4

A wide-bodied, big-wheeled carriage with a white calico sunroof stood waiting. The two ponies were pretty black-and-white kumingans, ubiquitous in Java. They appeared slight and fine-boned, yet they were strong and resilient, capable, Charlotte knew, of pulling heavy loads. The shafts of the carriage were shining black and bore at the heads finely wrought silver garuda birds, their wings flung back imperiously in flight. Tigran held on to Charlotte’s hand to help her in. Then he took the reins, and they turned onto the road around the house and out onto a broad avenue of monumental saman trees which formed a shady canopy over their heads and cast a dappled light on the road which would take them down to the river. As they clipped along in the morning breeze, a faint sound came to her ears. It was a gamelan orchestra playing somewhere out of sight, the sound of gongs and bells carried on the air. It was almost magical, as if the music were being played by invisible nymphs or carried down from the spheres. Then Tigran astonished her as he began to recite a poem.

“Thus spoke the Genius, as He stept along,

And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong;

Down the steep slopes He led with modest skill

The willing pathway, and the truant rill,

Stretch’d o’er the marshy vale yon willowy mound,

Where shines the lake amid the tufted ground …”

Charlotte looked at him and laughed, and he grinned broadly.

“You see, Madame, not just an ignorant dull Indiesman. My English tutor put poetry into my head. I’m sure you cannot name it? Eh? Eh?”

Charlotte laughed out loud. She could not.

“Erasmus Darwin, 1731 to 1802, The Botanic Garden. Very long and very difficult for a poor half-Dutch boy. I have forgotten much, but some just stays. I learned words like effulgent and adamantine, though I am still not sure what they mean. Are you not impressed?”

Charlotte bowed her admiration.

At the end of the avenue, the view of the river opened out. Charlotte saw the Japanese bridge, and Tigran stopped briefly. It was unusual but incredibly lovely, she thought, with its faded red wooden balustrade. Its curved shape was mirrored below in a constantly changing and intricate shadowy distortion of itself as the river ran over the stones, forming small waterfalls and pools. The sound was like bells, and the windrush in leaves. Here on the river she understood why the estate had been named Brieswijk. She could see the gnarled shapes of trees and old bushes, quite unlike jungle flora. The Kali Krukut was a swift flowing river. Tigran pointed out a hut amidst giant trees which extended out over the water. He often held bathing parties here, with picnics on the park. It was quite a common custom in Java, where the villagers used the river for washing and bathing.

Tigran jigged the horses into movement and turned the carriage along the bank. They passed a boathouse, with boats pulled up on the side: little sharp-prowed, blunt-sterned, gaily painted craft with palm-leaf roofs to shelter from the sun and one large oar to row and punt.

As they rode along the river’s edge, Charlotte saw that on the far bank, where the jungle relented or had been removed, there was a series of villages surrounded by sun-glinting paddy fields of rice. She heard a clear whistling sound, as plaintive as a wind-harp, and she saw floating high above three brightly painted kites, shaped like birds and winged dragons. She had seen fighting kites in Singapore, but these were new to her, and she shaded her eyes and watched as they swooped and soared, sending their music floating on the air. Their owners were lost in the undergrowth, and their lines so slender as to be invisible. They seemed to hang and swoop of their own volition, and Charlotte smiled.

Here, Tigran told her, the villagers grew rice for themselves and for the estate. He took one-fifth of the rice as a tax, and the villagers were obliged to supply labour for repairs of roads, riverbanks, canals and other works on the estate and to grow and process indigo. Otherwise he levied no taxes. On the fringes of the estate, towards the west, he had opened a free market to combat what he saw as the pointless and invidious habit of charging taxes to transport and trade at the market places which existed in other parts of the city. Here the villagers could sell their surplus produce for money, for doits, the small copper coins of the Dutch Indies.

They rode on, and Charlotte found that she was very interested in everything Tigran told her. She realised with a small jolt that she had already accepted that she would now be mistress of this place. It was a seductive and unsettling thought. He stopped the carriage, and they looked back over the park to the house standing on the knoll. From here, it looked quite small.

