by Vicki Baum
“I can tell you one thing, Van Tilema,” he said. “Those three widows they burnt came in very handily for the Governor. The troops were, practically speaking, already on the march.”
“If it had not been this cremation affair, it would have been something else,” the Commissarius replied. “Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
It was cool on the broad flight of stone steps. Their voices echoed, though they spoke in undertones. Boomsmer’s dirty pocket handkerchief still lay in the corner. He paused, fell behind the others and then quickly bent down and stuffed it into his pocket.
Why should I throw it away? he thought. It is quite good and the dhobi can wash it.
There, where it entered the sea, the river was broad and level and stagnant and a brackish smell rose from it. When the tide was out there was a sandy marsh between river and sea, with pools that oozed away and bred clouds of gnats. The ground was barren and nothing grew there but harsh grasses and prickly cactus bushes.
Now and then bits of red coral were washed up into the dead river bed; they looked like pieces of raw flesh. No birds sang there and no palms grew and there was no shade.
When Raka and his wife took up their quarters there, they found they had an undesired companion—Bengek, the husky. He had never been a beauty, but now the disease had made him more hideous than ever. Teragia shut her eyes when she first caught sight of him. Yet after a time she grew accustomed to him and when he was in great pain and went to her she comforted him or cooled his hands and feet with bandages of clay. He called her mother and Teragia soon put up with his dependence on her, just as she did with the three starving dogs which had likewise attached themselves to her.
Raka was at first nauseated by Bengek, but it was soon apparent that he was already more at home with the place and the fate to which they were both condemned, and he was serviceable. He had a boat and though his hands were of little use now in pulling in the net or raising the anchor, yet now and again he brought back a fish and shared it with them. The worst they had to endure at the outset was the lack of water, for the stagnant river water was infected with all kinds of sicknesses and fevers. Teragia summoned up her old powers. She was unclean, since she lived with a man who was unclean, and she did not know whether the gods had taken her gift away. But when she paced the ground with closed eyes she was aware of water trickling far below. She told the men to dig for the spring. It was hard work, for Bengek’s hands were mere stumps and Raka’s fingers hurt him as they contracted more and more. Also the Great Sickness oppressed them with an unremitting weariness. Probably both men would have died of starvation if they had not had the woman with them; for Teragia did not take the sickness and she gave them daily something of her own strength and courage. They dug and found water where Teragia had said. They built two balés, one for themselves and one for Bengek, who up to now had slept on dry twigs like a wild bird. Raka obtained bamboo and wood from his father. Servants of the priest’s household brought it to a certain spot and left it there, and Teragia fetched it as soon as they had gone. The spot was some way beyond the last of the Sanur sawahs. The ground was flat and arid and the sea winds swept over it. Nothing but the short harsh sea-shore grass grew there. There was a solitary stone figure belonging to a temple that had long since sunk into the ground—a raksasa, one of the guardians of the temple, whose weathered, lichened face had taken on an evil expression. There, on certain days, rice was left for the outcasts and a little yarn, too, so that Teragia could weave kains for them, and a few other of the barest necessaries of life.
Nevertheless, their hopeless existence had its rays of hope. “I have heard that even those who were sick as we are have sometimes got well again and been taken back into their villages,” Bengek said in his husky voice. He still wore flowers he found in the seaside grass behind his ear.
“If the gods will it, we shall get well again,” Raka replied. He still could not believe in the fate that had overtaken him. Sometimes he had the hope that one morning he would wake and find himself healed and spotless and leave these days behind him as an evil dream.
“We must build ourselves a house-temple,” he said, and Teragia rejoiced that this thought should come to him and fell in with the proposal eagerly. So the two men began to dig up clay and shape bricks which they dried in the sun. They searched for white coral stones on the beach for the walls and drift-wood for the shrine.
