Brazzaville Beach (25 page)

Then João called out. I ran over to him.

Just beneath the lowest branches of a large bush was a severed arm, the right arm of a young chimpanzee that seemed to have been crudely torn off at the shoulder. I looked at it: it could only be Muffin's. Alda was peering under the bush. He reached in with a stick, hooked it onto something and tugged. At once there was a great noise of buzzing and the bush came alive with thousands of blowflies, hard and shiny. It was as if handfuls of gravel were being flung at the leaves. The bush shivered and vibrated as the flies fought to escape. I backed away while Alda pulled his shirt over his head and plunged in to haul out the body.

It was Muffin. Something had been eating him recently, something small and carnivorous, a bush rat perhaps, and his stomach had been opened to expose his viscera, slimy and swollen. His face was battered and cut, just as Mr. Jeb's had been, and his left foot and leg below the knee was missing. The bloody, congealed socket of his right arm was filled with swarming ants. There was no stink but, as Alda heaved him out, some of his guts fell from the hole in his stomach with a moist slither.

I gagged and felt saliva swirl into my mouth. I felt faint and shocked. Muffin: neurotic Muffin who hated to leave his mother. I turned away and spat and took a deep breath. I opened my bag and removed my camera.

 

It was a long walk back home. I had wanted to bring Muffin's body but it was too badly torn to carry for such a long distance. As we trudged homeward I had plenty of time to think. I wondered what to do. Mr. Jeb and Muffin were dead. Lena was missing but I was now convinced that she too had been attacked and probably killed. Let's assume, I reasoned, that three of my southern chimps have been killed by the northerners. I had no doubt that Muffin was the latest victim. I had a vivid memory of Pulul sitting on Mr. Jeb's back twisting his leg round and round until the ligaments and tendons gave and it broke. The thinner limbs of a small adolescent would be no problem for a mature adult. A full-grown male was incredibly strong: I had seen them snap
branches as thick as an arm with almost casual ease. They could have torn apart Muffin as easily as you or I would wrench a drumstick from a roast chicken.

Three chimps were gone; only five were left: Clovis, Conrad, Rita-Mae, Rita-Lu and baby Lester. There were seven mature males in the northern group and several enthusiastic adolescents. What chance did my depleted band have against them? And there was another problem, no less perplexing: what should I tell Mallabar? For the first time I began to regret so precipitately sending off my article to the magazine. Events had moved faster than I could ever have imagined. Suddenly, revenging myself on Mallabar no longer seemed my highest priority.

 

“I don't quite see what you're saying,” Mallabar said, slowly.

We were in his bungalow; it was about nine in the evening and we were sitting in his study. This room was a small shrine of self-importance. The walls were covered with framed citations, photographs, honorary degrees and diplomas, but the room's furnishings were simple to the point of austerity: two metal filing cabinets, a square wooden table as a desk and a couple of canvas director's chairs. Mallabar preempted all criticism of the egotistical decor by classifying it as his fund-raising room. Important sponsors could see what results their patronage had achieved, and the spartan facilities reassured them that nothing had been squandered.

I sat in a canvas chair looking at several framed magazine covers featuring the man behind the desk opposite me. He had a faint smile on his face, but it was only a polite formality. His mood was not benign.

I began again.

“I want to take a female from the south and reinstate her in the northern group.”

“Hope, Hope,” he said, leaning forward urgently. “You don't understand. This is not a zoo. We can't move animals from cage to cage, as it were. To do what you want would be…out of the question. This is a
wild
environment. What you're proposing is an act of engineering.”

I resisted the temptation to point out the engineering required to build and operate the Artificial Feeding Area.

“I still think we should do it.”

“But you haven't told me why.”

“To…to avert trouble.” I held up my hand to stop him interrupting. “Northern males are making regular patrols into the south and—”

“I don't like that word ‘patrols,'” he said.

“That is what they are,” I said emphatically. “I've seen them, and…” I paused for a second, “there has been aggression.”

He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“Three of my chimpanzees have been killed. And two, for sure, have died as a result of violent attacks.”

