Toraja

by Nigel Barley

  Morning comes to an Indonesian village with a dramatic intensity that is almost comical. It begins with the cockerels, strutting around arrogantly, issuing tedious challenges to the world and scrabbling with their claws on corrugated iron roofs. Dogs join in, then donkeys, horses, cats, pigeons and children, screaming and trumpeting a fierce, all-encompassing din that heaves you out of bed. Then comes rice-pounding, the relentless thud of pestle on mortar that makes the whole house shake till you feel queasy. The final touch is added by the inevitable cassette-player that belts out the same, insistent six pop-songs over and over again while anyone not pounding rice gives voice to gargles of thick phlegm and leisurely nose-clearing.

  Then comes a long stage of people staggering about in various degrees of physical distress, groping for the first, desperate cigarette, throwing cold water over themselves with the gasps of drowning men and great expectorations, or roaming the house with baffled expressions on their faces, constantly readjusting sarongs and sucking air through their teeth as they hug themselves and shiver.

  All over the village, people are crouching miserably in corners discussing the cold. They huddle round the fire, whose embers have been poked into life to the annoyance of the cat who invariably sleeps there. The misery knows no end until the sun finally penetrates the chill and brings back life to the village. Like the English summer, the morning cold seems to constantly amaze everyone and no attempt is ever made to prepare against it. My Mamasa blanket was much admired, though no one in the village had bothered to acquire one for himself and no one wove there any more. In the mornings there was often much talk of a Dutch house that had once stood in the village and boasted a stove. When it was really cold, people would take refuge there. But, alas, a landslide had destroyed it.

  After a meal of warmed-up leftovers and sweet coffee, we set off. By now the sun was high and Johannis was sure we would find Nenek up to his thighs in mud, ploughing his rice-field. We did a little tourism, climbing up the road of exploded cobbles that led to the forest and the high peaks. Johannis pointed out a slab of rock that rose vertically out of the valley floor.

  ‘That,’ he explained, ‘is the fort of Pong Tiku.’ I knew of him as the Torajan leader who had fought the Dutch when they moved into the area in 1906. After a long siege, he was defeated.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘The Dutch took him to Rantepao and shot him.’ A look of fury crossed his face. ‘Nowadays he is a hero, but Baruppu’ people fought him. He burnt the village and everyone fled to Makki to seek magic. Just as we were about to return and destroy him, the Dutch came. That is why there are no really old houses here.’

  We moved on through elegant stands of bamboo that insisted on framing vistas of incredible beauty. The hills were punctuated with gushing streams, many of which could be crossed only via bridges of slippery green bamboo poles. Johannis took great joy in assisting me across like an old man.

  We came to another hamlet, standing on the top of a hill. Until now I had been struck by the tidiness and order of Torajan villages. They even planted flowers and shared that most English of notions, the lawn. This one was different. It was a mess. Nowhere else had I seen pigs allowed to wander freely and forage as they pleased. They had churned up the space between the houses into a quagmire. The people all looked slightly sticky and disreputable. Children ran everywhere mewling and holding handfuls of glutinous mess to their mouths. All had snot-trails under their noses. It looked as if someone had been collecting evidence to disprove the notion that Man had been made in the image of God. Suddenly, there emerged from one of the houses a man of contrasting kemptness. For a second, I thought it was Bambang, the architect, but it was another similar. He wore a spotless white shirt and trousers, polished shoes and a large gold watch. His hair was elegantly coiffed and parted as with a ruler. With elegant syntax, he invited us in. A corpse lay in the corner, wrapped for some future interment. Occasionally someone would get up and hit a gong.

  The kempt man launched into a violent denunciation of the villagers. He had, he assured me, written to the President about their backwardness, but strangely received no reply. But then, the President was a busy man. He had prayed to God that they all be struck down but God was clearly busy too. Still, one or two had been hit. He continued in a similar vein with much head-shaking and suddenly stood and delivered an impromptu sermon in a high-pitched scream. It was hard to know what religion he drew on, since Torajan Christians refer to God as Allah too. But it was clearly a God of the sword and he was impressively articulate.

