Max Havelaar (Nahuijs)/Chapter 12
[Continuation of Stern’s composition.]
“Dear Max,” said Tine, “our dessert, is so scantywould you notyou remember Madam Geoffrin?”
“Talk to us of something else than pastry? What the deuce! I am hoarse; it is Verbrugge’s turn.”
“Yes, Mr Verbrugge! Please relieve Max,” said Madam Havelaar. Verbrugge hesitated for a moment; and began:
“Once upon a time there was a man, who stole a turkey.”
“Oh you rogue,” cried Havelaar, “that is from Padang! And how does it go on?”
“It is finished. Do you know the end of this story?”
“To be sure, I ate the turkey in company with. . . . somebody. Do you know why I was suspended at Padang?”
“People said that there was a deficit in your cash at Natal,” replied Verbrugge.
“That is not altogether untrue, but neither is it true. From many causes I had been very careless in my pecuniary responsibilities at Natal, on which many observations were made. But this happened in those days very often: matters in Northern Sumatra were, soon after the pacification of Baros, Tapos, and Singkel,[1] so confused, all was so turbulent, that fault could not be found with a young man who was more inclined to be on horseback than at the desk, or in keeping cash-books in order. It could not be expected that everything would be in such strict order as if an Amsterdam bookkeeper had been in charge with nothing else to do. The Battah-countries were in revolt, and you know, Verbrugge, how all that happens there reacts on Natal. I slept every night in my clothes, to be ready for anything: which was often necessary. Moreover there was danger,—a few days before my arrival a plot had been discovered to revolt and murder my predecessor, and danger has something attractive, above all to a man of twenty-two, and this attractiveness makes him the more incapable for office-work, or the stiff accuracy which is wanted for the proper management of money matters. Moreover, I had all sorts of nonsense in my head. . . . .”
“It is not necessary,” said Madam Havelaar in reply to a man-servant.
“What is not necessary?”
“I had told them to make something ready in the kitchen—an omeletor some such thing.”
“Ah! . . . . and that is not necessary, because I have begun my story—that is naughty, Tine. Very well, as far as I am concerned; but these gentlemen have also a voice in the matter. Verbrugge! what do you like?—your share of the omelet or the story?”
“That is a difficult choice for a polite man,” said Verbrugge.
“Nor should I like to choose,” added Duclari, “for it would be a verdict between man and wife; and”
“Entre l’écorce et le bois, il ne faut pas mettre le doigt.”
“I will help you, gentlemen, the omelet is. . .”
“Madam,” said the courteous Duclari, “the omelet will certainly be worth as much. . . .”
“As the story? Certainly, if it is worth anything; but there is a difficulty. . . .”
“I wager that there is no sugar in the house,” said Verbrugge; “pray fetch from mine whatever you want.”
“There is sugar, from Madam Slotering; no, it is not that. If the omelet were good, that would not matter. . . .”
“What then, Madam; has it fallen into the fire?”
“I wish it had. No, it cannot fall into the fire; it is. . . .”
“But, Tine,” said Havelaar, “what is it then?”
“It is imponderable, Max! as your women at Arles . . . . ought to have been. I have no omeletI have nothing more.”
“Then, for heaven’s sake, the story,” said Duclari in droll despair.
“But we have coffee,” cried Tine.
“Good! Then we shall drink coffee in the fore-gallery,[2] and let us invite Madam Slotering and the girls,” said Havelaar, whereupon the small company moved.
“I suppose that she will not come, Max; you know that she prefers not to dine with us, and in this I cannot say that she is wrong.”
“She may have heard that I tell stories,” said Havelaar, “and that must have frightened her.”
“You are wrong there, Max! This would not harm her—she doesn’t understand Dutch. No, she told me that she wished to have her own household; and I understand that very well. You know how you translated my name—‘E. H. v. W.’ ”
“Eigen Haard veel Waard.”[3]
“Just so: she is quite right; she seems, moreover, a little unsociable. Only fancy, she makes the servants drive away all strangers that come near the house. . . .”
“I beg for the story or the omelet,” said Duclari.
“So do I,” cried Verbrugge; “evasions are not accepted. We are entitled to a complete dinner, and therefore I ask for the history of the turkey.”
“I have told you that already,” said Havelaar: “I stole the turkey from General van Damme, and ate it with somebody.”
“Before something went to heaven,” said Tine playfully.
“No, that’s an evasion,” cried Duclari, “we want to know why you stole that turkey.”
