The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (6 page)

I tried anyway (now I was this far, I could hardly bear to look down, much less climb down), but the slippery, slimy branch was my undoing. As soon as I put all my weight on it, I immediately lost purchase and crashed down, screaming loudly and frantically, terrified and sure I was about to die.

But the undergrowth was kind to me. While buffeting me and winding me, the tangle of massed foliage and latticework of stems, stalks and branches also broke my fall. And as I lay there getting my breath back, feeling tears of self-pity spring to my eyes, I realised I was looking straight at something I’d never seen before. It was a tunnel – the entrance to which was just about big enough to crawl through, and which disappeared into blackness around a bend.

I looked more closely. It seemed to be fashioned out of the same tangle of tree roots and undergrowth that had just been obliging enough to break my fall. It looked like it had been hollowed out some time ago as well, as its inner edges – the same latticework of branches and roots, mainly – were quite smooth of snags and spikes.

I pulled myself up and crawled across to it. It was a bit of a tight fit, but I could just about wriggle into it and venture in. I still remember that I didn’t feel too frightened. Sufficient light filtered through so that, although gloomy, it wasn’t pitch-black, and as I crawled along it opened out – it was a whole network of tunnels! – with branches heading off in several directions.

I began to wonder what kind of animal would have made such a tunnel, but curiosity triumphed over anxiety and I decided to crawl a little bit further. It was then, rounding a bend, that I made my next big discovery. There was a monkey up ahead of me – one of my monkeys – and it was scampering towards me with a nut in its hand. No sooner did it see me than it veered off down a side tunnel, with another monkey (they were both young and playing chase, it was obvious) scrambling along and screeching playfully in hot pursuit.

Seeing this made everything fall into place. They had created this network of tunnels on the floor of their territory to enable them to get around on the ground just as easily as they traversed the tops of the trees. And I realised that I would also be able to use it to get about the jungle floor speedily and safely. My disappointment about my lack of climbing skills now all but forgotten, I crawled after the monkeys and finally emerged in a small, familiar clearing, feeling as uplifted as at any point since I’d been abandoned in the jungle. Making this new discovery felt – and I remember the feeling to this day – almost as if Christmas had arrived. It really was as thrilling to me as that. A mark, perhaps, of just how feral I’d become.

I was certainly beginning to feel I’d learned all the skills I would need to keep me safe in this wild and remote place. But it was an assumption that turned out to be very wrong.

I was going to die soon, I was sure of it.

I had no idea why, only that the sense that I was dying was one that was diffusing through the whole of my body, causing me to clutch my stomach and whimper in pain.

I tried to think back, through the fog of pain, to what I’d eaten that might have done this thing to me.

Tamarind! It suddenly came to me. The day before, I’d eaten tamarind. It was one of my favourite things to feed on. Similar in shape to the bean pods that used to grow on our allotment, the tamarind pod was dark brown and furry, and, when spilt open, the insides were sweet and sticky, with the texture of figs.

But even as I’d tasted it, I’d known it wasn’t like the usual tamarind. This variety – doubtless one of many others to be found – had lots of small fruits inside, similar in size to peas, and, if anything, tasted even sweeter, like dates.

I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sit. Trying to work my muscles defeated me. But through my dizziness I felt a grim certainty form inside me. I had eaten delicious tamarind’s deadly twin. If there was one thing I’d learned from my time with the monkeys, I thought wretchedly, it was that things can look almost identical in every detail, but just a couple of tiny differences could have a seriously large impact – the difference, perhaps, between life and death.

But as I writhed, I saw that sympathy, if nothing else, might be at hand. Though my vision swam, I could just about see Grandpa monkey. I’d called him that simply because that’s what he looked like. He was older than the others, moved differently from the young ones and had the same sprinklings of white fur that triggered a clear if distant memory of the few old people I’d encountered in my former life. I recalled one clearly – not someone related, so perhaps a neighbour or friend. A white-haired woman who had no front teeth. Grandpa monkey had lots of teeth, but he was similarly white-haired in places and grey in others, especially on his face. He also walked slowly, just as the old woman in my mind’s eye had done, and had an old injury to his arm or shoulder, I thought, because he didn’t range around the treetops like the others.

