One Big Damn Puzzler

by John Harding

  It occurred to her that Managua must have come this way this morning, or the footsteps would have been erased by last night’s high tide, but this would not have been first thing, when he came to shit, for he had not been gone long enough then to take such a circuitous route through the jungle to get here. It was one big damn puzzler! But it was about to get bigger, for the trail continued towards the sea, keeping on until it reached the first wavelets of the still-outgoing tide. If Managua had been going to feed the pig then the animal must surely have drowned, for her husband had walked straight into the sea.

  FOUR

  FROM ‘THE OTHER SIDE OF PARADISE: THE SEXUAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS OF AN UNSPOILED PEOPLE’ BY L. TIBBUT (UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT)

  THE WHOLE WAY of life of the islanders, their social, sexual and domestic relationships, their morals, their religious beliefs, and the manner in which these things differ from our own, stem from a single – and in my experience of nearly a decade of studying primitive peoples in this region, singular – gap in their understanding. It is this: the islanders have never made the connection between sexual intercourse and conception; they appear to have no awareness of physiological paternity. They believe that women are solely responsible for the production of babies and that men play no role in the process.

  Quite how this misconception about conception came about is difficult to explain. Their burial practices, which involve the exhumation and dismemberment of the corpse of the deceased, have given them an extensive knowledge of human anatomy. They recognize and have names for the major organs of the body. Among these they value especially the eyes, which they believe to be the principal means of sexual arousal; the heart, which they see as the seat of strength and character, and the kidneys. These latter are the organs they associate with sex.

  Having traced the path of the urethra from the kidneys to the sex organs they believe this is the route of the fluids released by both male and female during lovemaking. They make no distinction between vaginal fluid and semen, believing both to have the same purpose, namely lubrication during the sex act. My suggestion to a group of male islanders, as we sat together outside Managua’s hut one evening discussing these things, that it might be the testes, not the kidneys, that produced the male fluid, was greeted with astonishment followed by somewhat derisive laughter. ‘What, then, are the testes for?’ I asked, when eventually they quietened down.

  ‘Why,’ said the man Purnu, the one who is said to be the island’s most powerful sorcerer and who always takes most delight in making fun of Western beliefs, ‘for decoration. They is make you pwili look beautiful. Think how silly pwili is look without balls for rest upon.’

  A discussion followed in which one after the other they averred that it was necessary to have two objects behind the single phallus to give it a balanced appearance. They cited the eyes on either side of the nose as corroboration for this arrangement.

  I then suggested that, whatever its origins, the male fluid might be essential for procreation. Again, I was greeted by raucous laughter. Even Managua showed none of the keen intellectual interest with which he is usually wont to address any remark of mine challenging his knowledge or beliefs. He appeared astounded at the idea of anyone thinking men had anything to do with conception.

  I mentioned that they must surely have noticed that adolescent girls on the island only became pregnant after they began having intercourse.

  Managua dismissed this as nonsense. Children on the island began their sexual activity as soon as they reached puberty. But none of them produced babies until several years after this. There was obviously no connection.

  ‘So it follows that a virgin can produce a child, then?’ I countered in my turn.

  ‘Is not you own Jesus be born from virgin?’ asked Purnu and the whole gathering dissolved into noisy mirth.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But that’s a special case. It’s because we know it’s not normally possible that we worship him. And anyway, it’s a story.’ They blanked on this. Only the literate Managua understands the concept of fiction. For the rest, magic and myths are part of everyday reality.

  Managua, sitting stately as a carved Buddha, waited for the laughter to subside and raised a hand to silence the last dribbles of it. He himself was sensitive enough to my feelings to make do with a wry smile. When he had quiet he addressed me with an air of patient condescension, as when a kindly parent explains something he considers obvious to a small child.

  ‘Virgin is not have baby,’ he explained, ‘because if way is not be clear, how is baby get out? Is necessary woman is make fug-a-fug for clear entrance of womb. But fug-a-fug is not be necessary for make baby.’

  ‘So a virgin birth is possible?’ I urged. ‘Assuming the way is made clear by some other means?’

  ‘Of course, but is not usually happen because all girls is make fug-a-fug from pretty early time and way is be clear from that.’

  Here the man Purnu interrupted. ‘Is be many example of womans is have babies without make fug-a-fug. How you is explain that one?’

  ‘I would say that it is impossible. That if a woman has a baby and says she has not made fug-a-fug then she is not telling the truth.’

  Purnu smiled in that superior way of his. ‘That is where you is be wrong.’ He turned to the others. ‘She is never meet Gawaloa.’

  Several of them exploded into great guffaws at this. I was puzzled and must have looked it. Purnu turned back to me. ‘Gawaloa is be one ugly sow,’ he said. ‘She is be so ugly no man is want for put he pwili any place near she.’

  ‘She is be more ugly than sow,’ interjected another. ‘Is insult sow for compare they.’ At this the laughter became even more raucous.

  ‘She is be so ugly is hurt eyes for look upon she,’ said another. More laughter.

  ‘Even pig is not want for put he pwili near that one,’ said yet another.

