In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘What other animals are there to see?’ I asked curiously. ‘I haven’t seen a single thing yet.’

  ‘Evenings are the best times to see the locals. That’s when they are all up and about, socialising and perhaps doing a spot of shopping for their supper. But quickly, have look over there!’

  I looked where Denis was pointing and caught a glimpse of a tiny, pointed face peering from the undergrowth. Then it was gone.

  ‘What was it?’ I breathed.

  ‘Plandok. Mouse-deer. They are lovely-looking little creatures. Just like European deer but a fraction the size. The Sakais attract them by drumming their fingers on a leaf. The plandok think it’s a come-hither signal and run into nets the Sakais string in the undergrowth.’

  ‘Where are the tigers?’ I asked. I tried to sound completely indifferent, but of course tigers were on my mind.

  ‘Could be anywhere. Probably asleep under a promising durian tree. Tigers have been known to keep watch under a durian tree for weeks at a time, waiting for the fruit to ripen and fall. They have enough sense not to try and get at the fruit before it falls because they know unripe durian will give them a pain in the belly.’

  About mid-morning, the ground began to fall away steeply towards the east. ‘The Telom Valley,’ Denis explained. ‘The Telom is a perfect valley for damming. One day, hopefully in the long distant future, some bright spark will dam the Telom and give Malaya half its electrical needs in one fell swoop.’

  The pathway emerged from the green shadow of the jungle and we were suddenly overlooking one of the most enchanting prospects I had ever seen. Perhaps it was its unexpectedness that made me catch my breath. Green grassy slopes fell away from us like gentle terraces, shaded here and there by clumps of towering teak and wide-branched meranti, many of the trees festooned with orchids – pastel pinks, yellows, blues and greens. Huge coloured butterflies darted and looped like jewels in the sunshine.

  ‘Here is your jungle paradise,’ Denis said. ‘Enjoy it, Nona. You’ve earned the right. Few white women have seen this side of Malaya.’

  ‘Tiger country, Tuan,’ Ismail said, coming up and joining us. He had Denis’s rifle out of its bag and had it crooked comfortably under his arm as he slipped bright silver bullets into the magazine.

  ‘What does he mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Tigers pick open country for their attacks,’ Denis explained. ‘If we’ve had one trailing us, this is where it would choose to make its run. But I don’t think for a minute that there is a tiger anywhere near. Even if there were, it wouldn’t attack a group as big as ours. It would wait until someone lagged behind, or strayed for one reason or another.’

  We set off across the park-like hillside, enjoying the breeze on our faces after the cloying humidity of the forest. We’d been walking since eight o’clock that morning and it was now nearly noon, but adrenaline kept the spring in my step. My expensive walking shoes had proved a good bargain and I felt I could keep walking forever.

  ‘Tired?’ Denis asked, and I shook my head truthfully. He looked at me, his blue eyes dancing. ‘You really are a most incredible girl,’ he said. ‘I want you to stay with me forever. Promise?’

  I nodded as if it was the most mundane question a girl was ever asked, but there was a lump in my throat.

  We finally broke for lunch beneath a clump of nipah palms. Ismail had made some serious preparations, and spread out a rug before opening a tin box with a flourish. ‘My cousin in Tanah Rata has prepared a chicken sate for us, Tuan,’ he said proudly. ‘I told her Mem would be coming with us into the ulu, and she cooked two chickens in her honour.’

  I felt so touched I kissed Ismail on the top of his fez. I don’t know what the Prophet would have made of the gesture but Ismail was pleased.

  After lunch we stretched out on the soft grass of the hillside and I realised just how exhausted I was. Within seconds I was asleep, my head full of happy thoughts and lovely images. I seemed to have been asleep for less than a minute when I was roused by laughter. Denis was crouching by my head taking a photograph of me while the others stood around laughing their heads off like silly schoolboys.

  ‘What on earth is so funny?’ I snapped, scrambling hastily to my feet. ‘Sleeping Beauty’, Denis grinned. ‘Or perhaps Babe in the Woods. Just had to get a shot of you, darling. The other fellows spoilt everything.’

