by Vicki Baum
“Peace on your way,” he sang out. “Peace on your sleep,” I replied.
My automobile was waiting with a trusty and patient air on the road north of Sanur. A crowd, twenty strong, stood round it, eyes, mouths and nostrils expressing delighted expectation and astonishment. They were the young people of the village, and they cheered as my old bus grunted huskily and started off.
The moon was high in the sky when I got home. There shone the constellation of Orion, which they call the Plough here, and the Southern Gross. The night air of my garden quivered with the chirping and humming of insects and the zigzag flight of fire-flies. The air was cool and there was a sheen on the palm-leaves which made them look like narrow kris blades. My little monkey sat on my shoulder and went to sleep. The tjitjak lizards on the wall made a smacking noise and a large red-spotted gecko uttered its cry in a husky baritone. I counted—eleven times, that meant good luck. After that there was silence, the vibrant silence of tropical nights. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw Raka’s little fevered face. Beyond it appeared the face of his ancestor—and Putuh and Pak and the cheap plates still unbroken on the little temple among the rice-fields. The old, old stories, touching and droll and proud and bloody. Many have died, but Pak lives on, the old peasant on the edge of his sawah.
I lit my pipe and got out some paper. Now I would tell all I could still recover of the days gone by.
He who is wise in his heart, sorrows neither for the living nor the dead. All that lives, lives for ever. Only the shell, the perishable, passes away. The spirit is without end, eternal, deathless.
(From the Bhagavad-Gita)
The Wreck of the Sri Kumala
PAK woke up when the cocks crowed at the back of his yard. He shivered under the blue kain with which he had covered himself and his eyes were still heavy with sleep. The room was dark, although Puglug, his wife, had left the doors open when she went out. Pak gave a deep sigh. He got up unwillingly and unwillingly went to his labors. But the day was favorable for ploughing, according to the calendar, and Pak got up from his mat just as the kulkul of the village sounded the seventh hour of the night. An hour more and the sun would step from his home and bring the day with him out of the sea.
The cocks still crowed lustily and Pak smiled as he picked out the voice of his favorite, the red one. He was still too young, but Pak could already see he had the makings of a fighter. Pak girded his kain about his hips and pulled it through between his legs so that it made a short loin-cloth. He groped about in the darkness for the beam and took down his knife and the sirih pouch and tied them to his girdle. His kain was moist and cool with the heavy dew. He had a hazy recollection of a confused dream. He felt his way to the other mat on the bamboo couch which stood opposite his own. The children were asleep—Rantun, who was seven years old, Madé, the next in age, and in the corner the bundle containing the baby, who had no name as yet.
Pak and his wife had made sure that they would have a boy this time. They had paid the balian eleven kepengs when the child began to stir in its mother’s womb and he had promised them a boy. Pak had begun to build castles in the air and had thought out a fine name for him. He wanted to call him Siang, the light and the day. Then when Puglug disappointed their expectations by giving birth to another girl, they did not know what name to give the child. Probably they would simply call her Klepon, a name that several girls of his family had been given.
Pak sighed once more as he left the room and after hesitating a moment in the open porch went down the steps into the courtyard. The kulkul had stopped.
The women had lit a fire in the kitchen balé and Pak’s father came following his lean shadow across the yard with a bundle of dried palm-leaves on his head and went across to the wall. Pak’s uncle lived on the west side of the plot and his first wife, who could never be at peace with anybody, could be heard quarrelling already. But Puglug was unclean for forty-two days after the birth of her little girl and could not prepare any food for Pak. He had good reason to sigh. He was as sick of Puglug as if she had been a dish of which he had eaten too much. Three daughters she had borne him and not one son. She was useless and not even good to look at. He sat on his haunches on the steps and looked down ill-humoredly at his wife, who was sweeping the yard with a besom. The sky by now was a little lighter behind the tops of the coco palms and Pak could distinguish her heavy shape, as she bent and got up again.
