Yes, Theo knew. He had spoken to Oorip after lunch; and although
the maid had at first tried to deny everything, afraid of losing
the sarongs, she had been unable to continue lying and had contented
herself with feeble little protests of "no ... no."... And, still early
that same afternoon, raging with jealousy, he sought out Addie. But
Theo was calmed by the indifferent composure of the good-looking youth,
with his Moorish face, already so fully sated with his conquests that
he himself never felt any jealousy. Theo was calmed by the complete
absence of thought in this tempter, who at once forgot everything
after an hour of love; forgot so gracefully that he looked up with
eyes of ingenuous surprise when Theo, red and boiling with fury, burst
into his room and, standing before his bed--where he was lying quite
naked, as was his habit during his siesta, with the magnificence of a
bronze statue, sublime as an ancient sculpture--declared that he would
strike him across the face. And Addie's surprise was so artless, his
indifference so harmonious, he seemed to have so utterly forgotten
his hour of love of the night before, he laughed so serenely at
the idea of fighting about a woman that Theo quieted down and came
and sat on the edge of his bed. And then Addie, who was a couple of
years younger but possessed incomparable experience, told him that
he really mustn't do it again--get so angry about a woman, a mistress
who gave herself to another. And Addie patted him on the shoulder with
almost fatherly compassion; and now, since they understood each other,
they went on confidentially pumping one another as they chatted.
They exchanged further confidences, about women, about girls. Theo
asked if Addie was going to marry Doddie. But Addie said that he
wasn't thinking of marrying and that the resident wouldn't be willing
either, because he didn't care for Addie's family and thought them
too Indian. Then, in a single word, he let slip his pride in his
Solo descent and his pride in the halo which shone dimly behind the
heads of all the De Luces. And Addie asked if Theo knew that he had a
young brother running wild in the compound. Theo knew nothing about
it. But Addie assured him that it was so: a young son of papa's,
mark you, from the time when the governor was still controller at
Ngadjiwa; a fellow of their own age, a regular Eurasian: the mother
was dead. Perhaps the old man himself didn't know that he still had
a son in the compound, but it was true; everybody knew it: the regent
knew, the native councillor knew, the head of the district knew, and
the meanest coolie knew. There was no actual proof; but a thing like
that, which was known the whole world over, was as true as that the
world itself existed.... What did the fellow do? Nothing, except curse
and swear, declaring that he was a son of the kandjeng tuan residèn,
who allowed him to rot in the compound.... What did he live on? On
nothing, on what he got by shameless begging, on what people gave him
and then ... by all sorts of practices: by going round the districts,
through all the villages, and asking if there were any complaints
and then drawing up little petitions; by encouraging people to go
to Mecca and let him book their passages with very cheap little
steamship-companies of which he was the unofficial agent: he would
go to the remotest village and display coloured posters representing
a steamer full of Mecca pilgrims and the Kaaba and the Sacred Tomb
of Mohammed. He would mess around like this, sometimes mixed up in
rows, once in a robbery, sometimes dressed in a sarong, sometimes
in an old striped calico suit; and he slept anywhere. And, when Theo
showed surprise and said that he had never heard of this half-brother
of his and expressed curiosity, Addie suggested that they should go
and look him up, if he was to be found in the compound. And Addie
gaily and quickly took his bath and put on a clean white suit; and
they went across the road and along the rice-fields into the compound.
It was already dusk under the heavy trees: the bananas lifted the
cool green paddles of their leaves; and under the stately canopy of
the coco-palms the little bamboo houses hid, romantically Oriental,
idyllic, with their palm-leaf roofs, their doors often already
closed, or, if open, framing a little black inward vista, with the
vague outline of a bench on which squatted a dark figure. The scabby,
hairless dogs barked; the children, naked, with bells dangling from
their stomachs, ran indoors and stared out of the houses; the women
kept quiet, recognizing the tempter and vaguely laughing, blinking
their eyes as he passed in his glory. And Addie pointed to the little
house where his old babu lived, Tidjem, the woman who helped him,
who always opened her door to him when he wanted the use of her hut,
who worshipped him as his mother and his sisters and his little nieces
worshipped him. He showed Theo the house and thought of his walk last
night with Doddie under the tjemaras. Tidjem the babu saw him and
ran up to him delightedly. She squatted down beside him, she pressed
his leg against her withered breast, she rubbed her forehead against
his knee, she kissed his white shoe, she gazed at him in rapture, her
beautiful prince, her raden, whom she had rocked as a little chubby
boy in her already infatuated arms. He tapped her on the shoulder and
gave her a rix-dollar and asked her if she knew where Si-Oudijck was,
because his brother wished to see him.
