Max Havelaar (Siebenhaar)/Chapter 12
“Dearest Max,” said Tine, “our dessert is very meagre. Couldn’t you . . . you know . . . Madame Geoffrin?”
“Tell you a little more, instead of sweetmeats? The deuce, I am hoarse. It’s Verbrugge’s turn.”
“Yes, Mr. Verbrugge! Do relieve Max for awhile,” begged Mrs. Havelaar.
Verbrugge thought a moment, and began:
“There once was a man who stole a turkey . . .”
“O, you wretch,” exclaimed Havelaar, “you’ve got that from Padang! And how does it go on?”
“That’s all. Who knows the end of the story?”
“Well, I! I ate it together with . . . someone. Do you know why I was suspended at Padang?”
“They said there was a deficit in your cash at Natal,” resumed Verbrugge.
“That was not altogether untrue, yet it was not true either. At Natal, owing to a number of causes, I had been very careless in my financial accounts, which were indeed open to many strictures. But that happened so often in those days! The conditions in the north of Sumatra were, shortly after the taking of Baroos, Tapoos, and Singkel, so confused, and everything was so unquiet, that no one could blame a young man, who preferred being on horseback to counting cash or keeping books, for the fact that things were not all so orderly and regular as one might have expected from an Amsterdam book-keeper who had nothing else to do. The Battah-lands were greatly disturbed, and you know, Verbrugge, how everything that takes place in the Battahs always reacts on Natal. I slept every night fully dressed to be quite ready for eventualities, and this often proved highly necessary. Then also danger—a short while before my arrival a plot had been discovered to assassinate my predecessor and raise a rebellion—danger has a distinct attraction, especially when one is only twenty-two. This attraction naturally makes a man unfit at times for office or for the meticulous precision that is necessary for the proper management of money matters. Besides, I had all sorts of follies in my head . . .”
“Traoossa,”[1] Mrs. Havelaar called out to the servant.
“What is not required?”
“I had told them to prepare something else in the kitchen. . . . An omelette or something of the kind.”
“I see! and that’s no longer required when I start telling about my follies? You naughty wretch, Tine. Well, I’m content, but the gentlemen have a vote also. Verbrugge, what’s your choice, your share of the omelette, or the story?”
“That’s a difficult position for a polite man,” said Verbrugge.
“And I also would rather not choose,” added Duclari, “for it’s a question here of deciding between husband and wife, and: entre l’écorce et le bois il ne faut pas mettre le doigt.”
“I’ll help you out, gentlemen, the omelette is . . .”
“Mrs. Havelaar,” said the very courteous Duclari, “the omelette will surely be worth as much as . . .”
“The story! Oh, certainly, if it were worth anything! But there is an obstacle. . . .”
“I bet there is no sugar in the house yet,” exclaimed Verbrugge. “Well, please send to my place for anything you want.”
“There is sugar . . . among Mrs. Slotering’s things. No, that’s not what’s wanting. If the omelette were otherwise all right, that would be no obstacle, but . . .”
“What, then, has it fallen into the fire?”
“I wish it were true. No, it can’t fall into the fire. It is . . .
“For goodness’ sake then, Tine,” exclaimed Havelaar, “what is it?”
“It’s imponderable, Max, like your women of Arles . . . ought to be! I have no omelette . . . I have nothing more!”
“Then for heaven’s sake the story,” sighed Duclari in comical despair.
“But we have coffee,” said Tine.
“Good! we’ll take coffee in the front veranda, and let’s call Mrs. Slotering and the girls to join us,” said Havelaar, and the little company went outside.
“I expect she’ll ask to be excused, Max! you know too that she would rather not have her meals with us, and I cannot blame her.”
“She has probably heard that I tell stories,” said Havelaar, “and that has frightened her off.”
“Oh, no, Max, that wouldn’t hurt her; she doesn’t understand Dutch. No, she has told me that she wants to go on with her own household, and I quite understand that. Do you remember how you once translated my initials?”
“E.H.V.W. Eigen haard veel waard.”[2]
“So then! She is quite right. Besides, it appears to me that she is a bit shy of strangers. Just imagine, she has all strange people that come into her grounds driven off by the caretakers.”
“I ask for the story or the omelette,” said Duclari.
“And so do I!” exclaimed Verbrugge. “Excuses not accepted. We have a right to a complete meal, and so I demand this story of the turkey.”
“I have already given it you,” said Havelaar. “I had stolen the animal from General Vandamme, and I ate it . . . with someone.”
“Before this ‘someone’ was taken up to heaven,” said Tine archly.
“No, that is cheating,” called Duclari. “We must know why you . . . stole that turkey.”
