“Can I trust you?” he asked urgently.
“In life… in death…”
“Let us go in then. And let me know your findings as soon as possible…”
The Prince bowed. His pale olive skin betrayed the silent, hidden rage churning inside him like the magma of a volcano. His eyes drilled with silent hatred into Van Oudijck’s back, the Dutchman, the base Dutchman, the commoner, the unclean dog, the infidel Christian, who, whatever he might feel in his polluted soul, had no business concerning himself with anything of his, his house, his father, his mother, their sacrosanct nobility and aristocracy… even though they had always bowed under the yoke of superior strength…
3
“I’M COUNTING ON YOU to stay for dinner,” said Eva.
“Of course,” replied Controller Van Helderen and his wife.
The reception—not a reception, as Eva always pleaded — was coming to an end: the Van Oudijck’s had left first; the Prince followed. The Eldersma’s were left alone with their intimate circle: Doctor Rantzow, senior engineer Doorn de Bruijn, with their wives and the Van Helderens. They sat down on the front veranda with some sense of relief and rocked comfortably to and fro. Whisky sodas and lemonade with great chunks of ice were served.
“Always full to burst, Eva’s reception,” said Mrs Van Helderen. “Fuller than last time at the Commissioner’s…”
Ida van Helderen was a typical white Eurasian, who always tried to behave in a very European way, and speak correct Dutch; she even pretended to speak bad Malay and not like either rijsttafel or spicy fruit salad. She was short and plump, very white, with big black eyes that always looked startled. She was full of little secret whims, hatreds, affections; they all welled up in her from mysterious, unfathomable motives. Sometimes she hated Eva, sometimes she adored her. She was totally unpredictable; every action, every movement, every word could hold a surprise. She was always in love, tragically. She saw her little private emotions in an extremely tragic light, grand and sombre — without any sense of proportion — and then poured her heart out to Eva, who laughed and comforted her. Her husband, the controller, had never been in Holland: he had been educated entirely in Batavia, in the Colonial Department of King William III College. And it was a very strange sight to see this Creole, apparently completely European — tall, blond, pale, with a blond moustache, his lively, expressive blue eyes full of interest, with his manners that were more refined than those of the most select circles in Europe, and yet so Indies in his ideas, vocabulary, dress. He spoke about Paris and Vienna as if he had spent years there, though he had never left Java; he loved music, though he found it difficult to come to terms with Wagner, when Eva played for him; and his great dream was to go to Europe one day on leave, to see the Paris Exhibition. There was an astonishing distinction and innate style about this young man, as if he were not the child of European parents, who had spent their whole lives in the Indies, but a stranger from an unknown country, whose nationality one could not immediately call to mind… At most there was a certain softness in his accent — the influence of the climate. He spoke Dutch so correctly that it would have appeared almost stiff amid the careless slang of the motherland; and he spoke French, English and German with greater ease than most Dutchmen. Perhaps he derived that exotic politeness and courtesy from a French mother: innate, pleasant, natural. In his wife, also of French origin, who came from Réunion, that exoticism had resulted in a mysterious mixture that had retained nothing but childishness: a welter of petty emotions, petty passions, while with her sombre eyes she strove for a tragic view of life, which she had merely flicked through like a badly written novelette.
Now she imagined she was in love with the senior engineer, the black-bearded doyen of the clique, already greying; and, in her tragic way, she imagined scenes with Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, a portly, placid, melancholy woman. The other couple in their intimate circle, Doctor Rantzow and his wife, were German: he, fat, blond, rather vulgar, with a middle-age spread; she, a pleasant, matronly type who spoke animatedly in Dutch with a German accent.
This was the clique where Eva’s word was law. Apart from Frans van Helderen, the controller, it consisted of very ordinary Indies and European types, people without any aesthetic sense, as Eva said, but she had no other choice in Labuwangi, and so she amused herself with Ida’s petty Eurasian tragedies, and resigned herself to the rest. Her husband, Onno, tired from his work as always, did not contribute much to the conversation, but listened.
“How long was Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia?” asked Ida.
“Two months,” said the doctor’s wife. “A long stay this time.”
“I’ve heard,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn — placid, melancholy, and quietly venomous — that this time a member of the Council of the Indies, a head of department in the colonial service and three young men in trade amused Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia.”
“And I can assure you all,” ventured the doctor, “that if Mrs Van Oudijck did not go regularly to Batavia, she would forgo a very salutary cure, even though she is taking it on her own initiative and not… on my orders.”
“Don’t let’s speak ill of her!” Eva interrupted him almost pleadingly. “Mrs Van Oudijck is beautiful — with a calm Junoesque type of beauty, with the eyes of Venus — and I’m prepared to forgive beautiful people around me a lot. And you, Doctor…” she wagged her finger at him. “Don’t betray professional secrets. You know that doctors in the Indies are often too free with their patients’ secrets. If ever I’m ill, I’ll never have anything worse than a headache. You won’t forget that, will you, Doctor?”
“The Commissioner looked preoccupied,” said Doorn de Bruijn.
“Do you think he knows… about his wife?” asked Ida gloomily, with her large eyes full of black velvet tragedy.
“The Commissioner is often like that,” said Frans van Helderen. “He has his moods. At times he’s good company, cheerful, jovial, as on the recent inspection tour. At others, he has his dark days, he works and works and works, and roars that the only person who does any work is himself.”
“My poor, unappreciated Onno!” sighed Eva.
“I think he’s working too hard,” Van Helderen went on. “Labuwangi has been a huge burden. And the Commissioner takes too much to heart, both at home and outside. His relationship with his son and with the Prince.”
“I’d get rid of the Prince,” said the doctor.
“But, Doctor,” said Van Helderen, “you know enough about conditions in Java to realize that it’s not as easy as that. The Prince’s family is too identified with Labuwangi and too highly regarded by the people…”
“Yes, I know Dutch policy… The British in India are more high-handed and peremptory with their Indian princes. The Dutch defer to them too much.”
“It remains to be seen which policy is best in the long run,” said Van Helderen drily, who could not stand a foreigner criticizing anything in a Dutch colony. “Fortunately we don’t have conditions of squalor and famine like they have in British India.”
“I saw the Commissioner talking very seriously to the Prince,” said Doorn de Bruijn.
“The Commissioner is too sensitive,” said Van Helderen. “He’s definitely troubled by the slow decline of an ancient Javanese family, a family that is doomed to fall but one that he would like to preserve. In that respect, however cool and practical he may be, the Commissioner is behaving rather poetically, although he wouldn’t admit it. But he remembers the glorious past of the Adiningrats, he still remembers the last glorious figure, the noble old pangéran, and he compares him with his sons, one a fanatic, the other a gambler…”