Tidjem stood up and beckoned to him to follow: it was some way to
walk. And they stepped out of the compound into an open road with
rails along it, by which the bamboo baskets filled with sugar were
removed to the proas that lay moored at a landing-stage yonder,
in the Brantas. The sun was going down in a fan-shaped glory of
orange sheaves; and the distant rows of trees that outlined the
paddy-fields were washed in with dark, soft, velvety touches against
their arrogant glow. These fields were not yet planted, but their dark,
earth-coloured expanse lay as broken by the plough. From the factory
came a few men and women, making their way home. Beside the river,
by the landing-stage, a small market of portable kitchens had been
set up under a sacred, five-fold banyan-tree, with its five trunks
merging into one another and its wide-spreading roots. Tidjem called
the ferry-man and he put them across, across the orange Brantas,
amidst the last yellow rays of the sun, outspread fanwise like a
peacock's tail. When they were on the other bank, the night fell over
everything, like the hasty fall of a gauze curtain; and the clouds,
which all through November had threatened the low horizons, hung
oppressively on the sultry air. And they entered another compound,
lit here and there by a paraffin-lamp, set down on the ground, with
a long lamp-glass but no globe. At last they came to a little house,
built partly of bamboo, partly of old packing-cases, and roofed partly
with tiles, partly with palm-leaves. Tidjem pointed to it and, once
more squatting on the ground and embracing and kissing Addie's knee,
asked permission to depart. Addie knocked at the door; a grumbling
and rumbling within was the only answer; but, when Addie called out,
the door was kicked open and the two young men stepped into the one
room of which the hut consisted: half bamboo, half deal boards from
packing-cases; a couch with a couple of dirty pillows in a corner,
and a limp chintz curtain dangling in front of it; a crazy table with
a chair or two; on the table, a paraffin-lamp without a globe; and a
litter of oddments stacked on a packing-case in a corner. Everything
was permeated with an acrid odour of opium.
And Si-Oudijck was sitting at the table with an Arab, while a Javanese
woman squatted on the couch, preparing a leaf of betel for herself. A
few sheets of paper lay on the table between the Arab and the young
half-caste. The last-named, evidently annoyed by the unexpected visit,
hurriedly crumpled the papers together. But he recovered his composure
and, assuming a jovial air, cried:
"Hullo, Adipati! Susuhunan! Sultan of Patjaram! Sugar-lord! How are
you, my god of beauty, the ruin of all good women?"
His jovial torrent of greetings continued without ceasing, while
he scrambled the papers together and made a sign to the Arab, who
disappeared through the other door, at the back.
"And who's that with you, Raden Mas Adrianus, my bonnie Lucius?"
"It's your little brother," said Addie.
Si-Oudijck looked up suddenly:
"Oh, is it really?" said he, speaking broken Dutch, Javanese and
Malay in the same breath. "I can see it is: my legitimate one. And
what does the fellow want?"
"He's come to see what you're like."
The two brothers looked at each other: Theo inquisitively, rejoicing
at having made this discovery, as a weapon against the old man,
if the weapon ever became necessary; the other, Si-Oudijck, secretly
restraining, behind his brown, crafty, leering face, all his jealousy,
all his bitterness and hatred.
"Is this where you live?" asked Theo, for the sake of saying something.
"No, I'm just staying with her for the time being," replied Si-Oudijck,
with a jerk of his head towards the woman.
"Has your mother been dead long?"
"Yes. Yours is still alive, isn't she? She lives in Batavia. I know
her. Do you ever see her?"
"No."
"H'm.... Prefer your step-mother?"
"Pretty well," said Theo, drily. And, changing the subject, "I don't
believe the old man knows that you exist."
"Yes, he does."
"I doubt it. Have you ever spoken to him?"
"Yes, formerly. Years ago."
"Well?"
"No use. He says I'm not his son."
"It must be difficult to prove."
"Legally, yes. But it's a fact and everybody knows it. It's known
all over Ngadjiwa."
"Have you no sort of evidence?"
"Only the oath which my mother took when she was dying, before
witnesses."
"Come, tell me things," said Theo. "Walk a bit of the way with us:
it's stuffy in here."
They left the hut and sauntered back through the compounds, while
Si-Oudijck told his story. They strolled beside the Brantas, which
wound vaguely in the evening dusk under a sky powdered with stars.
