Congo Page 21

  Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone.

  Ross called Elliot away from his dinner. “It’s for you,” she said, pointing to the computer next to the antenna. “That friend of yours again.”

  Munro grinned, “Even in the jungle, the phone never stops ringing.”

  Elliot went over to look at the screen: COMPUTR LNGWAGE ANALYSS NG REQUIR MOR INPUT KN PROVIDE?

  WHT INPUT? Elliot typed back.

  NOR AURL INPUT-TRNSMIT RECORDNGS.

  Elliot typed back, Yes lf Occurs. YES IF OCRS.

  RCORD FREQNCY 22—50,000 CYCLS—CRITICL

  Elliot typed back, Understood. UNDRSTOD.

  There was a pause, then the screen printed: HOWS AMY?

  Elliot hesitated. FINE.

  STAF SNOS LOV came the reply, and the transmission was momentarily interrupted.

  HOLD TRSNMSN.

  There was a long pause.

  INCREDIBL NWZ, Seamans printed. HAV FOUND MRS SWENSN

  2. Swensn NWZ

  FOR A MOMENT ELLIOT DID NOT RECOGNIZE THE name. Swensn? Who was Swensn? A transmission error? And then he realized: Mrs. Swenson! Amy’s discoverer, the woman who had brought her from Africa and had donated her to the Minneapolis zoo. The woman who had been in Borneo all these weeks. IF WE HAD ONLY KNON AMY MOTHR NOT KILD BY NATIVS.

  Elliot waited impatiently for the next message from Seamans.

  Elliot stared at the message. He had always been told that Amy’s mother had been killed by natives in a village called Bagimindi. The mother had been killed for food, and Amy was orphaned. . .

  WHT MEANS?

  MOTHR ALREDY DED NOT EATN.

  The natives hadn’t killed Amy’s moth& She was already dead?

  XPLN.

  SWENSN HAS PICTR CAN TRAMSMT?

  Hastily, Elliot typed, his fingers fumbling at the keyboard.

  TRANSMT.

  There was a pause that seemed interminable, and then the video screen received the transmission, scanning it from top to bottom. Long before the picture filled the screen, Elliot realized what it showed.

  A crude snapshot of a gorilla corpse with a crushed skull. The animal lay on its back in a packed-earth clearing, presumably in a native village.

  In that moment Elliot felt as if the puzzle that preoccupied him, that had caused so much anguish for so many months, was explained. If only they had been able to reach her before...

  The glowing electronic image faded to black.

  Elliot was confronted by a rush of sudden questions. Crushed skulls occurred in the remote—and supposedly uninhabited—region of the Congo, kanyamagufa, the place of bones. But Bagimindi was a trading village on the Lubula River, more than a hundred miles away. How had Amy and her dead mother reached Bagimindi?

  Ross said, “Got a problem?”

  “I don’t understand the sequence. I need to ask—”

  “Before you do,” she said, “review the transmission. It’s all in memory.” She pressed a button marked REPEAT.

  The earlier transmitted conversation was repeated on the screen. As Elliot watched Seaman’s answers, one line struck him: MOTHR ALREDY DED NOT EATN.

  Why wasn’t the mother eaten? Gorilla meat was an acceptable—indeed a prized—food in this part of the Congo basin. He typed in a question:

  WHY MOTHR NOT EATN.

  MOTHR / INFNT FWND BY NATIV ARMY PATRL DOWN FRM SUDAN CARRIED CRPSE / INFNT 5 DAYS TO BAG-MINDI VILLAG FOR SALE TOURISTS. SWENSN THERE.

  Five days! Quickly, Elliot typed the important question:

  WHER FWNO?

  The answer came back: UNKNWN AREA CONGO.

  SPECFY.

  NO DETALS. A short pause, then: THERS MOR PICTRS.

  SND, he typed back.

  The screen went blank, and then filled once more, from top to bottom. Now he saw a closer view of the female gor­illa’s crushed skull. And alongside the huge skull, a small black creature lying on the ground, hands and feet clenched, mouth open in a frozen scream.

  Amy.

