Translation:Max Havelaar/37

It was dusk. Tine was reading in the inner porch and Havelaar drew an embroidering pattern. Little Max conjured a jig-saw puzzle and was angry because he could not find the red body of that lady,

"Would this be right, Tine?" Havelaar asked. "Look, I made the palm a bit bigger. It’s just the the line of beauty of Hogarth, isn't it?"

"Yes, Max! But the lace holes are too close together."

"So? And the other strips? Max, show me your shorts! Aye, do you wear that one? Ah, I remember where you embroidered that one, Tine!"

"I don't. Where?"

"It was in The Hague, when Max was sick en we were scared because the doctor had said that he had un unusually shaped head, and that a lot of care would be needed to relieve the pressure on the brain. In those days you worked on that strip."

Tine stood up, and kissed the little one.

"I have her belly, I have her belly!" The child cried happily and the red lady was completed.

"Who hears the sound of a tontong?" the mother asked.

"I do," said little Max.

"And what does it mean?"

"Bedtime! But I didn't have dinner yet."

"You get food first, that's a matter of course."

And she stood up and give him his simple meal which appeared to have come from a well closed cupboard in her room, for the clicking of several locks had been heard.

"What do you give him?" asked Havelaar.

"Oh, don't worry, Max. The biscuit is from a tin from Batavia. And the sugar has always been locked."

Havelaar's thoughts went back to the point where he had been interrupted.

"You know," he continued, "that we even haven't paid that doctor's bill. Oh, that's really hard."

"Dear Max, we are so thrifty here, we will soon be able to pay our debts. Besides, I think you will soon be a Resident, and then everything will be arranged in little time."

"But that's a thing which makes me sad," Havelaar said. "I am very unwilling to leave Lebak. I'll explain. Don't you think we loved our Max even more after his disease? Now, well, I will love this poor Lebak when it has been healed of that cancer of which it has been suffering for so many years. Thinking of a promotion scares me, I am needed in this place, Tine! And yet, on the other hand, we do have debts..."

"Everything will be fine, Max! Even if you had to leave this place, you can always help Lebak if you are a Governor-General."

Nasty stripes appeared in Havelaar's embroidering pattern! There was anger in those flowers, the lace holes became ragged, sharp, the bit one another.

Tine understood that she had said the wrong thing.

"Dear Max," she began kindly.

"Damned! Do you want those wretches to starve all that time? Can you eat sand?"

"Dear Max!"

But he jumped up. There was no more drawing that day. Angrily he walked up and down the inner gallery, and eventually he spoke. His voice seemed rough and hard to any stranger, but Tine understood it in a different way. He said:

"Curse that tepidity, that shameful tepidity! I have been waiting a month for justice and in the meantime my poor people are suffering. The Regent is expecting that no-one dares to speak up against him! See..."

He went to his desk and came back with a letter in his hand, a letter which is here in front of me, reader!

"Behold, in this letter he dares to suggest what kind of labour he wants to have done by the people he called, illegally. Isn't this the summit of effrontery? And do you know who they are? Women with little children, pregnant women who have been driven from Parang-Koedjang to the capital to work for him! There are no more men! And they have nothing to eat, they sleep on the road and they eat soil! Can you eat soil? Do you want them to eat soil until I am a Governor-General? Damned!"

Tine knew very well whom Max was scolding, if he talked to her whom he loved so much.

"And," Havelaar continued, "all this is my responsibility! Perhaps some of those poor creatures wander out there. If they see our lamps, the will say: "That's were the villain lives who promised to protect us. He is there, happy with his wife and his child, drawing embroidering patterns, while we starve with out children like forest dogs on the road!" Yes, I hear them, I hear them, they call for revenge over my head. Here, Max, here!"

And he kissed his child so wildly that he felt scared.

"My child, if they tell you that I am a villain who had no courage to do justice, that so many mothers died and that it was my fault, if they tell you that it was neglect of your father which stle the blessing away from your head, oh, Max, Max, testify of what I suffered!"

He broke down in tears, which Tine kissed away. She carried little Max to his bed – a tikar – and when se came back she found that Havelaar was talking with Verbrugge and Duclari who had just come in. The talk was about the expected decision of the government.

