The Hidden Force (14 page)

The Prince bowed his head, agreed, promised, even said that he had already issued orders to calm the situation, that he had always deplored the excitement of the people, and it caused him great sorrow, that the Commissioner had become aware of it, despite his—Sunario’s—attempts to calm things down. The District Commissioner did not probe any further into this sample of dishonesty. He knew that the turmoil was being whipped up from within the palace, but he also knew that he had prevailed. However, he impressed once more on the Prince his responsibility should anything untoward happen in the pavilion the following day, during the meeting. The Prince begged him not to think of such things. And now, in order that they should part on good terms, he implored Van Oudijck to sit down again. He sat down, and as he did so he knocked over his glass, the sparkling ice-cold contents of which he had not yet touched. It clattered to the ground. He apologized for his clumsiness. The Princess had noticed his movement and her old face paled. She said nothing but beckoned a servant. And again the four servants appeared
half-squatting, half-creeping, and prepared another whisky and soda. Van Oudijck put the glass immediately to his lips.

There was an embarrassed silence. How far the action of the District Commissioner in knocking over the glass had been justified would always remain a mystery and he would never know. But he wanted to show the Princess, in coming here, that he was prepared for anything
before
their conversation, and
after
their conversation wished to trust her completely in everything. Both in the drink that she offered him, and the following day in the pavilion, where he and his officials would appear unarmed, if her benign influence would bring calm and peace to the population. As if to show that she understood him, and that his confidence would be justified, she got up and whispered a few words to a retainer whom she had beckoned. The Javanese disappeared and soon came all the way down the front veranda squatting, carrying a long object in a yellow sheath. The Princess took it from him and handed it to Sunario, who drew a walking stick from the yellow silk sheath, which he offered to the Commissioner as a token of their fraternal friendship. Van Oudijck accepted it, understanding its symbolic meaning. The yellow silk was the colour and material of authority: silk and yellow or gold; the stick itself was made of a wood that protects against snake bites and danger, and the heavy knob was worked in gold—the metal of authority—in the shape of the ancient sultan. This stick, offered at this moment, meant that the Adiningrats were again submitting to his authority and that Van Oudijck could trust them.

And as he took his leave, he was very proud and pleased with himself for having won the day through tact,
diplomacy
, knowledge of the Javanese: he would have averted the imminent rebellion just with words. That would be a fact.

That was so, that would be so: a fact. On that first evening of the market, cheerfully glowing with the light of hundreds of paraffin lamps, steaming enticingly with low-drifting smells of frying, full of the multicoloured jostling of the celebrating population—that first evening was pure festivity and the population discussed among themselves the Commissioner’s long courtesy visit to the Prince and his mother, since the carriage with the sunshade had been seen waiting for a long time in the drive, and the Prince’s retainers told them the story of the gift of the walking stick.

That was so: things happened as Van Oudijck had
calculated
and forced them to in advance. That he should be proud was only human, but what he had not dominated and thought of in advance were the hidden forces, of which he had no inkling and whose existence he would deny, always, in the natural simplicity of life. What he
failed
to see, hear or feel, was the deeply hidden force, which though it abated continued to smoulder like a volcanic fire beneath the apparently calm avenues of flowers and friendship: the hatred, which would have the power of impenetrable mystery against which he, as a Westerner, had no defence.

V
AN OUDIJCK LIKED TO BE CERTAIN
he had achieved his objective. He didn’t say much that day about his visit to the palace, or that evening when Eldersma and Van Helderen came to talk to him about the meeting that was to take place the following morning. They were both rather uneasy and asked whether they should be armed. But Van Oudijck very firmly and emphatically forbade them to bring weapons with them, and said that no one was authorized. The officials yielded, but no one was at ease. However, the meeting took place completely uninterrupted and in harmony; there were just more people about between the stalls of the evening market, there were more police at the decorated gates, with rippling strips of bunting. But nothing happened. The women at home were anxious and were relieved when their husbands returned safely. And Van Oudijck had achieved his objective. Sure of himself, trusting the Princess, he made a few visits. He reassured the ladies and told them to concentrate all their attention on the gala. But they were not convinced. Some families locked all their doors in the evenings and retreated to the central gallery with their friends and maids—armed, listening, on their guard. Theo, to whom his father had spoken
in a confidential moment, played a practical joke on them with Addy. The two young men visited in turn all the houses that they knew were most fearful and forced their way onto the front veranda, shouting to the occupants to open up: they could already hear guns being cocked in the central gallery. They had a whale of a time.