They could only work for short spells before they were overcome by fatigue and pain. The building was slow. Teragia helped them and worked as though she was a man herself. It never occurred to Raka that she was a woman. An unloved woman is not a woman. Lambon was lost and came to him only in his dreams at night. Teragia, too, had a lost love of which she never spoke. She was heart-broken for her little son, for Putuh, whom she had forsaken in order to go with Raka. Often they sat long hours together without uttering a word. Raka thought of Lambon and Teragia thought of Putuh.
Bengek dragged a plank from the beach that smelt of decay, and laughed. “A long time ago there was a Chinese ship wrecked near here,” he said. “Nobody thinks of it now.”
“I remember it,” Raka said. He smiled as he thought of the Chinaman he had carried ashore on his back through the surf.
“This is a plank from the ship,” Bengek said. “It will do well for the back wall of the shrine.”
“We ought to make a garden,” Raka said one day. “Palms and fruit trees and hibiscus. And we ought to plant a wairingin tree near the shrine to keep off all the evil spirits that haunt this spot.”
They could feel the evil spirits at night even though they were invisible. They were all round the place and made their sleep broken and their dreams heavy and their hearts oppressed. Sometimes mysterious lights flickered to and fro across the river. Teragia contrived to scratch a letter on a piece of bamboo and left it at the foot of the raksasa for the servants to find when they came next with the rice. “To our father, the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai of Taman Sari,” the letter ran, “We, the outcasts, beg the pedanda to send us seeds and fruits of all fruit trees, but above all cuttings from a wairingin tree, so that we may try to grow them and improve the place where we live. We beg the pedanda’s forgiveness for the uncleanness this letter brings into his clean house. Joy and peace to the pedanda, his house and the child in his house.”
When Teragia went next time to fetch the rice from the stone image, the letter had gone. A week later, the coconuts, seeds and young shoots Teragia had asked for were there. She waited until the two servants were lost to sight among the rice fields and palm groves that fringed the horizon and then bore off the welcome load. The pedanda had sent no answer to her letter and Teragia ached with longing for her child. Perhaps he is sick, she thought. He will be talking by now. He can walk like a man. When will he ask after his parents?
All three set to work planting and sowing. The ground was barren; the river had deposited all its mud on the sawahs and brought only sand and rubbish as far as this. But with the water Teragia carried from the spring and the ashes of the grass and weeds they dried and burnt and the offerings they made to the gods, the seeds pushed through the soil and the offshoots grew. A little green and shade rose about their balés.
“We will have a sawah too,” the men said after a time. Man is a hardy plant; and these men were as tough as the prickly scrub that grew in the sandy soil. They went out and as they had no plough they began turning the soil with their maimed, cramped hands. Sometimes they never spoke a word all day, but at other times Bengek relapsed into his old volubility and asked Raka question after question. It was odd, too, that he still respected the caste of his fellow sufferer. He crouched down before Teragia, and clasped his hands when he spoke to Raka.
“Do you know why this misfortune has befallen you?” he asked while they rested from digging.
“It was the gods’ will,” Raka replied.
“Why did they will it?” Bengek persisted. “If the gods are just, as they are always said to be, why do t
hey inflict such punishment on a man like you?”
“I make atonement for the guilt of a forefather,” Raka said. “You?” Bengek asked in amazement. “You, Raka?”
“The guilty are punished for seven generations and even longer. Much may have happened in that time. Perhaps one of my forefathers swore a false oath.”
The time when he had refused to acknowledge his fate was gone by. Now he bore it.
“Yes, the gods are just,” Bengek said. “They afflicted me with the Great Sickness because my mother was a witch.”
Raka looked at him with weary surprise for making this open confession. But Bengek was wholly absorbed in what he wanted to say. Probably he had had this load about his neck all his life. Now that he was an outcast he could speak of it—to Raka, who like him was an outcast.
