THE TREE

This is the story of a white woman who lived for fifteen years in Indonesia, living, not visiting, knowing the country and its people, from the highest to the lowest, and sharing their joys and their sorrows. This woman is myself. Which makes it more difficult for the telling because it is always difficult to be completely honest about oneself.

But I must begin at the beginning, and I am not sure what the beginning is. All lives have many beginnings apart from the obvious one of birth. Let us call mine at the foot of Snaefell mountain on the Isle of Man. One of the earliest stories my mother told me was about a barrel which rolled down Snaefell and did not stop till it reached the bottom. The barrel was filled with spikes. It also contained my great-grandmother. She had been put in the barrel still alive because she was thought to be a witch. At that place, which was a barren waste land, where the barrel stopped rolling, the Manx people tell that a tree of unusual beauty sprang from the earth. As a child I believed I saw the tree.

In common with everyone else I have many ancestors, but I think they are more important to me than they are to most people, though they are not all witches of course. I was born in Scotland of Manx parents. My father was an archaeologist who left Manxland for Africa before I was bom. He never returned, as he caught a tropical fever which killed him. My mother did not accompany him on this final expedition. She had no wish, so she later told me, to have her child born among as she put it "cannibals and natives in the Bush and the jungle." She did not share my father's love for these people and this land. She had promised to join him later. But after word of his death was received she married again. My stepfather was a Scotsman.

He adopted me as his own child, insisted on giving me his name and had my birth registered in Glasgow as his own daughter. But I am not a Scot. I am full-blooded Manx, or rather a mixture of blood from the Viking pirates who swept down from the north in the thirteenth century and the kings of the Isle of Man.

We are a superstitious lot, we Manx people. Many of us still believe in witchcraft and in the wee folk. What is called supernatural is not strange to us. We are subject to strong compulsions, not easily explained. We can sometimes foretell the future. When I was young, these powers were very strong in me, and they have returned from time to time. They did so when I was in solitary confinement in a Japanese prison during World War II. But more of this at the proper place... And who is to say that such powers are false? For me, such beliefs are important and I found that they endeared me to the Balinese people, among whom I spent so many years. Their "goona-goona," or witchcraft, was no more strange to me in the Isle of Bali than it had been in the Isle of Man, ten thousand miles away.

I spent the first fourteen years of my life on the Isle of Man, and then I went to school in Scotland. My stepfather was killed in the First World War. After his death my mother decided to go to the United States. We settled in Hollywood.

We soon found a distinct place for ourselves in the Hollywood of those days. I think my mother understood her new American friends better than she understood me and better than she had ever understood my father with his natives and his "cannibals." And yet she was Manx and believed in witchcraft and in the fairies and all the rest.

I myself was really an artist. It was largely through chance that I became successful in another field. I found myself writing interviews and articles about the film stars and the high moguls of Hollywdad which were published abroad in British trade and film magazines. I did not enjoy this work, but I made money at it. In fact, success was more than adequate, comfort and security assured. Yet I became increasingly restless. I was discontented. I was unhappy. I often wished that I was an archaeologist and would thus have a real excuse for going to far places. I wanted to paint and do nothing else, but there were so many other things in which I found myself involved. I thought the people I knew shallow and superficial. Their aims, their ambitions, were wholly apart from my own.

Although my mother did not understand me, she was aware that I was unhappy. She suggested once that I might care to return to Manxland, but this I brushed aside. I had a curious feeling that I would know the place where I wished to be as soon as I saw it.

My mother was always saying, "History will one day repeat itself." At that time I did not know what she meant. I was young then as I now count youth, and there were many things I did not know.

I must come now to the year 1932, which is another beginning for my story perhaps the one that matters most. It was a rainy afternoon. I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard. I stopped before a small theater showing a foreign film and on the spur of the moment decided to go in. The film was entitled "Bali, The Last Paradise".

I became entranced. The picture was aglow with an agrarian pat tern of peace, contentment, beauty and love. Yes, I had found my life. I recognized the place where I wished to be. My decision was sudden, but it was irrevocable. It was as if fate had brushed my shoulder. I felt a compulsion, from which I had no desire to escape.

I began to make my plans. My mother was not in the least surprised. "History repeating itself. I have always known it would happen some day. You and your father, both of you always preferred strange races."

What race could be stranger than the Manx? I wanted to ask her. But there was no need for argument. After I left I never saw my mother again. She died while I was a prisoner of the Japanese in Indonesia.

Would I do this thing all over again? Yes, I think I would. I survived, that is obvious, and more or less unscathed. The Manx are a sturdy people with a strange resistance to hardship. As I have said, fate brushed my shoulder. The barrel with the spikes had rolled to a stop, and the tree, which few could see, had spread out its branches.

PITO

I must set sail from New York, which I did on a bleak morning in November, on a fat little cargo ship bound for the Far East. I was equipped with all necessities, including money, of which I took all I had. As I wanted to paint in Bali, I acquired a two-year supply of canvases, brushes and oils. For my ship Batavia, as it was called then, was the port of call nearest to Bali, and by any reckoning Java was a long sea trek. En route we discharged and picked up cargo in Africa, India, China, Malaya, and Sumatra. There was month on month of this and I was the only passenger.

At last we dropped anchor at a cluster of wharves and warehouses called Tandjung Priok, the disembarkation point for Batavia, some six miles inland. That golden island where I hoped to live, that enchanted paradise of Bali where life would prove uncomplicated and exquisite, was still some distance off, waiting tranquilly between two oceans, the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea.

The dock laborers of Java were not the slow-shuffling coolies typical of Shanghai and Hong Kong with faces hidden beneath brown straw brims. They were lithe, agile brown men, their bare shoulders and strong legs gleaming like metal in the equatorial sun. Lordly Dutchmen and other Caucasians, cool in starched white duck or seer sucker, stood aloof from the antlike activities of the natives, and satisfied themselves that all was in order before they signaled for the shiny American-built motorcars, the taxis of Java, to take them home or to their clubs.

To reach Batavia, where I must arrange for my final objective, I drove along concrete-paved, canal-bordered roadways. The hotels in Batavia surprised me. There was the swank Hotel Des Indes, the comfortable Des Galleries, and the Netherlander of older fashion. All excellent. Important guests were received in the great houses whose green lawns surrounded the Koenigsplein, or King's Square, and whose windows looked grandly out on the Governor General's Palace. Java, like all the other islands of Indonesia, was then part of the Dutch East Indies, and Batavia reflected all that was best in colonial elegance.

I had planned to buy a motorcar and drive through Java to the little harbor of Banjuwangi, at the other end of the island, and then cross Bali Strait by native ferry. Dutchmen speaking good English were most eager to help me exchange dollars for guilders and negotiate the purchase of a motorcar until they learned that I intended making my journey alone. In Java, where every car owner has a native chauffeur, it was not considered proper for a white man to be at the wheel himself, and for a woman it was unthinkable! I was implored to abandon my original idea and instead to ship my car and travel in comfort by the Dutch KPM steamship line. I listened politely to this advice, and verified information I had already obtained. There were fishermen at Banjuwangi who could be hired to sail a motorcar across the strait in one of their native praus.

I bought a small drophead car and decided to set out alone that same night. I wished to see the people of Java and the countryside at close quarters, and to me there was nothing frightening in driving alone across Java. I had often driven alone from coast to coast in America. But I am forced to record that this Java drive proved quite a different matter.

The roads were strange and I knew neither the language nor the value of the money. At night I found myself in a veritable jigsaw puzzle of twists and turns with unlighted oxcarts blocking the way. And as for lights, my car lamps proved of limited use. Gleaming surfaces seemed to absorb them and overhanging tree branches blotted the moonlight that crept fitfully through clouds. Java was a motorists nightmare, and I began to realize why my Dutch acquaintances had been so dissuasive. The air at least was pleasant with a smell of wet earth and the fragrance of strange flowers.

There were many false turnings and fruitless gesticulations of inquiry to natives who couldn't understand me any more than I could understand them. The confusion was particularly trying when I wanted to buy food or petrol with American money. I could see that I had started my drive grossly unprepared, but it didn't matter. I was on my way to Bali and never doubted that I should arrive there.

Then at close to midnight, though it seemed later, I met Pito for the first time. I was destined to meet him three times in my life always under dramatic circumstances, as this story will reveal. The story of Pito would fill a book in itself. I was jerked to a stop by a child too close to my path, and there he was. I saw him quite plainly, a smiling, ragged little vagabond thumbing a lift. He had long blue-black hair and a pixy face. He couldn t have been more than nine. And he spoke amusing pidgin English.

This must be a trick, I couldn't help thinking. He might be a decoy for robbers. Or, if I took him into my car I might be accused of kidnaping a native child. For what would such a little fellow be doing alone so late and so far from any village? He offered to be my interpreter and my guide if I would take him with me wherever I was going. There was no question that he would prove useful if I could trust him. And I hadn't come so far for doubt to grip me. My sounder judgment was swayed by his childish appeal. He spoke at surprising length.

"Lady," he said, "you like me? I be your eyes. I be your tongue. I get you right change for your money, and I show you right road. I protect you from evil spirits at night. And I speak English good!"

When he learned that I was from America his eyes brightened and his words soared. "American? That is fine! We shall have no trouble. We can fly! All Americans big men have wings much treasure. Evil spirits afraid bother Americans. I can also protect you."

Yes, this strange little urchin was Pito. When I could interrupt his flow of speech I asked him many questions. Unexplained, he was much too unbelievable. How, for instance, had he learned such fluency in pidgin English, which could not have been his native tongue?

"I pick it up from tourists around the hotels since as long as I can remember."

"And your parents?"

"My father, he taken by Dutch soldiers to the land beyond the moon to die. My mother she die of broken heart, and her jiwa [soul] carried off by leyaks."

"Leyaks?"

"Evil spirits. I told you they roam at night."

The land beyond the moon, where Pito's father was, has another name. It is New Guinea, a bleak, malaria-infested island to which the Dutch at this time exiled political prisoners. The Indonesians know it as Tanah Merah, which means Red Earth. They lived in fear of the very name.

Pito, who proved an expert navigator, got us by morning to the next town where there was a police station. I was still worried about the boy. I did not trust him wholly, so I stopped at the police station for advice. The potbellied half-caste station commander to whom I spoke roared with laughter.

"The highways are full of these child nomads. Soon you will collect enough children to start a kindergarten! Put him out when you get to Banjuwangi. He's experienced enough and clever enough to find his own way back. He's just another boy and not worth bothering about."

I could not agree with this, but my worry lifted and my mistrust also. So Pito and I continued our journey. There were eight days of leisurely driving to East Java. The boy was an excellent teacher. He knew money values and taught me the Javanese equivalents of yes, no, want, how much, too much, and other simple and useful phrases. I was in luck to have found him.

These days were pleasant adventure, and this child with no home, no family, and no future apparently was an amusing companion, quite aside from his practical use. There was, I felt, no need for hurry. At night we stopped in villages at a series of resthouses maintained by the Dutch administration for the benefit of Dutch officials and commercial travelers. Despite the fact that these places were usually run by Eurasians, Pito was always refused admission. His color was wrong. But unperturbed he slept in the car along with the dusty luggage.

I soon found out one thing. It was useless to give him money. It would be taken from him by older boys or, if not, he would gamble it away. He was a born gambler and took great delight in teaching me odd little native games of chance. Sometimes he would wheedle my permission, and a little money, to make quick trips from the car to the kampongs (native quarters for the peasants) along the way, where he joined Chinese and Arabs. How amazing it was that grown men should gamble with a child, a child who happened merely to be passing by! But Pito was no ordinary child, of course. He had a will and strength beyond his years. In many ways he was far older than I was.

Soon I couldn't bear the thought of parting with Pito. He must come with me to Bali. But when I asked him if he would like to, I was unprepared for his quick and emphatic refusal. He had other plans. The American lady was very kind. But no. A Java boy must grow up in his own land, and find his father in this other land beyond the moon and set him free. He regarded the Bali people as foreigners, knowing nothing of Java's language or religion. I went on coaxing him. His body, starvation thin, needed care and food. These he could have. I would see that he went to school receive an education. It would be a pleasant life. He was a clever child and would be a credit to his race.

"No," he said, "a Java boy needs no schooling."

It was this that had brought his father to rain. The gods are angered by too much white man's learning.

When we reached Banjuwangi, I went to see the Dutch controlleur. He was cold and indifferent. More plainly than his guttural accent, his frigid gaze told me that I was an idiotic American woman tarnishing white supremacy. I asked him about Pito.

"Give the boy his fare to the place you so unwisely picked him up, and be glad that you are rid of him."

But I couldn't desert Pito. I decided to cross Bali Strait at night with the boy asleep in the car, and afterwards try to persuade him once more to remain with me in Bali.

The first part of my plan was successful. Pito slept soundly while the fishermen, signaled to be quiet, rolled the car into place on the light vessel, a craft so narrow it was impossible either to enter or leave the car while we were on the water. Sails were hoisted silently, and the prau, heavy laden, bobbed slowly into the darkness.

All went well until we reached the uninhabited and deserted beach of the island of my dreams. As the car was being unloaded, Pito woke up. I had to tell him that we were in Bali and that Java was five miles across the strait.

For a moment he stood rigid; Then his eyes distended and he screamed. I don't think I have mentioned that his one precious possession was a large dagger which he carried tucked in the belt of his sarong. Looking at the astonished prau men, he took this out. They edged away from him.

"Take me back take me back!" he shouted. "Bali full of leyaks - I die here!" Then he collapsed into complete hysteria. He wept while the fishermen whispered among themselves.

I managed to soothe Pito by asking his help. "What are they saying?" I asked him.

"That I am right. Bali full of leyaks. And for thirty kilometers, a hideout for tigers, a jungle deserted except for a few Dutch hunters in search of danger. You, a white lady, must take great care. But I I must go back!" He wept on.

So Bali was not yet attained. It was Pito who suggested that the car be left on the beach while we sailed back across the strait to Banjuwangi. I had desired freedom for myself. I could not take freedom from another.

It was an anticlimax, our arrival in Banjuwangi: the purchase of a train ticket to the village nearest where I had first seen Pito; the giving of a little money, food for the journey, some new clothing; and the writing down of my name should Pito ever wish to come to Bali, with the address of the American consul who might know where I could be found. At the end Pito was calm, silent and somewhat moody. His glances were sidelong and his underlip quivered a little. He removed the new and tightly rolled sarong from around his waist and drew forth an oddly shaped and hammered silver box. From this he took out a small carved wooden figure.

"This is a good luck charm," he said. "Saved me many times from evil spirits. Very powerful. With the money you give me I can buy more strong charms from the doekoen that is the witch doctor. So you take this, kind American lady, and keep it with you always. I am very happy to be back in Java. The train comes now. I go. I thank you very much."

I watched him board the train. It was the last I saw of him for many years.

"Selamet tinggal!" he shouted as the train moved away. That means, Live in peace.

"Selamet djalan, Pito." Go in Peace.

It is difficult for me to describe how I felt as I stood there, once again alone. My adventure had now begun in earnest.

SCENTED WATERS

Having put Pito on the train, I returned to the wharf at Banjuwangi in search of a prau to take me back to Bali, but it was growing dark and my boatmen had gone home for the night. I grew depressed. Even the weather was in harmony with my mood, for the stars had suddenly been eclipsed by clouds heavy and pregnant with rain. I thought of staying overnight at a hotel, but I was too worried to sleep and there was the problem of my car standing unprotected on the other shore. I was determined to cross the strait again that night.

To my questions about booking a passage, one prau man after another along the wharf shook his head. Wind coming up; tide not right; swells too strong.

Two oceans meet and rush on in opposite directions through a geographical funnel-tip in Bali Strait, thereby producing one of the curious nautical hazards of the East Indies. The Java Sea roars in from the north to oppose the might of the Indian Ocean; and the waters lash at each other in violent mating. But soon again the waves are quieted and the oceans are linked in an ephemeral trace of unpredictable duration. Many a small craft has disappeared in the depths of this interocean barrier.

When some of the prau men had acquainted me with these facts about the strait, I naturally appreciated their reluctance to take un necessary risks. Tired of fruitless walking, I paused for a rest at a kopi warong, a small native coffee stall, or hut, patronized by prau men and the native hands from foreign ships loading cargo in the lanes of Banju- wangi. The warong was dimly lit by a small kerosene lamp. Around the primitive counter sat men of the Orient brown-skinned Indone sians, lighter-hued Chinese, Arabs, and a few turbaned Indians their passive faces only half revealed in the flickering light. A dozen or more persons were seated in close proximity, yet the place was strangely silent. And although each man seemed absorbed in his own thoughts, I sensed an air of watchfulness, even of tension.

I was dressed in boys clothing, a cotton lumber jacket and slacks, not as a disguise but simply for ease and comfort in motoring. Nevertheless, it was helpful to be taken for a boy; it made me feel safer and I knew I attracted much less attention. Here at the roadside shop I buttoned my jacket, gave my slacks a hitch, made sure my hair was tucked under my beret, and slipped into place at the counter. I wore no make-up, I had acquired a very deep tan, and my height is such that I was not conspicuous among members of a short race. Unobtrusively I ordered kopi tubruk (native coffee) and shoved a coin across the counter in what I hoped was the hardened manner of a tough seaman.

As I sipped my coffee, the Indian seated next to me inquired politely in delightful broken English whether I came from one of the foreign ships now loading off Banjuwangi. I shook my head and replied that I was seeking passage to the island of Bali.

The Indian told the other men what I wanted. They immediately broke into lively conversation. Their blank faces now beamed with smiles and expressions of interest. The Indian, after a long harangue with the others, turned to me and said:

"Can do, can do. After twelfth hour has passed one fish boat will set sail take fish one goat two Bombay traders one Chinese man. All want to go to Bali. You go too if pay share."

"Where in Bali will the prau land?" I inquired.

The Indian drew a map of Bali on the counter. "Prau land on beach here," he said. Gesturing with the other hand, he went on: "Chinese bus meet prau, drive seven kilometers to village Djembrana."

My heart sank. The maps I had purchased in Batavia showed that Djembrana was at least thirty kilometers from Gilimanuk, the beach landing where I had left my car.

Noticing my disappointment, the Indian added, "Plenty good taxi at Djembrana take you anywhere for price." He said that the combined prau and bus fare to Djembrana would be two guilders. I almost smiled at the low fee and was about to agree to it when I remembered the stern teachings of my little guide Pito. Never under any circumstances, urged Pito, should one accept a first offer. No matter how low the initial offer may sound, a period of bargaining is essential if only to gain the seller's respect.

"Too much", I said. "How about one guilder?" That was just half the amount asked.

The Indian shook his head. "No can do, much too little."

A soft-spoken conference with the others followed, and then he named a sum which was one quarter of the first quotation added to the amount I had offered. I gave ponderous thought before nodding my head in agreement. There had been a saving of face all around. To mark the satisfactory conclusion of an interesting transaction I offered to buy a round of coffee, a gesture that was received with smiles and "trimah kasih, trimah kasih" many thanks. ("terima kasih" literally means "receive gratitude", Dikigoros.)

As we chatted over our coffee, my new-found friend told me that Bali was the child of India. Of all the islands of the Dutch East Indies, he said, only Bali was Hindu. The Balinese, although surrounded by Moslems on the other islands, had clung for hundreds of years to the customs and religion of India.

Like a practiced raconteur, the Indian began his version of the local saga on the origin of Banjuwangi and Bali, without waiting for encouragement or assent.

Centuries ago, when India was overrun by Mohammedans, a group of Brahman priests decided to flee the country and seek a new home across the seas rather than submit to the conqueror. Taking all their wives, relatives and worldly goods, the Brahmans sailed away, and after much wandering they landed on the shores of Java, where they decided to settle on a beautiful plain called Madjapahit. There they thrived in peace for three hundred years until a great crusading wave of Islam swept across Java. But just as the invading horde was about to overwhelm the Hindus of Madjapahit, a Brahman god named Vishnu appeared and promised deliverance to his people if they would evacuate Madjapahit and proceed to the tip of the eastern shore of the island.

Closely followed by marauding Moslems, the Brahmans for the second time in their history suffered themselves to be uprooted. Once again, complete with wives and all worldly goods, they pressed on, this time across mountains and rivers and through jungles laced with vines, until at last their heavily depleted and exhausted ranks stumbled on to the fringe of an impenetrable swamp at a point that was later to be named Banjuwangi. Here the Brahmans waited, as directed, until the god Vishnu appeared and invoked the sacred Hindu bird, Garuda, which miraculously transported all of them, one by one, to safety on the other side of the swamp. The pursuing Moslems came up just in time to witness with rage and incredulity the successful completion of the miracle.

