De stille kracht. English

by Louis Couperus

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Patjaram sugar-factory was fourteen miles from Labuwangi andtwelve from Ngadjiwa and belonged to the half-Eurasian, half-Solofamily of De Luce, a family who had once been millionaires, but wereno longer so very well off, owing to the recent sugar-crisis, thoughthey still supported a numerous household. This family, which alwayskept together--the old mother and grandmother, a Solo princess; theeldest son, the manager; three married daughters and their husbands,clerks in the factory, all living in its shadow; three younger sonsemployed in the factory; the many grandchildren, playing round andabout the factory; the great-grandchildren springing up round and aboutthe factory--this family maintained the old Indian traditions which, atone time universal, are now becoming rarer, thanks to the more frequentintercourse with Europeans. The mother and grandmother was the daughterof a Solo prince and had married a young and enterprising bohemianadventurer, Ferdinand de Luce, a member of a French titled familyof Mauritius, who, after wandering about for many years in search ofhis place in the sun, had sailed to India as a ship's steward, and,after all sorts of vicissitudes, had found himself stranded in Solo,where he achieved fame by means of a dish prepared with tomatoesand another consisting of stuffed chilies. Thanks to these recipes,Ferdinand de Luce won the favour of the Solo princess, whose hand heafterwards obtained, and even that of the old Susuhunan. After hismarriage he became a landowner, and, according to the national usage,a vassal of the Susuhunan of Solo, whom he supplied daily with riceand fruits for the household of the palace. Then he had launched outinto sugar, divining the millions which a lucky fate held in storefor him. He had died before the crisis, laden with wealth and honours.

  The old grandmother, in whom there was not a trace left of the youngprincess whom Ferdinand de Luce had wedded to promote his fortunes,was never approached by the servants or the Javanese staff save witha cringing reverence; and everybody gave her the title of Raden-ajupangeran. She did not speak a word of Dutch. Wrinkled like a shrivelledfruit, with her clouded eyes and her withered, betel-stained mouth,she was peacefully living her last years, always dressed in a darksilk kabaai, the neck and the light sleeves of which were fastenedwith precious stones. Before her sun-bitten gaze there hovered thevision of her former palace grandeur, which she had abandoned for loveof that French nobleman-cook who had pandered to her father's tastewith his dainty recipes; in her ears buzzed the constant murmur ofthe centrifugal separators, like the thrashing of screw propellers,throughout the milling-season, which lasted for months on end;around her were her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren:the sons and daughters addressed as raden and raden-adjeng by theservants; all of them still surrounded by the pale halo of theirSolo descent. The eldest daughter was married to a full-blooded,fair-haired Dutchman; the son who followed her to an Armenian girl;the two others were married to Eurasians, both brown; and their brownchildren--who were also married and also had children--mingled withthe fair-haired family of the eldest daughter; and the pride of thewhole family was the youngest son and brother, Adrien, or Addie, whomade love to Doddie van Oudijck and who was constantly at Labuwangi,the busy milling-season notwithstanding.

