“With Ida Bagus Rai, the pedanda of Taman Sari,” she said at last while her eyes danced with amusement. Bernis did not appear to see the joke.
“The pedanda is a nice man and a very holy one,” she said with a sigh of relief. “And Raka’s father,” Muna threw in quickly. Bernis looked at her reflectively to see what lay behind this. “It is taking a liberty to gossip about the lord’s friends,” she said loftily.
Muna pouted and said no more. The pigeons wheeled and alighted with a rustle of wings in one of the eastern courtyards. Bernis watched them absent-mindedly. All this part of the puri had been built by Chinese and was roofed with Chinese tiles. The back wall of the portico where they were sitting was lined with large greenglazed tiles, the same as those which adorned the wall round the palace. Bernis’s dwelling was one of the most splendid of all. It stood on a tiny square island enclosed by runnels of water and flowerbeds. The lord honored the most beautiful of his wives in every possible way, and gave her the position that became noble birth. But he had not chosen his first wife, who had to be of his own caste. Muna tried to read the expression on her mistress’s face. “There are men who are fonder of the old lontar books than of women,” she said meaningly. Bernis was not angry; she merely sighed. Boredom descended upon her, like a gray bird with widespread wings.
“What can we do to pass the time?” she asked idly.
Weave, Muna suggested. Go to the pond and look at the waterfowl. Turn out the chests and try on all the sarongs. Fetch palm-leaves and plait dishes for the offerings. Sleep until it was time to dress and watch the dancing in the chief court. Bernis shook her head. Muna pushed the gilded stand towards her on which were all the ingredients for making sirih—the silver casket of sirih-leaves, lime in a little wooden box, a box of beaten silver containing tobacco, chopped betel-nut on a pisang leaf. Bernis pushed the tray away again. For some reason the lord did not like his wives to chew and make their teeth brown, as other women did. And so Bernis denied herself this consolation, in which even the poorest of women indulged. “I did not know there was to be dancing tonight in the puri,” she said listlessly. Muna began at once upon all she had heard about it. “It is the dancers from Taman Sari,” she said eagerly. “They are coming to dance the baris. The lord has given them new robes and they are dancing to express their thanks for them. Over three hundred ringits the robes cost and they say that there is real silver on the baris crowns. They say, too, that a girl is going to dance at the same time as the men, but that I cannot believe. It would be improper,” Muna said primly. “The nymph ought to be played by a small boy as she always has been. But the Taman Sari dancers always must invent something new, and that is why such an idea came into their heads. We shall see what the lord will have to say to it if Raka really brings a girl with him.”
“Who is the girl?” asked Bernis.
“Lambon, a poor sudra’s daughter. No bigger than a gnat. I saw her dance the legong at the feast of the Coral Temple,” Muna replied. Bernis scarcely heard her.
“A crown with real silver . . .” her mistress said slowly. “Raka will look beautiful with a silver crown,” she added.
“Yes, he will look beautiful,” Muna said. Then they both fell silent and gazed at the runnels which enclosed their island.
A thousand people went in and out of the puri. Buildings were crowded together in innumerable courtyards; balés full of household articles, weaving stools and sacrificial vessels; the dwellings of the wives, relatives, officials, servants, slaves and their families. Watch-towers flanked the entrance to the main courtyard in which visitors had to wait until the lord received them. His own house was in the second court, and the large reception balé in the back wall of which were the plates, that excited such great and universal admiration. The house temple in the north-east wing was a beautiful building with images of stone in its wooden shrines and with carved doors showing Vishnu on his bird, Garuda. Here, too, was an island surrounded by running water and bridges on three sides leading to the temple doorway. There was a mosaic of shells on the steps. Everywhere there were trees, coco and betel palms, cambodia trees with gray branches and bright flowers, champak trees, darkleaved and tall. Tall grasses were planted between the paths, and flowers too. A balé in the fourth court was given up to the fightingcocks, of which Lord Alit alone possessed forty. The whole place was alive with birds and beasts that were kept as pets. There were the kasuar and his mate, vain and ridiculous creatures, pigeons of every sort, small green parrots with red breasts, which were caught in the west of Bali, and white cockatoos from the neighboring island of Lombok. Monkeys tugged at their chains or roamed about free to work what mischief they liked. There was a large number of small, rough-coated horses in open sheds, and buffaloes for drawing waggons rubbed themselves against the palace walls. Black swine of alarming fecundity ran loose with their litters and dogs, poultry and ducks were beyond counting. A large leguan and three huge turtles were in cages near the largest kitchen balé in readiness for the next feast. There were rice barns and threshing floors for threshing the grain; there were numbers of cooking balés and provision stores and balés for preparing sacrificial offerings and balés in which were kept the figures for the Shadow Play.
The lord Tjokorda Alit was seated cross-legged on a couch in his house. It was fairly light there, for the door on to the portico stood open and the Chinese architect had had large glass windows put in the opposite wall, like those in the palaces of the great sultans of Java. On the cross-beam of the roof lay offerings and many books— writings engraved on narrow strips of the leaves of the lontar palm. An oil lamp hung nearby, with a fringe of blue glass beads round the shade, a present from the Dutch Controller, Visser.
The lord was only of middle height and there was a flabby and unfinished look about his face as well as his body. As his skin was remarkably light in color, his courtiers and his wives told him that he was handsome. But his looks did not please him and he knew that he was ugly, uglier even than a simple sudra, to whom hard labor gave strength at least and muscular limbs. The lord was often overwhelmed by a vehement disgust with himself, particularly when he had his handsome friend Raka with him.
Alit’s eyes were half closed and he was pulling at his opium pipe. A boy of about nine years of age crouched at his feet. He was called Oka and was a distant relation of the lord’s, the son, by some father or other, of one of his wives, a woman of no caste. He had adopted the boy. Oka’s small face was bent over the flame of the opium lamp at which he was carefully roasting an opium pill, ready for the next pipe. The drug’s bitter-sweet smell filled every corner of the room, and the fumes made the child’s heart thump and his forehead drowsy. Without opening his eyes Alit handed the smoked-out pipe to be filled again. He kept Oka almost constantly at his side because the child was quiet and seldom spoke; and the lord loved above all things to be silent and to think. It was this, no doubt, that gave his eyes their strange and almost suffering expression, like that of people who know too much. But for the moment Alit felt happy and lightened of care, borne aloft by the soothing opium trance. An ever-widening clarity opened up new perspectives before his closed eyes and it seemed to him that he could now comprehend those mysteries over which he had pondered with the pedanda of Taman Sari the night before. “One says: I have killed a man; another thinks: I have been killed! Neither one nor the other knows anything. Life cannot kill, life cannot be killed.” Long series of verses in the noble language of other days passed through his mind, echoing their wisdom in resounding words. “End and beginning are only dreams. The soul is eternal, beyond birth and death and change.” He gave his pipe to the boy to fill once more. It was the fifth and last, for he never exceeded this number at one time. So long as he smoked all was good and his mind at peace. At other times he was often overcome by a melancholy for which there was no real cause. He was young, rich, powerful. He had many and devoted wives, many loyal and gifted advisers and rice-fields stretching farther than the eye could see. His only trouble was that sometimes he found no object in his life—as though it had stopped still or as though he had been bom with a soul tired out by too many reappearances on earth.
A shadowy figure with clasped hands appeared in the open doorway. It was one of the gate-keepers from the first courtyard. “What do you want?” the lord asked with annoyance.
“The