But mostly I learned that there are bonds tying all human beings together in ways we cannot fully understand, and those bonds are never more obvious than between children. For those few hours I spent with the children, I became one myself, stripped of my misery and my sense of self-importance.
In the weeks and months following my baptism in that river"s pool, I gradually came to accept the fact that, although I could never thrive with the Tulim, I could survive.
I had new friends among the Tulim now. The children, who were more taken with my novelty than my ugliness. The little girl Yellina, who was an orphan. She lived in a hut on the far side of the village. Whenever I emerged from my hut she was nearby, and always one of the first to run over to place her small hand in mine.
Without any particular intention on my part, I gradually began to learn how to live among the Tulim, at least from my perspective. From theirs I"m sure that I looked the complete buffoon.
I could not dress like them. That would be too much. The closest I could bring myself to nakedness was to cut the legs off my capris and crop my sleeveless blouse to deal with the heat. Along with my canvas shoes and underwear, they were my only clothes, and I had to wash them every other day. There was positively no way to keep the soot from the fires from blackening them.
I did not eat using all of my fingers as they did, but picked at my food using only one finger and my thumb, afraid I might inadvertently consume some live creature like an ant; some piece of ash that might have drifted onto the food; some sliver or dirt that might have fallen from the ceiling.
I did not walk about barefoot or scamper through the underbrush as did the children, but chose each placement of my feet cautiously, like a soldier stepping his way through a minefield.
I butchered their language, rarely managing to deliver a full sentence without granting the children some amus.e.m.e.nt. Heaven only knows what kind of lewd or ridiculous statements came out of my mouth those first weeks. But as the months pa.s.sed I learned, more each day.
I was too far removed from their customs to understand or engage in any of their ceremonies or dances, which seemed to be the central focus of their pa.s.sion once the sun set.
Apart from their politics, which I knew little about, and their animism, which I knew even less about, the Tulim way of life was profoundly simple. They collected, prepared, and ate food; they fashioned and maintained their dwellings; they slept; they danced and sang; they warded off evil spirits; they obsessed over babies, and they talked ceaselessly about all of the above.
But in these ways, wasn"t their life similar to the life of the tribe I had left upon boarding the jetliner bound for Australia? With limited resources, the Tulim used much simpler devices to accomplish their tasks, but the knowledge and sophistication required to live was no less in the jungle than anywhere else in the world.
Take, for example, the harvesting and preparation of the starchy staple sago, which Momos had formally introduced me to. The food is in the pith of the palm tree"s ma.s.sive trunk, and getting it out is a ch.o.r.e.
The trees are a closely guarded treasure. Fell a sago tree belonging to another and you might pay with your life. I watched from a boulder with several of the younger children as three men and four women went to work on one of Momos"s sago palms. Little Yellina was kind enough to explain every detail of their labor, rattling on nonstop despite the fact that I understood only a fraction of what she said.
They felled the palm, stripped off the copious thorns, and split its thick bark with an ironwood wedge. But that sweaty task was only the start of the process. Over the next few hours they dug out the pith and beat it to loosen the starch. Using water retrieved from a nearby creek, they washed the fibers over a screen that caught the starch as the water flowed through into a trough they"d built on the spot for the harvesting of that single tree.
The end result was a paste, which they rolled into banana leaves for transport back to the village, a good hour"s hike, two hours with me in tow.
Simple. But who had been the first to cut down such a tree, cut it open, beat and wash the pith for the tiny bits of sago growing between the fibers, and then consume the bland starch as we might eat bread?
My only contribution to the Tulim those first weeks was in my offering of fashion. It started with the legs that Lela had convinced me to cut off my capris. Left with two tubes of black polyester, it occurred to me that I could cut off a band with a bamboo knife and give it to little Yellina to wear around her head. The lower cla.s.s had no golden bands to encompa.s.s their foreheads, but polyester stretched easily enough and might make the perfect bandanna for my new little friend.
To say the black headband was a hit with Yellina understates just how much delight she took in her new headpiece. In the next twenty-four hours I had cut the legs of my slacks into thirty-one similar bands, half of which I gave to clambering children before Lela suggested I trade the rest for food.
I can"t tell you how many places I saw those bands over the next few weeks. What started out as headbands soon became armbands, thigh bands, bundle carriers, slings, washcloths, sago wraps...the Tulim"s inventiveness knew no bounds. I saw strips of my slacks around the necks of two different piglets with a leash attached; at least one woman used that cloth as a sanitary napkin.
I steadily progressed in my understanding of the Tulim language as I began applying every waking hour to learning it. As a wam who had learned Tulim as a second language herself, Lela was a patient and effective teacher. As were the children, who prided themselves on being the first to teach me a new word or point out a new bird.
Day by day my appreciation for their way of life grew. That which I had once found horrifying, like the Tulim"s grubs or their nakedness, became tolerable and then ordinary, then acceptable. As my vocabulary expanded, so did my appreciation for many of their customs.
