“Is that the problem?”
“And lots more besides…”
“Are you homesick? Don’t you like the Indies any more, don’t you care for Labuwangi, where we all think the world of you?… You’ve got the wrong idea about the Indies. Try to see the good side.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Is it no use any longer?”
“No…”
“You’re too sensible not to see the good things about this country.”
“You’re too fond of the country to be impartial. And I can’t be impartial either. But tell me the good things.”
“Where shall I begin? The good that we can do as officials for the country and its people, and the satisfaction we derive from it. The wonderful, marvellous work we do for the country and its people; the great amount of hard work that fills a whole life here… I’m not talking about all the office work of your husband, who is a secretary, I’m talking of later on, when he is an assistant commissioner!”
“How much longer will that be?…”
“And what about the comfortable life here then?”
“That the white ants gnaw away at.”
“That’s a cheap joke, madam.”
“That may be, Commissioner. Everything is out of tune in and around me. My cleverness, my piano, and my poor soul.”
“What about nature then?”
“It makes me feel so insignificant. Nature overwhelms me and consumes me.”
“Your work?”
“My work… one of the good things in the Indies…”
“Yes. The work of occasionally inspiring us humdrum people with your wit.”
“Commissioner, so many compliments! Is that all because of the performance!”
“And using that wit to help widow Staats?”
“Couldn’t I do good in Europe?”
“Of course,” he said curtly. “Off you go to Europe, madam. Join a charity organization in The Hague, with a collection box at your door and two and a half guilders… how often?”
She laughed.
“Don’t be unfair. A lot of good is done in Holland too.”
“But doing what you’re going to do for one unfortunate… is that ever done in Holland? And don’t tell me there’s less poverty here.”
“So?…”
“So there are a lot of good things here for you. Your work. Working for others, materially and morally. Don’t let Van Helderen become too infatuated with you, madam. He’s a charming chap, but too literary in his monthly controller’s reports. I can see him coming and I must go. So I can count on you?”
“Absolutely.”
“When shall we have the first meeting, with the theatre committee, and the ladies?”
“Tomorrow evening, Commissioner, at your house?”
“Excellent. I’ll circulate subscription lists. We must raise a lot of money, dear lady.”
“We’ll help Mrs Staats,” she said softly.
He shook her hand and left. She felt limp, without knowing why.
“The Commissioner warned me about you, because you were too literary!” she teased Van Helderen.
They sat on the front veranda. The heavens opened: a white curtain of rain descended in vertical folds. A plague of locusts leapt through the veranda. A cloud of tiny flies hummed like an Aeolian harp in the corners. Eva and Van Helderen lay their hands on the table and it raised a leg with a jerk, while the beetles swarmed around them.
3
LISTS CIRCULATED. The performance was rehearsed and three weeks later was performed, and the theatre committee presented the commission with the sum of almost fifteen hundred guilders for widow Staats; a house was rented for her, and she was set up in a small dress shop, for which Eva had called on connections in Paris. All the ladies of Labuwangi had placed an order with widow Staats, and in less than a month the woman had not only been saved from complete disaster, but her life had been arranged, her children were back at school, and she had a thriving business. All of this had happened quickly and unostentatiously: subscribers had given generously; the ladies were so quick to order a dress or a hat that they didn’t need, that Eva was astonished. She had to admit that the egotistical, self-obsessed, less appealing side that she so often saw in their social life—in their daily dealings, conversation, intrigues and gossip—had suddenly been pushed into the background by a collective talent for doing good, quite simply because it had to be done, because there was no alternative, because the woman had to be helped. After the day-to-day concerns of the performance had roused her from her gloom, and she had been galvanized into acting quickly, she learnt to appreciate this benevolent aspect of her surroundings and wrote so enthusiastically about it to Holland that her parents, for whom the Indies were a closed book, could not help smiling. But although this episode had awakened in her something soft and weak and appreciative, it was only an episode, and when the surrounding emotion had subsided, she was the same. Despite the disapproval that she felt around her in Labuwangi, she continued to centre her whole life around her friendship with Van Helderen.
