He was still recuperating at home a few nights later when a rustling from the rafters above his bed proved to be yet another python which had entered the village and was lying in wait. It was then that the local shaman had suggested that unless Laba became a sailor he would probably ‘die by python’.
Apart from some rudimentary agriculture, and the building and sailing of prahus, Bira’s only other income was earned by the village’s four intrepid python-hunters, led by Rindi, who sell the live snakes for their valuable skins to Chinese traders up the coast. Rindi was a shy and diminutive man of indeterminate age, whom we first met at the Keraing’s house, and who was persuaded to take us along with him on a number of occasions to record his unenviable working day or, rather, night.
The first was on the local islet of Likangloe, where the once abundant population of wild goats had recently been massively reduced in inverse proportion to that of the snakes which ate them, and where the resident family of fisherfolk had lost a 16-year-old daughter to a python only the year before. Since a python’s skin begins to deteriorate in quality once it has grown to about 15 feet, the largest are left alone, which is just as well as each one must be caught at night, alive and by hand, with a lamp to attract them from their lairs, and at least four men to get them into the sack afterwards.
We followed the hunting team in the dark, stumbling across the scrubby terrain, heavily pitted with limestone fissures, until Rindi located a promising lair by cautiously sniffing its entrance for the distinctive aroma of a large reptile which doesn’t brush its teeth. The hurricane-lamp was placed about 20 feet in front and pumped up to maximum brilliance while we lay sweating and mosquito-bitten in the shadows, fingering our cameras and the trigger of our temperamental Sun Gun, expecting that at any moment a curious snake would be drawn to the light from the shadows behind us, rather than from the cave ahead.
As we watched, a leathery doglike head began extending from the fissure on a seemingly interminable, peristaltically moving neck. When it was fully clear of the cave, three of the hunters then simultaneously seized it by head, tail and centre and held it straight enough to feed head-first into an open sack held by the fourth man.
It was only about 12 feet long – a baby by local standards – but it hissed and barked and thrashed and stank until finally converted into a writhing sack of potatoes. The hunters had drawn straws for their positions of the evening, which in order of desirability were: sack man, head man, tail man and middle man. The head man could get bitten, the tail man could get doused with noisome excreta – and if they both missed their grasp, then the middle man got both bad ends of the snake coming back at him at the same time.
Although we were suitably impressed by the mere 12-footer caught in Likangloe, the hunters promised that before we left they would take us into what was known locally as the ‘Death Cave’ to find the really big pythons. Lorne and I had often visited this particular cave in an attempt to film the Celebes Macaque, a baboon-sized monkey unique to the island, which nested in the giant tree which grew from it, but we had never thought of actually venturing inside.
Every sunset the apes would return from their day’s foraging to sleep in the branches of this giant tree, and we were driven to distraction by our repeated attempts to film them properly in the few seconds after they arrived and before the sun set. The monkeys themselves turned out to be a highly evolved and accomplished band of thieves, and were treated by the Biranese as a neighbouring tribe. Their history told of many wars and truces between the villagers and the ‘men of the trees’, and of how the monkeys would carry their dead down into those same caves which had served as a human burial-ground or, rather, burial-dump since pre-Islamic times.
The Keraing had told us that in the 1950s a military scouting party from Makassar had angered the village by entering the caves with special equipment and making off with a good deal of valuable porcelain – indicating it had also been used as a burial-chamber by early visiting Chinese mariners. It had been used more recently as well, during the Darul Islam revolutionary uprisings of the 1960s, when the bodies of execution victims were flung into the cave. For another 10 years not a soul had dared enter it, until the snake-hunters steeled themselves to descend in pursuit of a python which had consumed a child in the dry season of 1969. On closer cross-examination Rindi confessed that since then he and his team had not entered the place until we came along. We were to understand why.
