Tales of a Female Nomad

by Rita Golden Gelman

  After the first week, they acknowledge my frustration and give me their individual names: Tu Biang Sandat, Tu Biang Adi, etc. Our lessons continue. I feel like Anna in Siam.

  After I have been in the puri for several months, Tu Biang and Tu Aji arrive at my patio one morning in formal dress.

  “If you will excuse us,” says Tu Aji, “we would like to talk to you about something.”

  Tu Biang, whose trademark is laughter, is not even smiling. This is serious.

  “Please,” I say, lowering my head and putting my hands together.

  “Rita, you have been here for more than three months,” says Tu Aji. “Every day we talk and share our lives. You have brought your joy into our puri, and you have helped us in many ways. We are here to tell you that you have become family. We can no longer take money from you.”

  I cannot stop the tears or the swelling of pride I feel inside. I have come to Bali to seek spirituality and to learn about the Balinese world; but most important, wherever I am, I want to feel a part of the culture, to be accepted on the inside.

  Now as a family member, I want even more to know about the puri family. Tu Aji frequently talks about his father, who, when he became blind several years before he died, was writing a family history. He continued to dictate the history to Tu Aji until it was completed. One day I ask Tu Aji if he plans to write the family history of his generation. He apologizes, to me and to his father. He has not written anything. We both know that if Tu Aji does not write it, no one will. The written story of the dynasty will end, which would be sad, because Tu Aji is a wonderful storyteller.

  During our frequent conversations, Tu Aji tells me stories that make me feel as though I am living in a fairy tale.

  He tells me how he happened to marry Tu Biang. His father, the king, and her father were brothers, the only male siblings of their generation. The family wealth was split, half and half, between the two brothers.

  Tu Aji’s father had three sons. His brother had only one child, Tu Biang. Since wealth is passed on to sons, not to daughters, Tu Biang could not inherit her father’s half of the puri. Like all women, she had to “marry out” and live with her husband’s family.

  But the Balinese are very practical. And when a royal family is in such a situation, the woman (a teenage Tu Biang, in this case) officially becomes a man and takes on the duties and responsibilities of a man. She inherits and chooses a “wife,” who moves into her puri. She also assumes economic responsibility for the family and the education of the children. There was a tricky clause that was thrown into the deal: she had to marry one of her three first cousins.

  The teenage Tu Biang chose Tu Aji, who already had a wife and child, which of course angered Tu Aji’s younger brother, the king. He wanted her and her half of the wealth.

  Together Tu Aji’s first family moved into Tu Biang’s part of the puri. The two wives never got along. Today they barely talk, though they live within fifty yards of each other.

  Many years after they were married, Tu Biang was swindled out of all her money. She went crazy. For several years the beautiful princess from the puri ran insanely on the streets at night trying to win her money back by gambling.

  Tu Aji could not help. As a “wife,” he had no money. But the king did, and he promised to assist . . . if Tu Biang would sleep with him.

  Tu Biang and her mother, Tu Nini, chose instead to beg for rice from house to house, rather than give her cousin, the king, what he wanted. (Eventually, foreign guests in the puri helped her get back her life, some money, and her dignity.)

  Tu Aji tells me that because of Tu Biang’s “fall,” one of his sons had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. (He’s fine now.)

  Tu Aji also tells me an intriguing story about the king’s Wife Number Two. She went into a trance one day and received orders from the king’s dead father that the mother, who was still living, should adopt her, thus placing Wife Number Two into the highest caste.

  Tu Aji told his brother that it would be a crazy thing to do; there was no precedent. Surely it was a scheme of Wife Number Two and not a message from their father.

  The king, in that great royal tradition of punishing the messenger, cut off all relations with Tu Aji and his family for several years, sending out orders to all the extended 157 families in Kerambitan that they were to have nothing to do with Tu Aji, his wives, or his sons.