“Well, because I was hungry, and that was the fault of General van Damme, who had suspended me.”
“If you don’t tell me more than that, I will bring an omelet next time myself,” complained Verbrugge.
“Believe me, it was nothing more than that. He had many turkeys, and I had none. These birds were driven before my door; I took one, and said to the man who imagined that he watched them, ‘Tell the General that I, Max Havelaar, take this turkey, because I want to eat it.’ ”
“And what about that epigram?”
“Did Verbrugge speak to you about it?”
“Yes.”
“That has nothing to do with the turkey. That was because he had suspended so many functionaries: there were at Padang seven or eight of them whom he had suspended, with more or less justice, from their functions. Many amongst them deserved it less than I. The Assistant Resident of Padang himself had been suspended, and for a reason which, as I believe, was quite a different one from that given in the decision. I must tell you, however, that I cannot assure you that I know all about it, and that I say only what was thought to be true at Padang, and what may have been true, when taking into consideration above all the peculiarities of the General.
“He married his wife to gain a wager of an anker of wine. He often went out in the evening, and went everywhere. Mr. Valkenaar on one occasion so respected his incognito, that in a small street near the girls’ orphan-house, he gave him a thrashing, as a common disturber of the public peace. Not far from that place lived Miss ———. There was a rumour that this Miss ——— had given birth to a child, that had disappeared. The Assistant Resident was about to examine into the matter, and seems to have expressed his intention at a whist-party at the General’s. The next day he received an order to go to a certain district, whose controller had been suspended from his functions because of true or supposed dishonesty, there to examine and report upon these affairs. The Assistant Resident certainly wondered that he was charged with a thing that had no connexion whatever with his district; but as he could, strictly speaking, consider this charge as an honourable distinction, and as he was on very good terms with the General, so that he had no cause to think of a snare, he acquiesced in the mission, and went toI don’t know where, to execute his orders. After some time he returns and makes a report, that was not unfavourable to the Controller. But lo! the public (that is, ‘no-body and every one’) at Padang had now discovered that the Controller had only been suspended to afford an opportunity for the removal of the Assistant Resident from the place, in order to prevent his intended investigation of the disappearance of that child, or at least to delay it till it would be more difficult to clear up the mystery. I now repeat that I do not know whether that was true, but since my better acquaintance with General van Damme, it appears to me very credible; and at Padang likewise there was nobody who did not think him capable of such a thing, considering how very bad his morals were. Most people only gave him credit for one quality, intrepidity in danger; and if I, who have seen him in danger, stuck to the opinion that he was, after all, a courageous man, that alone would induce me to withhold this story. It is true that he, in Sumatra, had caused many ‘to be sabred down,’ but that ought to have been seen more closely, to form a correct estimate of his valour; and, however strange it may appear, I believed that he owed his military glory in a great measure to the spirit of contradiction which animates us all more or less. One readily admits, it is true, that Peter or Paul is this, or that; but what he is, that one must leave him, and never can you be so sure to be praised as when you have a great, a very apparent fault. You, Verbrugge, are drunk every day. . .”
“I?” asked Verbrugge, who was a pattern of temperance.
“Yes, I make you drunk every day: You forget yourself so far that Duclari tumbles over you in the fore-gallery. That he will find unpleasant, but he will immediately remember to have seen something good in you, which he did not remark before. And when I come, and I find you thus horizontal, then he will put his hand on my arm and say, ‘Oh, believe me, he is otherwise such a good, honest, nice fellow!’ ”
“I say that of Verbrugge, even when he is vertical,” said Duclari.
“Not with the same fire and persuasion. Think of it, how often one hears people say; ‘Oh, if this man would be attentive to his business, he would be somebody, but’ and then comes the story, how that he is not attentive to business, and is, therefore, nobody. I believe that I know the reason of this. Of those that are dead we always hear good qualities which we never before perceived. This is because they are in nobody’s way. All men are more or less concurrents; we should like to place everybody else completely under us, and to have all things under us. Politeness, even self-interest, prevents the confession of this, for very soon nobody would believe us, even if we asserted something true. A subterfuge is sought for, and look how we do it. When you, Duclari, say, ‘Lieutenant Slobkous is a good soldier, to be sure he is a good soldier, I cannot sufficiently express what a good soldier Lieutenant Slobkous is, . . . . but he is no theorist. . . .’ did you not say so, Duclari?”
