Savage Harvest Part 7

And then Asmat became quiet. The helicopters were s.h.i.+pped home. The Neptunes stopped circling. The Tasman and Eendracht returned to their regular patrols. In Atsj, von Peij waited a week to let the villagers go to the jungle to collect sago before he went on his rounds. His first stop was Jow, where everything seemed back to normal.

The next day he traveled the long way to Omadesep, via the inland creeks and cuts by canoe. The day was hot, but he felt glad to be out of Atsj, glad to have the Rockefeller search behind him, glad to be back to his regular routine. He arrived in Omadesep around noon.

"There are some men who want to meet you," his catechist said. "They have a message for you."

"Let them come," he said.

20.

December 1961

AJIM (NAKED), PHOTOGRAPHED BY FATHER VAN KESSEL IN BASIM SHORTLY AFTER MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER'S DISAPPEARANCE.

(MSC/OSC Brotherhood, Order of the Sacred Heart) IN BASIM, van Kessel started hearing strange, conflicting rumors. That something unsettling had been spotted on the sea. That the village of Warkai, just up the river from Otsjanep, was saying a white man had been killed and eaten by Otsjanep. Everyone seemed to know something. On December 3, van Kessel sent Gabriel back to Otsjanep. He sat and smoked, talked, listened. There have been rumors, he told the men in each jeu, that a man from the village named Bere told Omadesep of a white man having been killed. "We saw a fierce giant snake in the sea!" said Wotim, but that was all. They denied knowing anything else. But Bere went on a rampage, running through the village, yelling, screaming, telling everyone he hadn't said a thing, and then he ran off into the jungle. Van Kessel sent a canoe from Basim to Otsjanep and brought Bere and three other men back to Basim to question them. He did so one by one in his house on December 5.

"I just made it all up," said Bere.

"I didn't see a snake," Wotim said. "Just a piece of wood."

"There was a giant crocodile in the sea," said Aitur.

"I saw something with a face, but it was just a tree trunk," said Ekob.

Van Kessel asked them why Aitur didn't kill the crocodile. "We didn't have any weapons with us," he said.

He called in Wotim again, but Wotim ran into the jungle.

On December 8, he sent Gabriel to Otsjanep yet again, this time with a large supply of tobacco. They gathered in the Otsjanep jeu and sat and smoked. "Men of Otsjanep," Gabriel told them, "some of you have already been questioned, and you know that the Tuans are searching for a Tuan from America. They know the corpse washed ash.o.r.e in the neighborhood and that you must have found it and didn't know what to do with it, because the government could suspect you of wrongdoing. Hand me his shorts, so I can show it to the Tuans and they won't have to search any longer."

It was a tactical speech designed to get them to admit they had the body, not mentioning any murder or the suspicion of one. But no one knew anything. Pep had a new dagger made from human bone, though, and he offered his old one to Gabriel. Ajim wasn't there. And Gabriel felt they were behaving strangely. He "saw they were acting; people exaggerated their amazement and they gave cautious answers," van Kessel wrote in his report. "Behind his back they were whispering and they were really nervous."

Van Kessel wasn't sure, but he began to think that Michael Rockefeller had made it to sh.o.r.e and been killed by the men of Otsjanep.

ON DECEMBER 9, von Peij arrived in Omadesep, which lay at the far southern end of his parish. The sun had dropped by the time he settled into the house of his catechist-a spare, native-style room on stilts with gabagaba walls, a palm-frond roof, a table, a bed, and a cupboard. He felt unsettled; he wasn't ready to hear any news. A gas lamp glowed, and on the walls nearest the light, pale bug-eyed lizards with stubby tails and suction cup toes were poised, waiting for insects attracted by the light. Though only a few inches long, they emitted a loud barking sound. Outside, crickets buzzed and a pair of dogs squealed, fighting over sc.r.a.ps of fish skin.

Von Peij was waiting when in walked four men. Bere and b.u.mes were from Otsjanep; Mbuji and Tatsji-one of the men who had escorted Michael, Wa.s.sing, and Gerbrands in the canoes from Omadesep to Otsjanep back in June, who had relatives in Otsjanep-were from Omadesep. They wore shorts, since they were visiting a priest, but they were adorned with the usual bipane sh.e.l.l or carved pig's bone in their septums.

"Okay," von Peij said, "tell me your story."

