Pecked to death by ducks

by Cahill, Tim

  and become the monkey. Then I can climb trees and am very strong. I do this in front of all the people in the banjar, and the women sing the old songs to help me chase away the spirit. Then, later, the sickness is gone."

  In Jangu one night, on the hard-packed mud of the school yard, several hundred people gathered for a sanghyang ceremony. Men and women sat on long wooden benches while others stood five deep around a sturdy wooden corral constructed for the ceremony. In the center of the arena there was a young palm tree that had been recently cut down and propped up on the dirt with a clever arrangement of boards.

  Over twenty men stood inside the corral, waiting. A man wearing a leather loincloth and a long, disheveled black wig stepped into the corral. He was led to a small bamboo mat at the corner of the arena. He knelt, looked up, and nodded to a woman holding a plate of offerings that consisted of some biscuits, many flowers, and a bottle containing a small amount of clear liquor. The woman took the offering twenty yards away to a small stone structure about five feet high. This was the "seat" of the god of the banjar. It was shaped like an elongated pedestal with an open box on top. When the offerings had been made to the god, the man in the loincloth bent his head over a small, exquisitely crafted silver dish. One of the guards lit some twigs that had been soaked in aromatic oil. The man in the wig began rocking forward and back as he breathed scented smoke. The women of the banjar sang the ancient song, begging their god ro inhabit the rocking man with the spirit of the monkey.

  Suddenly, he fell over onto his back and writhed about on the hard-packed dirt. He leapt to his feet and ran around the corral with a strange simian gait. His eyes were completely closed, and his front teeth were exposed. He looked very like a monkey.

  The man turned for the tree and climbed it rapidly, without looking for handholds. It is fair to say that he dashed up the tree. At the top he pulled against a branch, leaning far out over the dirt, and the tree pulled loose from the wooden struts that held it. This seemed to infuriate the monkey, and he pulled and swayed

  in the topmost branches without regard to his own safety. The guards rushed to the tree and held it upright.

  Some of the men tried to lure the monkey down with freshly dug roots. The women continued to sing. Eventually, the monkey descended a lower branch and ate the muddy roots. He seemed to notice one of the guards and began grooming him, picking imaginary lice from his hair and eating them. Some of the women laughed, and the song was briefly interrupted.

  About ten minutes later, a kind of brittle tension seemed to animate the crowd. The monkey man's brow was furrowed, and his movements had slowed. There was an ancient anger in his face. He leapt at one of the guards. The crowd exploded in a single shriek that seemed composed of equal parts glee and fear.

  All twenty of the guards fell on the man, but he fought them off in convulsive bursts of what seemed to be superhuman strength. It seemed as if the monkey man was suffering a kind of fit. Several guards were thrown across the corral. Others were knocked off their feet. One man suffered a bloodied nose. A minute later the guards had the man restrained: There were several men on each arm, several on each leg. The man was lifted high on many hands, and Ketut sprinkled him with water that had been blessed by a priest.

  Slowly, the man came to his senses. I could see a distant bleari-ness in his eyes, a confusion there that you see in drunkards. He was lowered to the ground. Several of the guards spoke softly with him until he rose and walked away, stumbling slightly.

  There were several other sanghyangs that night. A man crawled about on all fours and ate garbage like a pig; another ran through a blazing fire and stomped it out with his bare feet. And always, at the end, there was the final violent, convulsive fight.

  Bali is, by and large, a peaceful island. In the mountain villages, miles away from the bustling tourist beaches, it is possible to leave a suitcase by the side of the road and return several days later to claim it. People do not fight, drink excessively, or steal. The culture is based on agriculture, and the agricultural system— one that has fed the island for uncounted centuries—requires co-

  operation of a very high order. Village water-control boards apportion irrigation rights to the water that flows off the slopes of the central volcanoes. The average size of a family farm is 2.5 acres, and water—hence cooperation—is essential. It is a system that works: No one goes hungry in Bali.

