De stille kracht. English

by Louis Couperus

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Eva Eldersma was in a more listless and dejected mood than she hadyet experienced in Java. After her efforts, after the fuss and thesuccess of the fancy-fair, after the shuddering fear of a rising,the little town conscientiously went to sleep again, as though wellcontent to be able to slumber as usual. It was December and the heavyrains had begun, as usual, on the fifth of the month: the rainy monsooninvariably opened on St. Nicholas' Day. The clouds which, for thepast month, continually swelling, had piled themselves upon the lowerhorizons now rose curtain-wise, like water-laden sails higher againstthe skies, rent open as by a sudden fury of far-flashing lightning,pouring and lashing down as though this wealth of water could no longerbe upheld, now that the swollen sails were torn apart, as though alltheir wanton abundance came streaming down from a single rent. Of anevening, Eva's front-verandah was invaded by a crazy swarm of insects,which, drunk with light, rushed upon their destruction in the lamps,as in an apotheosis of fiery death, filling the lamp-chimneys andstrewing the marble tables with their fluttering, dying bodies. Evainhaled a cooler air, but a miasma of damp, arising from earth andleaves, soaked the walls, seemed to ooze from the furniture, dimmingthe mirrors, staining the silk hangings and covering boots and shoeswith mildew, as though nature's frenzied downpour were bent on theruin of all that was fine and delicate, sparkling and graceful inhuman achievement. But the trees and foliage and grass shot up andexpanded and rioted luxuriantly upwards, in a thousand shades of freshgreen; and, in the reviving glory of verdant nature, the crouchinghuman community of open-fronted villas, wet and humid with fungi,all the whiteness of the lime-washed pillars and flower-pots turnedto a mouldy green.

  Eva watched the slow and gradual ruin of her house, her furniture,her clothes. Day by day, inexorably, something was spoilt, somethingrotted away, something was covered with mildew or rust. And none ofthe aesthetic philosophy with which she had at first taught herselfto love India, to appreciate the good in India, to seek in Indiafor external plastic beauty and inward beauty of soul, was ableto withstand the streaming water, the cracking of her furniture,the staining of her frocks and gloves, the damp, mildew and rustthat wrecked the exquisite environment which she had designed andcreated all around her, as a comfort, to console her for living inIndia. All her logic, all her feeling of making the best of things,of finding something attractive and beautiful after all in the landof all-prevailing nature and of people eager for money and position,all this failed her and came to naught, now that she was every momentirritated and incensed as a housewife, as an elegant woman, an artisticwoman. No, it was impossible in India to surround one's self withtaste and exquisiteness. She had been here for only two years andshe was still able to make a certain fight for her western culture;but nevertheless she was now already better able than in the firstdays after her arrival to understand the laisser-aller of the men,after their hard work, and of the women, in their housekeeping. True,the servants with their soundless movements, working with gentle hands,willing, never impertinent, were to her thinking far superior to thenoisy, pounding maids in Holland; but nevertheless she felt in all herhousehold an eastern antagonism to her western ideas. It was alwaysa struggle not to surrender to that laisser-aller, to the runningto waste of the over-large grounds, invariably hung at the back withthe dirty washing of the servants and strewn with nibbled mangoes; tothe gradual spoiling and fading of the paint of the house, which wasalso too large, too open, too much exposed to wind and weather to becared for with Dutch cleanliness; to the habit of sitting and rocking,undressed, in sarong and kabaai, with one's bare feet in slippers,because it was really too hot, too sultry to dress one's self ina frock or tea-gown, which only became soaked in perspiration. Itwas for her sake that her husband always dressed for dinner, in ablack jacket and stand-up collar; but, when she saw his tired face,with that more and more fixed, overtired office expression above thatstand-up collar, she herself begged him not to trouble to dress nexttime after his second bath and allowed him to dine in a white jacket,or even in pyjamas. She thought it terrible, thought it unspeakablydreadful; it shocked all her ideas of correctness; but really he wastoo tired and it was too sultry and oppressive for her to expectanything more from him. And she, after only two years in India,understood more and more easily that laisser-aller--in dress, inbody and in soul--now that every day she lost something more of herfresh, Dutch blood and her western energy, now that she admitted,certainly, that in India men worked perhaps as in no other country,but that they worked with one sole object before their eyes: position,money, retirement, pension ... and home, back home to Europe. True,there were others, born in India, who had been out of India onlyonce, for barely a year, who would not hear of Holland, who adoredtheir land of sunshine. She knew that the De Luces were like this;and there were others as well, she knew. But in her own circle ofcivil servants and planters every one had the same object in life:position, money ... and then off, off to Europe. Every one calculatedthe years of work still before him. Every one saw before him inthe future the illusion of that European retirement. An occasionalfriend, like Van Oudijck, an occasional civil servant, who perhapsloved his work for his work's sake and because it suited his nature,feared the coming pensioned retirement, which would mean a stupid,vegetating existence. But Van Oudijck was an exception. The majorityworked in the service and on the plantations for the sake of the restto come. Her husband also, for instance, was toiling like a slave tobecome assistant-resident and, after some years, to draw his pension;he slaved and toiled for his illusion of rest. At present she felt herown energy leaving her with every drop of blood that she felt flowingmore sluggishly through her weary veins. And, in these early days ofthe wet monsoon, while the eaves of the house incessantly dischargedthe thick, plashing shafts which irritated her with their clatter,while she watched the gradual ruin of all the material surroundingswhich she had selected with so much taste as her artistic consolationin India, she reached a more discordant mood of listlessness anddejection than she had ever gone through before. Her child was stilltoo small to mean much to her, to be a kindred spirit. Her husbanddid nothing but work. He was a kind and thoughtful husband to her,a dear fellow in every way, a man of great simplicity, whom she hadaccepted--perhaps only because of this simplicity, because of thequiet serenity of his smiling, fair-skinned, Frisian face and theburliness of his broad shoulders--after one or two excited, juvenileromances of enthusiasm and misunderstanding and soulful discussions,romances dating from her girlhood. She, who was herself neithersimple nor serene, had sought the simplicity of her life in a simpleromance. But his qualities failed to satisfy her. Now especially,when she had been longer in India and was suffering defeat in hercontest with the country that did not harmonize with her nature,his serene conjugal love failed to satisfy her.

