Max Havelaar 1732 Studios

Dutch · The Novel

Hoofdstuk 17

Chapter 17

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  1. 1

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    ZEVENTIENDESEVENTEENTHzeventiende · ordinal numeralmodifies HOOFDSTUK
    HOOFDSTUKCHAPTERhoofdstuk · noun, neuter, singularhead of title
  2. 2

    Saïdjah's father had a buffalo, with which he worked his field.

  3. 3

    When this buffalo was taken from him by the district chief of Parang-Koedjang, he was deeply grieved, and spoke not a word for many days.

  4. 4

    For the time of ploughing was near, and it was to be feared that, if one did not work the sawah in good time, the season for sowing would also pass, and that in the end there would be no rice to cut and store in the lombong of the house.

  5. 5

    I must remark here, for readers who know Java but not Bantam, that in this residency there exists private ownership of land, which is not the case elsewhere.

  6. 6

    Saïdjah's father, then, was very anxious.

  7. 7

    He feared that his wife would go short of rice, and Saïdjah too, who was still a child, and Saïdjah's little brothers and sisters.

  8. 8

    The district chief, moreover, would denounce him to the assistant resident if he fell behind in the payment of his land taxes.

  9. 9

    For the law lays down a penalty for that.

  10. 10

    Then Saïdjah's father took a kris that was a poesaka from his own father.

  11. 11

    The kris was not very fine, but there were silver bands around the sheath, and on the point of the sheath there was a little plate of silver as well.

  12. 12

    He sold this kris to a Chinese who lived in the chief town, and came home with twenty-four guilders, with which money he bought another buffalo.

  13. 13

    Saïdjah, who was then about seven years old, had quickly struck up a friendship with the new buffalo.

  14. 14

    I do not say friendship without purpose, for it is indeed touching to see how the Javanese kerbo attaches itself to the little boy who watches over it and tends it.

  15. 15

    The strong beast bends its heavy head obediently to the right or the left or downward at the touch of the child's finger — the child it knows, the child it understands, the child it grew up beside.

  16. 16

    Such a friendship, then, little Saïdjah had soon managed to inspire in his new companion too, and Saïdjah's encouraging child's voice seemed to lend yet more strength to the powerful withers of the strong beast as it tore open the heavy clay soil and marked out its path in deep, sharp furrows.

  17. 17

    The buffalo turned obediently when it reached the end of the field, and lost not a thumb's breadth of ground as it ploughed back the new furrow, which always lay beside the old one, as though the sawah were a garden plot raked by a giant.

  18. 18

    Next to it lay the sawahs of Adinda's father, the father of the child Saïdjah was to marry. And when Adinda's little brothers came up to the boundary between them, just as Saïdjah too was there with his plough, they would call out merrily to one another, and vie in praising the strength and the obedience of their buffaloes.

  19. 19

    But I believe that Saïdjah's was the best, perhaps because he knew how to speak to it better than the others. For buffaloes are very responsive to kind words.

  20. 20

    Saïdjah had reached nine years, and Adinda was already six, by the time this buffalo too was taken from Saïdjah's father by the district chief of Parang-Koedjang.

  21. 21

    Saïdjah's father, who was very poor, now sold to a Chinese two silver mosquito-net hooks, a poesaka from his wife's parents, for eighteen guilders. And with that money he bought a new buffalo.

  22. 22

    But Saïdjah was sad.

  23. 23

    For he had learned from Adinda's little brothers that the previous buffalo had been driven off to the chief town, and he had asked his father whether he had not seen that animal when he was there to sell the mosquito-net hooks — a question to which Saïdjah's father had not been willing to give an answer.

  24. 24

    And so he feared that his buffalo had been slaughtered, like the other buffaloes the district chief took from the people.

  25. 25

    And Saïdjah wept much when he thought of the poor buffalo with which he had been so close for two years. And he could not eat, for a long while, for his throat was too tight when he tried to swallow.

  26. 26

    Let it be remembered that Saïdjah was a child.

  27. 27

    The new buffalo came to know Saïdjah, and very soon took, in the child's affection, the place of its predecessor ... all too soon, really. For, alas, the wax impressions of our heart are so easily smoothed away to make room for later writing.

  28. 28

    However that may be, the new buffalo was indeed not as strong as the last one ... indeed the old yoke was too wide for its withers ... but the poor beast was as willing as its predecessor that had been slaughtered, and though Saïdjah could no longer boast of his buffalo's strength when he met Adinda's little brothers at the boundary, he maintained nonetheless that no other surpassed his own in goodwill. And whenever the furrow did not run as straight as before, or whenever clods of earth had passed by uncut, he would gladly make it good with his patjol, as much as he could.

  29. 29

    Besides, no buffalo had an oeser-oeseran like his.

  30. 30

    The penghoeloe himself had said that there was ontong in the course of those whorls of hair on its hindquarters.

  31. 31

    Once, out in the field, Saïdjah called to his buffalo in vain to make some haste.

  32. 32

    The beast stood stock-still.

  33. 33

    Saïdjah, exasperated at such great and, above all, such unusual stubbornness, could not refrain from uttering an insult. He cried: etc.

  34. 34

    Anyone who has been in the Indies will understand me. And whoever does not understand me gains by my sparing him the explanation of a coarse expression.

  35. 35

    Saïdjah meant nothing wicked by it, however.

  36. 36

    He said it only because he had so often heard it said by others when they were displeased with their buffaloes.

  37. 37

    But he need not have said it, for it did no good: his buffalo took not a step further.

  38. 38

    It shook its head as if to throw off the yoke; one could see the breath from its nostrils ... it snorted, shuddered, trembled ... there was terror in its blue eye, and its upper lip was drawn back so that the gums lay bare ...

  39. 39

    "Flee, flee," Adinda's little brothers cried all at once, "Saïdjah, flee!

