The Hidden Force

by Louis Couperus

  Eldersma, gravely ill, had already gone, but Eva had not been able to accompany him with her little son, since she had severe malaria. When she had recovered somewhat, she sold up her belongings and planned to go to Batavia and stay with friends for three weeks until her boat sailed. She left Labuwangi with very mixed feelings. She had suffered greatly there, but had also thought a lot, and cherished a deep feeling for Van Helderen—such a pure, glorious feeling—of the kind, it seemed to her, that shone only once in a lifetime. She said goodbye to him as an ordinary friend, in the presence of others, and gave him only a handshake. But that handshake and those banal words of farewell filled her with such melancholy that she had to choke back the sobs. That evening, alone, she did not cry, but stared silently into space for hours. Her husband, ill, had left… she didn’t know how she would find him, or if she would find him at all. Distant Europe—after her years in the Indies—spread its shores in welcome, while its cities, its civilization, its art loomed up—but she was afraid of Europe. An unspoken fear that her intellectual powers had declined, made her almost afraid of her parents’ circle, to which she would return in four weeks’ time. A tremulous anxiety that people would find her colonial in her manners and ideas, in her speech and dress, in the upbringing of her child, made her shy in advance—her, with all her bravura of an elegant, artistic woman. Her piano playing had definitely gone downhill: she would no longer dare play in The Hague. And she thought it would be good to spend a few weeks in Paris to become a little more worldly wise, before presenting herself in The Hague…

  But Eldersma was too ill… And her husband, what would they think of him, changed—her fresh-cheeked, Frisian husband, now worn out, exhausted, yellow as parchment, neglectful of his appearance, gloomily complaining whenever he spoke?… Still, a soft vision of the fresh German countryside, Swiss snow, music at Bayreuth, art in Italy gleamed before her eyes, and she saw herself with her sick husband. No longer united in love, but united beneath the yoke of life that they had assumed together… Then there was her child’s upbringing! Oh, to save her child from the Indies! Yet he, Van Helderen, had never been out of the Indies. But he was unique, he was an exception.

  She had said goodbye to him… She had to forget him. Europe awaited her, and her husband, and her child…

  A few days later she was in Batavia. She scarcely knew the city; years ago she had been there for a few days, when she first came out to the Indies. In Labuwangi, in the outpost of her small district capital, Batavia had gradually become glorified in her imagination to be the great Eurasian capital, the centre of Eurasian civilization: a vague vision of majestic avenues and squares, along which the sumptuous colonnaded villas were arrayed, down which the elegant teams of horses jostled. She had always heard so much about the luxury of Batavia, and was now staying there with friends. He was the manager of a large trading company and their house was one of the loveliest villas on the main square. Very strangely, she had been immediately struck by the funereal atmosphere, the deadly melancholy of that large town full of villas, where thousands of different lives, as if shrouded in silence, rushed towards a future of money and leisure. It was as if all those houses—sombre, proud—despite their white pillars and their grand façades frowned like care-worn faces with a concern that tried to hide behind the show of distinction of the wide-leaved palms. The pillared houses, however transparent, however open they seemed, remained closed; the people were always invisible. Only in the mornings, visiting the shops on Rijswijk and Molenvliet, which, with a scattering of French names, tried to give the impression of an elegant Southern European shopping centre, did Eva see the exodus of white men into town: white in complexion, dressed in white and with an almost blank expression, blank with reflective concern, their distant look focused on the future, which they calculated as a few decades or a few periods of five years: and in such and such a year, having earned such and such, then away from the Indies and to Europe. It was like some fever other than malaria that wore them out, and which they felt wearing out their unacclimatized bodies, their unacclimatized souls, so badly that they would have liked as it were to skip that day and reach the day of tomorrow, the day of the day after tomorrow—days that brought them a little closer to their goal, because they were quietly afraid of dying before that goal was achieved. The exodus filled the trams with their deathly white: many, already well-off but not yet rich enough for their aim, drove in their cabs and buggies to the Harmonie club, and took the tram from there so as not to tire their horses.

