The Hidden Force (20 page)

“
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?”

D
ODDY 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…

T
HEN, 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.