by Vicki Baum
His labors in the fields were rather lighter now, for his brother Lantjar was big enough to help him and Meru went with Rantun when she herded the ducks. His blind brother, too, loved the new temple; he loved to sit there while his quacking charges revelled in the mud of the sawah. Sometimes he passed his fingers over the stone figures and the ornamental work of the gateway and the carvings of the door of the Gedong shrine, for even he had helped with advice when it was being restored. He had developed a sense which replaced his eyes; he found his way all about the village and he also employed his nimble hands in making clappers for scaring birds from the sawahs or toys for little Siang. The children loved his company, particularly quiet little Madé, the second-born, and she was his guide whenever he needed one. Klepon was now a sturdy little bare-legged girl and Rantun, who was entrusted with her upbringing, sometimes put a small, empty plate of woven leaves or a scrap of sugar-cane on her shaven head—to start her education in good time. The old grandfather sat looking on and shaking with laughter at the earnest endeavours and sad mischances of his little granddaughter.
In other ways, too, the household enjoyed peace and concord, and for this there was a particular and joyful reason. Sarna, before her sickness, had announced with pride that she was once more expecting a baby, and no one doubted it would be a son, for she was the sort of woman who always had boys. She made a good deal of fuss over her pregnancy, for she often felt so bad that her stomach rose in revolt; on other days Lantjar had to climb the trees and bring her all the sour, unripe fruit he could find. Pak laughed goodnaturedly and was well content to watch his second wife rounding out daily in fruitful motherhood. Puglug, too, was indulgent to her younger sister and only laughed at her moods and complaints. Puglug was amazingly silent all these weeks and sometimes sat quite still with her hands in her lap and a secret smile on her plain honest face. As she said nothing Pak noticed nothing. His aunt had to open his eyes for him. “You had better ask your brother Meru to make a second cradle for you,” she said.
“Why? What is the joke now?” Pak asked, taken aback.
“Have you no eyes in your head?” the aunt exclaimed, bent double with laughter, and the old man came up, too, and laughed at his son’s denseness; even Klepon and Siang joined in, though they did not know what the laughter was about. Puglug alone kept her composure; she stood there silently smiling to herself. It took some time before Pak grasped that the visits of politeness he had been paying her had borne fruit and that she, too, was expecting a child. He was very glad; it was part of the general fertility. He patted her on the shoulder as soon as they were alone and said, “So you mean to give me another little girl, mother. What a lot of women I shall have soon in my household to thresh my rice!”
As the two wives were now in the same case they became more friendly and more like sisters, for they were expecting their babies in the same month. When Pak attended the meetings of the Subak or the village council, of which he was now an important and respected member, he was greeted by all kinds of flattering jests about his two wives. “I hear that both your cows mean to calve at the one time,” Rib, the wag, said, and Pak replied with ready wit, “You are envious, are you, because your ducks lay no eggs?”
Sarna gave birth to her child in the first week of the fifth month, and it was a son as expected. Although this child was not so long in coming into the world, he was the cause of quite as much agitation and crying aloud; and Pak worked hard to support and assist his wife and was bathed in perspiration by the time the child appeared. Once more Sarna was too weary to clean up the room herself and Puglug, in spite of her pregnancy, knelt down and washed the mother and the baby and the rammed earth of the floor, on which it had been born. Pak hit on a fine name for this son too; he called him Lintang, the little star—since he had already begun finding names for his sons in the sky. The aunt, however, grumbled and said that such high-sounding and arrogant names might harm the children.
Two weeks later Puglug came home from the market earlier than usual, put her load down in the kitchen, changed her good new kain for an old one, walked rather heavily to the house and laid herself down on the floor, which she had previously swept. When Pak came home after taking his best cock to the market to show it off to the other men, he found Puglug already in silent labor. The only sign of her pains was the drops of sweat on her face and she smiled grimly when Pak sat down behind her to help. This was the sixth child to be born in his house and he was a practised hand. The women who were present chaffed him good-humoredly and the old midwife, who was there on this occasion also, said with a titter, “If I die one of these days Pak can take over my job; he is as good at it as I am.”
