Reckoning (15 page)

There was a long uncomfortable pause after this, with much rustling of papers being gathered together
and scraping of chair legs on the floor as men suddenly remembered prior commitments and had to hurry away.

Richard Dartley flew to Brussels, and from there to Kinshasa in Zaire. Kinshasa had been Leopoldville when Zaire was the Belgian
Congo. He flew from there about seven hundred miles across the country to Kisangani, once Stanleyville. Zaire was bigger than
Dartley had expected, stretching from a tiny section of coastline beneath the western bulge of Africa to cover a vast tract
of its interior as far east as the big lakes. The country seemed more highly developed than other African countries he had
seen, with a lot of agriculture and mining. But Dartley was aware he was not going to get a chance to hang out in cities with
colonial atmosphere. He was headed for the equatorial forest.

He drove north from Kisangani, sharing the driving with the owner of the truck he had hired. The man seemed used to the idea
of crazy white men going into the jungle. He didn’t seem to want to hear their insane reasons for doing it, and he asked Dartley
few questions. They went north through Banalia to Buta and east from there toward the Ituri forest.

In one fair-sized market town, Dartley hired a local man to guide them. He and the driver and Dartley all spoke equally bad
French. Neither of the two Africans spoke each other’s language, there being more than two hundred different ones in Zaire.
Unlike the truck owner, the new man was curious. Dartley told him about Paul Egan, who was exploring for oil-bearing
strata in the Ituri forest. He said he was coming to help Egan. The man looked impressed. He said he did not know the area
where Egan was, nor had he ever even met anyone who had gone in there. Since the forest was about forty thousand square miles
in area, this news did not concern Dartley. When he got closer to where he wanted to go, he would find a new guide.

“I will take you as far as this truck can go,” the African said. “You will be in BaLese country. They are forest people and
they will show you.”

“Are they friendly?”

He shrugged. “I have never bothered with them.”

Clearly this man was Bantu, and had a low opinion of the BaLese. Dartley cared not a damn for the man’s opinions—he just wanted
to know if he was going to have problems with the BaLese.

“Will they be hostile to me?” Dartley asked.

The Bantu laughed at the idea and the truck owner joined in. From what Dartley could gather, the BaLese were a people being
left to one side by the modern nation of Zaire, which many of them did not even know they lived in. When modern technology—even
in the form of passable roads—came near, they backed off, always lingering on the edge of the deep forest. Every member of
the tribe eighteen or over had to pay an annual tax to the government of six zaires (about $1.50). Their only contacts with
authority were often the government efforts to collect that tax. Dartley had begun to like the sound of them.

He did not tell the two Africans what was in the small crate he collected at one market town. Not wanting to drive long distances
with weapons in case he was stopped for any reason by police or soldiers, he had a Belgian FN FAL automatic rifle forwarded
to this town for him by an arms dealer in Kinshasa. His uncle knew the dealer by reputation. Along with the rifle, Dartley
bought a 9 mm Browning HP 35 pistol also made in Belgium by FN.

The start of the Ituri forest was gradual. All three had to ask a lot of questions before deciding on the best route into
the section of forest where Dartley wanted to go. Local people were vague about the roads because the roads themselves were
vague. Few vehicles traveled them, and in a short time the jungle could overgrow a road the width of a pair of bicycle handlebars,
bicycles being the local beast of burden. One road was definitely open because it led to a leper colony and nuns drove in
a jeep to it once a month to deliver medical services.

“There are BaLese villages along this road,” the Bantu told Dartley. “I will arrange for some of them to take you through
the jungle to where you must go.”

Dartley nodded. Both men were doing their best for him. It was not an easy job. Although French was the country’s official
language, few people spoke it well and most around here didn’t speak it at all. The Bantu did better with Swahili, which a
number of people knew. But nobody in these parts ever went into the forest. The three would have to go in as far as they could
by road until they met those who knew their way
around. Dartley knew that oil occurred in strange places and he tried to imagine how big strikes would change this area, as
they had the North Sea.

The forest was dark, the canopy of leaves high above their heads blotting out most of the light. Even when it rained, only
a few drops fell to the ground below. The road ran between the tall bare tree trunks, and only small bushes and plants covered
the forest floor. When they stopped the truck, there was dead silence. The tree-dwelling animals lived a hundred feet above
the ground, and were invisible in the thick canopy. No birds or animals could be seen in the gloom at ground level. In open
places, which were mostly swampy, the kind of impenetrable jungle that Dartley had expected grew everywhere. The tangled vegetation
grew in riotous abandon and all kinds of sinister grunts and unidentifiable cries came from deep inside it. The truck tires
crushed two-foot saplings trying to take over the road.

The occasional villages were no more than groupings of mud-walled huts with leaf-thatch roofs. When children saw Dartley,
they pointed and screamed
“Muzungu! Muzungu!”
Then they ran for the huts as fast as they could. This grew worse as they came to more isolated villages. The Bantu was embarrassed
by this and explained some more about how primitive the BaLese were. He said that
muzungu
was the Swahili word for white man. Dartley suspected it had some additional overtones of meaning, because clearly the
children were scared out of their wits and their parents did not emerge from their huts, but instead pulled the doors closed.

“Ibaki is next,” one old man told them, pointing his spear down the road. He was wearing a white T-shirt with a red badger
emblem and UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

At the huts of Ibaki, the alarm caused by the appearance of a
muzungu
was even greater than elsewhere. Here even some of the adults ran for their lives. One tall man walked toward Dartley, laughing
at those who ran away. He spoke good French, which he had learned at a mission school. His European name was Dieudonne, and
his African one was Kuri. The government had passed a law saying everyone had to use only African names, yet Dartley noticed
later that the villagers mostly used each other’s French names, although they spoke to each other in their own language.

