The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

by Louis Couperus

For a fortnight Labuwangi was filled with excitement. In this silent little town, full of eastern slumber, a whirlwind of tiny passions, jealousies and enmities began to rise. Eva had her club of faithful adherents, the Van Helderens, the Doorn de Bruijns, the Rantzows, with which all sorts of tiny sets strove to compete. One was not on speaking terms with the other; this one would not take part because that one did; another insisted on taking part only because Mrs. Eldersma must not think that she was everybody; and this one and that one and the other considered that Eva was much too pretentious and need not fancy that she was the most important woman in the place because Mrs. van Oudijck left everything to her. Eva however had spoken to the resident and declared that she was willing to organize everything provided she received unlimited authority. She had not the slightest objection to his appointing some one else to set the ball rolling; but, if he appointed her, unlimited authority was an express condition, for to take twenty different tastes and opinions into account would mean that one would never get anywhere. Van Oudijck laughingly consented, but impressed upon her that she must not make people angry and that she must respect every one’s feelings and be as conciliatory as possible, so that the charity-bazaar might leave pleasant memories behind it. Eva promised: she was not naturally quarrelsome.

To get a thing done, to set a thing going, to put a thing through, to employ her artistic energies was her great delight: it was life to her, was the only consolation in her dreary life in India. For, though she had grown to love and admire many things in Java, the social life of the country, save for her little clique, lacked all charm for her. But now to prepare an entertainment on a large scale, the fame of which would reach as far as Surabaya, flattered alike her vanity and her love of work.

She sailed through every difficulty; and, because people saw that she knew best and was more practical than they, they gave way to her. But, while she was busy evolving her stalls and her tableaux-vivants, while the bustle of the preparations occupied the leading families of Labuwangi, something seemed also to occupy the soul of the native population, but something less cheerful than charitable entertainment. The chief of police, who brought Van Oudijck his short report every morning, usually in a few words—that he had gone his rounds and that everything was quiet and orderly—had of late had longer conversations with the resident, seemed to have more important things to communicate; the messengers whispered more mysteriously outside the office, the resident sent for Eldersma and Van Helderen; the secretary wrote to Ngadjiwa, to Vermalen the assistant-resident, to the major-commandant of the garrison; and the district controller went round the town with increased frequency and at unaccustomed hours. Amid all their fussing the ladies perceived little of these mysterious doings; and only Léonie, who took no part in the preparations, noticed in her husband an unusual silent concern. She was a quick and keen observer; and, because Van Oudijck, who was accustomed often to mention business in the domestic circle, had been mute for the last few days, she asked suddenly where the Regent of Ngadjiwa was, now that he had been dismissed by the government at Van Oudijck’s instance, and who was going to replace him. He made a vague reply; and she took alarm and became anxious. One morning, passing through her husband’s bedroom, she was struck by the whispered conversation between Van Oudijck and the chief of police and she stopped to listen, with her ear against the screen. The conversation was muffled because the garden-doors were open; the messengers were sitting on the garden-steps; a couple of gentlemen who wished to speak to the resident were walking up and down the side-verandah, after writing their names on the slate which the chief messenger brought in to the resident. But they had to wait, because the resident was engaged with the chief of police....

Léonie listened from behind the screen. And she turned pale at the sound of a word or two which she overheard. She returned silently to her room, feeling anxious. At lunch she asked if it would be really necessary for her to attend the fancy-fair, for she had had such a toothache lately and wanted to go to Surabaya, to the dentist. It would probably mean a few days: she had not been to the dentist for ever so long. But Van Oudijck, sterner than usual, in his sombre mood of secret concern and silence, told her that it was impossible, that on an evening like that of the fancy-fair she was bound to be present as the resident’s wife. She pouted and sulked and held her handkerchief to her mouth, so that Van Oudijck became distressed. That afternoon she did not sleep, did not read, did not dream, as a result of this unusual agitation. She was frightened, she wanted to get away. And at tea, in the garden, she began to cry, said that the toothache was making her head ache, that it was making her quite ill, that it was more than she could bear. Van Oudijck, distressed and careworn, was touched; he could never endure to see her tears. And he gave in, as he always did to her, where her personal affairs were in question. Next day she went off to Surabaya, staying at the resident’s and really having her teeth attended to.

It was always a good thing to do, once a year or so. This time she spent about five hundred guilders on the dentist. After this, incidentally, the other ladies also seemed to guess something of what was happening at Labuwangi behind a haze of mystery. For Ida van Helderen, the tragic white half-caste, her eyes starting out of her head with fright, told Eva Eldersma that her husband and Eldersma and the resident too were fearing a rebellion of the population, incited by the regent and his family, who would never forgive the dismissal of the Regent of Ngadjiwa. The men, however, were non-committal and reassured their wives. But a dark swirling tide continued to stir under the apparent calmness of their little up-country life. And gradually the gossip leaked out and alarmed the European inhabitants. Vague paragraphs in the newspapers, commenting on the dismissal of the regent, contributed to their alarm.