  40. 40

    There is a tiger!"

  41. 41

    And they all freed their buffaloes from the plough yokes, and flung themselves onto the broad backs, and galloped away across sawahs, over galangans, through mud, through brushwood and forest and alang-alang, along fields and roads. And when, panting and sweating, they came rushing into the village of Badoer, Saïdjah was not among them.

  42. 42

    For when he had mounted his buffalo, freed of its yoke, like the others, in order to flee as they did, an unexpected leap of the animal had thrown him off balance and cast him to the ground.

  43. 43

    The tiger was very near ...

  44. 44

    Saïdjah's buffalo, carried on by its own momentum, shot a few bounds past the spot where its little master awaited death.

  45. 45

    But it was by its own momentum alone, and not by its own will, that the animal had gone further than Saïdjah. For scarcely had it overcome the impetus that governs all matter, even after the cause that drove it has ceased, than it turned back, set its clumsy body on its clumsy legs like a roof over the child, and turned its horned head toward the tiger.

  46. 46

    The tiger sprang ... but it sprang for the last time. The buffalo caught it on its horns, and lost only a little flesh, which the tiger tore from it at the neck.

  47. 47

    The attacker lay there with its belly ripped open, and Saïdjah was saved.

  48. 48

    There had indeed been ontong in the oeser-oeseran of that buffalo!

  49. 49

    When this buffalo was taken from Saïdjah's father, and slaughtered ...

  50. 50

    I have told you, reader, that my tale is monotonous.

  51. 51

    ... when this buffalo was slaughtered, Saïdjah numbered twelve years, and Adinda wove sarongs and patterned them with pointed kapala.

  52. 52

    She had already learned to bring thoughts into the play of her dye-shuttle, and she traced sorrow upon her cloth, for she had seen Saïdjah very downcast.

  53. 53

    And Saïdjah's father too was grieved, but his mother most of all. For she it was who had healed the wound on the neck of the faithful beast that had brought her child home unharmed, after she had believed, from the news brought by Adinda's little brothers, that he had been carried off by the tiger.

  54. 54

    She had looked at that wound so often, with the thought of how deep the claw that drove so far into the buffalo's rough fibres would have driven into the soft body of her child, and every time she had laid fresh healing herbs upon the wound, she stroked the buffalo and spoke a few kind words to it, that the good faithful beast might after all know how grateful a mother is!

  55. 55

    She hoped afterward that the buffalo had truly understood her, for then it would also have understood her weeping when it was led away to be slaughtered, and would have known that it was not Saïdjah's mother who had it killed.

  56. 56

    Some time afterward Saïdjah's father fled the country. For he was greatly afraid of the punishment if he should not pay his land taxes, and he had no poesaka left with which to buy a new buffalo, since his parents had always lived in Parang-Koedjang and had thus left him little.

  57. 57

    His wife's parents, too, had always lived in the same district.

  58. 58

    After the loss of the last buffalo he kept himself going for a few more years by working with hired draught animals. But this is very thankless labour, and above all distressing for someone who has been in possession of buffaloes of his own.

  59. 59

    Saïdjah's mother died of grief, and then, in a moment of despair, his father took himself away from Lebak and from Bantam to look for work in the Buitenzorg district.

  60. 60

    He was punished with strokes of the rattan because he had left Lebak without a pass, and was brought back by the police to Badoer.

  61. 61

    Here he was thrown into prison because he was thought to be insane — which would not have been so inexplicable — and because it was feared that in a moment of matah-glap he might run amok or commit some other wrongdoing.

  62. 62

    But he was not long imprisoned, for he died shortly afterward.

  63. 63

    What became of Saïdjah's little brothers and sisters, I do not know.

  64. 64

    The little house they had lived in at Badoer stood empty for a while, and soon collapsed, since it was built only of bamboo and roofed with atap.

  65. 65

    A little dust and dirt covered the spot where much had been suffered.

  66. 66

    There are many such spots in Lebak.

  67. 67

    Saïdjah was already fifteen when his father set off for Buitenzorg. He had not gone there with him, because he carried greater plans in his heart.

  68. 68

    He had been told that at Batavia there were so many gentlemen who rode about in bendies, and that there might therefore be a place to be found for him as a bendie-boy — a post for which one usually chooses someone still young and not yet grown, so as not to upset the balance of the two-wheeled carriage by too much weight behind.

  69. 69

    There was, he had been assured, much to be gained by good conduct in such employment. Perhaps he might even, in this way, save up enough money within three years to buy two buffaloes.

  70. 70

    This prospect smiled upon him.

  71. 71

    With a proud step, like a man who has great matters in mind, he came in to Adinda after his father's departure, and told her his plan.

  72. 72

    "Only think," he said, "when I come back we shall be old enough to marry, and we shall have two buffaloes!"

  73. 73

    "Very well, Saïdjah! I will gladly marry you when you come back.

  74. 74

    I will spin, and weave sarongs and slendangs, and batik, and be very diligent all that time."

  75. 75

    "Oh, I believe you, Adinda! But ... what if I find you married?"

  76. 76

    "Saïdjah, you know perfectly well that I will marry no one. My father has promised me to your father."

  77. 77

    "And you yourself?"

  78. 78

    "I will marry you — be sure of that!"

  79. 79

    "When I come back, I will call out from afar ..."

  80. 80

    "Who will hear that, when we are pounding rice in the village?"

  81. 81

    "That is true. But Adinda ... oh yes, this is better: wait for me by the djati forest, under the ketapan where you gave me the melatti."

  82. 82

    "But, Saïdjah, how can I know when I am to go out to wait for you by the ketapan?"

  83. 83

    Saïdjah thought for a moment, and said:

  84. 84

    "Count the moons. I shall be away three times twelve moons ... this moon does not count.

