Then, like a clap of thunder, the rumour ran through Labuwangi that Van
Oudijck and his wife were going to be divorced. Léonie went to Europe,
very suddenly, really without any one's knowing why and without taking
leave of anybody. And it caused a great scandal in the little town:
people talked of nothing else and talked of it even as far away as
Surabaya, as far away as Batavia. Van Oudijck alone was silent; and,
with his back a little more bowed, went his way, working on, leading
his ordinary life. He had abandoned his principles and assisted Theo
to obtain a job, in order to be rid of him. He preferred to have
Doddie staying at Patjaram, where the De Luce women would help her
with her trousseau. He preferred Doddie to get married quickly and
to get married at Patjaram. In his great, empty house he now longed
for nothing but solitude, a spacious, cheerless solitude. He would no
longer have the table laid for him: they brought him a plateful of rice
and a cup of coffee in his office. And he felt ill, his zeal lessened;
a dull indifference gnawed at his vitals. He delegated all the work,
all the district to Eldersma; and, when Eldersma, after not sleeping
for weeks, half-crazy with nervous strain, told the resident that the
doctor wanted to send him to Europe with a certificate of urgency,
Van Oudijck lost all his courage. He said that he too felt ill and
done for. And he applied to the governor-general for leave and went
to Batavia. He said nothing about it, but he felt certain that he
would never return to Labuwangi. And he went away, quietly, with
not a glance at what he was leaving behind him, at his great field
of activity, which he had so lovingly organized. The administration
remained in the hands of the assistant-resident at Ngadjiwa. It was
generally believed that Van Oudijck wished to see the governor-general
about certain questions of importance, but suddenly the news arrived
that he was proposing to retire. It was not credited at first, but
the report was confirmed. Van Oudijck did not return.
He had gone, without casting a glance behind him, in a strange
indifference, an indifference which had gradually corroded the very
marrow of this once so robust and practical man, who had always
remained young in his capacity for work. He felt this indifference
for Labuwangi, which, when there was a question of his promotion
to resident of the first class, he had thought himself incapable of
leaving except with the greatest regret; he felt this indifference
for his domestic circle, which no longer existed. His soul was
filled with a gradual blight; it was withering, dying. It seemed to
him that all his powers were melting away in the tepid stagnation of
this indifference. At Batavia he vegetated for a while in his hotel;
and it was generally assumed that he would go to Europe.
Eldersma had already gone, sick almost unto death; and Eva had been
unable to accompany him, with the little boy, because she was down with
a bad attack of malarial fever. When she was more or less convalescent,
she sold up her house, with a view to going to Batavia and staying
there for three weeks with friends before her boat sailed. She left
Labuwangi with mixed feelings. She had suffered much there, but
had also reflected much; and she had cherished a deep feeling for
Van Helderen, a pure, radiant feeling such as could, she was sure,
shine forth only once in a lifetime. She took leave of him as of an
ordinary friend, in the presence of others, and gave him no more than
a pressure of the hand. But she felt so profoundly sad because of
that pressure of the hand, that commonplace farewell, that the sobs
rose in her throat. That evening, left to herself, she did not weep,
but sat in her room at the hotel, staring for hours silently before
her. Her husband was gone, was ill: she did not know how he would be
when she saw him, whether indeed she would ever see him again. Europe,
it was true, after her years in India, stretched its shores smilingly
before her, held forth the vision of its cities, its culture, its
art; but she was afraid of Europe. An unspoken fear lest she should
have lost ground intellectually made her almost dread the circle in
her parents' house, to which she would have returned in a month's
time. She trembled at the thought that people would consider her
colonial in her manners and ideas, in her speech and dress, in the
education of her child; and this made her feel shy in anticipation,
despite all her pose as a smart, artistic woman. Certainly she no
longer played the piano as well as she did; she would not dare to
play at the Hague. And she thought that it might be a good thing to
stay in Paris for a fortnight and brush off her cobwebs a little,
before showing herself in the Hague....
But Eldersma was too ill.... And how would she find him, her husband,
so much changed, her once robust Frisian husband, now tired out,
worn out, yellow as parchment, careless of his appearance, muttering
gloomily when he spoke?... But a gentle vision of a refreshing German
landscape, of Swiss snows, of music at Bayreuth, of art in Italy
dawned before her staring gaze; and she was herself reunited to her
sick husband. No longer united in life, but united under the yoke
of life, the yoke which they had shouldered together, once and for
all.... Then there was the education of her child! Oh, to save her
child, to get him away from India! And yet he, Van Helderen, had never
been out of India. But then he was himself, he was an exception....
