by John Coast
"But where is your anthropological curiosity? How will you understand the Balinese if you don't sympathize with what takes place in their minds at such important rites?" This time he turned to me, and he was part mocking.
"The trouble is that you must stick to your own 'ology'. Bali is interesting enough to give a life's work to many anthropologists, ethnologists, archaeologists, musicologists and others. So we concentrate on our own chosen field.· I could tell you little about cremations; further, I would admit cremations don't especially interest me. But I could tell you quite a lot of the history of the classical Legong in the last sixty years, and we have ideas even for creating a new dance. And don't forget we have our living to earn, too-looking after delightful people like you."
"You flatter me. But tell me one thing-by studying dancing and music, do you also get to know the people and the way they think?" "You do. But I would say that five years in Bali and a good knowledge of the Balinese language, quite apart from Indonesian, would be necessary to understand much of the Balinese. I'll tell you this much: the recently arrived Javanese and Sumatran officials in Denpasar often admit to not being able to understand them."
"Well, what sort of people do you think they are?"
"I know one thing. They are the least romantic of people. Like peasants all over the world they are superstitious, full of natural lore, necessarily opportunist. In their personal relationships they are direct and simple. They are. so uninhibited that they must have driven Margaret Mead to distraction. Complexes can only be projected into them, for they own none of themselves. Oh, they can be devastatingly natural! But their structure of society, their religion, their ways of thinking, their rules of conduct—that is where the complications come in."
"Please don't dispel my romantic illusions,” said Madame Fast.
"I do so enjoy them."
"Good. You keep your illusions, then. And Luce and I will continue to be mad about their music and dancing."
We took the Fasts up to see the dancing in Pliatan, of course, and he at once offered to put me in touch with an impresario in Belgium.
"It would be a tremendous success in Brussels," he said. "As for Paris, it would go crazy about it."
Before going back to Djakarta he told us, "We have to hold a regional conference somewhere in Indonesia during July. I am thinking that Bali might be an ideal place to hold it. Don't be surprised if we meet again before too many months have gone by."
The lights in the compound at Pliatan were dim. On the floor of the rehearsal verandah sat the Anak Agung, his two right hands, Made Lebah and Gusti Kompiang, Sampih and our two selves. The night was hot and still, and our cups of thick black coffee which the warong just outside the puri gates bought from a plantation in the mountains near Bedugul, remained untouched. The three children had long ago climbed together onto one thin mattress and were asleep, sprawled out over each other. The members of the club had all carefully laid down their hammers on the metallophone keys and wandered back to their houses in the dark. The only sign of movement in any of the houses, where now only coconut-shell lights burned steadily, came from the house nearest us, where a "mother" of the Anak Agung, his father's last surviving wife, could be heard yawning. This vast woman, we had recently learned, was the real head of the family, for she controlled the monies of the puri and thereby every adult and child within its four walls. What she thought of our work we did not know. We could see her as we talked, sitting mountainously on her bed, an old towel wrapped around her head, and scratching her large, still firm, bosom.
The cement of the verandah floor was cool, and we were discussing what next to add to our programme. We had a Legong that lasted over an hour, with Sampih's Kebiar and the overture. There was the Djanger, which could go on indefinitely; and there were masked dancers whom we used to call in sometimes from outlying villages. Already we had at our disposal a repertoire almost unique for one club, and our friends were conscious and proud of this.
"If we were to go abroad, Agung Adji, do you know how long our Legong, with the Kebiar and Djanger and Tabuh Telu would play for?" "That is for you to tell us," was the comfortable answer. The Balinese love talking into the night and he was in no hurry. "You mean the dances are too long?" asked Lebah.
"Of course they are," growled Sampih, who living in Kaliungu and poring over books on ballet and the western theatre was already our invaluable adviser.
"We love to see the Legong play for an hour, Made. But abroad our whole programme will have to be cut and condensed. So far, we have perhaps nearly half a programme. There is still much work to do."
"Beh! I thought we were nearly ready."
"Agung Adji—could we not make some agreement with three or four masked dancers from another village and make them honorary members of the club? We should find the right people and ask them to start rehearsing with us, because masked plays go on for hours and hours and I want to have two stories rehearsed and shortened to about twenty or thirty minutes. To make it worth their while, we could agree that if and when we go abroad, they would go with us." "That would be possible. In the village of Singapadu there are such people."
"And in Batuan, too, perhaps? I admire Kakul very much."
I was referring to a famous teacher and dancer, who by day was a hard-working peasant, each afternoon a fancier of fighting cocks, whose children from the ages of seven to fourteen all were good dancers, and who, himself, was able to teach some six sorts of dancing.
"Pliatan has no relations with Batuan. But doubtless John and Sampih together could influence Kakul. He is your friend and Sampih's old Baris teacher."
"All right, Agung Adji—that means we have Legong, Kebiar, Djanger, and Sampih's Baris dance to put in a masked play. Now Luce and I want something new."
“Something new? You mean...?"
"We mean just that. Bali is the only island in the whole of the Far East where new dance forms are being created. How old is the Kebiar, or the Djanger? Less than twenty-five years! Well, we want an entirely new dance created for our club to take abroad."
