Part 15

At the waterfront there was plenty to see while we waited. The freighter was loading with passengers for its return trip to Jakarta and the beach was turbulent. Bedrolls, bundles of goods wrapped in matting, fighting cocks in bamboo cages, and eating chickens tied by their feet into bundles were all being carried down to the shore and loaded onto the backs of porters, who waded out with them into deeper water where the lighters were waiting, followed by the passengers themselves. Just beyond the shallows, the boats would stand by while the oarsmen held them steady and passengers scrambled over the gunwales and helped to load the cargo aboard. At last, with only inches of freeboard, the lighter would move off ponderously in the direction of the freighter.

When the family finally assembled at the waterfront, I loaded our purchases and the girls into the dinghy and then shook hands with everybody, including Mr. Ndonoe, who had come down to see us off. Mr. Ndonoe, however, simply kept hold of my hand and used it to steady himself as he climbed into the dinghy and settled himself comfortably. I tried to explain that we were ready to sail as soon as we got to the _Phoenix_, but he indicated that he would go along. Mr. Dicker had the impression that the visit was official, so there was nothing to do but make the best of it.

Once on board, however, it appeared that Mr. Ndonoe had come with us for the same reason a pup jumps onto the seat of a car—because he enjoys the ride. I’m afraid we were a bit abrupt as we packed him into Flatty again, since Moto had to row him all the way to shore and return before we could load our dinghy aboard and get underway.

Boatwise, it is a pleasure to leave Kupang: just up anchor, drift slowly seaward as you make sail at your leisure, and you are on your way. No tricky channels, no coral, no adverse tides, no shifting winds, no held breath.

Much as we had looked forward to a leisurely trip up the Indonesian archipelago, we decided to make no more stops until Bali, where we felt more certain of our welcome. We had no desire to cause incidents, and were afraid that the feeling against the Japanese which had been evidenced in such a relatively large port as Kupang might cause even more trouble in remote spots, even farther removed from central control.

Accordingly, we set our course for Benoa, the port of entry to Bali, 500 miles to the west. On this hop there was much leisure for reading and relaxation. Books were always a special joy at sea, partly because we had time to think about what we read and partly because, in the hours when we gathered in the cockpit, we found pleasure in sharing what we had been reading through discussion or by reading bits aloud. Life at sea was teaching us the joys of conversation, of propounding a theory, of following an idea to its logical conclusion. We all increased our knowledge painlessly and almost unconsciously as we compared impressions of the people and places we had left behind or tried to learn a bit about the ports that lay ahead.

In route to Bali we talked, among other things, about our brief experience in Timor, about Mr. Ndonoe and his almost childlike eagerness, about the unreasonably prejudiced and stubborn senior immigration officer; about the very young immigration officials; and about the Italian port doctor who had come out for a two-year term “because not enough doctor for all the place they need.”

For the first time, as we read something of the history of this very new republic, we realized what terrible obstacles Indonesia was facing in her struggle to achieve a place in the community of nations. She had no background of gradual education and preparation for self-rule, as had the Philippines. Having thrown off a very paternalistic colonial rule by sudden revolution, she found herself without enough experienced leaders, professional men, and trained government officials. No wonder so many of the officers we met had seemed young. They were! And as for the older ones, like our senior official in Kupang, he had perhaps worked in a minor capacity under the Dutch and, on the basis of such slight experience, had been quickly kicked upstairs. Perhaps his overbearing and dogmatic attitude was simply a reflection of the treatment he himself had received or observed under the hated colonial rulers whom he had replaced.

Our periods of companionship in the cockpit were never scheduled and sometimes burgeoned at an hour that would have been unthinkable ashore. For example, from Barbara’s diary:

July 13. Woke up about 3 A.M. and realized by the wallowing of the ship, the slatting of sails, and the banging of blocks that the wind had left us. Went up to sit with Ted on watch. The wind was beginning to tease us, coming in little puffs and then falling off—but each time returning a little more strongly, until gradually we began to move and the water aft began to gurgle a bit. The phosphorescence of our wake was spectacular—we could trace the curve of the rudder deep down and bubbles of light like sparkling champagne were kicked up behind.

