by Vicki Baum
Pak was thankful she was so sensible and relieved she was going before his domestic troubles broke upon him.
“My father,” he said later to the old man, “where would be the best place to build a house for a second wife? And how soon could I start on it?”
The old man laughed to himself and replied, “I will ask my friend, the pedanda, what day would be favorable for building the foundations. And don’t worry any more. Even though it is a mistake to marry a woman for her looks, you will soon have had your fill of her and she will soon bear you a son and you will have peace.”
Although the weeks that followed were the most eventful in Pak’s life, there was a strange stillness in the household. Puglug had been mixing magic potions with his food in order to turn him from Sarna, but when she saw how useless it all was she gave in and did not even say anything, although she knew all. Puglug could be silent with the best when it was her policy; and Pak, who was eagerly absorbed in his preparations, actually believed that she was not aware of his plans. On his side he ignored the little troubles that began mysteriously to arise in his daily life. Sometimes there was not enough to eat when he came in from the sawah, or else he had the same remains put before him day after day long after the ants had infested them. When he looked for a clean kain there was none to be found and Puglug informed him that she had forgotten to do the washing. Or else she had an inflamed place on her arm and could not pound the rice for the household. Then she let the large pitcher fall from her head over the dried copra on the very day when he was taking it to Sanur to sell to the Chinaman. But nothing of all this broke in on Pak’s dream, for now he would have a second wife and his life would be as ripe and full of flavor as a durian fruit.
It turned out as his father had promised. The third Friday of the fourth month was the appointed day for beginning the building and Pak had brought along the earth and stones. He himself built the foundation walls, ramming the ground hard to receive them. He would have liked to have used red stones, like those of which Wajan’s chief house was built, but he could not find any and it would have been too costly to buy them; and so he used coral as everyone else did. Puglug went round the four sides and spat red betel-juice in her consternation, for it did not escape her that Pak had laid out a building rather larger even than his own house. Meru, on his return from the town, whistled in astonishment. “I’ve heard already that you carried off his chosen beauty from under the raja’s nose, brother,” he said good-humoredly. Pak was not sure whether this was said in jest or admiration, for Meru had a great reputation for his knowledge of women and his taste in them. “I shall want a garuda bird with Vishnu on its back for the main beam,” he said in lordly style.
“What will you give me to carve you one?” Meru asked. “Nothing, as you are my brother,” Pak said in a wounded tone.
Meru whistled again. He could carve garuda birds and Vishnus in his sleep by now—he had done so many for the puri at Badung. “A garuda bird and Vishnu an arm’s length in height and painted in red and gold, the same as in Bernis’s house,” Meru said. “Would that be good enough for her Highness, my brother’s second wife?”
“Who is Bernis?” Pak asked. But Meru did not answer. Instead he took his knife from his girdle and began playing with a piece of bamboo. “I’ll give you my white cock,” Pak said at last, and this was not a bad bargain for Meru.
“The men in the family have all lost their wits,” Puglug remarked to her aunt, taking care that Pak should overhear. “They say at Badung market that Meru is poaching in the puri preserves. One brother has lost his head in the village street, and the other will lose his head to the raja if he does not keep his hands off the palace women.”
Pak felt a touch of anxiety, for if it was true that Meru was making love on the sly to one of the raja’s wives he was in very real danger. He had a brief talk as man to man with his young brother. “You must not run after the women of the puri,” he said. “No good ever came of that kind of thing.”
Meru slapped himself on the thigh and laughed. “I run after the women?” he shouted. “I like that. It’s they who run after me, the little hens. The puri is full of slave-girls and they are all crazy as cats after the rainy season. Look after your own women and I’ll look after mine.”
“And I’ll want four carved cross-beams as well. I want the house to look imposing!” said Pak to end the discussion.
