by Dawn Farnham
“In Brieswijk. You cannot expect me to give up the children to a life of uncertainty. Alexander is my son, Charlotte, as much as Adam.” He softened his tone. “But you could stay and be with them as much as you liked. I am offering you your freedom. The freedom to be with him.”
Charlotte looked at Tigran. He would not give up the children; she saw it in his face. She had wanted him to love Zan, and he did; she could not reproach him for it now. All the reasons she had needed him before were still there. She loved Zhen, with an insane, desperate love. But she needed Tigran, though this love was of a different kind. She sighed.
When Zhen returned, she took his hand and they walked to the terrace wall, down to where the mountains kissed the valley, and asked him what their life would be together. He told her of the land on the hill, his plans to build a house. It would not be a conventional life for her, he could not offer that. But he would be hers forever; they would be together. Even as he heard himself say these words, he knew it was hopeless. But he had to ask her and hear the response from her lips.
She stood looking down over the shifting shades of endless cloud which wrapped this place and told him what he feared, although he understood as well as any sensible man could. Ties were here. He could not offer her marriage, social respectability, a proper home for her children. These things were important, he knew. He was Chinese.
He left the next day. He was angry, expressing in his manner a silent, hardly discernible sullenness. Angry at her or himself she was not sure. Again they would part in anguish.
Well, so, he said, she had made her choice. He faced her and took her by the arms, and she felt the force of his fingers gripping her. But, he said, do not come to me again unless it is forever. He dropped his hands and stood looking down at her.
“Unless you can accept this way, do not see me again. You understand, Xia Lou.”
Her heart had contracted at these words, so firmly spoken, and she had felt a heaviness in her limbs, as if the blood in her veins had turned to molten lead. He meant it. He never said anything he did not mean. She bowed her head in sorrow, for what else was there to do? He stood silently looking at her. The fierceness dropped away like a discarded cloth, and he put his hand to her cheek. She felt doubt surface like bubbles. She nestled her head in his hand for a moment, and he held it still, as if to imprint the shape of her face on his palm. Then he turned and mounted the carriage, and in a second he was gone.
40
Tigran watched from the bedroom window as the carriage pulled away. It was over. She had made her choice. He dropped into a chair, half-drained, grateful she had chosen him. Tomorrow they would go back to the children in Batavia.
When she came upstairs and opened the door, he held out his arms. She sank onto his lap. She would never love him as she loved Zhen. It was unrealistic of him to ask it. Theirs was the love of first love, of youthful fire. She would be sad for a while, but not like before. He was glad he had given her a choice, glad she had chosen their family. Now it was time to be happy again.
When they arrived in Brieswijk, he knew that happiness was now a possibility. To his babu’s annoyance, she picked up Adam and spent hours with him. Alexander, who had forgotten her, gradually came to know his mother, though he adored his father more than anyone.
One night she came to Tigran’s room and climbed into his bed. He had been half-asleep, but as he felt her hand move around his waist and onto his chest, he had turned to her. She showed him the wedding band, which she had put back on her finger.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes,” she answered, putting her hands into his hair, and they smiled at each other.
Miriam became a regular visitor to Brieswijk, and Charlotte found a different side to her character. Without her overbearing husband, she had a gaiety and lightness which was charming. Takouhi and Charlotte convinced her to change her hair, dress more in fashion, and now they were all friends. Captain Palmer had leased an estate at Meester Cornelis to install his harem, and Miriam and Takouhi decided to turn the house at Nordwijk into a school for girls.
Nathanial had returned from the East, filled with anger for what he saw there. Famine was threatening in Cirebon. Villagers were fleeing the harsh constraints of this endless and, for them, profitless production. They were rounded up for punishment before being forced back to the regions they had fled. The Dutch, Nathanial fulminated, were turning the richest land on earth into a place of starvation and misery.