“I want you to love this place, feel it is your home, Charlotte,” Tigran told her. He would have liked her to say, with ardent and passionate avowals, that home was in his arms only, but it was too soon, he knew, and he smiled at the thought of these boyish wishes. When he smiled like that, his mouth rose to one side and made his eyes crinkle. She looked into those eyes now, and for the first time she noticed that they were a deep brown flecked with gold. Like his sister’s, they turned up very slightly and were framed in long, black lashes. His face was etched with lines at the eyes and a slight furrow above his nose, which deepened when he frowned. These were the only reminders of his age, but they were not unattractive. She found herself smiling back, knowing his meaning.

The road gradually moved away from the river and became a jungle path. The shade was deep and cool. Great groves of thick bamboo spread feathery green leaves along the length of the path and whispered and rustled, though Charlotte could feel no breath of air. It was as if they spoke a secret language known only to themselves. Tigran looked straight ahead.

“I do not keep concubines, Charlotte, though it is common practice. I do not oblige women to occupy my bed.”

“But you did, Tigran. You had concubines. Takouhi told me.” Oh, dear Charlotte thought, why do I blurt out these things? What is the matter with me? But she wanted an answer. If she was to marry this man, at least she must know about this.

Tigran slowed the carriage. Charlotte sensed in the tightening of his jaw a certain discomfiture. He spoke softly.

“There were two women. One was a Balinese girl who was in Takouhi’s house. Her name was Surya. I was a young man, just nineteen. Takouhi always freed her slaves immediately they came into her house. Actually, when I inherited this estate she obliged me to free every person on Brieswijk too. She cannot abide slavery, particularly women in slavery. Of course, I did so. Not to have agreed would have chased her from my life, something that was impossible to imagine. So this girl was a free girl. I thought about nothing but her for months. She was so lovely. So young, only seventeen. Near my age. I admit I was a little crazed.”

Charlotte, listening to him, found herself wishing she had not asked. She felt a strange annoyance at these professions. Was she jealous? As the thought entered her head, she dismissed it. It was twenty years ago, and she was the one filled with rather uncivil curiosity.

“I was nineteen and already a father of two children. I had not known real love, I think. I asked Takouhi to see if Surya would want to be with me, and she was so happy.” He smiled at the thought, and Charlotte could see that in some ways it was still fresh in his mind. “We had two girls, but they died, you know … of fever, on the same day.” He stopped speaking, and Charlotte could sense his thoughts flying back to that time.

“The same day … God bless them.” His voice had grown very quiet. “It was a bad time and she got … low and very sick.”

Charlotte now utterly regretted prying into past wounds. She put out her hand to his.

“I’m sorry, Tigran, I should not have asked.”

He turned to look at her.

“No, I’m glad to tell you. I want everything to be clear between us. These things are in the past, old wounds. If we live, and especially if we love, we must have wounds. But when we are young they heal, Charlotte, though it seems they never will.”

She said nothing, looking down.

“The second girl was Ambonese, like Mia. After Surya, I needed someone. I couldn’t bear being alone. I didn’t want Mia. It was a strange time, a bit like I was dead. I can’t remember the days. I needed a woman with me all the time at night. If I was alone, ghosts would come. I couldn’t get rid of them. She wanted to come to me. When Surya died, she went to Takouhi and asked. She was so good to me, for she must have known I did not love her at all. There were no children. It would have been too much.’

Tigran smiled and looked at Charlotte.

“The ending is happier. When I was healed, I lost all need, all feeling for her. There was nothing I could do. So I proposed to find her a husband, gave her a dowry. She is respectably married to a trader in Surabaya and has three children with him. She has become a Dutch housewife; it is far better than being my concubine.”

Tigran jigged the horses into movement.

“Now you know my whole life. I gave my heart a rest and thought it would be peaceful, but now here you are, unsettling it again. Are you satisfied, Madam?”

