Labuwangi came to life again. It was as though people unanimously
agreed not to discuss the strange affair any further with outsiders,
because it was so excusable that any one should refuse to believe in
the thing; and they, at Labuwangi, believed. And the up-country town,
after the mystic oppression under which it had lain cowering during
those unforgettable weeks, came to life again, as though shaking
off all its obsession. Party followed upon party, ball upon ball,
theatricals upon concert: all threw open their doors to entertain
their friends and make merry, in order to feel natural and normal
after the incredible nightmare. People so accustomed to the natural
and tangible life, to the spacious and lavish material existence
of India--to good cooking, cool drinks, wide beds, roomy houses,
to everything that represents physical luxury to the European in the
east--such people breathed again and shook off the nightmare, shook
off the belief in strange happenings. If and when they discussed
the thing nowadays, they commonly called it that incomprehensible
conjuring--echoing the resident--the regent's conjuring-tricks. For
that the regent had something to do with it was certain. That
the resident had held a terrible threat over him and his mother,
if the strange happenings did not cease, was certain. That, after
this, order had been restored in everyday life was certain. So it
was conjuring. All were now ashamed of their credulity and their
fears and of having shuddered at what had looked like mysticism and
was only clever conjuring. And all breathed again and made up their
minds to be cheerful; and entertainment followed upon entertainment.
Léonie, amid all this dissipation, forgot her irritation at having
been recalled by Van Oudijck. And she too was determined to forget
the scarlet pollution of her body. But something of its terror
lingered in her. She now bathed early of an afternoon, as early as
half-past four, in the newly-built bathroom. Her second bath always
gave her a certain shudder. And, now that Theo had a job at Surabaya,
she got rid of him, also, from terror. She could not get rid of the
idea that the enchantment had threatened to punish both of them, the
mother and son, who were bringing shame on the home. In the romantic
side of her perverse imagination, in her rosy fancy full of cherubs
and cupids, this idea, inspired by her fears, struck too precious a
note of tragedy for her not to cherish it, for all that Theo might
say. She would go no further. And it made him furious, because he
was mad with love for her, because he could not forget the shameful
happiness which he had enjoyed in her arms. But she steadily refused
him and told him of her dread and said that she was certain that the
witchcraft would begin again if they two loved each other, he and his
father's wife. Her words drove him scarlet with fury, on the one Sunday
which he spent at Labuwangi: he was furious with her non-compliance,
with the motherly attitude which she now adopted and with the fact, of
which he was well aware, that she saw Addie often, that she often went
to stay at Patjaram. Addie danced with her at parties and hung over
her chair at concerts, in the improvised residential box. True, he was
not faithful to her, for it was not his nature to love one woman--he
loved women wholesale--but still he was as faithful to her as he was
able to be. He inspired her with a more lasting passion than she had
ever felt before; and this passion roused her from her usual passive
indifference. Often, in company, suffering and inflicting boredom,
enthroned in the brilliance of her white beauty, like a smiling idol,
with the langour of her years in India gradually filling her blood
until her movements had acquired that lazy indifference for anything
that did not spell love and caresses, until her voice had assumed
a drawling accent in any word that was not a word of passion: often
the flame which Addie shed over her would transfigure into a younger
woman, livelier in company, gayer, flattered by the persistent homage
of this youth, on whom every girl was mad.
And she delighted in monopolizing him as much as she could, to
the vexation of all the girls and of Doddie in particular. In the
midst of her passion, she also took an evil pleasure in tantalizing,
merely for tantalizing's sake: it gave her an exquisite enjoyment;
it made her husband jealous--perhaps for the first time, for she
had always been very careful--and made Theo and Doddie jealous; she
aroused the jealousy of every young married woman and every girl;
and, since she stood above all of them, as the resident's wife,
she had an ascendancy over all of them. When of an evening she
had gone too far, she delighted in winning back, with a smile,
with a gracious word, the place in their affection which she had
lost through her flirtations. And, strange though it might seem,
she succeeded. The moment they saw her, the moment she spoke,
smiled and exerted herself to be amiable, she won back all she had
lost and was forgiven everything. Even Mrs. Eldersma allowed herself
to be conquered by the strange charm of this woman who was neither
witty nor intelligent, who merely became just a little livelier,
who roused herself a little from her boring lethargy, who triumphed
only through the lines of her body, the contour of her face, the
glance of her strange eyes, restful and yet full of hidden passion,
and who was conscious of all her charm because she had meditated upon
it since her childhood. Together with her indifference, this charm
constituted her strength. Fate seemed to have no hold upon her. For
it had indeed touched her with a strange magic, until she thought
that a chastisement was about to descend upon her, but it had gone
its way again, drifted away. But she accepted the warning. She had
done with Theo and henceforth affected a motherly attitude towards
him. It made him furious, especially at these parties, now that she
had grown younger, livelier and more seductive.