“She was a witch and she sold her descendants to the powers of evil. My life was false and accursed from the beginning. I have lived alone so as not to hand down the curse to children and grandchildren. I wanted to leave the country and exile myself to another island where no one would know me. I had money buried under the wall to get me away from my mother, the witch. But she went at night to the cemetery and made offerings and uttered incantations and the evil spirits showed her where my money was hidden. She stole it and though I looked everywhere I could never find it. When I threatened her she laughed at me. One night she changed herself into a ball of fire, I have seen her fly away over the sawahs. She was a witch and I killed her, to prevent her causing still more misfortune. 1 poisoned her with bamboo leaves, and when she was weak I asked her where the money was. I could feel the Great Sickness coming on me and I wanted to give the money to the gods, so that they might relent and turn the affliction from me. But the witch died without telling me where she had hidden it. When she was dead I began searching. Every hand’s breadth of ground I turned over, but I did not find it. Then the men came and drove me out. The gods are just, Raka. That is so.”
When they had dug the ground, they led water from the river to this sawah of theirs. There were many days when Raka could not walk, for his feet were very sore; his face on the other hand was still beautiful and the least affected of his whole body. Teragia made him wooden crutches—crutches for Raka, the dancer.
“How long will it be before we die, Raka?” Bengek asked as he bent over the soil.
“I do not know,” Raka said.
“Are you impatient?” Bengek asked.
It was a strange question and Raka considered it for a long time. “It will be no better for us when we are dead, my friend,” he said at last.
“That is the worst of it,” Bengek said, “being unclean for ever and ever.”
Raka said nothing to this. With difficulty he cut a hollow bamboo to the right length and gave it to Bengek to put in the ground.
“Can we never be born again?” Bengek asked again.
“They who have the Great Sickness may not be burned. How shall their souls be freed?” Raka said. He did not say “we,” he still shut his eyes to his fate.
“And is there no remedy?” Bengek asked.
Raka smiled. “There is a story in an old lontar book,” he said, “of a king whose brother suffered from the Great Sickness. He was a soldier and came home from a war in which he had been victorious. He was very proud as he entered the puri with many lancers and much glory. But an old woman went up to him and put her arms about his hips as a lover might and all saw that she was a leper. Thus he got the Greak Sickness and was cast out. They built him a balé all by itself in the farthest court of the puri and let him stay there, as he was the brother of the king. When the time came and the king died and was burned, the leper left his balé and leapt into the flames after the king. And his soul was freed and rose to heaven.”
Bengek considered this for a long time in silence. “What good is that to you and me, my friend?” he said. “There will be no fire for us to jump into. We have not even got coconut shells to burn in order to cook our food.”
Raka looked up and saw Teragia coming. She was tall and lean and her face was seamed with the wrinkles that sorrow and destitution had engraved there. She helped him on to his crutches and led him home. She stood by him and though he had never loved her, her presence was meat and drink to him.
“I will ask your father for seed for the sawah,” she would say. “I have woven you a new kain. The wairingin stock is putting out branches. We must make ready special offerings for the New Year festival. You men might make a little gamelan with keys of bamboo.” They were lepers, cast out and accursed for all time and beyond, but life went on. Teragia could detect its current in them as she could the trickle of a spring beneath the soil.
She engraved another letter on a piece of bamboo. “To the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, our father.
“Will the pedanda in his goodness send us rice for the men to sow in the sawah they have got ready without plough or lampit, with the labor of their hands? The wairingin stock has taken root. Raka is resigned to his fate. Only my heart is sick and cannot cease thinking of the child in the house of the pedanda, our father. The pedanda will forgive his unclean daughter, Teragia.”
Many days passed after this letter was dispatched and nobody appeared over the flat waste of sand near the image of the raksasa. Their food gave out. The two men put out in the boat and exerted themselves to the utmost; but their fingers were too clumsy for the fine arts of fishing and they came back empty-handed. Teragia looked for grubs at the river mouth. She found a few and caught four dragonflies and two butterflies. She cooked them all and gave them to the men with the last grain of rice. Bengek ate eagerly. Raka pushed the leaf towards her with what was left of his meal. She went outside and turned her back and ate thankfully. Two more days went by.
