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Whether the pair of Sudanese ivory carvings you lifted really possess the juju to turn your livers to lead, as a dealer in Khartoum assured me, I am not competent to say.

Likewise the ivory Chinese female figure known as a `` doctor lady '' ( provenance Honan ) ; ;

a friend of mine removing her from the curio cabinet for inspection was felled as if by a hammer, but he had previously drunk a quantity of applejack.

The three Indian brass deities, though -- Ganessa, Siva, and Krishna -- are an altogether different cup of tea.

They hail from Travancore, a state in the subcontinent where Kali, the goddess of death, is worshiped.

Have you ever heard of Thuggee??

Nuf sed.

But it is the wooden sculpture from Bali, the one representing two men with their heads bent backward and their bodies interlaced by a fish, that I particularly call to your attention.

Oddly enough, this is an amulet against housebreakers, presented to the mem and me by a local rajah in 1949.

Inscribed around its base is a charm in Balinese, a dialect I take it you don't comprehend.

Neither do I, but the Tjokorda Agoeng was good enough to translate, and I'll do as much for you.

Whosoever violates our rooftree, the legend states, can expect maximal sorrow.

The teeth will rain from his mouth like pebbles, his wife will make him cocu with fishmongers, and a trolley car will grow in his stomach.

Furthermore -- and this, to me, strikes an especially warming note -- it shall avail the vandals naught to throw away or dispose of their loot.

The cycle of disaster starts the moment they touch any belonging of ours, and dogs them unto the forty-fifth generation.

Sort of remorseless, isn't it??

Still, there it is.