Natural History

by Neil Cross

  And yet, the day before learning of his father’s death, Patrick had dreamed of him; an old man in carpet slippers and baggy old trousers, shuffling around outside, surrounded by an uneasy swirl of snapping hyenas.

  He knew then (and he knew now), that this had been a coincidence, but there was a deep, human part of him—a magical thinker, a maker-of-connections—and that part demanded a link between the subject of his dreams and the object of them.

  This part of him knew, too that to dream of Jane was to speak with her.

  By day, at Monkeyland, the dreams left him with a dirge of unease. And at night, he kept his vigil: window open, camera ready. Blanket worn like a hooded robe. And he watched the oblivious sheep, a dim globe of light in the darkness—a sacrifice to certain dark gods in whom Patrick did not believe.

  He knew that something was about to happen.

  He believed in none of this. He believed in all of it. He believed it in the way he knew Jane must never travel without her grandfather’s old trunk.

  He kept his vigil.

  Charlie was at the bar. White shirt, wine-coloured waistcoat. He was reading yesterday’s Sun. The bar was empty, until a woman walked in. Business suit. Kitten heels. Handbag.

  He felt weird in the big, empty bar, not knowing where to look.

  She looked around. Saw him.

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  The red flock walls soaked up the echoes.

  He beamed at her; it felt huge on his face. Customers rarely spoke to him except to order a drink and, once or twice, to try to procure a prostitute.

  She spun around, taking in the emptiness. Her heels clicked on the floor. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Her shirt was open to the third button. Around her neck, she wore a silver chain.

  Her hair was short at the neck; a very blunt bob. He could see the tendons under the skin: the tendons in her thin wrist, her feet, her ankles.

  ‘Does it get any livelier?’

  He closed the Sun, concealing it under a cloth. ‘Not really.’

  She perched on a stool and placed her little handbag on the bar.

  He said, ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  She ordered a gin and tonic. Preparing it, his hands were blundering­—twice, he almost dropped the glass. He passed her the drink and she took a sip.

  ‘So it’s always like this?’

  He wondered what to say. He thought of twenty things.

  He said: ‘Usually.’

  ‘How long have you worked here?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘It feels longer, I bet.’ Her eyes were effervescent, and she wore that delicate necklace and that shirt, open three buttons.

  ‘I lost my old job. I worked out at the chimp sanctuary—Monkey­land, up the road. Some kid was throwing stuff at a chimpanzee. So I hit him.’

  She laughed—just once, but loud in the emptiness. The laugh scattered on the ceiling and came down as glitter and the red room became a snowglobe.

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s as good a reason as any for losing your job.’

  She was down from Manchester, she told him. She was a rep for a Medical Supplies Company. She ordered another drink.

  And later, she said, ‘So I might go out, grab something to eat. Any recommendations?’

  ‘There’s a seafood place on the harbour, but it’ll be quiet.’ He referred theatrically to his watch. ‘It might not even be open.’

  She grabbed her bag. ‘What the hell. Let’s see.’

  She left a tip.

  When she’d gone, trailing perfume behind her, the bar doubled in size, and fungal silence unfolded from the scarlet walls.

  He flicked through the Sun, but it held no interest—not even page 3, which was always worth a glance. Now it looked stupid; that happy, dumb smile, those perky tits.

  In the end, he poured himself a Coke and watched the ice melt until 10.45, when he began preparations to close the bar.

  At 10.55, she came back.

  His heart made a noise. He wondered if she heard it. The expression on her face implied she had.

  She had reapplied her lipstick. It was not red. It was a dark brown. Charlie knew nothing about lipstick. Charlie had never kissed anyone who wore it.

  She said, ‘Too late for last orders?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He began to slice the remaining half of the lime.

  She sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘It’s horrible, eating alone,’ she said. ‘Everyone looks at you.’

  Charlie scooped ice into the long glass and silently agreed.

  She said, ‘Are you finished for the night?’

  ‘Closing the bar.’ He added a vibrating splash of gin over ice.

