The Moonlit Garden

by Bomann, Corina

  “Helen says she taught herself to play,” she whispered to the music teacher one time when she thought Helen was out of earshot. But Helen’s sharp ears meant she could hear clearly what they were talking about.

  “Of course that could be possible,” Miss Hadeland replied. “Many great violinists were self-taught. And the way she plays means it’s possible that she has developed her own technique. In any case, I’d be interested to know where she got the violin.”

  “She’s staying stubbornly silent about it, however much I try to coax it out of her,” her mother replied. “But some time ago she mentioned a mystery woman she met at the gate. Perhaps she was the one who gave her the violin. Perhaps it was a traveler who had no idea what to do with the instrument.”

  “That means the violin might be stolen.”

  Her mother may not have noticed the covetous gleam in her music teacher’s eyes, but Helen saw it clearly. She hugged the instrument to her breast and silently swore that she would keep it safe and prevent anyone from laying a finger on it.

  “No, I don’t think so. And even if it was stolen, the crime didn’t happen in this area. James has asked around all over the city, but no one has lost an instrument. Of course, most people are still preoccupied with the aftermath of the earthquake, but I’m sure they would have noticed a missing violin.”

  Helen noticed Miss Hadeland mulling these words over for a few moments, and again she felt a compulsion to hug the violin close and assure it that it would never fall into anyone’s hands but her own.

  25

  Padang, 2011

  “Do you want to drive or shall I?” Verheugen asked, gesturing toward the jeep. It looked like a former military vehicle, the camouflage paintwork peeling in a few places and specks of rust showing on the tailgate and doors. Lilly felt like remarking that this vehicle would never pass its safety inspection in Germany, but she didn’t want to sound overly critical when Verheugen had been so generous with his help.

  “I think you’re probably more familiar with vehicles like this than I am.”

  “If you mean I have a lot of experience driving one of these, then you’d be right. I assure you they’re easier to drive than you’d think. Why don’t you have a go on the way back?”

  He swung himself up into the driver’s seat. Lilly looked skeptically at the jeep for a moment longer, but if her companion had confidence in it, why shouldn’t she?

  Verheugen turned the engine over a few times before it spluttered to life. “Well, at least the engine seems OK,” he said, laughing. “Climb in. I promise I don’t drive like the Padang taxi drivers!”

  Lilly obeyed, and they were off.

  As they threaded their way through the stream of traffic on the city streets, Lilly was glad she wasn’t driving. Vehicles roared past them, and some cut them off, seemingly unconcerned about causing damage. Pedestrians spilled fearlessly from the sidewalks onto the street, taking their lives into their hands as they leisurely made their way across despite the speeding streams of traffic. Horns hooted loudly, and frequent curses were shouted out, but obstacles were soon cleared, and the whole fray continued unabated.

  At last they reached the outskirts of Padang, where the houses had an air of poverty. Unlike in the city center, many of the houses here were built on stilts, in accordance with the Indonesian tradition. There were also a few crescent moon–style houses, but other architectural styles predominated.

  After following the busy main road to the north for a while, Verheugen turned off onto a sandy track.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” Lilly shouted above the engine noise that seemed to have gotten louder.

  Verheugen nodded. “I studied the map yesterday evening. We have to cross a stretch of bushland, but the way should be fairly clear. The house was in use until the 1950s, in any case. After that, it was simply forgotten. After the end of the colonial period the people here were not eager to research the history of their former overlords. There had been far too many dark incidents that seemed better forgotten. The Rawagede massacre on Java, for example.”

  “What happened there?”

  “The Dutch wanted to win back their colonial possessions with a war. It led to this massacre. Around four hundred and thirty dead. Not the kind of thing to make them popular with the people. Interest in the colonial period is gradually beginning to grow again, as the museum showed us, but there’s still a long way to go.”

  As they drove, Lilly noticed shadows flitting among the trees every now and then. There were numerous breeds of monkey on the island, but the animals she caught sight of disappeared so quickly that she was unable to identify them.

  After they had driven for about an hour, a weathered red roof appeared among the palms. A little later they saw a dirty white wall showing through the leaves.

  Verheugen parked the jeep in front of the entrance, which gave the impression that the house had long been abandoned. The custodian did not appear to take much care of the grounds but kept the grass outside the gate from growing too high.

  As the engine noise died away, a strange silence fell over the place. Lilly heard the occasional rustling and twittering of birds.

  She looked in fascination at the intricate wrought-iron gate, which hung a little crookedly on its hinges and was secured with a chain. Not a lot remained of its former magnificence. The high masonry gateposts were overgrown with moss. The garden had long been untouched by human hands, and the plants had grown exuberantly, obscuring the whole length of the fence. The drive leading up to the residence could still be made out, but tall blades of grass pushed their way through the flagstones. The edges were no longer straight lines but waves of green. The long branches of overhanging trees reached almost to the ground.

  “Depressing, isn’t it? You saw the old photo. This could once have been taken for an English country garden, but now it’s increasingly turning into a jungle.”