Grandpa monkey had kept a very close eye on me from a very early stage. But I didn’t think it was because he was concerned about my welfare. There had never been any warmth in the way he behaved when he was around me, so I decided it must be because he was very protective of his family. Perhaps he hadn’t quite decided if he liked me or not.

I watched him jump down from the tree he most liked to sit in and then approach me. What was he about to do? I had no idea but couldn’t care less, in any case. I was much too busy crying from the horrible gripping pain.

Grandpa monkey drew level, squeezed my arm firmly, then began shaking me slightly, shoving me, as if determined to herd me somewhere else.

He was purposeful and determined, and I wasn’t about to resist him. Scrabbling to get a purchase, I half-crawled, half-stumbled into the foliage, in the direction his repeated shovings seemed to suggest he wanted me to go.

It was out of the question to disobey, but I was still very fearful as I edged my way deeper into a patch of thorny bushes. And once in them, at least I had the pain of repeated stings and scratches to divert my mind from the pain inside me. Where we were going, however, I didn’t have a clue.

It was mere seconds before I found out. One minute I’d been scrabbling through a tangle of branches, now I was falling – tumbling over and over down a mossy, rocky bank, which was running with cool water and which eventually deposited me into a little basin below.

I looked around, panting as I tried to catch my breath. The basin was around eight feet wide, surrounded by rock and earth and tree roots, and looked almost like an open-topped cave.

A tight collection of black rocks had created a lip to one side, over which a steady stream of water formed a waterfall. The water I had landed in wasn’t deep, not enough to submerge me, but right away I could see that Grandpa monkey had come too. Was he going to take advantage of my weakened state and try to drown me?

It seemed I had my answer, for almost immediately he began shoving me again, trying to direct me towards the stream of water. I sobbed. All the worst things that could happen to me seemed to be happening all at once. I was terrified and in agony, and I hated the water – it was something I’d been afraid of all my life. Apart from drinking small quantities and being hammered by rainfall, I’d not seen water – water that could drown you – for a long time, and I hated to see it again now.

But Grandpa monkey was relentless and, though we were of similar size, he was also very strong. He seemed intent on putting my head under, keeping a tight grip on my hair. Was he trying to drown me? Or was he trying to make me drink the water? Or maybe he knew I was going to die anyway and was just trying to help me on my way.

Whatever his intentions, I struggled, heaving myself away from him and slapping the surface of the pool, splashing him, and as I did so he yanked my face up and looked me straight in the eyes.

As I looked back at him, I could see something I hadn’t before. His expression was completely calm. It wasn’t angry, or agitated, or hostile. Perhaps I’d been wrong, I thought, as I coughed and spluttered and tried to catch my breath again. Perhaps he was trying to tell me something.

I didn’t know what it was, but in that instant I trusted him. The look in his eyes and the calmness in his movements made me realise he was trying to help me. Accordingly, this time I did as he seemed to want. I went under and drank in great mouthfuls of muddy water, swallowing as much as I could and feeling it force its way up my nose.

At this point, Grandpa monkey let go of me. I wasted no time in scrambling out and up onto the rocky bank, where, completely spent, I just collapsed on the ground, face down.

I began coughing again and soon the coughing turned to vomiting – first the water and then behind it great heaving gouts of acid liquid that burned my throat and washed painfully over the skin of my scratched limbs.

But Grandpa monkey wasn’t done yet. No sooner had I stopped vomiting than he began chivvying me all over again to get back into the pool, this time to the other edge where the water was much shallower and where a second smaller waterfall dripped steadily.

I needed no urging. I drank from the waterfall thirstily and was happy to remain there, even as leeches clamoured to attach themselves to my legs, just to feel the flowing water cooling me and healing me, and the tortuous spasms inside me subside.

