Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  Pak went home and waited. He sat beside Sama, who was delirious and so weak and worn out that she could not speak. Also rice was now getting short and the yams on the new sawah were not ready yet; and besides, it was possible that a diet of yams might be fatal to his sick wife and child. Puglug grated coconuts and mixed them with the milk of the young nuts and tried to make Sarna eat, but she only turned her head away. The flow of her milk was stopped and Puglug had great difficulty in keeping little Siang alive from one day to the next by giving him mashed pisangs to suck on her fingers.

  “Why do you keep on calling out after Bengek the husky in your sleep?” Puglug asked her husband.

  “Do I?” Pak said in alarm. “It must be because his fields are next mine and he neglects them. I am afraid that more vermin will infest the sawahs. If his fields are sick, how shall mine flourish?”

  Puglug shut her lips tight and stared him in the face until he felt quite uncomfortable and turned away to go to his buffaloes.

  No one knew who started the rumour nor how it spread, but within a week all the villages round about—and all suffered from the plague of rats—were saying that Bengek’s mother must have something to do with the disaster. Many who had always feared her up to now took courage and told fearsome tales of her. She had been seen at night in the cemetery, offering up the blood of slaughtered fowls. Her eyes watered and children to whom she had given presents of food fell sick. The watchers who spent the nights in the watch-huts in the sawahs brought strange and dread things to mind. Fireballs had hovered like living things over the rice and one-legged lejaks with pigs’ heads had rushed with peals of laughter through the sawahs.

  Bengek the husky was now mentioned only in a whisper. He had never put in an appearance at the building of the temple tower and Pak never saw him on his sawah. He had made no contribution and he had not been present at the last cock-fight. Sarda the fisherman said he had not seen Bengek on the sea for a long time; his boat lay high and dry on the beach and the planks were starting in the heat of the sun. The men thought it over and reckoned it out and made inquiries in one place and another; finally it was ascertained that no one had seen Bengek for three weeks—not, in fact, since the rats began to lay waste the fields. The last person, it appeared, who had spoken to Bengek was Meru. He had come across him in Pak’s bamboo thicket by the stream. Meru had made his way there to bathe and also to cut himself a new stick.

  “Who’s there?” he had asked when he heard someone rustling through the branches. And he had heard Bengek’s husky voice reply, “It’s me.” Meru had felt his way towards him as he wanted to know whether the husky fellow was stealing his brother’s bamboos. But Bengek had had no bamboo poles in his hands but only two of the worthless bracts that grow at the joints of every bamboo shoot. He remembered it particularly because, as he blindly felt the leaves, the tiny hairs that grew on them ran into his fingertips and made them inflamed for days afterwards.

  It could not be said that Meru was the last to have seen Bengek since he could not see at all. But he was certainly the last to have known anything of him. Pak heard his brother’s story with astonishment and a vague shudder. He could not get the picture out of his head—the fisherman stealing out of his bamboo thicket with the two large leaves which there was only one use for: to kill someone by mixing the fine prickly hairs with his food. This tallied in a remarkable way with the memory of the swarm of rats in the mud of his sawah and the feeble whimpering of little Siang who was starving for lack of milk.

  The whispering in the five villages became a murmur and the murmur became an outcry.

  “Where are you going, son?” Pak’s father asked when he saw Pak putting his knife into his girdle on the day before the new moon and shouldering a long sharpened bamboo pole, though he had no load to carry.

  “I am going to Sanur to look for Bengek the husky,” Pak replied briefly.

  “Peace on your way,” the old man said with ceremony. “And may no evil come to you.”

  Every road was thronged with men carrying bamboo poles; they came even from Intaran and Renon, although no kulkul had summoned them. More and more joined them, but the fathers sent back their children who ran inquisitively along beside them and no woman thought of following them. When they reached Sanur they turned aside and followed the course of the river behind the village. They forced their way through the bamboo hedge and waded the marsh, both of which served to protect the village against evil spirits, and approached the witch’s homestead.

