Burridge Unbound (35 page)

“Lie down. Rest. I will return.”

The mat is thin but comfortable, with a pillow made of sturdy cloth stuffed, it feels like, with soft feathers. I drift near sleep, feel my body relax so completely it seems as if I’m rising
off the mat, hovering, looking down. This odd sense of safety I sometimes got with the Kartouf. It was the drugs, the needle. Maybe they’ve shot me up again. Maybe that’s it.

No panic. It feels all right. Just to hover, be still.

I don’t hear Suli re-enter, don’t feel her peel off my bloody clothes. What I do feel is the water – coolish at first, then fine. Such an elemental thing, washing me clean. Forgive me, Suli, for I have sinned. I can’t remember what I did, but I must have sinned or why would I be so bloody? She rubs my shoulders now with scented oil, my back and legs. I’m naked before her but it doesn’t feel like the usual world. Nakedness doesn’t matter. Blood, pain, sweat, filth – doesn’t matter. Not in this world. She turns me over and I see her face glistening with tears. They suit her – I can’t imagine anything more beautiful. The grieving widow. I see her for a moment kneeling in the airport, panic around her, her grief so perfect and profound.

It isn’t the usual world.

I say, “Dorut Kul has been murdered. He showed me a video of you and Sin Vello talking. The video has been stolen.”

She says, “Shhhhhh. Not now.”

Calmly. Everything is peaceful. Her hands are small but strong and warm. Wherever she touches on my body feels better instantly. My buttocks and legs and feet, oh my feet.

Like being with Joanne.
Joanne
. From that other reality I must cling to.

“He was shot in my suite at the Merioka. The back of his head blown off. His blood and brains were on the floor. And somebody took the video and transcript.”

“Just be still,” she says. “Everything will become clear.”

Her soothing hands on my belly, my wretched stomach, fragile chest. Everywhere she touches.

“Some boy they called Captain Velios was killed in
Welanto,” I say. These things I have to hold on to. I’m a Truth Commissioner. I haven’t come all this way to forget. “He was wrapped in garbage bags. He’d been mutilated.”

“Don’t think about it now,” she says. The fragrance of the oil. Sandalwood? I’m never going to leave this moment. Eternal comfort and relief. It must be some sort of death.

“I carried the body all the way to the police station. With Nito. Luki said she’d do it but I said no at that. Some things I said no to.”

“Yes.”

Her fingers on my scalp, rubbing the oil through and through, working down my forehead, across my eyes, down the line of my jaw. Like Wu. For a moment I could be back with him. None of this happened. Of course I didn’t go back to Santa Irene. Ridiculous. I’ve had enough punishment for one life. Wu’s fingers on the back of my neck, down my shoulders again. Pulling out the bad energy.

“What were you and Sin Vello talking about that was so bad?” Of course I have to ask it. I’m a Truth Commissioner. It’s why I’m here.

“Not now. Stay still.”

“Was it Minitzh? Did you plot to assassinate the president?” It’s the worst thing I can think of. What makes the most sense.

“Shhhhhh.”

“Why else would you kill Dorut Kul?”

“Everything will become clear,” she says. “Now we have to get ready.”

She rises and my body turns cold, just like that, grace has been withdrawn. I can’t move, lie here still as a corpse. Of course. If she had Dorut Kul killed then she’d have me killed too. It’s probably already happened. I’ve been killed and like so many other things it isn’t what you expect. I’m lying here
unable to move, cold as death, but still sensing, still thinking.

“We carried the body all the way to the police station, and I would’ve carried it up the stairs too at the Merioka, but somebody else had already done that.”

When she puts her hand on my shoulder again I can move. As simple as that. Reanimation, warmth flooding in. I sit up, then stand, and she wraps me in a long, patterned brown cloth – ginkos running up and down the trunks of trees. It hangs loosely around my shoulders, snug around the waist, falls nearly to the floor.

“For the man it’s called a
golung
. Yours is from the Upong, my old tribe. This one belonged to my husband.”

“Somebody else had already carried the body up,” I say. “The refrigerator was full of heads.”

Sunshine, the first really brilliant dose of it since coming back to the island. Dully, some thought from the past about my meds, how I shouldn’t spend time in full sun. But I’m off my meds anyway. Still, a hat would be useful, and sunscreen. Page one,
Your Visit to the Tropics
. When walking along a mountain ridge in the full sun carrying a chicken for hours, wear a hat and sunscreen.

