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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
A mystical Javan prince and a promiscuous wife are twin challenges to Dutch Commissioner Van Oudijck's seemingly impregnable authority. As he struggles to maintain control of his district and his family, ancient local traditions reassert their influence and colonial power begins to disintegrate. Set at the height of Dutch colonial rule in the East Indies, this classic of Dutch literature portrays the clash between Western rationalism and indigenous mysticism through an evocative and sensual narrative.
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LOUIS COUPERUS
THE HIDDEN FORCE
Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
CONTENTS
THE HIDDEN FORCE
BOOK I
1
THE FULL MOON, which that evening had a tragic intensity, had risen early, just before twilight faded, like a huge, blood-red globe. It flared sunset-like low beyond the tamarind trees of Long Avenue and climbed, gradually purging itself of its tragic hue, into an indistinct sky. A deathly hush pervaded everything like a veil of silence, as if, after the long afternoon siesta, the evening’s rest were beginning without any transition. Over the town, its white-pillared detached houses hidden among the tree-lined avenues and gardens, there hung a muffled silence in the oppressiveness of the evening air, without a breath of wind, as if the lustreless evening were wearied by the scorching east monsoon day. The houses nestled silently amid the vegetation, with their regularly looming ranks of large whitewashed flowerpots. Here and there lights were already being lit. Suddenly a dog barked and another dog answered, tearing the muffled silence into long, coarse shreds; the angry dogs—hoarse, breathless, gruffly hostile—suddenly they too fell silent.
At the end of Long Avenue lay the district commissioner’s mansion, set deep behind its front garden. Straight out of the blackness of the giant banyan trees its low lines of tiled roofs zigzagged their way one after the other towards the shadow of the rear garden, casting a primitive outline over a patchwork of rooms and verandas to form a single silhouette. At the front, however, rose the white columns of the portico, dazzlingly bright and substantial, widely spaced, open and welcoming with the expansiveness of an imposing palace gate. Through the open doors the central gallery extended backwards, illuminated by an occasional flickering lamp.
A native attendant lit the lanterns at the side of the house. Semicircles of large white pots containing roses and chrysanthemums, palms and caladiums fanned out left and right in a wide arc from the front to the side of the house. A broad gravel path formed the drive up to the white-columned portico; there was a wide, arid expanse of lawn surrounded by pots, and in the middle of it, on a brick pedestal, was a monumental vase containing a large latania. A green freshness was provided by the winding pond, where the huge leaves of a Victoria regia rubbed shoulders like round, dark-green trays, with the occasional splash of white from a lotus-like flower among them. A path wound along the edge of the pond, and in a round shingle-covered area stood a tall flag pole. The flag had already been lowered, as it was every day at six. A simple gate divided the grounds from Long Avenue.
The huge compound was silent. A single lamp from the candelabra on the front veranda, and another inside turned down low, had now slowly begun to burn, having been laboriously lit by the lamp boy as two night lights in the palace of columns and receding roofs, its perspective like that of a child’s drawing. On the steps of the office sat several attendants in dark uniforms, talking in whispers. After a while one of them got up and, with the leisurely gait of one not wishing to hurry, headed towards a bronze bell hanging high up, near the attendants’ shed at the very edge of the compound. He reached the bell after a hundred paces and rang seven slowly echoing strokes. The clanger reverberated with a brazen note, each stroke followed by a zigzagging boom. The dogs’ barking began again. The attendant, supple and boyishly slim in his blue linen jacket and trousers with yellow facings, cuffs and collar, calmly retraced his hundred steps back to the other attendants.
The light had now been turned on in the office and in the adjoining bedroom, where a faint glow penetrated through the blinds. The District Commissioner, a large thick-set man in a black jacket and white trousers, walked through the office and called outside:
“Attendant!”
The head attendant, in his linen uniform jacket, its tails edged with a wide yellow hem, approached on bended knees and crouched down…
“Call the nyonya, your mistress!”
“The nyonya has gone out, kanjeng!” whispered the man, and with both hands, fingers touching, he made the respectful sign of the semba.
