Brazzaville Beach (28 page)

“Of course.”

“Spend the next few days in the southern area with me.”

“Hope,” he said, a little wearily. “Really, I thought we—”

“No. There are some things you should see for yourself.” I felt surprisingly tense. I sat on the edge of the chair, rigid.

“All right, all right.” He spoke calmly and looked at me with some curiosity. “Do me good to get back in the field.”

Ginga reappeared with the coffee and stopped in the doorway.

“Everything all right?” she said. “Hope?”

“Hope's asked me to spend a few days with her in the south,” Mallabar said, talking about me as if I were slightly simple.

Ginga nodded. “Good,” she said. “Excellent. You haven't been out in the field for a while. Do you good.”

 

I spent the next three days with Mallabar as we watched the five survivors of the southern group going about their daily business. He asked me what had happened to Clovis's leg. I said I had no idea. We observed, we followed, we logged the data on the survey sheets and in our journals. Mallabar reminisced about the early days at Grosso Arvore. He told me about the efforts he and Ginga
had made to habituate the chimps to their presence. It had taken him ten months to get within twenty yards of a chimpanzee without it running off. He talked of how, for the first three years of their married life, their home had been an army surplus tent. How months could go by without seeing another soul. At first I wondered if these memories, unprompted by me, were a series of oblique rebukes; if he was gently reminding me that half his life had been spent at Grosso Arvore, in these hills and forests, and that my allegations were jeopardizing everything he had set out to achieve. But after a while I realized it was genuine nostalgia. Indeed, he was quite good company and it was fascinatingly instructive to observe the chimpanzees with him. I saw that he had an understanding of these apes that was profound and, there was no other word for it, full of love.

He looked at Clovis and remembered him as an infant. He knew his siblings and how his mother had died. He had seen Rita-Lu the day she was born. He had photographed Conrad's white sclerotics as he had peered through a screen of grasses one day, and had produced thereby one of the most haunting covers ever seen on
National Geographic
. And for the first time, too, I really sensed the personal bafflement and hurt in him, caused by the schism in the community he had studied for so long. For unknown reasons, some of those chimpanzees that had happily swarmed round his banana-dispensing machine had suddenly lost interest in it and had migrated south. He hadn't seen Rita-Mae—or SF2 as he referred to her—he said, for over two years. Baby Lester, he confessed, he had only known through photographs. To me he seemed like the benevolent chief of a tribe grown too large and complex for him to understand. Its motivating forces, its factions and feuds, allegiances and enmities, were too difficult to quantify and relate to. He confessed as much to me one afternoon.

“It was all very mystifying,” he said. “Terribly upsetting, really.” He laughed. “I just couldn't understand why they were doing this to me. And to be suddenly confronted by your ignorance when you felt you knew everything—well, nearly everything. It shakes you up, I tell you.”

“King Lear,” I said.

He looked at me. “Good God, let's hope not. What an analogy.”

“No, it was just…that same sense of mystification. Getting something so wrong. I know what you mean.”

“Do you?” He smiled; he was thinking of something else. “That's a comfort.”

 

On our second morning out João led us to a cluster of sleeping nests far south of the Danube. The northerners had spent the night here, he said. I realized the colonization was entering a new phase; now the chimps were not even bothering to return home as night fell.

“It's not surprising,” Mallabar said. “They know there are too few chimps to use this area to the full. It was the same when we had the polio epidemic. The core area shrunk, more chimps came down from the north.”

We were walking through the forest to the blasted fig tree. I was hoping we might find some northern chimps there. It was too close to the Danube, now, for my southerners. It was a sticky, still afternoon. The occasional breeze brought with it the wet-earth smell of impending rain.

“It'll rain tonight,” Mallabar said, inhaling deeply. “I love that smell.” He glanced at me and smiled. “I'm glad you asked me out, Hope,” he said. “I'm going to do this every two months or so—spend a few days in the field—I'm losing touch.” He went on almost garrulously to berate himself for the amount of administration and paperwork he was obliged to do. A manager was what he needed, he said, which would allow him to spend more time out in the bush with the chimpanzees.

