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Collier's, 11 August 1934, with "The Listening Leopard"
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
IT was Herr Karl Naumann, correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung, who first told me about the Grand Duchess Thalia of Sonderburg-Walstadt. Naumann knew the Almanach de Gotha by heart. I had never heard of the duchess till he asked my help in locating the exact place of her death.
Naumann was writing a book about lonely deathbeds, telling of the last moments of persons who died far away from homeland and friends.
I told him that I had visited the grave of John Howard Payne, the author of Home, Sweet Home, in Tunis and it was then that he mentioned the Grand Duchess Thalia of Sonderburg-Walstadt. "Some day," he said, "you might, in your wanderings, find out where the dear old lady was buried."
"What is the supposition?" I asked.
"We know she died in Java," he answered. "Batavia, or some place near. Just at the beginning of the war. There is a yarn that she ran into the jungle. Silly stuff, I think. Niece and a secretary were with her. They never turned up. Niece was the heir. Millions and millions."
"How old was the duchess?" I asked.
"Seventy-four," laughed Naumann. "Funny age to go native, isn't it? Well, some day you might be out that way."
EXACTLY five years after that talk with Karl Naumann, I
landed at Tanjong Priok and took the train connecting the port
with Batavia. Thoughts of the Grand Duchess Thalia were in my
mind. What made the old dear take to the tall timber? I puzzled
over the story as I rode the ten kilometers to Koningsplein
station. Of course the East exercises a peculiar effect on many
persons. A perfectly respectable dame from a civilized country is
likely, according to psychological snoopers, to lose her moral
rudder in the Orient.
The following morning the proprietor of the Hotel des Indes gave me an opening. He assured me that everyone who was anything stayed at the hotel. I thought of the elderly Thalia.
"You were here when the war started?" I asked.
"Plus ten years," he answered.
"I wonder," I began, "if the Grand Duchess Thalia of Sonderburg-Walstadt stayed here?"
"Where else would she have stayed?" he countered.
"I don't know, I'm sure," I stammered. "Stupid of me, of course."
The quiet flow of pedestrians moved along the Molinvliet. Dutch, Sundanese, Chinese, Malays and Madoerese. An impatient guest shouted for the proprietor; I was left alone to think of Thalia.
Seventy-four years of age. Free in Batavia, the "Paradise of the East." Why go back to Germany and a war when Java was open to her?
"Thalia showed good sense," I muttered. "Food was short in Germany during those days."
The proprietor roused me from my reverie. He leaned over my chair and spoke in a whisper. "If you are interested in the Grand Duchess Thalia," he murmured, "there is, at this very moment, a man in the bar who knows everything. He is Professor Van Bierrens."
PROFESSOR VAN BIERRENS put down his stein and stared at me, a
fine, big Dutchman with an easy manner.
"Does your Herr Naumann know about her death?"
"He doesn't," I stammered. "He has heard rumors, but the exact facts are not known to him."
He remained silent. I thought of the European cemetery by the Tanah-Abang Road, and I put a question. "Is the duchess buried here in Batavia?"
"No," snapped Van Bierrens, then, after a pause, and, more pleasantly, he added: "I think she is buried near Panabaram, in the Kediri Regency. Have you ever heard of a man named Jan Kromhout?"
At the moment I had never met the big Dutch naturalist with whom, later, I became quite friendly, so I answered in the negative.
"Kromhout could tell you everything if he wished to talk," said the professor.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"Somewhere in the Kediri Regency. They'll know his exact whereabouts at Blitar. Do you mind if I leave you? Any discussion of the Grand Duchess Thalia upsets me. It makes me ill."
He rose hurriedly, snatched his hat and walked swiftly to the door.
I was a little astonished. What was there about the end of the dear old lady of Sonderburg-Walstadt to upset the professor? I sat for a long time pondering over the words of Van Bierrens, and curiosity flayed me.
I LEFT Batavia that evening by the express of the State Line,
connecting the "Paradise of the East" with Soerabaja. The
throbbing wheels chattered of the grand duchess.... Thalia!
Thalia! Thalia! Thalia! ... At times I thought myself a
little insane. Why the devil should I worry about the doings of
an elderly German Frau?
The bungalow of Jan Kromhout was in a deserted spot, but the spirit of hospitality oozed from the massive form of the naturalist. There was no hotel or rest-house within twenty miles of Kromhout's camp, but he expressed a strong desire for companionship and begged me to stay as his guest. I think I stressed willfully my acquaintance with his friend Professor Van Bierrens. Later I confessed my deceit.
