Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

“Many people say that the souls of children who were not burnt because they died before they teethed inhabit rats and mice,” he said thoughtfully, “but why should the souls of children do us such mischief?”

  “That is rubbish,” the old man said. “The souls of children fall on the earth as dew; that is not disputed, and they are kindly and freshen the sawahs with their moisture.”

  Puglug now came into the light of the kitchen fire. “A runner of the subak has come to say that the men are summoned to a meeting to discuss the disaster,” she announced. The kulkul sounded through the village in short quick beats. Pak sighed heavily, wound his head-dress about his head and set forth.

  As the whole village this time was involved in the misfortune and no one knew what the reason for it could be, although many connected it with the comet and the presence of the two Dutch ships, the council decided that the gods ought to be asked about it.

  They waited for a day that was favorable for matters of magic and this chanced to be the fourth day of the next week. Meanwhile offerings were offered up somewhat at random and the rats devoured what was left of the ripening crops. When the day came they all waited impatiently for the evening and then assembled in the village temple. The gamelan played and the unmarried men and girls went in procession to the pedanda’s house to fetch Teragia, for it was through her mouth that the gods were to speak.

  Teragia looked serious and composed and she had put on a black kain and a white breast-cloth. Two servants followed her, one carrying a basket of offerings and the other holding her sleeping child. Ida Bagus Rai did not join the procession, since it is better for the pedanda not to have anything to do with affairs of magic; but the village priest and Teragia’s father were already waiting in the temple. Two umbrellas were held over Teragia and the gamelan preceded her as she advanced along the street, for she was holy.

  “Where is Raka?” some of the men asked, and the women looked about for him in the crowd. But Raka was nowhere to be seen and someone said he was at Badung with his friend, the lord.

  Teragia was conducted up into the balé Her father had already filled the water jar and got the smoke started, and Teragia sat down cross-legged before it. No one spoke to her, but two women supported her on each side and held her when, soon after, her head fell forward. The gameIan played on and then ceased, and in the silence that followed the crowd began to sing, the women at first, and then a few men joined in in the guttural tones of the old chants.

  Teragia had fasted for half the day, for she knew from experience that this made it easier to fall into a trance. She shut her eyes and inhaled the smoke of resin and sandalwood, which rose up at her feet, and extinguished herself as she might put out a fire. She could feel how she lost and forgot herself, and how a vacancy spread within her as though she were not a person but a barrel. She knew nothing of time and place; she soared and hovered and there was nothing around her but the singing. Her eyes were shut and she would have been unable to open them if she had tried; her limbs were heavy at first, then light, and then they disappeared, as though her body, too, had left her as soon as her soul had made room to receive the divinity.

  She did not know how long it took to reach this stage; but everything was then yellow on every side of her, a yellow that did not exist in the real world but only in her trance; and then she knew nothing more.

  As soon as her eyes became fixed and her head fell forward, they knew that she was ready to take the divinity into herself, and the old women crouching behind her supported her. Her hair lay so close to her finely shaped head that she might have been a priestess and her face was beaded with sweat as with a lustreless dew. When her limbs began to quiver and she sank into the old women’s arms, the singing ceased and everyone kept completely still and waited for the message of the god. In the stillness a bird could be heard singing in the cambodia tree in the temple court, and this made the stillness all the more profound.

