CHAPTER TEN
Next day, when Eldersma had gone to the office and Eva was movingabout the house, in sarong and kabaai, on her domestic duties, shesaw Frans van Helderen coming through the garden.
"May I?" he called out.
"Certainly," she called back. "Come in. But I'm on my way to thegodown."
And she held up her bunch of keys.
"I'm due at the resident's in half an hour, but I'm too early ... soI just looked in."
She smiled.
"But I'm busy, you know!" she said. "Come along to the godown with me."
He followed her; he was wearing a black alpaca jacket, because hehad to go to the resident presently.
"How's Ida?" asked Eva. "Did she sleep well after her seance oflast night?"
"Only fairly well," said Frans van Helderen. "I don't think she oughtto do any more. She kept waking with a start, falling on my neck andbegging me to forgive her, I don't know what for."
"It didn't upset me at all," said Eva, "though I don't understand itin the least."
She opened the godown, called the cook and gave the woman herorders. The cook was latta; [10] and Eva loved teasing the old thing.
"La ... la-illa-lala!" she cried.
And the cook gave a start and echoed the cry and recovered herselfthe next moment, begging for forgiveness.
"Throw down, cook, throw down!" cried Eva, in Malay.
And the cook, acting on the suggestion, flung down a tray of litchisand mangosteens and, at once recovering, stooped and picked up thescattered fruits from the floor, imploring to be forgiven and shakingher head and clicking her tongue.
"Come, we'd better go!" said Eva to Frans. "Else she'll be breakingmy eggs presently. "Out of this, cook, outside!"
"Out of this, outside!" echoed the latta cook. "Oh, mem sahib, begpardon, mem sahib, oh, enough, enough, mem sahib!"
"Come and sit down for a little," said Eva to Van Helderen.
He went with her:
"You're so cheerful," he said.
"Aren't you?"
"No, I've been feeling sad, lately."
"I too. I told you so yesterday. It's something in the Labuwangiair. There's no telling what this table-turning has in store for us."
They sat down in the back verandah. He sighed.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"I can't help it," he said. "I care for you so. I love you."
She was silent for an instant.
"Again?" she then said, reproachfully.
He did not answer.
"I have told you, mine is not a passionate nature. I am cold. I lovemy husband and my child. Let's be friends, Van Helderen."
"I'm fighting against it; but it's no use."
"I'm fond of Ida; I wouldn't make her unhappy for the world."
"I don't believe I was ever fond of her."
"Van Helderen!..."
"If I was, it was only for her pretty face. But white though Ida maybe, she's a half-caste ... with her whimsies and her childish littletragedies. I didn't see it so much at first, but I see it now, ofcourse. I'd met women from Europe before I met you. But you were arevelation to me, a revelation of all the charm and artistic gracethat a woman can possess.... And the exotic side in you appeals tomy own exotic side."
"I value your friendship highly. Let things remain as they are."
"Sometimes it's just as though I were mad, sometimes I dream... that we're travelling in Europe together, that we're in Italy orParis. Sometimes I see us sitting together over a fire, in a room ofour own, you talking of art, I of the modern, social developments ofour time. But, after that, I see us together ... more intimately...."
"Van Helderen!..."
"It's no longer any use your warning me. I love you, Eva, Eva...."
"I don't believe there's another country where there's so much lovegoing about as in India! I suppose it's the heat...."
"Don't crush me with your sarcasm. No other woman ever made such anappeal to my whole soul and body as you do, Eva...."
She shrugged her shoulders:
"Don't be angry, Van Helderen, but I can't stand thesecommonplaces. Let us be sensible. I have a charming husband, you havea dear little wife. We're all good, pleasant friends together."
"You're so cold!"
"I don't want to spoil the happiness of our friendship."
"Friendship!"
"Friendship is what I said. There is nothing I value so highly,except my domestic happiness. I couldn't live without friends. Iam happy in my husband and my child; next to these I need friends,above all things."
"So that they can admire you, so that you can rule over them!" saidhe, angrily.
She looked him in the face:
"Perhaps," she said, coolly. "Perhaps I have a need of admirationand of ruling over others. We all have our weaknesses."
"I have mine," he said, bitterly.
"Come," she said, in a kinder tone, "let us remain friends."
"I am terribly unhappy," he said, in a dull voice. "I feel as if Ihad missed everything in life. I have never been out of Java andI feel there's something lacking in me because I have never seenice and snow. Snow: I think of it as a sort of mysterious unknownpurity, which I long for, but which I never seem to meet. When shallI see Europe? When shall I cease to rave about Il Trovatore andmanage to visit Bayreuth? When shall I come within range of you,Eva? I'm feeling for everything with my antennae, like a winglessinsect.... What is my life?... With Ida, with three children, whom Iforesee growing up like their mother!... I shall remain controller foryears and then--possibly--be promoted to assistant-resident ... andso remain. And then at last I shall receive my dismissal--or ask forit--and go to Sukabumi to live, to vegetate on a small pension. Ifeel everything in me longing for idleness...."