By sunset the child lay there on the ground and Pak found to his unbounded astonishment that Puglug, too, had borne him a son. It was the last thing he had looked for from his first wife and it took his breath away. The women laughed aloud at the dumbfounded look on his face and showered congratulations on him and the child. Sarna was as much astonished as he was. She cried out in her surprise and delight and knelt beside Puglug and shook her and shouted in her ear that it was a son, a fine plump boy, a son—as though Puglug did not know it herself. Sarna bathed the new baby and washed Puglug, but then Puglug got up and cleaned the room herself, for this was a point of honor with her on which she would not give way.
Pak went about the yard boasting and joking. “Now I shall have to starve in spite of my two wives,” he said, “for they have both taken it into their heads to bear me a son at once, so they are both unclean and there is no one to cook my food.”
It was not so bad as all that, however. Rantun, without a word said, filled the place of both mothers and did their work and she could already carry three coconuts on her head or a medium-sized jar of water.
“I don’t know what name to give the child, mother of my son,” Pak said to Puglug. “You have thrown me off my guard and confounded me.”
“We might call him Datang—he who has come,” Puglug suggested, for she was a simple-minded woman of no great education. “Not good enough for my youngest son,” Pak said, and began racking his brains for a fine name. He looked up at the sky for inspiration, but nothing would do. Bulang, the moon, was at best a girl’s name and Mendung, the cloud, sounded sadly. Ciangelala, the rainbow, was not pleasing, for many people called a rainbow simply the louse of the sky. It was not until two days later that Pak had a happy thought. It came into his head of its own accord as he was breaking down the western sawahs for the second time with the lampit. The earth sucked and lay flat, the mud splashed up and spattered him and the buffaloes, and the smell was pleasant to his nostrils and the field was full of strength and the promise of fertility. And so Pak went home at noon and said to Puglug, “We will call our son Tanah, the earth, and I do not know of a better name.”
When three months had passed and it was time to celebrate the birthdays of both children—it was an economy to do it on one day—there was another surprise in Pak’s household. Meru took Pak aside and said with some embarrassment, “Could not my wedding take place on the same day and then we could entertain all our guests at once and have the pedanda to invite only once?”
It then came out that Meru had come to terms with Dasni and Puglug said she had known it a long time ago and it was a very good thing. Pak suspected that she had had a finger in the match and on further consideration he commended her for it. It was true that Dasni was dark of face and had pimples and large, heavy breasts, but that did not matter since Meru could not see. Besides, he had enjoyed plenty of beautiful girls while he still had eyes to see them, and Dasni was a distant cousin and so did not need to be carried off and it cost nothing to marry her. And as she was skilled at weaving baskets and mats and used to selling sirih, she would bring money in and also undertake the labors for which the aunt had long been too old. And so everything was arranged for the best in Pak’s household.
When all the festivals were over and paid for and he counted up the savings he had buried in his
floor, it appeared that the family was possessed of no more than fifteen ringits. That was not much and once more Pak had to put aside all thought of buying himself a kris or even of having his teeth filed, although both were very necessary for a man of his standing. And if the old man were to die one of these days, as he sometimes announced as a probability, there would not be enough money to bury him in a becoming manner and to entertain the village suitably. Pak looked about for a quick way of making money and thought: My cock will earn me all the money I want.
It happened most fortunately, as one among the many other blessings that fell to Pak’s lot ever since he gave his plates to the temple, that one of his cocks grew into a fine fighter.
