Dark Memory

by Jonathan Latimer

  CHAPTER 3

  THERE WAS NO FAT AT ALL upon this African highland. The mountains were sharply defined on the horizon, all of them solid and compact and angular. They stood firmly against the blue sky with the cauliflower clouds; the dark green ridges and peaks without curves. These were the gorilla mountains, and this was the path, worn wide and smooth from the bare feet of natives, slippery from the morning dew, winding deep through ferns and tangled underbrush and second-growth trees, passing ravines and valleys and escarpments, that led to them. Far below were the trucks and the Belgian road and ahead lay a country that, except for the hunter and the woodcutter, had been a secret place for ten thousand years.

  Jay walked with the porters along the black upgoing trail. There was a good feeling in passing through new country, he thought, almost as if you owned everything you saw. Especially in country like this, where such a feeling was not visibly contradicted by fences and no trespass signs. It was what America’s early settlers must have experienced. Now only a few places in the world could give it to you, and in a few years these would be gone. He had a feeling that he might see strange animals and plants at any moment. And this feeling was outside and above the excitement of actually being on safari.

  In the early morning they had loaded nearly a hundred porters with food and scientific equipment, the porters having been hired by Cable the day before at approximately five cents a day. Then they had paid a native policeman to watch the trucks and hired two guides to take them up the path that near the road was broad and easy to follow, but later forked often and sometimes almost vanished in weeds and grass.

  Now the trail was in a clump of trees covered with hanging moss and vines, and there was no longer the view of brown fields and round hills and forest seen from above. The trees hid the lower country. Ahead Jay could see Bill and ahead of Bill a porter, bent under a box of canned goods, and ahead of the porter the trail. It was, Mr. Palmer told them, a woodcutter’s trail. The undergrowth smelled of damp earth and wet leaves. A bird, calling queeny-hate, queeny-hate, queeny-hate, followed them irritatingly. The soft earth on the trail gave a little with each step, so that walking was difficult. Jay’s thighs began to feel swollen, as though the skin was too tight for the muscles.

  The trail came out of the trees into a sloping pasture of coarse grass, cut across the pasture through sunlight that hurt their eyes, and joined another trail that went through a saddle between two brown hills. Ahead of all the porters, sweating now, their black skins shining, Jay could see Mr. Palmer’s corduroy coat. In a second pasture native cattle with long curving horns watched them, the cattle fat and sleek and gentle-looking. In the open the sun was hot.

  As they climbed the country began to change. A few large trees grew in the undergrowth, and there were also Erythrina trees, many covered with crimson blossoms. Moss grew on the trunks of the big trees and from the branches hung plumes of Spanish moss. Jay had thought of the moss, driving in the fog, as gray, but he saw it was a number of colors: pale red, weathered copper, brown, beige. Ferns grew waist high by the trail. The trunks of the Erythrina trees were silver yellow, and the branches grew out so the trees were shaped like uneven sunshades.

  Passing an Erythrina just beside the trail, Bill pointed over his head. Jay looked up at the tree. He saw a woven bird’s nest shaped like a stocking cap.

  The trail came to a green valley with marsh grass growing in the center. At the far end of the valley was a small lake of dark water. White flowers grew on pads at the lake’s edge, and the hill back of it was covered with purple blossoms. The air was perfumed by the flowers. Mr. Palmer waited for them by the lake.

  “Ready for lunch?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Bill said, “and some beer.”

  They lay on the slope with purple blossoms and drank beer and ate lunch. They had fried ham and beans and coffee. Mr. Palmer’s boys ate rice and meat gravy. The porters had grain and bananas. It was nice, eating and resting in the tall grass. Jay was tired. They had come five miles.

  “You’d think people’d live up here,” Bill said.

  “It’s probably too cold.”

  “There is a village near here,” Mr. Palmer said. “Lower, though. Left fork goes to it.”

  “Do we go that way?” Jay asked.

  “No. We go up.”

  “I’m going to need a palanquin,” Jay said.

  “We’ll rest for a while.”

