Mapmaker's Dream: Ch. 17

From A Mapmaker's Dream by James Cowan

The following excerpt is from chapter 17 of the novel, which consists in the thoughts & observations of a monk named Fra Mauro [Fra means, roughly, "brother"] in Venice, Italy, during the sixteenth century. The monk, from his solitary cell, receives visitors and from their reports and from other sources, seeks to make a map of the world as he comes to see it. In some sense, we are all making maps of our world, and that's what this novel is in some part about. My question to you is: how do you map your world?

IN T H E O R I E N T, I am informed, there exist huge forests populated by exotic animals and flowers. Men who have visited those regions attest to the strange customs of the natives who inhabit them. They speak of striped carnivores known as tigers feeding on victims who go naked but for stripes painted all over their bodies. Some observers maintain that these natives are barely human because of their dose association with the animals that eat them, and so are excluded from the fraternity of civilized men.

Such reports from Sumatra, Java, and the Moluccas suggest that verdancy can be contagious. Entire communities live out their lives in the shade of huge leaves, which protect them from seasonal rains. They practice strange rites, some of which involve the eating of human flesh.

The idea that men might eat one another as part of a sacrificial ritual seems like a grave aberration, for I am not prepared to believe that the consumption of one unfortunate victim may lead to the renewal of another. In no other way, however, can I account for what otherwise might be considered a normal practice among animals.

On other maps I have studied, by such men as Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, there is some evidence for the existence of a Great South Land located in the vicinity of Beach and Lochac. Such a land encloses the Antarctic and is in turn joined to Terra del Fuego in the Americas. The region is said to be inhabited by a mysterious race of men who hop about on one huge foot the size of an umbrella, whereupon they use this same foot to shade themselves during the full heat of midday. I can only conclude that there are many wonders yet to discover before any definitive map can be drawn up to account for all the regions of the world.

Take, for example, a visit I received from a Jesuit priest who had recently returned from the Indies. Fra Campeggio, an indefatigable traveler, had been inspired by Marco Polo's journey to Tartary and beyond. With the blessing of the Pope he had gone out to convert the heathen wherever he could. Over the years he had opened missions in India and Malaya, before setting sail for Borneo. Reports had filtered through to him of a jungle people who in the
past had spurned Christian and Mohameddan zealots alike. According to Fra Campeggio, these people sought solace from birds rather than any deity on high.

"I took ship on a local Chinese craft," he recounted' "and met up with the bird people shortly after my arrival in Borneo. I had half expected to be confronted with men wearing feathers! Such were the reports of the tribesmen that I was prepared for almost anything. Instead I found men whose fate was determined by the call of seven sacred birds."*

*The bird men could be the ancestors of the Iban or Sea Dayaks of Bomeo, whose dialogue with the birds still goes on today. Sadly, uncontrolled logging of their forests is
threatening the habitat of these birds of augury. It is likely that within a decade all converse with the future may be lost.

Fra Campeggio outlined to me how their religion worked. Seven species of birds had been enlisted in the cause of augury, which formed the basis of their belief. Each time a certain bird uttered its call, this indicated to the listener what might later occur. A more elaborate synthesis would be arrived at, depending on whether the bird call was heard on the right hand or the left, whether it came from ahead or behind, or whether there occurred more than one call at any given time. This collaboration between men and birds extended to the level of a partnership. Nothing was ever done by the villager without consulting the birds and so receiving their permission to engage in any activity they wished.

"The birds had been accorded the status of gods," Fra Campeggio said. "A farmer cannot plant his crops, nor a man take a wife, nor an evil spirit be despatched from a village without the help of these birds. Their trill remains supreme, the pronouncement of a sibyl."

When I asked the good friar whether the people ever ate one another, he shook his head.

"They cherish the heads of their enemies, but it seems the birds will not allow them to eat themselves. Cannibalism is not on their menu," he replied with a smile.

I sighed with relief. Fra Campeggio, whose height must have inspired awe even among Borneo headhunters, was certainly not the type of man to lose his head when confronted by difficult circumstances. He was a man whose certitude was his armor.

"I made a journey into the hinterland with a member of the tribe in order to ascertain for myself whether his power of augury matched that of his explanation," he went on.

"Each bird that we encountered sang to us with a particular plenitude," Fra Campeggio added. "I gained the impression that we were in the presence of—let me say— our conscience. There's no other word for it. How on earth can one describe the lofty tone of admonition, or the raucous cry of warning, or perhaps the dear note of joy that came from the throats of such birds? It was as if for the first time I had heard the voice of Nature. Her words, though indecipherable from my point of view, nonetheless pointed to the possibility of entering into a dialogue. My guide, the elderly headhunter, was at pains to translate everything that the birds said. He held nothing back from me."