Then the gala finally opened. On the stage of the social club Eva had organized a series of three tableaux from the Arthurian legend: Viviane, Guinevere and Lancelot; in the centre of the garden there was a Maduran proa, in the shape of Viking ship, where one could drink iced punch; a neighbouring sugar factory, well known for the cheerful atmosphere that prevailed there, had provided a complete Dutch pancake stall as a nostalgic reminder of Holland, with the women dressed as Frisian farmer’s wives and the factory workers as cook’s assistants; and pro-Transvaal feelings were vented with a Mayuba Hill mock-up with ladies and
gentlemen
in fantastic Boer costumes. There was no mention of the huge under-sea eruption in Ternate, although half the proceeds had been assigned to the stricken areas. Beneath the glowing festoons of Chinese lanterns that wound their way above the garden, there was great enjoyment and the urge to spend a great deal of money, especially for Transvaal. But beneath the party atmosphere there was still a tremor of fear. Groups gathered and there were furtive glances outside at the bustle of half-castes, Javanese, Chinese and Arabs on the road around the smoking portable kitchens. And while sipping a glass of champagne or nibbling a plate
of pancakes, people pricked up their ears and listened to the square, where the evening market was in full swing. When Van Oudijck appeared with Doddy, greeted by the strains of the Dutch national anthem, and generously distributed coins and notes, people kept whispering secretly in his ear. And noticing the absence of Mrs Van Oudijck, people asked each other where she was. She had such bad toothache, they said, and that was why she had gone to Surabaya. People didn’t think it was very nice of her; she was not liked when she was not present. She was much discussed that evening, and the most scandalous things were said about her. Doddy took her place on the Maduran proa as a server, and Van Oudijck, with Eldersma, Van Helderen and a few controllers from other districts, went around buying drinks for his officials. When people asked him about secret information, casting anxious glances outside, with one ear on the square he reassured them with a majestic smile: nothing was going to happen, they had his word of honour on that. People found him very trusting and very sure of himself; the jovial smile around his wide moustache was reassuring. He urged everyone to think only of the fun and the charitable aim of his dear town of Labuwangi. And when suddenly the Prince, Radèn Adipati Sunario, appeared with his wife, the young
radèn-ayu
, and at the entrance paid for bouquets, programmes and fans with a hundred-guilder note, a sigh of relief went through everyone in the garden. News of the Prince’s hundred-guilder note had soon spread everywhere. And now people relaxed; they realized that there was no need for fear, that no rebellion
would break out that evening. They fêted the Prince and his smiling young wife, sparkling in her beautiful jewels.

Out of sheer relief, suddenly relaxed and impulsive, people spent more and more money, trying to vie with the few wealthy Chinese—those from before the opium monopoly, the owners of the white marble and stucco palaces—there strewing coins with their wives, in embroidered grey and green Chinese dresses, their gleaming hair full of flowers and jewels, smelling strongly of sandalwood perfumes. The money flowed, jingling into the tins of the happy servers. And the gala was a success. And when Van Oudijck finally and gradually disclosed here and there—to Doorn de Bruijn, Rantzow, officials from elsewhere—a few details of his visit to the palace and his conversation with the Princess, relayed in a humble, unassuming tone and yet, despite himself, beaming with happy pride, with joy at his victory—that was when he achieved his greatest effect.

The story went round the garden about the Commissioner’s tact and shrewdness in having averted revolution by his word alone. He was lionized, and he poured champagne for everyone, bought up all the fans, bought all the unsold tombola tickets. He was worshipped; it was his supreme moment of success and popularity. And he joked with the ladies, flirted with them. The party went on until six o’clock in the morning. The pancake cooks were drunk and dancing cheerfully around the pancake oven.

And when Van Oudijck finally went home, he felt a mood of self-satisfaction, strength, happiness, delight in himself.
The evening had made him rise in his own estimation and he valued himself more than ever before. He felt happier than he had ever felt.

