by Vicki Baum
“Fortunately there is to be a large burning at Taman Sari on the fourth day of next month. I have spoken with the council,” the old man went on, “and it seems it will not cost more than twenty-two thousand kepengs to have the corpse burnt. This sum must be found.”
“It shall be found, father,” Pak said shortly. His conscience had long been troubled and burdened, because in the pursuit of his desire he had almost forgotten his dead mother. A feeling of great relief came over him now that the cause of all their misfortunes had been ascertained and openly avowed, and the means of avoiding even worse disasters made clear. He dug up his ringits and found there were no more than seventeen, for he had spent a great deal since he married Sarna; Puglug rifled all the mouseholes where she stored up her savings and collected all the money she possessed. It came to three hundred and seventy-six kepengs. Pak talked seriously to his uncle and he produced three strange silver coins, which looked as if they might be Dutch. Pak puzzled and scratched his head, for they were still far short of the sum required, and then he sold Meru’s kris to the rich Wajan, who wanted one for his son. Wajan bargained and made difficulties and then gave him six hundred kepengs for it, which was too little. Meru, however, knew nothing of the deal, for he could not see, and what could a blind man want with a kris?
And so, as the day of the burning was approaching and the cremation beast had to be fashioned and the cremation tower built, not to speak of the cost of offerings and dues, Pak set off once more for Sanur to speak with the Chinese, Njo Tok Suey.
When he came back he was almost cheerful and he said to his father, “I have mortgaged the two western sawahs to the Chinaman and he has given me thirty ringits for them, so now we can have a very fine cremation indeed and there will be money over for unforeseen expenses.”
“That is right, son,” the old man said. “But how will you pay off the debt, for the sawahs do not belong to us but were only given to us by the lords of Badung.”
But Pak could not bear to hear the lord of Badung mentioned without having a bitter taste in his mouth as he had had on the day when the sentence was carried out on his brother. And so he only shrugged his shoulders and a moment later said, “I will sell half the crop and pay the Chinaman. It is not the raja’s business how we meet our private troubles.”
Puglug made an outcry, “And what shall we live on and what shall we eat if you sell the rice crop? Anyone would think that you could see no farther than your nose.”
“You mind the kitchen and feed the pigs instead of interfering in what is the men’s business,” Pak said, observing once again how ugly his first wife was with her untidy hair and hanging breasts. “I will put the new sawah under yams and maize as soon as it is harvested, so that we can get through until next harvest,” he said to his father, hoping for his approval. But Sarna made a face. “Did I marry you,” she said, “to live on yam and maize like any beggar’s wife? Our son will fall sick on such stuff.”
Pak, however, shook off his cares, and the whole household and the whole village threw themselves joyfully into the preparations for the great cremation. A creature in the shape of a fish was constructed to receive the bones of their deceased mother, and a high tower of bamboo, covered in cloth and gilt paper. Offerings were prepared, and the presents to be burnt with the body, and Puglug brought a number of small earthenware vessels from the market. Kepengs were stitched on to tenter-frames in the likeness of a woman. Priests were paid, quantities of palm wine bought for the guests and bearers, food was cooked for days together.
The joy and excitement increased as the day of the cremation drew nearer. The women were the best of friends over the preparations and the children jumped for joy. Even Meru seemed to share in the general happiness and a shadow of his old high-spirited laughter was to be seen again in his blind face.
Three days before the cremation the whole family went to the cemetery, where many more had already assembled. Graves were being opened on all sides and the remains of the dead brought to light. Pak’s family soon found their mother’s grave, although she had lain there so long that the mound in the course of years had got flattened. They opened the grave and allowed Rantun to be first to search it; with zeal and an air of great importance she grubbed in the soil with her small hands. They all cried out with joy when a small bone was discovered, for they had begun to fear that nothing at all would be found. And now they all took part in the search and unearthed the skull next from the moist ground and a good large piece of the back-bone; they pulled the bones this way and that and spent a long time in showing the soul of the deceased how dear she had never ceased to be to her family. Then they enveloped the bones in the piece of white linen they had brought for the purpose and carried the light bundle home.
For the next three days the whole village was in a state of wild joy and excitement, for there were forty-two funeral towers ready and over seventy souls were to be set free in the fire, so that they could rise to heaven and return again to earth in a new incarnation. On the day of the cremation itself the gamelan played from early morning, and the posts of the towers were wrapped round with bright-colored cloth, and the Temple of the Dead received rich offerings. The pedanda came to offer up prayers and give blessings, and lamps were lighted at many gateways to show that the house harbored one of the dead.
The tower stood ready in front of Pak’s yard, a gorgeous affair, gleaming with all its decorations. And at the cemetery the cremation beasts were set up, white bulls and cows for the Brahmans, lions for the nobles, and fishes or elephants for the corpses of lower caste.
Some of the poorer people had no beasts at all, but only decorated boxes, and Pak was glad to be able to do better than that for his mother’s soul. In all this excitement Pak had utterly forgotten having mortgaged his sawahs, and he enjoyed the festivity and all the joys of the cremation without a cloud on his mind.