  The walls shone with bits of red coral and three dogs bounded from the gate barking furiously. There was no sign of sickness or death posted up outside, but the knowing Krkek stopped and sniffed the air. The homestead was close to the sea and there was a smell of seaweed and salt and fish. They saw, too, the Dutch ships out at sea, and they had been joined by two more, so that there were now four in all. The men stopped and sniffed the air. Mingled with the tang of the sea there was another smell they all recognized—it was the smell of death.

  They kicked the dogs aside as they flew at their legs and crossed the bamboo grating and entered the yard. The smell grew stronger.

  What first met their eyes was a number of holes dug in the yard, some quite fresh and moist and others already beginning to dry in the sun. In several places the outer wall had given way owing to the ground having been excavated beneath it and two bread-fruit trees lay uprooted; they, too, had had their roots loosened by the digging. The whole aspect of the place was incomprehensible and senseless, as though some unknown beast had made its lair there, or a madman.

  The men stood and stared without moving and many of them felt afraid. Pak felt afraid. Krkek stooped to pick something up and threw it down again. It was the head of a chicken; and when they looked around they saw several more lying about. Of Bengek nothing was to be seen.

  Krkek went forward alone to the main house. Apart from all the diggings the yard was in order—the implements were in their proper places, the fishing nets were stretched between two trees and the large water barrel was full. And now a fighting-cock crowed from his bamboo cage and that took the eerie feeling from the place.

  “How are you, brother?” Rib said aloud to break the silence, as he squatted down beside the cock. The halves of coconut shells were supplied with maize, and water, too, had not been forgotten. Nevertheless, Pak did not venture to budge. He was expecting to see in one of the holes that strange chest which Bengek had fished out of the sea on the night of the wreck.

  Krkek sniffed the air again and went round the house to the eastern balé. They found there what they had dimly suspected. Wound in linen and enclosed in a framework of bamboo poles lay a corpse, ready for burial. A few clumsily prepared offerings were beside it; the awkward attempt to decorate them with leaves showed that there was no woman in the house.

  The men crowded round the balé and Krkek, who showed great courage that day, pulled the linen winding-sheet aside to see who the dead person was. They bent forward and saw the face of Bengek’s mother, the witch, and it seemed to them that she laughed. Krkek covered her face again and hurriedly wiped his hands on his kain.

  “Now we’re unclean for three days and can’t go on with the building of the temple,” Rib whispered in Pak’s ear. The men stood there, wondering what to do next. “It’s high time Bengek buried his mother,” Rib went on in a whisper, for he could not resist a joke, and screwed up his nose. The smell was almost unendurable.

  “Bengek, where are you?” Krkek shouted across the yard. But there was no reply. The cocks began crowing again and a little titjak lizard cried out from the bamboo wall of the house. Suddenly the three dogs ran past the men, all in the same direction, wagging their tails. Krkek hesitated for a moment and then followed them. He looked round at the rest and they came on behind him, carrying the sharpened poles as spears.

  They passed the pigsty and the granary, which was empty and looked utterly desolate, and came to the plantation of palms behind the house altar. A tjrorot uttered
its note; otherwise there was no sound. The stillness was intolerable and took away the breath.

  Suddenly Krkek came to a standstill. “There he is,” he said softly, pointing in front of him. The men pressed round him. They had set out full of courage and enthusiasm, eager to bring peace to the villages and to kill the witch and her son, if it had to be. But at the weird look of the yard all dug up, at the smell and the sight of the corpse and the emptiness and silence and eeriness of it all, their courage had oozed out at their heels. Some—and Pak was one of them—thought it possible they were bewitched and attributed to this the lethargy in their limbs and the leadenness of their feet.

  They could all see Bengek now. He was digging at the far edge of the plot of ground where the palm suckers grew right up to the wall. The dogs jumped up at him.

  “Bengek!” Krkek called out again, and the husky man looked up and saw them.

