by Rosie Thomas
She answered brightly, ‘What do I do with my time? You wouldn’t believe how busy it can be here. And that’s when I’m not working. When I’ve got a commission I have to lock myself away or it would never get done. There’s my orchestra, for instance. That’s Tuesdays, for rehearsal. Sometimes we put on a performance. There are other gamelan concerts, and shadow plays and temple festivals to go to. On a normal day if I just call in to the market in the village, it can take half a morning by the time I’ve greeted everyone I know and asked after the children and grandchildren. I visit my neighbours, the Balinese ones, and they visit me, on a strict turn-by-turn basis. That’s not to mention the Europeans, their drinks parties and swimming-pool barbecues and gallery openings…’
Bill said, ‘That’s busy.’
Connie thought, Yes. I am busy, because I need to be. It’s the life I’ve made for myself.
She smiled at him. She wanted him to know she had her place in the village. She was not an object for concern, and she was certainly not to be pitied.
‘Take today. There’s an invitation to go to my neighbour’s house, just over here.’ She pointed to the thick palm hedge that separated her garden from Wayan Tupereme’s house compound. ‘Wayan and his family have a big celebration coming soon, and today’s party is in preparation for that. All his relatives, the women especially, are coming to the house to help to prepare offerings for the ceremony. The men will be starting to build a roof to provide shade on the day itself. There’s a lot of work to be done, but it’s a social event too.’
Connie wondered if now was the right time to explain that the big event that was being so elaborately prepared for was the cremation of Wayan’s father. The old man had died more than a year ago and was buried in the village cemetery. The most auspicious day had been fixed on months ago, giving the best possible circumstances for the dead man’s atman, his immortal soul, to continue on its journey to heaven.
She added quickly, ‘You’re both invited too, of course, as my family. Wayan made a special call, to insist on that. But you are tired…’
Jeanette sat up.
– I would like to go to the party. Very much.
Her eagerness had a feverish glitter. Bill leaned forward to touch her arm, but she waved off the restraint.
– Why not? We are here. If you will take us, Connie?
Connie nodded. ‘Of course. And they will all want to meet you. They are very curious, always, about new people.’
Jeanette touched her fingers to her mouth in a question, and Connie wondered how she should answer it.
She picked an orchid flower from the vase on the table and placed it in a triangle with her water glass and a spoon. This was a difficult concept to sign, but she would do the best she could.
‘In Bali, everything is a matter of balance. Each living or inanimate thing is part of an ordered universe, each stands in relation to every other. This is called dharma, and our personal actions or karma must harmonise with our duty to dharma. To do this, Balinese Hindus try always to look at the world with regard for others, not themselves. To be old here is a matter for reverence. A new baby is pure and treated almost as a god. For a person to be deaf, or lame, or a stranger, this is also part of the balance of the universe. If a Balinese does not accept these differences, and acknowledge the grace in them, he causes disorder. Or adharma.’
Jeanette reached forward to stroke the flexed and velvety spotted petals of the orchid.
Slowly she mouthed the words.
– Dharma. Balance.
Bill sat with his hand shading his eyes.
– What time? Jeanette asked.
‘We should be there at about five o’clock. Once the day starts to cool down, but before it gets dark,’ Connie told her.
Jeanette took the orchid and tucked it behind her ear. It lent her a look of reckless gaiety.
– I will lie down for an hour.
Bill edged back his chair. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said at once.
Jeanette shook her head.
– Stay here with Connie.
Connie followed her into the bedroom. The shutters were closed and the ceiling fan stirred a draught of cool air.
‘Is there anything you need?’ she asked, as Jeanette lay down in the dimness. The flower glimmered against her temple.
Jeanette smiled.
– Dharma, she repeated.
Connie left her to sleep.
Bill had carried the plates and glasses into the kitchen. He was opening cupboard doors to find the right place to put things away, and keeping his face averted. Without needing to see, Connie knew the depth of pain in his eyes.
‘Those go in there,’ she pointed.
‘Thanks. And these?’
‘In the drawer.’
She was thinking about the kitchen in the Buntings’ house in Surrey and the way that the familiarity of their domestic routine, of their marriage itself, was printed all through it. Here in her own kitchen it would be difficult, after he had gone home again. She would look at this handle, that cup, and remember how he had touched them. He had been here, moving around in her small and self-contained universe, and from now on she would be obliged always to see the shape of him printed in the old rattan chair, and to direct herself away from the image of his long body curved into the yield of her mattress.
It was only a matter of weeks since the invasion of the film team, and it was strange now to remember how apprehensive she had been about this disturbance to her ordered life. In the end Angela and Rayner and the others had come and gone, bringing London to the village and then bearing it away again, and had left barely a trace of themselves except that the villagers still talked about the visit of the movie people.
It would not happen like that with Jeanette and Bill. Their impact on the village would be negligible, but for her everything would be changed.
Connie blinked. When she opened her eyes he was still there.
Bill collected up the salad trimmings and rinsed the sink, in the practised way that showed how he had learned to be cook and cleaner in the past few months.
The light surrounding them seemed to have turned very pale and crystalline.
