Euphoria

“I heard a word I knew, taiku, the Kiona word for stones. One said it then the other said it, louder. Then loud belly-shaking guffaws of laughter […] They laughed like people in England used to laugh before the war, when I was a boy.”

This passage illustrates how the tribespeople are capable of laughing at the anthropologists and their strange ways. They misinterpret Andrew’s attempt at suicide as an attempt to swim with stones in his pockets. He in turn admires their laughter, which seems to belong to a more ancient and happier civilization—one that England might have been before the First World War’s mass destruction.

“From the nature of their questions—Fen’s about religion and religious totems, ceremonies, warfare and genealogy; Nell’s about economics, food, government, social structure and child-rearing—I could tell they’d divided their areas neatly […] everyone wanted to stake out his own territory.”

Andrew’s observation of the different themes that interest Fen and Nell, which allow them to research alongside one another without invading each other’s territory, reminds him of the competitive, colonizing bias in anthropology as a whole. Like colonizers, anthropologists in the domain of knowledge have a tendency to claim their own distinct territory rather than collaborate.

“‘It’s that moment, about two months in, when you think you’ve finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp. It’s a delusion—you’ve only been there eight weeks—and it’s followed by complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It’s the briefest, purest euphoria.’”

Nell tells Andrew of the euphoric illusion that the anthropologists understand in the place they are studying. There is almost the quality of possessing a place once they have understood it. However, then comes the humility of learning that the strange land does not fit their theories and that they must become observers again.

“What a treasure trove a man like that would be, what perspective he would have on his own people.”

In her notebooks, Nell objectifies Xambun, a Tam tribesman who has gone to work as an indentured servant in the mines as a “treasure trove” to her own research. Although Nell is a sympathetic character, with a vested interest in the wellbeing of the tribes she studies, she cannot help slipping into the colonialist trope of seeing Xambun as an enriching resource to her studies.

“[S]he wrote with an urgency most of us felt but did not have the courage to reveal, because we were too beholden to the traditions of the old sciences. For so long I’d felt that what I’d been trained to do in academic writing was to press my nose to the ground, and here was Nell Stone with her head raised and swiveling in all directions.”

It is not only Nell’s gender that makes her a rarity in 1930s anthropology, but her spontaneous writing style, which conveys the spirit of discovery and surprise she feels on the field. She is therefore more loyal to her observations than to the reasoned tradition of academic science writing.

“I felt I loved them, loved them both, in the manner of a child. I yearned for them, far more than they could ever yearn for me.”

Formerly lonely, suicidal Andrew is grateful for the stimulation and company that Nell and Fen provide as it gives him a reason to stay alive; however, he wrongly speculates that because Nell and Fen have each other, they do not need him as much as he needs them.

“I was overwhelmed by life arriving and remembering my sister Katie’s fat legs and full of a wild selfish hope that my body having now seen the simplicity of it could manage that someday.”

This passage from Nell’s notebook conveys her visceral desire for a child. Seeing Sali in childbirth, she remembers her own deceased, yet beloved baby sister and commands her own body to yield the same result as the tribeswoman’s.

“I felt overwhelmed by the presence of her, which was ever strong in actuality than in memory […] I was aware now of how hard I’d tried six weeks ago not to find her attractive. I hadn’t remembered her lips and how the lower one dipped in the middle, brimming over.”

This passage conveys Andrew’s reignited physical attraction to Nell. He has fought against her sexual power over him but is now unable to help himself from becoming distracted by the abundance of her hair and lips.

“I wondered what they made of this woman who bossed them around and wrote down their reactions. It was funny how it all seemed more vulgar watching someone else do it.”

Removed from his own process of studying tribespeople, Andrew observes Nell at work and sees their occupation with fresh eyes. There is a vulgarity, he realizes, to subjecting people to anthropological experiments and documenting how they respond as though they are animals. In this instance, Andrew forms a bridge between Nell’s activity and King’s modern politically correct reader, who is likely to find the techniques of 1930s anthropology distasteful and dehumanizing.

“Sickness frightens him. It’s how he lost his mother after all. I’m seeing now from this vantage point that all the times he’s hovered over the bed, scolding me, hounding me to get up, it’s been fear, not fury.”

Nell observes Fen’s reaction to Andrew’s sickness and concludes that he is more afraid than angry. However, because he cannot face his fear of a sickness like the one that took his mother away, it comes out in aggression.

“Time stretched like a hair being pulled from each end, every second closer to the snap. Taut. Tauter. Tauterer.”

King’s language breaks from standard English, conveying the delirious reality of having a fever. The use of taut, tauter, tauterer makes language more sensory, signifying that Andrew reverts to a childlike state in his convalescence.

“‘They know their ancestors have a plan for them. There’s no sense that it was wrong. Tragedy is based on the sense that there’s been a terrible mistake, isn’t it?’”

Nell believes that Tam tribespeople do not suffer misfortune in the same way as people in the developed West because they see everything as part of an ancestral plan. For them, there is no bargaining with fate. Tragedy, on the other hand, which is suffered in the West, is experienced because of the notion of deviance from an overall plan.

