It was an age before Mertens’ wife returned with his bag. He took out a thermometer, shook it and placed it under Norman’s arm. The poor boy opened his eyes and looked into the middle distance. They were large and round and bloodshot. I told him that everything was going to be all right, but he didn’t respond. Then his eyes closed again and he lay still. I thought he seemed better, but Mertens frowned. He said that it was some kind of poisoning, that it was serious. He put a stethoscope to his ears and spent a long time listening to the boy’s heart. I sat on the bed and took Norman’s hand. It was ice-cold. His mouth hung open and his breathing was shallow. I looked at his golden hair, all matted and wet. Mertens was still checking the heartbeat when he suddenly cursed under his breath. He put his ear to the boy’s heart. I held my breath. Mertens listened for a few more moments, and then said, ‘I’m afraid he’s gone.’
The next morning, I woke on the sofa, still in my dress uniform. My head was on fire. I sat up and smoothed down my hair. Strong bands of sunlight slid through the wooden slats on the windows, making me blink. The air in the room was hot and stale. Events of the previous night slowly came back to me. I remembered drinking brandy, while Mertens tried to console me, then the doctor leaving very late with his wife. I remembered lashing out at Gerda when she tried to comfort me. I remembered the heaviness of my breathing when I was finally alone.
I stood up and staggered to the back of the villa. In the bedroom, Gerda was still asleep. I walked to the side of the bed, where she lay curled up. Her long hair was uncoiled on the pillow. I grabbed it and pulled her out of bed. She fell on to the floor, screaming. As I dragged her out of the bedroom, I felt clumps of hair come away. She tried to cling on to the furniture and begged me to stop, but I shouted that she was a vain hag and continued pulling her along the floor. I dragged her into the living room. All she wanted to do was fuck my officers. Worst of all, she was responsible for Norman’s death, and I was going to punish her for that. I let her go. She held her head and sobbed. I kicked her as hard as I could in the stomach.
I was given compassionate leave by General Biesz. With the help of the garrison pastor, I made arrangements for the funeral. I consented to a burial in the army cemetery and, after Mertens had completed the post-mortem, I put my son into the ground. He was buried with full military honours. At the service, the garrison brass band played the ‘Monte Carlo March’, a song that Norman and I used to march to on board the ship from Holland. I broke down; I could not help myself.
During my leave, I hardly said a word to Gerda. I slept on the sofa and spent time either in the mess halls, where I took my meals, or walking in the city. Every face I saw was Norman’s. In the markets, on street corners or in bars, I heard the boy calling out. Sometimes I thought I could see him, just disappearing round a corner, or through a doorway. Such a sweet boy. I wrote to Louise, informing her of Norman’s death. I wrote that his loss had cracked something inside me. I received a reply from her post-haste, in which she said I should never have married Gerda.
I was at the mess one day, drinking in the late afternoon, when Mertens sat down beside me. He had been looking for me all day, he said. I offered him a brandy, but he declined. He told me he had some news about Norman’s postmortem. The results had been negative for poisoning, but he had since discovered that Norman had been poisoned after all. He went on to say that my maid, who had contracted cholera and was being cared for in the hospital, had died the previous night. Before she died, though, she had confessed to poisoning Norman. I stared at Mertens. Words failed me. I searched my mind for a reason. Mertens said it was because of that soldier I had disciplined about the dog. The soldier had been her betrothed. She had poisoned Norman’s rice the night of the reception because of the punishment I had administered.
In a matter of days, I received orders from General Biesz to transfer immediately to the Willem I military establishment at Bejoe-Biroe in Java. The general said the situation was ‘too delicate’ for me to stay. I cleared out my desk and gathered up the papers I needed to take with me. I said a brief farewell to my secretary and to the colleagues who were still at work this late in the afternoon. They said nothing, except goodbye. I was sure the rumours had already started. I crossed the compound, a dried mud clearing, faced on all four sides by arches. I realised that my new posting was in fact a demotion and that I would never see this compound again. I couldn’t stomach the humiliation. Biesz had never liked me and now he was siding with the natives. I felt a pain behind my eyes and across my chest. I flagged down a rickshaw on the road outside the compound. As the porter ran through the streets of Medan, I felt like hitting somebody.