“Why! because I was in want, and that was the fault of General Vandamme, who had suspended me.”
“If I don’t get to know more about this I’ll bring my own omelette next time,” complained Verbrugge.
“Believe me, there is nothing else behind it than that. He had a great many turkeys and I had nothing. They drove those fowls past my door . . . I took one and said to the man who imagined he was looking after them: ‘Tell the General that I, Max Havelaar, take this turkey because I want to eat.’ ”
“And then that epigram?”
“Has Verbrugge spoken to you about that?”
“Yes.”
“That had nothing to do with the turkey. I made the thing because he suspended so many officials. There were at Padang quite seven or eight whom with more or less justification he had suspended from their offices, and several of them deserved it much less than I. The Assistant-Resident of Padang even had been suspended, and that for a reason which, I believe, was quite different from that stated in the Order. I don’t mind telling you this, although I cannot assure you that I know it all exactly, and though I only repeat what in the Chinese Church[3] at Padang they took to be the truth, and what indeed—especially in view of the known peculiarities of the General—may well have been true.
“He had, you must know, married his wife to win a wager, and with it an ‘anchor’[4] of wine. So he often went out of an evening to . . . gad about everywhere. The supernumerary Valkenaar was said on one occasion in a small street near the girls’ orphanage to have so strictly respected his incognito as to have given him a thrashing as he would to a ‘common’ street-arab. Not far from there lived the English Miss X. There was a rumour that this Miss X had given birth to a child which had . . . disappeared. The Assistant-Resident was obliged as head of the police, and it was also indeed his intention, to go into this matter, and he appears to have said something about this intention during a whist-evening at the General’s quarters. But what do you think happened! Next day he received orders to go to a certain division of which the Controller-in-charge had been suspended for real or supposed dishonesty, in order that on the spot he might investigate certain matters and might ‘report’ on them. It is true, the Assistant-Resident was astonished that a charge was given to him which did not in the least concern his division, but since strictly speaking he could consider this charge as a distinction which conferred an honour upon him, and as he was on such a friendly footing with the General that he had no cause to suspect a trap, he acquiesced in his mission, and set out for . . . I want to forget where . . . in order ta carry out his orders. After a while he returned, and sent in a report which was not unfavourable to the Controller. But lo and behold! in the meanwhile at Padang the public—i.e. no one and yet everyone—had discovered that the Controller had only been suspended to create an opportunity for temporarily removing the Assistant-Resident from the place, in order to prevent his intended inquiry into the disappearance of that child, or at least to defer it till such time as would render it more difficult to clear the matter up. I repeat that I personally cannot vouch for the truth of this, but, from the knowledge I myself obtained afterwards of General Vandamme, this reading of the case seems to me quite credible. At Padang there was no one who, as regards the depth to which his morality had sunk, did not consider him capable of such action. Most people only attributed one good quality to him, that of intrepidity in danger, and if I, who saw him in times of danger, had held the opinion that after all he was a brave man, this alone would now move me not to tell you this story. Certainly, in Sumatra he had been responsible for a deal of sabre-slashing, but anyone who had seen some of these occurrences at close quarters would have felt strongly inclined to discount his bravery; and, strange though it may seem, I believe he owed his soldier-reputation largely to the love of contrast which exists more or less in all of us. One loves to be able to say: ‘It is true that Peter or Paul is this, or this, or this, but . . . he is also that other: that cannot be denied him!’ And one is never so certain of being praised as when one is possessed of a very conspicuous failing. You, Verbrugge, are drunk every day . . .”
“I?” asked Verbrugge, who was a paragon of temperance.
“Yes, I am now making you drunk, daily! You forget yourself so far that Duclari of an evening stumbles over you in the veranda. He will think this disagreeable, but at once he will remember having noticed some good quality in you which, after all, was not conspicuous formerly. And when I come on the scene, and find you so objectionably . . . horizontal, he will lay his hand on my arm, and exclaim: ‘Ah! do believe that in every other respect he is such a dear, fine, smart fellow!’ ”
“That I’ll say of Verbrugge in any case,” exclaimed Duclari, “even when he is vertical.”
“But not with such fire and conviction! Just remember how often one hears: ‘Oh, if that man would look after his business, wouldn’t he be someone! But . . .’ and then follows the demonstration that he does mot look after his business, and is therefore nobody. I believe I know the reason of this. Of the dead, too, one always learns good qualities that formerly we never noticed. The cause is no doubt that they are not in anyone’s way. All men are more or less competitors. We would love to place everyone else quite, and in everything, below us. To express this, however, is forbidden by good manners and even by self-interest, for soon no one would believe us even though we maintained true things. We have, therefore, to find a roundabout way, and this is how we do it. When you, Duclari, say: ‘Lieut. Spatterdash is a good soldier, I swear he is a good soldier, I cannot tell you emphatically enough what a good soldier Lieutenant Spatterdash is . . . but he is no good at theory . . .’ Didn’t you say so, Duclari?”
