Father Anselmo Becomes Taboo

Father Anselmo had embarked on his first mission to spread the Good News. He was now signed onto a Spanish war ship sailing from Peru to a colony in the Indian Ocean, and they were going to drop him off to the island of Bohatu in the South Pacific. Bohatans had established exchanges with the Crown twenty-five years prior. While in his seminary in Sevilla, Anselmo had spent several years with a Bohatan prince, Kahoba, from whom he learned the language of the island. Kahoba, who was with him on the ship and going back to his native island, had told him of the great beauty of his island and his people. He often talked of the great traditions and folklore of Bohatu, from which Anselmo drew similarities to the Christian faith, and surmised that Bohatans should be relatively receptive to the Word of God.

The ship left Father Anselmo and Kahoba on the island with several craters of gifts for the locals. They included a wealth of tools for agriculture and wood carving, fine textiles from all over the world, and precious jewellery for the King of Bohatu. Anselmo of course also brought materials for teaching and conversion: loose and bound paper, ink, pens, books, Bibles, and all the props required for liturgy, baptisms, and exorcisms - if needed.  

The king, Kaha, held a three-day festival in honour of the exotic guest. There were dances of nubile girls and young warriors, singing and feasting. The king personally talked with Anselmo from his wooden throne: 

“We have propitiated the great Mahala, God of the Mah Mountain, prior to your arrival, and he indicated that a guest from the Stiff People, your people, is to be honoured. The ships of the Stiff People are wonders in our eyes, and your ingenious artefacts allow us to better honour Mahala with holy shrines and food offerings. Thus, your God must be a mighty one too. This is why Mah welcomes you, priest.”

Anselmo smiled and raised his cup of fi spirit with both hands and a bow in toast to the king. It was the third day of the welcome festivities. The dances on the first day had been militant, with fearsome masks. On the second day, the celebrations had included incantations and trances culminating in slaughter of five boars. The third day, there were merry circle dances and exchanges of gifts. Anselmo was instructed by Kahoba to ceremonially gift some of the stuff from the craters he brought to whomever gave him a gift, and he did so. However, in the evening he encountered a problem.

Anselmo was seated on a palm trunk near his craters and merrily drinking spirits and sweating in his frock. He was all tensed up throughout the day, which the locals noticed, and joked amongst themselves how Stiff People really are stiff. At dusk, an imposing man who appeared to be a high-ranking warrior walked up to Anselmo with a giggling teenage beauty. He pointed at a beautiful carved axe in the trunk, and grabbing the girl by the forearm, offered her to Anselmo.

“Oh boy,” thought Anselmo in panic. “This girl is beautiful, but I cannot break my vows of celibacy. I cannot do it. I cannot do it.” Thus, Anselmo waved his hands politely and explained in broken Bohanese that his God forbids him from taking that particular gift. He must be kept apart from women for his whole life; this was his oath.

The warrior was taken aback and kept repeating his offer. Anselmo tried to reason with the warrior, but the warrior pretended not to hear Anselmo, and kept repeating rather mechanically the offer of exchange. The teenager stopped giggling and began to look somewhat concerned.

Several people nearby noticed the impasse, and before any serious commotion rose up, Kahoba showed up to try and sort things out. He bowed to the ground in front of the warrior and threw some dust in the air, which made the latter stop repeating the offer and freeze as it were, looking blankly straight ahead. Kahoba then talked to Anselmo:

“The gift-exchange ceremony is sacred to my people. Giving and accepting of gift is the sign of accepting the peace of Mah, our God. Refusal to accept can unleash chaos on the island. You must accept the girl! It is an extremely honorable gift!”

“But Kahoba, you know how things work for me and my Church. I am not permitted to sleep with women, it is a grave sin for me!”

“Of course, I know that. Our people understand celibacy. Of course, we are very careful with our women. But on the third day of the Hospitality Festival things must play out exactly the opposite as the rest of the year, in that regard. We say that those who do not accept other men’s woman on this day, are exactly the type of men who try to steal them and sleep secretly with them on all other days. Your acceptance is in fact a sign of celibacy. So, you must prove to us that you are an honorable man!”

