Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  Ida Katut’s cock now moved his head and with a tremendous effort raised himself a little way. At the same moment Pak’s cock sprang to his feet—his legs, Pak knew were stout and strong—and drawing himself up on his uninjured leg, so that the other had no weight to carry, he remained standing. Ida Katut’s brave little white cock let his head fall and died; the Srawah remained standing. It was his first fight and no one could tell him what the gong meant. But he was a genuine Srawah and a descendant of the divine cock, and victory was in the marrow of his bones and in his blood.

  The coconut sank for the second time. The gong sounded. The cock stood erect a moment longer and then, amid laughter and applause, flapped his wings and uttered a loud victorious crow, followed by the gurgle which only the best cocks can boast.

  Ida Katut gave a sidelong and rather sorrowful look at his dead bird, and then pulled the twenty-five ringits he had lost to the prince from his girdle with many farcical groans and laid them at his master’s feet. The lord laughed. He no longer looked at Pak’s cock. Pak took up his ten ringits, feeling sorry now he had not wagered fifty. He picked up the dead cock by the legs and lifted up his own with care. The Srawah had sat down after his crow of victory, and was now bleeding faster. The next fight was on as Pak went away followed by shouts of congratulation from a few of his Taman Sari friends.

  “I ought to have let him fight the punggawa’s cock after all,” he said to his father.

  “That is so,” said the old man.

  Pak felt the cock’s heart beating against his finger-tips and he loved him greatly. The courageous and excited little heart grew slowly calmer. The old man took hold of him, looked at the wound and tried to stanch the bleeding. Pak was rent to the heart, as he had not been since little Siang’s sickness. His cock came next after his children. “Cock, my beautiful brother,” he whispered to him, “you fought well and you are the bravest and strongest of them all. You won and you will win again. And you shall have the rice cake I promised you.”

  He stopped at one of the vendors’ and bought one of her rice cakes for two kepengs, baked with oil and palm sugar. He and his father bathed the wound in the stream, put the cock in the hamper and carried him home.

  The old man made an ointment of cow dung and the wound healed in three days. Pak buried his ringits. He was happy and could scarcely wait for the next cock-fight. There was some to-do with the women over the dead and conquered cock, for they wanted to cook him and make a fine dish of him; but Pak insisted on cutting him up, muscle and bone and valiant little heart as food for his own Srawah, so that he might acquire the strength of this good cock whom he had conquered. And the Srawah danced and leapt in his cage whenever he caught sight of Pak, so fond was he of his master. Moreover, Pak heard later that the punggawa’s speckled cock was defeated by a red cock of the lord’s and slain, and again he thought: I ought to have let him fight.

  From now on, Pak went to every cock-fight in the district, even as far as Kuta and Badung. The wild excitement and joy and pride of these fights became part and parcel of his life, and a temptation he could not resist. Although before this Puglug had always grumbled over the cocks, both to herself and out loud, she was polite and even amiable to this one. For not a fight went by without Pak’s coming home with money in his girdle, and his courage rose with every victory, and he staked and won larger and larger sums. The cock became such a pet in the family that Pak and his father had to keep a sharp look-out to prevent the women and the children giving him grains of rice on the sly, which would have made him soft and pampered.

  With a good harvest, three sons in the family, money under his floor, his joy in his cock and general good fortune and prosperity, Pak’s life would have been crowned with complete content, but for the ever new requisitions levied by Badung on the people of Taman Sari—not on all of them, but on those who belonged to the puri and were in a sense serfs of the lord of Badung. In ordinary times this serfage was hardly noticeable, but now the Dutch ships lay in the roadstead and the foreigner’s cannon stood on the beach and the rumour of a war with the Dutch daily gained ground.

