Footsteps Read Free

conquer; I’ve never longed to be a victor over others. He who wanted to unfurl those banners of Caesar’s—he was never once victorious. And now he and his banners have crashed to disaster. Robert Suurhof, my nemesis, is in jail—and all because of his greed for overnight glory.
    No one is here to meet me. So what! People say only the modern man gets ahead in these times. In his hands lies the fate of humankind. You reject modernity? You will be the plaything of all those forces of the world operating outside and around you.I am a modern person. I have freed my body and my thoughts of all ornamentations.
    And modernity brings the loneliness of orphaned humanity, cursed to free itself from unnecessary ties of custom, blood—even from the land, and if need be, from others of its kind.
    I don’t need anyone to meet me. I need no help! Those who always need help are people who have allowed themselves to become dependent, almost like slaves. I am free! Totally free. From now on I will be bound only by those things in which I have a real stake.
    With my heart, body, and mind in this state of freedom I sat in the corner of the tram. There were no comfortable trams like this in Surabaya, traveling on steel rails, with a brass bell to chase away the sleepiness. Third class was crammed. First class, where I sat, was rather empty. I didn’t have much with me: an old suitcase, dented in many places; a bag; and a woman’s portrait in a wine-red velvet cover wrapped again in calico.
    The tram moved along smoothly. The aftereffects of the ship left my body plunging up and down as if I were riding a thousand waves. There’s talk that trams will soon be pulled along by electricity! How could electricity possibly pull a tram along?
    As it left the port the tram seemed to become lost in swampland, with only clumps of forest and jungle here and there. The air was pregnant with the mustiness of rotting leaves. Monkeys hung from the vines and branches, untroubled by the clanging bell. A few of them tumbled happily along. One even pointed at us with a branch. They were, perhaps, all conspiring to examine me especially, and now, in their own language, were crying out: That’s him, Minke, the “modern man”! Yes, that’s him, sitting there in the corner by himself. That one, with the beginnings of a mustache, but his chin still bare. Yes, that’s him all right, the Native who prefers European clothes, who carries on like a
sinyo.
He even travels in “white class”—first class.
    Ah, that must be the Golden Star Villa, famous because of all the stories about the slaves who toiled there in the time of the
Dutch East Indies Company.
Perhaps one day I’ll have time to write their story.
    The villa was the only thing decorating the swamps. Everything else was boring, nothing worth describing. Yet it was these swamps that had swallowed up one third of the Company’s soldierswhen they first arrived to occupy the area. The swamp has sided with the Natives for a long time now. On the other hand, it was this same swamp that killed sixty thousand Natives as they built Betawi. Most had been prisoners of war. And the glorious Captain Bontekoe, who began his rise to fame transporting sand and rock from Tangerang to Betawi, had also been almost killed by swamp fever.
    “What is this place called?” I asked the Eurasian conductor in Malay.
    His eyes blinked open, startled by this extra burden: “Ancol.”
    “Can the sailboats out there go right into Betawi?” I asked in Dutch.
    “Of course, sir, if they go up the Ciliwung.” He moved along, selling his tickets.
    Then the tram entered the city. The streets were just as narrow as in Surabaya, made from the same whitish-yellow stone. Old buildings, standing from the days of the Company, lined the streets. The streets were lit by gas. Another fairy tale, that Betawi had begun to asphalt its streets. Just more talk. And how many such fairy tales are told in this world?
    The city of Betawi! So