The Hidden Force
Louis Couperus








A mystical Javan prince and a promiscuous wife are twin challenges to Commissioner Van Oudijck's seemingly impregnable authority. As he struggles to maintain control of his district in the Dutch East Indies, as well as of his family, ancient local traditions reassert their influence and colonial power begins to disintegrate.






Louis Couperus




The Hidden Force





BOOK I





1


THE FULL MOON, which that evening had a tragic intensity, had risen early, just before twilight faded, like a huge, blood-red globe. It flared sunset-like low beyond the tamarind trees of Long Avenue and climbed, gradually purging itself of its tragic hue, into an indistinct sky. A deathly hush pervaded everything like a veil of silence, as if, after the long afternoon siesta, the evening’s rest were beginning without any transition. Over the town, its white-pillared detached houses hidden among the tree-lined avenues and gardens, there hung a muffled silence in the oppressiveness of the evening air, without a breath of wind, as if the lustreless evening were wearied by the scorching east monsoon day. The houses nestled silently amid the vegetation, with their regularly looming ranks of large whitewashed flowerpots. Here and there lights were already being lit. Suddenly a dog barked and another dog answered, tearing the muffled silence into long, coarse shreds; the angry dogs — hoarse, breathless, gruffly hostile — suddenly they too fell silent.

At the end of Long Avenue lay the district commissioner’s mansion, set deep behind its front garden. Straight out of the blackness of the giant banyan trees its low lines of tiled roofs zigzagged their way one after the other towards the shadow of the rear garden, casting a primitive outline over a patchwork of rooms and verandas to form a single silhouette. At the front, however, rose the white columns of the portico, dazzlingly bright and substantial, widely spaced, open and welcoming with the expansiveness of an imposing palace gate. Through the open doors the central gallery extended backwards, illuminated by an occasional flickering lamp.

A native attendant lit the lanterns at the side of the house. Semicircles of large white pots containing roses and chrysanthemums, palms and caladiums fanned out left and right in a wide arc from the front to the side of the house. A broad gravel path formed the drive up to the white-columned portico; there was a wide, arid expanse of lawn surrounded by pots, and in the middle of it, on a brick pedestal, was a monumental vase containing a large latania. A green freshness was provided by the winding pond, where the huge leaves of a Victoria regia rubbed shoulders like round, dark-green trays, with the occasional splash of white from a lotus-like flower among them. A path wound along the edge of the pond, and in a round shingle-covered area stood a tall flag pole. The flag had already been lowered, as it was every day at six. A simple gate divided the grounds from Long Avenue.

The huge compound was silent. A single lamp from the candelabra on the front veranda, and another inside turned down low, had now slowly begun to burn, having been laboriously lit by the lamp boy as two night lights in the palace of columns and receding roofs, its perspective like that of a child’s drawing. On the steps of the office sat several attendants in dark uniforms, talking in whispers. After a while one of them got up and, with the leisurely gait of one not wishing to hurry, headed towards a bronze bell hanging high up, near the attendants’ shed at the very edge of the compound. He reached the bell after a hundred paces and rang seven slowly echoing strokes. The clanger reverberated with a brazen note, each stroke followed by a zigzagging boom. The dogs’ barking began again. The attendant, supple and boyishly slim in his blue linen jacket and trousers with yellow facings, cuffs and collar, calmly retraced his hundred steps back to the other attendants.

The light had now been turned on in the office and in the adjoining bedroom, where a faint glow penetrated through the blinds. The District Commissioner, a large thick-set man in a black jacket and white trousers, walked through the office and called outside:

“Attendant!”

The head attendant, in his linen uniform jacket, its tails edged with a wide yellow hem, approached on bended knees and crouched down…

“Call the nyonya, your mistress!”

“The nyonya has gone out, kanjeng!” whispered the man, and with both hands, fingers touching, he made the respectful sign of the semba.

“Where has the mistress gone to?”

“I haven’t checked yet, master!” said the man, as an excuse for not knowing, and again made the sign of the semba.

The District Commissioner thought for a moment.

“My cap,” he said. “My cane.”

The head attendant, his knees still bent in dutiful respect, scuttled across the room and in a crouching position offered the semi-formal uniform cap and a walking stick.

The Commissioner went out, the head attendant hurrying after him holding a long burning wick, the glowing tip of which he swung in order to identify the Commissioner to anyone passing by in the dark. The Commissioner walked slowly across the compound and onto Long Avenue. Along that avenue, like a row of tamarind trees and flamboyants, were the villas of the principal local dignitaries, faintly lit, deathly quiet, seemingly unoccupied, with the lines of white-washed flowerpots glowing in the dim evening light.

The Commissioner walked first past the secretary’s house; then a girls’ school on the other side; then the notary’s office, a hotel, the post office and the home of the president of the criminal court. At the end of Long Avenue was the Catholic church, and farther on, across the river bridge, was the station. Outside the station was a large European shop, better illuminated than the others. The moon, having climbed higher and turning a brighter silver as it rose, shone down on the white bridge, the white shop, the white church: all this around a small, treeless square with a small, pointed monument — the municipal clock — at its centre.

The Commissioner met no one; the occasional Javanese, moving through the darkness, appeared momentarily from the shadows, causing the attendant to swing the glowing tip of his wick ostentatiously behind his master. Usually the Javanese understood and cowered to one side of the road. Sometimes, out of ignorance, fresh from his village, he failed to understand and walked anxiously by, looking apprehensively at the attendant, who kept on swinging and as he passed snapped a curse at him, because he — yokel as he was — had no manners. If a carriage or a trap approached, he again swung his shooting star through the evening, signalling to the coachman, who either stopped and alighted, or crouched in his vehicle, and while crouching steered towards the very edge of the road.

The Commissioner walked on gloomily, with a steady, determined pace. He turned right off the small square and walked past the Dutch Reformed Church, straight towards an attractive villa with slim, fairly accurate Ionic plaster columns and brightly lit with paraffin lamps set in a candelabra. It was the Concordia club. A few servants in short, tight-fitting white jackets were sitting on the steps. A European in a white suit, the landlord, was walking about the front veranda. But there was no one around the large drinks table and the broad wicker chairs spread their arms as if waiting in vain.

The landlord bowed on seeing the Commissioner, who touched his cap briefly, passed the club and turned left. He walked to the end of the avenue, past dark little cottages hidden away in small compounds, turned again and walked along the mouth of the river. Proa after proa lay moored there, like on a canal; a monotonous buzz of Maduran seamen droned slowly across the water, from which a fishy odour rose. Passing the harbourmaster’s office, the Commissioner continued towards the pier, which extended some way into the sea, and at the tip of which the iron candelabra shape of a small lighthouse, like a miniature Eiffel Tower, rose up. Here the District Commissioner stopped and breathed in deeply. The wind had suddenly got up, the east monsoon wind blowing from afar, as it did every day at that hour. But suddenly, unexpectedly, it stopped, subsided, as if flapping its wings in vain. The choppy sea smoothed its moon-white curls of foam and, momentarily, became a long, pale phosphorescent expanse.

Across the sea, the sad and monotonous drone of singing approached like a great nocturnal bird, and a fishing proa with a high, curved prow — giving it the look of a ship from antiquity — glided into the waterway. A melancholy, stoical acceptance of all the petty, dark, earthly things under that endless sky, on the shore of that sea of phosphorescent distances, drifted about and conjured a disturbing mystery…

Perhaps the tall, robust man who stood there, feet apart, breathing deeply and slowly in time with the incoming gusts of wind, tired from his work, from sitting at his desk, from his calculations regarding currency reform — the abolition of the smallest denomination of coins, entrusted to him personally by the Governor-General as an important matter — perhaps that tall, robust man, practical, cool-headed, decisive from the long-term exercise of authority did not feel that obscure mystery drifting over the Indies town that evening — his district capital — but he did feel a longing for tenderness. He felt the vague longing for a child’s arm around his neck, for small, high-pitched voices around him. He longed for a young, smiling wife to be waiting for him. He didn’t analyse that sentimentality in himself, he was not given to introspection: he was too busy for that. His days were too full and varied for him to be able to give in to what he knew were fits of weakness: the suppressed impulses of his young years. But though he didn’t reflect, the mood was impossible to shake off, like a pressure on his broad chest, like a disease of tenderness, a malaise of sentimentality in his otherwise very practical mind, that of a senior official who liked his work, his area, and was committed to its interests, and for whom the almost autonomous authority of his position was totally in keeping with his domineering nature; who with his powerful lungs was just as accustomed to breathing the atmosphere of his extensive responsibilities and broad field of varied tasks as he was to breathing the wind from the open sea. That evening in particular, the longing and nostalgia filled him completely. He felt lonely, not just because of the isolation that almost always surrounds a chief regional officer, who is approached either with conventional, smiling deference, for the sake of conversation, or with succinct, businesslike respect. Although he was the head of a family, he was lonely. He thought of his big house, his wife and children. And he felt lonely, sustained only by the importance he attached to his work. It was everything to him and filled all his waking hours. He fell asleep thinking about it and his first thought on waking was of some matter concerning the district.

At that moment, tired of figures, breathing deeply in the wind, he inhaled with the freshness of the sea its melancholy, the mysterious poignancy of the seas of the Indies, the haunting sadness of the seas of Java; the ruefulness, the melancholy that comes rushing from afar as if borne on mysterious wings. But his nature was not the kind to surrender itself to mystery. He denied it. There was no such thing: there was only the freshness of the sea and the wind. There was only the scent of fish and flowers and seaweed: an odour dispersed on the wind. There was only a moment’s respite, and whatever mysterious gloom he felt nevertheless creeping irresistibly that evening into his rather susceptible mind — which he thought concerned his family circle, which he would have liked to see more tightly-knit — gathered more closely around him as father and husband. If there was any melancholy, it stemmed from that. It didn’t come from the sea or from afar through the air. He did not give in to his very first sensation of strangeness… Instead he planted himself more firmly, threw out his chest, raised his stalwart, military head, and sniffed the air.

The head attendant, squatting with his glowing wick in his hand, peered intently at his master, as if asking what he’s doing standing there so oddly by the lighthouse… So odd, those Dutch… What’s he thinking?… Why is he acting like that?… At this hour, in this of all places… The sea spirits are out and about now. There are crocodiles under the water, and every crocodile is a ghost… Look, someone had made a sacrifice to them, banana and rice and dried meat and a hard-boiled egg on a raft of bamboo, down at the base of the lighthouse… What is His Lordship, kanjeng tuan, doing here now?… It’s not good, it bodes misfortune.

The attendant’s spying eyes ranged up and down across the broad back of his master, who just stood there and gazed… What was he gazing at?… What could he see being borne on the wind?… So strange, those Dutch, strange…

The Commissioner suddenly turned round and walked back, and the startled attendant followed him, blowing on the tip of his burning wick. The Commissioner returned the way he had come; there was now a gentleman sitting in the club, who greeted him, and a few young men were walking along Long Avenue. The dogs were barking.

As the Commissioner approached the entrance of his official compound he saw two white figures, a man and a girl, ahead of him at the other entrance, who vanished, however, into the blackness under the banyan trees. He went straight to his office, where he handed another attendant his cap and stick. He immediately sat down at his desk. He could fit an hour’s work in before dinner.




2


SEVERAL LAMPS HAD BEEN LIT. In fact the lamps had been lit everywhere, but in the long, wide galleries there was scarcely any light. In the grounds and in the house there must have been at least twenty or thirty paraffin lamps in candelabras and lanterns, but they gave no more than a dim glow, a yellow haze that spread through the house. A stream of moonlight flowed into the garden, illuminating the flowerpots and casting a sparkle across the pond. Against the bright sky the banyans stood out like soft velvet…

The first gong for dinner had sounded. On the front veranda a young man was swaying back and forth on a rocking chair, hands behind his head, bored. A young girl hummed to herself as she walked down the central gallery as if in expectation. The house was furnished in the conventional manner of commissioners’ residences in the interior, grand and banal. The marble floor of the front veranda was white and as glossy as a mirror; tall potted palms were positioned between the pillars; rocking chairs were arrayed around marble tables. In the first inner gallery, which ran parallel to the front veranda, rows of chairs stood against the wall, as if for an eternal reception. The end of the second inner gallery, which ran from front to back, at the point where it again widened into a gallery running from side to side, was marked by a huge red satin curtain hanging from a gold cornice. In the white wall spaces between the doors of the rooms hung either gold-framed mirrors on marble consoles, or lithographs — paintings as they were called in the Indies: Van Dyck on horseback, Veronese received by a doge on the steps of a Venetian palace, Shakespeare at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and Tasso at the Este court. But the largest space was occupied by a huge etching in a frame topped by the royal coat of arms: a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina in her coronation regalia. In the centre of the central gallery was a red satin ottoman, crowned by a palm. Apart from that, there were a great many chairs and large candelabra. Everything was well maintained and pompously banal, unhomely and without a single intimate corner, as if always expecting the next reception. In the semi-darkness of the paraffin lamps — just a single lamp was lit in each candelabra — the long, wide gallery stretched out in vacant tedium.

The second gong sounded. On the back veranda the table, overlong and as if forever awaiting guests, had been laid for three. The butler and six or so servants stood waiting at the serving tables and the two buffets. The butler had already started filling plates with soup, and a few of the servants put the three bowls of soup on the table, on top of the folded napkins lying on the plates. Then, once more, they continued to wait, while the soup steamed faintly. Another boy filled the water glasses with large cubes of ice.

The young girl had come closer, still humming. She may have been seventeen and was just like her mother, now divorced, the Commissioner’s first wife, a pretty young Eurasian woman who now lived in Batavia and, so it was said, ran a discreet gambling den. She had a pale olive complexion, with the occasional hint of a fruitlike blush, and lovely black hair that curled naturally at the temples and was worn up in a very large bun. Her black pupils sparkled in a moist blue-and-white pool, around which her heavy lashes played, up and down, up and down. Her mouth was small and a little plump, and her upper lip had the merest suggestion of dark down. She was not tall, and had slightly too full a figure, rather like a forced rose that blossoms prematurely. She wore a white piqué skirt and a white linen blouse with lace inserts, and round her neck was a bright-yellow ribbon that went very well with her olive pallor, which sometimes suddenly flushed, as if with a rush of blood.

The young man from the front veranda had also come strolling in. He resembled his father, with a thick blond moustache. Scarcely twenty-three, he looked at least five years older, dressed in a Russian linen suit but with a collar and tie.

Finally Van Oudijck himself arrived, his resolute step approaching swiftly, as if he were eating briefly before returning to work. All three sat down without a word and spooned up their soup.

“What time is Mama arriving tomorrow?” asked Theo.

“At eleven-thirty,” replied Van Oudijck, and turning to his personal servant behind him, said: “Kario, don’t forget that the mistress must be collected from the station at eleven-thirty tomorrow.”

“Yes, kanjeng,” whispered Kario.

A fish dish was served.

“Doddy,” said Van Oudijck. “Who were you at the gate with just now?”

Doddy, taken aback, slowly looked at her father, her eyes sparkling.

“At… the gate?… No one… With Theo maybe.”

“Were you with your sister at the gate?” asked Van Oudijck.

The young man’s thick blond brows creased.

“It’s possible… I don’t know… can’t remember…”

All three were silent. They ate their way hurriedly through dinner in an air of boredom. Five or six servants, in white jackets with red linen facings, moved about softly with their flat-toed gait, serving quickly and silently. The meal continued with steak and salad, and pudding and fruit.

“Nothing but steak…” grumbled Theo.

“Yes, that cook!” said Doddy with her throaty laugh. “She always serves steak when Mama’s not here; she couldn’t care less when Mama’s not here. She has no imagination. It’s too bad…”

Twenty minutes later they had finished eating, after which Van Oudijck went back to his office. Doddy and Theo strolled to the front of the house.

“Boring…” said Doddy with a yawn. “Come on, shall we have a game of billiards?”

In the first inner gallery, behind the satin curtain, was a small billiard table.

“Come on then,” said Theo.

They began to play.

“Why was I supposed to have been with you at the gate?”

“Oh… really!” said Doddy.

“Well, why?”

“Papa don’t need know.”

“Who were you with, then? Addy?”

“Of course!” said Doddy. “Is band playing tonight?”

“I think so.”

“Come on, let’s go, yes?”

“No, I don’t feel like it.”

“Oh, why ever not?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Are you coming?”

“No.”

“With Mama you would, no?” said Doddy angrily. “I know that very well. You always go to band with Mama.”

“What do you know… you little madam!”

“What do I know?” she laughed. “What do I know? I know what I know.”

“Eh?” he said teasingly, with a crude attempt to catch her on the rebound. “You and Addy, eh?”

“Well, and what about you and Mama…”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“No need hide from me! Anyway, everyone says.”

“Let them say.”

“It’s really bad of you, though!”

“Oh, go to hell…”

He threw down his cue angrily and marched off. She followed him.

“Look, Theo… don’t be angry. Do come with me to band.”

“No.”

“I won’t say any more,” she cajoled sweetly.

She was frightened that he would stay angry, and then she would have no one at all; then she would be bored to death.

“I promised Addy, and I can’t go alone…”

“Well, if you don’t say such stupid things again…”

“Yes, I promise. Theo dear, come on then…”

She was already in the garden.

Van Oudijck appeared on the threshold of his office, the door of which was always open, but which was cut off from the inner gallery by a large screen.

“Doddy!” he called out.

“Yes, Papa?”

“Would you make sure there are some flowers in Mama’s room tomorrow?”

His voice was almost embarrassed and he was blushing.

Doddy suppressed her giggles.

“All right, Papa… I’ll make sure.”

“Where are you off to?”

“With Theo… to hear band.”

Van Oudijck flushed with anger.

“To the band? You might ask me first!” he cried in sudden fury.

Doddy pouted.

“I don’t like your going out without my knowing where. This afternoon, too, you had gone out when I wanted to go for a walk with you.”

“Well, suda, that’s that then,” said Doddy, crying.

“You can go,” said Van Oudijck, “but I want you to ask me first.”

“No, I don’t feel like going any more!” Doddy wept. “That’s the end of it. No band.”

In the distance, in the garden of the Concordia club, they could already hear the first sounds.

Van Oudijck had go back to work. Doddy and Theo threw themselves into two rocking chairs in the front garden and rocked madly, gliding across the smooth marble in the chairs.

“Come on,” said Theo. “Let’s get going. Addy’s waiting for you.”

“No,” she sulked. “Don’t care two hoots. Tomorrow I shall tell Addy. Papa so horrid. He’s spoiling my fun. And… I’m not putting any flowers in Mama’s room.”

Theo sniggered.

“Say,” whispered Doddy. “That Papa… hey? So in love, always. He was blushing when he asked me about those flowers.”

Theo sniggered again, and hummed along to the distant music.




3


THE NEXT MORNING at eleven-thirty Theo went to collect his stepmother from the station in the landau. Van Oudijck, who at that time usually dealt with police business, had not said anything to his son, but when, from his office, he saw Theo getting into the landau and driving off, he thought it was nice of the lad. He had adored Theo as a child, had continued to spoil him as a boy, and had often clashed with him as a young man, but still the old paternal passion often flared up. At this moment he loved his son more than Doddy, who was still sulking that morning and had not put any flowers in his wife’s room, so he’d had to instruct Kario to provide some. He was now sorry that he hadn’t spoken a kind word to Theo for days and resolved to do so in the very near future. The lad was volatile: in three years he had been employed by at least five coffee companies; at present he was again out of work and was hanging around at home looking for something to occupy him.

At the station, Theo waited only a few minutes before the train from Surabaya arrived. He saw Mrs Van Oudijck at once, with her personal maid Urip and the two little boys, René and Ricus, who unlike himself were dark-skinned, and whom she had brought with her from Batavia for their long holidays.

Theo helped his stepmother off the train as the station-master stepped up to greet her respectfully. She nodded in reply with her unique smile, like a benevolent queen. With the same ambivalent smile she allowed her stepson to kiss her on the cheek. A tall woman, white, blond, in her thirties, with the languid elegance of women born in the Indies of European parents, she had a quality that immediately attracted attention. It lay in her white skin, her milky complexion, her very light blond hair and her eyes that were a strange grey colour, and which sometimes narrowed momentarily and always had an ambiguous expression. It lay in her eternal smile, sometimes sweet and engaging, and often intolerable, irritating. At first one couldn’t tell whether there was anything hidden beneath that look and that smile — any depth, any soul — or if it was nothing but looking and smiling, both with the same slight ambivalence. However, one soon noticed her smiling, non-committal indifference, as if she didn’t care even if the heavens fell, as if she would greet such an event with a smile. She walked slowly, dressed in a pink piqué skirt and a bolero, a white satin ribbon around her waist, and a white sailor hat with a white satin bow; her summer travel outfit was very smart compared with that of some of the other ladies on the platform, strolling along in stiffly starched wrap-arounds — like nightdresses — and tulle hats topped with feathers! The only touch of the Indies in her extremely European appearance that distinguished her from a woman newly arrived from Holland was perhaps her slow gait, that languid elegance. Theo had offered her his arm and she allowed herself to be conducted to the carriage—“the coach”—followed by the two little dark-skinned brothers. She had been away for two months.

She had a nod and a smile for the stationmaster, a glance for the coachman and the groom, and took her seat slowly, languidly, still smiling, like a white sultan’s wife. The three stepsons followed her; the maid travelled behind in a cart. Mrs Van Oudijck glanced outside and felt that Labuwangi looked exactly the same as ever. But she said nothing. She withdrew slowly and leant back. She exuded a certain contentment, but most of all a glowing, smiling indifference, as if nothing could affect her, as if she were protected by a strange power. There was something strong about this woman, whose power derived from her pure indifference: she had an invulnerable quality. She looked as if life had no hold over her, not over her appearance and not over her soul. As if she were incapable of suffering, her smile so content because for her there was no such thing as disease, suffering, poverty or misery. She had an aura of radiant egoism. And yet she was mostly amiable. She generally charmed, won people over because she was so pretty. Whatever else people might say about her, this woman, with her glittering self-satisfaction, was loved. When she spoke, when she laughed, she was disarming. Indeed, she was engaging. This was despite and — perhaps — precisely because of her unfathomable indifference. She was interested only in her own body and in her own soul; everything else, everything else was indifferent to her. Incapable of giving anything of her soul, she had never felt for anyone but herself, but she smiled so harmoniously and winningly that people always found her amiable, adorable. Perhaps it was because of the line of her cheeks, the strange ambiguity in her look, her indelible smile, the grace of her figure, the sound of her voice and words, always so appropriate. If people at first found her insufferable she seemed not to notice and, on the contrary, became even more engaging. If people were jealous, she again seemed not to notice and was full of praise; whether intuitively or indifferently she couldn’t care less what someone else considered a defect in themselves. She could admire with the sweetest expression an outfit that she considered ghastly, and from pure indifference she did not change her opinion later but stuck by her admiration. Her boundless indifference was her main source of vitality. She had become accustomed to doing whatever she felt like doing, and she did it with a smile. However people talked behind her back, she remained so proper, so enchanting, that people forgave her. She was not loved while she was not present, but the moment people saw her, they were completely won over again. Her husband worshipped her, her stepchildren — she had no children of her own — couldn’t help loving her, involuntarily, despite themselves; her servants were all under her spell. She never raised her voice; she gave a brief order and it was carried out. If something went wrong, if something got broken, her smile would fade momentarily… and that was all. And if her own spiritual and physical interests were in danger, she was usually able to avert it and settle things as advantageously as possible, her smile barely fading. She had wrapped her personal well-being so closely around her that she was usually in full control. Nothing seemed to weigh on this woman. Her indifference was utterly radiant — without contempt, without envy, without emotion: her indifference was, simply, indifference. And the seemingly effortless tact with which she lived and controlled her life was so great that if she were to lose everything she now possessed — her beauty or her position, for example — she might still perhaps have retained her indifference, her inability to suffer.

The carriage drove into the District Commissioner’s compound, just as the hearing of the police cases began. The Javanese magistrate was already in Van Oudijck’s office: the magistrate and the police attendants led the procession of the accused. The natives held on to each other by the hem of their jackets and tripped along, but the few women among them walked by themselves; under a banyan tree, at some distance from the steps leading to the office, they all crouched down expectantly. An attendant, hearing the clock on the front veranda, rang twelve-thirty on the large bell at the attendants’ lodge. The loud stroke reverberated through the scorching midday heat like a bronze organ reed. But Van Oudijck had heard the carriage trundling along and made the magistrate wait while he went to meet his wife. His face brightened. He kissed her tenderly, effusively, and enquired how she was. He was happy to see the boys again. And, remembering what he had been thinking about Theo, he had a kind word for his eldest child, too. Doddy, still sulking, kissed her mama, who allowed herself to be kissed, while smiling with equanimity and calmly returning the kisses, without warmth or coolness, but just doing what was required of her. It was plain to see that her husband, Theo and Doddy all admired her. They told her how well she looked; Doddy asked where she had got her nice travelling outfit. In her room Léonie saw the flowers and, knowing it was Van Oudijck who always ensured they were there, she stroked his arm briefly.

The Commissioner went back to his office, where a magistrate was waiting; the hearing began. Pushed along by a police guard, the accused came and squatted on the threshold of the office, while the magistrate squatted on a mat and the District Commissioner sat at his desk. As the first case was being heard, Van Oudijck continued listening to his wife’s voice in the central gallery, while the accused defended himself with a loud cry:

“No, no!”

The Commissioner frowned and listened attentively…

In the central gallery the voices fell silent. Mrs Van Oudijck had gone to change into a sarong and a loose jacket for the rijsttafel lunch, consisting of mixed dishes served with rice. She wore the garments coquettishly: a sarong from Solo, a transparent jacket, jewelled brooches, and white leather slippers with white bows. She had just dressed when Doddy came to her door and said:

“Mama, Mama… Mrs Van Does is here!”

The smile faded for a second: the soft eyes darkened…

“I’ll be right there, dear…”

`But she sat down and Urip, her personal maid, sprinkled perfume on her handkerchief. Mrs Van Oudijck stretched out and mused a little in the languidness that followed her journey. She found Labuwangi desperately dull after Batavia, where she had stayed for two months with friends and family, free and with no obligations. Here, as the Commissioner’s wife, she had a few, even though she delegated most to the secretary’s wife. Deep down, she was tired, out of humour, discontent. Despite her complete indifference she was human enough to have her spells of depression, in which she cursed everything. Then she longed suddenly to do something crazy, she longed, vaguely, for Paris… She would never let anyone see that. She could control herself, and now, too, she controlled herself before she reappeared. Her vague, bacchantic longing melted into indolence. She stretched out more comfortably, her eyes almost closed. Through her almost superhuman indifference there occasionally wound a strange fantasy, hidden from the world. What she most wanted to do was to live a life of perfumed imagination in her room, especially after her time in Batavia… After such a period of perverse indulgence she needed to give free rein to her wandering imagination and let it curl and float cloudlike before her eyes. In her otherwise entirely arid soul it was like an unreal blossoming of blue flowers, which she cultivated with the only sentiment she would ever be able to feel. She had no feeling for any human being, but she felt for those flowers. She loved daydreaming like this. What she would have liked to be, if she didn’t have to be who she was… The clouds of fantasy rose: she saw a white palace and Cupids everywhere…

“Mama, do come on! It’s Mrs Van Does, Mrs Van Does with two jars…”

It was Doddy at the door. Léonie got up and went to the rear veranda, where the Eurasian lady, the wife of the local postmaster, was sitting. She kept cows and sold milk. But she also dealt in other goods. She was fat, with a brownish complexion and a protruding stomach; she wore a very simple jacket with a narrow piece of lace over it, and her podgy hands stroked her paunch. In front of her, on the table, she had two jars in which something was sparkling. Mrs Van Oudijck wondered vaguely whether it was sugar or crystal, when she suddenly remembered…

Mrs Van Does said she was glad to see her back. Two months away from Labuwangi. “Too bad that, Mrs Van Oudijck, wasn’t it?” And she pointed to the jars. Mrs Van Oudijck smiled. What was it?

With an air of mystery Mrs Van Does placed a fat, limp, backward-curling forefinger against one of the jars and said in a whisper:

“Diamonds!”

“Are they?” asked Mrs Van Oudijck.

Doddy stared wide-eyed and Theo looked on in amusement at the two jars.

“Yes… You know, from that lady… I told you about… She won’t give her name. Kassian, poor soul. Her husband was once a big noise, and now… she’s so unhappy; she hasn’t a penny. All gone. All she has are these two jars. She had all her jewels removed and keeps the stones in here. They’ve all been counted. She’s entrusting them to me, to sell them. Because of my dairy business I have lots of contacts. You’d like to see them, wouldn’t you, Mrs Van Oudijck? Beautiful stones! The Commissioner will buy them for you, now you’ve come home… Doddy, give me a black cloth, velvet would be best.”

Doddy got the seamstress to look for a piece of black velvet in a cupboard full of sewing clutter. A boy brought in tamarind syrup and ice. Mrs Van Does, with a pair of tweezers between her double-jointed fingers, placed a few stones carefully on the velvet…

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I ask you, look at that quality, Mrs Van Oudijck! Magnificent!”

Mrs Van Oudijck looked. She smiled sweetly and said in her soft voice: “That stone is imitation, dear lady.”

“Imitation?” screeched Mrs Van Does. “Imitation?”

Mrs Van Oudijck looked at the other stones.

“And those others, Mrs Van Does…”—she bent over intently, and then said as sweetly as possible, “Those others… are… imitation, too…”

Mrs Van Does looked at her with amusement, and then said to Doddy and Theo, cheerfully, “That mama of yours… sharp! She sees right away!”

“Just a joke, Mrs Van Oudijck. I just wanted to see if you knew about jewels. Of course, on my word of honour, I’d never sell them… But these… look…”

And solemnly, almost religiously, she now opened the other jar, which contained only a few stones. She laid them lovingly on the black velvet.

“That one would be marvellous… for a leontine,” said Mrs Van Oudijck, peering at a large gem.

“Well, what did I tell you?” asked the Eurasian lady.

And they all gazed at the stones, the genuine ones, those from the “real” jar, and held them carefully to the light.

Mrs Van Oudijck could see they were all genuine.

“I really have no money, dear lady!” she said.

“This big one… for the leontine… six hundred guilders… a bargain, I assure you, madam!”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly, madam!”

“How much then? You will be making a good purchase. Poor thing, her husband used to be a big noise. Council of the Indies.”

“Two hundred…”

“Kassian! Two hundred!”

“Two hundred and fifty, but no more. I really don’t have any money.”

“The Commissioner…” whispered Mrs Van Does, sensing the approach of Van Oudijck, who, now the hearing was over, was heading towards the back veranda. “The Commissioner… he’ll buy it for you!”

Mrs Van Oudijck smiled and looked at the sparkling drop of light on the black velvet. She liked jewellery and was not entirely indifferent to precious stones.

She looked up at her husband.

“Mrs Van Does is showing us lots of nice things,” she said soothingly.

Van Oudijck felt a jolt of displeasure. He never enjoyed seeing Mrs Van Does in his house. She was always selling something; on one occasion batik-dyed bedspreads, on another woven slippers, and on a third occasion splendid but very expensive table runners, with gold batik flowers on yellow glazed linen. Mrs Van Does always brought something with her, was always in touch with the wives of former “big noises”, whom she helped to sell things, for a very steep commission. A morning visit from Mrs Van Does cost him at least a few guilders and very frequently fifty guilders, since his wife had a calm way of buying things she didn’t need, but was too indifferent not to buy from Mrs Van Does. He didn’t see the two jars at once, but he saw the drop of light on the black velvet, and realized that this time the visit would cost more than fifty guilders, unless he were very firm.

“My dear lady!” he said in alarm. “It’s the end of the month; there’s no way we can buy jewels today! And jars of them at that,” he cried, horrified, now seeing them sparkling on the table, among the glasses of tamarind syrup.

“Oh, that Commissioner!” laughed Mrs Van Does, as though a commissioner were always rich.

Van Oudijck hated that laugh of hers. To run his household cost him a few hundred guilders or so more than his salary each month; he was eating into his savings and had debts. His wife never bothered with money matters; she reserved her most radiant indifference for them.

She made the stone sparkle for a moment; it flashed a blue ray.

“It’s wonderful… for two hundred and fifty.”

“Let’s say three hundred then, dear lady…”

“Three hundred?” she asked dreamily, playing with the jewel.

Whether it was three or four or five hundred, it was all the same to her. It left her completely indifferent. But she thought the stone was beautiful and was determined to have it, whatever the price. And so she put it down gently and said:

“No, madam, really… the stone is too expensive, and my husband has no money.”

She said it so sweetly that her intention was impossible to guess. She was adorable in her self-denial. As she spoke the words, Van Oudijck felt a second jolt. He couldn’t refuse his wife anything.

“Madam,” he said. “You can leave the stone here… for three hundred guilders. But for goodness’ sake, take your jars away with you.”

Mrs Van Does looked up triumphantly.

“Well… what did I tell you? I knew the Commissioner would buy for you…”

Mrs Van Oudijck looked up with a gently reproachful look.

“But Otto!” she said. “How could you?”

“Do you like the stone?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful… but so much money! For one stone!”

And she pulled her husband’s hand towards her and allowed him to kiss her on the forehead, since he had been allowed to buy her a three-hundred-guilder jewel. Doddy and Theo winked at each other.




4


LÉONIE VAN OUDIJCK always enjoyed her siesta. She slept only briefly, but loved being alone in her cool room after the rijsttafel until five o’clock or five-thirty in the afternoon. She read a little, usually the magazines from the circulating library, but mainly she did nothing and daydreamed. Vague blue-tinted fantasies filled her periods of afternoon solitude. No one knew about them and she kept them strictly secret, like a hidden sin, a vice. She was much more inclined to reveal herself to the world when it came to an affair. They never lasted long and didn’t count for much in her life; she never wrote letters, and the favours she granted never gave the privileged one any rights in daily discourse. This made her silently and decorously perverse, both physically and morally. Her fantasies too, however limply poetic, were perverse. Her favourite author was Catulle Mendès: she liked all those flowerlets of sky-blue sentimentality, those pink affected Cupids, little fingers in the air, little legs charmingly fluttering — framing the most degenerate motifs and themes of perverted passion. In her bedroom there were a few pictures: a young woman lying back on a lace-covered bed, and kissed by two romping angels; another, a lion with its breast pierced by an arrow, at the feet of a smiling maiden; a large advertising poster for perfume — a kind of flower nymph, whose veil was being torn off on all sides by playful cherubs. She was particularly fond of that picture, and couldn’t imagine anything more aesthetic. She knew it was monstrous, but she had never been able to bring herself to take down the frightful thing, even though people looked disapprovingly at it — her friends and her children, who walked in and out of her room with that casualness typical of the Indies, which makes no secret of the act of dressing. She could gaze at it for minutes on end as if enchanted; she thought it utterly charming, and her own dreams were like that in the poster. She also kept a chocolate box with a keepsake picture on it, as a kind of beauty she found even more beautiful than her own: cheeks flushed, coquettish brown eyes beneath improbably golden hair, the bosom visible beneath lace. But she never gave away what she vaguely sensed was ridiculous; she never talked about those pictures and boxes, precisely because she knew they were ugly. But she thought they were beautiful, she loved them and considered them artistic and poetic.

These were her favourite hours.

Here in Labuwangi she didn’t dare do what she did in Batavia, and here people could scarcely believe what was said in Batavia. Yet Mrs Van Does was adamant that “that commissioner and that inspector”—one travelling, the other on an official tour and staying at the Commissioner’s residence for a few days — had found their way to Léonie’s bedroom in the afternoon, during the siesta. But at Labuwangi such realities were rare intermezzos among Mrs Van Oudijck’s pink afternoon visions…

Yet, this afternoon it seemed…

As if, after having dozed off for a moment and after all the tiredness from the journey and the heat had cleared away from her milk-white complexion — as if, now she was looking at the romping angels on the perfume advert, her mind was not on all that pink doll-like tenderness, but as if she were listening for sounds from outside…

After a while she got up.

She was wearing only a sarong, which she had pulled up under her arms and held in a knot on her breast.

Her splendid blond hair hung loose.

Her beautiful white feet were bare; she had not even slipped into her mules.

And she looked through the slats of the blind.

Between the flowerpots, which on the steps at the side of the house masked her windows with great masses of leaves, she looked out at an annexe with four rooms — the guest rooms — one of which was occupied by Theo.

She peered for a while and then opened the blind a fraction…

And she saw the blind of Theo’s room also open a fraction…

Then she smiled; tied the sarong more tightly, and went back to bed.

She listened.

A moment later she heard a brief crunching of the gravel under the weight of a slipper. Her venetian blinds, without being locked, had closed. A hand now cautiously opened them…

She turned, smiling…

“What is it, Theo?” she whispered.

He came closer, in pyjama bottoms and a linen jacket, sat down on the edge of the bed and played with her white, chubby hands, and suddenly kissed her passionately.

At that moment a stone whizzed through the room.

They were both startled, quickly looked up, and in a moment were in the middle of the room.

“Who’s throwing stones?” she asked, trembling.

“Perhaps one of the boys — René or Ricus — who are playing outside,” he said.

“They’re not up yet…”

“Or it might have fallen…”

“No, it was thrown…”

“Stones often come loose…”

“But this is gravel.”

She picked up the stone. He looked cautiously outside.

“It’s nothing, Léonie. It simply must have fallen from the gutter, through the window, and then it flew up again. It’s nothing…”

“I’m frightened,” she murmured.

He almost laughed aloud and asked, “Of what?”

They had nothing to fear. The room was situated between Léonie’s boudoir and the two large guest rooms intended only for commissioners, generals and other senior officials. On the other side of the central gallery were the rooms of Van Oudijck, office and bedroom, Doddy’s room and the room of the boys, Ricus and René. So Léonie was isolated in her wing, between the two guest rooms. It made her brazen. At this hour the compound was completely deserted. Anyway, she was not frightened of the servants. Urip was completely trustworthy and often received lovely presents: sarongs, a gold clasp, a long diamond jacket pin that she wore on her breast like a silver and jewelled brooch. Since Léonie never grumbled, was generous with advances on wages and had a certain apparently easy-going manner — although things only happened the way she wanted them to — she was not unpopular, and however much the servants might know, they had never betrayed her. This made her all the more shameless. In front of the passage between her bedroom and boudoir hung a curtain, and it had been agreed between Theo and Léonie that, in case of danger, he would simply slip away behind the curtain and exit through the garden door of the boudoir, as if wanting to see the rose pots on the steps. That would make it look as if he had just come from his own room and was viewing the roses. The inner doors of the boudoir and bedroom were locked as a rule, as Léonie made it quite clear that she did not care to be caught unawares.

She liked Theo because of his fresh youthfulness. And here in Labuwangi he was her only indiscretion, apart from an inspector who happened to be passing through, and the pink angels. Now they were like naughty children, laughing silently in each other’s arms. But they had to be careful. It was four o’clock and they could hear the voices of René and Ricus in the garden. They took over the whole compound for their holiday. Aged thirteen and fourteen, they loved the big garden. Dressed in blue-striped cotton jackets and trousers, and with bare feet, they went to see the horses and the pigeons: they teased Doddy’s cockatoo, which tripped about on the roof of the outbuildings, and they had a tame squirrel. They hunted for geckos, which they shot with a blowpipe, much to the annoyance of the servants, since geckos bring good luck. At the gate they bought roast peanuts from a passing Chinese and then made fun of him, imitating his accent, “Loast peanuts! Chinaman dead!”

They climbed the flamboyant tree and swung from the branches like monkeys. They threw stones at the cats; they taunted the neighbours’ dogs until they barked hoarsely and chewed each other’s ears. They messed around with water near the pond, making themselves unpresentable with mud and filth, and had the nerve to pick the water lilies, which was absolutely forbidden. They tested the firmness of the flat green water lily leaves — like large trays that they thought they could stand on, and went under… Then they put empty bottles in a line and pelted them with pebbles. Then, using a bamboo stick, they fished out all kinds of nameless floating debris and hurled it at each other. Their inventiveness was inexhaustible, and the hour of the siesta was their time. They had found a gecko and a cat and had made them fight: the gecko opened its miniature crocodile jaws and hypnotized the cat, which slunk off, retreating from the black beady-eyed stare — back arched, bristling with terror. And afterwards the boys made themselves ill on unripe mangoes.

Léonie and Theo had spied on the fight between the cat and the gecko through the blind and saw the boys now sitting calmly in the grass eating unripe mangoes. But it was the time when the convicted criminals — twelve of them — worked in the compound, under the supervision of an old, dignified overseer holding a cane. They fetched water in tubs and watering cans made from paraffin tins, sometimes in actual paraffin tins, and watered the plants, the grass and the gravel. Then they swept the grounds clean with the loud swishing of palm-leaf brooms.

Behind the back of the overseer, of whom they were afraid, René and Ricus pelted the prisoners with gnawed mangoes, called them names and pulled faces.

Doddy came by, well rested, playing with her cockatoo, which she carried on her hand and which cried, “Kaka! Kaka!” and raised its yellow crest with swift movements of its neck.

And Theo now slipped away behind the curtain into the boudoir, and when for a moment the boys were chasing each other in a bombardment of mangoes, and Doddy was walking towards the pond with her slouching, hip-swaying Indies gait and the cockatoo on her hand, he emerged from behind the plants, sniffed the roses and pretended he had been walking in the garden, before taking a bath.




5


VAN OUDIJCK FELT in a better mood than he had in weeks; after those two months of dreary tedium some sense of family life seemed to re-enter his house; he liked to see his two young scamps romping in the garden, even if they got up to all kinds of mischief, and he was especially pleased that his wife was back.

They were sitting in the garden, in casual dress, drinking tea at five-thirty. How strange that Léonie immediately somehow filled the big house with a more comfortable conviviality, since it was what she liked. Whereas Van Oudijck usually drank a quick cup of tea, which Kario brought to his bedroom, today the afternoon tea had already grown into a pleasant hour. Cane chairs and long deckchairs had been put outside; the tea tray was placed on a cane table; fried bananas had been served; and Léonie, in a red silk Japanese kimono, with her blond hair loose, lay in a cane chair playing with Doddy’s cockatoo and feeding the bird with cake. The house was instantly transformed, thought Van Oudijck, his wife sociable, sweet, beautiful, now and then telling them about her acquaintances in Batavia, the races at Buitenzorg, a ball at the Governor General’s palace, the Italian opera; the boys cheerful, healthy, full of fun, however dirty they were from their games — and she called them over and romped with them a bit and asked about high school, where they were in the second form; and even Doddy and Theo seemed different — Doddy, now picking roses charmingly from the flowerpots and breaking into song, and Theo talkative with Mama, and even with Van Oudijck himself. Lines of pleasure played around Van Oudijck’s moustache. He still had a young-looking face and scarcely seemed forty-eight. He had an acute, lively gaze, both responsive and penetrating. He was a little thick-set and had a predisposition to become more so, but he had retained a military dash, and on official tours he was tireless; he was an excellent horseman. Tall and well-built, content with his house and family, he had a pleasant air of solid masculinity, and there were jovial lines around his moustache. Relaxing, stretched out in his cane chair, drinking his cup of tea, he expressed the thoughts that usually rose up in him at such moments of contentment. Yes, it was a pretty good life in the Indies, in the Dutch Colonial Service. At least, it had always been good for him, but then he had been fairly lucky. But nowadays the promotion situation was desperate: he knew lots of assistant commissioners who were his contemporaries and who in all those years had had no chance to become commissioners. And that was certainly a desperate state of affairs, to be in a subordinate position in relation to a superior for so long, to have await orders from a commissioner at that age. He would never have been able to tolerate it, at the age of forty-eight! But being a commissioner, giving the orders oneself, administering for oneself a district as large and important as Labuwangi, with such extensive coffee plantations, such numerous sugar factories, with so many leased concessions — that was a joy, that was living: life on the grandest, most expansive scale, with which no position or life in Holland could compare. His great responsibility was a delight for his naturally dominant nature. His work was varied: office work and tours; the priorities of his work were varied: one was not bored to death sitting in an office; after office work there was the freedom of the natural world, and there was always variety, always something different. He hoped in eighteen months’ time to become a district commissioner first class, if there was a vacancy in a first-class area: Batavia, Semarang, Surabaya, or one of the Principalities. And yet it would be a wrench to leave Labuwangi. He was attached to his district, for which for five years he had done so much that had come to fruition, to the extent that any fruition was possible in this period of general malaise: with the colonies poor, the population impoverished, coffee-growing worse than ever, sugar possibly facing a severe crisis in two years’ time… the Indies were languishing and even in industrial East Java there was the beginnings of apathy and weakness, but still he had been able to do a lot for Labuwangi. During his watch the population had increased in prosperity; the irrigation of the paddy fields was excellent, after he had been able to use tact to win over the engineer, who had at first been constantly at odds with the colonial authorities. Numerous steam tramlines had been built. The secretary, his assistant commissioners, and his controllers were devoted to him, though working under him was hard. He took a pleasant tone with them, though, despite the work being hard. He could be friendly and jovial, even though he was the commissioner. He was glad that all of them — his controllers, his assistant commissioners — represented that healthy, cheerful kind of colonial official, happy with their life and work, even though they too nowadays combed the Government Almanac and the Colonial List for news of their promotion. So it was Van Oudijck’s hobby horse to compare his officials with those of the court, who did not demonstrate that cheerful attitude: consequently there was always a slight envy and animosity between the two groups… Yes, it was a pleasant life, pleasant work, everything was fine, everything was fine. There was nothing like the Colonial Service. His only regret was that his relations with the government-appointed native prince were not easier and more pleasant. But it was not his fault. He always scrupulously gave the Prince his due, recognized his rights, supported him with the Javanese population and even with European officials. Oh, he was so deeply sorry at the death of the old prince, the father of the Prince, a noble, well-educated Javanese. He had always sympathized with the former prince, and had immediately won him over with his tact. Had he not, five years ago now, when he arrived in Labuwangi for the hand-over of power, invited the old prince — a model of a true Javanese aristocrat — to sit beside him in his own carriage, and had not, as was customary, made him follow in a second carriage behind the commissioner’s; and had he not through this act of courtesy towards the old prince immediately won over all the Javanese chiefs and officials and flattered them in their respect and love for their prince, a descendant of one of the oldest Javanese dynasties, the Adiningrats, once, in the age of the Dutch East India Company, sultans of Madura?… But as for Sunario, his son, now the young prince, he failed to understand or fathom him — he admitted this only tacitly to himself — he saw him only as a mystery, that wayang shadow puppet, as he called him, always stiff, aloof from him, the commissioner, as if he — as a prince — looked down on him, the Dutch bourgeois; and on top of that a fanatic, with no awareness of the interests of the Javanese population, absorbed solely in all kinds of superstitious practices and fanatical reflections. He did not say it in so many words, but there was something in the Prince he couldn’t grasp. He could not place the delicate figure, with his staring jet-black eyes, as a human being in practical life, as he had always been able to do with the old prince, who had always been, in accordance with his age, his paternal friend — according to colonial etiquette his “younger brother”, always co-administrator of his district. But Sunario he found a phoney, not an official, not a prince, nothing but a fanatical Javanese, who shrouded himself in so-called mystery: all nonsense, thought Van Oudijck. He laughed at the holiness that the population attributed to him. He considered him impractical, degenerate, a demented Javanese dandy!

