Footsteps

  “You’re too tired, Mei. It shows in your face.”

  “And if you don’t really want to be a doctor, then what do you want to be?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “A free individual.”

  She laughed gaily. And I didn’t understand what she was laughing at.

  “Is that funny, Mei?”

  “Funny? How do you imagine this free individual to be? With no responsibilities? You can’t mean that. You’re just playing around. A friend of my friend wouldn’t be like that. Perhaps you’re just using the wrong words.”

  Her remarks made me uncomfortable. She smiled at my discomfort and those narrow eyes almost disappeared from her face, changing into little ridges. All the signs that she was ill also disappeared. Her pale lips turned red.

  She started to lecture me. “Don’t misunderstand what is meant by ‘Liberty’ in the slogan of the French Revolution.” I was amazed that she’d suddenly started talking about the French Revolution.

  She went on. “Even some of the French have interpreted this to mean they are free to steal and free of responsibilities toward anyone. They start to act completely arbitrarily. They are only after greatness for themselves in their own country! All of the educated Natives of Asia have a responsibility to help awaken their peoples. If we don’t, Europe will run riot throughout Asia. Do you agree?”

  I recognized her friend’s voice in what she was saying. Who have these young people studied with? Were their teachers better than mine?

  “If we make the wrong decisions about how to face up to the modern age, then we might end up allowing Europe to become the despot of the whole world.”

  “We’ve moved on to this kind of subject very quickly,” I said.

  “Yes, we trust each other, don’t we? I have had no one with whom I can discuss things like this for a long time now.” She paused. “Could you excuse me for just a minute?” She stood, nodded, smiled, and then, with that beautiful way of walking that she had, went inside.

  This sickly beautiful girl was just like her late friend. Pretty, looks fragile, yet like him has the courage to leave her country for faraway places because of her ideals. And she not only dares to strike out on such an adventure, but is also daring in her thinking, and in her friendships.

  I guessed that she had gone inside to read the rest of the letter.

  Then, from inside, came that exquisite voice: “Come and sit inside, my friend.”

  The room I entered was suffocatingly small. It went across the width of the shack, about nine feet, and was about six feet deep. I could see an even smaller room off to the side. The walls were made of plastered woven bamboo, but the plaster was peeling off everywhere. The furniture consisted of a table and a bench made of timber from a durian tree. On top of the table were two Chinese books, and the table itself was covered with scratched calculations. There was not a single picture hanging from any of the walls. I could hear voices coming from the neighbors all around, but there was nothing to be heard from inside.

  She came out from the other room wearing blue silk pants. Her sleeveless blouse was from the same material, and it was decorated with a picture of a dragon on the front. In these silken blue clothes, she looked even paler. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying. She carried a schoolbag. She took out another Chinese language book and from inside the book, a sheet of paper.

  “I’ve received two letters now from a Native woman,” she said. “But they’re written in a language I don’t understand. Perhaps you know her. Could you translate this for me?”

  The letter was from the girl from Jepara! She wrote that she had read in the papers about two modern Chinese girls. She wanted to meet them and had tried to find their addresses. She had found Ang San Mei’s address through the help of her friends in Betawi, and had sent her a letter as soon as she had received the address. She wanted to correspond and to exchange ideas. She was interested in finding out about emancipated Chinese women, both back in China and in the Indies. And was the fate of women in China as terrible as it was for Javanese women? Was there polygamy everywhere? Were Chinese men interested only in their own pleasures, and did they treat their mothers’ kind without care or responsibility?

  I also found out from this letter that the girl sitting next to me was a graduate of the Shanghai Teachers’ College and was fluent in both English and French. The girl from Jepara expressed her regret that she knew only Dutch. She started to learn English but had to give it up because there were no teachers or reading material available to her. The letter continued:

  In my opinion, no people anywhere can be respected if their women are oppressed by their men as is the case with my people, and if love and compassion are reserved for babies only. Everyone listens full of awe to the cry of a baby as it takes its first breath. After that the father pays no more heed, while the mother, as soon as the baby can crawl, once again becomes her husband’s slave. Sometimes I just can’t understand what respect and honor mean to men, and what it means to them that they are willing to let the whole nation lose its honor and dignity.

  “An interesting woman,” Mei commented. “Are Native men really like that?”

  “I think she’s right.”

  “Yes, they’re mostly like that in China too.”

  “But that wasn’t your experience, Mei.”

  “Only because I was raised in a convent, away from society.”

  “You’re Catholic?”

  “Yes. Someone exiled by her own people.”

  “But you’ve dedicated your life to your people. A people who have rejected you? You’ve forgiven them?”

  “Our Young Generation works for China and our loyalty is to China. The Young Generation fights against the rule of the Empress Tz’u-hsi, who is propped up by the Western powers. This girl from Jepara wants to start with the customs of her own people. A pity.”

  “Both are important,” I said. “They can be struggled for together.”

