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THE PLANCIUSby Konstantin Biebl
translated from the Czech by Jed Slast
copyright © 1931, 2012 by Konstantin Biebltranslation copyright © 2000, 2012 by Jed Slast
All rights reserved.
1
Where does Surabaya lie? Where is Prambanan located? What is Telega Mendjer and Kedjadjar?
Tokay? Babu? Assam? Siris? Excuse me, what is wau-wau?
I don’t know where Surabaya lies or where Prambanan is located. I have no idea what Telega
Mendjer and Kedjadjar are, or what is tokay, babu, assam, and siris. I don’t know what a wau-wau
is. But I like to sit on the deck after dinner as the Dutch converse with one another.
Since the beginning of the voyage, past the desolate shores of Africa, only on rare occasions did
their conversation touch on Java, and when it did, the topic was so lightly grazed it was as if by a
wing. It was not until later that the stream of their talk, like the ship, turned toward the East, and
the Dutch language, such a hard tongue spilling into the green Rhine, took on a beauty and
melancholy through the aromatic influx of Malay and Javanese words.
At night, with my eyes closed and with my arms covering them, in the trebled darkness I listened
to words I didn’t understand, letting them stir me for whole hours with their music, so mournful :
BURUBUDUR
Isn’t each “U” a niche for a Buddha statue?
2
Six in the morning : the sea in view, the Indian Ocean!
Air and water permeate one another at the horizon; the air becomes damp and salty, the water
breathable and translucent — two mirrors, each admiring itself in the other. To look at the sea is to
look at heaven and vice-versa. Plancius sails with its mast pointed downward, parting the white
clouds, from which dolphins stream on their peregrinations through the sky. Look, an albatross!
Flying under the sea, its stomach turned up. The sun rises.
3
The open sea is remarkable to me less for its verdigris hue — a patina borrowed from the heavens of
old chapels and churches — than for the fact that it is the largest circle I have ever seen, drawn by
the hand of God. Compared to this, what is a wedding ring removed from its finger, or the ring of
the greatest circus on earth, Barnum & Bailey, which vanishes in the ocean depths as easily as the
round pocket mirror that has just slipped from my hand?
My mirror, revolving gently as it falls to the bottom, is impressed on my mind, that where my face
would appear strange fish now open their mouths trying to exhale their asthmatic breath on it, as if
terrified by their own image.
Even if one were to gaze into the ocean depths for an entire month he would learn very little of
its secrets.
The Alps on the march, this is the ocean daily : the snowbound crests of waves, flying fish, the
mute larks of these velvety abysses, raising themselves aloft. And if you’re lucky, one day you will
catch sight of an aluminum shark glinting in the sun. You’ll also see : tortoises, as large as café
tables; water snakes, plenty of water snakes; errant coconuts with their hair in their face like the
heads of drowned men with whom fate curiously toys, as gulls alight on them and break into cynical
laughter; several empty bottles messageless; and then jellyfish, green, violet, pink — they are the
maiden bonnets of mermaids, brought to the surface by an underwater eddy. When the eddy abates,
the bonnets sink again to the bottom, to the feet of their owners, who the whole time have followed
them with green eyes gazing upward.
By chance I learned that on the ocean floor there are metropolises with millions of inhabitants.
An old captain on the small island of Sabang came out with it. He wept as he told me :
“I collided with the roof of a giant skyscraper one thousand floors high. The ship was damaged
but didn’t sink. They took me away because they thought I was crazy. But I’m not crazy!”
His hands were trembling as he unfurled a map and showed me the fateful spot, which he had
marked with a red cross. East of Formosa.
4
We’re approaching the equator. It’s already in sight, the equator, the sun’s reflection, a golden ring
encircling the world.
— Now!
Could it be that we’ve crossed the equator? We’ve crossed the equator and nothing has
happened. God, what a let down! How many stormy adventures at sea did we have when we were
sixteen? adventures we are now parting with once and for all : we’ve crossed the equator and
nothing has happened. God, what a let down! Act quickly! Maybe something can still be retrieved
from those wonderful days!
