Jaws of Death

by Paul Adam

  After four hundred metres they slowed to a fast walk, Max glancing back every few seconds to make sure the police weren’t on their tail. They headed out of town along a dusty road, then skirted round the back of some houses to the river. The Sungai Arot was broad and slow-moving, its waters a cloudy brown colour, as if saturated with mud and silt. The banks were fringed with luxuriant tropical vegetation – long grasses, shrubs, and a dozen or more varieties of palm tree. Jutting out from the near bank was a short wooden jetty from which a gang of boys about Ari and Max’s age were jumping into the river amid much boisterous shouting and laughing. They were wearing nothing but skimpy shorts, their nut-brown bodies gleaming wet.

  Seeing Ari arrive, the lads broke off from their games and crowded round, staring and smiling at Max, asking questions in their own language. Ari must have told them that Max was English, for two of the boys suddenly threw out a couple of phrases they had no doubt picked up from visiting tourists – ‘Good morning, how do you do?’ ‘What time is it? Is it time for tea?’ – then fell about in convulsions of laughter.

  ‘Boys will look after you,’ Ari said. ‘No one find you here. I go into town and hire ces.’

  Max gave him some money and watched him walk away along the riverbank. The boys had resumed their sport, racing out along the jetty and hurling themselves into the water. One of them came up to Max and gestured towards the river.

  ‘You want swim with us?’

  Max was tempted. It was baking hot in the fierce morning sun and the thought of a cool dip was very appealing. But he didn’t like the look of the Sungai Arot. It was very murky and you couldn’t tell what dangers lurked beneath the surface. He knew there were water snakes in Borneo, and crocodiles. The boys didn’t seem to be worried, but maybe they were used to the risks.

  ‘What about crocodiles?’ Max asked.

  ‘Crocodile?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Not here. That way, and that way, yes.’ He pointed up and then down the river. ‘Here, too many peoples, too many boat. Crocodile no like.’

  Why shouldn’t I join in? Max thought. It looked like fun. For a moment he thought about Consuela and Chris, wondering whether he should go back into town and try to find out what had happened to them. But he knew that would be dangerous. He was likely to be caught too, and then their trip to Borneo would have been for nothing. So he stripped down to his boxer shorts, ran out along the jetty and leaped into the river. The water was tepid, like a warm bath, but it was still cooler than the searing air on the bank. The other boys grabbed hold of him and pushed him under playfully. Max fought back, and soon the whole gang was tussling in the water, ducking and diving, then scrambling out and jumping back in again.

  Max lost track of time, but it must have been at least an hour later that Ari returned, coming upstream from Pangkalan Bun in a motorized canoe – maybe five metres long with a pointed bow and low sides. Ari sat in the stern, nursing the outboard motor with a look of unconcealed joy on his face – like a western teenager with a sports car. He pulled in alongside the jetty and the gang swarmed down into the canoe, all clamouring to be allowed a go with the motor, but Ari pushed them away, clinging fiercely to his position as skipper.

  Max gathered up his clothes and joined them all in the ces. Ari revved the outboard motor to show off, then engaged the gears. The canoe shot forward like a bullet, the force knocking two of the boys backwards off their seats. Everyone yelled and screamed with delight. They raced up the river for a hundred metres, then Ari throttled back and shouted something at his mates, jabbing his thumb towards the bank. Max guessed he was telling them the ride was over – he and his important English friend had business to transact and they weren’t taking this rabble with them. The boys went over the side reluctantly, then rocked the canoe up and down gleefully to try to capsize it until Ari bawled at them to get out of the way, and opened up the throttle again. His mates splashed to the shore and made catcalls and rude gestures from the bank as the ces surged away up the river.

  Ari slowed to a more manageable pace once his friends were out of sight. Max sat on the wooden plank at the front of the canoe and enjoyed the ride, the water creaming past beneath the bow, the cooling breeze blowing over his bare torso, moderating the clammy, burning heat of the sun.

