steeper. Below us the sea flattened out into a wide expanse of blue, separated from the sky by a sharp black line. The ship, already headed for Celebes, was a tiny object that crawled across the surface of the ocean with the determination of a snail.
The car ran slower and slower as it climbed the mountain, panting in the heat of the sun. As we left the fields and entered the forest there was the sound of a minor explosion and a jet of steam burst from the water cap. The driver stopped the car and got out with a sigh.
I wandered up the road. The forest was flooded with a soft golden light that glanced off the surface of huge thick leaves, turned others transparent, and penetrated caves that lay between tense, clutching roots. Not a flower to brighten this secret world; nor a sound, except the sudden brief note of some bird that rang for a moment like a tuning-fork. I returned to find the driver at work on the radiator. It had boiled dry, and the heat had melted the solder in seams that had obviously opened often. The driver resourcefully packed moss into the spaces, stuffing it in with a match. Then he plugged the hole with a wedge of wood. From the car he produced a tin marked Best Australian Butter and filled it with water from a brook by the road. He poured it in and banged down the cap. Then he smiled, said something I did not understand, and got back in the car.
The forest thinned; we were on the bare summit of the mountain, and the road now ran along the rim of a giant crater. The inner wall was covered with jungle, and far below shone a lake. Within this bowl rose a cone, its slopes streaked with lava that had once run down far into the valley, and from its side came intermittent gusts of steam that slowly dissolved in the air.
Now the road began its long descent to the sea, disappearing ahead of us in the zone where the trees began. Soon there were fields of com, huts, and at last a village, hidden beneath a grove of trees. All at once the road was filled with people and animals. Scenes flashed by; harvesters deep in yellow rice, a ring of noisy children around two copulating horses, a file of chanting women with offerings on their heads, a long procession with golden parasols that marched to the sound of gongs and wildly beating drums. The driver slowed up for pigs and ducks, but cut through chickens and dogs with indifference. Grey, starved and tottering, on walls, in doorways, the dogs infested the villages. They were so anæmic they could hardly drag themselves off the road. We drove along, knocking them to one side with a thud.
All at once we were by the sea, now purple in the late afternoon. Towering pink clouds hung motionless in the sky, making soft glowing patches on the surface of the water. The road ran past unloading fishing praus, past nets already spread on poles to dry. White plaster houses with tiled roofs appeared; in a moment we were in Den Pasar and had turned in the driveway of the hotel.
I was exhausted and could hardly wait to get out of the car. The hotel was a large cool bungalow, and I was shown to a room that opened on to a deep veranda one step above the lawn. Between the palms one could see people and little carriages forever passing along the road. I rang for a drink, and sank into the low, cushioned chair.
As I waited a new sound rose in the sky, high up, shrill and tremulous, sweeter than anything I had heard that day. I looked out. A flock of pigeons circled in the last rays of the sun. The sound seemed to follow them, and I could not think what it was. I called the boy, who said that the owner of the birds had hung little bells to their feet and attached bamboo whistles to their tail feathers. Round and round they flew, trailing across the sky wide hoops of sound. And then they vanished, the bells dying suddenly into nothing.
DEN PASAR
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