Fra Campeggio's story was a strange tale indeed, so startling was its implication. Here was a man who had gone out to convert the heathen, who instead had found himself subjected to what might only be called the "language ~f the birds." Is it any wonder that he did not lose his lead under the pressure of such a revelation? Finding himself standing under a forest canopy in the company of a headhunter, while at the same time listening to the call of seven unseen birds, must have suggested to him that hey were responding to a voice from elsewhere. It was a question I asked of the tall Jesuit as he gazed out the window at the cupolas and towers of Venice, glowing in the afternoon light, across the water.

"All my experience and knowledge could not teach me how to respond," he agreed. "Remember, I was in the presence of a man who had tried and then rejected cannibalism in favor of possessing another man's head as a part of his custom. What was I to say? We did not share the same world. His guides were birds, while mine were the junctions of Our Lord. Does not this signify the difference between us? Though both of us, I suppose, were grappling with the same inner voice.

Fra Campeggio had obviously thought a good deal about his experience in the Borneo jungle during his homeward voyage. Who wouldn't? He had journeyed to the end of the earth to convert a people he had never met before. In this respect he had been unsuccessful: he admitted to me that while he was among them no headhunters ever abandoned their beliefs in favor of his own.

But he did make an interesting observation: "While with the augurer, I was reminded of the words of the great Irish cleric Columbanus.* He maintained that those who wished to know the lofty profundity of things need to study Nature first. To comprehend the deep sea of understanding, it is important to observe the sea itself. If you wish to understand the Creator, then understand the creature. I suspect that this is what the headhunter was trying to show me. His interest in the birds, however odd it appeared to me at first, was in some way evidence of Columbanus's entreaty. He was trying to tell me that the symbol was closer to the essential nature of the invisible than its interpretation. "

To think that the Borneo headhunter had succeeded in matching wits with a learned Jesuit! It did not seem possible. In the presence of Fra Campeggio, seven mysterious birds had somehow orchestrated a significant doctrine that accorded created things the role of revealing what is normally accessible only to the intellect. These remote bird men of the jungle had managed to put into practice a doctrine that my confreres and I still have not completely resolved.

One question remained: How did these savage men arrive at such subtle conclusions when they were victims of an insatiable desire to possess other men's heads? I could not equate such behavior with my own understanding of what the head was meant to represent. As the seat of the intellect, it was hard to imagine it being reduced to a mere decoration outside a hut. Yet according to Fra Campeggio, that is exactly what these bird men of the Borneo jungle preferred.

"I suspect they had confused the imagination with the intellect," Fra Campeggio observed. "The calls of birds had become a clarion, drawing them away from the savagery of their customs but only for a brief moment. The fact remains that collecting human heads preoccupied them. They had not yet learned to recognize the similarity between what they created in their own minds as a result of a bird's call, and what they sought to remove from another man when they decapitated him.

"The imaginative faculty, when not joined to the intellect, is a flighty thing, as we all know. But it's also precious. If you treat it as a mere object, then how easy it is to destroy. By worshiping birds these tribesmen were able to preserve the power of imagination within themselves. When they chose to decapitate their enemies, they were wrenching it from another. This is why they found it impossible to embrace the teachings that I offered them. The language of the birds, so to speak, did not extend to communicating to them how powerful the intellect can be in its own right."

I asked the learned Jesuit whether the birds had provided him with insight into his own fate while he was among them.

"How can I be certain?" he replied. "While my guide was at pains to translate each call, his interpretation lacked the formal clarity I was hoping to hear. Each trill, you see, could be interpreted in different ways. I was left with the task of discerning Nature's message for myself."

I suggested to him that such an explanation might concur with the views of Columbanus.

"The book of Nature is written in many languages," Fra Campeggio admitted. "Not the least that of the birds. My only wish is that headhunting will one day be eliminated from the customs of the bird men. When it happens, they will have finally dispensed with the need to possess the physicality of the mind, and instead will look to its interpretive powers as an extension of the intellect. In this way their imaginative faculty will be matched by something far more lofty."

*Saint Columban was a sixth century Irish monk noted for his abstemious character and penchant for the seclusion offered by the hostile forests of Gaul. He transmuted pi|grrim fiervor into an existential theology in a series of sermons or instructions, which have been collected and edited by G. S. M. Walker as Sancti Columbani Opera (Dublin, 1970).