House of Glass by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
I saw Surati kneel and pay obeisance to Minke. But he shook his head and told her to stand up; he caressed the cheeks of Surati’s littlest, then started to talk with the older boy. It was obvious they were enjoying their conversation. I stood close to them. To avoid suspicion that I was eavesdropping, I looked the other way across the road; then I moved away closer to the taxi. When Minke came back to the taxi, his eyes were shining brightly. The car started up and Minke’s eyes still shone.
“What a fantastic woman!” he hissed. “I have met so many fantastic women in my life.”
“Yes, an amazing woman. Her name was Surati, yes?”
“So you know her story?”
“Kommer wrote a little book about her. Do you know Kommer?” I pretended I was ignorant.
“An extraordinary Indo journalist.”
“Yes, a man who loved the Natives and the Malay language,” I said. “It’s a pity he died just recently.”
“Ha? He always looked healthy and active.”
“An accident, Meneer. He was crushed by one of his own snakes, a giant python.”
He muttered something, in Arabic perhaps, and I didn’t understand.
“I would like to see his grave.”
“I don’t think that is necessary, Meneer, and we don’t know where it is either. I think not. You can do that later, after you’ve been to Betawi.”
“Where do we go now?” he asked, somewhat amicably.
“Wonokromo. Don’t you think you should see how that village has grown into a town with many impressive buildings?”
He didn’t answer. Perhaps he had submerged again into his past.
I still had doubts as to whether what he had written in This Earth of Mankind was true or not. So I watched his countenance closely. Was it true that he had once known somebody called Annelies Mellema? Was it true that he had married her? Was it true that he had been on very close terms with Nyai Ontosoroh? Were these writings nothing more than his fantasies? Or did he know about them from other people?
He kept his gaze on the left-hand side of the road. The taxi traveled slowly. It was as if he were counting every house that we passed.
“If you had been to Surabaya before, you would notice the changes. There are so many houses along this road now. The rice paddies and other fields are being pushed farther and farther back. Who knows what it will be like in another ten years?”
He took no notice of what I was saying. He didn’t pay any attention either to the crowds of people heading for Surabaya.
“That used to be a brothel,” I explained. “Its old owner died in Kalisosok jail.”
He pretended not to hear. But I kept on anyway, as if I were leading him back into his past, so full of beauty as well as bitterness.
“That must be the house that once belonged to a famous nyai. She was an extraordinary nyai, wealthy as well as beautiful. I wish I had been able to meet her.”
“It is a beautiful house,” he muttered.
“It must have been even more beautiful before. The architecture is quite marvelous. Do you recognize the German features of the building, Meneer?”
Again he ignored me. Yet I was able to guess that he didn’t know anything at all about European architecture. I continued to tantalize him with all the fantasies that he had written about in his book.
“Every part of Europe that has ever been under the influence of Germany has houses just like this one. The Natives here have never built houses like this.”
He nodded.
“Did you notice, Meneer? This whole road is asphalted now.”
My neighbor stretched out the window and looked. He nodded.
“The main streets in Betawi too. They’ve started asphalting all the main district roads in Java as well. You won’t recognize them today. There are so many cars in Surabaya these days. It’s much more comfortable in a car than by carriage, especially if the horse has a stomachache!”
Again he was studying the houses along the left-hand side. Perhaps my words were humoring him in his loneliness.
“If you traveled along this road in the past in a buggy or horse cart, your whole body would shake as the wheels fought with the street stones. See how the houses are all trying to outdo each other in beauty?”
We had passed the house of the famous nyai and the taxi continued on slowly. He still watched the left-hand side closely, as if he were looking through an old photo album whose photos were already fading. But I still wasn’t able to be sure whether he did indeed once have close and intimate connections with the area.
“You can see the forests over there behind all the tiled roofs.” I spoke again. “It’s probably a good place to hunt for birds or wild boar or deer,” I said, trying to awaken his memories of Robert Mellema.
But my hopes were not fulfilled. He still didn’t react.
“If we keep going, we’ll eventually come to Sidoarjo. It’s said that Sidoardjo is famous because . . .”
“We’ll go on another ten kilometers,” he said.
The asphalt road was hemmed in by small fields, and on the right there were rice fields stretching out to the foot of Arjuna mountain. Here and there you could see little black spots of groves of trees. It was in among those trees that you would find the farmers’ hamlets. But Minke kept his eyes on the left-hand side. And the crops sometimes ran up against fields of reeds and thickets of underbrush standing under the dark umbrella of all kinds of trees. Sometimes we would see a bamboo hut or humpy. And Minke kept his gaze pointed to the left.
Perhaps he had become bored, or perhaps there was another reason, but the driver began to speed up. My neighbor in the backseat told him neither to slow down nor to keep it up.
“Stop!” he said suddenly.
And the taxi came to a halt.
We were surrounded by fields of wild reeds to the left and right. They were perhaps two and a half meters high. As I followed Minke’s gaze, I came upon a big iron gate, about three meters wide. Above the gate there hung a huge zinc sign, with the words BOERDERIJ WONOCOLO.
