Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  When they came to the punggawa’s house in Sanur they found that he had not yet returned from the puri, and also that Molog had left a strong detachment of warriors armed with lances, krisses and rifles posted in the palm grove behind the punggawa’s house. The men were uncertain whether to feel that this was a protection or a menace.

  They stood about irresolutely for a time, not knowing what to do next. The punggawa had told them to keep within doors, but they felt safer when they were all together. No one thought of going to their sawahs that morning. Finally, Krkek and a few other of the more level-headed men of the village called a meeting of the council and they all returned to the village hall of Taman Sari, the great balé with its two-tiered roof supported on posts, where they had always so far solved all difficulties that threatened the village.

  There was a brief discussion in the laconic style of peasants confronted by an unexpected problem. The wealthy Wajan was in favor of abandoning the village and going into hiding if the Dutch invaded the country.

  “Hide where?” Rib asked, with a flicker of his customary frivolity. “We are not squirrels, to creep into coconuts.”

  Pak had the extraordinary sensation of thin cords being strained round his chest. Krkek in his sensible way finally summed up what was in all their minds. “What concern of ours is a war between our lord and the Dutch?” he said. “We do not want a war and fighting is not our business. What are the people of Badung to eat if the peasants go to war instead of growing rice? The plough is more important than the kris.”

  “That is so,” the men agreed.

  Pak had something to add to this. “If the Dutch offer violence to our women or injure our children, then we will fight; but if they only march through our village on their way to Badung, then we will stay in our houses and not stir,” he said out of the oppression of his heart. The raja put my brother’s eyes out, he took my best cock away from me: I will not fight for him, he thought dumbly.

  “We’ll fight like armadilloes,” Rib said, and the assembly dissolved in a fit of laughter. Poke an armadillo with a bamboo pole and he will roll himself up and sham dead: you may step on him and roll him over and he will not care.

  At noon the kulkul beat again and the men hastened to the house of the punggawa at Sanur, whither it summoned them. They now all had krisses stuck in their girdles and no children were to be seen in the village street. They crowded into the courtyard and crouched there with clasped hands; there were so many of them that they could not all find room and there was a dense crowd outside the gate, too. The punggawa looked tired, and the state with which he usually made his public appearances seemed to have wilted during the night.

  “Men of Badung,” he said, “I will now tell you all that has occurred. I was yesterday on the ship which carries the great lords and rajas of the Dutch and I spoke with them. They mean no evil. They love you and will take you under their protection. Their quarrel is only with the lord of Badung. They gave me a letter to him and I took it to Badung. In the letter they offered him peace for the last time and demanded his submission. I spent the whole night in discussion with the lord and his counsellors. The old tjokorda of Pametjutan was also present and the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, the holy man, to whose advice the lord listens. The lord refused to submit.

  “Men of Badung, I am now going on board the ship of the white men to take them this answer. Then they will land and make war.” The punggawa looked from one to another of the men who were immediately in front of him. Their faces had that sleepy expression which they took on only in moments of the closest and most anxious attention.

  “This war,” the punggawa went on, “will be worse than anything you can imagine and many will be killed. Is it your wish that I tell the Dutch that the five villages of the coast desire to be at peace with them?”

  At first there was silence, and then a murmur, and finally an old man, the head man of the village council of Sanur, spoke up: “It shall be as the punggawa has said—that we desire to be at peace with the Dutch. But, master, there are many men in the five villages who belong to the puri and eat the lord’s rice. These men are in duty bound to fight for him. What shall they do?”

  “That,” the punggawa answered, “is for each man to decide for himself. I hold no man back who wishes to fight for his lord. I myself shall hang a white flag before my house and whoever is afraid of the Dutch can come into my courtyard and be safe. Those who mean to fight have nothing to do with me; they must join the warriors of Molog, the captain, and put themselves under his protection. And now I advise you to go to your fields. If the Dutch find you peaceably at work they will do you no harm.”

