The Ten Thousand Things

by Maria Dermout

  The other two started talking together, shop talk of course, the director quietly, the professor excited, with his uh’s, his cackling laughs.

  Suprapto stood up and coughed. “I suppose I can go now?” he asked the director.

  The professor got up too, shook hands cordially, “it’s been a great pleasure . . . uh . . . Radèn, young friend, believe me.”

  The director also said in a friendly voice, “You’ll have great help from Suprapto, he is very accurate, and he writes the best hand of all of us, his drawings are quite meritorious too.”

  “Ah,” the professor said, looking with interest at the small brown hands, “that is a great gift!” He spread his own clumsy hands, “I’ve never been able to master that, I write like a blacksmith, like a real blacksmith, you’ll suffer from it, young friend!”

  The young Javanese thought, yes, yes, the clerk, a clerk can write neatly and draw neatly—he bowed again to the director, the professor, and left.

  But he had hardly entered the corridor when the professor pulled open the door behind him and called him back: “Eh, Radèn, young friend, you’ll take all precautions, won’t you—prophylactic quinine and smallpox inoculation?” He squeezed his eyes worriedly, “really, don’t forget! Imagine if you got smallpox, I’d never dare face your family again!” the cackling laugh.

  “Goodbye, my young friend! When do we leave?” he brought his hand to his head, “oh, but it is in our notebooks, you made a note of it too, didn’t you?”

  The young Javanese said slowly, “Certainly, professor.” Those were the first words he spoke to him.

  2.

  Radèn Mas Suprapto went quickly down the pier of Surabaya under the broiling sun. He was in Javanese dress, as neat as always, but now with a khaki-colored jacket, brown sandals and over the kerchief around his head an inconspicuous hat of fine brown straw. Coolies came behind him carrying his suitcases, neat suitcases; a little boy held his briefcase and camera. He was smoking and in his hand he had a thin rattan cane.

  The professor was leaning over the rail of the ship, pacing the deck. “So there you are, finally! They have already blown the first whistle—we would have left, left without you . . . uh . . . Radèn—I forgot your name again, young friend!” He calmed down a little, “but anyway, you’re here, good, completely recovered, did you have malaria? Take it easy now,” and he walked busily ahead to show him his cabin.

  Nothing about the professor had changed: it seemed as if he were still wearing the silk suit of two weeks ago and holding the same wet handkerchief in his hand; only now he was also wearing a topee of heavy cork, covered with khaki and lined in green. From the back of it a wide cloth hung halfway down his back. Over his glasses he had clipped two dark-green sunshades—why isn’t he carrying a butterfly net and a vasculum? Suprapto wondered.

  It didn’t surprise him when later he saw such a net and such a box in the professor’s cabin, and a large silken parasol with a green lining. The professor explained to him how practical and necessary it was; “sunstroke is no joke, young friend. I know from experience.”

  He also showed him a heavy old-fashioned gold watch which he always took along “on expedition,” as he called it, his grandfather’s watch. It had never failed him; it was wound with a little key and he could make it strike the hour with a gay little tinkle.

  Then there were two cotton bags which fitted into his coat pockets: it was his habit to get a supply of small change, in new silver coins, in each country he visited, and he showed the coins to Suprapto proudly: “for the children along the way, when they bring us plants and flowers, you’ll see what fun they think it! I remember how my good mother always used to give me a polished coin for my weekly allowance—it wasn’t the value, it was the gleam it had! When I finish this supply we’ll have to polish more ourselves.”

  Suprapto nodded silently—what kind of man was this? was he completely sane?—he looked around the cabin. On top of a cabinet there were two pictures in a double leather frame.

  When the professor saw Suprapto looking at them he took the frame down and handed it to him, “this is my wife,” he said, and to himself, “Kitty—poor Kitty,” and then again, “and my sister, my good sister Ursel” and laughed.

