CHAPTER SIX
Van Oudijck, in a pleasant mood because of his wife and children,suggested a drive; and the horses were put to the landau. VanOudijck had a pleased and jovial look, under the broad, gold-lacedpeak of his cap. Leonie, seated beside him, was wearing a new mauvemuslin frock, from Batavia, and a hat with mauve poppies. A lady'shat in the up-country districts is a luxury, a colossal elegance;and Doddie, facing her, but dressed inland fashion, without a hat,was secretly vexed and thought that mamma might just as well havetold her she was going to "take" a hat, to use Doddie's idiom. Shenow looked such a contrast to mamma; she couldn't stand them now,those softly swaying poppies. Of the boys, Rene was with them, ina clean white suit. The chief messenger sat on the box beside thecoachman, holding against his side the great golden umbrella, thesymbol of authority. It was past six, it was already growing dark;and over Labuwangi there hung at this hour the velvety silence,the tragic mystery of the twilit atmosphere that marked the days ofthe eastern monsoon. Sometimes a dog barked, or a wood-pigeon cooed,breaking the unreality of the silence, as of a deserted town. Butnow there was also the rattle of the carriage driving right throughthe silence; and the horses stamped the silence into tiny shreds. Noother carriages were met; an absence of all signs of human life casta spell upon the gardens and verandahs. A couple of young men on foot,in white, took off their hats.
The carriage had left the wealthier part of the town and enteredthe Chinese quarter, where the lights were burning in the littleshops. Business was almost finished: the Chinamen were resting, inall sorts of limp attitudes, with their legs dangling or crossed,their arms round their heads, their pigtails loose or twisted aroundtheir skulls. When the carriage approached, they rose and remainedstanding respectfully. The Javanese for the most part--those who werewell brought up and knew their manners--squatted. Along the roadstood the little portable kitchens, lit by small paraffin lamps,of the drink-vendors and pastry-sellers. The motley colours showeddingy in the evening darkness, lit by innumerable little lamps. TheChinese shops, crammed with goods, displayed red and gold signboardsand red and gold placards with inscriptions; in the background was thedomestic altar with the sacred print; the white god seated, with theblack god grimacing behind him. But the street widened, became suddenlymore considerable: rich Chinese houses loomed white in the dusk;the most striking was the gleaming, palatial villa of an immenselywealthy retired opium-factor, who had made his money in the daysbefore the opium monopoly: a gleaming palace of graceful stucco-workwith numberless outbuildings. The porticos of the verandah were in amonumental style of imposing elegance and in many soft shades of gold;in the depth of the open house the immense domestic altar was visible,with the print of the gods conspicuously illuminated; the garden waslaid out with conventional winding paths, but beautifully filled withsquare pots and tall vases of dark blue-and-green glazed porcelain,containing dwarf trees, handed down as heirlooms from father to son;and all was kept with a radiant cleanliness, a careful neatnessof detail, eloquent of the prosperous, spick-and-span luxury of aChinese opium-millionaire. But not all the Chinese houses were soostentatiously open: most of them lay hidden with closed doors inhigh-walled gardens, tucked away in the secrecy of their domestic life.
But suddenly the houses came to an end and Chinese graves stretchedalong a broad road, rich graves, each grassy mound with a stoneentrance--the door of death--raised in the form of the symbol offecundity--the door of life--and all surrounded with a wide spaceof turf, to the great vexation of Van Oudijck, who reckoned outhow much ground was lost to cultivation by these burial-placesof the wealthy Chinese. And the Chinese seemed to triumph in lifeand death in this mysterious town which was otherwise so silent;the Chinese gave it its real character of busy traffic, of trade, ofmoney-making, of living and dying; for, when the carriage drove intothe Arab quarter--a district of ordinary houses, but gloomy, lackingin style, with life and prosperity hidden away behind closed doors;with chairs in the verandah, but the master of the house gloomilysitting cross-legged on the floor, following the carriage with a blacklook--this quarter seemed even more mysterious than the fashionablepart of Labuwangi and seemed to radiate its unutterable mystery likean atmosphere of Islam that spread over the whole town, as thoughit were Islam that had poured forth the dusky, fatal melancholy ofresignation which filled the shuddering, noiseless evening.... Theydid not feel this in their rattling carriage, accustomed to thatatmosphere as they were from childhood and no longer sensitiveto the gloomy secret that was like the approach of a dark forcewhich had always breathed upon them, the foreign rulers with theircreole blood, so that they should never suspect it. Perhaps, whenVan Oudijck now and again read about Pan-Islam in the newspapers,he was dimly conscious in his deepest thoughts of this dark force,this gloomy secret. But at moments like the present--driving withhis wife and children, amidst the rattling of his carriage and thetrampling of his fine Walers; the messenger with the furled umbrella,which glittered like a furled sun, on the box--he was too intenselyaware of his individuality, his authoritative, overbearing nature,to feel anything of the dark secret, to divine anything of the blackperil. And he was now in far too pleasant a mood to feel or seeanything melancholy. In his optimism he did not see even the declineof his town, which he loved; he was not struck, as they drove past,by the immense porticoed villas, the witnesses to the prosperity offormer planters, now deserted, neglected, standing in grounds thathad run wild, one of them taken over by a timber-felling company,which allowed the foreman to live in it and stacked the logs in thefront-garden. The deserted houses gleamed sadly with their pillaredporticos, which, amid the desolate grounds, loomed spectral in themoonlight, like temples of evil. But they did not see it like that:enjoying the rocking of the smooth carriage-springs, Leonie smiledand dozed; and Doddie, now that they were approaching the Lange Laanagain, looked out to see whether she could catch sight of Addie....
De stille kracht. English Page 6
