Brazzaville Beach (6 page)

Hauser or Mallabar?…Then I paused. Surely this was getting a little out of hand? I opened my journal: there was my entry, unaltered.
The corpse of a two-to three-day-old chimpanzee infant, partially eaten
. What did I expect?

I placed my hands palm down on the warm wood of the desk. The death of a baby chimp. The sexual popularity of Crispina. Ian Vail's theory. And now somebody was going discreetly through my possessions. Looking for something, or merely confirming suspicions?

“Hope?”

Ian Vail was outside. I pulled back the tent flap and let him in.

“God, it's hot in here,” he said. He seemed slightly edgy. “I'm heading back out again. Brought you this.” He handed me a journal.
Bulletin of the Australian Primatological Association
.

“I didn't know you were a member,” I said.

He grinned apologetically. “It was the only place that would take it. I think I told you—Eugene wasn't exactly falling over himself to help me get it published.”

I flicked through the journal looking for his article. I found it: “Sexual and social strategies of wild female chimpanzees.” I read a few sentences.

“A real page turner,” he said. “Once I put it down I could hardly pick it up again.” He chuckled weakly at his old joke.

I was looking down at the open pages in my hands, but from
the new proximity of his voice I was aware he had moved closer to me. A few seconds dawdled by. I knew what would happen the moment I looked up.

I looked up. He stepped toward me and his hands gripped my shoulders. I turned my face; his lips and nose squashed into my cheek.

“Hope,” he said thickly. “Hope.”

“Don't, Ian.” I pushed him away. “What do I have to say to you? Jesus Christ.”

He looked wretched. The blush burning his fair skin, sweat glossy on his forehead. “I've fallen in love with you,” he said.

“Oh my God…don't be so, so
ridiculous
, Ian. For heaven's sake!”

“I can't help it. Today, when…I thought you—”

“Look. This is not going to go anywhere. I told you the last time.”

“Hope, just give me—”

“What about Roberta?” I turned the knife. “I like Roberta,” I lied. “I like you, but that's all. You're not being fair to any of us.”

He had an odd look on his face, as if he had been chewing on some gristle but was too polite to spit it out.

“Please, Ian.”

“I'm sorry. I won't…it won't happen again.”

He left. I sat down at my desk and thought about him for a while. Then I read his article. It was really quite good.

 

Roberta Vail was plain and on the plump side. She had wiry, naturally blond hair that she always wore pulled back from her forehead in a firm, clumpy ponytail. She wasn't unattractive, but she had a tired, slack expression to her mouth. She finished her meal and lit a cigarette. She only smoked when Ian was absent.

“Where's Ian?” I asked, as I sat down opposite her with my tray.

“He's not feeling so good. Not hungry.”

I commiserated and started my meal.

There was a quality about Roberta that always baffled me. Perhaps it was her closed, inert countenance—what was she thinking? Was she happy or sad? Did it matter? Or perhaps it was
simply that air of mystery that is associated with certain couples: a nagging curiosity on the part of the observer as to how they could ever have been attracted to each other in the first instance; a fundamental ignorance of what it was that the one found alluring in the other…. This may be a little unfair, I thought. I could see what might be thought interesting or appealing about Ian Vail, but as for what he saw in Roberta, I was stumped. But then, I reflected, we are always on shaky ground when it comes to understanding one man's meat or another man's poison in the sexual arena. I have been wrong more times than I care to think, and my oldest friend, Meredith, confided in me after my marriage broke up that she had never, ever understood my obsession for John Clearwater. I was amazed—I thought it would be as plain as day to others.

I returned my attention to Roberta, who was telling me about something she had observed at the Artificial Feeding Area. I stopped listening altogether when Mallabar and Ginga came in. There was an attitude in Mallabar's bearing this evening that was unusual. He seemed to be bracing his shoulders square; his eyes—I know this sounds absurd—appeared brighter. He went through into the kitchen area and Ginga joined me and Roberta.

“What's going on?” I said.

“Eugene'll tell you. Have you a cigarette?”

