small garden before
his house. He fancied that nothing would be changed, that he would be
able as heretofore to tyrannize good-humouredly over his half-caste
wife, to notice with tender contempt his pale yellow child, to patronize
loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law, who loved pink neckties and
wore patent-leather boots on his little feet, and was so humble before
the white husband of the lucky sister. Those were the delights of his
life, and he was unable to conceive that the moral significance of any
act of his could interfere with the very nature of things, could dim
the light of the sun, could destroy the perfume of the flowers, the
submission of his wife, the smile of his child, the awe-struck respect
of Leonard da Souza and of all the Da Souza family. That family's
admiration was the great luxury of his life. It rounded and completed
his existence in a perpetual assurance of unquestionable superiority.
He loved to breathe the coarse incense they offered before the shrine of
the successful white man; the man that had done them the honour to marry
their daughter, sister, cousin; the rising man sure to climb very
high; the confidential clerk of Hudig & Co. They were a numerous and an
unclean crowd, living in ruined bamboo houses, surrounded by neglected
compounds, on the outskirts of Macassar. He kept them at arm's length
and even further off, perhaps, having no illusions as to their worth.
They were a half-caste, lazy lot, and he saw them as they were--ragged,
lean, unwashed, undersized men of various ages, shuffling about
aimlessly in slippers; motionless old women who looked like monstrous
bags of pink calico stuffed with shapeless lumps of fat, and deposited
askew upon decaying rattan chairs in shady corners of dusty verandahs;
young women, slim and yellow, big-eyed, long-haired, moving languidly
amongst the dirt and rubbish of their dwellings as if every step
they took was going to be their very last. He heard their shrill
quarrellings, the squalling of their children, the grunting of their
pigs; he smelt the odours of the heaps of garbage in their courtyards:
and he was greatly disgusted. But he fed and clothed that shabby
multitude; those degenerate descendants of Portuguese conquerors; he was
their providence; he kept them singing his praises in the midst of their
laziness, of their dirt, of their immense and hopeless squalor: and he
was greatly delighted. They wanted much, but he could give them all they