 © Jef Gunn
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Ramumu Hoolihoo, Incorporated Click to read Click to |
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© Jef Gunn
|
Ramumu Hoolihoo, Incorporated Click to read Click to |
Ramumu
Hoolihoo, Incorporated
The slender volume rested flat against the back of the library shelf behind two Balzacs.
How did it get there? Probably slipped or pushed back. How long had it been there?
Probably a long time; who reads Balzac nowadays?
It was really more of a pamphlet than a book, old, dusty-gray cardboard cover, no title on the front, self-published probably, three staples for a spine. Inside the front cover, from the yellowed pouch stamped "Seattle Public Library," I slipped out the due date card. The last time the book had been checked out. . . . It had never been checked out.
The Economy of Appetite:
A Study of the Anthropology and Pathology
of Pygmy Capitalists of Western New Guinea
by
Sir Hoyle Raiburne, Ph.D.
It had no table of contents, no publisher, but it had a publishing date (1952), and it had a foreword:
Words cannot express my eternal gratitude to the dozens of scientists and dreamers who bravely journeyed into the jungles of Western New Guinea in search of mankind’s barbaric past, and found it. . . . I would also like to thank the Ramumu Hoolihoo pygmee [sic] tribe, those little, brown people whom I was fortunate enough to discover and whom, after many trials and tribulations, I have learned to love. . . .
It was signed, "Sir Hoyle Raiburne, Ph.D., London, England, 1952." On the next page was the dedication: "In Memorium: Greteline Bottoms-Raiburne (1895-1951) Who Gave Much More Than I In The Name Of Science." On the facing page it began:
Off the southern coast of Western New Guinea, on a remote island surrounded by a cobalt ocean and aeons of unrecorded time, there exists a race of men: tiny, savage, white-collared. . . .
I didn’t read any farther. It didn’t really catch my attention. So I wandered the library as I’m wont to do. I’m unemployed, looking for work. Honestly I am. I’m wandering the library, looking for work. I held onto the book, however. I don’t know why. When I returned to it several hours later (after a nap, a game of chess, another nap), I haphazardly flipped to the back of the book where a grainy, off-kilter, black and white photograph of the author accosted me. I grimaced, and tittered, and immediately returned to the beginning of the book. I read straight through to the end, without stopping, without looking up. Thirty-seven double-spaced, typo-ridden pages in forty-five minutes. It was astonishing, disgusting, and oddly consoling, given my present situation, "between opportunities," as they say.
It seems that Sir Hoyle Raiburne, Ph.D. (A Ph.D. of what? From where? Never says, which casts considerable doubt on the authenticity of his knighthood as well), along with his wife Greteline, stumbled upon a primitive culture practicing peculiar rituals that curiously reminded Sir Hoyle, although in a twisted fashion, of capitalism. After many "personal sacrifices" in the summer and fall of 1951, the Raiburnes finally gained the pygmy tribe’s trust. In ritual dances around a great fire, the pygmies recounted their incredible history.
The Ramumu Hoolihoos’ Western New Guinea pygmy ancestors were a warrior tribe. They killed and ate their enemies. But, seeking greater privacy, the tribe left the mainland and settled on an uninhabited island off the southern coast of Western New Guinea, now simply called Ramumu Island. Lacking rivals to kill and eat, the pygmies became pacifists and vegetarians. They remained totally unspoiled by the modern world until, one day, Raymond Hoolihan, a New York stockbroker, appeared and promptly spoiled them. Apparently, Hoolihan had gone completely mad following the stock market crash of 1929, and vanished from sight. His subsequent movements are shrouded in mystery until, sometime in the mid 1930s, he materialized on the island one sweltering summer night, saw the pygmies, and wanted to be Chairman of the Board once again. So he became Chairman: he was white and very, very tall; that was good enough for the pygmies. (By the family photograph—wife, two kids—found in the leather wallet that the pygmies kept for religious purposes, Sir Hoyle estimates Hoolihan at five foot six, whereas pygmies rarely grew beyond five feet in stature.)
Using his "business sense" (Raiburne’s words), Hoolihan organized, restructured, fired off memos ("charcoal on palm tree leaves"), and instituted company policies and dress codes ("sun-dried seaweed," writes Sir Hoyle, "painted with white chalk and worn like a collar round the neck"). The product: coconuts. Raymond Hoolihan, CEO of Raymond Hoolihan Incorporated was bastardized to Ramumu Hoolihoo, Inc. for easier pronunciation.
In his sickness and dementia, [Sir Hoyle speculates] Mr. Hoolihan thought he had cornered the market on coconuts. It is not hard to imagine that, after a few short months, Mr. Hoolihan fancied himself a powerful conglomerate.
