The Hidden Force (12 page)

But he could not understand why this had to be so; it upset and embittered him.

The fact was that he had imagined a quite different course—a splendid upward curve, the way he envisaged his own life—whereas the curve of their lives meandered chaotically downwards. He could not understand what could be stronger than him, if he wanted something. Had it not always been the case in his life and his career that whatever he wanted fervently had happened with the logic that he himself day by day had imposed on the things that were about to happen? His ambition had simply imposed that logic of the upward curve, since the aim his ambition had set itself was the restoration of this Javanese dynasty…

Would he fail? He would never forgive himself if he failed in striving to achieve an aim he had set himself as an official. Up to now he had always been able to achieve what he wanted. But what he was trying to achieve now—unbeknown to himself—was not just the aim of an official, part of his work. What he was now striving for was an aim that issued from his humanity, the noble part of himself. What he was now trying to achieve was an ideal, an ideal of a Westerner in the East, and of a Westerner who saw the East in the only way he knew how, the only way he could see it.

And he would never be prepared to admit that there were forces that combined into a single force that opposed him, that mocked his ideas, that scoffed at his ideals, and that was stronger the deeper it was hidden away: his was not the kind of nature to recognize them, and even its clearest revelation would be a mystery to his soul, and remain a myth.

V
AN OUDIJCK
had been to the office that day and on returning home was immediately met by Léonie.

“The
radèn-ayu pangéran
is here. She’s been here an hour, Otto. She would like to talk to you. She’s been waiting for you.”

“Léonie,” he said. “Have a look at these letters. I receive a lot of these sorts of communication, and I’ve never mentioned them to you. But perhaps it’s better if you are not left in the dark. Perhaps it’s better for you to know. But please don’t distress yourself about them. I don’t have to assure you that I don’t believe one jot of all that filth. So don’t be upset, and return the letters to me in person later. Don’t leave them lying around… And ask the Princess dowager to come to my office…”

Léonie, with the letters in her hand, brought the Princess from the back veranda. She was a dignified, grey-haired woman with a proud, regal bearing in her still slim figure. Her eyes were a sombre black; her mouth made broader by the betel juice, in which her filed-down black-painted teeth grinned, was like a grimacing mask and spoiled the lofty nobility of her expression. She wore a black satin jacket
fastened with jewels. Her grey hair and sombre eyes gave her an unusual mix of venerability and smouldering passion. Her old age was tinged with tragedy. She herself felt a fate pressing tragically on her and her family, and placed her sole hope in the far-reaching, god-like power of her eldest son Sunario, the Prince of Labuwangi. While she preceded Van Oudijck into the office, Léonie glanced at the letters in the central gallery. They were vulgar verses about her and Addy and Theo. Permanently wrapped up in the dream of her own life, she never took much notice of what people were thinking and saying, because she knew she could immediately win them over again, with her appearance and her smile. She had that calm charisma that was irresistible. She never spoke ill of anyone, out of indifference; she was conciliatory and forgiving to everything and everyone; and she was popular—when she was present. But she found these dirty letters, spewed out of some dark corner, unpleasant and annoying, even though Van Oudijck did not believe them. What if he did begin to believe them? She must be prepared for that eventuality. In particular, if that day should ever come, she must retain her most charming equanimity, all her invulnerability and inviolability. Where could those letters have come from? Who hated her so much? In whose interest was it to write about her in such terms to her husband? How strange that it should have got out… Addy, Theo? How did people know? Urip? No, not Urip… But who then, who? So was everything known? The fact was that she had always thought that what happened in secret niches would never be public knowledge.
She had even thought—naively—that men never talked to each other about her; about other women, yes, but not about her… Despite all her experience her mind was full of such naive illusions: a naivety that chimed with the poetry—half perverse, half childlike—of her rose-tinted imagination. So, could she not keep secret the hidden depths of her mystery, the hidden depths of reality for ever? For a moment it upset her. Despite all her propriety, reality nevertheless revealed itself… Thoughts and dreams always remained secret. Actual facts were such a nuisance. For a moment she considered being more careful in future, practising abstinence… But in her mind’s eye she saw Theo, she saw Addy, her blond and brown loves, and felt too weak… She knew she wouldn’t be able to overcome her passions, even if she controlled them. Might they not, for all her tact, one day lead to her downfall? But she found the idea laughable; she had a firm belief in her invulnerability, her inviolability. Life had no hold on her.