His passion for her began to burn to hatred. He hated her now,
with all the instinct of a fair-haired native, for that was what
he really was, despite his white skin. For he was his mother's son
rather than his father's. Oh, he hated her now, for he had felt
his fear of the punishment only for an instant and he ... he had
forgotten everything by now! And his one idea was to injure her--how
he did not yet know--but to injure her so that she might feel pain
and suffer. The process of thinking it over imparted a Satanic gloom
to his small, murky soul. Although he did not think about it, he felt
unconsciously that she was as though invulnerable; he even felt that
she boasted inwardly of her invulnerability and that it made her daily
more brazen and indifferent. She was constantly staying at Patjaram,
on any excuse that offered. The anonymous letters which Van Oudijck
still often showed her no longer disturbed her; she was growing
accustomed to them. She returned them to him without a word; once she
even forgot them, left them lying about in the back-verandah. Once
Theo read them. In a sudden flash of light, due to he knew not
what, suddenly he seemed to recognize certain characters, certain
strokes. He remembered, in the compound, near Patjaram, the hut,
half bamboo, half packing-case-boards, where he and Addie de Luce had
been to see Si-Oudijck and the papers hastily raked together by an
Arab. He had a vague recollection of seeing those same characters,
those strokes, on a scrap of paper on the floor. It passed vaguely
and quick as lightning through his head. But it was no more than
a lightning-flash. His small, murky soul had room for nothing but
dull hatred and troubled calculation. But he had not sense enough
to follow out that calculation. He hated his father by instinct
and innate antipathy; his mother, because she was a half-caste;
his step-mother, because she had finished with him; he hated Addie
and Doddie into the bargain; he hated the world, because it made him
work. He hated every berth he had ever had: he now hated his office at
Surabaya. But he was too lazy and too muddle-headed to do harm. Rack
his brains as he might, he could not discover how to harm his father,
Addie and Léonie. Everything about him was vague, turbid, dissatisfied,
indistinct. The object of his desire was money and a fine woman. Beyond
this, he had nothing in him but the dull-witted gloom and discontent
of the fat, fair-haired Eurasian that he was. And he continued to
brood impotently over his murky thoughts.
Until now, Doddie had always been very fond of Léonie,
instinctively. But she was no longer able to conceal the fact from
herself: what she had first thought an accident--mamma and Addie always
seeking each other with the same smile of allurement, one drawing the
other the length of the great room, as though irresistibly--was not an
accident at all! And she too hated mamma now, mamma with her beautiful
calmness, her sovereign indifference. Her own violent passionate
nature was coming into collision with that other nature, with its
milk-white, creole languor, which now for the first time, late in
the day, because of the sheer kindliness of fate, was letting itself
go as it pleased, without reserve. She hated mamma; and her hatred
resulted in scenes, scenes of nervous, loud-voiced temper in Doddie
contrasting with the irritating calmness of mamma's indifference,
scenes caused by all sorts of little differences of opinion: a visit,
a ride on horse-back, a dress, a spice or condiment which the one
liked and the other did not. Then Doddie wanted to have her cry out
on papa's breast, but Van Oudijck would not admit that she was in the
right and said that she must show more respect to mamma. But once,
when Doddie had come to him for consolation and he reproached her for
going for walks with Addie, she screamed out that mamma herself was in
love with Addie. Van Oudijck angrily ordered her out of the room. But
it all agreed too closely--the anonymous letters, his wife's new-born
flirtations, Doddie's accusations and what he himself had noticed at
the last few parties--not to give him food for reflection and even
to worry him. And, once he began to worry and reflect upon it all,
memories came suddenly darting into his mind like lightning-flashes:
memories of an unexpected visit; of a locked door; of a moving curtain;
of a whispered word and a timidly averted glance. He pieced it all
together and he quite suddenly recollected those same subtle memories
in combination with others, of an earlier date. It all at once aroused
his jealousy, a husband's jealousy of the wife whom he loves as his
most personal possession. This jealousy burst upon him like a gust
of wind, blowing its way through his concentration upon his work,
confusing his thoughts as he sat writing, making him suddenly run out
of his office, during the police-cases, and search Léonie's room and
lift a curtain and even look under the bed.