Because there was so little else. The loyal coterie that she had gathered around her with such hopes, whom she invited to dinner, to whom her house was always open—what did it really amount to? Nowadays she regarded the Doorn de Bruins and the Rantzows as indifferent acquaintances, no longer as friends. She suspected that Mrs Doorn de Bruin was not to be trusted, Dr Rantzow was too bourgeois, too common for her taste, and his wife an insignificant German housewife. Yes, they joined in the table-turning, but they enjoyed the inept stupidities, the indecent comments of the mocking spirit. She and Van Helderen took it extremely seriously, although she actually found the table comical. So there was no one left but Van Helderen to whom she felt close.
She had come to admire Van Oudijck, though. She had suddenly seen his true character and, although it was completely different from the artistic charm that had hitherto attracted her in people’s characters, she saw the line of beauty in this man too, who was utterly inartistic, who had not the slightest notion of art, and yet had such beauty in his simple masculine ideas of duty and in the equanimity with which he bore the disappointment of his domestic life. Because Eva saw that although he adored his wife, he did not approve of Léonie’s indifference to all the interests that constituted his life. If he saw nothing else, if apart from that he was blind to everything in the domestic sphere, this disappointment was his secret and his sorrow, to which, deep down, he was not blind.
And she admired him, and her admiration was a kind of revelation that art was not always paramount in human existence. She suddenly understood that the exaggerated posturing with art in the modern era was a sickness from which she had suffered and still suffered. Because what was she and what did she do? Nothing. Her parents were both great artists, pure creators, and their house was a temple and their fixation could be understood and forgiven. But what about her? She played the piano quite well, that was all. She had some ideas and some taste, that was all. In the past she had enthused with other young girls, and she remembered now that silly phase of writing each other letters in a derivative style, with echoes of romantic poetry. In that way, in her depression, her thinking progressed, and she underwent an evolution. It was almost incredible that as her parents’ child she should not value art above all things.
A process of seeking and thinking moved to and fro in her as she tried to find her way, now that she had lost herself completely in a country that was alien to her nature, among people on whom, without letting them notice, she looked down. She tried to find the good things in that country, in order to assimilate and appreciate them; among people she was happy to find those few who evoked her sympathy and admiration. But good experiences remained just episodes, and those few people exceptions, and despite all her searching and thinking, she could not find her way and was left with the resentment of a woman who was too European, too artistic—despite her self-knowledge and denial of art—to live contentedly and comfortably in a provi
ncial town in the Indies, by the side of her husband who had been swallowed up by office work, in a climate that made her ill, a nature that overwhelmed her, and in company she disliked.
And in the most lucid moments of this movement to and fro it was fear that she felt clearest of all, the fear that she felt softly approaching, she did not know from where it came or where it was bound, but seething above her head, as if with the swishing veils of a fate that moved through the sultry rainy skies…
In this resentful mood she did not gather her loyal coterie around her, she herself couldn’t be bothered and her acquaintances did not know her well enough to visit her. They no longer found in her the cheerfulness that had first attracted them. Now jealousy and hostility gained the upper hand and there was much gossip about her: she put on airs, she was pedantic, vain, proud, and aimed always to be first in the town; she acted as if she were a commissioner’s wife and bossed everyone about. She wasn’t really beautiful, but dressed outrageously, and her house was furnished in an incomprehensible style. Then there was her relationship with Van Helderen, their evening walks to the lighthouse. In Tosari, in the hive of gossip in the small, cramped hotel, where the guests are bored if they do not go on excursions and so are almost on top of each other in their narrow verandas, peering into each other’s rooms, eavesdropping by the thin partitions—in Tosari Ida heard about it and it was enough to awaken her Eurasian instincts and make her suddenly, without explanation, remove her children from Eva’s care. Van Helderen, while visiting his wife for a few days, asked for an explanation, asked her why she was insulting Eva by removing her children from her care without any reason and bringing them up to stay with her in Tosari, which considerably increased the hotel bill. Ida made a scene, with hysterical fits, which made the whole hotel tremble, which made everyone prick up their ears, and like a gale whipped up the babble of gossip into a sea. Without further explanation, Ida broke off relations with Eva. Eva withdrew. Even as far away as Surabaya, where she went to shop, she heard the slanders and smears, and she became so sick of her world and her people that she withdrew silently into herself. She wrote to Van Helderen and told him not to come any more, and entreated him to make it up with his wife. She no longer received him, and was now completely alone. She felt that she was in no mood to seek consolation with anyone in her circle. In the Indies there was no sympathy or fellow feeling for moods like hers, and so she shut herself away. Her husband worked. But she devoted more time to her son; she immersed herself completely in the love of her child. She withdrew into the love of her house. It now became a life of never going out, never seeing anyone, never speaking to anyone, never hearing any music except her own. She now sought consolation in her own home, her child and her reading. This was the lonely self to which she had been reduced after her first illusions and bursts of energy. Now she felt a constant homesickness for Europe, for Holland, for her parents, for people with an artistic culture. Now there was hatred for the country that she had at first seen as overwhelmingly great and beautiful, with its majestic mountains, and with the soft cloud of mystery in nature and in the people.
