Now she filled her life with thoughts of her child. Her son, little Onno, was three. She would guide him, make a man of him. As soon as he was born, she’d had vague illusions of one day seeing him as a great artist, preferably a great writer, world-renowned. But she had learnt since then. She felt that art is not always paramount. She felt that there were higher things, which, though she might sometimes deny them in her depression, were nonetheless there, great and gleaming. Those things were about shaping the future; those things were in particular about peace, justice and brotherhood. Oh, the great brotherhood of rich and poor — now, in her loneliness, she thought about it as the highest ideal, at which one could work, like sculptors on a monument. Justice and peace would then follow of their own accord. But brotherhood must be approached first, and she wanted her son to work at it. Where? In Europe? In the Indies? She didn’t know; she couldn’t see that in front of her. She thought Europe more probable than the Indies. In the Indies all her thoughts remained fixed on the inexplicable, the mysterious, the fearful. How strange that was…
She was a woman of ideals. Perhaps this alone was the simple explanation of what she felt and feared in the Indies.
“You’ve got entirely the wrong idea about the Indies,” her husband sometimes said. “Your view of the Indies is completely mistaken. Quiet? You think it’s quiet here? Why would I have so much work to do in the Indies if Labuwangi were quiet? We promote hundreds of interests of the Dutch and Javanese. Agriculture is pursued here as vigorously as anywhere… The population goes on increasing… Run down, a colony where so much is happening?… These are those idiotic ideas of Van Helderen. Abstract ideas, plucked out of the air, which you brood on. I can’t understand how you see the Indies as you do today… There was a time when you were receptive to what was beautiful and interesting… That seems to be all in the past… Actually you ought to go back to Holland…”
But she knew that he would be very lonely, and that was why she did not want to go. Later, when her son was older, then she would have to leave. But by that time Eldersma would definitely have become an assistant commissioner. Now he still had seventeen controllers and secretaries above him. That had been the case for years, that looking forward to a distant future of promotion like the pursuit of a mirage — he didn’t even think of becoming a commissioner. A few years as an assistant commissioner, and then back to Holland on a pension…
She found it a desolate existence, toiling away like that, for Labuwangi…
She was suffering from malaria and her maid, Saina, was massaging her sore limbs with her supple fingers.
“Saina, when I’m sick it’s inconvenient your being in the native quarter. Why don’t you move in here this evening with your four children?”
Saina thought that was a nuisance, too much fuss.
“Why?”
Saina explained. The house had been left to her by her husband. She was attached to it, although it was very dilapidated. Now, during the wet monsoon, rainwater often came in, and then she couldn’t cook and the children had nothing to eat. Having it repaired was difficult. She earned two and a half guilders a week from the lady, and sixty cents of that went on rice. Then every day she spent a few cents on fish, coconut oil, betel, and a few cents on fuel… No, it was impossible to repair the house. She would be much better off with the good lady, in the compound. But it would be a lot of fuss finding a tenant for the house because it was so run down and the good lady knew that no house in the native quarter must stand empty: it carried a hefty fine… So she preferred to go on living in her wet house… At night she could stay and look after the good lady; her eldest daughter could look after the little ones.
Accepting her petty existence with its petty miseries, Saina slid her supple fingers over the sick limbs of her mistress, pressing firmly and gently.
Eva found it a bleak existence, living on two and a half guilders a week, with four children, in a house that let the rain in so that it was impossible to cook.
“Let me look after your second daughter, Saina,” said Eva another time.
Saina hesitated, and smiled: she would rather not, but didn’t dare say so.
“Come on,” Eva insisted. “Let her come here: you’ll see her all day long; she can sleep in cook’s room; I’ll get her some clothes and all she’ll have to do is tidy up my bedroom. You can show her how to do that.”
“She’s still so young, nyonya, only ten.”
“Come on,” Eva insisted. “Let her help you now. What’s her name?”
“Mina, nyonya.”
“Mina? No! That’s the seamstress’s name. We’ll find another name for her…”
Saina brought the child, who was very shy, with a streak of rice powder on her forehead, and Eva dressed her in some nice clothes. She was a very pretty child, a softy downy brown, and looked sweet in her fresh clothes. She made a neat pile of all the sarongs in the wardrobe and put fragrant white flowers between them: the flowers had to be replaced with fresh ones every day. For a joke, because she was so good with flowers, Eva called her Melati.
A few days later Saina again squatted at her mistress’s feet.
“What is it, Saina?”
“Could the child come back to the wet house in the native quarter?”
“Why?!” asked Eva, astonished. “Isn’t your little girl happy here then?”
“Oh yes, but the child simply likes the cottage better,” said Saina in embarrassment; the nyonya was very nice, but little Mina liked the cottage better.
Eva was angry and let the child go, with the new clothes, which Saina simply took with her.
“Why wasn’t the child allowed to stay?” Eva asked the cook.