  It is also a system that pays social dividends. Two and a half million people live closely on Bali's 5,623 square kilometers. In another culture this crush of humanity might breed crime and disorder. Not so in Bali. Infractions of the traditional law are dealt with harshly.

  Every Balinese can tell of someone who was banished from his village for fighting or stealing. The banished person may stay, but he will receive no water for his crops, no one will sell him food or buy his services. No one will speak to him. Worse, he may not be cremated in his own village, where the ashes of his ancestors reside. This means there is no one to intercede for him in the afterlife and no chance for a favorable reincarnation. Banishment is a punishment that lasts for eternity.

  A Balinese man told me a sad, terrifying tale one day. A young man had been banished from his village. He had gone to another place and changed his life. He married and settled down. When he tried to return to his home village, the people stood on the path with their arms folded across their chests and would not let him pass.

  Adat y the traditional law, is very strong in Bali and supercedes Indonesian legality. A month before my visit, a man had been caught burglarizing a home. He was turned over to the police and released pending trial. Several days later the man was caught taking goods from another home. Drums sounded in the temple calling all the men from the banjar to a midnight meeting. It was decided that every man must strike at least one blow.

  The burglar's corpse was found the next day, and the police could find no one who knew what had happened.

  Adat is a stern and unforgiving law. It has formed the peaceful and honest nature of the Balinese. The corollary is that the Balinese often mask their daily disappointments and frustrations behind a smile. Sometimes, however, as in any society, people break

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  under the weight of their responsibility. Men simply go insane. They lash out in rage; they slash their loved ones to death with long knives; they kill anyone they encounter in blind rage. When a man runs amok, he must be hunted down and killed.

  Running amok is an Indonesian phrase, and the phenomenon is not uncommon in Bali.

  The violent trance states—the convulsive fights and blind rage exhibited by trance dancers—are a social safety valve for the Bali-nese. True, the trances only occur at certain times, accompanied by certain rituals, but the violence is entirely real. Men who might be near the breaking point can vent their rage in a socially approved ritual. It was, for instance, amazing to me how many times Ketut of Jangu was injured while attempting to subdue a trance dancer. He was, of course, the headman of the banjar, and there were those who resented him. One man hit him with a piece of wood and opened up a three-inch cut on his forehead. Ketut shrugged off the injury that would leave a lifelong scar. Men in a trance state are not responsible for their actions.

  So trance is a social safety valve and a way of playing out village strife. It is, I think, also a warning. In the end it is twenty of the strongest men in the village who must subdue the trance dancer. It is a reenactment of the amok scenario complete with a symbolic death at the end.

  In the village of Pakse Bali, near Klung Kung, there is a ceremony known as Prang Dewa, the war of the gods. It happens on the anniversary of the local temple, an event called the Odalan. The ritual lasts three full days, and on the final afternoon, women bearing offerings lay them before the gods of their temple. Rice is brought to the temple and ritually fed to the children of the village. Then figures representing the gods—small, beautifully carved figurines—are placed in boxes about two feet square and wrapped in sacr
ed cloth. The boxes are placed on top of two long runged poles and carried several miles down to the river, where the gods "bathe."

  For most of the year the temples of Bali are empty. The gods inhabit the temples and their representative figures only when in-

  vited down from the holy mountain, as during the Odalan. In Pakse Bali people believe the gods become quite jolly during their annual bath. They are carried back to the temple but would rather stay outside for a while. They want, a temple priest told me, to "main main," a Balinese term that translates to "play play."

  And the gods play rough. Men carrying the gods begin to stumble. The long runged poles with the boxes atop begin to rock and sway. Not all the carriers are entranced, however, and they attempt to run the gods through the temple gates. The men who have become entranced fight back. The poles swing about. Since there are half a dozen gods and twice as many long poles swinging about, many people are injured. A food stall near the temple is destroyed every year. There is much screaming.

