Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  The gamelans were already beginning to play here and there; processions of women, too, could be seen going to the temples with pyramids of offerings on their heads. They found the bathing-place and its little temple, but had to wait their turn, there were so many men there already. When they were clean and refreshed Pak took out the food for the cock from his sirih pouch, mixed it with water and fed the Srawah. He found a grassy place where he put him down to cool his feet and eat his fill of grass, bathed his breast and murmured flattering words in his ear. The cock listened with attention and beat his wings. Pak squatted a long time by the side of the road, for though many men passed by and many admired his bird it seemed to him too early to enter the lists. If the Srawah saw the other cocks he would want to fight at once and his excitement and impatience would only tire him out. He spent nine kepengs on rice and hot roasted nuts for Lantjar and himself and then they went to find a place for themselves.

  The first man to greet Pak was the smith. Pak saw at once that he had been wrong in taking the tall man for a thief. The smith was gorgeously dressed and wore a magnificent kris such as only a man of the guild of smiths, whose privilege it had been for centuries to manufacture the sacred weapon, could possess. The smith was shown great honor by all. His uncle, a gray-haired man with the large, bold eyes of a noble, appeared to be a man of importance in Tabanan. Pak felt it was an honor when the smith beckoned to him to take his place beside him. Each looked at the other’s birds and Pak found that the smith possessed two excellent cocks, a Buwik and a tailless one.

  “It is a pity our cocks cannot fight one another today,” the smith said, “but it is not the day for it.”

  “That is so,” Pak agreed. His father had impressed upon him that he had to seek out a red cock or a brown one with yellow neck and that on this day his cock was to fight from the north-west corner.

  An enormous crowd of men had collected—one whole side of the balé was occupied solely by lords and their dignitaries. The finest cocks of all Bali were to be seen, for there were lords who had come even from the north to take part as guests in the cremation and they had brought their cocks with them. Not far from the Raja of Badung, Pak observed a fine-looking man with fiery eyes who was talking to the young lord with great animation.

  “That is the gusti Nyoman of Buleleng,” the smith’s uncle said, for he knew most of the nobles by sight.

  “Nyoman the traitor,” muttered the smith. Pak looked at him with astonishment. The lord of Badung did not seem to be in as good spirits as the other raja. “Is your lord sick?” the uncle asked. “Opium,” Pak replied, who had heard this from Puglug. He swallowed. It was extraordinary how he got that bitter taste in his mouth whenever he saw his lord.

  This was the proudest and happiest and most deliriously exciting day Pak had ever lived through since his first son was born. His Srawah fought the lord of Badung’s red cock —and won.

  He scarcely knew himself afterwards how it happened. He had arrogantly refused various matches, which for one reason or another did not appeal to him, and then when the keeper of the lord’s cocks held the red one out to him he did not dare say no. He looked at the Srawah and he saw that he wanted to fight the red one and conquer him. Terror and courage laid hold on him at once. And he accepted combat. It was the same red cock that had killed the punggawa’s white one, before whom Pak had beaten a retreat that day. He had been jeered at and mocked. His cock was a good one—as good as any lord’s cock. He took on the match and won.

  Pak never forgot his excitement as the clamor broke out behind him and the men jumped to their feet and the bets got bigger and it dawned on him that this was the match of the day. When he released his cock for its battle with the lord’s, his arteries were so full of throbbing blood that he felt as if his chest would burst. He staked twenty-five ringits himself—a fortune. Thousands of ringits were laid against his cock, money enough to buy a whole kingdom. There stood his Srawah, white with his black down-feathers and he himself was but a man of low caste. Many of the lords of Bali with all their households betted against him—but the smith had put a hundred ringits on the Srawah. When the fight began and the clamor ceased on the instant, Pak felt that his heart had stopped, to beat no more.

