The Ten Thousand Things

by Maria Dermout

  Close the gate with lock and chain, no one shall enter the Garden.

  Leave the spice trees alone and let them blossom and bear fruit and strew their seeds on the ground; let the weeds grow and choke it all up again.

  The clover blossoms roll away and wither, the nutmeg fruits ripen, the yellow-green skin bursts; the coral red mace loses its color and blows away on the wind, the gleaming black nuts fall on the hard dry earth.

  No proa shall come from across the outer bay, moor at the quay, throw its rope around the old lantern post.

  The quay will collapse, even the strong ironwood post will rot away in the salt water.

  Leave the commissioner alone! Give him time to forget everything: the Garden and the house, his ebony furniture and china, the green water jug, his money, his servants, his wife, and his pearls.

  Let him forgive the four women if they have murdered him—he should know.

  Give him time.

  Then he will leave, for this is not his home. But he needs time—time.

  This happened in the same year that Lieutenant Himpies was shot by a Mountain Alfura’s arrow.

  CONSTANCE AND THE SAILOR

  THE OLD town house of the lady of the Small Garden was rented at that time to a young Dutch official and his family.

  A couple with a two-year-old daughter who was named Sophia Pia after her grandmother; the servants said Miss Sophy, and so her name was Sophy.

  There were six servants living in—besides a cook—all related to each other.

  Old Matthew was Number One. He should not have been a house servant at all, but the head of a Christian village on one of the other islands. He should have been a rajah, as they called it, even if he would never have worn a brocade caftan with mules and a turban with an aigrette; even if he had dressed only in striped cotton trousers and a jacket, and on Sundays for church black trousers and a jacket with sleeves of gleaming bombazine, and bare feet—just as now—he should still have been a rajah.

  Since time immemorial two families had been fighting each other on his island for the post of Rajah; every now and again the fight became a matter of life and death, and several times in succession Matthew’s family had lost it.

  He could talk about it quite resignedly: the other family was large, with many young and strong men; his family was smaller and most of them older or weaker. And the young defeat the old, the strong the weak, the many the few; that’s the way it is and there is nothing wrong with it—in the end the young are the old, the strong the weak, and the many the few.

  “But many that are first shall be last,” said Matthew.

  Still, it had been too much for him to remain at home and watch all this passively; he had left his wife and young children there, and once or twice a year he visited them. He himself had gone to the town at the outer bay and stayed there: an elderly man with little education—what was left for him but to become a house servant?

  Not that he had much liking for it; but he always brought some relatives along with him and cleverly distributed the work among them. He was such a respectable and wise old man that any house could count itself lucky where he was the number-one servant. Most of the work was done by Lea, sister of his wife, and her three children, and by a niece Pauline, the grown-up daughter of one of his brothers.

  Mama Lea was an enormous female, very dark and ugly, with a laughing mouth full of large snowy white teeth. No one understood where her delicate little daughter Lisbeth came from. The child looked a bit like a Negro doll, with heavy black curls, deep eyes like raisins and shiny white teeth, but her skin was light, the color of coffee with a lot of cream. She was nine or ten years old but Mama Lea dressed her like a woman, and when Matthew told her that Lisbeth was now old enough to work she combed Lisbeth’s short hair into a little high knot, and Lisbeth became the nursemaid of Miss Sophy.

  Her “work” was to sit with Sophy on a mat under a tree from after breakfast until it became too hot, and then again in the afternoon after her nap until the sun set. There were dolls to play with, a velvet dog, and a real bird: a tame cockatoo which the lady of the Small Garden had given as a present. Sophia said “ka-ka-tua” to it; those were her first words.

  Pauline did the sewing and the ironing, and repaired the laundry. Pauline was a mystery. She didn’t resemble any of the others, she didn’t seem to belong to them, and she kept at a distance. She obeyed Matthew—who wouldn’t obey Matthew?—but nothing more than that. A young woman, not very tall, neatly dressed in somber colors which made her seem even darker than she was; there was something constrained about her, as if she were holding back a secret behind that dark and controlled face—she was very lonely.

  Until the arrival of Constance.

  The cook fell ill, and since Matthew wasn’t able to find another relative for the job a cook was brought from the town: Constance. She was not of his family so she did not live in. She had her own home somewhere in the town, she had always lived there and was an independent woman, she looked down on the others, said they were from the jungle.

  Her face was not beautiful; it had no clear lines, was round and full like a child’s face; her glossy hair was almost smooth and she wore it combed back in a little knot low on her neck —but when Constance came from the market in her straight skirt and jacket, the old brown basket on top of a folded kerchief on her head, and walked under the high trees, down the lane to the house and up the stairs and through the gallery behind the green vines with their blue flowers, to her kitchen—then everyone stood still for a moment and looked after her.

  She held her long legs almost straight, hardly used her hips and knee joints; the muscles of the round smooth neck, the narrow straight back, the supple shoulders, all held her head with the heavy basket proudly up, moved the hanging arms rhythmically with her walk, never loose and dangling, slowly, as if her hands were heavy weights. That gave her gait something stately and languishing: the way someone personifying Harvest or Summer in a parade would walk. Instead of the old worn basket she could have been carrying a tray with golden pineapples or a brass water jug glittering in the sunlight.

