Child of All Nations (18 page)

They came out together. Then Djumilah took Mama’s suitcase and my suitcase into a room. I looked at Mama for a second. I heard her hiss: “Stupid woman!”

The basket of presents for the family had been carted into the kitchen by the carriage driver.

As soon as Djumilah reemerged from the room, she said: “Ah, you’ve stayed young, Sis Ikem. Sir, please feel free to change your clothes and rest up.”

“I want to see out the back first.” Nyai stood up again and Djumilah took her to the back part of the house.

I was left alone there with my heart in turmoil—I was thought
to be Mama’s new man! Perhaps worse than that: the kept man of a nyai. Why didn’t Mama put things right straight away when only one room was prepared? Why did she merely hiss “stupid woman”? I laughed, seeing the funny side of it. At least it would be good material for a story.

They came in again and sat down, still chattering away and laughing about I don’t know what. I was silent, meditating on what I heard. Usually the male guest is received by the man of the house in the front parlor and the female guests by his wife in the back parlor or kitchen. The host wasn’t there, so I was now included among the female guests. Another funny side to this awful situation.

The pockmarked girl came in again, bowing and bending as before. Now she put out some of the sponge cake we had brought from Wonokromo. At that moment Mama put the following question to Djumilah: “Elder Sister, where is Surati? I didn’t see her out the back there just now.”

“Surati? Come here,” she shouted shrilly. “Even your auntie doesn’t recognize you anymore!”

The pockmarked girl, curling her lip, bowed down: “It is I, Surati,” she whispered. “Yes, Aunt, I am now pocked like this.”

I too was startled. This was Surati, that pretty girl I had seen twice before. Marked with big broad pocks, some deep and blackish.

“Alah Niece.” Nyai stood up and pulled the girl up too. “How could this happen to you?”

“It is my fate, Aunt.”

“It was her father’s doing, Sis Ikem’s own brother, a man with no backbone. He wanted to follow in Sastrotomo’s footsteps, and sell his own daughter to the
Tuan Besar Kuasa
factory manager!” Djumilah burst out.

“What? Paiman?” Nyai was suddenly in a fury. “Paiman could do that to his daughter? Didn’t he know what I had to suffer? Sit here, Niece!”

Surati sat down, bowing her head as custom required a young girl to do before her elders, especially before a man she had never met before.

Djumilah began to screech out curses on her husband, like a stream of river water that had found a free path in the steepest part of a gully. Every now and then her words would be punctuated by
a shrill shout from Nyai: “A child as pretty as she, as sweet as she, look how she is now!”

Silently I followed the three women’s conversation. Their questions and answers provided the structure of a story. Mama was overcome by the fire of her emotions. Back here in the environment from which she originally came, she seemed for a moment no more educated than Djumilah, thrown about by waves of extreme emotion while Surati told her the story as if it were the story of someone else’s life; as though she had never felt sorrow or regret at the loss of her beauty.

They kept on talking. Mama groaned, accused, attacked; she laughed and smiled no more. The experiences of this once-beautiful blossom of Tulangan, the story of how she came to be pockmarked like this, unattractive to anyone, even to Mama and me, formed the basis of a great short story. It truly moved me and I wanted to write it. I promised myself that I would immortalize her suffering, even if the story was similar to Mama’s own.

They talked and talked for more than an hour. They forgot I was there with them. Then the factory whistle reminded us all that it was already five o’clock. The cane workers in the fields now knew the working day was over.

“Ah, Tuan hasn’t been able to rest yet?” Djumilah said in a tone that asked forgiveness. “Sis Ikem, please show Sir into the room.”

“I see there is another room. He can use that one,” said Nyai.

“Why must you be separated?” protested Djumilah.

“Don’t be stupid! This is Annelies’s husband!”

“Oh, ah, oh, Annelies’s husband! Ya-ya, and how is Annelies—people say she was taken to Holland?”

“She’s fine, Elder Sister,” Nyai lied.

“No news yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I had better prepare another room.”

Then I realized: Her own sister looked upon Nyai as a woman of low morals. But at least that unspoken matter was now resolved. I got a room of my own, perhaps Surati’s.