"I do understand that the Resident is in a hard position," said Duclari. "He cannot advise the Government to follow your suggestions, since too much facts would appear. I've been in Bantam for a long time, and I know a lot of it, more than you, Mr Havelaar! I was a petty officer in this region, and I heard facts which people dare not tell the clerks. But if a public investigation shows everything that happens, the Governor-General will call the Resident to account and wonder why he has not discovered in two years what you saw immediately. Of course it is in his interest to prevent such an investigation."

"I predicted that," replied Havelaar. "I was roused by his attempt to persuade the Adhipatti to file a complaint about me – which appears to prove that he wants to try to move the situation, for example by accusing me of  ... I don't know what. I covered myself to send copies of my letters directly to the government. One of them contains a request to be called to account when someone might say that I did something wrong. If the Resident accuses me, they cannot take a fair decision without first hearing me. One does that even to a criminal, and I am not a criminal..."

"There's the mail!" said Verbrugge.

Yes, it was the mail! And there was a letter from the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies to the former assistant- Resident of Lebak, Havelaar.


 * Kabinet. number 54. -- Buitenzorg, 23 March 1856.
 * The way in which you acted when you discovered or suggested evil practices of the chiefs in the department Lebak, and your attitude towards your superior, the Resident of Bantam, have been extremely displeasing to me.
 * In your intended actions I find neither balanced judgement, discretion and care, which are so important for a clerk who exercises authority in the interior country, nor feelings of submission to your immediate superior.
 * Within a few days after your appointment you could allow, without previous consultation of the Resident, that the chief of the native administration in Lebak became the aim of incriminating investigations.
 * In those investigations you found a reason – without even proving your accusations of the chief by facts, or even evidence – to do suggestions which meant that a native clerk – a sixty year old and still very zealous servant of the country, related by kin to distinguished Regent families in the neighbourhood, and about whom there were always favourable reports – would be subjected to a morally destructive treatment.
 * Furthermore, when the Resident showed himself unwilling to follow your suggestions, you refused to comply with your superior' reasonable requirement to give full disclosure of the facts that were known to you about the actions of the native administration of Lebak.
 * This behaviour deserves all disapproval, and suggest slightly that you are unable to have a task in the domestic government.
 * Therefore I see myself forced to relieve you of the further fulfilment of the office of an Assistant-Resident of Lebak.
 * However, since I received favourable reports about your earlier tasks, I found in these events no reason to take the prospect of another office in the domestic government away from you. Therefore you have been appointed to temporarily replace the Assistant-Resident of Ngawi.
 * Your further behaviour in this office will decide whether you can remain employed in the domestic government.

Signed by the man whom the King trusted for his zeal, skill and good faith, when he signed his appointment to Governor-General of the Dutch Indies.

"We leave this place, dear Tine," said Havelaar resigned. He gave the letter to Verbrugge, who read it with Duclari.

Verbrugge had tears in his eyes, but he did not speak. Duclari, a very civilised man, burst out in a wild curse:

"G.......... I have seen bastards and thieves in this government and they left with honour. And you get this letter!"

"It is nothing," said Havelaar, "the Governor-General is an honest man, he has been misinformed. But he could have prevented this by hearing me first. He got tangled in the web of the offices in Buitenzorg. We know that! I shall go to him personally and prove how the situation is. He shall do justice, I am sure of it!"

"But if you go to Ngawi..."

"Yes, I know that. The Regent in Ngawi is related to the court in Djokja. I know Ngawi, I was two years in the Baglen, which is in the neighbourhood. In Ngawi I would have to do the same as I did here – it would be useless travelling. Furthermore, it is impossible to serve as a test, as if I had ill-behaved. And finally, if you want to get rid of all that tampering, you must not be a simple clerk. There are too many people between the government and me who are interested in denying the misery of the people. There are more reasons which prevent me to go to Ngawi. There was no vacancy there. They created a vacancy for me. Look!"

And he showed the Javasche Courant which had come by the same mail. In the same decision which transferred him to Ngawi, the Assistant-Resident of that province was transferred to another department, where they did have vacancy.

"Do you know why I must go to Ngawi, and not to that vacant department? I'll tell you. The Resident of Madiven, where Ngawi is, is the brother-in-law of the former Resident of Bantam. I told you that the Regent has many bad examples."

"Ah," cried Verbrugge and Duclari at once. They understood that Havelaar had been transferred to Ngawi to test whether he would change his behaviour!