  Against Tu Aji’s advice, Wife Number Two was adopted by the king’s mother, who began coughing during the ceremony, spit blood soon after, and died the next week. (The adoption didn’t work either. Bad things started to happen to the family, and a few years later it was undone.)

  I am swept into Tu Aji’s stories like a child in a fairy tale. It is an enchanted world, and sinister. When Tu Aji talks about the special powers that his brother, the king, possesses, there is something ominous in the air. I have to keep reminding myself that these tales are not fiction or folklore. They are true stories about Tu Aji’s family, about people I know. People I talk to every day.

  The tales are so addictive that I cannot wait to get up every morning. Something extraordinary is always lurking just minutes away in Tu Aji’s stories. Finally, I cannot stand it any more.

  “Tu Aji,” I say. “Your stories are wonderful and I agree with your father: they should be recorded. Would you like to write a book with me? It will be a lot of work, many months, maybe years. Would you like to try?”

  “I have been thinking about the same thing,” he says. “I would like that very much.”

  And we plunge in with a fury. Every day we meet for hours. Now I am taking notes and asking questions, filling in gaps, and expanding on details. There are days when Tu Aji says, “I am tired today.” And we do not work. Often on those days he asks me questions, as interested in my stories as I am in his. I love it when his enthusiasm bursts into my dramatic pauses with “And then? And then?”

  But mostly Tu Aji talks. I never get tired of listening. I cannot get enough.

  Then one day I realize that there has never been anything like the book we are constructing . . . a true story of life in a real kingdom that reads like a fairy tale. I am suddenly frightened.

  “Tu Aji, I do not want you to work today. I would like you to think about something instead. I have just realized that our book has the potential of becoming a bestseller. That means it will be read all over the world . . . and it will certainly find its way back to Bali. The story of your family will be read by millions of people. They will read about your children, your brother, your wives. The good, the bad, and the embarrassing will be there in print for everyone to know. Please think carefully about the consequences. If you decide that you do not want to do it, I will understand.”

  The next morning Tu Aji joins me on my patio. “I have made a decision,” he says. “I am not worried about the stories we tell about my sons. They have all passed through their difficulties. Besides, I am their father and I can tell their stories. My wives’ stories too, I can tell. Those stories are my stories as well. But I have decided that the stories about my brother cannot be told while we are both alive. The book cannot be published until one of us is dead.”

  “No problem,” I say, hoping that his brother will be the first to go. “We can do all the work; we can even look for a publisher. We will just stipulate that the publication will have to wait until you or your brother dies.”

  “Good, then,” he says. “Let’s continue.”

  Four days later I walk out of my room at six in the morning. Tu Aji is sitting on my patio.

  “Why are you here so early?” I ask.

  “I had a heart attack in the middle of the night. I am waiting for a car to take me to the hospital.”

  His face is pale and his eyes are dull. He has already told me that he had a heart attack several years before I met him.

  “How do you know it was a heart attack?” I ask. “What were your symptoms?”

  “They were the same as the last time. A terrible pressure, l
ike squeezing, in the middle of my chest. Then it spread into my shoulder and my neck and my arm and I started to sweat. Adoo. Rita, I have told you many times that I am not afraid to die; but last night, when I thought I was dying, I did not want to go. I am not ready.”

  “And I am not ready either for you to leave.”

  We are sitting across from each other. I am not sure what his heart is doing at this moment, but my head is close to exploding. How is it possible that we are discussing a heart attack he is having as we speak, so calmly, without emotion. It is the Balinese way: as a subject gets more intense, more charged, the voices always get softer.

  I continue in the tone he has set, though it feels strange to be sitting there asking questions when inside I want to be screaming for the car and driver. Where are they? Somebody, please, get this man to a hospital.

  “Tu Aji, did you have other thoughts? Was anything else going through your head?”

  “Yes. I have told you my brother has special powers. When I thought I was dying, I thought, ‘My brother is doing this to me because I am telling too many family secrets.’”

