The Hidden Force (9 page)

Y
ES, THEO KNEW
. After lunch he had talked to Urip and although at first the maid had tried to deny
everything
, frightened of losing the sarongs, she had not been able to keep up the pretence, merely protesting weakly: “No, no…” Early that same afternoon, he had called on Addy, raging with jealousy. But the untroubled composure of the handsome young man with the Moorish face had calmed him down, so sated with all his conquests that he himself never felt jealousy. He had been placated by the total absence of any kind of thought in the Seducer, who had forgotten everything instantly, after his hour of love, and had looked up with naive astonishment when Theo, red-face, seething with rage, had entered his room and stood in front of his bed—where he lay completely naked, as was his habit during his siesta, young and magnificent as bronze, sublime as a classical statue—and declared that he would punch him in the face… And Addy’s amazement had been so artless, so harmonious in its indifference, so totally did he appear to have forgotten last night’s hour or so of love, so calmly had he laughed at the idea of fighting over a woman, that Theo had calmed down and sat on the edge of Addy’s bed. Addy—a
few years younger, but with his unparalleled experience—had said to him that he really mustn’t do that again, get so angry because of a woman: mistresses gave themselves to others. And Addy had patted him sympathetically on the shoulder, almost paternally, because they now understood each other, and had talked and listened to each other in confidence. They confided other secrets to each other, about women and girls. Theo asked if Addy planned to marry, but Addy said that he wasn’t thinking of marriage, and the Commissioner would not approve anyway, since he did not approve of the De Luces and considered them too Indies in their ways. In passing, he indicated his pride in his Solo origins, and his pride in the halo that shone palely behind the heads of all the De Luces. Then Addy asked Theo if he knew that there was a brother of his in the native village. Theo knew nothing about it, but Addy assured him: a son of his papa, from the time when the old man had been controller in Ngajiwa; a man of their age, gone completely native; the mother was dead. Perhaps the old man didn’t know himself that he had a child living in the native village, but it was true, everyone knew; the Prince knew, the Prince’s counsellor knew, the native district official knew, the most humble coolie knew. There was no conclusive proof, but something that was known by the whole world was as true as the existence of the world. What did the fellow do? Nothing but curse, maintaining he was the son of the Lord Commissioner who was leaving him to rot in the native quarter. What did he live on? On nothing, on what he begged brazenly, on what he was given, and apart from that… on
all kinds of practices: by going round the districts, through all the villages, asking if there were any complaints and drawing up petitions; by urging people to go to Mecca and book their passages on very cheap steamship lines, for which he was a freelance agent. He went to the furthest village and showed them advertising posters depicting a steamship full of pilgrims to Mecca, and the Kaaba and the Sacred Tomb of the Holy Prophet. So he pottered about, often involved in fights, and once in a robbery, sometimes dressed in a sarong, sometimes in an old striped cotton suit, and sleeping where he could. And when Theo showed surprise, maintaining that he had never heard a word about that half-brother, and was curious, Addy suggested going to see him, if he was perhaps to be found in the native quarter.

Addy, in a cheerful mood, quickly had his bath, changed into a fresh white suit, and they went along the road past the paddy fields into the native quarter. It was already growing dark under the huge trees: the banana plants raised their leaves like fresh green oars, and under the stately canopy of the coconut palms nestled the bamboo houses, poetically Oriental, idyllic with their thatched roofs, the doors usually closed and, if they were open, framing a small black interior with a vague outline of a sleeping bench with a darkening figure squatting on it. The mangy dogs barked; the children, naked, with bells attached to their bellies, ran away and peered from the houses. The women remained calm when they recognized the Seducer, and laughed, blinking as he passed in all his glory. Addy pointed out the house where
his old nursemaid Tijem lived, the woman who helped him, who always opened her door to him whenever he needed her hut, who worshipped him, just as his mother adored him and his sisters and little nieces. He showed Theo the house and thought of last night’s walk with Doddy, under the cemaras. Tijem the nursemaid saw him and came towards him in delight. She squatted down by him, hugged his leg to her withered breast, rubbed her forehead against his knee, then she kissed his white shoe and looked at him as if enraptured: her handsome prince, her
radèn
, whom she had rocked to sleep as a chubby little boy, already in love as she held him in her arms. He patted her on the shoulder, gave her two and a half guilders, and asked if she knew where si-Oudijck was, as his brother wanted to see him.