She had bidden him good-bye.... She must make up her mind to forget
him.... Europe was waiting for her ... with her husband ... and
her child....
Two days later she was at Batavia. She hardly knew the city; she
had been there once or twice, years ago, when she first came out. At
Labuwangi, in that little, outlying district, Batavia had gradually
become glorified in her imagination into an essentially Eurasian
capital, a centre of Eurasian civilization, a dim vision of stately
avenues and squares, surrounded by great, wealthy, porticoed villas,
thronged with smart carriages and horses. She had always heard so
much about Batavia....
She was now staying with friends. The husband was at the head of a
big commercial firm; their house was one of the handsomest villas on
the Koningsplein. And she had at once been very strangely impressed by
the funereal character, by the deadly melancholy of this great town of
villas, where thousands of varied lives are waging a silent, feverish
battle for a future of moneyed repose. It was as though all those
houses, gloomy despite their white pillars and their grand fronts,
were frowning like faces careworn with troubles that sought to hide
themselves behind a pretentious display of broad leaves and clustering
palms. The houses, however much exposed, amidst their pillars, however
seemingly open, remained closed; the occupants were never seen. Only in
the mornings, as she went on her errands along the shops in Rijswijk
and Molenvliet, which, with a few French names among them, tried
to give the impression of a southern shopping-centre, of European
luxury, Eva would see the exodus to the Old Town of the white men,
white-faced, dressed in white; and even their eyes seemed pale with
brooding anxieties, fixed upon a future which they all calculated
in so many decades or lustres: so much made, in this year or that;
and then away, away home from India to Europe. It was as though
it were not malaria that was undermining them, but another fever;
and she felt clearly that it was undermining their unacclimatized
constitutions, their souls, as though they were trying to skip that
day and reach the to-morrow, or the day after, days which brought
them a little nearer to their goal, because they secretly feared to
die before that goal was attained. The exodus filled the trams with
its white burden of mortality. Many, already well off, but not yet
rich enough for their purpose, drove in their victorias or buggies
to the Harmonie Club and there took the tram, to spare their horses.
And in the Old Town, in the old, aristocratic houses of the first
Dutch merchants, still built in the Dutch style, with oak staircases
leading to upper floors which now, during the eastern monsoon, were
stagnant with a dense, oppressive heat, like a tangible element, which
stifled the breath, the white men bent over their work, constantly
beholding between their thirsty glance and the white desert of their
papers the dawning mirage of the future, the refreshing oasis of their
materialistic illusion: within such and such a time, money and then
off ... off ... to Europe.... And, in the city of villas, around the
Koningsplein, along the green avenues, the women hid themselves, the
women remained unseen, the whole livelong day. The hot day passed,
the time of beneficent coolness came, the time from half-past five
to seven. The men returned home dog-tired and sat down to rest; and
the women, tired with their housekeeping, with their children and
with nothing at all, with a life of doing nothing, a life without any
interest, tired with the deadliness of their existence, rested beside
the men. That hour of beneficent coolness meant rest, rest after the
bath, in undress, around the tea-table, a short, momentary rest, for
the fearsome hour of seven was at hand, when it was already dark, when
one had to go to a reception. A reception implied dressing in stuffy
European clothes, implied a brief but dreadful display of European
drawing-room manners and social graces, but it also implied meeting
this person and that and striving to achieve yet one advance towards
the mirage of the future: money and ultimate rest in Europe. And, after
the town of villas had lain in the sun all day, gloomy and wan, like
a dead city--with the men away in the Old Town and the women hidden in
their houses--a few carriages now passed one another in the dark, round
the Koningsplein and along the green avenues, a few European-looking
people, going to a reception. While, around the Koningsplein and in
the green avenues, all the other villas persisted in this funereal
desolation and remained filled with gloomy darkness, the house where
the party was given shone with lamps among the palm-trees. And for
the rest the deadliness lingered on every hand, the sombre brooding
lay over the houses wherein the tired people were hiding, the men
exhausted with work, the women exhausted with doing nothing....
