Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  Most of the fugitives had relations in Taman Sari. Dasni’s parents and brothers and sisters were among them and they led a worn-out cow by a rope. Suddenly there was a shout of laughter and they all turned round. It was Rib. They looked at him in astonishment. “And here have we been taking offerings and keeping festivals in the Coral Temple for years and now it appears that it was never a holy place at all!” he cried out, laughing till tears ran down his cheeks. At first they looked at him in astonishment, and then they all laughed to They understood what he meant. Rib was right. “There were no gods in the Coral Temple—if there had been it could not have been shot to pieces,” they shouted. “If it had been a holy place nothing could have destroyed it!” In spite of their fears they all laughed at the thought of it.

  “No gods have ever dwelt in the Coral Temple and we have been fools enough to go on making offerings there,” they cried out one to another. The longer they reflected on the absurdity of having paid honor to a temple in which obviously not a single god had ever taken up his abode, the more ridiculous they found it. And so it came about that the fugitives were conducted to the several houses with loud laughter and shouts of mirth.

  “The cannon cannot do any hurt to our rice temple,” Pak said when he reached home. “It is holy and the gods visit it every day.” The first Dutch soldiers to enter Taman Sari arrived towards evening. At their head rode a man with gold decorations on his coat, a captain as Molog was. His horse was even bigger and more alarming than the accounts had led them to expect. It was twice as big and tall as the horses they had in their country. The Dutch soldiers, too, looked as though they had twice the strength and courage of the men of Bali. One or two discharged their rifles, for the fun of the thing apparently, for no one was killed, and the reports had the festive sound of Chinese crackers on days of teeth-filing or corpseburning. The people of Taman Sari could not refrain from hanging over their walls and devouring the foreign soldiers with their eyes. It was only when they heard shouts from the northern exit of the village, and when their own mounted lancers clattered through the place and when darkness came down without an end to the shooting, that fear overtook them.

  Pak sat on the steps of his chief house and brooded. He missed his father’s advice. His heart was sore for the old man and at the same time he felt that he himself was too stupid a man to be the head of the family in such distracting times. I can labor in the sawahs like a buffalo, 1 am all right for that, he thought sadly, but my head is empty and I do not know what to do. Shall we stay here within our walls, he thought, or shall we flee? The responsibility for Dasni’s parents and family and cow weighed on his mind as an added burden.

  Puglug came from the kitchen bringing him his rice and a hardboiled duck’s egg and stayed squatting near him while he ate.

  “The punggawa has taken all the rifles which he has kept hidden in his rice-barn and laid them before the captain of the foreign soldiers,” she said. “There were twenty. He has hung a white flag on the tall pole and a second white flag at his gate beside his bird-cages, so that the enemy on the big ships shall see them and not shoot at his house. The punggawa is a friend of the Dutch and it is safe at his house. Hundreds of people have taken refuge there already.”

  Pak threw away the emptied leaf. “Wife, where do you hear such tales?” he asked indignantly. “Is there a bird that flies about and tells you all it sees?”

  Puglug was affronted and got up and went. She came back again, however, and said, “You have children, sons and daughters. I thought you would be glad to know of a safe place.” And with that she returned to the kitchen. Pak went on brooding.

  Perhaps, he thought, it would be safer at the punggawa of Sanur’s place. But how shall we get there? It is getting dark and it is a long way. The sawahs may be thronged with soldiers—or else evil spirits may be lying in wait for the souls of the slain. What would the old man do, he thought, racking his brains. He would not go to the punggawa, whom he called a traitor. Suddenly he found the answer and his face cleared. He went to the women and sent the little girl to summon the whole family.

  “Get ready,” he said when they were all assembled. “We are going to the home of the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai. He has offered us the protection of his house because my father is his friend. Hurry up, we must get there before dark.”

  “Shall we take rice with us? Shall we be there a long time? Do the buffaloes come, too? And the ducks and the cocks?” the women all asked at once. Pak stopped his ears. “Take the children and leave the animals here,” he said. “I will come back first thing in the morning and feed them.”

