Dragon Apparent, page 12
It was at this point that the affair reached the administrator’s ears. As a result eight of the principals in the case were tried in the French court and received thirty years apiece. No Moï, of course, could ever understand the justice of this, and it would be impossible to convince him that the appalling fate of the prisoners, all praiseworthy men in their eyes, is anything more than the revenge of the spirits of the eight who died. It is because their sacrifices were insufficient. If only their resources hadn’t given out, all would have been well. And there is something in the last suggestion, because it was only the exhaustion of the food supplies that caused the administrator to hear about the affair.
* * *
Beyond the model villages of the M’nong R’lams lay the country of the less evolved M’nong Gars. The villages of the M’nong Gars were built along the banks of the Krong Kno in the shallows of which the villagers seemed to spend most of their day bathing or inspecting and resetting their fish-traps. The Krong Kno was a swift, yellow current, divided by sandbanks on which unconcerned M’nong Circes sat in groups arranging their tresses.
Buon Ročai, where Ribo had business, had been the headquarters of a well-known French anthropologist, who had been determined to live as a M’nong, eschewing all the aids of Western civilisation. Some time before our visit he had been reduced by various maladies, including beri-beri, to a condition when he could no longer walk, and the M’nongs, foreseeing the possibility of having to arrange the expensive burial ceremonies prescribed when a stranger dies in the village, got a message through to Ban Méthuot, asking for him to be taken away. He seemed to have been well liked. The hut in which he had lived for a number of months had been declared taboo and everything in it was exactly as he had left it. The table was still littered with the papers he had been working on, with his fountain pen lying among them. There was an uncorked bottle of French gin, a miniature camera and several films. Ribo said that he used to exchange legends with the M’nongs and that their favourite was the story of Ulysses and the Sirens which much resembled one of their own, dating from the days when their ancestors, contemporaries perhaps of the Homeric Greeks, had been a seafaring people. In this village there were several sufferers from tukalau, a fungoid disease of the skin only found in Polynesia and among certain South American tribes. The M’nong Gar long-houses were not raised on posts like all those we had seen until now.
At Buon Ročai we were joined by the chief of a canton of M’nong Gar villages. He was importantly dressed in a thick black coat, a vest and carpet slippers, worn over several pairs of woollen socks. A Turkish towel was wound, boating-style, round his neck, and to complete this ensemble – which did not include trousers – he wore a ten-gallon cowboy hat with a chin-strap. The chief’s face was stamped with the rodent expression of an Oriental who has had too much to do with Europeans. He smiled frequently showing a row of gums that had been badly damaged in a too-conscientious effort to remove all the evidence of teeth. The chief was evidently not a man to be afraid of ghosts, as according to Ribo he had committed two murders, but was too valuable for administrative purposes to be put out of circulation – an unusual concession to expediency in so stern a moralist as Ribo.
It was decided to stop next at Buon Lê Bang, where the anthropologist’s fiancée lived, so that Cacot, who would shortly be passing through Saigon on his way back to France, could call at the hospital with news of her. When we arrived the village was in the middle of a ceremony. A buffalo had been sacrificed that morning and now bleeding collops of flesh, complete with hide and hair, were hanging up all over the village. Brillat Savarins were industriously engaged in chopping up meat and compounding it with various herbs, according to their secret recipes. Frameworks had been put up outside all the houses on which brilliant red strips, attached at regular intervals, were drying like chilli peppers in the sun. Scintillating, metallic looking flies spiralled about them.
