Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  After bathing she went past the pedanda’s house and she longed to say good-bye to Raka before she became a wife of the raja’s. But when she came to the gate she did not venture to go in, but crouched down outside in the grass and laid her head on her arms and waited for she knew not what. She was still there when Teragia came home with water from the spring. Teragia bent over the little crouching figure and asked, “Are you sick, Lambon, my little sister?”

  “No,” Lambon said. “I am very happy. I am going into the puri today to be one of the lord’s wives.”

  Whereupon Teragia looked searchingly in her face for a moment and then led her affectionately into the courtyard and called for Raka. He came up with an armful of young papayas from the plantation. “Lambon!” he said. “How tall you have grown! I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

  Lambon stood with drooping head, unable to speak. Teragia put her hand under her chin and said, “She wants to say good-bye to you, Raka, before going into the puri to be one of the lord’s wives.” When Raka heard this he laughed out loud. “Has not Alit more wives than he wants already?” he cried out. “And the anak Agung Bima keeps on combing the villages for more.”

  Lambon threw back her head and said with energy, “It is a great honor and I am very happy. I have seen the lord Alit and he is handsome and has a fair skin, and he is going to make me his wife.”

  Raka said nothing. He looked at Lambon at first with surprise and then reflectively. “Alit is good and a true friend to those whom he likes,” he said earnestly. Lambon stood a moment longer with her arms hanging at her sides and an expectant look in her face. Then she said, “I only wanted to say good-bye. Peace remain with you,” and she turned to go. Teragia quickly put a few large blue flowers, such as grew only in the pedanda’s garden, in her hair and stood beside Raka in the gateway—waving to her as she went down the village street until she had turned the corner.

  At the last moment when all Lambon’s preparations were made, and she had said good-bye to everyone, and was setting out with her basket on her head escorted by Pak, his little daughters came running out of the house weeping loudly. They ran the whole length of the village beside Lambon, Rantun with little Klepon on her hip and Madé with nothing on. But Lambon did not weep as she left the village but had still the same dazed, gentle smile and lowered eyes.

  It took them an hour to reach Badung and Pak was perspiring when he handed his sister up to the gate-keeper. He laid his hands on her shoulders and at last pushed her from him. But he did not know what to say to her in farewell and he was sorry that his mother and hers was not alive.

  “Can I come and see her?” he asked the gate-keeper.

  “It is not usual,” the man said, and a glimpse of Lambon’s green kain as she vanished was the last Pak saw of her.

  Pak quickly forgot his sister, for now all his thoughts were taken up by his second wife. When the house was finished, the pedanda himself came to put life into it. Nine offerings were made, as well for the gods as for the demons below. The pedanda addressed each one of them, so that no misfortune should befall the house, no fire break out and no sickness enter. The timbers of the house were smeared with lime, charcoal, the blood of a fowl, coconut oil and powdered sandalwood. The plates shone over the door and new mats were spread on the two sleeping benches. Puglug and his aunt behaved this time with propriety, and it was only Pak who ran about in a fluster of agitation as though he would burst with excitement. For there was nothing left to do now but carry Sarna off.

  The whole village knew about it and the pedanda had ascertained the auspicious day and told Pak’s father. But of course no one in the village spoke of it and all went about their work as usual. But Pak had spoken to his friends, Rib, the jester, and Sarda, the fisherman, and they were ready to help in the rape, as the custom was.

  That afternoon Sarna did not go to the river for water but to the spring, and she told Pak the exact time when she would be there. So he and his two friends hid themselves among the roots of the old wairingin tree, and when Sarna had put her jar down they rushed out and carried her off. She defended herself with a branch but they only laughed; and afterwards, rather breathless with the fun, they sat down and rubbed her arms and legs with cold water. Then they set off over the sawahs, Sarna in front and Pak some distance behind her and then his two friends. Rib’s sawahs were some way out and they were bound for a deserted watch-house which stood in his fields. The sun had nearly set when they reached it; all the birds were singing and the chirping of grasshoppers and the jarring throb of cicadas was to be heard all over the rice-fields. Then darkness came quickly down and a thousand frogs began to croak. The night wind stirred the clappers in the ripening fields and great fireflies flickered through the air and settled on Sarna’s hair. Pak’s heart throbbed with all these night sounds after the excitement of the day.

