Pecked to death by ducks

Author:Cahill, Tim [Cahill, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American, Adventure stories
Publisher: New York : Vintage Books
Published: 1994-10-22T22:00:00+00:00

in the topmost branches without regard to his own safety. The guards rushed to the tree and held it upright.

Some of the men tried to lure the monkey down with freshly dug roots. The women continued to sing. Eventually, the monkey descended a lower branch and ate the muddy roots. He seemed to notice one of the guards and began grooming him, picking imaginary lice from his hair and eating them. Some of the women laughed, and the song was briefly interrupted.

About ten minutes later, a kind of brittle tension seemed to animate the crowd. The monkey man's brow was furrowed, and his movements had slowed. There was an ancient anger in his face. He leapt at one of the guards. The crowd exploded in a single shriek that seemed composed of equal parts glee and fear.

All twenty of the guards fell on the man, but he fought them off in convulsive bursts of what seemed to be superhuman strength. It seemed as if the monkey man was suffering a kind of fit. Several guards were thrown across the corral. Others were knocked off their feet. One man suffered a bloodied nose. A minute later the guards had the man restrained: There were several men on each arm, several on each leg. The man was lifted high on many hands, and Ketut sprinkled him with water that had been blessed by a priest.

Slowly, the man came to his senses. I could see a distant bleari-ness in his eyes, a confusion there that you see in drunkards. He was lowered to the ground. Several of the guards spoke softly with him until he rose and walked away, stumbling slightly.

There were several other sanghyangs that night. A man crawled about on all fours and ate garbage like a pig; another ran through a blazing fire and stomped it out with his bare feet. And always, at the end, there was the final violent, convulsive fight.

Bali is, by and large, a peaceful island. In the mountain villages, miles away from the bustling tourist beaches, it is possible to leave a suitcase by the side of the road and return several days later to claim it. People do not fight, drink excessively, or steal. The culture is based on agriculture, and the agricultural system— one that has fed the island for uncounted centuries—requires co-

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