He went about looking for the straightest and best-grown trunks in the plantations, for if he could not buy nanka wood timbers, he wanted at least to have the best durian trees he could find. The best durian trees grew in Wajan’s plantation on the edge of the village and this suited Pak particularly well. He could bring off a fine stroke of diplomacy as well as a good bargain.
One Thursday morning he presented himself in Wajan’s courtyard wearing his silk saput about his loins and a new head-dress. Wajan received him amiably. As politeness enjoined Pak first talked at length about anything rather than his errand.
“My father tells me the great rain will come soon,” he said, and, “I hear that you have a srawah among your cocks that ought to be invincible,” and, “I have been asked whether I will have my mother burned at the burning on the fifth day of next week. But I have refused because I want her to have a pyre to herself and not have her burned with thirty more—which could not be any pleasure to her soul.”
This was sheer bragging, for Pak had not even got the twenty thousand kepengs for the communal burning. A private one, such as only rich people could afford, cost ten times as much, and this was a sum beyond Pak’s conception. Wajan, however, was as amiable as before and made lavish offers of sirih. And then Pak came to the object of his visit.
“I am employed in building a house for a second wife and her house has to be a finer one than my main house,” he said in one breath, for he had thought out this piece of eloquence beforehand. He could not possibly have hit on a better way of informing Wajan of his designs on Sarna and respecting the proprieties at the same time. “I heard something about it,” the old man remarked. “I wish you joy and peace in your house.”
“I have been looking round for trees for the timbers of my new house. Nobody has such fine ones as you and I wanted to ask whether you would sell me six durian trees and four palm trees from your northern plantation.”
“Why not?” Wajan said. He would reckon the price and perhaps he would let him have them, although he had really intended them for fruit. Pak in his reply again laid stress on his desire to build a fine house, and repeated that Wajan’s trees would suit him better than any in the village. But when Wajan asked six hundred kepengs a tree, Pak’s heart sank and he gasped for air. He could not pay this price, and yet he did not wish to appear a poor man in the eyes of his future father-in-law. He offered to pay half down and to work for the rest in Wajan’s sawahs. When at last the deal was concluded, Wajan sent his youngest son up a palm tree and offered Pak the milk of a young coconut as an honored guest and Pak walked home on air, swollen with pride and satisfaction.
Next day he went with his axe, accompanied by several of his friends, to fell first the four palms. He did as his father had taught him. He embraced the trunk of each palm. “Palm tree, my mother,” he said, “I must fell you not because I wish to kill you, but because I need posts for my house. Forgive me, dear palm, and allow me to cleave your trunk with my axe.” And when they felled the trees and their crowns sank to earth with a loud rustling, Pak felt the strength of ten men in him, for he caught sight of Sarna hiding in the plantation watching him at work; and nothing makes a man so happy as when the right woman admires him as he works.
While the trunks were left to dry, he went out to cut bamboo stems for the roof, and he was fortunate in having a bamboo thicket on the edge of his sawahs; so he did not have to buy them. The bamboos grew cool and tall, shading the stream that ran beneath them, and Pak had good weather for cutting them and shortening them to the right length. He also mowed alang-alang grass for the thatch; it grew tall
in his uncle’s pasture, almost up to his chest. It hissed and whispered as it fell to his sickle and lay in swathes and was dry in two days and ready to be tied in bundles. He spoke to Krkek, who sent him men to help him build the roof, and he paid them with rice from his well-filled barns.
