The Ten Thousand Things

by Maria Dermout

  Then Matthew was standing next to her; he bent over and took her hands, pulled her to her feet, he did not say anything but just looked at her—for a moment it seemed as if she were going to attack him too. Then he let go of her hands, “go to your room, Pauline,” he said, “and close the door.”

  She left without a word.

  The child was sitting upright again. First she opened her mouth wide to start crying, but then she changed her mind, pulled the red doll toward her, brushed the sand off its dress, looked tenderly into its black bead eyes and started telling it in her own language what she thought of Pauline. But when she saw Matthew nearby she let go of the doll, stretched her arms toward him and began to cry plaintively.

  He took her with the doll in his arm, put the bird on his shoulder, and walked to the house, where he placed the child in her mother’s lap.

  “Miss Sophy fell,” he said.

  The bird climbed down his arm and sat on the table next to the tea tray to wait for a piece of sugar.

  Matthew remained standing there, and then he asked without any preliminary for a week’s leave: he wanted to visit his island and tomorrow the mail proa was sailing. The young woman looked surprised for a moment, he had been home quite recently.

  “And Pauline also asks leave to visit her island,” he said.

  “But she never told me,” the young woman answered.

  “No,” Matthew said.

  The young woman with Sophy and the doll in her lap was thinking: the mail proa did a long stretch across open sea, that was always dangerous. “Why don’t you wait for the packet?” she asked.

  Matthew looked at her. “No,” he said, “impossible, Madam, that would be too late.”

  The child whimpered the whole evening, until she fell asleep.

  Later that evening there was to be a party at the Club for all the ships’ officers.

  “I’d rather not go,” the young wife said, “can’t I stay home with Sophy? There’s something the matter with her, I’m afraid to leave her alone.”

  The official laughed at her: when they were out late Mama Lea and Lisbeth slept in the child’s room, Pauline too sometimes, and Matthew and Lisbeth’s two brothers slept in the back gallery.

  “Aren’t six people enough to take care of your daughter Sophy?” he asked. “They can call us if there’s something wrong.”

  She hesitated. “All right,” she said, “I’ll come—but Pauline mustn’t stay with Sophy.” She didn’t know why she said that, she had not seen what had happened in the garden.

  When they came home from the party very late in the night, Matthew and the two boys were fast asleep in the back gallery. Old Matthew sat up on his mat with a shock, he looked weary and uneasy. “I fell asleep,” he said, and rubbed his forehead.

  “Is that bad, Matthew?” asked the young official, “did you want to stay awake all night?”

  “It would have been better for me to stay awake, sir,” he said.

  From the bedroom Mama Lea emerged with Lisbeth, tottering with sleep, carrying their mats and pillows. “Miss Sophy has been very good,” she said, “she hasn’t cried once.”

  The young woman nodded, “thank you Mama Lea for taking such good care of her, and you too, Lisbeth, tomorrow I’ll have a treat for you and for Miss Sophy and for Kakka!”

  The child Lisbeth suddenly started to laugh loudly, right in the middle of the night. The bird Kakka was perched in his bamboo cage, where he was locked up during the night to be safe from the cat. He opened a round black eye and looked curiously around to see who was laughing.

  “Are you coming?” the official called.

  The young woman had the feeling that they were all one large happy family: the three of them, and the six, and Kakka.

  Only the door of Pauline’s room remained closed, and the room was dark.

  The following morning everyone got up later than usual.

  The young official went to his work. It was the day for his weekly card game at the Club and he would not be home for lunch.

  Matthew and Pauline stayed in their rooms and began packing, but the mail proa was leaving only at sunset. The crossing of the open sea was done at night when the current was more favorable.

  Mama Lea cleaned the house.

  The young wife had put a chair out in the garden and sat with the children.

  When Jacob the cook came home from the market he brought some news; Matthew and Mama Lea were standing with him and shook their heads about something.