  As the chain securing the gates was not padlocked, Verheugen quickly removed it and pushed one of the gates open. The shrill squeaking scared a few birds from the brush, and something on the ground scuttled off through rustling leaves—but there was no sign of the custodian.

  “What if he’s not here today?”

  “Then he won’t disturb us,” Verheugen replied as he looked around.

  Given its poor security, Lilly was amazed that the house had not been completely plundered. She was sure there would be no useable furniture inside, and even the stones from which it was built had some value and could easily have been sold.

  As they approached the house, the custodian suddenly appeared from among the trees and called out to them. Verheugen understood and replied, causing the custodian’s tense expression to relax.

  “Does he not want us to look around here?” Lilly asked after the conversation had ended and the custodian ascended the stairs leading up to the house.

  “He asked what we wanted here. I gave him the name of our friend from the museum, and he turned as meek as a lamb. He’s going to unlock the house for us but declined to give us a guided tour.”

  “We don’t need one of those anyway, do we?”

  “The only thing we need here is a good pair of ears and a bit of luck.”

  “Why good ears?”

  “Because I’m not sure how safe the floorboards are in there.”

  “Unsafe ceilings and rotten floors. Perhaps we should float through the door.”

  “Tell me when you’ve found out how to do that,” Verheugen replied with a laugh.

  The custodian opened the large front door, which must have welcomed streams of guests in its day. They were hit by a musty smell of old leaves, sand, and damp. The windows were boarded up, but badly, allowing a diffuse light to fall on the parquet that could hardly be seen beneath a thick layer of dirt. However, it was clear to see the route the custodian usually took through the house. The well-trodden path, with the parquet gleaming beneath as if it had actually been polished, led directly to a small door, behind w
hich Lilly suspected there must be a toilet. They headed in. The custodian had told Verheugen that the boxes containing the documents were in the library, toward the rear of the house.

  After crossing a spacious hallway, they reached the ballroom, its former glory only a faded memory. Lilly recalled the pictures in the newspaper and imagined she could see the elegant audience that Rose had played for—all the ladies’ silk dresses, and the gems and feathers that adorned their hair. In 1902 the Charleston had not yet been invented, and many of those women would still have worn corsets. The men who gathered here to seal business relations or keep an eye on the competition would have worn high collars and tailcoats.

  Rose would have stood among them with her magnificent wavy hair and her unusual violin. Lilly wondered again whether it was here that she had met Paul Havenden, if he had been one of the governor’s guests when she played here. Had they fallen in love in this very place?

  Lilly looked for the window through which the photo of the terrace had been taken, but she couldn’t make it out because of the boards over the windows.

  “I think I know where the library is,” Verheugen said suddenly. “Follow me.”

  Lilly tore herself away from the tall windows and the richly carved beams that ran the length of the ballroom ceiling and walked after him.

  As always happened when she had anything to do with old furnishings or houses, the antiques dealer in her awoke, but this time she found nothing to satisfy her. No one had forgotten a valuable marquetry cupboard in a corner; there was no bureau with drawers full of old love letters. The house seemed to have lost its inner life a long time ago; all that was left were shadows on the walls and floor to indicate where pictures, pieces of furniture, and carpets had once been.

  And yet . . . there was something very special about this house. Some old houses left to rack and ruin looked so gloomy that they seemed frustrated to have been forgotten. But despite everything, this house radiated a certain warmth. Perhaps she was merely imagining it, but it seemed as though it was happy that someone had at last noticed it and that people were visiting again—just as they had when its former master had been alive.

  “This must be the library.”

  Verheugen pointed to an open double door with flaking white paint. Behind it was a room that was big enough to have been a second ballroom. There was no longer any indication that this room had once been a place of learning and conversation. The bookshelves were gone. All that was left was a number of boxes lying around on the floor. The air was damp and musty, and Lilly would not have been surprised to see a fat tropical spider drop down from the ceiling.

  “My goodness!” she said as she caught sight of the untidy piles of papers and books. The sides of the cardboard boxes had fallen prey to the dampness, and long cracks split their sides like gaping mouths. It was only a question of time before the boxes collapsed completely, and their contents were distributed across the filthy floor.

  “It’s such a shame that no one is interested in this house,” Verheugen said. “I should speak to a few people back home, those who may have enough money to buy the building.”

  “Do you think the government here would just allow it?”

  “I’m sure they would. And if a foundation were to buy it, all the better. Or it could be converted into a wonderful hotel. I’m amazed no one’s considered the possibility.”

  “The people here must have other things to do than worry about the weekend residence of their former oppressor. Even if they don’t see it like that, I’m sure they have more pressing problems.”

  “You’re right again. Now then, let’s have a look and see what treasures are hidden here.”

  “OK. I suggest you start on the right, and I’ll take the left. We can work slowly toward each other.”

  Verheugen nodded and they set to work.

