Toraja

by Nigel Barley

  * * *

  The more I thought about the trek through the forest to Makki – suggested by Johannis’s luckless cousin – the less I felt inclined to undertake it. Yet it was here that traditional weavers were to be found. Fortunately, there was an alternative. A well-known Torajan weaver had recently moved from Kalumpang to the town of Mamuju. With a bit of luck, if I left at dawn, I could probably get there by bus in a single day.

  In retrospect, the journey has an unreal, nightmarish quality. Indonesians are excellent drivers. They have to be to do the things they do and survive. There were two near-accidents, when a horse bolted out of a side-road and when a buffalo ran into the side of our tiny crammed van, which was speeding along the narrow strip of tarmac. Then there was a third incident in which a deaf woman stepped out into our path. At such moments time is slowed down. There was somehow plenty of opportunity to scream and point out the woman only inches in front of us and time for the driver to swerve into a deep drainage ditch and rocket out again scattering a group of schoolchildren whose terrified faces blew against the windscreen like leaves. Miraculously, no one was hurt but the clutch had been torn out from under the vehicle. This being Indonesia, however, it was not a matter of two weeks in a garage. The driver calmly sat down, lit a fire and reforged the damaged parts so that within two hours we were off again.

  On either side were lush rice-fields giving five crops of rice every two years. Prosperous-looking houses were going up everywhere. Gleaming new mosques clearly showed we were in a Buginese area, among the pushy Muslim seafarers who have established themselves in many of the littoral areas of the archipelago. The roads were dotted with tiny carts pulled by chubby horses. Apart from the mosques, it looked like an American notion of the good, simple life.

  Presently the road began to hug the shore. I could not understand why the area had not been mentioned in any guidebook. Golden sands fringed a limpid blue sea. Simple wooden houses with balconies stood out over the waves while fishermen mended nets and women wove. Naked brown children laughed and sported in the pools. Dramatic outcrops of rock threw flying buttresses up into the cloudless sky. I began to imagine Mamuju with mounting excitement. The hotel would be a large white building of wood with a veranda from which I could watch the glory of a tropical sunset. The menu would be a riot of seafood. A landlubber’s fantasy.

  Things started to go wrong quite quickly after that. As we drove deeper into Buginese territory, a sort of Muslim detestation of dogs seemed to grip the driver. He swung the van in great arcs at those sitting harmlessly by the roadside and finally achieved a certainly fatal hit on a puppy. He grinned at the passengers, several of whom were muttering against him.

  ‘Dogs are unclean,’ he said.

  Perhaps it is more than chance that lack of fluency and theological weakness conspire to make one sound like the Bible. ‘Even unclean beasts are made by God and the man who kills them is a fool’ Had I really said that? The driver pouted and sulked. Possibly it was this that led him to declare his unwillingness to take us further than the next town without extra payment – though the reasons he invoked were the lateness of the hour and the unpredictable state of the road.

  I was not inclined to spend the night in the town of Majene. It was doubtless well enough in its own way but could not compare with the delights of Mamuju as pictured in my own imagination. After wandering round the market for some time, I finally found a man who was bound for Mamuju that very night. Alas, he only had a flat pick-up truck and the cab was fully occupied but I was welcome for modest payment to travel on the back. It was a beautiful evening of mellow sunshine. Mamuju was only a hundred kilometres away. It would be a joy.

  To my considerable embarrassment, I was not permitted to simply huddle down at the rear. A cane chair was installed on the platform and I was required to sit on it in a very upright pose like a colonial governor in state. The man drove with solemn precision, pausing lavishly at intersections as though wishing the maximum possible number of people to see me.

