by Nigel Barley
Johannis and I retreated to number fifteen and cowered in the gloom but were detected by the guides. One came and glared furiously at Johannis.
‘You have no permit. Why are you working as a guide?’
‘I’m a Torajan,’ snapped back Johannis. ‘Where are you from – Bali?’
‘It’s like this,’ I intervened, ‘this man’s not my guide, he’s my friend.’ There was a stunned silence. It felt a ridiculous thing to say – absurdly explicit – something that should be expressed in gesture or left implicit. Yet as I said it, I knew it was true. I had at one time lived for some eighteen months in an African village yet not met a single person I would call a friend. Yet here, the making of friends seemed almost inevitable. Was it some unconscious bias against Africa? It seemed unlikely. Was it simply that in that area of Africa there was no notion of friendship that corresponded to our own? A man’s friends were inevitably drawn from those he was circumcised with. There was no provision in their culture for meeting people you were not related to and feeling mutual affinity and sympathy. In Torajaland the ties of family were strong, indeed unbreakable, for they extended beyond the grave. Yet there was room for friendships too. Was it simply that in that part of Africa people tended to approach you either with embarrassing servility or arrogant hostility, whereas a Torajan farmer would look you straight in the eye and talk to you as an equal? Maybe it was simply the different cultural expectations aroused by a white face – a different history of colonialism. Whatever it was, it felt very real.
There was a deafening crashing of gongs. A French child had penetrated the house and was inflicting many years’ wear on the aged instrument in a few short minutes. Rain started again in thick, heavy drops but guests were still arriving in dribs and drabs as well as more formal delegations. In the latter case, they formed up outside the village and, after much preliminary preening, were accosted by men dressed as warriors, wearing horned helmets and waving spears. Emitting yodelled whoops and yelps, they confronted the visitors and conducted them to make their offerings and take their seats. The more progressive visitors had bought matching T-shirts with the name of their hamlet stamped on the front. Pigs, the small change of ritual obligation, were lugged in in a rough and ready fashion, while buffalo were paraded with great style. Elegant ladies glided about with areca-nut and coffee. A man with a school notebook came up and recorded the offerings. He nodded agreeably.
‘When there is a festival in their village, we will give these things back,’ he explained to me.
‘Do only people from other villages give?’
‘No. Everyone gives. Friends give. Children give. They must give buffalo if they want to inherit rice-fields. No buffalo, no fields.’
‘What did they give from your village, Johannis?’
‘Oh well. We are not so close. Anyway, we have no buffalo left. My brother just graduated from the university in Ujung Pandang. That cost fifteen buffalo. If it were not for the coffee crop, I would not get to school at all.’
A resonant pounding wafted out from behind one of the houses.
‘Ah. You will want to see this.’ He led me over. Women were gathered around an empty rice-mortar, a huge hollowed-out tree-trunk, their black clothes fluttering as they pounded away. To the instructions of a stern lady, they were beating a rapid rhythm on the wood with heavy pestles.
Torajan festivals are rigorously divided between those of the east and life and those of the west and death. Rice is strongly associated with life and so close relatives must give up rice when they are in mourning. The empty rice-mortar proclaimed this selfdenial to the world. Ironically, it also acted as a sort of dinner gong. Ladies began carrying meat and rice into the shelters or teetered around under buckets of syrupy coffee. In honour of the occasion, rice was heaped up in the middle of the floor in a glistening red heap.
‘Boiled with blood,’ announced the guide in French to the tourists next door. There were Gallic cries of disgust. I translated for Johannis.
‘He is wrong. It just grows red.’
‘The blood of pigs and buffalo, sometimes dogs,’ continued the voice authoritatively. Those few French who had tasted any rice could now be heard retching … ‘It is allowed to clot overnight before being scooped up and roasted.’ A female voice could be heard saying, ‘No,’ feebly.
‘They slit the throats of the animals and catch it all hot in long bamboo tubes…’
A male voice said in French, ‘I’ve been looking at this palm-wine. It looks a little pink. You don’t suppose
Johannis proffered a dish of buffalo meat and pig fat. It was very tough. I settled for a boiled egg up one end of the platter. A ravishingly beautiful girl with long, black hair and flawless golden skin came to clear away the dish.
