The Hidden Force

1

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

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

Léonie entered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do we do that?”

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

“You tease her, too.”

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

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

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

She laughed disparagingly.

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

“Where will she go?”

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

He took her in his arms.

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

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

“You mustn’t be angry any more…”

“Oh yes I must… I hate Doddy.”

“The poor child has done you no harm.”

“That’s as may be…”

“You, on the other hand, tease her.”

“Because I hate her…”

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

She laughed loudly.

“No! That’s not in my nature.”

“Why then?”

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

“Are you as bad as you’re beautiful?”

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

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

Again she laughed aloud.

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

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

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

“Do I bore you, too?”

“You?”

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

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

He laughed.

“You’re getting jealous!” he exclaimed.

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

“A devil…”

“Perhaps. Un bon diable.”

“Are you starting to speak French?”

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

“You’re getting superstitious.”

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

“You’re more nervous…”

“Not so indifferent any more?”

“You’re more cheerful, more amusing.”

“Was I boring before?”

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

“Perhaps I cared more about people then.”

“Don’t you care any more?”

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

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

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

“No.”

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

“You? Never.”

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

“In Paris?”

“Perhaps… Tell me, aren’t I too old?”

“For what?”

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

“Twenty-five.”

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

“No, no…”

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

“No…”

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

“I love my country.”

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

“I’d never want to…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Listen,” she said.

“It’s Mrs Van Does…”

“She’s back very early…”

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

“Then it’ll cost you ten guilders…”

“I expect so…”

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

“Oh, what does it matter?…”

“Listen,” he said again, more attentively.

“That’s not Mrs Van Does…”

“No…”

“It’s a man’s footstep…”

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

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

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

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

“Léonie!” thundered her husband.

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

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

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

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

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

Still no one else spoke.

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

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

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

He got up mechanically.

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

She looked up in complete astonishment and gentle sincerity.

“Here? I came to see Mrs Van Does…”

“And him?” said Van Oudijck pointing.

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

All three of them were again silent.

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

He looked at her sharply.

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

“Theo said you were here…”

“Theo was right…”

“Léonie…”

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

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

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

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

A dos-à-dos drew up outside.

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

“Very well,” said Van Oudijck gloomily.

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

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

“Yes,” said Léonie.

“Good Lord!.. And what happened?”

“Nothing,” continued Léonie, laughing.

“Nothing?”

“There was something…”

“What then?”

“Addy and Doddy are…”

“Are what?”

“Engaged!”

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

“Astaga!.. My diamonds!”

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

“Engaged?”

2

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

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

“At Mrs Van Does’ house… with Addy.”

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

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

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

3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Eva, with her little boy, toured in the De Harteman’s carriage. It was the cool time of day. She met two or three other carriages: Mrs So-and-so and Mrs So-and-so, who were known to go for a drive in the afternoons. She saw a gentleman and a lady walking in the main square: that was so-and-so and so-and-so; they always walked, and were well known in Batavia. Apart from that she met no one. No one. At this salubrious hour the villa quarter remained as dead as a ghost town, like one great mausoleum among the greenery. And still, like a refreshing oasis, the main square stretched out like a vast meadow, where the scorched grass was beginning to turn green after the first rains, with houses and their enclosed gardens so far, far away that it was like the countryside, like woodland and fields and meadows, with the wide sky overhead, where the lungs drank in the air, as if for the first time that day they were absorbing oxygen and life: the vast sky each day displayed another riot of hues, an abundance of sunset and a glorious extinction of the blazing-hot day, as if the sun itself were breaking into liquid seas of gold among lilac threats of rain. And it was so wide and splendid, it was such a vast source of reinvigoration that it really was a consolation that day.

