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.