Pak Mulyo took an opening question about working for the Dutch as an invitation
to tell how he worked with one in a context in which he could turn the
tables and feel the luxury of pity, if not power per se. Noting that "this Dutchman
was a good one," he stressed his exercise of choice while justifying his
sympathy for a former colonizer. Beginning with this anecdote, his retelling of
domestic service moved outside our frame. Instead he made it into a story of
the reversal of fates and nationalist liberation, and only then talked about tending
the garden of a Dutch colonial household.