Endangered (20 page)

Despite his drunk sleepiness, or maybe because of it, Otto couldn't resist. He started untying my shoelace.

Bouain watched disinterestedly, like a king with failing jesters. Once Otto had my laces undone, he looked at them, then at Bouain, then at me. I willed him to begin tying. Instead, he closed his eyes to take a nap.
Oh no, you're not, Otto.
I pinched him again, and his eyes flashed open, staring at me in outrage.

Then, with furious exactness, he started tying. The last time he'd started this I'd eventually stopped him, but now I didn't. He made a simple cross knot in the lace, again and again, until it became a big mass of chaos that I'd never be able to undo. Bouain sat up excitedly and scrutinized the bramble of shoelace. “But how …”

“I have magic,” I said quickly, “and this is my familiar. I can control him.” With that, I clapped once and raised my arms in a big
V
, our sign for
come and hug
. Popped out of his stupor by relief that his mother was no longer an evil pinching stranger, Otto leaped and put his arms around my neck, pulling close and staring intensely back at Bouain.

“You tricked me! The French, the magic … you are a
touri
!” he said.

Now that he had used that word, I got nervous. A
touri
was a
mundele
with sinister, supernatural ends. A sort of foreigner witch. In the small, isolated villages, even local people suspected of sorcery were ostracized or killed — the punishment was even worse for a
touri
. But I was a witch who had power over a bonobo Bouain
liked, a bonobo that he felt linked back to his home, so I hoped I might be safe.

“Can you cure me of a disease?” he asked, his hands to the drawstring of his pants.

“No,” I said. “My magic supplies are back home. All I have is my spirit connection to this bonobo. I stole two of his fingers, but have promised to give them back once we are in the next world. In return, he is my servant in this one.”

“I have seen that fingers are missing.” Bouain sighed. “I hoped you could heal me.” He looked crestfallen. Whatever disease he had was big on his mind.

“But if you remain in his good favor, he will bless you. Otto can cure you that way.”

“Otto?”

“His spirit name. It means
Demon Vengeance
in a European language.”

“I knew you were different. Your French. Your hair. Your skin. You will give me some of this magic.”

I thought quickly. “I told you, I do not have my instruments with me. My demon spirit called me and compelled me to fly to him.”

Otto looked at Bouain and then at me. His expression was a mix of
What do you think you're doing?
and
It's time for me to eat a peanut.

“Why do you not fly away with him right now?” Bouain asked, his eyes narrowing.

“He wanted to meet the immortal hunter who calls himself Bouain. Now he has. If you will help him get free, he will make you immune to bullets.”

“I am already immune to bullets,” Bouain said thoughtfully. I wondered how to respond. Bouain continued before I came up with anything. “But another shield would not harm me, and is helpful if the other one stops working.”

“He has met you now, and is satisfied. But he does not like to be trapped in one place. If he decides to give you this magic, it will be on the condition that you let us go free.”

Bouain tapped his nose. “I would like this magic. But I cannot release you or the bonobo. You are a gift from my men, and they will not be happy to see you set free.”

I tugged at Otto's ear and he, in response to the improvised game, swung his hand in the air, making a random
Z
. Bouain froze.

“If he gives you a gift and escapes, your men will see that you didn't release him. You will have been honored, and that will satisfy them.”

Bouain continued to tap his nose as he considered my plan.

“Let him give you some of his strength,” I pressed. I tugged at Otto's nipples, and he gave a complex confused grunt.
Good boy.
“The transfer will only take a minute.”

Bouain shifted off his chair and sat on the floor across from us. He closed his eyes and nodded.

Once Bouain's eyes were shut, I tickled Otto's armpits so he'd continue his grunting throughout the spell. Once the minute was up, I told Bouain he could open his eyes.

“Do you feel different?” I asked.

He nodded blearily. He'd fallen a little asleep. I felt a crazy urge to take this murderer's shoes off and put him to bed. This all would have gone much differently, I realized, if Bouain hadn't been drunk.

He lay down on the ground, a hand outstretched to Otto. My bonobo, of course, was having none of it. He looked at the hand, then up at me.
That's not a peanut.

Bouain said sleepily, “I must not release you, you see.” His eyelids slid closed and stayed that way.