On the third day towards noon Teragia saw a figure come over the flats and sit down beside the raksasa. She put her hand over her eyes and waited for this person to go away again before she went to fetch the food. But the person did not go. When Teragia looked again she could not recognize who it was, but a voice was wafted by the wind over the flat ground and pierced her to the heart. The air was still, for though the waves beat on the shore and the grasshoppers chirped, this was a sound that never ceased and Teragia no longer heard it. What she had heard was the voice of her child.
She got up and went to find Raka, who was sitting near the halffinished house-temple—for though the sick men had courage to start on many things, they lacked strength to finish them. She called out to him, “My brother, our son has come, he is playing beside the raksasa. Let us go nearer so that we may see him.”
Raka looked at her in amazement, but he shook his head. “I cannot go, mother,” he said. “He must not see my uncleanness. He must know only that his father was Raka, the dancer.” Teragia laid her hand on his shoulder to console him before she went.
She ran over the expanse of tufted grass until she was near enough to see the image of the raksasa clearly. The stone demon was sunk in the grass on the far side of the wide river bed and the sun gleamed on the wet sand. Teragia was still far enough away not to hurt the child with her uncleanness and yet near enough to look at him and hear his voice—faintly but recognizably. Again she put her hands over her eyes and squeezed the tears from her eyelids, so as to see clearly.
She saw that the figure beside the raksasa was not, as she had supposed, a servant girl, but the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, himself. The cleanest man in Taman Sari had come to this foulest spot to bring comfort to her heart. Putuh, her son, stood between his knees.
Teragia crouched down on the river-bank and looked across at the child. He did not see her and the pedanda made no attempt to point her out to him. He made no sign of having seen her and he did not call out to her. He merely sat there talking to the boy. The boy was strong and naked. His head was shorn and the lock on his forehead cut. He wore anklets and bracelets and a little metal casket round his neck to protect him from evil spirits. Teragia herself had put his navel cord in it and tied the l
ittle box round his neck. That was long ago, Teragia thought. He could run about now and he talked and babbled eagerly to his grandfather. He fell down when he ran after a butterfly, but he did not cry. That is Putuh, my little son, my princeling, my beautiful little bud, Teragia thought. Her eyes were glad and her heart drank healing in.
She sat on one side of the broad river-bed and the priest sat on the other. His hair was combed straight back and adorned with flowers. It had gone white. When the sun began to sink he got up, put the child on his hip and disappeared along the way that led to the rice fields, the palm groves and the world of men.
The orderlies let the champagne corks go with a pop and a few of the ladies screamed as if they were being tickled. The farewell committee in white lace dresses with puff sleeves and large low-crowned hats were red in the face with excitement. The embarkation of the troops was an event to celebrate. The orderlies filled the glasses with a practised hand acquired in the military casino at Surabaya. The ladies raised their glasses and after sipping them offered them to the officers. The bands of both battalions were playing, that of the 11th below on the pier and the 18th’s on the deck of the Van Swoll. Lieutenant Dekker, in his new blue uniform, took his wineglass from the hand of a girl in pink. She had a garland of moss-roses on her wide-brimmed hat of yellow straw with a long ribbon of black velvet hanging down behind. Lieutenant Dekker did not know her name, for he had only just reached Surabaya from Holland; but she seemed to him, owing perhaps to an unusual exaltation of his spirits caused by the farewell party, to be a girl of exceptional beauty and charm. The girl took a bunch of flowers from her black velvet waist-band and stuck it firmly in his shoulder-strap. Lieutenant Dekker bent down to enable her to reach up without having to stretch. He wondered whether officers who were going on active service were justified in stealing a kiss when they wished to so much as he did. He took the girl’s hand with the idea of leading her to a quieter corner of the deck. But there was no such corner. There was not a quiet corner in all Marinelaan. Not only were the two bands playing at once— one the “Gladiators’ March” and the other the Oranje anthem—but two speeches were also being made at the same time, one below on the pier, where the troops were drawn up in a square, listening with set faces to a company commander who was addressing them on the eve of their departure, and the other on the deck of the transport where the lady president of the committee was in full cry.