Too exhausted at the end of the day to talk to one another, let alone read (black scratches on a white page seemed fantastic, meaningless, and absurd), they chewed on their rice and collapsed into feverish reveries of drawn tubs and sit-down toilets and soft mattresses in dark quiet rooms and air-conditioning, dozens of vents of sweet blessed air-conditioning, the apex of civilization.
"All right," Drake snapped suddenly out of a dead silence and apropos of nothing, "this trip was one fucking mistake, I'm sorry, I apologize, we'll never attempt anything like it ever again."
"What are you talking about?" asked Amanda, visibly irritated. "Who's complaining?"
Early one morning they rounded a bend in the never-ending trail and were confronted by a weathered post carved into figures of hideous shape, the slaves of the dead; their long protruding tongues and even longer erections were hung with clumps of wilted plants and banana peels and crushed eggshells and pig and chicken bones and handfuls of other unidentifiable moldering rubbish -- a
hampatong
placed at the approach to every village in order to frighten off evil spirits. Farther up the trail several unsmiling children were gathered, peering anxiously back at the tall birdlike strangers.
"Long Buwong," announced Henry.
They followed the trail into a bright sun-struck clearing where waited a silent gathering of the Pekit people, their mahogany faces fixed in stiff identical grins of such exaggerated peculiarity as to fall without the parameters of social decoding. In the surrounding shade stood a pair of active longhouses on piles at least fifteen feet high, each structure decorated in a flowing skein of interlocking spirals and curls, organic shapes, the living geometry of trees and leaves and vines amid which peeked here and there the same singularly human face of a blandly cheerful disposition. Pigs rooted and dozed in the dark mire beneath. Chickens wandered freely. A couple of hairless dogs, glued together in mid-coitus, struggled squealing into the underbrush. A young man in a Raiders cap and a black T-shirt displaying a jawless skull above the flaming logo
burning sore
began making his way through the crowd.
"I do believe," Amanda confided quietly to her husband, "that we have entered the enchanted world beyond irony."
"Sure," agreed Drake, "but what's gonna take its place?"
The young man stepped confidently forward, shook each of their hands with great vigor, and stepped back again, all the while grinning with lunatic intensity. There followed an uncomfortable pause which the young man finally interrupted to announce in excellent English, "My father is coming." Then he stepped back again.
"Well," Amanda declared, "these are certainly a handsome people."
"I think they like us," said Drake.
The children watched them from behind their parents' legs. Most of the villagers were dressed in Western-style casual wear, baggy shorts and oversized T-shirts, though a few of the women were wrapped in beautiful sarongs of an ornate and abstract design. The pause lengthened. Then Amanda called to Jalong to bring her the green bag. She unzipped the side pocket and pulled out an armful of white T-shirts promoting her recent film
Cyberpsycho City of the Dead, Part II.
The screaming woman with the drill bit exiting her chest, "That's me," she said. In minutes every resident of the longhouse from toothless grandmas to wobbling toddlers was dressed in the outrageous shirt, whether it fit or not, a few dangling well below the wearer's knees.
Then, as if in response to some subtle cue, the excited crowd began to part, opening a path for a wizened little man with wrinkled and tattooed limbs and a wrinkled and tattooed face, the traditional pierced and stretched earlobes, one of which was torn, the pink strands dangling like stale taffy off the side of his little head. He was wearing a military-issue olive drab shirt and an elegant leopard-skin cap adorned with shells and gold coins and black and white hornbill feathers. He was also wearing the widest, thickest pair of black-framed glasses Drake had ever seen. "Look," he blurted, "it's Swifty Lazar."
This was Tama Usong, chief of the Pekit. Up close and magnified by huge lenses, his eyeballs revealed not a speck of white but sat in their sockets like a pair of transparent eggs filled with some mysterious fluid the rich dark hue of tobacco juice. With his son translating, he welcomed the visitors to his village, apologizing for the unforgivable lack of proper ceremony, but promising amends before the evening was through. He led them away from the crowd, past another wooden pole, bleached by the elements and sculpted by human hands and driven into the ground at the very center of the clearing, the axle upon which prisoners of war were once tied and sacrificed in an hours-long ritual of systematic bloodletting because without blood, the visible flow of life nutrients, the things of this world would vanish out of time.
They climbed like clumsy apes a notched wooden ladder up onto the wide veranda of the chief's longhouse. The walls and overhead beams hung with rattan mats and fishing nets were white with rice dust and the loose planks of the floor (no evidence of a single nail) clattered and shifted beneath their feet. The longhouse was partitioned into more than a dozen apartments, though many were empty and untended, daylight pouring through the holes in the rotted wood. The chief's rooms were located in the sturdy middle, a gloomy Spartan space reeking of smoke and animal grease and the musky, not unpleasant scent of the human at close quarters. The chief's possessions were few: an arrangement of artfully woven floor mats, a couple of spears, a tall blowgun leaning in the corner, several painted shields, a few baskets, an exquisite Chinese vase embellished with fierce gold dragons, and, incredibly, hanging at eye level on the otherwise bare wall, a trio of framed pictures, the official government photograph of President Suharto, the standard lithograph of a thorn-crowned and teary Jesus, and, in the elevated place of honor in between, a black and white glossy of a smirking Jack Nicholson.
