De stille kracht. English

by Louis Couperus

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ngadjiwa was a gayer place than Labuwangi: there was a garrison;managers and employers often came down from the coffee-plantations inthe interior for a few days' amusement; there were races twice a year,accompanied by festivities which filled a whole month: the receptionof the resident, a horse-raffle, a battle of flowers and an opera,two or three balls, distinguished by the revellers as the fancy-dressball, the ceremonial ball and the soiree dansante; it was a time ofearly rising and late retiring, of losing hundreds of guilders in afew days at ecarte and in the totalizator.... The longing for pleasureand the cheery joy of life were freely indulged during those days;coffee-planters and young men from the sugar-factories looked forwardto them for months ahead; people saved up for them during half theyear. The two hotels were filled with guests from all directions,every household entertained its visitors; people betted furiously,while champagne flowed in torrents, all, including the ladies, knowingthe race-horses as thoroughly as though they were their own property,feeling quite at home at the dances, everybody knowing everybody,as at family-parties, while the waltzes and Washington Posts andgrazianas were danced with the languorous grace of the Eurasiandancers, to a swooning measure, the trains gently floating, a smileof quiet rapture on the parted lips, with that dreamy voluptuousnesswhich the Indian settlers express so charmingly in their dances,especially those who have Javanese blood in their veins. Dancing withthem is not a rough diversion, all bumping against one another withrude leaps and loud laughter, not the wild whirl of the Lancers as atDutch boy-and-girl balls, but represents, especially to the Eurasians,nothing but courtesy and grace: a serene blossoming of the poetry ofmotion; a gracefully designed curve of precise steps to a pure measureover the club-room floors; an almost eighteenth-century harmony ofyouthful nobility, waving and trailing and swaying in the dance,despite the primitive boom-booming of the Indian musicians. This washow Addie de Luce danced, with the eyes of every woman and girl fixedupon him, following him, imploring him with their glances to takethem with him also in that waving and undulating motion; which waslike a dream upon the water.... This came to him with his mother'sblood, this was a survival of the grace of the dancing princessesamong whom his mother had spent her childhood; and the mingling ofmodern European and ancient Javanese gave him an irresistible charm.

  And now, at the last ball, the soiree dansante, he danced like thiswith Doddie and, after her, with Leonie. It was late at night,or rather early in the morning: the day was dawning outside. Afatigue hung over the ball-room; and Van Oudijck at last intimatedto the assistant-resident, Vermalen, with whom he and his familywere staying, that he was ready to go home. At that moment he was inthe front verandah of the club, talking to Vermalen, when the nativecouncillor suddenly ran up to him from the shadow of the garden and,suffering from obvious excitement, squatted, salaamed and said:

  "Excellency! Excellency! Please advise me, tell me what to do! Theregent is drunk, he is walking along the street and forgetting allhis dignity."

  The guests were taking their departure. The carriages drove up; theowners stepped in; the carriages drove away. In the road outsidethe club the resident saw a Javanese: the upper part of the man'sbody was bare; he had lost his head-dress; and his long, black hairfloated loosely, while he talked aloud, with violent gestures. Groupsgathered in the dusky shadow, looking on from a distance.

  Van Oudijck recognized the Regent of Ngadjiwa. Already at the ballthe regent had behaved without self-control, after losing heavily atcards and mixing all sorts of wines.

  "Hasn't the regent been home yet?" asked Van Oudijck.

  "Surely, excellency!" replied the councillor, plaintively. "I tookthe regent home as soon as I saw that he was no longer able tocontrol himself. He flung himself on his bed; I thought he was soundasleep. But see, he woke and got up; he left the palace and came backhere. See how he's behaving! He is drunk, he is drunk and he forgetswho he is and who his fathers were!"

  Van Oudijck went outside with Vermalen. He walked up to the regent,who was making violent gestures and delivering an unintelligiblespeech in a loud voice.

  "Regent!" said the resident. "Don't you know where and who you are?"

  The regent did not recognize him. He ranted at Van Oudijck, he calleddown all the curses of heaven upon his head.

  "Regent!" said the assistant-resident. "Don't you know who's speakingto you and to whom you're speaking?"

  The regent swore at Vermalen. His bloodshot eyes flashed with drunkenfury and madness. Assisted by the councillor, Van Oudijck and Vermalentried to help him into a carriage; but he refused. Splendid andsublime in his fall, he gloried in the madness of his tragedy, hestood, as though some explosive force had made him beside himself,half-naked, with floating hair and great gestures of his crazyarms. He was no longer coarse and bestial but became tragic, heroic,fighting against his fate, on the edge of the abyss.... The excess ofhis drunkenness seemed with a strange force to raise him out of hisgradual bestialization; and, fuddled as he was, he drew himself up,towering high, dramatically, above the Europeans.

  Van Oudijck gazed at him in stupefaction. The regent was now coming toblows with the councillor, who addressed him in beseeching tones. Onthe road, the population collected, silent, dismayed; the last guestswere leaving the club, where the lights were growing dim. Among themwere Leonie van Oudijck, Doddie and Addie de Luce. All three stillbore in their eyes the weary voluptuousness of the last waltz.