When I arrived at the villa, I paid the porter ten cents and walked on to the verandah. I went inside and looked for Gerda to tell her to start packing – we were to leave at the weekend. I went into the kitchen, then the bedroom, where I saw Gerda in bed with a man. I saw a uniform lying on a chair. The man looked at me, swore under his breath and got out of bed. He quickly put on his uniform. Only when he was dressed did I recognise him as the young naval lieutenant at the reception. The man stood, waiting for some kind of reprisal. I told him to get out. He left quickly and quietly.
Gerda was sitting up in bed, clutching the sheets to her breasts. I studied her. I asked where Non was and she said that the wet nurse had taken her for a walk. I took a step forward and saw her shrink away from me. I told her I wanted a divorce. She looked at me strangely, clearly not expecting that. I slapped her full across the face. She let out a cry and fell to one side. I did nothing more. I realised I was too tired. I told her again that I wanted a divorce, that I wanted it so much I would even let her divorce me. She said no. When I asked why not, she said that she wasn’t going to let me rob her of her rights to a pension. I felt like spitting in her face and promised to myself that I would rob her of everything else.
3
Gamelan
In 1580, Sir Francis Drake landed in Java while circumnavigating the globe in his ship the Golden Hind. During his stay, he visited a royal court and was invited to hear a performance of the court’s ‘gamelan’. In his ship’s log, he described it as ‘country-musick, which though it were of a very strange kind, yet the sound was pleasant and delightfull’. He was almost certainly the first European to hear a gamelan performance.
A gamelan is described by those who play it as a single large instrument, but it is in fact an ensemble of tuned percussion instruments, consisting mainly of gongs (a Javanese word), metallophones and drums. The wooden frames of the instruments are sometimes embellished with carvings of serpents or dragons and are usually painted in the royal colours of red and gold. Gongs and drums are common throughout South-east Asia, but the gamelan tradition is unique to the islands of Java, Bali and Lombok in Indonesia.
The first gamelans were made at the behest of Java’s ancestral sultans and housed in their courts. They were made of bronze, but more recent gamelans are made of brass or iron, especially those found in the poorer Javanese villages. The oldest known gamelan is the Gamelan Selonding, whose bronze bars were cast more than 2,000 years ago.
The origins of the gamelan are uncertain, as there are no written records, but from reliefs found on temple walls and ancient bronze drums, it has now been established that the use of the instrument was heavily determined by cultural influences from China and, most importantly, India. Hinduism arrived in Java from India in the first century ad. Buddhism arrived later, and the two religions dominated until the fifteenth century, when Islam spread through the islands.
The last of the great Javan Hindu kingdoms, Majapahit, was conquered by Islamic invaders around 1500. The largest and loudest of Java’s court gamelans, the Gamelan Sekaten, was created at that time at the command of Java’s first Muslim prince. He built two huge gamelans and ordered that they be played continuously for a week at a newly built mosque to mark the birth of Mohammed. It was hoped that the largely Hindu population would be drawn to the new Islamic faith. Today, about ninet
y per cent of Java’s population is Muslim, but the gamelan tradition still displays its Hindu-Buddhist roots.
A complete gamelan is actually two sets of instruments, each in a different scale: one is called laras slendro and has five notes; the other is called laras pelog and has seven notes. The two sets are laid out at right angles to each other.
Each instrument within a gamelan has a clear role to play, which is reflected in the way a gamelan is laid out. A central melody is played on metallophones in the middle of the gamelan and is then elaborated on by instruments at the front. Finally, the various gongs at the back are used as ‘punctuation’, marking off small sections within the larger melody.
The metallophones in the middle are of two types: the saron, which have no resonators and are struck with hard hammers, and the gendèr, which do have resonators and are played with soft hammers. These instruments play the ‘spine’ of the melody, called the balungan.
