by Vicki Baum
Lambon looked about her at the young plants gleaming in the water of the sawah and then looked again up into the sky. Raka’s explanation made her feel a little dizzy.
“Some people say all the same that the stars are simply there to ornament the sky at night,” Raka added.
“I don’t believe that,” Lambon said with decision. She thought it over for a moment and then reached for her basket and arranged the fruit in it.
“Sambeh is going to have a baby soon,” she said meanwhile, without looking at Raka.
“Who?” he asked in surprise.
“Sambeh, the servant in your house,” Lambon said. She paused, and as Raka made no reply she went on, “She is going to have a baby, and then she will be unclean for forty-two days, and won’t be allowed to cook any food or be of any use at all about the house.”
“It seems the gods will it so,” Raka said piously. He did not know what Lambon was driving at.
“Teragia will want another servant,” Lambon said.
Raka had nothing to say to this. He took hold of his pole and tied the hamper with the little pig to it. The little pig squealed like a baby.
“I should love to be a servant in your house,” Lambon said. “I thought perhaps you would ask Teragia to take me as a servant when Sambeh has her child . . .”
She came to a stop and could not go on. Her heart pounded. She could feel the blood rush to her face and was angry with herself. Raka put two fingers under her chin and lifted back her head and looked at her face with curiosity. “No,” he said. “No, Lambon, I can make no use of you as a servant.”
“Not? Why not?” Lambon whispered in dismay.
“You are too forgetful for a cook, too clumsy to carry water,” Raka said severely. She looked at him miserably and he began to laugh. “Lambon,” he cried, “you are too beautiful by far for a servant, particularly in a pedanda’s household.”
Lambon sat motionless and her hands went limp. She looked down at herself and then up at Raka. His skin was much fairer than hers. Raka was fair-skinned and handsome and she had a brown skin and thin arms and her father was a poor man of low caste.
“You are not to laugh at me,” she said angrily.
Raka looked at her in astonishment. “What things you think of while you sit there with your eyes going dark,” he said teasingly.
“My eyes do not go dark, not when I think of you,” she said, almost bursting with rage. He laughed out loud. “You can’t see your own eyes. But I can and they are dark,” he shouted.
Lambon turned her head away in mortification, when he took her by the hands and drew her towards him and stared in her eyes. She pulled her head-dress down over her face and then, feeling that this was not concealment enough, she buried her head in her arms. Raka let go of her and shrugged his shoulders; then he got up, stretched, put the pole across his shoulder and walked on. Lambon raised her head, and when she saw that Raka had gone on she, too, took up her basket and followed him down the steep river bank. On the way she picked a little purple flower and put it in her hair above her forehead. The load on her head did not sway. Raka looked round at her and laughed.
“Let us have a bathe before we go home. We are hot and dusty,” he called to her. There was no one at the bathing pool yet, for the sun had not set, though the moon was visible. The water looked cool and the sand gleamed in the river bed. Raka did not wait for her answer. He had already undone his kain, and covering himself with one hand, as he had learnt to do as a child, waded into mid-stream. There was a small rock there, on which the women who had bathed that morning had laid offerings—now withered. Lambon put her basket down, girded up her sarong and followed his example; only she kept at a distance and went farther downstream, away from the rocks, to the spot where women always bathed. She heard him splashing and blowing higher up and saw him forging through the water, turning it to milky foam. When the water was up to her waist she took off her sarong and threw it on to the bank. Her legs were much lighter in color than her breast, which was always exposed to the sun. It was a never-ceasing tribulation to Lambon that the very parts of her that Raka saw were tanned and coarse. Kneeling on the sandy bottom she plunged her hair into the water to wash it. The water was cool and clear and the current was stronger there than elsewhere. Lambon’s spirits rose; she shouted for joy and smacked the water with her hands. Raka was just wading ashore; his body shone wet as he wound his kain about his waist, Lambon played about a little longer in the water, but Raka took up his pig and went on, as though he had forgotten all about her. As soon as he had turned away, she scrambled hurriedly out of the water, slipped on her sun-warmed sarong and began smoothing her hair. She looked about for some flower, and finding two more of the violet-colored ones, adorned herself with them. She felt cheerful and happy now and the wind blew refreshingly against her moist body. She looked down at herself and was rather better pleased with the sight. Then she picked up her basket and hurried after Raka. She caught him not far from a wairingin tree that shadowed a small rice temple. He stopped and waited as she came breathlessly up with him.
