Footsteps (15 page)

Mei and I looked at each other. We had not yet talked about marriage. I had not even proposed. We had never discussed it.

I told Mei she should answer: “What does Mother think is best?”

But Mei answered: “Am I worthy to be your daughter, Mother?”

“Worthy of becoming the wife of a good husband,” answered Mother. “So when will you marry?”

“I don’t know, Mother,” Mei answered.

“Perhaps in a little while, Mother,” I translated for her.

Mei glanced at me and said: “I don’t trust your translation. You grinned while you spoke.”

“I said we would marry soon.” I spoke in English. “This is also a proposal. I know you won’t refuse.”

“Why are you proposing only now? Too scared except in front of your mother?”

“You’re grinning too,” I said. “I don’t believe you haven’t been waiting for me to propose.”

“What are you two arguing about?” asked Mother.

“She wants to have nine children, Mother,” I “translated” Mei’s answer and then told her in English what I had said.

She blushed. She bowed her head and whispered: “You’re too bold in front of your mother.”

“Ah, I forgot”—my mother called one of my sisters to come—“a girl so beautiful shouldn’t be without earrings.” She
spoke to my sister: “Let me take your earrings to be a souvenir for your new sister. I’ll give you some new ones later.” Then Mother tried to put them on Mei. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure what was the matter.

“Allah on high!!” she cried. “Your ears haven’t been pierced?”

I had never paid any attention. But she was right.

“How will you wear these earrings?”

“There’s no need, Mother,” I said.

“No need? A girl undecorated by earrings? Where do such teachings come from? Except if you can’t afford it?” She was angry at me. Then she took hold of Mei’s hand and clasped it in hers: “Why are you so thin? Both of you?”

“There’s a time for people to be thin, Mother,” I answered.

“Yes, there is such a time. There are also reasons for it,” Mother replied. “I have never heard of any teaching that says you must starve yourself!”

“What did she say?” asked Mei.

“She said that you would be prettier still if you put on a little weight.”

“When things settle down a bit and things are calmer, I will put on more weight, Mother,” said Mei.

“To be thin like this, Mother,” I “translated” for her, “means you can move more quickly and get around better. Rather than having to carry around all that unnecessary meat.”

“Ah, you’ll say anything. You must be thankful and patient so that fate smiles upon you. Yes, let’s hope all will turn out well for you, Child. Let’s pray that everything you both desire is granted to you.”

And so we accomplished the difficulties of facing my mother without hurting her feelings.

We then traveled on to Jepara.

Jepara, a town so much mentioned in our history, was a silent place, as if it had never played any role in the past at all. The town center was like a deserted tiger’s den. There was nothing of any interest at all. Yet we knew that inside the silent houses people were working with wood, turtle shell, and ivory, making objects of great beauty and expense. But all that was left of the past were some old ruins that people called the Portuguese Fort.

“Yes,” sighed the girl we had come to visit, “the golden age of Jepara is over. Now it is just a silent and forgotten place.”

She received us accompanied by one of her younger sisters, who mainly sat and listened.

We spoke in Dutch and once more I became an interpreter.

“Your Dutch is very good,” she praised me. She didn’t wait for my response but continued: “I value greatly and give thanks to all Native men who know how to respect women. No doubt so do you, sir. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to reply to your letter yet.”

She spoke and acted confidently and quickly. Then she turned to Mei: “You must be happy, miss, to be young and free.”

“This freedom, my friend, is the result of my own efforts, and of a struggle of the spirit that was also quite difficult.”

The girl from Jepara said that she understood that such freedom was open for all to obtain. But she said that such freedom should not be bought with the love of one’s parents. What was the meaning of freedom if it caused suffering for those who loved you and had looked after you? Wasn’t that just the transfer of one person’s suffering onto others?

I got the impression that she was talking about her own situation. She was struggling to make her thoughts submit to what was proper. And she was alone, without the company of any modern individual, alone by herself, trapped, and only she could resolve her situation. All anyone else could do would be to offer suggestions.

After she found out that Mei was an orphan, that she had never known her parents, she bit her lips and turned away, and her lips went white as she bit them. Everyone knew that she loved her father, and that her father loved her more than any other of her sisters or brothers. She was a pearl to her father, and it was she who had brought fame and honor to her parents, her family, and her name. And it was she who had brought life to the wood-carvers of Jepara.

But she was also a person of the modern age, a Native, one among only a handful who had to think for themselves, who had to free themselves from all the old ways, whose ideas might not be understood by those around them, whose ideas might indeed even provoke hostility. She was a freethinker whose body was hostage to her environment, and whose freedom was caged in by her love for her father. And she herself did not have the strength to free herself from her captivity. She represented the tragedy of
the change of times. She suffered no less than any other woman who lived under the yoke of a man’s rule.

“If you obtained such freedom,” Mei began again, “what would you do?”

The girl said that the suffering beside her and around her resulted from ignorance, while above her there was knowledge, science, and excessive power, which were all used to maintain the suffering below.

“You sound like a follower of the Buddha.”

She laughed and said that she was not proposing the acceptance of suffering; she was just explaining how it was the result of certain situations. There should be enjoyment too. But in Java suffering was endemic. It was part of the marrow of life. Many people did not feel the suffering because they were not aware of it. And so it was that the Dutch often said: “Happy are the ignorant, because they do not suffer so much. And happy are the children who do not yet need the knowledge to be able to understand.”

“It’s not so with all children,” said Mei, and she began to tell the story of her own childhood. It was a hard time, she said. She did not know who her parents were, she had so many responsibilities, as well as her studies, and the discipline and all the rules as well. “I think the best time in a person’s life is when you are able to use the freedom you have won for yourself.”

