Footsteps (12 page)

“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 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.”

“Since when have you been able to cook?”

“Beginning today, here with you. You’re not doing anything today, are you?”

“I thought you’d come. I’ve been waiting here.”

“No other guests today?”

“You’re the only one I’m expecting.”

“What about that small-footed woman?”

“A neighbor.”

“So you really live by yourself?”

“I thought it would be best.”

“What about your meals?”

“I get meals from next door.”

We started cooking. Happiness and poverty looked on together.

“Being close to an educated young man,” she went on, “I feel secure. Nearly all the uneducated men of my race look on women as nothing more than something to vent their lusts upon. And occasionally those who are educated are even worse. So our educated women feel disgusted whenever some man looks at us, even from afar, let alone if they approach us.”

That was a warning bell. How strange was the way she guarded herself, and how gently it was that she shielded herself.

“Not every educated man is like that,” I said.

“All the educated ones are the same,” she said coolly. “They use their education to oil their tongues in persuasion. If uneducated, then their lusts just speak directly.”

She had begun to punish me even before I had committed any crime. You, Mei, you force me to stay in line. Her delicate voice and gentle tones reminded me of my mother.

“I think I’m not one of those educated men that you’re talking about, Mei.”

“Well, why are we cooking together like this?” she asked, laughing. “You’re not cooking anyway—you’re just chatting.”

All I could do is answer with a nervous laugh.

“Why haven’t you learned Malay?”

“I’ve started.”

“What if we go out for a walk?”

“What about the cooking?”

“Later on, I mean,” I said in Malay.

She smiled and mumbled some strange-sounding answer that I couldn’t understand at all.

“Later,” she repeated in English, “when we can.”

“Why don’t you find somewhere better to live, Mei?”

“This is good enough. I’ll only be in the Indies for five years. I don’t need anything more.”

“You’re not happy here in the Indies?” She didn’t answer.
“What if we take a trip to the countryside one day? Breathe the fresh country air?”

“That would be very nice. When we have some holidays.”

I went the following Sunday as well. And brought more things to cook. Mei wasn’t home. There was a letter stuck to the door. She was sorry but she had work to do somewhere else. I left the things I had brought on the veranda divan and set off home full of disappointment. How I missed her. If I couldn’t meet her every week, it would be more than just a trip in vain; the loneliness would be more painful than I could bear.

I deliberately did not go on the fourth Sunday. Nor on the fifth. A letter arrived.

She wasn’t there when I arrived at Kotta. I walked up and down so that she would see me easily. I was really very anxious. Perhaps she was just playing a trick on me. No, I said to myself, she had no reason to do that.

Ten minutes later, a young Chinese boy came up to me. He asked nervously in Malay: “
Tuan
is waiting for
Encik
Teacher Ang?” He had round eyes set in narrow pockmarks of eye sockets, and he fondled a filthy tennis ball.

I hesitated. He might be someone sent by those who had threatened Mei. So what? They can bash me up then. Perhaps Mei does truly need me at this time.