Max Havelaar 1732 Studios

Dutch · The Novel

Hoofdstuk 12

Chapter 12

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  1. 1

    TWELFTH CHAPTER

    TWAALFDEtwelfthtwaalfde · ordinal adjectivemodifies HOOFDSTUK
    HOOFDSTUKchapterhoofdstuk · noun, neuter, singularhead of title
  2. 2

    "Dearest Max," said Tine, "our dessert is so meagre. Couldn't you ... you know ..."

  3. 3

    Madame Geoffrin?

  4. 4

    "Tell us something more, instead of pastry?"

  5. 5

    What the devil, I'm hoarse.

  6. 6

    It's Verbrugge's turn.

  7. 7

    "Yes, Mr. Verbrugge!"

  8. 8

    "Do relieve Max a little," Madame Havelaar requested.

  9. 9

    Verbrugge thought for a moment, and began:

  10. 10

    "There was once a man who stole a turkey ..."

  11. 11

    "Oh, you rascal," cried Havelaar, "you got that from Padang!"

  12. 12

    And how does it go on?

  13. 13

    "It's finished."

  14. 14

    Who knows the end of that tale?

  15. 15

    "Why, I do! I ate it up, together with ... someone."

  16. 16

    Do you know why I was suspended at Padang?

  17. 17

    "They said there was a deficit in your treasury at Natal," Verbrugge resumed.

  18. 18

    "This was not altogether untrue, yet neither was it true."

  19. 19

    At Natal, for all manner of reasons, I had been quite careless in keeping my financial accounts, on which a good many objections could indeed be raised.

  20. 20

    But this happened so often in those days! The conditions in the north of Sumatra were, shortly after the taking of Baros, Tapus and Singkel, so confused, everything was so unsettled, that one could not hold it against a young man — who would sooner sit on horseback than count money or keep ledgers — that things did not run as neatly and methodically as one might demand of an Amsterdam bookkeeper who has nothing else to do.

  21. 21

    The Battak lands were in turmoil, and you know, Verbrugge, how everything that happens among the Battaks always reacts upon the Natal district.

  22. 22

    At night I slept fully dressed, so as to be ready at hand quickly, which was indeed often necessary.

  23. 23

    Besides, there was the danger — some time before my arrival a plot had been uncovered to murder my predecessor and raise a revolt — danger has something attractive about it, especially when one is only two-and-twenty years old. And that attraction can sometimes make a man unfit for desk-work, or for the stiff exactitude required for the sound management of money matters.

  24. 24

    Moreover, I had all sorts of foolish notions in my head ...

  25. 25

    "Traoessa?" Madame Havelaar called to a servant.

  26. 26

    "What's not needed?"

  27. 27

    "I had said to get something more ready in the kitchen ... an omelette or something of the sort."

  28. 28

    "Ah!"

  29. 29

    And now it's no longer needed, just as I'm beginning on my foolish notions? You're being naughty, Tine! It's all the same to me, but these gentlemen have a vote too.

  30. 30

    Verbrugge, what do you choose, your share of the omelette or the story?

  31. 31

    "That is a difficult position for a polite man," said Verbrugge.

  32. 32

    "And I too would rather not choose," Duclari added, "for what is at stake here is a verdict between the master and the mistress, and: entre l'écorce et le bois, il ne faut pas mettre le doigt."

  33. 33

    "I shall help you, gentlemen, the omelette is ..."

  34. 34

    "Madame," said the very courteous Duclari, "the omelette will surely be worth at least as much as ..."

  35. 35

    "As the story? Certainly, if it were worth anything!"

  36. 36

    But there is an obstacle ...

  37. 37

    "I'll wager there's no sugar in the house yet," cried Verbrugge.

  38. 38

    Oh, do send to me for whatever you need! — Sugar there is ... from Madame Slotering.

  39. 39

    No, that is not where it falters.

  40. 40

    If the omelette were otherwise good, that would be no obstacle, but ...

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    "How so, Madame, has it fallen into the fire?"

  42. 42

    "I wish it had!"

  43. 43

    No, it cannot fall into the fire. It is ...

  44. 44

    "But, Tine," cried Havelaar, "what on earth is it, then?"