  "Addie," said the resident, "you're an intimate friend of theregent's. Just see if he knows you."

  The young man spoke to the tipsy madman, in soft Javanese accents. Atfirst the regent kept on with his words of objurgation, with hisgigantic, raving gestures; then, however, the softness of the languageseemed to hold a well-known memory for him. He gave Addie a longlook. His gestures subsided, his drunken glory evaporated. It wasas though his blood suddenly understood that young man's blood, asthough their souls recognized each other. The regent nodded dolefullyand began a long lament, with his arms raised on high. Addie tried tohelp him into a carriage, but the regent resisted and refused. ThenAddie took his arm in his own with gentle force and walked on withhim slowly. The regent, still lamenting, with tragic gestures ofdespair, suffered himself to be led. The councillor followed with oneor two underlings, who had run after the regent out of the palace,helplessly. The procession vanished in the darkness.

  Leonie, wearily smiling, stepped into the assistant-resident'scarriage. She remembered the gambling-quarrel at Patjaram; she tookpleasure in observing the gradual deterioration which was occurring sovisibly, this visible degradation by a passion controlled by neithertact nor moderation. And where she was concerned she felt strongerthan ever, because she enjoyed her passions and controlled them andmade them the slaves of her enjoyment.... She despised the regent;and it gave her a romantic satisfaction, an artistic pleasure, towatch the successive phases of that deterioration. In the carriageshe glanced at her husband, who sat in gloomy silence. And hisgloom delighted her, because she thought him sentimental, with hischampioning of the Javanese nobility, the result of a sentimentalinstruction, which Van Oudijck took even more sentimentally. And shedelighted in his sorrow. And from her husband she glanced at Doddie,detecting in the dance-weary eyes of her step-daughter a jealousydue to that last, that very last waltz of Leonie's with Addie. Andshe rejoiced in this jealousy. She felt happy, because sorrow had nohold upon her, any more than passion. She played with the things oflife and they glided off her and left her as unperturbed and calmlysmiling and unwrinkled and creamy white as before.

  Van Oudijck did not go to bed. With his head aflame, with a fury ofmortification in his heart, he at once took a bath, dressed himself inpyjamas and had coffee served on the verandah outside his room. It wassix o'clock; the air was steeped in a delightful coolness of morningfreshness. But he suffered from so fierce an anger that his templesthrobbed as though with congestion, his heart thumped in his chest,his every nerve quivered. The scene of that night and morning wasstil
l flickering before his eyes, ticking on like a cinematograph,with whirling changes of posture. What angered him above all wasthe impossibility of it all, the illogicality, the unthinkablenessof it. That a Javanese of high birth, forgetful of all the nobletraditions in his blood, should have been able to behave as the Regentof Ngadjiwa had behaved that night would never have seemed to himpossible. He would never have believed it, if he had not seen it withhis own eyes. To this man of predetermined logic the fact was simplymonstrous, like a nightmare. Extremely susceptible to surprise, whichhe did not consider logical, he was angry with reality. He wonderedwhether he had not been dreaming, whether he himself had not beendrunk. That the scandal should have occurred made him furious. But,as it was so, well, he would recommend the regent for dismissal. Therewas no alternative.

  He dressed, spoke to Vermalen and went to the palace with him. Theyboth forced their way in to the regent, notwithstanding the hesitationof the retainers, notwithstanding the breach of etiquette. They didnot see the wife, the raden-aju. But they found the regent in hisbedroom. He was lying on his bed, with his eyes open, recoveringgloomily, not yet sufficiently restored to life fully to realizethe strangeness of this visit, of the presence of the resident andassistant-resident by his bedside. He recognized them nevertheless,but did not speak. While the two of them tried to bring home to himthe gross impropriety of his behaviour, he stared shamelessly in theirfaces and persisted in his silence. It was all so strange that the twoofficials looked at each other and exchanged glances to ask whetherthe regent was not mad, whether he was really responsible. He had notspoken a single word, he remained silent. Though Van Oudijck threatenedhim with dismissal, he remained dumb, staring with shameless eyesinto the resident's eyes. He did not open his lips, he maintained theattitude of a deaf-mute. At the most, an ironical smile formed abouthis lips. The officials, really thinking that the regent was mad,shrugged their shoulders and left the room.

  In the gallery they met the raden-aju, a short, downtrodden littlewoman, like a whipped dog, a beaten slave. She approached, weeping;she begged, she implored for forgiveness. Van Oudijck told her that theregent refused to speak, for all his threats, that he was silent withan inexplicable but obviously deliberate silence. Then the raden-ajuwhispered that the regent had consulted a native physician, who hadgiven him a talisman and assured him that, if he only persisted inmaintaining complete silence, his enemies would obtain no hold uponhim. Terrified, she implored for help, for forgiveness, gathering herchildren round her as she spoke. After sending for the councillor andenjoining him to keep a strict watch on the regent, the two officialswent away.

