Footsteps (24 page)
How easy it was for Cremer to look for excuses—as if the weather had changed since he’d been there. The Native rulers of Sumatra had sold off their people’s land to the tobacco plantations. They had overturned and subverted their traditional law to give up the people’s rights over their ancestral lands. Over the last thirty years thousands of acres had been sold off by greedy sultans to the tobacco capitalists, and also to the sugar plantations.
I recalled the reports in the
Sumatra Post
of the cruelty of the European plantation owners, who never ceased in their search for fertile land…
And the way Native officials oppressed their own people…I jumped out of my bed and went over to the portrait of Ang San Mei—a portrait that was like an idol I worshiped.
And the last letter I had received from Ter Haar:
Yes, we must keep watch on van Heutsz. He is a major colonial figure. And don’t forget, he is a general who
has not won any international wars. He has achieved victories only over the Native peoples of the Indies. And even Aceh was never completely subdued by him. The Acehnese are now fighting back even harder, their determination aroused by the Japanese victory over Russia.
“Yes, Mei, I will study all this over again!”
I
studied once more all the notes I had made in my diaries. I took out all my correspondence. I put aside everything I had never really understood. I started to properly digest and assimilate those sections of the newspapers that I had marked with red pencil and that now lay heaped in the corner of my study. Gradually I began to build up a clearer picture of what had been happening during those years.
The most interesting materials were Ter Haar’s letters. Beginning from the very first one. If I order them in my own way, they read like this:
Dear Mr. Minke,
I am now in Semarang. Engineer van Kollewijn would not allow me to accompany him to Jepara. We don’t know what he and the girl discussed. When he arrived back in Semarang, he would not say a thing about what had happened.
It would be a mistake to think the meeting he held in Jepara was not important. Everything that a member
of parliament does has a political purpose, even if it is only talking with a housemaid.
It seems that the girl is being fought over by the different political groupings. Van Kollewijn’s visit was just one of many. You may remember how she handled the first attempt to force her to marry? Or perhaps you’ve never heard the story. Among us journalists it is a public secret. When the crisis came and the emotional stress became very great, she fell seriously ill. People were predicting that she would break with her family and convert to Protestant Christianity. Dr. N. Adriani and Dr. Bervoets, the founders of the first mission hospital in Mojowarno, also visited her on behalf of certain political groups.
It’s a pity we don’t know what really happened. So this information is just for you, not for publication.
And what about yourself? I’m sure you’ve been able to make contact with the Liberal group in Betawi. I’m sure the discussions have been very interesting. It’s a shame there is no Liberal newspaper in the Indies.
De Locomotief
has to self-censor itself all the time just to avoid incurring the wrath of the
Sugar Syndicate
and the Agricultural Traders’ Association. We must learn to avoid all the obstacles that are put in our way by the government and big business and we must learn to navigate the corals that lie under the sea that are there because of our own desires.
Even so, our paper is still considered the best in the Indies, with the biggest circulation and with the best reputation as a source of reliable information.
You’re not interested in seeing Semarang? I’ll take you to see the Soerja Soemirat Association, an organization founded by local Eurasians. It is the biggest and most successful social organization in the Indies. You would learn a lot from the experiences of the Soerja Soemirat. It runs a mechanical repair shop, a technical school, an orphanage, and a few small businesses. I think you would admire how these, mostly poor, Eurasians have been able to band together and, through some manufacturing and trading, look after themselves. They are not dependent on any government authority or any of
the big companies. They are taught, and teach each other, how to stand on their own two feet.…
The next few letters I can combine together like this:
Do you remember our conversation on the way home in the carriage after the meeting at the Harmoni club? It looked then as if van Heutsz was going to get the support of the Liberals. Perhaps he and van Kollewijn had made a deal of some kind. Van Heutsz may soon be installed as governor-general. If this happens, then there will be an evil alliance here in the Indies between the Free Democratic party and the military.