  45. 45

    "It is imponderable, Max, as if your women at Arles ... had to be there!"

  46. 46

    I have no omelette ... I have nothing left!

  47. 47

    "Then, in heaven's name, the story!" sighed Duclari with comic despair.

  48. 48

    "But coffee we have," cried Tine.

  49. 49

    "Good!"

  50. 50

    "Coffee in the front gallery, and let us call Madame Slotering and the girls to join us," said Havelaar, whereupon the little company moved outside.

  51. 51

    "I suspect she will decline, Max! you know that she too would rather not eat with us, and I cannot blame her."

  52. 52

    "She will have heard that I tell stories," said Havelaar, "and that has frightened her off."

  53. 53

    "Why no, Max, that would not trouble her: she understands no Dutch."

  54. 54

    No, she has told me that she wishes to keep running her own household, and this I understand very well.

  55. 55

    Do you still remember how you translated my name?

  56. 56

    "E.H.V.W: one's own hearth is worth much."

  57. 57

    "Just so!"

  58. 58

    She is quite right.

  59. 59

    Besides, she strikes me as rather shy of people.

  60. 60

    Imagine, she has the attendants drive off all strangers who set foot on the grounds ...

  61. 61

    "I ask for the story or the omelette," said Duclari.

  62. 62

    "So do I!" cried Verbrugge.

  63. 63

    Evasions will not be accepted.

  64. 64

    We have a claim to a full meal, and so I demand the history of the turkey.

  65. 65

    "That I have already given you," said Havelaar. "I had stolen the bird from General Vandamme, and ate it up ... with someone."

  66. 66

    "Before that 'someone' ascended to heaven," said Tine archly.

  67. 67

    "No, that's cheating," cried Duclari. "We must know why you ... made off with that turkey."

  68. 68

    "Why, because I was in want, and that was the fault of General Vandamme, who had suspended me."

  69. 69

    "If I learn no more of it than that, I'll bring an omelette myself next time," complained Verbrugge.

  70. 70

    "Believe me, there was nothing more behind it than just that."

  71. 71

    He had a great many turkeys, and I had nothing.

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    They were driving the creatures past my door ... I took one, and said to the man who fancied he was guarding them: "tell the general that I, Max Havelaar, am taking this turkey because I want to eat."

  73. 73

    "And then that epigram?"

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    "Has Verbrugge spoken to you about that?"

  75. 75

    "Yes."

  76. 76

    "That had nothing to do with the turkey."

  77. 77

    I composed that thing because he suspended so many officials. At Padang there were certainly seven or eight whom he had removed from their posts with more or less justice, and many among them deserved it far less than I did.

  78. 78

    The assistant resident of Padang himself had been suspended, and indeed for a reason which, I believe, was wholly other than the one stated in the decree.

  79. 79

    I am willing to tell you it, though I cannot vouch that I know everything exactly, and only repeat what was held to be true in the Chinese church at Padang, and what — especially in view of the general's known character — may well have been true.

  80. 80

    He had, you must know, married his wife to win a wager, and a cask of wine along with it.

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    So he often went out in the evenings, to ... roam about everywhere.

  82. 82

    The supernumerary Valkenaar is said once, in a little street near the girls' orphanage, to have respected his incognito so very strictly that the general gave him a thrashing, just like any common ruffian off the street.

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    Not far from there lived Miss X.

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    A rumour ran that this Miss had given life to a child, which ... had vanished.

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    The assistant resident, as head of the police, was bound — and indeed of a mind — to look into the matter, and seems to have said something of this intention at a whist party at the general's.

  86. 86

    But see, the very next day he receives the order to betake himself to a certain district, whose governing controller had been suspended from his administration on account of real or supposed dishonesty, in order to investigate certain affairs in loco and "to render a report" thereon. The assistant resident was indeed astonished that something should be laid upon him that did not concern his district at all; yet since, strictly taken, he could regard this commission as an honourable distinction, and since he stood on very friendly terms with the general, so that he had no cause to suspect a trap, he acquiesced in this mission, and set off — I will choose to have forgotten where — to do what he had been ordered.

  87. 87

    After some time he returns, and presents a report that did not sound unfavourable for that controller.