  There are three temples in each Balinese village: the original temple, the village temple, and the temple of death. It is in the temple of death, called the Pura Dalem, that the most bizarre ceremonies are celebrated. The religion of Agama Hindu aims to achieve a balance in the spiritual world. The demons of its mythology have a power that must be honored. Offerings are made to them in the same spirit that bribes are given to corrupt officials: "Here, take this and leave me alone." Sometimes the demon gods are honored in a ceremony that takes place in the temple of death.

  In the Pura Dalem known as Kestel Gumi a very dark ritual is enacted on the Odalan day.

  A gamelan, the Balinese fifty-man percussion orchestra, plays all afternoon. Presently, the gamelan tune becomes less ethereal, more frenetic, obsessive in its percussion. Suddenly, eight men burst from the inner courtyard, carrying daggers and the serpentine Balinese swords called krisses. For the most part these men have their eyes closed, and they run into the inner courtyard of the temple. Local people, spectators, move back to the walls to make room for the dancers in their frenzy. The men turn on one another. One swings a kris at another and misses by an inch.

  Suddenly, all the men begin fighting with krisses. If a right

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  seems to be moving toward the crowd, a guard—very carefully— puts a hand on one of the combatants and tries to move him toward the center of the courtyard.

  The dancers form a line. A priest in white, a temple priest, a permangku, falls into a trance. Another priest brings out live chickens. He holds the chicken up to one man's mouth, and this man bites the head off of the living animal. The spirit of the demon has entered him, and the dancer (or the demon) delights in demonstrating his iniquity: With his bare hands he rips the chicken apart and devours parts of it, entrails and all. The white-clad priest is on the ground, on his hands and knees, doing an odd kicking motion with his back legs. There are feathers clinging to the blood on his lips, and he crawls on his hands and knees to a dismembered chicken that has been dropped. He eats it, like a dog. Then all the trance dancers begin eating chickens, tearing them apart in some strange frenzy. There is no evident revulsion on these men's faces as they eat the writhing chickens; there is, in fact, only an odd savage joy.

  It is dark in the temple of death, and the gamelan is frantic. Eventually, after an hour or more, the hypnotic percussive music stops. One by one, but not in unison, the men wake from their frantic trance state and fall to the ground. They are sprinkled with holy water. Sometimes they fight as they come out of the trance, and many men hold them. The wakened trance dancers appear bleary-eyed, confused, like men in the last stages of blithering drunkenness. Their mouths and chests are covered with blood.

  I met the dalang —the storyteller—I. Made Sija in his family compound in the village of Bona. Made Sija was fifty-six years old, and there was a bustle of activity in his courtyard. He was building a cremation tower for a client, and his sons were working hard on the project. Both of his grandmothers, one whom he said was 101 years old, were walking about bare-breasted in the old style.

  I was brought hot tea in a glass. Made Sija said that "if photos are to be taken, the ceremony should be done properly. However,

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  if we do the proper ceremony with the proper offerings, the young ladies, the sanghyang dedari, might actually go into trance."

  Sija explained that the people of Bona hadn't done sanghyang dedari, the dance of the heavenly nymphs, in over forty years. The dances are performed to exorcise a sickness that lies heavy on the village. In the last forty years, Sija explained, "there have not been any contagious epidemics. This is because there are drugs to contain these diseases. The children go to school, and they are inoculated."

  At the famous tourist performances in Bona, where Balinese act out the dedari ritual, there are no trances. "We don't make offerings," Sija said, "these are performances."

  He said that the last sanghyang dedari done actually for the villagers was in 1945. In that year there was a gurubug boh bedeg, a contagious epidemic. And in his best storyteller's tradition Sija added that the dogs howled, owls hooted (owls are strong magic), and people were frightened. The village, he said, was suffering from typhus and dysentery.

