Andeline sat on the beach, her sarong draped loosely over her chest and stared wistfully out to the sea where Harold was swimming. They were honey mooning on Bako National Park where the golden sandy beaches were derelict and idyllic. Palm trees swayed and the clear water of the sea was as warm as a bath. It truly was like paradise. Every new bride’s desire. But not for Andeline, she had had access to palm trees and golden sands all her life whenever she felt like it. The Bidayuh are not great lovers of the sea. They tended to stay away from the beach areas, hence the name Land dayaks. Andeline sighed. She was finding it all rather boring. She dreamt of the West. She didn’t have Western dreams.
Harold splashed around the blue ocean of the South China Sea diving under and popping back up with huge shells which he waved excitedly at Andeline. She gave a weak smile and waved back. All this sitting about on the beach was turning her skin browner. Hardly a good look for a school teacher. Humph. She wrote her name in the sand and scribbled it out again. She wouldn’t go in the water herself because she was afraid after hearing one too many folk tales about the sea coupled with a near drowning childhood accident by their local village watering hole. Marooned like a dying swan she watched her new husband bob up and down.
“I love you!” Harold called and waved again. He flipped over doing an underwater handstand. His white feet pointing skyward. It was enough to break her despondency and made Andeline laugh.
Their entire honeymoon had consisted of exploring and photographing the jungle. Yawn. Looking for orang-utans. Double yawn. Searching for the rafflesia plant which looks like a giant two foot flower, but it’s actually a parasite. Yawn, yawn, yawn. And listening to Harold as he practiced his Greek, which was all Greek to Andeline. The trouble was, that monkeys and wildlife are just not so fascinating when you have grown up with it all around you as Andeline had. She wanted to go to England for their honeymoon to meet the Beatles, see The Queen and admire Big Ben. The most English affair that she was participating in, was Scrabble by candlelight on the veranda of their beach shack each evening. Double word scores were the order of the day.
Harold came wading out of the sea to show Andeline the shell he had just found. “This is the life, eh?” He said to Andeline as he plonked his wet body onto the sand next to her.
Andeline looked at Harold’s deathly white feet that had grown a deeper shade of white from being hidden from the sun beneath his socks for several years now.
He kissed her on the cheek.
Andeline took in his face. He looked funny without his glasses on. Like he was a different person, all squinty and strange. White marks encircled his eyes where his glasses had been and his jaw looked extra white where his thick beard had been a week earlier. Andeline had married a bearded Harold and as she went off to get changed for the reception, she returned to find a clean shaven man, the man that she had initially fallen for when they first met, but the shock was still huge none the less. He had sported that beard for several years and it was a part of him, like Endal‘s black beetle nut stained teeth, John Lennon’s little round spectacles, Hitler‘s funny little moustache orMarilyn Monroe’s blonde barnet.
Their wedding had been a strange affair. There appeared to be a great divide between Harold’s posh British ex-pat fellow missionary worker friends and Andeline’s family who did not want Andeline to marry Harold. Edward and Annabel Churcher, sat at the table with Harold, Andeline, Endal and Nayla, because Edward was Harold’s best friend in Sarawak. He and Annabel spent the entire time mocking Andeline’s family, despite the fact they were supposed to be good Christians, they were casting aspersions on the very people they were there to share Christianity with. Harold’s parents had not shown up, which did not surprise Harold as he knew the dim view Ernst had on Asians and mixed marriage in general. He figured that they had simply chosen to shun him. He had hoped for maybe a telegram from his mother, something, anything, but he realised that his father had probably forbidden her from contacting him. He missed his mother and her warm chuckle. But he did not care. He was in love and that love was reciprocated. It was the finest feeling in the world and Harold wanted to shout it from the roof tops. He wanted to scream through the jungle like Tarzan on a rope twine telling every creature within earshot that he had a wife. A wife!