Let’s say that Plancius isn’t one of those modern oil-fed vessels, but an old Dutch windjammer, the
type that undertook the first expeditions to India. On the equator, but only on the equator, would
absolute calm prevail. This is of some consequence for our ship. Having moved at a very slow pace
it suddenly comes to a stop — right on the equator, running through the ship’s center.
The captain curses and paces to and fro, from the southern to the northern hemisphere and back
again. He then stops and, straddling his legs across the equator so that he’s standing in both
hemispheres at the same time, tells the helmsman :
“We just need to move the ship a few feet, but tell me how?”
Not knowing what to do, he has all the sailors summoned together, except me. I take umbrage at
the slight and turn pale, but smile all the same. I stand a little off to the side, in the same place as
now I suppose. No one has anything useful to offer. The captain is holding his dislodged cap in the
same hand that scratches his head. The sailors stand in a circle around him, the veins popping up
on their brows as they brainstorm. The red-headed cook traces his thoughts with his hands, but
soon loses the thread. After three or four gestures he lets his hands drop, then he begins all over
again.
The captain suddenly turns around, having been struck in the bowed back of his neck by the
force of my gaze. I slowly and somewhat recklessly approach him. As I do, I feel welling up on my
body all the old wounds that I have suffered in my countless battles with the palefaces. I yank open
my shirt and everyone recognizes me at once, even the captain, who goes completely white, as if my
fame at sea were as great as it had once been on land.
But as that typical trait of every great adventurer, vanity, has not entirely vanished from me even
today, and seeing that action on my part would result in saving some Dutch schooner of, as I glance
about me, negligible worth, the control of which I could seize, so it appears, almost without a fight :
one wink of the eye would win over eight men, another wink four more . . . No, no, my lad, this isn’t
for us!
I have abandoned the ship — which I could have gained and saved — leaving it to fend for itself
with its bemused captain and entire crew. In one second I have aged to my twenty-nine years. And
this was for nothing more than the smile of a petite Japanese woman leaning against the railing,
who abruptly turned to me fully her fragrant visage.
5
I am not afraid of the sun; I love it more than anything else, this appalling sun that turns the
Albanian cliffs to ashes and dust. Meanwhile a drowsing vulture squints its sly eyes in the scorching
heat, nodding its white hoary head. I have no fear of Algiers, when the sun milk-glazes its mosques,
nor of the Red Sea, when the ship’s stoker, whom the heat has driven mad, suddenly runs out of the
engine room with a hellish laugh to fling himself into the water as sharkbait.
I am not even afraid of the sun in the tropics, blindly trusting it with bared head. Like the
natives, I gladly put my naked body in its hands, and then feel a mounting sadistic pleasure from the
thousands of slender needles that tattoo my vibrating skin.
My eyes are closed, and I see an enormous fire. Its crimson glow has penetrated my lids and lines
the interior of my head completely with flame, whose reflection is cast deep into my chest and
illuminates my lungs and heart, beating lightly. I see myself living, breathing. Yet I am immobile, as
immobile as a pharoah while being embalmed.
Perhaps the great anxiety with which I guard the least movement comes from the secret fear that,
having lost the conception of time, I have possibly been lying here thousands of years, and if I
would want to move my finger I’d find to my horror that I cannot.
For a moment my uneasiness intensifies. I have a flash of anamnesis that tells me I once had roots
sunk into the earth, which I now recognize around me, dolorous and swampy. All at once I clearly
see that I have never been anything other than what I am now, namely, a sprig of horsetail which
dropped down here millions of years ago and is turning to coal.
A vigorous prod at my shoulders rouses me out of the late Paleozoic Era :
“Sumatra!” announces Mr. Sachse.
