The Hidden Force

by Louis Couperus

  The young man spoke to the drunken madman in soft Javanese. At first the Prince went on cursing, and his crazy gestures became huge; but then he seemed to recognize in the softness of the language a familiar memory. He looked at Addy for a long time. His gestures subsided, his glorification of drunkenness petered out. It was suddenly as if his blood understood the blood of the young man, as if their souls were communicating. The Prince nodded gloomily and began to wail, at length, with his arms raised. Addy tried to help him into his carriage, but the Prince resisted: he did not want to go. Then Addy took his arm gently but firmly, and slowly walked off with him. The Prince, still wailing with a tragic, despairing gesture, let himself be led away. The Prince’s assistant followed with a few retainers, who had trailed the Prince from the palace, helplessly… The procession vanished into the darkness.

  Léonie, with a smile, got into the assistant commissioner’s carriage. She remembered the argument over cards at Pajaram; she enjoyed watching such a slow, public decline, an obvious undermining through passion, uncontrolled by any tact or correct moderation. As far as she was concerned, she felt stronger than ever, because she enjoyed her passions and controlled and made them the slaves of her pleasure… She despised the Prince and it gave her a Romantic satisfaction, a literary frisson, to catch a glimpse of the successive phases of that downfall. In the carriage she looked at her husband who sat there gloomily. His gloominess delighted her, because she thought him sentimental in his support of the Javanese aristocracy. A sentimental official instruction, which Van Oudijck interpreted even more sentimentally. And she revelled in his sorrow. Then she looked at Doddy and glimpsed in her stepchild’s eyes, tired with dancing, jealousy at that very, very last waltz of hers with Addy, and she was delighted at that jealousy. She felt happy, because sorrow had no hold over her, nor did passion. She played with the elements of life and they slid off her and left her just as unmoved and calmly smiling and unwrinkled and milky-white as ever.

  Van Oudijck did not go to bed. His head on fire, raging sorrow in his heart, he immediately took a bath, put on his pyjama bottoms and a jacket and ordered coffee to be brought to him on the veranda outside his room. It was six o’clock, and there was a wonderful, cool, morning freshness in the air. But he was in such a bad mood that his temples were throbbing as if congested, his heart was pounding and his nerves were trembling. He could still see the scene at dawn in his mind’s eye, flickering like a silent film, full of teeming changes in attitude. What upset him most of all was the impossibility of the incident, the illogicality, the inconceivability. That a high-born Javanese, despite all the noble tradition in his veins, could behave as the Prince of Ngajiwa had that night, had never seemed possible to him, and he would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. For this man of predetermined logic, this truth was simply as monstrous as a nightmare. Highly susceptible to surprises that he did not consider logical, he was angry at reality. He wondered whether he himself had not been dreaming, or drunk. The fact that the scandal had taken place infuriated him, but now that things were as they were, well, he would recommend that the Prince be dismissed… There was nothing else for it.

  He got dressed, talked to Vermalen and then went with him to the Prince’s palace; they both forced their way into the Prince’s presence, notwithstanding the vacillation of the retainers, notwithstanding the breach of etiquette. They didn’t see the Prince’s wife, the radènayu, but found the Prince in his bedroom. He was lying on the bed with his eyes open, coming round in a melancholy mood, but not yet sufficiently himself to understand fully the oddness of the visit, with the Commissioner and the assistant commissioner at his bedside. Although he recognized them, he did not speak. While the two officials each tried to make him see how extremely improper his behaviour had been, he stared at them brazenly and persisted in his silence. It was so strange that they looked at each other and wondered whether the Prince had not perhaps gone insane and whether he was responsible for his actions. He had not spoken a word so far, and still refused to speak. When Van Oudijck threatened him with dismissal, he remained silent, staring shamelessly into the Commissioner’s eyes. He did not part his lips, but maintained his complete silence. There was the slightest suggestion of irony around his mouth. The officials, convinced that the Prince was mad, shrugged their shoulders and left the room.

