or egrets, a host of which was assembled before us. Hermione also surprised me by spotting a crake, as it shot across the balk separating two rice terraces. Luckily I also saw it and was able to identify it, which, while it may not have impressed her unduly, as least served to elevate me above the level of rank tyro.
It was a calm day, clear but humid, lacking the customary breeze that rustled the palm fronds and sent ripples through the tussocks of rice retreating in ranks on either side. Presently we came to a curtain of greenery and passed through the village nestling in its shade. The inhabitants were not abroad and we spied no one, save one elderly lady striding energetically past us, an enormous bundle of kindling balanced on her head. In the meeting hall of the village ward some men lolled on the platform, chatting idly and ruffling the feathers of their fighting cocks. There was no other sign of activity, and all was strangely silent. Gone were the drone of flying insects and creak of cicadas in the boughs, and even the birds had ceased to sing. There was in the air vague portent of elemental upheaval; that prescient lull which goes before the storm. Some presentiment rang in my inner ear and caused me to stop and turn about. Hector and his sister were peering at the hedgerow a few paces behind, evidently engrossed by one of those skulking nonentities that are the enduring delight of your keen observer. Whatever it was, it was clearly their sole concern. Confounded thrumming: in whose thoughts was I concentrated ten thousand miles away?
Had I but known it then, I might have aborted my planned itinerary and chosen another path. But there was no turning back from the adventure that lay unavoidably in store, like a colossus straddling the dim horizon.
At length we came to the edge of the Great Divide and stood spellbound in an ocean of alang-alang, the coarse sharp-bladed grass that adorns the steep slopes of riverine valleys and, cut and dried, is used for thatching. Far below us the mighty torrent brawled and tumbled in an arc, its bed strewn with boulders the size of houses, before entering a gentler reach that resembled nothing so much as a bar of melted milk chocolate, bright reflexions patchily radiating from each remnant of silver wrapper.
So we descended to the water’s edge and the stretch beyond the rapids, where the flow was more sluggish. Spanning the narrows and suspended under the trunks of trees, which projected at right angles from the rocky shoulders formed at the intervening bend, was an awesome bamboo bridge. This was a miracle of construction, supported by the living limbs and strung together with coat-hanger wire. Directly beneath the bridge on the left bank where we rested, a sparkling spring gushed from a hollow in the cliff-face. Here might Artemis herself, wearied by the chase, have come with her attendant train of heavenly nymphs in order to disport and perform her secretive ablutions.
To this selfsame spot had I often repaired in the course of my regular wanderings, and according to custom, I quickly stripped and leapt into the cooling flow, exhorting my companions to do likewise. Neither Hector nor Hermione needed any second bidding. In a trice they were both naked and jumped in to join me. And in that brief, delirious instant when Hermione revealed her all, I could not help wondering whether the goddess herself was endowed with such perfection of form; and I recalled the terrible story of Actaeon, the hunter, who quite unwittingly surprised the chaste Mistress of the Bow while she was bathing. His one unintended glance so offended her modesty that she caused him to be changed into the object of his pursuit—a stag—and so he was hunted down and torn to pieces by his own hounds. Anyway, I reflected, even though my glimpse of her had hardly been involuntary, Hermione was clearly anything but outraged by it. After all, this was Bali; not ancient Greece, where gods and goddesses were so easily affronted. When Rajapala came upon Soepraba, the divine nymph, washing herself, he not only feasted his eyes on her but also resolved to make her his bride by stealing her selendang or mythical wings, thereby depriving her of the means to return to heaven. I rather fancied myself in the role of Rajapala.
The water, composite flux of countless mountain sources, was several degrees cooler than the surrounding air. It was so invigorating that I could happily have resigned myself to its embrace for the remainder of that afternoon. There were other attractions besides. All things considered, there is no rational explanation for what happened next. A demon had taken hold of me. I dashed out of the river and up the bank, and donned my shorts in a flash, before turning to address the others.
“I will lead you to the realm of Faerie,” I said.
It is a kind of Fairyland or Middle Earth, that region which extends beyond the Great Divide. A place unfrequented by tourists or outsiders, I had made the journey there a mere half dozen times before, returning as the Wedding-Guest after hearing the Ancient Mariner ‘like one that hath been stunned, and is of sense forlorn.’ If nothing is predestined, it was a singular chance that took us there this sultry afternoon.
As we picked our way gingerly over the rotting stems of bamboo, carefully watching each step whilst trying not to notice the brown flood swirling below, I wondered aloud if we had chosen the most propitious route. As if to echo my concern, one of the poles disintegrated with a hideous splintering crack directly under Hector, sending him sprawling, one leg dangling through the gap.
“Good grief!” he cried, clinging for dear life to the swaying handrail which looked as if it too was about to explode in a cloud of sawdust, “if this one goes then I’m a goner!” To her considerable credit, Hermione who was already safely across, collapsed on a rock, shaking with laughter.
“God, you’re a clot, Hector!” she blurted out comfortingly: “why is it that you must always draw attention to yourself in every situation?”
“Oh do shut up!” was all Hector could manage by way of strangled reply. “You’ll get yours by and by.”
No one could have foretold then that we were all going to get ours before the day was out.
The way up was much steeper than on the other side, in places precipitous, so that we were obliged to handhold perpendicular steps cut from the living rock. To our amazement, a lone grass-cutter scrambled cheerfully up behind us, then quickly overtook us, on his head a huge basket of grass that must have been his equivalent in weight. At last we got to the top and paused to survey the view which, like the scene that greeted Alice when she had passed through the looking-glass, was much the same as that on the other side, only reversed, with one or two subtle and not so subtle differences, such as the procession of modern and plainly not very Balinese structures that protruded through the curtain of green surmounting the opposing slope. To the south one could clearly see the distant ocean and the white oscillating line of breakers on the reef: to the north the prospect was hazier and the uplands were obscured under a lowering leaden sky. High above us there came the piercing scream of the Serpent Eagle, at once reassuring of survival, yet disquieting in tone. Everything was strangely still.
We strode along a grassy track, past portals of mud-brick and walls of stone. In spacious compounds the tall trees stood motionless. Not a sign of activity anywhere. Not a sound.
This all-pervasive silence was all the more obtrusive and oppressive for its alien existence in a sphere thronged by all manner of stridulating creature and peopled by inhabitants whose very being was predicated on ceremony and commotion. Were there no children here to chatter and clap hands and shriek with merriment; no churls to curse, nor dogs to bark?
The contagion of this malady of noiselessness reached out and sealed our lips; and all attempt at conversation was as futile as contrived.
With atmosphere so charged, it came as barely a surprise and almost a relief when, in a blinding blue flash followed by an instantaneous crash which shook the earth beneath us, Zeus proclaimed an end of elemental truce. We stood stupefied, our ears singing.
“That was a near miss.” Although I had spoken these words, they seemed to have been beamed through the ether from another world. “Perhaps we should try and find some shelter.”
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