The Hidden Force

by Louis Couperus

  The Prince bowed his head, agreed, promised, even said that he had already issued orders to calm the situation, that he had always deplored the excitement of the people, and it caused him great sorrow, that the Commissioner had become aware of it, despite his—Sunario’s—attempts to calm things down. The District Commissioner did not probe any further into this sample of dishonesty. He knew that the turmoil was being whipped up from within the palace, but he also knew that he had prevailed. However, he impressed once more on the Prince his responsibility should anything untoward happen in the pavilion the following day, during the meeting. The Prince begged him not to think of such things. And now, in order that they should part on good terms, he implored Van Oudijck to sit down again. He sat down, and as he did so he knocked over his glass, the sparkling ice-cold contents of which he had not yet touched. It clattered to the ground. He apologized for his clumsiness. The Princess had noticed his movement and her old face paled. She said nothing but beckoned a servant. And again the four servants appeared half-squatting, half-creeping, and prepared another whisky and soda. Van Oudijck put the glass immediately to his lips.

  There was an embarrassed silence. How far the action of the District Commissioner in knocking over the glass had been justified would always remain a mystery and he would never know. But he wanted to show the Princess, in coming here, that he was prepared for anything before their conversation, and after their conversation wished to trust her completely in everything. Both in the drink that she offered him, and the following day in the pavilion, where he and his officials would appear unarmed, if her benign influence would bring calm and peace to the population. As if to show that she understood him, and that his confidence would be justified, she got up and whispered a few words to a retainer whom she had beckoned. The Javanese disappeared and soon came all the way down the front veranda squatting, carrying a long object in a yellow sheath. The Princess took it from him and handed it to Sunario, who drew a walking stick from the yellow silk sheath, which he offered to the Commissioner as a token of their fraternal friendship. Van Oudijck accepted it, understanding its symbolic meaning. The yellow silk was the colour and material of authority: silk and yellow or gold; the stick itself was made of a wood that protects against snake bites and danger, and the heavy knob was worked in gold—the metal of authority—in the shape of the ancient sultan. This stick, offered at this moment, meant that the Adiningrats were again submitting to his authority and that Van Oudijck could trust them.

  And as he took his leave, he was very proud and pleased with himself for having won the day through tact, diplomacy, knowledge of the Javanese: he would have averted the imminent rebellion just with words. That would be a fact.

  That was so, that would be so: a fact. On that first evening of the market, cheerfully glowing with the light of hundreds of paraffin lamps, steaming enticingly with low-drifting smells of frying, full of the multicoloured jostling of the celebrating population—that first evening was pure festivity and the population discussed among themselves the Commissioner’s long courtesy visit to the Prince and his mother, since the carriage with the sunshade had been seen waiting for a long time in the drive, and the Prince’s retainers told them the story of the gift of the walking stick.

  That was so: things happened as Van Oudijck had calculated and forced them to in advance. That he should be proud was only human, but what he had not dominated and thought of in advance were the hidden forces, of which he had no inkling and whose existence he would deny, always, in the natural simplicity of life. What he failed to see, hear or feel, was the deeply hidden force, which though it abated continued to smoulder like a volcanic fire beneath the apparently calm avenues of flowers and friendship: the hatred, which would have the power of impenetrable mystery against which he, as a Westerner, had no defence.

  6

  VAN OUDIJCK LIKED TO BE CERTAIN he had achieved his objective. He didn’t say much that day about his visit to the palace, or that evening when Eldersma and Van Helderen came to talk to him about the meeting that was to take place the following morning. They were both rather uneasy and asked whether they should be armed. But Van Oudijck very firmly and emphatically forbade them to bring weapons with them, and said that no one was authorized. The officials yielded, but no one was at ease. However, the meeting took place completely uninterrupted and in harmony; there were just more people about between the stalls of the evening market, there were more police at the decorated gates, with rippling strips of bunting. But nothing happened. The women at home were anxious and were relieved when their husbands returned safely. And Van Oudijck had achieved his objective. Sure of himself, trusting the Princess, he made a few visits. He reassured the ladies and told them to concentrate all their attention on the gala. But they were not convinced. Some families locked all their doors in the evenings and retreated to the central gallery with their friends and maids—armed, listening, on their guard. Theo, to whom his father had spoken in a confidential moment, played a practical joke on them with Addy. The two young men visited in turn all the houses that they knew were most fearful and forced their way onto the front veranda, shouting to the occupants to open up: they could already hear guns being cocked in the central gallery. They had a whale of a time.

