But Eva insisted that she did not wish to be president if there were rules. In that case, she simply preferred to act. They gave in: the rules of Thalia were abolished and Eva had absolute power to choose the plays and cast the productions. The company flourished—under her direction the standard of acting was so high that people came from Surabaya to attend performances at the Concordia club. The plays performed were of a quality never before seen in Concordia.

This made her very popular in some quarters and very unpopular in others. But she pressed on and provided some European culture, to avoid gathering too much colonial “mould” in Labuwangi. And people went to great lengths to secure an invitation to her dinners, which were famed and notorious, since she demanded that the gentlemen came in evening dress and not in their Singapore jackets with no shirts underneath. She stipulated white tie and tails and would not budge. The ladies wore low-cut gowns as usual, to keep cool, and were delighted. But their partners protested and, on the first occasion, were all choking in their stiff collars and gasping for breath. The doctor maintained it was unhealthy; colonial veterans maintained it was absurd and contrary to all good old Indies customs…

However, after they had gasped a few times in those tails and stiff collars, everyone found Mrs Eldersma’s dinners delightful, precisely because they were so European in style.

2

EVA ENTERTAINED GUESTS every two weeks.

“My dear Commissioner, it’s not a reception,” she would always say to Van Oudijck in her defence. I’m well aware that no one in the provinces is allowed to “receive” except the commissioner and his wife. It really isn’t a reception, Commissioner. I wouldn’t dare call it that. I simply have an at-home day every two weeks, and am pleased if my friends can come… Surely there’s no harm in that, Commissioner, provided it’s not a reception?”

Van Oudijck would give a cheerful laugh that shook his jovial military moustache, and ask if dear Mrs Eldersma were pulling his leg. She could do what she liked, as long as she went on providing some fun, some theatre, some music to brighten social life. That was quite simply her responsibility: to provide some sophistication in Labuwangi.

Her at-home days were not at all colonial. In the District Commissioner’s house, for example, receptions were organized according to traditional provincial Indies custom: all the ladies sat together on the chairs along the walls, and Mrs Van Oudijck did the rounds, talking with each of them for a moment, standing while the ladies remained seated; in another gallery, the District Commissioner conversed with the gentlemen. Men and women did not mix. Bitters, port and iced water were served.

At Eva’s, people walked and strolled through the galleries, sat down here and there; everyone talked to everyone. It did not have the stateliness of the commissioner’s mansion, but had the chic of a French salon, with an artistic touch. It had become the custom for the ladies to dress up more for Eva’s days than for receptions at the commissioner’s house; at Eva’s they wore hats, a sign of the greatest elegance in the Indies. Fortunately, it did not matter at all to Léonie, but left her completely indifferent.

In the middle gallery Léonie was now sitting on a divan and stayed sitting there with the radèn-ayu, the prince’s wife. She found the old custom convenient; everyone came to her. At her own receptions she had to walk so much, working her way along the rows of women by the wall… Now she was taking it easy, sitting down, smiling at anyone who came to pay her a compliment. But apart from that it was a bustling throng of guests. Eva was everywhere.

“Do you like it here?” Mrs Van Does asked Léonie, casting a glance over the middle gallery, and surveying in bewilderment the line of matt arabesques painted with lime as frescos on the soft grey wall, the jati-wood panelling, carved by skilful Chinese cabinet-makers from a drawing in The Studio magazine, the bronze Japanese vases on jati-wood pedestals, in which bamboo branches and bunches of gigantic flowers cast a soft shadow up to the ceiling.

“Strange… but very nice! Unusual…” murmured Léonie, to whom Eva’s taste was still a mystery. Withdrawn as she was into her temple of egoism, what others did and felt didn’t matter to her, not even how someone else arranged their house. But she could never have lived here. She preferred her engravings—Veronese, Shakespeare and Tasso—which she thought distinguished, rather than the splendid sepia photographs of Italian masters that Eva had displayed on easels here and there.