by John Fowler
“She’s crucifying me!” he lamented, completely lost in his rant. “She’s crucifying all of us.”
“Why does she want the guns?” I asked.
“I know what she’s going to do. She’s going to count the bullets . . . find one missing . . . and accuse me of shooting Kima.” Stuart scarcely listened to me in the state he was in, and appeared more to be talking to himself as if thinking out loud.
“Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what she’s going to do once she’s convinced herself that I killed Kima.” Stuart heaved his bulging backpack onto his shoulders and stood upright. He took a deep breath. “I tried to talk to her rationally, about camp, and what’s been going on . . .” His eyes were wide and fixed staring into space. “And she just kept saying, ‘Stuart, where are the goddamn guns? Give me the fucking guns!’”
“Why? What’s she gonna do with the guns?”
“Then I see a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker on the table.” With a labored shrug, Stuart squared his loaded backpack, and grabbed the door latch. “I’m not gonna stay around here and find out.”
At that, he disappeared into the darkness, the cabin’s door slamming behind him. His quick heavy boot steps trudged around the cabin and faded down the trail into the forest. Stuart was gone.
At the edge of camp, the trail leading into the forest and down the mountain was poorly defined and intermingled with a crosshatching of trails made by the buffaloes that foraged in the camp at night. There was no well-worn footpath in the series of small grassy meadows that led away from Karisoke to the narrow path down the mountain. During the daylight we used visual cues to find where the path picked up on the other side of each clearing. Certain trees or fallen logs served as indicators to guide the way to the next section of trail. As many times as I had been down the trail, there were points at which I sometimes strayed a little off the path and had to retrace my steps.
Field guides and tourist brochures report that Cape buffaloes are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa with numerous human deaths caused by them each year. Their forest cousins that grazed at night in the meadows in and around Karisoke have the reputation of being even more aggressive. Stuart was motivated with enough fear to flee down the mountainside in pitch darkness where pugnacious forest buffaloes filled the grassy clearings and flanked the trails like Cerberus at the gates of hell.
Stuart, the human buffer zone between me and Dian, was suddenly gone—the guy who had dealt with Dian so masterfully it seemed, and who had, with ease, achieved what I could not—Dian’s acceptance, friendship, and support. I had originally wanted and expected that kind of friendly relationship with Dian, but after enduring her ceaseless hostility toward me, I found comfort in Stuart taking all of her attention, and marveled at their unflinching relationship. Stuart had not only won Dian over from the onset, he actually enjoyed his relationship with her, “But I still love the bitch,” he had once said to me after an argument with Dian. Now Stuart was gone. Dian’s brazen confidant, in a matter of moments, had been reduced to a frightened exile.
Feeling anxious and paranoid—and remembering Dian’s nocturnal ambushing of our dinner gatherings—I secured the deadbolt on my door and went to each window checking again for gaps, making sure that not even the tiniest space remained to allow someone outside to see me. In the quiet that followed, I thought about what might be next for Peter and me. Dian had demanded her guns. What would I do if I heard a gunshot in the dark? I found myself listening keenly for any sounds. The bushbucks had long since ceased their dusk-time barking, and I could imagine the sounds of snorting forest buffaloes along the mountain trail as Stuart crashed down through the dark forest, looking for the bottom, and the solid ground of anywhere but Karisoke Research Center.
Selfishly, I was relieved that Peter’s cabin was between Dian’s and mine. Wasn’t she more likely to go to Peter next with any questions she might have? Dian had known him much longer than me. Or maybe she’ll just slip into a drunken slumber and by morning be hung over and less volatile. We could speak to her then, in the daylight. But would she survive this night? Would any of us?
Many times in the past Dian had simply ostracized her students, not speaking to them at all, but instead communicating by notes that Kanyaragana or Basili delivered as if everyone at Karisoke lived miles apart. I found myself hoping for this and wishing Dian would slip quietly back to Cornell University to resume her attempt at an academic career, with only a note left behind.
