Footsteps (36 page)
I put the letter away without finishing it. What did it mean when a young woman opened a letter to her fiancé with such excessive praise? Such letters always ended with the sharpest of barbs.
Your Excellency, the honorable, Tuan Chief Editor
, began a different letter.
“Your Excellency, the honorable”—what was this all about? But I didn’t get a chance to smile. This letter did not end with a barb but with the raging cry of the helpless. I read on:
Would perhaps it be possible for Your Honorable Excellency, if Your Excellency should so be willing, to consider my most unworthy case and to accept my humble request for assistance in my difficulties. I have a daughter named Marjam, nine years old, attending Angka Satu school. In third grade. One day it seems that she was sleepy at school. The tuan teacher struck her. My daughter was unconscious for four days and nights. Then she died. Then even while we were in mourning, my wife and I, the tuan teacher came to our house and threatened to have me exiled because of the base and contemptible behavior of my daughter, totally improper behavior, he said, which only caused difficulties for the teachers that the government has brought all the way from Holland.…
My blood boiled. I jumped up out of my chair. The letter was from Bandung. I immediately hailed a delman and set off for the address on the letter. The house was gloomy. The master of the house was an employee of the forestry service. When he found out who I was, he fell to the floor to make obeisance as if he were my slave or servant. I forbade him. And he said that the teacher would be here any moment now.
And it was true; a few moments later the teacher arrived. He spoke rudely, in Malay, and sat himself down without waiting for an invitation.
He was a Pure-Blood Dutchman, heavily built and with arms covered in thick, blond body hair.
“Is this the teacher you wrote me about?” I asked in Sundanese.
“Who is this?” the teacher asked the master of the house in Malay.
But our host was too afraid to answer. It was I who answered in Dutch: “I am the person who is going to take you to court. I am going to bring charges against you. You are not a teacher,
you are a murderer!” I accused him, pointing at his nose. “Liar and bully! Get out, or run away!”
The big-bodied man shrank up, bending like some old doll. He picked up his briefcase, stood up, and walked toward the door, looked back again, and then disappeared from sight.
“We won’t let them get away with this. Come on, stand up. No one bows down to people here. Don’t be afraid of the court. Come with me now.”
“Where to, Your Excellency?”
“There are no ‘Your Excellencys’ here. To my office, so we can start things rolling.”
He refused, afraid that he would lose his job and pension.
“So you’re not prepared to lay charges?”
“I’m truly scared, Your Excellency.”
“Even so I am going to have papers drawn up so that you can have him charged. You will be called before the court anyway.”
“Please don’t involve me.”
I found Hendrik Frischboten back at the office attending to someone, and I gave him the man’s letter about his daughter.
“Let’s take this case up. I’ve met both the man concerned and the teacher.” Then I went back to my desk and finished reading Maysoroh’s letter:
My violin teacher, Om, has suggested I study singing. He says my voice is more beautiful than the sound of a violin. So I am studying singing as well now. It’s only now I realize that singing has to be studied too.
I know you do not tire of reading about what I am doing here. Forgive me if it does bore you. Papa is always telling me that I should remember and honor all those who have ever done good to us, whether it is the people around us or across the world—my teachers, and the world’s great writers and thinkers. And there is one name which I will honor and remember for all my life. You know the name, Om? Yours, my fiancé’s.
Why is there no end to all this flattery? She can have everything she wants in Paris. The Indies is just an untamed jungle and I am just one of its millions of monkeys. Why is there so much of this praise and flattery?
And so I am also very happy and proud to be able to tell you, Om, that I have decided to become a singer. As a singer I will be of no use to you, or to the Indies. On the other hand, Om, if I am a success, at least I will be of use to France.
Mama says that you should be a happy man because you are needed by your people. And happy too would I be if one day I was also needed by France. You will pray for my success, won’t you, and not try to stop me?
You who are so experienced, who understand the inner feelings of people, I am sure will be prepared to let go of that little dream we once dreamed together. Om, forgive this Maysoroh. Forgive her. She will never forget you, the person, his goodness. I do not regret the tears I have shed strengthening myself to write you this letter.
Every day I put flowers next to your picture, so that I see you and the flowers as one, just as you and your goodness are one. Forgive me, Om, I who have other and my own dreams.…
How I had tormented her. It took her days to get up the courage to write that letter. May, you are a daughter of France. It is now up to France to determine who you are to be and what will be your future. Only one thing stands firm in my life now—
Medan
, in all its forms of publication.
Medan
must grow, must spread its wings like the
garuda
, and the Natives from across the Indies will find protection in their shade. From a circulation of two thousand it grew to four, then five thousand. No colonial paper had ever reached that high.
The colonial papers opened their snouts and snarled and started howling their complaints. One attack followed another. The paper importer from whom we bought our newsprint, Jacobsen van der Berg, suddenly stopped selling to us. Very well. We were forced to buy from a Chinese importer at a higher price. Then finally we had to arrange to import paper ourselves, from Stockholm. While this was happening we opened stationery shops, which became our sales agents. Then the News Agency started offering us only the uninteresting wire stories. It’s lucky our readers weren’t so interested in international news. Anyway, they were patient enough to wait until
we were able to quote the news from the foreign press. We had to take on more and more people. One of the big Dutch trading companies, the Bormsumij, offered to sell us paper again after we started importing ourselves but we politely refused.
The reports of injustices and the calls for help kept flooding in.
Medan
had been accepted as a reality, as the defender of the Natives.
Medan
, as a newspaper, had a dual role because of the needs and the social situation of the Natives. But there were also strange letters that came in, such as:
Don’t interfere in this matter because you may find you’re unable to defend yourself.