And now he no longer consented to have Léonie staying at Patjaram,
advancing as his pretext that the De Luces should not be encouraged
in the hope of getting Doddie as a wife for Addie. For he dared not
speak to Léonie of his jealousy.... That Addie should ever get Doddie
for his wife!... True, there was native blood in his daughter too;
but he wanted a full-blooded European as his son-in-law. He hated
anything half-caste. He hated the De Luces and all the up-country,
Indian, half-Solo traditions of that Patjaram of theirs. He hated
their gambling, their hobnobbing with all sorts of Indian headmen,
people whom he accepted officially, allowing them their rights,
but, apart from this, regarded as unavoidable instruments of the
government policy. He hated all their posing as an old Indian family
and he hated Addie: an idle youth, who was supposed to be employed
in the factory but did nothing at all, except run after every woman,
girl and maid-servant in the place. He, the older, industrious man,
was unable to understand that kind of existence.
So Léonie had to do without Patjaram; but in the mornings she went
quietly to Mrs. van Does and met Addie in this lady's little house
while Mrs. van Does herself went out peddling, in a little cart,
with two jam-pots filled with diamonds and a bundle of embroidered
bedspreads. Then, in the evenings, Addie would stroll out with Doddie
and listen to her passionate reproaches. He laughed at her tempersome
displays, took her in his arms till she hung panting on his breast,
kissed the reproaches from her mouth till she melted away amorously on
his lips. They went no further, feeling too much afraid, especially
Doddie. They strolled behind the compounds, on the irrigation-dikes
of the rice-fields, while swarms of fire-flies whirled about them in
the dark like tiny lanterns; they strolled arm-in-arm, they walked
hand-in-hand, in enervating, caressing love, which never dared to
push matters any further. When she came home again, she was furious,
raging at mamma, in whom she envied the calm, smiling satiety as she
lay musing, in her white tea-gown, with a touch of powder on her face,
in a cane chair.
And the house, newly painted and whitewashed after the strange
happenings, which were now past, the house was filled with a hatred
that rose on every hand, as it were the very demoniacal bloom of
that strange secret; a hatred centering upon that silent woman, who
was too languid to hate and only delighted in silent tantalizing;
a jealous hatred of the father for the son, when he saw him too
often sitting beside his step-mother, begging, in spite of his own
hatred, for something, the father did not know what; a hatred of
the daughter for the mother; a hatred in which all this family-life
was being wrecked. How it had all gradually come about Van Oudijck
did not know. He sadly regretted the time when he was blind, when he
had seen his wife and children only in the light in which he wished
to see them. That time was past. Like the strange happenings of not
so long ago, a hatred was now rising out of life, like a miasma out
of the ground. And Van Oudijck, who had never been superstitious,
who had worked on coolly and calmly in his lonely house, with the
incomprehensible witchcraft all about him; who had read reports
while the hammering went on above his head and his whisky-and-soda
changed colour in his glass; Van Oudijck for the first time in his
life--now that he saw the gloomy glances of Theo and Doddie; now
that he suddenly discovered his wife, growing more brazen daily,
sitting hand-in-hand with young De Luce, her knees almost touching
his--became superstitious, believing in a hidden force which lurked
he knew not where, in India, in the soil of India, in a deep-seated
mystery, somewhere or other, a force that wished him ill because he
was a European, a ruler, a foreigner on the mystic, sacred soil. And,
when he saw this superstition within himself, something so new to him,
the practical man, something so strange and incredible to him, a man
of single-minded, masculine simplicity, he was afraid of himself, as of
a rising insanity which he began to perceive deep down within himself.