When the moment came to carry the handful of bones, wrapped in white linen, to the tower, it appeared that there were still many in Taman Sari who wished to pay honor to Pak’s mother and to show that she had not been forgotten. Indeed, the crowd of those who wished to lay a hand on her remains and to help carry the tower grew larger and larger and two groups fought for the privilege as though she had been a noted figure in the village. It took a long time, too, before they joined the other towers, for the bearers, with laughter and shouts and every sign of enthusiasm, took many roundabout ways and even went as far as the market-place under the large wairingin tree. All this, however, served to confuse the evil spirits and to prevent them following after the soul of the deceased. Pak himself carried the bones up a bamboo ladder on to the tower and his father followed him. They stayed there while it went swaying on its way to the cemetery, for they were the next of kin to the dead, and Pak was glad that the old man had lived to take part in the ceremony.
The white and gaily decorated glittering towers formed a long procession as they moved along the street, borne on the bare shoulders of hundreds of perspiring and laughing bearers and headed by the gamelan. It took over an hour to reach their destination behind the Temple of the Dead. The cemetery was still rough with the recently opened graves and the bearers by this time were merry with palm wine. Strong men of the village who knew how to make the fire burn well stood by the heaped piles of wood. Each family took its dead from the tower and the women sang and passed along, bearing offerings on their heads.
The bones of Pak’s mother made only a small packet and the smell of moist earth rose from them and reminded Pak of the smell of the sawahs. He himself deposited the bones in the belly of the wooden fish and the rest of the relations and friends crowded round to show their love. They laid pieces of cloth on them as well, and poured much holy water, and then broke the jars and threw them away. The pedanda went from beast to beast, blessing the dead and ordering the ceremony.
Flames now shot up on all sides from the heaps of wood laid under the beasts, and men damped down the fire with sods to make it burn in the right directio
n. There was a crackling and roaring of flames, and skulls and bones began to catch alight. Pak, too, pushed in a burning bamboo stem into his mother’s pyre and the women remained standing round it, silent and a little sad as they thought of the deceased. The volumes of smoke were so dense that it took away the breath and made the eyes smart. When they were sure that the pyre was burning well and the cremation beast was black and charred by the flames, the family, as was right and proper, returned home.
They entertained their guests, ate and drank and talked their fill and the children told Meru all they had seen.
It was not until late at night, when news came from the cemetery that the fire had burnt out and the ashes had cooled, that they went back there. And now torches could be seen flitting about on all sides in the drifting smoke as each family collected the white ashes of the bones from the darker ashes of the burnt-out pyres. Pak gathered all he could find and the women put them in an earthenware jar to take home.
It was now time to cheer the souls of the dead in their loneliness as they hovered homeless, and unused as yet to their new state, over the ashes they had just left. Fireworks were let off and the streets were in an uproar with the noise of rockets and shouting and singing. The smoke of the torches mingled with the smell of the cremation pyres. The children were wrought up to a high pitch of excitement by all the festivities of the day and did not want to go to sleep. Pak looked anxiously at his father to see if he was tired out, but he was happy and full of life as he told story after story to his guests.
The women powdered the ashes and put them in a coconut and later the pedanda came to pray and bless them. The village echoed with the letting off of fireworks and the bearers paraded the village singing at the top of their voices, for they were by now very drunk with palm wine. The fourth hour of the night had passed by the time the procession left Pak’s house to carry the ashes to the sea and consign them to the waves for the final purification. The children insisted on going too, and as the family set off slowly down the street with their light load they were joined by other torchlight processions whose destination was the same as theirs. There was a smell of torches, of the sea and of thousands of faded flowers. The dark beach was alive with lights and crowded with people and every face had a look of tense excitement. The tide was high, and as soon as they consigned the coconut to the sea the waves snatched it up on their foaming crests and carried it rapidly away.
Pak softly touched his father’s shoulder as he stood looking after the shell as it danced in the water. “Are you not tired, my father?” he asked, and the old man nodded back.
“Your mother was a good wife,” he said as though the vanished years had passed before his eyes as he looked out on the sea. “She was a good wife and now her soul is glad to be released. She will return to us soon in a new child and be with us again.”
Pak’s head was whirling with fatigue and all the honors done and received and all the palm wine. Sarna carried little Siang, and Rantun staggered under the weight of Klepon, who was fat and heavy. But at last she fell asleep as she walked and Pak took his two elder daughters in his arms and left the youngest to Puglug. Thus they got home at last and slept soundly without a care. And, sure enough, Sarna told her husband soon after that that she was expecting a baby, a second son for the house.
And then, just as Pak congratulated himself on having warded off all misfortune and purchased security for the family, just at that very moment rats began to infest the sawahs.
