The Hidden Force (17 page)

L
ÉONIE, 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.

“
A
ND 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…