Max Havelaar (Siebenhaar)/Chapter 20
It was evening. Tine sat reading in the inner colonnade, and Havelaar was designing an embroidery-pattern. Little Max was conjuring a block-picture together, and got into a pet because he could not find “the red body of that woman.”
“Do you think it would be all right like this, Tine?” asked Havelaar. “Look, I have made this palm-tree a trifle longer . . . this is exactly Hogarth’s ‘line of beauty,’ don’t you think?”
“Yes, Max, but the lace-holes are too close together.”
“Oh? And then those other borders? Max, just let me see your pants! Halloa! are you wearing that border? Why, Tine, I still remember where you worked that!”
“I don’t! Where was it?”
“At The Hague, when Max was ill, and we had been so frightened by the Doctor saying that he had such an unusual head-formation, and that we should have to take the greatest care to prevent undue pressure on the brain. It was exactly at that time that you were embroidering that border.”
Tine got up and kissed the boy.
“I have got her stomach, I have got her stomach!” the child exclaimed hilariously, and the red woman was complete.
“Who can hear them beating the tomtom?”[1] asked his mother.
“I,” said little Max.
“And what does it mean? ”
“Bedtime! But . . . I haven’t had anything to eat yet.”
“You shall eat first, of course.”
And she got up, and gave him his simple meal, which she appeared to get out of a well-closed cupboard in her room, for the clicking of several locks was heard.
“What are you giving him?” asked Havelaar.
“Oh, make your mind easy. Max: it’s a biscuit out of a tin from Batavia! And the sugar also has always been under lock and key.”
Havelaar’s thoughts returned to the point where they had been interrupted.
“Do you know,” he continued, “that we haven’t yet paid the Doctor’s bill? . . . Oh, it is very hard!”
“My dear Max, we are living so economically here, we shall soon be able to pay everything! Besides, you’ll no doubt soon be made a Resident, and then everything will be settled in a very short time.”
“That’s exactly the thing that makes me sad,” said Havelaar. “I should be so very sorry to leave Lebak . . . I’ll explain. Don’t you think we loved our Max even more after his illness? Well, it’s just in the same way that I shall love this poor place Lebak when the cancer has been cured from which it has suffered so many years. The thought of promotion dismays me, for I can’t be spared here, Tine! And yet, on the other hand, when I think of our debts . . .”
“It will all come right, Max! Even if now you had to go away from here, you could help Lebak later, when you are Governor-General.”
At this there showed savage streaks in Havelaar’s embroidery-pattern! There was anger in that florescence, those lace-holes became angular, pointed, they bit each other . . .
Tine saw that she had said something amiss.
“Darling Max . . .” she began gently.
“Curse it! Do you want to let those poor wretches hunger so long? Can you live on sand?”
“Darling Max!”
But he jumped up. There was no more drawing that evening. He strode up and down angrily in the inner colonnade, and at last he said in a tone that to any stranger would have sounded rough and harsh, but was very differently understood by Tine:
“Damn this laxness, this shameful laxness! Here I have sat down waiting for justice a whole month, and meanwhile those poor people suffer terribly. The Regent seems to be confident that no one dares tackle him! Look . . .”
He went into his office, and returned with a letter in his hand, a letter which lies before me, reader!
“Look! in this letter he has the audacity to make proposals to me as to the kind of labour he will have performed by the people whom he has called up unlawfully. Isn’t this carrying impudence too far? And do you know who those people are? They are women with little children, babies, pregnant women who have been driven from Parang Koodyang to the head-centre in order to labour for him! There are no more men! And they have nothing to eat, and they sleep in the road, and eat sand! Can you eat sand? Must they eat sand until I am Governor-General? Curse it!”
Tine knew very well with whom Max was in reality angry, when he spoke like this to her, whom he loved so deeply.
“And,” continued Havelaar, “for all this the responsibility falls on me! If at this very moment some of these poor creatures are wandering about outside there . . . if they see the gleam of our lamp, they will say: ‘There dwells the wretch who was to protect us! There he sits peacefully, with wife and child, and designs embroidery-patterns, and we lie here in the road with our children, starving like dogs of the forest!’ Yes, I hear it, I hear it, this cry for vengeance upon my head! Here, Max, here!”