  “I’d like a palanquin, too,” Bill said.

  After lunch Jay lay on his back in the grass and looked at the sky. Then he leaned on one elbow and looked at the lake and the mountains. The water in the lake was black and grass and reeds grew along the shore. There were wild flowers all over the valley. The air was sweet from them. The mountains were so close he could see the green bamboo forests. It was lovely country. He wondered if Linda would like Africa. She would love it! He pretended for a moment she was with him, and he got that hungry-sick feeling thinking of her always gave him. He closed his eyes and saw her, slim and young, and then he had to try very hard not to think of her. It was not good to think of her in the daytime. Sometimes it was all right at night when real things were unreal and unreal things real, but it was not good in the daytime.

  He closed his eyes. The sun was bright and hot in the windbreak made by the grass. The hot rays made the skin on his face feel taut. The porters were resting and talking. Now and then one would say something funny and they would laugh. Crossing the grass, the wind made a hissing noise.

  “Hello!” Mr. Palmer exclaimed suddenly. “What’s this?”

  Jay sat up. A white man and a dozen porters carrying bundles tied with vines were coming up the left fork of the trail. The man wore a brown sun helmet, a brown flannel shirt and tan shorts, cut long in the English style. He had a red feather stuck in his hat. He motioned to his porters to rest and came over to the grassy slope.

  “Bonjour,” he said.

  “Bonjour,” Mr. Palmer said.

  The man’s legs, between the rolled gray socks and the shorts, were lean and tan, but he was not young. He was a blond. His face was freckled and slightly fat and wrinkled and pleasant. “You have a nice place to camp,” he said in very bad French.

  “Oui,” Mr. Palmer said.

  “You are Belgian?”

  “No. English.” Mr. Palmer looked at Bill and Jay. “And Americans.”

  “Splendid.” The man changed to English. “I am quite lost in French.” He smiled at them. “May I sit with you for a moment?”

  “Of course,” Mr. Palmer said. “Can we give you a drink?”

  “You are kind.”

  “Whisky or beer?”

  “Beer, if you please.”

  Mulu brought the man a bottle of beer and a paper cup. He sat in the grass and talked about himself while he drank. His name was Gutzman. He was a dealer in skins, and he had completed a trip into the back country to trade with the natives. He was now on his way to Bukavu. The vine-tied bundles were his skins. He was employed by a firm of furriers in Hamburg, and came to Africa twice a year on buying trips. “It was once a fine business,” he said. “Now it becomes less and less.”

  “Too bad,” Mr. Palmer said. “Everything going to pot, though.”

  “Perhaps.” Herr Gutzman smiled at him. “But the fur business especially, because of our ersatz economy.”

  “Ersatz?” Mr. Palmer asked.

  “You have heard of it. The economy of substitution. Leather made from coal. Clothing of wood pulp. Bread of sawdust. Coffee of turnips. Gasoline of water. I exaggerate, of course. But not too much.”

  “I’ve heard it’s a lousy business,” Bill said.

  “Ah, no. I do not say that.” He wrinkled the corners of his eyes at Bill. “You see I understand American. No, it is not lousy. I do not wish to live in a concentration camp. It is for the fatherland. But it is hard on me.”

  “What are your furs used for?” Jay asked.

  “Many things. The skins of leopards are for women’s coa
ts. Of rugs. Lion pelts for men who wish to say they have shot them. Snakeskins for women’s shoes and cigarette cases. Elephant hides for luggage.” Herr Gutzman poured more beer into his cup. “But I talk too much of myself. You? You are on a hunting safari?”

  “We’ve a permit for two gorillas,” said Mr. Palmer.

  “Oh.” Herr Gutzman’s face changed. “Why aren’t you going to Mikeno? That is where they kill them.”

  “Too many have been killed there.”

  “That is true. The Prince of Sweden killed fourteen. And they are here. I have seen their tracks. But you will not like shooting them.”

  Bill asked, “Why not?”

  “It is not like other shooting.”

  “No?”

  Herr Gutzman’s face was very serious. “It is something like murder.”

