This Earth of Mankind

by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  Annelies sighed and moved her finger. She will be all right; I will not have to watch her die. I moved away and sat on a chair where I could watch her. Even ill she was gloriously beautiful: Her skin was fine, her nose, eyebrows, lips, teeth, ears, hair . . . everything. And I began to doubt Dr. Martinet’s explanation of Annelies’s psychology. Could such a beautiful body house such a disordered mind? And I—an outsider, just an acquaintance—must I also accept some responsibility for her just because of her beauty? Creole beauty. How involved my life was becoming! The result of my own actions as a philogynist.

  “Mama!” uttered Annelies. Now her legs began to move.

  “Ann!”

  She opened her eyes and continued to gaze off into the faraway distance. From this moment on she was my patient; that’s what Dr. Martinet had said. I held back my laughter, understanding that I was now the doctor who must cure her.

  I took the milk from the table. I raised her head with my arm and poured a little milk into her mouth. She began to sip it and smacked her lips a little. Yes, she was beginning to regain consciousness. I gave her some more to drink. She began to swallow.

  “Ann, my Annelies, drink it all up,” I said and I gave her some more to drink.

  She took one swallow after another.

  Nyai entered carrying lunch for two people.

  “Why are you doing it yourself, Mama?”

  “It’s not that. No one else is allowed to come up here. So the doctor was right—she is beginning to wake up now.”

  “Almost, Mama.”

  “Yes, Minke, the doctor said only you can look after her now. It’s up to you,” and she went out again.

  Annelies opened her eyes again and began to look at me.

  “What’s wrong with you, Ann?”

  She didn’t answer, but just gazed at me. I put her head down on the pillow again. The beautiful shape of her nose pulled my hand over to stroke it. The ends of her hair were brown and her eyebrows were lush, as if they had been fertilized before she was born. And her eyelashes, so long and curly, made her eyes seem like a pair of morning stars in a clear sky, her countenance itself the clearest sky of all.

  Where else on this earth of mankind could one discover such perfect Creole beauty, such a beautifully harmonious form? God has created such a thing only once and only in this one body in front of me. I will never let go of you, Ann, whatever is going on inside you. I am ready to face whatever and whomever.

  “Ann, today,” I said to her, “the weather is beautiful. It is hotter than usual, but it’s fresh, not too humid.”

  The girl still just looked at me, her gaze focused on the tip of my nose. She still hadn’t spoken. Her eyes blinked so slowly. Yet her beauty was still profound, greater than all those things that have been made by man, richer than all the combined and individual meanings to be found in the treasuries of the languages. She was a gift from Allah, without equal, unique. And she was mine alone.

  “Arise and awaken, Flower of Surabaya! Do you not know? Alexander the Great, Napoleon, all would fall to their knees to gain your love. To touch your skin they would sacrifice their nations, their people. Awaken, My Flower, because the world is a lesser place without you,” and without knowing it I was kissing her on the lips, and then became fully conscious of what I was doing.

  The long breath she expelled blew over my face. Her lips smiled. Her eyes too. But she still could not speak. So I kept on with my chatter, like Solomon praising the virgins of Israel: chin, breasts, cheeks, legs, the look in her eyes, her eyes themselves, neck hair—everything, all of her. I stopped only after I heard:

  “Mas!”

  “Ann, my Annelies!” I said, cutting her off, “you’re better now. Come on, get up. Let’s walk. Come on, my goddess.”

  She began to move. Her hand waved to me. And I responded to that hand.

  “Let me carry you,” and I carried her. Yes, I carried her. And I wasn’t strong enough. What sort of body was this, incapable of even carrying a girl! I put her down. Her legs stepped forward, shaking; her body swayed. I supported her. To the devil with chairs, table, and bed. I took her to the window where a minute ago I had stood with Dr. Martinet and where he had appointed me her doctor. A vast panorama of fields opened up before us. And the sun had already begun to leave its midday position.

  “Look over there, Ann, the forest is the limit of our view. And the mountains, and the sky, and the earth. You see, Ann? Do you really see it all?”

  She nodded. The wind whistled as it launched a gusty attack from out of that great expanse of nature, and it felt as if it was being channeled into that one window. Annelies shuddered.

  “Are you cold, Ann?”

  “No.”

  “You should get some more sleep.”

  “I want to be close to you, like now, Mas. It was such a long time, and you still didn’t come.”

  “I’m here now, Ann.”

  “Don’t let go of me, Mas.”

  “You’re cold standing here.”

  “I’m warm enough now. The forest seems different somehow. And the wind too. And the mountains. The birds also.”

  “You’re well now, Ann. You’re beginning to be strong again.”

  “I don’t want to be ill. I’m not ill. I was only waiting for you to come.”

  I no longer felt ill either, Ann, had you wanted to know. Something made me turn and through a small opening in the door I saw Nyai and Dr. Martinet. They didn’t enter. Then the door closed again.

  13

  The school director excused my absence, which went over the period allowed in my doctor’s certificate. The greetings I passed on from Herbert de la Croix softened his attitude. For several days I worked hard to catch up on my studies. It was easy. My grandfather had taught me that if you believe you will be successful in all your studies, then you will be successful; if you think of all study as easy, all will be easy. Be afraid of no kind of study, because such fear is the original ignorance that will make you ignorant of everything.

