Child of All Nations (33 page)

As I came out of the smoke-filled hut, the ferryman arrived. He kept his eyes to the ground, still afraid to look at me.

“Those little children are yours?”

“Yes, Ndoro Tuan.”

“You said you were a widower. Who’s that woman in there?”

Trunodongso’s wife came outside and up to me. Her eyes
were still red. Obviously she hadn’t had enough sleep. Her clothes were a mess. Like Trunodongso, she had swollen feet. Then came her two sons. Their feet were swollen as well. They wore shorts that went down to their knees, and their torsos were wrapped in sarongs. They stood, hands clasped in front of them.

“Still tired?”

“No, Ndoro. How did Ndoro know I was here?”

“From Pak Truno. He’s at my house. He told me. Are you strong enough to walk another few hundred yards? There’s a carriage waiting.”

They all looked exhausted. Perhaps they hadn’t eaten for a long time. Truno’s wife looked at the ferryman, seeking some kind of advice. The ferryman said nothing. He kept his head down, still afraid and suspicious.

“Good, have something to eat first. It’s already afternoon.”

I waited outside the hut. The two boys came and waited with me, sitting on the ground. I sat on a felled banana-tree trunk. Neither said a word, neither looked me in the face. The ferryman went inside and didn’t come out for a long while.

Five minutes later Piah came out carrying an earthenware dish containing three yellow sweet potatoes in one hand and a jug of water in the other. She put the dish down on the banana-tree trunk and the jug of water near my feet. She invited me to eat, ignoring her brothers.

I guessed this was the ferryman’s daily meal—now it was being given to his guests. I pushed the dish across to the two boys.

“Eat. We will be leaving soon,” I said.

They didn’t eat.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve already eaten. You still have to walk another mile or so.”

Unable to restrain their hunger any longer, they devoured the sweet potatoes, skin and all. Then they gulped down the water in the jug.

The ferryman had given them all he had, these guests on the run: A roof to shelter under, sweet potatoes, sleeping-bench, and even his own safety—he was ready to give them that too. In another place, Engineer Mellema, educated and quite well off, wanted to obtain other people’s property. And it was none other than the late Herman Mellema who had turned families like Trunodongso’s into vagabonds.

Trunodongso, this time I failed. But one day, you will still become one of my characters—you, who knew nothing of this modern age. No schooling, illiterate; merely the sight of someone in shoes makes you tremble! And you too, ferryman, you too will become a character in my stories. Perhaps you too are a farmer who has lost his land, and now hoes the waters of the Brantas.

I cannot do it now. Later, later when I have learned more about my own people. The thing to do now is get them away from here. I myself may have to leave quickly, leave Wonokromo and Surabaya.

Still the ferryman didn’t come out of the hut. Perhaps he was advising Trunodongso’s wife not to trust me.

“We must leave now,” I said to the two eldest, the boys.

They went inside the hut. I waited a long time. They didn’t come out, all apparently agreeing not to trust me. I went in. They all watched me, strange looks in their eyes.

“Quickly. It’s already late. Do you want to keep Pak Truno lying there in pain waiting for you?”

Surely it was the ferryman who was making things difficult for me, but I was not angry. I must respect him, no matter what. He himself didn’t try to look at me, just kept his head bowed. Perhaps he avoided looking even at my dirty, dust-covered shoes.

“So you and your children don’t want to come with me?” I asked. “Then I will return by myself. Pak Truno can’t come to fetch you until his wounds have healed.”

I went out, and walked away slowly, giving them more time to decide. I looked back, and still they hadn’t come out. I began to quicken my pace. Only after about fifty yards did I hear Piah shouting. I pretended not to hear, though I slowed my pace to let her catch up.

I could hear her footsteps as she got closer.

“Ndoro! Ndoro!” she called.

I stopped. Now I could hear her panting breath. I looked back. Extreme exhaustion was painted on her face—a face that looked so old and yet so childlike.

“Ndoro won’t arrest us?”

“Your father is waiting for you and he is hurt. If you don’t want me to take you to him, that’s up to you, Piah. If you want to come, good, you can all catch up with me. I will walk slowly to the main road. It’s still quite a way from here.”