  Pauline adored Constance from the very first day. She followed her everywhere, did unpleasant jobs for her, and defended her in a voice trembling with indignation when anyone criticized her.

  Constance had once been honestly married but no one knew where her husband had gone and she didn’t know herself. She now had a lover, as was her right—only it was a different one every day. And if she didn’t care much for her lovers, the lovers cared very much for her. They always wanted to fight one another or they waited for her in a secluded spot to speak to her just once more—the very last time—and threatened her with murder and suicide; and everyone suffered except Constance. For in her heart she cared for only one thing, and that was the rattan tug-of-war.

  Once, by accident, the young official and his wife had seen her at it.

  It had been late in the evening, on a little square in the heart of the town.

  The moon was shining but the foliage of the high trees was so heavy that it closed off the clear sky of the night; under it, in the dark and the dust, torches were burning with a flickering, reddish glare and there were many people.

  A long heavy rattan rope of pieces knotted together was lying on the ground in the middle of the square, and at each end a group of men waited for the tug-of-war.

  On one side the drum players were sitting with their instruments—large ones, small ones, and very light ones like tambourines. Some played with closed fists, others with the palms of their hands; a single one played his airily with the tips of his fingers.

  But the drums were completely and faultlessly attuned to one another—their music never became an anarchy of sound but remained bound in the severe rhythm, an all-penetrating beat; sometimes the rhythm changed, that was all.

  It urged the men on during their intense efforts to pull the rattan rope, it whipped up their strength and hammered the weariness out of their bodies.
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br />   Whenever a team had won the drums stopped abruptly and left the men, the victors too, completely exhausted. Some let themselves go and fell down where they stood, others sat listlessly on the ground.

  Then the women had to come and sing until the men had recovered.

  The women stood in rows, forming a square: five rows of five, for instance, or six rows of six—close together and dressed alike, each with a large white cloth folded flatly on her head.

  They sang songs, several different ones, and then over and over the monotonous song of the rattan tug-of-war which changes into a love song; and they clapped their hands and took a few steps in the rhythm of the music—forward or backward—they hardly moved from their places.

  The drums started again—softly . . .

  The drum calls, from afar, from afar—that is what the song said. Softly, as an accompaniment to the singing only, lightly marking the beat.

  But then—not suddenly—with careful fingers, hands, fists, the drums took over: their beat, their tempo, their rhythm!

  The words of the song, the melody, were lost in the thumping.

  The women continued to clap their hands in time with the drums, stepping forward and backward in their rhythm.

  The young official and his wife discovered Constance only after a while: she was in the first row but it was hard to recognize her among all those women.

  In the flickering light of the torches shining red and turbid through the smoke and the dust, her face seemed almost black. It was dripping with perspiration, gleaming as if oiled; she stared ahead with wide-open eyes, seeing nothing. And she looked exactly like the woman next to her, and the one next to that one.

  They were no longer rows of singing, dancing, clapping women but a strange unwieldy thing, dark, huge, square, covered with white, carried on a stream rather than moving—carried forward, backward, on the rhythm of the drums—the way the drums wanted it.

  “Had enough?” asked the young official. “What a terribly boring affair, imagine the beautiful Constance enjoying that.”

  His wife walked next to him. Was that what he thought?—she couldn’t understand. Boring? no—dark, threatening, exciting, mixed with an age-old fear—but not boring!

  Constance, with the many lovers she didn’t care about—Constance’s real lover was a drum, not one drum, all drums, the rhythm of them, and a more passionate, a more tender lover she would probably never find.

  The following day she was tired of course and had to sleep late, she did not come to do the cooking—Pauline would do it—she didn’t even send a message. Later in the day she showed herself, quietly and gracefully, gave Pauline her slow little smile and ignored Matthew’s mutterings.

  But one day she made a slip. Until then her love adventures had been her own business, but now—! Her new lover was a sailor, and a woman who is not so very young any more, who has some money, “one of the town,” cannot mix with a sailor.

  It was terrible!

  He was not even a sailor in the Royal Navy, nor of the packets—they always have a lot of money and stay only a few days—he was from a government coast-guard vessel, the worst of them all.

  He was not “one of ours” either, not even from any of the islands—he was from Macassar, he might even not be a Christian!

  Matthew wore a face like a thundercloud, he didn’t speak to Constance any more and he forbade Mama Lea to talk to her (and Mama Lea enjoyed talking so); Lisbeth’s little brothers ran behind Constance in the street and called her names, and Lisbeth herself tried with great patience to teach Sophy the “song of the drunken sailor.”

  Only Pauline remained faithful, but she was worried and kept saying, “be careful, Constance, be careful, it’ll bring trouble, you’ll see!” as if she could foresee the future.

  It began on an afternoon during the siesta hour: Pauline came rushing into the bedroom of the house without even knocking, came to a dead halt between the beds. Her head was huddled between her shoulders, she held her upper arms pressed against her body as if she were supporting it that way, her forearms straight in front of her; her hands were shaking violently.

