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I asked Ketut, my old medicine man, “What do you know about romance?”
He said, “What is this, romance?”
“Never mind.”
“No—what it is? What this word means?”
“Romance.” I defined. “Women and men in love. Or sometimes men and men in love, or
women and women in love. Kissing and sex and marriage—all that stuff.”
“I not make sex with too many people in my life, Liss. Only with my wife.”
“You’re right—that’s not too many people. But do you mean your first wife or your second
wife?”
“I only have one wife, Liss. She dead now.”
“What about Nyomo?”
“Nyomo not really my wife, Liss. She the wife of my brother.” Seeing my confused expres-
sion, he added, “This typical Bali,” and explained. Ketut’s older brother, who is a rice farmer,
lives next door to Ketut and is married to Nyomo. They had three children together. Ketut and
his wife, on the other hand, were unable to have any children at all, so they adopted one of
Ketut’s brother’s sons in order to have an heir. When Ketut’s wife died, Nyomo began living in
both family compounds, splitting her time between the two households, taking care of both
her husband and his brother, and tending to the two families of her children. She is in every
way a wife to Ketut in the Balinese manner (cooking, cleaning, taking care of household reli-
gious ceremonies and rituals) except that they don’t have sex together.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Too OLD!” he said. Then he called Nyomo over to relay the question to her, to let her
know that the American lady wants to know why they don’t have sex with each other. Nyomo
about died laughing at the very thought of it. She came over and punched me in the arm,
hard.
“I only had one wife,” Ketut went on. “And now she dead.”
“Do you miss her?”