At the front are the small kettle gongs (bonangs) and some gendèr, as well as various string or wind instruments, including fiddles (rebab), bamboo flutes (suling) and zithers (siter). These all have a wider range than the balungan instruments and are said to play the hidden melody ‘sung by the musicians in their hearts’.
Each of the gongs at the back has an onomatopoeic name: kenong, ketuk or kempul. The largest gong, called the gong ageng, is the most important instrument because it is believed to house the soul or spirit of the gamelan and no piece of music can begin or end until it is struck.
A gamelan can be played by up to forty people at any one time, but there is no conductor. The whole is co-ordinated by a drummer who sits in the middle of the gamelan, playing a range of double-headed drums. There is no musical notation and no improvisation – each piece of music has to be committed to memory.
Each player in the gamelan learns how to play every instrument, starting with the simpler instruments at the back and working their way forwards. There are no soloists but, during very lengthy performances, the players sometimes change places or are substituted altogether. No two gamelans are alike and, in time, Javanese musicians are able to tell the gamelans apart according to their tones.
On hearing a gamelan performance for the first time, the Spanish writer Miguel Covarrubias described the music as ‘an Oriental ultra-modern Bach fugue, an astounding combination of bells, machinery and thunder’.
4
Bejoe-Biroe, Java, Dutch East Indies, 1900–01
Neither for the one, nor for the other did I have any specific feeling of friendship, nor enmity. During the year and a half I used to know the MacLeod family, the conduct of Mrs MacLeod, notwithstanding the many rude insults she had to endure in public from her husband, was perfectly correct. I have often wondered whether Margaretha Zelle might not have grown into a good wife and mother, if her husband had been a more equable and sensible man. Her marriage to the uneven-tempered and excitable MacLeod was doomed to failure.
Dr Roelfsema, in a letter to the Editor,
Algemeen Handelsblad, 1920
One morning, after she and MacLeod had been in Bejoe-Biroe for several months, Gerda felt groggy and couldn’t wake up. She had a stomach-ache and slept through till midmorning, when the maid brought her some tea. Then she fell asleep again. When the maid looked in on her in the afternoon, she was still unconscious and had developed a fever. Concerned, the maid hurried to the small barracks nearby where MacLeod worked. He told her to fetch Dr Roelfsema and carried on with his duties.
Roelfsema examined Gerda for ten minutes, after which he told the maid to leave the bungalow immediately. He picked Non up, closed the door after him, walked to the barracks and handed Non to MacLeod. He told him that his wife had typhoid fever and that no one except himself or MacLeod was to enter the house until he said so. MacLeod sighed and nodded.
Gerda stayed in bed, slipping in and out of sleep. She developed spots on her arms and abdomen. The fever became worse. She could only hold down black tea or thin soup and her body weight decreased drastically. The doctor prescribed a course of aspirin and looked in on her twice a day. He had no other medication to give her, he explained – there was little else he could do.
After nearly three weeks the fever broke, but Gerda was still too weak to get up. The maid returned to help care for her. One night, Gerda woke, sensing someone in the room. She saw the maid placing hot tea by her bed. Because it was still dark outside, she was confused.
‘What time is it?’ she said.
The maid opened the wooden shutters and pointed outside.
‘Mata hari,’ she said.
Gerda sat up and looked out. She could see the first washes of light in the east. Dawn, she thought. The maid smiled and left. Gerda sat still, waiting for her head to clear, then drank some tea. There were large black leaves and cloves in the hot water. It smelled like jasmine.
For the first time since she had been taken ill, she felt like walking. She got up and put on her white silk peignoir. Her waist seemed so thin. Her cheeks were gaunt, but she felt better, cleaner somehow. In the living room, MacLeod was lying on the sofa with a tartan blanket covering him. She crept past and went outside. The grass was wet. She walked away from the bungalow, under the brightening sky and into the banyan trees. Her legs felt weak and unused.
