QB VII (6 page)

They made war on each other and went into battle resplendent in feathered dress, and the head of the vanquished hung in the home of the victor. Those who were not murdered were sold into the slave markets.

Over a period of time, James Brooke and his nephew, who succeeded him as rajah, established some form of order so that one merely had to concern himself with the task of survival against the land.

The third and final white rajah, Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, ended the hundred and five year reign of his family after the Second World War. During the war the Japanese occupied Sarawak for its oil fields at Miri and when the war ended, Brooke ceded the state to the British crown and Sarawak along with Brunei and North Borneo became crown colonies.

Sir Edgar Bates, the first governor of Sarawak, was to take over a state that had grown to fifty thousand square miles and held a half million people. Most of these were the Ibans or Sea Dayaks, the former head-hunters of uncertain origin. Some say they were seagoing Mongols.

Sir Edgar, from the upper middle civil servants, did his best toward education and eventual self-rule. But all of those things passed over in the time of the white rajahs had taken its toll. The new Sarawak-Orient Company explored for oil and minerals and attempted to exploit the unending forest. Yet, progress was measured as the snail crosses the land and bogged in a quagmire of ancient pagan taboos.

When Adam Kelno arrived in 1949, he became the thirtieth doctor in Sarawak. There were five hospitals. This was the facility for a half million persons.

He was assigned to Fort Bobang in the Second Division of Sarawak, in the land of the Ibans, the tattooed head-hunters of Borneo.

8

A
DAM
K
ELNO’S BOATMEN DEFTLY
maneuvered the thirty foot thatched roof dugout over the bubbling rapids where the Lemanak tributary rushed into the Lampur River. It was not difficult to tell the doctor’s boat for it had the largest out-board motor of any that pushed up the Lemanak. It smoothed and they glided past a brace of sleeping crocodiles. The sound of the motor sent them slithering down the sandbank into the water. A tribe of monkeys shrieked at them leaping along the treetops.

For ten miles up the Lemanak tributary there were a series of long houses of the Ulu Tribe of Sea Dayaks. Each of the houses was a communal village unto itself built on hardwood poles and housing from twenty to fifty families. The long houses running up to lengths of over two hundred feet hugged the river front. A pull-up ladder, once a defensive measure against attacking neighbors, served as a stairs to the common veranda. Facing the river, were a long uncovered drying platform and communal kitchen and work area. In the rear of each house there were small private rooms for each family. It was all roofed in palm leaf and shingles and beneath it pigs and chickens ran wild amid human feces, and mangy curs struggled for existence.

Fifteen such long houses formed a tribal unit of the Ulu’s under the rule of a chieftain named Bintang, after the stars.

The arrival of Dr. Kelno’s boat was greeted by the clap of gongs, the usual welcome for any visitor. During the day, as Dr. Kelno held clinic, the Turah’s, the heads of the other long houses of the tribe, arrived for the council meeting that Bintang had promised the doctor.

By evening they had all assembled, bedecked in woven jackets of blazing colors, cone-shaped hats topped with feathers, and assorted arm and leg bracelets. They were olive-skinned men of five feet in height, with seminegroid features mixed with that of Oriental. Their shiny black hair was pulled back to buns behind their necks and their shoulders, legs, and hands bore heavy tattoo markings. Some of the older Turahs sported such tattoos awarded to a warrior for his kills as a head-hunter in days not so long past. From rafter beams, all about the long house hung dozens of heads, all scraped clean as the inside of pumpkins. As the Turahs gathered Bintang offered them hot rice beer and they drank and chewed betel nuts and puffed cheroots in a comer of the common veranda.

Beyond them on the drying deck, the women went about their business of cooking, weaving rattan mats and bright cloth, making jewelry and curing the sago, a starchy food from tree trunks. Beneath their bare breasts they wore corsets made of many brass rings encircling the entire body and these adornments were decorated with coins and chain jewelry, and their ear lobes were deformed by heavily weighted earrings.

