Stories from Deli

Louis Couperus, 1923

We have been in Medan for a few days now, guests of Mr. Westenenk, governor of Sumatra’s east coast, and his wife. The impressions that I have received, under the guidance and information of my host, are overwhelmingly many. I want to make an attempt to arrange them in my memory and then to re-represent them in my words. It is the beginning of the rainy monsoon. No blue sky, no unrelenting azure. Rather a low, gray sky, full of the accumulated treasures of the rains, which are benevolent to nature and man, and all that concerns both. A damp mist floats around. It doesn’t drizzle, it never drizzles; it seems that the rain gods in the skies of the East, better than those of the western heavens, regulate the fall of the beneficent waters. Now it rains when it rains in this season, when nature and man expect it to rain. It falls from heaven; the monsoon gods pour out their jugs and bowls. It is a white rainfall, they are white, strong, strong currents, never drifted by the wind. Everything is dripping. The rivers are swelling and rushing forward; soil and grass have been watered; the trees, the plants bathe, breathing again, slurping with branches and roots, with every leaf and fiber in the abundant water blessing. It is a wealth, an overload when everything is in the East. It rains for an hour, it rains for hours.

The sun does not always come through immediately, because The rivers are swelling and rushing forward; soil and grass have been watered; the trees, the plants bathe, breathing again, slurping with branches and roots, with every leaf and fiber in the abundant water blessing. It is a wealth, an overload when everything is in the East. It rains for an hour, it rains for hours. The sun does not always come through immediately, because The rivers are swelling and rushing forward; soil and grass have been watered; the trees, the plants bathe, breathing again, slurping with branches and roots, with every leaf and fiber in the abundant water blessing. It is a wealth, an overload when everything is in the East. It rains for an hour, it rains for hours.

The sun does not always come through immediately, because the rain gods, zealous above, gather new treasures, fill their gray clouds, which swell into gigantic waterskins, fill their jugs and bowls; when they are ready they will pour again their bowls and jugs, pouring, bending over over the insatiable earth, they will open the swollen waterskins and cast down the white torrents.

This rain is an epic natural phenomenon. It’s not a drizzly melancholy like any of the Northern beaches. It is an overwhelming beauty and power; it is a wealth that falls from the sky over an earth that was in danger of being impoverished otherwise. The moment of her new wealth has just been chosen by the gods. The hour of new wealth strikes a little earlier in Sumatra than it strikes in Java – I remember very well that the day of the rains there in the East corner was determined by the cloud gods on December 5. The blessed hour strikes in Deli, in October.

The white, fresh city of Medan, with its elegant, white buildings and residential areas, lies as if under a shower. This is never dirty if the Western rain can make a city and even nature. This will not become dirty city mud, it will remain bathed earth. The foliage of coconut palms, the needles swirling of the tamarisks, the broad, satiny oar-leaves of bananas, everything has turned from an intense green or there is gold underneath that green. The cicadas, in the trees, shout their unbroken jubilant cry. The crickets, lower, fiddle on their joyfully shrill violins and clap their slum tongues. The flowers, the pink and red hibiscus and waroe, the yellow of the scented oleanders, have fainted in the predominance of the water, but as soon as the rain stops, all the new buds will at once sprout to new splendor, lest there be death and withering. For it is the life-giving gods who have arranged and control these moments in this nature, in this world.

Everything has turned from an intense green or there is gold underneath that green. The cicadas, in the trees, shout their unbroken jubilant cry. The crickets, lower, fiddle on their joyfully shrill violins and clap their slum tongues. The flowers, the pink and red hibiscus and waroe, the yellow of the scented oleanders, have fainted in the predominance of the water, but as soon as the rain stops, all the new buds will at once sprout to new splendor, lest there be death and withering. For it is the life-giving gods who have arranged and control these moments in this nature, in this world. everything has turned from an intense green or there is gold underneath that green. The cicadas, in the trees, shout their unbroken jubilant cry. The crickets, lower, fiddle on their joyfully shrill violins and clap their slum tongues. The flowers, the pink and red hibiscus and waroe, the yellow of the scented oleanders, have fainted in the predominance of the water, but as soon as the rain stops, all the new buds will at once sprout to new splendor, lest there be death and withering. For it is the life-giving gods who have arranged and control these moments in this nature, in this world. the pink and red hibiscus and, the yellow of the scented oleanders, have fainted in the predominance of the water, but as soon as the rain stops, all the new buds will at once blossom to new splendor, lest there be death and withering. For it is the life-giving gods who have arranged and control these moments in this nature, in this world. the pink and red hibiscus and, the yellow of the scented oleanders, have fainted in the predominance of the water, but as soon as the rain stops, all the new buds will at once blossom to new splendor, lest there be death and withering. For it is the life-giving gods who have arranged and control these moments in this nature, in this world.

