Forest of the Pygmies Read online

  “Eagle!” he cried, trying to dig her out from bundles, cameras, and seats that had wrenched free of the floor.

  When at last everyone was outside and they could evaluate the situation, it turned out that no one was injured; Nadia had no more than a nosebleed. The plane, on the other hand, was damaged indeed.

  “Just what I was afraid of. The propeller’s bent,” said Angie.

  “Is that serious?” asked Alexander.

  “Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be. If I can get another propeller, I can change it myself, but way out here, we’re in the soup. Where am I going to get a replacement?”

  Before Brother Fernando could open his mouth, Angie confronted him, hands on her hips.

  “And if you don’t want to see me really mad, don’t tell me that your God will provide!”

  Prudently, the missionary held his tongue.

  “Where are we exactly?” asked Kate.

  “I don’t have the faintest idea,” Angie admitted.

  Brother Fernando consulted his map and told them that he felt sure they were not far from Ngoubé, the village where his companions had established the mission.

  “We’re surrounded with tropical jungle and swamps. There’s no way out of here without a boat,” said Angie.

  “Then let’s build a fire. A cup of tea and a sip or two of vodka won’t hurt at all,” Kate proposed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Incommunicado in the Jungle

  AS NIGHT FELL, THE journeyers decided to make camp near the trees, where they would be better protected.

  “Are there pythons in this part of the world?” asked Joel, thinking of the near fatal embrace of an anaconda in the Amazon.

  “Pythons aren’t a problem because you can see them coming and shoot them. Much worse are the Gabon viper and forest cobra. Their poison kills in a matter of minutes,” said Angie.

  “Did we bring an antidote?”

  “There is no antidote for those bites. I’m more worried about crocodiles; those monsters eat everything,” commented Angie.

  “But they stay in the river, don’t they?” asked Alexander.

  “They’re also ferocious on land. When animals come down to drink at night, crocs snatch them and drag them to the bottom of the river. Not a pleasant death,” Angie detailed.

  She always carried a revolver and a rifle in her plane, though she had never had to fire them. In view of the fact that they would have to take turns standing guard through the night, she demonstrated to the others how to use them. They took a few shots and found that the weapons were in good condition, but none of them was able to hit a target only a few yards away. Brother Fernando refused to even try, because, according to him, firearms are tools of the devil. His experience in the war in Rwanda had left him badly scarred.

  “This is my protection, this scapulary,” he said, showing them a piece of cloth he wore on a cord around his neck.

  “This what?” asked Kate, who never had heard the word before.

  “It’s a holy object, blessed by the pope,” said Joel, showing them a similar one he wore.

  For Kate, who had been brought up in the sobriety of a Protestant church, the Catholic faith was as picturesque as African religious ceremonies.

  “I have an amulet, too, but I don’t think it will save me from ending up in the jaws of a crocodile someday,” Angie said, showing them a small leather pouch.

  “Don’t compare that witchcraft fetish to a scapulary!” protested Brother Fernando, offended.

  “What’s the difference?” asked Alexander, who was very interested.

  “One represents the power of Christ, and the other is pagan superstition.”

  “Our beliefs are religion; everybody else’s are superstition,” commented Kate.

  She had often repeated that sentence to her grandson, hoping to pound respect for different cultures into his head. Other favorite sayings of hers were, “We speak a language, anything else is a dialect,” and “White people create art; other races make crafts.” Alexander had tried to explain his grandmother’s statements in his social science class, but no one had understood the irony.

  A passionate discussion about Christian faith and African animism ensued, in which everyone in the group participated except Alexander, who was wearing an amulet of his own around his neck and thought it best to keep silent, and Nadia, who was walking up and down the open shoreline from one end to the other, deeply engrossed and accompanied by Borobá. Alexander went to join them.

  “What are you looking for, Eagle?” he asked.

  Nadia bent down and picked up some bits of rope from the sand.

  “I found several of these,” she said.

  “It must be some kind of vine.”

  “No. I think they’re something someone has made.”

  “What can they be?”

  “I don’t know, but it means that someone was here not too long ago, and maybe he will be back. We’re not as isolated as Angie believes,” Nadia deduced.

  “I hope they aren’t cannibals.”

  “Yes, that would really be bad luck,” she said, thinking of what she’d heard the missionary say about the madman who ruled the region.

  “I don’t see human footprints anywhere,” Alexander commented.

  “Or animals’, either. The earth is soft, and the rain has washed everything away.”