It was only a 40-minute scramble away from Bira through dry and spiny scrub before we could see the great tree looming far above any of the surrounding vegetation. But, on reaching it, it proved to be a good 20 feet taller than it appeared, for it grew from the floor of a protective circular sinkhole, perhaps 40 yards across, and with vertical walls about 20 feet deep fringed by tangled, thorny vines and spider’s webs. We cut our way through these and, following our python-hunters, who now seemed considerably less enthusiastic about the venture than they had been when they first suggested it, we slid down coconut ropes to the sinkhole floor and to the forbidding cobwebbed entrances which extended from its walls. It was quickly obvious why this was known as the ‘Death Cave’ – and, indeed, why the great tree had assumed such vulgar grandeur, for the stinking loam around its roots was thick with human bones. Skulls of goats and apes and people also littered the insides of the caves – where the air was chokingly rancid – and extremely large, spindly white spiders scuttled away from our lights. The loamy bat-dung crawled with poisonous six-inch millipedes, and at one point we automatically prostrated ourselves amongst them as a horde of disturbed bats swept towards us to escape. The deeper we went, the more clearly python tracks became apparent. Even the tracks smelt like pythons, over and above the surrounding stench, and football-sized bundles of bones were pointed out to us as the regurgitated remains of their meals. There was a passageway which ended with an abrupt vertical drop into darkness, but it had a conveniently adjacent stalacmite for attaching a rope.
Rindi, whose crew possessed only pressurized paraffin-lamps, asked to borrow our torch, and revealed with it a patch of silt floor a good 30 feet further down, as untrammelled as the bottom of the deep ocean trenches – except for the unmistakable tire-tracks of several large pythons.
‘See, Tuan, a whole other world down there. We had to go down there in 1969 following the snake which ate Denke’s little girl. We got it and cut the baby out of it. We need ropes, Tuan. The snakes don’t need ropes’, he chuckled feebly, ‘because they are ropes. Shall we go down?’
‘Shall we?’ I turned to Lorne, who was also having difficulty in breathing, and was quite aware of the idiocy of attempting a further rope descent (and hopefully subsequent ascent) with our equipment.
‘Tell you what, Tuan,’ Rindi volunteered. ‘This is bad season for big snakes. They’re not eating now, they’re sleeping. Very easy to find, but very angry. Not easy getting up that rope with angry snake behind. Better we find you more big snakes outside Death Cave.’
We were not hard to convince. We already had a fairly impressive snake hunt on film from Likangloe, even if only a small specimen was caught, and the really big ones would definitely have to wait.
Although all this was entertainingly unpleasant, in Bira the most genuine threat to our lives came disguised in the quietest way, when we broke the cardinal rule of touching an unidentified creature. We had been snorkeling together in the shallow reefs when we found the most beautiful octopus, barely a hand’s breadth in size, which rhythmically glowed with vivid blue circles. Since eyesight requires that I do most of the close-up camera work, it fell to me to film the creature crawling slowly across Lorne’s fingers. On our return to London, David Attenborough kindly came over to watch the rushes with us, and when he saw this particular episode he shrieked: ‘You fools! That is a fully adult and deadly Moluccan Blue-Ringed Octopus!’
We had never heard of such a thing; and apparently it had only recently been catalogued, after a spate of Australian deaths on the Great Barrier Reef. It is
particularly odd to watch that footage now, in the knowledge that a quick nip from that delicate creature would have sent Lorne into a coma in five minutes – and to the Pearly Gates, or thereabouts, shortly afterwards.
We were to witness a different and more promising sacrifice only after we had spent many patient weeks in Bira, when a white cock and a black goat were ritually slaughtered in Sinar Surya’s hull, signifying that at last we were about to depart. It was a messy sacrifice, since the shaman (the very same who had advised the Keraing to avoid the sea, and Laba to avoid the land) was such a trembling wreck that he could barely hold the machete and needed to be supported from both sides to avoid falling on his face.
