Tales of a Female Nomad (20 page)

Tu Aji is coming for me in fifteen minutes. The
kebaya
has been delivered and Dayu Biang is in my room helping me put on my new clothes. She is carefully wrapping the sarong around my waist for the third time, laughing because it keeps coming out wrong. The final flap has to finish in the middle of the front, and Dayu doesn’t know how to assess my dimensions so that it will end up right. Finally it comes out right and she ties the top edges together and begins on the scarf around my waist, which she safety-pins in place. When she finishes, she hands me a lipstick and a comb.

“You cannot go if you look like a chicken,” she comments, pointing to my hastily combed hair. We both laugh.

Tu Aji and Tu Biang exclaim their approval when they see me. Then, accompanied by Dayu Biang, who is carrying a basket on her head with rice and sugar and a folded-up long white cloth, a traditional gift for the family of a dead person, we walk around the corner and enter a courtyard where there is a big crowd. Tu Aji walks through the crowd, telling me to follow. As soon as the crowd sees Tu Aji, everyone moves to let us through; and soon, he and I are standing in the front row looking down at the naked body of a withered old woman stretched out on a bamboo table.

“The people close to her must wash and purify the body before they wrap it up,” Tu Aji explains.

A brother and a sister, four children, and two teenage grandsons all step up to pour holy water over the corpse. The huge crowd represents the
ban
jar,
the neighborhood organization that provides community support on such occasions. Everyone is on tiptoes, children on shoulders, straining to see the body being washed.

Before they wrap the body in white cloth, they wash it with soapy root and place flowers, coins, mirrors, spices, and leaves on and in designated parts of the body. Many months later, when Tu Aji tells me that if I should die in Bali, he would arrange for my cremation, I picture the craning necks of the villagers straining to see my withered corpse as it is washed in holy water, and I have to admit that in spite of the modesty that I conquered in Mexico, I cringe. It is easier for me to imagine the flames of cremation consuming my body than the village peering at my naked corpse.

The cremation is two days later. Accompanied by a syncopated brass percussion band, we walk through the streets alongside a procession of people holding onto a long white cloth, perhaps two hundred feet long (which explains why we brought cloth to the family). One end of the cloth is attached to the body, which is being carried in a decorated tower by dozens of young men from the
banjar.
The long cloth allows everyone to be connected to the deceased.

As in most ceremonies, everyone in the
banjar
participates . . . in the preparation, in the procession, and in the celebration at home after the cremation. The
banjar
is a bond that ties the community together from birth to death. People who leave the
banjar
to work or live somewhere else usually make monthly contributions in lieu of their participation, so that the
banjar
will be there for them during rites of passage. Our
banjar
has 250 families, two orchestras, a women’s group, and many small committees for every possible community need.

“Come,” says Tu Aji when we get to the cemetery, which is less than a mile from where we started. Once again he takes me through a crowd. This time we climb up a little mound to the center of the activity. The body has been placed in the bottom half of a papier-mâché bull that was part of the procession; the top half of the bull has been cut away, opening up a cavity for the body. There is a gas tank nearby, and three men are fiddling with the connections that will lead the gas through a hose to a place where it will ignite the wood and fuel the fire that will burn the body.

Women are pouring holy water and sprinkling flower petals on the body and placing sarongs and personal belongings next to the corpse. The dead woman and her possessions will burn together.

After the body ceremonies are done, we all step down, and the gas burners begin to hiss and shoot fire under the body. I cannot take my eyes away from the fire or my thoughts away from the fact that I am watching a human body engulfed in flames. In the West, cremations are done behind the scenes and the family is presented with the ashes; here, we watch as the body turns into ashes. It is so matter-of-fact.

When Tu Aji says that we are watching a practical way to get rid of the shell that has housed her spirit, it feels right. The spirit has moved on. I need time to live with the idea; but it seems so natural when he says it.

Within half an hour, the crowd is gone. A few hours later, so is the body.

A couple of days later, Tu Aji comes by my patio, where I am reading.

“It is time for you to have a tour of the
puri,
” he says. “And while we walk, I will tell you about my family.”

I am wearing a sarong and a short-sleeved T-shirt with a picture of a blue-footed booby on the front.

“Do I need to dress in traditional clothes?” I ask.

“You are fine,” he tells me. “Just tie a scarf around your waist.”

As we walk through an archway into another section of the compound, Tu Aji explains that his father, the previous king, had two wives. One of the wives was low caste; Tu Aji and his older brother (who is dead) were children of that wife. The only child of the high-caste wife, Tu Aji’s younger brother is the one who became the next and current king.

We enter the king’s section of the palace; it is ornate and gilded, the way a palace should be. There are fountains and carvings and paintings and statues. As we pass by his royal-looking home, the king steps off his porch and walks toward us, leaning on a cane and limping. Tu Aji whispers that the king suffers from arthritis.

The king is a big man around and short; he has a heavy scar that slashes across one side of his face. Tu Aji introduces us. I lift my hands and lower my head in greeting. He tells me that he doesn’t speak English, and we converse briefly in Indonesian.