While this went on Puglug had an attack of her former volubility, and shouted a number of unpleasant remarks as she went about the yard, without addressing them to anyone in particular. The women of the household made themselves even more disagreeable when the posts were erected and the time came for an offering to be deposited in the north-east corner of the house; this only a woman could do. Puglug was not to be found on this festal day, and her spiteful disappearance wounded Pak to the heart. And then his aunt, who behaved as a rule as though she was the only woman in the village who understood the right way of making an offering, grumbled and made difficulties about preparing and depositing this one. It was beneath her, she said, to prepare the way for half-grown pullets and she did not care a grain whether the new house was blessed or not. All this was extremely painful to Pak, for Teragia’s father, the balian, had come to say the proper prayers and for half an hour all was confusion and dismay. But at last Teragia herself appeared and, putting her hand on Lambon’s shoulder, showed her how to prepare the offering. And Pak’s little sister, rather awkwardly and yet with the grace of a former dancer, advanced with the offering; and then the balian was able to pray for a blessing on the house and that sickness might pass it by. Also his aunt finally felt able to display her knowledge, and so the eight prescribed offerings were laid at the right spots in order to conciliate the house god, Begawan Suwa-Karma. It was a great day for Pak and also for the poultry and the dogs, who later devoured the rice and the roasted entrails in the offering vessels.
Puglug, however, felt otherwise, and what seared her soul and made her particularly short-tempered with her husband was the splendor emanating from the red-and-gold Garuda bird of Meru’s handiwork which hung on the centre post of the house.
Pak’s days were fully occupied at this time and he saw very little of Sarna. For now he had the walls to finish and the door to fix, besides working in Wajan’s sawahs to pay for the trees. He also spent a lot of time cock-fighting, for he felt happy and successful and could bet with a good courage. His white cock did, in fact, win three times, and in this way Pak procured seven hundred of the three thousand kepengs he owed Wajan. And he went to the beach collecting coral, which contained a lot of chalk, and carried it in baskets to the lime-kiln in Sanur and gave the lime-burner six ripe coconuts for burning him beautiful white lime to wash the walls of his house with. Also he took his copra to the Chinese, Njo Tok Suey, and got two thousand two hundred kepengs for it. It was a poor price, but it helped towards the expenses that still lay before him.
When the walls were finished and the door fixed, Pak took his spade and dug up the plates before Puglug’s eyes, and put them in the wall—one over the door and the other two on each side. By this time the house was as good as finished, and it had such an air of wealth and splendor, that the whole village collected to look at it and there was scarcely an hour of the day when there were not a few people in Pak’s yard gaping at it and uttering cries of admiration. It took Pak all his time to preserve his modesty and to call his new house a wretched dirty hut, but he did so for the sake of good manners.
In the midst of all this stir it happened that Pak was summoned to the punggawa on a Wednesday on which the omens were unusually favorable. He found the punggawa’s servant at his gate when he came home from cutting fodder for the cow, and the message was so urgent that he went straight back with him, only stopping on the way to wash himself in a stream. Pak felt somewhat disconcerted and out of his depth, for neither was his father with him, nor could he ask Krkek what the meaning of this summons might be. He had an uneasy suspicion that his plates, which were now so openly exposed on the walls of his new house, might have something to do with it. Also the topic of the wreck had never quite died away and people from the court of Badung were often in the village, asking questions and searching for wreckage.
And when he entered the punggawa’s courtyard the first person who met his eye was a man of great influence in the palace. This was the anak Agung Bima, a relation of the lord of Badung, as Pak well knew. He sat beside the punggawa on a finely woven mat chewing sirih. Pak squatted low with clasped hands and waited.
“My friend,” the anak Agung said, “I seem to remember that your family has belonged to the puri for two generations. Did your father hold sawahs under the old lord?”
“That is so, your Highness,” Pak said with awe.
“Your brother, too, works in the puri and I have only lately honored him by the order for a kris holder,” the anak continued.
Pak inclined himself once more. Puglug’s ominous allusion to Meru’s love affairs passed through his mind, but he breathed again when it occurred to him that the whole interview seemed to be intended as an honor and distinction.
“Our lord, the Prince Alit, is my brother,” Bima went on, though this was a lie. “I am his eye, his mouth and his hand.”
Pak accepted this with deference. Are they going to give me another sawah or are they going to take one away from me? he thought in dismay.
“You have a sister; she is called Lambon, is she not? And she is beautiful and a good dancer?” the anak Agung said unexpectedly.