"And there is another reason why I cannot go there," he said. "The current Governor-General will soon retire. I know who will succeed him, and I know that I can expect no help from him. If I want to do something in time for my poor people, I must go to the current Governor before he leaves, and that would be impossible if I went to Ngawi. Tine, listen!"

"Dear Max?"

"You have courage, haven't you?"

"Max, you know that I have... if I am with you!"

"Well!"

He stood up and wrote the folowing petition, in my opinion an example of eloquence.
 * Rangkas-Betoeng, 29 March 1856.
 * To the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies.
 * I had the honour to receive your Excellency's missive of 23 March, number 54.
 * In answer to that letter I see myself obliged to ask your Excellency to accept my honourable resignation from the service of my country.
 * MAX HAVELAAR.

In Buitenzorg they needed little time to accept the resignation, much less than was needed how to reply to Havelaar's complaint. The latter had taken a month, and the reply to the resignation arrived in a few days in Lebak.

"Thank God," cried Tine, "at last you can be yourself!"

Havelaar received no order to temporarily leave the administration of his department to Verbrugge, so he thought that he had to wait for his successor. This took a long time since he had to come from a different corner of Java. After almost three weeks of waiting, the former Assistant-Resident of Lebak, who had always continued to do his duties, wrote the following letter to Controller Verbrugge:
 * Number 153 Rangkas-Betoeng, 15 April 1856.
 * To the Controller of Lebak.
 * You are aware that by Government decision of the 4th of this month, number 4, I have been released from the service of my country.
 * Perhaps I would have had the right to lay my tasks down immediately after receiving this message, since it appears to be an anomaly to perform a task without being a clerk.
 * However, I received no order to transfer my task, and I found it my duty to remain in my place until I had been properly relieved. Partly because if matters of minor importance I waited for my successor, hoping that this clerk would soon – this month – arrive.
 * Today I heard that my successor cannot be expected so soon – I think you heard it in Serang – and also that the Resident wondered why I did not yet ask to transfer the administration to you, in view of my particular situation.
 * This message was most agreeable to me. I need not tell you that I, who swore that I could not serve in any other way than I did here, have been punished with being rebuked, with a ruinous and dishonouring transfer, with the order to betray those poor wretches who trusted in me – with the choice between disgrace and want of income! After all this I tested each occurring case to my duty, and the simplest case was a problem for me, since I felt myself pressed between my conscience and the principles of the government, since I owe faith to the government as long as I have this office.
 * This trouble revealed itself in particular when I had to answer the people who complained.
 * One day I promised that I would deliver no one to the wrath of his chiefs! One day I was so careless to make my promise an evidence of the righteousness of the Government.
 * The poor people could not know that this promise and this evidence had been repudiated, that I was poor and that I had no power, even if I wanted righteousness and humanity.
 * And the complaining continued!
 * It was grieving, after receiving the missive of 23 March, to sit there as an assumed shelter, a powerless protector.
 * It broke my heart to hear the complaints about mistreatment, extortion, poverty, hunger, while I face hunger and poverty with my wife and child.
 * And I was not allowed to betray the government. I was not allowed to say: "go and suffer, the authorities want you to be extorted!" I could not recognise that I was powerless, being part of the shame and the unscrupulousness of the councillors of the Governor-General.
 * This is what I replied:
 * I cannot help you right now. But I will go to Batavia, I'll speak to the Great Lord about your misery. He is righteous and he will be with you. Go home now, do not resist, do not move, wait patiently. I think, I hope that right will be done!"
 * Thus I thought, ashamed because my promise for help had been marred, and to match my ideas with my duty in the administration, which will still pay me this month, and thus I would have gone on until the coming of my successor, if not a special vent caused me to finish this ambiguous attitude.
 * Seven people had complained. I gave them the answer mentioned above. They went back to their homes. On the way they met the village chief. He must have forbidden them to leave the kampong again and took their clothes away– as was reported to me – so they would stay home. One of them has escaped, came to me again and said that he dared not go back to his village.
 * I do not know what to answer this man!
 * I cannot protect him. I may not confess that I have no power. I do not want to prosecute the village chief, since it would appear that the case has been aroused by me pour le besoin de ma cause: I do not know what to do.
 * I entrust you, under later approval of the Resident of Bantam, from tomorrow morning with the administration of the department Lebak.
 * The Assistant-Resident of Lebak,
 * MAX HAVELAAR.