These words threw Anselmo into confusion, which was not helped by all the fi drink he had had. At the seminary he was a seasoned debater, but the theological argument he just heard from Kahoba was unlike anything he ever encountered before. He did not know how to answer. The obvious response was that Jesus Christ was the true God and that their mountain god was merely a metaphysical construct of the human collective; but of course, it was too early for that. He needed to use the internal logic of Bohatan spirituality to convince them. This is what he came up with:

“Kahoba, tell this to your warrior. My god Jesus has held a three-day festival that has fulfilled the need for all three-day festivals from now until the end of time. Thus, my people believe that the third day of gift-giving has been ended forever. It does not mean at all, not at all, that I don’t accept gifts, but that I have accepted the gift of all people, including your people, already once and for all. My celibacy is a symbol of that gift. You see, I wear this cross and this black robe to indicate that. Tell him, these are the symbols that exclude me.”

Kahoba’s face was growing desperate throughout Anselmo’s rant. The warrior started to grunt angrily. Kahoba grabbed Anselmo by the lapels and cried:

“Anselmo, don’t you understand? You are giving the exact the opposite impression that you are trying to give. With every moment you refuse the gift, you grow more and more lecherous, more lustful in their eyes! I told you, man: not accepting a woman on this day is exactly as committing adultery on any other day! Do it now, or we are both going to get into big trouble!”

Anselmo looked from one face to another. He looked at Kahoba’s panicked face, the warrior’s angry face, and the girl’s worried face, and at the many obscure faces watching the scene now in a semicircle, in the darkness of the evening. He had no choice, he had to consent.

“Fine, I accept the gift,” he said with downcast eyes.

There was a sigh of relief in the crowd. Anselmo then smiled dutifully at the warrior and bowed to him with hands clasped, and he accepted the girl from him. He respectfully handed him the axe, and the man seemed content. He walked off shaking his head and grunting, but once he made it back to the main fire, he got himself some drink and continued laughing and carousing with the crowd.  

The friction caused by Anselmo raised concern among some elders. Several middle-aged islanders informed Kahoba that, in order to make sure that the sanctity of the festival is preserved, they would have to observe Anselmo consummating his gift. Anselmo’s frown deepened when Kahoba told him about this requirement. He looked on the verge of crying. After some thought, he said: “This is going to be very difficult for me, Kahoba. Can I at least have some time to prepare? Can you get me some more of that fi-spirit? Oh my Lord, I’m so lost.”

Kahoba walked back to the circle of elders. There was some laughter, then he returned and told Anselmo: “They said, sure. You have until the fifth dance ends.”

Anselmo joined the big fire and got busy drinking. Soon his drunkenness began to attract a crowd, with islanders coming up to him and laughing with him, urging him to dance. Soon enough, Anselmo was hopping around on the dance ground with a group of warriors and maidens. Someone even gave him a spear, which he tried to spin around in Bohatan dance fashion. However, he wasn’t very dexterous at it, and he was soon discouraged from handling the spear for fear that he may let fly of it and injure an onlooker.

By the time the fifth dance ended, Anselmo was hardly in control of his wits. Later he barely remembered walking into a hut with the girl who was his gift. Of the love-making experience he remembered only some still-images.  

He woke up late the next day, and the girl had already left the hut. He did his morning prayers, adding a few extra ones addressing specifically the transgression he had committed the night before. He was boozy, and given the circumstances, and considering his greater mission on this island, he thought that perhaps it was not such a great transgression after all. Besides, he barely remembered anything, and certainly didn’t recall experiencing any pleasure. This was surely another alleviating factor.

He found Kahoba carving a piece of wood some distance from the hut.  

“Good morning, brother Anselmo! Will you eat now?” Kahoba greeted him merrily.

“I am quite hungry, to be honest.”

