by John Fowler
“Oh, yeah.” I sure remembered because I had pointed it out to her.
“Well, I had that wrapped in a tissue, you know, for safe-keeping in my purse, and, well, I ended up losing it.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that.” Funny she should bring that up just then, but I legitimately felt bad for her, knowing it had been a gift for someone.
“I know I must’ve just thrown it out somewhere on my trip back home, thinking it was just trash.” Perhaps she was thinking one of us had found it there in the cabin after she left.
Kanyaragana handed me a steaming cup of coffee with milk, and I accepted a cigarette from Dian as she stretched her pack of Impalas and matches out toward me. She remained standing and turned away to stare out the window as I lit up.
“I know I was making false accusations against Stuart,” she said.
I guessed she wanted a reaction from me, but as usual, I kept my poker face.
“I just wanted to pin something on him because I know he killed Kima.”
I was surprised and a little impressed by her admission of guilt, but remained dumbfounded by her lingering accusation.
“I saw Kima when she got sick, and I went with Stuart to take her to the vet,” I said, surprised she didn’t have direct questions for me about the details of that event—I could tell her the whole damn story.
“I know he killed her through neglect.”
Dian was calm and collected, but I dreaded where she was headed with this. Was she waiting for me to agree? To incriminate Stuart somehow? Spill my guts with some revelatory news she hadn’t yet heard? I sipped my coffee as Dian moved toward the window, staring out to where Toni waited at a table near the gorilla graveyard.
“I can’t stand walking around camp because of all the memories,” she said. I felt more awkwardness with these words. “Without Kima, there’s nothing here for me anymore. She was everything to me.” There was strong emotion rising in her voice, but she tempered it.
I didn’t facilitate a dialogue with her on this, instead, just listening to her as she seemed to be justifying her reasons to no longer be at Karisoke. Finally she changed direction, and focused on a piece of paper on a desk beneath the window.
“I know you tried to help Cindy and I am really and truly grateful for that. I typed up instructions for feeding her and the chickens.” She handed me the paper. As she paraphrased the instructions, I read along, guessing what the camp staff must have thought of Cindy’s dietary rations, indulgent relative to their own meager fare. The men were paid half the cost of Cindy’s daily meat, powdered milk, margarine, and eggs.
Cindy:
200 RWF [Rwandan francs] of meat twice a week
About 400 RWF of rice once a week
One tin of Nido [powdered milk] once a week
One tin of Blue Brand Margarine once a week
Seven eggs a week
If Cindy is going to pull through this condition, her diet is going to have to be improved over what she’s been getting in the past 4 months.
In the morning the man fixes her food, and now with margarine.
In the afternoon I give her a light meal with some glucose in it (bottle is in kitchen) and in the evening before I go to bed another bowl of milk mixed up with an egg and some bread.
She is eating 4 times a day now, and acts as though she really wants the food.
I am putting a combination of medicine (in dining room) on her back and Especially Spectrocin M. Same combination of medicines on her legs.
Please don’t leave her out in the rain, and if you have any extra time, she loves to play and chase sticks, etc.
Chickens:
50 RWF of corn twice a week usually
20 RWF of mtama [sorghum]
I mix rice in their corn box.
One glance at these instructions and I guessed at why Cindy’s weight had diminished. The men in camp were paid one hundred francs a day. Cindy, just a dog to them, was eating twice that amount in her food bowl. The meat, powdered milk, margarine, and eggs were luxury items to the locals. In a country where beans, rice, and potatoes were the mainstay most could afford, the men must have been hard-pressed to place delicacies into a dog’s dish rather than their own.
To oversee this food and medicine regime, I would have to be vigilant or do it myself. I would apply the medicine, but I couldn’t feed Cindy four times a day when I was out in the field with gorillas. Cindy’s daily diet, like Kima’s routine of feeding and brushing must have evolved as part of Dian’s raison d’être while her number of regular visits to the gorillas dwindled down to nothing. In depending on her, Dian’s pets made her feel good about herself. I was surprised to learn years later than Dian always wanted to have children, that she always envisioned getting married and having a family. Somehow, despite her parents’ divorce, her father’s suicide, and her unhappy childhood, Dian thought she would be part of a family of her own.