I hadn’t heard any footsteps approach, but my heart sank at the sudden sound of knocking on my door. A silent being waited there for my response. At first I remained quiet, pulse pounding in my ears. Terrible moments with gorillas had not been more frightful: neither Nunkie charging down the mountain screaming his deafening primal scream, nor Beetsme standing over me beating his chest in fury had been more disturbing.
“Yesss?” I said, trying to steady the tremor in my voice.
“Mademoiselli anataka wewe.” I recognized Kanyaragana’s voice saying Dian wanted to see me. My heart sank, and a knot formed in my stomach. I had to pause for a few seconds letting my gut wrench and settle before opening the door.
“Why?” I asked in Swahili, slowly opening the door and looking for clues on Kanyaragana’s face.
“Sijui.” Kanyaragana did not know why. His face was calm and his voice was normal, but just then he might as well have been Igor to Dr. Frankenstein. Didn’t Kanyaragana witness what had just happened between Dian and Stuart? He doesn’t speak English, would he understand the context of their argument? Did he know Stuart had fled? I tried to surmise all possible scenarios in my mind at once.
“Stuart teremuka,” I said, telling Kanyaragana that Stuart had gone down the mountain.
Kanyaragana stood waiting patiently for me in my doorway, but I hesitated to leave my cabin. Would it be worse if I didn’t go to her now? Would she just come down here? I also didn’t like the thought of sitting there, not knowing exactly where Dian was, or what she was up to. Had she found a gun? Would she sober up and walk down later? Should I wait outside my cabin and ambush her? My mind was racing.
“Where’s Peter?” I asked Kanyaragana.
I felt a small sense of relief when Kanyaragana said Peter was with Dian, knowing that I wouldn’t be dealing with her alone. I asked Kanyaragana what Peter and Dian were doing, but he said he didn’t know.
With my thoughts jumbled, I followed Kanyaragana out into the darkness. His flashlight faintly illuminated the trail. As we neared Peter’s cabin, buffalo snorted and trotted in different directions, their black hides camouflaging them against the night as always. At that moment, they seemed like a harmless sideshow compared to what I imagined lay ahead.
Kanyaragana and I passed Peter’s cabin and it was dark. Up ahead, a light from Dian’s house glowed ominously, and as we approached I stopped, straining to hear any sound. Kanyaragana slowed and turned to look back at me. His calm demeanor encouraged me onward. When we reached the steps to the cabin’s back door, I paused again and listened, faintly hearing Peter’s voice coming from Dian’s bedroom, straining to hear any sign of conflict. Dian’s weakened voice, barely audible, debilitated by alcohol and emotional exhaustion, emanated from within. Kanyaragana opened the door to the kitchen and I followed him inside. A glow from a Coleman pressure lantern in Dian’s bedroom spilled out into the living and dining areas, washing the straw-colored floor in a fan of pale light. The rest of the large room was hidden in giant shadows.
Kanyaragana stayed in the kitchen while I moved from dining to living area, running a plan through my head of how to grab a gun from Dian’s hand. Approaching the doorway to the bedroom, I could see the profiles of Peter and Dian, both seated on the floor. Their voices were quiet and calm. Dian’s voice was weepy and she cleared her throat repeatedly with the faint “ahem” that confirmed she was still quite drunk.
I stepped into the light of the bedroom.
“Stuart’s gone
,” Dian said, closing her eyes and shaking her head as if she was hearing voices and trying to ward them off.
“I know,” I admitted, squatting on the floor next to Peter. “He came by and got his things.” Dian opened her eyes wide. They were red and watery.
“He said I was crucifying him,” Dian said, looking aghast at the very thought while staring beyond Peter and me. “Crucifying him! Oya! Oya!” Our boss squared herself a little and flushed with anger. “And he’s taken things from camp. The binoculars are missing, and I can’t find one of the Olivettis.”
“He loaned one to Jean-Pierre,” I said. “Jean-Pierre needed to type some letters and asked Stuart if he could borrow it.”
“Do you know where the guns are?” Peter asked me, “Dian’s been looking for them, and I don’t know where they are.” Because Stuart had been away so much lately, he had put me in charge of the guns and money, and I was quite familiar with what went where. Both guns and cash had always been as safe and secure as Dian had kept them, but she then sure seemed convinced otherwise.
