The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

by Louis Couperus

He had gone, without casting a glance behind him, in a strange indifference, an indifference which had gradually corroded the very marrow of this once so robust and practical man, who had always remained young in his capacity for work. He felt this indifference for Labuwangi, which, when there was a question of his promotion to resident of the first class, he had thought himself incapable of leaving except with the greatest regret; he felt this indifference for his domestic circle, which no longer existed. His soul was filled with a gradual blight; it was withering, dying. It seemed to him that all his powers were melting away in the tepid stagnation of this indifference. At Batavia he vegetated for a while in his hotel; and it was generally assumed that he would go to Europe.

Eldersma had already gone, sick almost unto death; and Eva had been unable to accompany him, with the little boy, because she was down with a bad attack of malarial fever. When she was more or less convalescent, she sold up her house, with a view to going to Batavia and staying there for three weeks with friends before her boat sailed. She left Labuwangi with mixed feelings. She had suffered much there, but had also reflected much; and she had cherished a deep feeling for Van Helderen, a pure, radiant feeling such as could, she was sure, shine forth only once in a lifetime. She took leave of him as of an ordinary friend, in the presence of others, and gave him no more than a pressure of the hand. But she felt so profoundly sad because of that pressure of the hand, that commonplace farewell, that the sobs rose in her throat. That evening, left to herself, she did not weep, but sat in her room at the hotel, staring for hours silently before her. Her husband was gone, was ill: she did not know how he would be when she saw him, whether indeed she would ever see him again. Europe, it was true, after her years in India, stretched its shores smilingly before her, held forth the vision of its cities, its culture, its art; but she was afraid of Europe. An unspoken fear lest she should have lost ground intellectually made her almost dread the circle in her parents’ house, to which she would have returned in a month’s time. She trembled at the thought that people would consider her colonial in her manners and ideas, in her speech and dress, in the education of her child; and this made her feel shy in anticipation, despite all her pose as a smart, artistic woman. Certainly she no longer played the piano as well as she did; she would not dare to play at the Hague. And she thought that it might be a good thing to stay in Paris for a fortnight and brush off her cobwebs a little, before showing herself in the Hague....

But Eldersma was too ill.... And how would she find him, her husband, so much changed, her once robust Frisian husband, now tired out, worn out, yellow as parchment, careless of his appearance, muttering gloomily when he spoke?... But a gentle vision of a refreshing German landscape, of Swiss snows, of music at Bayreuth, of art in Italy dawned before her staring gaze; and she was herself reunited to her sick husband. No longer united in life, but united under the yoke of life, the yoke which they had shouldered together, once and for all.... Then there was the education of her child! Oh, to save her child, to get him away from India! And yet he, Van Helderen, had never been out of India. But then he was himself, he was an exception....

She had bidden him good-bye.... She must make up her mind to forget him.... Europe was waiting for her ... with her husband ... and her child....

Two days later she was at Batavia. She hardly knew the city; she had been there once or twice, years ago, when she first came out. At Labuwangi, in that little, outlying district, Batavia had gradually become glorified in her imagination into an essentially Eurasian capital, a centre of Eurasian civilization, a dim vision of stately avenues and squares, surrounded by great, wealthy, porticoed villas, thronged with smart carriages and horses. She had always heard so much about Batavia....

She was now staying with friends. The husband was at the head of a big commercial firm; their house was one of the handsomest villas on the Koningsplein. And she had at once been very strangely impressed by the funereal character, by the deadly melancholy of this great town of villas, where thousands of varied lives are waging a silent, feverish battle for a future of moneyed repose. It was as though all those houses, gloomy despite their white pillars and their grand fronts, were frowning like faces careworn with troubles that sought to hide themselves behind a pretentious display of broad leaves and clustering palms. The houses, however much exposed, amidst their pillars, however seemingly open, remained closed; the occupants were never seen. Only in the mornings, as she went on her errands along the shops in Rijswijk and Molenvliet, which, with a few French names among them, tried to give the impression of a southern shopping-centre, of European luxury, Eva would see the exodus to the Old Town of the white men, white-faced, dressed in white; and even their eyes seemed pale with brooding anxieties, fixed upon a future which they all calculated in so many decades or lustres: so much made, in this year or that; and then away, away home from India to Europe. It was as though it were not malaria that was undermining them, but another fever; and she felt clearly that it was undermining their unacclimatized constitutions, their souls, as though they were trying to skip that day and reach the to-morrow, or the day after, days which brought them a little nearer to their goal, because they secretly feared to die before that goal was attained. The exodus filled the trams with its white burden of mortality. Many, already well off, but not yet rich enough for their purpose, drove in their victorias or buggies to the Harmonie Club and there took the tram, to spare their horses.

