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 and told me what the market women were saying.
The sister of Babak’s mother saw a man with only one leg and a great pig’s face and anyone with any sense knows what that means. If the balian were asked he could say what would be best to do. He would say that every man in the place should take a big stone and go with it to a certain house and stone a certain person, who is the cause of it all, to death. Killing a white fowl! And taking presents to the pedanda! You might think we were rich folk with forty sawahs. Or perhaps my husband has five hundred ringits buried under the house the way he runs to the pedanda just because there is a little hole in the wall. Naturally Lambon is glad to go to the pedanda’s house, for perhaps she will catch sight of Raka there. I have noticed myself how her eyes darken if Raka only passes by, and that is a disgrace for a girl whose breasts have not grown yet——”
What Puglug went on to say was drowned in the squawking of the fowl which Lambon was carrying. Pak took it by the legs and went with it to the south corner of the yard. He would have liked to strike his unmannerly wife, who spoke without his permission, but he did not. She talked and talked—like a flock of ducks in the sawah, quack, quack, quack, whether she was asked her opinion or not. Oh, how sick he was of Puglug and how obvious it was that he ought to take a second wife.
He took his broad-bladed knife from the wooden sheath, which was stuck in his belt, and lifted the fowl high in the air.
“Fowl,” he said, “I must now kill you. I do not do it because I wish you evil, but because I must offer you up in sacrifice. Pardon me, fowl, and give me your permission.”
When this formality was concluded he held the knife level with the ground and swung the fowl so that its neck collided with the blade, and then he threw the bleeding creature down. It gave one cry and died. In the sudden stillness, a regular battle could be heard going on between Puglug and the uncle’s first wife in the kitchen. They were a good match in their passion for chatter and gossip and in fluency of tongue, and Pak could not help laughing outright as he listened to the unintelligible clatter, which suddenly ended in loud peals of good-natured laughter. He had almost forgotten his fears. As he went past he gave his two younger brothers, who slept together on a mat in an open balé, a shake to wake them. “You must shovel out some earth and mix it with lime so that I can mend the wall properly tonight,” he said, feeling that he sat aloft as master of the house.
Meru was wide awake at once. “As you command and desire, my lord,” he said in the lofty language used to a raja. Pak gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. He had had a great liking for his goodlooking, light-hearted brother ever since the days when he had taught him to walk. Since then Meru had in a sense left him behind, for he could carve and had even made a doorway for the palace of the Lord of Badung. “Who is going to give you your sirih today, you idler?” he asked good-naturedly, and went on to joke about Meru’s many adventures with girls. “Someone who is better looking than your wife,” Meru replied, and this, too, was said in fun. “We shall see yet who brings home the best-looking wife,” Pak said grandly. And as he spoke he was thinking of a particular girl, who had been in his mind for some time.
His spirits were quite restored as he led the cow by her halter out of the ruined shed, lifted the plough on his shoulders and set out. The old man, tottering at the knees, was already busy at the wall with great bundles of straw. It was late; the sun was rising. “Will my father think of feeding the cocks?” Pak called out to the old man politely. He was answered merely by a reassuring wave of the hand and a lift of the forehead with eyes closed—a gesture of friendly assent. And so Pak, with mind at rest, turned his back on the strange occurrences of this extraordinary morning and left the yard by its narrow gateway, peaceably preceded by his cow.
In the village street, where the walls of the compounds formed a long line, broken only by the high gateways, life was by now in full swing. The rays of the sun in the smoking morning air lay like silver beams athwart the tops of the palms and the dense fruit trees. A thousand birds sang at once. The large ribbed leaves of the pisang were transformed by the rising sun into bright transparent discs of green. Red hibiscus flowers bloomed round the house altar behind every wall. Women went by with baskets and mats on their heads, one behind