  In the old town, in the distinguished dwellings of the most prominent Dutch merchants, built in the Dutch style, with oak staircases to the upper floors—now swathed in the thick oppressive heat of the east monsoon, almost tangible and making it difficult to breathe—they bent over their work, constantly glimpsing between their thirsty glances and the white desert of their papers the dewy mirage of that future, the refreshing oasis of their materialistic delusion: within a certain time, a certain amount of money and then away, away… to Europe… And in the villa quarter around the main square, along the green avenues, the women hid, the women remained invisible, all through the long, long day. The hot day passed, the hour of salutary coolness arrived, the period from five-thirty to seven: the men, exhausted, returned to their homes and rested; and the women, tired from their household chores, their children and their insignificant life, tired from the deathly emptiness of their existence, rested next to their husbands. At the time of salutary coolness there was rest, a short rest after bathing, putting on house clothes and taking tea, because seven o’clock was drawing anxiously close—when it would already be dark and one would have to go to a reception. A reception meant dressing up in hot European outfits, it was the dreadful hour of playing along with the salon culture and worldliness, but it also meant meeting so-and-so, and trying to take a step further towards the mirage of the future: money and final rest, in Europe. And after the villa quarter had been sombre under the sun all day, deathly quiet as if deserted—with the men in the old town and the women hidden in their houses—now in the darkness around the main square and along the green avenues a few teams of horses and a few European-looking people, who were going to a reception, came across each other. While around the main square and down the green avenues the other villas persisted in their funereal deathliness, filled with gloomy darkness, the one hosting a reception blazed with lamps among the palms. Apart from that, the deathliness remained everywhere, lingering over the houses where the tired people hid, worn out from work; the women worn out from nothing…

  “Wouldn’t you like to go for a bit of a drive, Eva?” asked her hostess, Mrs De Harteman, a Dutch housewife, white as wax, and always tired from her children. “But I’d prefer not to go with you, if you don’t mind: I’d prefer to wait for Harteman. Otherwise he’ll find no one in when he gets home. So you go, with your little boy.”

  And Eva, with her little boy, toured in the De Harteman’s carriage. It was the cool time of day. She met two or three other carriages: Mrs So-and-so and Mrs So-and-so, who were known to go for a drive in the afternoons. She saw a gentleman and a lady walking in the main square: that was so-and-so and so-and-so; they always walked, and were well known in Batavia. Apart from that she met no one. No one. At this salubrious hour the villa quarter remained as dead as a ghost town, like one great mausoleum among the greenery. And still, like a refreshing oasis, the main square stretched out like a vast meadow, where the scorched grass was beginning to turn green after the first rains, with houses and their enclosed gardens so far, far away that it was like the countryside, like woodland and fields and meadows, with the wide sky overhead, where the lungs drank in the air, as if for the first time that day they were absorbing oxygen and life: the vast sky each day displayed another riot of hues, an abundance of sunset and a glorious extinction of the blazing-hot day, as if the sun itself were breaking into liquid seas of gold among lilac threats of rain. And it was so wide and splendid, it was such a vast source of reinvigoration that
it really was a consolation that day.

  Yet no one saw it, apart from the two or three people in Batavia who were known to go for a drive or a walk. Night descended on the purple twilight, casting deep shadows. The town, which had been lifeless all day, with its frown of gloomy reflection, slept, weary and care-worn…

  It used to be different, according to old Mrs De Harteman, Eva’s friend’s mother-in-law. They had gone now, the sociable houses with their Indies hospitality, with their hospitable tables, their truly cordial welcome. Because the character of the average colonialist had changed, as if overshadowed by a reverse of fortune, by the disappointment of not reaching his goal quickly, his materialistic goal of self-enrichment. And in that bitterness it seemed that his nervous system also became embittered, just as his soul became gloomy, his body weakened and had no resistance to the crushing climate…