  It was in some ways unfortunate that this was the day on which pilgrims return from the journey to Mecca, sporting the white turbans of their Haji status in a procession through the streets. The roads were lined with expectant crowds, craning their necks, waiting impatiently for the arrival of their loved ones who had been raised to new heights of piety by their onerous journey. It was a day when personal transformations were expected, when sinners might return as saints, when close relatives might be rendered almost unrecognizable through their contact with the holy. The ceremonial pace of the truck served to associate it with such a procession. As we advanced, a devout murmur went up, cut short with screams of hysterical laughter at the moment I became visible in my high chair. The absurd deflation of his expectation caused one man to fall off his veranda in astonishment, while another dropped the teapot he was holding as though its searing heat had just penetrated to his fingers. Whenever we halted at junctions, cheering, laughing crowds would rush up good-naturedly. They gently squeezed my arm and spoke the only English they knew. ‘Yes,’ they whispered. ‘Yes.’

  This imperial progress continued until darkness fell and we approached the town of Mamuju. People retreated into their houses to avoid a blanket of mosquitoes that seemed to drop from the sky. The road was obscured by dense clouds of smoke as they fired piles of coconut husks under the house to drive away the insects. It might be thought difficult for mosquitoes to pursue a man travelling on the back of a truck but they managed it. They wormed and bit and itched until I too was forced to smoke to lessen their attentions.

  There is no way to explain Mamuju except as a deliberate insult to the beauty of the rest of the coast. On seeing it I began to wish I had braved the forest leeches. It is an ill-natured bunch of sleazy concrete dwellings gathered around a dust-bowl. The centre of the town is an enormous heap of decaying refuse on which food markets are perilously erected. It must once have had a fine beach but now this is covered with concrete slabs on which more refuse is dumped so that goats can feed there. Several years ago, an earthquake damaged the water pipes and large areas of the town are still cut off from any regular supply. The dingy hotel was appallingly hot and simply had no water at all. Holes had been poked in the thin cardboard partitions between the rooms to allow neighbours to inspect each other illicitly. The only food available in town was a greasy stew of fishheads. I tossed and turned through a sleepless night of further mosquito attack and, as soon as it was light, fled to the Torajan part of town.

  Ethnic identity in such areas is largely religious. If you are Muslim, you are Buginese, if Christian, Torajan. A Torajan who becomes Muslim is often not recognized as Torajan any more. An air of brooding religious confrontation pervades the atmosphere.

  The Torajan settlements were clustered round their churches and it was here that I found Aneka, the woman I had come to seek. As an introduction I brought with me a letter I had been given by a Baruppu’ woman, Aneka’s daughter. Aneka was a woman in her mid-forties, worn and tight-lipped. She read the letter and invited me to stay. ‘We can read the Bible together,’ she offered. Like Johannis’s mother, she was a convert to Christianity and it assumed a prominent position in the forefront of her life. That was fine by me. Most of the languages I have ever learnt began with the appropriate Bible translation. Often the Bible would be the only book ever printed in that tongue.

  She and her husband had adopted a curious, pious pidgin so that the announcement of anything had always began, ‘It is God’s will that …’ whereas the announcement of anything good began, ‘God has opened the way so that …’ One rapidly adopts such locutions. When, on the third day, the husband asked me whether I was going outside to ‘cast large water’, I replied with no conscious comic intention, ‘If God opens the way.’

  Despite her religious apostasy, Aneka seemed initially a wholly traditional weaver, mistress of the lengthy process whereby a bundle of white fluff collected from her cotton bushes was transformed into beautiful blue and red text
iles. Between long bouts of reading the Bible, she eagerly demonstrated the preparation of dyes from plants. I noted that she used nearly two litres of chilli to fix the colour of a small cloth – which explained my reaction to the blanket on the Mamasa trail. The cloths, known as sarita and seko mandi, are of great importance for festivals all over Torajaland and are used to ornament people and buildings. Special powers – putting out fires, predicting dire events – are attributed to particular cloths, and they rapidly become heirlooms.