Johannis gawped. ‘I will help her.’
I did not see him for the next hour and a half, but he kindly came and fetched me down to the field where stone monoliths stood like miniature henges.
‘Come. They will kill a buffalo.’
A man with long hair tied up in a headband led in a buffalo, dancing and tossing its head. There was a long and inexplicable delay of the sort that precedes events the world over. The French reappeared fluttering and complaining. They pointed at me.
‘See. He was here first. Ah, these guides.’
The man with the notebook came and inspected the buffalo like an accountant. He checked the notebook and began a long interrogation of the man who had brought in the beast. Finally, it was led away.
‘Zut, alors. Merde.’
After an interminable delay, two smaller buffalo were brought back and tethered to stakes by the foot. The accountant fussed around taking notes. Mischievous-looking children came up, leaning on pointed bamboo tubes. The child with the portable erection displayed it with simple pride to the French ladies.
‘Aah. Disgusting! It looks like you, Jean.’
An aged gentleman, bent under the weight of years, approached and began a very long, very slow oration.
‘A to minaa, a high priest of the old religion …’ explained the guide.
Johannis snorted. ‘He’s just the head of the house.’
The French fussed with exposures and angles.
‘… A chant unchanged for thousands of years…’ said the guide.
‘He’s explaining that he’s a Christian so he won’t eat any of this meat,’ corrected Johannis.
‘… Telling a myth about the old days …’ said the guide.
‘… and the Blessed Virgin Mary,’ ended the old man.
The man with the headband pulled a wickedly sharp machete from its sheath. Holding the rope that tethered the buffalo, he stroked it almost caressingly across its throat. A silence. A red line appeared across the beast’s neck. Then it began to gasp and roll its eyes as a fountain of gore shot out. The little boys strained forward, the slayer keeping them back with an outstretched arm as the buffalo staggered and stumbled. Finally, it coughed and tumbled to its knees. The children dashed into the ebbing fountain of blood thrusting sharp bamboo tubes, giggling, into the gaping wound to collect the hot blood. Their hands and faces streamed with it. It matted their hair and washed into their eyes. They staggered away with their slopping tubes, jostling their elders who were stripping the skin from the still twitching corpse and tumbling its steaming guts on to the grass.
The second buffalo was straining to escape, but the man with the headband walked straight up and slashed it across the throat. As before, there was a gush of blood and the little boys had to be restrained. But this time, the beast did not fall. Instead, it broke free and dashed up the hill to the festival pursued by men waving swords. The crowd above squealed and broke before it – the men fearing for their lives, the women for their clothes. Finally, it was cornered and calmed. The slaughterer slashed it again. Once more it pulled free, spraying blood in all directions. Twice more they tried to kill it. Only gradually did a slow twitching spread from its feet through, the whole body and it fell. There were sig
hs of relief from the crowd. Johannis chuckled.
‘Magic. Someone is trying to spoil the festival.’ He pursed his lips and nodded sagely. The little boys looked annoyed. There was not a drop of blood left in the creature. The French were anxiously clicking away, ‘Terrible, awful,’ as the guide spewed forth endless commentary.
‘Enough, now,’ said Johannis. ‘We go back to town.’
An enterprising contractor had laid on an ad hoc bus service back to Rantepao. He laughed as I climbed on.
‘Look out. There is a giant getting in.’ He began collecting fares, red hundred-rupiah notes fanned between his fingers.
‘Hang on,’ cried a matronly lady as he took mine. ‘Why are you charging him more?’
The driver immediately switched to Torajan, Johannis delightedly translating: ‘I charge him more because he is bigger.’ ‘Yes, but he has no luggage. Anyway, I will sit on his lap.’ ‘It is up to me how much I charge him.’ ‘Yes, but the price to charter this bus is fifteen thousand. If you charge him more, I will pay less.’
The driver returned and pressed money in my hand. He grinned. ‘Puttyman’s reduction.’
Johannis chuckled, put his arms behind his head and executed one of those vicious spine-wrenching twists that Indonesians consider to be good for their backs.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said dreamily, ‘I am going back to my village, Baruppu’. Why don’t you come too?’
