The Shallow Seas (19 page)

His
babu
, who had nursed him since the day he was born, was sitting next to him, ready to cater to his every whim. She adored him and was his ministering spirit. Until he began to crawl she had carried him all day long against her heart in her long
slendang
. She fed him, bathed him, dressed him, took him everywhere, ready always to lift him up against her heart. She never tired of playing with him. She was very young and a child herself at heart. She suffered Tigran and Charlotte to cuddle and play with him, sure in the knowledge he would return to her. At night, she crooned him to sleep and slept on a mat by his bed.

Charlotte had learned first of Alexander the Great from a book in her grandfather's library: a French translation of an ancient Latin text. Now here was the legend of Alexander, the Persian Iskandar, carried forward in a book in the library at the Harmonie Club. It was John Leyden's translation of the
Malay Annals
, which Raffles had published in honour of his friend.

It happened on a time that Raja Iskandar of Makedonia wished to see the rising of the sun and with this view he reached the confines of the land of Hind
.

As she read these opening lines she was caught up. The first Mohammedan sultanate in the Malay world had been founded at Malacca by Parameswara, a Hindu prince who claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great through sons brought forth from this land of Hind. When he married a princess of the Arab faith, he converted and took the title Sultan Iskandar Shah, for Iskandar was the Arabic name for Alexander. Charlotte recalled the holy tomb on Bukit Larangan in Singapore, where some said he was supposed to be buried. She was immediately enchanted. The first kiss with Zhen had been in the old spice orchard on that hill. They had met there so many times. This mingling of Eastern and Western legend was perfect. Everything seemed to lead to this name for this child.

The approaching
slametan
had affected Takouhi in unsuspected ways. She began to talk of visiting the grave of her own mother, the Javanese princess first mentioned when Charlotte had met Takouhi in Singapore.

“When she die, family take her back to Surakarta, bury her near old palace.”

Suddenly Takouhi took Charlotte's hand. “Let's visit my Jawa family in Kraton, go to mother's grave.”

Charlotte gathered Zan's wet little body into a cotton cloth on her knee, handing him pieces of sticky rice cakes, smiling as he squished them between his fingers. A visit to the royal palaces of Surakarta! She had read about the Javanese royal courts both in Raffles's enormous tome on Java and Crawfurd's entertaining book on the archipelago. She went often, with or without Nathanial, to the library in the Harmonie Club. The keeper of the books had grown used to her. She enjoyed spending time poring over these books in these elegant rooms as the rain pounded on the roof. It reminded her of childhood hours spent reading in her grandfather's library in Aberdeen.

She squeezed Takouhi's hand. A trip to the princely eastern provinces. Yes, it would be wonderful!

13

Meda's one-thousand-day
slametan
would take place at Brieswijk.

They travelled away from the plantation high on the hills, down the steep winding road to the Grote Postweg, the Great Post Road, which swept across Java linking Anyer in the west to Panarukan in the east. Here, Daendels's great highway passed through the Puncak Pass eastwards through the high Priangan plateau and on, and westwards down to Buitenzorg and the capital. Rumour had it that thousands had died to construct it, from disease and forced labour; that Daendels had ordered the Javanese regents to supply labour and keep to a tight schedule. Failure to do so resulted in the death of the labourers and the regents; their heads hung on trees along the wayside as a constant reminder to others. Tigran told Charlotte he was not sure how many had died. His father and the old men talked of the benefits it had brought, not the costs. Corvée labour was as traditional as the
wayang
in the Javanese countryside. It had been built in one year. A thousand miles in one year, through swamp, jungle and mountains, Tigran said. In his
History of Java
, Raffles claimed 10,000 had died, but he did not care much for Daendels, Tigran added. He shrugged and left Charlotte to her thoughts.

They were glad of the highway, though, as they made their way to the palace of the Governor-General at Buitenzorg. One of the glories of this journey was the sight of hillsides covered with rasamala, the liquid-amber tree, rising straight as a pole to 130 feet.

