Louis Couperus - The Hidden Force

“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.