Footsteps (16 page)

Suddenly she asked Mei what Mei had been doing while she had been in the Indies. Mei, in a rather strange way, turned the question back on her. Mei answered that she was doing whatever she could, given her situation, and this was mainly writing for the public and privately to various people. Then our friend invited us to stay longer in Jepara.

“I’d like to very much,” said Mei, “but I don’t think I can this time.”

She asked me where I worked. I told her I was still at the medical school. She was very pleased to hear that. She told me about her brother in Europe and suggested I write to him.

“I have read your articles in
Bintang Hindia
and
De Hollandshe Lelie
,” I said to her. “Very interesting.” She was so pleased.

Mei said that I also wrote.

“Oh, yes, where?”

She held out her hand to me for the second time. She didn’t say anything about the letter she had written to one of her friends about my earlier experience. And I didn’t say anything either.

“Won’t we be late?” Mei asked suddenly.

The girl from Jepara was at her most enthusiastic now that we were talking about what we each had written. But time did not permit. The two girls shook hands emotionally, and the girl from Jepara said, “Happy are you, my friend, to be able to do what you yourself want, to do what you think is right for yourself and your people.”

“Yes, and it is all through struggle,” replied Mei.

“Yes.”

She also shook hands with me. And I couldn’t but notice her eyes. This person, who was the prisoner of love, shouted out with her eyes for a love that she had never yet known.

Our carriage left Jepara and headed toward Mayong. As soon as we were seated in the train for Semarang, a word escaped from my lips: “Tragic.”

“She could achieve more, much more, than she thinks.”

“Such a pity,” I whispered.

We continued our vacation in
Bandung.

Mei enjoyed our travels very much. But she was still thin and pale. It was anemia and low blood pressure; she was always pale and on the verge of illness. But throughout the journey to Bandung she chattered happily about the scenery. She was still shy about speaking in Malay, even though I had attempted several times to get her to try, so she kept up her commentary in English, often oohing and aahing at what she saw.

A girl from a faraway country who had followed her fiancé in his struggle. Alone and without family, brought up in an orphanage. And I was in love with her. Perhaps she still loved her fiancé and his spirit. Perhaps she was waiting for my proposal just so she could reject it. And I, a man, a connoisseur of beauty, could
not but be crazy about this beautiful girl who was in a class all her own.

Sometimes I tried to work out what I meant to her, but I could never be sure. I was someone whose ideal was to be a free human being. From the very beginning, she had corrected me on that. On the other hand, I saw her as a simple girl with a head filled with idealism. And how did she see herself? No doubt she thought herself pretty. Perhaps she thought of me simply as a slave to her beauty!

She turned away from the window.

“You keep on staring at me,” she said, embarrassed. “What are you thinking?”

“I was just imagining that you were already my wife.”

“But you haven’t even proposed yet,” she said. “At your mother’s…”

“You won’t laugh at my proposal? On the train like this, Mei?”

She bowed her head, and played with her fingers on her lap. Even with my eyes closed I knew she was hiding her feelings. I had already observed that talk of this kind always took her back to old memories, to my dead friend.

“You like living in the Indies now, don’t you?”

“To me everywhere is the same. Where my friends are, there is my country. Without friends, all this would be unbearable. And it would be the same in one’s own country, if you had no friends….”

“Mei, will you become my wife?”

“I’m so weak and my health is not good. Everyone says I am thin.”

“I will be a good doctor for you.”

“In six or seven years’ time?” She looked at me, then she moved across to sit next to me and whispered to me through the bang and clatter of the train: “You will regret marrying me, Minke. It will bring you many difficulties. In any case, if my health comes back to me, I will and must help you. But do you think I can regain my health once more?”

“You are already better than you were six months ago.”

“I would like very much to accept your proposal, Minke. I would be very happy. But is it possible?”

“You yourself know that you and I don’t like to delay things.”