  The forests on both sides of the river had been cleared to make paddy fields for growing rice, but as the canoe got further upstream the jungle returned – a wall of dense green vegetation, massive trees clinging to the banks, their branches overhanging the water. Max saw a monkey swinging down from a branch and splashing across the river directly in front of the ces. Ari throttled back to avoid hitting it.

  ‘What’s it doing?’ Max asked.

  ‘Canoe motor frighten crocodile away,’ Ari replied. ‘Is safe place to cross river. Monkey do it all the time.’

  ‘What kind of monkey is that?’

  ‘Proboscis. Monyet belanda, we say. You see its long nose? Lots of proboscis monkey here.’

  ‘What other animals do you get?’

  ‘Sun bears, wild boars, gibbons, pythons, sambar deer. But you no see by the river now. They very shy, stay hidden in deep forest.’

  ‘What about orang-utans?’

  Ari shook his head. ‘Not many orang-utan left. You go to Tanjung Puting National Park, you see orang-utan, and also in sanctuary Jaya look after. But here, orang-utan all gone. Man kill them, drive them away. Is very sad.’

  They weren’t the only people on the river. Other motorized canoes came past carrying passengers and goods, some of them so overloaded that their sides were only a few centimetres above the water. Larger vessels also floated by: houseboats that Ari called klotok, with cabins for sleeping in, and huge commercial barges stacked with tree trunks that had been logged upriver and were being transported to the coast. Several times Ari had to pull over to the bank to let convoys of barges past. Max was stunned by how many trees had been felled. But it wasn’t just logs the barges were carrying. Many were laden with dozens of big metal containers, which had a logo and the name RESCOMIN painted on their sides.

  ‘What are those?’ Max asked.

  ‘Palm oil,’ Ari replied. ‘From the plantations. They process palm nuts to make oil, then put in big tanks like that and send to port on coast. It go all over the world.’

  ‘How far away are the plantations now?’

  ‘Long way. We get there day after tomorrow.’

  Max realized that he hadn’t given much thought to this trip. He had relied on Ari to make all the arrangements. ‘What about tonight?’ he wondered. ‘Where will we spend the night? Are there villages – somewhere we can sleep?’

  ‘We sleep by river,’ Ari told him.

  In the early evening he steered the canoe in to the bank and cut the outboard motor. The two of them jumped into the shallow water and dragged the boat up onto a small shingle beach. They collected bits of wood from the shore and the edge of the rainforest and Ari made a fire. He’d bought supplies in Pangkalan Bun when he’d hired the ces – rice, vegetables, spoons, two billy cans, bottles of water and a heavy iron cooking pot. He gave Max the task of chopping onions and chillies while he sharpened a long, sturdy stick into a spear. Then he waded out into the river and waited patiently, still as a rock, his eyes fixed on the water, the spear poised in his hand. Max watched silently from the shore. Suddenly Ari’s spear lanced down into the river. When he pulled it out, there was a silvery fish wriggling on the point. He waded back out and killed the creature by hitting its head on a stone, then returned to the water and resumed his motionless position. Ten minutes and a couple of misses later, he’d caught a second fish. He gutted both with his knife and laid them out on a flat stone that he’d earlier placed in the fire to heat. The cooking pot containing rice and vegetables was put on the fire beside the stone and fifteen minutes later their meal was ready.

  Max tucked in greedily. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and was ravenous. The rice and vegetables were hot and spicy, the chillies burning hi
s throat, but the fish was tasteless and full of bones. It was like eating a barbecued hairbrush.

  ‘What sort of fish are these?’ he asked Ari.

  ‘Sebarau.’

  ‘You were really good at spearing them. That must take a lot of practice.’

  Ari shrugged modestly. ‘I do it since I was little.’

  ‘You said you grew up in the forest. Was it near here?’

  ‘Not near. Is over that way.’ He waved a hand vaguely in the air.

  ‘A village?’ Max asked.

  ‘Rumah betang. You call it longhouse. It gone now.’

  ‘Longhouse?’

  ‘Big house where lots of peoples live.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  Ari pulled a clump of fish bones from his mouth and threw them into the fire. Max thought he wasn’t going to answer the question, but he was just taking his time, thinking about it. ‘It burn,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Burn?’

