The Varnished Untruth

by Stephenson, Pamela

  Perhaps you wanted to belong to something, as teenagers tend to do. It’s a way of finding out exactly who they are. You had partially missed out on that developmental stage, due to the trauma you experienced at the time.

  Yes, but there was a lot going on in the zeitgeist. I think most people sensed the excitement, as the ‘age of Aquarius’ dawned. See, Australia was a little behind the UK and USA; we had the sixties in the seventies.

  However, I was mainly very focused on my acting career. As I grew in stature as an actor, my family continued to take quite an interest. I guess by now they may have begun to feel a bit guilty about kicking me out. But I still felt ambivalent about it all. My parents came to see my performances at the Sydney Opera House, and seemed pleased about my success. But no one gets perfect reviews and I did notice that every time something a bit disparaging was said about me, they took it personally and called me to complain that I’d embarrassed them. I was relieved when they told me they had inherited a house in the UK, from mum’s cousins Millie and Marie, and had decided to sell up and live there in Surrey.

  For the following few years I was a bit of a gypsy, living in whichever part of Australia I was working, and travelling quite a lot. I took a trip to Bali – a common holiday destination for young Australians – and was entranced by it. I adored the culture, the religious involvement with flowers, incense and decoration, the ceremonies, the legends, the colourful clothing. In true Conrad fashion, I sought out its nooks and crannies with a passion. While staying with the local music master’s family, I learned to play a Balinese instrument that makes a sound like a frog (well, why not? No practising required).

  The Balinese have an extraordinarily well-developed dance style, as well as masked plays and gamelan orchestras. Rarely seeing other white people, I based myself in Peliatan – far from the tourist areas – and attended daily dance classes. I sat with three-year-olds, trying to bend my adult fingers into the intricate shapes of a legong dancer, but to no avail; the dance form must be mastered before the age of twelve or it cannot possibly be achieved. I even managed to witness some special ceremonies, such as a tooth-filing, a cremation and a wedding. This was all so fascinating to me, I became a closet anthropologist; I still am.

  My longing for travel was omnipresent, and since I’d been earning money, I had some means for buying tickets. I had been living with a well-known Australian actor – let’s call him Gareth – who had been successful on Broadway in Oliver! Gareth was quite a bit older than me, and I appreciated that. There was a paternal edge to him that made me feel safe and protected, and he was a very good man. He educated me in many ways . . .

  Sounds a bit like the father you always wanted . . .

  Yes. It was all that. I was very much in love with him but, deep down, I knew I would not be with him forever. I set off on a trip around the world, promising Gareth I’d be back in a few months. But I wasn’t. As a matter of fact, I never again returned to live permanently on Australian shores.

  You were ready to fly the nest . . .

  Mmm, it felt a bit like that. Although it was scary, travelling the world alone. I still seem drawn to hostile environments, somehow wanting to test myself against the odds. Like the Congo, with the extreme personal danger to which I was exposed there. And then there was that terrible feeling of being out of my depth in a professional sense . . .

  How so?

  Well, as the days went by in the DRC and I met more and more survivors, I realized I was observing psychological dynamics that were far more serious than those most western psychologists have ever seen – yet none of these women had received mental health treatment. That was professionally and personally extremely challenging. As I listened to the survivors’ stories a terrible sense of hopelessness seeped into my own psyche. See, I’d never been unable to help anyone before, and that terrible feeling has haunted me ever since . . .

  Understandable. You of all people really NEED to be able to help . . .

  Yes, I hear you. It’s compulsive. And I am also aware that help is something I really want for myself but don’t know how to get. But at the same time in the dire DRC situation, help was sorely needed. And there was no crisis-intervention team here, no system for the healing of massive and widespread trauma. Given the enormity of the problem – the huge numbers of women affected, the severity of their psychological conditions – I seemed irrelevant, a lone psychologist without the time, resources or clinical framework to help. It took me a long time to recover from that life-changing trip. One of the feelings I had in the aftermath was shame at having once contemplated suicide. ‘How is it,’ I asked a Congolese doctor, ‘that these women are still alive?’ I was told: ‘African women don’t kill themselves. They have too many responsibilities.’ I thought back to the time I nearly jumped over a cliff because of a cheating lover and felt very, very ashamed.

