by Vicki Baum
At this Pak could keep his secret no longer, but dug the plates up again and showed them to his father by the light of the oil lamp. The old man held them up close to his dim eyes and stroked the smooth porcelain and looked at the roses and pondered over them for a long time. “Where did these come from?” he asked at last.
“They came from the earth in our eastern sawah when I was ploughing deeply,” Pak said. It was not actually a lie and his conscience was clear.
“Plates such as these came to us long ago from the countries beyond Java, from China and countries whose names are not known,” the old man said, and Pak marvelled, as so often before, at the extent of his father’s knowledge.
“Are they worth a lot of money?” he asked deferentially.
And his father said, “More than you can count. Someone must have buried them in the raja’s sawah long ago.”
One day Pak wrapped the plates in a freshly washed kain and tied them to a bamboo and set off for Sanur.
“Where are you going?” he was asked by everyone he met. “To Sanur,” he said without stopping.
“What are you going to do at Sanur?” they asked.
“I have something to sell the Chinese, Njo Tok Suey,” he replied with an important air as he walked on. The whole village was left buzzing with curiosity and that was just what he wanted.
When he arrived at the Chinaman’s house he had to pluck up his courage, but at last he went in; he did not crouch on his heels on the ground but stood upright, for Njo Tok Suey was a Chinaman without caste.
“If you have pigs to sell you had better go to Kula with them,” the Chinese said. “The boats that put in here want no more pigs. But if you have any copra, we could talk about that.”
“I don’t want to sell either pigs or copra but something far better, something you have never before set eyes on,” Pak said, puffed up with pride. “Show me,” the Chinese said. Pak undid the clean kain with ceremony, wiped each plate before taking it out and then displayed the three plates.
Njo Tok Suey at first said nothing at all. Then he went into the house for his spectacles. Pak quailed slightly, but not too much, when the Chinaman emerged wearing the spectacles. A man who had less hair on his head than a pig on its back could not make much impression on him.
“Where did these plates come from?” the Chinese asked.
Pak was ready with his story of having turned them up in his field when he was ploughing deeply. He told him also what his father had said. “They came from China long ago and must have been buried as a great treasure in the raja’s fields. Perhaps they were an offering against bad harvests and mice,” he added on his own account, for this had just occurred to him and struck him as being a remarkably acute observation. Njo Tok Suey shook his head as he turned the plates over in his hands. “They are not old and they do not come from China either,” he said. Suddenly something appeared to have come into his head, and he went quickly into the house and came back with a voluminous document. Pak looked over his shoulder, but he could make nothing of it.
“It occurred to me that somebody had stolen from the ship and buried them in your sawah,” Njo Tok Suey said finally. “But they are not on the list.” This sounded Chinese to Pak’s ears, but nevertheless he gave a slight start. He had contrived to forget how the plates came into his hands, and now he shuddered when he remembered the night he had kept watch and encountered the husky man. “Why do you come to me with these plates?” Njo Tok Suey asked.
“I want to sell them and you are the only man with enough money; also you know better than other people the worth of such treasure,” Pak said confidentially. Njo Tok Suey again looked the plates over. “You have not any copper to sell?” he asked abruptly.
“What is copper?” Pak asked with an innocent expression.
“I can easily tell you that,” the Chinese replied. “Copper is what you people stole from the ship which was wrecked here. Kepengs are made of it.”
“I stole nothing,” Pak replied in an injured tone. “I was one of the watch.” Whereupon Njo Tok Suey looked at him for some time in silence.
Pak had heard talk in the village of this and that having been taken from the wreck, but nobody bothered about it any longer. He had even been to the beach himself with his younger brother, Lantjar, who deserved a little fun now and again, and was of use besides helping to carry home nails and wood and whatever else they might find.
“I want to take a second wife and I must build her a house, for she comes of wealthy parents and is beautiful enough to ask that and more,” Pak said, deciding to put all his cards on the table. “That is why I want to part with my treasure and sell the plates which the Goddess herself sent me. It costs money to marry a second wife, as you know, sir.”
Njo Tok Suey removed his spectacles as though the plates were not worth further inspection. “I have no use for the plates,” he said. “You would do better to bring me copra. But to oblige you I will give you ten kepengs for each of them.”
Pak laughed bitterly. He knew that dealing with a Chinese was worse than having leeches behind your knees. But this was going too far. “Ten ringits each,” he shouted. “And even then it is making you a present of them.”
They bargained on and on, but the Chinese was hard-headed and it came to nothing. Twelve kepengs each was the utmost he would bid, and this was no more than Pak sometimes spent in one day on sirih alone. He wrapped up his plates again and returned to Taman Sari. He was not downhearted, far from it. He burled the plates again, this time near the wall, so that Puglug might not find them, and carefully trod down the soil.
Next day the whole village knew that Pak had turned up some plates in his sawah, and a number of inquisitive people turned up on one pretext or another and stood about in his yard, keeping their eyes open for a sight of the plates. This was just what Pak wanted. It might be all to the good if the wealthy Wajan heard that Pak, who was poor, had something that no one else in the village had so much as set eyes on.