The villagers were in a hilarious state. They had already been at the alcohol for four or five hours and there was a deafening clamour of gongs from the principal house. The ceremonial stiffness had long since worn off and we were assailed on all sides with offerings of raw meat and alcohol in bakelite cups. We went into the common house, in which, until they had outgrown it numerically, the whole village had lived. There was none of the strict division here of the M’nong R’lams, with the partitioned-off family apartments which it was incorrect to enter, and the common-room, with its neatly arranged ceremonial objects, where the visitors were received. This, instead, was a low, single chamber, perhaps fifty yards in length, lit by the two entrance apertures at each end, and a certain amount of light that filtered through the woven bamboo walls. The space occupied by each family was marked off by the formal arrangement of the family’s possessions. This was applied even to the cooking pots, suspended from the wall, each in its place and exactly level with the neighbour’s identical cooking pot. The jars, too, formed unbroken ranks from one end of the house to the other. It was an astonishing display of a passion for order, which had arisen, apparently, from the exigencies of sharing the limited available space. One imagined some senior personality, in the role of orderly officer, running his eye along the line of pots on his daily tour of inspection, with a critical frown for the occasional improperly folded blanket.
Cacot asked to see the anthropologist’s fiancée and she was instantly produced along with a couple of young relations. She was a splendid creature with large black eyes and a deep yellow, but by no means unpleasing, complexion. The removal of her teeth had been clumsily done, resulting in permanently swollen gums and a slight displacement of the top lip. Although slightly tipsy she managed to retain a pleasantly demure manner and many bakelite cups had to pass from hand to hand before she could be persuaded to raise her eyes. The two younger Gauguin models sat twisting their hands, heads averted, and faces, as far as one could see, masked with fright, having quite sobered up under the effect of our terrifying presence. It appeared that the all-powerful old women of the tribe were sufficiently drunk by now not to require propitiation, so Cacot asked without more formality if any of the girls were available for marriage. The fathers immediately appeared, clearly delighted. Both the younger girls were ready at any time, and their mothers would pay a high price in jars and gongs for approved sons-in-law. Unfortunately the older girl was already promised. In the case of a good-looking girl like that the competition was bound to be strenuous, and no wonder a European had fallen for her. Being a divorcee, the father pointed out, she was exceptionally well off, as, according to law, she had kept all her husband’s property when he had left her home. Cacot said he would decide on the younger of the remaining pair and marry her, with a holocaust of buffaloes, when he came back from France. He gave the girl a few promissory pats about the torso, and she did a painful best to look pleased. Whether this was taken seriously or not, I don’t know. Probably not. The Moïs enjoy leg-pulling as much as anybody else.
After leaving Buon Lê Bang we were on the Emperor’s new hunting track. Moïs were hacking this out of the virgin forest with implements that looked like garden hoes. They were paid six piastres a day, the piastre being worth fourpence officially, or about three-halfpence on the black market, and they were lucky to be able to work off their fifty days’ compulsory labour in this way and not on a plantation. When this road was finished, the Emperor would be able to drive in his specially fitted-up jeep, with a wooden platform built up, throne-like, in the back, right into the heart of what is supposed to be the richest hunting country in the world.
It was a mysterious landscape with mountains like thunderclouds threatening from the horizon. Clumps of bamboo spurted up from low, boiling vegetation. For the first time I saw the miracle of a peacock in flight, that Cacot fired at hopelessly, soaring with trailing plumage to the very top of a fern-swathed tree. The country was overrun with tigers and all the M’nongs’ stories were of them. Local wizards were reputed to specialise in tiger-taming and obtained their hold upon the villagers by allowing themselves to be seen riding upon the back of a muzzled tiger. Ribo was quite convinced that this took place; but even the most unimaginative European becomes infected with local credences in such places as this. There were a thousand inadvertent ways, too, of calling up a tiger, always ready, it seemed, to appear, like an uncomplaisant genie at the rubbing of ring or lamp. Most solecisms and lapses of table manners were reputed to have this unfortunate effect. It was particularly disastrous to scrape rice from a pot with a knife. Ribo said that the prestige of the tiger and their supposed human accomplices had risen so high that the M’nongs were becoming afraid to hunt them. After a recent hunt in which the tiger was killed, all the dogs who had taken part were found dead next day. Poisoned by a sorcerer, he thought. It was two of these tiger-men that the Chef de Canton had done away with. There was something curiously symbolical about the victory of this puny creature in his collection of cast-off Western clothes against the men in the tiger-skins.