  85. 85

    See, Adinda, carve a notch in your rice-block at each new moon.

  86. 86

    When you have cut three times twelve notches, I will arrive under the ketapan on the day that follows. Will you promise to be there?"

  87. 87

    "Yes, Saïdjah! I will be under the ketapan by the djati forest when you come back."

  88. 88

    Now Saïdjah tore a strip from his blue headcloth, which was very worn, and he gave that little piece of linen to Adinda, that she should keep it as a pledge. And then he left her, and Badoer.

  89. 89

    He walked on for many days.

  90. 90

    He passed by Rangkas-Betoeng, which was not yet the chief town of Lebak, and Waroeng-Goenoeng, where the assistant resident lived at that time, and the next day he saw Pandeglang, which lies there as though in a garden.

  91. 91

    A day later again he came to Serang, and stood amazed at the splendour of so large a town with its many houses, built of stone and roofed with red tiles.

  92. 92

    Saïdjah had never seen anything like it.

  93. 93

    He stayed there a day because he was weary, but at night, in the cool, he went on, and reached Tangerang the next day, before the shadow had yet fallen as far as his lips, even though he wore the great toedoeng that his father had left him.

  94. 94

    At Tangerang he bathed in the river near the crossing, and rested in the house of an acquaintance of his father's, who showed him how one plaits straw hats, just like those that come from Manila.

  95. 95

    He stayed there a day to learn this, because he reckoned he might later earn something by it, in case he should not succeed at Batavia.

  96. 96

    The next day, toward evening, when it grew cool, he thanked his host warmly and went on.

  97. 97

    As soon as it was wholly dark, so that no one should see it, he drew out the leaf in which he kept the melatti that Adinda had given him under the ketapan tree. For he had grown sad because he would not see her for so long a time.

  98. 98

    On the first day, and the second too, he had felt less keenly how alone he was, because his soul was wholly taken up with the great idea of earning money to buy two buffaloes — since his father himself had never owned more than one — and his thoughts were too fixed on seeing Adinda again to leave room for much sorrow over the parting.

  99. 99

    He had taken that parting in a fever of hope, and had fastened it in his thoughts to the eventual reunion under the ketapan.

  100. 100

    For so great a part did the prospect of that reunion play in his heart that, on leaving Badoer and passing by that tree, he felt something joyful, as if they were already past — the thirty-six moons that parted him from that moment.

  101. 101

    It had seemed to him that he had only to turn around, as though he were already coming back from the journey, to see Adinda waiting for him under that tree.

  102. 102

    But the further he drew away from Badoer, and the more he marked the dreadful length of a single day, the longer he began to find the thirty-six moons that lay before him.

  103. 103

    There was something in his soul that made him step less briskly. He felt sorrow in his knees, and though it was not despair that came over him, it was nevertheless a melancholy not far from despair.

  104. 104

    He thought of turning back, but what would Adinda say of so little heart?

  105. 105

    And so he walked on, though he went less briskly than on the first day.

  106. 106

    He held the melatti in his hand, and pressed it often against his breast.

  107. 107

    He had grown much older in three days, and no longer understood how he had once lived so calmly, when Adinda was so near him after all, and he could see her whenever and as long as he liked.

  108. 108

    For now he would not be calm if he could expect that she was about to stand before him.

  109. 109

    Nor did he understand how, after the parting, he had not turned back once more to look at her one last time.

  110. 110

    There came back to him too how, not long before, he had quarrelled with her over the cord she had spun for her brothers' lalayang, which had broken because, as he believed, there was a flaw in her spinning, by which a wager had been lost against the children of Tjipoeroet. "How was it possible," he thought, "to grow angry with Adinda over this?

  111. 111

    For even had she spun a flaw into the cord, and even had the wager of Badoer against Tjipoeroet been lost by it, and not by the glass shard — so mischievously and deftly thrown by little Djamien, who hid behind the pagger — would I, even then, have had the right to be so harsh with her, and to call her by unseemly names?

  112. 112

    What will it be, if I die at Batavia without having asked her forgiveness for so great a rudeness?

  113. 113

    Will it not be as though I were a bad man who flings abuse at a girl?

  114. 114

    And will not everyone at Badoer, when they hear that I have died in a foreign land, say: it is well that Saïdjah died, for he had a big mouth toward Adinda?"

  115. 115

    So his thoughts took a course quite different from his earlier exaltation, and uttered themselves unbidden — first in half-words under his breath, soon in a soliloquy, and at last in the melancholy song of which I here give the translation that follows.

  116. 116

    At first it was my intention to bring some measure and rhyme into that rendering, but, like Havelaar, I find it better to leave that corset off. "I do not know where I shall die.

  117. 117

    I have seen the great sea on the South coast, when I was there with my father to make salt.

  118. 118

    If I die on the sea, and they cast my body into the deep water, sharks will come. They will swim round my corpse, and ask: "which of us shall devour the body that sinks there in the water?"

  119. 119

    I shall not hear it. I do not know where I shall die.

  120. 120

    I have seen the house of Pa-ansoe burn, which he himself had set alight because he was mata-glap. If I die in a burning house, glowing pieces of wood will fall down upon my corpse.

  121. 121

    And outside the house there will be a great clamor of people throwing water to put out the fire. I will not hear it.

  122. 122

    I do not know where I shall die. I saw little Si-oenah fall from the coconut palm as he was picking a coconut for his mother.

  123. 123

    If I fall from a coconut palm, I shall lie dead at its foot, among the bushes, like Si-oenah. Then my mother will not weep, for she is dead.

  124. 124

    But others will cry out: "look, there lies Saïdjah!" in a loud voice. I will not hear it.

  125. 125

    I do not know where I shall die. I saw the body of Pa-lisoe, who had died of great old age, for his hair was white.

