Tales of a Female Nomad (22 page)

“Why are you here so early?” I ask.

“I had a heart attack in the middle of the night. I am waiting for a car to take me to the hospital.”

His face is pale and his eyes are dull. He has already told me that he had a heart attack several years before I met him.

“How do you know it was a heart attack?” I ask. “What were your symptoms?”

“They were the same as the last time. A terrible pressure, like squeezing, in the middle of my chest. Then it spread into my shoulder and my neck and my arm and I started to sweat. Adoo. Rita, I have told you many times that I am not afraid to die; but last night, when I thought I was dying, I did not want to go. I am not ready.”

“And I am not ready either for you to leave.”

We are sitting across from each other. I am not sure what his heart is doing at this moment, but my head is close to exploding. How is it possible that we are discussing a heart attack he is having as we speak, so calmly, without emotion. It is the Balinese way: as a subject gets more intense, more charged, the voices always get softer.

I continue in the tone he has set, though it feels strange to be sitting there asking questions when inside I want to be screaming for the car and driver. Where are they? Somebody, please, get this man to a hospital.

“Tu Aji, did you have other thoughts? Was anything else going through your head?”

“Yes. I have told you my brother has special powers. When I thought I was dying, I thought, ‘My brother is doing this to me because I am telling too many family secrets.’”

My eyes fill with tears and my body begins to shake. I realize for the first time that I love this man. It is a deep spiritual love, something I have never felt before. He cannot die; he is needed still, by his wives, his children, his family, his village . . . and me. If our book is really the target of his brother’s powers, then I am responsible for Tu Aji’s heart attack.

“Tu Aji, you must go to the hospital and get well and never think about the book again. I promise you we will never write it.” He does and we don’t.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE TRANCE

It’s been several months since Tu Aji’s heart attack. Things are back to nor-mal. He and I are still very close; we talk all the time. But I no longer ask for intimate details about his family, and he no longer volunteers them. One morning, as Tu Aji and I are sitting on my patio, the mailman, who only comes when there is a letter (no junk mail here), arrives with news from Jan. She’s on her way to Bali. I’m the second stop (after Hong Kong) on her one-year round-the-world trip. Perhaps there
is
a travel gene. I can’t wait for her to get here.

Tu Aji is as excited as I am about her four-month visit. There is something about meeting family that intensifies a friendship.

Jan arrives a few weeks after the turkeys. Tu Aji likes having animals around. Our menagerie consists of two dogs, four nursing puppies, an ordinary hen with six chickens, two black-and-white guinea hens, five birds in cages, a very green parrot on a chain, two pigs in pens, and the two recently arrived turkeys.

Everyone agrees that one of the turkeys is
galak,
fierce; and he doesn’t like Jan. Whenever she steps off the patio, he spreads his feathers out like a peacock, cackles like a demented rooster, and runs straight at her. Jan, an animal lover, shouts and swings her leg as though she is going to kick the big ugly bird with his off-color wattle and his shabby array of feathers, but he is not fooled. Instead, when he is close enough, he leaps off the ground and crashes into her. The scene is straight out of a slapstick comedy, and Tu Biang, Dayu Biang, and I cannot help laughing. Jan is not amused.

Neither is eighty-pound Tu Nini, Tu Biang’s mother, who has added to her sweeping chores the job of protecting Jan from the turkey. Whenever the sound of turkey cackle announces an imminent attack, Tu Nini comes running and screaming and swinging her broom. And if that doesn’t send him off into the bushes, she’s not afraid to give him a good whack . . . and a kick as well.

One day, as Jan and I are safely sitting on the patio (the turkey doesn’t leave the dirt), Tu Aji tells us that on Sunday we will be going to Bulung Daya.

“You are very lucky to be here at this time,” he tells us. “Many years ago my ancestors built a temple next to the beach there, to thank the gods for the treasure they found in the cave.”

“Treasure?” Jan asks, thinking gold and jewels.

“At Bulung Daya there is a huge cave. My ancestors discovered that the cave was home to thousands of little birds, swiftlets, who built the kinds of nests that are considered a delicacy by the Chinese. My family became wealthy selling the nests to Chinese traders, so we built a temple at the site to thank the gods for our good fortune. Today, the birds are gone, but the cave is still there; to us, it represents wealth and good fortune. So once every 210 days (a Balinese calendar year), we go to the temple to thank the spirits of the cave for their gifts, and we ask for continued success. And,” he pauses to laugh the deep rich laughter I have grown to love, “we have a picnic and the children play in the sand and the water. It is always a wonderful day.”