  ‘If you is have pwili like big strong stick’ – and here Purnu sketched a massive erection with his hands – ‘and you is see Gawaloa, pwili is become liana,’ and he mimed the drooping of the penis as if it were a dangling vine.

  ‘Is shrink you pwili plenty worse than cold sea,’ said one of his cronies.

  ‘Man, that sow is be ugly,’ said someone else. And they all whistled and nodded their heads as though thinking about the poor woman and contemplating in their minds’ eyes her awfulness. I imagined that at that moment, were they all to remove their pubic leaves, I would find a collection of shrivelled koks with not a single erection among them. It would have been impossible to confirm this, of course. The natives’ natural modesty and taboo against public sexual display, especially before a member of the opposite sex, renders such an idea unthinkable.

  ‘I get the idea,’ I said. ‘Gawaloa is not considered a beauty.’

  ‘No, you is not get all idea,’ said Managua, who, with his superior intelligence, was, as might be expected, the one to return the discussion to its starting point. ‘Gawaloa is not only be most ugly woman on island, so ugly no man is bear look for upon she. She is be also mother of five children. Explain me that.’

  I made an attempt to insist that in spite of what everyone said of this poor individual, not all the men on the island could think it because someone had certainly impregnated her at least five times.

  The discussion was then sidetracked from this important central point by some talk about how arousal was produced in the kidneys by virtue of them receiving messages from the eyes, and that intercourse would therefore be impossible with a woman so ugly. She was simply incapable of arousing a man.

  ‘So you cannot make fug-a-fug in the dark?’ I asked mischievously.

  One of them replied that of course this was possible. But only with someone who had already been observed in the light whence came a visual memory sufficient to accomplish arousal.

  It was also pointed out to me that unmarried girls freely indulged in sex with many partners from an early age, yet there were very few unmarried pregnancies, virtually none,
in fact. How could this be if pregnancy was a result of fug-a-fug?

  I had to admit I had no opposing answer. My researches to date lead me to believe that unmarried pregnancies occur at most in only 1 per cent of all island pregnancies, yet I am entirely satisfied the natives practise no form of contraception, not even coitus interruptus. Of course infanticide is another possibility, or it may be that babies are born secretly and then given up for adoption. Either would be logical since there is a great taboo against unmarried motherhood. This taboo has nothing to do with sexual morality. How could it, if sex has nothing to do with the production of babies? It is another wonderful example to be put among the many I have discovered over the years among primitive peoples of how taboos contribute to a desired social order. In our society we had, until recently, a taboo against unmarried sex as a means of enforcing monogamy and hence social stability. Western society is paternalistic. Our sexual morality is about one man preventing other men from impregnating his woman and inserting their genes into his family. But not having made the connection between sex and paternity, and having no taboo against unmarried and promiscuous sex, these natives have nevertheless instituted a taboo to accomplish the same end.

  Be that as it may, it remains that I am at a loss to explain the apparent absence of unmarried pregnancies and it is an area to which I intend to concentrate my further researches, the results of which I hope to include in a later publication.

  Although the natives do not acknowledge physiological paternity, their children are not fatherless. Far from it. The father of a child is considered the husband of its mother. Indeed their word for father is tama which means, literally, mother’s husband. He takes responsibility for the care and upbringing of her children and bonds with them from an early age. This is demonstrated by the fact that while division of labour is along wholly traditional lines seen throughout the wide world – he hunts, fishes, makes tools, etc., she sews, cooks and cleans the hut – there is one striking exception. One of the husband’s tasks is to fondle the baby. He dandles it on his knee and keeps it clean from excrement.

  Here, in a society which may not have changed in many thousands of years, we have then a precursor of the new man. In spite of believing himself to have no physical link with his children, the father cares for them in the most basic and intimate way. This would seem to be their means of ensuring that, despite the absence of a physical connection, the father bonds emotionally with his children. This is certainly the result, since the islanders are fiercely proud of their wives’ offspring and boast unremittingly about all their petty achievements, just as much as if they could take some genetic credit for them.

  FIVE

  WILLIAM HARDT SAT cross-legged on the floor of Managua’s hut where he had just been introduced to Managua’s real wife. She was certainly a step up from the butch girl Tigua, who stood peeping in through the doorway, William thought. Lamua was beautiful, a woman who might have stepped out of a Gauguin. Black hair hung to her waist and through it, as she served him a coconut bowl of spicy stew, peeped a pair of hard brown nipples. Her skin was the colour of honey and her lips exceedingly red and full. He would have found the sight of such a woman arousing, especially the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t breasts as she moved her head and with it her curtain of hair this way and that, except that she smelled of, well, crap. He couldn’t help noticing the brown stains on the soles of her feet as she sat opposite him. Managua was beside her and present as well were half a dozen of the island’s menfolk. Some kind of elders, William had at first assumed, although in fact they were just the ones who’d managed to squeeze in before Lamua had refused entry to anyone else because she didn’t want them messing up her hut, which was rich, coming from her, William thought now, seeing as she was the one with shit-stained feet. Then again, maybe having shit all over your feet was pretty normal here and perhaps had been the basis of Lamua’s objections: she wanted to keep the numbers down because she didn’t want more shit being walked around her home.