Charlotte looked straight ahead.

“For now, sir. Just so long as when you are done with me, you do not send me off to a trader in Surabaya.”

Tigran laughed. He had a nice, throaty laugh, she thought.

“Impossible. You shall be mistress of all you see, the unassailable queen of Brieswijk.”

They emerged into the sunshine, and Charlotte saw a village ahead. An old man was driving a pair of buffalo down the track with two little boys mounted on their backs. Their long horns curved from their heads like crescent moons. Two baby buffalo, fluffy and gangling, came behind. It was a charming scene, like a painting, almost unreal. In the distance lay the village, clean and swept, the stilt houses of wood and thatch surrounded by the greens of the jungle and the lime-coloured rice stalks. A narrow, three-tiered, thatch-roofed mosque occupied one side. On the other was another small temple of unusual design, it too, three-tiered with a manicured thatch roof but much smaller, a shrine made of carved stone and wood, dressed in a wide skirt of black-and-white checked cloth. A Balinese temple, Tigran told her.

Five hundred people, husbands, wives and children, occupied this kampong on the river bank. The rice, the herds of animals, the vegetables and fruits supplied the house and the kampong first, and any surplus was sold in the market. Charlotte realised quickly that thousands of people lived on Brieswijk alone.

Charlotte had been somewhat startled at the number of domestic servants. At least a hundred gardeners worked tirelessly to confine the ever encroaching jungle, tend the fruit and spice trees and grow the lowland vegetables. Cows, sheep and goats grazed on the low slopes by the river. Cotton, kapok, java jute and a myriad of other grasses and plants were harvested, and in the kampong the women wove, dyed and printed the cloth for the house and for the town. In the big house, there was an individual servant for every chore, and each jealously guarded his or her preserve. Keeping squabbling at bay was one of the senior housekeeper’s most onerous duties. The fire servants would not gather the wood, which was the wood servant’s job, nor the oil for the lamps. The cooks would not cut the food; the bath maid would not wash the floor. The maid who ironed the sheets would not touch the tablecloths. Charlotte had four personal maids, each with her appointed task, and she transcended their duties and privileges at her peril. She reflected that the Javanese domestic enjoyed a life of ease which her sisters in Scotland would have envied. All of this Tigran related to her as they moved along the path, the little horses’ tails waving gently from side to side, flicking at the occasional insect which annoyed their flanks.

She was glad no one here was a slave. Her Scottish family had been vehemently against slavery; her grandfather had been, she knew, a vocal and heartfelt supporter of Wilberforce and the abolitionists.

She questioned Tigran on the Dutch Indies attitude towards slavery. Where did the slaves come from?

They were sold to Bugis and Macassarese slavers by the local kings themselves, he said. The chiefs rounded up their own people, the poor, the destitute and the criminals of their islands and sold them to the markets in Batavia.

Charlotte looked at Tigran. He knew what she was thinking. The English ideas on this matter were common knowledge.

Raffles, Tigran said, during his command of Java, had tried to convince them all of the benefits of getting rid of the practice, but, apart from his own sister and a few others, no one had been receptive to these ideas. Raffles had imposed a tax on slave keeping and the official numbers had dropped dramatically, Tigran said with a wry smile. Raffles had officially prohibited the trade, but many, even in his own entourage, kept slaves and concubines, which caused no end of trouble. It was well known, for when they left, they advertised their sale quite openly in the Java Gazette.

The Sundanese people of West Java, this area, and the Javanese of the east had never been enslaved, not by their own kings, not by the Dutch; it was strictly forbidden. Mohammedans did not enslave those of their faith, and the Dutch were careful not to antagonise the Mohammedan population. The slaves came from the other islands, from Sumatra, Bali, Makassar, Ambon, Kalimantan, the eastern islands. In the VOC days, they came from everywhere: Africa, India, wherever the Dutch had colonies. Tigran admitted that during his father’s time he had thought nothing of keeping slaves. The slaves at Brieswijk were treated with kindness; many of their domestic slaves more like old friends. The worst abuses, he had heard, were generally at the hands of some of the nyai wives, who, being too much surrounded and spoiled, grew petulant and cruel. They were often jealous of the pretty slave girls who might catch the master’s eye and would resort to beatings and even poison. But slavery was, he assured her, on the wane. The English presence had had at least one effect on the Batavian attitudes. The English officers and officials brought their own free servants, who were quite cheap and worked hard and showed the old Batavians that one could do without slaves. The costs of slaves had risen dramatically, and they died too frequently. The whole business had come to be seen as uncouth and unsophisticated.

