The Origin of Leeches

The preceding myth focuses on the penis as organ of insemination and depicts the breakdown in sexual dichotomy that results from its improper use in hunting. The next myth reveals the penis as the source of women's menstrual capacity and the consequent moral necessity for sexual segregation.
In the Lake Kutubu area, there once lived a solitary light-skinned man who inhabited the hollow interior of the black palm (kawari ). The top of this palm was broken off, and the palm itself moved from place to place. No man saw him. But when a man stole something, this palm would appear, and the light-skinned man's head and shoulders would appear from the top of the palm and he would shout in a loud voice so that all men could hear, "This man is taking another's property!" The men were all frightened whenever this happened. "Who could be doing this?" they wondered. "Where is he?" they asked themselves. The men searched for him but could not find him. They worked hard without success to do so and finally gave up.

Another time a man said to his brother, "Go to my garden where my wife is working. Throw a twig in her direction as if you mean to seduce her." Then he hid near the garden. The other man approached his wife there and threw a twig toward her. She searched and searched, as if she too wished to commit adultery. But it was all a pretence and the man watched from hiding. The lone palm arrived and the light-skinned man's head appeared from the top, and he spoke the other man's name, saying, "Sir, this man is throwing a twig at your wife!" in a loud voice. Then he went back inside the palm. The man saw this and called out, "Brother, he is in that kawari palm over there!" and they both ran towards it. They grabbed the palm. "Here is where he speaks from," he said. Now the palm could not move. Having been touched by men's hands, it could not move. Then the two men called out for all the other men, telling them to bring their axes to chop down the palm. The men gathered with their stone axes and started cutting. But the palm was very hard and they only succeeded in mining their blades and wearing themselves out. They were all exhausted and the sun was about to set. "What shall we do?" they asked one another. But then they heard something speak from inside the palm. "Degi biane, degi biane, degi biane, dege biane! " it cried. "Degi " is a Wola word meaning "chop." "Listen!" the men cried, "'Biane ' it is saying!" they cried. Then some men left and returned with crowbars made from the hard biane tree. They tried to split the palm with these and did so effortlessly. It split into two halves, and there they finally saw the light-skinned man. He was

covered with thick body hair. His head hair hung down his back. He had a noseplug and earrings and a very wide bark belt made of cane in the Wola fashion. He was truly decorated. The men killed him. Having killed him, they cut up his body. They left only the penis and testicles. These they carefully enclosed in a small fence in the bush where they had killed him. Then they brought back the meat and distributed it.

Having done so, the head-men asked everyone. "Is there someone who hasn't received a portion?" And the people answered, "We have all eaten, but one maiden has received nothing so far. She went to make sago while the meat was being given out and received none." The men searched, but everything had been eaten. But they told her, "near the base of the black palm, we left one portion—go and take that." The maiden quickly went to the palm but found nothing there. She sat down and, with her hands, searched near the base of the palm but found nothing. It became dark and she could not see and kept feeling with her hands. Finally, she was about to leave and stood up. But she looked down and saw something hanging from her vagina. A large leech, engorged with blood, had eaten her menstrual blood and when finished had dropped off. The maiden removed the leech and carefully put it back into the little fence. Then, bleeding heavily, she returned to the village. "I searched and searched but found no meat. But something has bitten me and I've come back." In the morning, the men went to look again. They lifted the leaves covering the little fence and saw tiny leech offspring as thick as hair there. The penis had turned into a leech and had lain eggs. From then on, leeches covered the bush. That is all.

In its metaphoric creativity, this myth calls upon every image that the leech evokes for the Foi. Ubiquitous itself, the leech becomes an apt image for expressing the ubiquity of certain forms of communication. As the most common thing brought back from the bush (though unwittingly), the leech is a fitting vehicle to symbolize statements concerning the relationship between village and bush.

The opening of the myth posits a bizarre moral state in which men are subject to an externally imposed, publicly proclaimed moral judgment, a roving bush "vigilante" if you will. A hairy, light-skinned man dwells in the hollow of a Caryota species palm, the black palm from which bows are made. The Foi describe the palm as hollow since the external hardwood surrounds a very soft pithy interior. The physical characteristics of the man are in every sense a caricatured opposite of the Foi self-portrait—they describe themselves as dark-skinned and scanty-haired. In fact, the hairy man resembles the Foi's conventional image of their Highlands neighbors to the north (and he ultimately speaks in their tongue, the Wola language). Like the leech, the mobile

palm is drawn to men (as the Foi say that leeches are attracted to the paths that men use). The light-skinned man emerges from the top of the palm (as a leech raises itself up and also as a penis becomes erect) and betrays thieves by calling attention to them in a loud voice. Once again, the prototypical crime of theft is portrayed as the theft of a woman in adulterous sexual intercourse (see chapter 3). It is therefore not the public moral offences such as fighting, warfare, or slander that the hairy man acts against but the secret or private wrong-doings of individual men. I have thus labeled substitution A as "external mobile morality of a 'wild' man for collective immorality of village men."

Two men concoct a plan to locate the hairy man and arrange a false adulterous liaison. This draws the attention of the mobile palm, which the two men then immobilize (B : "False" theft for real theft; trapped for mobile palm; "tamed" for untamed morality). The other men of the village cooperate in attempting to chop down the palm, which they only accomplish after exhausting effort. Having finally felled it, however, they are unable to split it open. But at this point the hairy man, having betrayed other men with his loud voice, now curiously betrays himself, cryptically instructing the men about the biane stake that will allow them access to the palm's interior. The biane tree, like the black palm itself, is one of the hardwood trees most commonly used by the Foi for house building.

The men then chop the man up (as men chop leeches after plucking them off their legs, believing this is the only way to kill them) and bring the meat back to the village for general distribution and consumption (substitution C ). They distribute every bit of flesh except for the penis and testicles, which they carefully enclose in a tiny "house" and cover with leaves. The penis has metonymically come to stand for the originally mobile bush man: he has now been domesticated by a community of men. Substitution D then is "penis for man; penis for meat." In its inversion (and obviation) of the opening substitution it could perhaps be rendered "penis for mouth," since the significance of the hairy man's relationship with the village has been shifted between these two organs.

One young maiden, however, does not receive a portion of meat. Not having been "stolen" (in adultery or sexual intercourse), she cannot be said to have incorporated a collective (im)morality; she is "pre-moral." But the men instruct her as to where she can find the last remaining portion of meat, and so she goes to the bush to find the "little house" (which is how the Foi refer euphemistically to the men-

strual hut). Substitution E , then, is "premoral individual (maiden) for immoral community," thus replacing the experienced married woman who lured the hairy man to his destruction. In addition, it also implies "maiden for meat," the image of Foi marital exchange (hence the obviation of C by E ). The young woman searches for the penis but finds it has turned into a leech, which figuratively copulates with her (F : leech for penis; menstrual blood for meat). She brings the blood back to the village, conflating the spatial separation of menstruating and nonmenstruating women. The men return to find that henceforth the bush shall be infested with leeches. Their legs will be bitten and their blood "stolen," as they themselves attacked the lower extremity of the hairy man's mobile palm. The external theft of blood replaces an internal collective theft, and a mobile thief (the leech) replaces a mobile moral arbiter. The leech will become swollen and engorged with blood, even as a man's penis does.

The young woman not only allows herself to be bitten, but she carefully incubates the leech after it has bitten her. The implication is that if the leech had not copulated with the maiden, it would have remained immobilized within the "little house." Henceforth, women will have to confine their own menstrual periods, since it was the maiden's menstrual capacity that let the leech loose on the world—it is women who will have to stay in the "little house," while leeches follow men through the bush.