CHAPTER XXI
BUT Aunt Floor was just coming, shuffling down the
stairs with her flopping bosom, and Uncle Daan
was just ringing at the front-door. Old Anna was
delighted. She loved that bustle of members of the
family on the ground-floor and she received everybody
with her pleased old face and her meek, civil
remarks, while the fat cat under her petticoats
arched its back and tail against her legs. Old Dr.
Roelofsz came limping down the stairs behind Aunt
Floor, hobbling on his one stiff leg; and his
enormous paunch seemed to push Aunt Floor on, as
she shuffled carefully, step by step.
Aunt Stefanie was glad to get rid of Ina d’Herbourg
and said:
“Now I’ll go upstairs.”
She pushed past Roelofsz’ stiff leg in the passage
and forced her way to the stairs between Daan and
Aunt Floor; and, in her nervous hurry, afraid of
Ina, of sinfulness, of curiosity, afraid of Hell, she
almost stumbled over the cat, which slipped just
between her feet.
“I thought I should find you here, Roelofsz,”
said Uncle Daan. “If I hadn’t, I should have
looked you up at once.”
“Aha, aha, well-well-well, so you’re back once
more, Dercksz!” said the old doctor.
They shook hands; and Daan Dercksz nervously
looked at Dr. Roelofsz, as if he wanted to say
something. But he wavered and merely remarked,
hesitatingly, to Ina:
“Aren’t you going upstairs, Ina?”
“No, Uncle,” answered Ina, with apparent politeness,
glad to have a word with Dr. Roelofsz.
“You go first. Honestly, you go first. I can easily
wait a little longer. I’ll wait down here.”
Dr. Roelofsz joined her in the morning-room,
rubbing his cold hands, saying that it was warmer
here than upstairs, where they only kept up a small
fire: old Takma was never cold; he was always blazing
hot inside. But Aunt Floor, who also came
into the morning-room for a minute, puffed and
put off her heavy fur cloak, Ina helping her:
“A handsome cloak, Aunt.”
“Oh, I don’t know, child!” said Aunt Floor,
disparagingly. “Just an old fur. Had it thr-r-ree
year-r-rs. But useful in Gholland: nice and
war-r-r-m!”
Inwardly proud of the cloak, she bit the last word
into Ina’s face, rolling her r’s as she did so. They
all three sat down and Anna thought it so pleasant
of them that she brought in some brandy-cherries,
three glasses on a tray:
“Or would you rather have tea, Mrs. Ina?”
“No, Anna, your cherries are delicious.”
The servant went away, glad, happy at the bustle
on the ground-floor, to which the old lady no longer
ever descended. That ground-floor was her kingdom,
where not even the companion held sway,
where she, Anna, alone held sway, receiving the
family and offering refreshments.
Ina tasted a cherry, was sorry that Aunt Floor
had joined them in the morning-room. It was quite
possible that the old doctor, a younger contemporary
of Grandmamma’s, knew something; but it was not
certain. For Uncle Daan himself had only known it
such a little while, though Papa had known it for
sixty years. Sixty years! The length of that past
hypnotized her. Sixty years ago, that old ailing
doctor—who had given up practice and now merely
kept Grandmamma and Mr. Takma going, with
the aid of a younger colleague—was a young man
of twenty-eight, newly-arrived in Java, one of
Grandmamma’s many adorers.
She saw it before her and tried to see farther
into it; her curiosity, like a powerful lens, burnt
and revealed a vista in front of her, gleaming with
new light, through the opaque denseness of the past.
And she began:
“Poor Papa is not at all well. I’m afraid he’s
going to be ill. He is so depressed mentally too.
Yes, Aunt, he has been more depressed, mentally,
since he saw Uncle Daan again than I have known
him for years. What can it be? It can’t be money-matters.
“No, my dear, it’s not money-matters, though
we’re still as poor as r-r-rats.”
“Then what has brought Uncle Daan to Holland?”
asked Ina, suddenly and quickly.
Aunt Floor looked at her stupidly:
“What’s brought him? … Upon my word,
child, I don’t know. Blessed if I know. Uncle
always ghoes r-r-regularly to Gholland … on
bissiness, bissiness, always bissiness. What they’re
scheming together now, your Papa and Uncle Daan,
blessed if I know; but we sha’n’t get rich on it.”
And she shook her head almost in Ina’s face, reproachfully.
“And it’s year-r-rs that they’ve been
messing about together.”
“Poor Papa!” said Ina, sighing.