"Wouldn't you like a drive, Eva?" asked her hostess, Mrs. De
Harteman, a little Dutchwoman, white as wax and always tired out by
her children. "But I'd rather not come with you, if you don't mind:
I'd rather wait for Harteman. Else he'd find nobody at home. So you
go, with your little boy."
So Eva, with her little man, went driving in the De Hartemans'
"chariot." It was the cool hour of the day, before darkness set
in. She met two or three carriages: Mrs. This and Mrs. That, who
were known to drive in the afternoon. In the Koningsplein she saw
a lady and gentleman walking: the So-and-Sos; they always walked,
as all Batavia knew. She met no one else. No one. At that beneficent
hour, the villa-town remained desolate as a city of the dead, as
a vast mausoleum amid green trees. And yet it was a boon, after
the overwhelming heat, to see the Koningsplein stretching like a
gigantic meadow, where the parched grass was turning green with the
first rains, while the houses showed so far away, so very far away,
in their hedged-in gardens, that it was like being in the country,
amid wood and fields and pastures, with the wide sky overhead, from
which the lungs now breathed in air, as though for the first time that
day, breathed in oxygen and life: that wide sky, displaying every day
as it were a varying wealth of colours, an excess of sunset fires,
a glorious death of the scorching day, as though the sun itself were
bursting into torrents of gold between the lilac-hued and threatening
rain-clouds. And it was so spacious and so delightful, it was such
an immense boon that it actually made up for the day.
But there was no one to see it except the two or three people who were
known in Batavia to go driving or walking. A violet twilight rose;
then the night fell with one deep shadow; and the town, which had
been deathlike all day, with its frown of brooding gloom, dropped
wearily asleep, like a city of care....
It used to be different, said old Mrs. De Harteman, the mother-in-law
of Eva's friend. They were gone nowadays, the pleasant houses with
their Indian hospitality, their open tables, their sincere and cordial
welcomes, as if the colonist's character had in some sense altered,
had in some way been overcast by the vicissitudes of chance, by his
disappointment at not speedily achieving his aim, his material aim
of wealth. And, he being thus embittered, it seemed that his nerves
became irritable, just as his soul became overcast and gloomy and
his body lethargic and unable to withstand the destructive climate....
And Eva did not find Batavia the ideal city of Eurasian civilization
which she had pictured it at Labuwangi. In this great money-grubbing
centre, every trace of spontaneity had vanished and life became
degraded to an everlasting seclusion in the office or at home. People
never saw each other save at receptions; any other conversation took
place over the telephone.
The abuse of the telephone for domestic purposes killed all agreeable
intimacy among friends. People no longer saw one another; they no
longer had any need to dress and send for the carriage, the "chariot";
for they chatted over the telephone, in sarong and kabaai, in pyjamas,
almost without stirring a limb. The telephone was close at hand and
the bell was constantly ringing in the back-verandah. People rang one
another up for nothing, for the mere fun of ringing up. Young Mrs. De
Harteman had an intimate friend, a young woman whom she never saw
and to whom she telephoned daily, for half an hour at a time. She
sat down to it, so it did not tire her. And she laughed and joked
with her friend, without having to dress and without moving. She did
the same with other friends: she paid her visits by telephone. She
did her shopping by telephone. Eva had not been accustomed at
Labuwangi to this everlasting tinkling and ringing up, which killed
all conversation and, in the back-verandah, revealed one half of a
dialogue--the replies being inaudible to any one sitting away from
the instrument--in the form of an incessant, one-sided jabbering. It
got on her nerves and drove her to her room. And, amid the boredom
of this life, full of care and inward brooding for the husband and
penetrated by the chatter of the wife's telephonic conversations,
Eva would be surprised suddenly to hear of a special excitement:
a fancy-fair and the rehearsals of an amateur operatic performance.
