The banquet took place in the open air. The mood was calm. Everyone sat on the ground. Some dishes were served on a banana leaf, others in small bowls. The men were talking in muffled voices.
High above us was the firmament with millions of stars. Torches crackled and smoldered. The lights of fireflies were glowing in the tree branches, and every now and then a big beetle would soar through the air with a rattling swirl. As one of the guests of honor, my father sat at some distance away, having first entrusted me to one of the foremen. I sat in the grass next to this mandur with my legs crossed under me, which at the time was not a problem for me. Unfortunately, I later lost this useful skill.
It was all very exciting, and I was looking around inquisitively to see and experience as much as I possibly could. I really felt senang, very content. But to my great shock I suddenly saw a huge pool of blood no more than two meters away from me, at its center the enormous head of a water buffalo that had been sacrificed shortly before. The silky eyes were wide open, and the head rested diagonally on one of the strong horns. I shuddered and involuntarily leaned against the mandur’s muscular thigh. Through the fabric of his sarong I felt the reassuring warmth of his skin. If I believed in God, I would want Him to have a warm thigh like that.
A few weeks later we went up into the cool mountains again for several days. Early in the evening we usually sat on the bungalow’s large wooden balcony. My parents would read papers and magazines or listen to the radio. Carolien and I played Sorry or made drawings with colored pencils by Caran d’Ache. I often sharpened them with a pencil sharpener because of the delicious wood scent it created.
High up in the sky, lighted from below by the setting sun, clusters of kalongs, large bats also known as flying dogs, were moving off to their feeding places. It was cool, and the screeching of the monkeys in the trees farther on only accentuated the silence. Although there were almost no mosquitoes at this elevation—we slept without netting and during the night would pull up a light blanket—on the floor a dot of the obat nyamuk glowed softly, a small spiral of some green substance that, smoldering slowly, spreads an incense-like smell, chasing away the mosquitoes.
Suddenly I heard my father say “goddamn” in a half-whisper, while he gazed intently at my uncle who’d just stopped by. The newscaster of the NIROM, the Netherlands Indies Radio Broadcasting Network, had just read the announcement of the sinking caused by Japanese torpedoes in the South China Sea of the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, which were supposed to be protecting Singapore. It was 10 December 1941. The Dutch East Indies was wide open to invasion by the Japanese fleet.
The footsteps of Mars rang loud and clear.
Note
3. Buitenzorg is currently known as Bogor.
Chapter 4
BATAVIA
In 1941 political and military tensions in the Pacific were mounting. In order to cope with every contingency, early in the year the entire governmental apparatus of the Indies was centralized in Batavia.4 We, too, had moved there. We lived on the Sunda Road, a street in Kebon Sirih, the European district just south of the Koningsplein. Batavia was a large city. We were living in a freestanding one-story house surrounded by a garden, modern for its time, as were all the homes in that neighborhood. The house wasn’t big, but spacious enough for a family with two children. Facing the street was the terrace where we had tea late in the afternoon and where in the evening company was received. Across from us on the other side of the street was the athletic field of a school. This wasn’t the school I attended; I went to the Jan Ligthart School, a few streets further down. The back of the house had an airy covered walkway that led to the kitchen, the bathroom, and the gudangs. And all the way in the back of the yard, beyond the garage, stood the outbuildings. Of course, we had four or five local servants, as did everyone else. They occupied a series of small rooms in the outbuildings. Some had relatives or immediate family members with them. My parents didn’t know who exactly was living there, but I don’t think it concerned them very much.
The servants moved through the house and across the grounds without a sound. They were always solicitous and patient with us. The maid wore her black hair in a large knot. Her clothes were freshly laundered and smelled of starch in the morning. I don’t remember her ever punishing me or my sister or ever being irritable. We spoke Dutch with her. When we’d ask: “How old are you?” she would say: “I’m not old and I’m not young; I have always been here.”
My parents were accustomed to hiring servants who understood Dutch and were able to speak it to some degree as well. I don’t know what their motivation for this was, but I sorely regret it because it prevented us from learning any of the country’s languages. Even our marketplace Malay was clumsy. To this day I’m still jealous of cousins of mine who grew up on a plantation and thus learned to speak Sundanese or Javanese from their indigenous playmates.
The correct wage for servants was a perpetual topic of conversation among the European adults. It fluctuated between ten and twenty guilders a month, plus room and board. To say anything meaningful about its level today is rather pointless except for the following, perhaps. On Sunday koki, the cook, would customarily make rijsttafel for us. My mother would send her to the pasar in the morning to get the necessary ingredients. The koki would buy a chicken, eggs, different vegetables, fish, peppers, oil, a few pounds of rice, and coconuts. For these purchases my mother would give her the amount of one Dutch guilder, which was enough for everything on the shopping list. If koki had a few cents left, she was allowed to keep those. You can rest assured that she’d bargain the vendors down to almost nothing.
In the kitchen the cooking was done on charcoal, arang, in braziers, anglos, solid cast-iron chafing dishes. Early in the afternoon koki sorted, washed, and cut up the vegetables and chopped the meat. She spoke quietly with her assistant, a little mouse of a girl who was always in her vicinity. And then you’d hear the sound of the rhythmic kipas, the bamboo fan, and a smell of charcoal would waft around and prickle your nose, while from time to time small crackling sparks whizzed by.
The water well was in the backyard, near the servants’ quarters. Toward the end of the afternoon both men and women would bathe there. One time I was sitting with one of the boys next door on the wall that encircled the water supply. We were watching the people bathing. They crouched down so we wouldn’t be able to see their nudity and waited silently and patiently until we left. I’m still ashamed of this because they were too polite (or afraid) to chase us away.
It happened only once. Sastro, the driver, an even-tempered man of about forty who was highly esteemed by my parents, most respectfully asked my father for an appointment, where he spoke about my behavior at the water well. My father, who himself had been raised in the Indies, always approached the native kids, as he referred to them, with respect, something that was not self-evident for most Europeans. And he completely understood. In Sastro’s presence I was given a harsh and well-deserved dressing down.
Like all adults, my parents used to retire in the early afternoon heat for a siesta. That was when the garden became our territory. Actually, the children were also supposed to rest, but freedom called, and the heat didn’t bother us. Nobody paid any attention to us, which was most agreeable. We’d make sure not to make any noise and played in the yard in our loose flannel pajamas.
Stretched out to their full length, the cats—I don’t know how many of them used to roam in and around our house—lay dozing on the cool tiles in the shade or sleeping beneath the bushes. Keenly focused on anything that moved, their playful kittens were chasing butterflies or tapping at beetles and spinning them around.
The nameless crippled duck that had just appeared in our yard one day all tattered, his scrawny body full of messy quills, and without any respect for anything or anyone had chosen our place as his residence,