by Nigel Barley
He started a toytown war, short on actual gunfire but full of military posturing, seeking to extend his southern frontier to Semangka Bay and so give the British a toehold in the channel between Sumatra and Java. The little forces marched up and down in brave uniform, threw up stockades and blew bugles at each other like dogs barking in the night. He signed treaties of friendship with local sultans, regardless of Dutch claims to exclusivity. In all things he opposed Dutch monopoly.
* * *
There were two men sleeping under the Parr monument, or rather resting, for they were both staring up at the inside of the roof where paint and plaster eased themselves free to flutter down like snow. The coastal wind was here mitigated to a fresh breeze that swirled the motes of plaster as they descended. Occasionally the men would reach out and swat an importunate mosquito. We shared the inevitable cigarette.
‘Are you from Bengkulu?’
They laughed. ‘No one is from Bengkulu. Everyone here is from somewhere else. From Padang, from the Batak country, from Java. We are from Java – you know – transmigration.’
Transmigration is the scheme that shifts the excess population of Java to the outer islands where, in theory, they receive land, a hoe and a new future. Raffles had always fretted about his lack of population and even ended up dreaming of white settlers. The Company had soon put a stop to that. His own figures showed that marriage was dying out in the colony. When you married, you had to produce more pepper for the Company. So people simply stopped marrying. The mosquitoes, immune to marriage, bred on with unconcern. My arms were already dotted with bites.
We sat and we talked. Slowly the story emerged. They had come from Java three years before, received their land, but it had not been good land. They had cleared the trees themselves, raised a couple of crops. But the settler towns were boring. One had gambled and mortgaged his land to a Chinese. The other had married off his son and had to pay a huge bride-price. The land had gone.
‘If things go on like this,’ he said, ‘in a few years no one will be able to get married,’ It could have been Raffles talking. ‘So now we come to town to look for work. But today there is no work.’
‘What work do you do?’
‘We are coolies. When there is a ship, we unload it.’ That had been the job of Raffles’ African slaves. They had all gone, merged into the general populace somewhere. They had left little trace, though I seemed to recall a festival introduced by Gurkha soldiers. Had there been Gurkhas here? It seemed unlikely. Surely the chronology was wrong.
‘We have not,’ they said pointedly, ‘eaten today. A thousand rupiahs is enough for a man to eat in Bengkulu.’ I took the hint. It would be easy to slip them a couple of thousand rupiahs, but then I remembered Raffles and the chiefs.
‘No,’ I said, ‘no money. But over there, by the English fort, is an eating place. Let’s go and eat together.’
* * *
Raffles determined to visit as much as possible of his domain in person. He had a belief in the reality of human contact, in human contact as the only reality. There was also that craving for distinction that had marked him from a boy. It was always terribly important in his perambulations that no European should have been there before. His botanical expeditions masked an urge to deflower the whole country. He set off on great hikes, the Editor gamely in tow though usually pregnant. On receipt of the order to arrange bearers. Residents were wont to toss the piece of paper to one side with a laugh: it would never happen. The next thing was that Raffles would arrive, furious, on their doorstep, demanding to know why nothing had been done.
There comes a stage in middle age where every fine prospect is not simply a moving experience for the eye; it becomes the site for a house you plan to build some day. Thus it was with Raffles and the Bukit Kabut, ‘Hill of Mists’, a few kilometres outside Bengkulu. Here, he ordered land to be cleared:
‘… A comfortable cottage is erected … The only inconvenience will arise from the tigers and elephants, which abound in the vicinity … In many parts the people would seem to have resigned the empire to these animals, taking but few precautions against them, and regarding them as sacred; they believe in transmigration and call them their nene or grandfather. When a tiger enters a village, the foolish people frequently prepare rice and fruits, and placing them at the entrance as an offering to the animal, conceive that, by giving him this hospitable reception, he will be pleased with their attention, and pass on without doing them harm. They do the same on the approach of the smallpox. I am doing all I can to resume the empire of man and having made open war against the whole race of wild and ferocious animals, I hope we shall be able to reside on the Hill of Mists without danger from their attacks.’
He was also making war on smallpox with an inoculation campaign.
* * *
All was not well at the hotel. A wave of malaria had swept over us until it more closely resembled a hospital than a hostelry. Five of the staff were ill in bed. In a strange reversal, the guests looked after them, for this was no snooty Western establishment. The Balinese footballers took over the kitchen, Muslim culinary fears being soothed by the revelation that two of the reserves were Muslims not Hindus. I had assumed these two to be from the army, as they had ferociously scalped skulls.
‘No,’ they explained, ‘we nearly had to leave university this year, so we gave God our hair. And the girls used to love our hair.’
I sat in my hut, called – a sign informed me – ‘Rafflesia’, doling out aspirins and anti-malarials. An ineffectual doctor made tentative visits to the sick.
‘Take this medicine,’ he would say. ‘You will find it no help whatsoever,’ or ‘We must test your blood for parasites. Whatever the case, the results are always negative.’