They considered this, open-minded, with none of that scorn or conservatism that such a suggestion would have received in other eastern lands. Then Lebah, who perhaps had nightmare visions of western choreography being forced upon his gamelan and dancers, asked us cautiously, "And who would teach this new dance, Tuan?"
"Mario."
They looked happier as they thought this over. Then the Anak Agung sucked his teeth loudly and said, "It might be possible. Have you perhaps any ideas about what sort of dance this should be-or did you talk it over with Mario?"
"No, we've said nothing to Mario before asking for your approval. But Luce and I had two ideas only. We'd like this to be a dance for a man and a girl, not another solo dance; we would like a real Balinese dance created for, say, Sampih and little Raka, because so far we've seen girls take male roles and men take girl’s roles, but never-apart from the Djoged—have we seen a fine dance of this sort. And then Luce wants to design a truly feminine costume for the girl dancer for similar reasons-because girls dancing in male Kebiar costume we think are ugly and dull. Luce wants a really delicate, feminine costume. Perhaps it will have just a little Javanese or Serimpi influence in it."
"Beh!" Another silence.
Then the Anak Agung looked at the other Balinese, raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and turned to us grinning: "That is settled then. Has John any more ideas that we could discuss?"
"Only this, O Limb of God, my dear Agung Adji—when do we board the jeep together and invade Tabanan to carry off Mario?"
"Most excellent Tuan,” he replied, laughing, "who has never known patience: shall we say tomorrow morning at precisely ten o'clock from Kaliungu?"
And so the siege of Mario began.
On our first trip to Tabanan we found him just leaving the Government office on his bicycle to go o
n a message. So we were compelled to tell him that we wanted him to create another new dance for us under the patronizing gaze of the white-shirted and smartly trousered officials, who found it a ridiculous thing that a foreigner should drive all the way over from Denpasar to look for their messenger boy.
Mario was astonished at our proposal, yet also delighted. Since he must have leisure to think it all over, and since he had no immediate ideas for a new dance, he played for time. But this we gave him gladly, at first, merely telling him that we hoped he would make a dance with Sampih and Raka in it, and one that would contain the essentials of "boy meets girl." He guffawed, saying, “Good, Tuan, very good."
A week later we drove over again at the time his office closed. Perhaps there had been many cockfights, or perhaps no inspiration had yet come. He was full of excuses, and desperate as we blocked them.
His wife was sick, he said-truly sick. We replied that we had just come from his house, where indeed his wife had seemed a little pale, but we would gladly take her to Denpasar's hospital or to Dr. Suhardi, a Javanese gynaecologist friend of Luce's family, who was now practising there, too. Then he changed his ground, whispering to us confidentially that he must first ask permission of the Raja, who was still the nominal head of the civil administration. We said yes, this was reasonable, we would gladly go with him and tell the Raja why we were asking for him. So Mario, with his back to the wall, said that he must stay in Tabanan a while because very soon it was the anniversary of his house temple—and furthermore, he added on an inspiration, if he left his house, who would feed the fighting cocks?
We gave him another four days to think it over, and when we returned next time we drove straight to his house. His wife met us, laughing. "Mario has gone to a cockfights," he told us.
"Do you know, perhaps, in which village this fight is?"
"I did not ask. There is one almost every day."
Again we were defeated. But the following day we came back in the morning and found Mario in the market, drinking coffee. He greeted us with pretended contrition. "A great pity that my foolish wife did not know where the cockfight was yesterday." have not yet asked the permission of the Lord Raja to go to Pliatan, Tuan."
So we invited him to get into the jeep and solemnly and at once we drove up before the Raja's Office, and after we had apologized for the informality of our dress, the young Raja received us together and at once. He was a dark-skinned, round-faced man in his thirties, and most helpful.
"So you are starting Mario off again as a teacher," he commented.
"That is very good. He should be teaching Kebiar here in Tabanan, also."
And he graciously gave Mario permission to absent himself for a week or ten days at a time, provided that a reasonable deputy could be found to do his work.
"Easy, easy, Tuan," he told us. "My friends in the office will do that for me."
So we agreed to wait in Kaliungu till Mario came over on the morning bus, and then to take him by jeep to Pliatan. But next day no Mario came. We telephoned the Tabanan office from Denpasar, but he was not there. Next morning again we telephoned, and from another messenger we gathered that Mario's friends were not so willing to take over his additional work.
Then one afternoon I said to Sampih, "Come on, Pih. Let's go to Tabanan for the last time. Wherever Mario is we will find him and bring him back to Pliatan this very day."
Of course, he was not at home. But his wife told us to ask for him at a sort of warong, or club, where there was a billiard table, near the central crossroads of the town; and here we met a friend of Mario's who thought, though he was not sure, that Mario had left for a cockfight in a certain village some twelve kilometres distant, riding his bicycle. We left in hot pursuit, driving over grassy roads through rice fields which sloped down to the seashore, until we knew we were on the right track because we began to pass Balinese figures hurrying along, in their hands the coconut-leaf meshed baskets, out of which the fighting cocks tails could be seen projecting. Of one such man we asked the name of the village where the cockfight was being held; he directed us but he dared not claim a place in our jeep for fear it should alarm his cock. Another mile, and we could hear the roar of the betting crowd above the jeep's engine, and then the track, which was running through the very rice-fields, became so narrow that it would be impossible to turn if we went further, and the last hundreds of yards we walked.
