Max Havelaar (Siebenhaar)/Chapter 11
So I just wish to say, in the words of Abraham Blankaart, that I consider this chapter “essential,” because, I think, it gives a better knowledge of Havelaar, who once and for all appears to be the hero of the story.
“Tine, what kind of ketimon[1] is this? My dear girl, never put plant-acid with fruit! Cucumbers with salt, pineapples with salt, Indian oranges with salt, all that comes out of the soil with salt; vinegar with fish and meat . . . there is something about this in Liebig . . .”
“Dear Max,” Tine asked with a laugh, “how long do you think we have been here? That ketimon is Mrs. Slotering’s.”
And Havelaar had to make an effort to remember that he had only arrived the day before, and that with the best possible intentions Tine could not yet have arranged anything for the kitchen or the household. He himself had already been a long time at Rangkas-Betoong! Had he not spent the whole night reading in the archives, and had not too much already passed through his soul in connection with Lebak, for him to know straightway like this that he had only been there since yesterday? Tine perfectly understood this: she always understood him.
“Of course, you are right,” he said. “But in any case you really must read something of Liebig’s. Verbrugge, have you read much of Liebig?”
“Who is he?” asked Verbrugge.
“He is a man who has written a good deal about pickling gherkins. He also discovered how one may change grass into wool . . . you understand, don’t you?”
“No,” said Verbrugge and Duclari together.
“Well, the thing itself was of course always known: send a sheep into a paddock . . . and you will see what happens. But he has investigated the manner in which it happens. Other sages again say that he knows little about it. Now they are trying to find out the means of omitting the whole sheep from the operation[2] . . . Oh, those savants! Molière knew all about them . . . I like Molière very much. If you like we’ll arrange a course of evening readings, a couple of times a week. Tine will join, after Max has gone to bed.”
Duclari and Verbrugge liked the idea. Havelaar said that he had not many books, but among them were Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Vondel, Lamartine, Thiers, Say, Malthus, Scialoja, Smith, Shakespeare, Byron . . .
Verbrugge said that he did not read English.
“The deuce! aren’t you over thirty? What have you been doing all that time? But surely that must have been rather difficult for you at Padang, where so much English is spoken. Did you know Miss Mata-api?”
“No, I don’t know the name.”
“It wasn’t her name either. But they called her that in 1843, because she had such sparkling eyes. I suppose she is married by now . . . it’s already so long ago! Never did I see anything like it . . . yes, I did, after all, at Arles . . . you ought to go there one of these days! It’s the most beautiful thing I have found in all my travels. There is nothing, I think, that brings before you so clearly beauty in the abstract, the visible image of truth, of immaterial purity, as a beautiful woman. Believe me, just go to Arles and Nîmes . . .”
Duclari, Verbrugge and—I must admit it!—also Tine, could not suppress a loud laugh at the thought of just crossing over from the Western extreme of Java to Arles or Nîmes in the south of France. Havelaar, standing no doubt in his imagination on the tower built by the Saracens on the enclosure of the arena at Arles, had to make an effort to understand the cause of that laugh, then continued:
“Well, of course, I mean . . . if you should happen to be in that neighbourhood. I never met anything like it elsewhere. I’d become used to disappointment on seeing the things that were cracked up so much. For instance, you go and see the Falls that people speak and write about so much. Personally, I have felt little or nothing at Tondano, Maros, Schaffhausen, and Niagara. One has to consult one’s guide-book to have the necessary measure of admiration handy about ‘so many feet of water-fall’ and ‘so many cubic feet of water a minute,’ and if the figures are high, one has to say: ‘Heavens!’ I never want to see any more falls, at least not if I have to go out of my way for them. Those things say nothing to me! Buildings speak to me somewhat louder, especially when they are pages of history. But in this there speaks a feeling of a very different nature! One calls up the past, and the shades of days gone by pass in review. Among them there are most horrible ones, and so, however interesting this may be at times, the emotions evoked do not always afford satisfaction to one’s sense of beauty . . . never, at any rate, unmixed! And without the appeal of history there may be much beauty in some buildings, but it is usually spoilt by guides—whether of paper or of flesh and bone, it’s all the same!—guides who steal your impression by their monotonous: ‘This chapel was erected by the Bishop of Munster in 1223 . . . the columns are 63 feet high and rest upon’ . . . I don’t know what and I don’t care either. That babbling is a bore, for one feels that one has to get up exactly three and sixty feet of admiration, in order not to pass in the eyes of some people for a Vandal or a Commercial Traveller . . . and those are a race!”
