The Ten Thousand Things Read online

  The Garden held her, slowly enveloped her, showed her things, whispered her its secrets . . .

  And Sjeba showed her the way through the forest on the high mountains beyond the hills to the little spring: she scooped up the crystal water with her hand and drank it—bitter, bitter! Sjeba had warned her—she could say a thing like that so vehemently, and also that once you had taken that water in your mouth you should never spit it out again . . .

  Felicia read what Mr. Rumphius had said about the coral woman and she visited the place where the coral woman had drowned and been fished up again later.

  Now she also heard the story of the three little girls.

  After a long day Felicia and her grandmother caught their breath before going to bed, sitting in chairs at the beach or in the gallery on the couch, or just on a mat with their feet dangling over the Garden; not speaking much, the grandmother repeating some advice or a recipe, “so that you won’t forget.”

  That evening rain had threatened but it had stayed dry—very hot, very dark—a gleam of light from the side gallery fell on the open space in front of them where the stone foundations of the old house were standing, the one Felicia’s mother had wanted to rebuild, which had started the quarrel and had made them go to Europe, had made her meet a stranger in a hotel in Nice, had made her—made her—the nutmeg trees grew close around it . . .

  The old woman leaned against the stone pillar, she had been ill, “granddaughter, I have to tell you something,” and she fell silent.

  “Tell me, grandma.”

  “The house must not be rebuilt!” said the grandmother.

  “Oh, that, I know that, you didn’t want it that time and now—don’t think we’re going to spend our good money on a thing like that.”

  “It is not a matter of money,” the old woman said impatiently, “you will have plenty of money some day, and it isn’t that I am afraid either—” she waited a moment—“my father,” she then said, “my father was the younger brother of the three girls, much younger! He never even saw them.”

  “You’ve never told me that, grandma.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  And then she told the story of the first spicegrower, a large family with many children, who had lived in the beautiful house, “the spices fetched so much money!” with the white marble hall on the second floor (“the spice ships brought the marble from Europe, as ballast”), with the many slaves.

  There had been a slave market on the island of Ternate where they went to buy them—Papua slaves were rather cheap—slaves from Bali for instance were very expensive.

  The nurse of the three eldest daughters had been a slave girl from Bali, “she was so beautiful, granddaughter, every-one thought her so beautiful—including, I think, the father of my father, the father of the three girls; and that’s why the mother of the girls hated her and that’s why she hated the mother of the girls—the one the other—yes, that is the way things can be!”

  And she told how the three little girls had died—all three on one day, by poison? venom? “you know—venom!” or from a disease? Nobody had ever known.

  But once when the father was away from the island, the mother went to the police in the town at the outer bay and put in an accusation against the slave girl, and they had come for her and interrogated her in the Castle—they had examined her twice—“people were still put to torture then, granddaughter, and think, a slave!” She never confessed anything, not the second time either, but she was from Bali—the Balinese are very wise, they have means against pain—perhaps she knew means against pain; after that they had to let her go.

  “My father said once—everyone had slaves, those were the years of the slaves, that was the evil of the time, my father said. Every time has its own evil, but a human being can still be good. In the years of the slaves a man could be good to his slaves, my father said—his father had been good, but his mother had not, his mother had been cruel. He said that of his own mother, granddaughter, and also that it wasn’t true about the three girls, that his mother had only made that up—oh, nobody knows what happened, whose fault it was.

  “The people here at the Garden have been saying through all these years, whenever they talk about their deaths, that the girls were poisoned, but they weren’t there, they cannot know; my father said they hadn’t been poisoned but he was not there either, he couldn’t have known—nobody knows—oh, they should have had the poison plate from Ceram.

  “The slave girl lived on for a long time, my father remembered her quite well—she had never been able to walk after it, he said, oh, granddaughter! Then she must have died, and the house came down in the bad earthquake and when it happened the mother of my father was up in the Hall with a little child (she had so many children) and they were buried under the stones and burned to death.

  “My father said, ‘The house is a house of ill fortune, it must not be rebuilt, but don’t think about the rest any more, don’t talk about it! So that it will not happen all over again’; and now I have done it anyway, but who else—please repeat once so that you won’t forget, just this: the house must not be rebuilt—you know now why not,” she whispered, “you don’t have to repeat that part of it.”

  After Felicia had repeated it, the old woman sighed deeply and leaned against the pillar.

  Felicia’s voice had sounded gruff and reluctant, and that was how she felt: a deep unwillingness, an aversion—it required an effort to stay where she was—the child, Himpies, she should never have brought him here, to the Garden so far away, so far from God and all men, and hemmed in on all sides: rivers, inner bay, mountains, and on an island—hemmed in again—the sea around it, nowhere a little path leading to escape. A trap within a trap, and within, like those two women who had once hated each other—together in a trap—and the three small children! Now, it was different now, of course she realized that, and yet: Himpies in his little bed like—“grandma!” she called out aloud, “was that house, is . . . is it, is the Small Garden—is there a curse on the Small Garden? Please tell me the truth.”