  There were five rounds in the fight, for neither cock could wound the other. Five times the coconut shell sank and five times the gong went for the next round. Five times Pak carried his cock into the corner, talked to him, bathed him, breathed his strength into him, encouraged and implored him to fight, to conquer, not to leave him in the lurch. The ring was strewn with feathers white and red. Some of the lords jumped down from their platform and crouched on the ground to get a better view. The lord of Badung crouched beside Pak, the peasant, and shouted for excitement. Pak could hear himself shouting too.

  In the sixth round the Srawah killed the red cock.

  Pak was bathed in sweat when he bore his cock away. He had to be careful not to drop the ringits he had won. He nearly cut himself as he untied the spurs, his hands shook so. His cock’s heart beat so violently that he feared he might after all collapse and die of a burst heart, merely from the excitement of the fight and his victory. My cock has beaten the raja’s, he told himself. My cock has beaten the raja’s, my cock has beaten the raja’s. He bought him a rice cake and sat down beside his basket on the grass. My cock has beaten the raja’s.

  That night he accepted the invitation of the smith of Bandjar Pandé and spent the night at his uncle’s house. There was plenty to eat and they sat up late listening to the story-teller the uncle had engaged for the entertainment of his guests. Lantjar’s eyes grew round, for he had never heard such wonderful tales. Pak tried to pay attention to them, but his thoughts wandered. My cock has beaten the raja’s, he thought. He bent over to Lantjar and said under his breath, “Now we can both have our teeth filed. I have enough money to entertain the whole village.”

  The smith had brought a fortune back from the fight. He had put a hundred ringits on the Srawah and thirty on his own bird, the tailless one. On the other hand, he had lost twenty-five when his Buwik was killed. Pak could tell that the smith was a very rich man, for he seemed to think less of his winnings than the pleasure of the fight. Sometimes a shadow crossed his face and then Pak knew that he thought of his cock that had been killed and was grieving for the loss of him. Once during the evening, when Pak had already drunk a good deal of rice wine, the smith sat down beside him and said, “You don’t want to sell your Srawah?”

  “No,” Pak said, clear on this one point in spite of the fumes of the wine. He fell into a deep sleep in a balé with bamboo screens round it. The premises were crowded with guests and there was room found for all. The town resounded with dancing and music.

  The cremation took place next day. When Pak with his new friend the smith arrived at the puri he saw more people collected than he had ever seen before in one place. The gamelan played without a break. The lofty tower was stripped of its coverings and was a magnificent sight—eleven storeys, all lavishly adorned. Pak had to bend his neck right back to see the top of it. Three smaller towers stood beside it for the wives.

  “There is the beast for the burning,” the smith said, pointing to the lion which stood beneath a gilded roof carried on pillars covered in red. It was a magnificent cremation beast, gilded and adorned. Balés had been erected outside the wall of the puri and there the noble guests sat waiting, the men in one and the wives in another. Pak craned his head, for it occurred to him that Lambon might be among them, but he could not see her. “My sister is our lord’s favorite wife,” he confided to the smith. He had quite forgotten this honor that had been done him and it was only the sight of the wives in all their glory that recalled it to him.

  “Then it is only right that your cock should beat his,” the smith said. “You have won twenty-five ringits from him.” “I shall win a lot more,” said Pak. He was puffed out with pride. “That was only a beginning.”

  The smith, as though he had his doubts ab
out the Srawah’s future, made no reply to this. Pak looked again at the tower. “There they come,” he said impatiently.

  A lofty bamboo bridge crossed the wall of the puri to carry the corpse, so that its uncleanness should not contaminate the palace gateway. The bridge rose steeply to the highest storey of the cremation tower. Voices were hushed as the corpse was carried up there and everyone craned his neck. The gamelan droned on solemnly. The bearers ran hither and thither, swarming like bees, brownlegged, with their kains girt up as though for labor on the fields. They were young men, picked for their strength—hundreds of them, it seemed to Pak.

