Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (31 page)

At these noises, Titus made no attempt at defense, but whirled and galloped up the mountain, leading his family away. The gorillas bolted after him. The velocity with which they moved was shocking. The researchers stared, then belatedly sprinted after them. The approaching soldiers might not be Kutu, but the women weren't going to wait around to find out.

The men called and crunched forward through the underbrush. Perhaps, considering all the noise they made, they might not hear the gorilla's rushing retreat.

Barreling up the muddy slope, over rocks and logs, yanking her way through the foliage, Max was deeply conscious of the clear target her knapsack made swaying through the bushes. She scrambled fast, kicking the insteps of her feet into the mountain for traction and grabbing at tree branches to pull herself along faster, but her dislocated arm didn't have the strength to help much. She was slower than the others. Her breath rasped, her heart thudded. The apes galloped over the ridge. Even Rafiki lumbered out of sight. Over all of her own noise, Max couldn't tell if the soldiers were still marching or had stopped and were raising their rifles. Thirty feet from the ridge. Her legs felt strangely light, flying effortlessly through the undergrowth. A high-pitched vibration rose in her ears. Time ballooning out. Ten feet to the ridge.

She dove over the edge, threw herself down beside Yoko. Pressing her cheek against the rough hip of a tree, she gasped for air. Below, the soldiers talked and called and marched forward through the bushes. They didn't pause, didn't shoot.

One minute passed, then two. The sounds of the men gradually faded away round the mountain. In the slow silence that followed, she noticed her pants were stained wet and dark down to her knees. For a moment, she stared mystified.

“The gorillas crap when they flee too,” Yoko murmured, so quietly Max could barely hear her. “It must lend some evolutionary benefit.”

For breakfast, she'd eaten handfuls of blackberries, followed by the roughage of all that
Usena
, and then two mangos at lunch to stop her belly from aching. They hadn't packed any toilet paper and, even as she'd eaten the mangos, she'd known she'd pay for this later.

Adrenalin is an effective diarrheic. She lay where she was, flat against the mountain.

“My guess is shit works as a deterrent,” whispered Yoko. “Yuck, says the predator, I don't want to eat
that
one.”

Max stared up at the jungle canopy far above, at the distant leaves twinkling in the wind. Embarrassment seemed an emotion well beyond her at the moment. Her nerves realigned. Her hearing rich with her continuing breath. The air tasted green, moist, and deeply alive. Her pulse beat with a tight
bam-bam
in the tips of her fingers. Her body hummed on, functioning and whole.

She felt lighter. Not only in the obvious physical way, but as though she'd also dropped something less tangible behind. Strangely enough, she felt cleaner. More herself.

After a few minutes they found a stream to wash her pants in. She took them off and scrubbed at the stain with a rock.

Afterward, she sat down in the brook and watched the water pouring over her legs. The river rippled and shifted. She touched the surface with one fingertip, just enough that a shallow dimple was formed in the water, the cohesive bonds ribboning underneath. The water so transparent, it glistened like solid air. It smelled metallic and cold. All her senses heightened.

She wasn't proud of herself, not of how she'd acted in several ways over the last few days.

She took the
féticheuse's
pouch out of her pocket and left it by the side of the brook, soaked and abandoned. She didn't need it anymore. She would manage on her own.

Then she got up, wrapping a sweater around her waist as a sort of skirt. She wrung her wet pants out and tied to the outside of her pack to dry. Without soap, they weren't bacteriologically clean and wouldn't they smell very nice. Still, there was nothing she could do about it. Pausing frequently to listen for patrols, she and Yoko found the trail of the family again and followed it up the mountainside. The gorillas' trail shot straight up, higher and higher, not bothering to forage or stop for a nap.

Climbing, Max's bare legs moved freely, more easily than she could remember. Sounds struck her as sharply as light, the rocks glimmered in the sun.