But his disharmony with the Prince — only one of character, which had never developed into actual conflict, since he could after all wind the chap round his little finger! — was the only major difficulty that had occasionally troubled him in all these years. He would not have wanted to swap his life as a commissioner for any other. Oh, he was already fretting about what he would do later when he had retired. He would prefer to stay in the service for as long as possible; member of the Council of the Indies, vice-president… His secret ambition, far in the distance, was the position of governor general. However, at present there was a strange furore in Holland for appointing outsiders to the top posts — Dutchmen, wet behind the ears, who knew absolutely nothing about the Indies — instead of sticking to the principle of appointing Indies veterans, who had climbed from trainee-controller and knew the whole official hierarchy like the back of their hand… Well, what would he do after retirement? Live in Nice? Without money? Because saving was hopeless; life was comfortable, but expensive, and instead of saving he was running up debts. Well, that didn’t matter for now, that would be paid off, but later, later, later… The future, retirement, was a far from pleasant prospect. Vegetating in The Hague, in a poky house, drinking in gentlemen’s clubs with the old fogies… gave him the shivers. He wouldn’t think about it; in fact, he didn’t want to think about the future at all; he might be dead before then. For now it was splendid, his work, his house, the Indies. Nothing at all could compare with it.

Léonie had listened to him, smiling all the while; she knew his secret raptures, his passion for his work — what she called his worship of the Colonial Administration. She accepted it; she had nothing against it. She too appreciated the luxury of the life of a district commissioner. The relative isolation didn’t matter to her, since she was mostly self-sufficient… She replied with a smile, content, charming, with her milky complexion, which was even whiter under the light dusting of rice powder that contrasted with the red silk of the kimono, and beautifully framed by her wavy blond hair.

That morning, for a moment, she had been out of humour, had found Labuwangi with its dreary provincial air oppressive after Batavia. But since then she had been given a large gemstone, since then she had Theo back… His room was close to hers. And it would be a long time before he was able to find a position.

Those were her thoughts, while her husband, after the pleasure of confessing his innermost thoughts, still lay in blissful contemplation. Her reflections went no deeper than that, anything resembling remorse would have astonished her profoundly, had she been capable of feeling anything of the sort… It was gradually growing dark, the glowing moon was already rising, and beyond the velvety plump banyans, beyond the crowns of the coconut palms, which waved about and stuck up into the air like ceremonial bunches of dark ostrich feathers, the last rays of the sun gave a dull, blurred, golden reflection, against which the plumpness of the banyans and the stateliness of the coconut palms stood out as if etched in black.

From the distance came the monotonous, melancholy sound of a native gamelan percussion orchestra, its notes like a limpid piano line punctuated by deep dissonants…




6


VAN OUDIJCK, in a good mood because of the presence of his wife and children, was keen to go for a drive, and horses were hitched to the landau. He looked out with a jovial, amiable expression from beneath the wide gold braid of his cap. Beside him, Léonie was wearing a new mauve muslin dress, from Batavia, and a hat trimmed with mauve poppies. In the provinces a woman’s hat is a luxury, a mark of elegance, and Doddy, seated opposite her, hatless in provincial style, was silently annoyed and felt that Mama might have told her that she was going to “use” a hat. Now she looked so drab beside Mama, she couldn’t stand those smiling poppies! Only René had accompanied them, in a clean white suit. The head attendant sat on the box next to the coachman and held against his hip the large gold parasol, a symbol of authority. It was past six and already growing dark. It was at this time of day that a velvety silence, that tragic mystery of the twilit atmosphere of east monsoon days, settled over everything. The occasional bark of a dog or the coo of a wood pigeon was all that broke the unreal silence, like in a ghost town. But the carriage rattled right through it, and the horses trampled the silence to shreds. They encountered no other carriages, the absence of any sign of human life casting a spell over the gardens and verandas. A few young men were strolling about and raised their hats. The carriage had left the main avenues and entered the Chinese quarter, where the lights were being lit in the little shops. Business was more or less over: the Chinese were resting, their legs stretched out in front of them, or crossed one over the other in a general air of inactivity. When the carriage approached they got up and remained standing respectfully. The Javanese — those who had been well brought-up and had manners — crouched down. At the roadside, lit by small paraffin lamps, was a line of portable kitchens, harbouring drink vendors and pastry sellers. Countless little lights glowed in the evening dusk, grubby and garish, revealing the Chinese stalls crammed with merchandise, a jumble of red and gold characters and plastered with red and gold labels with inscriptions on them; at the back was the family altar with the sacred print of the white god, seated, and behind him the leering black god.

Suddenly the road widened and became more respectable. Houses of wealthy Chinese loomed gently out of the darkness. Especially striking was the palatial white villa of a wealthy former opium dealer who had made his fortune in the days before opium regulation, a shining palace of elegant stucco with countless outbuildings, the gates of the front veranda in a monumental Chinese style, grandly elegant in muted gold tones. At the back of the open house stood the huge family altar, the print of the gods resplendent in light, amid a mannered garden laid out with winding paths, exquisitely filled pots and tall flower vases glazed dark blue-green and containing precious dwarf plants. All this had passed from father to son — and all was kept in a state of sparkling tidiness, with a well-tended neatness of detail: the prosperous, spotlessly clean luxury of a Chinese opium millionaire. But not all the Chinese houses were so ostentatiously visible, most lay hidden in gardens behind high walls, shut off, retreating into their secretive family life. Suddenly the houses petered out and the wide road became lined with Chinese graves, opulent tombs. A grass mound with a bricked entrance — the entrance to death — was raised up in the symbolic shape of the female organ — the gateway to life. An ample lawn surrounded it (to the great annoyance of Van Oudijck, who calculated how much agricultural land had been lost to the graves of these rich Chinese). The Chinese seemed to triumph in life and death in the town that was otherwise so quiet and mysterious. It was the Chinese who gave it its real character of hectic coming and going, trade, making fortunes, living and dying. When the carriage entered the Arab quarter — ordinary houses, but gloomy, lacking style, fortune and human existence, hidden behind thick doors; at one, true, there were chairs on the front veranda, but the man of the house squatted gloomily on the ground, motionless, following the carriage with his black eyes — this part of town seemed even more tragically mysterious than the distinguished parts of Labuwangi, and the ineffable mystery seemed to billow out like an aspect of Islam across the whole town, as if it were Islam that spread a dark cloud of the fatal melancholy of resignation in the trembling, soundless evening… They could feel it in their trundling carriage, having been used to that atmosphere since childhood and no longer sensitive to the sombre mystery that was like the approach of a black power, which from the start had breathed over them — the unsuspecting rulers with their Creole blood. Perhaps when Van Oudijck occasionally read in the newspapers about pan-Islamism, he caught a whiff, or the black power, the sombre mystery, opened to his innermost thoughts. But like now, out for a drive with his wife and children in the rattling carriage — the clip-clop of his fine Australian horses, the attendant with the closed parasol that glittered like a cluster of sun’s rays — he felt too much himself, with his ruler’s and conqueror’s nature, to have any inkling of the black mystery or catch any glimpse of the black peril. And more especially because he felt too much at ease to sense or see anything melancholy. In his optimism he did not even see the decline of his town, which he loved; he did not notice, as they drove on, the huge colonnaded villas that bore witness to the former wealth of planters — abandoned, neglected, in overgrown grounds; one of them occupied by a lumber company that had allowed its foreman to occupy the house and pile planks in the front garden. The deserted houses loomed sad and white, their pillared porticoes casting shapes that gleamed eerily in the moonlight, like temples of doom… But seated in their carriage, enjoying the gentle rocking motion, they did not see it like that: Léonie dozed and smiled, and Doddy, now they were approaching Long Avenue once more, had her eyes peeled looking for Addy…




BOOK II





1


ONNO ELDERSMA, the secretary, was busy. Every day the post brought an average of several hundred letters and documents to the commissioner’s office, which employed two senior clerks, numerous native scribes and office assistants, and the commissioner complained as soon as they fell behind with their work. He himself worked hard and he demanded the same of his staff. But sometimes they were deluged with documents, claims and applications. Eldersma was a typical civil servant, completely wrapped up in his administrative work and always busy. He worked morning, noon and night. He didn’t take a siesta. He ate a quick dish of rice at four in the afternoon, and had a brief rest. Fortunately he had a sound, strong, Frisian constitution, but he needed all his energy and his nerves for his work. It wasn’t just scribbling, red tape — it was pencraft, muscular work, nervous work, and it went on and on. He was burning up, wearing himself out as he wrote. He no longer had any other ideas, he was nothing but a civil servant, a bureaucrat. He had a charming house, the sweetest, most exceptional wife, a charming child, but he never saw them. He lived only vaguely in his home surroundings. He just worked, conscientiously, finishing what he could. Sometimes he told the commissioner that he could not possibly do any more. But on this point Van Oudijck was inexorable, pitiless. He had been district secretary himself, and knew what it meant. It meant work, it meant plodding along like a carthorse. It meant living, eating and sleeping with pen in hand. Then Van Oudijck would show him this and that piece of work that had to be finished, and Eldersma, who had said that he could do no more than he was doing, would finish the work, and so always did a little more than he thought he could.

Then his wife, Eva, would say: my husband isn’t human any more — he’s a civil servant. The young wife, very European, who had never before been in the Indies and who been in Labuwangi for a year or so, had never known that one could work as hard as her husband did in a place as hot as Labuwangi was in the east monsoon. At first she had fought against it, and had tried to assert her rights over him, but when she saw that he really hadn’t a minute to spare, she waived those rights. She had immediately realized that her husband would not share her life, nor she his, not because he was not a good husband who was very fond of his wife, but simply because the mail brought two hundred documents daily. She had seen at once that in Labuwangi — where there was nothing — she would have to console herself with her house and, later, her child. She arranged her house as a temple to art and home comforts, and racked her brains over her little boy’s education. A highly cultured woman, she came from an artistic background. Her father was Van Hove, a well-known landscape painter, and her mother, Stella Couberg, a famous concert singer. Eva had grown up in a home filled with art and music, which she had absorbed from an early age from children’s books and nursery rhymes, then she had married an East Indies civil servant and accompanied him to Labuwangi. She loved her husband, a strapping Frisian fellow, with enough education to have wide interests. She had gone with him to the Indies, happy in her love and full of illusions about the Eastern mystery of the tropics. She had tried to hold on to her illusions, despite many warnings. In Singapore she had been struck by the bronze sculptured bodies of the naked Malays and the multi-coloured orientalism of the Chinese and Arab quarters, the chrysanthemum-scented poetry of the Japanese tea-houses she passed… But very soon, in Batavia, grey disillusionment drizzled down over her expectations of seeing beautiful sights everywhere in the Indies, like in a fairy tale out of the Arabian Nights. The routine of petty, ordinary, everyday life dampened all her enthusiasm to admire, and she suddenly saw all that was ridiculous, even before she could see any beauty. The men in pyjama bottoms and loose jackets stretched out on their reclining chairs, their legs stretched out on the extended slats, their feet — although very well cared for — bare, and the toes moving in an easy-going game of big and little toes, even as she passed… Or the ladies in sarongs and loose jackets — the only practical morning wear, which can be quickly changed two or three times before noon, but which suits so few people; the sarong, with its straight fall at the back is particularly angular and ugly, however elegant and expensive the garment. The banality of the houses with all their whitewash and tar and ugly rows of flowerpots; the parched, scorched look of nature, the filthiness of the natives… All those little absurdities in European colonial life: the accents punctuated with exclamations, the provincial airs and graces of the civil servants — the members of the Council of the Indies being the only ones entitled to wear a top hat; the strictly observed points of etiquette, such as when the senior official was first to leave a reception, and the others waited their turn… And the little tropical idiosyncrasies, such as the use of wooden Devoe-paint crates and paraffin tins for every conceivable purpose: the wood for shop windows, dustbins and home-made furniture; the tins for gutters, watering cans and every kind of domestic utensil… The young, highly cultured young woman, with her fantasies of the Arabian Nights, not distinguishing in these first impressions between colonialism — the ways of the European who settles in a country alien to his blood — and what was truly poetic and belonged genuinely to the Indies, was authentically Eastern, purely Javanese — the young woman, because of all these absurdities and many others besides, had immediately felt disappointed, as anyone with an artistic bent does in the colonial Indies, which are not at all poetic or artistic, and where people carefully pile as much horse manure as possible around the roses in white pots as a fertilizer, so that when a breeze gets up the scent of roses mingles with the stench of freshly watered manure. And she was unjust, as were all new Dutch arrivals, towards the beautiful country that they wished to see according to their preconceived notion of colonialism. And she forgot that the country itself, originally so beautiful, was not to blame for that absurdity.

She had experienced several years of this and had been amazed, sometimes alarmed and sometimes shocked, sometimes amused and sometimes irritated, and had finally, with her reasonable nature and the practical reverse side to her artistic sensibility, grown used to it all. She had grown used to the game with the toes, to the manure round the roses; she had grown used to her husband, who was no longer a human being or a husband, but a civil servant. She had suffered greatly, had written desperate letters, had been dreadfully homesick for her parents’ house, and had been on the point of leaving — but had not gone through with it, not wanting to abandon her husband, and so she had accustomed herself to her life, had come to terms with it. Eva was a woman who besides having the soul of an artist — she was an exceptional pianist — had a courageous heart. She was still in love with her husband and knew that despite everything she managed to provide him with a comfortable home. She gave much serious thought to her child’s education. And once she had accustomed herself, she became less unjust and suddenly saw much of the beauty of the Indies. She appreciated the stately grace of a coconut palm; the exquisite, heavenly flavour of the local fruits; the splendour of the trees in blossom; and in the interior she had discovered the noble grandeur of nature, the harmony of the rolling hills, the fairy-tale groves of giant ferns, the menacing ravines of the craters, the gleaming terraces of the wet paddy fields and the tender green of the young rice plants. And the Javanese character had been like an artistic revelation to her with its elegance, its grace, its formalized greetings, its dance, its distinguished aristocracy, often so clearly descended from a noble line, from generations of nobles, and modernizing until it acquired diplomatic flexibility, with a natural worship of authority, and fatalistically resigned beneath the yoke of the rulers whose gold braid awakens its innate respect.

In her parental home, Eva had always been surrounded by the cult of art and beauty, indeed, to the point of decadence; those around her, whether in an outward environment of aesthetic perfection, in beautiful words or in music, had always directed her towards life’s graceful contours, perhaps too exclusively. And now she was too well trained in this aestheticism to remain stuck in her disappointment and see nothing but the whitewash and tar of the houses, the petty quirks of officialdom, the paint crates and the horse manure. Her literary imagination now saw the palatial quality of the houses and the humorous side to official pomposity, which was almost inevitable. As she saw all those details more precisely, her view of the world of the Indies widened, until it became revelation upon revelation. Except that she continued to feel something strange, something she could not analyse, something mysterious, a dark secret whose soft approach she felt at night… But she thought it was just the atmosphere created by the darkness and the very dense foliage, like very faint music from very strange stringed instruments, the distant rustling sound of a harp in a minor key, a vague warning voice… A noise in the night, that was all, which gave rise to poetic fantasies.

In Labuwangi — a small, provincial centre — she often shocked her more provincial countrymen with her air of excitement, her enthusiasm, her spontaneity, her joie de vivre (even in the Indies) and joy in the beauty of life. Her instincts were healthy, though gently tempered and blurred by a charming affectation of wanting only what was beautiful: the line of beauty, the beautiful colour, artistic notions. Those who knew her felt either antipathy or extreme sympathy: few people were indifferent to her. In the Indies she had gained a reputation for being out of the ordinary: her house, her clothes, her child’s upbringing, her ideas were all out of the ordinary; the only ordinary thing about her was her Frisian husband, who was almost too ordinary for those surroundings, which seemed to have been cut out of an art magazine. Being a sociable person, she gathered around her as many members as possible of the European community, to which — though the community was seldom artistic — she brought an appealing tone that reminded them all of Holland. This tightly knit group admired her and naturally followed the tone she set. She was dominant because of her superior education, without being dominant by nature. Not everyone approved of this, and her critics called her eccentric, but the tightly knit group remained loyal to her, inspired by her amid the languor of Indies life to savour concerts, ideas, all that made life worth living.

For example, she had around her the doctor and his wife, the senior engineer and his wife, the district controller and his wife, and sometimes, from outside, a few controllers and a few young clerks from the sugar factories. It was quite a lively circle of people, with whom she called the tune, put on plays, organized picnics, and whom she enchanted with her house, her dresses and her Epicurean artistic flair. They forgave her everything they could not understand — her aesthetic credo, her love of Wagner’s music — because she offered them merriment, a little joie de vivre and conviviality amid the deadly colonial tedium. For that they were deeply grateful to her. And in this way her house had become the real centre of the social life of Labuwangi, while the district commissioner’s mansion opposite withdrew grandly into the shade of its banyan trees. Léonie van Oudijck was not jealous. She liked to be left in peace and was only too happy to give control to Eva Eldersma. And so Léonie had no part in anything: music or amateur dramatic societies, or charitable work. She delegated all the social duties that the wife of a district commissioner normally undertakes, to Eva. Léonie had her reception once a month, spoke to everyone, smiled at everyone and at New Year gave her annual ball. That was the extent of social life in the commissioner’s mansion. For the rest she lived for herself, in the comfort that she had selfishly created around her, in her pink fantasy of cherubs and whatever love she could find. At intervals she felt the need for Batavia and went there for a few months. And so, as the wife of the district commissioner, she went her own way, while Eva did everything, and set the tone. There were sometimes petty jealousies, for example between her and the wife of the inspector of finances, who felt it was she and not the secretary’s wife who should take second place after Mrs Van Oudijck. This led to squabbling over colonial civil service etiquette, and to stories and gossip that circulated, blown up out of all proportion, in the remotest sugar factories in the district. Eva paid no attention to the rumours, preferring to inject some life into Labuwangi, and to that worthy end, she and her club took charge. She had been elected district president of the Thalia amateur dramatic society, and had accepted, provided the rules were abolished. She was prepared to be queen, but without a constitution. The general consensus was that this was impossible: there had always been a rule book. But Eva insisted that she did not wish to be president if there were rules. In that case, she simply preferred to act. They gave in: the rules of Thalia were abolished and Eva had absolute power to choose the plays and cast the productions. The company flourished — under her direction the standard of acting was so high that people came from Surabaya to attend performances at the Concordia club. The plays performed were of a quality never before seen in Concordia.

This made her very popular in some quarters and very unpopular in others. But she pressed on and provided some European culture, to avoid gathering too much colonial “mould” in Labuwangi. And people went to great lengths to secure an invitation to her dinners, which were famed and notorious, since she demanded that the gentlemen came in evening dress and not in their Singapore jackets with no shirts underneath. She stipulated white tie and tails and would not budge. The ladies wore low-cut gowns as usual, to keep cool, and were delighted. But their partners protested and, on the first occasion, were all choking in their stiff collars and gasping for breath. The doctor maintained it was unhealthy; colonial veterans maintained it was absurd and contrary to all good old Indies customs…

However, after they had gasped a few times in those tails and stiff collars, everyone found Mrs Eldersma’s dinners delightful, precisely because they were so European in style.




2


EVA ENTERTAINED GUESTS every two weeks.

“My dear Commissioner, it’s not a reception,” she would always say to Van Oudijck in her defence. I’m well aware that no one in the provinces is allowed to “receive” except the commissioner and his wife. It really isn’t a reception, Commissioner. I wouldn’t dare call it that. I simply have an at-home day every two weeks, and am pleased if my friends can come… Surely there’s no harm in that, Commissioner, provided it’s not a reception?”

Van Oudijck would give a cheerful laugh that shook his jovial military moustache, and ask if dear Mrs Eldersma were pulling his leg. She could do what she liked, as long as she went on providing some fun, some theatre, some music to brighten social life. That was quite simply her responsibility: to provide some sophistication in Labuwangi.

Her at-home days were not at all colonial. In the District Commissioner’s house, for example, receptions were organized according to traditional provincial Indies custom: all the ladies sat together on the chairs along the walls, and Mrs Van Oudijck did the rounds, talking with each of them for a moment, standing while the ladies remained seated; in another gallery, the District Commissioner conversed with the gentlemen. Men and women did not mix. Bitters, port and iced water were served.

At Eva’s, people walked and strolled through the galleries, sat down here and there; everyone talked to everyone. It did not have the stateliness of the commissioner’s mansion, but had the chic of a French salon, with an artistic touch. It had become the custom for the ladies to dress up more for Eva’s days than for receptions at the commissioner’s house; at Eva’s they wore hats, a sign of the greatest elegance in the Indies. Fortunately, it did not matter at all to Léonie, but left her completely indifferent.

In the middle gallery Léonie was now sitting on a divan and stayed sitting there with the radèn-ayu, the prince’s wife. She found the old custom convenient; everyone came to her. At her own receptions she had to walk so much, working her way along the rows of women by the wall… Now she was taking it easy, sitting down, smiling at anyone who came to pay her a compliment. But apart from that it was a bustling throng of guests. Eva was everywhere.

“Do you like it here?” Mrs Van Does asked Léonie, casting a glance over the middle gallery, and surveying in bewilderment the line of matt arabesques painted with lime as frescos on the soft grey wall, the jati-wood panelling, carved by skilful Chinese cabinet-makers from a drawing in The Studio magazine, the bronze Japanese vases on jati-wood pedestals, in which bamboo branches and bunches of gigantic flowers cast a soft shadow up to the ceiling.

“Strange… but very nice! Unusual…” murmured Léonie, to whom Eva’s taste was still a mystery. Withdrawn as she was into her temple of egoism, what others did and felt didn’t matter to her, not even how someone else arranged their house. But she could never have lived here. She preferred her engravings — Veronese, Shakespeare and Tasso — which she thought distinguished, rather than the splendid sepia photographs of Italian masters that Eva had displayed on easels here and there. Most of all she liked her chocolate box, and the perfume advert with the cherubs.

“Do you like that dress?” Mrs Van Does then asked.

“Oh yes,” said Léonie smiling sweetly. “Eva is very clever; she painted blue irises on Chinese silk herself…”

She never said anything but sweet smiling things. She never spoke ill of people; it was all indifferent to her. And she now turned back to the radèn-ayu and thanked her in sweet, drawling sentences for some fruit she had sent. The Prince came along to talk to her and she inquired about his two young sons. She spoke in Dutch and the Prince and the radèn-ayu replied in Malay. The Prince of Labuwangi, Radèn Adipati Surio Sunario, was still young, just thirty, with a fine Javanese face like that of a supercilious wayang shadow puppet, and a little moustache with the tips carefully twisted, and above all a striking stare, a stare as if he were in a perpetual trance, a stare that seemed to plumb visible reality and see through it, a stare from eyes like glowing coals, sometimes dull and tired, sometimes glowing like sparks of ecstasy and fanaticism. Among the native population — almost slavishly attached to their royal family — he had the reputation of holiness and mystery, though no one ever got to the bottom of the matter. Here, on Eva’s veranda, he simply made the puppet-like impression of a distinguished native prince: the only surprise was his trancelike expression. The sarong that fitted smoothly around his hips hung in front in a bunch of flat, regular pleats that fluttered open; he wore a white starched shirt with diamond studs and a thin blue tie, over it a blue linen uniform jacket with gold buttons bearing the letter W for Wilhelmina and the crown; on his bare feet he wore black patent leather pumps turned up at the front; the kerchief wound carefully round his head in narrow folds gave his delicate face a feminine look, but his black eyes, occasionally tired, kept flashing in an ecstatic trance. His blue and gold belt held the golden kris dagger, fixed at the small of his back; on his small, slim hand shone a gemstone, and a cigarette case of braided gold wire peeped out of his jacket pocket. He said little — sometimes he looked drowsy, then suddenly his strange eyes would flash into life — and he replied to what Léonie said almost exclusively with a curt, abrupt:

“Saya… Your humble servant.”

He pronounced the two syllables in a harsh, sibilant tone of politeness, giving each syllable equal emphasis, and accompanied the formula with a brief, automatic nod of the head. The radèn-ayu, seated beside Léonie, answered in the same way:

“Saya…”

Though she invariably followed it with a slightly embarrassed laugh. She was still very young, perhaps just turned eighteen. She was a princess from Solo, and Van Oudijck could not stand her, because she introduced Solo manners and Solo expressions into Labuwangi, in her arrogant assumption that nothing was as distinguished and purely aristocratic as the customs and expressions of the court of Solo. She used courtly words, which the population of Labuwangi did not understand, and she had forced on the Prince a coachman from Solo, complete with the royal livery, which included a wig and a false moustache, at which the population stared goggle-eyed. Her yellow complexion was made even paler by a light layer of rice powder, applied moist, the eyebrows slightly arched by a line of black; jewels were pinned in her hair, which she wore in a traditional glossy bun, and in the centre was a kenanga flower. Over a full-length batik robe, which according to the custom of the Solo court trailed in front of her, she wore a red brocade jacket trimmed with gold braid and fastened with three large jewels. Two fabulous gems, in heavy silver settings, weighed down her ear lobes. She wore light mesh stockings and gold-embroidered Chinese slippers. Her small, slender fingers were covered in rings, as if set with diamonds, and she carried a white feather fan.

“Saya… saya…” she answered politely, with her shy laugh.

Léonie paused for a moment, tired of the one-sided conversation. Once she had talked to the Prince and the radèn-ayu about their sons, there was little else for her to say. Van Oudijck, whom Eva had given a guided tour of her galleries — since there was always something new to admire — rejoined his wife; the Prince rose to his feet.

“Well, Prince,” Van Oudijck said, in Dutch. “How is radènayu pangéran, the Princess dowager?”

He inquired about the widow of the old prince, Sunario’s mother.

“Very well… thank you…” muttered the Prince in Malay. “But Mama has not come with us… so old… tires easily.”

“I need to talk to you for a moment, Prince.”

The Prince followed Van Oudijck onto the front veranda, which was empty.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you that I’ve just received bad news about your brother, the Prince of Ngajiwa… I am informed that he has recently started gambling again and has lost large sums. Have you any knowledge of this, Prince?”

The Prince withdrew into his puppet-like stiffness, and said nothing. His eyes stared right through Van Oudijck, as if focused on something far in the distance.

“Tida…” came the negative reply.

“I instruct you, as head of the family, to investigate this matter and to keep an eye on your brother. He gambles, he drinks, he dishonours your name, Prince. If the old pangéran, your father, had had any inkling that his second son was wasting his life like this, it would have grieved him greatly. He bore his name with pride. He was one of the wisest and most noble princes that the government has ever had on Java, and you know how highly the government esteemed the pangéran. Even in the days of the Dutch East India Company, Holland was greatly indebted to your family, which was always loyal. But times appear to be changing… It is very sad, Prince, that an old Javanese family with such an exalted tradition as yours is no longer able to adhere to that tradition…”

Radèn Adipati Surio Sunario turned a shade of olive green. His trancelike gaze pierced the District Commissioner, but he saw that the Commissioner too was seething with rage. And he smothered his strange flashing gaze till it became a sleepy, tired look.

“I thought, Commissioner, that you had always felt affection for my house,” he murmured, almost plaintively.

“You thought correctly, Prince. I held the pangéran in great affection. I have always admired your noble house, and I have always tried to support it. I should like to continue to support it, together with you, Prince, hoping that you see not only — as you are said to — the world beyond this one, but also the reality around you. But it is your brother, Prince, for whom I feel no affection and whom I cannot possibly respect. I have been told — and can trust those who told me — that the Prince of Ngajiwa has not only gambled… but has also failed to pay the chiefs of Ngajiwa their salaries this month…”

They looked each other in the eye and Van Oudijck’s calm, assured gaze once again met the Prince’s flashing trancelike stare.

“Your informants may be mistaken…”

“I suspect that they would not bring such reports without having absolute certainty. Prince, this matter is very sensitive. Once again: you are the head of your family. Investigate the extent to which your younger brother has misused government funds and ensure that complete reparation is made as soon as possible. I am deliberately leaving the matter to you. I shall not raise the question with your brother, in order to spare a member of your family for as long as I can. It is up to you to reprimand your brother and point out to him what in my eyes is a crime, but one which you through your prestige as head of the family can still expunge. Forbid him to go on gambling and order him to keep his passion in check. Otherwise, I foresee very regrettable consequences, and I shall have to recommend your brother’s dismissal. You yourself know how reluctant I am to do this, since the Prince of Ngajiwa is the second son of the old pangéran, whom I held in high esteem, just as I would always wish to spare your mother, the radèn-ayu pangéran, any kind of sorrow.”

“I thank you…” murmured Sunario.

“Take good note of what I am saying to you, Prince. If you cannot make your brother see reason, and control his passion — if the salaries of the heads are not paid as soon as possible… then I shall be forced to act. And if my warning is to no avail… that would mean your brother’s downfall. You yourself know that the dismissal of a prince is such an exceptional event that it would bring shame upon your family. Help me to save the house of the Adiningrats from such ignominy.”

“I promise,” murmured the Prince.

“Give me your hand, Prince.”

Van Oudijck pressed the thin fingers of the Javanese.

“Can I trust you?” he asked urgently.

“In life… in death…”

“Let us go in then. And let me know your findings as soon as possible…”

The Prince bowed. His pale olive skin betrayed the silent, hidden rage churning inside him like the magma of a volcano. His eyes drilled with silent hatred into Van Oudijck’s back, the Dutchman, the base Dutchman, the commoner, the unclean dog, the infidel Christian, who, whatever he might feel in his polluted soul, had no business concerning himself with anything of his, his house, his father, his mother, their sacrosanct nobility and aristocracy… even though they had always bowed under the yoke of superior strength…




3


“I’M COUNTING ON YOU to stay for dinner,” said Eva.

“Of course,” replied Controller Van Helderen and his wife.

The reception—not a reception, as Eva always pleaded — was coming to an end: the Van Oudijck’s had left first; the Prince followed. The Eldersma’s were left alone with their intimate circle: Doctor Rantzow, senior engineer Doorn de Bruijn, with their wives and the Van Helderens. They sat down on the front veranda with some sense of relief and rocked comfortably to and fro. Whisky sodas and lemonade with great chunks of ice were served.

“Always full to burst, Eva’s reception,” said Mrs Van Helderen. “Fuller than last time at the Commissioner’s…”

Ida van Helderen was a typical white Eurasian, who always tried to behave in a very European way, and speak correct Dutch; she even pretended to speak bad Malay and not like either rijsttafel or spicy fruit salad. She was short and plump, very white, with big black eyes that always looked startled. She was full of little secret whims, hatreds, affections; they all welled up in her from mysterious, unfathomable motives. Sometimes she hated Eva, sometimes she adored her. She was totally unpredictable; every action, every movement, every word could hold a surprise. She was always in love, tragically. She saw her little private emotions in an extremely tragic light, grand and sombre — without any sense of proportion — and then poured her heart out to Eva, who laughed and comforted her. Her husband, the controller, had never been in Holland: he had been educated entirely in Batavia, in the Colonial Department of King William III College. And it was a very strange sight to see this Creole, apparently completely European — tall, blond, pale, with a blond moustache, his lively, expressive blue eyes full of interest, with his manners that were more refined than those of the most select circles in Europe, and yet so Indies in his ideas, vocabulary, dress. He spoke about Paris and Vienna as if he had spent years there, though he had never left Java; he loved music, though he found it difficult to come to terms with Wagner, when Eva played for him; and his great dream was to go to Europe one day on leave, to see the Paris Exhibition. There was an astonishing distinction and innate style about this young man, as if he were not the child of European parents, who had spent their whole lives in the Indies, but a stranger from an unknown country, whose nationality one could not immediately call to mind… At most there was a certain softness in his accent — the influence of the climate. He spoke Dutch so correctly that it would have appeared almost stiff amid the careless slang of the motherland; and he spoke French, English and German with greater ease than most Dutchmen. Perhaps he derived that exotic politeness and courtesy from a French mother: innate, pleasant, natural. In his wife, also of French origin, who came from Réunion, that exoticism had resulted in a mysterious mixture that had retained nothing but childishness: a welter of petty emotions, petty passions, while with her sombre eyes she strove for a tragic view of life, which she had merely flicked through like a badly written novelette.

Now she imagined she was in love with the senior engineer, the black-bearded doyen of the clique, already greying; and, in her tragic way, she imagined scenes with Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, a portly, placid, melancholy woman. The other couple in their intimate circle, Doctor Rantzow and his wife, were German: he, fat, blond, rather vulgar, with a middle-age spread; she, a pleasant, matronly type who spoke animatedly in Dutch with a German accent.

This was the clique where Eva’s word was law. Apart from Frans van Helderen, the controller, it consisted of very ordinary Indies and European types, people without any aesthetic sense, as Eva said, but she had no other choice in Labuwangi, and so she amused herself with Ida’s petty Eurasian tragedies, and resigned herself to the rest. Her husband, Onno, tired from his work as always, did not contribute much to the conversation, but listened.

“How long was Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia?” asked Ida.

“Two months,” said the doctor’s wife. “A long stay this time.”

“I’ve heard,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn — placid, melancholy, and quietly venomous — that this time a member of the Council of the Indies, a head of department in the colonial service and three young men in trade amused Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia.”

“And I can assure you all,” ventured the doctor, “that if Mrs Van Oudijck did not go regularly to Batavia, she would forgo a very salutary cure, even though she is taking it on her own initiative and not… on my orders.”

“Don’t let’s speak ill of her!” Eva interrupted him almost pleadingly. “Mrs Van Oudijck is beautiful — with a calm Junoesque type of beauty, with the eyes of Venus — and I’m prepared to forgive beautiful people around me a lot. And you, Doctor…” she wagged her finger at him. “Don’t betray professional secrets. You know that doctors in the Indies are often too free with their patients’ secrets. If ever I’m ill, I’ll never have anything worse than a headache. You won’t forget that, will you, Doctor?”

“The Commissioner looked preoccupied,” said Doorn de Bruijn.

“Do you think he knows… about his wife?” asked Ida gloomily, with her large eyes full of black velvet tragedy.

“The Commissioner is often like that,” said Frans van Helderen. “He has his moods. At times he’s good company, cheerful, jovial, as on the recent inspection tour. At others, he has his dark days, he works and works and works, and roars that the only person who does any work is himself.”

“My poor, unappreciated Onno!” sighed Eva.

“I think he’s working too hard,” Van Helderen went on. “Labuwangi has been a huge burden. And the Commissioner takes too much to heart, both at home and outside. His relationship with his son and with the Prince.”

“I’d get rid of the Prince,” said the doctor.

“But, Doctor,” said Van Helderen, “you know enough about conditions in Java to realize that it’s not as easy as that. The Prince’s family is too identified with Labuwangi and too highly regarded by the people…”

“Yes, I know Dutch policy… The British in India are more high-handed and peremptory with their Indian princes. The Dutch defer to them too much.”

“It remains to be seen which policy is best in the long run,” said Van Helderen drily, who could not stand a foreigner criticizing anything in a Dutch colony. “Fortunately we don’t have conditions of squalor and famine like they have in British India.”

“I saw the Commissioner talking very seriously to the Prince,” said Doorn de Bruijn.

“The Commissioner is too sensitive,” said Van Helderen. “He’s definitely troubled by the slow decline of an ancient Javanese family, a family that is doomed to fall but one that he would like to preserve. In that respect, however cool and practical he may be, the Commissioner is behaving rather poetically, although he wouldn’t admit it. But he remembers the glorious past of the Adiningrats, he still remembers the last glorious figure, the noble old pangéran, and he compares him with his sons, one a fanatic, the other a gambler…”

“I think our Prince — not the Prince of Ngajiwa: he’s just a coolie — is divine!” said Eva. “I think he looks just like a living shadow puppet. But I’m afraid of his eyes. What terrible eyes! Sometimes they’re sleepy, but sometimes they’re the eyes of a madman… But he’s so refined, so distinguished. And the radèn-ayu is an exquisite little doll too: yes, yes… She says nothing, but she looks decorative. I’m always glad when they do me the honour of attending my parties, and when they’re not there, there’s something missing. And what about the old radèn-ayu pangéran, grey, dignified, a queen…

“An inveterate gambler,” said Eldersma.

“They’re gambling everything away,” said Van Helderen. “She and the Prince of Ngajiwa. They’re no longer rich. The old pangéran had wonderful regalia for state occasions, magnificent lances, a jewelled betel-nut box, spittoons — useful items, those! — priceless. The old radèn-ayu pangéran has gambled it all away. I think that all she has left is her pension, 240 guilders, I believe. And how our Prince manages to keep all his cousins in his official residence according to Javanese custom, is a mystery to me.

“What custom?” asked the doctor.

“Every prince gathers his family round him like parasites, clothes them, feeds them, gives them pocket money… and the population finds that dignified and chic.”

“Sad… greatness fallen into decay!” said Ida gloomily.

A boy came and announced that dinner was ready and they adjourned to the rear veranda, and took their places at table.

“And what have you got up your sleeve, dear lady?” asked the senior engineer. “What are the plans? Labuwangi has been very quiet recently.”

“It’s awful really,” said Eva. “If I didn’t have my friends, it would be awful. If I weren’t making plans the whole time, having ideas, it would be awful, living like this in Labuwangi. My husband doesn’t feel the same, he works, just as all of you gentlemen work; what else can one do in the Indies but work, despite the heat. But for us women! Really, what a life, if one does not discover happiness in oneself, in one’s home, in one’s circle of friends — if one is fortunate enough to have such a circle. Outside of that there’s nothing. Not a painting, not a sculpture to be seen, no music to be heard. Don’t be angry, Van Helderen. Your cello-playing is delightful, but no one in the Indies keeps up with the latest developments. The Italian opera is performing… Il Trovatore. The amateur companies — not bad at all in Batavia — do… Il Trovatore. And you, Van Helderen… don’t deny it. I saw how entranced you were when the Italian opera from Surabaya brought Il Trovatore to the club here. You were in seventh heaven.”

“There were some lovely voices…”

“But twenty years ago — so I’m told — people were just as enchanted by… Il Trovatore. It’s terrible! Sometimes, all of a sudden, it weighs me down. Sometimes I have the sudden feeling that I have not grown accustomed to the Indies, and that I never will, and I feel homesick for Europe, for life!

“But, Eva…” protested Eldersma in alarm, frightened that she would actually go back and leave him alone in his utterly joyless working environment in Labuwangi. “You know you sometimes appreciate the Indies, your home; the good, full life…”

“Good materially…”

“And you appreciate your work. I mean, all the things you can do here.”

“What? Organizing parties? Organizing fêtes?”

“You’re the real commissioner’s wife, Eva,” enthused Ida.

“Which fortunately brings us back to Mrs Van Oudijck,” teased Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

“And to professional secrecy,” said Doctor Rantzow.

“No,” sighed Eva. “We need something new. Balls, parties, picnics, trips to the mountains… We’ve exhausted them all. I can’t think of anything else. The pressure of the Indies is weighing on me again. I’m in one of my melancholy moods. I suddenly have a horror of my servants’ brown faces around me. Sometimes the Indies frighten me. Don’t any of you feel that? A vague fear, a mysterious feeling in the air, something menacing… I don’t know. The evenings are so full of mystery and there is something mysterious in the character of the native, who is so far removed from us, is so different from us…”

“Artistic feelings,” teased Van Helderen. No, I don’t feel that. The Indies are my country.”

“Typical!” said Eva, teasing him in turn. “Why are you as you are? So strangely European; I can’t call it Dutch.”

“My mother was French.”

“But still you’re a colonial, born and brought up here. But you don’t behave at all like a colonial. I’m delighted to have met you, you’re a breath of fresh air… Help me then. Suggest something new. Not a ball and not a trip to the mountains. I need something new. Otherwise I shall feel homesick for my father’s paintings, my mother’s singing, for our beautiful artistic house in The Hague. Without novelty, I shall die. I’m like your wife, Van Helderen, forever in love.”

“Eva, please!” begged Ida.

“Tragically in love, with her beautiful, sombre eyes. Always with her husband first and then with someone else. I’m never in love. Not even with my husband any more. He is with me. But I haven’t got a passionate nature. Quite a lot of love goes on here in the Indies, doesn’t it, Doctor? So… no balls, no mountain trips, no love. My God, what else is there, what else?…”

“I know what we could do,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, her placid melancholy suddenly tinged with fear. She shot a sideways look at Mrs Rantzow, and the German woman understood her meaning…

“What is it?” they all asked, inquisitively.

“Table-turning,” the two women whispered.

There was general laughter.

“Oh,” sighed Eva, disappointed. “A gimmick, a novelty, a game for an evening. No, I need something that will fill my life for at least a month.”

“Table-turning,” repeated Mrs Rantzow.

“Shall I tell you something?” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

“The other day, for fun, we tried to get a three-legged table to turn. We promised each other that we would be absolutely honest. The table… moved and spelt out words by tapping alphabetically.”

“But was there no cheating?” asked the doctor, Eldersma and Van Helderen.

“You must trust us,” said the two ladies in self-defence.

“Agreed!” said Eva. “We’ve finished dinner. Let’s do table-turning.”

“We must promise each other that we will be honest…” said Mrs Rantzow. “I can see… that my husband will be antipathetic, but Ida… will be a great medium.”

They got up.

“Do we have to turn the lights off?” asked Eva.

“No,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

“An ordinary side table?”

“A wooden side table.”

“All eight of us?”

“No, let’s choose first. For example, you Eva, Ida, Van Helderen and Mrs Rantzow. The doctor is not sympathetic, nor is Eldersma. De Bruijn and I can relieve you.”

“Off we go then,” said Eva. A new resource for the social life of Labuwangi. “And no cheating…”

“As friends, we’ll give each other our word of honour… that we won’t cheat.”

“Agreed,” they all said.

The doctor sniggered. Eldersma shrugged his shoulders. A boy brought a side table. They sat around the wooden table and some placed their fingers on it light-heartedly, looking at each other with curiosity and suspicion. Mrs Rantzow was solemn, Ida sombre, Eva amused, Van Helderen laughing indifferently. Suddenly Ida’s lovely Eurasian face tautened.

The table trembled…

They looked at each other in alarm, and the doctor sniggered.

Then slowly the table raised one of its three legs, and carefully set it down again.

“Did anyone move?” asked Eva.

They all shook their heads. Ida had gone pale.

“I can feel vibrations in my fingers,” she murmured.

The table once again raised its leg, and creakily described an angry quarter turn on the marble floor, setting the leg down again with a violent thud.

They looked at each other in bewilderment.

Ida sat staring blankly ahead, with outspread fingers, ecstatic.

And the table, for the third time, raised its leg.




4


IT WAS CERTAINLY VERY STRANGE.

For a moment Eva was unsure whether Mrs Rantzow was lifting the table, but when she looked quizzically at the doctor’s wife, Mrs Rantzow shook her head and Eva could see she was acting in good faith. Once more they promised each other that they would be scrupulously honest… And, very oddly, once they were absolutely sure of each other, the table went on describing angrily grating semicircles and raising its leg and tapping on the marble floor.

“Is there a spirit revealing itself?” asked Mrs Rantzow, looking at the table leg.

The table tapped once: yes.

But when the spirit tried to spell its name, tapping the letters alphabetically, what came out was: “Z, X, R, S, A”, which was incomprehensible.

But all of a sudden the table started spelling out a name, as if being pursued… They counted the taps, and what came out was:

“Le…onie Ou…dijck?…”

“What about Mrs Van Oudijck?”

A vulgar word followed.

The ladies were alarmed, except for Ida, who sat as if in a trance.

“Did the table speak? What did it say? What is Mrs Van Oudijck?” people clamoured all at once.

“It’s unbelievable,” muttered Eva. “Are none of us cheating?”