  “I don’t know whether you can count on your cock winning very often,” the smith said. “Every fight costs him a lot. He spent much of his strength yesterday. Here come the wives.”

  Pak was rather annoyed that his friend should doubt his Srawah. “My cock has strength enough for fifty fights,” he said, and then bent his eyes on the wives. They crossed the bridge and then waited until they could mount their towers, which a whole crowd of bearers were carrying on long poles, a tower to each wife. Pak could not see whether they were beautiful, partly because they were veiled by their long hair and partly because they were surrounded by relations who followed them into the tower. “They are not very beautifully dressed,” he said with some disappointment The wives were dressed in white, plain white breast-cloths and white kains, but their hair was unbound, as the princesses wore theirs in old times.

  “They are dressed as becomes those who die of their own free will,” said an old man who had overheard Pak’s remark. “They are no longer young,” the smith said. “But still vain all the same,” Pak said laughing. Daily life with Puglug and Sarna had ended by teaching him something of women. The white-robed wives had bright combs and mirrors in their hands and were busy combing their hair, to make it as smooth and beautiful as they could before offering themselves up to death.

  “It is not my place to advise you,” the smith said, resuming the previous topic, when the towers had formed up in single file and little more was to be seen of the women in them, “but it might be as well to sell your cock before he begins to lose.”

  Pak nearly lost his temper, but instead he laughed. “Do you want to buy him?” he asked right out.

  The smith looked at him as though to say: Not bad for a peasant. “Perhaps,” he replied.

  “I am not selling him,” Pak said. At this moment the tumult of the bearers rose to the highest pitch. Their faces were smeared with soot and lime and they shook their fists to menace the invisible spirits that might bar their way. The swaying towers were raised shoulder-high and then steadied again. “The young Raja of Tabanan is up there with his son,” the smith said, pointing up to the top of the high tower. The crowd now surged along behind the funeral procession to the cremation ground. Pak saw little of the procession which preceded the towers. He only heard the shouts of the bearers and the drone of the gamelan music.

  But now and then he caught a glimpse of the splendor—lancers, ministers, nobles, women bearing offerings. Even the favorite horse of the dead raja was there too. Pak could hardly breathe for the pressure of those behind. The road was a solid mass of people winding on, head by head, like the scales of a brightly-colored snake. “It is not far,” the smith said to comfort him. Pak laughed back. No more was said about the cock. As they drew nearer to the cremation ground they felt the heat beat in their faces and from time to time their eyes watered and they coughed with the smoke.

  “We shall be best up here,” the old man, who belonged apparently to Tabanan, said. They followed him up a narrow slippery path and from the top they could, as he had said, see the whole scene. “Why is the fire alight already? The beast has not arrived yet,” Pak said. There was a pit surrounded on all four sides by a wall above which flames leapt up and it was from these that the heat and smoke came.

  “For the wives,” the old man said. “Here comes the beast, too.”

  A bamboo bridge hung high above the flames, protected from the fire on the underside by green leaves. Pak found it all he could do to stand fast on the slippery ground with the crowd surging behind him. The smith put his arm round his shoulders and in that way they held their ground. Meanwhile, the whole procession arrived below. The pedanda with his tall crown was borne on a chair. A long serpent of richly decorated cloth bound his chair to the lofty tower that followed it.

  When the procession came to a halt, the pedanda rose to his feet and taking a long bow shot four arrows to the four points of the compass. He hit the head of the serpent with a flower that fell from an arrow in its flight.

  “Suppose I offered you forty ringits for your cock,” the smith said. Pak swayed slightly on the edge of the smooth descent and leant close to the tall man’s shoulder. Forty ringits was a huge sum. He had never heard of such a sum being given for a cock.

  “The cock will bring me in more than forty ringits if I let him fight,” he said, drawing in his breath.