  Ross repeated the transmission several times, finishing on the image of Amy as an infant—small, black, screaming.

  “No wonder she’s been having nightmares,” Ross said. “She probably saw her mother killed.”

  Elliot said, “Well, at least we can be sure it wasn’t gorillas. They don’t kill each other.”

  “Right now,” Ross said, “we can’t be sure of anything at all.,,

  The night of June 21 was so quiet that by ten o’clock they switched off the infrared night lights to save power. Almost at once they became aware of movement in the foliage outside the compound. Munro and Kahega swung their guns around. The rustling increased, and they heard an odd sighing sound, a sort of wheeze.

  Elliot heard it too, and felt a chill: it was the same wheezing that had been recorded on the tapes from the first Congo expedition. He turned on the tape recorder, and swung the microphone around. They were all tense, alert, waiting.

  But for the next hour nothing further happened. The foliage moved all around them, but they saw nothing. Then shortly before midnight the electrified perimeter fence erupted in sparks. Munro swung his gun around and fired; Ross hit the switch for the night lights and the camp was bathed in deep red.

  “Did you see it?” Munro said. “Did you see what it was?”

  They shook their heads. Nobody had seen anything. Elliot checked his tapes; he had only the harsh rattle of gunfire, and the sounds of sparks. No breathing.

  The rest of the night passed uneventfully.

  DAY 10: ZINJ

  June 22, 1979

  1. Return

  THE MORNING OF JUNE 22 WAS FOGGY AND GRAY. Peter Elliot awoke at 6 A.M. to find the camp already up and active. Munro was stalking around the perimeter of the camp, his clothing soaked to the chest by the wet foliage. He greeted Elliot with a look of triumph, and pointed to the ground.

  There, on the ground, were fresh footprints. They were deep and short, rather triangular-shaped, and there was a wide space between the big toe and the other four toes—as wide as the space between a human thumb and fingers.

  “Definitely not human,” Elliot said, bending to look closely.

  Munro said nothing.

  “Some kind of primate.”

  Munro said nothing.

  “It can’t be a gorilla,” Elliot finished, straightening. His video communications from the night before had hardened his belief that gorillas were not involved. Gorillas did not kill other gorillas as Amy’s mother had been killed. “It can’t be a gorilla,” he repeated.

  “It’s a gorilla, all right,” Munro said. “Have a look at this.” He pointed to another area of the soft earth. There were four indentations in a row. “Those are the knuckles, when they walk on their hands.”

  “But gorillas,” Elliot said, “are shy animals that sleep at night and avoid contact with men.”

  “Tell the one that made this print.”

  “It’s small for a gorilla,” Elliot said. He examined the fence nearby, where the electrical short had occurred the night before. Bits of gray fur clung to the fence. “And gorillas don’t have gray fur.”

  “Males do,” Munro said. “Silverbacks.”

  “Yes, but the silverback coloring is whiter than this. This fur is distinctly gray.” He hesitated. “Maybe it’s a kakun­dakari.”

  Munro looked disgusted.

  The kakunidakari was a disputed primate in the Congo. Like the yeti of the Himalayas and bigfoot of North America, he had been sighted but never captured. There were endless native stories of a six-foot-tall hairy ape that walked on his hind legs and otherwise behaved in a manlike fashion.

  Many respected scientists believed the kakundakari existed; perhaps they remembered the authorities who had once denied the existence of the gorilla.

  In 1774, Lord Monboddo wrote of the gorilla that “this wonderful and frightful production of nature wal
ks upright like man; is from 7 to 9 feet high. . . and amazingly strong; covered with longish hair, jet black over the body, but longer on the head; the face more like the human than the Chim­penza, but the complexion black; and has no tail.”

  Forty years later, Bowditch described an African ape “generally five feet high, and four across the shoulders; its paw was said to be even more disproportionate than its breadth, and one blow of it to be fetal.” But it was not until 1847 that Thomas Savage, an African missionary, and Jeffries Wyman, a Boston anatomist, published a paper describing “a second species in Africa . . . not recognized by naturalists,” which they proposed to call Troglodytes gorilla. Their announcement caused enormous excitement in the scientific world, and a rush in London, Paris, and Boston to procure skeletons; by 1855, there was no longer any doubt— a second, very large ape existed in Africa.

