“She’s back very early…”
“I don’t suppose she’s sold anything.”
“Then it’ll cost you ten guilders…”
“I expect so…”
“Do you pay her a lot? For our rendezvous?”
“Oh, what does it matter?…”
“Listen,” he said again, more attentively.
“That’s not Mrs Van Does…”
“No…”
“It’s a man’s footstep…”
“It wasn’t a dos-à-dos either: it rattled far too much.”
“It’s probably nothing…” she said. “Someone who’s got the wrong address. No one will come in here.”
“The man is coming round the back,” she said, listening.
They both listened for a moment. Then suddenly, with two or three steps through the narrow garden and on to the small back veranda, his, Van Oudijck’s figure loomed at the closed glass door, visible through the curtain. He had wrenched the door open before Léonie and Addy could change position, so that Van Oudijck saw the two of them: her, sitting on the divan, him kneeling in front of her with her hand, as if forgotten, still resting on his hair.
“Léonie!” thundered her husband.
The blood coursed and seethed through her veins with the shock of surprise, and in a single moment she saw a whole future: his fury, a divorce, a court case, the money that he would give her, everything jumbled together. But, as if through the force of will-power, the rush of blood immediately subsided and evened out, and she sat calmly, with terror visible in her eyes for only a further moment, until she could direct her steely gaze at Van Oudijck. And pressing Addy’s head with her fingers she signalled to him to stay as he was, kneeling at her feet, and as if in a state of self-hypnosis, listening in astonishment at the sound of her own, slightly hoarse voice:
“Otto… Adrien de Luce is asking me to put in a good word with you… for him… He is asking… for Doddy’s hand…”
She was still the only one speaking. She continued: “He knows that you have some objections. He knows that you are not very fond of his family, because they have Javanese blood… in their veins.”
She spoke as if some other voice were speaking inside her, and she had to smile at the phrase “in their veins”. She did not know why; perhaps it was because it was the first time in her life that she had used it in conversation.
“But,” she went on, “there are no financial objections, if Doddy wants to live at Pajaram… And the young things have known each other… for so long. They were afraid of you…”
Still no one else spoke.
“Doddy’s nerves have been bad for so long, she’s been almost ill. It would be a crime not to give your consent, Otto…”
Gradually her voice became melodious, and the smile appeared around her lips, but her eyes were still steely, as if she were threatening some mysterious wrath if Van Oudijck did not believe her.
“Come…” she said very softly, very sweetly, tapping Addy gently on the head with her still trembling fingers. “Get up… Addy… and… go… to… Papa…”
He got up mechanically.
“Léonie,” said Van Oudijck, hoarsely. “Why were you here?”
She looked up in complete astonishment and gentle sincerity.
“Here? I came to see Mrs Van Does…”
“And him?” said Van Oudijck pointing.
“Him?… He came to see her too… Mrs Van Does had to go out… Then he asked to speak to me… and then he asked me… for Doddy’s hand…”
All three of them were again silent.
“And you, Otto?” she asked, more harshly this time. “What brings you here?”
He looked at her sharply.
“Do you want to buy something from Mrs Van Does?”
“Theo said you were here…”
“Theo was right…”
“Léonie…”
She got up, and with her steely eyes indicated to him that he had to believe, that all she wanted was for him to believe.
“Anyway, Otto,” she said, once more gentle, calm and sweet, “don’t keep Addy waiting for an answer any longer. And you, Addy, don’t be afraid, and ask for Doddy’s hand from Papa… I have… nothing to say about Doddy: I’ve already said it.”
They now stood facing each other in the cramped central gallery, stuffy with their breath and bottled-up feelings.
“Commissioner,” said Addy at that point, “I wish to ask you… for your daughter’s hand…”
A dos-à-dos drew up outside.
“That’s Mrs Van Does,” said Léonie hurriedly. “Otto, say something, before she comes…”
“Very well,” said Van Oudijck gloomily.
Before Mrs Van Does came in, he made his escape round the back, not seeing Addy’s proffered hand. Mrs Van Does came in, shivering, followed by a maid carrying a bundle: her merchandise. She saw Léonie and Addy standing there, stiff, as if in a trance.
“That was the Commissioner’s carriage…” stammered the Indies lady. “Was that the Commissioner?”
“Yes,” said Léonie.
“Good Lord!.. And what happened?”
“Nothing,” continued Léonie, laughing.
“Nothing?”
“There was something…”
“What then?”
“Addy and Doddy are…”
“Are what?”
“Engaged!”