He had sent the carriage home and walked home with Doddy. A few early traders were going to market. Doddy, half-asleep, dead tired, dragged herself along on her father’s arm…

Then, nearby, someone passed and although she felt it more than saw it, she suddenly shivered and looked up. The figure had passed. She looked round and recognized the back of the
haji
, who was in a hurry…

She felt so cold she almost fainted. But then, tired to the point of almost sleepwalking, she realized she was
half-dreaming
of Addy, of Pajaram, of the moonlit night under the cemaras, when at the end of the avenue the white pilgrim had given her a fright…

E
VA ELDERSMA WAS FEELING
more listless and gloomy than she had ever done in the Indies. After all her work, the bustle and success of the gala—after the shudder of fear at a possible revolt—the town fell back into its leisurely drowsiness, as if it were quite content to be able to nod off again, just as it always had done. December had come and the heavy rains had begun, as always on 5th December: the monsoon invariably set in on St Nicholas’s Day. The clouds, which for the past month had piled up on the low horizon, swelling all the while, hoisted their water-filled sails higher towards the sky and tore open, as if in a single fury of distantly flashing electric storms, and water poured down in streams like rich stores of rains that could no longer be kept on high. That evening a crazed swarm of insects had flown across Eva’s front veranda and, hypnotized by the flames had plunged to their deaths in the lamps, filling the lamp-glasses with their fluttering, dying bodies that lay strewn over the marble tables. Eva breathed in the cooler air, but a haze of damp from the earth and flowers settled on the walls and furniture, flecking the mirrors, staining the silk and creating mould on her shoes, as if the deluging
power of nature was out to ruin all the finely glittering and charming products of human labour. Yet it revived the trees and foliage, which thrived and shot luxuriantly upwards in a thousand shades of green, and in the burgeoning victory of nature the villas became wet and toadstool-like, and the white of the whitewashed pillars and flowerpots weathered to mouldy green.

Eva witnessed the slow, gradual ruin of her house, her furniture, her clothes. Day by day, inexorably, something decayed, rotted away, became mouldy, rusted. And all the aesthetic philosophy with which she had first learnt to love the Indies, to appreciate the good things, to look for the line of beauty in the Indies—both outwardly and for what was inwardly beautiful and spiritual—could no longer cope with the torrents of water, with the cracking-apart of her furniture, the staining of her dresses and gloves, with all the damp, mould and rust, which ruined her exquisite
surroundings
that she had designed and created around herself as consolation, a consolation for the Indies. Despite all her rationale and intellectual argument, despite finding
something
charming and beautiful in the land of all too powerful nature and people, in pursuit of money and advancement, everything fell apart and collapsed. At every moment she was forced to fret—as a housewife, as an elegant woman, as an artistic woman. No, in the Indies it was impossible to surround oneself with taste and exquisiteness. She had been here only for a few years, and she felt she still had some strength to fight for her Western civilization, but she
already understood better than when she first arrived how people could just let themselves go here: the men after their busy day’s work, the women with their households. Certainly, she preferred the silent and gentle servants, working
willingly
never impudently, to the noisily clumping maids in Holland, and yet she felt through her house an Oriental resistance to her Western ideas. It was always a battle, not to go under in the temptation to let yourself go, to let the grounds that were too big become overgrown at the back with the servants’ grubby washing invariably hanging out, and strewn with gnawed mangoes; in simply letting her house become dirty and the paint peel—it being too large, too open, too exposed to wind and weather to be looked after with Dutch cleanliness; in sitting in the rocking chair in sarong and jacket without getting dressed, one’s bare feet in slippers, because it was just too warm, too sultry to wear a dress or peignoir, which became soaked with sweat. It was for her sake that her husband was always dressed for dinner in the evenings, with a black jacket and high collar, but when she saw above that high collar his weary face peering out at her, with its increasingly stiff, overworked, clerk’s features, she herself told him in future not to dress after his second bath, and tolerated him at table in a white jacket, or even pyjamas and a jacket. She found it dreadful, unspeakably awful; it shocked her whole sense of civilized behaviour, but he was too tired and it was too oppressively close to demand anything else of him. And after only two years in the Indies, increasingly understanding how to let
oneself go—in dress, in body, in soul—now she was losing daily a little more of her Dutch freshness of approach and her Western energy, now she admitted that people in the Indies worked harder than in possibly any other country, but worked with a single aim in mind: position, money, retirement, pension and back, back to Europe. True, there were others who were born in the Indies and had spent scarcely a year away from the archipelago, who weren’t at all interested in Holland, who adored their sunny country. That is what the De Luces were like, and she also knew there were others. However, in her circle of officials and planters everyone had the same aim in life—position, money, and then away, away to Europe. Everyone was calculating the years they had left to work. Everyone saw the distant vision of European calm. The occasional individual, such as Van Oudijck—an exceptional official who loved his work for its own sake, and because it was in tune with his own character—dreaded the prospect of retirement, which would mean stupidly vegetating. But Van Oudijck was an exception. Most did their duty whilst thinking of their later pension. Her husband, for that matter, did the same: worked himself to death in order to retire a few years after he had become an assistant commissioner; he worked himself to death for an illusion of rest. Now her own energy seemed to be draining away with every drop of blood that she felt flowing through her dull veins. In these first days of the rainy season, the constant splashing of the gutters irritated her with their clatter; she saw all the
material things that she had tastefully chosen to surround herself with as her artistic consolation in the Indies being ruined by damp and mould, and she fell into a worse mood of listlessness and dejection than she had ever experienced. Her child was not sufficient, being too young as yet to be a soulmate. Her husband worked all the time. He was a kind, sweet husband to her, a good man, a man of great simplicity, whom she had perhaps accepted only because of that simplicity—that settled calm of his smiling, blond Frisian face and the ruggedness of his broad shoulders—after a couple of highly emotive episodes in her youth, full of dreams and misunderstandings and discussions full of high-flown sentiments. She, who was
not
calm or simple had sought in this simple man to bring simplicity and calm to her life. Yet his qualities did not satisfy her, particularly now, when she had been in the Indies for some time and was beginning to feel defeated in her struggle with the country. His calm, husbandly love did not satisfy her.