As is the normal custom, the fight was taking place under a temporary awning made from loosely laid palm fronds. Around the square earth floor were hundreds of peasants—no women at all were visible save those selling arak or palm toddy at the inevitable warongs—and they were in much the mood of a boxing crowd, the only differences being that they chewed betel, drank arak and squatted or stood in densely packed layers, talking and shouting loudly. We soon spotted Mario, in the very front row, with a smile of satisfaction on his face, but seeming to take no active part in the animated discussions surrounding him.
The whole of the centre of the floor was filled with squatting men, mouths plugged with their chews of tobacco, hoarsely offering their birds for a fight, holding them up to challenge some onlooker. When two men thought that their birds might be well matched, they would squat facing each other in the ring, where they exchanged birds, felt them, weighed them, fancying their chances, calculating whether the day and the hour and the colour of their opponent's bird was auspicious for their own bird or not. When any two of them had agreed to a contest, they would take out a slim wooden case the shape of a slender axehead, and from it select a spur, three or four inches long and as sharp as a razor, which they then bound firmly to their bird's right leg, where its own natural spur had long been removed. When three or four pairs were thus suited, the next round of fights would begin.
Seated prominently at one side of the ring was an elderly man, wearing a gorgeous new headcloth in honour of his position as the referee. By his side was a bell to sound the rounds, and also a bowl of water, near which was set a half coconut shell into which had been bored a tiny hole. A wounded bird would be "counted out" in the time that it took the coconut shell to sink in the bowl of water.
The first two owners now squatted in opposing corners, their birds held up in one hand above their heads, where their fine points were offered for the betters' inspection, and then bets began to be placed uproariously by every man. Two men would make a bet by one catching the other's eye, indicating the bird they each fancied by an outward thrust of the chin in its direction or by a shout of their bird's colour, then eyebrows were raised in mutual satisfaction and with a firm nod the bet was on. Professional betters also made their rounds, placing or accepting bets at even prices, at two-to-three or at two-to-one. Those who wanted to place their bets tried to find takers by shouting out the colour of the bird they fancied and by raising a hand with their silver coins exposed in them. "Djau! Djau! Djau! Djau!” they would shriek, this being the betting abbreviation for hidjau, meaning green.
When it was judged that most of the bets had been made, the first two men set their birds on the ground, facing each other in the centre of the ring and only an inch or two apart, where, with serpentine necks and bristling combs they measured and lunged at each other, while their owners inflamed them further by bouncing them up and down within range of their opponent’s beaks, then pulling them back again, until the birds crowed and were frantic with rage. The two men retreated again to their comers while the last bets were made in a storm of noise, and at a signal from the referee, released them to fight.
The two cocks run at each other, meeting beak to beak in the centre, measuring each other up and down, circling, eyeing one another redly, snakelike necks dipping and lowering, head and neck feathers angrily ruffled, always beak to beak, looking for an opening. The crowd is deathly silent.
Suddenly one cock leaps up-an immediate, long-drawn "Ah-h-h!" from the crowd—but he has timed it badly; only a f
ew feathers fly. At once his opponent leaps up against him again, and, as they fall apart, the keen spur is drawn in a vicious slash into the breast of his enemy near where the wing joins the body. As if on a reflex both birds leap up a third time together, breast to breast, and this time there is a great falling of feathers as they tumble asunder again. But the green bird is now seen crouched to the floor, a tell-tale trickle of dark blood showing through its bedraggled feathers. It tries in vain to rise to its feet again, but its eyes are already filming over and half shut in death. The owner of the winning bird, meanwhile, walks gingerly after his cock who still tries to attack the dying bird, and very carefully he slips a hand under it and lifts it cleanly aloft. If a bird is too excited, or its owner careless in picking it up, the spur can cut through a man's hand to the bone, while a frightened bird flapping desperately into the spectators has been known to send men to hospital with terrible wounds.
During three bouts the spectators urged on their favourites and groaned over their losses, making the most colossal and exciting din, but each time the fighting was over they pulled out their money and paid or accepted their debts with poker faces. Then out came the sirek pouches and the warongs were surrounded by men slinging down tots of the fiery arak. There was a wild-eyed, rather alcoholic atmosphere, aggressively masculine, and the usual musky smell was heavily impregnated with tuak and arak, with betel and cigarettes acrid and carnation flavoured.
I met Mario and Sampih on the edge of the throng. Mario was looking very happy.
"Bek! A pity the Tuan arrived so late. He would have seen my bird win." He indicated the winner's tail sticking out of the palm-leaf bag in which he was already encased again, and to which there was also now tied the corpse of his late enemy.
"I think cockfighting is like a religion to you, Bapa."
"Indeed, it is very important, Tuan. Even when I was always dancing I had to fight the cocks as well. If I had smelled blood at a fight, I would dance better."