Free Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer Page B

to be thrown like a beggar before the Native courts?
    Yes, all these things made me feel even more lonely, as if there was no way for me to make any real or intimate contact with the world around me.

    Every Saturday afternoon as we left the school grounds, you could see the parents of prospective brides making sure they would remember our faces. These were residents of the hamlets of Ketapang, Kwitang, and also Abang Puasa, whose residents killed Nyai Dasima. They were hunting after a medical student son-in-law! Even Kwitang had become a hunting ground for students. This was not only because of the number of parents there who were hunting after sons-in-law, nor because this hamlet’s young women were particularly attractive to students, and not because, in any case, we students were respected by everyone everywhere. There was a more fundamental reason—every student needed a family. There he could get out of his traditional clothes, change into European clothes, and become a sinyo once again. In European clothes, we could wander wherever we wanted, neutral in identity, especially when chasing after the nyai.
    Then the students would return to their adopted family, dress again in their traditional clothes, and go back to the school dormitory.
    All the inhabitants of Kwitang knew about this custom, and the hamlet’s families ruthlessly competed among themselves to win the chance to look after one of us. And always there was a young daughter of marriageable age. The tradition of keeping such daughters out of sight until she had a partner had been destroyed by the medical school.
    A student need only nod, need only say yes. The next day or the day after, he would have a wife. It could be his first, or just a new one.
    I was no different. I also had a family. It was headed by
Ibu
Baldrun, an old woman, a widow who lived off her husband’s pension. She had two adopted sons. My friends were amazed that I had picked a family like that.
    Whenever I wanted to disappear into the city, I would go to Ibu Baldrun’s first and change into European clothes. To wander off in Javanese clothes, especially when the sun was at its hottest, would turn your head into a mountain with a thousand streams of tears, with your hair feeling as if it was going to fall out at any moment. And how much worse it is when your dandruff is acting up. Even the scratching of the sharpest of fingernails can provide no relief. And then to walk barefoot over the stonestreets, with the droppings of all the city’s beasts of burden everywhere…uh!
    “
Denmas
, Ibu doesn’t understand why Denmas chose to live here. There’s no pretty young suitable girl here. Do you want Ibu to find you somebody?”
    And she went on to say that it was time I took a wife. And I said, well, if it’s a question of destiny whom I marry, then it doesn’t matter where I go, does it? She laughed and didn’t raise the issue again.
    I kept my European clothes there and also the bicycle I had eventually bought at the Van Hien bicycle shop in Noordwijk. There was a huge crowd of children who turned out to watch me learning to ride. And yes, after three days I had mastered this supernatural beast. My friends soon after also started to buy bicycles.
    Ibu Baldrun’s house turned out to be a good place to get some privacy. I used it as my postal address. And so it was to that house that my mother came to visit. This happened seven months into my studies. Taram, Ibu Baldrun’s eldest son, came to the school at the end of the afternoon classes and told me that I had a guest from far away who was waiting for me at his house. And so it was that I met again that most honored of women. She looked at me in amazement. I knelt down before her. Her look of amazement still did not go away. Her eyes caressingly inspected me, from my feet to the top of my destar, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Then: “I would never have thought, Child.”
    “What would you never have thought,