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    But see, during that time it had been discovered at Padang, by the public — that is: by no one and everyone — that the official had been suspended only to create an occasion for removing the assistant resident from the place, so as to forestall his intended inquiry into the disappearance of that child, or at least to put it off to a moment when the matter would be harder to clear up.

  89. 89

    I repeat now that I do not know whether this was true; yet from the knowledge I myself later gained of General Vandamme, this reading of the affair seems credible to me. At Padang there was no one who did not judge him — given the depth to which his morality had sunk — capable of such a thing.

  90. 90

    Most people granted him but one good quality, that of fearlessness in danger; and if I, who have seen him in danger, were of the opinion that he was, après tout, a brave man, that alone would move me not to tell you this history. It is true, he had had much "sabring" done on Sumatra; yet whoever had seen certain events from close up felt inclined to deduct something from his bravery, and, however strange it may seem, I believe he owed his soldierly renown in great part to that craving for contrast which more or less animates us all.

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    One gladly says: it is true that Peter or Paul is this, this or that, but ... that he is, that one must grant him!

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    And one can never be so sure of being praised as when one has some very conspicuous defect.

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    You, Verbrugge, are drunk every day ...

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    "I?" asked Verbrugge, who was a model of temperance.

  95. 95

    "Yes, I am making you drunk now, every day! you forget yourself so far that Duclari trips over you in the gallery of an evening."

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    He will find this disagreeable, but at once he will recall having seen something good in you that had never caught his eye before.

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    And when I then come in, and find you so badly ... horizontal, he will lay his hand on my arm and exclaim — "oh, do believe that he is otherwise such a fine, decent, capable young fellow!"

  98. 98

    "That I say of Verbrugge anyway," cried Duclari, "even when he's vertical."

  99. 99

    "Not with that fire and that conviction!"

  100. 100

    Recall just how often one hears it said: "oh, if that man would only mind his affairs, that would be somebody! But ..." — and then follows the argument as to how he does not mind his affairs and so is nobody.

  101. 101

    I believe I know the reason for this.

  102. 102

    Of the dead too one always hears of good qualities that we had never noticed before.

  103. 103

    The cause will surely be that they stand in no one's way.

  104. 104

    All people are more or less rivals. We would gladly set every other person wholly and in all things beneath us.

  105. 105

    To utter this, however, is forbidden by good manners, and even by self-interest, for very soon no one would believe us, even if we asserted something true.

  106. 106

    A roundabout way must therefore be sought, and here is how we do it.

  107. 107

    When you, Duclari, say: "Lieutenant Gaiters is a good soldier, truly he is a good soldier, I cannot tell you enough what a good soldier Lieutenant Gaiters is ... but a theorist he is not ..." — Haven't you said something like that, Duclari?

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    "I have never known or seen any Lieutenant Gaiters?"

  109. 109

    "Good, then invent one, and say that of him."

  110. 110

    "Why, I invent him, and say it."

  111. 111

    "Do you know what you have just said?"

  112. 112

    You have said that you, Duclari, are à cheval upon theory.

  113. 113

    I am not a hair better.

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    Believe me, we do wrong to grow so angry at someone who is utterly bad, for the good among us stand so near the bad!

  115. 115

    Let perfection be called nought, and let a hundred degrees stand for bad — how wrongly, then, do we act, we who bob about between eight-and-ninety and nine-and-ninety, in crying haro upon someone who stands at a hundred-and-one!

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    And still I believe that many fail to reach that hundredth degree only for want of good qualities, of courage, for instance, to be wholly what one is.

  117. 117

    "At how many degrees do I stand, Max?"

  118. 118

    "I need a magnifying glass for the fractions, Tine."

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    "I protest," cried Verbrugge — "no, Madame, not against your nearness to nought! — no, but officials have been suspended, a child is missing, a general stands accused ... I ask: la pièce!"

  120. 120

    "Tine, do see to it that next time there's something in the house!"

  121. 121

    No, Verbrugge, you shan't have la pièce until I've ridden my hobby-horse around the matter of contrasts a little longer.

  122. 122

    I was saying that every man sees in his fellow man a kind of competitor.

  123. 123

    One may not always be finding fault--how that would catch the eye!--and so we gladly exalt some good quality beyond measure, in order to throw into relief the bad quality whose exposure is really our only aim, without laying ourselves open to the appearance of partiality.

