Natural History (14 page)

Patrick had a buzz of giddiness, like a nicotine hit. He thought for a moment that he might pass out.

Don said, ‘Are you all right?'

‘Apparently, yes.'

‘Listen. We'll wait for better weather. Gather up some equipment. And—if it's come back—we'll go and find the sod. How about that?'

‘How about that.'

Together, they drank a toast to the Beast of Exmoor and upstairs, Jo lay on her back with her eyes wide open. She had heard every word of Patrick and Caraway's conversation; it had been conveyed through the echoing air and through the spaces of the big, old, empty house.

Patrick and Caraway went when they could: Sundays, the occasional lunchtime. They took cameras—35 mm, Charlie's old Polaroid, a bulky old Betamax. Don had packed his rucksack with sample containers, duct tape, plaster of Paris, lengths of rope. At his belt he carried a hunting knife, a compass. In his fist he carried, concertinaed, a map of the area.

They tramped through the undergrowth—the birdsong, the branches, the brambles, the twisting, hobbling roots.

Now and then, Don bent to examine some spoor—faeces or a pawprint, disturbed undergrowth.

But always came the slow, disappointed look. And always there was the determination to try again tomorrow.

And always, for Patrick, there were the daytime routines of Monkeyland. And these were followed by the vigil at the window, wrapped in a blanket for a shawl when, from the path, to any passing hiker—or to a big cat—he supposed he must resemble an observant ghost, waiting for all eternity for the killing sea to surrender up a long-dead lover.

They were at the computer, Jo standing at Mr Nately's side. His fingers were fast as he typed—he used all eight, including the pinkies, and didn't even look at them.

He said, ‘I thought you might be interested in this, after our discussion the other day.'

The website took its time to download. It advanced spasmodically, jerking down from the top of the screen.

There was a field of stars. Then flashing, red words:

RED ALERT!

RED ALERT!

Jo wanted to giggle, because the screen reminded her of
DON'T PANIC—
which was so usefully inscribed on the cover of
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Then there were more red words:

HALE BOPP

And the words became white on black, and made her eyes go funny:

Whether Hale-Bopp has a ‘companion' or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at ‘Heaven's Gate ®'.

The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the ‘Kingdom of Heaven') has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the ‘marker' we've been waiting for—the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to ‘Their World'—in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion—‘graduation' from the Human Evolutionary Level.

Last Chance to Advance Beyond Human
, the website yelled at her, against a starfield that hurt her eyes.

Mr Nately said, ‘What are they like, eh?'

It made Jo giggle. But it was scary, too.

FROM JANE'S NOTEBOOKS

At every intersection in Kinshasa stand lean young men, chewing manioc root, selling cigarettes, wristwatches, birds in cages, monkeys. Twice, we were stopped by the
garde civile—
misnamed, of course. They shrieked for our papers.

Mobuto named this city in 1965. It was his triumph, his showpiece. The Boulevard 30 Juin is a half-ruined testament to that, garbage burning in the shadow of glass and steel skyscrapers­—wealth mocking poverty, poverty hating wealth. And war, of course, on its way.

None of the big hotels would take us—not with a monkey. All of them claimed, falsely, to be full. Richard sang ‘Little Donkey'.

In the end, a back-street place took me and the infant while Richard and the others—close to rebellion—took rooms in the Intercontinental, arranging to meet me tomorrow morning.

We'll get the bonobo to the zoo, make sure she's looked after. We'll get some footage, and then we'll get the hell out.

Kinshasa zoo is the worst place on earth.

They built a fake rainforest in the city, and they put a zoo in it. This grotesque pantomime hasn't been funded or maintained since the Belgians left.

The animals—chimps, leopards, lions—have been driven mad by hunger and boredom. They're locked up in undersized, rusty cages; nothing but bars and concrete floors, barren but for accumulations of shit. To feed the animals, the staff raise chickens and ducks, and volunteers from Les Amis des Animaux au Congo bring scavenged bread, fruit, hotel scraps; none of it suitable, all of it better than nothing.