“So you see, the worm has turned. When we freed all the slaves on Brieswijk we were the laughingstock of the town, but now we are thought of as the most sophisticated and avant garde of enlightened citizens.”

Tigran laughed, stopped the carriage and helped her down. He was glad now that Brieswijk had only freemen, for this, he could see, pleased Charlotte, and at this moment he had no higher aim than pleasing her in every possible way. He silently thanked Takouhi for her actions so long ago, which at the time had been something of a cause célèbre, arousing enormous gossip and great consternation amongst his neighbours. The Governor-General had called him to account, but his lands were not government lands. Batavia was surrounded by private estates; the government had no say here.

A throng of villagers gathered, staring curiously at Charlotte. Tigran said something she did not understand, and there was a ripple of smiles and low murmurs. They bowed their heads slightly and put their right palms to their hearts. Tigran did the same. Then the crowd parted, and an old man came through the women and children and greeted Tigran. He was wizened and tiny, with sinewy tendons standing out on his arms and neck. His mouth was stained a bright red from betel chewing, and what teeth remained to him were quite black.

Tigran explained that this was the headman, grandfather of his childhood friend, who was nicknamed Petruk after one of Arjuna’s wise and loyal servants in the wayang stories. Petruk’s great-great grandmother had been brought from Bali, they thought, but this history was lost in the mists of time. They were not Mohammedans, Tigran added; they still kept to the Balinese ways. Petruk and Tigran had grown up together at Brieswijk. His mother had been Tigran’s wet nurse and had taken care of him. Petruk was out now, he said, probably in the fields.

Actually, Tigran was relatively sure that his friend was engaged in a cockfight somewhere out of sight. Petruk loved his pretty brown-and-white fighting cock more than he loved his wife. Cockfighting was farmed out to the Chinese as part of their monopoly on gambling taxes, but Tigran closed his eyes to the practice on his lands. Petruk and his family, he added, had been freed long ago and chose to stay and live here. Petruk’s father was long dead, and when his grandfather passed on, Petruk would be the headman.

Charlotte was rather lost in all these explanations, but she could not ask questions as the headman ushered them to a highly ornate pavillion built out over the river on fat teak stilts. The headman appeared flustered. Tigran was calming him; he explained to Charlotte that their visit had been unexpected. It was quite naughty of him, for the headman was unprepared.

Charlotte tried hurriedly to inspect this lovely building, but before she could take a long look, Tigran touched her arm and whispered for her to take off her shoes. As they stepped onto the highly polished floor, Charlotte saw a large number of instruments gathered on a raised dais to one side. This, she knew from Takouhi’s instructions, was the gamelan, the Javanese orchestra. Today it was silent, but she knew now that she had heard the strains of the gamelan from here as they had set out from the house.

Chairs were rushed in from somewhere in the village—heaven knew where, Charlotte thought—and placed in the verandah. Two tiny young women, pretty and gaily dressed in tight-fitting bodices and batik sarongs, brought tea and a silver and brass sireh set. Kneeling, they deftly took the leaf of the betel tree in their long, supple fingers, cut a slice of areca nut, added lime paste and condiments from the little containers on the tray, rolled the quids expertly and handed one, first to Tigran, then to Charlotte. Both girls wore hibiscus flowers in their hair and cast deep, coquettish glances at Tigran. Charlotte, remembering Takouhi’s words about the village girls’ liking for the white master, could not quite dismiss this as fancy.