Now in her forties, as despair must have replaced hope, pets like Cindy and Kima had become her family. The gorillas too, had become her extended family, but Dian no longer made the trek to see them, instead living with them vicariously through the notes of the interloping, but necessary, students she allowed into her sanctum.
As I read over these instructions, the sound of brisk boot steps rounded the corner of the cabin, approaching at a fast clip along the outside wall. Dian turned to see. The top of a white man’s light brown hair bounced past the high bay of windows along Dian’s living room. I couldn’t see well, from my seated position, but Dian did from where she stood. Her reaction was sudden and violent.
“OYA! OYA! OYA!” Dian wailed, the Rwandan word for “No!”
As the figure rounded the next corner and approached the open door, Dian rushed to slam it shut. “OYA!” She wasn’t fast enough.
“Whaaa . . . ?” Ian Redmond couldn’t finish his words as his big grin turned to a look of shocked puzzlement when the door slammed his shoulder. Dian turned her face and backed away, holding her hand out as if the young man was a flame too hot to approach.
Ian stepped farther inside, cheeks flushed from the hike, mouth open in bewildered astonishment at Dian’s behavior. Recently in from England for a brief stint training park guards at the base of the mountain, he had obviously planned a happy surprise reunion with Dian. But she was hardly receptive. Standing there, he looked like an English schoolboy that just got busted for troublemaking.
“Ian, you know how I feel!”
“What did I do?”
“You joined THEM!” Dian turned to spit on the floor.
“Them?”
“OYA!” Dian turned away again, wincing as if in pain.
“I didn’t join anybody.” Ian stood half inside as Dian laid into him about working with her archnemeses Amy Vedder and Bill Weber after they had set up their own camp at the base of the mountain for gorilla tourism, in direct conflict with Dian.
“Dian . . . c’mon . . .” Ian attempted a smile. “I was just trying to help our furry friends.”
In the silent awkward standoff that followed, Dian kept her face turned away from Ian, who stood frozen in the doorway. I wished I were out the door and off to Nunkie’s Group with Toni.
Finally Ian spoke.
“I knew you were back, and I just came up to see if there was anything I could do to help you.”
Dian turned to look at his face.
“Eht mwah, humwaaah . . .” Dian chided in her gorilla language, “I was sooo disappointed in you, Ian. Really and truly.”
“But if you want me to go, I will.”
Dian slumped into the chair behind her, keeping her eyes on Ian, sizing him up.
Slowly, Ian walked farther into the house, as if the wild animal in the room had been tamed, his eyes beginning to wander around the living area, a look of nostalgia on his face.
“I see you still have my mobile,” he said, pointing to a cluster of tin can lids hanging from a stick suspended from the ceiling.
Dian’s f
ace softened. “You gave that to me for Christmas.”
Ian smiled.
Dian turned and pointed to a small framed card on the wall with a picture of mountains and a short saying. “I still have that too.”
Ian recited it for her: “When one is in the mountains, one forgets to count the days.”
“I’ve always found that to be true,” Dian said, managing a smile. Ian’s foot was more than just in the door, it was right back into Dian’s heart.
“Oh Ian . . . how’s your hand?”
“It’s alright, I suppose.” Ian raised his left arm so Dian could better see his hand.
“Let me look at it.” Dian reached out, and Ian moved into the living area to sit down across from her and me. I had heard about this injury, and watched as Dian examined it. His wrist had been mangled, and a heavy scar ran from it up into his palm. Dian ran her fingers over the scar, examining it thoughtfully, flexing his hand to judge the movement. Two years earlier, while out cutting traps for Dian, Ian had run into poachers. One had punctured his wrist with a spear before fleeing, badly severing tendons and nerves. I knew Dian saw Ian’s wound as the ultimate symbol of devotion and dedication to her cause.
“We captured some poachers after that.” Dian said, grinning eerily.
“Yes . . .” Ian replied.