  126. 126

    If I die of old age, with white hair, the mourning-women will stand about my body. And they will raise a wailing, as the mourning-women did beside Pa-lisoe's body.

  127. 127

    And the grandchildren too will weep, very loudly. I will not hear it.

  128. 128

    I do not know where I shall die. I have seen many at Badoer who had died.

  129. 129

    They dressed them in a white cloth and buried them in the ground. If I die at Badoer, and they bury me outside the village, eastward against the hill, where the grass grows tall, then Adinda will pass by there, and the edge of her sarong will glide softly along the grass...

  130. 130

    I shall hear it."

  131. 131

    Saïdjah arrived at Batavia.

  132. 132

    He asked a gentleman to take him into service, which that gentleman did at once, precisely because he could not understand Saïdjah. For at Batavia people gladly take servants who do not yet speak Malay and are therefore not yet so spoiled as others who have had longer contact with European civilization.

  133. 133

    Saïdjah soon learned Malay, but kept honestly to his duties, for he thought always of the two buffaloes he wished to buy, and of Adinda.

  134. 134

    He grew tall and strong, because he ate every day, which at Badoer had not always been possible.

  135. 135

    He was well liked in the stable, and would surely not have been refused had he asked the coachman's daughter in marriage.

  136. 136

    His master himself was so fond of Saïdjah that he was soon raised to the post of house-servant. They increased his wages, and gave him besides continual gifts, because they were so particularly pleased with his service.

  137. 137

    The lady of the house had read Sue's novel, which caused such a brief stir, and thought always of Prince Djalma whenever she looked at Saïdjah. The young girls too understood better than before how the Javanese painter Radhen Saleh had made such a great sensation at Paris.

  138. 138

    But they thought Saïdjah ungrateful when, after nearly three years of service, he asked for his discharge and for a certificate stating that he had conducted himself well.

  139. 139

    They could not, however, refuse him this, and Saïdjah set out on his journey with a glad heart.

  140. 140

    He passed by Pising, where Havelaar had once lived, long ago.

  141. 141

    But Saïdjah did not know this. And even had he known it, he carried something quite different in his soul that kept him occupied.

  142. 142

    He was counting the treasures he was bringing home.

  143. 143

    In a roll of bamboo he had his pass and his certificate of good conduct.

  144. 144

    In a case fastened to a leather strap, something heavy kept swinging against his shoulder, but he was glad to feel it... I quite believe it!

  145. 145

    In it were thirty Spanish dollars, enough to buy three buffaloes.

  146. 146

    What would Adinda say!

  147. 147

    And this was not yet all.

  148. 148

    On his back one could see the silver-mounted sheath of a kris that he wore in his sash.

  149. 149

    The hilt was surely of finely carved kamoening wood, for he had wrapped it with great care in a silken covering.

  150. 150

    And he possessed still more treasures.

  151. 151

    In the fold of the kahin about his loins he kept a girdle of broad silver links, with a golden ikat-pendieng.

  152. 152

    It is true the girdle was short: but she was so slender...

  153. 153

    Adinda!

  154. 154

    And on a little cord round his neck, beneath his outer baadjoe, he carried a small silken pouch, in which lay a few dried melatti blossoms.

  155. 155

    Was it any wonder that at Tangerang he did not linger longer than was needed to visit his father's acquaintance, the man who plaited such fine straw hats?

  156. 156

    Was it any wonder that he said little to the girls along his way who asked him: "whither, and whence?" as the greeting goes in those parts? Was it any wonder that he found Serang no longer so grand, he who had come to know Batavia?

  157. 157

    That he no longer slipped away into the hedge, as he had done three years before, when the resident came riding by, he who had seen the far greater lord who lives at Buitenzorg and is the grandfather of the Soesoehoenan of Solo?

  158. 158

    Was it any wonder that he paid little heed to the tales of those who walked a stretch of the road with him and spoke of all the news in Bantan-Kidoel? That he scarcely listened when he was told that the coffee cultivation, after much unrewarded toil, had been wholly given up?

  159. 159

    That the district chief of Parang-Koedjang had been sentenced, for robbery on the public road, to fourteen days' confinement at his father-in-law's house? That the chief town had been moved to Rangkas-Betoeng?

  160. 160

    That a new assistant-resident had come, because the former one had died some months ago? How that new official had spoken at the first sebah-gathering?

  161. 161

    How for some time past no one had been punished for lodging a complaint, and how among the people there was a hope that all that had been stolen would be restored or made good? No, fairer images rose before the eye of his soul.

  162. 162

    He sought the ketapan tree among the clouds, far off as he still was, too far to seek it near Badoer. He grasped at the air around him, as though he would clasp the form that would be waiting for him beneath that tree.

  163. 163

    He drew for himself Adinda's face, her head, her shoulder... he saw the heavy kondeh, so glistening black, caught in its own knot, hanging down at her neck... he saw her great eye, sparkling in dark reflection... the nostrils she used to draw up so proudly as a child, whenever he—how was it possible!—teased her, and the corner of her lips where she kept a smile. He saw her breast, which now would swell beneath the kabaai... he saw how the sarong she had woven herself clasped her hips close, and, following the thigh in a curving line, fell along the knee in a lovely flow down upon the small foot...

  164. 164

    No, he heard little of what was said to him.

  165. 165

    He heard quite other tones. He heard how Adinda would say: "welcome, Saïdjah!

  166. 166

    I have thought of you at the spinning and the weaving, and at the pounding of the rice in the block that bears three times twelve notches cut by my hand.

  167. 167

    Here I am beneath the ketapan, on the first day of the new moon.

  168. 168

    Welcome, Saïdjah: I will be your wife!"

  169. 169

    That was the music that rang in his ears, and kept him from listening to all the news that was told him along his way.

  170. 170

    At last he saw the ketapan. Or rather, he saw a dark patch that hid many stars from his eye.