Nathanial and Charlotte began a tour of Brieswijk. Here, at least, he hoped to have some influence. The private estates had self-interest at heart; the needs of the Dutch state did not concern them. He engaged Charlotte and Tigran in talk of the policies of liberalisation which the Dutch government could not find, though they made the soundest economic sense. Indigo headed Nathanial’s list of abhorrent manufactures. There had never been such a noxious and crushing agriculture as this was for the Javanese peasant. To prove it, he took her to see the blue people.
For the first time, Charlotte crossed the Japanese bridge to the other side of the river. She could hardly believe that she had never done this before. The path led past the rice fields, some yellowing and ready for harvest, some springing fresh and green. The villagers planted the fields at different times to ensure a constant supply of new rice, and she found this chequered carpet of green and yellow a reassuring promise of abundance. After sawah, the wet rice fields, came the tegal, the dry fields where cucumbers, long beans, luffa vines and amaranth grew. Between were the big fish ponds, with beds of floating, leafy kangkong, the indispensible green vegetable of Asia. Nestled into a grove of long-leaved banana trees was a madrassah, a simple hut of bamboo posts and an atap roof; from inside came the boys’ voices, raised like the sleepy droning of bumble bees, in recitation of the Koran.
They walked on. Rising above the rice paddies was a vast field of head-high green plants covered in masses of pink and violet blossoms.
“Indigo,” said Nathanial. “The natives hate it because it is planted on the tegal fields where their vegetables and dry rice are usually grown. This crop here, on Tigran’s land, is two years old and still close to the village. After it has been harvested, the field will be useless for years to come, for the plant exhausts the soil quickly. Nothing else will grow here. In the Eastern provinces, this means the villagers must move constantly, opening up new fields further and further from their homes, walking hours each day. Even on Brieswijk, next year’s crop must be sown on the other side of the forest, and this land must be left to recuperate.”
Charlotte nodded. The field looked beautiful as they walked through it, but then, suddenly, she smelled an odour floating on the air, an odour so revolting that Charlotte could not breathe.
“The effluvia of the process,” said Nathanial, putting a hand to his nose. He had warned Charlotte, and she took out a perfumed handkerchief. The stench grew stronger as they arrived at the factory, a series of three-stepped vats and drying and pressing moulds set inside a fenced area by a small stream.
The putrid smell rose from the first vat, where the plants were steeped in water, rotting and bubbling. The ground around the vats was bright blue. Charlotte had never seen anything like it, as if they had wandered into a deep lake. The stream, too, was streaked with the dye. A mountain of rotting stalks stood behind the factory, steaming in the sun, swarming with flies. Men, their arms and chests stained blue, blue splashes on their faces, sat disconsolately taking the final product from the moulds, cutting it into small, hard, dry cakes of iridescent dark blue. They did not look up even as this white woman came into the grounds.
“When the fermentation is complete, the plant is drawn down into the beater vat, where the detritus is picked out of the liquid by hand, and it is churned continuously with paddles for two hours to add oxygen until it turns green and then violet-blue. Then the indigo turns into specks and flakes and sinks to the bottom like mud,” Nathanial explained.
Charlotte was feeling quite sick, but she felt she
must see this through, for the men on the ground had haunted faces of abject misery.
“The clear water is drained from the second vat, and the mud is spooned into bags to drain overnight,” said Nathanial. “The next day it goes into those moulds with holes, for pressing and drying.”
Charlotte could stay no more, and Nathanial walked quickly away with her, back to the village, speaking quickly as they went.
“The men who enter into this noxious manufacture, I have ascertained, do not live beyond seven years and must endure this hideous staining, which causes them humiliating miseries. The production befouls the air and the streams.”
Nathanial turned to Charlotte. “Charlotte, imagine this life. For this gruelling and disgusting manufacture, they receive no remuneration at all. It is part of the corvée. It is slavery, Charlotte, you can see. It must stop.”
Charlotte put her hand on Nathanial’s arm. She would speak to Tigran tonight, but, she added, Nathanial would have to talk to him, convince him perhaps to turn the fields to tobacco or some other equally profitable crop. He would have to give Tigran good reason to do it. Though he would want to heed her wishes, he would need an accounting.