Glancing up, she spotted the apes, still climbing at what must be twelve thousand feet. The slope around them was only sparsely vegetated. They seemed to be moving slowly, perhaps from the altitude or maybe from hunger. Normally they ate constantly. The last few days they'd hardly had time to forage. Climbing the rocky slope, the researchers moved even slower, their feet bleeding, their walk awkward and limping.

She watched her right hand grab hold of a clump of grass to pull her up. She realized she'd never really looked at her hand before, not hard enough: the blunt nails, the amber skin, a mild keloid scar left from a fall in fifth grade. This so-familiar pocket of muscles, tendons, and bone.

Her lungs moved, her legs climbed. She blinked around at the world. She felt a part of the gorillas and Yoko, this red soil and equatorial sun.

Uncle was leading the family. The researchers followed. The brush at this altitude was sparse enough they could keep the family in sight even from several hundred feet. Occasionally, the gorillas glanced back at the humans, at first startled, then resigned. They climbed on. The air got colder. At this altitude, Max began to find it difficult to breathe, sucking air in through her teeth. The gorillas had their heads tucked down into their effort. She concentrated on each step. That twig, this step, that hand. This moment here.

There was less and less mountain for them to climb up. No trees lived this high up except for occasional samples of heather and even these were stunted. They now clambered up among
Lobelia
, flowered spiny stalks rising six feet high, oversized so they wouldn't freeze solid at night. A few cabbage-like groundsels in a barren world of lichen and moss. Bare scree clattered away under their feet. Nowhere was there any foliage big enough to hide behind. Just boulders, patches of snow, and these Martian-looking flowering stalks.

Some type of scarlet bird alighted on a
Lobelia
and pecked at its seeds, glancing nervously around. The gorillas seemed just as jumpy, ripping stalks down with watery cracking sounds, eating only half of each and then moving on. Titus and Uncle wouldn't let anyone stop for long. Uncle was still tugging on his chin, then wiping his hair away on the ground. The two silverbacks kept glancing back down the mountain, searching for soldiers, then they'd turn back and grunt ferociously at dawdlers. Baring their teeth and thumping the ground, they herded the others up and up until there was nowhere left to climb.

The family stood on the peak, milling around and confused. The point farthest on all sides from civilization.

The air was cold up here, a brisk wind whining in from the south, the snow carved by the wind. Yoko and Max stayed a hundred feet down from the peak, kept their movements quiet, heads lowered. The animals didn't look at the women much, seemed dazed with exhaustion.

As the sun sank behind the mountain, the family settled down to sleep on the bare ground. There were no branches to make nests from. Shivering, Max pulled on her pants and bundled up in the blankets with Yoko. She didn't know how Asante and Rafiki would survive the night on the windswept peak without anything to keep them off the frozen rocks and snow.

Below her, stretched the vast landscape of jungle and, beyond that she could see a patchwork of many farms, diminutive and neat. From this altitude, the distance didn't seem all that great, almost as though, if she took a giant running jump off this mountain, she could reach the nearest homes, perhaps find safety.

The sunset cycled the sky through every possible hue and shade as the shadow of the mountains stretched out further and further over the land below. Max stared at it, unblinking.

Then the sun disappeared, darkening the world. On the peak, one of the gorillas groaned. A sad elongated note of cold and worry. Max looked up at them. Unable to discern individuals, she could see just the lumpy silhouette of the family huddled together for warmth.

A different gorilla answered, a lower mewl extended for a long moment in the growing dark.

A smaller voice—probably Asante—hummed back, and then another called, and another.

Together, they sang, their voices rising, long moans, eerie whines, rumbling calls, discordant and low, chaotic and communal, crying out into the night.

Max watched the silhouette, transfixed by this alien chorus.

Long after the night had descended, long after the gorillas had fallen silent, perhaps sleeping, perhaps not, she stared around at this world, the stars brilliant and twinkling in the thin air, the moon rising bright as a bone, lighting this landscape so it gleamed.

