Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  Puglug came from the big market at Badung and regaled the listening family with all the news she had gathered.

  “. . . and they say the white men’s raja has demanded a tremendous sum from the lords of Badung, for that stinking Chinese boat that was wrecked at Sanocr. Why, we’ve all forgotten all about it! But the rajas of the white men have written letters and sent ambassadors and they say in the market that they demand nine hundred thousand kepengs”

  “How many kepengs?” the old father asked, putting his hand to his ear.

  “Nine hundred thousand kepengs or even more,” Puglug repeated, holding up nine fingers.

  “Mbe!” Pak cried out, quite overcome, but his uncle shook his head and said, “That is the sort of rubbish the women talk when they get gossiping at market. Nine hundred thousand kepengs— there is not so much money as that in the whole world.”

  “That is what the white men ask, and my uncle is right—so much money does not exist, at least in Badung. That is why the ships of the white soldiers lie off the coast and the order has come to shut off the frontiers of Tabanan and Gianjar, so that the people of Badung can sell nothing any longer, and that, too, is why the father of my children has to take rice by side roads to other countries, in case the soldiers of the white men should know anything about it.”

  “You are talking a lot of nonsense,” Pak said crossly. “If we don’t have a better harvest than we have had lately, no one in Badung will want to sell rice to Gianjar and Tabanan; we shall have to go to their markets and buy from there, unless we mean to starve.”

  “That is forbidden too. They want us to starve. And if the white rajas hear of rice coming in from elsewhere, they will shoot their guns and destroy our villages. That is why there is a comet in the sky.”

  “How could they destroy our villages?” Pak’s father exclaimed. “Are we soldiers? It has never yet happened that soldiers fought with peasants. If the comet means war, it has nothing to do with us Sudras. The white men’s soldiers will have to fight it out with the Ksatrias, who are making such a noise with their rifles under Molog’s orders.”

  “That is so,” said all who had been listening.

  Yet an uncomfortable feeling hung over the villages, for these rumours and others like them kept on cropping up. And even if Puglug was only a foolish market woman, there were intelligent and experienced people such as Krkek who were of the same opinion.

  The next time Pak slept in his chief house with Puglug, she sprang a new cause for anxiety on him in the intimacy of the night. “I am only a foolish woman and it is not for me to give you advice, father of Siang,” she said, and Pak pricked up his ears when he heard himself addressed so ceremoniously. “But if I had a younger brother like Meru, I should not let him keep on going to Badung. I should make him work on the sawahs. I would rather tie him fast like a buffalo, and put a yoke round his neck like an unruly boar, than let him spend his time as he does in the puri. I am only a foolish woman, but that is what I should do if I had a younger brother.”

  “What are you talking about, wife?” Pak asked, but all the same he had a strange feeling of uneasiness, for he knew that Puglug was no fool, talk as she might, and she had made the money for him to buy the buffaloes with. “You know as well as I do that Meru is employed in the puri to carve the doors of the new temple tower.”

  “The doors have been finished long ago and Meru has no longer any business in the puri,” Puglug said to this. Pak thought it over for a moment. “It’s the women in the puri. It’s them he’s running after,” Puglug added, and said no more.

  “It will be time enough to worry when Meru comes and tells me that he wants to bring a slave into the family as his wife,” Pak said. “I was not talking about slaves,” Puglug said, and with this the disquieting talk was at an end.

  Pak decided to speak to his young brother. “Meru, my younger brother,” he said when Meru came home at the end of the week, “I want you to help me with the planting instead of going to Badung. You eat my rice and I have the right to your help on our sawahs.”

  Meru pulled a face, but as he was a good-natured and amiable fellow he stayed at home for the next few days, got up at cock-crow, girt up his kain and helped his brother with the planting of the new sawahs. But he was not so cheerful as usual; he spent his leisure time sitting in a corner of the yard carving a piece of light-colored wood without saying a word to anybody. His old father squatted beside him now and again and looked on as the work took shape beneath the deft strokes of the knife, but he could not make much of it.