  He wasn’t just a cheating lover, Pamela. In your traumatized mind he represented a stern father, meting out punishment you believed you deserved. Choosing another woman was tantamount to repeating your real father’s rejection – powerfully damaging, re-traumatizing stuff. Try to be kinder to yourself.

  Yes, doctor. I will try . . .

  Chapter Six

  ADVENTURE

  So . . . your passion for travel is clear and understandable. It has its origin in your first voyage to the UK, when you were first exposed to a wider world of new experiences, adventures and other cultures – which you adored. But this tendency of yours actively to seek to travel in hostile environments – I’m wondering about the risks you have been taking. Shall we explore what you might be trying to achieve through facing such dangers?

  Mmm. I am definitely drawn to extreme adventure . . .

  Close your eyes and take a moment to allow yourself to revisit somewhere you’ve been, somewhere you felt afraid to be, yet were gripped by the power of the experience . . .

  OK . . .

  What are you seeing?

  Mmm . . . Well, it’s still dark . . . A little bit of light creeping in . . .

  What are you hearing?

  Mosquitoes . . . Dozens of them. As usual, they’re up well before me. I can hear them buzzing all around my mosquito net . . .

  What are you feeling?

  Scared. Maybe one got inside and bit me during the night . . . I don’t want to get dengue fever again. I have to put my arm outside the net to reach under my sleeping mat for my special water bottle – not just any water holder, but one a member of my camera crew fashioned for me yesterday into a portable loo. ‘Here’s your “she-wee”,’ he’d said with a grin. As a New Zealander, he pronounced it ‘shay way’, but I wasn’t going to snigger. Thank God. I would no longer have to take my pants down and give the bugs full munching rights on my backside.

  Where are you?

  Um . . . in a tree house, somewhere up the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Malaria, Japanese encephalitis and dengue are rife here. I’m worried. My anti-malarial tablets and the vaccination I had last month will probably protect me against the first two, but there’s no prophylactic for dengue fever; I was very ill with it three years earlier in Samoa and definitely don’twant to run the risk of contracting a haemorrhagic version. That can kill you.

  I peed, dressed, ate a protein bar, took my pills, cleaned my teeth, did my hair, put on make-up and sprayed DEET all over me – all within the confines of my netted bed. I’m getting better at this.

  What are you seeing?

  The first rays of sun are cracking their way through the coconut wood slats of the tree house . . .

  What can you smell?

  Um . . . coffee . . . and eggs. Our guide is making breakfast. But I don’t want to eat. ‘Just bottled water for me, thanks!’ ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Then come and meet my son. He’s waiting for you . . .’

  And where are you now?

  Down by the river. I’m standing right where our dugout canoe’s waiting. We’ve been travelling on the water for three days now.

  W
hat are you seeing now?

  Hmm . . . A young man. He’s . . . he is undressing for me . . .

  Nice work if you can get it . . .

  What? No, seriously this is all in the name of anthropological inquiry.

  Oh. Right. Well? Go on . . .

  He casually unbuttons his jeans and removes his T-shirt. Now he’s turning round so I can see the markings on his back and buttocks. Hah! No bug-worries for him.

  How are you feeling?

  Uncomfortable . . . I’m just trying to ignore the awkward, cross-cultural subtext of this encounter. Now I’m venturing closer. ‘May I touch please?’ He nods shyly so I reach out and ran my fingers along the raised tracks of keloids that are running vertically down the left side of his back, all the way to the middle of his buttock. It’s a beautifully designed, deliberate scar. The effect’s just as I’ve been told – remarkably like the dorsal side of a crocodile . . . At the base of the design, I can make out an asymmetrical star shape. ‘What’s this?’ I ask. ‘This is the sign of a female crocodile,’ he says. ‘The men can choose male or female during the initiation ceremony.’ The markings went over his shoulder and around one nipple. ‘That’s the crocodile’s eye.’