  “Lantjar can get down some coconuts and papayas, so that we shall not go empty handed,” Sarna said, remembering her manners. Pak gave her a smile for this excellent idea. Rantun put her arm round Madé and led little Klepon by the hand. The aunt carried Siang, and Puglug and Sarna each had a little son on her hip.

  When they were all ready the first bats were on the wing. They hesitated in the gateway, for just as they were going through they heard the tramp of soldiers’ boots and the Dutchmen appeared in a cloud of dust. “Through the garden and along the stream,” Pak said. They all turned back and crossed the yard, past the house altar where their aunt had laid offerings, through the dusk of the palm orchard and over the bamboo fence that bordered the stream.

  Dasni’s parents insisted on dragging their cow along with them after all; it splashed through the brook and mooed loudly, for this was strange water. Dasni led Meru, and Lantjar made a way for the three little girls under his outstretched hands when they reached the bamboo thicket. Here it was quite dark. Pak went ahead on the moist slippery ground. Glowworms hung on the leaves and little Siang grabbed at them. When they got to the edge of the bamboo thicket they saw the open sawahs before them as a patch of light under the dark arch of the leaves. They hurried on to get out of the darkness. Suddenly Pak stopped. Only the cow splashed on through the water.

  Heads and shoulders, soldiers in blue uniforms, started up from the standing crops in the sawahs. They were so far away that they looked quite small—but they laid their rifle butts to their cheeks. Pak’s wives screamed. He hurried them back under the bamboos. There was a rattle and a whistling sound. Now the cow, too, stood still. Pak was astonished to find his knees shaking. He held his breath and stood there in the darkness with his family behind him. He could not see the soldiers from where he stood, but he heard them approaching. They made a great trampling as they trod down the rice and a smell of leather and unfamiliar sweat was wafted from them. A captain on a white horse was framed in the leafy archway where the bamboos ended. They could see him, but he did not see them because they had shrunk back into the darkness and did not stir. The captain turned his horse, called out to his soldiers and they ran after him, through the stream and over the fence, and vanished into the village palm plantations.

  Pak waited a long time before he moved. When the last sound had died away he crept out. It seemed to be safe now. He beckoned to his family to follow him. The cow again plodded through the water. Pak waited at the edge of the trampled sawah until they had all assembled. His daughters were still missing. They waited for them, but they did not come. “Rantun, Madé, Klepon,” Pak called out. A whimper from the bamboos was the only answer. “They are afraid,” Pak said with a smile, though his own lips trembled. He went back along the narrow path beside the stream to fetch them. He could not see them but he heard Madé crying. “Be quiet,” he whispered into the darkness, “or the soldiers will come back.” The crying grew louder. Now he heard someone breathing behind him—it was Puglug, who had followed him to find her daughters. “Be quiet,” she whispered, too. She parted the bamboo branches and pulled Madé out. Pak felt about for the other children. He got hold of the edge of a kain; it was wet from the stream that flowed over it. “What is it?” Puglug whispered. “I don’t know,” Pak replied.

  But he knew already. His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. He saw his little daughters. They lay on t
he ground. They were limp and motionless. They did not stir. They made no answer. Rantun’s head was in the water and Klepon was clasped tightly in her arms.

  Pak bent down and lifted the two children up. He carried them out of the thicket into the light and laid them down in the trampled rice haulms of the sawah. They were dead.

  Lieutenant Dekker had distinctly seen the flash of lances among the palms before he gave the order to fire; yet nothing was to be seen of the enemy when he and his men entered the plantation. He had the place thoroughly searched, for he had been sent out with his twenty men to patrol the district for ambushed natives. Not an enemy, not a lance to be seen. He dismounted and let his horse graze the short grass among the palms. He was glad of the dusk. He closed his eyes, which were fatigued with dust and sunlight, and again he saw lances. He saw the beach as it had first met his eyes on landing—with the gleam of lances concealed behind the palms and the half-naked natives charging the soldiers, with their snake-like blades drawn. Dangerous and cunning, so it said in the hand-book. The country was made for ambushes.

