Jane (17 page)

“People die every day in the jungle,” he’d told Father. “Think of all the lives that meat will save. The Mbele will be grateful.” Further, Ral Conrath meant to dig the ivory out of the elephants’ skulls. He was indignant when Father demanded that the Gatling gun not be used again and instructed the bearers to carry it back to the village. It was a grim march. Yabi controlled his agitation for as long as he was able, but when we arrived at the village I could see silent tears rolling down his cheeks. The disgrace, he believed, was all his. It was no surprise that even the meat of two elephants for a starving tribe did nothing to assuage the unnecessary loss of three of its own.

Ral Conrath finally returned wearing a false cloak of remorse and made fulsome apologies to Motobe. The chief was unmoved. Indignant, he had muttered rather loudly, “Ungrateful bastard,” and turned away to set the expedition on its way again. That was Yabi’s cue. Father and he came to stand before the headman. He made the deepest and most humble apologies and begged him to accept a gift, one that could never return his loved ones but something they might trade with and bring some good to his people.

To Ral Conrath’s astonishment, his elephant ivories were carried right past him with great solemnity and laid at Motobe’s feet. There was great satisfaction watching Conrath’s face burn as his trophies were given away. Of course there was nothing he could do.

But in that moment, a second member of the Porter family became this damnable bully’s avowed enemy.

*   *   *

“Deeper, goddamn it!” Ral Conrath shouted at the bearers who were digging holes in the soggy ground.

We had paddled on past the Mbele village, and the river had ended in a mangrove swamp. A mile beyond that it had turned into this marsh, and there Ral had ordered the bearers to bury the metal canoes.

“It is very difficult digging in this soil,” Yabi told him. “It is as much water as earth.”

I could see by Ral Conrath’s expression that he didn’t care for his guide’s tone. It was defiant, his anger boiling just below the surface. It made no difference to Conrath that some of Yabi’s friends and family had died on the elephant hunt, but he was too dependent on the native man to simply order him to buck up and get on with it.

What he said was, “I don’t want to hear any excuses. If the bearers want to get paid, they’ll do as they’re told. Otherwise you can tell them to turn around and go home.”

Without a word, Yabi walked away.

Conrath looked up and caught sight of D’Arnot—certainly another annoyance. The Frenchman, after sobering up on the riverboat, had taken to the bottle again, and sometimes, when D’Arnot was drunk, he would rave on about seeing the “ape-man” in the trees roaring like a lion.

Following Yabi’s lead, the Porter Expedition proceeded on foot. We slogged on, suffering mosquitoes, leeches, and flesh-eating fish that ripped at our calves in the shallow water. Ral stayed at the head of the column and spoke to no one but Yabi. As the two of them pored relentlessly over maps in the soggy camps they set up at night, the guide appeared less and less confident about finding the mountain range.

“That’s all we need,” Ral Conrath groused at Yabi, “a wild-goose chase through hell!”

The terrain had changed into a dense, steaming jungle thicket. There were no discernible paths, either human or animal. Everything was overgrown, and the bearers, with their machetes, hacked away at it, jumpy from the constant worry of poisonous snakes and a vine, they said, that grew a whole foot a day, not to mention the insects that could crawl into your ear at night and eat the eyes right out of their sockets. The diggers and cook were uneasy, too. There was much grumbling, and quarrels were breaking out between them every day. Even I was having doubts about Yabi.

Then the thicket broadened a bit, into a low, level canopy—young trees overhead, giant ferns and large-leafed bananas closer to the ground. Everyone was relieved to see narrow paths to be followed. There were larger animals, too—flying monkeys, anteaters, wild hogs, peacocks. Now in the rare clearing, we could make out—off to the east of us—a single conical peak.

“So is that the mountain range with ‘trees that touch the sky’?” Conrath demanded of Yabi.

He was staring at it with unblinking eyes. “It may be, but I cannot say for certain.”

“Why in the hell not? How many damn mountain ranges can there be out here?”

“We will just continue on and know very soon,” Yabi said. He turned his back on Ral Conrath and continued down the jungle path.

To our surprise, the Mbele Ogowe River surfaced once more. It had been running underground and now emerged as a narrow but swiftly running river. Yabi’s excitement could hardly be contained at its appearance. This was something of the early journey with his father that he had forgotten over the years and now remembered—how the river had “come and gone from sight.” It meant that the Porter Expedition was on the right track.

When the river submerged again, leaving nothing but soggy ground, the party was back to slogging. Everyone took turns falling into holes in the soft earth and getting up covered in foul-smelling muck. Ral Conrath was already on edge when late in the afternoon of the seventh day a fog rose up from the swamp. Not just a normal fog. It reeked of sulfur and decay, and worse, it was so thick that we could not see the fingers of our hands stretched out at arm’s length in front of us.

I was tied to my father’s belt by a rope. He, in turn, was following behind Yabi, carefully finding the guide’s footprints to step into. All sounds were muted, eerie. Everyone was half blind in the dangerous terrain and deathly exhausted.

Suddenly we heard the shrieking.
One of the bearers!
He should have been behind us, but he must be abreast of us. Off to our right.

There was no chance of seeing him in the mist—there was only the shrill sound of agony. Yabi untied himself from Father and quickly disappeared into the fog. My father and I were knee-deep in muck and still tethered together. But we followed Yabi’s shouts and the bearer’s screaming, which was getting weaker and weaker.

When we reached Yabi, he stood with an arm outstretched to keep us from going farther. Beyond was a boiling mud pot, its grey viscous soup having engulfed all but the head and one arm of the unlucky bearer. The man’s eyes were bulging and he was already insensible, but god-awful sounds still emerged from his steaming lips. He slid farther down until nothing showed but his hand, as though he was reaching for rescue. But a moment later it disappeared in the bubbling muck as well.