Bit by bit, it spilled out. On Friday, November 17, Otsjanep had heard that van de Waal wanted building materials in Pirimapun, which they delivered on Sat.u.r.day. The fifty men departed for home late Sunday afternoon, and on Monday morning they paused at the mouth of the Ewta, safe in their own territory. It was a good time to have a smoke and a bite of sago. Something moved in the water. They saw a crocodile, an ew, in the Asmat language. No. It wasn't a crocodile, but a Tuan. He was swimming on his back. He turned and waved. One of them said: "People of Otsjanep, you're always talking about headhunting Tuans. Well, here's your chance." An argument ensued. Dombai, the leader of the Pirien jeu, didn't think he should be killed. Ajim and Fin thought otherwise. While they tried to lift him into a canoe, Pep stabbed him with a spear. It wasn't fatal. They rowed him to the coast, to the Jawor River, where they killed him and made a big fire.

"Was he wearing gla.s.ses?" asked von Peij. "What kind of clothes was he wearing?"

Their answer burned in his memory, a detail he'd never forget: the white man was wearing shorts, but shorts they'd never seen before and that you couldn't buy in the shops of Agats-shorts that ended high up on his legs and had no pockets. Underpants.

Von Peij listened. Nodded his head. "Where is his head?"

"Fin-tsjem aotepetsj ara," they said. "It hangs in the house of Fin. And it looked so small, like the head of a child."

"What about his thigh bones?" said von Peij, who knew that thigh bones were used as daggers. "And his tibia?" These were used as the points of fis.h.i.+ng spears.

Pep had one thigh bone, Ajim the other. Jane one tibia, Wasan the other. As had Michael's left upper arm, Kakar his right. Akaiagap his right forearm, Akaisimit his left. Bese, Erem, and Fom each took a rib. Ainapor had his shorts, those strange shorts that had no legs and no pockets. Dombai or Bese had his gla.s.ses.

"Why did they kill him?" von Peij said.

The killings in Otsjanep almost four years earlier, they said.

Von Peij was overwhelmed. The details, especially the description of Michael's underwear, were too concrete not to be credible. He'd been in Asmat almost six years, spoke the language fluently, was as intimate with the Asmat and their culture as any European had ever been. He felt burdened. But he feigned disbelief. Said little.

The next morning he returned to Jow and sent his cook to the jeu. A few hours later, the cook returned. The same story was now making the rounds of Jow; everyone knew everything.

Von Peij moved on to Biwar Laut, Amates's village. A crowd of men were gathered there. They were excited. They wanted tobacco. "Nda kapak to," they said. "We have to smoke!"

"If you want tobacco," von Peij said, "then you have to do something for me. Bring a letter immediately to Agats."

"To the HPB [the government official]?" Their enthusiasm dampened. They didn't want to go. Not to Agats. Not to any government officials. They were afraid.

"Okay," von Peij said, "then I'm not giving you any tobacco. And the letter isn't for the government, but to a priest who's just pa.s.sing through for one day. That's why you have to go now." The tide was going out, the water dropping fast. In order to make the journey, they had to go immediately.

They agreed. Von Peij scratched a note: "Without having the intention of doing so, I stumbled across information and I feel compelled to report this. Michael Rockefeller has been picked up and killed by Otsjanep. Jow, Biwar, and Omadesep are all clearly aware of it."

He sealed the note in an envelope addressed to Father de Brouwer, the head priest in Agats, but inside of that was a message addressed to the government controller in Agats, Cor Nijoff.

Von Peij returned to Atsj the next day.

On December 12, van Kessel arrived in Agats to talk to Nijoff, who showed him von Peij's "small note that was absolutely clear." Van Kessel immediately traveled to Atsj to talk to his colleague.

ON DECEMBER 15, back in Basim, van Kessel wrote a long report to Nijoff. "After my conversation with Father von Peij, the one percent of doubt I had has been taken by the very detailed data which matched with my data and inspections.

"IT IS CERTAIN THAT MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER WAS MURDERED AND EATEN BY OTSJANEP," he wrote in all caps. "This was revenge for the shooting four years ago . . . and in all the villages until Sjeru [sic] people only talk about this heroic act of Otsjanep and it is known everywhere." Van Kessel spelled it all out. Names. Who had which body parts. That Tatsji, who had free pa.s.sage between Omadesep and Otsjanep, had arrived in the village as they were singing bisj songs and had seen Pep's new thigh bone dagger. And that Otsjanep was in a turbulent mood, "ready to receive" anyone from the government who might come to investigate. In rough water and high winds, Gabriel took the note that night to Nijoff, who was now in Pirimapun. Gabriel's canoe capsized three times and he arrived sick and exhausted; he would almost die of pneumonia.