Now she filled her life with thoughts of her child. Her son, little Onno, was three. She would guide him, make a man of him. As soon as he was born, she’d had vague illusions of one day seeing him as a great artist, preferably a great writer, world-renowned. But she had learnt since then. She felt that art is not always paramount. She felt that there were higher things, which, though she might sometimes deny them in her depression, were nonetheless there, great and gleaming. Those things were about shaping the future; those things were in particular about peace, justice and brotherhood. Oh, the great brotherhood of rich and poor—now, in her loneliness, she thought about it as the highest ideal, at which one could work, like sculptors on a monument. Justice and peace would then follow of their own accord. But brotherhood must be approached first, and she wanted her son to work at it. Where? In Europe? In the Indies? She didn’t know; she couldn’t see that in front of her. She thought Europe more probable than the Indies. In the Indies all her thoughts remained fixed on the inexplicable, the mysterious, the fearful. How strange that was…
She was a woman of ideals. Perhaps this alone was the simple explanation of what she felt and feared in the Indies.
“You’ve got entirely the wrong idea about the Indies,” her husband sometimes said. “Your view of the Indies is completely mistaken. Quiet? You think it’s quiet here? Why would I have so much work to do in the Indies if Labuwangi were quiet? We promote hundreds of interests of the Dutch and Javanese. Agriculture is pursued here as vigorously as anywhere… The population goes on increasing… Run down, a colony where so much is happening?… These are those idiotic ideas of Van Helderen. Abstract ideas, plucked out of the air, which you brood on. I can’t understand how you see the Indies as you do today… There was a time when you were receptive to what was beautiful and interesting… That seems to be all in the past… Actually you ought to go back to Holland…”
But she knew that he would be very lonely, and that was why she did not want to go. Later, when her son was older, then she would have to leave. But by that time Eldersma would definitely have become an assistant commissioner. Now he still had seventeen controllers and secretaries above him. That had been the case for years, that looking forward to a distant future of promotion like the pursuit of a mirage—he didn’t even think of becoming a commissioner. A few years as an assistant commissioner, and then back to Holland on a pension…
She found it a desolate existence, toiling away like that, for Labuwangi…
She was suffering from malaria and her maid, Saina, was massaging her sore limbs with her supple fingers.
“Saina, when I’m sick it’s inconvenient your being in the native quarter. Why don’t you move in here this evening with your four children?”
Saina thought that was a nuisance, too much fuss.
“Why?”
Saina explained. The house had been left to her by her husband. She was attached to it, although it was very dilapidated. Now, during the wet monsoon, rainwater often came in, and then she couldn’t cook and the children had nothing to eat. Having it repaired was difficult. She earned two and a half guilders a week from the lady, and sixty cents of that went on rice. Then every day she spent a few cents on fish, coconut oil, betel, and a few cents on fuel… No, it was impossible to repair the house. She would be much better off with the good lady, in the compound. But it would be a lot of fuss finding a tenant for the house because it was so run down and the good lady knew that no house in the native quarter must stand empty: it carried a hefty fine… So she preferred to go on living in her wet house… At night she could stay and look after the good lady; her eldest daughter could look after the little ones.
Accepting her petty existence with its petty miseries, Saina slid her supple fingers over the sick limbs of her mistress, pressing firmly and gently.
Eva found it a bleak existence, living on two and a half guilders a week, with four children, in a house that let the rain in so that it was impossible to cook.
“Let me look after your second daughter, Saina,” said Eva another time.
Saina hesitated, and smiled: she would rather not, but didn’t dare say so.
