De stille kracht. English

by Louis Couperus

  THE HIDDEN FORCE

  A Story of Modern Java

  by LOUIS COUPERUS translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

  Jonathan Cape Eleven Gower Street London

  First published 1922 All rights reserved

  Printed in Great Britain by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

  TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

  The Hidden Force gives a picture of life in the Dutch East Indies inthe last year of the nineteenth and the first year of the twentiethcentury. Conditions have altered slightly since then--Dutch ladies nolonger wear "sarong" and "kabaai" so generally, and there are otherminor changes--but the relations between the Europeans and the nativesremain very much as they were.

  I have translated nearly all the Malay and Javanese words scatteredthrough the text, agreeing with my publisher that the sense of colourthroughout the book is strong enough without insisting on these nativeterms, and I have done my best to reduce foot-notes to a minimum.

  Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

  Chelsea, 20th November 1921

  CONTENTS

  Page Translator's Note 5 Chapter One 9 Chapter Two 19 Chapter Three 26 Chapter Four 39 Chapter Five 46 Chapter Six 54 Chapter Seven 59 Chapter Eight 69 Chapter Nine 78 Chapter Ten 94 Chapter Eleven 102 Chapter Twelve 111 Chapter Thirteen 116 Chapter Fourteen 123 Chapter Fifteen 129 Chapter Sixteen 140 Chapter Seventeen 150 Chapter Eighteen 153 Chapter Nineteen 165 Chapter Twenty 174 Chapter Twenty-one 188 Chapter Twenty-two 193 Chapter Twenty-three 204 Chapter Twenty-four 214 Chapter Twenty-five 225 Chapter Twenty-six 234 Chapter Twenty-seven 244 Chapter Twenty-eight 251 Chapter Twenty-nine 258 Chapter Thirty 275 Chapter Thirty-one 287 Chapter Thirty-two 294

  CHAPTER ONE

  The full moon wore the hue of tragedy that evening. It had risenearly, during the last glimmer of daylight, in the semblance of ahuge, blood-red ball, and, flaming like a sunset low down behind thetamarind-trees in the Lange Laan, it was ascending, slowly divestingitself of its tragic complexion, in a pallid sky. A deathly stillnesslay over all things like a veil, as though, after the long mid-daysiesta, the evening rest were beginning without an intervening periodof life. Over the town, whose white villas and porticoes lay huddledamid the trees of the lanes and gardens, hung the windless oppressionof the evening air, as though the listless night were weary of theblazing day of eastern monsoon. The houses, from which not a soundwas heard, shrank away, in deathly silence, amid the foliage of theirgardens, with their evenly-spaced, gleaming rows of great whitewashedflower-pots. Here and there a lamp was already lit. Suddenly a dogbarked and another answered, rending the muffled silence into long,ragged tatters: the dogs' angry throats sounded hoarse, panting,harshly hostile; then they, too, suddenly fell silent.

  At the end of the Lange Laan the Residency lay far back in itsgrounds. Low and vivid in the darkness of the banyan-trees, itlifted the zig-zag outline of its tiled roofs, one behind the other,against the dark background of the garden, with one crude line ofletters and numerals that dated the whole: a roof over each galleryand verandah, a roof over each room, receding into one long outlineof irregular roofs. In front, however, rose the white pillars of thefront verandah, and the white pillars of the portico, gleaming talland stately, set far apart, with a large, welcoming spaciousness,making the roomy entrance impressive as a palace doorway. Throughthe open doors the central gallery was seen in dim perspective,running through to the back, lit by a single flickering light.

  A native messenger was lighting the lanterns beside thehouse. Semicircles of great white pots with roses and chrysanthemums,with palms and caladiums, curved widely to right and left in front ofthe house. A broad gravel path formed the drive to the white-pillaredportico; next came a wide, parched lawn, surrounded by flower-pots,and, in the middle, on a carved stone pedestal, a monumental vase,holding a tall latania. The only fresh green was that of the meanderingpond, on which floated the giant leaves of a Victoria Regia, huddledtogether like round green tea-trays, with here and there a brightlotus-like flower between them. A path wound beside the pond; andon a circular space paved with pebbles stood a tall flag-staff, withthe flag already hauled down, as it was every day at six o'clock. Aplain gate divided the grounds from the Lange Laan.