  “You know best what he is worth to you,” the smith said reasonably. Below them, the serpent was now released from the pedanda’s throne and wound round the beast which had been borne along in the procession, a large and splendid creature. The smoke from the fire became unendurable. Shouts and laughter arose when the bearers carrying the tall tower turned about and danced backwards and forwards; they turned the great swaying structure round three times to confuse the evil spirits; for they are stupid and can only go straight forward. Then they set the tower down on a bamboo bridge leading down to a roofed platform of earth, on which the lion had already been set down. The relations of the dead raja, his son and grandson, who had accompanied him thus far on the topmost storey of the tower, carried the white-swathed corpse down over the bridge, supported by many men. They all now crowded round the lion, which was opened and made ready to receive the body. The smith shouted something in Pak’s ear, but Pak could not hear what he said, for the noise was louder than ever. The fire roared, the burning bamboos crackled loudly, women sang, the gamelan played, the bearers shouted at the tops of their voices and Pak’s head was dazed by all the clamor and the smoke. “What did you say?” he shouted back. The smith signed to him that he would wait till the noise died down. The body was now deposited in the lion; the pedanda said a prayer and poured holy water into the beast in torrents. The relations crowded round and offered their gifts to the dead raja. The gamelan stopped playing and the singing, too, ceased. Pak dried his streaming eyes on a corner of his kain.

  As there was nothing in particular to see at the moment the smith resumed his discourse. This smith was an obstinate fellow—used to bending iron.

  “It is possible you may still win two hundred ringits with your cock—if the gods so will it,” he said. “It is also possible he may be killed in the next fight. Then you will be sorry you refused forty ringits for him. Forty ringits would buy you a sawah.”

  Pak felt uneasy when he heard this. That is so, he thought. If the gods willed, my Srawah might be killed in his next fight. Forty ringits would buy me a sawah. “What heat,” he said rather querulously. A fire had now been lighted under the cremation beast and with a loud crackling noise its bluish flames licked the lion, in which the soul of the dead raja was to find release. The clamor broke out afresh as the bearers of the three smaller towers approached and began turning this way and that in the open space. The tops of the towers, on which were the wives and the small escort of relations who bore them company, swayed to and fro. When the spirits had been sufficiently led astray the towers were taken in their turn to the bridge which spanned the square of flame on tall bamboo posts. The wives and their relations descended from the towers and walked to the middle of the bridge where a small shelter resembling a balé was ready to receive them.

  “It must be hot there,” Pak said.

  The old man who had spoken to him before joined in again. “They are the raja’s first wife and his two favorite ones among the others,” he said. “Four-and-twenty wives he had an
d only three go with him. Their resolve does them credit.”

  “What are they doing up there now?” Pak asked him.

  “They are waiting for the lion to be burnt up and the raja’s soul released so that they will be ready at the right moment to accompany him to heaven.”

  “Shall we wait any longer?” Pak asked the smith rather impatiently. It was not very pleasant standing there in the mud with the smoke and the jostling of the crowd.

  “You don’t see such a fine cremation every day,” the smith remarked politely to the old man. He, however, in the manner of old men, praised former days at the expense of the present.

  “It was better in the old days—three wives are not enough for a great raja,” he said.

  The red and gold decorations on the lion were black and the beast was a mere skeleton of charred woodwork. Its head toppled off into the fire as men with bamboo poles wound in black and white cloth stirred and poked the blaze.

  “My father, too, tells of great cremations with many wives,” Pak said politely.

  “It is only a silly craze of mine, I know,” the smith said, “but your cock takes my fancy. I’ll give you fifty ringits for him.”

  Pak had wavered at the offer of forty, but when he was offered fifty it suddenly occurred to him that the smith was trying to take him in. It came into his head that the cock was worth even more— a hundred, two hundred, any sum. He had beaten the lord’s cock, he thought again with an echo of the pride and joy he had felt the day before. No amount of money in the world could buy him this sensation.

  “You are rich and I am only a poor man,” he said politely, “but I would rather keep my cock.”