says of the tuan that he has great power,” the grandmother said with awe; she came carrying a heavy earthenware vessel carefully in her arms. The sinews of her thin arms were like taut whipcord. The mother brought kains and cloths, bright in color but not too clean. I rubbed Raka’s feet with salt, made him a hot compress and wrapped him up in everything I could lay hands on. Then I laid him down on the couch and the old woman crouched down again beside him. On the right of the house there was a smaller open balé, such as you see in every courtyard, where the daily offerings are prepared. Raka’s mother cast one more look on the child, who had now ceased muttering, and then she squatted down there and began weaving palm-leaves together. It might be necessary to make more offerings than had been made so far—great and powerful offerings to the gods, so as to enlist their aid; and offerings to the evil spirits, so as to appease them. There are witches in every village of Bali. These are women, mostly old, but sometimes young, who league themselves with the powers of darkness by means of certain secret spells, handed down from generation to generation. They take the left-hand road, as the saying is. They acquire the power of changing themselves into lejaks, strange and sinister beings, who roam abroad by night, doing mischief and spreading misfortune. Often, while their bodies are asleep in their homes, the evil souls of such witches, transformed by magic, haunt the night as balls of fire. Nearly every Balinese has seen lejaks. One may smile—but I have myself more than once encountered such fire-balls at night, strange apparitions, that breathe and hover, and there are other white people in the island who have had experience of these inexplicable spooks. I did my utmost as a doctor to help little Raka; but I was not quite sure that it was only an inflammation of the lungs which I had to fight.
An hour went by in silence. Putuh had squatted down on the steps at my feet and I sat on a mat near the improvised sick bed and waited. There was some strong and inexplicable bond between this child and me. I had to stay until the crisis had passed, for better or for worse. Time came to a stop, as it sometimes does. My servant squatted at the far end of the yard near the basket cages containing the cocks, and hummed a tune which consisted of five notes and sounded melancholy, though it was intended to be gay. He was passionately fond of cock-fighting. The Government banned all but a few officially authorized cock-fights, since it wished to protect the Balinese against gambling away all they possessed. Nevertheless, many a secret cock-fight took place on the sly in the close-cropped meadows behind the villages. Absentmindedly I watched my man take a white cock out of its basket and caress it. Time had ceased to move. After an incalculable interval I heard a sound from the bundle of cloths on the bed. I got up quickly and looked at the boy. He had come to himself. His eyes were open and almost clear. Sweat was pouring in trickles down his face and washing the dirt from his light brown skin. With dry lips he asked for something to drink. Putuh himself jumped up and came back with half a coconut shell fitted with a handle. He put it to the child’s lips and he drank the water eagerly. Putuh looked questioningly at me. “It is all right now,” I said with relief. The grandmother raised her hands and murmured with thankfulness that the tuan could break any spell. She called across the yard and the boy’s mother came and stood shyly near the bed, as though it was not her own child at all. She looked quietly at the boy. Raka smiled at her. Putuh did not speak to her, for he could not so far forget what was due to his dignity as to address his wife in the presence of a visitor.
“My little prince, you will soon be well again now,” he said to the child. The grandmother stood up and embraced my hips with both arms—a mark of devotion which only an old woman could allow herself. “Raka will soon be dancing the kebjar again,” I said with satisfaction. I freed the wasted little body from its hot wrappings and rubbed it. The fever was broken. His grandmother helped, while his mother merely stood there limply as though worn out by extreme exertion. His grandmother gently touched my hand when I bent over and looked at the child’s face. “The tuan, too, has noticed whom he is like?” she asked with a knowing smile. Yes, I replied, I had.
“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
