Footsteps (11 page)

“I was brought up and educated in a convent, Mr. Minke, in a Catholic convent in Shanghai.”

This girl’s frankness was amazing.

“Have you told others this?”

She smiled, and looked at me with those shining eyes. “What is there that I shouldn’t tell a good friend of my friend?”

“Thank you, miss.”

She didn’t say anything about her friend who had died—who had written that letter to her.

“Why am I called ‘miss’ by a good friend of my friend? Call me Mei. No one calls me that now. I have heard a lot about you.
My friend didn’t put his trust in people easily. He had sharp instincts about people. Whomever he trusted, so too must I trust them.”

“Thank you, Mei. You’re extraordinary,” I said, admiring her frankness.

“Thank you.”

“The letter won’t need a reply,” I said.

“Yes.” She was silent for a moment, “You’re right, it won’t need a reply. I haven’t even read it all.”

“You know what happened?”

“I know.” She shook her head weakly. Then her hands moved nervously as if she wanted to grab hold of something from another dimension. “I read about it in the newspaper.”

“How did you know he left a letter?”

“Everyone, including myself, believed in the power of his sixth sense. An extraordinary person.” Her voice was full of praise, but also sadness. “I have never met anyone like him.”

“He said he chose Surabaya because it was the most difficult area.”

“So he trusted you.”

I nodded.

“He didn’t give his trust easily. I will go to the most difficult area, he told me before he left. You will receive news from me in one way or another. If you don’t receive any news from me for a long time, then sooner or later someone will seek you out; I don’t know who. Perhaps that will be my last letter ever.”

She kept on talking. Her voice exhibited more and more adoration, but it also became sadder and sadder. Glassy-eyed, she looked down at her shoes, turned away her face, then stood and turned around as if to walk away. It seemed she didn’t want to show her feelings.

I turned around so as not to see her face. And I realized how deep the relationship between the two of them must have been. A relationship between two close comrades, between a young woman and a young man—it was not just a relationship between comrades-in-arms. They were bound by intimate and close emotional ties. I also felt her loss.

“You have my deepest, my truly sincere condolences, Mei,” I said.

“Thank you. You are the first to share my loss all this time. No one else knew about the relationship between the two of us.”

Soon I felt that I had known this girl for a long time, as if we had been at school together, as if we’d been educated together for years and years. She was quickly able to get hold of her emotions again. She took out the clips from her hair and held them in her lap, sometimes fiddling with them. She was seated calmly now in her chair.

“Can you tell me what he said to you?” she asked.

I told her everything, just as I had noted it down in my diary. She listened to every word. She made no attempt to correct my English. That we were out of town when he left our house. That he left this letter. That he was caught by the Surabaya Tong Secret Society and how he died.

She bowed her head again. Her voice was like a sigh: “I never guessed things were that difficult. He never told me.”

And I told her of my admiration for him.

“Did he ever talk to you about the Surabaya Tong?”

“No.”

“About the Yi Me Tuan?”

“No.”

She held out her hand again to thank me for the protection we had given her friend. And this time it was as if she were the one who didn’t want to let go. Her hand was cold.

“Are you ill, Mei?”

“Perhaps I am. I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to take you to the doctor?”

She laughed and let go of my hand. Her teeth shone and she shook her head slowly.

“No need to go to that trouble. You’re studying to be a doctor yourself, aren’t you?”

“I’m still in my first year. I don’t know anything yet,” I said. “Where did you go to school?”

“A Catholic high school.”

“Where?”

“I told you, in Shanghai.”

“And why were you brought up in a convent?”

“As far as I know, I was always there.”

“And how did you come to meet your friend?”

“Could we not talk about him anymore?” Her voice was sad again, then suddenly, energetically, she asked: “May I wish you well in your studies?”

“Of course. But school is so boring.”

“Why do you stay?”

“I don’t know what else to do. It’s the highest education that you can get in the Indies.”

“Don’t know what else to do?” she asked, amazed, in such an intimate voice that it set my heart pounding, “as if there isn’t much work to do in the Indies.”

I gazed into her eyes and for some reason they were shining brightly. I felt that the cultural and racial barriers between us, me as a Javanese and she as a Chinese, for some reason that I didn’t understand but could only sense, had been magically made to vanish. It was as if the two of us had come out of the same factory, called the modern age.

“I read your name in the papers,” I said.

“The person who wrote that never met me. I think all she knew were the names of the teachers. No one knows me, because no one needs to know me. I prefer it that way.”

“But I know you now.”

“You are the trusted bearer of a special message.”

“I understand, Mei.” It had suddenly come to me that she too was probably in the Indies illegally. Just as her friend had been. “But you seem to have had more success.”

“What do you mean?”

“The setting up of the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan.”

“Ah, that? Well, it’s all very fragile. Tomorrow or the next day, there may be no place for me there anymore. The old thinking is still trying to dominate there. They only want Chinese to be taught.” Then she seemed to be jolted by something. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking you’re him. Your voices are so alike, except perhaps your English is better. Perhaps I’m not thinking too clearly at the moment.”

“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:

“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 concubine—then there’s no prayer—but just as many children.”