Across the swamp, the Brahmans prayed, rejoiced and feasted in thanksgiving. And while their priests were sprinkling holy water made from the petals of flowers along the edge of the swamp, a second miracle occurred. The vile stench of the swamp disappeared and was replaced by an odor so divinely scented that it seemed to contain the essence of every flower that ever blossomed in that countryside which was called Bali. And then, before the eyes of the happy Brahmans, on the one side, and the distraught Moslems, on the other, the swamp began to give forth fresh spring water; at first trickling, then gurgling into puddles, and later flooding into pools which swallowed the grass and the reeds, and eventually swallowed the swamp. Soon a great tossing sea separated Moslem from Brahman, and Bali, severed from Java for all time, was safe from invasion. For, lest Islam should consider giving further chase by boat, the waves of the new sea became mountainous, and foamed and boiled furiously.

The Moslems retreated, and though they subsequently established supremacy in Java, never again did they lay claim to the island of Bali.

It was thus, according to my Indian storyteller, that the town at the tip of Java, at the edge of the submerged swamp, got its name. Banjuwangi, in English, means Scented Waters.

Concluding his romantic tale, the Indian told me that on a clear day, when the wind was right, fishermen still claimed that the waters gave off a faint perfume.

I rather regretted having to leave my storyteller, but about midnight, as arranged, I sailed from the quayside. A strong breeze was blowing. In addition to the two Bombay traders Arabs in fezzes, an elderly Chinese, and myself, there were three Madurese to handle the boat. Aboard there was no place to sit except on deck, where a small woven palm mat had been spread with a tiny lantern in the center.

Ill at ease and frankly frightened, I sat in silence, withdrawn as far as possible from the other passengers. Here was I, a lone white woman, in the company of sinister-looking men of races strange to me. All the money I had in the world was on my person sewed in a belt around my waist. What was to prevent these men from attacking me, robbing me, tossing me overboard? Who would ever know what they had done? Who, indeed, would miss me or worry about my disappearance?

Out in the open sea the wind became bitterly cold, and the deck was hard and uncomfortable. The Arabs soon drew out a bundle and unwrapped it, producing an assortment of native sweetmeats and other food cunningly wrapped in banana leaves. Invited to share the meal, I at first declined, but when they insisted and they seemed to have a plentiful supply I gratefully accepted one of the leaf-wrapped portions. Consisting of rice pressed into a small roll about a meat filling, it tasted delicious but was so heavily seasoned with spices that the tears welled into my eyes. In the months to come I was to grow so fond of this wonderfully hot food of the East that I found all Western food tasteless unless strongly fortified with paprika.

Having cleared the shelter of the shore line, our little craft began to pitch and bob violently on the roughening water. To my amazement the Arabs and the Chinese became seasick. A veteran of more than three months at sea, I had become a good sailor. The rough going failed to upset me, and I was soon asleep on the deck.

Within half an hour I was awake again, torn from my troubled sleep by a wild careening of the prau. As I lay on the deck we seemed at one moment to be racing upward toward the sky at an alarming angle and speed. The next moment we were poised on the crest of a wave, and then rushing down into the flailing waters. The boat was entirely out of control, I was sure of that. I have never seen waves heaving and breaking so violently; it seemed that at any instant we might be swamped or sucked under. I clung to the deck boards in absolute terror, hardly conscious of the spray which was drenching me again and again. For an eternity I lay there, tensed, waiting for death to reach out for us, certainly there could be no escape.

The two Arabs were huddled close together, obviously petrified; but the Chinese looked more and more like a sphinx, a graven figure. Now and then the Arabs screamed questions to the crew, but the prau men were too busy handling the sails and bellowing orders across the deck to pay any attention. As the storm raged on, the Arabs became hysterical, fell on their knees and began to chant their prayers. The Chinese sat smoking as though nothing at all were happening. From time to time the chanting Arabs looked hard at me, and over the howling of the wind I thought I heard them mention the word "Amerika" and "Tuan Amerika." Perhaps they were blaming me, a stranger in their midst, for the storm and ill fortune.

I moved closer to the stolid old Chinese. "Not afraid," he comforted me, "storm over soon now." In answer to my questioning looks at the other passengers he added, "Arabs call on Allah for help. Much afraid. Promise gifts of great wealth if reach other side safely. Remind Allah they are not alone on boat, also Amerika young man with much money."

"I have no money," I assured the old gentleman.

"Don't worry about them," he laughed. "Arabs making idle promises to Allah until safe on other side. Then all promises forgotten!"

Gradually the wind abated, but the waves remained high. The praumen relaxed their efforts a little, and informed us the worst was over. We had passed the point where the two seas meet. We had been blown off our course and had tacked back and forth most of the night. From now on the sailing would be rough but not dangerous. I lay down to sleep again, as did the Chinese. The last thing I heard was the steady droning of the Arabs at prayer.

When I awoke at daybreak the massive blue bulk of the mountains of Bali lay straight ahead. Clouds clustered about the peaks. Their rose-tinted upper fringes and the clear sky above gave promise of a bright and beautiful day. I was yet to learn that in Bali most of the days begin and end in splendor.

Drawing my thoughts back from the island of my hopes the land we were fast approaching I observed that the men were all regarding me in an odd fashion. I turned my head and as I did so my hair came tumbling to my shoulders. My beret had fallen off while I slept. Throughout Java I had been able to conceal my hair beneath it.

Now discovered, I retrieved my beret and hastily gathered up my hair, but it was too late.

"Selamet pagi sobat," I said weakly. Good morning, friends. The men courteously returned my greeting. "You sleep long, njonya," said the Chinese. He was thus informing me that they were aware I was a woman, for njonya is the feminine of tuan. "Njonya tourist, yes?" he asked.

"Tourist, no," I replied. I was not questioned further. The men were in fact the essence of kindness and good manners. I felt ashamed that I should have doubted their intentions the night before. Truly, I told myself, I had much to learn.

Waiting for us on the beach was a bus. It was an antiquated wreck, but the engine was running. A number of natives were already inside. They had come from Djembrana, I was told, to collect the fish we brought to Bali.

At Djembrana I found a taxi without difficulty and started back toward Gilimanuk and my motorcar.

My first drive in Bali was unforgettable; a long road through deep forest with monkeys playing on every side. At the approach of the taxi they fled into the treetops, screaming and chirping. Now and then a deer dashed across the road ahead of us, and sometimes pheasants were to be seen among the bushes. For miles there was no sign of habitation. The lonely western part of Bali, the driver told me, was rarely visited except by the Dutch when they came tiger hunting. Serenity and peace hung like a veil over the beautiful green countryside. Bali was even more lovely and satisfying than I had imagined.

On the lonely Gilimanuk beach I found my car just as I had left it. My suitcases and crates in the rear seat were intact. Nothing had been touched.

I paid the taximan, got into my car, and started the motor. Apparently the man had expected to deliver me to friends at a hunting party. I waved to him and drove on. In my rear-view mirror I could see him staring after me as though I were mad. And as I drove away, it may have been the wind changing or it may have been sheer imagination, but I thought I detected in the warm air the faint and elusive scent of flowers.

DEN PASAR

Varicolored butterflies welcomed me to Bali. They danced and flirted around my car as I drove slowly along the jungle road out of Gilimanuk toward Den Pasar, the main town of the island. Like bright confetti flung after me, drifting back and forth, but never falling to the ground, the butterflies floated in pursuit, joyously escorting me on my journey. It was such a pleasant greeting, this vivid shower of wings, and my spirits rose. I felt I was free at last to live naturally and simply free to find peace.

The road from Gilimanuk plunged into a deep, dark forest; the jungle symphony was music to my ears, and I drove many miles and crossed many narrow flimsy bridges before I saw the golden-skinned, graceful little men and women who are the people of Bali.

In manner and dress, the Balinese differ quite sharply from their neighbors in Java. Most striking to a new arrival is the practice among the women of leaving their breasts uncovered fully exposed. Everywhere I saw them, along the road or in the rice fields, the women innocently displaying their large firm breasts as they walked in single file, balancing huge loads on their heads.

Much of the way the road to Den Pasar followed winding streams. Frequently I saw natives bathing, washing their buffaloes, and even attending to other bodily functions, all in the same stream. But always modestly. The women carefully concealed themselves up to the waist before removing their sarongs, and the men never exposed themselves fully.

The ancient loveliness of Bali endured almost to the limits of Den Pasar. Then it vanished, and even the people seemed to change. The picturesque temples, the thatch roofs and carved stone walls of the villages were gone, miserable, replaced by shabby Chinese and Arab shops and rows of Dutch houses which were neat and drab and stiff and all alike.

I registered at the Dutch-owned Bali Hotel. I could now bathe and change into a dress. I found the lounge and dining room so crowded with white men and women that it was not difficult to imagine myself again in New York or Hollywood. The people were mostly Dutch, of the colonial administrative type, with a sprinkling of American tourists. There were no native guests to be seen, only native servants.

I sat alone at meals, usually unnoticed. The Dutch did not seem particularly friendly to a stranger. But on the second night a young man with yellow hair and stony blue eyes, self-consciously handsome in his starched white uniform and gold epaulets, introduced himself as the assistant controlleur "aspirant controlleur" of the Den Pasar district.

"You are a stranger, are you not?" he inquired affably as he seated himself. I nodded. He made a few observations about the scenery and the weather and then asked me, "How long do you intend to stay in Bali?"

"Indefinitely," I replied. "It all depends, a good long time, probably."

"You understand that there are a number of formalities which the Dutch government requires of foreigners who wish to remain here for more than a few weeks?"

"The Dutch!" I exclaimed. "But this is Bali."

"This is not Bali. This is a little Holland where you and everyone else must conform with all the Dutch laws. Bali is part of the Dutch colonial empire. Possibly you didn't know that. To start with, if you wish to stay here for six months or more you must pay a fee of one hundred and fifty guilders."

"I have paid that already when I docked at Batavia," I said quickly.

"May I inquire why you came to Bali? It is a long way from America for a young lady to travel alone."

"I came to paint," I replied.

"Oh." He smiled. "An artist? Well, you won t stay long. Foreigners get fed up with the island after a while. I myself have been here two years, and I am sick to death of Bali with its heat and filth. I am praying for the day when I can go home to Holland. But I am a government employee, I must stay. Many artists come here, quickly get tired of the place, and go home."

"Not all of them, Mr. Controlleur?" I asked.

"Well," he conceded, "nearly all. We still have a few crackpots here." He paused and looked at me. "Exactly what are your plans?"

I hesitated for an appreciable moment before I confided my plans to the aspirant controlleur. And then I told him. "My idea of coming to Bali was, if possible, to follow the pattern of living of the Balinese people. Here in Den Pasar I find no evidence of native life, only the Dutch club, hotel, bank offices, and the Chinese shops of the village. I want to get out into the country and live with the natives themselves, study their culture and come to know the real Bali."

"But that s impossible!" he exclaimed. "You simply can't do it! There are no female artists on Bali and certainly no white women living alone with the natives. You had better stay in the hotel."

"I m sorry, but I have made up my mind. You just told me there are other artists here. They don't stay in the hotel, or even in Den Pasar, and I won't either. I intend to live with the natives in their villages."

"You don t know what you are talking about," he replied. "You can t do that here, in the East Indies not even male artists do that. They don't live in the kampongs but build their own houses. Even so, they are a nuisance to the Dutch government, and they are a most immoral lot."

His manner became lighter as he mused on the immorality of the artists. "Let me see, we have a Belgian, he's living with a Balinese woman, set himself up in a lost paradise of his own. Then there is a Swiss, but I advise you to keep away from him. His paintings are crazy, and he is no gentleman. We have another screwball artist who is Dutch. Two Dutchmen in fact. One lives on Sanur beach. We rather expect Americans to be a little odd, but when they're Dutch they're beyond the pale. The other Dutchman I mentioned lives in Ubud with a German artist who also is a musician, a writer, and a collector of butterflies. But in no case do we like it when the whites become intimate with the natives. It is bad for our prestige."

This dissertation on the morals and character of Bali's artists surprised me. Not that I took this young official completely at his word. I had said a little to the hotel manager about my plans, and a word or two must have been passed along. This is why I had been singled out for a lecture. The young official went on.

"If you were to try and live as a Balinese, the effect upon the natives and upon their respect for the white people would be very bad. The colonial administration, I can tell you, would frown upon it. Perhaps we could help you to rent a little house here in Den Pasar."

I had a temper to match my red hair. "Thank you for your advice," I snapped, "but please understand this, if I wanted comfort and luxury and modern living quarters I would never have left America, and if I wanted to live among the Dutch I would have gone to Holland!"

The Dutchman rose. "I make allowances for you because you are a stranger and an American. You are enthusiastic now, but you will soon have your fill of this place. You will become fed up with the dirt, the filth, the unsanitary way of living, and you will long for your clean, comfortable America."

"Mr. Controlleur," I said, "you speak of dirt, filth, and the unsanitary conditions of the kampongs. That doesn't speak well for the Dutch after three hundred years of colonization of the East Indies."

He smiled as he walked away.

Each day at the Bali Hotel found me more restless than the day before. Had I erred sadly in burning my bridges in Hollywood? Would it not have been better to come to Bali for a short visit and then to have made my decision to remain or not? Could I be happy here knowing that the Dutch administration would oppose me at every turn? Would the natives welcome me and ask me to remain if I went to them?

Question upon question clouded my thoughts, filled me with doubt, when suddenly I recalled that first day's drive to Den Pasar. I remembered again the kindliness and friendliness of the natives and the simple sincerity of their smiles. I vowed then that I would go to the Balinese no matter what the authorities said, and I would try to live the tranquil life of a native.

My mind firmly made up, I called upon the head controlleur to show him my passport, and the receipt for the one hundred and fifty guilders landing fee. He treated me coldly, but respectfully.

"It is unusual for a white woman to leave the town without a chauffeur guide," he said. "And it would be out of the question for you to rent a house away from Den Pasar. In fact, there are no houses to rent in the country."

I left the controlleur's office without committing myself in any way. Back in the Bali Hotel, where I asked for my bill, the Dutch manager remonstrated with me.

"Miss, you are really doing a very foolish thing. There are no hotels in the interior, no places to rent, only a couple of small pasangrahans, or resthouses, miles apart, used by the Dutch officials when they are on inspection tours."

"I am here to see Bali, not to live in a de luxe hotel and watch colonials drink and play tennis," I replied.

"You will be back," he said sarcastically. I'll keep a room for you."

Thus ended my stay in Den Pasar. Whatever lay ahead could surely be no worse. Somewhere on this beautiful island there had to be a place for me, and I must find it.

THE PALACE, THE PRINCE, AND THE RAJAH

My plan was simply to fill the car with benzine, drive into the interior of the island, and keep on driving until the car ran dry. I vowed to myself that wherever this happened, there I would stay. Even if it meant sleeping in the rice fields, I would not return to the Bali Hotel. Telling myself that the Bali gods would surely ride with me, and not to worry about events over which I had no control, I started from Den Pasar at a very early hour long before officialdom was astir. It never entered my head that I wouldn't find a place to stay.

Bali was sheer enchantment. Sleepy villages, smiling natives, landscape staggeringly rich in color and design. The benzine tank was fuller than I thought, and hour after hour I passed through primitive villages, up and down mountain roads, across rice fields, and through jungle land.

I stopped once to eat some sandwiches I had brought from the hotel, and at another point high up in the mountains by the volcanoes I stopped at a roadside stall and bought a few coconuts so I could drink the milk.

When the car finally spluttered and died, I found myself in a beautiful, medieval village high up in the hills and outside a high, handsomely carved wall of red brick with an open archway guarded on both sides by four stone figures representing Balinese gods.

Behind the stone wall seemed to be a mysterious-looking temple hidden in tropical foliage. I smiled as I thought surely I must be destined to live with the gods in the Garden of Allah.

Outside this wall was a market square where varieties of goods were being bartered by half-nude mountain women. There were fat green melons, coconuts, strange-looking fruits, primitive cooking utensils, and all kinds of rope in fact everything a native household in the tropics would need. The natives immediately surrounded me. They looked menacing, but they were only curious.

Hearing weird music coming from within the imposing-looking walls and knowing that the Balinese people have no objection to strangers entering the temples if they do so with proper respect, I timidly entered the courtyard. The startling scene that met my eyes might have been straight from the Arabian Nights, or from an illustration for a child's fairy-tale book. It was a tableau that even the moguls of Hollywood could not have imagined in their wildest flight from reality. I stood dumfounded and wondered if I had a fever and were imagining things or if I had suddenly been whisked back to a world that existed a thousand years ago.

A sumptuous Oriental feast was in progress. Temple bells were ringing, and gamelans (native instruments) were softly playing hypnotic melodies from a bygone age. High priests, like Buddhas, were seated cross-legged on bamboo platforms six or eight feet from the ground and surrounded by columns and pyramids of fruit, flow ers and carved palm leaves, fantastically shaped offerings to the gods. Behind each priest sat a priestess handing him the different flowers needed for the distilling of holy water. The priests' bodies were bare from the waist up, and around their necks hung several strands of colored beads. They wore tall crimson headdresses, and white loincloths topped with silver brocade sashes. Held in their elegant hands, which had nails five inches long, were golden bells; they tinkled them as they chanted mantras and prepared the holy water to be sprinkled on the heads of the people kneeling before them in prayer.

On other bamboo platforms covered with pale-green matting woven from young palm leaves sat the Rajah with the nobles. At the time I thought they were merely rich worshippers. Their golden bodies also were bare, but from the waist down they wore a kain (a long strip of cloth) of brilliant hue, either in yellow and silver brocade, magenta and black, or blue, green, or purple brocades. Tucked into the back of their sarongs were handsome krisses with gold handles carved in the shape of a Balinese god, and studded with precious gems. Their colorful headdresses were coquettishly tied in front with a bow, and from the bow either a flower or a precious stone was showing. The handles of the krisses were peeping over their shoulders, giving the effect of the gods laughing in the twilight.

The women, looking for all the world like storybook princesses, were seated on platforms covered with silks. Most of them were barebreasted, their lovely bronzed bodies glistening in the soft evening light. They were dressed even more elaborately than the men. Gold snake bracelets studded with star sapphires adorned their slender arms. All were chatting merrily.

Serving maids were flitting back and forth with sweetmeats wrapped in banana leaves, and with artificially colored drinks made from coconut milk. Old men were squatting on their haunches all around the courtyard, massaging large fighting cocks, preparing them for the cockfight which would take place later in the evening.

Suddenly I realized that hundreds of pairs of black eyes were centered on me, projecting the same astonishment that I myself so plainly showed. I smiled in my most friendly manner, but they just kept on staring, until the women started to giggle nervously behind hands held in front of their faces.

Feeling nervous and embarrassed, I started to stroll around the courtyard, stopping now and then to admire a piece of sculpture or a beautiful offering. I watched the priests with their downcast eyes tinkle their golden bells and chant the Vedas. I thought what a beautiful painting this strange scene would make. Once I stopped before a group of children, but they took one solemn-eyed look at me and fled screaming.

I began to feel that something was wrong, that maybe I had been imprudent to enter this temple. I decided to return to the car and see what could be done about getting a little benzine.

Just as I was moving toward the gate a handsome young man of about thirty came up to me saying, "Excuse me, perhaps I could be of some assistance to you. Are you looking for someone?"

I stared at him in amazement, noticing his princely clothing, and then foolishly stammered, "Oh, you speak English."

His large dark eyes danced with amusement as he replied, "Well, is there anything remarkable about the ability to converse in the English language? A few of us have attended universities abroad, you know."

"Of course not," I answered, "but it is a little surprising to hear English spoken in such a remote village, ten thousand miles from the nearest English-speaking country."

He then told me he had been a student at Leiden University in Holland and at Heidelberg University in Germany, that he had always been interested in European languages.

"May I inquire how you came to be in our village, and how you found your way into the palace?" he asked.

"Palace!" I exclaimed. "This is a temple, is it not? I entered because I heard temple bells ringing, and saw a temple feast in progress, and I have heard that the Balinese people do not object to strangers entering their temples. I came in to hear the lovely music and to admire the beautiful offerings. It is like entering fairyland or the abode of the gods."

The young man threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"It gives me great pleasure to hear you refer to the puri as an abode of the gods. You have in fact entered the palace of my father," he said, "but being a stranger you would not be expected to know the difference between the palaces of the rajahs and the Brahman temples, for they are very much alike in appearance, especially from the outside. May I introduce myself? My name is Anak Agung Nura. I am the only son of the Anak Agung Cede. I bid you welcome to my father's palace. The feast in progress is a marriage feast, for this day my cousin Anak Agung Anom has married."

I shyly stammered my name, and told him that I was an artist from Hollywood. Then I offered my apologies for having entered his father's palace in such an unceremonious manner.

"Think nothing of it. We are delighted to receive you, although it is a bit of a surprise to find a young lady all alone in our village, and so far from her own countrymen, I am most curious to hear how you found your way here, for you are an American tourist, are you not?"

"No, Anak Agung Nura, I am not a tourist. I came to your lovely island with the intention of staying for the rest of my life, hoping to be able to paint and follow the peaceful, contented way of your people."