“Where has the mistress gone to?”
“I haven’t checked yet, master!” said the man, as an excuse for not knowing, and again made the sign of the semba.
The District Commissioner thought for a moment.
“My cap,” he said. “My cane.”
The head attendant, his knees still bent in dutiful respect, scuttled across the room and in a crouching position offered the semi-formal uniform cap and a walking stick.
The Commissioner went out, the head attendant hurrying after him holding a long burning wick, the glowing tip of which he swung in order to identify the Commissioner to anyone passing by in the dark. The Commissioner walked slowly across the compound and onto Long Avenue. Along that avenue, like a row of tamarind trees and flamboyants, were the villas of the principal local dignitaries, faintly lit, deathly quiet, seemingly unoccupied, with the lines of white-washed flowerpots glowing in the dim evening light.
The Commissioner walked first past the secretary’s house; then a girls’ school on the other side; then the notary’s office, a hotel, the post office and the home of the president of the criminal court. At the end of Long Avenue was the Catholic church, and farther on, across the river bridge, was the station. Outside the station was a large European shop, better illuminated than the others. The moon, having climbed higher and turning a brighter silver as it rose, shone down on the white bridge, the white shop, the white church: all this around a small, treeless square with a small, pointed monument—the municipal clock—at its centre.
The Commissioner met no one; the occasional Javanese, moving through the darkness, appeared momentarily from the shadows, causing the attendant to swing the glowing tip of his wick ostentatiously behind his master. Usually the Javanese understood and cowered to one side of the road. Sometimes, out of ignorance, fresh from his village, he failed to understand and walked anxiously by, looking apprehensively at the attendant, who kept on swinging and as he passed snapped a curse at him, because he—yokel as he was—had no manners. If a carriage or a trap approached, he again swung his shooting star through the evening, signalling to the coachman, who either stopped and alighted, or crouched in his vehicle, and while crouching steered towards the very edge of the road.
The Commissioner walked on gloomily, with a steady, determined pace. He turned right off the small square and walked past the Dutch Reformed Church, straight towards an attractive villa with slim, fairly accurate Ionic plaster columns and brightly lit with paraffin lamps set in a candelabra. It was the Concordia club. A few servants in short, tight-fitting white jackets were sitting on the steps. A European in a white suit, the landlord, was walking about the front veranda. But there was no one around the large drinks table and the broad wicker chairs spread their arms as if waiting in vain.
The landlord bowed on seeing the Commissioner, who touched his cap briefly, passed the club and turned left. He walked to the end of the avenue, past dark little cottages hidden away in small compounds, turned again and walked along the mouth of the river. Proa after proa lay moored there, like on a canal; a monotonous buzz of Maduran seamen droned slowly across the water, from which a fishy odour rose. Passing the harbourmaster’s office, the Commissioner continued towards the pier, which extended some way into the sea, and at the tip of which the iron candelabra shape of a small lighthouse, like a miniature Eiffel Tower, rose up. Here the District Commissioner stopped and breathed in deeply. The wind had suddenly got up, the east monsoon wind blowing from afar, as it did every day at that hour. But suddenly, unexpectedly, it stopped, subsided, as if flapping its wings in vain. The choppy sea smoothed its moon-white curls of foam and, momentarily, became a long, pale phosphorescent expanse.