Everyone swore they were playing fair.

“Let’s be absolutely honest, otherwise it’s no fun… I really wish I could be sure…”

That was what they all wished: Mrs Rantzow, Ida, Van Helderen, Eva. The others looked on eagerly, believing what they heard, though the doctor was sceptical and went on sniggering.

The table grated angrily and tapped, and the leg repeated:

“A…”

And the leg repeated the dirty word.

“Why?” asked Mrs Rantzow.

The table tapped.

“Write it down, Onno!” said Eva to her husband.

Eldersma found a pencil and paper and took down the messages.

Three names were given: a member of the Council of the Indies, a departmental head and a young businessman.

“In the Indies, when people are not gossiping, the tables are doing it for them!” said Eva.

“The spirits…” murmured Ida.

“Such phenomena are usually mocking spirits,” lectured Mrs Rantzow.

But the table went on tapping…

“Take it down, Onno!” said Eva.

Eldersma went on writing.

“A-d-d-y!” the leg tapped out.

“No!” everyone said at once, vehemently denying the imputation. “The table is mistaken about that! At least young De Luce has never been mentioned in connection with Mrs Van Oudijck.”

“T-h-e-o!” tapped the table, correcting itself.

“Her stepson! How awful! That’s different! That’s common knowledge!” cried the babble of voices in agreement.

“But we know that!” said Mrs Rantzow, focusing on the table leg. “Why don’t you tell us something we don’t know? Come on, table; come on, come on, spirit!”

She addressed the table leg sweetly and cajolingly. People laughed. The table grated.

“Be serious!” warned Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

The table fell on to Ida’s lap with a thud.

“Adu! I don’t believe it,” cried the beautiful Eurasian woman, as if awakening from her trance. “It hit my tummy!..”

They laughed and laughed. The table revolved angrily, and they got up off their chairs, keeping their hands on the side table, and followed its angry waltzing movements.

“Next… year…” the table tapped.

Eldersma wrote it down.

“Terrible… war…”

“Between whom and whom?”

“Europe… and… China.”

“That sounds like a fairy tale,” sniggered Doctor Rantzow.

“La…bu…wangi,” tapped the table.

“What?” they asked.

“Is… a… hole…”

Please say something serious, table” begged Mrs Rantzow sweetly, in her pleasant German matronly tone.

“Dan…ger,” tapped the table.

“Where?”

“Threatens…” the table continued. “Labu…wangi.”

“Danger threatens Labuwangi?”

“Yes!” the table tapped once, angrily.

“What danger?”

“Rebellion…”

“Rebellion? Who is going to rebel?”

“Within two… months… Sunario…”

They listened intently.

But the table suddenly and unexpectedly bumped against Ida’s stomach again.

“Adu! I don’t believe it,” cried the young woman.

The table had had enough.

“Tired…” it tapped.

They kept their hands on it.

“Stop it now,” the table tapped.

The doctor, sniggering, put his broad hand on it, as if trying to force it to stop.

“Damned miser!” cursed the table, grating and turning.

“Swine!” it went on.

And a few more dirty words followed, directed at the doctor, as if a street urchin were shouting at him: filthy words without rhyme or reason.

“Who is thinking up those words?” asked Eva indignantly.

Obviously no one was making them up, neither the three ladies nor Van Helderen, always very correct and obviously indignant at the shamelessness of the poltergeist.

“It really is a ghost,” said Ida, ashen-faced.

“I’m stopping,” said Eva nervously and lifted her finger off. “I can’t make head or tail of this nonsense. It may be amusing… but the table isn’t used to decent company.”

“We have a new resource for Labuwangi!” said Eldersma. “No more picnics or balls… but table-turning!”

“We must practice!” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

Eva shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s inexplicable,” she said. “I can only believe that we were all playing fair. It’d not be at all like Van Helderen to suggest such words.”

“Madam,” protested Van Helderen

“We must do it more often,” said Ida. “Look, there’s a pilgrim to Mecca leaving the grounds…”

She pointed to the garden.

“A pilgrim?” asked Eva.

They looked in the garden. There was no sign of anything.

“Oh no,” said Ida. “I thought it was a haji… It’s nothing: the moonlight…”

It had got late. They took their leave, laughing and cheerfully bewildered, but unable to find an explanation.

“As long as it hasn’t made the ladies nervous!” said the doctor.

No. Relatively speaking they were not nervous. They were more amused, although they didn’t understand.

It was two o’clock in the morning by the time they left. The town was deathly quiet in the velvet shadow of the gardens, the moonlight streaming down.




5


THE NEXT DAY, when Eldersma had left for his office and Eva was wandering through her house on domestic duty, dressed in a sarong and a jacket, she saw Frans van Helderen coming through the garden.

“May I?” he called out.

“Of course!” she shouted. “Come in. But I’m on my way to the pantry.”

And she showed him her basket of keys.

“I’m due to see the Commissioner in half an hour, but I’m too early… That’s why I’ve dropped by.”

She smiled.

“But I’m busy, you know!” she said. “Come along with me to the pantry.”

He followed her, wearing a black lustre jacket, since he was about to see the Commissioner.

“How’s Ida?” asked Eva. “Did she sleep well after last night’s seance?”

“So-so,” said Frans van Helderen. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to repeat it. She kept waking up with a start, throwing her arms round my neck and asking forgiveness, I’ve no idea what for.”

“It didn’t make me nervous in the least,” said Eva. “Though I can’t make head or tail of it…”

She opened the pantry, called her cook, and arranged the menu with her. The cook suffered from a nervous affliction that caused her, when surprised, to obey any order and imitate whoever spoke to her, and Eva liked to tease the old woman.

“La… la-illa-lala!” she cried.

The cook jumped, repeated the cry, and the next moment came to her senses, begging for forgiveness.

“Throw it down, cook, throw it down!” cried Eva, and the cook, reacting to the suggestion, threw a tray of rambutan and mangosteen fruits on the floor, and instantly came to herself, begging forgiveness, picking up the scattered fruit, shaking her head and clicking her tongue.

“Come with me!” said Eva to Frans. “Or she’ll be breaking my eggs next. Come on, outside with you, cook!”

“Come on, outside!” repeated the cook with the nervous condition. “I beg forgiveness, nyonya. Enough, mistress!”

“Come and sit down for a moment,” said Eva.

He followed her.

“You’re so cheerful,” he said.

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I’ve been feeling melancholy recently.”

“So have I. There’s something in the air in Labuwangi. We must pin our hopes on our table-turning.”

They sat down on the back veranda. He sighed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I’m fond of you. I love you.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Again,” she said reproachfully.

He didn’t reply.

“I’ve told you, I haven’t got a passionate nature. I’m cold. I love my husband and my child. Let’s be friends, Van Helderen.”

“I try to fight it, but it’s no good.”

“I’m fond of Ida, I wouldn’t want to hurt her for anything in the world.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever loved her.”

“Van Helderen…”

“Perhaps just her pretty face. But however white she may be, she’s a Eurasian, with her whims and childish petty tragedies. I never realized it before, but now I do. I’ve met European women before you. But you’ve been a revelation to me, of everything that is enchanting, gracious and artistic in a woman… Your exoticism complements my own.”

“I value your friendship highly. Let’s keep it like that.”

“Sometimes it’s as if I’m crazy, sometimes I dream… that we’re travelling through Europe as a couple, that we’re in Paris together. Sometimes I see us together in a private room by the fire, you talking about art and me about contemporary social issues. But then I see us in a more intimate situation.”

“Van Helderen…”

“It doesn’t matter if you warn me off. I love you, Eva, Eva…”

“I don’t think there’s any country on earth where so many people are in love as in the Indies. It must be the heat…”

“Don’t crush me with your sarcasm. No woman has ever appealed to me so completely, body and soul, as you, Eva…”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Don’t be angry, Van Helderen, but I can’t stand those clichés. Let’s be sensible. I have a charming husband, and you have a sweet wife. We’re all good friends and have fun together.

“You’re so cool.”

“I don’t want to spoil our happy friendship.”

“Friendship!”

“Friendship. There’s nothing I value as much apart from my domestic happiness. I couldn’t live without friends. After happiness with my husband and my child, the first thing I need is friends.”

“To admire you, and for you to dominate,” he said angrily.

She looked at him.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps I need to be admired and to dominate. We all have our weaknesses.”

“I have mine,” he said bitterly.

“Come on,” she said in a warmer tone. “Let’s stay friends.”

“I’m deeply unhappy,” he said in a flat voice. “It’s as if I’ve missed out on everything in my life. I’ve never left Java, and I feel a sense of incompleteness because I’ve never seen snow or ice. Snow… for me it stands for a strange, unknown purity. I never even come close to what I long for. When will I see Europe? When will I stop enthusing over Il Trovatore and be able to go to Bayreuth? When will I reach you, Eva? I reach out everywhere with my antennae, like a wingless insect… What does the rest of my life hold for me? With Ida, with three children, who I know will grow up to be just like their mother. I’ll work as a controller for years, and then — perhaps — become an assistant commissioner… and rise no further. And then finally I’ll leave the service, retire or be retired, and move to Sukabumi and vegetate on a small pension. Everything in me seems to long for a life of idleness.”

“But you love your work, and you’re a good official. Eldersma always says: anyone in the Indies who doesn’t work and doesn’t like his work is lost…”

“You haven’t got a nature for love, and I haven’t got one for work, for nothing but work. I can work for a purpose, which I can see before me in all its beauty, but I can’t work… for the sake of work and to fill the emptiness in my life.”

“Your purpose is the Indies.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Fine words,” he said. “That may be true of someone like the Commissioner, whose career is going smoothly, who has never sat and pored over the Colonial List and speculated about so-and-so’s illness and so-and-so’s death… in the hope of promotion. For someone like Van Oudijck, who really believes, in all his idealistic honesty, that the Indies are his purpose, not for Holland but for the Indies themselves, for the Javanese, whom he as an administrator protects from the tyranny of landlords and planters. I’m more cynically inclined…”

“But don’t be so lukewarm about the Indies. It isn’t just fine words: that’s what I feel. The Indies are where the true greatness of us Dutch lies. Listen to foreigners talk about the Indies, and they are all enraptured by its glories and about our way of colonizing… Don’t associate yourself with that wretched spirit you find in Holland, which knows nothing about the Indies and always has a sarcastic word for them in its petty, stiff, bourgeois narrow-mindedness…”

“I didn’t realize you were such a fan of the Indies. Just yesterday you felt anxious here, and I defended my country…”

“Oh, I feel a shudder in the mysteriousness of the evenings, when some imminent danger — I don’t know what — seems to threaten: a frightening future, a danger to us… I feel that I personally remain far removed from the Indies, though I don’t wish to be… that here I miss the art I was brought up with, that here I’m without that line of beauty in people’s lives, which my parents always drew my attention to… But I’m not unjust. The Indies as our colony I find great; us, in our colony, I find great…”

“In the past perhaps, but now everything is going wrong, now we are no longer great. You have an artistic nature; despite the fact that you seldom find it, you always look for the artistic line in the Indies. Then that great, glorious image comes to your mind. That is the poetry. The prose is a huge, but exhausted colony, still ruled from Holland with one idea in mind: profit. The reality is not that the rulers are great in the Indies, but that the rulers are petty-minded exploiters. The country is being sucked dry, and the real population — not the Dutch, who spend their money from the Indies in The Hague, but the native population, attached to the soil of the Indies — are being oppressed by a disdainful overlord, who once helped create that population from his own blood. Now they are threatening to rise up against that oppression and that contempt. You, being an artist, feel the danger approaching, vaguely, like a cloud in the air, in the tropical night. I see a very real danger arising — for Holland — if not from America and Japan, then from the soil of this land itself.”

She smiled.

“I like it when you talk like that,” she said. “You might convince me in the long run.”

“If only I could achieve that much with words!” he laughed bitterly as he got up. “My half hour is up: the Commissioner is expecting me and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Goodbye, forgive me.”

“Tell me, am I a flirt?”

“No,” he replied. “You are as you are. And I can’t help loving you… I keep extending my antennae. That’s my fate…”

“I’ll help you to forget me,” she said, with warm conviction.

He laughed briefly and took his leave. She saw him crossing the road to the Commissioner’s compound, where he was met by an attendant…

“Actually life is one long self-deception, one long wild-goose chase after illusions,” she thought despondently. “A great goal, a universal goal… or a small private goal, for my own body and soul… Oh God, how little it all means! We wander round a bit, without knowing anything, and every one of us is in pursuit of his own little goal, his own fantasy. The only ones who are happy are the exceptions, such as Léonie van Oudijck, who is no more alive than a beautiful flower, or a beautiful animal.”

Her child toddled towards her, an engaging, fat, blond little boy.

“My baby!” she thought. “What will become of you? What will life bring you? Oh, nothing out of the ordinary perhaps. Perhaps a repeat of what has happened countless times before… Oh, when one feels like this, the Indies are so oppressive!”

She hugged her son and her tears dripped on to his blond curls.

“Van Oudijck has his office of commissioner; I have my little circle of… admiration and domination; Frans has his love… for me… we all have our toys to play with, just as my little Onno plays with his little horse. How little there is to us, how little there is to us!.. All through our lives we give ourselves airs, imagine all kinds of things. We are convinced we have a direction and purpose to our poor, lost, little lives. Oh, what’s got into me, darling? And what awaits you, my darling?”




BOOK III





1


FOURTEEN MILES FROM LABUWANGI, and thirteen miles from Ngajiwa, lay the Pajaram sugar factory, belonging to the De Luce family — half Creole, half Solo in origin — once millionaires, no longer as rich as they were because of the recent sugar crisis, but still maintaining a large household. This indissoluble family comprised: an old mother and grandmother, a Solo princess; the eldest son, an administrator; three married daughters and their husbands — employed as clerks in the business — who lived in the shadow of the factory; the numerous grandchildren playing close to the factory; the great-grandchildren germinating close to the factory. In this family old Indies traditions were preserved, which — once universal — are today becoming rarer because of more intensive contact with Europeans. The mother and grandmother was the daughter of a Solo prince, who had married a young, energetic adventurer and bohemian, Ferdinand de Luce, the scion of a noble family from Mauritius, who, after some years of roaming and searching for his niche in the world, had sailed to the Indies as a steward on board a ship, and after all kinds of vicissitudes had been stranded in Solo, where he won fame for a tomato dish and one of stuffed peppers! Ferdinand de Luce’s cooking gained him access to the Prince of Solo, whose daughter he later married, and even to the old Susuhunan. After his marriage he became a landowner, according to Solo law a vassal of the Susuhunan, to whom he sent a daily tribute of rice and fruit for the Palace household. Then he had gone into sugar, guessing the millions that a favourable destiny had in store for him. He had died before the crisis, wealthy and universally honoured.

The old grandmother, who had retained nothing of the young princess who had married Ferdinand de Luce for social advancement, was invariably approached with servile respect by the servants and the Javanese staff of the factory, and everyone gave her the title of radèn-ayu pangéran. She spoke not a word of Dutch. As wrinkled as a shrivelled fruit, with her cloudy eyes and withered, betel-stained mouth, she lived out her last years peacefully, always in a dark silk jacket, with a jewelled fastening at the neck and tight sleeves. Before her dimmed eyes flickered the vision of the former palatial greatness she had abandoned for the love of that aristocratic French cook, who had delighted her father’s taste buds with his recipes; her poor hearing caught the constant muffled whoosh of the centrifuges — like ships’ propellers — during the milling of the sugar cane, which lasted for months. Around her were her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; the sons and daughters called radèn and radèn-ayeng, all of them still surrounded by the pale aura of their Solo origins. The eldest daughter had married a full-blooded, blond Dutchman; the son who followed her, an Armenian girl; both the other daughters had married Eurasians, both brown-skinned, as were their children — now themselves married and with children and mingling with the blond family of the eldest daughter; and the glory of the whole family was the youngest son and brother Adrien, or Addy, who was paying court to Doddy van Oudijck, and who, despite the busy milling period, was constantly at Labuwangi.

In this family they had preserved traditions that have died out — as one remembers them in Indies families from years ago. Here one still found in the grounds on the back veranda the countless maids, one of whom does nothing but grind up rice powder, while another provides incense and a third pounds sambal for a hot sauce, all dreamy-eyed with agile, playful fingers. It was also where the succession of dishes in the rijsttafel seemed endless; where a long line of servants — one after another — solemnly served yet more varieties of vegetable sauce, yet another chicken dish, while maids ground sambal in an earthenware mortar to suit the different tastes and requirements and spoiled palates. Here it was still the custom, when the family attended the races at Ngajiwa, for each of the ladies to appear followed by a maid, moving slowly and solemnly; one maid carried a jar of rice powder, another a box of peppermints, binoculars, a fan, a bottle of perfume, like a court procession with state insignia. Here one also found old-fashioned hospitality; the row of guest rooms was open to whoever called; one could stay as long as one liked: no one asked about the purpose of your journey, or your date of departure. A great inner simplicity, an all-embracing cordiality, instinctive and innate, prevailed here alongside limitless boredom and dreariness, a complete lack of ideas, few words, but with a gentle smile making up for ideas and words; materially life was full to overflowing, all day long one was served with cool drinks and biscuits and spicy fruit salad, and three maids were assigned to make salad and biscuits. There were numerous animals in the grounds: a cage full of monkeys, a few parrots, dogs, cats, tame squirrels and a small, exquisite mouse deer that roamed free. The house, built onto the factory, and at milling time ringing with the thunder of the machines — the sound of steamship propellers — was spacious and furnished with old, outdated furniture: the low wooden beds with four carved bedposts hung with mosquito nets, the rocking chairs with very rounded backs — all the kind of things one could no longer buy, everything without a single modern feature, except — only during the meal — the electric light in the front veranda! The district commissioners, always in indoor dress, the men in white or blue stripes, the women in sarongs and jackets, looking after either monkeys or parrots or deer, in simplicity of soul, always with the same sweet pleasantness, slowly and long drawn out, and the same gentle smile. Then, once the milling season was over, and all the rush had subsided — during which the lines of sugar wagons drawn by superb oxen with gleaming brown coats had kept bringing more and more and more loads of sugar cane down the road strewn with their shreds and ruined by the wide cart tracks — and the seed for next year had been bought, and the machines were still, there was a sudden chance to relax after their unremitting toil. There came the long, long Sundays, the months of rest, the need for partying and fun. At the great dinner given by the lady of the house, with a ball and tableaux vivants, the whole house was full of visitors, both known and unknown, who stayed on and on. The old, wrinkled grandma — the lady of the house, the radèn-ayu, Mrs De Luce, whatever one wished to call her — was affable with her dulled eyes and betel-stained mouth, affable with everyone, always with an anak mas behind her — a “golden child”, a poor adopted princess — who followed her, the great princess from Solo, carrying the box of betel nuts: the child, a small slim girl of eight, with a fringe, her forehead made up with wet rice powder, round breasts already developing under the pink silk jacket and the gold miniature sarong around her narrow hips, like a doll, a toy belonging to the radèn-ayu, the dowager Mrs De Luce. And for the native villages there were popular festivals, a traditional gesture of liberality in which all Pajaram shared, according to the age-old tradition that was always observed, despite crisis or unrest.

It was relatively peaceful in the house now that the milling season and the celebrations were over, and an indolent calm had ensued. But Mrs Van Oudijck, Theo and Doddy had come over for the celebrations and were staying on at Pajaram for a few days. Seated around the marble table, on which there were glasses of syrup, lemonade and whisky soda, was a large group of people: they did not say much, but rocked contentedly up and down, occasionally exchanging a few words. Mrs De Luce and Mrs Van Oudijck spoke Malay, but very little: a gentle, good-natured boredom descended on a large number of rocking people. It was strange to see the different types: the beautiful milky-white Léonie next to the yellow, wrinkled Princess dowager; Theo, light-skinned and blond as a Dutchman with his full, sensual lips that he had inherited from his Eurasian mother; Doddy, already like a mature rose with her irises sparkling in her black pupils; the son of the director, Achille de Luce — tall, well-built, brown — whose thoughts were focused solely on his machinery and his seed; the second son, Roger — short, thin, brown — the bookkeeper, whose thoughts were focused solely on that year’s profits, with his Armenian wife; the eldest daughter, already old — stupid and ugly, brown — with her full-blooded Dutch husband, who looked like a country bumpkin. The other sons and daughters, in all shades of brown, and hard to distinguish at first glance; and around them the children, the grandchildren, the maids, the little golden foster-children, the parrots and the deer and, as if sprinkled over all these grown-ups and children and animals, the same benevolent togetherness, but also over everyone the same pride in their Solo matriarch, who caused a pale halo of Javanese aristocracy to gleam behind all their heads, and as proud as any of them were her Armenian daughter-in-law and her clodhopping Dutch son-in-law.

The liveliest of all of these elements that had merged through long cohabitation in the patriarchal seat was the youngest son, Addy, in whom the blood of the Solo princess and the French adventurer had mingled harmoniously. While it had not made him brainy, it had given him the good looks of a young Eurasian, with a Moorish touch, something southern, something Spanish. And in this youngest child the two racial elements, so far removed from each other, had for the first time been joined harmoniously, had for the first time married with complete mutual understanding — as if in him, this last child of so many, the adventurer and the princess had met in harmony for the first time. Addy appeared to have no imagination or intellect to speak of, and was incapable of stringing together two ideas to make a coherent train of thought; all he felt was the vague benevolence that had descended on the whole family, and apart from that he was like a beautiful animal that had degenerated spiritually and mentally, degenerated into one big emptiness. His body had become like a resurrection of racial perfection, full of strength and beauty, while his marrow and his blood and his flesh and his muscles had developed into a harmony of physical attraction, so utterly, mindlessly, beautifully sensual that the harmony had an immediate appeal for women. The young man had only to appear, like a beautiful southern god, for every woman’s eyes to be on him, and absorb him deep into their imaginations so they could later summon him up in their mind’s eye; the young man had only to come to a ball after the races at Ngajiwa for all the young girls to fall in love with him. He plucked love wherever he found it, and he found it particularly abundant in the villages around Pajaram. Every woman was in love with him, from his mother to his little nieces. Doddy van Oudijck worshipped him. She had been in love hundreds of times since the age of seven, with anyone whom she spied with her bright eyes, but never before as she was with Addy. It radiated so strongly from her that it was like a flame everyone could see, and that made them smile. For her, the milling party had been one round of enchantment… when she danced with him; one round of torture… when he danced with anyone else. He had not proposed, but she was thinking of proposing to him, and dying if he refused. She knew that her father, the Commissioner, was opposed; he did not like the De Luce family, that Solo-French crowd, as he called them. But if Addy wanted to, her father would give in, because otherwise she, Doddy, would die. For this child of love, the young Eros was the whole world, the universe, life itself. He courted her, kissed her secretly on the lips, but no more than in the thoughtless way he did with others; he kissed other girls, too. If he was allowed to, he went further, quite naturally, like a devastating young god, an unthinking god. But he still had some respect for the commissioner’s daughter. He had neither courage nor impudence, and lacked much passion in his choices, seeing women as women and so sated with conquest that obstacles were not a stimulus. His garden was full of flowers, all of which strained towards him; he stretched out his hand almost without seeing, and just plucked.

While they rocked around the table, they saw him approaching through the garden and every woman’s eyes were trained on him as on a young seducer arriving in the sunshine, which was like a radiant garland around him. The dowager radèn-ayu smiled and looked at her youngest son with love, her favourite. Behind her, squatting on the ground, the golden foster-child peered wide-eyed; the sisters peered, the nieces peered, Doddy peered, and Léonie van Oudijck’s milk-white complexion was tinged with a pink shade that merged with the glow of her smile. Automatically she glanced at Theo and their eyes met. And these souls that were all burning love — their eyes, mouths, flesh — understood each other, and Theo’s jealousy blazed so fiercely in her direction that the pink shade faded and she turned pale and was afraid, with a sudden unreasoning, shuddering fear that pierced her usual indifference, while the Seducer, in his halo of sunshine, came closer and closer…




2


MRS VAN OUDIJCK had promised to stay on for a few days in Pajaram, and in fact she was rather apprehensive, not feeling quite at home in these old-fashioned Indies surroundings. But when Addy appeared, she changed her mind. Deep in her heart this woman worshipped her sensuality, as if in the temple of her selfishness this milky-white Creole woman sacrificed all the intimacy of her rose-tinted imagination to her unquenchable desire, and in that worship she had arrived at an art, a knowledge, a science, of ascertaining with a single glance what attracted her in any man who was approaching her, who walked past her. With one it was his bearing, his voice; with another it was the curve of his neck on his shoulders; in a third it was his hand on his knee; but whatever it was, she saw it at once, at a glance. She knew instantly, in a trice. She had weighed up the passer-by in a fraction of a second and she knew at once whom she rejected — and that was the majority — and those she deemed worthy — and they were many. And those whom she rejected in that split second in her own supreme court, with that one glance, in that one instant, could abandon all hope: she, the priestess, would never admit them to the temple. For others the temple was open, but only behind the screen of her decorum. However shameless she might be, she was always decorous, and love was always secret; for the world she was nothing but the charming, smiling Commissioner’s wife, somewhat indolent, who won everyone over with her smile. When people did not see her, they spoke ill of her; once they saw her, she immediately captivated them. Among all those with whom she had shared the secret of her love, there existed a kind of freemasonry, a mysterious cult: whenever two of them met in passing they would exchange no more than a few whispered words about the same memory. And Léonie, milky-white, could sit calmly in a large circle around a marble table where at least two or three men had been initiated into the secret. It did not ruffle her composure or dim her smile. She smiled ad nauseam. She would barely glance from one to the other, while she briefly reappraised them, with her infallible judgement. She had scarcely any recollection of past time spent with them, scarcely any thought of the next day’s assignation. It was the secret that existed only in the mystery of intimacy, and was therefore never divulged in the profane world. If in the circle a foot sought to touch hers, she would withdraw hers. She never flirted, indeed she was sometimes rather dull, stiff, prim and smiling. In the freemasonry between the initiates and herself, she revealed the mystery, but in the eyes of the world, in the circles round the marble tables, she did not give so much as a glance, a handshake, and her dress did not so much as approach a trouser leg.

She had been bored during these days at Pajaram after accepting the invitation to the milling celebrations, which she had declined in previous years, but now that she saw Addy approaching, she was no longer bored. Of course she had known him for years and had seen him grow from a child to a boy to a man, and she had even kissed him occasionally as a boy. She had been weighing him up for a long time, the Seducer. But now he approached with his halo of sunshine, she appraised him once more: his handsome, slim, animal quality and the glow of his Seducer’s eyes in the shadowy brown of his young Moor’s face, the curling swell of his lips, made just for kissing, with the young down of his moustache, the tigerish strength and suppleness of his Don Juan’s limbs. It all blazed out at her and made her blink. As he said hello and sat down, scattering cheerful words round the circle filled with languorous conversation and sleepy thoughts — as if showering a handful of his sunshine, his gold dust, over them all, over all those women: his mother and sisters and nieces and Doddy and Léonie — Léonie looked at him, just as they all looked at him, and her gaze moved to his hands. She could have kissed those hands; she suddenly fell in love with the shape of his fingers, with the brown tigerish strength of his palms. She fell instantly in love with all the wild animal quality that exuded from the young man’s every pore like a scent of virility. She could feel her blood pulsing, scarcely controllable, despite her great skill at remaining cool and decorous in the circles round the marble tables. But she was no longer bored. She had an aim for the next few days. Yet…her blood was pulsing so violently that Theo had seen her blush and the trembling of her eyelids. Loving her as he did, his eyes had seen right through her. And when they went for the rijsttafel on the back veranda, where the maids were already squatting to grind everyone’s hot spices according to the individual tastes, he shot just two words at her under his breath:

“Be careful!”

She started, feeling he was threatening her. That had never happened before; all those who had shared in the mystery had always shown her respect. She was so shocked, so indignant at that touching of the temple curtain — on a veranda full of people — that her calm indifference was set churning and her eternally carefree tranquillity was roused to revolt. But she looked at him — blond, broad-shouldered, tall, a younger version of her husband, his Indies blood revealing itself only in the sensuality of his mouth — and she did not want to lose him: she wanted to keep this type of man alongside the Moorish Seducer. She wanted them both; she wanted to savour the difference between their male attraction, the Dutch blond-and-white kind with the merest trace of Indies blood, and Addy’s feral attraction. Her soul trembled, her blood trembled, as the long succession of dishes circulated ceremoniously. She was in more turmoil than she had ever been. Awakening from her placid indifference was like a rebirth, an unknown emotion. She found it bewildering to be thirty, and to feel it for the first time. A feverish wickedness blossomed in her, like the overpowering scent of red flowers. She looked at Doddy sitting next to Addy; the poor child could scarcely eat, she was aglow with love… Oh, the Seducer, he had only to appear!.. And Léonie, in her fever of wickedness, rejoiced at being the rival of her much younger stepdaughter… She would look after her, she would even warn Van Oudijck. Would it ever come to a marriage? What did marriage matter to her, Léonie?! Oh, the Seducer! She had never dreamt of him so in her pink siesta hours! This was not the charm of cherubs, this was the pungent smell of tiger-like attraction; the golden sparkle of his eyes, the muscular suppleness of his prowling paws… And she smiled at Theo with a look of self-surrender: a great rarity among the circle of people eating their rice. Normally she never gave herself away in public. Now she yielded for a second, happy that Theo was jealous. She was passionately fond of him. She loved the fact that he looked pale and angry with jealousy. Around her, the sunny afternoon glowed and the sambal was irritating her dry palate. There were small beads of sweat on her temples, and on her breasts under the lace of her jacket. She would have liked to hug them both at once, Theo and Addy, in a single embrace, in a mixture of different sorts of lust, clutching them both to a body made for love…




3


THAT NIGHT was like a downy cloud of velvet, descending languidly from the sky. The moon in its first quarter appeared as a small crescent, like a Turkish half moon, from the tips of which the unlit side of the disc was vaguely visible in outline against the sky… A long avenue of cemara trees led away from the front of the house, with straight trunks and foliage like unravelled plush and frayed velvet standing out like tufts of cotton wool against the low clouds, which heralded the approaching monsoon a month in advance. Wood pigeons cooed intermittently and a tokay gecko called, first with two rattling preliminary notes, as if in preparation, and then with his call, repeated four or five times:

“Tokay, tokay!..” at first powerful, then dipping and weakening…

The nightwatchman out front on the main road, where the sleeping market lay with its now empty stalls, struck eleven strokes on his hollow block of wood, and when a belated cart came by he shouted in a hoarse voice, “Who goes there?”

The night was a canopy of soft velvet, descending languidly from the sky, like an abundant mystery, a frightening future threat. But in that mystery, beneath the plucked black tufts of cotton wool, the frayed plush of the cemaras was like an inescapable summons to love in the windless night, like a whispered exhortation not to let this moment pass… True, the tokay kept pestering with its drily comic call, and the nightwatchman startled everyone with his “Who goes there?”, but the wood pigeons cooed softly and the whole night was like an eiderdown, like one great alcove curtained by the plush of the cemaras, while the sultriness of the distant rain clouds — which had been on the horizon all month — swirled around with an oppressive magic. Mystery and enchantment floated through the downy night, descending into the alcove where twilight was falling, melting away all thought and spirit, and presenting warm visions to the senses…

The tokay was silent, the night attendant nodded off: the velvety night reigned over all, like an enchantress crowned with the crescent moon. They approached slowly, two youthful figures, arms around each other’s waists, mouth seeking mouth with rapturous compulsion. Their forms were shadowy under the unravelled velvet of the cemaras, and in their white clothes they emerged as the eternal pair of lovers, always the same, everywhere. Here especially, the pair of lovers was inevitable in the magical night, seemed to be one with the night, summoned by the ruling enchantress; here it was predestined, blossoming as a double flower of fateful love, in the muffled mystery of the compelling skies.

And the Seducer seemed like the son of that inexorable queen of the night, who swept the weak girl along. To her ears the night seemed to be singing with his voice; her little soul melted, full of its own weakness amid the magical powers. She walked touching his side, feeling the warmth of his body penetrating her yearning maidenhood; her liquid gaze enveloped him with the longings of her sparkling irises, diamond-like against her black pupils. He, drunk with the power of the night — the enchantress that resembled his mother — was at first determined to take her further. Losing sight of all reality, losing all respect for her, unafraid of anyone, he was determined to take her further, past the night watchman who was nodding off, across the main road into the native quarter that was hidden away among the stately plumes of the coconut palms, a canopy for their love — to take her to a hideaway, a house he knew, a bamboo hut, which they would open up for him.

Suddenly she stopped, gripped his arm and pressed even closer to him and begged him not to. She was afraid…

“Why?” he asked softly, with his silky-smooth voice, as deep and downlike as the night. Why not tonight, tonight at last, there would be no danger…

But she trembled, shuddered and begged: “Addy, Addy, no… no… I don’t dare go any further… I’m frightened the attendant will see us, and look… there he is… a haji in a white turban…”

He looked towards the road. On the other side awaited the village under the canopy of coconut palms, with the bamboo hut that they would open up…

“A pilgrim?… Where, Doddy? I can’t see anyone…”

“He was walking down the road, he looked round, he saw us, I saw his eyes glittering and he went behind those trees into the village…”

“Darling, I didn’t see anything…”

“He was there, he was there. I don’t dare, Addy. Please, let’s go back!”

His handsome Moorish face clouded: he could already see the hut being opened by the old woman, whom he knew and who adored him as all women adored him, from his mother to his little nieces.

And once again he tried to persuade her, but she refused, and stopped and would not move an inch. Then they went back, and the clouds were even sultrier, low on the horizon, and the soft, blanketing night was as dense as snow, only warm; the ragged outlines of the cemaras were blacker and fuller. The dim shape of the mansion appeared, unlit, deeply asleep. And he begged her, he implored her not to leave him that night, that he would die that night without her… She was on the point of giving in, and promising, with her arms round his neck… when she started again and again cried out: “Addy… Addy… there, again… that white figure!..”

“You seem to be seeing pilgrims everywhere!” he said sarcastically.

“Well, look then…”

He looked, and really did see a white figure approaching along the front veranda. But it was a woman.

“Mama!” cried Doddy in alarm.

It was indeed Léonie, and she came slowly towards them.

“Doddy,” she said softly. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I was so frightened. I didn’t know where you were. Why do you go for walks so late at night? Addy…” she continued, with motherly affection, as if speaking to two children. “How can you be so silly, out walking with Doddy so late. You really mustn’t do it again! I know it’s nothing, but what if someone saw you! Will you promise me never to do it again?”

She entreated them sweetly, in engagingly reproachful tones; implying that she understood very well that they were burning with love for each other in the magical, velvety night, and by her tone of voice immediately forgiving them. She looked like an angel, with her round, white face set amid the loose wavy hair, in the white silk kimono that hung around her in supple folds. And she pulled Doddy towards her, and kissed the child, and wiped her tears away. Then, gently, she pushed Doddy away, to her room in the outbuildings, where she slept safely among so many rooms full of daughters and grandchildren of the old Mrs De Luce. And as Doddy left for the loneliness of that room, weeping softly, Léonie went on talking to Addy, gently reproaching him, then again warning him sweetly like a sister, while he, a handsome brown Moor, stood there before her shyly, putting a brave face on it. They were in the dim light of the front veranda; the night air perfumed the irresistible clouds of sensuality, of love, of muffled mystery. She reproached and warned and said that Doddy was a child, and he must not take advantage of her… He shrugged his shoulders, defended himself, putting a brave face on it; his words struck her like gold dust, his eyes sparkled like a tiger’s. Persuading him to spare poor Doddy in future, she took his hand — his hand that she adored — his fingers, his palm, which this morning, in her confusion, she could have kissed — and she squeezed that hand and was almost in tears, and begged him to spare Doddy… He suddenly realized, and flashed his wild-animal look at her and saw her beauty and her female attraction, milky-white, and he knew she was a priestess with secret knowledge… And he also spoke of Doddy, coming closer to her, feeling her touch, pressing her two hands between his, making her understand that he understood. And still pretending to weep and implore, she led him away and opened the door to her room. He saw a faint light and her maid, Urip, who went out through the front door and settled down to sleep outside on a mat like a faithful animal. Then she laughed in greeting, and he, the Seducer, was amazed at the warmth of the smile of this white blond seductress, who threw off her silk kimono and stood before him like a statue, naked, arms open wide…

Urip, outside, listened for a moment. And she was about to settle down to sleep, dreaming of the lovely sarongs that her mistress would give her tomorrow, when she suddenly started and saw a haji with a white turban walk across the compound and disappear into the night.




4


THAT DAY the Prince of Ngajiwa, the younger brother of Sunario, was to pay a visit to Pajaram, since Mrs Van Oudijck was leaving the following day. Everyone was waiting for him on the front veranda, rocking around the marble table, when his carriage rattled into the long avenue of cemaras. They all stood up. And now, especially, it was apparent how highly regarded the old dowager was, how closely related she was to the Susuhunan himself, since the Prince got out and, without taking one step further, squatted by the first step to the front veranda and respectfully made the sign of the semba, bringing his hands with fingertips touching up to his head, while behind his back a retainer, holding up the closed gold-and-white sunshade like a furled sun, made himself still smaller and shrank to nothing. The old woman, the Solo princess, who saw the palace glittering before her eyes once again, approached him, bade the Prince welcome in the courteous tones of palace Javanese — the language used between royal equals — until the Prince rose up, and the family approached behind the old woman. The way in which he then politely greeted the Commissioner’s wife was almost condescending compared with his servility of a moment ago… He then sat down between Mrs De Luce and Mrs Van Oudijck, and a leisurely conversation ensued. The Prince of Ngajiwa was very different from his brother Sunario: taller, coarser, without the latter’s shadow-puppet quality. Although younger, he looked older, his features engrained with passion, his eyes burning with passion: for women, for wine, for opium, and, especially, passion for gambling. Silent thoughts seemed to light up that leisurely, languid conversation, without ideas and with so few words, constantly punctuated by the polite “yes, yes” behind which they all hid their secret longing… They spoke Malay, since Mrs Van Oudijck did not dare speak Javanese, that refined, difficult language, full of nuances of etiquette, which few Dutch people ventured to use with a high-ranking Javanese. They said little, but rocked gently; a vague courteous smile indicated that they were all involved in the conversation, even though only Mrs De Luce exchanged the occasional word… Until finally the De Luces — the old mother, her son Roger and the brown daughters-in-law — could no longer contain themselves, even in front of Mrs Van Oudijck, and laughed in embarrassment, while drinks and cake were served and until, despite their politeness, they quickly conferred with a few words of Javanese, over Léonie’s head, and the old mama, no longer able to control herself, finally asked her if she would mind if they played a hand or two of cards. Despite themselves, they all looked at her, the District Commissioner’s wife, the wife of the representative of Dutch power, who they knew hated their gambling, their ruin, which claimed the highest Javanese dynasties, whom the Commissioner wished to sustain. But she, being too indifferent, wouldn’t dream of preventing them with a tactful jocular word, for her husband’s sake: she, the slave of her own passion, allowed them to be enslaved by theirs, and to revel in it. She simply smiled and was quite happy for the gamblers to retire to the twilight of the wide, square inner gallery, the ladies now greedily counting their money in their handkerchiefs, alternating with the men, until they were all sitting close together, eyes glued to the cards, sneaking glances at each other and playing endlessly — winning, losing, paying or collecting their winnings, opening the handkerchief full of money for a second and then closing it again, without a word, only the rustle of the small square cards in the twilight of the inner gallery. Were they playing vingt-et-un or the native game of setoter? Léonie had no idea, being indifferent, far from sharing that passion, and glad that Addy stayed sitting next to her and Theo looking jealously at him. Did he know? Did he suspect something? Would Urip keep her mouth shut? She revelled in the emotion and wanted them both, white and brown, and the fact that Doddy was now sitting on the other side of Addy, rocking almost in a swoon, caused her intense and wicked pleasure. What else was there in life but to abandon oneself to the urge of one’s sensual longings? She had no ambition, was indifferent to her high position; she, the first lady in the district, who delegated her responsibilities to Eva Eldersma, and to whom it meant nothing that hundreds of people at the receptions in Labuwangi, Ngajiwa and elsewhere greeted her with the kind of ceremony reminiscent of a royal audience — who secretly, in her perverse, pink daydreams, with a novel by Mendès in her hands, scoffed at provincial exaggeration, in which the wife of a district commissioner can be a queen. She had no other ambition but to possess the man she deemed worthy of her choice; no other spiritual life than the cult of her body, like an Aphrodite acting as her own priestess. What did she care if they were playing cards in there, or if the Prince of Ngajiwa ruined himself! On the other hand, she found it important to observe the traces of that ruin in his ravaged face and resolved to take even better care of herself. To have Urip massage her face and limbs, to have her prepare even more of the white liquid rice powder, the wonder cream, the magic ointment of which Urip knew the secret and which kept the skin firm, white and as wrinkle-free as a mangosteen. She found it fascinating to see the Prince of Ngajiwa burning up like a candle, his mind dulled by women, wine, opium, cards — perhaps most of all by cards, from peering stupefied at them, gambling, calculating odds that could not be calculated, calculating superstitiously, working out according to the traditional petangan almanacs the day and time when he must play in order to win, the required number of players, the amount of his stake… Now and then she stole a glance at the players in the inner gallery, shrouded in twilight and greed, and she thought of what Van Oudijck would say and how angry he would be if she told him about it… What difference did it make to him whether that royal family was ruined? What did she care about his policies, or Dutch policies in general, which are so keen to maintain the high reputation of the Javanese nobility, through whom they rule the population? What did she care if Van Oudijck, thinking of the noble old pangéran, was saddened by the visible decline of his children? None of this mattered to her, all that mattered to her was herself and Addy and Theo. She had decided to tell her stepson, her blond lover, that afternoon not to be so jealous. It was becoming noticeable, she was sure that Doddy could see it. Hadn’t she saved the poor child from herself yesterday? But how long would that warning last? Would it not be better if she warned Van Oudijck, like a good, careful mother?… Her thoughts roamed languidly; the morning was boiling, in those last scorching days of the east monsoon, when the limbs are covered in beads of sweat. Her body trembled and, leaving Doddy with Addy, she carried Theo off, and reproached him for looking so jealous. He seethed with anger, red-faced, clenching his fists, then imploring, then almost weeping with impotent rage. She became rather angry and asked him what he wanted…

They had gone around the side of the house, into the long side veranda; there were caged monkeys with banana skins strewn around them from the fruit the creatures had eaten, fed to them by the grandchildren.

The gong for the rijsttafel had already sounded twice, and on the back veranda the maids were already squatting and preparing everyone’s spices. But around the gaming table people seemed deaf. The whispering voices grew louder and harsher, and both Léonie and Theo pricked up their ears. A sudden quarrel seemed to have flared up, despite Mrs De Luce’s attempts to smooth things over between Roger and the Prince. They spoke Javanese, but had abandoned all politeness. They were yelling at each other like coolies, accusing each other of cheating. They heard the repeated attempts of the old Mrs De Luce to calm things down, supported by her daughters and daughters-in-law. But chairs were roughly pushed back, a glass broke, and Roger appeared to throw down the cards in anger. All the women inside called for calm in high-pitched voices, muted voices, whispering, with little exclamations, little cries of indulgence and indignation. All over the house the countless servants listened. Then the argument subsided: long, angry declarations continued to flare up between the Prince and Roger; the women tried to shush them, embarrassed by the presence of the District Commissioner’s wife, looking to see where she might be. And things finally quietened down and they resumed their seats in silence, hoping that the quarrel had not been too audible. Until finally, very late — getting on for three o’clock in the afternoon — the old Mrs De Luce, the passion for gambling still gleaming in her dulled eyes, yet summoning up all her princess’s prestige, came onto the front veranda as if nothing had happened and asked whether Mrs Van Oudijck would care to join them for lunch.




5


YES, THEO KNEW. After lunch he had talked to Urip and although at first the maid had tried to deny everything, frightened of losing the sarongs, she had not been able to keep up the pretence, merely protesting weakly: “No, no…” Early that same afternoon, he had called on Addy, raging with jealousy. But the untroubled composure of the handsome young man with the Moorish face had calmed him down, so sated with all his conquests that he himself never felt jealousy. He had been placated by the total absence of any kind of thought in the Seducer, who had forgotten everything instantly, after his hour of love, and had looked up with naive astonishment when Theo, red-face, seething with rage, had entered his room and stood in front of his bed — where he lay completely naked, as was his habit during his siesta, young and magnificent as bronze, sublime as a classical statue — and declared that he would punch him in the face… And Addy’s amazement had been so artless, so harmonious in its indifference, so totally did he appear to have forgotten last night’s hour or so of love, so calmly had he laughed at the idea of fighting over a woman, that Theo had calmed down and sat on the edge of Addy’s bed. Addy — a few years younger, but with his unparalleled experience — had said to him that he really mustn’t do that again, get so angry because of a woman: mistresses gave themselves to others. And Addy had patted him sympathetically on the shoulder, almost paternally, because they now understood each other, and had talked and listened to each other in confidence. They confided other secrets to each other, about women and girls. Theo asked if Addy planned to marry, but Addy said that he wasn’t thinking of marriage, and the Commissioner would not approve anyway, since he did not approve of the De Luces and considered them too Indies in their ways. In passing, he indicated his pride in his Solo origins, and his pride in the halo that shone palely behind the heads of all the De Luces. Then Addy asked Theo if he knew that there was a brother of his in the native village. Theo knew nothing about it, but Addy assured him: a son of his papa, from the time when the old man had been controller in Ngajiwa; a man of their age, gone completely native; the mother was dead. Perhaps the old man didn’t know himself that he had a child living in the native village, but it was true, everyone knew; the Prince knew, the Prince’s counsellor knew, the native district official knew, the most humble coolie knew. There was no conclusive proof, but something that was known by the whole world was as true as the existence of the world. What did the fellow do? Nothing but curse, maintaining he was the son of the Lord Commissioner who was leaving him to rot in the native quarter. What did he live on? On nothing, on what he begged brazenly, on what he was given, and apart from that… on all kinds of practices: by going round the districts, through all the villages, asking if there were any complaints and drawing up petitions; by urging people to go to Mecca and book their passages on very cheap steamship lines, for which he was a freelance agent. He went to the furthest village and showed them advertising posters depicting a steamship full of pilgrims to Mecca, and the Kaaba and the Sacred Tomb of the Holy Prophet. So he pottered about, often involved in fights, and once in a robbery, sometimes dressed in a sarong, sometimes in an old striped cotton suit, and sleeping where he could. And when Theo showed surprise, maintaining that he had never heard a word about that half-brother, and was curious, Addy suggested going to see him, if he was perhaps to be found in the native quarter.