  “A curse? You mustn’t say such a thing, granddaughter. A house of ill luck, yes! But ill luck is not the same as a curse, and the Garden—the Small Garden? would it be—no, you don’t think that, you can’t think that. Wherever there are people there is also ill luck, sadness, evil too sometimes, venom, you know—venom—but that doesn’t mean that we, that people are cursed, you mustn’t say that, granddaughter. It is not good to say that.” The old woman was sitting up straight and she kept shaking her head; it took her a while to calm down. “I know what you mean: when we meet evil it scares us, it frightens us, but it shouldn’t. We must try to remain proud people, upright!”

  She leaned back against the pillar and after a long time she said, “when you want to preserve pineapple it is a good thing to soak it first overnight in lime water, granddaughter.”

  Felicia did not answer, she looked at her, “sometimes you see things, don’t you, grandma?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the old woman answered hesitantly, “sometimes it seems . . . but . . . but not very clearly.”

  “Did you ever see the three girls?”

  “I? I thought so, once, but it wasn’t true.”

  “And all the others here say—”

  “You mustn’t believe them!” said the old woman vehemently, “they repeat each other, people always repeat each other—once, I hadn’t been back for long at the Small Garden with my son Willem, and I was standing there—” she pointed behind the house where the wood began—“together with an old cook we had then; she died long since, you’ve never known her. She could see things. I was sad that day, I had spells of sadness in those days, like you now, don’t you, granddaughter, and then suddenly she said, probably to console me, ‘look, mistress! the three girls, there they go, sssh,’ and when I asked, ‘but where?’ she said, ‘there!’ and she pointed under the trees, ‘don’t you see them? there, all three, but hush,’ and she indicated with her hand how tall each one
was: thus, and thus, and thus, and it was as if she really saw them. ‘They’re sweet children,’ she said, ‘the two oldest like to laugh but the youngest one doesn’t!’ ”

  When Felicia went to bed, the room with its whitewashed walls, light-gray doors and blinds, with all the white gauze mosquito netting and draperies, was very still but so open and light in the pink radiation from the night lamp, so without any hint of nightly dark and fear and secrets—the child Himpies was sleeping in the crib: arms and legs spread wide he slept, withdrawn from everything—she stood and watched him for a moment. In future she would make him say good night to the three girls on the screen around the night lamp. Later he would hear about three other girls who had been made to drink poison, she could not prevent that; but he might confuse them all and think that Elsbet, Katie and Marregie were those three happy girls in pink: the two eldest on the seesaw and the smallest who did not laugh, with the hoop and stick. He wouldn’t know who was who.

  On top of all the other work Felicia now had the servants dig out the foundations of the old house: the debris, which was full of pieces of white marble, could well be used to reinforce the embankment at the inner bay.

  Whatever she tried to plant on that spot afterward languished, and when she complained about it the grandmother looked at her, said nothing—only muttered something about foolishness!—what had she expected?

  And the bibi . . .

  At that same time, after her illness, the grandmother began to call Felicia in on her negotiations with the bibi, “so you’ll know how it’s done.”

  The bibi always stepped out of her proa by herself, and the bell was not rung either; the grandmother remained standing at the top of the stairs in the side gallery. But she did shake hands with the bibi and bade her sit down on the couch.

  The bibi was small and thin, very dark; she wore an old sarong of many colors and a solid-colored jacket, very dark green or dark red but not black; a woven scarf over her head which she never took off. The servants who were Christians (on the Small Garden all servants were Christians and the village across the river was Christian too) whispered that she was a Mohammedan, that she had certainly been to Mecca and that Allah’s name must be embroidered in that scarf—but who was going to ask her? As long as the bibi was there everyone kept at a distance.

  The grandmother brought a tray from the living room with a plate and a cup and saucer which were used by the bibi only; they always stood apart from the other china. The bibi could not eat from a plate or drink from a cup which had been used by someone else. They also made separate coffee for her and a new jar of candied fruit was opened—the bibi had a sweet tooth. When Felicia once said, “what a lot of bother!” the grandmother replied that that was the proper way to do it.

  In the meantime the bibi unpacked her basket and put all its contents on the couch and on the low table in front of her: not only dried herbs, roots, bulbs, pieces of fragrant wood, little bottles with liquids, oils, the “very best” rose water, all the ingredients for amber balls, for dried scents, incense, medicines, but also shells, pieces of coral, rare stones, little jewels, curiosities, and what not.

  A ring cut from a white marble-shell with black inlay; a dried lobster claw which looked exactly like a little swan; a bracelet of scarlet shells for men to wear to war. And also really precious things like the horn of a rhinoceros; a Stone of Life (all metals melted together); a coconut from the Palm of the Sea, and such. She asked exorbitant prices for these, she would rather not sell them; she brought them along to be admired. The grandmother clapped her hands in proper astonishment and nodded, and nudged Felicia to do the same, and then proceeded with the business at hand.