The chicken has gotten used to my carrying it. At first it squawked and flapped wildly, but now I have her cradled from below with my hand at her throat. Comfort and death. I’m sweating like a water sack. Suli is leading a goat and some of the soldiers have turkeys in bamboo cages. Why didn’t I get a cage for my chicken?

It doesn’t matter. We’re just walking. The
golung
is light and cool, doesn’t seem to be falling off. I’m hungry though, and the pressure is building in my head. I didn’t think there would be headaches in death. Somehow that seems too earthly. But then
again this is a journey back. An impossibly colourful bird sings at the top of a tree and then for a while the path swings to the edge of a rice paddy and I see the other paddies tiling down the slope, then up the next, filling the whole valley, liquid silver layers. We
have
to stop to look – you’d have to be dead not to pause in awe, and so I know I’m not dead yet. There’s more I have to go through.

Small steps, blood working through my body, the chicken hot against me but still calm. The path turns into the wooded area then back to the open, affording another clear view of this valley of tiled water. It isn’t the fabled Watabi Valley but like it, I imagine. The path is slick in most places and my cheap rubber thongs swim in the muck, flap against my heels when I step forward. Down and down, over a rickety log bridge, past a small village like the one where Suli met me, huts on stilts, a few cooking fires smouldering. Then finally to a larger village, all of us collecting like small streams coming into a river. Old men with gnarled ceremonial walking sticks, some in red
golungs
, some in brown. Women in blue or green, draped in lavish garlands of flowers, and children too in bright colours, many of them leading goats, dogs, carrying chickens. Trickling down, the colours blending and mixing, voices like water. Shadows deep and cool when we reach them, sun so bright, overpowering in the open.

We pool on a flat field on the far edge of the village. A large, low platform has been erected under the shade of three enormous trees, and in front of it, on the ground, the families are swirling, gathering, talking, sitting. Hugs and laughter, kids skittish, sitting for a time then running, pausing to whisper then darting off.

“Is this a wedding?” I ask.

“No. A funeral,” Suli says.

She’s greeted now not like a president but as a favourite returning daughter. The soldiers are soon garlanded and Suli is enveloped and carried off like a flower in the current. I’m left with my chicken, which is anxious now; it doesn’t like this crowd of people and all the other animals they’ve brought. It scratches and flaps and I let it go for a time. It darts from between legs to open patches, then stops and eyes us all nervously. One of the soldiers corrals it for me and holds it, and when Suli comes back we sit on the ground twenty or thirty feet from the platform.

“Who died?” I ask.

“Her name was Kulika Lo, which means the mother of Lo. She had twelve other children, eight of them survived. Those people up on the platform are her family, her brothers and sisters and their children, her own children and theirs.” Over a hundred people in all, it looks like, squatting, sitting, kneeling on the mats on the platform, some with heads bowed, others talking casually, some young girls sleeping with their arms around each other.

“How old was she?”

“Probably not yet sixty, though aged for around here. She was sick for a long time. Nobody paid attention to her then. But now that she’s dead she’s become very important.”

“Why’s that?”

“She’s part of the
huloika
now, the spirit world. She can intercede on behalf of her friends and relatives. When she was sick that meant she’d angered the
huloika
somehow. She must have deserved it. But now she has crossed over and it’s important to let her know that she is well respected.”

For a long time it appears as if nothing is happening. More and more people dressed in finery arrive from various paths,
fill up this open space bearing baskets, food, animals. We talk and don’t talk; the family members on the platform look at us and look away. I’m slow to become aware of the music – soft bamboo flutes, long stringed instruments on gourds, drums of various kinds, a rhythmic tapping device festooned with bottle caps and empty tin cans. Gradually people move forward to the platform in twos and threes, and pull out lengths of cloth, jugs, jewellery, household items.

“Presents for Kulika Lo,” Suli says.

They bring out the finery and show it to the family, who watch or don’t watch, talk or stay silent, it doesn’t seem to matter. The gifts are presented then laid at the foot of the platform in a growing mound. Ages pass and then it dawns on me that the body of Kulika Lo is underneath this mound.

“You mustn’t hold back when giving to the dead,” Suli says. “You must be extravagant in order to win favour.”