The padlock that hung on the back door was open, barely balancing on its hook. Whether he'd intentionally left us an escape route or simply fallen asleep without remembering to lock the
touri
and her bonobo in, I didn't know. But there it was: an open door.

I opened the door just wide enough to slip outside, and shut it silently. I couldn't see anything in the still night, so I waited, hoping my eyes would adjust and that it wasn't actually pitch-black out. As I hung there, I listened to Otto's hungry groans at my back. Eventually the black became charcoal, and I decided it was worth the risk to start moving. I could orient myself only by the surfaces moonlight frosted: the rim of an old bicycle tire, a crumpled water bottle, the aluminum arc of a grenade handle.

I needed to get to the southern edge of the city, where I could locate the river and trace along it until I reached the village of Ikwa. What I feared most was a man's yell, and what I feared second most was barking. All it would take was one dog to alert everyone to the girl out on her own in the middle of the night. But the street remained quiet as I crept forward. It seemed the dogs of Mbandaka had all been eaten.

The time I'd spent on the roof of the post office had given me a pretty good sense of the city's layout, so I kept along the roads I suspected would be easiest. Occasionally I'd step on something that clattered, and once I stumbled into a crate that crashed into the night. I'd sometimes see red eyes shining at me, soldiers or their victims, too drunk or sad or tired to care about the girl slipping through their city.

I heard running water. On all fours, I passed down a steep, grassy ravine to the river, Otto bumping against my back. Some insects or plants stung my arms, but I couldn't see them and I
couldn't care. Once we were a few inches past the edge, I heard Otto slurp greedily. I wished I still had the iodine so I could drink, too, but of course it had gone when the street soldiers had stolen my bag. I wasn't too thirsty yet, so I decided to hold off.

We trudged away from Mbandaka. It would be foolish to tromp much farther through the river's edge in the dark, with the risk of snakes and crocodiles. Once we were a few hundred feet along, I could no longer detect the silhouettes of any buildings near the water's edge, so I hoped we would be hidden if we lay out until the sun came up. I settled in a few feet onshore, held Otto to my chest, and rocked him through his complaining hunger while we waited for the dawn.

 

I'd thought the lumps along the river that had tripped me were logs, but as the light improved I saw they were bodies. Some had hit the water and sunk up to their throats in mud, and others looked like they were crawling, caught in bizarre motion. Some were men and boys, but most were women and girls, their wraps still in beautiful colors, undone and spread along the ground like butterfly wings.

On the far side I could now see the mine. There was nothing official about it, just a wall of crumbly earth surrounding a pit. No one was standing guard, because there was no fancy machinery to protect. It was no more than a sore in the earth, broad and chaotic, gouged out by human fingernails, ounce to pound to ton.

These corpses couldn't have been more than a day or two old and weren't visibly decomposed, but I still shuddered to think of Otto last night, drinking water steeped in rotting flesh.

We got moving quickly, before the day's soldiers and slaves arrived. With the morning came the flies thickening on the corpses. They gathered on me and probed my bug bites and the muck in my
hair, batted against my face. My stomach was growling now, and I could feel Otto, desperate to eat, grazing his teeth on the back of my neck. I realized he was probably suffering from a hangover to boot. But where would I find us food and safe water? Everything around here had to have been well picked over.

I tried to remember the map of Congo hanging on the wall of the UN station. Ikwa looked so close to Mbandaka, like it almost adjoined. But in such a huge country, a millimeter could mean days of travel.

Thinking of the town made me think, too, of its namesake. I imagined old Ikwa once again sitting on a branch next to me, quietly watching the sun set. Then my imagination provided Mushie, lying next to Anastasia with his arm out, hoping for the smallest touch; Songololo sitting on her mother's belly, dreaming up ways to make trouble. Did they wonder why I had left? Had they figured out that I had something important to do? I wish I could have explained it to them, but explanations were something the bonobos had no way to understand. There was no telling their children they were sick and that was why they didn't want to tickle. There was no saying they had to go up the river to stay alive. There was no saying “Pweto saved our lives, so don't attack him.” There was no saying “I'm only going to be gone for a few weeks, take good care of one another and don't think I'm dead.” There was no saying “I love you.”

