It was a fact also that Minke was not the only person who had been exiled from Java to Ambon. Just a little while before, a prince had been exiled there also—a prince who had been brought up and educated in Europe, who grew up to be an adventurer, a fighter and creator of all kind of disturbances. He was the Prince Van Son. Minke was also an adventurer, but an adventurer in history. Prince Van Son was a different kind of adventurer, a street-gutter adventurer. They would meet in exile, an odd couple, perhaps bound to be in conflict, thrown together in one place. He was being treated as if he were a criminal. And I? It was I who was the criminal, who had planned his murder, so that all the determinations of the government, the governor-general and colonial authority could be implemented without disturbance. How rotten is life’s drama!
And what wasn’t rotten in colonial life? All the big fish ganged up together to be the wielders of power. All the little fish rotted, scattered about and spoiling the sea with their rottenness.
Look now, the assistant resident of Maluku in his white uniform is here to receive this disappointed exile and to tell me that my duties in regard to him are now finished.
I watched another official take over my duties, witnessed by the assistant resident. Laughing, he asked for my signature on his orders. Then he said to the new exile: “Welcome to my area, Meneer. I hope you will enjoy your stay in Ambon, Meneer,” as if he were an invited guest.
Minke just nodded, not saying a word. He who had been so generous with his words in his newspaper was now being very sparing. This man who was used to people listening to him now had to listen to all the rules that colonial authority had decided to enforce upon him. This man whose writings were always read now had to read all the regulations that had been designed to restrict his freedom.
I went with them to escort him to his home in Benteng Street in Ambon town. Before returning to Betawi, I tried once more to say a few words to him, words that came straight from my heart. His lips and ears were closed to me. Someone as contemptible as I did not deserve to receive his attention. He kept his greatness even in defeat. His greatness was not in the slightest demeaned. Someone who was so resolute in the face of the loss of his freedom would surely be resolute in the loss of everything else that remained.
And I? It seems there was no other way for me—I would remain in my contemptible state. Yes, my God, isn’t it amazing how position can change a person’s soul like this . . .?
It is said that as you approach half a century you begin to achieve full maturity and confidence in yourself. Your attitude toward life starts to stabilize, and your experiences of life have become rich. But not with me. As I approached the half-century mark, I had grown weak and unprincipled instead. And worse still, I knew exactly the reasons and did not dare fight back.
This accursed situation began in a no less accursed event. It occurred about ten years ago, when I was forty. I was healthy, strong, played heavy sport every day, was simple, was humble, and held the highest rank in the police force of any Native—police inspector class 1. I believed in goodness and charity and I was prepared to dedicate my life to them, as a human being and as a policeman.
I knew that all my friends were envious of my good fortune as an official, as a husband and as a human being. Their envy of my rank was declared through slander and false reports. This made me very cautious in everything I did. I made sure I did not give anyone the opportunity to pull me down. I carried out every task I was given with great diligence. I believed in and carried out my work based on the teachings I brought with me from home, from school, from my environment, from my religion. That was the morality that I completely believed in. To wipe evil from the face of the earth, no matter how small, that was truly doing good.
My commander at that time, Commissioner Van Dam tot Dam, who was so proud of being a pure Dutchman, free of the taint of either English or Jewish blood, called me in and gave me an unusual task, to eliminate the remnants of the Si Pitung gang, a band of outlaws active around Cibinong, Cibarusa, and Cileungsi, all in the Betawi and Buitenzorg area.
I had moved from criminal investigation work behind a desk out into the field.
At that time, domestic security had been handed over to the police. The army was not involved anymore, except if they were requested. The big and small wars that were taking place outside Java were what brought a permanent police force into being. And I was among those who joined it from the very beginning.
And so it was that I left for the field with a force of almost sixty men from the Betawi and Buitenzorg police.
In the area where Si Pitung’s men reigned, there was no more law or government. There was only terror, fear, murder, kidnapping, and violence. I roamed this no-man’s-land fighting small battles with quick, hard, and merciless moves. The English, Chinese, and Dutch landlords and their families had fled from the area to Betawi or Buitenzorg.
I was able to break the resistance of the gang wherever I found them. They used sawed-off rifles, so that they were able to carry them without being noticed. They had also been able to defeat the plantation police from all the local plantations. This was something that made our work more difficult. Usually the landlords’ plantation police were able to help us, although I knew that they were no better than terror gangs working to protect the landlords’ interests.
Whenever we wanted to enter a village, a few shots in the air would empty the streets. Everyone would run off and hide. It was only the gang members who would not hide inside a house. They would seek cover behind clumps of bamboo. Once we understood this, it was easy to work out a way to defeat them. Every time we got rid of a member of the gang, I would praise the Heavenly Father, and give thanks that I had the opportunity to carry out His will. And then I would pray that my children would follow in the footsteps of their father.