The Balinese dispensed bitter papaya leaves, a folk remedy, and played football. They held long, earnest conversations on equipment. A particular concern were shin pads, called skin-skin in Indonesian, in a manner that neatly healed the ancient fission between West and North Germanic dialects. After a few days, I fell ill too.
‘I expect,’ smiled the doctor, ‘you are feeling terrible. Never mind. Tomorrow you will feel even worse.’
He was, of course, right. The usual symptoms followed, fever, chills, vomiting, the spike being hammered into the top of your head. I heard him chortling to one of the footballers.
‘We expect about four in ten to die with this. This looks to me like it’s turning into cerebral malaria. He should die in the next couple of days. I’ll get in touch with the Christian pastor.’
So that was it. I would end my days in the graveyard that had nearly claimed Raffles and had taken his children. I snivelled as I worked out that I was much the same age as he was when he finally left Bengkulu. Our birth – and, it seemed – death-days were almost identical. Like Parr I had brought this death upon myself. There had been a too strong identification with Raffles. It was as if I was to die in his place. There would be no commemorative obelisk.
The hut was infested with bees. They flew in through a hole on one side, circled agonizingly round my head, and plunged into holes they had drilled in the roofbeams. My fevered brain kept making links between Raffles and Sukarno, Raffles and myself. Their droning drove me crazy. What was worse was the knowledge that in English they were called ‘mason bees’.
* * *
The great triumph of Raffles during this arduous cross-country campaign was the discovery of the ‘Devil’s betel box’, the Rafflesia arnoldii, a vast parasitic flower, a metre across, big enough to hold a gallon and a half of fluid. His pride is that of a true botanist. No one else could be as proud of being identified with such a hideous growth that stinks of rotten carrion.
‘There is nothing more striking in the Malayan forests than the grandeur of the vegetation: the magnitude of the flowers, creepers and trees, contrasts strikingly with the stunted and, I had almost said, pigmy vegetation of England. Compared with our forest trees, your largest oak is a mere dwarf. Here we have cr
eepers and vines entwining larger trees, and hanging suspended for more than a hundred feet, in girth not less than a man’s body, and many much thicker …
We got on, however, very well; and though we were all occasionally much fatigued, we did not complain. Lady Raffles was a perfect heroine. The only misfortune at this stage was a heavy fall of rain during the night, which penetrated our leafy dwelling in every direction, and soaked every one of the party to the skin. We were now two days’ march beyond the reach of supplies; many of our Coolies had dropped off; some were fairly exhausted and we began to wish our journey at an end. We, however, contrived to make a good dinner on the remaining fowl, and, having plenty of rice and claret, did not complain of our fare.
… The utmost good-humour and affection seemed to exist among the people of the village; they were as one family, the men walking about holding each other by the hand, and playing tricks on each other like children; they were as fine a race as ever I beheld; in general about six feet high, and proportionably stout, clear and clean skins, and an open ingenuous countenance. They seemed to have abundance of every thing; rice, the staple food of the country, being five times as cheap as at Bencoolen, and every other article of produce in proportion.
… Hitherto we had been fortunate in our weather; but before we reached this place, a heavy rain came on, and soaked us completely. The baggage only came up in part, and we were content to sleep in our wet clothes, under the best shade we could find. No wood would burn; there was no moon; it was already dark, and we had no shelter erected. By perseverance, however, I made a tolerable place for Lady Raffles, and, after selecting the smoothest stone I could find in the bed of a river for a pillow, we managed to pass a tolerably comfortable night.’
Bung Karno and his family undertook a similar journey from Bengkulu to Padang in 1942, their departure lit by the burning supply dump at Fort Marlborough – the Japanese army was only a few miles away and advancing. They were seized by Dutch troops and marched off.
Despite his identification with the peasantry, Sukarno was a city boy, unattracted by the jungle. His resentments against the Dutch were city resentments. As a child he had had to watch films dubbed with Dutch subtitles, but – greater indignity yet – not from the front of the screen but from behind, with the poor people, so that the Dutch text was backwards.
He makes much of their sufferings in sleeping in a plain native hut, trudging 300 kilometres on narrow paths, living in terror of wild animals. It is an epic tale of heroism. On the fourth day, however, they emerged from the trees and caught a bus.
* * *
It was like a scene from a Verdi opera but instead of monks there were footballers, dressed in that oddly textured, iridescent satin, dark-blue in colour but mostly black against the light. And shorts. Monks would not have worn shorts. There was the strong, not unpleasant, odour of Oriental sweat. Not the sour-milk smell of Europeans, nor the rank fat of Africans and West Indians. It had fundamentals of light musk and high tones of jasmine tea. There was something else. Yes, it was the rheumatism-balsam reek of the moustache tonic they rubbed into their upper lips.
The players were praying with heads lowered, a deliberately non-denominational prayer – in accordance with Bung Karno’s five principles – invoking a carefully non-specific High God. The Muslims and Hindus, unshaven like mafia mourners, were together asking mercy on someone who, nominally at least, was a Christian. They were gathered in a semi-circle around the foot of the bed, led in devotion by their captain as if in some public school ideal of life. They finished, touched their hands briefly together over my racked body and uttered a single piercing shout that made me groan. Then they formed the only orderly queue I have ever seen in Indonesia and each stroked me lightly on the shoulder, murmuring softly, ‘May you make a swift recovery’, turned and clattered out on studded boots.
