At first the cook did not dare say.
“Come on, why not, cook?” Eva insisted.
“Because the nyonya had called the girl Melati… Flower and fruit names… are given only… to dancing girls,” explained the cook mysteriously.
“But why didn’t Saina tell me?” asked Eva angrily. “I had no idea!”
“Shy…” said the cook, apologetically. “Forgive me, nyonya.”
These were small incidents in her daily life as a housewife — anecdotes from her household. But they made her bitter because she felt them as a division, which was always there between her and the people and things in the Indies. She did not know the place and she would never know the people.
And the small disappointment over those episodes filled her with as much bitterness as the larger one of her shattered illusions, because her everyday life among the recurring trivialities of her household was itself growing smaller and smaller.
BOOK VI
1
THE MORNINGS WERE OFTEN COOL, washed clean by the abundant rains, and in the sunshine of the early morning hours a soft haze rose from the earth, a bluish blurring of any line or colour that was too sharp, so that Long Avenue with its villas and enclosed gardens was shrouded in the charm and vagueness of a dream avenue: its pillars rose ethereally like a vision of serene columns, the lines of the roofs ennobled by their vagueness; the tints of the trees in silhouette were refined into soft pastel washes of hazy pink, and even hazier blue, with an occasional yellow glow, and a distant streak of dawn, and over all this breaking day was a dewy freshness that spurted upwards out of the drenched ground and whose droplets were caught in the childlike softness of the very first rays of the sun. It was as if the earth began for the first time every morning and as if human beings were only then created, in a youth of naivety and paradisaical ignorance. But the illusion of this daybreak lasted only briefly, no more than a few minutes: the sun, rising higher, broke through the virginal haze, its proud halo of piercing rays pouring forth burning gold sunlight, divinely proud to rule for a brief moment, since the clouds were already gathering, approaching in a grey mass like battle-ready hordes of dark spirits, ghostlike and bluey deep black, their thick and heavy lead grey overwhelming the sun and crushing the earth under white torrents of rain. And the evening twilight, grey and hurried, one shroud falling on another, was like an overwhelming sadness falling over earth, nature and life, in which that second of paradise in the morning was forgotten; the white rain rushed down like a drowning gloom; the roads and the gardens drank in the waterfall until they glowed like swamp pools in the falling dusk: a chill, spectral mist rose like the movement of languid ghostly garments, which floated over the ponds and the houses, dimly lit by smoking lamps around which clouds of insects swarmed, plummeting to their death with scorched wings. The air was filled with a chill melancholy, a shadowy anxiety about the approaching threat from outside, about the omnipotent hordes of clouds, about the boundless immensity that wafted rustling from the far, unknown distance: as big and wide as the firmament, against which the houses did not seem protected, in which the people — with all their culture and science and inward emotion — were small and insignificant, as small as writhing insects, helpless against the interplay of gigantic mysteries borne from afar.
Léonie van Oudijck, in the half-lit back veranda of the Commissioner’s house, was talking in a soft voice to Theo, with Urip squatting down beside her.
“It’s nonsense, Urip!” she said in irritation.
“No, it isn’t, nyonya, it isn’t nonsense,” said the maid. “I hear them every evening.”
“Where?” asked Theo.
“In the banyan tree in the grounds behind the house, on the highest branches.”
“They’re wildcats!” said Theo.
“They’re not wildcats, kanjeng!” the maid maintained. “Massa, goodness me! As if Urip didn’t know how wildcats miaow! Creeow, creeow, is the sound they make. What we hear every night now are the ghosts! They are the little children crying in the trees. The souls of the little children crying in the trees!”
“It’s the wind, Urip…”
“Goodness me, nyonya. As if Urip couldn’t hear the wind! Boo-oh is how the wind goes, and then the branches move. These are the little children moaning in the highest branches and the main branches do not move. Then everything is deathly quiet… This spells doom, ma’am.”
“And why should it spell doom…”
“Urip knows, but dare not say. Ma’am is bound to be angry.”
“Come on, Urip, out with it!”
“It’s because of the tuan kanjeng, the tuan commissioner.”
“Why?”
“Recently at the fair on the square and the fair for white people, in the town park…”
“Well, what about it?”
“The day wasn’t properly calculated, according to the almanacs. It was an unlucky day… And with the new well…”
“Well, what about the new well?”
“There was no ritual offering of food. So no one uses the new well. Everyone draws their water from the old well… Even though the water is not good. Because the woman with the bleeding hole in her breast rises from the new well… And Miss Doddy…”
“What?”
“Miss Doddy saw him, the white haji! That is not a good pilgrim, the white pilgrim… That is a ghost. Miss Doddy has seen him twice, at Pajaram and here… Listen, ma’am.”
“What?”
“Can’t you hear? The children’s souls are moaning in the topmost branches. There is no wind at the moment. Listen, listen, they are not wildcats! The wildcats go cree-ow, creeow when they are on heat! That is the souls!..”
All three listened. Instinctively Léonie pressed closer to Theo. She was deathly pale. The spacious back veranda, with the table permanently set, stretched away in the gloomy light of a single hanging paraffin lamp. The waterlogged back garden was dimly visible against the blackness of the banyans, from which a stream of droplets was falling, but whose impenetrable, velvety masses of foliage were immobile. And an inexplicable, scarcely perceptible groaning, like a faint secret of tormented young souls persisted high above, as if in the sky, as if in the topmost branches of the trees. At times it was a short cry, at others a faint sobbing as if of tortured girls…
“What kind of animals can they be?” asked Theo. “Are they birds or insects?…”
The groaning and the sobbing were clearly audible. Léonie was as white as a sheet and was trembling all over her body.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Theo. “They must be animals…”
But he himself was as pale as a ghost, and when they looked into each other’s eyes, she realized that he was afraid, too. She squeezed his arm tightly and pressed up against him. The maid squatted humbly, hunched up, as if accepting whatever fate brought as an inexplicable mystery. She would not take flight. But in the eyes of the white people there seemed to be a single thought, to flee. Suddenly the two of them — the stepmother and the stepson who were bringing shame on the house — felt fear, a single fear, as if of punishment. They didn’t speak, they said nothing to each other, just stayed resting against each other, understanding each other’s trembling, the two white children of the mysterious Indies earth — who from their childhood onwards had breathed the mysterious air of Java; unconsciously they had heard the vague, softly approaching mystery, like ordinary music, a music that they had not heeded, as if mystery were ordinary. As they stood trembling and looking at each other, the wind got up and brought with it the secret of the souls, and carried them away; the branches moved about wildly and fresh rain poured down. A chilly breeze filled the house; a gust extinguished the lamp and they were left in darkness for a moment. She, despite the openness of the veranda, almost in the arms of her son and lover; the maid cringed at their feet. But then she disengaged herself from him, disengaged herself from the black oppression of darkness and fear through which the rain roared; a chilly wind blew and she stumbled indoors, almost fainting. Theo and Urip followed her. The central gallery was lit, and Van Oudijck’s office was open. He was working. Léonie stood there indecisively, with Theo, not knowing what to do. The maid disappeared, muttering under her breath. It was then that Léonie heard a whooshing sound and a small round stone flew through the veranda and fell somewhere. She gave a cry and stepped behind the screen that separated the office where Van Oudijck was sitting at his desk, then she cast caution to the winds and again threw herself into Theo’s arms. They stood shivering and clinging to each other. Van Oudijck had heard her, stood up and came out from behind the partition. His eyes were blinking rapidly, as if tired from working. Léonie and Theo regained their composure.