  With this the punggawa turned about and went into the house without waiting to hear what the men had to say to it. They hung about for awhile in the road in front of the house, and then dispersed and slowly made their way home.

  “What shall you do, Pak?” Sarda, the fisherman, asked, as they reached the outskirts of Sanur where their ways parted.

  “I don’t know yet. I must ask my father,” Pak said. He was utterly worn out and dazed by all the talking that had gone on that day.

  “My family has been given three sawahs by the lord,” Sarda said. “I can hardly do otherwise than take my lance and go to Molog.”

  Pak looked at the fisherman in amazement—Sarda, his friend, who had helped him to carry off Sarna; Sarda, with whom he had often drunk palm wine, who sat side-by-side with him when they played in the gamelan, and who took one end of the pole when they carried the gong—Sarda meant to fight and Pak did not. He put his hand on his shoulder before they parted. He did not know what to say.

  When he got home he squatted beside his father and ate the rice his second wife brought him. The women had their children close round them and were eager to hear what Pak had to tell. But they were too polite to ask. Pak was exasperated by them, nevertheless. “Go into the kitchen and don’t all sit round me like croaking frogs.” When the women had gone the men of the family were left sitting together— Pak and his father and uncle, blind Meru and young Lantjar. Pak had his youngest son on his knees. When he had told his news they all sat and chewed in silence. At last the old man spoke.

  “I cannot understand what you tell me, my son,” he said. “The punggawa holds his office from our raja and is a relation of his. How can he tell you to keep peace when the lord calls on you to fight?”

  “The punggawa is our friend and does not wish the villages of the coast to come to harm. We ought to be grateful to him for not forcing us to fight,” Pak said, though the thought of this had never occurred to him.

  “A rumour has come to me on the wind that the punggawa is a friend of the Dutch and is in their pay as the gusti Nyoman is. Perhaps he is a traitor as the other is. Who has told you that his advice is right?” the old man asked obstinately.

  Pak folded his hands and replied, “The raja put out the eyes of my brother, your son. He has taken my best cock from me. I will not fight for the raja.”

  “We are all the lord’s servants,” the old man replied. “My father served him and I, too, and you. The sawahs whence our rice comes belong to the raja. We belong to the raja. When he sends out the holy kris to summon us, we must go.”

  When the old man had said this he spat out his betel-juice and looked straight in front of him. An oppressive silence weighed on the rest. The cocks crowed from the back of the yard. The women in the kitchen had never kept so quiet. The old man got up and crossed the yard and disappeared behind the rice barn. After a while they saw him coming back again; he had a lance in his hand and his kris in his girdle. He stopped in front of his three sons and looked at them all in turn. Meru raised his face to his father, for he could feel his eyes resting on his head.

  Pak folded his hands and asked in the ceremonious style used to a superior: “Whither does my father mean to go?”

  “To join the raja’s warriors,” the old man answered. “Peace rest with you.”

  They bowed themselves with hands c
lasped and looked after him as he left the yard by the narrow gate. Pak felt as desolate as he used to feel when a child if darkness overtook him out in the pastures with the buffaloes.

  Nothing unusual occurred that night and the next morning began as any other morning did—with the crowing of the cocks, with the sound of the besoms as the women swept the yard, with the barking of dogs and the blazing up of the kitchen fire. The women did not indeed go to the river for water, for Pak had bidden them keep at home. They got what water they needed from the narrow watercourse that ran through the village and the cocks were put out on the strip of grass outside the gate as they always were. After doing nothing for an hour Pak grew impatient. He considered taking out his buffaloes and going out to the sawahs, which it was time to plough the second time. He stood at the gate of his yard to find out what the other men were doing. The street was quieter than usual and not a woman or child was to be seen. A few men passed by and Pak called out to them. “Are you going out to work on the sawahs?”