“Do you really mean you want to come into my house?” he asked, just as though they had never stopped talking together.
“Yes,” she said eagerly, supporting the basket on her head with her left hand. Raka looked her up and down, he looked at her hair, her face, her neck, her breast and her hips and the cheap new sarong of which she was so proud.
“But I want no second wife in my house,” he said jokingly, and yet with just a hint of earnest. Lambon stared at him in alarm. The next moment his arms were round her and his face pressed to hers. The wairingin tree rose high and dark above them. A bird sang and ceased again. Lambon’s knees failed her and the nipples of her breasts hurt. She pushed Raka away with all her strength. He picked up the pole and his pig, which he had let fall on to the grass.
“Be quiet,” he said to the little beast which had begun to squeal. “We are going straight home now.”
He had vanished from sight while Lambon was still collecting the fruit which had been scattered from her basket. It is his fruit, she thought, running after him. She caught him up only at the edge of the village. “Here is your basket,” she called out breathlessly. “Keep it,” he called back. But she ran on and caught hold of him by his kain. He turned round and stood close to her with a laughing tender look in his eyes.
“You will not be able to dance much longer, Lambon,” he said. I never noticed it until today, he thought. Lambon is too old now for the legong.
Lambon gazed at him without understanding at once what he was saying. It had never entered her head that her dancing was over when she arrived at puberty.
“Too old——?” she murmured. “But what shall I do when I cannot dance any longer?”
He felt sorry for her; not very, for she was charming and he knew that he could have her when he wished.
“It is time you looked out for a husband,” he said. “There are plenty of men in the village who would like to sleep with you.” He took her head in his hands for a moment, her warm hair in his warm hands. The three purple flowers were still in her hair, but crushed, when he turned and left her. Lambon stood looking after him until he reached the gate and disappeared.
His wife looked up from the loom as he came in, for he had been three weeks away from home; but he said nothing as he went past her to the sty with the little pig. “Has Raka come home?” his mother asked, for her eyes had grown dim. “Yes, he is here,” the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, called out to her, and went on chiselling a raksasa in stone which was to be set up as guardian at the cross-roads at the entrance to the village.
Teragia stood for a moment beside her weaving loom and then followed her husband to the pigsty.
Teragia was always the first to rise in the priest’s house-hold. She left Raka still fast asleep and went out softly. The morning was dewy and loud with the songs of birds. She returned to the house again to get a clean kain and she put another ready for Raka when he wok
e. She paused a moment to look at his sleeping face. Raka the beautiful. His hair fell over his cheeks and he breathed deeply and evenly. Raka, Teragia thought, my husband, my handsome brother. She never got over her amazement that the gods had given her Raka. Beside his beauty she felt herself ugly, and stiff and dead beside his life. She spread out her hands over his breast, but did not venture to touch him.
When she went out into the courtyard again to get water from the large earthenware vessel and wash her face and hands, she heard her father-in-law, the great pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, coughing in the big house; and so she went quickly to the kitchen quarters and roused the two servants. Soon after the fire in the hearth was fanned to a flame and the smoke curled out through the thatched roof.
Teragia bowed low as the pedanda descended the steps. She knew that he meditated in the mornings and disliked speaking before he had prayed. Also he might not eat, drink or chew sirih until he had blessed the holy water for the day. She stood humbly to one side as he passed without seeing her. Ida Bagus Rai was a tall man whose hair was turning gray and the bridge of his nose was as thin as the blade of a knife. He walked on to the balé, where he prayed and sat down on his cushion with legs crossed and folded hands to meditate. The day before Teragia had woven small platters of palm-leaves of the kind prescribed for the daily offerings. She fetched cooked rice from the kitchen and sirih from the basket, and she went into the garden to pick flowers for the offerings and arranged them in the correct manner in the platters. Then she stepped over the bamboo grating which separated the precincts of the house temple from the rest of the courtyard, to keep the pigs out.