  Eva did not find in Batavia the ideal city of Eurasian civilization, as she had imagined it in East Java. In this great centre, concerned with money, lusting for money, all spontaneity had disappeared and life was reduced to eternal drowsy confinement in one’s office or house. People saw each other only at receptions, and apart from that communicated by telephone. The telephone killed all sociability among friends: people no longer saw each other, they no longer needed to dress up or get out of the carriage, since they chatted on the telephone, in sarong and linen jacket, and almost without moving. The telephone was close to hand and the bell was always jangling on the back veranda. People rang each other for no reason at all, just for the pleasure of ringing. Young Mrs De Harteman had a bosom friend, whom she never saw and whom she talked to every day on the telephone for half an hour. She sat down for it, so it didn’t tire her. She laughed and joked with her friend, without having to get dressed and without moving. She did the same with other friends: she paid her visits on the telephone. She ordered her shopping on the telephone. Eva, from her time in Labuwangi not being used to that eternal jangling and telephoning—which killed all conversation on the back veranda by allowing one to hear quite clearly half a conversation but with the reply inaudible to anyone else sitting there, like a constant one-sided rattle—became nervous and retired to her room. In the dreariness of this existence, full of worry and brooding for her husband, interrupted by the telephone chatter of her hostess, it was a surprise for Eva to hear of a special distraction: a bazaar, rehearsals for an amateur opera production. She attended one herself during those weeks and was astonished by the really excellent performance, as if given by those musical amateurs with an energy of despair in order to dispel the boredom of evenings in Batavia… Because the Italian opera had gone, and she had to laugh at the “events” section in the local newspaper, where the only choice was mostly between three or four shareholders’ meetings. Really, Eva felt that Labuwangi had been much livelier. True, she herself had contributed greatly to that liveliness, while Van Oudijck had always encouraged her, happy to make his district headquarters a pleasant, lively little town. She came to the conclusion that she preferred a little community in the provinces after all, with a few cultured, sociable European types—provided they got on together and didn’t squabble too much in close proximity—to pretentious, supercilious and gloomy Batavia. Only among the military was there any life. Only officers’ houses were lit at night. Apart from that, the town was dead on its feet all through the long, hot day, with its frown of worry, its invisible population of people looking to the future: a future of wealth and, even more perhaps, of leisure in Europe.

  And she longed to be off. Batavia suffocated her, despite her daily tour around the spacious main square. She had only one more melancholy wish: to say goodbye to Van Oudijck. Very oddly, this elegant and artistic woman had been struck and charmed by his character: that of a simple, practical man. Perhaps, just for an instant, she had felt something for him, deep inside, that contrasted with her friendship for Van Helderen: more an appreciation of his great human qualities than a feeling of platonic spiritual affinity. She had felt sympathetic compassion for him in those weird days of mystery: he all alone in his huge house, with the strange phenomena lurking all around him. She had felt deep sympathy for him when his wife, as it were, throwing away her exalted position, had left in a shameless burst of scandal, with no one knowing precisely why—his wife, at first always extremely correct, despite all her perversion, but gradually so consumed by the cancer of the strange phenomena that she had no longer been able to restrain herself, revealing the innermost depths of her degenerate soul with the utmost indifference. The red spatters of betel juice, spewed by some supernatural agent on to her naked body, had infected her, had eaten their way into her bone marrow, like a decomposition of her soul, to which she might very slowly succumb. The stories about her that were now circulating—about her life in Paris—could only be whispered, unspeakably perverse as they were.

  In Batavia, in conversations at receptions, Eva heard about it. When she asked about Van Oudijck, and where he was staying, and whether he would be leaving for Europe soon, after his resignation that was so unexpected—something that had stunned the entire official world—people were not sure, and wondered if he were no longer in Hotel Wisse, where they had seen him living for a few weeks, lying motionless in his chair on the front veranda, as if staring at a single point… He had scarcely gone out at all, he ate in his room and did not go into the restaurant, as if he—the man who had always had to deal with hundreds of people—had become shy. Finally Eva heard that Van Oudijck was living in Bandung. As she had a number of farewell visits to make there, she went to West Java. But there was no sign of him in Bandung: the hotel-keeper was able to tell her that Commissioner Van Oudijck had stayed at his establishment for a few days but had left, and he didn’t know where he’d gone. Until finally, by chance, she heard from a gentleman at table that Van Oudijck was living near Garut. She went to Garut, pleased to be on his trail, and there, at the hotel, they were able to tell her where he lived. She was not sure whether she should write to him first and announce her visit. It was as if she knew intuitively that he would make his excuses and she would not see him again. And on the point of leaving Java, she longed to see him, both out of sympathy and out of curiosity. She wanted to see for herself what had become of him, to get to the bottom of why he had resigned so suddenly and erased such an enviable position in life: a position immediately occupied by someone behind him jostling for advancement, eager for promotion. So very early the next morning, without advance warning, she drove off in a carriage from the hotel; the hotel-keeper had told the coachman directions. She drove a long way, past Lake Lellès, which the coachman pointed out to her: the sacred, gloomy lake with the ancient graves of saints on two islands, while above, like a dark, deathly cloud, there floated a constantly circling swarm of huge black bats, flapping their demonic wings and screeching their despairing wails, circling all the while—a mournful, dizzying contrast to the endless blue sky, the demons, once so shy of the light, had triumphed and no longer shunned the brightness of day, since they obscured it anyway with the shadow of their funereal flight. And it was so frightening: the sacred lake, the sacred tombs and above it, as it were, a swarm of black devils in the deep blue ether, because it was as if something of the mystery of the Indies suddenly revealed itself, no longer concealing itself in a vague blur, but actually visible in the sunlight, causing dismay with its impending victory… Eva shuddered, and as she looked anxiously upwards, it seemed to her as if the black swarm of wings would plummet downwards. Onto her… But the shadow of death between her and the sun only circled vertiginously, high above her head, and only shrieked in despairing triumph… She drove on, and the plain of Lellès stretched green and inviting before her. The moment of revelation had passed: there was nothing more but the green and blue luxuriance of nature on Java; the mystery had already become hidden again among the delicate waving bamboo groves and dissolved in the azure ocean of the sky.