Yet no one saw it, apart from the two or three people in Batavia who were known to go for a drive or a walk. Night descended on the purple twilight, casting deep shadows. The town, which had been lifeless all day, with its frown of gloomy reflection, slept, weary and care-worn…

It used to be different, according to old Mrs De Harteman, Eva’s friend’s mother-in-law. They had gone now, the sociable houses with their Indies hospitality, with their hospitable tables, their truly cordial welcome. Because the character of the average colonialist had changed, as if overshadowed by a reverse of fortune, by the disappointment of not reaching his goal quickly, his materialistic goal of self-enrichment. And in that bitterness it seemed that his nervous system also became embittered, just as his soul became gloomy, his body weakened and had no resistance to the crushing climate…

Eva did not find in Batavia the ideal city of Eurasian civilization, as she had imagined it in East Java. In this great centre, concerned with money, lusting for money, all spontaneity had disappeared and life was reduced to eternal drowsy confinement in one’s office or house. People saw each other only at receptions, and apart from that communicated by telephone. The telephone killed all sociability among friends: people no longer saw each other, they no longer needed to dress up or get out of the carriage, since they chatted on the telephone, in sarong and linen jacket, and almost without moving. The telephone was close to hand and the bell was always jangling on the back veranda. People rang each other for no reason at all, just for the pleasure of ringing. Young Mrs De Harteman had a bosom friend, whom she never saw and whom she talked to every day on the telephone for half an hour. She sat down for it, so it didn’t tire her. She laughed and joked with her friend, without having to get dressed and without moving. She did the same with other friends: she paid her visits on the telephone. She ordered her shopping on the telephone. Eva, from her time in Labuwangi not being used to that eternal jangling and telephoning — which killed all conversation on the back veranda by allowing one to hear quite clearly half a conversation but with the reply inaudible to anyone else sitting there, like a constant one-sided rattle — became nervous and retired to her room. In the dreariness of this existence, full of worry and brooding for her husband, interrupted by the telephone chatter of her hostess, it was a surprise for Eva to hear of a special distraction: a bazaar, rehearsals for an amateur opera production. She attended one herself during those weeks and was astonished by the really excellent performance, as if given by those musical amateurs with an energy of despair in order to dispel the boredom of evenings in Batavia… Because the Italian opera had gone, and she had to laugh at the “events” section in the local newspaper, where the only choice was mostly between three or four shareholders’ meetings. Really, Eva felt that Labuwangi had been much livelier. True, she herself had contributed greatly to that liveliness, while Van Oudijck had always encouraged her, happy to make his district headquarters a pleasant, lively little town. She came to the conclusion that she preferred a little community in the provinces after all, with a few cultured, sociable European types — provided they got on together and didn’t squabble too much in close proximity — to pretentious, supercilious and gloomy Batavia. Only among the military was there any life. Only officers’ houses were lit at night. Apart from that, the town was dead on its feet all through the long, hot day, with its frown of worry, its invisible population of people looking to the future: a future of wealth and, even more perhaps, of leisure in Europe.

And she longed to be off. Batavia suffocated her, despite her daily tour around the spacious main square. She had only one more melancholy wish: to say goodbye to Van Oudijck. Very oddly, this elegant and artistic woman had been struck and charmed by his character: that of a simple, practical man. Perhaps, just for an instant, she had felt something for him, deep inside, that contrasted with her friendship for Van Helderen: more an appreciation of his great human qualities than a feeling of platonic spiritual affinity. She had felt sympathetic compassion for him in those weird days of mystery: he all alone in his huge house, with the strange phenomena lurking all around him. She had felt deep sympathy for him when his wife, as it were, throwing away her exalted position, had left in a shameless burst of scandal, with no one knowing precisely why — his wife, at first always extremely correct, despite all her perversion, but gradually so consumed by the cancer of the strange phenomena that she had no longer been able to restrain herself, revealing the innermost depths of her degenerate soul with the utmost indifference. The red spatters of betel juice, spewed by some supernatural agent on to her naked body, had infected her, had eaten their way into her bone marrow, like a decomposition of her soul, to which she might very slowly succumb. The stories about her that were now circulating — about her life in Paris — could only be whispered, unspeakably perverse as they were.

