A FEW years ago I read this story: in a village in Java, one afternoon, a farmer appeared in the village community center holding two bloody human heads: the head of his wife and the head of an unknown young man.

The farmer told the startled and terrified village head that he was the killer. On his way home from checking the water in his ricefields, he saw behind a bush his wife, lying naked on the grass, sleeping exhausted in the arms of a youn