Child of All Nations (38 page)

When I awoke it was light. The day was visible through the porthole. Two small fishing boats with small sails were attacking a wave. The howl of the ship’s motor shook everything, including me. Washing my face in the basin, I went outside. And Ter Haar’s words were still there, swooping down, attacking me, pursuing me. How could a Native become president? Would he not just fall back into the ways of the kings, which he would know from legends, and which he could see for himself in the bupatis? And
then would not others emerge who wanted to be like him? Then wars would rage continuously, just as in the classic history of our rulers. War without end—each person pitted against the other, all against all? What would come of it?

We have had hundreds of years of experience of war, Mr. Ter Haar. Defeat, always defeat. And according to Miriam—who knows whether it was her own opinion or just picked up in one of the alleys of this world—it is Minke, and Minke’s race that is perhaps the cleverest in the world at turning its back on reality, at drugging itself into sleep, at humoring itself with the fantasy that they have never been defeated.

That maiden had the hope, whether a just or an insane hope: Don’t be like your fellow countrymen, Minke. There must be one person who is aware, who can be their brain and their senses. Another wolf, that Miriam.

And the Philippines—salute! Defeated? Defeated in its fight against America? At least this mighty people had defeated Spain. It’s a pity, Mr. Ter Haar, but we are not Filipinos. I could not imagine it: The Indies without the Dutch! We must draw as deeply as possible on the well of European knowledge and learning. Just as Japan is doing. There is no honor without European science and learning. Mr. Ter Haar, you are truly a spirited coaxer, leading me astray.

With that last thought I went into the bathroom. But none of these things wanted to be shaken loose. They kept popping up, pursuing me and hopping up and down crazily everywhere. What torment such a little knowledge can wreak…

Private capital began to enter the Indies…yes, at the end of the
Culture System.
The minister of colonies, de Waal, legislated for the expropriation of land which was to be set aside for capital interests born of the corruption during the Culture System. And these interests wanted guarantees from the governor-general of the Netherlands Indies, not against the possible depredations of Native rebels—they were considered insignificant—but against the incursions of the English, who were biding their time and quietly keeping their eyes on the situation from Singapore and Semenanjung. What was the meaning of the London Treaty of 1824? It was just a piece of paper. The English could use Aceh as a bridge into the Indies. Aceh had to be brought totally under Dutch control, to dispel the fears of big capital.

And Aceh proved to be unlike Java. The Dutch fell into a trap. The Acehnese War raged, the most costly during the whole of colonial history. Ninety percent of the armed forces and seventy percent of the budget were siphoned off to win that war. It went on for almost a quarter of a century! The commitment shown by the Netherlands Indies government in subjugating Aceh acted as a guarantee for capital. More and more capital made its way to the Indies.…

In the dining room Ter Haar was already waiting. He went on with the stories from yesterday. He tried to explain the power of big capital in our times, the modern era. He never mentioned the Acehnese War. All this talk he came out with now was almost a repetition of what was in that anonymous pamphlet that Magda Peters had given me.

I asked him whether he had ever read an anonymous tract on this subject. He asked in turn, amazed: “Do you mean
The Cesspool of Our Colonial Policies
?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“So you have read it. Do you know that pamphlet is a banned publication?”

“I never knew there were banned publications in the Indies.”

“Be careful not to get caught with it, Mr. Minke. There was an earlier banned book too,
Women of Jayakarta
, but it is nothing compared to that pamphlet. If you have already read it you should be a member of the Radical Group. I’ll try to arrange it, if you agree. But keep away from the Indies Union.”

“What is this group?”

“Just a discussion group. You agree?”

What was wrong with being honored with membership? Discussions about the current situation, no doubt more interesting than school discussions. I agreed without thinking about it any further. Anyway, he knew more than I did.

He invited me to walk with him on deck. He was becoming more and more friendly and open. He went on with his story:

These days the big capital that came into the Indies was not active only in agriculture. Capitalists had their fingers in mining, transport, shipping, industry. The small Chinese tin miners on Bangka Island had been swept aside by big investors. The small sugar business of Java had been stamped out by the sugar factories.
These small businessmen were now just coolies belonging to the new, powerful tuans.

