Toraja

by Nigel Barley

  ‘They are male but they cannot have children because their member is very small. They have high voices. The tambolang is the only man who may enter a rice-barn.’ That was particularly interesting since I had entered one that day. Nenek waved me away. ‘Oh you. You do not matter. You are a puttyman, therefore strange. Anyway that was in the old days. Nowadays women run away, they are no good. If a man is not to starve, he has to go up there and get food.’

  According to the literature, such figures no longer existed. I was particularly interested, therefore, when Johannis insisted he knew of one in Rantepao and took me there.

  The man in question was very thin and old. His house swarmed with dogs and children. I sidled up to the matter gently. I was interested in the old ways and had been told that his family knew such things. He assented. Did he perhaps know anything about the to burake tambolang? There was a silence. He was embarrassed. ‘Who’s been talking to you?’ he demanded, glaring at Johannis. ‘That was my father. I know nothing about it.’ He was distinctly peeved. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I have retained nothing at all of all that from my father – except one thing.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A taste for chocolate.’

  I had been pleased anyway. If his father had been tambolang that seemed to settle the matter of his maleness. Johannis, however, was ready to torpedo my certainties.

  ‘Don’t forget, very many Torajans are adopted. We are always taking each other’s children.’ So I had learned nothing.

  Johannis, too, had led me to the man in Baruppu’ who – he claimed – could take buffalo horns from outside his house and make them fight each other as their living owners had done. I asked the man about it. He looked at me as though I were a madman and gently explained that when a buffalo was dead it was dead. Part of being dead was not moving any more. He stared at me as though fearing I might be dangerous.

  ‘He was shy,’ declared Johannis unabashed. ‘Anyway, he will just think you are a schoolteacher driven mad by your learning.’

  Neither of these incidents reflected any discredit on Johannis. Another event did.

  One day he appeared, grinning at me. ‘When you hear this, you will be happy,’ he said. I looked suspicious. ‘There is a special ceremony next door tonight.’

  ‘What sort of ceremony?’ He looked bashful and stared at his feet as he flexed his toes.

  ‘It’s something I’ve arranged.’ Now I really was suspicious.

  ‘It’s something from the old days. You see, often when a man has a lot of bad luck he goes to an expert who tells him to make an offering to the central pillar of his house. I’ve persuaded my cousin next door to kill a chicken for the pillar and I will help with the ceremony.’

  ‘You will help? Shouldn’t Nenek do it?’

  ‘Nenek doesn’t want to. But he has told me how. I just thought you’d want to know. It’s only next door.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I felt a sort of holy glow. My interest in the old ways seemed to be prompting a response in the heart of this young pagan.

  ‘Ooh. One other thing. I’d like to write some notes on it. Can I have a pen, maybe one of those red waterproof ones?’ Johannis had long admired these pens. An appeal to my pedagogic instinct.

  ‘Of course.’

  He popped the pen in his top pocket and went off humming.

  That evening, we all assembled in the small ramshackle house. There were quite a number of young people there, friends of Johannis, and I had to squeeze in at the back. Johannis had arranged the set. The cousin was there, seated with his back to a large pillar, looking tense. Johannis and some of the other young bloods of the village sat around him in a circle. None of the old people had appeared. An oil lamp was turned very low so that it shone up into their faces from below, making them look strange and unearthly. There was a murmur of conversation. In front of the cousin was arranged a little fire with a small, round-bottomed clay pot standing on it. A knife and bits of wizened roots lay prepared. Johannis seemed to have assumed all the dignity of his grandfather. He rapped on the floor for silence, then began a choral song that the others joined in, sitting cross-legged and swaying their upper bodies back and forth. There was a little unseemly giggling. Johannis glared it into submission. The singing went on for some time. At a sign from Johannis, a small boy brought in a tiny white chick, gave it to him and scuttled away. Johannis held it aloft, waved it about and slit its throat. He sprinkled blood on the cousin’s forehead, the pillar, the pot. One by one, ingredients were stirred into the brew. A foul odour pervaded the room like stale flatulence. Johannis appeared to be chanting like a to minaa. Had Nenek taught him that? He began to make passes with his hands in the steam, gently running his fingers over the pot and up over his face, breathing in the steam. The cousin was exhorted to do the same, to inhale, to caress the pot, to rub the strength of it into his skin, to repeat the words. There was a sudden scream of laughter and someone turned up the lamp. All the young bloods roared and banged the floor. The cousin and I were left staring at each other in amazement. Then I saw what the cousin could not see. Johannis had smeared red ink from my pen all over the inside of the pot. Mixed with soot, it was now spread all over the face of his hapless victim. It was indelible. It took two days for him to get it off.

