The Hidden Force

by Louis Couperus

  Addy, in a cheerful mood, quickly had his bath, changed into a fresh white suit, and they went along the road past the paddy fields into the native quarter. It was already growing dark under the huge trees: the banana plants raised their leaves like fresh green oars, and under the stately canopy of the coconut palms nestled the bamboo houses, poetically Oriental, idyllic with their thatched roofs, the doors usually closed and, if they were open, framing a small black interior with a vague outline of a sleeping bench with a darkening figure squatting on it. The mangy dogs barked; the children, naked, with bells attached to their bellies, ran away and peered from the houses. The women remained calm when they recognized the Seducer, and laughed, blinking as he passed in all his glory. Addy pointed out the house where his old nursemaid Tijem lived, the woman who helped him, who always opened her door to him whenever he needed her hut, who worshipped him, just as his mother adored him and his sisters and little nieces. He showed Theo the house and thought of last night’s walk with Doddy, under the cemaras. Tijem the nursemaid saw him and came towards him in delight. She squatted down by him, hugged his leg to her withered breast, rubbed her forehead against his knee, then she kissed his white shoe and looked at him as if enraptured: her handsome prince, her radèn, whom she had rocked to sleep as a chubby little boy, already in love as she held him in her arms. He patted her on the shoulder, gave her two and a half guilders, and asked if she knew where si-Oudijck was, as his brother wanted to see him.

  Tijem got up and beckoned them to follow her. It was a long walk. They left the native quarter and found themselves on an open road along which lay rails and the bamboo baskets in which sugar was transported to the boats lying ready there at a jetty on the River Brantas. The sun was setting, in a huge fan-shaped display of orange rays; the distant lines of trees were like dark, plump velvet blurred in the splendid glow, marking the limit of the paddy fields that were not yet planted, the gloomy land lying fallow. A few men and women issued from the factory on their way home. At the river, beneath a sacred banyan tree consisting of five intertwined trunks with an extensive root system, a small market with portable kitchens had been set up. Tijem called the ferryman and he took them across the orange-tinted Brantas, the last light of the sun fanning out like a peacock’s tail. Once they reached the other side, night descended hurriedly with curtains of mist, and the clouds, which all through that November had been threatening on the low horizons, created an oppressive, sultry atmosphere. And they entered another native quarter, illuminated here and there by a paraffin lamp. Until they finally came to a house made half of bamboo, half of Devoe crates, and covered half in tiles, half in thatch. Tijem pointed and, again crouching to hug and kiss Addy’s knee, she asked his leave to go back. Addy knocked on the door: there was the sound of some grumbling and stumbling, but when Addy called out the door was opened with a single kick and the two young men entered the only room in the house—half bamboo, half wood from crates. There was a sleeping bench with a few dirty cushions in a corner, in front of which dangled a limp, chintz curtain, plus a rickety table and a pair of chairs, a paraffin lamp without a globe on it on the table, and small household items cluttered on a crate in a corner. A sour opium smell permeated everything.

  And at the table sat si-Oudijck with an Arab, while a Javanese woman squatted on a sleeping couch, preparing herself some betel. The half-caste hurriedly screwed up some sheets of paper lying on the table between them, visibly annoyed at the unexpected visit. But he soon recovered and put on a jovial air, calling out: “Well, Prince, Susuhunan! Sultan of Pajaram! Sugar Baron! How are you, handsome one, ladies’ man?”

  His jovial torrent of greetings went on and on, as he gathered the papers together and signalled to the Arab, who promptly disappeared through the other door at the back.

  “And who have you got with you, Lord Adrianus, pretty Lucius?…”

  “Your brother,” replied Addy.

  Si-Oudijck suddenly looked up.

  “Well, well,” he said, speaking a mixture of broken Dutch, Javanese and Malay. I recognize him, my legitimate brother. And what has the fellow come for?”

  “Just to see what you look like…”

  The two brothers surveyed each other, Theo with curiosity, pleased to have made this discovery as a weapon to be used against the old man, if such a weapon should ever be necessary; the other, si-Oudijck, keeping hidden within himself—behind his shrewd brown leering face—all his jealousy, bitterness and hatred.

  “Do you live here?” asked Theo, just for something to say.

  “No, I’m staying with her for the moment,” answered si-Oudijck nodding towards the woman.

  “Did your mother die a long time ago?”

  “Yes. Yours is still alive, isn’t she? She’s in Batavia. I know her. Do you ever see her?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm… Do you like your stepmother better?”

  “We get on all right,” said Theo drily. “I don’t think the old man knows you exist.”

  “Oh, yes, he does.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Have you ever talked to him?”

  “Yes. In the past. Years ago.”

  “And?…”

  “Did no good. He says I’m not his son…”

  “It’s probably difficult to prove.”

  “Legally, yes. But it’s a fact, common knowledge. Known all over Ngajiwa.”

  “Have you no proof at all?”

  “Only my mother’s oath on her deathbed, before witnesses.”

  “Come on, tell me a bit more. Come for a walk with us, it’s stuffy in here…”

  They left the hut and strolled back through the native quarters, while si-Oudijck talked. They walked along the Brantas, which wound along in the dim evening light under a sprinkling of stars.