They recalled their history through dances and long, hypnotic songs and chants that sounded more like speeches put to music than the kind of melodic choruses I had learned to sing. They spent hours on carvings, using stone chisels to cut stories and beliefs into their shields and their spears.
Their many taboos took some patience to understand, but given the Tulim worldview they started to make some sense. It was forbidden for any man to sleep with a woman during her menstrual period because she could not conceive when bleeding, and the only purpose of copulation was to produce children. Neither could any man sleep with a girl who had not yet bled, for the same reason.
No woman could enter battle or kill any boar or crocodile lest she be injured and unable to bear children. If a woman pleased the spirits and her husband, she would conceive. If she still did not conceive, it was because one of her ancestors had offended the spirits, and she would only be cleansed with the river of life, which came from a man.
As in most cultures, men lived by a different standard. The stronger the man, the stronger his urge to father children. To produce the rivers of life necessary for fathering those children, a man had to stay strong by killing wild pigs, or by taking the lives of his enemies, which included anyone outside the Tulim, particularly those who attempted to enter the valley. Furthermore, men should not plant food or harvest it, because these actions robbed them of the energy they needed to hunt and kill the enemy and to pa.s.s life on to their women.
I still had not been called to Wilam and for this I was thankful. I rarely even saw him, and when I did I went out of my way to avoid him. In many ways I felt like a forgotten piece of luggage, and I didn"t mind.
My only real use to them was in childbearing, and I wasn"t interested in fulfilling this function.
Lela, on the other hand, was.
She was bleeding now. This meant she could be taken as a wife. A young man among the royal muhan had been eyeing her. Her days were filled with antic.i.p.ation and excitement. My lack of enthusiasm confounded her. For fertile Tulim women, not bearing children was like not eating or breathing.
I was finding my way among the Tulim, but I was grateful not to be Tulim. I think deep down inside I still hated them.
It was nearly sixty days from my capture before my world was turned on its end once again.
I had learned to sleep reasonably well on a bedding of gra.s.s, using dried leaves bound by twine as a pillow. The nights did not get cool enough to merit any covering. My only frustration was the insects that braved the hut when the fire died; they crawled over my body as I slept. Unless I wanted to spread the smelly mud on my skin to ward them off, I had no choice except to tolerate them.
The pervasive smoke that had once bothered me so much became my friend once I understood that insects were repulsed by it as well. Indeed, all sago and other foods were stored on racks above the fire and so remained insect-free, a rather ingenious storage system, I thought.
I had settled into a light sleep late when a disturbance awakened me. Lela had pulled out several out of the horizontal boards that formed the door and was speaking to a warrior at the entrance. I knew enough of the language by that point to understand his request.
"She must come now."
"Now?" Lela said. "To where?"
"Wilam"s home. Bring her now."
Then the warrior was gone.
Lela became quite frantic, rattling on about Tengan, who was Wilam"s most magnificent warrior. His coming to our hut was very important indeed. All of my fears came roaring back, and for a few moments I sat frozen by thoughts of being taken to the cliffs to meet my fate.
"Isaka has died?" I asked.
"Hurry! You must be clean!"
She grabbed one of the gourds filled with spring water and shoved it into my hands. I splashed my face and wiped the grime off with my rag. As usual my hair was braided-I had always worn my hair long and couldn"t bring myself to cut it despite the tangled mess it easily became.
"Is this good?" I asked. "Should I wash my body?"
Lela, who was frantically changing into a new gra.s.s skirt with red-dyed tips she"d made with great care just that week, glanced at my face. Then at my yellow blouse, which was now brown, and ragged at the bottom where it had ripped on a broken branch.
"We must hurry," she said.
"What about my arms and legs? They"re filthy!"
"We don"t have this time, miss. We must run!"
Fifteen minutes later we stood in the lords" courtyards. Wilam lived in two houses, a spousal home he shared with his wives, and one reserved for his more stately business. The latter was a men"s house, or jeu, where he slept when he didn"t want to be with his wives, or wife as it was now. Tengan, the warrior who"d brought the message, delivered us to Wilam"s spousal home.
I didn"t know if the hut"s decor reflected the tastes of Wilam or of his wife, but the comforts that greeted us took me aback when I set foot inside.
The walls were covered with boar hides, crocodile skins, furs, and groupings of brightly colored feathers from parrots and birds of paradise. A cooking fire burned near the entrance of the room. The back half of the long, cave-like hut was relatively free of smoke and much cleaner than most huts I had seen.
The sleeping bed stood a foot off the floor and was covered in furs. Tall, intricately carved shields lined the walls around the bed.
A woman sat to one side, leg folded back, watching me with interest. This was Wilam"s wife Melino. She had been pointed out to me from a distance once before.