“Perhaps,” he says to me, “you can give me and my wives English lessons.” I nod and smile.

When we shake hands in parting, I discover he is missing two fingers on his right hand. A few years ago, Tu Aji explains as we walk, a crazy man slashed the king’s face and cut off his fingers. The man had been coming onto the palace grounds through a back entrance to consult the king’s Wife Number Two, who, secretly and against the king’s orders, had set up a business as a trance medium. One day the king saw the man and ordered him off of the palace property. The man returned the next night with a knife and slashed the king . . . and Wife Number Two as well. (After the incident, the man was put into an asylum.)

Now we are in the holy part of the compound, the part that contains the temple of the dynasty. Tu Aji points to a small white building with no windows, about twelve feet square. It is here that the family heirlooms are stored, gold and silver bowls, precious krisses (knives) that have been in the family for generations, jewels, and other royal treasures. Tu Aji tells me that he is worried the king may have sold some of the family inheritance, things that belong to everyone, things that he is obligated to pass on to future generations.

Tu Aji also advises me that if I teach English to the king and his wives, I should do it in our section of the compound.

“The king is used to getting whatever he wants,” says Tu Aji. “And that includes women.” And then he adds, using an expression I will hear from him many times over the next years, “A king must what he will.”

Apparently, ever since they were children, Tu Aji was told that his royal little brother, king-to-be, could have anything he wanted. “Including my food, my bike, my friends, and my wife.”

My friend is matter-of-fact when he talks about his younger brother’s behavior. Tu Aji is smarter, gentler, and far more compassionate than the king; but while he often questions his brother’s behavior, he is firmly rooted in the royal culture, and he always observes its traditions.

After I have been in the
puri
for about a month, I develop a routine. Before breakfast, I bike to the beach, which is six kilometers away. I leave at six, as soon as it is light enough to ride. As I pedal between miles of rice fields, there is a steady stream of women with baskets on their heads walking toward the market to sell and buy.

And there are men along the road, staring into the street in meditative tranquility, feet flat on the ground, thighs resting on calves, backs more or less straight. I have often tried to crouch that way. The minute I flatten my heels onto the ground, I fall over backward.

There are also fathers and grandfathers on the side of the road holding babies, some in silence, some in a one-way conversation with the babies. When I pass by, many of the younger men tell the tots to wave to the tourist. I smile and wave back.

When I get to the beach, I leave my bike on the road and walk onto the black sand. If the tide is out, there are long stretches of wet sand with thousands of tiny sand pictures made by miniature crabs. They are exquisite little pictures, symmetrical and balanced; some are circular, others are angular. Always, when I first arrive, there is no sign of the artists. They have felt my movement and run for cover. If I stand motionless for a few minutes, hundreds of them reappear and continue processing the algae and spitting out the sand in the little balls that create the pictures.

Every morning I sit cross-legged on a clump of grass, facing the sea, alone and at peace. I close my eyes and meditate. When I finish, I feel one with the world. I have always loved the sensation of meditation and the peaceful feeling it brings. For years I promised myself I would meditate daily, but I never did. Here in Bali, I’m doing it.

On the way back to the
puri,
I bike past preschool children beginning to assemble for their morning playgroup.
“Elo, turis!”
they call.
“Elo!”
I answer back.

There are other kids, older, hair wet from the morning washing, dressed in well-ironed uniforms, navy shorts on the bottom, white shirts on the top, on their way to school; some are walking, some biking. Often someone calls out, “Hello, Mister, I love you.” His pals giggle.

By the time I get back to the
puri,
breakfast is waiting for me: sliced papaya (the most orange and best I have ever eaten, picked from a tree near my room), a newspaper-and-banana-leaf-wrapped rice package with bits of vegetables, half a hard-boiled egg, and a sprinkle of crisply fried shallots. And coffee.

The rice breakfast is what the family eats each morning, minus the fruit. I am the only one who eats fruit. The Balinese assert that fruit in the morning is bad for the stomach; but they accept that my western stomach is different.

After breakfast, unless there is a ceremony or a procession in the village, I plug in my computer and work. Tu Aji usually joins me for lunch and continues my education. One day I give Tu Aji a photograph with my left hand.

“Rita, you must never give or take anything with your left hand.”

“Oops. Sorry, I forgot. You know that we do not have this prohibition in America. There is not a distinction between a dirty hand and a clean hand.”

In all of Indonesia the left hand is used to wipe one’s bottom, and the right hand is used for interaction. The training begins at birth. An infant who reaches out with the wrong hand is corrected by the parent.

“No, no,” says the parent, moving the left hand back and putting the right hand forward. “Use your sweet hand.”

Tu Aji has apparently never been told that westerners have no hand etiquette.

“What if you are giving something to the president?” he asks, reaching for the most formal situation he can think of.

“It would not matter,” I say. “In fact, at graduation ceremonies, it is traditional for the president of the university to hand the student the diploma with the left hand and shake congratulations with the right hand.”

Tu Aji is shocked.