Ecotopia (13 page)

Marissa mostly stared at the displays of whale life (Ecotopians have incredible wildlife photographers—they must literally live with the species they are filming—though as far as I can tell Ecotopians don’t take ordinary snapshots of our quick-freeze-the-moment type.) It turns out she has swum with dolphins, but won’t say much about the experience except that it was enormously exciting and quite scary.

On the way back we passed shrimp boats and other small fishing craft—apparently the Bay, once an open cesspool, has again become the fertile habitat which estuaries naturally are (thus my ardent informant). Was proudly told how many metric tons of tiny, succulent Bay shrimp are consumed and shipped out daily; even clams, whose shells the local Indians once piled into huge refuse mounds, have returned to the mudflats.

Windblown, a little sunstruck, a little drunk, we returned at dusk to the Cove and to bed. “Ben is really a good brother to have, but I’ve never been able to get him to know where to stop,” Marissa said apologetically. (I had noticed her lecturing him on the dock as we were stowing the boat’s gear away.) “He cares about me a lot, even if I’ve never gotten him to understand me. He never likes to see me taking risks. It’s a relic of the family past, I guess—when women supposedly had no independence at all. But without taking risks, I wouldn’t feel I was alive.” She smiled at me, with a sweet but inscrutable companionableness, and lay down in my arms.

What can I possibly mean to this incredible woman? She evades my questions about what she thinks of me. When she is back at the lumber camp, she evidently sleeps and lives with Everett as before; yet little by little, she spends more of her free time with me. Yet she makes good-humored fun of me, correcting my ecological mistakes
(like wasting wash water or electricity) as if she was the highly advanced person and I a kind of bumpkin, not yet fully acclimated to civilized life.

Sometimes, when I say something about how Ecotopians, or she herself, appear to me, she becomes very quiet and attentive. The other night I mentioned their way of holding eye contact for what seems to me excessively long times, and how this stirred up feelings it is hard for me to handle. “What feelings?” she asked. “Nervousness, a desire for relief, to look away for a while.” “And if you withstand the nervousness and go on looking?” (All this, of course, with her great dark eyes intent upon mine.) “Then I guess tenderness, and a desire to touch. —It makes me afraid I’ll cry.” “You strange person—of course you can cry!” She gave me a long, strong hug.

I had to explain. “Not in
our
country! Maybe here you can teach me, though. I don’t have to be so guarded here, with you.” “All right,” she said, a faint puzzlement in her eyes. Can I be, for her, some kind of Mysterious Stranger—exotic in spite of myself?

SAVAGERY RESTORED:
ECOTOPIA’S DARK SIDE

Marshall-by-the-Bay, May 24. After much negotiation, I have now been permitted to observe that monstrous custom which has inspired so much horror toward Ecotopia among civilized nations: the Ritual War Games. Yesterday I became, so far as I know, the first American ever to witness this chilling spectacle. My companions and I rose before dawn and took a train north from San Francisco to the town of Marshall. Then a walk of 20 minutes (passing two of the small homemade shrines that dot the Ecotopian landscape) brought us to a hill overlooking a rolling, open piece of country with a creek flowing through it down to the marshy edge of the water.

When we got there, preparations for the ritual were well under
way. Two bands of young men had gathered, one on each side of the creek. Perhaps 25 were on each side. Each group had built a fire, and prepared some kind of drink in a large cauldron—apparently a stimulant to anesthetize themselves against the terrors to come. Each man (they ranged from about 16 to 30) had a large, dangerous spear, with a point of sharpened black stone. And each man was painting himself with colors, in primitive, fierce designs.

After a time, when several hundred spectators had gathered, a signal was given on a large gong. At this, the spectators became tense and silent. The “warriors” deployed along both banks of the creek, taking up positions about a spear-length apart. One group, seeming more aggressive, began a war chant that sounded quite blood-thirsty, though also perhaps a bit reminiscent of our athletic cheers. When the other side seemed to hesitate and back off from the creek, the aggressive group crossed it, brandishing their spears, and began a series of rushes up the other side.

The defenders, however, could not be panicked. Whenever a number of attackers pressed hard against one of their men, his neighbors gathered to his defense, shouting and bringing their spears to bear; and this flexible, fluid, shifting pattern of offense and defense seemed to prevail all along the line. Occasionally a group would gather and rush at the opponents’ line. But this rush would soon be countered, though often at the cost of very close calls with the sharp obsidian blades.

This went on, with much shouting and the crowd growing increasingly excited, for perhaps half an hour—the warriors returning occasionally to their cauldrons for refreshment. Then suddenly a scream went up from one end of the line. My attention had been elsewhere, so I did not actually see the fatal blow, but others later told me a warrior had slipped on the grass during one of the rushes, and an opponent had seized the chance and managed to run a spear entirely through his shoulder.

At this, all hostilities miraculously ceased. The two tribes retreated to their original positions. Partisans of the “winning” side appeared joyful, almost ecstatic, slapping and hugging each other; the losers’ partisans were downcast. Doctors appeared from among
the onlookers, and began attending to the wounded man. There was a lot of blood on the grass, but from comments around me I gathered that the victim was not in grave medical danger despite his nasty wound.

The victors now began a dance of celebration. Their partisans came down the hill to join them. Musicians struck up, and dancing began. The warriors shared their cauldron with all, in an atmosphere of excited jubilation. Some of the leading warriors on the winning side went off with women into the bushes. On the losing side there appeared to be a good deal of lamentation, crying, and writhing around. After a time the fires were stoked up again, food was brought out, and a feast began to take shape. This was held at the camp of the winners; they magnanimously offered to feed the defeated side—who accepted deferentially.