I explained how I could not endure living in the Dutch tourist hotel another day, how I had started for the interior of the island, vowing that with the help of the gods I would stay wherever the car ran out of petrol.

"The car spluttered and stopped dead outside your palace gates."

I was wondering how I could excuse myself gracefully and return to the car when Anak Agung Nura smiled and said, "It seems to me that your fate has been decided by the gods you so wisely invoked, it is evident that you are destined to stay at my father's palace."

"Oh no, Anak Agung Nura," I replied. "Under no circumstances would I dream of imposing on your family, but I should like very much to stay in your charming village. Perhaps you could direct me to a pasangrahan. I could stay there for the night, and make fresh plans tomorrow. If there is not a pasangrahan, maybe I could stay in the kampong."

"Certainly not," he quickly replied; "you haven't any idea what a kampong is like. It is very primitive. You couldn t possibly stay there, and besides the kampong people would be afraid of you, especially with your long red hair. They are very superstitious. Furthermore," he added, with a twinkle in his eyes, "it is unwise for one to set oneself against what the gods have predetermined. If it had been your fate to stay in a kampong, your car would not have brought you to my father's gate. We Balinese people are strong believers in destiny, and in reincarnation. Who knows but that in some former life you were a Balinese maiden, and now after a thousand moons of wandering you return to the land that is your rightful home. Come, I shall introduce you to my father. He is an even greater fatalist than I. He will be amused at hearing about your flight from the Dutch officials, and he will love to learn something of your fabulous Hollywood."

He took my arm, led me to the veranda where his father was seated with his nobles, and whispered to me, "Quismat" (Kismet). I shivered with premonition of things yet to come.

The Rajah's sweet old face wrinkled up in smiles as he heard his son tell him the story of my defiance of the Dutch officials; and the nobles laughed heartily at the account of my predawn escape from the Bali Hotel at Den Pasar. After Anak Agung Nura had finished the story of my adventure, the old Rajah studied me thoughtfully. After a few moments he said, "What is written in stars must be. The way of the gods is sometimes difficult to interpret, but once understood, not even a moon-calf would ignore the omen. I think that you did not come to my puri by chance. It was written thus long ere you were bom. I bid you welcome, daughter."

FOURTH-BORN

I could not provoke the gods. The Rajah's offer must be accepted. I must stay at the palace as a daughter.

I said yes, with many thanks, and at once was taken by father and son to another part of the courtyard where I was formally presented to the Rajah's first wife, known as Isteri Satu. She was a sweet woman, but very shy. With her were her two daughters, charming young girls in their teens, both unmarried and as shy as their mother.

The Rajah's broad smile needed no translating. His speech was always translated by his son.

"Now I have three daughters and one son." The old man spoke so gaily that I was inclined to think the entire matter had turned to jest. But then his tone turned serious. "We shall call you K'tut, which is Balinese for fourth-born child. Soon I shall summon the high priest and, after the custom of our ancestors, we shall give you another name which will be the name of your destiny."

A month later I found myself playing the star role in a ceremony, part medieval and part pagan, in which the name K'tut Tantri was bestowed upon me. I have kept the name ever since.

If I had realized what my destiny held I should probably have fled from Bali while there was yet time. But I had no such intimation, and for the present everything was so gay and happy.

What did disturb me, however, was the way the servants groveled on the floor when they served me or fell on their knees when I passed. The Rajah and I had some lively arguments about these matters which highly amused the prince. I was born and bred a white woman and then - quite deeply - I became a Balinese. The cross currents have always - at least subconsciously - fought in me.

All this came later. I must return now to that first day at the palace. The Rajah, having introduced me to his family and welcomed me, excused himself to attend to certain guests. The prince then took me to a farther courtyard, to a small bungalow which had intricately carved wooden doors and roof beams overlaid with gold leaf.

"This will be your home," he told me casually. While I stood admiring the carvings he explained that his father had done them himself. "We of the younger generation can no longer do this traditional carving."

When we opened the doors I was even more astonished at the magnificence of the room within. There was a great bed with silken canopies and the rest of the furniture was en suite. The ceiling was beamed, the beams carved with little godlike figures covered with gold leaf and rubbed down with Chinese red and blue. The walls of this room, and also the walls of a veranda, had paintings depicting a variety of incidents in the lives of the gods. The white walls of an enormous bathroom served as background for scenes, as I learned, from the epic poem the Ramiyana. The entire effect was overwhelming.

Outside the palace once more, the prince was greatly amused when he saw my dust-coated car still laden with roped-up luggage. He never quite recovered from the shock of learning that I had taken the long drive from Batavia.

As servants unloaded the car, he observed my art materials. "Painting is the one thing I myself like to do," he told me. "But I can't paint in the traditional Balinese manner. I have my own way. Incidentally, it will be impossible for you to paint in your living quarters. There isn't enough light. I shall have to find you a studio. Come, I think I know -"

I realized suddenly that I was very tired and had seen for the moment as much as I could bear. But the prince conducted me to yet another building, much like my little house in design except that it was without furniture.

"The roof is too low for good light," he said, "but I shall have workmen take out the tiles and put in a skylight."

I told the prince that I was very tired from my day's drive and should like to rest a while in my lovely little house. He apologized for his thoughtlessness, and took me back there. Food was brought, and eventually I was alone. I was soon asleep.

A faint tinkling of bells ushered in my first morning at the palace. It was a sound wholly unlike the gamelan music of the courtyard. Its strangeness didn't matter somehow. My mind was curiously at ease. My rest had been deep and long, the first refreshing sleep since my arrival in Bali. The light singing of the bells continued as I bathed in the cool waters of my exotic bathroom. The bag I most required had been quite magically unpacked for me. I found clean clothes, and then with equal magic breakfast was ready on my veranda.

As I sat there enjoying the newness of the morning, the prince joined me with his sisters Princess Ara and Princess Ksiti.

"Good morning, good morning," he greeted me cheerfully, "I hope you had a fine rest."

"It was perfect," I assured him. "Tell me what are those strange bells? I keep hearing them."

"Oh those! I'll show you."

He produced two small strips of wood, placed them between his fingers and rattled them like castanets. In answer to this staccato rat-a-tat, the tinkling of the bells swelled and a flock of doves landed at our feet.

"This is my private orchestra," Prince Nura said laughingly. He tendered his arms as perches for the fluttering birds. "See the tiny bells fastened to their feet? And those without bells have wooden whistles or flutes carved in bamboo. They are intelligent birds and come to feed at the call of the castanets. All over Bali and Java you will find these bird orchestras. The bells and the flutes are too light to interfere with flight. And the music the doves make, especially at daybreak and when they return to their roosts at night, is beloved by all."

The anticipated food was brought and soon the birds were scrambling for it. Then about nine the two young princesses hurried away. Their brother explained that they went every day to a school across the square where the children of the village were taught to speak Malay.

"Malay is so simple," the prince said. "It is the lingua franca of the East Indies. We will teach you it in no time at all! But first you must learn Balinese. And with your permission I shall be your instructor."

Official duties occupied the Rajah during the daytime. He had been appointed by the Dutch as regent for the district. But the prince appeared to have plenty of time to give to me. He explained the many things that were unfamiliar to me, invited me for a stroll through the village, and took me later for a tour around the countryside.

Strangely, I never for a moment doubted his intentions, which would have been natural under the rather peculiar circumstances. He was young, good looking, had been everywhere, and was in a position of considerable authority. Some women would have thought him dangerous. I did not, and time proved me right. He had a gentleness, a refinement, and a sort of simplicity which was not in any way childlike. Moreover, he was highly intelligent, as are most of the educated Balinese, and bred to a culture very different from our own but based on moral standards extraordinarily high by any reckoning.

The day we were to visit the village a messenger came and delivered to the prince an official-looking document. He glanced at it and then said, with some surprise, "This is for you!"

I opened the envelope. "It s in Dutch. Can you tell me what it says?"

He read the contents to himself, then turned to me. "It didn t take long for the news to spread. The controlleur of Klungkung already knows that you are here. He asks that you present your passport at his office as soon as possible."

"But I showed my passport to the controlleur of Den Pasar before I left the town!" I was very annoyed. "This is an unwarranted intrusion chasing after me. I shall ignore it. I am not going to drive twenty-five miles to Klungkung!"

The prince looked at me in surprise. "I'm afraid it's not quite so simple as that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the Dutch have the final authority. You can't merely ignore them. My father and I have learned that it pays to be diplomatic. They might make trouble both for you and for us. The Dutch do not approve of a white woman associating too closely with the Balinese."

"Yes, so I have been told."

"I'm sure you have. In fact, I have wondered a little about how you have managed so well, and so has my father. I'm afraid you'll have to go."

"If I go, it will be only because you have asked me to go."

He smiled a little uneasily. "Yes, I do ask you."

"Will you come with me?"

"I think it would be best for you to go alone. If the controlleur sees us together, he would make it much more difficult. In fact, he wouldn't like it in the least."

I was confused but could see that I had no choice. I refueled my car from the palace stocks and drove unwillingly to Klungkung. I did not know what I should find there. Perhaps my stay at the palace was a beautiful dream.

A BRUSH WITH THE CONTROLLEUR

Since my ship dropped anchor at a port in the Dutch East Indies I had been subjected to a great deal of advice from many sources. There was the handsome blond youth who sat down uninvited at my dinner table in the hotel at Den Pasar. He was the "aspirant," or assistant, controlleur. He had asked me a great many questions and told me quite firmly that I couldn't remain in Bali as I had planned. There was the Dutch controlleur at Banjuwangi with whom I had discussed the little boy, Pito. There was the head controlleur at Den Pasar to whom I had shown my passport and my receipt for its payment. And others, I am sure, whom I have forgotten to list.

Their songs all had the same refrain. I could not remain. It was dangerous. It was not done. It imperiled white supremacy. Some of them regarded me as insane, some as merely foolish, but none were quite as unprepossessing as the controlleur of Klungkung. None of them had made me quite so angry. He was rude and stupid. He tried to frighten me. He tried to browbeat me. But he didn't know how. He didn't keep me cooling my heels. I was granted an audience almost at once. The preliminary courtesies were of the briefest. He was anxious to come to the point.

"Young lady," he addressed me, "you have been called to this office on the orders of the controlleur of Den Pasar. He has informed you that the Dutch colonial administration would take a most dim view of your leaving the vicinity of Den Pasar to live with the natives in the interior of the island. We Dutch rule these people by keeping them in their place. What will happen to that, do you think, if once they get the idea that the white people regard them as equals? You a white woman accepting the hospitality of a native family..."

He spluttered at this. For the moment he seemed to have run out of petrol. He obviously ate too much and drank too much and had high blood pressure. A really long diatribe was beyond his capacity.

"I find the Rajah and his family cultured and civilized," I told him. "And I do not think that I am in any sense lowering myself or injuring the dignity of the white race by accepting their delightful hospitality."

"Don t you know," he asked, "that all the Balinese rajahs have several wives and numerous concubines? Why, the Rajah of Karangasem had forty wives at least! Aren't you afraid that you'll have to join the harem?"

"I believe that my host has two wives. I have met one of them, a most charming lady. They regard me as a daughter, I assure you."

"If that's so, it's lucky for you. Have you heard of goona-goona?"

"Black magic? Yes, I've heard of it."

"If any native woman becomes jealous of you, you'll die very quickly. They have ways devilish, undetected ways. It's up to us officials to warn you to avoid any possibility of such a thing happening to any white person on this island. You're putting yourself in a very dangerous position, living in the puri, I mean the palace, the women there are especially skilled in the use of goona-goona. You don't understand the customs nor speak the language"

"I can learn."

"You can't learn overnight."

"I shall never give any Balinese woman cause to be jealous of me. I know how to deport myself with decorum."

"In America perhaps, but here it's different. You don't know how they can dispose of those whom they regard as rivals. You get ill, then helpless, your mind goes, you suffer torture, real torture, and then you die. And it's all kept secret." He started to go into some rather gruesome details, but I didn't listen. "There was an English officer poisoned by his native paramour's husband..."

As it was clear he was not frightening me he tried another tack. "What respect do you think these natives will have for you if you accept them as equals?"

I had been looking at the man rather closely. The conclusion I had reached was unavoidable. Indonesian blood was dark in his veins. Perhaps if I hadn't been so angry I would not have mentioned this. But I could not resist it. "I'm surprised at you, Mr. Controlleur, being so down on the natives. Haven't you any respect for your own native blood? I should think it was something to be proud of, not ashamed."

I thought he would have an apoplectic fit. Very few Indo-Dutch admit that they are half Indonesian. Nothing upsets them more than being reminded of it. For the moment I was afraid that, without benefit of goona-goona, I would be responsible for a major disaster. But he recovered. He suddenly became calm.

"You say you are being treated as a daughter. I presume you have met the Rajah's son? A very proud young man indeed, who fancies that as he has attended the University of Leiden in Holland he is the equal of any Dutchman. That's what comes of education! I have had to put him in his place more than once. I suppose he tried to impress you?"

"He has been most kind. I think him a very well-bred young man, the most civilized person I have met so far in Bali, though all the members of the Rajah's household I have found charming. I am very happy and proud to be a guest at the purl, and I have no intention of leaving. I think you have ignored the fact that I am not living in the kampong of a poor uneducated native, although I would be happy to do so. It is shameful to speak of the natives as though they were a race of murderers. What dignity I have seen so far on this island comes from them."

"We have always found America's idea of democracy strange," he said. "For the Dutch it is ruinous. So why don't you be sensible and leave? You could leave now without.. without..." He hesitated and I supplied him with his words: "Without being deported as an undesirable alien?"

He let that pass. "Look. There's something I must know. How did you get into the puri in the first place? You have no connections in Bali that we are aware of. Of course you might have run across the Rajah's son somewhere in Europe, it's a possibility"

"I never laid eyes on Prince Nura before yesterday."

"Then how?"

"The Bali gods led me," I said sweetly.

"Bali gods! What do you mean, Bali gods! Don't be funny."

I knew that sooner or later I would have to explain how it happened that I became a guest in the Rajah's palace, so I told the simple truth.

The controlleur listened attentively. When I was through, he jumped up from his chair. "I never heard such a preposterous and fantastic story in all my life!" he shouted. "Just wandering in a strange white woman. The Rajah and his son know what's what, even if you don t. I don't believe your story, I don t believe a word of it!"

"You mean I'm not good enough to stay at the puri? I thought you considered me too good, because I'm white thought I was lowering the dignity and the prestige of the entire white race."

He glared. "So you persist in this mad idea?"

"I most certainly do!"

"I suppose you know that you'll be ostracized by all the Dutch on the island? No white person, outside a couple of artists perhaps, will speak to you. Nor will you be received in any European home. Furthermore... Well, you did mention it yourself."

"Mention what?"

"Deportation as an undesirable alien."

I had a faint feeling that I was getting the upper hand. I went on with what I had to say. "I shall continue to be a guest at the puri, and I assure you that I shall act with the greatest decorum. Therefore, Mr. Controlleur, I advise you not to make any trouble for me or for my host. Because if you do I shall go to the American consul in Surabaya. He will tell you that I cannot be deported without reason, and I shall never give you such a reason."

With this I rose, bade him a cold good day, and walked out of his office.

In a small room directly outside there occurred an incident to which at the time I paid little attention. In this anteroom was a Balinese young man who was working as a clerk. He could hardly have avoided hearing the interview. He greeted me with something above and beyond the call of ordinary courtesy. In fact, a smile spread over his face and he bowed me out with marked ceremony. Later I realized that my argument with the controlleur would be repeated by him to all his countrymen, and the news spread over the whole island.

I drove back to the palace with a heavy heart. I must talk with the Rajah and his son and follow their advice. I certainly would not wish to be an embarrassment to them or cause them any trouble. Rather than do this I would return to Hollywood.

They were both waiting to hear the result of my interview. I told them everything. The prince listened in silence.

"He could not have been more unpleasant. He hated me. But I hated him also. In fact I am beginning to hate all the Dutch."

"You mustn't feel like that," the prince told me. "It's not the Dutch we must hate but this ridiculous colonial system with its narrow prejudices and its fears. All Dutchmen are not like the controlleur of Klungkung, or even of Den Pasar. Dutchmen in Holland are a different breed altogether. These men are colonial diehards. If not, they are removed from office. If they like the natives they are considered unsuitable. Why, only a few months ago there was a controlleur of another province whose only fault was that he mixed too freely with us. This became known to the Resident who told the Governor..."

It is a long story: a transfer to a lonely island as far as possible from Bali an added rank given in order to save face. There were other, subtle punishments for treating the Balinese as human beings.

The Rajah then told me that as far as he and his family were concerned they hoped I would continue to stay at the puri and not be frightened away. He doubted that the controlleur had the authority to make me move except on a trumped-up charge, and "if it came to that he personally would take it up with the Governor. He pointed out, however, that the white colony would never receive me in their homes. I would be treated as a pariah. He said that even the Balinese nobles were not received as guests in Dutch houses or clubs and that, save for a few foreign artists, they had no social connections with white people on the island.

The prince, after translating all this for his father, added what I suspected was a warning of his own. "You might get very lonely without the company of other white people."

But I knew I should never be lonely as long as I had such wonderful friends.

MATTERS OF LANGUAGE AND CLOTHES

"You don't understand the customs nor speak the language," the controlleur of Klungkung had told me, and I had replied that I could learn.

During the next month I learned a great deal language, customs, and more than anything a wholehearted acceptance of a way of life which was alien to me. It was, I do believe, my destiny. How, other wise, could I so soon have regarded the palace as my rightful home? The life there was, in many ways, fantastic. Agung Nura, with his European training, was responsible for gently introducing me into it. He never let me see too much at once. I was gradually prepared for everything was too unusual.

The languages were comparatively simple for me, and my studies began by attending the village school for children. The daughter of the Rajah, Agung Ksiti, was at first my chief teacher. But she could not speak English. I was taught by the drawing of objects on a blackboard, with the Balinese word written beneath and also the Malay equivalent. In the evenings Nura himself taught me to read and write in "high Balinese/ The low-caste dialect was quite different.

"One must be very careful", he warned me, "never to address a person of rank in anything but high Balinese. To the peasants you speak with low-caste tongue."

This last was difficult for me to remember to do, and I often found myself addressing peasants in the high language. But this didn t matter. In fact it pleased the peasants to be spoken to. And as a stranger in their midst, I think I felt it discourteous to speak to them in any other way. Nura also insisted that I learn something of the ancient Kawi speech and study the classic literature. He said that to understand the people I must know their background. I became steeped in the history of the country and in the works of the writers and philosophers. He translated for me the records and the stories which were written on lontar leaves. The folklore was amazingly similar to our own fairy tales.

Then there was the matter of clothes. From the first I had wanted to dress in Balinese clothes, but had hesitated to suggest it. Finally, much to my delight, the suggestion came from the two young princesses. They brought me sarongs, sashes, sandals, and at my own insistence a silk coatee called a kebaya. I refused to go barebreasted. The girls could not understand this. They told me that I was a woman like every other woman and surely I was not ashamed of my body! But I could not be persuaded. First the sarong and then the winding of the sash. This is a broad band of stiff corded silk some five yards long. Princess Ara started wrapping it around me at the hip, raising it slightly at every turn so that it formed a tight ascending spiral.

"It's so tight I can't breathe," I panted. "It's worse than any corset." I felt like a mummy folded in a shroud.

"You'll get used to it," the girls giggled. "It has to be tight because it must lie flat flat flat. No bulging at the hips. A straight line is most important. And for you it's more important than for us, because in the back you are not so straight as we are."

"But that is beautiful," Agung Ara hastened to say. "And being wound tightly it will still show. It is what our men most admire. You see, when we walk there is nothing to get excited about. When a white woman walks it is different."

This frankness surprised me, but it was the sort of natural frankness which no one could mind.

Now for the first time in the full Balinese costume, I took stock of myself. As I examined the fruits of their work in a mirror, Ara and Ksiti circled around me, their eyes alight with excitement. "Tjantik, tjantik!" they exclaimed. "So beautiful! So wonderful! What marvelous white skin, what perfect complexion!"

Never before in all my life had I been told that I was beautiful. Never before had I known the heart-warming thrill of being admired sincerely and without reservation. Never had I been the object of such flattering attention. I looked in my glass and looked again, examining myself from every angle, and I discovered with astonishment that I was indeed not unattractive. The straight sweep of the sarong from hip to ankle, the contrasting color of the sash, the simplicity of the little kebaya above, gave me a grace and dignity I had never achieved with Western garments. The effect of white skin against rich Balinese textiles was striking. And I thought my hair looked unusually nice, too. Shoulder length and red as a forest flame, it had long been my one claim to beauty. All in all, this was a dramatic transformation. Undeniably, it gave me more than a touch of glamour.

"Tjantik," Ksiti cooed. "Njonja, how do you like it?"

"Girls," I said, with tears in my eyes, "I can t thank you enough. I find it perfect. I am delighted with my Balinese personality. I shall never go back to the style of the West."

