“Every regent collects his whole family around him like parasites, clothes them, feeds them, provides them with pocket-money ... and the natives think it dignified and smart.”
“Sad ... that ruined greatness!” said Ida, gloomily.
A boy came to announce dinner and they went to the back verandah and sat down to table.
“And what have you in prospect for us, mevrouwtje?” asked the senior engineer. “What are the plans? Labuwangi has been very quiet lately.”
“It’s really terrible,” said Eva. “If I hadn’t all of you, it would be terrible. If I weren’t always planning something and having ideas, it would be terrible, this living at Labuwangi. My husband doesn’t feel it; he works, as all you men do: what else is there to do in India but work, regardless of the heat? But for us women! What a life, if we didn’t find our happiness purely in ourselves, in our home, in our friends ... when we have the good fortune to possess those friends! Nothing from the outside. Not a picture, not a statue to look at; no music to listen to. Don’t be cross, Van Helderen. You play the ’cello charmingly, but nobody in India can keep up to date. The Italian Opera plays Il Trovatore. The amateur companies—and they’re really first-rate at Batavia—play ... Il Trovatore. And you, Van Helderen ... don’t object. I saw you in an ecstasy when the Italian company from Surabaya were here lately, at the club, playing ... Il Trovatore. You were enchanted.”
“There were some beautiful voices among them.”
“But twenty years ago, they tell me, even then people were enchanted with ... Il Trovatore. Oh, it’s terrible! Sometimes, suddenly, it crushes me. Sometimes, all of a sudden, I feel that I have not grown used to India and that I never shall; and I began to long for Europe, for life!”
“But Eva,” Eldersma began, in alarm, dreading lest she should really go home one day, leaving him alone in what would then be his utterly joyless working-life at Labuwangi: “sometimes you do appreciate India: your house, the pleasant, spacious life....”
“Materially....”
“And don’t you appreciate your own work—I mean the many things which you are able to do here?”