Machetes, carving knives, carved masks, baskets, woven cloth, fancy hats,
saftoris
, figurines, wooden bowls, decorated sandals, pots of food. The first goat is brought up and now the family notices. Long speeches are made which I can’t hear and of course wouldn’t understand, but no one in particular seems to listen. And then the goat is slaughtered right there in front of the family, in front of us all. A skinny boy holds the rope and a young man in brown with a ceremonial cloth hat wound high on his head swings a machete through the goat’s neck. Blood spurts immediately on the boy and the young man as the goat goes down, its back legs kicking up for an instant, as if fighting might be a possibility. The boy smiles and steps away with the head still on the rope, blood now down his front and dripping on the ground. More whacks and a leg is presented to the family, whose members applaud but don’t take it.

Suli brings me some local beer in a carved wooden goblet. It’s warm and plentiful and sweeter than I expect, and every time I look my goblet is full again.

The slow tide of families. Each in turn brings their offerings, adds them to the pile. Some of them have beaded hair and red dye on their faces, anklets of animal teeth. A muzzled monkey is brought forth and held up for the family, briefly tries to escape before being clubbed to the ground with the back of an axe. Two boys hold the arms while a father pauses to smile, then swings through one shoulder then another, twists the limbs off and holds them aloft. Again, there’s no effort to avoid the blood – it spurts over much of the nearby crowd; the mist of it hangs in the air like salt spray. A dog is chopped but survives, cries out piteously, and there’s confusion as blow after blow glances. Half-lame, the dog starts to crawl off but is pursued until a gush of blood brings a roar. Knives flash, and the sorrowful dog is soon reduced to bloody sections, each presented to the family then taken off to one of a dozen cooking fires behind the big trees.

Then Suli stands and motions to me and I rise, my legs stiff from being crossed so long. We walk slowly to the front, Suli talking to everybody, not in Kuantij, it seems to me, but some tribal language, the words sounding even stranger than usual. Hardly anyone pays attention to me, and I wonder if it’s because I’m sick – I must’ve offended the
huloika
.

No sun now, but thick clouds and building humidity, my
golung
soaked with sweat, the heat of the day and of all these people trapped in the bowl of this clearing. Near the platform the ground is soaked in blood. Suli slips off her sandals, motions for me to do the same, my toes slide and squish in the hot mud. Then she begins a chant of sorts, her voice reedy, fragile. At first it’s just her and then others join in, from the
family and from the field. A low chant, simple –
boru’ut ki gan da gan da tu na
, it sounds like, over and over. I sing along, close my eyes, feel my body swaying, feet in the blood-soaked soil, the smell of rotting flowers, meat, perfumes, incense, of death and life filling my head.
Boru’ut ki gan da gan da tu na
. It could be anything or nothing, but it sounds to me like the most profound poetry. It seems to vibrate through my body and I don’t want it to end. It builds and builds till thunder fills the valley, till every voice is with her, every body stands and sways, louder and louder and then suddenly, all at once, low as a whisper:
boru’ut ki gan da gan da tu na
.

Then I’m slaughtering a chicken. A soldier brings it up, the same one I carried so far under my arm, and holds its head and body down on the great chopping block while I raise a machete. One slip, I think, and I’ll slice off part of this man’s arm, maybe even catch him in the neck coming down. I pull my swing and miss completely, to the roar of the crowd, their hilarity, the soldier jiggling with silliness, Suli doubled over, the family rocking on the platform. I raise the machete again but the soldier laughs too much, he can’t hold the chicken still, it seems inevitable I’m going to get his hand. This time I can’t pull away, I try to focus.

Slash!
The shock of it rockets up my arm, the machete sticks in the block as the chicken falls away in parts and the soldier rises, blood-soaked … lifts the chicken for everyone to see. His hands still fastened, head still on.

After my measly chicken there are more goats and dogs, then a water buffalo the size of four men. When the blade strikes its flank the blood sprays out over all of us, comes down like rain for a time, washes in our hair and sweat. We’re all drinking now,
supira
, the local version, far more powerful than what I tasted before. I know I shouldn’t drink this much, but
that was from the old days, when I took medicine and was a Truth Commissioner. This is a new time, an in-between time – nothing is quite real and nothing is unreal. In fact, I come to realize, we’re all on our way to death, every one of us, children to grandmothers. Just slightly behind Kulika Lo, but not that far. This is the waiting lounge, in a way, the place to say goodbye and to wish for favours from the one who’s leaving, because we’ll be going there soon ourselves. Every one of us. The blood falls on us all.