Nathanial nodded in agreement, impressed by Charlotte’s sound judgement.
It was not just to help Nathanial that Charlotte proposed to Tigran a voyage together, but she knew he was pleased and agreed, for her sake, to read a report by Nathanial on alternatives to the indigo production. She asked Tigran to show her the Spice Islands, for she wanted to go away with him in their brig, to cleanse it of bad memory. So, for a time, they left Nathanial to make his report and took Queen of the South and two other ships on a trading voyage to Surabaya and on into the Moluccas. She wanted to learn Tigran’s commerce, and they both loved the sea. This ship had been a place of such misery to them both, but, now, standing in his arms, looking out over the night sea with its moonbeam trails, she saw that this contentment was love too.
As the months passed, she became Tigran’s enthusiastic student, learning the business of Brieswijk and Buitenzorg, finding she was clever and quick, enjoying the evenings spent at his side discussing, to her amazement, crops, trade and liberal economics.
One day, Charlotte was attending to some papers at the desk in the bedroom at Buitenzorg. Tigran had been showing her the accounts for the plantation. Today they would tour the tea factory together. The fire was burning fiercely in the big fireplace, for it was early, and the day was chill. She looked up as she heard a distant clamour in the mountain silence. She rose and went to the landing and called to the housekeeper, but there was no answer.
Frowning, she went downstairs, worried for the children. She went immediately to the playroom and saw the babus together with Alexander and Adam before the fire. It was so cold that she had told them to play in the house until the mist went off the hill a little and the day warmed. Seeing her, Zander came to her side and took her hand. He so rarely did this that she was arrested by the gesture, and she heard him say, very quietly, “Papa.” He wanted Tigran. She picked him up in her arms. “Papa is riding. He will come soon.”
She smiled, but he pushed against her. He was so strong that she was forced to put him down, and he looked at her with his dark almond eyes and, without a word, ran towards the door. He was so fast and sometimes so reckless that she followed him, alarmed, calling the babu.
As she passed through the hall, which, even with two fires burning at either end was still cold, the noise of the commotion grew greater. The big teak doors stood ajar, and Alexander slipped through. She ran after him, calling his name. As she passed outside, she saw the reason for the commotion. The syce was trying to calm Tigran’s horse, which was clattering its hooves against the flint of the courtyard, its eyes wild, panicked, sweaty. Charlotte stopped, her breath in her throat. She looked frantically back and forth, seeking Tigran. The babu, running and crying, grabbed Alexander. Servants gathered round, chattering and they all stood as the horse was calmed.
The gravity of the situation hit her. Tigran was not here! The two big black dogs which always ran by his side were not here. She let out a blood-curdling scream and fell to her knees. The syce was now shouting to the men, and the mandoor came forward, shouting orders. A search party: the master must have fallen. A man hoisted himself quickly onto Tigran’s mare and calmly began to urge her forward.
Charlotte rose, aided by the housekeeper and her maids.
“No, no, no!” She felt a hideous premonition. She went to her room and sat before the fire, staring. This was to be her punishment. Not the children; it would not be the children, nor her. Whatever it was that needed to be appeased, it would take Tigran, the very best thing, the most worthy one, the white prince. This is what the dark world did. Charlotte fell to her knees, and for the first time in her life, she began to pray. She said his name over and over again like a mantra, sending out a protective mantle.
It was dusk when they found him. He had been thrown from his horse, which had been frightened, they thought, by a snake: nearby was evidence of a nest. The dogs had lain by him like sentinels. It was their whining and keening that had led the party to him. They had put him in the study on a bed. His neck had been broken. Charlotte had known he was dead the minute she had seen his horse without him. Alexander, too, had known. He had spurned her comfort and buried himself in the arms of his babu.