  124. 124

    When someone complains to me because I have said, "his daughter is very beautiful, but he is a thief," I answer, "how can you be so angry about that! Why, I said your daughter is a charming girl!" You see, that wins twice over!

  125. 125

    We are both grocers; I draw off his customers, who will not buy raisins from a thief, and at the same time people say of me that I am a good fellow, because I praise a competitor's daughter.

  126. 126

    --No, it is not quite so bad as that, said Duclari, that is rather strong!

  127. 127

    --It strikes you so just now because I have made the comparison a little too short and abrupt.

  128. 128

    We must imagine that "he is a thief" somewhat softened and wrapped about.

  129. 129

    The drift of the parable holds true. When we are obliged to grant someone certain qualities that lay claim to esteem, respect, or awe, then it pleases us to discover, alongside those qualities, something that relieves us in part or in whole of the tribute we owe.

  130. 130

    "Before such a poet one would bow the head, but ... he beats his wife!" You see, then we are glad to use the bruises on that woman as a pretext for keeping our own head upright, and in the end it even gives us pleasure that he beats the creature, which is otherwise a very ugly thing.

  131. 131

    As soon as we are forced to acknowledge that someone possesses qualities making him worthy of the honor of a pedestal, as soon as we can no longer deny his claim to it without passing for ignorant, unfeeling, or envious ... then at last we say, "very well, set him up there!" But even while we are hoisting him up, and while he himself still imagines we stand enraptured by his excellence, we have already tied the knot in the lasso that is to serve, at the first favorable opportunity, for hauling him down again.

  132. 132

    The more turnover there is among the occupants of the pedestals, the greater the chance for others to come up for their turn as well; and this is so true that, out of habit and for practice--just like a hunter who shoots at crows he leaves lying where they fall--we gladly pull down even those statues whose pedestal we ourselves can never hope to mount.

  133. 133

    Kappelman, who feeds on sauerkraut and small beer, seeks his own elevation in the complaint, "Alexander was not great ... he was intemperate," though there is not the slightest chance that Kappelman will ever rival Alexander in the conquest of the world.

  134. 134

    Be that as it may, I am certain that many would never have hit upon the idea of holding General Vandamme so brave a man, had his bravery not been able to serve as a vehicle for the rider always tacked on beside it: "but ... his morals!" And, equally, that this immorality would not have been taken so gravely by the many who were themselves none too unimpeachable on that score, had they not had need of it to balance against his fame for courage, which kept some of them from sleeping.

  135. 135

    One quality he did truly possess in high degree: will.

  136. 136

    What he set himself to do had to be done, and usually was done.

  137. 137

    And yet--you see how I have the contrast at hand again at once?--and yet in his choice of means he was also a little ... free, and, as van der Palm said of Napoleon--wrongly, I believe--"the barriers of morality never stood in his way!" Now, in that case it is certainly easier to reach one's goal than when one holds oneself genuinely bound by such things.

  138. 138

    The assistant-resident of Padang, then, had brought in a report that read favorably for that suspended controller, whose suspension thereby took on a tinge of injustice.

  139. 139

    The Padang gossip ran on: people still kept talking about the vanished child. The assistant-resident felt himself called once more to take up the matter, but before he could bring anything to light he received a decree by which the Governor of Sumatra's West Coast suspended him "on the ground of dishonesty in office." It was put about that, out of friendship or pity, he had set the controller's case in a false light, against his own better knowledge.

  140. 140

    I have not read the papers concerning this affair, but I know that the assistant-resident stood in no sort of relation whatever to that controller, which already appears from the very fact that he was the one chosen to investigate the matter.

  141. 141

    I know further that he was an honorable person, and that the Government held him to be so, which appears from the annulment of the suspension once the affair had been investigated somewhere other than on Sumatra's West Coast.

  142. 142

    That controller, too, was afterward fully restored to his honor.

  143. 143

    It was their suspension that suggested to me the epigram which I had laid on the general's breakfast table by someone who was then in his service, and earlier in mine.

  144. 144

    The walking edict of suspension that suspending rules us all, Jan Suspend-the-lot, our Governor, the werewolf of our days, Would gladly have suspended his own conscience with a will... Had it not long since, and for good, been finally dismissed away.