“Haha, of course,” laughed Kahoba. “They say you were akin to a green demon last night!”

“What?”

“Relax, it’s a compliment. It means you are strong!”

“Well, thanks, I suppose.”

“Relax, man,” Kahoba hugged Anselmo. “That girl is outside her moon, so you have nothing to worry about. What’s such a big deal with getting laid, anyways?”

* * *

Several weeks passed, and then several months. Anselmo learned the routines of island life and became comfortable speaking the language. His life was comfortable too, as he was still considered a guest and treated with the honors due to a guest. This meant that he didn’t need to get involved in the labors of the island. He had no internal role in the social structure that would assign to him a set of duties. Instead, Father Anselmo walked among the people and observed their works, including fishing, hut-building, plastic arts, child-rearing, cooking, and hunting. He recorded much of what he saw in his diaries. The weather of the island loosened the stiff European; his skin bronzed and he looked healthier than when he had arrived. After stubborn insistence he was allowed to help out with some of the heavy lifting on the island, and the exercise strengthened his body. 

Of course, he soon enough began preaching Christianity to the locals. His behavior was proper and good in the eyes of the tribe, and they were receptive and even curious to hear about his God. He became close with the big warrior with whom he had exchanged an axe for a one-night stand. Both of them felt the need to signal to each other that there were not any ill feelings left. The man’s name was Tadua. He talked to Tadua about Jesus often. One day, the two of them were spear fishing on a rock together. Actually, Father Anselmo was no good with a spear, so he was tottering in the shallows trying to catch crabs with his shirt as a net. He was explaining to Tadua: 

“The Heavenly Father of all human beings sent his only begotten Son as a sacrifice to bring eternal peace to all humankind until the end of days. Because Jesus was perfectly good, and God himself, his sacrifice has infinite value, and thus there is no longer need to sacrifice boars to ensure peace.”

“But my people never saw Jesus,” said Tadua, “and as you saw yourself, the boars bring us peace. How can Jesus bring us peace, and be in us, when we never saw him, and we never ate him?”

“Well, we cannot see Jesus Christ because he has gone to Heaven. But he will return at the end of time to bring final peace on Earth once and for all. In the meantime, Jesus lives in those who accept him. Also, we kind of do eat Jesus.”

“So, Jesus lives in you, now?”

“Yes, I hope so.”

“Well, are you at peace? Has he already brought peace, or he has yet to bring peace when he returns?”

“For the time being, we Christians are to imitate Him and strive to be like Him, but when he returns, he will be visible to all.”

“You cannot have peace without blood rites,” said Tadua. “Our god Mah also lives inside of us. But first his spirit enters a boar, whom we slaughter and eat. When we eat the boar, the spirit of Mah enters us too, and we live in peace. But we have to keep repeating the ritual to maintain peace.”

“Well, you see, we kind of do something very similar, said Anselmo. We eat the body and blood of Christ every seven days, too.”

“What animal does Jesus enter?”

“He doesn’t enter any animals. He enters bread, which is similar to your saha, and his blood is wine, a drink similar to fi.”

“Plants don’t have any blood,” said Tadua, “God doesn’t want plants. He wants animals, beings with blood. You already told me that your god is the same, with the story of the first brothers.”

Anselmo wanted to explain the concept of transubstantiation at this point but had no idea how to do it in the Bohatan language. He was going to have to learn more about the culture and try another time.

On another occasion, while sitting with Tadua near his hut, he tried to explain the idea of Heaven and Hell. He said how the righteous, those who please God, go to a state of eternal bliss with God in Heaven, and how those who offend God are doomed to suffer in fiery Hell for all eternity.

“That is correct!” was Tadua’s surprising answer. “We hold a similar belief. My people dread the fiery pit, and this is why we make sure that all of us go to Heaven.”

“How can you be sure that every one of you goes to heaven?” Asked Anselmo.

Tadua was surprised by the question: “Who do you see among us that is cursed? Can’t you see that we all live in harmony?”

