Dancing Out of Bali

by John Coast

  Then on the way south again, our student escort asked us to stop on the mountain road and led us off through a vegetable patch to a simple wooden hut, where we found the renowned leader of Balinese resistance, Lieutenant Tantra himself, popularly known as Pa' Poleng, the Piebald Father, his former revolutionary nom de guerre.

  He read Islam Salim's letter. Then he smiled and promised us that "he would rub the head a bit" of one of the signatories of the protest letter and use his influence to see that all went quietly and well. This group could do much for Bali and Indonesia, he said. But then he added, in a serious voice:

  "But remember—the head of our Government in Denpasar, friend Sutedja, feels just the same way about Gianjar as I do." He looked at us all in turn, with unblinking eyes. "None of us must ever forget what we suffered at the hands of the former regime—and even now we must always be on our guard against their machinations."

  We saw Pa' Poleng again several times before leaving Bali, finding him the type of young revolutionary who compelled respect by his sincerity. He had wide-open, uncompromising, straight eyes; was wiry and thin; rode in no comfortable car but was content to lead a Spartan life in the Army, using an older jeep than mine, and setting an austere example to his men.

  The other group of nationalists we met through the manager of the People's Bank, Ida Bagus Pedada. Their leaders were two intelligent, subtle men, named Widja and Mantik.

  Though Widja used his influence in Denpasar, Mantik quickly became our adviser and friend, driving up to Pliatan most Sundays to eat with us and watch the rehearsals. We were sorry not to have met him before, for his brain was acute and fearless, while his tongue could cut like the spur of a fighting cock.

  Indrosugondho arrived in Bali a day or two later, and after drinking tea with us in Kaliungu, and after we had watched him talking with the Pliatan club and strumming on their metallophones, comparing their scales with the Javanese, we saw how fortunate we would be were an artist such as this to accompany us on behalf of the Government. He told us, though, that nothing had yet been settled.

  Before he went back to Java I told him the results of our political delvings, hinting that reports exposing this little bluff would soon be on their way to Djakarta. Indrosugondho listened quietly and was silent; but from the amused expression in his eyes I knew that he had already come to the same conclusions.

  We now became too busy to heed any politics or intrigues, too everlastingly at work to have time to reflect on any role played unconsciously against a backdrop of the drama of Bali's social evolution. And though we were becoming more and more tired, and daily summoning the old Javanese woman from behind the village barber's hut to come and massage us, we were so impregnated with the music, so gladly feeling the responsibility of building up and dovetailing and concentrating the loveliest of the dances for Western eyes, that in our isolated world we were thoroughly, if ephemerally, happy.

  We now had exactly the forty-four dancers and musicians to which our contract limited us. Our gamelan had been cut to twenty-three, but, as we had feared, the Kebiar reserve for Sampih, Gusti Ngurah Raka, failed us. After fetching him and losing him again several times as soon as he had returned home, the Anak Agung and I drove over once more to his distant village, walked far down muddied precipices and with a guide clambered across a fast-flowing torrent by stepping stones that were invisible and treacherously smooth under the muddy water, and for which our feet groped prehensilely. After this little adventure we ascended a high, vertical bank, and entered a spacious but empty compound, where a child told us in a thin, piping voice to wait while she sought her father.

  At length the dancer came, and we asked his wife to join us as we sat talking in a small bale of wood painted blue. And for the last time we related to both of them our need for a Kebiar dancer. He answered, saying he would come. Then I turned to his sullen wife, who owned the rice-fields and had borne him five children, and she answered sourly, "I bow always to my husband, Tuan."

  So, for three more days he rehearsed with us, and his melancholy face warmed a little. Then again he went home, and after a week, a classic letter reached us through the post.

  "Respected Tuan," it read. "On account of the disease of madness which sometimes affects my father, and because there is need for a man in this house, with this letter I hereby cancel the going abroad of my husband to dance." And that was the end of him.

  Another younger pupil of Mario's danced once or twice in Pliatan but our doctor found that his lungs were tubercular. The important Kebiar and Bumblebee roles were thus still without a reserve for them.

  As to the programme, it was now as full of action and entertainment as was legitimate, and so condensed that in a normal month's living in Bali you would not see such varied and good dancing. I was sad only because time forbade my including Kakul's Djauk dance. In it, Kakul, on feet as light as air, faced a solo drummer and did a quite incredibly rapid, feinting dance at the drummer. It was breathtaking, but an inseparable part of a long Djauk entry.

  The Kaliungu “office,” meanwhile, quivered with life, too. We sent London and New York painted sketches of the set we required, a Balinese gateway, pencilling in the exact proportions. We wrote and sent out notes for the script to be used by a mistress of ceremonies on the stage apron. We sent programme notes concerning each dance. We made a plan stating the room accommodation required for us all, including kitchens, utensils for cooking, rice, meat, vegetables and exotic spices. Columbia Artists were undertaking all this for us. And then, more than a month after our contract had been signed, came the long-delayed offer from Sol Hurok, whose secretary had mistakenly sent it by sea mail. The stamped envelope I sent back to his office to prove that we had not deliberately done this to him. We felt sorry for the secretary....