  Rib, in spite of his jocularity, was the very pattern of tact and good behaviour and made not a single ribald remark when he and Sarda left the two by themselves in the little cabin. They had brought food and two oil lamps with them. The trickle of water running into the fields could be heard nearby and the moist rich earth smelt of fruitfulness. From the other side the green scent of the ripening sawahs was borne on the wind. All this was so familiar and homely to Pak that his heart came to rest after all his agitation. He stood in the doorway of the hut with his arm round Sarna’s shoulders looking after his friends as they vanished in the dusk across the fields. He could still hear them laughing and then far away the kulkul beating in Taman Sari to summon the men. For now the rape had been detected and they had been given time to hide themselves and the next thing was to make a great uproar about it.

  “Sarna,” Pak said softly, “I am content.” He looked once more over the sawahs and then he pulled her inside the hut and shut the door and slept with her and made her his wife.

  Meanwhile the village was bright with torches and loud with the beating of the kulkul and the shouts of the men. They ran hither and thither searching everywhere for the raped girl except where the runaway couple were hidden. Wajan tore his hair and lamented loudly, and after a time Rib and Sarda arrived and endeavoured politely to soothe and console him.

  Then it became known that Wajan, in spite of all Pak’s diplomatic moves, was seriously annoyed by the carrying off of his daughter. Even when Krkek himself put it to him that, with her disfigured ear, she could not expect a better husband than the honest and hardworking Pak, even then he stuck to his grievance and raged and demanded damages for his pained feelings and the deep insult he had suffered.

  After three days Pak returned to the village with his new wife and begged forgiveness of his father-in-law. It was then settled that he had to pay eight ringits for the abduction, and the whole village considered this hard and unjust. But Pak was too happy to care. He dug up the eight ringits and now he had only twenty-four left of his savings beneath the floor of his house, and there was no more talk of the burning of his mother’s bones.

  “How does your house please you?” Pak asked his second wife. “Quite pretty,” Sarna said, and it did not sound very enthusiastic considering the plates and the splendid garuda bird. “If I had married the raja I should have had a roof of Chinese tiles.” Since her ear had healed she had talked of nothing but her rejection of a raja, and of the great sacrifice she had made in order to marry a common man like Pak. But Pak only laughed for, in the first place, it flattered him and, besides, he knew Sarna in the intimacy of the night and she was his wife, and he knew the sweetness of her and her continual hunger for his embraces.

  The wedding was celebrated at the same time as the consecration of the new house, and Pak spoiled all the festal ceremonies by his excitement and forgetfulness. His uncle and aunt, his father and brother all pushed him this way and that and helped him to get through it properly. Sarna, however, never lost her head for a moment; she sold him rice in the courtyard and she let him beat her, and broke the string and walked through the fire at the cerem
ony of union. And she bathed in the river and came back and laid herself down on the floor of the house with a lighted torch beside her at the ceremony of cleansing. And finally she sat down opposite the pedanda with her face to the east. He spoke to the souls of their forefathers and offered up the prescribed offerings, sprinkled the pair of them with holy water, and did a lot more things which Pak could never afterwards remember. But it all signified the dedication of the marriage and after that they were man and wife.

