Child of All Nations (31 page)

When I reached the dry canal I found him trying to free himself from an overgrown vine. His eyes showed no fear—this madman.

“Now you die!” I hissed.

“Don’t kill me,” he said, panting softly. “I’m not an enemy.”

“Shut your mouth!”

“Truly, I’m not an enemy.”

I raised my machete to scare him into admitting who he was.

“I’m a friend,” he said, and he remained calm and unafraid.

I attacked with my machete, intending to cut off his head. He adroitly stepped aside. Although fat, he was tremendously fit, quick like a deer. That alone was enough to confuse me. I jumped into the canal to finish him off once and for all. I heard him still panting. I heard my own breathing too.

“No!” he shouted, seeing I was truly out to kill him. No
matter. In a moment his neck would be sliced, as soon as he was no longer able to sidestep the machete, which was already whistling in the air. He rolled over quickly. My machete missed again, hitting a clump of clove plants. I raised it once again.

All of a sudden there was an explosion. My hand, holding the machete, bent back. The machete snapped and the broken piece disappeared into the overgrowth.

I stopped in my place, Nyai. The machete did not cut through his neck. I glanced up at my weapon. All I could see was the top of a tree. All that was left of my machete was its stump. Fatso seemed to think I’d be worried by that. He smiled, that madman! He obviously didn’t understand who Darsam was, Nyai.

Fatso leaned against the bank of the canal. My shortened machete was once again raised, ready to smash down on his face. His fat lips and narrow eyes would disappear from his face. I no longer heeded the pistol in his hand.

“Don’t go on,” he warned.

I paid no attention. The pistol exploded again. Now what was left of my machete fell to the ground amongst the weeds and ferns of the unused canal. Nyai, my hand felt hot. My fingers were unable to grip. He had shot me; I could do nothing.

“What did I say?” he said in Malay. “I’m not an enemy. What could I do? You forced me to shoot.” He stood up straight. The pistol still pointed at me.

If he had shot once more, I wouldn’t be here reporting today. I’d have preferred to be shot dead. But he didn’t do it. The injury to my hand left me helpless. I wanted to attack with my left hand, but I realized in a moment that it would be useless. I stayed silent.

“Had enough?” he asked insolently. “Not going to attack me again? Learned your lesson?” I was silent, ashamed, fuming. “If you’re not going to attack again, I’ll put this pistol away and help you. Well? Agreed?”

How insolent he was! I still said nothing; I was clenching my teeth. He only shook his head, smiling, perhaps in insult, perhaps in pleasure at my condition.

“What’s the meaning of one person with one machete?” he said. “Come on, out of the canal. I’ll help you out. Out of there first.”

I performed that shameful act. I climbed up the bank of the
canal. He heaved me up from below, pushing my buttocks. Insolent. Once I was up, he climbed up nimbly, that jungle cat.

“Let me stop the bleeding,” he said. “If you lose too much blood, that’ll be the end of you. Lift your wounded hand right up in the air. It hurts? Of course.”

He was so friendly, I don’t know whether to make fun of me, or to rub in the shame, or whether it was sincere. I don’t know. I raised high my wounded hand. He put away his pistol. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. His attitude was not that of a troublemaker. I didn’t know what to do. Carefully he put his hand into his pocket and took out a handkerchief. He twisted it around until it became like a piece of cord and he tied it tightly around my wrist. The blood stopped flowing.

“Let me take you home,” he said again.

It was true—he didn’t want to kill me. His hands were well muscled and strong. He wasn’t just any fat man. I had underestimated him. It was lucky there were no villagers about. When they heard the shooting, everyone had shut themselves in their houses, locked their doors. How ashamed I would have been if they had seen me being escorted along by the man I was going to cut up! There was no patrol about either. The sun had set. Dark. No moon, Nyai. My own house was locked from the inside.

In front of the door, he said: “Tell your wife to take you to the hospital at the palm-oil factory at Wonokromo. Don’t say you were shot. Don’t go to the police. Say you’ve had an accident.”

And before disappearing into the darkness, he added again: “I am not an enemy. Don’t get things wrong. Behind all this, I’m your friend, only you don’t know who I am. Go to the hospital straight away.”