  171. 171

    That must be the Djati forest, by the tree where he would see Adinda again, the next day after the rising of the sun.

  172. 172

    He felt about in the dark, and ran his hands over many trunks. Before long he found a familiar unevenness on the south side of a tree, and laid his finger in a groove that Si-Panteh had hacked there with his parang, to ward off the pontianak who was to blame for the toothache of Panteh's mother, shortly before the birth of his little brother.

  173. 173

    That was the ketapan he was seeking.

  174. 174

    Yes, this was indeed the spot where for the first time he had looked at Adinda differently from his other playmates, because there, for the first time, she had refused to take part in a game she had nonetheless played with all the children, boys and girls, only a short while before. There she had given him the melatti.

  175. 175

    He sat down at the foot of the tree, and gazed up at the stars. And when one shot across, he took it as a greeting on his return to Badoer.

  176. 176

    And he wondered whether Adinda were sleeping now. And whether she had cut the moons correctly into her rice-block?

  177. 177

    It would grieve him so if she had skipped a moon, as though it were not enough already... thirty-six! And whether she had batiked fine sarongs and slendangs?

  178. 178

    And he wondered too who might be living in his father's house? And his childhood came back to his mind, and his mother, and how that buffalo had saved him from the tiger, and he pondered what would have become of Adinda had that buffalo been less faithful?

  179. 179

    He watched closely the setting of the stars in the West, and with each star that vanished at the horizon he reckoned how the sun was a little nearer to its rising in the east, and how much nearer he himself was to seeing Adinda again.

  180. 180

    For surely she would come at the first ray, yes, at the very dawn she would already be there... ah, why had she not come the day before?

  181. 181

    It saddened him that she had not run ahead to meet it, that beautiful moment which for three long years had lit his soul with an indescribable radiance.

  182. 182

    And, unjust as he was in the selfishness of his love, it seemed to him that Adinda ought to have been there, waiting for him, he who now complained—before the time, already!—that he had to wait for her. But he complained without cause.

  183. 183

    For the sun had not yet risen, the eye of day had not yet cast a glance over the plain.

  184. 184

    True, the stars up above were paling, ashamed that their dominion would soon come to an end... true, strange colors flowed over the mountaintops, which seemed darker the more sharply they stood out against a lighter ground... true, here and there through the clouds in the east something glowing flew—arrows of gold and of fire shot back and forth, parallel to the horizon—but they vanished again and seemed to fall down behind the impenetrable curtain that still kept the day hidden from Saïdjah's eyes.

  185. 185

    Yet it grew lighter and lighter around him. He could already see the landscape, and already he could make out the crest of the little coconut grove in which Badoer lies hidden... there slept Adinda.

  186. 186

    No, she slept no longer! How could she sleep?

  187. 187

    Did she not know that Saïdjah would be waiting for her?

  188. 188

    Surely she had not slept the whole night through! Surely the village watchman had knocked at her door, to ask why the pelitah lamp burned on in her little house, and with a gentle laugh she had said that a vow kept her awake, to weave to the end the slendang she was working on, which had to be ready for the first day of the new moon...

  189. 189

    Or she had passed the night in the dark, sitting on her rice-block, counting with eager finger whether there were truly thirty-six deep notches carved there side by side.

  190. 190

    And she had amused herself with a feigned alarm that perhaps she had miscounted, that perhaps one was still missing, so as again, and again, and each time anew to relish the lovely certainty that three times twelve moons had indeed and truly passed since Saïdjah last saw her.

  191. 191

    She too would now, as it grew so light, strain her eyes in fruitless weariness to bend her gaze beyond the horizon, that they might meet the sun, the slow sun, that stayed away... stayed away...

  192. 192

    There came a streak of bluish red that clung to the clouds, and the edges grew bright and glowing, and it began to flash like lightning, and again arrows of fire shot through the vault of the sky, but this time they did not fall down, they fastened themselves upon the dark ground, and spread their glow in larger and larger rings, and met one another, crossing, winding, turning, wandering, and they joined into sheaves of fire, and flashed with a golden brilliance upon a ground of mother-of-pearl, and there was red, and blue, and yellow, and silver, and purple, and azure in it all... oh God, that was the dawn: that was the seeing-again of Adinda!

  193. 193

    Saïdjah had not been taught to pray, and it would have been a pity besides to teach him, for holier prayers, more fervent thanks than lay in the speechless rapture of his soul, could not be captured in human language.

  194. 194

    He did not want to go to Badoer. The seeing again of Adinda herself seemed less beautiful to him than the certainty of seeing her again in a little while.

  195. 195

    He sat down at the foot of the ketapan, and let his eyes wander over the countryside.

  196. 196

    Nature smiled upon him and seemed to bid him welcome like a mother her returning child. And just as a mother paints her joy by willfully recalling the sorrow now past, in showing what she has kept as a keepsake through the absence, so Saïdjah too let himself be cheered by the sight again of so many spots that had been witnesses of his short life.

  197. 197

    But however his eyes or his thoughts wandered about, again and again his gaze and his longing fell back upon the path that leads from Badoer to the ketapan.

  198. 198

    Everything his senses took in was named Adinda.

  199. 199

    He saw the ravine to the left, where the earth is so yellow, where once a young buffalo sank into the depths: there the villagers had gathered to rescue the animal—for it is no small matter to lose a young buffalo—and they had let themselves down on strong rattan ropes.

  200. 200

    Adinda's father had been the bravest of all...

  201. 201

    Oh, how she clapped her hands, Adinda! And over yonder, on the other side, where the little coconut grove waves above the huts of the village, somewhere there Si-Oenah had fallen from a tree, and died.

  202. 202

    How his mother wept: "because Si-Oenah was still so little," she lamented... as if she would have grieved any less had Si-Oenah been bigger.

