Stories from Deli

Louis Couperus. 1911.

Tell me, I say; tell me from Deli …

“Oh,” my wife says, and she shudders, her hands covering her face for a moment. Those three years in Deli … I’ll never forget them. I was ten years old, thirteen when we left. I had such a romantic childhood that I really did not need to read books by Gustave Aimard … It was like a book by Gustave Aimard … Papa had become an administrator … at the first tobacco company … He was went there a year before, and then we came: mama, with our children, I the eldest, and a governess … Daddy had a big house built, high on stilts, of wood – the other houses were made of bamboo, and the house stood on a kind of headland in the river, with water on all sides. All around the barns, then the fields, and around us the forest, the mystery, the desolation …

Even though it was busy for us: the overseers, the keepers, three hundred coolies … Between those three hundred coolies, we , some Europeans, deserted … Close by, on the river, an eccentric, a Frenchman, an explorer, lived in a small house, very alone, and between our house and his was a small cemetery: there his wife was buried, and there my brother is buried … So strangely quiet, that little cemetery, so close by …

In the forest, deep, deep in, the Bataks had withdrawn … It was quite pacified, as it was was called, but each time they rose up, the Bataks, against the Kompenie, who had taken their lands from them, and then they undertook raids and murder trips … Murders were committed, atrocities, in the neighborhood … You got used to the horrors … I lived among the horrors … Imagine us alone , between three hundred coolies … If only they had made an uproar! Besides, from businesses in the neighborhood you always heard the most gruesome reports … He had been murdered with wife and children; he had been tortured, in a horrible way … Fifteen minutes drive from us was the encampment: a captain, two lieutenants, a handful of soldiers … And there behind the forest, with the ever-threatening danger … Beneath our house , between the posts on which it was built for the moisture was … the prison. Sometimes a reluctant coolie was locked up there for the night. Then I heard him swear below me, scream, shout, stomp, stairs … I shivered with fear in my bed … I was a slender child, but I received a Spartan education. Five minutes from the house, the bathroom, large, made of bamboo, was by the river. I found it unsafe, so far, so in the face of impending danger. And because I was also very afraid of the dark, Dad would sometimes say in the evening:

“Little … I think I left my cigar case in the bathroom: go get it …

Then I left, with a beating heart. Through the black garden, on the side the dark fields, to the gloomy river, to the bathroom … I thought I saw the white Pontianaks haunt, with their bleeding breasts and loose hair, over the water and between the black trees. And shivering, I brought Dad back his cigar case, which he had deliberately forgotten there. We always had ferocious horses. Daddy’s passion was to tame ferocious horses. He hitched them to a gang, and I had to sit next to him … “Don’t be afraid, little one; never be afraid … “And I was always afraid … How many accidents I have not already gotten into …” Unbridled “horses running wild; breaking ashes, falling gangs … I then grabbed Daddy’s hands, which held the reins; that was of course very stupid of me, very dangerous. Sometimes you heard the tigers at night, around the house, screaming, tragic and furious, like immense cats …

Once … I looked through the blinds … I saw a tiger … The beast crept away from the house, disappeared into the night … I, shivering, went straight to say it, to Daddy … The next morning Daddy would go on a tiger hunt with the overseers and keepers … They searched for the tracks … Then it turned out that the traces were not of tiger’s feet, but … of flat human hands! The tiger had been a spy, in a tiger skin, a spy of the Bataks. We found sometimes, in the morning, nailed to the posts of the house, what hair, with blood … That was a polite warning. It reported that there was hunger in the forest, among the Bataks, and that they wanted rice. Then Daddy sent to the forest to investigate … Yes, they wanted rice from the ‘great sir’ … Well, well, rice would be given to them … And they got rice, and the imminent danger was averted again. One night, the tongue-tongue that gave the sign of fire! And Dad was just absent! Then in the dark night we saw the fierce fire of the coffee barns, blazing towards the sky, immense red and yellow flames … Were they malicious ones who had started the fire? Our house was certainly spared … The arsonists were never discovered. Then … the big amok party, in the neighborhood … The admin who started the fire? Our house was certainly spared … The arsonists were never discovered. Then … the big amok party, in the neighborhood … The admin who started the fire? Our house was certainly spared … The arsonists were never discovered. Then … the big amok party, in the neighborhood …

The admin of the tobacco company murdered there with his wife, his children … And one of the employees, who was bleeding, bleeding, fled with us, who bound Mamma, and who told us the terrible story, the horrifying story, of the murder, of the abomination, and how the crooks had gagged, tortured one of the children, so that it might say where the father kept the money …

Between such horrors I lived, I lived three years … And yet, although I was afraid , I thought it was ‘interesting’ … I was a Romanesque child, and I found it ‘interesting’ … Later, when we lived at Buitenzorg, I found life pale, and without interest, and without emotion, without spies like tigers dressed up, without bloody warnings at our doors, without murder, without fire, and I longed back to the house on the headland by the river,over there in Deli …

So my wife told me: the mistral screeched through the chimney, tugged at the windows, and it was dark in our room, where the dying fire hissed up its long, stretching tongue.