“It is a bit of a dance we three are in. But there is a better balance when B is here, too. Fen’s demanding, rigid, determined nature weighs heavily on one side of the scale and Bankson’s and my more pliant & adjustable natures on the other, equaling things out.”

In her notebook, Nell acknowledges the unusualness of the situation the three of them find themselves in, but she admits that things are better when Andrew is around to balance out Fen’s rigidity. In her contemplation of the different types of temperament, she also relays the foundation of the Grid theory.

“And then she saw them, Malun and a man in green trousers. They were standing but he was curled over her and she held him with great effort, his full cumbersome weight, keening as if over a dead body. But he was not dead. There were long deep scars across his bare back, fresher and far cruder than his initiation scarring […] but he was not dead.”

Nell sees the returning Xambun, and he is a sad sight. Although alive, he seems deeply lethargic as though from injury and scarred haphazardly through the tribulations of indentured servitude.

“But she had needed a brother, it turned out. She had needed one with the Mumbanyo. She might still have her baby if she’d had a brother there.”

This is one instance where King alludes to Fen’s violence but does not specify its exact nature. Nevertheless, there is the suggestion that Nell once had a baby and Fen had something to do with its death. Perhaps Fen was imitating the Mumbanyo, who kill their firstborn. The reference to a brother is the need for a third: the person to hold someone accountable. Andrew arguably fills this role.

“Fen claims that if you just let go of your brain, find another brain, the group brain, the collective brain […] it is an exhilarating form of human connection that we have lost in our embrace of the individual except when we go to war.”

In her notebook, Nell alludes to Fen’s reference of the collective brain, which presides over base, communal impulses such as food, drug-taking, and sex. Whilst these impulses are potent amongst the tribes, the civilized West has lost this, except in the dark conditions of going to war.

“For long stretches of time it felt like we were crawling around in each other’s brain. We talked in the abstract about relationships, which temperaments went well together. Nell said opposites worked best, and I hastened to agree, though I didn’t believe it and hoped she didn’t either.”

Nell and Andrew have intense commonalities as people on the Southern edge of temperament. However, when they begin talking about compatibility, Nell supports the old-fashioned idea of complementary opposites, as per patriarchal understandings of gender polarity. Andrew, however, hopes for a different picture of gender.

“‘Why are there so many tribes who share everything—food, shelter, land, income—but their stories always revolve around someone’s brother or best friend stealing his woman?’”

Nell gives voice to Margaret Mead, the historical anthropologist her character is based on. Mead’s idea, which is one of the opening quotes to King’s book, is that “[q]uarrels over women are the keynote of the New Guinea primitive world.” However, on a deeper level, the idea of a woman being stolen is taking shape in the novel’s narrative with Andrew’s attempt to steal Nell from Fen.

“He is not the same man, they said, and he has gone to find his spirit and bring it back into his body […] I watched how fervently they prayed to all their gods for the return of Xambun’s soul to his body […] I doubted anyone had ever prayed for me like that.”

Andrew is moved by the tribe’s interpretation of Xambun’s going off with Fen as an attempt to reclaim his soul after it leaves him during his indentured servitude. They feel Xambun’s loss of soul as though it is their own and pray with all their beings to have him restored. The tribe’s care for this lost man makes Fen’s treatment of him and his return as a casualty ever more tragic.

“She told me that the Tam believed that love grows in the stomach and that they went around clutching their bellies when their hearts were broken. ‘You are in my stomach’ was their most intimate expression of love.”

The Tam belief that love grows in the stomach nurtures Nell and Andrew’s intimacy. As they make love and seemingly begin their own tribe, they do so with a respect for the Tam by referring to their cultural understanding of where emotion is located within the body.

“‘We can’t go. These are my people.’ Her voice broke. She understood. She understood about their gods and amends—and Fen’s brutal possessiveness.”

Nell is devastated to learn that they have to leave the tribe after Fen returns with the flute and the dead Xambun. She feels a deep connection with these people, even though their origins are so different from her own. However, Fen has offended the tribe by choosing to keep the flute instead of granting it to Xambun’s body. As Fen’s wife, Nell understands that the most respectful and safe thing she can do is to leave.

“I had never seen more clearly how streets like these were made for and by amoral cowards, men who made money in rubber or sugar or copper or steel in remote places then returned here where no one questioned their practices, their treatment of others, their greed. Like them, the three of us would face no recriminations. No one would ever ask us here how we had got a man killed.”

Andrew returns to Western civilization and walks through the streets of Sydney after his time with the tribes. He is disgusted with the hidden means that make the capitalist city run, imagining that many lives were sacrificed to keep the city running. Then, he identifies himself, Nell, and Fen as amongst these invisible privileged; he is almost saddened by how easily they will get away with the crimes that have led to Xambun’s death.

“‘I needed something big. And this is big. Books on this thing will write themselves.’”

Fen attempts to qualify to Andrew why he needs to find and take the flute. He wants to surpass Nell’s careful labor and illustrious books with something that is “big” and impressive in scale. He considers the massive sacred flute to be the magical object that will bring him fame. Fen feels the need to go into competition with Nell and beat her so that he can swing the balance of power in their relationship his way.