The Encounter Page 6
counted on, and at the end of thirteen dots there’s this huge
great big animal, above the thirteenth dot, and it’s thirteen
weeks, thirteen quarters of the moon after the Pleiades
emerges is when this happens. To understand time you have
to understand something a bit ritualistic, something which is
repeating…
NOMA
. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
Ten…
The
ACTOR
stops dancing and returns to the desk.
ACTOR. Meanwhile, downriver, men from Loren’s world were
busy elaborating plans that would deliver Tuti to the world of
machinery, and televised news, soft drinks and government
welfare.
The
ACTOR
picks up a small speaker that begins to play an
advertising jingle, moving it around the binaural head.
Tuti danced on unsuspectingly. Some of us are friends.
Petru recording, played on the
ACTOR
’s phone.
PETRU.
Every time you go and spend time with a tribe like
that, you change them to an extent. You bring them over to a
stage of civilisation that they would reach perhaps, but you
bring them over too fast. On the other hand you, as the
scientist, you gain immensely from having been immersed in
the experience. So it is our gain, we the modern people, and
it is usually their loss. If we decide never to contact tribes
any more, then we will never… we will never… find out the
deepest, most interesting and controversial things about
ourselves. We will not find it out. On the other hand, how will
they develop? More slowly, although they have always
developed more slowly. They will still get to our civilisation
at one time or another. Material progress is unfortunately
unavoidable. More coffee?
ACTOR. A little while later, the fires were restarted and beiju was
cooked. And Loren noticed that Barnacle had not eaten. He
was back making his whistling arrows. Why hadn’t he eaten?
LOREN. He’s fasting. Why is he fasting?
ACTOR.
Some of us are friends.
(
Looped.
)
SFX: door creaking open. The following is a conversation
between the
ACTOR
, live, and a child, Noma McBurney,
recorded aged five.
NOMA.
Dada, I’m hungry.
ACTOR. Sweetie, please… You’re supposed to be in bed.
NOMA.
Dada, why have you got your shoes on in the house?
You don’t want to get the floor dirty.
ACTOR. Well, I know, but Mama’s not here, so…
NOMA.
I’m hungry! Can I have something to eat please?
ACTOR. There isn’t anything. Well, okay, I’ve got this packet
of crisps. There you go, there’s a crisp. Now, I am working…
NOMA.
Night-night, Dada, give me a kiss.
ACTOR. Now go to bed. And don’t slam the door please, I’ve
got a headache.
SFX: door slamming.
9. Around the Face of Time
ACTOR. What’s in these?
The
ACTOR
reads some of the ingredients from the back
of the packet and then crunches a few crisps. The bag
rustles. The sound is looped and turns into the crackle of
a burning fire.
He woke feeling fingers on his left wrist. He felt up with his
right. His watch was gone. He looked up. And saw faces
looking down at him… A nauseating smell of burning rubber
and smoke filled his nostrils… He looked over the side of his
hammock and he realised what it was.
LOREN. My Adidas trainers. They’re burning them; they’re
burning my shoes.
ACTOR. He swung out of his hammock and pushed his way
through the group of people out into the plaza. There was a
fire. His shoes were melting, on the flames. His watch was
already a black disc.
LOREN. Hey, fellas! I need those. Those are my Adidas
trainers. You don’t need them I do.
The
ACTOR
slips into them and reacts violently, as if the
soles of their feet were scalded.
Okay, you’ve burnt my shoes. You’ve killed my watch. At
least I’ve still got my camera.
SFX: camera shutter.
My camera! I’d fallen asleep with it on my hip and now I
didn’t have it.
I rushed back to my hut and searched my hammock. No
camera anywhere. I pushed back out into the plaza. My heart
was racing in front of me. The community were all gathered,
looking at me. I wanted to seize them, shout, where is my
camera? Give me my camera! Calm down. They’re naked,
they can’t hide a black box anywhere.
I saw Red Cheeks watching me, his arms folded. When I
caught his eye, he turned away. Calm down, calm down.
Across the plaza I saw Barnacle arriving. He seemed
innocent in all this, looking to right and left at his people to
see what was going on. They avoided his eyes and started to
drift away. Then I realised they had been trying to hex me.
Burning personal belongings is almost always a hex. I knew
I had to act. I had to do something before the moment
passed. I was being ostracised. I had to get their attention. I
had no idea what I should do… so I did the first thing that
came into my head.
