The Hidden Force

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.