  ‘Land around longhouse was forest. Rescomin take land and chop down trees. Then they burn ground to clear for oil palms. Fire very big. Wind catch it and fire spread to longhouse. Many peoples die.’

  Max stared at him, aghast. ‘And your family?’ he asked, though he already suspected what the answer would be.

  ‘They die,’ Ari replied calmly. ‘My mother, my father, my sisters. I was not there. I was at river. I get away from fire in boat.’

  Max didn’t know what to say. So this was what Rita Anwar had meant when she said Ari’s parents had been murdered by Rescomin militias. They hadn’t been killed deliberately, but the militias’ reckless actions had led to their deaths.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Max said. It sounded feeble, but it came from the heart. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Three year ago.’

  ‘And has anyone been punished for it? Has Rescomin paid compensation?’

  ‘No, nothing happen. Mr Anwar, he try to help us, the ones who survive the fire, but he get nowhere. Rescomin too powerful. They have important high-up friends. Mr and Mrs Anwar, they very good to me. They give me home, if I need. They find me jobs, bits of work.’

  ‘Will Mrs Anwar worry if you’re not there tonight?’

  ‘I telephone her when I go to get ces. Tell her I take you upriver. She no worry. I come and go all time.’

  Ari threw the remains of his fish onto the fire and stood up. He obviously didn’t want to talk any more. Max washed the cooking pot in the river and helped Ari gather more wood. Then they settled down by the fire as darkness fell.

  Max had thought that the rainforest at night would be absolutely still and quiet and was surprised by how noisy it was. There seemed to be sounds coming from the jungle all the time: hoots and low howls and strange, unsettling cries. They disturbed him at first, but he soon got used to them. He felt safe by the fire, with Ari curled up next to him.

  He thought about what the Dayak boy had told him – about the fire, his parents dying. How did you get over something as horrific as that? How did you get on with your life when you were only fourteen and your family had been burned to death? Max admired the way Ari seemed to be coping with his loss. But was he really coping? Or was he being eaten up by grief underneath that calm exterior?

  Max couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be an orphan. He had gone through a traumatic couple of years since his dad had disappeared and his mum had been imprisoned, but at least his parents were still alive. He saw his mum every week and had a powerful feeling that he would soon find his dad. You’re not far away, I can sense it, Dad, he thought. But where?

  * * *

  They were up at first light. The rainforest animals were already out foraging for food. Birds with dazzling red, green and yellow plumage flitted to and fro across the river – kingfishers, Ari said – and in the trees above them proboscis monkeys were swinging from branch to branch, calling loudly to one another.

  Max heard a whooshing sound and turned to see two huge birds swooping down over the water and landing in the top of a tree on the far side. They were the size of swans, with long trailing tail plumes, orange necks and red and yellow beaks.

  ‘Hornbills,’ Ari said. ‘They good birds. They bring luck.’

  ‘Really?’ Max replied. ‘I hope so.’

  Ari put the cooking pot on the fire and they had more boiled rice and vegetables for breakfast, then they kicked out the embers, loaded up the canoe and were on their way. All day they headed upriver, forking off left at one point up a smaller tributary, where they encountered convoy after convoy of palm-oil barges travelling downstream.

  Towards evening the rainforest on the left bank began to peter out, the land cleared to make paddy fields. Then, beyond the fields, Max saw a huge wooden building on stilts.

  ‘Longhouse,’ Ari said. ‘We stay there tonight.’

  They tied the canoe to a wooden jetty and disembarked. A couple of local Dayak boys, who were fishing off the end of the jetty, hitched up their lines, ran over to Ari and chattered away at him excitedly. Then they turned and raced ahead of them along a well-trodden path through the paddy fields. By the time Max and Ari reached the longhouse, there was a crowd of young boys and girls waiting to greet them. They were escorted up a ladder made from a notched tree trunk onto the veranda of the longhouse, which must have been nearly a hundred metres long. A palm-thatched roof overhung the veranda to provide shelter from the weather.