  These brown-skinned men could lie hid in the ricefields, in their dense plantations, which at first he had taken for the jungle, and behind every palm; and they might be concealed in their oddlooking huts. There were walls everywhere as though these villages had been built on purpose for defence and surprise. The inhabitants were neither to be heard nor seen, but Dekker felt them on every side of him. His men, who under the sergeant had scoured every corner of the palm grove, now returned. “All clear, sir,” the sergeant reported smartly. He was an old, seasoned colonial soldier with a yellowish-white goatee. Dekker had a faint suspicion that, as a second-lieutenant in a brand new uniform, he was not taken quite seriously. He had had a great idea of himself and his leadership when he had set off on his white horse at the head of his men. But the first three hours of the campaign had made a lot of difference. He had twice lost direction, though any Javanese convict or navvy could tell it by a glance at the sun. He knew now, too, that a horse was merely a ridiculous encumbrance in the rice-fields. It sank in the mud, stumbled over the banks, fell, shied at snakes; he cursed both it and his hot tunic and felt the sweat streaming down him. Never again on horseback, he swore.

  He was very thirsty. For the third time his hand went to the water-bottle at his belt, though he knew it was empty. The murmur of a stream could be heard from the edge of this plantation and it aggravated the sensation of thirst.

  “Don’t drink that water,” he called out sharply when some of his men went towards the stream. It said in the hand-book: “Officers are strictly warned against letting their men drink the river water in Bali. The water is full of impurities, and epidemics are one of the greatest dangers threatening the expedition. Drinking water will be supplied in sufficient quantities to each unit.”

  “Three of the men are footsore, sir,” the sergeant said. “They want to bathe their feet.”

  Dekker looked on with envy as the men took off their boots and socks and bathed their feet in the stream. As an officer he could not follow their example. He could not ask the sergeant for a drink from his water-bottle, although he had seen the men sharing theirs. He turned about quickly with a feeling of lurking eyes behind a trunk. Nothing. No eyes, no lances, no enemy. He had always imagined that on active service there was an enemy opposed to you whom you attacked and conquered. Here the enemy was at his back and unseen. It was uncomfortable.

  He heard a bugle call in the distance and felt relieved. It had a familiar sound of garrison life. The men pulled on their boots and socks. It was dark by now. Dekker took out a cigarette, but his parched mouth made it tasteless. He threw it away and passed his tongue over his lips. “We’ll go back, sergeant,” he said. The sergeant approached his officer when he was addressed in this informal way. “We ought to have had a couple of Ambonese with us,” he said, looking up at the palms.

  “Why?” Dekker asked. Orders had been given to employ only white troops in all operations that threatened danger. He had been proud when the captain of his company detailed Dutch soldiers for his patrol.

  “You are thirsty, sir,” the sergeant explained. “If we had one or two colored boys with us they’d have been up there in a flash and brought down a few klapas for you, sir.”

  “Brought what?” Dekker asked. “Klapas—coconuts, sir.”

  Dekker had a small Malay dictionary in his kit as well as the handbook. He was not yet quite at home with the language, for what he had learned of it in Holland in preparation for colonial service did not sound quite like the Malay spoken by the troops. He was always caught tripping by the scraps of Malay that people in the colonies interspersed with their Dutch.

  “Give the order to march off,” he said.

  The sergeant barked out the order, Dekker mounted his peevish nag and rode beside the sergeant. He ought by right to have ridden ahead, but the sergeant had a better sense of direction. Dekker took out his hand-book and examined the rough sketch maps, and then put it back again. They came to a village street. All the villages looked alike with their endless walls and gates and curiously exotic temple doors, and the thick foliage of tall trees meeting over the roads.

  “Patrol—halt!” the sergeant ordered.

  “What is it?” Dekker asked with some agitation. The sergeant saluted: “Requisition, sir,” and leaving the men and the officer where they were he tramped noisily in at one of the gates. Dekker got ready to give the order to fire in case anything happened.

  Nothing happened. The sergeant reappeared with three large, green, coconuts. They were already cut open. He gave one to the lieutenant and the others were passed from hand to hand. Dekker had never tasted anything so good as the cool clear liquid. It soothed his dry and dusty throat and he drank it to the last drop. The sergeant looked pleased.