“Okay, but no one lives in a perfect world. Evil must happen, even on Bohatu.”

“Yes, evil does happen sometimes,” conceded Tadua, “There are times when the Evil god Lah enters the body of one or more of our villagers, and then that villages goes to the fiery pit.”

“But how can you know that he goes to the fiery pit? What are the rules that make him go there?”

“Why, we watch him go down to the fiery pit,” Tadua said. “The Big Fiery Pit is on top of the Lah Mountain, which is on Lah Island. It is half a day of rowing from our island. When some unlucky person becomes possessed with Lah, we take him there, and we throw him in. This appeases Lah. We never let anyone possessed with Lah stay among us. It would create chaos and cause our island to be swallowed by the ocean. Where is your fiery pit?”

“Our fiery pit is not on this earth,” Anselmo felt a little sorry that all his explanations have to be so complex.

“That’s not good. How can you get rid of evil then?”

Again, Anselmo was at a loss for words. He said that they can’t, and that evil is always present among them.

“No, no,” insisted Tadua, “Stiff People are not evil. Stiff people are noble!”

Though Father Anselmo could not present a conclusive theology to Tadua and his people, his preaching nevertheless attracted curiosity. Yet, he knew that to preach the Gospel it was important to demonstrate saintliness by example and to spare words, so he became resolved to show hard work and grace whenever and wherever he could. He noticed, for example, a poor old couple living in a particularly shabby hut beyond the outskirts of the village. Whenever, he would pass by them on his way up or down the mountain, where he went alone to pray, he would greet them cordially. The couple would wave back with smiles as they lounged on the porch of the hut. Later on, seeing that they are frail and emaciated, he would bring them a spare fish or soup from the meals he took in the centre of the village. They accepted it with what seemed to be gestures of blessings, though Anselmo could not understand their dialect. They may have been from another island. He would not tell anyone about his acts of charity so as not to appear boastful.

One day Tadua took Anslemo boar hunting with several men in the forest. It was in preparation for an upcoming festival. On their way up the mountain, armed with bows and arrows and spears, they walked past the old couple’s hut. The two hosts were sitting crossed legged out on the porch. Anselmo nodded towards them to Tadua:

“What a gentle couple those two are!”

“They are tapu!” said Tadua, “No one must touch them. If you touch them, you must die. They are tapu. Unclean!”

“Oh,” exclaimed Anselmo, “Okay, I got it.” Of course, he decided not to reveal that he has already “touched” them on multiple occasions.

In the bush, the hunting party, consisting in fact of seven men counting Tadua and Anselmo, tracked a sounder of wild boars for what the better part of the day, a time span that to Anselmo seemed closer to eternity. Finally, they spotted the boars in a clearing by a loud brook, and under silent guidance of Tadua, the men circled around and approached the beasts from downwind side. Tadua carefully placed an arrow in his long bow and shot it in the direction of the animals. Immediately, as the boars begun to squeal and scramble wildly, the other tribesmen jumped out towards the clearing, and with crazed yells rushed and threw their spears at them. When the commotion settled, Anselmo saw that there was large male boar lying on the ground, with an arrow and a spear sticking out of his body. His chest was still heaving desperately.

Tadua pulled out from his waist belt a wooden dagger with several prongs, like those of a fork, except they were sticking out in a circular and slightly twisted fashion. He placed it into the hands of Anselmo and said: “You must strike it in the heart.”

“I would rather not,” Anselmo pleaded, “You see, I am not skilled at hunting at all.”

“You must!” insisted Tadua, “Do not speak any more!”

“But, …” Anselmo tried.

“You and the boar are both foreigners on our land!” thundered Tadua, “You must kill a beast, to prove that you are not the beast!”

Anselmo once again found himself painted in a corner. It seemed like he had no options. He took the dagger from Tadua’s hand and approached the lying boar. Lifting up the dagger with both hands over his head, he crouched by the animal looking to swing the sharp prongs into its soft belly, and upwards to under its rib cage. Just when he raised the dagger up and grunted in strain, the boar swung his head violently, lurching in a last-ditch attempt to save its life. Its tusks tore through Anselmo’s shirt and sliced deep into his forearm.