She herself attended one of these rehearsals during her visit and
was astonished by the really first-rate execution, as though those
musical amateurs had put the strength of despair into it, to dispel
the tedium of the Batavian evenings. For the Italian opera had left;
and she had to laugh at the heading "Amusements" in the Javabode,
which amusements as a rule were limited to a choice of three or
four meetings of shareholders. This too used to be different, said
old Mrs. De Harteman, who remembered the excellent French opera of
twenty-five years ago, which, it was true, cost thousands, but for
which the thousands were always forthcoming. No, people no longer had
the money to amuse themselves at night. They sometimes gave a very
expensive dinner, or else went to a meeting of shareholders. Eva, in
truth, considered Labuwangi a much livelier place. True, she herself
had largely contributed to the liveliness, at the instigation of Van
Oudijck, who was glad to make the capital of his district a pleasant,
cheerful little town. And she came to the conclusion that, after
all, she preferred a small, up-country place, with a few cultured,
agreeable European inhabitants--provided that they harmonized with one
another and did not quarrel overmuch in the intimacy of their common
life--to this pretentious, pompous, dreary Batavia. The only life
was among the military element. Only the officers' houses were lit
up in the evening. Apart from this, the town lay as though moribund,
the whole long, hot day, with its frown of care, with its invisible
population of people looking towards the future: a future of money,
a future perhaps even more of rest, in Europe.
And she longed to get away. Batavia suffocated her, notwithstanding
her daily drive round the spacious Koningsplein. She had only one
wish left, a melancholy wish: to say good-bye to Van Oudijck. Her
peculiar temperament, that of a smart, artistic woman, had, very
strangely, appreciated and felt the fascination of his character,
that of a simple, practical man. She had perhaps, only for a moment,
felt something for him, deep down within herself, a friendship which
formed a sort of contrast with her friendship for Van Helderen,
an appreciation of his fine human qualities rather than a feeling
of Platonic community of souls. She had felt a sympathetic pity for
him in those strange, mysterious days, for the man living alone in
his enormous house, with the strange happenings creeping in upon
him. She had felt intensely sorry for him when his wife, kicking
aside her exalted position, had gone away in an insolent mood,
arousing a storm of scandal, nobody knew exactly why: his wife,
at one time always so correct in her demeanour, notwithstanding all
her depravity, but gradually devoured by the canker of the strange
happenings until she was no longer able to restrain herself, baring the
innermost secrets of her profligate soul with cynical indifference. The
red betel-slaver, spat as it were by ghosts on her naked body, had
affected her like a sickness, had eaten into the marrow of her bones,
like a disintegration of her soul, of which she might perhaps die,
slowly wasting away. What people now said of her, of her mode of life
in Paris, represented something so unutterably depraved that it was
not to be mentioned above a whisper.
Eva heard about it at Batavia, amid the gossip at the
evening-parties. And, when she asked after Van Oudijck--where he was
staying, whether he would soon be going to Europe, after his unexpected
resignation, a thing that had surprised the whole official world--they
were unable to tell her, they asked one another if he was no longer
at the Hôtel Wisse, where he had been seen only a few weeks ago,
lying on his chair in his little verandah, with his legs on the rests,
staring fixedly before him without moving a limb. He had hardly gone
out at all, taking his meals in his room and not at the table-d'hôte,
as though he--the man who had always been accustomed to dealing with
hundreds of people--had became shy of meeting his fellow-creatures. And
at last Eva heard that Van Oudijck was living at Bandong. As she had
to pay some farewell visits, she went to the Preanger. But he was
not to be found at Bandong: all that the hotel-proprietor was able
to tell her was that Van Oudijck had stayed a few days at his place,
but had since gone, he did not know whither.
Then at last, by accident, she heard from a man whom she met at
dinner that Van Oudijck was living near Garut. She went to Garut,
feeling pleased to be on his track. The people in the hotel were able
to direct her to where he lived. She could not decide whether she
should first write to him and announce her visit. Something seemed
to warn her that, if she did, he would make some excuse and that she
would not see him. And she, now that she was on the point of leaving
Java for good, wanted to see him, from motives of mingled affection
and curiosity. She wished to see for herself how he looked, to get
out of him why he had so suddenly sent in his resignation and thrown
up his enviable position in life, a position instantly seized by the
next man after him, in the great push for promotion.