Five days later, on December 20, Ajim, Fin, and several other men from Otsjanep arrived in Basim, where a relative had died. They steered clear of van Kessel's house, but he sent them a message: he would pay three steel axes for Michael's head and two for his femur. The two warriors from Otsjanep refused. "THEY DID NOT DENY THE MURDER," van Kessel wrote, "though they also said, Tatsji is talking nonsense.' " The priest found the two men and took a photo of them, "so one would later (if necessary) recognize the main culprits."

Van Kessel's long report found its mark. On December 21, six days after sending it to Nijoff, P. J. Platteel, the governor of Dutch New Guinea, cabled Theo Bot, the minister of the interior. The cable is marked "secret" and "destroy." It was in fact partly destroyed, and only part of it remains in the archives, but it carries a handwritten note: "Remainder not distributed.

"Resident Merauke [Eibrink Jansen] received through controller Agats [Nijoff] a letter from Father van Kessel in which it is stated that the latter a.s.sumes beyond any doubt that Rockefeller was murdered by the inhabitants of Ocanep [sic] village and eaten. His information, which was obtained by contact persons in other villages, would allegedly agree with similar information obtained through Father van Pey [sic]. According to this information, on the morning in question a number of canoes would have found Rockefeller at sea and allegedly he had already been run through with a spear when he was hauled aboard. Once ash.o.r.e he would have been slaughtered and eaten. Skull, bones and clothing are said to reside with person known by name. Resident also reports that rumors are making the rounds in Merauke about these things already and that it is improbable that the case remains outside the press. In my opinion some reservations need to be made. No evidence has been found yet and therefore there is no certainty yet. In this connection it doesn't seem germane to me to give information to the press or Rockefeller Senior at this time. If any questions arise then we could respond to these by stating that the rumor has reached us too and that it will be investigated. This will gain us some time and would enable us in case of confirmation to pick a more favorable moment for publication. Resident Merauke is still considering which action would be most proper to get definitive closure."

21.

March 2012

MEN FROM OTSJANEP AND PIRIEN GATHER TO TALK IN PIRIEN DURING MY FIRST TRIP TO THE VILLAGE. THE MAN IN THE CENTER IS BER, SON OF DOMBAI; TO HIS RIGHT IS TAPEP, SON OF PEP.

AMATES, WILEM, FILO, Manu, and I piled into the longboat at six a.m. and headed back to Otsjanep. Although I'd read all of van Kessel's and von Peij's reports before my first visit and had spoken at length to von Peij, I had wanted to take things slow.

Finally I'd told everything to Amates and Wilem, and neither was surprised in the least. "Otsjanep killed him; every Asmat knows this," Amates had said. "We will find out everything, don't you worry, Mister Carl."

This time we were returning to just Otsjanep and Pirien, where I wanted to spend a few days and finally question the men directly about Michael Rockefeller. With us was Hennah Joku, a small, quiet woman who'd grown up in Papua New Guinea and on Lake Sentani, outside of Jayapura, in Indonesian Papua, where her father had been an early leader in the Papuan independence movement. I'd been waiting for her for five days in Agats, and she'd finally arrived. Her English and Indonesian were perfect; I hoped she'd help fill in the s.p.a.ces that I couldn't understand when Amates was translating.

We slid into the mud banks of Pirien just after noon. The village felt hot and still. There was no dock here; we clambered over three canoes and up onto sagging, rotting logs that formed a precarious path over the mud. At the house we'd stayed in before there was shouting.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," said Wilem, shaking his head.

Amates looked grim. "We cannot stay here," he said.

Though the house was vacant, it was next door to a family whose outhouse we had used, for which Amates had given them money. The patriarch wouldn't let us stay. "People were angry at him," Amates said. "Jealous. Come."

We walked along Pirien's main boardwalk, raised five feet over the swamp. We descended a notched log, then walked twenty feet along a single two-by-four two feet over the black mud to a three-room house with a small veranda. Amates said a few words and whoos.h.!.+ the family inside gathered their nipa palm sleeping mats and little piles of clothing and disappeared into the back kitchen area, a twenty-by-twenty thatched room with a mud hearth. Its floor was made of sticks an inch in diameter, placed two inches apart. Blackened pots hung from the eaves, which were filled with faded cloth and palm net bags, bows and arrows, and fis.h.i.+ng nets.