While I was dozing in the sun land had surfaced in the west, a long blue band hemming a
somewhat lighter sea. Mr. Sachse hands me his spyglass. What a land! And what a familiar land! In
the vast marshes stretching from the north across the whole west to the south I see palms and tree
ferns.
My teeth chattering, I say to myself : “Sumatra! Sumatra!”
6
Mr. Sachse is no longer nervous; his wife has stopped turning her emerald ring. Mr. Jansen is not
snapping toothpicks and throwing them under the table. Mr. Makelaars has quit drumming the
table.
“Djongos!”
Mrs. Sachse would like some ice cream.
Gradually I’m beginning to understand why Mr. Sachse made such a fuss recently on the deck of
the German Yorck whenever the steward did not bring the tea he’d ordered : “This would be
unthinkable on a Dutch ship! Everything there runs smooth as silk! Do you know what ‘djongos’ is?
You don’t, how could you! No one who hasn’t spent time on Java could know.” Mr. Sachse chuckled.
His hand described the arch of an air bridge from Genoa to Batavia, flinging the butt of his cigar
into the sea, the fish fighting for it.
“Djong . . . !”
Mr. Jansen wants a glass of sherry.
And here it is.
Slowly I’m beginning to understand this one word, half a word, the second half can be
swallowed and still one’s wishes are immediately satisfied.
“Djong . . . !”
Mr. Makelaars would like some fish.
And here it is.
This is akin to : Table, set yourself ! “Djong,” i.e., roast chicken, lobster, zabaglione, pineapples,
and all the comforts of India. Slowly I’m beginning to understand.
7
The ship lightly rolls, every chair a rocker; the horizon rises and falls.
I open a Malaysian textbook. On the first page, first word : djongos. He sits in the Javanese
fashion, watching my every movement : djongos. His face is motionless, as are all faces of the East,
and though he might spend his entire life in someone’s service he will never lose his natural nobility.
He looks askance when regarding you, like we look upon stars of lesser luminosity. Putting himself
into a light sleep by dint of his own will, he remains effortlessly vigilant, and will divine each of your
wishes and see to them automatically without hesitation or the least displeasure. “The Javanese are
the best servants in the world,” the Dutch will tell you.
When thirsty you say : “Saya minta ayer blanda.” An appetite for food is expressed by the word
“makan!” Mr. Sachse assured me one day that it is possible to learn fairly good Malay in two weeks.
He’s right : Malay is without grammar. It is used only in the imperative. To speak Malay means to
know how to command. You’d be truly amazed at what a simple language it is; you need to know
just a few magic phrases.
I think back to Professor Jiroušek who with such tenacity would graft the subjunctive into our
heads. What would he say if he were to hear that his pupil from the first bench by the door had
learned Malay in two weeks? I’ll pay him a visit when I return. He’ll be at home and will be a little
taken aback since he’ll recognize me. I must thank him for all his efforts, which I have come to
appreciate fifteen years later on the deck of Plancius. I’ll tell him this in Malay and then he’ll really
be flabbergasted. But I don’t know how to say “thank you.” In the meantime Djongos has taken
advantage of my stooping over the textbook to slip a cushion behind my back. Even though I peruse
the entire book, it’s no help. I’m agitated that I cannot complete the sentence I will say upon my
return from Java. Irritating me the most, however, is Djongos’s extreme solicitousness. Look at how
his eyes follow my lit cigarette! I pretend that I don’t notice, and at the moment when he least
expects it I flick an ash, which instead of falling to the ground as I expected tumbles into an ashtray
he has managed, by I don’t know what sort of miracle, to hold out at the last second. Humiliated by
failure, I discard the cigarette half-smoked. Djongos extinguishes it with a saliva-moistened finger.
With a quick movement, so he won’t be able to help me execute it, I turn the back of my chair to
him. This victory so satisfies me that I remain calm even though he has repositioned himself
opposite me as before.
Here comes Babu with a toddler in tow. The Javanese nanny : a voluntary slave of European
children.