T
en days after the first lion's death, Sarah had stepped into Jeremy's tent after the camp had retired for the night. He had been sweating and tossing with the malaria that came and went no matter what medicine Alan gave him. For days at a time he would be fine and then, as the sun set, shivers would begin to roil up from deep in his gut and he would shut himself in his tent so the workers would not see him weakened and trembling.

That night, the slither of the goatskin off her body had reached him through his delirium, making him open his eyes and sit up in bed. In the darkness in front of him, stood the silhouette of a naked African body.

The day before he had bid goodbye to Otombe. Beside them the train had idled, waiting for Jeremy, ready to cross the newly built bridge to the far side of the river. Since the night of the first lion's death, the second lion had not been spotted, had not killed again. In the windows of the train were the faces of several hundred workers. He had not meant for his good-bye to be this public, had been searching for Otombe all day, but only now, as the train was about to leave had the hunter appeared, stepping out of the nyika. Jeremy watched him stride closer. Feeling his own face tighten with emotion, he directed his eyes at Otombe's feet as the man stopped three feet away. By staring only at those dark toes spread wide in the red dust, he was able to contain his own expression, but he had no idea what Otombe's face showed.

Speaking, the man's voice sounded relatively normal, neither rushed nor choked up. “I thank you for helping me rid the area of the lions. You have saved many of my people.” His words were measured and clear, as befitted an important occasion, the kind of words Jeremy so wished he could issue from his own throat right now. Instead there was only this heat tightening in his neck, his ribs working to pull air in. He remembered Patsy's open mouth struggling to breathe.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeremy glimpsed Alan stepping into the doorway of the train, lighting his pipe, and watching this scene with straightforward curiosity.

“I thank you also for saving my life and treating me fairly,” said Otombe. Beneath these words, there was more feeling. Perhaps he was warming up to something, something demonstrative. Jeremy had seen African men holding hands in public without embarrassment, as well as standing with their arms draped over another's shoulders. In a moment Otombe might step close, pull him into a tight hug or—like the French—a kiss on each cheek.

And then he would step back. Let go. Jeremy's chest or cheek beginning to cool where the warmth of Otombe had been pressed just a moment before.

The rest of Jeremy's life stretching out in front of him.

So Jeremy jerked back harshly, from this moment, from whatever other words Otombe might say, from whatever gesture he might make, from all these men staring. He chopped one hand up in farewell and stalked away, shoving past Alan onto the train and locking himself into his own compartment.

He had no idea how Otombe reacted; with what expression he watched Jeremy's stiff-backed retreat.

In the day since, Jeremy's furious loneliness and self-reproach were close to a physical assault. All he had left were his memories and the scrap of Otombe's robe, the lump of it becoming so much a part of his mouth that he knew not how to live without it, the way it filled his cheek with its load of wet sorrow. However, he knew already its taste had faded and changed, begun to be sucked away and infiltrated by the flavor of his own flesh. He had to work increasingly hard to remember how it had been, reconstructing its tang of sweat and dust. He knew his memories would fade in the same way, becoming bland and overexposed. With every hour that passed, the paucity of his life stretched out in front of him.

And now standing in the darkness of his tent was this naked African body.

Blinking, he decided it must be Otombe who, confused by their farewell, had paced across the bridge to visit him in the railroad's new campsite on the far side of the river. The bravery of Otombe had always been greater.

Awkwardly pushing himself to his feet, his head pulsing with fever, Jeremy felt desperate with the need to take back his graceless good-bye, to make his feelings clear. The criminal bravery of the condemned. Here in his tent there could be no further reason to prevaricate. No one was watching. Otombe must already understand him for what he was and, obviously, this was Jeremy's last chance with him. If, God forbid, any complaint surfaced about what might happen here, few would take the tribesman's word over his own. Stepping forward, he laid one hand on the person's shoulder. The African made no movement away. Lowering his nose to the neck, Jeremy inhaled sweat, wood smoke, and red dust, closed his eyes to savor it. Since the malaria had started, his sense of smell worked so well, better than his vision, which sometimes fuzzed and flickered. Even from this small motion of his head, his skull felt as though the river were sloshing around inside, making every thought bob about, confused. Scared he would faint before he could demonstrate his intentions, uncertain of how to do this, he ran his hand hurriedly down the ribs to the hip.

