One Big Damn Puzzler

by John Harding

  Managua sat trying to work on his revision of Polonius’s death scene but he couldn’t concentrate. Every so often he would lift the upturned crate and finger the red dress he had concealed beneath it. Managua’s great secret was not a secret any more. Lintoa had uncovered it. He had surmised as much yesterday when Lintoa would not reveal to him the object of the new spell. Why wouldn’t the she-boy tell him if it was just another island girl? Besides, who was there but his own daughter who could hold a pig-fat oil lamp to Kiroa? And his discovery of the discarded red dress had confirmed his suspicions. Well, it was a stand-off. He had Lintoa’s secret and Lintoa had his.

  He heard footsteps and stuffed the dress under the milk crate. Purnu walked in. Managua pretended to be so caught up in his work that he hadn’t noticed. Purnu walked around him and peered first over his right shoulder and then over his left, looking at Managua’s writing.

  The little sorcerer nodded knowingly. ‘Hmm,’ he said, pointing a bony forefinger at the page. ‘I see you is have “can” in there.’ Managua followed the skinny digit and was astonished to find it actually was pointing at the word “can”. He almost dropped his pen. Purnu put his hands behind his back and took another turn around the hut, finally stopping behind Managua again and peering over his other shoulder. Again the bony finger. ‘I is see you is have second “can” also.’

  Managua could hardly believe it. Once could have been chance, but not a second time. He turned and looked up at his diminutive rival. ‘So?’

  Purnu shrugged. ‘Is be nothing wrong with that. Is be all right for have two “cans”. “Can” is be very good word. You is can say two things with this one word.’ Here he gave a facetious little chuckle. ‘How many words you is can say that about?’

  Managua was annoyed beyond measure. ‘Here,’ he challenged, thrusting the paper into Purnu’s weasel face, ‘you is can read rest if you is like.’

  Purnu lifted a hand deprecatingly. ‘No, no, is be all right. I is just want for read “cans”. Is be enough read for now. I is have something else I is must talk with you ’bout.’

  Managua was pleased to see the little man’s face grow angry now and felt his own relax a little. ‘You is best sit down,’ he said.

  Purnu squatted the other side of the milk crate. ‘Is be this. You is use magic on my daughter. You is put love spell on she.’

  ‘What is be wrong with that? I is not say is be true, but if is be true, what is be wrong?’

  ‘You is make she fall in love with damn she-boy, that is what is be wrong! Is be your idea of joke?’

  Managua adjusted his spectacles and looked at his manuscript as though all this was of little interest to him. ‘You is be sure she is be in love? Perhaps she is just want advice for dress.’

  ‘You is not mock me!’ Purnu was practically snarling now. ‘You is must see how she is trail after this she-boy. Is be big one, Lintoa.’

  Managua turned to him. ‘Yes, I is see. Who is can fail for notice? I is not want for hurt you feelings.’

  This annoyed Purnu even more. He looked like he could scarcely restrain himself from striking the older man. ‘Is be so ridiculous is must be spell at work. And there is be only one person beside me who is can make such spell work so well. Is must be you.’

  Managua said, ‘You is let me ask you question. How this she-boy is treat she? He is love she back? He is ask she go in jungle with he?’

  Purnu hung his head. ‘You is know is not be so. He is push she away so she is make even more fool of self.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Managua. ‘So what for Lintoa is come ask me for spell for make Kiroa love he if he is not want she?’

  Purnu shook his head sadly. There was no answer to that.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

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

  Birth and death

  THE LONGER ONE spends upon the island, the more one loses one’s initial patronizing attitude to the islanders’ beliefs and begins to admire the advantages they offer. It is easy to feel superior to ignorance and superstition, but, to use that awful modern phrase, it works for them. They are by and large happy. Depression is generally unknown. Yes, they can be unhappy, but for a specific reason: a failed crop, a disappointing love affair, the death of a loved one; but nonspecific depression is something I have yet to come across. ‘Methinks I know not why I am so sad’ does not exist.