Anselmo screamed and swung again savagely at the beast, who squealed again, then got up and darted off into the brush. Anselmo’s blow was nowhere near fatal; it merely served to spur the boar in its plight. Anselmo then heard commotion from the hunters. They were yelling incredulously and pointing at him. They seemed to be yelling:

“He is the boar man! He is the boar man!”

One of the men took an arrow from his quiver and strung it on his bow.

“Don’t move! Don’t move!” the others shouted.

The arrow shot towards Anselmo and missed him. At this point, Anselmo got up and rushed through the thicket, in roughly the same direction as the boar had done. The rest of the party was in hot pursuit. Anselmo ran down the mountain slope. In deathly panic, an idea occurred to him to rush to the old couple’s hut and hide in there. If the place was taboo, the villagers would perhaps not enter there.

He managed to keep ahead of his pursuers, in part because the latter would slow down whenever they got close to him in the process of shooting an arrow or throwing a javelin. At the moment he ran into the sight of the hut, the hunters could not see him. He rushed into the hut and hid away from the entrance and under a window. He saw the couple seated on the bed opposite the window, and he put his index finger to his mouth, imploring them to stay quiet. He huddled tightly against the thatched wall, gripping the pronged dagger anxiously and listening for what was happening outside.

In a short moment, he could hear the hunters pause and gather in front of the hut. He could hear one of them guessing that Anselmo was hiding in the hut.

“He must be,” Anselmo could hear the voice of Tadua shortly after. “Come out, Anselmo! Come out, you are unclean! We can see your blood in front of the hut! We know you are in there!”

There was complete silence. The men outside deliberated. From what Anselmo could gather, someone was arguing that they would need to perform a rite to lift the taboo from the hut in order to enter it.

“But if we remove the taboo from the hut, we remove the taboo from Anselmo too,” said one man.

“But we cannot remove taboo from Anselmo. His blood was spilt by the boar, so the shadow of the boar is in him now. If we lift the taboo, the boar’s shadow will escape, but we must slay the boar!”

After some more debate, the hunting party agreed to seek doctrinal advice from the village assembly, and they went back to the village. They left one of the warriors to keep guard by the hut, lest Anselmo tries to flee.

They returned to the hut early the next morning, with medicine men and an additional crowd of villagers. They first saw the guard sleeping at his post, leaning on the trunk of a palm tree and hugging his spear. They then saw that the old couple was sitting on the front porch of their hut as was their habit. In front of them they saw the dead body of Anselmo spread out supine on the ground. His white shirt had been profusely soaked in blood, and the pronged dagger stuck out from his chest. The crowd murmured in commission, and an old medicine man stood in front and rose his hand for silence.

“The old man and the old woman were taboo, but now that they have slain another taboo, to wit, Anselmo, they have removed the taboo from themselves. Thus, they are free to go, and moreover, they are to be feted for expelling impurity from the island.”

“Indeed, they are to be feted!” clamoured the crowd, which included Tadua. "It also included the teenage girl that Anselmo had slept with, and it included Kahoba, Anselmo’s erstwhile cultural interpreter.

That day, the village began another three-day ceremony, just as the one they had held to welcome Anselmo. Only this time, the guests of honor were the old couple. Instead of boars, alas, the party’s main feast was Anselmo himself. As Tadua poked his pronged dagger into an especially sinewy part of the meat, he remarked to a friend sitting next to him:

“You know, I am looking forward to seeing if it’s true what Anselmo told me, that he has Jesus in him. He is a great god indeed, for he gifts his people with mighty ships and wondrous tools.”

“I think he was indeed sent from heaven to cleanse us. We only needed to strike his shadow before he returns to the village, but he kept running away. He must have been pre-ordained as a sacrifice.”