It was on the second evening that Jan Kromhout told me the story of the Grand Duchess Thalia. I had mentioned my interest on the day of my arrival, but my questions had been deftly avoided. Kromhout refused to be drawn.
On this second evening the naturalist was interested in a captive. An animal that was stubbornly preparing for death as the one way of escape from the stout cage that held him prisoner. He would neither eat nor drink. He lay with his head upon his paws and stared at Kromhout with dull-gold eyes.
THE prisoner was a full-grown leopard, but a leopard clothed
in a distinctive fashion. He was a curious example of partial
melanism. The upper body, from the angle of the jaw to the hip
joint, was completely black—so black that the
characteristic spots were not visible in bright
sunlight—while the under body, legs and tail were of a
rufous buff and carried the usual spots. It was this
extraordinary marking that gave the animal a value in the eyes of
the naturalist.
"But he will not live," growled Kromhout. "He has lost the desire for life. Ja, it is so. He wants something badly. His sweetheart, I think."
The naturalist dropped into a homemade easy-chair, poured himself a liberal glass of schnapps, gulped it down with the fine thirst of tropical countries, that seems in itself a little sinful, then looked at me out of deep-set eyes.
"If" you have the right desire to live you can do anything," he said slowly. "Anything at all. So few of us have it. We tire of our wives and our families, of our little affairs and the cheers of fools. And we are told by the insurance people and the Bible that we are sitting too long at the table. When you pass seventy you are a freak.
"You are curious about the Grand Duchess Thalia? Is it not so? I will tell you about her. You might not believe, but that is nothing. Belief is the greatest of the virtues.
"Before the war I was catching specimens of the chevrotain at a place about fifty miles from here. It is a strange place. It has an atmosphere that is funny. When you are alone you think that someone is walking with you. You stop, and the someone with you stops. You go on, and he goes on. It is explained by the geologists. The nature of the ground makes funny echoes.
"I had heard of a native who lived there. He had taken up his quarters in a ruined temple, and there were stories about him. Mad stories. They said he had been there three hundred years. Three hundred years and more. They called him the 'Old One.' There are, in the Orient, many fellows like that. I have seen them, and they have not impressed me much. They are humbugs.
"One day I followed the track of a tiger to the old temple where this native lived. He was sitting on a stone terrace in front of the ruin. He was naked as a new-born baby, and he was so busy rubbing his arms and his legs with some stuff that he took from a calabash that he did not hear my steps.
"I sat in the bushes and watched him, and while I watched him there sneaked into my head something that startled me. Do you know what it was? It was a belief in those stories that were told about him. Ja, ja! A belief that he was old! That he was three hundred years old and more!
"There came out from him that feeling you get when you enter the big temples of Boro-Buddur and Chandi Jago. He was wrapped in the years. In layers and layers of years. When I stared at him I was looking at Java when they offered sacrifices to Siva and Parvati, and Ganesha their son. There were funny feelings down my spine and my head was hot.
"AFTER a while he sensed that I was there. I had made no sound
but his skin told him. He put the calabash away, looked at the
place where I was squatting and spoke in the Sundanese dialect. I
came out pretty quick and made a little apology for peeping at
him. It was wrong to spy on anything as old as that man.
"He did not know how old he was. He could not count. It is a pity that we have learned to count. A great pity. If we did not know when we got to the threescore-and-ten mark we might go on.
"That figure seventy is the station where a lot of weak people think they should get out of the world. It has got into the subconscious mind. And their friends and their neighbors are thinking them dead. Not spitefully, but nicely. We Dutch have a proverb. It says, 'The nails in the coffins are tongue-driven.' "
Jan Kromhout paused and stared at the leopard who had no desire to live. The leopard, golden eyes wide, stared back at the naturalist. I wondered much how the Grand Duchess Thalia could climb into the story. Interesting, of course, this account of the ancient, but what had it to do with an elderly German lady from Sonderburg-Walstadt?
"SOME archaeologists came to look at that old temple,"
continued Kromhout. "They made measurements and they found that
there must be a walled-up chamber in the place. A big chamber.
They went round and round the walls looking for a door, but they
could not find one. There was not a crack in the stone. They
spoke to me, and I said that the old fellow might know where the
door was.
"They laughed. They thought that door must have been walled up about the time when Hendrik Zwaardekron brought the first coffee plants to Java. It is funny that coffee is an alien to Java, is it not?