“That is a forest out there, my dear. Full of wild beasts.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “I have a horrible feeling”—I was treading very carefully here—“that they have been attacked and killed by the northern chimps.”

“Stop now!” he shouted. He stood up, very angry. “Don't say another word. For your own sake.” He was shivering slightly, even though he had a tight pursed smile on his face. He put both hands on his desk and lowered his head for four or five seconds. When he looked at me again there were, I could swear, tears in his eyes. It was very impressive.

I sat there and listened to him, knowing that I had gone as far as I could, and that to go further would mean the end of my career at Grosso Arvore. So I listened as Eugene Mallabar ran through his autobiography for me, sketched out his ambitions and dreams, and summarized the enormous efforts and sacrifices he had made over the last two and a half decades. All this, it transpired, was a mere preamble to what he had to address to me. He and Ginga, he reminded me, had not been blessed with children. As a consequence they were inclined to look on all those who worked at Grosso Arvore as members of their large, extended family. People came for a year or two, they lived and worked here, and eventually returned to America or France or Sweden or wherever. But they never forgot what they had shared, and they never forgot Grosso Arvore. (I was tiring rapidly now.) Every
body was admired and cherished, everyone was special, they were all working together in common purpose.

“Take yourself, Hope. You are, and I make no secret of it, a very special member of our family. The exceptional circumstances of your arrival, at a time when our fortunes were particularly low, was very, very important to us. You answered our call at our time of need. You came to us…”

He paused for effect. I had a ghastly premonition of what he was going to say next and he did not disappoint me.

“Ginga and I think of you with great fondness. It…it would not be going too far to say that I myself like to think of you as my daughter…. There's something about you, Hope, that stimulates my, our, parental love. So—” He paused again, turning his head to one side as if to hide a tear from me. “So I hope you will take what I am about to say in the spirit of a father talking to a much-loved, but young and inexperienced daughter.”

He looked at me for approval. I kept my face rigidly neutral.

“I have been studying chimpanzees for twenty-five years,” he said. “Now you arrive here and you see certain things, certain occurrences which are unfamiliar to you, and you make an interpretation. Too fast. Too eager. You count your chickens before you leap.” He came round his desk and leaned back against it. He linked hands and pointed his joined fists at me.

“These…these allegations you've made are pure speculation. You are jumping to conclusions based on the patchiest data. Bad. Bad science, Hope. Whatever you may think is happening is
wrong
. You are wrong, Hope. I'm sorry. I know, you see. I know more about chimpanzees than any living person, more than any person in the history of mankind. Think about it.” He smiled incredulously.

“And yet you are challenging me.” He spread his hands. “That's why I get angry. You're too bold. The advancement of understanding goes A B C D E F G. You go A B and then you jump to M N O. It can't be done, it can't be done.”

He came toward me and put both hands on my shoulders. He pushed his dark face close to mine.

“Don't torment yourself with these wild speculations, my dear.
Observe and note. Observe and note. Leave the interpretation to me.”

He leaned forward and pressed his dry lips to my forehead. I felt the sharp prickle of his neat beard on my nose and cheeks. I said nothing.

He led me to the door, smiling fondly at me. I realized he had enjoyed himself enormously.

“Thank you, Eugene,” I said flatly. “I understand now.”

“Bless you.” He squeezed my arm. “We shall do great work here, Hope. You and I.”

I walked out into the moist warm darkness of the African night with a new sense of purpose.

 

Two days later, I was returning to camp from a long follow of the surviving members of the southern group. Clovis and Rita-Lu had moved away from the others, leaving them feeding on date palms. I left João and Alda and followed Clovis and Rita-Lu. They traveled north for about half an hour. Then they stopped. Rita-Lu presented and Clovis copulated with her. Then they rested in the shade, Clovis idly grooming Rita-Lu.

With the transfer of the core area farther south, much more of our working day was given over to traveling than before. I carried on observing until about four in the afternoon before I decided it was time to head back to camp. I called up João on the walkie-talkie, gave my location and told him I was going home and that he and Alda should do the same.

