Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  My thoughts might be high-flown and beautiful, but my words to Ida Bagus Putuh the while were full of vulgarity and good Dutch curses. I saw nothing of the road and the landscape, although as a rule, even after thirty-five years in Bali, I never tired of gazing at the terraced rice-fields, the gorges and the distant vistas of palm trees. Putuh had put a fresh quid into his mouth and was silent for very shame at the white man’s lack of control.

  We passed through the town of Badung, which is also called Denpasar from its street of shops where Chinese, Indians, Japanese and Arabs have their funny little booths. We went by the hotel. One of the five radios of the island could be heard through the entrance which was on a level with the road. It sounded like Sunday in a Dutch provincial town and I shut my eyes in disgust. Putuh laughed and tried to imitate the sound of it, which seemed comical to him. “The white people’s gamelans are not good,” he criticized. As we passed the two great wairingin trees at the entrance to the main street, my thoughts were caught back into the past. The trees were still there, standing where they had stood years ago before the wall of the Puri, the palace of the lords of Badung. This was the spot where Bali had changed the most. There, where the palace courtyards had sprawled abroad their clutter of buildings and people, white-skirted girls were playing tennis and, farther away, Mohammedan salesmen from Denpasar were practising football. An automobile full of tourists was coming round the corner.

  I don’t know whether it ever occurs to the Balinese that in this spot their lords, together with all their dependants, died a grim and proud death. They are forgetful folk, and perhaps it would be impossible to be as happy as they are unless one had their talent for forgetting. The Dutch, however, do not forget how the lords of Badung and Pametjutan, of Tabanan and Kloengkoeng went to their death. They remember it with admiration. Perhaps it has helped them to understand the soul of the Balinese and how carefully they have to be treated if they are not to be utterly destroyed. I like to believe that the death died by its lords has helped to preserve the island’s liberty and its ancient laws and its gods.

  A hundred yards or so from the hotel women were again to be seen bathing naked in the river, the houses again retreated behind their walled enclosures and the palms reared their tufted tips. Poultry, pigs and dogs scattered before the car. We turned into the next village and reached the expanse of rice-fields beyond it. North of Sanur my gasping conveyance was brought to a stop and we set off for Taman Sari across the rice-fields. I pulled off my shoes at the edge of the fields, for on the foot-wide banks of moist clay that part the sawahs it is easier to get along barefoot. In front of me yellowgreen vipers darted rapidly into the water of the sawahs, where planting had just begun. The sky and all its clouds were reflected in the water among the tender green tips of the young rice plants. Taman Sari does not lie on a large road and so life there goes on as in the old days. Putuh walked behind me and the tread of his bare feet was noiseless and sure.

  The sign woven of palm leaves that there was sickness in the house hung at the door of Putuh’s dwelling. In the niches on either side of the gateway there were offerings to the evil spirits—sirih and rice and flowers—so that they should not enter the courtyard. Putuh and I entered, followed by my servant carrying my bag on his shoulder as though it was a heavy load.

  The courtyard, surrounded with its various smaller buildings and balés, was clean and silent. Two or three well-grown black porkers scampered away in front of me. I had not wasted time putting on my shoes, although the village people laughed at me when I came along barefoot like a Balinese; but I was too impatient to spare time for formalities. Putuh, with punctilious politeness, murmured the usual excuses: his house was poor, dirty and stinking, and he begged me to forgive it. I was relieved when I saw only the sign of sickness at the gate and not yet the sign of death. Putuh called across the courtyard for his wives. One of them, the younger, came out of the kitchen with a baby in arms astride on her hip. Two little girls naked but for wooden pins in their ears stared at me, finger in mouth. The fighting cocks crowed from bamboo basketwork cages farther away in the yard. Putuh led me to a building of bamboo standing on a stone foundation, which was clearly the balé where his second wife lived with her children. A very old woman, probably Raka’s grandmother, squatted on the bamboo bench with the sick child in her lap. Near her knelt his mother; she was a woman with a rather faded, Indian face, such as you often find among Brahmans, and young, firm breasts. Both women smiled anxiously as I bent down over the boy.

  Raka looked bad. His lips were dry and cracked with fever and his flickering eyelids were closed. His arms were emaciated and the small dirty fists were limply clenched. He muttered ceaselessly in delirium. His forehead and forearms were smeared with a yellowish ointment, no doubt a remedy of my colleague, the balian. His pulse was quick and thin and his breathing was light and difficult. I saw at once that it was not malaria, or in any case not only malaria. As always with the sick in Bali, he was naked and only lightly covered with his little kain. The grandmother said something in a low voice to Putuh, who repeated it to me: it was not fitting that the woman should address the white tuan. “The child has not sweated yet. He is hot and cold, but he cannot sweat,” Putuh said, smiling. It took me years to understand this Balinese smile. Sometimes it is seen on blanched lips and then it signifies great sorrow and perhaps even despair.