  “We are not sure,” they replied. They were as undecided as he was. Pak turned back into his yard, busied himself in his barn and rubbed his buffaloes down with wisps of grass—an attention they accepted with surprise. It was fortunate that so sensible a man as Krkek had the biggest say in the village. He sent the subak’s runner to tell the men to go and work on the fields as usual. There was no danger. Pak took out his buffaloes with a sigh of relief, gave the women strict orders to be prudent and left. He felt a little anxious about his father.

  He ploughed without paying proper heed to the work, and his furrows were not as straight as usual. Yet after a time he felt the healing of the earth and the air of the sawahs, as he always did, and his cares passed away as the little cloud over the palms to the north. The tjrorot beat his little bamboo kulkul. When the sun was straight above his head the big kulkul in the village beat, too. Pak wondered whether to go home. Everything was upside down. In the ordinary way every man knew what he had to do: when to work, when to hold festival, what offerings to make, and what customs to obey. Ever since the menace of war with the Dutch, everything had been uncertain and Pak had been called upon to make decisions which were beyond the power of a simple man like him. For example, he had told Meru that very morning not to drive the ducks out on to the pastures. But then he saw the duck-herds were out and the ducks joyfully plunging their beaks into the mud and he felt he had perhaps been wrong. His ducks were hungry and possibly they would turn on each other in their pen and peck each other to death. How was he, who did not even know what to do about his ducks, to know what to do when it came to fighting the Dutch? When the holy kris called, one had to go, his father said; and his father was wise. It was the first time in his life that Pak had gone against the old man. His throat was filled with bitterness, his tongue and his gullet were bitter, and his mouth. I will not fight, he thought once more. My brother has had his eyes put out and my cock has been taken from me. I will not fight.

  He saw Lantjar come running between the sawahs, breathless and stumbling as he ran. “The Dutchmen are here,” he shouted from a long way off. “News has come— they have left their big ships and are coming ashore in many boats—thousands of soldiers with rifles and guns. What are we to do?”

  Men were hurrying past from the other sawahs and more messengers came running from the village. “They look like raksasas, with beards and enormous eyes. They have huge horses with them, bigger than have ever been seen. They cannot speak to us, but they threaten us with their rifles. The women are crying for fear in every house.” Pak dragged his plough out of the wet earth and his buffaloes from the field. He was ploughing the new sawah and he was glad it was not far away from the village. Lantjar helped him with the beasts. All the men hurried from the fields. In spite of his haste Pak halted for a moment when he reached the rice temple and, leaving Lantjar in charge of the buffaloes, he went in. He knelt down before the chief shrine and gazed at his plates. He felt sure the gods would protect him in return for his gift. He wanted to pray, but he could not think of a word to say by way of prayer. He could only crouch there with hands folded on his forehead and lay open to the gods the wishes of his heart. Protect my house, my family, my children and my fields. When he left the temple he had no more fear.

  Just as they reached the outskirts of the village the mounted lancers broke from the bamboo thicket by the stream. There were many more of them than on the day before. Pak realized that a large number of men had joined the lord’s warriors, men who went as his own father had, when the holy kris called. He looked for the old man among those who followed the riders at a slower pace on foot. But he could not see him for the throng; his buffaloes tore along for home and the water splashed up in his eyes as they forded the stream. The fighting men vanished in the direction of Sanur.

  The village had become so strange a place that it might not have been Taman Sari at all; Pak felt like the man in the fairy story who opened his eyes and found himself on an unknown island. There was a wild rushing to and fro in the streets; the people were scurrying hither and thither as senselessly as frightened hens. Women wept and children screamed, making such a clamor that the unfamiliar noise that came rattling from Sanur was scarcely audible. The brilliant light of day was thick with dust. A procession of women carrying offering baskets came walking through the distracted crowds on its way to the village temple. They were right: it was necessary to pay honor to the gods. A little farther on Pak met the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai. He strode calmly on with his long staff in his hand, followed by two pupils, as though he knew nothing of strife and fear. A few people made him a fleeting obeisance with hands folded.