Tijem got up and beckoned them to follow her. It was a long walk. They left the native quarter and found themselves on an open road along which lay rails and the bamboo baskets in which sugar was transported to the boats lying ready there at a jetty on the River Brantas. The sun was setting, in a huge fan-shaped display of orange rays; the distant lines of trees were like dark, plump velvet blurred in the splendid glow, marking the limit of the paddy fields that were not yet planted, the gloomy land lying fallow. A few men and women issued from the factory on their way home. At the river, beneath a sacred banyan tree consisting of five intertwined trunks with an extensive root system, a small market with portable kitchens had been set up. Tijem called the ferryman and he took them across the
orange-tinted Brantas, the last light of the sun fanning out like a peacock’s tail. Once they reached the other side, night descended hurriedly with curtains of mist, and the clouds, which all through that November had been threatening on the low horizons, created an oppressive, sultry atmosphere. And they entered another native quarter, illuminated here and there by a paraffin lamp. Until they finally came to a house made half of bamboo, half of Devoe crates, and covered half in tiles, half in thatch. Tijem pointed and, again crouching to hug and kiss Addy’s knee, she asked his leave to go back. Addy knocked on the door: there was the sound of some grumbling and stumbling, but when Addy called out the door was opened with a single kick and the two young men entered the only room in the house—half bamboo, half wood from crates. There was a sleeping bench with a few dirty cushions in a corner, in front of which dangled a limp, chintz curtain, plus a rickety table and a pair of chairs, a paraffin lamp without a globe on it on the table, and small household items cluttered on a crate in a corner. A sour opium smell permeated everything.

And at the table sat si-Oudijck with an Arab, while a Javanese woman squatted on a sleeping couch, preparing herself some betel. The half-caste hurriedly screwed up some sheets of paper lying on the table between them, visibly annoyed at the unexpected visit. But he soon recovered and put on a jovial air, calling out: “Well, Prince, Susuhunan! Sultan of Pajaram! Sugar Baron! How are you, handsome one, ladies’ man?”

His jovial torrent of greetings went on and on, as he gathered the papers together and signalled to the Arab, who promptly disappeared through the other door at the back.

“And who have you got with you, Lord Adrianus, pretty Lucius?…”

“Your brother,” replied Addy.

Si-Oudijck suddenly looked up.

“Well, well,” he said, speaking a mixture of broken Dutch, Javanese and Malay. I recognize him, my legitimate brother. And what has the fellow come for?”

“Just to see what you look like…”

The two brothers surveyed each other, Theo with
curiosity
, pleased to have made this discovery as a weapon to be used against the old man, if such a weapon should ever be necessary; the other, si-Oudijck, keeping hidden within himself—behind his shrewd brown leering face—all his jealousy, bitterness and hatred.

“Do you live here?” asked Theo, just for something to say.

“No, I’m staying with her for the moment,” answered si-Oudijck nodding towards the woman.

“Did your mother die a long time ago?”

“Yes. Yours is still alive, isn’t she? She’s in Batavia. I know her. Do you ever see her?”

“No.”

“Hmm… Do you like your stepmother better?”

“We get on all right,” said Theo drily. “I don’t think the old man knows you exist.”

“Oh, yes, he does.”

“No, I don’t think so. Have you ever talked to him?”

“Yes. In the past. Years ago.”

“And?…”

“Did no good. He says I’m not his son…”

“It’s probably difficult to prove.”

“Legally, yes. But it’s a fact, common knowledge. Known all over Ngajiwa.”

“Have you no proof at all?”

“Only my mother’s oath on her deathbed, before witnesses.”

“Come on, tell me a bit more. Come for a walk with us, it’s stuffy in here…”

They left the hut and strolled back through the native quarters, while si-Oudijck talked. They walked along the Brantas, which wound along in the dim evening light under a sprinkling of stars.