  For Pak, the whole day was enveloped in a droning mist, and he marvelled at Sarna’s gracious way of attending to the guests as though she had long been used to living in his house. Now and then he took a sly look at Puglug and saw that she was dressed in her best with flowers in her hair, just as though the marriage was of her own making. Also she had cooked a splendid and sumptuous meal and called Sarna young sister and friend in a loud voice. And Sarna, like a kitten, thanked her loudly and often. She wore a large hibiscus flower over her ear and this concealed the mutilated lobe. The gamelan arrived too, for Pak was a member of it, and it took up a position near the gateway and Pak’s father beat the gong instead of him, since he was being honored that day and had to listen. When night came on the whole courtyard smelt of spilt palm wine and the guests were still drinking when Pak, wearied out with a surfeit of honor and happiness, had fallen asleep with his head against a post of his new house.

  By the time all the dissipation and excitement of these weeks were over it was time to reap the eastern fields. The sawah absorbed Pak once more and it was there he lived the life he loved best. He was happier at home than before, but things were not so simple as they had been. Puglug put a great deal of work on the new wife; and Sarna, with an amiable smile, put it back on Puglug again. “If I had married the raja—” she was very often heard to say.

  After a time Pak ceased to laugh good-naturedly over this. Sarna was his wife, and though in the ardour of his love he had built her a house on which three plates were displayed, she would have to be put in her place all the same. It was still as sweet as ever to fondle her and sleep with her, and he still called her sometimes by the names of fruits and birds. But he got used to her and it happened as his father had said: the hunger and the fever and the restlessness passed out of his blood like a sickness that was over.

  Not that Sarna was of no use in the household. She could catch dragonflies and roast them to a turn, and she had a cunning hand at cutting out palm-leaf decorations for the offerings. Things did not go equally well in the months when it was her task to see to his meals. But he forgave her that, for in the very first month after the marriage her kain remained clean and Pak had hopes of a son.

  “She must not pound rice or carry water, for she promises to bear a son to our house,” he said confidentially to Puglug. His first wife pulled a face. “You would think she was a raw egg,” she said. “How shall the son be strong if the mother does not work?”

  In spite of this Pak observed that Puglug spared his second wife the heavier labors when her womb began to grow big, and he was grateful to her. He never let a week go by without spending a night with Puglug in the chief house, and he praised her cooking and her children. Moreover, at about this time he was allotted another sawah by the lord of Badung, probably because Lambon had been taken into the puri. More rice for the household and more work for Pak. He was glad to do it. He gave the eastern fields a rest and pressed on with the western ones and began ploughing again and breaking down the soil, three times, with aching back and thighs. He talked to the earth and took offerings to the rice goddess and explained to his cow what they had to do. The tjrorot sang and it sounded like a tiny kulkul, and his father came and surveyed the growing crops. And all the time Pak waited for the birth of his son, dreaming great things of him. I will teach him to plough and sow and plant, he thought. I will take him between my knees and show him how to beat the gong, he thought on other days. At other times he thought how he would impart all he knew and had experienced, as his father had done with him.

  Soon after the New Year had been celebrated came the day when the child was born. Pak was out on the sawah mowing weeds when Rantun came running to him. “Your wife is taken with great pains,” she called out from far off. “The little brother is going to be born.” At this Pak was seized with fear and joy at once, as though a hand was at his throat. He did not pause to wash off the mud in the stream, but ran home, perspiring all over his body, and reached the yard breathless. From the gate he could hear Sarna crying out, and this seemed to him strange, for Puglug had given birth to three children in complete silence and with tight lips. The yard was full of women. It seemed to Pak that all the women of the village had collected; some ran inanely to and fro like fowls and some sat motionless, some gave advice and some prepared the offerings.

  Rantun clung to his hand when he went into Sarna’s house, and crouched beside him as he sat down behind Sarna and supported her body. “Take good heed, Rantun,” he said, “for you, too, will have to bear children.”

  He felt very sorry for Sarna; her body streamed with sweat and her kain was soaked and her eyes were shut and she threw herself about and cried aloud. But if she had not cried out he would have been even sorrier for her. “Puglug never cried out,” he said out loud. But Puglug signed to him to be quiet and Sarna cried out more loudly than ever. After a while Pak was soaked with sweat, too, and the cries rang in his ears. He would have liked to ask his father whether his mother had cried out in this way, but his father kept out of the way on this occasion. So Pak stayed sitting behind Sarna on the floor and the time passed endlessly and yet never moved. “Why is it taking so long?” he asked the women.

