The native suburbs boiled in tropical heat and disease and steeped in foul water, but Weltevreden spoke of the optimism of pre-war years with bright new trams gliding along the tree-lined avenues and sparkling canals built by the Dutch to bring coolness and soothing motion to their crisp, white, residential areas. In the commercial quarter, the stiff, narrow fronts of Amsterdam had been preserved but out here in the suburbs there was enough space for the Dutch Landhaus to take their place. Fat dwellings sat securely in large grounds, pruned and watered by copious gardeners who fought a relentless battle against tropical exuberance, just as their owners waged war on the manic disorder of the whole, vast colonial archipelago. Lauterbach moved into the sprawled gingerbread villa of one of the Etappe merchants where the man lived with his pale wife and three big-boned daughters but he spent much of his own time in the gentlemanly atmosphere of the Harmonie, the famous club on the corner of the noisesome main boulevard where carriages, horsed and horseless, rattled up and down around the clock.