  They were still a good distance from him, and they did not stir from the spot. They merely held fast to their bamboo poles and breathed hard. Bengek stood motionless for a moment, spade in hand.

  “Get out,” he shouted as loudly as his husky voice could. “Leave me alone. I did not ask you to come here. I want nobody’s help. You can go. I won’t speak to you. Go.”

  The men were now crowded so closely together that they formed a small compact knot, although there were nearly a hundred of them. Suddenly some of them broke loose and started running for Bengek; they covered the expanse of ground in great bounds, tailing out their knives as they ran. The rest followed, scarcely knowing what they were about. Pak ran, too, and found himself among the foremost with Krkek close at his side.

  Bengek leapt on to the wall and swung his spade. “Go,” he shouted, and this time his voice was husky no longer but a loud deep roar. “Go, and leave me alone. This is my place—get out!”

  Krkek stopped dead as he ran. He caught hold of the man nearest him and gripped him fast. Those behind charged on and nearly fell over those in front, who stood rooted to the spot and stared at the fisherman.

  “Don’t touch him,” Krkek said in a low, breathless voice. “He has the great sickness.”

  They stood with their eyes fixed on Bengek, who crouched on the wall ready to defend himself with his spade. Slowly they retreated, for now they could all see it: he had the great sickness—the frightful sickness whose name might never be uttered. They stared at him and they saw his face. It was without eyebrows and bloated, and his thick, swollen ears started from his head; and more terrible than all, he had stuck two large red hibiscus flowers behind those leprous ears.

  The men slowly retreated. “The great sickness?” Pak whispered incredulously. “The great sickness, the great sickness, the husky one has the great sickness and the witch is dead,” they all whispered. Krkek looked round and saw a heap of stones, which had broken away from the coral-stone wall. He stooped and picked one up and threw it at the leper. Pak, too, picked up a stone—it was rough and heavy to his hand—and threw it. All the men flung themselves on the stones and hurled them at the wretch on the wall. The dogs jumped and howled when they were hit.

  Bengek gazed at the men for a moment as though he did not realize what they were doing. Then he threw away his spade and jumping off the wall ran in great bounds to the beach. They did not follow him and he was soon out of range of their stones, His figure grew smaller and smaller and vanished at last in the prickly scrub which bounded the beach. The tjrorot still uttered its cry and a gust stirred the palm-tops and died away.

  “The gods know whom they punish,” Krkek said softly. “We will go to the pedanda and be cleansed.”

  Raka

  BEYOND the western courtyards, where most of the slaves lived and kept their poultry and pigs, rose a wall, and beyond this wall the stir and noise of the puri suddenly ceased.

  It bounded a ruinous part of it where no one lived and no one ever went. Creepers and shrubs had overgrown the tumble-down buildings and dragged them to the ground in their embrace. The chief building of this forgotten courtyard was surrounded by a ditch, but the bridge had given way and sunk into the water. The demons who guarded the entrance were nothing now but moss-covered blocks of stone. Wild bees made their homes in the trees and huge butterflies hovered undisturbed above the flowers. Mosquitoes hung in dense clouds over the stagnant water and the smell of decay mingled with the penetrating scent of salicanta flowers.

  It was here that Lambon had her secret encounters with Raka. The lovers met there almost daily, for their passion consumed them with such a devouring flame that desire began to torture them again even though they had parted only an hour before. Raka made his way there by a forgotten and crumbling gateway on the west side of the palace wall and Lambon had discovered a path that led by a round-about way from the temple to the spot where Raka awaited her. They had to jump across the wide ditch, and then they were safe in the ruined house on the forgotten island, where perhaps in other days the favorite wife of one of the lords had been housed. The steps had given way and the couches too, but there was a door they could shut behind them and Lambon with Muna’s help had brought mats there to rest on. Even before the night on which she and Raka saw each other again Lambon had made this place her refuge. She had sat there hour after hour with parted lips, tranced as the water-lilies were in the standing water. Sometimes she cried; sometimes she fell asleep until Muna came to fetch her. Thus she was led to believe that Muna thought nothing of her spending every hour there that her lord did not require of her. But the eyes of the slave-girl, in which there was just the trace of a squint, saw more than Lambon thought. Her little brain was sharp and well versed in the intrigues of the raja’s wives and nothing that concerned the secret crimes of love escaped her. But Muna’s liking for her new mistress equalled her hatred of Bernis, and so she loyally and silently protected her from the inquisitive eyes and ears of the puri.