  I should have been annoyed that my integrity had been impugned but my principal reaction was relief that Johannis had not chosen me as the victim.

  * * *

  Much as I wanted to remain in the village, it was time to return to the provincial capital. My visa would shortly expire and therefore had to be extended. It could all be arranged quite quickly, I was assured, at the Immigration Office. It took great stealth to leave the village without Nenek, who had set his heart on a jaunt to the city. The plan was that we would walk down the mountain, but we were unfortunate enough to meet up with the truck going in the same direction. Our previous crimes were now forgiven and we were urged to climb aboard. Reluctantly, we did so. We were even offered seats of honour in the cab. As soon as we reached the muddy section, the truck again became firmly stuck. For at least an hour we went through the same routine of digging, pushing, looking for rocks. Finally, Johannis nudged me. ‘Let’s walk,’ he said.

  Everyone stopped work to watch our treacherous departure. Johannis whistled. I hung my head.

  It was a glorious day, fresh and clear. We encountered a man feeding long bundles of rushes to his buffalo, like planks into a circular saw. We walked together for a while and had a long discussion about what rituals a purchased buffalo could be used for as opposed to one raised at home. Twelve kilometres further on we reached the main road, where we might hope for a bus to the city. We sat by the coffee house and waited. We played with the children. We drank coffee. We cast water. We drank more coffee. The proprietor began to sound us out about a bed for the night. No buses came. The deranged schoolteacher appeared and began to tell me about his plans for industrial development. Suddenly, there was the sound of a bus. Johannis and I leapt to our feet, anxious lest it drive straight past. Round the corner came the truck that we had treacherously abandoned.

  It was no time for false pride. Johannis waved them down and went into an enormously insincere performance of joy at their good fortune. The driver eyed us ruthlessly. Finally, it was agreed that we could get back on board. But we lost our seats in the front and we had to pay.

  Let Me Call You … Pong

  The Immigration Office in Ujung Pandang was a hot, dusty concrete building down by the harbour. A long line of people sat waiting. They looked infinitely depressed as if they had all been waiting a long time and entertained no immediate hope of deliverance. There was no one behind the desk. Those waiting were sailors, straight from the naval academy. They were instantly friendly. I laughed at their passport photographs. They laughed at mine. I tried on their hats. They were all too small. After about an hour, six uniformed officials staggered in under the weight of an enormous, floppy chart. They spent the next forty minutes t
rying to fix it to the wall. The wall, however, proved to be solid concrete and resisted all efforts. Finally, they gave up and leant it in one corner. Only then could we see what it was. It was an immaculately lettered graph whose steeply rising curve showed ‘Increasing Efficiency of the Office’.

  We began by filling in forms. The sailors helped. Kindly, they explained that before even starting I would need to buy a dossier from a shop round the corner, otherwise no one would even process my application. ‘The shop,’ they whispered, ‘is owned by the brother of the man behind the desk.’ The shop took some finding. When I arrived back with my dossier, the office was closing. ‘But it’s only twelve o’clock.’ The man shrugged. ‘We open at eight tomorrow. But don’t forget it’s Friday. We close early so everyone can go to the mosque.’