Workers on a cocoa plantation had banded together to bring accusations against the plantation manager, a Mr. Meyer, that he had been brutally mistreating their families. He was even worse than Vlekkenbaaij in Tulangan. The fact that Meyer found out that the workers had banded together showed that he was in league with the local prosecutor who had received the workers’ complaints. The prosecutor froze the case. It was then that they turned to us and Frischboten took up the case.
If Mr. Meyer does not desire to stand trial before the courts, we would be very happy to bring him before another court—
Medan
and its readers, whose prosecutors and judges, European and Native, are almost infinite in number.
The local prosecutor was forced to bring him to trial. Meyer went to jail.
Fine, we accepted these dual duties gladly. And it was not I, but life in the Indies itself that demanded it be so.
There was one letter that we printed, which turned out to be fake. I was trapped and had to have dealings with the law. There was great uproar when I refused to go before a Native court. As someone with noble blood, a Raden Mas, I had the right of
forum privilegiatum.
I could not be handed over to a Native judge and prosecutor to be done with as they pleased.
Hendrik Frischboten threw himself into the case. My defense depended on being able to find who wrote the false letter. We succeeded and the case was dropped. When we discovered the culprit we also learned that there was someone else behind the plot, manipulating things like a dalang—Robert Suurhof.
Don’t put it off,
wrote Mama
, find someone like Darsam.
You’ll regret it if you forget about this.
Every day more and more people came seeking help. Frischboten advised them in Malay, Sundanese, and Dutch. He, who first looked as though he was lazy, lacking self-confidence and energy, turned out to be fired by idealism when it came to defending truth and justice.
“Don’t worry,” said Frischboten, “heap all the problems of the Natives onto my back. In every colony, no matter in what part of the world, you find only evil and crime, coming also from the colonizers themselves. The colonials are often more evil than the most primitive Native to be found in the jungles of Papua. You mustn’t believe too much in school education. Every good teacher may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.”
And all the cases we dealt with seemed to prove what he said. The crimes committed by Europeans were generally more extensive, bigger, and worse.
“In the colonies today it is like it was five hundred years ago when those who had power did what they liked—enslaved, oppressed, killed, stole, and destroyed. All in the name of ‘peace and order.’ The modern states of Europe are no longer so barbaric. Or at least they don’t let things go to such extremes.”
Om,
wrote Maysoroh again
, I have received your letter.
One evening Papa and Mama were sitting reading the newspapers. I said I was sorry but could I disturb them for a minute? Papa put down his glasses and his newspaper. Mama too. Jeannette was asleep in her lap. I was hesitant as how to start; then Mama began: Is there something wrong, May?
Her question made it easier for me to begin, and so I began: No, Ma, I answered. Would you both like to hear a letter I wrote to Om in Bandung. And I read them my letter to you. And then I read them your answer, finishing with the words: May, you are a child of France. It is up to you what France makes of you and your future.
Mama asked: You mean you’re breaking off your
engagement? And I answered with a question: Will I be sinning against him, Ma, if I break off the engagement?
Mama didn’t say anything. We both know that it was she, wasn’t it, Uncle, who wanted us to face our life and spend our futures together. It seemed to her that our futures would be simpler if we were together.
Mama seemed very sad for us. She was the one most affected by this. I’ll put the baby to sleep first, she said. You talk to your Papa. She went and did not come out again. Papa said: It’s all up to you both. I have no right to interfere, darling May, said Papa.
I was so worried that I had made Mama unhappy. So I went after her into the baby’s room. She was lying down on the bed cuddling the baby to sleep. And I sat on the edge of the mattress facing her. Are you disappointed, Mama? I asked carefully.
Finally Mama spoke, slowly: May, perhaps it was I who was wrong. I entered the real world when I was sold by my parents to a man who was foreign to me in every aspect—his person, his language, his people, his ways, and his customs. What I did for you two I thought was a much better thing than that. And so I thought I was doing right. It’s only now, today, that I realize that it was not right at all, not the right thing to do for either of you. Please forgive this old woman who did not realize what she was doing, May.
Om, to hear Mama speak with such remorse made me almost cry. I could hardly breathe because of the lump in my throat. This very, very wise woman was asking forgiveness of me. And who was I? What was I? The words became stuck in my throat and: Who am I, Mama, that you should ask forgiveness of me? Mama sat up and caressed my hair as if I were a baby and said: If I had given birth to you myself, I would still ask your forgiveness. Have you spoken with your Papa? I nodded. Whatever you decide is best, said Mama again, best for you, will surely also be best for your Papa and for your om back there in Bandung.
I never replied to her letter. And I never wrote to her again.
I know you will not be broken by this,
wrote Mama
, only old branches can be broken. The young ones bend with the storm. Only the stupid ones try to resist.
Ah, Mama, I have encountered no storms. None. Or is it not yet? Maybe the storms will come one day, but not now. I am in the midst of my triumph…even though I know that every triumph has its end. But not yet, Ma.
And in Klungkung the army began to enter the four-mile area around the city that was defended by the Balinese heroes, all dressed in white and prepared to die. There was no one among the people who did not fight. The battle to overthrow the kingdom of Klungkung lasted over forty days and was followed enthusiastically by every newspaper reader in the Indies.
Klungkung fell, but Lombok rose in rebellion.
R
aden Tomo’s emissary came to Bandung to demand delivery of the promise I had made. He and his friends had established the kind of organization suggested by the retired Java Doctor. And by myself as well. The name of the organization was
Boedi Oetomo.
An approximate translation of
Jamiatul Khair
, meaning “of noble character,” one of the most progressive of the Arab self-improvement associations. He also brought a Constitution and a Statement of Aims and Objectives, all written in reasonable Dutch. He asked for space in
Medan
to publicize the new organization.
“We’ll be glad to. Just send us the materials. But why have you given your organization a Javanese name? Is it only for Javanese?”