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The small town of Blora in Central Java is the birthplace of Indonesia’s most accomplished novelist and short story writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006), and the setting of his short story compilation “Tales From Blora.” In one of those stories, “What is Lost,” Pramoedya, who was imprisoned by both Sukarno and Suharto without trial, wrote, “The Lusi river circles half of Blora on the southern side. In the dry season, its bed, covered in pebbles and sand and mud, protrudes out as if it wanted to take a look at the sky. Its water is only a few decimeters [1 decimeter is 10 centimeters] deep.” Pramoedya wrote that description in 1950. In the second week of June 2009, at a glance the Lusi River looked exactly like he described. The banks of the river were green with bamboo and other plants and the water looked relatively clear. However, for those who remember the time when Pramoedya was writing, the river has changed a lot.

“Nowadays it gets completely dry,” said Soesilo Toer, 72, one of Pramoedya’s younger siblings. “It is a different river now. It is much dirtier now, and people collect sand and pebbles from its bed so it is full of pot-holes. When we were children our neighbors called us the ghosts of the Lusi River because we spent so much time there catching shrimp and fish and collecting freshwater shellfish to eat and to sell. It was the Second World War, or as it was experienced here, the Japanese occupation time then, and there were severe food shortages.”

Soesilo lives in the old house that his father built in 1925, the year Pramoedya was born. Their father was a teacher and an education pioneer in Blora. Exploring Blora with Pramoedya’s stories, one can find most places that feature, especially those in “Tales From Blora.” The square in the centerof the city, the house of the bupati (district head) that opens on to the square, the railway station and Pramoedya’s family home are all described in his work. The square is now half covered with concrete and the grass area has been planted with decorative palms and other trees. The house in which Pramoedya was born stood on what is now Jalan Iskandar, but used to be Jalan Musi, but the building was pulled down long ago and now a clothes shop stands in its place. The school that Pramoedya’s father built for the Instituut Boedi Oetomo is now the SMP V State junior high school. In front of the school is a small monument, built in 1993, dedicated to Mastoer Imam Badjoeri, supposedly naming Pramoedya’s father. The monument was erected without consultation with the Toer family and during his lifetime, Pramoedya protested that the name was wrong. In a letter published posthumously, Pramoedya wrote that his father had never used the name Imam Badjoeri and that, after joining the Nationalist movement in the early 20th century, he dropped the Mas from Mastoer because he felt uncomfortable with the feudal title. “The use of the name [on the monument] obviously abuses the deceased’s human rights and is a form of oppression, it defiles his honor and also the honor of his children,” Pramoedya wrote.

After Pramoedya’s birth, his parents built the house on Jalan Sumbawa that he grew up in. In 1950 the house was renovated and now Soesilo and his wife and son share it with Walujadi Toer, 82, another of Pramoedya’s younger brothers. The house is made of brick and teak, and one of the rooms houses a library of around 3,000 books. “It used to be the kitchen,” Soesilo said. “I try and encourage the children around here to read. For the library’s fifth birthday I have told the children that come here that there will be a prize for whoever reads the most.” The walls of the library are covered with pictures of Pramoedya, and to fund its upkeep, Soesilo sells Pramoedya T-Shirts, but there are none of the writer’s books on display.

“I keep Pramoedya’s books inside because they get stolen if they are kept here,” Soesilo said. “Sometimes people borrow them and don’t return them. But what can one do? I can’t stop people reading, can I?

“The window in this library is the only remaining part of the original house, while the doors you see now are recycled from the walls of the old kitchen. This is where Pramoedya used to peep in on the debates that our father used to have with his guests. He would also peep while our father and mother argued.”

This house is still a lot like Pramoedya described. It has a large garden filled with vegetables and fruit tended to by Soesilo, and it is easy to imagine the young Pramoedya tugging on his mother’s batik sarong while she worked around the house.

Many of the writer’s stories reflect his deep love for his mother and his admiration for strong women in general. His father was a strict teacher whom Pramoedya, who had to repeat three years during primary school, found hard to please. When Pramoedya graduated, his father thought he was not ready to advance to secondary school so told him to repeat his final year, although his teachers would not allow that.

“Pramoedya cried in that cemetery,” Soesilo said, pointing to an old graveyard not far from the house. The unease the young Praemodya felt with his father was compensated for by a close relationship with his mother. “He used to follow our mother everywhere,” Soesilo said. Their mother died of tuberculosis in 1942. In an article published by Time Asia in 2002, Pramoedya wrote that the two women who shaped his character were his mother and his maternal grandmother. The tragic story of his grandmother’s life was the material he used in his novel “The Girl from the Coast.”

“Our grandmother was very beautiful and had blue eyes,” Soesilo said, “and there are several stories about her origins. I believe the story that says our grandmother was the illegitimate daughter of a Dutch official and his Javanese servant. She was brought up by the same Dutchman who lived in the center of Rembang, by the square, not far from the house of the Islamic religious leader who also lived in the center of town. She was then used by that man as a surrogate wife, but after she gave birth to our mother, she was ordered to leave the house and her baby. She then traveled all over, even as far as Surabaya. To survive she worked as an unskilled laborer and at one time was a prostitute. She then married a Dutchman’s servant and he took her to Blora, where eventually she left him and survived by buying and selling used goods in the market.

“One day, when she went to a teacher’s house to ask if the family had any used goods to sell, she got to talking to the teacher’s wife, and discovered that the teacher’s wife was the daughter who had been wrenched from her bosom as a baby. She used to visit us a lot but always refused to live with us, and she died peacefully by the side of the road near her house after walking home from our house, years after our parents had died.”

Most of Pramoedya’s stories are sad, and sadness can be felt in the shadows of the old town, which is slowly being eroded by development and time. The old railway station, which often featured in his stories, no longer sees rail passengers or passing trains. The roads that the young Pramoedya had such fun cycling on and described as smooth and shaded have lost their trees and have suffered from neglect. Statistics show that Blora is the poorest district in the Central Java province, and with scraggly saplings in place of the magnificent teak trees that used to characterize the area, the poverty is readily observable. But, like the characters in Pramoedya’s stories, this poverty is borne with dignity, and there is no sense of desperation.

It is unknown whether the district’s stoic manner influenced Pramoedya’s writing but he was clear that the two people who most shaped his character were his mother and grandmother. While he was on the prison island of Buru, his memories of his grandmother gave him the strength to survive. He has had his own strong influence on those who have followed after him. Kunarto Marzuki, a young writer who lives in Blora and writes for national and provincial broadsheet publications, said, “For the average Blora person, the fact that Pramoedya grew up here is irrelevant, but for people like me, he is a source of inspiration. He is one of the reasons I have the confidence to write.”