Across the sea, the sad and monotonous drone of singing approached like a great nocturnal bird, and a fishing proa with a high, curved prow—giving it the look of a ship from antiquity—glided into the waterway. A melancholy, stoical acceptance of all the petty, dark, earthly things under that endless sky, on the shore of that sea of phosphorescent distances, drifted about and conjured a disturbing mystery…
Perhaps the tall, robust man who stood there, feet apart, breathing deeply and slowly in time with the incoming gusts of wind, tired from his work, from sitting at his desk, from his calculations regarding currency reform—the abolition of the smallest denomination of coins, entrusted to him personally by the Governor-General as an important matter—perhaps that tall, robust man, practical, cool-headed, decisive from the long-term exercise of authority did not feel that obscure mystery drifting over the Indies town that evening—his district capital—but he did feel a longing for tenderness. He felt the vague longing for a child’s arm around his neck, for small, high-pitched voices around him. He longed for a young, smiling wife to be waiting for him. He didn’t analyse that sentimentality in himself, he was not given to introspection: he was too busy for that. His days were too full and varied for him to be able to give in to what he knew were fits of weakness: the suppressed impulses of his young years. But though he didn’t reflect, the mood was impossible to shake off, like a pressure on his broad chest, like a disease of tenderness, a malaise of sentimentality in his otherwise very practical mind, that of a senior official who liked his work, his area, and was committed to its interests, and for whom the almost autonomous authority of his position was totally in keeping with his domineering nature; who with his powerful lungs was just as accustomed to breathing the atmosphere of his extensive responsibilities and broad field of varied tasks as he was to breathing the wind from the open sea. That evening in particular, the longing and nostalgia filled him completely. He felt lonely, not just because of the isolation that almost always surrounds a chief regional officer, who is approached either with conventional, smiling deference, for the sake of conversation, or with succinct, businesslike respect. Although he was the head of a family, he was lonely. He thought of his big house, his wife and children. And he felt lonely, sustained only by the importance he attached to his work. It was everything to him and filled all his waking hours. He fell asleep thinking about it and his first thought on waking was of some matter concerning the district.
At that moment, tired of figures, breathing deeply in the wind, he inhaled with the freshness of the sea its melancholy, the mysterious poignancy of the seas of the Indies, the haunting sadness of the seas of Java; the ruefulness, the melancholy that comes rushing from afar as if borne on mysterious wings. But his nature was not the kind to surrender itself to mystery. He denied it. There was no such thing: there was only the freshness of the sea and the wind. There was only the scent of fish and flowers and seaweed: an odour dispersed on the wind. There was only a moment’s respite, and whatever mysterious gloom he felt nevertheless creeping irresistibly that evening into his rather susceptible mind—which he thought concerned his family circle, which he would have liked to see more tightly-knit—gathered more closely around him as father and husband. If there was any melancholy, it stemmed from that. It didn’t come from the sea or from afar through the air. He did not give in to his very first sensation of strangeness… Instead he planted himself more firmly, threw out his chest, raised his stalwart, military head, and sniffed the air.
The head attendant, squatting with his glowing wick in his hand, peered intently at his master, as if asking what he’s doing standing there so oddly by the lighthouse… So odd, those Dutch… What’s he thinking?… Why is he acting like that?… At this hour, in this of all places… The sea spirits are out and about now. There are crocodiles under the water, and every crocodile is a ghost… Look, someone had made a sacrifice to them, banana and rice and dried meat and a hard-boiled egg on a raft of bamboo, down at the base of the lighthouse… What is His Lordship, kanjengtuan, doing here now?… It’s not good, it bodes misfortune.
The attendant’s spying eyes ranged up and down across the broad back of his master, who just stood there and gazed… What was he gazing at?… What could he see being borne on the wind?… So strange, those Dutch, strange…
The Commissioner suddenly turned round and walked back, and the startled attendant followed him, blowing on the tip of his burning wick. The Commissioner returned the way he had come; there was now a gentleman sitting in the club, who greeted him, and a few young men were walking along Long Avenue. The dogs were barking.
As the Commissioner approached the entrance of his official compound he saw two white figures, a man and a girl, ahead of him at the other entrance, who vanished, however, into the blackness under the banyan trees. He went straight to his office, where he handed another attendant his cap and stick. He immediately sat down at his desk. He could fit an hour’s work in before dinner.
