Pale Fire connections

Nova Zembla
is the name in Dutch for...

Novaya Zemlya
where in 1961 the USSR detonated history's largest nuclear explosion...

the Tsar Bomba.

Bombycilla
is the genus of birds better known as the

waxwing.

The Bandung Octopus House

Ever since my wife first told me about a "weird house with a scary octopus on the roof" where people say witchcraft is practised, I have been somewhat interested in this locus of lurid rumour -- though not quite enough to go to Bandung just to see it.

Located on Pasteur Road, the house has a statue of a large black cephalopod on its roof, grasping the house with its tentacles -- the design of the house itself suggests a submarine being grappled, and has seaweed-like ornamentation in places, which implies the sculpture was always part of the design.

The house dates back to the 1980s at least. According to some sources, the octopus was originally pink, but the paint has mostly peeled away. You can still see pink paint on the suckers, in some photographs. The peeling paint and general disrepair of the house's exterior is often cited as one of the things that makes it so creepy.

I say 'cephalopod' because neighbourhood residents say it's a squid, not an octopus, according to this Bandung Citizen article: http://citizenmagz.com/?p=2451

That article also features an interview with the head of the neighbourhood association, who says it's just an ordinary house, the octopus is a decorative cover for a water tank and he's never had any complaints.

Rumah Gurita from a distance

 

But then... he *would* say that, wouldn't he?

Stained glass windows - and a cross between
seashell and submarine designs?

Also noted by internet commenters are a number of stained glass windows, featuring playing card designs (picture at right), Jesus, 'figures of antiquity' and an inverted cross (I have yet to see pictures of any of these).

Another recurring feature in accounts of the house is that it has "no door", or even that it can only be viewed from a distance and disappears when you approach -- one account describes the writer and his friends becoming groggy and disoriented, finding themselves on an unexpected street, defeated by some kind of magical barrier: http://cerita-misteri.reunion.web.id/2011/10/misteri-rumah-gurita-di-bandung.html

How this squares with accounts where people claim to have knocked on the door and spoken with a caretaker is unclear. The neighbourhood watch guy in the article linked above says that they used to get a lot of people ringing the doorbell for a prank or a dare, so the people inside don't answer the door any more.

This blog entry - http://ryanz-grill.blogspot.hk/2009/04/rumah-gurita-di-bandung-sebelum-tol.html - describes a 2009 visit where the door was answered by a portly Chinese man who said the owner used to be a sailor, and that he spends most of his time in Jakarta.

A year earlier, the blogger "Manson Davis" had a similar visit, but when his videoed the conversation with the caretaker, his phone developed a mysterious glitch and the video file was corrupted. Manson Davis' blog is now offline and not on archive.org - just because it was on Friendster, or something more sinister?

In fact, the house was raided by the cops in May this year - http://news.liputan6.com/read/601498/diduga-tempat-ritual-seks-bebas-polisi-periksa-rumah-gurita.
As you might expect, they found nothing. A police spokesperson said it's just a normal house with three people living there.I suspect this will do little to affect the Octopus House's reputation.

Pink suckers - allegedly the original colour
of the whole thing

The most common theory about the house is that it is a church of Satan. Typical stories include a woman going to the house and leaving the next morning "sick and covered in scratches" -- and presumably with only hazy memories of what happened, although this isn't specified.

The more detailed, prurient accounts generally involve evangelical protestant minsters, naive girls and parties at the house that start with worshipping the Devil before going predictably Eyes Wide Shut. Here's an example -- note the use of larger, different coloured text for what the writer considers the key words: http://iseng-posting.blogspot.hk/2012/01/misteri-rumah-gurita-bandung.html

This is tediously unimaginative but seems to be the only narrative with traction on Indonesian forums. One or two places suggest a link with the Illuminati, which is slightly more interesting but still not much off the beaten path.

I hope someone can step forward in future with a new, compelling, mostly implausible but not outright falsifiable story that will give this piece of unusual architecture the occult, conspiratorial urban legend it deserves. 

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer

 Well. Where to begin?

Probably with the racism. I mean, this book is really very racist. It's not even subtext, or implied like that time a Bond film appeared to suggest that all black people in America were connected to a kind of Caribbean mafia. It's just right there.

In fact, it's so right there that at first I thought it might just be the characters' point of view, with some authorial distance added by the use of a Dr Watson-style narrator. But really the further you go, the more the novel (titled The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu in its original UK release -- I have the US version, complete with reference to "Cold Harbor Lane") appears to be the work of a complete loon, whose views on race relations map exactly to those of his two protagonists. That both characters differ not one iota on the subject is a strong clue that the Yellow Peril is supposed to be real, although the actual role of Chinese and other Asians in Fu-Manchu's plan -- and whether or not their participation in being a Peril is active or conscious -- is described in inconsistent terms at varying points in the plot.

It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith -- lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.

It is so ridiculous that it becomes vaguely amusing. Consider, for example, replacing "Chinese" with "Dutch", in the following:

No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese.

But of course as I am not part of the ethnic group being maligned, it's easy for me to not be upset by this. I can only hope that Chinese readers today are able to view Rohmer's writing as the same kind of bemusing backhanded flattery that I see when Iranian propaganda paints Britain as a malign world power with tendrils of evil operating conspiracies across the globe. Britain may well be malign, but Iran seems to be the only place where it is still the go-to mastermind behind bad things that happen.

To return to Fu-Manchu, it does have good points which go a long way towards explaining its popularity apart from British xenophobia, as powerful a resource as that can be. Rohmer's brand of Yellow Peril lunacy translates into a breathless pace that carries the reader along in its mad energy, beginning the very moment Empire-trotting adventurer Nayland Smith bursts into the office of Dr Petrie (the Watson analogue) like Lord Flashheart and immediately begins expositing on the way to the first crime scene.

Personal drama? Characterisation? Rohmer cares not for such things, except perhaps for Smith's oft-noted tendency to tug at his earlobe when thinking.
Indeed, it's the preposterousness of the action that makes it fun, creating a rising what-on-earth-could-happen-next tension from set piece to set piece, although this does wear a little thin towards the end.

The daftness of the prose, meanwhile, makes it frequently very funny - usually unintentionally, although there are places where I suspect Rohmer was being uncharacteristically dry.

"Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the enemy is poorer -- unless he has any more unclassified centipedes."

Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed. He had just dropped from a first-floor window.

It can also be fun to try imagining any real person actually behaving in the manner ascribed to Smith:

[H]e leapt stormily to his feet, shaking his clenched fists towards the window. 
"The villain!" he cried. "The fiendishly clever villain!"



  Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal, snapping his teeth together and tugging at his ear. 



 He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar. 

(These are all from quite separate places in the story, not one sequence.)


By the end of the novel, it remains unclear what Fu-Manchu's plan actually was, but never mind all that. At least by that point it's been made evident that he really does have a plan, and Smith isn't just some Sir Digby Chicken-Caesar figure needlessly hassling a foreign tourist.

Would I recommend The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu to others? Um... not really. Maybe if you like Dan Brown - Rohmer is very much cut from the same cloth.
Otherwise, while it's amusing in places, there are plenty of other pulp adventures that could go higher on your reading list.