I kept that promise well during all my years in Bali, except for rare occasions when it was virtually compulsory to wear a frock or high-heeled shoes or a hat. And when I did, how strange and foreign it felt!

Ksiti looked out the doorway. "Here comes Agung Nura! Wait till he sees you!"

My first impulse was to run and hide. But then I told myself that since I had decided to become a real Balinese I had to face up to it.

Nura came in then stopped dead as he saw me. His eyes opened wide and a look of astonishment spread over his face.

The princesses jumped up and down with excitement. "See, see!" they chorused. "See what has happened!"

Nura stood for a full minute staring. And then, "You are lovely," he said softly. "Absolutely lovely."

They said no more but it was enough. I knew that the garments of Bali were meant for me. Nura's enthusiasm for my new mode of dress was not without reservations, however. My hair worried him. We must encourage it to grow long, he said, so that it might be combed tightly on top of my head in the Balinese manner. Perhaps in the village it might best be rolled under a scarf, like a tight turban.

"And your walk," said Nura. "In a sarong you cannot take those long strides. Ara Ksiti you must teach her to walk slowly with the grace of the Balinese."

In the days that followed they tried very patiently to teach me to glide, to use every muscle sinuously. They tried placing a basket of fruit on my head to teach me balance. I spilled fruit everywhere. They tried using a pot of water instead and were thoroughly splashed for their pains. They even tied my hands behind my back to force me to hold my shoulders erect. In the end they went to their brother and confessed failure. They would never be able to teach me to walk with Balinese grace. But they did cure me of a tendency to slouch.

The princesses and the other women of the court, envious of my fair skin, began trying to lighten their own complexions through applications of white powder. The glorious color of their skin, a shade of gold which is so hard to capture on canvas, came through the powder in a ghostly purple-blue. I protested constantly against this disfigurement of natural beauty and finally induced many of them to use restraint in applying the powder puff.

For some time after donning Balinese dress I remained rather selfconsciously within the puri walls. I was no problem as far as the Rajah and his family were concerned, but I was certainly a sensation to his friends. News of me had spread to the villages, and beyond. The palace was getting many more vibsitors than usual.

There came a day when, of necessity, we must all go down to Den Pasar to shop. There were no shops in the village. Would I go in Balinese clothing? the Rajah wished to know.

"Why, of course," the princesses replied, "in what else?" The two girls felt responsible for me.

We crowded into the Rajah's limousine, Agung Nura and his attendant, his two sisters with their elderly serving maid, and I. It was a gay ride, made gayer by the exciting apprehension of what was to come. We were about to introduce to Bali something new a white woman turned into a Balinese. A white woman who wore native clothing, who walked and talked only with the natives, and who considered herself one of them.

The chauffeur parked the limousine on the main street, and hardly had we stepped from it when incredulous cries reached our ears: "Adoe! Njonya! Look look a white girl dressed like a Balinesel!"

We soon attracted a swelling crowd of natives. They bowed low before the prince and his sisters, but their main interest was obviously in the white woman who wore a sarong, a kebaya, and sandals, and whose sun-glinting hair hung down to her shoulders.

"Adoe! Adoe." This hushed exclamation of admiration followed us everywhere. Smiling natives trotted after us. When we entered a shop they waited close-packed outside until we emerged, and then trailed down the street. From them I felt a warm surge of friendliness and welcome, of gratitude that a member of the white race had found their ways worth copying, and of keen pleasure at my evident delight. I felt that they really liked me, and I was sustained by their appreciation.

And then, as we eddied, flushed and happy, out of the crowded shop we came face to face with a party of European women, carefully groomed, expensively dressed. We all halted, our paty on the one side and the white women on the other. The women stared at me, at first in mere curiosity and then in swiftly rising contempt.

"Disgraceful!" one woman exclaimed.

The others chimed in: "Shocking horrible!" - "A white woman in native dress consorting on equal level!"

As they swept past, the natives cleared a broad passage for them.

My courage and happiness vanished. "Quick, quick," I pleaded, "let's get out of here." In the distance I could see another group of white people approaching.

Nura eyed me sternly. "Don't let them upset you. What they think or say is not important. I suspect they're jealous."

The princesses added their own words of comfort. "Don't be frightened. Just ignore them. That is what we do when we are insulted publicly. Remember, you don't live with the Dutch any more."

No, I didn't live with the Dutch. But the white people who were drawing near were two Dutchmen and, I presumed, their wives. They stared at me intently. But if they made any sarcastic remarks I did not hear them. I closed my ears and then my eyes. We went on with our shopping, but the fun was gone.

As I have said, my red hair did not blend with the Balinese costume. As time went on I became increasingly conscious that it worried everyone. Something must be done, and it was the Rajah who made the final suggestion. It would be best if my hair were dyed black. He explained to me that in Bali only demons, witches, and the dreaded goddess of evil, Rangda, had red hair. With such hair the superstitious people might fear me and would never really accept me as one of them. My hair was the reason why the children had fled screaming from me when I had first entered the palace courtyard. So, somewhat reluctantly, I agreed.

The Rajah took a very personal interest in the transformation. He hovered over the skillful maids who were assigned to the work, clucking like a hen and issuing constant and often unneeded instruction. "Now blue black-blue-black, and be careful it must be absolutely perfect."

The hair was finally cut with bangs across the forehead like an Egyptian's and let fall to my shoulders.

"Too bad," said the Rajah, "that we can't dye your gray-green eyes brown."

LEARNING THE WAYS OF THE BALINESE

Once given my new name, I had to become a true Brahman, and to do this I must receive religious instruction. I went, therefore, to the home of the village high priest, who spoke excellent English. He taught me about karma, the transmigration of souls, the unreality of the world (maya), and the names of the Hindu deities; he also taught me how to pray and what to say. I recited after him verses from the Bhagvad-Gita, the Lord's song.

The studying I did was not easy, but being young and, I hope, reasonably intelligent, I was an apt pupil or so I was told. I became deeply attached to the old high priest. The Brahman high priests are considered to be of higher caste than even the rajahs. Their homes are called geriyas. There was one priest in the north of the island at whose home I often stayed for days, having become a good friend of his family.

Brahmanism is a many-sided creed and takes in every aspect of life. No act, no matter how simple, is performed without an obeisance to the gods.

I attended temple feasts all over the island. They were very gay, quite unlike going to church in the West. And they were real feasts, with music from the gamelans and everyone laughing and talking. While the priests chant and prepare the holy water, young men and women sit around flirting. I saw women bring into the temple courtyard little tables upon which they set out sweetmeats and drinks for sale. At some religious feasts even domestic animals and pieces of household furniture were brought into the temple to be blessed!

One thinks of the East as a country of leisure, at least for the nobles. But nothing could be further from the truth. There was a siesta in the early afternoon because of the intense heat, but outside of that everyone was occupied from morning to night, the women as well as the men. We did everything but rest. I was rarely alone. I sometimes wondered if any disgrace was attached to being by oneself. And yet I loved it all.

I had thought I would paint. I had planned on this. Agung Nura, as he had promised, saw to it that my studio was prepared. My paintings were unpacked, with Nura and often the young princesses eagerly watching. As each canvas was unrolled, the prince made exclamations of delight. He was amazed at the Balinese scenes which I had painted while on the way to Bali. He asked me if I would like to see his own paintings and promptly produced several. They were in modern Western style, and done with considerable feeling for composition. Later I was to learn much from him that strengthened my own feeling for composition one of my strongest points as a painter.

He worked humor into his art, his rollicking spirit always bringing out the lighter side of a subject. Frequently I would find in my studio or bungalow a new sketch, usually a sardonic caricature of Dutch behavior. I recall one particularly bitter drawing of Dutch officials banqueting beneath a canopy. Each man wore the mask of an animal. The table was covered with bottles of liquor and rich and varied foods. Outside the canopy squatted peasants, thin and in rags. It was very well done, but the subject surprised me. I had much to learn about Agung Nura s political opinions.

I was too excited to begin painting at once, and anyhow I had very little free time. I did not mind this, for I could not yet hope to express on canvas all I was seeing. Everyone was so good to me and life was so interesting. I was not a guest, but a member of the family, a much-loved member.

There was a woman, Isteri Duah, whom I knew but did not know. The name means second wife, and vaguely I was aware that the Rajah had a second wife, but the two ideas had not connected in my mind. His first wife, Isteri Satu, I had come to know quite well. She was active in all affairs of state and attended certain state functions though she never sat down with the rajahs at official feasts. I found this curious as she functioned in many ways as any wife of a prominent statesman in America might do. I was told that other rajahs would not have sat down at the table with her. It would have been a breaking of convention.

But it was all right for them to sit with me because I was a foreigner. I was present at many feasts where I was the only woman. The Rajah insisted on my being present because I could amuse his guests. Agung Nura told me that his father was proud of me and liked to show me off. He always humorously introduced me as his fourth-bom daughter.

The second wife, Isteri Duah, was of lower caste than the Rajah and much younger. She had no children. She was largely responsible for the running of the huge palace household, and hundreds of servants and underlings came to her for orders. In this department she was in a position of considerable authority. She must have been a very practical person and I know that everyone regarded her with a great deal of esteem, including the first wife who was deeply attached to her and depended on her in many ways. There was no jealousy. The Isteri Satu thought it entirely reasonable that the Rajah should have a second wife. Without question he was a man of high moral character. I think his morals would stand up rather well by any standards one could name. A neighboring rajah, also highly respected, had forty wives and a hundred children.

I recount these matters in what may seem to be too much detail, for it was a strange world to me as it may be to the reader. There were many amusing incidents. I was introduced and taken everywhere, to the palaces of all the rajahs always accompanied by Agung Nura and several servants. Frequently the old Rajah himself was my escort, watching over me afraid, I think, that I might be enticed away from him. All the rajahs seemed to like me, and many of them invited me to stay at their palaces.

There were brothers and brothers-in-law. The high-caste Balinese are often closely related. There was one palace quite as large and as beautiful as the one in which I lived. It belonged to an older brother, the Anak Agung Pongawa, a deeply religious and fine man. Most of the other palaces were less impressive.

As time went on I formed a friendship with a cousin of Agung Nura's; she had the same name as his younger sister, Anak Agung Ksiti. She was tall for a Balinese woman, with a thin, intelligent face and a personality that interested and attracted me. Her father was dead, and although she was twenty-five which made her middle-aged in that country she had refused to marry. She was very wealthy in her own right, and lived a life of extraordinary independence. In a sense she was uneducated, a Balinese woman of the old type. She knew no English or any other European language. As soon as I gained fluency in Balinese and Malay we became very close.

Incidentally, the Malay language has adopted the Roman alphabet, which is of course like our own. But the written Balinese makes use of a sort of syllabic script, each syllable a character. This is rather difficult at first.

I have spoken so far only of the sweetness and innocent charm of Balinese life. There is another side. Some of their ceremonies involve blood sacrifices. There is, for instance, a kris dance which is performed by the men of the village, young and old. They are entranced, plunge swords, or rather krisses, into their breasts and other parts of their bodies, but mysteriously do not wound themselves or even bleed. Toward the end of the ritual the pemangku, the people s priest, as opposed to the Brahman priest, eats small chickens alive. I could never become used to this spectacle, though my friends accepted it without quibble. It is an observance which has been retained through a thousand years, and who can say that it is more to be deplored than the English or American sport of hunting? I myself have never cared for hunting. And I think the methods used in our stockyards brutal. The whole matter is difficult to explain.

There is a much rarer and more spectacular ceremony of blood sacrifice strictly religious which occurs only once in ten years. I was fortunate or possibly unfortunate enough to witness it. The affair takes place at a lake deep within the yawning crater of an extinct volcano high among misted peaks.

On this day Agung Nura and I left our car at the village of Kintamani and made our way on foot by a steep and slippery trail down to the lake s edge. We expected a canoe to be waiting for us, to take us across the lake where the Rajah and other important men of Bali had gone the afternoon before. Our destination was one of a group of very old villages, the last of those settled by the original inhabitants of Bali, who lived there long before the coming of the Hindus. They are touched but lightly by the life, or the Brahmanism, of the present and few people visit them. They are called Bali Aga villages, and are walled against intrusion.

"One can never truly know Bali," Nura had told me, "without going into them. The Bali Aga have been called nations within our nation. Intruders are resented."

There was no canoe for us, and it started to rain. In fact it poured, and I became soaked. The prince left me in order to find means of transportation, and I was discovered by a Balinese, fat and sweating, who turned out to be one of the few rajahs I did not already know. He spoke perfect English and insisted on taking me across the lake in his own boat. Happily, he also had a very large and beautifully decorated umbrella. I explained the situation, and told him who I was. He had heard all about me. When he proposed leaving one of his servants to tell the Anak Agung Nura that I had gone on, I consented to my rescue.

It seemed a perilous voyage enough. The boat leaked and had constantly to be bailed out. I think we were two hours on the water. But the whole story of that day is a long one altogether. On the far shore there was a cluster of small temples and huts, and behind these could be seen the walls of the Bali Aga village. Near the huts I saw a shelter with a thatched canopy beneath which a long table was set with food and drink. As we stepped ashore several men greeted my benefactor with much bowing and scraping. But something one of the men said appeared to upset him. He excused himself and strode off into one of the little huts, leaving me to my own resources. It was still raining very hard.

With the water dripping from my hair and streaming down my face, I started toward the shelter with the thatched canopy. As I approached I noticed that there were several white men among the Balinese nobles seated at the table. To my horror I recognized the controlleur of Klungkung and the controlleur of Den Pasar. They saw me, too, and glared, their faces gleaming with dislike. I halted. The rain was preferable to joining them, so I turned and ran back to the shelterless shore line. It was there that Agung Nura found me, when he arrived finally in a canoe he had managed to procure.

He pacified me with the assurance that we would stay away from the Dutchmen, and then he and his father took me to a small stone house along the beach where I was given dry clothes and food. By then the rain had stopped and the sun was out, and the day's ceremony started with a great ringing of bells by the priests. Prayers were intoned.

Now the peasants loaded boats with live geese, goats and chickens and a single sad-eyed water buffalo, all to be drowned as a gesture of propitiation to the gods. There were also boatloads of fruit, flowers, and rice.

"Once every ten years it is necessary to appease the gods of the lake," Agung Nura explained. "The animals are weighted down with kapengs [native money] equal to their own weight. There must be fortunes in Balinese money tossed into the water!" We got into a canoe, the Rajah carefully lifting his red and gold ceremonial trappings so that they might not be soiled more than they already were, and paddled out into the lake. The heavy-laden boats carrying the sacrifices were taken out about a mile amid much praying and casting of flowers. Suddenly at an appointed spot the animals were pushed overboard. There were more prayers until the bobbing heads disappeared and the ruffled water was again quiet.

It was beginning to grow dark, but for the safety of our homeward journey we must wait for the moonlight. We took advantage of this to go to the walled village of the Bali Aga where, because of the Rajah's exalted status, we were admitted. Finally the moon rose, the night became brilliant. We could return home. I consoled myself that at least there had been no human sacrifice.

A DAUGHTER OF THE PALACE

Another blood sacrifice with a religious significance was the favorite sport of the Balinese and the old Rajah. Cockfighting was the Rajah's only vice. He was basically a gentle person and yet he loved it. He persuaded me to go with him, which was unusual - as no Balinese women ever went to cockfights. More and more I seemed to do what he wished me to do. I saw things more and more through his eyes. As for the cockfights, I cannot say that I did not come to enjoy them.

He taught me to be a good judge of fighting cocks, how to place a bet and with whom. We bet with the rich Chinese merchants and with the other rajahs. I still had some money of my own and insisted on using it for my gambling. The rajahs all bet large sums. My bets were much smaller, but I often won.

I recall sitting around a rectangle which was filled with offerings to the gods. At the center of each of the four sides was seated one of the local potentates. The birds fought, and we bet. I suppose it is a cruel sport. The birds, with long sharp spurs attached to their feet, were often killed and always wounded, but I admit I grew not to notice the cruelty. Now I might feel differently, but I must record how I felt then. The picturesqueness appealed to me. It would have appealed to any artist. I later painted many pictures of these fights. The excitement was tremendous. And I told myself that any pleasure I could bring to the old Rajah was a small return for his abundant kindness. I was in a rather peculiar position with him. I had in a very real sense become his daughter, such a daughter as he could never have fathered. He loved it, and I loved it. To some, my life at the puri might seem protected, almost cloistered. But I think I have told enough already to show that this was far from the truth. To use a slang phrase, "I got around."

One day a ship of the American navy anchored off the coast, and the Rajah announced that he would dearly love to go aboard a real battleship, especially an American one. I took it upon myself to write a letter to the captain, who responded warmly with an invitation to lunch. It was decided that the Rajah, the prince, the princesses and I should accept. But there was a line drawn. The Isteri Satu and the Isteri Duah could not be allowed to leave the palace.

The harbor was shallow, and no ship of battle size could dock at the quayside, so a kunch was sent for us. We arrived in much state with suitable attendants, the family wearing their most splendid raiment, though I myself preferred to dress simply. The Rajah and his son had golden krisses tucked in their sashes. Jewels flashed. The girls had wrapped yards of yellow and gold brocade around their bodies. Their necks, arms, and ears sparkled with gold and diamonds, and their black hair was heavily scented with frangipangi.

The captain himself escorted the Rajah and the Anak Agung Nura everywhere, while officers in charge of the princesses and me followed close at their heels. The old man was like a child at his first circus. There was an airplane to examine right on the deck and also a fine launch almost as large as the one which had been used for our own transportation. But it was the guns which fascinated him most.

"If we only had had guns like these when we were invaded, we never would be a colony of Holland now!" he said.

This amused the captain greatly. In fact every comment the old man made amused him, even though it had to be translated by Agung Nura.

"Tell your father," the captain instructed Nura, "that we would be delighted to let him have some guns now, but I am afraid it is a bit late, and besides it might lead to international complications."

It was at lunch that the gaiety reached its height. The officers were much intrigued by the six-inch-long fingernails of the Rajah and the princesses, and were amazed at their skill in managing knives and forks, not realizing that they had all had training in European manners. The prince did not wear long nails, and naturally I did not.

The ice-cream course was the climax. The Rajah had never eaten ice cream before. He asked for a second helping and a third and a fourth. His son warned him that he would be ill. Even the princesses, who rarely admonished their father, spoke in warning. And he did feel a little squeamish later, particularly on the launch from ship to shore.

In return for this hospitality the Rajah invited the captain and his officers to the palace, arranging for them a feast of feasts. The puri was decorated as it had been on the day of my arrival. All the neighboring rajahs were included among the guests with their families and ministers. Dancers were brought from all over the island, gamelan orchestras came from far and near. Even a cockfight was scheduled.

Because of the presence of the rajahs certain formalities had to be observed. On arrival the women were immediately separated from the men. Ara and Ksiti and I escorted them to the women's quarters where the Isteri Satu and the Isteri Duah greeted them and we sat around gossiping. I alone was included at the table with the rajahs and our American guests. It was expected of me and for once I was glad. I never enjoyed these feminine sessions, perhaps because I was too modern.

The Americans had the time of their lives. If the Rajah had overeaten of the ship's ice cream, they certainly returned the compliment in regard to the suckling pigs roasted before their eyes, the turtle satays cooked on skewers, to say nothing of the beverages. Although the Rajah and his son did not touch alcoholic drinks, the palace was always well stocked with every type of wine and liquor, including arak and brum (this last a rich native wine). [It is "brem", a kind of rice beer, similar to sake, and it is disgusting. Dikigoros.] Our new friends sampled them all.

The party ended at daybreak. On leaving, the captain asked the Rajah what he would like to have from America as a remembrance of this wonderful day and night. Without hesitation, but with a twinkle in his eye, the Rajah said he would like an ice-cream-making device.

He was greatly touched when, some two months later, a brand-new refrigerator arrived from Washington. There were careful instructions on how to make ice cream. With the gift, on one of the shelves, there was a large card: WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE CAPTAIN AND HIS OFFICERS OF THE AMERICAN BATTLESHIP.

It was most unfortunate that the palace had no electricity, so the gift was useless. I suggested selling it to the Dutch hotel at Den Pasar or to an official there, as electricity had been installed at Den Pasar. With the money we could buy the type of freezer using bottled gas.

The Rajah was horrified. "What? Sell the gift of the American navy? Never! This is the first gift I have ever received from America, and I would not consider parting with it. When I die I shall leave it to my children."

He had his precious gift placed in his private living quarters, and I heard that some of his finer apparel was kept on its shelves. I helped him to select return offerings for the captain and his officers.

The incident of the battleship was altogether pleasant. But about this time there was perceptible a growing rift not between the prince and his father, who were always deeply attached, but between the modern and ancient ways of looking at things. The prince was modern in his outlook, and his father clung to the old customs. I suspect that my arrival and the interest it created had minimized their differences for a while, but now certain problems began to appear or reappear. I don't think they were new.