Still, she wanted to be prepared for possible
contingencies
. All she asked of her life was to be free of pain and suffering, of poverty, and to make her passions the slaves of her pleasure, so that she could continue to have pleasure for as long as possible, and live this life as long as possible. She thought over what she would say if Van Oudijck ever questioned her, if the anonymous letters sowed a seed of doubt. She asked herself if she would not break with Theo after all. Addy was enough for her. And she became absorbed in her preparations, as in the uncertain combinations of a play that had yet to begin. Until she suddenly heard the
voice of the
radèn-ayu pangéran
in the office raised against her husband’s calm voice. She listened, curious, sensing a drama and calmly happy that this drama ran off her like water off a duck’s back. She crept into Van Oudijck’s bedroom; the dividing doors were open for ventilation and only a screen divided the bedroom and office. She peered past the screen and saw the old Princess, more agitated than she had ever seen a Javanese woman. The
radèn-ayu
was pleading in Malay with Van Oudijck who, in Dutch, was assuring her that it was impossible. Léonie listened more closely, and heard the old Princess begging the Commissioner to have mercy on her second son, the Prince of Ngajiwa. She begged Van Oudijck to think of her late husband, the
pangéran
, whom he had loved as a father, who had loved him as a son—with an affection deeper than that between an “elder and a younger brother”; she begged him to think of their illustrious past, the glory of the Adiningrats, always the loyal friends of the Dutch East India Company, in war its allies, in peace its most loyal vassals: she begged him not to decree the end of their dynasty, on which a dreadful fate had descended since the
pangéran’s
death, driving it into an abyss of fatal destruction. She stood before the Commissioner like Niobe, like a tragic mother, her arms raised in the powerful emotion of her words, tears streaming from her dark eyes, and her wide mouth—stained with the brown betel juice—like a grinning mask. Yet as she grinned, fluent words of persuasion and imprecation welled up; she wrung her hands in supplication, and her fist beat her breast as if in penitence.

Van Oudijck answered her in a firm but soft voice, telling her indeed how deeply he had loved the old
pangéran
, how highly he esteemed the old family, how no one would want more than he did to maintain them in their eminence. But then he became more severe and asked her on whom the Adiningrats could blame the fate that now pursued them. Looking her straight in the eye, he told her that it was her fault! She shrank back, bursting with rage, but he repeated it again and again. Her sons were
her
sons, bigoted and arrogant and addicted to gambling. And gambling, that base passion, spelt disaster for their greatness. In the insatiability of their lust for gain, their dynasty was tottering towards destruction. How often did a month go by when the Prince of Ngajiwa failed to pay the salaries of his chiefs? She admitted it was true: at her insistence her son had taken—borrowed—money from the treasury to pay gambling debts. But she also swore that it would never happen again! And where, asked Van Oudijck, had a prince, the descendant of an ancient family, ever behaved in such a way as the Prince of Ngajiwa had at the race ball? The mother wailed: it was true, it was true; fate was clinging to their steps and had clouded her son’s mind with madness, but it would never, never happen again. She swore by the soul of the old
pangéran
that it would never happen again, and that her son would regain his dignity. But Van Oudijck became more heated and accused her of never having exerted a positive influence on her sons and her nephews, of being the evil genius of her family, since a demon of gambling and greed had her in its clutches. The
old Princess began to screech with pain, she who looked down upon the Commissioner, the Dutch commoner, that he dared speak to her in that way and was right to do so. She reached out and begged him for mercy; she begged him not to recommend her younger son to the government for dismissal, which would follow the advice of such a highly esteemed official and do as the Commissioner said. She begged him to show pity and to have patience. She would talk to her son, and Sunario would talk to his brother: they would bring him to his senses after he had been ravaged by drink, gambling and women. Oh, if only the Commissioner would show pity, if only he would relent! But Van Oudijck was implacable. He had been patient for so long. Things had come to a head. Since her son, under the influence of the native healer, trusting in his talisman, had opposed him with his insolent silence, which the Prince believed made him invulnerable to enemies—he would demonstrate that he, the Commissioner, the plenipotentiary of the government, the Queen’s representative, was the strongest, despite the native healer and the talisman. There was nothing else for it: his patience was exhausted, his love for the
pangéran
admitted no further indulgence; his feeling of respect for their family could not be transferred to an unworthy son. It was decided: the Prince was to be dismissed.