  Suddenly Teragia’s lips received the afflatus and she began to speak. A murmur ran through the crowd when a strange, deep, ringing voice issued from her mouth in a speech they could not understand—Kavi, the old Javanese tongue, which only pedandas and scholars knew. Although they could understand nothing, the people of Taman Sari listened breathlessly, for this was the critical moment which was to bring them the sole remedy for the misfortune that had overtaken their sawahs. The god spoke slowly and for a long time out of Teragia’s mouth. The old women supported her rigid body and her father sat close to her in the balé, listening with rapt attention, for he had to report the message later in the common tongue. Here and there in the crowd others fell into a trance, men and women and even two half-grown children. They, too, began to talk all at once. While the burble of voices grew louder and the excitement increased, Teragia’s message seemed to have come to an end. She lay back silent in the women’s arms, but her soul had not yet come back to her. Her father sat opposite her and waited, since it is not good to break a trance. When some time had gone by and she still did not come to herself, he dipped his finger-tips in the holy water and sprinkled her with it. Slowly the fixed look in her face relaxed and she opened her eyes and smiled at her father. She was very tired and somewhere in the crowd she could hear her baby crying in the arms of the servant; it had woken up and was hungry. She struggled to her feet with an air almost of embarrassment and vanished in the crowd. There she unloosed her breast-cloth and gave her child the breast.

  Meanwhile her father gave the chief men of the village the message which the god had spoken through her mouth and everyone crowded round him, not to miss a word. This was what the balian said:

  There were in the hands of the people of the village certain precious objects which belonged to the gods and were wrongfully withheld from them. The gods would not be reconciled until these objects were restored to them. Moreover, a new shrine was to be built in the rice temple at the confluence of the two streams north-east of Taman Sari and every man must contribute labor, money and taxes; also everything that had been stolen must go towards the building of the shrine. Thus had the god spoken and enjoined, threatening them with misfortune if the command was not obeyed and promising good fortune and good harvests if they did as he said.

  A murmur of dismay ran through the people, for this was a hard message, as hard as the fate that had befallen the sawahs. Most of the men crowded round Krkek, for he was head of the Subak and the building of a new shrine in the rice temple concerned him first of all. But after a few minutes their depression gave way and some even began to laugh; after all, it was good to know at least what the gods required of them. The wag, Rib, chaffed the men nearest him and asked them, one after another, whether they had any of the stolen valuables, imitating as he did so the self-importance and inflated dignity of the punggawa of Sanur. And the men all laughed and said they had nothing they ought not to have and had always paid the gods and the temples their dues in offerings and taxes. Yet they eyed one another covertly for any sign of conscious guilt.

  By degrees the crowd dispersed, keeping together in knots with torches alight to ward off lejaks and evil spirits. But Krkek resolved that the building of the temple should be begun on the next auspicious day and that it should be built of free-will offerings; and he told the other men to bring their contributions to the large townhall before the next full moon. A number of men went back with Wajan, who had invited them to his house to drink palm wine and discuss the new situation.

  Pak and Sarda, the fisherman, carried the heavy gong between them behind the rest of the gamelan players to the building where the instruments were kept. He had been in a strange state all the evening, with cold hands and feet and a fevered buzzing in his head and his ears. It seemed to him that the divinity had unmistakably spoken to him personally and that he alone was the guilty cause, not only of his own misfortunes, but of the disaster that had befallen the whole village. He was the man who had wrongfully withheld stolen treasure from the gods, it was he on whom the penalty fell. In his vanity and blind
ness and conceit he had taken the plates away from the goddess Sri; he had dug them up out of the earth of his sawah in order to give his house the splendors of a palace and to win a smile from Sarna. He slunk along with the bamboo pole, from which the large heavy gong was suspended, eating into his shoulder and his whole body burned with shame. His fields were laid waste and at home Sarna with his only son lay sick and near to death. But the guilt was his; it was his folly and wrongdoing that were the cause of it all; he had lied to himself for the sake of the plates which were not really his.

  He refused Wajan’s invitation to drink palm wine, for it was no time for palm wine, and he did not hear what Rib said to him when he put away his gong with the other instruments. He was afraid of going on home alone, although he had a torch and had prudently put a piece of garlic in his ear before starting. However, he got home without any untoward encounter and saw that the offerings to the demons were in their place at his gate and that Rantun had also put glowing coconut shells beside them to show him the way. The sign of there being sickness in the house hung from the offering niche beside the gate and reminded him of the danger that threatened Sarna and Siang. He stepped over the bamboo grating in the gateway and started at the sight of his own shadow as it fell on the piece of wall beyond that served to confuse the spirits. Holding his torch high in the air he went to Sarna’s house. The door was shut and Rantun lay asleep on a mat in front of it, a trusty little guardian of the sick. Pak’s heart warmed at the sight of her, and bending down he covered the child with his loin-cloth, for the night air was chill and misty. Then he raised the torch to the plates in the wall and looked long at them.