By Balinese custom, or indeed any Eastern custom, it was full time that the Anak Agung Nura took to himself a wife. The Rajah announced with seeming suddenness that the matter was settled. He had chosen for Nura a suitable bride, Rati, a beautiful young girl, not quite sixteen. The prince was outraged and flatly refused to have anything to do with such a marriage.

The entire puri was in an uproar. The Rajah and his ministers were dismayed. By every possible means they tried to induce Agung Nura to change his mind and follow the customs of his forebears. But his modern education prevailed, and he was adamant. The Rajah said that he himself would be put to shame before his court and all the rajahs and nobles of Bali. I felt very sorry for both Agung Nura and his father, but even more sorry for the bewildered little Rati who, while not in love with the prince, was deeply embarrassed by his refusal. It was nothing personal, Agung Nura assured her. She was charming, she was very pretty, it was merely that he did not wish to marry her.

Finally I was never told under what pressure a compromise was arrived at. Agung Nura would marry Rati, but be a husband in name only. There would be a formal ceremony, and that was all. It would not be followed by a ceremony known as the bride wrapping, a strange and primitive affair.

I had attended numerous bride-wrapping ceremonies during my stay at the palace, always experiencing a degree of embarrassment, so I could understand Agung Nura's objection to taking part as a star performer. By custom the bride was wrapped in many yards of white cloth, giving her somewhat the appearance of a mummy, and was then carried into the nuptial chambers. It was the task or privilege of the bridegroom to unwind the cloth as a prelude to the consummation of the marriage. As the two ends of the cloth were skillfully concealed, it sometimes took hours for the bridegroom's nervous fingers to accomplish the unwinding. Then he must reappear before the wedding guests with the cloth in his hand, proof that he had fulfilled his obligation. As often as not he was deeply scratched by the bride's long fingernails, especially if the marriage had been arranged against her will. The wait was always a lively affair, with feasting and laughter, but it was as nothing to what followed the return of the bridegroom with the cloth. Then the talk became frankly ribald.

Because Agung Nura was a prince and Rati would be his first wife, the bride-wrapping ceremony was called for. In the case of a later marriage to a woman of lower caste, the ritual was curtailed and there was no bride wrapping.

Prince Nura asked me to explain to his father why he felt as he did, and I agreed to try. As I anticipated, the old man's first reaction was shock at my audacity in speaking openly of a subject not to be discussed with women.

"But you cannot expect to send your son to European universities and then, on his return, have him accept the feudal customs of his ancestors," I pointed out.

"And what is wrong with those customs?"

"Nothing for you perhaps. But for him a great deal."

Fortunately by this time I was able to speak quite fluently in Malay.

"A man and a woman should marry for love," I went on, "and should be allowed to choose their own mate."

"Love, love - what is love? And what has love to do with marriage? High-caste women should know nothing of love!"

The old man was more shocked than ever. Ribaldry was one thing, but a serious discussion of intimate matters with a woman was quite another.

"I never heard such nonsense in all my life. What has love done for you people of the West? As far as I have heard, you are in and out of court, divorcing the mates you marry for this love of which you speak so admiringly. We do not have such things as divorced wives. Now what have you to say?"

"You would be surprised at all the noble deeds that have been inspired by love," I answered him, trying for a lighter tone.

"I have been surprised enough already," he said.

By chiding him in a playful way for his old-fashioned views I finally succeeded in bringing a smile to his face.

"Listen, fourth-born, you had better be quiet or I will wrap you up in yards of white cloth and deliver you to one of my neighbors. I know several of my brother-rajahs whom I would have no trouble in persuading to take you."

"I am quite sure," I told him, "that you have no intention of turning me over to any of them no more than you have of selling your useless refrigerator to a Dutchman in Den Pasar."

With him restored to his usual good nature, I chose this auspicious moment to take my leave.

Gradually his sulks grew less. All he ever said to me after this was that he wished he had never been talked into sending his son abroad for a Western education. The Anak Agung Nura's behavior was incomprehensible to him and upsetting to the entire court.

Agung Nura thanked me for my effort on his behalf, which was only partially successful.

The Rajah finally yielded to the prince's insistence that he should continue to lead a bachelor existence, and then the formal marriage to Rati took place. Tradition had been carried out at least in part. No doubt it was the father's secret hope that the son would change his mind when Rati was a little older. But in this he was to be disappointed. Agung Nura never consummated this marriage, nor did he ever marry again. So the old Rajah was cheated out of grandchildren from the male line of his family.

It was not long afterward that the elder daughter of a neighboring rajah secretly eloped with a rich young Chinese merchant. Her father collapsed in rage, and the Rajah, who was deeply sympathetic with him in his plight, engaged Agung Nura in heated disputes over the affair. It was unheard of that a girl of such high rank should marry a foreigner, a commoner moreover with different religion and custom sand without the consent of the family!

Agung Nura suggested to his father that the girl would never have received such consent. The young man was of excellent family from Peking. The two were deeply in love.

"I envy them," said Agung Nura. "They will be companions as well as husband and wife. She is a most intelligent girl, not one to be always confined in a puri. She will see the world."

"And what has companionship and seeing the world to do with marriage?" demanded the old man. He blamed his son for holding such radical views. "What difference does it make if the man is rich and has a fine home in the northern part of the island and another house in Peking? I can t stand this thing called education!"

Calamity after calamity descended upon the village. The highly superstitious people put all the blame on the Anak Agung Nura and the eloping princess, believing that the gods were angered at their revolt against the old customs.

Twins, considered an omen of evil, were born to a couple. A double birth was bad enough when the children were of the same sex, but in this case they were not a double tragedy. Elaborate and expensive offerings must be made to appease the gods, and laid at the crossroads and at all entrances and exits to the village. The mother must leave her kampong, for she was considered unclean, to take up residence with her twins in the Pura Dalem, the Temple of Death. There she stayed for forty days and nights, after which she returned for the purification ceremonies. Only then was she permitted to return home, to be received with feasting and dancing and an enormous cockfight. In older times it was believed that twins of opposite sexes had been married in the womb; therefore they were required to marry each other on reaching maturity.

By such accidental happenings, interpreted in the light of ancient superstitions, the whole neighborhood was affected by the revolt of the two young people. What they had done opened the way to further disaster. The world of the past was tottering. Even more than the Dutch occupation, these things shook the simple Balinese. I could almost see the Rajah growing old before my eyes. There was fear stirring.

INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS

"You remember the village of Kintamani?" Agung Nura had come into my studio, as he often did. Of course, I remembered. Kintamani was the place where we had been obliged to leave our car on the day of the rather gruesome ceremony of drowning the animals in the kke.

"Yes," I replied, "only too well. It's near the volcano."

"My father owns a large coffee plantation not far away. Beautiful country, lovely mountains. I was wondering if you would like to join my sister and me on a visit there?"

I told him I'd love to.

"The coffee," Nura explained, "is now ready for harvesting. It will be sold to Chinese and Arab traders, who come to buy the beans while still on the tree. Bali coffee is of a veiy high quality. I must be away from the puri for at least a month in order to attend to everything. I shouldn't want the traders to get the beans too cheap. Not only for my father's sake but for the villagers. In the past it was outrageous how the people were cheated."

"A whole month?" I questioned. "Perhaps your father wouldn't like the idea of my going."

"Not at first, perhaps, but don't worry. Between the two of us we can easily talk him into it. You always seem able to twist him around your little finger. If you really would like to go, it's as good as settled."

"I would hate to do anything which your father wouldn't approve of," I said.

"Come," said Nura, "we'll get it all arranged now."

We found the Rajah seated on a mat on the floor carving a piece of gold which he was fashioning into a brooch. The carving was fine and intricate. It depicted the figure of Ardjuno, god of love. The Rajah spent many hours sculpturing the traditional Balinese deities, sometimes in wood as well as metal. He was really very gifted.

We told him at once of my wish to accompany Nura and Ksiti to the plantation.

For a while he did not answer. It was almost as if he had not heard us. And then:

"Aren't you afraid you'll freeze to death up there?"

"I'm used to cold climates," I explained.

"Ksiti will have need of a companion while I am attending to the merchants," Agung Nura cut in. "And I shall want someone besides Ksiti to talk to in the evenings."

"Oh," said the Rajah jokingly, "so Ksiti needs a companion! And what of me? I shall miss K'tut's nightly stories about her fabulous country. I'll have no one to tell me about Paul Revere riding his horse, and Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves, and George Washington and Thomas Paine and all the other American heroes. And there will be no one to give me my lessons in English. I was getting along so well, too. If you are gone a month I shall forget everything you've taught me."

"You could come with us," I suggested, "or at least drive up and see us sometimes. It s not so far."

The Rajah snorted. "You don't know in what a ridiculous place my son has built his house! It is miles from the highway. No motorcar can get anywhere near the place. Besides, I have my official duties here as regent of the district. No, I cannot join you."

Naturally, the Rajah gave in. He did so at last with a good deal of grace. "After all," he admitted, "I was being a selfish old man In wishing to keep my fourth-born by my side. I am sure K'tut will be all the happier after this trip to return to the puri, a far more appropriate and civilized environment for a young lady, even from the West."

In a few days we were ready and the Rajah was quite gay about it. "Now, fourth-bom," he cautioned me, "do not run off with one of the Chinese merchants! Rajah Z lost a daughter that way and I wouldn't want to lose one the same way."

I was deeply touched by his saying this to me. Apparently it never occurred to him that I might ran off with his son. He trusted me to preserve my status as a member of his family, in truth a daughter, and a sister to Agung Nura. It was indeed a rather strange relationship which existed between Agung Nura and me, a difficult one to explain. We were very close, and yet I did not love him in that sense in which love between a man and a woman is usually understood. It might have been different, this I admit, but I was wise enough to know that only by keeping our friendship on a platonic basis could I live at the puri as I desired.

The coffee plantation and Agung Nura's house were on the opposite side of the volcano from the lake where the ceremonial drownings had taken place. We had to make our way from Kintamani on foot as we had before, but the path was somewhat less difficult. I was surprised to find that Nura s house was built quite in the Western manner, like a luxurious chalet such as one might find in an expensive mountain resort in America. He explained: "I did not have a road built from Kintamani because I wanted complete privacy, a retreat not only from the world but from the puri. Before you came I spent much time here. You are the first white woman to cross the threshold."

I didn t know what to say to this, so I said nothing, and he went on: "But that is not so strange. I no longer think of you as a white woman. It seems as if you have always been with us. What a happy Bali we could have if the Dutch were like you." I laughed. "They would be horrified if they thought they resembled me!"

Though I spoke lightly, to me the Dutch were not a laughing matter. They were still trying to force me to leave the puri, threatening me with everything from deportation to that goona-goona which they said would sooner or later be used against me by jealous women in the palace. The fact that I had given no woman in the palace cause for jealousy they obviously did not believe. The whole Dutch colony hated me, looked upon me as a pariah. Scandalous tales about me and the prince were widely circulated.

The chalet was a lovely place, luxurious but without ostentation. Compared with the feudal quality of the puri, it possessed simplicity. Here the servants were not allowed to grovel. Agung Nura had profited by his Western education in more ways than one.

The main room was large, and smelled of pine wood from the fire of pine logs which always crackled in the enormous fireplace. A vast couch was set in front of the fireplace; in a corner was a record player, with a large library of records of the works of the great composers. Three walls were lined with books in several languages - philosophy, science, politics, biography, and, of course, the world's great novels. On either side of the fireplace were hung sports trophies won by Nura at his two universities, and a collection of krisses and spears. And all this in a forest of towering pines and coffee estates. It was for me the most peaceful place in the world.

Agung Nura and I had many talks before that fire. It was then that my mind was opened to political ideas to which I had never in the past paid much attention.

One evening, Nura took his sister and me to a very small village within easy distance of his house to see a trance dance. The Balinese name for it is sanghyang. The performance was held in a wooded clearing which was lit by oil-filled coconut shells hung from the trees. Moonlight filtered down through the branches. The most gifted of scenic designers could not have improved on this setting. Hundreds of mountain people were there, either naked or clothed in rags, their mouths distorted by wads of tobacco or betel nut. They were the most primitive people I had yet seen; many of them appeared hardly human. Their eagerness had a strange animal-like quality about it.

The dance began with two boys sitting on the ground opposite each other, each boy holding a stick. The sticks were joined by a cord, attached to which, and hanging down, were two puppet dolls. representing gods. The boys held the cord taut, their arms rigid. Then their faces twisted curiously. They began to tremble, their bodies jerked spasmodically. But the sticks remained steady, the cord taut. "Now they are in a state of trance," Nura whispered.

Suddenly the dolls began to dance and shake and move violently from one end of the cord to the other. The spirit of the gods had entered into them. The boys were unconscious.

On the ground in front of the dolls two very young girls, splendidly robed, were seated. Now they began to moan softly, to sway back and forth. Finally they shook violently as if in ecstasy. The spirit of the gods had left the dolls and had entered into the bodies of the girls, who also were in a state of trance. The trances were induced, so Nura said, by the temple priests, and neither the girls nor the boys would awaken until the priests so wished. The young people had inhaled a rather heavy-smelling incense at the beginning of the dance.

Suddenly the girls leaped onto the shoulders of the boys, who immediately rose up and stood for a moment quite rigid. A fire of burning coconut shells had been spread over the ground behind them. The boys with the girls still standing on their shoulders turned and ran back and forth over the fire, barefooted. They swirled and leapt, the girls leaning this way and that, doing a kind of dance without support of any kind except for their feet planted firmly on the boys' shoulders. I expected them to fall any minute and be burned in the fire. But Nura told me that this was impossible while they were in a state of trance. Neither were they burned by the fire. The girls were not dancers, he said, and wholly untrained; their performance was due to their unconscious condition. It was the goddesses who were moving and swaying through the medium of the girls' bodies, so the Balinese people believed.

Whether Nura himself believed this I do not know. He had not protested at the eating of the live chickens, though he told me later that he hated the rite and was sorry there was nothing he could do about it. The sanghyang dances were different, and hypnotism a power generally recognized. It was an incredible phenomenon.

Deeper within the mountain fastness I saw a number of such dances, and other ceremonies, that I shall not attempt to describe. Life in these utterly remote spots was even more primitive. I tried to see as much of it as I could. For the most part the people here worked on the Rajah's coffee plantation, but a few had small holdings of their own. I have no words to describe how archaic their life was. They were completely without education. They simply couldn't grasp the purpose or use of schooling.

Kintamani itself was a mere collection of tiny Chinese shops, a market place, and a Dutch resthouse sprawled along the highway of the mountain overlooking the Batur volcano. This part of the countryside was under the jurisdiction of Nura's father. All the rajahs had been made regents of their districts by the Dutch, who gave them large incomes to serve in this capacity. The work they did took little of their time. The natives were accustomed to being ruled by the rajahs and more or less content. And the rajahs for their part found their lives comparatively undisturbed by the Dutch administration. It was a system which worked, but hardly made for progress.

Agung Nura felt strongly about colonialism, and during those evenings when we sat before the fire at the chalet he told me what he thought what he hoped to accomplish. He unfolded for me the history of colonialism in Indonesia and his dream of freeing his people.

"The poverty is appalling and totally unnecessary," he said. "You have already seen something of Dutch stupidity. But it goes deeper. The whole system is evil. The people work from sunup to sundown for a mere pittance, ten Dutch cents a day, which is much less than that in your money. Java is an island with tremendous natural resources, oil, rubber. Many millions of money go to Holland every year with no adequate return. Nothing is done to raise the living standards of the people. And something must be done."

"What?" I asked.

He did not know exactly. "Oh, the rajahs are not without blame, even my father is not. He shuts his eyes to the poverty outside the puri gates. And what could he do against the present system? Nothing, I suppose. He would consider it too great a risk, and so would all the others like him, who live in luxury. Yet my father is a man kind and good."

I agreed with all this.

"True, his own servants are practically slaves, but at least they are happy slaves. They are fed and clothed and cared for. They would not know what to do in any other life. Then there is the color bar. The Dutch are afraid of men like myself of high rank educated abroad. We return here and are treated as badly as they dare, all doors are closed to us where white men gather. We have no positions of consequence in the government, where we could do a great deal if we were allowed to. But that is exactly what the Dutch fear most. If it were known that I, a rajah's son, was thinking revolutionary thoughts, I would be whisked off to prison and then to the Tanah Merah concentration camp kept by the Dutch in the swamps of New Guinea for native political prisoners. There are fourteen thousand of them there, I believe."

I told him I had heard of the place and reminded him of the little boy, Pito, who helped me find my way. He called it the country beyond the moon.

"Yes, that's it. I have no wish to go there," he said grimly.

Nura told me too of the taxes people paid out of their pitiful wages. "If they do not pay they are taken from their kampongs and set to road building in this climate a grueling labor." He spoke of the great men who had tried to liberate the Indonesians from the Dutch yoke. (Bali itself was not taken by the Dutch until early in this century, though they held Java and the other islands long before that.) He told me the story of Prince Diponegoro, whose followers were all mounted on black steeds with gold and red trappings, the men in white capes and brandishing jeweled swords. This was a hundred years ago. Prince Diponegoro was captured, but his bravery had made him a national hero.

Nura did not believe in violence as a way to freedom, preferring negotiation. But without firearms which the Dutch denied them and without a leader, what could the Balinese accomplish? "We do have one man," he said. "He is still young, but he has been in exile for nine years. He is a man of very great stature, and there is none like him. His name is Sukarno."

This was the first time I had heard that name.

"Unless something happens," Nura said, "I am very much afraid that he will die in exile."

When the coffee had been harvested and sold, we returned to the puri, but I did so with a heavy heart. I found myself in a thoughtful mood. Agung Nura, to my surprise, was not the same outspoken person in the puri that he had been at the chalet. In his father's palace he kept his ideas carefully to himself, in part because he did not want to upset his father, but also because there was always the possibility of a spy. So on the surface he appeared what he might so easily have been, a mere playboy like so many Eastern princelings.

Yet this was not the deepest cause of my curious discontent. I was beginning to realize that I had not taken advantage of my opportunities to see Bali as it really was. I had let myself be lulled into a passive state by pleasure and comfort, and this was certainly not what I had traveled half across the world for. Oh yes, I had seen the Bali Aga villages, I had seen the kampongs, I had been present at primitive ceremonies and dances and feasts, but always in the company of those whom the natives regarded as royalty. I knew nothing, positively nothingof what was really going on in the country.

AMONG THE PEOPLE OF THE KAMPONGS

By now I knew that Bali, the country of my adoption, was my place in the world. And I decided that I must learn more about it than I could see from the perspective of the puri. I must go forth by myself and live with the natives of the kampongs. What Agung Nura had said to me had affected me deeply.

When I told the Rajah that I proposed to leave the puri and wander about over the island, he stared at me in amazement.

"Why, fourth-born, you don't have to leave the puri in order to learn how our people live. You have seen the most primitive villages, the kampongs, the ceremonies, and I can tell you all about the communal system. Every kampong is the home of what the Scottish people would call a clan, a family brothers, sisters, children, husbands, wives. I know all about it, I can tell you."

But I persisted. "That's just it. I don't want to be told. I must see for myself, I must live among them, eat their food, do as they do."

"Oh, my son has been talking to you. He has an insane idea of freeing his people. They are not so badly off. We rajahs see to that. But how could you, a young woman from the West, accustomed to every comfort, live as they live? They don t mind, never having known anything else. Why, the dirt of the kampongs would disgust you, and the peasants are completely uneducated, you would have nothing in common with them. Oh, I know my son s views. He would give them bathrooms, schools, even to the lowliest. He has made you his ally in his one-man campaign against the occupation of his country by foreigners. But there is no way to the freedom he wants, except through a miracle."

"I believe in miracles!" I exclaimed.

After a fairly long argument, he gave way.

"You must love our people very much to take such interest," he said, smiling. "I will not stop you. Do I not always agree with you, fourth-born? But I shall console myself knowing that you will be returning to the puri more quickly than you think. You could never stand for long the life you propose."

When I told Agung Nura of my decision to go and live in the villages he was, in one way, delighted. It showed how I felt about his people. But he took it upon himself to warn me in greater detail about what I would face.

"You'll get ill living on their food prepared as they prepare it. They have no notion of even the most elementary hygiene. You may get dysentery or possibly malaria. Never drink the kampong water without boiling. It comes straight from the streams which are used as sewers. Never sleep without being covered with a mosquito net."

I grew a little apprehensive. Could I really do these things? I conveyed something of my fears to Nura, but he had no answer.

Before I left the puri, the Rajah presented me with the golden brooch he had been carving, with my name and the words "You shall never be forgotten" etched in Sanskrit on the back. Agung Nura gave me something even more precious. This was a very old bronze coin, suspended from a golden chain, and known as the Ardjuno amulet of love. It is thought to have extraordinary magical powers, and to guard the wearer from evil.

The Balinese have great faith in the Ardjuno coin and believe it was carved by the gods.

