Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  “I will speak to Krkek about it and ask his advice. He is a clever man,” he said evasively.

  “Shall I mention it to Dasni in the meanwhile and take her the remedy for her skin? The balian would mix it properly for me in return for a basket of pisangs, and you need only give rich Wajan a present if the droppings of his pigeons do good.”

  “If I ask rich Wajan for anything at all, it will be for something better than pigeon-droppings,” said Pak. He bit his lip as soon as it was out of his mouth. Puglug looked narrowly at him and said no more. He would have given much to know whether she had already heard at the market about his secret meetings with Sarna. But Puglug was silent and her face showed no sign.

  “We have talked enough for one evening,” he said. “I am tired. Tomorrow we shall know better.”

  Puglug followed him obediently into the house and laid Klepon down in her cot. Rantun and Madé were already rolled up on the other bench. Pak took the oil lamp down from its hook and looked at the little girls. Rantun even in her sleep had her arm protectingly round her younger sister. Pak smiled, pinched out the wick and lay down on his mat. Puglug had lain down already, but that was no concern of his. He lay awake until she had fallen asleep; then, feeling it hot and oppressive in the little room, he got up and went out into the yard. The moon was shining and the palm-tops were black against the brightness in the sky. He walked aimlessly to and fro, driven by the unrest in his blood. Then he squatted down and let the night air and the dew cool his body, but it was no good. It is a fever that destroys the flesh, he thought sadly. If it goes on, it will take me three days to plough one furrow and I will get behind with my work, and they will shut off the water from my sawahs and I shall be punished. He went out through the gate and crouched in the sluice that flowed along the wall and through the village. The water cooled but did not calm him. I must take Sarna into my home, he thought, so that I can see her and be with her whenever I wish. Sarna is a rich man’s daughter and spoilt. She will not be the second wife and do as Puglug bids her when she has to pound the rice. He tried to imagine Sarna doing the housework in a dirty kain and getting ugly as Puglug had. That cannot be, he thought. If she is spoilt, she can go on being spoilt. I am rich enough. Besides, it is well known that the second wife is for the husband’s pleasure as a rule. He went back into the moonlit yard and knotted up his kain again around his wet hips. Thoughts surged in his wretched head, which was not used to thinking. The dogs had woken up and looked at him with surprise. Then he heard light footsteps in the yard, and looking up he saw the old man there. “Why do you not sleep, my son?”

  “I don’t know, father. I am overcome by a great restlessness and the narrow walls of my rooms suffocate me,” Pak replied. The moon shone brightly and every object and every building cast black shadows. The old man, who had shrunk together in the last years, so that Pak was now taller than he, looked sadly up at him.

  “I thought the cow must have broken loose,” Pak muttered. “It is nothing else, father——”

  “I have heard you creeping home just before cockcrow for three nights past. Are you going secretly to a woman?” the old man asked, and Pak realized with relief that there was nothing the old man in his wisdom did not know and understand.

  “What is it that tortures a man like a sickness and puts him beyond his own help? It is a woman—and I must have her or else my whole life will be brought to nought.”

  His father considered this for a while. “I will speak to my old friend, the pedanda,” he said. “In all probability this woman has used sorcery and the spell must be broken. You know that the mother of the husky man of Sanur is a witch and the women go to her for such things. Now go to sleep and tomorrow I will see how to heal you of this sickness.”

  Pak hung his head at this. He had no desire to be healed. He wanted to have this fever for ever in his blood and Sarna with him in his house to appease it. He tried in vain to imagine that she took the dark way to the witch and mixed a witch’s brew with his food. But she was always at the back of his eyes, and he could see her at every moment, and her face was always sweet and faultless, full of laughter and roguishness; it was inconceivable that she should have anything to do with the black arts of magic. He followed his father’s bent and withered form across the moonlit yard to his balé “May I sleep with you, old man?” he asked familiarly as if he was still a child. The old man nodded. Pak lay down beside his father’s emaciated form which took little room on the couch and his father spread half of his own kain over his son. Lantjar, the youngest of the brothers, was asleep on the floor. Pak felt calmer to be lying close to his father as in his childhood. His eyes closed. It would be sensible to take Dasni, he thought. But I do not want to be sensible, but happy, he thought again as he fell asleep.

  Raka and Lambon were coming over the rice-fields from Kesiman. They were on their way home after a three weeks’ stay in the house of the old teacher of dancing. They were a long time on the way, because in all the villages they passed through Raka was hailed and stopped and invited into the houses and pressed to take at least some fruit or sirih. Laughing and light-hearted he went on his way, taking as a matter of course the love people felt for him. As his dancing delighted them and it made them happy to offer him hospitality, it would have been impolite to decline what they were glad to give.

  The basket on Lambon’s head was soon full of fruit and sirih and at last Raka was carrying on his bamboo pole a hamper containing a little black pig. Someone had given it to him for his wife, Teragia, in gratitude for her care of a sick child. Raka was in no hurry to be home. He sat down on the steps leading up to the doors of houses and talked to the old women, who were always eager for news of neighboring villages. He squatted at the road-sides with the men who were fondling their fighting-cocks and weighing one against another and even letting them fight one another for practice and the fun of the thing. It was the idle hour of the day when field labor was done and there was leisure for amusement.