  “Patrol—march,” he said. “I paid them three kepengs, sir.” When they reached the camp at Sanur the troops were just beginning their evening meal. The labor corps, impressed for the campaign, had done good work in this short time: tents and camp beds had been put up and lamps of the kind called company lamps were alight everywhere. The General and his staff were even installed in a proper house—not a Dutch house but in something that at least had walls and a door. The welcome smell of food steamed from the large stew-pans and the men were lined up, dixies in hand and broad grins on their faces.

  Lieutenant Dekker made his report to the Captain, had a word or two with some of his comrades and went to his tent. He was tired out—more tired than he had realized. It was only at the sight of that wretched affair called a camp-bed that he felt how leaden his legs and how hot his eyes were. His Javanese servant was squatting smoking outside his tent.

  “Minta makan,” he said, proud of being able to order his meal in Malay. The boy went off noiselessly. It was comfortable in the tent and the lamp was lighted. The air now was quite chilly. The pastor lay on his bed reading with his tunic unbuttoned.

  “Well, what have you been up to, my friend?” he asked, pushing his spectacles on to his forehead.

  Lieutenant Dekker was rather annoyed at the prospect of being saddled with the pastor for the whole of the campaign. He had even gone so far as to mention the matter to the first-lieutenant.

  Schimmelpennick was a very good fellow, but he made it so very clear that even a pastor could be a very good fellow. Besides, he was not at all robust. He had been horribly sea-sick during the landing, though he had certainly borne it like a hero. He did not seem to feel the heat, which Dekker found intolerable. On the other hand he was always feeling cold and complained of it bitterly. Now he had another grievance.

  “My Jongos hasn’t come yet with the barang-barang,” he complained. “I shall have to sleep in my clothes, that’s all. Very unpleasant.”

  Dekker pulled off his boots and eased his toes. “C’est la guerre,” he said aptly.

  “What? Yes—you’re right there,” the pastor replied.

  The boy brought the food—meat and pota
toes and a thick sauce smelling of onions. Dekker ate hungrily. “Minta minum,” he said, feeling thirsty.

  “That’s just the snag,” Schimmelpennick said triumphantly. “Something has gone wrong with the water ration. They said we had oceans of water sent on shore from the warships. No doubt, but where has it got to? Not a drop to be had in the whole camp.”

  “We must send a few Ambonese up the coconut palms for klapas,” Dekker said, with recently acquired wisdom. He felt a longing for their cool liquor.

  “Some of the men gave me water from their own water-bottles,” the pastor said. “What fine fellows they are, such a wonderful spirit of comradeship and so grateful for any little joke one makes.”

  Dekker took off his tunic and unbuckled his revolver. “Where can one get a wash?” he asked. He was dog-tired.

  “Wash? Campaigners don’t wash,” Schimmelpennick replied gaily.

  “I might have a swim in the sea, perhaps,” Dekker said. The thunder of the waves could be heard distinctly.

  “Don’t do that,” Schimmelpennick said. “Sharks, barracudas, sword-fish, very poisonous.”

  The boy came in once more and put down a tin pot of coffee for his officer. Dekker drank greedily while the pastor looked on.

  “Delicious, I expect,” he said rather enviously. “It’s liquid, anyway,” Dekker replied.

  He lay down on his bed and shut his eyes. He saw lances, palm jungles, naked brown natives, sword-blades, lances, ambushes, water and again lances.

  The pastor sat up again. “I’ve had my disappointments, too,” he said. “It’s Sunday tomorrow. I wanted to give the men the word of God. Out of the question. I went to the General. Wouldn’t hear of it. They have to be on the march tomorrow. I’d like to know what I’m here for.”

  “For the dead,” Dekker said. “To comfort the wounded.” “Comfort, yes,” the pastor said. “We have had two slightly wounded cases today. One is Mohammedan. The other did send for me and do you know what he wanted? Gin. That’s what he wanted.” He lay down and took off his spectacles. “Shall I put the light out?”