Nirvana Effect (2 page)

Weeks ago, Mahanta had mentioned the ritual. 
Edward’s mind travelled back to the moment.

“In a few moons, the tribe will try to make me a man,” Mahanta
says in Tamil
as he guide
s Edward through the jungle.

“What do you think of that?” Edward
asks
, noting the odd way Mahanta phrased it.

“Well, I’d like to stay a boy forever, I think,” he
says
. 

Mahanta was hardly a boy by any
standard.  He was a hardened, muscular seventeen year old who could have passed for twenty-five in the West.  His dark hands bore the callouses of labor.

“Me, too,”
says Edward
.  “How will they make you a man?”

“It is not something for out
siders.”  Mahanta will no
t discuss it further.

Edward breathed in deeply and let the oxygen circulate through his veins.  Nockwe’s threats were fresh in his mind.  The more time distanced him from them, however, the more easily he recognized that Nockwe’s intimidation act was probably for Edward’s own benefit. 
Must be some Onge law forbidding outsiders, just like Mahanta said.

Finally, Edward
recalled
his
mission instructions.  He would follow them tonight, not because he really cared what Brother Anthony thought, but rather because they provided a good justification for the decision he’d already made the moment Nockwe had told him not to leave the
hut
:
  

“
You have
too inquisitive
a
mind, Brother Styles.  It is why I’m sending you to the Onge.  No white man has ever changed their culture.  I know you‘ve heard ‘you‘re not your brother’ plenty of times – and you definitely are
not
Allen.  But in this one case, perhaps, it’s a good thing.  Don’t do the preaching that you hate, anyway.  Just study, and study well.  Teach these people western science - irrigation, basic medicine.  Do not fail to learn everything about this tribe - every secret, every way.  You must unde
rstand
these people.  Only then can you help them.  Maybe
after that we’ll send in Allen.

“Why did you become a Jesuit, again?”  It was Anthony’s running joke.
  He always said it with a serious face and then laughed sharply, in a staccato chortle.  “
Your heart’s in the right place, my
scientist priest.  I have no doubt of that.  God has a purpose for us all.”

These Onge
had mystified
Edward
.  In six months, he felt no closer to understanding them than when he started.  Perhaps Allen would have done a better job after all.  The Onge not only resisted change; they rebuked it.  Their women lugged water over half a mile from a nearby stream, yet were utterly disinterested in irrigation.  They let Edward practice medicine on individual tribesmen, but refused to learn medicine’s procedures themselves.  If he could just
understand
some fabric of their culture, he could relate enough to help them.  As it was, he was planning on packing up, soon.

He would not miss this opportunity to observe them.  Nockwe had
the right idea in being
so forceful in his warning; yet the only way he could have avoided Edward’s watching would have been to never bring it up in the first place.

Edward’s thoughts turned toward more questions.  He had no idea what the ritual would entail.  He had not a clue what lay in store for him outside the
hut.  He didn’t bother reflecting
on it.  He would soon find out.

He paused at the doorway and gripped the bamboo.  It dug into his skin
.  He weighed the consequences of satiating his curiosity, then shrugged them off.  He just wouldn’t get caught. 
That was th
a
t.

Before Edward could even roll off the balls of his feet to poke his head outside, the air filled up with a low, hair-raising drone.
The sound seemed everywhere, as though without source or reason.  He could feel it.

The ritual. 
It had begun. 

Edward couldn’t help but fear for Mahanta.  Many of the primitive initiation rites he’d studied were none too pleasant for the initiate
.  Edward liked the young man.  He was different than the rest of the Onge.  He had an ear sharp for all things Western and a head full of questions. 

Edward hoped that difference wouldn’t result in consequences for Mahanta during the ceremony.

The droning enervated Edward.  He tried to place the sound,
momentarily
drained of all his enthusiasm to sneak out.  He steeled himself to push on along the course that his curiosity had pointed.  He poked his head out. 
No guards.

He slipped outside.  The sound became more localized to his ears.  It was coming from the bonfire area.  Edward crept around his hut and peeked in that direction.

A fire blazed higher than he’d ever seen at the camp.  Edward could tell a sizeable crowd had gathered.  He could view its fringes even from his dismal vantage point. 
It must have been half the tribe.

He knew he could risk getting closer.  He didn’t see anyone around.  The camp felt abnormally still.  If the tribe had their vision burned out by the fire,
they wouldn’t be able to see his
spying.  
He cursed to himself
using his favorite Onge curse:
“Niet wan-wan.”
 
Fools die fools.

Edward crept to the next closest tent, and then another, edging as closely as he dared to the gathering.  All the dwellings were empty.  Everyone was at the fire.

It was the medicine man who was droning.  Edward could see him clearly, twisting and contorting on the ground, his chant incongruously monotonous.  The crowd watched raptly.  Their long flickering shadows stretched behind them as though to reach Edward as they shifted to follow the vagaries of the light.  Edward stopped approaching when their shadows met his own.

He
heard
the witch doctor more distinctly now, bellowing at a monotone which eerily lacked sanity or humanity. 
Edward had the dim realization
that he was awfully close.  He suddenly was aware of his heart pounding
as though lodged in his ears. 
He had a fleeting thought which he quickly quelled. 
I should go back. 

