Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

Enhancing the Narrative

Posted on 29. Dec, 2023 by Paul Sochaczewski in Alfred Russel Wallace and his assistant Ali, Articles

 

Enhancing the Narrative
Imagining conversations between Alfred Russel Wallace and his assistant Ali.

 

A historian quickly learns there is little absolute truth.  The authors of personal memoirs and observer narratives enhance, misremember (sometimes deliberately), censor, and leave out chunks of information.

We are left with narrative “facts” that are repeated and rehashed in academic journals and books.

Rarely, though, do historians try to go beyond the facts and speculate on the emotions, intentions, and psychological motivations of their research subjects.

We know quite a bit about Alfred Russel Wallace, mostly from his own voluminous and careful writings.

But we know relatively little about Ali, his “faithful companion” during some six years of travel in the Malay Archipelago.

I’ve been following Alfred Russel Wallace, and his assistant Ali (known by only one name) for some 50 years. Large gaps remain in our understanding of what motivated Ali and his opinions about his employer.

As a fun exercise, I’ve created several “imagined conversations” between the two men, based on tidbits of information and provocative clues found in Wallace’s narratives.

 

Imagined Conversation #1

We don’t know precisely where Ali came from, what he did before he met Wallace in Sarawak in December 1855, or the circumstances of Wallace hiring 15-year-old Ali to be his cook and Malay teacher. Here’s one speculative scenario.

Wallace is having dinner with his host, James Brooke, the famed White Rajah of Borneo. They are in Brooke’s residence in what is now Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. Over wine and roast chicken, Wallace explains his plans to spend a few years exploring the isolated islands of Indonesia. The dialogue might have gone like this:

“And you’re going on this trip by yourself?” Brooke asks, pouring Wallace some more wine.

“As I’ve done in Brazil on the Rio Negro.”

And how did that work out in the end? Brooke thinks. Instead he inquires, “And you speak Malay fluently?”

“Er, not yet.”

“And you have a diplomatic right of passage and introductions?”

“You know I don’t.”

“And you have some form of income?”

Wallace doesn’t bother to answer.

Brooke leans back in his chair. “Wallace, you’re a good chap. But they’re going to eat you alive down there in Indonesia — full of arrogant Dutch and primitive ethnics, you know. Here, you’re my guest, so the shopkeepers don’t cheat you too much, and the bandits leave you alone. But down there…”

Brooke calls out for the Malay man who runs Brooke’s household. We don’t know his name; let’s call him Abdul. “Abdul,” Brooke says. “You’ve got relatives all over the place. Find my dear, innocent friend Tuan Wallace a boy to accompany him on his travels, to cook for him, to teach him Malay, and to see that he doesn’t get into too much trouble.”

A few days later Abdul presents a quiet, short lad of 15. “This is my cousin Ali. He’s not a bad cook. He’s from Santubong, where Tuan Wallace is going to, er, work.”

Brooke asks the young man, in near-perfect Malay but with a lilting English accent that almost makes Ali laugh, whether he is prepared to accompany this strange, too-tall White man to Indonesia on a journey from which neither of them might return.

Ali lowers his eyes. He had never been spoken to directly by a White man, let alone the rajah. Indeed, the man identified as Wallace is a strange creature. He is too tall. He wears odd clothes. His eyes are intense. But he has a kind, expressive face. Ali, who had never left the village he came from, who only vaguely knew where Indonesia was (to the south, basically), who understood just a few words of English, who… well, you get the picture … simply says softly: “Yes, Tuan.”

“He’ll do,” Wallace says, clapping his hands.