  By the following week, I had not made any great progress. The man dealing with my application was not inclined to be helpful.

  ‘English?’ he had said, smirking. ‘When I went to England, the immigration people treated me like a dog. Yes, it’s nice to have an English application.’

  He sent me all round town three times on an extended paperchase. The hardest part was getting documentation from the head of the Ministry of Labour saying that I did not need any documentation from them. The sailors had similar problems. He made them buy patriotic stickers at enormous cost. By the end of the first week, their dossiers were covered with them. They exhorted sporting activities, family planning and care for the environment.

  During one of the long lulls while my dossier was being ‘processed’, I paid a visit to the huge new university being built on the outskirts of the city to look up a man I had met briefly in England. I never found him, but by sheer good fortune I wandered into the office of an extremely elegant lady who taught English. In the course of conversation I described my difficulties at the Immigration Office. ‘What is the man’s name?’

  ‘Arlen. He is a Batak – from Sumatra.’

  ‘I do not think I know him. We are having a party at the hotel tonight,’ she said. ‘You must come.’

  There are many hotels in Ujung Pandang but only one has any pretensions to luxury. It is built out over the sea with swaying palm-trees and waves that only make the politest of noises. A sign in the lobby informed me that I was present to say goodbye to a visiting American professor. As I entered, he shook me by the hand. ‘I have greatly enjoyed working with you over the past two years,’ he said with deep sincerity.

  My hostess, Ibu Hussein, turned out to be the wife of the Dean. I was introduced to him, a rotund, smiling man who heaped my plate with food. The party was not at all like its English equivalent would have been. There were many speeches, mostly in English. One man with mad eyes and a tight blue suit gave a long address about his own stay in America, where he had learned to ride on the bus without paying and to extract many cans of Coca Cola from a machine for a single dime. Another man rose and with strong grievance announced that at his leaving party in America, he had been required to pay for his food. The Dean stood up and revealed that at one time he had studied in Manila, but there the bus drivers cheat the passengers, not the other way round. At that time he had been so poor that the only way he got enough to eat was to attend the receptions given every week for new Indonesian students. That meant he had to ride out to the airport on a bus just so that he could ride in again with the new batch. No one had ever recognized him. In America he had noticed that at the end of term the students stole all the clocks.

  Some students, scrubbed and desperately shy, recited poems in an English that was quite incomprehensible. A young man stood up and indicated the departing professor. ‘This man is my father. I very love him,’ and began to cry. A haughty stray cat promenaded across the roof beams with infinite poise as the Dean began to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in various languages. By far the most convincing was Japanese.

  Johannis lived out in the Torajan area of the city, a delightful spot near a big pond surrounded by vegetable gardens. Its only disadvantage was the enormous number of mosquitoes there. Feeling in high good humour after the university reception, I decided to visit him and we went off to drink palm-wine with some of the other Torajans in the house. We sat in a large yard on rough wooden stools while the foaming bamboo tubes of wine belched and rumbled against the wall. After some time, a short, fat man made a dramatic entrance on a motorbike directly into the yard. Everyone went very quiet. ‘Police,’ muttered Johannis. The man sat on his motorbike, lit a cigarette and looked around.

  ‘Who’s the Dutchman?’ he shouted. Johannis swivelled round reluctantly.

  ‘A tourist, Pak. He’s going to Toraja.’

  ‘Get him over here.’

  He looked me up and down. What was my name? Where was I staying? Why was I with these people? Didn’t I know this was an illegal drinking place? These were bad people. I would get myself into trouble. I was a guest in his country. He would take me somewhere else to drink. I was about to protest but saw Johannis give me a significant look and shake his head. I climbed on the motorbike and off we went.

  Our destination was another illegal drinking place. It cost me three beers and an hour’s attention to the many wrongs he had suffered, in his village in Bali, in the police-force, from his wife.

  ‘More drink,’ he demanded. I felt it was time to try a big lie.

