The Hidden Force

by Louis Couperus

  “I thank you…” murmured Sunario.

  “Take good note of what I am saying to you, Prince. If you cannot make your brother see reason, and control his passion—if the salaries of the heads are not paid as soon as possible… then I shall be forced to act. And if my warning is to no avail… that would mean your brother’s downfall. You yourself know that the dismissal of a prince is such an exceptional event that it would bring shame upon your family. Help me to save the house of the Adiningrats from such ignominy.”

  “I promise,” murmured the Prince.

  “Give me your hand, Prince.”

  Van Oudijck pressed the thin fingers of the Javanese.

  “Can I trust you?” he asked urgently.

  “In life… in death…”

  “Let us go in then. And let me know your findings as soon as possible…”

  The Prince bowed. His pale olive skin betrayed the silent, hidden rage churning inside him like the magma of a volcano. His eyes drilled with silent hatred into Van Oudijck’s back, the Dutchman, the base Dutchman, the commoner, the unclean dog, the infidel Christian, who, whatever he might feel in his polluted soul, had no business concerning himself with anything of his, his house, his father, his mother, their sacrosanct nobility and aristocracy… even though they had always bowed under the yoke of superior strength…

  3

  “I’M COUNTING ON YOU to stay for dinner,” said Eva.

  “Of course,” replied Controller Van Helderen and his wife.

  The reception—not a reception, as Eva always pleaded—was coming to an end: the Van Oudijck’s had left first; the Prince followed. The Eldersma’s were left alone with their intimate circle: Doctor Rantzow, senior engineer Doorn de Bruijn, with their wives and the Van Helderens. They sat down on the front veranda with some sense of relief and rocked comfortably to and fro. Whisky sodas and lemonade with great chunks of ice were served.

  “Always full to burst, Eva’s reception,” said Mrs Van Helderen. “Fuller than last time at the Commissioner’s…”

  Ida van Helderen was a typical white Eurasian, who always tried to behave in a very European way, and speak correct Dutch; she even pretended to speak bad Malay and not like either rijsttafel or spicy fruit salad. She was short and plump, very white, with big black eyes that always looked startled. She was full of little secret whims, hatreds, affections; they all welled up in her from mysterious, unfathomable motives. Sometimes she hated Eva, sometimes she adored her. She was totally unpredictable; every action, every movement, every word could hold a surprise. She was always in love, tragically. She saw her little private emotions in an extremely tragic light, grand and sombre—without any sense of proportion—and then poured her heart out to Eva, who laughed and comforted her. Her husband, the controller, had never been in Holland: he had been educated entirely in Batavia, in the Colonial Department of King William III College. And it was a very strange sight to see this Creole, apparently completely European—tall, blond, pale, with a blond moustache, his lively, expressive blue eyes full of interest, with his manners that were more refined than those of the most select circles in Europe, and yet so Indies in his ideas, vocabulary, dress. He spoke about Paris and Vienna as if he had spent years there, though he had never left Java; he loved music, though he found it difficult to come to terms with Wagner, when Eva played for him; and his great dream was to go to Europe one day on leave, to see the Paris Exhibition. There was an astonishing distinction and innate style about this young man, as if he were not the child of European parents, who had spent their whole lives in the Indies, but a stranger from an unknown country, whose nationality one could not immediately call to mind… At most there was a certain softness in his accent—the influence of the climate. He spoke Dutch so correctly that it would have appeared almost stiff amid the careless slang of the motherland; and he spoke French, English and German with greater ease than most Dutchmen. Perhaps he derived that exotic politeness and courtesy from a French mother: innate, pleasant, natural. In his wife, also of French origin, who came from Réunion, that exoticism had resulted in a mysterious mixture that had retained nothing but childishness: a welter of petty emotions, petty passions, while with her sombre eyes she strove for a tragic view of life, which she had merely flicked through like a badly written novelette.

  Now she imagined she was in love with the senior engineer, the black-bearded doyen of the clique, already greying; and, in her tragic way, she imagined scenes with Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, a portly, placid, melancholy woman. The other couple in their intimate circle, Doctor Rantzow and his wife, were German: he, fat, blond, rather vulgar, with a middle-age spread; she, a pleasant, matronly type who spoke animatedly in Dutch with a German accent.

  This was the clique where Eva’s word was law. Apart from Frans van Helderen, the controller, it consisted of very ordinary Indies and European types, people without any aesthetic sense, as Eva said, but she had no other choice in Labuwangi, and so she amused herself with Ida’s petty Eurasian tragedies, and resigned herself to the rest. Her husband, Onno, tired from his work as always, did not contribute much to the conversation, but listened.

  “How long was Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia?” asked Ida.

  “Two months,” said the doctor’s wife. “A long stay this time.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn—placid, melancholy, and quietly venomous—that this time a member of the Council of the Indies, a head of department in the colonial service and three young men in trade amused Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia.”

  “And I can assure you all,” ventured the doctor, “that if Mrs Van Oudijck did not go regularly to Batavia, she would forgo a very salutary cure, even though she is taking it on her own initiative and not… on my orders.”

