Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer Page B

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