She would remember exactly how he scraped the chopping board clean and rinsed it, and the way he had to stoop a little to do these tasks because the counter was too low for him.
What would Bill do when Jeanette was gone?
It seemed impertinent, almost, to speculate about his grief.
What will I do? Connie wondered. A stab of pure pain made her gasp.
Bill folded a cloth. His movements were very slow, indicating that he was experiencing some difficulty that she could only guess at. She resisted the impulse to touch him for comfort’s sake.
It dawned on her that she had barely thought about afterwards. All her concentration had been on the progress of the disease, on Jeanette, and on the business of dying and death. Afterwards remained a vacuum.
The only certainty was that it would not hold out any prospect for herself and Bill. That was implicit in before.
‘Thank you. That’s all done,’ she smiled.
‘It didn’t take long,’ he said, reflecting her own neutrality back at her.
Connie went into her room. There was still an hour or so before it would be time to go to Wayan’s house.
‘I should explain,’ Connie said, ‘before we go.’
Bill and Jeanette were ready. Jeanette had made up her face. They looked expectantly at Connie.
‘This evening marks the beginning of the send-off for my neighbour Wayan’s father. The cremation itself is next week, on the most auspicious day.’
Bill’s thumb moved to the corner of his mouth.
‘We’re going to a funeral? A sort of wake?’
‘Yes. And no, in fact. Of course it is a funeral and it’s a sad occasion because the family and friends are saying a final goodbye, but the old man died quite a long time ago.’
Jeanette was following the explanati
on carefully.
– How long ago?
There was no point in being evasive. The arrangements were according to Balinese custom, and Bill and Jeanette might as well hear about it now.
‘A little more than a year. A big, grand cremation costs a lot of money for the family, and they have to save up for it as well as wait for the auspicious date in the calendar. So the body is temporarily buried, and then when everything is ready they dig it up again in order to cremate it and set the spirit free. It tends to be a wild party.’
Jeanette started to laugh. The surprising sound of it bubbled out of her throat.
– I have to see this, don’t I?
Outside Wayan’s house, scooters and parked cars lined the narrow lane, and dozens of pairs of sandals and shoes were lined up at the step. The bale, the house pavilion, was overflowing with people. The bamboo pillars that supported the palm-leaf roof were decorated with strips of coloured cloth and the roof itself was swathed in more folds of colour. Most of the men wore white or crimson head-cloths and bright sarongs. The women’s long skirts were intricate ikat fabrics and frangipani and hibiscus blossoms were plaited in their hair. Children in their best clothes chased and played between the adults’ legs. The effect was of a brilliant moving sea of patterns and faces and smiles.
As the visitors passed through the outer gate into the open compound, Wayan and his wife came forward to greet them. Connie made the introductions, formally, in polite Balinese. Dayu, Wayan’s diminutive wife, placed her hands together and bowed to each of them in turn.
‘You are welcome,’ she said in English. ‘Please come to join us.’
The guests were crowding towards the family temple, placed in the most sacred corner of the compound and separated from it by a gate. Connie bowed her head to the nearest people she recognised in the throng.
A priest in white robes was preparing to make the offerings.
Chairs were ranged in a loose row for those who needed them, and without drawing attention to it Wayan made sure that Jeanette found her way to one. The priest lifted a small bronze bell and rang it. At once the talk and laughter died away.
A small group of gamelan musicians were gathered with their instruments in the inner enclosure. One of them struck a long, shivering gong note. It resonated in the warm, damp air. The daylight was fading, and the guttural boom of the first frogs could be heard against the brittle rasp of crickets and trills from birds hidden in the foliage. Thick wafts of incense rose through the leaves and coloured cloth hangings and twisted into the smoky evening sky.
The musicians began to play. It was sombre temple music, the metallophones with their bamboo resonators laying down a skeletal rhythm that was filled in with the drums and gongchimes. Connie listened with close attention.
The priest was chanting. He lifted and placed the offerings in turn, silver plates of rice cakes garlanded with flowers and bark-frilled bamboo skewers of fruit. The guests mumbled or chanted their prayers, holding a blossom between their fingers and pressing folded thumbs to their foreheads. The priest’s attendant came through the crowd with a clay jug of tirta, the holy water. Bill was somewhere behind Connie in the crowd, but she watched Jeanette observing and copying her neighbours. When Jeanette’s turn came she held out her cupped palm for the water as the others did, sipped three times at it, then dripped the remainder over her hair. She took a pinch of sticky rice too, and following the grandmother beside her she pressed a few grains to her forehead and temples.
The tempo of the music changed. It rippled now, faster, like running water with a silvery thread in it.
The prayers were over and people were turning away, laughing and gossiping again. Connie was struck, as she always was, by the seamless way that spiritual and secular life were woven together in the rituals of the village.
A small group of women had been in one of the enclosed rooms during the prayers. Now they came out, carrying huge bowls of rice and baskets of coconut leaves. The working part of the evening was about to begin. In the centre of a knot of young girls, Connie spotted Dewi. Her baby son was wrapped in a sky-blue shawl and tied against her, his smooth brown head just visible.
