QB VII by Leon Uris Read Free Book Online

DEFTLY maneuvered the thirty foot thatched roof dugout over the bubbling rapids where the Lemanak tributary rushed into the Lampur River. It was not difficult to tell the doctor’s boat for it had the largest out-board motor of any that pushed up the Lemanak. It smoothed and they glided past a brace of sleeping crocodiles. The sound of the motor sent them slithering down the sandbank into the water. A tribe of monkeys shrieked at them leaping along the treetops.
    For ten miles up the Lemanak tributary there were a series of long houses of the Ulu Tribe of Sea Dayaks. Each of the houses was a communal village unto itself built on hardwood poles and housing from twenty to fifty families. The long houses running up to lengths of over two hundred feet hugged the river front. A pull-up ladder, once a defensive measure against attacking neighbors, served as a stairs to the common veranda. Facing the river, were a long uncovered drying platform and communal kitchen and work area. In the rear of each house there were small private rooms for each family. It was all roofed in palm leaf and shingles and beneath it pigs and chickens ran wild amid human feces, and mangy curs struggled for existence.
    Fifteen such long houses formed a tribal unit of the Ulu’s under the rule of a chieftain named Bintang, after the stars.
    The arrival of Dr. Kelno’s boat was greeted by the clap of gongs, the usual welcome for any visitor. During the day, as Dr. Kelno held clinic, the Turah’s, the heads of the other long houses of the tribe, arrived for the council meeting that Bintang had promised the doctor.
    By evening they had all assembled, bedecked in woven jackets of blazing colors, cone-shaped hats topped with feathers, and assorted arm and leg bracelets. They were olive-skinned men of five feet in height, with seminegroid features mixed with that of Oriental. Their shiny black hair was pulled back to buns behind their necks and their shoulders, legs, and hands bore heavy tattoo markings. Some of the older Turahs sported such tattoos awarded to a warrior for his kills as a head-hunter in days not so long past. From rafter beams, all about the long house hung dozens of heads, all scraped clean as the inside of pumpkins. As the Turahs gathered Bintang offered them hot rice beer and they drank and chewed betel nuts and puffed cheroots in a comer of the common veranda.
    Beyond them on the drying deck, the women went about their business of cooking, weaving rattan mats and bright cloth, making jewelry and curing the sago, a starchy food from tree trunks. Beneath their bare breasts they wore corsets made of many brass rings encircling the entire body and these adornments were decorated with coins and chain jewelry, and their ear lobes were deformed by heavily weighted earrings.
    The mood of the Turahs, which had been lively, changed to somber as the dour Dr. Kelno and his translator joined them. Feelings about him were definitely mixed. Bintang bade them to place their highly colored and ornamented seat mats on the rattan floor. Dr. Kelno and his translator, Mudich, sat opposite them all. Bintang and his chief magician Pirak, the Manang of the tribe, sat off to a side. Pirak was one of the hereditary fakirs called by the spirits to administer health and the wisdom of the gods. There were numerous categories and ranks of the Manangs. Pirak, a wrinkled old specimen, was of a special breed known as Manang Bali, a male in female’s dress and behavior. He was a seductress of young males but bisexual as well. Pirak received exorbitant fees of gifts and food for performance of his mystic hokum. Too old to inherit chiefdom from Bintang, Pirak was determined to hold his exalted position and felt that Dr. Adam Kelno presented a threat.
    Meaningless amenities flowed and then the translator began the business, as the half-starved dogs snapped up the remains of the plates of delicacies.
    “Dr. Adam say,” Mudich began, “that monsoon season is almost upon us