  It did Theo good to hear about this, about his father’s housekeeper when he was just a controller, rejected after being unjustly accused of unfaithfulness: the child born later and never recognized, never supported; the boy, roaming from one native quarter to another, romantically proud of his degenerate father, whom he observed from afar, following with his leering gaze as that father became an assistant commissioner and then a commissioner, married, divorced, remarried; occasionally learning to read and write after a fashion from a native clerk with whom he was on friendly terms… It did the legitimate son good to hear this, because deep down, however blond and white he might be, he was more the son of his Eurasian mother than his father’s son; because deep down he hated his father, not for any specific reason, but because of a secret instinctive antipathy, because, despite his appearance and demeanour of a blond, white-skinned European, he felt a secret affinity with this illegitimate brother, felt a vague sympathy for him, since they were both sons of the same motherland, with which their father had no emotional ties except those he had acquired during his training: the artificial, humanely cultivated love of the rulers for the land they ruled. Since childhood Theo had felt like this, far removed from his father; and later that antipathy had become a smouldering hatred. He enjoyed hearing his father’s irreproachable reputation being demolished: a high-minded man, a senior official of absolute integrity, who loved his family, who loved his district, who loved the Javanese, who wanted to support the Prince’s family—not only because his instructions set out in the Government Gazette required him to respect the position of the Javanese nobility, but because his own heart spoke to his, whenever he remembered the noble old pangéran… Theo knew, of course, that his father was like that—so exalted, so noble, that he had such integrity—and it did him good, in the mystery-filled evening by the Brantas, to hear that irreproachable character, that exalted, noble integrity being picked apart; it did him good to meet an outcast who in an instant had covered that high and mighty father figure in slime and filth, torn him from his pedestal, brought him down to the abject level of everyone else—sinful, evil, heartless, ignoble. He felt a wicked joy in his heart, like the one felt at possessing the wife that his father adored. He d
id not yet know what to do with that dark secret, but he accepted it as a weapon; he sharpened it that evening, as he listened to the half-caste with his leer, who became worked up and started ranting. And Theo put away his secret in a safe place, storing his weapon deep inside. Old grievances came to the surface, and he, too, the legitimate son, launched into a tirade against his father, admitted that the Commissioner no longer tried to gain advancement for his son, any more than he would for any clerk: that he had once recommended him to the managers of an impossible company, a rice plantation, where he, Theo, had not been able to stand it for more than a month, that he had left Theo to his fate, was obstructive when he tried to obtain concessions, even in districts other than Labuwangi, even in Borneo, until he had been forced to kick his heels and live on charity, finding no work because of his father’s attitude, tolerated in that house where he hated everything.

  “Except your stepmother!” si-Oudijck interjected drily.

  But Theo went on, giving vent to his feelings in turn and telling his brother that even if he was recognized and legitimized, things would still be pretty lean. In this way they egged each other on, glad to have met and to have become friends for this brief hour. Next to them walked Addy, amazed at this rapid sympathy but, apart from that, without a thought in his head. They had crossed a bridge and via a detour had arrived behind the factory buildings at Pajaram. Here si-Oudijck took his leave from them, shaking Theo’s hand, which slipped him a few two-and-a-half-guilder coins that were eagerly accepted, with a flicker of the furtive look but without a word of thanks. And Theo and Addy headed past the now silent factory towards the mansion, where the family were walking around outside in the garden and in the avenue of cemaras. And as the two young men approached, the eight-year-old golden child, the old mama’s foster-princess, came to meet them, with her fringe and her rice-powdered forehead, in her sumptuous doll’s clothes. She walked towards them, suddenly stopping when she reached Addy and looking up at him. Addy asked what she wanted but the child didn’t reply, just looked up at him, and then, stretching out her hand, she stroked his hand with hers. Some obviously irresistible magnetism had drawn the shy child to him, making her walk up to them, stop and stroke him, so that Addy laughed out loud, bent down and kissed her light-heartedly. The child skipped away contentedly. And Theo, still worked up from that afternoon—first by his conversation with Urip, then by his confrontation with Addy, his meeting with his half-brother, the confidences about his father—feeling bitter and full of his own problems, was so irritated by the trivial behaviour of Addy and the little girl, that he exclaimed, almost angrily: “You’re hopeless… you’ll never be anything but a ladykiller!”