And he kissed his child with a wildness that frightened the little one.
“My child, when they say to you that I am a wretch who had not the courage to do justice . . . that so many mothers died through my fault . . . when they say to you that your father’s neglect of duty stole the blessing from your head. O, Max, O, Max, bear witness to what I suffered!”
And he burst into tears, which Tine kissed away. She then took little Max to his bed, his mat of straw, and when she returned she found Havelaar in conversation with Verbrugge and Duclari, who had just come in. The conversation ran on the expected decision of the Government.
“I can quite well understand that the Resident is in a difficult predicament,” said Duclari. “He cannot advise the Government to carry out your proposals, for then too much would come to light. I have been in Bantam a long time, and know a good deal about it, more even than you, Mr. Havelaar! I was already in this neighbourhood when I was a subaltern, and in that position one comes to know things that the native dares not say to the officials. But if after a public inquiry all this should come to light, the Governor-General would call upon the Resident for an explanation, and ask him how it is that in two years he did not discover what was at once obvious to you. He must therefore seek to prevent such inquiry. . . .”
“I have realized this,” answered Havelaar, “and, awakened by his effort to induce the Adhipatti to make allegations against me, which seems to indicate that he will try to side-track the question, by, for instance, accusing me of . . . I don’t know what, I have covered myself by sending copies direct to the Government. One of them contains the request to be called upon for an explanation, in case, perhaps, a pretence should be made that I had done something wrong. Now if the Resident attacks me, then in common justice no decision can be arrived at without first hearing me. One owes this even to a criminal, and as I have done nothing wrong . . .”
“There comes the post!” exclaimed Verbrugge.
Yes, it was the post! The post, which brought the following letter from the Governor-General to the ex-Assistant-Resident of Lebak, Havelaar.
“Ex. Co.
“No. 54
“The manner in which you have proceeded since the discovery or supposition of malpractices on the part of the Chiefs of the Division of Lebak, and the attitude taken up by you on that occasion towards your superior officer, the Resident of Bantam, have incurred my greatest dissatisfaction.
“In your actions, above referred to, there has been an absence equally of moderate deliberation, tact, and prudence, which are so urgently requisite in an officer clothed [sic] with the execution of authority in the interior, as of a proper conception of subordination to your immediate superior.
“It was only a few days after you had entered upon your new duties that you found good, without previous consultation of [sic] the Resident, to make the Chief of the Native Government of Lebak an object of incriminating inquiries.
“In those inquires you found cause without even substantiating your charges against that Chief by facts, and far less by proofs, to recommend measures which tended to subject a Native Officer of the stamp of the Regent of Lebak, a sixty-year-old but still zealous servant of his Country, related to neighbouring important Regent-families, and about whom there have always been received favourable reports, to a treatment which would have entirely ruined him from a moral point of view.
“Moreover, when the Resident showed himself indisposed to give immediate effect to your proposals, you refused to comply with the reasonable demand of your Chief to make a complete disclosure of the things that were known to you relative to the actions of the Native administration at Lebak.
“Such actions deserve complete disapprobation, and would readily give cause to suspect unfitness for the occupation of a position with the Internal Administration.
“I am therefore compelled to relieve you of the further fulfilment of your duties as Assistant-Resident of Lebak.
“In view, however, of former favourable reports received about you, I have not wished to find a reason in what has occurred to deprive you of the prospect of another appointment with the Internal Administration. I have, therefore, provisionally charged you with the performance of the function of Assistant-Resident at Ngawi.
“On your future actions in that position it will wholly depend whether it will be possible for you to remain employed with the Internal Administration.”
And below this was written the name of the man on whose “zeal, ability, and loyalty” the King said he was able to rely, when signing his appointment as Governor-General of Netherlands India.
“We are leaving here, dearest Tine,” said Havelaar resignedly, and he handed the missive from Cabinet to Verbrugge, who read the document together with Duclari.