“But you must take a broader view, think about the consequences.
You should think about this deeply. What do I mean to you? Your people need you much more than I do. Look at the forests out there.”

“At this moment there is not one tree upon the earth that has any business with us.”

I held her thin hand and it trembled. She had accepted my proposal in her heart. But perhaps not yet in her mind.

Seeing me become silent, she started to talk to me like a mother to her child, full of love and worry.

“In six or seven years you will become a doctor. Those of your people who are ill will come to you. They are all poor and will not be able to pay you, but you are not seeking riches, are you? So you will share in the poverty of your people. Is it right that I burden you even more? I think not. But you will find out that your people are not only sick in body because of poverty, but also sick in spirit because of another kind of poverty, a poverty of modern knowledge and understanding. And you will have to heal their spirit too, so your people will become a mighty and strong people. What is it that I can do to help you in this? I think you know what are the possibilities.” She breathed in as deeply as she could, one of her short gasping breaths. Then she continued: “Now perhaps you will ask yourself: What else is there that binds us two together except the future?”

“So you agree that we should marry?”

“Your mother is very good, Minke,” she answered.

And so we were married in a mosque outside Bandung at nine o’clock in the morning.

Our wedding present was far too magnificent—the Boers of South Africa, an army undefeated for ten years, were defeated by the English army. The Dutch farmers, the Boers, who had founded two small republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, had surrendered, and England had increased its power and expanded its conquests.

The Dutch farmers had gone to South Africa to seek a better life. Then the English arrived. The Boers fled, crossing the river Vaal, and set up the two new republics. Then gold was found in the Transvaal area. The English returned across the river and war could not be avoided.

Gold! Hope for the future! Defeat for the small and weak. Victory for the big and powerful.

“The English have brought so much trouble to the world,” said Mei. “Empress Tz’u-hsi could not hold them back. In fact, she’s ended up working with them. But we can now count the days that Europe will reign over the colored peoples.”

That was the first time in my life that I had ever heard such an idea.

“There have been so many Europeans who have caused so much suffering in the world.” She told me about Sir John Hawkins, the Englishman who pioneered the slave trade between Africa and America, so that forty million Africans ended up dead or condemned to a life of slavery.

And I had never come across this story before. I had never heard it from anyone or read it anywhere, in school or outside.

O
nce back in Betawi, Mei started to regain her health, and to get her color back. As the wife of a Native, she no longer had to worry about the residency laws.

Ibu Baldrun grew fonder and fonder of her, even though there remained a huge gap in culture and beliefs, tradition and language. And Mei worked as hard as she could to fit in with her new situation.

Ibu Baldrun forbade her to enter the kitchen. Mei was kept busy with the lighter household chores. Ibu wanted my wife to be healthy, plump, and glowing. And Mei became like her own child.

Mei herself didn’t pay much attention to her health. She threw herself perhaps too intensely into her study of Malay, even to the extent of learning the Betawi pronunciations. Her Malay quickly improved. Then an old sickness returned—restlessness at being dependent, even upon her own husband. She started giving Mandarin and English lessons to the children of rich Chinese who lived near Kramat. But when I came home from the auction paper office, I always found her waiting on the veranda reading books that I was never able to read. So we would sit and talk about the
day’s events or about something she had just finished reading. It was during these evening discussions that I began to learn much about China.

I also learned the background to Mei’s departure from China for the Indies, although she herself didn’t link her departure to the situation she explained. She and her fiancé—at least that’s how I thought of him—had fled from China after the failure of the Yi He Tuan rebellion, Empress Tz’u-hsi, with the backing of the Western colonialists in China, carried out a vicious crackdown. Even though the rebellion failed, its organizations continued the struggle against the Ching Dynasty. Mei was a member of one of these organizations, I don’t know which one. She mentioned some of their names, but they were too hard for me to remember. So as not to get her suspicious, I never asked her to spell out their names. If I did try to write them down, they’d probably be something like this: Pai Lian Chiao or the White Lilies; Siao Tao Hui or the Small Knives Union; Ke Lao Hui or the Union of Older Brothers; and many others that I can’t remember. It seemed her connection had been with the White Lilies or Small Knives Union.