  Her mouth trembled so much that she could hardly speak, “the sailor, the sailor from Macassar, he’s come with a knife, he’s murdering Constance!”

  She was such a frightening figure, the way she stood there with shaking hands, that the young official jumped out of bed, grabbed Pauline by one arm and crying “come on! where, where is he?” stumbled out of the house in his rumpled pajamas on his bare feet—he couldn’t walk well on bare feet. His wife ran after him, in her dressing gown.

  The bedroom opened on the back gallery, and behind it was the garden, sunny and empty under the trees—there was no one to be seen. Through a window Mama Lea and Lisbeth were peering out with large frightened eyes. The boys had hidden somewhere in the bushes at the back of the garden.

  Why wasn’t Matthew there?

  The house stood close to the outbuildings; to the right, near the back gallery, was the kitchen on a small gallery with long vines. The wooden door to the kitchen was closed and in front of it stood a man. That must be the sailor!

  He wasn’t in uniform but in a long sarong, black jacket, a thin dark kerchief wound around his head.

  Constance was nowhere to be seen, had she been able to escape in time?

  The kitchen door was closed, there was a heavy wooden bar on the inside and there were wooden bars on the windows —she would be relatively safe in there.

  The sailor stood with his face almost against the door, knocking on it with his left hand, softly but insistently, and in his right hand he held a short, wicked-looking knife with the point down.

  “Hey there—you!—are you mad!” the young official called while he hobbled down the gallery with Pauline.

  The sailor spun sharply around, he pressed his back against the closed door and stood bent forward, staring hard.

  The official’s wife knew what would happen now: first her husband, then Pauline, then she; then inside, little Sophy in her bed, then back, Constance in the kitchen; after that he would run out into the street and be caught. That was how it always happened, that’s how it would be in the paper: “Sailor runs amuck—kills one two three four five—four adults and a child.” The young official first!—her heart stopped beating.

  Then she saw the face of the sailor. It wasn’t a “dark” face—a young face, full of suspicion, watchful but at the same time astonished, as if he were at a loss about something.

  “Are you completely crazy, what do you want with that knife? Give it to me!”

  The young official was now standing face to face with him and put out his hand.

  The sailor eyed him for a second—the official was young too, a scrawny fellow, not very tall, in pajamas and with empty hands.

  What was he going to do?

  Without saying a word the sailor held the knife toward him, but just then Pauline jumped in between the two men like a cat, and before they knew what she was up to she had grabbed the knife and run away with it, holding it in both hands.

  For a moment it seemed as if all would go awry.

  A wave of darkness, of fury, swept over the face of the sailor: wide-open eyes stared out—even the whites of his eyes became dark. The official shouted furiously, “Pauline, you fool, what are you doing! Give that knife back immediately!”

  But she was standing at a distance, holding the knife against her; one of her hands was bleeding and she was ready to run on. The young official would never be able to catch her on his bare feet. He shrugged, “idiotic woman,” he said, and turned again toward the sailor, who also seemed to have calmed down.

  “How can you—” he started again, stopped, looked at the other man, and then they both began to grin.

  “You’re quite right, sir,” the sailor said, “I beg your pardon,” and he scratched his head.

  They now walked side by side toward the lane in front of the house.

  The sailor stopped. “A woman li
ke that,” he said and pointed with his thumb at the kitchen, “drives a man crazy, sir, really!” and he hit his own forehead several times with his hand, the long brown fingers bent far back.

  “Well, leave her alone then,” the official advised him.

  The sailor smiled again, “you’re right sir, I beg pardon.”

  Then he came rigidly to attention in his sarong and jacket, saluted smartly with his hand straight and stiff beside his forehead, “and all the best to you, sir!”

  The official in his striped pajamas saluted back, he had served too once, “the same to you!” he said—what else could he say?

  And that was the end of that.

  The sailor walked on, the young man turned back to the house, “are you coming?” he asked his wife, but she remained where she was to see what would happen next.

  For the sailor was standing still in the lane, at the other side, under the high trees, and Pauline was rattling at the kitchen door. After a while Constance opened it carefully, and when she saw that Pauline had the knife, she came out.

  She was still pale but her color soon came back, and then she walked toward the lane in her stately gait, Pauline next to her with the knife. “Constance,” Pauline whispered urgently, “be careful, Constance!”

  But Constance did not listen to her. She looked at the sailor across the lane and the sailor looked at her.

  And since they were lovers, why didn’t they make up, why didn’t they leave together and let Pauline stand there alone with the knife? They could go walking along the blue outer bay, hand in hand, Constance holding a green palm leaf over her head against the sun, Constance and her sailor. But no, they just stood there and looked at each other.

  The sailor was not very tall, dark, lightly built, supple and yet strong—there was something open about him; space, sea with white-crested waves, and a high wind—a green depth of water with a silvery fish fleeting through; he could have been the fish!

  And he was young.

  Compared to him Constance’s feet were too flatly on the ground now that she was standing still, and it was as if a stagnancy hung around her, of air under dense trees, smoke of the torches, dust, the sickly beating of drums.