Dialogue in Bali

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Three languages are in use in the island, an arcane priestly tongue which is unknown to the laity, the language of the High Caste and the language of the Low Caste. The High Caste language is high- flown, elaborate, and full of compliments, the Low Caste familiar and colloquial. But it is beneath the dignity of a high-caste Balinese to address a low-caste Balinese in anything but the lower-caste language and when a Balinese of the lower caste addresses a high-caste Balinese, decorum enjoins the exalted idiom of the higher. As it is not eti- quette for the lower caste to look at the other directly, he fixes his glance no higher than his interlocutor's leg below the knee, and addresses his words to it. Here is a transposition of this unique conversational punctilio into English.

Scene: a bamboo-grove by the sea at sunset. Enter, right, a high-caste and, left, a low- caste Balinese.

High-caste Balinese: 'Ow yer blowin', cock?

Low-caste Balinese: It is indeed gracious of Your Legship to deign to address his servant. HCB: Not 'alf! 'Ow are all the Missises and the nippers? LCB: Prosperity, which is both the hand- maid and the guerdon of diligence, encloses the brows of the former like a fragrant wreath, your Legship, and the artless innocence of the latter bespeaks a burgeoning virtue which kindles a glow in the breast of their begetters.

HCB:'Alf a mo, though! One of them little bleeders needs a clip on the ear. Blow me if 'e wasn't pinchin' mangoes last night from my backyard! The blinking branch bust and your Young 'Opeful comes arse over tip in a cow-pat. Proper pickle 'e looked. Larf — I nearly split meself! But I'd tan 'is bum for 'im.

LCB: Retribution, your Legship, shall visit iniquity with tribulation.

HCB: That's the ticket. You give the little perisher wot for. 'Ow's the rice comin' on?

LCB: Ripe rice-grains, your Legship, are as pearls unto the people and a moiety thereof as the treasures of the deep. HCB: 'Ear, 'Ear! But 'ow's it doin'? LCB: The green ear betokens a white granary.

HCB: Go on? So we're sittin' pretty, like?

LCB: The burning eye of the sun may shrivel the young stalk, your Legship, and the pinions of aspiration, moulting beneath its parching glance, fling our fledgling hopes prostrate in the paddy- field.

HCB: (gloomily) Then we'd be up the creek.

LCB: Even so. But may the Merciful Ones on high cast a ray of partiality on your Legship and on his servant.

HCB: Keep our fingers crossed, like? 'Ere! Crikey? It's time for me nosh! I won't 'alf catch it from my better 'alves if I show up late for me evenin' blow-out! So I'll be sayin' so long.

LCB: May digestion entwine satiety with a garland of poppies!

HCB: Mine's something chronic.

LCB: Half a spoonful of brine from the ocean, your Legship, scourges wind from the abdomen and smooths the puckered brow.

HCB: Go on? I'll 'ave a bash at it, blow me if I don't! Well, I'll be shoving off. All the best, cock, and toodle-oo.

LCB: Heaven shower its lustre on your Legship! May it endow his thews with the strength of the trunk of Ganesh and scatter the path of his spouses with frangipani and marigolds. May it grant them the benison of fecundity, and, to his concubines, eyelids like the violet, cheeks like the lotus-petal, waists as sinuous as Naga, hips like water-melons in the season of water-melons and em- braces as tender as those of the holy Apsaras. Let the fruit of his lions be manifold as the stems of the banyan- tree, straight as the arrow of Arjuna, swift as Garuda — that noble bird! valiant as Rama, nimble as Hanuman and as tuneful upon the flute as the Lord Krishna himself!

HCB: Thanks, cock. Keep smiling!

(Exeunt on opposite sides) As the sun disappears beyond the volcano, the moon rises beyond Lombok, Borneo and the Wallace line.