“Come on,” Eva insisted. “Let her come here: you’ll see her all day long; she can sleep in cook’s room; I’ll get her some clothes and all she’ll have to do is tidy up my bedroom. You can show her how to do that.”
“She’s still so young, nyonya, only ten.”
“Come on,” Eva insisted. “Let her help you now. What’s her name?”
“Mina, nyonya.”
“Mina? No! That’s the seamstress’s name. We’ll find another name for her…”
Saina brought the child, who was very shy, with a streak of rice powder on her forehead, and Eva dressed her in some nice clothes. She was a very pretty child, a softy downy brown, and looked sweet in her fresh clothes. She made a neat pile of all the sarongs in the
wardrobe and put fragrant white flowers between them: the flowers had to be replaced with fresh ones every day. For a joke, because she was so good with flowers, Eva called her Melati.
A few days later Saina again squatted at her mistress’s feet.
“What is it, Saina?”
“Could the child come back to the wet house in the native quarter?”
“Why?!” asked Eva, astonished. “Isn’t your little girl happy here then?”
“Oh yes, but the child simply likes the cottage better,” said Saina in embarrassment; the nyonya was very nice, but little Mina liked the cottage better.
Eva was angry and let the child go, with the new clothes, which Saina simply took with her.
“Why wasn’t the child allowed to stay?” Eva asked the cook.
At first the cook did not dare say.
“Come on, why not, cook?” Eva insisted.
“Because the nyonya had called the girl Melati… Flower and fruit names… are given only… to dancing girls,” explained the cook mysteriously.
“But why didn’t Saina tell me?” asked Eva angrily. “I had no idea!”
“Shy…” said the cook, apologetically. “Forgive me, nyonya.”
These were small incidents in her daily life as a housewife—anecdotes from her household. But they made her bitter because she felt them as a division, which was always there between her and the people and things in the Indies. She did not know the place and she would never know the people.
And the small disappointment over those episodes filled her with as much bitterness as the larger one of her shattered illusions, because her everyday life among the recurring trivialities of her household was itself growing smaller and smaller.
BOOK VI
1
THE MORNINGS WERE OFTEN COOL, washed clean by the abundant rains, and in the sunshine of the early morning hours a soft haze rose from the earth, a bluish blurring of any line or colour that was too sharp, so that Long Avenue with its villas and enclosed gardens was shrouded in the charm and vagueness of a dream avenue: its pillars rose ethereally like a vision of serene columns, the lines of the roofs ennobled by their vagueness; the tints of the trees in silhouette were refined into soft pastel washes of hazy pink, and even hazier blue, with an occasional yellow glow, and a distant streak of dawn, and over all this breaking day was a dewy freshness that spurted upwards out of the drenched ground and whose droplets were caught in the childlike softness of the very first rays of the sun. It was as if the earth began for the first time every morning and as if human beings were only then created, in a youth of naivety and paradisaical ignorance. But the illusion of this daybreak lasted only briefly, no more than a few minutes: the sun, rising higher, broke through the virginal haze, its proud halo of piercing rays pouring forth burning gold sunlight, divinely proud to rule for a brief moment, since the clouds were already gathering, approaching in a grey mass like battle-ready hordes of dark spirits, ghostlike and bluey deep black, their thick and heavy lead grey overwhelming the sun and crushing the earth under white torrents of rain. And the evening twilight, grey and hurried, one shroud falling on another, was like an overwhelming sadness falling over earth, nature and life, in which that second of paradise in the morning was forgotten; the white rain rushed down like a drowning gloom; the roads and the gardens drank in the waterfall until they glowed like swamp pools in the falling dusk: a chill, spectral mist rose like the movement of languid ghostly garments, which floated over the ponds and the houses, dimly lit by smoking lamps around which clouds of insects swarmed, plummeting to their death with scorched wings. The air was filled with a chill melancholy, a shadowy anxiety about the approaching threat from outside, about the omnipotent hordes of clouds, about the boundless immensity that wafted rustling from the far, unknown distance: as big and wide as the firmament, against which the houses did not seem protected, in which the people—with all their culture and science and inward emotion—were small and insignificant, as small as writhing insects, helpless against the interplay of gigantic mysteries borne from afar.
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