“They’re in their box,” I said.
“We looked, and couldn’t find them,” said Peter, pointing to an open wooden box on the floor beside Dian. It was the cash box. I looked just past Dian into the shadows of the room, directly at the small wooden container tucked under the bedside table, against one wall within arm’s reach behind Dian. Either in the emotionally charged chaos of the evening, or because Stuart didn’t want guns added to the equation, the box remained closed and locked.
Quickly, I assessed the situation: Peter is here, Kanyaragana is in the other room, Dian is weak and intoxicated. I took the plunge.
“It’s right there,” I said, pointing just behind her.
Peter moved the lantern to illuminate the area by the bed as I crawled behind Dian and retrieved the box. Dian dragged the container in front of her and with the camp’s ring of keys opened the small lock. As she lifted the hinged lid, I thought about what I would do if she picked up one of the guns. Instead, Dian only stared down at her pistols, one Walther and one Beretta. The bullets were there too, but Dian didn’t count them.
Dian closed the lid of the box and stared at it. Peter and I watched awkwardly as Dian closed her eyes and shook her head slightly as if adjusting her thoughts.
“I’m going to have two of the men sleep here in the cabin tonight,” she said, “so that I don’t do anything crazy.” Dian lifted her head and looked at Peter and me through red watering eyes. “So that I have witnesses that I don’t do anything crazy.”
Peter and I nodded and sat on the floor with Dian, trying to recall where items were that Dian had thought were stolen. Stuart may have left a pair of boots at Jean-Pierre’s that he had forgotten to bring back on his last trip. He had also loaned a pair of binoculars to Jean-Pierre, but we hadn’t considered them stolen.
Dian had gone “bonkers” as she called it, and now sat in the aftermath, near catatonic in her over-expenditure of emotions. Late into the night, Peter and I sat with Dian, reassuring her that things were okay, until the pressure lantern, on its last fumes, hissed and sputtered and dimmed.
TWENTY-TWO
DIAN’S FRIEND
The morning after Stuart’s exile, I longed to climb down the mountain too, and wander off into the lowlands away from Karisoke, to the respite of Kigali and gracious embassy hosts. I wanted to teremuka as we learned to say, the Swahili word meaning literally “go downhill” and figuratively “get off the mountain.” Stuart had gone teremuka. Part of me envied his escape. I had gone to sleep pondering how far our colleague had gotten in the darkness. No one set out from camp at night. It was crazy, but that’s what he’d been driven to. I believed he must’ve eventually made it down the trail, but where to then? And in the dark no less! Bill and Amy were gone, and no one had yet taken occupancy of their metal hut, locked, secured, and guarded at the base of Mount Visoke. I surmised he was headed for Jean-Pierre’s Plantation de Gasiza, a long and tortuous hike across the lowlands, through the shambas, to the base of Mount Muhavura not far from the Ugandan border.
I wanted to linger in bed, dreaming of being teremuka with the rest of the world, but knew I needed to make an attempt to find Nunkie’s Group before Dian asked me to. I had to pull myself together. That would be Dian’s next big issue: Where’s Nunkie? Despite being seen again in July, after his longtime status as missing, the silverback had continued to make himself scarce, skirting the higher elevations of Mount Visoke to avoid poachers and competition with other gorillas. With Stuart gone, I would have to be the one trying to keep up with this evasive silverback. His travails had kept him nervous and difficult to approach.
Dian had learned much about the formation of gorilla family groups from the irascible Nunkie. This silverback had first appeared in the Karisoke study range in 1972 as a lone male who didn’t match any of the existing noseprints Dian had thus far collected. Until then, Dian had not known of a gorilla traveling by itself in the forest, and she was at first in disbelief when a student reported the interloper in the proximity of Group 5. Nunkie was alone, but not to be lonely for long. He had come a-courtin’.