  “Really?” Mr. Palmer said. “Have you shot them?”

  “One. Many years ago. It was like killing a brave naked man whom you had angered by threatening his family. In the war I saw many men die, but when I have bad dreams I see my gorilla.”

  “Why should a gorilla be different from a lion or a rhino?” Bill asked.

  Herr Gutzman shrugged his shoulders. “You will see.” He finished his beer, thanked Mr. Palmer and stood up, snapping his fingers at the porters. “I am sorry to leave,” he said, “but I have such a walk.”

  “Quite all right,” said Mr. Palmer.

  Gutzman bowed to each of them. He was very polite. “I wish you very good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Jay said.

  They watched him until he disappeared over the lip of the valley. His porters were fine black men, larger than theirs. “We must push,” Mr. Palmer said.

  “Damn it,” Bill said. “Where’s my palanquin?”

  They climbed all afternoon. Around four it turned cold. The air had the chill of fall air in northern Michigan. The porters began to grumble about the long climb and the cold. Mulu and the headman had trouble keeping them moving. The trail was overgrown with grass and small plants and there were frequent stretches of mud. They camped for the night on the sheltered side of a ridge between two clumps of timber, sleeping close to the fires for warmth. The next morning it was cold, even while they were climbing. A silver mist hid the highland until noon. Then the mist rolled up the mountains and they could see the dark forest above them.

  They climbed almost directly east, leaving the woodcutter’s trail for an elephant path. They were through with the cutover land. Big trees with twisted branches grew along the elephant path, the trunks green with moss. Grass and ferns and hanging vines grew under the trees, still wet from the mist. Morning glories were everywhere, and there was Spanish moss. They climbed into a hillside of wild celery, waist high and looking like domestic celery. Jay broke off a stalk and tasted it. It was bitter.

  He had read that the gorillas fed on celery. He did not know how he felt about gorillas. Herr Gutzman had made them seem quite harmless. But they were too big to be harmless. It was spooky, he thought, to climb through this strange forest of hanging moss and pink- and purple-tinted morning glories and twisted trees that was like no other forest he had ever seen, and wonder if gorillas were watching him. It was exciting to think this was a gorilla forest. He had read gorillas would never attack humans without provocation. That was what the German had said. He had also read of gorillas scooping out the insides of men with a paw. He had been amused when he read this, thinking of man being used as a soft-shell crab, but he did not think it was so funny now. It would certainly be possible for a gorilla to break up a man very badly. He wondered where his gun was. He looked around and saw Juma, the Somali boy assigned to him and Bill, coming with the Springfield. Juma grinned at him, showing beautiful square teeth, and he grinned at Juma.

  They were now high in the mountains and the peaks ahead did not look so large. They climbed quietly through the wet forest. Sunlight came in slants past the trees. In a swampy clearing Jay saw a sunbird with a violet breast and a crimson-ringed neck. It flew away with whirring strokes. Several times they skirted clumps of bamboo. Near one, Juma touched Jay’s shoulder.

  “Beef,” he said.

  Jay stopped. He could hear something in the bamboo. “What kind beef?”

  Juma shook his head.

  Jay caught up with Bill. “Did you hear some animals on the left?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “There were some.”

  They reached an escarpment leading to a plateau between two of the nearest peaks. The path left the swampland and wound up the escarpment, at times so abruptly Jay had to use his hands to keep from slipping. It was hard work, this climbing, and he had trouble breathing. He could feel the rush of blood back of his eyes. His shoes slipped. He envied the porters with their bare feet. It was cool, but he was sweating. At the top of the escarpment Mr. Palmer and some of the porters were waiting. They stood together, staring down at something. Jay looked over Mr. Palmer’s shoulder and saw the print of knuckles in the mud. They were human-looking, but incredibly big.

  “Christ!” Bill exclaimed from the other side of Mr. Palmer.

  “Big beggar,” Mr. Palmer said.

  The marks were not very deep. The gorilla had been simply balancing himself with the knuckles of one hand. Jay wondered if he had heard the noise of the party and had shambled off into the underbrush. Mulu, the gunbearer, knelt by the print. “Fresh?” Bill asked him.