2
SEVERAL LAMPS HAD BEEN LIT. In fact the lamps had been lit everywhere, but in the long, wide galleries there was scarcely any light. In the grounds and in the house there must have been at least twenty or thirty paraffin lamps in candelabras and lanterns, but they gave no more than a dim glow, a yellow haze that spread through the house. A stream of moonlight flowed into the garden, illuminating the flowerpots and casting a sparkle across the pond. Against the bright sky the banyans stood out like soft velvet…
The first gong for dinner had sounded. On the front veranda a young man was swaying back and forth on a rocking chair, hands behind his head, bored. A young girl hummed to herself as she walked down the central gallery as if in expectation. The house was furnished in the conventional manner of commissioners’ residences in the interior, grand and banal. The marble floor of the front veranda was white and as glossy as a mirror; tall potted palms were positioned between the pillars; rocking chairs were arrayed around marble tables. In the first inner gallery, which ran parallel to the front veranda, rows of chairs stood against the wall, as if for an eternal reception. The end of the second inner gallery, which ran from front to back, at the point where it again widened into a gallery running from side to side, was marked by a huge red satin curtain hanging from a gold cornice. In the white wall spaces between the doors of the rooms hung either gold-framed mirrors on marble consoles, or lithographs—paintings as they were called in the Indies: Van Dyck on horseback, Veronese received by a doge on the steps of a Venetian palace, Shakespeare at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and Tasso at the Este court. But the largest space was occupied by a huge etching in a frame topped by the royal coat of arms: a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina in her coronation regalia. In the centre of the central gallery was a red satin ottoman, crowned by a palm. Apart from that, there were a great many chairs and large candelabra. Everything was well maintained and pompously banal, unhomely and without a single intimate corner, as if always expecting the next reception. In the semi-darkness of the paraffin lamps—just a single lamp was lit in each candelabra—the long, wide gallery stretched out in vacant tedium.
The second gong sounded. On the back veranda the table, overlong and as if forever awaiting guests, had been laid for three. The butler and six or so servants stood waiting at the serving tables and the two buffets. The butler had already started filling plates with soup, and a few of the servants put the three bowls of soup on the table, on top of the folded napkins lying on the plates. Then, once more, they continued to wait, while the soup steamed faintly. Another boy filled the water glasses with large cubes of ice.
The young girl had come closer, still humming. She may have been seventeen and was just like her mother, now divorced, the Commissioner’s first wife, a pretty young Eurasian woman who now lived in Batavia and, so it was said, ran a discreet gambling den. She had a pale olive complexion, with the occasional hint of a fruitlike blush, and lovely black hair that curled naturally at the temples and was worn up in a very large bun. Her black pupils sparkled in a moist blue-and-white pool, around which her heavy lashes played, up and down, up and down. Her mouth was small and a little plump, and her upper lip had the merest suggestion of dark down. She was not tall, and had slightly too full a figure, rather like a forced rose that blossoms prematurely. She wore a white piqué skirt and a white linen blouse with lace inserts, and round her neck was a bright-yellow ribbon that went very well with her olive pallor, which sometimes suddenly flushed, as if with a rush of blood.
The young man from the front veranda had also come strolling in. He resembled his father, with a thick blond moustache. Scarcely twenty-three, he looked at least five years older, dressed in a Russian linen suit but with a collar and tie.
Finally Van Oudijck himself arrived, his resolute step approaching swiftly, as if he were eating briefly before returning to work. All three sat down without a word and spooned up their soup.
“What time is Mama arriving tomorrow?” asked Theo.
“At eleven-thirty,” replied Van Oudijck, and turning to his personal servant behind him, said: “Kario, don’t forget that the mistress must be collected from the station at eleven-thirty tomorrow.”
“Yes, kanjeng,” whispered Kario.
A fish dish was served.
“Doddy,” said Van Oudijck. “Who were you at the gate with just now?”
Doddy, taken aback, slowly looked at her father, her eyes sparkling.
“At… the gate?… No one… With Theo maybe.”
“Were you with your sister at the gate?” asked Van Oudijck.
The young man’s thick blond brows creased.
“It’s possible… I don’t know… can’t remember…”
All three were silent. They ate their way hurriedly through dinner in an air of boredom. Five or six servants, in white jackets with red linen facings, moved about softly with their flat-toed gait, serving quickly and silently. The meal continued with steak and salad, and pudding and fruit.
“Nothing but steak…” grumbled Theo.