This much-honored girl inspected Mei and seemed suspicious of her physical weakness. She herself was plump, perhaps an inch and a half shorter than Mei. Her face was roundish, while Mei’s was oval. She replied that perhaps what Mei had said was true. With such freedom people could also freely show their pain at their failures. Without such freedom, even your pain had to be kept from those you loved, for the sake of that love.

Her voice pierced our hearts. I could understand her sufferings. She was a person of the modern age, someone who had studied in order to be able to understand, and who had come to understand and then to realize her own sufferings, and that of others like her and of her people. But she was still imprisoned by custom, by her parents’ love, and by her situation as an unmarried elder daughter.

“But weren’t you offered the chance to study in Holland?” I asked.

Yes, it was no secret, she said. But what could be achieved
in Holland? Wouldn’t she end up even further away from reality and more isolated from her world?

Turning back to Mei she said that she and Mei had different starting points. She started with a happy childhood, while Mei did not. She wanted every young girl to have the same happy childhood. She wanted to teach them, to educate them—her voice shook, reflecting her inner troubles and restlessness. She wanted to give such girls a foundation in life where they were taught that men must respect them, based on their real achievements and qualities.

She had begun to prepare her plans. But nothing could be achieved without freedom. And then she said that in Priangan there was a young woman who had actually started the kind of school she herself had always dreamed about. Her name was Dewi Sartika. She would try to write to her. And what about that kind of endeavor in China? Had such schools been started there?

“I don’t think so,” answered Mei. “But there are already many women teachers in China.”

“Why aren’t there any schools like that?”

“My educated countrymen have set themselves a task they think is more important—the liberation of Chinese society as a whole.”

The girl from Jepara was completely taken aback. And I could understand why. We knew very little in the Indies about China or the Chinese. All we were taught was some geography, the names of provinces and towns and rivers and so on. The only other thing we knew was that China was an independent country but with several areas where foreign powers had special privileges. I only began to understand more about China after I’d been with Mei for quite a while. The education of children of the kind that our friend wanted was seen as less important than the overall task. At least that was the case as far as Mei knew.

“No. Children’s happiness, and also the happiness of adults, in the midst of a sea of unhappiness is a strange thing. Those who are happy just pretend to be, or are indeed happy but because nobody else is. Isn’t this immoral?”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Mei.

Our friend seemed lost in thought, her head bowed and still. She truly was somebody who liked to think and liked to discuss things with other people. She had a democratic spirit; she wasn’t offended by others because they had opinions of their own. But
everything she said seemed to be motivated by an anxiety, a general insecurity.

She said further that everything had a beginning. And the beginning was nothing other than the proper education and training of the children. She looked at each of us in turn, hoping for either support or rejection, or both at once.

“That’s not the only way, my friend,” said Mei. “It’s only one way among many. The old and the parents must be educated too. And you must gather capital as well. Without money, the most you can teach is six or seven people. Even after a thousand years, you still won’t have finished.” Her face lit up and lost all its paleness. “We have our own way.”

“What is that way?”

I translated the girl’s question to Mei, and she answered straightaway: “Organize, my friend, form associations, with many people, tens, hundreds, yes, even tens of thousands, all becoming one powerful giant, with a strength greater than the sum of all the members put together…”

I translated and translated.

“…with giant hands, giant legs, and with tremendous vision and abilities and resilience…”

The two of them talked and talked. I translated and translated.

But how else could you begin, this girl asked, except through education and schooling? Being a student and teacher together. Being a teacher and student together. Loving and being loved. Being loved and loving. Everything is a result of struggle. And not always a short struggle either. And old-fashioned love that is not oriented to the future with its complexities and richness was also wrong and had to be corrected. To correct this, you also need struggle, vigor, and the appropriate actions. There is love everywhere, even among animals. Without love, can people suffer life?

Once again I got the impression that she was wrestling with her own feelings and thoughts—the tragedy of a modern person who cannot find a way out of the limitations of her own thinking. A thousand gods would not be able to free her from them. Only people themselves can solve this kind of problem, said one article I’d read. The gods are not as compassionate now as they were in our ancestors’ days. The modern age has forced people to take responsibility for themselves. To grab it out of the hands of the gods. There was no longer a
deus ex machina
as in the legends of
earlier times, said the article. People today were under the whip of their own consciousness, and they could not get away from this anymore.

“In the end,” Mei was saying, “even love is a thing, even though sacred and mysterious, and abstract, and every ‘thing’ is subordinated to humankind. It’s up to us how we use it.”

“None of my European friends have ever spoken like this,” said the girl from Jepara. “Your thinking is very severe.”

“Not severe, my friend,” said Mei, “but obedient to necessity. Everything must bow to our will, whether concrete or abstract.”

“As we are conquering the laws of nature.”

“That is only a part of it.”

The discussion became more and more serious, and I continued to translate. Whatever else I thought, I had to respect this primary-school-educated girl who was shackled by her own exalted thoughts without any proper response from those around her, shackled by the love for her parents, and with all her ideas coming from her love for her fellow beings. She thought she could not escape and made no effort to escape. Truly a tragedy. What a torturing burden for this young soul were her own thoughts!

I think that if a man proposed to her, she would be able to decide quickly on whether to say yes or no. She refused to let herself leave an environment of love for one without love. She refused to accept her fate as a Javanese woman, where a wife is but the property of her husband. She rebelled against such a way of life. She wanted something new. She knew what she had to do in order to reach that new something, but she lacked the courage to do what was necessary.

It was better that I didn’t intervene in the discussion. It wasn’t that the issues weren’t interesting. On the contrary, they were all part of the problem of coming to grips with the modern era.