And, strong though he had proved himself to be at the time of
the strange happenings, which he had been able to exorcize with a
single word of threatening force, this superstition, which came as
an aftermath of those events, found a weakness in him, a vulnerable
spot as it were. He was so much surprised at himself that he did not
understand and was afraid lest he might be going mad; and still he
worried. His health was undermined by an incipient liver-complaint;
and he kept on examining his jaundiced complexion. Suddenly he
had an idea that he was being poisoned. The kitchen was searched,
the cook subjected to a cross-examination; but nothing came to
light. He realized that he had been frightened by nothing. But the
doctor declared that he had an enlarged liver and prescribed the
usual diet. A thing which otherwise he would have thought quite
natural, a far from uncommon illness, now of a sudden struck him as
strange, a mysterious event; and he worried over it. And it got on
his nerves. He began to suffer from sudden weariness when working,
from throbbing headaches. His jealousy upset him; he was overcome by
a shuddering restlessness. He suddenly reflected that, if there were
now any hammering above his head, if betel-juice were now spat at him,
he would not be able to stay in the house. And he began to believe in
a hatred rising slowly all around him out of the hostile soil, like a
miasma. He believed in a force deep-hidden in the things of India, in
the nature of Java, in the climate of Labuwangi, in the conjuring--as
he continued to call it--which sometimes makes the Javanese cleverer
than the European and gives him the power, a mysterious power, not to
release himself from the yoke, but to cause illness, lingering illness,
to plague and harass, to play the ghost most incredibly and hideously:
a hidden force, a hidden power, hostile to our temperament, our blood,
our bodies, our souls, our civilization, to all that seems to us the
right thing to do and be and think. It had flashed before him as in
a sudden light, it was not the result of thought, it had flashed out
before him as in a dreadful revelation, which was utterly in conflict
with all the logic of his methodical life, his methodical mode of
thought. In a vision of terror, he suddenly saw it before him, as
the light of his approaching old age, as men who are growing old do
sometimes suddenly perceive the truth. And yet he was young still and
hale. And he felt that, if he did not divert his maddening thoughts,
they might make him ill, weak and miserable, for ever and ever....
To him, above all, a simple, practical man, this change of mental
attitude was almost unbearable. What a morbid mind might have
contemplated in quiet meditation now flashed upon him as a sudden
terror. Never would he have thought that there might be somewhere,
deeply hidden in life, things which were stronger than the power of
the human will and intellect. Nowadays, after the nightmare which he
had so courageously defeated, it seemed to him that the nightmare had
sapped his strength nevertheless and inoculated him with every sort
of weakness. It was incredible, but now, as he sat working late in
the day, he would listen to the evening voices in the garden, or to
the rat that rustled overhead. And then he would suddenly get up, go
to Léonie's room and look under the bed. When he at last discovered
that many of the anonymous letters by which he was persecuted came
from the pen of a half-caste who described himself as his son and was
even known in the compound by his own surname, he felt too doubtful to
investigate the matter, because of what might come to light that he had
himself forgotten, dating from his controllership, from the old days,
at Ngadjiwa. He was doubtful now of things of which he had once been
certain and positive. Nowadays he was no longer able so positively
to order his recollections of that period as to swear that he had
not a son, begotten almost unconsciously in those days. He did not
clearly remember the housekeeper who had looked after him before his
first marriage. And he preferred to let the whole business of the
anonymous letters smoulder in the dusky shadows, rather than stir
it up and enquire into it. He even caused money to be sent to the
native who called himself his son, so that the fellow might not abuse
the name which he arrogated to himself and demand presents all over
the compound: chickens and rice and clothes, things which Si-Oudijck
exacted from ignorant villagers, whom he threatened with the vague
anger of his father the sahib, yonder at Labuwangi. In order that there
might be no more threats of this anger, Van Oudijck sent him money. It
was weak of him: he would never have done it in the old days. But now
he had an inclination to hush things up, to gloss over things, to be
less stern and severe and rather to mitigate anything unduly strict by
half-measures. Eldersma was sometimes amazed when he saw the resident,
who used to be so firm, hesitating, when he saw him yielding in matters
of business, in differences with crown tenants, as he had never done
before. And slack methods of work would gradually have found their
way automatically into the office, if Eldersma had not taken the work
out of Van Oudijck's hands and given himself even more to do than he
already had. It was generally stated that the resident was ill. And,
in fact, his skin was yellow; his liver was painful; the least thing
set his nerves quivering. It unsettled the house, in conjunction
with Doddie's tempers and outbursts and Theo's jealousy and hatred,
for Theo was at home again, had already thrown up Surabaya. Léonie
alone continued her triumphant career, ever beautiful, white, calm,
smiling, contented, happy in the lasting passion of Addie, whom she
knew how to hold, amorous expert, love's sorceress that she was. Fate
had warned her and she kept Theo at a distance; but for the rest she
was happy and contented.
