Footsteps (29 page)

The proposal to reach out to a wider audience by publishing a paper was agreed to by the organization’s leadership. Our capital?
Every proposed member had to pay, in advance, dues for either a quarter, a half, or a whole year. Each immediately became owner of a share. A company was formed. A lawyer quickly had it registered with the Ministry for Justice. The weekly magazine
Medan—Arena
—began publishing, owned and operated by Natives. Not by the Dutch, not by the Chinese or any other newcomers. By Natives! What had to happen has happened! United you can achieve anything. Anything!

Alone in my room I found tears coming to my eyes. I had discovered a new world: the accumulation of capital using money donated by my own people, people who found it hard to make ends meet. These donations took food from their plate but they were still willing to give. We had accumulated some capital. A new world, a new birth.

And in my diary I engraved the following words: Who can predict how a baby will grow up? To become a prophet or a criminal, or just another inhabitant of this world, blank, contributing nothing?

And it was the old way that we had used. The priyayi way. It was as the girl in Jepara had said: Once a bupati had set an example, all his underlings would copy.

Four bupatis had subscribed to
Medan
—worth more than all our money capital. Within only three months we had gained one thousand five hundred subscribers from all over Java, and from the main towns in Sumatra and the Celebes. A print run of two thousand was not enough.

At the very least, Nyo, even though it is just a beginning, you have started your work as a propagandist. There is no need to regret not having become a doctor. You are the first Native to start
, wrote Nyai Ontosoroh from Wonocolo after she had received the first few copies. She paid for a two-year subscription. But she wasn’t a very successful subscription agent. She also wrote:

The majority of our subscribers were those who wanted to know the laws and regulations better so that they would not make mistakes and would be promoted more quickly. Now there was a new challenge from Mama. More letters arrived asking for explanations about new or different laws. Mama challenged me again:
It can’t be avoided? There’s nothing else to do but service these requests? Ah, there are many things more important than these laws and regulations.

Our subscribers’ need for legal explanations kept growing and growing. The Patih of Meester Cornelis couldn’t handle all the work anymore. We had to hire a European lawyer for two hours a week. Sandiman worked himself half to death noting down lawyer Mahler’s answers to all the questions that came in. Luckily he was a friendly and helpful person.

And Mahler’s fee came to one third of the business’s profit.

In the meantime
Medan’s
circulation spread farther and farther throughout Sumatra and to the big harbor towns of Borneo, the Celebes, and the Moluccas. The subscribers from outside Java brought their own demands. They wanted us to use the kind of Malay they had learned at school. They wanted a language that knew where heaven and earth were, not a bazaar language that floated about without roots, disoriented.

With much effort the printers were able to meet our demand for a larger print run. The circulation reached over two thousand. The new subscriptions took it over three thousand and the printer was unable to handle the order. And the new subscribers were not coming from among the priyayi. That market seemed to have become saturated. They came from Native traders and businessmen who had picked up Malay in their business dealings.

Thamrin and Patih refused to switch to school Malay, especially seeing that the new subscribers were traders and not priyayi. And then the village heads began to subscribe and the Eurasian employees on the private plantations. Finally the Europeans were forced to start subscribing.

Then people began referring civil cases to us. Mahler had to be paid even more because he was now working four hours a week instead of two.

Our own newspaper! Like in a fairy tale. Publishing every day! We were being run off our legs just trying to get a magazine out.

Most of the requests for help concerned abuses carried out by the railway, the plantations, and government officials, as well as the abducting of wives and girls by officials who abused their authority. Mahler began working six hours a week. And
Medan
became an angel of mercy for the Natives of the Indies.

We took on new people, including an old friend, Wardi. Even so, work piled up higher and higher.

Thamrin kept coming and asking about our program for establishing schools and hostels. We convened a meeting of the council. The decision—the establishment of a special body to carry out these tasks and another to administer financial assistance to qualified students who could not afford to pay for more schooling. These three bodies were to be administered by a Funds for Advancement Foundation, which was registered a week later in the office of the solicitor Mr. Willhelmsen. Thamrin donated from his own pocket an amount equivalent to the cost of two pilgrimages to Mecca as well as five acres of agricultural land.

A month later those in charge of the foundation were arrested by the police for losing on the gambling tables of Gambir Market the money that had been entrusted to them.

I kept on with my work. And as time went on I learned from all the letters just how much people needed help to cope with the injustices done to them. There were even such letters from government officials themselves, who held some power in their hands. It was just like it was half a century ago in the time of Multatuli. I began to understand more fully just how persecuted the Native people were, by the government and its officials, by other criminals, and by dishonest traders.

Mei, how wonderful it would be if you were alive today!

I think 1907 would have flown by, except for something that happened that I will always remember.

That afternoon I was sprawled out, exhausted, lazily enjoying a cane rocking chair. There was a small table beside me. Sandiman was just putting on a recording of Verdi’s opera
Rigoletto.
I’d
started the practice of setting aside three hours a week to listen to European music, copying what had been the practice of Mama and her children.