So, next morning, very early, without sending him word, she drove
away in a carriage belonging to the hotel. The landlord had explained
to the coachman where he was to go. And she drove a very long way,
along Lake Lellès, the sombre sacred lake with the two islands
containing the age-old tombs of saints, while above it hovered, like
a dark cloud of desolation, an ever-circling flock of enormous black
bats, flapping their demon wings and screeching their cry of despair,
wheeling round and round incessantly: a black, funereal swirl against
the infinite blue depths of the ether, as though they, the demons who
had once dreaded light, had triumphed and no longer feared the day,
because they obscured it with the shadow of their sombre flight. And
it was all so oppressive: the sacred lake, the sacred tombs and above
them a horde as of black devils in the deep blue ether, because it
was as though a part of the mystery of India were being suddenly
revealed, no longer hiding itself, a vague, impalpable presence, but
actually visible in the sunlight, rousing dismay with its menacing
victory.... Eva shuddered; and, as she glanced up timidly, she felt as
though the black multitude of screening wings might beat down ... upon
her.... But the shadow of death between her and the sun only whirled
dizzily around, high above her head, and only uttered its despondent
cry of triumph.... She drove on; and the plain of Lellès lay green
and smiling before her. And that second of revelation had already
ticked past: there was nothing now but the green and blue luxuriance
of the Javanese landscape; the mystery was already hidden away among
the delicate, waving bamboos or merged in the azure ocean of the sky.
The coachman was driving slowly up a steep hill. The liquid rice-fields
rose in terraces like stairs of looking-glass, pale-green with
carefully-planted blades of paddy; then, suddenly, there came as who
should say an avenue of ferns: gigantic ferns, waving their fans on
high, with great fabulous butterflies fluttering around them. And
between the diaphanous foliage of the bamboos there appeared a small
house, built half of stone, half of wattled bamboo, surrounded by
a little garden containing a few white pots of roses. A very young
woman in sarong and kabaai, with cheeks gleaming like pale gold and
coal-black eyes inquisitively peeping, looked out in surprise at the
carriage, which was approaching very slowly, and fled indoors. Eva
alighted and coughed. And she suddenly caught a glimpse of Van
Oudijck's face, peering round a screen in the middle gallery. He
disappeared at once.
"Resident!" she cried, in a coaxing tone.
But no one appeared and she grew confused. She dared not sit down and
yet she did not want to go away. But round the corner of the house,
outside, there peeped a little face, two little brown faces, the faces
of very young half-caste girls, and vanished again, giggling. Inside
the house, Eva heard a greatly excited, very nervous whispering:
"Sidin! Sidin!" she heard somebody call, in a whisper.
She smiled, took courage and stayed and walked about in the little
front-verandah. And at last there came an old woman, not perhaps so
very old in years, but old in wrinkled skin and eyes that had grown
dim, wearing a coloured chintz sabaai and dragging her slippers; and,
beginning with a few words of Dutch and then taking refuge in Malay,
smiling politely, she requested Eva to be seated and said that the
resident would be there at once. She herself sat down, smiled, did not
know what to talk about, did not know what to answer when Eva asked
her about the lake, about the road. All that she could do was to fetch
syrup and iced-water and wafers; and she did not talk, but only smiled
and looked after her visitor. When the young half-caste faces peeped
round the corner, the old woman angrily stamped her slippered foot and
scolded them with a hasty word; and then they disappeared, giggling
and running away with an audible patter of little bare feet. Then
the old woman smiled again with her eternally smiling wrinkled face
and looked at the lady timidly, as though apologizing. And it was a
very long time before Van Oudijck at last entered the room.
He welcomed Eva effusively, excused himself for keeping her waiting. It
was obvious that he had shaved in a hurry and put on a clean white
suit. And he was evidently glad to see her. The old woman departed,
with her eternal smile of apology. In that first cheerful moment,
Van Oudijck seemed to Eva exactly the same as usual; but, when he
had calmed down and taken a chair and asked her whether she had heard
from Eldersma and when she herself was going to Europe, she saw that
he had grown older, an old man. It did not show in his figure, which,
in his well-starched white suit, still preserved its broad, soldierly
air, a sturdy build, with only the back a little more bowed, as though
under a burden. But it showed in his face, in the dull, uninterested
glance, in the deep furrows of the careworn forehead, in the colour of
his skin, which was dry and yellow, while the thick moustache, about
which the jovial smile still flickered at intervals, had turned quite
grey. His hands shook nervously. And, when she told him what people
had said at Labuwangi, he listened without interrupting, betraying
a lingering curiosity about the people yonder, about the district
of which he had once been so fond. She discussed it all vaguely,
glossing over things, putting the best face on them and, above all,
saying nothing of the gossip: that he had taken French leave, that
he had run away, nobody quite knew why.
"And you, resident," she asked, "are you going to Europe too?"
