And at the table sat si-Oudijck with an Arab, while a Javanese woman squatted on a sleeping couch, preparing herself some betel. The half-caste hurriedly screwed up some sheets of paper lying on the table between them, visibly annoyed at the unexpected visit. But he soon recovered and put on a jovial air, calling out: “Well, Prince, Susuhunan! Sultan of Pajaram! Sugar Baron! How are you, handsome one, ladies’ man?”
His jovial torrent of greetings went on and on, as he gathered the papers together and signalled to the Arab, who promptly disappeared through the other door at the back.
“And who have you got with you, Lord Adrianus, pretty Lucius?…”
“Your brother,” replied Addy.
Si-Oudijck suddenly looked up.
“Well, well,” he said, speaking a mixture of broken Dutch, Javanese and Malay. I recognize him, my legitimate brother. And what has the fellow come for?”
“Just to see what you look like…”
The two brothers surveyed each other, Theo with curiosity, pleased to have made this discovery as a weapon to be used against the old man, if such a weapon should ever be necessary; the other, si-Oudijck, keeping hidden within himself — behind his shrewd brown leering face — all his jealousy, bitterness and hatred.
“Do you live here?” asked Theo, just for something to say.
“No, I’m staying with her for the moment,” answered si-Oudijck nodding towards the woman.
“Did your mother die a long time ago?”
“Yes. Yours is still alive, isn’t she? She’s in Batavia. I know her. Do you ever see her?”
“No.”
“Hmm… Do you like your stepmother better?”
“We get on all right,” said Theo drily. “I don’t think the old man knows you exist.”
“Oh, yes, he does.”
“No, I don’t think so. Have you ever talked to him?”
“Yes. In the past. Years ago.”
“And?…”
“Did no good. He says I’m not his son…”
“It’s probably difficult to prove.”
“Legally, yes. But it’s a fact, common knowledge. Known all over Ngajiwa.”
“Have you no proof at all?”
“Only my mother’s oath on her deathbed, before witnesses.”
“Come on, tell me a bit more. Come for a walk with us, it’s stuffy in here…”
They left the hut and strolled back through the native quarters, while si-Oudijck talked. They walked along the Brantas, which wound along in the dim evening light under a sprinkling of stars.
It did Theo good to hear about this, about his father’s housekeeper when he was just a controller, rejected after being unjustly accused of unfaithfulness: the child born later and never recognized, never supported; the boy, roaming from one native quarter to another, romantically proud of his degenerate father, whom he observed from afar, following with his leering gaze as that father became an assistant commissioner and then a commissioner, married, divorced, remarried; occasionally learning to read and write after a fashion from a native clerk with whom he was on friendly terms… It did the legitimate son good to hear this, because deep down, however blond and white he might be, he was more the son of his Eurasian mother than his father’s son; because deep down he hated his father, not for any specific reason, but because of a secret instinctive antipathy, because, despite his appearance and demeanour of a blond, white-skinned European, he felt a secret affinity with this illegitimate brother, felt a vague sympathy for him, since they were both sons of the same motherland, with which their father had no emotional ties except those he had acquired during his training: the artificial, humanely cultivated love of the rulers for the land they ruled. Since childhood Theo had felt like this, far removed from his father; and later that antipathy had become a smouldering hatred. He enjoyed hearing his father’s irreproachable reputation being demolished: a high-minded man, a senior official of absolute integrity, who loved his family, who loved his district, who loved the Javanese, who wanted to support the Prince’s family — not only because his instructions set out in the Government Gazette required him to respect the position of the Javanese nobility, but because his own heart spoke to his, whenever he remembered the noble old pangéran… Theo knew, of course, that his father was like that — so exalted, so noble, that he had such integrity — and it did him good, in the mystery-filled evening by the Brantas, to hear that irreproachable character, that exalted, noble integrity being picked apart; it did him good to meet an outcast who in an instant had covered that high and mighty father figure in slime and filth, torn him from his pedestal, brought him down to the abject level of everyone else — sinful, evil, heartless, ignoble. He felt a wicked joy in his heart, like the one felt at possessing the wife that his father adored. He did not yet know what to do with that dark secret, but he accepted it as a weapon; he sharpened it that evening, as he listened to the half-caste with his leer, who became worked up and started ranting. And Theo put away his secret in a safe place, storing his weapon deep inside. Old grievances came to the surface, and he, too, the legitimate son, launched into a tirade against his father, admitted that the Commissioner no longer tried to gain advancement for his son, any more than he would for any clerk: that he had once recommended him to the managers of an impossible company, a rice plantation, where he, Theo, had not been able to stand it for more than a month, that he had left Theo to his fate, was obstructive when he tried to obtain concessions, even in districts other than Labuwangi, even in Borneo, until he had been forced to kick his heels and live on charity, finding no work because of his father’s attitude, tolerated in that house where he hated everything.
“Except your stepmother!” si-Oudijck interjected drily.
But Theo went on, giving vent to his feelings in turn and telling his brother that even if he was recognized and legitimized, things would still be pretty lean. In this way they egged each other on, glad to have met and to have become friends for this brief hour. Next to them walked Addy, amazed at this rapid sympathy but, apart from that, without a thought in his head. They had crossed a bridge and via a detour had arrived behind the factory buildings at Pajaram. Here si-Oudijck took his leave from them, shaking Theo’s hand, which slipped him a few two-and-a-half-guilder coins that were eagerly accepted, with a flicker of the furtive look but without a word of thanks. And Theo and Addy headed past the now silent factory towards the mansion, where the family were walking around outside in the garden and in the avenue of cemaras. And as the two young men approached, the eight-year-old golden child, the old mama’s foster-princess, came to meet them, with her fringe and her rice-powdered forehead, in her sumptuous doll’s clothes. She walked towards them, suddenly stopping when she reached Addy and looking up at him. Addy asked what she wanted but the child didn’t reply, just looked up at him, and then, stretching out her hand, she stroked his hand with hers. Some obviously irresistible magnetism had drawn the shy child to him, making her walk up to them, stop and stroke him, so that Addy laughed out loud, bent down and kissed her light-heartedly. The child skipped away contentedly. And Theo, still worked up from that afternoon — first by his conversation with Urip, then by his confrontation with Addy, his meeting with his half-brother, the confidences about his father — feeling bitter and full of his own problems, was so irritated by the trivial behaviour of Addy and the little girl, that he exclaimed, almost angrily: “You’re hopeless… you’ll never be anything but a ladykiller!”