  ‘I’m sorry. I have to get back. I have to see the governor tomorrow morning.’ He looked at me. Could it be true? He doubted it but couldn’t be sure and rolled off the bench on to his feet.

  ‘Take you back to the hotel,’ he slurred. ‘Guest in the country.’ We wove rather erratically back to the hot, depressing place where I was staying. I took my leave, thanking him for ‘looking after me’.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Now there’s a thing. I seem to be out of petrol. You wouldn’t have a thousand rupiahs on you would you?’ There seemed no point in changing my policy of craven appeasement now. I paid up.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, trying to give it the same inflection as you would if asking an English policeman his number.

  ‘Venus,’ he said. ‘My name is Venus.’

  Day after day, I went back to the Immigration Office. Sometimes Arlen was there and had new tasks for me to perform. Sometimes he was not there at all and I just waited. Then, on one extraordinary day, the door of the Office Head was flung open. I had tried several times to see this man and always been directed back to Arlen. He approached me with an air of deference, bowing and dancing on the balls of his feet.

  ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘you are being looked after properly. Perhaps there is something I can do to help you?’ It was hard to know where to start. He smiled ingratiatingly as I launched into an account of my difficulties. Five minutes later, I was leaving the office with a three-week extension. It had taken twelve days. The Office Head opened the door for me.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘send my regards to Ibu Hussein.’

  I phoned the university and got through to the Dean.

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘he was not supposed to say anything. My wife did happen to pass through the Immigration Office this morning. You see, it just so happens that the Office Head is a student at the university. To get promotion, he needs to pass an examination. At the moment he is finding the course very hard. Perhaps, if the processing of visas took less time, he would have more time for his studies and the course would not seem quite so hard.’

  ‘I see. How can I ever thank you?’

  ‘There is no need. Many people in England have been nice to me, so I am nice to you. Perhaps in the future you will be able to be nice to an Indonesian.’

  When I returned to the hotel, I found the door to my room ajar. Voices could be heard from inside. My heart sank. It was obviously the English Club who had tracked me down and would make my life hideous with their irregular verbs. Still, I had to be nice to an Indonesian. With a set smile, I opened the door. It was the sailors from the Immigration Office.

  ‘We got your address
from the form,’ they announced, ‘and told the people here we were all your cousins. We have come to see you in case you are lonely and sad.’

  I told them of the extraordinary events with my visa. They smiled and hugged me. Surely I could not be that lovable?

  ‘Then you can come with us to see the butterflies.’ Oh dear! I thought of the zoo in Surabaya. I was doomed to undertake a dreary crawl through the fleshpots of the old town.

  ‘My wife would not like it.’

  ‘She would prefer you sit here sadly rather than come with us and see the beautiful butterflies? That cannot be.’ See? Perhaps my participation would be limited to a voyeur’s role.

  ‘It is only ten o’clock in the morning. They won’t be up.’

  They nodded earnestly. ‘They rise very early. It is the best time before they get hot and tired. Besides, we have borrowed a truck just for you.’ It was true. Parked outside was a truck in the blue livery of the Indonesian navy. There was nothing for it. I owed an Indonesian a kindness. I went.

  It came as a considerable relief when we drew up outside a butterfly sanctuary. We spent a delightful day sipping warm orange squash and looking at pretty Lepidoptera. It was quite unlike a day out with English tars.

  We arrived back at sunset.

  ‘You will come to our house near the biscuit factory.’ Seven of them lived in a tiny hut covered with pictures of an American pop-singer. ‘We like her because she is a virgin. She sings about it,’ they explained.

  ‘But how do you all sleep here? You cannot all lie down?’

  ‘We take it in turns. Some sleep till two in the morning, then they have to go outside so others can lie down. Bruno sleeps during the day too but then he is from Irian Jaya.’ Bruno grinned a huge black man’s grin.

  As the sun set and warm dust blew around our feet we chewed on broken biscuits bought cheap from the factory next door. Never before or since have I felt such warm companionship.