(From the Bhagavad-Gita)
The Wreck of the Sri Kumala
PAK woke up when the cocks crowed at the back of his yard. He shivered under the blue kain with which he had covered himself and his eyes were still heavy with sleep. The room was dark, although Puglug, his wife, had left the doors open when she went out. Pak gave a deep sigh. He got up unwillingly and unwillingly went to his labors. But the day was favorable for ploughing, according to the calendar, and Pak got up from his mat just as the kulkul of the village sounded the seventh hour of the night. An hour more and the sun would step from his home and bring the day with him out of the sea.
The cocks still crowed lustily and Pak smiled as he picked out the voice of his favorite, the red one. He was still too young, but Pak could already see he had the makings of a fighter. Pak girded his kain about his hips and pulled it through between his legs so that it made a short loin-cloth. He groped about in the darkness for the beam and took down his knife and the sirih pouch and tied them to his girdle. His kain was moist and cool with the heavy dew. He had a hazy recollection of a confused dream. He felt his way to the other mat on the bamboo couch which stood opposite his own. The children were asleep—Rantun, who was seven years old, Madé, the next in age, and in the corner the bundle containing the baby, who had no name as yet.
Pak and his wife had made sure that they would have a boy this time. They had paid the balian eleven kepengs when the child began to stir in its mother’s womb and he had promised them a boy. Pak had begun to build castles in the air and had thought out a fine name for him. He wanted to call him Siang, the light and the day. Then when Puglug disappointed their expectations by giving birth to another girl, they did not know what name to give the child. Probably they would simply call her Klepon, a name that several girls of his family had been given.
Pak sighed once more as he left the room and after hesitating a moment in the open porch went down the steps into the courtyard. The kulkul had stopped.
The women had lit a fire in the kitchen balé and Pak’s father came following his lean shadow across the yard with a bundle of dried palm-leaves on his head and went across to the wall. Pak’s uncle lived on the west side of the plot and his first wife, who could never be at peace with anybody, could be heard quarrelling already. But Puglug was unclean for forty-two days after the birth of her little girl and could not prepare any food for Pak. He had good reason to sigh. He was as sick of Puglug as if she had been a dish of which he had eaten too much. Three daughters she had borne him and not one son. She was useless and not even good to look at. He sat on his haunches on the steps and looked down ill-humoredly at his wife, who was sweeping the yard with a besom. The sky by now was a little lighter behind the tops of the coco palms and Pak could distinguish her heavy shape, as she bent and got up again.
Then he caught sight of Lambon, his young sister, coming from the kitchen and carrying a pisang leaf heaped up with cooked rice. Pak took it eagerly, sat down again on the steps and felt better. He put three fingers into the rice and crammed his mouth full. His spirits rose with every mouthful he swallowed. Puglug paused in her work for a moment and watched her husband, for whom she was not allowed to cook any food, while he ate, and then went on sweeping. She is a good wife, Pak thought to himself, now that his belly was contented with rice. She is strong and can carry thirty coconuts on her head. She is hard-working and goes to the market and sells sirih and foodstuffs and earns money. It is not her fault that she cannot bear a son. Our forefathers decided it so. He wiped his fingers on the emptied pisang leaf, threw it down on the ground and began carefully wrapping his sirih in betel-nut and adding a little lime to it. As soon as he had the strong quid in his mouth, so strong that the spittle ran down from the corners of his mouth, the world seemed a good place. He got up to fetch the cow from the shed and the plough from the balé where all the implements were kept.
Lambon, who had sat at his feet watching him eat, went back to the kitchen. Her small face looked pretty in the light of the blazing fire and Pak looked back at her for a moment and was proud of her.
Lambon was a dancer; she danced the legong at the festivals with two other children, in a dress all of gold and a crown of yellow flowers in her hair. She was beautiful; Pak could see that, even though she was his sister. She had not celebrated the festival of ripe maidenhood and yet the boys of the village stood in front of the house and drew in their breath with nostrils dilated when she passed. The whole family hoped she would marry a rich man when she was old enough.
But now that Pak stepped into the yard in the dawning light, he stopped still with open mouth. It looked as though the demons had made their home there all night. In many places the straw had been torn from the wall, which he had thatched with such care after the last harvest. Not far from the gate on to the road yawned a hole. A heavy branch had been broken from a bread-fruit tree and lay on the ground like a dead thing. Half the roof of the shed had been carried away. Pak stared at all this in terror. He could not understand it. He had never seen anything like it. He ran quickly to his father, who was old and knew more than he did. “Who has done it?” he asked, out of breath.
The old man was both lean and feeble, for his strength had been drained away by many attacks of the heat sickness. “Who has done it?” he repeated in a sing-song, as his habit was. It gave him time to think and to hit on a shrewd answer. Pak stared at him in an agony of suspense. He could positively feel the evil spirits about his ears. It was they who had played havoc with his yard by night.
“There was a storm from the west last night,” his father said. “That is what has done it. I lay awake all night and there was lightning in the sky and a great uproar in the air.” He began to smile with toothless gums and added, “The sleep of the old is light, my son.”
At this Pak’s terror gave way a little. “Perhaps we ought to make a special offering to Baju, the god of the wind,” he murmured, staring at the gap in the wall. The old man pondered this at his leisure. “Many years ago,” he said, “there was a storm like this. That time the pedanda ordered every household to kill a chicken for Baju. There were great offerings made and next day the sea cast up a ship, laden with rice and coconuts, which were divided up among all of us.”
Pak listened in astonishment. “Mbe!” he said, deeply impressed. He examined the gap in the wall. “Shall I kill a fowl?” he asked. It occurred to him that now all the demons and spirits of the underworld could come thronging into his unprotected yard. The old man, who often knew what people were thinking without needing to be told, said, “Call your brother. We will mend up the hole with straw while you are on the sawah. When you come home you can build it up with earth. There is still some lime here too, to whiten it with. You must kill a fowl and we will offer it to the gods. But after that, go out to the field, for today is a good day to plough.”
Pak turned about obediently, feeling consoled by the old man’s measured sing-song. “The wife is still unclean and may not offer sacrifices,” he muttered, however.
“You must kill the fowl and your sister and my brother’s wives will make the offering and I will ask the pedanda what we must do.”
Pak’s heart was lighter, for the pedanda, Ida Bagus Rai, was almost the cleverest man in the world and nearly infallible. Even the Lord of Badung sent for him when he wanted advice. Pak spat out his sirih and went to the kitchen. “You must get a present ready for the pedanda,” he said to the women. “It need not be anything very much, for the pedanda knows that we are poor. Lambon shall take it. And bring me a white fowl to kill.”
Puglug, whose ears were sharp, had come up and stood leaning on her besom. Suddenly, without waiting to be asked her opinion, she burst out, “Why do you want to go taking great presents to the pedanda when the balian gives just as good advice for three papayas? Perhaps I, too, could tell you what happened last night if I was asked. I could have told you beforehand, for Babak was here only the day before yesterday