The rooms themselves were empty, the walls black with soot and dirt. We sat on the floor, and Filo cooked lunch on his portable one-burner stove-white rice and freeze-dried ramen, with a few canned sardines mixed in. By now I had a clearer sense of who was who. We were in the house of one of Dombai's sons, the man van Kessel said had Michael's gla.s.ses. Dombai had eventually married four wives and produced fourteen children, and he'd died from being gored by a wild boar. Kokai, the man we'd met in Basim who told me the story of Lapre's raid, was related to him somehow. Pep, Fin, and Ajim were all dead, but the sons of Pep and Ajim were here, alive and well.

"Come, we go to Otsjanep," said Amates when we were done eating.

We tiptoed over the walkways again-well, I tiptoed, while Amates and Wilem and the Asmat scampered over the narrowest logs and boards with babies on their backs like they were walking on a three-foot-wide sidewalk. We jumped in the longboat and sped upriver a half-mile. The jungle cleared and Otsjanep appeared. We tied up at a low dock and climbed onto the right bank. Boardwalks ran over the swamp, and houses-thatch and palm and wood, with corrugated roofs-dotted a broad clearing. It was quiet and smelled of smoke and dampness. There were people everywhere, on every porch, in every doorway. Watching. A crowd of men and boys gathered, following us. A child saw me and started screaming, shaking violently, inconsolable, and then dived into a water-filled ditch, desperate to escape and hide.

Amates laughed. "She is afraid of you. She thinks you're a ghost."

The boardwalk ended, and we navigated across logs in the mud to a dilapidated and abandoned wooden house with a large covered porch. We sat down on the floor, our backs to its front door, and men began gathering. Five. Ten. Thirty. Soon there were fifty sitting around us. Waiting. In the front sat Tapep, son of Pep, now the head of Otsjanep.

Amates took two pouches of loose-leaf tobacco and pushed them into the circle. Wilem took another one and did the same. Tapep and the older men reached for the pouches, took fingerfuls of the brown leaves, divided them up, pa.s.sed them around.

Out of nowhere, with no warning, with no apparent signal, a man yelled and started singing in the Asmat way-a long, mournful chant-and others joined in. "Yeh! Yeh," they shouted in unison, all forty men in one voice, perfect harmony. It was powerful. Haunting. Beautiful.

Amates began talking. And talking. Sometimes in Indonesian, sometimes in Asmat. When he was done, there was a moment of silence, and then I heard a different kind of screaming. Hysterical wailing. The beat of a drum from across the village. Men turned their heads, spoke, began to stand and leave and stream toward the direction of the wails.

"Someone has died," Amates said, rising. "A woman. We must go. We will come back this afternoon."

Which we did. The same men gathered. We distributed tobacco again, and Amates gave his speech again, and with Hennah's help, I did my best to capture what I could of what was said.

"We are all the same, Americans and Asmat. We Asmat have a proud history. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We do things different now, after the Bible came, but our past is who we are and we should talk about it. People in America are interested in Asmat. They want to know about us. Everyone in America already knows about what happened to Michael Rockefeller, so there's nothing to be afraid of. It was a long time ago. Mister Carl has come a long way and he wants to know these old stories." Then Amates said, "And we know Pep killed Michael Rockefeller."

A stir went through the group. They fidgeted. Pep's son, Tapep, spoke. "What happened here then was a long time ago. It is past. No one here remembers."

An old man wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt that said SNIPER! on the front spoke. "Everyone in Otsjanep is young, and they are surprised at this story. I have heard it, but I was just a little boy, and I am afraid."

I watched Tapep. He swallowed, looked at me, looked at Amates. He and the men started talking in Asmat, a quiet argument. "They're worried," said Amates. "Scared."

"I heard these stories from my father," said a man wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt in green and brown camouflage. And the next thing I knew he was talking about "the white man, Pastor Zegwaard," bringing the Bible to Asmat. "This is all I can remember," he said.

Silence. No one said anything more. We sat and stared at each other, and I had no idea if they were telling the truth or not. Was I imagining their skittishness? Was I imagining that they were deflecting the conversation on purpose to Zegwaard?

"Let's go," said Amates. "That is enough for the day."

THAT NIGHT WE sat on the floor around the flickering lights of two tin cans filled with kerosene, a column of black smoke rising into the darkness. Shadows danced across the dirty walls. Rain poured down, the way it does only in Asmat, a shattering, pummeling onslaught. A few men from Pirien sat there too, the women and children, at least a dozen of them, out in the kitchen. We smoked. We looked at each other. It all felt untouchable to me.

"Do you think they were telling the truth today?" I asked Amates.

"Two men said, We know this story, but we are afraid to talk,' " Hennah said.