It did Theo good to hear about all this, about that housekeeper
of his father's, in the days of his controllership, dismissed for
an infidelity of which she was guiltless; the child born later and
never recognized, never maintained; the boy wandering from compound
to compound, romantically proud of his inhuman father, whom he
watched from a distance, following him with his furtive glance
when the father became assistant-resident and resident, married,
divorced his wife and married again; by slow degrees learning to
read and write from a native scrivener of his acquaintance. It
did the legitimate son good to hear about all this, because in his
innermost self, fair-haired and fair-skinned though he might be,
he was more the son of his mother, the half-caste, than of his
father; because in his innermost self he hated his father, not
for this or that reason, but from a secret antipathy in his blood,
because, despite the appearance and behaviour of a fair-haired and
fair-skinned European, he felt a secret kinship for this illegitimate
brother, felt a vague sympathy for him. Were they not both sons of
the self-same motherland, for which their father felt nothing except
as a result of his acquired development, the artificially cultivated,
humane love of the ruler for the territory which he governs. From his
childhood Theo had felt like that, far removed from his father; and
later that antipathy had grown into a slumbering hatred. It gave him
pleasure to hear the legend of his faultless parent demolished; the
impeccable, magnanimous man, a functionary of the highest integrity,
who loved his domestic circle, loved his residency, loved the Javanese,
and was anxious to uphold the regent's family, not only because his
official instructions prescribed that the Javanese nobility should be
respected, but because his own heart told him as much, when he thought
of the noble old pangéran.... Theo knew that his father was all this:
blameless, high-minded, upright, magnanimous; and it did him good,
here, in the mysterious evening beside the Brantas, to hear that
blamelessness, that high-minded, upright magnanimity torn to ribbons;
it did him good to meet an outcast who in one moment spattered that
high-throned paternal figure with mud and filth, dragging him from his
pedestal, making him appear no higher than another, sinful, wicked,
heartless, mean. It filled him with a wicked joy, even as he was
filled with a wicked joy at possessing his father's wife, whom his
father adored. What to do with this dark secret he did not yet know,
but he clutched at it as a weapon; he was whetting it there, that
very evening, while he listened to the end to what this furtive-eyed
half-caste, ranting and working himself up, had to say. And Theo hid
his secret, hid his weapon deep in his heart.
Grievances rose in his mind; and he too now, the legitimate son,
abused his father; declared that the resident did no more to help him,
his own lawful son, to get on than he would do for any of his clerks;
told him how his father had once recommended him to the manager of an
impossible undertaking, a rice-plantation, where he had been unable
to stay longer than a single month; how afterwards he had left him
to his fate, thwarting him when he went hunting after concessions,
even in other residencies, even in Borneo, until he was now obliged
to remain hanging about and sponging at home, unable to find a job,
thanks to his father, and merely tolerated in that house where he
disliked everything.
"Except your step-mother!" Si-Oudijck interpolated, drily.
But Theo went on, growing confidential in his turn and telling his
brother that it would be no great advantage for him even if he were
acknowledged and legitimatized. And in this way they both became
excited, glad to have met each other, to have grown intimate in this
brief hour. And beside them walked Addie, surprised by this quick
mutual attraction, but otherwise empty of thought. They had crossed
a bridge and by a circuitous route had come out behind the Patjaram
factory-buildings. Here Si-Oudijck said good-night, shaking hands with
Theo, who slipped a couple of rix-dollars into his palm. They were
accepted greedily, with a flicker of the furtive glance, but not a
word of thanks. And Addie and Theo went past the factory, now silent,
to the house. The family were strolling, outside, in the garden and in
the tjemara-avenue. And, as the two young men approached, the golden,
eight-year-old child came running towards them, the old grandmother's
little foster-princess, with her fringe of hair and her whitened
forehead, in her rich little, doll-like dress. She came running
up to them and suddenly stopped in front of Addie and looked up at
him. Addie asked her what she wanted, but the child did not answer and
only looked up at him and then, putting out her little hand, stroked
his hand with it. It was all so clearly the result of an irresistible
magnetism in the shy child, this running up, stopping, looking up
and stroking, that Addie laughed aloud and stooped and kissed her
lightly. The child skipped back contentedly. And Theo, still excited
by his evening, first by his conversation with Oorip and then by his
explanation with Addie, his meeting with his half-brother, his own
confidences about his father--Theo, feeling bitter and interesting,
was so greatly irritated by this trivial behaviour of Addie and the
child, that he exclaimed, almost angrily:
"Oh, you ... you'll never be anything but a woman's man!..."