It did Theo good to hear about this, about his father’s housekeeper when he was just a controller, rejected after being unjustly accused of unfaithfulness: the child born later and never recognized, never supported; the boy, roaming from one native quarter to another, romantically proud of his degenerate father, whom he observed from afar,
following
with his leering gaze as that father became an assistant commissioner and then a commissioner, married, divorced, remarried; occasionally learning to read and write after a fashion from a native clerk with whom he was on friendly terms… It did the legitimate son good to hear this, because deep down, however blond and white he might be, he was more the son of his Eurasian mother than his father’s son;
because deep down he hated his father, not for any specific reason, but because of a secret instinctive antipathy, because, despite his appearance and demeanour of a blond,
white-skinned
European, he felt a secret affinity with this illegitimate brother, felt a vague sympathy for him, since they were both sons of the same motherland, with which their father had no emotional ties except those he had acquired during his training: the artificial, humanely cultivated love of the rulers for the land they ruled. Since childhood Theo had felt like this, far removed from his father; and later that antipathy had become a smouldering hatred. He enjoyed hearing his father’s irreproachable reputation being demolished: a high-minded man, a senior official of absolute integrity, who loved his family, who loved his district, who loved the Javanese, who wanted to support the Prince’s family—not only because his instructions set out in the Government Gazette required him to respect the position of the Javanese nobility, but because his own heart spoke to his, whenever he remembered the noble old
pangéran
… Theo knew, of course, that his father was like that—so exalted, so noble, that he had such integrity—and it did him good, in the mystery-filled evening by the Brantas, to hear that irreproachable character, that exalted, noble integrity being picked apart; it did him good to meet an outcast who in an instant had covered that high and mighty father figure in slime and filth, torn him from his pedestal, brought him down to the abject level of everyone else—sinful, evil, heartless, ignoble. He felt a wicked joy in his heart, like the one felt at possessing the wife that
his father adored. He did not yet know what to do with that dark secret, but he accepted it as a weapon; he sharpened it that evening, as he listened to the half-caste with his leer, who became worked up and started ranting. And Theo put away his secret in a safe place, storing his weapon deep inside. Old grievances came to the surface, and he, too, the legitimate son, launched into a tirade against his father, admitted that the Commissioner no longer tried to gain advancement for his son, any more than he would for any clerk: that he had once recommended him to the managers of an impossible company, a rice plantation, where he, Theo, had not been able to stand it for more than a month, that he had left Theo to his fate, was obstructive when he tried to obtain
concessions
, even in districts other than Labuwangi, even in Borneo, until he had been forced to kick his heels and live on charity, finding no work because of his father’s attitude, tolerated in that house where he hated everything.

“Except your stepmother!” si-Oudijck interjected drily.

But Theo went on, giving vent to his feelings in turn and telling his brother that even if he was recognized and
legitimized
, things would still be pretty lean. In this way they egged each other on, glad to have met and to have become friends for this brief hour. Next to them walked Addy, amazed at this rapid sympathy but, apart from that, without a thought in his head. They had crossed a bridge and via a detour had arrived behind the factory buildings at Pajaram. Here si-Oudijck took his leave from them, shaking Theo’s hand, which slipped him a few two-and-a-half-guilder coins that
were eagerly accepted, with a flicker of the furtive look but without a word of thanks. And Theo and Addy headed past the now silent factory towards the mansion, where the family were walking around outside in the garden and in the avenue of cemaras. And as the two young men approached, the eight-year-old golden child, the old mama’s foster-princess, came to meet them, with her fringe and her rice-powdered forehead, in her sumptuous doll’s clothes. She walked towards them, suddenly stopping when she reached Addy and looking up at him. Addy asked what she wanted but the child didn’t reply, just looked up at him, and then, stretching out her hand, she stroked his hand with hers. Some obviously irresistible magnetism had drawn the shy child to him, making her walk up to them, stop and stroke him, so that Addy laughed out loud, bent down and kissed her light-heartedly. The child skipped away contentedly. And Theo, still worked up from that afternoon—first by his conversation with Urip, then by his confrontation with Addy, his meeting with his half-brother, the confidences about his father—feeling bitter and full of his own problems, was so irritated by the trivial behaviour of Addy and the little girl, that he exclaimed, almost angrily: “You’re hopeless… you’ll never be anything but a ladykiller!”