Verbrugge had tears in his eyes, but said nothing. Duclari, a particularly refined man, burst out in a savage oath:
“God damn! I have seen scoundrels and thieves in the Government here . . . they have left with full honours, and to You a letter like this is written!”
“It is nothing,” said Havelaar; “the Governor-General is an honest man: he must have been deceived . . . although he could have guarded against this deceit by hearing me first. He has been caught in the web of Buitenzorg officialdom. We know that kind of thing! But I will go to him and show him how matters stand here. He will do justice, I am certain!”
“But if you go to Ngawi . . .”
“Exactly, I know! At Ngawi the Regent is related to the Court of Djokja. I know Ngawi, for I was two years at Baglen, which is in the vicinity. I should be compelled at Ngawi to do exactly the same thing as here: that would be useless travelling to and fro. Besides, it is impossible for me to serve on probation, as though I had misconducted myself! And finally, I see that, in order to put a stop to all this intriguing, I must cease to be an official. As an official I find between myself and the Government too many persons who are interested in denying the misery of the population. There are, in addition, still further reasons that prevent me from going to Ngawi. The place was not vacant . . . it has been purposely made vacant for me: look!”
And he showed in the Java Gazette, received by the same mail, the fact that in the one Government Order in Council the Administration of Ngawi was entrusted to him, and the Assistant-Resident of that province was transferred to another division that was vacant.
“Do you know why it is exactly Ngawi where they want me to go, and not the division that was vacant? I’ll tell you! The Resident of Madioon, to which Ngawi belongs, is the brother-in-law of the former Resident of Bantam. I have mentioned that the Regent formerly had such bad examples . . .”
“Ah!” exclaimed Verbrugge and Duclari at the same time. They understood why Havelaar was particularly transferred to Ngawi on probation, to see whether he would improve!
“And there is still another reason why I cannot go there,” he said. “The present Governor-General will soon retire. . . . I know his successor, and I know that nothing may be expected of him. Therefore in order to do anything for these poor people in time, I must see the present Governor-General before his departure, and if now I were to go to Ngawi, that would be impossible. Tine, listen!”
“Dear Max?”
“You have plenty of courage, haven’t you?”
“Max, you know that I have courage . . . when I am with you!”
“Very well!”
He rose and wrote the following request, in my opinion an example of eloquence:
“To the Governor-General of Netherlands India.
“I have had the honour to receive Your Excellency’s Cabinet-missive of the 23rd instant, No. 54.
“I find myself compelled, in answer to that document, to ask your Excellency to give me my honourable discharge from the service of the State.
Not so long a time was required at Buitenzorg to give the discharge applied for as appeared to have been necessary for the decision as to how one might divert Havelaar’s accusation.
“Thank God!” exclaimed Tine, “that at last you may be yourself!”
Havelaar received no instructions provisionally to hand over the administration of his division to Verbrugge, and thought therefore that he should await his successor. That officer was a long time in arriving, as he had to come from an entirely different part of Java. After waiting nearly three weeks, the ex-Assistant-Resident of Lebak, who, however, had all the time still functioned as though in office, wrote the following letter to Controller Verbrugge:
“No. 153.
“To the Controller of Lebak.
“You are aware that by Government-decree of the 4th instant, No. 4, I have, at my own request, been honourably discharged from the service of the State.
“I might have been at once justified, on receipt of that decision, in giving up my duties as Assistant-Resident, as it appears an anomaly to fulfil a function without being an official.
“I did not, however, receive any instructions to surrender my charge, and, partly from a realization of the obligation not to leave my post without having been duly relieved, partly from causes of subordinate importance, I awaited the arrival of my successor, as I imagined that this officer would be here soon—at least during this month.
“I have just learnt from you that my substitute cannot be expected quite so soon—you heard this, I believe, at Serang—and also that the Resident is astonished that, in the very peculiar position in which I find myself, I have not yet asked to be allowed to place the administration in your hands.
