Tracks of the Tiger (3 page)

Beck used the opportunity to take a swig of water from the bottle in his backpack. He had politely turned down the offer of a soft drink for the trip from Peter's mum. Beck knew that if you wanted to stay hydrated you couldn't beat plain water. That was the real thing. Especially in a climate as humid as the jungle.

Peter had finished taking pictures. He straightened up, turned and almost fell over. ‘What the—?'

He had managed to get his foot caught in a loop of vine. He instinctively gave it a tug to free it and nearly fell over again. Another, slightly harder tug had even less success. If anything the vine grew tighter.

‘Don't fight it, Peter,' Beck told him. ‘You have to ease yourself free.' He took the camera so that his friend could bend down and free his foot with his hands. ‘Remember, in the jungle every single plant wants to climb, so they're strong and tough and most of them have thorns or hooks or suckers . . .'

‘I get the message,' Peter muttered as he straightened up for the second time, this time with two free feet. ‘Don't wrestle with jungle plants because they will win.' He took his camera back.

‘Yup!' Beck agreed. ‘I got taught that in Borneo, when Mum and Dad were there with Green Force—'

‘Green Force?' Nakula had been waiting to see there were no stragglers in the group. He hadn't been listening in, but those two words had obviously stood out in the conversation. For the first time his cool politeness was punctured by active interest. ‘You were with Green Force?'

‘Mum and Dad were,' Beck answered, a little taken aback by the sudden enthusiasm. In fact, their trip to Borneo had been their last trip together as a family, before the plane crash . . .

Nakula explained, ‘Poachers worked near my village when I was younger. We all knew who they were, but a corrupt police chief refused to charge them. Green Force gave us funds so that we could bring our own private prosecution in the courts.'

Beck felt uncomfortable under the burning approval in the man's eyes. ‘Glad they helped,' he said awkwardly.

‘Your parents must have been good people,' Nakula commented.

‘Well . . . yeah. I always thought so. They kind of grew on me, I guess.' Beck smiled.

Nakula laughed, and it transformed his face, making him look suddenly warm and friendly. But then the other tourists gathered round to see what was keeping them, and the professional reserve came back.

‘It is almost feeding time,' he announced. ‘This way . . .'

The feeding platform for the orang-utans was in a clearing. A few manmade objects stood out – climbing frames, ropes, a cluster of huts around the edge that blended into the surroundings. Otherwise, like the rest of the sanctuary, it was kept as natural as possible.

And here there were enough orang-utans to keep even the loud tourist happy. They knew what time of day it was and they swarmed around the keepers. Small ones, large ones, baby ones with their parents. Beck could count eight, maybe ten, without even moving his head.

He remembered the one by the river, thinking it looked part human, part spider. Up close the resemblance was even stronger. The body was short and stocky with a pronounced pot belly, but the arms looked like they had been grafted on from a completely different species. They were twice as long as the legs and seemed to have a life of their own. When an orang-utan waddled along on two legs, it had to hold its arms up to stop them dragging on the ground, as if it was wading through invisible water. Their hands were also huge – two massive leathery mitts that looked like hairy wicket keeper's gloves.

Their faces were hairless, like wrinkled leather. Beck was struck by the variety of expressions. Orang-utans could laugh – they bared their teeth and their shoulders shook. They could look thoughtful, or happy, or even angry if another orang-utan said or did something that they objected to.

When they squatted down, shoulders hunched, they suddenly looked incredibly old. They were so
almost
human. Beck could see that this was how humans might have turned out if evolution had just developed in a slightly different way. Their eyes, though, were almost always sad. They seemed to contain the wisdom of the universe, as if they knew what a mess their close relatives the humans were making of their jungle – a jungle where they themselves were totally at home.

Beck squatted down in front of a teenage orang-utan which was tucking into a banana. It glanced up at him and their eyes met for a moment. Beck could have sworn he could read its thoughts:
Listen, mate, you humans need to do a lot better. Now excuse me, this banana's more interesting than you are
.

A keeper handed a bucket to an old, grizzled male, who held the handle in his teeth and trotted on all fours over to a couple of his friends. He sat in front of the bucket, then reached into it for the food. One of the others clung to a branch with one foot and one hand, and dipped his spare hand into the bucket for the food. The third hung upside down by his feet and reached into the bucket from above.

Peter was laughing so much he had trouble taking a photo. ‘What do they eat?' he asked.

Nakula was standing and watching the same scene, hands in his pockets and a fond smile on his face. ‘In the wild, fruit – all kinds. Here we give them only bananas and milk. We try to keep their diet boring to encourage them to forage for themselves.'

‘They don't look very bored.'

‘I know.' Nakula sighed. ‘Perhaps we treat them too well. I would like them not to need us at all – to live freely in the jungle, in no danger from the hand of man, only visiting us when they wanted to. But at the same time, I am pleased they want to stay here because I would miss them so much if they left.'

‘So, if they weren't hanging around here, where would they be?'

‘Oh, they like to live on their own. At night they sleep in nests—'

‘
Nests?
'

‘Certainly.' Nakula laughed at Peter's surprise. ‘See, up there?'

He led the boys over to the edge of the clearing and pointed up at one of the trees. Peter zoomed his camera in on the nest. It really did look like a giant bird had made it. Branches and leaves and sticks were jammed together in a fork of the tree's limbs, ten metres up.

‘They rarely spend more than two nights in the same place. They might move into a vacant nest, or make a new one just for one night. They are very – what is your word? – easygoing? And see how there is fruit nearby?' He pointed at clusters of berries that dangled above the nest. ‘They like to laze around in their nests and have their food dangling at arm's length.
Very
easygoing.'