Then Ter Haar went off to the Netherlands. His letters from Holland were mainly personal. At the beginning of 1904, he returned to the Indies and visited me at the dormitory. He said it was now certain that van Heutsz would be made governor-general. He had emerged the lone victor after an almighty fight among all the generals. He was the one who suggested the new position of armed forces chief, which the rest were now fighting over. In the meantime, he will take the position of governor-general. Yes, a clever move. He would now have the highest position in the land. And tribute for life from every resident he appointed!
A few months later van Heutsz was appointed governor-general of the Netherlands Indies and Ter Haar wrote me:
We can only pray that the idea of the territorial integrity of the Indies is not going to mean war. Now that the Aceh War is over, the army has all its forces at its disposal. It can do whatever it wants. If war does come, let’s hope it does not mean that more of the independent parts of the Indies will have to suffer the hell that Aceh did. I am worried about the talk in military circles here, that after Aceh, it will be Bali’s turn.
The military’s calculations are that the Balinese will be just as fanatical as the Acehnese, even though their religion is different. The Natives there were always fighting each other though, they are saying. And the colonial authorities were also involved. And they would be victorious over the Balinese as well as the Acehnese.
They are also saying that the divide and conquer policy was not working. The Dutch had been in alliance with the king of Buleleng for twelve years and still they had not conquered Bali.…
I wrote to him that his letter reminded me of two reports I had read about Bali. One was to do with prohibition against the ritual cremation of widows at their husband’s funeral and the other was about the ransacking of a merchant ship, the
Sri Kumala
, that was wrecked on Gumicik beach, near Sanur.
He answered:
The Netherlands Indies exercises no authority in Bali. The ban on the cremations was just propaganda, to boost Europe’s image as humanitarian and as having law. Holland had no effective authority in Bali, not even in the friendly kingdom of Buleleng. The Balinese, who are a proud people, did not hear and did not listen to the Dutch prohibition.
The newspaper reports are true. The ship
Sri Kumala
, which was wrecked off Sanur, was sacked by the local people, who also killed the crew. Emissaries from the Netherlands Indies government traveled from Batavia and Surabaya to Denpasar to demand compensation of one thousand ringgit.
My friend Minke, I think it is all part of a scheme, worked out by van Heutsz’s military, to start a war with Bali. They have to find an excuse. There must be a reason, some proper grounds, to attack another party because that’s the European way of thinking. Not like the Asian kings—they attacked other kingdoms giving no other reason than that they wanted to be stronger than the others. Europe must have a reason, even if it is just made up and isn’t really true, but there must be some excuse for the action. To satisfy their intellect, my friend Minke, not their morality, neither of which Natives have anyway. The odds are one in ten, my friend, that van Heutsz will almost definitely implement his plan to “unify” the Netherlands Indies.
Do you remember how van Zeggelen attacked van Heutsz that time? She wasn’t wrong about him. I’m sure
if war breaks out between the Netherlands Indies and Bali, she will go to Bali and show her support for the Balinese heroes, just as she did for the Buginese and the Acehnese in their defeat.
Or do you think the Balinese might win?
Perhaps the Balinese could have won if they hadn’t been so lax during the last several years. Did you know that twenty years ago the black market for weapons in Singapore was dominated by the competition between Aceh and Bali? The Acehnese used the dollars from their pepper, the Balinese used slaves. The Chinese traders of Singapore had enough slaves, especially women for mistresses, so Bali lost out. The weapons flowed to Aceh. Then the Dutch attacked Aceh and the war started. Bali felt safe again. Bali no longer tried to arm itself. Now it’s too late. Bali will be defeated. There are no grounds at all for thinking that Bali might win. Even so we can still pray that there will be no war.
Then a letter from my old correspondent Miriam de la Croix arrived from Holland. She had married a lawyer, a thirty-eight-year-old widower.
If you write to me, don’t use my family name,
wrote Mir Frischboten.
