Gorillas in the Mist

by Farley Mowat

  None of these suggestions was agreeable to Peter, but his desire for Dian was so great that he continued to climb to Karisoke, and his visits were sometimes happy ones.

  July 12: Peter up at 7:30 P.M. I couldn’t believe it! It was one of the most beautiful nights we’ve ever spent together…. He really swore his love to me even on bended knee, saying, “I love only you—there is no other—you are all to me.” He could not playact like this. He must mean it.

  At this juncture Dian badly needed a friend in camp with whom to talk. For a time after Kelly Stewart’s return she had confided in her, if somewhat uneasily. However, even that tentative relationship had been damaged almost beyond repair when, during this period of wild mood swings, Dian opened and read some of the letters flowing between Kelly and Sandy Harcourt. The contents of Harcourt’s letters had shocked Dian by the vehemence of his dislike, which she characterized as “real hatred.” Since she could find no obvious explanation for this enmity, she concluded that Kelly might have been fostering it, perhaps out of jealousy.

  She stopped opening the mail only when it became obvious that the younger woman knew what she was doing. Rather than confront Dian and risk a fight, Kelly drew a padlock on the back of a letter to Sandy before she sent it up to Dian’s cabin to await the biweekly mail porter.

  This was sufficient to shame Dian into leaving the mail alone; but for weeks thereafter the two women kept their distance, communicating solely by means of notes, and then only when strictly necessary. However, as the summer wore on, Dian was driven to seek Kelly’s company again, if only for the relief of being able to unburden herself of her confused feelings and desperate doubts about Weiss. Kelly seemed to be a sympathetic listener, although Dian would unfailingly note in her diary after these confessionals, “I talked too much.”

  The strains and stresses of the affair were beginning to tell on her in other ways. She had trouble keeping track of the date and at one point discovered she was in the wrong week in her diary.

  I’m really mixed up. My head isn’t worth shooting.

  She found she was continually losing things—she misplaced her pistol and spent the better part of a week searching for it, only to discover it “in drawer with all my papers—kind of where I thought I’d put it.”

  On a hazy, portentous mid-September day Dian descended the mountain and drove in her combi to Kigali airport to pick up Peter, who had been to France for a month’s vacation. They drove back to Ruhengeri to find Fina waiting outside Peter’s house, hysterical and determined to have a showdown.

  She had all the kids with her, except Joseph, who was with us, because she’d been living in the house looking after them. While they and the neighbors all watched, she came after me with a club, then Peter went for her. I’ll never get over it. She was screaming and so was he. I retreated and yelled at his men to stop her and help him. She was a crazy woman. He really must have suffered because she nearly killed him before his men drove her off. We went into the house. I asked who was going to guard my car. He said not to worry, but then she took her club and broke all the glass in the windshield, while holding Sophie in her other arm. Then I don’t remember much. He went out to lock her in the storeroom and get the police. While he was gone she broke all the storeroom windows and tried to climb out. I was watching her and also trying to hide in the house. Sophie was running around after me, crying and screaming. The other kids hid in the bedrooms. Peter came back with two police and they took her off. All the neighbors were watching but no one helped him.

  About 3 P.M. he went to the prison and let her go, saying she had to leave town. I couldn’t believe he would let her go like that. I took the car to the garage and had a new window put in.

  Guamhogazi, Dian’s chief porter at the time, was posted along with a zamu or watchman to protect the car. Dian spent the night with Peter.

  I had a horrible nightmare and woke up screaming. Next day we climbed the mountain together. I took only one and a half hours, which isn’t bad for me, but he was angry at me for being so slow. Even Saturday night he wasn’t any good-we only did it once in the morning. He acted as if I was the problem. I remember Fina’s big boobs and nipples in the yellow T-shirt and yellow pants and her beating him, and little Pierre shoving me away when I tried to stop him from watching. Yves just disappeared and didn’t come back.

  I couldn’t get Peter to talk or smile or anything. I know something is on his mind other than not being able to make love, but what it could be I don’t know…. He says we’ll get married if I insist on it and also repeated that he only wanted to get married before if I got pregnant. Now he doesn’t think I can and doesn’t seem interested. I’m really sure he doesn’t love me anymore.