  Pak was a serf. His father in his youth had been a servant in the puri of Pametjutan. That was how he had got the two western sawahs. Pak himself had had occasional service to render to the lord of Badung as porter, for which he had been almost too liberally rewarded with the two eastern sawahs. When he surrendered his sister to the puri he had been given the new sawahs. Nevertheless, he always had that bitter taste in his gullet whenever he was reminded of the lord; for Meru his brother went about, a blind man with a stick, and Pak was the serf of the man who had had his eyes put out. So now when officials from Badung came and armed the men of Taman Sari who belonged to the puri, with krisses, lances and rifles, Pak, though he could not refuse to receive the weapons, felt no inclination to fight. He was a peasant of low caste and not a warrior of the caste of the Ksatrias. It is true he had wished for a kris all his life and he wore it for show at the cockfights; but he put the lance away in the balé where all his other implements were stored. The rifle, in the use of which two of Molog’s soldiers instructed him, he handed up again, after thinking it over, to the punggawa.

  “Highness,” he said, “I am a simple man and it seems to me that evil spirits and demons are concealed in this thing. I have small children in my household and I am afraid this rifle might kill them without anyone touching it and—as I am told—even from a distance. If there is war with the white men and my lord calls on me I can always come and get it.”

  The punggawa smiled instead of being angry. As Pak was not the only one who looked askance at these newfangled weapons, many other rifles were handed up and were stacked in an empty rice barn in the punggawa’s yard.

  It frequently happened, however, that Pak was summoned to Badung to undertake various tasks and he grumbled under his breath. He labored on his sawahs and gave half the yield to his lord. Half of his sweat and his labors and the ache in his thighs and back were for the raja’s benefit. “It is not right that he should call us away from the fields as well to mend his walls and dig his ditches,” Pak said, and all the men of the villages throughout the country said the same. The truth was that the puri of Badung had for years been relapsing into a state of splendid decay, as had all the other puris of Bali, with great holes in the ground into which people stumbled at night, broken-down steps, gaps in the outer walls, roof-timbers eaten away by ants and sun-dried bricks crumbling into dust; and now it was being repaired under Dewa Gdé Molog’s sharp eye. Scarcely had Pak finished one bout of these wearisome labors and got back to his fields when he was again ordered back to Badung.

  This time it was not so bad. He came home pleased and excited. But as usual Puglug knew all about it without his needing to open his mouth. “Shall I never in my life be allowed to have any news to tell?” he said with annoyance. “I have been ordered to lead two pack-horses when the lord goes to Tabanan.”

  Puglug, who was only waiting to take the words out of his mouth, now broke in volubly, “On the second Wednesday of this month there is to be the burning of the body of the father of the present Raja of Tabanan and the preparations have been going on for the last three months. They say at the market it will be the most splendid cremation ever seen in this part of the island for ten years past. Thirty-three thousand ringits are being spent on it, and I should dearly like to go and take Rantun and Madé. with me, for they will never again in their whole life have the chance of seeing such a splendid sight, I dare say.”

  “Thirty-three thousand kepengs?” Pak asked.

  “Ringits, ringits—thirty-three thousand ringits,” Puglug said. “There will be guests from all the puris, but no white men, as there were at the last cremation of a lord at Karang Asem, for there is enmity between the Dutch and the lords of Tabanan. The white soldiers have made a camp at Ketewel, so perhaps on second thought it will be better not to go to Tabanan with my daughters, in case of war.”

  “The lord of Tabanan has not invit
ed you,” Pak said, for his tongue had become nearly as sharp as Rib’s. His father chuckled to himself. “How many of the old raja’s wives are going to be burnt?” he asked, spitting out his betel juice.

  “None. It is old-fashioned and not done any more, father,” Puglug said. “But there will be six separate gamelans playing and dances all day long and a big cockfight the day before. There will be enough to see if one had six eyes in one’s head instead of two.”

  “Some people talk as though they had six tongues in their heads instead of one,” Pak said pointedly. It was only when he had released this barb that the meaning of Puglug’s words reached him. “A cock-fight—at Tabanan?” he asked thoughtfully.

  “You had better ask cleverer people than me,” Puglug said, affronted, and went off with her water-jar on her head and little Tanah on her hip.