He stared in front of him and gave a painful laugh before replying. And
at last he said, almost shyly:
"No, mevrouwtje. I don't think I'll go home. You see, I've been
somebody out here, in India; I'd be nobody over there. I'm nobody now,
I know; but still I feel that India has become my country. It has
got the upper hand of me; and I belong to it now. I no longer belong
to Holland, and I have nothing and nobody in Holland that belongs to
me. I'm finished, it's true; but still I'd rather drag out my existence
here than there. In Holland I should certainly not be able to stand
the climate ... or the people. Here the climate suits me and I have
withdrawn from society. I have helped Theo for the last time; and
Doddie is married. And the two boys are going to Europe, to school...."
He suddenly bent towards her and, in a changed voice, he almost
whispered, as though about to make a confession:
"You see, if everything had gone normally, then ... then I should
not have acted as I did. I have always been a practical man and I was
proud of it and proud of living the normal life, my own life, which I
lived in accordance with principles that I thought were right, until
I reached a high place among my fellow-men. I have always been like
that and things went well like that. Everything went swimmingly with
me. When others were worrying about their promotion, I passed over
the heads of five men at a bound. It was all plain sailing for me, at
least in my official career. I have not been lucky in my domestic life,
but I should never have been weak enough to break down on the road
with grief because of that. A man has so much outside his domestic
life. And yet I was always very fond of my family-circle. I don't
think it was my fault that everything went as it did. I loved my wife,
I loved my children, I loved my home, my home surroundings, in which
I was the husband, and father. But that feeling in me was never fully
satisfied. My first wife was a half-caste whom I married because I
was in love with her. Because she could not get the upper hand of me
with her whim-whams, things became impossible after a few years. I was
perhaps even more in love with my second wife than with my first: I am
simply constituted in these matters. But I was never allowed to have
a pleasant home-circle, a pleasant, kindly wife, children climbing
on your knees and growing up into men and women who owe their lives
to you, their existence, in short, everything that they have and
possess. That is what I should have liked to have. But, as I say,
though I did not get it, that would never have pulled me under...."
He was silent for a moment and then continued in an even more
mysterious whisper:
"But that, you see, the thing that happened.... I never understood; and
it's that which brought me to where I am. That ... all that ... which
clashed and interfered with my practical, logical ideas of life ... all
that"--he struck the table with his fist--"all that damned nonsense,
which ... which happened all the same: that did the trick. I did not
shirk the fight, but my strength was no use to me. It was something
against which nothing availed.... I know: it was the regent. When
I threatened him it stopped.... But, my God, mevrouwtje, tell me,
what was it? Do you know? You don't, do you? Nobody knew and nobody
knows. Those terrible nights, those inexplicable noises over head,
that night in the bathroom with the major and the other officers! It
wasn't any hallucination: we saw it, we heard it, we felt it, it spat
at us, it covered us from head to foot; the whole bathroom was full
of it! It is easy for other people, who didn't experience it, to deny
it. But I ... and all of us ... we saw it, heard it and felt it! And
we none of us knew who it was.... And since then I have never ceased
to feel it. It was all around me, in the air, under my feet.... You
see," he whispered very softly, "that--and that alone--did it. That
made it impossible for me to stay there. That caused me to be struck
stupid, to become a sort of idiot in the midst of my normal life,
in the midst of my practical good sense and logic, which suddenly
appeared to me in the light of an ill-constructed theory of life, of
the most abstract speculation, because, right through it, things were
happening that belonged to another world, things that escaped me and
everybody else. That, that alone, did it! I was no longer myself. I
no longer knew what I was thinking, what I was doing, what I had
done. Everything in me was tottering. That ruffian in the compound
is no child of mine: I'll stake my life on it. And I ... I believed
it. I sent him money. Tell me, do you understand me? I don't suppose
you do. It's not to be understood, that strange, unnatural business,
if you haven't experienced it, in your flesh and in your blood,
till it finds its way into your marrow...."
"I do believe that I also experienced it, once in a way," she
whispered. "When I was walking with Van Helderen by the sea ... and
the sky was so far and the night so deep ... or the rains came rustling
towards us from so very far away and then fell ... or when the nights,
silent as death and yet brimful of sounds, quivered about one, always
with a music which one could not catch and could scarcely hear.... Or
simply when I looked into the eyes of a Javanese, when I spoke to my
babu and it seemed as though nothing of what I said reached her mind
and as though what she replied concealed her real, secret answer...."