“The Vandals?”
“No, the others. Well, one may say: keep your guide in your pocket if he is a printed one, and leave him outside or tell him to be silent in the other case; but besides the fact that for more or less right judgment one really does often require information, one should in any case, even if one could always do without the information, seek in vain in any building that which satisfies one’s longing for beauty more than a very short moment, because a building lacks movement. I think this also applies to sculpture and painting. Nature is movement. Growth, hunger, thought, feeling, they all are movement . . . rest is death! Without movement no pain, no joy, no emotion! You try to sit still without stirring, and you will find how quickly you make a spooky impression on everyone else and even on your own imagination. Even in seeing the most beautiful ‘living statues,’ one soon longs for the next number, however glorious may have been the initial impression. Now since our thirst for beauty 1s not slaked by one single glance of a beautiful thing, but is an imperative need for a series of successive glances, that is for the movement of the beautiful, we suffer from an unsatisfied craving in contemplating that class of art-works, and for this reason I maintain that a beautiful woman, unless she be a portrait-beauty without real movement, comes nearest to the ideal of the divine. We soon feel how great is the need for movement when a dancer, let her be Elsler or Taglioni, after a dance stands still on her left leg and grins at the public.”
“This does not count here,” said Verbrugge, “for this is absolutely ugly.”
“I agree. Yet she gives it as beautiful, and as the climax to all that preceded, in which there may in reality have been much beauty. She gives it as ‘the point’ of the epigram, as the ‘aux armes!’ of the Marseillaise which she has sung with her feet, as the whisper of the willows upon the grave of a love she has just lamented in dance. Oh, it’s repulsive! And that the spectators also, who usually, like all of us more or less, fashion their taste on custom and imitation, consider that movement as the most thrilling, is proved by the fact that then they burst into applause, as if they wished to say: All that preceded was certainly very fine also, but now we can absolutely no longer contain our admiration! You said that final pose was absolutely ugly—I say so too—but what is the reason? It is because the movement ceased, and with it the story the dancer told. Believe me, immobility is death!”
“But,” advanced Duclari, “you have also rejected waterfalls as an expression of beauty. Yet waterfalls move!”
“Yes, only . . . without a story! They move, but don’t get away from the place. They move like a rocking-horse, without even the va et vient. They make a sound, but do not speak. They cry: hrrroo . . . hrrroo . . . hrrroo . . . and never anything else! You cry for six thousand years or longer: hrrroo, hrrroo . . . and then see how few people will look upon you as an entertaining man.”
“I won’t put it to the test,” said Duclari. “But I still am not quite convinced that the movement you demand is so absolutely indispensable. I give in about the waterfalls, but surely, I think, a good painting may express much.”
“Undoubtedly, not only for one moment. I’ll try to explain my meaning by an example. To-day is the 18th of February . . .”
“Certainly not,” said Verbrugge, “we are still in January . . .”
“No, no, to-day is the 18th of February, 1587, and you are locked up in Fotheringay Castle . . .”
“I?” asked Duclari, who thought he had not clearly understood.
“Yes, you. You are bored and seek diversion. The wall over there has an opening in it, but it is too high for you to see through it, and yet that’s what you wish to do. You put your table beneath it, and on it a stool with only three legs, one of which is rather weak. You once at a fair saw an acrobat who placed seven chairs on top of one another, and then himself on top head downwards. Conceit and boredom both urge you to do something similar. With tottering effort you climb that stool . . . achieve your object . . . cast a glance through the opening, and exclaim: ‘O, God!’ Then you fall down! Now can you tell me why you exclaimed: ‘O, God!’ and why you fell?”
“I suppose the third leg of the stool broke,” said Verbrugge sententiously.
“Ah, well, that leg may have broken; but it was not this that made you fall. That leg broke because you fell. Before any other opening you would have held out on that stool a whole year; but here you had to fall, even if the stool had had thirteen legs, nay, even if you had stood on the floor.”