“I have never known or seen a Lieutenant Spatterdash!”
“Very well, then create one, and say this of him!”
“All right, I create him, and say it.”
“Then do you know what you have really said? You have said that you, Duclari, are à cheval in theory. I am not a hair’s breadth better. Believe me, we do an injustice in being so angry with a person who is very bad, for even the good ones among us are so near to badness! Let perfection be posited as zero, and one hundred degrees be called bad, then how wrong we are—we who fluctuate between ninety-eight and ninety-nine!—to set up a hue and cry about a man who finds himself at one hundred and one! And even then I believe that many only do not reach the hundredth degree for want of good qualities—want of courage, for instance, to be entirely what they are.”
“At what degree am I, Max?”
“I want a magnifying glass for the subdivisions, Tine.”
“I protest,” exclaimed Verbrugge—“no, Mrs. Havelaar, not against your proximity to zero!—no, but officials have been suspended, a child has disappeared, a general stands accused {{..}} I demand la pièce!”
“Tine, for goodness’ sake see that next time there is something in the house! No, Verbrugge, you are not going to get la pièce before 1 have done a little more riding round on my hobby with regard to contrasts. I said every man sees in his fellow a kind of rival. One is not permitted to be always blaming—which would catch the eye too much!—so we seek to exalt one good quality in particular, in order to draw special attention to the bad quality the revealment of which is in reality all we are after, without risking the appearance of partiality. When someone complains to me then I answer: ‘How can you be so angry about this? Haven’t I also said that your daughter is a sweet girl?’ You see, this gives a double win! We are both grocers, I take away his customers, who will buy no raisins from a thief, and at the same time people will say that I am a kind man, because I praise the daughter of a rival.”
“No, surely it’s not as bad as that,” said Duclari, “that’s a little too strong!”
“That only appears so to you because I have made the comparison a little brief and brusque. We must of course mentally wrap up a little that ‘He is a thief.’ The gist, however, of the parable remains true. When we are compelled to admit in a person certain qualities that give him a claim to esteem, respect, or awe, then it gives us a pleasure to discover by the side of those qualities something that relieves us partly or wholly from the tribute thus owed. ‘To such a poet one would bow the head, but . . . he beats his wife!’ You see, we gladly use the black marks of the woman as a pretext to be allowed to keep our head erect, and in the end we are even quite pleased that he beats the poor thing, although otherwise this would naturally be a horrible act. As soon as we have to recognize that someone possesses qualities that render him worthy of the honour of a pedestal, as soon as we can no longer deny his claim to this without passing for ignorant, unfeeling, or jealous . . . then at last we say: ‘Right, put him on it!’ But already during the process of putting him there, and while he himself is under the delusion that we are enchanted with his eminence, we are making the noose in the lasso that shall serve at the first favourable opportunity to drag him down. The more frequent the mutation among the proprietors of pedestals, the greater becomes the chance for others to get a turn also; and this is so true that, from habit as well as for practice—just as a hunter who fires at crows which after all he does not intend to pick up—we also like to drag down those statues whose pedestal we shall never have the chance of occupying. Kappelman, who feeds himself with sauerkraut and small beer, seeks elevation in the lament: ‘Alexander was not great . . . he was intemperate,’ although for Kappelman there is not the slightest chance of ever competing with Alexander in world-conquest.
“However this may be, I am certain that many would never have conceived the idea of thinking General Vandamme so brave, if his bravery might not have served them for the conveyance of the invariable adjunct: ‘But . . . his morality!’ And also that this immorality would not have been taken so seriously by the many who themselves were not wholly unassailable on that score, had they not needed it as a counterpoise to his renown for bravery, which with some would hardly allow them to sleep.
“One quality he really possessed in a high degree: energy. Whatever he made up his mind to do, was to be done, and usually also—was done. But—you see that again I at once have the contrast at hand!—but then in the choice of the means he certainly was a little . . . free, and, as Van der Palm, I believe unjustly, said of Napoleon: ‘Obstacles of morality never stood in his way!’ Well, in that way, of course, it is certainly easier to attain one’s object than if one did consider oneself bound by such a thing.