"If you wear this coin, K'tut," Nura told me, "no one can steal our place in your heart or take you away from our shores without your consent."

There is no doubt that he really believed this. And I grew to believe it too. I wore the coin for as long as I stayed in Bali. I also wore, round my waist, the little carved box which the child Pito had given me. Possibly the two together were invincible. How can one prove that they were not?

By this time I was known to the people all over the island. News travels fast in Bali, and the peasants knew that I was friendly. And Agung Nura had introduced me to many of them at temple feasts and dances. It was therefore easy for me to stay at the kampongs. I just went in and said that I should like to stay with them for a few days. The peasants were delighted with the idea.

I was gone from the puri for more than two months and I did everything I had been warned against doing. I went to all corners of the island, living in unspeakable conditions in the very lowliest of kampongs, and everything that Nura had said about them was true, and more besides. Night after night I slept on a mat on the floor in dark huts without windows. I ate food prepared by women with filthy hands and dirt-caked nails. I drank unboiled water from their earthenware jugs, and their fermented palm wine out of dirty glasses or broken cups with dead mosquitoes floating on top. I bathed in the creek with the other women and for toilet facilities wandered into the bushes. I watched old women with betel-stained mouths chew food to a pulp and then stuff it into the mouths of children who lacked the teeth for chewing. I remained in excellent health, free from dysentery or malaria, though both diseases were rife. I never showed that I was shocked at anything or that I considered myself above anybody. And I received nothing but affection.

The tendency was, at first, to treat me as an honored guest. This I refused to be. I tried to help them by sending for medicines and clothing. I loved these people very much and felt that they returned my affection.

I didn't spend every moment in the kampongs. As I entered each district I had to pay a visit to the local Rajah, or village chieftain. I had already met most of the rajahs; they were very surprised, and greatly interested, at what I was doing. I did not go fully into my reasons, merely said that I was curious to know how the peasants lived. They all urged me to visit them, but I had not left my own puri for any such purpose.

While I was an established member of the Rajah's puri, the Dutch officials had more or less let me alone. They had to be careful not to insult the rajahs, who made the running of the country easier for them.

But when I left the puri it was quite a different matter. My first summons came within a week of my departure. It was curt and to the point, just a line in Dutch: "The controlleur wishes you to call upon him immediately."

This was the controlleur of Klungkung, the same man whom I had seen before and disliked so heartily. I had no choice but to obey the summons, and I must do so in my native dress, having nothing else to wear.

In the outer office the Balinese clerks turned smiling faces toward me. One said, "I shall announce you." And then, through the thin partition, "K'tut Tantri is here. She is dressed in a sarong."

Speaking to the clerk in Malay, which I now understood perfectly, the Dutchman boomed, "I refuse to meet any white woman in a sarong! This is koerang hormat!" The phrase means lese majesty, disrespect to the representative of the Dutch Queen.

The clerk came back and told me that the controlleur would not receive me unless I was dressed in European clothes.

"But I now have no other clothes. If he wants to see me I am here."

There was a brief and low-voiced conference in the private office, and then the clerk returned again and ushered me in. The controlleur glared at me.

"I see," he said, speaking in English, "that you have gone from bad to worse! The palace was too good for you. So now you have sunk to the level of the kampongs. As for your native dress, what you choose to wear privately is one thing, but coming to see me at my office, the sheer effrontery of it..." He sputtered with anger, and concluded his harangue by using a phrase "masoek bangsa andjin" that is most offensive. It means in a rather loose translation, "You have entered the dog state." ["bangsa" does not mean "state", but "race". Dikigoros]

I could hardly believe my ears.

"If you insult me again," I told him, "I shall write to the American consul. I am doing nothing wrong in staying at the kampongs!"

"If you return to the palace at once we may come to accept the situation. But if you persist in your present way of life we shall see about deporting you."

This was not an idle threat. I knew he had been waiting to make it for a long time.

"So that is what you wished to see me for. Well, you've seen me, native dress and all. Good day."

With that I walked out of his office. The native clerks grinned, and one raised a thumb in a gesture of congratulations. These summonses occurred more than once, but I shall not trouble to repeat them, as they ran true to pattern with only trifling variations.

I went back to the kampongs and found there, as always, politeness and kindness. In all the time I spent with the more lowly natives, I never heard them shout or scream in rage. I never saw a child abused and rarely heard one cry. There was no complaining, no mention of the difference between their poverty and the way the rajahs lived. And of course the contrast was fantastic. To me it seemed unjust, but to them it was an accepted order. The palaces were in their way luxurious in the extreme. The kampongs only just sustained life in a mild climate.

Each kampong is surrounded by a wall of adobe topped with thatch. Inside this are a number of huts, each of one room and without windows. The floors are made of hard mud. The huts are used only for sleeping in, the people live in the common yard. There is little furniture except mats of woven bamboo on slightly raised platforms which are used as beds. The cooking is done outside. In one corner of the yard the women thresh the rice which is stored in a specially built hut. Rice, and vegetables cooked in coconut milk, with some ground chili peppers are the staple food. Cooking utensils are primitive.

The yard invariably contains several shrines to the gods, usually with offerings displayed. In one corner is the pigsty. The pigs are bred mainly for the market. At the time I was there fruit bananas and papayas was a source of slight additional income, and eating the fruit an impossible extravagance. I often wondered how the men who worked so hard in the rice fields held their strength on a diet so meager and unvaried.

In every village there are several kampongs each, as the Rajah told me, harboring the members and relatives of one family. Every male, when married, must join the village council. He must always remain in his own village. He must help his neighbors and receives help in return. No money is ever exchanged. Everything is shared. A headman rules the council, elected by common approval. He cannot refuse this honor. The sharing goes beyond an exchange of ordinary courtesies. All are involved in the various feasts which punctuate human progress, from birth through marriage and on to death.

That goona-goona of which I had been warned I now encountered for the first time. In the kampongs it was frequent, though practiced more often for good than for evil. Superstitions affected everything the people did. But I myself was in no position to criticize. Did I not wear as a charm a coin on a golden chain carved with a god and a little box hung by a cord round my waist?

Despite the filth, the discomfort, and the meager meals from which I always arose hungry, I found the kampongs the paradise for which I had left Hollywood. To me they contained a curious quality of peacefulness which I had not found in the palaces of the rajahs. It was an artistic, an uninhibited, way of life. Most of these poor peasants were artists of talent and power of expression.

I finally came to the village of Kuta on the west coast facing the Indian Ocean. The beach was magnificent and without a house or a hut. There were a few temples and numerous fishing smacks or praus moored close. What a site for a house! I revisited the beach frequently, and it was here that the idea entered my head of building an exclusive hotel. It was merely an idea. What would I be doing with a hotel? A hotel took capital, and I had by this time given most of my money away. If I only had the land... Moreover, under the Dutch, no white person could own land, I was told.

I talked with the villagers in Kuta who owned the beach. They could lease me the land, I learned, for the amount they would have to pay the government in taxes. This was such a ridiculously low sum that I leased from two families practically the whole of Kuta Beach. I could manage somehow to build myself a small house here. There were a few white artists and writers in Bali. Most of them had built their own houses. Since living in the kampongs I had got to know them. My calls were always welcome, and I learned that they were as I was at loggerheads with the Dutch officials.

Before I left the puri the Rajah made me promise to return for prayers at least once a week. I did this out of respect for him and to please him.

On one of these visits to the puri that were, I must admit, a pleasure as well as a duty I noticed again a building which had often excited my curiosity. It was a rather handsome house in the Western style standing in its own grounds, a short distance from the walled puri. It had once been used by a Dutch official stationed in the village, but the office had been discontinued, and since then the house had remained untenanted.

I asked Agung Nura about it. I didn't see much of him these days. Though he visited me at the kampongs, his arrival was always a signal for the occupants to gather before him in suitable attitudes of adoration and little intelligent talk could be carried on.

"Who owns that house?" I asked Nura.

"That's a curious question."

"Why?"

"My father was speaking of it just today, I mean in connection with you. He is anxious to have you back here with us, as we all are, but we realize that in the puri you do not lead quite the independent life you prefer. If you lived in this house you would feel more free, wouldn't you? You could paint without interruption, and see your artist friends, and wander about to your heart's content." He realized that I found the restrictions of the palace a little irksome. Agung Nura could not believe that I liked living in the kampongs.

"You haven't answered my question. Who owns the house?"

"It is owned by our cousin, your friend, Anak Agung Ksiti."

I made an exclamation of pleasure. This was the wonderful woman of whom I was so fond.

"Do you think she would rent it to me for a while?"

The thought had come to me while Nura had been talking. What he said was in part true. I could certainly paint there, and I would be far more free than in the puri. The house on the beach could wait.

"Why don't you talk with her about it? I think it could easily be arranged."

The old Rajah thought so too.

I was staying at that time in one of the better kampongs with the family of a gamelan player who was a most talented musician. But I do not mean to suggest that he had money. The small amounts he made were spent on his musical instruments. We had a little bit more to eat, a piece of dried fish with the rice and in the rooms were one or two pieces of bamboo furniture, lacking in most of the other kampongs. But otherwise conditions were generally the same.

I talked to Anak Agung Ksiti the next day. She was delighted that I wished to live in her house, but she refused the suggestion of my paying rent. Together we went through it. There were a number of fine rooms. Two at least could be used as guest rooms. This was it! The beginnings of my hotel. I would take some paying guests; they would restore my bank account at least a little. Not ordinary tourists, but writers, and artists, and those who would appreciate a place away from the usual paths of the tourist crowd staying at the Dutch hotel at Den Pasar and away from the Dutch official stationed there. And with my knowledge of the island and its language I would be an excellent guide to the off-the-beaten-track places. And I could paint and sell my paintings. I felt I had now absorbed enough of the Balinese life to put it all on canvas.

The Rajah too was delighted, partly - I felt sure - because I would still be under the protection of the puri.

As if by magic workers appeared who started to put the villa in tiptop shape. It was ran down a bit, like any other building which has not been lived in, especially in the tropics. Furniture was brought. Much as I argued, I was not allowed to pay for anything. "K'tut's house" absorbed the attention of the entire palace. This was not exactly in accordance with my own plans for complete emancipation, but there was little I could do about it. My house provided everyone with a delightful new toy. The Rajah himself, suitably attended, came over daily to criticize what was being done.

"Of course," he warned me - it seemed to me that he was always warning me of something - "the Dutch won't like this when they know you are going to have white guests."

"Oh, not necessarily white!" I had long ago decided there would be no color bar.

"As you well know, the Dutch officials are against foreigners living in the villages. It is not only that you will take business away from their hotel at Den Pasar, but they want foreigners to remain under Dutch eyes."

"I should think they would be delighted that I am at last living in a Western style villa on my own. I am out of the kampongs, even out of the puri. That is what they wanted, isn t it?"

"Not exactly. They didn't want you in this part of Bali at all."

Despite his satisfaction in general, there was one thing about the house which did not suit the Rajah: the bathroom walls were shabby.

"They have been shamefully neglected. Oh, well, we'll attend to it. I know exactly what I shall do. Tomorrow I'll let a few of the prisoners out of jail, and in no time you'll find the bathroom transformed."

"Prisoners!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. Some of them are most talented artists and work men. They can retile the floor, do the walls with frescoes."

I was shocked. "What have they done to be in jail?" Prisoners in my bathroom were not a pleasant prospect.

"They're just common prisoners, thieves mostly, a few murderers. I shall give orders that they arrive here the first thing in the morning."

I wondered if this was the Rajah's idea of a joke. If so, it was the kind of Balinese humor I had not happened upon before. While the repairs were in progress, I was staying in the puri. The next morning I rose early and went over to the villa. The prisoners were no joke. I was standing in the garden when in marched a dozen men, as disreputable and ill-assorted a group as I had ever seen, with a uniformed prison guard at their heels.

"These are the men who will decorate your bathroom," the guard announced. "I shall leave them with you and call back for them at five o clock tonight." And with that he stalked off.

I was dumfounded. But I showed the men to the back of the house where the bathroom was situated. Everything was in readiness as the Rajah had promised it would be. They were all most polite and smiling, but I thought it best to leave them to it and go away. I returned to the puri to look for Agung Nura, who was painting in his studio.

When I told him what happened he took the news with surprising calm. "Oh, don't worry about the prisoners. They like being let out."

"Yes, most prisoners would. But won't they run away?"

"Where would they run to? If they tried that they would be caught very quickly. My father, or rather the guards, doubtless picked them very carefully. They wouldn't be let out if they were really dangerous."

"Your father told me some of them were murderers."

"I doubt that. He was probably exaggerating a bit."

"But surely such men won't be able to paint frescoes!"

"The Balinese peasants are a race of artists, don't forget. Even the commonest man has a great deal of artistic feeling."

That day I avoided the villa. But shortly before the appointed hour of five, Agung Nura and I strolled over there and found the prisoners squatting around the garden waiting for the guard. They thanked Agung Nura for the food which had been sent over to them from the palace kitchens. Presently the guard appeared and escorted them back to the jail.

"I hope they haven't destroyed the walls of the bathroom," I said to Nura.

"Oh, you'll be surprised at what they've done."

We went to see. I was indeed surprised. In fact, I was stunned. The floor was beautifully tiled and the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with scenes which depicted the torments of the damned in hell. I thought it was funny, painted by the criminals themselves. I was amazed at the beauty of the color and the skill of the execution. I had noted such scenes and but little better done on the ceiling of the famous Hall of Justice in Klungkung, and sometimes carved on temple walls. But in my own bathroom it was a shock. Some of the incidents depicted were to Western eyes wholly indecent, but to the Indonesians they were merely a part of life, in this case, of death. To the common people sex was commonplace, like breathing. No mystery was ever made of it. I had learned this in the kampongs. In our sense of the word obscenity did not exist for them.

Just what I should do about these frescoes I was not sure. I did not wish anything in my house to give a false impression to the strangers I had planned to have as guests. For a moment I was merely embarrassed, and this because Nura was with me. But suddenly he began to laugh and then I joined in, dissolving the embarrassment.

At last the day came when the villa was ready and I moved in. The people in the kampongs would miss me, I knew, but I would continue to see them and to provide them with the little things they needed, such as medicines and kerosene for their tiny lamps. I was their only connection with the world outside. Most of them had never been off the island of Bali. They did not even know where Java was; as for America, it was hardly a name.

The villa had a large open veranda, and it was here that Agung Nura and I continued our talks. I told him in detail just what I planned about having paying guests.

"No color bar, no race prejudice at all. I shall accept Dutch artists as well as American, Indian, Chinese, and of course Indonesian."

He thought this delightful. "Perhaps we shall establish an art colony right here in our own village."

I think Agung Nura was often lonely for want of contact with people who were his intellectual equals.

"But you won t have enough room for all who will wish to come! You will be forced to move to larger quarters. What about Kuta Beach, which you have already leased?"

I hadn't told him about Kuta Beach, but no news in Bali can be kept secret.

"So you know about that," I said, a trifle sheepishly. "Before I saw this villa I did think of building myself a little house there."

He looked at me. "A little house or a hotel?" he asked. Sometimes I thought that he could read my mind.

"Oh, that would be quite impossible."

"Yes, that would take money. I should be very happy to provide you..."

"No. You and your father have done much too much for me already. The means for such a project must come from elsewhere, or from myself."

"You and your independence!" he laughed. Then he told me that he was going away soon to visit a friend at the court of the Sultan of Solo in Java.

"I wish to study the political conditions there. I've heard some disturbing rumors. It is a pity you can't come with me, but I'm afraid that wouldn't do."

"I can see that," I said.

"I shall, if possible, visit other places in Indonesia. And you, K'tut, while I am away, attend to your guests, save your pennies, dream of the hotel you would like to have on Kuta Beach."

"I suppose you will write to me and keep me informed?"

"I will write to you, no matter where I am."

He was silent for a moment or two, and then continued, "It is not only the news from Java that is disturbing, it is not only the Dutch. There are other elements, a great cauldron which may someday boil over."

"I'll do the little things," I told him, "you the big."

He hardly heard me, and yet at that moment I felt extraordinarily close to him. I didn't ask him what he meant. I left him to his own thoughts, as he rose and quietly walked away.

A DREAM TAKES SHAPE

I was established in the villa, with two rooms for paying guests, and Agung Nura was gone, to be away for a long time. Now was the hoped-for opportunity to paint while I saved pennies for the future. But though I did paint, there were difficulties of many kinds. It is not a period I remember with pleasure.

The Dutch as usual received the news of my villa before it was an accomplished fact and promptly launched a bitter campaign against me as a questionable charactera white girl gone native. They were more bitter, I think, because they could not attack me directly, knowing that I had the protection of powerful nobles useful to them. Chauffeurs of hired cars were warned to keep tourists away from my place. The tourist trade was a Dutch monopoly. The inference was that I would take trade away from the Dutch-owned Den Pasar hotel. But my two guest rooms were hardly a menace and besides I had made it clear that I did not wish to accommodate the ordinary run of tourists.

The situation was troublesome, also ludicrous, as the chauffeurs who had been given orders to avoid me were my friends. I had lived with their families in the kampongs. In consequence, they ignored the orders for the most part, especially if the tourists were American, English, or Australian with the result that my villa became overrun with sightseers. The campaign had backfired. I was well known before, but now I was notorious. And yet my guest rooms were not profitable. Knowing that I did not wish ordinary tourists, but people in the arts who would, in truth, be my guests, friends came to see me from all over the island and often remained for several days, in turn introducing their visiting friends. And from them I felt I could not take money, either for their room and board or for my services as a guide.

My life at the villa is not important to the story I have to tell here, so it is only necessary to touch on the highlights. In that time I experienced periods of great satisfaction and periods of almost unbearable depression. I sometimes felt that all I wanted was to be left alone by everyone. Often I was tempted to leave the island, but I could not bring myself to admit failure. It was the old Rajah who more than once stopped me by reminding me that it was my destiny to remain.

"You came here, fourth-born," he told me, "under compulsion, led to our island by the gods. It is not yet clear what the gods wish for you and what you must suffer to carry out their wishes. But you must stay."

There were days when no guests, paid or unpaid, found their way to the villa, and when I was beset by sightseers I closed my gates to them and returned to my painting. The number of canvases I was able to paint depicting the life of the Balinese was surprising. I never painted just pretty barebreasted Balinese girls with pots of fruit on their heads, but life in the kampongs, the island as I had seen it, the ceremonies, the trance dances, the temples, and the cockfights. I sold some of these pictures, but the money did not even begin to cover my expenses. Where were those pennies I was supposed to save?

While the Dutch hounded me, my friends told me that I was setting a fine example to all white people proving that East and West can get along together on a basis of equality. And I did have many friends. I remember with fondness Walter Spies, a fine German painter who had lived in Bali for many years and was always close to the Balinese people. There was Le Mayeur, a gentle character, a Belgian who had married a Balinese dancer of exceptional beauty. They had a house on the beach at Sanur, a few miles from Den Pasar. Near them was an American couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mershon. Mrs. Mershon had opened a small clinic for the natives and supplied them with medicines. I remember that she was greatly interested in Balinese ritual. On Sanur Beach also there was a Dutch couple, Mr. and Mrs. Pol, both artists and charming people, not at all the official type. And then there was Carol Dake, also Dutch, a painter who continually was at odds with the Dutch officials.

Finally, there was Theo Maier, a Swiss painter who lived wholly as a native, even to marrying two Balinese women and having a child by each. I frequently visited his house and enjoyed the extraordinary native dishes with which even I was not familiar. Theo loved to cook. He lived far from the white colony of Sanur in a very primitive village near the Gunung Agung mountain. We had one thing in common: dislike of the Dutch officials.

Among those who came to visit me were some distinguished tourists writers and painters from England, China, Holland, India, and two princes from Siam. And very often sons of neighboring rajahs visited me with their wives. It was truly a cosmopolitan atmosphere.

During this time I came to know a man whose friendship was to mean a great deal to me. Paradoxically, Tuan Daan was a Dutchman. But he had nothing in common with officialdom. He seemed more English than Dutch, for he had been educated at Cambridge. He was now a planter, running his father's large sugar plantations in Java. His family was very important in Holland, high in the Dutch aristocracy, and his connections far-reaching. I really don't know what I should have done without his help. The officials had to exercise caution after we became friends. Though they disliked him heartily, there was little they could do.

Tuan Daan loved the island of Bali and came there whenever he could. He first arrived at my villa with his wife and baby in an overloaded station wagon and took my two guest rooms, which were for the moment unoccupied. His wife was an English girl and very beautiful. Unfortunately she did not share her husband's feeling for Bali. His first stay was comparatively brief, as he had pressing business in Java. Intending to return, he left his family at the villa to wait for him, but his wife did not wait; when he came back she was gone.

My friendship with Daan grew with time. A man of wealth, he had done a great deal for the natives, and he knew everyone including the friends I have mentioned.