He had let in the water on an auspicious day and ploughed the first time and broken down the soil and brought the prescribed offerings and prayed to the goddess Sri for a good harvest. He had put out the seedlings in a corner of the field and strewn cooked rice over the field and sprinkled it with holy water and prayed again. His back ached from his labors. When the seedlings grew tall and showed their dark green tips, the sight gladdened his eyes and he ploughed and prepared the ground a second time. It was heavy work, for the young buffaloes were stupid beasts and slow to learn what was required of them. Pak had levelled the edges of the field with the spade and dug the corners, where the plough could not go, by hand, and he had kept the water at the right height and neglected nothing. He waited ten days and ploughed a third time and gave the fields three days’ rest and then he went over it twice with the lampit and levelled it until his sawah was like silk under its covering of water. And he got the loan of cows and asked his friend Rib to help and went over the ground again with the largest lampit and three teams. Before this he had mown the edges and buried all the grass and weeds deep in the mud so as to make the ground even more fruitful and he allowed no woman on the field but gave it all the strength that was in him.
Then he took up the little plants and trimmed and bundled them. And he planted them all by himself, for Meru could not help him now and his uncle lay at home with pains in his joints and was of no more use, and it was one of the hardest days of Pak’s life. And he waited for the auspicious day and watched for the constellation of the Plough and set up an altar on the left of the water inlet and made more offerings and prayed. And so the days passed and all was done with care and in proper order, and when the right time came the women were allowed on the sawah to weed and the children caught caterpillars and dragonflies for their meal times and Lantjar drove the ducks out to seek their food in the mud. Puglug worked hard and the sweat ran down her fading breasts, but Sarna said that it made her back ache to bend, because she had the child within her. She left off working and picked unripe green fruit, for which she had a great longing. Pak only laughed; he rejoiced at the prospect of having another son and he spoilt Sarna a little at this time.
The stalks grew longer and in four and a half months the ears began to show. A festival was held in the rice temple and a new altar was built on the fields. The ears hung heavy and were already a silvery green and Pak sniffed up the moist green smell of the grain into his nostrils and began making the clappers to scare the birds and his heart was glad. He was going to have a fine harvest, the best for many years, and pay off his debts with enough over to feed all who lived on his rice.
One morning he went out on to the sawah, not to work but to see how things were going and to gladden his eyes with the sight.
All he saw was the stalks—the ears had vanished as though evil spirits had made off with them.
Pak felt as though the edges of the sawah rose under his feet; the sight turned his stomach and he vomited. He looked a second time, but there was nothing to be seen but the bare stalks and no ears at all. He crouched down before the altar, which he had built to Sri, and he felt a cold sweat run down his temples, and down his sides, too, ran a cold sweat. He shuddered violently and felt sick as he looked at his fields with all the grain gone after all his labor. He sat down by the edge of the field with his feet in the muddy earth, for his legs gave beneath him, and held his head in his hands. Then he noticed a strange movement among the haulms and saw a large rat disappear into the mud and then another and another. And then he saw that all the ground was heaving with rats. The stalks rustled and stirred with them and now and then he could hear the nibbling of their teeth.
After some time Pak stood up and looked about him. He found that the fields of his neighbor, Bengek the fisherman, were eaten bare and so were the crops on all the fields around. It is as well I planted yams on the new sawah, he thought gloomily. The rats have come to my fields, he thought. Why do the gods punish me, he thought, now that I have done all I ought and had my mother burned and offered up every offering to the Lady Sri? We shall die, he thought, for when there is no rice people must die. What shall I do now? he thought. He bent down to pick up a clod of earth and threw it at a rat and it scuttled away. There are the souls of evil men in them and they will leave nothing. Darkness had fallen before he thought of returning home.
The men of the village were sitting outside the town hall talking in undertones as Pak went gloomily by. They called out to him, but he did not hear. When he got home he found they
had heard the news. Puglug brought him his food, looked at him with pity and said nothing. Her look annoyed him; he longed for consolation. “Is it not Sarna’s month to give me my food? Why do you push yourself in?” he said.
“Sarna is sick and cannot wait on you,” Puglug replied, “and Siang, too,is feverish. We sent for the balian and he has given him medicine. Now eat, father of my children.”
It went against Pak’s stomach to take food; he still felt bad from the blow he had had. He got up and went to the fine house he had built for his second wife and stepped in. Sarna was crouching on the couch, holding her little son on her lap. Her eyes were hollow and when he touched her he could feel that she was hot.
“Have you got the heat sickness?” Sarna was smeared on the breast and shoulders with a yellow ointment and the child, too, had a whole lump of it on his forehead.
“It hurts me to breathe,” Sarna whispered, “and I feel I shall die.” Pak let his hands fall and did not know what to say. Why doesall this happen to me? he thought in a daze. He went out to find his father. The old man was asleep in the kitchen. “He was shivering for cold and came to lie down by the fire,” his aunt whispered, making room for Pak. His father had heard him come in in his sleep and sat up. He drew Pak to him as though he was still a child and put his hand on Pak’s knee.
“Many years ago we had rats in the fields and nobody knew why the gods punished us,” he said. “Then the priests found that an old temple had sunk from neglect into the earth of the sawahs. The men dug it out and built it up afresh and the rats were caught and killed. We made little towers and burnt them so that the souls imprisoned in the animals were set free, and we carried the ashes to the sea. Next year we had a fine harvest and no more was seen of the rats.” Pak cheered up; it sounded consoling and he could fancy to himself the rats’ little funeral towers.