  Then the gala finally opened. On the stage of the social club Eva had organized a series of three tableaux from the Arthurian legend: Viviane, Guinevere and Lancelot; in the centre of the garden there was a Maduran proa, in the shape of Viking ship, where one could drink iced punch; a neighbouring sugar factory, well known for the cheerful atmosphere that prevailed there, had provided a complete Dutch pancake stall as a nostalgic reminder of Holland, with the women dressed as Frisian farmer’s wives and the factory workers as cook’s assistants; and pro-Transvaal feelings were vented with a Mayuba Hill mock-up with ladies and gentlemen in fantastic Boer costumes. There was no mention of the huge under-sea eruption in Ternate, although half the proceeds had been assigned to the stricken areas. Beneath the glowing festoons of Chinese lanterns that wound their way above the garden, there was great enjoyment and the urge to spend a great deal of money, especially for Transvaal. But beneath the party atmosphere there was still a tremor of fear. Groups gathered and there were furtive glances outside at the bustle of half-castes, Javanese, Chinese and Arabs on the road around the smoking portable kitchens. And while sipping a glass of champagne or nibbling a plate of pancakes, people pricked up their ears and listened to the square, where the evening market was in full swing. When Van Oudijck appeared with Doddy, greeted by the strains of the Dutch national anthem, and generously distributed coins and notes, people kept whispering secretly in his ear. And noticing the absence of Mrs Van Oudijck, people asked each other where she was. She had such bad toothache, they said, and that was why she had gone to Surabaya. People didn’t think it was very nice of her; she was not liked when she was not present. She was much discussed that evening, and the most scandalous things were said about her. Doddy took her place on the Maduran proa as a server, and Van Oudijck, with Eldersma, Van Helderen and a few controllers from other districts, went around buying drinks for his officials. When people asked him about secret information, casting anxious glances outside, with one ear on the square he reassured them with a majestic smile: nothing was going to happen, they had his word of honour on that. People found him very trusting and very sure of himself; the jovial smile around his wide moustache was reassuring. He urged everyone to think only of the fun and the charitable aim of his dear town of Labuwangi. And when suddenly the Prince, Radèn Adipati Sunario, appeared with his wife, the young radènayu, and at the entrance paid for bouquets, programmes and fans with a hundred-guilder note, a sigh of relief went through everyone in the garden. News of the Prince’s hundred-guilder note had soon spread everywhere. And now people relaxed; they realized that there was no need for fear, that no rebellion would break out that evening. They fêted the Prince and his smiling young wife, sparkling in her beautiful jewels.

  Out
of sheer relief, suddenly relaxed and impulsive, people spent more and more money, trying to vie with the few wealthy Chinese—those from before the opium monopoly, the owners of the white marble and stucco palaces—there strewing coins with their wives, in embroidered grey and green Chinese dresses, their gleaming hair full of flowers and jewels, smelling strongly of sandalwood perfumes. The money flowed, jingling into the tins of the happy servers. And the gala was a success. And when Van Oudijck finally and gradually disclosed here and there—to Doorn de Bruijn, Rantzow, officials from elsewhere—a few details of his visit to the palace and his conversation with the Princess, relayed in a humble, unassuming tone and yet, despite himself, beaming with happy pride, with joy at his victory—that was when he achieved his greatest effect.

  The story went round the garden about the Commissioner’s tact and shrewdness in having averted revolution by his word alone. He was lionized, and he poured champagne for everyone, bought up all the fans, bought all the unsold tombola tickets. He was worshipped; it was his supreme moment of success and popularity. And he joked with the ladies, flirted with them. The party went on until six o’clock in the morning. The pancake cooks were drunk and dancing cheerfully around the pancake oven.

  And when Van Oudijck finally went home, he felt a mood of self-satisfaction, strength, happiness, delight in himself. The evening had made him rise in his own estimation and he valued himself more than ever before. He felt happier than he had ever felt.

  He had sent the carriage home and walked home with Doddy. A few early traders were going to market. Doddy, half-asleep, dead tired, dragged herself along on her father’s arm…

  Then, nearby, someone passed and although she felt it more than saw it, she suddenly shivered and looked up. The figure had passed. She looked round and recognized the back of the haji, who was in a hurry…

  She felt so cold she almost fainted. But then, tired to the point of almost sleepwalking, she realized she was half-dreaming of Addy, of Pajaram, of the moonlit night under the cemaras, when at the end of the avenue the white pilgrim had given her a fright…

  BOOK V

  1

  EVA ELDERSMA WAS FEELING more listless and gloomy than she had ever done in the Indies. After all her work, the bustle and success of the gala—after the shudder of fear at a possible revolt—the town fell back into its leisurely drowsiness, as if it were quite content to be able to nod off again, just as it always had done. December had come and the heavy rains had begun, as always on 5th December: the monsoon invariably set in on St Nicholas’s Day. The clouds, which for the past month had piled up on the low horizon, swelling all the while, hoisted their water-filled sails higher towards the sky and tore open, as if in a single fury of distantly flashing electric storms, and water poured down in streams like rich stores of rains that could no longer be kept on high. That evening a crazed swarm of insects had flown across Eva’s front veranda and, hypnotized by the flames had plunged to their deaths in the lamps, filling the lamp-glasses with their fluttering, dying bodies that lay strewn over the marble tables. Eva breathed in the cooler air, but a haze of damp from the earth and flowers settled on the walls and furniture, flecking the mirrors, staining the silk and creating mould on her shoes, as if the deluging power of nature was out to ruin all the finely glittering and charming products of human labour. Yet it revived the trees and foliage, which thrived and shot luxuriantly upwards in a thousand shades of green, and in the burgeoning victory of nature the villas became wet and toadstool-like, and the white of the whitewashed pillars and flowerpots weathered to mouldy green.