  The scales were brought; at times the grandmother tasted something for its genuineness, smelled it—it was an endless bargaining. Yet it was as if the two old women knew in advance what would be bought and how much would be paid for it. The grandmother put aside the things she was going to keep, “get me my purse, granddaughter!” There was always just about the right amount of money in the purse.

  The bibi carefully packed everything up again, in rags, in boxes, little bags—some of the things were on no account to touch each other!—put it all back into the basket.

  More coffee was brought for her and sweets; the bibi got up, put a tight dark hand on her stomach and said that she was completely satisfied; the grandmother escorted her to the top of the stairs—never farther—their hands touched each other.

  The two little boys who had been kept away by Sjeba came running to see if something beautiful had been bought for the curiosities collection. Sjeba shook out the couch cover, the table cloth, beat up the pillows. “Thank goodness!” she said to Felicia with a suppressed fury in her voice—was it fury or something else?

  Felicia looked at her, “yes, thank goodness,” she said too, and knew at once what the “something else” was. Sjeba was afraid of the bibi, as she was herself.

  On occasion, when the grandmother left them alone together, the bibi could look at her as if—with those gleaming black eyes, deeply sunk in the dark-brown face, sharp like awls and at the same time mortally tired—did she want to say something? what did she want to say? North America?, South America?, is he still alive?—no, he is not—and Felicia became deadly cold in the look from those eyes.

  She was always glad when her grandmother came back.

  Every now and again the bibi brought “jewelry” with her. Once she had pushed a bound-up piece of cloth toward Felicia, with pearls in it.

  Felicia, who usually did not care for jewelry, suddenly wanted those pearls—she was aware of nothing but their smoothness, their roundness, their gleam. She gave a start when the grandmother took the cloth out of her hands and handed it back to the bibi.

  “Take these pearls from the sea back, and see that they are all there!” the grandmother said.

  “Yes,” said the bibi, but she did not start to count the pearls, she kept her eyes on Felicia. “They are beautiful,” she said softly, almost without moving her lips, and made a little gesture at her neck, “beautiful for a string around the neck—for a lady, a gentleman likes—”

  “Yes!” said the grandmother, “very beautiful, wrap them up again, and in the future you must never bring pearls from the sea here, to the Small Garden, and do not forget that, bibi!”

  All went awkwardly the rest of that day; for the first time Felicia had the feeling that her grandmother was a bothersome old woman who interfered in everything. She, Felicia, was no longer a child, she did most of the work; they earned a decent amount of money—if she wanted to buy pearls for a necklace, then what!

  That evening when they were alone she took up the subject once more.

  The grandmother said, “pearls from the sea are tears, granddaughter!” (Why did she keep saying pearls from the sea?)

  “I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” Felicia said shortly—her voice was as hard as that of her mother.

  “No, granddaughter, I know that.”

  “You yourself always buy Arabian incense, that’s tears too! at least that is what you have told me.”

  The old woman started to laugh, “but you’re foolish, sweet granddaughter, pearls of the sea are tears we will have to cry ourselves, and the others are tears which were once cried for us people by the prophet Mohammed—that’s what they say, at least, and that is not the same thing.”

  On the next visit of the bibi—there was a long time in between—it happened again, in a way.

  When the old woman was alone with Felicia she handed her a box made of folded palm leaves, in which there was a string of beads.

  Felicia had never seen such beads before, neither of glass nor of metal, not of jade either, she thought; of stone or baked clay, rather, opaque, in mysteriously tender and quenched colors: orange, ocher, golden brown, some touched with black; so subdued of hue—melancholy almost, as if there was something of autumn in that little box woven from leaves, something of passing and dying.

  S
he looked at them and held her breath.

  “They are beautiful,” the bibi said, again in that soft toneless voice.

  “Yes,” Felicia said and looked around to see where her grandmother was, “yes, I want to buy them from you, how much do they cost, how much are they?”

  “They are very expensive,” the bibi said softly, but she did not say how expensive.

  But it was already too late, the grandmother had returned, like the first time she took the box from Felicia’s hands, put the top on and gave it back. “True,” she said, “very expensive, for two of these one could formerly buy a human being, isn’t that so, bibi?” And when the bibi did not answer, “so you have not been able to remember that you weren’t to bring pearls to the Small Garden?”

  Felicia shook off her thoughts.

  “Pearls! Are these pearls?” She looked furiously at her grandmother.

  “Are these pearls, bibi?” asked the grandmother.

  And the bibi muttered, scarcely audible, “wrong pearls: pearls from the earth,” and stared fixedly at the ground in front of her.

  With a jolt Felicia pushed back her chair, got up, walked away without saying a word. She went around the house and into the wood, sat down on the edge of the cistern and cried—she who never cried—what was there to cry for? there was nothing to cry for; she did not want to cry—he there—where? —she here, and it was autumn and life was going by . . .