Addy, in a cheerful mood, quickly had his bath, changed into a fresh white suit, and they went along the road past the paddy fields into the native quarter. It was already growing dark under the huge trees: the banana plants raised their leaves like fresh green oars, and under the stately canopy of the coconut palms nestled the bamboo houses, poetically Oriental, idyllic with their thatched roofs, the doors usually closed and, if they were open, framing a small black interior with a vague outline of a sleeping bench with a darkening figure squatting on it. The mangy dogs barked; the children, naked, with bells attached to their bellies, ran away and peered from the houses. The women remained calm when they recognized the Seducer, and laughed, blinking as he passed in all his glory. Addy pointed out the house where his old nursemaid Tijem lived, the woman who helped him, who always opened her door to him whenever he needed her hut, who worshipped him, just as his mother adored him and his sisters and little nieces. He showed Theo the house and thought of last night’s walk with Doddy, under the cemaras. Tijem the nursemaid saw him and came towards him in delight. She squatted down by him, hugged his leg to her withered breast, rubbed her forehead against his knee, then she kissed his white shoe and looked at him as if enraptured: her handsome prince, her radèn, whom she had rocked to sleep as a chubby little boy, already in love as she held him in her arms. He patted her on the shoulder, gave her two and a half guilders, and asked if she knew where si-Oudijck was, as his brother wanted to see him.

Tijem got up and beckoned them to follow her. It was a long walk. They left the native quarter and found themselves on an open road along which lay rails and the bamboo baskets in which sugar was transported to the boats lying ready there at a jetty on the River Brantas. The sun was setting, in a huge fan-shaped display of orange rays; the distant lines of trees were like dark, plump velvet blurred in the splendid glow, marking the limit of the paddy fields that were not yet planted, the gloomy land lying fallow. A few men and women issued from the factory on their way home. At the river, beneath a sacred banyan tree consisting of five intertwined trunks with an extensive root system, a small market with portable kitchens had been set up. Tijem called the ferryman and he took them across the orange-tinted Brantas, the last light of the sun fanning out like a peacock’s tail. Once they reached the other side, night descended hurriedly with curtains of mist, and the clouds, which all through that November had been threatening on the low horizons, created an oppressive, sultry atmosphere. And they entered another native quarter, illuminated here and there by a paraffin lamp. Until they finally came to a house made half of bamboo, half of Devoe crates, and covered half in tiles, half in thatch. Tijem pointed and, again crouching to hug and kiss Addy’s knee, she asked his leave to go back. Addy knocked on the door: there was the sound of some grumbling and stumbling, but when Addy called out the door was opened with a single kick and the two young men entered the only room in the house — half bamboo, half wood from crates. There was a sleeping bench with a few dirty cushions in a corner, in front of which dangled a limp, chintz curtain, plus a rickety table and a pair of chairs, a paraffin lamp without a globe on it on the table, and small household items cluttered on a crate in a corner. A sour opium smell permeated everything.

And at the table sat si-Oudijck with an Arab, while a Javanese woman squatted on a sleeping couch, preparing herself some betel. The half-caste hurriedly screwed up some sheets of paper lying on the table between them, visibly annoyed at the unexpected visit. But he soon recovered and put on a jovial air, calling out: “Well, Prince, Susuhunan! Sultan of Pajaram! Sugar Baron! How are you, handsome one, ladies’ man?”

His jovial torrent of greetings went on and on, as he gathered the papers together and signalled to the Arab, who promptly disappeared through the other door at the back.

“And who have you got with you, Lord Adrianus, pretty Lucius?…”

“Your brother,” replied Addy.

Si-Oudijck suddenly looked up.

“Well, well,” he said, speaking a mixture of broken Dutch, Javanese and Malay. I recognize him, my legitimate brother. And what has the fellow come for?”

“Just to see what you look like…”

The two brothers surveyed each other, Theo with curiosity, pleased to have made this discovery as a weapon to be used against the old man, if such a weapon should ever be necessary; the other, si-Oudijck, keeping hidden within himself — behind his shrewd brown leering face — all his jealousy, bitterness and hatred.

“Do you live here?” asked Theo, just for something to say.

“No, I’m staying with her for the moment,” answered si-Oudijck nodding towards the woman.

“Did your mother die a long time ago?”

“Yes. Yours is still alive, isn’t she? She’s in Batavia. I know her. Do you ever see her?”

“No.”

“Hmm… Do you like your stepmother better?”

“We get on all right,” said Theo drily. “I don’t think the old man knows you exist.”

“Oh, yes, he does.”

“No, I don’t think so. Have you ever talked to him?”

“Yes. In the past. Years ago.”

“And?…”

“Did no good. He says I’m not his son…”

“It’s probably difficult to prove.”

“Legally, yes. But it’s a fact, common knowledge. Known all over Ngajiwa.”

“Have you no proof at all?”

“Only my mother’s oath on her deathbed, before witnesses.”

“Come on, tell me a bit more. Come for a walk with us, it’s stuffy in here…”

They left the hut and strolled back through the native quarters, while si-Oudijck talked. They walked along the Brantas, which wound along in the dim evening light under a sprinkling of stars.

It did Theo good to hear about this, about his father’s housekeeper when he was just a controller, rejected after being unjustly accused of unfaithfulness: the child born later and never recognized, never supported; the boy, roaming from one native quarter to another, romantically proud of his degenerate father, whom he observed from afar, following with his leering gaze as that father became an assistant commissioner and then a commissioner, married, divorced, remarried; occasionally learning to read and write after a fashion from a native clerk with whom he was on friendly terms… It did the legitimate son good to hear this, because deep down, however blond and white he might be, he was more the son of his Eurasian mother than his father’s son; because deep down he hated his father, not for any specific reason, but because of a secret instinctive antipathy, because, despite his appearance and demeanour of a blond, white-skinned European, he felt a secret affinity with this illegitimate brother, felt a vague sympathy for him, since they were both sons of the same motherland, with which their father had no emotional ties except those he had acquired during his training: the artificial, humanely cultivated love of the rulers for the land they ruled. Since childhood Theo had felt like this, far removed from his father; and later that antipathy had become a smouldering hatred. He enjoyed hearing his father’s irreproachable reputation being demolished: a high-minded man, a senior official of absolute integrity, who loved his family, who loved his district, who loved the Javanese, who wanted to support the Prince’s family — not only because his instructions set out in the Government Gazette required him to respect the position of the Javanese nobility, but because his own heart spoke to his, whenever he remembered the noble old pangéran… Theo knew, of course, that his father was like that — so exalted, so noble, that he had such integrity — and it did him good, in the mystery-filled evening by the Brantas, to hear that irreproachable character, that exalted, noble integrity being picked apart; it did him good to meet an outcast who in an instant had covered that high and mighty father figure in slime and filth, torn him from his pedestal, brought him down to the abject level of everyone else — sinful, evil, heartless, ignoble. He felt a wicked joy in his heart, like the one felt at possessing the wife that his father adored. He did not yet know what to do with that dark secret, but he accepted it as a weapon; he sharpened it that evening, as he listened to the half-caste with his leer, who became worked up and started ranting. And Theo put away his secret in a safe place, storing his weapon deep inside. Old grievances came to the surface, and he, too, the legitimate son, launched into a tirade against his father, admitted that the Commissioner no longer tried to gain advancement for his son, any more than he would for any clerk: that he had once recommended him to the managers of an impossible company, a rice plantation, where he, Theo, had not been able to stand it for more than a month, that he had left Theo to his fate, was obstructive when he tried to obtain concessions, even in districts other than Labuwangi, even in Borneo, until he had been forced to kick his heels and live on charity, finding no work because of his father’s attitude, tolerated in that house where he hated everything.

“Except your stepmother!” si-Oudijck interjected drily.

But Theo went on, giving vent to his feelings in turn and telling his brother that even if he was recognized and legitimized, things would still be pretty lean. In this way they egged each other on, glad to have met and to have become friends for this brief hour. Next to them walked Addy, amazed at this rapid sympathy but, apart from that, without a thought in his head. They had crossed a bridge and via a detour had arrived behind the factory buildings at Pajaram. Here si-Oudijck took his leave from them, shaking Theo’s hand, which slipped him a few two-and-a-half-guilder coins that were eagerly accepted, with a flicker of the furtive look but without a word of thanks. And Theo and Addy headed past the now silent factory towards the mansion, where the family were walking around outside in the garden and in the avenue of cemaras. And as the two young men approached, the eight-year-old golden child, the old mama’s foster-princess, came to meet them, with her fringe and her rice-powdered forehead, in her sumptuous doll’s clothes. She walked towards them, suddenly stopping when she reached Addy and looking up at him. Addy asked what she wanted but the child didn’t reply, just looked up at him, and then, stretching out her hand, she stroked his hand with hers. Some obviously irresistible magnetism had drawn the shy child to him, making her walk up to them, stop and stroke him, so that Addy laughed out loud, bent down and kissed her light-heartedly. The child skipped away contentedly. And Theo, still worked up from that afternoon — first by his conversation with Urip, then by his confrontation with Addy, his meeting with his half-brother, the confidences about his father — feeling bitter and full of his own problems, was so irritated by the trivial behaviour of Addy and the little girl, that he exclaimed, almost angrily: “You’re hopeless… you’ll never be anything but a ladykiller!”




BOOK IV





1


OVERALL, LIFE HAD BEEN KIND to Van Oudijck. Born into a simple Dutch family with no money, he had spent his youth at a harsh, though never cruel, school. Serious from an early age, he had worked hard from the outset, looking towards the distant future, to a career, to the honourable position he was eager to assume as soon as possible among his fellow men. His time as a student of colonial administration in Delft had been fun enough for him to feel that he had once been young, and because he had once taken part in a masquerade, he actually believed that he had had a very wild youth, squandering money and painting the town red. His character was composed of a great deal of quiet Dutch solidity, a generally somewhat sombre and dreary earnestness, intellectual and practical: used to seeking his rightful place in human society, his ambition had developed rhythmically and steadily into a temperate professional ambition, but had developed only along the lines his eye tended to focus on — the hierarchical line of the Colonial Service. Things had always gone his way: his considerable capacities won him considerable esteem, he had become an assistant commissioner earlier than most and a commissioner at a young age, and his ambition had actually already been satisfied, since his position of authority was in complete harmony with his nature, whose desire for power had kept pace with its ambition. He was actually quite content, and although his eye saw much further and he glimpsed a seat on the Council of the Indies, and even the governor general’s throne, there were days when, serious and contented, he maintained that becoming a commissioner first class — besides the higher pension — had little to commend it except at Samarang and Surabaya, but East Java was very troublesome, Batavia had such an odd and almost diminished position, amid so many senior officials, members of the Council of the Indies and heads of department. And so, although he kept one eye on possible preferment, his practical and moderate nature would have been quite satisfied if someone had been able to predict that he would die as commissioner of Labuwangi. He loved his district and he loved the Indies; he felt no nostalgia for Holland or the trappings of European civilization, and yet he himself remained extremely Dutch, with a particular hatred for anything mixed-race. This was the contradiction in his character, since he had married his first, Eurasian wife purely out of love, and he loved his children, whose Indies blood was clearly apparent — outwardly with Doddy, inwardly with Theo, while René and Ricus were thoroughgoing young Eurasians — with a pronounced paternal love, full of the latent tenderness and sentimentality hidden deep inside: a need to give and receive in the bosom of the family. Gradually this need had extended to the circle of his district: he took a paternal pride in his assistant district commissioners and controllers, among whom he was popular and liked; only once in the six years that he had been district commissioner of Labuwangi had he been unable to work with a controller, a half-caste, whom after a period of patience with the man and with himself he’d had him transferred, or had fired him as he put it. And he was proud that, despite his authoritarian regime, despite his strict insistence on hard work, he was popular among his staff. He was all the more distressed by that mysterious, persistent enmity with the Prince, his “younger brother” according to Javanese titulature, in whom he would have liked to find a real younger brother, who under his tutelage governed his Javanese population. It pained him that this was his lot, and he thought of other princes, not only the noble pangéran, but others that he knew: the Prince of D—, educated, speaking and writing pure Dutch, the author of crystal-clear Dutch articles in newspapers and magazines; the Prince of S—, a little frivolous and vain but an extremely wealthy benefactor, a dandy in European society, gallant with the ladies. Why was he in Labuwangi saddled with this silent, angry, secretly fanatical shadow puppet, with his reputation as a saint and a magician, stupidly idolized by the people, in whose welfare he took no interest and who worshipped him only because of the prestige of his ancient name, and in whom he, Van Oudijck, always felt a resistance to his authority, never openly expressed but tangible beneath the Prince’s icy correctness. And on top of that, the brother in Ngajiwa, the card-player, the gambler — what had he done to deserve such princes?

Van Oudijck was in a gloomy frame of mind. He was used to receiving occasional, regular anonymous letters, slanders spat out poisonously from quiet corners — one defaming an assistant district commissioner, another a controller, then smearing the native chiefs or his own family — sometimes in the form of a friendly warning, sometimes in that of vicious schadenfreude, wishing mainly to open his eyes to the shortcomings of his officials and the misdemeanour of his wife.

He was so used to these uncountable letters, which he read fleetingly, if at all, then tore them up without the slightest concern. Since he was used to making up his own mind, the spiteful warnings made no impression on him, however much they reared their heads, like hissing snakes among all the letters that arrived daily in the post. And he’d always had such a blind spot for his wife. He had continued to see Léonie in the serenity of her smiling indifference and in the circle of domestic warmth that she certainly created around her — in the cavernous emptiness of the commissioner’s mansion that with its chairs and ottomans seemed constantly arranged for receptions — that he could never believe one jot of those slanders. He never talked about them. He loved his wife devotedly, and since in company he always saw her virtually silent, since she never flirted or behaved coquettishly, he never caught a glimpse of the depravity of her soul. In fact, he was quite blind in domestic matters. At home he had the kind of utter blindness that so often afflicts men who are extremely knowledgeable and competent in their business or professional life, eagle-eyed at work but myopic at home; used to analysing things en masse, and not the details of an individual soul; whose knowledge of humanity is based on principle, and who divides human beings into types, as if casting an old-fashioned play; who can immediately assess the work capacity of their subordinates, but who have no inkling of the psychological complexity of the members of their household, with its intertwined, tangled arabesques like overgrown vines — constantly looking over their heads, constantly missing the inner meaning of their words, with no interest in the multicoloured emotions of hate, envy and love unfolding rainbow-like before their very eyes. He loved his wife and he loved his children, because of his need for paternal feelings, for fatherhood, but he knew neither his wife nor his children. He knew nothing about Léonie and had never suspected that Theo and Doddy had secretly remained faithful to their mother, so far away in Batavia, living in unspeakable degradation, and had no love for him. He believed that they did love him, and when he thought about them, it aroused a dormant tenderness in him.

He received the poison-pen letters every day. They had never made any impression on him, but recently he no longer tore them up, but read them carefully and put them away in a secret drawer. Why, he could not have said. They were accusations against his wife, smears against his daughter. They were alarmist suggestions that he might be stabbed in the dark. They were warnings that his spies were totally unreliable. They told him that his rejected wife was living in poverty and hated him; they told him that he had a son whose existence he had ignored. They quietly rummaged about in all the dark, secret areas of his life and work. Despite himself, he felt depressed by them. It was all vague and he had nothing to reproach himself with. For himself and for the world he was a good official, a good husband and a good father, a good person. The fact that he was accused of having judged unfairly here, of having acted cruelly and unfairly there, of having rejected his first wife, of having an unacknowledged son living in the native quarters, the fact that people were slinging mud at Theo and Doddy — all this was making him gloomy at present. Because it was incomprehensible that anyone should behave in this way. For this practically minded man it was the vagueness that was most irritating. He would not fear an open conflict, but this shadow-boxing played on his nerves and his health. He had no inkling of why it was happening. There was nothing tangible. He could not picture the face of an enemy. And every day the letters came, and every day there was hostility in the shadows around him. It was too mystical for someone like him and was bound to make him bitter and gloomy. Then there appeared in the local newspapers pieces originating from a small, hostile press, accusations that were vague or demonstrably untrue. Hatred bubbled up everywhere. He could not think why, and pondering on the question was making him ill. He talked to no one about it and hid his pain deep inside.

He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t conceive why things were as they were and becoming worse. There was no logic to it. Since the logical reaction would be for them to love him, however high and mighty and strict they found him. And indeed, did he not so often temper that authoritarian severity with the genial laugh beneath the wide moustache, under a more easygoing friendliness or warning and correction? On official tours was he not the sociable commissioner, who regarded the tour with his officials as a sport, as a wonderful excursion on horseback through the coffee plantations, calling at the coffee warehouses? Did he not regard it as a pleasant trip, which relaxed the muscles after so many weeks of office work? The great procession of district heads following on their little ponies, riding their frisky mounts like nimble monkeys, flags in hand, the gamelan orchestras sprinkling their crystalline notes of welcome wherever he went, and in the evening the carefully prepared meal in the hostels and late into the night the games of cards.

Hadn’t they said, his officials, in informal moments, that he was a commissioner after their own hearts, a tireless horseman, good company at meals and young enough to take the shawl from the dancing girl and dance with her for a moment, cleverly performing the lithe, stylized movements of the hands, feet and hips — instead of excusing himself by paying her money and letting her dance with the native official? He never felt as comfortable as on tour. And now he was gloomy, discontent, not understanding what forces were thwarting him in the dark — him, the man of honesty and light, of simple ethical principles, of serious dedication to work. He thought of going on tour soon and using the physical activity to throw off the gloom oppressing him. He would ask Theo to come with him and take some exercise for a few days. He loved his son, though he thought him unwise, rash, hot-headed, lacking perseverance in his work, never satisfied with his superiors, resisting his manager too tactlessly until he made his position untenable at yet another coffee plantation or sugar factory where he was working. He believed that Theo must make his own way in life, just as he, Van Oudijck, had done, instead of relying completely on his father’s protection and position as a district commissioner. He was not a man for nepotism. He would never prefer his son above someone else with equal rights. He had often said to nephews, who were keen on obtaining concessions in Labuwangi, that he preferred not to have relatives in his district, and that they should expect nothing from him except complete impartiality. That was how he had made it, and that was how he expected them to make it, and Theo too. And yet, he secretly observed Theo, with all his father’s love; secretly, he deeply regretted the fact that Theo lacked perseverance and no longer focused on his future, his career, an honourable place in society, based on either esteem or money. The boy lived from day to day, without a thought for tomorrow… Perhaps he was outwardly cool towards Theo: well, he would have a confidential chat with him, give him some advice, and he would ask at any rate if Theo would come on tour with him. The thought of just under six days’ riding in the pure mountain air — through the coffee plantations, inspecting the irrigation works, doing the most pleasant part of his work — so broadened his mind, clarified his outlook, that he stopped thinking about the letters. He was a man with a clear, simple view of life: of course he found life natural and not confused or complicated. His life had progressed up a visible staircase openly and gradually, with a view of a gleaming pinnacle of ambition, and he had never been able or willing to see what writhed, what churned in the dark shadows, what bubbled up from the abyss, close to his feet. He was blind to the life that operates beneath the surface. He didn’t believe in it, just as a mountain-dweller who has for a long time lived near a dormant volcano does not believe in the fire inside it, that survives deeply hidden and escapes only as hot steam or sulphurous air. He believed neither in the power above things nor in the power that resided in things themselves. He didn’t believe in silent fate or in silent gradualness. He believed only what he saw with his own eyes: in the harvest, the roads, the districts and villages, and in the prosperity of his district, in his career that he saw as an upward curve ahead of him. In this unclouded clarity of a simple male nature, in this universal axiom of just rule, just ambition and a practical sense of duty there was only one weakness: the deep tenderness that he felt for his own home, which, being blind, he did not see for what it was deep down, but only according to his fixed principles as to how his wife and his children should be.

He had not learnt from experience, since he had loved his first wife as much as he now loved Léonie.

He loved his wife because she was his wife — the centre of his circle. He loved the circle for its own sake and not the individuals, the links of which it was composed. He had not learnt from experience. He did not think according to life’s changing hues, he thought according to his ideas and principles. They had made him a man and made him powerful, as well as a good administrator. They had also generally made him, in accordance with his nature, a good person. But because there was so much unconscious tenderness in him, unanalysed and simply deeply felt, and because he did not believe in the hidden force, in the life hidden within — in what writhed and churned like volcanic fires under mountains of majesty, like troubles under a throne — because he did not believe in the mysticism of visible things, life could sometimes find him unprepared and weak, when — divinely serene and stronger than mankind — it deviated from what he thought logical.




2


THE MYSTICISM OF VISIBLE THINGS on the island of mystery called Java… outwardly a docile colony with a subject race that was no match for the rough merchants, who in the heyday of their Dutch Republic, with the youthful strength of a young nation eager and hungry for profit, rotund and cool-blooded, planted their feet and their flag in the collapsing empires, the thrones tottering as if there had been an earthquake. But deep down this island had never been conquered. Although smiling with dignified contempt — resigned, bowing to its fate — deep down, despite a grovelling veneration, it was living freely its own mysterious life, hidden from Western eyes, however hard they tried to fathom the mystery — as if there had been a philosophy of being sure to preserve one’s dignified equilibrium with a smile, giving way flexibly, apparently politely seeking rapprochement — but deep down with a divine certainty about its own opinion, and so far removed from the thinking of the rulers, the civilization of the rulers, that there would never be solidarity between master and servant, because the insurmountable distance remains, that goes on proliferating in one’s mind and blood. And the Westerner, proud of his power, of his civilization, his humanity is seated high on his throne, blind, selfish, self-obsessed within the intricate mechanism of his authority within which he operates as precisely as clockwork, controlling each revolution until to the foreigner looking from outside this conquest of the visible, this colonization of a land physically and spiritually alien, appears a masterpiece, the creation of a new world.

But beneath all this outward show lurks the hidden force, slumbering now and not ready for battle. Under all that semblance of visible things is the ominous essence of silent mysticism, like smouldering fire in the ground and like hate and mystery in the heart. Under all this calm grandeur the danger threatens, and the future rumbles like the subterranean thunder in volcanoes, inaudible to the human ear. It is as if the conquered peoples know and simply abandon the pressure of things, waiting for the sacred moment, which will come if the mysterious calculations are correct. They understand the rulers with a single searching look, see them with their illusions of civilization and humanity, and know that they do not exist. Though they give him the title of lord and the respect due to a master, they see right through his democratic businessman’s nature, and secretly despise him and judge him with a smile, comprehensible to their brothers, who smile the same way. They never contravene the code of abject servitude and with the semba greeting pretend to be inferior while secretly knowing themselves to be superior. He is aware of the unspoken hidden force: they feel the soft approach of the mystery in the sweltering hot wind from their mountains, in the silence of the mysteriously silent nights, and he has a presentiment of distant events. What is, will not always remain so: the present disappears. They harbour the unexpressed hope that one day, one day in the far distant eddies of the dawning future, God will raise up those who are oppressed. But they feel it, hope it and know it in the depths of their soul, which they never reveal to their rulers and which they never could reveal. It remains for ever like the illegible book, in an unknown, untranslatable language, in which, though the words are the same, the colours of the words are different and the nuances of two thoughts have a different spectrum: prisms in which the colours are different, as if refracting the light of two different suns — rays from two different worlds. There is never the harmony that understands; the love that feels in unison never blossoms; and between them there is always the rift, the depths, the abyss, the vast distance, the wide horizon from which the mystery softly approaches, in which, as in a cloud, the hidden force bursts forth…

So it was that Van Oudijck did not feel the mystery of visible things.

And the divine, tranquil life could find him unprepared and weak.




3


NGAJIWA WAS a more cheerful place than Labuwangi: there was a garrison; administrators and clerks often came down from the interior for some fun; twice a year there were races, and the attendant festivities took up a whole week — commissioner’s reception, horse lottery, flower parade and an opera, two or three balls, which the revellers divided into a masked ball, a gala ball and a soirée dansante: a time of early rising and late retiring, of going through hundreds of guilders in a few days at cards and at the bookmaker’s… During those days the urge for pleasure and sheer enjoyment of life simply burst out. Coffee planters and sugar clerks looked forward to those days for months; people saved for six months. People poured in from all directions, into the two hotels; every family took in lodgers; people wagered with passion in a flood of champagne, the public, including the ladies, as familiar with the racehorses as if they were their personal property; quite at home at the balls, with everyone knowing each other, as if at family parties, while the waltzes and the Washington Post and Graziana were danced with the languorous grace of the Eurasian dancers of both sexes, with a swooning rhythm, trains softly billowing, a smile of calm rapture on the half-opened mouths, with that dreamy ecstasy of dance that the dancers of the Indies, men and women, express so charmingly, not least those with Javanese blood in their veins. For them, dance is not a wild sport, crude leaping around and bumping into each other with loud laughter, not the crude confusion of the lancers at young people’s balls in Holland, rather it is pure courtesy and grace, particularly among those of mixed race: a calm unfolding of elegant movement, a gracefully described arabesque of a precise step perfectly in time across the floor of club ballrooms; a harmonious blend of almost eighteenth-century youthful, noble, flowing movement, and languorous, floating steps, accompanied by the decidedly primitive booming rhythm of the Indies musicians. That was how Addy de Luce danced, with the eyes of all the women and girls fixed on him, following him, begging him with their eyes to take them with him into the undulating swell, like dreamily entering the water… That came from his mother’s side, that was an echo of the grace of royal dancers among whom his mother had lived as a child, and the mixture of modern Western and ancient Javanese gave him an irresistible attraction…

Now, at the ball, the soirée dansante, he danced like that with Doddy and afterwards with Léonie. It was already late at night, early in the morning. Outside, the day was breaking. Exhaustion lay over the whole ballroom, and finally Van Oudijck indicated to Vermalen, the assistant commissioner with whom he and his family were staying, that he wished to leave. At that moment he was standing on the front veranda of the club, talking to Vermalen, when the prince’s assistant suddenly came straight towards him out of the shadow of the garden and, clearly upset, squatted down, made the semba and spoke: “Kanjeng! Kanjeng! Advise me, tell me what to do! The Prince is drunk and is walking about the street and has completely lost his sense of dignity.”

The revellers made their way home. The carriages trundled up to the main entrance; their owners got in and the carriages trundled off. In the road, in front of the club, Van Oudijck saw a Javanese: his upper body bare, he had lost his turban and his long black hair waved freely about, while he gesticulated violently and talked loudly. Groups formed in the dim shadows, watching from afar.

Van Oudijck recognized the Prince of Ngajiwa. The Prince had already behaved without self-control during the ball, after losing large sums at cards and drinking all sorts of different wines indiscriminately.

“Hadn’t the Prince already gone home?” asked Van Oudijck.

“Certainly, kanjeng!” wailed the prince’s assistant. I had already taken the Prince home, when I saw that he was out of control. He had already thrown himself down on his bed; I thought he was fast asleep. But as you see, he woke and got up; he left the palace and came back here. Look how he’s behaving! He’s drunk and he’s forgetting who he is and who his fathers were!”

Van Oudijck went outside with Vermalen. He approached the Prince, who was gesticulating wildly and declaiming an incomprehensible speech.

“Prince!” said the Commissioner. “Have you forgotten where and who you are?”

The Prince did not recognize him. He flared up at Van Oudijck and hurled every conceivable insult at his head.

“Prince,” said the assistant commissioner. “Don’t you know who is talking to you and whom you are talking to?”

The Prince railed at Vermalen. His bloodshot eyes flashed fury and madness. Van Oudijck tried to help him into a carriage but he refused. Sublimely grand in his downfall he revelled in the craziness of his tragedy, and stood there as if he had burst out of himself, half-naked with waving hair. His expansive gestures were no longer coarse or bestial, but became tragic, heroic. He was wrestling with his fate on the brink of an abyss… The excess of his drunkenness seemed through some strange power to lift him out of his slow descent into bestiality, and in his drunken state he grew in stature and towered dramatically high above those Europeans. Van Oudijck looked at him stupefied. The Prince was in a tussle with the assistant commissioner, who pleaded with him… Along the road the population gathered, silent, appalled: the last guests left the club and the lights were dimmed. Among them were Léonie van Oudijck, Doddy and Addy de Luce. All three of them still had the weary delight of the last waltz in their eyes.

“Addy!” said the Commissioner. “You’re on close terms with the Prince. See if he recognizes you.”

The young man spoke to the drunken madman in soft Javanese. At first the Prince went on cursing, and his crazy gestures became huge; but then he seemed to recognize in the softness of the language a familiar memory. He looked at Addy for a long time. His gestures subsided, his glorification of drunkenness petered out. It was suddenly as if his blood understood the blood of the young man, as if their souls were communicating. The Prince nodded gloomily and began to wail, at length, with his arms raised. Addy tried to help him into his carriage, but the Prince resisted: he did not want to go. Then Addy took his arm gently but firmly, and slowly walked off with him. The Prince, still wailing with a tragic, despairing gesture, let himself be led away. The Prince’s assistant followed with a few retainers, who had trailed the Prince from the palace, helplessly… The procession vanished into the darkness.

Léonie, with a smile, got into the assistant commissioner’s carriage. She remembered the argument over cards at Pajaram; she enjoyed watching such a slow, public decline, an obvious undermining through passion, uncontrolled by any tact or correct moderation. As far as she was concerned, she felt stronger than ever, because she enjoyed her passions and controlled and made them the slaves of her pleasure… She despised the Prince and it gave her a Romantic satisfaction, a literary frisson, to catch a glimpse of the successive phases of that downfall. In the carriage she looked at her husband who sat there gloomily. His gloominess delighted her, because she thought him sentimental in his support of the Javanese aristocracy. A sentimental official instruction, which Van Oudijck interpreted even more sentimentally. And she revelled in his sorrow. Then she looked at Doddy and glimpsed in her stepchild’s eyes, tired with dancing, jealousy at that very, very last waltz of hers with Addy, and she was delighted at that jealousy. She felt happy, because sorrow had no hold over her, nor did passion. She played with the elements of life and they slid off her and left her just as unmoved and calmly smiling and unwrinkled and milky-white as ever.

Van Oudijck did not go to bed. His head on fire, raging sorrow in his heart, he immediately took a bath, put on his pyjama bottoms and a jacket and ordered coffee to be brought to him on the veranda outside his room. It was six o’clock, and there was a wonderful, cool, morning freshness in the air. But he was in such a bad mood that his temples were throbbing as if congested, his heart was pounding and his nerves were trembling. He could still see the scene at dawn in his mind’s eye, flickering like a silent film, full of teeming changes in attitude. What upset him most of all was the impossibility of the incident, the illogicality, the inconceivability. That a high-born Javanese, despite all the noble tradition in his veins, could behave as the Prince of Ngajiwa had that night, had never seemed possible to him, and he would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. For this man of predetermined logic, this truth was simply as monstrous as a nightmare. Highly susceptible to surprises that he did not consider logical, he was angry at reality. He wondered whether he himself had not been dreaming, or drunk. The fact that the scandal had taken place infuriated him, but now that things were as they were, well, he would recommend that the Prince be dismissed… There was nothing else for it.

He got dressed, talked to Vermalen and then went with him to the Prince’s palace; they both forced their way into the Prince’s presence, notwithstanding the vacillation of the retainers, notwithstanding the breach of etiquette. They didn’t see the Prince’s wife, the radèn-ayu, but found the Prince in his bedroom. He was lying on the bed with his eyes open, coming round in a melancholy mood, but not yet sufficiently himself to understand fully the oddness of the visit, with the Commissioner and the assistant commissioner at his bedside. Although he recognized them, he did not speak. While the two officials each tried to make him see how extremely improper his behaviour had been, he stared at them brazenly and persisted in his silence. It was so strange that they looked at each other and wondered whether the Prince had not perhaps gone insane and whether he was responsible for his actions. He had not spoken a word so far, and still refused to speak. When Van Oudijck threatened him with dismissal, he remained silent, staring shamelessly into the Commissioner’s eyes. He did not part his lips, but maintained his complete silence. There was the slightest suggestion of irony around his mouth. The officials, convinced that the Prince was mad, shrugged their shoulders and left the room.

On the veranda they met the radèn-ayu, a small downtrodden woman like a beaten dog, a slave girl. She approached them in tears and asked, begged, for forgiveness. Van Oudijck told her that the Prince was still refusing to speak. No matter what he had threatened him with, the Prince had inexplicably but clearly deliberately refused to speak, The radèn-ayu then whispered that the Prince had consulted a native healer, who had given him a talisman and assured him that if he persisted in complete silence, his enemy would not be able to gain a hold over him. Anxiously she begged for help and forgiveness, gathering her children around her. After summoning the Prince’s assistant and charging him with guarding the Prince as far as possible, the officials left. Although Van Oudijck had often had to deal with Javanese superstition, it still infuriated him, contradicting as it did what he called the laws of nature and life. Yes, only superstition could lead the Javanese to stray from the true path of their innate courtesy. Whatever representation they made to him now, the Prince would remain tight-lipped, persisting in his total silence that the native healer had imposed on him. In this way he imagined himself safe from all those he considered his enemies. This preconceived notion of enmity with someone Van Oudijck would have liked to regard as a younger brother and co-administrator was what upset him most of all.

He returned to Labuwangi with Léonie and Doddy. Back home he felt a momentary pleasure at being in his own house again, a delight in his own domesticity that he had always found soothing: the material pleasure of being in his own bed, with his own desk and chairs, drinking his own coffee, prepared the way he liked it. Those small consolations restored his good humour for a second, but he immediately felt all his old bitterness returning when under a pile of letters on his desk he recognized the tortuous handwriting of a couple of shadowy letter-writers. Mechanically he opened the first and was disgusted to find Léonie’s name linked with that of Theo. Nothing was sacred to those wretches: they invented the most monstrous combinations, the most unnatural slanders, and the most gruesome allegations up to and including incest. All the mud that was slung at his wife and son raised them to an even greater height and purity in his love, to a peak of inviolability, and he loved them both with an even greater and more fervent tenderness. But all his churning bitterness brought back his ill humour in full force. It was based on reality, since he had to recommend the Prince of Ngajiwa for dismissal, and was reluctant to do so. Yet this unavoidable necessity soured his whole existence, and made him nervous and ill. When he could not follow the course that he set out, when life deviated from the events predetermined a priori by himself — Van Oudijck — this recalcitrance, this revolt by life, made him nervous and ill. After the death of the old pangéran he had simply resolved to raise up the floundering dynasty of the Adiningrats, both in loving memory of the exemplary Javanese prince and because of his mandate as a commissioner, and out of a feeling of humanity and hidden poetry in himself. And he had never been able. From the outset he had been thwarted — unconsciously, through the power of things — by the old radèn-ayu pangéran, who lost everything at cards, gambled everything away and ruined herself and her family. He had censured her as a friend. She was not unreceptive to his advice but her passion had proved stronger. Van Oudijck had immediately judged her son, Sunario, the Prince of Labuwangi, even before his father’s death, as unfit for the actual post of prince: pettily proud of his noble blood, insignificant, never informed about real life, without any talent for government or concern for the ordinary people, extremely fanatical, always consorting with native healers and with sacred calculations, always withdrawn and living in a dream of obscure mysticism, and blind to what might bring prosperity and justice to his Javanese subjects. And yet the population worshipped him, both because of his nobility and because of his reputation for holiness and far-reaching powers: a divine magical power. Secretly the women of the palace sold the water that had flowed over his body when he bathed, bottled as a medicine, a cure for various afflictions. That was what the elder brother was like, and this morning the younger had lost all control of himself, obsessed by the craving for gambling and drink… With these sons, the dynasty — once so brilliant — was tottering to its downfall: their children were young, some cousins were assistant princes in Labuwangi in neighbouring districts, but not one drop of noble blood flowed in their veins. No, he, Van Oudijck, had never been able to do what he wanted. The people whose interests he was defending were themselves fighting against him. They had no future.

But he could not understand why this had to be so; it upset and embittered him.

The fact was that he had imagined a quite different course — a splendid upward curve, the way he envisaged his own life — whereas the curve of their lives meandered chaotically downwards. He could not understand what could be stronger than him, if he wanted something. Had it not always been the case in his life and his career that whatever he wanted fervently had happened with the logic that he himself day by day had imposed on the things that were about to happen? His ambition had simply imposed that logic of the upward curve, since the aim his ambition had set itself was the restoration of this Javanese dynasty…

Would he fail? He would never forgive himself if he failed in striving to achieve an aim he had set himself as an official. Up to now he had always been able to achieve what he wanted. But what he was trying to achieve now — unbeknown to himself — was not just the aim of an official, part of his work. What he was now striving for was an aim that issued from his humanity, the noble part of himself. What he was now trying to achieve was an ideal, an ideal of a Westerner in the East, and of a Westerner who saw the East in the only way he knew how, the only way he could see it.

And he would never be prepared to admit that there were forces that combined into a single force that opposed him, that mocked his ideas, that scoffed at his ideals, and that was stronger the deeper it was hidden away: his was not the kind of nature to recognize them, and even its clearest revelation would be a mystery to his soul, and remain a myth.




4


VAN OUDIJCK had been to the office that day and on returning home was immediately met by Léonie.

“The radèn-ayu pangéran is here. She’s been here an hour, Otto. She would like to talk to you. She’s been waiting for you.”

“Léonie,” he said. “Have a look at these letters. I receive a lot of these sorts of communication, and I’ve never mentioned them to you. But perhaps it’s better if you are not left in the dark. Perhaps it’s better for you to know. But please don’t distress yourself about them. I don’t have to assure you that I don’t believe one jot of all that filth. So don’t be upset, and return the letters to me in person later. Don’t leave them lying around… And ask the Princess dowager to come to my office…”

Léonie, with the letters in her hand, brought the Princess from the back veranda. She was a dignified, grey-haired woman with a proud, regal bearing in her still slim figure. Her eyes were a sombre black; her mouth made broader by the betel juice, in which her filed-down black-painted teeth grinned, was like a grimacing mask and spoiled the lofty nobility of her expression. She wore a black satin jacket fastened with jewels. Her grey hair and sombre eyes gave her an unusual mix of venerability and smouldering passion. Her old age was tinged with tragedy. She herself felt a fate pressing tragically on her and her family, and placed her sole hope in the far-reaching, god-like power of her eldest son Sunario, the Prince of Labuwangi. While she preceded Van Oudijck into the office, Léonie glanced at the letters in the central gallery. They were vulgar verses about her and Addy and Theo. Permanently wrapped up in the dream of her own life, she never took much notice of what people were thinking and saying, because she knew she could immediately win them over again, with her appearance and her smile. She had that calm charisma that was irresistible. She never spoke ill of anyone, out of indifference; she was conciliatory and forgiving to everything and everyone; and she was popular — when she was present. But she found these dirty letters, spewed out of some dark corner, unpleasant and annoying, even though Van Oudijck did not believe them. What if he did begin to believe them? She must be prepared for that eventuality. In particular, if that day should ever come, she must retain her most charming equanimity, all her invulnerability and inviolability. Where could those letters have come from? Who hated her so much? In whose interest was it to write about her in such terms to her husband? How strange that it should have got out… Addy, Theo? How did people know? Urip? No, not Urip… But who then, who? So was everything known? The fact was that she had always thought that what happened in secret niches would never be public knowledge. She had even thought — naively — that men never talked to each other about her; about other women, yes, but not about her… Despite all her experience her mind was full of such naive illusions: a naivety that chimed with the poetry — half perverse, half childlike — of her rose-tinted imagination. So, could she not keep secret the hidden depths of her mystery, the hidden depths of reality for ever? For a moment it upset her. Despite all her propriety, reality nevertheless revealed itself… Thoughts and dreams always remained secret. Actual facts were such a nuisance. For a moment she considered being more careful in future, practising abstinence… But in her mind’s eye she saw Theo, she saw Addy, her blond and brown loves, and felt too weak… She knew she wouldn’t be able to overcome her passions, even if she controlled them. Might they not, for all her tact, one day lead to her downfall? But she found the idea laughable; she had a firm belief in her invulnerability, her inviolability. Life had no hold on her.

Still, she wanted to be prepared for possible contingencies. All she asked of her life was to be free of pain and suffering, of poverty, and to make her passions the slaves of her pleasure, so that she could continue to have pleasure for as long as possible, and live this life as long as possible. She thought over what she would say if Van Oudijck ever questioned her, if the anonymous letters sowed a seed of doubt. She asked herself if she would not break with Theo after all. Addy was enough for her. And she became absorbed in her preparations, as in the uncertain combinations of a play that had yet to begin. Until she suddenly heard the voice of the radèn-ayu pangéran in the office raised against her husband’s calm voice. She listened, curious, sensing a drama and calmly happy that this drama ran off her like water off a duck’s back. She crept into Van Oudijck’s bedroom; the dividing doors were open for ventilation and only a screen divided the bedroom and office. She peered past the screen and saw the old Princess, more agitated than she had ever seen a Javanese woman. The radèn-ayu was pleading in Malay with Van Oudijck who, in Dutch, was assuring her that it was impossible. Léonie listened more closely, and heard the old Princess begging the Commissioner to have mercy on her second son, the Prince of Ngajiwa. She begged Van Oudijck to think of her late husband, the pangéran, whom he had loved as a father, who had loved him as a son — with an affection deeper than that between an “elder and a younger brother”; she begged him to think of their illustrious past, the glory of the Adiningrats, always the loyal friends of the Dutch East India Company, in war its allies, in peace its most loyal vassals: she begged him not to decree the end of their dynasty, on which a dreadful fate had descended since the pangéran’s death, driving it into an abyss of fatal destruction. She stood before the Commissioner like Niobe, like a tragic mother, her arms raised in the powerful emotion of her words, tears streaming from her dark eyes, and her wide mouth — stained with the brown betel juice — like a grinning mask. Yet as she grinned, fluent words of persuasion and imprecation welled up; she wrung her hands in supplication, and her fist beat her breast as if in penitence.

Van Oudijck answered her in a firm but soft voice, telling her indeed how deeply he had loved the old pangéran, how highly he esteemed the old family, how no one would want more than he did to maintain them in their eminence. But then he became more severe and asked her on whom the Adiningrats could blame the fate that now pursued them. Looking her straight in the eye, he told her that it was her fault! She shrank back, bursting with rage, but he repeated it again and again. Her sons were her sons, bigoted and arrogant and addicted to gambling. And gambling, that base passion, spelt disaster for their greatness. In the insatiability of their lust for gain, their dynasty was tottering towards destruction. How often did a month go by when the Prince of Ngajiwa failed to pay the salaries of his chiefs? She admitted it was true: at her insistence her son had taken — borrowed — money from the treasury to pay gambling debts. But she also swore that it would never happen again! And where, asked Van Oudijck, had a prince, the descendant of an ancient family, ever behaved in such a way as the Prince of Ngajiwa had at the race ball? The mother wailed: it was true, it was true; fate was clinging to their steps and had clouded her son’s mind with madness, but it would never, never happen again. She swore by the soul of the old pangéran that it would never happen again, and that her son would regain his dignity. But Van Oudijck became more heated and accused her of never having exerted a positive influence on her sons and her nephews, of being the evil genius of her family, since a demon of gambling and greed had her in its clutches. The old Princess began to screech with pain, she who looked down upon the Commissioner, the Dutch commoner, that he dared speak to her in that way and was right to do so. She reached out and begged him for mercy; she begged him not to recommend her younger son to the government for dismissal, which would follow the advice of such a highly esteemed official and do as the Commissioner said. She begged him to show pity and to have patience. She would talk to her son, and Sunario would talk to his brother: they would bring him to his senses after he had been ravaged by drink, gambling and women. Oh, if only the Commissioner would show pity, if only he would relent! But Van Oudijck was implacable. He had been patient for so long. Things had come to a head. Since her son, under the influence of the native healer, trusting in his talisman, had opposed him with his insolent silence, which the Prince believed made him invulnerable to enemies — he would demonstrate that he, the Commissioner, the plenipotentiary of the government, the Queen’s representative, was the strongest, despite the native healer and the talisman. There was nothing else for it: his patience was exhausted, his love for the pangéran admitted no further indulgence; his feeling of respect for their family could not be transferred to an unworthy son. It was decided: the Prince was to be dismissed.