“Yes, that cook!” said Doddy with her throaty laugh. “She always serves steak when Mama’s not here; she couldn’t care less when Mama’s not here. She has no imagination. It’s too bad…”
Twenty minutes later they had finished eating, after which Van Oudijck went back to his office. Doddy and Theo strolled to the front of the house.
“Boring…” said Doddy with a yawn. “Come on, shall we have a game of billiards?”
In the first inner gallery, behind the satin curtain, was a small billiard table.
“Come on then,” said Theo.
They began to play.
“Why was I supposed to have been with you at the gate?”
“Oh… really!” said Doddy.
“Well, why?”
“Papa don’t need know.”
“Who were you with, then? Addy?”
“Of course!” said Doddy. “Is band playing tonight?”
“I think so.”
“Come on, let’s go, yes?”
“No, I don’t feel like it.”
“Oh, why ever not?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Are you coming?”
“No.”
“With Mama you would, no?” said Doddy angrily. “I know that very well. You always go to band with Mama.”
“What do you know… you little madam!”
“What do I know?” she laughed. “What do I know? I know what I know.”
“Eh?” he said teasingly, with a crude attempt to catch her on the rebound. “You and Addy, eh?”
“Well, and what about you and Mama…”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re crazy,” he said.
“No need hide from me! Anyway, everyone says.”
“Let them say.”
“It’s really bad of you, though!”
“Oh, go to hell…”
He threw down his cue angrily and marched off. She followed him.
“Look, Theo… don’t be angry. Do come with me to band.”
“No.”
“I won’t say any more,” she cajoled sweetly.
She was frightened that he would stay angry, and then she would have no one at all; then she would be bored to death.
“I promised Addy, and I can’t go alone…”
“Well, if you don’t say such stupid things again…”
“Yes, I promise. Theo dear, come on then…”
She was already in the garden.
Van Oudijck appeared on the threshold of his office, the door of which was always open, but which was cut off from the inner gallery by a large screen.
“Doddy!” he called out.
“Yes, Papa?”
“Would you make sure there are some flowers in Mama’s room tomorrow?”
His voice was almost embarrassed and he was blushing.
Doddy suppressed her giggles.
“All right, Papa… I’ll make sure.”
“Where are you off to?”
“With Theo… to hear band.”
Van Oudijck flushed with anger.
“To the band? You might ask me first!” he cried in sudden fury.
Doddy pouted.
“I don’t like your going out without my knowing where. This afternoon, too, you had gone out when I wanted to go for a walk with you.”
“Well, suda, that’s that then,” said Doddy, crying.
“You can go,” said Van Oudijck, “but I want you to ask me first.”
“No, I don’t feel like going any more!” Doddy wept. “That’s the end of it. No band.”
In the distance, in the garden of the Concordia club, they could already hear the first sounds.
Van Oudijck had go back to work. Doddy and Theo threw themselves into two rocking chairs in the front garden and rocked madly, gliding across the smooth marble in the chairs.
“Come on,” said Theo. “Let’s get going. Addy’s waiting for you.”
“No,” she sulked. “Don’t care two hoots. Tomorrow I shall tell Addy. Papa so horrid. He’s spoiling my fun. And… I’m not putting any flowers in Mama’s room.”
Theo sniggered.
“Say,” whispered Doddy. “That Papa… hey? So in love, always. He was blushing when he asked me about those flowers.”
Theo sniggered again, and hummed along to the distant music.
3
THE NEXT MORNING at eleven-thirty Theo went to collect his stepmother from the station in the landau. Van Oudijck, who at that time usually dealt with police business, had not said anything to his son, but when, from his office, he saw Theo getting into the landau and driving off, he thought it was nice of the lad. He had adored Theo as a child, had continued to spoil him as a boy, and had often clashed with him as a young man, but still the old paternal passion often flared up. At this moment he loved his son more than Doddy, who was still sulking that morning and had not put any flowers in his wife’s room, so he’d had to instruct Kario to provide some. He was now sorry that he hadn’t spoken a kind word to Theo for days and resolved to do so in the very near future. The lad was volatile: in three years he had been employed by at least five coffee companies; at present he was again out of work and was hanging around at home looking for something to occupy him.