A few weeks ago a chimpanzee—balding, parasite-ridden, ready to grab at anything resembling food—attacked one of the keepers; she lost a hand.

The zoo director was happy to show all this to the camera. She's doing her best, they all are, but they need help, and there is none. Her biggest fear is a mass escape; starved animals predating on their keepers. It wakes her in the night.

Back in her office, she examined the bonobo and told us, on camera, there was nothing she could do. It will live, or it will die. There's no point bringing it to the zoo. This zoo is the last place in the world you'd want to bring a sick animal.

That was the end of it.

‘Nobody will want to watch this,' said Richard. ‘It's too depressing. It's not a bear in Greece. People understand Greece. This is just horrible.'

The others agreed. There was an air of sullen insurrection about them. They looked schoolboyish and ridiculous; for all their filth and tangles of beard, unable to meet my eye.

Camra Dave said, ‘We want to go home, mate. We just want to go home now.'

‘We're not supposed to be here,' said Richard. ‘This isn't why we came.'

The bonobo clung to me.

Mick said, ‘It's only a bloody monkey. It's cute and everything, but who really gives a toss when …' He looked around, at Kinshasa. And he nodded at the horizon, approximately east, in the direction we've come from. Escaped from.

I said, ‘I know you didn't sign up for this.'

‘Too fucking right,' said Mick. Then he said, ‘Sorry, mate.'

‘Give the ape to the Belgian woman,' he said. ‘The bonobo woman. She'll look after it.'

I said, ‘Give me two days.'

‘One day,' said Richard. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's not him,' said Dave. ‘It's us. We've had enough. We're shitting it. Quite frankly, we're shitting it.'

The Belgian woman lives in an apartment block, half-deserted. The expatriates, the employees of logging companies, the teachers, they're all gone. The stairs are empty. The heat absorbs the echoes of our footfalls.

We knocked on the door and she answered: ebulliently red-headed, exhausted. Her flat stinks. It stinks because it's full of bonobos—half a dozen of them. She's bought them from local markets—babies. They retreat when we enter. They get behind her.

She did a brief interview for the camera. She wants to publicize the plight of these animals, but she is disheartened, exhausted, and the atmosphere was strange—all of us huddled together in the small apartment, with all these apes.

I introduced her to our infant. She took it, tenderly. She stroked its brow with a gentle finger. Then she passed it back to me and said, ‘What can I do?'

She meant, she has no more room.

I said, ‘But we have to leave tomorrow. Perhaps you know someone?'

‘I can make some calls, but this baby is very sick. I don't think it will live. I'm sorry.'

Dave put down the camera and Mick turned off the tape and we sat in the sweet, stinking ape heat.

I said, ‘Okay.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Fine.'

She said, ‘There are no vets. There is nowhere to take these animals.'

‘And what about the people?' said Richard. ‘There is nobody to care for the people.'

‘People will die,' she said.

I stood, the infant clutching me. I could smell her. The musty, good smell of her, even in her sickness.

We left the apartment. The hot airlessness of the hallway was a physical weight, and the Kinshasa street it stands upon was like a vision of the future, a city gone chaotic under the swelling sun, the last days; the smoke from the burning garbage, the mad traffic, the money-changers, the police.

‘That's it,' said Richard, kindly enough. ‘What more can we be expected to do?'

I said, ‘Take it back to England.'

He said, ‘We can't do that. Can you imagine what it would take? The paperwork, the bribery. Dealing with the embassies, with quarantine. We can't do it.'

The others looked away. Richard said, ‘Jane—it's dying.'

I reached up a hand and felt the shape of it, clinging to me; the nubs of her spine, the wiry tangle of her pelt; the humanity of her hands.

Richard bit his lip. Ruffled his hair. It needs cutting. In England­ he uses hair gel and mousse, and a mirror to get it looking right. But now it is a shaggy pelt, spotted with dandruff and sebum. His beard is weirdly orange, flecked with silver; it has crawled over his cheekbones and it bristles, orange and silver, just under his blue eyes.