I offered her a Tusker, Roberta a Kool. She chose Roberta's. We both lit up and Roberta went in search of pudding. Ginga turned to me and positioned her body so we could talk confidentially. Ginga had a narrow face with thin lips, prematurely lined and aged from too many years under the African sun. She had unusual eyes—the upper lids seemed heavy, as if she were dying to go to sleep but was making a special effort for you. She spoke good English but with a pronounced accent—Swiss-French, I supposed; she came from Lausanne. She was very thin. I imagined that in the right clothes she would look elegant. I had never seen her in anything but a shirt and trousers. She wore no makeup.

She patted my hand and smiled at me. Ginga liked me, I knew that.

“Hope, Hope, Hope,” she said, mock-despairingly. “Why is Eugene so cross with you? He was in a rage the other night.”

I shrugged, sighed, and told her a little about the transformation of dead baby chimp into dead baby baboon. It made no sense to her, she said.

“So where's the body?” she demanded.

“It doesn't exist,” I said. I inclined my head in Hauser's direction. “He incinerated it.”

Ginga made a face. “Well, you know he's been so worried, Eugene,” she said. “For the project. There is no money, you know? It's terrible.” She reflected a moment, running a hand through her short hair. She took a slow, avid pull on her cigarette, hollowing her cheéks. She exhaled, giving me a half smile, half grimace.

“But I think everything will be fine now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wait and see.” She pointed.

I turned. Mallabar emerged from the canteen's kitchen with two foil-capped bottles of Asti Spumante. Everyone stopped talking as, with undue ceremony, he assembled glasses, popped the corks and poured out the foaming wine, silencing with histrionic gestures all speculation as to the cause of this rare treat.

So we waited dutifully, with our charged glasses, while Mallabar stood at the head of the table, head slightly bowed, jaws and cheeks working as if he were actually masticating, tasting the speech he was about to deliver. I sensed people gathering behind me and turned. All the kitchen staff were ranged behind me and most of the field assistants. João caught my glance and mouthed something at me but I couldn't interpret it. Mallabar looked up at the ceiling; his eyes seemed moist. He cleared his throat.

“These last three years,” he began huskily, “have been the hardest I have ever known in more than two decades at Grosso Arvore.” He paused. “That we have been able to continue our work is due in large part to you”—he thrust both hands at us—“my colleagues and dear friends. Under the most trying circumstances—the most trying—and in the face of increasing difficulties, we have struggled on to sustain that vision that was born here so many years ago.”

Now he smiled. He beamed, showing us his strong teeth.

“Those black days, I think we can now say, are behind us. A brighter future beckons at the end of the rainbow.” He nodded vigorously. “I heard this afternoon that the DuVeen Foundation of Orlando, Florida, is to award us a grant of two and three-quarter millions of dollars, U.S., spread over the next four years!”

Hauser cheered, we all clapped. Toshiro whistled deafeningly.

“We are already recruiting in the States and the U.K.,” Mallabar continued triumphantly. “I can tell you that within months the census will be resuming. We are negotiating with Princeton University for two more research fellowships. Many other exciting developments are afoot. Grosso Arvore, my dear good friends, is saved!”

We raised our glasses and, prompted by Hauser, drank to the health of Eugene Mallabar.

After the Asti Spumante we moved on to beer. We sat around the table, exulting in our good fortune, chatting and laughing. Even I, the newcomer, felt cheered, not so much at the news but at the patent elation on the faces of the others, the old-timers. Four more years, a big grant by an important foundation…where one led, others would surely follow, we decided. Hard currency—solid dollars—would soften the restrictions imposed by the government as a result of the civil war. Perhaps Mallabar was right: a brighter future did beckon at the end of the rainbow.

Later, as we were leaving, Mallabar came up to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and left it there. I wondered if he were a little drunk.

“Hope,” he said sonorously, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” He squeezed my shoulder. With his other hand he caressed his beard—I could just hear the rasp of tidy bristles.

“Well…what?”

“Could you do this week's provisioning run? I know it's Anton's turn but I need him here. I can't spare him.” He smiled fondly at me, not showing his teeth. “We have to reassess all our various projects, in the light of the DuVeen grant. We can't waste a moment.”