The blasted fig tree was empty, but chimps had been there recently, as the ground was covered with half-eaten fruits. I paced about feeling edgy. Northerners feeding in this tree, which I had come to associate so much with my chimps…. It was almost like having your house burgled. This was my territory, mine and my southerners; now it was home to strangers and no longer felt the same.

 

On the third day the northerners attacked again. It had rained in the night, as Mallabar had predicted, and the forest was wet and visibly steaming in the sunlight, the paths mushy beneath our feet. We wore lightweight oilskins and Wellington boots. Occasionally we could hear the distant noise of thunder but Mallabar still wasn't sure, he said, if this was the true start of the rainy season.

João had located our southerners in a grove of lupus trees. The fall of rain had brought out their pale yellow, sticky flowers overnight, and all the chimps were sitting in the branches grazing on them. Rita-Mae lay on a low branch, on her back, one leg dangling, with Lester squatting on her stomach. She seemed to have eaten her fill; from time to time she would reach out, pluck a lupus flower and give it to Lester to eat.

The forest was still dripping from the drenching it had received. Everywhere was the sound of water falling on leaf as the movements of the chimps shook droplets free. And in the background there was still the noise of thunder, as the night's cloud systems moved south toward the coast, heavy furniture being shifted in the room above. We sat and watched the chimps in the sultry, moist heat. The atmosphere was soporific. Mallabar yawned again and again. It was infectious; we both yawned simultaneously.

He turned and smiled at me, and seemed about to say something, when he was interrupted by a crash of vegetation. Pulul or Americo—it was too sudden for me to tell—hurled himself out of the nearby bushes and leapt up and grabbed Rita-Mae's hanging leg. With a scream she and Lester fell the ten feet to the ground. To the left, Sebastian and Darius were up another tree after Conrad, who brachiated recklessly from his position into an adjacent tree, missed his grip and half-fell, half-tumbled through the branches to the ground.

Meanwhile, Gaspar had grabbed baby Lester by one leg and was whirling him round and round in midair. Observing this, Darius jumped down and seized the baby from Gaspar, who readily surrendered him.

Darius held Lester by both legs and thrashed him violently against the knobbled length of an exposed root. I saw Lester's skull literally explode under the force of the blow and bits of brain and bone were scattered widely. Then Darius thwacked the limp body against a trunk two or three times before flinging it carelessly away.

Conrad and Clovis made their escape, shrieking and calling. Rita-Lu adopted her half-crouched, presenting position and watched as Pulul and Americo and a couple of unidentified adolescents pummeled and stamped on the supine body of Rita-Mae, who had been badly stunned by her fall in the first charge. Then, as if on some invisible signal, they stopped and gathered round Rita-Lu. Darius drummed on a tree and they were off again, like the time before, running and whooping, Rita-Lu in their midst.

Rita-Mae was not dead. When they had gone, she stood up, shivering, and immediately fell over. She made a feeble hooting noise as if calling for Lester. She rolled over, managed to regain her feet once more, cast around a couple of times as if making a cursory search for Lester and then loped off with some awkwardness into the undergrowth after Clovis and Conrad.

The fight had lasted only a few minutes. I felt myself begin to unfreeze. I looked round at Mallabar. His face was sallow, bloodless; his beard looked suddenly black and coarse. He was biting his bottom lip, staring in front of him as if he were in terrible shock. I touched his shoulder; I could feel it shuddering beneath my fingers.

“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus Christ.” He kept on repeating this.

I thought it best to leave him alone for a moment or two and went to look for Lester's body. I found it hanging in a thorn bush. The head was a loose bag of pulped tissue and bone, the small limbs bizarrely mishapen and broken in many places. Carefully, I lifted him out and placed him on the ground. I turned; Mallabar was walking toward me.

He stared, clearly horrified, at Lester's body.

“Did you see,” he said, in a small voice, “that alpha male, what he did? Did you see?”

I felt enormously sorry for the man. “I know,” I said. “It's very shocking. Nothing prepares you for the violence. Even me.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the third fight I've seen.”