  They were as beautiful and precious as on the first day and the roses looked like real ones. The porcelain was white and smooth and there was not a crack to be seen. And yet these plates had brought dire misfortunes to Pak and his household. He sighed heavily and opened the door and went in.

  Sarna lay on the couch with her child beside her, but her eyes were open. Pak held the torch over them both and looked closely at them. Sarna muttered feverishly and he could not understand what she said. He crouched down beside her and touched his son’s body and found it burning with a dry heat. A wooden bird was suspended over his crib and on it were offerings to Kumara, the goddess of children, and more offerings lay on the roof-beam.

  “How are you, mother?” Pak asked, putting his hand on Sarna’s brow. But she only went on muttering and did not know him. He took the child from her side and laid him in the cradle. It frightened him to feel how limply he lay in his arms, almost as if he were already dead. The smoke of the torch filled the room and Sarna coughed painfully without ceasing to mutter feverishly. He opened the door to air the room, but then it occurred to him that the damp night air might be the death of Siang; so he shut it quickly behind him and stood in the portico beneath the plates. He sighed deeply as he reflected that he had never in his whole life been so overwhelmed with grief and care as at this hour. His heart in his breast was as tight and small as a clenched fist. He put out the torch and found his way to his father in the dark. The old man had taken to sleeping in the kitchen near the embers in the hearth, for his blood grew chilly with advancing years. Pak lay down close to the old man without venturing to wake him. But after a short time his father knew he was there and stroked his face with his hand. “Son, why do you cry?” he asked. “My misfortunes are more than I can bear,” Pak said, and sobbed without shame, for when he was with his father he always felt that he was still a little child. “My wife and my son are going to die, and what will become of me then?” He secretly hoped that his father, who always had comfort to give, would contradict him. But the old man only went on stroking his face and said after a long pause, “It must be as the gods will.”

  He took a corner of his kain and wiped the tears from Pak’s face. Pak sobbed a little more and then, creeping closer to his father, he nestled against his old hide which was as dry and rough as the bark of a tree, and finally fell asleep and dreamt of his sawahs.

  It was no easy job chipping the plates out of the wall. Pak got to work early next day and tried one tool after another. But the plates were firmly bedded into the wall and he was afraid of breaking them. It might only anger the gods further if he offered damaged and broken plates for the building of the temple and he could not go too carefully. When all his attempts failed, he decided to pull the wall down in order to get at the plates without damaging them. Nearly the whole day was spent over this task and the family stood round in astonishment watching Pak at his incomprehensible labors. As Sarna shrank in pain every time a fragment of the wall crashed to the ground, Puglug offered to take her young sister and the child into her own house. Puglug was glad to do it and she nursed them with the greatest care. She is a good wife, Pak thought, not for the first time. However unpleasant Puglug might be when things were going well, she was a tower of strength whenever disaster threatened the household.

  Pak wiped the plates clean on his own kain and took them to the town hall. He left the wall in ruins, promising himself to make it good next day. He was in haste to hand the plates over for fear they might bring further misfortunes.

  Krkek was not very much surprised when Pak handed over the plates to him, for everyone in the village knew of the treasure with which Pak had adorned the house of his second wife. “The pedanda has helped us with the plans for rebuilding the temple,” he said. “We shall build three new shrines, one for our forefathers, one for Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva and a throne of stone for Suria. Every man in the place must contribute one ringit and work two days of the week. The pedanda has promised to carve the stone figures for the gateway himself. I will ask him where your plates shall go. They are very beautiful and perhaps they might do well for the base of Suria’s throne.”