* * *

 

Imagined Conversation #2

Ali grew in stature and took on added responsibilities as camp manager and collecting assistant. It is thought that Ali shot some 5,000 of the more than 8,000 birds Wallace collected. Ali also learned taxidermy, an invaluable skill for Wallace and a skill that likely helped Ali find employment in Ternate after Wallace left.  Ali was also an intermediary between the odd foreigner who lived rough in the forest and spent hours examining tiny bugs and isolated villagers who had little experience in dealing with characters such as Wallace.  Ali, for his part, was also a foreigner, originating in the distant region of western Borneo.  In his campfire story-telling with innocent villagers he no doubt took advantage of his perceived status resulting from working with an influential White man and the extensive travels through Southeast Asia both Wallace and Ali had experienced.

Ali and Wallace are camped on a small island in eastern Indonesia seldom visited by outsiders. Earlier in the day Wallace had shown some local men what a butterfly he had collected looked like under a magnifying glass. That experience became the subject of conversation for hours.

After preparing dinner for Wallace (who often eats alone), Ali goes to a village house for a simple meal of rice, boiled vegetables, and a weak soup of river fish rife with small bones and spiced only with fiery chilies. He has liberated some roast chicken, which he had prepared for Wallace, and shares it with the men.

“Your man,” one of the villagers says. “He’s a shaman?”

Ali asks what he means.

“He collects these creatures and uses them for spells and incantations.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, it’s obvious. Why else would anyone bother to collect all these things unless he was going to use them to heal people?”

“Or put a spell on them!” another man adds.

“Or raise the dead!” a third man insists. “I heard he brings the dead back to life. I spoke with Tuan Wallace yesterday, when I brought him some beetles. He laughed when I told him that I knew his secret, but he just ignored me. But that’s true, isn’t it, Young Brother Ali? He makes the dead come alive!”

“You’re just simple village men,” Ali says. “If you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t make up stories like that. Have you ever heard of a place called Singapore?”

“Tuan Wallace stays up all night; I’ve seen his lamp shining. That’s when he does his magic!” another villager says with authority.

Yet another villager adds: “Does he use magic to grow his beard? Can you get me some of the potion? My wife would like me to have a big beard like that. Very strong!” Laughter.

“Stop this stupid talk. Bring me some beautiful birds and butterflies tomorrow. I’ll pay you well,” Ali says, keen to change the subject.

“And he says he’s from a place called ‘An-glung,’” the first villager says, refusing to drop the subject. “Where is that Ali?

“Far across the ocean.”

“How many days paddling?”

“In his country Tuan Wallace is a great pawang,” Ali says, his voice taking on an authority that doesn’t match his short stature. “In his country there are bears the size of this house and crocodiles as long as your prahu. Whenever there’s a problem, the officials send for him, and he sings a pantun into the animal’s ear to get the beast to repent and follow the Christian god.”

Much consternation and whispering.

“So, my advice is, when Tuan Wallace asks you to get specimens, don’t try to fool him. And never, ever cheat or steal from him. He knows exactly what you are thinking.”

More concerned murmuring

“And yes, he talks to the dead.”

Yet more disquiet and alarm, accompanied by copious consumption of rice wine.

“You know, in Singapore I shot a tiger,” Ali says, looking each man in the eyes. “A huge man-eating tiger. The governor invited me to his palace; he’s the top white man there, even more important than Tuan Wallace. His palace was as big as this entire island. He had a zoo with giant horrible creatures they say came from outer space. All the furniture was made of gold. He has an army of ten thousand men, and the same number of vicious women bodyguards who will cut off your balls if you insult him. Tuan Governor gave me a medal…”

* * *

Wallace and Ali travelled together for some six years, a partnership that ended in 1862 when Wallace boarded a steamer for England, leaving Ali behind with valuable gifts of cash, guns, and supplies.  Did Ali want Wallace to take him along to England?

 

Imagined Conversation #3

Wallace and Ali are going over the day’s take — a few dozen beetles (some as tiny as a grain of rice, a few large and garish, and one giant with frightening pincers), a handful of glorious butterflies, and a gray parrot.

“Ali, show me how you skin this parrot,” Wallace says in Malay.