  Pak’s father, with increasing age, had acquired the habit of falling into a silent abstraction, from which he unexpectedly emerged with all his wits surprisingly about him.

  “What is there old-fashioned about wives being burned with their husbands so that they may enter the heaven of Shiva at the same time as he?” he asked briskly. “When the father of the lord of Pametjutan was burned, twenty-six of his wives went with him, two of his halfbrothers and several of his courtiers. It was a very fine burning.”

  Pak was not listening; he was lost in thought. “Lantjar,” he said to his younger brother, “you shall come with me when I go to Tabanan, you can carry the cock.”

  “What will you bring me back if your cock wins?” asked Sarna, who was sitting on her heels not far away. She giggled and gave Pak an alluring look out of the corner of her eye, for she was not aware herself how fat she had grown, but Pak was, and also that she had a disfigured lobe to her ear.

  “Five kepengs’ worth of pegnut medicine,” he replied pointedly, and Dasni, Meru’s wife, laughed out loud, for it was well known that pegnut medicine was for hot blood.

  “You sometimes talk as though you had forgotten that I might have married a raja,” Sarna said to Pak. As she said this the old man once more joined in the conversation. “The old Raja of Tabanan was a great lord,” he said. “It would be a scandal if he were burnt without his wives and I do not believe it will happen.”

  When Pak arrived at Tabanan with the baggage-train of the lord of Badung he marvelled yet again over the way his father always knew everything beforehand and was always right. As he squatted near a sirih seller he overheard people saying that three of the favorite wives of the dead raja had expressed their desire to be burned with him. He gave only half his mind to it, for on the other side of him there was talk about the cock-fight for the following day. “Last time the Raja of Kloengkoeng won over four hundred ringits,” said a tall man who had squatted beside him to buy cooked rice. “He is expected early tomorrow morning and he is bringing his cocks with him, for it is going to be a great cock-fight.”

  “The Raja of Bali has the best cocks in South Bali,” Pak said proudly. “He has brought twelve cocks and not a single one of them has ever had so much as a scratch.”

  “They are not going to let the wives be burned,” a young fellow with his mouth full of rice said at Pak’s elbow.

  “And who is to forbid it?” asked the sirih seller, rolling tobacco in a leaf.

  “The Dutch. They don’t like wives having themselves burned,” a middle-aged man put in, as he squatted down and joined the group. “The Dutch have nothing to say in Tabanan nor in Kloengkoeng either,” the tall man said.

  “Do you come from Kloengkoeng, friend?” Pak asked. “Yes, from Kloengkoeng. And you?” the tall man replied.

  “I come from Taman Sari on the coast of Badung,” Pak said. “What is your caste?” the middle-aged man asked. It was the usual question between strangers.

  “I am of no caste and the lord has given me some sawahs,” Pak said humbly.

  “And you?” the old man asked of the tall one. “I am a smith from Pandjar Pandé,” he replied.

  “Has the master-smith come for the cock-fighting too?” Pak asked much more politely, for the guild of smiths enjoyed the highest esteem. Their daughters might not marry with any higher caste, but only another smith—so proud were they.

  “Yes,” the smith said. “I have brought two cocks and I mean to let them fight. And you?”

  “I have brought one—a young bird,” Pak said with becoming modesty.

  “The cremation tower is as tall as a coconut palm,” the young fellow said, “and five hundred bearers have been appointed to carry it. I am one of them.”

  Pak paid seven kepengs for the food he had had and went away in the smith’s company. The town was already full of the noble guests and their retinues and though night was drawing on new arrivals kept coming in. The streets were thronged; torches flickered amidst the dimmer light of many oil lamps. Joyful anticipation shone in every eye and much tuak was sold and drunk. Everyone wore his best kain and even Pak wore his kris in his girdle. An immensely tall scaffolding of bamboo rose into the night sky in front of the lord’s puri, hung with matting, which concealed the cremation tower. Pak looked up at it with awe; he looked forward to the cremation, even though the cock-fighting next day aroused a keener excitement. The sky was clear and thickly set with stars.