At four, when Earle came on watch, Jessica heard us talking and she, too, came up and joined us, just in time for a thrilling display of phosphorescent dolphins! They gamboled and disported about us in luminous streaks and splashes. We could follow them beneath the surface, a moving river of cold, greenish light, until they broke the surface in a shower of spangles accompanied by the characteristic “whoof” of expelled air.

Our entrance into Bali was one of the most trying and difficult that we had yet experienced. The currents that sweep down between the islands are fierce in these areas and the monsoon wind pours down through the passes. The year previous, a yacht larger than the _Phoenix_ had been blown down the strait while attempting to reach Bali and it had taken her a month to work her way back against the winds. We had no desire to emulate that experience!

The log tells of some of our difficulties:

Last night set course to reach Bali—allowed 1 knot westerly current.

When estimated distance run at 0500, sailed N and at dawn saw outlines of land. Rainy, misty, visibility poor.

Thought this point of land was S.E. Bali and set course to run up coast to Benoa. No visibility in frequent showers. Lost land, picked up _another_ point, and decided we were in the middle of Lombok Strait. _Terribly_ rough—roughest we’ve had yet—high, steep waves, from all directions. (Displaced all the boxes tied in the back of the cockpit—first time _that_ ever happened.)

Finally saw small island S. of Nusa Besar, and thus positively identified position. Cut south of island, across both Lombok and Bandung Straits.

Very rough, tough trip. To cross straits logged about 25 miles to make 10 good.

Finally located Benoa, in a relatively clear moment, got the leading marks in line, when a heavy shower washed out all sight. Since the entrance involves a right-hand turn and various tricky meanderings, we put about and lay off one hour until the weather cleared a bit.

When we entered, we found _buoys were completely changed_ from the pilot book and our up-to-date chart. Had to put man at masthead and con our way through the reef.

The village of Benoa turned out to be a picturesque cluster of houses and brightly painted fishing boats drawn up on a spit of land to the left of the harbor, but the port of Benoa, on the other side of the water, was less interesting. It consisted of a few large and, at this hour, quite deserted buildings beside a large dock. We drifted in, tied alongside just at dusk, and gathered on the deck wondering what to do next and whether anyone from the village should be notified of our arrival.

Across the water a few early fires flickered in the town. On the dock, high above, a half dozen men began to congregate, squatting to look down at us with friendly curiosity. I decided to see what I could find out, but when I climbed up the ratlines and so to the dock, I met with no success. Phrases I had memorized in Dutch—in Indonesian—in Malay—nothing seemed to arouse any understanding. At last, in desperation, I tried a few words of Japanese—and suddenly we were off! Only then did I remember that Bali had been held by the Japanese from 1942 until the end of the war. Their Japanese was not much better than mine—but different. Anyway, it served and through an exchange of very halting questions-and-answers I learned that all the officials had gone for the day, that it was quite all right for us to remain at the dock overnight, and that Den Pasar, the main city of Bali, was 11 kilometers away and could be reached by bus.

I returned to the deck, where we had a leisurely supper and turned in early. To tell the truth, I was utterly exhausted. The family took a short walk, but came back to report nothing of interest on our side of the harbor except the dock buildings, a long, deserted causeway stretching into the distance across tidal flats, and a stack of long wicker baskets like porous sausages, each of which contained—a real, live pig!

Even this news failed to arouse me. However the Balinese arranged to package and store their bacon for export, it could wait, I decided, until morning.

10 BALI, JAVA, THE KEELING-COCOS

“A sense of uneasy anticipation....”

Bali was worth all the trouble it took to get there. Not only is it spectacularly beautiful, with its rugged mountains, its misty vales, its crumbling temples, and the glossy green of its rice paddies, but the people are beautiful too. Outside of Den Pasar, where the tourists congregate and create understandable disruptions and where it is considered “rude” for women to go about unclothed above the waist, the Balinese serenely follow their age-old customs, practice the Hindu religion, which is the hard core of their society, and preserve their independence and integrity.