  Lilly looked skeptically inside the first box. All it contained were a few bills from the 1940s. They were no use to anyone now—either the amounts due had long since been settled or forgotten, or the companies that had issued them no longer existed. On the bottom of the box Lilly felt a damp growth of mold that caused her to withdraw her hand quickly. Things did not look much better in the next box. Invoices, delivery notes, the remains of old schoolbooks with names on the covers that had faded to illegibility. A note in a child’s handwriting that declared how much its owner hated algebra. Beneath this were a few more schoolbooks in Dutch. These might have been of interest to someone, but they were worthless to her.

  “Have you found anything yet?” she asked Verheugen.

  “No, it’s all junk. It seems as though they forgot to burn it, and now people think it might be of value. What about you?”

  “The same. Do you know anyone who might have a use for damp-stained old schoolbooks?”

  “No. I suggest we leave them here.”

  “Good idea,” Lilly agreed.

  She was about to give up on the third box when she moved aside another moldy invoice to reveal a thick brown leather cover.

  “It can’t be!” she murmured, so softly that Verheugen had not heard. She pulled out the photo album. It was bound in thick tooled leather and felt fairly heavy—no wonder, as it contained a lot of photographs, both on paper and on thin plates.

  Lilly opened it reverentially and found herself looking into the faces of the governor and his household. She saw his wife and daughter as well as all the servants. Maids with starched aprons and caps, a butler with a strict expression, a cook, and, to judge from their clothes, two domestic servants and two stable boys. She was struck by the fact that all the servants appeared to be locals, none of whom looked as though their master treated them badly.

  The next few photos showed the interior of the house and the views from the windows. These included the terrace and the garden itself, which was a blend of native vegetation and Dutch horticulture. Lilly had to smile when she saw that there was even a bed containing beautiful tulips.

  The following pictures were less interesting. Obviously the album was not so much a personal family album as a kind of photographic record of the history of the house. There were photos of a reception for a sultan, a number of extremely important-looking men who would probably have smoked cinnamon cigars with the governor, official events, and even a three-foot-high Christmas tree imported by who knew whom for the festive celebrations.

  The next photo sent a shiver down Lilly’s spine. The woman in the middle was none other than Rose Gallway. The picture was a variation of the one she had seen in the newspaper. It seemed that the governor—Lilly was sure he would have been the owner of this album—had asked for a copy of his own.

  Unfortunately there was little of interest on the following pages. Rose appeared once more, again among a few people who clearly wanted to be seen with her. There were some more scenes involving important men, and after a while another picture of the whole household, in which the governor’s daughter was this time accompanied by a husband and child.

  As she leafed through, she noticed something beneath a semitransparent parchment-like interleaf, something thick that couldn’t be a photo plate. She carefully lifted the interleaf and saw a thin black notebook pressed between the pages. It clearly didn’t belong there, but over the years, during which the album had lain forgotten, it had become a part of it. Lilly carefully freed the little book and opened it.

  Compressed between the photos, it had been protected from the damp. The paper looked in good condition and, although the ink had run a little, the words were still clearly legible.

  The notebook was written in English, and Lilly’s breath caught in her throat as she realized who the author was.

  This diary is my atonement. Rose Gallway.

  The words on the first page seared themselves into Lilly’s eyes. Rose Gallway kept a diary! And she spoke of atonement! What could be concealed in it? And how did it get here? Had all the documents found after the departure of the Dutch colonial masters been stored here?

  Lill
y glanced furtively at Verheugen, who was busy rummaging through another box. She felt like showing him the little book immediately, but something held her back. It might seem ungrateful, but before she showed him this treasure, she wanted to read it herself, acquainting herself intimately with the woman who had once owned her violin.

  Apart from that, how would he react if she told him she wanted to take it with her? These were archived documents, and she could be risking a serious penalty if she simply took it for herself. This little notebook would be a real sensation for Gabriel’s music school.

  While Verheugen was still immersed in his box, Lilly quickly stowed the notebook out of sight beneath her T-shirt. I’ll decide what to do later, she thought. I want to read it first.

  “Well, Lilly, have you found anything?” she heard suddenly. She started. Had he noticed her hiding the notebook away?

  “You could say that,” she replied uncertainly, picking up the album.

  The notebook quickly reached her body temperature, and as she rose and crossed to the other side of the room, she hardly noticed it anymore.

  “Do you think there’ll be anything against me taking this with me?” she asked, handing the album to Verheugen.

  He whistled in amazement. “Well, what a find! I’d be surprised if anyone wanted this, but it’s an important document of the age.”

  That answered Lilly’s question. “Then I’d better leave it here.”

  “I would if I were you, but I’m sure no one would have anything against you making copies of the photos to take away.”

  Lilly nodded. “Have you found anything interesting?”

  “I’ve no idea whether there’s anything of interest here. They all look like accounting records to me. It seems as though the governor only left behind those and a few newspapers and magazines.”

  “It looks like they’re something for the people at the museum.”

  “True, but I think we should keep looking. Perhaps we’ll still find a church register or something of the sort. You never know—there may be some passionate love letters lying around here.” Verheugen winked. “I’m grateful to you for the opportunity to be here. This is the most exciting search I’ve ever undertaken.”