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Oh Noni, you must be glad you cannot see this. The curtains are closed and there's dust on the window-sills, for I haven't found the need to clean them. It's all over... Again.
Do you remember our house in Batavia? It was so beautiful, with the verandah where Nenek used to sit in her rocking-chair. The clerk used to play with us. I think he liked us. The poor man didn't have children himself. Ah, poor clerk, but at least he could stay behind. I never heard from him again, nor from anyone. Do you think they have forgotten us?
What did we know about politics? It was our country just as it was theirs. We were just children. What had we done wrong?
O Noni. You weren't there when we had to leave. They had stolen everything. What could we do? They had abandoned us. Everyone had abandoned us. I later heard the Americans had forced the government to stop the police actions.
The servants have taken your doll. I don't know who did it, but I suspect the cook of doing it. Yet I hope that the clerk took it home for his cousin. He's the only one of them who deserves to have it.
We hurried aboard those ships and people died aboard. They were tossed into the cold waves and no-one knows where they are now. They could be anywhere. Eaten by the fish I presume.
And then we arrived. I was more dead than alive and here we were in the coldest country you can imagine. It was snowing! You have never seen snow, have you? It's wet and sticky and cold, so cold! How I hated this country. I wanted to go back and I cried for months. Was this the Holland they had talked about? The people were as cold as the weather and we had no servants. No-one cared. The Dutch had abandoned us just like the natives and the Americans. Yet we managed.
We took up our lives and I went to university. I became a lawyer and I married a Dutch woman. We had four children, three boys and a girl. I named her Noni, after you. They're very nice, but now they have their own lives and their own children. They have all moved to America and left me behind.
So here I am, in my empty house and everything has changed again. I once longed for the old days, when we were playing with the clerk, but now I find myself longing for the early days in Holland. Oh, I hated this country, but it was still better than it is now. The people have no respect for old people anymore and it's always raining. I even think back at the snow with a smile on my face. It hardly snows anymore. Climate change they call it. The climate has changed indeed. If they look at me now they just see a foreigner. I don't get it. The Indonesians called us foreigners and now the Dutch call us foreigners too. Do we belong nowhere?
O Noni. Do we always have to long for tempo doeloe? Can we never have peace in the present? O Noni, I'm so glad you don't have to see this. You are still in the belt of emerald. I envy you... |
Bleak
Written by richard (88 comments posted) 8th March 2007 | Definitely a very bleak piece. I wasn't sure whether the story is about Dutch people who went to Jakarta and returned home, or a third demographic, neither Dutch or Indonesian? I read it as expatrite Dutch and that worked for me. (My knowledge of Indonesian history is a bit sparse.)
I wonder whether it is worth making it a longer story (not a novel but a longer short story) and putting some more behind the summary of the man's life and maybe building up the sense of dislocation and lack of belonging a bit more?
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Written by Fledermaus (3306 comments posted) 8th March 2007 | Thanks for your comment, Richard.
I can see where the confusion comes from. The main character I had in mind is an Indo: the child of a colonial Dutch and a native of the Dutch East Indies.
After World War 2, Sukarno declared Indonesian Independence and a war broke out between the Dutch and the Indonesians, called the 'police actions'. The Dutch campaign was brutal, but succesful, until the UN (and especially the USA) intervened.
Eventually the Netherlands gave up Indonesia and everyone of Dutch decent, as well as those who had fought for the Dutch during the police actions were expelled. |
Written by Phil (6730 comments posted) 8th March 2007 | I thought this was a very successful piece - your best for a long time. You capture a real emotion in the narration of this. This might well work as a longer piece, but for me, this is very good as it stands.
I was glad to have the history lesson at the end.
Back to history with a quality cameo.
Thanks for this one.
Phil. |
Written by Fledermaus (3306 comments posted) 9th March 2007 | Thanks Phil.
I'm glad you liked it.
In Dutch literature there seems to be a whole genre of East-Indian writers who seem to long for the old days, and I think in France there's a similar thing about Algeria and Vietnam.
It's often strange to listen to the stories of old people who lived there. They can tell them smiling, while they're often incredibly tragic... | Lovely
Written by Gill21 (566 comments posted) 18th March 2007 | I'm not entirely sure about the history behind this however i don't think it distracted me from enjoying the piece. I thought it was lovingly told and i particularly liked the round up;
'O Noni. Do we always have to long for tempo doeloe? Can we never have peace in the present? O Noni, I'm so glad you don't have to see this. You are still in the belt of emerald. I envy you...' - it was almost poetic and summed up the romantic nature of the piece.
There was a great sense of longing and yearning about it. He didn't even speak of his new family in such a way as he did his 'first life'.
Great. |
Written by Fledermaus (3306 comments posted) 19th March 2007 | Thanks Gill.
There's indeed something romantic in the way those people long for the old days. Over here they created their own community and sub-culture, with its own music and food, which are neither Dutch nor Indonesian. And whenever you talk to old people about their days in the East Indies, they get all nostalgic and dreamy  |
Written by anorwegianwood (278 comments posted) 26th March 2007 | I managed to miss this when it was first posted. Glad I caught it (thank you, Work Awaiting Review bar). The ending is beautiful.
~Claire |
Written by Fledermaus (3306 comments posted) 2nd April 2007 | | Thanks Claire. |
Written by Witzl (1585 comments posted) 2nd April 2007 | I managed to miss this too, Fledermaus, and I am sorry that I did. It is really moving and really makes me want to know more. You capture a sense of longing and pain that is very believable without giving away too much.
One of the women who worked at the Keramisch Werkcentrum in Heusden was Dutch Indonesian, and she had such mixed feelings about Holland and the Dutch. Her Dutch was fluent, and in so many ways she was Dutch, and yet it was easy to see that she was largely considered a foreigner.
Why not turn this into an extended piece? |
Written by Fledermaus (3306 comments posted) 2nd April 2007 | Thanks Witzl,
I heard that in the 1950s and 1960s there where sometimes fights between Dutch and Indonesian youths. Then, in the 1970s most Indonesians were accepted, but there were troubles with people from the Maluku Islands. Their parents fought on the Dutch side during the Police Actions, but they were betrayed by the Dutch government and when they fled Indonesia at last, they were put in the barracks of a former nazi concentration-camp... In return some of their youths started to commit terrorist attacks, leading to more distrust and violence.
Then in the 1980s and 90s there was a huge influx of other minorities and people seemed to realize that most Indonesians were well adapted and didn't cause much trouble, but now, since the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, there seems to be an increase of racism again.
There seems to be a lot of material to write about, so maybe I will write something bigger some day. |
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