Love and Death in Bali

by Vicki Baum

  He sat down to meditate beside the image of a raksasa that had sunk into the ground. The lord looked round for Oka. “Stay here with the pedanda,” he told him gently. He himself went on without pausing, crossed the river and went towards some low shrubs among which he caught sight of some roofs.

  Teragia was coming from the spring with a water-jar on her head. “Come no farther, stranger,” she called out. “Unclean dwell here.”

  “Greetings, Teragia,” the lord said, without stopping. She looked at him in astonishment as he approached. Her face was tanned with the sun and lined with care and so impassive that he did not know whether she recognized him or not when he stopped in front of her and took off his hat and threw it down on the grass.

  “Where is Ida Bagus Rai?” he asked. “I have a message for him.” He gave him his full title, as though Raka were still the darling of all. Three lean dogs came and sniffed at him without barking.

  “In the house,” Teragia said. “Go in, if you are not afraid of the uncleanness.”

  “I have put all fear away from me,” Alit replied as seriously as though he were addressing another man. She was so tall he had to look up when he spoke to her. The enclosure with its unfinished walls and its two small balés was clean and tidy. Raka sat in one of them on a mat, with closed eyes, doing nothing. The lord had felt afraid of seeing his friend’s beautiful face again, blotched and swollen with the Great Sickness. But it was not marred; it had only become strange and other than it was before.

  “Raka,” he said in a voice not quite his own. Raka opened his eyes and looked up.

  “Alit,” he cried. He corrected himself with a hasty movement as though he had only now recognized the lord and clasped his hands humbly. “Tjokorda, your Highness,” he whispered. Then seeing that he was disguised he asked quickly, “Are you in flight?”

  “You, who know me better than anyone, ought not to ask me that,” Alit said, smiling. He was still searching for Raka in Raka’s face, but the darkness came quickly down and obliterated the features of the seated figure.

  “I have sent messengers through all my kingdom to say to all that tomorrow is the end. Offerings will be made in every temple. Anyone who wishes to die with me may come to my puri. I could find no messenger to come to you. Therefore I came myself,” he said, still standing in front of the crouching man. He was thinking of the promise they had given each other on their way to Batukau and he knew that Raka was thinking of it too.

  “A sacrificial death is the cleanest thing of all,” Raka whispered, raising his hand. “And I of all things am the most unclean.”

  Alit now saw that Raka’s hands were deformed and his fingers no longer like those of a human being. As he got to his feet his crutches, which he had propped against the edge of the balé, fell with a clatter to the ground. Alit was filled with pity and yet he shuddered. Only the shell, the perishable, passes away, he thought again. Comfort and certainty were in the old books of the Mahabharata, wisdom that foresaw all and gave an answer.

  He bent down to his friend and touched his shoulder with the tips of his fingers. He could feel that Raka trembled. “Sacrificial death makes the unclean clean,” he said. “That is why I am here to point you out the way. Tomorrow we shall enter heaven together.” As he raised himself he felt Raka touch his feet. He forced himself not to shudder at the touch. Raka without a word laid his forehead on the lord’s feet.

  Teragia’s long shadow fell over them. She was there with a lighted lamp in her hand. When Alit turned to go she lighted him as far as the river. She stayed there until he had forded the sandy river-bed and reached the raksasa. She saw the white figure of the pedanda as he rose to his feet. He unwound his white kain, took off his white jacket, took his kris from his girdle and put them all down beside the image of the demon, just where rice and fruit had always been put for them. He went away clothed only in a loin-cloth as the lord was.

  She waited a long time until they had vanished from sight and then she went to fetch the clothing. The kris had a scabbard of tortoise-shell. The hilt was of wood and on it was carved the veiled widow. Teragia went back and helped Raka to put on the dress of those who were dedicated to death. She herself still had a white kain left over from the days when she prayed the gods to enter into her. She was inexpressibly happy and thankful. Raka was happy too. She could tell it by the way he discarded his crutches and set out only with the support of her shoulder. She did not take a torch to light their way for fear they might be recognized and driven out. They went in darkness, slowly and painfully and thinking only of reaching Badung before the first glimmer of dawn.