  “That’d be too difficult. What else does she say?”

  I looked at her. Her eyes were no longer red. I read her the second letter. It went on to talk about the emancipation of women in Europe. The girl from Jepara wrote that she thought women in Europe were demanding too much. Women and men should have the same rights. But no more than that, she said. Special rights for some means oppression for others.

  She also asked whether she was doing the right thing in writing because she had received no replies. She had found someone to translate the replies if they were written in English. She told how she had an older brother who understood English and who would, perhaps, be continuing his studies in Europe next year because there was nowhere higher for him to study in the Indies. He wasn’t her real brother. Her real brother had left the year before and would already be beginning classes at the university.

  “A progressive family,” commented Mei.

  The letter went on to say that she herself had graduated only from primary school. She was now in seclusion, which was the custom in Java for women of marriageable age. Her only friends were her books and letters. The only people who could actually talk with her were her sisters. Her life was a silent one. The author had the greatest respect for Miss Ang, who had left her country without the protection of her family—such a big step!

  The letter went on to ask Mei’s opinion about marriage, which the letter’s author argued should be the foundation of a long-lasting and intimate relationship between man and woman. What did Miss Ang think of a relationship which was so formal and so temporary and so easily severed that those concerned could then go spreading stories of each other’s weaknesses and sins. Would not such a marriage only make a man and a woman less honored and less worthy? Was this how it was in China too?

  “Worse,” answered Ang San Mei. “Whenever one of my sisters married, everyone wished the married couple a hundred children and a thousand grandchildren. I don’t know how many women have been married to the accompaniment of that prayer. Except if she’s being taken as a concubi
ne—then there’s no prayer—but just as many children.”

  “What about your appointment?” I asked suddenly. “Aren’t you going now?”

  “Today is for my guest,” she said. “This woman from Jepara is a good person; she doesn’t think about herself at all.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “I will answer her letters. Would you translate for me?”

  “Of course. You tell me what to say. I’ll write it out.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I might not have the chance another time.”

  She seemed nervous. I guessed she probably didn’t have any paper.

  “You work it out first in English while I go and get some paper.” And without waiting for a reply, I got up and left.

  It turned out not to be so easy to find a stall that sold paper. When I got back half an hour later, she’d written out her reply on a piece of dirty wrapping paper, which I pretended not to notice. I immediately translated it into Dutch. She went into the cooking area and brought out two glasses of creamed avocado. As if she knew it was my favorite. The two glasses stood there next to each other like two lonely lovers.

  “It’s too hard for you to write with these glasses in the way. Ayoh, let’s drink first,” she said.

  I hesitated to take my glass. She had spent her no doubt limited and much-valued money to buy this expensive drink. The avocado was used only by Europeans. Natives weren’t familiar with it yet. In Betawi there was only one avocado plantation and it had been opened by a European. Natives weren’t planting them yet. We clinked our glasses in a toast. She laughed and her teeth gleamed. And her eyes, now only slits, were black, covered by her long eyelashes. The way she held her glass for me to clink with it, the way she raised her chin, all set my heart pounding.

  Here was another kind of beauty in yet another place, with different origins as well. And what kind of beauty was it? Why was this girl, whom I had just met, so impressive? Why did she strike me as being beautiful? It was a beauty that wasn’t empty, that was backed up by character and knowledge. Was that it?

  And how surprised I was when I realized that she wasn’t putting her glass to her own lips but to mine. As if commanded, my glass in turn went to her lips. We were just about to drink, and the two of us burst out laughing.

  “What?”

  “This was his custom too.”

  No doubt she was referring to her late friend. But I didn’t respond to what she had said. And she suddenly seemed to be lost in thought. I put my glass to her lips and, silently, she began to drink. And I from her glass. She laughed again, but I couldn’t see if her eyes were laughing too.

  She put the glass down on the bench beside me. I followed suit, then continued writing.

  “It looks as if many of the Malay papers have published stories about you,” I said, on another subject.

  “Perhaps. I’ve no idea really.”

  I continued writing.

  “Why don’t you correspond with her too?” Mei asked.

  “You can introduce me in this letter,” I said.

  “Yes, put that in.”

  Mei’s letter told of the fate of women in China. In the villages they had to work as hard as the men—harder, in fact, because they had to look after the household, manage the children, and give birth, as well as cope with menstruation. They did everything that men also did, except read and write. Many also fought in the wars, some even becoming war heroes. Generally, with perhaps the exception of those from the upper class, Chinese women were trained to work and they coped with all the difficulties they faced by working and striving. Because of this, they could survive anywhere in the world. Toward the end, the letter said:

  And, my friend, I do not think you could find anywhere in the world one of my fellow countrywomen who has killed herself or died of hunger, even though she has found herself in a foreign country. You need not be so surprised that I am here in a foreign land either. You too would do the same if you were a Chinese woman. I think, my friend, that it is the middle-class and upper-class women who are the dependent ones. In Java, too, I think the peasant women have more rights because of their responsibilities—in looking after the land, and the animals, and the household too. The fewer a person’s responsibilities, the fewer their rights. But I don’t really know what the situation is in your country. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the interior of this beautiful green land of yours.