  On the veranda they met the radènayu, a small downtrodden woman like a beaten dog, a slave girl. She approached them in tears and asked, begged, for forgiveness. Van Oudijck told her that the Prince was still refusing to speak. No matter what he had threatened him with, the Prince had inexplicably but clearly deliberately refused to speak,. The radènayu then whispered that the Prince had consulted a native healer, who had given him a talisman and assured him that if he persisted in complete silence, his enemy would not be able to gain a hold over him. Anxiously she begged for help and forgiveness, gathering her children around her. After summoning the Prince’s assistant and charging him with guarding the Prince as far as possible, the officials left. Although Van Oudijck had often had to deal with Javanese superstition, it still infuriated him, contradicting as it did what he called the laws of nature and life. Yes, only superstition could lead the Javanese to stray from the true path of their innate courtesy. Whatever representation they made to him now, the Prince would remain tight-lipped, persisting in his total silence that the native healer had imposed on him. In this way he imagined himself safe from all those he considered his enemies. This preconceived notion of enmity with someone Van Oudijck would have liked to regard as a younger brother and co-administrator was what upset him most of all.

  He returned to Labuwangi with Léonie and Doddy. Back home he felt a momentary pleasure at being in his own house again, a delight in his own domesticity that he had always found soothing: the material pleasure of being in his own bed, with his own desk and chairs, drinking his own coffee, prepared the way he liked it. Those small consolations restored his good humour for a second, but he immediately felt all his old bitterness returning when under a pile of letters on his desk he recognized the tortuous handwriting of a couple of shadowy letter-writers. Mechanically he opened the first and was disgusted to find Léonie’s name linked with that of Theo. Nothing was sacred to those wretches: they invented the most monstrous combinations, the most unnatural slanders, and the most gruesome allegations up to and including incest. All the mud that was slung at his wife and son raised them to an even greater height and purity in his love, to a peak of inviolability, and he loved them both with an even greater and more fervent tenderness. But all his churning bitterness brought back his ill humour in full force. It was based on reality, since he had to recommend the Prince of Ngajiwa for dismissal, and was reluctant to do so. Yet this unavoidable necessity soured his whole existence, and made him nervous and ill. When he could not follow the course that he set out, when life deviated from the events predetermined a priori by himself—Van Oudijck—this recalcitrance, this revolt by life, made him nervous and ill. After the death of the old pangéran he had simply resolved to raise up the floundering dynasty of the Adiningrats, both in loving memory of the exemplary Javanese prince and because of his mandate as a commissioner, and out of a feeling of humanity and hidden poetry in himself. And he had never been able. From the outset he had been thwarted—unconsciously, through the power of things—by the old radènayu pangéran, who lost everything at cards, gambled everything away and ruined herself and her family. He had censured her as a friend. She was not unreceptive to his advice but her passion had proved stronger. Van Oudijck had immediately judged her son, Sunario, the Prince of Labuwangi, even before his father’s death, as unfit for the actual post of prince: pettily proud of his noble blood, insignificant, never informed about real life, without any talent for government or concern for the ordinary people, extremely fanatical, always consorting with native healers and with sacred calculations, always withdrawn and living in a dream of obscure mysticism, and blind to what might bring pr
osperity and justice to his Javanese subjects. And yet the population worshipped him, both because of his nobility and because of his reputation for holiness and far-reaching powers: a divine magical power. Secretly the women of the palace sold the water that had flowed over his body when he bathed, bottled as a medicine, a cure for various afflictions. That was what the elder brother was like, and this morning the younger had lost all control of himself, obsessed by the craving for gambling and drink… With these sons, the dynasty—once so brilliant—was tottering to its downfall: their children were young, some cousins were assistant princes in Labuwangi in neighbouring districts, but not one drop of noble blood flowed in their veins. No, he, Van Oudijck, had never been able to do what he wanted. The people whose interests he was defending were themselves fighting against him. They had no future.

  But he could not understand why this had to be so; it upset and embittered him.

