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.