Perhaps because this had been our practice in Surabaya, Verdi always took me back to old memories, to Mama and her business, to Annelies and to all the happiness that had ended with tragedy.

It was true that I didn’t yet appreciate European music as fully as I did gamelan. European music stimulated in me many different thoughts. Gamelan music instead enveloped me in beauty, in a harmony of feeling that was without form, in an atmosphere that rocked my emotions to an eternal sleep.

Just as the phonograph was playing “The Last Rose of Summer” and I had, by coincidence, opened my eyes, I saw a two-horse carriage pull up in front of the house. A young Eurasian girl alighted and then helped out a young boy. Then a Native woman descended who, in her turn, helped down a European. And the European man used a crutch.

Marais! Jean Marais! He had come from Surabaya to visit! And that Native woman—wasn’t that Mama? I jumped up out of the rocking chair. Mama! Yes, it was. I ran out to welcome them.

“Mama! Ah, Jean! Who would ever have guessed you were coming? No letter, no news of any kind!”

A touch on my back made me turn around.

“Uncle,” the Eurasian girl greeted me. “Have you forgotten me already?”

“Ai, is this Maysoroh? Oh, it is you, May!” I shouted out. “You’ve grown into such a young lady!” And she kissed me on the cheek as was the custom among Europeans.

“This is Rono. You’ve probably forgotten. Rono Mellema.”

I stopped for a moment, trying to remember who Rono Mellema was.

“Rono!” I cried. “I remember now.” I lifted him way up above my head and took note of his eyes. His eyes were somewhat bluish, like Robert’s.

“And what about you, Child? It looks as though things are better for you now,” said Mama.

“No complaints, Mama. No complaints.”

She spoke so sweetly and gently. I don’t know why I was so moved by this great woman, whom I had been fortunate to meet during my life, a goddess always extending her hand and helping with her wisdom in times of trouble.

Limping along, Jean Marais spoke his words of friendship in French: “You’ve become a great man now.”

“Ayoh, come on in,” I invited them, while putting down Rono.

Sandiman ran about back and forth bringing in their things. And I didn’t understand why the two families were both visiting Batavia together. Mama perhaps wanted to get back her loans to me? But Jean Marais? Perhaps he was going home to France?

“You’ll stay here, of course?” I asked.

“Where else if not here with you?” replied Mama in Dutch as usual.

We all went inside. As we entered the living room, everyone stopped, except Rono Mellema who flopped himself down on a chair. They were all nailed to the floor before
Flower of the Century’s End.
I too stood there silently, joining with them in their feelings.

“It’s a pity she could not be here with you, Child,” said Mama, her voice filled with sadness. Then she looked away from the picture.

“Enough, Ma.”

“You put up her picture even now? Doesn’t it torment your thoughts?”

Jean Marais came up to me and put his two hands on my shoulders. He spoke in a deep voice: “We are so happy now, and you…why don’t you put the painting away?”

“I’m happy too, Jean, truly. Come on, these are the rooms. You choose for yourself.”

Sandiman put their things in their rooms. Mama examined the house and its furnishings, the paintings and other wall decorations, and then went into the kitchen to talk with the housemaid. I didn’t know what they were talking about.

Back from the kitchen, she asked straightaway: “So you’re still single? How come? You’re in good condition. You need a wife and children, at least two or three. Or perhaps you’re keeping a mistress somewhere?”

“No, Ma.”

“Enough. Forget that picture. Get married. It’s not right for people to live alone. They should live together with someone.” Then she went into my room to continue her inspection.

My heart started pounding. She would see the picture of Ang San Mei! And, yes: “Come here, Child!” she called out from inside my room.

I hurried in. Mama was standing in front of the picture.

“Who is this Chinese woman?”

“My wife, Ma.”

“I have never seen her. You never told me about her.”

“She died, Ma.”

“Child!” she cried out, “you always have such evil luck. You must marry again quickly. Such a pretty child, even though narrow-eyed and skinny.”

“She left me no children, Ma.”

“And why didn’t you ever tell me about her? Did she die or did she leave you? Don’t hide anything from me, Child.”

“What is there to hide, Ma? She died without children.”

I began to recognize again the voice, the look in her eyes, the loving expression of her face. Seven years had aged her slightly, but her energy and friendliness had not changed.

“Be frank with me, Child, don’t hide anything from me—she ran off and left you?”

“No, Ma, truly she didn’t. She died.”

“She wasn’t faithful to you?”

“She was more than faithful, Ma.”

“There is something you’re hiding from me.”

“What is there that I must hide from you, Ma?”

“There’s something. You hang the other picture in the sitting room. You hang this in your own room. There is some secret between you and her.”

I didn’t understand what she meant. And I was at an even greater loss as to how to answer. But Mama’s sharp eyes never missed anything. So I told her everything. She listened attentively to every word while keeping her eyes on Ang San Mei’s picture. Then: “So she was the fiancé of the young Chinese man? What an amazing girl! To leave her own country to die in another people’s. Of her own free will. So what makes you so downcast, Child? You did everything you could for her.”