  I soon found that Raka had double pneumonia. “How long has the child been sick?” I asked. The mother and grandmother took to their fingers and reckoned with a great effort. They came to an agreement on nine days. The crisis would soon be reached. “How did the sickness begin?” I asked, so as to be sure of my ground. Putuh hesitated before replying. What I wanted to know was what were the first symptoms, such as shivering, vomiting. I might have known what Putuh’s reply would be. “Somebody cast an evil spell,” he said in fact in a low voice. In Bali there are no natural causes of sickness. The sick must have been bewitched, plagued by evil spirits or punished for the misdeeds of an ancestor. Again the memory of the other Raka passed through my mind, while I tried to get medicine down the child’s throat, and chivvied the women away to heat water and to fetch kains to wrap and cover the hot little body with and a kapok mattress for the couch. “Who would bewitch a little child?” I asked. “Raka is a beautiful dancer; everyone loves him.”

  “There are witches in the village,” Putuh whispered. “I name no names.”

  He fixed me with an agonized expression as I got the needle ready in order to give the child an injection.

  “If he is bewitched I will break the spell. You know that,” I said in a rage.

  “Everyone says of the tuan that he has great power,” the grandmother said with awe; she came carrying a heavy earthenware vessel carefully in her arms. The sinews of her thin arms were like taut whipcord. The mother brought kains and cloths, bright in color but not too clean. I rubbed Raka’s feet with salt, made him a hot compress and wrapped him up in everything I could lay hands on. Then I laid him down on the couch and the old woman crouched down again beside him. On the right of the house there was a smaller open balé, such as you see in every courtyard, where the daily offerings are prepared. Raka’s mother cast one more look on the child, who had now ceased muttering, and then she squatted down there and began weaving palm-leaves together. It might be necessary to make more offerings than had been made so far—great and powerful offerings to the gods, so as to enlist their aid; and offerings to the evil spirits, so as to appease them. There are witches in every village of Bali. These are women, mostly old, but sometimes young, who league themselves with the powers of darkness by means of certain secret spells, handed down from generation to generation. They take the left-hand road, as the saying is. They acquire the power of changing themselves into lejaks, strange and sinister beings, who roam abroad by night, doing mischief and spreading misfortune. Often, while their bodies are asleep in their homes, the evil souls of such witches, transformed by magic, haunt the night as balls of fir
e. Nearly every Balinese has seen lejaks. One may smile—but I have myself more than once encountered such fire-balls at night, strange apparitions, that breathe and hover, and there are other white people in the island who have had experience of these inexplicable spooks. I did my utmost as a doctor to help little Raka; but I was not quite sure that it was only an inflammation of the lungs which I had to fight.

  An hour went by in silence. Putuh had squatted down on the steps at my feet and I sat on a mat near the improvised sick bed and waited. There was some strong and inexplicable bond between this child and me. I had to stay until the crisis had passed, for better or for worse. Time came to a stop, as it sometimes does. My servant squatted at the far end of the yard near the basket cages containing the cocks, and hummed a tune which consisted of five notes and sounded melancholy, though it was intended to be gay. He was passionately fond of cock-fighting. The Government banned all but a few officially authorized cock-fights, since it wished to protect the Balinese against gambling away all they possessed. Nevertheless, many a secret cock-fight took place on the sly in the close-cropped meadows behind the villages. Absentmindedly I watched my man take a white cock out of its basket and caress it. Time had ceased to move. After an incalculable interval I heard a sound from the bundle of cloths on the bed. I got up quickly and looked at the boy. He had come to himself. His eyes were open and almost clear. Sweat was pouring in trickles down his face and washing the dirt from his light brown skin. With dry lips he asked for something to drink. Putuh himself jumped up and came back with half a coconut shell fitted with a handle. He put it to the child’s lips and he drank the water eagerly. Putuh looked questioningly at me. “It is all right now,” I said with relief. The grandmother raised her hands and murmured with thankfulness that the tuan could break any spell. She called across the yard and the boy’s mother came and stood shyly near the bed, as though it was not her own child at all. She looked quietly at the boy. Raka smiled at her. Putuh did not speak to her, for he could not so far forget what was due to his dignity as to address his wife in the presence of a visitor.

  “My little prince, you will soon be well again now,” he said to the child. The grandmother stood up and embraced my hips with both arms—a mark of devotion which only an old woman could allow herself. “Raka will soon be dancing the kebjar again,” I said with satisfaction. I freed the wasted little body from its hot wrappings and rubbed it. The fever was broken. His grandmother helped, while his mother merely stood there limply as though worn out by extreme exertion. His grandmother gently touched my hand when I bent over and looked at the child’s face. “The tuan, too, has noticed whom he is like?” she asked with a knowing smile. Yes, I replied, I had.

  “The tuan knew his forefather. The tuan is old too, he has come to the evening of his days as I have,” the grandmother said. I was taken by surprise, for I had never noticed that I was old. I had forgotten, as the Balinese did, to count the years as they passed. Yes, I, too, was old and the past was dearer to me and nearer and clearer than the present. I put my hand on the old woman’s shoulder, a sign of great affection which made her titter like a young girl.