“Third?”

“Yes.” I spread my hands apologetically. “Eugene, this is what I've been trying to tell you. This is what's been happening here.”

“
Been
happening?” he said distractedly, as if lost in other thoughts.

“I've been trying to tell you. But you—”

He raised his fist to shoulder level, arm bent and took a step toward me.

“What have you been doing here?” he said in an urgent, trembling voice. “What have you been doing to them?”

“What're you talking about?”

“It's you. It's something you've done to them.”

“Come on, Eugene, don't be stupid!”

He lowered his fist and hung his head for an instant.

“I blame myself,” he said. He looked up. “I should have had you supervised.” Then he screamed at me, madly: “What have you done! What have you done?”

I took a step back. I had felt his spit on my face.

“I haven't done a thing, you fool, you bloody idiot!” I shouted at him, angry myself. “I've just been watching them.” I pointed at Lester's broken body. “It's what
they're
doing. They're killing each other!”

He had raised his fist again. His eyes were wide.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” he shouted. “Shut your fucking mouth!”

“No! The northern apes are wiping out my southerners. One by one. Now you've seen it with your own eyes, you stupid bloody fool, and you—”

He tried to hit me. He hurled a punch, full force, at my open face. If he had connected he would have broken my nose. Squashed it flat. Crushed bones and shattered teeth. But somehow I managed to jerk my head away and down and the punch hit me on the shoulder. I heard, distinctly, the knuckle bones in his fist
crunch and break as the force of the blow spun me round and right off my feet. I fell heavily to the ground. My shoulder burned, hot with pain. I felt it had sprung from its socket. I grunted through clenched teeth, flinching, looking round expecting another attack.

Mallabar was some distance off, scrabbling in the undergrowth looking for something. He was flicking his right hand curiously, fingers spread, as if they were wet and he was trying to shake water from them. He stood up; he had a stick in his left hand. He ran over toward me.

“Eugene!” I screamed at him, “Stop, for Christ's sake!”

I ducked.

He hit me across the back. The stick broke under the blow, but, because it was left-handed, it hadn't as much impact as it might have. He grabbed at me, and I pushed wildly at his face, scratching. At the same time, somehow, I caught hold of two of the broken fingers on his right hand and pulled them back with as much savage effort as I could muster.

He bellowed with pain and let me go. I ran.

I sprinted off down the path through the dripping forest toward the camp. I thought at first I could hear his running footsteps behind me, but I never looked round. I ran for fifteen minutes and then halted, doubled over, my body aching with effort. I sank to my haunches, hand on a tree trunk for support. I tried to calm down.

I felt a hot drumbeat throb in my right shoulder. I slipped my jacket off and unbuttoned my shirt. My shoulder was pink, flushed and already slightly swollen. I could see four darker circles in a row, the imprint of his knuckles. Very gently, I eased my shoulder joint. Very sore, but mobile.

I dressed and headed off again. I crossed the Danube and walked into camp past the feeding area. I could hear the noise of chimps coming from it. I turned left to cut past Mallabar's bungalow, making for the census hut. On my left were the garages and workshops. I saw a Land-Rover parked there with its bonnet up and Ian Vail leaning inside fiddling with the engine. He stood up, wiped his hands on a rag and closed the bonnet with a vengeful but satisfied bang. It had been Vail's turn to do the
provisioning run this week. By rights he should have left hours ago.

“Hi,” he said, as I walked over to him. “Bloody fuel pump.”

“When're you off?” I asked.

“Are you OK, Hope? You look—”

“When're you off?” My voice was trembling.

“Now.”

“Ten minutes. Five minutes. I'm coming with you.”

I went back to the census hut and threw a few essentials—passport, wallet, cigarettes, sunglasses—into a canvas holdall. I hadn't thought at all what to do, but seeing Ian Vail about to leave, I knew suddenly I wanted to be with Usman for a while and talk about beach huts and tiny airplanes. I would let some days pass and either return and face Mallabar, or else send for my things and leave.