  Later Mama Lea told the young woman, “there’s been a fight last night, sailors of course,” and shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.

  They all had their afternoon siesta.

  When the young woman was having her tea, her husband came home.

  He looked hot and tired, he collapsed in a chair without greeting her, threw his white hat on another chair, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face, repeatedly, stared at the tea she had poured but did not touch it.

  “I’ve been at the military hospital,” he then said gruffly, “that’s why I’m so late.”

  “In the military hospital—what did you have to do there?”

  “Attend an autopsy.”

  “An autopsy—”

  “Yes, yes, an autopsy, have you never heard of an autopsy?” His voice sounded as if he were furious with her—“that idiot of a doctor asked me to attend an autopsy, and so I did, I can heartily recommend it to everybody!”

  “Was it dreadful?” she asked, frightened.

  “What?” he said, “what? An autopsy?”—he shrugged several times—“no, no, it isn’t so bad,” his voice sounded less irritated now, “the bad part of it is done by then, the bad part is when they change a living human being into a crumpled piece of trash fit for the dustbin.”

  She looked at him, surprised, “but, but—”

  “Oh,” he said, immediately impatient again, “of course you never know anything—there was one of those fights last night, in an alley near the harbor, a lot of wounded in the hospital, and this one dead.”

  “Yes,” she said, “Mama Lea mentioned it—were they sailors?”

  “Yes of course they were sailors, what else? It’s always the same, sailors from one ship and sailors from another ship, and afterward nobody knows what started it—it is always pitch-dark, there was a woman with them too, one of the wounded said, or women—perhaps it started over a woman. Police arrived too late of course, and then they insist on an autopsy to determine the cause of death! Why?—it won’t lead to anything.”

  His wife had the impression that he went on talking but was actually thinking of something else; suddenly he interrupted himself and asked: “Do you know who it was?”

  “Who?” she asked, “who?” She was slow in understanding him, but she felt nervous herself.

  “God have mercy on me!” he exclaimed, “who? the man we’re talking about, the dead man. Do you know who it was?”

  “No, no, how should I know?”

  “Well, it was Constance’s sailor.”

  “Constance’s sailor?”

  “Yes,” the official said, “of that day!” He imitated Pauline with her trembling voice, “the sailor, the sailor from Macassar, you know, with his knife—that one!”

  His wife lifted her head and they regarded each other in silence.

  After a while the young man started talking again, he talked while staring into space, and he was drumming with the fingers of one hand on the back of the other.

  “At first I didn’t realize, only later—his face wasn’t badly hurt. I don’t know whether you remember him from that afternoon. I do.

  “He was—what should I say, beautiful, that’s such a strange word for a man—he was a fine specimen! A good fellow too, I thought, how easily he could have killed me with his knife then—” he shrugged—“well, anyway, such a young and sound body, washed clean and tanned by the wind and the rain and the sea—and then somebody picks up a knife, and what do you think remains?


  “All his blood run out of him, that bronze skin dirty yellow, a horrible waxy yellow, and all those yawning wounds with curled edges and the flesh popping out—oh!—” he shuddered—“such a waste!” he said bitterly.

  Then the young woman asked him: “Did they find the knife?”

  “I guess so,” he said indifferently. “How should I know? It might be lying on the bottom of the outer bay, ten fathoms of water over it, what does it matter?”

  A little cough: Matthew and Pauline were standing in the front gallery. Both in black, in their Sunday clothes, Matthew in long trousers and a full-sleeved coat, Pauline in a pleated skirt, long jacket, black slippers with the toes pointing upward.

  Matthew said they had come to say goodbye to the master and mistress.

  When the official’s wife looked at Pauline she started—it wasn’t Pauline! Even in those somber clothes she seemed another person, someone younger, someone who had been relieved of all depression. It was not her face, nor her mouth, nor her forehead that had changed—no, the black eyes, they hid a deep secret joy about something.