"My God," exclaimed Drake, "this damn photo is actually signed."
"You're joking." Amanda moved in to read the inscription: "To Papa Usong, the Granddaddy of the hunt, Your pal, Jack."
"The chief here is blowing us away," said Drake.
The son nodded enthusiastically. "Tuan Jack is our good friend."
"Of course," muttered Amanda, wryly, "Jack is everybody's friend."
Seemed that the famous movie actor had personally visited the village many years back and had on many occasions since sent letters and gifts. Except for a guide and two porters he had arrived completely alone, a solitary wanderer who preferred visiting the noble places of the earth without the distractions of an entourage. He was a great explorer. He had danced for the Pekit people, an occasion still remembered with fondness by all who witnessed it. One day he would return and there would be such celebration as to exceed the week-long harvest festival. Were Drake and Amanda friends of Tuan Jack, also?
"Unfortunately, no," admitted Drake, "but maybe if the chief here could arrange a private head-to-head, there's this screenplay I've been working on for six years now. . ."
"We've shared the same makeup person," said Amanda.
The chief's wife emerged from a back room, carrying a teakwood tray of dainty white teacups filled to the rim with a black oily-looking brew. She radiated a daffy hospitality, beaming away at her guests, every tooth in her head stained with betel nut. Everyone was happy; the village hadn't received any visitors since the Swedish ski team came through six months ago on some sort of off-season training exercise. The chief's wife was wearing a bright yellow sarong and a length of stereo cable wrapped around her waist for a belt.
Amanda took a sip of the suspicious-smelling, lukewarm liquid. "Interesting," she said.
Drake shrugged his shoulders, lifting his brows in quizzical confusion. He stared into his cup, hoping to recognize the drink before he had to take another sip. He couldn't; he did. He still couldn't quite place the bizarre taste. "Would you please inquire of the chief," he asked the son, "as courteously as possible, just what it is we have been enjoying so enthusiastically in our cups here."
"Coca-Cola," said the son. No translation necessary.
The chief's face lit up with pleasure. "Coca-Cola," he repeated, proudly. He and his wife always tried to keep on hand a few old bottles for their Western guests. Everyone seemed to enjoy this medicine so much.
"Thank you," said Drake, solemnly. "We are indeed honored."
He offered a toast to the chief, who returned the compliment, declaring his sunburnt company "warriors of the trek," who had braved and suffered so much to travel so far to have found themselves in this simple settlement amid the maze of the big, big woods.
The chief then led his guests out onto the veranda, where the ever-inquisitive Drake asked about the heads. Weren't the rafters usually trimmed with dozens of cured heads?
The chief chuckled. All sold, long ago, for much cash to people like you. Too bad. We need money now, also.
Before Drake could ask another question, Amanda began tugging on his arm. "It's time, Mr. Curiosity, for your afternoon nap, you know how you get without those extra two hours of rest."
The chief showed them to a set of rooms exactly like his, dark, rank, and empty. The floorboards were bowed and cracked and through the rather wide spaces between they could see the bare ground underneath the longhouse, the mottled backs of the pigs nestled together in the cozy, rejuvenating mud. The chief gave them a lock and a key for the shiny fresh hasp on their door. The village was changing. People go away now to coast and come back with new ideas. Not how it used to be.
"Yes," said Amanda, "same story in our country." The chief was surprised.
"Oh yes," she went on, "our people too go to coast, come back with new ideas. They either end up in jail or on the big screen." Drake smiled, threw out his arms. "Look at us." The chief embraced each in turn, speaking solemnly into their ears as he did so.
"He's giving you his personal blessing," translated the son. "He hopes your dance will be successful."
"Why, thank you," Amanda said, "what a poetic way of putting it. Honey, give him something nice."
"Oh, yes. Right." Drake rummaged around in one of his sweat-stained bags. He handed the chief two cartons of unopened Marlboros. "More," urged Amanda. "God, you are so cheap. Give him the bottle, too."
Drake hesitated. "But I was saving that in case we got in some real trouble."
"How do you know that isn't the situation right now?"
"Oh, all right," he said with jagged impatience, and when he turned around again it was to present to the delighted chief the fifth of Johnnie Walker with all the ceremony of an officious wine steward.
"Look how happy he is," said Amanda.
"Well, let's hope he doesn't get too happy and then blame us for it."
