Nirvana Effect

by Craig Gehring

  He turned his eyes back to the fire and the “stage” it lit. Niet wan-wan.

  He could clearly see the medicine man, still on the ground. Mahanta stood over him, facing the crowd. To his left, Nockwe brandished a burning staff. He touched the flame to the fleshy arm of the medicine man. The medicine man did not respond in any way.

  Nockwe then turned to Mahanta. That’s why he shouted. Nockwe touched the staff to Mahanta’s flesh. Again, the young man yelped, but did not move. The crowd observed passively. Edward could not be so passive, wincing as though the burn had been to his own flesh. Edward was rooting for him.

  Mahanta stared straight ahead to the crowd as again Nockwe touched the staff to the medicine man. Again he touched the staff to Mahanta. This time, Mahanta held fast. No sound came from his lips. He did it with an ease that let Edward know he needn’t have yelped either of the other two times if he hadn’t wanted to. Edward could imagine the burn growing worse and worse on Mahanta’s arm, and still Mahanta didn’t react. Finally, the chieftain cast the staff back into the fire. Edward sighed quietly, relieved.

  Nockwe grunted and raised his arms, chanting over and over again in an ancient tongue. Edward recognized its Indo-European roots. Man, hunter, killer, peace bringer - something to that effect. He could definitely make out the symmetry in the words. The burn was to burn out something animalistic in the youth, and yet bring out all that was animalistic in the soon-to-be-man.

  Nockwe’s words stopped. In unison, the tribe lay down their weapons and kneeled. The chieftain nudged the boy towards them. Mahanta walked forward warily. He was looking at their weapons.

  Mahanta’s concentration was absolute. Edward didn’t understand what that look was, then. He would later recognize that this was the moment that would launch Mahanta onto his inevitable path.

  Quietly, Mahanta stole to the back of the crowd. From the ground next to a young child, he took a small staff. He circled to the front, between the fire and the crowd, and held up the petty stick, shouting, “Ley hook!” I am.

  The tribesmen were troubled. Whispers circulated through them like an insidious breeze. The younger boys looked wildly about with darting eyes. They feared for Mahanta.

  Mahanta was not supposed to choose a child’s staff for this coming-of-age. Edward found himself leaning in, as though the few inches he gained would give him a more microscopic view to what was happening. Forgotten was the need to run.

  One of the biggest of the males of the tribe stood up and shouted to Nockwe. He spoke too quickly for Edward to interpret, but it had a tone of indignation. It was matched by several angry cries from the crowd, though no one else stood.

  “Do you break the way, Dook?” Nockwe shouted back in Onge. He spoke slowly, so that all could hear. His feet were planted firmly, his composure unperturbed. He would let no man disturb his dominance of the tribe.

  “This child breaks the way with his weapon, Chieftain. Does he mock our ways?” The dissident matched Nockwe’s pace, speaking more to the crowd than to his ruler. He was playing politics; Dook wanted Nockwe’s title.

  Before Nockwe could answer, he was stopped by the medicine man, who had quietly risen from his trance during the disturbance and now gripped Nockwe’s arm.

  “TAUN!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. It was a curse Edward had never heard before, directed straight at Dook. It blasted the big man down back to his knees and silenced the other dissidents. The medicine man then whispered in Nockwe’s ear.

  Nockwe surveyed the crowd. “It is the way. The boy has chosen,” he announced. “The boy may choose any weapon to become a man.”

  “Turn around, boy,” rasped the medicine man.

  Fear gripped Edward. Despite the intertribal politics, there was something else occurring here. He couldn’t quite grasp it. The adrenaline pumping through his veins kept it just out of reach of his mind.

  The youth faced the fire now. Edward was long overdue on returning to his hut. His legs wanted to run but he could not turn his head from the scene.

  They continued their ritual. “I face the fire,” Mahanta shouted.

  “I face your life,” shouted back the medicine man.

  “I face a boy,” cried Nockwe.

  “We face a boy,” shouted the tribe in unison.

  Silence. Mahanta acknowledged them by bowing his head. “I am a man,” he asserted.

  “By whose spear?” returned the medicine man.