  “Don’t let’s speak ill of her!” Eva interrupted him almost pleadingly. “Mrs Van Oudijck is beautiful—with a calm Junoesque type of beauty, with the eyes of Venus—and I’m prepared to forgive beautiful people around me a lot. And you, Doctor…” she wagged her finger at him. “Don’t betray professional secrets. You know that doctors in the Indies are often too free with their patients’ secrets. If ever I’m ill, I’ll never have anything worse than a headache. You won’t forget that, will you, Doctor?”

  “The Commissioner looked preoccupied,” said Doorn de Bruijn.

  “Do you think he knows… about his wife?” asked Ida gloomily, with her large eyes full of black velvet tragedy.

  “The Commissioner is often like that,” said Frans van Helderen. “He has his moods. At times he’s good company, cheerful, jovial, as on the recent inspection tour. At others, he has his dark days, he works and works and works, and roars that the only person who does any work is himself.”

  “My poor, unappreciated Onno!” sighed Eva.

  “I think he’s working too hard,” Van Helderen went on. “Labuwangi has been a huge burden. And the Commissioner takes too much to heart, both at home and outside. His relationship with his son and with the Prince.”

  “I’d get rid of the Prince,” said the doctor.

  “But, Doctor,” said Van Helderen, “you know enough about conditions in Java to realize that it’s not as easy as that. The Prince’s family is too identified with Labuwangi and too highly regarded by the people…”

  “Yes, I know Dutch policy… The British in India are more high-handed and peremptory with their Indian princes. The Dutch defer to them too much.”

  “It remains to be seen which policy is best in the long run,” said Van Helderen drily, who could not stand a foreigner criticizing anything in a Dutch colony. “Fortunately we don’t have conditions of squalor and famine like they have in British India.”

  “I saw the Commissioner talking very seriously to the Prince,” said Doorn de Bruijn.

  “The Commissioner is too sensitive,” said Van Helderen. “He’s definitely troubled by the slow decline of an ancient Javanese family, a family that is doomed to fall but one that he would like to preserve. In that respect, howev
er cool and practical he may be, the Commissioner is behaving rather poetically, although he wouldn’t admit it. But he remembers the glorious past of the Adiningrats, he still remembers the last glorious figure, the noble old pangéran, and he compares him with his sons, one a fanatic, the other a gambler…”

  “I think our Prince—not the Prince of Ngajiwa: he’s just a coolie—is divine!” said Eva. “I think he looks just like a living shadow puppet. But I’m afraid of his eyes. What terrible eyes! Sometimes they’re sleepy, but sometimes they’re the eyes of a madman… But he’s so refined, so distinguished. And the radènayu is an exquisite little doll too: yes, yes… She says nothing, but she looks decorative. I’m always glad when they do me the honour of attending my parties, and when they’re not there, there’s something missing. And what about the old radènayu pangéran, grey, dignified, a queen…

  “An inveterate gambler,” said Eldersma.

  “They’re gambling everything away,” said Van Helderen. “She and the Prince of Ngajiwa. They’re no longer rich. The old pangéran had wonderful regalia for state occasions, magnificent lances, a jewelled betel-nut box, spittoons—useful items, those!—priceless. The old radènayu pangéran has gambled it all away. I think that all she has left is her pension, 240 guilders, I believe. And how our Prince manages to keep all his cousins in his official residence according to Javanese custom, is a mystery to me.

  “What custom?” asked the doctor.

  “Every prince gathers his family round him like parasites, clothes them, feeds them, gives them pocket money… and the population finds that dignified and chic.”

  “Sad… greatness fallen into decay!” said Ida gloomily.

  A boy came and announced that dinner was ready and they adjourned to the rear veranda, and took their places at table.

  “And what have you got up your sleeve, dear lady?” asked the senior engineer. “What are the plans? Labuwangi has been very quiet recently.”

  “It’s awful really,” said Eva. “If I didn’t have my friends, it would be awful. If I weren’t making plans the whole time, having ideas, it would be awful, living like this in Labuwangi. My husband doesn’t feel the same, he works, just as all of you gentlemen work; what else can one do in the Indies but work, despite the heat. But for us women! Really, what a life, if one does not discover happiness in oneself, in one’s home, in one’s circle of friends—if one is fortunate enough to have such a circle. Outside of that there’s nothing. Not a painting, not a sculpture to be seen, no music to be heard. Don’t be angry, Van Helderen. Your cello-playing is delightful, but no one in the Indies keeps up with the latest developments. The Italian opera is performing… Il Trovatore. The amateur companies—not bad at all in Batavia—do… Il Trovatore. And you, Van Helderen… don’t deny it. I saw how entranced you were when the Italian opera from Surabaya brought Il Trovatore to the club here. You were in seventh heaven.”

  “There were some lovely voices…”

  “But twenty years ago—so I’m told—people were just as enchanted by… Il Trovatore. It’s terrible! Sometimes, all of a sudden, it weighs me down. Sometimes I have the sudden feeling that I have not grown accustomed to the Indies, and that I never will, and I feel homesick for Europe, for life!