  “Where are you spending the night?” the smith asked in a friendly way.

  “I have left my brother and my cock in the puri of the gusti Oka,” Pak said. “Our raja is staying with him because he’s a cousin of his, but the puri is not large and probably we shall have to sleep in the open.”

  “I should very much like to see your cock,” the smith said, and Pak realized that the tall man was one of those to whom cock-fighting was all in all.

  “Come along then,” he said, feeling flattered.

  They made their way through the strange and overcrowded town and arrived at the puri of the gusti Oka, who was an official at the court of Tabanan, and after some difficulty found young Lantjar with the cock in the crowd outside the wall. Many of the porters of the lord of Badung’s baggage-train were already asleep on the ground, rolled up in their kains. Big fires had been lighted and many torches were burning to keep away the evil spirits. There was a smell of smoke and horses and crowded humanity. Here, too, the men were hemmed in by a crowd of vendors, who had come to make money from places as far off as Mengul and Badjra. Some of the men from Badung had brought their cocks with them, for they could not forgo the pleasure of having a cock-fight of their own.

  “There is all the difference between looking on while others eat and filling your own belly,” said the smith, who seemed to be a well-spoken and sensible man. Pak found his brother by one of the fires; he was sitting on his heels, sleepy-eyed, and chewing. He had grown into a good-looking young fellow and the girls were already beginning to give him sidelong glances. Pak had decked him out in his own second-best head-dress for this great festivity. The basket containing the Srawah was behind him in the flickering dusk on the trodden grass at the foot of the puri wall. Pak was pleased. He had given him strict orders not to be parted from the cock, for he had a suspicion that in this strange town, to which crowds had been drawn for the festival, every other man might be a thief. A cock like his was more than likely to attract attention and be stolen.

  “This is my brother Lantjar,” he said to the tall smith, “and here is my cock.”

  The man from Bandjar Pandé squatted down at once beside the basket and inspected the Srawah. The cock was sleepy and distracted by the smoke and the smell of strangers and the reflected light that shone in his eyes from the walk of the puri. But as soon as he recognized Pak he began to dance as thought it was broad daylight.

  “Could you take him out?” the smith asked. Pak observed with pride the look of admiration in the face of his new acquaintance as he put the cock in his hands. The Srawah resented the touch of a stranger and struggled. The smith laughed. “I’ll put my money on him tomorrow,” he said, and he could not have paid him a highe
r compliment.

  “Your cocks are much better, I am sure of that,” Pak replied with equal politeness.

  “Listen,” the smith said. “This is no bivouac either for you or your cock. You come with me to my uncle’s house; he is the chief man of his district and there is plenty of room at his place. You can count on a mat and a handful of rice for your brother and yourself there and your cock will be glad of the company of mine.”

  Pak was just going to accept this tempting offer when terror gripped his heart. Perhaps this smith was one of those very thieves he was afraid of. He was being invited to spend the night in a house he knew nothing of and then when he woke up in the morning his cock would be gone. With a heavy heart he remembered that he was fat from his own village in a strange land, where even the very air had another taste.

  “No, we had better stay here,” he said almost gruffly. “The overseer might come looking for me.”

  The smith looked at him with a smile and said, “As you like, friend. Peace on your staying.”

  “Peace on your sleep,” Pak called after him. He regretted his refusal a little. He edged nearer Lantjar, stared a while longer drowsily into the fire, heard the burbled voices and, a little later, the jingling bells of a train of pack-horses passing by and fell asleep.

  He was up early next morning, for the kulkul seemed to be beating in every corner of the town. Lantjar rubbed his eyes and wondered where he was when he saw the unfamiliar palace wall and the strange trees above it. Pak first went to the stables in the puri to see to the feeding of the two horses in his charge. He asked one of the servants who were hastening to and fro where you bathed at Tabanan and set off there with Lantjar. He carried the cock himself.