Since the pajong – the sunshade, symbol of authority – gold, gold-and-white, silver-and-white, green-and-white, open or closed, after carried by a “nanny,” behind or above the official’s head, was abolished, some of its glory was lost. Has the measure in Java ever been understood or appreciated by the Javanese? But on Sumatra, the pajong was never worn as a symbol of glory as an official or regent. The distinction surrounding a chief official in Deli, in Medan, has thus remained practically the same as it ever was.

A palace, like the one in which the Governor of Sumatra’s East coast resides at Medan, is of a grand construction, of which the Dutchman, who never entered the outskirts – in our modern times one no longer speaks of ‘possessions’ but of ‘regions’: mind you on the fine distinction !, and the outlying areas are those outside Java itself – has no idea. Medan is the white city between green trees and green lawns, carefully maintained, shaved. And in its park – I will only speak of a park, although it is not an ‘Indian’ word and one only speaks here of the Government House in its beautiful ‘garden’, the two-storey palace is hidden – yes, I am only talking about palace and that is no exaggeration – with quiet, white lines only a short distance between his tjemara, ficus, palm and tamarind trees. It is of a generous distinction, grand and always ready for official reception, with its portico, in front of which the cars drive, with its two parallel, immense, columned front galleries, while the central gallery as a wide corridor leads to the very wide rear gallery. which, completely open, high, spacious, between its columns, despite these dimensions, nevertheless offers a cozy dining room and living quarters.

Although a Dutch house, let’s say a Hague house in Duinoord, could almost dance a two-step in with another ditto. I’m exaggerating? Good, but of these generous proportions is for my fellow countryman, who does not know the Indies, and for whom else am I writing my sketches! to conjure up an image only by exaggeration. To the side of the central galleries are sitting rooms and study rooms: offices; Mr. and Mrs. Westenenk also have their sleeping quarters on the first floor: one floor is not old-fashioned To the side of the central galleries are sitting rooms and study rooms: offices; Mr. and Mrs. Westenenk also have their sleeping quarters on the first floor: one floor is not old-fashioned To the side of the central galleries are sitting rooms and study rooms: offices; Mr. and Mrs. Westenenk also have their sleeping quarters on the first floor: one floor is not old-fashioned Indian, and more slightly newfangled; this beautiful house is no more than twenty years old. As far as we are concerned, the guest building is, as is often the case with the residence houses in India, a separate pavilion (the calibrated word). A covered open corridor leads to it from the rear veranda. They are spacious rooms: bedroom, sitting room, front porch, bathroom, this one the size of your drawing-room in Duinoord, and the guest can withdraw completely if he likes, so that he does not become too much of a burden to the host and hostess.

The ‘outbuildings’ are lost behind the hedges of Chinese bamboo and flowering hibiscus. The Deli River flows, swollen, behind the garden and shimmers in moonlight, sometimes in rain, with silver plaques. A few deer wandering around on the board in their park. A Lorre yells all kinds of sweet words over there, but if they don’t answer him, he sometimes gets angry. Although he will never swear and knows that once Governors Lorre must hold back. A few servants – not as many as I remember from earlier days in such houses: for need of service ?? – glide around on quietest, bare feet and do their work or serve you with the never-hurried grace in the distinguished style, which good Javanese servants – they are Javanese here at home – always keep in such an environment. They are not heard, they are hardly seen,

I appreciate these great things in the life of our chief civil servants and they were not a surprise to me: I remember the same many years ago from residence houses in Java. Our democratic age does not yet seem to have erased every distinction and beauty of the art of living in ordinary everyday things. A few police guards are always sitting in the gallery by the side of the Governor’s office. They arise when the guest passes them, going from the pavilion to the back gallery. A flagpole used to be at the front of the garden; the flag is now blowing from above the house.