  The other villagers sat around giggling and whispering. Johannis watched me smugly. Then, the penny dropped.

  ‘Is this man perhaps a schoolteacher?’ I hissed. They all grinned and nodded. ‘Driven mad by his learning?’ They grinned and nodded again. The madman continued preaching. He was now talking about lightning.

  ‘He is not dangerous,’ explained Johannis, ‘and his family look after him. But he is very boring.’

  “Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘Life has become much easier since they bought him the bicycle.’

  ‘The bicycle?’

  ‘Yes, now instead of preaching to them, he can cycle down to the market and preach to everyone.’

  We continued on our way, climbing up towards the forest. After a while we came to a small hamlet of very beautiful traditional houses, the tallest I had seen. They were quite new and exhibited some unusual features. In one the windows, traditionally placed high up in the gables, had been covered by two nude pin-ups in accordance with modern taste. The carving was deeper and the motifs were bigger than those I had seen down in the valley. At the far end was a ramshackle structure that might easily be converted to a warm family home but was manifestly permanently in course of arrangement. The veranda that had been planned for the front was still in a rudimentary stage, with unfastened planks simply laid across the beams so that they could flip up in the face of the incautious visitor. The wooden handrail to the access stairs was broken and tied with string. The roof was an incongruous mixture of wooden slats and corrugated iron that was a mere temporary expedient. The beams were festooned with bags and woodworking tools. It was the house of a builder, a man far too busy sorting out other people’s houses ever to get round to his own. Here sat Nenek, carving a large beam. He was not just a priest of the old religion, he was a woodcarver too.

  I motioned to Johannis to stop and we paused to watch. Nenek was totally absorbed in his work. On his nose was perched a pair of glasses as ramshackle as his house. The hands that had been frail and dry as sticks were now firm as he guided the knife in smooth, delicate curves. A curiosity of Nenek’s hands, the long curvature of the thumbs, was now revealed as the result of many years’ pressure from the carving knife. His hands glided over the black surface of the beam with the elegance of an ice-skater, curls of wood snaking out between his fingers as the delicate spirals and loops of the geometric pattern leapt out from the background. It was one of the most therapeutic moments I have ever known, a sense of peace reigned over the hamlet, a feeling of smooth serenity. Nenek leaned forward and spat and I had a sudden horrified realization that his spittle was bright red. Was he seriously ill, a dying tubercular artist in these damp hills? Then I saw the jaws champing, the areca-nut lying beside the beam. He was chewing the bitter nut with lime after the fashion of many old Torajans whose teeth are turned mahogany by the red juice.

  It seemed a shame that this was happening in total isolation. I felt the urge to share the moment with someone, to fix the pleasure. Johannis yawned hugely. But why shouldn’t other people see this? It would make a wonderful exhibition. I could take Nenek to London so he could build a carved house or a rice-barn. The exhibition would not be just the finished object but the whole process of its construction. The moment that the thought was complete, I rejected it. Just imagine the problems with visas, wood, funding. Perhaps Nenek would get ill. Perhaps it was an immoral action, an urge to convert people into performing anima
ls. Anyway, it could never be done. Nenek looked up, saw us and cackled.

  We spent the rest of the day watching him work. He talked of the patterns, their names and meanings, of the stories relating to house-building. He had risen early that day to end the period of ma’nene’ so that creative activities could be resumed. It was good to have a knife back in his hands. But, alas, tomorrow he would have to stop again since the body in the mad schoolteacher’s village was to be finally dealt with. The dead man was of the old religion, so Nenek would be in charge.

  As we were about to leave the hamlet, a man beckoned Johannis over and they had a long whispered conversation. Finally, he turned to me and grinned. ‘Makan angin?’ he inquired – ‘Eating the wind?’ an idiom that means to go for a walk without any fixed purpose. ‘Yes,’ I agreed with the vacuous good humour required of the field-worker, ‘Makan angin.’