"That, again, is another thing," he said. "I can't understand that:
as far as I was concerned, I knew my native through and through. But
possibly every European feels it in a different way, according to his
nature and his temperament. To one it is perhaps the dislike which he
begins by feeling for the country that attacks him in the weak point
of his materialism and continues to oppose him ... whereas the country
itself is so full of poetry, I might almost say mysticism. To another
it is the climate, or the character of the native, or what you will,
that is antagonistic and incomprehensible. To me ... it was the facts
which I could not understand. And until then I had always been able
to understand a fact ... at least, I thought so. Now it appeared
to me as though I no longer understood anything.... In this way,
I became an incompetent official and then I realized that it was all
over. And then I quietly resigned my post. And now I'm here ... and
here I mean to stay. And do you know the strange part of it? Perhaps
I have--at last--found my family-circle here...."
The little brown faces were peeping round the corner. And he called
to them, beckoned to them kindly, with a broad fatherly gesture. But
they pattered away again, audibly, on their bare feet. He laughed:
"They're very timid, the little monkeys," he said. "It's Lena's little
sisters; and the woman you saw just now is her mother."
He was silent for a second, quite simply, as though she was bound
to understand who Lena was: the very young woman, with the golden
bloom on her cheeks and the coal-black eyes, of whom she had caught
a fleeting glimpse.
"And then there are some little brothers, who go to school in
Garut. Well, you see, that's my domestic circle. When I came to know
Lena, I adopted the whole family. I admit it costs me a lot of money,
for I have my first wife at Batavia, my second in Paris, and René and
Ricus in Holland. It all costs me money. And now my new 'home-circle'
here. But now at least I have my circle.... It's a very Indian kettle
of fish, you'll say: that Indian quasi-marriage to the daughter of
a coffee-overseer, with the old woman and the little brothers and
sisters included in the bargain. But I'm doing a little good. The
family haven't a cent and I'm helping them. And Lena is a dear child
and is the comfort of my old age. I can't live without a wife; and so
it happened of itself.... And it works very well: I lead a cabbage-life
and drink first-rate coffee; and they look after the old man...."
He was silent and then continued:
"And you ... you are going to Europe? Poor Eldersma, I hope he'll be
better soon! It's all my fault, isn't it? I worked him too hard. But
it's like that in India, mevrouw. We all work too hard here ... until
we stop working altogether. And you are going ... in a week? How
glad you will be to see your father and mother and to hear some good
music? I am still always grateful to you. You did much for us, you
stood for poetry in Labuwangi. Poor India! How they rail at her! After
all, the country can't help it that we freebooters have invaded their
territory, barbarian conquerors that we are, only working to grow rich
and get away! And then, when they don't grow rich, they start railing:
at the heat, which God gave it from the beginning; at the lack of
nourishment for mind and soul: mind and soul of the freebooter! The
poor country railed at like this may well say in itself, 'You could
have stayed away!' And you ... you didn't like India either."
"I tried to grasp the poetry of it. And now and then I succeeded. For
the rest, it's my fault, resident, and not the fault of this beautiful
country. Like your freebooter, I should have stayed away. All my
depression, all the melancholy from which I suffered in this beautiful
land of mystery, is my own fault. I don't rail at India, resident."
He took her hand and, almost with emotion, almost with a gleam of
moisture in his eyes, said, softly:
"I thank you for saying so. Those words are like you, the words of
a sensible, cultivated woman, who doesn't rave and rant, as a silly
Dutchman would at not finding in this country exactly what corresponded
with his petty ideals. Your temperament suffered much here, I know. It
was bound to. But it was not the fault of the country."
"It was my own fault, resident," she repeated, with her soft,
smiling voice.
He thought her adorable. That she did not burst into imprecations,
that she did not fly into ecstasies because she was leaving Java in a
few days' time gave him a sense of comfort. And, when she rose to go,
saying that it was getting late, he felt very sad:
"And so I shall never see you again?"
"I don't think that we shall be coming back."
"It's good-bye for ever, then!"
"Perhaps we shall see you in Europe."
He made a gesture of denial:
"I am more grateful to you than I can say for coming to look the old
man up. I shall drive with you to Garut."
