Louis Couperus - The Hidden Force

“Mama, do come on! It’s Mrs Van Does, Mrs Van Does with two jars…”

It was Doddy at the door. Léonie got up and went to the rear veranda, where the Eurasian lady, the wife of the local postmaster, was sitting. She kept cows and sold milk. But she also dealt in other goods. She was fat, with a brownish complexion and a protruding stomach; she wore a very simple jacket with a narrow piece of lace over it, and her podgy hands stroked her paunch. In front of her, on the table, she had two jars in which something was sparkling. Mrs Van Oudijck wondered vaguely whether it was sugar or crystal, when she suddenly remembered…

Mrs Van Does said she was glad to see her back. Two months away from Labuwangi. “Too bad that, Mrs Van Oudijck, wasn’t it?” And she pointed to the jars. Mrs Van Oudijck smiled. What was it?

With an air of mystery Mrs Van Does placed a fat, limp, backward-curling forefinger against one of the jars and said in a whisper:

“Diamonds!”

“Are they?” asked Mrs Van Oudijck.

Doddy stared wide-eyed and Theo looked on in amusement at the two jars.

“Yes… You know, from that lady… I told you about… She won’t give her name. Kassian , poor soul. Her husband was once a big noise, and now… she’s so unhappy; she hasn’t a penny. All gone. All she has are these two jars. She had all her jewels removed and keeps the stones in here. They’ve all been counted. She’s entrusting them to me, to sell them. Because of my dairy business I have lots of contacts. You’d like to see them, wouldn’t you, Mrs Van Oudijck? Beautiful stones! The Commissioner will buy them for you, now you’ve come home… Doddy, give me a black cloth, velvet would be best.”

Doddy got the seamstress to look for a piece of black velvet in a cupboard full of sewing clutter. A boy brought in tamarind syrup and ice. Mrs Van Does, with a pair of tweezers between her double-jointed fingers, placed a few stones carefully on the velvet…

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I ask you, look at that quality, Mrs Van Oudijck! Magnificent!”

Mrs Van Oudijck looked. She smiled sweetly and said in her soft voice: “That stone is imitation, dear lady.”

“Imitation?” screeched Mrs Van Does. “Imitation?”

Mrs Van Oudijck looked at the other stones.

“And those others, Mrs Van Does…”—she bent over intently, and then said as sweetly as possible, “Those others… are… imitation, too…”

Mrs Van Does looked at her with amusement, and then said to Doddy and Theo, cheerfully, “That mama of yours… sharp! She sees right away!”

“Just a joke, Mrs Van Oudijck. I just wanted to see if you knew about jewels. Of course, on my word of honour, I’d never sell them… But these… look…”

And solemnly, almost religiously, she now opened the other jar, which contained only a few stones. She laid them lovingly on the black velvet.

“That one would be marvellous… for a leontine,” said Mrs Van Oudijck, peering at a large gem.

“Well, what did I tell you?” asked the Eurasian lady.

And they all gazed at the stones, the genuine ones, those from the “real” jar, and held them carefully to the light.

Mrs Van Oudijck could see they were all genuine.

“I really have no money, dear lady!” she said.

“This big one… for the leontine… six hundred guilders… a bargain, I assure you, madam!”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly, madam!”

“How much then? You will be making a good purchase. Poor thing, her husband used to be a big noise. Council of the Indies.”

“Two hundred…”

“ Kassian ! Two hundred!”

“Two hundred and fifty, but no more. I really don’t have any money.”

“The Commissioner…” whispered Mrs Van Does, sensing the approach of Van Oudijck, who, now the hearing was over, was heading towards the back veranda. “The Commissioner… he’ll buy it for you!”

Mrs Van Oudijck smiled and looked at the sparkling drop of light on the black velvet. She liked jewellery and was not entirely indifferent to precious stones.

She looked up at her husband.

“Mrs Van Does is showing us lots of nice things,” she said soothingly.

