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Preface

It must, I think, have been in 1916, a time when Europe was too much preoccupied to remember the existence of a little island called Bali, that I came by chance into the possession of some very beautiful photographs. One of my friends had got them from an acquaintance—a doctor who lived in Bali. They made such an impression on me that I begged my friend to give me them; and I kept turning again and again to these pictures of men and beasts and landscapes, whenever the horrors my generation was exposed to—war, revolution, inflation, emigration—became unbearable. A strange relationship grew up between these photographs and me; I felt that I should one day come to know those people and that I had actually walked along those village streets and gone in at those temple doors.

It was not until 1935 that I was able to make the voyage to Bali. My first visit was the realization of a dream without a hint of disillusionment. The privilege I enjoyed of seeing the real and unspoilt Bali instead of merely the modernized and tawdry fringes which tourists skirt in comfort was due to a letter of introduction to Doctor Fabius.

It was Doctor Fabius whose now faded and yellowing photographs had played so great a part in my life. He had the reputation of being the oldest Dutch resident and an eccentric with an unrivalled knowledge of Balinese life. The other Dutch officials on the island had a great respect for his professional ability, his knowledge and his influence over the natives. At the same time they were inclined to laugh at the way he lived and said of him that he was half Balinese. He was a white-haired, lean, silent old gentleman, of an ironical turn of mind and rather averse to visits from persons like myself. In spite of this a peculiar sort of friendship developed between us in the course of time, and this resulted in his taking me with him to more and more distant villages and allowing me to see the real life of the Balinese.

When I returned to America I had a strange feeling of homesickness for Bali; I wrote several letters to Doctor Fabius which remained unanswered. I went back to Bali a year later for a second, and this time a long, visit, and found that he had died of pneumonia. The works of art, which had filled his house to overflowing, had been bequeathed to various friends; but for me Fabius had singled out one of those cheap, funny little Japanese tin boxes. I received this legacy with a feeling of perplexity and surprise. The box contained papers, some written by hand, some typewritten. There were pages from diaries, notes on customs and ceremonies, memoranda of all sorts, and also a long novel, the theme of which was the conquest of Bali by the Dutch. With them was a letter, in which Doctor Fabius authorized me in a few rather ironical sentences to reduce this jumble of manuscripts to order—“a task in which I have always been hindered by my Balinese laziness,” as he said—and to publish what I thought worthy of publication.

Love and Death in Bali is the book I have extracted from these papers after trying to discard what was redundant or too involved. It is concerned with a historical event which is known in the story of the colonization of Bali as “Puputan,” that is, roughly, “The End.” Nevertheless, it is not in the strict sense a historical novel, but rather a free rendering of actual occurrences.

Names and characters have been altered and the order of events is sometimes arbitrary. For example, the burning of widows at Tabanan took place three years and not three months before the dispatch of the punitive expedition. The Dutch officials of that time are nearly all still living and were, as I know, good friends of Fabius, who spoke of them with the greatest esteem. Men like Liefrinck and Schwarz are renowned for their knowledge of Bali and they love the island dearly. The officials in Fabius’s book have not only been given other names but are fictitious characters, who have no connexion with the real persons they represent. When I went through his manuscript I came upon many liberties of this kind, which I have no doubt were intentional. So I left them as they were. Clearly it was his aim to present the truth from the inside, even at the cost, when he thought it necessary, of sacrificing outward accuracy.

Similarly, I have taken the liberty of ending the story with the conquest of Badung. Fabius’s interminable manuscript goes on to the final colonization of other districts as well, where very much the same events occurred as in Badung. The Lord of Tabanan committed suicide with his son when he was taken prisoner and in Klungkung there was the same wholesale recourse to self-inflicted death—a puputan—as at Badung. Moreover, it seems to me that in Fabius’s eyes the simple and, in the deeper sense, pacifist existence of the peasant Pak was perhaps of more importance than the collisions in Bali between the vigorous Realpolitik of Holland and a heroic and medieval pride of arms.

Since then the Dutch have carried out an achievement in colonization that reflects the highest credit on them. Scarcely anywhere in the world are natives free to live their own lives under white rule so happily and with so little interference and change as in Bali; and I would like to believe with Doctor Fabius that the self-sacrifice of so many Balinese at that time had a deep significance, since it impressed upon the Dutch the need of ruling this proud and gentle island people as considerately as they have, and so kept Bali the paradise it is today.

The introductory chapter, put together from diary notes of Doctor Fabius, is concerned with the present day. The tale itself embraces the years from 1904 to 1906. For help and encouragement in sifting and examining the mass of material my thanks are due to: The Resident of Bali and Lombok, Mynheer van Haaze-Winckelman, Mrs. Katharane Mershon of Sanur, Herr Walter Spies of Oeboed, and many other of my Bali friends.

Bali has become the fashion. When I came back from the island, where in many places life and customs have remained unaltered for thousands of years, I found an irruption of Bali bars and Bali bathing costumes and Bali songs. I need not say that Doctor Fabius’s book has nothing to do with this Bali—if only because this Bali does not exist.

Vicki Baum