“I am agreeable,” said Duclari. “I see that you have made up your mind to make me come down coûte que coûte. I am now lying down full length . . . but I really don’t know why.”
“Well, now, this all the same is quite simple! You suddenly saw a woman attired in black, kneeling down before a block. And she bowed her head, and white as silver was the neck that shone against the black velvet. And near by stood a man with a large sword, and he held it up high, and his eye gazed on that white neck, and he mentally traced the arc his sword would describe, so that there . . . there between those vertebræ it would be driven in with precision and force . . . and then you fell, Duclari. You fell because you saw all this, and therefore you exclaimed: ‘O, God!’ In no way because there were only three legs to your stool. And long after you had been set free from Fotheringay—I should imagine through the intermediation of your cousin, or because the people got tired of keeping you there longer free of charge, without their being obliged to do so, like a canary—long after, even to this very day, you still dream waking of that woman, and in your sleep you suddenly start awake, and fall down on your couch with a heavy thud, because you are trying to seize the arm of the executioner. Is it not so?”
“I’m ready to believe it, but I really cannot say definitely, as I have never looked through a hole in the wall at Fotheringay.”
“Right, right! Neither have I. But now I take a painting representing the decapitation of Mary Stuart. We’ll assume that the presentation is perfect. There it hangs, in a gilt frame, by a red cord, if you like . . . I know what you are going to say, all right! No, no, you do not see that frame, you even forget that you have given up your cane at the entrance of the picture-gallery . . . you forget your name, your child, the latest model forage-cap, everything therefore, in order to see, not a picture, but to behold there in very truth Mary Stuart: in every way exactly as at Fotheringay. The executioner stands there absolutely as he must have stood in reality, I will even go so far as to assume that you put out your hand to ward off the blow! So far that you exclaim: ‘Let the woman live, perhaps she will mend her ways!’ You see, I give your beau jeu as regards the execution of the picture. . . .”
“Yes, but then what next? Is not then the impression just as striking as when I saw the same scene in reality in Fotheringay?”
“No, most decidedly not; and that only because this time you did not climb on top of a stool with three legs. You take a stool—on this occasion with four legs, and for choice an easy chair—you sit down before the picture so that you may enjoy long and thoroughly—we do, strange though it seems, enjoy the spectacle of horrible things—and what impression do you think it will make on you?”
“Well, terror, fear, pity, emotion . . . just as when I looked through the opening in the wall. We have assumed that the picture is perfect, I must therefore receive from it entirely the same impression as from the real thing.”
“No! within two minutes you feel a pain in your right arm, out of sympathy with the executioner who has to hold up that heavy piece of steel so long without moving.”
“Sympathy with the executioner?”
“Yes! fellow-suffering, community of feeling, you know! And likewise with the woman who has to lie there in front of that block such a long time, in an uncomfortable attitude, and probably in a disagreeable frame of mind. You still have pity for her, but not, now, because she has to be decapitated, but because one keeps her waiting so long before she is decapitated; and if you still would say or exclaim anything in the end—assuming that you feel an impulse to interfere in the matter—it would be nothing more than: ‘For goodness’ sake strike, my good man, the woman is waiting for it!’ And if afterwards you again see the picture, and see it again often, then your first impression will even have become this: ‘Isn’t this business finished yet? Is he still standing and is she still lying there?’ ”
“But then what movement is there in the beauty of the women at Arles?” asked Verbrugge.
“Oh, that is quite a different thing! They enact a whole period of history in their features. Carthage flourishes and builds ships on their brow . . . hear Hannibal’s oath against Rome . . . see, they are twining strings for their bows . . . see, the town is on fire.”
“Max, Max, I really believe you lost your heart at Arles,” teased Tine.
“Yes, for a moment . . . but I found it again: you shall hear. Just imagine . . . I do not say, I have there seen a woman whose beauty was this or the other, no: they were all beautiful, and so it was an impossibility there to fall in love pour tout de bon, because every next one again supplanted the previous one in your admiration, and I really thought at the time of Caligula or Tiberius—who is it again they tell this fable about?—who wished that the whole human race had only one head. For it was in this way the wish came to me that the women of Arles . . .”
“Might have but one head?”
“Yes . . .”
“In order to cut it off?”
