Devoured (15 page)

Uman looked quickly across at the boy. But Ackerman hadn’t finished.

‘So, Mr Broderig? Perhaps you were not aware of Professor Mann’s little … let’s just call it an arrangement
, ja?
He keeps her quiet, this little beauty, but not quiet enough.’ Ackerman threw back his head and laughed. ‘I’ll wager you didn’t discuss that over cribbage, when you persuaded Broderig to hire you as his botanical chaperone. How much you, and so many others, like to lift a bit of petticoat.’

It was at precisely those words, Katherine, that I brought him down with one blow. Ackerman fingered his whip but he read the group well. Five men against one. He stumbled away muttering and every now and then spat out gobs of blood, as the rest of us fell quiet. Above our heads, the clouds thickened and another crack shattered across a burnished orange sky. The chief made his offerings but then another crack – nearer this time. The Mias chattered and bore its teeth, grabbing San’s hair. San grinned at me and shrugged his shoulders.

‘The storm is getting closer.’

Uman started hacking down great umbrella leaves to shield us from the rain. The sky blazed cinnabar. A million dying embers trailed across the sky. ‘It won’t last,’ shouted Emmerich above the pounding din. I smiled at the others in camaraderie, but our group, despite the storm, was already splintered. Ackerman stood apart, letting the rain drench him to the skin. Was it a show of bravado? Or something else? The only thing he had bothered to cover was his gun. He had placed it in one of the storage boxes, his heavy boot upon it. Then suddenly, as it had begun, the rain stopped.
The sun broke out beams of yellow through the blackened clouds, which shifted into whispers, then disappeared. The storm was over.

 

After the rains had gone, we settled down for the night, and I must have slept for hours. When I woke, San’s hand was shaking me gently. ‘Mr Broderig. The Mias.’ His eyes had filled with tears.

‘Your baby, San? Is that what you mean?’

‘It’s gone, Mr Broderig.’

‘It can’t have gone, San. Let’s try the riverbank. There are jack there and durian. Maybe your little pet is down there stuffing himself to the brim?’

It was the earliest point of dawn, when the air is fresh and cool. Basking lizards shot like skirmishes into the pools of circling water.

‘We’ll find him, San. I promise.’ The boy looked up at me with half a smile.

It was a little in the distance but I knew what we’d found. Up ahead, at first all I could see was a curtain of insects, hovering around the drooping branch of a belian tree. I swept the flies back with my hand not caring if they bit or poisoned me. The body hung limp from the tree. The little Mias had been slit from ear to ear. Its dead head lolled to one side. He had hung the baby, Katherine. Not content with slicing the ape’s throat, he had hung it from a branch with a rope of rattan. I took my knife and cut the Mias down. And I knew who’d done this. It was Ackerman.

I took the boy’s hand and, stumbling, we wandered back together. Along the way, I found some fallen leaves and wrapped the Mias in a shroud and as we made our way back to the camp, I saw Ackerman still lying on his
pua-kumbu
and I readied myself.

‘Get up.’ My anger needed no announcement. ‘Get up and tell the others what you did. Get up, Mr Ackerman, or God knows, I’ll get you up myself.’

Ackerman stirred. I raised my voice again.

‘Get up you coward, for here he is, gentlemen, the Great White Hunter, and look what he got, a real prize catch. Ah, yes, there’s the knife. Why, you couldn’t even be bothered to clean it and cover your tracks. You are a damned coward, sir. Get up, I say.’

Ackerman pulled himself up. ‘I was doing it a favour, putting it out of its misery,
ja
? But what do you know about this world? You’re just a passing visitor to Borneo. Has your aristocratic family ordered you here to make your way? To check on the colonies? To prove yourself a man? Some of us have a real living to make. The skin will fetch a bit. The bones, too.’

‘Get up, damn you’ was all I could say. His bravado was beyond me.

The rest of the camp was awake now and I could feel their questioning eyes following me as I lifted my gun.

‘For the last time, Ackerman, get up and tell us what you meant by this. The boy has done nothing to you. The skin of this Mias is worthless. This was spite and nothing more.’

Ackerman swaggered before me, the butt of the rifle jutting
ready under his chin, his finger on the trigger. He took a step forward. ‘I wouldn’t point your rifle at me, English boy. I think we both know who’s the better shot. It’s just payment for what you did, Broderig. You might well have slit the beast yourself.’

‘Please, Mr Broderig.’ It was San, pleading with me. ‘Please, let’s just bury the Mias.’

I could have shot Ackerman there and then but something held me back. I knew, when it came to guns, it was an unequal match. That he was the better shot. For all my desire to punish the man, I failed to do it.

‘Come, Benjamin. He isn’t worth it.’

It was Emmerich and I felt my anger abating. It ebbed away like a tide, but something else flooded in to replace it. This was not the trip I had planned. This was not the adventure I had dreamt of when I crossed the seas on
The Advancement.
I hadn’t come to Borneo to prove myself to the likes of Ackerman. An ill-educated lout brought up by some washerwoman stinking of fish in Holland. I was losing myself in the forest, Katherine. I was losing my sense of self-worth.

Uman meanwhile was busying himself, cutting up long pieces of coppery bark, which lay scattered all around our camp. Soon there was enough to make a little box. We laid the Mias inside the coffin, and that done, San placed a little carving on the top. A wooden hornbill, to ward off evil spirits, which were now circling all around us.

‘He’ll not have the baby’s skin,’ whispered Uman. ‘But
no good will come of more bad words. The orang putus is powerful. We need his work to feed our families. You will go back to England, Mr Broderig, and we will not see you again. But Mr Ackerman will always need us. We must accept that.’