  They were good, expensive portraits: one of a woman not young but youthful, sweet, blond, with round curls all about her face, large round eyes with silky lashes, a rounded turned-up nose—but the mouth was not round, it was a thin dissatisfied mouth. At her throat was a cloud of tulle.

  Sister Ursel was the professor without the mustache, with a pince-nez instead of glasses, straight hair combed high, a blouse with a stand-up collar.

  “My sister Ursel,” the professor said again, “without her—my wife is so delicate, has such bad health; I would not have been able to leave her alone—without Ursel I could never travel.” He stopped, looked out through the porthole at the sky, “never travel any more, young friend.”

  Suprapto suddenly asked, “how many children do you have, professor?”; he knew that question was supposed to be Oriental and might annoy a European.

  The professor turned to him, his eyes wide open and very light blue, he wasn’t annoyed. “I,” he said, “I mean my wife and I would have liked children, we love children, but with her bad health—it was unthinkable.” And he repeated, “Ursel, if it weren’t for Ursel I would never dare leave her alone.”

  Suprapto shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, he wanted to leave but now the professor held him back, “and—and you, Radèn Mas, young friend, are you married? Do you have children, how many children?” he asked with the same emphasis, and chuckled.

  Suprapto said no, he wasn’t married, he had no children. “That is a pity,” the professor answered, and he muttered something about the severe rules he had heard of, the caste rules for marriage which were still in force in Javanese noble families like Suprapto’s. “Well,” he said, “everything has its pros and cons, young friend, don’t forget! To preserve certain qualities, outward and inward ones, in a family—that isn’t so crazy! Style, for instance. Let your mother choose a beautiful young woman for you, of the proper class of course, see that you have children!”

  The professor grinned, he was hot, blushed, looked past the other through the porthole.

  Later in his own cabin, the door locked, Suprapto took out his portrait—he also had a portrait, also of a woman.

  It was a bad picture, made in a Chinese shop, in glossy black and white; in the background a stone balustrade with artificial palms and a volcano with a plume of smoke rising; in the foreground a rattan table, a vase with a bunch of paper roses, and beside it, she was standing.

  She wore a Javanese dress and over it the straight coat which looked like a coachman’s cape, of velvet, it seemed, with heavy gold soutache. It was a long coat but the stiff batik showed underneath, with one corner sticking out sideways, which gave a dashing effect. She was wearing stockings and embroidered slippers—with one hand she leaned on the rattan table, with the other she held her parasol; the very delicate fingers were covered with jewels, one ring next to the other, she also wore two round diamond earrings, the coachman’s cape was closed with a diamond pin, and on the small round hat the marabou feathers were held together with a complicated ornament of gold and precious stones.

  The woman whom he called his mother.

  Her name was under the portrait. She was of such high rank that she had a male title—tuan Ratu—that is, Sir Princess. “In traveling costume,” the caption added.

  She was neither young nor old in the picture.

  Against that background, in all that gaudiness, that clumsy coat, and yet so graceful, so slender.

  Suprapto looked at her, at what was behind her: the country—his country—mid-Java, the Principalities—one mountain, the volcano, was in the photograph, but there was another. A pair, cone-shaped, rising in pure unbroken lines, so hazy, golden-edged, upward from the immeasurably wide plain.

  A hazy sky above.
/>
  The palace with nothing but straight definite lines. In the heart of it the women’s quarters, walled; courtyards with trees, walled; bathing places, walled; terraces with balustrades, a large square with majestic banyan trees, high sculptured gates—which could be locked.

  The people, generation after generation of men and women, with their passions—but how controlled, bound to old, old rules, approaching the perfect, never changing.

  His youth there: as long as he could remember, this immovability, as if everything stood still and was: for-ever. No one ever cried or laughed aloud, nothing burned up in joy or sorrow—cool and secluded from the burning sun outside.

  Afterward he had gone among strangers, on Java, later in Holland, pulled in two directions. As a young student at Leyden among many, he had hoped—he had had a lot of friends, a girl friend, young, sweet; he had not taken law like the other young men from his family, but had quietly started on botany, his favorite study, without telling anyone.