From now onwards Puglug talked of nothing else, and she turned up every yard of earth in the courtyard in the hope of finding the plates, and seeing them with her own eyes and touching them with her own fingers. His aunt and uncle brought him tid-bits to wheedle his secret out of him. And Pak was aware from all sides how greatly he had grown in importance. Sarna alone asked no questions. She merely gave him a sidelong look now and then, while her tongue roamed over her upper lip—a sign that she was thinking something over. Pak himself had to introduce the topic.
“There are some people in the village who seem to think I have turned up treasure in my sawah,” he said. He was having rather a restless time of it, for as soon as Puglug left the house, he dug up the plates and buried them again somewhere else so that she should not find them. Also, now that the Chinaman had refused to deal, he did not know what to do but bury them in one place after another and content himself with the riches of secrecy and the importance it gave him.
“The people in the village seem to think you offered yourself for the low job of scaring squirrels and gathering coconuts, like any other poor man,” Sarna said, and her words were like a douche of cold water.
“There are some things women do not understand,” he replied with dignity. Sarna pinched his ears and laughed, but before he left her she asked when they would meet again, and the lover’s fever in his blood burnt more fiercely than ever.
It was true that he was working hard at gathering coconuts; he wanted more than his own twelve trees yielded. By rights he ought now to be taking it easy after the heavy labors of ploughing and planting. Instead of that he had to climb up and down the palm trees, skinning his calves on the trunks, and then load himself up with coconuts. When he got home he set his brother Lantjar and his sister Lambon to work to cut up the nuts and dry them in the yard, so that he should have copra to sell the Chinaman.
“It’s a shame,” Puglug broke out. “Soon we shall not have a drop of coconut milk to feed Klepon on when she teethes and we shall hav
e to buy coconuts for the temple dues and we shall forget what grated coconut tastes like.”
“Which only shows that there is more sense in many a coconut than in the heads of some people I know of,” her aunt said, bristling for battle. Pak said nothing at all. He took his four cocks to the place where most of the men forgathered at that time of day. He wanted to hear no more for a good while about women, coconuts and buried crockery. Even his little sister, Lambon, was not the same ever since she had grown too old to dance the legong. She sat sullenly in front of a pile of coconuts, which were destined to become copra, and forgot even to lift her knife for half an hour together.
And so it came to that Friday when all Pak’s perplexities were submerged for an hour or two in the excitement of an event which went beyond anything he had ever experienced.
It started with the beating of the kulkul to summon all the men of the village to the house of the punggawa of Sanur. They lost no time; from Taman Sari and from the neighboring four villages along the coast they hastened over the rice-fields strung out in single file. It was the same as on the day when the Chinese ship struck. “What can it mean?” Pak asked the wise Krkek. “I had the news yesterday,” he replied carelessly. “A great punggawa of the white men has come in a ship from Buleleng to ask questions of us.”
“Ask questions of us? What does he want to ask?” Pak cried out, and his knees gave way beneath him with fright.
“We shall know soon,” was all Krkek said.
The punggawa’s courtyard was like the entrance to a hollow tree inhabited by, bees. It was one surging jostling crowd and women vendors had already spread their mats on its fringes, for there was the promise of doing a brisk trade. Pak squeezed his way into the yard behind Krkek, and as most of the crowd was now squatting down he made room for himself between two half-grown lads. And now he saw the white man.
The sight was not nearly so bad as he had imagined it would be. In the first place, the white man was no taller than Pak himself, and he sweated like any ordinary man. All the same, there was something frightening about his face, for it was not white, as you might have expected, but pink, as light-colored buffaloes were beneath their bristles. The white man was enclosed in unbecoming and solidly constructed clothing, though this certainly was white, and he sat on a kind of seat Pak had never seen before.
“What is that he is sitting on?” he whispered in Krkek’s ear.
“A chair. All white men have them,” Krkek said. Pak clicked his tongue in amazement.
“Is he lame?” he asked next, when he had considered this strange apparatus from new points of view. “Or why do his legs hang down like that?”
“Be quiet,” Krkek said testily. “White men cannot sit in any other way. It is the sign of their caste.” This satisfied Pak for the time. He could tell that the white man was of high caste by the fact that his chair was higher than the punggawa’s mat. Also the punggawa’s servant held the indispensable umbrella over the white man and not over the ruler of the coast villages.
“Silence,” the men in the courtyard called out, and stirred expectantly to and fro. “He is going to speak to us.”
All opened their mouths in order to hear better and a murmur of wonder ran through the crowd when the Controller addressed them in their own tongue. “He speaks like anyone else,” Pak said, quite taken aback. Rib, the wag, was sitting near him. “Did you expect him to grunt like a pig?” he asked audibly, and there was laughter from behind. The punggawa stood and looked over the heads of the crowd. “Silence,” he said severely. “Listen to what the tuan Controller has to say to you and answer when you are asked.”
“People of Sanur, Taman Sari, Intaran, Renon and Dlodpekan,” the Controller said, “you all remember that on the second day of the third week of the second month a ship, the Sri Kumala, was wrecked on your coast?”