  The fact was that he had imagined a quite different course—a splendid upward curve, the way he envisaged his own life—whereas the curve of their lives meandered chaotically downwards. He could not understand what could be stronger than him, if he wanted something. Had it not always been the case in his life and his career that whatever he wanted fervently had happened with the logic that he himself day by day had imposed on the things that were about to happen? His ambition had simply imposed that logic of the upward curve, since the aim his ambition had set itself was the restoration of this Javanese dynasty…

  Would he fail? He would never forgive himself if he failed in striving to achieve an aim he had set himself as an official. Up to now he had always been able to achieve what he wanted. But what he was trying to achieve now—unbeknown to himself—was not just the aim of an official, part of his work. What he was now striving for was an aim that issued from his humanity, the noble part of himself. What he was now trying to achieve was an ideal, an ideal of a Westerner in the East, and of a Westerner who saw the East in the only way he knew how, the only way he could see it.

  And he would never be prepared to admit that there were forces that combined into a single force that opposed him, that mocked his ideas, that scoffed at his ideals, and that was stronger the deeper it was hidden away: his was not the kind of nature to recognize them, and even its clearest revelation would be a mystery to his soul, and remain a myth.

  4

  VAN OUDIJCK had been to the office that day and on returning home was immediately met by Léonie.

  “The radènayu pangéran is here. She’s been here an hour, Otto. She would like to talk to you. She’s been waiting for you.”

  “Léonie,” he said. “Have a look at these letters. I receive a lot of these sorts of communication, and I’ve never mentioned them to you. But perhaps it’s better if you are not left in the dark. Perhaps it’s better for you to know. But please don’t distress yourself about them. I don’t have to assure you that I don’t believe one jot of all that filth. So don’t be upset, and return the letters to me in person later. Don’t leave them lying around… And ask the Princess dowager to come to my office…”

  Léonie, with the letters in her hand, brought the Princess from the back veranda. She was a dignified, grey-haired woman with a proud, regal bearing in her still slim figure. Her eyes were a sombre black; her mouth made broader by the betel juice, in which her filed-down black-painted teeth grinned, was like a grimacing mask and spoiled the lofty nobility of her expression. She wore a black satin jacket fastened with jewels. Her grey hair and sombre eyes gave her an unusual mix of venerability and smouldering passion. Her old age was tinged with tragedy. She herself felt a fate pressing tragically on her and her family, and placed her sole hope in the far-reaching, god-like power of her eldest son Sunario, the Prince of Labuwangi. While she preceded Van Oudijck into the office, Léonie glanced at the letters in the central gallery. They were vulgar verses about her and Addy and Theo. Permanently wrapped up in the dream of her own life, she never took much notice of what people were thinking and saying, because she knew she could immediately win them over again, with her appearance and her smile. She had that calm charisma that was irresistible. She never spoke ill of anyone, out of indifference; she was conciliatory and forgiving to everything and everyone; and she was popular—when she was present. But she found these dirty letters, spewed out of some dark corner, unpleasant and annoying, even though Van Oudijck did not believe them. What if he did begin to believe them? She must be prepared for that eventuality. In particular, if that day should ever come, she must retain her most charming equanimity, all her invulnerability and inviolability. Where could those letters have come from? Who hated her so much? In whose interest was it to write about her in such terms to her husband? How strange that it should have got out… Addy, Theo? How did people know? Urip? No, not Urip… But who then, who? So was everything known? The fact was that she had always thought that what happened in secret niches would never be public knowledge. She had even thought—naively—that men never talked to each other about her; about other women, yes, but not about her… Despite all her experience her mind was full of such naive illusions: a naivety that chimed with the poetry—half perverse, half childlike—of her rose-tinted imagination. So, could she not keep secret the hidden depths of her mystery, the hidden depths of reality for ever? For a moment it upset her. Despite all her propriety, reality nevertheless revealed itself… Thoughts and dreams always remained secret. Actual facts were such a nuisance. For a moment she considered being more careful in future, practising abstinence… But in her mind’s eye she saw Theo, she saw Addy, her blond and brown loves, and felt too weak… She knew she wouldn’t be able to overcome her passions, even if she controlled them. Might they not, for all her tact, one day lead to her downfall? But she found the idea laughable; she had a firm belief in her invulnerability, her inviolability. Life had no hold on her.