There were many beautiful shrines. The pedanda himself had chiselled the stone figures of gods and demons on which the altars rested. Teragia folded her hands over her forehead, knelt down and then laid the offerings on each shrine. The fowls came and pecked up any grains of rice that were left over. The sun was now up and a blue moist haze rose from the palms and mingled with the acrid smoke from the kitchen hearth. Teragia’s next task was to put the loom ready for Raka’s mother. The old lady could still weave quite well by the mere touch of her skilled hands without the use of her eyes. But Teragia had to put the strands of yarn ready for her with the colors in the right order. When this was done it was time to go to the spring to fetch water for the pedanda to consecrate.
Teragia would not leave this task to a servant; it was her own treasured and sacred duty. Also the women of the village believed that the water which Teragia herself fetched had a double virtue. Therefore she raised the heavy pitcher to her head, after placing over its mouth a basket with a few little offerings, and left the yard.
She soon joined the procession of women who were on their way to the spring to bathe. They were mostly pious elderly women who were not content to bathe in the river but took the longer steeper path up the river gorge where a very ancient and incredibly large wairingin tree gripped with its roots the mossy rocks whence the spring issued. Every day when Teragia, alone and unaccompanied by a servant, mingled with them as though she were one of themselves, it was a feast of joy to them. They touched her dress and her hands to show their pleasure and crooned old-fashioned blessings on her in long-drawn chants—happiness for the day, joy on her path, stillness of mind and a son, or many, in due time. Some of them who were grandmothers brought their grandchildren with them to let Teragia see the cuts they had got from bamboo splinters or from coral on the beach.
Teragia loved these early morning hours when everything glistened as though created afresh overnight. She took off her two kains and stood beneath the spring which spouted from the mouth of an old, mossy stone serpent. She looked like a boy among the other women, for she was taller than they and her breasts scarcely showed. After washing her hair and smoothing it down she wound her kains about her again. Then she joked with the old women and took the children between her knees and rubbed an ointment of yellow kunjit on their sore places. She did not fill her pitcher until peace fell again on the spring. But first she laid her offerings on the little wooden altars which stood in the gorge above it. Her knees shook as she hoisted the full pitcher on to her head, but she was strong and carried her load with back erect.
When she reached the river again she did not take the usual path by the ford but went about a hundred paces upstream, where a small basin had been hollowed out among some rocks. Lower down, the river was already approaching the sea and sluggish, but here it rushed turbulently in small rapids. As Teragia crossed it, she caught sight of the pedanda at the edge of the river a little higher up. He was cleaning his teeth, washing his long hair and bathing. He was accompanied only by two pupils. Teragia too called herself a pupil of her father-in-law’s, for though she was not initiated into the secrets of the sacred Mantras and Mudras, he taught her to read the old books and imparted the knowledge by which one could tell which days were auspicious and which of all the thousand different offerings to offer up.
When Teragia got home again Raka was still asleep, but his mother was already seated at her loom. “Greeting, daughter, peace on your coming,” she chanted. Teragia stroked the old lady’s hands and put a flower in her smooth hair. “Peace on your work,” she replied, smiling.
The two servant-girls were laughing happily as they swept the courtyard and fed the pigs. Teragia carefully poured out some of the spring water into a silver vessel, which she then replaced on the tripod in the prayer balé She fetched spills of sandalwood to burn and lit the sacred fire in a small brazier. She poured more water into a jar, ready for the priest’s washings. She brought flowers from many bushes and trees, red for Brahma, blue for Vishnu, white for Shiva. She tied a flower to the silver staff which was used for sprinkling the consecrated water and put the long-handled bell ready in its silken holder. She put on one side the basket containing the high crown which the pedanda wore at high festivals and arranged his cushion. When all was done she surveyed her work with satisfaction. While standing thus she felt what seemed to be a light touch on her neck. She turned quickly round with her hand on the place where she felt the touch. No one had touched her. But Raka was on the portico of the house and it must have been his look she felt as he looked at her from behind.
