We separated from Torajan death traditions next morning, and concentrated on some of their more life-affirming rituals, aware of how corpses are spoiled by combining the two. At least we thought we were being aware.
“You want to have Christmas dinner?” Asked our desk clerk. Yes, indeed, we replied, realizing that it was Christmas Eve. That would be fine.
“Better you have Christmas dinner at the Toraja Coralia.” She said. So we thanked her, and booked in for that evening at the Coralia, on our way to the market. It was market day in Rantepao, with hundreds of huge pigs bound with green cords on green pallets side by side, rows of vendors with multicolored peppers, roosters, kreteks, green bananas, and long beans, more water buffalo with ropes through their noses, and firewood. When Robyn bought a finely made conical hat off the head of one of the elderly ladies in the clothing bazaar, I had the same shiver go up my spine as my purchase of an apron from a lady in Dali, many Chinese moons before. We drank Torajan coffee in glasses, and then I took her picture wearing her new headgear in a nearby bamboo grove, with shoots as wide as my arm.
The bemos near the market followed the universal general rule that the cheaper the fare, the more crowded and slower the ride. The boundary conditions for Robyn and I had been in a market in Nha Trang in the old Vietnam days, where two cents got us a ride to nowhere, all day long. The ten cents we paid in Rantepao got us almost nowhere in less than half the time.
Where we got to were some of the best examples of tongkonan architecture in Tanatoraja, immense thatch and woven bamboo houses with tremendous upswept high gabled buffalo horn roofs, facing north toward the home of the old gods, with a carved buffalo head talisman at the front. Large boulders loomed out of the mist at the base of each of the pilings. The long poles in front were nailed with a long column of water buffalo horns, arranged from the biggest at the bottom, to the smallest at the top.
The colors were Torajan colors of black death, yellow blessings from the gods, white purity, and red human life. The last also took the form of barefoot boys and their puppies playing on the thick tongkonan floor planks, or little ones peeking out of secret small window spaces above us, the tiny doors carved on the inside with roosters and an all-seeing eye.
Downhill on the right from this cluster of tongkonan, in another bamboo thicket, was a large tree with more small doors cut in it. Behind these doors, however, pegged shut, were the remains of children who died before their teeth had come in. The tree had absorbed these children and, when cut with a knife, it dripped white sap.
“Like milk.” Robyn said.
“Like milk.” I agreed.
We continued down the track past rice paddies and arching spumes of bamboo, into a forest across bamboo bridges. Half split bamboo canes, lain end to end within each other, brought water splashing into a bucket beside an isolated house a hundred meters further down the trail. We emerged at a crystal pool surrounded by limestone boulders and silence. Silent night. We made the bemo back to Rantepao in time for Christmas dinner.
“Today you go see Tau-Tau?” she asked, next morning. Robyn and I nodded our head affirmatively. Today was Tau-Tau day.
“See them now.” She said. “Soon all gone.” And she was right. The Tau-Tau were life-sized wooden effigies of noble takapua dead, sacred to living relatives who believed that they could bestow blessings and grant favors. Costing a year’s wages to bring into being, Tau-Tau were also worth a year’s wages to unscrupulous purveyors for the primitive art market, who stole more of the remaining figures every year, and caused many families to remove them into their homes.
The Makale bound bemo dropped us off at the Londa turnoff, and a two-kilometer stroll the caves. Small boys were waiting with lanterns and entrepreneurial spirit. They were determined to give us our money’s worth, and dragged us crawling through the claustrophobic warren of tight tunnels of skulls and long bones, spilling out of piled up coffins, some shaped like boats, intricately carved, and decayed. Sartorial sarong-garbed Tau-Tau statues guarded another part of the vault.
“Romeo and Juliet.” Said one of the urchins, pushing the maxillary teeth of two of the skulls together for additional effect, and earning a ripple of nervous laughter from his other colleagues. They walked us back out along the checkerboard mud dikes of rice terraces to a waterworn limestone cliff face wall. Gazing out from a vertiginous height, was a row of weathered mannequins. One had his sarong flung over his right shoulder. Something protruded from his lower lip, even at a distance. Welcome to Kansas.
No comments:
Post a Comment