Though he has never seen them, Tu Aji tells us that the nests look like shiny shredded coconut. They are made of seaweed and held together by thick bird saliva. In China, they are thought to strengthen a man’s sexual drive and cure many different kinds of illnesses. There are still many caves in Indonesia where these birds exist. It is said that fifty pounds of nests sell today for fifty thousand U.S. dollars. Unfortunately, the birds abandoned the
puri
’s cave several generations ago.

When Jan and I awake at dawn on Sunday, Tu Biang is assembling casserole-size containers, which will be filled with the various dishes of our picnic lunch and then locked together in metal carrying frames, three containers to a frame.

Dayu Biang is reviewing the hundreds of palm-leaf woven baskets filled with offerings. Besides being a servant in the
puri,
Dayu Biang, a
brahmana,
is an “offering expert.” She is called upon by many different families in our neighborhood to advise the women about what offerings they need for their ceremonies, how many, how big, and how to present them.

There is nothing haphazard about offerings. Each kind of weaving has a name; each type of flower or leaf combination is specific. Some offerings require a slice of banana or sugarcane; others require four different colors of flowers; still others need eggs or rocks or tiny modeled Buddhas.

I once joined some women who were shaping colored rice dough (very much like play dough) into figures and symbols for a wedding offering. When I showed my carefully sculpted, two-inch-high Buddha to Dayu Biang, she held it out, turned it around, and, noticing that the head was a bit askew and the mouth slightly twisted, announced to me and ten other women, “Your Buddha has a toothache!” As with the
tortillas
in Mexico, my contributions in Bali bring laughter to my hosts.

When the offerings and the food and the people are loaded into the van, we take off toward the north. An hour later, our drive comes to an end in a grove of coconut trees that overlooks the sea.

We walk, single file, down a muddy hill toward a sandy beach, all of us carrying as much as we can: food, offerings, clothes, paraphernalia for the ceremony. I am carrying a giant birthday-type cake about the size of a large pizza, only taller. It is my western contribution to the picnic, purchased after long and serious consultation with Tu Biang. My flip-flops are slithering in the downhill mud and I am desperately praying that I and my cake don’t fall. After about ten minutes on the muddy hill, we step onto the sand.

It’s a few hundred yards in the hot sun to the temple, a distance that could be dangerous for a cake with a gooey frosting. I stop, take out a sarong from my book bag, and put it, folded, on top of the cake box. About five minutes later, I see that Tu Biang is waiting for me. When I catch up, she looks with horror at my improvised insulation. Quickly looking around to be sure no one else has noticed, she takes the sarong off of the cake box.

“It is clean,” I tell her.

“You cannot put it near food,” she tells me. “It has been worn around the bottom half of your body.”

I turn around to see if anyone is looking. I can imagine word going out that no one should eat my polluted contribution to the afternoon. Tu Biang looks too and then she signals that no one has seen and I must not tell anyone this has happened. It’s our secret.

The beach ends when the sand meets a huge cliff that reaches out into the water. Waves are pounding into the cliff and covering the rocky path that leads to the end of the promontory where the cave is located. Tu Aji explains to Jan and me that the first part of the ceremony will be held out on the rocks and that we cannot begin until the tide goes out. First, we will have lunch.

By the time the ceremony begins, the king’s family has arrived. Eight of his children, their spouses, and their children are here. And all of the five wives. The
banjar
(neighborhood organization) gamelan orchestra has also arrived. Twenty men carry the heavy brass instruments across the sand. Bulung Daya represents wealth and success. Even the
banjar
is hoping the family, and the village, will thrive in the coming year.

During lunch, the gamelan plays. The kids run in the waves. The adults talk. We all eat. Then, finally, someone signals that the tide has gone out far enough. It is time to begin.

We walk in a long procession on the rocky path that abuts the cliff. There are men and boys carrying colorful flags on bamboo poles and others rhythmically clapping their cymbal-like instruments, surrounding us with a syncopated brass-percussive beat. There is a lay priest in white sitting at the end of the path, surrounded by offerings and waves crashing into the cave about twenty feet to his left.

It is not an easy walk from the beach to the cave entrance. Some of the younger men help the women over places where the rocks are rough and the step up or down is steep. The women’s sarongs are wrapped so tightly around our legs that our stride is barely six inches.

