In the house, redecorated and whitewashed after the strange events — which were now over — there was a hatred that seemed to put out shoots everywhere like a diabolical flower, a hatred that surrounded the smiling woman who was too lethargic to hate and whose only pleasure was silent teasing: a jealous hatred now of father for son when he saw him sitting too often with his stepmother, despite Theo’s own hatred begging for something his father could not fathom; a hatred of a son for his father; a hatred of a daughter for her mother; a hatred that spelt disaster for all family life. Van Oudijck did not know how it had gradually come to this. Sadly, he regretted the time when he had been blind, when he had seen his wife and children only in the light in which he wanted to see them. That was over now. Just as the strange events had once risen into their life, so hatred rose like a pestilential miasma from the ground. Van Oudijck, who had never been superstitious, who had worked coolly and calmly in his deserted house, where incomprehensible spectral activity continued around him, who had read reports with hammering going on over his head and his whisky and soda turning yellow in his glass — Van Oudijck, for the first time in his life, now saw the dark looks of Theo and Doddy; he now suddenly found his wife becoming more brazen every day, hand in hand with young De Luce, knees almost interlocked; he saw himself changed, aged, gloomily spying; became superstitious, insurmountably superstitious, believing in a hidden force, hidden he knew not where in the Indies, in the soil of the Indies, in a deep mystery, somewhere, somewhere — a force that meant him no good, because he was a European, a ruler, a stranger on this mysterious, sacred shore. When he saw this superstition in himself, so new for him as a practical man, so utterly incredible in him — a man of simple, masculine sobriety — he was alarmed, as if at a latent madness he began to sense in himself.
Strong as he had been during the strange events, which he had been able to ward off with a single threat of force, this superstition — the aftermath of those events — found a weakness, a vulnerable spot in him. He was so surprised at not understanding himself that he was frightened of going mad, and yet he went on fretting. His health had been undermined by the beginnings of liver disease and he studied his yellow complexion. Suddenly he thought of poisoning. The kitchen was investigated and the cook was questioned, but nothing was found. He realized he was worrying about nothing, but the doctor diagnosed a swollen liver and prescribed the usual diet. What in other circumstances he would have considered quite normal — a very common illness — he now suddenly found odd, a strange phenomenon, about which he fretted. It affected his nerves. He now suffered from sudden bouts of tiredness while working, and from pounding headaches. His jealousy made him agitated; he was seized by tremors of restlessness. He suddenly realized that if there had been hammering above his head now, if betel juice had been spewed around him, he wouldn’t be able to stay in the house. And he believed in a hatred that rose in clouds out of the resentful earth like a pestilence. He believed in a force, deeply hidden in things in the Indies, in nature in Java, the climate of Labuwangi, in the mumbo-jumbo — that was what he still called it — that sometimes enables the Javanese to outsmart the Westerner, and gives him power, mysterious power, not enough to free himself from the yoke, but sufficient to make people ill, make them languish, to taunt and torment them, to haunt them incomprehensibly and horribly — a hidden force, a hidden power, hostile to our Western temperament, our blood, our body, our soul, our civilization, to everything we see fit to be and to think. He had been illuminated as if by a sudden single light, not as a consequence of thinking. He had been illuminated as if with a single jolt of revelation, completely at odds with the logic of his everyday life, his everyday train of thought. He suddenly saw it before him in a single vision of terror, like the light of his approaching old age, just as the very old sometimes suddenly see the truth. Yet he was still young, he was strong… And he felt that unless he could divert his crazy thoughts they might make him ill, weak and miserable, for ever, for ever…
For him especially, as a simple practical man, this sudden reversal was almost unbearable. What someone with a morbid cast of mind would have contemplated calmly, left him thunderstruck. He had never thought that there might be things in life somewhere deep down, mysterious, stronger than will-power, intellectual power. Now — after the night-mare, which he had bravely overcome — it appeared that the nightmare had exhausted him after all and infected him with all kinds of weakness. It was unbelievable, but now, in the evenings when he was working, he listened to night falling in the garden, or the rat stumbling around above his head. And then he would suddenly get up, go into Léonie’s room and look under her bed. When he finally discovered that many of the anonymous letters by which he was pursued were the work of a half-blood claiming to be his son, and even known in the compound by Van Oudijck’s own surname, he felt too hesitant to investigate the matter, because of what might come to light that he had forgotten, from his time as a controller long ago in Ngajiwa. Now he wavered, where in the past he had been resolute. Now he was no longer able to order his memories with such certainty that he could swear he had no son, sired at that time almost without knowing it. He did not have a clear memory of the housekeeper he’d had before his first marriage. He preferred to let the whole business of the anonymous letters go on smouldering in their dark recess, rather than investigate and stir things up. He even had money sent to the half-caste who claimed to be his son, so that he would not abuse the name that he had appropriated, by asking for gifts of chicken, rice and clothes all over the compound. These were things that si-Oudijck asked of ignorant village folk, whom he threatened with the vague displeasure of his father, the master over in Labuwangi. So to avoid the villagers being threatened any longer with his wrath, Van Oudijck sent him money. That was a sign of weakness, and in the past he would never have done it, but now he developed a tendency to pour oil in troubled waters, to make excuses, no longer to be so unbending and severe, and to blur and tone down everything that was black and white. Eldersma was sometimes amazed when he now saw the Commissioner — who had once been so resolute — in two minds, saw him giving way in administrative matters, disputes with tenants, in a way he never would have done in the past. A laxness in the operation of the office would have crept in, had not Eldersma taken the work off Van Oudijck’s hands, and made himself even busier than he already was. It was widely rumoured that the District Commissioner was a sick man. And it was true that his complexion was jaundiced, and his liver painful; the slightest thing set off his palpitations. The atmosphere in the household was neurotic, with Doddy’s tantrums and outbursts, the jealousy and hatred of Theo, who was back home after having abandoned Surabaya. Only Léonie remained triumphant, always beautiful, white, calm, smiling, content, exulting in the enduring passion of Addy, whom she was able to enchant as a sorceress of love, a mistress of passion. Fate had warned her, and she kept Theo at arm’s length, but apart from that she was happy, content.