“Of course not! In order to . . . kiss it on the brow, I was going to say, but yet that’s not it! No, to gaze at it, to dream of it, and . . . to be good!”
Duclari and Verbrugge probably again thought this conclusion very peculiar. But Max did not notice their surprise, and continued:
“For so noble were the features, that one felt something like shame to be only a human being, and not a spark . . . a beam—no, that would still be matter!—a thought! But . . . then all at once a brother or a father would be sitting by the side of those women, and . . . so help me God, I saw one who blew her nose!”
“Didn’t I know that you would again draw a black line across it!” said Tine, vexed.
“Is that my fault? I should have preferred to see her fall down dead! May such a woman desecrate herself?”
“But surely, Mr. Havelaar,” asked Verbrugge, “suppose she had a cold?”
“Well, she should not have had a cold with such a nose!”
“Yes, but . . .”
Just then, as though Old Nick took a hand in the game, Tine suddenly felt that she must sneeze, and . . . before she could stop herself she had blown her nose!
“Max, my dear boy, don’t be cross!” she begged with a half-restrained laugh.
He did not answer. And, however foolish it may seem or be . . . yes, he was cross about it! And what will sound strange also, Tine was pleased that he was cross, and that therefore he demanded more from her than from the Phocean women of Arles, even though it was not because she had cause to be proud of her nose.
If Duclari still thought that Havelaar was “mad,” one could not have blamed him for feeling confirmed in that opinion on noticing the momentary irritation which, after and on account of that nose-blowing, was to be read on Havelaar’s face. But the latter had come back from Carthage and now read—with the celerity with which he could read when his mind was not too far away from home—on the faces of his guests that they were setting up the following two theses:
- He who does not wish his wife to blow her nose is a fool.
- He who thinks that a nose cut in beautiful lines may not be blown is mistaken in applying this opinion to Mrs. Havelaar, whose nose is slightly pomme de terre.
The first thesis Havelaar left alone, but . . . the second!
“Oh,” he exclaimed, as if he had to reply, although his guests had been too polite to express their theses, “I’ll explain. Tine is . . .”
“Dear Max!” she said deprecatingly.
This meant: “For heaven’s sake don’t tell these gentlemen why in your estimation I should be exalted above colds!”
Havelaar seemed to understand what Tine meant, for he answered:
“All right, my child! But, gentlemen, do you know that one is often mistaken in judging the claims of some people to the right of physical imperfection?”
I am certain that the guests had never heard of those claims.
“I knew in Sumatra a girl,” he went on, “the daughter of a datoo.[3] Well, now, I held that she had no right to this imperfection. And yet I saw her fall into the water during a shipwreck . . . just like any other person. I, a human being, had to help her ashore.”
“But . . . did you want her to be able to fly like a sea-mew?”
“Certainly, or . . . no, she ought to have had no body. Shall I tell you how I made her acquaintance? It was in ’42. I was Controller of Natal[4] . . . were you ever there, Verbrugge?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then you know that they grow pepper there. The pepper-gardens are situated at Taloh-Baleh, to the north of Natal, on the coast. I had to inspect them, and as I had no knowledge of pepper, I took with me in the prao a datoo, who knew more about it. His daughter, then a child of thirteen, came with us. We sailed along the coast, and had a tedious journey . . .”
“And then you were shipwrecked?”
“Not at all, the weather was fine, too fine. The shipwreck you are thinking of took place much later. Otherwise I should not have been bored. We sailed along the coast, and it was boiling hot. A prao does not offer much opportunity for diversion, and in addition I happened to be in a doleful mood, contributed to by many causes. First of all, I had an unhappy love, secondly, an . . . unhappy love, thirdly . . . well, something else of the same kind, etc. Ah, well, that’s in the nature of things. But moreover I chanced to be at a point between two attacks of ambition. I had made myself a king and had been dethroned again. I had climbed the tower and had fallen to the ground. . . . I shall pass over this time how it all came about! Enough, I was sitting in this prao with a sour face and in a bad humour, and was what the Germans call ‘unenjoyable.’ Amongst other things I considered that it was not right and proper to make me inspect pepper-gardens, and that long ago I ought to have been appointed Governor of a solar system. Then also it appeared to me a sort of mental murder to place a mind like mine in one prao with this stupid datoo and his child.