  In considering the cycle of birth and death it is perhaps easier to begin at the end, for from death springs life.

  Considerable rituals attend funerals. As far as the islanders are concerned, death never comes purely through accident or illness, nor even old age, but as the result of magic being practised against the deceased. It might therefore be said that every death is a murder. Certainly there is always an autopsy of a kind. The corpse of the deceased is kept in his home for one complete day and no longer, a practice that probably has as its basis the practical consideration of the rapid rate of decay in the heat. While it is in the house it is visited by friends and relatives who do not hesitate to embrace it and touch it. The purpose of this seems less to do with saying farewell to the deceased, as in our society, but more as an aide-memoire, to help the mourners remember their loved one. This may partly explain why it is the women who are most keen to handle the corpse, for they will not be seeing the deceased again in the kassa house. Gifts of food are also brought for sustenance on the journey of the loved one’s soul to Tuma, the island of the dead. At the same time there is an implicit understanding that the loved one is no longer here. His body may be, but his soul, or spirit, has already fled.

  After this period of mourning, during which keening and the tearing of hair are commonplace – although not among the immediate family who must, according to custom, hide their feelings – the loved one is buried in a shallow grave. Afterwards there is a kind of party in the village in which much kassa is smoked and the men put on their ceremonial skirts and dance ritual funeral dances. The women never dance.

  Next day the body is exhumed and examined. Owing to the heat it will now be in a considerably advanced stage of putrefaction. Again mourners will touch and fondle the body. They dissect the torso and examine the internal organs, hence their intimate acquaintance with human anatomy, even though, as we have seen, they do not always draw the right conclusions from their study of it. By this time the condition of the corpse has so deteriorated that it disintegrates on being handled. It is customary now for pieces of the corpse to be removed. Any remaining flesh is stripped away and some of the bones may be kept as souvenirs. Knuckle-bones are commonly used for necklaces or bracelets, for example, and Managua once proudly showed me a tibia that had once been part of his uncle, stroking it so fondly that I could not help but wonder whether his attachment to it did not have something to do with his lacking one of his own. What remains of the corpse after this dismemberment is again buried, this time permanently. Although all of this may sound grisly, I can bear witness that it is carried out with the utmost delicacy and affection. The natives have none of our awe of death. Having embraced the physical decay of the body they do not regard the end of life as a taboo subject. How much better, for all that it is repulsive to an outsider, is this than our own taboos about the subject, our avoidance of the physical side of the event and our many euphemisms during discussion of it.

  The spirit of the deceased, as we have said, is no longer present, having already begun its journey to Tuma. I was reading Managua’s Complete Shakespeare the other day and came across the quotation in Hamlet about death. ‘From whose bourn no traveller returns’, Shakespeare says of death, except of course that in that very play Hamlet’s own father comes back as a ghost! However, generally our own beliefs about the afterlife are suppositions cobbled together from bits of the Bible. As a child I imagined it as a land above the clouds where everyone wore long white robes and listened to angels playing harps. I never felt it sounded like much of a
compensation for having to die and leave life on earth. The natives have no need of such pipe dreams because they have first-hand accounts of the afterlife, given to them in the kassa house. Instead of our own rather sterile paradise, sitting around with the saints listening to hymns, so much less fun than temporal existence, Tuma offers an enhanced version of normal life. Food is plentiful without having to make a garden, fish are supplied with no nets being cast and the men are serviced sexually by dozens of beautiful young women. This may have all the trappings of fantasy, but the islanders claim it as fact because of eyewitness accounts of Tuma they say they have received from the spirits of dead relatives in the kassa house. Of course these meetings with ghosts are hallucinations produced by a powerful drug, although time and again an islander has insisted to me that he learned something about himself that he had no previous knowledge of from a dead relative in the kassa house. How can this be? Perhaps the drug allows one to retrieve long-buried memories, it is entirely possible. At the very least, some kind of mass hysteria must be involved. Certainly it would be strange, if it is merely a hallucinogenic drug that is at work here, that everyone who imbibes it should have the same hallucinations, namely that they see dead loved ones. Why not pink dragons or castles in the air?

