Rovinus had died—as Western medicine would define the term—at the end of May, three months earlier. But according to Torajan tradition, Rovinus remained living. He might have stopped breathing, but his physical state was more like a high fever, an illness. This illness would last until the first animal, a buffalo or a pig, was sacrificed. After the sacrifice, ma’karu’dusan (“to exhale the last breath”), Rovinus could at last die alongside the animal.
During his two years of fieldwork in Toraja, anthropologist Dimitri Tsintjilonis developed a close friendship with a local woman named Ne’ Layuk, who referred to Dimitri as one of her children. He came back to Toraja nine years later, excited to surprise Ne’ Layuk with his joyous return, only to discover she had died two weeks prior to his arrival. Dimitri went to visit her corpse and was led into the back room by a family member, who announced to Ne’ Layuk that Dimitri was “back.”
Looking at her face, I crouched down by her side and whispered my greetings. Although one side of her face seemed to be slightly crumbling, she looked serene and composed . . . she was only “asleep” (mamma’) and she “knew” (natandai) I was there. More than that, she could hear and see me; in fact, she was not “dead” (mate); she was only ill (“hot”) and “could feel everything” (nasa’dingan apa-apa).
In Toraja, during the period of time between death and the funeral, the body is kept in the home. That might not sound particularly shocking, until I tell you that period can last from several months to several years. During that time, the family cares for and mummifies the body, bringing the corpse food, changing its clothes, and speaking to the body.
The first time Paul ever visited Toraja, he asked Agus if it was unusual for a family to keep a dead relative in the home. Agus laughed at the question. “When I was a child, we had my grandfather in the home for seven years. My brother and I, we slept with him in the same bed. In the morning we put his clothes on and stood him against the wall. At night he came back to bed.”
Paul describes death in Toraja, as he’s witnessed it, not as a “hard border,” an impenetrable wall between the living and the dead, but a border that can be transgressed. According to their animistic belief system, there is also no barrier between the human and nonhuman aspects of the natural world: animals, mountains, and even the dead. Speaking to your grandfather’s corpse is a way to build a connection to the person’s spirit.
The priest had gone silent, his last “COOOOOEEEEE!” fading mercifully from the loudspeaker. Paul sidled up beside me and whispered, “After they sacrifice the buffalo, maybe one of the tourists should be next.”
As if on cue, two men walked toward the buffalo. One threaded a blue rope through its metal nostril ring. The man was gentle with the buffalo, scratching its chin. The buffalo seemed not to notice it had become the center of attention. The second man squatted down to tie the buffalo’s front hooves to wooden stakes in the ground.
I was expecting—I’m not sure—another chant, a gathering of family members? But it took only seconds for the man to lift the buffalo’s chin by the rope, pull a machete from his belt, and slice directly into its throat. The buffalo reared back into the air, its powerful muscles and horns on display. It attempted to flee, but the rope kept it in place. There was a vivid red gash on its throat, but no blood was falling. The first cut was not deep enough.
Several more men rushed forward, grabbing at the rope strung through the buffalo’s nose, but the buffalo wasn’t having it. It bucked and thrashed, exposing its severed windpipe to the crowd. It was not easy to watch. The man pulled out a machete from his belt, giving the neck a second chop. This time the buffalo’s throat pulsed electric red blood.
The buffalo jerked back with enough force to break itself free from the wooden stake. It stumbled to the right and barreled into the crowd. There was chaos, screaming. The footage from my small video camera went into Cloverfield mode, heavy breathing and sweeping shots of the ground. The crowd surged around me and I sliced my hand on the edge of a concrete pillar.
I was sure someone (probably me) would fall victim to the buffalo’s revenge, but the celebrants caught it and dragged it back to the center, where at last it fell still, its blood pouring into a pool of red foam around its throat. The crowd’s keening noises and nervous laughter bloomed into a complex polyphony. The danger had brought the funeral to life.
AGUS WAS ON a heated phone call.
“What’s the deal?” I asked Paul.
“We need to bring a pig.”
“Where are we going to get a pig?”
“Agus is finding one. It’s rude to show up without a pig.”
The SUV was already full. There was me, Paul, Agus, the driver, and Atto, a fifteen-year-old boy catching a ride to the distant village. There was no room for a pig.
Agus hung up the phone and announced, “Tomorrow my friend will bring the pig on his moped.”
Atto was texting furiously the whole ride, as you would expect from a teenager trapped in a car with adults. During the ma’nene’, the graves of his uncle and his great-grandfather would be opened. Both men had died before Atto was born, so he’d only ever met them as corpses.
The village had no central square, but was a series of isolated hamlets. The majority of its people were rice farmers, including our hosts. They lived in seven tongkonan (the sweeping Torajan homes on stilts) situated around a communal courtyard. Plump roosters crowed. Skinny dogs chased the roosters and laughing children chased the dogs. Women were beating the recently harvested rice with tall bamboo poles in a mesmerizing, repetitive motion.
People trickled in to the village to begin cleaning the ten or so house-graves that stood in a cluster. Heavy padlocks on the grave doors were a new development; it’s not that the neighbors didn’t trust one another, but a few years prior a mummy had been stolen from the village and taken to Rantepao for sale to a collector. The villagers were tipped off as to who had taken it, and went to Rantepao to steal it back.
A group of men gathered to discuss the logistics of house-grave ventilation. A villager named John Hans Tappi had been placed in one of the graves two years earlier. You could see his dark wood coffin propped up in the corner, through the open door. Tappi’s son feared the air inside had been too wet, too humid. “I hope my father is still okay, still mummified, and has not gone rotten.”
This would be an important ma’nene’ for John Hans Tappi. His son felt that when John died two years before, his family had not been able to do enough for him financially. They could not afford to sacrifice a buffalo in his honor and the slight had haunted the son ever since. He believed that by not slaughtering the buffalo, “my father was not carried to the second life.” That would change this week; the buffalo was already selected and waiting in a nearby field.
Two house-graves over, a woman pulled open the door and sprayed an industrial-sized can of lemon air freshener inside.