Three hundred prisoners were proof of my success. It was true, though, that it was almost impossible to get much information out of them. While squatting, they just rocked back and forth or spat, inviting my men to crack them over the head with their rifles. I was not able to get much information at all, but the region around Cibinong, Citeureup, Cibarusa, and Cileungsi was secured. So although I was unable to obtain any meaningful information, there was no way that people could deny my success. I had broken the gang and secured the region with sixty men in two months.
It was easy to identify the leaders despite their silence. Whoever was not afraid of a threatening bayonet was certain to be one of their leaders, one of the village fighters who were often led by men who were considered invulnerable and who believed themselves to be invulnerable. Among the three hundred prisoners, there were eight invulnerables. Once these men had been taken away from the others, the remainder would begin to lose their courage and would begin to answer our questions. They were a mixture of Malays and Sundanese, with most of them from the latter group.
Each of the invulnerables had so many wives each, legal or otherwise. And it was these wives who eventually became the source of the best information. One of them was called Nyi Juju. When she was brought before me, I was startled into a reverie for a moment. She was big-bodied and neither her skin nor the shape of her face was that of a Native. She was obviously a first-generation Eurasian. The interrogation took place in a police post in Cibarusa.
“Juju, who are your parents?” I asked in Malay.
“Karta bin Dusun, Tuan, sir.”
Karta bin Dusun could not be summoned. He had died in one of our raids. He was just an ordinary Native, like his wife Nyi Romlah.
I interrogated Nyi Romlah in another room. “Is it true that Juju is your daughter?” I asked.
“It’s true, Tuan, sir.”
“Is Nyi Juju your daughter with Karta or someone else?”
Romlah went pale for a moment. She started to behave strangely. I slammed the table with my cane; she shuddered. “Tell me everything. Anyone who gives me false information will be caned,” I threatened her.
Romlah fainted, afraid to tell me the tr
uth. She was afraid of me and of other forces that I did not yet understand. I went back into the room where Juju was waiting.
“Yes, you are the daughter of Romlah. But Karta bin Dusun is not your father. Your father was a Dutchman, wasn’t he?” I asked gently.
“How would I know, Tuan? People say I am the daughter of Tuan Piton.”
I knew that she meant Pinkerton, a relative of one of the Tanah Abang landowners, an Englishman, and a jockey who had won several horse races in Betawi.
Immediately Romlah regained consciousness after being splashed with water, I shouted at her: “Juju is your daughter with Tuan Piton, yes?” She was too afraid to answer.
“Don’t be afraid of Piton. Answer me.”
“It is true, Tuan. But it was against my will, Tuan.”
“Good. Who else suffered the same as you at the hands of Piton?” I saw her pull the skin of her lips because of her fear. “Don’t be afraid. Just tell me.”
“Many, Tuan. Very many.”
“How could it be so many?”
“The landlord’s bodyguards fetched me and the others from our homes, and took us to Tuan Piton’s house.”
“Didn’t your husband say anything?”
“Everyone was afraid, Tuan.”
“Why didn’t you report it to the village head or the police?”
“We were afraid, Tuan. And anyway, they would probably just be angry with us. That’s what usually happens, Tuan.”
“Did this happen to your daughter Juju, too? She was taken from your house by the Kelang criminal?”
“The same, Tuan, but she wasn’t brought home.”
I went back to Juju in the other room.
“Were you taken by Kelang as his wife with your agreement?”
“I was taken from my mother, Tuan.”
“Be careful if you are lying.”
“No, Tuan, I am not lying.”
Twenty-one women, the wives of the gang leaders, all gave similar answers. Eleven of them had been properly married. It was clear that all these women were chosen for their beauty. Perhaps because of people like Pinkerton, Cibarusa had many attractive Eurasian girls, who were seldom known to the outside world. And they were bound then to fall victim to the Europeans on the plantations, their henchmen, or the outlaw gangs.
The interrogation of these women revealed that the Europeans and their henchmen had robbed people of their worldly goods, their honor, had extracted excessive taxes, beaten people up and murdered people. And none of this had been investigated by the authorities. These women’s stories made my heart shrivel up. This gang that had grown under the protection of the charisma of Si Pitung turned out to be fighting against the arbitrary oppression by the local European and Chinese landowners and their agents.
The police should have taken action against these foreign landowners and their agents before Si Pitung’s resistance emerged.
The reality was that I was a policeman who had smashed the attempts of village people to fight back against oppression.
I returned to Betawi with a brilliant victory over village people whose only desire was for a decent life. My success brought a heady sense of triumph for a field policeman. But it also brought a new awareness of the white politics that exploited the local people, and I went home a knotted spirit, not knowing what was right. In the meantime, fourteen people had died during the operations I led.
I prepared a comprehensive report, with the hope that I could transfer the responsibility and pangs of conscience to those in authority who had given me this task. But the forty-page report didn’t give me any satisfaction either. My soul cried out for everything to return to what it had been before. I wanted once again to be someone with a clear conscience who always did God’s will.
There was no reaction, no response. Except that Commissioner Van Dam tot Dam spoke to me in passing. He said that everyone was praising me for the success of my operation, that they were very happy with my report, and that even Europeans could rarely do what I had done. But the responsibility for the annihilation of that rebellion against oppression continued to burden my mind and soul. I felt that I had sinned.
