that it had something to do with the husk, with the fact that the outer part must be stripped away to reveal the inner. The only other (overtly) ancestor-worshipping culture I have observed in South East Asia was that of the inveterate betel-chewers of western Sumba, a rice-growing people. As part of their annual fertility rite, they make offerings at the megalithic graves of their ancestors of sirih pinang – a whole betel nut, a thin green fruit that looks like a large immature catkin, and lime powder. For the Sumbanese, the symbolism of the offering is manifest: the betel nut, very much like a miniature coconut, is the womb; the catkin stands for the penis; the white powdered lime for the fertilising seed. There were similar elements here, the fertile hollow of the coconut and the myriad grains of rice the sperm.
Sarani was not strong on symbols. ‘Sometimes we make Mbo’ Pai when someone is ill, and you must make Mbo’ Pai before a wedding, but this kind is one that we do from time to time for good luck.’ Nasib was the word he used, meaning also ‘fate’ and ‘fortune’. ‘Good luck for fishing, for health, for the boat.’ I wondered if there was an element of animism at work, if the boat had a spirit that could be protected and strengthened through the observance of ritual. I had seen such a ceremony performed in another part of the Malay world, a shamanic cleansing and fortifying of a house-spirit, a spiritual spring-clean.
‘No, of course the boat does not have a ghost.’ I sensed he was getting irritated by my questions, but I had to ask how the ceremony was thought to work.
‘No, the ancestors do not come here.’
‘Where are the ancestors, Panglima?’
‘Their spirits are with Mbo’. Mbo’ is the first ancestor. He comes here.’
‘And the ancestors made the same offerings?’
‘Oh, yes. They did it like this, so we do it like this the same.’
‘And if you do this, you will thrive?’
‘Kalau Tuhan menolong.’
Sarani was the first to wake and he set about the third act of Mbo’ Pai. He emptied the rice onto a winnowing tray, and took it aft to where Minehanga and another woman were waiting by the rice mortar, carved from a single piece of wood. Every boat had one of these, knocking about, sat on, used as a quotidian container, until the time came for it to assume its ceremonial role. Sarani emptied half the rice into the hollow and the two women standing opposite each other, each with a foot on the base, drove double-ended pestles as tall as themselves into the mortar in turn, one two, and the boat’s sounding boards gave back thump thump, thump thump. The first light of day reached us through the palms of the island as the rice was winnowed over the stern.
Minehanga tore the husk off the coconut and split it with a parang. She squatted on a block of wood to which was attached a cruelly toothed metal spur and ground the coconut against the bit, catching the grated flesh in a bowl below. The mixture of rice and coconut was put on to cook. Everyone on the three remaining family boats partook of the meal – Sabung Lani had left for Bongao before dawn. The rice had been too long in the grain and made the whole meal taste musty.
The taboo on work aboard the boat was still in force and the injunction served to remind Sarani of all the chores he had to complete, all the improvements he wanted to make. ‘Tomorrow, we will wash the boards, we will take out all the nets, and find that rat. We will wash out the hold. We will wash all our clothes. Then I want to build a roof. Like Pilar’s, plank-board and pitch-cloth, if there is wood. You see, you put supports and then an arched beam across …’ This led him to examine the rickety structure that held up the tarpaulin. ‘But this will have to wait until Sabung Lani comes back. He has a sainso.’ I wondered what on earth a sainso was. ‘You know, it’s a machine from your country. Sainso. For cutting wood.’ A chainsaw, Sabung Lani had a chainsaw. ‘From Si Sehlim the fish agent in Sandakan. He also has an ajusabal.’ This turned out to be an adjustable spanner of gargantuan proportions with which Sarani (or more likely Pilar) would work on the engine. Sarani could not even start the engine by himself.
The nut holding the flywheel onto the engine block was huge and rusted. ‘I want to take the wheel off and put that on.’ He was pointing to a rusting contraption that was sloshing around in the oily bilge, a crank handle that he would mount across the top of the engine, and at the end of the shaft a geared cog and chain set-up that would turn the engine over. The chain sat in a tin soused with oil. ‘Then I can start it myself.’ I cast an eye over the motor, the wads of flip-flop rubber that wedged the throttle lever into place, the tube leading into a plastic five-litre oil bottle that acted as the oil reservoir, the other tube, held up by a piece of string tied to a roof spar, running out of the plastic barrel with a lid and a tap that was the fuel tank – more like a patient in intensive care than a locomotion unit – and I wondered that it started at all.
It was permitted, however, to work away from the boat, and Sarani, on Pilar’s boat, made ready to go fishing on the reef. My sunburn had subsided, and I was glad to be able to accompany Sarani again, if only to get away from his boat; there was something about the stillness and the inactivity aboard during the Mbo’ Pai that seemed preternatural. As he poled out against a stiffening breeze I asked him about the place of his ancestors near Bongao, about his childhood.
‘My father came from Sanga-Sanga. My mother’s family was near Sibutu, but she died when I was still small. I was the ninth of ten children. Three of the others died when they were young. My father was already old and when my mother died he went back to Bongao. It was a dangerous journey before we had engines, the current is very strong. When we got there I did not live with my father. I slept on a different boat with another family. I worked with them and then, when I was just a youth, I hadn’t long been wearing shorts, I worked for the Japanese. They were building an airstrip on Sanga-Sanga Island. They paid us Japanese dollars and then the aeroplanes and the boats of the Melikan came playing bombs, and they paid us Melikan dollars to mend the flying ship place. Your dollars in Italy are the same?’
This was astounding information. I could have asked Sarani how old he was till I was blue in the face, and still be none the wiser, but now, as a result of his desire to show off his Japanese vocab and his curiosity about the international currency market, I could work out that if he was wearing shorts, at (say) the age of eleven, in 1942, he was roughly sixty-five, and fourteen at the end of the war. ‘Some of those Melikan used to give me cans of food, which I sold, and sometimes we went fishing in their boat and I would dive for them. For oysters.’
He was quiet for a moment, remembering. ‘I had my own boat after that. I went out to catch trepang, just working all the time. My father had died. I had no family close by. I ate with the other family, the one from before, but every night I was spearing trepang, and every day I was boiling it and smoking it. I would sit there on the sea-shore watching my fire, and the boys my age would say, “Come, play baseball,” and I would say no and stay tending my fire. There was a girl who would stay with me on the beach sometimes and she … Oh, what was that?’ A ray. ‘We must find poles for those spear heads. We can do that on Mabul tonight.’ He did not resume his story. I asked him what happened next, and he said ‘When? Here, start paying out the net.’
Collecting reef produce is much like collecting wild mushrooms – you have to know what is safe to eat. You have to know what is safe to touch, for that matter; at least mushrooms do not bite you, prick you, sting you or cut you. The biters do not present much of a threat. Reef sharks are timid fish, and barracuda attacks are caused in the main by mistaken identity – look out for that flashing silver bracelet that looks like a fish in distress. Triggerfish are ill-tempered enough to attack an intruder into their nesting territory, but their mouths are small and nutrition is not the object of their biting. There are two deadly poisonous biters, the sea snake and the blue-ringed octopus. The sea snake is one of the most poisonous of all snakes: fifteen minutes to organ failure. Luckily, it is also one of the most docile and bites so rarely that it is not considered dangerous. They also say that its mouth is so small, it can only bite in places like the fraenum of skin between the fingers; I have not met anyone who has tested this theory, although one did swim glancingly across my shoulder once. The octopus