This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Author:Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2015-10-18T16:00:00+00:00

12

As soon as Darsam led me up the stairs, Nyai Ontosoroh came rushing out to greet me.

"You've gone too far, Nyo, we've been waiting and waiting so long for you. Annelies has fallen very ill longing for you!"

"Young Master was also ill, Nyai. I had to carry him here."

"No matter. If the two of them get together again, everything will be all right. The sickness will disappear."

Those words were so embarrassing, yet it already felt like they had started to work as an antitoxin, dissolving away the palakia in my head. Nyai caught me by the shoulder and whispered softly in my ear, smiling.

"Yes, your temperature is a bit high. No matter. Let's go upstairs, child. Your little sister has had to wait too long. You didn't even send news."

She spoke so gently, it went straight to my heart. It. was as if she was my own mother, my beloved mother, and I no other than her little boy, under her guidance. Yet my eyes kept glancing about here and there. At any moment Robert could leap out

of the darkness and thrust a knife into me with those mighty muscles of his.

"Where is Robert, Mama?" I asked, as we climbed the stairs.

"Sst. You don't need ask that. He's his father's son."

Why did I become so malleable in the hands of this woman? Like a lump of clay that could be molded just as she wished? Why was there no fight in me? Even the will to fight was missing, as if she understood and had mastery over my inner self, and could lead me in the direction I myself desired?

The upstairs was far more luxurious. Almost all the floors of the corridor were covered with carpet. It felt as if I were a cat who could walk along without making a single sound. The open windows offered views that stretched far away out there into the distance. Paddies and fields and forest spread out everywhere, joined together one after the other. A small group of people were collecting the last of the harvest. The remaining paddy was still fallow, awaiting the beginning of the end of autumn.

The newspapers reported that there had been an abundant harvest that year. There was no need to import low-quality rice from Siam, even though the most fertile rice lands of east and central Java were, to all intents and purposes, producing only sugar. It was a sign, said one observer, that Queen Wilhelmina had been blessed by God as the youngest queen ever, at an age very young for a queen.

We stood in front of the bed. Nyai fixed the blanket that lay over Annelies. That girl's breasts stood out underneath the blanket. And Nyai put her daughter's hand into mine.

"Annelies, darling."

With great effort the girl opened her eyes. She didn't turn. She didn't look. Her eyes, and that effort-filled look, were swept up to the ceiling, then they closed again.

"Minke. Nyo, child, take care of my sweetheart here," whispered Nyai. "If you too are sick, then get well now.

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