Who wouldn’t feel sorry for that most exhausted member of the group? Even in these circumstances, they still held important the ideal of freedom—just a tiny bit of freedom—without ever having heard of the French Revolution. But I could do no more than offer them my help.

She stood there, bewildered.

“If it’s only you that is to come, then let’s go.”

“I will go back first, Ndoro.”

“Yes, go back first. But I can’t stop. I will keep on walking slowly.”

The child went back to get her mother. I kept walking, without looking back. It seemed a long distance I had to travel. The trust I had won from them in Tulangan was now lost. How many months ago was that? Two? Had things changed so much since then? I wore Christian clothes, I wore shoes, I was closer to Europeans than they were. And it was Europeans who wanted to catch Trunodongso, husband and father. They were people on the run, afraid, hungry, and tired.

They will give in to me too, I decided in my heart. On the run, in other people’s villages, without Trunodongso, they will have nothing. They will surrender to me.

When I arrived back at the main road, I found the driver sound asleep, snoring. I climbed aboard and sat beside him. His head was uncovered and his mouth open. His headband had fallen to the floor; I could see his hair was graying.

For five minutes I sat there beside him. The carriage swayed every now and then as the horses, worried by swarms of evening flies, kept shaking their bodies. The driver still didn’t wake up. And Trunodongso’s family still didn’t appear.

I cleared my throat and he woke up. He blinked his eyes several times, startled, looking at me in great embarrassment. His hand groped about his head looking for the band of his destar. He became even more nervous when he realized his head was uncovered—very impolite according to Javanese custom. I picked up his fallen destar and gave it to him. He bowed again and again as he climbed down from the carriage, all the while thanking me, feeling he had been too much honored, that I had been too considerate in my actions.

“Forgive me, Ndoro.”

“It’s all right.”

“Do we leave now, Ndoro?”

“We’ll wait a bit longer.”

He didn’t protest. The sun had almost sunk below the horizon. He asked nothing, said nothing. It was not yet an age when someone barefooted could start up a conversation with someone who wore shoes. In the stories of our ancestors only the priests and gods wore slippers and shoes. And these simple people equated shoes with the power of Europe, of the same essence as the army’s rifles and cannons. They were more afraid of shoes than daggers or machetes, swords or spears. You are right, Herbert, Sarah, and Miriam de la Croix: They have been made to abase themselves so low by the Europeans, by their own Native leaders. They have become so full of fear: The wages of continuous defeat in the battlefield of confrontation with European civilization.

Kommer, do I still not yet know my own people? Will people still think of me as incomplete, laugh behind my back, because I write only in Dutch? Now I can answer: Even if only a little bit, I have begun to know my people, a peasant people.

Just watch, the Trunodongso family will be forced to overcome their fear and suspicion, called to Trunodongso, the center of their family. That is the way of things in Java. They must come and will come. I know the Javanese way. I will wait. My efforts must succeed.

As twilight reached its climax they became visible in the distance, walking one behind the other. Slowly, hungrily. The two boys carried their little sisters on their backs. Little Piah walked in front.

I climbed down from the carriage to greet them. They seemed unsure. The hope of seeing the center of the family again shone a little in their faces. The ferryman followed behind, a little way in the distance.

“Climb aboard, everyone.”

They climbed up silently, surrendering to whatever might befall them as long as they could see Trunodongso again—but not surrendering from hunger or exhaustion.

The ferryman stood watching us from a distance. I waved to him. He came closer, bowed his head.

“Thank you for looking after Trunodongso’s family. When you go home, you’ll be lonely?”

He just spat.

“Come here, closer.”

He took a step forward, but didn’t dare come too close.

“For the hospitality you gave them, and for the sweet potatoes you need yourself, take this talen.”

He took it silently.

“There’s nothing else you want to say?”

“Can I come to see them soon?”

“They will come to see you, once things are all right.”