  “Well!” Pauline suddenly said, “well!” and her voice was a young light voice.

  “Be quiet, Pauline,” said Matthew, and he repeated her “Well.” “We have to go, it is late,” and his voice sounded dull and resigned after hers.

  The two boys were waiting in the garden with the luggage. Matthew took Pauline by the hand and they went down the steps, but on the bottom one Pauline turned around and said before Matthew could stop her, “Well, I’m going! And the sailor, the sailor from Macassar, he was the one who murdered Constance after all, with his knife!”

  After that she quietly followed Matthew out.

  The young official and his wife remained behind in the front gallery with the tea tray.

  “Will Matthew be gone for long?” he asked.

  “He said a week.”

  “And Pauline?”

  At first the young woman didn’t answer.

  “And Pauline?” he insisted.

  “Pauline?” she repeated slowly and without looking at him, “did you think Pauline would come back? No, I don’t think Pauline will ever come back.”

  The young man and the woman suddenly took each other’s hands, and when a moment later the little procession of every afternoon passed them—Sophy in front with the red doll in her arms, Lisbeth behind her and the cockatoo bringing up the rear in little leaps—they looked at it as if they saw it for the first time in their lives. The young woman started to cry.

  He gave her his handkerchief. “But you mustn’t cry,” he said.

  THE PROFESSOR

  1.

  A BELL in the corridor, a head around the door, “Suprapto is to come to the director’s office!”

  Radèn Mas Suprapto, bent over his slides, had been waiting for this and yet it sent a little shock through him. He stood up. All at once there was a buzz of voices from the other assistants in the large laboratory. “Suprapto, you lucky fellow” . . . “watch out for the head-hunters over there” . . . “bring me a paradise bird when you come back . . .”

  He nodded stiffly, without smiling—yes, yes—but his heart was beating so fast that a wave of heat rose through his body.

  Finally, finally something good, for once it was he! A study tour through the Moluccas with the famous professor from Scotland: a scientific expedition to prepare a new standard work on the flora of those islands; Rumphius’s books of herbs would be the basis for it. The professor spoke no Malayan—he did.

  As he walked alone down the long corridor a little laugh appeared on his face, just for a second; he was the man, for once it was he!

  There he went—not tall, almost too slender the way a very young man can be, although he wasn’t a very young man any more—in Javanese dress, the finest batik, ocher yellow and dark brown, selected for him by his mother in Surakarta. A short white jacket with long sleeves; bare feet—indoors he always walked on bare feet.

  He was a handsome man: a bent, almost Semitic nose, the hairs of his beard and mustache carefully plucked out, his hair hidden under a kerchief. The eyebrows, as thin as pencil lines, the black lashes were the only hair on the fine light-brown face.

  His hands and especially his feet were small and strikingly beautiful.

  Yet he was not feminine in his gracefulness, it was a tense refinement of centuries, beyond masculinity or femininity.

  He knocked, waited, opened the door, closed it behind him, entered the room, made a bow (shoulders and body bending slightly with his head), straightened up again, looked—

  And then his mood vanished.

  Of course—what had he expected?

  At a round table sat the director of the Government Agricultural Service with the professor. The professor sat with his face turned toward him.

  There he is, your wonderful professor! Yes, yes, how do you like that, Radèn Mas Suprapto?

  Tall, thin, with clumsy hands and feet, in an ill-fitting suit of silk shantung, not very clean, with perspiration stains under the arms, bulging pockets. He had reddish hair, in his right hand he held a large wet handkerchief with which he rubbed his head, making the hair stand up in tufts. Red bushy eyebrows above glasses with heavy double lenses, blue eyes without much expression.

  A thick nose covered with freckles.

  And over the mouth with its square tobacco-stained teeth a droopy reddish mustache was hanging—why such a mustache, who in all the world had such a mustache?

  His skin was as white as a girl’s, full of spots and freckles, and the heat bothered him so much that his face kept turning scarlet as if he were blushing.