‘Why not? Thank you, Johannis.’
At the bus station was one of those awkward moments where relationships are defined for all time. I reached in my pocket.
‘Er… Johannis …’
He backed away. ‘Look. You are a rich man. I am very poor. So when you leave you give me something. Maybe your shoes.’ He looked at my very large, very disreputable shoes. ‘Well, maybe not your shoes but something like your shoes. But don’t give me money. It would be insulting.’ A friend, then.
‘I meet you tomorrow. Now I go eat at my uncle’s house. Then, maybe I go back to the festival.’
‘To look at the bamboo?’
He grinned. ‘Yes, maybe I look at the bamboo. In that village is some very fine bamboo.’
At the hotel, the proprietor was all smiles. Either my part in yesterday’s debauch was unknown or it was pardoned on the grounds that all kinds of anti-social behaviour are expected of a guest. But it was not to be a peaceful night. There was a nervous plucking at my sleeve and I turned to see a small, ferrety man with nervous, darting eyes.
‘Hallo, boss. I am Hitler. Maybe you have heard of me.’ It was hard to know what to say to that. Maybe I had misheard.
‘Hitler?’
‘Yes, Pak, my father used to hear the name on the radio before I was born and liked it.’
He pulled me to my door and in the light of the dim bulb pushed a Polaroid picture at me. Another hairy-legged transvestite? No. It was a wooden grave-figure, the sort of thing Torajans have in front of their tombs, rather a good one.
‘You buy, Pak? I hear you from a museum.’
‘No. You know I’m not allowed to buy old things. I’m not looking for trouble.’
‘I get it to Bali for you. From Bali, you can get it anywhere. Everybody does it. I got a friend.’ He mentioned the name of a London dealer.
‘No.’
He switched tactics. ‘This is not an old grave-figure. Just a very good one. I give you a good price.’ It took time to disengage myself without rudeness but finally it was done and I was sinking into oblivion. There was a firm knocking at the door. Another man. He looked outraged.
‘My brother came to see you.’
‘Your brother?’
‘Hitler.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Why don’t you want to buy from him? You get a better offer?’
‘No. I just want to go to sleep.’ I tried pushing the door. He pushed it back.
‘A coffin – an old, carved coffin. You buy?’
‘No!’ Finally the door was shut but it seemed only minutes before there was a knocking again. Broad sunlight streamed through the window. I opened the door. A fat hand pushed me back into the room.
‘You know me?’ the voice hissed. It was the policeman from the cock-fight.
‘Yes, I know you.’
‘Good. There is a man outside. His name is Hitler. He is a dealer in stolen property. He will try to sell you a grave-figure. Whatever the price he asks, say you will take it. You will be helping the Indonesian Republic. I want to arrest him.’
‘Now look. Not so fast…’ Someone was clearly being set up here but how could I be sure it was not me? A rich tourist. Someone who worked for a museum. I looked a pretty good suspect in my own eyes.
‘Just agree to everything,’ hissed the policeman. Why was he whispering? ‘I should hate to think you were not a friend of the Republic. Your name will not be mentioned.’
Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door and dragged Hitler in. Hitler extolled the virtues of the figure, its age, the simplicity of its lines. The policeman poked me in the ribs from time to time and nodded enthusiastically at me. I was determined not to agree to buy it. Yet at the same time, the air was heavy with menace. What was to stop them simply cooking up a story between them? I clearly could not turn them down flat either.
‘You will appreciate,’ I began, ‘that I have to be very careful. It is a very beautiful grave-figure.’ The policeman smiled. ‘But it might be illegal for me to buy it.’ He poked me and scowled. ‘I shall have to see the figure. I could not buy something I had not seen.’ Both now looked worried. ‘Perhaps we could meet at another time in another place.’ The two looked at each other.
‘Perhaps,’ said Hitler, ‘I could bring it here tonight?’
‘Good idea!’ By tonight I would be in Johannis’s village. The policeman poked me again. ‘I am sure you can buy it now.’
‘No. I absolutely must see it first before I buy.’ He brightened.
‘You buy? Right, we come back tonight.’
They walked back to their motorbike. As they left, the policeman gave me a horrible wink.