“You know about de Waal’s Agrarian Laws?” I shook my head. Another new continent.

“And you must know that it was former Minister of Colonies Van de Putte who was the brilliant mind behind them, and the cleverest of all the devils of heaven and earth. A sailor, Mr. Minke, who came to the Indies and became a Tuan Besar Kuasa in charge of a sugar mill. It was he who drew up the sugar laws when he later became minister for the colonies. Now it has been revealed: All this time he was the owner of the biggest sugar-cane plantation in the Besuki-Bondowoso region. Him! While your people, Mr. Minke, who lived all around those plantations, had nothing! That is the sort of thing you will find out by joining our discussions.”

What a huge range of things this one wolf knew! Perhaps there wasn’t a grain of truth in any of it. But he did seem to know.

“Do you know the story of how the big farmers of Priangan were robbed of their most fertile lands?”

It had happened not long ago, he told me. The big farmers or rich villages had their own forests, rice lands, other fields and crops. They owned hundreds of buffalo, which roamed freely in the village or on private land. In order to seize those lands for the big capitalists, the government only had to issue land regulations. But in order to take the lands over without creating suspicion, Native agents were set to work. They put poison in the water holes where the buffalo drank. In one month ten thousand buffalo died. The villages stank of rotting carcasses. Disease was rampant. So it was announced: No cattle were allowed to roam freely in the forest lands or in the jungle. With army troops as their bully-men, and facing little resistance, the government forced the villages and big farmers to give up their lands. Now it was all planted with tea. Not a single relic remained of the great cattle farms. Destroyed, totally annihilated.

“You would never find out such thing without joining the Radical Group, Mr. Minke. Please, don’t look at me like that. Our group is only a vehicle to collect information about all the dark, illegal goings-on in the Indies. And then there is the gold rush around Pontianak. You surely wouldn’t have heard about that. Isn’t that right? Yes? And the secret societies of illegal immigrants from North Borneo.”

His words kept swooping down without a pause. I don’t know when he had the opportunity to wet his throat and lips. Perhaps he had finished five or seven cigarettes. You could even smell the cigarette smoke on my clothes. He talked and talked:

Capital wanted to turn all the Natives into its coolies. The Natives’ land would become its own land. So the capitalists resisted with all their might any moves for European education to be given to Natives. They were afraid the source of their power, cunning and evil, would be revealed. But capital needs more than just coolies; it also needs foremen who can at least read and write. So schools were set up to teach a few people to read and write. Then that too wasn’t sufficient; they needed some who could count. And those schools needed teachers, so a teachers’ school was set up. Then they felt the need for a few people who could speak a little Dutch. The primary schools that were operating were divided into grades I and II; students in first grade received a little tutoring in Dutch. So, as things developed, capitalist interests in the Indies found they needed educated Natives for their own enterprises. And so on and so on. More advanced schooling, at high-school level, in special subjects, was instituted for Natives: agriculture, administration, medicine, law. It could not be avoided. It was necessary because of the growth and development of capitalism itself—including the medical school I myself was about to enter. And I will be given good money to stay with the government, to make government service attractive.

And the most powerful of all capital was sugar capital. It was on behalf of sugar that the liberals in the Netherlands, calling their policy the Ethical Policy because they wanted to pay the Netherlands’ debt to the Indies accrued in the days of the Culture System, waved the banners of education, emigration, and irrigation for the Indies, and prosperity for the Natives. But in reality it was done in the interests of sugar. Education: to produce the literates and numerates and technicians needed for the sugar industry. Emigration: to move more Javanese off Java, providing much-needed labor in Sumatra and opening up more land for canefields in Java. Irrigation: Water for the cane plantations, for sugar.

“And that’s not all, Mr. Tollenaar,” Ter Haar went on.

“One need gave birth to another, because that is the law of life. Willing or unwilling, capital will bring Natives more and
more into contact with Western science and learning whether they want that to happen or not.