  Often though Van Oudijck had encountered the superstition of theJavanese, it always enraged him, as opposed to what he called thelaws of nature and life. Yes, nothing but his superstition couldinduce a Javanese to depart from the correct path of his innatecourtliness. Whatever they might now wish to put before him, the regentwould remain silent, would persist in the absolute silence prescribedby the physician. In this way he believed himself protected againstthose whom he considered his enemies. And this preconceived notion ofhostility in one whom he would so gladly have regarded as his youngerbrother and fellow-ruler was what disturbed Van Oudijck most of all.

  He returned to Labuwangi with Leonie and Doddie. Once at home, hefelt for a moment the pleasantness of being back in his own house, anenjoyment of domesticity that always soothed him greatly: the materialpleasure of seeing his own bed again, his own writing-table and chair,of drinking his own coffee, made as he was accustomed to have it. Theseminor amenities put him in a good humour for a little while, but he atonce felt all his bitterness awaken when he perceived, under a pile ofletters on his desk, the disguised handwritings of a couple of furtivecorrespondents. Automatically he opened these first and felt sick whenhe read Leonie's name coupled with that of Theo. Nothing was sacredto those scoundrels: they concocted the most monstrous calumnies,the most unnatural libels, the most loathsome imputations, down tothat of what was almost incest. All the filth flung at his wife andson only set them higher in his love, girt them with a greater purity,placed them on an inviolable summit and made him cherish them with adeeper and more fervent affection. But his bitterness, once stirred up,brought back all his mortification. Its actual cause was that he hadto propose the Regent of Ngadjiwa's dismissal and did not enjoy theprospect. But this one necessity embittered his whole being, upsethis nerves and made him ill. If he could not follow the path whichhe had determined upon, if life strayed from the possibilities whichhe, Van Oudijck, had a priori fixed, this reluctance, this rebellionupset his nerves and made him ill.

  He had once and for all resolved, after the death of the old pangeran,to raise up the declining race of the Adiningrats, alike because ofhis affectionate memory of that excellent Javanese prince, becauseof his instructions as resident and because of a sense of loftyhumanity and hidden poetry in himself. And he had never been ableto do so, he had at once been thwarted--unconsciously, by forceof circumstances--by the old raden-aju pangeran, who gambled awayeverything, who was ruining herself and her kin. As a friend he hadexhorted her. She had always been accessible to his advice, but herpassion had proved too strong for her. Van Oudijck had from the first,even before the father's death, judged her son, Sunario, the Regentof Labuwangi, unfitted for the actual position of regent. The fellowwas petty and insignificant, insufferably proud of his descent,never in touch with the actualities of life, devoid of any talentfor ruling or any consideration for his inferiors, a great fanatic,always occupied with native doctors, with sacred calculations, withtalismans, always reticent and living in a dream of obscure mysticismand blind to what would spell welfare and justice for his Javanesesubjects. And the population adored him nevertheless, both because ofhis noble birth and because he was reputed to possess sanctity anda far-reaching power, a divine magic. Silently, secretly, the womenof the Kabupaten sold bottles of the water that had flowed over hisbody in the bath, as a healing remedy for various diseases. There youhad the elder brother; and the younger had quite forgotten himselflast night, frenzied by cards and drink. In these two sons the onceso brilliant race was tottering to its fall. Their children wereyoung; a few cousins were native councillors in Labuwangi and theadjoining residencies, but their veins contained not a drop of thenoble blood. No, Van Oudijck had always failed, glad though he wouldhave been to succeed. The very men whose interests he defended wereopposing his efforts. Their day was over. But why this must be so hecould not understand; and it all upset him and embittered him.

  And he had pictured to himself a very different path, a beautifulascending path, even as he saw his own life before him, whereas withthem the path of life wound tortuously downwards. And he did notunderstand what it was that was stronger than he when he put forthhis will. Had it not always happened in his life and his career thatthe things for which he had fervently wished came to pass with thelogic which he himself, day after day, had attributed to the thingsthat were about to take place? His ambition had now established thelogic of the ascending path, for his ambition had established as itsaim the revival of this Javanese family....

  Would he fail? To fail in striving for an aim which he had set himselfas an official: he would never forgive himself! Hitherto he had alwayssucceeded in achieving what he had willed. But what he now wanted toachieve was, unknown to himself, not merely an official aim, a part ofhis work. What he now wanted to achieve was an aim the idea of whichsprang from his humanity, from the noblest part of himself. What henow wanted to achieve was an ideal, the ideal of the European in theeast and of the European who sees the east as he wishes to see itand as he could but see it.

  And that there were forces that gathered into one force, whichthreatened him, mocking at his proposals, laughing at his ideals,and which was all the stronger through lying more deeply hidden:this he would never admit. It was not in him to acknowledge them;and even the clearest revelation of them would be a riddle to hissoul and would remain a myth.