  Anyhow, real or imagined, these visions present us with a picture of life on Tuma as being not a product of the imagination – there is nothing imagined about it, it is all simply a superior version of what is – but of desire. A perfect island life.

  ‘And how long does it last?’ I asked Managua.

  ‘Always,’ he replied. ‘Is be for all time.’

  ‘So you never grow old there?’

  ‘Yes, you is grow old, of course, but when you is feel you is become too old you is just shake off you skin, like snake, and is find new body underneath, and is be young again.’

  ‘And you can keep doing this?’

  ‘For sure. You is do for ever if you is like.’

  I asked if this meant that everyone who ever died was on Tuma. At this he laughed. ‘Of course not! If all is stay on Tuma is not be any new babies here.’

  He explained that sometimes people grow bored with Tuma. They might change their skins dozens of times and then become tired of doing the same old thing every day. So they become babies. Their spirits enter the bodies of new babies which rise up from the sea and float away from Tuma and back to this island.

  ‘But they is have no memory of who they is once be,’ explained Managua. ‘Is start again from new.’

  The babies float on a gentle tide towards the island. If you listen very carefully, on the right night, you can hear them calling across the sea: ‘Waa waa, waa waa.’ It is, apparently, not a harsh insistent baby cry, but a plaintive one as they seek for mothers among the island’s population.

  Once they reach the island, the babies enter the heads of sleeping women and travel down through their bodies to the womb. That is how babies are made.

  It is easy of course to dismiss all this as silly superstition. But then are our own beliefs any more? We, too, have at the heart of our most prevalent religion the idea of virgin birth. What is Jesus, viewed from another angle, other than a gifted sorcerer able to turn water into wine and raise the dead? Is that any more fantastical?

  It’s true that the natives’ belief in non-physiological paternity is scientifically ridiculous. But this is a place where science is irrelevant. Sometimes I find the concept of Tuma so attractive, such a relief after the constant battle with the self-delusion that there is any point to life, and the idea of the floating babies so appealing, that I think, Why not? Why not just suspend disbelief and live the rest of my life as if all this were true? The idea is not without its attractions.

  THIRTY-NINE

  ‘WHERE YOU IS go all time? You is be more hard for find than Managua pig.’

  Lintoa shrugged. ‘I is like be on own sometimes. Is be some new taboo say I is must be around you two all time?’

  ‘You is always like be around we before.’ Tigua looked up at him from under his long eyelashes, eyelashes that had never known a lover’s nibbles. ‘Now is be like you is avoid we. And what for you is always wear pink dress? Where is be you red? You know you is look plenty better in red.’

  ‘I is just fancy change, is be all,’ muttered Lintoa. ‘You is have problem with that?’

  ‘No, is be OK. But if you is not want for wear red dress, then you is can give me. I is always like that dress. OK?’

  ‘Mebbe.’

  ‘What for is “mebbe”? Is be quite simple, unless you is want for wear two dress at once. You is go fetch red dress for me now.’

  Lintoa was struggling here. He couldn’t get Tigua the dress because he hadn’t got it. But if he told Tigua that, the next question would be, How come? Luckily, before Lintoa came up with anything – and whatever he’d have come up with was unlikely to fool the other she-boy – Tigua noticed an approaching figure. ‘Oh no, is be you girlfriend again.’

  ‘Is not we Lintoa is avoid,’ murmured Sussua. ‘Is be she, Kiroa.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Lintoa. ‘I is must hide all time for avoid she.’

  Tigua said nothing but shot Lintoa a decidedly unconvinced glance. The she-boy was protesting a bit too much not to be concealing something.

  Kiroa reached them. She was a tall girl, another attribute besides her beauty that was valued by the village boys. She towered over the diminutive Tigua. ‘Moning,’ she said.

  Tigua looked around, putting on a mystified expression. ‘Someone is speak?’ he asked, his voice even more innocent than usual.

  ‘I said moning,’ said Kiroa.