The colourful majesty of the jungle was impossible to enjoy from the ground. Only above it, as if offered exclusively to the exalted eyes of gods and angels, could one gaze on the blossoming beauty of the vast canopy of trees. Tigran stopped the coach to look down from their vantage point. Below them spread, in swathes of brilliant scarlet and purple, the tubular flower clusters of the rasamala. Here and there, climbing plants of white and fiery orange had found their way to the tops of the trees, and the combination of blossoms spreading from hillside to hillside was of a staggering beauty.

The staging posts offered refreshments and a change of horses. Stalls sold fried
ikan mas
, fried banana, fruits and vegetables. The scenery was always spectacular. The volcanic mountains of Gede, Salak and Pangrango surrounded the lower foothills, pierced with small, rushing waterfalls and rock-strewn rivulets. As the road wound down the mountainside, the tea plants stopped abruptly and gave way to jungly forest and amphitheatres of terraced fields of yellowing rice.

It enchanted the senses, and no matter how often she made this journey, it was always the same.

The Manouks were guests for several days of Pieter and Wilhelmina Merkus.

This was not the first time Charlotte had seen the Buitenzorg Palace, but the first time they had stayed as guests.

Much of it had been destroyed in the earthquake which followed the eruption of Salak Mountain eight years before. The main house had been remodelled from the original grand three-storey to a single story Palladian-style building. There was still much to be completed in the outer buildings, and the grounds remained to be restored to their former brilliance. They liked to come, Wilhelmina said, for the children, and she enjoyed the cooler weather.

Charlotte was standing with Wilhelmina, admiring a painting of the old palace hung in the dining room. The original, Wilhelmina was telling her, had been a private estate purchased by Baron von Imhoff, the Governor-General, in 1744, as a place of cool repose. Buitenzorg meant “
sans souci
”, the place without a care. Since then it had always served as the official country retreat. Daendels had spent a lot of time here, and, of course, Raffles had lived here almost all the time with Olivia during the British interregnum.

Charlotte liked the old Governor-General and his wife, with whom she and Tigran enjoyed a pleasant, easy relationship. They were the epitome of Dutch Indies life. Merkus had arrived in Batavia as an ambitious young man from Holland. He had passed through the ranks of government and was appointed Governor of the Mollucas at Amboyna, the capital of the Spice Islands. He fought the British, who marauded constantly in the region, and brought West Papua into the power of the Dutch.

Wilhelmina was a Cranssen, a daughter of one of the most illustrious families of the Dutch Indies. Her father had been a chief adviser to Raffles and her mother, a Balinese, he had legitimised as a Nessnarc, reversing the name. The Cranssens' pedigree stretched back into the VOC times, and they were related by marriage to every one of the great families of that era. Wilhemina's grandmother, Catharina, incredibly old, lived at Buitenzorg. Her grandfather, Abraham Couperus, had been the unfortunate Dutch Governor of Malacca, humiliated and imprisoned when it passed to the British in 1795.

The influence of these Compagnie dynasties had faded with the dissolution of the VOC and the arrival of Herman Daendels. Daendels was a man of the Enlightenment, of revolutionary Europe, and he came determined to make a clean sweep of Javanese feudalism. He abolished hereditary rights and put the princes under his command to build the Great Post Road against an expected British invasion. He completely dismantled the old town of Batavia, ordering the destruction of the ancient fort and the use of its stones to build his new palace at Koningsplein, away from the disease of the old port. He laid out the new town, with its wide streets and vast squares. Charlotte began to understand the broken-down appearance of the lower town. To raise revenue, he took the drastic step of selling public land to private ownership, particularly to rich Chinese to whom the government was already indebted. Three provinces in the far east of Java were swallowed up in these sales.

The lands around Batavia, the
ommelanden
, and in the Preanger, the coffee growing regions, were further sold off under Raffles. Tigran's father, Gevork, made sure he profited from this unforeseen and permanent sale of government lands, and the estates for both the tea and coffee plantations had been purchased during the government of these two men. For this sale of government lands and his perceived profit from it, Raffles was subsequently accused of corruption and had returned to England under a cloud.