Meanwhile the bustle of preparation for the fancy-fair went on, but people no longer put their hearts into the work. They led a fussy, restless life and were becoming ill and nervous. At night they bolted and barred their houses, placed arms by their bed-sides, woke suddenly in terror, listening to the noises of the night, which sounded faintly in space outside. And they condemned the hastiness shown by Van Oudijck, who, after the scene at the race-ball, had been unable to restrain his patience any longer and had not hesitated to recommend the dismissal of the regent, whose house was firmly rooted in the soil of Labuwangi, was one with Labuwangi.

The resident had ordered, as a festival for the population, an evening market on the square outside the regent’s palace, to last for a few days, coinciding with the bazaar. There would be a people’s fair, numbers of little stalls and booths and a Malay theatre, with plays drawn from the Arabian Nights. He had done this in order to give the Javanese inhabitants a treat which they would value greatly, while the Europeans were enjoying themselves on their side. It was now a few days before the fancy-fair, on the previous day to which, as it chanced, the monthly council was to be held in the palace.

The anxiety, the fuss and a general nervousness filled the otherwise quiet little town with an emotion which made people almost ill. Mothers sent their children away and themselves were undecided what to do. But the fancy-fair made people stay. How could they avoid going to the fancy-fair? There was so seldom any amusement. But ... if there really were a rising! And they did not know what to do, whether to take the lowering menace, which they half-divined, seriously or make a light-hearted jest of it.

The day before the council, Van Oudijck asked for an interview with the raden-aju pangéran, who lived with her son. His carriage drove past the huts and booths in the square and through the triumphal arches of the market, formed of bamboo-stems bending towards each other, with a narrow strip of bunting rippling in the wind, so much so that, in Javanese, the decorations are known as “ripplings.” This evening was to be the first evening of the fair. Every one was busy with the final preparations; and, in the bustle of hammering and arranging, the natives sometimes neglected to cower at the passing of the resident’s carriage and paid no attention to the golden umbrella which the messenger on the box held in his hands like a furled sun. But, when the carriage turned by the flagstaff and up the drive leading to the palace and they saw that the resident was going to the regent’s, groups huddled together and spoke in eager whispers. They crowded at the entrance to the drive and stared. But the natives saw nothing save the empty market-place looming beyond the shadow of the banyans, with the rows of chairs in readiness. The chief of police, suddenly passing on his bicycle, caused the groups to break up as though by instinct.

The old princess was awaiting the resident in the front-verandah. Her dignified features wore a serene expression and betrayed no trace of what was raging within her. She motioned the resident to a chair; and the conversation opened with a few ordinary phrases. Then four servants approached in a crouching posture: one with a bottle-stand; the second with a tray full of glasses; the third with a silver ice-pail full of broken ice; the fourth salaamed, without carrying anything. The princess asked the resident what he would drink; and he replied that he would like a whisky-and-soda. The fourth servant came crouching through the other three to prepare the drink, poured in the measure of whisky, opened the bottle of soda-water with a report as of a gun and dropped into the tumbler a lump of ice the size of a small glacier. Not another word was said. The resident waited for the drink to grow cold; and the four servants crouched away. Then at last Van Oudijck spoke and asked if he might speak to her in entire confidence, if he could say what he had in his mind. She begged him, civilly, to do so. And in his firm but hushed voice he told her, in Malay, in very courteous sentences, full of friendliness and flowery politeness, how great and exalted his love had been for the pangéran and still was for that prince’s glorious house, although he, Van Oudijck, to his intense regret, had been obliged to act counter to that love, because his duty commanded him so to act. And he asked her—presuming that it was possible for her, as a mother—to bear him no grudge for this exercise of his duty; he asked her, on the contrary, to show a motherly feeling for him, the European official, who had loved the pangéran as a father, and to cooperate with him, the official—she, the mother of the regent—by employing her great influence for the happiness and welfare of the population. Sunario had a tendency, in his piety and his remote gaze at things invisible, to forget the actual realities that lay before his eyes. Well, he, the resident, was asking her, the powerful, influential mother, to cooperate with him in ways which Sunario overlooked, to cooperate with him in love and unity. And, in his elegant Malay, he opened his heart to her entirely, describing the turmoil which for days and days had been seething among the inhabitants, like an evil poison which could not do other than make them wicked and drunk and would probably lead to things, to acts, which were bound to have lamentable results. He made her feel his unspoken view that the government would be the stronger, that a terrible punishment would overtake all who should prove guilty, high and low alike. But his language remained exceedingly cautious and his speech respectful, as of a son addressing a mother. She, though she understood him, valued the tactful grace of his manner; and the flowery depth and earnestness of his language made him rise in her esteem and almost surprised her ... in a low Hollander, without birth or breeding. But he continued. He did not tell her what he knew, that she was the instigatress of this obscure unrest; but he excused that unrest, said that he understood it, that the population shared her grief in respect of her unworthy son, himself a scion of the noble race, and that it was only natural that the people should sympathize deeply with their old soveran, even though the sympathy was ignorant and illogical. For the son was unworthy, the Regent of Ngadjiwa had proved himself unworthy and what had happened could not have happened otherwise.