The jungle was difficult to walk through: aerial roots sprouted from the trees above and sank down into the soil. Lianas and vines connected each tree to every other. She heard dripping all around her. The jungle seemed alive. The foliage quivered as water dripped from above and unseen birds uttered strange clicks and squawks. The tops of the chaotic trees were as high as a cathedral roof. She stepped carefully through the undergrowth, feeling a little dizzy but calm. Insects stopped buzzing when she approached them. She thought she could hear music, soft music, coming through the trees from somewhere in front of her.
After she had crept through the jungle for some time, the trees thinned out and she could see huts in front of her. The sun had risen now and the music was louder. She stepped out into a clearing, where there was a kampong made up of about fifteen wood-and-leaf huts. As she approached the source of the music, she could make out ten or more men sitting on the hard ground, each in front of a different instrument, which he struck with hammers. She stood a little way off and watched them.
Some of the instruments looked like rows of kettledrums topped with large balls. Others were like xylophones. She saw two gongs behind one of the men. The wooden casings for the instruments were all painted in the same red and gold. The men, dressed in simple, ragged clothes, didn’t talk or look at each other, but just kept their eyes on the keys and struck softly. Gerda was captivated by the sound, so slow and soothing. There was a fire burning nearby; the smoke rose directly upwards from it, drifting through the canopy of huge leaves and vines. She could smell patchouli oil.
Then she noticed two young girls as they came out from behind one of the huts. Their pepper-red silk sarongs were trimmed with gold and trailed on the ground. They were very slim. Both wore metal headpieces and small-link chains and wider bracelets around their ankles, wrists, upper arms and necks. Their eyebrows were thick and black, their lips and long nails painted scarlet. They began dancing to the music, their bodies stiff, but their arms moving fluently, wrists turning in the air, hands fanning in and out. They turned their heads from side to side, smiling all the time. Then they bowed deeply to each other, turned around and repeated their movements. Gerda couldn’t take her eyes off them.
*
When she found herself back at the bungalow, Gerda was unaware of how she had arrived there. She stepped into the living room to see MacLeod sitting with Non, feeding her. He looked ridiculous in his uniform with a child on his lap. She steeled herself.
‘Where have you been? Non needed feeding,’ he said.
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s gone noon. Where have you been?’
She ignored him. ‘I have to go away, somewhere warmer. I need to recuperate.�
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‘If you are well enough to gallivant about in the early morning, you’re well enough to start feeding Non again. A bottle of milk costs thirty cents and she needs five bottles a day. I can’t afford to buy any more!’ he said.
‘You seem to be managing very well,’ she said, walking into the bedroom.
MacLeod eventually agreed to Gerda’s wish that she have time to convalesce and sent her to a coffee plantation near Ulingie, owned by a friend of his. Secretly, he was quite pleased she had gone. While she was away, MacLeod spent time in the mess hall with his fellow officers. They stayed up drinking and playing cards until the mess hall closed at one o’clock, at which time they would go into one of the nearby kampongs to visit a brothel.
On one such night, MacLeod paid extra to be rough and chose the youngest girl he could see. In the squalid room, he tied her arms behind her back with one of his army belts and stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth. He barely noticed the child in the crib behind the door.
In the following weeks, MacLeod tired of the prostitutes and began eyeing the Javanese wives of Dutch officers. After discreet enquiries, MacLeod soon discovered that many of the Javanese wives or mistresses were willing to sleep with other officers for money.
MacLeod gave the maid enough money to feed Non and slept with as many of these Javanese women as his major’s pay could afford. He rarely enjoyed it. He found he could drain some of his anger by blindfolding the women, or hitting them across the face just before he came.
A year after arriving in Bejoe-Biroe, MacLeod was told by the barracks CO that his promotion to lieutenant colonel had been turned down by General Biesz. That night, he woke still drunk at three in the morning to find a young Javanese woman lying unconscious next to him. When he turned her over, he saw blood dripping from her nose and mouth. Then he realised his right hand was hurting. He quickly dressed, flung two dollars on the bed and left the building quietly.
The Red Dancer Page 3