Proprietors of buses did not risk their newest stock on the Baruppu’ route. Our bus was hideously scarred and pocked. It had clearly gone through a period when cosmetic attempts had been made upon its virtue but such times were now long behind it. It was frowsy and broken down and it knew it. Johannis eyed the occupants appraisingly.
‘Too much cewek. Not enough men.’
It seemed an odd remark for him to make.
‘When we get stuck,’ he explained, ‘the women and pigs stay inside. Only the men get out and push.’ Pigs? I looked inside. There they lay, trussed with bamboo between their legs.
Johannis had bought meat, eggs, garlic and chilli. It looked like Baruppu’ was a famine area. We drove around town several times in the fashion I had now become used to. The driver stopped and ate. One man miraculously withdrew money from the cash desk of the electricity company. Coconuts were pushed under our feet. The vehicle settled ever lower on its springs. A menacingly pregnant woman was embarked. A bicycle was dismantled and stowed behind. Children were parked on laps, luggage shifted to less convenient positions. Everyone smoked and shut the window tightly, although it was a far from cold day.
The instrumentation of the minibus indicated an implausible state of simultaneous emergency on all systems. The brake warning light was on, as was the oil light. We had no petrol or water. The battery was declared to be discharging continuously. At every source of water, the driver would halt and pour gallons on to and beside the passenger seat. This was not the position of the radiator but of the clutch, which grew so hot that the front passenger’s plastic sandals began to smoulder.
Fares were collected. It was explained that this was so that the driver would have enough money to buy petrol. Finally, we stopped at the petrol station. The attendant pointed at me, ‘Turiis!’ he declared with a grin.
The bus company clearly had some link with this establishment, fo
r the attendant threw off his peaked cap like a mark of servitude, sprang into the driver’s seat, revved the engine and shot off with a yodelled whoop. Only I seemed surprised.
‘Wah!’ cried Johannis with a pure delight that made me feel old and jaded. The other men beat their thighs with their hands in exuberance and joined in what I would later recognize as the Torajan war-cry.
Mountain Barnstormers
An early morning mist still hung about the valleys, lurking among the trees and undergrowth. Although it was barely light, one of the great tidal waves of schoolchildren was in full spate. They emerged from the thick bush on either side of the road, hugging their textbooks in anticipation of the duties of matrimony, and picked their way among the rocks that soon replaced any attempt at tarmac.
The bus bucked and heaved up a spiral path until suddenly we broke through the cloud and beneath us lay the boiling cauldron of Rantepao, wreathed in steam with range after range of hillpeaks stretching away as far as the eye and imagination could see. The tops glinted with the first dewy rays of the sun. ‘Wah!’ cried a voice as if from Heaven, ‘Beautiful.’ I extended my neck with difficulty out of the window and saw for the first time that the roof had been colonized. Two radiantly happy small children perched atop with the deep joy that deadly peril brings to the truly young.
After about an hour of buttock-wrenching progress, we paused. The driver turned round in his seat and grinned wickedly at me. ‘Nyonya Bambang,’ he said. It was hard to know what to make of that. The implication from the tone of voice was that this was going to be good. Nyonya is the term for a respectable married woman, while Bambang is a man’s name. The answer soon became clear.
There emerged from a nearby house a man of offensive cleanliness. He positively gleamed. Once again, I was transported back to school. This was teacher’s pet. Before mounting the seat beside the driver – which he assumed as his right – he dusted it off with a spotless handkerchief. He addressed me as being the only person worthy of his attention. ‘My name is Bambang. I am an architect from Jakarta.’ He extended a hand like a dead fish. Bambang refused my offer of a cigarette. Indeed he insisted the windows be opened to allow the smoke to dissipate. He passed me his visiting card and seemed put out that I had none of my own to offer in exchange. We went through the usual round of questions establishing professional and marital bona fides. He was here to visit relatives, he explained, and to study the traditional architecture of Torajaland. His tragedy was that he loved babies but hated children. The logical result of these principles, twelve children, drove him from the house until he was tempted to sire another one, which gave him a year or two of consolation but ultimately increased his discomfiture. This trip to visit relatives was one of many to escape his prodigious offspring.