“I wasn’t holding the pliers . . .” Dian continued grinning, partially crossing her eyes with a sinister demented look. Ian grew quiet and I joined him in his uneasiness. Dian was telling something I thought I wasn’t supposed to know. But by then I’d heard the stories of Dian with the local Chef des Brigades, Paulin Nkubili, a sort-of sheriff from Ruhengeri, torturing poachers. Someone had reputedly used pliers to squeeze fingertips to get these men to give names of their accomplices.
“Remember Munyarukiko?”
Ian stayed quiet, letting Dian do the talking.
Dian sneered, with a sinister grin. “He died.” She held the demented look, giving me flashbacks of the night before. Ian remained awkwardly quiet and stared at the floor.
By that time, I had heard the hearsay of Dian asking her head porter Gwehandegaza to use sumu on her most reviled enemy poacher, Munyarukiko. Now the evidence was before me. The camp staff told me that when this poacher died of natural causes, Gwehandegaza quickly accepted full credit for his death, telling Dian that he took care of Munyarukiko, as she had requested. No wonder she was devoted to this head porter of hers whom the rest of us, including camp staff, mistrusted. The men said Gwehandegaza was then paid his ill-gotten gains for this perceived service. He well knew how to maneuver and extract from his boss. She had even bought him the moped he used to travel into Kigali for us on market days.
And so it came to be that Dian, in her own mind, had taken a contract out on a Rwandan enemy. And she was proud of it. Her happiness to be a hit-woman troubled me further. Our camp director, in effect, showed she was capable of contract murder, and thought that she, in fact, had carried one out.
Now Ian, shifting in his seat, seemed as uncomfortable as me. In the awkward silence that followed, Dian changed the subject to current affairs, bringing her long-lost friend up to date on her plans to return to the States, opinions on the present state of Karisoke, and her resentment of the neighboring Mountain Gorilla Project. Intermittently she playfully chided Ian with gorilla sounds: eht mwah . . . huummwah . . . just to remind him of how disappointed she had been in him.
While the two were catching up, Dian let me rejoin Toni, still waiting patiently outside, and the two of us headed into Zaire and the upper slopes of Mount Visoke to search for Nunkie’s Group again. I knew I was in for another long day in the field, with a hard climb ahead, and an irascible silverback screaming and charging at me if I found him, but I felt relief walking out of Karisoke for the day, thankful that Ian provided some new distraction for Dian.
Toni and I failed to find Nunkie on our hike, instead running into the silverback Peanuts and his Group 4 high on Mount Visoke. With our delayed start and long climb, we didn’t return to camp until nearly sundown. I expected Dian to be frantic at our late return, but instead she was in high spirits. In the aftermath of Mademoiselli’s volatile return to camp, combined with Stuart’s unexpected flight, she must have felt like she did after Carolyn left, worried about what was being said about her in the civilized world below. Who has Stuart spoken to by now? What has he told them? Same as then, she hosted a damage-control dinner for Peter and me—with her newly redeemed Ian included in the feast. I surmised this was her displacement behavior, her way to make things feel better in camp, as if nothing was wrong and all was jolly-good, even rapport with us students. Dian’s life and work had become a cycle of angry outbursts and emotional breakdowns, fueled by intolerance and paranoia, followed by damage control to the best of her ability. Like faithful dogs, we students were at least in it for the food. And the beer!
Kanyaragana brought Peter, Ian, and me cold Primus, while Dian emerged from her bedroom where she’d downed another shot of Johnnie Walker Red Label from the bottle on her desk. Her characteristic throat-clearing, “ahem” gained frequency with every return visit to the bedroom and in direct proportion to her increasing inebriation.
“You guuuys . . . Ian . . . it’s so good to see you again! Ahem. Reeeally and truuuly!” she exulted. While we chowed down on hot plates of spaghetti, Dian began telling us about her trip to Japan, where she had been treated like a celebrity.
“Before they showed the film, I gave a short talk at the podium, and . . . you guys, they were so nice to me . . . everyone clapping and cheering, and the Japanese are so polite. Reeeally and truuuly! Bowing and nodding to everything.”