Ten minutes after leaving the two chimpanzees, I came to an area of the forest that I called the glade. It was a place where the character of the forest changed dramatically. Here there were huge stands of bamboo, with diameters at their base of twenty to thirty feet. Their mass was such that they blotted out so much of the sun that the vegetation beneath their spreading crowns was untypically sparse. The only trees that seemed to flourish in this perpetual twilight were thin spindly thorns—locally called rat thorns because the bark on their trunks was curiously incised, rather like a rat's tail. In this shade the rat-thorn trees grew relatively straight, up to a height of twenty feet. The trunks, branchless for two thirds of the way, were studded with soft,
warty brown thorns. At the top, their crown of branches and leaves was insubstantial and undernourished-looking. Because of the absence of ground cover this was the only area of the reserve that looked as if it might have been planted out. The rat-thorn trees did not crowd together, and with their clean, branchless trunks they resembled poles hammered into the ground. The glade looked, I thought, like a surreal orchard, planted to produce some as yet unheard-of fruit.

I reached the glade and walked quickly through the rat-thorn trees. I knew where I was now, not as far from home as I had thought. The main pathway that we had cut deep into the southern area was only three minutes' walk away.

I stopped abruptly. I had seen something moving in the gloomy recesses of the glade. I left the path and moved behind a stand of bamboo to wait.

The northerners were moving at a faster pace than usual, almost a lope, in rough Indian file, with Darius leading. They had never come this far south before.

They passed about sixty feet from me, unaware of my presence. They were as silent as ever, but this increased speed made them seem more sinister, somehow. This new pace signaled lack of caution; the old tentativeness had gone.

I radioed João and said I was going to follow and set off, trailing them at a distance of forty to fifty yards. While we were in the glade I could keep up with them, but as we left it I began to fall behind. Then I realized why they were moving with such confident deliberation. They knew where they were going. They were heading directly to where I had left Clovis and Rita-Lu. They must have seen them from some vantage point.

Then I heard shrieking and squealing from up ahead, all the ugly noises of aggression and fear. I swung to my left. There was a narrow ravine nearby, cut by a small stream, along whose eroded edge the going would be easier. As I ran I fumbled in my bag for my camera. I had to have photographic evidence of a chimp attack if I was ever to refute Mallabar. The noise ahead was growing steadily more intense and now I could hear the violent thrashing and breaking of branches.

But trying to run and extract my camera from its case meant
that I could not properly judge where I was going. One foot went too near the edge of the gully, the ground gave way and I fell, tumbling and slithering twenty feet of near vertical incline to its bottom, coming to rest in a rubbery clump of pepper cress that grew in the streambed.

At first I was a bit stunned and disoriented. I stood up and sat down heavily, straight away. I crawled up the stream a way to find my camera, which was dirty but undamaged.

Getting my bearings, I realized that the noise of the fight had moved on, farther upstream. I walked up the ravine for a hundred yards trying to follow it. Then it seemed to burst out anew on the bank edge high above me. I could glimpse in the trees and bushes the flailing, rushing bodies of several chimps, but could not recognize them. Then suddenly it was quiet again. Then some hooting, then some furious screams. Then silence.

The banks of the ravine here were very steep, and with little vegetation growing out of the stony exposed earth there were few handholds. I walked downstream looking for an easier route out. I found a place where some creepers and lianas grew down the bank face from the forest above. I grabbed the thickest, tugged strongly on it to see if it gave, and began to climb up, hauling myself hand over hand.

I was halfway up when I heard a noise—a slither of earth and pebbles—I looked up to see a rock the size of a medicine ball bounce down toward me. I had no time to avoid it or protect myself. My seeing it and its fall past me were virtually simultaneous. I felt its warm breeze brush me, it may even have touched my hair, and then heard it bury itself with a thunk in the damp sand of the riverbed. Big clods of earth, dust and shale followed it. This did not miss me. I hung on to my liana and hunched my head into my shoulders.