Then he caught sight of Lambon, his young sister, coming from the kitchen and carrying a pisang leaf heaped up with cooked rice. Pak took it eagerly, sat down again on the steps and felt better. He put three fingers into the rice and crammed his mouth full. His spirits rose with every mouthful he swallowed. Puglug paused in her work for a moment and watched her husband, for whom she was not allowed to cook any food, while he ate, and then went on sweeping. She is a good wife, Pak thought to himself, now that his belly was contented with rice. She is strong and can carry thirty coconuts on her head. She is hard-working and goes to the market and sells sirih and foodstuffs and earns money. It is not her fault that she cannot bear a son. Our forefathers decided it so. He wiped his fingers on the emptied pisang leaf, threw it down on the ground and began carefully wrapping his sirih in betel-nut and adding a little lime to it. As soon as he had the strong quid in his mouth, so strong that the spittle ran down from the corners of his mouth, the world seemed a good place. He got up to fetch the cow from the shed and the plough from the balé where all the implements were kept.
Lambon, who had sat at his feet watching him eat, went back to the kitchen. Her small face looked pretty in the light of the blazing fire and Pak looked back at her for a moment and was proud of her.
Lambon was a dancer; she danced the legong at the festivals with two other children, in a dress all of gold and a crown of yellow flowers in her hair. She was beautiful; Pak could see that, even though she was his sister. She had not celebrated the festival of ripe maidenhood and yet the boys of the village stood in front of the house and drew in their breath with nostrils dilated when she passed. The whole family hoped she would marry a rich man when she was old enough.
But now that Pak stepped into the yard in the dawning light, he stopped still with open mouth. It looked as though the demons had made their home there all night. In many places the straw had been torn from the wall, which he had thatched with such care after the last harvest. Not far from the gate on to the road yawned a hole. A heavy branch had been broken from a bread-fruit tree and lay on the ground like a dead thing. Half the roof of the shed had been carried away. Pak stared at all this in terror. He could not understand it. He had never seen anything like it. He ran quickly to his father, who was old and knew more than he did. “Who has done it?” he asked, out of breath.
The old man was both lean and feeble, for his strength had been drained away by many attacks of the heat sickness. “Who has done it?” he repeated in a sing-song, as his habit was. It gave him time to think and to hit on a shrewd answer. Pak stared at him in an agony of suspense. He could positively feel the evil spirits about his ears. It was they who had played havoc with his yard by night.
“There was a storm from the west last night,” his father said. “That is what has done it. I lay awake all night and there was lightning in the sky and a great uproar in the air.” He began to smile with toothless gums and added, “The sleep of the old is light, my son.”
At this Pak’s terror gave way a little. “Perhaps we ought to make a special offering to Baju, the god of the wind,” he murmured, staring at the gap in the wall. The old man pondered this at his leisure. “Many years ago,” he said, “there was a storm like this. That time the pedanda ordered every household to kill a chicken for Baju. There were great offerings made and next day the sea cast up a ship, laden with rice and coconuts, which were divided up among all of us.”
Pak listened in astonishment. “Mbe!” he said, deeply impressed. He examined the gap in the wall. “Shall I kill a fowl?” he asked. It occurred to him that now all the de
mons and spirits of the underworld could come thronging into his unprotected yard. The old man, who often knew what people were thinking without needing to be told, said, “Call your brother. We will mend up the hole with straw while you are on the sawah. When you come home you can build it up with earth. There is still some lime here too, to whiten it with. You must kill a fowl and we will offer it to the gods. But after that, go out to the field, for today is a good day to plough.”
Pak turned about obediently, feeling consoled by the old man’s measured sing-song. “The wife is still unclean and may not offer sacrifices,” he muttered, however.
“You must kill the fowl and your sister and my brother’s wives will make the offering and I will ask the pedanda what we must do.”
Pak’s heart was lighter, for the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, was almost the cleverest man in the world and nearly infallible. Even the Lord of Badung sent for him when he wanted advice. Pak spat out his sirih and went to the kitchen. “You must get a present ready for the pedanda,” he said to the women. “It need not be anything very much, for the pedanda knows that we are poor. Lambon shall take it. And bring me a white fowl to kill.”