  Tigua jerked up his head. ‘Ah is be you. Voice is come from so far up I is think is must be monkey in tree.’

  Kiroa pulled a face, ‘And what is be noise I is hear? Is be sound like snake is slither in dust. Oh, I is see now, is be little Tigua.’

  ‘And I is see is be Kiroa. I is think for moment is be palm tree is walk and talk.’

  ‘You is be very funny, I is not think.’

  ‘But now I is see is Kiroa head at top. I is mistake for coconut.’

  Kiroa refused the bait this time. There was no point in taking on Tigua who had suddenly developed a terrada tongue. She had always been so friendly to Kiroa in the past. The sorcerer’s daughter could not understand why she had changed. But it was certainly best to avoid getting into another spat with her. Instead Kiroa sidled up to Lintoa. She put her hand upon his shoulder, a weight every boy on the island would have liked to feel, but Lintoa merely flinched.

  ‘I is like pink dress,’ said Kiroa. ‘Is suit you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lintoa shaking her off and adjusting his shoulder strap. The colour of the dress might be different from the other; its fit was just as bad.

  Kiroa ignored the rebuttal. ‘You know, is be very nice if you is not wear red dress for let I is wear. We is be about same height.’

  ‘Dress is belong first Miss Lucy,’ Tigua snapped. ‘Is not be for giant. Lintoa is make all kind of cuts in dress for make fit. If you is must make more for make even bigger, dress is go fall pieces.’

  Kiroa ignored the jibe. ‘You is like for I is have red dress, Lintoa?’ She used her most wheedling voice.

  Tigua all but exploded. ‘I is ask for borrow dress first, sow!’

  Lintoa smiled. Pretty soon they would be scratching one another’s eyes out, except, of course, that Tigua would have to sit on Sussua’s shoulders to reach Kiroa’s. He almost said so but stopped himself. Jokes about Kiroa’s height were getting boring. You could overdo a thing like that.

  ‘Is be impossible for you is wear dress,’ Lintoa said. ‘Is break taboo.’

  ‘What?’ said the other three girls in unison.

  ‘Is break taboo. Answer me this, Kiroa, is you be allow for wear man’s clothes?’

  ‘Well, no, everyone is know that.’

  ‘Well then who is wear white womans’ dress here?’

  ‘Well, is be you and Suss
ua and little girl there.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lintoa. ‘You is not see any other womans from tribe is wear they dresses?’

  ‘Well, no . . .’

  ‘And what is be we three?’

  ‘You is be she-boys.’

  ‘Exactly. She-boys. Only people in tribe who is wear they dress is be boys. So, if girl like you is wear one she is wear boys’ clothes. She is be cross-dresser. Is break taboo.’

  Tigua clapped her hands. ‘I is love that. You is be more smart you is look Lintoa. You is get more smart every day. Is must be because you is be around me all time.’

  Kiroa had a finger to her lip, trying to work it out. She was so puzzled by the logic of it she didn’t even notice the three of them had sneaked off until they were long since vanished into the jungle.

  FORTY

  WILLIAM WOKE TO find everything around him hazy as though something had happened to his vision during the night. It was as though he were looking at the world through a veil. He wondered if he was going blind. Could it be an effect of the kassa? Who knew what damage it might be doing to his body? Although since Lucy had first kissed him, or if not him then his mosquito bites, he had experienced a hitherto unknown sense of calm, he realized he was now flexing his eyelids right-left-left-right and all the old free-floating anxiety was back. Perhaps, like cannabis, kassa induced paranoia? Another undoubted effect was that he could see a ghostly figure moving around the place where he was lying. He was getting flashbacks now, seeing his dad when he wasn’t high on kassa.

  ‘Dad?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ It was a woman’s voice.

  ‘Mom?’ he essayed, although he knew it couldn’t be. His mother was still alive. He’d no sooner thought this than he realized he’d been on the island nearly three weeks, cut off from the outside world. What if his mother had passed away in that time and was now come from Tuma to visit him?

  In an instant the haze vanished and he found himself looking at Lucy. ‘It’s only me,’ she said.