Eva Eldersma was in a more listless and dejected mood than she had
yet experienced in Java. After her efforts, after the fuss and the
success of the fancy-fair, after the shuddering fear of a rising,
the little town conscientiously went to sleep again, as though well
content to be able to slumber as usual. It was December and the heavy
rains had begun, as usual, on the fifth of the month: the rainy monsoon
invariably opened on St. Nicholas' Day. The clouds which, for the
past month, continually swelling, had piled themselves upon the lower
horizons now rose curtain-wise, like water-laden sails higher against
the skies, rent open as by a sudden fury of far-flashing lightning,
pouring and lashing down as though this wealth of water could no longer
be upheld, now that the swollen sails were torn apart, as though all
their wanton abundance came streaming down from a single rent. Of an
evening, Eva's front-verandah was invaded by a crazy swarm of insects,
which, drunk with light, rushed upon their destruction in the lamps,
as in an apotheosis of fiery death, filling the lamp-chimneys and
strewing the marble tables with their fluttering, dying bodies. Eva
inhaled a cooler air, but a miasma of damp, arising from earth and
leaves, soaked the walls, seemed to ooze from the furniture, dimming
the mirrors, staining the silk hangings and covering boots and shoes
with mildew, as though nature's frenzied downpour were bent on the
ruin of all that was fine and delicate, sparkling and graceful in
human achievement. But the trees and foliage and grass shot up and
expanded and rioted luxuriantly upwards, in a thousand shades of fresh
green; and, in the reviving glory of verdant nature, the crouching
human community of open-fronted villas, wet and humid with fungi,
all the whiteness of the lime-washed pillars and flower-pots turned
to a mouldy green.
Eva watched the slow and gradual ruin of her house, her furniture,
her clothes. Day by day, inexorably, something was spoilt, something
rotted away, something was covered with mildew or rust. And none of
the æsthetic philosophy with which she had at first taught herself
to love India, to appreciate the good in India, to seek in India
for external plastic beauty and inward beauty of soul, was able
to withstand the streaming water, the cracking of her furniture,
the staining of her frocks and gloves, the damp, mildew and rust
that wrecked the exquisite environment which she had designed and
created all around her, as a comfort, to console her for living in
India. All her logic, all her feeling of making the best of things,
of finding something attractive and beautiful after all in the land
of all-prevailing nature and of people eager for money and position,
all this failed her and came to naught, now that she was every moment
irritated and incensed as a housewife, as an elegant woman, an artistic
woman. No, it was impossible in India to surround one's self with
taste and exquisiteness. She had been here for only two years and
she was still able to make a certain fight for her western culture;
but nevertheless she was now already better able than in the first
days after her arrival to understand the laisser-aller of the men,
after their hard work, and of the women, in their housekeeping. True,
the servants with their soundless movements, working with gentle hands,
willing, never impertinent, were to her thinking far superior to the
noisy, pounding maids in Holland; but nevertheless she felt in all her
household an eastern antagonism to her western ideas. It was always
a struggle not to surrender to that laisser-aller, to the running
to waste of the over-large grounds, invariably hung at the back with
the dirty washing of the servants and strewn with nibbled mangoes; to
the gradual spoiling and fading of the paint of the house, which was
also too large, too open, too much exposed to wind and weather to be
cared for with Dutch cleanliness; to the habit of sitting and rocking,
undressed, in sarong and kabaai, with one's bare feet in slippers,
because it was really too hot, too sultry to dress one's self in
a frock or tea-gown, which only became soaked in perspiration. It
was for her sake that her husband always dressed for dinner, in a
black jacket and stand-up collar; but, when she saw his tired face,
with that more and more fixed, overtired office expression above that
stand-up collar, she herself begged him not to trouble to dress next
time after his second bath and allowed him to dine in a white jacket,
or even in pyjamas. She thought it terrible, thought it unspeakably
dreadful; it shocked all her ideas of correctness; but really he was
too tired and it was too sultry and oppressive for her to expect
anything more from him. And she, after only two years in India,
understood more and more easily that laisser-aller--in dress, in
body and in soul--now that every day she lost something more of her
fresh, Dutch blood and her western energy, now that she admitted,
certainly, that in India men worked perhaps as in no other country,
but that they worked with one sole object before their eyes: position,
money, retirement, pension ... and home, back home to Europe. True,
there were others, born in India, who had been out of India only
once, for barely a year, who would not hear of Holland, who adored
their land of sunshine. She knew that the De Luces were like this;
and there were others as well, she knew. But in her own circle of