That thought, that bonobos saw only behavior and not reasons, had always made me sad. But maybe being able to say “I love you” was just smoke and mirrors compared to having a living being under your fingers. I'd rescued Otto, and hugged him when he needed it and more. That didn't lie. I held myself to the standard of my thoughts and ideals. Otto held me to the standard of my actions. It was something I could learn from, especially in the context of the last few weeks.

Somewhere around midday I was hiking along, singing a lullaby and rubbing Otto's foot, when he unexpectedly tumbled from my back. I saw him squatting on the earth, grimacing apologetically. Beneath him a puddle of loose diarrhea was forming. A lot of it, and very liquid, like someone had poured out a pot of tea. His legs trembled as it continued, then he came back to me and lifted his arms to be picked up, murping. I stroked his head and kissed it, but held him at arm's length as I took some broad leaves and cleaned his bottom as best I could. As soon as I'd finished, more diarrhea came. He frowned, an expression I hadn't seen since our car ride right after I'd picked him up. His little eyes crinkled; he was cramping up.

I thought about the river, those bodies, the water washing over them and then downriver to my Otto, and wished I'd been quick-thinking enough to stop him from drinking. “Otto, honey,” I said, rubbing his clammy hand. “It's just a little longer, okay? We'll probably be there by tomorrow.”

I cleaned him up again and lifted him. He sighed. Usually he clamped on with his hands and went in for a kiss, but this time he kept his arms at his side, holding on to me with only his legs. So I carried him like a human baby, his body heavy in my arms, singing the same lullabies I'd sung to him back when we'd first started knowing each other. Only now he let himself sleep, gurgling away as I tromped along.

I concentrated on moving forward as quickly as I could. The amount of fluid that had come out of his little body … I needed one little pill of Cipro, or a couple of tabs of Imodium. A pharmacy. But there was nothing like that for thousands of miles. All I had was Otto, and all Otto had was me.

I stopped often to check on him, but every time I gently brushed the hair back from his forehead I found him sleeping. I
couldn't tell if it was just the rain forest humidity, but his brow felt hot and moist.

I was getting very thirsty, and couldn't really tell anymore if my own hot forehead was from a rash or dehydration. I had returning visions, annoying in their insistence, of the tall tumbler of club soda I used to enjoy on Friday nights with my parents. Clinking ice.

I had a jangling headache, and each footstep was sending bolts up my skull. When we came across a broad flat stone in the muddy earth, remarkably free of termites and ants, I decided to stop us early for the day. I sat with Otto, laying him flat on the warm stone. He didn't sit up, but lifted his arms in the
come and hug
move. I embraced him hard, and when I let go he slumped back to the stone, murping at me.

We both needed hydration, but I couldn't stomach taking in river water, not after what the last gulpful had done to Otto. Most of the fruits the bonobos ate, though, contained water. If I could find some of those and get him to eat …

Promising Otto that I wouldn't leave his sight, I explored the wooded area to see what I could find. There were none of the usual shoots, nor could I find any figgy fruits. I went back to check on Otto and found his face in a grimace, body sweaty and twitching.

I gave him a kiss and started exploring in the other direction. There wasn't anything much to eat there, either, but on the way back to Otto I came across a short tree with glossy leaves. Guava. I combed through the branches, hoping to find something to nourish us, but my heart sank; it was the wrong season and the tree wasn't in fruit. But the leaves … I remembered Mama Marie-France chewing on her guava leaves for diarrhea. They might help Otto, and might even give us some sustenance in the process. If nothing else, we'd get some tiny amount of water out of them. I
ripped down a few branches, feeling very bonobo as I did, and headed back to Otto.

I pulled him into my lap and tried to get him to eat. Nothing doing; he kept dozing off. Running the leaf under his nose, flying it in like an airplane — nothing worked. He kept making his kissy face, which I knew by now meant he might want me to spit water into his mouth. I would have, gladly, but I had none to give.