We stood in place, disbelieving the scene we had just witnessed. But with nothing more to be done, Yabi led us back to what there was of a path. Father spoke in low, worried tones to our guide as Ral Conrath listened.

“We are moving on from here,” Yabi told him. “We are soon coming to Waziriland. You will start your dig and all will be well.”

“Yeah, right
,”
Conrath said, “and I’m the king of Belgium.” Then he called for camp to be made, and no more was said about the loss of the native man.

But in the morning when we woke, one-third of our bearers had disappeared.

Eden

The loss of the carriers would have been much harder to bear had the expedition not soon after passed out of the most miserable of landscapes and arrived at another that could be negotiated with comparative ease. Directly to the east was the quartet of mountains, one large peak and three smaller foothills. The range was blanketed with enormous trees as described by Yabi’s father—ones that with their monstrous size indeed “touched the sky.” There was a preponderance of jagged black rock that had been crushed by the millennia into the richest of all soils, which fed the vegetation. At the base of the range we observed a trail winding up and around the highest of the mountains, but there was no purpose in exploring it. More to the point, we had come to a place of almost excessive beauty.

Yabi was ecstatic, for although there was still no sign of the Waziri tribe, he recognized this location as the farthest point to which his father and he had come all those years ago.

The dense, uniform thicket with its oppressive under- and overgrowth that needed hacking through for every footstep had here broadened out into groves of huge and ancient trees—mangoes, figs, baobabs, rubber, silk-cotton, and mahogany—spread out umbrellalike above spacious clearings and well-worn tracks. In the soaring canopy, wild orchids nestled in the soft moss of heavy limbs. Giant fruit-laden trees of a species no European had ever before seen were hung with thick, ropy vines. There was an almost deafening chorus of birdsong of more varieties than one could possibly count, and though larger animals did not make themselves apparent, one could discern by the wide paths and by the great rustlings, grumblings, and not-so-distant roars that here lived big game of every possible variety. Yabi explained that what we had recently emerged from was “jungle”—new growth. This area was “forest” … and very, very old.

The climate was different as well. Even though it was hot and the vegetation lush, the heat was relatively dry. Certainly there were myriad insects, some astonishing and unique, but we were no longer eaten alive by swarms of voracious mosquitoes and sand flies.

As we drove deeper into the forest, we discovered rock rifts and escarpments, exquisite waterfalls, streams and ponds. Yabi guessed that the Mbele Ogowe River again ran underground here, but Father surmised that the character of the locale was, in fact, informed by its volcanism. He was no expert, but the largest of the peaks had the shape of a volcano, though long extinct.

Yabi, who was “following his nose,” was finding more frequent signs—subtle, except to the most peerlessly trained eyes—of human habitation: nothing as obvious as a footprint, but a tiny hole in a tree trunk where an arrow had pierced and later been extracted; twigs on the ground broken in a certain pattern that meant a man, not an animal, had trodden; the lingering scent of a woman many days after she had gone from her seat on a rocky outcropping. If this was not Waziriland, Yabi assured us, it was very near to it.

Happily, Ral Conrath had suggested that our party make an encampment here and spend a day or two to rest. Everyone quickly agreed, as we were sore and depressed from our many tribulations and needed a peaceful respite before moving on.

All these sights were thrilling to me, and my heart began to lighten. Despite the wretched Mr. Conrath and the tragic start to our expedition, my father and I were finally on a clear path to finding our missing link. I could, for the first time since the disastrous elephant hunt, begin to forgive myself for ending the lives of the two blameless creatures. Sleep, however, was harder to come by than forgiveness. My mind, every fiber of my being, was afire.

We had finally arrived.

*   *   *

I walked slowly along the paths, gazing up at the wondrous canopy, stooping to sink my nose into flowers’ fragrant faces. I stopped and listened to birdsong. Enjoyed the perspiration softening my skin. Following what appeared as the trail of small animals, I found myself at a pool of clear water and, wasting no time, stripped off my clothing and let down my hair. I lowered myself in, slowly, savoringly, watching my breasts float on the surface, sweeping my arms like two wings over the water, and dipped my head back to soak my hair. I heard a rustling in the bush then and found the bottom with my feet, so only my head and shoulders rose above the surface. I looked all around me but saw nothing, no one. All was benign. Still, I felt watched. A moment later Father appeared on the path I’d come from. His expression was, I imagined, all that mine had been while walking along so heavenly a road. When he saw me in the pool and my clothing in a heap, he beamed and sat down on the narrow shore.

“You look like a water nymph, sweetheart. Or Eve in the Garden of Eden.”

“I am! Father, I’ve dreamed of this place. This
very
one. It’s positively primeval. Can’t you imagine that somewhere exactly like this human life could have evolved?”

“I think it could.”

“Turn your back.” He did, and as I rose from the water and dressed, he closed his eyes, slowly inhaling the fragrance of a thousand flowers, and we shared the sweet cacophony of life sounds around us.

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

Father led me down narrow, circuitous paths to an outcropping of black basalt, a shallow cave in one side.

“Stand back.” He barred me from coming too close.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Just wait.”

Suddenly a cloud of hot sulfurous steam shot from the depression and billowed all around us. After a few moments, much of it was sucked back into the vent.

“The earth is breathing!” I exclaimed. I slipped my hand into his. “Thank you, Father. Thank you for this.”

“I’m afraid we have to leave tomorrow. Our dreadful Mr. Conrath assures me that our caves are not much farther.” Father stood and took a more businesslike tone. “We haven’t come for the beauty, you know.”

I smiled up at him and finished the thought. “We’ve come for the beast.”

He pulled me up into a warm embrace. “Or at least his bones.”