“Here is an empty stomach shouting for cooked rice,” he called to her. He patted the fine network of muscles over his diaphragm. Teragia laughed. “I was coming, hungry man,” she called back, and then, after quickly and rather hurriedly putting sirih beside the cushion, she ran to the kitchen.
She came back to Raka with a heaped-up leaf and found him sitting comfortably on his heels. The sweet clove scent of his cigarette pervaded the courtyard. Raka is at home again, Teragia thought happily. The rice was steaming hot and Teragia held the leaf while he ate. It pleased her to wait on him, though her palms hurt with the heat. She went for a second supply when she saw that he had still not had enough; also, as a surprise she brought him strong coffee in the only glass the household boasted of. Then she stood watching while her husband ate and drank and smoked again. “Come, eat too,” he said affectionately, and gave her what was left.
She sat turned away in a corner, for it was not the right thing to eat in a husband’s presence, and ate gladly.
Now the pedanda entered the courtyard and walked to the house with unseeing eyes and mind absorbed. Teragia left her husband, although she would gladly have stayed on enjoying these happy moments with him for ever. She went instead to give the priest his comb and the oil to comb out his hair. When it was smoothed to a close helmet round his refined and slender skull, he tied it in a tight knot at the back of his head, as a sign of his rank.
Teragia walked behind him as he went to his balé. He turned to the west, rinsed his mouth three times, poured water over his feet and again smoothed his hair. Then he took up the kain of white linen, which is the vestment of a pedanda, and put it on instead of his ordinary dress. Cleansed thus for his sacred duties he turned his face to the east, towards his domestic altar, in order to speak with the gods. The
fowls assembled expectantly beneath the balé, waiting for the grains of rice which fell to the ground in the course of the ceremony. A particularly impudent, youthful and ill-bred fowl made a great clatter which almost drowned the priest’s murmured words.
When Teragia looked about for Raka she discovered him leaning against a tree watching his father with a mixture of awe and amusement. He was now wearing a cloth wound rakishly about his head and the sunlight flashed from his teeth. Raka, Teragia thought again, that is Raka, my husband, whose child I bear within me. He knows nothing of the darkness upon which floats the world. Raka grimaced as the little monkeys in the garden always did, and vanished with a wave of the hand behind the kitchen. Teragia collected herself and followed the prayers with an earnest face.
Holding a champak flower between the forefinger of his clasped hands, with his priest’s ring on his thumb, Ida Bagus Rai spoke to the gods. He called on each one singly and for each one he cast a petal into the holy water and threw flowers to each of the four points of the compass. He took up the bell and rang it to call the attention of the gods and he moved his fingers, with all the grace of a dancer, in the ancient manner prescribed in the Mudras. From time to time he ceased from his murmured prayers and sank into a mute and concentrated supplication, with clasped hands raised to his forehead. Then he sprinkled himself and the flowers with water and put a tiny fan of flowers in his hair, as ordained for the priest. The fowls stood by and looked on. Teragia waited below the balé to be of service to him, but Ida Bagus Rai saw no one. The prayers went on and on, for the gods were many and each had to be summoned and addressed by his name as Lord and King and Prince and Raja. Teragia kept a look-out for Raka out of the corner of her eyes. He was sitting now on the balé where the implements were stored and busily employed. The servants’ children stood leaning against him, and two sons of their neighbor as well, and he was making kites for all of them. I will give you a fine son, and his kites will fly the highest, Teragia thought happily. She left the prayer balé and joined the group. Raka did not even see her. He and the children were now pulling hideous and comical faces at each other and their laughter rang through the courtyard. Teragia went closer to them; she was aware of the weight in her womb and felt that her hands were empty. She put them on the shoulders of one of the children and the boy looked round at her and his laughter died away.