  Even in the twentieth century, new animal species were discovered in the rain forest: the blue pig in 1944, and the red-breasted grouse in 1961. It was perfectly possible that a rare, reclusive primate might exist in the jungle depths. But there was still no hard evidence for the kakundakari.

  “This print is from a gorilla,” Munro insisted. “Or rather a group of gorillas. They’re all around the perimeter fence. They’ve been scouting our camp.”

  “Scouting our camp,” Elliot repeated, shaking his head.

  “That’s right,” Munro said. “Just look at the bloody prints.”

  Elliot felt his patience growing short. He said something about white-hunter campfire tales, to which Munro said something unflattering about people who knew everything from books.

  At that point, the colobus monkeys in the trees overhead began to shriek and shake the branches.

  They found Malawi’s body just outside the compound. The porter had been going to the stream to get water when he had been killed; the collapsible buckets lay on the ground nearby. The bones of his skull had been crushed; the purple, swelling face was distorted, the mouth open.

  The group was repelled by the manner of death; Ross turned away, nauseated; the porters huddled with Kahega, who tried to reassure them; Munro bent to examine the injury. “You notice these flattened areas of compression, as if the head was squeezed between something

  Munro then called for the stone paddles that Elliot had found in the city the day before. He glanced back at Kahega.

  Kahega stood at his most erect and said, “We go home now, boss.”

  “That’s not possible,” Munro said.

  “We go home. We must go home, one of our brothers is dead, we must make ceremony for his wife and his children, boss.”

  “Kahega. .

  “Boss, we must go now.”

  “Kahega, we will talk.” Munro straightened, put his arm over Kahega and led him some distance away, across the clearing. They talked in low voices for several minutes.

  “It’s awful,” Ross said. She seemed genuinely affected with human feeling and instinctively Elliot turned to comfort her, but she continued, “The whole expedition is falling apart. Ifs awful. We have to hold it together somehow, or we’ll never find the diamonds.”

  “Is that all you care about?”

  “Well, they do have insurance. . .

  “For Christ’s sake,” Elliot said.

  “You’re just upset because you’ve lost your damned monkey,” Ross said. “Now get hold of yourself. They’re watching us.”

  The Kikuyu were indeed watching Ross and Elliot, trying to sense the drift of sentiment. But they all knew that the real negotiations were between Munro and Kahega, standing off to one side. Several minutes later Kahega returned, wiping his eyes. He spoke quickly to his remaining brothers, and they nodded. He turned back to Munro.

  “We stay, boss.”

  “Good,” Munro said, immediately resuming his former imperious tone. “Bring the paddles.”

  When they were brought, Munro placed the paddles to either side of Malawi’s head. They fitted the semicircular indentations on the head perfectly.

  Munro then said something quickly to Kahega in Swahili, and Kahega said something to his brothers, and they nodded. Only then did Munro take the next horrible step. He raised his arms wide, and then swung the paddles back hard against the already crushed skull. The dull sound was sickening; droplets of blood spattered over his shirt, but he did not further damage the skull.

  “A man hasn’t the strength to do this,” Munro said flatly. He looked up at Peter Elliot. “Care to try?”

  Elliot shook his head.

  Munro stood. “Judging by the way he fell, Malawi was standing when it happened.” Munro faced Elliot, looking him in the eye. “Large animal, the size of a man. Large, strong animal. A gorilla.”

  Elliot had no reply.

  There is no doubt that Peter Elliot felt a personal threat in these developments, although not a threat to his safety. “I simply couldn’t accept it,” he said later. “I knew my field, and I simply couldn’t accept the idea of some unknown, radically violent behavior displayed by gorillas in the wild. And in any case, it didn’t make sense. Gorillas making stone paddles that they used to crush human skulls? It was impossible.”