It would be nice to be able to sketch in these magazines the silhouettes of high standing men I meet in India. I would like nothing more than to draw a portrait in word of my host. But I fear to be indiscreet and then, so much has already been written about Mr. Westenenk. My readers will remember how this civil servant, who speaks flowery Malay with the greatest ease, who has probed the Malay soul, who, although started in Borneo as a controller, continued his entire civil service career up to this high post of the Governorship of Sumatra’s East Coast, in Sumatra itself, and for whose thorough knowledge and love the regions of Bengkoelen, Palembang, Padang, Deli, no longer hold a secret, in ’14 the … Inspector General of Anatolia, Armenia was offered. He was already at Constantinople, he was already consulting in cabinet with Enver Pacha and the Turkish authorities, and was brave with them on the question of equality between Muzelman and Christian when the war broke out and that high appointment in preference to other neutral candidates, alas. limit and stake. Mr. Westenenk was already about to leave for Erzeroum. I respect my host’s modesty. Nor is it the place here to elaborate on that honorable moment for our country, when a Dutchman was approached by Russia and the other Powers to settle the thorny Armenian affairs. I just want to assure you here that when Mr. Westenenk tells me about Sumatra, I am fascinated by the highest degree and that the hours flee.

Sumatra … I should have stayed here for at least a year to learn a little about Sumatra’s past and present; I can feel this when I listen to Mr. Westenenk. I’m only staying here for three weeks. What can I see in such a short time and what can I tell you in such a short time of what I saw! I am in Medan, which is mainly the capital of several centers of enterprises: petroleum, rubber, tobacco, tea, oil, palm, fiber, coffee. The European effort that came so powerfully to result here. I hope to tell you about Belawan’s new port works; I hope to tell you about everything the Westerner wishes to do and does here.

But for the moment, I still see Sumatra as the ancient soil, as the ancient island, whose past stretches beyond the legend of Alexander the Great, ancestor of all the Malay princes, who call him Iskander Dsoelkarnain, the Two-Horned One, to the distant centuries. when from Hindi Pre-Indian tribes moved southward along the sea opening around the Malacca peninsula and settled on Sumatra, where people do not believe they have to account for the native population. These ancient tribes, who fled from Aryan domination to Cambodia (Kmer), brought over the lands where later Bangkok arose, Pre-Indian, most antique culture to the east coast of Sumatra, to Java. The Sumatraansche Bataks descend from these ‘Negritos’, says Mr. Westenenk; small, frizzy blacks and cannibals. These negritos showed the tattooed resignations that the Hindus still show here in Deli.

At Medan are two Hindu temples, which we will see and are served by Brahmins, red and green and white symbolic tattooed over head and chest. most antique culture to the East coast of Sumatra, to Java. The Sumatraansche Bataks descend from these ‘Negritos’, says Mr. Westenenk; small, frizzy blacks and cannibals. These negritos showed the tattooed resignations that the Hindus still show here in Deli. At Medan are two Hindu temples, which we will see and are served by Brahmins, red and green and white symbolic tattooed over head and chest. most antique culture to the East coast of Sumatra, to Java. The Sumatraansche Bataks descend from these ‘Negritos’, says Mr. Westenenk; small, frizzy blacks and cannibals. These negritos showed the tattooed resignations that the Hindus still show here in Deli. At Medan are two Hindu temples, which we will see and are served by Brahmins, red and green and white symbolic tattooed over head and chest.

While my host tells me about these things, which he has fathomed with knowledge and love and of which I only touch on the quintessence, but which can be read in the learned brochures that Mr. Westenenk wrote, evening falls. We sat outside with our whiskey-soda, we did not detect it. There is a thud that frightens us: that is a bunsing, a loeak, which throws itself out of a tree branch on invisible prey. The Lorre screeches. The evening has completely fallen. Waringin’s and mango trees draw high, heavy, dark contours against a mysterious fading sky. A kodok-bangkok (big toad), which is sometimes in the house jumps and positions himself behind a piece of furniture, lets out his cry and shouts: “More rain!” He predicts more rain: above that the water gods are busy filling their waterskins.

It is the mysterious Indian West monsoon evening. No stars. A sultry oppression. A pressing mystery. Then, suddenly, a heavy smell of ‘doepa’ (incense). It is Thursday evening and then the doepa is burned to prepare for Friday, which is the holy day of the week. ‘I don’t like that air,’ says Mr. Westenenk. ‘It reminds me too much of that time at Fort-de-Kock, when in Padang religious insanity caused an uproar and I as a controller the mad crowd, laillah Allah! crying and the twitching fingers ready to tear, wrapped in white, saw dancing towards me, in the moonlight! ‘ The doepa scent is almost swooning. Everything is quiet, quiet, almost devoted, and fearfully mysterious. This is the Indian night falling and wading around the great white palace. The city lies around us in its evening rest of villa-houses illuminated here and there. In front of the road, the last grobaks, carts, pulled by white oxen, like houses covered with palm leaves, rattle away. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads.

Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. This is the Indian night falling and wading around the great white palace. The city lies around us in its evening rest of villa-houses illuminated here and there. In front of the road, the last grobaks, carts, pulled by white oxen, like houses covered with palm leaves, rattle away. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads. Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. This is the Indian night falling and wading around the great white palace.

The city lies around us in its evening rest of villa-houses illuminated here and there. In front of the road, the last grobaks, carts, pulled by white oxen, like houses covered with palm leaves, rattle away. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads. Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. The city lies around us in its evening rest of villa-houses illuminated here and there. In front of the road, the last grobaks, carts, pulled by white oxen, like houses covered with palm leaves, rattle away. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads. Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there.

The city lies around us in its evening rest of villa-houses illuminated here and there. In front of the road, the last grobaks, carts, pulled by white oxen, like houses covered with palm leaves, rattle away. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads. Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads. Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. This is the Indian evening, through which the great kalong sometimes flutters like a demon, close above our heads. Over there, in the city, is the Hôtel de Boer: a complex of white buildings. A sparkle of electric light, covered tables, cheerfulness, jest. It is hari-besar, the coolies are paid and have time off, the planters have moved to town and have dinner with their ladies. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there. There is not the Indian night there; there is a European mundane moment there.

But the evening continues to be mysterious about the city, the river, the beautiful palm road of Belawan, the road between the djati trees to Padang-Boelan. And I have felt him as I always felt him, as a child and in the later years, impenetrable, unsolvable as a riddle, veiled like an unapproachable deity, hovering over us … Meanwhile my host of the orang-boenian- those who disappear. Those are the women beautiful ghosts, sometimes marrying the sons of men. And of the orang-aloes, the transparent creatures, the fine shadows that float … Then, at nine o’clock, dinner is announced. The great toad jumps in. Can you see that bold toad leaping unimpeded over the great marble stones? The little lizards, at the top of the ceiling, call, in love, each other, male and female: yoo, yoo! “Tjokok!” the toad shouts and predicts rain, more rain! Sparrows that go to sleep nestle somewhere above the capital of a pillar. The servants appear stately, with dish and saucer, as if for a ceremony.

Medan is thus the new city, with the white, fresh buildings, situated in its green, fresh lawns, which owes its emergence mainly to the busy planters life that surrounds it. It is quite unique in our Indies; you will no longer find her equal, neither in Sumatra nor in Java. She is modern and European; it has an English flavor; Singapore’s neighborhood has undoubtedly influenced Medan. Witte Societeit – rightly called the zoo – Post Office, Town Hall and Java Bank, Hôtel de Boer and Medan-Hôtel, the imposing offices of various companies – Harrison and Crossfield, Deli-Maatschappij, Deli-Proefstation, Deli-Spoor-weg-Maatschappij, Firma Van Nie & Co., they are all there in the extraordinarily fresh green of rain-washed palms, ficus, tjemara’s, as white buildings of prosperity, of prosperous labor, of admirable Western effort. And yet, it is the malaise that is prevalent at the moment; the sound ‘malaise’ is not from the air; now it sounds in undertone, briefly suppressed, then the bitter, mournful sound whines loose and dominates everything: malaise! Especially malaise for us rubber people! Lament the rubber planters, whose estates, here in the neighborhood, are doomed to a stop for the moment. But the lamentation does not take away that the tourist – and what am I unlike a tourist, who writes for perhaps future tourists – no other impression is perceived but that of prosperity and wealth and freshness and young strength. Tennis is played a lot, and what is amusing is that football is practiced by young Malays, who, between their own language, call out the standard terms of noble football sports with a comical English accent.

The planters-administrators of tobacco and rubber and palm oil companies, the inspectors, the young assistants – you see especially the ‘hari besar’ – great days – pay and vacation days, in Medan; we will also see them on the companies themselves. They are all of a healthy, energetic, robust type. Is the administrator by nature dignified in his equally mature disposition? The inspector, who has eight or nine companies to inspect a week – long live the car that made this possible! – if he is a diligent, brisk fellow, he may have climbed to this lofty rank very young; the assistants are the fresh youth of the planters. Their mentality has changed a lot in recent years.

Twenty years ago, I travelled with the German mail to the Indies; many German young men were on board, and their destination was at some company at Deli to try as an assistant. There were considerable German names among them. It had not happened in Germany: the family sent the young scapegoats away to the Far East. There were those who were drunk every night. It was a sad sight. I remember a nice, most lovable, handsome-looking boy with a great German name: he was drunk almost every evening … He sometimes remained invisible for a day, and then came out refreshed and most sympathetic. After two years he died in Deli, barely twenty-two years old.

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