He peered around the edge of the hut
closest
to the fire, watching with the one eye he dared expose.  They stood in rank and file, every Onge with a weapon in his hand, dressed similarly to Nockwe.  There were more than four hundred of them.  It must have been all the males in the village.  Even the children
attended
.  The light flickered ominously off their dark skin and weapons.

On the far side of the bonfire writhed the medicine man.  He lay horizontal on the ground, his erratic gyrations out of sync with the constant, insane chant that came deep from his gut.  He may have been in his death throes of a drug - or it may have been all ceremony.  The who
le village was silent, though,
except for this “witch doctor” who would have been committed to an asylum in any Western culture.

Edward’s ears started to separate out the sounds of the night.  Besides the chant, there was the faint rattle of the medicine man’s beads.  The birds and the animals of the jungle let out their occasional cry.  Over it all he heard his own breathing, his heart racing as though if it ran fast enough he could escape whatever threat the jungle people
might throw
at him. 

Over his own breathing he heard another.  A tiny yelp
behind him
clued his ears to it.
He twisted around quietly, Nockwe’s poison-tipped spear flashing in his mind’s eye.

It was only Mahanta.  The
young man sat in a hut forty yards away.
  Edward wondered how he’d heard him.  Probably
the fear was stretching his
perceptions.

He
saw Mahanta
through the
hut’s entrance. 
He sat there alone on a mat with a surgical needle in his hand, his arm
straight
out. 
Blood pooled red on the pit of his arm.  He’d given himself some sort of shot.  Edward wondered if that was a part of the ritual.
 

The anachronism
gave
Edward
something to ponder, but he filed it away for later
.  His mind never stopped; f
ear seemed to
work it all the harder
.

Mahanta would be leaving
that
hut soon, and might have the same injunction toward keeping the ritual
’s
secret as Nockwe.  Edward saw
the young man
was breathing hard, staring straight forward.  The missionary quickly took cover behind another hut, out of view of Mahanta’s path to the gathering.  Again, Edward peered out to the fire.

T
he medicine man’s chant
grew
softer.  His body now matched the droning, immobile on the dirt surrounding the fire.  A
n ember
blew from the fire onto hi
s arm.  It rested there, s
inging his skin before finally
smoldering.  He didn’t move,
and
the droning didn’
t stop.  The whole village was absorbed in his performance
.

Except Mahanta.
  Edward peered back around the corner.  Mahanta was no longer in the hut. 
Edward spotted the
his
shadow shrinking toward the f
ire.  Edward turned back around
again. 

Mahanta walked stiffly towards the gathering, nearing the now quiet medicine man. 
The villagers bunched closer to the fire
to watch
.  The
ir
weapons gave them more the aspect of a militia than a religious or communal gathering. 
Edward wondered what was in store for Mahanta.

Edward heard a sudden shriek of pain. 
He risked craning his neck out to get a better view.  It was early in the morning, but
he felt he’d never been more awake in his life. 
H
e
examined his options.  If he
sprinted at the
first sign of the ceremony ending,
he could make it without being spotted.  Still, it was too close.  He thought again about running back. 

He turned his eyes back to the fire and the “stage” it lit. 
Niet wan-wan.

He could clearly see the medicine man, still on the ground.  Mahanta stood over him, facing the crowd.  To his left, Nockwe brandished a burning staff.  He touched the flame to the
fleshy arm of the medicine man.  The medicine man did not respond in any way.

Nockwe then turned to Mahanta. 
That’s why he shouted. 
Nockwe touched the staff to Mahanta’s flesh.  Again, the young man yelped, but did not move.  The crowd
observed passively
.  Edward could not be so passive, wincing as though the burn had been to his own flesh. 
Edward was rooting for him.

Mahanta stared straight ahead to the crowd as again Nockwe touched the staff to the medicine man.  Again he touched the staff to Mahanta.  This time, Mahanta held fast.  No sound came from his lips.  He did it with an ease that let Edward know he needn’t have yelped either of the other two times if he hadn’t wanted to.  Edward could imagine the burn growing worse and worse on Mahanta’s arm, and still Mahanta didn’t react.  Finally, the chieftain cast the staff back into the fire.  Edward sighed quietly, relieved.

Nockwe grunted and raised his arms, chanting over and over again in an ancient tongue.  Edward recognized its Indo-European roots. 
Man, hunter, killer, peace bringer
- something to that effect.  He could definitely make out the symmetry in the words.  The burn was to burn out something animalistic in the youth, and yet bring out all that was animalistic in the soon-to-be-man.

Nockwe’s words stopped. 
In
unison
,
the tribe lay down their weapons and kneeled.  The chieftain nudged the boy toward
s them
.  Mahanta walked
forward
warily.  He
was looking at their weapons.

Mahanta’s concentra
tion was absolute
. 
Edward didn’t understand what that look was, then. 
He would later recognize that this was the moment that would launch Mahanta onto his inevitable path. 

Quietly,
Mahanta
stole to the back of the crowd.  From the ground next to a young child, he took a small staff.  He circled to the front, between the fire and the crowd
, and held up the petty stick, shouting,
“
Ley hook!” 
I am.