  “But, Eva…” protested Eldersma in alarm, frightened that she would actually go back and leave him alone in his utterly joyless working environment in Labuwangi. “You know you sometimes appreciate the Indies, your home; the good, full life…”

  “Good materially…”

  “And you appreciate your work. I mean, all the things you can do here.”

  “What? Organizing parties? Organizing fêtes?”

  “You’re the real commissioner’s wife, Eva,” enthused Ida.

  “Which fortunately brings us back to Mrs Van Oudijck,” teased Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

  “And to professional secrecy,” said Doctor Rantzow.

  “No,” sighed Eva. “We need something new. Balls, parties, picnics, trips to the mountains… We’ve exhausted them all. I can’t think of anything else. The pressure of the Indies is weighing on me again. I’m in one of my melancholy moods. I suddenly have a horror of my servants’ brown faces around me. Sometimes the Indies frighten me. Don’t any of you feel that? A vague fear, a mysterious feeling in the air, something menacing… I don’t know. The evenings are so full of mystery and there is something mysterious in the character of the native, who is so far removed from us, is so different from us…”

  “Artistic feelings,” teased Van Helderen. No, I don’t feel that. The Indies are my country.”

  “Typical!” said Eva, teasing him in turn. “Why are you as you are? So strangely European; I can’t call it Dutch.”

  “My mother was French.”

  “But still you’re a colonial, born and brought up here. But you don’t behave at all like a colonial. I’m delighted to have met you, you’re a breath of fresh air… Help me then. Suggest something new. Not a ball and not a trip to the mountains. I need something new. Otherwise I shall feel homesick for my father’s paintings, my mother’s singing, for our beautiful artistic house in The Hague. Without novelty, I shall die. I’m like your wife, Van Helderen, forever in love.”

  “Eva, please!” begged Ida.

  “Tragically in love, with her beautiful, sombre eyes. Always with her husband first and then with someone else. I’m never in love. Not even with my husband any more. He is with me. But I haven’t got a passionate nature. Quite a lot of love goes on here in the Indies, doesn’t it, Doctor? So… no balls, no mountain trips, no love. My God, what else is there, what else?…”

  “I know what we could do,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, her placid melancholy suddenly tinged with fear. She shot a sideways look at Mrs Rantzow, and the German woman understood her meaning…

  “What is it?” they all asked, inquisitively.

  “Table-turning,” the two women whispered.

  There was general laughter.

  “Oh,” sighed Eva, disappointed. “A gimmick, a novelty, a game for an evening. No, I need something that will fill my life for at least a month.”

  “Table-turning,” repeated Mrs Rantzow.

  “Shall I tell you something?” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

  “The other day, for fun, we tried to get a three-legged table to turn. We promised each other that we would be absolutely honest. The table… moved and spelt out words by tapping alphabetically.”

  “But was there no cheating?” asked the doctor, Eldersma and Van Helderen.

  “You must trust us,” said the two ladies in self-defence.

  “Agreed!” said Eva. “We’ve finished dinner. Let’s do table-turning.”

  “We must promise each other that we will be honest…” said Mrs Rantzow. “I can see… that my husband will be antipathetic, but Ida… will be a great medium.”

  They got up.

  “Do we have to turn the lights off?” asked Eva.

  “No,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.

  “An ordinary side table?”

  “A wooden side table.”

  “All eight of us?”

  “No, let’s choose first. For example, you Eva, Ida, Van Helderen and Mrs Rantzow. The doctor is not sympathetic, nor is Eldersma. De Bruijn and I can relieve you.”

  “Off we go then,” said Eva. A new resource for the social life of Labuwangi. “And no cheating…”

  “As friends, we’ll give each other our word of honour… that we won’t cheat.”

  “Agreed,” they all said.

  The doctor sniggered. Eldersma shrugged his shoulders. A boy brought a side table. They sat around the wooden table and some placed their fingers on it light-heartedly, looking at each other with curiosity and suspicion. Mrs Rantzow was solemn, Ida sombre, Eva amused, Van Helderen laughing indifferently. Suddenly Ida’s lovely Eurasian face tautened.

  The table trembled…

  They looked at each other in alarm, and the doctor sniggered.

  Then slo
wly the table raised one of its three legs, and carefully set it down again.

  “Did anyone move?” asked Eva.

  They all shook their heads. Ida had gone pale.

  “I can feel vibrations in my fingers,” she murmured.

  The table once again raised its leg, and creakily described an angry quarter turn on the marble floor, setting the leg down again with a violent thud.

  They looked at each other in bewilderment.

  Ida sat staring blankly ahead, with outspread fingers, ecstatic.

  And the table, for the third time, raised its leg.

  4

  IT WAS CERTAINLY VERY STRANGE.

  For a moment Eva was unsure whether Mrs Rantzow was lifting the table, but when she looked quizzically at the doctor’s wife, Mrs Rantzow shook her head and Eva could see she was acting in good faith. Once more they promised each other that they would be scrupulously honest… And, very oddly, once they were absolutely sure of each other, the table went on describing angrily grating semicircles and raising its leg and tapping on the marble floor.

  “Is there a spirit revealing itself?” asked Mrs Rantzow, looking at the table leg.

  The table tapped once: yes.