“Yes-yes-yes, well-well-well,” exclaimed the doctor,
sitting sideways, with his paunch dangling in
front of him, “we’re getting old, we’re getting
old….”
“Speak for yourself!” cried Aunt Floor, angrily.
“I’m only ssixty.”
“Only sixty? Aha, aha!” mumbled the doctor.
“Only sixty? I thought you were older.”
“I’m only ssixty, I tell you!” said Aunt Floor,
wrathfully.
“Yes-yes, then you’re the same age …
as … as Ottilie…. Well-well, well-well! …”
“Yes,” said Aunt Floor, “I’m just the same age
as Ottilie Steyn.”
“Sixty years … well- well!” mumbled the
doctor.
“You were a young man then, doctor,” said Ina,
with a little laugh.
“Yes-yes, child, yes-yes … a young man!”
“There’s a good many years between you and
Grandmamma, isn’t there?”
“Yes-yes-yes!” said Dr. Roelofsz, confirming the
statement vehemently. “Nine years’ difference,
nine years…. And with Takma …
five years … aha, yes, five years …
that’s the difference between him and me….”
“It’s so nice that you and Grandmamma and Mr.
Takma have always kept together,” Ina continued,
softly. “First in India … and afterwards
always here, at the Hague.”
“Yes-yes, we just kept together….”
“Ssuch old fr-r-riends!” said Aunt Floor, with
feeling.
But she winked at Ina, to convey that Dr.
Roelofsz, in spite of the difference of nine years,
had nevertheless been a very intimate friend of
Grandmamma’s.
“Doctor,” said Ina, suddenly, “is it true that,
sixty years ago…?”
She stopped, not knowing what to say. She had
begun her sentence like that, craftily, and now broke
it off deliberately. The old doctor had a shock:
his paunch flung itself from left to right and now
hung over his sound leg.
“Wha-at?” he almost screamed.
His eyes rolled in his head as he looked at her.
Terror distorted the wrinkled roundness of his
enormous old head, with the monk’s-face, clean-shaven,
and the sunken mouth, which was now open,
while slaver flowed between the crumbly teeth over
the frightened lips. He clenched and raised his old
hands, with the skin hanging in loose, untidy folds,
and then dropped them on his knee.
He knew: Ina saw that at once. And she acted
as though his scream was no more than an exclamation
following upon a failure to hear, because of his
deafness; she raised her voice politely and quietly
and repeated in a little louder tone, articulating her
words very clearly:
“Is it true that, sixty years ago, Grandmamma—though
she was thirty-seven then—was still a
gloriously beautiful woman? Yes, those old people
took more care of themselves than we do. I’m
forty-five, but I’m an old woman….”
“Come, come,” said Aunt Floor, “an oldd
womann!”
And the doctor mumbled:
“Yes-yes, aha, oh, is that what you were asking,
Ina? … Yes, yes, certainly: Grandmamma
… Grandmamma was a splendid, a splendid
woman … even after she was past her first
youth….”
“And what about Ottilie? She was for-r-rty
when Steyn fell in love with her.”
“Yes,” said Ina. “It wasn’t … quite nice
of Aunt Ottilie; but it was a wonderful testimony
to her youth….”
And she stared at the doctor with the hidden
glance of her well-bred, wearily-blinking eyes. He
sat huddled in his chair, an old, decayed, shapeless
mass, a heaped-up ruin of a man and a human
being, an old, old monk, but wearing a loose frock-coat
and loose waistcoat, which draped his broad
body. The terror in his rolling eyes had died away;
and his glance drooped to the left, his head to the
right. It was as though he were seized with inertia,
after his fright, after his excessive emotion at Ina’s
question, at the ominous number of sixty. He
nodded his enormous head sagaciously; and, in the
wintry light from outside, the shiny top of his head
became covered with bright patches.
“Yes-yes-yes, well-well-well!” he mumbled, almost
like an idiot.
He rose laboriously, now that Daan Dercksz
came downstairs, followed by Stefanie, followed by
old Mr. Takma, who refused any assistance on the
stairs, though Anna made a point of looking on
anxiously, driving away the cat, fearing lest it
should slip between the old gentleman’s feet.
“Grandmamma is tired,” said Daan Dercksz.
“Then I’d better not go up,” said Ina. “No,
Anna, I think I won’t go up. I’ll come back some
other day soon. Grandmamma has had so many
visitors to-day.”