  Adults appeared in doorways, staring inquisitively at the visitors as they were taken to a communal space at one end of the building and presented to the longhouse chief – a broad, muscular middle-aged man who had a face like crumpled leather and tattoos on almost every bit of his exposed skin. Ari conversed politely with the chief in their own language, then the man said a few words to Max.

  ‘He says you are welcome,’ Ari translated. ‘We can sleep here and eat with them.’

  Max smiled at the chief. ‘Thank you.’

  Ari had brought a canvas sack with him from the canoe, which he now opened to reveal an assortment of gifts.

  ‘I use your money to buy,’ he whispered to Max as he gave the chief some rolls of fishing line, packets of spices, honey and other provisions that, Max guessed, were luxuries in this remote part of Kalimantan.

  The chief thanked them graciously, then withdrew into his apartment, leaving them to the care of the longhouse children, who gathered round, peering shyly at Max and talking animatedly to Ari.

  ‘Do they all live in this one building?’ Max asked Ari.

  ‘Yes. Longhouse is traditional Dayak way. Everyone together. All families have own space inside longhouse, but share open areas. I get them to show you.’

  Ari spoke to their hosts, who responded enthusiastically, taking them along the veranda and showing them the apartments where they all lived. In one room an elderly man was carving sculptures out of wood – beautifully crafted monkeys and lemurs and other rainforest animals.

  ‘They’re really good,’ Max said.

  ‘He make to sell to tourist in Pangkalan Bun,’ Ari explained. ‘Tourist like wooden animal.’

  Later that evening they ate with one of the longhouse families, a simple meal of rice and grilled turtle. The turtle was smoky and as tough as an old car tyre.

  ‘If we adults,’ Ari said, ‘they give us tuak – rice wine – and get us drunk, then make us dance and sing song. But we childrens so we OK. We no have to sing and dance.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Max said.

  They spent the night in a corner of the communal hall, sleeping on mats woven out of leaves, with a blanket wrapped around them. Then, in the morning, after a breakfast of rice and fruit, they continued upstream in the canoe.

  The paddy fields around the longhouse soon gave way to oil-palm plantations. The rows of trees came almost to the river – only a narrow strip along the bank remained uncultivated – and they went on for mile after mile.

  ‘Was all this once rainforest?’ Max asked.

  Ari nodded. ‘Yes; now
Rescomin have it all. Very big area, many square kilometres.’

  ‘And their processing plant?’

  ‘Is just up here. I show you. But we must be careful. There is guards with guns. They drive around plantations.’

  Ari steered the canoe in to the bank and cut the motor, letting the vessel glide the last few metres. Max jumped out and tied the bow rope to a tree stump, then they walked along the bank. After two hundred metres they rounded a bend and came across a long line of barges moored at the side of the river, each one stacked with metal containers.

  Ari slowed and looked around warily. ‘Processing plant not far now. These empty containers. They wait here, then go to plant to get palm oil.’

  They walked past the barges. None of them had their own engines or wheelhouses: they were just floating cargo decks that had to be towed by a tug. As they neared the front of the line, Ari suddenly dropped to the ground, signalling to Max to do the same. Max flung himself down into the grass.

  ‘Guards,’ Ari whispered.

  Max heard the noise of a vehicle, then saw a black jeep coming towards them along the plantation’s perimeter track, which ran parallel to the river. There were two men in uniform in the front, the passenger holding a semi-automatic rifle across his chest. Max wondered for a moment whether they’d been spotted, then realized that this was just a routine patrol. The jeep rattled past, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

  Ari scrambled to his feet and continued walking along the bank for another hundred metres before lying down again in the shelter of a bush. Max crawled up next to him. Ari pointed ahead and Max saw a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire blocking the riverbank. Beyond the fence was a massive industrial complex with tall chimneys puffing out smoke, a big metal-sided building the size of an aircraft hangar and a cluster of smaller one-storey cabins that looked like offices.

  ‘That the processing plant,’ Ari said.

  ‘Does the fence go all the way round it?’

  ‘Yes. There no way in except gate with guards on it.’