The Cuckoo Colloquium

14 - Pete

"Minum dan gembira!" the refrain rang throughout the longhouse.

The party was in full swing. More drinking, and Pete was feeling the effects. Happy celestial streams undulated over his head in the shadows, which appeared to dance from the amber glow of the lighting.

There was not a great deal of connection between them all, but it didn't seem to matter; the celebration was good. There was arm wrestling among the men, and, of course, the locals won. And the children tittered and stumbled in the dark, as if they had been at some secret stash while their elders were all preoccupied with their guests.

Someone danced, wearing a helmet of hornbill, with long plumes trailing behind. A shiny machete hung from his waist on an ornate sheath, and he held a long shield. Then he crouched, suddenly springing out with the machete, swinging it as if killing some animal. They were exaggerated actions, like the old theater of Pete's youth. Yet everyone applauded, over the top applause, because the dancer was-as Pete learned-a relative of the chief.

"They're a good deal better than the culture dancers," Pete said of the previous day's performance. And he meant it-these people had no leashes around their necks, they were real-deal savages.

"Too much superstition," Dim said, lazing on his mat, unimpressed with the performance. "They's primitive-if not enough water, yous go kill a goat, if too much water, yous go kill a fish. It stupid, it crazy."

Pete looked at the shiny, toothless faces chortling in the wavering candlelight as Dim went on, "Their lives boring, they stuck here, so yous good excuse for party."

"They're Christians?"

Pete pointed, dubious, to a crucifix on the wall over a picture of a robed man, the Diocese of Malaysia, who had chipmunk jowls and liver spots, perhaps victim of an unkind camera.

One guy sitting across from Pete grinned, showing his strong, yellow teeth. "Roman Catholic."

"Merry Christmas," another said-the lobes of his ears slit and dragged down, and to Pete he looked like an upside-down bilby. The guy then insisted on showing off his finger tattoos-each one symbolizing the taking of heads for each painted joint.

Something appeared that looked like long strands of spaghetti in salt. And Puso jumped in, lifted a strand, and swallowed it.

"I don't think it's pasta," Nini cautioned, but the boy had already downed several more in his famishment.

Pete enjoyed watching these two kids, Nini and Puso, and their prepubescent flirting; they were kicking each other's tires, doing their little jigs for each other.

Dim explained the spaghetti strands: "It the little snakes in the fishes."

Puso nodded as if he had known all along, "Ah, the worms." Then came his realization-and Pete watched the boy's dark skin blush darker.

"If you feels the sick, you vomit over the edge," Dim advised, pointing at the railing outside, "for the chickens-they loves the worms."

Puso ran outside, and Nini sat there with a lost kind of look, and so Pete gave her a wink. "The boy's hung like a stock horse, he is."

He thought he'd nudge things along, spice up the trip. But Nini's eyes bugged out like she just got shocking news from home, and she jumped up and lit outside, too.

On Pete's other side, Moonch was going on to her hosts about some kind of tree snake that could actually glide through the air. Pete was impressed by the girl's knowledge of the local flora and fauna; her parents were in the business of tropical plants, it seemed-before they got shipped upriver.