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 offerings to the goddess and prayed to her for a good harvest, he always saw her in his mind’s eye as Sarna, rich Wajan’s daughter.
He got his refractory cow to the bottom by the time that the girls had reached the top. They stood there in a gaily colored row shouting down to him and laughing, but he could not catch the drift of their jokes. He looked after them till they vanished across the ricefields, and then went on, shaded by his large hat. The cool water refreshed his feet as he forded the river, and he was happy.
After ascending the other bank he soon reached his sawahs. They were deep in good muddy water, and although Pak had got up in a bad temper for work he now rejoiced in it. He got the plough in position, attached the cow to it and put his own weight, too, behind it. With bent knees he pressed heavily down to make the plough dig deeply into the soft, moist earth. The soil made a dull sucking noise as it rose and fell from the ploughshare. Pak loved this sound. He loved this earth. The mud splashed up and sprinkled him and the cow with cool drops which soon dried to a gray crust. White herons flew over and alighted to fish on stilt-like legs for the slender eels which throve in the sawahs. Dragonflies flickered past. The earth sucked and threw up noisy mud bubbles and was eased.…
So the hours passed. When the sun was at its highest and the first four of the eight hours of the day had gone by, Pak stopped ploughing. His thighs ached, so did his arms. Sweat ran into his mouth. He felt a great emptiness in his stomach. Yet it annoyed him to have to leave his work to go home to fill his empty stomach with food. He put a fresh sirih into his mouth to appease his pangs.
Then suddenly he saw a small figure coming across the rice-fields with a small basket on her head. He screwed up his eyes. The white herons rose at her approach. Pak began to laugh—it was Rantun, his daughter, bringing him his dinner, though really she was still too small to undertake the tasks of a grown girl. She came along looking very solemn, dressed in a little sarong which flapped about her feet. She had little earrings in her ears and a long lock of hair fell straight down her forehead. It had not been cut yet, for Pak had never yet had enough money by him for the festival that he had to give when the pedanda cut this lock for the first time and blessed the child. Why, he had not even had his own teeth filed, though he was a married man and a full member of the village council. These festivals were put off from year to year in Pak’s family. Perhaps in time he would be able to save enough money to get it all done at one go—the filing of his teeth, Lambon’s ripeness, the cutting of the lock and the first birthday of the newly born child. Pak had a little money buried under his house, fifty-two ringits in all; it had been fifty-five before the last cock-fight. Puglug had made sharp remarks about men who gambled away their money instead of seeing to the burning of their mothers, and Pak had listened with a stolid face, knowing in his heart that Puglug was right. His mother had died five years ago and it was high time her remains were burnt. Pak was often secretly afraid that the unreleased soul of his mother would make itself felt in ways disastrous for the family. He had searched everywhere to find where Puglug hid her own money, her market earnings; but he had never found any of it and Puglug maintained that she had to spend it all to feed him well, as it was the duty of a wife to do.
While Pak’s thoughts had been running on all the cares of which Rantun’s uncut hair reminded him, the child had come up. Now she knelt down at the edge of the sawah and opened her basket. Earnestly and a little timidly she handed him a pisang leaf of rice and another of roast beans. Pak rinsed his hands in the water which ran from the neighboring field down into the sawah and began to eat. The cow cheerlessly pulled the grass on the narrow balk. When he had eaten his fill he gave Rantun what was left and she modestly ate it up. Rantun was a quiet gentle child and Pak was very fond of her in spite of her not having turned out to be a son. He put his hand on her shoulder and they sat thus for a time, motionless, silent and perfectly happy.
When he was rested and had enjoyed long enough the comfort of a full belly, Pak got up. “You are a good little woman and one day I’ll give you a fine new sarong,” he said, putting his hands round her. Rantun snuggled