  In this family, traditions were still maintained, now quite obsolete,such as people remembered in the Indian families of long ago. Here youstill saw, in the grounds, in the back verandah, the numberless babus,[11] one grinding rice into a fine face-powder, another preparingincense, another pounding diverse condiments, all with dreamy eyes,all with slender, nimbly-moving fingers. Here the habit still prevailedof an endless array of dishes at lunch, with a long row of servants,one after the other, solemnly handing round one more vegetable, onemore sauce, one more dish of chicken, while, squatting behind theladies, the babus pounded each a different condiment in an earthenwaremortar, according to the several tastes and requirements of the satedpalates. Here it was still the custom, when the family attendedthe races at Ngadjiwa, for each of the ladies to appear followedby a babu, moving slowly, lithely, solemnly; one babu carrying abetel-pot, another a bonbonniere filled with peppermints, or a pairof race-glasses, or a fan, or a scent-bottle; the whole resembling aceremonial procession bearing the insignia of state. Here, too, youstill found the old-fashioned hospitality: the row of spare-roomsopen to any one who cared to knock; here all could stay as longas they pleased; no one was asked the object of his journey or thedate of his departure. A great simplicity of mind, an all-embracing,spontaneous, innate cordiality prevailed, together with an unboundedweariness and tedium, a life of no ideas and but few words, the ready,gentle smile making good the lack of both; a material life, fulland sated: a life of cool drinks and native pastry and fruit-saladhanded round all day, three babus being specially appointed tomake fruit-salad and pastry. Any number of animals were scatteredover the estate: there was a cage full of monkeys; a few lories;dogs, cats, some tame squirrels and an exquisite little dwarf deer,which ran about loose. The house, built on to the factory, quakingall through the milling-season with the noise of machinery--likethe throbs of screw propellers--was spacious and furnished withthe old, old-fashioned furniture: the low wooden bedsteads withfour carved bed-posts hung with curtains; the heavy-legged tables;the rocking-chairs with peculiarly round backs: all things whichare now no longer obtainable; nothing that betrayed the least touchof modernity, except--and this only during the milling-season--theelectric light in the front verandah! The occupants were always inindoor dress: the men in white or blue-and-white striped pyjamas; theladies in sarong and kabaai, toying with a monkey or a lory or a doe,in simplicity of mind, with ever the same pleasant jest, drawlingand drowsy, and the same gentle little laugh. The passions, whichwere certainly there, slumbered in that gentle smile. Then, when themilling-season was over; when all the bustle was over; when the filesof sugar-carts, drawn by the superb oxen, with glossy brown hides,had brought an ever-increasing store of canes over the fibre-coveredroad, which was cut to pieces by the broad cart-ruts; when the seedhad been bought for next year and the machines were stopped: thencame the sudden relaxation after the incessant labour, the long,long holiday, the many months' rest, the craving for festivity andenjoyment; the big dinner given by the lady of the house, followedby a ball and tableaux-vivants; the whole house full of visitors,who stayed on and on, known and unknown; the old, wrinkled grandmamma,the landowner, the raden-aju, Mrs. de Luce, whatever you liked to callher, always amiable, with her dull eyes and her betel-stained mouth,amiable to one and all, with always an anak-mas, a "golden child," apoor little adopted princess at her heels, carrying a gold betel-boxbehind the great princess from Solo: a slender little woman of eightyears old, her front hair cut into a fringe, her forehead whitenedwith moist rice-powder, her already rounded little breasts confinedin the little pink silk kabaai, with the miniature gold sarong roundthe slender hips; a doll, a toy for the raden-aju, for Mrs. de Luce,for the Dowager de Luce. And for the compounds there were the popularrejoicings, a time-honoured lavishness, in which all Patjaram shared,according to the age-old tradition which was always observed, despiteany crisis or unrest.

  The milling-season and the rejoicings were now over. There wascomparative peace indoors; and a languorous Indian calm had set in. ButMrs. van Oudijck, Theo and Doddie had come over for the festivitiesand were staying on a few days longer at Patjaram. A great circleof people sat round the marble table covered with glasses of syrup,lemonade and whisky-and-soda; they did not speak much, but rockedluxuriously, exchanging an occasional word. Mrs. de Luce and Mrs. vanOudijck spoke Malay, but were not talkative. A gentle, good-humouredboredom drifted down on all these rocking people. It was strange to seethe different types: the pretty, milk-white Leonie beside the yellow,wrinkled raden-aju-dowager; Theo, pale and fair as a Dutchman, withhis full, sensual lips, which he inherited from his half-caste mother;Doddie, already looking like a ripe rose, with the sparkling irisesand black pupils of her black eyes; the manager's son, Achille de Luce,brown, tall and stout, whose thoughts ran only on his machinery and hisseed; the second son, Roger, brown, sho
rt and thin, the book-keeper,whose thoughts ran only on the year's profits, with his little Armenianwife; the eldest daughter, old already, brown, stupidly ugly, with herfull-blooded Dutch husband, who looked like a peasant; the other sonsand daughters, in every shade of brown, not easily to be distinguishedone from the other; around them the children, the grandchildren, thelittle, golden-skinned adopted children, the babus, the lories andthe dwarf deer; and over all these people and children and animals,as though shaken down upon them, lay a good-hearted solidarity; andover all these people there also lay a common pride in their Soloancestors, crowning all their heads with a pale halo of Javanesearistocracy; and the Armenian daughter-in-law and the bucolic Dutchson-in-law were not least proud of this descent.

