The gamelan was trickier, and in the end they decided they could make do with a gendang, two gongs, a tote and a K trek. The gendang was a drum made from a hollowed palm stump, and at one end of it was a goat skin, and at the other the skin of a calf, and they were bound on with a rotan, or jungle creeper. The gongs were made with two square edge-bent-down sheets of iron suspended over waterpitchers on a wooden frame; the amount of water in the pitcher determined the depth of the note. The Toté, which is a small ninekeyed type of xylophone was very difficult, for it required a fairly thick bit of metal to convert into the keys; but the Indische Jongens are wonderful scroungers, and when I found the metal, they found tools, and the bars for the nine keys were cut out and in position on the little wooden frame within 24 hours. So we had our Toté. The K trek, a purely onomatopoeic word, was simple, and consisted only of course strips of metal bound together with wire in the shape of a metal cloth-pattern-book and which, when struck or shaken, gave out a crisp metallic rhythm.

Nearly every evening we rehearsed the dance in one secluded spot or another, the main embarrassment coming from moving on interested spectators who nightly came to watch. Tari’s patience and skill was amazing to see, and his constantly reiterated ‘Weet je?’ (Do you know?) was the first Dutch phrase I understood, for he said it as he demonstrated every single minute movement of each dancer. The smooth, graceful entry of the girl dancers Tari produced after two months; by then their hand gestures and feet movements were coordinated. The Sword Dancers were soon quite good for they’d done it before. The Spearmen were ornamental and statuesque, rather than dancers and the two clowns were allowed individual license to mimic the other dancers as they chose. Among the four male dancers were young Franz and Leider of the string-bass: the latter being keen but hopelessly clumsy and unable to keep serious for a minute at a time; but the slender, undernourished-looking Franz was the most graceful of the lot.

To see the way every dancer was trained up, to watch the fitting of the whole thing together, to see the beginning of some of Tari’s own dances while our improvised little gamelan hammered out the elusive oriental melody in a minor key, was a unique experience – and the incredible flexibility of Tari’s superb hands and fingers was alone worth an hour’s watching. But this show was doomed never to go on, Takdir Allah!

More and more bodies were being required once again by the Nips for up country maintenance of the railway and, though by knowing well all the Adjutants and Sergeant-Majors I held back the essential dancers for several weeks in the teeth of their Dutch C.O.s, a large draft had to go up only ten days before the show was due, and my complete cast went up into the jungle together rather than be hopelessly split up. The gamelan and Tari were used in the Dutch Show that happened to be on that week, but our Keraton Dance never went on.