  Managua had shredded some dried leaves and was packing them into the end of a long-stemmed wooden pipe. Around him one or two of the men kept sniffing the air.

  ‘What is be that stink, Managua?’ It was a scrawny little man with a sour face, sitting on the other side of Lamua, who asked. ‘You is be sure this kassa is be fresh?’

  ‘I is pick myself last day and is dry overnight by fire. How much fresher you is can get?’ Managua reached behind him where there was a pile of books on an upturned plastic crate. From among them he pulled a US dollar bill. William was astonished to see him roll it up into a narrow tube and thrust it into the fire. When it was burning, he stuck it into the bowl of the pipe and began sucking on the stem to fire it up.

  ‘Um, excuse me?’ said William. ‘But isn’t that a US dollar you have there?’

  Managua ignored him for a moment, obviously fearful the fragile beginnings of a light for his pipe would go out. Once it was fired up he took a puff or two, then handed the pipe to the sour-faced man. ‘Here, Purnu, now you is tell me this is not be fresh.’

  Purnu took a drag, held it in, nodded, then took another. ‘Is be fresh all right, but is still smell bad. Is smell like shit.’

  William tried not to look at Lamua’s feet. She was sitting right next to Purnu. He didn’t want to give her away. He looked at the soles of everyone else’s feet. They were all covered in dust, but none of them in shit.

  William decided to change the subject by putting his question again. ‘I said, did you know you just lit your pipe from a dollar bill?’

  Managua looked at the half-burned money still smouldering in his hand. He tossed it contemptuously into the fire. ‘Dollar, yes, is good for light pipe. Is not burn too fast. Is give plenty time for light kassa.’

  William chuckled. ‘You mean you got money to burn?’

  ‘Money?’ said Managua.

  ‘Yes, dollars. You could have bought something with that dollar.’

  ‘Bought?’ said Managua. ‘What you is mean, bought?’

  William felt a surge of excitement within his breast. In all his planning for the visit it had never occurred to him that the society he would encounter would be pre-cash, presumably a barter economy.

  His immediate thought was that this was charming, the idea of a whole people unsullied by money. His next was that it must mean they had little contact with civilization.

  ‘There are other white men on the island . . .?’ he ventured.

  Managua took a moment to reply, then shook his head. ‘No, is be no other white mans, not for many years.’ He’d paused a moment to consider the correct answer to William’s question and then responded truthfully. If William had said ‘white people’ he would have said yes, because there was Miss Lucy. But William had only asked about men.

  ‘You can exchange dollars for something else,’ William continued. ‘For example the dollar you just burned might have been changed for . . . oh, I don’t know . . . say a can of Coca-Cola.’

  ‘Coca-Cola?’ said Managua. ‘Man, you is be crazy. Who is go give you Coca-Cola for piece of paper? Why, you is not can write on this paper. I is know, I is try. What use is be?’

  William was puzzled. There was something that didn’t add up here. Managua had mentioned Shakespeare. Surely if he’d read Shakespeare he’d know about money?

  Before he could work it out, his thoughts were interrupted. Purnu said something William didn’t catch but he had a good idea of what it must have been as Purnu lifted one cheek of his behind from his mat and made a butt-wiping motion with his hand. Everybody laughed.

  ‘For white mans,’ said Managua, who had been initiated into Western lavatorial purposes during his stay in the hospital on the big island. ‘But here everyone is know sea is be better.’

  After Purnu had tried the pipe and affirmed the fitness of the kassa leaves it was passed to William as guest of honour. Before he could stop himself, he wiped the stem of the pipe on his shirt and then had to smile an apology when he looked
up and found all the natives staring uncomprehendingly at him. His first drag inhaled hot sparks into his lungs and resulted in a dramatic fit of coughing. Lamua leaped up and came back with a half coconut shell filled with water, which William drank. His need for water was so urgent that it overcame the troubling thought of where this water had come from, and who else might have been drinking from this coconut shell. When he’d just about recovered, fighting back tears, he looked again at the natives. Their faces were a mixture of concern and disbelief that someone should make such a big deal out of smoking a bit of kassa. Managua lifted his hand to indicate that William should try again. This time he was ready for it and took a light pull on it. This time it wasn’t harsh and the taste was sweet and perhaps a little sickly. He was relieved to hand the pipe to the person next to him.

  Of course, William knew nothing about kassa. He didn’t know that the leaves of the kassa tree contain the same active chemical compound as the seeds, but in a slightly different form, which, along with taking it through the lungs rather than the stomach, gives a different effect. Smoked, kassa has none of the hallucinogenic properties of when it’s eaten, rather it produces a mild relaxant effect, not unlike that obtained from cannabis. But while it was certainly true that William’s body seemed pleasantly weightless, his mind remained its usual seething mass of anxiety, untouched. Not only was he not relaxed, he was suddenly fearful. It was as though the kassa had enabled him to step outside his own body and see the potentially dangerous situation he had put himself in. He was alone, the only white man, so far as he could tell, on an island populated by natives who were so primitive they didn’t even know what money was. Their earlier contact with Americans had been disastrous and they used poison darts.