  In every village the young unmarried men, who were as yet of no importance whatever, assembled in their open balés, smoking, chewing and boasting of their latest conquests. Raka sat with them and chaffed them and slapped them on the back. But when they asked him about his own adventures he laughed and said he had nothing to tell them. He was said to be all the more a favorite with the girls because of his reticence. Whenever he passed a mother with her little children beside her, he called out his congratulations and admired the beauty and fatness of the babe at her breast. He jokingly helped the young girls to hoist the heavy pitchers on to their heads when they had drawn water. He talked to children, cows and ducks he met by the way and let no one pass without asking them whence and whither. And so it was that they had been a good two hours on the way before reaching the river that flowed at the back of Taman Sari.

  Lambon kept always a pace or two behind Raka, for he was her elder and almost her teacher and married and of the highest caste. She was proud of going in his company through the villages and seeing how beloved he was; and she knew that girls older than her, who already had big breasts, were envious of her. She strode on with a nervous look and felt in every inch of her the joy of Raka’s presence and of being Lambon, the dancer, on whom the raja himself had smiled when he saw her dance.

  When Raka loitered anywhere she knelt down by the roadside and wiped the little beads of sweat from her face. She had plenty to do, too, with her hair and her head-dress while waiting for him, for she had just reached puberty and now there was to be a neat coil of hair on her head and a fringe, as sign of her maidenhood. Apart from this, not much fuss had been made of it, a few offerings had been offered up, her brother Pak had given her a new sarong, and one or two of Puglug’s friends had brought some sweet rice cakes which they helped to dispose of over a good gossip without paying much attention to the little ceremony. Lambon was not eager to be home again. It was a life of poverty and her brother’s and uncle’s wives were always having words over the little there was to eat. She
had been spoilt at Kesiman and she had become estranged day by day from the life in her own family.

  Her teacher’s home at Kesiman could almost be called a puri— there were so many balés and so many people living on his rice and everything was so fine and open-handed. It was at Kesiman, too, that Lambon had her friends, not at Taman Sari. There were two, younger than she was, with whom she danced the legong, and three others, who helped her to dress for dancing and looked with admiring eyes at her beauty. They confided all their secrets and there was no end to the giggling and laughing when they were together. Lambon’s favorite was little Resi, her master’s granddaughter, who was like a sister. Sometimes they sat a whole morning together hand in hand without speaking. Lambon was glad to be silent, for then she could think about Raka undisturbed. Now and then there were differences of opinion between the old dancing master and Raka. The master was a noble of a wealthy family and devoted his life to handing down the old dances and steps, as he himself had learnt them from his own master fifty years before in Sukawati. But Raka was daring: he suddenly did something in a dance that had never been seen before, and when the master took him to task, he was not even aware that he had danced in any but the traditional way. Lambon, on the other hand, executed every movement zealously and scrupulously in the way she had been taught, without departing from it by a tremor of her neck or a quiver of the little fan in her hand. She had fingers that could be bent right over the backs of her hands and fine mobile wrists. She could roll her shoulders as if they were balls and give her eyes a dazed stare or dart them like lightning from corner to corner of their sockets, just as the dance required. Raka had taught her how to touch her heels with the back of her head when dancing the legong. The old teacher was horrified at the sight of this unseemly innovation, but Lambon loved to do it and she practised it in secret, with Resi to support the small of her back. Now that she was a girl Lambon often found herself doing and wishing things she could not quite understand. She did not want to annoy the old dancing master; and yet to bend her supple body backwards with closed eyes gave her pleasure even though her head felt dizzy afterwards; for it was Raka who had taught her how to do it. Sometimes, too, she could not stop laughing at silly jokes of her friends. But above all, her heart was big with suspense, for now that she was growing up she would have to consider which man she would not refuse to sleep with if he asked her.

  She knew that she was beautiful; it was as obvious as that she had two legs. Her old teacher had impressed upon her that the gods were actually present, seated on their thrones, when she danced at the temple festivals. It was obvious that the gods could not be asked to look on at any but beautiful dancers. So when her old teacher, too, was pleased with her and her friends were full of admiration and Raka praised her, she was content to ignore the village youths who stood and looked after her as she went by. She wanted none of them. She wanted Raka. But Raka, as far as she could see, thought as little of her as she did of the little fan she used for dancing.

  Everything she knew came from Raka. He showed her every movement which her teacher was too old and stiff to show her. He stood behind her, holding her hands firmly and making every movement with her until she got it right. He put his fingers on her neck and made her aware of all its vertebrae separately until she could move them one by one. He clasped her round the hips and glided to and fro with her until she gained the right speed and agility and could do it alone. Other girls all grew up with their mothers, far removed from men. But she had been used from childhood to having the hands of her master and Raka on her body. And for some time now it made a lot of difference whether it was the old guru’s or Raka’s.