The Ramumus, honest, hard working hunter-gatherers to begin with, enjoyed working for Hoolihan at first. They wanted to please the "Big Ramumu," as Raymond had come to be called. But soon Hoolihan, in his lunacy and megalomania, became suspicious and overbearing toward his pygmy workers. He spied on them constantly, from the trees, the bushes, the spear-like high grass. At staff meetings he reviled them with unrealistic deadlines, impossible productivity levels, and dreadful threats; if a certain fathomless profit margin was not reached, kwali teekee nik! nik!—which, roughly translated, means "heads will roll." Although nearly a god in their eyes, the Big Ramumu’s tedious managerial style ate away at the Ramumus. Frustrated and grumpy, the pygmies rebelled against Hoolihan’s authority. Sir Hoyle states:
Worker subversion took many forms. The more timid Ramumus ate the coconuts that they gathered and murmured hateful curses about Mr. Hoolihan to the gods. Bolder workers conspired to pierce his fleshy, drinker’s nose with an especially long quill from a bird of paradise and, when their plans failed, settled on secretly bedding Mr. Hoolihan’s many mistresses. And the most audacious Ramumus embezzled large amounts of coconuts in pouches hidden under their grass skirts and tried to escape the island on rickety, ill-designed rafts fashioned from bamboo shoots and hollowed-out coconuts.
Raymond Hoolihan bitterly noted the obvious decline in productivity; the daily piles of coconuts were getting smaller and smaller. One day he strapped himself to the belly of a lumbering ox in an effort to catch the pygmies red-handed. It worked. He finally caught them stealing; the paranoid knew it was going on all along, and he fired off a memo. The Ramumus preserved the actual document ("a nipa palm leaf," notes Sir Hoyle) in clay. It reads:
From: Big Ramumu
To: All little employees
Managmint regretz to unform You that do to
uniVoidabul Corprit DownSizing your Jobs have
been alim elinim Turminated.
Although their English was spotty at best, the Ramumus understood the terminology well enough; they had been laid off. They were no longer wanted. They felt used, taken advantage of, depressed, and angry. Raymond feared that they might try to organize, unionize, maybe form a rival company. But he was mistaken. In a mad frenzy the pygmies revolted, stoned the Big Ramumu to death with coconuts, and ate him. The Ramumus felt lost, however, without Hoolihan’s guidance, misdirected though it was. So they recreated Raymond’s business philosophy as they perceived it, a philosophy that stressed, above all else, "self-sacrifice for the good of the company." That moment proved decisive in the evolution of the Ramumu Hoolihoos as they reverted to ritualized cannibalism, or anthropophogy, man eating man.
Over the course of our stay, [recounts Sir Hoyle] my wife and I witnessed and, after a time participated in, the strangest, most barbaric ritual, I daresay, cilivized [sic] man has ever seen. On pre-designated nights roughly equivalent to the start of each financial quarter, as pygmies danced and beat their drums round a blazing fire, the little Ramumus offered up to the current Big Ramumu (in memory of Mr. Hoolihan always the tallest pygmy in the tribe) their flesh for consumption. I will not trouble you gentle readers, especially the delicate constitutions of the fairer sex, with the horrific details. Suffice it to say that the menu featured the entire human anatomy. During the feast, the little Ramumus let out blood-curdling wails and screeches, but they never drew back their arms and legs. After the ritual had ended, however, the next tallest pygmy crept up to the Big Ramumu sleeping off his gluttony and dispatched him with a large, ritually blessed coconut. As the pygmies roasted their dead leader, that tallest pygmy assumed the role of the Big Ramumu, and the cycle continued anew . . . .
In a postscript to the book, Sir Hoyle writes, "Irrespective of the opposition to my findings voiced by the scientific community, perhaps, above all, one should leave this strange, fascinating tale with the knowledge that we so-called civilized men live in a society not far from the barbarism of primitive man—with its hope and fear and cannibalism." As I turned to the back page, to the photograph of Sir Hoyle, I found myself nodding in agreement. America was, indeed, not far away.
Sir Hoyle Raiburne, Ph.D. smiled up at me from the page. I now understood why he had published the book by himself, likely with his own money, and in spite of the probable ridicule and disbelief of his colleagues. He had to publish, to justify his own sacrifice, to justify the price he paid for his research. The tall, thin Englishman, circa 1952, mustached, goateed, widowed, wore a pith helmet and many-pocketed khakis. But, despite that gleaming, toothy, indomitable British grin, there seemed to be a glassiness, a touch of sadness, even despair, about the eyes, as he leaned on a crutch under his left arm—for he had no right; and stood on his right leg—for he had no left.
Profile
Dan says he doesn’t talk to many people. Somehow I believe him. When he asked me to write about him—he said he doesn’t know any other writers—I said, "Well, shouldn’t I know what kind of writer you are? How about letting me read something you wrote?" He replied by saying, "Sorry, I don’t have anything with me." He says he’s a writer. He says he’s trying to get his novel The Autobiography of Riley Prancer published. At this hour I’m willing to believe anything.
This is what I know about Dan Watkins: rather odd-looking, a little sad, and a little pissed off— "generally," he says. I can sympathize. All in all not a bad guy, as far as I can tell.
He said that if I wrote this thing for him that he’d buy the next round. In this instance, anyway, he’s a man of his word.
—James Robb
Bio
Dan Watkins
Place of residence: Seattle.
Birthplace: San Francisco.
Grew up in: Sebastopol, California.
Day job: Temp.
Education: B.A. in English, University of California at Los Angeles.
Award: Most Improved Player, Sebastopol Little League Soccer, 1978.
Current project: Drohns Smoking Their Brains Out—a novel.
Favorite book: Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
Philosophy:
1. World peace will occur only when everyone takes off their clothes.
2. People look silly without their clothes.
3. People would rather be cruel to each other than look ridiculous.
More info: I was unemployed for a period of ten months and wrote "Ramumu
Hoolihoo, Incorporated" at the height of that misery.
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