  It took another hour to traverse the grassland, and then we plunged back into the jungle. It was harder going this time, the undergrowth encroaching onto the path so that Uda and Busu had to slash at it constantly. It was also humid down in the valley, so that I was soon streaming with perspiration. It became a hard slog. I excluded everything else from my mind and just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. My calves and thighs ached, I could hardly see through the sweat running into my eyes, but I refused to give in. It was finally Denis who called a halt.

  ‘Enough is enough!’ he called, stopping me with his hand on my shoulder. ‘You really are a champion, Nona, but spare a thought for the rest of us! We’ll take a break and have a drink of water.’

  Ismail produced a canteen and we shared it, sitting on our gear in the middle of the track. Suddenly Uda reached for his blowpipe, loaded it with a dart from a pouch at his waist, and put it to his lips, lifting the long, thin weapon skywards as he did so. There was a ‘thut!’ as he fired the dart, followed by a rustling and snapping of twigs as the body of a bird fell through the upper branches to land at our feet.

  ‘Good eating,’ Besu said in passable Malay. ‘Temiar will eat now.’

  ‘The Temiar have no set meal times,’ Denis explained. ‘They eat whenever providence places food in front of them. A pretty good idea when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from.’

  Busu built a small fire of twigs and bark while Uda beheaded and gutted the bird with economical blows from his parang. Within minutes it was sizzling and crackling in the flames, the feathers burning off to leave a rather scrawny carcass, a bit smaller than a chicken. Uda offered us all a portion, but I was not tempted. Denis ate a small amount, out of politeness I think, but Ismail joined the Temiar with gusto, the three of them pulling apart the sweet-smelling flesh and eating it with their fingers.

  Within a quarter of an hour the meal was over: game had been killed, prepared, cooked and eaten in less time than it takes to order a meal at a restaurant.

  The break had done us all a power of good and we set off with renewed energy. We were approaching the Telom now, and I could hear it splashing and gurgling away to our left. The sounds of water drew closer and closer, and then suddenly we were on the riverbank itself. The river was about sixty feet wide, a black, restless stretch of water full of boulders and gurgling whirlpools. Fine spume hung in the air, reflecting tiny rainbows every time a sunbeam broke through the canopy. I would have given anything to take off my shoes and bathe my feet, but Denis cautioned me against it. ‘Once you take your boots off you’ll never get them back on,’ he said seriously. ‘Stick it out – there’s only another five miles or so to go.’

  That last five miles were sheer purgatory. The path wound along the riverbank, climbing over mossy outcrops of rock and twisting through a maze of giant ferns that dripped moisture constantly on our heads. At one stage I felt a moment of panic when I noticed how quickly it was getting dark, the shadows filling in the spaces between the trees and making the path hard to follow. The horrible thought struck me that we might be forced to spend a night out in the open.

  ‘Not long now,’ Ismail said encouragingly. ‘Tuan and I have been here many, many times before. Soon you will see Krani Hondai’s longhouse.’

  And then there it was, high on a bank above flood level, a long dark shape looming in the gathering darkness with a string of lights glowing through its flimsy walls. It was about a hundred feet long, a quarter of that wide, and it stood on tall stilts so that its floor was about a man’s height above the ground.

  Uda and Busu ran ahead of us to make sure w
e were properly welcomed, and when we arrived and climbed the bamboo entrance ladder the whole Temiar community was waiting for us in the smoky, fire-lit interior. At a dais at the far end of the room I could see Pat waving to us frantically, surrounded by smiling Temiars.

  Our progress down the length of the hut was something like a royal procession. The floor was bamboo, and so springy that each step had to be carefully calculated. There were a series of partitioned booths or cubicles on either side, each with its own log fire on a clay fire-pan, and as we passed them the occupants reached out to touch us in friendly gestures of greeting.

  ‘We were just starting to get worried,’ Pat said after clasping us each in a welcoming bear hug. ‘Hondai was just about to send out a rescue party.’

  ‘We were held up by your friend Uda,’ Denis smiled. ‘He potted some game on the way, and we had to wait while it was cooked and eaten.’ He turned to the man next to Pat and dropped into Malay. ‘Krani Hondai, I give you many thanks for lending us your two most trustworthy guides, and bidding us stay with you and your people.’