  Whenever Teragia turned round she saw the three famished dogs at her heels. Behind them a crouching figure stole along—Bengek, the husky, the unclean, the son of the witch. He kept out of their way and thought they could not see him, but they had seen him from the first moment when they left the river mouth. She secretly smiled her rare, unwilling smile.

  “Bengek wants to die with us,” she said to Raka. “May he do that?”

  “Who am I to stand in the way of his being born again?” Raka said gently.

  They got to Badung in the fourth hour of the night. No one recognized them although they reached the shattered wall of the puri among a crowd of people all going the same way. The gate by which Raka had gone to his stolen meetings with Lambon swung open in desolation. They crouched down not far from it and waited for the morning.

  Messengers had gone in haste to all the villages of the kingdom with the message: Tomorrow there will be a great battle and the end. Many of those who belonged to the puri came and some did not. And not a few who were neither related to the lord nor bound to him by any sort of service went nevertheless to Badung to die with him. For death has a mysterious power of seduction, as wine has, or love. They came with their wives and children, with the old men and grandmothers of their families, clothed in white if they had any white linen and, if not, in the gaily colored kains of the simple people. Every man had a kris and many of the women and boys had them too. They streamed into the puri and squeezed their way as near as they could get to their lord or to Molog, the captain of the warriors, and said, “You summoned us and we are ready to die with you.” No one felt any fear, all were merry and in festive mood as though they had come to witness a cremation. The children did not cry; they leaned against their mothers and fell asleep or if they could not sleep their eyes sparkled with excitement and the reflection of the fires. No torches were needed in the puri, for the fires blazed up now here, now there and lit up the courtyard.

  No one smoked opium or drank palm wine that night. Sacrificial death is clean and holy and must be met with an unclouded mind and open heart. No one wept, but now and then a sound of laughter was heard from the huddled dwellings where the lord’s wives lived. They were the scene of feverish activity: The slave girls were cutting out long strips of linen and stitching the little men’s jackets in big hurried stitches. The women laughed as they put on this unusual dress. Tumun, who had formerly been a prostitute at Kesiman, gave free rein to her vanity on this day of days. She shaved her eyebrows by the light of an oil lamp and fixed gold ornaments to her temples. Muna, the slave-girl, was busy beautifying Lambon, so that in heaven as well she should be the raja’s favorite wife. With jokes and flatteries she combed Lambon’s luxuriant hair and put little splinters of wood sprinkled with scented oils behind her ears. Every mirror was brought out and in front of each a woman turned herself this way and that in her new white robes. Muna herself, frivolous little slave-girl though she was, had resolved to die with Lambon. It was astonishing how few of the wives and servants and slaves had left the puri. The women whom Bijang had brought along were less lively. The tjokorda of Pametjutan, to whom they belonged, was old and sick and moody and often clouded in mind, and perhaps they were not so very delighted by the thought of being married to him in heaven and for all eternity. Messengers hurried between the two puris, bringing articles of clothing and adornment. They brought news
too. The old tjokorda, it was said, had left his sick bed and clothed himself in white. He could no longer walk, but a chair was ready in which, when the moment came, he was to be carried out to meet the enemy. Bijang was keeping him company and telling him stories to pass the time. She already had a kris in her girdle to complete her male attire, the messenger said, and she entertained her slave-girls by showing them how she would kill herself. She had decided to die in her puri, since she was old-fashioned and thought it undignified for a noble lady to show herself to foreign soldiery, even though it was only to be killed.