I wanted to ask if Peter and I were shown in the film, but she never mentioned this. Her effusive soliloquy soon took on a somber tone, as she described the footage.
“When they showed the baby, after Icarus nearly killed her . . .” Dian adopted a dramatic expression looking toward the ceiling, pausing until water welled up in her eyes—willing it, I thought. Peter, Ian, and I grew quiet until Dian finished describing the film, and I flashed back to those nightmarish moments in the hagenia tree when Dian literally pulled the baby from the clutches of the other gorillas.
“Ahem . . . I know she wanted to be a gorilla again,” Dian surmised with a swallow of beer at the end of her story.
When Kanyaragana asked in Swahili if I’d like some more food, Dian began to translate for me.
“John speaks Swahili now.” Peter interjected.
“Eht mmmwaaahhh . . .” Dian growled, scowling at me. I knew she had struggled with learning to communicate with her staff for years, so I didn’t show her my new skills. Instead, she changed the subject.
“You guys, because word is spreading from the base of the mountain . . .” Dian took a deep breath, and continued in a normal tone, “that I tried to kill Stuart, I’m going to have to be on my best behavior during the rest of my stay.”
None of us knew quite how to respond to this, and we remained silent in the awkwardness, knowing her man Gwehandegaza must have already gotten word to her with something to this effect, whether factual or fabricated.
“Now, you guys, back in the States, I’ve had someone helping me,” she continued, “and they tell me that sometimes, sometimes you have to step outside yourself.” She gestured her right hand out to her side, “and look back at yourself to see how you’re acting.” Was she referring to the advice of a psychotherapist? It’s about time, I thought, seeing the blatant irony in Dian giving us advice on how to keep one’s bad behavior in check.
Ian stayed overnight in my cabin, and made the hike down the mountain the next morning, to resume his temporary stint training new park guards. During her remaining days in camp, Dian busied herself in her cabin, placated by my daily attempts to locate Nunkie, and my observations of Group 4. Each night after my long hikes with one of the camp’s gorilla trackers, she beckoned me into her cabin for news, handing me a tall cold Primus. The alcohol did help dull the
angst in the room, but there was a lot of angst to dull. Usually, I only had news of old gorilla trails and maps of former nest sites. Peter continued his daily visits to Group 5, and Dian interacted very little with him. I had obviously been moved up the ranks in favor, but felt very uncomfortable in that spot, knowing how quickly her favor could turn, and how vehement it could become. I was well aware by then that those closest to her were the biggest targets.
The day before she departed, Dian was happy when I brought back news of a long encounter with Nunkie’s Group, and a report of all of those gorillas being in good health, despite being deep into Zaire where they were vulnerable to poachers. That same night, Mademoiselli took a break from packing to visit me in my cabin. Her all too familiar and distinct, “ahem” gave away her drunken state before she even knocked on my door. Seeing she was tipsy but composed, I let her inside. Cracking a smile, she stood in front of my desk where I resumed a seat at my typewriter.
“Ahem . . . I’ve decided to take Cindy back with me,” she said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”
“Well, I guess that is a good idea . . .” I wanted to say more, to converse with her, but the fear of castigation I developed from my first days with her remained.
“There’s nothing left here for me now.” Dian’s tone turned somber. “And, I want you to know, I really appreciate all you’ve done.” Again, I didn’t know what to say. As hard as it had been to take all her berating, it felt just as hard to deal with this semblance of appreciation, especially on the heels of her going “bonkers” just days before. I knew better than to trust her.
Dian held out her left hand, stretching it toward me. The awkwardness for me was overwhelming, but I had to act. Sheepishly, I took her hand in mine. What I thought would be a handshake became a hand-hold . . . as she lingered, locking eyes on mine. I wanted to look away.
“I want you to know that I am your friend,” Dian said. Continuing her stare, water began welling in her eyes. She was waiting for my response. The woman who stole film, read our mail, tortured poachers, and took out contracts on enemies was asking me to be her friend. Does she really mean friend? I needed to respond in some positive way, if only as displacement behavior. I had half planned this upon her departure, and now needed to follow through to ease the awkwardness.