I have no idea how long I sat there, semi-conscious, trance-like, but at some point I felt restored enough to clamber back up again. Grandpa monkey had been sitting at the pool’s edge, immobile all this time, just watching and waiting. As I moved, so did he, rising up to his feet, then, seemingly satisfied with his efforts, turning and scuttling off ahead of me, back to his tree.

I will never know for sure what it was that had poisoned me, just as I’ll never know how Grandpa monkey knew how to save me. But he did. I am convinced of it.

And the encounter didn’t just teach me yet another survival lesson. It also marked a point when my life with the monkeys changed. Because, from that day on, Grandpa monkey’s attitude towards my continued presence changed completely. Where once he’d been indifferent and then obviously wary, he now felt like both my protector and my friend.

Now he seemed happy both to share food with me and groom me, and would often feast upon the wealth of bugs that lived in my mat of hair. And, bit by bit, my sense of loneliness and abandonment began to fade. Though there would still be nights when I’d be overcome by what I’d lost and weep for hours, these instances of grief were getting fewer. Curled up in my little ball, in my hollowed-out piece of tree trunk, with the comforting, familiar sound of the monkeys up above me, I was gradually turning into one of them.

The incident of my being poisoned and ‘saved’ by Grandpa monkey proved to be a turning point in how the monkeys responded to me. Taking their lead from their elder, more and more of them seemed happier to approach me and groom me. No longer was I just a tolerated outsider; it felt as if I was becoming a real part of the troop, which made the ache lodged in my heart that tiny bit more bearable.

Though I had by now become aware that my new family sometimes changed – some animals disappearing and returning with tiny babies, others disappearing and never being seen again – I began to get to know some of the monkeys quite well. There was Grandpa, of course, who was a constant during my time there. But also energetic Spot, gentle, loving Brownie and timid White-Tip, one of the little ones, who seemed to really love me and who would often jump onto my back, throw her arms around my neck and enjoy being carried wherever I went.

Of course, I hadn’t actually given any of the monkeys names at the time. By now I had no use for human speech at all – only my crude version of monkey language. I don’t think I even thought in human language any more. So I’d no longer consciously ‘think up’ something as abstract as a name. I had simply begun identifying each animal by some distinguishing attribute or physical characteristic. My life had become all about sounds and emotions. And ‘missions’. All of life was now broken into missions. Missions to find food. Missions to find company. Missions to find a safe place to hide if there was danger. I had only two concerns: to satisfy my basic needs and to satisfy my curiosity – the same simple life that the monkeys had.

*

Now I felt more accepted, I became even more determined to learn how to climb to the top of the canopy. I was beginning to hate that I had to spend such long solitary periods on the ground, from where I could hear the joyous whoops and shrieks of the games going on high above me but was not able to get up there and join in. Getting up there, from then on, became my new mission.

I had not stopped practising my climbing since my first failed attempt. It would be so wonderful to be able to escape the dampness of the forest floor and to feel the sun on my back – the whole might of the sun – instead of having to make do with the long shafts that angled down from between the branches, where I could only linger in the patchy spotlights they created. Despite the colours of the jungle, it sometimes seemed to me that I was living in a black and white world. Some parts of the undergrowth, even at the brightest part of the day, were so dark as to seem shrouded in perpetual night, pierced by arrows of light so white and blinding it hurt my eyes.

I was also desperate to have some respite from the heavy, stagnant air and the endless irritation of all the creepy crawlies. I was used to bugs, but never had I seen so many different kinds in one place. The jungle teemed with them: flying things, scuttling things, jumping things and biting things. There were flying beetles that looked like tiny machines – today I’d liken them to helicopters – which had whirring wings that made a special sound as they landed. There were blue bugs and green bugs, bugs that looked like sparkly treasure, and bugs that thrilled me because they would light up at night. There were big black beetles that seemed to have pairs of scissors on their noses, and any number of different squirmy, wormy, wibbly, wobbly grubs. It sometimes felt as if I saw something new every day.