  The costumes were coming along well. Luce was now, with the help of friends in "Pertia,"very awake Balinese firm in Denpasar which made fine kains and sarongs, supervising the final tailoring of traditional Balinese jackets, like high-necked black mess jackets, one of which was being made from warm material, one from thin cotton, for each of the thirty-three men in the group.

  Only one clothing drama arose, but Tjokorda Oka survived it, though for a time he feared he had lost eight hundred rupiahs of money to pay his workmen. The Tjokorda, a most honest man, apparently lived in torment for two days after losing this money, and prayed to the village Barong to help him find it. He suspected the thief to be a man who had wandered suspiciously near him while he bathed in the river one evening; he searched this villager's house violently and in vain, but in order to scare him kept uttering publicly the most horrible threats of vengeance. Two nights after his loss, he awoke to hear a dreamlike voice bidding him go down to the river and look by the bole of the tree where he had left his clothes while bathing that day. He dressed himself hurriedly, lit resin torches, took his servants to the river's bank with him: and there the money was! Next morning he came to us, mightily relieved, to tell us his story, and he added, "Beh! Our’s is a powerful Barong in Singapadu. I prayed for its help, and it helped me. Now I shall make special offerings for it and give the village a Barong Play."

  On yet another level we were travelling round to all the Punggawa’s offices and police stations, getting letters of good conduct for each man and woman in the group, while the Denpasar Immigration Office was preparing the passports, and the whole group had come down in instalments to be photographed in the town. On a table in my house was a pile of American visa application forms nearly a foot high, for every one of us had to fill out a three-page questionnaire, and all this naturally became our task, too.

  In Denpasar, too, we had discovered Dr. Angsar, a young and modern physician, who cured Luce's old complaint after discovering her allergy. He now inoculated and vaccinated all of us, and coped with our two casualties. For Serog, our invaluable old clown, had a horny growth creeping over his eyes, and this old peasant dared to
enter the hospital and have both his eyes operated upon, not even losing his humour—which kept his ward in a state of quite dangerous laughter—when his eyes were bandaged and he was blind for four days. His was an example of courage and trust; and when he had recovered, he confided to us that his ambition abroad was to buy a set of false teeth—he owned but one stump and could not chew his sireh.

  Then one day the Anak Agung said to us, "This· Gusti Oka according to our Balinese custom she should not go with us. She will defile the company."

  "What's the matter with her, Agung Adji?" I asked in surprise, for Gusti Oka was the pretty leader of our Djanger.

  "She is sebel—unclean. She is more than twenty years old and has never menstruated. Often she looks swollen and sick. She may not enter a temple, strictly speaking, for fear of desecrating it; and of course no man would think of marrying her."

  But Dr. Angsar injected hormones into her, and in about a month she had soiled her kain for the first time to the amazed delight of her whole family.

  It was outside Bali, however, that my main worries were now centred. In the first place, the London try-out date just didn't materialize. Since the K.L.M. charter had to be paid three weeks in advance, and its date had to fit in precisely with the London run, we were faced either with losing our charter or arriving in London to find no theatre ready for us—for we could not finalize the charter's date till the London theatre was found for us. This was a situation that was driving me frantically to telephone Djakarta in the two half-hours a week when such phone connection existed-at a time when all good officials were taking their afternoon nap.

  Then, just when things were moving to their climax in Bali, another press campaign started up in Djakarta. This time three papers in the political group opposed to President Sukarno were sniping from their gutters at us, and I was sickened and furious and quite unable to do anything about them from Denpasar.

  So, when once again I was called to Djakarta this time to meet my Directors-General finally elect, Indrosugondho and Sutarjo, I was only too glad to jump into the first plane, intending to visit these foul newspapers as well as settle the K.L.M. charter. But, as I said to Luce, the first night I was at the Des Indes I would put through a long-distance call and I would speak to Anthony Hawtrey, the director of the small, artistic Embassy Theatre in London, who had had experience of the Javanese Dancers in 1946. It was already July 7th when I left Bali....

  Directly I had dropped my bag in the Des Indes I booked the call to London for the following evening, and then jumped into a Ministry car and drove to Indrosugondho's small bungalow, where I found him with Sutarjo, a tall, heavily-built man who wore spectacles and a black Moslem pitji hat. Sutarjo told me he was then trying to help Suprapto escape from his radio station so that he could get on with handling the group's insurance and baggage. Indrosugondho, as the senior of the two, would sign the K.L.M. charter agreement, and early next morning the three of us called on the K.L.M. office, asking them to wait patiently for a final charter date till I had spoken to London.

  That evening the English voice of Anthony Hawtrey, made tinny by the great distance, came through clearly. First I told him of the project, adding that my cousin Joan could show him all the publicity material he needed; this group was 100 per cent better than the students' troupe of 1946: was he interested? Yes, said Hawtrey; and if he could get a West End theatre, since the little Embassy Theatre was being repaired anyway, wouldn't I prefer that? Obviously, I replied—but don't get too big a theatre—this is an intimate show. How long could you play in London? he asked. We were wanting a week in Paris and a week in London, but Paris is hopeless in August; so we want two weeks between August 25th came his voice shrilly. I'm pretty sure I can get either the Princes or the Winter Garden Theatre. Anyhow, confirm by cable and keep in touch, said he: but it's a deal.