As I settled into that room, with its tidy bed and clean linen, I began to muse upon how disappointed Nyai must be. She would not try to marry me to Surati now. Her failure was an omen: I would soon be able to escape from Surabaya and Wonokromo.

Twilight arrived. The lights came on and I suddenly realized: electricity! For several minutes I stood gazing in admiration at the globe that gave off light but burned no oil, no gas, no wick. I thought of Edison and I bowed my head in his honor. I had now actually enjoyed two of his discoveries, the phonograph and the electric light bulb. And I was actually seeing an electric light bulb itself, not just a picture in a newspaper or magazine.

After I bathed, instead of taking the usual afternoon stroll, I began to note down the story of Surati’s life. But I wasn’t able to do it in peace. All of a sudden I heard Mama, running amok with words—and a man’s low voice occasionally responding. Sastro Kassier had arrived home and was feeling Mama’s wrath.

There was silence at the dinner table that evening and an atmosphere of enmity. I withdrew from the table before the battle began again.

It was Djumilah’s voice that first broke the silence. “You were always a man without a backbone. Like a wayang shadow puppet that’s lost its stick. It’s lucky there’s not a war on. How would you behave if you had to go to war?”

“Nothing but the descendant of a slave!” Mama reentered the fray.

“You keep out of this, Sanikem. You’ve done all right as a nyai,” Paiman alias Sastrowongso alias Kassier answered.

“No! You’re the one who benefited from my sale as a nyai. You were made a clerk!”

“But you’re doing all right too!”

“I’m doing all right now because I’ve worked and fought hard, not because I was made into a nyai! Idiot!”

I closed the door, and my ears too, and went on writing my notes.

T
hese are the notes I made about what happened to Surati, rearranged and rounded out with further material:

The citizens of Tulangan were busy preparing for a farewell party for the tuan manager, tuan besar kuasa. His contract had expired. As soon as his replacement arrived, he would set off for Surabaya among much festivity. He wanted to leave the people with something nice to remember. To the employees whom he was leaving, he kept saying: “May my replacement be better than I. Please help him!”

All the employees, workers, and other ordinary citizens held the same hope. The manager of the sugar mill was a powerful man in Tulangan, more powerful than the
bupati, assistant resident
, or even the resident. He was a little king. People said his wage was bigger than that of the governor-general. Though people didn’t bow down and abase themselves before him, as they had to before a bupati or other Native official, his word was law. The old people of the village could still tell the story of the first tuan besar kuasa, the one Herman Mellema replaced, and how he ordered the execution
of seven farmers who rebelled and refused to surrender their land. Five others had died of fright after carrying out orders to remove stones from the temples to be used as the foundation of giant constructions for the factory.

The laugh of a manager is something that puts people at ease; his threat is something else: The plantation supervisors, foremen, office employees, even the coolies, will obey him without question. At the crook of his finger, people will come; with just a grunt, people can be knocked to the ground.

The manager of the sugar mill, the tuan besar kuasa: a man with a tongue of fire.

So it was the time for preparations for the arrival of the new manager. The hand-over ceremony was attended by the controller and the bupati of Sidoarjo. Two hours after the ceremony, the new and the old managers came out from the office and went among the festive throng. The gong sounded, and the party began. At the same time, carriages were readied to escort the old manager as he left Tulangan.

The party itself was kept going with hired dancers, with palm wine, and with dice and brawling.

The new tuan manager was called Frits Homerus Vlekkenbaaij. He accompanied his predecessor as far as Sidoarjo railway station. As soon as he returned he strode into the partying crowd. Through an interpreter he rebuked: “What kind of infidel’s party is this? Such noise—barbaric! Everyone leave! Go! Quickly!”

Everyone realized at once that gloomy clouds hovered before them.

Mijnheer Frits Homerus Vlekkenbaaij was short, even compared to Natives. His body was like a ball, with a bloated stomach—the stomach of someone who always sat and did no physical work. His eyes were deep, and peered out from under his eyelids, a greenish yellow, but clear, like marbles. He was the first European to appear there in public wearing short-sleeved shirts and short trousers, so that his dense, long, blond body hair was visible. He was bald; his cheeks were round and loose. His heavily lidded eyes gave the impression that he never slept at the right time. He kept to himself, avoiding speech except to spray abuse at people.

