fixed advanced in the solemn rhythm of the dance through the hangings and up to the two umbrellas which flanked the space marked off as a stage. The gamelan played on. The second dancer got up after a long interval; he was a better dancer than the first and the loudly talking crowd was hushed.
Servants came and knelt before Raka, offering him young coconuts filled with cool, thin, sour-tasting milk. He refused them, although his throat was parched with excitement. This always happened to him before he danced. He did not know why. He got outside himself and knew himself no more. He felt his heart beat and his sinews stretch as taut as a rope tied to a heavy weight. Yet he felt light and without weight at all. The old teacher called this state “having other thoughts.” Raka felt himself enveloped in a blue veil which made people’s faces grow pale. Soon he saw nothing but this blue haze. He was alone within it as in a cloud. The gamelan played on and on. He heard nothing of the joke of the comic servant, or of the applause of the audience shouting with delirious delight, greeting every joke and allusion with peals of laughter, signalling their enjoyment from one to another, while the young lads took the opportunity of pressing against the wall of girls as though this would help them to hear better. The lord’s wives, sitting cross-legged on mats in a small balé, were as skittish as young animals released from confinement. Their laughter rose and fell like a breeze.
Raka knew nothing of all this. He heard the gamelan call him and now he saw a point of light rise in the blue vacancy like a crystal ball. His eyes were fixed in a stare as he rose to his feet. “The way is prepared,” the narrator chanted in front. “My lord will soon appear. He walks in the forest and flowers grow beneath his feet. He threatens and tigers tremble for fear.” The gamelan was playing, the drum beat furiously. Raka stood between the two umbrellas which flanked the entrance to that other world, the world of fantasy in which he was transformed into a god. He felt himself stretch and grow, far beyond his real height. Then he stepped forward into the light of the lamps.
The lord sat with his chin propped in one hand and his eyes never left Raka for one moment. “Our master devours the dance with his eyes,” Ida Katut whispered to his neighbor who nodded and made a grimace that said much. He was called Anak Agung Bima, the child of the great. He was one of the three relations of the lord who affected to be important persons in the puri. Bima had arrogated to himself an office of his own. He confiscated horses, women and cocks that took the lord’s fancy. He had procured the plates which adorned the reception balé and paid nothing for them. He received the presents which were brought to the puri and often kept some for himself. Semal he was often called, which means squirrel, because he was always hoarding and nibbling. But above all he considered it his office to guess Alit’s unspoken desires and to fulfil them, whether for better or worse. He was short and stout and he followed his master and cousin wherever he went, never letting him out of his sight and sticking so closely to him that Alit sometimes felt that he was caught in a spider’s web. Bima got on to his knees to see what interested the lord, for he had just made an involuntary movement.
It was Lambon, who had just appeared on the scene. She looked small and slender and her child’s face was profoundly serious. She advanced with knees and thighs tightly pressed together. Her hands fluttered like birds. Her slender neck quivered under her large crown. She glided towards Raka in faltering zigzags. It was an utterly artistic, almost inhuman dance in which feeling had been left behind and everything was precisely timed and measured movement of an extreme aesthetic perfection. Her small bare feet raised the dust from the ground and her hips swayed as cool as the stem of a water-lily. Now she was close to Raka and he moved with her. Her arms enclosed in tight and gleaming sleeves described tense arabesques in the air. “Look, she approaches the god,” the narrator chanted. “She winds herself about him, like a snake, and as a creeper embraces the upright trunk. Beware, Laksmana, beware of the nymph.” The gamelan played on. Raka and Lambon glided past one another, their faces drew near for a moment and then separated and again drew near. It was like the play of butterflies before their mating.
The lord leant forward with his eyes fixed on the dance. His eyes drank their fill, as Ida Katut had said. He clenched his fists as a servant drew Raka’s kris from the scabbard and gave it him. The loveplay turned to earnest. The kris flashed over Lambon’s head and she quailed beneath it—and vanished. The gamelan played. The drums beat in a tumult. Then Raka ran towards the other two dancers in the battle of Laksmana with the two demons.
Many of the children had fallen asleep. They clung fast to their mothers like little monkeys in their sleep. Many of the slave-girls of the palace-women slept too, with their heads leaning upon one another. Even some of the courtiers, with the sirih still in their mouths, let their heads fall forward. The old Tjokorda Madé had fallen asleep, wearied out with age and much suffering. Only Alit was alert and wide-awake to the very end.
With the last note of the gamelan the crowd broke up and quickly dispersed. They set off home by the light of the torches, keeping together, so that they need fear no demons or lejaks. Many of the women held knives, with onions speared on them, a certain defence against the dangers of the night. The men of Taman Sari bore their instruments on their shoulders. The newfangled lamps round the arena, which did not last out so long as the coconut lamps, were dimmed with their own smoke. The lord’s wives stood wearily leaning on one another, and the faded flowers in their hair smelt all the more strongly for being faded. They waited on their lord’s pleasure. Bernis stood apart, impatient for what the night might bring. The lord remained seated on his mat, lost in reflection. He smiled as he looked after the retreating dancers. Ida Katut squatted near, trying to read his thoughts. The Anak Agung Bima approached him with clasped hands, though he was of the same blood as Alit.
“I noticed you found the little girl dancer beautiful,” he said tentatively yet officiously. The lord raised his eyes heavily from the vacant arena and stood up. He stretched and took a deep breath of the cool air which fell dew-laden from the tops of the palms.
“She is still a child,” he said, “but one day perhaps she will be a beautiful woman.”
Buleleng
IT was hot in Buleleng. A sluggish breeze wafted the heat southward from the equator and it hung heavy along the shores of Bali. The Chinese sat in front of their shops with their jackets unbuttoned and perspired. Two traders from Bombay sat cross-legged beside their balés of cloth and played dominoes. Three sailing-ships from Macassar were anchored in the roadstead and the crews roamed the few streets of the town, brown-faced, black-fez’d and bold.
A Javanese servant ran along the gravel path to the office. He was carrying, with an anxious expression on his face, a white tunic which creaked with starch. The Controller in charge of inland affairs, Mynheer Visser, stood impatiently in the office. He was in shirt-sleeves and the sweat ran in three small trickles down his neck. He stamped his feet, drummed on his desk and gave every sign of angry impatience. At last the servant appeared with a tunic, which he held out to his tuan with bent, submissive back. Visser cursed a little in fluent Javanese, though this language does not lend itself well to curses. He hastily put on the uniform and buttoned the high collar up to his double chin. The gold epaulettes gleamed. Visser ended with an honest Dutch Godverdamme and the Javanese began to laugh. He knew this signal: it meant that his master’s rage had cooled and that peace and quiet were restored.
“What’s up?” Boomsmer asked from the door leading to the second office. He was a tall sandy-colored Dutchman with tousled hair and blue eyes.
“This buffalo of a servant of mine hadn’t ironed my tunic and the Resident wants to speak to me immediately,” Visser said as he buttoned in his paunch with an effort.
“At nine in the morning? There must be something up. Perhaps the Russians have been smuggling their superannuated breech-loaders into South Bali again.”
Visser