The Princess had listened to him, unable to believe his words, seeing an abyss gaping in front of her. And with a screech like that of a wounded lioness, with a scream of pain, she pulled the jewelled pins out of her knot so that her long grey hair streamed down around her; in a single movement she tore open her jacket; no longer able to control her pain and despair that rose like a mist from the gaping abyss, she threw herself at the feet of the European, grabbed his foot violently with both hands and planted it on her bent neck in a single movement that threw Van Oudijck off balance, and she screamed out that she, the daughter of the sultans of Madura would be his slave for ever if he would just this once have mercy on her son, and not plunge her family into the abyss of disgrace, which she saw gaping around her. And she clung to the European’s foot with the strength of despair, and kept that foot, with the sole and heel of the shoe, like a yoke of slavery pressed into her streaming grey hair, her neck bent to the ground. Van Oudijck was trembling with emotion. He realized that this haughty woman would never, apparently spontaneously, humiliate herself in the deepest way she could think of, would never abandon herself to the most violent expression of grief that a woman could ever show — with her hair loose, and the ruler’s foot on her neck — if she were not shocked to the depths of her being, if her despair had not reached the point of self-destruction. He hesitated for a moment, but no more than a moment. He was a man of well-pondered principles, of pre-established logic: immutable in decision-taking, never susceptible to impulse. With immense respect he finally freed his foot from the vicelike grip of the Princess, reached out to her with both hands and lifted her up from the floor with great deference and with obvious sympathy. She flopped into a chair, broken and sobbing. For a moment she thought she had won, sensing his soft-heartedness. But when he shook his head calmly but firmly to indicate a negative decision she realized it was all over. She gasped for breath, half-fainting, still with her jacket open, her hair loose. At that moment Léonie entered. She had seen the drama being enacted before her very eyes and felt moved as if by a work of literature. She experienced something akin to pity. She approached the Princess, who threw herself into her arms, seeking the support of another woman in the helpless despair of the inevitable catastrophe. And Léonie, her beautiful eyes focused on Van Oudijck, muttered a single word of intercession and whispered: “Give in!” It represented a living blossoming of pity in her arid soul. “Give in!” she whispered again. And for the second time Van Oudijck hesitated. He had never before refused his wife anything, however costly her request. But this meant the sacrifice of his principles: never going back on a decision, the firm implementation of a desired course of events. That is how he had always controlled the future. He had never shown any weakness, and he said it was impossible.

Perhaps if he had given way, his life would have turned out differently. Yet he had no inkling of the sacred moments when a man must not assert his own will, but must be piously carried along by the impulse of the silent powers. He did not respect, acknowledge or comprehend such powers, and never would. He was a man with a lucid, logical, simple male sense of duty; a man of the clear, simple life. He would never know the silent forces lurking beneath the simple life. He would have scoffed at the suggestion that there are peoples who have more control of that force than Westerners. The very idea that there are a few individuals among those peoples in whose hands the force loses its omnipotence and becomes a tool — would make him shrug his shoulders and continue on his way. No experience would teach him. Perhaps he would be perplexed for a moment… But then, immediately afterwards, his man’s hand would firmly grasp the chain of his logic and fit the iron factual links together…

Perhaps, if he had given in, his life would have turned out differently.

He saw Léonie helping the old Princess, broken and sobbing, out of his office.

A deep emotion, a pity that touched him to the core, brought tears to his eyes, and through those tears there appeared the image of the Javanese whom he had loved like a father.

But he did not give in.




5


THERE WERE REPORTS from Ternate and Halmaheira that a terrible submarine earthquake had devastated a group of islands in the area, that whole villages had been washed away and that thousands were homeless. The telegrams had caused greater consternation in Holland than in the Indies, where people were more accustomed to earthquakes at sea and on land. There had been much talk about the Dreyfus trial in France, and people were beginning to discuss the Transvaal, but almost nothing was said about Ternate. Nevertheless, a coordinating committee was set up in Batavia and Van Oudijck convened a meeting. It was decided to arrange a charity gala in the club and its gardens as soon as possible. Mrs Van Oudijck, as usual, left everything to Eva Eldersma and took no part at all. For a fortnight, a frenzy of activity engulfed Labuwangi. In the deathly quiet provincial Indies town, a tumult of petty passions, jealousies and enmities arose. Eva had her loyal clique — the Van Helderens, the Doorn de Bruijns, the Rantzows — and, competing with them, all kinds of little coteries. So-and-so had fallen out with so-and-so; so-and-so wasn’t taking part because so-and-so was; so-and-so insisted on taking part just because Mrs Eldersma must not think she was almighty; and X and Y and Z felt that Eva was getting above herself and mustn’t imagine she was the local first lady, just because Mrs Van Oudijck left everything to her. However, Eva had spoken to the commission and agreed to organize the event, but only if she had a totally free hand. She had no objection to the Commissioner choosing someone else to run the show, but if he chose her, a completely free hand was a precondition, because having to accommodate twenty different opinions and tastes would mean endless discussions. Van Oudijck laughed and gave in, but impressed upon her that she mustn’t upset people, must respect people’s feelings and be as conciliatory as possible so that the charity gala would leave behind pleasant memories. Eva promised: she was not argumentative by nature.

Doing something — organizing something, achieving something, expressing her artistic energy — was Eva’s main joy, her consolation in the dreariness of Indies life. Because although she had found much in the Indies that she had come to love and admire, social life for her, with the exception of her little group, lacked all attraction. But now the chance of organizing a gala, one that would be talked of as far away as Surabaya, flattered her vanity and her energy.

She sailed through every difficulty, and because people realized that she knew best and had the most practical solutions, they let her have her own way. But while she was busy devising her fancy fair stalls and tableaux vivants, and while the pressure of preparations for the gala spread through the principal families of Labuwangi, something seemed to spread through the soul of the native population, nothing as frivolous as charitable festivities. For the past few days the Chief of Police, who presented a brief report to Van Oudijck every morning, usually in just a few words — that he had made his rounds and found everything in order — was having longer conversations with his superior, and seemed to have weightier matters to report to him; and the attendants whispered more mysteriously outside the office. The Commissioner summoned Eldersma and Van Helderen, and the secretary wrote to Vermalen in Ngajiwa to the commanding officer of the garrison; and the controller patrolled the town more and more often, at unaccustomed hours. In their flurry of activity the ladies sensed little of the mysterious activity, and only Léonie, who was not concerned with the gala, noticed an unusual, silent concern in her husband. She quickly and accurately sensed that something was wrong, and since Van Oudijck — who was in the habit of often talking about business at home — had been tight-lipped for the last few days, she asked where the Prince of Ngajiwa was now that he had been dismissed by the government at the instigation of Van Oudijck, and who was to replace him. His vague reply put her on her guard and worried her. One morning, passing through her husband’s bedroom, she was struck by the whispered conversation between Van Oudijck and the Chief of Police, and she listened for a moment with her ear to the screen. The conversation was muted because the garden doors were open: the attendants were sitting on the garden steps; a few gentlemen, needing to speak to the Commissioner, were walking up and down the side veranda after writing their names on a slate, which the head attendant had brought in. But they had to wait, because the Commissioner was talking to the Chief of Police… Léonie listened by the screen. And she turned pale when she caught a few words. She went quietly to her room, afraid. At lunch she asked if it would really be necessary for her to attend the gala, since she had been having such a toothache recently, and she needed to go to Surabaya to the dentist. It would take some time: she had not been to the dentist for ages. But Van Oudijck, severe in his gloomy mood of secret concern and silence, told her that she couldn’t go, that she must be present on an evening like that of the gala, as the district commissioner’s wife. She pouted, sulked and held a handkerchief to her mouth, making Van Oudijck nervous. That afternoon she didn’t sleep, didn’t read, didn’t dream because of her unusual agitation. She was afraid and wanted to get away. And at afternoon tea in the garden she started crying, saying that her toothache was making her head hurt and she was becoming ill, that she could not stand it any more. Van Oudijck, nervous and worried, was touched; he could never bear to see her cry. And he gave in, as he always did to her, where her personal affairs were concerned. The following day she left for Surabaya, where she stayed at the commissioner’s house and really did have the dentist treat her teeth. It was always wise to do it once a year. This time it cost her about five hundred guilders.

By now, casually, the other ladies also sensed something of what was happening in Labuwangi behind a haze of mystery. Because Ida van Helderen told Eva Eldersma, her tragic white Eurasian eyes aghast with fear, that her husband and Eldersma and the Commissioner too were afraid of a revolt by the population, stirred up by the Prince’s family, which could never forgive the dismissal of the Prince of Ngajiwa. However, the men gave nothing away and reassured their wives. But a dark turbulence continued to bubble under the ostensible calm of their provincial life. And gradually the rumours leaked out and alarmed the European population. Vague reports in the newspapers — commenting on the dismissal of the Prince — also played a part. Meanwhile, the busy preparations for the gala continued, but people were no longer involved heart and soul. People’s lives were hectic and restless, and they became sick with nerves. At night, houses were made more secure, weapons put out close to hand; people woke suddenly in a fright, listening to the muffled sounds of the night in the great outdoors. Opinion condemned the hastiness of Van Oudijck, who after the scene at the ball following the races had no longer been able to exercise any patience, and had not hesitated to recommend the dismissal of the Prince, whose family was so attached to and so identified with the territory of Labuwangi.

The Commissioner had authorized for the native population an evening market on the square in front of the commissioner’s mansion, which would last several days and coincide with the gala. There would be popular festivities, with many stalls and booths, and a Malay theatre company performing scenes from the Arabian Nights. As a favour to the Javanese population, which was much appreciated, he had decreed this to be at the same time that the Europeans were celebrating. There were now only a few days to go to the gala and the day before, quite coincidentally, the monthly management meeting was to be held at the palace.

The anxiety, the bustle, the nervousness caused such a stir in the otherwise invariably quiet town that it made people almost ill. Mothers sent their children away and were themselves in two minds. But the gala made people stay. Did they want to miss the gala? Treats were so rare here. But if there really was… a rebellion! And people didn’t know what to do: people were undecided whether to take seriously the murky threat that they sensed, or to make light-hearted fun of it.

The day before the meeting, Van Oudijck requested an audience with the Princess, who lived with her son. His carriage drove past the booths and stalls on the square, and through the decorative gates of the evening market. This evening was to be the first evening of the festivities. They were putting the finishing touches and in the hive of activity and hammering and arranging, the natives did not always squat down for the Commissioner’s carriage, and did not see the gold sunshade, which the attendant held on the box like a furled sun. But when the carriage drove past the flagpole into the palace driveway and people saw that the Commissioner was going to visit the Prince, groups formed, and people spoke in heated whispers. They thronged about the entrance to the drive, and tried to catch a glimpse of proceedings. But the population could see nothing except the dim outline of the empty pavilion, with its rows of expectant chairs. The Chief of Police, who at that moment suddenly rode past on his bicycle, made the gatherings scatter as if by instinct.

The old Princess waited for the Commissioner on the front veranda. A calm lay over her dignified face and did not allow one to read her inner turmoil and feelings. She motioned the Commissioner to sit and the conversation began with the usual formalities. Then four servants approached quickly, half-squatting and half-crawling across the ground: one with a crate full of bottles, another with a tray carrying a quantity of glasses, a third with a silver ice bucket full of ice cubes, the fourth not carrying anything but performing the semba. The Princess asked the Commissioner what he wanted to drink and he said he would like a whisky and soda. The last servant, still moving between the three others on his haunches, prepared the drink, poured in the measure of whisky, opened the soda-water bottle like a cannon and dropped an ice cube like a miniature glacier into the glass. Not a word had yet been spoken. The Commissioner first allowed the drink to stand, and the four servants left on their haunches. Then, finally, Van Oudijck began and asked the Princess if he could say in complete confidence what was on his mind. She begged him politely to do so. In his firm, muted voice, he said to her, in Malay, in very courteous phrases full of friendship and flowery politeness, how high and great his love for the Prince had been and still was for his illustrious family, even though he, Van Oudijck had with the deepest regret had to act contrary to that love, because his duty demanded it of him. And he asked, if that were possible for a mother, not to bear him any ill will for performing his duty; he asked her, on the contrary, to feel like a mother towards him, the European official, who had loved the Prince like a father, to work with him, the official, as the mother of the Prince, by exercising her great influence as far as possible for the welfare and prosperity of the population. In his piety and his distant focus on invisible things, Sunario sometimes lost sight of factual, self-evident reality; well, he, the Commissioner, was asking her, the powerful, influential mother, to cooperate with him, in harmony and love, on those matters that Sunario overlooked. In the elegance of his Malay he opened his heart completely, and told her of the turmoil that had been brewing for days among the population, like a noxious poison that could only intoxicate it and might lead it to commit acts that would be bound to cause deep regret. And with those last words “deep regret” he indicated to her, between the lines, that the government would be the stronger, and that a dreadful punishment would befall those who were proved guilty, both high and low. But his language remained supremely courteous and his words respectful, like those of a son addressing a mother. She, although she understood the tenor of his words, appreciated the tactful grace of his manners, and the flower-strewn depth and seriousness of his language made him rise in her estimation and almost astonished her — in a Dutch commoner, without noble blood or breeding. But he went on, and did not say to her what he knew very well, that she was the instigator of this dark turmoil — though he did say it was excusable, that he understood that the population sympathized with her in her sorrow at her unworthy son, himself a descendant of the noble family, and that it was therefore natural that the people should feel deeply for their old Princess, even if that sympathy was in this case unreasonable and illogical. For her son was unworthy, the Prince of Ngajiwa had proved himself unworthy, and what had happened could not have happened differently. His voice became stern for a moment and she bowed her grey head, remained silent and appeared to accept what he said. Now his words became more tender again and once more he asked for her help in exercising her influence for the best. He had complete confidence in her. He knew that she upheld the tradition of her family, the loyalty to the Dutch East India Company, the unimpeachable loyalty to the government. He was asking her to exercise her power and influence in such a way, to use the love and veneration she inspired in such a way that she, together with him, the Commissioner, might quieten what was churning in the darkness; that she would bring to their senses those who did not reflect; that she would pacify what threatened in secret — thoughtlessly and frivolously — the worthy and powerful authority. While he flattered and threatened at the same time, he felt that she — although she said scarcely a word, but simply punctuated his words with her saya—was becoming susceptible to his more powerful influence as a man of tact and authority, and that he was causing her to reflect. He could see that as she reflected the hate subsided in her, the vengefulness became paralysed, and that he was breaking the energy and pride of the ancient blood of the sultans of Madura. Beneath his flowery language, he gave her a glimpse of complete downfall, the heavy penalty, the government’s power that remained superior. And he bent her into the old suppleness in bowing before the power of the rulers. He taught her that, against her impulse to rise up and throw off the hated yoke, it was better to be sensible and calm and to submit once again. She nodded gently in agreement, and he felt he had overpowered her, which awakened a sense of pride in him. And now she spoke, and promised with her inwardly weeping, broken voice, saying that she loved him like a son, that she would do as he wished and would certainly exert her influence outside the palace in the town to abate these threatening troubles. She denied any responsibility and said that they had originated from the unthinking love of the population, which sympathized with her because of her son. She repeated his own words back to him, but did not use the word “unworthy”, since she was his mother, and again she repeated that he could trust her, that she would do as he wished. Then he told her that tomorrow he would be coming to the monthly council with all his officials and with the native chiefs, and said that so great was his trust in her that all the Europeans would be unarmed. He looked into her eyes. He was threatening her more by saying this than if he had mentioned weapons. For simply by the intonation of his Malay, he was threatening her with the punishment — the revenge — of the government if as much as one hair on the head of his officials were harmed. He had got to his feet. She also got up, wrung her hands, begging him not to speak in this way and to trust her and her son completely. And she summoned Sunario, the Prince of Labuwangi, and Van Oudijck repeated yet again that he hoped for peace and reflection, and in the tone in which the old Princess used with her son, he felt that she wanted there to be reflection and peace. He felt that she, the mother, was all-powerful in the palace.

The Prince bowed his head, agreed, promised, even said that he had already issued orders to calm the situation, that he had always deplored the excitement of the people, and it caused him great sorrow, that the Commissioner had become aware of it, despite his — Sunario’s — attempts to calm things down. The District Commissioner did not probe any further into this sample of dishonesty. He knew that the turmoil was being whipped up from within the palace, but he also knew that he had prevailed. However, he impressed once more on the Prince his responsibility should anything untoward happen in the pavilion the following day, during the meeting. The Prince begged him not to think of such things. And now, in order that they should part on good terms, he implored Van Oudijck to sit down again. He sat down, and as he did so he knocked over his glass, the sparkling ice-cold contents of which he had not yet touched. It clattered to the ground. He apologized for his clumsiness. The Princess had noticed his movement and her old face paled. She said nothing but beckoned a servant. And again the four servants appeared half-squatting, half-creeping, and prepared another whisky and soda. Van Oudijck put the glass immediately to his lips.

There was an embarrassed silence. How far the action of the District Commissioner in knocking over the glass had been justified would always remain a mystery and he would never know. But he wanted to show the Princess, in coming here, that he was prepared for anything before their conversation, and after their conversation wished to trust her completely in everything. Both in the drink that she offered him, and the following day in the pavilion, where he and his officials would appear unarmed, if her benign influence would bring calm and peace to the population. As if to show that she understood him, and that his confidence would be justified, she got up and whispered a few words to a retainer whom she had beckoned. The Javanese disappeared and soon came all the way down the front veranda squatting, carrying a long object in a yellow sheath. The Princess took it from him and handed it to Sunario, who drew a walking stick from the yellow silk sheath, which he offered to the Commissioner as a token of their fraternal friendship. Van Oudijck accepted it, understanding its symbolic meaning. The yellow silk was the colour and material of authority: silk and yellow or gold; the stick itself was made of a wood that protects against snake bites and danger, and the heavy knob was worked in gold — the metal of authority — in the shape of the ancient sultan. This stick, offered at this moment, meant that the Adiningrats were again submitting to his authority and that Van Oudijck could trust them.

And as he took his leave, he was very proud and pleased with himself for having won the day through tact, diplomacy, knowledge of the Javanese: he would have averted the imminent rebellion just with words. That would be a fact.

That was so, that would be so: a fact. On that first evening of the market, cheerfully glowing with the light of hundreds of paraffin lamps, steaming enticingly with low-drifting smells of frying, full of the multicoloured jostling of the celebrating population — that first evening was pure festivity and the population discussed among themselves the Commissioner’s long courtesy visit to the Prince and his mother, since the carriage with the sunshade had been seen waiting for a long time in the drive, and the Prince’s retainers told them the story of the gift of the walking stick.

That was so: things happened as Van Oudijck had calculated and forced them to in advance. That he should be proud was only human, but what he had not dominated and thought of in advance were the hidden forces, of which he had no inkling and whose existence he would deny, always, in the natural simplicity of life. What he failed to see, hear or feel, was the deeply hidden force, which though it abated continued to smoulder like a volcanic fire beneath the apparently calm avenues of flowers and friendship: the hatred, which would have the power of impenetrable mystery against which he, as a Westerner, had no defence.




6


VAN OUDIJCK LIKED TO BE CERTAIN he had achieved his objective. He didn’t say much that day about his visit to the palace, or that evening when Eldersma and Van Helderen came to talk to him about the meeting that was to take place the following morning. They were both rather uneasy and asked whether they should be armed. But Van Oudijck very firmly and emphatically forbade them to bring weapons with them, and said that no one was authorized. The officials yielded, but no one was at ease. However, the meeting took place completely uninterrupted and in harmony; there were just more people about between the stalls of the evening market, there were more police at the decorated gates, with rippling strips of bunting. But nothing happened. The women at home were anxious and were relieved when their husbands returned safely. And Van Oudijck had achieved his objective. Sure of himself, trusting the Princess, he made a few visits. He reassured the ladies and told them to concentrate all their attention on the gala. But they were not convinced. Some families locked all their doors in the evenings and retreated to the central gallery with their friends and maids — armed, listening, on their guard. Theo, to whom his father had spoken in a confidential moment, played a practical joke on them with Addy. The two young men visited in turn all the houses that they knew were most fearful and forced their way onto the front veranda, shouting to the occupants to open up: they could already hear guns being cocked in the central gallery. They had a whale of a time.

Then the gala finally opened. On the stage of the social club Eva had organized a series of three tableaux from the Arthurian legend: Viviane, Guinevere and Lancelot; in the centre of the garden there was a Maduran proa, in the shape of Viking ship, where one could drink iced punch; a neighbouring sugar factory, well known for the cheerful atmosphere that prevailed there, had provided a complete Dutch pancake stall as a nostalgic reminder of Holland, with the women dressed as Frisian farmer’s wives and the factory workers as cook’s assistants; and pro-Transvaal feelings were vented with a Mayuba Hill mock-up with ladies and gentlemen in fantastic Boer costumes. There was no mention of the huge under-sea eruption in Ternate, although half the proceeds had been assigned to the stricken areas. Beneath the glowing festoons of Chinese lanterns that wound their way above the garden, there was great enjoyment and the urge to spend a great deal of money, especially for Transvaal. But beneath the party atmosphere there was still a tremor of fear. Groups gathered and there were furtive glances outside at the bustle of half-castes, Javanese, Chinese and Arabs on the road around the smoking portable kitchens. And while sipping a glass of champagne or nibbling a plate of pancakes, people pricked up their ears and listened to the square, where the evening market was in full swing. When Van Oudijck appeared with Doddy, greeted by the strains of the Dutch national anthem, and generously distributed coins and notes, people kept whispering secretly in his ear. And noticing the absence of Mrs Van Oudijck, people asked each other where she was. She had such bad toothache, they said, and that was why she had gone to Surabaya. People didn’t think it was very nice of her; she was not liked when she was not present. She was much discussed that evening, and the most scandalous things were said about her. Doddy took her place on the Maduran proa as a server, and Van Oudijck, with Eldersma, Van Helderen and a few controllers from other districts, went around buying drinks for his officials. When people asked him about secret information, casting anxious glances outside, with one ear on the square he reassured them with a majestic smile: nothing was going to happen, they had his word of honour on that. People found him very trusting and very sure of himself; the jovial smile around his wide moustache was reassuring. He urged everyone to think only of the fun and the charitable aim of his dear town of Labuwangi. And when suddenly the Prince, Radèn Adipati Sunario, appeared with his wife, the young radèn-ayu, and at the entrance paid for bouquets, programmes and fans with a hundred-guilder note, a sigh of relief went through everyone in the garden. News of the Prince’s hundred-guilder note had soon spread everywhere. And now people relaxed; they realized that there was no need for fear, that no rebellion would break out that evening. They fêted the Prince and his smiling young wife, sparkling in her beautiful jewels.

Out of sheer relief, suddenly relaxed and impulsive, people spent more and more money, trying to vie with the few wealthy Chinese — those from before the opium monopoly, the owners of the white marble and stucco palaces — there strewing coins with their wives, in embroidered grey and green Chinese dresses, their gleaming hair full of flowers and jewels, smelling strongly of sandalwood perfumes. The money flowed, jingling into the tins of the happy servers. And the gala was a success. And when Van Oudijck finally and gradually disclosed here and there — to Doorn de Bruijn, Rantzow, officials from elsewhere — a few details of his visit to the palace and his conversation with the Princess, relayed in a humble, unassuming tone and yet, despite himself, beaming with happy pride, with joy at his victory — that was when he achieved his greatest effect.

The story went round the garden about the Commissioner’s tact and shrewdness in having averted revolution by his word alone. He was lionized, and he poured champagne for everyone, bought up all the fans, bought all the unsold tombola tickets. He was worshipped; it was his supreme moment of success and popularity. And he joked with the ladies, flirted with them. The party went on until six o’clock in the morning. The pancake cooks were drunk and dancing cheerfully around the pancake oven.

And when Van Oudijck finally went home, he felt a mood of self-satisfaction, strength, happiness, delight in himself. The evening had made him rise in his own estimation and he valued himself more than ever before. He felt happier than he had ever felt.

He had sent the carriage home and walked home with Doddy. A few early traders were going to market. Doddy, half-asleep, dead tired, dragged herself along on her father’s arm…

Then, nearby, someone passed and although she felt it more than saw it, she suddenly shivered and looked up. The figure had passed. She looked round and recognized the back of the haji, who was in a hurry…

She felt so cold she almost fainted. But then, tired to the point of almost sleepwalking, she realized she was half-dreaming of Addy, of Pajaram, of the moonlit night under the cemaras, when at the end of the avenue the white pilgrim had given her a fright…




BOOK V





1


EVA ELDERSMA WAS FEELING more listless and gloomy than she had ever done in the Indies. After all her work, the bustle and success of the gala — after the shudder of fear at a possible revolt — the town fell back into its leisurely drowsiness, as if it were quite content to be able to nod off again, just as it always had done. December had come and the heavy rains had begun, as always on 5th December: the monsoon invariably set in on St Nicholas’s Day. The clouds, which for the past month had piled up on the low horizon, swelling all the while, hoisted their water-filled sails higher towards the sky and tore open, as if in a single fury of distantly flashing electric storms, and water poured down in streams like rich stores of rains that could no longer be kept on high. That evening a crazed swarm of insects had flown across Eva’s front veranda and, hypnotized by the flames had plunged to their deaths in the lamps, filling the lamp-glasses with their fluttering, dying bodies that lay strewn over the marble tables. Eva breathed in the cooler air, but a haze of damp from the earth and flowers settled on the walls and furniture, flecking the mirrors, staining the silk and creating mould on her shoes, as if the deluging power of nature was out to ruin all the finely glittering and charming products of human labour. Yet it revived the trees and foliage, which thrived and shot luxuriantly upwards in a thousand shades of green, and in the burgeoning victory of nature the villas became wet and toadstool-like, and the white of the whitewashed pillars and flowerpots weathered to mouldy green.

Eva witnessed the slow, gradual ruin of her house, her furniture, her clothes. Day by day, inexorably, something decayed, rotted away, became mouldy, rusted. And all the aesthetic philosophy with which she had first learnt to love the Indies, to appreciate the good things, to look for the line of beauty in the Indies — both outwardly and for what was inwardly beautiful and spiritual — could no longer cope with the torrents of water, with the cracking-apart of her furniture, the staining of her dresses and gloves, with all the damp, mould and rust, which ruined her exquisite surroundings that she had designed and created around herself as consolation, a consolation for the Indies. Despite all her rationale and intellectual argument, despite finding something charming and beautiful in the land of all too powerful nature and people, in pursuit of money and advancement, everything fell apart and collapsed. At every moment she was forced to fret — as a housewife, as an elegant woman, as an artistic woman. No, in the Indies it was impossible to surround oneself with taste and exquisiteness. She had been here only for a few years, and she felt she still had some strength to fight for her Western civilization, but she already understood better than when she first arrived how people could just let themselves go here: the men after their busy day’s work, the women with their households. Certainly, she preferred the silent and gentle servants, working willingly never impudently, to the noisily clumping maids in Holland, and yet she felt through her house an Oriental resistance to her Western ideas. It was always a battle, not to go under in the temptation to let yourself go, to let the grounds that were too big become overgrown at the back with the servants’ grubby washing invariably hanging out, and strewn with gnawed mangoes; in simply letting her house become dirty and the paint peel — it being too large, too open, too exposed to wind and weather to be looked after with Dutch cleanliness; in sitting in the rocking chair in sarong and jacket without getting dressed, one’s bare feet in slippers, because it was just too warm, too sultry to wear a dress or peignoir, which became soaked with sweat. It was for her sake that her husband was always dressed for dinner in the evenings, with a black jacket and high collar, but when she saw above that high collar his weary face peering out at her, with its increasingly stiff, overworked, clerk’s features, she herself told him in future not to dress after his second bath, and tolerated him at table in a white jacket, or even pyjamas and a jacket. She found it dreadful, unspeakably awful; it shocked her whole sense of civilized behaviour, but he was too tired and it was too oppressively close to demand anything else of him. And after only two years in the Indies, increasingly understanding how to let oneself go — in dress, in body, in soul — now she was losing daily a little more of her Dutch freshness of approach and her Western energy, now she admitted that people in the Indies worked harder than in possibly any other country, but worked with a single aim in mind: position, money, retirement, pension and back, back to Europe. True, there were others who were born in the Indies and had spent scarcely a year away from the archipelago, who weren’t at all interested in Holland, who adored their sunny country. That is what the De Luces were like, and she also knew there were others. However, in her circle of officials and planters everyone had the same aim in life — position, money, and then away, away to Europe. Everyone was calculating the years they had left to work. Everyone saw the distant vision of European calm. The occasional individual, such as Van Oudijck — an exceptional official who loved his work for its own sake, and because it was in tune with his own character — dreaded the prospect of retirement, which would mean stupidly vegetating. But Van Oudijck was an exception. Most did their duty whilst thinking of their later pension. Her husband, for that matter, did the same: worked himself to death in order to retire a few years after he had become an assistant commissioner; he worked himself to death for an illusion of rest. Now her own energy seemed to be draining away with every drop of blood that she felt flowing through her dull veins. In these first days of the rainy season, the constant splashing of the gutters irritated her with their clatter; she saw all the material things that she had tastefully chosen to surround herself with as her artistic consolation in the Indies being ruined by damp and mould, and she fell into a worse mood of listlessness and dejection than she had ever experienced. Her child was not sufficient, being too young as yet to be a soulmate. Her husband worked all the time. He was a kind, sweet husband to her, a good man, a man of great simplicity, whom she had perhaps accepted only because of that simplicity — that settled calm of his smiling, blond Frisian face and the ruggedness of his broad shoulders — after a couple of highly emotive episodes in her youth, full of dreams and misunderstandings and discussions full of high-flown sentiments. She, who was not calm or simple had sought in this simple man to bring simplicity and calm to her life. Yet his qualities did not satisfy her, particularly now, when she had been in the Indies for some time and was beginning to feel defeated in her struggle with the country. His calm, husbandly love did not satisfy her.

She began to feel unhappy. She was too versatile a woman to seek her happiness solely in her little boy, though with the minor immediate concerns and with thoughts of his future, he did fill part of her life. She had even devised a complete theory of child-rearing. But it didn’t fill her life completely. She was seized with homesickness for Holland, for her parents, for their beautiful artistic home, where one always met painters, writers, composers — an exceptional artistic salon for Holland, where the various branches of art, usually isolated in Holland, came together for a moment.

The image appeared in her mind’s eye like a distant dream as she listened to heralding thunderclaps in the sultry air, close to bursting point, awaiting the deluge that would follow. There was nothing for her here. She felt out of place: she had her faithful group who gathered around her because she was so cheerful, but no deeper sympathy, intimate conversation — except with Van Helderen. And she wanted to be cautious with him so as not to give him any ideas.

Except for Van Helderen. And she thought of the other people around her here in Labuwangi. She thought of people, people from everywhere. And pessimistic as she was in these days, she found in all of them only the egotistical, selfishness, and the less endearing self-absorption; she could scarcely express it to herself, distracted by the massive power of the rain. But she found in everyone conscious and unconscious things that were unattractive. In her faithful friends, too, and in her husband. In the men, young women, young men around her. Everyone had their ego. In no one was there a harmony between the self and others. That which she disapproved of in one person; in another she found something else unpleasant. It was a critical view that made her feel desolate and gloomy, because it was contrary to her nature: she liked to love. She liked to live in company, spontaneously, harmoniously with many others: at the beginning she had been filled with a love of human beings, a love of humanity. Great issues evoked an emotional response in her, but there was no response to all she felt. She found herself empty and alone in a country, a town, in surroundings where absolutely everything — things large and small — grated on her soul, her body, her character, her nature. Her husband worked. Her son was already going native. Her piano was out of tune.

She got up and tried the piano, with long runs that turned into the Feuerzauber from Die Walküre. But the roar of the rain drowned out her music. As she got up again, desperately listless, she saw Van Helderen standing there.

“You gave me a fright,” she said.

“Can I stay to lunch?” he asked. “I’m alone at home. Ida has gone to Tosari for her malaria and taken the children with her. It’s an expensive business. How I’m supposed to stand this for a month, I don’t know.”

“Send the children over here after they’ve been up in Tosari for a few days…”

“Won’t that be a lot of trouble?”

“Of course not… I’ll write to Ida…”

“That really is very sweet of you… It would be a big help.”

She laughed flatly.

“Aren’t you well?”

“I feel like I’m dying.”

“How do you mean?”

“I feel like I’m dying a little every day.”

“Why?”

“It’s terrible here. We were longing for the rains, and now they’re here they’re driving me crazy. And — I don’t know — I can’t stand it here any longer.”

“Where?”

“In the Indies. I taught myself to see all that was good and beautiful in this country. It was all for nothing. I can’t take it any more.”

“Go to Holland,” he said softly.

“My parents would certainly be glad to see me back. It would be good for my son, because every day he’s forgetting more of his Dutch, which I had started teaching him so enthusiastically, and is talking Malay — or worse still, patois. But I can’t leave my husband alone here. Without me he’d have nothing left here. At least — I think so — I like to think so. Perhaps it’s not true.”

“But if you get ill…”

“Oh… I don’t know…”

There was an unusual sense of exhaustion in her whole being.

“Perhaps you’re exaggerating!” he began cheerfully. “Come on, perhaps you’re exaggerating. What’s the matter, what’s upsetting you, what’s making you so unhappy? Let’s draw up an inventory.”

“An inventory of my calamities. My garden is a swamp. Three chairs on my front veranda are cracking apart. White ants have eaten my lovely Japanese rugs. For some inexplicable reason, a new silk dress has come out in damp stains. Another, purely from the heat, I think, has disintegrated into a few threads. In addition, various minor disasters of the kind. To console myself I plunged into Wagner. My piano was off-key; I think there are cockroaches running around between the strings.”

He gave a little laugh.

“What idiots we are here, we Westerners in this country. Why do we bring all the trappings or our precious civilization, which cannot survive here anyway! Why don’t we live in fresh bamboo huts, sleep on a mat, dress in a sarong and a linen jacket with a scarf over our shoulders and a flower in our hair. All your culture, with which you hope to become rich — it’s a Western idea, and in the long run it will collapse. All our administration — it’s exhausting in the heat. Why, if we want to be here, don’t we live simply and plant rice and live on nothing?…”

“You’re talking like a woman,” he said, half laughing.

“Possibly,” she said. “I’m speaking half in jest. But one thing that is certain is that here I feel a force that opposes me, opposes all my Westernness, a force that thwarts me. Sometimes I’m afraid here. Here I always feel on the point of being overwhelmed, I don’t know by what: by something out of the ground, by a power in nature, by a secret in the souls of those black people, whom I don’t know… At night especially I’m afraid.”

“You’re nerves are bad,” he said tenderly.

“Perhaps,” she answered flatly, seeing that he did not understand her, and too tired to go on explaining. “Let’s talk about something else. That table-turning is strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Recently when the three of us did it — Ida, you and me…”

“It certainly was very strange.”

“Do you remember the first time? Addy de Luce… It seems to be true after all about him and Mrs Van Oudijck… and the revolt… The table predicted it.”

“Couldn’t it be unconscious suggestion by us?”

“I don’t know. But just imagine if we’re all playing fair and the table starts tapping and talks to us, using an alphabet.”

“I really wouldn’t do it too often, Eva.”

“No. I find it all inexplicable, and yet it’s already beginning to bore me. People get used to the incomprehensible.”

“Everything is incomprehensible…”

“Yes… and everything is banal.”

“Eva,” he said, rebuking her with a gentle laugh.

“I’m giving up the struggle completely. I’ll just look at the rain… and rock.”

“Once you saw the beauty of my country.”

“Your country? Which you’d gladly leave tomorrow to go to the Paris Exhibition.”

“I’ve never seen anything.”

“You’re so humble today.”

“I’m sad, for you.”

“Oh come on, don’t be.”

“Play some more…”

“Here, drink your gin and bitters. Pour yourself one. I’ll play on my out-of-tune piano, which will be in tune with my soul, which is also confused…”

She went back to the central gallery and played from Parsifal. He, on the front veranda, sat and listened. The rain lashed down and the garden was flooded. A violent thunderbolt seemed to split the world asunder. Nature was all-powerful and in its gigantic revelation the two people in this damp house were small: his love was nothing, her melancholy was nothing, and the mystical music of the Grail was like a nursery rhyme amid the booming mysticism of that thunderbolt, with which fate itself seemed to be passing with its heavenly cymbals over the human beings drowning in the deluge.




2


VAN HELDEREN’S TWO CHILDREN, a boy and a girl of six and seven, were staying with Eva, and Van Helderen came regularly for a meal once a day. He never spoke again of his innermost feelings, as if he didn’t want to disturb the soothing sweetness of their time together every day. And she accepted his daily visits, unable to deny him access. He was the only man she knew to whom she could talk and with whom she could think aloud, and he was a comfort to her in these gloomy days. She did not understand how she had got into this state, but she gradually fell into total apathy, a kind of nihilism in which nothing seemed necessary. She had never been like that. She had a lively, cheerful nature, she sought and admired beauty, poetry, music and art: things that, from her very first children’s books, she had seen around her and felt and discussed. In the Indies she had gradually begun to miss everything she needed. She was seized by a desperate nihilism that made her ask: what is it all for; what is all that piffling whirling about for? When she read about social forces, the great social question in Europe, in the Indies the emerging issue of the Eurasians, she thought: what is the world for if human beings remain eternally the same — small and passive and oppressed in the misery of their humanity? She couldn’t see the point. Half of humanity suffered from poverty and struggled to rise from that darkness — towards what? The other half vegetated stupidly and drowsily in money. Between the two there was a stairway of shades from dark poverty to anaesthetized wealth. Above them arched the same rainbow of eternal illusions: love, art, big questions marks concerning justice and peace and an ideal future… She found it all futile, she couldn’t see the point and thought: why is the world as it is, and why are there poor people?…

She had never felt like this before, but she couldn’t fight it. Slowly, day by day, the Indies made her spiritually ill. Frans van Helderen was her only consolation: this young controller, blond and distinguished, who had never been in Europe, who had been educated entirely in Batavia, had taken his exams in Batavia, had with his supple courtesy, his indescribably strange nationality, by virtue of his almost exotic education, become a dear friend. She told him how much she treasured that friendship and he no longer responded by declaring his love. As it was, there was so much tenderness in their relationship, something idealistic, which they both needed. In the ordinariness that surrounded them, that friendship shone forth as something most exquisite and glorious, of which they were both proud. He was a frequent visitor — especially now his wife was at Tosari — and in the dusk they would walk to the lighthouse, which stood by the shore like a miniature Eiffel Tower. There was much talk about those walks, but that did not bother them. They sat down on the base of the lighthouse, looked out to sea, and listened to sounds in the distance. Ghostly proas, with sails like nocturnal birds, slid into the canal, to the aching crooning of the fishermen. A melancholy air of desolation, of a small world of small people, spread eerily under the twinkling starry skies, where the mystical Southern Cross appeared diamond-like, or the crescent moon sometimes shone, and above the melancholy of the fishermen’s droning song, battered proas, the little people at the bottom of the little lighthouse, floated an unfathomable immensity: skies and eternal lights. And out of the immensity the ineffable approached as the superhumanly divine in which all petty humanity submerged, melted.

“Why should I attach any value to life, when I may be dead tomorrow?” thought Eva. “Why all that human entanglement and bustle, when we all may be dead tomorrow?…”

She told him. He replied that individuals did not live for themselves and their own present time, but for all human beings and for the future… But she laughed bitterly, shrugged her shoulders, and found him trite. She found herself trite, too, thinking such things, which had been thought so often before. Yet, despite her self-criticism, she remained oppressed by her obsession with the pointlessness of life, when everything might cease to exist tomorrow. A humiliating sense of atomic smallness overcame both of them as they sat there, looking at the vast skies and eternal starlight.

Yet they loved those moments, which meant everything to them, since when they were not too aware of their smallness, they talked about books, music, art and the bigger things in life. They felt that despite the subscription library and the Italian opera in Surabaya, they were no longer in touch. They felt that the great, exalted things were very far removed from them, and they were seized, both of them, by a homesickness for Europe, a desire no longer to feel so small. They would have both liked to go away, to Europe, but neither of them could. They were trapped by humdrum everyday life. Then, almost automatically, in perfect harmony, they talked about the soul and the essence of things and its great mystery.

All its mystery. They could feel it from the sea, in the air, but secretly they also sought it in the dancing leg of a table. They could not understand how a spirit or soul could reveal itself through a table on which they earnestly placed their hands, and through which the energy passing through was transformed from something dead to something alive. But when they placed their hands on it, the table did come alive, and they couldn’t help believing. The letters that they counted sometimes came out in a confused form in a strange alphabet, as if directed by a mocking spirit intending constantly to tease and confuse, suddenly to stop and become coarse and filthy. They read books about spiritualism together, and weren’t sure whether to believe or not.

These were silent days — silent, monotonous days — in the town, where rain gushed everywhere. Their life together seemed unreal, like a dream that wove through the rain like a mist. And for Eva it was like a sudden awakening when one afternoon, walking outside down the damp avenue and waiting for Van Helderen, she saw Van Oudijck approaching.

“I was just on my way to see you, dear lady!” he said excitedly. “I wanted to ask you something. Will you help me again?”

“With what, Commissioner?”

“But first tell me, are you not well? You don’t look well at the moment.”

“It’s nothing serious,” she said with a flat laugh. “It will pass. What can I do for you, Commissioner?”

“Something has got to be done, dear lady, and we can’t do without you. My wife said only this morning: ask Mrs Eldersma…”

“What is it?”

“You know Mrs Staats, the wife of the stationmaster who passed away? The poor woman has been left with nothing, just her five children and a few debts.”

“He committed suicide, didn’t he?”

“Yes. It’s a very sad case. We must help her. We need a large sum. Circulating lists won’t produce much. People are generous enough, but recently they’ve made such a lot of sacrifices. At the gala they went crazy. They won’t have a lot to give now at the end of the month. But at the beginning of next month, January, dear lady, there’ll be a production by Thalia. Very quick, a couple of drawing-room pieces, without great overheads. Tickets at one guilder fifty or two-fifty, and if you organize it, the house will be full and they will come from Surabaya. You must help me dear lady. You will, won’t you?”

“But Commissioner,” said Eva wearily. “We’ve just had the tableaux vivants. Don’t be angry, but I don’t feel like playacting all the time.”

“Yes, yes, you must…” Oudijck insisted rather imperiously, excited about his plan.

She became peevish. She liked her independence and particularly in these days of depression she was too gloomy, in these dreamlike days she felt too woolly to accede sweetly and at once to the request from on high.

“Really, Commissioner, I can’t think of anything this time,” she answered abruptly. “Why doesn’t Mrs Van Oudijck do it herself?…”

She startled herself by saying that peevishly. As he walked next to her, he became upset and his face darkened. The excited, cheerful look, the jovial laugh around his thick moustache had suddenly disappeared. She saw that she had been cruel and regretted it. And for the first time she realized that however much in love he might be with his wife, he did not approve of her shirking all her duties.

He was lost for an answer, and as he hunted for words, she was silent.

Then she said, in a sweet tone: “Don’t be angry, Commissioner. That wasn’t very kind of me. I know very well that Mrs Van Oudijck doesn’t like that kind of thing. I’m happy to take it off her hands. I shall do whatever you want.”

She was so nervous that her eyes filled with tears.

Smiling now, he gave her a quizzical sideways look.

“How on edge you are. But I knew that your heart was in the right place, and you wouldn’t let me down with my plan, and would want to help poor Mrs Staats. But nothing too expensive, dear lady, no lavish expenditure, and no new scenery. Just your wit, your talent, your beautiful diction in French or Dutch — whatever you want. We’re proud of that in Labuwangi, and all those wonderful things — which you will provide free of charge — will be quite enough to make the performance a success. But how nervous you are, dear lady. Why are you crying? Are you not well? Tell me if there is anything I can do for you.”

“Don’t give my husband so much work, Commissioner. I scarcely ever see him.”

He made a gesture of helplessness.

“It’s true, it’s terribly busy,” he admitted. “Is that the heart of the matter?”

“Show me the good things about the Indies.”

“Is that the problem?”

“And lots more besides…”

“Are you homesick? Don’t you like the Indies any more, don’t you care for Labuwangi, where we all think the world of you?… You’ve got the wrong idea about the Indies. Try to see the good side.”

“I’ve tried.”

“Is it no use any longer?”

“No…”

“You’re too sensible not to see the good things about this country.”

“You’re too fond of the country to be impartial. And I can’t be impartial either. But tell me the good things.”

“Where shall I begin? The good that we can do as officials for the country and its people, and the satisfaction we derive from it. The wonderful, marvellous work we do for the country and its people; the great amount of hard work that fills a whole life here… I’m not talking about all the office work of your husband, who is a secretary, I’m talking of later on, when he is an assistant commissioner!”

“How much longer will that be?…”

“And what about the comfortable life here then?”

“That the white ants gnaw away at.”

“That’s a cheap joke, madam.”

“That may be, Commissioner. Everything is out of tune in and around me. My cleverness, my piano, and my poor soul.”

“What about nature then?”

“It makes me feel so insignificant. Nature overwhelms me and consumes me.”

“Your work?”

“My work… one of the good things in the Indies…”

“Yes. The work of occasionally inspiring us humdrum people with your wit.”

“Commissioner, so many compliments! Is that all because of the performance!”

“And using that wit to help widow Staats?”

“Couldn’t I do good in Europe?”

“Of course,” he said curtly. “Off you go to Europe, madam. Join a charity organization in The Hague, with a collection box at your door and two and a half guilders… how often?”

She laughed.

“Don’t be unfair. A lot of good is done in Holland too.”