  A fresh onset of festal gaiety swept through the women’s quarters when Ida Katut made his appearance with a command from their lord that they should put on all the finery they possessed. The little story-teller had for long enjoyed the dubious privilege of taking liberties with the raja’s wives and behaving as though he was not a man at all but a gelded buffalo; and so it was his office on this occasion also to hand over the krisses which the lord sent for his wives. They were not particularly choice ones, for these had all been allotted to the men and boys of the court; but they were highly polished and sharpened. The slaves put them in their mistresses’ girdles and Tuman made great play with hers and swaggered about like a prince in a fairy tale. Ida Katut himself wore an enormous kris at his diminutive back and was tremendously busy. Oka ran about with him and he, too, had a kris at his back. He was too impatient and excited to sit still and begged the little story-teller for one fairy tale after another to pass the time. After Ida Katut had gone the women opened their baskets and chests and took out their gold crowns, their rings and bracelets and adorned themselves as though for the festival of the New Year.

  As the night wore on more and more people crowded into the puri until there must have been thousands assembled there. On this solemn occasion the four castes kept more strictly apart than they usually did. The simple people, the sudras and rice cultivators, the servants and all the casteless artisans who belonged to the lord assembled in the now ruinous outer court, marvelling at its desolation and not venturing to enter the inner courts. The warriors of the Ksatria caste, who had come with all the members of their families from the smaller puris and noble houses, surrounded Molog, their captain, who gave his orders in a loud voice. The cannon were examined and dragged into position, new emplacements were made if the old ones had given way and rifles were issued and the warriors mustered. They, least of all who were assembled in the puri, gave any thought to death, although it was their trade. The relations of the lord, all the distant uncles and cousins, the children of halfbrothers, descendants of wives without caste who yet were of the blood of the tjokordas—all these assembled round the house where they supposed the lord to be. Gusti Wana, the first minister and all his dependants was among them; he wore hibiscus flowers and fine beaten gold in his head-dress and was more talkative than usual. There, too, was Anak Agung Bima, with his youngest grandson in his arms, and the chief overseer of the lord’s sawahs. All the dignitaries of the court were gathered here and all their relations and the servants of their relations and the servants’ families. The whole network of relationships that spread through the country from the puri after the manner of the roots of a wairingin tree was to be seen there in all its ramifications. They were all there ready and glad to die with their lord, while the free men of the villages slept peacefully in their homes with their wives and children.

  In the fourth hour of the night the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, arrived from Taman Sari accompanied by a pupil carrying the holy vessels. All made way for him reverently, for he was one of the wisest and holiest men in the land. He, too, was clothed in white and the people did not know whether this was merely in token of his priestly dignity or whether it was because he had decided to share the lord’s end. His hair, too, was white and gleaming and adorned with rare orchids and yellow, white, red and blue flowers for each of the great gods. He wore a kris in his girdle, a simple one with a scabbard of woven bamboo and a plain wooden hilt. He asked the servants and courtiers where their lord was to be found and, as no one could tell him, he went past the pond to the courts in the northeast of the puri where the watercourse surrounded the island on which the house-temple stood.

  Lord Alit was kneeling before the great shrine of his holy forefathers, lost in meditation, his hands clasped on his forehead. The pedanda knelt down on the mat beside him and put his hand on his shoulder. “Are you praying, my son?” he asked gently.

  “I am praying the mighty fathers of my race to tell me whether I have chosen the good way,” Alit said. His eyes shone hot and dry in the light of the two oil lamps which hung before the shrine.

  The pedanda set out the sacred vessels on the mat and signed to his pupil to leave them. He took his bell out of the box and put on his tall priest’s crown. He washed his mouth and his feet and sat cross-legged before the altars. “I will call on the gods for you and they will answer you,” he said.

  Offerings lay on every throne and the fading flowers smelt strong and sweet. The smoke of sandalwood and resin rose from the braziers and mingled its scent with that of the flowers. A murmur, subdued by the distance, came from the crowded courts. The stars moved across the sky, hour by hour, a cool wind got up and swept away the smell of burning and made the flames leap up. The night passed, the kulkul beat, the cocks crowed. The last night before the end was over. The darkness was already growing pale in the east when the lord and the priest got to their feet and left the temple. Many of the people in the courtyard had fallen asleep leaning against the balés and at the foot of the walls, tired out with the exertions and agitation of the previous days. The fires had burned down.