  203. 203

    But little he was, that is true, for he was smaller and weaker even than Adinda...

  204. 204

    No one set foot on the little path that led from Badoer to the tree.

  205. 205

    Soon she would come: oh, surely.. it was still so early!

  206. 206

    Saïdjah saw a badjing that with playful nimbleness sprang up and down the trunk of a coconut palm.

  207. 207

    The little creature—the vexation of the tree's owner, yet charming in shape and movement all the same—clambered tirelessly up and down.

  208. 208

    Saïdjah saw it, and forced himself to keep watching it, since this gave his thoughts rest from the heavy labor they had been performing since the rising of the sun... rest after the wearying wait.

  209. 209

    Soon his impressions found voice in words, and he sang what was passing within his soul.

  210. 210

    I would rather be able to read you his song in Malay, that Italian of the East, but here is the translation:

  211. 211

    "See how the badjing seeks his living On the coconut palm.

  212. 212

    He climbs, descends, frolics left and right, He circles the tree, springs, falls, climbs, and falls again: He has no wings, and yet is as nimble as a bird.

  213. 213

    Much good fortune, my badjing, I wish you well!

  214. 214

    You will surely find the living that you seek...

  215. 215

    But I sit alone by the djati forest, Waiting for the living of my heart. Long since has the little belly of my badjing been filled...

  216. 216

    Long since has he returned to his little nest... But still my soul And my heart are bitterly grieved..

  217. 217

    Adinda!"

  218. 218

    Still there was no one on the path that led from Badoer to the ketapan.

  219. 219

    Saïdjah's eye fell on a butterfly that seemed to rejoice because it was beginning to grow warm.

  220. 220

    "See how the butterfly flutters about there. His little wings glitter like a many-colored flower.

  221. 221

    His little heart is in love with the blossom of the kenari.

  222. 222

    Surely he is seeking his sweet-scented beloved. Much good fortune, my butterfly, I wish you well!

  223. 223

    You will surely find what you seek...

  224. 224

    But I sit alone by the djati forest, Waiting for what my heart loves.

  225. 225

    Long since has the butterfly kissed The kenari blossom that he loves so dearly...

  226. 226

    But still my soul And my heart are bitterly grieved... Adinda!"

  227. 227

    And there was no one on the path that led from Badoer to the tree.

  228. 228

    The sun had already begun to stand high ... there was warmth in the air now.

  229. 229

    "See how the sun glitters up there, High above the waringi hill! She feels herself too warm, and longs to descend, To sleep in the sea, as in the arms of a spouse.

  230. 230

    Much good fortune, O sun, I wish you well!

  231. 231

    What you seek, you will surely find... But I sit alone by the djati forest, Waiting for rest for my heart.

  232. 232

    Long since will the sun have set, And be sleeping in the sea, when all is dark... And still my soul And my heart will be bitterly grieved....

  233. 233

    Adinda!

  234. 234

    Still there was no one on the road that leads from Badoer to the ketapan.

  235. 235

    "When there will be no more butterflies fluttering about, When the stars will glitter no more, When the melatti will be sweet-scented no more, When there are no longer grieving hearts, Nor wild beasts in the forest... When the sun will run its course awry, And the moon forget what east and west are...

  236. 236

    If then Adinda has still not come, Then an angel with shining wings Will descend to earth, to seek what was left behind there.

  237. 237

    Then my body will lie here beneath the ketapan...

  238. 238

    My soul is bitterly grieved...

  239. 239

    Adinda!" Still there was no one on the path that led from Badoer to the ketapan.

  240. 240

    "Then my body will be seen by the angel. He will point it out to his brothers with his finger:

  241. 241

    "See, here a dead man lies forgotten, his stiffened mouth kisses a melati blossom.

  242. 242

    Come, let us take him up and bear him to heaven, him who waited for Adinda until he was dead.

  243. 243

    Surely he may not be left behind there, he whose heart had the strength to love so!"

  244. 244

    Then once more shall my stiffened mouth open to call Adinda, who holds my heart dear...

  245. 245

    Once again shall I kiss the melati that she gave me...

  246. 246

    Adinda... Adinda!"

  247. 247

    And still there was no one on the path that led from Badoer to the tree.

  248. 248

    Oh, surely she had fallen asleep toward the break of morning, worn out from keeping watch through the night, from keeping watch through many a long night! Surely she had not slept for weeks: that was it!

  249. 249

    Should he get up and go to Badoer? No!

  250. 250

    Should it seem as though there were any doubt about her coming? If he were to call the man who, off in the distance there, was driving his buffalo out to the field?

  251. 251

    That man was too far away. And besides, Saïdjah did not want to speak about Adinda, did not want to ask after Adinda... he wanted to see her again, her alone, her first of all!

  252. 252

    Oh surely, surely she would come soon now! He would wait, wait...

  253. 253

    But what if she were ill, or... dead?

  254. 254

    Like a wounded deer Saïdjah flew up the path that runs from the ketapan to the village where Adinda lived.

  255. 255

    He saw nothing and heard nothing, and yet there had been something he might have heard, for there were people standing on the road at the entrance to the village, who called out: "Saïdjah, Saïdjah!"

  256. 256

    But... was it his haste, his frenzy, that kept him from finding Adinda's house?

  257. 257

    He had already rushed onward to the end of the road where the village leaves off, and like one possessed he turned back, and struck himself on the head because he might have passed by her house without seeing it. But again he was at the entrance, and—my God, was it a dream?—again he had not found Adinda's house!

  258. 258

    Once more he flew back, and all at once he stopped, gripped his head with both hands, as if to wring out of it the madness that was overtaking him, and cried aloud: "drunk, drunk, I am drunk!"