  I followed his advice; I believed in the truth of his wise words. I never fell behind in my studies, even though, yes, even though I did not study as hard as the others. But now I really studied hard, to catch up on what I had missed during the last few weeks.

  A carriage and driver had been put aside by Mama especially for me. Night and day. And each time I left for school in my new vehicle I picked up May Marais to drop her off at her school in Simpang.

  Everything had changed. Especially, and most of all, myself. I now felt like a man of real substance as I sat in my luxury buggy in the middle of Surabaya’s traffic. It was easy to see too that my friends at school had also changed. Meaning: They seemed to be, and probably indeed were, distancing themselves from me. I interpreted all this as a sign of respect towards someone who has just scored a rise in his marks. It was possible I might have been wrong in this estimation of my position, so I looked upon it as provisional only. My teachers, now that I traveled by luxury carriage, seemed to treat me as someone they didn’t know but who was of equal status. This too was a provisional guess.

  I felt I was no longer the old Minke. My body was the same, but its contents and its perceptions were new. I no longer liked to joke. There was more to me now than that. I was more thoughtful, while my friends at school were still childish. I no longer wanted simply to float on the surface of problems—in every conversation and discussion I wanted to dive straight down to the bottom of every problem.

  See, even Robert Suurhof still didn’t want to approach me. He always moved away if we passed near each other. And the girls at the school avoided me too, as if I were the source of some plague.

  Several times the school director summoned me to get assurances that I had not already married, because a student must leave the school once he is married. I think it was Suurhof who was doing the talking. It could have been no one else. He alone knew what had happened. Eventually I found out for certain that my guess was not wrong. He’d spread rumors, inciting
my friends against me. (So my estimation of myself was wrong after all!). The looks directed at me were from people I felt I no longer knew.

  Everything had changed. Now, all around me at school, there was no enveloping aura of brightness, but only loneliness, a loneliness that called and summoned me to reflection.

  The only teacher who did not change was Miss Magda Peters, the Dutch language and literature teacher. She still hadn’t married. All over her exposed skin there were brown freckles. Her clear brown eyes were always sparkling. At first her appearance tended to make you laugh. She struck me as looking like a white, female monkey with an ever-surprised face. But then as we listened to her first lesson, we all became quiet. The impression of a white, female monkey disappeared. Her freckles vanished. A feeling of respect replaced all this. And here are her words, when, in her first class since traveling down from the Netherlands to the Indies, she said:

  “Good afternoon, students of H.B.S. Surabaya. My name is Magda Peters, your new teacher for Dutch language and literature. Please put up your hands if you don’t like literature.”

  Almost everyone put up their hands. There were even some who stood up to show their antipathy.

  “Excellent. Thank you. Please sit down everybody. Even the people of the most primitive society—in the heart of Africa, for example—who have never sat in school, never seen a book in their life, who don’t know how to read and write, are still able to love literature, even if only oral literature. Isn’t it an outstanding achievement that after at least ten years in school, H.B.S. students still do not like literature and language? Yes, it’s truly outstanding.”

  No one laughed and there was nothing to laugh at. Total silence.

  “You will all advance through school. Perhaps you will obtain a string of all sorts of degrees, but without a love of literature, you’ll remain just a lot of clever animals. Most of you have never seen the Netherlands. I was born and brought up there. So I know that every Hollander loves and reads Dutch literature. People love and honor the paintings of van Gogh, Rembrandt—our own and the world’s great painters. They who do not love and honor them and who do not learn to love and honor them are considered to be uncivilized. Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language. Put up your hand if you don’t understand.”

  To make sure we weren’t classified as uncivilized, from that moment on we all knew we would have to concentrate on the teacher’s every word. She had us in the palm of her hand.

  And Miss Magda Peters’s attitude towards me never changed. She must surely have heard the rumors whispered by Robert Suurhof.

  It was generally Magda Peters who opened the Saturday afternoon discussions. She did this not just happily but with great enthusiasm. Every student could put forward any topic—general or personal, local news or international developments—as the afternoon’s subject. If no student had anything to put forward, only then would the teacher choose the subject. Students were not obliged to attend if they weren’t interested. The most popular discussions were those led by Magda Peters. No one wanted to miss out, and so the discussion had to be held in the hall with the students sitting on the floor. Only the speaker would stand. The teachers also sat on the floor. The teacher leading the discussion would also stand. On those occasions, one could see that freckles covered all of Magda Peters’s body.

  In order to place my situation and my attitudes in context, so that you may judge the truth or otherwise of my views about myself and my surroundings, I think it is proper that I tell something about my experiences in those discussions.

  Once I asked about the Association Theory of Dr. Snouck Hurgronje. Magda Peters asked for comments from the other students. No one knew anything about it. She then looked politely at the teachers but none showed signs of wanting to respond. Then she herself spoke.

