Burridge Unbound

by Alan Cumyn

  We pool on a flat field on the far edge of the village. A large, low platform has been erected under the shade of three enormous trees, and in front of it, on the ground, the families are swirling, gathering, talking, sitting. Hugs and laughter, kids skittish, sitting for a time then running, pausing to whisper then darting off.

  “Is this a wedding?” I ask.

  “No. A funeral,” Suli says.

  She’s greeted now not like a president but as a favourite returning daughter. The soldiers are soon garlanded and Suli is enveloped and carried off like a flower in the current. I’m left with my chicken, which is anxious now; it doesn’t like this crowd of people and all the other animals they’ve brought. It scratches and flaps and I let it go for a time. It darts from between legs to open patches, then stops and eyes us all nervously. One of the soldiers corrals it for me and holds it, and when Suli comes back we sit on the ground twenty or thirty feet from the platform.

  “Who died?” I ask.

  “Her name was Kulika Lo, which means the mother of Lo. She had twelve other children, eight of them survived. Those people up on the platform are her family, her brothers and sisters and their children, her own children and theirs.” Over a hundred people in all, it looks like, squatting, sitting, kneeling on the mats on the platform, some with heads bowed, others talking casually, some young girls sleeping with their arms around each other.

  “How old was she?”

  “Probably not yet sixty, though aged for around here. She was sick for a long time. Nobody paid attention to her then. But now that she’s dead she’s become very important.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She’s part of the huloika now, the spirit world. She can intercede on behalf of her friends and relatives. When she was sick that meant she’d angered the huloika somehow. She must have deserved it. But now she has crossed over and it’s important to let her know that she is well respected.”

  For a long time it appears as if nothing is happening. More and more people dressed in finery arrive from various paths, fill up this open space bearing baskets, food, animals. We talk and don’t talk; the family members on the platform look at us and look away. I’m slow to become aware of the music – soft bamboo flutes, long stringed instruments on gourds, drums of various kinds, a rhythmic tapping device festooned with bottle caps and empty tin cans. Gradually people move forward to the platform in twos and threes, and pull out lengths of cloth, jugs, jewellery, household items.

  “Presents for Kulika Lo,” Suli says.

  They bring out the finery and show it to the family, who watch or don’t watch, talk or stay silent, it doesn’t seem to matter. The gifts are presented then laid at the foot of the platform in a growing mound. Ages pass and then it dawns on me that the body of Kulika Lo is underneath this mound.

  “You mustn’t hold back when giving to the dead,” Suli says. “You must be extravagant in order to win favour.”

  Machetes, carving knives, carved masks, baskets, woven cloth, fancy hats, saftoris, figurines, wooden bowls, decorated sandals, pots of food. The first goat is brought up and now the family notices. Long speeches are made which I can’t hear and of course wouldn’t understand, but no one in particular seems to listen. And then the goat is slaughtered right there in front of the family, in front of us all. A skinny boy holds the rope and a young man in brown with a ceremonial cloth hat wound high on his head swings a machete through the goat’s neck. Blood spurts immediately on the boy and the young man as the goat goes down, its back legs kicking up for an instant, as if fighting might be a possibility. The boy smiles and steps away with the head still on the rope, blood now down his front and dripping on the ground. More whacks and a leg is presented to the family, whose members applaud but don’t take it.

  Suli brings me some local beer in a carved wooden goblet. It’s warm and plentiful and sweeter than I expect, and every time I look my goblet is full again.

  The slow tide of families. Each in turn brings their offerings, adds them to the pile. Some of them have beaded hair and red dye on their faces, anklets of animal teeth. A muzzled monkey is brought forth and held up for the family, briefly tries to escape before being clubbed to the ground with the back of an axe. Two boys hold the arms while a father pauses to smile, then swings through one shoulder then another, twists the limbs off and holds them aloft. Again, there’s no effort to avoid the blood – it spurts over much of the nearby crowd; the mist of it hangs in the air like salt spray. A dog is chopped but survives, cries out piteously, and there’s confusion as blow after blow glances. Half-lame, the dog starts to crawl off but is pursued until a gush of blood brings a roar. Knives flash, and the sorrowful dog is soon reduced to bloody sections, each presented to the family then taken off to one of a dozen cooking fires behind the big trees.