In Batavia, in conversations at receptions, Eva heard about it. When she asked about Van Oudijck, and where he was staying, and whether he would be leaving for Europe soon, after his resignation that was so unexpected — something that had stunned the entire official world — people were not sure, and wondered if he were no longer in Hotel Wisse, where they had seen him living for a few weeks, lying motionless in his chair on the front veranda, as if staring at a single point… He had scarcely gone out at all, he ate in his room and did not go into the restaurant, as if he — the man who had always had to deal with hundreds of people — had become shy. Finally Eva heard that Van Oudijck was living in Bandung. As she had a number of farewell visits to make there, she went to West Java. But there was no sign of him in Bandung: the hotel-keeper was able to tell her that Commissioner Van Oudijck had stayed at his establishment for a few days but had left, and he didn’t know where he’d gone. Until finally, by chance, she heard from a gentleman at table that Van Oudijck was living near Garut. She went to Garut, pleased to be on his trail, and there, at the hotel, they were able to tell her where he lived. She was not sure whether she should write to him first and announce her visit. It was as if she knew intuitively that he would make his excuses and she would not see him again. And on the point of leaving Java, she longed to see him, both out of sympathy and out of curiosity. She wanted to see for herself what had become of him, to get to the bottom of why he had resigned so suddenly and erased such an enviable position in life: a position immediately occupied by someone behind him jostling for advancement, eager for promotion. So very early the next morning, without advance warning, she drove off in a carriage from the hotel; the hotel-keeper had told the coachman directions. She drove a long way, past Lake Lellès, which the coachman pointed out to her: the sacred, gloomy lake with the ancient graves of saints on two islands, while above, like a dark, deathly cloud, there floated a constantly circling swarm of huge black bats, flapping their demonic wings and screeching their despairing wails, circling all the while — a mournful, dizzying contrast to the endless blue sky, the demons, once so shy of the light, had triumphed and no longer shunned the brightness of day, since they obscured it anyway with the shadow of their funereal flight. And it was so frightening: the sacred lake, the sacred tombs and above it, as it were, a swarm of black devils in the deep blue ether, because it was as if something of the mystery of the Indies suddenly revealed itself, no longer concealing itself in a vague blur, but actually visible in the sunlight, causing dismay with its impending victory… Eva shuddered, and as she looked anxiously upwards, it seemed to her as if the black swarm of wings would plummet downwards. Onto her… But the shadow of death between her and the sun only circled vertiginously, high above her head, and only shrieked in despairing triumph… She drove on, and the plain of Lellès stretched green and inviting before her. The moment of revelation had passed: there was nothing more but the green and blue luxuriance of nature on Java; the mystery had already become hidden again among the delicate waving bamboo groves and dissolved in the azure ocean of the sky.

The coachman drove slowly up a steep road. The liquid paddy fields climbed upwards step by step in reflecting terraces, an ethereal green of the carefully planted rice shoots. Then suddenly it was like an avenue of ferns: giant ferns, which rose upwards and fanned out, and big, fabulous butterflies fluttering around. And between the ethereal bamboos a small house became visible, half stone, half woven bamboo, with a garden around it containing a few white pots of roses. A very young woman in a sarong and linen jacket, with a soft golden blush on her cheeks, jet black eyes peering in curiosity, observed the unexpected sight of the very slowly approaching carriage and fled indoors. Eva got out, and coughed. Around a screen in the central gallery she suddenly glimpsed Van Oudijck’s face, peering, He disappeared at once.

“Commissioner!” she called, in her sweetest voice.

But no one came, and she was embarrassed. She did not dare sit down and still she didn’t want to leave. Around the corner of the house peered a small face, two small brown faces of two very young Eurasian girls, and then disappeared again, giggling. In the house Eva could hear whispering, very emotional it seemed, very nervous. “Sidin! Sidin!” she heard them shouting and whispering. She smiled, gaining courage, and walked around to the front veranda. Finally an old woman came, perhaps not so old in years, but old and wrinkled and dull-eyed, in a coloured chintz jacket and shuffling along on slippers and with a few words of Dutch before reverting to Malay, smiling politely she asked Eva to sit down and said that the Commissioner would be there immediately. She also sat down, smiling, and didn’t know what to say, or what to answer when Eva asked her something about the lake. Instead she ordered syrup, and iced water and wafers, and did not talk, but smiled and attended to her guest. When the young girls’ faces peered round the house, the old woman stamped her slippered foot angrily and scolded them, after which they disappeared giggling and raced away to the sound of bare feet. Then the old woman smiled again with her ever-smiling wrinkled mouth and looked in embarrassment at the lady as if apologizing. And it was a long time before Van Oudijck finally arrived. He welcomed Eva effusively, and apologized for keeping her waiting. He had obviously shaved quickly and put on a clean white suit. He was visibly pleased to see her. The old woman, with her eternal apologetic smile, left them. In that first, buoyant moment, Van Oudijck struck Eva as completely his old self, but when he had calmed down and pulled up a chair and asked her if she had news of Eldersma, and when she herself was going to Europe, she saw that he had grown old, become an old man. It didn’t show in his figure, which in his well-starched white suit still retained something of its broad-shouldered military bearing, something rugged, with only the back slightly bowed as if under a burden. But it showed in his face, in the dull, uninterested look, in the deep furrows in the almost pained forehead, the yellowed, parched look of his skin, while his broad moustache around which the jovial lines still played, was completely grey. There was a nervous tremor in his hands. He questioned her about what people had said in Labuwangi, still with some residual curiosity about the people there, about something that had once been so dear to him… She glossed over it all, putting the best face on everything, and was especially careful not to mention any of the rumours: that he had deserted his post, run off, no one knew why.