  The vast grounds were silent. There were now burning, slowly andlaboriously lit by the lamp-boy, one lamp in the chandelier in thefront verandah and one indoors, turned low, like two night-lights ina palace which, with its pillars and its vanishing perspective ofroofs, was somehow reminiscent of a child's dream. On the steps ofthe office a few messengers, in their dark uniforms, sat talking inwhispers. One of them stood up after a while and walked, with a quiet,leisurely step, to a bronze bell which hung high, by the messengers'lodge, in the extreme corner of the grounds. When he had reachedit, after taking about a hundred paces, he sounded seven slow,reverberating strokes. The clapper struck the bell with a brazen,booming note; and each stroke was prolonged by an undulating echo, adeep, thrilling vibration. The dogs began to bark again. The messenger,boyishly slender in his blue cloth jacket with yellow facings andtrousers with yellow stripes, slowly and quietly, with supple step,retraced his hundred paces to the other messengers.

  A light now shone in the office and also in the adjoining bedroom,from which it filtered through the Venetian blinds. The resident,a tall, heavy man, in a black jacket and white duck trousers, walkedacross the room and called to the man outside:

  "Messenger!"

  The chief messenger, in a cloth uniform jacket edged with broad yellowbraid, approached with bended knees and squatted before his master.

  "Call Miss Doddie."

  "Miss Doddie is out, excellency," whispered the man, while with histwo hands, the fingers placed together, he sketched the reverentialgesture of the salaam.

  "Where has she gone?"

  "I did not ask, excellency," said the man, by way of excuse for notknowing, again with his sketchy salaam.

  The resident reflected for a moment. Then he said:

  "My cap. My stick."

  The chief messenger, still bending his knees as though reverentlyshrinking into himself, scuttled across the room, and, squatting,presented an undress uniform cap and a walking-stick.

  The resident went out. The chief messenger hurried after him, carryingin his hand a long, burning slow-match, of which he waved the glowingtip from side to side so that the resident might be seen by any onepassing in the dark. The resident walked slowly through the gardento the Lange Laan. Along this lane, an avenue of tamarind-trees andflamboyants, lay the villas of the more important townsfolk, faintlylighted, deathly silent, apparently uninhabited, with their rows ofwhitewashed flower-pots gleaming in the vague dusk of the evening.

  The resident first passed the secretary's house; then, on theother side, a girls' school; then the notary's house, an hotel, thepost-office, and the house of the president of the Criminal Court. Atthe end of the Lange Laan stood the Catholic church; and, farther on,across the river-bridge, lay the r
ailway-station. Near the stationwas a large European store, which was more brilliantly lighted thanthe other buildings. The moon had climbed higher, turning a brightersilver in its ascent, and now shone down upon the white bridge,the white store and the white church, all standing round a square,treeless, open space, in the middle of which was the town-clock,a small monument with a pointed spire.

  The resident met nobody; now and then, however, an occasional Javanese,like a moving shadow, appeared out of the darkness; and then themessenger waved the glowing point of his wick with great ostentationbehind his master. As a rule, the Javanese understood and made himselfsmall, cowering along the edge of the road and passing with a scuttlinggait. Now and again an ignorant native, just arrived from his village,did not understand, but went by, looking in terror at the messenger,who merely waved his wick, and, in passing, sent a curse after thefellow, behind his master's back, because he, the village yokel, hadno manners. When a cart or trap approached he waved his little fierystar again and again through the darkness and made signs to the driver,who either stopped and alighted or squatted in his little carriage,and, so squatting, drove on along the farther side of the road.

  The resident went on gloomily, with the smart step of a resolutewalker. He had turned off to the right of the little square and wasnow walking past the Protestant church, making straight for a handsomevilla adorned with slender, fairly correct Ionian plaster pillars andbrilliantly lighted with paraffin lamps set in chandeliers. This wasthe Concordia Club. A couple of native servants in white jacketssat on the steps. A European in a white suit, the steward, passedalong the verandah. But there was no one sitting at the greatgin-and-bitters-table; and the wide cane chairs opened their armsexpectantly but in vain.

  The steward, on seeing the resident, bowed; and the resident, raisinghis finger to his cap, went past the club and turned to the left. Hewalked down a lane, past dark little houses, each in its own littledemesne, turned off again and walked along the mouth of the river,which was like a canal. Proa after proa lay moored to the banks; themonotonous humming of Maduran seamen crept drearily across the water,from which rose a smell of fish. Past the harbour-master's officethe resident made for the pier, which projected some way into thesea and at the end of which a small lighthouse, a miniature Eiffeltower, stood like an iron candlestick, with its lamp at the top. Herethe resident stopped and filled his lungs with the night air. Thebreeze had suddenly freshened, the north-east wind had risen, blowingin from the offing, as it did daily at this hour. But sometimes itsuddenly dropped again, unexpectedly, as though its fanning wings hadbeen stricken powerless; and the roughened sea fell again, until itscurdling, foaming breakers, white in the moonlight, were replaced bysmooth rollers, slightly phosphorescent in long, pale streaks.

