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