  ‘Do you do room service?’

  ‘Until two a.m.’

  He handed her the glass, and she took it. He thought for a second that she might actually wink. She didn’t. He watched her leave the red bar, taking her drink with her, and wondered if she knew he was watching.

  He didn’t see her again for a month.

  FROM JANE’S NOTEBOOKS

  In five weeks at the camp, we’ve surveyed several hundred square kilometres of forest, patchy savannah and near-swamp. We’ve gathered information on more than fifty ground nests and several tree nests.

  The way it looks, the dominant males make the ground nests. Females, juveniles and infants prefer the trees.

  We think they live in small groups; probably fewer than ten of them. Perhaps there is only one group. Perhaps the species is about to vanish, just before it’s officially discovered.

  Here is the evidence we’ve collected for its existence, the Bili Ape: its nests, its shit, its footprints. And the look in people’s eyes when they speak of it, the stories they tell.

  We haven’t seen it. But it’s seen us. It’s been watching.

  We discussed what to do next. We have a great deal of film, but no ape. So Richard suggested that Claude takes us to Virunga National Park. He wants to film some evidence of poaching: it’ll play well, if only as context.

  Claude agreed. He cares about the animals, he wants people in England to see what’s happening to them.

  ‘People in England will care about the animals more than the people,’ I said, and Claude gave me a look that made me uncomfortable.

  We took a vote. We opened a bottle of gin I’ve been hoarding since the hotel. Passed round a tin mug.

  It was down to Camra Dave and Sound Mick—whatever happens, they get their fee. If we go home now, it’s no loss to them. So we looked at the ground and waited out their silence.

  Claude wanted them to film the poachers, even though it might be dangerous—for us, but more so for him. Even though he has the gun.

  In the end, Camra Dave said, ‘Fuck it, why not?’

  And we nodded, and bravely jutted out our lips.

  ‘Fuck it, why not?’ said Claude, pleased, and we shook hands. Claude kissed me on the cheek.

  10

  Comet Hyakutakewa was long gone; it had shone brightly for a few days, back in the early spring, and then departed on its vast and soundless ellipse.

  But Hyakutakewa had been only the opening act. Now, Comet Hale Bopp was coming. Hale Bopp was the main event; the greatest comet Jo and Nately, or anyone else on the planet, were ever likely to see.

  It wouldn’t shine at its brightest until next year. But already, if you knew where to look, it was visible to the naked eye. Had been, since the summer. A white point, coming closer.

  Mr Nately had been staying up late to observe it. Jo could tell; during lessons he drifted off, yawned, covered his mouth with a fist. Once or twice, as she worked at an essay or a test, his eyes closed and she saw the surprised, waking twitch after his chin had drooped to his chest.<
br />
  Jo didn’t mind; she was tired, too.

  The sun was still rising when she got to her desk. The blush behind the dark and fearful orchard at the end of the garden made an oblong silhouette of Mr Nately’s observatory.

  Mr Nately heated the classroom with a Calor-gas burner whose rippling emanations thickened the light, blurring the space between Jo’s eye and the text of her books. She wore layers of clothes and felt languid and unable to concentrate. Her mind was elsewhere on Earth.

  At night, she dreamed of her mother, but the dreams were confused—Jane stood on a high rock with her arms in the air, and behind her, the sun rose (or set) behind a vast and lowering bank of stormclouds.

  It was difficult to imagine the African heat when waking in a breath-condensing, cold-floored bedroom, or passing the frost on the briars. It was more difficult still to imagine Jane being threatened by a war which, for most people in England, did not exist.

  Jo supposed there must be other wars in the world, going on right now, and she wondered how she was supposed to find out about them. The TV news and the newspapers were full of New Labour, and John Major and Tony Blair, and an election that wasn’t going to happen for months yet—and she wouldn’t be interested in it, even then.