Ali tries not to giggle. He always giggles when Wallace spoke Malay. It sounded like cats fighting.

“By myself?”

“You’re the only Ali here.”

So, Ali sharpens the scalpel, as he has seen Wallace do countless times.

“Separate the feathers on the ventral part of the body — that’s the bottom part of the bird.  Start to cut at the throat and slice down to the cloaca — all the way at the bottom.”

Ali feels proud that he knows what Wallace means when he uses scientific words.

“Slowly, Ali. Better to make one clean cut than several sloppy cuts. Slowly-slowly catch the monkey.”

“You know that saying, Tuan?” Ali asks.

“It’s English.”

“No, it’s Malay.” Ali slices the bird’s breast and pins the carcass on the workbench — a grand name for a couple of planks — to expose the bird’s organs.

“Careful. Put some kapok into its body to absorb the blood. You don’t want to ruin the color of the feathers.”

Ali continues as Wallace hovers. The young man removes the bird’s organs and is about to throw them through a hole in the rattan floor. Below, scavenger dogs smell a potential snack and jostle for position below the shack on stilts that is Wallace’s home, laboratory, study, and store room.

“Be careful. Don’t throw the guts on the floor.”

Ali is confused. “Where should I put it, then?”

Wallace is irritated. He brusquely takes the scalpel, lays the guts on a clean space, and slices the crop open. “Look here, Ali, what do we see?”  Wallace doesn’t wait for an answer. “We can determine what the bird was eating when you so cruelly shot it.”

Ali comes from a culture where irony is still in its infancy; he doesn’t reply.

Wallace picks out half-digested critters. “This looks like a caterpillar. This was a beetle, probably. And what’s this gloop?” he asks, poking in a mess of jelly-like stomach contents.  He rubs his fingers in the soft mixture and smells it, then tastes it, to Ali’s disgust.

Wallace wipes his hands and writes in his notebook, mumbling to himself as he does so: “Caterpillar. Beetle. Piece of something, maybe a spider. And a half-digested bit of ripe fig, which would have been perfect for making confiture if this creature hadn’t eaten it first. Ah, well, a bird’s also got to survive.”

Ali says nothing; he is used to the idiosyncrasies of the man he works for.

“And don’t get blood on the workbench.”

“It’s just blood, Tuan.”

“To you it’s just blood. To the rats and the ants, it’s a fiesta. And I don’t care how you choose to sleep; I don’t want to sleep with ants and rats crawling around.”

“Why do you do this, Tuan?”

“You mean collecting?”

“All these useless insects and birds.”

“Because people in Europe buy them. And that pays for your salary.”

Europe. Ali has heard of Europe from conversations he had overheard when Wallace was speaking with other White men.

“Tell me about this ‘Europe.’”

And Wallace tells Ali some stories about great cities, large buildings, women in fine dresses, the wonderful thing called the steam engine that was just becoming fashionable, and the miracle of photography.”

“I would like a photograph, Tuan.”

“Hmmm. Maybe when we get to Singapore, Ali. I think they have a photographer there.”

Ali is silent. He continues working until the final step when he sprinkles arsenic into the empty carcass and adds some clean cotton. He speaks softly. “I want to go with you to England, Tuan.”

It is Wallace’s turn to remain silent. Finally, he says: “You wouldn’t be happy there. You’re better here, with your people.”

“You’re my people, Tuan. You taught me to cut the birds.” And in English he says, “You teach me An-glush.”

“Finish up this bird, Ali. Then I’m going to sleep. I’m very tired, and we have a long day tomorrow.”

* * *

 

These imagined conversations are taken from “Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird”, published by Explorer’s Eye Press, 2023.  ISBN: 978-2-040573-41-7.

Available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and other Amazon sites.

 

 

 

And you might enjoy my personal travel memoir of following Wallace throughout Southeast Asia, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles, published by Explorer’s Eye Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-2-940573-25-7

Available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and other Amazon sites.