Free The Hidden Force by Louis Couperus Page B

Rantzow.
    “No,” sighed Eva. “We need something new. Balls, parties, picnics, trips to the mountains… We’ve exhausted them all. I can’t think of anything else. The pressure of the Indies is weighing on me again. I’m in one of my melancholy moods. I suddenly have a horror of my servants’ brown faces around me. Sometimes the Indies frighten me. Don’t any of you feel that? A vague fear, a mysterious feeling in the air, something menacing… I don’t know. The evenings are so full of mystery and there is something mysterious in the character of the native, who is so far removed from us, is so different from us…”
    “Artistic feelings,” teased Van Helderen. No, I don’t feel that. The Indies are my country.”
    “Typical!” said Eva, teasing him in turn. “Why are you as you are? So strangely European; I can’t call it Dutch.”
    “My mother was French.”
    “But still you’re a colonial, born and brought up here. But you don’t behave at all like a colonial. I’m delighted to have met you, you’re a breath of fresh air… Help me then. Suggest something new. Not a ball and not a trip to the mountains.I need something new. Otherwise I shall feel homesick for my father’s paintings, my mother’s singing, for our beautiful artistic house in The Hague. Without novelty, I shall die. I’m like your wife, Van Helderen, forever in love.”
    “Eva, please!” begged Ida.
    “Tragically in love, with her beautiful, sombre eyes. Always with her husband first and then with someone else. I’m never in love. Not even with my husband any more. He is with me. But I haven’t got a passionate nature. Quite a lot of love goes on here in the Indies, doesn’t it, Doctor? So… no balls, no mountain trips, no love. My God, what else is there, what else?…”
    “I know what we could do,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, her placid melancholy suddenly tinged with fear. She shot a sideways look at Mrs Rantzow, and the German woman understood her meaning…
    “What is it?” they all asked, inquisitively.
    “Table-turning,” the two women whispered.
    There was general laughter.
    “Oh,” sighed Eva, disappointed. “A gimmick, a novelty, a game for an evening. No, I need something that will fill my life for at least a month.”
    “Table-turning,” repeated Mrs Rantzow.
    “Shall I tell you something?” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.
    “The other day, for fun, we tried to get a three-legged table to turn. We promised each other that we would be absolutely honest. The table… moved and spelt out words by tapping alphabetically.”
    “But was there no cheating?” asked the doctor, Eldersma and Van Helderen.
    “You must trust us,” said the two ladies in self-defence.
    “Agreed!” said Eva. “We’ve finished dinner. Let’s do table-turning.”
    “We must promise each other that we will be honest…” said Mrs Rantzow. “I can see… that my husband will be antipathetic, but Ida… will be a great medium.”
    They got up.
    “Do we have to turn the lights off?” asked Eva.
    “No,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn.
    “An ordinary side table?”
    “A wooden side table.”
    “All eight of us?”
    “No, let’s choose first. For example, you Eva, Ida, Van Helderen and Mrs Rantzow. The doctor is not sympathetic, nor is Eldersma. De Bruijn and I can relieve you.”
    “Off we go then,” said Eva. A new resource for the social life of Labuwangi. “And no cheating…”
    “As friends, we’ll give each other our word of honour… that we won’t cheat.”
    “Agreed,” they all said.
    The doctor sniggered. Eldersma shrugged his shoulders. A boy brought a side table. They sat around the wooden table and some placed their fingers on it light-heartedly, looking at each other with curiosity and suspicion. Mrs Rantzow was solemn, Ida sombre, Eva amused, Van Helderen laughing indifferently. Suddenly Ida’s lovely Eurasian face tautened.
    The table trembled…
    They looked at each other in alarm, and the doctor