“And Mr. Tollenaar, you yourself want to study to be a doctor. Yes, there must be doctors, so that the plantations and factories aren’t disturbed with people falling ill.”

“If in the future I graduate as a doctor, it won’t be my intention—”

“Willing or unwilling, you will become a part of the cane-crusher machine—like the sieve, or a cog, or steam kettle.”

“But a graduate of the medical school becomes a government doctor.”

“It’s all the same, Mr. Minke.”

He had succeeded in making me understand.

“The government would not provide education and training if it weren’t in its own interests. Remember what happened in the Philippines. But they have no choice.”

I understood now why Jean Marais was so sickened by the Aceh War, something he experienced himself.

Another ship came into sight as it passed us from the west.

“Look at the ship, another KPM ship. The queen’s capital is behind it—just like this one. Both made by clever engineers and tradesmen. The motors made by the best inventors. But it all belongs to capital. Those without capital are no more than coolies, no more than that, no matter if they are more brilliant than all of the Roman and Greek gods together.”

Now I thought of Nyai. She too was able to employ Europeans to do her business. They came when she called. And Mr. D——. L——., that incompetent lawyer, was tossed out of the house in front of everyone because he was no longer of use. A Native throwing out a Pure! What a lot Nyai had learned from Mr. Mellema!

Ter Haar began again to discuss the Philippines, but this time choosing material he thought I would understand. Now he used a new term that was even more difficult: nationalism. He himself had great difficulty in explaining it.

Then he stopped. Like somebody who had just remembered something, he took out his pocket watch: “I have an appointment, Mr. Tollenaar. You must be bored with this endless chatter of mine.”

“Not at all,” I said, though in fact I did feel more than a little full.

“Then we’ll take this all up again another time.”

“I have never met a European like you, Mr. Ter Haar.”

“Not all Europeans are rotten.”

“You remind me of Miss Magda Peters.”

“Quite possibly. I only heard her name after she was expelled from the Indies.” He nodded, excusing himself, and walked off, disappearing down some stairs.

Back in my cabin, I opened the dictionary. But its explanation of nationalism was just as unenlightening as Ter Haar’s. Nothing in the dictionary equated this nationlism with the greatness Ter Haar attributed to the rising up of the Filipinos against Spain and America.

I had not been long scribbling down the outline of Ter Haar’s discourse when his servant arrived with two magazines:
Manual of the Indies
and
Research and Experiment
, a German magazine. It seemed this was how he wanted to continue our discussions.

Only because I had never seen it before, I opened the German magazine first. There wasn’t a single picture. My German was terrible, but there was an article about the Philippines. I felt I had no choice but to force myself to untangle its meaning. And it was more than just difficult. Knotted up and entangled by all my own recent experiences, my mind turned the article’s complexity into complete confusion. On the other hand, it was those very experiences that enabled me to understand some things. Aided by those experiences, I came up with this picture of the situation.

The educated Natives of the Philippines put their hopes in the Spanish liberals back in Spain, just as I had put my hopes in the Pure Dutch liberals back in the Netherlands. Yes, in Europe, the land where the peak of human achievement and brilliance was stored as in a museum. And the Natives had beautiful dreams: One day the Spanish would, in their generosity, make them members of the parliament in Spain and give them the full civil rights of subjects of Spain, and they would be able to feel they could do some good for their own people in their own land.

One thing I learned, a basic piece of knowledge: that a small group with this dream tried to bring it to reality, inviting others to dream the same way. They set up a newspaper. A newspaper!
Filipino Natives publishing their own newspaper! And the educated Native Dr. José Rizal was one of its leading figures.

I had never seen a picture of him. But I imagined him as someone tall and slim, with big side-whiskers, mustache, and heavy eyebrows. But that’s not so important. What was important was that the authorities in Spain cursed him and took action against him. And I was forced to think about how things were in the Indies. There had never been anything like that Filipino group here. Never. And the indications were that there never would be. Poor Trunodongso; with machete and hoe he wanted to fight them, while even Rizal had been trampled so easily.