  Krani Hondai was a man of middle age, rather short and stocky for a Temiar, with a friendly face from which round black eyes stared at me with open curiosity. ‘Welcome, Tuan, and welcome also to your gracious lady,’ he responded. ‘We have prepared a special meal made with spices brought from Cameron Highlands to mark this important occasion. The first time a white lady has visited the Temiar.’

  I was touched, but couldn’t think of anything better to do than to wordlessly shake his hand.

  Pat brought a young Temiar girl into the group. She had a pretty, vivacious face and a quite marvellous figure. Dressed only in a sarong and beads, her oiled breasts shining in the firelight, she stood demurely beside Pat while he made his introductions. ‘Nona, this is my wife Anjang. Anjang, this is Nona, a good friend who wishes to see the ulu, and learn the ways of the Temiar.’

  Anjang smiled shyly and wordlessly handed me a necklace. It was a pretty little object, made up of beads and coloured nuts strung on a length of waxed animal sinew.

  ‘A gift of welcome,’ Pat explained. ‘The Temiar give gifts freely, but there is no need for you to give her anything yet. You are the visitor.’

  I put the necklace around my neck, smiling my thanks.

  We joined Krani Hondai’s group on the penghulu’s dais, sitting cross-legged around a broad eating mat made of woven palm leaves. It was indeed a feast fit for a king, made up of curried mouse-deer, curried chicken, wild hillrice, corn on the cob, banana and tapioca. We reclined around the eating mat like dissolute Romans on their couches, reaching for the food with our bare hands and pushing the leftovers through the gaps in the split-bamboo floor to the chickens penned between the stilts below. Most of those on the dais spoke Malay and so we talked and joked as we ate, the firelight flickering on our faces. Other Temiar joined us from the family cubicles during the evening, some just for a moment or two to look at the unfamiliar white faces, some with questions or comments to make. Those who wished to speak simply sat with us in polite silence, knees drawn up to their chins, until invited to speak by Krani Hondai. Savages they may have been, but I sensed a decorum that would not have been out of place at the King’s House in KL.

  One young man wanted to accompany Denis and Pat on the tiger shoot scheduled for the following evening, and he put his case with exquisite frankness. ‘I am not regarded very highly by my fellow warriors,’ he said simply. ‘This is because I am not a good hunter, nor am I accurate with my blowpipe. Because I am so poorly regarded, I am having difficulty winning myself a wife. If you let me come with you to the platform tomorrow night, I will stay quietly out of your way. You will not even know I am there. Afterwards, I will be regarded as one of the bravest of the brave, because I have helped the two tuans kill the tiger that is troubling us. And so all the single girls will want Unai as their husband.’

  Denis considered the request thoughtfully. ‘Unai, you are a brave man to volunteer to sit with us up in a tree while a tiger prowls beneath us in the darkness of the night. I know that as a Temiar you will fear the possibility of revenge from the spirits of the forest for the violence that will be in our hearts. I salute your bravery. You may come with us if you truly wish.’

  Another young Temiar, a woman, wanted to know how I had curled my hair. ‘Our hair is straight,’ she said. ‘We weave flowers into it, we bind it with bright cloths, we scent it with patchouli oil, but I think all that would be unnecessary if we could but curl it as you do. Can you tell us the secret?’ I did my best but her eyes grew wide with disbelief when I tried to explain about curling tongs and all the other paraphernalia of modern hairdressing.

  I was suddenly desperately tired and wanted only to curl up and shut my eyes. ‘Did they really make a bamboo house for us?’ I asked Pat, and he nodded his head.

  ‘They made two,’ he said. ‘One for Anjang and me, one for you and Denis. You look dead beat, Nona. Perhaps we should call it a day.’

  It was easier said than done. The Temiar are night people, and they found it hard to believe that we really were tired and wanted to go to bed. But finally, after a lot of talk and a hundred goodnights, the four of us were on our way, backing politely down the whole length of the longhouse before arriving at the door through which we had entered. I was glad that we were not sleeping in the longhouse: while friendly and welcoming, it was also smoky and noisy, and Denis had told me that it was full of lice and cockroaches.

