The Ten Thousand Things Page 11

  The life we shouldn’t try to examine too carefully—the proa suddenly lost speed, almost came to a stop.

  What was it now?

  Something had come loose on one of the wings, the steersman said, the rattan ropes had to be tightened, otherwise they might even capsize—it wouldn’t take long.

  Felicia looked annoyed—always something!—stared ahead, then over the edge of the proa into the water of the inner bay. There was no wind and the water was clear there, with green and blue discolorations, hardly moving, almost motionless—

  Suddenly there were three young turtles, all three of the same size, their shields gleaming, almost pink, with a symmetrical pattern of dark brown and yellow and black stripes and spots; each with its four fins waving up and down, young and yet with the same old man’s bald head on a wrinkled neck, with little gleaming eyes under sleepy lids and a large yellow beak like a bird’s.

  They let themselves drop, their fins upright, as if they were drowning, rose again; they kept together, swam over and under each other, carefully, not touching, with a strangely thoughtful and yet casual grace.

  Then, as unexpectedly as they had risen, they dropped down into the deep and did not reappear.

  Felicia looked ahead and without knowing it bent her head sideways and asked, “content with the three young turtles—can one say that?”

  “Come on, you! Get a move on!” the lady of the Small Garden called out with her hard voice, “how long is this going to take? Don’t you want to get home today? I do!”

  When they landed the water was so still, not one ripple, that the trees, the white pavilion stood reflected in the inner bay—that happened very rarely.

  The following day Felicia stayed at the Garden. Once or twice she went down to the beach, to stand under the plane trees for a moment.

  Late in the afternoon a proa moored; visitors? She did not expect anyone. An officer, a high one, the major himself, the—very nice—major himself. He greeted her, sat down as if he had come for tea, did not say much, cleared his throat—he had come to say, to his great regret, a message had been received, her son had been shot from an ambush by a Mountain Alfura, with an arrow—he was wounded, badly wounded—

  “You can tell me.”

  “Yes,” he said then.

  “When?” she asked, as if that made any difference.

  “Yesterday afternoon,” said the major. The message had come by a courier proa, there were no details yet.

  Yesterday afternoon, yesterday afternoon, that was when she had been looking at the three young turtles dancing in the water.

  When the major got up she walked with him to the proa, thanked him for coming in person; after standing awhile at the inner bay she turned around, climbed up the stairs, through the side gallery and to the outbuildings.

  Night had fallen.

  In the large kitchen the hanging lamp was lit and some wall lamps, and it was crowded: all the servants, also the seasonal spice pickers, the rowers were there, and the women; from the village a raft was crossing with still more people—like the night she had arrived at the Small Garden with the child Himpies, and they had come to see him—thus they now came again for the one who was not there, and to wake with her through this night.

  Now, as then, serious and silent and keeping in the background: because they did not matter, nor did Felicia; it was the child—her child, their children, the children of men—in life and in death.

  They did not speak to her either, they remained seated or standing where they were, they did look at her. Sjeba came to her, stood very close, almost touching.

  Felicia caught both her hands for one moment and then with the greatest effort she controlled herself, “you must see to it that there’s enough coffee.” She loosened one hand and detached the key ring from her belt under her jacket and gave it to Sjeba, “and arak,” she said, “and cakes; cook all the necessary dishes, let the other women help you so that there’s enough; it is still a long night. I’ll be inside.” She turned and left the kitchen.

  She herself took her little rattan chair to the room of her son and sat next to his bed as if he were lying in it. Someone had made the bed with a clean sheet and clean pillowcases; the mosquito curtains had been lifted back and hung over the silver hooks.

  Outside it was dark.

  The night light with the glass screen and the three pink girls was standing there but she didn’t light it—it was not dark in the room; in the side gallery the large hanging lamp burned and the double doors were open—the doors should stay open. The two windows behind the bed were open too.

  From time to time someone entered for a moment, spoke a few words, or just stood silently near the bed.

  In between Felicia thought of all the people who were not there, who were dead or not there—and then it was for a moment as if they were there, in the room with her and standing beside the bed, in turn—her grandmother, her parents.

  Once during that night he was there too, her husband, the father of Himpies, whom he resembled and did not resemble. Felicia shook her head; “it is such a pity that you could not wait then, that you have not seen him once,” she said. She said it softly, whispering almost, as if she wanted to console.

  Bear: he was swearing so terribly and without stopping, about Himpies being—“Don’t, Bear!”

  Toinette should have been with her now, they together; the child could sleep in the guest room—but it was her own fault, she had not even been willing to be sad about her that night.

  Late in the night a woman entered; Felicia looked up—when she stood near her the woman took both her hands in her own, pulled them up, held them like that—for a moment it gave Felicia a feeling of unspeakable relief—then laid the hands back in her lap, nothing else, and left. Felicia looked after her: who, who was she, was she the dancer in the Dance with the Shell?

  The man with the blue hair came too—his son had been killed years before. Felicia stood up and made him sit in her chair. “Sit down, Bappa,” she said, taking another chair, and they spoke a few words about his son and about her son. Then Felicia escorted him to the door, “thank you for coming, Bappa,” she said; he was a very old man now and he no longer dyed his hair blue.