“But doing what you’re going to do for one unfortunate… is that ever done in Holland? And don’t tell me there’s less poverty here.”

“So?…”

“So there are a lot of good things here for you. Your work. Working for others, materially and morally. Don’t let Van Helderen become too infatuated with you, madam. He’s a charming chap, but too literary in his monthly controller’s reports. I can see him coming and I must go. So I can count on you?”

“Absolutely.”

“When shall we have the first meeting, with the theatre committee, and the ladies?”

“Tomorrow evening, Commissioner, at your house?”

“Excellent. I’ll circulate subscription lists. We must raise a lot of money, dear lady.”

“We’ll help Mrs Staats,” she said softly.

He shook her hand and left. She felt limp, without knowing why.

“The Commissioner warned me about you, because you were too literary!” she teased Van Helderen.

They sat on the front veranda. The heavens opened: a white curtain of rain descended in vertical folds. A plague of locusts leapt through the veranda. A cloud of tiny flies hummed like an Aeolian harp in the corners. Eva and Van Helderen lay their hands on the table and it raised a leg with a jerk, while the beetles swarmed around them.




3


LISTS CIRCULATED. The performance was rehearsed and three weeks later was performed, and the theatre committee presented the commission with the sum of almost fifteen hundred guilders for widow Staats; a house was rented for her, and she was set up in a small dress shop, for which Eva had called on connections in Paris. All the ladies of Labuwangi had placed an order with widow Staats, and in less than a month the woman had not only been saved from complete disaster, but her life had been arranged, her children were back at school, and she had a thriving business. All of this had happened quickly and unostentatiously: subscribers had given generously; the ladies were so quick to order a dress or a hat that they didn’t need, that Eva was astonished. She had to admit that the egotistical, self-obsessed, less appealing side that she so often saw in their social life — in their daily dealings, conversation, intrigues and gossip — had suddenly been pushed into the background by a collective talent for doing good, quite simply because it had to be done, because there was no alternative, because the woman had to be helped. After the day-to-day concerns of the performance had roused her from her gloom, and she had been galvanized into acting quickly, she learnt to appreciate this benevolent aspect of her surroundings and wrote so enthusiastically about it to Holland that her parents, for whom the Indies were a closed book, could not help smiling. But although this episode had awakened in her something soft and weak and appreciative, it was only an episode, and when the surrounding emotion had subsided, she was the same. Despite the disapproval that she felt around her in Labuwangi, she continued to centre her whole life around her friendship with Van Helderen.

Because there was so little else. The loyal coterie that she had gathered around her with such hopes, whom she invited to dinner, to whom her house was always open — what did it really amount to? Nowadays she regarded the Doorn de Bruins and the Rantzows as indifferent acquaintances, no longer as friends. She suspected that Mrs Doorn de Bruin was not to be trusted, Dr Rantzow was too bourgeois, too common for her taste, and his wife an insignificant German housewife. Yes, they joined in the table-turning, but they enjoyed the inept stupidities, the indecent comments of the mocking spirit. She and Van Helderen took it extremely seriously, although she actually found the table comical. So there was no one left but Van Helderen to whom she felt close.

She had come to admire Van Oudijck, though. She had suddenly seen his true character and, although it was completely different from the artistic charm that had hitherto attracted her in people’s characters, she saw the line of beauty in this man too, who was utterly inartistic, who had not the slightest notion of art, and yet had such beauty in his simple masculine ideas of duty and in the equanimity with which he bore the disappointment of his domestic life. Because Eva saw that although he adored his wife, he did not approve of Léonie’s indifference to all the interests that constituted his life. If he saw nothing else, if apart from that he was blind to everything in the domestic sphere, this disappointment was his secret and his sorrow, to which, deep down, he was not blind.

And she admired him, and her admiration was a kind of revelation that art was not always paramount in human existence. She suddenly understood that the exaggerated posturing with art in the modern era was a sickness from which she had suffered and still suffered. Because what was she and what did she do? Nothing. Her parents were both great artists, pure creators, and their house was a temple and their fixation could be understood and forgiven. But what about her? She played the piano quite well, that was all. She had some ideas and some taste, that was all. In the past she had enthused with other young girls, and she remembered now that silly phase of writing each other letters in a derivative style, with echoes of romantic poetry. In that way, in her depression, her thinking progressed, and she underwent an evolution. It was almost incredible that as her parents’ child she should not value art above all things.

A process of seeking and thinking moved to and fro in her as she tried to find her way, now that she had lost herself completely in a country that was alien to her nature, among people on whom, without letting them notice, she looked down. She tried to find the good things in that country, in order to assimilate and appreciate them; among people she was happy to find those few who evoked her sympathy and admiration. But good experiences remained just episodes, and those few people exceptions, and despite all her searching and thinking, she could not find her way and was left with the resentment of a woman who was too European, too artistic — despite her self-knowledge and denial of art — to live contentedly and comfortably in a provincial town in the Indies, by the side of her husband who had been swallowed up by office work, in a climate that made her ill, a nature that overwhelmed her, and in company she disliked.

And in the most lucid moments of this movement to and fro it was fear that she felt clearest of all, the fear that she felt softly approaching, she did not know from where it came or where it was bound, but seething above her head, as if with the swishing veils of a fate that moved through the sultry rainy skies…

In this resentful mood she did not gather her loyal coterie around her, she herself couldn’t be bothered and her acquaintances did not know her well enough to visit her. They no longer found in her the cheerfulness that had first attracted them. Now jealousy and hostility gained the upper hand and there was much gossip about her: she put on airs, she was pedantic, vain, proud, and aimed always to be first in the town; she acted as if she were a commissioner’s wife and bossed everyone about. She wasn’t really beautiful, but dressed outrageously, and her house was furnished in an incomprehensible style. Then there was her relationship with Van Helderen, their evening walks to the lighthouse. In Tosari, in the hive of gossip in the small, cramped hotel, where the guests are bored if they do not go on excursions and so are almost on top of each other in their narrow verandas, peering into each other’s rooms, eavesdropping by the thin partitions — in Tosari Ida heard about it and it was enough to awaken her Eurasian instincts and make her suddenly, without explanation, remove her children from Eva’s care. Van Helderen, while visiting his wife for a few days, asked for an explanation, asked her why she was insulting Eva by removing her children from her care without any reason and bringing them up to stay with her in Tosari, which considerably increased the hotel bill. Ida made a scene, with hysterical fits, which made the whole hotel tremble, which made everyone prick up their ears, and like a gale whipped up the babble of gossip into a sea. Without further explanation, Ida broke off relations with Eva. Eva withdrew. Even as far away as Surabaya, where she went to shop, she heard the slanders and smears, and she became so sick of her world and her people that she withdrew silently into herself. She wrote to Van Helderen and told him not to come any more, and entreated him to make it up with his wife. She no longer received him, and was now completely alone. She felt that she was in no mood to seek consolation with anyone in her circle. In the Indies there was no sympathy or fellow feeling for moods like hers, and so she shut herself away. Her husband worked. But she devoted more time to her son; she immersed herself completely in the love of her child. She withdrew into the love of her house. It now became a life of never going out, never seeing anyone, never speaking to anyone, never hearing any music except her own. She now sought consolation in her own home, her child and her reading. This was the lonely self to which she had been reduced after her first illusions and bursts of energy. Now she felt a constant homesickness for Europe, for Holland, for her parents, for people with an artistic culture. Now there was hatred for the country that she had at first seen as overwhelmingly great and beautiful, with its majestic mountains, and with the soft cloud of mystery in nature and in the people.

Now she filled her life with thoughts of her child. Her son, little Onno, was three. She would guide him, make a man of him. As soon as he was born, she’d had vague illusions of one day seeing him as a great artist, preferably a great writer, world-renowned. But she had learnt since then. She felt that art is not always paramount. She felt that there were higher things, which, though she might sometimes deny them in her depression, were nonetheless there, great and gleaming. Those things were about shaping the future; those things were in particular about peace, justice and brotherhood. Oh, the great brotherhood of rich and poor — now, in her loneliness, she thought about it as the highest ideal, at which one could work, like sculptors on a monument. Justice and peace would then follow of their own accord. But brotherhood must be approached first, and she wanted her son to work at it. Where? In Europe? In the Indies? She didn’t know; she couldn’t see that in front of her. She thought Europe more probable than the Indies. In the Indies all her thoughts remained fixed on the inexplicable, the mysterious, the fearful. How strange that was…

She was a woman of ideals. Perhaps this alone was the simple explanation of what she felt and feared in the Indies.

“You’ve got entirely the wrong idea about the Indies,” her husband sometimes said. “Your view of the Indies is completely mistaken. Quiet? You think it’s quiet here? Why would I have so much work to do in the Indies if Labuwangi were quiet? We promote hundreds of interests of the Dutch and Javanese. Agriculture is pursued here as vigorously as anywhere… The population goes on increasing… Run down, a colony where so much is happening?… These are those idiotic ideas of Van Helderen. Abstract ideas, plucked out of the air, which you brood on. I can’t understand how you see the Indies as you do today… There was a time when you were receptive to what was beautiful and interesting… That seems to be all in the past… Actually you ought to go back to Holland…”

But she knew that he would be very lonely, and that was why she did not want to go. Later, when her son was older, then she would have to leave. But by that time Eldersma would definitely have become an assistant commissioner. Now he still had seventeen controllers and secretaries above him. That had been the case for years, that looking forward to a distant future of promotion like the pursuit of a mirage — he didn’t even think of becoming a commissioner. A few years as an assistant commissioner, and then back to Holland on a pension…

She found it a desolate existence, toiling away like that, for Labuwangi…

She was suffering from malaria and her maid, Saina, was massaging her sore limbs with her supple fingers.

“Saina, when I’m sick it’s inconvenient your being in the native quarter. Why don’t you move in here this evening with your four children?”

Saina thought that was a nuisance, too much fuss.

“Why?”

Saina explained. The house had been left to her by her husband. She was attached to it, although it was very dilapidated. Now, during the wet monsoon, rainwater often came in, and then she couldn’t cook and the children had nothing to eat. Having it repaired was difficult. She earned two and a half guilders a week from the lady, and sixty cents of that went on rice. Then every day she spent a few cents on fish, coconut oil, betel, and a few cents on fuel… No, it was impossible to repair the house. She would be much better off with the good lady, in the compound. But it would be a lot of fuss finding a tenant for the house because it was so run down and the good lady knew that no house in the native quarter must stand empty: it carried a hefty fine… So she preferred to go on living in her wet house… At night she could stay and look after the good lady; her eldest daughter could look after the little ones.

Accepting her petty existence with its petty miseries, Saina slid her supple fingers over the sick limbs of her mistress, pressing firmly and gently.

Eva found it a bleak existence, living on two and a half guilders a week, with four children, in a house that let the rain in so that it was impossible to cook.

“Let me look after your second daughter, Saina,” said Eva another time.

Saina hesitated, and smiled: she would rather not, but didn’t dare say so.

“Come on,” Eva insisted. “Let her come here: you’ll see her all day long; she can sleep in cook’s room; I’ll get her some clothes and all she’ll have to do is tidy up my bedroom. You can show her how to do that.”

“She’s still so young, nyonya, only ten.”

“Come on,” Eva insisted. “Let her help you now. What’s her name?”

“Mina, nyonya.”

“Mina? No! That’s the seamstress’s name. We’ll find another name for her…”

Saina brought the child, who was very shy, with a streak of rice powder on her forehead, and Eva dressed her in some nice clothes. She was a very pretty child, a softy downy brown, and looked sweet in her fresh clothes. She made a neat pile of all the sarongs in the wardrobe and put fragrant white flowers between them: the flowers had to be replaced with fresh ones every day. For a joke, because she was so good with flowers, Eva called her Melati.

A few days later Saina again squatted at her mistress’s feet.

“What is it, Saina?”

“Could the child come back to the wet house in the native quarter?”

“Why?!” asked Eva, astonished. “Isn’t your little girl happy here then?”

“Oh yes, but the child simply likes the cottage better,” said Saina in embarrassment; the nyonya was very nice, but little Mina liked the cottage better.

Eva was angry and let the child go, with the new clothes, which Saina simply took with her.

“Why wasn’t the child allowed to stay?” Eva asked the cook.

At first the cook did not dare say.

“Come on, why not, cook?” Eva insisted.

“Because the nyonya had called the girl Melati… Flower and fruit names… are given only… to dancing girls,” explained the cook mysteriously.

“But why didn’t Saina tell me?” asked Eva angrily. “I had no idea!”

“Shy…” said the cook, apologetically. “Forgive me, nyonya.”

These were small incidents in her daily life as a housewife — anecdotes from her household. But they made her bitter because she felt them as a division, which was always there between her and the people and things in the Indies. She did not know the place and she would never know the people.

And the small disappointment over those episodes filled her with as much bitterness as the larger one of her shattered illusions, because her everyday life among the recurring trivialities of her household was itself growing smaller and smaller.




BOOK VI





1


THE MORNINGS WERE OFTEN COOL, washed clean by the abundant rains, and in the sunshine of the early morning hours a soft haze rose from the earth, a bluish blurring of any line or colour that was too sharp, so that Long Avenue with its villas and enclosed gardens was shrouded in the charm and vagueness of a dream avenue: its pillars rose ethereally like a vision of serene columns, the lines of the roofs ennobled by their vagueness; the tints of the trees in silhouette were refined into soft pastel washes of hazy pink, and even hazier blue, with an occasional yellow glow, and a distant streak of dawn, and over all this breaking day was a dewy freshness that spurted upwards out of the drenched ground and whose droplets were caught in the childlike softness of the very first rays of the sun. It was as if the earth began for the first time every morning and as if human beings were only then created, in a youth of naivety and paradisaical ignorance. But the illusion of this daybreak lasted only briefly, no more than a few minutes: the sun, rising higher, broke through the virginal haze, its proud halo of piercing rays pouring forth burning gold sunlight, divinely proud to rule for a brief moment, since the clouds were already gathering, approaching in a grey mass like battle-ready hordes of dark spirits, ghostlike and bluey deep black, their thick and heavy lead grey overwhelming the sun and crushing the earth under white torrents of rain. And the evening twilight, grey and hurried, one shroud falling on another, was like an overwhelming sadness falling over earth, nature and life, in which that second of paradise in the morning was forgotten; the white rain rushed down like a drowning gloom; the roads and the gardens drank in the waterfall until they glowed like swamp pools in the falling dusk: a chill, spectral mist rose like the movement of languid ghostly garments, which floated over the ponds and the houses, dimly lit by smoking lamps around which clouds of insects swarmed, plummeting to their death with scorched wings. The air was filled with a chill melancholy, a shadowy anxiety about the approaching threat from outside, about the omnipotent hordes of clouds, about the boundless immensity that wafted rustling from the far, unknown distance: as big and wide as the firmament, against which the houses did not seem protected, in which the people — with all their culture and science and inward emotion — were small and insignificant, as small as writhing insects, helpless against the interplay of gigantic mysteries borne from afar.

Léonie van Oudijck, in the half-lit back veranda of the Commissioner’s house, was talking in a soft voice to Theo, with Urip squatting down beside her.

“It’s nonsense, Urip!” she said in irritation.

“No, it isn’t, nyonya, it isn’t nonsense,” said the maid. “I hear them every evening.”

“Where?” asked Theo.

“In the banyan tree in the grounds behind the house, on the highest branches.”

“They’re wildcats!” said Theo.

“They’re not wildcats, kanjeng!” the maid maintained. “Massa, goodness me! As if Urip didn’t know how wildcats miaow! Creeow, creeow, is the sound they make. What we hear every night now are the ghosts! They are the little children crying in the trees. The souls of the little children crying in the trees!”

“It’s the wind, Urip…”

“Goodness me, nyonya. As if Urip couldn’t hear the wind! Boo-oh is how the wind goes, and then the branches move. These are the little children moaning in the highest branches and the main branches do not move. Then everything is deathly quiet… This spells doom, ma’am.”

“And why should it spell doom…”

“Urip knows, but dare not say. Ma’am is bound to be angry.”

“Come on, Urip, out with it!”

“It’s because of the tuan kanjeng, the tuan commissioner.”

“Why?”

“Recently at the fair on the square and the fair for white people, in the town park…”

“Well, what about it?”

“The day wasn’t properly calculated, according to the almanacs. It was an unlucky day… And with the new well…”

“Well, what about the new well?”

“There was no ritual offering of food. So no one uses the new well. Everyone draws their water from the old well… Even though the water is not good. Because the woman with the bleeding hole in her breast rises from the new well… And Miss Doddy…”

“What?”

“Miss Doddy saw him, the white haji! That is not a good pilgrim, the white pilgrim… That is a ghost. Miss Doddy has seen him twice, at Pajaram and here… Listen, ma’am.”

“What?”

“Can’t you hear? The children’s souls are moaning in the topmost branches. There is no wind at the moment. Listen, listen, they are not wildcats! The wildcats go cree-ow, creeow when they are on heat! That is the souls!..”

All three listened. Instinctively Léonie pressed closer to Theo. She was deathly pale. The spacious back veranda, with the table permanently set, stretched away in the gloomy light of a single hanging paraffin lamp. The waterlogged back garden was dimly visible against the blackness of the banyans, from which a stream of droplets was falling, but whose impenetrable, velvety masses of foliage were immobile. And an inexplicable, scarcely perceptible groaning, like a faint secret of tormented young souls persisted high above, as if in the sky, as if in the topmost branches of the trees. At times it was a short cry, at others a faint sobbing as if of tortured girls…

“What kind of animals can they be?” asked Theo. “Are they birds or insects?…”

The groaning and the sobbing were clearly audible. Léonie was as white as a sheet and was trembling all over her body.

“Don’t be frightened,” said Theo. “They must be animals…”

But he himself was as pale as a ghost, and when they looked into each other’s eyes, she realized that he was afraid, too. She squeezed his arm tightly and pressed up against him. The maid squatted humbly, hunched up, as if accepting whatever fate brought as an inexplicable mystery. She would not take flight. But in the eyes of the white people there seemed to be a single thought, to flee. Suddenly the two of them — the stepmother and the stepson who were bringing shame on the house — felt fear, a single fear, as if of punishment. They didn’t speak, they said nothing to each other, just stayed resting against each other, understanding each other’s trembling, the two white children of the mysterious Indies earth — who from their childhood onwards had breathed the mysterious air of Java; unconsciously they had heard the vague, softly approaching mystery, like ordinary music, a music that they had not heeded, as if mystery were ordinary. As they stood trembling and looking at each other, the wind got up and brought with it the secret of the souls, and carried them away; the branches moved about wildly and fresh rain poured down. A chilly breeze filled the house; a gust extinguished the lamp and they were left in darkness for a moment. She, despite the openness of the veranda, almost in the arms of her son and lover; the maid cringed at their feet. But then she disengaged herself from him, disengaged herself from the black oppression of darkness and fear through which the rain roared; a chilly wind blew and she stumbled indoors, almost fainting. Theo and Urip followed her. The central gallery was lit, and Van Oudijck’s office was open. He was working. Léonie stood there indecisively, with Theo, not knowing what to do. The maid disappeared, muttering under her breath. It was then that Léonie heard a whooshing sound and a small round stone flew through the veranda and fell somewhere. She gave a cry and stepped behind the screen that separated the office where Van Oudijck was sitting at his desk, then she cast caution to the winds and again threw herself into Theo’s arms. They stood shivering and clinging to each other. Van Oudijck had heard her, stood up and came out from behind the partition. His eyes were blinking rapidly, as if tired from working. Léonie and Theo regained their composure.

“What is it, Léonie?…”

“Nothing,” she said, not daring to say anything about the souls or the stone, afraid of the imminent punishment. She and Theo stood guiltily, both white as a sheet and trembling. Van Oudijck, with his mind still on his work, saw nothing.

“Nothing,” she said. “The mat is worn, and… I almost stumbled. But I wanted to mention something, Otto…”

Her voice was trembling but he didn’t hear it, blind and deaf to her as he was, still absorbed in his documents.

“What?”

“Urip suggested to me that the servants would like to have an offering, since a new well has been sunk in the grounds…”

“The well that is two months old?”

“They don’t draw water from it.”

“Why not?”

“They’re superstitious, you see; they don’t want to use the water until the offering has been made.”

“Then it should have been done immediately. Why didn’t they let me know through Kario? I can’t think of all that nonsense by myself. But I would have arranged an offering at the time. Now it’s like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The well is two months old.”

“It would be good in any case,” said Theo. “Papa, you know yourself what the Javanese are like: they won’t use the well if they aren’t granted an offering.”

“No,” said Van Oudijck stubbornly, shaking his head. “Making an offering now would be quite senseless. I would have been happy to do it, but now, after two months, it’s absurd. They should have asked straight away.”

“Come on, Otto,” begged Léonie. “Why don’t you make the offering. As a favour to me.”

“Mama has already half-promised Urip…” said Theo with gentle insistence.

They stood before him, trembling, white as a sheet, like supplicants.

But, worn out as he was, and with his mind on his documents, he was filled with a stubborn reluctance, though he could seldom refuse his wife anything.

“No, Léonie,” he said firmly. “You must never promise anything you’re not sure of…”

He turned away, went round the screen, and sat down to continue his work.

They looked at each other, the stepmother and her stepson. Slowly, aimlessly, they moved from where they were onto the front veranda, where a damp darkness floated between the imposing pillars. They saw a white figure approaching through the sodden garden. They were alarmed, frightened of everything now, each silhouette reminding them of the strange punishment that would befall them so long as they remained in the parental home on which they had brought shame. But when they peered more closely they recognized Doddy. She said that she had been to see Eva Eldersma. In fact she had been walking with Addy de Luce, and they had sheltered from the rain in the native quarter. She was very pale and shivering, but Léonie and Theo couldn’t see it in the dark front veranda, just as she couldn’t see that her stepmother was pale, and Theo too. She was shivering so violently because she had been pelted with stones in the garden — Addy had left her at the gate. She thought of an impudent Javanese, who hated her father and his house and his family, but on the dark front veranda, where she saw her stepmother and brother sitting silently close together, as if helpless, she suddenly felt — she knew not why — that it had not been an impudent Javanese…

She sat down with them in silence. They looked out onto the dark, damp garden, over which night approached as if on giant bat’s wings. And in the wordless melancholy that filtered between the stately white pillars in the grey dusk, all three of them — Doddy alone; her stepmother and stepson together — frightened to death and crushed by the strange event that was about to happen…




2


DESPITE THEIR FEAR, Theo and Léonie sought each other out even more often, feeling drawn by what was now an unbreakable bond. In the afternoons he would slip into her room and they would embrace wildly and then remain close together.

“It must be nonsense, Léonie…” he whispered.

“All right, so what is it then?” she whispered back. “I heard the groaning, didn’t I? And the stone whizzing through the air…”

“And so…”

“What?”

“If it is something… suppose it’s something we can’t explain.”

“But I don’t believe that sort of thing!”

“Nor do I… But just…”

“What?”

“If it is something… if it’s something we can’t explain, then…”

“Then what?”

“Then it’s not because of us!” he whispered almost inaudibly. “Didn’t Urip say so herself. It’s because of Papa!”

“Oh, but it’s too silly…”

“I don’t believe in that nonsense either.”

“The groaning… must be animals.”

“And that stone must have been thrown by some wretch, one of the servants, someone with big ideas… or who has been bribed…”

“Bribed? By whom?”

“By… the… Prince…”

“Oh, Theo!”

“Urip said that the groaning came from the palace…”

“What do you mean?”

“And that they wanted to taunt Papa from there…”

“Taunt?”

“Over the Prince of Ngajiwa’s dismissal.”

“Did Urip say that?…”

“No, no, she didn’t say that. I’m saying that. Urip said that Prince Sunario has magic powers. That’s nonsense of course. The fellow is no good… He’s bribed people… to torment Papa.”

“But Papa isn’t aware of anything…”

“No… And we mustn’t say anything. That’s the best thing to do… We must ignore it.”

“And the white pilgrim, Theo, that Doddy has seen twice… And when they make the table turn at Van Helderen’s place, Ida sees him too…”

“Oh, of course he’s another of the Prince’s men.”

“Yes, I expect he is… But it’s still horrible, Theo… My Theo, I’m frightened!”

“Of that nonsense! Come now!”

“If it is something, Theo… it’s not because of us?”

He laughed.

“Of course not. Because of us! It’s foolery by the Prince…”

“We shouldn’t see each other any more…”

“Oh yes we should. I love you, I’m mad about you.”

He kissed her violently and they were both afraid, but he put a brave face on it.

“Come on, Léonie, don’t be so superstitious…”

“When I was a child, my nursemaid told me…”

She whispered a story in his ear. He turned pale.

“Oh, what nonsense, Léonie!”

“There are strange things, here in the Indies… If they bury something of yours, a handkerchief or a lock of hair… then… using just charms… they can make you fall ill and waste away, and die… without a doctor having any idea what the disease is…”

“That’s rubbish!”

“It’s absolutely true!”

“I didn’t know you were that superstitious!”

“I never used to think about it. I’ve only been thinking about it recently… Theo, do you think there is something?”

“There’s nothing… except kissing.”

“No, Theo… be quiet, don’t. I’m frightened… It’s getting late. It’s getting dark so soon. Papa’s already up, Theo. Go now, Theo… through the boudoir. I want to take a bath. I’m frightened when it gets dark these days… With those rains there is no dusk… It takes you by surprise, the evening… The other day I had no light taken into the bathroom… and it was already so dark in there… and there were two bats flying around; I was frightened they would get tangled up in my hair… Quiet… is that Papa?”

“No, it’s Doddy… playing with her cockatoo.”

“Go now, Theo.”

He left through the boudoir and walked into the garden. She got up, threw a kimono over her sarong that she had knotted loosely under her arms, and called Urip.

“Bring the bath things!”

“Ma’am!..”

“Where are you, Urip?”

“Here, ma’am…”

“Where were you?…”

“Here in front of your garden door, ma’am… I was waiting!” said the maid, meaningfully, implying that she was waiting until Theo had gone.

“Is the kanjeng tuan up yet?”

“Already up… has already had bath, ma’am.”

“Bring me my bath things then… Light the lamp in the bathroom… The other day the lamp-glass was broken, and the lamp wasn’t filled…”

“Ma’am never used to bathe with a light on…”

“Urip, did anything… happen… this afternoon?”

“No… everything was calm… But, oh dear, when night falls… All the servants are afraid, ma’am. The cook doesn’t want to stay.”

“Oh, what a fuss… Urip, promise her five guilders… as a present if she stays…”

“The butler is frightened too, ma’am…”

“Oh, what a fuss… I’ve never known so much fuss, Urip…”

“No, ma’am.”

“I’ve always been able to organize my life so well… But these are things!..”

“What can we do, ma’am?… Things more powerful than mankind…”

“Do you really think they aren’t wildcats… and a man throwing stones?”

“They’re no such thing, ma’am.”

“Well… just bring my bath things then… And don’t forget to light the lamp…”

The maid went out. Darkness was already filtering from the rain-shrouded air. The commissioner’s mansion lay deathly quiet in the pitch darkness of its giant banyans; the lamps had not yet been lit. On the front veranda, alone, Van Oudijck was drinking tea, reclining on a wicker chair in pyjama bottoms and jacket… In the garden, deep shadows were accumulating, like swathes of black, airy velvet falling from the trees.

“Lamp boy!” called Léonie.

“Ma’am!”

“Light the lamps! Why are you so late? First light the lamp in my bedroom…”

She went to the bathroom… She passed the long line of storerooms and servant’s rooms that closed off the garden at the back. She looked up at the banyan where she had recently heard the groaning of the souls in the top branches. The branches were not moving. There was not a breath of wind, the air was oppressively close with a threatening rainstorm, a storm too heavy to break. In the bathroom Urip lit the lamp.

“Did you bring everything, Urip?”

“Yes, ma’am…”

“Didn’t you forget the big bottle of white perfume?”

“And what’s this then, ma’am?”

“Right then… In future you must give me a finer towel for my face. I always tell you to give me a fine towel. I don’t like those rough ones…”

“I’ll go and get one.”

“No, no! Stay here, sit outside the door…”

“Very good, ma’am…”

“Listen, you must get a locksmith to check the keys here… We can’t lock the bathroom… That’s ridiculous, if we have guests…”

“I’ll see to it tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget…”

She closed the door. The maid squatted in front of the closed door, patient, passive in the face of the small and big things of life, guided only by loyalty to her mistress, who gave her nice sarongs and as large an advance as she wanted.

In the bathroom, the small nickel lamp on the wall cast a dim light over the greenish marble of the wet floor and on the water in the square brick tub.

“I think I’ll bathe earlier in the afternoon!” thought Léonie.

She took off her kimono and sarong and, naked, glanced in the mirror at the silhouette of her milky plumpness, the curves well-versed in the ways of love. Her blond hair took on a golden glow, and a pearly dew dripped from her shoulders over her neck and down the shadowy cleft between her small, round breasts. She lifted up her hair, admiring, studying herself to see whether there was the line of a wrinkle, feeling whether her flesh was firm. One hip arched, as she stood on one leg and created a long, sculpted line of white undulating highlights, caressing her thigh and knee and ebbing away at her instep… But she woke with a start from this admiring contemplation. She quickly tied up her hair in a bun, lathered herself, and with the bucket poured the water over herself. It fell heavily in long, flat spouts — her shoulders, breasts and hips shining like polished marble in the light of the small lamp. She was keen to make haste, looking up at the window to see if the bats would fly in again… Yes, she would definitely bathe earlier in future. It was almost dark outside. She dried herself hurriedly on a rough towel and gave herself a quick rub with the white ointment that Urip always prepared, her elixir of youth, suppleness and firm whiteness. At that moment she saw a small red spot on her thigh. She paid no attention to it, thinking it must be something in the water, a dead insect. She rubbed it off. But as she rubbed herself she saw two or three larger, vermilion-coloured spots. She suddenly went cold, not knowing or understanding. Again she rubbed herself; and she took hold of the towel, on which the spots had already left an unpleasant deposit like congealed blood. A shudder went through her from head to foot. And suddenly she saw. From the corners of the bathroom — she could not tell how or from where — the spots came, at first small, then larger as if spewed out by a slavering mouth full of betel juice. Chilled to the core, she screamed. The splashes, having been spewed out as purple gobs, became thicker and swelled as they hit her. Her body was smeared with a grimy, dribbling red. One splash struck her back… On the greenish white of the floor, the filthy gobs slithered, floating on the water that had not yet run away. In the tub they fouled the water and disintegrated disgustingly. She was red all over, filthily besmirched, as if defiled by a shameful mass of filthy vermilion, which invisible betel-chewing throats scraped together from the corners of the room and spat at her, aiming at her hair, her eyes, her breasts, her belly. She screamed and screamed, driven completely out of her mind by the strange events. She threw herself at the door, tried to open it, but there was something wrong with the handle, because the door was not locked, or bolted. She could feel repeated spitting on her back; her buttocks were dripping with red. She screamed for Urip and heard the maid on the other side of the door, pulling and pushing. Finally the door gave way. Helpless, crazy, naked and besmirched, she threw herself into her maid’s arms. The servants flocked around. She could see them coming from the back veranda, along with Van Oudijck, Theo and Doddy. In her wild hysteria, her eyes wide open, she was ashamed, not of her nakedness but of her defilement… The maid had grabbed the kimono, also besmirched, from the door handle and threw it round her mistress.

“Stay away!” she cried helplessly. “Don’t come any closer!” she shrieked crazily. “Urip, Urip, take me to the swimming pool! A lamp, a lamp… to the swimming pool!”

“What is it, Léonie?”

She didn’t want to say.

“I… trod… on a toad!” she screamed. “I’m… frightened… of scabies! Don’t come any closer… I’m naked! Stay away, stay away! A lamp, a lamp… a lamp for goodness’ sake… to the swimming pool! No, Otto! Stay away! All of you stay away! I’m naked! Stay away! Bring a lamp!”

The servants were rushing around everywhere. One took a lamp to the swimming pool…

“Urip! Urip…”

She clung to the maid.

“They’ve spat at me… with betel juice!.. They’ve spat at me with betel juice! They’ve… spat… at me… with betel juice.”

“Shush, ma’am… come with me to the swimming pool!..”

“Wash me, Urip! Urip… on my hair, in my eyes… Oh God, I can taste it in my mouth!..”

She sobbed uncontrollably, as the maid dragged her along…

“Urip… look… first… go and see… if they’re spitting… in the swimming pool too!”

The maid went in, shivering.

“There’s nothing, ma’am.”

“Quick then, bathe me, wash me, Urip…”

She threw off the kimono; in the light of the lamp her beautiful body was revealed as if it had been smeared with filthy blood.

“Urip, wash me… No, don’t fetch any soap… Just with water… Don’t leave me alone! Urip, please wash me here… Burn the kimono! Urip…”

She dived into the swimming pool and swam around helplessly; the maid, half-naked, dived in with her and washed her…

“Quick, Urip… quick, just the dirtiest bits… I’m afraid! Soon… soon they’ll be spitting in here… Into the room, Urip… now… now wash me again, in the room, Urip! Call out and say no one must be in the garden! I don’t want to wear the kimono any more. Quick, Urip, call, I want to get out of here!”

The maid shouted into the garden in Javanese.

Léonie, dripping, climbed out of the water, and naked and wet hurried past the servants’ rooms, with the maid behind her. In the house, Van Oudijck, crazed with worry, came up to her.

“Go away, Otto! Leave me alone! I’m… naked!” she screamed.

And she threw herself into her room and, once Urip had come in, locked all the doors.

In the garden, the servants huddled together under the roof of the veranda, close to the house. The thunder rumbled softly, and silent rain began to fall.




3


LÉONIE, WHO HAD BEEN ILL for several days with nervous exhaustion, stayed in bed. In Labuwangi there were rumours that the commissioner’s house was haunted. At the weekly gatherings in the municipal garden, while the band was playing, while the children and young people were dancing on the open stone dance floor, there were whispered conversations at the tables about the strange events in the commissioner’s house. Dr Rantzow was asked about it, but could only say what the District Commissioner had told him, what Mrs Van Oudijck herself had told him: the fright she had had in the bathroom was from a huge toad on which she had trodden and slipped. However, more information was obtained from the servants, but when one person talked of the throwing of stones, the spewing of betel juice, another laughed and called them old wives’ tales. Hence the uncertainty remained. But in the newspapers, from Surabaya to Batavia, there were brief, strange reports, which were not explicit but left a good deal to the imagination.

Van Oudijck himself spoke with no one about it, not with his wife, not with his children, not with his officials, and not with the servants. But on one occasion he came out of the bathroom with wild, staring eyes. But he went calmly back into the house and controlled himself so that no one noticed anything. Then he spoke to the Chief of Police. There was an old cemetery that bordered on the grounds of the commissioner’s house. This was now guarded night and day, as was the back wall of the bathroom. The bathroom itself, however, was no longer used and people bathed in the guest bathrooms.

As soon as Mrs Van Oudijck had recovered, she went to Surabaya to stay with friends. She never returned; without discussing it with Van Oudijck she had arranged for Urip gradually, unobtrusively, to pack all her clothes, and all kinds of knick-knacks that she was attached to. One case after another was forwarded to her. When Van Oudijck once accidentally went into her bedroom, he found it empty apart from the furniture. All sorts of things had also disappeared from her boudoir. He hadn’t noticed the dispatching of the cases, but now he understood, now he realized that she was not coming back. He cancelled his next reception. It was December and René and Ricus were due to come from Batavia for a week or ten days, but he cancelled the boys’ visit. Doddy was invited to stay with the De Luce family at Pajaram. Although as a full-blooded Dutchman Van Oudijck had an instinctive dislike of the De Luces, he gave in. They were fond of Doddy, and it would be more cheerful for her than at Labuwangi. He abandoned his dream that his daughter would not be swallowed up by the Indies. Suddenly Theo also left, having suddenly secured, through Léonie’s influence with certain captains of commerce in Surabaya, a lucrative position in an import-export business. Van Oudijck was now all alone in his big house. Since the cook and the butler had run off, Eldersma and Eva invited him to eat with them on a regular basis, both lunch and dinner. He never mentioned his house and it was never discussed. What he talked about in secret to Eldersma, as secretary, and to Van Helderen, as district controller, was never divulged by the two of them, as if it were an official secret. The Chief of Police who usually gave a brief daily report — to the effect that nothing special had happened, or that there had been a fire, or a man had been wounded — now gave long, secret accounts; the doors of the office were closed so that the attendants outside did not hear. Gradually all the servants left, departing silently at night, with their families and household effects, leaving their quarters dirty and empty. They didn’t even stay in the district. Van Oudijck let them go. He kept only Kario and the attendants; and the convicts tended the garden every day. In that way, from the outside, the house was ostensibly unchanged. But from within, where nothing was maintained, a thick layer of dust covered the furniture, white ants devoured the mats, and mould and damp patches appeared. The Commissioner never went through the house, and lived only in his bedroom and office. His face assumed a sombre expression of bitter, silent despair. He was more precise than ever in his work, and he urged his officials on most insistently, as if he thought of nothing but the interests of Labuwangi. In his isolated position he had no friend and sought none. He bore everything alone. Alone, on his own shoulders, which were stooping at the approach of old age, he carried the heavy burden of his house that was disintegrating; his family life that was a victim of the strange events that he could not fathom, despite his police, his attendants, his personal vigilance, despite all his spies. He discovered nothing. People told him nothing. No one unearthed anything. And the strange goings-on continued. A large stone smashed a mirror. Calmly he had the slivers swept up. His was not the kind of nature to believe in a supernatural origin of the events, and he did not believe. The fact that he couldn’t find the culprit or an explanation of events made him quietly furious. But he did not believe. He did not believe when he found his bed covered in filth, and Kario at his feet protested that he did not know how. He did not believe when the glass he picked up broke into little pieces. He did not believe when he heard as if above his head a constant thudding of provocative hammering. But his bed had been sullied, his glass broke, the hammering was a fact. He investigated those facts as punctiliously as he would have done in a criminal case, but nothing came to light. He remained calm in his relations with European and Javanese officials and with the Prince. No one noticed any change in him, and in the evenings he went on working proudly at his desk amid the stamping and hammering, while the garden, as if enchanted, was wrapped in downy night.

Outside on the steps the attendants huddled together, listening, whispering, looking round timidly at their master, who was writing with a frown of concentration between his brows.

“Do you think he can’t hear it?”

“Of course. He’s not deaf, is he?”

“He must be able to hear it…”

“He thinks he can get to the bottom of it with policemen…”

“Soldiers are coming from Ngajiwa.”

“From Ngajiwa!”

“Yes. He doesn’t trust the policemen. He has written to the Major.”

“For soldiers?”

“Yes, there are soldiers coming…”

“Look at him frowning…”

“He works and works.”

“I’m frightened. I wouldn’t dare stay if I didn’t have to.”

“As long as he’s here, I have the courage to stay.”

“Yes… he’s brave.”

“He’s tough.”

“He’s a brave man.”

“But he doesn’t understand.”

“No, he doesn’t know what it is…”

“He thinks it’s rats…”

“Yes, he got them to hunt for rats up under the roof.”

“Those Dutch don’t know.”

“No, they don’t understand.”

“He smokes a lot…”

“Yes, at least twelve cigars a day.”

“He doesn’t drink much.”

“No… just a whisky and soda in the evenings.”

“He’ll be asking for one any minute now…”

“No one has stood by him.”

“No. The others have understood. They’ve all gone.”

“He goes to bed late.”

“Yes. He works hard.”

“He never sleeps at night anyway. Only in the afternoon.”

“Look at him frowning…”

“He just goes on working…”

“… Attendant!”

“He’s calling!”

“Kanjeng!”

“Bring me a whisky and soda!”

“Kanjeng…”

One attendant got up to get the drink. He had everything to hand in the guest building so he didn’t need to go into the house. The others moved closer together and went on whispering. The moon pierced the clouds and illuminated the garden and pond as if with a wet mist of enchantment. The attendant prepared the drink and offered it, squatting.

“Put it down here,” said Van Oudijck.

The attendant put the glass on the desk and crept away. The other attendants whispered.

“Attendant!” called Van Oudijck a moment later.

“Master!”

“What did you pour into this glass?”

The man trembled, and cringed at Van Oudijck’s feet.

“Master, it isn’t poison, on my life, on my death. I can’t help it, master. Kick me, kill me. I can’t help it, master.”

The glass was a yellow ochre colour.

“Fetch me another glass and pour it here…”

The attendant left, shivering.

The others sat close together, feeling each other’s bodies through the sweaty linen of their uniforms and looking frightened. The moon rose gleefully, mockingly, from above the clouds, like an evil fairy; its moist, deathly still enchantment draped the wide garden in silver. In the distance, from the back of the garden, a groan sounded as if from a child being strangled.




4


“AND HOW ARE YOU, my dear lady? How’s the depression? Do you like the Indies a little better today?”

Eva heard his jovial words as she saw him approaching through the garden at about eight, arriving for dinner. There was nothing in his tone but the jovial greeting of a man who has been working hard at his desk, and is now happy to see a sweet, good-looking woman at whose table he is about to sit. She was amazed and she admired him. He gave no sign of having been tormented all day long in an empty house by strange, incomprehensible phenomena. There was scarcely a wisp of melancholy on his wide forehead; scarcely a trace of concern in his broad, slightly stooped back, and the jovial lines round his thick moustache were there as always. Eldersma went up to him and in his welcoming handshake there was a kind of freemasonry of shared knowledge, and Eva sensed their intimacy. Van Oudijck drank his gin and bitters as usual; mentioned a letter from his wife, who was probably going to Batavia; said that René and Ricus were staying in the Principalities with a friend, on a coffee plantation. He said nothing about why they were not all with him, why he had been totally abandoned by his family and servants. He had never mentioned it in these intimate surroundings, where he now ate twice a day. And although Eva did not ask about it, it made her extremely nervous. So close to the haunted house, the pillars of which she could see dimly through the foliage of the trees, she felt more jittery every day. All day long the servants whispered around her, and glanced timidly in the direction of the Commissioner’s haunted residence. At night, unable to sleep, she listened herself to see if she could hear anything odd: the groaning of the children. The Indies night was too packed with sound for her not to lie trembling in her bed. Through the urgent croaking of the frogs for rain, for still more rain, their constant croaking with the monotonous guttural roar, she heard a thousand sounds that kept her awake. Through it the calls of the tokays and other geckos rang out like clockwork, like mysterious chimes. She thought about it all day long. Eldersma said nothing about it either. But when she saw Van Oudijck arriving for lunch, and for dinner, she had to bite her lip not to ask him anything. And the conversation ranged far and wide, but never touched on the strange phenomena. After lunch the Commissioner walked home; after dinner, at ten o’clock, she saw him disappearing back into the shadows of the garden. With a calm gait, every evening he went back through the enchanted night to his abandoned and miserable house, where outside his office he found the attendants and Kario squatting close together, and he worked late at his desk. And he never complained. He investigated meticulously, but nothing came to light. Everything continued to happen as an unfathomable mystery.

“And how do you like the Indies this evening, dear lady?” It was virtually always the same pleasantry, but every day she admired his tone. Courage, unshakable self-confidence, certainty about his own knowledge, belief in what he knew for certain, rang as clear as a bell in his voice. However desolate he must feel as a man who has lost all domestic intimacy and cool practicality in a house deserted by his family and full of inexplicable phenomena, there was no trace of despair or gloom in his persistent male simplicity. He went about his business, did his work more meticulously than ever — and he investigated. And at Eva’s table he was always a lively guest, talking to Eldersma about such matters as promotion, politics in the Indies, the new rage for having the Indies governed from Holland by laymen who hadn’t a clue. He talked animatedly, without getting worked up. Calmly, sociably, until Eva came to admire him more and more each day. But for her, as a sensitive woman, it became a nervous obsession. And one evening, while taking a short walk with him, she asked him. If it was not awful, if he could not leave the house, if he could not go on tour, for a long, long time. She saw his face cloud over when she raised the matter. But still he answered in a friendly tone that it wasn’t that bad, even though it was inexplicable, that he was determined to get to the bottom of all the sorcery. And he added that he really ought to go on tour, but did not go, so as not to give the impression of running away. Then he briefly pressed her hand, told her not to get worked up and not to think or talk about it. The latter sounded like a friendly command. She pressed his hand again, with tears in her eyes. And she watched him go, with his calm, manly step, and disappear into the night of his garden, where the enchantment, in order to take hold, had first to muffle the roaring cries of the frogs for rain. Then she shivered and hurried home. And she found her house, her spacious house, to be small and completely open and unprotected against the vast Indies night, which could penetrate everywhere.

But she was not the only person preoccupied with the mysterious phenomena. They oppressed the whole of Labuwangi with their inexplicable nature, which conflicted dramatically with factual, everyday reality. They talked about them in every home, even if only in a whisper, so as not to frighten the children and not to let the servants notice that they were in awe of Javanese mumbo-jumbo, as the Commissioner himself had called it. And a fear, a gloom made people ill with nervous peering and listening in the nights that were awash with sound and billowed thick, muffled and grey across the town, which seemed to nestle deeper amid the foliage, and during the damp dusk disappeared beneath a dull, silent resignation and submission to the mystery. At that point Van Oudijck decided to take firm measures. He wrote to the Major — the Commandant of the garrison at Ngajiwa — instructing him to bring a captain, a couple of lieutenants and a company of soldiers. That evening the officers dined with the Commissioner and Van Helderen at the Eldersmas’s house. They rushed their meal, and Eva, standing at the garden gate, saw them all — the Commissioner, the secretary, the controller, together with four officers — heading for the dark garden of the haunted house. The grounds of the commissioner’s mansion were cordoned off, the house surrounded and the cemetery put under guard. And the men, all of them, went into the bathroom.