The
ACTOR
goes to a multi-pack of water, removes the
packaging and uses the packaging to create a loop of
scrunching around the binaural head. They breathe heavily
with each movement, then begin to run, still using the
packets to create the sound of feet on leaves.
SFX: looped version of the above.
I started jogging around the perimeter of the village.
I watched my feet pound the grass. One lap. Two laps. Three
laps. I heard my own thoughts projected right back at me in
panic. Calm down. But running felt good, liberating.
I passed Red Cheeks, screaming something at his friends.
They had hexed me, now I was hexing them, casting a spell
of my own. Now they were starting to watch, they were all
coming back. Barnacle was scanning his crowd, trying to
interpret their reactions. Whenever I passed him, I exploded
into a hammering of fists and feet, almost a parody of intent.
LOREN (
pre-record
).
I can’t think of anything else to do. I’ve
got to get through to you.
LOREN. Five laps.
LOREN (
pre-record
).
We have to communicate. We are
communicating.
LOREN. Ten laps.
LOREN (
pre-record
).
I want to survive. I want you to survive
as well.
LOREN. I ran on. Fifteen, twenty laps. I slowed down, walked
a lap. Stopped in front of Barnacle. Dripping with sweat.
What was he going to do? Then he turned and started
jogging. Just the way I had gone
.
SFX: loop plays in reverse as the
ACTOR
stands, watching
the track of Barnacle running.
Following my tracks. But in the opposite direction.
Counterclockwise. He was undoing my spell. And as he
passed me, he beat his fists and feet as I had done.
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
I don’t know if this will
work. I don’t know if my people will follow me.
LOREN. Was I losing my mind?
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
I have no alternative…
I have to try to make it work.
LOREN. I felt I was inside his head, literally thinking his
thoughts.
I’m not psychic; I don’t believe in that shit… Still I
received it.
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
Other white people have
been before. They brought death. My people are dying now
to avoid that death.
LOREN. This was some bigger emergency – a threshold of
some kind in the tribe’s life…
Barnacle ran until his chest became a mirror of sweat. He ran
at the limit of his strength, and he was fasting, remember.
His people now began to utter cries of encouragement, as if
wanting to instil him with energy… Red Cheeks had drifted
off, disgusted. Barnacle ran on but now, his messages no
longer glowed in my mind, but had dissolved into a residual
beaming, a sort of leftover. It crystallised into this.
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
The face of time.
LOREN. The face of time? Eighteen, nineteen, twenty laps.
He slowed to a walk and everyone hailed their chief.
Barnacle stopped in front of me. He raised a finger and said
something solemn. I looked at the space he and I had circled,
performing our competing spells. What was that in my head?
Did he really say that? The face of time.
I slipped my feet into the remains of my chargrilled Adidas
trainers… I looked into the forest, trying to calm myself
down. I looked up at a black creeper… Fuck! That’s not a
creeper, that’s my film. A black strip of film, hanging from a
branch. Fuck! I’ve been running with two rolls of exposed
film in my pockets. Only one roll of film left. Those are my
shots! Who put that there? And then I looked a little higher
up the tree and I saw my camera. In the hands of a woolly
monkey. A woolly monkey clutching my camera… It must
have been a pet of one of the kids.
‘Hey… Hey!’ He climbed higher. ‘For god’s sake, don’t open
it!’ What was I doing, I was talking to a monkey? I threw a
stick. He caught it. Bad idea. He was poking with it at the
camera. The back flew open. He ripped out the film. The spool
popped out. And he ripped the camera apart in one movement.
SFX: camera is ripped apart. A jumble of voices. The words
‘The. Great. Shot.’ are heard.
ACTOR. Loren McIntyre’s knees gave way and he just sank to
the floor. He sat there. Inches from his damaged camera.
Useless. Reduced. Reduced to one roll of film. How could
he prove that he had been there? What was he going to give
National Geographic
? He was reduced to just a body.
Purposeless. He was a tourist now. No watch. He would have
to live by nature’s clock. He would have to be like these
people.
Petru recording, played on the
ACTOR
’s phone.
PETRU.
After this, Barnacle, as is described in the book,
became extremely friendly, and he started to spend time with
him. And to sort of protect – anyway, Barnacle and McIntyre,
became a sort of inseparable item.
