About two hundred yards away a group of natives were standing and squatting around, and maidens sat cross-legged with baskets and small flares selling dainty edibles. We edged through the crowd and saw two girls about ten years old wrapped in embroidered sarongs, with elaborate gold tinsel head-dresses that flickered sparklingly in the lamplight as they danced mosaic patterns to treble high notes, accompanied by deep bass tones from large gongs; their heads swayed, their eyes flickered, their fingers quivered to the devilish music, which developed to a crescendo like a raging torrent, then calmed down again into a placid river. The finish was anticlimactic; the dancers stopped abruptly and sank back into the crowd. There was no applause – the Balinese never applaud; nor have they a word for love or thank you.
Walter Spies, the musician and painter, called and had lunch with us at the hotel. He had lived in Bali for fifteen years, and spoke Balinese. He had transcribed some of their music for piano, which he played for us; the effect was like a Bach concerto played in double time. Their musical taste was quite sophisticated, he said; our modern jazz they dismissed as dull and too slow. Mozart they considered sentimental, and only Bach interested them because his patterns and rhythms were similar to their own. I found their music cold, ruthless and slightly disturbing; even the deep doleful passages had the sinister yearning of a hungry minotaur.
After lunch Spies took us into the interior of the jungle, where a ceremony of flagellation was to take place. We were obliged to walk four miles along a jungle path to get there. When we arrived, we came upon a large crowd surrounding an altar about twelve feet long. Young maidens in beautiful sarongs, their breasts bare, were queueing up with baskets laden with fruit and other offerings, which a priest, looking like a dervish with long hair down to his waist and dressed in a white gown, blessed and laid upon the altar. After the priests had intoned prayers, giggling youths broke through and ransacked the altar, grabbing what they could as the priests lashed violently out at them with whips. Some were forced to drop their spoils because of the severity of the lashings, which were supposed to rid them of evil spirits that tempted them to rob.
We went in and out of temples and compounds as we pleased, and saw cock-fights and attended festivals and religious ceremonies which took place all hours of the day and night. I left one at five in the morning. Their gods are pleasure-loving, and the Balinese worship them not with awe, but with affection.
Late one night Spies and I came upon a tall Amazon woman dancing by torchlight, her little son imitating her in the background. A young-looking man occasionally instructed her. We discovered later that he was her father. Spies asked him his age.
‘When was the earthquake?’ he asked.
‘Twelve years ago,’ said Spies.
‘Well, I had three married children then.’ Seemingly not satisfied with this answer, he added: ‘I am two thousand dollars old,’ declaring that in his lifetime he had spent that sum.
In many compounds I saw brand-new limousines used as chicken-coops. I asked Spies the reason. Said he: ‘A compound is run on communistic lines, and the money it makes by exporting a few cattle they put into a savings fund which over the years amounts to a considerable sum. One day an enterprising automobile salesman talked them into buying Cadillac limousines. For the first couple of days they rode around having great fun, until they ran out of gasoline. Then they discovered that the cost of running a car for a day was as much as they earned in a month, so they left them in the compounds for the chickens to roost in.’
Balinese humour is like our own and abounds in sex jokes, truisms and play on words. I tested the humour of our young waiter at the hotel. ‘Why does a chicken cross the road?’ I asked.
His reaction was supercilious. ‘Everyone knows that one,’ said he to the interpreter.
‘Very well then, which came first, the chicken or the egg?’
This stumped him. ‘The chicken – no –’ he shook his head, ‘– the egg – no,’ he pushed back his turban and thought a while; then announced with final assurance: ‘The egg.’
‘But who laid the egg?’
‘The turtle, because the turtle is supreme and lays all the eggs.’
Bali then was a paradise. Natives worked four months in the rice-fields and devoted the other eight to their art and culture. Entertainment was free all over the island, one village performing for the other. But now paradise is on the way out. Education has taught them to cover their breasts and forsake their pleasure-loving gods for Western ones.
Before leaving for Japan, my Japanese secretary, Kono, expressed a desire to go ahead and prepare for our arrival. We were to be the guests of the Government. In Kobe harbour we were greeted by aeroplanes circling over our ship dropping leaflets of welcome, while thousands cheered on the docks. The sight of numerous brightly coloured kimonos against the background of smoke-stacks and the drab grey docks was paradoxically beautiful. There was little of the reputed mystery or restraint in that Japanese demonstration. It was as excited and emotional as any crowd I have ever seen anywhere.
The Government put a special train at our disposal to take us on to Tokyo. At each station the crowds and excitement increased, and the platforms were crammed with a galaxy