  I know now I will never get married.

  On November 2, Dian and Kelly Stewart were chatting outside Dian’s cabin when they heard what sounded like a yell. “It’s only an owl,” Kelly said. They listened and heard it again. Clearly it was someone screaming. Several possibilities flashed through Dian’s mind: it could be Fina on the rampage or it could be an avenging poacher. Anything seemed possible since several American students working at Jane Goodall’s research center in Tanzania that summer had been kidnapped and held for ransom by political outlaws.

  Taking no chances, Dian pushed Kelly into the cabin storeroom, locked the door for safety’s sake, and ran for her gun. Just then Basili came pounding across the meadow, shouting his lungs out. There was another fire. Some outdoor clothing Kelly had hung up too near the stove in her cabin had ignited, and the blaze had already spread to the cabin walls and roof.

  I let Kelly out, then I go but can’t help much with hauling water, so go into house and dump it on fire. The place had too much of a head start and the wogs had panicked, wasting precious time doing nothing. We stay up until 3-me until 4:50 A.M., trying to save her stuff. I’m finished.

  So was the cabin. But the greatest loss was Kelly’s accumulated gorilla data—months of it gone up in flames.

  Very shaky a.m. I could hardly move. Kelly really stunned. Had her for breakfast and told her to take a check and go down with it and start buying materials to rebuild cabin. I don’t recall the day clearly…. I’m sick in P.M. I really X and collapse. Very bad. No letter from Peter at all.

  That night Dian awoke from a nightmare to find herself beating Kima, who had been sleeping on the bed with her.

  She was shaking with fear. I feel so badly, and worried about what is happening to me.

  So the year lurched ominously toward its conclusion. In December, Kelly Stewart departed for another term at Cambridge, where she would rejoin Sandy Harcourt. Dian was alone at Karisoke with her native staff.

  As 1976 began she was trying hard to complete the final revisions on her doctoral thesis, but her personal distress was so great she could not concentrate.

  I work all day, little stopping, on Hinde’s suggestions but can’t get it right. There is no end to it…. Kima acting rather lonely…. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.

  She found herself crying over small irritations or just from fatigue. She began drinking more. Her diary entries became erratic, sometimes just a scribbled word or two, sometimes nothing at all. She was slipping more deeply into the slough of depression.

  January 23: I write a horrid letter to Peter. I am so fed up with everything.

  By early February her diary had degenerated into indecipherable scratchings made with such violence the pen all but pushed through the paper. She had somehow injured her arm, and the pain was keeping her from sleeping.

  Arm so Bad. Can’t sleep. Awake all night. Fuck the world. No Peter.

  Gradually the writing began to improve, although the entries remained terse.

  February 10: No good-can’t sleep anymore at all-arm is much much worse.

  February 11: Not well. Reading for thesis discussion.

  February 12: Have Nemeye spend night up here tending fire so can stay awake to complete thesis.

  A few days later her
handwriting began to return to normal, although her frame of mind seemed only marginally improved.

  Bad hail storm. Kima so sick. I go down. My arm so bad decided must go to Ruhengeri. First time off mountain for months, but Peter was in Gisenyi and didn’t return till 6:30 so I just had to sit and wait in his office. He seemed glad to see me and was very gentle. Gave me a bath. I cried most of the night.

  The following day Dian had her arm X-rayed at the Ruhengeri hospital and found she was suffering from an acute case of tendonitis.

  I went to pick up X rays and then to Peter’s office, where everyone was after him — everyone. A nurse from Uganda was there with a girl with bilharzia and a little baby dying from a cracked skull. I started crying again when I saw the baby. Peter is so respected-beloved-I was so proud of him and ashamed of myself.

  Slowly she pulled herself together and got back into the routine of the camp, once again trying to compensate for her aloneness by seeking contact with the gorillas.

  Out to Group 5-fantastic contact. All silverbacks came near us. Puck takes camera lens after I take pictures…. I took National Geographic magazine with me and Puck was really funny looking at gorilla pictures in it-but got too funny at end of contact, acting the big fool and beating the hell out of me. He must think I’m as tough as he is. For the first time I wondered about their getting overhabituated.