As soon as they were alone they spread out their bedding upon the rough uneven planks and hung their mosquito netting and crawled inside and immediately fell into realms of sleep so profound as to be uninhabited by even the rarest, most monstrous dreamlife, and when soft-spoken Henry came at dusk to awaken them for the evening's festivities they rose up in confusion, unable for several scary seconds to place themselves or their whereabouts within the mystical circle of reason. Their muscles felt tenderized; they were too aware of their bones.
"Big excitement," Henry announced, barely able to contain himself. "Special treat for special visitors from Hollywood, U.S. of A. You are to come now."
They staggered to their feet, looked at one another and laughed, and they followed Henry down the veranda and into a large meeting room filled with villagers who sat on the floor in long neat rows. A pall of cigarette smoke already hung from the overhead beams like sheeting of blue gauze. The chief welcomed the Copelands with fussy animation, showing them to their seats of honor up front upon a gorgeous piece of tapestry displaying an ancient motif of interlocking dragon-dogs. At the head of the room stood an altar of some sort above which was mounted a ferocious hornbill mask. In a grave ritualistic manner compounded of equal parts of the priestly and the theatrical, the chief removed the black and gold covering cloth to reveal a wooden stand containing a twenty-six-inch Sony Trinitron and Philips (Dutch influence never far from this former colony) VCR. From a leather pouch lying on a shelf under the machines the chief produced, again with no small measure of formality, a single videocassette. From outside the longhouse came the husky cough and subsequent roar of an electric generator being cranked into action. The chief popped the cassette into the recorder. The crowd quieted; the television flickered awake. The camera was in motion, a traveling shot, tracing in distorted close-up the ominous bends and curves of a dark blue bas-relief, actually caressing the sinuous forms of -- was it lettering of some kind, the title of the picture? Or was it, yes, omigod -- the bat sign. Amanda and Drake turned in unison to stare at one another in openmouthed shock. Holy Incongruity! In the middle of a Pekit longhouse in the middle of a Stone Age village in the middle of an equatorial rain forest in the middle of mythic Borneo they were about to sit among a tribe of former headhunters and watch a video of
Batman.
Though they had obviously seen the film numerous times, the Pekit attended to the dark flow of cartoon brutality with the intense concern of a graduate seminar on modern cinema. Then Nicholson appeared and the crowd went wild. The ensuing chorus of whoops, cackles, and verbal exclamations never fading entirely away but burbling on as a secondary background track, ready to flare full force the moment their man reentered a scene. And when Nicholson made his first entrance in complete Joker regalia, several of the Pekit men got so excited they leaped to their feet and started stamping deliriously upon the floor. For the Joker was the very image of the pale-faced demon who wandered alone through the forest, stealing Pekit blood by night to sell in glass jars to the white men on the coast. But the Joker was also their good friend Jack, who had tamed the demon by assuming its guise. This was their favorite film, their only film. And when, at picture's end, the bat signal shone reassuringly moonlike in the evening sky over troubled Gotham City, the audience broke into a mad ovation. Theirs was a culture that had not yet forgotten the necessity of tending to the sky and the divine matters astronomical, meteorological, and ornithological therein.
The chief stood up and the room immediately quieted. He began to tell a story. He spoke of the time when he was young and the red-chested trogons always crossed the river in the proper direction and one day he became quite ill and fell into a powerful trance and flew himself faster, higher than any bird up over the roof of the trees to a cave atop Mount Liangpran where he battled from dusk to dawn with the ferocious soul of an Iban village. And on the following day the Pekit won a great victory over that hated village and the warriors returned with more heads than anyone had ever seen and the Pekit were happy and prosperous for a long time after.
Then a second man with a deep voice and a spoon instead of a boar's tusk or tiger's fang inserted in his upper ear hole rose in place to relate the famous tale of the talking frog who lived in the pig wallow at the beginning of time and whispered to the ancestors the news that when one member of the tribe fell sick, all would fall sick, and the rice and the palm and the mango would wither and die, but that there was a remedy for such evil -- the taking of human heads. Without fresh heads, everyone would die. So the ancestors followed the frog's advice and the Pekit thrived. How fortunate that in the days when the sun was young, frogs could talk!
This story reminded a third man of the garrulous head captured in battle and brought back to the village to be kept in holy sanctuary within the main longhouse, where it was bathed and caressed and engaged in social conversation and tenderly nurtured with daily offerings of food and drink and -- every skull's special favorite -- tobacco. For years it proved to be a good friend to the Pekit, chattering away like a pet cockatoo, all its advice thoroughly sound. Then suddenly the head fell silent, refused to speak despite long sessions of gentle coaxing. Mounds of nice fruit and vegetables and sticky rice were piled high before it. The Pekit prayed and danced and sang; thinking it might be lonely, they surrounded their friend with other heads. Nothing worked. The
padis
festered. The pig and deer fled from the forest. The people sickened and died. The few who remained gathered their belongings and moved over the hills into a distant valley where they built a new longhouse, planted new fields, and the first head taken in the first battle spoke to them and said that what they had done was good. So the Pekit learned the wisdom of moving frequently, before the spirit of each place died.