Nakula cocked his head to one side and looked thoughtfully at the two boys. It looked like he was weighing up a difficult decision.

‘You two are the only young people in your group, yes? I think I know another young person who would very much like to meet you. Over here . . .'

He led them over to a hut. Beck turned and saw that Peter's father was the other side of the clearing, talking to a couple of Americans; he waved at him to let him know where they were.

Inside the hut another keeper sat on a chair with his back to them. The angle he was sitting at suggested he was feeding a baby with a bottle. When Nakula said his name, he looked up and the boys saw it was indeed a baby on his lap – a baby orang-utan.

The two men chatted briefly in Malay, and then the second keeper stood up and handed the baby over to Nakula. He smiled at the boys and left.

‘This is Ayesha,' Nakula explained as he cradled the tiny orang-utan. ‘She was found near her mother's dead body, too frightened to move on and find food. She almost starved to death, but we were able to save her . . .'

He grinned at the boys, guessing the answer to the question he was about to ask. ‘Would you like to hold her?'

Beck got to feed her first so that Peter could take pictures. He couldn't help comparing her to baby Hannah back at the hotel. They were about the same size and weight – which meant surprisingly heavy – but Hannah wasn't a solid lump of muscle covered in soft, silky hair. Holding Ayesha was like holding a solid rubber ball. The first time Beck was given Hannah he had been terrified of hurting her. If he accidentally dropped Ayesha he was sure she would bounce straight back up again.

Hannah could wrap five fingers around one of Beck's; Ayesha's hand was large enough to engulf his own. Hannah smelled of baby lotion, but Ayesha had a pleasantly warm, musky animal odour, like a well-groomed cat. Again Beck looked into an orang-utan's eyes, and this time there was no doubting her expression. That same world-weary sadness mixed with one hundred per cent trust.
You'll look after me, won't you? You'll make sure I'm all right.

‘Course I will,' he whispered. ‘Course I will . . .'

‘You in here, boys?' Mr Grey poked his head round the door. ‘The bus leaves in five— Ah, you've made a friend!'

‘We've got to leave?' Peter sounded sad. ‘We're only just starting . . .'

Nakula's face was once again blank and impassive, like when he had been talking to the loud tourist. Beck guessed that meant
I disagree with you profoundly but it is my job to be polite to you and so I will be
. In their short time in the hut, they had seen a very different side to Nakula. He was a man who loved the orang-utans, and he had sensed similar feelings in Beck and Peter. He'd enjoyed passing on what he knew. Suddenly he was back to his dour old self.

‘Well, there are the ruins to look at—' Mr Grey pointed out.

‘Very old ruins?' Beck asked.

‘Oh, yes, a thousand years or more . . .'

‘So it's not like they're going anywhere, is it?' Peter interrupted with a grin.

‘No,' Mr Grey said patiently, ‘but we are, in five minutes.'

‘You are returning to Medan, sir?' Nakula asked unexpectedly.

‘Well, yes, after the ruins. Why?'

‘Oh . . .' Nakula shrugged. His voice had the kind of casual tone you only hear when someone has a definite plan. ‘I drive there this evening. I am very happy to look after your boys and bring them back then. You see' – he indicated to Ayesha, who was still playing with her bottle in Beck's arms – ‘once a baby has started feeding it is hard to interrupt.' The little orang-utan's teeth gripped the bottle tightly and sucked frantically.

‘You can say that again!' said Beck, laughing.

‘That's certainly true,' Peter's dad muttered, thinking of Hannah's howls if she was deprived of her bottle. ‘That would be kind of you.' And to the boys: ‘Am I maybe detecting that thousand-year-old classical ruins aren't totally your thing?'

‘Compared to a brand-new baby orang-utan . . . ?' Peter said thoughtfully. ‘Not really.'

Mr Grey sighed. He looked at the boys, looked at Ayesha, looked at Nakula, looked at his watch. Finally he seemed to accept that this was one battle he couldn't win.

‘I guess it's a wonderful chance to see this sort of work – but behave yourselves, OK?' he told the boys.

‘You got it,' they replied excitedly.

Then to Nakula:

‘So, what time can we expect you this evening . . . ?'

‘What happened to Ayesha's mother?' Beck shouted over the noise of the engine. He clutched at the open-topped jeep's roll bar as it lurched out of a particularly deep rut on the jungle road. The boys sat in the back, leaning forward so they could speak to Nakula as he drove.

‘Did something get her?' Peter asked.

‘I think she starved to death, as Ayesha would have done,' Nakula said with blunt sadness. He didn't look round, preferring to concentrate on the potholed road ahead.

They had stayed another three hours at the sanctuary, playing with Ayesha and meeting some of the other keepers and orang-utans. Each keeper had his own favourite and the boys got acquainted with them all. Beck had never realized how individual the animals were. Each one was just as much a character as a human. They had their likes and dislikes, their own sense of humour, their own moods and tempers. It didn't matter that none of them could talk. They had ways of letting you know what they were thinking. And when, sadly, it was time for Nakula to keep his promise and drive the boys back to Medan, Beck was sure the orang-utans were sorry to see them go – Ayesha in particular. Peter handed her over as if she was his own baby sister. She clung to her keeper's chest and watched them leave with sad coos and chirrups, and then buried her face in the man's shirt.

‘Starved?' Beck asked, surprised by what Nakula had said. He knew all too well that the jungle held many deadly surprises, but starvation shouldn't be one of them. Especially not for an animal in its natural environment.