Augusta de Wit

“ I was at the time staying with friends in the Salemba quarter; and we had a drive of nearly an hour through avenues of tall waringin trees. There was no wind, not the faintest breath of air; all that world of leaves stood unstirred; summits broad as hilltops, and cascades of massive foliage, making a blackness against skies all limpid with diffused starlight. Between the vaguely-discerned stems, the little lights, which fruit vendors keep twinkling all the night through, would now and then flare up, and a reddish arm be revealed, the portion of a face, and some fruits in a basket. ”

“ If so, I will remember Java, years hence, not as the fairy-land it seemed to me only yester day, in the sylvan solitudes of Tjerimai, but as a busy manufacturing country, prosperous and prosaic.
I will remember a rich soil, an enervating climate, alternating droughts and inundations and fever-breathing monsoons; a mode of life, comfortable and even luxurious, but monotonous in the extreme, which taxes to the utmost both mental and physical energies. I will think of white dusty towns by yellow muddy rivers; of hills, and vales, and marshy lowlands overgrown with thick, sprouting rice ”

“ The [148] evening breeze is astir in the tall tree-tops, waking a drowsy bird here and there among the branches; it chirps sleepily and is still again. Aloft, a single star is seen limpid and tremulous, like a dewdrop about to fall. And the garrulous groups around the wayang-screen gradually cease their talk.
Now the "dalang" rising, disposes, on an improvised altar, the sacrificial gifts—fruit, and yellow rice, and flowers, and lights the frankincense that keeps off evil spirits. ”

“ Under some huge waringin tree, at the gate of a town or village, an altar is erected to the tutelary genius the "Danhjang Dessa," who has his abode in the thick-leaved branches. And the pious people, whenever they have any important business to transact, come to it, and bring a tribute of frankincense and flowers, to propitiate the god, and implore his protection and assistance, that the matter they have taken in hand may prosper. On the way from Batavia to Meester Cornelis, there stands such a tree by the road-side, an immense old waringin, in itself a forest. ”

“ All day long, she carries her little charge in her long "slendang," the wide scarf, which deftly slung about her shoulders, makes a sort of a hammock for the baby. She does not like even the mother to take it away from her; feeds it, bathes it, dresses it prettily, takes it out for a walk, ready, at the least sign, to lift it up again into its safe nest close to her heart. She plays with it, not as a matter of duty, but as a matter of pleasure, throwing herself into the game with enjoyment and zest, like the child she is at heart ”

“ The marble floor and whitewashed walls breathe freshness, the water in the stone reservoir is limpid and cold as that of a pool that gleams in rocky hollows. And, as the bather dips in his bucket, and send the frigid stream pouring over him, he washes away, not heat and dust alone, but weariness and vexatious thought in a purification of both body and soul, and he understands why all Eastern creeds have exalted the bath into a religious observance. ”

“ But, whereas I freely confess that the inner life of the Javanese has remained hidden from me, their outward existence has become familiar enough. The Javanese practically live out-of-doors. They take their bath in the river; perform their toilet under some spreading warigin tree, hanging a mirror as big as the hand on the rugged stem; and squat down to their meal by the roadside. After nightfall, dark figures may be discerned around the stalls of fruit-vendors, fantastically lit up by the uncertain flame of an oil-wick. ”

“ Unless, indeed, the new arrival be a greater lady, in which case the former occupant will cede to her the place of honour, and content herself with the next. Soon, around the big marble-topped table, the circle is drawn, one-half of it shining like the rainbowed sky; the other black as innermost darkness; one semi-circle of women; another of men; as strictly separated as we are taught that the sheep and goats shall be, on a certain day. I cannot but think that the men must be conscious of the fact, and its dire symbolism. ”

“ Even now, whilst in the factory yonder, fires roar, engines pant, and human beings sweat and toil, to change the dew-drenched glory of the fields into a marketable commodity some hamlet in the plains is celebrating the Wedding of the Rice with many a mystic rite. Some native chief, celebrating the birth of a son, welcomes to his house the "dalang," the itinerant poet and playwright, who on his miniature stage, represents the councils of the Gods, and the adventures, in war and love, of unconquerable heroes, and of queens more beautiful than the dawn. ”

“ For to be cool, or not to be cool, that is the great question, and all things are arranged with a view to solving it in the most satisfactory manner possible. For the sake of coolness, one has marble floors or Javanese matting instead of carpets, cane-bottomed chairs and settees in lieu of velvet-covered furniture, gauze hangings for draperies of silks and brocade. The inner hall of almost every house, it is true, is furnished in European style—exiles love to surround themselves with remembrances of their far-away home. ”

“ In a similar manner, no surmise can be formed as to the character of Batavia social life before the charm has, at least in part, passed off, which its setting casts over the critical faculties. It moves in romance; it is surrounded by beauty; its conditions and circumstances are in themselves a source of delight. It would seem almost enough for a feast, in the cool of the evening, to sit under the verandah, marking on the gleaming marble floor half-reflections as in tranquil waters under a tranquil sky seen from afar ”

“ I was never sure whether the soft creaking noises heard all night through came from the bamboo grove in the garden, or from the bamboo in my wall. The crickets seemed to sing in my very ears; and a faint, sweet smell pervaded the little room, such as breathes from the leafage, dead and living, of a forest. Like a cenobite's cell, too, my pavilion was not meant for a storehouse of worldly treasures. Even if moths and rust did not corrupt, thieves would have quite exceptional facilities for breaking through and stealing them. "Breaking through" is too energetic and vigorous a term ”

