tired, Minke,” said Marais gently, “your soul, not your body. You need a new environment, a new atmosphere.”

“Yes. I must go.”

“Go where, Minke? You’ll leave Nyai alone, by herself?”

I couldn’t answer. What Jean had said made me realize just how tired and dispirited I was.

“Good, you must get some rest,” Kommer proposed. “You have the right to a rest. We only came to let you know about Maarten Nijman and his paper, a sugar paper. You musn’t be discouraged. Come, Mr. Marais; we’ll go now. Pass on our goodbyes to Nyai.”

They left. I escorted them to the front steps and watched as their carriage left our property. Farther and farther away they moved, finally disappearing from sight.

However unrefined Kommer might be, he’s proved to be a good and reliable friend. And Jean Marais too. What would happen to me if I had no friends? They have felt all that I have felt over the last months. I will write a letter to Mother and tell her of the beauty of friendship—something she always advised me about but which I never thought about seriously until now.

Back inside the house, I remembered Mama. The news Kommer brought had shaken her greatly. She had lost something which she had always been able to hold on to. I should be with her now.