The Princess had listened to him, unable to believe his words, seeing an abyss gaping in front of her. And with a screech like that of a wounded lioness, with a scream of pain, she pulled the jewelled pins out of her knot so that her long
grey hair streamed down around her; in a single movement she tore open her jacket; no longer able to control her pain and despair that rose like a mist from the gaping abyss, she threw herself at the feet of the European, grabbed his foot violently with both hands and planted it on her bent neck in a single movement that threw Van Oudijck off balance, and she screamed out that she, the daughter of the sultans of Madura would be his slave for ever if he would just this once have mercy on her son, and not plunge her family into the abyss of disgrace, which she saw gaping around her. And she clung to the European’s foot with the strength of despair, and kept that foot, with the sole and heel of the shoe, like a yoke of slavery pressed into her streaming grey hair, her neck bent to the ground. Van Oudijck was trembling with emotion. He realized that this haughty woman would never, apparently spontaneously, humiliate herself in the deepest way she could think of, would never abandon herself to the most violent expression of grief that a woman could ever show—with her hair loose, and the ruler’s foot on her neck—if she were not shocked to the depths of her being, if her despair had not reached the point of self-destruction. He hesitated for a moment, but no more than a moment. He was a man of well-pondered principles, of pre-established logic: immutable in decision-taking, never susceptible to impulse. With immense respect he finally freed his foot from the vicelike grip of the Princess, reached out to her with both hands and lifted her up from the floor with great deference and with obvious sympathy. She flopped into a chair, broken
and sobbing. For a moment she thought she had won, sensing his soft-heartedness. But when he shook his head calmly but firmly to indicate a negative decision she realized it was all over. She gasped for breath, half-fainting, still with her jacket open, her hair loose. At that moment Léonie entered. She had seen the drama being enacted before her very eyes and felt moved as if by a work of literature. She experienced something akin to pity. She approached the Princess, who threw herself into her arms, seeking the support of another woman in the helpless despair of the inevitable catastrophe. And Léonie, her beautiful eyes focused on Van Oudijck, muttered a single word of intercession and whispered: “Give in!” It represented a living blossoming of pity in her arid soul. “Give in!” she whispered again. And for the second time Van Oudijck hesitated. He had never before refused his wife anything, however costly her request. But this meant the sacrifice of his principles: never going back on a decision, the firm implementation of a desired course of events. That is how he had always controlled the future. He had never shown any weakness, and he said it was impossible.

Perhaps if he had given way, his life would have turned out differently. Yet he had no inkling of the sacred moments when a man must not assert his own will, but must be piously carried along by the impulse of the silent powers. He did not respect, acknowledge or comprehend such powers, and never would. He was a man with a lucid, logical, simple male sense of duty; a man of the clear, simple life. He would never know the silent forces lurking beneath the simple life. He would
have scoffed at the suggestion that there are peoples who have more control of that force than Westerners. The very idea that there are a few individuals among those peoples in whose hands the force loses its omnipotence and becomes a tool—would make him shrug his shoulders and continue on his way. No experience would teach him. Perhaps he would be perplexed for a moment… But then, immediately afterwards, his man’s hand would firmly grasp the chain of his logic and fit the iron factual links together…

Perhaps, if he had given in, his life would have turned out differently.

He saw Léonie helping the old Princess, broken and sobbing, out of his office.

A deep emotion, a pity that touched him to the core, brought tears to his eyes, and through those tears there appeared the image of the Javanese whom he had loved like a father.

But he did not give in.