A child’s greatest pleasure is not to receive a toy, but to break it. And as Babu loves all the world’s
children — black, yellow, white — she bears everything with equanimity. She lets them scratch, bite,
kick, pull her hair, smiling the whole time with her eyes full of sad joy. When a child begins to cry,
perhaps because he has hurt his little hand — a hand he uses with all his strength to hammer his
nanny’s face — Babu cries with him and blows on it. If she could be sure it would soothe him, she
would offer him a knife to cut off her own nose or ears, if only the child would smile a little. So as
all Javanese males are djongos, all females are babu.
The child pulls his nanny toward the railing, and Babu must hold him as he spits into the ocean.
He is delighted when the wad falls right on Babu’s face mirrored in the water. Babu and the child
laugh at this together.
At that moment Djongos taps her on the shoulder to warn her that she is blocking my view of
the ocean. She glances at me, then at the child, who doesn’t want to leave. She is beautiful and
bewildered. This is the most pure-hearted woman in the world. I don’t dare raise my eyes to her, not
even as she is leaving with the child, who in his own astonishment has forgotten to commence
bawling. She walks off leisurely, swinging her hips swathed in a batik sarong, its great lotus blossom
spreading open with each step.
8
Mrs. Sachse orders :
“Spit it out!”
Babu spits out a masticated betelnut and stands there guiltily with bloodstained mouth as if she’d
just run out of a dentist’s office.
“I simply cannot bear to have my babu chewing siris,” she says turning toward us. “But it’s no
use, after a while she will just do it again.”
Mr. Jansen would like to add something to this, but doesn’t as he appreciates the impropriety of
superfluously amplifying the vices of a colored nanny. Using this opportune moment to hide my true
intentions, and like a switchman who has just shifted the train onto another track, I ask :
“Do you know Malay well?”
“I have been in Java for fifteen years,” Mr. Jansen assures me.
“How do you say ‘thank you’ in Malay?” I ask, as if unaware that I am aiming at his heart.
“What’s that? What’s that?” In the end he has to admit he doesn’t know. Neither does Mr. Sachse
nor Mr. Makelaars. No one from the party knows.
“Just a moment,” Mr. Sachse says, “let us solicit Engineer Berger’s opinion.” A little hard of
hearing from the quinine, it seems he would rather not comply : maybe because his fever is drawing
him into the casino or because he has spotted me, whom he has so openly despised since the first
moment I set foot on the ship, which is why he is now sitting with his back to me. In this tense
atmosphere Mr. Sachse, smiling thrice — twice in his pince-nez — puts the question to him :
“How do you say ‘thank you’ in Malay?”
Mrs. Sachse is as aroused as if she were in the theater viewing a melodrama; Mr. Jansen, not
having any toothpicks handy, is snapping matchsticks and tossing them under the table; Mr.
Makelaars is violently drumming the table as if a decisive battle were about to take place. But
Berger maintains his composure.
“I have no idea,” he replies, “I have never had need of those words, and I also hope, gentlemen,
that neither have you. And why would you? Do you ever speak Malay amongst yourselves? Never!
We speak Malay only with the natives. However, if you would like to slake your curiosity, you should
ask someone more qualified than I,” pointing to me over his shoulder without so much as deigning
to turn his head.
Mrs. Sachse jumps to her feet; the color has drained from her face and she is shaking all over. She
is not so much concerned about what he has said as about his outrageous behavior. She is proud of
the Dutch colonists’ level of social refinement and is pleased to be included in their ranks. Mr.
Jansen senses that there has been a misunderstanding : “Have you two gentlemen not been
introduced?” and he introduces me.
I thought Berger would pounce on me; he embraces me instead : “So, you are Czech? Well that’s
just fine! But where did you get so dark? Forgive me, I thought you were a half-breed,” and he offers
me a cigar.