The mood of the Turahs, which had been lively, changed to somber as the dour Dr. Kelno and his translator joined them. Feelings about him were definitely mixed. Bintang bade them to place their highly colored and ornamented seat mats on the rattan floor. Dr. Kelno and his translator, Mudich, sat opposite them all. Bintang and his chief magician Pirak, the Manang of the tribe, sat off to a side. Pirak was one of the hereditary fakirs called by the spirits to administer health and the wisdom of the gods. There were numerous categories and ranks of the Manangs. Pirak, a wrinkled old specimen, was of a special breed known as Manang Bali, a male in female’s dress and behavior. He was a seductress of young males but bisexual as well. Pirak received exorbitant fees of gifts and food for performance of his mystic hokum. Too old to inherit chiefdom from Bintang, Pirak was determined to hold his exalted position and felt that Dr. Adam Kelno presented a threat.

Meaningless amenities flowed and then the translator began the business, as the half-starved dogs snapped up the remains of the plates of delicacies.

“Dr. Adam say,” Mudich began, “that monsoon season is almost upon us and river will swell. Dr. Adam not come back for long time. Last year during monsoon, cholera very bad. This year Dr. Adam wants no such. He ask to give medicine through needle to save from cholera. Only twenty families in all of the long houses agree. Why is this so, say Dr. Kelno,”

“Because Wind Spirit, Sea Spirit, Forest Spirit, and Fire Spirit are chosen by the Chief Spirit, Patra, to rule over sickness. We have prepared birds to sacrifice and will beat gongs four nights after first monsoon. Tell Dr. Adam, we have many way to fight sickness.”

“Many, many way,” Pirak the magician added, pointing to his bag of omens, healing stones, and herbs.

A murmur of agreement arose among the Turahs.

Adam drew a deep breath, controlled himself, and leaned over to his translator. “I want you to ask Bintang the following. I will give my medicine to the families that want it. If, after the monsoon season is over, the families I have treated are all well but many others who were not given my medicine are dead from fever will that prove that the gods favor my medicine?”

Mudich pretended not to understand. Adam repeated it slowly. The translator squirmed, then shook his head. “I cannot ask such question of Bintang.”

“Why not?”

“It will embarrass chief before his Turahs if you prove to be right.”

“Well, isn’t he responsible for the health and well-being of his people?”

“Bintang also responsible to keep the legends. Sickness come, sickness go. Legend remain.”

All right, Adam thought to himself, I’ll get at this another way. He once again explained carefully to Mudich the question he was posing.

“Dr. Adam say to Bintang, why is burial ground so close to river? Dr. Adam say it must be moved because it make water unclean and bad water cause sickness.”

“No true,” Bintang answered. “Spirit cause sickness.”

Again the Turahs all nodded in agreement.

Adam saw the anger in Pirak’s eyes. The Manang Bali was responsible for the disposal of the dead and burial was a source of much of his income and riches. “Legend say, must bury on hill rising from river. Burial ground in right place now. Must not be moved.”

“Dr. Adam say burial unclean. People not buried deep enough and many without a box to put them in. This Dr. Adam say spoil water when it runs next to burial ground. Pigs and dogs no fenced so they come to burial ground and eat dead. When we eat pigs and drink water it cause sickness.”

“If woman die bleeding when giving child, she cannot have coffin,” the Manang Bali answered. “If warrior die he must be buried close to water to ease his journey to Sebayan.”

“But when you bury him with all that food in the ground, the animals dig it up!”

“How can he travel to Sebayan without food? Besides, Dr. Adam, in Sebayan he no longer has trouble so is better to get there,” Bintang said.

“If chief die,” Pirak added, “he must be burned and given to Fire Spirit. Dr. Adam no understand we must bury depending on how someone die.”

Moving the cemetery site now became another utterly useless pursuit Kelno was being swamped under the weight of mysticism and taboos. He persisted.

“Dr. Adam say, last time he come he brought seeds and vines of okra to plant in field near sago tree forest. Bintang promise to plant okra because is good for us to eat and make us strong.”

“We learn,” Pirak said, “in omen from birds that fields by sago forest are cursed.”

“Just how did you come to that?”

“Very difficult to read bird omens,” Pirak said, “take many years learning. Way bird fly, way bird sing, way bird cry, way two birds fly together. Birds give such bad omen we slaughter pig in ceremony and read markings on pig’s liver. Everything say fields are cursed.”

