He said, "What is this, romance?"

"Never mind."

"No--what it is? What this word means?"

"Romance." I defined². "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 expression, 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 heir³. When Ketut's wife died, Nyomo began living in both family compounds, splitting⁴ 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 religious 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 relay⁵ 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?"

A sad smile. "It was her time to die. Now I tell you how I find my wife. When I am twenty-seven years, I meet a girl and I love her."

"What year was that?" I asked, desperate as always to figure out how old he is.

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