It used to be different, said old Mrs. De Harteman, the mother-in-law of Eva’s friend. They were gone nowadays, the pleasant houses with their Indian hospitality, their open tables, their sincere and cordial welcomes, as if the colonist’s character had in some sense altered, had in some way been overcast by the vicissitudes of chance, by his disappointment at not speedily achieving his aim, his material aim of wealth. And, he being thus embittered, it seemed that his nerves became irritable, just as his soul became overcast and gloomy and his body lethargic and unable to withstand the destructive climate....
And Eva did not find Batavia the ideal city of Eurasian civilization which she had pictured it at Labuwangi. In this great money-grubbing centre, every trace of spontaneity had vanished and life became degraded to an everlasting seclusion in the office or at home. People never saw each other save at receptions; any other conversation took place over the telephone.
The abuse of the telephone for domestic purposes killed all agreeable intimacy among friends. People no longer saw one another; they no longer had any need to dress and send for the carriage, the “chariot”; for they chatted over the telephone, in sarong and kabaai, in pyjamas, almost without stirring a limb. The telephone was close at hand and the bell was constantly ringing in the back-verandah. People rang one another up for nothing, for the mere fun of ringing up. Young Mrs. De Harteman had an intimate friend, a young woman whom she never saw and to whom she telephoned daily, for half an hour at a time. She sat down to it, so it did not tire her. And she laughed and joked with her friend, without having to dress and without moving. She did the same with other friends: she paid her visits by telephone. She did her shopping by telephone. Eva had not been accustomed at Labuwangi to this everlasting tinkling and ringing up, which killed all conversation and, in the back-verandah, revealed one half of a dialogue—the replies being inaudible to any one sitting away from the instrument—in the form of an incessant, one-sided jabbering. It got on her nerves and drove her to her room. And, amid the boredom of this life, full of care and inward brooding for the husband and penetrated by the chatter of the wife’s telephonic conversations, Eva would be surprised suddenly to hear of a special excitement: a fancy-fair and the rehearsals of an amateur operatic performance.
She herself attended one of these rehearsals during her visit and was astonished by the really first-rate execution, as though those musical amateurs had put the strength of despair into it, to dispel the tedium of the Batavian evenings. For the Italian opera had left; and she had to laugh at the heading “Amusements” in the Javabode, which amusements as a rule were limited to a choice of three or four meetings of shareholders. This too used to be different, said old Mrs. De Harteman, who remembered the excellent French opera of twenty-five years ago, which, it was true, cost thousands, but for which the thousands were always forthcoming. No, people no longer had the money to amuse themselves at night. They sometimes gave a very expensive dinner, or else went to a meeting of shareholders. Eva, in truth, considered Labuwangi a much livelier place. True, she herself had largely contributed to the liveliness, at the instigation of Van Oudijck, who was glad to make the capital of his district a pleasant, cheerful little town. And she came to the conclusion that, after all, she preferred a small, up-country place, with a few cultured, agreeable European inhabitants—provided that they harmonized with one another and did not quarrel overmuch in the intimacy of their common life—to this pretentious, pompous, dreary Batavia. The only life was among the military element. Only the officers’ houses were lit up in the evening. Apart from this, the town lay as though moribund, the whole long, hot day, with its frown of care, with its invisible population of people looking towards the future: a future of money, a future perhaps even more of rest, in Europe.
And she longed to get away. Batavia suffocated her, notwithstanding her daily drive round the spacious Koningsplein. She had only one wish left, a melancholy wish: to say good-bye to Van Oudijck. Her peculiar temperament, that of a smart, artistic woman, had, very strangely, appreciated and felt the fascination of his character, that of a simple, practical man. She had perhaps, only for a moment, felt something for him, deep down within herself, a friendship which formed a sort of contrast with her friendship for Van Helderen, an appreciation of his fine human qualities rather than a feeling of Platonic community of souls. She had felt a sympathetic pity for him in those strange, mysterious days, for the man living alone in his enormous house, with the strange happenings creeping in upon him. She had felt intensely sorry for him when his wife, kicking aside her exalted position, had gone away in an insolent mood, arousing a storm of scandal, nobody knew exactly why: his wife, at one time always so correct in her demeanour, notwithstanding all her depravity, but gradually devoured by the canker of the strange happenings until she was no longer able to restrain herself, baring the innermost secrets of her profligate soul with cynical indifference. The red betel-slaver, spat as it were by ghosts on her naked body, had affected her like a sickness, had eaten into the marrow of her bones, like a disintegration of her soul, of which she might perhaps die, slowly wasting away. What people now said of her, of her mode of life in Paris, represented something so unutterably depraved that it was not to be mentioned above a whisper.
