Hoofdstuk 15

Havelaar's predecessor, who indeed wished to do good yet at the same time seemed to have somewhat feared the high displeasure of the Government--the man had many children and no fortune--had therefore preferred to speak with the resident about what he himself called grave abuses, rather than to name them outright in an official report.

He knew that a resident does not gladly receive a written report, one that stays lying in his archive and may later serve as proof that he had been alerted in good time to this or that wrong, whereas a verbal communication leaves him, without danger, the choice between acting or not acting on a complaint.

Such verbal communications usually had as their consequence an interview with the Regent, who naturally denied everything and insisted on proof.

Then the people who had had the audacity to complain were summoned, and, crawling before the feet of the Adhipatti, they begged for pardon.

"No, that buffalo had not been taken from them for nothing; they fully believed that a double price would be paid for it." "No, they had not been called away from their fields to labour without pay in the Regent's Sawahs; they knew very well that the Adhipatti would have rewarded them handsomely afterward." "They had brought their accusation in a moment of unfounded resentment ... they had been out of their minds, and begged that they might be punished for such grave disrespect!"

The resident then knew well enough what to think of that withdrawal of the accusation, but the withdrawal gave him nonetheless a fine opportunity to uphold the Regent in office and honour, while he himself was spared the unpleasant task of "troubling" the Government with an unfavourable report.

The reckless accusers were punished with strokes of the rattan, the Regent had triumphed, and the resident returned to the chief town with the agreeable consciousness of having once again "managed" the matter so well.

But what was the assistant-resident now to do, if on the following day yet other complainants presented themselves to him?

Or--and this happened often--if the very same complainants returned and withdrew their withdrawal?

Was he again to set that matter down in his notes, in order again to speak of it with the resident, in order again to watch the same comedy played out, all at the risk of passing in the end for a man who--stupid and malicious, then--kept bringing forward accusations that had repeatedly to be dismissed as groundless?

What was to become of the so necessary friendly relation between the foremost Native Chief and the first European official, if the latter kept seeming to give a hearing to false accusations against that Chief?

And above all, what became of those poor complainants after they had returned to their village, back under the power of the district- or village-chief whom they had accused as the executor of the Regent's arbitrary will? What became of those complainants?

Whoever could flee, fled.

That was why so many men of Bantam roamed about in the neighbouring provinces!

That was why so many inhabitants of Lebak were among the insurgents in the Lampong districts!

That was why Havelaar had asked, in his address to the Chiefs: "how is it that so many houses stand empty in the villages, and why do so many prefer the shade of the forests elsewhere to the coolness of the woods of Bantan-Kidoel?"

But not everyone could flee.

The man whose corpse drifted down the river in the morning, after he had, the previous evening, in secret, hesitant, fearful, asked for a hearing with the assistant-resident ... he had no further need of flight.

Perhaps it might even be reckoned an act of mercy to withdraw him, by an instantaneous death, from some further span of life.

He was spared the ill-treatment that awaited him on his return to his village, and the rattan-blows that are the punishment for all who can imagine, even for a moment, that they are not a beast, not some lifeless block of wood or stone. The punishment of one who, in a fit of folly, had believed that there was Justice in the land, and that the assistant-resident had the will, and the power, to uphold that Justice ...

Was it not indeed better to prevent that man from returning the next day to the assistant-resident--as the latter had sent word in the evening for him to do--and to smother his complaint in the yellow water of the Tjioedjoeng, which would carry him gently down to its mouth, accustomed as it was to being the bearer of those brotherly tokens of greeting from the sharks of the interior to the sharks of the sea?

And Havelaar knew all this!

Does the reader feel what passed within his soul at the thought that he was called to do justice, and was answerable for it to a higher power than the power of a Government that did indeed prescribe that justice in its laws, but did not always so gladly see it applied?

Does one feel how he was tossed about by doubt--not about what he was to do, but about the manner in which he had to act?

He had begun with gentleness. He had spoken to the Adhipatti as to an "elder brother"; and whoever might think that I, taken with the hero of my story, am trying to exalt beyond measure the manner in which he spoke, let him hear how once, after such an interview, the Regent sent his Patteh to him to give thanks for the kindness of his words, and how, long afterward, that Patteh--speaking with the controller Verbrugge, after Havelaar had ceased to be assistant-resident of Lebak, after there was therefore nothing more to hope or to fear from him--how that Patteh, moved at the recollection of his words, exclaimed: "never yet has any lord spoken as he did!"

Yes, he wished to help, to set right, to save, not to destroy!

He felt pity for the Regent. He, who knew how the lack of money can press, above all where it leads to humiliation and disgrace, sought for grounds of excuse.

The Regent was old, and the head of a family that lived on a grand footing in neighbouring provinces, where much coffee was harvested and therefore much emolument enjoyed.

Was it not galling for him to have to fall so far short, in his way of living, of his younger relatives?

Besides, the man, ruled by fanaticism, believed that, as his years advanced, he could buy the salvation of his soul through hired pilgrimages to Mecca and through alms to prayer-chanting idlers.

The officials who had preceded Havelaar in Lebak had not always set good examples. And, finally, the sheer extent of the Regent's Lebak family, which lived entirely at his charge, made his return to the right path difficult.

Thus did Havelaar seek for grounds to put off all severity, and to try once more, and yet once more, what could be achieved by gentleness.

And he went even further than gentleness.

With a generosity that called to mind the very faults that had made him so poor, he repeatedly advanced the Regent money on his own responsibility, so that need should not press too hard toward transgression; and, as usual, he forgot himself so far that he offered to stint himself and his own to the strictly necessary, in order to come to the Regent's aid with the little he could yet spare out of his income.

Should it still seem necessary to give proof of the gentleness with which Havelaar discharged his difficult duty, that proof could be found in a verbal message he charged the controller to deliver, when the latter was once about to leave for Serang: "tell the resident that, hearing of the abuses that take place here, he must not believe that I am indifferent about them. I make no immediate official report of them, because I wish to keep the Regent, for whom I feel pity, from too great severity, since I want first to try to bring him to his duty through gentleness."

Havelaar often stayed away for days on end.

When he was at home, he was usually to be found in the room which on our ground-plan is represented by the seventh compartment.