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I met Tobias in a giftshop of a little museum where he was scheduled for a lecture on the Asmat of Irian Jaya. I did not know what he looked like but there were only two of us in the giftshop of the little museum and he past seventy showing his maturity. What I remember most is that he gave me the look of mischief. Thus he enchanted me. (People who have lived with the people of the forest are said to have this gift.)
At the lecture he cast another spell under the guise of anthropology. He sang an Asmat song fishermen sing when they go out with their nets. It sounded like the song of the evil monkeys in
The Wizard of Oz. “Ooo – eee – ooo…”
Tobias then translated:
we shit in the river
the shrimp eat the shit
we eat the shrimp
ooo – eee – ooo
I got to interview Tobias for RFD. He said he had supported himself by folding Christmas cards for a Jewish company in Brooklyn half the year to earn money to live the other half with the people of the forest who had enchanted him and sent him back for us.
-- Franklin Abbott
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