  259. 259

    And the women of Badoer came out of their houses, and with pity watched poor Saïdjah standing there, for they recognized him, and understood that he was looking for Adinda's house, and knew that there was no house of Adinda's in the village of Badoer.

  260. 260

    For, when the district chief of Parang-Koedjang had taken away the buffalo belonging to Adinda's father... I have told you, reader, that my tale is monotonous.

  261. 261

    ... then Adinda's mother had died of grief. And her youngest little sister had died because she had no mother to suckle her.

  262. 262

    And Adinda's father, who dreaded the punishment if he did not pay his land rents...

  263. 263

    I know it well, I know it well, that my tale is monotonous! ...

  264. 264

    Adinda's father had gone away out of the land. He had taken Adinda with him, along with her brothers.

  265. 265

    But he had learned how Saïdjah's father had been punished at Buitenzorg with strokes of the rattan because he had left Badoer without a pass.

  266. 266

    And so Adinda's father had not gone to Buitenzorg, nor to Krawang, nor to the Preanger, nor to the Batavian Ommelanden... he had gone to Tjilangkahan, the district of Lebak that borders the sea.

  267. 267

    There he had hidden himself in the forests, and waited for the coming of Pa-Ento, Pa-Lontah, Si-Oeniah, Pa-Ansioe, Abdoel-Isma and several others who had been robbed of their buffaloes by the district chief of Parang-Koedjang, and who all dreaded punishment if they did not pay their land rents. There, by night, they had seized a fishing prau, and had put out to sea.

  268. 268

    They had steered westward, keeping the land to their right, as far as the point of Java.

  269. 269

    From here they had headed northward until they saw Tanahitam before them, which the European seamen call Princes' Island. They had sailed around that island on its eastern side, and had then held course for the Keizersbaai, taking their bearing on the high peak in the Lampongs.

  270. 270

    Such, at least, was the route that men whispered to one another in the Lebak country, whenever there was talk of official buffalo-theft and unpaid land rents.

  271. 271

    But the bewildered Saïdjah did not clearly understand what they were telling him. He did not even rightly grasp the news of his father's death.

  272. 272

    There was a humming in his ears as though a gong had been struck inside his head. He felt how the blood was forced in jolts through the veins at his temples, which threatened to give way under the pressure of so heavy a swelling.

  273. 273

    He did not speak, and stared with a dulled gaze about him without seeing what was around and beside him, and at last burst out in a ghastly laugh.

  274. 274

    An old woman took him along to her little house and nursed the poor fool.

  275. 275

    Before long he no longer laughed so ghastly, but still he did not speak.

  276. 276

    Only at night were the others in the hut startled by his voice, when he sang in a toneless way: "I do not know where I shall die," and several of the people of Badoer pooled their money together to bring an offering to the boajas of the Tjioedjoeng for the healing of Saïdjah, whom they took to be out of his senses.

  277. 277

    But out of his senses he was not.

  278. 278

    For one night, when the moon shone bright, he rose from the baleh-baleh, and quietly left the house, and sought out the spot where Adinda had lived.

  279. 279

    It was not easy to find it, because so many houses had fallen in. Yet he seemed to recognize the place by the width of the angle that certain shafts of light had formed through the trees as they met in his eye, the way a sailor takes his bearing on lighthouses or jutting mountain peaks.

  280. 280

    Yes, it must have been there... there Adinda had lived!

  281. 281

    Stumbling over half-rotted bamboo and over pieces of the fallen-in roof, he forced his way to the sanctuary that he sought.

  282. 282

    And, truly, he found something still left of the standing pagger beside which Adinda's baleh-baleh had stood, and there even still stuck in that pagger the bamboo pin on which she had hung her dress when she lay down to sleep...

  283. 283

    But the baleh-baleh had fallen in like the house, and had nearly crumbled away to dust.

  284. 284

    He took up a handful of it, pressed it to his parted lips, and breathed very deeply...

  285. 285

    The next day he asked the old woman who had nursed him, where the rice-block was that had stood in the yard of Adinda's house?

  286. 286

    The woman was glad to hear him speak, and ran round the village to look for that block.

  287. 287

    When she could point out the new owner to Saïdjah, he followed her in silence, and once brought to the rice-block, he counted upon it thirty-two notched marks...

  288. 288

    Then he gave that woman as many Spanish dollars as were needed for the buying of a buffalo, and left Badoer.

  289. 289

    At Tjilangkahan he bought a fishing prau, and arrived in it after several days' sailing in the Lampongs, where the insurgents were resisting Dutch authority.

  290. 290

    He joined a band of Bantammers, not so much to fight as to seek out Adinda. For he was gentle by nature, and more given to sorrow than to bitterness.

  291. 291

    One day when the insurgents had again been beaten, he wandered about in a village that had just been taken by the Dutch army, and was therefore in flames.

  292. 292

    Saïdjah knew that the band which had been destroyed there had consisted largely of Bantammers.

  293. 293

    Like a ghost he roamed about in the houses that had not yet wholly burned, and found the body of Adinda's father with a klewang-bayonet wound in the chest.

  294. 294

    Beside him Saïdjah saw the three murdered brothers of Adinda, mere youths, scarcely more than children still, and a little farther off lay the body of Adinda, naked, hideously abused...

  295. 295

    A narrow strip of blue linen had been thrust into the gaping wound in her breast, which seemed to have put an end to a long struggle...

  296. 296

    Then Saïdjah ran toward some soldiers who, with leveled rifles, were driving the last surviving insurgents into the fire of the burning houses. He clasped his arms around the broad sword-bayonets, pressed himself forward with all his strength, and with one last effort drove the soldiers back still farther when the hilts struck against his chest.

  297. 297

    And a little while later there was great jubilation at Batavia over the new victory that had once more added so many laurels to the laurels of the Dutch-Indian army.

