March 03, 2008
We Always Forget The Ballast.
I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I somehow missed reading this book in my previous life as a Southeast Asianist scholar, but there you go. Look -- just do yourself a favor and buy this book, okay?
A story of the Moluccas Suprapto had to hear the professor tell.- from Maria Dermoût's The Ten Thousand Things (1955), translated by Hans Koning Posted by the wily filipino at March 3, 2008 10:41 PMA young prince from Tuban on Java pours water over his father's hands during a ritual washing, he drops the basin, is slapped by the old man, insulted, and then has only one wish: to get away.
On a sandbank at the shore he draws a proa in the sand, with all the accessories a proa has: rudder, mast, sails, oars for a calm, rope, anchor stones in baskets, jugs of fresh water and food, fuel and a piece of flint, a brazier and a cooking pot, mats to sit and sleep upon, goods for barter, scales, money, and above all, arms. He thinks of everything -- he is a clever young man, he forgets nothing, except one thing! He forgets the ballast.
Then, when the Lord Allah has answered his prayer and made his drawing into reality (and his brother and sister and his old nurse who want to come along have gone on board) the proa floats too high on the waves.
Ballast is needed! What kind of ballast?
There is nothing available but the earth of their country; and they carry earth aboard and throw it in the hold; then they set sail without looking back.
They pass many islands, and at all of them they weigh the earth there against the earth they took with them -- the two never have the same weight.
Until they come to the Moluccas, to that one island -- there the earth weighs as much as the earth of their own country, and there they stay and found a small state, and the Javanese prince from Tuban is the first Rajah.
"Don't you ever write poetry, young friend? You could make a poem out of this, an epic, in hexameters, and what deep meaning it has!" The professor laughed his cackling laugh, he looked Suprapto in the face for a moment and then suddenly said very seriously, "You too, didn't you? You too had to hold the water basin and you too dropped it, my poor young friend, that is always the beginning --"
For once Suprapto did not control himself. "A water basin, what do you mean?" he said shortly, almost angrily. "I've never in my life been made to hold a basin for anyone!"
The professor shook his head, "but you have, young friend, you have. All of us, always, when we're young, have to hold something for those who are old, and we drop it and want to get away, and draw a ship in the sand to reach a new country, and we always forget the ballast -- there is no ballast but the earth of the old country -- and the new country's earth is always just as heavy as the old country's -- and for that, then, we have left and crossed the seas and might even have drowned on the way, in deep water, or grown old and in our turn let someone hold a basin up for us -- you too, you'll see, you too, Raden Mas Suprapto," the professor said slowly and clearly, "just like that other prince."