  Then Suli stands and motions to me and I rise, my legs stiff from being crossed so long. We walk slowly to the front, Suli talking to everybody, not in Kuantij, it seems to me, but some tribal language, the words sounding even stranger than usual. Hardly anyone pays attention to me, and I wonder if it’s because I’m sick – I must’ve offended the huloika.

  No sun now, but thick clouds and building humidity, my golung soaked with sweat, the heat of the day and of all these people trapped in the bowl of this clearing. Near the platform the ground is soaked in blood. Suli slips off her sandals, motions for me to do the same, my toes slide and squish in the hot mud. Then she begins a chant of sorts, her voice reedy, fragile. At first it’s just her and then others join in, from the family and from the field. A low chant, simple – boru’ut ki gan da gan da tu na, it sounds like, over and over. I sing along, close my eyes, feel my body swaying, feet in the blood-soaked soil, the smell of rotting flowers, meat, perfumes, incense, of death and life filling my head. Boru’ut ki gan da gan da tu na. It could be anything or nothing, but it sounds to me like the most profound poetry. It seems to vibrate through my body and I don’t want it to end. It builds and builds till thunder fills the valley, till every voice is with her, every body stands and sways, louder and louder and then suddenly, all at once, low as a whisper: boru’ut ki gan da gan da tu na.

  Then I’m slaughtering a chicken. A soldier brings it up, the same one I carried so far under my arm, and holds its head and body down on the great chopping block while I raise a machete. One slip, I think, and I’ll slice off part of this man’s arm, maybe even catch him in the neck coming down. I pull my swing and miss completely, to the roar of the crowd, their hilarity, the soldier jiggling with silliness, Suli doubled over, the family rocking on the platform. I raise the machete again but the soldier laughs too much, he can’t hold the chicken still, it seems inevitable I’m going to get his hand. This time I can’t pull away, I try to focus.

  Slash! The shock of it rockets up my arm, the machete sticks in the block as the chicken falls away in parts and the soldier rises, blood-soaked … lifts the chicken for everyone to see. His hands still fastened, head still on.

  After my measly chicken there are more goats and dogs, then a water buffalo the size of four men. When the blade strikes its flank the blood sprays out over all of us, comes down like rain for a time, washes in our hair and sweat. We’re all drinking now, supira, the local version, far more powerful than what I tasted before. I know I shouldn’t drink this much, but that was from the old days, when I took medicine and was a Truth Commissioner. This is a new time, an in-between time – nothing is quite real and nothing is unreal. In fact, I come to realize, we’re all on our way to death, every one of us, children to grandmothers. Just slightly behind Kulika Lo, but not that far. This is the waiting lounge, in a way, the place to say goodbye and to wish for favours from the one who’s leaving, because we’ll be going there soon ourselves. Every one of us. The blood falls on us all.

  Food, feasting, music, chanting, wild dance, more slaughter and sacrifice, talk and more talk. Suli never stops, spills supira on herself as if it were blood, kisses the children, feeds the grandmothers, tease
s the young boys with their big feet and thin shoulders. She seems like a president now too, a president and a returning daughter, someone to curry favour with here, in this life. I watch her and eat, regardless of the food, vast quantities returning now from the many fires, spiced with fruit and burning peppers, strange sauces, cool jellies, more supira, always more supira. Every time I look up it seems more crowded, the air hotter, less room for any of us and our cumbersome bodies. Dancing now on the platform and in the field, dancing under the blackening sky, dancing crazily as the rain comes down, slashing, rivers of it, all heading here, in the pooling place, the waiting lounge, where we meet before death. Soaking the flowers and food, the fine clothes, the gifts, washing the blood into mud and the mud into blood that covers our feet and legs, splashes up our clothes the more we dance, soaks us all, washes us in the same blood-mud we came from, the same we’re heading towards.