“I may add, though, that otherwise I liked the Malay Chiefs, and got on with them very well. They even have much in their composition that makes me prefer them to the Javanese Grandees. Yes, I know, Verbrugge, that in this you do not agree with me, and there are but few people who admit that I am right in having such an opinion . . . but we won’t discuss that point now.
“If I had made that trip on another day—with fewer cobwebs in my head, I mean—I should probably have at once entered into conversation with the datoo, and perhaps I should have found that he was well worth my cultivation. Probably also I should then have induced the little girl to talk, and this might have entertained and amused me, for in a child there usually is some originality . . . although I must admit that I was still too much of a child myself to be interested in originality. This is different now. Now I see in every girl of thirteen a manuscript in which as yet but little or nothing has been erased. One surprises the author in undress, and this is often quite pretty.
“The child was stringing beads on a cord, and seemed to need all her attention for this. Three red ones, one black . . . three red ones, one black: it was pretty!
“Her name was Si Oopi Keteh. This in Sumatra means approximately little lady . . . yes, Verbrugge, you know it, but Duclari has always served in Java. Her name was Si Oopi Keteh, but in my mind I called her ‘poor thing,’ or something like it, as in my estimate I was so infinitely exalted above her.
“It was late afternoon . . . nearly evening, and the beads were put away. The land moved slowly away alongside us, smaller and smaller grew the Ophir behind us to the right. To the left, in the West, above the wide wide sea that has no limit until it meets Madagascar, and behind it Africa, the sun was sinking, and made his beams play ducks and drakes on the waves in curves that grew more obtuse every moment: he sought coolness in the sea. How the deuce did that thing run again?”
“What thing . . . the sun?”
“No, no . . . I used to make up verses in those days! Oh, delicious ones! Just listen:—
That steeps Natal’s wild shore,
So gentle when on other strands,
There ever bursts upon the sands
With turbulent rush and roar!
No sooner hears you speak,
But Westward to the unmeasured space
Rise his dark eyes and seem to face
The distant climes they seek.
Westward their glances flee,
And when your own stray round, he shows
’Tis water, boundless water flows,
Always the sea, the sea!
So fiercely bank and beach:
For sea alone would meet your gaze,
Could it o’er endless water-ways
To Madagascar reach!
The Ocean’s wrath to still,
And many a cry was doomed to ascend,
Unheard by wife, or child, or friend,
And known but to God’s will!
A last despairing quest,
And groped and caught and splashed around
To feel if yet support be found,
And sank on Death’s cold breast!
“And . . . and . . . I have forgot the rest.”
“That may be found again by writing for it to Krygsman, your clerk at Natal. He has it,” said Verbrugge.
“Where did he get it?” asked Max.
“Perhaps from your waste-paper-basket. But he certainly has it! Isn’t what follows the legend of the first sin, through which the island that formerly protected the roadstead of Natal sank? The story of Djiva and the two brothers?”
“Yes, that is so. That legend . . . was no legend. It was a parable I made up and which within a couple of centuries will probably become a legend if Krygsman drones out that thing too often. That was the beginning of all mythologies. Djiva is soul, as you know, soul, spirit, or something of the kind. I made it a woman, the indispensable naughty Eve . . .”
“Well, Max, what becomes of our little lady with her beads?” asked Tine.
“The beads were packed away. It was six o’clock, and there on the equator—Natal lies a few minutes north of it: whenever I went overland to Ayer-Bangie, I had to make my horse step across the Line . . . it made one liable to stumble over it, on my soul!—there on the equator six o’clock was the signal for evening meditations. Now it seems to me that at night one is always a little better, or rather less mischievous, than in the morning, and this is natural. In the morning one pulls oneself together—one is . . . sheriff’s officer or Controller, or . . . no, this is not enough! A sheriff’s officer pulls himself together to do his duty with a vengeance that day . . . good God! what a duty! What must that heart look like, pulled together! A Controller—I don’t say this for you, Verbrugge!—a Controller rubs his eyes, dislikes the job of meeting the new Assistant-Resident, who wants to assume an absurd superiority, on the strength of an extra year’s service, and of whom he has heard so many eccentric things . . . in Sumatra. Or that day he has to measure paddocks, and wavers between his honesty—you don’t know this, Duclari, as you are a soldier, but there really are honest Controllers!—then he stands hesitating between that honesty and the fear that Radhen Dhemang this one or the other may ask him to return the piebald that is so good at counting. Or else that day he will have to say firmly yes or no to missive number anything. Briefly, on awakening in the morning the whole world lies on your heart, and that’s heavy for a heart, however strong. But at night there is a pause. There are ten full hours between now and the moment one will have to face one’s coat again. Ten hours: thirty-six thousand seconds to be a human being in the true sense! This looks rosy to anyone. This is the moment in which I hope to die, in order to arrive yonder with an unofficial countenance. This is the moment when your wife again finds in your face the something that took her when she allowed you to keep that pocket handkerchief with a crowned E in the corner . . .”