Dieudonne was agreeable to guide Dartley to the village of Diku. He himself had seen Paul Egan there about three weeks previously.
He was using Diku as a base and making three-day trips into the forest. It was news to Dieudonne that Egan was looking for
oil. Dartley hoped he had not let some big secret slip.

“What did you think he was doing?”

Dieudonne said, “I thought he wanted to meet with the pygmies. Americans who come here always want to meet pygmies.”

Dartley let that go. “Where did you get that shirt?”

Dieudonne was wearing a lime green T-shirt with purple handwriting that read
Malibu.
He laughed. “The missionaries pass out clothes south of here. Traders buy them and bring them into the forest on bicycles
to sell them to us. You have been to Malibu, yes?”

Dartley nodded.

“It’s near Hollywood?”

“Yes.”

Dieudonne was pleased to hear this confirmed. He demanded six zaires a day (about $1.50) to guide Dartley, who readily agreed,
as he would have if Dieudonne had asked for sixty.

Dartley paid off the Bantu and the truck owner and they left. Since it was still early, he and Dieudonne set out on their
journey. Dartley waited until they were out of sight before he opened the crate. Everything was in order. He fired off some
cartridges from both the rifle and pistol.

They were aiming to reach a village in the interior where they could eat and spend the night. They got there just before dusk.
Fires were still smoking but the place was empty except for a few very old people, crippled with age.

“Where did everybody go?” Dartley asked.

Dieudonne shrugged. “Into the forest.”

“Will they come back?”

“No.”

Dartley thought this over. It was clear to him that the old people had been abandoned because they could
not move. What had happened? He saw one old man looking at him and trembling.

“What’s happening? Are they running from me?”

Dieudonne tried to put it delicately. “Many people believe that
muzungus
will eat them.”

“They think I’m a cannibal!”

“They think all white people like to eat human flesh.”

Dartley was genuinely shocked. People had called him a lot of things before, but this was a new one. He asked, “Is that why
your wife created such a scene, trying to pull you back, just before we left?”

“Foolish people in the village put the idea in her head that she would never see me again. I do not believe that you eat people.”

All the same, Dartley noted that Dieudonne slept on the opposite side of the village that night.

Moving out shortly after dawn, while mist still hung over the tree tops, Dartley was aware that the forest had changed again.
It was not so dark under the trees, and plants with big leaves and long stalks grew on the forest floor. Huge butterflies
with dazzling colors fluttered in shafts of sunlight, and hornbills flew overhead, calling raucously. Vines hung down, sometimes
in long moving walls; ferns and parasitic plants clutched the trunks and branches. It was cool and moist, with not many insects—a
welcome change for Dartley.

Dieudonne said they had one full day’s walk to Diku and that the forest was like this all the way. The
trail was only two or three feet wide and winding, but easy going. The traders wheeled their bicycles loaded with goods along
it. In places it widened considerably, and this was where elephants used it. Dartley heard animals frequently, but the only
good-sized creatures he saw were occasional monkeys in the canopy overhead and small deer in thickets.

The two men carried Dartley’s possessions in two small knapsacks. He had taken only essentials—a light tent and sleeping bag,
mosquito netting and one change of clothes. There were some dried and canned foods, only enough for three days for two men.
He expected to be able to buy food or hunt for it. Before he left Washington, he took shots and pills for what seemed to him
like every disease known to man. He had Merthiolate, Lomotil for diarrhea, vitamins, and chloroquine and primaquine for malaria,
as well as antisnake and antispider venom kits. He had a bottle of wood alcohol to rub on insect bites and cuts, which could
easily go septic in the jungle. A small surgical kit contained sterile scalpels, clamps, gauze, needles, silk and gut. He
had been warned to take plenty of ampicillin so that he could give some of the broad-spectrum antibiotic to those he would
see desperately in need of it and still have some left for himself; lots of aspirin to feed those who were unfriendly and
out of sorts; and a carton of Marlboros.

At one point, when Dieudonne had gone a little way ahead on the path, Dartley thought he saw something flicker in a thick
stand of plants. He waited and
watched. Then he saw it again—the big leaves being pressed down slowly, being parted, as something stalked slowly forward
through them. In a moment he was looking deeply into the eyes of a leopard. The big cat was scrutinizing him, looking for
weakness, for fear, for aggression. Dartley remained very still—it was not yet too late to grab for his rifle hanging from
its sling on his right shoulder, but he was intrigued by the look this leopard was giving him. It had the eyes of a poker
player toying with a stack of one-hundred-dollar chips and looking across the table at a losing player. Dartley stared right
back into its flashing jade eyes, and the beast switched its gaze twenty feet to Dartley’s right. Then he saw it fade backward
slowly into the leaves, like the Cheshire cat in
Alice In Wonderland,
which completely disappeared except for its smile.

Douglas Dockrell flew from the capital of Kinshasa to Kisangani. He chartered a small plane there and flew north to Titule.
He was stranded there for a day, with a hotel room whose corrugated zinc roof made it too hot to enter before sundown. Then
he met Bombwe, the policeman. At first, things had not gone smoothly between them. Bombwe had tried to hit on him for cigarettes,
his watch, his shoes. He had demanded to see Dockrell’s passport, which was French and in the name of Marcel Dupuis. He compared
the passport photo of a man with cropped fair hair with the man opposite him, who had somewhat longer black hair and a clipped
black mustache.