  “Do you see what your brother is carving there in the corner?” Puglug asked, as she sat down near her husband.

  “No—is it something good?” Pak asked. He was feeding his cocks and giving them water.

  “It is a stag leaping a doe,” Puglug replied, compressing her lips as her habit was ever since Sarna had joined the household.

  Pak went and watched Meru at his carving. It was a stag and a doe and the male animal was mating with the female. The carving was still in the rough, but it was easy to see what it was going to be. Nothing of the sort had ever been seen before. Pak could not help laughing at it—it made his blood tingle.

  “For whom are you carving that, brother?” he asked.

  “For myself—just to pass the time,” Meru replied. Pak went back to the women.

  “It’s a stag leaping a doe,” he said. “I like it, though I have never seen such a piece of carving before. What is wrong with it?”

  “It shows where your brother’s thoughts are,” Puglug said as she picked up little Klepon and went away. Pak looked at his second wife in astonishment and Sarna burst out laughing at the bewildered look in his face. “What did she mean by that?” he asked in perplexity.

  “Your young brother seems to have warm dreams. He has a woman in his thoughts,” Sarna said, for she understood such matters. Pak forgot her strange smile as she said this, but it came back to him later when the disaster had already befallen Meru.

  They finished the planting of the new sawah and Meru helped also with the cutting of the alang-alang grass. On the third day he made off to Badung again and stayed there for two weeks.

  Then a message came from the punggawa of Sanur with the request that Pak and his father would go to him. “What can be the meaning of it?” Pak asked the old man on the way, as he helped him along the banks between the sawahs, which were slippery with the rain. But his father, who was never at a loss, could only shrug his shoulders in silence.

  “Perhaps the prince means to give us another field. Puglug tells me that he is very pleased with Lambon and has her with him oftener than any other of his wives,” Pak said optimistically. But his father shook his head. “It is Monday today and an unlucky day for all dealings with the authorities,” he replied curtly.

  The punggawa received them with unusual kindness and they squatted down before him and there was long talk over one thing and another. He signed to his servants to offer these two simple men sirih, and even then it took him a long time to come to the point, for it was not a pleasant task to have to tell the old man what had to be told.

  “Grandfather of Siang,” he said at last, and the old man smiled with pleasure, for it warmed his heart to hear himself addressed thus, “your son, Meru, the carver, has done wrong and must be punished.”

  The punggawa did not address Pak, the brother, but only the father, and the old man lowered his eyes as he had learnt to do when as a young man he was in the service of the lord.

  “He has lifted his eyes in unseemly fashion to a wife of the lord Alit, our master,” the punggawa went on, “and you know what that means.”

  The old man opened his mouth twice before he spoke. His lips had gone dry and he had to moisten them with his betel-stained tongue before he could utter a word.

  “Must he die?” he asked submissively.

  “Our lord and master is of great goodness,” the punggawa said. “He has turned his eyes away from the crime and grants your son h
is life.”

  Pak sat in a daze as though someone had struck him a blow on the head. “Must he be banished—to Lombok or the island Nusa Penida?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Banishment is only for men of high caste. You ought to know that,” the punggawa said, without so much as looking at him. Silence followed. My brother Meru, Pak thought. Suddenly he remembered how he used to carry his younger brother on his hip. They had herded the ducks and their father’s two cows. Meru’s kite had always flown higher than any other boy’s. The singing in his head and all round him went on and on.

  “I sent for you to tell you that the punishment will be carried out tomorrow when the sun is in the first quarter. Go to the puri of Badung to take your son and brother away, for he will need your help,” the punggawa said. He looked at the two men—dumb with fright and grief—and added, “It pains me that your family should suffer thus. Meru has done nothing base: his crime is one that any man can understand. Bernis is a beautiful woman and men are weak and it is easy to fall. But even though the prince in his goodness spares his life, yet honor demands that Meru shall pay with his eyes the penalty of having looked upon a wife of the raja.”