Nevertheless she lingered a little and then went
away, sick with unsatisfied curiosity, which filled her
soul with ravenous hunger. Aunt Stefanie also took
her leave, saying that Mamma was poorly to-day;
and the last to go was old Takma, calculating his
steps carefully, but walking straight and erect. Ina
felt that he too must know. What was it, what
could it be? Those old people knew, every one of
them!
“Come, let’s go home, Dhaan,” said Aunt Floor.
“Our car-r-riage is waiting.”
“You go,” said Daan Dercksz, hesitating. “I
want to talk to Roelofsz first. I’m so glad to see
him again….”
“Eh, always talking!” said Aunt Floor, displeased
when her husband left her side. “Then
I’ll send back the car-r-riage for you presently….”
She said good-bye and shuffled away.
“May I see you home, Mr. Takma?” Ina
asked.
Takma nodded his consent:
“Do, child,” he said, taking her arm.
Though he held himself well and would never
have a cab, he always thought it reassuring and
pleasant if somebody went back with him, down the
Nassaustraat, over the razor-back bridge, to his
house on the Mauritskade. He never asked to be accompanied,
but was glad to accept when any one
offered. Ina, however, reflected that she would not
dare to ask old Mr. Takma anything: imagine,
suppose he knew and were also to get a shock, in
the street! It would be enough to give him a
stroke! No, she was too careful for that, but she
was sick and famished with the hunger of curiosity
in her soul. What could it be? And how should
she ever know?
Daan Dercksz remained behind with the old
doctor. His parrot-profile shook and his beady
bird’s-eyes—Aunt Stefanie’s eyes—kept blinking as
though with excitement, while all his lean figure
seemed to shrivel still smaller beside the colossal
bulk of the doctor, who towered before him with the
figure of a deformed Templar, resting on one leg
which was sound and one which was short and
limping.
“Well, Roelofsz,” said Daan Dercksz, “I am
glad to see you again.”
“Yes-yes, aha, it’s quite five years since you were
in Holland last…. Well-well, that’s a long
time…. We’re growing old, we’re growing
old…. You didn’t expect to find your mother
so fit…. Yes-yes, I’ll make her see a hundred
yet! You wait and see, you wait and see….
Perhaps she’ll survive us all, Takma and me, yes-yes….”
“Yes,” said Daan Dercksz, “Mamma is very
little altered.”
“She has a splendid constitution, yes-yes, always
has had. Her mind’s quite clear; her memory is
good; well-well, yes-yes, that’s a blessing, at her
age….”
“And Takma also….”
“Keeps well, keeps well, yes-yes…. Well-well,
we’re all growing old … I too, yes-yes,
I too….”
But Daan Dercksz was greatly agitated. He had
promised his brother Harold to be very careful
and not to talk, but, during the two months that
he had known, the secret and the horror of it burnt
into his soul, the soul of a business-man who, old as
he was, for the first time underwent a great emotion
outside his business.
And he could not hold himself in check. The
house was silent. Anna had gone back to her
kitchen; the old lady was sitting upstairs, alone
with the companion. A small gas-jet was burning
in the morning-room; another in the passage.
Afternoon darkness and silence hovered in the
atmosphere of the little house in which the old lady
had lived so long, had so long sat waiting at her
window upstairs, in her high chair….
“Roelofsz,” said Daan Dercksz.
He was a head shorter than the doctor; he took
hold of a button of the doctor’s waistcoat.
“Yes-yes,” said Roelofsz. “What is it,
Dercksz?”
“Roelofsz … I’ve heard about it.”
“What?” shouted the doctor, deaf.
“I’ve heard everything … in India.”
“What?” shouted the doctor, no longer deaf,
but dismayed.
“I’ve heard everything, heard it all … in
India.”
The doctor looked at him with rolling eyes; and
his pendulous lips slavered in his clean-shaven
monk’s-face, while his breath panted, reeking between
the crumbly teeth.
And he, in his turn, caught hold of one of Daan
Dercksz’ buttons:
“What have you heard?”
“I’ve heard everything,” Daan Dercksz repeated.
“Heard it all … in India. I know
… I know everything.”
“You know … everything? Oh? Oh?
You know everything? … What … what
do you know?”
“About … about Mamma…. About
Takma…. About….”
They stood staring into each other’s startled
eyes.
“About my father,” said Daan Dercksz; and
his frightened voice sank to a hesitating whisper.
“About my father. What you know too. What
you have always known. That Takma, that night,
when he was with my mother, snatched my father’s
own weapon from him: a kris which the Regent had
given him the day before….”
“You know?” cried the doctor. “You know?