Of that, I couldn’t argue. I knew that England would always be my home and that this time in the forest was fleeting. That it was men like Ackerman that ruled the day. So there was nothing else for it. We buried the creature and packed up the camp and set off back to Empugan.

This time, the chief followed the bend of the river. The mighty Simunjan roared. We kept to the high banks above it, slowly and silently, allowing the sound of the jungle to be our words. I was lulled by it. Soothed by it. Admonished by it. Melodic gibbons hurled themselves in acrobatic delight, warning us to stay out of their sight. Proboscis monkeys growled their disapproval. They seemed to know everything, Katherine. What had gone and what would come.

No good comes of evil. And evil was in the air. It smelt stale and bitter and it had rancour on its face. Now the Mias was gone, San was the weakest, and more than once on that walk, I noticed Ackerman finger his whip and curse under his breath if the child fell behind or stumbled.

But then a strange thing happened.

Somehow, we seemed to find ourselves back in the very spot where I had shot my first and last orang-utan. The ground was still crushed from the weight of our boots, and there was a stunted myrtle tree where we had stacked the
cadavers. Nothing had changed here, despite all that had changed for us.

San was the first this time to hear it. The faintest rustle. And then a crack and falling branches, just up ahead of us. Orang-utan. But why this part of the forest, where their brothers and cousins had been slain? Why had they come back here when they were kings of the forest and could go where they pleased?

‘The
tuai rumah
says no more killing today. We must return to Empugan.’ I quite clearly saw Mr Banta nod in agreement and Emmerich bow his head in respect. But before any of us could stop him, Ackerman had pushed past us, gun loaded. He moved like lightning, the
fusil de chasse
cocked and ready. A gentleman’s gun, in a murderer’s hand.

This time I didn’t wait motionless, but as quick as Ackerman, I was after him. I had a plan. I moved with speed. I had two shots. So had he. I think I heard the others calling after me, but the voices soon faded to whispers.

The forest was suddenly dense. I could still hear crashing ahead of me. It was the Mias, I was sure of it. ‘Ackerman,’ I hissed through the spaces in the branches. ‘Ackerman, leave the beast.’ Another rustle, then a foot tread. Orang-utans don’t walk. They stay above the ground and swing through branches. ‘Ackerman,’ this time louder. ‘It’s Broderig.’ No answer came but more rustling. Ape or man? I couldn’t be sure. My head was spinning and then through the dense foliage I saw something move.

A huge male. One shot in the right place and it would be over. This was dangerous and I knew it, but I had hunted at Ashbourne and seen what could happen with two in the fray, guns loaded. Accidents happen and the Mias had to be saved, at any cost, can you see that, Katherine?

I fired my first shot in the air. Howls and shrieks rose into the canopied treetops. The Mias had sprung away from me, which is what I intended, but I kept on going, knowing my real purpose. And then beyond a pile of fallen tree, I saw Ackerman. I saw his gun glinting, its pin-thin shadow taunting me as he aimed straight ahead. ‘Ackerman. Enough.’ He caught my eye and I’m sure he smiled, but then he was gone.

I had one more shot. Breaking back rapier branches with my arms and the butt of my gun, inured to the tears at my skin, springing over roots like a civet. The steaming jungle urging me on. Breathless, I stopped. A rustle again, so close I could smell him. Yes, it was Ackerman, his back to me, readying himself. One more crack and it was certain death for the ape, but I had made my decision. I pulled back the trigger and focused my eyes through the sighting of the gun.

For a split fraction of time, I tasted triumph. But then I tasted dread. I knew what I had done. I had shot a man, in cold blood, to save the Mias.

I stood for just a moment longer but the moaning grew louder. Ackerman had been blasted to hell, a ball through his gut. There in the forest, looking at me, his eyes seeing what I
had seen, knowing what I knew. The Mias had been in his view, I am sure of it, but I had been quicker this time. I had been the better shot.

He was spilling out on the reddening earth, still full, I thought, of marble cake and Machars whisky, for I had watched Ackerman this morning, as the rest of us buried the baby. He was happily swigging single malt and chomping on
boterkoeke,
as if nothing had happened. Well, I thought, now it had.

My confession, Katherine, is not that I shot Ackerman. Hunting incidents are common enough, are they not? They are two a penny in England during the season, and we accept they are part of the chase and the bloodletting; the cycle of country living. What I confess is that I felt nothing. No remorse. No regret. No asking forgiveness of God. Just a void, where answers should be.

I stood over him and watched him fade away. How long it took, I couldn’t say, for the wound was deep and he fought it. I was quite happy to leave him there for the ants and the other jungle scavengers but then the others arrived. It could have been hours. Or minutes. I couldn’t tell. Emmerich, good fellow that he was, insisted we take the body back to the village. Rather fittingly, I thought, we piled his body onto a makeshift stretcher just as we had done with the Mias, pulling the heap behind us.

And I thought it right and proper to call them my apes now, for Ackerman no longer had use of them. I also took
his ledger. The others wanted no part of it. I offered them a percentage of the money, knowing the British Museum would pay me handsomely. San and Uman refused, saying the Mias bodies carried evil spirits and the money would lead to despair. Mr Banta said I should at least give something to the mother in Vlissingen. He said he would tell her the news when he returned to Holland, and this would be sooner now than he had originally planned.

So there you have it. What more can I tell you, Katherine? Perhaps the forest played its part and deceived me. And as I write this, I can still hear Mr Demarest calling out in his devilish fever. His voice is not so unlike Ackerman’s. But these are not the words spoken as Ackerman held on to his guts and the last vestiges of his life. Mr Demarest’s words are what you might expect of a good man, who is dying and must make his peace with his God.