  Before the end of the first year the bank had sent him a letter from his mother’s agent, telling him that his monthly allowance would have to be discontinued “for lack of funds,” that he’d better come back. He could make a trip to Paris first, stay as long as he wished, his passage first-class would be paid for him.

  When he returned everything was ready and waiting: a post at Court with his mother’s brother, the ruling prince: well paid, good prospects; the beautiful young woman, of the proper class of course, had been selected for him.

  He hadn’t married the young woman, he hadn’t wanted the post, he had not stayed. His mother had raised her eyebrows—that was the influence of those Western ideas—if that was how he wanted it—he would feel different later.

  To Batavia and then the clerk’s job in the Government Agricultural Service—and now he was the assistant of the famous professor, on his way to the Moluccas!

  What good would that do?

  When he looked at the portrait he knew that one day he would go back, he knew that she—Sir Princess, in traveling costume, and all that was behind her, plain, mountains, sky, palace, the beautiful young woman of the proper class—were his background, the basis of his life, were himself.

  But not yet.

  Now he was still on a voyage, at sea, with his crazy professor, going somewhere.

  He took the portrait, folded it in the silk handkerchief to put it back between his clothes, and then he thought something he had never thought before.

  He thought, when he was still young, in Leyden, when there was still time, if she had then pulled one ring from her slim fingers, or taken one clip from her ears, or the jeweled pin from her coat, or the gold and diamond brooch from her hat with the marabou feathers—but she hadn’t, the Sir Princess in traveling costume.

  3.

  There were so few passengers aboard that the professor was offered an extra cabin for all his papers and books. He had brought crates full of books: not only books on botany and Rumphius’s Book of Herbs in twelve volumes with all the commentaries and appendixes, but also history, geography, ethnology, descriptions of old voyages, and last but not least, Rumphius’s Book of Curiosities.

  Sometimes while reading it the professor would call Suprapto in, “listen to this, young friend!” and grin.

  All the superstitions of Rumphius, about shells and coral, crabs with odd names, magical stones, all sorts of crazy stories . . .

  And their conversations: fragments, snatches of conversation . . .

  The professor and Suprapto on deck, on a bench against the rail—the sea of Banda as wild as it can be, a heavy, clouded sky, broilingly hot, the sea grayish and covered with whitecaps, the ship rolling—they were just on the edge of seasickness.

  “Look at that boiling pot!” the professor said, and he grew a bit pale, and then he suddenly told Suprapto how a Scotswoman, long ago, had predicted a “sailor’s grave” for him. “The odd thing is that there’s something wrong in her story; a real sailor’s grave, she said, body rolled in something, a weight at your feet and in deep water—but at the same time near a coast, a beautiful green coast. Of course I could get sick and die aboard a ship, but when you’re so close to land I’ve always heard that they wait to bury people ashore. Her story made a tremendous impression on me, and—let me confess something . . . uh . . . Radèn, young friend,” he whispered, “I am afraid of the sea.” And then the professor became very seasick.

  “Why did you never finish your studies, young friend?”

  “There was no more money,” Suprapto answered stiffly.

  “No money, oh come now, and you from a family of princes with all its treasures!” the professor cackled, “and money, oh there’s always money. Has no one ever tried to get you a scholarship? but that should still be possible.” He fished out his notebook, took off the rubber band, a pencil—“just do your best for me these months, and I’ll write you a beautiful reference and I’ll push the director of the Agricultural Service a bit, and at home, I mean at my home, I’ll figure out something—I’ll ask my sister Ursel, she has a way with everything, with her everything is possible! She always has money too, she’s constantly receiving inheritances.” He grinned gaily. “Not me! I can’t handle money . . . uh . . . young friend, I—” he made a note—“I’ll write Ursel immediately.”

  Suprapto’s face reddened. “That is very kind of you, professor,” he said, “but don’t bother. I couldn’t accept that, I wouldn’t want to—it is too late now.”