  Several times a day, there was a downpour that drenched them as effectively as standing in a shower, then ended as suddenly as it had begun. Those cloudbursts kept them wringing wet, yet didn’t offer any relief from the heat; just the opposite, the humidity made things even more unbearable. The stranded travelers set up Angie’s tent, into which five of them could crowd as the sixth stood guard. At Brother Fernando’s suggestion, they looked for animal droppings to make a fire; it was the only way to keep the mosquitoes at bay and at the same time mask their scent, which might attract wild animals. The missionary warned them against bugs that lay their eggs under fingernails and toenails; those pockets become infected, making it necessary to pry up the nails with a knife and scrape out the larvae, a procedure akin to Chinese torture. To prevent that, they rubbed their hands and feet with gasoline. He also warned them not to leave any food in the open because the ants it attracted could be more dangerous than crocodiles. An invasion of termites was a terrifying sight; in their passing they wiped out every living thing, leaving nothing behind but bare earth. Alexander and Nadia had heard about those insects in the Amazon, but now they learned that the African species were even more voracious. As dusk fell they were set upon by a swarm of tiny bees, the insufferable mopani; despite the smoke, the pests invaded the camp and swarmed over every inch of their skin, even their eyelids.

  “They don’t bite; they just drink your sweat. It’s better not to try to shoo them off,” the missionary told them. “You’ll get used to them.”

  “Look there!” called Joel.

  An ancient turtle with a shell more than three feet across was creeping along the shore at the water’s edge.

  “He’s probably more than a hundred years old,” Brother Fernando calculated.

  “I make a delicious turtle soup!” exclaimed Angie, picking up a machete. “You have to swing the minute they stick their head out—”

  “Don’t even think of killing it,” interrupted Alexander.

  “That shell’s worth a lot of money,” said Angie.

  “We can eat tinned sardines for supper,” Nadia reminded her. She, too, was opposed to the idea of eating the defenseless turtle.

  “It’s not a good idea to kill it. It has a strong odor, and that will attract dangerous predators,” added Brother Fernando.

  The centenarian ambled on along the riverbank at its calm pace, never suspecting how near it had come to ending its days in a pot.

  The sun went down, the shadows of the nearby trees lengthened, and finally it was cool.

  “Don’t look over this way, Brother Fernando, because I’m going to take a dip and I
don’t want to entice you.” Angie laughed.

  “I would advise you, miss, not to go near the river. You never know what you might find in the water,” the missionary replied dryly, not looking at her.

  But Angie had already taken off her slacks and blouse and was running toward the riverbank in her underwear. She had sense enough not to go into water any deeper than to her knees, and she was watchful, ready to fly out of the river in case of danger. With the same tin cup she used to drink her coffee, she began emptying water over her head with obvious pleasure. The others followed her example, except for Borobá, who hated getting wet, and the missionary, who stood with his back to the river, concentrating on preparing a meager meal of beans and tinned sardines.

  Nadia was the first to see the hippopotamuses. In the shadows of dusk, they blended into the dark water, so the group became aware of their presence only when they were very near. There were two adults—smaller than those on Michael Mushaha’s preserve—enjoying the water a few feet away from where they were bathing. The third animal, their offspring, they saw only later, peering from between the monumental rear ends of its parents. Quietly, doing nothing to provoke them, the friends stepped out of the water and returned to camp. The huge animals showed no curiosity at all toward the humans; they continued to bathe calmly for a long while, until it was so dark that they disappeared in the blackness. Their deeply creased skin was thick and gray like that of the elephants. Their ears were small and round, and their mahogany eyes very bright. Two pouches swung from their upper jaws, cushioning the enormous, square canines that were capable of biting through an iron pipe.

  “They take a mate, and they are more faithful than most humans,” explained Brother Fernando. “They have one calf at a time and look after it for years.”

  After the sun went down, night had fallen very quickly and the group was surrounded by the impenetrable darkness of the forest. Only in the small clearing on the shore where they had crash-landed could the moon be seen in the sky. The solitude was absolute. They set up a schedule to sleep in shifts while one of them stood guard and fed the fire. Nadia, who had been excused from responsibility because of her age, insisted on sitting up with Alexander during his turn. Many of the animals that came during the night to drink at the river were confused by the smoke, the fire, and the scent of human beings. The most timid retreated, frightened, but others sniffed the air, hesitated, and finally, prodded by thirst, approached. The instructions of Brother Fernando, who had studied the flora and fauna of Africa for thirty years, were not to disturb them. Usually they did not attack humans, he said, unless they were hungry or provoked.

  “That’s in theory. In practice they’re unpredictable and might attack at any moment,” Angie refuted.

  “The fire will keep them some distance away. I think we’re safe here on the shore. It will be more dangerous in the forest,” said Brother Fernando.

  Angie cut him off. “Yes, but we don’t plan to go into the forest.”

  “Are you thinking of staying here forever?” the missionary asked.

  “We can’t get out of here by land. The only possibility is the river.”

  “Swimming?” Brother Fernando persisted.

  “We could build a raft,” Alexander suggested.

  “You’ve read too many adventure novels, young man,” the missionary replied.

  “We’ll decide that tomorrow; right now, let’s rest,” Kate ordered.

  Alexander and Nadia’s shift began at three in the morning. With Borobá they would watch the sun come up. Sitting back to back, weapons on their knees, they talked in whispers. They always stayed in contact when they were separated, but even so they had a thousand things to tell each other when they met. Their friendship was profound, and they were sure that it would last throughout their lifetimes. True friendship, they believed, survives the passing of time, is selfless and generous, and asks nothing in return except loyalty. They had never actually discussed it, but both protected their affection from the curiosity of others. They loved each other without making a great show of it, discreetly and quietly. They shared dreams, thoughts, emotions, and secrets by e-mail. They knew each other so well that sometimes words weren’t necessary to express what they were thinking.

