The Cuckoo Colloquium

12 - Moonch

'What did the Dalai Llama say about rain forests?'

This was preying on Moonch's mind as she sat on the stump. The mantra-compassion, non-violence, love-it just didn't feel right, not in a jungle.

She had been watching the shirtless local man with a spear and pretty tattoos on his neck paddle up in a small canoe, and then beach it on the other side of the elephant-eared palms. And then, 'Head hunters, head hunters!' went Windy's frenzied screams.

Fish dotted a big net, heaped in the back of the man's canoe-Moonch just intuited this to be true, even though the canoe was on the other side of the palms.

"They're gonna cook us in big pots and shrink our heads!"

Moonch also knew the guy was the same fisherman they had passed on the river in the boat-or when they had had a boat.

How did she know these things? Had the accident woken some new sensitivity within her?

This was bigger than compassion, non-violence, love; it was bigger than Taoism, or Buddhism, or Moonch family solidarity. Because when she was doing that soaring backflip, she had seen only one thing-and it wasn't the naked body of Nini Read, or anything so lesbo shallow-it was the trees, the jungle trees, and it was like the jungle had split open, and there was this gaping, green hole, and inside the hole was a soul, and that was profound and way cool.

'My missing soul-it's here, waiting for me!' She just had to locate it, like a scavenger hunt.

The man spoke in Malay with Dim, though their communication seemed an effort, and he jabbered and pointed off in an eastwardly direction.

"He gonna's take us to his house," Dim said, though he didn't seem thrilled with the invitation-more like it was an offer one best not refuse.

Dim and the local zipped off like small darts into the forest, and she did a diagnostic check-She had pain, but it was the right pain, the pain you'd feel if you did a back-flip from thirty feet-a stinging pain throughout her body. But nothing was broken-nothing except her view of life, her jungle vision, which, actually, was a pretty big event: Everything seemed different now, the jungle had come alive for her; colors seemed so vibrant; there was a happy buzzing all around her, and it was life-jungle life, pulsing, singing!

They had piled things onto her like she was some pack burro, but Moonch didn't mind-not when the jungle had come alive, not when the flora was auditioning for her, not when the butterflies danced so.

After about an hour of steady jungle slogging, Puso slumped against a fat vine as if something had inexplicably affected his health. "I'll never get home to graduate, I'll wind up working in bars getting propositioned by my own Mum!"

After another hour Nini flopped to the ground as if stricken by a blowgun dart. "You'll have to amputate my feet if I'm forced to walk any further."

But Moonch didn't mind; there was music in everything; you just had to be plugged in.

Dim seemed to take their concerns seriously, though, and he scuttled away spider-like over a rotted log to talk with the guide. And he came back and waved his hand. "He say five."

Nini held out her arms, martyr-like, again. "Five what? - Minutes? Hours? Years?"

"We there in five."

It was not five minutes-Moonch could testify to that. Another hour went by, and the tattooed guide in front kept walking, climbing ridges, and then descending into swamp brush and mud, and then back onto a green carpet of leaf litter, with occasional barbs and trip-wire creepers.