She began to feel unhappy. She was too versatile a woman to seek her happiness solely in her little boy, though with the minor immediate concerns and with thoughts of his future, he did fill part of her life. She had even devised a complete theory of child-rearing. But it didn’t fill her life completely. She was seized with homesickness for Holland, for her parents, for their beautiful artistic home, where one always met painters, writers, composers—an exceptional artistic salon for Holland, where the various branches of art, usually isolated in Holland, came together for a moment.

The image appeared in her mind’s eye like a distant dream as she listened to heralding thunderclaps in the sultry air, close to bursting point, awaiting the deluge that would follow. There was nothing for her here. She felt out of place: she had her faithful group who gathered around her because she was so cheerful, but no deeper sympathy, intimate
conversation
—except with Van Helderen. And she wanted to be cautious with him so as not to give him any ideas.

Except for Van Helderen. And she thought of the other people around her here in Labuwangi. She thought of people, people from everywhere. And pessimistic as she was in these days, she found in all of them only the
egotistical
, selfishness, and the less endearing self-absorption; she could scarcely express it to herself, distracted by the massive power of the rain. But she found in everyone conscious and unconscious things that were unattractive. In her faithful friends, too, and in her husband. In the men, young women, young men around her. Everyone had their ego. In no one was there a harmony between the self and others. That which she disapproved of in one person; in another she found something else unpleasant. It was a critical view that made her feel desolate and gloomy, because it was contrary to her nature: she liked to love. She liked to live in company, spontaneously, harmoniously with many others: at the beginning she had been filled with a love of human beings, a love of humanity. Great issues evoked an emotional response in her, but there was no response to all she felt. She found herself empty and alone in a country, a town,
in surroundings where absolutely everything—things large and small—grated on her soul, her body, her character, her nature. Her husband worked. Her son was already going native. Her piano was out of tune.

She got up and tried the piano, with long runs that turned into the
Feuerzauber
from
Die Walküre
. But the roar of the rain drowned out her music. As she got up again, desperately listless, she saw Van Helderen standing there.