I learned that an ambulance which had been standing by would shortly carry away the wounded man (now neatly bandaged up) so I went over to speak to him. They had laid him out on a kind of stretcher made of red cloth with a white cross on it. His body was arranged in a startlingly crucifix-like way, with straps on wrists and ankles. Several women leaned over the stretcher, moaning and from time to time wiping his forehead with a damp rag.

“Oh, how you have suffered!” cried one. “I have done a man’s thing,” he replied, in a rather rote tone. “Your poor body has been hurt, you might have died!” the women said. “Do not think of me, think of our family: I bear wounds for them.” “We all suffer!”

At this, the young man looked at them in an almost pitying way. “It is finished,” he said quietly, and closed his eyes. From the way he spoke, I thought for a moment that the doctors had been mistaken, and he was dying. But apparently it was just a signal for the women to leave him—for after they did, he opened his eyes again and looked around in perfectly cheery spirits.

I seized the opportunity and went up to him. “How do you feel?”

“I feel like a man,” he said, relapsing into his former rote manner. “Once more I have survived.” “Can you tell me what the
fighting was about?” “It was us against them, of course, to see who would win.” “No other reason?”

He gave me a curious look. “It also is to test ourselves—don’t you understand how good it feels to be frightened, and come through?” “Would you do it all over again?” “Sure. We
will
do it again, probably on the second full moon from now. —Are you a stranger?”

“I’m an American newspaper reporter,” I said, “writing articles for my paper. Can I take your picture?” I pulled out my camera, expecting no objection, but the young man replied, “NO! Absolutely not! Have you no decency?” At this a group of men nearby turned toward us in a menacing way.

“Excuse me,” I said, realizing I had made a serious blunder. I put the camera away quickly. (Later I learned that Ecotopians think photography has a dark-magic side, as a way of trying to freeze time—to cheat biology and defy change and death, so it would be especially out of place at such a time.) The Ecotopians, however, did not leave it at that. One of the older men asked me to come and sit beside him. He offered me a meat-stuffed pastry, and proceeded to lecture me on the meaning of the war games I had been witnessing.

Ecotopians, he began, had always regarded anthropology as a field with great practical importance. After Independence they had begun to experiment in adapting anthropological hypotheses to real life. It was only over a great deal of resistance that a radical idea such as ritual warfare had become legally practicable, even with the ingenuity of the best lawyers. But its advocates had persisted, convinced as they were that it was essential to develop some kind of open civic expression for the physical competitiveness that seemed to be inherent in man’s biological programming—and otherwise came out in perverse forms, like war.

They hoped that Ecotopians would not be forced to fight any actual wars, since they knew the utter destruction that would result. On the other hand, it seemed indisputable that man was not a creature built for a totally and routinely peaceful life. Young men, especially, needed a chance to combat “the others,” to charge and flee, to test their comradeship, to put their beautiful resources of
speed and strength to use, to let their adrenalin flow, to be brave and to be fearful. “In America,” my companion pointed out with a smug grin, “you accomplish some of the same objectives with your wars and your automobiles. They let you be competitive and aggressive and allowed to risk smashing each other. Of course, you also have professional football. But it is only a spectator sport—and besides, the players do not possess lethal weapons. Though I admit we took some ideas from it.”

He went on to argue that Ecotopian ritual war games actually result in very few fatalities—something like 50 young men die in the games each year, a figure he insisted on comparing with our highway toll of about 75,000 a year and our war dead, which tend to average out to around 5,000 a year. It appears, by the way, that women never participate in the war games; but before our feminist militants leap on this point, they should know that the games were established as part of the Survivalist Party’s generally cooperation-oriented program, and that Ecotopians prefer to focus women’s competitiveness in other ways: through contests for political leadership, through organizing work—at which women are believed to excel—and through rivalry over men to father their children.

It is thus chiefly young men who participate in the games, and the meets are set up largely between neighboring groups, something like our high-school athletic contests but on an even smaller scale. The game today, for instance, was between two communes that occupy neighboring territories. One group raises sheep for wool and cows for milk; the other “farms” oysters in an estuary of the Bay. Apparently in the cities competition is usually between neighborhoods or work groups—factory against factory, store against store, as happens in our industrial bowling leagues. However, there are no leagues, pennants, and so forth. Each ritual session is a self-contained event, an end in itself.

“What about the cross?” I asked.

“Well, Ecotopia came into existence with a Judeo-Christian heritage,” was the reply. “We make the best of it. You will find many expressions of it in our culture still. In this case, obviously the young man
is
indeed suffering for his family or ‘tribe.’ We have a lot of poetry and music that focuses precisely on this
suffering, as well as on courage and bravery. There’s also a little ceremony for when a wounded man comes back from hospital. You might guess what it’s called: the raising. He stands up and walks.”

It is clear, thus, that the abhorrent spectacle of fine young men deliberately trying to kill each other is a semi-religious rite and a practice not lightly instituted, no matter what we Americans may think of it. It may indeed have antecedents in the institution of bullfighting, in football, in the Mass, or in the ritual wars of savage tribes. But its senseless violence, the letting of blood without a justifying cause, must surely remain a blot on Ecotopia’s name among civilized nations.

(May 25) Goddamn woman is impossible! Got really turned on at the war games—stayed beside me during the fighting, explaining it to me in low, excited voice. Then afterward rushed away to the cauldron, drank an enormous cupful, looked around in an inviting fashion, and made no resistance when one of the winning warriors came up, propositioned her, and literally carried her away. (She weighs about 130, as I happen to know, but this didn’t faze him.) Not a glance in my direction.