Van Oudijck felt a jolt of displeasure. He never enjoyed seeing Mrs Van Does in his house. She was always selling something; on one occasion batik-dyed bedspreads, on another woven slippers, and on a third occasion splendid but very expensive table runners, with gold batik flowers on yellow glazed linen. Mrs Van Does always brought something with her, was always in touch with the wives of former “big noises”, whom she helped to sell things, for a very steep commission. A morning visit from Mrs Van Does cost him at least a few guilders and very frequently fifty guilders, since his wife had a calm way of buying things she didn’t need, but was too indifferent not to buy from Mrs Van Does. He didn’t see the two jars at once, but he saw the drop of light on the black velvet, and realized that this time the visit would cost more than fifty guilders, unless he were very firm.

“My dear lady!” he said in alarm. “It’s the end of the month; there’s no way we can buy jewels today! And jars of them at that,” he cried, horrified, now seeing them sparkling on the table, among the glasses of tamarind syrup.

“Oh, that Commissioner!” laughed Mrs Van Does, as though a commissioner were always rich.

Van Oudijck hated that laugh of hers. To run his household cost him a few hundred guilders or so more than his salary each month; he was eating into his savings and had debts. His wife never bothered with money matters; she reserved her most radiant indifference for them.

She made the stone sparkle for a moment; it flashed a blue ray.

“It’s wonderful… for two hundred and fifty.”

“Let’s say three hundred then, dear lady…”

“Three hundred?” she asked dreamily, playing with the jewel.

Whether it was three or four or five hundred, it was all the same to her. It left her completely indifferent. But she thought the stone was beautiful and was determined to have it, whatever the price. And so she put it down gently and said:

“No, madam, really… the stone is too expensive, and my husband has no money.”

She said it so sweetly that her intention was impossible to guess. She was adorable in her self-denial. As she spoke the words, Van Oudijck felt a second jolt. He couldn’t refuse his wife anything.

“Madam,” he said. “You can leave the stone here… for three hundred guilders. But for goodness’ sake, take your jars away with you.”

Mrs Van Does looked up triumphantly.

“Well… what did I tell you? I knew the Commissioner would buy for you…”

Mrs Van Oudijck looked up with a gently reproachful look.

“But Otto!” she said. “How could you?”

“Do you like the stone?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful… but so much money! For one stone!”

And she pulled her husband’s hand towards her and allowed him to kiss her on the forehead, since he had been allowed to buy her a three-hundred-guilder jewel. Doddy and Theo winked at each other.

LÉONIE VAN OUDIJCK always enjoyed her siesta. She slept only briefly, but loved being alone in her cool room after the rijsttafel until five o’clock or five-thirty in the afternoon. She read a little, usually the magazines from the circulating library, but mainly she did nothing and daydreamed. Vague blue-tinted fantasies filled her periods of afternoon solitude. No one knew about them and she kept them strictly secret, like a hidden sin, a vice. She was much more inclined to reveal herself to the world when it came to an affair. They never lasted long and didn’t count for much in her life; she never wrote letters, and the favours she granted never gave the privileged one any rights in daily discourse. This made her silently and decorously perverse, both physically and morally. Her fantasies too, however limply poetic, were perverse. Her favourite author was Catulle Mendès: she liked all those flowerlets of sky-blue sentimentality, those pink affected Cupids, little fingers in the air, little legs charmingly fluttering — framing the most degenerate motifs and themes of perverted passion. In her bedroom there were a few pictures: a young woman lying back on a lace-covered bed, and kissed by two romping angels; another, a lion with its breast pierced by an arrow, at the feet of a smiling maiden; a large advertising poster for perfume — a kind of flower nymph, whose veil was being torn off on all sides by playful cherubs. She was particularly fond of that picture, and couldn’t imagine anything more aesthetic. She knew it was monstrous, but she had never been able to bring herself to take down the frightful thing, even though people looked disapprovingly at it — her friends and her children, who walked in and out of her room with that casualness typical of the Indies, which makes no secret of the act of dressing. She could gaze at it for minutes on end as if enchanted; she thought it utterly charming, and her own dreams were like that in the poster. She also kept a chocolate box with a keepsake picture on it, as a kind of beauty she found even more beautiful than her own: cheeks flushed, coquettish brown eyes beneath improbably golden hair, the bosom visible beneath lace. But she never gave away what she vaguely sensed was ridiculous; she never talked about those pictures and boxes, precisely because she knew they were ugly. But she thought they were beautiful, she loved them and considered them artistic and poetic.