To try to forget this burden, I attempted to study all the papers that had been written about Si Pitung. I couldn’t get any rounded picture from these. All they talked about were his acts of violence against rich people. He was depicted as a vicious man, acting without reason, a barbarian who attacked villages with his big band of men, killing, stealing, burning, and torturing the tax collectors as if they were his personal enemies. He eliminated all those working for the government, no matter what their race. Then the remnants of his gang rose again and did the same. They rebelled for the same reason. And not one of them could explain why they were rebelling. They were unable to explain how they felt.
I began to see Pitung’s face everywhere. There was a sparse beard and mustache, and smooth skin the color of the langsat fruit. He wasn’t tall, more of a stocky build. According to the reports I read, he always wore white robes when he attacked, and a turban, and to his left and right he was escorted by two aides, carrying a betel-leaf box and his weapon. That picture left a strong impression on me and would not go away. It started to follow me as if it were my own shadow.
I knew that my nerves were under a great strain.
During the ceremony appointing me adjutant commissioner I was almost unable to stop myself from trying to shoo that image of Pitung away with my hands. I could feel his sparse mustache brushing up against my neck, as if he was there whispering, mocking me: Death for us, promotion for you, heh, Tuan Pangemanann?
I was now the adjutant commissioner. There were thousands of Europeans and Eurasians, let alone Natives, who would never savor a rank as high as this. Now even the Harmoni Club was open to me. My character was swept away by this rank and by the law that also made me equal to a Dutchman. With or without my uniform, the Harmoni management would have to let me enter, even though I would still suffer their angry glances. I was now officially a member of the club and they who caused me to be born on this earth would never have guessed that I would reach a rank that was allowed only to Europeans.
I knew for sure that Si Pitung never strode up the stairs into the Harmoni Club, though I knew he used to operate nearby when he was young, around the Harmoni Bridge and the land owned by the landlord Alaydrus. But almost every time I came to the club, there he was, standing on the corner, in his robes and turban, raising his hand and greeting me: “Greetings, Tuan Pangemanann, are you well today?” I was the only one who could see him. . . .
Ziihhh, I hissed, chasing away the image of that devil. And only then would he disappear. I never told my wife about this nervous problem I had developed. And it was not possible for me to go to a psychiatrist. There was not a single one in the Indies.
So my promotion to adjutant commissioner was accompanied by my new habit of hissing Ziihhh to get rid of my vision of Si Pitung. On top of this, every time I received a visit from one of the landowners who wanted to thank me, I suffered an attack of high blood pressure, often becoming extremely irritated. They all tried to thank me in their own way, rarely coming with empty hands. They always brought something, either for my wife or for the children. They were thanking me because now they could continue to oppress the Natives again without disturbance.
Then there was another explosion of unrest in the hamlets of Lemah Abang and Tambun. This was another people’s rebellion against the power of the English and Chinese landowners. Then there was trouble on the Pemanukan en Tjiasem Landen plantation, a private estate in Pemanukan and Ciasem. All the rebellions took the same form as Si Pitung’s. Each time a rebellion occurred it was I who was given the task of getting together a combined force of police and suppressing the revolt. The nature of my work changed from routine police work to something that was virtually military work. I used the same methods as those I used against the remnants of Si Pitung’s gang.
Another one of history’s ironies—Governor-General Daendels h
ad built up defenses right around Java in order to keep the English army out of the Indies, and out of Java in particular. And so the military road between Anyer and Banyuwangi was built. Finding his administration facing bankruptcy, he sold government land to a number of private owners. But the English still invaded. And so the Indies had a new governor-general, namely Thomas Raffles. He too fell into the gully of insufficient finances. He followed in the footsteps of Daendels and sold more land to wealthy Englishmen and Chinese. Private estates became strung out across the north coast of Java. And almost one century later Adjutant Commissioner Pangemanann had to solve the unrest that was the heritage of these two men.
Neither of them would ever know Pangemanann with two ns. They would never know how he had to bow down, with his tortured conscience, becoming, against his will, a man without principles. He had become a kind of servant cleaning up their mess. The ethical face of Europe must not be sullied, and so it was that I was obliged and was permitted to use even the dirtiest methods.
I knew with certainty that I was being manipulated by supernatural phantoms of almost one hundred years ago, by supernatural spirits that I could not feel, whom I could only get to know from files on nice white sheets of paper and from the filth that was their legacy to colonial life, the life of my own times.
To whom could I take my grievances? In my era the power that is always victorious is colonial power. Everything that is not a part of colonial authority is its enemy. I myself was an instrument of colonialism. The great teachers beautifully taught about the enlightenment of the world that would be brought by the Renaissance, the Aufklärung, about the awakening of humanism, about the overthrow of one class by another that was begun with the French Revolution when the feudal class was removed by the bourgeoisie. They called on people to side with the progressive march of history. And meanwhile, I was sinking into the disgusting colonial mud.
House of Glass Page 7