  Johannis laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not angin-wind, anjing-dog. We are lucky. A dog has caught rabies in the village and been killed so we can eat it. You will not be cold tonight. Dog is very hot!’

  The next day’s ceremony was a somewhat rustic and rough-hewn version of the one I had seen in the valley. Although Nenek was in overall command and once more very much on his dignity, most of the actual work was done by a man in a sailor’s cap. For once, there was a surplus of meat piled up in the path – dead pigs and buffalo. An auction began, pieces being sold off at what seemed like rather high prices. There were no tourists here. I was glad not to fall into that unflattering category. I was here as a guest, not because they wanted anything from me.

  ‘Thank you again for that medicine you gave me,’ said Nenek. Medicine? Ah yes, the whisky.

  ‘But it is not good to drink medicine without meat. Perhaps you would like to buy me that piece of pig they are selling.’

  I decided to try a little sarcasm.

  ‘I hear there is dog for sale. Perhaps you would prefer that.’

  ‘No. Dog makes you very strong with women. I am old. It would not be seemly.’ I decided to try to change the subject.

  ‘How old are you, Nenek?’

  ‘Over a hundred.’

  ‘He’s seventy,’ said Johannis. They glared at each other.

  ‘In those days, we did not count,’ resumed Nenek. ‘I was born in the year there were many mice. An old man needs to eat pig.’

  I sighed and bought him the pig.

  The idea of the exhibition would not go away. But how could I get a mountain man to grasp such an alien concept? It would have to be handled carefully. I did not want to alarm Nenek by suddenly coming out with it.

  ‘Nenek, suppose I wanted to build a carved rice-barn in London. Could it be done?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll come and do it if you like. Shall we leave today? I’ll need three helpers, Johannis, Tanduk over there and a special man if you want a bamboo roof. I can give you a list of all the pieces of wood we’ll need. We won’t argue about the price. One really good buffalo is the standard rate for me. You’ll have to give something to the others though. We’ll need some coolies in England too.’

  ‘Coolies?’

  ‘Yes, to help with the lifting.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about going to a strange country?’

  ‘Why should I be? Carvers are used to working away from their village when there’s a job to be done. Anyway,’ he squeezed my hand, ‘I know you will look after us and protect us if there are enemies.’

  ‘It will take a lot of time to plan, Nenek. I cannot promise you. I shall have to persuade the English and then the Indonesians to let us do it. It will be very difficult.’

  ‘Is there wood in England?’

  ‘It’s not the right wood. We would have to bring everything from here.’

  ‘That is no problem. We can choose the wood. Is there areca-nut to eat in England?’

  ‘There is no areca-nut.’

  ‘That might be a problem. Never mind. You and I will do it together. When they wanted a Torajan house for the exhibition in Jakarta, they took a man from Kesu. He has never stopped boasting about it. This will stop him.’ He stared into the distance with a visionary gleam in his eye. For some reason, I could only think of the problem of sending a bill to the accounts office for one top-class water buffalo.

  Conjugal Rites

  As a modern Torajan, Johannis sometimes displayed a curious prudery. The matter first came to prominence in the case of underwear, ‘inner clothes’. Indonesian men favour stout, classical undergarments that are sturdy and capacious. My own ‘inner clothes’ having suffered in the course of my stay, I consulted Johannis about the possibility of securing fresh supplies. The matter, it seemed, was infinitely difficult and delicate. Most were sold in the market but by women. It was therefore out of the question for me to buy them there. They would giggle, ask questions about size and cover their noses. He could not ask a female relative to buy inner garments for me because I would be obliged to go into unseemly detail about just how ‘inner’ they would be.

  Fortunately, he had a male friend who might help. Under cover of darkness, we made our way to a small shop on the outskirts of town. After a whispered conversation I was allowed to inspect and purchase several pairs which were rapidly rolled up to disguise their shape and wrapped in copious layers of newspaper. We scuttled back with the furtive haste of drug dealers. So great was the sense of some huge favour being done me that I had not dared haggle about the price.