  “By the tribe’s spear,” shouted Mahanta.

  “What shall you slay?” asked Nockwe.

  Silence again. The silence grew too long. Mahanta was breathing heavily. Edward wondered what drug was coursing through his veins. Maybe he’d blanked out.

  “What do you slay, child?” coaxed the medicine man.

  Mahanta said nothing.

  “What do you say, child? Will you slay the hog?” the medicine man asked again.

  Mahanta shook his head - no. The tribe grew more agitated. The medicine man quieted them with a small hand motion. His stage presence was impeccable.

  Patiently, he asked Mahanta, “Then what shall you slay?”

  Mahanta gripped his stick and spoke slowly in the formal version of their tongue. “As it is sung in the psalms of our ancestors, I shall slay the panther as a child, and defying my elders, remain a child immortal.”

  “Blasphemy!” shouted a man in the crowd. Several joined him and started shouting, their weapons to hand.

  “You call yourself a god?” asked the medicine man.

  “I call myself a child. And I shall slay a panther tonight with this toy and so become immortal,” said Mahanta, defiant.

  The medicine man nodded, feinting as though he were just motioning toward Nockwe to get his attention, but with a cat-like grace Edward would have never expected out of the old man, he grabbed Nockwe’s spear and in one swooping motion hurled it over the fire at Mahanta.

  It was hard for Edward to make out by the firelight at such a distance, but in an instant it seemed that Mahanta’s whole body shifted, as though jerked like a rag doll by an unseen hand. The spear flew where he had been just a moment before. Mahanta struck the spear in midair with his staff, shattering it in two. Its splinters flew into the crowd of Onge.

  The tribesmen could no longer contain their excitement. Edward could make one of the voices out, one of the younger men who he knew trained under the medicine man. He seemed to be quoting. “He shall shatter the spear of the spirit guide.” Others voiced terse agreement.

  For only a moment, Mahanta locked eyes with the medicine man. Then, with his tiny staff still gripped in his hand, Mahanta launched into an all-out sprint towards the jungle.

  Edward’s stomach dropped. Mahanta was running directly at him.

  Mahanta flew with an unnatural speed. He wasn’t just running - every muscle in his body seemed to be propelling him as though he were clawing up for air along the ground. Some invisible force was pushing him, pulling him toward the jungle, and toward Edward.

  Behind Mahanta, most of the tribe started running, their weapons to hand. Edward drew back. They were coming so quickly.

  He had a choice to make. He could bolt for it, but surely they’d see him and his long shadows.

  Edward frantically edged around the hut, losing his footing in mud. He heard the thundering footsteps of the tribe draw nearer. Mahanta flew by. Edward threw himself into the hut behind which he’d been hiding. He would wait it out.

  Edward noticed the walls of this hut didn’t come all the way down to the floor. It was a cooking hut. He jumped up onto a bench against the far wall to avoid running the risk of some observant Onge noticing his legs. The shadows of the tribe raced on the floor. Their feet drummed the earth, only yards away.

  It would only take one Onge taking pause at the hut to see him through the holes in the bamboo reeds, but they were all in pursuit of Mahanta.

  Edward started to get the same feeling he’d had just half an hour before when Nockwe had entered his hut. He might
not survive this night.

  Through one of the wider gaps in the wall, Edward peeked to see what was happening. The tribe had all raged into the jungle. He didn’t know enough to be able to analyze it. Unanswered questions whizzed through his mind. Were they trying to kill Mahanta or just watch him? What was happening? Mahanta ran as though possessed. Perhaps he had overdosed on whatever drug he’d injected in his veins. An insane part of Edward wanted to follow, to run with the tribe as though one of them.

  As the pounding of the Onge feet receded towards the nearby jungle, the voice of reason (and terror) triumphed. It was time to return to his hut. He had been fortunate; no need to push his luck. The men were in the jungle. The women seemed to be gone somewhere, too. The whole village was empty. He wouldn’t even need to sneak to make it back safely.

  He stepped down from the bench and turned toward the doorway.

  An Onge stood where only the darkness had been a minute ago. It was Nockwe.