  She was beginning to feel unhappy. She was too versatile a woman tofind all her happiness in her little boy. He certainly filled a partof her life, with the minor cares of the present and the thoughtof his future. She had even worked out a whole educational systemfor him. But he did not fill her life entirely. And a longing forHolland encompassed her, a longing for her parents, a longing forthe beautiful, artistic home where you were always meeting painters,writers, musicians, the artistic salon--an exception in Holland--thatgathered together for a brief moment the artistic elements which inHolland usually remained isolated.

  The vision passed before her eyes like a vague and distant dream,while she listened to the approaching thunders that filled the air,sultry to bursting-point, while she gazed at the downpour thatfollowed. Here she had nothing. Here she felt out of place. Hereshe had her little clique of adherents, who collected around herbecause she was cheerful; but she found no sort of deeper sympathy,no serious conversation ... except in Van Helderen. And with him shemeant to be careful, so as to give him no illusions.

  There was only Van Helderen. And she thought of all the other peoplearound her at Labuwangi. She thought of people, people everywhere. And,very pessimistic in these da
ys, she found in all of them the sameegoism, the same self-complacency, the same unattractiveness, the sameself-absorption: she could hardly express it to herself, distracted asshe was by the terrific force of the pelting rain. But she found ineverybody conscious and unconscious traits of unloveliness ... evenin her faithful adherents ... and in her husband ... and in the men,young wives, girls, young men around her. There was nothing in anyof them but his own ego. Not one of them had sufficient harmony ofmind for himself and another. She disapproved of this in one, hatedthat in another; a third and a fourth she condemned entirely. Thiscritical attitude made her despondent and melancholy, for it wasagainst her nature: she preferred to like others. She liked to live,in spontaneous harmony, with a number of associates: originally shehad a profound love of people, a love of humanity. Great questionsmoved her. But nothing that she felt met with any echo. She foundherself empty and alone, in a country, a town, an environment inwhich all and everything, large and small, offended her soul, herbody, her character, her nature. Her husband worked. Her child wasalready becoming thoroughly Indian. Her piano was out of tune.

  She stood up and tried the piano, with long scales that ended in theFeuerzauber of Valkyrie. But the roar of the rain was louder thanher playing. When she got up again, feeling desperately dejected,she saw Van Helderen standing before her.

  "You startled me," she said.

  "May I stay to lunch?" he asked. "I am all by myself at home. Idahas gone to Tosari for her malaria and has taken the children withher. She went yesterday. It's an expensive business. How I'm to keepgoing this month I do not know."

  "Send the children to us, after they've had a few days in the hills."

  "Won't they bother you?"

  "Of course not. I'll write to Ida."

  "It's really awfully good of you. It would certainly make thingseasier for me."