In spite of the social success of my villa, it was heading for financial ruin. I suppose I did more entertaining than I could afford. Though my servants, all good friends, had come to me from the pun, I paid them and fed them. And the food I served was of the best.

I found myself with very little funds, but I still stayed on at the villa. I could have moved back to the puri, or returned to the kampongs, or asked help of the Rajah. But I had been obligated to him for too long. Had Nura been there he would have guessed the truth, being a good businessman, but his father was innocent in such matters, He took it for granted that I was making a huge success of my undertaking. He was quite proud of me, he said, and was a frequent visitor at the villa.

At this time I met an American couple. They wanted me to act as their guide during their stay in Bali. On one of our trips, I took them to the beautiful Kuta Beach, which impressed them greatly. And I told them of my plan to build a hotel there. The next day, to my surprise, they made me a proposition: they would supply the money to build a small hotel to be enlarged later from the profits if I would supply the land. Against my better judgment I agreed and signed away a half interest in the whole piece of land, which was divided by a dirt road leading from Kuta village. On one side of the road a bungalow was built for them, and on the other side one for me. And on their side, next to their bungalow, we built the hotel. But before long I could see that I had made a great mistake, the hotel would never be run as I wanted it run. Very soon we began to fall out over the question of the color bar, and other things. It became clear that my idea of a hotel where all nationalities would be welcome was but a dream.

Among the guests who came to stay at the hotel at this time was a rich American, Mr. Tenney, who owned pineapple plantations in Hawaii. I took him everywhere, and to places never seen by tourists. He was a sympathetic man; he felt as I did about the Balinese and decided he would like to live for a few months each year in Bali. He therefore asked the American couple and myself if we would sell him the lease of the land and the bungalow on my side of the road my bungalow in fact. We agreed to this, but he continued to stay at the hotel and I in my bungalow.

Things were not going too well with my partners in the hotel business. They showed plainly their preference for the Dutch and their way of life. Having no head for money matters, I had paid little attention to the contract. I didn't even receive a copy of it. For a time things seemed to go from bad to worse, and I found myself in a very depressed frame of mind.

One day Mr. Tenney came to me and said, "I can see that you and your partners will never get along, and I am deeply concerned about you. Business and family matters necessitate my leaving for America at once, but before I go I wish to sign back the land and the bungalow to you. Not to the partnership but to you personally. I also want to give you my car."

He left Bali shortly afterward. A few weeks later my partners broke the contract.

I moved from the hotel, as there was nothing else I could do, and stayed at the bungalow on the other side of the road and wondered what was going to happen next. And the servants left the hotel with me. I pointed out to them that this was foolish, for I had no money to pay them for their services, but they wouldn't listen. To me they were not servants but good friends. Three of them I had brought to the hotel with me. I knew their families well. It always irked my American partners that I treated them as friends instead of menials.

One was a very famous dancer whose portrait appeared on all the guidebooks and literature about the Bali dancers. His name was Njoman. Then there was Maday, a well-known gamelan player and composer of no mean ability. Last and brainiest of the three was Wyjan, also a dancer. Wyjan was very handsome and of a charm quite unbelievable. I loved these three and I knew they returned my affection. They could neither read nor write but they were artists in every sense of the word.

We used to sit on the beautiful beach together watching the sun set, which was always a fantastic sight. They would tell me stories of ancient times. Like all their countrymen, they never worried about the future. But I was worrying.

One day, sitting on the beach, I asked the boys, "What are we going to do now? My money is almost gone."

"I will tell you what we will do," Wyjan replied calmly. "We will start to build another hotel the kind of hotel of which you have dreamed. It will be right here on this beach, and built like a rajah's palace. It will be famous, and everyone will help you. And when it is finished the foreign guests will surely come to you and you will make a fortune. We will call it "Swara Negara" - The Sound of the Sea. We will pound our own rice on the grounds. We will have Balinese maidens who will weave. We will have our own gamelan. Maday here will know about that and Njoman will dance and bring in other dancers. Everyone who works at the hotel will be in some way an artist. We will have painters and sculptors. It will be an enchanted garden by the time we get it finished. We will build a coral temple and the village priests will prepare a feast and bless the ground. Beneath the temple we will bury offerings of gold and silver. If we follow all these customs all will be well and we shall prosper."

Wyjan was interrupted by the others with many exclamations of "T'eh adoh" which means approval and applause. Then Njoman and Maday added to the fairy tale: "We will have our own pigs, ducks and chickens, we will not cut down any of the coconut or palm trees, but build in between and around them. It brings bad luck to cut down trees without making offerings to the tree-gods. Besides, we can always sell the coconuts or use them ourselves. Many things can be done with coconuts. Oh, we can be self-supporting!"

I almost cried as I looked at the three earnest faces. "Lads," I told them, "it's a beautiful dream. But it would take a great deal of money to build such a place. The labor is not everything."

For a while we were silent. Then, as my contribution I suggested selling the car. Cars were bringing fantastic prices at the time. Perhaps a Chinese trader or an Arab...

But Wyjan cut me short. "K'tut, we cannot and will not sell the car! If we have a hotel we will need it not only to take our guests around, but for shopping. We are eighteen kilometers from the market at Den Pasar. No, we will not sell the car!"

Njoman and Maday agreed vigorously with Wyjan. "We will find a way. Let us leave it in the hands of the gods."

Still I was not persuaded. So the next morning I rose early and went to Den Pasar in search of a buyer. I did not go in the car; I thought I could get more for it if a buyer came to see it. Besides, I loved to travel in a native dokkar, a sort of miniature horse and cart. I managed to interest an Arab shopkeeper, who promised to come to the beach the following morning with a view to purchasing the car. On my return I told the boys what I had done.

"I think the Arab will almost certainly buy," I said.

Though I read disappointment in their faces, the boys had little comment to make then or later. I decided that they were philosophically accepting the inevitable. But the next morning, to my surprise, the boys did not appear at the bungalow. I called. No answer. I searched the beach. But nothing. My first thought was that they were hurt at my refusal of their advice and had gone back to their kampongs. I wondered unhappily if they had gone for good.

The Arab arrived at the appointed hour while I was having coffee on the veranda. I offered him a cup, which he drank quickly for he was impatient to be finished with his errand. Then we made our way to the makeshift garage that sat back from the sea in order to protect the car from the salt air.

Approaching the shed, I was bewildered to find it closed on four sides by bamboo poles set close and tied together with stout sisal rope intricately wound. It was like a fort. Hanging by an extra piece of rope was a large sign which read: MOTOR TIDAH BOLEH DIJUAL meaning Motor Not for Sale or Not Allowed to be Sold.

My three boys must have worked all night with the help of someone more literate than they. Naturally, the Arab was indignant. He took himself off in a towering rage at having been brought so far for nothing.

I sat down on the ground, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry, but finally settled for laughter. I laughed as I hadn't in months. Then I returned to the bungalow where I spent a lonely day pondering the question: "What am I going to do now?" By evening I had no answer, and lacking the heart to go to the beach and watch the sunset by myself, I sat on the veranda waiting for I didn't know what.

I received my answer. Through the coconut trees a small procession approached. It was my boys returning, each with a sack slung over his shoulder. At the veranda they greeted me in unison:

"Tabe, njonya besar!"

This greeting had never been used to me before. I had forbidden it. It was a greeting required of natives in addressing Dutch women. "Njonya" is a term signifying white women and "besar" means high/big/great. [The word "njonya" doesn't exist and never existed. Until 1973, it was written "njonja", then "nyonya", and it is used for women of all races and nationalities. Dikigoros] Tabe corresponds to our good day.

However, the three seemed very gay and obviously were teasing me.

"Where have you been?" I asked.

"To the kampongs on business."

"You have ruined my chance to sell the car! What made you do such a thing?"

Instead of answering they set down their sacks and opened them, revealing rice, eggs, coffee, chickens, and other food. The most precious they properly kept to the last for the grand climax. This was a smaller bag, filled with silver ringgits. Ringgits are big Dutch coins, each worth about two and a half guilders. Paper money followed.

I stared. I pointed. "Where did you get all that money? I hope you didn t steal it!"

"No, K'tut, we did not steal it. It is for you to build your hotel."

"But where did you get it?" I repeated.

"The people of our kampongs have borrowed money from the Chinese, using our rice fields as security," Wyjan said. In the morning I had laughed. Now I burst into tears.

SOUND OF THE SEA

So the hotel was started with money from the kampongs. The coins and paper bills amounted to a little more than a thousand guilders, to the Balinese natives an enormous sum, but in American money it came to about five hundred dollars. The boys thought I was crying because of what they had done to my car, but I cried from sheer emotion at the kindness of these people who had risked everything, mortgaging their lands and their very lives, to help me.

"I shall go to your kampongs and thank them," I said.

"Thanks are not necessary," Wyjan told me. "That you are willing to accept our help is thanks enough. And someday you will help us. We will return the money. So don't cry, K'tut. This is a time for rejoicing, not for tears."

Wyjan, who could think nothing but plans for the hotel, was the organizer, the leader. I realized that we didn't have enough money even to build one more bungalow, but his ideas were grandiose beyond anything I could imagine.

"I know an architect, the cleverest builder in Bali. He lives in a kampong not too far from here. I shall take you to him."

"But, Wyjan, we haven't the money to pay for an architect!"

"Of course not. We don't pay him now. Our credit is good. We will supply the material, bamboo, coconut trees, bricks, coral. He will bring in skilled workmen, as there are many such in his kampong. Other labor we get from the village. His name is Bagus. [What a pecualiar name. It means "great" - whereas "besar" means only "big". Dikigoros] We shall build in a royal manner, and he will feel honored to do it. When the hotel is finished, we will pay him so much every month. The Balinese are in no hurry for money, and it is our adat [custom] to help one another."

A day or so later, Wyjan took me to his friend Bagus, who received us most graciously and nodded with pleasure as Wyjan unfolded his plan. "We need your clever help so badly, Bagus. In fact, without your help I am at a loss to know what we should do." Wyjan had the devil's own tact. "We are not asking you to design an ordinary hotel like the Dutch one in Den Pasar, but something which will reveal your talents in their true light."

It was not surprising that Bagus had heard of me, as he knew Anak Agung Nura well and admired him. "Any friend of his is a friend of all our people. He is a brilliant and a great prince." Then he went on to describe in even more exact detail all that the hotel would be: "Pavilions, kitchen, dining room, bathrooms, and of course a fine coral temple. No house can be higher than the temple. There must be a lotus pond and shrines"

My astonishment grew as he continued. "I shall bring the blueprints in a couple of days," he said in conclusion, and went on to instruct Wyjan what materials to start buying.

The next morning Wyjan went off on his bicycle, refusing my offer to drive him, he said he could bargain better by himself. He was really extraordinary, a born organizer and leader. Later I was to learn that he also had the knack of controlling workmen. They never dillydallied when he was about, and yet they liked him.

In a few days Bagus appeared, not only with blueprints that would have done credit to any Western architect, but with his first batch of workmen. He was ready to start. The workmen would live on the premises. They began at once to construct a primitive shed for themselves, where they would cook their meals and have a place to unroll their mats at night. I found myself caught up in activities for which I was somewhat unprepared, but I liked Bagus from the first.

We were seated on the veranda, he squatting on the floor, explaining the blueprints spread out neatly around him, when there was the sound of a car approaching at high speed. It stopped suddenly. With even more suddenness a man jumped out. It was Agung Nura, whom I had not seen since a very brief visit he had paid to his father a few months before. He looked older, as if the cares of the world sat on him more heavily than in the past. And yet his vitality and enthusiasm had never been stronger.

"K'tut, K'tut!" he shouted. At first he hardly noticed the Balinese, who had risen hastily and was bowing in the traditional manner when nobility appeared. Then he recognized his friend. "Why, Bagus, so you are taking charge. Splendid!" He turned again to me. "I heard all about your hotel. I arrived back in Bali only last night, but I must come and see for myself."

For the rest of the morning the three of us pored over the blue prints, pointing out, exclaiming, suggesting embellishments.

"Here will be the first pavilion, and here is the place for the temple, though for that we must consult with the village priest. We must obtain white coral." And so on.

At one point Agung Nura asked, "Now, what do you need? How can I help?" I was about to say that we needed nothing, but Bagus had other ideas. "Agung Nura, what I would like for K'tut's puri are a few carved golden doors such as adorn your own puri. There are a number of such doors to be had from the puris of the nobles. I hear they are ripping them out and selling them and with the money building Western villas which seem to suit the younger generation better. You doubtless have many friends who would let you have them at a modest price."

"How many would you need?" The prince spoke much as if Bagus had requested a drink of water.

"Oh, one for every pavilion. Say four for the present."

"I m sure I can get you at least four. And there will be other things. I'll see what I can do."

Listening to the two men talking over my head, as if my wishes did not for the moment count, I felt that Agung was regarding me as a child who had to be kept happy.

"You must listen to the gamelan music as long as you can," he told me suddenly. At this, he and Bagus exchanged a curious look. What did he mean? I did not know, but there came to my mind the words of the English poet: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"

Later, over lunch, talk turned to larger things, to the disquieting news of the world beyond Bali where Agung Nura had been spending his time. There had been trouble aboard a Dutch battleship. The Javanese crew had tied up the white officers and sailed away, ignoring radio warnings that the ship would be bombed if it was not brought back. The situation was tense. Indonesians were being arrested right and left.

"We all want freedom, but as for getting it... I don't know" Agung Nura said. "I am fortunate to be able to travel, but how long this fortune will last is another story. I do what I can."

When Bagus had gone, Nura told me more about his travels through Java. I was particularly pleased to hear of a visit he had made to Daan's plantation. "Daan is not interested in politics," he explained, "so I can visit him quite openly. Besides, he is Dutch. But he is not like these other Dutch. He is a kind man, greatly loved by all those who work for him."

In a couple of weeks, Nura said, Daan intended to visit Bali in a yacht, bringing some friends, and he wanted both of us to join him on a cruise to the Spice Islands.

Agung Nura looked about him. "By the way, my father believes that you made a tremendous financial success of the villa and it is with that money that you are able to do all this. But I have reason to believe otherwise."

Then he got it out of me, the whole extraordinary story, the three boys, the money from the kampongs, Bagus' trust in me, everything.

I had not meant to tell him, and had been stupid enough to think he would not guess about the financial failure of the villa. But nothing surprised him. "It shows what the Balinese people think of you, K'tut."

"I am almost ashamed. I have done so little. And I have been absorbed in my own petty interests."

"All of us do that at times," he consoled me. "I have a feeling that someday you will be of great use to us. You still wear the Ardjuno amulet I gave you and Pito's little silver box?" I told him I did.

The next morning Agung Nura called for me, and we went together in search of the golden doors. Before nightfall we had obtained four and arranged for them to be delivered to Kuta by the owners; they were very beautiful. New doors could not have equaled them, and the gold leaf alone was worth a small fortune.

We found more than doors. There were many old Balinese paintings and sculptures and some unusual musical instruments made of bamboo. In the district of Ubud the Rajah insisted on presenting me with a complete one-room pavilion called Bali Cede. This had a very large built-in four-poster bed, the posts exquisitely carved and colored and gold-leafed. There were carved panels and ceiling, and the walls were covered with parchment paintings. The floor and roof were of pink and red tiles.

Months afterward, when Bagus had lovingly reassembled it and added a small archway leading to a bathroom, the first guest to occupy the Bali Cede was my own dear Rajah. "If it weren't for the Sound of the Sea," he told me, "I wouldn't know that I'm not in my own puri." But this takes me ahead of my story.

Life now was very full with the boys, Bagus, an increasing number of workmen, and the constant flow of materials and gifts. Agung Nura came whenever he could manage it. And in two weeks, as Nura had foretold, Tuan Daan arrived with a party of friends. Remembering Nura's story of the Dutch battleship, the arrests, and all the trouble brewing in Java, I marveled at the seemingly carefree company. Everything was very gay.

As I had no place to accommodate guests, the visitors slept aboard the yacht but dined with me, sometimes on the beach and sometimes on the veranda of my bungalow. Wyjan, whose talents were legion, managed to produce magnificent dinners. There was little money except what I made occasionally as a guide, but a Chinese shop in Den Pasar, run by a delightful family, extended me unlimited credit, and there was fruit from the kampongs and an abundance of local fish. After these dinners, which were veritable feasts, Maday would play the gamelan and Njoman would dance for Daan and his friends.

Daan took great interest in the construction of the pavilions, and it came out that he knew a good deal about building. He consulted with Bagus, presumably about technical matters, but when his visit ended and he had left Bali I learned that he had paid the architect a good part of what I owed him. I suspect he paid for other things too. This is why I came to think of the Sound of the Sea as Daan's home in Bali, and why I never accepted payment from him, his family, or his friends, however crowded the hotel might be.

So at last the hotel was completed, that is to say, as much as it would ever be, because we kept having to add new pavilions in order to accommodate the swarms of guests. From the outset the place was a tremendous success, and no wonder. It might have come straight from the Arabian Nights with its lush gardens, its wall of white coral, and its ancient stone statues. It was a replica of a rajah's palace. There were a few concessions to Western comfort, bathrooms, deep mattresses, and later a large powerhouse to generate electricity. Foreign magazines reported it as the unique hotel of the entire Far East. With the money I made I was able to pay back every cent I owed to the kampongs, and more besides.

For a while the Dutch let me alone, but when they lost their best tourist trade to me, and the servants of the Den Pasar hotel flocked to work for me, though I tried to prevent them, the persecutions started again. Ironically, it was the presence of celebrities in my hotel which caused the most storm and eventually saved me. The Dutch claimed that Sound of the Sea was the scene of shameful orgies, unmentionable debaucheries. Such statements brought down on their heads immediate repercussions, even from Holland itself, for statesmen and members of the titled aristocracy did not take kindly to publicity of that sort. The atmosphere became so charged that I had to be doubly careful to avoid supplying any foundation to the scandal.

Inevitably, legends grew about a place as unique and successful as Sound of lie Sea. The spirit of camaraderie was so marked that the guests frequently spent time in the kitchen learning from the cooks how to prepare native dishes. It was said that mine was a place where you waited on the servants instead of the servants waiting on you. There was a joke - and it was not entirely a joke - that if I liked you and you had ten guilders in your pocket you could stay at Sound of the Sea forever. Poor artists were always welcome at my table.

But enough was enough, the Dutch thought. So far they had lost the battle, but they were not through. One fine day when my hotel was full the Dutch police came down and arrested all my servants, Wyjan, Njoman, and Maday with the rest. They wanted to "interrogate" them, so they said.

I immediately cabled the American consul in Surabaya, and within twenty-four hours the servants were released, but the stories with which they returned were appalling. The police had tried to make them confess that my hotel was improper.

What happened now was something far larger than K'tut Tantri and her puri, though I was involved in it. Made uneasy by the unrest in Indonesia, the Dutch decided to take steps. In a first move the Governor General ordered a cleanup of homosexuals throughout the Dutch East Indies. This was an excuse to arrest a great many people, the innocent along with the guilty. An enormous scandal broke. Doctors, lawyers, navy officials, and even members of the Dutch administration who had not quite toed the desired political line were taken into custody.

The result was hysteria, which soon spread to Bali. There were inquiries, and a number of people fled the island. I was questioned along with friends and guests. However, the moral atmosphere of my hotel was above reproach, and the police could discover nothing wrong, and for a while the Dutch drew back from me.

Then a series of curious incidents took place, which I did not at the time understand or even try to understand. It seemed coincidence. I was acquainted with most of the rajahs in Bali. The younger ones especially enjoyed coming to my hotel for a gay dinner or a swim. Now I noted an increase in these visits. Then one, and an other, and still another, made a point of finding me alone to ask if I would do him the honor of marrying him. The proposals were quite formal. Yes, they said, of course they already had other wives, but this, I surely knew, was the Balinese custom. Nothing could be done about it. If I would accept their offer I would never have cause for regret. I would then become a Balinese in fact, as I now was in spirit.

I had received offers of marriage before during my stay in Bali, but never quite in this way. I couldn't pin down the difference exactly, but it was there. With as much courtesy as I could muster I told them, no, though I greatly appreciated the honor.

"I think it most important that you become a Balinese," one of them said. "You have made a place for yourself in all our hearts, and we cannot lose you."

I realized afterward that these men were doing what they could, in fact the only thing it was within their power to do to save me. At the time I didn't know that I was in such need of saving, and in thinking about these marriage offers I was perplexed. It was almost as if the men had discussed among themselves what they could do. They must have heard something which I had not heard.

For a time everything went smoothly with me. I was not bothered, and my self-confidence was restored. Then one day a Dutch half-caste policeman arrived at my hotel with a large official envelope, long familiar to me. Some controlleur, no doubt, wished to see me. But no. This was a deportation order. If I did not leave the island within one week I would be arrested and put on the first available ship for the United States. No expknation was given.

I went at once to the controlleur in Den Pasar to ask what this meant. "What reason"

"The Dutch government is not called upon to supply a reason. You are an alien. And we will get you out of this island if it is the last thing we do!"