  A young woman loses her saftori, stepped on by someone: one moment it’s there and the next she is naked in the blood-mud. I’m startled, but she laughs, the others laugh. An older man on the other side of the crowd hoists his golung in the air and then there are others. It seems exactly the right thing to do in this mud, in this rain, with this music and the supira and blood. Several women start laughing and calling because one of the men has an erection. It looks like a penis gourd from an old National Geographic, but no, it’s the real thing, the women laugh and point and the man is dancing, strutting. I turn to look at Suli, to ask her, Is this what your folks do at funerals? Where is she? We are all whirling and singing. I see her for a moment and lose her, then she is right next to me, her face filled with laughter. She bends to scoop up an armful of the blood-mud and hoists it at me, splashes my chest. I do the same to her, and then we’re rolling in it, blood-mud in our hair and faces, up and down our bodies. She pitches me onto my back and I see her now as an animal. I am erect as that other man, as all the men, and quick as any wildcat she pulls me inside her and before I can breathe or think I stream so painfully I cry out. She lurches off me, stays gasping on her hands and knees when another man washed in blood-mud approaches her from behind. I rise in a fury, throw him off, and then Suli turns on me again and drives me on my backside, spitting and laughing, the rain falling in torrents now so that I can hardly see what other writhing bodies are doing.

  What other bodies are doing doesn’t matter. We kick and spin, circle, swim, laugh and ache and reach for one another again and again as the rain slashes and we are washed in tides of mud and blood and longing for this life and the next and the lives we’ve left behind.

  25

  At the community lagoon, not long after sunrise. A great flaming tree with red and orange blossoms overhangs murky brown water that smells of the rot of too much life. I feel it too, within my body, and it’s not just the ache of overindulgence. I’ve spent too much of my life too soon, and what’s left is tired and sore and brittle and badly used.

  “You must turn your eyes away,” she says as she wades into the pool and begins unwinding her saftori. It strikes me as the first really funny thing I’ve heard in a long while. “I’m not kidding,” she says. “The villagers take this very seriously.”

  “After last night men and women can’t bathe together?”

  “That was different,” she says. “Turn your eyes away.”

  A sleek grey snake lies quietly on one of the upper branches of the flaming tree. At first I think it’s a vine, then I notice its flickering tongue. Not looking at us, not looking away.

  “Last night was not entirely part of our world and is treated as something separate from the traditions and decorum of everyday life. Did you notice any huloika?”

  “No.”

  Her thin brown body glistens in the water, her shoulders so straight, her throat and neck–

  “Turn your head away!” Emphatic. Then calmer: “They were dancing above us. I could just catch sight of a few.”

  This terrible sadness, a bitter fatigue. I’ve laid down with the devil, with a blood-soaked angel, and it’s as if she has pulled from me the last ounces of my hope. Hope for what? For redemption, dignity, for this godforsaken country.

  “Who are they?”

  “The huloika don’t always connect to people exactly as we knew them. They’re something like amalgamations. One I thought was Jono and my father. They were so happy to see me, to be together again after so many years. That hasn’t happened in a very long time for me.”

  “Being with your father and husband?”

  “Being with their huloika. I’m sorry, you must think me a lunatic.” The sound of her light steps approaching, water gently splashing and dripping.

  “I didn’t see any huloika,” I say. “But I’ll be one soon if I don’t get back on my meds.” What I don’t say is this: I was part huloika. Not last night, but in captivity. I was so near death I must have floated over the line sometimes.

  “We’ll take the helicopter back to the capital in an hour. You can turn your head now. The water is yours.”