Tigran hardly appeared to notice them. Their lips were stained a pinkish red, from the sireh, Charlotte knew, with a mounting apprehension. Tigran took the quid of sireh and placed it in his cheek, holding it there and nodded to Charlotte to do the same. She had seen the Indian money-lenders in Singapore chew on this sireh, noticed the reddened lips and teeth of the Chinese Nonyas and the Malays but had never thought of trying it herself. Truthfully, she thought it quite disgusting: the red mouth, the red spittle. Now she was expected to put it in her mouth! Tigran saw her hesitation and murmured to her,

“Put it inside the cheek only, do not chew. After the visit we can get rid of it, but not to accept is an insult. Sorry, Charlotte; I should have warned you.”

Tigran looked so crestfallen that Charlotte screwed up her courage and quickly, without allowing another thought to enter her head, put the quid inside her cheek.

The headman was squatting in front of them, chewing his own wad with obvious pleasure. A period of silence ensued as tea was offered. Charlotte thought she might choke. The taste was everything at once; bitter and sweet, fizzingly hot, peppery and yet tangy with tinges of chocolate mixed with what she could only imagine would be the taste of soil after rain. Even though she was not chewing, she could feel the wad become a grainy mash, sticking to her teeth and gums. She had begun to salivate and swallow, breaking out into a sweat. As Tigran and the headman chatted amiably, she thought she might gag and put her hand on his arm. He turned and saw her face, rose and brought a brass spittoon to her. She looked at him, distressed, and spat out the mixture as delicately as was possible under the circumstances, wiping her mouth with her handkerchief. He, seeing her embarrassment, shielded her from the prying eyes of the villagers who were seated on the ground in front of the pavilion. Then, turning back to the headman, he spat out his wad, noisily, distracting the attention from her.

Tigran handed Charlotte the tea and she drank, clearing her mouth. When he saw her relief, he sighed and rose, taking his leave quickly.

Regaining their shoes, Tigran looked so serious that Charlotte said, “I am well, Tigran, but perhaps I should not try that again.”

“I am sorry, Charlotte. I don’t enjoy this makan sireh, either, but I am used to it. If you live here, it cannot be avoided. But there is no need for you to do it again. We have done our duty to the kampong. I have invited them to our wedding celebrations. They have had a look at this white madam who I intend to marry and now can gossip for weeks. The headman will inform all the other villages on the estate.”

He looked shyly down.

“I hope you do not mind me showing you off.”

Charlotte took his hand as she climbed back into the carriage. “Tigran, I do not mind anything you do, other than offer me another betel quid! I, too, want to feel at home here.”

Her words affected him like a heady wine, and he repaid her with a smile of delight. Tigran climbed into the carriage and took the reins. He hesitated slightly, then turned to her.

“Can you drive, Charlotte?” he asked.

She was taken aback. Actually she had never driven a carriage, was somewhat afraid of the horses. Tigran put the reins in her hands and covered them with his.

“Together, yes?”

He clucked softly and shook the reins. The ponies moved gently away, and Charlotte drew a nervous breath. Within a few minutes he had taught her how to guide them, slow them, urge them on. She had not thought it so easy and laughed with delight. Tigran withdrew his hands from hers, and with an increasing confidence Charlotte drove the ponies on the path to the chapel, which led along the edge of the forest and ascended gently in a long sweep to the white building which gradually came into sight over the rise. Though she laughingly begged him to help her pull the ponies to a halt, he refused, smiling, and when she mastered this little skill and the ponies stopped, she gave a little cry of triumph and turned to him. The sight of her face flushed with delight pulled at Tigran’s heart, and he itched to take her into his arms, but he quickly leapt down from the carriage.

The chapel was a perfect jewel of simplicity and elegance: a white building with a Dutch gable and two stout teak doors. On one door was carved the image of the Virgin and Child, Mary’s cloak wrapping the baby Jesus. On the other stood St. Gregory the Illuminator, first Primate of Armenia, bedecked in flowing robes and wearing his mitre of office. Charlotte could see that these images had been carved by Javanese craftsmen, for they had the elongated features of the elegant heroes of the wayang. This merely added to their charm.