  They are made by a relatively simple process whereby the warp threads are stretched out on a frame and parts are blanked off with plastic string. Dye is then painted over the whole. When it is dry, part of the protective string is removed and the process repeated with other colours. The threads are divided in two and woven into two cloths which are then sewn together to form a single textile made of two identical sections. The end result is a thick, soft material richly ornamented with glowing colours that gently mellow over the years. Of particular interest was the fact that some of the designs used in woodcarving also turn up in the cloths. Aneka gave them the same names as Nenek had, but whereas she maintained that carving designs had been copied from textiles, Nenek attributed primacy in the opposite direction. For him, carving designs dropped directly from Heaven ready-made. For Aneka, they had been invented by women like herself. Perhaps it was this that had encouraged her recently to innovate. In discussions of such matters, scholars tend to opt for one or other as the original source, ignoring the fact that there is at least a third term in the relationship the designs of tattooing that are nowadays rapidly disappearing. She had started including crosses, sheep and other Christian symbols in experimental cloths that she was as yet too nervous to show the world. Sheep particularly bothered her, since she was not sure she had ever seen an authentic example. It is surprising how often they are mentioned in the Bible.

  It took nearly a week to see the whole process of cloth-making. It was with a definite feeling of liberation, that I climbed aboard the bus that would take me back to Torajaland, a large bundle of Aneka’s cloths stowed under my feet. Soon, however, they were removed to make way for coconuts and used as a seat for a tiny spiky-haired child who stared at me with eyes of deep wonder.

  A podgy man was installed beside the driver with elaborate displays of deference. He was called Bapak a lot. Clearly a man of some standing. We watched resentfully as his own space was carefully preserved from incursion while more and more passengers were crammed into ours. Finally, the driver appeared at the side window and made gestures, albeit deferential, that he should move up to allow another in. Bapak puffed and tutted fretfully. We smirked. His bastion was breached. The door opened and one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen climbed in beside him. He turned round and leered at us.

  The bus shot off, coconuts rumbling around our feet. The child still stared at me with wonder as its mother pushed handfuls of rice into its mouth.

  Outside the first town, we were waved to a halt by a policeman with a rifle. A guilty hush settled over the bus. The policeman took his time. He eyed the bus up and down. He walked round it. He took off his sunglasses. He beckoned the driver outside with his rifle, stuck his thumbs in his belt and embarked on a lengthy oration. Words blew in through the window, ‘… danger to passengers … respect for the law … integrity of the Republic’. The driver hung his head. We all sat to attention.

  ‘Two passengers too many,’ said Bapak. ‘He speaks in high principles. This will be expensive.’

  The lecture continued for several minutes more. The policeman embarked on a thorough examination of the vehicle -lights, tyres – and demanded sheaves of documentation. Then, he led the driver round the back.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ said Bapak nodding.

  The driver could be heard saying, ‘Yes, Pak. But I think just this once it might be overlooked

  He got back in cocky and grinning and started the engine.

  ‘How much?’ asked Bapak.

  ‘Two thousand, but he didn’t even notice the licence I gave him isn’t mine.’ He laughed and slammed the bus into gear.

  Round the next corner, two more passengers waved the bus down and got on. Normal service resumed.

  Much of the journey was spent dozing. I surfaced briefly later that night and saw a mountain gleaming in the moonlight. I recognized it at once. The young Torajan next to me was awake.

  ‘Isn’t that,’ I asked, ‘the mountain where there was the ladder that linked heaven and earth in the days of the ancestors?’

  He looked at it and shrugged indifferently. ‘Maybe. But we call it porno mountain. If you look at the rocks, there is the male and there the female …!’

  Arriving in Rantepao felt like coming home. There was the friendly, ugly town. There were the cheery, easy-going people. At the hotel, Johannis and a very tall, thin man were asleep in a chair, leaning on each other, their mouths open. It did my heart good to see them.

  The name of Johannis’s friend was Bismarck. I yearned to introduce him to Hitler but I suppose they would not have seen the point. According to his own accounts, Bismarck had led a life of high adventure. He was a member of the Torajan nobility or as he put it, ‘gold class.’ This was apparent in his bearing. When talking to non-Torajans he was easy and relaxed. When Torajans spoke to him, he was instantly stiff and referred to them in the third person or simply ignored them completely.