“Nothing could please me more than this news. For I need not assure you that I, who have declared that I could not serve otherwise than as I did here . . . I, who for this manner of serving have been punished with censure and a ruinous and dishonouring transfer . . . also with the command to betray the poor people who trusted in my loyalty—with the choice therefore between dishonour and destitution: that after all this I had to test with pains and care every case that presented itself, having constant regard to my duty, and that even the simplest matter was trying to me, placed as I was between my conscience and the principles of the Government to which I owed loyalty as long as I was not relieved of my office.
“My difficulty became especially apparent whenever I had to give an answer to a complainant.
“For at one time I had promised not to give up anyone to the rancour of his Chiefs!—At one time I had—with considerable imprudence!—pledged my word for the justice of the Government.
“The poor people could not know that this promise and this pledge had been disavowed, and that I stood alone, poor and powerless, with my desire for justice and humanity.
“And all the time the complaints continued!
“It was intensely painful, after the receipt of Cabinet’s missive of 23rd March, to sit there as a supposed haven of refuge, and yet to be an impotent protector.
“It was heartrending to listen to the complaints about ill-treatment, extortion, poverty, starvation . . . when now even I myself was going to face, with wife and child, both hunger and poverty.
“And yet even then I was not at liberty to betray the Government. I was not at liberty to say to those poor people: ‘Go and suffer still, for the Administration wishes you to be exploited!’ I was not at liberty to confess my impotence, linked as I was to the disgrace and unscrupulousness of the advisers of the Governor-General.
“This is what I answered:
“ ‘I cannot help you immediately! But I shall go to Batavia, and I shall speak to the Great Lord about your misery. He is just, and he will stand by you. For the present go home peacefully . . . do not resist . . . do not yet leave the place . . . wait patiently: I think, I . . . hope that justice will be done!’
“So I thought, ashamed of the breach of my pledge of assistance, that I might make my ideas harmonize with my duty towards the Administration, as it still pays me this month, and I should have continued this until the arrival of my successor, if an unusual occurrence to-day had not necessitated my putting a stop to this equivocal relation.
“Seven persons had complained. I gave them the above reply. They returned to their homes. On the way they met their village-chief. He must have forbidden them to leave their kampong again, and—as it has been reported to me—taken their clothes away from them to compel them to stay at home. One of them escaped, came to me again, and declared that he durst not return to his village.
“I absolutely do not know what I am to say to that man!
“I cannot protect him . . . I may not confess my impotence to him . . . I will not prosecute the village-chief who has been accused of the above action, as this would have the appearance that I had raked up this case pour le besoin de ma cause: I know no longer what to do. . . .
“I charge you, pending further approval of the Resident of Bantam, from to-morrow with the administration of the Division of Lebak.
“The Assistant-Resident of Lebak,
“Max Havelaar.”
After this Havelaar left Rangkas-Betoong with his wife and child. He declined any escort. Duclari and Verbrugge were deeply moved when bidding them farewell. Even Havelaar was touched when at the first relay he saw a numerous crowd of people who had stolen away from Rangkas-Betoong to salute him for the last time.
At Serang the family alighted at Mr. Slimering’s residence, and were received with the accustomed Indian hospitality.
That night there were many visitors at the Resident’s house. They said as significantly as possible that they had come to meet Havelaar, and Max received many an eloquent handshake. . . .
But he had to go to Batavia to see the Governor-General. . . .
On his arrival there, he applied for an audience. This was denied him, as His Excellency was suffering from a whitlow on his foot.
Havelaar waited until that whitlow was better. Then he again applied for an audience.
His Excellency was so busy that he had even been compelled to refuse an audience to the Director-General of Finance, and consequently he could not receive Havelaar either.
Havelaar waited until His Excellency should have struggled through all his pressure of work. Meanwhile he felt something like jealousy of the persons who assisted His Excellency in his labours. For he loved to work much and rapidly, and as a rule those “pressures” would melt away under his hand. But of this, of course, there could now be no question. Havelaar’s labour was harder than labour: he waited!
He waited. At last he sent in another request for an audience. He was answered that His Excellency could not receive him because he was entirely occupied with the preparations for his approaching departure.
Max recommended himself to the favourable consideration of His Excellency for half an hour’s audience, as soon as there should be a small space of time between two “pressures.”