“And what about you, Commissioner? Will you be returning to Europe soon?”

He stared into space, then he laughed bashfully before replying. And finally, and almost in embarrassment, he said: “No, dear lady, I shan’t be going back. You see, here in the Indies I was once somebody, there I would be nobody. I’m nobody anyway now, but I still feel that the Indies have become my country. The country has taken hold of me and now I belong to it. I no longer belong to Holland, and there’s nothing and no one in Holland that belongs to me. I may be burnt out, but I’d still prefer to drag out the rest of my existence here than there. In Holland I wouldn’t be able to face the climate or the people any more. Here I like the climate and I’ve withdrawn from people. I was able to do a last favour for Theo, Doddy is married, and the two boys are going to Europe for their education…”

He suddenly bent over towards her and, in a different voice, he almost whispered, as if about to make a confession: “You see… if everything had happened normally… then… I wouldn’t have acted as I did. I’ve always been a practical man and I was proud of it, and I was proud of normal life: my own life, which I lived according to principles that I thought were right, until I had attained a high position in the world. That’s what I always did, and things went well for me. I had a charmed life. While others fretted about promotion, I leap-frogged five at a time. It was all plain sailing for me, at least in my career. In my personal life I’ve never been happy, but I’m not the kind of weakling to pine away from grief because of that. There is so much for a man to do besides his family life. And yet I was always very fond of my family. I don’t think it’s my fault that things happened as they did. I loved my wife, I loved my children, I loved my house: my home life, where I was husband and father. But that feeling in me was never fully satisfied. My first wife was a Eurasian, whom I married for love. Because she failed to get me under her thumb with her whims, our marriage didn’t work after a few years. I think I was even more in love with my second wife than with my first: I’m a simple man when it comes to these things… but I’ve never been granted a loving family existence: a loving wife, children who clamber on to your lap and grow up into people, people who owe you their lives, their existence, actually everything they have and are… I should have liked to have had that…”

He paused for a moment, and then continued, more secretively, in even more of a whisper: “But what… you see… what happened… I’ve never understood, and that’s what’s brought me to this… That, all of that went against, conflicted with life and practical sense and logic… all that”—he banged his fist on the table—“all that bloody nonsense, which still, which happened anyway… that’s what did it. I stood up to it, but I lacked the strength. It was something that nothing was strong enough to counter… I know, of course, it was the Prince. When I threatened him, it stopped… But my God, dear lady, what was it? Do you know? You don’t, do you? No one, no one knew, and no one knows. Those terrible nights, those inexplicable noises above my head; that night in the bathroom with the Major and the other officers… It really wasn’t an illusion: we saw it, we heard it, we felt it. It pounced on us, it spat at us: the whole bathroom was full of it! It’s easy for other people who didn’t experience it to deny it. But I — all of us — we saw it, heard it, felt it… And none of us knew what it was… Since then I have felt it constantly. It was all around me, in the air, under my feet… You see, that… and that alone,” he whispered softly, “is what did it. That’s what meant I could no longer stay there. That’s why I seemed to be dumbstruck, reduced to idiocy — in ordinary life, in all my practical sense and logic, which suddenly seemed to me a wrongly constructed philosophy of life, the most abstract reflection — because, cutting across it, things from another world manifested themselves, things that escaped me, and everyone. That alone is what did it. I was no longer myself. I no longer knew what I thought, what I was doing, what I had done. Everything was thrown off balance. That wretched creature in the native quarter… he’s no child of mine: I’d stake my life on that. And I… I believed it. I had money sent to him. Tell me, can you understand me? I’m sure you can’t, can you? It’s incomprehensible, that strange, alien sensation, if one has not experienced it oneself, in one’s flesh and blood, until it penetrates your bone marrow…”