They stayed there all night, and all night the grounds and the house remained cordoned off and surrounded. They re-emerged at about five o’clock, and immediately went for a communal swim. They did not talk about what had happened to them, but they’d had a terrible night. The very next morning the bathroom was demolished.

They had all promised Van Oudijck not to speak about that night, and Eldersma would not say anything to Eva, or Van Helderen to Ida. The officers in Ngajiwa were also tight-lipped. All they would say was that the night in the bathroom had been too improbable to be believed. Finally one of the young lieutenants let slip something about his adventure, and a story circulated about betel juice being spat, stones being thrown, a floor shaking like in an earthquake, while they had struck it with sticks and sabres, and on top of that about something unspeakably dreadful that had happened. Everyone added a little touch of their own, so that when the story reached Van Oudijck, he scarcely recognized the terrible night, which had been quite horrific enough without embellishment.

Meanwhile, Eldersma had drawn up a report of their joint vigil and they all signed the improbable report. Van Oudijck took the report to Batavia in person and handed it to the Governor General. It was subsequently deposited in the government archives.

The Governor General advised Van Oudijck to take a short period of leave in Holland, assuring him that this leave would in no way affect his imminent promotion to commissioner, first class. However, he declined the favour and returned to Labuwangi. The only concession that he made was to move in with Eva Eldersma until the commissioner’s house was cleaned. But the flag continued to fly from the flagpole in the grounds of the commissioner’s residence…

On his return from Batavia Van Oudijck frequently met the Prince, Sunario, on official business, and in his dealings with him the Commissioner remained correct and stern. Then he had a short conversation, first with the Prince, and then with his mother, the Princess. These two conversations lasted no longer than twenty minutes, but it seemed that the few words spoken had been both weighty and menacing.

Because the strange happenings ceased. When everything in the house had been cleaned and restored under Eva’s supervision, Van Oudijck forced Léonie to return, as he wished to give a great New Year’s ball. In the morning the Commissioner hosted a reception for all his European and Javanese officials. In the evening the guests streamed in through the brilliantly lit verandas from all over the district, still slightly apprehensive and curious, and instinctively looking around in their immediate vicinity and upwards. And while the champagne was going round, Van Oudijck himself took a glass and offered it to the Prince with a deliberate violation of etiquette, and, with a mixture of threatening seriousness and good-natured joviality, spoke these words, which for months afterwards were to be repeated throughout the district: “Go ahead and drink, Prince. I assure you on my word of honour that no more glasses will break in my house, except by chance or carelessness…”

He could speak like this because he knew that — this time — he had been too strong for the hidden force, simply because of his courage, as an official, a Dutchman and a man.

Still, in the eyes of the Prince as he drank, there was a faint, slightly ironic look indicating that though the hidden force had not triumphed — this time — it would still remain an inexplicable mystery for the short-sighted gaze of Westerners…




5


LABUWANGI REVIVED. There was almost unanimous agreement that they should no longer talk about the strange things to people from elsewhere, since although their scepticism in this matter was so forgivable, the people of Labuwangi believed. The provincial town, after the mystical pressure under which it had been for those unforgettable weeks, came back to life. As if to shake off all obsession, party succeeded party, ball succeeded ball, play followed concert: everyone opened up their houses to celebrate and have fun and seek some ordinary pursuits after the unbelievable nightmare. The people, so accustomed to a normal and comprehensible life, the ample and material comfort of the Indies — to a good table, cold drinks, wide beds, spacious houses, to earning and spending money: all the physical luxury of the Westerner in the East — such people breathed a sigh of relief, and shrugged off the nightmare and the belief in the strange happenings. If it was ever still talked of, it was generally called incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo, in imitation of the Commissioner. Mumbo-jumbo concocted by the Prince, since it was certain that he’d had a hand in it. It was certain, too, that the Commissioner had threatened him, and his mother, with fearful consequences if the strange happenings did not cease. And it was certain that subsequently order had been restored to ordinary life. Mumbo-jumbo then. People were now ashamed of their credulity, their fear, and for having shuddered at what had seemed mysterious and was nothing but clever mumbo-jumbo. And people wanted to be cheerful and there was one party after another.

In this intoxicating atmosphere, Léonie forgot her annoyance at being called back by Van Oudijck. And she too wanted to forget the vermilion defiling of her body. But there was still a residue of fear in her. She now bathed early in the afternoon, at four-thirty, in the newly built bathroom. Her second bath was still the cause of some trepidation. And now Theo had a position in Surabaya, she gradually detached herself, partly out of fear. She could not shake off the thought that their idyll had threatened to punish them both, mother and son, for bringing shame on the parental home. The romantic side of her perverse imagination, her pink fantasies full of cherubs, Cupids, gave this idea — inspired by alarm — too precious a tragic hue not to hold on to it, whatever Theo said. She’d had enough. And it drove him to distraction, since he was mad about her; he could not forget the infamous pleasure he had experienced in her arms. But she held her ground steadfastly, and told him about her fear and said she was certain that the ghosts would return if they made love, he and his father’s wife. Her words made him apoplectic on the occasional Sunday that he spent at Labuwangi: furious at her refusal, her newly assumed maternal persona, and furious because he knew that she saw a lot of Addy de Luce and often stayed at Pajaram. At the parties, Addy danced with her; at the concerts he hung over her chair in the improvised commissioner’s box. True, he was not faithful to her, since it was not in his nature to love only one woman — he bestowed his favours far and wide — but still he was as faithful to her as he possibly could be. She felt a more lasting passion for him than she had ever felt before; and this passion roused her from her usual passive indifference. Often in company, though boring, dreary, she would be enthroned in the glow of her white beauty, like a smiling idol, the languor of the Indies years gradually flowing into her blood, until her movements had taken on that indifferent sloth for everything but caresses and love; her voice, the drawling accent used for any word that was not a word of passion. Under the flame that emanated from Addy and surrounded her, she transformed into a younger woman, more lively in company, more cheerful, flattered by the continuing attentions of the young man who had turned all the girls’ heads. And she delighted in dominating him as far as possible, to the regret of all the girls and especially of Doddy. In her passion she also took a spiteful delight in teasing, just for the sake of it: it gave her an exquisite pleasure, and — for the first time, since she had always been very careful — she made her husband jealous, made Theo jealous, Doddy jealous: she made all the young women and girls jealous. And there she stood above them all, as the Commissioner’s wife, she was superior to them all. If on a particular evening she had gone too far, she delighted in winning back, with a smile or a word, the affection she had forfeited by her flirtatiousness. And strangely enough, she succeeded. The moment people saw her, the moment she spoke, smiled and made a point of being nice, she regained everything, people forgave her everything. Even Eva was won over by the strange charm of this woman, who was not witty, not intelligent, who became scarcely any more cheerful when roused from her dreary lethargy, and who won people over only through the lines of her body, the shape of her face, the look in her strange eyes — calm and yet full of hidden passion — and who was aware of her attraction, having noted its effect since childhood. That attraction together with her indifference was her strength. Anything to do with fate seemed to bounce off her. Although it had approached her with strange magic, until she thought that a punishment would descend on her, it had drifted away. But she heeded the warning. She no longer wanted Theo, and henceforth she treated him like a mother. It enraged him, especially at these parties, now that she was younger, more cheerful and more seductive.

His passion for her began to turn to hate. He hated her now, with all the instinct of a Eurasian, which — for all his white skin — is what he was. He was more his mother’s son than his father’s. Oh, he hated her now, because he had felt his fear of punishment for an instant, and now he had forgotten everything. And his aim was to do her harm. How, he did not yet know, but he wanted to do her harm, so that she felt pain and sorrow. Pondering on this gave his small, murky soul a satanic sombreness. Although he didn’t think about it, he felt unconsciously that she was virtually invulnerable, and even that she secretly revelled in that invulnerability, and it made her more shameless and more indifferent every day. She was off to stay at Pajaram at every moment, on any pretext. The anonymous letters, which Van Oudijck still frequently gave her to read, no longer upset her; she became used to them. She returned them to him without a word: occasionally she even forgot about them and left them lying about on the back veranda. Once Theo read them there. He didn’t know in what sudden burst of lucidity, but he suddenly thought he recognized certain letters, certain strokes. He remembered the cottage in the native quarter in Pajaram — made half of bamboo and half of paraffin crates — where he had visited si-Oudijck with Addy de Luce, and the papers that he had hastily gathered together with an Arab. He vaguely remembered those same letters and strokes on a slip of paper on the floor. The blurred image flashed through his mind. But it was no more than a lightning bolt. His small, gloomy soul contained nothing but dull hate and murky calculation, but he was not clever enough to develop that calculation. He hated his father, from instinct and antipathy; his mother because she was a Eurasian; his stepmother because she no longer wanted him; he hated Addy, and for good measure he hated Doddy; he hated the world, because he had to work in it. He hated every job now that he had his office in Surabaya. But he was too lazy and insufficiently lucid to do any harm. He could not think of a way, however hard he tried, of harming his father, Addy and Léonie. Everything in him was vague, murky, discontented, unclear. What he wanted was money and a beautiful wife. Apart from that, there was nothing in him but his dull gloom and the malaise of a fat, blond colonial. And his thoughts rambled dimly and impotently on.

Up to now Doddy had always been very fond of Léonie, instinctively. But now she could deny it no longer: what at first she had thought was coincidence — her mama and Addy always seeking each other out in the same smile of attraction, one of them tugging at the other from one end of the room to the other, as if irresistibly — was not coincidence at all! And she too now hated Mama; Mama with her beautiful calm, her sovereign indifference. Doddy’s own passionate nature clashed with that other nature of milky-white Creole lethargy, which only now at this late stage, simply because of the propitiousness of fate, dared let itself be carried away, unconditionally. She hated Mama and that hate resulted in scenes, scenes of nervous anger, the screaming anger of Doddy at the taunting calm of Mama’s indifference, on all kinds of petty differences of opinion: about a visit, a ride on horseback, a hot sauce, a dress that one of them liked and the other did not. Léonie enjoyed teasing Doddy, just for the sake of it. Doddy would try to cry on her daddy’s shoulder, but Van Oudijck refused to take her side, and said that she should have more respect for Mama. But once, when she came to him for consolation, and he admonished her for her walks with Addy, she screamed that Mama herself was in love with Addy. Van Oudijck was angry and shooed her out of the room. But it all fitted together too well — the anonymous letters, his wife’s new flirtatiousness, Doddy’s accusation and what he had observed for himself at the recent parties — for him not to ponder and even brood on it. And now, once he started brooding and pondering about it, sudden memories flashed through his mind like bursts of lightning: of an unexpected visit; of a locked door; of a moving curtain; of a whispered word and a timidly averted glance. He combined all that and suddenly recalled those same subtle memories, linked to others from the past. It suddenly roused his jealousy, a man’s jealousy of his wife, whom he cherishes as his dearest possession. Jealousy rose in him like a gust of wind and blew through his concentration at work, confusing his thoughts as he sat working, making him suddenly leave his office while he was dealing with the court cases, to search Léonie’s room, lift up a curtain, even look under the bed. Now he no longer allowed her to stay at Pajaram, ostensibly because he did not wish to raise the hopes of the De Luces that Addy would ever marry Doddy. Because he did not dare to talk to Léonie about his jealousy… He could not contemplate Addy ever marrying Doddy. Though his daughter had Indies blood in her veins, he wanted a full-blooded European as a son-in-law. He hated anything to do with mixed race. He hated the De Luces, and the whole native Indies’ quasi-royal tradition of their Pajaram. He hated their gambling, their consorting with all kinds of Javanese chiefs: people whom as an official he gave their due, but apart from that regarded as necessary tools of government policy. He hated all their pretensions to be an old Indies family, and he hated Addy: a young man, supposedly employed in the factory, but who did nothing except chase after anything in skirts. As an older, industrious man, he found such a life insufferable. So Léonie would have to forgo Pajaram, but in the mornings she simply went to Mrs Van Does, and in her little house she met Addy, while Mrs Van Does herself went shopping in a cart, with two jars of diamonds and a bundle of batik bedspreads. In the evenings Addy went walking with Doddy and listened to her passionate reproaches. He laughed at her anger and took her in his arms until she clung to him gasping for breath: he kissed the accusations from her lips until, mad with love, she melted in his arms. They went no further, being afraid, especially Doddy. They walked beyond the compounds along the embankments through the rice fields, while swarms of fireflies in the darkness around them twinkled like tiny lamps; they walked arm in arm, hand in hand, enervated by physical desire that they never dared take to its logical conclusion. They explored each other all over with their hands, they made love with their hands. When she got home she was beside herself, furious with Mama, envying her calm, smiling fulfilment as she sat musing on a cane chair in her white peignoir, with a dusting of powder.

In the house, redecorated and whitewashed after the strange events — which were now over — there was a hatred that seemed to put out shoots everywhere like a diabolical flower, a hatred that surrounded the smiling woman who was too lethargic to hate and whose only pleasure was silent teasing: a jealous hatred now of father for son when he saw him sitting too often with his stepmother, despite Theo’s own hatred begging for something his father could not fathom; a hatred of a son for his father; a hatred of a daughter for her mother; a hatred that spelt disaster for all family life. Van Oudijck did not know how it had gradually come to this. Sadly, he regretted the time when he had been blind, when he had seen his wife and children only in the light in which he wanted to see them. That was over now. Just as the strange events had once risen into their life, so hatred rose like a pestilential miasma from the ground. Van Oudijck, who had never been superstitious, who had worked coolly and calmly in his deserted house, where incomprehensible spectral activity continued around him, who had read reports with hammering going on over his head and his whisky and soda turning yellow in his glass — Van Oudijck, for the first time in his life, now saw the dark looks of Theo and Doddy; he now suddenly found his wife becoming more brazen every day, hand in hand with young De Luce, knees almost interlocked; he saw himself changed, aged, gloomily spying; became superstitious, insurmountably superstitious, believing in a hidden force, hidden he knew not where in the Indies, in the soil of the Indies, in a deep mystery, somewhere, somewhere — a force that meant him no good, because he was a European, a ruler, a stranger on this mysterious, sacred shore. When he saw this superstition in himself, so new for him as a practical man, so utterly incredible in him — a man of simple, masculine sobriety — he was alarmed, as if at a latent madness he began to sense in himself.

Strong as he had been during the strange events, which he had been able to ward off with a single threat of force, this superstition — the aftermath of those events — found a weakness, a vulnerable spot in him. He was so surprised at not understanding himself that he was frightened of going mad, and yet he went on fretting. His health had been undermined by the beginnings of liver disease and he studied his yellow complexion. Suddenly he thought of poisoning. The kitchen was investigated and the cook was questioned, but nothing was found. He realized he was worrying about nothing, but the doctor diagnosed a swollen liver and prescribed the usual diet. What in other circumstances he would have considered quite normal — a very common illness — he now suddenly found odd, a strange phenomenon, about which he fretted. It affected his nerves. He now suffered from sudden bouts of tiredness while working, and from pounding headaches. His jealousy made him agitated; he was seized by tremors of restlessness. He suddenly realized that if there had been hammering above his head now, if betel juice had been spewed around him, he wouldn’t be able to stay in the house. And he believed in a hatred that rose in clouds out of the resentful earth like a pestilence. He believed in a force, deeply hidden in things in the Indies, in nature in Java, the climate of Labuwangi, in the mumbo-jumbo — that was what he still called it — that sometimes enables the Javanese to outsmart the Westerner, and gives him power, mysterious power, not enough to free himself from the yoke, but sufficient to make people ill, make them languish, to taunt and torment them, to haunt them incomprehensibly and horribly — a hidden force, a hidden power, hostile to our Western temperament, our blood, our body, our soul, our civilization, to everything we see fit to be and to think. He had been illuminated as if by a sudden single light, not as a consequence of thinking. He had been illuminated as if with a single jolt of revelation, completely at odds with the logic of his everyday life, his everyday train of thought. He suddenly saw it before him in a single vision of terror, like the light of his approaching old age, just as the very old sometimes suddenly see the truth. Yet he was still young, he was strong… And he felt that unless he could divert his crazy thoughts they might make him ill, weak and miserable, for ever, for ever…

For him especially, as a simple practical man, this sudden reversal was almost unbearable. What someone with a morbid cast of mind would have contemplated calmly, left him thunderstruck. He had never thought that there might be things in life somewhere deep down, mysterious, stronger than will-power, intellectual power. Now — after the night-mare, which he had bravely overcome — it appeared that the nightmare had exhausted him after all and infected him with all kinds of weakness. It was unbelievable, but now, in the evenings when he was working, he listened to night falling in the garden, or the rat stumbling around above his head. And then he would suddenly get up, go into Léonie’s room and look under her bed. When he finally discovered that many of the anonymous letters by which he was pursued were the work of a half-blood claiming to be his son, and even known in the compound by Van Oudijck’s own surname, he felt too hesitant to investigate the matter, because of what might come to light that he had forgotten, from his time as a controller long ago in Ngajiwa. Now he wavered, where in the past he had been resolute. Now he was no longer able to order his memories with such certainty that he could swear he had no son, sired at that time almost without knowing it. He did not have a clear memory of the housekeeper he’d had before his first marriage. He preferred to let the whole business of the anonymous letters go on smouldering in their dark recess, rather than investigate and stir things up. He even had money sent to the half-caste who claimed to be his son, so that he would not abuse the name that he had appropriated, by asking for gifts of chicken, rice and clothes all over the compound. These were things that si-Oudijck asked of ignorant village folk, whom he threatened with the vague displeasure of his father, the master over in Labuwangi. So to avoid the villagers being threatened any longer with his wrath, Van Oudijck sent him money. That was a sign of weakness, and in the past he would never have done it, but now he developed a tendency to pour oil in troubled waters, to make excuses, no longer to be so unbending and severe, and to blur and tone down everything that was black and white. Eldersma was sometimes amazed when he now saw the Commissioner — who had once been so resolute — in two minds, saw him giving way in administrative matters, disputes with tenants, in a way he never would have done in the past. A laxness in the operation of the office would have crept in, had not Eldersma taken the work off Van Oudijck’s hands, and made himself even busier than he already was. It was widely rumoured that the District Commissioner was a sick man. And it was true that his complexion was jaundiced, and his liver painful; the slightest thing set off his palpitations. The atmosphere in the household was neurotic, with Doddy’s tantrums and outbursts, the jealousy and hatred of Theo, who was back home after having abandoned Surabaya. Only Léonie remained triumphant, always beautiful, white, calm, smiling, content, exulting in the enduring passion of Addy, whom she was able to enchant as a sorceress of love, a mistress of passion. Fate had warned her, and she kept Theo at arm’s length, but apart from that she was happy, content.

Then there was suddenly a vacancy in Batavia. The names of two or three commissioners were mentioned, but Van Oudijck had the best chance. He fretted about it, he was apprehensive: he didn’t like Batavia as a district. He would not be able to work there as he had worked here, devoting himself assiduously to promoting so many different interests, both cultural and social. He would have preferred an appointment in Surabaya, where there was a lot happening, or in one of the Principalities, where his tact in dealing with the Javanese nobility would have stood him in good stead. But Batavia! For a commissioner, the least interesting district as an official: for the position of district commissioner the least flattering aspect was the arrogance of the place, close to the governor general, right in the midst of the most senior officials, so that the commissioner, virtually all-powerful elsewhere, was no more than another senior official among members of the Council of the Indies, and too close to Buitenzorg, with its conceited secretariat, whose bureaucracy and red tape were in conflict with administrative practice and the actual work of the commissioners themselves.

The possibility of his appointment threw him into complete confusion, and made him jumpier than ever, now that he would have to leave Labuwangi at a month’s notice, and sell his household effects. It would be a real wrench to leave Labuwangi. Despite what he had suffered there, he loved the town and especially his district. Throughout his territory in all those years he had left traces of his industry, his concentration, his ambition, his love. Now, in less than a month, he might have to hand it all over to a successor, tear himself away from everything he had lovingly provided and promoted. And the successor might change everything, and totally disagree with him. It provoked a melancholy gloom in him. The fact that a promotion would also take him closer to retirement, meant nothing to him. That future of idleness and boredom as old age approached was a nightmare to him.

Then his possible promotion suddenly became such a pathological obsession that the improbable happened and he wrote to the Director of the Colonial Service and the Governor General requesting that he be left at Labuwangi. Little of these letters leaked out; he himself said nothing about them either in the family circle or among his officials, so that when a younger commissioner, second class was appointed as commissioner of Batavia, people talked about Van Oudijck having been passed over, without knowing that it had been at his own instigation. Searching for a reason, people raked up the dismissal of the Prince of Ngajiwa, and the ensuing strange happenings, but it was felt that neither was really reason enough for the government to pass over Van Oudijck.

He himself regained in the process a strange kind of calm, the calm of weariness, of letting himself go, of being stuck in his familiar Labuwangi, of going native in his provincial post, of not having to go to Batavia, where things were so completely different. When at his last audience the Governor General had mentioned a European leave, he had felt a fear of Europe — a fear of no longer feeling at home there — now he felt the same fear even of Batavia. Yet he was only too familiar with all the quasi-Western humbug of the place; he knew the capital of Java put on very European airs, and in reality was only half-European. In himself — unbeknown to his wife, who regretted the shattered illusion of Batavia — he was secretly amused that he had been able to ensure that he stayed in Labuwangi. But that amusement showed him that he was changed, aged, diminished, eyes no longer fixed on the path upward, assuming a higher and higher position in human society, which had always been the path of his life. What had happened to his ambition? How had his domineering drive slackened? He attributed everything to the effect of the climate. It would certainly be good if he could refresh his blood and his mind in Europe. But instantly that thought dissolved for want of will. No, he didn’t want to go to Europe. He was fond of the Indies. He gave himself over to long reflections, lying in an easy chair, enjoying his coffee, his airy clothes, the gentle weakening of his muscles, the aimless drowsy flow of his thoughts. The only sharp-edged element of that drowsy flow was his ever-increasing suspicion, and he would suddenly wake from his torpor and listen to the vague sound, the faint suppressed laughter that he imagined he heard from Léonie’s room, just as at night, suspicious of ghosts, he listened to the muffled sounds of the garden and the rat above his head.




BOOK VII





1


ADDY WAS SITTING with Mrs Van Does on the small back veranda of her house when they heard a carriage rattle to a halt outside. They looked at each other with a smile, and got up.

“I’ll leave you alone,” said Mrs Van Does, and she disappeared to ride around town in a dos-à-dos carriage doing business with friends.

Léonie entered.

“Where’s Mrs Van Does?” she asked, acting each time as if it were the first: that was her great attraction.

He knew this and replied: “She’s just popped out for a moment. She’ll be sorry not to have seen you…”

He spoke in this way because he knew that she liked it: each time the ceremonial beginning in order to maintain the freshness of their liaison.

They sat down on a divan in the small enclosed central gallery, he next to her.

The divan had been covered with a piece of brightly patterned cretonne; the white walls were covered with some cheap fans and Japanese scroll paintings, and on either side of a small mirror there were two imitation bronze statues on pedestals: unspecified knights, one leg forward, a spear in hand. Through the glass door the grubby rear veranda was dimly visible, the pillars greenish yellow and damp, the flowerpots also greenish yellow, with a few withered rose bushes; the damp garden beyond was overgrown, with a pair of scrawny coconut palms, their leaves drooping like snapped feathers.

He drew her into his arms, but she pushed him back gently.

“Doddy is insufferable,” she said. “We must put an end to it.”

“How do we do that?”

“She must leave home. She’s so irritable, I can’t do a thing with her.”

“You tease her, too.”

She shrugged her shoulders, out of humour after a tiff with her stepdaughter.

“I used not to tease her, she used to love me, we used to get on very well. Now she explodes at the least thing. It’s your fault. Those eternal evening walks that lead nowhere are playing on her nerves.”

“It’s better they don’t lead anywhere,” he murmured, with his seducer’s smile. “But still I can’t break it off, because that would hurt her, and I can never hurt a woman.”

She laughed disparagingly.

“Yes, you’re so kind-hearted. You’d spread your favours far and wide out of the goodness of your heart. But whatever happens, she’s leaving home.”

“Where will she go?”

“Don’t ask such stupid questions!” she cried angrily, jerked out of her usual indifference. “Away, away, she’s going away: I couldn’t care less where. You know that once I say something, it happens. And this, this will happen.”

He took her in his arms.

“You’re so angry. You’re not beautiful at all like that…”

Upset, she didn’t want to let herself be kissed at first, but he didn’t like such upsets and was well aware of the power of his irresistible, handsome, Moorish masculinity, and overpowered her with brute force, smiling all the while and hugging her so tightly that she couldn’t move.

“You mustn’t be angry any more…”

“Oh yes I must… I hate Doddy.”

“The poor child has done you no harm.”

“That’s as may be…”

“You, on the other hand, tease her.”

“Because I hate her…”

“But why? Surely you’re not jealous?…”

She laughed loudly.

“No! That’s not in my nature.”

“Why then?”

“What’s it to you? I don’t know myself. I hate her. I enjoy teasing her.”

“Are you as bad as you’re beautiful?”

“What’s bad? How should I know! I’d like to tease you too, if only I knew how.”

“And I’d like to give you a good hiding.”

Again she laughed aloud.

“Perhaps that might do me good now,” she admitted. “I’m seldom upset, but Doddy!..”

She tensed her fingers and, suddenly calmer, she snuggled up to him and put her arms round his body.

“I used to be very indifferent,” she confessed. “Recently I’ve become much more nervous, since I had such a fright in that bathroom, after they spat betel juice all over me. Do you think it was ghosts, spirits at work? I don’t think so. It was the Prince taunting us. Those wretched Javanese know all sorts of things… But since that time I’ve been thrown off course. Do you understand that expression?… It used to be wonderful: everything ran off me like water off a duck’s back. Since I was so ill, I seem to have changed, become more nervous. Theo, when he was angry with me once, said that since then I’ve been hysterical… which I used not to be. I don’t know: perhaps he’s right. But I’ve certainly changed… I care less about people; I think I’m becoming very brazen… The gossip is also more spiteful than it used to be… Van Oudijck annoys me, snooping around like that… He’s starting to notice things… And Doddy, Doddy!.. I’m not jealous, but I can’t stand those evening strolls she has with you… You mustn’t do it any more, go for walks with her… I won’t stand for it any more, I won’t… Everything bores me here in Labuwangi… What a miserable, monotonous existence… Surabaya bores me too… So does Batavia… Everything here is so dull: people never think up anything new. I’d like to go to Paris… I think I’m made of the right stuff to enjoy myself there.”

“Do I bore you, too?”

“You?”

She stroked his face with her hands, his chest, down to his legs.

“Shall I tell you something? You’re a handsome lad, but you’re too good-natured, which irritates me, too. You kiss anyone who wants to be kissed by you. At Pajaram you slobber over your old mother, your sisters, everyone. I think that’s terrible of you!”

He laughed.

“You’re getting jealous!” he exclaimed.

“Jealous? Am I really getting jealous? It’s terrible if I am. I don’t know… I don’t want to. I still believe that there’s something that will always protect me.”

“A devil…”

“Perhaps. Un bon diable.”

“Are you starting to speak French?”

“Yes. With my departure to Paris in view… Something that protects me. I firmly believe that life has no hold on me, that I am invulnerable, to anything.”

“You’re getting superstitious.”

“Oh, I already was. Perhaps I’ve become worse. Tell me, have I changed recently?”

“You’re more nervous…”

“Not so indifferent any more?”

“You’re more cheerful, more amusing.”

“Was I boring before?”

“You were quiet. You were always beautiful, wonderful, divine… but rather quiet.”

“Perhaps I cared more about people then.”

“Don’t you care any more?”

“No, not any more. They gossip anyway… But tell me, haven’t I changed in more ways?

“Oh yes… more jealous, more superstitious, more nervous… What more do you want?…”

“Physically… haven’t I changed physically?…”

“No.”

“Haven’t I aged… Aren’t I getting wrinkles?”

“You? Never.”

“Do you know… I think I’ve got a whole future ahead of me… Something completely different…”

“In Paris?”

“Perhaps… Tell me, aren’t I too old?”

“For what?”

“For Paris… How old do you think I am?

“Twenty-five.”

“You’re fibbing: you know perfectly well that I’m thirty-two… Do I look thirty-two?”

“No, no…”

“Tell me, don’t you think the Indies is a rotten country… You’ve never been to Europe, have you?”

“No…”

“I only between the ages of ten and fifteen… Actually you’re a brown colonial and I’m white colonial…”

“I love my country.”

“Yes, because you think you’re some kind of Solo prince. That’s your absurd delusion in Pajaram… I, I hate the Indies… I spit on Labuwangi. I want to get out. I have to go to Paris. Will you come with me?”

“I’d never want to…”

“Not even if you consider that there are hundreds of women in Europe that you’ve never had?…”

He looked at her: something in her words, in her voice made him look up, a deranged, hysterical note, that had never struck him in the past, when she had always been the silently passionate lover, eyes half-closed, who immediately afterwards wanted to forget and become propriety itself. Something in her repelled him: he liked the supple, soft yielding of her embrace, with something indolent and smiling — as she used to be — not these half-crazed eyes and purple mouth, ready to bite. It was as if she could feel it, because she suddenly pushed him away, and said brusquely: “You bore me… I know you inside out. Go away…”

But he didn’t want to; he didn’t like a rendezvous that led nowhere, and he embraced her and asked…

“No,” she said abruptly. “You bore me. Everyone bores me here. Everything bores me…”

On his knees, he grasped her waist and pulled her towards him. She, laughing slightly, gave way a little, running her hand nervously through his hair. A carriage pulled up outside.

“Listen,” she said.

“It’s Mrs Van Does…”

“She’s back very early…”

“I don’t suppose she’s sold anything.”

“Then it’ll cost you ten guilders…”

“I expect so…”

“Do you pay her a lot? For our rendezvous?”

“Oh, what does it matter?…”

“Listen,” he said again, more attentively.

“That’s not Mrs Van Does…”

“No…”

“It’s a man’s footstep…”

“It wasn’t a dos-à-dos either: it rattled far too much.”

“It’s probably nothing…” she said. “Someone who’s got the wrong address. No one will come in here.”

“The man is coming round the back,” she said, listening.

They both listened for a moment. Then suddenly, with two or three steps through the narrow garden and on to the small back veranda, his, Van Oudijck’s figure loomed at the closed glass door, visible through the curtain. He had wrenched the door open before Léonie and Addy could change position, so that Van Oudijck saw the two of them: her, sitting on the divan, him kneeling in front of her with her hand, as if forgotten, still resting on his hair.

“Léonie!” thundered her husband.

The blood coursed and seethed through her veins with the shock of surprise, and in a single moment she saw a whole future: his fury, a divorce, a court case, the money that he would give her, everything jumbled together. But, as if through the force of will-power, the rush of blood immediately subsided and evened out, and she sat calmly, with terror visible in her eyes for only a further moment, until she could direct her steely gaze at Van Oudijck. And pressing Addy’s head with her fingers she signalled to him to stay as he was, kneeling at her feet, and as if in a state of self-hypnosis, listening in astonishment at the sound of her own, slightly hoarse voice:

“Otto… Adrien de Luce is asking me to put in a good word with you… for him… He is asking… for Doddy’s hand…”

She was still the only one speaking. She continued: “He knows that you have some objections. He knows that you are not very fond of his family, because they have Javanese blood… in their veins.”

She spoke as if some other voice were speaking inside her, and she had to smile at the phrase “in their veins”. She did not know why; perhaps it was because it was the first time in her life that she had used it in conversation.

“But,” she went on, “there are no financial objections, if Doddy wants to live at Pajaram… And the young things have known each other… for so long. They were afraid of you…”

Still no one else spoke.

“Doddy’s nerves have been bad for so long, she’s been almost ill. It would be a crime not to give your consent, Otto…”

Gradually her voice became melodious, and the smile appeared around her lips, but her eyes were still steely, as if she were threatening some mysterious wrath if Van Oudijck did not believe her.

“Come…” she said very softly, very sweetly, tapping Addy gently on the head with her still trembling fingers. “Get up… Addy… and… go… to… Papa…”

He got up mechanically.

“Léonie,” said Van Oudijck, hoarsely. “Why were you here?”

She looked up in complete astonishment and gentle sincerity.

“Here? I came to see Mrs Van Does…”

“And him?” said Van Oudijck pointing.

“Him?… He came to see her too… Mrs Van Does had to go out… Then he asked to speak to me… and then he asked me… for Doddy’s hand…”

All three of them were again silent.

“And you, Otto?” she asked, more harshly this time. “What brings you here?”

He looked at her sharply.

“Do you want to buy something from Mrs Van Does?”

“Theo said you were here…”

“Theo was right…”

“Léonie…”

She got up, and with her steely eyes indicated to him that he had to believe, that all she wanted was for him to believe.

“Anyway, Otto,” she said, once more gentle, calm and sweet, “don’t keep Addy waiting for an answer any longer. And you, Addy, don’t be afraid, and ask for Doddy’s hand from Papa… I have… nothing to say about Doddy: I’ve already said it.”

They now stood facing each other in the cramped central gallery, stuffy with their breath and bottled-up feelings.

“Commissioner,” said Addy at that point, “I wish to ask you… for your daughter’s hand…”

A dos-à-dos drew up outside.

“That’s Mrs Van Does,” said Léonie hurriedly. “Otto, say something, before she comes…”

“Very well,” said Van Oudijck gloomily.

Before Mrs Van Does came in, he made his escape round the back, not seeing Addy’s proffered hand. Mrs Van Does came in, shivering, followed by a maid carrying a bundle: her merchandise. She saw Léonie and Addy standing there, stiff, as if in a trance.

“That was the Commissioner’s carriage…” stammered the Indies lady. “Was that the Commissioner?”

“Yes,” said Léonie.

“Good Lord!.. And what happened?”

“Nothing,” continued Léonie, laughing.

“Nothing?”

“There was something…”

“What then?”

“Addy and Doddy are…”

“Are what?”

“Engaged!”

She burst out laughing with a shrill laugh of irrepressible joie de vivre, whirling the flabbergasted Mrs Van Does round, and kicking the bundle out of the maid’s hands, so that a pack of batik-dyed bedspreads and table runners tipped onto the floor and a small jar, full of glistening crystals, rolled out and broke.

“Astaga!.. My diamonds!”

Another exuberant kick and the table runners flew in all directions; the glistening diamonds lay strewn among the table and chair legs. Addy, the terror still in his eyes, was crawling about on his hands and knees collecting them. Mrs Van Does repeated:

“Engaged?”




2


DODDY WAS EXCITED, in seventh heaven, ecstatic, when Van Oudijck told her that Addy had asked for her hand, and when she heard that Mama had spoken on her behalf, she hugged her impulsively, with her spontaneous, mercurial temperament, again surrendering to the attraction that Léonie had exercised over her for so long. Doddy immediately forgot everything that had upset her in the excessive intimacy between Mama and Addy, when he hung over a chair and whispered to Mama. She had never believed what she’d occasionally heard at the time, because Addy had always assured her that it was not true. And she was so happy at the prospect of living with Addy, as man and wife, at Pajaram. Because, for her, Pajaram represented the ideal of domesticity: the big house built next to the sugar factory — full of sons and daughters and children and animals, to whom the same good-naturedness and cordiality and boredom had been handed down, those sons and daughters with their aura of Solo descent — was her ideal dwelling place, and she felt an affinity with all those minor traditions: the sambal pounded and ground by a crouching maid behind her chair at lunch was the acme of gastronomic pleasure; the races at Ngajiwa, attended by the languid procession of all those women flapping their arms by their sides, followed by maids, carrying their handkerchief, perfume bottle, binoculars, was for her the height of elegance; she loved the old Princess dowager, and she had pledged herself to Addy, fully, unreservedly, from the very first moment she had seen him: when she had been a little girl of thirteen, and he a lad of eighteen. Because of him she had always resisted Papa’s attempts to send her to Europe, to a boarding school in Brussels; because of him she had never wanted anything else but Labuwangi, Ngajiwa, Pajaram; because of him she would live and die in Pajaram. Because of him, she had experienced all the minor fits of jealousy when he danced with someone else; all the major fits of jealousy when her girlfriends told her he was in love with so-and-so and going out with someone else; because of him she would always experience those feelings of jealousy big and small, as long as she lived. He would be her life, Pajaram her world, sugar her interest, because it was Addy’s interest. Because of him she would want lots of children, who might be brown — not white like her papa and mama and Theo, but brown because their mother was brown, a faint dusty brown, as opposed to Addy’s beautiful bronze Moorish brown; and, following the example given at Pajaram, her children — her many, many children — would grow up in the shadow of the factory, living from and for sugar and later would plant the fields, and mill sugar cane, and restore the family’s fortunes, so that it would be as resplendent as in the past. And she was as happy as she could possibly conceive of being, seeing her lovelorn girl’s ideal so attainably close: Addy and Pajaram; and not suspecting for a moment how her happiness had come about: through a word spoken almost unconsciously by Léonie, in a moment of self-hypnosis in a crisis. Oh, now she no longer needed to seek out the dark recesses, the dark rice fields with Addy; now she constantly embraced him in the full light of day, sat radiantly close to him, feeling his warm male body that belonged to her and would soon be hers completely; now her adoring gaze was focused on him, for everyone to see, since she no longer had the chaste strength to hide her feelings: now he was hers, now he was hers! And he, with the good-natured resignation of a young sultan, allowed his shoulders and knees to be caressed, let himself be kissed and his hair be stroked, let her put her arm round his neck, accepting everything as a tribute due to him, being used as he was to the tribute of women’s love, cherished and cuddled, ever since he was a chubby little boy, since he was carried by Tijem, his nurse, who adored him — since the time when he frolicked in a smock with his sisters and cousins, who were all in love with him. He received all those tributes good-humouredly, but deep down astonished, shocked by what Léonie had done… And yet, he reasoned, perhaps it might have happened anyway, since Doddy loved him so much… He would have preferred to stay unmarried; as a bachelor he had plenty of family life, while retaining the freedom of giving much love to women out of the goodness of his heart… Naively, it occurred to him even now that it wouldn’t work, would never work, staying faithful to Doddy for long, since he was so good-natured and women were all so crazy. Later Doddy would simply have to get used to that, come to terms with it, and — he remembered — in the palace at Solo it was just the same with his uncles and cousins…

Had Van Oudijck believed them? He did not know himself. Doddy had accused Léonie of being in love with Addy; that morning, when Van Oudijck had asked where Léonie was, Theo had replied tersely:

“At Mrs Van Does’ house… with Addy.”

He had given his son a furious look, but had not asked any more questions: he had just driven straight to Mrs Van Does’ house. He had actually found his wife together with young De Luce, and him at her feet, but she had said so calmly to him:

“Adrien de Luce has asked for your daughter’s hand…”

No, he did not know himself whether he believed her. His wife had answered so calmly, and now, in the first few days after the engagement, she had been as calm and smiling as ever… He now saw for the first time that strange aura of hers, that sense of invulnerability, as if nothing could affect her. Did he suspect behind this ironic woman’s wall of invulnerability her secret, passionate sensuality? It was as if in his later nervous suspicion, in his restless mood, in his phase of superstitious prying and listening to the haunted silence, he had learnt to see things around him to which he had been blind in the tough strength of a dominant and arrogant senior official. And his desire to know for certain the things he guessed at became so intense in his morbid irritability that he became increasingly friendly with his son, but no longer because of spontaneous paternal feeling, which he had always had for Theo, but out of curiosity, to sound him out and make him reveal everything he knew. And Theo, who hated Léonie, who hated his father, who hated Addy and Doddy — in his general hatred of everyone around him, hating life in his obstinate, blond Eurasian way, longing for money and beautiful women, angry that the world, life, fortune, as he imagined them in his petty way, did not seek him out and fall into his lap and take him in their arms — Theo was only too happy to squeeze out his few words like drops of gall, silently rejoicing when he saw his father suffer. Very gradually he let Van Oudijck suspect that it was true about Mama and Addy. Still Van Oudijck couldn’t accept it. In the intimacy between father and son that was born out of suspicion and hatred, Theo mentioned his brother in the native quarter, and said he knew that Papa gave him money. Van Oudijck, no longer sure, no longer knowing what the truth was, admitted that it was possible, admitted it was true. Then, remembering the anonymous letters, which only recently had ceased to arrive since he had sent money to that half-caste who had the presumption to use his name — he also thought of the smears he had so often read in them and at the time had rejected as filth — he thought of the names of his wife and Theo, which were so often linked in them. His distrust and suspicion flared up like an unquenchable fire, burned away all other feelings and thought in him. Until at last he could no longer contain himself and spoke to Theo openly about it. He did not trust Theo’s indignation and denial. And now he no longer trusted anything or anyone. He distrusted his wife and his children, his officials; he distrusted his cook…




3


THEN, LIKE A THUNDERBOLT, the rumour spread around Labuwangi that Van Oudijck and his wife were to divorce. Léonie went to Europe, very suddenly, in fact without anyone knowing or without saying goodbye to anyone. It was a huge scandal in the town, the only topic of conversation, and people talked of it as far away as Surabaya and Batavia. Only Van Oudijck said nothing and, just a little more stooped, he soldiered on, went on working, lived his normal life. Ignoring his own principles, he had helped find Theo a job, in order to be rid of him. And he preferred to have Doddy stay at Pajaram, where the De Luce ladies could help her with her trousseau. He preferred that Doddy should marry soon, and at Pajaram. All he wanted now was solitude in his big, empty house — vast, cheerless solitude. He no longer had the table laid for himself: he was just brought a bowl of rice and a cup of coffee in his office. And he felt ill, his professional enthusiasm waned, and a dull indifference took root in him. The whole brunt of the work, the whole district, fell on Eldersma, and when Eldersma, after not having slept for weeks and at the end of his tether, told the Commissioner that the doctor wanted to send him to Europe on emergency health grounds, Van Oudijck lost all heart. He said that he, too, felt ill, exhausted. And requested leave from the Governor General and went to Batavia. He said nothing about it, but he was certain he would never return to Labuwangi. And he went away quietly, without a backward glance at the scene of his great labours, where he had once created a coherent whole with such devotion. The assistant commissioner in Ngajiwa was entrusted with the administration. It was generally thought that Van Oudijck wished to speak to the Governor General about some important matters, but suddenly news came that he wanted to resign. At first people were sceptical, but the rumour was confirmed. Van Oudijck did not return.

He had gone, without a backward glance, in a strange mood of indifference, an indifference that had gradually infected the very marrow of this once so strong, practical, ageless worker. He felt indifferent towards Labuwangi, which he had once thought he would never have to leave without the greatest homesickness — if he were promoted to commissioner, first class; he felt indifferent towards his family life, which no longer existed. His soul seemed to be gently wilting, weakening, atrophying. He felt as if all his strength were melting away in the lukewarm stagnation of that indifference. In Batavia he vegetated a little in a hotel, and it was generally thought that he would go to Europe.

Eldersma, gravely ill, had already gone, but Eva had not been able to accompany him with her little son, since she had severe malaria. When she had recovered somewhat, she sold up her belongings and planned to go to Batavia and stay with friends for three weeks until her boat sailed. She left Labuwangi with very mixed feelings. She had suffered greatly there, but had also thought a lot, and cherished a deep feeling for Van Helderen — such a pure, glorious feeling — of the kind, it seemed to her, that shone only once in a lifetime. She said goodbye to him as an ordinary friend, in the presence of others, and gave him only a handshake. But that handshake and those banal words of farewell filled her with such melancholy that she had to choke back the sobs. That evening, alone, she did not cry, but stared silently into space for hours. Her husband, ill, had left… she didn’t know how she would find him, or if she would find him at all. Distant Europe — after her years in the Indies — spread its shores in welcome, while its cities, its civilization, its art loomed up — but she was afraid of Europe. An unspoken fear that her intellectual powers had declined, made her almost afraid of her parents’ circle, to which she would return in four weeks’ time. A tremulous anxiety that people would find her colonial in her manners and ideas, in her speech and dress, in the upbringing of her child, made her shy in advance — her, with all her bravura of an elegant, artistic woman. Her piano playing had definitely gone downhill: she would no longer dare play in The Hague. And she thought it would be good to spend a few weeks in Paris to become a little more worldly wise, before presenting herself in The Hague…

But Eldersma was too ill… And her husband, what would they think of him, changed — her fresh-cheeked, Frisian husband, now worn out, exhausted, yellow as parchment, neglectful of his appearance, gloomily complaining whenever he spoke?… Still, a soft vision of the fresh German countryside, Swiss snow, music at Bayreuth, art in Italy gleamed before her eyes, and she saw herself with her sick husband. No longer united in love, but united beneath the yoke of life that they had assumed together… Then there was her child’s upbringing! Oh, to save her child from the Indies! Yet he, Van Helderen, had never been out of the Indies. But he was unique, he was an exception.