  She laughed softly.

  "Aren't you well?" he asked.

  "I feel deadly," she said.

  "How do you mean?"

  "I feel as if I were dying by inches."

  "Why?"

  "It's terrible here. We've been longing for the rains; and, now thatthey've come, they are driving me mad. And ... I don't know what:I can't stand it here any longer."

  "Where?"

  "In India. I have taught myself to see the good, the beautiful inthis country. It's all no use. I can't go on with it."

  "Go to Holland," he said gently.

  "My people would be glad to see me, no doubt. It would be good formy boy, because he's forgetting his Dutch daily, though I had begunto teach it to him so conscientiously, and he speaks Malay ... orgibberish. But I can't leave my husband here all alone. He would havenothing here without me. At least, I think so: that is one more sortof illusion. Perhaps it's not so at all."

  "But, if you fall ill...?"

  "Oh, I don't know!"

  Her whole being was filled with an unusual fatigue.

  "Perhaps you're exaggerating!" he began, cheerfully. "Come, perhapsyou're exaggerating! What's upsetting you, what's making you sounhappy? Let's draw up an inventory together."

  "An inventory of my misfortunes? Very well. My garden is a marsh. Threechairs in my front-verandah are splitting to pieces. The white antshave devoured my beautiful Japanese mats. A new silk frock has comeout all over stains, for no reason that I can make out. Another isall unravelled, simply with the heat, I believe. To say nothing ofvarious minor miseries of the same order. To console myself I tookrefuge in the Feuerzauber. My piano was out of tune; I believe thereare cockroaches walking among the strings."

  He gave a little laugh.

  "We're idiots here," she continued, "we Europeans in this country! Whydo we bring all the paraphernalia of our costly civilization with us,considering that it's bound not to last? Why don't we live in a coolbamboo hut, sleep on a mat, dress in a cotton sarong and a chintzkabaai, with a scarf over our shoulders and a flower in our hair. Allyour civilization by which you propose to grow rich ... is a westernidea, which fails in the long run. Our whole administration ... isso tiring in the heat. Why--if we must be here--don't we live simplyand plant paddy and live on nothing?"

  "You're talking like a woman," he said, with another little laugh.

  "Possibly," she said. "Perhaps I don't mean quite all I say. Butthat I feel here, opposing me, opposing all my western notions,a force which is antagonistic to me ... that is certain. I amsometimes frightened. I always feel ... that I am on the point ofbeing conquered, I don't know what by: by something out of the ground,by a force of nature, by a secret in the soul of these black people,whom I don't know.... I feel particularly afraid at night."

  "You're overwrought," he said, tenderly.

  "Possibly," she replied, wearily, seeing that he did not understand andtoo tired to go on explaining. "Let's talk about something else. Thattable-turning's very curious."

  "Very," he said.

  "The other day, the three of us: Ida, you and I...."

  "It was certainly very curious."

  "Do you remember the first time? Addie de Luce: it seems to be trueabout him and Mrs. van Oudijck.... And the insurrection ... the tableforetold it."

  "May we not have suggested it unconsciously?"

  "I don't know. But to think that we should all be playing fair andthat that table should go tapping and talking to us by means ofan alphabet!"

  "I shouldn't do it often, Eva, if I were you."

  "No, I think it inexplicable, and yet it's already beginning to boreme. One grows so accustomed to the incomprehensible."

  "Everything's incomprehensible."

  "Yes ... and everything's a bore."

  "Eva!" he said, with a soft, reproachful laugh.

  "I give up the fight. I shall just sit in my rocking-chair ... andlook at the rain."

  "There was a time when you used to see the beautiful side of mycountry."

  "Your country? Which you would be glad to leave to-morrow to go tothe Paris Exhibition!"

  "I've never seen anything."

  "How humble you are to-day!"

  "I am sad, because of you."

  "Oh, please don't be that!"

  "Play something more."

  "Well, then, have your gin-and-bitters. Help yourself. I shall playon my out-of-tune piano; it will sound as melodious as my soul,which is also all of a tangle...."

  She went back to the middle gallery and played something fromParsifal. He remained sitting outside and listened. The rain waspouring furiously. The garden stood clean and empty. A violentthunder-clap seemed to split the world asunder. Nature was supreme;and in her gigantic manifestation the two people in that damp housewere diminished, his love was nothing, her melancholy was nothing andthe mystic music of the Grail was as a child's ditty to the echoingmystery of that thunder-clap, whereat fate itself seemed to sail withheavenly cymbals over these doomed creatures in the Deluge.