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Chapter 4

BATAVIA

In 1941 political and military tensions in the Pacific were mounting. In order to cope with every contingency, early in the year the entire governmental apparatus of the Indies was centralized in Batavia.⁴ We, too, had moved there. We lived on the Sunda Road, a street in Kebon Sirih, the European district just south of the Koningsplein. Batavia was a large city. We were living in a freestanding one-story house surrounded by a garden, modern for its time, as were all the homes in that neighborhood. The house wasn’t big, but spacious enough for a family with two children. Facing the street was the terrace where we had tea late in the afternoon and where in the evening company was received. Across from us on the other side of the street was the athletic field of a school. This wasn’t the school I attended; I went to the Jan Ligthart School, a few streets further down. The back of the house had an airy covered walkway that led to the kitchen, the bathroom, and the gudangs. And all the way in the back of the yard, beyond the garage, stood the outbuildings. Of course, we had four or five local servants, as did everyone else. They occupied a series of small rooms in the outbuildings. Some had relatives or immediate family members with them. My parents didn’t know who exactly was living there, but I don’t think it concerned them very much.

The servants moved through the house and across the grounds without a sound. They were always solicitous and patient with us. The maid wore her black hair in a large knot. Her clothes were freshly laundered and smelled of starch in the morning. I don’t remember her ever punishing me or my sister or ever being irritable. We spoke Dutch with her. When we’d ask: “How old are you?” she would say: “I’m not old and I’m not young; I have always been here.”

My parents were accustomed to hiring servants who understood Dutch and were able to speak it to some degree as well. I don’t know what their motivation for this was, but I sorely regret it because it prevented us from learning any of the country’s languages. Even our marketplace Malay was clumsy. To this day I’m still jealous of cousins of mine who grew up on a plantation and thus learned to speak Sundanese or Javanese from their indigenous playmates.

The correct wage for servants was a perpetual topic of conversation among the European adults. It fluctuated between ten and twenty guilders a month, plus room and board. To say anything meaningful about its level today is rather pointless except for the following, perhaps. On Sunday koki, the cook, would customarily make rijsttafel for us. My mother would send her to the pasar in the morning to get the necessary ingredients. The koki would buy a chicken, eggs, different vegetables, fish, peppers, oil, a few pounds of rice, and coconuts. For these purchases my mother would give her the amount of one Dutch guilder, which was enough for everything on the shopping list. If koki had a few cents left, she was allowed to keep those. You can rest assured that she’d bargain the vendors down to almost nothing.

In the kitchen the cooking was done on charcoal, arang, in braziers, anglos, solid cast-iron chafing dishes. Early in the afternoon koki sorted, washed, and cut up the vegetables and chopped the meat. She spoke quietly with her assistant, a little mouse of a girl who was always in her vicinity. And then you’d hear the sound of the rhythmic kipas, the bamboo fan, and a smell of charcoal would waft around and prickle your nose, while from time to time small crackling sparks whizzed by.

The water well was in the backyard, near the servants’ quarters. Toward the end of the afternoon both men and women would bathe there. One time I was sitting with one of the boys next door on the wall that encircled the water supply. We were watching the people bathing. They crouched down so we wouldn’t be able to see their nudity and waited silently and patiently until we left. I’m still ashamed of this because they were too polite (or afraid) to chase us away.

It happened only once. Sastro, the driver, an even-tempered man of about forty who was highly esteemed by my parents, most respectfully asked my father for an appointment, where he spoke about my behavior at the water well. My father, who himself had been raised in the Indies, always approached the native kids, as he referred to them, with respect, something that was not self-evident for most Europeans. And he completely understood. In Sastro’s presence I was given a harsh and well-deserved dressing down.

Like all adults, my parents used to retire in the early afternoon heat for a siesta. That was when the garden became our territory. Actually, the children were also supposed to rest, but freedom called, and the heat didn’t bother us. Nobody paid any attention to us, which was most agreeable. We’d make sure not to make any noise and played in the yard in our loose flannel pajamas.

Stretched out to their full length, the cats—I don’t know how many of them used to roam in and around our house—lay dozing on the cool tiles in the shade or sleeping beneath the bushes. Keenly focused on anything that moved, their playful kittens were chasing butterflies or tapping at beetles and spinning them around.

The nameless crippled duck that had just appeared in our yard one day all tattered, his scrawny body full of messy quills, and without any respect for anything or anyone had chosen our place as his residence, was quacking for attention.

The clatter of the bucket at the well signaled that siesta time was over. The kebun, the gardener, would fill two large square oilcans with water and, the muscles of his bare back bulging, carry them into the yard on a pole across his shoulders. When he reached the flowerbeds, he’d pour the water into a smaller can with a wooden handle, whose bottom had been pierced with little holes. Then he’d water the plants, dousing the shrubs and trees as well.

It was time for our bath. In the cool semidark bathroom with its always slightly musty smell, you scooped the water from a huge cement basin, the mandi-basin, and poured it over your head. Sometimes the water contained droves of mosquito larvae. To repel them our neighbors kept a few goldfish in their mandi-basin. I loved the looks of that and whined that I wanted the same. But my parents didn’t think it was sanitary, and that was the end of the matter.

As you were bathing, you stood on a wooden pallet, which felt mossy and slippery to your bare feet. It was a disagreeable sensation, all the more so because almost transparent, glassy-looking centipedes often lived underneath the pallet. After the bath the maid would use sweetish-smelling baby powder for your neck, between your legs, and between your toes. Then you were allowed to play outside again.

When the kebun had finished watering the plants, he’d languidly rake the gravel path or sweep the hallway and gallery with a sapu lidi, a broom made of bendable palm-leaf ribs.

Sometimes he’d carve a slingshot for us from a fork-shaped branch. A frightful weapon. With small round pebbles we’d shoot at sparrows or alley cats that dared venture into our yard. I must confess that I was actually quite happy we never hit anything because I wouldn’t have known what to do with an animal injured like that.