The last village reached that day was Buon Choah, belonging to a small and exceptionally interesting tribe called the Bihs. When Doctor Jouin had visited the valley, two years before, they still retained their ancient burial customs which, he said, were identical with those of the Hovas of Madagascar. For two years the dead were exposed in open coffins in the trees. After that the bones were taken down and thoroughly cleaned, and before final burial, the skull was carried round the fields by an old woman of the family, and offerings were made to it. Doctor Jouin’s photograph of the elevated coffin, which he needed for a book on Moï funeral customs, had been destroyed during the Japanese occupation and I promised to take another for him. But I was too late. In the two years since Jouin had been there American evangelical missionaries had been to the village, persuaded the Bihs to give up such customs, and by way of giving something in exchange had taught one of the village boys to play the harmonium.
We had been spotted on the outskirts of Buon Choah and by the time we walked into the village an extraordinary spectacle was taking place. Women were scrambling in lines down the stepladders of the long-houses, like cadets coming down the rigging of a training ship. They then formed up in two rows – one on each side of the path, standing fairly smartly to attention. They wore white turbans and navy-blue calico blouses and skirts. The chief came hurrying to meet us, carrying under his arm a copy in English of the Gospel of St Mark and the usual diploma awarded for meritorious service to the Japanese.
Ribo and Cacot seemed faintly displeased and said something to the chief, nodding in the direction of the women. The chief snapped out a word of command and the blouses began to come off. When the women weren’t being quick enough, the chief and the heads of families shouted at them in stern reproof. In a few seconds the reception parade was ready and we made our way to the chief’s house between two score or so of freely displayed Balinese torsos. I believe that Ribo and Cacot thought that the blouses, too, were the work of the pastor, and felt that the moment had come to draw the line.
At Cêo-Rêo, not far from Buon Choah, are located the villages of those enigmatic personages, the Sadets, of Fire and Water, whose fearsome reputation is widespread throughout Indo-China. It is astonishing to realise that from the remotest antiquity the Kings of Champa, Laos and Cambodia – that is, the temporal powers between which Indo-China was divided – all paid tribute to the formidable spiritual authority of these two poor Jarai tribesmen.
The Sadet of Fire is the guardian of a fabulous sword; a primitive, crudely hewn blade, according to report, which is kept wrapped in cotton rags. The mere act of half-drawing this weapon – to which the aforementioned kingdoms all lay claim – would be sufficient to plunge the whole of living creation into a profound slumber; while to draw it completely would cause the world to be devoured by fire. Until the reign of the present king of Cambodia’s grandfather, a caravan of elephants bearing rich presents was sent annually to the Sadet of Water.
Both the Sadets seem to be regarded as the incarnation of supernatural beings, possessing involuntary and apparently uncontrollable powers, which are malefic rather than benevolent. The Sadet of Water is associated, in some obscure way, with epidemics, and is a kind of spiritual leper, surrounded with the most awesome taboos. When he travels through the country, shelters are specially erected for him outside the villages, and offerings are placed in them. Neither Sadet is allowed to die a natural death. As soon as one is considered to be mortally ill, he is dispatched by lance-thrusts, and a successor is chosen by divination from the members of his family. The mantle of this relinquished authority is said to be assumed with much reluctance by the person designated.
CHAPTER 9
The Rhadés
NEXT MORNING we reached the country of the Rhadés, who are said to be the most advanced of the Moï tribes. Like all the others they are great talkers and topers and have the familiar self-depreciatory humour (‘our women are the ugliest in the world’), but they have not yet been infected with that sense of doom, that listlessness in the face of threatened extinction that seems to beset most members of the animal species after they have passed a certain stage on the downhill path. It has also been found that the Rhadés will accept slight modifications in their way of living if such innovations can be represented to them as approved by the spirits.
