The Ten Thousand Things

by Maria Dermout

  The rowers, two on each side, scooped up the water with short broad oars; at first they had to push hard but once the proa had gained speed they put in their oars only occasionally. The helmsman aft steered with an oar too, a few strokes on the left, then a few on the right; sometimes the proa rested with one wing on the water, sometimes with a sharp thud it shifted onto the other one.

  The sun had burned away the mist, yet it did not become clear, and the light remained a silvery white—very glaring.

  There was a rustling and swishing all around them: the bay, the oars in and out of the water, the waves spattering against the boards of the proa and the beams of the wings; and when they rowed close to the shore the mild surf on the sand and against the coral reefs; the wind in the trees. And beneath these sounds the old woman talked and talked in a monotonously muttering voice—when she remembered that Felicia did not understand she stopped and smiled shyly behind the pleated white handkerchief.

  After a while the boy became sleepy and Felicia put him in the basket which was standing at her feet. The old woman immediately held the parasol over the basket and no longer over their heads; she said something again, pointed with a finger at Felicia, “ex-act grand-ma,” she said laboriously, and pointing at the boy who was dozing contentedly in the light and the rustle and the small movement of the proa, “ex-act mas-ter Wil-lem” and she made a gesture in the direction they were going.

  Did she want to say that her grandmother had thus come back with her little son Willem to the Small Garden at the inner bay, once?

  Perhaps this same woman had been there—Felicia’s father would be fifty soon, had he been a few years old then? Between forty-five and fifty years ago?

  The old woman would have been barely twenty. Now in her late sixties, as old as the grandmother—Felicia was calculating it all very carefully as if it were terribly important: more than forty-five, almost fifty years ago—that is not so very long ago, it might have been today.

  She was sitting there with head bent forward to get some shade from the parasol, she stared at the boy—her grandmother with her little son Willem in the proa, with a nurse? or perhaps a native playmate from the Garden who had come along when she married her “beau” and went with him to Java—far away, and now she was coming back—what kind of man would that husband of her grandmother have been, who had died so young?

  She had never thought about that before—she was constantly thinking now of things she had never thought about before: in the light and the rustle and the small movement of the proa.

  Her own husband had been a “foreigner” in a hotel in Nice: no wonder, she and her parents had always lived in hotels in Europe—“not another day,” her mother would cry, and off to the next hotel. A handsome, distinguished foreigner, “he looks like a diplomat,” said her mother, who had been enchanted with him—Felicia too had been enchanted with him but hadn’t said it; her father had said nothing at all, as usual. And he?—“that sugary money of your mother’s,” he sometimes said when they were alone together. He had a lightly mocking way of speaking, sometimes a bit melancholy too.

  With the “sugary money” everything had had to be paid—he had been involved in an “affair of honor” in his own country and could not return there. No one understood exactly what he had lived on until then.

  They had been married, traveled a lot, lived in hotels too, expensive hotels, sometimes with the parents, sometimes alone; they had used up quite a bit of the “sugary money.” Her mother had approved, she took care of all their affairs—five years; then came the sugar crisis in Java.

  Felicia was finally expecting the child which she had expected all those years—in a room in an expensive hotel and without money; there was nothing the man knew how to do, she could play the piano—a note stuck in the frame of the mirror: to America, and try—a new life for her and the child, and later—he had been obliged to take some of her jewels for the voyage, just for the time being, there was no other way—and—Li—that was how he called her.

  He had taken with him all that was left of the “sugary money,” and all her jewels and the Snake with the Carbuncle stone—he should not have done that, she had told him about the Snake with the Carbuncle stone. He also should not have gone before the child was there, before he had seen the child . . .

  When the child was a few months old she had borrowed money from relatives in Holland for the voyage back; her father had for once in his life said, “that is good, we belong at the Small Garden”; her mother had been angry, “now you’re taking little Willem away from us too, now I’ll never go walking with him or buy him something,” and she had cried. In the end she had somehow found the money for that jacket which was much too expensive.

  Her grandmother, newly widowed, was returning home in the proa with her son Willem—yes, that’s the way things sometimes work out, granddaughter.

  The child in the basket was called Willem after his grandfather and she was alone too. They were going back to have a roof over their heads and a bite to eat; and she must try and raise her little son—oh, he’d grow up, she thought, and he’d have a wife and child later; who knows, a daughter? the daughter would marry one day and her son would be called Willem after his own grandfather Willem; the daughter’s husband would die or go away—to America for instance, that is far away, and then she would—“that’s the way things work out, granddaughter, yes!” Who? who was saying that? was she, Felicia, saying that to her granddaughter?—no, that did not make sense, that wasn’t it—she herself was the granddaughter—

  She thought, she had never before thought that—in the light and the rustle and the small movement of the proa—repetition, repetition, nothing but repetitions linked to one another. Again and again the same, and again and once more.

  The old man in the bow called out, she did not hear him; the old woman touched her. He was pointing: to the right a low cape which seemed to block off the outer bay, to the left the inner bay, enclosed in green shores like a lake—somewhere there was the Garden. She nodded—yes, yes, for sure—who cares.