civil servants and planters every one had the same object in life:
position, money ... and then off, off to Europe. Every one calculated
the years of work still before him. Every one saw before him in
the future the illusion of that European retirement. An occasional
friend, like Van Oudijck, an occasional civil servant, who perhaps
loved his work for his work's sake and because it suited his nature,
feared the coming pensioned retirement, which would mean a stupid,
vegetating existence. But Van Oudijck was an exception. The majority
worked in the service and on the plantations for the sake of the rest
to come. Her husband also, for instance, was toiling like a slave to
become assistant-resident and, after some years, to draw his pension;
he slaved and toiled for his illusion of rest. At present she felt her
own energy leaving her with every drop of blood that she felt flowing
more sluggishly through her weary veins. And, in these early days of
the wet monsoon, while the eaves of the house incessantly discharged
the thick, plashing shafts which irritated her with their clatter,
while she watched the gradual ruin of all the material surroundings
which she had selected with so much taste as her artistic consolation
in India, she reached a more discordant mood of listlessness and
dejection than she had ever gone through before. Her child was still
too small to mean much to her, to be a kindred spirit. Her husband
did nothing but work. He was a kind and thoughtful husband to her,
a dear fellow in every way, a man of great simplicity, whom she had
accepted--perhaps only because of this simplicity, because of the
quiet serenity of his smiling, fair-skinned, Frisian face and the
burliness of his broad shoulders--after one or two excited, juvenile
romances of enthusiasm and misunderstanding and soulful discussions,
romances dating from her girlhood. She, who was herself neither
simple nor serene, had sought the simplicity of her life in a simple
romance. But his qualities failed to satisfy her. Now especially,
when she had been longer in India and was suffering defeat in her
contest with the country that did not harmonize with her nature,
his serene conjugal love failed to satisfy her.
She was beginning to feel unhappy. She was too versatile a woman to
find all her happiness in her little boy. He certainly filled a part
of her life, with the minor cares of the present and the thought
of his future. She had even worked out a whole educational system
for him. But he did not fill her life entirely. And a longing for
Holland encompassed her, a longing for her parents, a longing for
the beautiful, artistic home where you were always meeting painters,
writers, musicians, the artistic salon--an exception in Holland--that
gathered together for a brief moment the artistic elements which in
Holland usually remained isolated.
The vision passed before her eyes like a vague and distant dream,
while she listened to the approaching thunders that filled the air,
sultry to bursting-point, while she gazed at the downpour that
followed. Here she had nothing. Here she felt out of place. Here
she had her little clique of adherents, who collected around her
because she was cheerful; but she found no sort of deeper sympathy,
no serious conversation ... except in Van Helderen. And with him she
meant to be careful, so as to give him no illusions.
There was only Van Helderen. And she thought of all the other people
around her at Labuwangi. She thought of people, people everywhere. And,
very pessimistic in these days, she found in all of them the same
egoism, the same self-complacency, the same unattractiveness, the same
self-absorption: she could hardly express it to herself, distracted as
she was by the terrific force of the pelting rain. But she found in
everybody conscious and unconscious traits of unloveliness ... even
in her faithful adherents ... and in her husband ... and in the men,
young wives, girls, young men around her. There was nothing in any
of them but his own ego. Not one of them had sufficient harmony of
mind for himself and another. She disapproved of this in one, hated
that in another; a third and a fourth she condemned entirely. This
critical attitude made her despondent and melancholy, for it was
against her nature: she preferred to like others. She liked to live,
in spontaneous harmony, with a number of associates: originally she
had a profound love of people, a love of humanity. Great questions
moved her. But nothing that she felt met with any echo. She found
herself empty and alone, in a country, a town, an environment in
which all and everything, large and small, offended her soul, her
body, her character, her nature. Her husband worked. Her child was
already becoming thoroughly Indian. Her piano was out of tune.
She stood up and tried the piano, with long scales that ended in the
Feuerzauber of Valkyrie. But the roar of the rain was louder than
her playing. When she got up again, feeling desperately dejected,
she saw Van Helderen standing before her.
"You startled me," she said.
"May I stay to lunch?" he asked. "I am all by myself at home. Ida
has gone to Tosari for her malaria and has taken the children with
her. She went yesterday. It's an expensive business. How I'm to keep
going this month I do not know."
"Send the children to us, after they've had a few days in the hills."
"Won't they bother you?"
"Of course not. I'll write to Ida."
"It's really awfully good of you. It would certainly make things
easier for me."
