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Samosir Revisited
Travel stories tend to be aggrandized over time, especially when told by sailors, who like to spin a yarn or two. Colors become more vivid, events more shattering, people more enticing, risks more life threatening, with every rendering under a swinging oil lamp, on deck under the night stars, with an enraptured audience. In my twenty-five years of sailing (never as a captain, though) I heard many of these tall stories, of a single gun shot killing three sea pirates, of goats laying eggs on the Galapagos, and of nuns carrying Kalashnikovs.
I had only one tall story, but it was a sure killer. On board a new ship, with a fresh captain, I would ask innocently: "Can you dream up a story which has as its inevitable end, landing at 7 a.m. in the morning on Bangkok airport, being the sole passenger aboard a KLM-liner, deadly ill, weighing only 45 kilo's, with no luggage, no travel documents or even suitable clothing, with just a blanket around the body, being dumped by the crew on the tarmac, arrested by Thai MP's, put in jail on the airport, and rescued two hours later by H.M. King Bhumibol in person?" (I have a witness to this story, situated in 1955, and it is Bhumibol himself, still King of Thailand, then Siam, today). This question would stop other story-tellers dead in their tracks. They had no clue.
Part of this story has already been unveiled in the second installment of the Samosir stories (Bonaire Reporter January 3-11). Just a brief recapitulation, and then I'll restart on Samosir itself, this eerie island no one has ever been able to trace on a maritime map. (It is three times the size of Bonaire and is surrounded by fresh water, lying in Lake Toba in Sumatra, the largest inland crater lake in the world).
One morning in early June 1955 we left Samosir, - "we" being the members of a small Dutch cabaret group touring the Far East who had broken with sponsor Shell, and had been invited to come and play at Bhumibol's court in Bangkok for the Dutch community there - and landed on the shore of Lake Toba, waiting for our Land Rover transport back to Medan. With a fellow player - a great mimic in the school of Jan-Louis Barrault, but a bit of a miser - I sauntered along the coastline. An old Batak woman ran a little stall from which she sold sundry souvenirs, quite authentic pieces at the time. Her prized possession was an old Batak religious book, written on palm leaves, and bound with strings of dried hard grass.
Our mimic feigned interest and started to negotiate. When the old woman had given in to his latest bid he smiled a vicious little grin and walked away. The woman grumbled something in Batak which sounded to me like a curse. (It was and it came out). I felt embarrassed and bought the book. She then proceeded to inspect the palms of my two hands, and she told me (in Dutch, which the Batak people do speak): "In the very near future, maybe no more than a month, you will have four brushes with death. Also, you will meet three very high-placed people, kings or prime ministers, but they will not be able to protect you. I therefore give you this amulet, for free, because you bought my book, and redressed the insult by your friend." Believe it or not, these were her very words, and her prediction came entirely true.
The same day we drove to Medan, where we were treated to an unexpected tea party in the sprawling complex of the "Captain of the Chinese," the de facto ruler of all expat Chinese in the Eastern Hemisphere.
The occasion was the funeral of a grandchild. The whole compound, with lakes and pagodas, was hung with two meter long streamers, the traditional Chinese mourning card from friends and relatives. The atmosphere was rather festive. I was allowed an audience with the Captain's mother, a frail but regal lady in her eighties, who showed me her handiwork which had occupied her for the past 17 years. It was a rather small ivory sphere, the size of a grapefruit, with six independently moving spheres cut out inside. She told me, in impeccable French, that she would live until she had finished the seventh infinitely small sphere, and had decorated it, with her delicate chisels. Was this the first of my four brushes with death, and with a regal person? It turned out not to be; just a general rehearsal.
The next day we flew to Bangkok - a very bumpy ride, smacking of a brush with the eternal again - and set up camp in our lodgings in the royal palace. We produced three performances, and after a dizzying week, with many parties, lit by lampions, candles and festive fires, embarked for the island of New Guinea, in Eastern Indonesia where our tour was to be resumed. To be continued...
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