  “Come on, Radèn, my young friend,” said the professor, “too late? That terrible expression! Give it another thought—” he wanted to say more but only slipped the rubber band around his notebook and slowly put it back in his pocket.

  He’s glad that’s the end of it, Suprapto thought.

  One of the letters the professor wrote that night was to Miss Ursel McNeill.

  A story of the Moluccas Suprapto had to hear the professor tell.

  A young prince from Tuban on Java pours water over his father’s hands during a ritual washing, he drops the basin, is slapped by the old man, insulted, and then has only one wish: to get away.

  On a sandbank at the shore he draws a proa in the sand, with all the accessories a proa has: rudder, mast, sails, oars for a calm, rope, anchor stones in baskets, jugs of fresh water and food, fuel and a piece of flint, a brazier and a cooking pot, mats to sit and sleep upon, goods for barter, scales, money, and above all, arms. He thinks of everything—he is a clever young man, he forgets nothing, except one thing! He forgets the ballast.

  Then, when the Lord Allah has answered his prayer and made his drawing into reality (and his brother and sister and his old nurse who want to come along have gone on board) the proa floats too high on the waves.

  Ballast is needed! What kind of ballast?

  There is nothing available but the earth of their country; and they carry earth aboard and throw it in the hold; then they set sail without looking back.

  They pass many islands, and at all of them they weigh the earth there against the earth they took with them—the two never have the same weight.

  Until they come to the Moluccas, to that one island—there the earth weighs as much as the earth of their own country, and there they stay and found a small state, and the Javanese prince from Tuban is the first Rajah.

  “Don’t you ever write poetry, young friend? You could make a poem out of this, an epic, in hexameters, and what deep meaning it has!” The professor laughed his cackling laugh, he looked Suprapto in the face for a moment and then suddenly said very seriously, “You too, didn’t you? You too had to hold the water basin and you too dropped it, my poor young friend, that is always the beginning—”

  For once Suprapto did not control himself. “A water basin, what do you mean?” he said shortly, almost angrily. “I’ve never in my life been made to hold a basin for anyone!”

  The professor shook his head, “but you have, young friend, you have. All of us, always, when we’re young, have to hold something f
or those who are old, and we drop it and want to get away, and draw a ship in the sand to reach a new country, and we always forget the ballast—there is no ballast but the earth of the old country—and the new country’s earth is always just as heavy as the old country’s—and for that, then, we have left and crossed the seas and might even have drowned on the way, in deep water, or grown old and in our turn let someone hold a basin up for us—you too, you’ll see, you too, Radèn Mas Suprapto,” the professor said slowly and clearly, “just like that other prince.”

  Suprapto did not answer; so the professor knew his name full well, all that “uh”-ing and “young friend” was only to humiliate him—and just what was he getting at?

  The professor wasn’t getting at anything; he only made the little gesture—head cocked, one shoulder high—of a man who regrets something but feels unable to do anything about it—is sorry, he sorry for me! Suprapto thought, he sorry for “the other prince”! For after all he was a prince—and he thought of the portrait.

  The professor who without batting an eyelid began to talk to him, an Oriental, about race prejudice.

  “Yes, my young friend,” he said, “it is one of those generally accepted conceptions, and yet it’s a misconception—that only the white man has race prejudice. I’ve done some traveling—” his eyes lightened—“and looked around, and believe me, it’s not a matter of East or West, white or colored. One can have it as much as the other.”

  Suprapto sat still for a moment with his head bent forward: it was certainly true. He knew—he knew how his mother, when thinking or speaking of a white man, could turn pale with an almost physical aversion.

  The professor said, “Such a tight little fence around us: caste and class, race and place, a whole list. And some of it associated with old, deep things—so familiar and so secure around us—but we, we of the mind, we can do without; we don’t always want to, but we can go stand in the cold and the wind and see for ourselves. Isn’t that true, young friend? See for ourselves—if we want to,” he finished.