Читать книгу House in Bali - Colin McPhee - Страница 8

PART ONE

THE PORT

THE SHIP HAD SAILED from Surabaya for Bali in the late afternoon.

The boy stumbled down the stairs with my bags to the cabins that ran along either side of the dark saloon, and carried them to the state-room that lay directly over the propeller. I opened the door to find a portly Chinese merchant very much at home on the lower berth. He had removed the top to his white silk pyjamas, and he lay there, relaxed as a reclining Buddha, smoking a pipe of opium in great tranquillity. On the upper berth he had neatly arranged his considerable luggage, which included a cage containing a restless starling. The porthole was clamped down so that no breath of air might trouble this cosy paradise. I had not the heart to disturb him, and after the boy had set down my bags I closed the door and went upstairs.

I spent the night on deck, leaning over the rail and looking into the darkness for some thin beam of light to signal the presence of land. The ship made a gentle commotion in the water, churning it into foam that dissolved with a faint hiss. The engines moaned in their sleep, and from time to time some inner vibration of the ship caused the little coffee cups, left on the tables by the deck boy, to ring softly in their saucers.

Even if I had had the cabin to myself I could not have slept, for I was filled with an inner excitement that kept me wide awake. I had come all this way on a quest of music—to listen to the gamelans, the strange and lovely-sounding orchestras of gongs that still made music, it seemed, in the courts of Java and the villages and temples of Bali, and as I looked out into the night I could hardly believe that this musical adventure was actually about to begin.

I was a young composer, recently back in New York after student days in Paris, and the past two years had been filed with composing and the business of getting performances. It was quite by accident that I had heard the few gramophone records that were to change my life completely, bringing me out here in search of something quite indefinable—music or experience, I could not at this moment say. The records had been made in Bali, and the clear, metallic sounds of the music were like the stirring of a thousand bells, delicate, confused, with a sensuous charm, a mystery that was quite overpowering. I begged to keep the records for a few days, and as I played them over and over I became more and more enchanted with the sound. Who were the musicians? I wondered. How had this music come about? Above all, how was it possible, in this late day, for such a music to have been able to survive?

I returned the records, but I could not forget them. At the time I knew little about the music of the East. I still believed that an artist must keep his mind on his own immediate world. But the effect of the music was deeper than I suspected, for after I had read in the early books of Crawfurd and Raffles the quite fabulous accounts of these ancient and ceremonial orchestras, my imagination took fire, and the day came when I determined to make a trip to the East to see them for myself.

I leaned against the ship rail recalling all this and watching the phosphorescent wake fade into the blackness. I could not get used to the changed appearance of the sky; constellations that once had been flat designs now took on new dimensions, disclosing planes that extended far into space. Suddenly the night was luminous, and the silhouette of mountains, surprisingly near, stood up against the sky.

As the sun rose the mountains grew streaked with descending ridges and shadows, and along the foothills the palms glistened in the early humid light. But with the day the mountains flattened once more into cones, and within an hour, as we landed, the sun was throwing light and heat in all directions.

The little port town of Buleléng lay white along the edge of the sea. On either side of the main street, beneath the shade of enormous overhanging trees, were the shops, half hidden within a long arcade. Here thermos bottles, flashlights and celluloid dolls were sold by the Japanese, batiks and Manchester sarongs by Bombay men. The Chinese shops were crammed with everything under the sun, ironware, porcelain, hams, lacquer, smoked duck, silks and firecrackers. Arabs, Chinese, and Balinese in gay flowered batik strolled through the arcades. They sat peacefully in tiny restaurants, smoking, drinking synthetic pear juice coloured that seductive pink which is the symbol of sweetness in Mexico and Harlem, Naples, Kong and Batavia. The town gave forth the faint, voluptuous scent of all eastern cities, of nutmeg and aromatic cigarettes, coconut oil, gardenias and drying fish. From somewhere came the sound of sweet crystal music; of a gong, and above it thin chimelike melody, commencing, stopping, commencing once again.

A car was waiting to take me over the mountains to the south shore, but I was in no hurry to leave. I turned off the main street and wandered down a maze of lanes. Here the shops were simple boxes with one end knocked away, their contents spilling into the street. Copra and coffee merchants, photographers and dentists crowded side by side. The dentists were Japanese, and their offices held no secrets from the passer-by. In the centre of each a plush chair balanced on uncertain machinery; the walls were covered with terrifying charts, while glass cases exhibited pearly molars and sets of golden teeth.

The music had stopped, but suddenly it began once more, louder, very near. At the end of the street stood a small Chinese temple, and the music came from inside the open door. Now that I was near it was no longer a single voice suspended in the air; instead, it had become strong and definite, composed of many different kinds of sounds. It clashed, rang and echoed, and beneath it all was the persistent beat of drums that rose at one moment to a fury, fell the next to an almost inaudible throb.

Inside the temple it was cool and dark. Incense burned on the altar; along the walls were empty gambling-tables, and on the cement floor beside them lay a few sleeping Chinese, dead to this world. Near the door mats had been spread and on them, in the midst of a confusion of gongs and instruments with great metal keys, sat a score of Balinese musicians. In the shadow you could barely make out the enormous gongs that hung in the back of the orchestra, but the light from the door reflected on the small gongs in front that were set out in horizontal rows. With serene and unified gestures the men struck the gongs and keys with little hammers and mallets; those beside the great gongs at the back held sticks with thickly padded knobs. Only once in a long time did they seem to come to life, raise their hands to strike, with infinite gentleness, the knob of the gong that hung beside them.

The melody unrolled like some ancient chant, grave and metallic, while around it there wove an endless counterpoint of tones from the little gongs in front. From time to time, above the drums there floated the soft, reverberating tone of a great gong, deep, penetrating, seeming to fill the temple with faintly echoing sound.

The music came to an end and the men laid down their mallets. They stared, but their gaze was not unfriendly. A young Chinese came up to speak a few polite words in English, and I began to question him. It seemed that the players had been engaged for the temple ceremonies as there were no Chinese musicians in Buleléng. The name of the piece just played? He consulted the drummer. The Sea of Honey.

Once more the men took up their mallets, to begin the more animated Snapping Crocodile. I stood there utterly fascinated. It was even more incredible than I had imagined. But this time when the musicians came to the end they did not begin again. Some rose and went out. I waited for a while, hoping they would return, but as I looked at my watch I saw it was time to leave if I wanted to reach Den Pasar on the south shore of the Island by sundown. I went out reluctantly and walked back through the narrow streets in the direction from where I came.

The driver kicked off his sandals, curled his toes over the clutch and started the car. Before we had left town the road began to climb, past the trim colonial bungalows, past the house of the Resident, a baroque pile of white columns and cast iron, up and out into the ricefields that rose in ever-diminishing terraces as the road grew steeper. Below us the sea flattened out into a wide expanse of blue, separated from the sky by a sharp black line. The ship, already headed for Celebes, was a tiny object that crawled across the surface of the ocean with the determination of a snail.

The car ran slower and slower as it climbed the mountain, panting in the heat of the sun. As we left the fields and entered the forest there was the sound of a minor explosion and a jet of steam burst from the water cap. The driver stopped the car and got out with a sigh.

I wandered up the road. The forest was flooded with a soft golden light that glanced off the surface of huge thick leaves, turned others transparent, and penetrated caves that lay between tense, clutching roots. Not a flower to brighten this secret world; nor a sound, except the sudden brief note of some bird that rang for a moment like a tuning-fork. I returned to find the driver at work on the radiator. It had boiled dry, and the heat had melted the solder in seams that had obviously opened often. The driver resourcefully packed moss into the spaces, stuffing it in with a match. Then he plugged the hole with a wedge of wood. From the car he produced a tin marked Best Australian Butter and filled it with water from a brook by the road. He poured it in and banged down the cap. Then he smiled, said something I did not understand, and got back in the car.

The forest thinned; we were on the bare summit of the mountain, and the road now ran along the rim of a giant crater. The inner wall was covered with jungle, and far below shone a lake. Within this bowl rose a cone, its slopes streaked with lava that had once run down far into the valley, and from its side came intermittent gusts of steam that slowly dissolved in the air.

Now the road began its long descent to the sea, disappearing ahead of us in the zone where the trees began. Soon there were fields of com, huts, and at last a village, hidden beneath a grove of trees. All at once the road was filled with people and animals. Scenes flashed by; harvesters deep in yellow rice, a ring of noisy children around two copulating horses, a file of chanting women with offerings on their heads, a long procession with golden parasols that marched to the sound of gongs and wildly beating drums. The driver slowed up for pigs and ducks, but cut through chickens and dogs with indifference. Grey, starved and tottering, on walls, in doorways, the dogs infested the villages. They were so anæmic they could hardly drag themselves off the road. We drove along, knocking them to one side with a thud.

All at once we were by the sea, now purple in the late afternoon. Towering pink clouds hung motionless in the sky, making soft glowing patches on the surface of the water. The road ran past unloading fishing praus, past nets already spread on poles to dry. White plaster houses with tiled roofs appeared; in a moment we were in Den Pasar and had turned in the driveway of the hotel.

I was exhausted and could hardly wait to get out of the car. The hotel was a large cool bungalow, and I was shown to a room that opened on to a deep veranda one step above the lawn. Between the palms one could see people and little carriages forever passing along the road. I rang for a drink, and sank into the low, cushioned chair.

As I waited a new sound rose in the sky, high up, shrill and tremulous, sweeter than anything I had heard that day. I looked out. A flock of pigeons circled in the last rays of the sun. The sound seemed to follow them, and I could not think what it was. I called the boy, who said that the owner of the birds had hung little bells to their feet and attached bamboo whistles to their tail feathers. Round and round they flew, trailing across the sky wide hoops of sound. And then they vanished, the bells dying suddenly into nothing.

DEN PASAR

DEN PASAR WAS A rambling town of white Government buildings, a dozen European houses, and a street or so of shops, surrounded by an outer layer of huts crowded beneath a tangle of trees and palms. There was peace and order in the large square around which the European houses were set. Here in the late afternoon the doctor, the Shell agent, the school inspector and the hospital nurse played tennis; in another part of the field a desultory game of football took place among the Balinese. They wore striped jerseys and shorts, striped stockings, and boots that were too heavy, so that when they ran and kicked you thought of motions performed under water.

The shops were a repeat of Buleléng—a line of Chinese grocers and goldsmiths, Chinese druggists, photographers and bicycle agents. There was also a single Japanese photographer (as there seemed to be in almost every small town in the Indies) who did little business, but whose shop was strategically placed at the main crossroad where you could see the European offices and houses as well as the Chinese shops. On a side-street Arabs sold textiles and cheap suitcases. In the Javanese icecream parlour you could buy hilariously coloured ices when the electric equipment was in order. There was no church, but the Arab quarters contained a mosque; a small cinema ran Wild West pictures twice a week. At one end of the main street lay the market, where people picked their way through a confusion of pigs and pottery, batiks, fruit, brassware and mats.

During the day there was the incessant clang of bells from the pony carts that filled the streets, and the asthmatic honk of buses and cars forever driving in and out of town. The crowing of a thousand cocks, the barking of a thousand dogs formed a rich, sonorous background against which the melancholy of a passing food vendor stood out like an oboe in a symphony.

But at night, when the shops had closed and half the town was already asleep, the sounds died so completely that you could hear every leaf that stirred, every palm frond that dryly rustled. From all directions there now floated soft, mysterious music, humming, vibrating above the gentle, hollow sound of drums. The sounds came from different distances and gave infinite perspective to the night. As it grew late the music stopped. Now the silence was complete, only at long intervals pierced by a solitary voice, high, nasal, nostalgic, singing an endless tune; or else broken by the sudden hysteria of the dogs that began in a thin, single wail, rose quickly to a clamour of tormented voices and died once more into silence.

The hotel with its cool lobbies and tiled floors was an oasis after a few hours in the glare and heat that I loved, but which drained me of the last drop of energy. I could not believe the thermometer when it registered only 85. After a walk through the town I would collapse on the bed, which, like all beds in the Indies, had no springs. I broke into a rash which the hotel manager recognized at once as red dog, and only the chance discovery in my dictionary that roode hond meant prickly heat in Dutch kept me from rushing to the doctor.

I was not trying to learn Dutch, however, but Malay.

Malay is a language that seems childish and simple so far as expressing daily wants is concerned, and turns out to be elaborate and ambiguous when it comes to conveying a complex thought. It is the Esperanto of Malaya and the Indies, and you can even hear it in Colombo and Hong Kong. The vocabulary contains much Arabic, a little Sanskrit, Portuguese and Javanese, a little Dutch and English, and a few lovely-sounding primitive words for such common objects as man, fish and coconut, that are known from Madagascar to Easter Island. I had begun to study when on board ship, but up to now I had not ventured much past asking for hot shaving water, more coffee, and ice water.

It was only after I met Sarda that I felt the need for a greater vocabulary. When I wanted a car I phoned the Chinese garage, and they had got in the habit of sending me a certain ancient though well-preserved Buick. Sarda was the name of the self-possessed and handsome youth who drove it with an air of utter scorn.

He dressed with elegance. His batik sarong was crisp and new, covered with a design of flowers and tennis rackets. He wore a silk sport shirt, and over it a white jacket, elegantly tailored American style. In the breast pocket were an Ever-sharp, a fountain pen and a comb. On his feet were sandals and on his head a batik headcloth, in the folds of which he had fastened a rose.

At first I sat in the back seat of the car, alone with my cameras, thermos and sandwiches, but I soon grew weary of this isolation and moved to the front, where I could talk to Sarda as we drove. The hotel manager strongly disapproved. For in this little gesture anything apparently was to be read, possible friendliness and intimacy, and even worse, equality, so abhorrent from the colonial point of view. You must keep your distance, said the manager; the correct place for a white man is in the back seat. In the old days, he continued, Hollanders married natives; to-day it is different. Take them to bed if you like, but see they come in at the back door.

He spoke in heavy earnestness, but without hatred. He was a red-faced man, forever dripping sweat. He bullied his boys, sometimes in roaring fury, sometimes in tired routine. Yet he must have got on with them, nevertheless, for the service was excellent.

Ahmat! he shouted, as we sat in the lobby. Ahmat! he bellowed, and I thought his voice would shatter the glass over the huge picture of the Queen of the Netherlands that hung above us.

A slim figure approached.

Bring two gin-bitters, and hurry!

He blotted his forehead with a damp handkerchief.

Lazy! he complained. You can teach them nothing. Ten years I’ve been here, he moaned. If it weren’t for the girls. . . . Did you notice the little one by the door selling rings?

We finished our drinks and I got up. He had a final word for me.

I don’t like to see you there in the front seat. The white man must never forget to maintain the dignity of the white race.

He gave a gentle belch.

Then as an afterthought he added, If you really must sit in front, drive the car yourself and let the chauffeur sit behind.

But I continued to sit the way I pleased. We drove with the top down, the hot sun beating on our heads. It was only when we passed the tennis court or entered the hotel driveway that I felt self-conscious, ostentatious and subversive.

At the hotel itineraries were posted for those who had only a few days on the island. Each day was crammed from dawn till sundown. “Thurs. a.m.: sacred pool; tombs of the kings; palace at Karangasem; lunch at resthouse. Afternoon: bats’ cave; sacred forest; giant banyan; hot springs. Dance performance at hotel, 9 p.m.”

I preferred to drive at random through the island, getting lost in the network of back roads that ran up into the hills where, as you looked down towards the sea, the flooded rice-fields lay shining in the sunlight like a broken mirror. The sound of music seemed forever in the air. People sang in the fields or in the streams as they bathed. From behind village walls rose the sound of flutes and cymbals as invisible musicians rehearsed at all hours of the day and night. Temples in a state of celebration shook with the heavy beat of drums, the throb of enormous gongs, and as we drove home at night we passed through village after village where, by the roadside, amid a blaze of little lamps, people had gathered to sit and watch the puppets of the shadow-play.

As the car ascended from the sea into the mountains, the style and mood of the music seemed to change. In the lowlands, musicians played with a bright vivacity, while music shimmered with ornamentation, rich and complicated as the ornamented temples themselves. But in the hills, as you travelled higher and higher, among villages that lay farther and farther apart, the music, like the architecture of the temples, grew more austere, took on an air of increasing antiquity and severity. Here, in the mists and clouds, where temple walls were green with moss and roofs overgrow with ferns, only rarely was the quiet broken by the grave sound of ancient ritual music at some village feast.

Although Sarda was clearly bored by these excursions into the hills (Mountain style! he would remark loftily while we watched some slow-moving dance) he soon grew resigned to stopping the car at the sound of music. I would get out, and make my way through the crowd to where the musicians were gathered. No one seemed to mind this intrusion in the least, and as I sat there, listening, and watching the confused events of a temple feast, the women with their towers of offerings, the ceremonial dancing before the altars, the processions and the bursting firecrackers, all sense of time had vanished completely.

Sometimes, after a long morning of casual exploration, Sarda would stop at the market-place of some village, where we would sit at the little coffee-stall for a glass of tea or tepid beer. Above the murmur of the market there drifted from the open door of the tiny Government school the sound of children’s voices, sleepily chanting the multiplication table to the rap of a ruler. The presence of the car was not long in attracting a group of boys. Comments began.

Essex.

No, Buick 1927. An old model.

An old man would ask: How can it be? A chariot going like that, along, without horse or cow.

Unsympathetic laughter banished him to the dark ages.

Wake up, grandfather, think! You push in the foot, pull the handle and it goes.

Sarda listened in scornful silence. He would turn to me.

The talk of mountain people! He would start the car with a flourish, and we departed with magnificent suddenness, like gods.

In the early morning the island had a golden freshness, dripped and shone with moisture like a garden in a florist’s window. By noon it had become hard and matter-of-fact. But in the late afternoon the island was transformed once more; it grew unreal, lavish and theatrical like old-fashioned opera scenery. As the sun neared the horizon men and women turned the colour of new copper,. while shadows grew purple, the grass blue, and everything white reflected a deep rose.

One evening, as we drove along, the full moon rose above the fields, scarlet, enormous, distorted beyond belief in the invisible haze. I told Sarda to stop the car, and sat looking in silence. A tone of romantic enthusiasm in my voice, possibly, had set Sarda thinking, for suddenly he asked,

In America you have no moon, perhaps?

He spoke so simply I could not tell if irony were intended or not. I told him we had, and at this he started the car, saying I would be late for dinner at the hotel.

It was during this first week that, one late afternoon, we came to a village bright with banners and streamers. In front of the temple a crowd was gathered, and the sound of swift, complicated music filled the air. I pushed through the wall of people to a clearing, where at one end sat the musicians among their instruments. At the other end a pair of curtains stretched on a wire marked a stage entrance.

The music rose and fell with almost feverish intensity. Before the orchestra two drummers leaned forward over their drums, their hands beating against the drum-ends like moth wings against a lamp. Suddenly the music came to a halt. There was a pause, while the players rested. But soon they came to attention once more. They picked up their little hammers and mallets; there was a signal-accent from the first drummer, and once more the music broke on the air like a shower.

The curtains parted, and through them appeared a child (could she be nine?) clad apparently in gold. The setting sun cast a spotlight through the trees, and she glittered like an insect as she moved. Soon she was followed by two others; the folds in their skirts were stiff and metallic, and in each headdress golden flowers nodded from the ends of wires and trembled with each motion of the body. Dance and music were like a single impulse. The children darted like humming-birds. Their gestures had infinite elegance, and they seemed like little statues, intricate and delicate, that had come to life—not with suppleness, but, like the sequence of images in a film, in a series of poses that lasted the mere fraction of a second. You felt they were conscious of every sixteenth-note in the music.

At first the dance was formal and abstract. The story had not yet begun, said Sarda. But soon it grew clear that a drama was unfolding. There was a scene of tenderness, followed by a march around the stage. The first child took up a pair of golden wings and became a bird. The second waved a kris to ward it off. There was another march, a battle. The dancers went rapidly from role to role.

Now the King of Lasem takes leave of the Princess Lang-kasari, whom he has carried off, said Sarda. He goes to fight her brother. A raven flies before him. He stumbles over a stone. He will be killed. . . .

At last the music came to an end, and the children, their foreheads damp with sweat, sat down by the musicians, drooping like wilted flowers. There was something poignantly troubling in the cool, pre-adolescent grace, the serenity of the faces that were neither innocent nor corrupt.

Over and over the hypnotic music seemed to ring in my ears above the motor of the car as we drove home in the night.

Those are the légong dancers of the Prince of Saba, Sarda remarked. They say he is madly in love with the first, but he cannot marry her yet. He must wait her first menses. His second wife is sick with jealousy.

What does the little girl think about it?

Probably nothing. She wouldn’t dare. She is only a peasant. You would think he would prefer one of the others. They are prettier, and one is a princess, the other a Brahman.

They seem very young.

But who desires an opened flower? And besides, if you want virginity . . .

And he, what is he like?

A great gambler, a great lover of dancing. His musicians are famous. He was playing the drum just now.

I remembered the dramatic-looking young man who drummed so feverishly, his eyes fixed on the dancers as they moved across the stage. His energy seemed to flow into every accent of the music, every motion of the dancers, through their bodies and out into the fragile hands that were forever forming new and beautiful designs.

And who trains the dancers?

He trains them himself, they say.

We rode on in silence. It was too late for dinner at the hotel, and I went to the Chinese restaurant on the main street. It was almost closing time, and I sat alone with Sarda while the sleepy cook took down a pan and fanned the dying fire. From somewhere in the back came the sound of a flute above a faintly twanging zither.

We drove down to the sea. The moon was high, and the beach was flooded with silver light. Around the bay in the distance the mountains were small and transparent.

I feel like swimming, I said. Is it safe?

Yes; here there are no sharks.

Will you come along?

Sarda put the key of the car in his pocket and got out.

We undressed, hanging our clothes over the side of a dugout that lay drawn up on the beach. We walked slowly into the water. Far out you could hear the surf on the reefs; far out the little lamps of the fishing praus shone and bobbed up and down.

When we came out we sat on the rocks to let the faint breeze blow us dry. I did not want to return to the hotel. For a long time I lay on the sand, listening to the sea breaking on the reefs, letting the sand flow through my fingers.

Tuan seems very happy here, remarked Sarda a few days later.

Very happy indeed, Sarda.

Why remain at the hotel? I know of a small house for rent in a village not far from Den Pasar. It is not dear.

In my mind I saw a thatched hut against a background of tree-ferns and bamboos. I suddenly realized how bored I was with the hotel, how imperative it was to live my own way, in my own house. I told Sarda we would go to the village the following morning. If the house had a roof I was determined to take it.

THE HOUSE IN KEDATON

THE HOUSE WAS SMALL and square, with a roof of corrugated tin and walls covered inside and out with damp white plaster. It had four rooms of exactly the same size, with a shuttered window to each, and the floors were cement that threw back a ringing echo at the least noise. In the back was a still smaller building which contained kitchen, bath and a place for a servant to unroll his sleeping-mat.

The house stood on a small rectangle of ground surrounded by an almost empty moat, overgrown with moss and ferns, from which a frog croaked dismally from time to time. Once this moat had been filled to the brim; for the house, it seemed, had been built as a “pleasure retreat” for a Brahman priest of the village, and was still known to all as the Gunung Sari, Mountain of Flowers. But the priest had long since given it up, and now rented it from time to time to a passing white man who wished to live native style.

The doors creaked; the rooms were musty; the place had been shut a year. But from the deep veranda in front you looked out through the palms over gleaming ricefields and caught a glimpse of the sea beyond. Arrangements were conducted through the businesslike young grandson of the old priest, who said that the rent would be forty guilders a month and that I could move in when I wished. He promised there would be the necessary furniture when I arrived.

The disapproval of the hotel manager when I told him my change in plans was real if not eloquent. But when he saw I would not listen he suddenly became surprisingly human, and offered to lend me linen, silver and comfortable chairs. I thought I even detected the slightest inflection of envy in his voice as he now gave advice about white ants and warned about the water. He said I would need a cook and a houseboy, and that my room boy could easily find them for me.

That evening an exceedingly languid youth in white jacket and trousers approached my veranda at the hotel, sat down on the floor and bowed politely, hands clasped below his chin. He did not look very efficient, but the room boy said he had recently worked in the hotel. He said also that he had found me a cook, and the next morning as I went out in my pyjamas for the early cup of coffee she was already waiting for me, standing patiently in the wet grass. She was a short, plump Madurese with a round face that had the expression of a sulky child. She was barefoot, and wore a white sarong covered with red peacocks; a short white jacket parted at the seams under her arms in order to meet across her breasts, exposing a triangle of midriff.

This is the koki, said the houseboy. She can cook Dutch,

Good day, koki, I said.

Tabé tuan; tuan chari koki?

She spoke in the strange, childish singsong of the Indonesian servant, colourless and remote. I gave her some money, told her to buy pots and pans, and said I would have lunch at the house two days later.

Two days later the house had become warm and alive. I found the priest’s son and two other boys waiting to welcome me. They had swept the house clean and arranged the furniture in careful order. The koki and the houseboy were already there; the shutters were wide open, and about the place there was an air of expectation.

Two of the rooms had been furnished exactly alike. Each contained a loose, musical iron bed, draped like a girl at her first communion in limp white netting. In the bed were two pillows, and down the centre ran the dutch wife, a long bolster, plump as a sausage. Against a wall in each room was a table with an enamel jug and basin, and above it a small mirror. In the corner stood a chair. The third room contained a bare dining-table and four chairs symmetrically placed. The fourth room contained nothing at all. On the open window sills the boys had placed drinking glasses with bright flowers that shone transparently in the morning sun.

The koki was already at home. She sat on the kitchen floor, fanning the fires of three small braziers and stirring the contents of the pans on top. Around her were bowls of grated coconut, fried onions and ingredients I could not identify. On the mat beside her lay little mounds of red peppers, garlic and nuts. There was a litter of bananas, duck eggs and crabs, some Australian butter in a large tin, and a stupefied chicken, tied by the leg to a nail in the wall. Her cigarettes and betel were within easy reach. An emaciated dog had already adopted the place and sniffed in the corners of the room.

In the air was a powerful, complex smell, acrid and pungent, of burnt feathers, fish and frying coconut oil. I was to find this a daily smell, punctual and inevitable as the morning smell of coffee at home. It came chiefly from sra, a paste of shrimps that had once been ground, dried, mixed with sea-water, then buried for months to ferment. It was used in almost everything, fried first to develop the aroma. It was unbelievably putrid. An amount the size of a pea was more than enough to flavour a dish. It gave a racy, briny tang to the food, and I soon found myself craving it as an animal craves salt.

Each night I gave the koki a guilder, at that time about forty cents, which she converted into Chinese coins when she went to the market at dawn. She bought a pair of chickens or a beautiful fish, vegetables, fruit, eggs, rice, beancurd, a handful of dried fish for herself and the boy, and had something left over to treat herself to cigarettes and betel.

Each morning she appeared around seven with a large washbasin balanced on her head. It had become a fantastic hat trimmed with pineapples, leeks, cabbages and bananas, from out of which peered a numb-looking chicken or duck.

Tabé tuan.

Tabé koki. How goes it?

Yes, tuan.

She was too remote, too indifferent to fill in the correct reply. She trudged silently to the back of the house. But it would not be long before her voice took on another tone. She was a woman with a little, shrewish temper, and she refused to get along with the houseboy. She was a Madurese and a Mohammedan, while he was a heathen Balinese, and a pork-eater into the bargain. Her scolding would burst forth in a sharp chatter that rose to a squeak and disappeared in the higher overtones of final exasperation.

For lunch she cooked Javanese style, which meant rice, accompanied by a dozen different dishes that were enough for six people. The table was crowded with bowls in which fish and fowl swam in sauces of green, yellow or scarlet. Some dishes tasted somewhat like curry, though infinitely fresher in flavour; some were so hot with spice they brought tears to the eyes and sweat to the forehead.

The preparation of these dishes was involved, and took hours of patient labour. The idea, it seemed, was variety to please a gourmet’s palate, for a chicken was never cooked in one way only, but divided into parts, to be fried, broiled, stewed, shredded, and seasoned with great care for contrast. A fish she cooked in the same way. This, however, was not enough, for there were endless little side-dishes of strange delicacies—stewed acacia blossoms, preserved duck eggs, tiny octopus fried crisp and looking like a dish of spiders.

Her sweets were even stranger. For lunch would end perhaps with corn and grated coconut mixed with a syrup of palm sugar, soggy little balls of rice paste treacherously filled with more syrup, or a sliced pineapple to be eaten with salt, red pepper and garlic.

But at night the koki “cooked Dutch.” Then she would send in a meat loaf, or duck in a black and curious sauce. Pancakes and blancmange alternated for dessert.

The houseboy was strangely limp and colourless. He had said, Call me Gusti (prince) though it seemed he had no right to the title. He a gusti? exclaimed the koki to me privately. She laughed derisively. In the early morning Gusti brought me luke-warm coffee while he was still half asleep. He dragged the mattress into the sun, moved chairs and dusted as though it took his last ounce of strength. He managed to wash a shirt or two each morning, and spent the afternoon in a delicious dream-world of cigarette smoke and slow, thoughtful ironing. First he did my shirts, then a pair of trousers. After this he rested. Then he pressed his own shirt and jacket, or spent an hour ironing fancy pleats into his sarong. This he wore when not in the mood for trousers, wrapped neatly around his waist and falling down the front in folds, which lay in flat accordion pleats that opened out when he walked, reminding you of Egyptian reliefs.

Soon the house was running of its own accord. I grew deaf to the koki’s voice; as I learnt to understand what she was saying it became clear that she scolded much of the time simply to keep in practice; these outbursts were her daily vocal exercises, necessary to keep her voice flexible in the long complaint of woman against man.

The village was laid out square as a chessboard. Like all villages on the island, it was a network of roads and lanes that ran north and south, east and west. It gave the impression of lying in the heart of a lovely forest; the houses were hidden behind walls in a jungle of breadfruit-trees and palms, whose long fronds drooped like plumes and reflected the morning sunlight at a thousand angles.

The house lay just off the main road at one end of the village. Across the way stood the Temple of Origins. You walked down the road past the Temple of the Village Elders to the market and the men’s clubhouse. Then you came to the Temple of the Earth’s Axis. Out in the fields stood the little temple for Sri, the rice goddess. Still farther away you could see from the house a group of shrines for Saraswati, goddess of learning. Beyond the graveyard at the south edge of the village stood the Temple of the Dead. Silent, deserted, each temple waited for its feast day, when the courts would fill with people and the walls echo with music.

At the market-place in the centre of the village all was life and movement from dawn till late at night. Here people came to meet and gossip, and buy a handful of dried fish or a measure of rice. Once in three days, on market-day, you could buy pigs and ducks, mats, Japanese textiles, hardware from China and Java. Here too, in the shade of the great banyan that covered the entire market, men gathered each day to talk idly, or sit and think about nothing at all. They brought their fighting cocks, and sat for hours absent-mindedly massaging the firm, tense legs, or running the long silky necks through their fingers.

At -night the men’s clubhouse became the social centre. It was a long hut of bamboo and palm-thatch, with a raised floor of earth that had dried hard as a rock. Here the gamelan that belonged to the music club of the younger men in the village was kept. In the daytime you seldom passed without hearing from within a soft chime of gongs or metal keys as some child, sitting in the cool darkness of the empty hut, improvised and learnt for himself how to play. But after dark the hut was a luminous centre surrounded by a blaze of little, lamps. Outside the saleswomen had set down their tables of sweets and betel, while the members of the club gathered inside to practise. Now was the time to go through the music they already knew, for the sheer pleasure of it, or work over the difficult parts of some new composition they were just learning. They used no notes (indeed there were none, it seemed); each phrase of the melody, each intricate detail of accompaniment they had learned by ear, listening carefully and with infinite patience to the teacher who had, perhaps, been called from some other village. Late into the night they played. From the house I could hear them going over phrase after phrase, correcting, improving, until the music began to flow of its own accord. I fell asleep with the sounds ringing in my ears, and. as I slept I still heard them, saw them rather, for now they seemed transformed into a shining rain of silver.

NYOMAN KALÉR

A BALINESE VILLAGE IS divided into wards or banjars. Each has its headman, its priest, its separate community life. Sometimes the village is a peaceful one, with a harmonious relationship between all banjars, but often (I was to find out) there is bitterness and rivalry between adjacent wards, especially among the youths and younger men. One evening shortly after I had come to the village I received a call from the head of my own banjar.

It was dusk, and I was sitting on the veranda talking with Sarda when I heard the sound of steps on the gravel. I looked out, to see three figures approaching single file through the trees. The leader walked in a curious way. He seemed to drift in, for although he advanced in a straight line his body slanted sideways to the right, while his head tilted slightly to the left. He gave the impression of being on the point of going off in any direction.

But there was authority, I could see, in the way he came up the two steps of the veranda and sat down on the floor a little distance from my chair. His two young followers sat respectfully on the lower step.

Sarda introduced him.

This is Nyoman Kalér, head of the banjar and teacher of the légong dancers.

He wore a tight white coat, cut in the old colonial style, with brass buttons that ran up to the neck; a worn sarong and a tightly knotted headcloth completed his attire. He bowed politely before speaking.

Tuan has just arrived? They say tuan is from America.

He spoke in a gentle, friendly voice. He was a slight man, perhaps thirty, with intelligent eyes and a smiling, well-shaped mouth that was both sensual and vaguely sarcastic. There was also something a little pedantic about him, something birdlike in the way he inclined his head first one way then another as he talked.

The boys sat very still and silent, their hands folded in their laps. The older one had the features of Nyoman Kalér, but in his face there was only serenity. A small white flower bud hung down the centre of his forehead, its stem fastened in a hair.

Tuan has come to paint pictures perhaps?

My visitor came directly to the point.

I explained that I was a musician, that I composed music, and had come here simply to listen to Balinese music. I told him I expected to remain several months. I said I was happy to know he was a musician like myself, and I hoped he would come often to the house.

Yes, he replied, willingly! And if he could be of service I had only to ask.

After a short time he politely asked permission to depart. All three bowed, rose and walked out into the dark.

He is a clever man, remarked Sarda after they had left. He knows a lot besides music and dancing.

Gusti’s comment was less enthusiastic.

They say he can become a léyak.

What do you mean?

He hesitated, lowered his voice.

He knows how to turn himself into a monkey or a ball of fire.

The boy with the flower, who was he?

His nephew, Madé Tantra.

Two days later Nyoman Kalér made a second appearance. He came alone, in the middle of the morning, and the time passed in the most agreeable of conversations. As we sat there, smoking and drinking coffee, I began to question him about music in the village.

It turned out that in our banjar there were three separate gamelans, and he was the head of all three. One belonged to the légong club. There was also the gandrung club.

What is gandrung? I asked.

The dance is something like légong, but the dancer is a boy in girl’s clothes. He dances in the streets for a few pennies, going from door to door. There is another gandrung in the next banjar, but ours is better. When he dances there are always many who step out to dance with him. They can hardly wait their turn. . . .

There was a look of satisfaction in Nyoman’s face. He took a heart-shaped betel leaf from a little pouch, folded it and put it in his mouth.

The third gamelan was seldom seen. It was kept locked in the Temple of the Sea and taken out only on feast-days, to play the stately ceremonial music without which no celebration would be complete.

And the gamelan that practises each night in the clubhouse by the market? I asked.

His voice was suddenly thin as he answered, It is the music club of the banjar to the south; and though he smiled there was a curious withdrawal in his eyes. He sat for a while, preoccupied and no longer communicative, and soon he rose and took a ceremonious departure.

Sarda explained. Hot rivalry burned between Nyoman’s légong gamelan and the club of the other banjar. Members did not speak. Moreover, in the past month the other club had been called twice to Den Pasar to appear at the hotel. Nyoman’s club had gone there only once. . . .

Late that afternoon I heard the animated sound of gongs, cymbals and drums passing along the road, and as I looked through the trees I could see the rival club, wearing their brightest clothes, marching in procession towards Den Pasar.

They are going to meet the bus from West Bali, said Sarda. Gusti Bagus, who is head of their banjar, emerges to-day from jail, and they are going to greet him.

He had sold some ricefields, it seemed, that belonged to his brother. He had been away six months.

Nyoman Kalér had been a dancer as a boy. He was brought up at the old court of the Prince of Blahbatu. His father was one of the parakans, feudal retainers, of the Prince, and had been, among other things, a member of the palace gamelan. Nyoman Kalér (lithe and attractive, as a child, I imagined) had been trained as a court dancer.

What kind of dance? I asked him one time.

Nandir; it is no longer danced. It was the same as légong. Boys took the part of girls then more often than to-day.

Why did you stop?

I grew up and my suppleness was lost.

He had turned to music. He could, of course, have become an actor as he grew older, for in the ancient theatre of the court, so formal and highly stylized, it was very hard to say where dancing ended and acting began. But he had no voice, he said. He was, moreover, too slightly built for the heroic baris or warrior’s dance; or the equally heroic toping, the honoured mask-plays that had to do with the ancient kings of Bali. With the death of the old Anak Agung the court had fallen into a decline. Nyoman had left, to come to Kedaton, where his family owned ricefields. When the légong club was formed he had trained both dancers and musicians. The little dancers had been a great success; soon he was in demand in other villages, and to-day he was well-established. He belonged to the peasant class, and the other men in his household worked the ricefields. I thought, however, he had chosen well, for I could not possibly imagine him behind a plough, or bending over to set out, one by one, the young rice plants in the flooded fields.

In these early conversations with Nyoman I caught glimpses of ancient and brilliant courts, of palaces forever ringing with music and crowded with actors and dancers. For at one time the princes of Bali had been great patrons of the arts. Many of them had come from Java to escape the wave of Islamic culture that had begun to spread through the land. With their wives and concubines, their soldiers, craftsmen, actors and musicians, they continued in Bali to live in a splendour half barbarous, half provincial, patterned on the great and luxurious courts of the Javanese rajahs.

But now a glittering court life was almost a thing of the past. Government pawnshops overflowed with treasures from the palace. Gongs and jewelled krises, golden rings and headdresses filled shelves and glass cases, while the palaces decayed and grew cluttered with rocking chairs and mirrors, umbrella stands, jardiníères and telephones. As they passed along the road, the six rajahs now glared at each other from closed Packards. You could tell their cars at once by the tiny golden parasols above the radiator caps, and by the swift, efficient driving of the chauffeurs. The princes rumbled by in open Fords which they were forever repairing by the roadside. Now and then they passed on motor cycle.

At the court of Blahbatu, said Nyoman, recalling twenty years before, there were two great orchestras. In the outer palace stood the massive Gamelan with the Great Gongs, to play for ceremonies and welcome the arrival of guests. In the inner palace an assembly of little gongs and keyed instruments more delicately formed, sweeter and softer in tone, played a far more romantic music. This was the gamelan Semar-pagulingan, the Gamelan of Semara, God of Love, God of the Pillowed Bed. The music, said Nyoman, soothed and rejoiced the heart with its sweetness. Every evening it began; off and on the musicians played, late into the night. . . .

Where is the gamelan now? I asked.

It had been pawned long ago, said Nyoman, and later bought by the men of Sukawati, and transformed into a gamelan for légong.

But the gamelan of state remained, he thought, and one day we drove to Blahbatu to see the instruments, for they were, it seemed, unusually large and handsome. (The gongs you could hear for miles, said Nyoman.) The keys had been dismounted and stored away, and now only the carved wooden stands were to be seen, crowded in a shed and covered with dust.

But if the courts of Bali to-day grew increasingly silent, in the villages music rang more loudly than ever. No temple feast could conceivably begin before the arrival of the Gamelan with the Great Gongs, whose stately ceremonial music, mingling with the prayers of priest and the chant of worshippers, was considered as necessary for the pleasure of the gods as incense, flowers and offerings. For the further entertainment of the gods (and mortals by happy coincidence) a variety of dances and masques were rehearsed to the more delicate Légong Gamelan—democratically adapted from the princely Gamelan of the Love God. Processions marched to the lively beat of the Gamelan of the Little Gongs or the more primitive Gamelan of the Bamboo Rattles. Anonymous, unwritten, the music on these occasions was ancient as the rites themselves, unchanged, apparently, for centuries.

For the boys and young men of the village, however, music had become something more intense than the mere accompaniment for ritual or ancient dance. A new wave of musical enthusiasm had recently swept the island, and clubs formed overnight as young musicians organized to learn kebyar, the new, the deliciously exciting music that had first been heard around Buleléng, and was now taking the island by storm. Night after night villages shook with the crash of cymbals and the brassy clang of little gongs as the clubs furiously rehearsed for an approaching competition. Then was the time for outstanding clubs to meet and tirelessly play against each other all day and all night. The verdict of the judges sowed seeds of bitterness, and the kindest word was Sape—a tie! Otherwise the losers brooded for months, while the winners were insufferable.

But in the shade of this emotional florescence, so torrid, in so high a key, the more conservative clubs continued to produce their classical plays and dances. These remained dear to the hearts of all. Night after night people gathered to watch as some youthful group of actors rehearsed beneath the trees. They sat entranced before the lighted screen of the shadow-play, never tiring of the ancient legends of Prince Rama, or the endless wars of the Pandawas. Drama both entertained and edified; the exemplary restraint of the legendary heroes and the nobility of their words presented an ancient ideal of conduct and manners.

As for kebyar (commented Nyoman), it was like an explosion; once the sound had died nothing remained.

THE MASKS

ONE MORNING AN OLD WOMAN came in with a covered basket and sat down on the lower step of the veranda. She had some “ancient objects” to sell. Did I wish to see them?

She uncovered the basket and took out a pile of brocades, a kris, a silver dish. At the bottom of the basket were several masks, and these she now arranged in a row along the floor. They were worn with age, but two seemed to me very beautiful. I bought them and hung them on the wall.

The two masks differed as night from day. The one, dark-coloured, devoured with fury, was the complete negation of the other that hung beside it, a fragile, chalk-white shell, serene and shadowless. It grew in mystery the more I looked at it. It had the same sexless calm that I had found so haunting and enigmatic in the faces of the little légong dancers I had seen at Saba. I had caught the expression again in the face of Made Tantra as he sat on the veranda the night of Nyoman Kalér’s first appearance. The next time Nyoman came to the house I questioned him.

Those masks on the wall, whose masks are they?

He did not answer immediately. That depends, he said. It is hard to say. They would follow the story. The small one is that of a prince—perhaps Rama. It was the gentle type, the “sweetly brave,” the restrained, the manis. He got up from the chair, went to the end of the veranda and turned around.

He had taken a dramatic pose that was both sculpturesque and fluid. At first it was purely two-dimensional, as though he were part of some temple relief. His thighs were turned outwards, his knees bent, while he slowly raised his arms, closing his hands in formal designs. He narrowed his eyes, seemed to gaze far away, while the shadow of a smile now played about his mouth. He began to move forward into a third dimension. He gently shifted his weight from foot to foot with lovely control, while head slanted, hands turned, in perfect harmony with his movements. It was strange and dreamlike, like swimming seen in a slow-motion film.

He spoke some lines; his voice rose in stylized falsetto, sweetly harsh, indolently rising and falling in formal declamation. He created an atmosphere of remoteness and utter unreality, created a character that seemed both feminine and tense with hidden force. He paused, returned to this world.

Like that, he said. So Prince Panji would enter in the gambuh play. But a keras character, violent and unrestrained, is very different, he continued. When the King of Lasem appears, he moves like this. . . .

He drew himself up proudly. His gestures lost all suavity. His face was transformed; his eyes stared, his mouth was tense, drawn down at the comers. He advanced menacingly, and as he spoke his voice was loud and rasping. He stopped.

It was only a brief impression, a mere indication that he had given, but with it the masks on the wall seemed to take on depth and meaning.

But the masks, I said. When would they be used?

There were three different theatres, he explained, three different kinds of actors. In one theatre you see the actors as ordinary men; in the second they are masked. In the third the actors are simply shadows thrown upon a screen, the shadows of little puppets, operated by a single man who recites and improvises around the ancient tales.

I had read about this mysterious little theatre perhaps the most ancient of all, claimed by some to have its origin in rites in which the shades of the departed were called back to this world. Even to-day much of the magic atmosphere, it seemed, remained, for Nyoman talked of the great care taken of the puppets and the offerings which must be made for them before a play could be given.

I must see a shadow-play, I said. I’ve been in Kedaton two weeks and not yet seen one.

It is not often the village is so quiet, he said. We sat there talking. From the kitchen came the sound of a broken glass, followed by the familiar outburst of scolding.

I was hoping Madé Tantra would come again, I said. As yet I have no friends here in Kedaton.

I will tell him, said Nyoman. He rose, and after saying goodbye walked down the path beneath the trees to the roadway.

A SHADOW-PLAY

ONE MORNING AS I RETURNED home from a walk in the ricefields, I entered the gate of the Temple of the Dead which lay at the edge of the graveyard beyond the village. A wall ran round a small group of pavilions and shrines set out in order along the sides of the courtyard. The stone bases were carved, and inlaid with Chinese porcelain plates. Between the altars grew flowering shrubs, and in a corner a twisted frangipani leaned forward, its naked branches bursting with starry blossoms. The courtyard was swept clean, immaculate except for the newly fallen flowers that shone like bits of paper on the black earth. There was an atmosphere of peace, silence and decay, of neglect and loving care. Gold and lacquer had tarnished, thatch had worn, while moss and mould crept over the vines and leaves that sculptors had once cut into the stones.

In the walls reliefs were filled with little figures—animals, fishes, humans, birds. In a baroque jungle of plants and scrolls heroes made war against demons, made love to maidens. Elegant and archaic, mystic and sensual, they moved in a shallow world which, however, was given infinite perspective by the ever-changing shadows cast by the sun. Between heroic episodes were scenes from daily life. Here the artist had turned from mythology to the joys of reporting. Men slew pigs, played flutes and gongs, fished and made exuberant love. Their activities had been recorded with an observant eye and an obvious love for detail, detail that seemed miraculous when I touched the stone that had been cut. Nets had mesh; flowers, stamens; vine trendrils stood out in actual spirals. I felt that if an earthquake should destroy them, these walls would quickly be built once more, carved with the same antlike patience.

As I passed the market I met Nyoman and Made Tantra. We sat for a while at the counter of the Javanese coffee-stall, piled with fruit and gaudy cakes, while Nyoman told me there would be a shadow-play that night in Kuta, a half-hour’s drive away.

Will you go, Nyoman?

No, I must teach.

Perhaps Madé Tantra would like to come with me?

Madé Tantra spoke at last: Yes, I should like to.

I said that Sarda would call for him in the car on his way to the house that evening. We finished our coffee and left.

It was late in the evening when we arrived, and the performance was about to begin. Around the clearing in front of the men’s clubhouse a hundred oil-lamps glowed on a hundred little tables. Some of these were for gambling, and the men sat around them noisily betting and banging down coins. Behind others sat the saleswomen with their sweets and bottles of arac. The air was filled with the scent of flowers that lay spread among the wares, to be sold to those seized with the sudden desire to make themselves attractive.

In a booth to one side was a lighted screen, and on the ground in front the people sat, waiting for the play to begin. From behind the screen came the sound of soft, swift music. I went to the back, to find a small crowd collected to watch the dalang (the operator) set up the puppets.

Half in trance he sat there cross-legged, close to the screen, beneath the light of a flaring oil-lamp that swung above his head. With careful deliberation he took a figure from the box, studied it, lovingly arranged its arms. At last he handed it to an assistant, to search for another in the box that was packed with figures.

The little puppets reminded me of the carvings I had seen that morning in the temple walls. They had the same delicacy, the same two-dimensional style; but instead of being cut in stone they had been chiselled out of thin leather and the details of their costumes stamped in tiny holes and slashes. They were not flexible, for only the arms moved, jointed at the shoulder and elbow. They were controlled by thin sticks attached to the hands; another stick ran down the centre of the body to brace it, and stuck out to act as handle. The puppets were so pierced with holes that when held against the light they were like lace. They were painted in gold and bright colours, and when the light fell on them they sparkled iridescently.

One by one the assistants took them—gods and demons, mortals, animals and little properties—and set them in their correct place to the right or left of the screen. This was significant. Gods went to the right, demons to the left, mortals to either side, according to their character. At last only a small space remained in the centre of the screen for the dramatic action. The puppets stood huddled at the sides, and from the outside the screen seemed framed in a tangled forest of shadows. In the centre the lamp glowed dimly through the screen, a mystic flame, disembodied.

At last the dalang was ready. He folded his hands, closed his eyes, and his lips moved silently. He was pronouncing to himself certain magic formulas, so that (a) his voice might be sweet, (b) his jokes meet with success, and (c) his performance be pleasing to all—to the gods and to mortals, male, female and hermaphrodite.

He stopped. Between the toes of one foot he held a small block of wood, which he struck against the puppet box several times as signal that the play would begin. I went outside to sit among the crowd and see the play in black and white.

From behind the screen came the voice of the dalang as he changed in old Javanese the introduction; the phrases rose like an incantation, as though he were summoning the shadows from another world. At last his voice grew still, the music stopped; the screen was a luminous rectangle in the dark, and behind it the little shadow-figures now began to appear. They came and went like moths flying across a beam of light.

At first there was little action. The exposition was an endless dialogue between two rival princes. (The play was from the wars of the Pandawas, said Tantra. He couldn’t say what part.) They stood there, facing each other, punctuating their speeches with a slight movement of their long, outstretched arms. Their voices gently rose and fell like the breathing of a sleeper, but suddenly they would grow sharp, stridently falsetto, frigid and vicious with hate. The arms rose with sinister restraint, denouncing with swift, menacing gestures.

But now the clowns appeared. There were two pairs, each pair devoted attendants to a prince. From behind their heroes they threatened each other grotesquely. Their voices were insinuatingly intimate and oily. When an attendant spoke to his prince he raised his arms in a sembah of respect. And yet his voice seemed to be slyly mocking, for when he spoke the audience laughed loudly at his lines.

The scene changed. A tender dialogue took place between prince and princess. Back and forth the shadows swam, eclipsing each other, becoming one in a brief embrace. The dalang’s voice was now honey-sweet, incredibly feline and erotic. But again the clowns appeared, this time male and female attendants. Their love-making was scandalous, and the climax held a great surprise. The figure of the male servant was jointed at more places than the arms, for suddenly an enormous phallus sprang out. In the uproarious laughter of the crowd there rose falsetto catcalls from the boys and high nasal cries from the women, exaggerated and sardonic.

At other times they listened attentively, as though they couldn’t bear to miss a word. They cheered the defeat of the foe, and when the favourite clown dealt death to hundreds by unhooking his proud emblem of virility and using it as a club the children yelled with glee.

Sarda slept in the car. Made Tantra sat beside me, lost in the play. Once he got up to bring me a banana-leaf of rice and turtle meat. Then he brought a glass of arac. We sat there long after the moon had disappeared behind the palms. The sky grew pale; on the screen action had died and the lamp grew dim. In the distance you could hear the surf on the rocks. As they waited for the dénouement people dozed, while piled against each other the children slept, relaxed as kittens.

Suddenly, as though to synchronize with the approach of day, the play broke into life. Music burst out; warriors appeared; arrows flew; demons were slain, princess rescued. Within five minutes the play was over; the audience rose to its feet and slowly evaporated.

As we walked back to the car a man came up and spoke to Madé Tantra.

Tantra! How did you get here?

I came with the tuan.

They talked for a moment; I got into the back of the car and opened the thermos of coffee. I was frightfully sleepy.

Who was that? I asked Made Tantra as he got in beside me.

Lotring, a friend of Nyoman’s. He taught the musicians who played to-night. He is very clever. . . .

I thought of the delicate music I had been listening to all evening. It had a strangely rushing sound, an indefinable, nervous energy, a laciness that seemed to translate magically into sound the movements of the mysterious little shadows. Four musicians sat facing one another, and as hands moved with incredible rapidity up and down above the keys, I could only think of four perfectly co-ordinated little pianos. Sometimes the music rang out harsh and clanging as a furious battle between the puppets took place; grew languid for a love scene; died to almost nothing as the “sweetly gentle” prince lamented. As usual, the sounds kept ringing in my ears long after the music had stopped.

It’s almost day, I said to Made Tantra.

But he was sound asleep, his head falling against my shoulder as we turned a curve. In the early morning light people had begun to stir. Smoke rose from the little offerings that burned before the doorways in every village. In the mist men followed their water buffaloes out into the ricefields. Once home I fell on the bed and slept till noon.

At the time of full moon these shadow-plays seemed to be taking place all over the island. I would count a dozen in one evening as I drove along at night. What was the occasion? I would ask Sarda.

A marriage ceremony, a tooth-filing. The dedication of a new temple or clubhouse. A cremation. . . .

How many dalangs do you suppose there are in Bali?

He thought. He could not say. Perhaps a thousand. There were ten within a mile of my own village.

I went with Nyoman Kalér one evening to see the dalang who lived at the other end of the village, a Brahman by the name of Ida Bagus Anom. He was a great scholar, said Nyoman, well read in the classics. His father had been a priest. . . .

He was a grave man, with large, heavy-lashed eyes that were both intelligent and mystic. He was not surprised to see me, for Nyoman had announced my visit the day before. We sat talking while a boy dragged out the heavy puppet box and opened it. One by one the dalang took out the puppets and passed them to me, pronouncing their names. Some were so fragile, so pierced with patterns that the leather barely held together, and when you held them in the light they seemed completely transparent. Others were dark and squat, clumsy and absurd. Some carried spears, others gongs and drums. There were elephants, tigers, amorphous sea beasts, horses with fine chariots.

One puppet I looked at several minutes. It had an air of delicate nobility, with eyes long and narrow, lips curved in smile, a slender torso in gold that disappeared in a cloud of filmy sarong.

Arjuna, said the dalang. One of the Pandawa princes. They belong to the right.

The right?

The side of the gods.

As I looked at it he began to recite.

Such is the nature of his smile, that it discloses not his heart. An air of serenity conceals his trouble. Still undetermined, he cares not to reveal his thoughts. His intentions he will not quickly tell. . . .

These lines, said Nyoman, introduced Arjuna to the audience.

I picked up another puppet. It was the figure of a demon-woman, with staring eyes, a fanged mouth, great pendulous breasts.

Durga, goddess of death, said the dalang. A puppet of the left.

A third figure seemed to have Arjuna’s face, but on the head was a towering crown, and the body was coloured green. This was the god Indra. Siva the Protector was almost identical, except for his colour and his four arms. But Siva the Destroyer had a dozen demons’ heads, was surrounded with flames, had clawed hands and feet.

One more puppet held my attention. It was fat and grotesque, clad only in a breech clout. The lined face was filled with craft and genial sensuality; the eyes were wise and weary. It was Tualén, the faithful attendant of the hero. This was the beloved clown, whose impudence delighted the crowd, the Falstaff, the Sancho Panza who deflated high-flown motives and sentiment, criticizing even the gods. He it was whose jokes were both cynical and obscene, who parodied so outrageously the poetic love scenes, who could be counted on to think of ways to outwit the enemy at the last moment, and always dealt the last triumphant blow in battle.

Tualén! said the dalang, looking at the puppet with affection. He is older than them all. . . .

He put the puppets back, arranging them with care. Each had its proper place in the pile. Tualén must go last, on top. He put the arms in order, set the figure gently down, and closed the lid.

The lamp of the shadow theatre is the sun, said Ida Bagus Anom as we sat there in the dark pavilion; the screen is the sky. The god of the shadow-play is Iswara. He paused, went on.

The lamp lies in the eye of the dalang. The fire lies in the liver, the smoke in the voice. The oil is the fat, the wick the marrow, the puppet-sticks the sinews. . . .

As we walked home I thought how all the puppets in this Lilliputian drama were matched against each other as in a game of chess. (I was to find this so in all the plays.) The plot resolved itself to a simple tug-of-war between the forces of right and left. A character belonged once and for all to one side or the other, and stood or fell accordingly. The cards, it seemed, had long ago been stacked against the demons, for things must come out right in the end, as surely as dissonance dissolves in concord. Since the outcome was known in advance, the play lacked tension, and scenes could be cut or extended at will without affecting in any way the plot. Puppets or men, the play could be brought at any moment to a satisfactory conclusion, could be folded up like a telescope should an unexpected shower of rain make this necessary.

THE DESIGN IN THE MUSIC

SEVERAL NIGHTS IN THE WEEK the légong club of which Nyoman Kalér was the head met to practise in the Temple of Origins across the road. There were some thirty musicians in the club, and thirty more members to help carry the heavy instruments. Some of the boys and men worked in the fields, others did nothing at all. They gathered together in the early evening, after they had bathed in the stream that ran by the house. Sometimes they rehearsed with the little dancers, but more often it was for the sake of the music alone, and for hours the air would ring with swift, chiming sounds that rose and fell above the agitated throb of drums.

At first, as I listened from the house, the music was simply a delicious confusion, a strangely sensuous and quite unfathomable art, mysteriously aerial, aeolian, filled with joy and radiance. Each night as the music started up I experienced the same sensation of freedom and indescribable freshness. There was none of the perfume and sultriness of so much music in the East, for there is nothing purer than the bright, clean sound of metal, cool and ringing and dissolving in the air. Nor was it personal and romantic, in the manner of our own effusive music, but rather, sound broken up into beautiful patterns.

It was, however, more than this, as I was to find out. Already I began to have a feeling of form and elaborate architecture. Gradually, the music revealed itself as being composed, as it were, of different strata of sound. Over a slow and chantlike bass that hummed with curious penetration the melody moved in the middle register, fluid, free, appearing and vanishing in the incessant, shimmering arabesques that rang high in the treble as though beaten out on a thousand little anvils. Gongs of different sizes punctuated this stream of sound, divided and subdivided it into sections and inner sections, giving it metre and meaning. Through all this came the rapid and ever-changing beat of the drums, throbbing softly, or suddenly ringing out with sharp accents. They beat in perpetual cross-rhythm, negating the regular flow of the music, disturbing the balance, adding a tension and excitement which came to rest only with the cadence that marked the end of a section in the music.

Tiny cymbals pointed up the rhythm of the drums, emphasized it with their delicate clash, while the smallest of bells trembled as they were shaken, adding a final glitter, contributing shrill overtones that were practically inaudible.

Not long after I became acquainted with Nyoman Kalér, he had said I was welcome to come and listen as the men practised, and the friendly members of the club soon grew used to seeing me enter the courtyard after dark to sit beside them while they played. Their instruments were arranged in careful order, like an orchestra. The deep-voiced jégogans, with their heavy, trembling keys, were ranged at either side, while in the centre stood the soft-toned g’ndérs that played the melody. At the back were placed the little gangsas, on which the brilliant ornamental parts were performed. The drums, the leading instruments, were placed in front. At a short distance away the tones merged and blended so that the gamelan sounded like one great instrument.

I sat watching the concentration of the players. Boys of fourteen, men of twenty or sixty—all gave themselves up to the serious business of rehearsal. The music was rapid, the rhythms intricate. Yet without effort, with eyes closed, or staring out into the night, as though each player were in an isolated world of his own, the men performed their isolated parts with mysterious unity, fell upon the syncopated accents with hair’s-breadth precision. I wondered at their natural ease, the almost casual way in which they played. This, I thought, is the way music was meant to be, blithe, transparent, rejoicing the soul with its eager rhythm and lovely sound. As I listened to the musicians, watched them, I could think only of a flock of birds wheeling in the sky, turning with one accord, now this way, now that, and finally descending to the trees.

What is the object of this club? I asked one night.

A little pleasure, a little profit, said Nyoman.

For the feasts and celebrations of Kedaton, their own village, they gave their services, as they were expected to do. In the temple they accompanied the ceremonial dances before the altars, played far into the night as they lulled priest and priestess to sleep with trance-music.

But when their légong dancers appeared in other villages, said Nyoman, the club expected to be paid. The money went into the treasury to be saved until the time of galungan, the week of feasts and holidays. Then was the time for joyous liquidation. The club bought pigs for a banquet and divided the remainder of the funds for holiday spending. But often it would be found that there was only a very small sum to share, for in the past six months the funds would have melted away on new costumes for the dancers, new gold leaf for the instruments, or a new set of headcloths for the members of the club.

For a club must sparkle, said Nyoman, when it appeared. Especially in another village. Otherwise they would be too ashamed. . . .

The iridescent music of Nyoman’s gamelan had its roots in a distant past, could be traced to the courts of ancient Java, and from there to a still more ancient India and China. Here to-day it had blossomed miraculously into something new. Successive generations of musicians had recreated it, transformed it, quickening the rhythm and modifying the instruments so that they rang with greater brilliance. An elaborate technique of interplay among the different instruments had slowly evolved, a weaving of voices around and over the melody, enveloping it in a web of rich though delicate ornamentation. And yet no separate part was in itself too difficult; all united to form a shimmering, pulsating whole, held together by the discipline of long rehearsal. As for the composers themselves, who could say? Long since dead, they were, presumably, simple craftsmen. Their names were unknown.

But how was it possible, I asked, for men to remember through the years this music of the past? If there were no notes. . . . In my country, I said, we write down our music. I showed him a printed page. He looked at it with curiosity.

There are also written notes in Bali, he said. But few people can read them, few have ever seen them. A book is rare.

If you could find one for me. . . .

He thought his friend Lotring, a musician who lived in Kuta, owned one. He would go one day and see.

He came a week later saying, Here is the book.

It was a bundle of dried palm leaves, trimmed and neatly tied together. It was old and brittle, and crumbled as I opened it. Inside, three or four lines of Balinese script stretched across each strip of leaf.

That is the pokok, the stalk, the trunk of the music, he said.

It was nothing more than the meagre tones of the chant in the bass, the barest of outlines. Nothing to indicate rhythm, nothing to indicate melody or the elaborate interweaving of sounds. A scratch here and there marked the accent of a gong and that was all.

It was only a reminder, said Nyoman. The rest, he explained, existed in the mind of the teacher.

Balinese music is based on five tones. In the sacred writings of the priests these tones have cosmological significance, for they are linked with the gods of the five directions, north, east, south, west and centre, where in the middle of a lotus sits Batara Siva, Creator, Destroyer, Lord God of All. His mystic colour is white; his sacred syllable hing; and the tone for this syllable is ding.

The gods of the other directions have also their colours—red, yellow, blue, black; their syllables and tones—dong, déng, doong, dang. . . .

But he didn’t think, said Nyoman when I asked him, that the boys and men of the clubs thought of this as they played.

Music is for pleasure, he said. It pleases both gods and men. In the writings of the priests there were long directions about the dances and gamelans “necessary” at a temple feast. It was to be regretted that to-day these directions were only half carried out. The gods felt slighted, complained more and more frequently, through the mouth of the priest or medium in trance. . . .

Thus music, I learned, had its “stem,” its primary tones (which it was possible to preserve in writing) from which the melody expanded and developed as a plant grows out of a seed. The glittering ornamental parts which gave the music its shimmer, its sensuous charm, its movement—these were the “flower parts,” the “blossoms,” the kantilan. (Like a dancer, Nyoman explained in parenthesis, whose body is the trunk, whose arms and head are melody, and whose hands form the flowers, which are the “gilding” of the dance.)

It was in these flower parts, he said, that a teacher showed his inventiveness, a gamelan its ability. The style was always changing, although the stem-tones remained the same. When he was a child, at court, the music had been slower, simpler, softer. But to-day it had become very difficult. . . .

One evening Nyoman brought to the house a g’ndér from the gamelan and began playing the soft love-music from the légong dance. A row of thin metal keys hung suspended over a row of upright bamboo tubes, and trembled at the least touch. As he sat there on the floor, the keys came to his shoulders. He held a little mallet in each hand; his fingers were relaxed, and the mallets seemed to fall upon the keys rather than strike them. The tones were limpid, with a mysterious, prolonged echo from the tubes, and as he played he seemed to lose himself in the dreaminess of the sounds he was producing.

A g’ndér is delicately adjusted and easily goes off pitch. If the bamboo resonators are out of tune, the tone is dead, but when the instrument is perfectly in tune it has a haunting sound, prolonged and softly ringing. It is the presence of many of these instruments that gives a gamelan its floating, disembodied sound.

The g’ndér was followed by a drum, on which Nyoman began to explain the different drum strokes. He held it across his knees, drumming lightly with his fingers—you only used the sticks for the great ceremonial music or the heroic dances. He used the finger tips, the palm of the hand, the ball of the thumb, striking the drum sometimes near the middle of the parchment to give a deep, hollow sound, or near the rim, when it rang out tensely. The two hands fluttered in endless patterns —the soft, rapid throb for the love scenes, light tripping rhythms for more playful moments, tense, heavy drumming filled with sharp, excited accents for the battles, the abductions, the appearance of a god or demon.

Another day he brought a little gangsa, to show me how the flower parts were composed. Soon the house was filled with gongs, drums, cymbals and flutes, looking like a museum in disorder. But I wished for a piano, for I was beginning to feel out of practice. I was also eager to try out some of the melodies from the légong gamelan that I had begun to write down, to see how they would sound.

It was by chance that I heard of one that belonged to a resident on the island who was willing to let me have the use of it for a few months. It created a sensation in the village when it arrived, for nothing like it had ever been seen. It was a shrill upright; its tones echoed disagreeably against the walls and the cement floor, but it was surprisingly in tune. The afternoon of its arrival the house was filled with visitors who came to listen to the strange new music that was suddenly heard in the village. They pressed the keys, examined the pedals.

What a great voice! they exclaimed. What a number of “leaves” (the keys). What are the foot-brakes for?

I showed them the mechanism. I played a melody from the légong which I had written down, filling in the gongs with the left hand. Lost in admiration they left to spread the news in the village.

The g’ndér looked very fragile beside the piano. It was beautifully carved; little animals peered out from a forest of leaves, and its keys jangled softly as we moved it. The piano was a monument of cold efficiency. As a ruler is marked, it divided the octave into twelve precise degrees. The tuning of the g’ndér was more irregular. Only some of the tones agreed with the piano, while others were strange and unaccountable as certain tones in the voice of a Negro blues singer. Heard separately, each instrument sounded convincing. When I listened to one after the other I was deeply disturbed. The piano sounded harsh and out of tune after the softer intonation of the g’ndér.

Since the piano had twelve tones to the g’ndér’s five, the music I played held no meaning for Nyoman. Tourists have brought back romantic tales of the Balinese taste for Bach, but this was quite impossible. Nyoman’s reaction to Western music was typical. It was a complicated noise without order, tempestuous and baffling in its emotional climaxes, dragging on and on and leading nowhere.

Your music is like someone crying, he said. Up and down, up and down, for no reason at all.

A simple tune on the white keys might catch his interest, but the harmony of the left hand ruined it for him. His ears could not filter the sound made by so many notes so closely spaced.

His reaction to rhythm was just as negative. Balinese music is tense and syncopated like jazz, and when I played a waltz, or an adagio from some sonata, Nyoman would exclaim—Where is the beat?

Where is no beat! Like a bird with a broken wing!

Only my jazz records would he listen to at all. He found the singing curious, the trumpet of Louis Armstrong fantastic, but he felt the rhythm at once.

THE GODS DESCEND

IN TWO DAYS IT WOULD BE be full moon, when the feast of the Temple of the Ancestors would take place.

For a month the women of Nyoman Kalér’s household had been busy, like the women of every other household in the village, in preparing the offerings, the endless cakes, fritters, sweets, and ceremonial objects made of palm leaf. In Nyoman’s house confusion reigned, especially the last few days, for new costumes were being made for the three little légong dancers, and snips and scraps of bright-coloured cloth lay scattered about among the piles of cakes and fruits. Men cut and sewed; over a table three boys leaned, their faces flecked with gold leaf as they painted enormous flowers and birds in gold on the costumes of the dancers.

The morning mist was still in the air on the day of the feast as one by one the men came out of their doorways and walked towards the temple, to begin the festive cooking. It was not long before the courts were in a turmoil. Soon there was the sound of chopping as groups of men prepared the spice, the sound of soft scraping as they grated huge mounds of coconut. Above the laughter and conversation pigs shrieked as they were carried into the kitchens. Ducks gabbled, while about the court chickens fluttered, blood still dripping from their necks. From simmering caldrons the acrid steam of bitter blimbing leaves mingled with the bright aroma of frying pork. Cooks stirred, prodded, turned the spits, carefully lifted from pans wide coils of sausage, to set them out to cool above the reach of dogs that now flocked in the courts. In the air there hung the sharp, fresh scent of ginger, lime and tamarind.

All at once, above this cheerful bustle there floated the sound of tranquil, golden music. The Gamelan with the Great Gongs had arrived. Exempt from other work, the musicians sat in the shade of a pavilion playing the music appropriate to ceremonial occasions—the stately Beat of Eight that lasted half an hour; the Beat of Four, the lively Beat of One. They rested for a while; began again: Clucking Cock, with its curious rhythm; the tuneful Snapping Crocodile. Throughout the morning the air was filled with sound that gladdened the hearts of all, causing the temple to ring with “festive noise.”

In and out the women came with their offerings, to arrange them by the shrines of the inner temple, until the sun was overhead and, by what seemed to me a miracle, the cooking was suddenly over.

While in the temple the village elders banqueted ceremoniously, the rest of the food was carefully divided and taken home, but not before the tiniest of servings, each meticulously complete with microscopic portions of rice and hashes, shreds of chicken and all the rest, were set aside for the gods.

A temple feast is a complex ritual, an anniversary, a three-day honouring of the gods. On the evening of the first day the gods are invited to descend and enter the shrines prepared for them. For three days they are feasted and entertained. Before they leave, advice and favours will be sought; they are then informed the feast is over, and ceremoniously requested to depart.

Late that night I walked down the road with Made Tantra to witness the arrival of the gods.

The inner court was filled with silent, expectant men and women. They sat there on the ground, quietly waiting. Below the shrines the offerings were spread out, and before them sat the priest and three elderly priestesses. Incense burned. In the silence the priest prayed, rang his bell, began a new prayer. Eyes closed, the priestesses swayed ever so slightly.

From a pavilion came the faint chime of a g’ndér. In the shadow I could barely make out a few instruments from the légong gamelan. A single musician played softly, waiting for the others to arrive.

A long, slow chant began, faintly at first, then growing in volume as others joined in. The priestesses swayed more violently, tossing their heads from side to side.

Have the gods come? I asked Madé after a while.

Not yet; soon, perhaps.

How will you know?

When one of them begins to speak.

But presently the priestesses stopped moving. They sat there very still. The priest got up.

Madé murmured. It did not happen.

What now?

Later they will try again. Sometimes you must wait a whole day.

Outside, in the clearing before the temple, all was light and movement. A crowd had gathered, waiting for the entertaining arja play to begin. The actors had only just arrived, said Made. They were still dressing.

We sat down by one of the little gambling-tables where a noisy card game was in progress. The tiny cards were marked with symbols, and as Made explained, it seemed very much like mahjong. The players cheerfully invited me to take a hand. For the sake of sociability I joined them, but the combinations were endless, the rules involved, and in a little while I got up, to return inside the temple.

Once more the priestesses had given themselves up to the soft chant of women’s voices. Soon after we came in there was a sudden cry from the oldest, and she began to toss wildly about. In a low intimate voice the priest questioned her. At first she would not answer, and cried as though her heart were breaking. Then at last she spoke, and we knew that the gods were here.

Where did the gods actually stay while here on earth? In the tiniest objects, apparently; in stones, in bits of wood, in little golden figures. These precious objects were kept locked in the temple, to be taken out, purified and set in the shrines for the three days of the feast. At one moment this feast seemed scaled for the propitiation of giants, at the next it was like a dolls’ tea party. Images and stones were wrapped in the brightest of cloths, tied with golden sashes, set on silken cushions, while their food was set out for them in the smallest of dishes. Yet woe betide the community if the gods felt slighted and grew angry. Now, suddenly, they were titans; in their anger they spread disaster in the form of drought and epidemics of plague.

On the afternoon of the second day the dancers from Kesiman arrived, to perform with masks one of the ancient chronicle plays that dealt with the early kings of Bali. We watched an episode from the life of the King of Bedulu, whose mask was a terrifying combination of human eyes and mouth with the snout and tusks of a boar.

He had got the head of a pig in this way, explained Nyoman Kalér, as we stood watching. He had been born strong in magic power. When he was a child he often amused himself by cutting off his head and asking his attendant to put it back on again. One day his head rolled into the river and was carried away. In desperation the servant cut off the head of a boar and placed it on his neck. . . .

But in the play we only saw him defeated by a prince from Java, whose name was Gaja Mada, Mad Elephant.

On the third night, while in front of the temple the audience watched the shadow-play, the gods departed.

The departure had been preceded by a ceremonial dance. While, from the shadows, there came the sound of animated music from the gamelan, a group of women stepped forth to dance the gabor, the presentation of offerings of wine, oil, incense; Their shoulders were bare, their breasts bound with woven scarves, and in their hair were crowded orchids, jasmine, gardenias. I recognized Nyoman’s two wives among them as they danced, seriously, tranquilly, as though in their sleep. In and out of the shrines they wove, disappearing in the shadows, emerging into the moonlight, until at last they paused before the altars, where a priestess stood, to fan the essence of the offerings in the direction of the gods.