“I never knew or saw a Lieutenant Slobkous.”
“Very well, make one, and say that of him.”
“Well, I make him, and say it.”
“Do you know what you have now said? You have said that you, Duclari, are thoroughly acquainted with theory. I am not a bit better. Believe me, we are wrong to be so angry. with one who is very bad, for the good ones amongst us are very near the bad. Suppose we call perfection 0, and take 100 degrees to be bad, how very wrong we are then, who fluctuate between 98 and 99, to call shame on a person who stands at 101. And still I believe that many do not attain the 100th degree for want of good qualities, courage, for instance, to be quite what 1 is.”
“At what degree do I stand, Max?”
“I want a magnifying-glass for the subdivisions, Tine.”
“I object,” cried Verbrugge—“no, Madam! considering your proximity to the 0,—no, functionaries are suspended, a child is lost, a General is accused. . . .”
“But where’s the story?”
“Tine, take care that next time there is something in the house. No, Verbrugge, you will not get ‘the story’ until I have been a little time longer on my hobby-horse, on the spirit of contradiction. I said every man sees in his fellow-creature a sort of rival. One must not always blame what is but too obvious, therefore, we like to exalt a good quality excessively, to make the bad quality (which is properly the only thing we want to reveal) the more obvious, without displaying the appearance of partiality. If any one comes to me complaining that I have called him a thief, when I have also called his daughter a lovely girl, then I reply: ‘How can you be so angry since I have called your daughter a lovely girl?’ Do you see, I win both ways. Each of us is a grocer; I take away his customers, who will not buy raisins of a thief,—and at the same time, it is said that I am a good man, because I praise the daughter of a rival in business.”
“No, it is not so bad,” said Duclari; “that is going much too far.”
“You think so, because I made the comparison a little short and blunt. You must mitigate it a little. But if we must indeed acknowledge that somebody is in the possession of a quality which merits esteem, respect, or credit, then we are pleased to discover, near this quality, something which releases us in part or altogether of this tribute.
“To such a poet we should bow, but. . . . he beats his wife. You see, then, we like to use the black and blue of this wife as a motive to keep our backs straight; and in the end we are pleased that he beats the poor creature,—a practice which in any other case we should condemn. If we must acknowledge that somebody possesses qualities that allow him the honour of a statue, if we can no longer deny his claims thereto without being thought ignorant, insensible, or jealous, then we say, ‘Well: set him up!’ But already, while mounting him upon the pedestal, and while he himself still thinks that we are full of admiration of his excellence, we have already made the noose in the lasso, that is intended, on the first favourable opportunity, to pull him down. The greater the changes among the occupiers of pedestals to have a turn too, and this so true, that we from habit, and for exercise, like a sportsman who shoots crows which he does not bag, like to pull down even these statues, whose foot-piece never can be mounted by us. If Kappelman lives on sauerkraut and hard beer, he likes to say: ‘Alexander was not great. . . . he was intemperate,’ whilst there exists for Kappelman not the least chance of rivalry with Alexander in conquering the world. How this may be, I am sure that many never would have the idea that General Van Damme was so very brave, if his bravery could not have served as a vehicle for the always added: ‘but. . . his morality!’ And at the same time, that this immorality would not have been much thought of by many, who were not themselves so very invulnerable in this respect, if it had not been wanted to counterbalance his renown for prowess, which disturbed the slumbers of some. One quality he possessed in a very high degree—energy. What he intended to happen did generally happen. You see, however, I have immediately an antithesis ready—but in the choice of the means he was very free, and, as Van der Palm[4] has said, as I believe unjustly, of Napoleon, ‘Obstacles of morality never arrested him,’ and then it is certainly easier to attain your aim than when you think yourself bound by such rule.
“The Assistant Resident of Padang had made a report that sounded favourably for his suspended Controller, whose suspension got in this way a colour of injustice. The Padang scandal continued: people always were talking about the disappearance of the child; the Assistant Resident was again obliged to notice the matter; but before he could clear up the mystery, he received an order, whereby he was suspended by the Governor of Western Sumatra ‘because of negligence.’ He had, as it was said, out of friendship or pity, and while he knew better, represented the matter of the Controller in a false light. I did not read the documents concerning this affair; but I know that the Assistant Resident was not in the least connected with this Controller, which is already evident from his having been chosen to examine the matter. I know, moreover, that he was an estimable person, and the Government thought so too, which appears from the annullings of the suspension after the affair had been examined elsewhere than on the west coast of Sumatra. This Controller also was afterwards restored to his honour. It was their suspension which inspired me with the epigram that I caused to be put down on the General’s breakfast-table by somebody who was then in his service, and had been formerly in mine—
Old Jack the Suspender, the bogie of fools—
Would surely his Conscience itself have suspended,
Were ’t not that it long ago finally ended!’ ”[5]
“Such a thing was not proper,” said Duclari.