Otto watched disinterestedly as I selected three particularly luscious leaves from a branch, delicately placed them into my mouth, and started chewing. It was hard going, as the saliva refused to come; it felt like my molars were crushing paint chips. Finally, though, I got the leaves into a semimoist mush. I leaned forward, blew on his lips so he'd part them, and let the wad drop into Otto's mouth. His eyes widened, like I'd committed some minor betrayal, and he pushed the bundle out of his mouth with his tongue. I shook my head, put the wad back in my mouth, chewed it a little more, and let it drop in again.

By now Otto seemed to have come around to the idea. He absently chewed and swallowed while he looked at me. Once the wad was gone, I put a fresh leaf in his mouth and he casually chomped it, looking here, there, and everywhere, as if I couldn't have asked him to do anything more boring. But he swallowed it. I put in another.

That was how sunset found us: huddled together with our bottoms on the sun-soaked stone for warmth, eating guava leaves one by one, otherwise motionless, Otto's frail little shoulders pressed into my belly.

Before we tried to sleep, I took off my T-shirt and tented it on four sticks in the hopes that I'd be able to collect dew come morning. At one point during the long night, Otto rolled away from me and returned a minute later. I wondered what he'd gone off to do, but come morning I found no remnants of anything alarming;
he must have peed. I unhitched my T-shirt and wrung the dew that had soaked it into Otto's mouth. I saved one of the sleeves for myself; the few drops of water disappeared onto my parched tongue like they'd never been.

After a reluctant breakfast of a few guava leaves, we continued our journey. As we walked, my body started to rebel against me. My stomach cramped despite the guava, and I wondered whether it was a matter of time before Otto's fate would be my own. The sun beat down, and I could feel my skin heating and cracking. Otto grew heavy and quiet on my back. I had to force myself to go on.

Step by step. There was no other way to do it.

Even so, I wasn't sure I could. It was a small relief that I eventually stopped feeling my skin and stomach and head, could sense nothing more than the distant pressure of the ground against my feet. I couldn't walk anymore; I could only lumber.

It was amazing how close we'd been to Ikwa that terrible night. Just an hour after we started out I came across the first village houses. I collapsed out of view at the tree line while a mother walked by. She had a bundle of logs on her head and was holding the hand of a crying child, another baby strapped to her back. Three young boys in ratty shirts walked by. One had been stricken by polio, keeping up with his friends by agilely dragging forward with his hands while his ruined legs trailed behind. An old woman followed them, hauling a jug.

We needed that water.

These people were poor, with barely any clothes on their backs, but they were living everyday lives. I had hopes that Ikwa was safe.

I wanted to close my eyes and let myself sleep. But instead I mustered up the courage to leave my hiding spot. As I stepped out of my crouch, my stomach lurched and sensation ripped back through my body, the sudden pain doubling me over. Only by
digging my fingernails into my arms could I make the other agonies relent. I trusted to sisterhood first and approached the mother with her crying child. By then she was washing clothes by a stream bank, and she stiffened as I softly called. She stood up, but didn't raise any alarm. I tried to speak to her in French, Lingala, and then English, but she knew none of them. She stared at my agonized smile, and her little daughter stopped crying when she saw Otto, her eyes widening in fascination. The woman left her washing and got up from the bank, gesturing for me to follow.

She brought me to one of the three young boys I'd seen earlier, the one who'd had polio. Struggling to form words, I asked him if he spoke Lingala, and he responded “no” in French. So, in French, I asked him if he could tell me where a great ape release site was nearby. Propped up on his arms and staring up at me, his hands heeled in plastic shoes, he shook his head. But I didn't think he'd understood what I meant. Maybe it was my fault; maybe I was too delirious to make real sentences. I tried again more slowly, and still no luck.

The woman touched my arm and made a spade with her fingers, tapping them on her lips. I nodded. Yes, I was hungry.

We were given cold water to drink that the boy explained in pidgin French was fresh and safe. Squatting beside a blackened tin pot outside the woman's hut, I ate burned rice, crispy and gooey. And bananas. I was blissful and queasy at the same time — I could only just force the food down, even though I was desperately hungry. Otto didn't eat more than a piece of banana, but he did gulp down a ton of water. After we ate, he even allowed the little girl to take him into her lap. Through my haze of discomfort, I pantomimed some of the games he liked to play, and even though Otto was sluggish, they were soon having a companionable time.