At the station, Theo waited only a few minutes before the train from Surabaya arrived. He saw Mrs Van Oudijck at once, with her personal maid Urip and the two little boys, René and Ricus, who unlike himself were dark-skinned, and whom she had brought with her from Batavia for their long holidays.
Theo helped his stepmother off the train as the station-master stepped up to greet her respectfully. She nodded in reply with her unique smile, like a benevolent queen. With the same ambivalent smile she allowed her stepson to kiss her on the cheek. A tall woman, white, blond, in her thirties, with the languid elegance of women born in the Indies of European parents, she had a quality that immediately attracted attention. It lay in her white skin, her milky complexion, her very light blond hair and her eyes that were a strange grey colour, and which sometimes narrowed momentarily and always had an ambiguous expression. It lay in her eternal smile, sometimes sweet and engaging, and often intolerable, irritating. At first one couldn’t tell whether there was anything hidden beneath that look and that smile—any depth, any soul—or if it was nothing but looking and smiling, both with the same slight ambivalence. However, one soon noticed her smiling, non-committal indifference, as if she didn’t care even if the heavens fell, as if she would greet such an event with a smile. She walked slowly, dressed in a pink piqué skirt and a bolero, a white satin ribbon around her waist, and a white sailor hat with a white satin bow; her summer travel outfit was very smart compared with that of some of the other ladies on the platform, strolling along in stiffly starched wrap-arounds—like nightdresses—and tulle hats topped with feathers! The only touch of the Indies in her extremely European appearance that distinguished her from a woman newly arrived from Holland was perhaps her slow gait, that languid elegance. Theo had offered her his arm and she allowed herself to be conducted to the carriage—“the coach”—followed by the two little dark-skinned brothers. She had been away for two months.
She had a nod and a smile for the stationmaster, a glance for the coachman and the groom, and took her seat slowly, languidly, still smiling, like a white sultan’s wife. The three stepsons followed her; the maid travelled behind in a cart. Mrs Van Oudijck glanced outside and felt that Labuwangi looked exactly the same as ever. But she said nothing. She withdrew slowly and leant back. She exuded a certain contentment, but most of all a glowing, smiling indifference, as if nothing could affect her, as if she were protected by a strange power. There was something strong about this woman, whose power derived from her pure indifference: she had an invulnerable quality. She looked as if life had no hold over her, not over her appearance and not over her soul. As if she were incapable of suffering, her smile so content because for her there was no such thing as disease, suffering, poverty or misery. She had an aura of radiant egoism. And yet she was mostly amiable. She generally charmed, won people over because she was so pretty. Whatever else people might say about her, this woman, with her glittering self-satisfaction, was loved. When she spoke, when she laughed, she was disarming. Indeed, she was engaging. This was despite and—perhaps—precisely because of her unfathomable indifference. She was interested only in her own body and in her own soul; everything else, everything else was indifferent to her. Incapable of giving anything of her soul, she had never felt for anyone but herself, but she smiled so harmoniously and winningly that people always found her amiable, adorable. Perhaps it was because of the line of her cheeks, the strange ambiguity in her look, her indelible smile, the grace of her figure, the sound of her voice and words, always so appropriate. If people at first found her insufferable she seemed not to notice and, on the contrary, became even more engaging. If people were jealous, she again seemed not to notice and was full of praise; whether intuitively or indifferently she couldn’t care less what someone else considered a defect in themselves. She could admire with the sweetest expression an outfit that she considered ghastly, and from pure indifference she did not change her opinion later but stuck by her admiration. Her boundless indifference was her main source of vitality. She had become accustomed to doing whatever she felt like doing, and she did it with a smile. However people talked behind her back, she remained so proper, so enchanting, that people forgave her. She was not loved while she was not present, but the moment people saw her, they were completely won over again. Her husband worshipped her, her stepchildren—she had no children of her own—couldn’t help loving her, involuntarily, despite themselves; her servants were all under her spell. She never raised her voice; she gave a brief order and it was carried out. If something went wrong, if something got broken, her smile would fade momentarily… and that was all. And if her own spiritual and physical interests were in danger, she was usually able to avert it and settle things as advantageously as possible, her smile barely fading. She had wrapped her personal well-being so closely around her that she was usually in full control. Nothing seemed to weigh on this woman. Her indifference was utterly radiant—without contempt, without envy, without emotion: her indifference was, simply, indifference. And the seemingly effortless tact with which she lived and controlled her life was so great that if she were to lose everything she now possessed—her beauty or her position, for example—she might still perhaps have retained her indifference, her inability to suffer.