"It will indeed be the last," I replied. "I will never leave on such an order. This is a frame-up. And if you put me on a ship you will be sorrier than you have ever been in your life! I shall see to that!"

The next morning I caught the plane for Java and went at once to the American consul at Surabaya. He told me that they could not deport me unless they could prove that I ran an immoral hotel or spread communism. "But you must get a lawyer. The matter should be taken up with the Governor General at Batavia. Get everything moving as quickly as you can." This was his final advice.

It was my idea to engage an Indonesian lawyer, but Agung Nura said that a Dutch lawyer was necessary as no Indonesian would have a chance in a Dutch court. On his urging I went to Tuan Daan, who recommended a lawyer who was one of his close associates. Soon necessary formalities were completed, the Dutch officials in Bali were notified that the case would go before the Governor General. Until a verdict was reached I could not be arrested or put off the island.

Weeks passed without a decision. From many parts of the world people who had stayed at my hotel wrote to the Governor General protesting at the treatment I was receiving. One Dutch baroness who was close to Queen Wilhelmina wrote: "If the American girl, K'tut Tantri, is put out of Bali we shall invite her to Holland, where she will have something to say."

Meantime my hotel was emptied of all guests. The Dutch allowed no one to remain there, though I was permitted visitors.

"They will never permit you to be deported," my Dutch lawyer assured me. "It is no crime to get on well with the natives, to wear native clothes, even to live with native families. Only persecution and intolerance and racial prejudice are crimes."

I had more faith in what the Rajah had once told me: "It is not yet clear what the gods wish for you, but evidently you must suffer to carry out their wishes."

After weeks of tense waiting, one morning suddenly, as always, and unheralded Agung Nura appeared. I was on my veranda with a number of callers. Agung Nura greeted them briefly. And then to me: "I have something to ask you, K'tut. I have been considering it very deeply, so please listen."

"Why, of course I listen!"

He took me down the path to the sea's edge. I could feel the strong pressure of his hand on my arm.

"Will you marry me, K'tut Tantri?"

I was reminded of the rajahs who but a little while ago had put the same question. I said the first thing that came into my head: "Why, Nura, how could I? You have a wife already!"

"In Bali it is quite legal to have more than one wife, and you surely know the situation between Rati and me. Oh, I know there would be disadvantages perhaps for us both. But you would be safe. You would be a Balinese. The Dutch would not dare to touch you. You belong here. You have made a place for yourself."

I did not know what to reply.

"I have spoken about it to my father and received his approval. In fact, he told me that if there were no other way out he would even marry you himself!"

This broke the strain, and we both laughed a little. "I'm sure he would, Nura, I'm sure he would!"

"Well?"

I shook my head. "No, dear Nura, it's impossible. I could never accept from you such a sacrifice. The Dutch would never forgive you. You would have to give up all your dreams for your countrymen. I must fight my battles for myself. You are already in more danger than I shall ever be, no matter what happens. You are a dear friend and brother, and I cannot add to that danger. I came here to Bali to obtain freedom for myself and not to take it from those I love."

It was while Anak Agung Nura was still with me that word came that his Excellency, the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies, had ordered the reversal of the deportation order. [That decision by his Excellency was to cost the lives of tens of thousands of Dutch men, women, and children, and later on, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Dikigoros]

TRIUMPH AND TROUBLE

So I had won my case. I could not be deported. This ought to have meant more to me than it did. What I had been through was not to be easily shaken off. And I believe there was another reason for my apathy, a premonition of disaster far greater than anything I had so far endured. The peace I had come to Bali to find was gone, temporarily at least. I was restless and tired at the same time. There was a great deal going on in the world, and I was not part of it.

My hotel was reopened, but it was not the same. The monsoons had come in earnest, and if Bagus had not wired the roofs of my pavilions to the ground, I should have seen them fly off. It was not the season for visitors. Perhaps I had become too accustomed to the pressure of many people and their needs. I tried to study political economy and read book on the colonial system. From what I had seen of this system I did not think much of it. I was waiting, but I did not know for what.

In Europe there was a man named Hitler, and then in Europe war broke out. It was September, 1939, that England declared war on Germany. Hitler had marched on Poland. We heard the news, but it was far away. We were safe here, confident that nothing could happen to us. The English in Bali and Java, I noted, were returning to their own country. Otherwise everything was as always. The colonial Dutch seemed to ignore the whole thing, though Holland was an ally of England. Then Hitler's armies invaded Holland. Rotterdam was bombed. Queen Wilhelmina fled to England with her government.

It was about this time that an old British general came to my hotel. He was a Scotsman from the island of Skye and was returning to England as soon as he could. Meanwhile he spent his days sitting on the terrace overlooking the sea, and knitted. I had never seen a man knit before, but he told me that he always knitted before he went into action.

"Good for the nerves and it lets you concentrate. He said I was wrong if I thought that what had happened in Europe would not affect Indonesia. I think I learned more from him than from the books I had been reading.

Though the Dutch could not ignore the war after Holland fell, they seemed, even yet, extraordinarily complacent. The Indonesians, at least the more educated ones in the larger islands, were much more concerned. Their political leaders were openly pro-Ally and asked the Dutch to arm and train a percentage of natives in the event of an emergency. But this request was ignored. There was a powerful pro-Nazi group among the Dutch, called the NSB. Java, it seemed, was filled with this fifth column. In Bali the Dutch life appeared unchanged.

As the weather improved, guests came to my hotel, though they were for the most part from the other islands or from Singapore. Tuan Daan came, also his father and mother, and a retired American naval captain, Captain Kilkenny, as well as military personnel of various nationalities in increasing numbers.

I was again making money, but the joy had gone out of me. Through Daan I became quite friendly with some of the Dutch, not of course the controlleurs, or the people in the KPM shipping company, or those who ran the Bali Hotel, but Dutch officers whose views, surprisingly enough, were sympathetic to my own. I should explain that the Kuta airport nearby had been taken over by the Dutch Air Force. A group of aviators placed there for advanced training and for maneuvers formed the habit of coming to my place whenever their duties permitted. They were fine young men, friendly and charming. They liked to swim from my section of the beach and to have dinner afterward.

They were a jolly lot and I enjoyed their pranks, except when as a stunt they flew their planes in formation directly over me as I sat on my terrace, so low that I expected them to crash on my head. For them everything was free food and drinks, a car for sightseeing, and even a pavilion if they wished to remain overnight. Some times I wouldn t see them for days at a time, then they would reappear. Many of them were married, with homes in Java, and I visited several of them more than once.

And then there came further trouble with Dutch officialdom.

I received a telegram from the English statesman, Lord Norwich, better known as Duff Cooper, saying that he and his wife were on their way to Australia and would like to stay at my hotel for a day or two. Would I meet them at the airport? Yes, of course, I replied at once. Duff Cooper was the Resident Cabinet Minister at Singapore. His wife was the noted beauty Lady Diana Manners.

The news spread quickly. The Dutch officials informed me promptly that guests of such rank, representatives of the British crown, could not possibly stay with me, but must be entertained at the mansion of the Resident of Bali. A delegation would be at the airport to meet them.

"It's a ridiculous situation," one official said, "but it can be adjusted in a proper manner."

"Let us leave that decision to the Duff Coopers," I answered him, unable to keep the anger from my voice. "This will be simple as I shall be at the airport."

I went ahead with my preparations as if nothing was in doubt. I would prepare the most sumptuous native foods, such as Kuta had rarely seen before, and call the best dancers and the finest gamelans. The dancers were charming and talented young maidens who were almost as carefully chaperoned as the daughters of rajahs, although they had come from the kampongs. I would invite the entire village. I knew, from my years in the puri, how to entertain illustrious guests in the Balinese fashion. Wyjan, Njoman, and Maday were in their glory. Under their direction all of Kuta assisted. But actually to meet the Duff Coopers the only Europeans I invited were William and Ardene Pol from Sanur, a delightful couple and good friends of mine.

And so the great day came, and I arrived at the airport. Njoman and Maday had decorated my large open car to look like a flowered float at the Pasadena Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. Wyjan had obtained a Union Jack which he attached in front. I didn't have the heart to tell them of my misgivings. The Dutch would expect to see their flag displayed, not the British flag alone. I suggested adding the Dutch flag, but the boys said, "No," and there was no time for argument. As chauffeur and footman Wyjan and Njoman sat in front dressed like princes (though bare from the waist up). The entire effect was devastating.

All the Dutch officials were present, with a number of shining black limousines which looked out of place. We had ten minutes to wait, but it seemed much longer. The Dutch were stunned speechless by my own display. Then the plane came in and out stepped our guests. The Dutch delegation immediately surrounded them.

"We shall drive you at once to Government Mansion, where we have made suitable arrangements with the Resident."

But they underestimated Duff Cooper. "I am deeply honored," he said, "but I am on a holiday, and I have made my own arrangements. Lady Diana and I are to be the guests of Miss K'tut Tantri at Kuta Beach. Please point her out to me."

"But, Excellency, her hotel is a native hotel. You would not like it, you would not be comfortable!"

"From what I have heard of her hotel I shall be extremely comfortable and will like it immensely." He smiled. "Besides, I always wanted to go native."

I was standing close by but had not as yet stepped forward. Rather unwillingly an agent of KLM, the Dutch airline, beckoned to me. "This is K'tut Tantri."

It was my hour of triumph. The Duff Coopers were cordiality itself. Nothing was lost on them, or unappreciated. Wyjan and Njoman, standing at attention, relaxed sufficiently to help them into the car.

It was no wonder that Lady Diana had made a name in the theater in addition to being a great lady. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen and as charming as she was lovely. She was delighted with everything. Duff Cooper was interested in the architecture of the pavilions and the garden.

The Pols arrived, and we all sat in the bamboo bar waiting for the lunch gong. This turned into a very serious moment. The news Duff Cooper told us was more alarming than we had realized.

"Anything can happen," he said. "You are not safe, even here."

Our talk was cut short by word that an urgent message had come for me. Outside the bar a young man from the dancers kampong was waiting to tell me that the manager of the Bali Hotel, and the agent for the KPM shipping company, had informed the dancers that if they danced at my hotel that night they would never again be called on to dance at Den Pasar.

Asking the Pols to assume my duties as hostess, I drove at once to the assistant resident, who was in rank above the controlleur. The man received me coldly, but listened while I told him that if he didn't see that these orders were immediately revoked I would send the whole story to the press in Britain. I said Lord Norwich would be shocked and affronted when he heard of this insult and that the Dutch would feel repercussions from the British government. I threatened to send a cable to the Dutch Governor General in Batavia. Then I returned to Kuta.

Duff Cooper, his wife, and I had a pleasant afternoon driving around the countryside. There was no news on our return. Then, just before dinner, when we and the Pols were again seated in the bar and I was almost bursting with impatience to know if the dancers were going to turn up or not, the Dutch aspirant controlleur walked in. Bowing right and left, he asked me if he might speak to me privately. We moved down to the end of the bar together.

"The dancers will come to you tonight," he said, "and the Resident wishes me to tell you that he did not know of the ultimatum given to the kampongs. It came from the management of the Bali Hotel and the KPM agent."

I asked him if he would care for a drink, but he refused, clicked his heels, and took himself off. I noticed Duff Cooper looking at him, probably aware that something had been in need of adjustment.

The party was a great success.

I tell of the Duff Coopers visit at such length because it made a marked difference in the way the Dutch regarded me.

This was November of 1941. The news from Europe grew worse. The Dutch began to bestir themselves. With Holland fallen, the Dutch government was carrying on from England, and the colonials could not afford to be disloyal.

It must have been during the last few days of November that Daan came to see me, wanting my entire hotel through Christmas and New Year's for entertaining his family and friends who were still in Java. As I was charged with arranging suitable festivities, this gave me something to take my mind off the clouds that were gathering. I often recalled what Duff Cooper had said "you are not safe, even here." Agung Nura was in Java. Exactly where he was or what he was doing I did not know. There was a curious pall of secrecy over everything.

One morning very early I was awakened by a banging on the door of my pavilion. I rose and went to the window. One of the aviators stood there.

"Let me in, K'tut, let me in! I have something to tell you!"

I hastily put on a robe and went to the door. The young man still stood there, not moving, though he had asked to be let in.

"You're an American."

"Why, yes, you know that."

"Well, the American navy in Pearl Harbor has been sunk by the Japanese. Your country is in the war now. The colonel sent me over to tell you the news. If Tuan Daan and Captain Kilkenny are here, you had better let them know at once."

The bearer of ill tidings left then. It was about two miles to the airport, and he evidently walked or perhaps ran all the way. Not taking time to dress further, I went to the pavilion where Daan and Captain Kilkenny were still sound asleep. They were both rather meticulous about the ritual of dressing, but not now. I had barely reached my own bungalow when I saw first one and then the other dashing out.

"Take a car! "I shouted.

"We were going to."

That night Daan left for Java. As a reserve officer he must report at once. The Dutch colonials would fight the Japanese if not the Germans. [They couldn't fight any Germans in Insulinde any more, as they had killed them already in 1940, all of them civilians, including. women and children. But K'tut Tantri didn't notice, apparently. Dikigoros] Japan was nearer. As for Captain Kilkenny, he managed to get away the next day. In the United States, even retired navy captains would now have their use. He offered to take me with him, though how he could have managed this I do not know.

One of the aviators who was constantly flying to Java and back brought me a long letter from Agung Nura advising me to close the hotel and return to his father's puri. Even if the Japanese were to reach Bali they would not disturb the rajahs, as they might have use for them later. In the puri I would be comparatively safe. All anybody seemed to consider was personal safety, and also what would happen to their money.

Though opinion varied as to when the Japanese would come to Java, I was advised by everyone to leave the islands at once. But I did not wish to leave. I had been there for many years now, and Bali had become my home. If the Dutch hadn't succeeded in sending me away, surely the Japanese wouldn't? I had come to Bali for peace and freedom. Perhaps for me the ultimate freedom lay in placing myself in the front line of battle.

The airport was very near me. For three days every week now a squadron of fliers would come over from Java. These men, I knew, would have the responsibility for the defense of all the islands. My hotel was known, even to those who had never been there. It had been opened to the air force before, but now I opened it completely. I could make what was left of their lives happier. I knew that Sound of the Sea was in danger. The airport was the only thing on Bali which would interest the Japanese in the event of bombing, and the hotel was in easy range.

I designed for the Dutch airmen a flag, an orange triangle and in each corner a black D, which I told them stood for "Darling Daring Devils". This flag became famous in Bali and Java. The young aviators were delighted with the flag, and flew it not only on their planes but on their automobiles as well.

The Dutch officials soon spread the rumor that I must be a spy, and eventually the fliers were notified that my place was out of bounds. The aviators strongly protested this order. Then the high brass of the Dutch Royal Air Force came to my hotel to investigate. I gave a party for them, which I know they enjoyed immensely, and spent the evening explaining myself.

"For whom would I be spying," I asked, "and what would I be finding out that is not already a matter of common knowledge? The fliers fly to Darwin in Australia. They bring back presents for their wives with the shop labels still attached, also packets of matches with the name of the hotel at which they stayed. However secretly they go, they are seen. I know no Japanese, I am British born and an American citizen. I have lived in Bali, without leaving, for many years. I have made some money from my hotel and if I wish to spend it on your air force, what better use can I find for it? I feel I am doing very little for those who perhaps may give their lives in defense of Bali. Please don't take that little from me. I assure you that your boys might be in much worse hands."

As a result of this investigation, the out-of-bounds order was revoked. Later these high officers who had dropped in on me sent me by plane from Bandung enough fresh strawberries to feed a regiment. With the strawberries was a message: "We know that our men could not be in better care than that of K'tut Tantri."

The Japanese were getting closer to Java, but the Darling Daring Devils continued to come to my hotel, and the orange-and-black flag did not stop waving. Few of these men are now alive, but I have never regretted that before the curtain dropped I brought them a little happiness.

THE CURTAIN FALLS

Singapore fell. The Dutch were shocked into activity. Singapore was closer than Pearl Harbor, too close. The Japanese would hardly stop there. The Dutch colonial empire was directly threatened. No aviators came to Sound of the Sea now. They were too busy. They were in a war their war. Java would be next. The Japanese had planes as well as ships and well-trained troops. They might not come to Bali, an insignificant spot on the map, but they would surely bomb the airport which English, Australian, and Dutch planes were using as a base. The beaches of Sanur and Kuta were strung with barbed wire three fences deep. Pillboxes and guns appeared. The front of my hotel seemed like some strange fort. I could sit on my terrace and look at it. In the rear an air-raid shelter was in the process of being dug. This work was stopped as it was not practical merely a sandy pit lined with boards, which would have protected no one. I think I was the only American still here.

A Dutch officer begged me to leave my hotel. "A stray bomb," he said, "just a stray and your entire place would be demolished."

Perhaps I had become, in truth, a Balinese. The natives were not leaving. They couldn t. Besides, they had hope in an old prophecy which predicted that a yellow race would come from the north and free them from the domination of foreigners. It rankled that their offer to bear arms to help the Dutch to defend their country had been refused. Then, when rumors came of the barbarity with which the Japanese treated those they captured, the natives didn t know what to believe. Would the Japanese come as saviors or as new tyrants? No one knew.

I received another message from Agung Nura urging me to return to the safety of his father's puri. But I didn't wish to do this. I wished to remain just where I was. I suppose I was confused, though in a sense unaware of my confusion. I even started to build more pavilions. Sound of the Sea had become for me a symbol. It was like my Ardjuno coinI held to it with a sort of superstitious fervor. I make no attempt to explain this, I merely record it. When the airport was finally bombed I still remained. Perhaps I was so deeply shocked that the shock brought immobility.

All this occupied a comparatively brief period of time. I could not then, and cannot now, be accurate as to the hours or days. My hotel was as yet undamaged.

Then Wyjan brought news that the Japanese were off the coast of Sanur, only eight miles away, "You must leave," he told me. "You must leave at once! You don't know it yet, but panic is coming, and it is worse than shooting. The Dutch are beginning to desert. Soon you will see them running."

And that was exactly what I saw. Not the officials - they had been ordered to stay, and besides they never expected the Japanese to remain -, but all the Dutch businessmen and the agents from the shipping company and even the Dutch military. I watched them running for their lives as the news spread that the Japanese had landed, not on Java but on Bali itself. I watched them as they threw away their uniforms or whatever else they wore, and donned native clothing and stained their faces brown. They managed somehow to get away. The panic grew as the Dutch set fire to all the military installations, the great warehouses where the rice was stored, the oil dumps, everything.

My beloved Bali was in flames. At last I realized that I too must go. First I had to say good-by to the Rajah, though it would be difficult now to get to the puri. Wyjan offered to drive me, but I could not let him take the risk. I might have driven myself, but it was best to go on foot through back roads and over hills and creeks. It was a long walk and the country was not easily negotiated on foot. Nevertheless, I did it, stopping now and then to rest and to watch the destruction I was for the moment escaping.

The puri was unchanged. The Rajah welcomed me with tears in his eyes. "You have come home, fourth-born!"

It was hard to tell him that I had come only to say good-bye.

"I was afraid of that. I have here a letter for you. It is from Nura. He sent it in my care, knowing evidently that you would come here to receive it."

"You must go to Gilimanuk in the north", Nura's letter ran. "I have arranged with some Madurese fishermen who will secretly take you to Java. And they will know where to find me. I shall be some where near Banjuwangi. Do not be too long in coming, as I am not sure how long I can remain."

I told the Rajah what the letter contained. "I must go."

"You do not have to go!" he said. "You can remain here in safety. Since when must you take orders from my son? And yet you would not marry him."

There was a silence between us then, and much unsaid.

"No, I would not marry him."

The Rajah looked at me. "You are very dear to me, K'tut, but I do not understand you."

"Sometimes I do not understand myself. I must leave you now. I have much to see about. As I cannot carry my hotel on my back I must arrange that it is cared for."

The old man shook his head. "You must be exhausted."

"I am not exhausted."

"The gods have given you their strength."

There were no farewells, just my leaving. I found that one of the puri servants was to be my guide. He carried a basket of food I was glad to have before my journey was over. At the puri I had barely touched what had been set out for me. How long my return took I cannot say. It seemed to me that I had passed through a morning and a high noon and a sunset. Sound of the Sea was still there. The Japanese were still in the midst of landing at Sanur.

That same evening I had a long talk with Wyjan. He and Njoman and Maday would care for the hotel. "If the Japanese come here," I told him, "as they doubtless will the officers will surely take over the place, be polite, serve them, cater to them. Don t risk your lives, it will be futile. I don't want this place to be destroyed or you killed. And by the way..." I handed him a paper which I had prepared "this is to say that if anything should happen to me the hotel belongs to you. You and Njoman and Maday. There is no one else I would leave it to."

Wyjan was overcome. "Nothing can happen to you, K'tut, nothing must, now that you are leaving."