  It was quite cool outside, with a three-quarter moon so that we didn’t need torches for the short walk to the sleeping huts. The huts, set high on stilts, stood close together in a small clearing. I clambered up the short ladder into our hut and lit the oil lamp. The interior was immaculately clean, and smelt sweetly of freshly cut bamboo. The floor was split bamboo laced together with rattan, the walls were woven palm-leaves, and the high pitched roof was thatched with fresh atap. The only furniture was a low bamboo table on which stood several pitchers of water, while a straw sleeping mat occupied most of the floor space.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said to Denis as he followed me in. ‘A tiny little bamboo house all of our own.’

  Ismail had stacked our rucksacks in one corner and while Denis rigged the mosquito net and made up the bed with blankets, I changed out of my clothes and into a pair of pink Chinese pyjamas I had bought especially for the trip. I thought them practical as well as fetching, but Denis couldn’t stop laughing.

  ‘You look like a perfect Madam Butterfly,’ he gurgled. ‘Good grief, woman – there is even a pair of dragons climbing up your legs! Don’t let the Temiar see you in that or they’ll have a go at them with their blowpipes!’

  I attacked the beastly man and we rolled on the floor. The split bamboo was as springy as a trampoline and the whole house shook and juddered as we wrestled. We tried desperately to keep our mirth within bounds but failed miserably and I ended up screaming like an idiot.

  ‘Hey! Everything okay over there?’ It was Pat, calling from his little house ten feet away. Denis cleared his throat in the sudden silence. ‘Quite okay, Pat. I’ve just been dealing with a couple of small dragons that managed to get in here with us.’

  I fell asleep the instant my head touched the pillow. It must have been hours later when I woke and lay in the comfortable cocoon of blankets trying to work out what had roused me. Then I heard it again: a deep, soft cough just outside the flimsy palm-frond wall of our cottage. There was an opening in the latticework near me, and I raised myself to peer out.

  A tiger was standing motionless in the moonlight, a huge beast, so close I could see every detail of its shining coat, even the whiskers on its face. It turned its head towards me so that the moonlight caught its eyes and made them glow. My breath caught in my throat and I was trembling from head to foot. But not from fear. It was sheer awe at the beast’s magnificence that gripped me and turned me into jelly.

  I heard Denis stir beside me, then the soft, metallic click as he removed the sa
fety-catch on his rifle. He moved slowly, silently, so that he was lying beside me, the rife in front of him pointed at the tiger.

  ‘Are you going to shoot it?’ I breathed. I suddenly felt I couldn’t bear the thought of what was going to happen next: the sharp whiplash crack of the rifle, the tiger flopping to the ground, the light going out of those lovely amber eyes.

  Denis didn’t answer, and we just lay there, both of us staring mesmerised at the magnificent beast. It seemed to sense we were peering at it, and turned and padded towards us so that the white fur of its muzzle was against the opening in the palm-frond wall. I thought then that Denis would surely fire, and screwed my eyes up tight and put my hands over my ears.

  But still there was no shot. ‘Shoo!’ Denis said softly, and my heart exulted. He wasn’t going to shoot at all.

  When I opened my eyes the tiger was padding slowly away towards the forest and Denis had reapplied the safety-catch. ‘That was rather a moment, wasn’t it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Did you see it looking at us? I think the damned thing even winked.’

  ‘Why didn’t you shoot it?’ I asked.

  Denis thought for a moment before replying. ‘It’s a fine animal in its prime,’ he said, ‘with absolutely nothing wrong with it. Goes against the grain to put down a beast like that, just because it’s taken a dog or two, and frightened a brace of old ladies.’

  ‘What about tomorrow’s tiger shoot? The Temiar will be disappointed if you call it off. They’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble to set things up for you and Pat.’

  Denis shook his head. ‘I don’t care what Krani Hondai or anyone else might say – I’m not going to shoot that tiger,’ he said. ‘In fact, I think it has rather more right to be here than we do.’

  I put my arms around him. ‘I’m so glad,’ I said, hugging tightly.

  The news of the tiger’s visit and Denis’s decision not to shoot it caused consternation in the longhouse. The Temiar are a superstitious people who believe that nothing happens without the involvement of their gods. Being animistic, they see these gods in every animal, place or thing in the forest. Some gods are good, but some are bad, bent on harm. The trick is to identify which is which. Thus the visit by the tiger and the decision by the tuan to spare its life needed to be properly analysed. Were these events a straightforward message from the gods that the tiger posed no risk, or had the tuan been tricked by evil spirits into sparing a future killer?