Once again happy and radiant, putting to shame Mrs. Jansen’s diamonds, Mrs. Sachse bursts
into a rather un-Dutch laugh. Naturally she doesn’t fail to curb her uncorked voice just enough to
make it generally understood that this laughter of hers is a deliberate attempt to quickly gloss over
the unfortunate indiscretion. The rest of the party also starts to laugh, thereby indicating that they
do indeed understand. Sitting close by, the major looks on in wonder. When his glassy gaze,
accustomed to binoculars, meets Mrs. Sachse’s eyes, he produces a faint smile so that she will not
think he condemns the party’s conduct.
At this point Eng. Berger recognizes his obligation to give me his undivided attention. He
inquires into the purpose of my journey and has a difficult time grasping what I mean by “research
trip.” I ask him what he thinks is the most beautiful thing on Java.
“The hotels! You’ll see, it’s the hotels. Each room has its own water closet and large bathroom
with shower. Surrounding the hotels are parks with sand walkways amid beds of roses.
“Will you be spending time in Batavia? Don’t forget to have a look at the fair; you won’t see
something like that every day. For instance, the head of the Dutch queen with a diamond diadem,
only this diadem is ten meters high. I tell you, it’s a magnificent piece of gardening, made out of
nothing but white orchids.
“Did you know you could get Pilsner on Java? But what will probably surprise you the most is
that when you go to the rain forest I believe there are lovely asphalt roadways for you to drive on.
You have no reason to be afraid, the tigers have already been killed off, or at least very nearly so.
Anyway, in Solo there is a zoo where you can see all the wildlife found on Java. Snakes eight meters
long! Crocodiles! Panthers! One would be hard put to say that such a panther was even indigenous.
I have seen monkeys, but only once I think, though there are plenty of them up in the mountains.
Sometimes one manages to spot them from the train, but in this heat you never know — one tends
to sleep.”
“What is your opinion of the Javanese?” I ask next.
“Oh, the Javanese,” Berger replies, absorbed in thought. “They are so kind and so gentle,” he
adds. “And why shouldn’t they be? They have it pretty good. By constructing dams the government
has ensured them a sufficient allocation of water needed for flooding the rice paddies. They don’t
have problems with work, which they can find on the plantations or in the sugar refineries,
whichever they prefer. We have founded a hospital for them and are building lazarettos.”
Engineer Berger would lay bare to me the whole of his colonial heart if it were not for a sudden
radio bulletin from Batavia, a bulletin as extraordinary as it is incomprehensible. It quakes the ship,
shakes the mast, upends the chairs, ruins the games of chess, hastily clearing out the salon so it can
then sweep clean every single third-class cabin. The Chinese, rich merchants from Java, capitalize
on the confusion and admix a bit of their yellow with the throng of their white competitors.
“There is an uprising on Java.”
They surge to the railing. With eyes bulging in terror as if there had been a mass overdose of
caffeine, they face the dark event, devouring the last remnants of daylight so that dusk begins to fall
more quickly than at other times.
Mrs. Sachse is the first to scream : “My pearls!”
She sees her drawers ransacked, while Mr. Sachse stands before his prised-open warehouse out of
which hundreds and hundreds of his bicycles are in motion in every direction. Mr. Jansen has one
hand gripping his wife’s arm and the other his servant’s throat, from whose hand falls a liberated
knife. Mr. Makelaars defends his house, shooting from a window onto the street. And Engineer
Berger sees the rebellion grow ripe on the plantations.
They all stare at the sea. They all see Batavia burning! I stand behind a Japanese woman with a
high open comb in her hair, behind whose grille the sun is setting.
Note : Konstantin Biebl (1898-1951) was a member of Devětsil and co-founder of the
Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia. Known primarily as a poet, Plancius is one of his
few works of prose, and is very much in the vein of Poetism. It was published privately
as a limited edition booklet by Sfinx Bohumil Janda in Prague on New Years 1931 as a
gift for friends. Jindřich Štyrský provided the frontispiece (reproduced here) and the
design. An earlier version of this translation appeared in The Prague Revue, no. 7 (2000).