They have given up, because this is too big for television. You need a wraparound screen, forty storeys high, 3-D glasses, the kind of sound-system that makes your eardrums bleed.

I said, ‘I took responsibility.'

He said, ‘For God's sake Jane, it's only an ape!'

I saw then that we have separated—Richard and Mick and Dave and me.

Charlie was cleaning the rooms on the second floor when she found him.

He was finishing his next-to last room. The door was open. She passed by—backtracked two or three steps—stood in the doorway.

He was sticky-mouthed and sweaty. His hair was sticking up.

She leaned in the doorway. She looked the same. A different suit, different shoes, different shirt. But the same fine chain around the same throat.

She said, ‘Hello again.'

‘Hello.'

‘I was wondering if I'd see you.'

There was a long mirror at the edge of his vision. He wanted to glance at himself: to see what kind of state he was in. But he daren't. He stood there with the Henry vacuum cleaner in his hand. It had a smiley face printed on the front of the red canister—the hose was its nose.

He said, ‘Here I am.'

She half-lifted her little bag in strange salute, and the corners of her mouth flexed.

‘Me, too.'

He had sweaty hair and he was wearing overalls.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I'd better leave you to it.'

She didn't appear to have blinked. It must have been an optical illusion—perhaps their blinks were synchronizing, the way the moon spun on its axis in perfect time with the Earth, always to show the same face.

But at dinner she was quiet, and prodded her food.

He tried to eat. It felt wrong.

She put down her cutlery and dabbed with a napkin at the corners of her mouth. It wasn't required; she'd eaten almost nothing. She said, ‘I don't do this.'

‘Do what?'

‘This.'

‘Eat dinner?'

She got the bill and he sat there, helpless.

They went to her car. She didn't offer her arm. He walked beside her.

He thought of the drive that lay ahead; all the way back to Innsmouth. Him staring at the passenger window, at the reflection of his own face. Chris at the wheel, following the radiant string of cat's eyes.

He touched her arm; her pointy elbow.

At his touch, she stopped. She faced him.

He said, ‘Are you, like, married or something?'

She laughed. At first, he was glad; it was good to hear her laughing again. But then he heard that it was a bad laugh, a desolate laugh. It was like the Anchorage; it had been corrupted by bad magic.

‘Yes and no. Not any more. It's complicated.'

She rooted in her handbag and produced her cigarettes.

‘I'm twice your age. Jesus Christ.'

She booked them into another hotel; a better hotel. She showed Charlie her corporate credit card and made a face and winked.

Charlie blushed under the neutral gaze of the desk clerk, because often he had been in the desk clerk's position.

He followed Chris to the elevator and up to the fifth floor. And he stood while she opened the door and hung out the PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB sign and turned on the lights.

After he had come, a long and violent animal spasm, she stroked his face. She was crying. And he let her, because it made him feel strong. He buried his face in her neck and smelled her—different, even better now.

And he was still awake when the sunrise brightened the curtains and the Sunday traffic started outside, and he pulled the blankets over them and lay thinking.

He curled around her, thrilled by the astonishing intimacy of her kittenish snoring, the nape of her neck; her mouth slightly open.

He thought,
Don't sleep,
and soon he was asleep.

They woke just in time to check out. There was a rush of clothes-gathering, jumping into trouser and knickers: she hurried, topless to the bathroom and cleaned her teeth with an index finger, combed her hair with wet hands: produced make-up from her bag, scribbled some on.

The sunlight came clean and cold through the curtains. There was no wind.

He waited on the steps while she paid the bill. And in the car on the way home, he sat transformed. The cold air slipstreamed through the open window.

She pulled up opposite the house. And in the shadow of it, he felt the transformation begin to reverse.

He glanced at her knees, her ankles, her wrists. Thought of her, curled up asleep; her little snores. The way her naked breasts jiggled as she finger-cleaned her teeth.