“And when she had not yet acquired the right to have a cold,” said Tine.
“Now then, don’t tease! I only want to say that at night one feels more genial.
“Now when, as I said, the sun slowly vanished,” Havelaar went on, “I became a better human being. And it may be counted as the first sign of this improvement that I said to the little lady:
“ ‘It will soon be a little cooler now.’
“ ‘Yes, toowan!’[5] she replied.
“But I bowed my highness still lower to that ‘poor thing,’ and started a conversation with her. My merit was the greater as she answered very little. I was agreed with in all I said . . . a thing which also grows tedious though one may be ever so conceited.
{{“‘Would you like to come again next time to Taloh Baleh?’ I asked.
“ ‘As the toowan commander will decide.’
“ ‘No, I ask you whether you think a trip like this pleasant.’
“ ‘If my father wishes it,” she answered. I ask you, gentlemen, was it not enough to drive one mad! Well, all the same, I did not go mad. The sun was down, and I felt genial enough not to be put off by so much stupidity. Or rather I believe I began to take a pleasure in hearing my voice—there are few among us who are not fond of listening to themselves—but after my taciturnity of the whole day it seemed to me that, having at last started speaking, I deserved something better than the two silly answers of Si Oopi Keteh.
“I’ll tell her a fairy tale, I thought, then I shall at the same time hear it myself, and there is no need for her to answer me. Now you know that, just as in unloading a ship the last Krandjang[6] of sugar put in will be the first to come out again, so we also usually first unload the thought or story that was put into our mind last. In the ‘Magazine for Netherlands India’ I had shortly before read a story by ‘Jeronimus’: ‘The Japanese Stone-cutter’. . .
“I may tell you that this ‘Jeronimus’ has written some charming things! Did you ever read his ‘Sale in a death-house’! and his ‘Graves’! and, above all: ‘Pedatti’?[7] I’ll give you that.
“Well, I had just read ‘The Japanese Stone-cutter.’ Oh, I say, I now suddenly remember how a moment ago I lost my way to that poem in which I let the fisher-lad screw his ‘dark eye’ round in one direction till he must have squinted! That was a concatenation of ideas. My annoyance on that day was connected with the dangers of the Natal roadstead . . . you know, Verbrugge, that no man-of-war is allowed to enter that part of the sea, especially in July . . . you see, Duclari, the west monsoon is strongest there in July, just the reverse of here. Well, the dangers of those waters connected themselves with my thwarted ambition, and this ambition again is connected with that poem about Djiva. I had repeatedly proposed to the Resident at Natal to make a breakwater, or otherwise an artificial harbour in the mouth of the river, with the object of bringing trade to the Division of Natal, which connects the important Battahlands with the sea. A million and a half of people in the interior did not know what to do with their products because the roadstead of Natal was rightly in such bad odour. Well, these proposals had not been approved by the Resident, or at least he maintained that the Government would not approve them, and you know that well-trained Residents never recommend anything but what they can tell beforehand will appeal to the Government. Making a harbour at Natal was in principle opposed to the system of the closed door, and so far from wishing to invite ships, it was even prohibited, except in cases of force majeure, to admit sailing ships to the roadstead. If in spite of this a ship happened to come—it was mostly American whalers or French ships that had loaded pepper in the independent little realms at the Northern point—I always got the Captain to write me a letter in which he asked leave to store drinking-water. My annoyance at the failure of my efforts to achieve something to the advantage of Natal, or rather my wounded vanity—wasn’t it very hard that I still counted so little as not to be able to have a harbour constructed where I wanted it?—Well, then, all this, in connection with my candidature for the regulation of a solar system, had that day made me so unamiable. When the sunset cured me a little—for discontentedness is an illness—it was exactly that illness which reminded me of ‘The Japanese Stone-cutter,’ and perhaps it was only for one reason that I thought that story aloud: namely, that, making myself believe that I did it out of kindness towards the child, I could thus on the sly take the last dose of medicine I felt I needed. But she, the child, cured me—for some days at least—better than my story, which must approximately have run thus:—
“ ‘Oopi, there was a man who cut stones out of the rock. His labour was very heavy, and he laboured much, but his wages were slender, and he was not contented.