Puglug, whose ears were sharp, had come up and stood leaning on her besom. Suddenly, without waiting to be asked her opinion, she burst out, “Why do you want to go taking great presents to the pedanda when the balian gives just as good advice for three papayas? Perhaps I, too, could tell you what happened last night if I was asked. I could have told you beforehand, for Babak was here only the day before yesterday and told me what the market women were saying.
The sister of Babak’s mother saw a man with only one leg and a great pig’s face and anyone with any sense knows what that means. If the balian were asked he could say what would be best to do. He would say that every man in the place should take a big stone and go with it to a certain house and stone a certain person, who is the cause of it all, to death. Killing a white fowl! And taking presents to the pedanda! You might think we were rich folk with forty sawahs. Or perhaps my husband has five hundred ringits buried under the house the way he runs to the pedanda just because there is a little hole in the wall. Naturally Lambon is glad to go to the pedanda’s house, for perhaps she will catch sight of Raka there. I have noticed myself how her eyes darken if Raka only passes by, and that is a disgrace for a girl whose breasts have not grown yet——”
What Puglug went on to say was drowned in the squawking of the fowl which Lambon was carrying. Pak took it by the legs and went with it to the south corner of the yard. He would have liked to strike his unmannerly wife, who spoke without his permission, but he did not. She talked and talked—like a flock of ducks in the sawah, quack, quack, quack, whether she was asked her opinion or not. Oh, how sick he was of Puglug and how obvious it was that he ought to take a second wife.
He took his broad-bladed knife from the wooden sheath, which was stuck in his belt, and lifted the fowl high in the air.
“Fowl,” he said, “I must now kill you. I do not do it because I wish you evil, but because I must offer you up in sacrifice. Pardon me, fowl, and give me your permission.”
When this formality was concluded he held the knife level with the ground and swung the fowl so that its neck collided with the blade, and then he threw the bleeding creature down. It gave one cry and died. In the sudden stillness, a regular battle could be heard going on between Puglug and the uncle’s first wife in the kitchen. They were a good match in their passion for chatter and gossip and in fluency of tongue, and Pak could not help laughing outright as he listened to the unintelligible clatter, which suddenly ended in loud peals of good-natured laughter. He had almost forgotten his fears. As he went past he gave his two younger brothers, who slept together on a mat in an open balé, a shake to wake them. “You must shovel out some earth and mix it with lime so that I can mend the wall properly tonight,” he said, feeling that he sat aloft as master of the house.
Meru was wide awake at once. “As you command and desire, my lord,” he said in the lofty language used to a raja. Pak gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. He had had a great liking for his goodlooking, light-hearted brother ever since the days when he had taught him to walk. Since then Meru had in a sense left him behind, for he could carve and had even made a doorway for the palace of the Lord of Badung. “Who is going to give you your sirih today, you idler?” he asked good-naturedly, and went on to joke about Meru’s many adventures with girls. “Someone who is better looking than your wife,” Meru replied, and this, too, was said in fun. “We shall see yet who brings home the best-looking wife,” Pak said grandly. And as he spoke he was thinking of a particular girl, who had been in his mind for some time.
His spirits were quite restored as he led the cow by her halter out of the ruined shed, lifted the plough on his shoulders and set out. The old man, tottering at the knees, was already busy at the wall with great bundles of straw. It was late; the sun was rising. “Will my father think of feeding the cocks?” Pak called out to the old man politely. He was answered merely by a reassuring wave of the hand and a lift of the forehead with eyes closed—a gesture of friendly assent. And so Pak, with mind at rest, turned his back on the strange occurrences of this extraordinary morning and left the yard by its narrow gateway, peaceably preceded by his cow.
In the village street, where the walls of the compounds formed a long line, broken only by the high gateways, life was by now in full swing. The rays of the sun in the smoking morning air lay like silver beams athwart the tops of the palms and the dense fruit trees. A thousand birds sang at once. The large ribbed leaves of the pisang were transformed by the rising sun into bright transparent discs of green. Red hibiscus flowers bloomed round the house altar behind every wall. Women went by with baskets and mats on their heads, one behind the other, preceded by their lengthened shadows; and the one in front spoke under her breath without caring whether the next heard what she said. They stopped when they came to the wairingin tree and helped one another to lower the loads from their heads. Then they spread their mats on the ground and displayed their goods on them to the best advantage—sirih, cooked rice, ducks’ eggs, garlic and spice. Puglug as a rule went to the market too, but now she had to wait until the days of her uncleanness were over before she might work again. Pak, as he went quietly along, shook off the thought of Puglug as though it were an ant. He loitered a moment in front of the house of Wajan, who was a man of wealth, and the cow came to a stop and began pulling at the short grass at the edge of the road. She was used to having to wait for Pak here. He stopped as though to see to his large round hat which he wore on top of his head-dress, and at that very moment a boy came out bringing Wajan’s cocks, which he put down on the grass to cool their feet. Wajan had eighteen cocks and Pak only four; even this was more than a man in his poor circumstances ought to have and Puglug made many peevish comments on the fact. Since there was nothing but the cocks to be seen Pak gave a tug at the cow’s halter and said, “We must get on to the sawah, sister,” and went on his way.
Pak’s father had been given two sawahs by the old lord of Pametjutan and he himself had got two more from the young lord Alit of Badung. His were situated on the northeast side of the village and the old man’s on the north-west. As his father had not the strength now for heavy work in the fields, Pak had to cultivate all four sawahs himself; he had only one cow and his relations could not give him enough help. The lord’s gift of land had made a serf of Pak in so far as he had to pay half the yield to the overseer of the lord’s land. Also he had to do any work required of him by the household of the lords in the puris of Badung. But in return for all this he had four sawahs, rich and well-watered land, heavy sheaves at harvest time, green and fragrant silk before the ears formed. If he worked industriously, the four sawahs yielded two hundred sheaves, with two harvests every fifteen months. That brought in, for his share, enough food for his family, enough rice for the festivals and taxes and offerings, enough to pay friends of his for occasional help. And in
good years there was still a little over which he could sell to Chinese traders when ships put in at Sanur to take in a cargo. Pak had prayed to the goddess Sri that the harvest might be a good one and the earth kind and the ears full. He had let the water into the eastern sawahs three days before, and that was why he had to start ploughing that day, for so it was laid down. Meanwhile the fields on the west were nearly ripe; the water had already been drawn away from them, and thus ploughing and planting on one plot alternated with reaping and binding on the other.
Pak met other men from the village, who had come to work on their fields, all along the narrow balks. They shouted a word or two to each other—about the night’s storm and the jobs they were going to and coming from—without stopping to talk. His eastern fields lay some way from the village and Pak had to get his cow and his plough down the steep bank of a river and across the ford. The path, trodden by bare feet, was slippery and the cow jibbed. Pak called her “sister” and “mother,” begged her pardon and tried to explain that the descent was unavoidable. Suddenly he heard girls’ voices from the river and stared with open mouth. He had forgotten that he was later than usual and that he would meet the women on their way back from bathing. They climbed the steep bank one after the other, laughing and twittering like birds at sunrise. Pak’s heart stopped. He had caught sight of Sarna among them.
He gave her a quick glance as she passed him, but he did not see whether she returned it. She smiled, but he did not know whether it was to him or at him. I ought to have put a red hibiscus flower behind my ear, he thought. But no, he thought immediately after, that would have ruined everything. It did not do to show the girls all you felt for them. He stood on the grass and grasshoppers jumped about him and he gazed after Sarna. She was young and strong and beautiful. Everything about her was rounded—her face, her breasts, her hips. Round, but tender and charming. His liver and his heart were big and full of sweetness when he looked at Sarna. Her hair was wet and her sarong too. She had a moist and heavy lock of hair hanging from below her headdress, as a sign of her maidenhood. She wore large earrings made of lontar leaves in her ears, like the rice-goddess Sri. When Pak made offerings to the goddess and prayed to her for a good harvest, he always saw her in his mind’s eye as Sarna, rich Wajan’s daughter.