“I think I’ve sometimes felt it too,” she whispered. “When I walked with Van Helderen along the seashore, and the sky was so distant, the night so deep, or when the rains came rushing from so far away and then descended… or when the nights, deathly quiet and yet so brimful of sound, trembled around you, always with a music that could not be grasped and scarcely heard… Or simply when I looked into the eyes of a Javanese, when I talked to my maid and it was as if nothing I said got through to her, or as if her answer concealed her real, secret answer…”

“That’s something different,” he said. “I don’t understand that: I personally knew the Javanese. But perhaps every European feels that in a different way, depending on his predisposition, and his nature. For one person it is the antipathy that he felt from the beginning in this country, which attacks the weak spot in his materialism and goes on fighting him… while the country itself is so full of poetry and… mystery… I’d almost say. For another person it’s the climate, or the character of the natives, or what have you, that are hostile and incomprehensible. For me… it was facts I could not fathom… at least that was how it seemed to me. Then it seemed as if I didn’t understand anything any more… That was how I became a bad official, and then I realized that the game was up. So I quite calmly packed it in, and now I’m here, and here’s where I’ll stay. And do you know a funny thing? Here I may at last… have found the family life I want…”

The little brown faces peered round the corner. And he called to them, beckoned to then with a kind, expansive, paternal gesture. But they charged off again, their bare feet pattering. He laughed.

“They’re very shy, the little monkeys,” he said. They’re Lena’s sisters and the woman you’ve seen is her mother.”

He paused for a moment, quite simply, as though she would realize who Lena was: the very young woman with a gold blush on her cheeks and jet-black eyes, whom she had seen in a flash.

“And then there are young brothers, who have to go to school in Garut. You see, that’s my family now. When I met Lena, I took responsibility for the whole family. It costs me a lot of money, because I have my first wife in Batavia, my second in Paris, and René and Ricus in Holland. That all costs money, and here there’s my new “family”. But at least I have a family… It’s all very Indies, you may say: an informal Indies marriage with the daughter of a coffee-plantation foreman, and on top of that the old woman and little brothers and sisters. But I’m doing some good. These people were penniless and I’m helping them, and Lena is a sweet child, the consolation of my old age. I can’t live without a woman, and so it happened more or less by itself… And it’s fine like this: I vegetate here and drink good coffee and they look after the old man very well…”

He fell silent, and then continued: “And you… you’re going to Europe? Poor Eldersma, I hope he’ll soon recover… It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I made him work far too hard. But that’s how it is in the Indies, dear lady. We all work hard here, until we stop working. And you’re leaving… in just a week? How happy you’ll be to see your parents and listen to beautiful music. I’m still grateful to you. You did a lot for us, you were the poetry in Labuwangi. The poor Indies… how people curse them. The country can’t help the fact that we barbarians invaded it, conquerors whose only wish was to grow rich and then be off… And if they don’t get rich… they curse: the heat that God bestowed on it from the outset… the lack of sustenance for the soul and the mind… the soul and mind of the barbarian. The poor country that has been cursed so much will probably think: if only you’d stayed away! And you… you didn’t like the Indies.”

“I tried to grasp their poetry, and now and then I succeeded. Apart from that… everything is my fault, Commissioner, and not the fault of this beautiful country. And like your barbarian… I should not have come here. All the depression, all the melancholy I suffered here in this beautiful land of mystery… is my fault. I’m not cursing the Indies, Commissioner.”

He took her hand, moved almost to tears by what she had said.

“Thank you for that,” he said softly. “Those words are yours: your own words, the words of an intelligent, cultured woman — not like a stupid Dutchman who lashes out because he has not found here exactly what corresponded to his ideal. I know your nature suffered greatly here. That’s inevitable. But… it was not the fault of the country.”

“It was my own fault, Commissioner,” she repeated, with her soft voice and smile.

He thought she was adorable. The fact that she did not burst into imprecations or break into exalted language because she was leaving Java in a few days, was a tonic to him. And when she got up and said that it was time she should be going, he felt a deep melancholy.