  The proa no longer followed the coast but set out to cross the inner bay—was there nothing within reach to break into pieces, nothing she could smash?

  She bent over the edge of the proa, scooped up water in her hand—the water was cool—she dabbed her face with it, pulled off that silly hat, another splash of water—her hair wet too!—sat up straight: she wasn’t her grandmother, and not her granddaughter either! She, who was named Felicia—Happy—that was her name, she came with her child for a stay with its great-grandmother (how many children have a great-grandmother?) in the Garden at the bay—where was there a more beautiful bay?

  The child would play there as she had, with shell and coral, with duck crabs on little red legs, with tame birds; he would be afraid of the Leviathan and the palm-wine mannikin; a child must have something to be afraid of too. The fishermen would take him in their proas and teach him to call out—Mister Wind—and would a child not be happy then?

  And she was no “widow woman”—her husband was still alive, whatever had happened, he was still alive. For a moment she put her cool wet hand together with the warm dry one in her lap—let him stay alive, she asked, amen . . .

  She unclasped her hands again, nudged the old woman, pointed at the boy in the basket, “not Willem!” she said, “not Willem,” moving her lips spasmodically and all the while shaking her head. What was his name then? She couldn’t think of a name so quickly, “not Willem! Willy! Willy!”

  The face of the old woman, first tense in her effort to understand, relaxed, she nodded, she understood very well not mas-ter Willem, but Himpies! Immediately she called through the proa to the others—Himpies!—and pointed, and then they began: helmsman and rowers, the old man and woman, the two big children, they began to sing the song of the boy Himpies of the island Saparua who had a tummy of rubber.

  One whistled his part, another improvised a deep bass, the old man suddenly had a piece of wood in his han
d and beat out the rhythm on the edge of the proa, the two children clapped their hands, the old woman pushed the folded handkerchief into her sleeve, gave Felicia the parasol—quickly, she wanted to clap her hands too.

  Felicia held the parasol and tried to listen to what they sang, she didn’t understand much of it, only the chorus—Himpies, little boy Himpies, of the island Saparua.

  The boy Himpies in the basket woke up; first he turned over on his stomach, on knees and elbows, then with a jolt and a turn he sat up straight in his crumpled lace jacket and looked dumbfounded over the basket’s edge; he was soaking wet.

  Thus they arrived at the Small Garden on the inner bay.

  The slave bell was being rung.

  The grandmother was standing under the trees on the beach in an orange silk sarong and white jacket, high-heeled slippers, with a little kerchief in her hand as if she had been standing there through all those seventeen years. She was a bit smaller and darker, but her hair had not yet turned gray.

  “There you are, granddaughter,” she said, “I have been waiting for you, and did you bring your little boy Willem?”

  “His name is Himpies, grandma.”

  “Do you think that’s such a beautiful name? All right! Good day, Himpies,” said the old lady, “welcome,” and she tried to shake hands with him as if he were a grown man, “I have already started a cabinet with curiosities for you.”

  Then she led them in, up the stone stairway to the wide side gallery and to their room. It was the front one, the prettiest of all four, and it had once been the room of Felicia’s parents. Their English brass bed was still standing there with all the knobs Felicia had always wanted to count as a child; and her own crib with its wooden bars on each side.

  A tall thin woman was moving about the room, not as neatly dressed in black as the others, in a colored sarong and long jacket, a bit rumpled.

  “This is Sjeba, granddaughter,” said the grandmother, “and this is my granddaughter, Sjeba, who has come back with her little son Willem, I mean Himpies. Don’t you remember each other?”

  “No,” said Sjeba, “we don’t remember each other,” she spoke some words of broken Dutch; she took the little boy from Felicia, “you come here little boy Himpies, and I’ll change you.”

  The child looked at her, opened his eyes even wider than usual, pulled his chin in; and then he laughed for the first time at his other mother Sjeba.

  Felicia walked farther into the room: from the windows there was the view through the trees on the inner bay; for the rest there were only doors, a large double door to the side gallery, a door to her grandmother’s bedroom, and yet another door leading to stone steps which went down to the garden, near the lemon orchard.

  It was a large room and it contained the usual furniture: some dressers, a rattan towel rack, a wash stand with a marble top and a flowery basin, a Japanese screen around a night commode, a coat stand with white curtains, chairs and a table. On the marble tabletop stood a little bunch of flowers, a glass with oil and a wick for a night light. On the walls hung heavily decorated oil lamps.

  “Where have the three girls gone to?” Felicia asked.

  The grandmother looked at her. “The three girls? How do you mean?”

  “Who were on the screen of the night lamp.”

  “Oh those, you mean those! You still remember, granddaughter,” she would often say these words that day, “of course they are still here, wait!” She walked out of the room and came back with a little glass screen which she put on the table, “these girls?”

  It was a screen of pink milky glass in a frame of black wrought iron on curved legs: under a pink tree two pink girls were sitting on a seesaw and a third pink girl was watching them, with a hoop and a stick in her hand—all three in the same stiff pink dresses with flounces, high-buttoned shoes, pink picture hats with ribbons; a little pink dog was jumping around, in the pink sky a swarm of pink swallows—far off—were on their way to the pink south.