  Still, she wanted to be prepared for possible contingencies. All she asked of her life was to be free of pain and suffering, of poverty, and to make her passions the slaves of her pleasure, so that she could continue to have pleasure for as long as possible, and live this life as long as possible. She thought over what she would say if Van Oudijck ever questioned her, if the anonymous letters sowed a seed of doubt. She asked herself if she would not break with Theo after all. Addy was enough for her. And she became absorbed in her preparations, as in the uncertain combinations of a play that had yet to begin. Until she suddenly heard the voice of the radènayu pangéran in the office raised against her husband’s calm voice. She listened, curious, sensing a drama and calmly happy that this drama ran off her like water off a duck’s back. She crept into Van Oudijck’s bedroom; the dividing doors were open for ventilation and only a screen divided the bedroom and office. She peered past the screen and saw the old Princess, more agitated than she had ever seen a Javanese woman. The radènayu was pleading in Malay with Van Oudijck who, in Dutch, was assuring her that it was impossible. Léonie listened more closely, and heard the old Princess begging the Commissioner to have mercy on her second son, the Prince of Ngajiwa. She begged Van Oudijck to think of her late husband, the pangéran, whom he had loved as a father, who had loved him as a son—with an affection deeper than that between an “elder and a younger brother”; she begged him to think of their illustrious past, the glory of the Adiningrats, always the loyal friends of the Dutch East India Company, in war its allies, in peace its most loyal vassals: she begged him not to decree the end of their dynasty, on which a dreadful fate had descended since the pangéran’s death, driving it into an abyss of fatal destruction. She stood before the Commissioner like Niobe, like a tragic mother, her arms raised in the powerful emotion of her words, tears streaming from her dark eyes, and her wide mouth—stained with the brown betel juice—like a grinning mask. Yet as she grinned, fluent words of persuasion and imprecation welled up; she wrung her hands in supplication, and her fist beat her breast as if in penitence.

  Van Oudijck answered her in a firm but soft voice, telling her
indeed how deeply he had loved the old pangéran, how highly he esteemed the old family, how no one would want more than he did to maintain them in their eminence. But then he became more severe and asked her on whom the Adiningrats could blame the fate that now pursued them. Looking her straight in the eye, he told her that it was her fault! She shrank back, bursting with rage, but he repeated it again and again. Her sons were her sons, bigoted and arrogant and addicted to gambling. And gambling, that base passion, spelt disaster for their greatness. In the insatiability of their lust for gain, their dynasty was tottering towards destruction. How often did a month go by when the Prince of Ngajiwa failed to pay the salaries of his chiefs? She admitted it was true: at her insistence her son had taken—borrowed—money from the treasury to pay gambling debts. But she also swore that it would never happen again! And where, asked Van Oudijck, had a prince, the descendant of an ancient family, ever behaved in such a way as the Prince of Ngajiwa had at the race ball? The mother wailed: it was true, it was true; fate was clinging to their steps and had clouded her son’s mind with madness, but it would never, never happen again. She swore by the soul of the old pangéran that it would never happen again, and that her son would regain his dignity. But Van Oudijck became more heated and accused her of never having exerted a positive influence on her sons and her nephews, of being the evil genius of her family, since a demon of gambling and greed had her in its clutches. The old Princess began to screech with pain, she who looked down upon the Commissioner, the Dutch commoner, that he dared speak to her in that way and was right to do so. She reached out and begged him for mercy; she begged him not to recommend her younger son to the government for dismissal, which would follow the advice of such a highly esteemed official and do as the Commissioner said. She begged him to show pity and to have patience. She would talk to her son, and Sunario would talk to his brother: they would bring him to his senses after he had been ravaged by drink, gambling and women. Oh, if only the Commissioner would show pity, if only he would relent! But Van Oudijck was implacable. He had been patient for so long. Things had come to a head. Since her son, under the influence of the native healer, trusting in his talisman, had opposed him with his insolent silence, which the Prince believed made him invulnerable to enemies—he would demonstrate that he, the Commissioner, the plenipotentiary of the government, the Queen’s representative, was the strongest, despite the native healer and the talisman. There was nothing else for it: his patience was exhausted, his love for the pangéran admitted no further indulgence; his feeling of respect for their family could not be transferred to an unworthy son. It was decided: the Prince was to be dismissed.