  The headmen of the banjars in the village became frightened and called upon the gods of the village's three temples. Young girls would dance in a trance. Sija said that the girls dance to drive away devils with their very beauty. The girls must be too young to menstruate, and they must be untrained in the classical dance called the legong. They will, in a trance state, dance the very graceful and extremely complicated legong perfectly. And if they do, it is thought that the gods may speak through them. "Someone may say to a sanghyang dancer, my son is sick," Sija said, "and the gods, speaking through the young girl, will tell him to get such and such an herb."

  In a sanghyang dedari, songs are sung to entertain the heavenly nymphs and invite them to inhabit the bodies of the young girls. The songs are about flowers, especially those with a strong fragrance. "It is," Sija said, "a way to sweet-talk them." He laughed. "Evil spirits and sickness, they do not like nice songs," he said.

  In the old days the people of Bona used to pinch the girls or

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  burn them lightly. "If they have no feeling or response," Sija said, "they are in trance."

  At four-thirty that afternoon I went to the temple to see a special sanghyang dedari. The proper offerings would be made.

  The temple was the Pura Dalem in Bona. It was drizzling slightly, then the rain stopped, and a fresh wind blew in. There was to be the Odalan in three days, and dozens of women were sitting about the inner and outer courtyards making offerings. I counted fourteen young women in bright red blouses with green sashes.

  Two girls, each about ten years old, wore the classical green legong costumes that did not cover their shoulders. We went into the inner courtyard, and the girls knelt on their sandals. They clasped their hands in prayer above their heads. The women in red knelt behind them. They were laughing and talking among themselves. All around, women oblivious to the dedari ceremony were making offerings for the Odalan. The young girls were sprinkled with holy water. A headdress of flowers and beaten gold was put on each of their heads. A stick of incense was put in the headdress.

  Fourteen men, bare-chested and wearing the black-and-white skirts called kains, stood to the side. A woman fanned incense on the kneeling girls. The women in red sang for the heavenly nymphs to descend. A dog trotted by, looking for offerings on the ground. A man watching shooed it off: "Chek, chek."

  It was a dark afternoon, heading toward dusk. The graveyard was just off the Pura Dalem, and a dark forest of palms and twisted jungle trees fringed the death temple.

  At 5:50 the girls began to sway slightly. Suddenly, one fell backward into the arms of a waiting woman. It seemed to me that the other didn't fall at quite the same time and wa
s gently pulled. She fell heavily into the arms of the woman behind her.

  Two of the men lifted the girls onto their shoulders. The dedari did not open their eyes. They were given fans, which they swung about in sinuous, perfectly coordinated motions while they rode on the shoulders of the men.

  The entire procession—the men in kains, the women in red—

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  moved through the Odalan preparations in the outer temple and stopped outside, before the intricately carved gate of the temple.

  There was a large white canvas spread out on the gravel there. The women knelt to the left, the men sat to the right. The women sang about flowers for a time, and the little girls danced in perfect unison, although it appeared that both had their eyes closed. It was a dance where the movement of the fans and the hands and the arms meant as much as the movements of the feet. In Balinese dance there is little of the jumping of Western dance. Movements are rooted to the earth. The positioning of the feet, the sinuous movements of the arms: These are the significant gestures. It is, to my eyes, a celebration of femininity and grace.

  Presently, one of the men began a wordless syncopated tune— he had a fine voice and was smiling broadly as he sang—and the rest of the men joined in, their voices sharp and percussive in the gathering gloom. It was the chak-a-chak sound of the kecak, the male chant of a sanghyang dedari ceremony. Since the orchestra, the gamelan, cannot play in times of sickness, the sound of this percussive orchestra is sung by men. As Sija had said, the kecak song has martial overtones: It sounds like people fighting, and it is unnerving. As the kecak chant increased in tempo, the girls danced faster, never losing their grace.

  Behind them, carved into the stone that formed the gate of the temple of death, there were two stone demons, a little like gargoyles, that guarded each side of the entrance. Above the gate was the face of a great bulging-eyed, fanged demon.