  It was already dusk by the time I had given them all the necessary directions and left the courtyard. My servant carried my magic bag tied to a bamboo pole and also a bottle of sweet rice wine which Putuh had given me. The village street was now full of life and movement, for the hour before sunset is a busy time. Men were taking in their cocks after having left them all day long outside the walls of their compounds to enjoy the sight of passers-by. Women returned from some errand or other with square-shaped baskets on their heads. Boys with long poles tipped with a bunch of feathers drove waddling ducks back from the fields. Girls put offerings in the niches at the gates. Everybody was intent on being safely home and settled down before darkness fell and released the demons and spirits. Men with sheaves of rice on bamboo poles, men with great bundles of hay, men with sleek, light-brown cows coming in from the fields. Idle young men with flowers behind their ears, hard-working old men, wise and wizened, all came along, one after another, with necks erect and bodies naked to the waist, walking with their incomparable rhythm. I am never tired of watching these people, and the way they talk and sit on their haunches and rise to their feet and work and rest. The bark of a dog, the smoke of the open kitchen hearths, the smell of cigarettes and champak flowers. The girls came with smooth wet hair from bathing, adorned with flowers. Here and there an oil lamp was already alight in a shop. A sound hovered in the air like the chimes of many bells in tune—it was the gamelan, the Balinese orchestra, which makes such finely woven music. The orchestra were practising their programme for the next festival in the large balé, the village town-hall and meetingplace. At the end of the village there stood a sacred tree, an ancient wairingin, as large as a church, with a dark dome of foliage and thousands of arching roots exposed to the air that gripped like iron and looked like iron. Beneath its huge cupola stood one of the six temples of Taman Sari; a double gateway, crowded with images of gods and guarded by demons, led into the first of its three courts.

  Temples in Bali are not buildings: they are open enclosures surrounding sacred places which have been revered since the dawn of time. The great stone and wooden chairs and thrones stand there, and on them the gods invisibly seat themselves when the priests call upon them. I stood for a moment at the temple gate to let some women with large baskets of offerings on their heads pass by. The music of the gamelan sounded as I left the village and set off again across the rice-fields. I saw the Great Mountain in front of me now, veiled with bars of drifting cloud. The first bats were already on the wing and the cicadas made a merciless din. I looked forward to being at home again. I would sit and look at Tamor’s deer and marvel at this piece of work which his uncle had begun and failed to carry out and his descendant had brought to completion. I remembered how the old woman had called me old and how it had made me laugh. But it was true that I had lived in the island a long time and seen a lot. I had known many people who were now dead and many who had been born again. I realized that I was harnessed to the cycle of things and a part of them. I had known the island when it was still fighting for its liberty, and I was there when it was conquered and got new masters in place of the powerful and cruel rajas of the old days. But it had altered little. There were bicycles now and motor-buses and a little modern rubbish in a few wretched little shops. There were a few hospitals and schools, and there was even an hotel where tourists were dumped for a three days’ stay and then carted off again after seeing a few sights they didn’t understand. But Bali had not changed. It lived according to the old law, resisting every encroachment. The mountain, the gorges, the ricefields, the palm-clad hills were the same as ever. The people were the same as ever. They were the same people, from one generation to the next, cheerful for the most part, gentle and quick to forget; we should never understand them quite and never learn the secret of their placidity and resignation. Many of them were artists and they would always make new music for the gamelan and carve new figures in wood and stone and write new plays and dance new dances. But the gods did not change, and as long as they were throned in a thousand temples and inhabited every river, mountain, tree and field, Bali, too, would not change.

  Yes, it was true. I must be old to think such thoughts. I stumbled barefoot along the low banks between the sawahs as I meditated on these things. In the midst of the fields there was a small temple, built when disaster and blight fell on the sawahs. At the gateway sat a man wearing a large round hat he had woven himself. I thought I recognized him. He was an old man and he waved his hand to me. “Greeting, Tuan,” he called out, in the sing-song of the old-fashioned folk.

  “Greeting, friend,” I said. “Greeting, my brother.”

  It was Pak, the father of Tamor, the sculptor. He was as old as I, gray-haired and toothless. He had to break up his sirih with a knife, because he could chew no longer.

  “How are you, Pak?”

  “I am
content,” Pak sang out. “My feet are content, my hands are content after my work. My eyes are happy when they look out on the sawah, and life is sweet.”

  I stood talking with him for a short time, chatting about this and that. My servant waited nearby, just a little impatient, for he wanted to go into the village that night and see the Shadow Play. He was in love and the girl would be there, and he would be able to make eyes at her and perhaps whisper a word in her ear. I am coming soon, my friend—just one moment. I am just going in through the temple gate to look out over the fields. They shone more brightly now than the sky itself whose reflection gleamed on the surface of the water. The first frogs were already croaking and from Sanur could be heard the dull regular beat of the kulkul, the wooden drum which calls the men together. I saw the shrine of the deity in the last rays of the sun. Three plates of cheap pottery, with a rather hideous pattern of roses, were let into the stonework at the base of the shrine and caught the light. Yes, there they were still and still well-preserved— these three plates which had played so great a part in Pak’s life. I stood a moment longer, listening to the cicadas and the thud of the kulkul. The cool green smell of the growing crops came from afar. Raka will get well, I thought to myself. Pak raised his hand and waved me a friendly good-bye as I went.