"You like your work, for all that; you're a first-rateofficial. Eldersma always says that in India a man who doesn't workand who doesn't love his work is lost."
"Your nature is not made for love and mine is not made for work: notfor that and nothing else. I can work for an aim that I see beforeme, a beautiful aim; but I can't work ... just for work's sake andto fill the emptiness in my life."
"Your aim is India...."
"A fine phrase," he said. "It may be so for a man like the resident,who has succeeded in his career and who never has to sit studying theColonial List and calculating on the illness of this man or the deathof that ... so that he may get promoted. It's all right for a man likeVan Oudijck, who, in his genuine, honest idealism, thinks that hisaim is India, not because of Holland, but because of India herself,because of the native whom he, the official, protects against thetyranny of the landlords and planters. I am more cynical by nature...."
"But don't be so lukewarm about India. It's not merely a fine phrase:I feel like that myself. India is our whole greatness, the greatnessof us Hollanders. Listen to foreigners speaking of India: they are allenchanted with her glory, with our methods of colonization.... Don'thave anything to do with the wretched Dutch spirit of our people athome, who know nothing about India, who always have a sneering word forIndia, who are so petty and stiff and bourgeois and narrow-minded...."
"I didn't know that you were so enthusiastic about India. Onlyyesterday you were full of wretched anxieties, and I was standing upfor my country...."
"Oh, it gives me a sort of shudder, the mystery in the evenings,when something seems to threaten I don't know what! I'm afraid of thefuture; there's danger ahead of us!... I feel that I, personally, amstill very remote from India, though I don't want to be; that I missthe art amid which I was educated; that I miss here, in our everydaylife, the plastic beauty which both my parents always pointed out tome.... But I am not unjust. And I think that India, as our colony,is great; I think that we, in our colony, are great...."
"Formerly, perhaps it was so. Nowadays, everything is going wrong;nowadays, we are no longer great. You have an artistic nature;you are always looking for artistic perfection in India, though youseldom find it. And then your m
ind is confronted with that greatness,that glory. That's the poetry of it. The prose of it is a giganticbut exhausted colony, still governed from Holland with one idea: thepursuit of gain. The reality is not an India under a great ruler,but an India under a petty, mean-souled blood-sucker; the countrysucked dry; and the real population--not the Hollander, who spends hisIndian money at The Hague, but the population, the native population,attached to the native soil--oppressed by the disdain of its overlord,who once improved it with his own blood, and now threatening torevolt against this oppression and disdain.... You, as an artist,feel the danger approaching, vaguely, like a cloud in the sky, inthe Indian night; I see the danger as something very real, somethingrising--before Holland--if not from America and Japan, then out ofthe soil of India herself...."
She smiled:
"I like you when you talk like this," she said. "I should end byfalling in with your views."
"If I could achieve that by talking!" he laughed, bitterly, gettingup. "My half hour is over: the resident is expecting me and he doesn'tlike waiting a minute. Goodbye ... and forgive me."
"Tell me," she said, "am I a flirt?"
"No," he replied. "You are what you are. And I can't help it: Ilove you.... I am always stretching out my poor antennae. That ismy fate...."
"I shall help you to forget me," said she, with affectionateconviction.
He gave a little laugh, bowed and went away. She saw him cross theroad to the grounds of the resident's house, where a messenger met him.
"Really life, when all is said, is one long self-deception, awandering amid illusions," she thought, sadly, drearily. "A greataim, an universal aim ... or even a modest aim for one's self,for one's own body and soul: O God, how little it all is! And howwe roam about, knowing nothing! And each of us seeks his own littleaim, his illusion. The only happy people are merely exceptions, likeLeonie van Oudijck, who lives no more than a beautiful flower does,or a beautiful animal."
Her child came toddling up to her, a pretty, fair-haired, plumplittle boy.
"Sonny," she thought, "how will it be with you? What will be yourportion? Oh, perhaps nothing new! Perhaps a repetition of whathas so often been before. Life is a story which is always beingrepeated.... Oh, when we feel like this, how oppressive India canbe!..."
She kissed her boy; her tears trickled over his fair curls.
"Van Oudijck has his residency; I my little circle of ... admirersand subjects; Frans his love ... for me: we all have our playthings,just like my little Onno playing with his little horse. How smallwe are, how small!... All our lives we make believe, pretending,imagining all sorts of things, thinking that we are giving a path ora direction to our poor, aimless little lives. Oh, why am I like this,sonny? Sonny, sonny, how will it be with you?"
De stille kracht. English Page 10