In contrast to other countries we had visited, even the more remote islands, we saw little influence of the West in Bali. No American movies, not even in Den Pasar; no Cokes or chewing gum. Music could be heard as one strolled the streets of a village at night, and it was not rock and roll but the hauntingly compelling music of Bali, played on drum and gamelin.

Our first act, after officially entering the next morning, was to take the bus to Den Pasar to meet Barbara’s mother. Minnetta herself was on a trip around the world, traveling by a somewhat faster means and at a bit higher altitude, but the motivating aim of her entire junket had been to meet us in Indonesia!

No one seemed to know the bus schedule, but all were happy to show us where to wait for it. Eventually, a dilapidated bus pulled up, so we climbed on and waited. And waited. And _waited_.

Several praus with wishbone sails pulled up to the sea wall and willing hands began to unload. Stalks of bananas, bunches of coconuts, matting bundles were all unloaded, carried up the sloping sea wall to the road and thence up a narrow ladder to the top of the bus.

The driver returned, carrying a woven banana leaf tray on which were a few carefully arranged yellow flowers and a few leaves. He placed this in a niche above the driver’s seat and stuck a stick of burning incense into a holder on the dashboard. (There’s an extra that American models don’t have!) We wondered if he was exorcising whatever demons may have gotten aboard with us.

A little later the people began to get on. Soon the bus was full, but still we waited. Down at the waterfront another prau came in. This one was loaded to the gunwales with large turtles and Barbara scrambled out with her camera.

“Don’t let them go without me!” she warned, stalking her photographic prey.

She didn’t have to go to the shore for her pictures, however. Her subjects were being brought to her, each turtle borne upside down on the shoulders of a man who walked with it easily up the sloping ladder to the top of the bus and there deposited it neatly.

The last two turtles were too large to be carried by a single man. These were slung from poles and brought up to the road by two men each, who shoved them inside the bus where they just filled the aisle and made an excellent footrest for the passengers, who sat in long seats facing one another. At last we started.

Once we were rolling, we passed beautifully irrigated rice fields, villages with walled compounds, and temples which looked centuries old, with carved elephants or boars guarding their narrow gates. Everywhere we saw evidences of the rice harvest: rows of workers in the fields, seemingly bowed over beneath the weight of huge mushroom-shaped hats as they cut the ripened grain; men and women carrying sheaves to be threshed, the men with two full shocks swinging from each end of a pole across the shoulders, the women with a single, larger bundle balanced on the head.

Throughout the Balinese countryside women apparently have not heard of the regulation, promulgated in Java, that they must be “properly clothed” or, if they have heard of it, they pay it the same attention that the Balinese, through the centuries, traditionally have paid to the directives of their alien rulers: they ignore it. In the dooryards the lovely bodies of the women, clothed only in a sarong of patterned batik, moved in graceful rhythm as they bounced an upright pole first with one hand, then with the other, to thresh the grain which had been spread on mats to dry.

In Den Pasar we got off at the wide dirt lot which is the bus terminus and transferred to a doh-ka, the pony-cart-for-two which is the picturesque means of travel through the city streets. The driver whipped his tiny horse to a gallop, the plume of bells on its head jingled merrily, and in no time at all we were deposited in front of the Bali Hotel, where Minnetta was waiting on the porch.

She was far too travel-wise to be living at the Bali Hotel, however. Already she had found lodgings, at one-fifth the tourist rate, at a small Balinese hotel on a side street. That night Barbara stayed with her there and, on the way back from seeing the rest of us off at the bus terminal, she managed to get herself completely lost. Through this happy accident she made the acquaintance of Igusti Rai Suwandi, a charming young Indonesian of Ted’s age who had been studying English in school. Rai (Igusti, we learned, is a title of caste and not a proper name) was happy to show Barbara back to her hotel and practice his English.