While mighty Beethoven’s females proved to be a challenge, Nunkie managed to lure away two consorts from the less-experienced Uncle Bert of Group 4. Within a year, two of Group 4’s lower-ranking females, Papoose and Petula, jumped ship to run off with this bold new rogue. Within another year, Petula gave birth to a female, and Papoose next gave birth to a male. While Nunkie went on to take females from other groups, a new gorilla family had formed right in the Karisoke research range. Sort of . . .
Nunkie traversed in and out of our study range, an area of about twenty-five square kilometers. He had taken females, but he hadn’t taken the choice feeding areas of the mountain’s lower altitudes and saddle area surrounding camp, still held jealously by the other established silverbacks and their groups. Nunkie’s struggles had left him protective and defensive, even to us well-intended researchers. Visiting him meant finding him, and finding him meant a hard climb up Mount Visoke, or well into Zaire, rewarded by repeated charges and spine-chilling screams. He stayed between me and his females, scarcely allowing me to see any other behaviors, or even glimpse and count his harem and offspring when I wasn’t laid out on the ground whimpering respectfully.
But Dian would be featuring Nunkie in her next National Geographic article, and she needed someone to keep up with him for the most up-to-date data and his current story. Of course, Nunkie’s travels into poacher area only fueled her fear that they would again make more casualties of her gorillas. With Dian back in camp, I knew best to make yet another foray out to Nunkie a top priority.
Young Toni would be my tracker that morning, and I joined him by the fire pit outside my cabin. In single file, we trudged along the trail toward the western end of camp, and Dian’s cabin. I wondered what he had learned of the night before. Although my Karisoke Swahili had blossomed into a fluency, this young tracker still hadn’t yet learned much of it to communicate in camp. The two of us walked in silence.
As we approached Dian’s cabin, I scanned through the trees for any sign of her. I recalled her late mornings after a bender, when I waited outside to pick up the baby gorilla, until she unapologetically appeared at the door in her dingy men’s long johns, bagging at the knees. Surely she had slept in late the day after last night’s traumatic events. Aware of Toni’s heavy footsteps, I tried to quiet mine, nearing the house to round the corner and slip away quietly toward the meadow beyond.
Tap. Tap. TAP!
Did I hear something? Keep moving Toni . . .
I tried to keep up the pace as we passed by the cabin, hoping I hadn’t really heard the rapping, which shifted to the next window on the south end, where the trail ran right beside the house. Tap tap tap! A muffled voice followed, sounding through the glass. “John! John!”
There she was, reaching for the window latch and loosening it. I stopped, stifling a deep sigh. With a creaking so
und, the frame opened on its hinges and Dian’s head was in plain view.
“Uh . . . John . . . Are you heading out?” Dian asked in a soft, plaintive voice.
“Yes, Toni and I are on our way out to Nunkie’s Group.”
“Oh, good.” A sunbeam through the hagenias shone directly on Dian’s face and hair, and I was surprised to see she had regained the rested look I had seen when she first appeared on the trail the day before. She looked composed. Despite the late, anguish-filled night before, she had been up a while, and was already dressed in a clean flannel shirt. In the low-angled morning sun, her new hair color glowed, showing its reddish tint. From her open, white window frame, she looked like a quaint, and very tall, English country lady.
“I don’t want to keep you, but . . . uh . . . could you come inside?”
“Um . . . yeah . . . sure.” What else could I say?
Toni nodded and wandered ahead to the picnic table by the gorilla graveyard. I continued on around to the same side of the cabin, and Dian greeted me at her door, beckoning me inside.
I felt the same nervous tension around her I always had, since meeting her for the first time in Kigali—on guard and cautious of what was next. Dian offered me a seat in her living area, leaving the door open to the warming outside air.
“Kanyaragana,” she summoned, in her emotionless breathy voice, “bring John some coffee.” Her devoted houseboy, back in his old routine, peeked his head around the kitchen doorframe with an amused and knowing smile; he had seen and heard so much drama unfold from his view from that kitchen. I sat, leaning my panga on the goatskin chair and sliding my backpack to the floor, while Dian remained standing.
“I’m just getting some things together before I leave again.” A few boxes were in the middle of the floor, papers stacked here and there. “You know that gold piece I bought at the craft shop in Kigali?”