The captain and I were left together. He sat on the end of the bed and looked down on me, hefting a four-foot high trophy from one hand to the other. No celebratory symbol had been spared. It incorporated the goddess of victory, laurel branches, a chalice, a Garuda bird and a small golden footballer.
‘You won, then,’ I croaked.
‘No,’ he said, affronted. ‘We lost.’
Of course. In Indonesia everyone gets a trophy. The side-board has made a glorious entry into the modern Indonesian home, groaning beneath the weight of honours accumulated in even the most undistinguished of lives. The winners’ trophy would have been six feet high.
He shifted in obvious discomfort and peered down at his gashed left knee oozing blood.
‘It was not football so much as karate. Every time we got near them, they turned so as to be on the referee’s blind side and thumped us or kicked us. In ordinary football that’s well enough, but we are university men. It is not fitting.’
He felt my brow. ‘You are still hot. I need to talk to you. You must offer something to God. You will not recover until you promise him something.’
I thought of the boys who had given their hair.
‘I don’t think God would want my hair. Anyway,’ I quipped, ‘he seems to be taking it all on his own.’ I thought it was a pretty good joke for a man who felt as bad as I did, but the captain was not in a joking mood. He looked saddened by my lack of solemnity. That was not fitting either. I suddenly recognized this scene. It was a man-to-man chat, a talk to the troops. He would have ticked off his team members in just the same way.
‘Pay attention. You are a rich tourist, so you must give God some of your wealth. You must promise a good deed and if you get better, you must perform it. That is the way. If you ask, he will hear. But you must give, too.’
I thought about it. It was not hard to find a good deed. One of the team, Nyoman, had confided that he had had to drop out of his course for a year to work. He was at his wits’ end to find the money to carry on. If I recovered, I would pay his fees.
He looked at me hard, perhaps detecting a spiritual change. ‘Have you promised to God?’
‘Yes, I have promised.’
He sighed. ‘Now you will see. You will get better. It is a simple matter.’ He rose, carrying his trophy before him like a cross and patted me kindly.
‘Excuse me, I must go and make sure the men are cleaning their boots. If they do not, after defeat, they will get depressed. And if their boots rot it is not certain they will all be able to find new boots for next season. You are a good man. I hope you recover.’
It was the moment for an Indonesian proverb. I pulled my mousy, greying hair. ‘Hearts vary,’ I pronounced enigmatically, ‘but everyone has black hair.’
He looked at me, unsure whether I was being solemn or not, sighed and went through the door.
* * *
‘The pleasure of this journey was great to Sir Stamford, as it opened to him a field of future usefulness. He saw that it was not only the barren coast which he had to improve, but a country rich in all the bounties of nature, and a people ready and willing to profit by his influence and advice. One old chief, on taking leave, actually fell on his neck and wept; and soon after walked the whole way from Tanjungalum, the most distant place visited, to see him again at Bencoolen. Such simple uncivilized people are soon won by kindness; they are like children, easy to lead, hard to drive. It was Sir Stamford’s extreme simplicity of mind and manners that rendered him so peculiarly attractive to them, as they are always ready to be kind and attentive, provided they meet with encouragement and sympathy, thus affording a proof that the heart is the best teacher of true politeness. The Editor on reaching Merambung laid down under the shade of a tree, being much fatigued with walking: the rest of the party dispersed in various directions to make the necessary arrangements, and seek for shelter; when a Malay girl approached with great grace of manners, and on being asked if she wanted anything, replied, “No, but seeing you were quite alone, I thought you might like to have a little bichara [talk] and so I am come to offer you some siri [betel] and sit beside you.” And no courtier could have
discussed trifling general subjects in a better manner, or have better refrained from asking questions which were interesting to herself only; her object was to entertain a stranger, which she did with the greatest degree of refinement and politeness.’
– Lady Raffles, Memoir
* * *
After five days, I could move again. The Balinese had disappeared back to their own island, but heaped their addresses upon me after the Indonesian fashion. The doctor returned occasionally for purely social reasons, celebrating me as proof of the power of his healing skills. It was time to take the overnight bus to Padang, but first I would test my legs and see the myriad activities of the beach.
The fishermen were busily defecating under their stilted houses and heaving boats about in feats of community solidarity.
‘We are not from Bengkulu,’ they shouted before I even asked. ‘We are Padang people.’
Out there was Rat Island, where the British had landed their goods and built a malaria hospital. The permanent wind grounded the mosquitoes. Line after line of fierce waves rushed in from the Pacific and smashed on the coral. Little figures slipped and slithered out to the very brink of the deep. Two men waved a greeting and beckoned me out to share their danger. They were the men from the Parr monument. One was scraping fuzzy weed from the rock into a basket. Fried, it would be a relish. The other was plunged up to his neck in the water, occasionally diving under to hack at the coral with a crowbar and emerge blue with cold and spluttering.