  My eyes fill with tears and my body begins to shake. I realize for the first time that I love this man. It is a deep spiritual love, something I have never felt before. He cannot die; he is needed still, by his wives, his children, his family, his village . . . and me. If our book is really the target of his brother’s powers, then I am responsible for Tu Aji’s heart attack.

  “Tu Aji, you must go to the hospital and get well and never think about the book again. I promise you we will never write it.” He does and we don’t.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE TRANCE

  It’s been several months since Tu Aji’s heart attack. Things are back to nor-mal. He and I are still very close; we talk all the time. But I no longer ask for intimate details about his family, and he no longer volunteers them. One morning, as Tu Aji and I are sitting on my patio, the mailman, who only comes when there is a letter (no junk mail here), arrives with news from Jan. She’s on her way to Bali. I’m the second stop (after Hong Kong) on her one-year round-the-world trip. Perhaps there is a travel gene. I can’t wait for her to get here.

  Tu Aji is as excited as I am about her four-month visit. There is something about meeting family that intensifies a friendship.

  Jan arrives a few weeks after the turkeys. Tu Aji likes having animals around. Our menagerie consists of two dogs, four nursing puppies, an ordinary hen with six chickens, two black-and-white guinea hens, five birds in cages, a very green parrot on a chain, two pigs in pens, and the two recently arrived turkeys.

  Everyone agrees that one of the turkeys is galak, fierce; and he doesn’t like Jan. Whenever she steps off the patio, he spreads his feathers out like a peacock, cackles like a demented rooster, and runs straight at her. Jan, an animal lover, shouts and swings her leg as though she is going to kick the big ugly bird with his off-color wattle and his shabby array of feathers, but he is not fooled. Instead, when he is close enough, he leaps off the ground and crashes into her. The scene is straight out of a slapstick comedy, and Tu Biang, Dayu Biang, and I cannot help laughing. Jan is not amused.

  Neither is eighty-pound Tu Nini, Tu Biang’s mother, who has added to her sweeping chores the job of protecting Jan from the turkey. Whenever the sound of turkey cackle announces an imminent attack, Tu Nini comes running and screaming and swinging her broom. And if that doesn’t send him off into the bushes, she’s not afraid to give him a good whack . . . and a kick as well.

  One day, as Jan and I are safely sitting on the patio (the turkey doesn’t leave the dirt), Tu Aji tells us that on Sunday we will be going to Bulung Daya.

  “You are very lucky to be here at this time,” he tells us. “Many years ago my ancestors built a temple next to the beach there, to thank the gods for the treasure they found in the cave.”

  “Treasure?” Jan asks, thinking gold and jewels.

  “At Bulung Daya there is a huge cave. My ancestors discovered that the cave was home to thousands of little birds, swiftlets, who built the kinds of nests that are considered a delicacy by the Chinese. My family became wealthy selling the nests to Chinese traders, so we built a temple at the site to thank the gods for our good fortune. Today, the birds are gone, but the cave is still there; to us, it represents wealth and good fortune. So once every 210 days (a Balinese calendar year), we go to the temple to thank the spirits of the cave for their gifts, and we ask for continued success. And,” he pauses to laugh the deep rich laughter I have grown to love, “we have a picnic and the children play in the sand and the water. It is always a wonderful day.”

  Though he has never seen them, Tu Aji tells us that the nests look like shiny shredded coconut. They are made of seaweed and held together by thick bird saliva. In China, they are thought to strengthen a man’s sexual drive and cure many different kinds of illnesses. There are still many caves in Indonesia where these birds exist. It is said that fifty pounds of nests sell today for fifty thousand U.S. dollars. Unfortunately, the birds abandoned the puri’s cave several generations ago.

  When Jan and I awake at dawn on Sunday, Tu Biang is assembling casserole-size containers, which will be filled with the various dishes of our picnic lunch and then locked together in metal carrying frames, three containers to a frame.

  Dayu Biang is reviewing the hundreds of palm-leaf woven baskets filled with offerings. Besides being a servant in the puri, Dayu Biang, a brahmana,is an “offering expert.” She is called upon by many different families in our neighborhood to advise the women about what offerings they need for their ceremonies, how many, how big, and how to present them.

