“The tuan knew his forefather. The tuan is old too, he has come to the evening of his days as I have,” the grandmother said. I was taken by surprise, for I had never noticed that I was old. I had forgotten, as the Balinese did, to count the years as they passed. Yes, I, too, was old and the past was dearer to me and nearer and clearer than the present. I put my hand on the old woman’s shoulder, a sign of great affection which made her titter like a young girl.
It was already dusk by the time I had given them all the necessary directions and left the courtyard. My servant carried my magic bag tied to a bamboo pole and also a bottle of sweet rice wine which Putuh had given me. The village street was now full of life and movement, for the hour before sunset is a busy time. Men were taking in their cocks after having left them all day long outside the walls of their compounds to enjoy the sight of passers-by. Women returned from some errand or other with square-shaped baskets on their heads. Boys with long poles tipped with a bunch of feathers drove waddling ducks back from the fields. Girls put offerings in the niches at the gates. Everybody was intent on being safely home and settled down before darkness fell and released the demons and spirits. Men with sheaves of rice on bamboo poles, men with great bundles of hay, men with sleek, light-brown cows coming in from the fields. Idle young men with flowers behind their ears, hard-working old men, wise and wizened, all came along, one after another, with necks erect and bodies naked to the waist, walking with their incomparable rhythm. I am never tired of watching these people, and the way they talk and sit on their haunches and rise to their feet and work and rest. The bark of a dog, the smoke of the open kitchen hearths, the smell of cigarettes and champak flowers. The girls came with smooth wet hair from bathing, adorned with flowers. Here and there an oil lamp was already alight in a shop. A sound hovered in the air like the chimes of many bells in tune—it was the gamelan, the Balinese orchestra, which makes such finely woven music. The orchestra were practising their programme for the next festival in the large balé, the village town-hall and meetingplace. At the end of the village there stood a sacred tree, an ancient wairingin, as large as a church, with a dark dome of foliage and thousands of arching roots exposed to the air that gripped like iron and looked like iron. Beneath its huge cupola stood one of the six temples of Taman Sari; a double gateway, crowded with images of gods and guarded by demons, led into the first of its three courts.
Temples in Bali are not buildings: they are open enclosures surrounding sacred places which have been revered since the dawn of time. The great stone and wooden chairs and thrones stand there, and on them the gods invisibly seat themselves when the priests call upon them. I stood for a moment at the temple gate to let some women with large baskets of offerings on their heads pass by. The music of the gamelan sounded as I left the village and set off again across the rice-fields. I saw the Great Mountain in front of me now, veiled with bars of drifting cloud. The first bats were already on the wing and the cicadas made a merciless din. I looked forward to being at home again. I would sit and look at Tamor’s deer and marvel at this piece of work which his uncle had begun and failed to carry out and his descendant had brought to completion. I remembered how the old woman had called me old and how it had made me laugh. But it was true that I had lived in the island a long time and seen a lot. I had known many people who were now dead and many who had been born again. I realized that I was harnessed to the cycle of things and a part of them. I had known the island when it was still fighting for its liberty, and I was there when it was conquered and got new masters in place of the powerful and cruel rajas of the old days. But it had altered little. There were bicycles now and motor-buses and a little modern rubbish in a few wretched little shops. There were a few hospitals and schools, and there was even an hotel where tourists were dumped for a three days’ stay and then carted off again after seeing a few sights they didn’t understand. But Bali had not changed. It lived according to the old law, resisting every encroachment. The mountain, the gorges, the ricefields, the palm-clad hills were the same as ever. The people were the same as ever. They were the same people, from one generation to the next, cheerful for the most part, gentle and quick to forget; we should never understand them quite and never learn the secret of their placidity and resignation. Many of them were artists and they would always make new music for the gamelan and carve new figures in wood and stone and write new plays and dance new dances. But the gods did not change, and as long as they were throned in a thousand temples and inhabited every river, mountain, tree and field, Bali, too, would not change.
Yes, it was true. I must be old to think such thoughts. I stumbled barefoot along the low banks between the sawahs as I meditated on these things. In the midst of the fields there was a small temple, built when disaster and blight fell on the sawahs. At the gateway sat a man wearing a large round hat he had woven himself. I thought I recognized him. He was an old man and he waved his hand to me. “Greeting, Tuan,” he called out, in the sing-song of the old-fashioned folk.
“Greeting, friend,” I said. “Greeting, my brother.”
It was Pak, the father of Tamor, the sculptor. He was as old as I, gray-haired and toothless. He had to break up his sirih with a knife, because he could chew no longer.
“How are you, Pak?”
“I am content,” Pak sang out. “My feet are content, my hands are content after my work. My eyes are happy when they look out on the sawah, and life is sweet.”
I stood talking with him for a short time, chatting about this and that. My servant waited nearby, just a little impatient, for he wanted to go into the village that night and see the Shadow Play. He was in love and the girl would be there, and he would be able to make eyes at her and perhaps whisper a word in her ear. I am coming soon, my friend—just one moment. I am just going in through the temple gate to look out over the fields. They shone more brightly now than the sky itself whose reflection gleamed on the surface of the water. The first frogs were already croaking and from Sanur could be heard the dull regular beat of the kulkul, the wooden drum which calls the men together. I saw the shrine of the deity in the last rays of the sun. Three plates of cheap pottery, with a rather hideous pattern of roses, were let into the stonework at the base of the shrine and caught the light. Yes, there they were still and still well-preserved— these three plates which had played so great a part in Pak’s life. I stood a moment longer, listening to the cicadas and the thud of the kulkul. The cool green smell of the growing crops came from afar. Raka will get well, I thought to myself. Pak raised his hand and waved me a friendly good-bye as I went.
“Peace on your way,” he sang out. “Peace on your sleep,” I replied.
My automobile was waiting with a trusty and patient air on the road north of Sanur. A crowd, twenty strong, stood round it, eyes, mouths and nostrils expressing delighted expectation and astonishment. They were the young people of the village, and they cheered as my old bus grunted huskily and started off.
The moon was high in the sky when I got home. There shone the constellation of Orion, which they call the Plough here, and the Southern Gross. The night air of my garden quivered with the chirping and humming of insects and the zigzag flight of fire-flies. The air was cool and there was a sheen on the palm-leaves which made them look like narrow kris blades. My little monkey sat on my shoulder and went to sleep. The tjitjak lizards on the wall made a smacking noise and a large red-spotted gecko uttered its cry in a husky baritone. I counted—eleven times, that meant good luck. After that there was silence, the vibrant silence of tropical nights. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw Raka’s little fevered face. Beyond it appeared the face of his ancestor—and Putuh and Pak and the cheap plates still unbroken on the little temple among the rice-fields. The old, old stories, touching and droll and proud and bloody. Many have died, but Pak lives on, the old peasant on the edge of his sawah.
I lit my pipe and got out some paper. Now