still in love with her husband and knew that despite everything she managed to provide him with a comfortable home. She gave much serious thought to her child’s education. And once she had accustomed herself, she became less unjust and suddenly saw much of the beauty of the Indies. She appreciated the stately grace of a coconut palm; the exquisite, heavenly flavour of the local fruits; the splendour of the trees in blossom; and in the interior she had discovered the noble grandeur of nature, the harmony of the rolling hills, the fairy-tale groves of giantferns, the menacing ravines of the craters, the gleaming terraces of the wet paddy fields and the tender green of the young rice plants. And the Javanese character had been like an artistic revelation to her with its elegance, its grace, its formalized greetings, its dance, its distinguished aristocracy, often so clearly descended from a noble line, from generations of nobles, and modernizing until it acquired diplomatic flexibility , with a natural worship of authority, and fatalistically resigned beneath the yoke of the rulers whose gold braid awakens its innate respect.
In her parental home, Eva had always been surrounded by the cult of art and beauty, indeed, to the point of decadence; those around her, whether in an outward environment of aesthetic perfection, in beautiful words or in music, had always directed her towards life’s graceful contours, perhaps too exclusively. And now she was too well trained in this aestheticism to remain stuck in her disappointment and see nothing but the whitewash and tar of the houses, the petty quirks of officialdom, the paint crates and the horse manure. Her literary imagination now saw the palatial quality of the houses and the humorous side to official pomposity, which was almost inevitable. As she saw all those details more precisely, her view of the world of the Indies widened, until it became revelation upon revelation. Except that she continued to feel something strange, something she could not analyse, something mysterious , a dark secret whose soft approach she felt at night… But she thought it was just the atmosphere created by the darkness and the very dense foliage, like very faint music from verystrange stringed instruments, the distant rustling sound of a harp in a minor key, a vague warning voice… A noise in the night, that was all, which gave rise to poetic fantasies.
In Labuwangi—a small, provincial centre—she often shocked her more provincial countrymen with her air of excitement, her enthusiasm, her spontaneity, her
joie de vivre
(even in the Indies) and joy in the beauty of life. Her instincts were healthy, though gently tempered and blurred by a charming affectation of wanting only what was beautiful: the line of beauty, the beautiful colour, artistic notions. Those who knew her felt either antipathy or extreme sympathy : few people were indifferent to her. In the Indies she had gained a reputation for being out of the ordinary: her house, her clothes, her child’s upbringing, her ideas were all out of the ordinary; the only ordinary thing about her was her Frisian husband, who was almost too ordinary for those surroundings, which seemed to have been cut out of an art magazine. Being a sociable person, she gathered around her as many members as possible of the European community, to which—though the community was seldom artistic—she brought an appealing tone that reminded them all of Holland. This tightly knit group admired her and naturally followed the tone she set. She was dominant because of her superior education, without being dominant by nature. Not everyone approved of this, and her critics called her eccentric, but the tightly knit group remained loyal to her, inspired by her amid the languor of Indies life to savour concerts, ideas, all that made life worth living.
For example, she had around her the doctor and his wife, the senior engineer and his wife, the district controller and his
In her parental home, Eva had always been surrounded by the cult of art and beauty, indeed, to the point of decadence; those around her, whether in an outward environment of aesthetic perfection, in beautiful words or in music, had always directed her towards life’s graceful contours, perhaps too exclusively. And now she was too well trained in this aestheticism to remain stuck in her disappointment and see nothing but the whitewash and tar of the houses, the petty quirks of officialdom, the paint crates and the horse manure. Her literary imagination now saw the palatial quality of the houses and the humorous side to official pomposity, which was almost inevitable. As she saw all those details more precisely, her view of the world of the Indies widened, until it became revelation upon revelation. Except that she continued to feel something strange, something she could not analyse, something mysterious , a dark secret whose soft approach she felt at night… But she thought it was just the atmosphere created by the darkness and the very dense foliage, like very faint music from verystrange stringed instruments, the distant rustling sound of a harp in a minor key, a vague warning voice… A noise in the night, that was all, which gave rise to poetic fantasies.
In Labuwangi—a small, provincial centre—she often shocked her more provincial countrymen with her air of excitement, her enthusiasm, her spontaneity, her
joie de vivre
(even in the Indies) and joy in the beauty of life. Her instincts were healthy, though gently tempered and blurred by a charming affectation of wanting only what was beautiful: the line of beauty, the beautiful colour, artistic notions. Those who knew her felt either antipathy or extreme sympathy : few people were indifferent to her. In the Indies she had gained a reputation for being out of the ordinary: her house, her clothes, her child’s upbringing, her ideas were all out of the ordinary; the only ordinary thing about her was her Frisian husband, who was almost too ordinary for those surroundings, which seemed to have been cut out of an art magazine. Being a sociable person, she gathered around her as many members as possible of the European community, to which—though the community was seldom artistic—she brought an appealing tone that reminded them all of Holland. This tightly knit group admired her and naturally followed the tone she set. She was dominant because of her superior education, without being dominant by nature. Not everyone approved of this, and her critics called her eccentric, but the tightly knit group remained loyal to her, inspired by her amid the languor of Indies life to savour concerts, ideas, all that made life worth living.
For example, she had around her the doctor and his wife, the senior engineer and his wife, the district controller and his
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