“And so I’ll never see you again?”

“I don’t think we’ll be coming back.”

“So it’s goodbye for ever?”

“Perhaps we’ll see you again, in Europe…”

He waved his hand dismissively.

“I’m deeply grateful that you came to pay the old man a visit. I’ll drive back to Garut with you…”

He called inside, where the women were hiding out of sight, and where the little sisters were giggling, and he got into the carriage with her. They drove down the avenue of ferns and suddenly they saw the sacred lake of Lellès, overshadowed by the vertiginous circling of the constantly gliding bats.

“Commissioner,” she said. “I feel it here…”

He smiled.

“They’re just bats,” he said.

“But in Labuwangi… it might have been just a rat…”

He frowned for a moment. Then he smiled again — the jovial line appeared around his broad moustache — and he looked up with curiosity.

“Hmm,” he said softly. “Really? You feel it here?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t… It’s different with everyone.”

The giant bats gave a shrill despairing call of triumph. The carriage drove on, and passed a small railway halt. In the normally deserted landscape it was strange to see a whole population of motley Sundanese flocking around the small station, eagerly awaiting a slow train that was approaching among the bamboos, belching black smoke. All their eyes were staring crazily as if they were expecting salvation from the first glimpse, as though the first impression they received would be a spiritual treasure.

“That’s a train bringing hajis,” said Van Oudijck. “All newly returned from Mecca.”

The train stopped, and from the long third-class carriages, solemnly, slowly, full of piety and aware of their worth, the pilgrims alighted, heads in rich yellow and white turbans, eyes gleaming proudly, lips pressed together superciliously, in shiny new jackets, golden-yellow and purple cloaks, which fell in stately folds almost to their feet. Buzzing with rapture, sometimes with a mounting cry of suppressed ecstasy, the throng pressed closer and stormed the exits of the long carriages… The pilgrims alighted solemnly. Their brothers and friends vied with each other in grabbing their hands, the hems of their golden-yellow and purple cloaks, and kissed their sacred hands, their holy garment, because it brought them something from holy Mecca. They fought and jostled around the pilgrims to be the first one to kiss them. And the pilgrims, contemptuous and self-confident, seemed not to see the struggle, and were superior, calm, solemn and dignified amid the fighting, amid the surging and buzzing throng, and surrendered their hands to them, surrendered the hems of their tunics to the fanatical kiss of anyone who came near.

It was strange in this country of deeply secret slumbering mystery, to see arising in this Javanese people — who as always cloaked themselves in the mystery of their impenetrable soul — an ecstatic passion, repressed and yet visible, to see the fixed stares of drunken fanaticism, to see part of their impenetrable soul revealing itself in their adulation of those who had seen the tomb of the Prophet, to hear the soft throb of religious rapture, to hear a shrill, sudden, unexpected, irrepressible cry of glory, which immediately died away, melted into the buzz, as if frightened of itself, since the sacred moment had not yet arrived…

On the road behind the station Van Oudijck and Eva, making slow progress because of the bustling crowd — which was still surrounding the pilgrims with its buzz, respectfully carrying their luggage, obsequiously offering their carts — suddenly looked at each other, and though neither of them wanted to put it into words, they said it to each other with a look of understanding, that they both felt it — both of them, simul taneously, there amid that fanatical throng — felt It, That.

They both felt it, the ineffable: what is hidden in the ground, what hisses beneath the volcanoes, what wafts in on the distant winds, what rushes in with the rain, what rumbles in with the deeply rolling thunder, what floats in from the wide horizon over the endless sea, what looks out from the black secret eye of the inscrutable native, what creeps into his heart and squats in his humble respect, what gnaws like a poison and an enmity at the body, soul and life of the European, what silently resists the conqueror and wears him down and makes him languish and die, if not immediately die a tragic death: they both felt it, the Ineffable…

In feeling it, together with the melancholy of their impending farewell, they did not see among the swaying, surging, buzzing throng that pushed along, apparently respectfully, the yellow and purple dignitaries — the pilgrims returning from Mecca — they did not see one large white figure rise above the throng and leer at the man who, however he had lived his life in Java, had been weaker than That…

Pasuruan — Batavia

October 1899—February 1900