Not only the coolies and the villagers, but especially the office employees and foremen were frightened of his power. It was the
Mixed-Blood employees who whispered to the villagers and coolies: The new Tuan was
Plikemboh
—“Ugly Penis.” The name stuck. The women would look away or giggle, covering their mouths, whenever they heard that name.

From the time of the party a tense atmosphere oppressed all of Tulangan—villagers, employees, and laborers. Plikemboh seemed capable of doing anything to anyone—Native, Pure, or Mixed-Blood. The workers and office employees reacted in their normal way: They would accept any treatment as long as they weren’t dismissed.

Plikemboh understood that people were afraid of him. He was pleased. Now he was really someone. He was feared; he was master. He didn’t have to work. Fear was his trusted foreman. He was rarely seen at his desk. His only order during the whole first month was: Tighten the supervision over the manufacture of spirits and hard drink.

Plikemboh was a drinker and a drunkard. Yet he never drank what he had manufactured himself. So one or two sample bottles of drink from his own factory were brought to him, and he would sniff them to assess their alcohol content.

In the second month he started to wander around outside the complex. He would visit the cane plantations and the factory’s electric plant. He liked to stand watching the plant’s steam generator, proud that it was the very first in the Surabaya area. He would walk around carrying an air rifle with which he hunted birds. He didn’t ride horses—unusual for a sugar-mill manager.

In the late afternoons he could be seen sitting in front of his house, perhaps half drunk, with the air rifle on his table. He would take aim and shoot at any Native child who passed by on the street. Soon all the children were afraid of him. They would run away as soon as he appeared in the distance, carrying his rifle. So began the practice that mothers would use his name to frighten disobedient children.

Whenever he spent time outdoors, his face went very red, like that of a hen about to lay an egg. His head hardly ever turned, as if it were just a piece of twisted firewood.

Everyone knew he was a bad shot. He never took home a single bird. Whenever he went hunting a black leather bag hung from his shoulder. People guessed the bag had never held a bird, only a bottle of brandy.

After realizing that the birds would always elude his black leather bag, Plikemboh became bored with his rifle. Now he discovered a new kind of hunting: entering the homes of the Natives who lived near the factory complex, opening the doors to their rooms, their cupboards, even their cooking pots and rice steamers. His reasoning was that Natives could not be trusted; they were all thieves or half thieves, smugglers of contraband, manufacturers of illegal whisky. He never found what he was looking for. Then he began to worry the women. People began to lock their doors and wouldn’t open them even if he pounded on the door.

Both men and women felt disgust whenever near Tuan Plikemboh. Not just because of his appearance; more so because of his character. Wherever he was present, people felt the air to be polluted. His body hair, his bloatedness, his transparent eyes, his glistening baldness…

One day Djumilah cried out, startled. Plikemboh had entered the house, perhaps through a window. Djumilah ran to the back part of the house, into the kitchen. All the boys were at school. The girls were in the kitchen. Plikemboh came into the kitchen too. The girls, in a daze, scattered in every direction, running faster even than their mother.

Djumilah ran out into the back yard. She shivered; she was unable to speak. She saw Surati pulling up water from the well, ready to do the family washing. Her mother signaled her to run. The girl didn’t understand. Plikemboh had rushed out and reached the well. Now he stood before Surati, who was shaking with fear, unable to stand up any longer.

In the distance she could hear Djumilah calling for help. People came running. Seeing Tuan Besar Kuasa up to one of his tricks again, they all disappeared, guarding their own fates.

Fear and revulsion made Surati shiver and collapse into a squat. Seeing this, Plikemboh didn’t know what to do. He slunk away behind the other houses and disappeared from view.

Only then did the neighbors return to Surati. They picked her up and carried her to the bench in the kitchen and changed her wet, stinking
kain
. Her face was white and she still couldn’t speak.

The tuan manager, carrying his shoulder bag, descended again to the main road and returned to his office. From his books he found out that house number fifteen was occupied by the Sastro
Kassier family. He summoned the paymaster. Before coming to the Indies he had prepared himself by learning a little Malay from a retired controller. The conversation took place in Malay: