Dancing Out of Bali Read online

  But when we reached the top step of the main gateway into the outer courtyard and saw the jammed humanity below, we decided to stay there. We could see the rectangle of earth gaily decorated with streamers and woven palm leaves where the gamelan was playing under the white glare of three kerosene lamps. We could make out Raka at his drum. And in front of the orchestra we could plainly see the Kebiar dancer. For fifteen minutes we watched him dance—the fluttering of long-nailed fingers, the flirtatious eyebrows, the pivoting and hopping about the floor, all in a seated position. But though the dancer had grace of a sort and rhythm, he was entirely without the magic quality which we sought—the quality that the dance's creator had had in the nineteen-thirties, the great Mario.

  As the dance finished, the crowd slowly flowed in our direction, while we waited flat against the gateway till they had gone. Then we went forward to apologize to Raka.

  We were greeted with laughter.

  "Beh! The Tuan is perhaps becoming a Balinese. How late is it, Tuan?"

  So we sat joking at a warong, sipping a little arak mixed with the pink, thick rice wine, called brum, till Raka asked, "Are you tired or do you still want to see the trances—if they come off?"

  "But we would love to see the trances."

  "Good. Then we will go into the inner courtyard."

  It was now dark in the inner courtyard. Over in a corner we could just see an old priest, waited on by some women who sat before him on the ground, with a pot of charcoal burning there in the darkness, and a few small offering trays nearby. The sound of rising and falling voices was wafted over to us.

  Suddenly a bunch of neatly dressed girls, hand in hand, brushed past us, one of them turning toward us and smiling, for we saw the flash of white teeth. Raka laughed when we asked him who the girl was.

  "It was Soli, the Legong dancer," he said. "She is nearly a woman now. She goes with older girls these days, seldom any more with the other Legong girls. It is a nuisance, but soon we shall be looking for another Legong dancer."

  "But Raka-how old is Soli? Eleven? Twelve?"

  "Maybe. She doesn't know how old she is. But she has a young sister who has already menstruated. Soli will be carried off soon. Tuan has noticed perhaps that when she dances her eyes sometimes glance at a man? That is very bad indeed in a Legong. It is good if she marries."

  We waited, kicking our heels.

  "You haven't really told us what is likely to happen...I was beginning, when Raka turned to us quickly.

  "It is starting now he,"said briefly."just watch."

  In front of the incense arising from the charcoal brazier we could see the old white-robed priest getting to his feet, while attendants stood tensely, protectingly around him. All the while he kept muttering, and then a sentence of the old Kawi tongue, incomprehensible, would be flung out across the courtyard. Then came more mumbling, sometimes a deep-throated chuckle, ending in a laugh or snort. A weird, eerie act of ventriloquy in the night, it seemed to us, for the priest was seemingly carrying on conversations with himself in several voices.

  "What is he saying?” whispered.

  "He is in trance. He goes into this state so that he can become an empty medium through which the gods can speak to the village and tell us whether they are satisfied or not with our offerings. So far all is well."

  But a moment later a fierce altercation seemed to break out. Stormy voices were raised-all issuing from the one throat. It was uncanny.

  Snarls, grunts, whines, imperious orders, poured through the old priest, who was swaying tempestuously around the yard, in the end facing the high altar where the sacred and powerful masks of the Barong and Rangda lay displayed on top of the boxes in which they were normally stored. The Barong, a purely animistic symbol of Good, was in Saba represented in the form of a great black boar, inside which two men would dance and act the Barong play at the time of the New Year festivities. Rangda on the other hand, was the Demon Queen of the leyaks, in another manifestation being Durga, the Hindu Goddess of Death. And it was towards the mask of the terrible Rangda, flaming of tongue and sabre-toothed, that the priest was now clawing his way, a torrent of bestial growls bursting through his old lips.

  The few Balinese present seemed to be watching closely, but showed no sign of fear. Raka breathed excitedly. "Na-a-a! So that is it. Rangda has said that not enough offerings were made for her. She is complaining and cursing through the priest. More offerings will have to be made, and more propitiations."

  The priest, meanwhile, shivering all over as with a fever, was clamouring for the Rangda mask to be put over his head.

  "Now the spirit of Rangda is in him,” said Raka.

  Strutting, shaking, the old man stamped around the courtyard, making his way back awkwardly to his place before the brazier. There the mumblings continued, until after a while, when he was calmer, the mask was gently lifted off him. But he himself remained deep in trance, mouthing incomprehensibly. Some voices started chanting, to break the trance, and holy water was made ready to sprinkle on him when the trance should leave him. At last the priest opened his eyes, staring, and then frenziedly plunged his hands into the brazier, upsetting it, tearing out two or three burning husks of coconut fibre, which, still red and aflame, he dusted through his long hair, even crammed in his mouth, sparks scattering all around him.

  "The trance is now leaving him, Tuan,” said Raka solemnly.

  "There remains only the sprinkling of the holy water. Then he will go home."

  Stiffly we got to our feet. Fantastic scenes such as these, full of beauty and sincerity, probably take place many thousands of times in one year in Bali.

  Raka walked with us to the road.

  "Thank you for a wonderfully interesting experience, Raka. And peace on your sleep."

  "It was nothing. Peace on your going."

  When the President arrived in Bali I was fortunate in being able to speak with him for a moment at the airport, where I was eyed suspiciously by my old opponent, the Palace Secretary. And though his planned holiday was to become a week of solid political speech making, he agreed that he would like to see the Legong of Saba. Luce and I, therefore, almost lived in Saba, timing the dance so that the President should not be bored, and patching up the costumes and headdresses as best we could.

  But before the evening for the Legong came, I heard that the President was to make one of his speeches in the Wisnu Cinema to young nationalists from all over Bali. And for once I broke my rule. I was so interested to hear what the Head of State's attitude would be to the dangerously growing lawlessness throughout the island, that, together with Jef Last, a renowned Dutch writer who was teaching in a school in North Bali, and was my valued friend, I found myself seated with the representatives of the press in about the fourth row. Behind us the hall overflowed with long-haired young men, oddly garbed, whose tenseness communicated itself to us, and who were the force which, if uncontrolled, would bring Bali into terrorized anarchy.

  Straight from an Army Day parade came Sukamo, dressed in very simple, man-of-the-people khaki shirt with open collar and rolled up sleeves. He was greeted with a frightening welcome of cheers in which patriotism and hysteria were blended. But at first Sukamo took his seat in the hall's front row, and a Balinese youth leapt to the stage, where, with raised fist and staring eyes, he led those young nationalists on a sweet orgy of verbal revenge against the ills of Indonesia's past colonial sufferings. My skin was a-prickle with gooseflesh. Myself an emotional person, I have learned to be profoundly distrustful of emotional thinking. And that this could happen in Bali, depressed and worried me.

  Then Ruslan Abdulgani rose to take his place. He, since the revolutionary days in Java, had been the Secretary-General at the Ministry of Information, and he poured cold douches of reason and logic over the hot heads before him, mixing his reason with a subtle sympathy for their cause, till he judge
d they were ready to receive the speech of the President himself.

  Having folded his sleeves a trifle higher and urged some gaping market women standing at the rear of the hall to come forward and fill the empty front seats, Sukarno led his listeners out on a brisk attack on the classic enemy, Imperialism. The young nationalists roared their applause. Having thus shown them that he, too, could eat fire, and when he sensed that he had them tied emotionally to him, he broke off, paused, and in a quite different, hushed voice, descended from the realms of generalization to the present moment.

  Did they think that Father Sukarno did not understand their aspirations, he asked them? Did they not guess how completely he was in sympathy with them? Then, very gently he underlined the points where he agreed with them. He, too, wanted Bali to progress with the rest of Indonesia; he deplored, also, the old Dutch policy of keeping Bali in a museum state; the old feudal system which had been banished in Java must meet the same fate in Bali, he said; and was he not the Father of his People and thus the greatest believer of them all in a united country...? But...

  When Pandit Nehru had come to Bali with him six months ago ("and don't forget, my friends, that Nehru's India is politically perhaps our closest ally as well as the ancient source of much of Bali's Hindu culture"), well, Pandit Nehru had said: (and here the President's voice faltered, and tears coursed down his cheeks unashamed, bringing a deathly silence upon the hall): "In Bali I feel that I am seeing a people and country as it was in the morning of the world... in the morning of the world.” Therefore, whether they liked it or not, Bali and the people of Bali, did have a special position in the eyes of the outside world, and thus a unique responsibility to the State of Indonesia.

  And having brought his young hearers to this firm, even primeval earth, he abandoned all oratorical tricks in order to urge, no, in order to command the nationalists to act henceforth in a disciplined way. In the most lucid language he instructed them to throw away their methods of violence and terror, and to use such techniques as they had just heard outlined by Ruslan Abdulgani.

  It was a masterpiece of a speech. And to me it was now encouragingly clear that the Indonesian Government in Djakarta regarded the disorders in this inconveniently well-known island as a danger to the name of the whole archipelago. It was for this reason that the President was prepared to spend a whole week touring the island with Islam Salim and the head of Denpasar's civil administration, Sutedja, in an attempt to restore peace.

  A few nights later, on a lawn in front of the Government house, the President saw the Saba Legong. We sat exactly behind him, and to us, hoping for his approval, the dance this night seemed infinitely long. We watched anxiously to see if he yawned. But when the Legong and his favourite dancer, Tjawan, had both danced, he turned around and asked,"This Saba—is it a very poor village?"

  "It is poor, sir."

  "Tell their leader to bring the small girls to see me tomorrow about noon. And tell them to work out the cost of a new set of costumes. I like this Legong. It is truly of the people."

  Next day Gusti Gde Raka appeared at our house just as we were finishing lunch. His face was positively smug with contentment. The Legong children and several members of the club followed behind him. He sat down, breathless, unable to speak. Then: "Beh! That Bapa Sukarno!"

  "Well-did he promise you new costumes?"

  "New costumes? That was nothing! He told us that he would call us to dance in the palace at Djakarta soon. We are exploding with happiness. A greater honour we could not have. And then, as we prepared to take our leave, he told us that we could spend up to a thousand rupiahs on making new costumes so that we should not be ashamed in Djakarta."

  Raka was so overcome that he could say no more, not even utter a word of thanks; but the double-hand grip he insisted on giving both of us as he left with his party to catch a bus, nearly broke our fingers.

  The sequel to this story came some months later. We were eating one day in Saba with our friend, Theo Meier, the Swiss painter, when out of the night there sprang a man waving a broad knife, and who, instead of cutting our throats, started haranguing Raka fiercely. Raka, very calmly, sent this fellow about his business, saying to us, "His daughter has been kidnapped for marriage. He swears he knew nothing about it and wants me to help him go in pursuit of the man.

  But it is nonsense. It was all arranged." He paused, then went on: "There are two kidnappings tonight, for it is a lucky day. The other girl that I hear is to be kidnapped is our Legong-Soli."

  And so it was. Nor had Raka trained any substitute for her, nor was any good understudy for the respectably married Soli ever found. Her place was at length taken by a little mouse of a thing with no personality at all.

  But when Raka said to us, very soon after her marriage, "It is rumoured that Soli's kain was clean this month so, "that we knew she would soon be bearing a child and unable to dance the Legong ever again, we told Raka bluntly that he was risking the future of his club if he found no suitable replacement.

  "You try to find one, Tuan John," Raka would reply jokingly. "I've looked at every little girl in the village. There are no others."

  The sad truth, however, was, that ever since the President had looked with favour on his Legong, Raka's manner had become more and more overconfident. He was compensating for his former fear by becoming very self-satisfied. There was no arguing with him. The little mouse came to stay. And so timid a little mouse was she that when the summons to the palace came, many months later, he dared not use her and the Legong was danced by a young mother, Soli: which was all very wrong.

  It was fortunate then, that a car stopped in our lane one morning soon after the President's departure, and its chauffeur, Made Lebah, entered our compound bringing news from the Pliatan gamelan club.

  "Greetings, Tuan and Nyonya. Well, we have been rehearsing three nights. It is very bad at the moment-very bad. But if you are brave enough to listen once, the Anak Agung hopes you will dine in his puri tomorrow evening soon after nightfall. Then you can hear the gamelan and see our Legong candidates."

  "This is the best of news, Made. We shall meet tomorrow."

  I turned to Luce with a smile: "It seems that the Pliatan iron is warming up just as Saba begins to cool off."

  "By tomorrow night we shall know," answered Luce.

  3

  The Club in Pliatan

  *

  A tall, spare man with grey hair and a deep voice was waiting at the gateway of the puri in Pliatan to meet us and bring us in. He was spotlessly tidy in a starched khaki shirt, with a green sarong and sandals.

  “I am the Dewa Gde Putu and the headman is my brother," he said, introducing himself," I am to welcome you to our home. We hope that tonight's will be the first of many meals you will both eat here with us," and motioning with his right hand he beckoned us to follow him in.

  "There is great excitement tonight," he continued. "The club will all be here; perhaps you will care to say a few words to them. Also, the old Legong teacher may come later, and then you can see the three little Legong girls whom we think suitable, for we want also to ask your opinion. And Sampih has come over from Sayan and is here tonight, too."

  So saying he was leading us through the courtyard, which was made into an outer and inner courtyard by being divided by a broad house, set exactly in its centre, and the rear wall of which was sculptured with a magnificently carved Garuda bird, the Hindu phoenix, steed of the God Wisnu. Passing a verandah in this first courtyard our eyes detected the gleam of gold paint on the metallophones of a full gamelan orchestra. The compound was alive with people in the dusk, with scores of naked children, arms around each others necks, and waists, happy already in anticipation.

  We were to eat in the farthest, newest house, a thatched replica of a very simple modern bungalow of three rooms The sitting room and dining room combined was lit by a kerosene lamp whic
h revealed four bamboo chairs round a low table on a cement floor, while in the background we could see another table where plates were already piled high with white rice.

  The headman came in, rubbing his hands, beaming: "Welcome, welcome! I am just this minute finished in the kitchen." "You have been cooking yourself, Anak Agung?"

  "Of course. Balinese men are the best cooks, and if it is for a feast or for guests, I always do the cooking myself. Now, we have here some special arak, mixed with brum and wild honey. It is a very strong arak. Do you and the Nyonya dare to join us?"

  So we sat there drinking together while night fell swiftly across the courtyard outside. Then, apologetically: "Anak Agung," I said.

  "Before we begin working together, forgive my ignorance and please tell me exactly what your full name is; also your brother's. We are terribly confused by all these titles in Bali."

  But it was his brother who quickly replied, "Of a truth there are many titles, Tuan. You see, in our Hindu religion there are four castes.

  First, the caste from which the high priests are chosen—the Brahmana.

  The priests have the title Pedanda; but an ordinary Brahmana man we address as Ida Bagus, and a Brahmana woman as Dayu."

  "Then not all Brahmana are priests?"

  "Certainly not. But high priests can only be chosen from the Brahmana caste. Then next comes the Raja caste, the caste of the warriors, the Ksatriya. Their titles are Tjokorda, Anak Agung and Dewa, and to that caste our family belongs. Next there are the Wesya, whose title generally is Gusti. There are thousands of these titles all over Bali, and the three castes together make up our aristocracy.

  Lastly, we come to the ordinary people—the Suddras. They have many castes and crafts among themselves, but possess no titles. A first-born child of a Suddra family is simply called Wayan, a second born, Made, a third, Nyoman and a fourth, Ketut."