Jane (22 page)

There
was
something that could be done to quench the fire that had gutted me. To temper the fury that racked my soul. There might be no civilized laws to bring suit against him. No prisons to hold him. No powers to seek redress of his unconscionable acts. But Ral Conrath was not invisible. And he believed me dead. When I returned to my world, I would find him. Find him and avenge the betrayal of my family. So I must be strong and I must be patient. I must bide my time in this forest. Cool my passions. Formulate my plans. My immediate future was more than uncertain. But the villain’s greed would devour him in the end. Of this I was certain.

I lifted my head and saw Tarzan’s steady gaze upon me, and I breathed the first painless breath in a long while. My beloved father was lost, but here before me was a true and trusted friend.

I reached out my hand and he lifted me up. I saw eagerness in his face. Some wordless purpose. And suddenly I found that I wished more than anything to know Tarzan’s mind.

“Come,” he said, and together we climbed Sumbula.

Mothers and Fathers

Now I followed Tarzan up the mountain path to the site of my near demise. With news of death below me, I had no desire to visit its memory above me, but Tarzan was oddly determined to ascend. I had asked him to explain his urgency, but he’d just gestured his frustration. Many times he had no words to make his thoughts clear.

Patience,
I reminded myself. I thought that perhaps a lack of it might become my great nemesis here in the forest while, conversely, assimilation and education my greatest desire. Was this place not like Cambridge, a college of sorts? The University of Nature. And Tarzan my professor of all subjects.

Even in the depths of my mourning, I was forced to smile.

He had wanted to carry me on his back up the trail, but I had insisted upon walking, for some of the time at least, to trudge up the incline on my own steam. Tarzan was unnaturally strong, but he was, after all, human, and there were limits to his capabilities. The trees here were so enormous, the circumference of their limbs so large, and the distance between them so great, they made brachiation impossible. He signaled that if he took me high enough into the branches he could run along them with me on his back as we had done in Eden. But I wished to begin the recovery of my strength at once. I knew this would test me severely, and I wondered, as my thighs burned and my breath became short and labored, if I was up to the task.

Well, I
must
be up to it. That was all there was to it.

It had been a long and arduous climb, but finally we arrived at the site of the incident—the clearing Ral had hacked away to make room for his surveying equipment, all of it askew on the ground. But there—I could hardly bear to lay eyes on it—was evidence of the most terrifying violence imaginable. The picked-clean bones of the porter were already bleaching in the sun. The leopard’s corpse, the great beast that had very nearly killed me, was sprawled not ten feet away. With its thick spotted hide, it had weathered the scavengers and the elements far better than its human counterpart had done. Only with the sight of it did the vision come clear to me what Tarzan must have risked to save my life—the Bowie sunk to its hilt in the man-eater’s flesh, its snarling fury, writhing and clawing, its great jaws snapping at Tarzan’s face. He would have seen the mad eyes, long bloodied fangs. Smelled the hot, rank breath. Felt its razor claws inflicting tears in his skin.

But what had driven him to risk life and limb for a stranger, an interloper in his world?

A thought came to me. I asked him in words and signs.
Did you see me and the bad white-skin here?
Tarzan nodded yes. So he had witnessed my angry confrontation with Ral Conrath.
Did the bad white-skin see you?
Tarzan shrugged at that.

“Sord tar-zan,”
he began.
“Goro hota bomba et-nala!”
I did not know the words, but by the ferocious look twisting his features and his harsh gesture down the path we had just come from, I knew he meant “he left you here to die!”

Tarzan picked up the tripod and gazed questioningly at it. “Why
sord tar-zan
come here?” he asked.

I was rendered silent.
How on earth could I explain the Belgians? Their greed and cruelty. A trade route through Eden?

“
Many
sord tar-zans
come here,” was the best I could manage.

“Men-nee?”

I was lost for words, exhausted by the climb and agonized by the loss of my father. I conceded defeat. An explanation of Leopold’s legions would have to wait.

Now Tarzan strode purposefully to the big cat’s remains and knelt down beside it. He laid his hands upon the leopard’s skull and was still for a long moment, softly muttering words I imagined were a prayer of sorts. Then he lifted the heavy back pelt—dark gold with round black rosettes—rotted through with numerous holes, and threw it aside. The belly skin had disappeared altogether, certainly consumed by armies of ants and microbes that lived in the rich soil.

The leopard’s skeleton was now revealed, and I found myself drawn to it, as I had been drawn to my first human cadaver. I knelt at Tarzan’s side. He looked searchingly at me, but I was too curious at what lay below to attempt communication. I feasted my eyes on the long body and shortish legs, the massive skull with its pointed occiput and four great fangs. I touched one of the large flaring scapulas and moved a hind leg bone in its socket through its range of motion. The segmented tail, too, held me fascinated. But Tarzan had come with a purpose and, finally losing patience with my examination, grasped the spinal column and tossed the clattering skeleton away. Then he began raking through the dirt beneath the carcass. With a satisfied grunt he picked out of the soil an object that fit easily in the palm of his hand. He brushed it off and rubbed it on his loincloth. Then he held it up in front of me. The sight of so common an item in so uncommon a setting stunned me.

It was a large gold locket, a perfect oval, worked with fine filigree, hanging from a broken gold chain. This could belong only to Tarzan. He’d known exactly where to look. Clearly, the bauble meant much to him, and he had lost it as he’d been saving my life.

Now he was dangling it before me, insisting that I take it. This I did and examined the thing more closely. It was beautifully made, as was the thick chain, and by the weight of them felt like solid gold. It was an expensive piece. I continued cleaning the locket with the short skirt of my cotton garment. Soon it was gleaming in the sun.