Eva heard about it at Batavia, amid the gossip at the evening-parties. And, when she asked after Van Oudijck—where he was staying, whether he would soon be going to Europe, after his unexpected resignation, a thing that had surprised the whole official world—they were unable to tell her, they asked one another if he was no longer at the Hôtel Wisse, where he had been seen only a few weeks ago, lying on his chair in his little verandah, with his legs on the rests, staring fixedly before him without moving a limb. He had hardly gone out at all, taking his meals in his room and not at the table-d’hôte, as though he—the man who had always been accustomed to dealing with hundreds of people—had became shy of meeting his fellow-creatures. And at last Eva heard that Van Oudijck was living at Bandong. As she had to pay some farewell visits, she went to the Preanger. But he was not to be found at Bandong: all that the hotel-proprietor was able to tell her was that Van Oudijck had stayed a few days at his place, but had since gone, he did not know whither.
Then at last, by accident, she heard from a man whom she met at dinner that Van Oudijck was living near Garut. She went to Garut, feeling pleased to be on his track. The people in the hotel were able to direct her to where he lived. She could not decide whether she should first write to him and announce her visit. Something seemed to warn her that, if she did, he would make some excuse and that she would not see him. And she, now that she was on the point of leaving Java for good, wanted to see him, from motives of mingled affection and curiosity. She wished to see for herself how he looked, to get out of him why he had so suddenly sent in his resignation and thrown up his enviable position in life, a position instantly seized by the next man after him, in the great push for promotion.
So, next morning, very early, without sending him word, she drove away in a carriage belonging to the hotel. The landlord had explained to the coachman where he was to go. And she drove a very long way, along Lake Lellès, the sombre sacred lake with the two islands containing the age-old tombs of saints, while above it hovered, like a dark cloud of desolation, an ever-circling flock of enormous black bats, flapping their demon wings and screeching their cry of despair, wheeling round and round incessantly: a black, funereal swirl against the infinite blue depths of the ether, as though they, the demons who had once dreaded light, had triumphed and no longer feared the day, because they obscured it with the shadow of their sombre flight. And it was all so oppressive: the sacred lake, the sacred tombs and above them a horde as of black devils in the deep blue ether, because it was as though a part of the mystery of India were being suddenly revealed, no longer hiding itself, a vague, impalpable presence, but actually visible in the sunlight, rousing dismay with its menacing victory.... Eva shuddered; and, as she glanced up timidly, she felt as though the black multitude of screening wings might beat down ... upon her.... But the shadow of death between her and the sun only whirled dizzily around, high above her head, and only uttered its despondent cry of triumph.... She drove on; and the plain of Lellès lay green and smiling before her. And that second of revelation had already ticked past: there was nothing now but the green and blue luxuriance of the Javanese landscape; the mystery was already hidden away among the delicate, waving bamboos or merged in the azure ocean of the sky.
The coachman was driving slowly up a steep hill. The liquid rice-fields rose in terraces like stairs of looking-glass, pale-green with carefully-planted blades of paddy; then, suddenly, there came as who should say an avenue of ferns: gigantic ferns, waving their fans on high, with great fabulous butterflies fluttering around them. And between the diaphanous foliage of the bamboos there appeared a small house, built half of stone, half of wattled bamboo, surrounded by a little garden containing a few white pots of roses. A very young woman in sarong and kabaai, with cheeks gleaming like pale gold and coal-black eyes inquisitively peeping, looked out in surprise at the carriage, which was approaching very slowly, and fled indoors. Eva alighted and coughed. And she suddenly caught a glimpse of Van Oudijck’s face, peering round a screen in the middle gallery. He disappeared at once.
“Resident!” she cried, in a coaxing tone.