  At one time he had dealt in illegal substances in Jakarta, then imported pornography through foreign friends, but he had eventually been consumed by self-disgust and returned to Toraja where he spent as much time as possible in the forest. He was now a dealer in ‘stolen’ antiquities, but seemed genuinely to pursue his calling with high moral sentiments.

  ‘It is like this,’ he explained. ‘The people who come here are willing to pay a million rupiahs for a grave figure. Imagine how much that means to a simple farmer. His children can go to school and have a future. He will have security. He is probably a Christian and sees grave figures as a bad thing. If he is a pagan, he can sell the old figure and buy a new one and still have a good profit. Even the ancestors agree. They are always asked. Everyone is happy. But the government has forbidden it because they fear that if the figures are sold tourists will no longer come. So the family will arrange for the figures to be ‘stolen’ and they will be sold in Bali or London. They come to me because I have contacts. I do not go to them. They know my family and trust me. I take a percentage and see they are not cheated. Always, I insist they wait one month after they have decided to sell just in case they change their minds. Often I sell to museums. Maybe your museum would not buy but American museums do. I have many friends in American museums. Anyway, I think you are probably all the same. You want to take the beautiful things and put them in a box and send them away. Now, would you like to go to my house and I will show you some fine things.’

  ‘I would love to see them but you know I cannot buy them. Anything over fifty years old requires a permit. That is the law.’

  ‘Yes, that is the law, But come and see. I like to show things to people who enjoy them.’

  His house was a treasury of old and strange objects, spinning wheels, doors, hats, shoes. He demonstrated them all with enormous pride. He put on a prince’s hat and sat in dignity, seized a spear and became a warrior, pulled out an areca-nut container and chewed like an old villager. In the midst of his performance his tiny daughter appeared in a fluffy pink party frock and a gold paper crown. They looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘Ah yes. She is going to a birthday party.’ Bismarck took her on his knees, eyes full of love.

  ‘One day,’ he said to me, ‘you and I will walk the hills together. I will take you to places no one else knows about. I feel it in my bones. I am not wrong about these things. I have seen the Lord of the Forest.’

  ‘The Lord of the Forest?’

  ‘Yes. You will not find him in any of your anthropology books about the religion of the Torajans
but in the villages we all know him. I, who was brought up a Christian, have met him. That is one of the reasons I have gone back to the old ways.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Well, I will tell you. I wanted to meet him just to see if he really existed. I went into the deep forest for three nights and I just sat naked and waited. The first night I had been drinking and nothing happened. The second night I had eaten normally. On the third night, I had fasted. Suddenly he was there.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘A very old man. There was no bottom half to his body. He floated on mist and he spoke to me. “What do you want?” he said. I said, “Nothing. I just wanted to see that you were real.” Imagine.’ He struck himself on the forehead. ‘I could be a rich man now if I had said the right thing, but I just wanted to know. “Do not worry,” he said. “I will always look after you in my forest.” Then he was gone. Then, quite suddenly I was frightened.’ Bismarck laughed. ‘I ran out of the trees as fast as I could and hid in the house and shook with fear. But now, you see, I am strong because I know for sure.’

  There came an odd scratching noise outside. Putting down his daughter, Bismarck went to the door and there was a murmur of conversation. He returned laughing.

  ‘There is an old man there, asking for you. He asked for “Pong Bali” – Pong is like puang. It is our word for “lord”. So now we have a name for you – Pong Bali. Don’t worry. It is not the Lord of the Forest.’

  I went outside. It was Nenek. He refused to come in. It would not be proper. This was the house of a noble and he was suddenly shy. He had walked the thirty-odd kilometres to town to buy areca-nut but had no money. Perhaps I would give him some? The simplicity of the thought made it irresistible. But something else was troubling him.

  ‘I have not been able to sleep. I have promised you one buffalo. But someone in the village said one buffalo would not even pay the cost of a ticket to England.’