Still the person did not move away, but only swiveled to offer the rump.

Jeremy gave up trying to dissuade himself. He grabbed her and pulled her to him. In the drunken moments that followed, in the midst of his unpracticed rubbing and grinding, he found her quite sufficient. The dark flanks, the narrow hips and spine.

By the time in his delirium he began to comprehend his mistake, he was far beyond the point of stopping.

Afterward, his reaction was gratitude.

So intense.

He pressed upon her all the money he had in the tent. Her eyes opened wide at the bills he shoved into her hands. Quickly she tucked the money into her robe and swung out the tent flaps, disappearing without a word.

An unspoken understanding was reached. Sarah visited his tent every few nights. After a little experimentation and a few humiliating failures, he found the best formula. It was easier when the malaria was upon him. Then, by simply closing his eyes he could find himself back in the river, everything so clear. It was more vivid than the rest of his life: cool water to his waist, Otombe staring at him, those dark eyes. He sucked on the piece of leather in his mouth. He breathed in her smell.

But whether the malaria was present or not, in the darkness he always approached her from the back, touched only that side of her body, far from the breasts, pretending. She inserted his manhood with as little fanfare as one might slide an envelope into a mailbox. He used her shoulders to guide her motion, while he buried his face in the tuft of wooly hair at the back of her skull. He never had to learn what expression her face wore, whether desire or disgust or simple endurance.

When she visited, before he touched her, he always tied the tent flaps open with trembling hands, so only the mosquito netting and several miles of recently laid railroad tracks remained between him and the distant water. Since the malaria, his powers of imagination had increased, could recreate whole scenes. Every day the coolies laid more of the tracks, moving the camp further on, yet he found in the tent at night he could still smell the river's water, hear its low gurgle. He could watch Otombe wading toward him, the waves rippling round his hips, the askaris mysteriously gone, the lions not around. Otombe placed his hand softly on Jeremy's chest, leaning closer. All his life, Jeremy had trained himself to be satisfied with so much less than this.

The joy each time took his breath away.

But then afterward, afterward . . .

He would open his eyes to see this stranger panting on her knees in front of him, head down, waiting for him to pull out so she could collect her money.

In this intimate moment, he felt more alone than ever.

Unable to speak for the tightness of his throat, he would remove himself quickly. She would get to her feet, pick up the purse he left for her on the desk, and leave. At no point during this interaction did either of them say a word. There was no point. They did not share the same language.

He would wash off, sometimes two or three times, swearing to himself never to do this again.

He would have assumed that this regular physical relieving of the tension within him would make him more relaxed and easygoing, but instead, especially the day after a visit from her, he found a restless irritability near the surface, this emotion that could erupt with no notice into rage. One afternoon when his men were working with a sluggishness that seemed egregious, the feeling bubbled up inside of him and he lost control, screaming at them that they were embarrassments to humanity, abominations, that their families would feel disgust at how they shirked their work. His face got hot, his lips wet, his voice shrieking.

Of course afterward he deeply regretted this scene, his statements. He stayed up late drafting a short speech of apology, but the next morning at the worksite, while he unfolded his speech, preparing to deliver it, Ungan Singh pointed out how quickly the coolies were laboring. In his voice was approval. In a single day they had laid three-quarters of a mile of track, nearly double their normal achievement.

Surprised by this, Jeremy looked back over the distance they had traveled since yesterday. He knew that this much farther from the river, there would be fewer mosquitoes.