“I quite agree; . . . but I was bound to do something. Only fancy: I had no money, received nothing: that I feared every day starvation, which in reality I was very near, I had few or no relations at Padang, and, moreover, I told the General that he was responsible if I perished from hunger, and that I should accept aid of nobody. In the interior there were persons who, on hearing what had happened, invited me to come to their homes; but the General prohibited the issue of my passport thither. Neither was I allowed to go to Java. Anywhere else I could have managed it, and perhaps there too, if people had not been so afraid of the mighty General. It appeared to be his intention to let me starve. Such a state of things lasted nine months!”
“And how did you live all that time? had the General plenty of turkeys?”
“No, I did that only once. . . I made verses, and wrote comedies. . . . and so on.”
“And was that enough to buy rice at Padang?”
“No, but I did not ask that for it, . . . I would rather not say how I lived.”
Tine pressed his hand; she knew it.
“I have read a few lines which you wrote at that time on the back of a receipt,” said Verbrugge.
“I know what you mean; the lines give you an idea of my position. There was at that time a periodical paper, the ‘Copyist,’ to which I subscribed. As it was under the protection of the Government, the editor being an official under the General Secretary, the subscribers’ money went into the Exchequer. They offered me a receipt for twenty guilders. As this money had to be booked at the Governor’s office, and the receipt, if the money was not paid, had to pass these offices to be sent back to Batavia, I made use of this opportunity, and protested against my poverty on the back of the paper.
Adieu, Copiste, adieu! Trop malheureux destin.
Je meurs de faim, de froid, de soif, et de chagrin. . .
Vingt florins font pour moi deux mois de nourriture.
Si j’avais vingt florins. . . je serais mieux botté,
Mieux nourri, mieus logé, j’en ferais bonne chère.
It faut vivre avant tout, soit vie de misère.
Le crime fait la honte, et non la pauvreté.’
But when, afterwards, I went to the publishers of the ‘Copyist,’ to give them my twenty guilders, I was told that I owed nothing. It appears that the General had himself paid the money for me, to prevent this illustrated receipt being sent back to Batavia. Butwhat did he do, after the taking away of that turkey—?
“It was a theft; and after that epigram?”
“He punished me terribly. If he had accused me as being guilty of want of respect for the Governor of Western Sumatra, which could have been explained in those days with a little ingenuity, as an endeavour to undermine, to revolt, ‘or as theft on the public road,’ he would have showed himself to be a right-minded man. But no, he punished me better! He ordered the man who had to watch the turkeys to choose henceforth another road; and as to my epigram. . . that is still worse—he said nothing, and did nothing. You see that was cruel! He did not grant me the smallest claim to be a martyr. . . I did not become interesting by persecution, and was not allowed to be unhappy through excess of wit. . . it was enough to disgust me once for all with epigrams and turkeys. So little encouragement extinguishes the flame of genius to the last spark! I never did it again!”
- ↑ Three Dutch settlements on the west coast of North Sumatra. Singkel is the most northern of the Dutch possessions in that island, and is separated by a river of the same name from the still independent little states of Troomon and Analaboo. Still further north commences the Sultanat of Atchin. The whole coast from Ayer-Bangie to the northern point is known to sailors by name of Pepper Coast.
- ↑ Such a fore-gallery is open on three sides and supported by pillars. The reader will find a description of an Indian house infra, p. 231.
- ↑ Eigen Haard veel Waard = “One’s own hearth is worth much.” (There’s no place like home.) The lady’s name was Everdine Huberte van Wÿnbergen.
- ↑ Johannes Henricus Van der Palm, a celebrated Dutch author and orator, born 1763, died 1840; best known by his Bible for children and his Bible translations.
- ↑
“Het wand'lend schorsbesluit, dat schorsend ons regeert,
Jan Schorsäl, Gouverneur, de weerwolf onzer dagen,
Had zijn geweten zelf met vreugd gesuspendeerd,—
Als ’t niet voor langen tijd finaal reeds ware ontslagen.”