Oh, my God! Do you know that? I … I
have never said a word. I am eightee-eight years
of age … but I’ve … I’ve never said a
word.”
“No, you never said anything ,… but
Mamma’s baboe …”
“Ma-Boeten?”
“Yes, Ma-Boeten told her son, a mantri at
Tegal. Ma-Boeten is dead and the mantri has
started blackmailing me. He’s been to me for
money. I’ve given him money. I shall give him
money every month.”
“So you know…. Yes-yes, O my God,
yes-yes! … So you know, Dercksz, you
know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“What did the mantri say? What had Ma-Boeten
told him? …”
“That my father tried to kill Takma, with a
kris…. That Takma snatched the kris from
him, while …”
“While what? … Yes-yes, while what?”
“While Mamma … while my mother …”
“Yes-yes?”
“Flung her arms round my father, to prevent
him …”
“O my God, yes, yes!”
“To prevent him from defending himself …
and that Ma-Boeten, behind the door, heard her
say …”
“Yes-yes … yes-yes … O my God!”
“Heard her say, ‘I hate you, I hate you: I’ve
always hated you…'”
“Yes-yes … O my God!”
“I’ve always hated you and … and I love
Emile!'”
“Yes-yes … and then?”
“And then she called out to Takma, almost
aloud, ‘Emile, give him a stab: rather he than
you!'”
“O … my … God!”
The doctor sank, in a heavy mass, upon a chair:
“So you know!” he moaned. “It’s sixty years
ago yes-yes, O my God, yes-yes! I’ve never
spoken about it, never! I was so fond of your
mother. I … I … I held an inquest on
the body next day!”
“Yes, they let it drift down stream … in
the kali …”
“I held an inquest on the body next day …
and I … I understood…. I had understood
it before, for I had seen your mother that morning
and she was raving in her delirium … and I
… I promised … yes-yes, I promised
that I wouldn’t tell … O my God, O my God
… if she … if she would consent to love
me! O my God, O my God, Dercksz, Dercksz,
Daan, I have never … I have never said a
word! … And God knows what people, sixty
years ago, yes-yes, sixty years ago, didn’t think
… and say … and gossip and gossip …
without knowing the truth … until it was all
forgotten … until it was too late to hold a
fresh inquest, after all those months…. I never,
never said a word…. O my God, no-no, no-no!…”
“When I knew, Roelofsz, I couldn’t stay in
India. I felt that I must see Harold, see you, see
Mamma, see Takma …”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I had to see you all. Oh, how
they must have suffered. I am sorry for her, for
Takma. I had to see you, to talk to you about it.
I knew that you …”
“Did the mantri know … about me?”
“Through Ma-Boeten.”
“Yes, she knew everything, the hag!”
“She held her tongue for years. I did not even
know that she was alive. And then she told her
son. She thought Mamma was dead. The son
knew some of the servants at our house. He got to
know that Mamma was still alive….”
“O my God, O my God, yes-yes!”
“I give him so much a month.”
“Until Mamma dies?”
“Yes … until she dies!”
“O my God, O my God, yes-yes!”
“But Roelofsz, what you did not know …”
“What … What? … What didn’t I
know?”
“What you did not know is that Harold …”
“Harold? Your brother?”
“Knew! …”
“Harold knew?”
“Yes! … Yes! …”
“He knew? How did Harold know? O my
God, O my God! How did Harold know?”
“Harold knew … because he saw!”
“He saw? Harold saw?”
“He was with them there, in the hills; he was
in the pasangrahan.”
“Harold?”
“He was a boy of thirteen. He woke up! He
saw Mamma, Takma and Ma-Boeten. He saw
them carrying his father’s body. He stepped in
his father’s blood, Roelofsz! He was thirteen years
old! He was thirteen years old! He has never
forgotten what he saw! And he has known it
always, all his life, all his life long!”
“O my God, O my God! … Oh, dear!
… Is it true? Is it really true?”
“It’s true! He told me himself.”
“And he too … did he never tell?”
“No, he never told!”
“He’s a good fellow, yes-yes, one of the best of
fellows. He does not want to bring disgrace …
oh, dear … on his old mother’s head! …
Daan, Daan … O my God! … Daan,
don’t you ever tell: don’t ever tell!”
“No, I sha’n’t tell. I have spoken to you and to
Harold, because I discuss everything with him;
business matters and …, and everything. He’s
often helped me…. He helped me in India,
in a nasty affair which I had out there … in
my time … yes … O Lord … in my
time! I’ve always discussed everything with
Harold. I spoke to you because I knew that you
knew….”