  In May 1976, Dian returned to Cambridge. Her thesis had been accepted and she now only had to pass an oral examination. Although she had never earned a master’s degree, and even her B.A. in occupational therapy had no bearing on zoology, her study of the mountain gorillas of the Virungas contained such an enormous amount of new information on so many varied aspects of their lives that the examiners were pleased to confirm her doctorate.

  At long last she was Dr. Fossey.

  From Cambridge, Dian traveled to California to take part in a National Geographic Society-sponsored symposium featuring her self, Dr. Jane Goodall, and the as-yet-undoctored Biruté Galdikas—Leakey’s three primate ladies, or the “trimates” as they were sometimes called. This was a rare treat for the audience but a harrowing experience for Dian, who was suffering from dysentery.

  There was the usual obligatory visit to the Prices, after which Dian flew to Washington where she cataloged film and photos for her National Geographic sponsors and brought the Research Committee up-to-date on Karisoke’s operations. She returned to Karisoke late in June with her emotional equilibrium much improved.

  Her first concern was for her gorillas. The day after her return, she and Rwelekana made a twelve-kilometer sweep through the highlands, searching—unsuccessfully, she was happy to note—for traps and other evidence of poachers. A week later she trekked across the mountains to Kabara in Zaire (as the Congo was now called) to satisfy herself that all was well with the gorillas in that region.

  Several students worked at Karisoke through the summer of 1976, and Dian kept close rein on them. There were confrontations with certain individuals who resented her “interference” in their work, an attitude that exasperated her.

  Who gave them their work? Who showed them how to do it? The arrogance of some of these know-it-alls is not to be believed. One little shit from New York with a master’s had the nerve to ask me where I got mine. I told him to call me DOCTOR Fossey from now on.

  In August she had trouble with a group of French students.

  I went to their cabin to tell them their field notes were overdue, and one of the bastards pushed me out the door and down the steps to the ground. I do believe he would have hit me to death if my Africans hadn’t been present. He screamed, “You treat us like monkeys.” I believe he is cracking up. At any rate, I’ll keep my cabin locked until next Wednesday when they leave.

  The “student” she liked best during that period was not a student at all. She had found Tim White hitchhiking along the road near Ruhengeri. He was a young Virginian who had been seeing the world on the proverbial shoestring. Finding himself in central Africa, he had gravitated toward the Virungas after hearing about the gorillas. Although he had no academic training, he proved to be an excellent field worker, selflessly devoted to the interests of the gorillas. More than that, he was a genuine handyman, which was something the average Stanford or Cambridge Ph.D. student seldom was. Among other things, he soon had every Aladdin lamp and spirit stove in camp repaired and functioning perfectly.

  Dian rarely saw Peter Weiss during the summer of 1976, although she continued to receive regular intelligence reports on Fina’s activities.

  Fina seen in Ruhengeri by Guamhogazi with kids, at the Indian store. If she is shopping in town she must be living with Peter.

  October 12: Guamhogazi said Fina was seen in the car with Weiss in the afternoon along with the kids. BUT he was seen alone in the car in the A.M. and she alone walking on the road beyond the hospital.

  Early in October, Kelly Stewart returned to Karisoke to continue her studies. Dian welcomed her back, but there was an element of constraint between them.

  I go down to Kelly’s, find she has dyed her hair but is still fat. She started to say, “I’m so happy to see …” then just let it trail off. She had pinned a sketch of a gorilla done by Sandy Harcourt on her wall, and she showed me a fertility charm given to her by his sister, so I guess they will get married when she finishes here. I wish her lots of luck….

  On the morning of October 24, Dian unexpectedly received a “passionate letter” from Peter. This was the first she had heard from him in months, and despite her resolution to put him out of mind, she immediately decided to go down the mountain.

  He was home when I got there and wanted me at once, but not ten minutes later the phone rings-a cesarean at the hospital and he is gone for an hour and a half. Then the kids come home-hell. Then we start again and some bastard comes over for a beer and I have to stay in the bedroom-and then dinner. He said little about Fina, just that she’d been there three times for lunch.