Then suddenly Batavia fell vacant. The names of two or three residents
were mentioned, but Van Oudijck had possessed the best chance. And
he worried about it, was afraid of it: he did not care for Batavia
as a residency. He would not have been able to work in Batavia as he
worked here, at Labuwangi, zealously and devotedly fostering so many
different interests connected with agriculture and the people. He
would rather have been appointed to Surabaya, where there was plenty
going on; or to one of the Vorstenlanden, where his tact in dealing
with the native princes would have been turned to good purpose. But
Batavia! It was the least interesting of all districts, from the
official point of view, and, what with the arrogant atmosphere of
the place, the least flattering to one in the position of resident,
in close contact with the governor-general, surrounded by the highest
officials, so that the resident, who was almost supreme anywhere else,
was at Batavia no more than yet another high official among so many
members of council and directors. And it was much too near Buitenzorg,
with its arbitrary secretariat, whose bureaucratic and red-tape methods
were always clashing with the practical administrative methods of
the residents themselves.
The prospect of being appointed unsettled him entirely, harassed him
more than ever, with the thought of leaving Labuwangi in a month's
time, of selling up his furniture. It would break his heart to leave
Labuwangi. In spite of all that he had gone through there, he loved
the town and especially his district. During all those years, he
had left traces of activity throughout his district, traces of his
devoted labour, of his ambition, of his affection. And now, within
a month, he would probably have to transfer all this to a successor,
to tear himself away from everything that he had so lovingly cherished
and fostered. It filled him with a sombre melancholy. He cared not
a straw for the fact that the promotion also brought him nearer to
his pension. That unoccupied future, with the boredom of approaching
old age, was a very nightmare to him. And his successor would perhaps
make all manner of changes, would disagree at every single point.
In the end, the chance of his promotion became such a morbid obsession
with him that the improbable thing happened and he wrote to the
director of the B.B. and to the governor-general, begging to be left
at Labuwangi. The secret of these letters was pretty well kept:
he himself concealed them entirely, both from his family and from
his subordinates, so that, when a younger second-class resident was
appointed Resident of Batavia, people said that Van Oudijck had been
passed over, but not that this had happened at his own request. And, in
seeking the cause, they raked up all the old gossip about the dismissal
of the Regent of Ngadjiwa and the strange happenings thereafter, but
without finding in either any particular reason why the government
should have passed over Van Oudijck.
He himself recovered a strange sort of peace, a peace due to
weariness, to laisser-aller, to becoming rooted in his familiar
Labuwangi, to not having to be transferred, old up-country veteran
that he was, to Batavia, where things were so very different. When the
governor-general, at his last audience, had spoken to him about going
to Europe on leave, he had felt afraid of Europe, afraid of no longer
feeling at home there; and now he felt afraid even of Batavia. And
yet he knew all that there was to know about the would-be western
humbug of Batavia; yet he knew that the capital of Java only pretended
to be exceedingly European and in reality was only half-European. In
himself--and unknown to his wife, who regretted that dispelled illusion
of Batavia--he chuckled silently at the thought that he had succeeded
in remaining at Labuwangi. But, while he chuckled, he nevertheless
felt changed, aged, belittled, felt that he was no longer glancing at
that upward path--the prospect of constantly winning a higher place
among his fellow-men--which had always been his path of life. What
had become of his ambition? What had happened to decrease his love
of authority? He put it all down to the influence of the climate. It
would certainly be a good thing to refresh his blood and his mind in
Europe, to spend a couple of winters there. But the idea immediately
evaporated, wiped out by his lack of resolution. No, he did not want
to go to Europe; it was India that he loved. And he indulged in long
meditations, lying in a long-chair, enjoying his coffee, his light
clothing, the gentle relaxation of his muscles, the aimless drowsiness
of his thoughts. The only obvious thing in his drowsy mood was his
ever-increasing suspicion; and now and again he would suddenly wake
from his languor and listen to the vague sounds, the soft, suppressed
laughter which he seemed to hear in Léonie's room, even as at night,
when, suspicious of ghosts, he listened to the muffled sounds in the
garden and to the rat scurrying overhead.