  Eva witnessed the slow, gradual ruin of her house, her furniture, her clothes. Day by day, inexorably, something decayed, rotted away, became mouldy, rusted. And all the aesthetic philosophy with which she had first learnt to love the Indies, to appreciate the good things, to look for the line of beauty in the Indies—both outwardly and for what was inwardly beautiful and spiritual—could no longer cope with the torrents of water, with the cracking-apart of her furniture, the staining of her dresses and gloves, with all the damp, mould and rust, which ruined her exquisite surroundings that she had designed and created around herself as consolation, a consolation for the Indies. Despite all her rationale and intellectual argument, despite finding something charming and beautiful in the land of all too powerful nature and people, in pursuit of money and advancement, everything fell apart and collapsed. At every moment she was forced to fret—as a housewife, as an elegant woman, as an artistic woman. No, in the Indies it was impossible to surround oneself with taste and exquisiteness. She had been here only for a few years, and she felt she still had some strength to fight for her Western civilization, but she already understood better than when she first arrived how people could just let themselves go here: the men after their busy day’s work, the women with their households. Certainly, she preferred the silent and gentle servants, working willingly never impudently, to the noisily clumping maids in Holland, and yet she felt through her house an Oriental resistance to her Western ideas. It was always a battle, not to go under in the temptation to let yourself go, to let the grounds that were too big become overgrown at the back with the servants’ grubby washing invariably hanging out, and strewn with gnawed mangoes; in simply letting her house become dirty and the paint peel—it being too large, too open, too exposed to wind and weather to be looked after with Dutch cleanliness; in sitting in the rocking chair in sarong and jacket without getting dressed, one’s bare feet in slippers, because it was just too warm, too sultry to wear a dress or peignoir, which became soaked with sweat. It was for her sake that her husband was always dressed for dinner in the evenings, with a black jacket and high collar, but when she saw above that high collar his weary face peering out at her, with its increasingly stiff, overworked, clerk’s features, she herself told him in future not to dress after his second bath, and tolerated him at table in a white jacket, or even pyjamas and a jacket. She found it dreadful, unspeakably awful; it shocked her whole sense of civilized behaviour, but he was too tired and it was too oppressively close to demand anything else of him. And after only two years in the Indies, increasingly understanding how to let oneself go—in dress, in body, in soul—now she was losing daily a little more of her Dutch freshness of approach and her Western energy, now she admitted that people in the Indies worked harder than in possibly any other country, but worked with a single aim in mind: position, money, retirement, pension and back, back to Europe. True, there were others who were born in the Indies and had spent scarcely a year away from the archipelago, who weren’t at all interested in Holland, who adored their sunny country. That is what the De Luces were like, and she also knew there were others. However, in her circle of officials and planters everyone had the same aim in life—position, money, and then away, away to Europe. Everyone was calculating the years they had left to work. Everyone saw the distant vision of European calm. The occasional individual, such as Van Oudijck—an exceptional official who loved his work for its own sake, and because it was in tune with his own character—dreaded the prospect of retirement, which would mean stupidly vegetating. But Van Oudijck was an exception. Most did their duty whilst thinking of their later pension. Her husband, for that matter, did the same: worked himself to death in order to retire a few years after he had become an assistant commissioner; he worked himself to death for an illusion of rest. Now her own energy seemed to be draining away with every drop of blood that she felt flowing through her dull veins. In these first days of the rainy season, the constant splashing of the gutters irritated her with their clatter; she saw all the material things that she had tastefully chosen to surround herself with as her artistic consolation in the Indies being ruined by damp and mould, and she fell into a worse mood of listlessness and dejection than she had ever experienced. Her child was not sufficient, being too young as yet to be a soulmate. Her husband worked all the time. He was a kind, sweet husband to her, a good man, a man of great simplicity, whom she had perhaps accepted only beca
use of that simplicity—that settled calm of his smiling, blond Frisian face and the ruggedness of his broad shoulders—after a couple of highly emotive episodes in her youth, full of dreams and misunderstandings and discussions full of high-flown sentiments. She, who was not calm or simple had sought in this simple man to bring simplicity and calm to her life. Yet his qualities did not satisfy her, particularly now, when she had been in the Indies for some time and was beginning to feel defeated in her struggle with the country. His calm, husbandly love did not satisfy her.