  Pak cleared his throat and asked, “And what happens to the woman?”

  “She is of high caste. The prince casts her off and she is banished for ever,” the punggawa said.

  Pak and his father sat for a moment longer mute on the ground, and it was some small comfort and appeasement to have sirih to chew. Then the punggawa helped the old man to his feet and laid his hand on his shoulder. When Pak looked at his father he saw big tears rolling down the old man’s cheeks and his own throat pained him and there was a bad taste in his mouth.

  They did not say a word as they went back across the sawahs to Taman Sari. In the village Pak’s father parted from him. “I will go and speak with my friend, the pedanda,” he said, stopping at the gate of his friend’s house. Pak went home alone, blinded with grief. The people he met looked after him when he made no answer to the greeting they called out to him.

  He sat down in his yard on the steps of Sarna’s house and took his little son on his knee to comfort him. The women gathered round and his little daughters too, looking at him anxiously.

  “My brother Meru will come home tomorrow and he will be sick with his eyes,” he said after a time. “Get the eastern balé ready and put cushions on the couch. You can also take the curtains from Sarna’s house and wash them and hang them round his bed.” As soon as he said this he realized that Meru would no longer be able to see the curtains and he laid his head on the shoulder of his little son and began to weep. His three little daughters leant up against him and Klepon, who was just beginning to talk, said, “Father, father, father . . .”

  The women talked together in low voices in the kitchen. “I could have told you what was coming,” Puglug whispered. “Old Ranis was talking about it at market. Meru used to sleep with a young slavegirl, called Muna, until her mistress, the beautiful Bernis, noticed him and took him away from her. So Muna went and told the anak Agung Bima all about it, and it’s he who is in charge of the wives. She was sorry afterwards and took it all back and said she had been telling lies out of anger against her mistress, who often beat her. But the anak Agung Bima kept his eyes open and watched them, and he observed that Bernis and Meru exchanged secret signs and were meeting each other. After that there was no help for it and it must be borne.”

  The aunt had already begun preparing special offerings for the house altar, and the women resolved in whispers to take offerings to the village temple as well and to have prayers offered up to the gods that they might lighten Meru’s affliction. The task of preparing and decorating the offerings helped them through the long hours of the night; and the men did not sleep either. The old man came home late and went straight to the house altar and squatted in silence before it hour after hour.

  In the morning he was dressed and ready before Pak had wound his loin-cloth about him. They did not go down to the river to bathe that day, for they shuddered with dread. The uncle went with them too, and they were joined on the way by a few friends of the family who had heard of their sorrow. Pak was afraid lest the journey would be too much for his father, but the old man had cut himself a staff and led the way with the even stride of a peasant. Not a word was said as they went along, and as they reached the puri of Badung the sun was still below the trees.

  The gate-keeper let them in and pointed to the courtyard in which judgments were given. There was a lofty open building there, built in the same style as the watch-tower and painted in white and red, to show up the pains of hell depicted on the walls. Some officials of the court sat aloft there, and there were other men squatting on the walls that surrounded the courtyard, waiting for the proceedings to begin. There were no women to be seen and Pak gave a fleeting thought to Lambon and wondered whether she had heard of her brother’s fate, and whether she might possibly be able to beg the lord to pardon him. But at the same time he knew that pardon was out of the question in a case where the raja’s honor was involved, and he resigned himself.

  After what seemed an endless time there was a movement in the courtyard, and men armed with spears advanced with Meru in their midst. He was in his best kain and wore his kris in his girdle. There was a hibiscus flower in his headdress over his forehead. But what horrified Pak was that he wore a loin-cloth of the cloth in which the dead were wound.

