The Hidden Force Part 28

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 Labuw.a.n.gi. 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 Labuw.a.n.gi 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 "Amus.e.m.e.nts" in the Javabode, which amus.e.m.e.nts 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 Labuw.a.n.gi 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 s.p.a.cious 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, n.o.body 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 Hotel 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'hote, 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 Lelles, 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 mult.i.tude 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 Lelles 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-gla.s.s, 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, 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, n.o.body 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 n.o.body over there. I'm n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuted 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 d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d, mevrouwtje, tell me, what was it? Do you know? You don't, do you? n.o.body knew and n.o.body 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 Rene 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 Labuw.a.n.gi. 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 G.o.d 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 Lelles, 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 Labuw.a.n.gi ... 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 pa.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ating the bliss of the first glance, as though their first impression would be a treasure for their souls.