  “Yes, bwana.”

  Jay grinned at Bill. They were both excited. He looked down at the print. Mulu made a mark with the knuckles of his right hand in the mud. His print was not half as large as the gorilla’s. Now, for the first time, gorillas seemed real to Jay. The big print made them real.

  “Must keep moving,” Mr. Palmer said.

  They crossed the plateau and went up a very steep escarpment. Jay followed Bill, using bushes and vines to pull himself along where the mud was bad. He crawled up the last half of the escarpment. His hands became coated with mud. At last the path came out onto a large plateau and disappeared into a jungle of bamboo. The whole plateau was covered with the bamboo. The path no longer climbed, and it was wider, as though here the elephants that made it had traveled in pairs. Jay caught his breath on the level surface. He followed Bill’s back for a time through the wide corridor in the bamboo, and then he saw a clearing and brown tents. The clearing was on a level with most of the mountains to the east. Just past camp the plateau ended and the elephant path dropped into a deep gulley. Across the gulley was a forest. Jay could see over the forest the wavelike mountains, the close mountains green and the last blue gray. The camp was in a glade of tall grass, and three tents had been put up. Back of them, still in the glade, but close to the wall of bamboo that covered the rest of the plateau, were huts built by the porters of vines and bamboo stalks. A crimson-flowered Erythrina tree, plane-topped and gnarled, stood by the biggest tent.

  Lew Cable came out to meet them. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Climbing,” Bill said.

  “We expected you last night.”

  “We came as fast as we could.”

  “That’s very damned slow. We’ve wasted a day waiting for you. What held you up?”

  “Nothing,” Bill said. He was getting angry. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Don’t get sore.”

  Bill asked, “Where’s the professor?”

  “Resting in his tent,” Cable said. “You needn’t get sore.”

  “Just lay off and I won’t get sore,” Bill said.

  He went to the biggest tent. Jay was glad he had stood up to Cable. He could, though. He was not a hired hand. He was a scientist and would probably outrank Cable at the museum. He wondered why Cable was always so ugly. He followed Bill into the tent. Professor Huntley was lying across his bed, his head hanging over the side, watching something in a wooden box. He smiled up at them. “Gentlemen!” He was glad to see them.

  “What in hell are you doing?” Bill asked.


  “Resting, William, resting.”

  The professor was wearing woolen mittens and a shabby brown sweater over a flannel shirt. The rest of him was covered by a blanket. His shirt was buttoned at the collar, but he wore no necktie. Jay had seen better dressed panhandlers. He had fluffy white hair and a pleasant face and brown eyes. He was an old man, nearly seventy, but his expression was youthful, alert and inquisitive. He was one of the world’s great paleontologists.

  Bill was his assistant at the museum. He and the professor understood each other very well. Bill treated the professor as though he was a small boy. Everybody at the museum did. The professor liked it. He would go back to his laboratory and put on his rubbers when the doorman told him to, and if he forgot lunch, the waitress in the staff’s dining room would interrupt his work to make him eat. Bill watched out for him in the same way.

  “That’s not what I call resting,” he told the professor. “What’s in that box?”

  “A golden mole.”

  Jay looked into the box. There was a small tailless animal with light brown fur in it. It seemed to be asleep.

  “A Chrysochloris?” Bill’s voice sounded surprised. “Here in the mountains?”

  “We found him this morning.”

  Bill turned the animal over. There were big claws on its front feet. They were out of proportion to the body.

  Professor Huntley smiled at Jay. “Like this better than news-papering?” he asked.

  “It’s swell.”

  “It’s harder on the legs.”

  “I don’t know,” Jay said.

  The professor laughed. “Maybe not,” he said. “Got your camera?”

  “Yes.”

  “We should find something for you to photograph. Last night we heard a gorilla bark.”

  Bill looked up from the mole. “Honest?”

  “Yes. He was in the bamboo.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “Like a big dog.”

  “We saw the tracks of one,” Jay said.