Her dark, silken skin was unblemished in any way that I could see. Her lips looked soft and her cheekbones rose high, giving her a majestic appearance. But Melino"s defining feature was her eyes, which were tainted with blue, just enough to suggest a mystery behind her gaze.
For a fleeting moment I surprised myself by coveting her skin and her hair. Perhaps even her standing among these people.
The prince sat on the bed, cross-legged, arms on his knees, staring at us.
I brought my hands together in a sign of respect, bowing slightly.
"Come closer," he said. "I would see what has caused me so much grief."
Lela translated everything, even what I understood from the terms I knew and the context in which they were spoken. What she didn"t translate on the spot, she explained later that night.
We approached and stopped several paces from his bed. His skin was dark and clean; his nails were white and manicured; his hair was oiled, and sparkled like a starry night sky. He wore no golden bands or rattan, no jewelry at all. His well-muscled body was naked.
I remember staring at him and thinking that he was a beautiful man, particularly his face, his strong square jaw carved in black, his deep-set eyes. He was truly a lord in this jungle.
"Whatever grief we have brought you, we will repay a hundred times," Lela said, dipping her head.
"Do you have a hundred lives to give? Then I might ask for a hundred deaths."
He said it with the authority of one born and bred for nothing less than a throne, but I heard more in his voice. There was note of admiration in his reprimand. A hint of respect.
"Yes, my prince," Lela said.
"My advisers demand I have you both taken to the cliffs tonight."
With this single announcement my world crumbled. I felt panic well up in my chest. I should have known, of course. It had always only been a matter of time. I threw all caution to the wind and bowed to my outrage.
"Then you would lose the greatest treasure that has come into your valley since any of your advisers were born," I said. "Tell him that."
Lela hesitated, but did.
Wilam drilled me with a strong stare. "You know nothing of our ways. Kirutu"s hand was held back because he fears the spirits, but his bitterness knows no end." He paused and drew a steady breath. "Butos will present Kirutu with a new wife tomorrow. The two tribes have threatened war if I don"t kill you before the feast."
I held his gaze. Everything I had seen in Wilam told me that he recognized and admired strength.
"It was you who saved me, not them," I said. "Now you will tell the world that you were wrong?"
"Watch yourself," Melino said, but her tone wasn"t condemning. She was sincere.
Wilam offered a shallow smile. "I was curious, nothing more. But now Kirutu forces my hand and threatens to make me appear weak."
"Then you called me here only to tell me that you"re going to kill me?" I asked. My mind was flaring with offense, and I knew I was speaking out of turn, but the desperation I"d felt upon first arriving was coming back, and strong.
"If not for my wife I wouldn"t have called you at all," he said.
"Then your wife is wise," I said. "You possess a great treasure in me. You must take full advantage of this treasure if you wish to defeat Kirutu."
He chuckled. "So now the one our children call Yuliwam thinks she commands me?"
Melino mumbled something that I couldn"t understand. Nor did Lela translate.
Wilam stood from the bed and paced before me, arms across his chest. "Then speak. Tell this muhan how to conduct his affairs. Perhaps you could also tell me what food to eat, how to dress, how to produce many sons."
"I could offer you a son," I said.
"You believe I need you to produce a son?"
True. He was a prince. Surely he could have his pick of Tulim women.
"No. But a son from the slave you plucked out of Kirutu"s grasp."
He eyed me, then went on, resolved.
"If I kill you as Kirutu demands, then he redeems himself and I look weak. If I don"t kill you, he has just cause for war. So I will neither have you thrown from the cliffs nor keep you. Instead I will present you to Kirutu tomorrow, as a wedding gift."
My heart left me. I saw his reasoning immediately. By doing this he would appear both clever and compliant to the laws that governed them.
"Giving me to Kirutu-"
"Silence!"
"Let her speak before you consign her to her death," Melino said.
Wilam hesitated. Clearly his wife had a voice.
"Speak," he said.
I glanced between them, fully unnerved.
"You were right in seeing that I would be dangerous in Kirutu"s hands. If he has this treasure instead of you, he would surely-"
"Enough!" he snapped, s.n.a.t.c.hing his hand into a fist.
"If you were going to kill me, why didn"t you just throw me from the cliffs long ago?" I demanded. "Your law demands that any wam who comes into the valley can live only if the council approves. Kirutu did not approve, but you showed great courage by defying him. Now you would throw away all of the value I offer you?"
He stepped up to me, took my cheeks between his thumbs and fingers, and squeezed.
"Remember whom you stand before," he snapped. His eyes darted down to my mouth and I thought he might be looking at my teeth. He was showing his dominance, but there was also curiosity in his eyes. A softness that defied his tone, his grip.
"The value you once had to me has become a liability."
He released my jaw, retreated to the bed, and sat down facing us, arms limp on his knees once more.
"Leave us. Both of you."