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Oeroeg was my friend When I think back on my childhood and adolescence, an image of Oeroeg invariably rises before my eyes, as though my memory were one of those magic pictures we used to buy, three for ten cents: yellowish, shiny little cards coated with dried glue, which you had to scratch with a pencil to reveal the image underneath That is how Oeroeg comes back to me when I delve into the past The setting may vary, depending on how long ago the period I am recalling is, but Oeroeg never fails to appear, be it in the overgrown garden at Kebon Djati or on the reddish-brown muddy paths along the sawahs in the Preanger highlands, in the hot carriages of the little train we took to primary school each day in Soekaboemi, or later, at the boarding-house when we were both at school in Batavia Oeroeg and me, playing and tracking in the wilderness; Oeroeg and me, hunched over our homework, our stamp collections and forbidden books; Oeroeg and me, ever together, during each and every stage of our development from child to young man I think it is fair to say that Oeroeg is imprinted in my being like a brand, a seal – now more than ever, since every form of communication has been banished to the past I do not know why I feel the need to take stock of my relationship with Oeroeg and of all the things he meant to me, and still means It may be something to do with what I felt was his inescapable, unfathomable otherness, that secret of spirit and blood which posed no problems in childhood and youth, but which now seems all the more confounding   *   Oeroeg was the eldest son of my father’s mandoer, and like me was born at Kebon Djati, the estate managed by my father We were only a few weeks apart in age My mother was very fond of Oeroeg’s mother As a young woman fresh from Holland and deprived of contact with other members of