  “I am not sure what it means, either. Perhaps it is something that has arisen in colonial political life. Do you know what colonial politics are?” No one answered. “It is a system or power structure to consolidate hegemony over occupied countries and peoples. Someone who agrees with such a system is a colonialist, who not only agrees with it, but also legitimatizes it, carries it out and defends it. The basic issue in all this is the one of earning a living. None of this need yet attract your attention, students. You’re all still too young. If such matters were to become the subject of a literary work, it would be much more interesting, as in the case of Multatuli’s works, which have been discussed with you in class several times. Try, Minke, to explain Dr. Snouck Hurgronje’s Association Theory.”

  I explained what I’d heard from Miriam de la Croix and my own views on it.

  “Stop!” said Magda Peters. “Such subjects may not yet be discussed at H.B.S. school. It’s up to you if you want to discuss them outside school. Such matters are the affair of the Queen, the Netherlands government, the governor-general and the Netherlands Indies government. If you have a desire to find out more, it’s best you do so outside school. Because none of you have a topic for today’s discussion, I will choose one myself.

  “Just recently I came across an article about life in the Indies. Too few people write about this. Precisely because of that, it attracted my attention. Maybe the writer is Indo-European. Maybe, I say. Perhaps some of you may already have read it? It’s called: “Uit het Schoone Leven van een Mooie Boerin—The Beautiful Life of a Beautiful Peasant Girl.” The writer’s name is Max Tollenaar.”

  Several hands shot up. I kept a straight face. Max Tollenaar was my pen name. The original title had been changed and the editor had made some alterations to the text, not all of which I agreed with.

  Miss Magda Peters began to read it out, placing stresses and pauses in such a way that her voice sang and the essay sounded more beautiful than I had originally intended. Yes, you could say it sounded like a long poem, dense with emotion. Virtually no one even blinked while listening. And after the reading was over and people were freed from its hold over them, at last they were able to let go of their breath.

  “It’s a pity that this story was published in the Indies, about the Indies, about the people and society of the Indies. As a result no one has discussed it in class. All right, one of you come forward and give us your reactions and comments on this story, perhaps even a critique.”

  Robert Suurhof immediately came forward. He stood there, legs apart, feet nailed to the floor, as if he were scared the wind would blow him over. All eyes were directed at him. Only I hesitated.

  He looked around at his friends first. Perhaps he was looking for moral support.

  “I’ve read four pieces by Max Tollenaar over recent weeks. They have all been about the same thing and have been colored by the same emotions. The writer is in the power of some force outside himself. Yes, yes, the writer is suffering some drastic fever. The writings are the long deliriums of someone who has lost all control over himself, who has lost all touch with reality. I don’t know who Max Tollenaar is. But I can make a good guess, because I am the only witness to the events that he writes about.

  “Miss Magda Peters, I don’t think we should be talking about such writings in a school discussion,” he continued. “It only makes us all dirty, miss. If I’m not mistaken—and I’m certain I’m not—the writer of this doesn’t even have a family name.”

  He was quiet for a moment, glancing around at all the students in whom he was building up such tension. He raised his chin. His eyes shone victoriously. He was going to let go one more shot.

  Miss Magda Peters looked taken aback. Her eyes were blinking rapidly.

  I alone knew what Robert Suurhof was up to: to revenge himself upon me. So I began to understand better: It was he who wanted Annelies. There could be no reason other than jealousy for his hatred and his public insults to me. Yes, it was Robert who desired to possess Annelies. He took me with him that day to make himself look good, and so I could be a witness. Why me? Because I was a Native. Upper-class European ladies used to take a monkey with them everywh
ere so they would appear more beautiful in comparison. He took me. It was Suurhof’s monkey that won Annelies’s heart.

  “The person in question, miss,” Suurhof resumed, “is not even an Indo. He is lower than an Indo, than someone whose father refused to acknowledge him. He is an Inlander, a Native who has smuggled himself in through the cracks of European civilization.”

  He bowed to pay respect to Magda Peters and then to the other teachers present, and then sat down anxiously on the floor.

  “Students, Robert Suurhof has just given us his opinion on the author of this story; an author whose identity he alone knows. What I had hoped for was an opinion about the story itself. Very well. Who do you reckon is the author?”

  All the students looked around at each other. Then all looks were directed towards their friends who were neither Pure nor those who looked Mixed-Blood, but towards those who looked Native, as if underlining Suurhof’s words. They all bowed down their heads.

  I knew Suurhof’s face was pointed towards me. The others followed his example. No, said my heart, no, don’t be afraid. To the devil with all this; if need be, I can leave this school. If necessary, right now.

  Suurhof stood up again. He said briefly:

  “The author is among us now.”

  It seemed his whisperings had spread throughout the school. Now every face was directed towards me. I looked straight at Suurhof. Victory shone from his eyes.

  “Who is it, Suurhof?” asked Miss Magda Peters.

  With Caesar’s forefinger, he pointed at me.

  “Minke!”

  Magda Peters took a handkerchief from her bag and wiped her neck, then her two hands. She didn’t know what to do. She turned for a moment towards the row of seated teachers, then at me, then at the students seated upon the floor. Then she walked over to the teachers and the director, who also happened to be present. She gave a little nod, returned to the middle of the meeting, and made a path through the students, heading straight towards me.