  Her hair pulled back and sleek, face fresh but tired, in this light she looks fragile, losing the battle with age. She’s also sending out powerful female waves of longing – she wants me to embrace her, damn whatever the villagers might say, damn the sadness I feel in my bones. Her pull is as powerful as if she’d reached out with her hand. It’s a selfishness, a need to dominate, spoiled as everything else this morning. I walk past her, eyes down.

  “I need to know about Dorut Kul. Why was he killed? What were you discussing with Sin Vello in that video he was so disturbed about?”

  Silence. I step into the water, let the filthy golung fall from my own aching, aging body. Limbs back to their familiar trembling, stomach in its usual roiling state.

  “You said you were going to explain everything.”

  “I said everything will become clear.”

  “It isn’t.” Immersing myself in the water, sickly warm. I wonder what diseases are lurking here, what leeches and snakes.

  “I took you to the onjupta ceremony so that you would know that we live very close to life and death here, to the huloika. It’s all a much stronger part of our reality than it is for you. But now you’ve seen some of it. You’ve been part of it. And it is part of you.”

  “Did you conspire to murder General Minitzh?” I ask. Surely this is why Dorut Kul had to be killed.

  “There are enemies massing against us from every corner.”

  “Did you and Sin Vello plot to kill the president?”

  “There are shades of truth and night that do not bear too close an inspection,” she says. “They wipe out everything else. Make you think nothing else matters.”

  “Did you have Dorut Kul murdered?”

  She looks past me, as if she’s somewhere else.

  “Why did you want me on your Truth Commission? To make you look good? A hobbled torture survivor who wouldn’t be up to examining things too closely? Why did you fuck me? So I wouldn’t ask these questions?”

  She waits before answering, then simply repeats, with monumental calm, “There are shades of truth and night.”

  There are shades of Suli Nylioko, too, that do not bear too close an inspection. My will for it evaporates, like the mist from this scummy lagoon, like any forward momentum this country ever generates. I turn to watch her step away, her head erect, body swaying slightly, looking now like a twelve-year-old village girl walking back from the community lagoon.

  Fresh clothes, a brown batik shirt and light pants, my rubber thongs cleaned of all the mud and blood from yesterday. The villagers move slowly, as if the air has been made gelatin and gravity increased. The grounds are littered with chicken feathers, animal fur, soiled clothing, fly-infested remnants of food. My stomach is in disarray, my head held together by cellophane.

  Suli Nylioko killed President Minitzh. The angel of non-violence, probably in concert with – why not the Kartouf? Why not? Anything is possible. She evades and distorts and so it’s probably true. I haven
’t a lick of evidence – a film and transcript I couldn’t understand and no longer possess, a dead body in my suite, a lover who will not deny any of it.

  A lover.

  Who sees spirits, stands in front of soldiers, calms thousands, makes me turn my head away. Who brings me back to life and turns it sour.

  A lover.

  Who’ll probably have me killed. Why not? Death is so close here anyway. What’s one less Truth Commissioner?

  Lover.

  The word turns over in my mind as we lift off in the presidential helicopter and the village becomes a spot of brown nearly lost in the monstrous green surrounding it. And the delicate silver terraces – from up above they’re sheets of mica glinting in the sun, whole mountains’ worth, art not food. If I were a god looking down I’d want to pluck the entire valley as a jewel.

  A lover. Reanimating my body, but with a trick of mirrors, I wake up in the morning and my spirit’s been sliced open. There were huloika all around me but I couldn’t see them. All I’ve been able to see is dead bodies: heads in refrigerators, bodies wrapped in garbage bags, brains on my floor. I couldn’t see the huloika. The other side. Where the mud and the blood meet, food and death and sex and rain, pouring rain, flowers and filth and the stink of it all. My battered body. I’ve been through everything, I think. There’s nothing else that can be done to me. Kill me? That’s nothing to fear. Not any more.