After I shouted and banged on the door, my wife opened up. She took me to the hospital. Marjuki drove the buggy. I was lucky there were people still on duty. And, yes, they did ask what had happened.

“I fell, Tuan, and was stabbed by some bamboo,” I answered.

The Dutch doctor treated me, washed and bandaged my hand himself, and put it in this sling here. He didn’t let me go home. The three of us were given coffee and told to wait a moment. We sat on a long bench.

Disaster, Nyai. It wasn’t long before the police arrived. We
were taken away to the police station. We were interrogated that night. They didn’t believe my wound came from falling on bamboo. They said there were no signs of bamboo around the wound, but there were signs of a bullet passing through. I don’t know how they could tell. But I still didn’t admit anything. They threatened to detain all three of us until we confessed what had happened. I had to tell them, Nyai. If I didn’t and they kept us, who would look after the business?

That night too a detail of policemen took us home. They took lamps to the canal and examined the place. They found not only the shell of a bullet but plenty of signs of a fight. They took away the spent shell and also the pieces of my broken machete.

That’s what happened, Nyai. Once I started to tell what happened, the whole story came out. Minem was interrogated that night too. She didn’t know where Babah Kong lived. She admitted to sleeping with him a few times and said he had promised to make her his concubine. But Minem didn’t believe him. Babah Kong wasn’t very generous, according to Minem, so she wasn’t sure about the idea.

It was all taken down. And you can see, Nyai, I wasn’t arrested. Neither was Minem. Now it’s Babah Kong who’s being chased by the police on some other charges. It seems, Nyai, maybe we’ll end up in court again, if Babah Kong is caught.

I thought, at that point, that Darsam’s report was over. Mama didn’t ask him anything, though she must have realized there were a lot of issues to follow up: Minem’s baby, Mr. Dalmeyer’s work, Dalmeyer’s relationship with Minem, Fatso still being around the place, Darsam’s new troubles, the upcoming trial…

This woman had so much to face.

But Darsam hadn’t finished.

He put his bandaged hand on the table, having taken it out of the sling.

“Nyai,” he said, his voice taking on an even more serious tone. “I have carried out Nyai’s orders as well as I could. If I have made any mistakes, done anything incorrectly, I would like Nyai to say so.”

A tense silence followed. Nyai still said nothing.

“Have I done wrong, Nyai?”

Nyai Ontosoroh let out a big breath; both her cheeks sagged
a little. She rubbed behind her ear with the finger of her left hand, then said slowly: “You have made no mistakes, Darsam. You have not been in error in anything. Everything has been handled correctly.”

“In dealing with Fatso too, Nyai?” asked Darsam, childlike.

“You weren’t entirely right there. The same as the other time, you wanted to go too far. If Babah Kong hadn’t been armed with a pistol, would you have killed him?”

“No, Nyai, I just wanted to frighten him.”

“Don’t lie! Fatso wouldn’t have taken it so seriously if you hadn’t been serious as well,” Nyai replied. “How’s your hand now?”

“Nyai,” he said sadly, “my fingers no longer have the strength to carry a machete—to swing it, or to spin it. I can’t even hold it. I understand now, Nyai, how my livelihood has depended so much on these fingers of my right hand. With them I carried out all of your orders, Nyai: Removed trespassers, escorted the milk wagons, taken up my machete, collected debts, taken care of security, maintained authority over all the workers. Now these fingers are of no use. I have thought about this for a long time, Nyai, yes, these last few days; without these fingers Darsam is no longer of any use to Nyai. I’m no longer of use even to myself. I’m unable to work. I must admit it, Nyai: My service to you is at an end.” His voice slowed, serious and sad. “Darsam will go home to his village, Nyai, home to Sampang.”

“And what will you do there? Make salt? It’ll be no different. You won’t be able to work there either, without those fingers.”

“That’s the trouble indeed, Nyai.”

“Go and see Dr. Martinet tomorrow. You can’t be sure your fingers are damaged permanently.”

“And if they are, Nyai?”

“Get them checked first. Dr. Martinet will do all he can.”

“And if they are damaged permanently, Nyai?” he repeated.

“Ah, see the doctor first.”

He didn’t want to go. He remained motionless in his seat, waiting for his employer’s decision.