We all sit on the rocky ground facing the cave, the men cross-legged, the women with their legs to the side. The chanting begins and the sweet ringing of the priest’s bell. We hold a stick of incense between our fingers as the priest chants. And then we hold flower petals. We are praying to the spirits of the cave. The waves are roaring in the background, splashing us all, but lightly.

When the praying is over, and we have paid our respects to the benevolent spirits, it is time to acknowledge and placate the evil spirits.

Three men, one son from each of the three brothers, walk to the edge of the cliff and face the cave. The first, son of the king’s Wife Number Three, an officer of one of the major banks in Denpasar, is holding a live duck. The second, a lawyer and a judge, son of the oldest, deceased brother, is holding a chicken. The third, Tu Aji’s son, a doctor, is carrying a squawking chicken. One by one they throw their animal sacrifices into the waves, sending them to their death as the waves crash into the rocky promontory.

And the evil spirits, who like fresh blood, are pacified. Hopefully all has gone well, and the spirits, both good and bad, are happy.

“Now we will go into the temple to pray,” says Tu Aji to Jan and me, rushing us along the rocky, wet path. “Oh, you are so lucky to be able to see this. Hurry. The women are going to dance now, from the beach to the temple entrance.”

How proud he is of his ceremonies; how much he loves his culture. His enthusiasm is contagious.

As the five wives of the king, several of his daughters and daughters-in-law, a few teenage grandchildren, the wives of the lawyer, the doctor, the banker, and Tu Biang step from the rocky path onto the sand, they turn to face the water and begin to dance backward, inviting, enticing the spirits of the cave to come to the temple and receive our prayers.

Tu Aji stands between me and Jan near the entrance to the temple, which is about forty feet from the water. The dancing women approach, their fluid movements flowing through their bodies from their fingertips through their hands and arms and hips as though they were all of one boneless, rubbery piece.

As they come closer, Tu Aji exclaims, “Oh, no. It’s happening again.”

He is looking at Tu Biang and calling for two of his sons to help their mother. Her dancing is no longer smooth and flowing, it is jerky and angular. Her feet are stabbing the sand, her arms are cutting through the air. The muscles in her neck are tight and visible. Tu Biang has gone into trance.

Tu Aji is upset. He does not want her in this state. Two of her sons are supporting Tu Biang, one on each side, as she trance-dances toward the temple. The king’s Wife Number Two is also in trance. The two women dance next to each other into the temple and sit down together on a mat.

Soon we are all sitting on mats, silently facing the many altars that are filled with offerings and decorated with black-and-white checkered cloths. There is an energy in the air, a tension among the players.

Then a scream pierces the moment. Tu Biang and her sister-in-law jump up and begin to call out in eerie voices, shrill and demanding.

“What are they saying?” I ask Tu Aji.

“They are calling for the king to come before them.”

Jan and I sit there, frightened and fascinated. No one “calls for the king”; it isn’t done. It’s the king who “calls for” things and people and services. But the king is walking, with his severely arthritic body, leaning on a cane, moving from his comfortable, shaded seat on the other side of the altars toward the two women. And soon he is standing before Tu Biang and Wife Number Two.

The sounds coming out of their mouths are not at all like their everyday voices. Tu Aji translates from the Balinese. They are telling this vindictive, powerful man that he is not fulfilling his responsibilities to the family. They are saying that he is destroying the dynasty, ruining the family name by not being honest. He must attend more family functions, they tell him, and treat the people in the village with more kindness.

“You have to be true, not false in your heart, to bind the family together,” are the words coming out of Tu Biang’s mouth, but she does not sound like Tu Biang. The king is standing in front of her, nodding his head. He does not look like a king.

When the two women are finished, they sit down, the king returns to his seat, and the prayer ceremony takes place.

As we walk back to the van an hour later, I ask Tu Aji, “What will happen to Tu Biang tomorrow? Will he punish her?”

Tu Aji looks at me as if I have not learned anything in all these months. “No, he will not punish her. That was not Tu Biang, it was the spirit of our father speaking through her. Nothing will happen to Tu Biang. She was not responsible for what she said. She was the empty vessel that was used by my father’s spirit.”

On the ride back to the
puri,
Tu Biang, apparently exhausted, sleeps in the front. Jan and I sit in the back, stunned and silent. As soon as we are home, we huddle in Jan’s room. Neither of us knows what to think. Have we seen and heard a voice from another world or are these women faking? There’s no question that the Balinese around us, including Tu Aji and the king, believed they were hearing from the spirit world.