Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Zeggelen pressed him.
    “Personal opinion? Of course I have one, but it’s not for the public.”
    “Of course. But don’t you think you should let your old friends, and your new ones here, know what your views are? Isn’t that fair enough, General, as long as there are no military secrets involved?”
    “Very well, for my old and new friends who are here with us tonight. Everyone knows from the papers that the war in Aceh was very costly. Almost the total resources of the Indies, both manpower and money, were mobilized for that conquest. Now that the war is over, the government will, of course, be able to begin to strengthen the administration there, tighten security, and restore civil order. And to unify the Indies.”
    “Of course, you mean
expand
, don’t you, not
unify
?”
    “Unify.”
    “I think the general has always preferred this new term, which in fact has the same meaning,” pressed Marie van Zeggelen.
    “Nah, what did I say? A soldier shouldn’t get involved in talking.”
    “Very true, General. This new term of yours explains everything very clearly.”
    Van Heutsz laughed boisterously. His eyes pleaded for help from van Kollewijn, who was grinning, enjoying his friend’s discomfort.
    “Once you’ve begun to speak,” the member of parliament said, “you must continue. What else can you do?”
    All eyes were now focused on the general, famed for his conquest of Aceh. I had been observing him closely. I wanted to get a feel for how a killer talked and behaved.
    “It’s not difficult to understand what the implications are. The money saved by ending the war in Aceh can now be put to other uses….”
    His movements and the way he spoke were enough to make one feel confident in predicting that more wars would be breaking out everywhere. More Natives, armed with bows and arrows and spears, in as yet unknown places, would die in their hundreds on the orders of this man. For the sake of the unity of the colony, in other words, for the security of big capital in the Indies. The spilling of more blood, the loss of life, slavery, oppression, exploitation, humiliation—all this would occur at the wave of his hand. All this man sitting near me need do was point with his baton at the map, and somewhere in the Indies hell would descend to tear apart the lives of the people. Those left alive would be burdened with rodi, which would produce more of that unaccounted, unreported wealth for the Indies.
    “No one should misunderstand,” van Heutsz went on. “The unification of the Indies does not mean expansionism. There are pockets of power, different political enclaves, a score or so, still left in these Indies, which are destabilizing surrounding regions—regions that have acknowledged the sovereignty of Her Majesty.”
    “They are independent states,” said Marie van Zeggelen, “just like Aceh before it was conquered.”
    “They are not states, they are stateless regions. They have no economy or monetary system. They have no foreign relations.”
    “They are independent states,” Ter Haar retorted, “no matter how small or weak.”
    “They use old Chinese coins, not their own coinage. In the Batak area, for example, they use the Spanish dollar,” answered van Heutsz.
    “That’s no criterion. Some of them do have foreign relations. They all have systems of government. They have their own defenses. Isn’t that so, Your Excellency?”
    Engineer van Kollewijn just smiled silently.
    “And they are a source of strife,” van Heutsz stated firmly.
    “Perhaps they think we are the source of strife, General.”
    Van Heutsz laughed and nodded vigorously. He seemed to be enjoying the debate. Then: “That’s why we make, buy, and use guns.”
    And whoever does not make them, buy them, and use them—now I understood—they become targets and victims.
    “And what about East Papua? And Southeast Papua? Are they on the list of regions to be ‘unified’?”
    “Ha-ha-ha,” the general laughed again.