The table trembled…
They looked at each other in alarm, and the doctor sniggered.
Then slowly the table raised one of its three legs, and carefully set it down again.
“Did anyone move?” asked Eva.
They all shook their heads. Ida had gone pale.
“I can feel vibrations in my fingers,” she murmured.
The table once again raised its leg, and creakily described an angry quarter turn on the marble floor, setting the leg down again with a violent thud.
They looked at each other in bewilderment.
Ida sat staring blankly ahead, with outspread fingers, ecstatic.
And the table, for the third time, raised its leg.
4
IT WAS CERTAINLY VERY STRANGE.
For a moment Eva was unsure whether Mrs Rantzow was lifting the table, but when she looked quizzically at the doctor’s wife, Mrs Rantzow shook her head and Eva could see she was acting in good faith. Once more they promised each other that they would be scrupulously honest… And, very oddly, once they were absolutely sure of each other, the table went on describing angrily grating semicircles and raising its leg and tapping on the marble floor.
“Is there a spirit revealing itself?” asked Mrs Rantzow, looking at the table leg.
The table tapped once: yes.
But when the spirit tried to spell its name, tapping the letters alphabetically, what came out was: “Z, X, R, S, A”, which was incomprehensible.
But all of a sudden the table started spelling out a name, as if being pursued… They counted the taps, and what came out was:
“Le…onie Ou…dijck?…”
“What about Mrs Van Oudijck?”
A vulgar word followed.
The ladies were alarmed, except for Ida, who sat as if in a trance.
“Did the table speak? What did it say? What is Mrs Van Oudijck?” people clamoured all at once.
“It’s unbelievable,” muttered Eva. “Are none of us cheating?”
Everyone swore they were playing fair.
“Let’s be absolutely honest, otherwise it’s no fun… I really wish I could be sure…”
That was what they all wished: Mrs Rantzow, Ida, Van Helderen, Eva. The others looked on eagerly, believing what they heard, though the doctor was sceptical and went on sniggering.
The table grated angrily and tapped, and the leg repeated:
“A…”
And the leg repeated the dirty word.
“Why?” asked Mrs Rantzow.
The table tapped.
“Write it down, Onno!” said Eva to her husband.
Eldersma found a pencil and paper and took down the messages.
Three names were given: a member of the Council of the Indies, a departmental head and a young businessman.
“In the Indies, when people are not gossiping, the tables are doing it for them!” said Eva.
“The spirits…” murmured Ida.
“Such phenomena are usually mocking spirits,” lectured Mrs Rantzow.
But the table went on tapping…
“Take it down, Onno!” said Eva.
Eldersma went on writing.
“A-d-d-y!” the leg tapped out.
“No!” everyone said at once, vehemently denying the imputation. “The table is mistaken about that! At least young De Luce has never been mentioned in connection with Mrs Van Oudijck.”
“T-h-e-o!” tapped the table, correcting itself.
“Her stepson! How awful! That’s different! That’s common knowledge!” cried the babble of voices in agreement.
“But we know that!” said Mrs Rantzow, focusing on the table leg. “Why don’t you tell us something we don’t know? Come on, table; come on, come on, spirit!”
She addressed the table leg sweetly and cajolingly. People laughed. The table grated.
“Be serious!” warned Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.
The table fell on to Ida’s lap with a thud.
“Adu! I don’t believe it,” cried the beautiful Eurasian woman, as if awakening from her trance. “It hit my tummy!..”
They laughed and laughed. The table revolved angrily, and they got up off their chairs, keeping their hands on the side table, and followed its angry waltzing movements.
“Next… year…” the table tapped.
Eldersma wrote it down.
“Terrible… war…”
“Between whom and whom?”
“Europe… and… China.”
“That sounds like a fairy tale,” sniggered Doctor Rantzow.
“La…bu…wangi,” tapped the table.
“What?” they asked.
“Is… a… hole…”
Please say something serious, table” begged Mrs Rantzow sweetly, in her pleasant German matronly tone.
“Dan…ger,” tapped the table.
“Where?”
“Threatens…” the table continued. “Labu…wangi.”
“Danger threatens Labuwangi?”
“Yes!” the table tapped once, angrily.
“What danger?”
“Rebellion…”
“Rebellion? Who is going to rebel?”
“Within two… months… Sunario…”
They listened intently.
But the table suddenly and unexpectedly bumped against Ida’s stomach again.
“Adu! I don’t believe it,” cried the young woman.
The table had had enough.
“Tired…” it tapped.
They kept their hands on it.
“Stop it now,” the table tapped.
The doctor, sniggering, put his broad hand on it, as if trying to force it to stop.
“Damned miser!” cursed the table, grating and turning.
“Swine!” it went on.
And a few more dirty words followed, directed at the doctor, as if a street urchin were shouting at him: filthy words without rhyme or reason.
“Who is thinking up those words?” asked Eva indignantly.
Obviously no one was making them up, neither the three ladies nor Van Helderen, always very correct and obviously indignant at the shamelessness of the poltergeist.
“It really is a ghost,” said Ida, ashen-faced.
“I’m stopping,” said Eva nervously and lifted her finger off. “I can’t make head or tail of this nonsense. It may be amusing… but the table isn’t used to decent company.”
“We have a new resource for Labuwangi!” said Eldersma. “No more picnics or balls… but table-turning!”
“We must practice!” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.
Eva shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s inexplicable,” she said. “I can only believe that we were all playing fair. It’d not be at all like Van Helderen to suggest such words.”
“Madam,” protested Van Helderen
“We must do it more often,” said Ida. “Look, there’s a pilgrim to Mecca leaving the grounds…”
She pointed to the garden.
“A pilgrim?” asked Eva.
They looked in the garden. There was no sign of anything.
“Oh no,” said Ida. “I thought it was a haji… It’s nothing: the moonlight…”
It had got late. They took their leave, laughing and cheerfully bewildered, but unable to find an explanation.
“As long as it hasn’t made the ladies nervous!” said the doctor.
No. Relatively speaking they were not nervous. They were more amused, although they didn’t understand.
It was two o’clock in the morning by the time they left. The town was deathly quiet in the velvet shadow of the gardens, the moonlight streaming down.
5
THE NEXT DAY, when Eldersma had left for his office and Eva was wandering through her house on domestic duty, dressed in a sarong and a jacket, she saw Frans van Helderen coming through the garden.