“I have heard that,” Alit said. “She found out where the punggawa should dig his well. Do you love her very much?”
Raka laughed and clapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Love is a word from the old poems you read. In real life there is no love. Men come together like apes and birds. It is sweet sometimes to play with a woman, but the wind blows and there is an end of it. I cannot imagine what you mean when you speak of love.”
“And your wife?” Alit persisted. There was a frown on his brow and his eyes were unlit beneath the heavy lids.
“I married her because my father wished it. She is a great help to me now that my mother cannot see well. Also our families have always been connected. I respect her very highly—almost as if she were a man on the same level as oneself. She would please you,” Raka added with a smile. “Besides, she understands the old ways of speech and reads about times past in the lontar books.”
Alit considered Raka’s answer for a few moments. He appeared to be pleased with it. He signed to Oka and the boy fetched his pipe and began preparing the opium. Alit took the first pull and then offered the pipe to Raka. He shook his head. “Before dancing I must not eat nor indulge in the joys of opium,” he said.
“Like a priest before the morning prayer?” said Alit, laughing. Raka made a face. He imitated a pedanda muttering Mantras and moving his fingers. Suddenly he broke off and became serious.
“To think that I might once have become a pedanda,” he said uneasily.
Alit quickly put his hand on his knee. “You are still young and no drop of knowledge has ever penetrated your brain,” he said consolingly, with a trace of condescension and also of envy. He signed to Oka. “Bring the baris dress for Ida Bagus Raka. He shall change his clothes in my house,” he ordered. The boy slipped from the room. It was invaded for a moment by light and sounds from without as the door opened and shut.
There was coming and going all the time in the courtyard. The inquisitive spectators of the conference had gone and others had come and squatted down in their place. At one moment some fowls had strayed in, too, and been shooed away with laughter and clapping of hands. Now a crowd of servants appeared, carrying halves of coconut shells with wicks burning in the oil. They hung the lamps here and there along the walls and from the eaves and chased away the shadow of night. Below in the first court there was already a gay and expectant crowd in the light of row on row of lamps, for the people were streaming in from many villages to see the dance, news of which had been borne on the breeze. Old men and young; women with flowers in well-combed, oiled hair, accompanied by all their children and with babies on their hips or in their arms; young girls, in a state of eager excitement, with gay shawls over their shoulders against the chill of the night. The men of Taman Sari set up the instruments of their gamelan orchestra at one end of the space reserved for the dance and the gilt carving shone whenever servants went by with more lamps. Those who could find no room in the courtyard crowded in front of the main entrance of the puri. Small boys with flowers stuck behind their ears, cigarettes in their hands and much finery on their sarongs climbed up on to the walls. Women vendors spread their mats and their provisions outside in the light of the small lamps, and many of the people ate, and when they had done threw away the leaves, which were immediately licked clean by the dogs. Ida Kutut threaded his way through the crowd like a wood-beetle. He kept his ears open and his wrinkled face beamed with the joys of eavesdropping.
The dancers were already waiting up in a balé screened by hangings. It was besieged on all sides by an inquisitive crowd, surging and swaying and spying in through every gap or hole in the curtains. Mothers lifted their children up and showed them the two dancers who played the minister and his funny servant to give them a foretaste of the laughter to come. In the middle of the balé, shielded from view by the men, sat Lambon, bolt upright in her gilded robe, like the small wooden image of a goddess; she was delighted by the prospect of dancing and by the fragrant smell of the champak flowers she wore on her crown. Her aunt sat beside her; she seemed to have left her volubility at home. Probably she was overcome by the splendor of the palace. From time to time she plucked at Lambon’s robe or said something to her in a whisper. The famous teacher from Kesiman, who had taught her dancing, sat on Lambon’s other side. His long hair, already going gray, was knotted up under his head-dress and he wore a short black coat with sleeves, which gave him the air of a courtier in ceremonial dress. He seemed to be anxious and chewed sirih to compose his mind, although it was rather hard work for his toothless gums; but he was too vain to grind his betel-nuts beforehand, as old people did.
Among the gamelan players sat Pak in a state of eager suspense. He had put on his best kain and wore a hibiscus flower behind his ear. He had, too, a new red saput about his hips, a present from Puglug. As he did not possess a kris, he had brought with him a short knife in its sheath, which he had stuck in his belt at the back. But all this was nothing to the splendor of his head-dress, for the gamelan guild had bought new ones from their common purse, purple and richly embroidered with gold flowers, which rivalled the gleam of the instruments, and made the players feel that they were quite as smart as the dancers in spite of their new and costly dresses.
Pak squatted expectantly beside the large gong which it was his part to beat. His fingers were stiff and clumsy from his labors in the field; they were not adapted for the delicate bells and other metal instruments on which the melodies were played. Nor was his ear true enough to beat the large drum which led and gave the time to it all. But he loved music with a slumbering love, just as though its notes were a soft cushion he could fall asleep on. The gong was easy to manage, and he had learnt how to beat it when he was still a little boy who sat between his father’s knees.
Once he got up and went to the dancers’ balé to see his little sister, on whose account he felt a throb of agitation, for among the older members of the gamelan there were persistent undercurrents of disapproval of a girl’s dancing in the same dance as the men: it was wrong and unseemly because it had never been done before. He pushed the hangings aside and tried to attract her attention over the shoulder of her teacher, but she did not smile; she merely returned his look with a solemn gaze as though she actually were the nymph she represented in her gorgeous dress. Even to Pak she seemed no longer to be the same girl who brought him his rice that morning and carried water in her torn sarong. He loved his sister with almost the same paternal love as he felt for his daughter Rantun.
The arena for the dance was marked off by spears and flag-poles from which hung lamps of a foreign sort that Pak had never seen before. They were not made of wood and had no basin to hold the oil and wick; they were made of glass and cast almost too brilliant a light. He regretted that Krkek was not at hand to explain the phenomenon to him.
Instead he now caught sight of his wife Puglug squatting in the front row of the spectators with her two daughters in front of her. They had a piece of sugar-cane which they sucked alternately in a sociable way. Puglug was very smart in a new yellow sarong with a pattern of large birds. Pak wondered where she had got the money for it. It annoyed him to see that her breasts were uncovered, which meant that bats and vampires could suck her milk. Apparently she had left Klepon, the newly born infant, at home in its little hammock crib, in which it had been laid on the Twelfth Day festival. Then Pak suddenly caught sight of Sarna and his heart gave such a jump that his breath failed him. Her hair was combed tightly back and adorned with flowers, as though she were a woman of noble birth, which was not all in keeping with her station, for after all she was only the daughter of a sudra, however wealthy he might be. She wore silver earrings instead of rolls of lontar leaves. She looked very beautiful and Pak could not take his eyes from her face. After a time his mind was made up; he got to his feet and squeezed his way through the throng. “I’ll only buy sirih,” he muttered to himself as his pretext, although his sirih pouch was well filled. He did not succeed in getting anywhere near Sarna, so he went outside the gate where the women vendors sat. “Are you not going to buy from me?” a woman called to him. Turning his head he recognized Dasni, the Sanur girl who had brought him his food to the beach. As she had called to him he squatted down in front of her mat and looked at her. She had a white head-dress wound through