"Death Trance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

'Do you have any doubts?'
Incense wafted between them, rolling over in the heavy night air. Michael said, 'Yes, naturally I have doubts. Didn't you have doubts before you did it for the first time?'
'Of course,' replied the pedanda. He had taught Michael to always question him. 'But I had to throw away my doubts. Just as you will have to throw away yours.' He paused for a moment and then said, 'Silakan duduk.'
Michael obeyed, walking across to the centre of the
courtyard where two frayed silken mats had been laid out. Carefully, so that he would not wrinkle the silk, he sat down cross-legged, his back rigidly straight and the palms of his hands held outward.
'Tonight you will take your first steps into the world of the spirits.' said the pedanda. He did not join Michael straight away as he usually did, but stood watching him with stony eyes, his hands still lightly pressed together as if he were holding a living butterfly between them. What shall I do now? Release the butterfly, or crush it to death?
Michael shivered, although he had always promised himself that when the pedanda announced that this evening had finally arrived, he would accept it without fear and without sentimental feelings. He had every right to feel afraid, however, because the culmination of his tutorship under the pedanda would mean that he could see and talk to any of the dead whom he chose to, just as clearly as if they were still living.
He had every right to feel sentimental too, because once he had seen the dead - once he was able to enter that trancelike state that was the necessary vehicle to such difficult explorations - he would become a priest himself, and after that, he would never see the pedanda again. The pedanda had taught him everything he could. Now it would be Michael's turn to seek out evil and walk among the ghosts of Bali's ancestors.
The pedanda had never shown him any fatherly affection, for all that Michael called him Pak. On the contrary, he had often been persnickety and brittle-tempered, and he had even given Michael penances for the slightest mistakes. And when Michael's father had died, the pedanda had been unsympathetic. 'He is dead? He is lucky. And besides, when you are ready, you will meet him again.'
All the same, a strong unspoken understanding had grown up between them, an understanding that in many ways was more valuable to Michael than affection. It was
partly based on mutual respect, this understanding, and partly on the mystical sensitivity they shared, a faculty that enabled them both to enter the dream worlds of the deities. They had experienced the reality of the gods at first hand through the trancelike state known in its less highly developed form as sanghyang, during which a man could walk on fire or stab himself repeatedly with sharp-bladed knives and remain unhurt.
'You say nothing,' the pedanda told him. 'Are you afraid?'
'Tidak,' Michael said. 'No.'
The pedanda continued to stare at him without expression. 'I have told you what to expect. As you enter the world of the dead, you will also be entering the world of the demons. You will encounter the leyaks, the night vampires who are the acolytes of Rangda. You will see for yourself the butas and the kalas, those who breathe disease into the mouths of babies.'
'I am not afraid,' Michael said. He glanced at the pedanda quickly, a sideways look, to see his reaction.
The pedanda came closer and leaned over Michael so that the boy could smell the curious dry, woody smell the priest always seemed to exude.
'Very well, you are not afraid of leyaks. But suppose you came face to face with Rangda herself.'
'I should call on Barong Keket to protect me.'
The pedanda cackled. 'You will be afraid, I promise you, even if you are not afraid now. It is right to be afraid of Rangda. My son, even I am afraid of Rangda.'
Then the pedanda left Michael briefly and returned with a large object concealed beneath an ornately embroidered cloth. He set the object in front of Michael and smiled.
'Do you know what this is?'
'It looks like a mask.'
'And what else can you tell me about it?'
Michael licked his lips. 'It is very sakti.' He meant that it was magically powerful, so powerful that it had to be covered by a cloth.
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'Would you be frightened if I were to show it to you?' asked the priest.
Michael said nothing. Thepedanda watched him closely, searching for the slightest twitch of nervousness or spiritual hesitation. After a moment, Michael reached forward, grasped the corner of the cloth and drew it off the mask.
As confident and calm as he was, he felt his insides coldly recoil. For the hideous face staring at him was that of Rangda, the Witch Widow, with bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, and fangs so hooked and long that they crossed over each other. Michael's sensitivity to the presence of evil was so heightened now that he felt the malevolence of Rangda like a freezing fire burning into his bones. Even his teeth felt as if they were phosphorescing in their sockets.
'Now what do you feel?' asked the priest. His face was half hidden by shadow.
Michael stared at the mask for a long time. Although it was nothing more than paper and wood and gilded paint, it exuded extraordinary evil. It looked as if it were ready to snap into sudden life and devour them both.
Michael said, 'If Barong Keket does not protect me, the spirit of my father will.'
The pedanda took the embroidered cloth and covered the mask again, although he left it where it was, resting between them.
'You are ready,' he said dryly. 'We shall close our eyes and meditate, and then we shall begin.'
The pedanda sat opposite Michael and bowed his head. The fragrant incense billowed between them, sometimes obscuring the priest altogether so that Michael could not be certain that he was still there. The incense evoked in Michael's consciousness the singing at funerals, the trance dances, and all the secret rituals the pedanda had taught him since he was twelve years old. There was another aroma in the incense, however: bitter and pungent, like burning coriander leaves.
'You must think of the dead,' the pedanda told him. 'You must think of the spirits who walk through the city.
You must think of the presence of all those who have gone before you: the temple priests who once tended this courtyard, the merchants who cried in the streets outside, the rajas and the perbekels, the children and the proud young women. They are still with us, and now, when you wish to, you may see them. The crowds of the dead!'
Michael looked around. He was in the first stages of trance, breathing evenly as if he were cautiously entering a clear, cold pool of water. There, lining the walls of the inner courtyard, stood carved stone shrines to the deities of life and death, a shrine to Gunung Alung, the volcano, and another to the spirits of Mount Batur. It was in these shrines that the gods were supposed to sit when they visited the Pura Dalem. Michael had occasionally wondered if the gods ever came here any more - the temple was so ruined and the odalan festivals were no longer held here - but he realized that it would be heretical to display doubts to the pedanda.
The shrines to the greatest deities had eleven layered meru roofs, tapering upward into the darkness. Those to lesser gods had only seven roofs, or five. There were no gifts laid in front of any of these shrines as there were in other temples, no fruit or flowers or bullock's heads or chickens. Here there was nothing but dried leaves that had fallen from the overhanging trees and a few scattered poultry bones. There were no longer any temple priests to cater to the comforts of the gods.
The pedanda began to recite to Michael the words that would gradually lift him into a deeper state of trance. Michael kept his eyes open at first but then slowly his eyelids drooped and his body relaxed; gradually his conscious perceptions began to drain away and pour across the courtyard floor like oil.
The pedanda began to tap one foot on the stones rhythmically and Michael swayed back and forth in the same rhythm, as if anticipating the arrival of celebrating villagers, the way it would have been when the odalan festivals were held in the temple. He swayed as if the kendang
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drums were beating, and the kempli gong was banging, and the night was suddenly shrill with the jingling of finger cymbals.
'You can walk now among the dead, who are themselves among us. You can see quite clearly the ghosts of those who have gone before. Your eyes are opened both to this world and the next. You have reached the trance of trances, the trance of the dead, the world within worlds.'
Michael pressed his hands against his face and began to sway ever faster. The clangour of drumming and cymbal clashing inside his brain was deafening. Jhanga-jhanga-jhanga-jhanga-jhanga: the complicated, unwritten rhythms of gamelan music; the whistling melodies of life and death; the rustling of fire without burning, of knives that refused to cut; the swath in the air made by demons who stole children in the dark.
Great blocks of crimson and black came silently thundering down on top of him. His mind began to burst apart like an endless succession of opening flowers, each one richer and more florid than the last.
The kendang drums pounded harder and harder; the cymbals shrilled mercilessly; the gongs reverberated until they set up a continuous ringing of almost intolerable sound.
Michael swayed furiously now, his hands pressed hard against his face. The voice of the pedanda reached him through the soundless music, repeating over and over, 'Sanghyang Widi, guide us; Sanghyang Widi, guide us; Sanghyang Widi, guide us.'
It was now - at the very crescendo of his trance - that Michael would usually have stood up to dance, following the steps untaught by priests or parents, or by anybody mortal, yet known by all who can enter into the sanghyang.
But tonight he was suddenly, and unexpectedly, met by silence and stillness. He continued to sway for a short time, but then he became motionless as the silence and the stillness persisted and the imaginary music utterly ceased.
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