The carriage drove into the District Commissioner’s compound, just as the hearing of the police cases began. The Javanese magistrate was already in Van Oudijck’s office: the magistrate and the police attendants led the procession of the accused. The natives held on to each other by the hem of their jackets and tripped along, but the few women among them walked by themselves; under a banyan tree, at some distance from the steps leading to the office, they all crouched down expectantly. An attendant, hearing the clock on the front veranda, rang twelve-thirty on the large bell at the attendants’ lodge. The loud stroke reverberated through the scorching midday heat like a bronze organ reed. But Van Oudijck had heard the carriage trundling along and made the magistrate wait while he went to meet his wife. His face brightened. He kissed her tenderly, effusively, and enquired how she was. He was happy to see the boys again. And, remembering what he had been thinking about Theo, he had a kind word for his eldest child, too. Doddy, still sulking, kissed her mama, who allowed herself to be kissed, while smiling with equanimity and calmly returning the kisses, without warmth or coolness, but just doing what was required of her. It was plain to see that her husband, Theo and Doddy all admired her. They told her how well she looked; Doddy asked where she had got her nice travelling outfit. In her room Léonie saw the flowers and, knowing it was Van Oudijck who always ensured they were there, she stroked his arm briefly.
The Commissioner went back to his office, where a magistrate was waiting; the hearing began. Pushed along by a police guard, the accused came and squatted on the threshold of the office, while the magistrate squatted on a mat and the District Commissioner sat at his desk. As the first case was being heard, Van Oudijck continued listening to his wife’s voice in the central gallery, while the accused defended himself with a loud cry:
“No, no!”
The Commissioner frowned and listened attentively…
In the central gallery the voices fell silent. Mrs Van Oudijck had gone to change into a sarong and a loose jacket for the rijsttafel lunch, consisting of mixed dishes served with rice. She wore the garments coquettishly: a sarong from Solo, a transparent jacket, jewelled brooches, and white leather slippers with white bows. She had just dressed when Doddy came to her door and said:
“Mama, Mama… Mrs Van Does is here!”
The smile faded for a second: the soft eyes darkened…
“I’ll be right there, dear…”
`But she sat down and Urip, her personal maid, sprinkled perfume on her handkerchief. Mrs Van Oudijck stretched out and mused a little in the languidness that followed her journey. She found Labuwangi desperately dull after Batavia, where she had stayed for two months with friends and family, free and with no obligations. Here, as the Commissioner’s wife, she had a few, even though she delegated most to the secretary’s wife. Deep down, she was tired, out of humour, discontent. Despite her complete indifference she was human enough to have her spells of depression, in which she cursed everything. Then she longed suddenly to do something crazy, she longed, vaguely, for Paris… She would never let anyone see that. She could control herself, and now, too, she controlled herself before she reappeared. Her vague, bacchantic longing melted into indolence. She stretched out more comfortably, her eyes almost closed. Through her almost superhuman indifference there occasionally wound a strange fantasy, hidden from the world. What she most wanted to do was to live a life of perfumed imagination in her room, especially after her time in Batavia… After such a period of perverse indulgence she needed to give free rein to her wandering imagination and let it curl and float cloudlike before her eyes. In her otherwise entirely arid soul it was like an unreal blossoming of blue flowers, which she cultivated with the only sentiment she would ever be able to feel. She had no feeling for any human being, but she felt for those flowers. She loved daydreaming like this. What she would have liked to be, if she didn’t have to be who she was… The clouds of fantasy rose: she saw a white palace and Cupids everywhere…
“Mama, do come on! It’s Mrs Van Does, Mrs Van Does with two jars…”
It was Doddy at the door. Léonie got up and went to the rear veranda, where the Eurasian lady, the wife of the local postmaster, was sitting. She kept cows and sold milk. But she also dealt in other goods. She was fat, with a brownish complexion and a protruding stomach; she wore a very simple jacket with a narrow piece of lace over it, and her podgy hands stroked her paunch. In front of her, on the table, she had two jars in which something was sparkling. Mrs Van Oudijck wondered vaguely whether it was sugar or crystal, when she suddenly remembered…
Mrs Van Does said she was glad to see her back. Two months away from Labuwangi. “Too bad that, Mrs Van Oudijck, wasn’t it?” And she pointed to the jars. Mrs Van Oudijck smiled. What was it?