  The liveliest of all these elements, which were melting into oneanother, as it were, through long communal life under the patriarchalroofs, was the youngest son, Adrien de Luce, Addie, in whom the bloodof the Solo princess and that of the French adventurer had blendedharmoniously. The admixture, it is true, had given him no brains,but it had given him the physical beauty of a young Eurasian, withsomething of the Moor about it, something southern and seductive,something Spanish, as though in this last child the two alien racialelements had for the first time mingled harmoniously, for the firsttime been wedded in absolute mutual sympathy; as though in him, thislast child after so many children, adventurer and princess had forthe first time met in harmony. Addie seemed to possess not a jot ofintellect or imagination; he was unable to unite two ideas into onecomposite thought; he merely felt, with the vague good-nature which haddescended upon the whole family. For the rest, he was like a beautifulanimal, degenerating in soul and brain, but degenerating into nothing,to a great nullity, to one great emptiness, while his body was likea renewal of his race, full of strength and beauty, while his marrowand his blood and his flesh and his muscles were all one harmony ofphysical seductiveness, so purely, stupidly, beautifully sensual thatits harmony had for a woman an immediate appeal. The lad had but toappear, like a beautiful, southern god, for all the women to look athim and take him into the depths of their imagination, to recall himto their minds again and again; the lad had but to go to a race-ballat Ngadjiwa for all the girls to fall in love with him. He pluckedlove where he found it, in plenty, in the Patjaram compounds. Andeverything feminine was in love with him, from his mother to his littlenieces. Doddie van Oudijck was infatuated with him. From a child ofseven she had been in love, a hundred times and more, with every onewho passed before the glance of her flashing pupils, but never yet aswith Addie. Her love shone so strongly from her whole being that itwas like a flame, that everybody saw it and smiled. The milling-feasthad been to her one long delight ... when she danced with him; onelong martyrdom ... when he danced with others. He had not asked herto marry him, but she thought of asking him and was prepared to dieif he refused. She knew that the resident, her father, would object:he did not like those De Luces, that Solo-French crew, as he calledthem; but, if Addie was willing, her father would consent, rather thansee her die. To this child of love that lovable lad was the world,the universe, life itself. He made love to her, he kissed her onthe lips, but this was no more than he did to others, unthinkingly;he kissed other girls as well. And, if he could, he went further,like a devastating young god, an unthinking god. But he still stoodmore or less in awe of the resident's daughter. He possessed neitherpluck nor effrontery; his passions were not markedly selective;he looked on a woman as a woman and was so much sated with conquestthat obstacles did not stimulate him. His garden was full of flowerswhich all lifted themselves up to him; he stretched out his hand,almost without looking; he merely plucked.

  As they sat rocking about the table they saw him come throughthe garden; and the eyes of all these women turned to him as to ayoung tempter, arriving in the sunshine, which touched him as witha halo. The raden-aju dowager smiled and gazed at him, enamouredof her son, her favourite; squatting on the ground behind her, thelittle golden adopted child stared with wide-open eyes; the sisterslooked out, the little nieces looked out, and Doddie turned paleand Leonie van Oudijck's milky whiteness became tinged with a rosyshade which mingled with the glamour of her smile. She glanced atTheo mechanically; their eyes met. And these souls of sheer love,love of the eyes, of the lips, love of the glowing flesh, understoodeach other; and Theo's jealousy of Leonie blazed so fiercely that therosy shade died away and she became pale and fearful, with a sudden,unreasoning fear which shuddered through her usual indifference,while the tempter, in his halo of sunshine, came nearer and nearer....