“Tomorrow I come again,” he promised. “I will meet your son. I will show him many things. If he will come by me for two days I will show him fete of young girl who become big.”

This event, which took place _in_ two days, turned out to be the coming-of-age ceremony for a young cousin, and Rai invited our whole family to attend. At the appointed time he took us to the outer courtyard of his “oldest brother’s wife’s father’s home.” We found it overflowing with milling tourists from the Bali Hotel who were busily taking pictures of suckling pigs turning on a spit and lovely girls passing through from the street to the inner courtyard with trays of food on their heads.

Our hearts sank. We had hoped for more than this, colorful as it was. But we needn’t have worried. Rai led us through the crowd, up some stone steps, through a narrow doorway in the brick wall, and down to the inner courtyard—and another world. All about us were open buildings with thatched roofs, their floors raised above the ground. Each of them was gaily decorated with lengths of bright cloth, flowers, and woven palm leaves. The guests, sitting cross-legged upon the floor of each pavilion, were all wearing native Balinese costume—magnificent sarongs of red or green or blue cloth with designs of gold thread and turbans of batik. They eyed us with curiosity and reserve and, for one horrible second, I wondered if Rai had brashly invited us without consulting his elders. Almost immediately, however, we were greeted warmly by Rai’s brother, who told us to make his home our own and led us to one of the detached buildings which had been, apparently, assigned to us for our own use.

In one of the houses, discreetly curtained off with gay hangings, the young girl for whom the ceremony was being held was being adorned for the main event of the day: the ritual of filing down her canine teeth. The reason for this operation was cheerfully given us by Rai: “So she not be like animal.”

When all was ready the maiden—a pretty, frightened-looking girl of seventeen—was borne out on the shoulders of two men, for on this day her feet must never touch the ground. She was clothed in a sarong of green and gold lamé, with a gold scarf bound around her breasts and wearing a tall crown of beaten gold, heavy with ornaments.

In the center of the courtyard was the most gaily decorated pavilion of all and here she was deposited on a raised couch in full view of all the family and guests. Women attendants removed her headdress and helped her to lie down. A priest then took over, intoning prayers and throwing petals of flowers around and over her with a ceremonial gesture. Having induced at least semihypnosis, he began the task of filing down her teeth. Throughout the proceedings, the chants of a dozen handmaidens provided a moaning background, in which the girl herself joined at times as if in fear or pain. Several times she sat up long enough to rinse her mouth and spit into a yellow coconut shell. The business had just enough of a suggestion of the dentist’s chair to lend it a slightly incongruous note.

When all was over, she was again lifted to the shoulders of her bearers and carried, wan and red-eyed, back to the privacy of the dressing room.

“Soon,” Rai promised Jessica, who was visibly upset, “she be more happy, _you_ see. This afternoon, many food—everything play.”

For us, too, there was “many food”: trays heaped high with molded rice, both plain and highly seasoned; a wide variety of curries and condiments; succulent roast pork; sate—bits of spicy meat on thin skewers; bananas, mandarin oranges, and various other dishes that I preferred to eat without identifying.

In the afternoon, as Rai had promised, the girl—now a marriageable young lady—was again carried among us, glowingly triumphant. Dances and a Balinese puppet play were presented for the assembled guests.

Also thanks to Rai—and because it was an auspicious time on the Balinese lunar calendar for ceremonial occasions of any kind—we had the opportunity of viewing a cremation. The remains of a number of deceased persons had been “saved up” for months, waiting until the bereaved families could prepare, and afford, a properly grand celebration. I use the term “celebration” advisedly, for a cremation in Bali, coming many months after the sorrow of death has faded, is not a time of mourning but a joyous release: release of the soul of the departed and, one presumes, release of the family from a heavy burden of obligation.

The procession accompanying the crematory tower itself was long and colorful. It included groups of musicians who played on the melodious Balinese drums, gongs, cymbals, and flutes; men who carried bundles of rice straw and others with cords of firewood; and a lengthy file of women with offerings of all kinds which they bore upon their heads. Everyone, it seemed, contributed food or goods, according to his means or ambition, and everything was to be consumed—by fire.