10. What Was in the Dark
LOREN. Barnacle indicated that we should walk into the forest
together. We passed children gathered round a shaman. They
were looking at caterpillars, insects, plants. I imagined he
was showing them the law of the forest. Pretty soon they’ll
be able to survive on their own in the forest.
Once we were alone, the communication started again.
Smooth and implicit. And even though he was a few yards
away, he communicated to me that:
You are sad because what was in the dark should have stayed
in the dark.
It was so clear, I couldn’t believe he hadn’t spoken. Was he
talking about my camera? No, how could he be? But it was
so much like speaking… for a moment, I couldn’t accept it
and I shouted:
‘Fala Português?’
He leaked into my mind somehow that he didn’t understand
my words. I went and stood quite close to him. I had to
accept what was happening, or else I had to assume I was
hallucinating. Barnacle communicated something like:
Here’s the forest; if you run away right now, I’m not going to
stop you.
I said nothing. Again he said:
Other white people have been here. They brought death.
It is almost impossible to describe the exact nature of the
communication between us. The clearest description I can
give is that it was like a kind of dialogue. He said:
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
We have been moving
around.
LOREN. I tried to communicate back: have you been attacked?
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
Yes. By white people that
came down from the sky.
LOREN. So where are you moving to?
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
We’re going to the
beginning?
LOREN. What beginning?
BARNACLE (LOREN
voice-over
).
The beginning.
LOREN. We walked back to the village. Barnacle scanned me
with his eyes. What they spelled was clear, no beaming
necessary: what was I going to do? I was asking myself the
same question. What am I going to do?
What am I going to
do?
(
Looped
.)
Petru recording, played on the
ACTOR
’s phone.
PETRU.
But he kept telling us, ‘How can I say this
–
the
Geographic
is going to jump on me?’ I said, Loren, no one is
going to jump on you. You may create some controversy,
regarding whether you believe that what happened
happened, but that’s not like, it’s not a case for fraud or
anything…
IRIS
. …I would say that, we got him comfortable though…
PETRU
. …We got him comfortable, and, he was towards the
age, to which he wanted to talk about it.
ACTOR. He was towards the age at which he wanted to talk
about it.
SFX: collage of voices from the
ACTOR
’s unconscious.
NOMA.
Can you know wha
t I’m thinking, inside my head?
STEVEN ROSE.
Of course you need your brain, I need my
brain to think, I need my brain to be conscious. But that
doesn’t mean that consciousness is in my brain, any more than
the fact that I need my legs to walk means that it’s my legs
that are doing the walking.
IAIN McGILCHRIST.
Everything in the world is only known in
comparison to everything else that we know. There isn’t a
way of getting out of this. The myth that we’re up against
nowadays is that there is some abstract, objective reality that
is beyond our myth-making, beyond our language, beyond
metaphor, which is absolute rather than relative. But there is
no such thing.
11. The Night Hunt
The
ACTOR
returns to the desk and loops breathing into the
microphone.
LOREN. I slept until I thought I was dreaming of a jaguar and
its grunt. And then I woke. There was a jaguar. In the village.
A jaguar in the village. I sat bolt upright. In the nearest hut,
children cried in panic, the noise of the village tripled in
volume.
I heard Red Cheeks screaming. Six or seven other young men
brandishing spears and burning branches, ganged up in the
middle of the clearing. I found myself in front of the gang of
young men and Red Cheeks gestured for me to follow him. I’d
always wanted to see a jaguar hunt so I stepped closer to him.
But I was furious with myself for not having my camera.
SFX: jaguar grunt.
We scrambled over the wet grass into a solid wall of fogged-
up forest vegetation. The torches went away into the
darkness like flares. Keep up, come on. I’m in my mid-
fifties, they’re in their twenties. The worst scenario would be
to be left alone in the dark. The grunt rang out again.
SFX: jaguar grunt.
Where are they?
AYYYAYYA!
I heard Red Cheeks shout unexpectedly. The young men had
stopped right in front of a spiny thickness. The beast had
crawled underneath it – a cluster of thorny plants between
the roots of a huge tree. I headed for it as fast as I could so as
not to miss the spectacle. Red Cheeks suddenly pushed me.
Powered by this and my own momentum, I ran straight into
the thornbush.
He dropped his torch and stepped on it. The other burning
branches disappeared in the same instant.
Total dark followed.