  Pak took courage and addressed the priest in spite of the unmannerly rudeness of doing so. But the extraordinary events of the day seemed enough to excuse him.

  “Pedanda,” he said, “my old father, whom the pedanda knows well, has forsaken us. He has gone out to join the raja’s warriors. What shall we do so that nothing shall happen to him?”

  “Your father is a loyal servant,” the pedanda said kindly. “The gods will protect him. And you—are you afraid?”

  Pak let his eyes fall. The pedanda smiled. “If there is danger, bring your family to my house,” he said. “I will gladly take them in, I have been a friend of your father’s for many years. They will be safe with me, for my house is under the protection of the gods.”

  Just as Pak was about to thank him there was a clap like thunder. The report was so tremendous that Pak felt the air rush against his ears as though to burst his head. It was answered by a prolonged and piercing scream from the women and children in the road. Pak found himself clasping the priest round the knees with his head buried in his kain as if he was still a child himself. “It has begun,” the pedanda said, still smiling as before. “The Dutch cannon,” He released himself gently from Pak’s grasp and walked on.

  When Pak got home with his buffaloes the news that Sanur was in flames had already in some inexplicable manner come to Puglug’s ears. “The Dutch have set fire to the village and everyone is dead— they have not left one alive,” she said, and her lips trembled. Sarna threw her arms round Pak’s neck without shame, as though they were behind closed doors in the intimate seclusion of her house. He shook her off.

  “Have the cocks been fed?” he asked. Meru, the blind man, shook his head. Pak went to fetch the cocks from the roadside and fed them. For some reason it comforted his wives a little to see him doing it.

  There was a particularly tall palm in the garden and Pak climbed up it to see the burning of Sanur. But Sanur was not burning. There was only a little smoke in the north-west corner of the large village where the Coral Temple stood. Nor were all the people dead, for now the first fugitives arrived, with children, buffaloes, baskets and cocks, and told what had happened.

  The raja’s soldiers had lain in ambush behind the palms near the beach in order to fall on the enemy as soon as they came ashore. This was an act of reckless daring, for there were only about a hun
dred rnen of Bali against thousands of soldiers. But their warlike ardour boiled up and could not be restrained. Also the Molog himself, their captain, was at their head to lead them.

  The foreign soldiers shot from their boats, and their rifles shot so swiftly that each shot mowed down several men. Molog’s men shot, too, but their rifles did not shoot straight and they seized kris and lance meaning to fall on the enemy as they landed. The sand of the shore was whipped with the bullets of the Dutchmen, according to the fugitives, and the warriors kept to the shelter of the palms. The sight of the strange soldiers and their immense horses, as they drew near the shore in their boats, was terrifying. But then three men advanced quite alone up the beach towards the raja’s warriors. One of them was the gusti Nyoman of Buleleng—he had a drawn kris in his hand. The other two were the tall white men whom the lord had always called his friends. Dewa Gdé Molog recognized them. The gusti Nyoman called out to the warriors in a loud voice to lay down their arms and no harm should come to the village. Molog replied with a shout: his soldiers rushed from their cover with loud cries, their curved krisses in their hands, and fell headlong as though Durga, the goddess of death, had lain her finger on them. But two Dutchmen fell also with blood flowing from them. The others lifted them up and carried them back into one of the boats. The rest of the warriors retreated. Then came the great thunder-clap and the largest of the gray ships was suddenly wreathed in smoke. The shots from its cannon had hit the Coral Temple and destroyed it. The shrines and thrones of the gods fell in ruins. Fire broke out and the new eleven-storeyed tower and even the exposed roots of the wairingin tree were turned to charred embers.

  The people of Taman Sari heard this account with shudders of horror and fear, but with the liveliest curiosity notwithstanding.

  They crept out from their houses into the street and surrounded the fugitives and asked them a thousand questions. When they heard of the destruction of the temple they could not at first believe it. “Mbe!” they exclaimed, “how is it possible to destroy a temple? How can the gods permit it? Mbe! Mbe!”