  The sun was shining. Meru stood in the middle of the courtyard with a fixed and unconscious smile as though asleep. One of the officials stepped down from the court of justice and, standing before Meru, read his sentence from a lontar book. Meru did not stir and gave no sign of having heard it.

  After this another man of high caste stepped up to the little group of relations and friends and said, “If you wish to greet your brother and speak with him, you may do so now.”

  Pak looked questioningly at his father. But the old man shook his head. “Better not disturb him,” he said softly without taking his eyes from his son. “As he is now he will feel the pain less.”

  As no one spoke to the condemned man, another man came down from the court-house and approached Meru. He, too, was in ceremonial dress and wore a white cloth.

  Putting both hands on Meru’s shoulders he addressed him in a loud voice.

  “Brother,” he said, and his voice reached the farthest corner of the courtyard. “It falls on me to execute the sentence. I do not do it because I wish you ill. Forgive me in that I must cause you pain and allow me to carry out my office.”

  In as loud a voice Meru answered, “Do your duty.”

  The man put his hand to his girdle and took out a bamboo knife. Two other men stepped behind Meru and held him fast. Pak turned his eyes away. There was a little altar of bamboo, adorned with flowers. There were a few hens searching here and there for grains of rice. There was a funny-looking little white dog.

  The man who stood there in the middle of the courtyard flourished his knife twice and plunged it into Meru’s eyes.

  Not a sound was to be heard. Then he let the instrument fall to the ground and received Meru in his arms as he fell forward in a dead faint.

  Pak carried his brother out of the puri over his shoulder and he seemed to him strangely light, no heavier than a child. His friends quickly brought a bamboo stretcher and laid the unconscious man on it. Blood trickled in two thin streams from the sockets of his eyes and the closed lids fluttered like the wings of a captured butterfly. One limp arm hung down from the stretcher as the men raised it to their shoulders and moved off, and his father walked beside them holding his son’s hand. It was a long way to Taman Sari. No one spoke a word.

  When they got home, the pedanda was there waiting and also Teragia with her father, the balian. They laid Meru down on the cushions with the freshly washed curtains and stood beside him. Towards evening his consciousness returned, and the gamelan, of which Pak was a member, came and played in the yard for many hours, for nothing helps to
lighten pain so well as music.

  Yet for many days Meru groaned and cried out and threw himself about in his intolerable agony and for a week it seemed that he would die. But he was young and strong and by degrees he recovered. At first he tried to walk with his hands on Rantun’s shoulders, and they all helped him as he groped his way about. He asked for his knife and cut himself a stick and with its help he ventured out into the village street. Pak often gave him his little son to hold, in the belief that the warm touch of the child would console his brother as it always did him.

  One day when Meru was groping his way about the yard he came upon the piece of carving he had begun before his disaster befell him. Squatting upon the ground he held the block of wood in his hands and ran his fingers over the surface of it. Another day they saw him with the carving on his knees, working at it with his knife, while with his fingers he touched and felt it since he could not see it. “What are you carving at there, brother?” Pak asked with a smile. “Nothing,” Meru replied, raising his sightless face from his work. But Pak had seen what it was. A clumsy arrow now pierced the flank of the stag who leaped his doe: the creatures were slain in the very moment of their greatest happiness. Pak did not know what to say for grief at the sight of it and after a while Meru put his unfinished work away and never touched it again. “I cannot see what I am doing,” he said, and looked with empty eye-sockets into the darkness that enclosed him.

  Pak’s father was a great deal with the pedanda during these weeks and had long talks with him. One day he came home and called the whole family together—the uncle and aunt and Lantjar, too. “My friend the pedanda tells me that there is only one means of warding off further misfortune from our house,” he said, “and you all know what it is.”

  They hung their heads, for they did in fact know. The body of their dead mother had not yet been burned and this neglect had continued for too long. It was no wonder that her soul, seeking rest and finding none, had given marks of displeasure in order to insist on the peace which was her due.