“You gave me a fright,” she said.

“Can I stay to lunch?” he asked. “I’m alone at home. Ida has gone to Tosari for her malaria and taken the children with her. It’s an expensive business. How I’m supposed to stand this for a month, I don’t know.”

“Send the children over here after they’ve been up in Tosari for a few days…”

“Won’t that be a lot of trouble?”

“Of course not… I’ll write to Ida…”

“That really is very sweet of you… It would be a big help.”

She laughed flatly.

“Aren’t you well?”

“I feel like I’m dying.”

“How do you mean?”

“I feel like I’m dying a little every day.”

“Why?”

“It’s terrible here. We were longing for the rains, and now they’re here they’re driving me crazy. And—I don’t know—I can’t stand it here any longer.”

“Where?”

“In the Indies. I taught myself to see all that was good and beautiful in this country. It was all for nothing. I can’t take it any more.”

“Go to Holland,” he said softly.

“My parents would certainly be glad to see me back. It would be good for my son, because every day he’s forgetting more of his Dutch, which I had started teaching him so enthusiastically, and is talking Malay—or worse still, patois. But I can’t leave my husband alone here. Without me he’d have nothing left here. At least—I think so—I like to think so. Perhaps it’s not true.”

“But if you get ill…”

“Oh… I don’t know…”

There was an unusual sense of exhaustion in her whole being.

“Perhaps you’re exaggerating!” he began cheerfully. “Come on, perhaps you’re exaggerating. What’s the matter, what’s upsetting you, what’s making you so unhappy? Let’s draw up an inventory.”

“An inventory of my calamities. My garden is a swamp. Three chairs on my front veranda are cracking apart. White ants have eaten my lovely Japanese rugs. For some
inexplicable
reason, a new silk dress has come out in damp stains. Another, purely from the heat, I think, has disintegrated into a few threads. In addition, various minor disasters of the kind. To console myself I plunged into Wagner. My piano was off-key; I think there are cockroaches running around between the strings.”

He gave a little laugh.

“What idiots we are here, we Westerners in this country. Why do we bring all the trappings or our precious
civilization
, which cannot survive here anyway! Why don’t we live in fresh bamboo huts, sleep on a mat, dress in a sarong and a linen jacket with a scarf over our shoulders and a flower in our hair. All your culture, with which you hope to become rich—it’s a Western idea, and in the long run it will collapse. All our administration—it’s exhausting in the heat. Why, if we want to be here, don’t we live simply and plant rice and live on nothing?…”

“You’re talking like a woman,” he said, half laughing.

“Possibly,” she said. “I’m speaking half in jest. But one thing that is certain is that here I feel a force that opposes me, opposes all my Westernness, a force that thwarts me. Sometimes I’m afraid here. Here I always feel on the point of being overwhelmed, I don’t know by what: by something out of the ground, by a power in nature, by a secret in the souls of those black people, whom I don’t know… At night especially I’m afraid.”

“You’re nerves are bad,” he said tenderly.

“Perhaps,” she answered flatly, seeing that he did not understand her, and too tired to go on explaining. “Let’s talk about something else. That table-turning is strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Recently when the three of us did it—Ida, you and me…”

“It certainly was very strange.”

“Do you remember the first time? Addy de Luce… It seems to be true after all about him and Mrs Van Oudijck… and the revolt… The table predicted it.”

“Couldn’t it be unconscious suggestion by us?”

“I don’t know. But just imagine if we’re all playing fair and the table starts tapping and talks to us, using an alphabet.”

“I really wouldn’t do it too often, Eva.”

“No. I find it all inexplicable, and yet it’s already beginning to bore me. People get used to the incomprehensible.”

“Everything is incomprehensible…”

“Yes… and everything is banal.”

“Eva,” he said, rebuking her with a gentle laugh.

“I’m giving up the struggle completely. I’ll just look at the rain… and rock.”

“Once you saw the beauty of my country.”

“Your country? Which you’d gladly leave tomorrow to go to the Paris Exhibition.”

“I’ve never seen anything.”

“You’re so humble today.”

“I’m sad, for you.”

“Oh come on, don’t be.”

“Play some more…”