Anu took everyone down his favorite hunting path. Over ten years before a developer had wanted to buy the land and build a columbarium on it. To protect a forest in which the Bunun had always hunted, Anu tried getting a bank loan to buy the land. He got more than he bargained for. He had no head for money management and was soon drowning in debt. There were a few times when he was ready to give up and sell, but fortunately later on he got support from some aboriginal villagers and Han Chinese friends and was able to make ends meet. The past few years the forest had become a place for tourists to experience Bunun culture. Several years before, Anu’s youngest son Lian had gone into the forest to check the village water supply, and maybe because he forgot to pray to the ancestral spirits or because his prayers were not pious enough, a fig branch that had cracked in a typhoon came crashing down just as poor Lian was passing by. Lian was no longer breathing by the time he was discovered that evening. Long estranged from his wife, raising his sons alone, Anu would go into the forest every day to seek solace. Anu did not blame the forest. It was only doing its duty, by growing, shedding leaves, dying, or by fatally crushing a Bunun youth who just happened to be walking underneath.
So Anu had a peculiar feeling whenever he regarded this particular stand of fig, phoebe and autumn maple trees. It was not something he could tell the people around him about. He always imagined that one of the aerial roots hanging down from one of the weeping figs was his son’s avatar, a notion that fortified his resolution to guard the forest. When he took visitors on eco-cultural tours here, he would ask them to experience the forest one sense at a time. They would close their eyes and touch a tree root, lean on the tree and smell a wild mushroom, taste prickly ash leaves, and listen to a certain birdcall to judge how far away it was. It was as if by getting these people to do these things, at least a few of them would be able to smell, touch, hear or sense his son’s spirit. To him, in some form or other, Lian was still alive.
He led the group before a giant boulder in the crushing embrace of a gnarled old tree that had perched on top of it, wrapping its twisted roots around it. Underneath the rock was a small cave where Bunun hunters waited out the rain. Dahu was himself a guide, and Hafay and Umav had been there many times. Anu said, “The cave knows everyone here but our guests.” He wanted Detlef and Sara to go in and let the cave “get to know them.”
There was space for two grown-ups in the cave, though for westerners of Detlef and Sara’s height it was quite a squeeze. Dahu retold his joke about how being over 170 cm tall was a disability among the Bunun, adding that Detlef, who was close to 190 cm, must be severely height challenged. A man of this height would tend to get tripped or tied up by the vines and creepers as he runs through the forest, seriously limiting his pace.
“Actually, there’s caves like this everywhere in the forest, some in rocks, some formed by rainstorms and rockslides. But don’t ever take shelter in caves in trees and rocks above a certain altitude. Those caves tend to be bear dens. If the bear happens to come back and finds an uninvited guest, it’ll catch you,” Anu said, “and take you to the police station.”
After this burst of banter, Anu let them rest there for the time it takes to have half a cigarette, then guided them to another place where he had tied a rope up a huge fig tree to a height of about two and a half stories. The forest floor was slippery from all the recent rain, and Anu kept reminding everyone to be a bit more careful.
Anu quite liked these two unassuming foreigners. Detlef had an academic background, but he didn’t act like a big professor who would throw his weight around. He was like a worldly wise elder, while Sara was a person with the courage to try new things. Anu knew he’d have no trouble getting along with Sara from the moment she downed the first glass of millet wine he poured for her.
“Anyone who drinks his wine in one gulp, no matter how it tastes, is probably a friend,” Anu’s father had told him once when he was young.
There were no lights on anywhere nearby. Now Anu wanted the two of them to experience what it was like to travel the forest by night, so he advised everyone to turn off his flashlight and follow the person in front by holding hands or listening for the sound of breathing.
Which was why no one noticed when Hafay, who was last in line, stayed behind and ducked into the cave under the rock.
Hafay’s heart was pounding the first time Umav brought her to the Forest Church. She felt she’d finally found a vessel that could contain her, a shell in which she could hide like a hermit crab. From then on, when no one was watching, Hafay would go into the forest by herself and crawl into the cave and rest like a bear in hibernation, thinking of nothing at all.
Though she was aboriginal, Hafay had pretty much spent her whole life in the city, and even after returning to the east coast she still passed most of her time in Haven. When she opened the Seventh Sisid, Pangcah friends invited her to join her age set, participate in the local Pangcah tribal order, and live there with them. But after taking part in a few age set activities, she still didn’t feel like she fit in, no matter how friendly the people were, even when she was dancing. Sometimes she would run into former customers. So, to avoid embarrassment, Hafay started to withdraw from tribal village life.
But the first time she set foot in the Forest Church, the damp air and the smells of the roots and the grass made her feel that she was in her element. She liked the way the weeping figs survived by growing aerial roots that went down, down, down until they reunited with the earth and helped prop up the parent tree. She liked the scarred old trees even more. A split in the bark was sealed and healed by the tree’s own sap. As if all pain would pass.
If Ina were still alive she would like it here.
Ina died because she just would not take her girlfriends’ advice. After her life settled down again, Ina fell in love with another customer, assuming every guy was like Old Liao, who had loved her in his own way. Hafay did not get too worked up when she finally got the call from the madam at the massage parlor, maybe because she had already foreseen Ina’s death when Ina dove into the creek and finally found Old Liao’s body. Except this time Ina ended up dying underwater, as she had countless times in Hafay’s dreams. The black flower of Ina’s long hair bloomed forever, and Ina would never float back up again.
The girls in the massage parlor said that Ina had gone out with Big Tom. Nobody knew who Big Tom was, except that he was a new guy Ina was seeing. And nobody knew how or why she’d died. Only one thing was certain, that the money in Ina’s account had all been withdrawn, and by Ina herself, so that the police had no leads, no way of pressing the investigation. Luckily Ina had opened another account for Hafay, so her life did not have to start from zero.
Now, under cover of darkness, hiding out for the time being in the cave, Hafay felt so much better. It was dark in here but not like in the little rooms in the massage parlor. This small cave insulated you from the sound outside, so when you first came in you heard your own heart beating as well as a slight ringing in your ears. Hafay had drunk quite a bit tonight, and she just needed to be by herself in the cave for a little while, for a brief respite from the rain.
Dahu noticed Hafay was not with the group when he was helping everyone rope climb up that humungous weeping fig. But he guessed she had gone into the cave for some alone time, something he often did himself. That cave was inviting. It made you want to crawl in and see what it was like. He decided to keep quiet so as not to disturb her. Whatever the forest was doing to her he did not need to interfere.