“Let’s say three hundred then, dear lady…”
“Three hundred?” she asked dreamily, playing with the jewel.
Whether it was three or four or five hundred, it was all the same to her. It left her completely indifferent. But she thought the stone was beautiful and was determined to have it, whatever the price. And so she put it down gently and said:
“No, madam, really… the stone is too expensive, and my husband has no money.”
She said it so sweetly that her intention was impossible to guess. She was adorable in her self-denial. As she spoke the words, Van Oudijck felt a second jolt. He couldn’t refuse his wife anything.
“Madam,” he said. “You can leave the stone here… for three hundred guilders. But for goodness’ sake, take your jars away with you.”
Mrs Van Does looked up triumphantly.
“Well… what did I tell you? I knew the Commissioner would buy for you…”
Mrs Van Oudijck looked up with a gently reproachful look.
“But Otto!” she said. “How could you?”
“Do you like the stone?”
“Yes, it’s wonderful… but so much money! For one stone!”
And she pulled her husband’s hand towards her and allowed him to kiss her on the forehead, since he had been allowed to buy her a three-hundred-guilder jewel. Doddy and Theo winked at each other.
4
LÉONIE VAN OUDIJCK always enjoyed her siesta. She slept only briefly, but loved being alone in her cool room after the rijsttafel until five o’clock or five-thirty in the afternoon. She read a little, usually the magazines from the circulating library, but mainly she did nothing and daydreamed. Vague blue-tinted fantasies filled her periods of afternoon solitude. No one knew about them and she kept them strictly secret, like a hidden sin, a vice. She was much more inclined to reveal herself to the world when it came to an affair. They never lasted long and didn’t count for much in her life; she never wrote letters, and the favours she granted never gave the privileged one any rights in daily discourse. This made her silently and decorously perverse, both physically and morally. Her fantasies too, however limply poetic, were perverse. Her favourite author was Catulle Mendès: she liked all those flowerlets of sky-blue sentimentality, those pink affected Cupids, little fingers in the air, little legs charmingly fluttering — framing the most degenerate motifs and themes of perverted passion. In her bedroom there were a few pictures: a young woman lying back on a lace-covered bed, and kissed by two romping angels; another, a lion with its breast pierced by an arrow, at the feet of a smiling maiden; a large advertising poster for perfume — a kind of flower nymph, whose veil was being torn off on all sides by playful cherubs. She was particularly fond of that picture, and couldn’t imagine anything more aesthetic. She knew it was monstrous, but she had never been able to bring herself to take down the frightful thing, even though people looked disapprovingly at it — her friends and her children, who walked in and out of her room with that casualness typical of the Indies, which makes no secret of the act of dressing. She could gaze at it for minutes on end as if enchanted; she thought it utterly charming, and her own dreams were like that in the poster. She also kept a chocolate box with a keepsake picture on it, as a kind of beauty she found even more beautiful than her own: cheeks flushed, coquettish brown eyes beneath improbably golden hair, the bosom visible beneath lace. But she never gave away what she vaguely sensed was ridiculous; she never talked about those pictures and boxes, precisely because she knew they were ugly. But she thought they were beautiful, she loved them and considered them artistic and poetic.
These were her favourite hours.
Here in Labuwangi she didn’t dare do what she did in Batavia, and here people could scarcely believe what was said in Batavia. Yet Mrs Van Does was adamant that “that commissioner and that inspector”—one travelling, the other on an official tour and staying at the Commissioner’s residence for a few days — had found their way to Léonie’s bedroom in the afternoon, during the siesta. But at Labuwangi such realities were rare intermezzos among Mrs Van Oudijck’s pink afternoon visions…
Yet, this afternoon it seemed…
As if, after having dozed off for a moment and after all the tiredness from the journey and the heat had cleared away from her milk-white complexion — as if, now she was looking at the romping angels on the perfume advert, her mind was not on all that pink doll-like tenderness, but as if she were listening for sounds from outside…
After a while she got up.
She was wearing only a sarong, which she had pulled up under her arms and held in a knot on her breast.
Her splendid blond hair hung loose.
Her beautiful white feet were bare; she had not even slipped into her mules.
And she looked through the slats of the blind.
Between the flowerpots, which on the steps at the side of the house masked her windows with great masses of leaves, she looked out at an annexe with four rooms — the guest rooms — one of which was occupied by Theo.
She peered for a while and then opened the blind a fraction…
And she saw the blind of Theo’s room also open a fraction…
Then she smiled; tied the sarong more tightly, and went back to bed.
She listened.
A moment later she heard a brief crunching of the gravel under the weight of a slipper. Her venetian blinds, without being locked, had closed. A hand now cautiously opened them…
She turned, smiling…
“What is it, Theo?” she whispered.
He came closer, in pyjama bottoms and a linen jacket, sat down on the edge of the bed and played with her white, chubby hands, and suddenly kissed her passionately.
At that moment a stone whizzed through the room.
They were both startled, quickly looked up, and in a moment were in the middle of the room.
“Who’s throwing stones?” she asked, trembling.
“Perhaps one of the boys — René or Ricus — who are playing outside,” he said.
“They’re not up yet…”
“Or it might have fallen…”
“No, it was thrown…”
“Stones often come loose…”
“But this is gravel.”
She picked up the stone. He looked cautiously outside.
“It’s nothing, Léonie. It simply must have fallen from the gutter, through the window, and then it flew up again. It’s nothing…”
“I’m frightened,” she murmured.
He almost laughed aloud and asked, “Of what?”
They had nothing to fear. The room was situated between Léonie’s boudoir and the two large guest rooms intended only for commissioners, generals and other senior officials. On the other side of the central gallery were the rooms of Van Oudijck, office and bedroom, Doddy’s room and the room of the boys, Ricus and René. So Léonie was isolated in her wing, between the two guest rooms. It made her brazen. At this hour the compound was completely deserted. Anyway, she was not frightened of the servants. Urip was completely trustworthy and often received lovely presents: sarongs, a gold clasp, a long diamond jacket pin that she wore on her breast like a silver and jewelled brooch. Since Léonie never grumbled, was generous with advances on wages and had a certain apparently easy-going manner — although things only happened the way she wanted them to — she was not unpopular, and however much the servants might know, they had never betrayed her. This made her all the more shameless. In front of the passage between her bedroom and boudoir hung a curtain, and it had been agreed between Theo and Léonie that, in case of danger, he would simply slip away behind the curtain and exit through the garden door of the boudoir, as if wanting to see the rose pots on the steps. That would make it look as if he had just come from his own room and was viewing the roses. The inner doors of the boudoir and bedroom were locked as a rule, as Léonie made it quite clear that she did not care to be caught unawares.