“I have a sister—Lambon,” Pak said. “Unfortunately she is much too old to dance and she is ugly and a burden in the house.”
He inwardly thanked his father for having taught him his manners so well, that even when addressing high dignitaries of the court he knew the right thing to say. Bima waved his politeness aside and came to the point.
“I have come here to tell you that your sister has been chosen to enter the puri. If she is, as I hope, of a ripe enough age, she can be received on the prince’s next birthday as one of his wives,” he said without further beating about the bush.
Pak’s brain did not work fast enough to take all this in at once. An idiotic expression came into his face, his mouth opened, his eyebrows went up to his head-dress, and he stared at the punggawa.
“My sister Lambon—?”
Naturally a number of people had attached themselves to him as he went to the punggawa’s house, and now there were whispers of astonishment and wonder behind him. A crowd of village children renewed their attempts to peer over the wall and Pak expected any moment to hear a scoffing remark from his friend Rib.
“Thank the anak Agung,” the punggawa now told him, “and bring your sister to the puri early tomorrow morning. I am glad that your family has received this distinction, for I know that you and your father are good men and loyal subjects of your lord and master.”
“I am to bring her tomorrow?” Pak asked. She has not even a new kain, he thought. “She has not even a new kain,” he said aloud. He heard laughing behind him.
“She will be provided in the puri with all she requires in the way of dress and adornment,” the anak Agung said. “You have only to bring her and to ask for me.”
But a happy thought had found its way into Pak’s brain, befogged as it was by this great honor. “Do I not receive a little present if I give my sister to the raja—so that I can fit her out and dress her?” he asked.
The punggawa wrinkled his brow and the anak began to laugh. “You ought rather to offer me a present for proposing your sister’s admission to the puri—not ask one from me,” he cried out, and Pak remembered that his brother Meru in his impudent way had called the anak a corrupt and avaricious rhinoceros. But something told him that there was money to be made out of it, and as he needed money, a lot of it, for his marriage he plucked up his courage.
“I will speak to my sister,” he said. “She is still a child and she may be afraid of entering the puri.” As he said this it occurred to him that it might be the truth. He knew little of what Lambon thought and she seldom talked in his presence.
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bsp; This aspect of the matter was discussed at some length and when Pak took his leave the anak Agung had parted with five ringits— twice as much as Pak had expected and half what Bima had been prepared at the outset to pay. Pak returned home escorted by an excited throng. Puglug, of course, had heard it all already, and he found the women of his establishment collected in a circle with Lambon crouching in the middle like a little inert chrysalis. It annoyed Pak that he could never be first with the news, but he had his ringits in his pocket and a great honor had come to his house.
“Are you not glad to be one of the raja’s wives?” he asked Lambon. She looked at him with big eyes and nodded without a word. “You don’t quite understand yet what it means,” he said impatiently.
“I am stupid, my brother,” Lambon whispered. “Shall I be at liberty in the puri?” she asked a little later. “Or shall I be kept a prisoner?”
Puglug and her aunt broke out into dissertations on the honor and felicity awaiting her. She kept her hands folded in her lap and smiled absently.
“You must be very happy, Lambon my sister,” Pak warned her. And Lambon said gently—Yes, she was very happy.
The women had enough to occupy them all that evening, for Puglug ran out to buy fragrant oils and a new kain, while her aunt searched Lambon’s head for lice and gave her hair a thorough combing. Also her old kain was washed and her eyebrows shaved, as though she was to dance the legong again. Next morning the excitement flared up afresh. Lambon was sent off early to the river to bathe and Puglug packed her belongings in a square basket. They also got her pisangs and papayas and put them in a red fancy basket, and said that they were intended for an offering. This was not out of a fear that there would not be enough to eat in the puri, but because it would make a better impression not to arrive empty-handed. Pak was already arrayed in his best to take his sister to Badung, and now he loitered waiting at the gate, for it was a long time before she came back from the river.