  “The child will be born at the appointed time,” the old midwife said. She massaged Sarna’s body and put a rope in her hands which was fastened to the door and was meant to help her in her labor. Pak looked at Puglug’s face; it was composed and in its ugliness he now detected great goodness and strength. He would gladly have laid his head in her capacious lap and rested, for he was wearied out with Sarna’s labor. But she only nodded to him to put his hands on Sarna’s body and said, “You must help her so, for you are the husband.”

  The sun already slanted down the sky and Sarna’s cries went on and on.

  “I have had enough,” Pak said, getting up and going out into the yard. Is she made of other stuff than other women? he thought, feeling impatient with Sarna. She cannot pound rice and she will not help Puglug with the work, and when she ought to bring forth a child she breaks down. But as he thought this he gave a start, for he had forgotten that there might be danger. He went back into the house; the women had hung two oil lamps beside the plates. Pak looked round for his first wife. “Puglug,” he said, and was surprised to find his throat and lips as dry as dust. “It cannot last much longer,” Puglug said consolingly as she went up to him. “Sarna is young and slender and the child has first to make a way for itself.”

  “Is there danger?” Pak asked, feeling grateful to Puglug. She laughed at him and took his hands between hers and rubbed them. “No, there is no danger,” she said as if he were a child.

  Pak went back and sat down again behind Sarna. He wondered at her. The bare earth was beneath her so that its strength could pass into her and the child, but Sarna had no strength. Her head hung limp like the flower on a broken stem and she whimpered on and on. Even in her womb there was no movement now. The sun set. Pak looked from one to the other of the many women who filled the room. Is it dangerous? Is she dying? Will she bear me a dead child? he wanted to ask. But the women appeared to be indifferent. They chewed sirih and some of them had leaves in their hands, from which they ate the cooked rice Puglug brought them. Then he saw his aunt come up the steps with a sharp bamboo knife in her hand to cut the umbilical cord. Sarna began to cry out more loudly and Puglug wiped the sweat from her forehead. He had taken her as his wife in the watch-house among the sawahs and she had been sweet, but now she looked ugly—broken. She was no good at bearing children
or at anything else. She turned her eyes to him and whispered, “Oh Pak, help me. Oh Pak, help me.” Then she cried out aloud, “Oh Pak, help me!” Pak began supporting her back again and pressing down on her womb as Puglug had shown him. The earth round Sarna was wet with sweat in large dark patches and he thought: This child will never be born.

  Suddenly Sarna gave a long and piercing cry. Puglug and his aunt bent over to help her. And then Pak saw that his child lay on the earth; it had tiny sprawling limbs, and it was a son.

  Sarna fell back in his arms and smiled the very moment her pains were over. “Is it a son, Pak?” she asked. “Yes it is a son,” he answered, breathless for joy. He stroked her forehead and her wet hair and her shoulders and held her on his knees, until Puglug had parted the child from the umbilical cord. All the women now talked at once and pushed him out of the house and showered congratulations on him. Pak suddenly found himself alone, while an immense stir began in the house. He ran to his father and shouted: “It’s a son and he’s fine and big.” The old man came down from his balé. “Offerings must be brought,” he said, “and you must build him an altar, on the right of the house, where they bury the afterbirth, the little brother of your son.”

  The yard was full of torches and women and shouting, and women crossed from the kitchen carrying large vessels of water to wash the mother and the child.

  Puglug had always cleansed the house herself after the birth of her children, but it appeared that Sarna was too weak and the other women did it for her. Even the next day when she went to the river to bathe Puglug had to help her; and she supported her younger sister down the steep bank without complaining. She did not say: “I bore my children without crying out and I needed no help.” All the same Sarna held her head high and said: “I have borne a son to a house where before there were only daughters.”