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,