“So the Assistant-Resident of Padang had sent in a report that was favourable to the suspended Controller, whose suspension thus assumed an appearance of injustice. The Padang rumours continued: the lost child was still continually talked about. The Assistant-Resident again felt himself called upon to take up this matter; but before he could obtain any clarity in the affair, he received an Order by which the Governor of the West Coast of Sumatra suspended him ‘for dishonesty in official dealings.’ It was suggested that, from motives of friendship or sympathy, he had, against his better knowledge, placed the affair of the Controller in a false light.
“I have not read the documents that deal with this matter, but I absolutely know that the Assistant-Resident had no relations whatever with this Controller, which would also naturally be evident from the fact that it was he who had been specially chosen to inquire into the affair. I also know that he was a man of undoubted probity, and that the Government knew him to be such, as is borne out by the cancellation of the suspension, after the case had been investigated elsewhere than on the West Coast of Sumatra. The Controller, also, was afterwards reinstated without a blemish on his record. It was their suspension that suggested the epigram to me which I caused to be placed on the General’s breakfast-table, by a person then in his, and previously in my service:—
Governor, weirwolf of our days, John All-suspender,
Would gladly e’en suspend his feeble conscience thus,
But that long since ’twas forced its office to surrender.’ ”
“You must pardon me, Mr. Havelaar, I think your action was not permissible,” said Duclari.
“And so do I . . . but I had to take some action! You must realize that I had no money, that I received nothing, and that any day I might fear death from starvation, which indeed came close enough to me. I had few or no relations at Padang, and, besides, I had written to the General that he was responsible if I should die from want, also that I should accept help from no one. There were people in the Interior who, hearing of my circumstances, invited me to come and stay with them, but the General wouldn’t allow a pass to be given me. Nor was I allowed to leave for Java. Everywhere else I could have managed for myself, and perhaps even there if people had not all been so afraid of the powerful General. It seemed to be his intention to let me starve. This lasted nine months.”
“And how did you keep alive so long? Or had the General many turkeys?”
“Yes, plenty! But that was of no use to me . . . one does a thing like that once, you see! What I did during all that time? Ah, well . . . I composed verses, wrote plays . . . and so on.”
“And were you able to buy rice for those things at Padang?”
“No, but that I never asked for them. I would rather not say how I lived.”
Tine pressed his hand. She knew.
“I have read a couple of lines which you are said to have written on the back of a bill in those days,” said Verbrugge.
“I know what you refer to. Those lines depicted my position. There was a periodical at that time called The Copyist, to which I had subscribed. It was under Government patronage—the editor was an officer of the General Secretarial Department—and so the subscriptions were paid into the Treasury. They presented to me a bill for twenty guilders. As this money had to pass through the Governor’s office, and therefore the receipt, if the debt remained unpaid, would similarly pass through that office to be returned to Java, I took the opportunity of protesting on the back of this document against my poverty:—
Adieu, Copiste, adieu! Trop malheureux destin:
Je meurs de faim, de froid, d’ennui et de chagrin,
Vingt florins font pour moi deux mois de nourriture!
Si j’avais vingt florins je serais mieux chaussé,
Mieux nourri, mieux logé, j’en ferais bonne chère. . .
Il faut vivre avant tout; soit vie de misère:
Le crime fait la honte, et non la pauvreté![5]
“But when afterwards in Batavia I visited the Editor of The Copyist to pay my twenty guilders, I found that I owed nothing. It appeared that the General himself had paid this money for me in order not to be compelled to return the illustrated bill to Batavia.”
“But what did he do after . . . after . . . your taking that turkey? It was after all . . . theft! And after that epigram?”
“He inflicted a terrible punishment! If for these facts he had brought me to justice as guilty of disrespect to the Governor of the West Coast of Sumatra, which in those days with a small stretch might have been interpreted as ‘an effort to undermine Dutch authority and an incitement to rebellion’ or ‘larceny on the King’s highway,’ he would have shown himself a kind-hearted man. But no, he punished me more effectively . . . miserably! the man who had charge of the turkeys was ordered next time to choose another way. And my epigram . . . alas, that was still worse! He said nothing, and did nothing! Look, that was cruel! He grudged me the last vestige of the martyr’s glory, I was not to be made important through prosecution, nor unhappy through excessive wit! O, Duclari . . . O, Verbrugge . . . it was calculated once and for all to make one loathe epigrams and turkeys! So little encouragement quenches the flame of genius unto the last spark . . . inclusive; I never did it again!”
- ↑ “It is not required.”
- ↑ Own hearth great worth (One’s own hearth is worth a good deal).
- ↑ In India an expression like “Tout Paris.”
- ↑ One sixth of a hogshead.
- ↑ I have left this untranslated from the French in which it was written, to give an idea of Multatuli’s skill in writing verse in a foreign language at the age of 23. Trsl.