  When he saw the young Javanese he immediately stood up, moved his handkerchief over to his left hand and extended his large clammy right hand, “Aha, my young mentor!” and laughed, a short cackling laugh.

  The director stood up and presented them formally, “this is Radèn Mas Suprapto, professor—Professor McNeill, Suprapto.” He spoke very distinctly, as if the other two were both slightly deaf.

  “Wait, wait a minute, I’ll never be able to remember that! uh . . . uh . . . Radèn . . . uh . . . Mas—but sit down, my young friend, no?” he turned to the director, who was after all the host, blushed, wiped his forehead.

  “Yes, won’t you join us for a moment, Suprapto?” the director said quietly. Usually in his office he kept Suprapto standing.

  The young Javanese sat down with a little bow of the head toward the director. His face was blank.

  The professor had fallen back in his creaking rattan chair, put away his handkerchief and started to search in his bulging pockets until he had found a fat notebook with pieces of paper sticking out, photographs, a pencil, and a rubber band around it all.

  “What, what was your name? I must make a note of it—Radèn? Mas, did you say? That’s a title of nobility, isn’t it? I’ll put you under R.” He leafed through the book. “Remind me, under R, and then Su—how was it?”

  The Javanese did not answer.

  “Su-prap-to,” the director said slowly.

  Yes, yes, Suprapto the clerk, that’s the way you can put it down . . .

  There was a silence.

  The professor made a note of something, closed the book again, put the rubber band around it, no, took it off again—“we’d better get down to business—oh, my memory, my memory! perhaps you’ll write it down too, Radèn . . . uh . . . Today is the—I’m going back to Bandung later today, I want to leave from there a week from now—does that suit you, uh . . .” he glanced at the notebook, seemed on the point of looking for the name again under R, then decided against it. “We are sailing from Surabaya, I want to spend two or three weeks on Java first, mid-Java, the Merapi, the Principalities, they must be very worth while? What do you think . . . uh . . . Radèn, my young friend?”

  The director said a bit coolly, “Radèn Mas Suprapto is from mid-Java, professor, his whole family is from Surakarta —his mother is the sister of the ruling prince, isn’t that so
, Suprapto?”

  He looked at Suprapto, who did not answer.

  “Ah,” the professor said, beaming, “but that’s most fortunate! It will be a pleasure to visit your family, show them the person to whom they are entrusting their son—or rather, to be honest, the old man whom their son has to take care of”—a wink, a laugh like a cackling hen.

  The Javanese sat motionless; he wasn’t there.

  The low-ceilinged open hall with the marble floor, the sculptured wooden beams resting on red and gold pillars, the gilded sacred birds in the four corners, green shaded coolness from the high trees all around—a visitor! His family (not his parents, they had died young, he had never known them) —the woman who was head of the family, whom he called “mother,” dark, fragile, brittle almost, and at the same time unbreakably proud and haughty.

  He saw her look at the professor.

  He saw the professor the way she would see him.

  He saw her bony dark hand in the large not quite dry white hand.

  He saw them sit around a marble table, his mother on the couch, slender in one of her most beautiful batiks, all her jewels; she would pretend not to understand a word, she would not say anything, smile absent-mindedly and politely, listen to everything.

  When the professor left she would look after him, watch him descend the marble stairs too quickly, stumbling (he might even wave), walk under the banyan trees—and then she would frown, close her eyes for a moment, look at her husband and at him: they were pro-Western, pro-European, were they not?

  Well, there they saw a European, a professor! Learned—the way she could say such a word—a professor is learned! the professor of Suprapto!

  Impossible: he couldn’t do it.

  How to get out of it? Not say anything now—he had already thought of something: he would get ill, send a wire to Bandung at the last minute. Give up the trip? Why?—that wasn’t necessary, only the mid-Java part; go on board at Surabaya.

  He now took out a neat little notebook and a pencil, wrote down the dates carefully.