The sixties were a strange time for all of us...
The Dreadful Death of Cousin Arthur
My cousin Arthur died in 1963, the year I turned 21. Arthur was three years older than me, a bespectacled, bookish sort of fellow with severely cropped brown hair and glasses that he was constantly pushing back up the bridge of his nose. I, like a great many young men at the time, wore my hair very long and tended towards blue jeans and tie dyed t-shirts decorated with anti-war slogans. Arthur, by contrast, was Mr. Suit-and-Tie, his shoes always polished to a dazzling sheen and his tie and handkerchief carefully chosen to match whatever white or pastel starched and pressed button-down shirt he happened to be wearing. Rumor had it that Arthur even ironed his socks.
The greatest passion Arthur ever exhibited was for Pepsi Cola. He adored Pepsi Cola with a devotion that bordered on idolatry. Whenever Arthur had to attend a social function, he did so with several bottles of the stuff stashed surreptitiously about his person, so as not to be at the mercy of whatever brand his hosts might have chosen to buy. As small children, his sisters and I delighted in finding and absconding with his Pepsi whenever we could, leaving poor Arthur to stand thirstily for the remainder of the gathering, as he would not soil his palate with any lesser libation.
To my Aunt Minerva’s great pride, her son Arthur was the first of our generation to attend and graduate from college. After he graduated, Arthur enrolled in graduate school, avidly pursuing his Master’s Degree in Anthropology. Unlike most young men of the day who attended graduate school to escape a senior trip to Southeast Asia, Arthur viewed Anthropology with a reverence he had hitherto reserved only for his Pepsi Cola. Although he looked and acted remarkably like an accountant, Arthur’s chosen field of study involved what Aunt Minerva liked to refer to as the ‘Lost Tribes of Darkest Africa’.
During his final year of graduate school, Arthur made numerous journeys to Africa to complete first-hand studies of many of these tribes, their cultures and their customs. It was during one of these trips that Arthur and three of his traveling companions met their fate at the hands of an obscure tribe of cannibals who inhabited a hitherto unexplored swath of jungle deep in the Congo.
We would have never learned of Arthur’s fate, except that the fifth member of their expedition, a serious-faced young woman named Delilah Smith, was escorted from the jungle several weeks later by a traveling missionary party after they had discovered her wandering alone outside of the cannibalistic tribe’s territory. She was dazed and suffering from fever and insect bites, but in remarkably good condition considering her recent ordeal. She carried a small bag, and otherwise possessed only the ragged remnants of the clothing she had been wearing when the group was surprised by the cannibals. The bag, which she clutched with a convulsive grip, contained all that remained of her deceased colleagues.
Aunt Minerva was notified of Arthur’s death by representatives of Uncle Sam, who had in turn been contacted by the American Embassy office in that region of Africa. She promptly called her sister Athena, my mother, and then collapsed in hysterics.
The day that Delilah Smith was due to arrive in the United States, escorting the remains of Arthur and company, Aunt Minerva was still indisposed. Since my mother could not leave her side I was chosen to meet Miss Smith at the airport and take custody of Arthur’s body.
When Miss Smith finally cleared customs, she was shown to the small room where I, along with the parents of Arthur’s assistant, Richard, anxiously awaited her. With murmured condolences, she rummaged in her luggage, finally producing two small boxes, one for me and one for Richard’s parents.
As a mere cousin, she left me until last, spending time with Richard’s mother and father first. Finally, after they had murmured their last thanks and shed more tears, the bereaved parents shuffled out, clutching their small box.
When Miss Smith handed me the box containing Arthur’s remains, I did something that Richard’s parents had not done. I split the tape with a thumbnail and opened it, ignoring her horrified gasp. As I looked into the container, my own shocked inhalation rivaled hers. Instead of ashes, as I had expected, I was looking at a shriveled, mummified human penis.
I slammed the box shut, gawking at the blushing Miss Smith.
"I don’t understand this," I spluttered. "However can this be all that is left of Arthur?"
"I can tell you of what befell Arthur and the others, if you’ve the stomach for it," she replied. Her voice was as crisp and serious-looking as her face, with an accent varying between upper class British and moneyed New England. When I nodded assent, she seated herself at the small table in the center of the room, gesturing me towards the chair opposite hers. Conspicuous young rebel that I was at that time, I turned my chair so that the back faced the table, then straddled it, resting my elbows on the chair back after placing the box containing what was left of Arthur on the table between us. Miss Smith waited until I had arranged myself, then she began her story:
"We had contracted for a guide in the last trading town along the Congo River, and after we finished outfitting ourselves, we set out for the deep jungle. Arthur, who was heading up the expedition, had heard rumors of a tribe that was supposedly located far back in the jungle along an unexplored tributary of the Congo River. This tribe, it was said, had never before been seen by any white man. Our party consisted of myself, Arthur, Richard, who was Arthur’s assistant from the university, our guide Tomas, and a local bearer with an unpronounceable African name whom everybody called Joe.