  She wondered what made one war matter, and another not. It wasn’t something she could ask Mr Nately. He could recite the campaigns of Alexander, or Julius Caesar, or Field Marshal Haig, or General Montgomery. He watched the news and read The Times. He knew something about the genocide in Rwanda—more than most people seemed to. But he knew almost nothing about what was going on, right now, in Zaire.

  FROM JANE’S NOTEBOOKS

  The war is coming.

  We’ve decided to head west, fly out from Kinshasa, cross the border into Brazzaville if we have to. We’ve got petrol: we’ve got trucks.

  And we’ve got good footage from Virunga: an elephant on a smoking table, being hacked into pieces for transportation; villagers tortured by armed gangs of poachers, beaten and burned for daring to open their mouths in protest.

  We’ve got the bushmeat stalls at Bukavu—the heaped baskets of monkeys; the cakes of blackened meat, the smiling vendor who said they were either smoked elephant or gorilla.

  We’ve got bulldozed trees heaped either side of the logging road; hunting camps at the edge of the floor of a cathedral-like, brand new clearing in the forest. We’ve got the skinny men carrying panniers hung with duikers and colobus monkeys.

  We’ve got the miserable little camp, a ramshackle collection of palm-frond shelters, and a gorilla’s head bubbling in its own juices. There was a burned, sweet undercurrent to its smell, like sugar blackening the bottom of a heavy-based pan. The woodsmoke made our eyes water.

  We’ve got the poacher passing me a huge, meaty hand; a hand with black nails and a leathery palm.

  I began to cry and wanted the camera turned off, but of course they kept it rolling because tears are good. Tears will sell it. Tears are human interest.

  I did a shouted piece to camera, standing on a scar of logging road while huge, yellow lorries, piled with hardwood, passed with a noise like jet engines.

  ‘More than thirty million people survive in the forests of the Congo Basin. These people have hunted here for thousands of years, and had little impact on overall animal numbers.

  A few years ago, you couldn’t find bushmeat in Zairean cities—not until the European logging companies, mostly Trench, began to decimate the forests for its hardwood.

  They forced animals into ever-smaller spaces, little enclaves, through which more and more new roads are being rammed. And on these new roads come the urban hunters—men who know little, and care less, about maintaining the balance of the forest.

  They cut deals with the drivers, to cross the country with bushmeat secreted in their trucks. Thus, they introduced a new taste to the cities. And so, most bushmeat—chimpanzee meat, gorilla meat, elephant meat—isn’t used to feed starving people; not the hungry refugees subsisting in the unfamiliar rainforest. It’s sold in cities, at far higher prices than beef or goat. It’s destined for the plates of the wealthy.’

  Anyway. There’s enough. The war is coming.

  Once we decided, it became urgent: we wanted to get home right now, right away.

  We said goodbye to Claude. He’s returning to Goma, to work for some Belgian NGOs. The boys told jokes about Belgians, but I don’t think boring Belgians are much of a joke on the Congo—not when they’re told by white Europeans, anyway. Any more, I suppose, than efficient Germans are much of a joke in Tel Aviv.

  I’m scared for Claude. He has to walk right back into it. We swapped addresses: we passed a Biro, a little notepad. He gave me an address where he can check his mail, periodically. I gave him the PO Box of Monkeyland. It looks pitiful, written down: Monkeyland. I cringed, and felt like a coward. England seemed almost comical, when I thought about where Claude is going. After all these weeks together, and all he’s shown us, we didn’t know how to say goodbye.

  In the end, he just walked off. Richard made another joke. Claude turned and waved, and turned again, and that is the last time I think I will ever see his face.

  In the morning, as we were preparing to leave, a young soldier found me.

  Into my arms he pressed a bundle. It’s a tiny, sick bonobo. A week ago, it saw its mother captured, taunted and beaten. Then it saw its mother killed, skinned, butchered and cooked. Then it was chained to the stall on which its mother was for sale, smoked and in pieces.

  The soldiers wanted to sell the infant as a pet. But it was sick, and nobody would buy it.

