Louis Couperus - Eline Vere

‘Oh, he has no idea, does he, the little mite! No, you don’t know what Auntie’s raving about, do you? But it feels so good to rant and rave for once! I wish I could do something outrageous, something quite mad, but there’s nothing I can think of. I’m so dull nowadays that I can’t even think at all. If only Eliza were here, she’d know what to do. Do you know what Eliza and I did once, that first time I was staying in Brussels? I never dared to tell anyone before, but now I don’t care, I can say whatever I like. Just imagine, one evening we went out, just the two us, for a walk; we were feeling adventurous, you know. Mind you don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Then we met two gentlemen, two very nice gentlemen, whom we’d never met before. And we went for a drive with them. . in an open landau, and then we. . we went to a café.’

Her whole speech had been punctuated by nervous, shrill giggles, and by the end of it she was laughing hysterically, with frenzied tears running down her contorted features. Not a word of it was true, but to her it was all real.

‘Just fancy! We were in café! A café! And then—’

‘Eline, please! Stop being so silly,’ Betsy said quietly.

‘Oh, you think it’s terribly shocking, don’t you? Well, you can put your mind at rest; it wasn’t that bad.’

She gave another wild, forced laugh and then broke down into sobs.

‘Oh, that wretched Reijer! I have this constant pain here, in my head, and he doesn’t even care, all he goes on about is my cough. I know I cough, I don’t need him to tell me. Oh, God! And that boarding house is so awful.’

‘Then why don’t you come back to live with us?’

‘We’d only be at each other’s throats again after the first three days!’ Eline laughed hollowly. ‘Now that we don’t see very much of each other we seem to get on rather better than before, I find.’

‘Honestly, I’d do my best to make you feel at home!’ pleaded Betsy, feeling increasingly concerned about the state of Eline’s nerves. ‘We could take care of you properly! I’d accommodate myself to your wishes.’

‘But I wouldn’t accommodate myself to yours! No, thank you very much! Freedom above all. You talk such nonsense. We’d start bickering in no time — I mean, just look at us, we’re bickering already.’

‘Why do you say that? I am not bickering, not by any means. All I want is for you to come back to us as soon as possible — tonight, preferably.’

‘Betsy, if you don’t shut up about that I shall leave now and never come back. I have no desire to live in your house, do you hear? I will not live with you, and that’s final.’

She hummed a little.

‘Will you stay for supper, at least?’ asked Betsy.

‘Yes please! But I’m exhausted, so I won’t have much conversation. What are your plans for later this evening?’

‘We’re going to the Oudendijks’. Haven’t you been invited?’

‘No, I’ve stopped going out.’

‘Why?’

‘Drat the Oudendijks! Oh, my poor head! I’m half dead. . do you mind if I go and lie down for a while?’

‘Please do.’

‘Then I’ll go to Henk’s room; there’s a comfy couch there.’

‘The fire isn’t lit, though.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind.’

. .

She went upstairs to Henk’s sitting room. Henk was out. She removed her coat and hat. Then she took a cigar from a cigar box, bit the tip off and lit it, but the bitter taste disgusted her and she stubbed it out. She lay down on the couch. Her wandering eyes lit on a weapon rack, a trophy of swords, daggers and pistols. What if she wanted to kill herself, how would she do it? A dagger through her heart? A bullet in her mouth? Oh no, no, she would never have the courage, and anyway she wouldn’t know how to handle a dagger or a pistol. She might just wound herself, mutilate herself, and. . go on living. Besides, death was even worse than life. Death was something she never dared to think about, something infinitely, unspeakably vast and empty. Would there be life after death, would there be a God? She remembered having sweet visions of azure landscapes bathed in a luminous glow, with singing angels flitting about on silvery wings, and far away in the hazy distance a throne of clouds occupied by an ethereal being of majestic allure. The vision came back to her now, and she felt herself being borne aloft on the soft strains of heavenly song. But then she had a sense of falling down to earth at dizzying speed with the room wheeling all around her, until her eyes came to rest on the weapon rack again. No, no, not a pistol, not a dagger! Not poison, either, because she would turn blue and green and they’d find her with her face twisted and swollen and everybody would be appalled by her ugliness. What if she drowned? Then, too, she would be ugly, with her body all bloated by the time they fished her out of the lake. But drowning was supposed to be a gentle death; you saw the water closing over your head in a gorgeous swirl of lovely colours and then you gradually dropped off to sleep, sinking deeper and deeper into a billowing, downy softness, and in death you were like Ophelia, adorned with water lilies and reeds. But she couldn’t think of any lake with lilies and reeds in The Hague, there were only canals with foulsmelling, green water. . oh no, not that! The lake in the woods, then? Or the sea at Scheveningen? No, no, she would be too terrified, and anyway she was too weak; she wouldn’t even have the strength now to run away in the middle of the night during a storm as she had done so long ago, all alone, battling against the wind and the driving rain. And she came to the conclusion that she would never find the courage to hang herself, or to suffocate herself; the fact was that she was too cowardly to kill herself at all. She began to quake as in a fever, so horrified was she by her thoughts.

Why did she have to be like this? Why couldn’t she have been happy with Otto? Why hadn’t she met St Clare when she was eighteen? What had she done to deserve such wretchedness? Who had she ever harmed? Hadn’t she taken good care of Aunt Vere in her final illness, hadn’t she sacrificed her own good fortune for Vincent? Oh, if only she had been capable of happiness, then she would have shared it with everyone around her. St Clare — or was it Otto? — had once told her there were treasures slumbering in her soul. Well, she would have shared out those treasures, she would have bestowed the jewels of her joy wherever she went. But it had not come to pass, she had been crushed by the sheer weight of her existence, and now she was so tired from the struggle that her only wish was that it should end. Oh, if only she were dead. .

The rain had stopped; it grew dark. Exhausted from her sombre ruminations, she lay back, numb, her mind a blank, and at length dozed off. She was roused by a heavy footfall in the hallway, and before she was fully awake, Henk entered.

‘My dear Sis! What are you doing here in the dark? My, how cold it is in here!’

‘Cold?’ she echoed with the dazed look of a sleepwalker. ‘Yes, so it is, I can feel it now — I’m shivering. I must have been asleep.’

‘Why don’t you come downstairs with me? Dinner will soon be served. Betsy said you were staying, is that right?’

‘Yes. Oh, Henk, how awful that I fell asleep.’

‘Awful? Why?’

‘Now I won’t sleep a wink tonight!’ she sobbed, burying her head in his shoulder.

‘Why won’t you come back to live with us, Elly?’ he asked softly. ‘It would be so much better all round.’

‘No, no, I don’t want that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It wouldn’t do, Henk. I am certain of that. It’s very sweet of you to ask, but it simply wouldn’t do. I have these sudden moods when I feel like smacking Betsy, for instance, especially when she’s being nice to me. I very nearly hit her this afternoon.’