"Tomas proved to be a good and trustworthy guide, and we motored up the Congo in a small flatboat, finding the hidden tributary and proceeding along it until it became impassable for the boat. At that point, we concealed the craft in some thick brush and continued the trek on foot. Joe carried most of the foodstuffs and photographic equipment, while the rest of us carried our personal necessities, notebooks and specimen jars. Arthur, of course, also carried two large bottles of Pepsi, which he carefully rationed for himself and about which we all teased him mercilessly.
"The expedition was going very well, and we were all making numerous notes and rapidly filling our specimen jars. Then one morning, midway through the second week of our trek, we stepped into a small clearing to find ourselves surrounded on all sides by nearly naked tribesmen of a type we had never encountered before. They had paint daubed across their faces and bodies, and their spears and arrows looked very sharp and menacing. Unlike other natives we had encountered, none of these men were smiling, or indeed making any effort at communication.
"They relieved us of our machetes and Tomas’s gun, then marched us forcibly through the jungle for almost half a day before we came to their village. Once we were there, I was separated from the others and turned over to a group of women, all of whom were busy with different domestic tasks. I was given a crude clay jug, and made to fetch water with two tribes women who appeared to be about my age. We brought the water back from the river and poured it into a great stone pot that occupied the center of the village. It took a couple of hours, and many trips, before we’d finally brought back enough water to satisfy the unfriendly and ancient crone who was directing the proceedings.
"Once there was enough water in the cauldron, a fire was lighted beneath it and two of the older women were assigned to keep the fire burning. As night fell, torches were lit, so many of them that the clearing was as bright as day. Finally, except for the two women feeding the fire, all of the rest of the women gathered in a loose semi circle on the outer rim of the boundary defined by the flickering torches. Four or five men walked slowly into the clearing, beating out a complex rhythm on long narrow drums that hung on thongs from their necks.
"Then a large group of men entered, all decorated in bright splashes of paint and wearing jewelry made of shells, stones, bones and feathers. They were singing, their discordant voices somehow blending with the music of the drums. Between them, slung from poles, they carried Arthur, Richard, Tomas and Joe. I bit my lips, somehow stopping myself from crying out. All four had been stripped naked and were already dead.
"The bodies were arranged side by side on the ground by the huge pot. One by one, their murderers used sharp knives and cut away the top half of each body, stopping at their," and here Miss Smith paused a second, blushing to the roots of her hair.
"Um, stopping at their, um, thing," she finally said, gesturing towards the box on the table between us. "They then picked up the portions they had cut off and threw them into the pot. These they cooked for awhile, as they continued to play their drums and dance about in the torch light. Then each of the men took a bowl and helped himself to a large portion of stew, and I saw to my sorrow that they washed their grisly feast down with shares of one of Arthur’s bottles of Pepsi.
"They covered the remaining portion of the bodies with leaves, and the next night there was a second feast. The drums and dancing were the same, except that this time they cooked the lower half of each body, cutting away and throwing into the pots everything below the men’s... um..." She blushed again, then plunged ahead, "Below the men’s things."
"They washed this second feast down with shares of Arthur’s second bottle of Pepsi. Afterwards, one of the women gathered up my poor companions," another blush, "Um, things, which she took to the edge of the village and buried. That night I crept out of the women’s tent, dug up all that remained of my friends and took them with me as I made my escape from the village. They weren’t guarding me, and I don’t think they even bothered to pursue me. It struck me as a rather chauvinistic society." She said this with an audible sniff.
There was a long silence following her narrative, then I shook my head. "I don’t get it, " I said. "These cannibals ate their bones, their internal organs, even their hair. Why wouldn’t they eat their, um, their things?" This last I said lamely, blushing myself as I glanced at Miss Smith.
Miss Smith stared at me as if I had gone quite mad. "The savages," she sniffed, "Had only Arthur’s Pepsi with which to wash down their repast."
My bafflement must have shown in my face, because her expression softened somewhat as she explained.
"Young man," she said, not unkindly. "Things go better with Coke."