The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

by Louis Couperus

The steward, on seeing the resident, bowed; and the resident, raising his finger to his cap, went past the club and turned to the left. He walked down a lane, past dark little houses, each in its own little demesne, turned off again and walked along the mouth of the river, which was like a canal. Proa after proa lay moored to the banks; the monotonous humming of Maduran seamen crept drearily across the water, from which rose a smell of fish. Past the harbour-master’s office the resident made for the pier, which projected some way into the sea and at the end of which a small lighthouse, a miniature Eiffel tower, stood like an iron candlestick, with its lamp at the top. Here the resident stopped and filled his lungs with the night air. The breeze had suddenly freshened, the north-east wind had risen, blowing in from the offing, as it did daily at this hour. But sometimes it suddenly dropped again, unexpectedly, as though its fanning wings had been stricken powerless; and the roughened sea fell again, until its curdling, foaming breakers, white in the moonlight, were replaced by smooth rollers, slightly phosphorescent in long, pale streaks.

A mournful and monotonous rhythm of dreary singing approached over the sea; a sail loomed darkly, like a great night-bird; and a fishing proa with a high, curved stem, suggesting an ancient galley, glided into the channel. A melancholy resignation to life, an acquiescence in all the small, obscure things of earth beneath that infinite sky, upon that remote, phosphorescent sea, was adrift in the night, conjuring up an oppressive mystery....

The tall, sturdy man who stood there, with straddling legs, breathing in the loitering, fitful wind, tired with his work, with sitting at his writing-table, with calculating the duiten-question, that important matter, the abolition of the duit,[1] for which the governor-general had made him personally responsible: this tall, sturdy man, practical, cool-headed, quick in decision from the long habit of authority, was perhaps unconscious of the mysterious shadow that drifted over the native town, over the capital of his district, in the night; but he was conscious of a yearning for affection. He vaguely felt a longing for a child’s arms around his neck, for shrill little voices about him, a longing for a young wife awaiting him with a smile. He did not give definite expression to this sentimentality in his thoughts; it was not his habit to give way to musing upon his individual needs; he was too busy, his days were too full of interests of all kinds for him to yield to what he knew to be his moments of weakness, the suppressed ebullitions of his younger years. But, though he did not reflect, the mood upon him was not to be thrown off; it was like a pressure on his sturdy chest, like a morbid tenderness, like a sentimental discomfort in the otherwise highly practical mind of this superior official, who was strongly attached to his sphere of work, to his territory, who had its interests at heart, in whom the almost independent power of his post harmonized entirely with his authoritative nature, and who was accustomed with his strong lungs to breathe an atmosphere of spacious activity and extensive, varied work, even as he now stood breathing the spacious wind from the sea.

A longing, a desire, a certain nostalgia filled him more than was usual that evening. He felt lonely, not merely because of the isolation which nearly always surrounds the head of a native government, who is approached either with formality and smiling respect, for purposes of conversation, or curtly, with official respect, for purposes of business. He felt lonely, though he was the father of a family. He thought of his big house, he thought of his wife and children. And he felt lonely and borne up merely by the interest which he took in his work. That was the one thing in his life. It filled all his waking hours. He fell asleep thinking of it; and his first thought in the morning was of some district interest.

Tired with casting up figures, at this moment, breathing the wind, he inhaled together with the coolness of the sea its melancholy, the mysterious melancholy of the Indian seas, the haunting melancholy of the seas of Java, the melancholy that rushes in from afar on whispering, mysterious wings. But it was not his nature to yield to mystery. He denied mystery. It was not there: there was only the sea and the cool wind. There was only the sea-fog, with its mingled savour of fish and flowers and seaweed, a savour which the cool wind was blowing away. There was only the moment of respiration; and such mysterious melancholy as he, nevertheless, irresistibly felt stealing that evening through his somewhat softened mood he believed to be connected with his domestic circle: he would have liked to feel that this circle was a little more compact, fitting more closely around the father and husband in him. If there was any cause for melancholy, it was that. It did not come from the sea, nor from the distant sky. He refused to yield to any sudden sensation of the uncanny. And he set his feet more firmly, flung out his chest, lifted his fine, soldierly head and snuffed up the smell of the sea and the fragrance of the wind....

The chief messenger, squatting with his glowing wick in his hand, peeped attentively at his master, as though thinking:

“How strange, those Hollanders!... What is he thinking now?... Why is he behaving like this?... Just at this time and on this spot?... The sea-spirits are about now.... There are caymans under the water, and every cayman is a spirit.... Look, they have been sacrificing to them there: bananas and rice and meat dried in the sun and a hard-boiled egg, on a little bamboo raft, down by the foot of the light-house.... What is the sahib doing here?... It is not good here, it is not good here, alas, alas!...”

And his watching eyes glided up and down the back of his master, who simply stood and gazed into the distance: what was he gazing at?... What did he see blowing up in the wind?... How strange, those Hollanders, how strange!...

The resident turned, suddenly, and walked back; and the messenger, starting up, followed him, blowing the tip of his slow-match. The resident walked back by the same road; there was now a member sitting in the club, who greeted him; and a couple of young men were strolling in the Lange Laan. The dogs were barking.

When the resident approached the entrance to the residency, he saw before him, standing by the other gate, two white figures, a man and a girl, who vanished into the darkness under the banyans. He went straight to his office; another messenger came up and took his cap and stick. Then he sat down at his writing-table. He had time for an hour’s work before dinner.