Ribo had sent word calling the personalities of the village of Buon Plum to a palaver. Their village had been selected as the guinea-pig for the social experiment that was his pet project. The idea was to introduce agricultural innovations and anti-malarial measures. Buon Plum was to become a model village; an object lesson to all its neighbours, who, it was hoped, would be anxious to follow suit. That was how it went in theory. But it was clear that Ribo could not convince himself that it would really work out that way. There were so many factors to be taken into account; some, I thought, that as a French official he felt unable to specify. However, Ribo had gone so far as to persuade the people of Buon Plum to put in a great deal of work, clearing an area of forest and planting a communal orchard and vegetable garden. They were to plant maize and manioc, which they wouldn’t know how to turn into alcohol. As a result, he hoped (but doubted), they would eat more and drink less. This time he was going to talk to them about anti-malarial measures.
We were met, outside the village, by the chief accompanied by the heads of families, each carrying leaves of tobacco and a small bowl containing cooked rice and an egg. It was correct to take a leaf of tobacco from each, and to symbolise acceptance of the food by touching the egg. The chief had the fine, pensive face and the curving nostrils and lips of the best type of Yemeni Arab. (Do anthropologists still go about taking cranial measurements and if so, what could they make of the diversity of the Moïs?)
The chief and his notables were all turned out in their best turbans, jackets and loincloths. Every man held ready for inspection a Japanese diploma or a certificate of service with the French-raised militia. Ribo, alarmed by the formal atmosphere, decided to ask the chief, at this stage, for the ceremonies preceding the palaver to be cut to a strict minimum. The chief bowed gravely in agreement but pointed out that as a newcomer – myself – was present, a brief rite inviting the protection of the various spirits could not be avoided. Ribo shrugged his resignation and we accordingly went up into the common-room of the chief’s long-house, where my friend’s pessimism deepened at the sight of the lined-up alcohol jars. The arrangement of the room was almost identical with that of the M’nong R’lams; the benches running round the walls, the battery of gongs and the great buffalo-hide drums. On the beams, hung with leather shields, crossbows and drinking-horns, were the art-treasures I was coming to expect; a daringly sporting Vietnamese calendar showing a bathing beauty, a car-chassis oiling chart, a Tarzan cartoon.
At a sign from the chief I took up position on a stool opposite the principal jar but with my back to it. The gongs struck up but I could see nothing of what was happening, as all the activity was going on behind me. I was alone in the middle of the room facing a blank wall awaiting my formal presentation to the spirits before I could be allowed to join the ceremony. Someone came and stood behind me and began a low-voiced incantation, barely audible above the clangour of the gongs. I was told afterwards that this was the sorcerer, who had come in with a white cock, had bathed its feet in water and was now waving it over my head. As soon as the incantation was complete the sorcerer turned me round on the stool and handed me the bamboo tube from the tall jar. At the same time the chief’s wife, the only woman in the room, took a thin, open-ended copper bracelet from one of the jar handles and fastened it round my left wrist. This conferring on the welcome stranger of the copper bracelet must be a custom of extreme antiquity, since it is practised by Moï tribes all over Indo-China, most of which have lived in separation in historical times. It carries with it temporary tribal protection and a number of minor privileges, which vary in detail from village to village, such as the right to touch certain of the sacred drums. There is a fuller degree of initiation which is undertaken by some Europeans wishing to take part in the more closely guarded ceremonies such as those accompanying the removal of the front teeth at puberty. In this case the initiate pays for the sacrifice of a pig, and a little blood drawn from his foot is mixed in alcohol with that of the pig and drunk by all present. On such occasions a thicker bracelet is conferred, on which is engraved a secret mark. Further sacrifices are indicated by additional marks, the bracelet serving thus to record, for all to see, its wearer’s services to the community, and is the equivalent on the spiritual level of the Japanese diploma or the French certificate of military service. Many Europeans are to be seen wearing half a dozen or so of the thinner bracelets. They are one of those mild affectations, like tying on the spare wheel of one’s car with liana, which mark the old Indo-China hand.
