The covenant - James A. Michener [65]
Java is a moral sink, the white women often being worse than the men. They spend whole days in lechery or idleness, eating themselves into insensibility, drinking to excess, consorting with the lowest of the islands, and accomplishing nothing. I know of three wives who in Holland would be exemplary church members who do nothing from one week to the next but eat, fornicate with strangers, and complain about their slaves, of whom they have an abundance.
Small wonder that the Lords XVII established the iron-clad principle that no position of leadership could be held by a man born in the islands. Such men would lack the moral fiber automatically obtained during an education in Holland; their judgment would be sullied by their contact with the Javanese, their force corroded by the deleterious effects of the East.
'There is one escape for a boy like Willem,' the governor said, calling for the fan-boys again, since the air was becoming oppressive. 'If he goes home now, before contact with Asian women, and if he enters the university at Leiden, he may cleanse himself of his Javanese birth. If he remains here, he condemns himself to third- or even fourth-level positions.'
Disheartened, Mevrouw van Doorn sank into a chair. She was only fifty-one and wanted to keep her sons with her in the big house with the multitude of servants, but she appreciated the dangers of which the governor was speaking. Karel's progress might be impeded if he did not get back to Holland, but Willem would be disqualified for any advancement. She must send her sons home.
'The after-fleet will sail in January,' the governor said. 'I can find them two passages on the Haerlem.' When she hesitated, he added, 'God knows, Hendrickje, there's a dark future for them in Java. At best, marrying some local girl of dubious reputation. At worst, sinking into the gutter.'
She sighed, rose and went to the doorway to contemplate the flowers in her garden, and said, 'Arrange for them to go,' and with that she abruptly turned all her attention to her New Year's festival. It would be free and open, like the ones her husband had offered Compagnie people when he was alive, with everyone invited.
She began by borrowing musicians from homes of her friends, and smiled approvingly as the brown-skinned slaves carried their bronze game-lans and bamboo drums into the various rooms where dancing would occur. Then she enrolled cooks from these same houses, until she had more than forty servants in and about the kitchens. The walls she decorated with her own fabrics, hanging them in great festoons until the colors danced. Twenty-four turbaned footmen attended the carriages, and an equal number of women watched after the guests when they entered the halls.
The celebrations lasted three days, and were especially vivacious in that many of the leaders of Batavian society had departed on the Christmas fleet, so that those who remained felt obligated to show extra enthusiasm to replace that which had been lost. People ate and drank till they were near senseless, then slept sprawled on beds and floors until the soft music awakened them so that they could sing and dance and eat themselves into another stupor. At times some amorous woman, having dreamed of this party for weeks, or one whose husband had left on the fleet, would catch a stout burgher as he was about to go to bed, and she would join him in one of the smaller rooms, often retaining the fan-boy to keep the humidity lowered.
Mevrouw van Doorn's two sons watched the New Year's celebrations with detached interest; stern Karel had observed the carryings-on in previous years and judged them to be the inevitable release of spirits by people who were far from home and sentenced to live among natives they did not respect. He had no wife as yet, nor any intention of finding one for the present, and whenever some lady far in drink wanted