He climbed out of the car, examined the steel posts that were embedded in concrete slabs in the ground, and gazed again and again at the sign. Then: “Driver!” he called.
The driver turned off the engine and got out of the car. The three of us looked down the three-meter-wide road that led through the field of thick tall reeds. There was a bend in the road in the distance and all you could see was reeds.
“Is there a village in there?” asked Modern Pitung in Malay.
“I am not sure, Tuan T— A— S—.”
The driver, who had been silent all this while, had recognized his passenger. He had used Minke’s real name, his name since birth.
Minke looked at the driver for a long time. His eyes shone—he had made contact with the world that he had left behind five years ago. He just nodded. Then: “Has this farm been here a long time?”
“A long time, Tuan.”
“Who owns it?”
“I don’t know, Tuan.”
“Chinese or European?”
“They say a Madurese, Tuan.”
“A Madurese runs a farm? And they keep dairy cattle there?”
“Of course, Tuan. They say three hundred head.”
“Enough. Let’s go back to Surabaya,” he said.
As soon as we climbed back into the car, it turned around and headed for Surabaya. Minke leaned over close to the driver and asked: “So you don’t know the name of the owner, driver?”
“No, Tuan. Who would ever remember the name of somebody who lived in the middle of fields of reeds like that? All that is known is that he is a Madurese. There is a story, I don’t know if it is true or not, that he was once the head guard at a farm owned by a nyai. Ah, that’s a story from long ago, Tuan. Nobody remembers anymore. I don’t know how the story went. The nyai was defeated in some court case and then built this other farm there together with the Madurese. After the farm was going well, she married another Dutchman and left for his homelan
Minke threw himself back into the seat. Now his eyes were closed. I still couldn’t be sure that the Minke sitting next to me now was the Minke he had fantasized about in This Earth of Mankind. Was there a real relationship between reality and fantasy? He seemed at least to be interested in these things.
“Where do we go now?” I asked.
“Back to town.” He closed his eyes and went silent.
As we entered Surabaya town I asked: “Don’t you want to do some shopping?”
He didn’t answer and pretended that he was asleep. I looked at him from the side. He did look older now as he approached forty years. Five years in exile was too heavy a punishment for a person who believed in the need of educated people for freedom. And the freedom that he chased had resulted in his losing everything, including his basic freedom, which was his basic capital. All that faced him each day was the prospect of gazing across Ambon harbor in between reading his newspapers and books. In a few more years he would need glasses, just like the old people. And he still had not gained anything for himself.
As someone who had spent so much time mixing with Europeans, I found his profile distinctly Native Javanese. If he were wearing baggy black pants, an old singlet, and had a sarong hanging around his neck, he would seem no different from any other Native. Even with a mustache twirled upward at the ends. But it was precisely this profile of his that drew my admiration. He was an innocent who did not understand his own strengths. If he had been fully aware of them and been able to use them to the maximum, he could have turned the Indies upside down. Armed with so little knowledge and learning, he dreamed of an Indies nationalist awakening without understanding how it could happen.
And this was a Javanese, a Native Javanese, wearing Javanese clothes, but no longer a Javanese at all. He was not like his parents, or his ancestors. He was a European who based his life on reason, and not on Javanese illusions, on Javanism as he himself called it, including its artistic form of wayang and gamelan—the “mountains” where his people sought refuge after the fall of Majapahit. According to Meneer L—, they sought refuge from centuries of defeat, and it was in these mountains that they found peace and contact with the glories of bygone days, glories that would never be repeated again.
This man sitting next to me was perhaps the only Javanese who had thrown off all his illusions, both as a Javanese and as an individual. With his still inadequate knowledge and learning he groped about, clutching at every straw, hoping somehow to awaken nationalism in the Indies.
It is said that there is a great, unexpected power that can emerge from under the ocean, or in the explosion of a volcano or within individuals who truly know what is the purpose of their life. Wasn’t it Minke himself who so often said never denigrate the ability of any individual? And it would be no exaggeration if I were to say that the individual sitting next to me also had the same power that moved oceans, or caused volcanoes to erupt. If he had not been such an innocent, if he had properly understood his own powers, perhaps the Indies too would have had an Asian president to follow after Sun Yat-sen and Aguinaldo.
To be a Javanese who had freed himself from Javanism also meant being able to understand the world of Javanese illusions and to reject it. Such a person preferred to see the world as it was and to accept it and to deal with it as it really was. And a Javanese who was not a Javanist was a revolutionary in these times in which I lived. I knew that he had never studied Western philosophy. Only his common sense would be able to help him escape from this atavism.
Perhaps he was the first Javanese realist.