At last he learnt that His Excellency was to depart next day! This was a thunderbolt to him.
Still ever he held on with convulsive desperation to the belief that the retiring Governor-General was an honest man, and . . . had been deceived. A quarter of an hour would have been sufficient to prove the justice of his cause, and it seemed that this quarter of an hour was going to be refused him.
I find among Havelaar’s papers the draft of a letter he seems to have written the retiring Governor-General the last night before that high official’s departure for the mother-country. In the margin there is a pencil note: “not exact,” from which I conclude that in copying out the letter he must have altered some phrases. I draw attention to this, so that, from an absence of literal agreement of this document with the letter, a doubt may not arise of the authenticity of the other official papers of which I stated the contents, all of which are signed by a strange hand as certified copies. Perhaps the man to whom this letter was addressed may wish to publish the entirely exact text. One might then see by comparison to what extent Havelaar had deviated from his draft. In essence correct, the context was as follows:
“Excellency! My request made by official application of the 28th February, for an audience in connection with the affairs of Lebak, has been without result.
“Your Excellency has also not been pleased to comply with my repeated subsequent requests for an audience.
“Your Excellency therefore has placed an official who was favourably known to the Government (these are Your Excellency’s own words!), one who for seventeen years served the State in these colonies, one who not only had done no wrong, but who had even with unprecedented self-denial aimed at doing right and was ready to stake everything for honour and duty . . . such an one Your Excellency has placed below criminals. For to criminals one gives at least a hearing.
“That Your Excellency has been misled with regard to me, is a thing I can understand. But I do not understand why Your Excellency should have refused to take the opportunity of escaping from such misguidance.
“To-morrow Your Excellency departs from here, and I may not let you leave without once more having said that I have done my duty, entirely my duty, with discretion, with restraint, with humaneness, with gentleness and with courage.
“The reasons on which the disapprobation expressed in Your Excellency’s Cabinet-massive of 23rd March is based are entirely fictitious and mendacious.
“This I can prove, and I should already have done so if Your Excellency had been pleased to grant me half an hour’s audience. If Your Excellency had been able to spare one half hour to do justice!
“This has not been the case. A respectable family has thereby been reduced to poverty. . . .
“About this, however, I do not complain.
“But Your Excellency has sanctioned: the system of abuse of authority, of theft and murder, under which the poor Javanese are crushed, and it is this of which I complain.
“This cries to heaven!
“There is blood on the money saved from your Indian salary thus received, Excellency!
“Once more I ask for a moment’s audience, be it this night or be it early to-morrow morning! And still again I do not ask this for myself, but for the cause I advocate, the cause of justice and humanity, which is at the same time the cause of a well-considered policy.
“If Your Excellency’s conscience is at ease about leaving here without hearing me, mine will be clear through the conviction that I have done everything possible to prevent the sad and bloody events that will soon be the consequence of the self-willed ignorance in which the Government is left concerning the things that happen among the population.
Havelaar waited that evening. He waited the whole night.
He had hoped that perhaps anger at the tone of his letter would bring about what he had vainly tried to attain by gentleness and patience. His hope was in vain. The Governor-General departed without having heard Havelaar. Another Excellency had retired to rest in the motherland!
Havelaar wandered about, poor and forsaken. He sought . . .
Enough, estimable Stern! I, Multatuli, take up the pen. You are not called upon to write Havelaar’s life-history. I have called you into being . . . I made you come from Hamburg . . . I taught you to write fairly good Dutch, in a very short time . . . I made you kiss Louise Rosemeyer, who is “in” sugar . . . it is enough, Stern, you can go!
“That Shawlman and his wife . . .”
Halt! miserable product of sordid covetousness and blasphemous hypocrisy! I created you . . . you grew under my pen to a monster . . . I loathe my own creation: choke in coffee and vanish!
Yes, I, Multatuli, “who have borne much,” take up the pen. I make no apology for the form of my book. That form appeared to me suitable for the attainment of my object.
That object is twofold:
In the first place I wished to give existence to a thing that may be kept as a sacred heirloom by little Max and his sister, when their parents shall have perished from want.