" 'You might ask him,' laughed one of those archaeologists. 'That is, if you think he knows what happened three hundred years ago.'
"I asked that 'Old One' if he knew anything about the door. He did not answer me for about an hour, then he said that it had been walled up when he was a very little boy. He remembered the day. Someone was buried there, he thought. Someone important.
"I asked if he knew where the door was. He thought a long while over that question, then he got up and started to finger the stone carvings along the wall. It was a little queer. It made those scientific fellows stop and stare at him. They were beginning to think that he was as old as the natives said he was. There was something about that thin claw of his scratching amongst the carved lotus leaves. The claw was trying to remember. The claw! Those fingers were trying to recall some trick that other fingers had done in the long ago.
"He found it! Ja! In the heart of a sacred lotus. He pressed the petal, and a part of the wall slipped back. A part that was so cunningly joined to the rest that no one could see a crevice.
"In that chamber those scientific gentlemen found some bones and a copper plate that told them the place was being closed up with the body of a saint in the year 1670, so that old fellow had seen something that happened years before Hendrik Zwaardekron had got the first beans off his coffee plants. It gave those archeological fellows a shock."
THE leopard rose, made a quick turn of his cage, sniffed the
night wind that came nosing into the bungalow, then took up his
former position, head on his paws, his eyes fixed on
Kromhout.
The Dutchman filled himself another glass of schnapps and continued his story.
"I went down to Batavia," he said. "I met my friend Professor Van Bierrens. I told him of that native, and of the matter of that door that he opened.
" 'He has some secret,' said Van Bierrens.
" 'I think it is just the desire to live,' I told him.
" 'But that is a secret!' he snapped. 'A great secret! You should have found out what he is living for! What is the desire?'
"He was so mad with me that he stamped out of the Hotel der Nederlanden, where I was staying. He made me Laugh. You are wondering what has all this got to do with the Grand Duchess Thalia of Sonderburg-Walstadt? Now I am coming to her. Coming to her very quick indeed.
"That Professor Van Bierrens was back at my hotel first thing in the morning. He grabbed me by the arm and he took me up to the Hotel des Indes. He sent up his card and in a few minutes I was bowing to an old German woman, all painted and powdered, who looked as old as the Sacred Cannon that the natives pray to at the Penang Gateway. She was your grand duchess. Ja! She was Thalia of Sonderburg-Walstadt on her way back from German New Guinea.
"She made me tell her about that 'Old One' in the hills. Quick and sharp were her questions. How old did I think he was? Was I sure? What did I think he had in the calabash? I had told Van Bierrens that I had watched that native rubbing himself with something that he poured from a calabash, and Van Bierrens had repeated it to her.
" 'Do you think, Mynheer Kromhout, that he could make a person of a certain age young again?' she snapped.
" 'I do not know,' I answered. 'I have never asked him.'
" 'Would he sell his secret?' she demanded.
"I shrugged my shoulders. What did I know? Nothing.
" 'Everything in the world is for sale,' cried that old woman. 'Everything! Tomorrow we start for this place Kediri.'
"On the next day I met the niece of the duchess, who was traveling with her. And I met a young man who was the secretary of the old lady. The niece was nineteen, and the secretary was twenty-one, and they loved each other.
"NOW I will tell you something. Something that startled me.
That old woman, the Grand Duchess Thalia, was also in love with
that boy who was working as her secretary! He did not know it!
The girl did not know it! They were too much wrapped up in each
other to think such a thing possible. If someone had told them
they would not have believed.
"The duchess was seventy-four! Three and a half times the age of the boy who could only see one woman in the world, and that was the little fraulein who blushed so prettily when he looked at her!...
"With the servants there were eleven of us.
"On the train I had pains in my head because I had mixed myself up in that business. It did not seem nice to me. There was money—Ja, a lot of money, but when I looked at the duchess I felt that I was helping someone to play tricks with the Almighty. I felt ashamed. That woman was so old."
Some odor came in on the wind and startled the leopard. He sprang to his feet and sniffed hungrily at the breeze. Kromhout watched him with interest. For a full five minutes the animal stood without moving a muscle, then, with a little whimper, he slipped back to his former position and stared at the naturalist.
"That puff of wind came from his home," said Kromhout. "He knows it. Where was I in my story? Ach, I know! We had tents and beds and everything. That woman had millions of gulden. Millions and millions! We made a camp in the mouth of a valley, then I went to look for the 'Old One.'