  The young soldier could see my anger—this exhausted, rheumy-eyed white woman, sweat-stained. He wanted me to take the bonobo and just leave. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  I was so angry, but we didn’t leave. Instead, Dave was quick to get the camera running, hoisted onto his shoulder.

  And, on camera, I asked the shy young man with the gun how bonobo tastes.

  ‘It is a little tough,’ he said.

  Bonobos are found only between the Congo River in the north and the Kasai River in the south.

  Unlike chimpanzees, who are violent, territorial, warlike, predatory and murderous, bonobos regulate their society with non-procreative sex. They use sex in greeting, as a means of conflict resolution, as reconciliation—and as favours traded by the females in exchange for food. They are the only non-human creature to have been observed kissing with tongues, engaging in face-to-face vaginal intercourse, oral sex, mutual masturbation between females, and frottage between males.

  They do eat insects and sometimes small mammals, but their primary energy source is fruit.

  In 1980, there were 100,000 of them. By 1990, that number had been reduced by 90 per cent. And that was before the boy soldiers started hunting them as bushmeat, with automatic weapons.

  The soldier slunk away; feeling watched, he was narrow-hipped and insulted, surly as a young Elvis Presley.

  The infant weighs about the same as a bag of sugar. It is dark-faced, with coarse black hair, parted in the centre. I took it to the Land-Rover and opened some bottled water.

  As I dripped water into her mouth, she struggled to free her arms from the blanket, then reached out for me. She grasped me tightly—the falling reflex—then she stroked the hair on my bare forearm.

  She’s not really strong enough to be carried on my back, but it’s what she wants—it makes her feel secure. She clings on as best she can; then slides off. In the end, I fashioned a sling for her, from the blanket, and she rests in that. She’s thin. She’s dying.

  I laid her in the back of the Land-Rover. She slept. I watched her for a while.

  I spoke to Richard.

  ‘Zaire,’ he said, reading my expression, ‘is going to fuck. It’s a mess. We need to get out, asap. We agreed to get out.’

  And I am h
omesick, and scared, and longing for my children. But home doesn’t seem real. How can it be real, a few hours’ flight from all this—this sick creature which has fallen into my care, in this sick country and this chaos? You can feel it gathering.

  I offered Richard a deal. I told him it’s a good show: we didn’t find the Bili, but we can rescue this ape, this child, from a war-zone. It’ll be a quest, a drama, dragging this sick baby across a dangerous country, in an attempt to save its life.

  Naming her.

  I said, ‘We have to give her a name.’

  Richard gave me a look. The others sulked. They want to go home. Back to the West Country of England; cider and Glastonbury Tor.

  We argued. People stopped to frankly watch; we must have been quite a diversion, these four white people in filthy clothes, three men and one woman, screaming at each other outside the Land Cruisers.

  But finally, we agreed.

  Let’s get the bonobo to Kinshasa. Let’s drop it off somewhere safe, and then let’s cross over to Brazzaville, where there is no war, and then let’s work out how the hell to get home.

  Patrick maintained his night-time vigil. But still, the cat did not return, and the sheep lived. He grew to resent it; easy meat, content in her metal trap at night, munching the abundant grass short by day.

  Perhaps the cat had been one of the dreams that were infecting his waking life. He remembered it had been early morning, the light unreal in the woodland. Perhaps he had blinked and slept, and made of the mossy English oakwoods a rainforest.

  But the fear had been real. He didn’t run the way he ran in dreams: his legs weren’t treacle-slow, dream slow, dream heavy. He ran like an athlete, and stood in his kitchen and drank cold, limestone-tinctured water.

  He didn’t know what to think, or to whom he could speak, and sometimes he wondered—sitting in the darkness, shrouded in a coarse blanket, making deals with forces in which he did not believe, to take the life of the sheep as a substitute for his wife—if he might not be going a little mad.

  As the year grew older, the Anchorage Hotel grew void and creepy. Charlie hated the emptiness; it made the hallways shabby. He feared the blind, numbered doors to empty rooms. He snooped out of guest-room windows and saw winter dust devils travelling the deserted scoop of Minehead beach.