  And that was how I ended her letter.

  ’I’ll post it,” I said.

  “Thank you.” She smiled at me.

  “How could anyone do anything else but help you, Mei? It could only be because they didn’t know you.” I changed back to a previous subject. “Mei, it looks as though the papers have been reporting on you a lot.”

  “I don’t know. I only remember once, when our school was being opened, there was a European woman there. She tried to start up a conversation in English with me. I don’t remember her name. It was just small talk. I wouldn’t talk about myself, about what I was doing or where I had come from….”

  I studied her closely and she knew I was studying her. The longer I looked at her, the more beautiful she seemed, despite her thinness and paleness. Or was I just a womanizer, as my friends used to accuse me. No, it wasn’t just a matter of being a philogynist. Was it wrong for me to be attracted by her beauty? Was it wrong that I had a sense of beauty and had glands in my body?

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “It’s not my fault,” I said.

  “It’s my fault?”

  “Yes. It’s your fault. You’re too attractive.”

  “How many women have heard you say that?”

  “And how many men have you questioned like this? With words so cutting?” I asked.

  She laughed, and her eyes disappeared. She dropped this subject and started to talk about other things. The conversation became more and more relaxed. Then she invited me to take lunch with her. We went into the back room, which wasn’t at all as I expected. It was just a kitchen with a sleeping bench. There were no other rooms.

  We sat on the bench to eat. Its bamboo mat was rolled up and I could see a bag inside it. There was nothing else in the room except some kitchen utensils. I could see out the back through the kitchen door. The backyard was about six by nine feet. There was a big, high wall of a building at the rear of the yard.

  There were only the two of us. And that was the first time I ate noodles fried with mushrooms and a little meat. Incredibly delicious. Out of kilter altogether with the overall condition of this bamboo hut. In the middle of such poverty as this, where did such delicious food come from?

  I watched her cross herself. Then she began eating, using chopsticks. I used a spoon and fork. Her lips shone with the moisture from the food, making her even more attractive. She obviously hadn’t eaten since morning.

  The small-footed woman wasn’t to be seen anywhere. Who knows where she had gone? All the while we were eating I tried to fathom this mystery of a girl. Educated, but living in the midst of poverty, so free in receiving a man she didn’t know. Without even a piece of paper to write on. I’d finished my noodles. So had she. And I could have eaten two more plates. But I knew that she would be going without in order to feed me now.

  And this somehow reminded me of the raft maker’s widow who supported Troenodongso by selling sweet potatoes.

  Mei took the plates out into the kitchen and washed them.

  Yes, there was nothing here. Just an old bag hanging from the bamboo divan. Probably everything she owned was in that bag.

  She came in again and suggested we go out and sit on the veranda. So she hadn’t tired of me yet. And she was just like Khouw Ah Soe. She always got excited when the topic changed to the Japanese Young Generation, and her own Young Generation.

  “Mei,” I called to her, “did you know Khouw Ah Soe for long?”

  Her face became gloomy. And I didn’t press her. I heard her draw in a long breath.


  “A diamond of a youth, brilliant,” she praised him again. “I prayed always for his safety.” Her voice became reflective again. “In the end, he died without ever seeing his closest friends again.”

  “Nor his family?”

  “He was an orphan like me. But he was brought up a Protestant.”

  It seemed certain to me that Khouw Ah Soe and Mei had been engaged. It was probably true that they slipped secretly into the country together. She was probably forced to take this job as a teacher, after her fiancé was killed by the Tong secret society in Surabaya.

  I regretted that I had brought her thoughts back to her friend just so that I could find out what their relationship had been. Quickly I steered the conversation on to all sorts of other things. By this time even my young eyes could hardly see—the sun had almost set.

  “I’m very happy that you have spent so much time here with me today. I’m so happy to be able to meet a friend of my friend. Please come here often. It will help me so much if you can translate any letters I receive that I can’t understand or answer.”

  It was time for me to go, though reluctantly.

  On the way home, I had a lot to think about. Perhaps tonight, she would not eat. And she surely wouldn’t be having any breakfast tomorrow. So thin and pale. Was she really happy that I had come? Or was it just because I was somebody in whom her late fiancé had put his trust? She had been left by her loved one, and now she had to struggle hard to make a living. But she felt no humiliation because of her poverty. Neither was she ashamed in front of me.

  I went back the following Sunday. This time I brought things for cooking—rice, meat, vegetables, and spices.

  When I arrived, I found her daydreaming on the veranda divan. She jumped up happily as soon as she saw me.

  “We’ll feast today, Mei,” I said fixing our program. I showed her the things I’d brought. “Come on, let’s eat.”