  When they reached the shadow of the palms which fringed the top of the river bank, Raka stopped. Lambon stopped too, politely in the rear. “Let us rest a little,” he called to her. “This son of a pig gets heavier the longer I carry it.” Lowering the bamboo pole from his shoulder, he put the hamper down on the grass. The little pig grunted its satisfaction. Lambon dropped to her knees and took the basket from her head. Raka looked idly at her. “My stomach feels empty again,” he called out to her. She brought him the basket and knelt in front of him. He lazily took a pisang and began to eat it. Lambon watched with veneration in her eyes. He had gleaming white, evenly filed teeth. When he had done he turned over on his back with his arm under his head and looked up into the tree-tops.

  “The lord wants us to dance the baris again in Badung next week. He has visitors from Tabanan,” he said drowsily.

  “That will be lovely,” Lambon said delightedly. She loved the glamour of the puri, and the baris was the only dance in which she could dance with Raka. The old teacher, certainly, thought it unseemly, but the Taman Sari dance guild had held out on this point, and the success which had attended the innovation of a girl’s appearing with the male dancers had justified them. The teacher had assembled his pupils and told them the story of the baris dance. Lambon never attended to what the narrator chanted during a performance, but she sat full of awe while her teacher told the stories of demons and gods, although she forgot it all again directly. All she retained was the impression that the dancing belonged to another world than that of the village and her brother’s household. A world of princes and princesses and demons, with gods coming down from heaven to fight with them, of women who were likened to flowers and wild birds and deep ponds, in which gold-fishes swam.

  It was not the same, either, in the house of Raka’s father, the pedanda, as it was in her own home. Lambon sometimes went on errands there for her father or was sent for by Raka. She was always a little afraid of Teragia, although she was never anything but kind to her. She smoothed Lambon’s hair with her large hand and also brought her bright-colored fruit-juice in the half of a coconut shell and little rice cakes tasting of palm sugar. Yet Lambon always felt embarrassed in the priest’s house, everything there was so spotless; and flowers of every color, which Raka’s father, the pedanda Ida Bagus Rai, needed for the daily offerings, grew there. Raka’s mother went noiselessly about the courtyard—a tall, erect old lady dressed in a black kain and with the breasts of a young girl. As she was blind it was her custom to acquaint herself with persons and things by touch. It seemed funny to Lambon when the old lady’s cool hands explored her face as though she was a piece of carving or a figure in wood. But you could not laugh in the priest’s house as you could elsewhere. Even Raka was not the same in the presence of his parents and his wife.

  Lambon’s thoughts went from one thing to another as she sat beside Raka on the grass, following the direction of his eyes. All he could possibly see up there was a little cloud slowly sailing to join her sisters near the Great Mountain. Raka pulled a stalk of grass and began chewing it. Suddenly he laughed aloud and turned over and stared in Lambon’s face. “What are you laughing at?” she asked, taken aback.

  “Not at you,” he replied, still laughing. He waved his left hand in the air to disclaim the idea. Only nobles and artists might wear their nails so long. They were pointed like the spur of a fighting-cock and the color of mussels.

  The little pig gave a loud squeak. Lambon aimed a blow at it. “Don’t——” Raka said, holding her hand tightly. She wrenched it free and said, “You hurt me.” It was a lie. It pleased her when Raka held her hand, even if it did hurt. Now her hand lay on the grass like a, pisang rind someone had thrown down and Raka once more gazed into the sky.

  The faint outline of the new moon could be seen rising in the east, scarcely visible, for the sky was still bright. Lambon looked impatiently at the sky that detained Raka’s eyes.

  “Is it true that there used to be seven moons?” she asked. Ever since she had put on her first kain and begun to dance she had been accustomed to ask Raka everything.

  “You always forget everything you are told,” he said. “There used to be seven moons, until one of them fell down and now it hangs in the Temple of Pedjeng as a giant gong. Since then there have been only six, and that is why the year has only six months
now. It used to have seven,” Raka said drowsily, without taking his eyes from the sky.

  “Is the woman who lives in the moon very beautiful?” “Yes, she is very beautiful.”

  “What does she look like?” Lambon asked importunately. Raka at last took his eyes from the cloud and sat up. “How am I to know?” he asked in a moment. “I have never paid her a visit yet.”

  “Do you know any girl who is like what you imagine her to look like?” Lambon asked. She would have given her new sarong to hear Raka reply: “You, you, Lambon.” But he said, “No.”

  Lambon decided to talk of something else. “Are there any other countries beside Bali?”

  “Yes,” he said, “there is Java, where our ancestors came from.” It was wonderful how Raka knew everything. But his reply left her as unsatisfied as before. “And who made the stars?” she asked.

  Raka sighed, for Lambon’s mania for asking questions was exhausting and replies were thrown away, for she forgot all she was told. But after a look at her parted and expectant lips he decided to answer this too.

  “You must imagine heaven just like Bali. Just the same. There are the same villages and temples and puris. Only that in heaven everything stands on its head, as though reflected in a river. Yes,” he said, “Bali is a reflection of heaven. You can understand that. Up there there are sawahs just as here below and what you see sparkling as stars are the tips of the young plants hanging down towards us.”