  After examining the body, Elliot went to the stream to wash the blood from his hands. Once alone, away from the others, he found himself staring into the clear running water and considering the possibility that he might be wrong. Certainly primate researchers had a long history of misjudging their subjects.

  Elliot himself had helped eradicate one of the most famous misconceptions—the brutish stupidity of the gorilla. In their first descriptions, Savage and Wyman had written, “This animal exhibits a degree of intelligence inferior to that of the Chimpanzee; this might be expected from its wider departure from the organization of the human subject.” Later observers saw the gorilla as “savage, morose, and brutal.” But now there was abundant evidence from field and laboratory studies that the gorilla was in many ways brighter than the chimpanzee.

  Then, too, there were the famous stories of chimpanzees kidnapping and eating human infants. For decades, primate researchers had dismissed such native tales as “wild and superstitious fantasy.” But there was no longer any doubt that chimpanzees occasionally kidnapped—and ate—human infants; when Jane Goodall studied Gombe chimpanzees, she locked away her own infant to prevent his being taken and killed by the chimps.

  Chimpanzees hunted a variety of animals, according to a complicated ritual. And field studies by Dian Fossey suggested that gorillas also hunted from time to time, killing small game and monkeys, whenever— He heard a rustling in the bushes across the stream, and an enormous silverback male gorilla reared up in chest-high foliage. Peter was startled, although as soon as he got over his fright he realized that he was safe. Gorillas never crossed open water, even a small stream. Or was that a misconception, too?

  The male stared at him across the water. There seemed to be no threat in his gaze, just a kind of watchful curiosity. Elliot smelled the musty odor of the gorilla, and he heard the breath hiss through his flattened nostrils. He was wondering what he should do when suddenly the gorilla crashed noisily away through the underbrush, and was gone.

  This encounter perplexed him, and he stood, wiping the sweat from his face. Then he realized that there was still movement in the foliage across the stream. After a moment, another gorilla rose up, this one smaller: a female, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. The new gorilla gazed at him as implacably as the first. Then the hand moved.

  Peter come give tickle.

  “Amy!” he shouted, and a moment later he had splashed across the stream, and she had leapt into his arms, hugging him and delivering sloppy wet kisses and grunting happily.

  Amy’s unexpected return to camp nearly got her shot by the jumpy Kikuyu porters. Only by blocking her body with his own did Elliot prevent gunfire. Twenty minutes later, however, everyone had adjusted to her presence—and Amy promptly began making demands.

  She was unhappy to learn that they had no
t acquired milk or cookies in her absence, but when Munro produced the bottle of warm Dom Perignon, she agreed to accept champagne instead.

  They all sat around her, drinking champagne from tin cups. Elliot was glad for the mitigating presence of the others, for now that Amy was sitting there, safely restored to him, calmly sipping her champagne and signing Tickle drink Amy like, he found himself overcome with anger toward her.

  Munro grinned at Elliot as he gave him his champagne. “Calmly, Professor, calmly. She’s just a child.”

  “The hell she is,” Elliot said. He conducted the subsequent conversation entirely in sign language, not speaking.

  Amy, he signed. Why Amy leave?

  She buried her nose in her cup, singing Tickle drink good drink.

  Amy, he signed. Amy tell Peter why leave.

  Peter not like Amy.

  Peter like Amy.

  Peter hurt Amy Peter fly ouch pin Amy no like Peter no like Amy Amy sad sad.

  In a detached corner of his mind, he thought he would have to remember that “ouch pin” had now been extended to the Thoralen dart. Her generalization pleased him, but he signed sternly, Peter like Amy. Amy know Peter like Amy. Amy tell Peter why— Peter no tickle Amy Peter not nice Amy Peter not nice human person Peter like woman no like Amy Peter not like Amy Amy sad Amy sad.

  This increasingly rapid signing was itself an indication that she was upset. Where Amy go?

  Amy go gorillas good gorillas. Amy like.

  Curiosity overcame his anger. Had she joined a troop of wild gorillas for several days? If so, it was an event of major importance, a crucial moment in modern primate history— a language-skilled primate had joined a wild troop and had come back again. He wanted to know more.