I thought. He was referring to the fortnightly run into the provincial capital where we stocked up on supplies. It was at least
a three-day trip, sometimes longer, and we usually adhered strictly to the rota. I had made it a month ago.

“It would be a special favor to me,” he said carefully, more pressure being applied to my shoulder. “You would be my goose who laid the golden egg.”

“How could I refuse.”

“Bless you.” A final squeeze. “Good night my dear. See you tomorrow.”

I walked slowly back to my tent, wondering if there were other motives behind this “special favor.” Was it a punishment or was it a way of saying no hard feelings? I strolled past Hauser's lab, and then on my left the vast pale columnar trunk of the hagenia tree. A nightjar fluted its haunting five-note call.

Something moved at the entrance to my hut. I stopped.

“Mam, it is I, João.”

I went into the tent and lit the hurricane lamp. João stood outside. I asked him in but he said he had to get back to his village.

“I saw Lena, Mam. I come to tell you.”

“And?”

“She has her baby.”

“Oh.” I had the sensation of a sagging, a falling inside me.

I thanked him, we said good night and he left for home. I sat down on my bed, suddenly tired. Stupidly, I felt tears smart in my eyes.

NOISE OR SIGNAL
?

The man I work with—Gunter—started to go deaf fairly recently. The doctors couldn't explain why but his hearing problems became so bad that be was obliged to be fitted with a hearing aid. He told me that, initially, he found the amplified sound in his head alarmingly hard to cope with. Everything came at him in a rush, he said, trying to explain the effect; sounds were suddenly unfamiliar and new. “You see, Hope,” he said a
little plaintively, “the problem was that I couldn't tell what was irrelevant and what was important…I couldn't tell noise from signal
.”

I think: Join the club. Learning to listen is like any process of education. You have to sift through a mass of phenomena and discard what is unimportant. You have to distinguish the signal from the noise. When you find the signals a pattern might emerge, and so on
.

That was what John Clearwater was attempting to do with his work on turbulence. Here was an area that was all “noise,” completely random and unpredictable. “Hyperbolic” was a word he used. Was there any pattern in turbulence? Were there any signals being given off? And suppose there were, would a pattern form? And what would that tell us about other disorderly systems in the universe? He told me once that he was looking for equations of motion to predict the future of all turbulent systems
….

The eye sees. It explores the optic array before us. Things shift and change, but the eye searches always for concepts of invariance. That is the way the visual world is pinned down and understood. John was on a different tack: it was variance that fascinated him now—systems in flux, erratic and discontinuous. He was trying to comprehend happenstance, he told me, and write the book of the unruly world we lived in
.

On Brazzaville Beach the waves roll and tumble and flatten on the sand in a sizzle of foam. Endlessly, wave after wave. On a beach in Scotland once, John pointed out to sea and said: what I want to do is write the geometry of a wave
.

 

Hope did not notice any further changes in John Clearwater as the weeks progressed. He had stopped drinking but it made no difference to his demeanor. He spent more time away from the flat at the college but his new sphere of interest—turbulence—did not appear to be all-consuming.

In early spring they went to Scotland for a holiday, renting a cold cottage in the Borders near Biggar for a fortnight. They traveled to Ipswich and spent a weekend with John's mother (his father had died a decade previously). She was an old frail gray lady, her back hooped in a pronounced dowager's stoop which made her look up at you sideways, cocking her head to obtain a clearer, oblique view out of one bright eye. She lived with John's brother, Frank, and his wife, Daphne, in a new housing development on
the outskirts of the city. Frank was a pharmacist, bald and genial. He and Daphne had two young boys—Gary and Gerry—who were polite and disciplined. To Hope it was a dull and interminable weekend of endless snacks and meals and television, most of which she spent in a state of confused befuddlement, trying to divine John Clearwater's origins in this bland suburban mulch. From time to time she caught herself sneering, and warned herself against being too contemptuous: for most of the world, she realized, this was the Good Life.