The story had altered the nature of the room as the audience, lapsing into sullen silence, contemplated the present-day implications of its truth.
The chief clapped his hands sharply twice, then called on Drake to restore the cheer. It was the funny Westerner's turn to make a fool of himself.
Drake, dependably nervous before any assembly larger than a comfortable two -- a potentially fatal career flaw he'd been undergoing weekly hypnosis to try to correct -- didn't know where to begin. Then he realized he could take advantage of the situation by visualizing this fascinated congregation of feathered and tattooed Pekit as a boardroom of skeptical movie execs; he could practice his pitch. So he began to tell the story of a fearsome man of chrome who traveled backward from the time not yet come to kill a woman who would give birth to the boy destined to lead the revolt against the machines. That was as far as he got. The Pekit broke into huddles of animated discussion. Several had already seen that picture and were filling in the details for their friends.
Then Amanda asked for her turn and threw the gathering into complete consternation. Women danced; women sang; they did not speak, not even the beautiful white missus from the land of many stars. Amanda insisted. The Pekit elders conferred heatedly in a corner until eventually the ethics of harmony and hospitality prevailed over prior objections. The American woman could say what she liked. Never one to shrink from a theatrical challenge, Amanda seized center stage with the authority of an inveterate ham, shooting bold darts into each Indonesian face curious enough to meet her gaze, daring her audience to interrupt her. She performed for them a vision of a tribe of brave hunters who set sail in an iron boat upon the river of time; they drift out past the jeweled stars to worlds beyond imagining in search of metals rarer than gold. What they find is a demonic shape-shifting dragon who lays siege to the boat, slaughtering the hunters one by one until all that remains is a lone woman who, after a round of harrowing battles, defeats the dragon and sets the boat on a course for home. Amanda saluted her entranced listeners and sat down. There was a moment of startled silence, then the room exploded into raucous laughter. A preposterous tale. A woman warrior? How big was this dragon? How fast? How many claws? How long was her blowgun? Upon such considerations whole philosophies have been erected. And as the discourse turned metaphysical, the mood soured.
"And you criticize me for innocently questioning the chief," said Drake. "Look at how the women are staring at you. Why don't you start signing up volunteers for an action committee?"
"Just shut up," said Amanda. "Won't hurt them to hear a different kind of story now and then."
"It's not them I was worried about."
Social disaster, if not worse, was averted by the timely arrival of dinner, pork and breadfruit and bamboo shoots and rice in sufficient quantities to feed a party twice this size, carried in steaming from the kitchens in the separate structure behind the longhouse. Then the endless bowls of
tuak,
rice wine one was expected to consume in a single swallow. After a couple of bowls, everyone was smiling. The spirit of congeniality had been restored. Now the real party could begin. The village orchestra, seated neatly along the far wall, started to play upon a variety of exotic instruments, oddly shaped drums and flutes and gongs and animal horns, infectious tunes that demanded physical accompaniment, so, one by one, as the bowls of
tuak
went around that company (one sip tasting tart and cidery, the next smooth as cream), each rose to take a turn dancing before the others, dances solemn, dances humorous, dances in imitation of the wild boar or the rhinocerous hornbill, dances in lengthy reenactment of the hunt, the women displaying an amusing fondness for exaggerated vaudevillian impressions of the pomposities of their men. The chief's son in the Burning Sore T-shirt presented an inspired parody of the Copelands' arrival, Drake's multifarious vanities punctured with consummate skill, the stiff-backed carriage, the oh-so-casual one-hand-in-the-pocket stance that couldn't quite conceal the basic underlying nervousness, the impatient supercilious look he often assumed when trying to listen to someone else talk for a change. The Pekit howled with delight; Amanda, too. The boy had even whitened his face with rice paste, enlarged his nose with a piece of folded paper, and greased his hair with pig fat to comb it straight back from his forehead. A pair of borrowed sunglasses completed the look: L.A. headhunter ultra cool.
Without waiting to be asked, Amanda leaped to her feet and started scooting energetically across the floor, cocking her head at intervals, emitting an abrupt "Beep-beep" from the corner of her mouth. Nothing would do but that this tough crowd be given a professional re-creation of classic moments from Warner Brothers' Road Runner cartoons. She barreled along the desert highway, dodging busses, cars, giant boulders launched by her archenemy, Wile E. Coyote. When she blew up the hapless wolf with a primo stick of dynamite, the Pekit squealed with pleasure. It was only when she sat back down again to thunderous applause, having fully redeemed herself with that exhibition of outrageous witlessness, that she realized how horribly drunk she truly was.