  The coachman drove slowly up a steep road. The liquid paddy fields clim
bed upwards step by step in reflecting terraces, an ethereal green of the carefully planted rice shoots. Then suddenly it was like an avenue of ferns: giant ferns, which rose upwards and fanned out, and big, fabulous butterflies fluttering around. And between the ethereal bamboos a small house became visible, half stone, half woven bamboo, with a garden around it containing a few white pots of roses. A very young woman in a sarong and linen jacket, with a soft golden blush on her cheeks, jet black eyes peering in curiosity, observed the unexpected sight of the very slowly approaching carriage and fled indoors. Eva got out, and coughed. Around a screen in the central gallery she suddenly glimpsed Van Oudijck’s face, peering, He disappeared at once.

  “Commissioner!” she called, in her sweetest voice.

  But no one came, and she was embarrassed. She did not dare sit down and still she didn’t want to leave. Around the corner of the house peered a small face, two small brown faces of two very young Eurasian girls, and then disappeared again, giggling. In the house Eva could hear whispering, very emotional it seemed, very nervous. “Sidin! Sidin!” she heard them shouting and whispering. She smiled, gaining courage, and walked around to the front veranda. Finally an old woman came, perhaps not so old in years, but old and wrinkled and dull-eyed, in a coloured chintz jacket and shuffling along on slippers and with a few words of Dutch before reverting to Malay, smiling politely she asked Eva to sit down and said that the Commissioner would be there immediately. She also sat down, smiling, and didn’t know what to say, or what to answer when Eva asked her something about the lake. Instead she ordered syrup, and iced water and wafers, and did not talk, but smiled and attended to her guest. When the young girls’ faces peered round the house, the old woman stamped her slippered foot angrily and scolded them, after which they disappeared giggling and raced away to the sound of bare feet. Then the old woman smiled again with her ever-smiling wrinkled mouth and looked in embarrassment at the lady as if apologizing. And it was a long time before Van Oudijck finally arrived. He welcomed Eva effusively, and apologized for keeping her waiting. He had obviously shaved quickly and put on a clean white suit. He was visibly pleased to see her. The old woman, with her eternal apologetic smile, left them. In that first, buoyant moment, Van Oudijck struck Eva as completely his old self, but when he had calmed down and pulled up a chair and asked her if she had news of Eldersma, and when she herself was going to Europe, she saw that he had grown old, become an old man. It didn’t show in his figure, which in his well-starched white suit still retained something of its broad-shouldered military bearing, something rugged, with only the back slightly bowed as if under a burden. But it showed in his face, in the dull, uninterested look, in the deep furrows in the almost pained forehead, the yellowed, parched look of his skin, while his broad moustache around which the jovial lines still played, was completely grey. There was a nervous tremor in his hands. He questioned her about what people had said in Labuwangi, still with some residual curiosity about the people there, about something that had once been so dear to him… She glossed over it all, putting the best face on everything, and was especially careful not to mention any of the rumours: that he had deserted his post, run off, no one knew why.