  The prince and the priest made their way among the exhausted and sleeping people to the gate leading into the outer court.

  “Peace on your way, my master,” the prince said as though he had already put off his exalted rank.

  The pedanda smiled, though there was still the absorption of long prayer in his eyes. “I am staying with you,” he said, “and with those whom you take with you into the heaven of Shiva,” he added and his smile took on a deeper meaning. The lord smiled too, for they both thought of Raka. When he went into his house to clothe himself in white and to put the sacred kris, Singa Braga, in his girdle, his mind was wholly at peace. The ancient words of the holy writings echoed in his heart and gave it calm and certainty:

  Happy the warrior to whom the just fight comes unsought. It opens for him the door of heaven.

  Six cages containing little gray doves hung from the roof of the balé. Alit opened them one after the other.

  Without honor is he who casts off duty and obedience. To lose his honor is worse for a man of noble blood than to die.

  The doves cowered down when he put them on his hands; they hesitated to take flight into the darkness. So he threw them up into the air.

  The end of birth is death. The end of death is birth. So it is ordained, it was written.

  The day dawned to the accompaniment of the thunderous report of a Dutch gun.

  “I can’t sleep. Can you?” Pastor Schimmelpennick asked as he sat up in bed. “Every bone in my body is aching.”

  Dekker rolled over and looked irritably at his tent companion. “I had just got off to sleep,” he said reproachfully.

  “It’s morning at last, thank God,” Schimmelpennick said, putting on his spectacles and taking out his watch. “Four thirty-six. Let’s hope for a better camping place tomorrow.”

  Dekker pushed his hair from his face. He, too, was now aware of aches and pains in the back from the day’s marching and a night on straw. The company lamps were all alight, for a rumor had reached them at midnight that the Raja of Badung was planning a fierce assault and the battalion had been given the alarm. The men were sleeping on the ground beside their piled arms. The officers had been allotted the huts of the puri of Kesiman—in so far as they were not shot to bits. Dekker looked about him.

  “Nice pig-sties, these palaces,” he said with repugnance.<
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  The pastor smiled to himself. “You are right there, my friend,” he agreed. “A pigsty and nothing more. Those fellows in Java are big swells in comparison.”

  Dekker lay down again and closed his eyes. The straw scratched his neck and the earth floor of the hut was lumpy. He tried to find hollows to fit his bones, but it was useless. Nevertheless, he fell into a doze after a time and was nearly asleep when a loud report, immediately followed by a second, woke him up again.

  “The big naval guns,” the pastor remarked with satisfaction. “Rather different from our little twelve-pounders.”

  “Haven’t heard anything of them for long enough,” Dekker said. The four days’ campaigning, with all its experiences and exertions, seemed like years. He had a beard starting to grow and his nose was peeling with the sun. The bugles sounded reveillé.

  “Now for it,” he said with an uneasy feeling in the pit of the stomach as he buttoned up his tunic.

  “Are they going to give us any breakfast, I wonder?” the pastor asked.

  “Something or other’s wrong with the rations,” Dekker said. “I’d like to know who gets the makanan sent from the ships.”

  The confusion of a camp roused in the half-light of dawn filled the courtyards. Men starting up from sleep, coughing, fumbling, cursing and laughing, staggered to their feet and finally sorted themselves out. The pastor sat with the handbook to Bali on his sharp knees and studied a poor map of the puri of Badung. The naval guns continued to rend the air. “If only I don’t have diarrhoea,” he said, clasping his round paunch.

  “Why, do you feel bad?” Dekker asked unconcernedly.

  “A bit cold and queer in here. Perhaps it’s that emergency ration of last night.”

  “The grub was all right,” Dekker said; he was tired of his companion’s little troubles.

  “Well, of course, if you like pork and beans out of a tin,” the pastor said in an aggrieved tone.