“ We alighted and made our way as best we could through the grass-grown clearings of the jungle. The sun was but just beginning to warm the air. White shreds of mist still hung among the tree-stems, and swathed the brushwood. The grass underfoot was white with dew, glistening with myriads of brilliant little points where the yellow sunlight touched it. The broadly curved banana leaves, and the feathery tufts of the palm trees overhead began to grow transparent, standing out in light green against the shining whiteness of the sky. ”

“ The great, strong, full noon-day sun beats on the stuccoed buildings, heating their whiteness to an intolerable incandescence. It has set the garden ablaze, burning up the long grey shadows of early morning to round patches of a charred black, that cling to the foot of the trees; and making the air to quiver visibly above the scorched yellow grass-plots. Among their dark leafage, the hibiscus flowers flare like living flame; and the red-and-orange blossoms, dropping from the branches of the Flame of the Forest, seem to lie on the path like smouldering embers. ”

“ Gaudily-painted "praos" glide down the dark canal; native women pass up and down the flight of stone steps that climbs from the water's edge to the street, a flower stuck into their gleaming hair, still wet from the bath; the tribe of fruitvendors and sellers of sweet drinks and cakes have established themselves along the parapet, in the shade of the tamarinds; and the native crowd, coming and going all day long, makes a kaleidoscopic play of colours along the still dark water. ”

“ The whole island is one vast rice-field. Rice on the swampy plains, rice on the rising ground, rice on the slopes, rice on the very summits of the hills. From the sod under one's feet to the uttermost verge of the horizon, everything has one and the same colour, the bluish green of the young, or the tawny gold of the ripened rice. ”

“ Here and there, I heard the murmur and tinkle of a fountain; and I passed by quiet ponds and lakelets, dark green in the shadow of overhanging trees. One of these sheets of water—or rather the streamlet into which it narrows at one end—is completely overgrown with white lotus flowers; and a sight more exquisitely beautiful cannot be imagined. It burst upon me suddenly, as I came out of a long, dark avenue; and, at first, I could not make out what that white splendour was. It seemed to float like a luminous summer cloud, like a snowy drift of morning mist. ”

“ The light may have been glaring enough among the whitewashed houses of Ryswyk and Molenvliet—it is on the Plein only that tropical sunshine manifests itself in the plenitude of its power. The great sun stands flaming in the dizzy heights; from the scorched field to the incandescent zenith the air is one immense blaze, a motionless flame in which the tall tamarinds stand sere and grey, the grass shrivels up to a tawny hay, and the bare soil stiffens and cracks.—The intolerable day is past. ”

“ And, aloft, sparkling with purple and gold, their long streamers spread out upon the wind, the two kites soar and swoop, swerve, plunge a second time, slowly swim upwards again, glide a little further, and hang motionless. The thin cords are all but invisible; the fantastic shapes high in the air seem animated with a life of their own, wilful, untiring, eager to pursue, and swift to escape, full of feints and ruses. ”

“ Like the often-repeated bath, the rice table is a Javanese institution, and its apologists claim equal honours for it as an antidote to climatic influences. I confess I do not hold so high an opinion of its virtues, but I have fallen a victim to its charms. I love it but too well. And there lies the danger, everybody likes it far too much, and, especially, likes far too much of it. It is, humanly speaking, impossible to partake of the rice table, and not to grossly overeat oneself. ”

“ He does not disturb the loneliness. He is indigenous to the place, its natural product, almost as much as the cicadas trilling among the grass blades, the snakes darting in and out among the crevices of the sun-baked soil, and the lean cattle, upon whose backs the crows perch. There is but one abiding power and presence here—the broad brown field under the broad blue sky, shifting shades and splendours over it, and that horizon of sombre trees all around. ”

“ From where I sat, I could see, framed by the circular sweep of the hanging foliage, a stretch of beach, with some huts amidst a banana plantation, and, further down, a native boat lying keel upwards upon the sand. A lean dog crouched in the shadow, panting with tongue hanging out. No other living creature was to be seen.
The afternoon was far gone before there came a change, imperceptible at first, a gradual sobering of colour, and a growing definiteness in the contours of trees and bushes. Then, the air began to cool down. [171] The horizon grew distinct ”

“ From the rank undergrowth of brushwood and bulrushes [10] rise clumps of cocoanut palms, their dark shaggy crowns strangely massive above the meagre stems through which the distant horizon gleams palely. In open spaces young trees stand out here and there, half strangled in the festoons of a purple-blossomed liana that trails its tendrilled length all over the lower shrub-wood. Thickets of bamboo bend and sway in the evening wind.
To the right stretches a long straight canal, dull as lead under the lustreless sky ”

“ The cool fresh green of the banana-leaf makes the prettiest contrast imaginable to all these colours, its silky surface and faint fragrance giving, at the same time, an impression of dainty cleanliness such as could never be achieved by even the most spotless linen and china of a European dining-table.
The Javanese are very frugal eaters. A handful of rice with a pinch of salt, and, perhaps, a small dried fish being sufficient for a day's ration. Of course, we, Europeans, confessedly, eat too much. ”

“ And in the sacred grove of Sangean on Tjerimai, the green summit of which dominates the southern horizon, some huntsman, crouching by the shore of the legend-haunted lake, invokes the Princess Golden Orchid, and her saintly brother, Radhen Pangloera, who live in a silver palace deep down in the shining water, and who shower wealth, honour, and long life upon the mortal, who pronounces the names the spirits of the lake know them by. ”

“ Nothing arrests him in his career. The gallery too narrow for his evolutions does not exist. One exhausted partner after another he has led back to her mamma and the restorative champagne-cup, and his ardour is not a whit abated, though his hair seems to be sprinkled with diamond-dust, and its cheeks have sunk to the pallor of that wilted lily, his collar—the last of the posy gathered at home, and thrown away drooping into a corner of the dressingroom, off the verandah. ”