The Crocodile Youth

The dirt road into the village was thick with dust. A whole crowd was coming along it, one afternoon long ago. An old tale of the Ê Đê people says they were as many as termites, as many as ants. The spears and blades on their shoulders bristled like the trees of the forest. When the people of the village heard those footsteps, they knew at once who was coming.

Hold that picture for a moment. Then turn to a second one.

The same people. The same faces that had just come down that road. But this time they are sitting on the floor of a longhouse, the home of a family that traces its line through the mother. Their legs are neatly folded, and they hold bowls of rice the host has just handed them. Their spears and blades stand out on the veranda, and no one is guarding them. Out in the yard, the children run back and forth, and not one of them has to keep their eyes lowered.

The one who turned the first picture into the second is the young man the Ê Đê of the Central Highlands call Chàng Cá Sấu, the Crocodile Youth.

No one explains why he carries that name. The storytellers never felt the need to either. All anyone knows is that the name, once heard, is never forgotten, and it has followed him through many generations.

He lived in a village, and for the Ê Đê of old, the village was everything. It was where people lived, and also where they looked after all their own affairs. Right and wrong in the village were already set by custom. That custom was not written on paper. It was spoken aloud in rhyming lines, called klei duê, so that anyone who heard it could remember it.

In the old tales of the Ê Đê, a chief is called a Mtao. Mtao is a rank, not a kind of character. One tale tells how a Mtao himself stepped in between two sides who were fighting, and urged them to let go of their hatred.

As for the head of a village, the old custom says this. He is the banyan tree at the head of the stream, the fig tree at the head of the village. He is the one who watches over the brothers, children and grandchildren of the village. If he does not take care to judge the disputes of the villagers, then he himself is the guilty one. His crime is bringing ruin to the homes of his own village.

But this tale is about other people. It is about the Mtao of the villages to the west, and the Mtao of the villages to the east. Both sides were known as violent and cruel. Wherever they went, the villages there lost their goods and their homes. In the villages, people began to watch the road. Every afternoon someone would go and stand at the edge of the village. They looked toward the far end of the dirt road, to see whether any dust was rising that day.

The Crocodile Youth lived between those two sides. He was strong, and he stepped aside for no one. They came at him, and he did not fall back.

The old tale says very little about the days that followed. It says only that he was a formidable rival to the Mtao of the west and the Mtao of the east. Then it says he beat them until they knelt and begged to surrender. That is all.

The men who had just been marching down the road now knelt on the ground, not daring to raise their heads. Their spears and blades lay scattered, and no one bothered to pick them up. The Crocodile Youth stood, still breathing hard. No one said a word. Farther off, behind the roofs of the longhouses, the evening forest stayed green and silent, as if the yard below were none of its business.

At this point, the tales of the Central Highlands usually end. The wicked fall, the village is at peace again, and people sing their children to sleep with that ending.

The tale of the Crocodile Youth does not end there.

In his hands at that moment lay the power to decide life or death for the men kneeling at his feet. The whole village stood there, waiting for him to use that power. The men kneeling below were waiting too.

He set it down. He spared them from death.

In an Ê Đê village, most questions of right and wrong were settled by reconciliation. The judge, whom the Ê Đê call pô phat kđi, was usually a respected elder who knew the custom well. The judgment did not aim at harsh punishment, but at teaching and at making peace. When a case was settled, there was still one more rite to perform. It was held to end the feud between the two sides for good, witnessed by the spirits and by the whole village.

The men who had just been spared did not quietly get up and leave. They swore an oath. They swore that from then on, they would never again dare to do cruel deeds.

And they kept their word.

In time, those men lived happily and in harmony with the people of the village.

The second picture is the cool, shady floor of a longhouse belonging to a family traced through the mother. A few men sit cross-legged, hot rice in their hands. One of them has just said something that makes the host burst out laughing. Out on the veranda, the spears leaning there have not been touched for a long time, and a thin layer of dust covers their tips.

And no one has to stand at the edge of the village watching the road anymore. This afternoon only the wind travels the dirt road, along with a few cows ambling home late. It is as if nothing on that road had ever given a child reason to be afraid.