  298. 298

    And the Governor-General wrote to the Mother Country that peace in the Lampongs had been restored. And the King of the Netherlands, advised by his Ministers of State, rewarded so much heroism once again with many crosses of knighthood.

  299. 299

    And probably, in Sunday church or at prayer meetings, prayers of thanksgiving rose to heaven from the hearts of the pious, on learning that "the Lord of Hosts" had once more fought on the side of the Netherlands under her banner...

  300. 300

    "But God, moved with so much woe, would not accept the offerings of that day!" * * * * *

  301. 301

    I have made the close of Saïdjah's story shorter than I might have done had I felt any appetite for sketching something gruesome.

  302. 302

    The reader will have noticed how I lingered over the description of the waiting beneath the ketapan, as if I shrank back from the sorrowful denouement, and how I slid over it with revulsion.

  303. 303

    And yet this was not my intention when I began to speak of Saïdjah.

  304. 304

    For at first I feared I should need stronger colors to move the reader in describing such strange conditions.

  305. 305

    Little by little, however, I came to feel that it would be an insult to my public to believe that I ought to have brought more blood into my painting.

  306. 306

    I could have done so, though, for I have documents lying before me... but no: rather a confession.

  307. 307

    Yes, a confession, reader! I do not know whether Saïdjah loved Adinda.

  308. 308

    Nor whether he went to Batavia. Nor whether he was murdered in the Lampongs with Dutch bayonets.

  309. 309

    I do not know whether his father died as a result of the rattan-strokes given him because he had left Badoer without a pass. I do not know whether Adinda counted the moons by notches in her rice-block...

  310. 310

    All this I do not know!

  311. 311

    But I know more than all that.

  312. 312

    I know and can prove that there were many Adindas and many Saïdjahs, and that what is fiction in the particular becomes truth in the general.

  313. 313

    I have said already that I can give the names of persons who, like the parents of Saïdjah and Adinda, were driven out of their land by oppression.

  314. 314

    It is not my aim, in this work, to set down the kind of disclosures that would suit a tribunal called to pronounce on the manner in which Dutch authority is exercised in the Indies—disclosures that would carry weight as proof only for one who had the patience to read them through with attention and concern, such as cannot be expected of a public that seeks diversion in its reading.

  315. 315

    That is why, instead of dry names of persons and places, with the dating attached, instead of a copy of the list of thefts and extortions that lies before me, I have tried to give a sketch of what may go on in the hearts of the poor folk who are robbed of what is needed to sustain their lives, or rather: I have only let it be guessed at, fearing to deceive myself too badly in tracing the outlines of feelings I have never undergone.

  316. 316

    But as for the main point?

  317. 317

    Oh, that I might be summoned to substantiate what I have written!

  318. 318

    Oh, that someone might say: "you have invented this Saïdjah... he never sang that song... there lived no Adinda at Badoer!" But that it were said with the power and the will to do justice, the moment I had proven myself no slanderer!

  319. 319

    Is there a lie in the parable of the good Samaritan, because perhaps no plundered traveler was ever taken in by a Samaritan household?

  320. 320

    Is there a lie in the parable of the sower, because no farmer will cast his seed upon a rock? Or—to come down to something closer to my own book—may one deny the truth that makes up the main matter of Uncle Tom's Cabin, because perhaps no Evangeline ever existed?

  321. 321

    Will anyone say to the authoress of that immortal plea—immortal not for its art or talent, but by its tendency and its impact—will anyone say to her: "you have lied, the slaves are not abused, for... there is untruth in your book: it is a novel!" Was she too not bound, instead of a tally of dry facts, to give a tale that clothed those facts, so as to drive home into people's hearts the sense of the need for reform?

  322. 322

    Would her book have been read, had she given it the form of a legal brief?

  323. 323

    Is it her fault—or mine—that truth, to gain admittance, must so often borrow the garment of falsehood?

  324. 324

    And to certain ones who perhaps maintain that I have idealized Saïdjah and his love, I must ask how they can know this? After all, only very few Europeans think it worth the trouble to stoop to observing the feelings of the coffee- and sugar-machines whom people call "natives."

  325. 325

    Yet even if their objection were well founded, whoever advances such considerations as proof against the main thrust of my book hands me a great triumph. For, translated, they amount to this: "the evil you are fighting does not exist, or not to so high a degree, because the native is not like your Saïdjah... there lies in the mistreatment of the Javanese no such great evil as would lie there had you drawn your Saïdjah more truthfully.

  326. 326

    The Sundanese does not sing such songs, does not love so, does not feel so, and therefore..."

  327. 327

    No, Minister of Colonies, no, retired Governors-General, that is not what you have to prove!

  328. 328

    You have to prove that the population is not mistreated, regardless of whether there are sentimental Saïdjahs among that population. Or would you dare to claim that you may steal buffaloes from people who do not love, who sing no melancholy little songs, who are not sentimental?

  329. 329

    Under an attack on literary ground I would defend the accuracy of my portrayal of Saïdjah, but on political soil I at once concede every objection to that accuracy, so as to prevent the great question from being shifted onto the wrong terrain.

  330. 330

    It is wholly the same to me whether I am taken for an incompetent painter, so long as it is granted me that the mistreatment of the native is: FAR-REACHING! For so indeed runs the wording on the memorandum of Havelaar's predecessor, which the latter showed to the controleur Verbrugge: a memorandum that lies before me.

  331. 331

    But I have other proofs!

  332. 332

    And this is fortunate, for Havelaar's predecessor too might have been mistaken.

  333. 333

    Alas, if he was mistaken, he was very harshly punished for that mistake.

The particulars

The text
Max Havelaar, Multatuli. The Novel.
Translation
Public-domain Dutch (Multatuli, d. 1887; published 1860). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
Reading aloud
Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
Words
Every word of the text, by letter.
Data
JSON · Markdown · A guide for agents
Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.