“Well-well-well, yes-yes-yes … But Daan,
Dercksz, don’t speak to any one else!”
“No, no, I sha’n’t speak to any one else.”
“Not to Stefanie, not to Anton, not to
Ottilie …”
“Their child! …”
“Yes-yes, her child and his. Hush-hush, Daan,
these are such old things, they’re all past!”
“If only they were! But they are not past
… as long as Mamma … and Takma …
are still alive!”
“Yes-yes, yes-yes, you’re right: as long as they’re
alive, those things are not past … But, oh,
they are so old, he and she! It won’t last much
longer. They’re passing, they’re passing, those
things … slowly, but they’re passing….
Yes-yes, it’s so very long ago…. And people
no longer trouble about any of us…. In the
old days, yes, in the old days they, people, used to
talk … about Mamma and Takma and the
children, about Anton, about you … and
that scandal in India … about Ottilie: they
talked a great deal about Ottilie …. That’s all
past now … it’s passing…. We are old
… yes-yes … we are old….”
He sank back in his chair; his shapeless bulk collapsed
over his slanting paunch, as if it would fall
to the floor.
At that moment there came from upstairs a shrill
scream, suppressed but penetrating, as though it issued
from an old throat that was being strangled;
and almost at the same time the door upstairs was
flung back and the companion called:
“Anna … Anna, come quick!”
Daan Dercksz was an old man, but a shiver ran
down his back like ice-cold water. The doctor
started, tottering on his legs, and at last drew up his
shapeless bulk and cried:
“What is it? What is it?”
And the two men hurried up the stairs as fast as
they could, with Anna behind them.
There were two lamps alight in the drawing-room;
and the old lady was sitting straight up in
her chair. Her eyes, enormously dilated, stared
from her head in tense dismay; her mouth remained
open, after the scream which she had uttered, and
formed a dark cavity; and she held one arm uplifted,
pointing with an outstretched finger to the
corner of the room, near the china-cabinet. Thus
she sat, as though petrified and rigid: rigid the
staring expression and the open mouth, rigid all
the old face, in extreme terror, petrified the gesture
of the stiffly-held arm, as though she could never
lower it again. And the companion and Anna, who
now went up to her together excitedly, asked:
“Mevrouw, mevrouw, what’s the matter?
Aren’t you well? Aren’t you well?”
“The-ere!” stammered the old woman.
There! … There!”
And she stared and kept on pointing. The two
men had appeared in the doorway and instinctively
they all turned their eyes to the corner, near the
china-cabinet. There was nothing to be seen save
by the eyes of the old lady, nothing save what she
saw there—and she alone saw it—rising before her,
nothing save what she saw rising in a paroxysm of
the remorse that had overwhelmed her for years
and years … until suddenly she saw again, saw
for ten or twenty seconds, in which she became petrified
and rigid, while the old blood froze in her
veins. She now received a shock; her hand fell in
her lap; she herself dropped back against the straight
pillow of her high-backed chair and her eyes
closed….
“The mistress has been taken like this before,”
said old Anna, in a whisper.
They all, all except Daan Dercksz, knew that she
had been taken like that before. They crowded
round her. She had not fainted. Soon she opened
her eyes, knew the doctor, knew the two women,
but did not know her son Daan. She glared at
him and then gave a sudden shiver, as if she had
been struck by a resemblance.
“Mother! Mother!” cried Daan Dercksz.
She still stared, but she now realized that he was
not a materialization of what she had just seen,
realized that he was a son who resembled his father,
the man whom she had first loved and then hated.
Her fixed look died away; but the wrinkles in her
face, in the later paroxysm of shuddering, remained
motionless in their deep grooves, as though etched
and bitten in.
Anna stroked her hand and wrist with the soft,
regular movement of a light massage, to restore
her consciousness entirely … until the old
blood melted and flowed again.
“To bed,” murmured the old lady. “To
bed….”
The two men went away, leaving her to the care
of the women. At the bottom of the stairs, the
dimly-lighted ground-floor shivered, full of shadow
silent as the grave. Daan Dercksz took Roelofsz’
arm, while the doctor hobbled laboriously down
the stairs, from the bad leg on to the sound leg.
“What was it she saw?” asked Daan Dercksz.
“Ssh!” said the old doctor. “Yes-yes …
yes-yes …”
“What did she see?”
“She saw … Dercksz; she saw … your
father! …”
In the kitchen the cat sat mewing with fright.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter XXI. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.