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 dismally from time to time. Once this moat had been filled to the brim; for the house, it seemed, had been built as a “pleasure retreat” for a Brahman priest of the village, and was still known to all as the Gunung Sari, Mountain of Flowers. But the priest had long since given it up, and now rented it from time to time to a passing white man who wished to live native style.
The doors creaked; the rooms were musty; the place had been shut a year. But from the deep veranda in front you looked out through the palms over gleaming ricefields and caught a glimpse of the sea beyond. Arrangements were conducted through the businesslike young grandson of the old priest, who said that the rent would be forty guilders a month and that I could move in when I wished. He promised there would be the necessary furniture when I arrived.
The disapproval of the hotel manager when I told him my change in plans was real if not eloquent. But when he saw I would not listen he suddenly became surprisingly human, and offered to lend me linen, silver and comfortable chairs. I thought I even detected the slightest inflection of envy in his voice as he now gave advice about white ants and warned about the water. He said I would need a cook and a houseboy, and that my room boy could easily find them for me.
That evening an exceedingly languid youth in white jacket and trousers approached my veranda at the hotel, sat down on the floor and bowed politely, hands clasped below his chin. He did not look very efficient, but the room boy said he had recently worked in the hotel. He said also that he had found me a cook, and the next morning as I went out in my pyjamas for the early cup of coffee she was already waiting for me, standing patiently in the wet grass. She was a short, plump Madurese with a round face that had the expression of a sulky child. She was barefoot, and wore a white sarong covered with red peacocks; a short white jacket parted at the seams under her arms in order to meet across her breasts, exposing a triangle of midriff.
This is the koki, said the houseboy. She can cook Dutch,
Good day, koki, I said.
Tabé tuan; tuan chari koki?
She spoke in the strange, childish singsong of the Indonesian servant, colourless and remote. I gave her some money, told her to buy pots and pans, and said I would have lunch at the house two days later.
Two days later the house had become warm and alive. I found the priest’s son and two other boys waiting to welcome me. They had swept the house clean and arranged the furniture in careful order. The koki and the houseboy were already there; the shutters were wide open, and about the place there was an air of expectation.
Two of the rooms had been furnished exactly alike. Each contained a loose, musical iron bed, draped like a girl at her first communion in limp white netting. In the bed were two pillows, and down the centre ran the dutch wife, a long bolster, plump as a sausage. Against a wall in each room was a table with an enamel jug and basin, and above it a small mirror. In the corner stood a chair. The third room contained a bare dining-table and four chairs symmetrically placed. The fourth room contained nothing at all. On the open window sills the boys had placed drinking glasses with bright flowers that shone transparently