“What are you waiting for now?”

“Will I be dismissed, Nyai?”

“Even if nothing can be done for your fingers, Darsam, you will stay here. Your children graduate from the local primary
school this year, and must learn to work. They can begin to learn Dutch. Who knows, Darsam; your children may not be as ignorant as you. And what does it matter that your right fingers are broken, if your heart is strong? Go, get some sleep.”

“But Darsam will never hold a machete again.”

“Go to bed!” shouted Nyai.

Very hesitantly he rose, raised his left hand in salute to Nyai and me, put his chair back against the wall, then went. He walked erect, not looking back. He disappeared down the stairs.

“Do you know what has happened tonight?” Mama asked me.

“The police are out after Fatso, Ma, who is really Babah Kong.”

“That’s not important.”

“Thre will be another trial, Ma, and more abuse and humiliation.”

“That’s not important either. The case is over, although there are still loose ends. It’s this, Child. Darsam and others like him only realize now: All this time life has depended on those right-hand fingers. Life comes from those fingers. All of a sudden those fingers cannot be used. He only realizes it after his capital is damaged, the living capital of his fingers. Others pretend they work with their brains. For years and years, they study, they learn to think that they might live properly and as they wish to live. But a person’s brain can be damaged too; remember Tuan Mellema. Years of learning and practice disappear in one moment—decades of learning disappear. Wandering at night like an animal, forgetting he is human…”

“Why, Ma?”

“And there are others who put their lives in the hands of money capital. For decades too, they make their capital grow, from a small seed to a banyan tree thick with foliage. Then, suddenly, they realize that the money was obtained immorally, the fruits of deception—”

“Ma!”

“So it seems we are all the same, Child: Me, Tuan Mellema, and Darsam. What we thought to be solid, strong, trustworthy, something we could hold on to, turns out to be no more than a speck of sand. Perhaps this is what they call the tragedy of living. How fragile we are! And Khouw Ah Soe, young and intelligent,
is now dead, killed by his own people—a people he was working to help. Perhaps his murderer knew who he was—a killer paid just one rupiah or perhaps two.”

“If they knew him well, they would never have killed him,” I objected. “Maybe they would even have helped him.”

“That’s what happens in the shadow puppet stories, Minke. In real life, people are killed precisely by those who know and understand them. And the Acehnese, Minke—how many of them have been killed by Europeans, who have made it their business to know all there is to know about them? And your story about Trunodongso—who do we see there, impoverishing him and forcing him off his land? Those who know more, more about farmers and farming. I’m sure Tuan Mellema was involved not only in deceiving those farmers, but in oppressing them and using force against them as well. A conspiracy to embezzle rent money must start with cheap land to rent.”

Mama wasn’t really talking to me. She was testing her own thoughts. She was looking for something to grip hold of, some truth that had its very roots in truth. She was trying to face and not give in to the tragedy of life.

Slowly it was becoming clear that my own and the world’s joyful greeting to the modern age was an act of folly. Only the tools and the methods were modern, Mama said. Man remained the same, never changing, on the sea, the land, at either pole, amongst the wealth and poverty that he himself makes.

“While listening to Darsam’s report, I decided how much money I would return to the peasants, Child. An amount equivalent to all the capital we used to set up this business. I will build schools. I will employ one or two teachers. I will tell them to teach Dutch and arithmetic.”

“That will be good, Ma.”

“If they knew Dutch, they wouldn’t be so afraid when they had to deal with the Dutch. And if they knew some arithmetic, how to count, they wouldn’t be tricked so easily. If you decided not to leave Wonokromo and Surabaya, you could visit there once a week. You could tell the children about the evil doings of the colonialists.”

“They’d arrest me and put me on trial, Ma, and accuse me of agitation and incitement. They even expelled Magda Peters.”

“So who must begin, if not you? Do you too want to go to
sleep, like in that story of Kommer’s about Kartini, and wake up with the modern age already here?”

To be honest, I shook with fear as I heard that challenge.

“You’re not saying anything, Minke, Child. Who must begin? Must I do everything myself?”

“Of course not, Ma.”

“Then who must do it? Yes, indeed, hundreds of people will carry out this work. That is in the future, I don’t know when. But who will begin?”