I wished to give those children a patent of nobility from my own hand.
And in the second place: I will be read.
Yes, I will be read! I will be read by statesmen who are obliged to watch the signs of the time . . . by literati who “also just want to have a look” at the book of which everyone says such unpleasant things . . . by traders who are interested in coffee-sales . . . by ladies’ maids who will hire me for a couple of pence . . . by Governor-Generals in peaceful retirement . . . by Ministers in occupation . . . by the lackeys of these “Excellencies” . . . by praying parsons who will say more majorum that I attack the Almighty God, where I only rise against the little deity that they made after their own image . . . by thousands and ten thousands of samples of the race of Drystubble, who—continuing to promote their little businesses in the well-known manner—will be the loudest to shriek with others about the “prettiness” of my writings . . . by the members of the Houses of Representatives, who have to know what is going on in the great Empire beyond the sea, which belongs to the Realm of the Netherlands.
Yes, I shall be read!
When this object is attained, I shall be satisfied. For it was not my desire to write well . . . I wanted to write in such a way as to be heard. And like one who cries: “Stop thief!” and who troubles little about the style of his improvised address to the public, so also I am quite indifferent as to the manner in which people will consider that I have yelled my “Stop thief!”
“The book is a patchwork . . . there is no gradual development in it . . . striving after effect . . . the style is bad . . . the writer is inexperienced . . . no talent . . . no method . . .”
Right, right, all right! But . . . the Javanese are maltreated!
For: disproof of the main tendency of my work is impossible!
For the remainder, the louder the disapproval of my book, the better I shall like it, for so much the greater will be the chance of being heard. And that is what I wish!
But you, whom I disturb in your “pressures” of occupations, or in your peaceful “retirement,” you Ministers and Governor-Generals, do not depend too greatly on the inexperience of my pen. It might gain practice, and with a little exertion it might perhaps attain to an efficiency which in the end would cause the truth to be believed even by the People! Then I should ask that People for a place in its Representation, were it only for the purpose of protesting against certificates of integrity that Indian Specialists mutually present to each other, perhaps to suggest the extraordinary idea that they themselves attach value to that quality . . .
In order to protest against the endless expeditions and acts of heroism against poor miserable creatures who have first been forced to rebellion by maltreatment.
In order to protest against the shameful cowardice of circulars that besmirch the honour of the Nation by invoking public charity for the victims of chronic piracy.
It is true, those rebels were starved skeletons, and those pirates are able-bodied men!
And if that place were refused me . . . if people persisted in not believing me . . .
Then I should translate my book into the few languages that I know and into the many languages that I can still learn, so that I might ask from Europe what I had in vain sought in the Netherlands.
And in all the Capitals songs would be sung with refrains like this: a pirate state lies on the sea, between the Scheldt and Eastern Friesland!
And if even this did not avail?
Then I should translate my book into Malay, Javanese, Soondah, Alfoor, Booghinese, Battah . . .
And I should hurl klewang-whetting warsongs into the hearts of the poor martyrs to whom I have promised help, I, Multatuli.
Deliverance and help, by legal means if possible . . . by lawful means of force if necessary.
And this would react most disadvantageously on the Coffee-sales of the Dutch Trading Company.
For I am no fly-rescuing poet, no gentle-hearted dreamer, as was down-trodden Havelaar, who did his duty with the courage of a lion, and who starves with the patience of a marmot in winter.
This book is an introduction . . .
I shall increase in power and keenness of weapons, in proportion as it shall be needed . . .
God grant that it may not be needed!
No! it will not be needed! For to You I dedicate my book, William the Third, King, Grand Duke, Prince . . . more than Prince, Grand Duke and King . . . Emperor of the glorious realm of Insulind, that winds yonder round the equator like a girdle of emerald . . .
From You I dare ask with confidence whether it is your imperial will:
That Havelaar is splashed with the mud of Slimerings and Drystubbles.
And that yonder Your more than thirty million subjects are maltreated and exploited in YOUR name!
- ↑ The hour-block.