“But that, you see, the thing that happened.... I never understood; and it’s that which brought me to where I am. That ... all that ... which clashed and interfered with my practical, logical ideas of life ... all that”—he struck the table with his fist—“all that damned nonsense, which ... which happened all the same: that did the trick. I did not shirk the fight, but my strength was no use to me. It was something against which nothing availed.... I know: it was the regent. When I threatened him it stopped.... But, my God, mevrouwtje, tell me, what was it? Do you know? You don’t, do you? Nobody knew and nobody knows. Those terrible nights, those inexplicable noises over head, that night in the bathroom with the major and the other officers! It wasn’t any hallucination: we saw it, we heard it, we felt it, it spat at us, it covered us from head to foot; the whole bathroom was full of it! It is easy for other people, who didn’t experience it, to deny it. But I ... and all of us ... we saw it, heard it and felt it! And we none of us knew who it was.... And since then I have never ceased to feel it. It was all around me, in the air, under my feet.... You see,” he whispered very softly, “that—and that alone—did it. That made it impossible for me to stay there. That caused me to be struck stupid, to become a sort of idiot in the midst of my normal life, in the midst of my practical good sense and logic, which suddenly appeared to me in the light of an ill-constructed theory of life, of the most abstract speculation, because, right through it, things were happening that belonged to another world, things that escaped me and everybody else. That, that alone, did it! I was no longer myself. I no longer knew what I was thinking, what I was doing, what I had done. Everything in me was tottering. That ruffian in the compound is no child of mine: I’ll stake my life on it. And I ... I believed it. I sent him money. Tell me, do you understand me? I don’t suppose you do. It’s not to be understood, that strange, unnatural business, if you haven’t experienced it, in your flesh and in your blood, till it finds its way into your marrow....”
“I do believe that I also experienced it, once in a way,” she whispered. “When I was walking with Van Helderen by the sea ... and the sky was so far and the night so deep ... or the rains came rustling towards us from so very far away and then fell ... or when the nights, silent as death and yet brimful of sounds, quivered about one, always with a music which one could not catch and could scarcely hear.... Or simply when I looked into the eyes of a Javanese, when I spoke to my babu and it seemed as though nothing of what I said reached her mind and as though what she replied concealed her real, secret answer....”
“That, again, is another thing,” he said. “I can’t understand that: as far as I was concerned, I knew my native through and through. But possibly every European feels it in a different way, according to his nature and his temperament. To one it is perhaps the dislike which he begins by feeling for the country that attacks him in the weak point of his materialism and continues to oppose him ... whereas the country itself is so full of poetry, I might almost say mysticism. To another it is the climate, or the character of the native, or what you will, that is antagonistic and incomprehensible. To me ... it was the facts which I could not understand. And until then I had always been able to understand a fact ... at least, I thought so. Now it appeared to me as though I no longer understood anything.... In this way, I became an incompetent official and then I realized that it was all over. And then I quietly resigned my post. And now I’m here ... and here I mean to stay. And do you know the strange part of it? Perhaps I have—at last—found my family-circle here....”
The little brown faces were peeping round the corner. And he called to them, beckoned to them kindly, with a broad fatherly gesture. But they pattered away again, audibly, on their bare feet. He laughed:
“They’re very timid, the little monkeys,” he said. “It’s Lena’s little sisters; and the woman you saw just now is her mother.”
He was silent for a second, quite simply, as though she was bound to understand who Lena was: the very young woman, with the golden bloom on her cheeks and the coal-black eyes, of whom she had caught a fleeting glimpse.
“And then there are some little brothers, who go to school in Garut. Well, you see, that’s my domestic circle. When I came to know Lena, I adopted the whole family. I admit it costs me a lot of money, for I have my first wife at Batavia, my second in Paris, and René and Ricus in Holland. It all costs me money. And now my new ‘home-circle’ here. But now at least I have my circle.... It’s a very Indian kettle of fish, you’ll say: that Indian quasi-marriage to the daughter of a coffee-overseer, with the old woman and the little brothers and sisters included in the bargain. But I’m doing a little good. The family haven’t a cent and I’m helping them. And Lena is a dear child and is the comfort of my old age. I can’t live without a wife; and so it happened of itself.... And it works very well: I lead a cabbage-life and drink first-rate coffee; and they look after the old man....”
He was silent and then continued:
“And you ... you are going to Europe? Poor Eldersma, I hope he’ll be better soon! It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I worked him too hard. But it’s like that in India, mevrouw. We all work too hard here ... until we stop working altogether. And you are going ... in a week? How glad you will be to see your father and mother and to hear some good music? I am still always grateful to you. You did much for us, you stood for poetry in Labuwangi. Poor India! How they rail at her! After all, the country can’t help it that we freebooters have invaded their territory, barbarian conquerors that we are, only working to grow rich and get away! And then, when they don’t grow rich, they start railing: at the heat, which God gave it from the beginning; at the lack of nourishment for mind and soul: mind and soul of the freebooter! The poor country railed at like this may well say in itself, ‘You could have stayed away!’ And you ... you didn’t like India either.”
“I tried to grasp the poetry of it. And now and then I succeeded. For the rest, it’s my fault, resident, and not the fault of this beautiful country. Like your freebooter, I should have stayed away. All my depression, all the melancholy from which I suffered in this beautiful land of mystery, is my own fault. I don’t rail at India, resident.”