He called out something indoors, where the women were keeping out of
sight and the little sisters giggling. He stepped into the carriage
by her side. They drove down the avenue of ferns; and suddenly they
saw the Sacred Lake of Lellès, overshadowed by the circling swirl of
the bats ever flapping round and round:
"Resident," she whispered, "I feel it here...."
He smiled:
"They are only bats," he said.
"But at Labuwangi ... it was perhaps only a rat."
He just wrinkled his brows; then he smiled again, with the jovial
smile about his thick moustache, and looked up with inquisitive eyes:
"What?" he said, softly. "Really? Do you feel it here?"
"Yes."
"Well, I don't. It's different with everybody."
The giant bats shrilled their triumph in shrieks of desolation. The
little carriage drove on and passed a little railway-halt. And, in
the otherwise lonely region, it was strange to see a whole populace,
a swarm of motley Sundanese, streaming towards the little station,
eagerly gazing at a slow train which was approaching, belching black
clouds of smoke amidst the bamboos. All their eyes were staring
crazily, as though anticipating the bliss of the first glance, as
though their first impression would be a treasure for their souls.
"That's a train full of new hadjis," said Van Oudijck. "They're all
pilgrims newly returned from Mecca."
The train stopped; and from the long third-class carriages, solemnly,
slowly, very devoutly and conscious of their dignity, the hadjis
alighted, in their rich white-and-yellow turbans, their eyes gleaming
with pride, their lips pursed with conceit, in brand-new, shiny
coats and gold-and-purple skirts which fell in stately folds to just
above their feet. And, humming with rapturous excitement, sometimes
with a rising cry of ecstasy, the waiting multitude pressed closer
and stormed the narrow doorways of the long railway-coaches.... The
hadjis solemnly alighted. And their brothers and friends vied with one
another in grasping their hands and the hems of their gold-and-purple
skirts and kissed that sacred hand or that sacred garment, because it
brought them something of Mecca the Holy. They fought, they hustled
one another around the hadjis, to be the first to give the kiss. And
the hadjis, conceited and self-conscious, seemed unaware of the
struggle, maintained a peaceful dignity and a solemn stateliness amid
the struggle, amid the billowing, buzzing multitude, and surrendered
their hands, surrendered the hem of their garments to the fanatical
kiss of all who approached.
And, in this land of profound, secret, slumbering mystery, in this
people of Java, which, as always, hid itself in the secrecy of its
impenetrable soul, suppressed indeed, but visible, it was strange to
see an ecstasy rising to the surface, to see an intoxicated fanaticism,
to see a part of that impenetrable soul revealed in its deification
of those who had beheld the tomb of the prophet, to hear the soft
humming of a religious rapture, to hear, suddenly, unexpectedly, a
shout of glory, not to be suppressed, quavering on high, a cry which
instantly sank again, drowned in the hum, as though itself fearful,
because the sacred era had not yet arrived....
And Van Oudijck and Eva, on the road behind the station, slowly
driving past the busy multitude which still buzzed about the hadjis,
respectfully carrying their luggage, obsequiously offering their
little carts: Van Oudijck and Eva suddenly looked at each other and,
though neither of them cared to express it in words, they told each
other with a glance of understanding, that they felt it, that they
felt that, both of them, both together this time, in the midst of
this fanatical multitude....
They both felt it, the unutterable thing, the thing that lurks in
the ground, that hisses under the volcanoes, that slowly draws near
with the far-travelled winds, that rushes onwards with the rain, that
rattles by in the heavy, rolling thunder, that is wafted from the far
horizon of the boundless sea; the thing that flashes from the black,
mysterious gaze of the secretive native, that creeps in his heart and
cringes in his humble salutation; the thing that gnaws like a poison
and a hostile force at the body, soul and life of the European, that
silently attacks the conqueror and saps his energies, causing him to
pine and perish, sapping his energies very slowly, so that he wastes
away for years; and in the end he dies of it, perhaps by a sudden,
tragic death: they both felt it, both felt the unutterable thing....
And, in feeling it, together with the sadness of their leave-taking,
which was so near at hand, they failed to see, amid the waving,
billowing, buzzing multitude which reverently hustled the
yellow-and-purple dignity of the hadjis returned from Mecca, they
failed to see that one, tall, white hadji rising above the crowd and
peering with a grin at the man who, though he had lived his life in
Java, had been weaker than That....