This made her very popular in some quarters and very unpopular in others. But she pressed on and provided some European culture, to avoid gathering too much colonial “mould” in Labuwangi. And people went to great lengths to secure an invitation to her dinners, which were famed and notorious, since she demanded that the gentlemen came in evening dress and not in their Singapore jackets with no shirts underneath. She stipulated white tie and tails and would not budge. The ladies wore low-cut gowns as usual, to keep cool, and were delighted. But their partners protested and, on the first occasion, were all choking in their stiff collars and gasping for breath. The doctor maintained it was unhealthy; colonial veterans maintained it was absurd and contrary to all good old Indies customs…
However, after they had gasped a few times in those tails and stiff collars, everyone found Mrs Eldersma’s dinners delightful, precisely because they were so European in style.
2
EVA ENTERTAINED GUESTS every two weeks.
“My dear Commissioner, it’s not a reception,” she would always say to Van Oudijck in her defence. I’m well aware that no one in the provinces is allowed to “receive” except the commissioner and his wife. It really isn’t a reception, Commissioner. I wouldn’t dare call it that. I simply have an at-home day every two weeks, and am pleased if my friends can come… Surely there’s no harm in that, Commissioner, provided it’s not a reception?”
Van Oudijck would give a cheerful laugh that shook his jovial military moustache, and ask if dear Mrs Eldersma were pulling his leg. She could do what she liked, as long as she went on providing some fun, some theatre, some music to brighten social life. That was quite simply her responsibility: to provide some sophistication in Labuwangi.
Her at-home days were not at all colonial. In the District Commissioner’s house, for example, receptions were organized according to traditional provincial Indies custom: all the ladies sat together on the chairs along the walls, and Mrs Van Oudijck did the rounds, talking with each of them for a moment, standing while the ladies remained seated; in another gallery, the District Commissioner conversed with the gentlemen. Men and women did not mix. Bitters, port and iced water were served.
At Eva’s, people walked and strolled through the galleries, sat down here and there; everyone talked to everyone. It did not have the stateliness of the commissioner’s mansion, but had the chic of a French salon, with an artistic touch. It had become the custom for the ladies to dress up more for Eva’s days than for receptions at the commissioner’s house; at Eva’s they wore hats, a sign of the greatest elegance in the Indies. Fortunately, it did not matter at all to Léonie, but left her completely indifferent.
In the middle gallery Léonie was now sitting on a divan and stayed sitting there with the radèn-ayu, the prince’s wife. She found the old custom convenient; everyone came to her. At her own receptions she had to walk so much, working her way along the rows of women by the wall… Now she was taking it easy, sitting down, smiling at anyone who came to pay her a compliment. But apart from that it was a bustling throng of guests. Eva was everywhere.
“Do you like it here?” Mrs Van Does asked Léonie, casting a glance over the middle gallery, and surveying in bewilderment the line of matt arabesques painted with lime as frescos on the soft grey wall, the jati-wood panelling, carved by skilful Chinese cabinet-makers from a drawing in The Studio magazine, the bronze Japanese vases on jati-wood pedestals, in which bamboo branches and bunches of gigantic flowers cast a soft shadow up to the ceiling.
“Strange… but very nice! Unusual…” murmured Léonie, to whom Eva’s taste was still a mystery. Withdrawn as she was into her temple of egoism, what others did and felt didn’t matter to her, not even how someone else arranged their house. But she could never have lived here. She preferred her engravings — Veronese, Shakespeare and Tasso — which she thought distinguished, rather than the splendid sepia photographs of Italian masters that Eva had displayed on easels here and there. Most of all she liked her chocolate box, and the perfume advert with the cherubs.
“Do you like that dress?” Mrs Van Does then asked.
“Oh yes,” said Léonie smiling sweetly. “Eva is very clever; she painted blue irises on Chinese silk herself…”
She never said anything but sweet smiling things. She never spoke ill of people; it was all indifferent to her. And she now turned back to the radèn-ayu and thanked her in sweet, drawling sentences for some fruit she had sent. The Prince came along to talk to her and she inquired about his two young sons. She spoke in Dutch and the Prince and the radèn-ayu replied in Malay. The Prince of Labuwangi, Radèn Adipati Surio Sunario, was still young, just thirty, with a fine Javanese face like that of a supercilious wayang shadow puppet, and a little moustache with the tips carefully twisted, and above all a striking stare, a stare as if he were in a perpetual trance, a stare that seemed to plumb visible reality and see through it, a stare from eyes like glowing coals, sometimes dull and tired, sometimes glowing like sparks of ecstasy and fanaticism. Among the native population — almost slavishly attached to their royal family — he had the reputation of holiness and mystery, though no one ever got to the bottom of the matter. Here, on Eva’s veranda, he simply made the puppet-like impression of a distinguished native prince: the only surprise was his trancelike expression. The sarong that fitted smoothly around his hips hung in front in a bunch of flat, regular pleats that fluttered open; he wore a white starched shirt with diamond studs and a thin blue tie, over it a blue linen uniform jacket with gold buttons bearing the letter W for Wilhelmina and the crown; on his bare feet he wore black patent leather pumps turned up at the front; the kerchief wound carefully round his head in narrow folds gave his delicate face a feminine look, but his black eyes, occasionally tired, kept flashing in an ecstatic trance. His blue and gold belt held the golden kris dagger, fixed at the small of his back; on his small, slim hand shone a gemstone, and a cigarette case of braided gold wire peeped out of his jacket pocket. He said little — sometimes he looked drowsy, then suddenly his strange eyes would flash into life — and he replied to what Léonie said almost exclusively with a curt, abrupt: