Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  This spot was under the protection of the Goddess. The earth of his field, blest by her, was of sufficient power to break any spell that might, for all he knew, be inherent in Bengek’s gift. Taking his knife from its sheath he began digging out the earth at the foot of the mound. It was soft and muddy and easy to dig out. When the hole was large enough he bedded the plates into it and closed the earth round them and smoothed it down.

  “O Goddess,” he said, “I offer you these precious plates. Make them pure of evil influences and bless my field so that its soil shall be fertile and the ears full and heavy.”

  The tjrorot sounded its hollow wooden note in the distance. Pak set off home to fetch his plough. He had left home a poor man yesterday. It was as a rich man he returned. Richer than Wajan, Sarna’s father. His secret lay big and warm in his heart, like a steadily glowing fire.

  The Puri

  A FLOCK of white pigeons rose from the ground and circled high above the puri of the lord of Badung. The silver bells on their feet gave out a whirring tinkle of metallic sound, like the voice of a white cloud at noon. The gray pigeons in their red cages cooed as they tripped to and fro. A large kasuar, which had been searching the grass for food, extended its long neck, thrusting it this way and that as though it had too tight a collar. Muna, the slave-girl, laughed and let her hands fall for a moment. Bernis, the most beautiful of the lord’s wives, bent back her head and looked up into the sky. She shook out her hair. “Well?” she asked, without taking her absorbed and dreaming eyes from the flock of pigeons up in the sky. Muna began zealously combing her mistress’s long hair again. She drew it back strand by strand; it was sleek and fragrant and shone with coconut oil.

  “Then she was clever enough to arrange matters so that she was bound to encounter him,” Muna went on quickly. “She put herself right in his path as he went to his cocks. He did not so much as glance at her. She said: ‘Greetings, my lord and master,’ turning her eyes away. ‘Greeting, Tumun,’ he said, and walked on. She ran after him and pulled at his sarong. ‘My lord and master has had no sirih from me for a long time,’ she said. My mistress ought to have seen how the lord behaved then! He paid no attention at all—he looked straight through her, like this”—Muna copied the lord’s contemptuous look and squinted with the effort—“he paid no more attention to her than if she had been a dead dung-beetle in his path. He simply went on and left her standing there—the vain, silly creature. All the women laughed her to scorn.”

  “What a shameless woman,” Bernis said, “to make herself cheap. You can tell that she is a beggar’s daughter.”

  Muna had ended her task. “I have heard,” she said, “that she was a whore at Kesiman and had to go about with her breasts covered until the Anak Agung Bima brought her into his palace.” She drew a palm-leaf basket towards her, in which were white cambodia flowers, tinged with pink. Taking here and there a single hair she wound it about a petal to hold it fast. It looked as though the flowers were scattered carelessly over her black hair. “My mistress is the most beautiful of all. She will bear a strong and fine son and the lord will raise her up to be the first of his wives,” she chanted.

  “Hold your tongue and don’t talk nonsense,” Bernis broke in. Muna went dumb with fright and cowered down with the instinctive movement of one who was used to being beaten.

  “Go,” said Bernis. “Leave me alone, I cannot endure your chatter.” Muna took the comb and basket and vanished down the steps. Bernis laid her head in her hands, for she wished to give rein to her sadness. She had been wedded to the young lord Alit for twelve months and still she had not had a child. In her last month, too, her hopes had been dashed and it was long since her lord had visited her. It was a strange thing that all his twenty-two wives were childless. And yet the courtyards and all the other dwellings of the puri swarmed with children; all the court officials, the servants, the slaves and all the numerous retinue of the palace—they all had children. Only the dwellings of the lord’s wives were silent; only in them there was no sound of small feet. Bernis caressed her own skin to sooth its longings. She held her breasts in her hands to still the ache of an unfamiliar pain. Then she let her hands fall and restlessly pulled her sarong tighter. “Muna,” she called out. Apparently Muna had been watching her from a distance, for the next moment she was once more on the steps of the portico. “What is my mistress’s wish?” she asked with a virtuous expression. Bernis drew the girl towards her and put her arm round her. “You are growing up,” she said cajolingly. “It will soon be time to look out for a husband for you. Have you been looking about yourself yet?” Muna giggled and looked coy. “Is it the gardener, Rodia? Or the keeper of the white cocks? Yes, it is he, I know. He has a moustache and looks like a noble. He blows out his nostrils like a horse whenever he catches sight of you.” Muna hid her face in her mistress’s lap and murmured shyly into this secret recess. “Who is it?” Bernis asked, lifting up the girl’s head with her hands on her hair.

  “Meru, the sculptor,” Muna whispered with lowered eyes. Bernis reflected on this. “Your taste is not bad,” she said slowly. “He has no eyes for me—he has too many girls,” Muna whispered. She had the face of a little monkey and the prettiest and nimblest of hands.

  “You are too young. Wait a year,” Bernis said chillingly. There was silence for a time. Muna took Bernis’s hand and played with it.

  “With whom did the lord spend last night?” her mistress asked abruptly. Muna’s mouth twisted in a droll grimace, but she did not reply at once. She left her mistress on tenterhooks.

  “With Ida Bagus Rai, the pedanda of Taman Sari,” she said at last while her eyes danced with amusement. Bernis did not appear to see the joke.

  “The pedanda is a nice man and a very holy one,” she said with a sigh of relief. “And Raka’s father,” Muna threw in quickly. Bernis looked at her reflectively to see what lay behind this. “It is taking a liberty to gossip about the lord’s friends,” she said loftily.

  Muna pouted and said no more. The pigeons wheeled and alighted with a rustle of wings in one of the eastern courtyards. Bernis watched them absent-mindedly. All this part of the puri had been built by Chinese and was roofed with Chinese tiles. The back wall of the portico where they were sitting was lined with large greenglazed tiles, the same as those which adorned the wall round the palace. Bernis’s dwelling was one of the most splendid of all. It stood on a tiny square island enclosed by runnels of water and flowerbeds. The lord honored the most beautiful of his wives in every possible way, and gave her the position that became noble birth. But he had not chosen his first wife, who had to be of his own caste. Muna tried to read the expression on her mistress’s face. “There are men who are fonder of the old lontar books than of women,” she said meaningly. Bernis was not angry; she merely sighed. Boredom descended upon her, like a gray bird with widespread wings.

  “What can we do to pass the time?” she asked idly.

  Weave, Muna suggested. Go to the pond and look at the waterfowl. Turn out the chests and try on all the sarongs. Fetch palm-leaves and plait dishes for the offerings. Sleep until it was time to dress and watch the dancing in the chief court. Bernis shook her head. Muna pushed the gilded stand towards her on which were all the ingredients for making sirih—the silver casket of sirih-leaves, lime in a little wooden box, a box of beaten silver containing tobacco, chopped betel-nut on a pisang leaf. Bernis pushed the tray away again. For some reason the lord did not like his wives to chew and make their teeth brown, as other women did. And so Bernis denied herself this consolation, in which even the poorest of women indulged. “I did not know there was to be dancing tonight in the puri,” she said listlessly. Muna began at once upon all she had heard about it. “It is the dancers from Taman Sari,” she said eagerly. “They are coming to dance the baris. The lord has given them new robes and they are dancing to express their thanks for them. Over three hundred ringits the robes cost and they say that there is real silver on the baris crowns. They say, too, that a girl
is going to dance at the same time as the men, but that I cannot believe. It would be improper,” Muna said primly. “The nymph ought to be played by a small boy as she always has been. But the Taman Sari dancers always must invent something new, and that is why such an idea came into their heads. We shall see what the lord will have to say to it if Raka really brings a girl with him.”

  “Who is the girl?” asked Bernis.

  “Lambon, a poor sudra’s daughter. No bigger than a gnat. I saw her dance the legong at the feast of the Coral Temple,” Muna replied. Bernis scarcely heard her.

  “A crown with real silver . . .” her mistress said slowly. “Raka will look beautiful with a silver crown,” she added.

  “Yes, he will look beautiful,” Muna said. Then they both fell silent and gazed at the runnels which enclosed their island.

  A thousand people went in and out of the puri. Buildings were crowded together in innumerable courtyards; balés full of household articles, weaving stools and sacrificial vessels; the dwellings of the wives, relatives, officials, servants, slaves and their families. Watch-towers flanked the entrance to the main courtyard in which visitors had to wait until the lord received them. His own house was in the second court, and the large reception balé in the back wall of which were the plates, that excited such great and universal admiration. The house temple in the north-east wing was a beautiful building with images of stone in its wooden shrines and with carved doors showing Vishnu on his bird, Garuda. Here, too, was an island surrounded by running water and bridges on three sides leading to the temple doorway. There was a mosaic of shells on the steps. Everywhere there were trees, coco and betel palms, cambodia trees with gray branches and bright flowers, champak trees, darkleaved and tall. Tall grasses were planted between the paths, and flowers too. A balé in the fourth court was given up to the fightingcocks, of which Lord Alit alone possessed forty. The whole place was alive with birds and beasts that were kept as pets. There were the kasuar and his mate, vain and ridiculous creatures, pigeons of every sort, small green parrots with red breasts, which were caught in the west of Bali, and white cockatoos from the neighboring island of Lombok. Monkeys tugged at their chains or roamed about free to work what mischief they liked. There was a large number of small, rough-coated horses in open sheds, and buffaloes for drawing waggons rubbed themselves against the palace walls. Black swine of alarming fecundity ran loose with their litters and dogs, poultry and ducks were beyond counting. A large leguan and three huge turtles were in cages near the largest kitchen balé in readiness for the next feast. There were rice barns and threshing floors for threshing the grain; there were numbers of cooking balés and provision stores and balés for preparing sacrificial offerings and balés in which were kept the figures for the Shadow Play.

  The lord Tjokorda Alit was seated cross-legged on a couch in his house. It was fairly light there, for the door on to the portico stood open and the Chinese architect had had large glass windows put in the opposite wall, like those in the palaces of the great sultans of Java. On the cross-beam of the roof lay offerings and many books— writings engraved on narrow strips of the leaves of the lontar palm. An oil lamp hung nearby, with a fringe of blue glass beads round the shade, a present from the Dutch Controller, Visser.

  The lord was only of middle height and there was a flabby and unfinished look about his face as well as his body. As his skin was remarkably light in color, his courtiers and his wives told him that he was handsome. But his looks did not please him and he knew that he was ugly, uglier even than a simple sudra, to whom hard labor gave strength at least and muscular limbs. The lord was often overwhelmed by a vehement disgust with himself, particularly when he had his handsome friend Raka with him.

  Alit’s eyes were half closed and he was pulling at his opium pipe. A boy of about nine years of age crouched at his feet. He was called Oka and was a distant relation of the lord’s, the son, by some father or other, of one of his wives, a woman of no caste. He had adopted the boy. Oka’s small face was bent over the flame of the opium lamp at which he was carefully roasting an opium pill, ready for the next pipe. The drug’s bitter-sweet smell filled every corner of the room, and the fumes made the child’s heart thump and his forehead drowsy. Without opening his eyes Alit handed the smoked-out pipe to be filled again. He kept Oka almost constantly at his side because the child was quiet and seldom spoke; and the lord loved above all things to be silent and to think. It was this, no doubt, that gave his eyes their strange and almost suffering expression, like that of people who know too much. But for the moment Alit felt happy and lightened of care, borne aloft by the soothing opium trance. An ever-widening clarity opened up new perspectives before his closed eyes and it seemed to him that he could now comprehend those mysteries over which he had pondered with the pedanda of Taman Sari the night before. “One says: I have killed a man; another thinks: I have been killed! Neither one nor the other knows anything. Life cannot kill, life cannot be killed.” Long series of verses in the noble language of other days passed through his mind, echoing their wisdom in resounding words. “End and beginning are only dreams. The soul is eternal, beyond birth and death and change.” He gave his pipe to the boy to fill once more. It was the fifth and last, for he never exceeded this number at one time. So long as he smoked all was good and his mind at peace. At other times he was often overcome by a melancholy for which there was no real cause. He was young, rich, powerful. He had many and devoted wives, many loyal and gifted advisers and rice-fields stretching farther than the eye could see. His only trouble was that sometimes he found no object in his life—as though it had stopped still or as though he had been bom with a soul tired out by too many reappearances on earth.

  A shadowy figure with clasped hands appeared in the open doorway. It was one of the gate-keepers from the first courtyard. “What do you want?” the lord asked with annoyance.

  “The punggawa of Sanur is waiting in the outer balé with two Chinese and requests an audience.”

  “Send him and his Chinese to Gusti Wana,” Lord Alit said irritably.

  “I did so, master. The minister heard the punggawa and told him to bring the matter to the lord’s own ears. He sent me here.” And now there appeared in the portico behind the gate-keeper several bent figures and a murmur of voices could be heard from which Alit understood that his high officials had come to beg him to receive the punggawa. He gave his pipe to Oka and rose to his feet. The punggawa is a busybody, he thought. He thinks himself a tiger, but he is no bigger than a cat. In one corner of the room there was the figure of a courtier carved in wood and painted in sombre colors, designed to hold the lord’s kris. Oka took the kris from the hands of the wooden figure and gave it to his master, and the lord put it through the back of his girdle and then advanced into the portico among his counsellors. Gusti Wana was there with the rest, a little man who easily became excited; also Gusti Nyoman, the steward of the yield from the rice-fields and the lord’s revenue, Dewa Gdé Molog, captain of the guard, garrison and arsenal of the puri. The last was a man of fine words and very proud. There were further three of the lord’s relations, who had gained admittance to the family through one or other of his wives and claimed kinship as cousins or brothers-in-law. They had long-winded titles, fine names and no influence. Alit looked over the company with a smile and silence fell. Suddenly they all began talking at once and explaining the punggawa’s predicament. The lord put up his hand and again they were silent.

  “Why did you not send the punggawa to my uncle? You know well enough that village disputes of his do not interest me.

  “The Tjokorda Pametjutan is old and sick and complained of being in great pain this morning,” Gusti Wana said. “No one could ask of him to deal with difficult matters.”

  “Is it then a difficult matter that the punggawa wishes to intrude on me?” the lord asked, still smiling. The best he could hope was to find the zeal of his officials entertaining and rather funny, but as a rule it wearied him to such a degree that he ya
wned until his eyes watered. He sat down on a raised platform which Oka had spread with a finely woven mat. “Bring the punggawa and his Chinese here,” he ordered the gate-keeper. By receiving them in the portico of his own house instead of in the large reception hall, he showed that he did not take their business seriously. The courtiers placed themselves cross-legged behind him and the punggawa entered the courtyard followed by the two Chinese. All three advanced with bodies politely bent and stopped at the foot of the steps. Just as the punggawa was about to speak, an aged little man flitted past him and crouched at the feet of the lord. This was Ida Katut, the lontar writer and storyteller of the puri. He had the face of a field-mouse and an insatiable curiosity to hear and see and note all that went on. Afterwards when he came to recount what he had gleaned, the lord often laughed aloud as he recognized the people Katut had, so to say, devoured and whom he now reproduced with all the peculiarities of their walk or voices and the vanity or submissiveness with which they entered his presence.