  She thought: his son was killed—in action, as they call it; her son had been shot from an ambush—that was not the same. Her son was murdered, she now thought for the first time.

  Domingoes seemed to be in the room—Sergeant Domingoes who was serving on Ceram. “You took bad care of him,” she said bitterly.

  They brought her coffee.

  Others came.

  A very young woman, herself expecting a baby, bent over her, stroked her hands, “madam’s little child,” she said.

  After that Felicia sat with her eyes closed tightly.

  A glass of arak brandy, “come, drink it.” It was Sjeba—a plate with a cake.

  Still others.

  The three little girls in the pink dresses stood on the screen, two on the seesaw and one with hoop and stick; they were there but because the night light was not on they seemed faded and small and flat, as if already they no longer belonged there.

  The night passed.

  The sky turned gray, the inner bay under it an even lighter gray; the trees were standing soaked with dew and almost black. The small parade of women with Bibles and handkerchiefs did not come out from under the trees to the proas—for her son there were no proas.

  Felicia rose from her chair, unhooked the mosquito curtains, pulled them across each other and tucked them in carefully under the mattress; then she left the room, closing the door behind her. In the side gallery the lamp was still burning.

  6.

  She heard the details later. There had been a small patrol: her son, Domingoes, his men, a few convicts.

  They had not made contact with the Mountain Alfuras and were on their way back. They had come down through the steep mountain terrain and were catching their breath in a jungle clearing. Her son had been standing there bareh
eaded, his collar unbuttoned (she knew how he had stood, his head bent slightly backward), when from behind the trees an arrow had come, penetrating straight into his bare throat.

  He had fallen on the ground, unconscious.

  The others had not known how or what, was it a poisoned arrow? an arrow with barbed hooks for manhunting? how to get it out? The old convict had come forward, he had said he knew—first make a stretcher from branches, as light as possible; they had put him on it, then the old man had taken out the arrow. Domingoes had wanted to bandage the wound, but the convict had said: hold it closed with your fingers.

  They had carried the stretcher down in relays of four, taking turns at holding the wound closed. They had traveled as fast as they could, it had been very heavy going especially with the tending of the wound. In the end the old man had refused to be relieved from that job. One of them had run ahead to get the doctor: it had taken some time to find him.

  Her son had not regained consciousness, his breathing had continued for a long time, weakly, but for a long time. But when they had finally arrived at the barracks he had bled to death; it was almost evening then.

  Early the following morning they had buried him on a hill near the coast, with military honors.

  The old convict had had an attack of hysterics, crying for forgiveness, saying that it was all his fault.

  Later Domingoes came to visit Felicia.

  She would rather not have seen him; in the very beginning she had found consolation in hearing people talk about her son or even being with someone who had known him, but now there was a resistance within her against it.

  Yet she had not written Domingoes not to come.

  He arrived late in the afternoon, they had tea together under the trees at the bay. He was a stocky man, with curly hair cut very short, in uniform, a nice face; she would not have recognized him.

  They talked about little things, or she did—had the trip been good? was that expedition over now? what were his plans? how were his parents, still alive? his father dead—a pity . . .

  He gave polite but very short answers.

  She asked whether he still remembered her grandmother.

  Yes, he still remembered madam’s grandmother.

  “Your father made beautiful things, I still have some—if you like I’ll show you—do you want one?”

  “Yes, ma’m,” he only said, and she did not know to what.

  The name of her son or even of the boy Himpies was not mentioned between them. That was not proper, Himpies wouldn’t approve of that.

  Later, under the lamplight, they made a list together of the men who had been there; Felicia wanted to reward them for their efforts, give them something—especially the old convict.

  “Shall I send in a petition for the reduction of his sentence?” she asked.

  Domingoes looked at her, “I don’t know whether they would do that,” he said, “he has murdered twelve people, I think—that is quite a lot.”

  To Domingoes she gave the gold watch and chain of her son, and his mother-of-pearl spoon—he asked for the spoon, “to hold in my hand,” he said, “the hand has a good memory.” She also gave him a golden fruit with an amber ball, although it wouldn’t be of much use to him, she thought.

  The remainder of the evening passed quickly; after supper Domingoes said that he wanted to visit some people in the village, and Sjeba and Henry. He could sleep with them.

  “My son’s friend sleeps in the guest room,” Felicia said shortly. She did not hear him come home.

  The following morning Domingoes did not leave immediately. They walked together to all the old places. They stood in the green, quiet valley near the white shell from which the chicken drank—“the Leviathan who is too terrible,” Domingoes said.

  “Did you know about that too?” Felicia asked.

  Domingoes nodded, “Mr. Himpies . . .” he said.

  They climbed into the hills; it was as beautiful as always there.

  They came back past the graves of the three girls, and halted a moment near the little gate.

  “I’ve never seen them,” Domingoes said.

  “No, neither have I,” said Felicia, “none of us, I’m afraid.”