"I found him sitting on the ledge in front of the temple, I spoke to him about the grand duchess. How old she was and how she had an idea that he might make her young. I said she would pay anything that he asked.
" 'I have everything that I want,' he said. 'Tell the old buffalo cow that it cannot be done.'
"I WAS mad with him. I grabbed his skinny ankle and pulled him
to his feet. 'Put something round your nakedness and come with
me!' I yelled. 'You must speak to her yourself!' I was sick with
that business. Sick that I had spoken to Van Bierrens at
Batavia.
"The 'Old One' tied a strip of dirty cloth about his middle and we went down to the camp. Just as we got to the tents someone started the big phonograph that the grand duchess carried with her on her travels. The 'Old One' stopped and looked at me. 'What is that?' he asked. I tried to tell him that it was a machine, then I led him to the big tent that was used as a sitting-room and showed it to him.
"When he saw the machine and heard the music that was coming from it that native threw himself on his knees and covered his face. He thought the thing a god! Ja! A god that would get up and kick him to death if he didn't crawl to it. I tried to get him to his feet, but he wouldn't move. I had to ask the young secretary to stop the thing before he would get up. That machine had him scared good and plenty.
"When it was quiet he tiptoed all around it. He thought the god was inside. When it started again he dropped, covered his face and lay still, and he was there on the mat lying full length when the Grand Duchess Thalia came into the tent.
"The 'Old One' had no interest in the grand duchess. No interest at all. He was watching that machine. He could not take his eyes from it when it was silent. He was crawling on his belly and muttering prayers to it.
"I told the grand duchess that he would do nothing. 'He does not want money,' I said. 'He has everything he wants.' Then, as I looked at him, I said: 'This machine seems to stir him a lot.'
" 'Offer it to him if he will help me to become young!' cried the duchess. 'Offer it to him now! Quick!'
"It took a lot of talking to explain to the 'Old One.' His mind could not grip what I said. Two dozen times I made the offer in the Sundanese dialect.
"When he got that offer into his head he was like a wild man. He went crazy with the thought of owning that talking box. He made noises like a hungry dog that has found a big bone. He spluttered promises. He wanted me to tell the old woman that he would make her as nimble as a deer. I had a job to stop him from starting that minute on that duchess. She was not an old buffalo cow to him then; she was a goddess."
Again the leopard rose and sniffed the night. His eyes were red coals as he wheeled.
"It is the change in the monsoon that is rousing him," said Kromhout. "It brings smells from his home. Watch him! He is getting news on that wind. Ja! Big news. It is his mail! It is possible that his wife has sent him a letter. She is not pleased with his being away so long and has put her temper into an odor that the wind has brought him. She might think he has found another wife. She must know that he is beautiful."
We waited in silence while the leopard "read" his wind letters, then, when he quieted down, Kromhout took up his story.
"Now, years after that business, I am much puzzled," he said slowly. "Much puzzled over the work of the 'Old One.' Often I think of the weeks that followed his visit to the camp. I have made myself go back and look at each day, and it is still a mystery to me. A great mystery.
"But I saw! I, Jan Kromhout, who has lived in the East for half a century! What did I see? I saw the years being peeled off that old Grand Duchess Thalia like you would peel the husk from a coconut! Peeled off by that native....
"Each day he would work on that old woman. He would rub her arms and her face and her legs with that stuff he had in the calabash. And he would massage her till she squealed with the pain. He was not gentle. Not a bit. That phonograph was in his head, and when the grand duchess cried out with the agony he would curse her and tell me to ask her to keep quiet.
"And he would try to throw into her mind the will to get young. That was hypnotic. He would hold her eyes with his eyes as he massaged her. Hold her so that she thought she was young. He drove her back over the years. That was it! Drove her back, day after day, till her brain was fooled, and then her brain acted on her heart and her liver and her muscles. It said, 'What is wrong with you? I know that you are only thirty, so why are you sluggish and old?'
"YOU have seen Faust? Yes? Well, I saw something as big and
bigger happen under my eyes. Not done quick like it is done in
the opera. Slow, slow like the budding of a tree.... It was not
easy, that business, but the grand duchess had an incentive.
Ja, she had a big incentive.
"You wonder what the young secretary and the niece thought? I mean, what they thought of the change in the looks of the grand duchess? I will tell you. Those two youngsters were so much in love with each other, and so busy looking at each other, that they did not notice any change. It is a fact. They were blind. Blind to what was happening to the old woman. I know. Once or twice I made a remark about the grand duchess, just a little word to say that the climate was improving her health and looks, but they did not see anything. I do not think they would have noticed any change if Her Highness had become a little baby and started to crawl around the floor of the tent.