  So I walked out of the booth on air, stopping on the dining verandah at the table of an ECA friend, where I said, "Andy, I've hooked a deal in London with six minutes' telephoning. I can't believe it."

  On the following morning it so happened that the newspapers smearing me quite excelled themselves. One of them published a filched copy of my Foreign Ministry contract, protesting at such "enormous" wages being paid to a foreigner. Another predicted that all the profits would disappear into my pockets. Yet another hinted darkly that it was incredible how this one miserable white man could twiddle the Indonesian President and three Ministries round his little finger.

  I therefore went in search of some of my Secretaries-General to ask them to explain publicly that two Indonesians would now be going with, and over, me to save national face; and I also wanted it made clear that the Balinese venture was merely a first experiment, which, if successful, would lead to Javanese and Sumatran groups going abroad in subsequent years.

  There then followed one of the most extraordinary weeks of my life. Though I realised that this was more than a mere personal attack on me, being rather a tragic and unpleasant symptom of Indonesia's social evolution—which in turn was but one facet of all Asia's nationalist revolt—I had never felt more frustrated and sick at heart.

  For my one "official channel" now dried up on me! During four critical days I tried to speak with Ruslan Abdulgani, to ask him to make the statement I needed. And for four whole days he either locked himself up in his house or held himself incommunicado in his Ministry, mysteriously refusing to see me. Meanwhile, more jealous officials from Denpasar arrived in Djakarta, where they again started whispering in the ear of the Palace Secretary....

  On the fourth evening, when Abdulgani was still in his retreat, in desperation I called late at night at the private house of the Palace Secretary himself, who then and there hissed at me that I had misled the President about the situation in Bali; that no one official channel had ever been agreed upon, and that each and every step I took must be taken with the full concurrence of all the five Ministries; that I must never presume to darken the Presidential Palace again.

  So I went at once to the Secretary-General of my own Foreign Ministry, Dr. Darma. It was then eleven o'clock at night, and Dr. Darma, a most industrious man, I found lying in his pyjamas on the floor of his living room, reading the current Economist. I told him my dilemma—that I needed a statement made by the Government, that Ruslan Abdulgani was invisible, that the Palace Secretary had forbidden me to go to the Palace. But he replied: "You must see the President, obviously. Try to get an appointment at the Palace tomorrow and say that I support you.” Having said which he rolled over onto his stomach again and continued his reading.

  But next morning, while once more I lay in wait at the Ministry of Information, Ruslan Abdulgani suddenly manifested himself.

  He was cordiality and normality itself. And from his office we telephoned to the President and I was actually in his presence an hour later. In a most embarrassing interview the Palace Secretary, specially summoned, was informed by the President that he understood nothing of these underground, artistic Balinese politics. But any public statement-well, that was in the province of Ruslan Abdulgani.

  But when I returned to the Information Ministry, Ruslan said:

  "Later on, when the whole group is in Djakarta en route abroad, we will make a full statement."

  I said: "And what of my name being dragged in the mud day after day in the mean time?''

  "Ignore it," said Ruslan. "It is a compliment to be attacked by such people."

  "But you are a Secretary-General and racial sentiment can't be used against you."

  "Ignore it," he repeated.

  I said, "You know the truth of the matter; the ordinary reader doesn't. It's always me, the foreigner, who gets it in the neck. The Government says nothing because it's beneath its dignity, and my enemies in Bali only see what is published in the papers. Even Izak Mahdi, my closest Indonesian friend, was puzzled and spent hours discussing the whole problem with me last night.
"

  "I can't forbid you to call on these men said Ruslan, “but my advice remains the same: ignore them."

  I went that afternoon to the office of one of the gang against us.

  ''I'm sorry, friend Ruslan,” I had said,"but I want just once to attempt to tell them about what we're doing."

  But the interview I found tragic in its racial implications. The columnist was a tall youth, handsome and neurotic, and he asked to hear the whole story. He listened, his head jerking nervously up and down, then said, almost hysterically, "The President has absolutely no right to meddle in things like this—he has acted quite wrongly.

  And you yourself are now associating with such contemptible political figures that you are automatically suspect-muddied with their dirt."

  "Leaving aside your malicious abuse,” I replied, "the President only recommended this project, and hasn't it struck you that if I'm working for an objective I must work with the persons who are in the Government?"

  He changed his ground.

  "Anyhow, you're being paid far too much—and we object to your calling yourself an expert on Indonesian culture."

  I answered quietly, “I am receiving about the same pay as a Second Secretary at the British Embassy. As to the word ‘expert’ I loathe it, never use it, and am not responsible for the Foreign Ministry's nomenclatures. But they don't describe me as an expert on Indonesian culture."

  With disdain in his eyes he strode lankily to a filing cabinet and flung a photostatted copy of my contract on the table.