  More than once Alexander’s mother had asked him if Nadia was “his girl,” and he always denied it more emphatically than was necessary. She wasn’t “his girl” in the common sense of the term. The mere question offended him. His relationship with Nadia could not be compared to the fits of love that struck his friends or to his own fantasies about Cecilia Burns, the girl he had thought he would marry ever since he started school. The feelings between Nadia and him were unique, untouchable, precious. He realized that such an intense and pure relationship was not common among teens, and that is why he didn’t talk about her. No one would understand.

  An hour later the stars began to disappear, one by one, and day began to dawn: first a soft glow in the sky that soon became a spectacular blaze flooding the landscape with orange reflections. A variety of birds filled the sky, and a concert of birdsong waked the rest of the party. They immediately sprang into action, some stirring the fire and preparing something to eat, others helping Angie remove the propeller with the hope that it could be repaired.

  They had to pick up sticks to stave off the monkeys that descended on the small camp to steal food. The battle left them exhausted. The monkeys withdrew some distance down the beach and watched from there, awaiting a moment’s inattention to attack again.

  The heat and humidity were crushing: Everyone’s clothing stuck to their bodies, their hair was wet, their skin burning. The forest exuded a strong odor of decomposing organic matter that blended with the stench of the excrement they had used for their fire. They were besieged with thirst, but they had to conserve the last reserves of bottled water they had in the plane. Brother Fernando suggested using water from the river, but Kate said that it would give them typhus or cholera.

  “We can boil it, but with this heat there’s no way to cool it down; we’d have to drink it hot,” Angie added.

  “Then let’s have tea,” Kate concluded.

  The missionary used the jug hanging from his pack to bring water from the river and also to boil it. The water was the color of iron oxide, metallic in taste, and had a strange sweetish, almost nauseating smell.

  Borobá was the only one of them to venture into the forest; everyone else was afraid of getting lost in the thick undergrowth. Nadia noticed that he kept darting back and forth, with a look that at first seemed to be of curiosity but soon resembled desperation. She called Alexander, and they went after the monkey.

  “Don’t go far, children,” Kate warned.

  “We’ll be right back,” her grandson replied.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Borobá led them through the trees. As he jumped lightly from branch to branch, Nadia and Alexander fought their way forward, beating a path through thick ferns and praying they wouldn’t step on a snake or come face-to-face with a leopard.

  Alexander and Nadia plunged through the vegetation, never losing sight of Borobá. It seemed to them that they were following a faint path through the forest, maybe a very old trail that had filled in with plants but was still used by animals going to the river to drink. The pair was covered with bugs from head to foot; faced with the impossibility of getting rid of the pests, they had no choice but to resign themselves to them. They tried not to think of the number of illnesses transmitted by insects, from malaria to the lethal sleep induced by the tsetse fly, whose victims sank into a deep lethargy in which they languished until they died, trapped in the labyrinth of their nightmares. In places, they had to sweep aside enormous spiderwebs before they could continue, and from time to time they sank up to their calves in gluey mud.

  Suddenly through the unrelenting sounds of the forest they could hear something similar to a human lament, shocking enough to make them stop and listen. Borobá began jumping up and down nervously, indicating t
hat they needed to keep going. Some yards farther on, they saw what was disturbing him. Alexander, who was in the lead, came within a few feet of falling into a pit yawning at his feet, a kind of deep trench. The cry was originating from a dark form that at first sight they took to be a large dog.

  “What is it?” murmured Alexander, stepping back and not daring to raise his voice.

  Borobá’s screeches grew louder; the creature in the hole moved, and then they could see it was some kind of simian. It was tangled in a net that had completely immobilized it. The animal looked up and when it saw them began to roar and bare its teeth.

  “It’s a gorilla,” said Nadia. “It can’t get out.”

  “It looks like it’s in a trap.”

  “We have to get it out,” Nadia said.

  “How? It might bite us. . . .”

  Nadia leaned down toward the trapped animal and began to talk to it as she did with Borobá.

  “What is it saying?” Alexander asked her.

  “I don’t know whether it understands me. Not all apes speak the same language, Jaguar. On the safari I could communicate with the chimpanzees, but not the mandrills.”

  “Those mandrills were scoundrels, Eagle. They wouldn’t have listened to you even if they did understand you.”

  “I don’t know the language of these gorillas, but I suppose it must be something like that of other apes.”

  “Tell it to stay quiet, and we’ll see if we can free it from the net.”

  Little by little, Nadia’s voice calmed the imprisoned animal, but when they tried to come closer, it bared its teeth again and growled.

  “It has a baby!” Alexander cried.

  The gorilla’s offspring was tiny—it couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old—and it was clinging desperately to its mother’s shaggy coat.