She laughed softly.
"Aren't you well?" he asked.
"I feel deadly," she said.
"How do you mean?"
"I feel as if I were dying by inches."
"Why?"
"It's terrible here. We've been longing for the rains; and, now that
they've come, they are driving me mad. And ... I don't know what:
I can't stand it here any longer."
"Where?"
"In India. I have taught myself to see the good, the beautiful in
this country. It's all no use. I can't go on with it."
"Go to Holland," he said gently.
"My people would be glad to see me, no doubt. It would be good for
my boy, because he's forgetting his Dutch daily, though I had begun
to teach it to him so conscientiously, and he speaks Malay ... or
gibberish. But I can't leave my husband here all alone. He would have
nothing here without me. At least, I think so: that is one more sort
of illusion. Perhaps it's not so at all."
"But, if you fall ill...?"
"Oh, I don't know!"
Her whole being was filled with an unusual fatigue.
"Perhaps you're exaggerating!" he began, cheerfully. "Come, perhaps
you're exaggerating! What's upsetting you, what's making you so
unhappy? Let's draw up an inventory together."
"An inventory of my misfortunes? Very well. My garden is a marsh. Three
chairs in my front-verandah are splitting to pieces. The white ants
have devoured my beautiful Japanese mats. A new silk frock has come
out all over stains, for no reason that I can make out. Another is
all unravelled, simply with the heat, I believe. To say nothing of
various minor miseries of the same order. To console myself I took
refuge in the Feuerzauber. My piano was out of tune; I believe there
are cockroaches walking among the strings."
He gave a little laugh.
"We're idiots here," she continued, "we Europeans in this country! Why
do we bring all the paraphernalia of our costly civilization with us,
considering that it's bound not to last? Why don't we live in a cool
bamboo hut, sleep on a mat, dress in a cotton sarong and a chintz
kabaai, with a scarf over our shoulders and a flower in our hair. All
your civilization by which you propose to grow rich ... is a western
idea, which fails in the long run. Our whole administration ... is
so tiring in the heat. Why--if we must be here--don't we live simply
and plant paddy and live on nothing?"
"You're talking like a woman," he said, with another little laugh.
"Possibly," she said. "Perhaps I don't mean quite all I say. But
that I feel here, opposing me, opposing all my western notions,
a force which is antagonistic to me ... that is certain. I am
sometimes frightened. I always feel ... that I am on the point of
being conquered, I don't know what by: by something out of the ground,
by a force of nature, by a secret in the soul of these black people,
whom I don't know.... I feel particularly afraid at night."
"You're overwrought," he said, tenderly.
"Possibly," she replied, wearily, seeing that he did not understand and
too tired to go on explaining. "Let's talk about something else. That
table-turning's very curious."
"Very," he said.
"The other day, the three of us: Ida, you and I...."
"It was certainly very curious."
"Do you remember the first time? Addie de Luce: it seems to be true
about him and Mrs. van Oudijck.... And the insurrection ... the table
foretold it."
"May we not have suggested it unconsciously?"
"I don't know. But to think that we should all be playing fair and
that that table should go tapping and talking to us by means of
an alphabet!"
"I shouldn't do it often, Eva, if I were you."
"No, I think it inexplicable, and yet it's already beginning to bore
me. One grows so accustomed to the incomprehensible."
"Everything's incomprehensible."
"Yes ... and everything's a bore."
"Eva!" he said, with a soft, reproachful laugh.
"I give up the fight. I shall just sit in my rocking-chair ... and
look at the rain."
"There was a time when you used to see the beautiful side of my
country."
"Your country? Which you would be glad to leave to-morrow to go to
the Paris Exhibition!"
"I've never seen anything."
"How humble you are to-day!"
"I am sad, because of you."
"Oh, please don't be that!"
"Play something more."
"Well, then, have your gin-and-bitters. Help yourself. I shall play
on my out-of-tune piano; it will sound as melodious as my soul,
which is also all of a tangle...."
She went back to the middle gallery and played something from
Parsifal. He remained sitting outside and listened. The rain was
pouring furiously. The garden stood clean and empty. A violent
thunder-clap seemed to split the world asunder. Nature was supreme;
and in her gigantic manifestation the two people in that damp house
were diminished, his love was nothing, her melancholy was nothing and
the mystic music of the Grail was as a child's ditty to the echoing
mystery of that thunder-clap, whereat fate itself seemed to sail with
heavenly cymbals over these doomed creatures in the Deluge.