The Hidden Force Read Online Free PDF Page B

each other’s arms. But they had to be careful. It was four o’clock and they could hear the voices of René and Ricus in the garden. They took over the whole compound for their holiday. Aged thirteen and fourteen, they loved the big garden. Dressed in blue-striped cotton jackets and trousers , and with bare feet, they went to see the horses and the pigeons: they teased Doddy’s cockatoo, which tripped about on the roof of the outbuildings, and they had a tame squirrel. They hunted for geckos, which they shot with a blowpipe, much to the annoyance of the servants, since geckos bring good luck. At the gate they bought roast peanuts from a passing Chinese and then made fun of him, imitating his accent, “Loast peanuts! Chinaman dead!”
    They climbed the flamboyant tree and swung from the branches like monkeys. They threw stones at the cats; they taunted the neighbours’ dogs until they barked hoarsely and chewed each other’s ears. They messed around with water near the pond, making themselves unpresentable with mud and filth, and had the nerve to pick the water lilies, which was absolutely forbidden. They tested the firmness of the flat green water lily leaves—like large trays that they thought they could stand on, and went under… Then they put empty bottles in a line and pelted them with pebbles. Then, using a bamboo stick, they fished out all kinds of nameless floating debris and hurled it at each other. Their inventiveness was inexhaustible, and the hour of the siesta was their time. They had found a gecko and a cat and had made them fight: the gecko opened its miniature crocodile jaws and hypnotizedthe cat, which slunk off, retreating from the black beady-eyed stare—back arched, bristling with terror. And afterwards the boys made themselves ill on unripe mangoes.
    Léonie and Theo had spied on the fight between the cat and the gecko through the blind and saw the boys now sitting calmly in the grass eating unripe mangoes. But it was the time when the convicted criminals—twelve of them—worked in the compound, under the supervision of an old, dignified overseer holding a cane. They fetched water in tubs and watering cans made from paraffin tins, sometimes in actual paraffin tins, and watered the plants, the grass and the gravel. Then they swept the grounds clean with the loud swishing of palm-leaf brooms.
    Behind the back of the overseer, of whom they were afraid, René and Ricus pelted the prisoners with gnawed mangoes, called them names and pulled faces.
    Doddy came by, well rested, playing with her cockatoo, which she carried on her hand and which cried, “Kaka! Kaka!” and raised its yellow crest with swift movements of its neck.
    And Theo now slipped away behind the curtain into the boudoir, and when for a moment the boys were chasing each other in a bombardment of mangoes, and Doddy was walking towards the pond with her slouching, hip-swaying Indies gait and the cockatoo on her hand, he emerged from behind the plants, sniffed the roses and pretended he had been walking in the garden, before taking a bath.

5
    V AN OUDIJCK FELT in a better mood than he had in weeks; after those two months of dreary tedium some sense of family life seemed to re-enter his house; he liked to see his two young scamps romping in the garden, even if they got up to all kinds of mischief, and he was especially pleased that his wife was back.
    They were sitting in the garden, in casual dress, drinking tea at five-thirty. How strange that Léonie immediately somehow filled the big house with a more comfortable conviviality, since it was what she liked. Whereas Van Oudijck usually drank a quick cup of tea, which Kario brought to his bedroom, today the afternoon tea had already grown into a pleasant hour. Cane chairs and long deckchairs had been put outside; the tea tray was placed on a cane table; fried bananas had been served; and Léonie, in a red silk Japanese kimono, with her blond hair loose, lay in a cane chair playing with