‘He’s been shaking like this ever since he was 16 years old,’ the Keraing told us, ‘when he first had the experience which made him take up the profession. He was fishing with his uncle, and they caught a large silver fish. As the fish died it changed colours like a rainbow, and he left his body and has never really returned to it. So he’s the village shaman.’
‘Is there always this much blood when he’s on duty?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ the Keraing grinned at me. ‘No prahu can put to sea before the black goat of stability and the white cock of courage have been sacrificed for a safe journey. But if you think this is bloody’ – and he laughed his hacking tubercular laugh – ‘our ancestors wouldn’t think of going to sea in a new prahu which hadn’t first been rolled into the water over the living bodies of seven women in their first pregnancy! And, by the way,’ he added, as if it was all part of the same subject, ‘I think I’ve come up with the safest combination of captain and crew for your journey. You’ll meet them tomorrow.’
Living with the Keraing and his wife was a very public affair; and, although they barked a good deal at the constant throng which invaded their household while we were there, they were traditionally in no position to deny them entrance, and each resident of Bira got his chance to observe lengthily our every blink and mannerism. When we were asleep, it had ceased to matter, but when we ate it still remained a bore.
Thirty pairs of eyes stared with unwavering concentration as I dipped my hand into the all-too-familiar breakfast of slightly sour rice and salted fish.
‘Look, he’s pushed the fish’s head aside.’
‘How can he live on such little mouthfuls of rice?’
The low running commentary on our every move was a familiar background to all our meals in Bira, but there was an added tension in the air today. They could sense our nervous impatience, and they were determined to remember everything very clearly, for it could be many years before they would again have the opportunity to witness such exotic behaviour. Today the big hairy visitors were leaving.
The crowd at the door parted to let through a gaunt old man wearing the black peci hat, symbol of Indonesian nationalism, faded sarong and a shirt with so many patches that it was hard to tell which was the original material. He took a seat in solemn silence and, uninvited, started to roll up some of the Keraing’s tobacco.
The Keraing waved in his direction. ‘This is Ladjang. In the days when I travelled in prahu he always went with me. We even sailed as far as Singapore. Never again! I’m sending him with you to make sure you have no problems. He is very stupid, but you can trust him and he knows more islands than all the crew put together.’
Ladjang’s brow wrinkled as if focusing on some minor anxiety that nothing could be done about anyway. His mouth hung slightly open to reveal one enormous tooth dangling in solitary splendour from his upper gum and which wobbled alarmingly whenever he spoke.
He appeared to be an unprepossessing ‘guardian’ until you looked into his humorous and lively eyes. We had yet to learn that the ‘problems’ the Keraing was anticipating could come from our own crew, and that Ladjang’s job as our intermediary with them was to call on all his diplomatic skills and moral courage.
At that moment the principal ‘problem’, Tandri Dewa, our captain-to-be, stormed in. Slight and in his mid-twenties, he moved with energetic nervousness, his sharp eyes darting in all directions, as if on constant guard against a knife in the back – a worrying habit which I have since come to associate with compulsive back-stabbers.
‘Where are your things?’ he demanded. ‘We’re late!’
In Europe such abruptness might have raised an eyebrow or two, but in Indonesia it was stunningly rude. There was a shocked hush, and then the Keraing, with a sly smile, told him that Ladjang would be sailing with us.
I had to sympathise with Tandri. This was to be his first independent command, and his status and authority were already threatened by our presence. Having to take Ladjang the ‘elder statesman’ along as well was a further humiliating blow. He tried to argue, but everyone in the room knew that the battle was lost before it had even begun.