My husband was born in Bandung. He is fluent in Sundanese and Malay. Unfortunately he can’t speak Javanese. He wants to go back to Java and open a practice in Bandung.
I have told him a lot about you and he very much wants to meet you.
There are rumors going about that there is trouble in Bali. Is it true? There are no reports in the papers here, just gossip, especially around the stock market. If it is true, what is your opinion about what is happening?
Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you that the authoress Marie van Zeggelen has arrived in Holland. She has been giving many lectures about the Acehnese war. I went to listen one time. She was glorifying the Acehnese women who went forth into battle with the men, to die or be wounded. And that has never happened in Europe,
although here the movement for women’s rights is now at its peak.
She told of the loyalty of the Acehnese fighters to their country, people, and religion. She told of their defeat, which they suffered stoically—in a war which was completely different from the Boer War in South Africa or the wars that had taken place between European countries. A special Acehnese kind of war: one that did not know night or day. The only war during three centuries of Dutch presence in the Indies that had independence as its goal.
Everyone is saying, including Father, that the Balinese have learned a lot from the fall of the Javanese. It won’t be so easy to conquer them. Is it true what they’re saying, that the Indies will invade Bali? Tell me something about Bali. They say the men are all handsome and brave and the women accomplished in many things.
I answered Mir Frischboten’s letter by passing on what Ter Haar had told me. I had no choice as there was no other material to use. There was still almost no news at all in the papers about Bali.
This is what Ter Haar had written me:
I will tell you what little I know about Bali.
It’s true not much has been written about Bali. One day if I get a chance to go there, perhaps I will have more to say.
The emissary from the Netherlands Indies who went to Denpasar met the Raja of Klungkung’s first minister, I Goesti Agoeng Djelantik. What van Heutsz had been hoping for happened. As had been predicted, Djelantik rejected the claim for compensation. People said that the first minister was indeed speaking officially on behalf of the Raja of Klungkung, who was in the Asmarapura Palace in Klungkung itself.
“We will pay compensation in the form of the tip of our spears.”
And so van Heutsz now had his excuse for invading Bali.
One company of troops landed at Sanur and another two landed at Kuta. They were both under orders to march on Denpasar.
If you read the next issue of the army magazine, you’ll get a more detailed idea of what happened—though you must remember not to accept everything it says as the whole truth.
It’s indeed pitiful to see a country that has not yet been touched by the spirit of the modern era. They can never win, no matter how brave and strong are their warriors. Look at Bali. The Klungkung Kingdom engages in hardly any trade. So it cannot afford a decent-sized standing army. It’s immoral in these times to rely simply on the loyalty of the people, especially when you’ve been using the people as a source of luxury and comfort for the king and his family. Yes, even though the writers and the priests have tried to teach loyalty through religion and even by deifying the king, such a country will be defeated.
Perhaps you disagree. Please let us know your views on this matter.
I answered his letter by saying that I was too busy with work and study to give it any thought. And, in any case, I didn’t have any information upon which to base my comments.
In his next letter, he rebuked me with the following words:
How can you be so apathetic about the disaster that has befallen your fellow countrymen? Don’t you feel their suffering as your own? Yes, they are Balinese but they are of the Indies and therefore also your countrymen. Their skin is the same as your skin. The water they drink and the rice they eat is the same. You cannot use your studies as an excuse, no matter how much work you have to do. Being apathetic about what is happening is the same as helping the army vanquish the Balinese people. Why can’t you put aside just a few minutes to think about them, to discuss with your friends what is happening?
He was right. The Balinese were my fellow countrymen. But it was also true that I had no chance to discuss what was happening
to the Balinese with the other students. They were all busy with their own affairs. Most of them didn’t even read the newspapers. Newspapers cost more than cigarettes. Most gave priority to the latter. And they were already satisfied with the prospect of being appointed a government doctor when they graduated. So, in the end, I never discussed it with anyone, not even with my wife.