Love and Death in Bali. Vicki Baum
sister of Babak’s mother saw a man with only one leg and a great pig’s face and anyone with any sense knows what that means. If the balian were asked he could say what would be best to do. He would say that every man in the place should take a big stone and go with it to a certain house and stone a certain person, who is the cause of it all, to death. Killing a white fowl! And taking presents to the pedanda! You might think we were rich folk with forty sawahs. Or perhaps my husband has five hundred ringits buried under the house the way he runs to the pedanda just because there is a little hole in the wall. Naturally Lambon is glad to go to the pedanda’s house, for perhaps she will catch sight of Raka there. I have noticed myself how her eyes darken if Raka only passes by, and that is a disgrace for a girl whose breasts have not grown yet——”
What Puglug went on to say was drowned in the squawking of the fowl which Lambon was carrying. Pak took it by the legs and went with it to the south corner of the yard. He would have liked to strike his unmannerly wife, who spoke without his permission, but he did not. She talked and talked—like a flock of ducks in the sawah, quack, quack, quack, whether she was asked her opinion or not. Oh, how sick he was of Puglug and how obvious it was that he ought to take a second wife.
He took his broad-bladed knife from the wooden sheath, which was stuck in his belt, and lifted the fowl high in the air.
“Fowl,” he said, “I must now kill you. I do not do it because I wish you evil, but because I must offer you up in sacrifice. Pardon me, fowl, and give me your permission.”
When this formality was concluded he held the knife level with the ground and swung the fowl so that its neck collided with the blade, and then he threw the bleeding creature down. It gave one cry and died. In the sudden stillness, a regular battle could be heard going on between Puglug and the uncle’s first wife in the kitchen. They were a good match in their passion for chatter and gossip and in fluency of tongue, and Pak could not help laughing outright as he listened to the unintelligible clatter, which suddenly ended in loud peals of good-natured laughter. He had almost forgotten his fears. As he went past he gave his two younger brothers, who slept together on a mat in an open balé, a shake to wake them. “You must shovel out some earth and mix it with lime so that I can mend the wall properly tonight,” he said, feeling that he sat aloft as master of the house.
Meru was wide awake at once. “As you command and desire, my lord,” he said in the lofty language used to a raja. Pak gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. He had had a great liking for his goodlooking, light-hearted brother ever since the days when he had taught him to walk. Since then Meru had in a sense left him behind, for he could carve and had even made a doorway for the palace of the Lord of Badung. “Who is going to give you your sirih today, you idler?” he asked good-naturedly, and went on to joke about Meru’s many adventures with girls. “Someone who is better looking than your wife,” Meru replied, and this, too, was said in fun. “We shall see yet who brings home the best-looking wife,” Pak said grandly. And as he spoke he was thinking of a particular girl, who had been in his mind for some time.
His spirits were quite restored as he led the cow by her halter out of the ruined shed, lifted the plough on his shoulders and set out. The old man, tottering at the knees, was already busy at the wall with great bundles of straw. It was late; the sun was rising. “Will my father think of feeding the cocks?” Pak called out to the old man politely. He was answered merely by a reassuring wave of the hand and a lift of the forehead with eyes closed—a gesture of friendly assent. And so Pak, with mind at rest, turned his back on the strange occurrences of this extraordinary morning and left the yard by its narrow gateway, peaceably preceded by his cow.
In the village street, where the walls of the compounds formed a long line, broken only by the high gateways, life was by now in full swing. The rays of the sun in the smoking morning air lay like silver beams athwart the tops of the palms and the dense fruit trees. A thousand birds sang at once. The large ribbed leaves of the pisang were transformed by the rising sun into bright transparent discs of green. Red hibiscus flowers bloomed round the house altar behind every wall. Women went by with baskets and mats on their heads, one behind the other, preceded by their lengthened shadows; and the one in front spoke under her breath without caring whether the next heard what she said. They stopped when they came to the wairingin tree and helped one another to lower the loads from their heads. Then they spread their mats on the ground and displayed their goods on them to the best advantage—sirih, cooked rice, ducks’ eggs, garlic and spice. Puglug as a rule went to the market too, but now she had to wait until the days of her uncleanness were over before she might work again. Pak, as he went quietly along, shook off the thought of Puglug as though it were an ant. He loitered a moment in front of the house of Wajan, who was a man of wealth, and the cow came to a stop and began pulling at the short grass at the edge of the road. She was used to having to wait for Pak here. He stopped as though to see to his large round hat which he wore on top of his head-dress, and at that very moment a boy came out bringing Wajan’s cocks, which he put down on the grass to cool their feet. Wajan had eighteen cocks and Pak only four; even this was more than a man in his poor circumstances ought to have and Puglug made many peevish comments on the fact. Since there was nothing but the cocks to be seen Pak gave a tug at the cow’s halter and said, “We must get on to the sawah, sister,” and went on his way.
Pak’s father had been given two sawahs by the old lord of Pametjutan and he himself had got two more from the young lord Alit of Badung. His were situated on the northeast side of the village and the old man’s on the north-west. As his father had not the strength now for heavy work in the fields, Pak had to cultivate all four sawahs himself; he had only one cow and his relations could not give him enough help. The lord’s gift of land had made a serf of Pak in so far as he had to pay half the yield to the overseer of the lord’s land. Also he had to do any work required of him by the household of the lords in the puris of Badung. But in return for all this he had four sawahs, rich and well-watered land, heavy sheaves at harvest time, green and fragrant silk before the ears formed. If he worked industriously, the four sawahs yielded two hundred sheaves, with two harvests every fifteen months. That brought in, for his share, enough food for his family, enough rice for the festivals and taxes and offerings, enough to pay friends of his for occasional help. And in good years there was still a little over which he could sell to Chinese traders when ships put in at Sanur to take in a cargo. Pak had prayed to the goddess Sri that the harvest might be a good one and the earth kind and the ears full. He had let the water into the eastern sawahs three days before, and that was why he had to start ploughing that day, for so it was laid down. Meanwhile the fields on the west were nearly ripe; the water had already been drawn away from them, and thus ploughing and planting on one plot alternated with reaping and binding on the other.
Pak met other men from the village, who had come to work on their fields, all along the narrow balks. They shouted a word or two to each other—about the night’s storm and the jobs they were going to and coming from—without stopping to talk. His eastern fields lay some way from the village and Pak had to get his cow and his plough down the steep bank of a river and across the ford. The path, trodden by bare feet, was slippery and the cow jibbed. Pak called her “sister” and “mother,” begged her pardon and tried to explain that the descent was unavoidable. Suddenly he heard girls’ voices from the river and stared with open mouth. He had forgotten that he was later than usual and that he would meet the women on their way back from bathing. They climbed the steep bank one after the other, laughing and twittering like birds at sunrise. Pak’s heart stopped. He had caught sight of Sarna among them.
He gave her a quick glance as she passed him, but he did not see whether she returned it. She smiled, but he did not know whether it was to him or at him. I ought to have put a red hibiscus flower behind my ear, he thought. But no, he thought immediately after, that would have ruined everything. It did not do to show the girls all you felt for them. He stood on the grass and grasshoppers jumped about him and he gazed after Sarna. She was young and strong and beautiful. Everything about her was rounded—her face, her breasts, her hips. Round, but tender and charming. His liver and his heart were big and full of sweetness when he looked at Sarna. Her hair was wet and her sarong too. She had a moist and heavy lock of hair hanging from below her headdress, as a sign of her maidenhood. She wore large earrings made of lontar leaves in her ears, like the rice-goddess Sri. When Pak made