Endal had sulked his way through the whole wedding day in yet another borrowed polyester suit. He was deeply saddened by his favourite daughter’s choice to marry this foreign man and not some respectable Bidayuh warrior like himself or Paul. He did not know where England was, but he knew it was far away and if she went there, he might never see her again. He had welcomed Harold into his home, but he did not expect him to steal his daughter away. The prospect of losing Andeline was like losing Namari, his own wife all over again. He refused to talk to Andeline and ignored Harold which wasn’t difficult due to his lack of English.
Paul and Nayla more than made up for everyone else. They were both strong warm people who sprinkled lightness and love everywhere they were.
“Marry Harold and escape this good for nothing land.” Nayla would tell Andeline. “Don’t be like me, belly full of child every year. I will end up like our mother. Dead before my uterus has had time to shrink.” She told it like it was.
“Come hunting with me Mr Dr Harold,” Paul would tell Harold. “We will make you a warrior Bidayuh, then Endal will be happy for you to marry his daughter.” Harold would go into the jungle with Paul, but due to his dyspraxic nature would inevitably scare the animals away with his galumphing feet, which was fortunate for Harold as he really didn’t want to kill anything. Paul found him hilarious and loved to gee him on and freak him out. “Spider!” Watch out!
“Aaagh, where?”
“Not really scaredy white man, come on.”
Nayla and Paul, had moved out of the Longhouse building and had their own little house a whole ten metres away. Paul had built it with the help of his brothers, on land given to him by Endal. They had six children by now that all needed feeding. Even though Paul stuck with Bidayuh traditions, he found that there was more money to be earned in the city. So he headed into Kuching everyday on his motorcycle and worked in a bank. First thing in the morning, every evening and at the weekends, he would help with Endal’s farming and yet still somehow managed to be around for his children when they needed him. He was full of cheerful stories and if a child was upset, he would be the first one to sing a song to cheer them up. “Gooodness gray juss grate ball so fire!” Then he would pick up the children one by one and run round the house with them, telling them he would throw them off the porch if they did not stop crying. A risky choice, but it always worked. Bidayuh children were easily pleased. They weren’t spoilt by the excesses of civilisation. Back in those days, there was no television, no computer games, no mobile phones, no internet, no dolls and not many books. They didn’t have shops and radios and things that they "must-have" - no bikes, no fancy clothes and no mass produced plastic. They played with simple sticks, stones, maybe a ball, but their greatest occupier was story telling.
The Bidayuh Tale of Two Lovers - A Bedtime Story as told by Paul
So children, beware of what you say, be careful about remarks and be respectful as you do not want to upset these spirits, for they too can hear you and see you as you may hear and see them.
A holy man lived at the foot of Mount. Santubong in Kuching. Unknown to him, he was being watched from afar by the spirit daughter of the Moon who lived at the very top of the mountain. She was dutifully bound to live high up so that she could be near the moon but one day she was granted a wish to leave the top of the mountain and appear in human form to go wherever she pleased for the day. She visited him at his house where he was spellbound by her beauty and they fell in love. Because they fell in love, she was allowed to remain in human form as long as they were together. They became husband and wife and he went to live with her at the top of Mount Santabong. For a few years they were very happy at the top of the mountain until one evening he saw the twinkling lights of the village below and his brothers and sisters in Kuching. He began to feel homesick and asked his spirit wife if he could go to visit them. She agreed but told him he must come back after two months.
When he got back to his family, he was so pleased to be with everyone again. He partied and at and drank and celebrated every night. He was having such a great time that he didn’t realise, he had been there for more than two months. One evening he saw a dark cloud over Mt. Santubong then he remembered his spirit wife he had left behind. He hurried back to his wife only to find she was not there. An old man told him that his wife had been seen at the top of Gunong Serapi another mountain in a village called Lundu by the sea, he hurried there but she was not there. He searched and searched, but her being had disappeared, torn apart by grief and destined never to see him again. It was only his love that was keeping her visible to him and in being away for more than two months she was not able to appear in human form again. In the end he too died of a broken heart. That is why when you look across from Bako you can see the islands form the silhouette of a man lying down in the sea. On moonlit nights you can hear the sad wailing and crying of a woman or a man. To this day they are still searching for each other.
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