  Where are you now?

  I’m at the Sing-Sing now. The festival. There are crocodilescarred backs everywhere and . . . wow, and, in fact, everywhere I look there are live crocodiles. I can’t believe . . . people are wearing them around their necks as jewellery. People are actually dancing with them. Oh . . .! Now I’ve been given a baby croc to hold . . . I’m cradling it. It’s much softer than I’d have thought . . . Although I have to say, it’s not exactly engendering my maternal instincts. Oh my God . . . I can see several men in the crowd walking around with huge, vicious, salt-water crocs on a flimsy lead . . . Aggghhh!

  What happened? You came out of the hypnotic trance very suddenly just then . . .

  Well, one just escaped into the crowd! Got away from its owner . . . Wow, that was a heart-stopping moment. My husband says having a salt-water croc after you is like being chased by a hungry train.

  You really do have a special interest in ethnographic anthropology, don’t you?

  Yes! So fascinating! The people from certain tribes along the Sepik River believe the crocodiles are their ancestors. In special ‘spirit houses’ young men undergo an initiation rite that involves re-enacting their own births and making them physically connected to their reptilian past. Held protectively by an uncle, they are cut and scarred until their backs resemble those of their scaled ancestors. Oh boy, it must be enormously painful. And so must be an attack from one of the dwindling population of present-day crocodiles that inhabit the Sepik. I saw them from time to time, basking in the mud at noon, or hunting at night with glittery eyes caught in the glare of my torch. They say those critters have a nasty habit of getting under your canoe and upending it so neatly the passengers flip right into their jaws.

  After several days’ canoe trip up the Sepik River, I reached my destination – Ambunti, with its Crocodile Sing-Sing Festival. It started with a warm, tropical downpour that delayed the festivities because no one wanted to get their fine, feathered headdress wet. Well, people had worked for a whole year to produce their costumes. For some, this had involved a long process of luring special bright green beetles inside their houses then making them into shiny beads to cover each tribesman’s busby-style helmet. I watched men painting each other’s faces with clay (some were cheating by using modern finger-paints). Others were stringing shells, leaves and feathers around their bodies and jamming their penises into pointed gourds that would shake as they danced. Now that’s not something you see every day. And this was normally no place for a woman; however, my presence was strangely tolerated (it’s good to be an older, white woman!).

  At one point, a terrible cry emanated from the show ground; a pig had been tied to a stake in readiness for its presentation to the main sponsors – the World Wildlife Fund. My sense of irony fully engaged, I found a young woman who was representing the charity and asked, ‘What will you do with this unfortunate creature?’ I expected the answer to be, ‘Let it go’ or ‘Put it out of its misery’, but instead she grinned hungrily, ‘Have a big feast!’

  I wandered among the tribes people, searching for the ‘mud men’, a fascinating group of people who cover themselves with ash and grey mud. When I found them, they were waiting patiently for their turn to dance. In contrast to their grey bodies, hair and faces, their mouths were bright red from chewing the ubiquitous beetle nut that invokes an amphetamine-style ‘high’ and destroys one’s teeth. One group of mud men were carrying a closed canvas stretcher in which a child was cowering. Hmmm. There is a strong history of cannibalism in these parts and only a week ago the local newspaper carried a story about a man who ate a baby. ‘Why would a man eat a baby?’ I had asked a local chief. The answer was chilling: ‘The baby was fat and the man was hungry.’ Ask a silly question . . .

  You travelled alone for some time after you left Australia, didn’t you? Was that intrepid-style travel, too?