With an air of mystery Mrs Van Does placed a fat, limp, backward-curling forefinger against one of the jars and said in a whisper:
“Diamonds!”
“Are they?” asked Mrs Van Oudijck.
Doddy stared wide-eyed and Theo looked on in amusement at the two jars.
“Yes… You know, from that lady… I told you about… She won’t give her name. Kassian, poor soul. Her husband was once a big noise, and now… she’s so unhappy; she hasn’t a penny. All gone. All she has are these two jars. She had all her jewels removed and keeps the stones in here. They’ve all been counted. She’s entrusting them to me, to sell them. Because of my dairy business I have lots of contacts. You’d like to see them, wouldn’t you, Mrs Van Oudijck? Beautiful stones! The Commissioner will buy them for you, now you’ve come home… Doddy, give me a black cloth, velvet would be best.”
Doddy got the seamstress to look for a piece of black velvet in a cupboard full of sewing clutter. A boy brought in tamarind syrup and ice. Mrs Van Does, with a pair of tweezers between her double-jointed fingers, placed a few stones carefully on the velvet…
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I ask you, look at that quality, Mrs Van Oudijck! Magnificent!”
Mrs Van Oudijck looked. She smiled sweetly and said in her soft voice: “That stone is imitation, dear lady.”
“Imitation?” screeched Mrs Van Does. “Imitation?”
Mrs Van Oudijck looked at the other stones.
“And those others, Mrs Van Does…”—she bent over intently, and then said as sweetly as possible, “Those others… are… imitation, too…”
Mrs Van Does looked at her with amusement, and then said to Doddy and Theo, cheerfully, “That mama of yours… sharp! She sees right away!”
“Just a joke, Mrs Van Oudijck. I just wanted to see if you knew about jewels. Of course, on my word of honour, I’d never sell them… But these… look…”
And solemnly, almost religiously, she now opened the other jar, which contained only a few stones. She laid them lovingly on the black velvet.
“That one would be marvellous… for a leontine,” said Mrs Van Oudijck, peering at a large gem.
“Well, what did I tell you?” asked the Eurasian lady.
And they all gazed at the stones, the genuine ones, those from the “real” jar, and held them carefully to the light.
Mrs Van Oudijck could see they were all genuine.
“I really have no money, dear lady!” she said.
“This big one… for the leontine… six hundred guilders… a bargain, I assure you, madam!”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly, madam!”
“How much then? You will be making a good purchase. Poor thing, her husband used to be a big noise. Council of the Indies.”
“Two hundred…”
“Kassian! Two hundred!”
“Two hundred and fifty, but no more. I really don’t have any money.”
“The Commissioner…” whispered Mrs Van Does, sensing the approach of Van Oudijck, who, now the hearing was over, was heading towards the back veranda. “The Commissioner… he’ll buy it for you!”
Mrs Van Oudijck smiled and looked at the sparkling drop of light on the black velvet. She liked jewellery and was not entirely indifferent to precious stones.
She looked up at her husband.
“Mrs Van Does is showing us lots of nice things,” she said soothingly.
