years and not three months before the dispatch of the punitive expedition. The Dutch officials of that time are nearly all still living and were, as I know, good friends of Fabius, who spoke of them with the greatest esteem. Men like Liefrinck and Schwarz are renowned for their knowledge of Bali and they love the island dearly. The officials in Fabius’s book have not only been given other names but are fictitious characters, who have no connexion with the real persons they represent. When I went through his manuscript I came upon many liberties of this kind, which I have no doubt were intentional. So I left them as they were. Clearly it was his aim to present the truth from the inside, even at the cost, when he thought it necessary, of sacrificing outward accuracy.
Similarly, I have taken the liberty of ending the story with the conquest of Badung. Fabius’s interminable manuscript goes on to the final colonization of other districts as well, where very much the same events occurred as in Badung. The Lord of Tabanan committed suicide with his son when he was taken prisoner and in Klungkung there was the same wholesale recourse to self-inflicted death—a puputan—as at Badung. Moreover, it seems to me that in Fabius’s eyes the simple and, in the deeper sense, pacifist existence of the peasant Pak was perhaps of more importance than the collisions in Bali between the vigorous Realpolitik of Holland and a heroic and medieval pride of arms.
Since then the Dutch have carried out an achievement in colonization that reflects the highest credit on them. Scarcely anywhere in the world are natives free to live their own lives under white rule so happily and with so little interference and change as in Bali; and I would like to believe with Doctor Fabius that the self-sacrifice of so many Balinese at that time had a deep significance, since it impressed upon the Dutch the need of ruling this proud and gentle island people as considerately as they have, and so kept Bali the paradise it is today.
The introductory chapter, put together from diary notes of Doctor Fabius, is concerned with the present day. The tale itself embraces the years from 1904 to 1906. For help and encouragement in sifting and examining the mass of material my thanks are due to: The Resident of Bali and Lombok, Mynheer van Haaze-Winckelman, Mrs. Katharane Mershon of Sanur, Herr Walter Spies of Oeboed, and many other of my Bali friends.
Bali has become the fashion. When I came back from the island, where in many places life and customs have remained unaltered for thousands of years, I found an irruption of Bali bars and Bali bathing costumes and Bali songs. I need not say that Doctor Fabius’s book has nothing to do with this Bali—if only because this Bali does not exist.
Vicki Baum
Introduction
When I got home from the little Government hospital, where I had spent the whole morning attending to various cases of fever, severe bamboo cuts and tropical ulcers, I found a bicycle leaning against the wall at my gate. I hurried across the courtyard, for I was curious to know who my visitor was. My Dutch friends like to make fun of me because my place is built in the native style—a house of whitewashed daub with a portico, surrounded by a number of smaller buildings or balés. Balés are raised platforms with roofs of alang-alang grass resting on posts. Many balés have one or even two mud walls and they can be sheltered from sun or rain by matting. Life is cheerful and pleasant in these balés and only the house itself has real walls. The whole plot is surrounded by a wall above which palms and fruit trees grow as high as a forest.
On the steps of the open portico sat Ida Bagus Putuh and a step higher squatted the sculptor, Tamor. They were from the village of Taman Sari, near the coast and several hours distant from the foothills where I lived. Both clasped their hands and raised them to their shoulders in greeting. Ida Bagus did it with punctilious ceremony, but Tamor, who had modern ideas, did it with a laugh, showing his white, evenly filed teeth, as though he did not take the ceremony quite seriously. Tamor was a good-looking and talented fellow, who sometimes carved figures of quite astonishing beauty. He was fond of wearing brightly colored sarongs and beautiful head-dresses, which he wound round his small Egyptian skull with an air all his own. He had a red hibiscus flower stuck behind his ear and was smoking a maize-leaf cigarette which had a sweet smell of spice and cloves. His fine torso was hidden by a dirty, cheap Japanese shirt, for that was the height of fashion with the younger generation. “Greetings, Tuan,” he said cheerfully. Beside him was a coconut-fibre bag, in which, I knew well, he had a new carving to show me. “Greetings, Tuan,” Ida Bagus Putuh said also. “Greetings, friends,” I said, and looked at them both.
Putuh, who knew that I was somewhat old-fashioned, was dressed in the old Balinese style, and was as smart as though he were paying a visit to a raja. He was naked to the waist, with long, beautiful muscles beneath his light brown skin. He wore a gold-threaded saput round his waist and hips girding his hand-woven silk kain. He had even stuck his kris in his girdle behind his back and its beautifully made wooden hilt projected above his shoulder. Putuh, too, wore a flower; it was in his head-dress above the middle of his forehead, but it was not an hibiscus flower but a yellow champak blossom. Its stronger, sweeter and more aromatic perfume pervaded the whole portico—the perfume of Bali—and it was already beginning to fade. Ida Bagus Putuh had a quid of sirih, betel, lime and tobacco, in his mouth, which was not so becoming, and at intervals he skilfully spat a jet of red liquid clear of the steps right into the courtyard.
“How long have my friends been here?” I asked out of politeness. “We have only just come,” was the reply, and this, too, was merely a polite formula. The two of them might very well have been sitting on the steps for five hours, squatting and smoking contemplatively with the inexhaustible patience of their race.
Ida Bagus is the title of those who belong to the highest caste of Brahmans. I had a suspicion that Putuh, though not half my age, was quite as old-fashioned in his way of thinking. In earlier days his family played a great part in his village and far beyond it. It produced many great priests or pedandas up to the time when the great disaster overtook Putuh’s father. Now they were poor and lived quietly in Taman Sari and Putuh labored in the rice-fields like any sudra. But he had a dignity beyond his years, and, as I have said, he was of a conservative turn of mind and kept to the fine manners of the older generation. The Balinese in general have very little idea how old they are. Their mothers, after six or seven years, get the dates mixed up (and no wonder with the complicated Balinese Calendar) and then they give up counting. But certain events, of which more will be said later, occurred when Putuh was two; and since these events became a landmark in Dutch colonial history it was a simple matter to reckon Putuh’s age. He was thirty-two years old at this time according to our reckoning and nearly twice as old if the days of the year are reckoned as two hundred and ten according to the Balinese Calendar.
Although Putuh was a modest man, and Tamor’s intimate friend, he had taken care to sit a step higher, as was due to his caste.
I sent for coffee and lit my pipe, which never failed to excite astonishment and amused admiration in the Balinese. Both men now stared at me with open mouths. These people are adepts at registering wonder: their upper lips, arched in any case, curve right upwards, their nostrils dilate and their elongated eyes, which look sad even when they are laughing, take on a fascinated expression. “Mbe!” they say, full of amazement. “Mbe!”
Conversation began to flag, as it was meant to do. We circled round the object of their visit in many an elaborate phrase. As for Tamor, it was clear from the start that he had carved something which he wanted me to buy; but whether Putuh had accompanied him merely out of a liking for me was not so easy to discover. He sat and chewed, keeping his mouth open and smiling all the while—a rather complicated exercise—and now and again an anxious and intent look came into his eyes.
Tamor announced that he had brought Putuh with him on the back of his bicycle, and Putuh added to this that he had really intended coming by the motor-bus but fortunately Tamor, too, was going to my house on business