  Few words were wasted when Raka and Lambon met. Their love was too great and their longing too strong. They rushed together like two animals, and had no more power to separate than a pair of dragonflies that eddied linked together over the sawahs. It was only when fatigue came to loosen their embrace that the tide of tenderness reached their hands. Then they sat, temple touching temple, on the mats and talked in whispers. They opened the door by a chink and watched the tall bulrushes swaying in the water and listened to the frogs sitting on the leaves of the lotus flowers.

  “Are you happy?” Lambon would ask.

  “I am happy,” Raka would reply. The eternal talk of lovers. “Will it always be so?”

  “Always, my little sister.”

  “If we are discovered, shall we have to die?” “If we are, we shall die together,” Raka said.

  “Yes, then we shall die together,” Lambon said, well content.

  It seemed a simple thing to die together. Great love is always close to death and parting. It was this constant peril that raised their feelings and their embraces and their happiness to such a pitch The puri had a thousand eyes. Twenty women envied Lambon and, although they flattered her as the favored wife, they would gladly have poisoned her. She was guarded by innumerable spies, young and old. It did not escape them that Lambon’s beauty bloomed as a flower, and that her throat and shoulders often showed the tender wounds of love. Muna made an ointment of kunit and a yellow powder to put over the little bruises for fear the prince might notice them. But the other women envied Lambon these marks of love, as old warriors envy one another the scars of battle.

  When it was time for the lovers to part, Muna appeared on the wall that separated this waste place from the rest of the puri and whistled three times in imitation of a betitja bird. Lambon tore herself away and Raka remained hidden in the building. It was only long after Lambon had gone that Raka crept out, leaped the ditch and made his way to the overgrown and crumbling gateway, eyes and nostrils on the alert as though he was a beast in the jungle.

  It was fortunate that Alit spent his days in a regular manner. There were the h
ours he spent in the temple, or when the pedandas of the neighborhood visited him, bringing old lontar writings with them; or else he was detained by consultations with his advisers, or the punggawas of the various districts of his realm came to make their reports; or a letter arrived from the Dutch, which had to be weighed and answered. And, as a diversion after so many serious occupations, there were the cock-fights on the open space in front of the puri, which lasted many hours. All this was the concern of men and it gave Lambon time to go her own way in secret. But it was odd that Raka should be absent on all these occasions and particularly that he should neglect cock-fighting; for no one took part in it with more excitement or gambled more recklessly than he.

  Whenever Alit had Raka with him—and this was seldom now— it was very obvious to him that his friend had altered. Raka was at one moment buoyed up by the wildest high spirits, and at the next sunk in deep depression. He put out his hand eagerly for the opium pipe and then withdrew it again in alarm, as though afraid that the drug would make him talk. He brought Alit a great many presents, and this had never been his custom before. It had been Alit who had overwhelmed the handsome Raka with gifts and kindnesses. Now it was the other way round. “Are you sick? Have you fever?” Alit asked when Raka fell silent and stared into a corner of the room. Raka merely laughed. “I have never been sick in my life, you know that,” he said with a flickering up of his old arrogance.

  “You are not the same as you were. What is it? Has someone bewitched you?”

  “Perhaps,” Raka replied, turning serious.

  “I have spoken to your father. He tells me that you have no eyes for Teragia and your little son. Is it a woman?”

  Raka hesitated. “Yes,” he then said, drawing a deep breath. “It is a woman.”