The main attraction, naturally, was the tall and elaborately decorated cremation tower, which carried the mortal remains of the dozen or so individuals who were being honored. This was borne upon the shoulders of some eighteen or twenty men, who plunged it from one side of the road to the other, splashed it with water from the drainage ditches along the way, or spun it about in erratic, zigzag patterns. This, we were told, was to confuse the spirits of the dead so they could not find their way back to haunt the living.

At the cremation grounds all the carefully wrapped bundles of bones were removed from the tower and placed, each in its own wooden coffin, beneath a long shed. The offerings were piled, as if for lavish display, upon a low platform covered with mats, nearby, and then the whole was set ablaze.

Only one development marred our enjoyment of this happy island. This was an illness which laid Jessica low for several days. On the night after the cremation—which had been a swelteringly hot day filled with excitement and topped off by a meal of strange and exotic foods—Jessica complained that she “didn’t feel good.” I wasn’t too surprised, but we decided to spare her the long bus ride back to Benoa and arranged for Barbara and Jessica to take a room at Minnetta’s hotel for the night.

Gradually Jessica’s vague symptoms seemed to localize in a stiff neck and I set off for Benoa with Ted, sure that all she needed was a good night’s sleep to put her back on her feet.

Early the next morning, however, Barbara turned up at the boat, having left Jessica with her grandmother and caught the first bus from Den Pasar.

“She must be running a high fever,” she told me, with a slightly wild look in her eye. “It was like sleeping with a hot pad, but I didn’t have my thermometer or even aspirin with me!”

She dived below to consult her medical bible, _The Ship’s Medicine Chest at Sea_, which she had not, so far, been called upon to use. Now, however, she was in no way reassured to discover that both polio and meningitis may start with the symptoms of “stiff neck and fever.” Armed with thermometer, textbook, and an overnight case stuffed with every medication she thought she might need, Barbara set off again for the hotel.

By the time she got back Jessica’s fever had turned into a chill and Minnetta, finding no blankets available at the hotel, had commandeered every coat and sweater she could lay hands on and piled them all on top of her shivering charge. Jessica insisted that she had no headache, so Barbara gratefully scratched meningitis as a possibility but the dread of polio still lingered. Rai, as deeply concerned as the family, had been hovering around anxiously and Barbara now dispatched him on his bicycle to look for a qualified physician who could speak English.

Jessica, meanwhile, slept fitfully. Occasionally she woke up to report a new symptom or a change in one of her old ones, whereupon Barbara flew back to her “do-it-yourself” medical text and started her diagnosis all over. The stiff neck turned out to be “more of a sore throat, really” and the “buzzing in the head” was tracked down to a vagrant bluebottle fly.

The climax came when Jessica, her temperature soaring again, began to toss off sweaters and shawls and disclosed a stomach covered with bright red spots! “Sore throat ... fever ... and a rash!” At last Barbara felt that she had it pinned down. “Scarlet fever!”

She began the indicated medication. It was getting dark now, and Jessica, in delirium, began to talk wildly. Barbara’s nerve was just about to break when Rai returned to report that he had “heard of a doctor” who could speak English. The women bundled Jessica up, summoned a doh-ka, and off they started across town, escorted by Rai on his bicycle.

Dr. M. Muhamad Angsar Kartakusuma left his supper to see them. He listened gravely as Barbara outlined the symptoms. Then he took a tongue depressor (the one item Barbara hadn’t thought to bring) and made an easy diagnosis—tonsillitis.

“A shot of penicillin”—he administered it almost before Jessica had time to flinch; “and these pills every four hours”—he handed an envelope to Barbara—“and I think you have nothing more to worry!”

“But—what about the rash?” Barbara protested.

Dr. Kartakusuma examined it briefly. “From heat,” he said, and added a box of medicated powder to relieve the itch.

The charge: nothing!