Seeing her run her fingers lightly over the carvings, he said, “The Javanese carvers, as Mohammedans, are forbidden to create the human image. It is an offence against Tuan Allah, who created man in perfection. I understand little of the subject, but have been told that when the Mohammedan faith came to Java it found stubborn resistance from ancient Hindoo traditions. With time and a little wisdom, the religion was subtly altered to allow the Javanese their traditional arts, the music of the gamelan and the shadow world of the wayang in particular. Thus were created the elongated, grotesque features of the wayang, which resemble but little the true features of humans but which stand as their shadowy spirits. I cannot speak to the truth of this, but that is what I have been told.”

They entered the church. Through the windows of lead and clear glass in the chancel and the nave shone a soft light on the teak wood pews and the cool tiled floor. On the altar stood a cross inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli, on the wall a painting of the Ark sitting atop a mountain.

“We are the descendants of Noah,” Tigran said. “This picture reminds us that Mount Ararat lies at the heart of our country, that we were the first Christian nation on earth.”

Charlotte recalled the Armenian church in Singapore and wondered aloud if George had visited here.

“Yes, of course,” said Tigran, “but I think George’s building is much finer than this. He had more authoritative guides among the priests in Singapore. My father built this simple chapel when he moved here, for the Armenian community. He kept to the Dutch style of the house, for he was, in almost everything but religion, a Dutchman. We are few, no more than fifty in Batavia. But the Armenians are a people used to hardship. A small tribe whose wars are fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled and whose prayers are no more answered. My father used to say that nothing can destroy them utterly, however, for when two of them meet anywhere in the world, they create a new Armenia. This chapel was a centre for this ‘new Armenia’. There is another church south of Koningsplein now, built by Miriam’s husband, but we shall be married here.”

Charlotte was touched by this poetic articulation of his people’s troubles, their stoical survival against all odds. She viewed with renewed eyes the church and the motives behind its construction. It was a tiny bulwark against annihilation standing in the distant East, so far from the mother land, keeping a candle burning in this dark history.

Tigran led her to the graves of his father and mother, of three babies lost to them very young and of his father’s concubine, Miriam’s mother, who had been baptised and laid to rest here. Charlotte was curious why Takouhi’s mother was not buried there. Tigran explained that Takouhi’s mother had been Javanese, of the Mohammedan faith. Really their father should not have married her, for she never converted. He finished and began to turn away, but Charlotte put her hand on his arm, silently requesting to know more. Tigran smiled at her curiosity, glad that she was showing an interest in his family.

“She was a Javanese princess from the Kraton in Surakarta in the eastern part of the island who was given to my father. As I understand, this should not have happened. Takouhi knows the whole story. You will have to ask her. In any case, when she died, the court took her back to be buried in the royal cemetery.”

He led Charlotte to a corner of the graveyard where thick gardenia bushes grew in profusion and filled the air with a heady scent. He showed her a little carved stone shrine which stood on a plinth just outside the fence, wound about with a faded, chequered black–and-white cloth. Flowers and woven grasses adorned it. Charlotte looked up at him.

“This is for Surya and the children,” he said. “They are not buried here,” he told her, reading her mind. “Surya was Balinese; it is not Java, it is an island, an island unlike any other in the archipelago. It has kept to its ancient traditions of the Hindoo and the Boodha, driven there by the spread of the Mohammedan faith which moved slowly through Java hundreds of years ago. Every week, someone from the kampong comes to put flowers,” he said. “Many former slaves are Balinese. A great number of slaves in Batavia have always been Balinese. I think they like this little piece of Bali. My father would not have allowed it, but I am happy it is here.”

Tigran plucked a gardenia bloom and placed it gently on the little shrine.

“Everything I loved about her was in her Balinese ways, her looks, her grace. I didn’t want to change any of that. The Hindoo burial is by fire. So she was cremated together with the babies in her arms, and I put their ashes into the sea.”