  Pak’s heart was lightened once he had handed over the plates. There were a number of men sitting round; some had brought their cocks along with them so that they, too, might enjoy what was going forward, and others played a gambling game on a mat. The rebuilding of the temple was a source of pleasure and soon they were all ready to forget that the rats had eaten all the rice off the sawahs. Pak inspected the heap of things which the first day had produced and marvelled in silence. There were boards and small bits of iron and even smaller pieces of a reddish metal he was not acquainted with, which had gone green in places. There were several paper parcels of rusty nails and some pieces of sailcloth which might do for a skilful hand to paint pictures on. There was also a small heap of money, coins of all sorts, ringits from Singapore, a good number of kepengs, and Dutch money as well, stamped with the young, high-bosomed, long-nosed goddess of the white man.

  Pak was not very quick in the uptake, but as he stood there inspecting the first results of the requisition, it dawned on him to his great astonishment that he was not the only one in the village whom the sea had enriched with the property of the gods. Even though they had all, when interrogated by the punggawa, indignantly disclaimed any part in the plundering of the Chinese ship, it was clear all the same that many of them had somehow come into the possession of stolen goods. When Pak had finally arrived at this conclusion his conscience was appeased and a broad grin of relieved surprise spread from ear to ear.

  Now that he had delivered up the plates, he went so far as to expect that Sarna would be well again by the time he got home, and he made haste to get back. But Sarna and the child were still unconscious and their souls were not with them. Teragia was sitting beside them looking anxious. Her father had sent her with an ointment which she was rubbing over Sarna’s and Siang’s limbs. “Will it help?” Pak asked.

  Teragia smiled to console him. “I will pray to the gods that it may,” she said. Pak sent Lantjar to the garden for three papayas as a present in return for her trouble.

  Next he went to offer his help in the levelling of the ground for the new temple. It was hard work and he wanted to do it. He carried some young trees along over his shoulder and helped to plant them. While the
work was going forward, Meru, with the help of his stick, came to the site where the streams joined and sat there with his newfound smile on his blind face. The men asked his advice about the decorative work to give him pleasure and held out pieces of wood and stone for him to feel and say how they could best be used. Meru ran his fingers over them and the pedanda told the men what gods and demons and beasts they were to carve or chisel out of them.

  “By the way, has the fisherman, Bengek, the husky man, handed anything up?” Pak asked desperately. Krkek, who was always wide awake, looked keenly at him. “Why do you ask that?” he said slowly.

  “It seems to me that Bengek, whose mother is a witch ought to contribute something to the building too,” Pak said, and said no more.

  “I will inquire in Sanur,” Krkek said.

  Three days went by; Pak knew that Krkek had been to Sanur, and when he saw him again at the site, he came to a stop beside him after unloading his planks from his shoulder and wiped the sweat from his face and waited. As Krkek made no remark, he asked when he had recovered his breath, “Has the fisherman Bangek handed up anything for the building of the tower?”

  “No,” Krkek said. “And what has it to do with you?”

  When he got home Pak sat down to think. What was the good of building a temple with the sweat of their brows and giving up all they possessed? he thought. As long as the husky man kept what was not his, the gods would continue to punish them. It is not my place to speak, he thought, but sooner or later Bengek must give up what he fished out of the sea.

  Hours went by while he thought this over and at night he went to see Krkek and talk to him again. “There are people,” he said, “who believe that all the trouble comes from the house of Bengek and his mother, the witch. If the people of Sanur would ask the gods properly, they would be bound to find out what had to be done about it.”

  For the first time Krkek allowed it to be seen that he understood. “It is possible,” he said, “that Bengek ought to hand over more than many others, since he lives close to the sea and is a fisherman and all is fish that comes to his net, and his mother takes the left-hand path.”