“ ‘He sighed because his labour was heavy. And he exclaimed: “Oh, that I were rich, so that I might rest on a baleh-baleh[8] with red silk klamboo!"[9]
“ ‘And there came an angel from heaven, and said: “Be it unto thee as thou hast said!”
“ ‘And he was rich. And he rested on a baleh-baleh and the klamboo was of red silk.
“ ‘And the king of the land passed by, with horsemen in front of his car. And behind the car also there were horsemen, and the golden payong[10] was held above the head of the king.
“ ‘And when the rich man saw this, he was vexed that no golden payong was held above his head. And he was not contented.
“ ‘He sighed, and exclaimed: “I wish I were a king!”
“ ‘And there came an angel from heaven, and said: “Be it unto thee as thou hast said!”
“ ‘And he was a king. And in front of his car rode many horsemen, and behind his car also there were horsemen, and above his head the golden payong was held.
“ ‘And the sun shone with burning beams, and scorched the earth, so that the grassblades withered.
“ ‘And the king murmured that the sun burnt his face, and had power above him. And he was not contented.
“ ‘He sighed, and exclaimed: “I wish I were the sun!”
“ ‘And there came an angel from heaven, and said: “Be it unto thee as thou hast said.”
“ ‘And he was the sun. And he sent his beams upward and downward, to right and left, and all round.
“ ‘And he scorched the grassblades on the earth, and the faces of the kings that were on the earth.
“ ‘And a cloud placed itself between him and the earth, and it threw back the beams of the sun.
“ ‘And he grew wroth that his power was resisted, and he murmured that the cloud had power above him. And he was not contented.
“ ‘He wished to be the cloud, which was so powerful.
“ ‘And there came an angel from heaven and said: “Be it unto thee as thou hast said.”
“ ‘And he became a cloud, and placed himself between the sun and the earth, and caught the sunbeams, so that the grass grew green.
“ ‘And the cloud rained in large drops on the earth, and made the rivers swell, and banjirs[11] carried away the herds.
“ ‘And the volume of his waters destroyed the fields.
“ ‘And he fell upon a rock, which yielded not. And he plashed down in great streams, but the rock yielded not.
“ ‘And he waxed wroth because the rock would not yield, and because the strength of his streams was useless. And he was not contented.
“ ‘He cried: “To that rock power has been given above me! I wish I were that rock!”
“ ‘And there came an angel from heaven and said: “Be it unto thee as thou hast said!”
“ ‘And he became a rock, and moved not when the sun shone, nor when it rained.
“ ‘And there came a man with a mattock and a pickaxe and a heavy hammer, and he hewed stones out of the rock.
“ ‘And the rock said: “What is this, that the man has power over me, and can hew stones out of my bosom?” And he was not contented.
“ ‘He cried: “I am weaker than this one . . . I wish I were this man!”
“ ‘And there came an angel from heaven, and said: “Be it unto thee as thou hast said!”
“ ‘And he was a stone-cutter. And he hewed stones from the rock, with hard labour, and he laboured very heavily for slender wages, and he was contented.’ ”
“Most charming,” exclaimed Duclari, “but now you still owe us the proof that little Oopi ought to have been imponderable.”
“No, I never promised you that proof! I have only wished to tell you how I made her acquaintance. When my story was finished, I asked:
“ ‘And you, Oopi, what would you choose, if an angel from heaven came to ask you what you most wished?’
“ ‘Surely, Sir, I should pray that he might take me to heaven.’ ”
“Isn’t that beautifully sweet?” asked Tine, turning to her guests, who perhaps thought it very absurd. . . .
Havelaar rose, and wiped something from his forehead.