Charlotte felt a sob rise and controlled herself with difficulty. The way he had said this, so simply, the way he had silently placed the flower on the shrine, spoke of the deepness of his feelings for this young girl, dead at twenty, the same age as herself.

Tigran moved quickly away. He did not want Charlotte to grieve over this. He had spent three years doing that, filled with desolation and quiet madness. As he watched their funeral pyre, he had thought he might lose his mind, and when he had placed their ashes on the ocean he had wanted to slip over the side with them, quietly sink down into that deep dark watery place, forget Surya’s flowing hair and dark eyes, forget the gurgling laughter of his little girls, drown love. Only restraining hands had prevented him, the hands of Petruk, his friend and Takouhi’s Balinese manservant. Takouhi had come, but he had not wanted to share this moment with anyone else. When the grief had finally, slowly, lessened, and he could breathe, he had sworn never to feel like that again. But here was Charlotte, so like Surya, though he would never say it: light-skinned, dark-haired, lovely and young, filled with promise and light.

They moved to the stone of Miriam’s daughter, Maria, who had lived but three short years, next to Meda’s grave. Fresh leaves and flowers adorned all the graves, but the greatest number had been spread over these. Charlotte saw, half covered by grass and earth, a rope chain connecting all the children’s gravestones, joining them, it seemed, so that they would have companions in the afterlife. Charlotte knew that Takouhi came here almost every day. They stood looking down at these little mounds, and Charlotte felt her heart in her throat, remembering Meda, her pretty face, her lovely voice. It wasn’t fair. This lovely child. Her thoughts fled to George, alone, lonely, travelling in Europe, missing Takouhi and grieving for Meda, wanting desperately for him to come home. Tigran moved behind Charlotte and put his arms around her, laying his hand on her waist.

“We all lost these children, but a new one awaits. It is God’s will. I promise I will love this baby as I love all my children, as I loved Maria and Meda, as I love you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte felt tears rise in her throat and turned in his arms, burying her head in his shoulder. Tigran held her tight against him, putting his cheek gently against her hair, filled with emotion, feeling her sense of loss and pain—relief, too, he hoped, at his assurances. He knew she would think of this Chinaman as the baby grew, but after the birth, gradually, day by day, he would fade in her memory. In the meantime, Tigran would surround her with luxury and love. He would make this child a Manouk, his own child, endow it with privilege. He did not care what other blood ran in its veins. Half the blood was Charlotte’s. It was enough. He would be the true father of her child. Not a Chinaman’s bastard, but heir to a fortune and enviable social status. Charlotte could not remember this Chinese man forever. Tigran would teach her to love him more through kindness and affection and wealth and position. He was certain of it.

The following evening, by the candlelight of the terrace, blessed by the holy water of the priest, they exchanged promise rings. His was a gold band, hers a circle of silver and white diamonds. He put it on her right hand. On their wedding day the rings would pass through the hands of the priest, to their left hands. As he put it on her finger, Charlotte tried to feel something for this man who knelt at her feet, kissed her hands. Gratitude surfaced; she understood him better now, liked him more. But her other thoughts were fragmented.

From then on, almost every day, Tigran brought her something new. Silks, lace kebaya and exquisite batik sarongs, velvet and feathered hats, jewels of every colour.

Yet every night, before she slept, she opened the little box and gazed at the single white pearl on the necklace of woven red silk threads. The necklace he had given her the day she left him. What did anything else matter? She thought of Tigran’s words. We all love in some measure the one who awakens powerful feelings. Is it true love? She shook her head. It was not like that with her and Zhen. Poverty had locked him into a marriage with a woman he did not love. Her situation was so like his that she was drawn even closer to him. Like him, now, she was forced by convention and self-preservation to marry someone else. In the day she lived entangled in her European life in Java; in the day he lived entangled in his Chinese life in Singapore; but at night, she knew, was certain, they lived in each other’s dreams.