She burst out laughing with a shrill laugh of irrepressible joie de vivre, whirling the flabbergasted Mrs Van Does round, and kicking the bundle out of the maid’s hands, so that a pack of batik-dyed bedspreads and table runners tipped onto the floor and a small jar, full of glistening crystals, rolled out and broke.
“Astaga!.. My diamonds!”
Another exuberant kick and the table runners flew in all directions; the glistening diamonds lay strewn among the table and chair legs. Addy, the terror still in his eyes, was crawling about on his hands and knees collecting them. Mrs Van Does repeated:
“Engaged?”
2
DODDY WAS EXCITED, in seventh heaven, ecstatic, when Van Oudijck told her that Addy had asked for her hand, and when she heard that Mama had spoken on her behalf, she hugged her impulsively, with her spontaneous, mercurial temperament, again surrendering to the attraction that Léonie had exercised over her for so long. Doddy immediately forgot everything that had upset her in the excessive intimacy between Mama and Addy, when he hung over a chair and whispered to Mama. She had never believed what she’d occasionally heard at the time, because Addy had always assured her that it was not true. And she was so happy at the prospect of living with Addy, as man and wife, at Pajaram. Because, for her, Pajaram represented the ideal of domesticity: the big house built next to the sugar factory — full of sons and daughters and children and animals, to whom the same good-naturedness and cordiality and boredom had been handed down, those sons and daughters with their aura of Solo descent — was her ideal dwelling place, and she felt an affinity with all those minor traditions: the sambal pounded and ground by a crouching maid behind her chair at lunch was the acme of gastronomic pleasure; the races at Ngajiwa, attended by the languid procession of all those women flapping their arms by their sides, followed by maids, carrying their handkerchief, perfume bottle, binoculars, was for her the height of elegance; she loved the old Princess dowager, and she had pledged herself to Addy, fully, unreservedly, from the very first moment she had seen him: when she had been a little girl of thirteen, and he a lad of eighteen. Because of him she had always resisted Papa’s attempts to send her to Europe, to a boarding school in Brussels; because of him she had never wanted anything else but Labuwangi, Ngajiwa, Pajaram; because of him she would live and die in Pajaram. Because of him, she had experienced all the minor fits of jealousy when he danced with someone else; all the major fits of jealousy when her girlfriends told her he was in love with so-and-so and going out with someone else; because of him she would always experience those feelings of jealousy big and small, as long as she lived. He would be her life, Pajaram her world, sugar her interest, because it was Addy’s interest. Because of him she would want lots of children, who might be brown — not white like her papa and mama and Theo, but brown because their mother was brown, a faint dusty brown, as opposed to Addy’s beautiful bronze Moorish brown; and, following the example given at Pajaram, her children — her many, many children — would grow up in the shadow of the factory, living from and for sugar and later would plant the fields, and mill sugar cane, and restore the family’s fortunes, so that it would be as resplendent as in the past. And she was as happy as she could possibly conceive of being, seeing her lovelorn girl’s ideal so attainably close: Addy and Pajaram; and not suspecting for a moment how her happiness had come about: through a word spoken almost unconsciously by Léonie, in a moment of self-hypnosis in a crisis. Oh, now she no longer needed to seek out the dark recesses, the dark rice fields with Addy; now she constantly embraced him in the full light of day, sat radiantly close to him, feeling his warm male body that belonged to her and would soon be hers completely; now her adoring gaze was focused on him, for everyone to see, since she no longer had the chaste strength to hide her feelings: now he was hers, now he was hers! And he, with the good-natured resignation of a young sultan, allowed his shoulders and knees to be caressed, let himself be kissed and his hair be stroked, let her put her arm round his neck, accepting everything as a tribute due to him, being used as he was to the tribute of women’s love, cherished and cuddled, ever since he was a chubby little boy, since he was carried by Tijem, his nurse, who adored him — since the time when he frolicked in a smock with his sisters and cousins, who were all in love with him. He received all those tributes good-humouredly, but deep down astonished, shocked by what Léonie had done… And yet, he reasoned, perhaps it might have happened anyway, since Doddy loved him so much… He would have preferred to stay unmarried; as a bachelor he had plenty of family life, while retaining the freedom of giving much love to women out of the goodness of his heart… Naively, it occurred to him even now that it wouldn’t work, would never work, staying faithful to Doddy for long, since he was so good-natured and women were all so crazy. Later Doddy would simply have to get used to that, come to terms with it, and — he remembered — in the palace at Solo it was just the same with his uncles and cousins…