It was one of the three young birds that Sarna had begged of her father, a fine cock with white plumage, strong legs and the tiny sprout of a comb. Pak’s father, who knew more about cocks than any man in Taman Sari, had had his eye on this cock from the first, when he was so young that his voice broke whenever he crowed. He had sat on his heels by his cage for hours observing him, taking him out and examining his claws and his neck and talking to him; and he had mixed his food for him with great care in accordance with most particular prescriptions. Twelve grains of maize with water at morning, six at midday, together with a strengthening mixture which he himself prepared with cow dung and pepper. He had massaged his muscles, cooled his feet in the stream that ran past the house or in the dew of the grass, and hardened off the soles of his feet.
When the cock was full-grown the old man called to Pak one day and said, “I think this bird will win you many a fight. He is a genuine Srawah.”
“That’s not possible,” Pak said. “How should Wajan, who is so avaricious that he counts the grains of rice his children eat, give me a genuine Srawah as a present?”
“Wajan knows nothing of cocks, but I do,” the old man said. “I have examined him feather by feather and point by point and I tell you he is a Srawah. There is not a feather on his body that is not either black or white.”
Pak took the bird from the basket and weighed him on his hand and looked him over and excited him and took great delight in the bird. He was a beautiful bird, white with a few black down-feathers. In the afternoon he took him for the first time to the plot of grass in front of the town hall, where the men always squatted to appraise each other’s birds.
“What sort of a one have you got there?” they asked him. “Nothing out of the way. He’s too young to fight yet. My father-in-law gave him to me,” Pak said.
“Is it a Srawah?” an elderly man, who was nearly as knowing as Krkek, asked.
“I don’t know enough about cocks myself to say,” Pak said with boastful modesty. “My father seems to think he is a Srawah.”
“Where did he come from?” another man asked, taking the cock from Pak’s hand and holding him up in the air.
“From Bedulu, I believe,” Pak said.
“Then it certainly is a Srawah,” the elderly man insisted. The wag, Rib, who came up just then, looked at the cock and asked, “When are you going to kill your cockerel and make satté of him?” They all laughed loudly and Pak joined in. “If you were not too stupid to know east from west you would be able to see perhaps that he is a Srawah,” he said, for he was long past the stage of merely laughing in admiration of Rib’s jokes; he could now answer back and turn the laugh on to his side.
“If your cock is such a wonderful bird, you had better hide him before his Highness, the anak Agung Bima, catches sight of him and takes him for the puri,” Rib replied.
“It is a Srawah and the best cock I have seen for many a long day,” said a very old man with no teeth, who had been squatting near saying nothing, with his prim of betel and tobacco inside his lower lip. Pak took his cock home again, full of pride and joyful anticipation; for a Srawah was the descendant of an invisible, divine cock, and recognizable by particular marks; and this one could not fail to win fights and bring him in money and do him honor.
From now on there was another source of joy and hope and importance in Pak’s life besides his ripening sawahs and his growing children, and this was the young cock. He left it to his father to mix his food and to oversee his upbringing, but he himself fed him, so that the Srawah should take to him, and he spent a great part of his free time gazing at him, pampering him, carrying him about, showing him off, boasting of him and slowly preparing him for his first fight.
The Srawah had not a single defect and he grew larger and more pugnacious daily. He had a fine broad back and his muscles, which Pak massaged daily, were also broad and firm, as they ought to be. He was given no grain now but only chopped dried fowl, flesh and bone and particularly the legs, mixed with water, so that the strength of the other bird should pass into him. His middle claw had twenty-one rings in the skin, the sign of a conqueror, and when Pak lifted him up and put him down he could feel the springiness with which the bird always jumped from the ground again. There was also a tremor in his shoulder muscles and sometimes, too, a throb in his throat after crowing, such as only particularly good fightingcocks made.
“You will win me many fights, Srawah, for you are strong and beautiful,” Pak whispered to him, and he stroked the cock’s feathers for half-hours together; the cock liked this and Pak’s hands, too, were soothed and happy.
Every second week he threw him into the water and left him to swim to make his feet flexible, and on the cocks’ birthday, which was celebrated throughout the whole country, he laid the prescribed offerings on the top of his hamper. He did not allow the cock to remain on the place when Meru was newly married, for a fightingcock might neither have hens of his own nor come anywhere near such uncleanness if he was to keep his strength. So Pak put his cock in Wajan’s charge for forty-two days and went there daily to feed him with his own hand, and to see that he was put out on the grass in his basket so that he could eat as much of it as he wished.