  “Yes, those girls!” Felicia said; now the screen was where it had always been and at night the light would shine through it again, a pink night light.

  “Think of you remembering that, granddaughter!”

  In the grandmother’s room not much had been changed; Felicia looked for a moment at the cabinet on the legs with the claws—but on that first day she did not ask anything about the “special drawer,” the treasure, the guardians of good fortune; the grandmother did not speak about it either. It still smelled of incense in the room, the real Arabian, the tears of the prophet.

  Next to it the guest room, of course there had to be a guest room.

  And the last room, farthest in back, was sitting room and dining room both: the old black piano, a round dining table in the middle under a hanging oil lamp with the antique chairs around it, a little buffet, a cupboard, in one of the corners a rattan chair. On the walls blue china plates were hung in a neat row—everything exactly as it used to be.

  But there was a little red lacquered cabinet which Felicia did not recall: in the bottom were drawers, above them two glass doors. The grandmother immediately took her there, “the curiosities cabinet for Himpies!” she said.

  Behind the glass doors things were still standing without order: on the top shelves china and glassware for parties, green wine glasses, a large teacup, white with gold—On Your Anniversary—a silver ice bucket (as if there were ever ice on the island), mother-of-pearl spoons.

  On the shelf below stood a basket filled with fruits cut from the softest inner core of the sago palm and painted in bright colors—behind it a stuffed bird of paradise was perched on a little branch: its tail upright like a fountain of yellow and gold, its green satin head bent as if it were picking a fruit.

  On the next shelf, coral: at the back and on the sides transparent “sea fans,” and in the center the finest of all, the “sea net” and the “sea linen” in quenched purple and dark yellow; a piece of “sea string,” and a little tree of black coral. A large shell, a “Triton’s horn,” was there too, orange red inside, with a nice round hole “for Himpies to blow on.”

  The grandmother also opened the top drawer, full of little shells, one had been set aside from the others, and she said, “that is the double Venus-heart, granddaughter, that is a very rare one.”

  The books of Mr. Rumphius had been put in the bottom drawer.

  In the side gallery there were potted plants between the pillars; and there was a couch with a flowery spread and a low round table in front of it.

  And just as in the past some tame birds were walking through the house, two green parakeets together and a little black parrot with a lame leg; they could go about freely, there were never any cats or dogs in the Small Garden.

  The little boy had to be taken care of, his porridge cooked and fed to him, and then he went to sleep again in his basket. Felicia and her grandmother ate together, rested a bit, unpacked; Sjeba helped with everything.

  And every now and again Felicia stepped out into the garden: to the right, the foundations of the old spicegrower’s house were still visible among the nutmeg trees, and farther down that way was the green valley with all the fowl, the wild little river, and the one large white shell of the Leviathan—oh, it was just the drinking place for the chickens.

  Behind the house the wood—the three neglected graves; she did not continue into the hills but walked the other way down to the wide river under the trees, with the village on the other shore.

  It was all different from the way she had thought it to be.

  In the house, the old pavilion, she had found the furniture, the things of the past—old and worn, true, but they were still there; and people went about, her grandmother, servants, their children, and a few birds.

  The house, the outbuildings especially with their thick walls, were standing solidly enough; the bronze slave bell was still hanging in its wooden bell tower.

  Out in the open: the hills with the rosebushes, the dark rocks toward the valley; the trees an
d the palms in the wood and everywhere—one even more graceful, tall or leafy than the other—the planes on the small strip of beach, so regal in faded silvery gray and darkest green; the living water everywhere—the Small Garden! And yet, how could there be any place in the world so deserted and still and abandoned? A bit sad, a bit sallow in color, “poorish,” as her mother always said, in the merciless white sunlight—and so terribly and hopelessly far away from everything and from everyone.

  The large kitchen in one of the outbuildings was full of people talking and laughing, but it was as if their voices came from somewhere else.

  The grandmother went to look there from time to time and asked her to come along. She saw new faces each time, heard new names—they had endlessly long names.

  “Who are they all?” she asked, “do you have so many servants?”

  “But of course not, granddaughter,” said her grandmother, “how can you think that? Only those two who came to the boat to get you, the old Eliah and Sarah, those are my own servants from long ago—Sarah and I have known each other all our lives; Sarah is my friend. Their son Henry is now the cowherd and Sjeba is his wife—you know her too now—they have no children; another son, Moses, is the gardener; the two children who came to the boat with them are from still another son. They go to the school in town, they are so bright, Josua and Susanna. Today they were excused to go to the boat.”

  “My nanny once was also called Susanna.”

  “Yes, the fat one,” grandmother said—but she did not go on about “once.”

  “And all those others?” asked Felicia.

  “They work in the garden occasionally, or row me. Some of them have come only to see Himpies. When he wakes up, you must take him over so that they can see him.”

  Later the boy was put on a mat under a tree and people came to look at him in little groups, never too many at a time; they talked to him, sang him a song. The boy watched them silently and solemnly, with the rag doll under his arm; the two big children Josua and Susanna were sitting next to him and Sjeba did not let him out of her sight.