Wilhelmina was always most interesting on the recent history of Java. She was well-read and politically clever, a perfect companion to her husband in his high office. From her own family, she had learned a great deal. As well as the most capable Javanese linguists, Raffles had many former Dutch administrators, sympathetic to English ideas, to help him in governing Java. Two of the most important were Herman Muntinghe and Willem Cranssen, Wilhelmina's father, both of whom were able, liberal-minded and spoke excellent English.

“The English and the Dutch, no matter their personal feelings, had to appear united, for the Javanese Regents were constantly on the lookout for a chance of rebellion. However, my father and Muntinghe were close to Raffles, and they admired each other so it was an easy relationship,” Wilhelmina said.

Tigran, the Governor-General and the other men retired to the smoking room. Now the ladies were seated in the verandah, where the air was cool. The temperature change from the high hills to here was considerable. The evenings were not cold but merely pleasantly cool. Takouhi had gone to bed, but Charlotte was curious and enjoying, as always, the company of Wilhelmina.

Pieter Merkus was remarkable for having married a divorced woman. This was common knowledge in Batavia. Wilhelmina was unconcerned. Her former husband had been an unpleasant man, stupidly so, since she took away from him a considerable inheritance and influence. Pieter, she had been happy to tell Charlotte, was a man she could respect and love. The divorce had had little effect on his promotion, and she was delighted to acknowledge the fact that she was the first, and perhaps only, divorced woman to be the wife of a Governor-General of the Indies. She took care, with great affection, of his daughter Henrietta born to him by an Ambonese slave woman.

“Raffles governed Java almost entirely from the palace at Buitenzorg. Olivia Raffles died here, you know, and the memorial he built for her is in the grounds of the palace, just beyond the lake. The botanical gardens adjoin the grounds. Would you care to visit it tomorrow and take a turn with the children?”

Charlotte quickly agreed. She very much wanted to learn more.

As the evening broke up, Tigran came out onto the verandah. He put his arms around her, and they gazed out at the jagged moonlit outline of Mount Salak. It looked so peaceful, yet they both knew it contained a heart of fire.

Charlotte leaned against him. “What will you do tomorrow? I am visiting the gardens with Wilhelmina and the children. Takouhi may come. Will you hunt?”

“I'll come with you. Old Teysmann is a good friend. We shall make a picnic on the lakeside, and tomorrow night there is a
wayang
performance. Do you remember the
wayang
play in Brieswijk the night before our marriage?”

The wedding had seemed a dream, but now, in his arms and content, Charlotte remembered that night.

Tigran had asked the puppet master to put on a play in honour of his forthcoming marriage. They had chosen the
Arjunawiwaha
, the Story of Arjuna's Marriage. Everyone understood the conceit. On this occasion, several villainous characters had been added from the pantheon of Dutch VOC Governors, to further merriment.
Wayang
performances could last all night, but Tigran had asked that this one be limited to two hours. In the long, low light of the late afternoon, hundreds of villagers from the
kampongs
made their way to the lawns of the house. Food and drink was laid out on the riverside, which the villagers devoured noisily, chattering, their babes in arms and children running to and fro.

The puppet master was the most famous
dalen
in Batavia. The
gamelan
belonged to the estate and was endowed with the finest musicians Tigran had been able to find. As the last streaks of crimson left the sky and the dusk crept over the grounds, the villagers had gathered. The first star appeared, tremulous as a dewdrop in the heavens, and the groups ceased their chatter.

The
dalen
rose, like a high priest of the shadow world, and spread on a bamboo altar the sacrificial gifts—fruit, yellow rice and flowers—lighting the incense to honour the gods and to keep off evil spirits. As the perfumed smoke rose on the breeze, the
gamelan
began, in a thunderous burst, and the dancers appeared. The village children shrank into their parents' arms at this sound, eyes glued to the stage. Like willowy saplings, the dancers turned and swayed, miming the ballad, the prologue to the play, which a companion was singing. The sound of the
gamelan
was pure and mysterious, like moonlight on flowing water, constantly shifting but always the same. When the dancers disappeared, the shadow play began.