  The matter surfaced again in the village. One morning, I was woken by a very agitated Johannis who waved ‘inner wear’ at me in great outrage. I had washed the offending articles the day before and hung them on the washing line in front of the house. I should have hung them behind the house where only members of the family could see them.

  But worse was to follow. Johannis’s cousin, the somewhat simple but good-natured man who lived next door, was undone by a mixture of inner wear and bamboo.

  The day after the festival, we were disturbed by voices from next door raised in anger. A woman seemed to be doing most of the talking or, in this case, shouting. Johannis promptly made for the kitchen to be able to hear better and stood with one ear pressed to the flimsy partition, grinning and nodding, infuriatingly unwilling to translate. Finally, he consented to do so with great glee. It appeared that the cousin had been detected, after drinking much palm-wine, heading for the bamboo with another woman from the village. The lady was of bad reputation. Her mother had been friendly with Japanese soldiers during the war. She was rumoured to have a Japanese father. The cousin’s voice growled short, shifty answers, the voice of a man caught out. Far from turning away wrath, his demeanour seemed to drive his wife to a new frenzy of outrage. There was a long period of screaming followed by the unmistakable sound of a blow being struck, then – abruptly – silence.

  The next day, the cousin ate with us. His wife had gone back to her parents. It was unthinkable that a man would cook for himself. No one was in any doubt about what would happen. The man would have to go to the wife and eat humble pie until either she agreed to come back or her family made her. It came as no surprise, therefore, when the cousin disappeared for a couple of days. Contrary to expectation, however, when he returned he was alone and in a very bad mood. No one dared ask about the wife. Occasionally he would try to rouse my interest in an expedition across the mountains to Makki where they still made cloth. It was difficult country and we would have to sleep in the forest. There were many leeches. I thought of the horse-ride from Mamasa and prevaricated.

  Suddenly, however, the wife returned. Now it was she who was in a bad mood while he smirked and strutted around the village with the bravado of a fighting cock. He, after all, had the upper hand. Her family had sent her back.

  Near the public washing place was a small coffee shop, a staging-post on the way to the outside world. Here, men would often gather to play cards, drink coffee or engage in conversation with the deaf-mute son of the house through gesture. Every village in Toraja seems to have i
ts deaf-mute. No one seems to teach them sign language. The cousin was a hardened card-player and often to be found here.

  One of the jobs of a chaste and dutiful spouse is to do the washing, including her husband’s ‘inner wear’. It therefore came as no surprise that the wronged wife appeared with the washing while the cousin idled in the coffee shop. The deaf-mute gasped and pointed. The cousin smirked at his cronies and played his cards with just a little more panache than usual. The wife began on the washing and laid out his underwear on the rocks. Still he smirked down at her. She fixed back her hair and looked up at him. Then, seizing a large rock and humming to herself, she began pounding the crotches of his underpants one by one. The cronies roared with gleeful malice. The deaf-mute gurgled rapturously. She had returned to wifely duty but still managed to have the last word. The cousin’s sufferings did not end here, however. Johannis had now marked him down as a man ripe to be the butt of his humour.

  Johannis, like many Christians, had a particular taste for the more bizarre manifestations of occult powers. Christianity, in its Torajan compromise with the old way, in no sense opposed the belief in spirits of nature, ghosts and hidden powers. His knowledge of such things was wild and approximate and quite often he would lead me on wild-goose chases. Sometimes this was not his fault. Anthropology is full of false trails.

  On one occasion, I had shown interest in a particular kind of priest called to burake tambolang. This figure is associated with the east and fertility and has an odd sexual status, being a hermaphrodite, bisexual or transvestite – Torajans seem unclear about the distinctions. In Baruppu’ such figures were regarded as an exoticism, though Nenek himself was properly referred to as indo’ aluk, ‘mother of tradition’, and he was unable to explain this female appellation. Nenek was clear on the subject of the tambolang, however.