The carriage began to move. I sat beside the driver. Looking over my shoulder, I examined them one by one. How many miles had they traveled, circling to avoid the soldiers? I won’t ask them here. I saw how their gaze wandered everywhere without fixing on anything in particular, as though they had no interest in the difference between their one-hut village in the middle of the sugar cane and the town with all its factories and street lighting. Perhaps the town’s activities were no more to them than the rustling and swaying of the cane leaves.

“Have you ever seen a train, Piah?”

“Yes, Ndoro,” she answered tiredly. But she wasn’t really interested. Neither were the others. It was as if Stevenson, the inventor of trains, had never harnessed steam to move a locomotive engine, which then carried the products of cane workers’ sweat to Tanjung Perak harbor.

“Have you been on one?”

“No, Ndoro.”

“Wouldn’t you like to?”

“No,” she answered slowly, paying more attention to the actual question than to the presence of a train in either her imagination or on this earth of mankind.

“Look at the train.” I pointed to a string of carriages with its engine puffing and hissing along from the south. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

They all shifted their gaze to the horseless iron carriage. Not one of them held it in particular admiration. It was not part of their world. Perhaps their own dreams were more beautiful.

The carriage was being overtaken by the panting, breathless train, which puffed out clouds of smoke and ash like a dragon in the myths of bygone peoples. But my fellow passengers were still not interested. Perhaps they were exhausted by the uncertainty of their fate. Perhaps, too, Trunodongso, the center of their lives, was the only grand thing in their thoughts.

“Do you know that Pak Truno’s sick?”

No one answered. They knew; better not to speak out.

“You can work at Wonokromo,” I said to the two eldest children.

They didn’t answer.

“You’ve never been to school?” I asked again.

“It’s enough they know how to hoe the ground, Ndoro.” Now it was their mother who answered.

“Perhaps Pak Truno has already been seen by Tuan Doctor.”

In the glow of the streetlights I could see them become anxious: A doctor had entered the life of Truno. Ah, how much everything European torments their peace of mind. I didn’t feel able to keep the conversation going. I realized there was a centuries-wide gap between them and me. Centuries! Perhaps this was what my history teacher meant when he talked about the social gap, or maybe, better still, the historical gap. In one nation, where people eat and drink the same things, in one country, yes even in one carriage there can be such a gap, not yet or not at all bridged.

All of us in that carriage sat silently, each with his or her own groping thoughts.

Our vehicle entered the
Boerderij Buitenzorg
long after the sun had set. Mama ordered that they all be taken straight into the warehouse. Trunodongso was sitting on a bamboo mat being examined by Dr. Martinet. Seeing a European present, Truno’s wife and her children stopped, each gripping hold of the other.

“It’s all right,” I said, encouraging them. “Go on in.”

I set an example, and they moved forward, their feet dragging along the floor, bowing again and again, keeping their gaze away from the white person in front of them.

Mama followed behind them.

“Ayoh, don’t be afraid.” She too encouraged them, passing them and going up to the doctor.

“The wound is somewhat old,” said Dr. Martinet in Dutch to Mama.

“A villager, doctor,” answered Mama.

“It’s not a wound from being pierced by bamboo, Nyai,” he spoke again. “A wound from a sharp weapon, perhaps a week ago. Has there been another fight here since the incident with Darsam?”

“No.”

“Remember, Nyai, what you say now I’ll have to report if there is any investigation.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

“I know he didn’t fall on any bamboo,” Dr. Martinet pressed.

“What does it matter, Doctor? It’s all the same. He is wounded and must be treated.”

“It might be a different matter before the law.”

“There’s no need for a trial, Doctor,” answered Nyai Ontosoroh patiently.

“Very well. It was an accident with bamboo. Make him understand, Nyai. If he doesn’t, he can get a lot of people in trouble.”

“Thank you, Doctor. You are always so good to us.”

Dr. Martinet went home without joining us for dinner.

Only then did Trunodongso’s wife and children sum up enough courage to approach. As quick as lightning Mama shifted her attention to her new guests: “Stay here with your husband, you and all your children. Don’t think about what’s happened. Look after him well. There are more mats over there. Roll them out on the floor when you want to sleep. The warehouse is big. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t tell anyone anything. Just one story to someone, and you could bring disaster upon us all. Do you understand?”