Waian looked at the cock and was annoyed that he had given away such a fine bird. “Will you exchange your cock for three coconuts?” he asked. “I am willing to have him back though he has faults of every kind.”
Pak merely laughed at this offer, and he was glad when the forty-two days had passed and he could take his cock home again. Now, too, the bird was old enough to learn how to fight in earnest and how to protect the vulnerable spot under his wings. Pak tied a kepeng round his neck by a cord so that it hung over his breast. As he could not endure this he sprang into the air and raised his spurred heels, and thus learned the movements which served at once for attack and defence.
And now when Pak took the cock at noon to the open space in front of the village hall, where the men tried out their birds, there was not one that his cock was afraid of; on the contrary, he drew himself up and lowered his head and his neck distended with valiant breath and he showed eager lust for battle.
And so when there was to be a three-day cock-fight at Sanur the old man said, “This time you must let your cock fight and he will certainly win.”
Pak took his cock from the basket and stroked him. “Cock,” he said, “now the time has come for your first fight and you will certainly win, for there is not a cock as fine and brave as you. When you have been victorious I will buy you a red rice cake such as you have never eaten in your life— that I promise you.” The cock listened attentively, standing quite still and erect between Pak’s knees, and then he made a contented cluck in his throat and Pak was sure he had understood.
During the last three days before the fight many people came to Pak’s yard to ask his father’s advice. Pak took out the flat wooden bowl where he kept the sharp spurs, nine in number and of various shapes and lengths. They were polished and in fine order, for the old man kept them oiled, as they ought to be, with the oil from a shadow-play lamp, which was mixed with the sharpest spices, so that the sharpness of the spurs matching the sharpness of the red pepper might speedily slay any opponent. Pak’s father had a small jar of this oil by him, and he gave some of it to the other men, too,
as a gift or in return for a present of fruit or rice.
Pak, as well as his cock, grew more and more excited as the day of battle drew near. Pak stroked his feathers until they shone and he himself put on his best kain, and with the cock in a bamboo hamper set off accompanied by his father. As they went along between the sawahs they saw other men all going in the same direction with their hampers, and there was a feeling of great festivity and excitement in the air. On the way the old man impressed on his son again and again what he had to do. “You must pit your cock only against a pure white bird or, failing that, only against a Buwik, speckled with all colors, although such a Buwik would be a dangerous adversary. And don’t forget either that you cannot win unless you start him from the north-east corner, and you must on no account let yourself be hustled into any other quarter. I once knew a cock who was the very image of yours; he belonged to the old lord of Pametjutan. He fought for ten years and was never beaten. I hear he’s alive still, and they give him rice and look after him well in the puri, although he is so old, for he was worth a fortune to the lord in his best days.”
“If my cock wins today I am going to buy him a red rice cake. I have promised him that.”
“He is going to win,” the old man said.
The cockpit at Sanur was a large square building whose floor rose in three wide steps, so that each row of spectators could see over the heads of those in front. In the middle, and slightly raised above the ground level, was the four-sided battleground. The air circulated freely since the building had no walls; it rested on posts and between the lower and the upper roof there were again posts, so that the building was both airy and well lighted. Women vendors were encamped all round, but only men were allowed inside to watch the fights and boys who were old enough to herd buffaloes. On one side there was a dais for the lords who had announced their intention of being present, and in the northeast corner there stood a small altar of bamboo with offerings for the demons who delight in battle and seeing blood flow; for cock-fighting was not only a pleasure and a recreation but at the same time a holy and necessary offering. If these demons were not placated with a few drops of the blood of cocks, then blood-lust and anger would enter into men, and they would begin to fight and slay one another and then blood would flow, not in drops, but in floods and torrents.