  A mournful and monotonous rhythm of dreary singing approached overthe sea; a sail loomed darkly, like a great night-bird; and a fishingproa with a high, curved stem, suggesting an ancient galley, glidedinto the channel. A melancholy resignation to life, an acquiescencein all the small, obscure things of earth beneath that infinitesky, upon that remote, phosphorescent sea, was adrift in the night,conjuring up an oppressive mystery....

  The tall, sturdy man who stood there, with straddling legs, breathingin the loitering, fitful wind, tired with his work, with sitting athis writing-table, with calculating the duiten-question, that importantmatter, the abolition of the duit, [1] for which the governor-generalhad made him personally responsible: this tall, sturdy man, practical,cool-headed, quick in decision from the long habit of authority, wasperhaps unconscious of the mysterious shadow that drifted over thenative town, over the capital of his district, in the night; but hewas conscious of a yearning for affection. He vaguely felt a longingfor a child's arms around his neck, for shrill little voices about him,a longing for a young wife awaiting him with a smile. He did not givedefinite expression to this sentimentality in his thoughts; it wasnot his habit to give way to musing upon his individual needs; he wastoo busy, his days were too full of interests of all kinds for him toyield to what he knew to be his moments of weakness, the suppressedebullitions of his younger years. But, though he did not reflect, themood upon him was not to be thrown off; it was like a pressure on hissturdy chest, like a morbid tenderness, like a sentimental discomfortin the otherwise highly practical mind of this superior official,who was strongly attached to his sphere of work, to his territory,who had its interests at heart, in whom the almost independent powerof his post harmonized entirely with his authoritative nature, andwho was accustomed with his strong lungs to breathe an atmosphere ofspacious activity and extensive, varied work, even as he now stoodbreathing the spacious wind from the sea.

  A longing, a desire, a certain nostalgia filled him more than wasusual that evening. He felt lonely, not merely because of the isolationwhich nearly always surrounds the head of a native government, who isapproached either with formality and smiling respect, for purposesof conversation, or curtly, with official respect, for purposes ofbusiness. He felt lonely, though he was the father of a family. Hethought of his big house, he thought of his wife and children. And hefelt lonely and borne up merely by the interest which he took in hiswork. That was the one thing in his life. It filled all his wakinghours. He fell asleep thinking of it; and his first thought in themorning was of some district interest.

  Tired with casting up figures, at this moment, breathing the wind,he inhaled together with the coolness of the sea its melancholy, themysterious melancholy of the Indian seas, the haunting melancholyof the seas of Java, the melancholy that rushes in from afar onwhispering, mysterious wings. But it was not his nature to yieldto mystery. He denied mystery. It was not there: there was only thesea and the cool wind. There was only the sea-fog, with its mingledsavour of fish and flowers and seaweed, a savour which the cool windwas blowing away. There was only the moment of respiration; and suchmysterious melancholy as he, nevertheless, irresistibly felt stealingthat evening through his somewhat softened mood he believed to beconnected with his domestic circle: he would have liked to feel thatthis circle was a little more compact, fitting more closely aroundthe father and husband in him. If there was any cause for melancholy,it was that. It did not come from the sea, nor from the distant sky. Herefused to yield to any sudden sensation of the uncanny. And he set hisfeet more firmly, flung out his chest, lifted his fine, soldierly headand snuffed up the smell of the sea and the fragrance of the wind....

  The chief messenger, squatting with his glowing wick in his hand,peeped attentively at his master, as though thinking:

  "How strange, those Hollanders!... What is he thinking now?... Why ishe behaving like this?... Just at this time and on this spot?... Thesea-spirits are about now.... There are caymans under the water,and every cayman is a spirit.... Look, they have been sacrificingto them there: bananas and rice and meat dried in the sun and ahard-boiled egg, on a little bamboo raft, down by the foot of thelight-house.... What is the sahib doing here?... It is not good here,it is not good here, alas, alas!..."

  And his watching eyes glided up and down the back of his master,who simply stood and gazed into the distance: what was he gazingat?... What did he see blowing up in the wind?... How strange, thoseHollanders, how strange!...

  The resident turned, suddenly, and walked back; and the messenger,starting up, followed him, blowing the tip of his slow-match. Theresident walked back by the same road; there was now a member sittingin the club, who greeted him; and a couple of young men were strollingin the Lange Laan. The dogs were barking.

  When the resident approached the entrance to the residency, he sawbefore him, standing by the other gate, two white figures, a man anda girl, who vanished into the darkness under the banyans. He wentstraight to his office; another messenger came up and took his capand stick. Then he sat down at his writing-table. He had time for anhour's work before dinner.