And in the Old Town, in the old, aristocratic houses of the first Dutch merchants, still built in the Dutch style, with oak staircases leading to upper floors which now, during the eastern monsoon, were stagnant with a dense, oppressive heat, like a tangible element, which stifled the breath, the white men bent over their work, constantly beholding between their thirsty glance and the white desert of their papers the dawning mirage of the future, the refreshing oasis of their materialistic illusion: within such and such a time, money and then off ... off ... to Europe.... And, in the city of villas, around the Koningsplein, along the green avenues, the women hid themselves, the women remained unseen, the whole livelong day. The hot day passed, the time of beneficent coolness came, the time from half-past five to seven. The men returned home dog-tired and sat down to rest; and the women, tired with their housekeeping, with their children and with nothing at all, with a life of doing nothing, a life without any interest, tired with the deadliness of their existence, rested beside the men. That hour of beneficent coolness meant rest, rest after the bath, in undress, around the tea-table, a short, momentary rest, for the fearsome hour of seven was at hand, when it was already dark, when one had to go to a reception. A reception implied dressing in stuffy European clothes, implied a brief but dreadful display of European drawing-room manners and social graces, but it also implied meeting this person and that and striving to achieve yet one advance towards the mirage of the future: money and ultimate rest in Europe. And, after the town of villas had lain in the sun all day, gloomy and wan, like a dead city—with the men away in the Old Town and the women hidden in their houses—a few carriages now passed one another in the dark, round the Koningsplein and along the green avenues, a few European-looking people, going to a reception. While, around the Koningsplein and in the green avenues, all the other villas persisted in this funereal desolation and remained filled with gloomy darkness, the house where the party was given shone with lamps among the palm-trees. And for the rest the deadliness lingered on every hand, the sombre brooding lay over the houses wherein the tired people were hiding, the men exhausted with work, the women exhausted with doing nothing....

“Wouldn’t you like a drive, Eva?” asked her hostess, Mrs. De Harteman, a little Dutchwoman, white as wax and always tired out by her children. “But I’d rather not come with you, if you don’t mind: I’d rather wait for Harteman. Else he’d find nobody at home. So you go, with your little boy.”

So Eva, with her little man, went driving in the De Hartemans’ “chariot.” It was the cool hour of the day, before darkness set in. She met two or three carriages: Mrs. This and Mrs. That, who were known to drive in the afternoon. In the Koningsplein she saw a lady and gentleman walking: the So-and-Sos; they always walked, as all Batavia knew. She met no one else. No one. At that beneficent hour, the villa-town remained desolate as a city of the dead, as a vast mausoleum amid green trees. And yet it was a boon, after the overwhelming heat, to see the Koningsplein stretching like a gigantic meadow, where the parched grass was turning green with the first rains, while the houses showed so far away, so very far away, in their hedged-in gardens, that it was like being in the country, amid wood and fields and pastures, with the wide sky overhead, from which the lungs now breathed in air, as though for the first time that day, breathed in oxygen and life: that wide sky, displaying every day as it were a varying wealth of colours, an excess of sunset fires, a glorious death of the scorching day, as though the sun itself were bursting into torrents of gold between the lilac-hued and threatening rain-clouds. And it was so spacious and so delightful, it was such an immense boon that it actually made up for the day.

But there was no one to see it except the two or three people who were known in Batavia to go driving or walking. A violet twilight rose; then the night fell with one deep shadow; and the town, which had been deathlike all day, with its frown of brooding gloom, dropped wearily asleep, like a city of care....