"I thought that old lady had a job on her hands. A big job. She would need all the tricks the 'Old One' could show her. She was getting younger! Ja, ja! At times she did not look half her age! It was strange. If you met her you would think that she was a woman of thirty, but what was the good of tearing off all those years if the man she wanted did not see the change? I wondered what would happen when she would put her cards on the table and say, 'Look at me! I have become young so that you will love me!' I wondered."
The leopard whined softly. There was a world of pain in the tense protest against imprisonment. The sound went out into the night, a concrete thing, floating away to the surrounding jungle, rousing animal hate against Man. Man, the trapper, the torturer, the builder of prisons called Zoological Gardens.... Gardens!
After a long pause Jan Kromhout resumed his story. "At the end of July the 'Old One' got his phonograph," he said slowly. "I helped him to get it up to the ruins where he lived. He had done all that he could. He had earned that talking machine.
"That evening I went down to the camp of the Grand Duchess Thalia. It was a fine night. There was a moon, and the winds were soft and perfumed. It was a night for lovers. A night for whispered words and white arms. I thought of days when I was young, and when I talked with girls in the Vondel Park at Amsterdam.
"I was going through a little grove of trees toward the tent when I heard voices. I stopped in the shadows and listened. The Grand Duchess Thalia of Sonderburg-Walstadt was speaking. I tried to get back, but she and the man who was with her moved onto the cleared patch and blocked me. I had to drop on my knees and pray that they would go away. I did not want to hear what that woman was saying. I wish I had never heard it. It wakes me now in the nights. Ja! Nearly twenty years after, those words wake me! I can hear the pain in her voice.
"She was telling that young man what she had done. What she had done for his sake! For his sake! How she had made herself young so that he would love her! It was terrible to listen to. Then, in the moonlight, she wheeled on her toes to show him that youth had come back to her. Wheeled like a dancer and flung out her arms to him....
"He was facing me, that secretary. Facing me with his mouth open and his face plastered with foolishness brought by her words. Never have I seen a man look so astonished as that youngster. Never! He tried to shut his mouth so that he could speak, but he couldn't. Nee! He couldn't! His jaws were clamped with horror, then, when she moved toward him, he let out a mad laugh, a laugh that gave you shivers, and he turned and ran into the trees....
"I saw another bit of magic then. I saw that woman growing old! Growing as old as she was when the 'Old One' first started on her! Growing old as she stood there in the moonlight! Those years that he had peeled from her were coming back as I watched. Coming back like crows, angry because she had tried to shake them off! She staggered past me toward the tent. She was older than she was when I had first seen her. Twenty, thirty years older! She was a hundred! Ja! A hundred!...
"Next morning, while the grand duchess was in bed sick, a runner came from Blitar with the news that Germany had gone to war. That was the finishing stroke for the Grand Duchess Thalia. She was dead in three days. It was her wish that she should be buried in that place. There is a stone with her name. That is all."
"And the young secretary and the niece?" I asked.
"They were married in Batavia," answered Kromhout. "I knew that the girl was the one that was to inherit the fortune of the grand duchess. Van Bierrens had told me that. But I think that fool business made them wish to do without the money. I think so. They had love and youth, and they wanted nothing else. Where they are I do not know, but I think they would be happy. Ja. I think they would be very happy. Love is the one great thing in this foolish world."
JAN KROMHOUT remained a long while without speaking. Slumped
in his big chair, he watched the leopard. The beast had walked to
the end of his cage that was nearest to the open door, and there,
nose pressed against the bars, he was reading the messages that
came on the veering wind. A strange, statuesque figure. A little
weird.
Kromhout rose standing behind that wire netting?" he said. "So! Just in case of accidents. You see—you see I am going to let that fellow free. He has memories of something. He would die if I kept him. Now, look out!"
The big naturalist pulled a lever that locked the bars against which the nose of the leopard was thrust. The flat iron slats fell away. The beast was free to spring through the open door of the bungalow.
For an instant he turned, his golden eyes upon Jan Kromhout. For just an instant. Then he sprang for the doorway. In the silence we heard the crackle of the dry bamboos before the bungalow, then a cry, tense and thrilling, came back to us.
Jan Kromhout dropped the lever. "There is someone somewhere that loves him," he said softly. "She will be glad to get him home. I will have another glass of schnapps and go to bed."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.