  2

  Edward clambered back to the bench and tried to pry his way through the gap in the wall, to no avail.

  He was trapped. The only way out of the hut, full of holes as it seemed, was through the doorway and through Nockwe.

  Nockwe’s hand gripped the dagger at his belt. Edward was happy Nockwe’s spear had shattered. The chieftain edged toward Edward as he spoke in Onge.

  “You are a foolish white man. I told you not to leave the hut.”

  Edward kept eyeing the sheathed dagger. He felt numb and out of breath.

  Nockwe moved closer still. “You will pay a fool’s gamble to feed your curiosity.”

  Here was a shimmer of hope. Nockwe was still talking. As long as Nockwe was talking, he was not dead. Edward abandoned all pretense of not knowing Onge. “I heard shouts. I thought there might have been violence.”

  “You left the hut!” shouted Nockwe.

  “I feared for my life.”

  Nockwe shifted his feet and checked his back. When he addressed Edward again, he spoke quickly and softly. “You were right to fear so. You are a good white man but a stupid one.”

  Edward was barely able to keep pace translating in his mind. Onge was definitely not second nature to him yet.

  “There is nothing you could gain,” said Nockwe, “and everything you could lose. This we call the fool’s gamble. By the laws of the tribe you will die.”

  Edward could not press back any further to the wall. He scanned the room for weapons, anything that could help him. He had nothing but his bare hands to defend himself from Nockwe. Edward waited for him to make his move.

  Nockwe’s move never came. “I’ll not be the one to kill you,” he said. “You are a good white man - you see my peoples’ hardships and you help. But you are victim of your curiosity. If the tribe learns what you saw, either I or someone else will have to end your life.”

  Edward started breathing again, sagging from the wall. Nockwe would bend the rules so long as there were no witnesses.

  “What is happening?” Edward asked.

  Nockwe shrugged after considering his question. “You just saw a coming of age.”

  “But he didn’t ask for a hog. He was supposed to ask for a hog?” asked Edward.

  “But he asked for a panther.”

  “Yes, a panther. Why?”

  “I don’t know. There is a legend…”

  “With a panther and a child’s staff?”

  “You came before the yelling.”

  Edward smiled weakly. “I am a very stupid white man.”

  Nockwe grinned. “You speak very good Onge for being such a stupid white man. There is a legend, it must be what Mahanta is thinking. But it is only a fable. No boy can kill a panther with a toy. No man can even find a panther to kill. The panther finds and kills him. This is the way of panthers and men.”

  “He took a drug,” Edward said.

  Nockwe furrowed his eyebrows and searched Edward’s eyes. Finally Nockwe nodded, accepting the truth in his statement. “What sort?” he asked.

  “I thought you’d know.”

  Nockwe shook his head. “There is no drug or potion for the ceremony. Nothing to dull the senses. Even with the hog half-dead and drugged we do not want to lose any of our youth to an accident.”

  “It was by some sort of…umm…infusion,” said Edward. He had to use the Onge cooking term; they had no medical vocabulary.

  “Perhaps that explains it.” Nockwe’s eyes glossed over momentarily. He looked disheartened.

  A cry reached them from the jungle. Nockwe whipped back into action. “You will follow me, white man,” he instructed, “and stay very close if you want to live through the night. I am no threat, but the tribe is. And I am a threat in the presence of the tribe.” He gripped Edward’s shoulder. “You are a friend to my people, but they are no friend of yours. So remember when I am your friend and when I am not. Come with me.”

  “Should I just go back to my hut?” Edward asked. At that moment, his hut was very appealing.

  “The hut is not safe for you there. You were right to fear for your life in the hut, if that is true. But only because of what is now occurring.”

  Nockwe backed toward the entrance.

  “Follow me, white man,” he said in English to Edward. “Stay close.”

  Edward numbly followed. Nockwe‘s English was better than he had before pretended. And I thought I had Nockwe fooled. “Where are we going?” Edward asked.

  “To the jungle.” There would be no arguing with him. He was already moving out the doorway. “Perhaps we can help young Mahanta survive the night,” he said quietly. They heard another shout from the jungle. “We must run.”