I was also able to form the impression that she thought the Tong societies were the strongest Chinese organizations in Java. This movement had been founded by Chinese who fled their country after the failure of the Taiping rebellion in the middle of the last century. The Tongs didn’t like the new wave of exiles; they especially disliked those from the White Lilies movement. This was because the White Lilies not only wanted the overthrow of the Ching dynasty but also wanted a total reformation of China and the founding of a republic.

From many of her other accounts of different things about China, I concluded somewhat hesitantly that China was experiencing a period of instability and turmoil. It was different from Japan, which was growing stronger and more assertive. And when I turned to my own country, I also found stability—the stability of Dutch power.

Her stories always contained so much, were about such important and substantial things. I was always embarrassed when she asked me what I had been reading or what new things I had learned at school. But I couldn’t let her stories pass without countering with one of my own. I once decided to tell her one of my best stories from the medical school—about Diwan, a permanent
patient at our hospital. He lived in a cage. He was considered a threat to the community. He was suffering from satyriasis, gonorrhea, and syphilis. He had carried out one hundred and nineteen rapes, fifty-one against humans and the rest on animals.

She seemed to sicken after hearing this. I waited for her to ask what satyriasis was. She didn’t ask.

“What was his occupation?”

“He peddled stuff he had scavenged.”

“What schooling did he have?”

“He’s illiterate.”

“If he had an education he would be even more dangerous. Do you remember how our friend in Jepara talked about how life could be its own cage? That would make a more interesting story than satyriasis and venereal diseases.”

“But it’s a medical student’s story. Diwan’s got hemorrhoids now.”

“So?”

“It’s important, Mei. Because he can cause us to pass or fail our exams, to go up a class or down.”

“Ah, you.”

“So you need to listen to this story. Something different from what we heard about in Jepara. Diwan is always used in the symptomology exams. Any student who doesn’t try to get Diwan on his side by sending food and so on is bound to fail. He will pretend to have this or that symptom, and you will make the wrong diagnosis.”

“And you know all his diseases?”

“He’s got another cartload of diseases.”

“I like stories about people who are sane and think clearly. Even if they’ve got sick bodies like me.”

“But there are many who are ill in this world for whom medical knowledge might turn out to be important, Mei. You mustn’t forget that.”

“Yes, the sick must be attended to. But that which destroys life and society does not need to be cured so that it can resume its destruction. It’s more important to cure or replace a sick environment than a sick individual.”

“Then what would happen to all the patients? Who would look after them?”

She laughed.

“Why are you laughing, Mei?”

“That’s for other doctors to worry about. My husband will be doing more than just curing sick bodies. He is also going to cure a way of life that is rotten. You’ll always remember what our friend in Jepara said, won’t you?”

And suddenly I realized the purpose of all her stories about the Taiping, Yi He Tuan, the White Lilies Association, the Small Knives Union, and the Union of Older Brothers. She was leading me to think about what I wanted to do with my life….

Every evening at nine I would set off for the dormitory. Mei always walked with me to the gate. She would stand there until Ibu Baldrun called: “Don’t stay outside too long,” and Mei would go inside.

And when I looked back and she was gone, I would hasten my step.

1904 was a very important year in our lives.

How could I not say it was important? Like thunder out of a clear sky came a letter addressed to me at the school. Everyone there, staff and students, was excited. I had received an invitation from the Secretariat of the Governor-General to attend the reception to celebrate the appointment of Governor-General van Heutsz, who had just replaced Governor-General Rosenboom.

And just because of a letter, everyone now looked upon me with respect, admiration, and amazement. The director and all the other staff reminded me to arrive on time and behave properly so that the school’s name and reputation would rise in the eyes of society.