“That is so,” the people murmured readily.
‘’Now I want those of you whom the punggawa appointed as a watch to step forward.”
For a time the courtyard looked like a rice sieve when women shake it and the grains roll this way and that. But at last twelve men pushed their way to the front row with their hands clasped. Pak was one of them and Sarda, the fisherman, and his waggish friend, Rib, and several other of Pak’s neighbors. “It is true then that a watch was set,” the Controller said to the punggawa. Krkek made himself the spokesman for the rest.
“It is,” he said in a voice that trembled slightly. “There was a watch set for several days, two and two, good honest men.”
The Controller pondered this, wrinkling his forehead meanwhile. “Punggawa,” he said.
“Tuan Controller,” said the punggawa, and clasped his hands as though he were a man of no caste in comparison with the white man.
“The punggawa told me yesterday that he set no watch because he did not wish to accept any responsibility, and that the watchmen of the Chinese were overpowered and the ship plundered. This morning, when questioned by the raja himself, the punggawa took all this back. I am now convinced that a watch was set. But what am I to make of these two different stories, and what am I to say to the tuan Resident?”
“There was a watch set, tuan Controller,” the punggawa said, and his voice sounded small and hollow. “But as our watchmen were tired and sleepy men who did not keep good watch over the boat, I thought it better to say that I had not provided a watch.”
“Which of you kept watch the first night?” the Controller next asked. “I want to speak to them.”
Krkek gave Pak a push in the back which landed him straight in front of the Controller. Clutching about him in alarm he encountered Sarda the fisherman’s arm and gripped tight hold of it. The Controller seemed to smile and Pak felt relieved. He ventured shyly to return the smile.
“Now, my friends,” the Controller said—and by this time Pak had grown used to the sight of him—“you kept watch the first night. Tell me what you saw. I know all about it, so it is no use lying.”
“It was cold and later it rained,” Krkek said on behalf of both of them, as neither of them opened his mouth. “It was hard to keep a fire going.”
“I have been told that a number of men came in the middle of the night and plundered the boat. Perhaps there were so many of them that you were afraid and ran away. There is no need to be ashamed of that, for you are simple folk and no warriors.”
“That is so,” they all murmured complacently, for this seemed to them a good way of putting it. Sarda then opened his mouth. “I did not see any men,” he said, and shut it again.
“And you?” the Controller asked, looking at Pak. This was unpleasant, for his light eyes were like a blind man’s, and yet they looked keenly in Pak’s face. He felt hot under his head-dress and his hair stood on end. He wrinkled his forehead and thought hard, for he had a poor memory.
“I don’t know whether I saw any men or not,” he said at last. “How do you mean, you don’t know? Are your eyes bad?” the Controller asked patiently.
“Very bad. They would not keep open, sir, although I strictly commanded them to. But for as long as they were open I saw no men,” Pak said.
Now an event happened—the white man began to laugh. He opened his mouth and laughed aloud. At first they all stared at him, and then the laughter caught on over the whole courtyard. They all pointed and cried out, “Look, just look at him—he is laughing!”
Above all the noise Rib’s voice could be heard saying, “Pak had a quiet night for once. He had not got to sleep with his wife!”
The punggawa extended his hand and the laughter slowly ceased. The white man got to his feet and his face was now very serious.
“You people, men of the coast of Badung,” he said, “when this boat was wrecked it was driven by the storm, but it was a good ship, laden with money and goods. Is that so?”
There was a murmur of assent.
“When you go down to the shore now, what do you see? A few boards—not even good enough for mussels to take possession of.
I want to know what has become of the ship. What has become of the goods and the ringits it carried? Who destroyed it and took away its masts and planks?”
The men stirred uneasily on their bare heels at this direct interrogation. Many of them chewed feverishly and not one made any reply. Someone from behind near the wall growled out that the sea and Baruna, the sea-god, had taken what it pleased them to take, but the murmur soon died away.
“You men are responsible for this ship,” the Controller said in a loud voice. “I stand here in the name of my master, the lord Resident of Bali and Lombok, who is a just man and loves you as his own children. If you restore what you have stolen, you shall be pardoned. If not, ships will come with cannon and rifles and you will rue the day you plundered that boat.”
The Controller sat down again and wiped the sweat from his face with a white cloth. Profound silence ensued and the men’s faces went mute and blind. They clenched their teeth and said not a word. They had been insulted and there was nothing they could say. The silence went on and on and lay like a weight on the courtyard. Suddenly, when it had become almost intolerable, a man stepped forward. Every eye was fixed on him. It was Bengek, the husky man, the son of the witch.
“May I speak?” he asked the punggawa, and the punggawa nodded.
“I am a fisherman, sir,” Bengek said in his whispered tones that all the same could be heard in the farthest corner of the yard. “I have to go to sea when it is dark and the men in the village are asleep. I went out earlier than the other fishermen on the night of the shipwreck—and I saw some men. Other nights, too, I saw them, when there was no moon. They waded out and boarded the wreck. They were men from Gianjar.”