  Edward plunged into the jungle, trying to keep up with Nockwe. Edward had never dared travel the jungle at night.

  Nockwe wasn’t running so much as swimming through the jungle, leaping across crevasses and darting between minute openings in the foliage with ease and fluidity. He somehow always found footing despite the irregular undergrowth, and Edward had a hard time emulating him. The missionary was in good shape, but nowhere near the physical prowess of the head of the Onge tribe.

  As he sprinted deeper into the jungle, Edward’s need to keep up with Nockwe grew. If he lost his guide, he had no way back to the village. Nockwe changed direction unpredictably, and Edward’s lungs heaved the humid air until they felt ready to collapse.

  Nockwe stopped suddenly, but Edward didn’t see him in time. He slammed into the chieftain. Nockwe’s firm hands grasped him and kept him from falling headlong. “Shteck!” whispered Nockwe. It was the Onge injunction for silence.

  Edward strained his ears over his own desperate breathing. Far in the distance he heard the shouting and running of the villagers.

  Edward and Nockwe twisted their heads back around. An animal was shrieking not far from them. Edward scanned the trees. At any moment it might drop on him.

  “There,” said Nockwe. “The panther.” Edward was relieved to see Nockwe point in the distance. It had like it was right there.

  An Onge battle cry drowned out the last of the roar. It sounded like Mahanta.

  “Quickly,” urged Nockwe. He rushed toward Mahanta, away from the mob of villagers closing in behind them. Edward had to fight his every impulse in order to follow. His only comfort was that there would be only one panther, but hundreds of angry Onge in the opposite direction and thousands of jungle animals should he simply flee into the darkness.

  They broke into a clearing. At the far end of the open space was a huge, ancient tree, its branches arching down to kiss its far-reaching roots. Mahanta and the panther danced back and forth before it, silhouetted by the moon.

  The panther was furious, yowling, jabbering, hissing and scratching, pouncing at Mahanta. Mahanta bore the stick in his hand and pounded the panther’s skull every time it made a pass at him.

  The young man moved as though he were some sort of animal, himself - something far more wild and threatening than the jungle cat. Edward had never see
n a human being move like he did. The panther struck with an inescapable power and agility, and yet here was this boy who dodged it easily.

  Neither Nockwe nor Edward advanced closer than the edge of the clearing. The chieftain muttered a curse.

  Edward wrenched his eyes from the fight to look at Nockwe. His moonlit eyes watched the fight, but Edward could tell by his frozen pupils that he was thinking, not watching. Unexpectedly, Nockwe wrenched his head to the right as though he were a deer reacting to the crack of a rifle. “DOWN,” he whispered furiously in English, shoving Edward into the grass.

  Edward soon saw that Nockwe had good reason for his abruptness. The sharp pain of Nockwe’s rough handling faded into the back of Edward’s mind as he tuned his ears to the soft sounds of hundreds of footsteps nearby. The tribe had reached the clearing, too. Peeking up from the grass, he saw the villagers exit the jungle here and there. They cautiously kept to its edge, just like Nockwe.

  Edward turned his eyes back to the roaring panther and the quiet youth. The panther was further enraged and had lost all caution in its pouncing. As soon as it landed it launched into the air again, trying to reach Mahanta. It may as well have been pawing at its shadow.

  Mahanta only struck the occasional blow as he dodged the cat. He kept glancing at the tribe gathering at the edge of the clearing. He wasn’t looking for help.

  Seems like he wants an audience. Edward dismissed the thought as soon as it came to him. Mahanta was fighting a real panther. This was life or death, and though he fought with a child’s toy, it was no game. Surely he didn’t care whether or not there was a crowd. Surely by now whatever drug-induced delusions of grandeur he had were shattered by the necessities of survival.

  Edward thought about the injection Mahanta had taken. This is a drug-induced insanity. It must be stopped. Mahanta’s drug might have been an effective upper, but it was only a matter of time before that panther tore him limb from limb.

  Much to Edward’s amazement, no member of the tribe moved to intervene, not even Nockwe.

  “Is there anything we can do?” asked Edward emphatically from the grass.