"What?" I said. "When did they say that? Why didn't you translate it?"

She shrugged.

"Yes," Amates said. "They know, but they are just afraid."

"They are afraid of America," Wilem said. "Of the American army. Tomorrow some men are going to Basim for tobacco and sugar. Amates and I should go with them, to talk with them alone."

In the darkness and dancing light, Amates and Wilem whispered, kneeling close to me. "Manu has been hearing things. People are afraid to be seen talking, so we will go out tomorrow night and talk to people."

Then Amates said, "The gla.s.ses are here. Dombai's son says he has seen them. They are in his family. His father was killed when he was a small boy, by a bite from a pig." He paused. "If I was teaching these people, I would go crazy! They answer a question with a question. They say nothing!"

I don't know what time it was when I fell asleep in a corner on the floor. I was jarred awake by chanting and drumming. It was close by. I got up, tiptoed past ten bodies on the floor-Dombai's son and his family, all squished together on palm mats, babies and children in the pile-and went outside. The rain had long since stopped, and there was no moon. It was pitch-black. Warm. Still. The chanting and drumming were right there, right in front of the house on the boardwalk, but I couldn't see anything. When lightning flashed on the horizon, there they were, a circle of a dozen men thirty feet away. Over the drumming, staccato and deep, a voice would begin and others would join in, the sound seeming to come up from the very center of the earth. I sat down transfixed. Why was this happening here, in front of my house? I wanted to go over to them, but wasn't sure if I should. As the sound went through me I looked at the sky, the Milky Way thick overhead, a trillion stars. I don't know how long I sat and listened. An hour. Two. It went on and on, with the occasional pause, the flash of a match lighting a face, a red glowing; a laugh here, a low voice there, and then the drums beat again and the voices rang on even as I tried to go back to sleep.

AMATES AND WILEM disappeared at four a.m., and I spent the day sitting on the porch and walking through the village. Children ran wildly, everywhere. They climbed palm trees and swam in the river and rolled in the mud. Gangs of them walked holding hands and covered in white, dried mud. A few chickens and huge black pigs scrunched through the swamp. The flies were incessant, swarming onto my hands, legs, arms, eyes, and mouth. In the afternoon everyone just went to sleep. The whole village ceased to move.

When Amates returned late that morning, he was angry. Frustrated. "They say nothing," he said. "They say they know but are too afraid to say. They say, Maybe tomorrow.' But we'll go to Otsjanep again in a little while. The man we went to Basim with is afraid the other elders will get mad. It's a problem with our own history. We don't have a problem talking about it, he said, but the elders don't want to."

Around noon, an old man walked into the house. He whispered to Amates, who took him into the other room. They sat on the floor, smoked and whispered. It was such a big, deep secret, this thing that had happened so long ago and that everyone knew about but no one wanted to speak of. And the reasons were so complex. The young felt connected to a past that carried deep shame; they feared the wrath of the Indonesian government, the American government, and probably the Catholic Church and G.o.d himself. If they had killed Michael, it had been an act of tremendous defiance, something they'd never done before and knew wouldn't go over well with their white overlords. But I suspected there was more to it than that, more than concerns about legal consequences or Christian wrath. If Michael had been killed by Otsjanep, it wasn't as simple a matter as revenge in the Western sense. It was spiritual, sacred, a rebalancing, and there were probably elements that went so deep they couldn't be shared without repercussions from the spirit world itself. Balance in Asmat was a precarious thing because it was based on opposites: if they had killed Michael, then they would be waiting, waiting for the response, a response literal and metaphysical.

When Amates and the man emerged, Amates said we'd go back to Otsjanep in a bit. To the man's house. There he would tell us what he remembered.

THE HOUSE WAS a timeless place, all sticks and thatch and open fireplaces. Smoke curled from the hearth, and the floor was bark, covered with sweet-smelling palm fronds. We could not pa.s.s unnoticed. Walking from the boat to the house, we picked people up, the crowd grew, and by the time I was sitting on the palm floor there were twenty of us. And more coming all the time. The man looked nervous. He was tall, skinny, with a hole in his ear and one in his septum, and tight curls of gray. "He says okay, he will tell the story, but we must go, there are too many people," Amates said.

We moved to the front veranda of the abandoned house again, and again there was a huge crowd. We pa.s.sed out the tobacco. Everyone rolled cigarettes, and we waited. Pep's son Tapep arrived. The man who said he'd tell us the story rose and went into the house with a few others. I heard low voices. He walked out and kept walking and he was gone.