My thoughts were borne willy-nilly back to Meneer L—’s discussion of the Javanese personality. From time to time, he said, a Javanese will come forward who will seem to be a personality of strong integrity. We see such people at the time they achieve worldly success. You can see this in their leaders throughout Javanese history since the time the Europeans arrived, from Sultan Agung through to the rajas of more recent times. But as soon as these people have been tested in life, their integrity collapses, they lose all faith in themselves, surrender themselves to illusion, and try to suck power from the supernatural world, from trees, devils, spirits, demons, ogres, from their ancestors, from animals . . . and when I heard this I recognized the truth in what Minke had written about the behavior of Sastro Kassier when he was being pressed by Plikemboh.
If one day you get the chance to talk with an educated Javanese, get him into a conversation about wayang, and keris, then praise the sophistication of the gamelan and Javanese dance, said Meneer L—, and then tell him how advanced Javanese philosophy and metaphysics are. If he reacts with enthusiasm and agrees with all your praise, it means he will never achieve anything despite all his education.
In the end every victory of human over human is in fact a victory for a particular philosophy, a particular outlook and spiritual attitude toward humankind, toward oneself, toward society and nature. Java has been continually defeated. Someone who is taken in by such praise is somebody blind to what has been happening all around him for a long time. Such a person will be defeated at his very first test. Study Javanese history, Meneer L— told me: There have been too few leaders who have died on the field of battle defending their beliefs. They all wavered, then surrendered to the Dutch, and by doing that admitted the superiority of Europe, of the European philosophy and outlook, and not just its knowledge and learning.
Do you know what the Javanese people’s favorite story from history is? All I could do in my ignorance was sit and listen to Meneer L—. And he continued to speak, full of his own enthusiasm. He told me. The story of Surapati, Meneer. The Javanese themselves cannot explain why his story is so popular, but I know why, Meneer. They all dream and long for a leader who is prepared to live and prepared to die for what he believes in, like Surapati. Surapati’s attitude, wasn’t that itself a philosophical statement? And nobody like Surapati has since appeared. Surapati was the one and only such figure. Now he is just a dream. The reality is that every Javanese leader since then has failed the first test he has faced.
The peoples of the world today, Meneer, he went on to say, are competing to make some meaningful contribution to humanity, in the field of science, learning, philosophy, engineering, medicine, including the Negro and Indian peoples, and there is not a single contribution from the Javanese people. They have degenerated to a situation far worse than that of their ancestors, and live in their shadow. Today’s Javanese, and I hope you’ll forgive me for using this kind of comparison, but today’s Javanese are just like grass living off the richness of the soil. Nothing more than that. They are low grass creeping along the earth they suck their nutrients from. They do not see the giant trees and timber around about them.
I knew that every time Meneer L— talked about the Javanese I felt that I was somehow involved as well, and I began to study my own people, the Menadonese. I think that there is no gap between the Javanese and the other peoples of the Indies, or at least it is a very small gap. Their universe is also a universe of illusions.
The man next to me opened his eyes again, and his gaze went straight to the right-hand side of the road.
“The Japanese Garden,” he said to the driver, then closed his eyes again.
What did he want at the Japanese Garden, the neighborhood where the Japanese prostitutes used to live? Was he once involved with one of them and now wanted to witness for himself the ruins of the past? There was one name only that was mentioned in his manuscripts—Maiko. After seventeen years that woman would be just a lump of rotting flesh. In Minke’s story she was said to be infected with Burmese syphilis.
As usual, the Japanese Garden, which had slowly grown into a center for soldiers of fortune and enterprise, was rather busy.
He opened his eyes and kept a very close watch on the business signs as we drove by. I ordered the driver to slow down.
“Stop!” he ordered suddenly.
Without ask
He walked straight inside, once again not asking for my permission first. I went inside too. There was nothing at all of interest. It was just an office with a few people working at their desks.
Standing a little way back from him, I watched him speak to one of the employees, who then took him across to another room. Minke knocked on the door and stood there alone waiting. Someone opened the door and invited him inside, but Minke didn’t go in. Perhaps he wanted me to be sure that he wasn’t going to try to escape. Then the door opened wider and a skinny, pale Native wearing European clothes, somewhat shorter than Minke, emerged.
I did not try to get closer. I just watched from a distance, about seven meters. I ignored the amazed stares of the employees.
The man just stood there in front of Minke. Suddenly he raised his two hands, grabbed Minke, and embraced him. And I could hear his voice sob like a little child: “Mas, Mas, you’ve come home, Mas. Forgive me for not being able to help you in your difficulties,” and like a little child, he wept, kissing and embracing Minke.
Everyone turned to watch what was happening. I went up to one of them and asked him in Dutch: “Who is that man?”
“Meneer Darman.”
And I remembered the name from Minke’s writings. This must be the company he referred to as Speceraria.
They conversed in Dutch.
“I tried to find Madame Minke, but I didn’t succeed. Your mother and father also tried, but they didn’t succeed either. Forgive us all, Mas, forgive us all.”
“I just wanted to see how you were.”
“We can talk about that some other time, Mas. Come on inside now.”
“No, I will have to go in a minute. How are your wife and children?”