She had said goodbye to him… She had to forget him. Europe awaited her, and her husband, and her child…

A few days later she was in Batavia. She scarcely knew the city; years ago she had been there for a few days, when she first came out to the Indies. In Labuwangi, in the outpost of her small district capital, Batavia had gradually become glorified in her imagination to be the great Eurasian capital, the centre of Eurasian civilization: a vague vision of majestic avenues and squares, along which the sumptuous colonnaded villas were arrayed, down which the elegant teams of horses jostled. She had always heard so much about the luxury of Batavia, and was now staying there with friends. He was the manager of a large trading company and their house was one of the loveliest villas on the main square. Very strangely, she had been immediately struck by the funereal atmosphere, the deadly melancholy of that large town full of villas, where thousands of different lives, as if shrouded in silence, rushed towards a future of money and leisure. It was as if all those houses — sombre, proud — despite their white pillars and their grand façades frowned like care-worn faces with a concern that tried to hide behind the show of distinction of the wide-leaved palms. The pillared houses, however transparent, however open they seemed, remained closed; the people were always invisible. Only in the mornings, visiting the shops on Rijswijk and Molenvliet, which, with a scattering of French names, tried to give the impression of an elegant Southern European shopping centre, did Eva see the exodus of white men into town: white in complexion, dressed in white and with an almost blank expression, blank with reflective concern, their distant look focused on the future, which they calculated as a few decades or a few periods of five years: and in such and such a year, having earned such and such, then away from the Indies and to Europe. It was like some fever other than malaria that wore them out, and which they felt wearing out their unacclimatized bodies, their unacclimatized souls, so badly that they would have liked as it were to skip that day and reach the day of tomorrow, the day of the day after tomorrow — days that brought them a little closer to their goal, because they were quietly afraid of dying before that goal was achieved. The exodus filled the trams with their deathly white: many, already well-off but not yet rich enough for their aim, drove in their cabs and buggies to the Harmonie club, and took the tram from there so as not to tire their horses.

In the old town, in the distinguished dwellings of the most prominent Dutch merchants, built in the Dutch style, with oak staircases to the upper floors — now swathed in the thick oppressive heat of the east monsoon, almost tangible and making it difficult to breathe — they bent over their work, constantly glimpsing between their thirsty glances and the white desert of their papers the dewy mirage of that future, the refreshing oasis of their materialistic delusion: within a certain time, a certain amount of money and then away, away… to Europe… And in the villa quarter around the main square, along the green avenues, the women hid, the women remained invisible, all through the long, long day. The hot day passed, the hour of salutary coolness arrived, the period from five-thirty to seven: the men, exhausted, returned to their homes and rested; and the women, tired from their household chores, their children and their insignificant life, tired from the deathly emptiness of their existence, rested next to their husbands. At the time of salutary coolness there was rest, a short rest after bathing, putting on house clothes and taking tea, because seven o’clock was drawing anxiously close — when it would already be dark and one would have to go to a reception. A reception meant dressing up in hot European outfits, it was the dreadful hour of playing along with the salon culture and worldliness, but it also meant meeting so-and-so, and trying to take a step further towards the mirage of the future: money and final rest, in Europe. And after the villa quarter had been sombre under the sun all day, deathly quiet as if deserted — with the men in the old town and the women hidden in their houses — now in the darkness around the main square and along the green avenues a few teams of horses and a few European-looking people, who were going to a reception, came across each other. While around the main square and down the green avenues the other villas persisted in their funereal deathliness, filled with gloomy darkness, the one hosting a reception blazed with lamps among the palms. Apart from that, the deathliness remained everywhere, lingering over the houses where the tired people hid, worn out from work; the women worn out from nothing…

“Wouldn’t you like to go for a bit of a drive, Eva?” asked her hostess, Mrs De Harteman, a Dutch housewife, white as wax, and always tired from her children. “But I’d prefer not to go with you, if you don’t mind: I’d prefer to wait for Harteman. Otherwise he’ll find no one in when he gets home. So you go, with your little boy.”

And Eva, with her little boy, toured in the De Harteman’s carriage. It was the cool time of day. She met two or three other carriages: Mrs So-and-so and Mrs So-and-so, who were known to go for a drive in the afternoons. She saw a gentleman and a lady walking in the main square: that was so-and-so and so-and-so; they always walked, and were well known in Batavia. Apart from that she met no one. No one. At this salubrious hour the villa quarter remained as dead as a ghost town, like one great mausoleum among the greenery. And still, like a refreshing oasis, the main square stretched out like a vast meadow, where the scorched grass was beginning to turn green after the first rains, with houses and their enclosed gardens so far, far away that it was like the countryside, like woodland and fields and meadows, with the wide sky overhead, where the lungs drank in the air, as if for the first time that day they were absorbing oxygen and life: the vast sky each day displayed another riot of hues, an abundance of sunset and a glorious extinction of the blazing-hot day, as if the sun itself were breaking into liquid seas of gold among lilac threats of rain. And it was so wide and splendid, it was such a vast source of reinvigoration that it really was a consolation that day.

Yet no one saw it, apart from the two or three people in Batavia who were known to go for a drive or a walk. Night descended on the purple twilight, casting deep shadows. The town, which had been lifeless all day, with its frown of gloomy reflection, slept, weary and care-worn…

It used to be different, according to old Mrs De Harteman, Eva’s friend’s mother-in-law. They had gone now, the sociable houses with their Indies hospitality, with their hospitable tables, their truly cordial welcome. Because the character of the average colonialist had changed, as if overshadowed by a reverse of fortune, by the disappointment of not reaching his goal quickly, his materialistic goal of self-enrichment. And in that bitterness it seemed that his nervous system also became embittered, just as his soul became gloomy, his body weakened and had no resistance to the crushing climate…

Eva did not find in Batavia the ideal city of Eurasian civilization, as she had imagined it in East Java. In this great centre, concerned with money, lusting for money, all spontaneity had disappeared and life was reduced to eternal drowsy confinement in one’s office or house. People saw each other only at receptions, and apart from that communicated by telephone. The telephone killed all sociability among friends: people no longer saw each other, they no longer needed to dress up or get out of the carriage, since they chatted on the telephone, in sarong and linen jacket, and almost without moving. The telephone was close to hand and the bell was always jangling on the back veranda. People rang each other for no reason at all, just for the pleasure of ringing. Young Mrs De Harteman had a bosom friend, whom she never saw and whom she talked to every day on the telephone for half an hour. She sat down for it, so it didn’t tire her. She laughed and joked with her friend, without having to get dressed and without moving. She did the same with other friends: she paid her visits on the telephone. She ordered her shopping on the telephone. Eva, from her time in Labuwangi not being used to that eternal jangling and telephoning — which killed all conversation on the back veranda by allowing one to hear quite clearly half a conversation but with the reply inaudible to anyone else sitting there, like a constant one-sided rattle — became nervous and retired to her room. In the dreariness of this existence, full of worry and brooding for her husband, interrupted by the telephone chatter of her hostess, it was a surprise for Eva to hear of a special distraction: a bazaar, rehearsals for an amateur opera production. She attended one herself during those weeks and was astonished by the really excellent performance, as if given by those musical amateurs with an energy of despair in order to dispel the boredom of evenings in Batavia… Because the Italian opera had gone, and she had to laugh at the “events” section in the local newspaper, where the only choice was mostly between three or four shareholders’ meetings. Really, Eva felt that Labuwangi had been much livelier. True, she herself had contributed greatly to that liveliness, while Van Oudijck had always encouraged her, happy to make his district headquarters a pleasant, lively little town. She came to the conclusion that she preferred a little community in the provinces after all, with a few cultured, sociable European types — provided they got on together and didn’t squabble too much in close proximity — to pretentious, supercilious and gloomy Batavia. Only among the military was there any life. Only officers’ houses were lit at night. Apart from that, the town was dead on its feet all through the long, hot day, with its frown of worry, its invisible population of people looking to the future: a future of wealth and, even more perhaps, of leisure in Europe.

And she longed to be off. Batavia suffocated her, despite her daily tour around the spacious main square. She had only one more melancholy wish: to say goodbye to Van Oudijck. Very oddly, this elegant and artistic woman had been struck and charmed by his character: that of a simple, practical man. Perhaps, just for an instant, she had felt something for him, deep inside, that contrasted with her friendship for Van Helderen: more an appreciation of his great human qualities than a feeling of platonic spiritual affinity. She had felt sympathetic compassion for him in those weird days of mystery: he all alone in his huge house, with the strange phenomena lurking all around him. She had felt deep sympathy for him when his wife, as it were, throwing away her exalted position, had left in a shameless burst of scandal, with no one knowing precisely why — his wife, at first always extremely correct, despite all her perversion, but gradually so consumed by the cancer of the strange phenomena that she had no longer been able to restrain herself, revealing the innermost depths of her degenerate soul with the utmost indifference. The red spatters of betel juice, spewed by some supernatural agent on to her naked body, had infected her, had eaten their way into her bone marrow, like a decomposition of her soul, to which she might very slowly succumb. The stories about her that were now circulating — about her life in Paris — could only be whispered, unspeakably perverse as they were.

In Batavia, in conversations at receptions, Eva heard about it. When she asked about Van Oudijck, and where he was staying, and whether he would be leaving for Europe soon, after his resignation that was so unexpected — something that had stunned the entire official world — people were not sure, and wondered if he were no longer in Hotel Wisse, where they had seen him living for a few weeks, lying motionless in his chair on the front veranda, as if staring at a single point… He had scarcely gone out at all, he ate in his room and did not go into the restaurant, as if he — the man who had always had to deal with hundreds of people — had become shy. Finally Eva heard that Van Oudijck was living in Bandung. As she had a number of farewell visits to make there, she went to West Java. But there was no sign of him in Bandung: the hotel-keeper was able to tell her that Commissioner Van Oudijck had stayed at his establishment for a few days but had left, and he didn’t know where he’d gone. Until finally, by chance, she heard from a gentleman at table that Van Oudijck was living near Garut. She went to Garut, pleased to be on his trail, and there, at the hotel, they were able to tell her where he lived. She was not sure whether she should write to him first and announce her visit. It was as if she knew intuitively that he would make his excuses and she would not see him again. And on the point of leaving Java, she longed to see him, both out of sympathy and out of curiosity. She wanted to see for herself what had become of him, to get to the bottom of why he had resigned so suddenly and erased such an enviable position in life: a position immediately occupied by someone behind him jostling for advancement, eager for promotion. So very early the next morning, without advance warning, she drove off in a carriage from the hotel; the hotel-keeper had told the coachman directions. She drove a long way, past Lake Lellès, which the coachman pointed out to her: the sacred, gloomy lake with the ancient graves of saints on two islands, while above, like a dark, deathly cloud, there floated a constantly circling swarm of huge black bats, flapping their demonic wings and screeching their despairing wails, circling all the while — a mournful, dizzying contrast to the endless blue sky, the demons, once so shy of the light, had triumphed and no longer shunned the brightness of day, since they obscured it anyway with the shadow of their funereal flight. And it was so frightening: the sacred lake, the sacred tombs and above it, as it were, a swarm of black devils in the deep blue ether, because it was as if something of the mystery of the Indies suddenly revealed itself, no longer concealing itself in a vague blur, but actually visible in the sunlight, causing dismay with its impending victory… Eva shuddered, and as she looked anxiously upwards, it seemed to her as if the black swarm of wings would plummet downwards. Onto her… But the shadow of death between her and the sun only circled vertiginously, high above her head, and only shrieked in despairing triumph… She drove on, and the plain of Lellès stretched green and inviting before her. The moment of revelation had passed: there was nothing more but the green and blue luxuriance of nature on Java; the mystery had already become hidden again among the delicate waving bamboo groves and dissolved in the azure ocean of the sky.

The coachman drove slowly up a steep road. The liquid paddy fields climbed upwards step by step in reflecting terraces, an ethereal green of the carefully planted rice shoots. Then suddenly it was like an avenue of ferns: giant ferns, which rose upwards and fanned out, and big, fabulous butterflies fluttering around. And between the ethereal bamboos a small house became visible, half stone, half woven bamboo, with a garden around it containing a few white pots of roses. A very young woman in a sarong and linen jacket, with a soft golden blush on her cheeks, jet black eyes peering in curiosity, observed the unexpected sight of the very slowly approaching carriage and fled indoors. Eva got out, and coughed. Around a screen in the central gallery she suddenly glimpsed Van Oudijck’s face, peering, He disappeared at once.

“Commissioner!” she called, in her sweetest voice.

But no one came, and she was embarrassed. She did not dare sit down and still she didn’t want to leave. Around the corner of the house peered a small face, two small brown faces of two very young Eurasian girls, and then disappeared again, giggling. In the house Eva could hear whispering, very emotional it seemed, very nervous. “Sidin! Sidin!” she heard them shouting and whispering. She smiled, gaining courage, and walked around to the front veranda. Finally an old woman came, perhaps not so old in years, but old and wrinkled and dull-eyed, in a coloured chintz jacket and shuffling along on slippers and with a few words of Dutch before reverting to Malay, smiling politely she asked Eva to sit down and said that the Commissioner would be there immediately. She also sat down, smiling, and didn’t know what to say, or what to answer when Eva asked her something about the lake. Instead she ordered syrup, and iced water and wafers, and did not talk, but smiled and attended to her guest. When the young girls’ faces peered round the house, the old woman stamped her slippered foot angrily and scolded them, after which they disappeared giggling and raced away to the sound of bare feet. Then the old woman smiled again with her ever-smiling wrinkled mouth and looked in embarrassment at the lady as if apologizing. And it was a long time before Van Oudijck finally arrived. He welcomed Eva effusively, and apologized for keeping her waiting. He had obviously shaved quickly and put on a clean white suit. He was visibly pleased to see her. The old woman, with her eternal apologetic smile, left them. In that first, buoyant moment, Van Oudijck struck Eva as completely his old self, but when he had calmed down and pulled up a chair and asked her if she had news of Eldersma, and when she herself was going to Europe, she saw that he had grown old, become an old man. It didn’t show in his figure, which in his well-starched white suit still retained something of its broad-shouldered military bearing, something rugged, with only the back slightly bowed as if under a burden. But it showed in his face, in the dull, uninterested look, in the deep furrows in the almost pained forehead, the yellowed, parched look of his skin, while his broad moustache around which the jovial lines still played, was completely grey. There was a nervous tremor in his hands. He questioned her about what people had said in Labuwangi, still with some residual curiosity about the people there, about something that had once been so dear to him… She glossed over it all, putting the best face on everything, and was especially careful not to mention any of the rumours: that he had deserted his post, run off, no one knew why.

“And what about you, Commissioner? Will you be returning to Europe soon?”

He stared into space, then he laughed bashfully before replying. And finally, and almost in embarrassment, he said: “No, dear lady, I shan’t be going back. You see, here in the Indies I was once somebody, there I would be nobody. I’m nobody anyway now, but I still feel that the Indies have become my country. The country has taken hold of me and now I belong to it. I no longer belong to Holland, and there’s nothing and no one in Holland that belongs to me. I may be burnt out, but I’d still prefer to drag out the rest of my existence here than there. In Holland I wouldn’t be able to face the climate or the people any more. Here I like the climate and I’ve withdrawn from people. I was able to do a last favour for Theo, Doddy is married, and the two boys are going to Europe for their education…”

He suddenly bent over towards her and, in a different voice, he almost whispered, as if about to make a confession: “You see… if everything had happened normally… then… I wouldn’t have acted as I did. I’ve always been a practical man and I was proud of it, and I was proud of normal life: my own life, which I lived according to principles that I thought were right, until I had attained a high position in the world. That’s what I always did, and things went well for me. I had a charmed life. While others fretted about promotion, I leap-frogged five at a time. It was all plain sailing for me, at least in my career. In my personal life I’ve never been happy, but I’m not the kind of weakling to pine away from grief because of that. There is so much for a man to do besides his family life. And yet I was always very fond of my family. I don’t think it’s my fault that things happened as they did. I loved my wife, I loved my children, I loved my house: my home life, where I was husband and father. But that feeling in me was never fully satisfied. My first wife was a Eurasian, whom I married for love. Because she failed to get me under her thumb with her whims, our marriage didn’t work after a few years. I think I was even more in love with my second wife than with my first: I’m a simple man when it comes to these things… but I’ve never been granted a loving family existence: a loving wife, children who clamber on to your lap and grow up into people, people who owe you their lives, their existence, actually everything they have and are… I should have liked to have had that…”

He paused for a moment, and then continued, more secretively, in even more of a whisper: “But what… you see… what happened… I’ve never understood, and that’s what’s brought me to this… That, all of that went against, conflicted with life and practical sense and logic… all that”—he banged his fist on the table—“all that bloody nonsense, which still, which happened anyway… that’s what did it. I stood up to it, but I lacked the strength. It was something that nothing was strong enough to counter… I know, of course, it was the Prince. When I threatened him, it stopped… But my God, dear lady, what was it? Do you know? You don’t, do you? No one, no one knew, and no one knows. Those terrible nights, those inexplicable noises above my head; that night in the bathroom with the Major and the other officers… It really wasn’t an illusion: we saw it, we heard it, we felt it. It pounced on us, it spat at us: the whole bathroom was full of it! It’s easy for other people who didn’t experience it to deny it. But I — all of us — we saw it, heard it, felt it… And none of us knew what it was… Since then I have felt it constantly. It was all around me, in the air, under my feet… You see, that… and that alone,” he whispered softly, “is what did it. That’s what meant I could no longer stay there. That’s why I seemed to be dumbstruck, reduced to idiocy — in ordinary life, in all my practical sense and logic, which suddenly seemed to me a wrongly constructed philosophy of life, the most abstract reflection — because, cutting across it, things from another world manifested themselves, things that escaped me, and everyone. That alone is what did it. I was no longer myself. I no longer knew what I thought, what I was doing, what I had done. Everything was thrown off balance. That wretched creature in the native quarter… he’s no child of mine: I’d stake my life on that. And I… I believed it. I had money sent to him. Tell me, can you understand me? I’m sure you can’t, can you? It’s incomprehensible, that strange, alien sensation, if one has not experienced it oneself, in one’s flesh and blood, until it penetrates your bone marrow…”

“I think I’ve sometimes felt it too,” she whispered. “When I walked with Van Helderen along the seashore, and the sky was so distant, the night so deep, or when the rains came rushing from so far away and then descended… or when the nights, deathly quiet and yet so brimful of sound, trembled around you, always with a music that could not be grasped and scarcely heard… Or simply when I looked into the eyes of a Javanese, when I talked to my maid and it was as if nothing I said got through to her, or as if her answer concealed her real, secret answer…”

“That’s something different,” he said. “I don’t understand that: I personally knew the Javanese. But perhaps every European feels that in a different way, depending on his predisposition, and his nature. For one person it is the antipathy that he felt from the beginning in this country, which attacks the weak spot in his materialism and goes on fighting him… while the country itself is so full of poetry and… mystery… I’d almost say. For another person it’s the climate, or the character of the natives, or what have you, that are hostile and incomprehensible. For me… it was facts I could not fathom… at least that was how it seemed to me. Then it seemed as if I didn’t understand anything any more… That was how I became a bad official, and then I realized that the game was up. So I quite calmly packed it in, and now I’m here, and here’s where I’ll stay. And do you know a funny thing? Here I may at last… have found the family life I want…”

The little brown faces peered round the corner. And he called to them, beckoned to then with a kind, expansive, paternal gesture. But they charged off again, their bare feet pattering. He laughed.

“They’re very shy, the little monkeys,” he said. They’re Lena’s sisters and the woman you’ve seen is her mother.”

He paused for a moment, quite simply, as though she would realize who Lena was: the very young woman with a gold blush on her cheeks and jet-black eyes, whom she had seen in a flash.

“And then there are young brothers, who have to go to school in Garut. You see, that’s my family now. When I met Lena, I took responsibility for the whole family. It costs me a lot of money, because I have my first wife in Batavia, my second in Paris, and René and Ricus in Holland. That all costs money, and here there’s my new “family”. But at least I have a family… It’s all very Indies, you may say: an informal Indies marriage with the daughter of a coffee-plantation foreman, and on top of that the old woman and little brothers and sisters. But I’m doing some good. These people were penniless and I’m helping them, and Lena is a sweet child, the consolation of my old age. I can’t live without a woman, and so it happened more or less by itself… And it’s fine like this: I vegetate here and drink good coffee and they look after the old man very well…”

He fell silent, and then continued: “And you… you’re going to Europe? Poor Eldersma, I hope he’ll soon recover… It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I made him work far too hard. But that’s how it is in the Indies, dear lady. We all work hard here, until we stop working. And you’re leaving… in just a week? How happy you’ll be to see your parents and listen to beautiful music. I’m still grateful to you. You did a lot for us, you were the poetry in Labuwangi. The poor Indies… how people curse them. The country can’t help the fact that we barbarians invaded it, conquerors whose only wish was to grow rich and then be off… And if they don’t get rich… they curse: the heat that God bestowed on it from the outset… the lack of sustenance for the soul and the mind… the soul and mind of the barbarian. The poor country that has been cursed so much will probably think: if only you’d stayed away! And you… you didn’t like the Indies.”

“I tried to grasp their poetry, and now and then I succeeded. Apart from that… everything is my fault, Commissioner, and not the fault of this beautiful country. And like your barbarian… I should not have come here. All the depression, all the melancholy I suffered here in this beautiful land of mystery… is my fault. I’m not cursing the Indies, Commissioner.”

He took her hand, moved almost to tears by what she had said.

“Thank you for that,” he said softly. “Those words are yours: your own words, the words of an intelligent, cultured woman — not like a stupid Dutchman who lashes out because he has not found here exactly what corresponded to his ideal. I know your nature suffered greatly here. That’s inevitable. But… it was not the fault of the country.”

“It was my own fault, Commissioner,” she repeated, with her soft voice and smile.

He thought she was adorable. The fact that she did not burst into imprecations or break into exalted language because she was leaving Java in a few days, was a tonic to him. And when she got up and said that it was time she should be going, he felt a deep melancholy.

“And so I’ll never see you again?”

“I don’t think we’ll be coming back.”

“So it’s goodbye for ever?”

“Perhaps we’ll see you again, in Europe…”

He waved his hand dismissively.

“I’m deeply grateful that you came to pay the old man a visit. I’ll drive back to Garut with you…”

He called inside, where the women were hiding out of sight, and where the little sisters were giggling, and he got into the carriage with her. They drove down the avenue of ferns and suddenly they saw the sacred lake of Lellès, overshadowed by the vertiginous circling of the constantly gliding bats.

“Commissioner,” she said. “I feel it here…”

He smiled.

“They’re just bats,” he said.

“But in Labuwangi… it might have been just a rat…”

He frowned for a moment. Then he smiled again — the jovial line appeared around his broad moustache — and he looked up with curiosity.

“Hmm,” he said softly. “Really? You feel it here?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t… It’s different with everyone.”

The giant bats gave a shrill despairing call of triumph. The carriage drove on, and passed a small railway halt. In the normally deserted landscape it was strange to see a whole population of motley Sundanese flocking around the small station, eagerly awaiting a slow train that was approaching among the bamboos, belching black smoke. All their eyes were staring crazily as if they were expecting salvation from the first glimpse, as though the first impression they received would be a spiritual treasure.

“That’s a train bringing hajis,” said Van Oudijck. “All newly returned from Mecca.”

The train stopped, and from the long third-class carriages, solemnly, slowly, full of piety and aware of their worth, the pilgrims alighted, heads in rich yellow and white turbans, eyes gleaming proudly, lips pressed together superciliously, in shiny new jackets, golden-yellow and purple cloaks, which fell in stately folds almost to their feet. Buzzing with rapture, sometimes with a mounting cry of suppressed ecstasy, the throng pressed closer and stormed the exits of the long carriages… The pilgrims alighted solemnly. Their brothers and friends vied with each other in grabbing their hands, the hems of their golden-yellow and purple cloaks, and kissed their sacred hands, their holy garment, because it brought them something from holy Mecca. They fought and jostled around the pilgrims to be the first one to kiss them. And the pilgrims, contemptuous and self-confident, seemed not to see the struggle, and were superior, calm, solemn and dignified amid the fighting, amid the surging and buzzing throng, and surrendered their hands to them, surrendered the hems of their tunics to the fanatical kiss of anyone who came near.

It was strange in this country of deeply secret slumbering mystery, to see arising in this Javanese people — who as always cloaked themselves in the mystery of their impenetrable soul — an ecstatic passion, repressed and yet visible, to see the fixed stares of drunken fanaticism, to see part of their impenetrable soul revealing itself in their adulation of those who had seen the tomb of the Prophet, to hear the soft throb of religious rapture, to hear a shrill, sudden, unexpected, irrepressible cry of glory, which immediately died away, melted into the buzz, as if frightened of itself, since the sacred moment had not yet arrived…

On the road behind the station Van Oudijck and Eva, making slow progress because of the bustling crowd — which was still surrounding the pilgrims with its buzz, respectfully carrying their luggage, obsequiously offering their carts — suddenly looked at each other, and though neither of them wanted to put it into words, they said it to each other with a look of understanding, that they both felt it — both of them, simul taneously, there amid that fanatical throng — felt It, That.

They both felt it, the ineffable: what is hidden in the ground, what hisses beneath the volcanoes, what wafts in on the distant winds, what rushes in with the rain, what rumbles in with the deeply rolling thunder, what floats in from the wide horizon over the endless sea, what looks out from the black secret eye of the inscrutable native, what creeps into his heart and squats in his humble respect, what gnaws like a poison and an enmity at the body, soul and life of the European, what silently resists the conqueror and wears him down and makes him languish and die, if not immediately die a tragic death: they both felt it, the Ineffable…

In feeling it, together with the melancholy of their impending farewell, they did not see among the swaying, surging, buzzing throng that pushed along, apparently respectfully, the yellow and purple dignitaries — the pilgrims returning from Mecca — they did not see one large white figure rise above the throng and leer at the man who, however he had lived his life in Java, had been weaker than That…

Pasuruan — Batavia

October 1899—February 1900




TRANSLATOR’S NOTE


The first English translation of Couperus’s novel appeared in London in 1922 and was followed by an American edition in 1924. The translator was Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (1865–1921), a naturalized Englishman of Dutch extraction, who knew the author and translated several of his best-known works.

In 1985, for the scholarly Library of the Indies series published by the University of Massachusetts Press, the editor, E.M. Beekman, produced a revised, extensively annotated version. Most of Teixeira’s text is retained on the grounds of its “congruence of tone with the original” (p. 40), but a number of slips are corrected, the confusing British Raj-linked terms of address “sahib” and “memsahib” are abandoned and a number of suppressed, sexually explicit passages restored. A full glossary of Malay terms is provided. Readers requiring a fuller historical, political and ethnic background to the story are referred to Beekman’s very useful edition. However, for all its many virtues this is a compromise translation, in which the language of 1900 occasionally jars with contemporary (American) idiom, while the plethora of Malay terms slows today’s reader down, without, in my view adding greatly to the immediacy or impact of the narrative.

In this translation I have chosen not to annotate, but to explain terms in the body of the text on first occurrence. Two important Dutch official titles have been paraphrased: “resident” (potentially misleading in English) as “(district) commissioner”, and “regent”, denoting a hereditary Javanese noble employed by the colonial authorities to assist the commissioner, as “prince”. For the sake of consistency, “Eurasian” is used throughout to refer to mixed-race individuals, and “Creole” to designate those of European ancestry brought up and resident in the Indies. Current Indonesian spelling has been used throughout for Malay words, titles and place names. Historical geographical names associated with Dutch colonial rule, like Batavia and Buitenzorg, have been retained in preference to their modern equivalents, Jakarta and Kota Bogor, respectively.

The Dutch text used is that of the critical reading edition in volume 17 of K. Reijnders et al., eds, Louis Couperus. Volledige Werken, 50 vols (Utrecht/Antwerp: Veen, 1987–96).

P.V.




AFTERWORD


In 1900, when The Hidden Force was first published, Holland ruled the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. In 1899, the sultans of Aceh had been defeated and the whole island of Sumatra brought under Dutch rule. The smaller islands, such as Lombok, the Moluccas and the Lesser Sunda Islands, were subjugated in the 1880s and 1890s. And Java already had been colonized for some time before that.

As it turned out, complete Dutch control over its Asian colony was only to last for about fifty years. But of course nobody could have known that in 1900. To the Dutch governors, planters, businessmen, administrators, police officers, scholars, geographers, soldiers, bankers, travellers, railway engineers, schoolteachers, and their wives, 1900 must have felt like the best of times.

It was also just then, at the very peak of Dutch colonial power, that an idea of nationhood began to emerge among native intellectuals. A Javanese feminist, Radèn-ayeng Kartini, advocated education for women. And, in 1908, her friend Dr Sudara founded the Budi Utomo, the first nationalist association, inspired by the example of Mahatma Gandhi. National independence was not their immediate aim. They wanted a bigger say in the way they were governed. And there was growing sympathy for this view in the Netherlands. The “liberal” policy, which meant the liberty of Dutch planters to exploit the colonies as they saw fit, was replaced by the “ethical” policy, which took a fuller account of native interests. But full independence would only come after the Second World War, during which the Japanese shook the foundations of European rule by showing the white imperialist, so to speak, without clothes.

In fact, the Europeans always were vulnerable. Colonial rule, in Indonesia as well as, say, India, had to be based to some extent on bluff; the idea of European supremacy had to seem natural, and for it to appear that way the Europeans themselves, as much as the native populations under their control, had to believe it to be so. As soon as the colonialists lost faith in their natural right to rule — a loss which Nirad C. Chaudhuri, speaking of the British in India, once memorably characterized as “funk”—the colonial edifice, built over time, often haphazardly, would begin to rot, slowly, at first imperceptibly, but relentlessly, until the whole thing came toppling down. Perhaps it is so with all authoritarian systems. Loss of nerve was certainly a factor in the collapse of the Soviet empire. So perhaps Mountbatten and Gorbachev had something in common.

But in the Dutch East Indies in 1900, I suspect, only a sensitive novelist, passing through, would have been able to pick up the smell of decay, or, at any rate, to put that smell into words. Louis Couperus was such a novelist. And The Hidden Force, written during a year-long stay in the East Indies, is one of the masterpieces to come from the colonial experience. It is still regarded in the Netherlands as a great book. Couperus was very famous in Britain and the US as well, during his lifetime: fifteen of his books were translated; Katherine Mansfield and Oscar Wilde were among his admirers. But he has been largely forgotten outside Holland. I don’t know why. Couperus’s precious, elaborate, sometimes quite bizarre prose seems less dated in English than in the original Dutch. The reason may be that the Dutch language has changed far more than English has since 1900.

The Hidden Force is a story of decay, fear and disillusion. It takes place in Labuwangi, an imaginary region of Java. The writer’s vision of Dutch colonialism is that of a solid Dutch house, slowly crumbling in hostile, alien soil. The Dutch characters — even Van Oudijck, the chief local administrator, or district commissioner, of Labuwangi, initially so “practical, cool-headed, decisive from the long-term exercise of authority”—are defeated by the hidden forces of the land they rule. The nature of these hidden, or silent, forces is indistinct. It is not quite black magic, associated with Javanese mysticism, although that plays a part. Couperus, a Romantic of his time, believed in supernatural forces. He is quoted in E.M. Beekman’s illuminating introduction to his edition (see Translator’s Note): “I believe that benevolent and hostile forces float around us, right through our ordinary, everyday existence; I believe that the Oriental, no matter where he comes from, can command more power over these forces than the Westerner who is absorbed by his sobriety, business and making money.”

One character in the novel who commands such power (but power over little else) is Prince Sunario, the native aristocrat whose family had ruled the region for centuries. Van Oudijck detests him. Sunario is the heir to a long line of local sultans. The Dutch administration kept these nobles on as vassal rulers with colourful ceremonial trappings, and some administrative duties, such as tax-collecting. Van Oudijck, an “ethical” administrator, respected Sunario’s father, a Javanese of the old school, but sees Sunario as “degenerate, a demented Javanese dandy”, a “mystery, that wayang shadow puppet”, gambling and indulging in native hocus-pocus. Sunario, for his part, views the Dutchman as a crude, base, foreign infidel, who has no business upsetting the sacred bonds and privileges of ancient aristocratic rule.

Couperus, in this book at least, is in no way an apologist for colonial rule. Quite the contrary. His descriptions of Van Oudijck’s priggish love of order, hard facts and hard work, and the same man’s patronizing view of natives and contempt for half-castes, so typical of Dutch colonial administrators, are full of mocking irony. Van Oudijck’s disdain for the Eurasians is not always personal. His first wife had Javanese blood, and he loves his two children, even though his daughter, Doddy, looks and speaks like a typical Indo-European. It was the idea of the “Indo” that Van Oudijck cannot abide — the idea of something less than pure. Van Helderen, a Creole born in the Indies, warns the Dutch wife of a civil servant that the native population, “oppressed by a disdainful overlord”, is likely to revolt at some point. He sounds remarkably prophetic. She, Eva Eldersma — a bored, artistic Dutch woman trapped in the colonial life — had sensed something foreboding in the air. She thinks it is the strangeness of the landscape, the climate, the people, whom she doesn’t understand. And he says to her: “You, being an artist, feel the danger approaching, vaguely, like a cloud, in the air, in the tropical night; I see a very real danger arising — for Holland — if not from America and Japan, then from the soil of this land itself.”

There is no doubt that Couperus felt the danger on his travels through Java. And remember, this was written when Dutch power was unassailable. But Couperus was not a prophet. So a vague sense of unease, of something being out of kilter, must have been palpable. There must have been a feeling, among at least some of the Dutch, of walking on treacherous ground, which could suck you in, however sturdy your big Dutch boots might be. To describe this feeling as guilt would be wrong and anachronistic. It might have been closer to a sense that the Europeans had bitten off more than they could chew, or a nagging awareness of the hollowness

of their bluff. Van Oudijck resists such feelings until near the end of the book, when he, too, is defeated by the silent forces of the East, forces manipulated, perhaps, by his opponent, the puppet-like Sunario. The struggle between the two men is a struggle between two types of power: one is supposedly rational, open, bureaucratic; the other is magical, shadowy, mysterious. The hidden force of Sunario is associated with the night, with moonlight, while the power of the District Commissioner is exercised mainly in daylight. As Beekman points out in his introduction, the District Commssioner’s ceremonial sunshade, or pajong, is often described as a “furled sun”.

One is reminded of V.S. Naipaul’s descriptions of Trinidad, where the black plantation slaves would turn the world upside down at night. Then, hidden by the dark, they would call up half-forgotten remnants of African magic to transform their abject existence as slaves into a glorious parallel world of kings and queens. Naipaul describes this as a pathetic fantasy, and Couperus writes about the hidden force as something quite real. But both writers, like Conrad, are sensitive to the horror that lies behind it.

The conflict between Van Oudijck and Sunario comes to a head when the behaviour of Sunario’s brother becomes impossible. He gambles and drinks, and instead of efficiently carrying on his tax-collecting and other duties, steals money from the treasury to pay his debts. The District Commissioner decides to take the unprecedented step of dismissing him, which would mean a frightful loss of face for an ancient noble family. The Prince’s mother, a princess, is so outraged that she throws herself at the District Commissioner’s feet and offers to be his slave, if he could only forgive her son. But Van Oudijck stands firm. He cannot afford to compromise. Principle is principle. A decision, once taken, must not be revoked. For he “was a man with a lucid, logical, simple, male sense of duty, a man of the clear, simple life. He would never know the forces lurking beneath the simple life and together constituting the almighty silent force. He would have scoffed at the suggestion that there are peoples who have more control of that force than Westerners.”

Then horrible things start to happen. The District Commissioner’s young wife, Léonie, as promiscuous as she is narcissistic, finds herself being spat on with blood-red sirih (betel juice), apparently from nowhere, as she stands naked in her bath. (Couperus’s description of slimy splatters dribbling down her breasts, her belly and her buttocks shocked his Dutch readers; in the original English translation such passages were bowdlerized.) Malevolent spirits stalk the district commissioner’s mansion. Stones sail through the rooms. Sinister figures in white turbans appear and disappear, like ghosts. Glasses shatter, whisky turns yellow. The District Commissioner’s family leaves the haunted mansion in terror. Even his servants flee from the house. But the District Commissioner stays put, working on his papers, ignoring the noises, the broken glass, the soiled beds, the hammering overhead. He has these disturbing events investigated, “as punctiliously as he would have done in a criminal case, and nothing came to light”.

The District Commissioner and the Prince come to a kind of agreement in the end — what agreement, the reader never knows — and the torments stop, but, like Dutch supremacy itself, the District Commissioner’s authority begins to disintegrate even as it reaches its peak. And, again as was the case with the Dutch colonialists, the subversion, the fatal loss of nerve, occurs inside the ruler’s own heart.

Van Oudijck had ignored his wife’s sexual adventures, even though everyone else knew about them. He had been blind to her affairs with his half-caste son — her stepson — and with a handsome Eurasian boy called Addy, even though regular hate mail pointed these things out to him. He had not been aware of the jealousies that soured the air in his residency. But, now, suddenly, after he had resisted the hidden forces through sheer force of will, the tropical poison began to sap his spirit too. For the first time in his life the District Commissioner felt the pangs of hatred and jealousy and he became superstitious, too, “believing in a hidden force, hidden he knew not where, in the Indies, in the soil of the Indies, in a deep mystery, somewhere, somewhere — a force that meant him no good, because he was a European, a ruler, a stranger on this mysterious, sacred shore”. The moonlit Javanese night had exacted its revenge.

The Hidden Force opens an interesting and fresh angle on the idea of Orientalism. For Couperus made use of all the symbols that became the clichés of East and West, which Edward Said has identified with colonial apologetics: the East representing the passive female principle (the moon), and the West the vitality of the sun; the West being modern, rational, logical, industrious, creative, idealistic, and the East mysterious, mystical, torpid, sensual, irrational. And so on. But far from using these images of Occident and Orient to justify colonialism, Couperus shows the futility of European rule. For the hidden force of the East will vanquish the West, with all its rational pretensions.

More than that, The Hidden Force suggests that it is desirable that the East should do so. Van Oudijck’s spiritual defeat is also a small triumph of enlightenment. He loses the attributes that made him into the perfect Dutch administrator, to be sure. Where he had been stern and decisive before, “now he developed a tendency to pour oil in troubled waters, to make excuses, no longer to be so unbending and severe, and to blur and tone down everything that was black and white”. His vitality is gone. His skin turns sallow. In short, he shows the danger-signs of giving in to the torpor of the East, of “going native”. This happens, quite literally, at the end of the book, when Eva Eldersma, the artistic Dutch woman, goes to say goodbye to him before leaving for Europe — she, too, has been defeated; she will never come back. She finds Van Oudijck living in a native village, or kampong, in a situation that is “all very Indies”. He has found a kind of happiness there, living with a native woman and her extended family. He has lost his principles, but he has gained an insight, for his principles no longer blind him to reality. He has accepted the Indies for what it is.

The European dread of going native, which Couperus describes so beautifully, was a fear on two fronts: a political and a sexual one. Both are, of course, linked. We laugh now at the image of Englishmen and Dutchmen in the jungle or the bush, dressing up for formal dinners in the tropical heat. But there was a real purpose to this. For the stiff suit was one of the necessary caste marks to impress their subjects, as well as themselves, of the Europeans’ natural right to rule. Letting go of European proprieties, or “principles”, was a step towards letting go of power. In colonial households (Eva Eldersma’s for instance), it “was always a battle, not to go under in the temptation to let yourself go, to let the grounds that were too big become overgrown…” When Eva’s husband is too hot and tired to dress for dinner in a black jacket and stiff collar, she “found it dreadful, unspeakably awful…”

No wonder the Europeans felt horribly humiliated when, dressed in rags, they were forced to bow to Japanese guards in Second World War concentration camps. The Japanese knew perfectly well what they were doing. Like the black slaves in Trinidad, they turned everything upside down, except that this was for real. As the Dutch writer Rudy Kousbroek, himself a former prisoner of the Japanese, has pointed out, the most common expression among the Dutch survivors was: “We were treated like coolies”—that is to say, much like the way the Dutch treated many of their colonial subjects.

Then there was the sex. People forget what a sexual, even sexy enterprise colonialism was. And I don’t mean just metaphorically, in the sense of the virile West penetrating the passive, feminine East. (The idea, by the way, of Asia as the temple of Venus, and all her temptations, is as old as the ancient Greeks.) Colonial life was quite literally drenched in sex. White men would enter the kampongs and take their pleasure with native girls for a few coins, or even for nothing, if the men were cheap and caddish enough. Europeans enjoyed the droit de seigneur in the kampong, and anyway, native women and half-castes were supposed to be unusually highly sexed. They still had this reputation when Eurasians moved to Holland in the 1940s and 1950s, usually to settle in The Hague, where I grew up. Girls of Indonesian or mixed-race extraction at my school were all supposed to be “hot”. And the languid boredom of colonial life encouraged endless wife-swapping affairs among the Europeans as well.

Casual tropical sex is personified in The Hidden Force by Léonie, the District Commissioner’s wife, and her Indo lover, Addy de Luce. Both live for seduction. Neither of them has anything but sex on the brain. They are born voluptuaries. Léonie loves Addy. Indeed every woman and girl loves him, with “his handsome, slim, animal quality and the glow of his seducer’s eyes in the shadowy brown of his young Moor’s face, the curling swell of his lips, made just for kissing, with the young down of his moustache; the tigerish strength and suppleness of his Don Juan’s limbs…”

The European fear of letting go, of being “corrupted”, of going native, was to a large extent, I suspect, the northern puritan’s fear of his (or her) own sexuality. If Couperus had shared this fear, his book would have been another Victorian morality tale. But he is not a puritan at all. He doesn’t judge his characters harshly, not even the voracious hare-brain Léonie. Indeed, one feels that he himself would have fancied Addy. A dandy, a homosexual, and a Romantic, Couperus understood the sensuality of colonial life perfectly. He was attracted to the sun — in the Mediterranean, as well as in the East — for just that reason. He cultivated the image of torrid indolence. His rooms in Europe would be heated to a tropical temperature, as though he were an orchid, and he pretended to spend most of his time dreaming. In truth, of course, like Noel Coward, who affected a similar pose, he worked very hard. But with his carefully tended, over-refined sensibility he might have seemed more in sympathy with Sunario, the “degenerate[…] Javanese”, than with Van Oudijck.

Couperus’s readings from his work were legendary. He would complain if the flowers on stage weren’t exactly right. He did not read his prose so much as declaim it, in his high-pitched theatrical voice, like a male Sarah Bernhardt. My grandmother once attended one of these performances in a provincial Dutch town. She remembered how Couperus not only had the flower arrangement changed after the intermission, but how he had changed his socks and tie to ones of a slightly different shade of grey.

And yet Couperus, however rarefied his tastes, did not try to identify himself with the Javanese. He was born in the Dutch East Indies, where his father was a colonial official, but he remained completely European. He describes Sunario from the same ironic distance as he does Van Oudijck. If Couperus felt close to any group in particular it was with those who were neither one thing nor the other: the Eurasians. Both Van Oudijck and Sunario are pure in their ways, the principled, full-blooded Dutchman, or totok, and the refined, pure-blooded Javanese; and that, in Couperus’s eyes, was precisely what was wrong with them. For Couperus celebrated the ambiguity he himself personified: a Dutchman born in the Indies, a homosexual who was married to a devoted wife, a master of the Dutch language but an exotic outsider in Holland—“an orchid among onions” as one of his obituarists called him.

The only characters in The Hidden Force who are entirely at ease with themselves, despite their European pretensions, are the Indos: Addy and his extended family, or Van Oudijck’s daughter, Doddy. They appear to have the best of both worlds. But I suspect this is more a reflection of Couperus’s sympathies than real life. For in fact the Eurasians probably had the worst of all worlds. They were legally Europeans, but they ranked low in a society obsessed by race and colour. Some hardly spoke Dutch; others, like Van Helderen, who prophesied the native rebellion, spoke it almost too precisely. Like Van Oudijck, most totoks respected the Javanese as a civilized race, perhaps more civilized in their way than the Europeans, but despised the Indos. They were commonly regarded by the Dutch as lazy and stupid, as well as oversexed. People made fun of their efforts to speak proper Dutch. Even Couperus has some fun with this — something that tends to be lost in translation. The Indos overcompensated by disdaining the natives, as though this would make the Dutch accept them as equals. In fact, of course, it just made them seem more despicable. Rudy Kousbroek, who has written brilliantly about this extraordinary social geography, described his native Dutch East Indies thus:

Our tropical paradise was a madhouse, whose people looked down on one another in ways that no outsider could ever fathom. It was a factory of inferiority complexes, which produced all manner of contorted behaviour that still has not entirely disappeared.

The fusion between Dutch and East Indian never took, culturally or politically, except in some individual instances of people highly educated in both cultures. Yet it is that blend, that ambiguity, if you like, that state of having the best of both worlds, which many Dutch writers born in the East, including Couperus and Kousbroek, have yearned for. This can result in mawkish regret. But the best of these writers came to see that their dream was bound to fail, as long as one side had its boot at the neck of the other. It would not work, no matter how well-meaning or idealistic the rulers might be. Of course, many rulers were neither. Van Oudijck was both, which is why he couldn’t understand why his native subjects hated him: “There was no logic in it. Logically, he should be loved, not hated, however strict and authoritarian he might be considered. Indeed, did he not often temper his strictness with the jovial laugh under his thick moustache, with a friendly, genial warning and exhortation?”

His insight into the tragedy of European colonialism made Couperus a great writer. And his sympathy for the hybrid, the impure, the ambiguous, gave him a peculiarly modern voice. It is extraordinary that this Dutch dandy, writing in the flowery language of fin-de-siècle decadence, should still sound so fresh. But we can only be grateful. For now that the dreams of ethnic purity are making a comeback, his voice is more urgent than ever.

IAN BURUMA