“I don’t have such romantic childhood memories,” I said. No, my childhood years were more cherished: I was Mamma’s spoiled child, and my eldest sister, who was sweet, but often very witty, then called me by all kinds of names: the ‘under-creep’, the ‘last vertebra of the tail’, and ‘greenhouse plant’; all because I was the youngest, the Benjamin, of so many children. I don’t have many interesting souvenirs, but still, sometimes I remember all at once …

That’s how I remember this: we were in the Indies, when I was a nine-year-old child. And I went with mama to the old city to a Chinese carpenter; a carpenter who was very clever, who carved and collected, sold and imitated antique furniture, as you sometimes find in the kampong. He made very beautiful carvings: I still remember how beautiful I thought it, even if I was only a child. Well, I went to him with Mommy to choose antique chairs … He received Mommy very politely, as a Chinese merchant does, with bows and lots of flattering words. But suddenly, when he saw me, he was startled for a moment, as if something struck him, and then bowed very low to me three times, four times, and he called his wife and his sons, and they all bowed very low to me, with flattering words and gestures of deep reverence. I will never forget … I was a nine-year-old child, and those bending Chinese made a very deep impression on me …

Then my mother said in astonishment:

“Why do you bow to my boy like that, say Baba, and why do your wife and your sons bow to him like that?

And the Chinese joiner then said, reverently:

– Great madam, we bow to your son, the little sir, because he is noticeably drawn with a very happy sign. Did you not know that, great madam? Look, the little gentleman has in the front of his hair, on his forehead, a crown, a twisted curl, just like everyone else has one on the back, on the back of his head. Such a crown in front, on the forehead, is a very rare and extremely happy sign. The little gentleman is drawn extremely happily. For the crown in the front indicates that he has a ‘great soul’ …

“Baba,” said my mother; don’t make my boy vain; he will become too proud if you tell him now that he has a ‘great soul’ …

And in myself, very impressed, I thought about what it could be: to have a ‘great soul’, and I, a boy of nine years old, searched in me for my ‘great soul’ …

Then the Chinese carpenter said very earnestly:

“That’s not how I mean it, great madam … Perhaps I don’t say it very well in Malay: in my language I would say that the crown in the front marks the little gentleman as having a” great soul. ” By that I mean that the little gentleman will be happy in the life that awaits him, because his soul will be ‘great’ and will see around him, and see all the beauty that is in the world and in the world. man. The ‘great souls’ who see it in this way are the poets and the artists: they imitate the nature and life, and those imitations are their happiness. Their souls are “great” because they see much and understand much, and in turn give much of what they receive; for the “great souls” are mild. And because they receive and give, and see and admire and imitate, they are happy, their lives are happier than many other people: they are the blessed of the gods, and the gods love them …

So, literally, spoke the Chinese carpenter: only later did I fully understand his words; but then I was still very impressed, for his sons, great Chinese boys, stood smiling and bowing and pointing to my crown in front.

My mother was a sweet, simple woman. I saw her forehead frown a little; and I understood that she was afraid that the Chinese carpenter praised and admired me too much for my crown in front, as she sometimes frowned when acquaintances and friends said that I was a very sweet little boy …

But as my mother now turned the conversation and inquired about the carved chairs, I approached the altar at the back of the shop.

The Chinese boys, smiling and courteous, surrounded me … And I looked up to the great, sacred Chinese plate: the picture of the gods who would bless and love me. They were two gods: one was generously fat, smiling, white, pink, in beautiful golden robes, with long drooping mustaches around the lips …

Louis Couperus. De zwaluwen neêr gestreken. 1911. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/coup002zwal02_01/coup002zwal02_01_0005.php

The other, shrinking behind him, squirmed in one, and grinned terribly, with blood-shot eyes, black and scarlet face and hair and beard, and he stretched out clawing fingers, with sharp, very long nails …

The Chinese boys lit incense sticks in slender vases, which smelled fine blues upwards.

The black god grinned through the smoke, and the pink, fat god smiled at me kindly.

[p. 58]

I looked up confidently to the gods, who would ‘bless’ and ‘love’ me, because I had a crown in the front.

I liked the good god, and the black did not frighten me very much; I thought he was far more farcical than creepy, with his fiery red beard, and then I thought his robe, black, gold and red, very beautiful …

– That’s one of my souvenirs, I said. My crown in the front is now completely gone with the thinning of my hair, but, although my soul is not so much ‘bigger’ than other souls, yes, even though I count myself humbly among the ‘small’, the very ‘small souls, I have found the happiness that the Chinese carpenter meant: the happiness of seeing and understanding, of giving and receiving, the happiness, as poets and artists can find, to see all the beauty of the man, the world and life …