  “Mr. Himpies did; he always said, the girls in the pink dresses, so he must have seen them.”

  “I don’t believe so,” Felicia answered, but she did not explain further.

  “We didn’t want to admit that we never saw them,” Domingoes added.

  And Felicia said, “Yes, that is true.”

  They walked on through the wood, past the singing trees, past the arèn palms where the palm-wine mannikin was hung when they were tapped, past the stream; now they were speaking of my son, and Himpies, and Mr. Himpies, as if it were no longer a forbidden name.

  Near the old bathing place they sat down on a bench.

  Felicia was silent—she had wanted to ask, did you look at him when you were carrying him? did you call to him and say, oh soul of . . . ? enumerate his hundred things? as they always do here—he was still alive then—he was young, young people should live, perhaps you could have held him back then—but she did not say it.

  They had come to speak again, she didn’t know how, of the old convict. “What kind of man is he?” Felicia asked. “My son wrote me about him, do you think he is bad?”

  Domingoes said, “Oh, madam asks that because he has killed all those—but that was unintentional.”

  “Does he ever talk about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he sorry, do you think?”

  “I don’t think he is very sorry. There is one hope in him: to be free someday.”

  “Does he long for his country?”

  “Yes, he also longs for his country and he hopes that the woman who informed on him will still be alive, he says, for then he will—” Domingoes made a gesture of strangling, one of his hands high up around his own neck.

  Felicia saw it: a strong brown hand, a good hand, around a straight strong neck; at the same moment she felt an ice-cold shiver in the back of her head—an old crooked skinny hand like a claw on a young white throat, so vulnerable, and everything scarlet with blood. She sat straight, bent her shoulders back as in defense, “has he—he did not want to harm Himpies, are you certain of that?”

  Domingoes immediately brought his hand down from his neck, looked at her as if he did not understand; then his face creased with laughter.

  “He harm Mr. Himpies, is that what madam thought! He was like an old hen with one little chicken left, fluttering and cackling over it; we . . . we people sometimes had a hard time not laughing at him, Mr. Himpies sometimes got angry but then he had to laugh too. When the arrow came he was laughing with us at the old man—”

  When the arrow came—like that, quietly—it hardly hurt.

  Felicia was sitting next to Domingoes on the bench; she liked the beach in front of the house better, she seldom came here—yet it was very peaceful and green; the thin jets of water from the open lion’s mouth fell with a slight splash into the cistern, the children’s bath, where now only birds came. And in her brusque way she suddenly asked—if he wanted to leave the service, was tired of wandering around and longed for his own place, as long as she was at the Small Garden (as long as she lived she would be at the Small Garden) she would help him settle there. He did not have to worry too much about the “how” of it—it would be as if he were her adopted son, the adopted brother of her son Himpies; he could marry, have a family.

  He regarded her; his eyes were dark seen from so close, a bit melancholy, very melancholy; and with equal abruptness he said, no, he did not want to settle; and when Felicia insisted, “why not? do you suddenly not like the Small Garden any more?” he self-consciously recited the lines from the psalm, the lines about who go down to the sea in ships will see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep—he said it in Malayan, the Malayan of the Bible which is different from the spoken language. She had learned the psalms when she was a child fr
om her nurse Susanna, especially the hundred-and-fourth one, she had forgotten most of it, remembered only a few words, Lakh-lakh the stork, and Hua which means the Lord. It took her a moment to understand what he had said.

  “Are you going to be a sailor?” she then asked.

  He laughed, “no, not a sailor!” he said, “but life can be like sailing on a ship, madam.”

  Later Felicia took him to the proa and watched it cross the inner bay; of course the bell had not been rung!—such a slackness in everything of late—and there went the Sergeant Domingoes who would rather be a penniless wandering soldier than settle at the Small Garden. And her son had been murdered by a Mountain Alfura—her son should not have been murdered.

  THREE: AT THE OUTER BAY

  THE COMMISSIONER

  THE OTHER haunted garden on the island was at the outer bay. It was a great deal smaller than the Small Garden, it was actually not very much larger than an ordinary garden such as one finds with a house. It was near the town and the highway. On one side of it was the outer bay, on the other three an impenetrable hedge of high thorny bamboos, with a huge wrought-iron entrance gate.

  From the house the ground fell steeply to the beach.

  Only one of the rooms of the house dated from the old days and had old-fashioned brick walls, as thick as a man is high, with tall windows and deep sashes, and a black-and-white marble floor which showed some cracks, all of it rather worn and faded. Yet this must have once been the “Sunday room.”

  The rest of the house had been built later: a closed gallery, more rooms—only the lower part of the walls brick, the rest planks chalked white.

  In front of the house was a verandah, painted green, with some rickety steps leading down to the garden and the short wide lane of plane trees which descended straight to the beach. A small open beach; to the left and the right more plane trees, in the center a ramshackle wooden quay. At the end of the quay stood a solid pole, made of ironwood, too high to have been meant for mooring only. It might once have been a lantern post with an oil lamp at the top—a reassuring little light over the outer bay—now it certainly was not.