  The visit had been less than satisfactory, and when Dian gloomily returned to Karisoke the next day, she learned that Cindy had tried to follow her to Ruhengeri, with near-disastrous results.

  She ran down the road after the combi, and two wogs, full of pombe, both poachers, came out of a bar and stoned her. They hit her and Semitoa, who was trying to catch her. My watchman caught her as she was fleeing from the wogs and brought her back to camp. No bones broken, but she was badly bruised. Nemeye said I should charge them, so I did.

  One of the two men who had stoned the dog served two months in jail for his offense. The other could not be found.

  Nearly two months later a group of park guards arrived at Karisoke with a prisoner in tow. He was identified to Dian as being the second man in the Cindy stoning incident.

  He had been hiding in Zaire, they said. He was drunk. I played “let’s stone Cindy” and nearly knocked him out.

  Dian’s helpful hitchhiker, Tim White, left Karisoke early in December to continue his world travels. It was a sad day for Dian. However, his replacement had already arrived. This was Ian Redmond, a fair-haired, boyish young Englishman who would prove to be everything Tim White had been and more. Dian considered him the finest student ever to set foot in the park, although this opinion may have rested more on his devotion to the welfare of the animals than on his academic prowess.

  Her initial impression of Ian Redmond was, however, anything but favorable.

  November 7: Ian character arrives at 7:30 or so wearing shorts and no shoes-crazy. For sure this kid is not going to work out.

  November 8: Redmond kid still hasn’t fixed breakfast by 9:30-wants to do cine and stills and everything else he can think of. A real mess. He got from England to Mombasa on £9! That’s impossible!

  Although she thought him feckless, she could not help liking him. She began referring to him half derisively, half affectionately, as “the boy,” “the kid,” sometimes “the child.”

  In a continuing effort to patch things up with Dian, Peter Wei
ss invited her to spend Christmas with him and the children. Ever hopeful, she descended the mountain.

  Peter gave me a tape recorder and seemed very proud of it. We have champagne and cake for dinner-not much else…. We have breakfast alone and then he goes out to fiddle with car. I am so bored. I work on slides.

  Very good fillet for lunch and then he naps. I return to slides and in comes Fina. I was scared-she didn’t talk to me. I gathered up slides and returned to the bedroom. We waited for her to leave.

  In evening we start game of Master Mind and I win. We play more after dinner and he loses all.

  On Boxing Day she returned, dispirited, to Karisoke, convinced at last that no possibility of a life with Peter Weiss existed. Since this was the case, she continued to make the best of what she had.

  Climb up mountain cold and wet. Change clothes and fix Christmas for the two kids, who were feeling sorry for selves. Ian brought me a mobile he’d made out of tin can lids, and Kelly gave me some neat sketches. I gave them each a pile of stuff. It was really pleasant, and I cooked a good dinner for a change, and we all had some fun while the hail banged down on the roof like fury. They didn’t leave until long after midnight. I couldn’t sleep and feel so tired of it all.

  Next day in P.M. Kelly said the boy told her he had never had a nicer Christmas and never gotten so many presents.

  — 14 —

  Christmas 1976 at Karisoke had been relatively pleasant. Dian’s friendship with Kelly had regained some of its warmth, and she was becoming fond of Ian, who was developing into a gorilla enthusiast after her own heart. The African staff was functioning well; the poachers seemed to have been at least temporarily subdued; and the gorillas were free of undue interference from mankind.

  However, not all was sweetness and light. Dian’s health was worsening and she found it increasingly difficult to join the gorillas on their rain-chilled daily rounds. Trapped more and more in her cabin by an ailing body, she was also bogged down in the never-ending demands of scientific record-keeping and of preparing the monthly reports to her sponsors in the United States, upon whom the survival of Karisoke depended. An avalanche of paper was becoming the bane of her existence. Now that she had her Ph.D., she was also under increasing pressure to publish her scientific findings. And she was making her first tentative attempt to write a popular book about her life with the gorillas.