  If I could have, I would have travelled by balloon. It was 1975 when I set off to explore the world alone, and I’d seen the movie based on the Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days; that really whetted my appetite for a bit of similar, cross-continental madness. Instead of a balloon, I flew by commercial airline from Sydney to Manila in the Philippines. Actually, although I had thought the place would be interesting, I was immediately disappointed to discover it was a shambolic, traffic-laden and fairly westernized place. I didn’t stay long. But my next stop, Japan, was a different story. I was fascinated by Tokyo, and was especially tickled by the startling juxtaposition between ancient and modern Japanese culture – punk teenagers in kimonos made from black plastic bin liners were smoking weed within spitting distance of robed monks performing a morning chanting ceremony at a central Shinto shrine. I saw businessmen, in grey western suits and briefcases, installing prayer cards (presumably hoping to land that big client account) in the designated cubby holes outside an ancient Buddhist temple.

  How exactly does being in the presence of people whose culture is vastly different from your own speak to you?

  I’m really not sure. Perhaps because I was deprived of that growing up in such a homogenous, WASP society, or perhaps because I have this other, foreign culture inside me – my Maori roots – that I have never explored and is so mysterious to me . . . But experiencing and getting to know people from other cultures is something that I have loved since that first sea voyage when I was eleven. And despite my ambivalence about my parents, I do have to thank them for instilling in me a curiosity and enjoyment for the wider world, and an appreciation of the diversity of its inhabitants.

  But as a young actress, I was also very keen to see the way different peoples of the world performed. I was determined to see theatre wherever I travelled. For example, when I was in Tokyo I found my way to a kabuki performance. The production was slow and indecipherable, but I sat transfixed. The show takes many hours, with a long break in the middle for a meal, although I had not known that when I bought my ticket. The ticket-box vendor kept showing me plates of weird plastic food and wouldn’t stop until I picked one. When the lights came up for the interval I followed everyone else to an enormous canteen full of tables bearing Japanese numbers, and I stood there confused – until I saw a man waving and pointing to the only table in the place with a lonely little flag bearing an English number ‘1’, beneath which sat a bento box containing the edible version of my plastic food choice. That just tickled me.

  I was entranced by the extreme theatricality of that kabuki performance, the histrionic characterizations, the highly elaborate costumes and make-up, and the magical way the actors changed on stage before our very eyes. The scenery was also elaborate, and actors made surprise entrances from trapdoors hidden at various points on the revolving stage. I was intrigued to see how long the performers could hold their traditional poses – with ope
n mouths, flared nostrils and eyes crossed. Craig Revel Horwood would be in his element! It was a bit like a cross between early Shakespeare performances and English pantomime. Oh, and EastEnders. The audience seemed perfectly familiar with the story. Even though it was apparently in an ancient form of Japanese, some of them got quite noisy and shouted back at the actors from time to time. Highbrow Japanese hecklers – what a concept! Not knowing that most western people dip into a kabuki show for half an hour then make a run for the nearest sake bar, I returned for the afternoon portion of the show, and actually stuck it out until the bitter end. Apparently you can now get earphones with an English translation which, I must say, would have been nice.

  But sitting there in the kabuki theatre, watching that highly melodramatic, all-male performance, I was trying to imagine what it must have been like 400 years ago when it was an all-female extravaganza. Apparently those women were sex workers and their sensual performances were so popular they caused riots – which led to their being banned by the Shogun’s officials. So men took over the performing, and I imagine kabuki theatre became a perfect home for male-to-female transgendered people; however, they too were in demand as prostitutes and the audience mayhem they inspired led to another clamping-down. I wish I’d seen it in its heyday. In a way, it seems a shame that kabuki theatre is now so formal and respectable. But some of the actors who play female roles (onnagata), are extremely famous in Japan – even revered as ‘National Living Treasures’. Honoured transvestites? Well, I suppose the British value their pantomime dames. I thought of Les Girls and wished Australian society appreciated them more, rather than considering them simply to be tacky figures of fun. Strange that, years later, I would conduct a psychological study of transgenderism as it is expressed by people in various cultures throughout the world.