  BOOK IV

  1

  OVERALL, LIFE HAD BEEN KIND to Van Oudijck. Born into a simple Dutch family with no money, he had spent his youth at a harsh, though never cruel, school. Serious from an early age, he had worked hard from the outset, looking towards the distant future, to a career, to the honourable position he was eager to assume as soon as possible among his fellow men. His time as a student of colonial administration in Delft had been fun enough for him to feel that he had once been young, and because he had once taken part in a masquerade, he actually believed that he had had a very wild youth, squandering money and painting the town red. His character was composed of a great deal of quiet Dutch solidity, a generally somewhat sombre and dreary earnestness, intellectual and practical: used to seeking his rightful place in human society, his ambition had developed rhythmically and steadily into a temperate professional ambition, but had developed only along the lines his eye tended to focus on—the hierarchical line of the Colonial Service. Things had always gone his way: his considerable capacities won him considerable esteem, he had become an assistant commissioner earlier than most and a commissioner at a young age, and his ambition had actually already been satisfied, since his position of authority was in complete harmony with his nature, whose desire for power had kept pace with its ambition. He was actually quite content, and although his eye saw much further and he glimpsed a seat on the Council of the Indies, and even the governor general’s throne, there were days when, serious and contented, he maintained that becoming a commissioner first class—besides the higher pension—had little to commend it except at Samarang and Surabaya, but East Java was very troublesome, Batavia had such an odd and almost diminished position, amid so many senior officials, members of the Council of the Indies and heads of department. And so, although he kept one eye on possible preferment, his practical and moderate nature would have been quite satisfied if someone had been able to predict that he would die as commissioner of Labuwangi. He loved his district and he loved the Indies; he felt no nostalgia for Holland or the trappings of European civilization, and yet he himself remained extremely Dutch, with a particular hatred for anything mixed-race. This was the contradiction in his character, since he had married his first, Eurasian wife purely out of love, and he loved his children, whose Indies blood was clearly apparent—outwardly with Doddy, inwardly with Theo, while René and Ricus were thoroughgoing young Eurasians—with a pronounced paternal love, full of the latent tenderness and sentimentality hidden deep inside: a need to give and receive in the bosom of the family. Gradually this need had extended to the circle of his district: he took a paternal pride in his assistant district commissioners and controllers, among whom he was popular and liked; only once in the six years that he had been district commissioner of Labuwangi had he been unable to work with a controller, a half-caste, whom after a period of patience with the man and with himself he’d had him transferred, or had fired him as he put it. And he was proud that, despite his authoritarian regime, despite his strict insistence on hard work, he was popular among his staff. He was all the more distressed by that mysterious, persistent enmity with the Prince, his “younger brother” according to Javanese titulature, in whom he would have liked to find a real younger brother, who under his tutelage governed his Javanese population. It pained him that this was his lot, and he thought of other princes, not only the noble pangéran, but others that he knew: the Prince of D——, educated, speaking and writing pure Dutch, the author of crystal-clear Dutch articles in newspapers and magazines; the Prince of S——, a little frivolous and vain but an extremely wealthy benefactor, a dandy in European society, gallant with the ladies. Why was he in Labuwangi saddled with this silent, angry, secretly fanatical shadow puppet, with his reputation as a saint and a magician, stupidly idolized by the people, in whose welfare he took no interest and who worshipped him only because of the prestige of his ancient name, and in whom he, Van Oudijck, always felt a resistance to his authority, never openly expressed but tangible beneath the Prince’s icy correctness. And on top of that, the brother in Ngajiwa, the card-player, the gambler—what had he done to deserve such princes?

  Van Oudijck was in a gloomy frame of mind. He was used to receiving occasional, regular anonymous letters, slanders spat out poisonously from quiet corners—one defaming an assistant district commissioner, another a controller, then smearing the native chiefs or his own family—sometimes in the form of a friendly warning, sometimes in that of vicious schadenfreude, wishing mainly to open his eyes to the shortcomings of his officials and the misdemeanour of his wife.

  He was so used to these uncountable letters, which he read fleetingly, if at all, then tore them up without the slightest concern. Since he was used to making up his own mind, the spiteful warnings made no impression on him, however much they reared their heads, like hissing snakes among all the letters that arrived daily in the post. And he’d always had such a blind spot for his wife. He had continued to see Léonie in the serenity of her smiling indifference and in the circle of domestic warmth that she certainly created around her—in the cavernous emptiness of the commissioner’s mansion that with its chairs and ottomans seemed constantly arranged for receptions—that he could never believe one jot of those slanders. He never talked about them. He loved his wife devotedly, and since in company
he always saw her virtually silent, since she never flirted or behaved coquettishly, he never caught a glimpse of the depravity of her soul. In fact, he was quite blind in domestic matters. At home he had the kind of utter blindness that so often afflicts men who are extremely knowledgeable and competent in their business or professional life, eagle-eyed at work but myopic at home; used to analysing things en masse, and not the details of an individual soul; whose knowledge of humanity is based on principle, and who divides human beings into types, as if casting an old-fashioned play; who can immediately assess the work capacity of their subordinates, but who have no inkling of the psychological complexity of the members of their household, with its intertwined, tangled arabesques like overgrown vines—constantly looking over their heads, constantly missing the inner meaning of their words, with no interest in the multicoloured emotions of hate, envy and love unfolding rainbow-like before their very eyes. He loved his wife and he loved his children, because of his need for paternal feelings, for fatherhood, but he knew neither his wife nor his children. He knew nothing about Léonie and had never suspected that Theo and Doddy had secretly remained faithful to their mother, so far away in Batavia, living in unspeakable degradation, and had no love for him. He believed that they did love him, and when he thought about them, it aroused a dormant tenderness in him.