‘Dewi,’ Connie smiled and waved.
The girl flashed a smile in return and ducked through the crowd towards her. Jeanette reached Connie’s side at the same time. The grains of rice were still glued to her tissuethin skin.
‘This is my friend, Dewi. She is Wayan and Dayu’s daughter. And this is their grandson,’ Connie told her. The unfamiliar Balinese names took time to sign and Dewi waited, her bright eyes on Jeanette.
‘My sister,’ Connie completed the introduction. Dewi was too polite to show her surprise at the difference in their looks. She made her graceful bow, and Jeanette’s fingers fluttered close to the baby’s head.
Beautiful, her gesture said, and Dewi smiled proudly. She gestured in return, Would you like to hold him?
Jeanette opened her arms. One hand cupped the baby’s head, the other supported his tiny weight against her breast. She breathed in the scent of him and touched her lips to his gleaming cheek.
‘He’s a strong boy,’ Connie said to Dewi.
‘Oh, yes. Like his father,’ the girl beamed.
There were more people to greet. Wayan’s cousin Kadek from the village store came to touch her hand.
‘Good evening, Ibu Connie.’
Kadek was a relatively wealthy man. He and his brothers and all the other cousins would be helping to pay for the cremation. Connie had heard that three other families would also be sending off their relatives during the same ceremony. It was not unusual for people to club together to meet the heavy costs.
The women were settling at tables with the bowls of rice and coconut leaves spread between them. Connie talked to Dayu, and when Jeanette finally parted with the warm bundle of baby she joined them. Her face was faintly coloured under her make-up. She rocked her empty arms.
– That baby. The scent they have. The hollow at the back of his neck. I wish Noah had a son.
‘Maybe he and Roxana will.’
– Not in my time.
Jeanette’s face was smooth. Connie could see no bitterness or anger in it now.
‘He will some day,’ Connie murmured.
– I wish he could see this, too. The colours. The people. He would love this place.
Bill and Jeanette and Connie herself had all suggested to Noah that he should come out to Bali with them. But Noah had replied that he was busy at work and with Roxana, and that in any case his parents should take the opportunity to enjoy some uninterrupted time with Connie. Bill had confided to Connie that he hadn’t had the heart to push the suggestion any harder. He didn’t think Noah had acknowledged to himself how little time there was left.
Jeanette leaned closer.
– Will you do something for me?
‘Of course,’ Connie said.
– If. When. Will you be a grandmother in my place?
Connie took a breath. ‘Yes. I promise. Whatever Noah wants.’
Composedly, Jeanette nodded her head.
– Good. Thank you.
All round them, women were working. Some of them were scooping up handfuls of rice, coloured bright pink or yellow or pistachio green, and dextrously moulding them into animal shapes. These would be left to dry, and then incorporated into the high tiers of offerings on cremation day. Others were weaving strips of tough palm leaf into baskets. Their fingers flashed, folding and turning and skewering with sharp slivers of bamboo. They talked while they worked, hardly even glancing downwards as the intricate baskets took shape. The musicians played sweet, liquid music over the frog chorus.
Connie had been to one class, aimed at Westerners living in the village, on how to fold the simple triangular baskets used for daily offerings.
‘Shall we have a go?’ she said now. ‘Rice pigs or palm baskets?’
Dayu beamed her encouragement and gave them both a fistful of leaves. The women moved up on the bench
es, patting a free space among them. Connie and Jeanette took their places and spread out the leaves between them.
‘Hold like this. In and out.’ Immediately Connie’s leaf split, while Jeanette’s splayed into its fibrous components and all the women broke into peals of laughter.
Connie laughed too. ‘Wait. You fold, I’ll stick the skewer in.’
She and Jeanette began to work, clumsily, in tandem.
It was almost dark now, and the lights in the compound had come on. Some of the men were carrying in bales of leaves that would provide temporary thatch for the open compound. Others were putting up bamboo poles to support the new roof or carry long strings of lights. Connie saw Bill in the middle of one group. He stood head and shoulders taller than the other men, and they were using him as a prop to hold up a pole with one hand and run up a length of cable with the other. There was the usual village cacophony of waving and shouting and running about as the work progressed, with Wayan and Kadek directing the business. Bill pointed and gestured at another loop of cable, indicating where it should be fixed. He was good at fitting in. It was just one of the reasons why Connie loved him.
Between them, she and Jeanette managed one misshapen, ragged basket with a stray corner of palm leaf sticking out like the ear of a lame dog. Dewi held it up and the women giggled behind their hands, the flowers nodding in their hair. Dayu had left the tables to oversee another cohort of women in the kitchen, preparing food for the workers, and now they began to emerge with bowls heaped with hot food. It was important for the prestige of the dead man that everything should be of the best quality, and laid on in abundance. The musicians abandoned their instruments and the men put down their tools and cables. The women served them with big, steaming platefuls. The noise of talk and laughter grew louder. Children squirmed away from the attention of the adults, and some of them took up the musicians’ mallets and began picking tunes from the percussion instruments. A tiny, plump child was patting out a rhythm on one of the drums.