“Dr. Adam say we have only half the farm land we need. We must make use of all of it. Okra will drive out evil spirits from the fields. Okra is sacred food,” Mudich translated, as Kelno tried to use their own taboos to gain his end. But the frustration wore on.

“Dr. Adam buy four water buffalo from Chinese. Why you no go to town of Sarebas and bring back?”

“Buffalo sacred omen, like moth and blue bird.”

“But you not bring them to eat but only to work with in field.”

“Curse to make sacred omen labor.”

After another hour of it, Adam was exhausted. He begged to be excused from the feast and the cockfight and tersely bid them farewell. Pirak, the Manang Bali, was now filled with kindness, having won all his arguments. Dr. Adam would not return till after monsoon. As he climbed into his boat and curtly ordered the boatmen to cast off, the Ulus on shore waved a halfhearted farewell. When the boat turned the bend, Bintang looked to Mudich and asked, “Why does Dr. Adam come here if he hate us so much?”

9

T
HE CLOSENESS OF THE
British compound at Fort Bobang imposed friendships on persons who would have spent a lifetime avoiding each other. Angela was particularly adaptable to the narrow social circle. Adam was not.

He had a particular dislike for L. Clifton-Meek, the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Second Division. Clifton-Meek’s office adjoined his clinic and their homes were only separated by that of the commissioner, Jack Lambert.

The Empire was a haven that saved the mediocre from obscurity. Lionel Clifton-Meek was a prime example of the shoe clerk, the railroad ticket seller, the humbled assistant tailor who had wiggled his way into a niche in His Majesty’s far-flung interests. It was a small hole to crawl into indeed, but once staked out it was his and his alone. Clifton-Meek carefully guarded against either taking on responsibility, or making decisions, or outside intrusions. He clothed himself in a blanket of paper work to expand a belief in his own importance. In this safe place he could wait it out and end up with a nice pension for loyal service to the crown.

If L. Clifton-Meek personified a low echelon of civil servants, his drab, turkey-necked wife, Mercy, even more vividly portrayed what was hated by the black and yellow people they ruled.

In England, the Clifton-Meeks would have lived a gray life in a brick row house in a gray town or in London in a walk-up cold water flat, where her only qualification to augment her husband’s insufficient income would be to hire herself out as a maid.

But the Empire did much for the lowly of England. In Sarawak they had stature. In the Second Division there was no other agricultural commissioner. Clifton-Meek had much to say about the rice fields, and the rubber plantations, and spent much of his time frustrating the Sarawak-Orient Company by the endless chain of command. A bone in the throat of progress.

Mercy Meek had at her beck and call two Malayan house-boys, who slept on the veranda and chased after her with an umbrella to shade her milky freckled skin from the sun. And she had a pure Chinese cook. The artificial snobbery of then-low ancestry caused them to hyphenate their name as a further gesture of self-importance. And to top it all, Mercy attempted to bring the God of the Episcopalians to these heathens. On Sunday, the compound vibrated with her playing of the organ and pounding the fear of Jesus into them to a response of listlessly mumbled prayers.

Commissioner Lambert was another sort. Like Adam’s superior, MacAlister, Lambert was an old hand in these parts, a good administrator who calmly listened to the complaints of the native chiefs, did little about them, and saw that everyone was well supplied with British flags and portraits of the King for their long houses. Basically, Lambert and Kelno left each other alone.

But that time had to come when L. Clifton-Meek had been buggered about once too often by that certain foreign medical officer and filed an indignant report.

Before Lambert let the report go into channels, he thought a meeting ought to take place between parties. It commenced in the commissioner’s boiling, peeling office under a tired overhead fan, which did little to bring comfort. L. Clifton-Meek’s pinched white face quivered as he clung to the books of governing regulations while Lambert thumbed through the thick report.

Lambert mopped his wet jaw. It was a strange place for a man to perspire from, Adam thought. “It appears, Dr. Kelno, that we have a misunderstanding of sorts. I rather it not go beyond this desk if we can all reach an agreement.”

Clifton-Meek arched his back as Adam glared at him with contempt.

“Have you familiarized yourself with Clifton-Meek’s complaint?”

“I read it this morning.”

“Not really a serious matter.”

“I consider it quite serious,” Clifton-Meek said in a voice that trembled with fear.