“This is a locket,” I said, pointing to it.

Tarzan parroted me. Once he had learned a word and spoken it one time, it never needed repeating.

“It is pretty.” I had never attempted teaching him an adjective before. Making an expansive gesture with my hands, I said
“vando,”
his word for “good.” But this was an imperfect description. I saw a white flower entwined in a nearby bush and, pointing, said “pretty.” A red-and-black insect fluttering past I called by the same word. But this, too, was confusing, for the word for “flower” was
osha
and the insect
zut-tat.
Tarzan, I could see, was listening intently, concentrating deeply.

“Pretty,” I said again and ran my hand slowly across the least chewed portion of the discarded leopard skin. Then suddenly, as if one of Mr. Edison’s electric lightbulbs had been switched on, understanding flared in Tarzan’s eyes.

“Prit-tee,” he said and touched the flower in the bush. “Prit-tee,” he repeated, pointing to a red-and-yellow sunbird that had lit on a branch nearby.

I smiled broadly at the success.

Then he reached out impulsively and touched my cheek. “Prit-tee,” he said.

I swallowed hard.

“Yes. Good.” Happily taken aback and a bit flustered, I began fussing with the locket. Its clasp was sticky, and I was relieved to have something upon which to redirect my attention from Tarzan’s unexpected praise. It took a good bit of fiddling with my fingernail to pop open the latch. But when I looked down at the tiny photographs in their oval frames, I felt my jaw drop.

On the right was the portrait of a lovely young woman stylishly coiffed and dressed in the fashion of twenty years previous. On the left was a fine gentleman in a starched collar and frock coat, his gleaming black hair short and parted in the middle.

Good Lord, I was staring at an image of Tarzan!
I looked back and forth between the two, just to be certain.

There was no explanation save one. The man was his father and the woman his mother. I looked up and found Tarzan puzzling over the locket, but it was not the photographs that held him rapt. It was the latch. He took the necklace from me and, ignoring its contents, began opening and shutting it again and again. It occurred to me that the young man had no idea that the locket owned such capabilities, and that he had never before seen the inside of it.

Gently I took it back from him, spread the two halves wide, and held it before him. Finally he took notice of the pictures. He squinted at them with first a blank stare and then utter bewilderment.

I hesitated, unsure if I should speak the next words.
But how could I not?
I pointed to the man in the locket.

“This is Tarzan’s father.”

He shook his head. “No Tarzan fah-thah.”

I must not be making myself clear, I thought. I touched the photograph now, then reached out and touched Tarzan’s cheek. He looked perplexed.

“Tarzan prit-tee?”

“No, no,” I said, frustrated that I could not express just now that, indeed, Tarzan was pretty—the handsomest man I had ever laid eyes on. I resorted to the method of communication with which we had had the greatest success. I cleared away some grasses and created a dirt slate. I drew stick figures of myself and my father, connected by a line through our chests.

“Jane. Jane’s father,” I said, pointing to the figures. Then, wiping them away, I drew another male figure and laid the locket next to it, connecting the two with a line. “Tarzan. Tarzan’s father.”

Still he resisted with a furious shake of the head. I must try another tack. I drew a female with breasts and a tiny male figure next to it. I named the
balu
Tarzan, then questioned what the female figure was called.

He answered quickly. “Kala.”

Good,
I thought. Kala
meant “mother.”

I pointed to the female figure in the dirt. “Tarzan’s mother?” I questioned.

He nodded and uttered, “Tarzan muh-thah.”

Now I set the locket over the top of the stick figure and, pointing to the woman in the golden oval, proclaimed, “Tarzan’s mother.”

He shook his head violently. “No! Kala Tarzan muh-thah.”

Now it was I who was filled with confusion.
Why was he not understanding? Why did he not recognize the couple in the locket as his parents? And who was Kala?

All at once he stood and, as was his way with coming and going, disappeared into the bush.

My mystification was growing.
Who was this man? What was his parentage, and how had he evolved into this brilliant and untamed adventurer of the forest?

In the next moment Tarzan returned with a section of tough vine and from it peeled a single long fiber. He picked up the locket, snapped it closed, and ripped the broken chain from the necklace, tossing it away. Carefully he replaced the chain with the vegetal cord. Then he reached out and tied it around my neck atop the Waziri ornament.

“Jane prit-tee lok-it.” He stared hard at me. I was, I supposed, as enigmatic a being to him as he was to me. And by the look in his steel-grey eyes, he was bound and determined to learn the deepest secrets of my heart.

To the West

It was less than a single day’s travel, yet I felt it as a lifetime. Except for thoughts of my father and raw bolts of fury directed at Ral Conrath, I was feeling myself again. Tarzan had become a man possessed. He knew his direction and destination, and while he did not overwork me, mostly we traveled.

He called to a brown-furred monkey sitting in a tree fork feasting messily on juicy pawpaw, who called back in the same voice. He showed me a flower of insane beauty and appalling stench, and an insect that looked like a twig walking on legs. There was a puffing steam vent and the riot of colorful lichen that grew all around it. At first I hung on to Tarzan as though my life depended on it. I took my first independent steps among the webwork of trees high above the forest floor, but they were tentative. Tarzan, of course, could run fleet-footed along those limbs. I was reminded of my hunting dogs, a rich scent ahead of them, their legs seeming to move before their brains. They were always changing direction, backtracking, surging ahead, stopping occasionally to ponder an obstacle, but never for long.