We couldn’t believe that we were actually on our way. We packed up our possessions and our battered pile of equipment, walked on air, despite our load, through the butterfly and lizard gardens to the high cliff overlooking Bira’s deep-water harbour. The sea was dead calm and the coral a glistening treasure trove of vivid gems. Seemingly suspended in mid-air, and connected to this world only by their anchor cables, floated the prahu of Bira’s magnificent fleet. That moment will remain forever crystallized in my memory. Whatever desperate or mundane disappointments might lie ahead, as we gazed down at – those phantoms from another age I felt that we had become travellers in time. For more than a year Lorne and I had struggled towards this moment and, contrary to all the laws of psychology, we were finding that the realization of our dreams surpassed our wildest expectations.
Once aboard Sinar Surya, the idyllic image was shattered. Frenetic confusion reigned, as new rattan was hurriedly woven into cradles for her steering oars, rips in her old sails were frantically patched and last-minute adjustments made to her standing rigging. Canoe-loads of coral and sand were being ferried from the beach to fill her empty hold, for she could not sail against the monsoon to Makassar without ballast. To my inexperienced eyes she seemed still to be floating far too high in the water, and I doubted that we would get away before sunset.
However, in the midst of all that confusion, Bendra, the shaman, was calmly intoning Islamic and animist prayers, and making offerings on deck for the Nuang Ase, or ‘leaving the land’ ceremony. He, along with some of the older nakoda, had divined through omens and astrological portents that this was the last auspicious day for embarking on the seasonal voyage. If we were not away by sunset, there would not be another appropriate departure date for more than a month. We were not alone in our dilemma, for all the other prahu in the fleet around us were up against the same deadline.
The Keraing came aboard with his guests and family in colourful array. The Nuang Ase is the one day in the year when the taboo against women boarding the prahu may be broken, and they brought with them a feast, including the black goat of the earth and the white cock of the sky which had been sacrificed in our hull the night before. Even in that dead calm, the ladies turned green with sea-sickness. Etiquette demanded it, as a display of their femininity.
At midday an unseasonal wind began gusting from the east, and our calm anchorage was transformed into a choppy lee shore. Tandri Dewa decided that, ready or not, we must make a move, and the guests and grateful ladies were put ashore. Lustily chanting Bugis sea-shanties, our entire crew edged Sinar Surya directly into the eye of the wind and beyond the reef. A safe distance from shore all sails were set and, with the last anchor hauled in, the mizzen and foresails were backed – the crew hanging far out over the deep-blue water to keep the booms at an angle that would force her bows around towards the south so that her mainsails could fill. Soon her hundred tons were brought to life as all eight sails pulled hard on her first tack of the season.
In the spreaders 40 feet above us the agile topmen, Basso and Rasman, executed hair-raising victory somersaults before shinning down the shrouds with the rough wires grasped between their toes. We had only known
Sinar Surya as a lumpish extension of the land – as dependent on it as a baby is on its mother; now she had come of age as she surged south to a thrilling new rhythm, new smells and new sensations. Every creak and groan was music to me, and the surge of each wave echoed through her entire frame and re-echoed through mine. Her crew danced to their tasks, and I understood for the first time the meaning of the Indonesian words for ‘crewman’ – anak prahu, literally ‘child of the prahu’. With a shake of her eight great sails, she had become a mother in her own right, and we were all her children.
Our immediate problems were sorting out our living arrangements, for although it had been agreed with Tandri that we would occupy the ship’s only excuse for a cabin we now found our things moved down into the hold. Rather bitter negotiations resulted in our final victory, and our stuffing our possessions into the windowless cabin astern and ensuring that our toothbrushes – significant status symbols – joined the only other two aboard in the privileged rack at the foot of the mizzen mast. One belonged to the one-toothed Ladjang, and was shared amongst a few fastidious members of the crew; the other was Tandri’s, to be used by no one, not even himself.
The east wind held firm, the blue waters parted, and we surged south along the fringing reef towards Tanjung Bira, the southernmost point of Sulawesi. At the top of its high cliffs is the sanctuary of the goddess Sampanena, protectress of mariners. Our crew’s wives would already be heading there to make offerings on behalf of their husbands.
Ring of Fire Page 11