The Hidden Force

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…