And Bulan dances..

By Anton Kurnia

I have heard several different accounts of my father and mother. One of them was told to me by my grandmother.

It goes like this: My father and my uncle were identical twins. Their parents gave them exotic Javanese names -- Sugriwa for my father and Subali for my uncle.

They resembled each other physically, temperamentally, and even their voices were alike. So it was no easy matter to tell them apart.

Moreover, there existed between them a peculiar bond. If one of them fell ill, the other would fall ill also.

In the common phrase, they were like two halves of the same apple.

When they grew into adulthood they went into business.

At the age of twenty they moved to Bali from their little town in southern Central Java.

There they opened up a textile business. They sold various products: songket (cloth with golden embroidery), shawls, cotton cloth, batik, silk, earthenware, etc.

My father settled in Denpasar and would send my uncle on business trips to the other cities in Bali.

After some time, my father fell in love with a girl named Ayu Bulantresna, or Bulan, a dancer in a pura, Balinese temple. Besides performing ritual dances, she was also an acolyte in the temple.

She was a hot-blooded, dark-skinned girl with an incredible figure, long black hair, and beautiful doe eyes accentuated by slender eyebrows.

I can picture Bulan, my mother, dancing seductively to the music of gamelan, a loud but monotonous music, a music of mysterious significance, concentrating in itself all the secrets and passions of the people of Bali.

As she performs her rhythmic steps, the consecrated movements of the temple dance, Bulan unfolds like the petals of a flower.

What a hypnotizing effect all of this must have had upon my father.

Above all, the experience could only have been enhanced by the acrid, peppery smell of her sweat mingling with the sandalwood oil she wore on her body and other perfumes redolent of the essences of exotic trees that arouse sensations that slumbered hitherto in the depths of the consciousness.

All these things revived distant, dead memories in my father's mind.

He fell in love with Bulan, so deeply in love that he embraced the dancing girl's religion.

After some time, she became pregnant and was discharged from the temple.

Soon my uncle returned to Denpasar from one of his trips. Apparently, when it came to women, as in all other matters, his reactions were identical to my father's.

He fell passionately in love with my mother and consequently seduced her.

Because of his physical resemblance to my father this was not difficult for him to achieve.

As soon as she learned the truth, my mother said that she would never again have anything to do with either of them unless they agreed to undergo "trial by snake."

If they agreed to the trail, she would belong to the one who survived.

The trial consisted of the following. My father and my uncle would be enclosed together in a dark room in which a poisonous snake had been let loose. The first of them to be bitten by the snake would open the door of the room and take the other out to safety.

Before the two were shut up in the room, my father asked Bulan if she would perform the sacred temple dance for him one more time.

She agreed to do so.

Outside, twilight faded into night. Denpasar was enveloped in total darkness except for the dim light of the moon that shone through the fleecy clouds, casting a pale light over the streets.

And, under the moonlight, Bulan danced, with her significant, measured, gliding movements. Bulan danced, with her bosom bare, her slanting eyes black as the dark night of eternity, swaying this way and that. As she performed her rhythmic steps, Bulan unfolded like the petals of a flower. Each movement had a precise meaning and spoke a language not of words.

Then my father and uncle were shut up in the room with the snake.

Instead of shrieks of horror, what the listeners heard was a groan mixed with wild, bestial laughter.

When the door finally opened, my uncle stumbled out of the room.

His face was ravaged and he looked considerably older now. The terror aroused by the sound of the snake's body as it slid across the floor, its furious hissing, its glittering eyes, the thought of its poisonous fangs, the horror of all this drove him mad.

In accordance with the terms of the agreement, however, Bulan belonged to my uncle now.

The frightful thing was that the "trial" had deranged my uncle's mind and he was never the same after that.

Could it be this story has some strange bearing upon my personal history, and that the horror of the "trial by snake" has left its imprint on my soul and is somehow pertinent to my own destiny?