The next day, in the daily post that arrived with their supplies, came a note of congratulations from the head engineer in Mombasa, Preston. Since the lion had been shot, Preston had been writing him upon occasion, consulting on details, asking his opinion.

And so he forced himself to remonstrate the coolies at times, especially on the days after Sarah visited. He was motivating them to labor away from the malarial river, working to safeguard their lives. Each time he doubted his actions, he considered that brutal scene of the coolies stabbing the lion's body. They had different mores than he did. Who could tell if his yelling bothered them? The critical point was this was the best way to save their lives.

And bellowing at them had the additional benefit of releasing the emotion knotted inside of him so he could sleep at night.

With each day, lashing out at the men became a little less forced. Wishing not to yell at them any longer than necessary, he learned which threats were most effective at motivating them. No lunch being served until enough work was completed certainly got the men moving (especially once there were a few days where no lunch was served at all), and soon they seemed almost to expect him to castigate them while they began laying railroad tracks in record time. At that point, trading in on the new esteem Preston held for him, he had a second doctor brought in to help care for the infirm. This decreased the mortality rate somewhat. With the coolies' new speed, he was also able to arrange to have them paid more. He was figuring out how to subsist in this land, working out an effective if unpleasant mode of behavior, trying his best to be responsible.

At the worksite, the sense of isolation was not that much worse than before. It was something he knew how to endure.

Tonight, he remembered seeing Otombe walking out of the river, his skin gleaming. Pumping quickly now, Jeremy ran his hand along the spine of the person bowed in front of him, feeling the bones and sinewy muscles. He could do this because the malaria sometimes still returned, the evenings flickering and fevered. He could do this because he did not feel he had a choice; there was his physical need and this interaction was the closest he could get to Otombe now. He could not give it up
.

During the daylight hours, it was hard to believe in these surreal visits, that he had performed such an act with a woman, that he had paid for her services. So many of his life's wishes and desires had resided solely in his head that this dreamlike quality felt right to him.

Thus, perhaps it was not surprising, that a number of visits had occurred before he first considered the possibility her womb might quicken.

In the beginning the idea had a certain ludicrous quality to it, but as the weeks passed and her visits continued he was forced to consider the possibility more seriously. Never before had this potential existed for him, and he found his mind dwelling upon it until it felt almost predestined. He realized that if Sarah were to conceive, he would unfortunately have few lines of action to choose from, none of them appealing.

As her body swelled and ripened, Alan would comprehend her situation. He would argue—never implicating Jeremy directly—that the increasingly obvious example of her past behavior would be damaging to the moral development of the coolies in camp. Alan would advise she be let go as the cook and sent back to her people. Implicit in his advice would be his conviction that no man who had lain with her could have any certainty her condition was the result of his seed.

Of course Alan's solution would be the one most men chose, the reaction expected. However Jeremy would find it extremely difficult and distasteful.

An alternative would be to have her remain in camp, but that choice would be frowned upon. Sarah's offspring would be relatively pale and, in terms of potentially responsible parties, there were only two white men residing within twenty miles.

Perhaps Jeremy could stomach returning her to her village if he sent along a regular stipend. On this continent, a few coins could change a life.

However, even then, the child, possibly of his issue, would have to survive in a mud hut, in a land where famines happened, where malaria and lions killed, where no one wore trousers or attended school. Other men might not be as bothered by the idea of this kind of upbringing, but, then, they knew they were likely to sire other children who could be raised in a more conventional manner.

If Sarah did have a child, once it had passed the age where it critically needed the mother (British boarding schools he believed waited until the age of six or seven), maybe he could transport it to the relative safety of New England and arrange for the gift of civilization and an education (probably in Boston, where the more cosmopolitan schools had experience with students of many backgrounds). After the child had reached his or her majority, Jeremy was not sure what the future could hold. The important point was the education, the offering of the wonders of the modern age.