  There is nothing haphazard about offerings. Each kind of weaving has a name; each type of flower or leaf combination is specific. Some offerings require a slice of banana or sugarcane; others require four different colors of flowers; still others need eggs or rocks or tiny modeled Buddhas.

  I once joined some women who were shaping colored rice dough (very much like play dough) into figures and symbols for a wedding offering. When I showed my carefully sculpted, two-inch-high Buddha to Dayu Biang, she held it out, turned it around, and, noticing that the head was a bit askew and the mouth slightly twisted, announced to me and ten other women, “Your Buddha has a toothache!” As with the tortillas in Mexico, my contributions in Bali bring laughter to my hosts.

  When the offerings and the food and the people are loaded into the van, we take off toward the north. An hour later, our drive comes to an end in a grove of coconut trees that overlooks the sea.

  We walk, single file, down a muddy hill toward a sandy beach, all of us carrying as much as we can: food, offerings, clothes, paraphernalia for the ceremony. I am carrying a giant birthday-type cake about the size of a large pizza, only taller. It is my western contribution to the picnic, purchased after long and serious consultation with Tu Biang. My flip-flops are slithering in the downhill mud and I am desperately praying that I and my cake don’t fall. After about ten minutes on the muddy hill, we step onto the sand.

  It’s a few hundred yards in the hot sun to the temple, a distance that could be dangerous for a cake with a gooey frosting. I stop, take out a sarong from my book bag, and put it, folded, on top of the cake box. About five minutes later, I see that Tu Biang is waiting for me. When I catch up, she looks with horror at my improvised insulation. Quickly looking around to be sure no one else has noticed, she takes the sarong off of the cake box.

  “It is clean,” I tell her.

  “You cannot put it near food,” she tells me. “It has been worn around the bottom half of your body.”

  I turn around to see if anyone is looking. I can imagine word going out that no one should eat my polluted contribution to the afternoon. Tu Biang looks too and then she signals that no one has seen and I must not tell anyone this has happened. It’s our secret.

  The beach ends when the sand meets a huge cliff that reaches out into the water. Waves are pounding into the cliff and coveri
ng the rocky path that leads to the end of the promontory where the cave is located. Tu Aji explains to Jan and me that the first part of the ceremony will be held out on the rocks and that we cannot begin until the tide goes out. First, we will have lunch.

  By the time the ceremony begins, the king’s family has arrived. Eight of his children, their spouses, and their children are here. And all of the five wives. The banjar (neighborhood organization) gamelan orchestra has also arrived. Twenty men carry the heavy brass instruments across the sand. Bulung Daya represents wealth and success. Even the banjar is hoping the family, and the village, will thrive in the coming year.

  During lunch, the gamelan plays. The kids run in the waves. The adults talk. We all eat. Then, finally, someone signals that the tide has gone out far enough. It is time to begin.

  We walk in a long procession on the rocky path that abuts the cliff. There are men and boys carrying colorful flags on bamboo poles and others rhythmically clapping their cymbal-like instruments, surrounding us with a syncopated brass-percussive beat. There is a lay priest in white sitting at the end of the path, surrounded by offerings and waves crashing into the cave about twenty feet to his left.

  It is not an easy walk from the beach to the cave entrance. Some of the younger men help the women over places where the rocks are rough and the step up or down is steep. The women’s sarongs are wrapped so tightly around our legs that our stride is barely six inches.

  We all sit on the rocky ground facing the cave, the men cross-legged, the women with their legs to the side. The chanting begins and the sweet ringing of the priest’s bell. We hold a stick of incense between our fingers as the priest chants. And then we hold flower petals. We are praying to the spirits of the cave. The waves are roaring in the background, splashing us all, but lightly.

  When the praying is over, and we have paid our respects to the benevolent spirits, it is time to acknowledge and placate the evil spirits.