  145. 145

    --Forgive me, Mr. Havelaar, I find that sort of thing was hardly fitting, said Duclari.

  146. 146

    --So do I ... but I had to do something!

  147. 147

    Imagine that I had no money, received nothing, and feared from day to day to starve to death, which indeed came near enough to happening. I had few connections or none at all in Padang, and besides, I had written to the general that he would be answerable if I perished of want, and that I would accept help from no one.

  148. 148

    In the interior there were those who, hearing how matters stood with me, invited me to come and stay with them, but the general forbade that anyone should give me a pass to go there.

  149. 149

    Nor was I allowed to leave for Java.

  150. 150

    Everywhere else I could have saved myself, and perhaps there too, had people not been so afraid of the powerful general.

  151. 151

    It seemed to be his plan to let me starve.

  152. 152

    That lasted nine months!

  153. 153

    --And how did you keep yourself alive so long?

  154. 154

    Or did the general have a great many turkeys!

  155. 155

    --Oh yes!

  156. 156

    But that did not help me ... a thing like that you do only once, do you not?

  157. 157

    What did I get up to during that time?

  158. 158

    Oh ... I made verses, wrote comedies ... and so forth.

  159. 159

    --And was there rice to be bought in Padang for that?

  160. 160

    --No, but I did not ask for it with those, either.

  161. 161

    I would rather not say how I lived.

  162. 162

    Tine pressed his hand; she knew.

  163. 163

    --I have read a few lines that you are said to have written in those days on the back of a receipt, said Verbrugge.

  164. 164

    --I know which you mean.

  165. 165

    Those lines sketch my situation.

  166. 166

    In those days there was a periodical, the Copyist, to which I was a subscriber.

  167. 167

    It was under the patronage of the Government--the editor was an official at the General Secretariat--and for this reason the subscription moneys were paid into the public treasury.

  168. 168

    I was offered a receipt for twenty guilders.

  169. 169

    Now since this money had to be handled at the Governor's offices, and the receipt therefore, if it went unpaid, had to pass through those offices in order to be sent back to Batavia, I made use of that opportunity to protest my poverty on the back of the document:

  170. 170

    Twenty florins... what a treasure!

  171. 171

    Farewell, literature; farewell, Copyist, farewell!

  172. 172

    Too wretched a fate: I die of hunger, of cold, of boredom and of grief — twenty florins would feed me for two months!

  173. 173

    If I had twenty florins I'd be better shod, better fed, better lodged; I'd live well...

  174. 174

    One must live above all, even a life of misery: it is crime that brings shame, and not poverty!

  175. 175

    But when I came later to Batavia to bring my twenty guilders to the editorial office of the Copyist, I owed nothing.

  176. 176

    It seems the general himself paid that money for me, so as not to be compelled to send that illustrated receipt back to Batavia.

  177. 177

    --But what did he do after the ... after the ... taking of that turkey? It was, after all ... a theft!

  178. 178

    And after that epigram?

  179. 179

    --He punished me dreadfully!

  180. 180

    Had he put me on trial for those matters as guilty of disrespect toward the Governor of Sumatra's West Coast--which in those days, with a little goodwill, might have been construed as an "attempt to undermine Dutch authority, and incitement to rebellion"--or for "theft on the public highway," he would have shown himself a kind-hearted man.

  181. 181

    But no, he punished me better than that ... horribly!

  182. 182

    To the man who had to keep watch over the turkeys, he gave orders to choose a different path from then on. And my epigram ... ah, that is even worse — it said nothing, and did nothing!

  183. 183

    You see, this was cruel!

  184. 184

    He would not grant me the least martyr's air; I was not made interesting by persecution, nor allowed to be unhappy through far-reaching wit! O, Duclari ... o, Verbrugge ... it was enough to make one sick once and for all of epigrams and turkeys!

  185. 185

    So little encouragement snuffs out the flame of genius down to the last spark ... myself included: I have never done it again!

  186. 186

    THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

The particulars

The text
Max Havelaar, Multatuli. The Novel.
Translation
Public-domain Dutch (Multatuli, d. 1887; published 1860). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
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Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.