She rose, finally, wrapped herself in a woollen shawl and went slowly down the stairs to the study. It had been cleared of everything but the bed upon which he lay. The door stood open, and candles were laid about his bier and throughout the room. Villagers and servants sat silently around him. The estate manager was present, the housekeepers, the maids, as well as Madi, who had brought him into the world, all keeping vigil over him throughout this long night. His body had been prepared, she could see, cleansed and dressed in white, his arms by his side, a white cloth covering him from his waist to the floor.
The room was cold, the yellow flames of the candles merely the colour of warmth, without its substance. Her breath faltered on the frosty air. The breaths of those around him, too, rose in a brumal tapestry, floated fleetingly and was consumed by the darkness. In the midst of this ghostly host, Tigran lay, as if asleep, yet no breath came from him.
She stood transfixed. Raindrops spattered against the windowpanes beyond the thick curtains, like muffled tears. She could not see where he was broken and for a moment thought they had made a mistake. Then Madi begin to chant, quietly, a haunting Javanese song, and the sound was like a sorrowful sacrament. She stepped haltingly up to him and touched his cheek. It was glacial, like ice on the moors, and she recoiled in horror.
But he looked still so like himself that she went up again and put her warm hand to his cheek, looking on his face, so late beloved, and all repulsion disappeared. She leaned over him, the warmth of her breath swirling about his face like a dewy mist, and put her lips to his. She took her shawl and covered his body carefully, pulling it to his neck. Then she put her fingers into his hair and rested her head against his chest. He had left her this morning, left their warm bed and dressed quickly for his ride. He had come to her for a kiss, nuzzling her neck like a puppy, and she had pushed him away playfully because his nose, his cheeks were cold. She had not kissed him good-bye because he had felt cold. Suddenly she began to shiver, her body trembling at this terrible thing.
41
Charlotte and Nathanial left the chapel grounds. She felt bludgeoned by remorse, bruised with guilt. This man who had loved her beyond reason haunted her. For months after his funeral, in the midst of some activity, she would suddenly drift into misery. Every time she thought about it, she thought of her fault, his love and kindness which she had not even repaid that morning with one small kiss. This kiss grew in her mind until it took on enormous importance. She could not shake the idea that it was this that had separated Tigran from life and death: if she had taken him into her arms that morning, he would be alive now.
Charlotte pl
ucked a gardenia flower and placed it carefully on the Balinese shrine. Tigran’s grave lay nearby. Perhaps he would find Surya again, and his baby daughters. She felt in her heart that he had never truly recovered from that first love, that in some way she had been Surya’s shadow. She shook her head. Delusion—delusion and guilt. She just wished it to be so, to assuage her own feelings. Nathanial, the man of science, of reason, had tried desperately to rationalise the events of that day, but he knew he was trying to help her fight a battle she had to fight alone.
They walked out into the park and looked down towards the distant silver gleam of the river. The pony trap was waiting, drawn by the same two gentle black-and-white ponies which had taken her on her first tour of these grounds. She moved between them, remembering, her hands caressing their soft noses, their big liquid eyes gazing at her. Nathanial helped her into the carriage. Charlotte took the reins and set the ponies at a clip down along the drive. She contemplated the vast grounds, now bathed in late afternoon light.
Tigran had appointed her legal guardian of their children and left everything to her: Brieswijk, the trading house, the plantations, the Singapore properties, all his vast fortune. She was now, undoubtedly, one of the richest women in the East Indies. This thought, too, left her exhausted with guilt. The oblivion of opium had tempted her, like a loving friend, to take him again into her arms, but her promise to Zhen and the thought of what humiliations and torments Tigran had endured to rid her of it gave her pause. Finally it was Nicolaus, who came with his own two children, with Alexander by his side and Adam in his arms, who gave her comfort, talking of his father, these little boys, of Tigran’s legacy. Resolve took the place of withering, guilt-laden inaction.
Nathanial had given her Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, for he lived by Pope’s words that “the proper study of mankind is man,” and she found, within this book, an inspiration.