Gerald Durrell (5 page)

“Na bush pig
dat,” said Elias sadly, as we listened to the faint sound of the retreating
hogs.

“Na fine chop,”
said Andraia wistfully. “Na fine chop for European, too,” he continued, fixing
me with a reproachful eye, in case I should think his disappointment was purely
selfish.

“This gun no got
power for kill bush pig,” I explained hurriedly, “at Eshobi I get other gun
much bigger.”

““E get plenty
power?”

“Yes, he get
plenty power, he fit kill bush pig, tiger, even elephant,” I said, boasting
wildly.

“Eh . . . aehh!
Na true, sah?”

“Na true. One
day we go for bush and we go get plenty bush pig, plenty.”

“Yessir,” they
chorused.

We continued on
our way, the hunters happy with the thought of the roast bush pig to come, and
I dwelling pleasantly on the memory of the two beautiful beasts we had just
seen, and feeling that my prestige was still intact.

A long time
after we met the Red River Hogs I was in a considerably more exhausted
condition when we had our third and last encounter for that day. We came to an
area of the forest floor which looked as though it had been ploughed up: the
leaf-mould had been raked and scrabbled, rocks and branches overturned, and
green saplings bent and chewed.

My two hunters
examined the signs and then Elias crept to my side and whispered the magic word
“soombo”. Now soombo means a Drill, and the Drill is that prepossessing baboon
one sees in the zoos with a glowing posterior and the savage frown. I always
have had a soft spot in my heart for Drills, perhaps because they always
display the more unmentionable parts of their bodies with such refreshing
candour, to the horror of the zoo public. In any case, here, if I was to
believe Elias, was a whole herd of them, and I was not going to miss the chance
of seeing them in the wild state, so we crept forward with all speed in the
direction of the grunts and peevish screams which we could hear echoing through
the forest ahead. For an hour we followed them, scrambling and ducking,
crawling on all fours, and once, rather reluctantly on my part, we traversed
about a hundred yards of swamp, flat on our tummies. But try as we would, we
could not get close enough for a good view, and our only reward was an
occasional flash of grey fur amongst the bushes. At length we gave it up and
lay exhausted on the ground, smoking much-needed cigarettes and listening to
the sounds of the departing Drills.

We continued on
our circuitous route and reached the outlying huts of the village just after
dark. I was scratched and dirty and extremely tired, but I felt elated that I
had done what I had set out to do. Round a bright fire outside one of the huts
squatted a circle of black figures. A child ran screaming into the hut at the
sudden sight of this tattered white apparition. The parents rose to greet me.

“Welcome, Masa,
welcome.”

“Evening, Masa .
. . you done come?”

Soft voices and
gleaming teeth in the firelight, and the pleasant smell of wood smoke.

“We go rest here
small time, Elias,” I said, and squatted down thankfully by the fire. The earth
was still warm from the sun. I could feel the ache in my legs disappearing and
a pleasant glow running through my body.

“Masa go for
bush?” inquired the elder man of the fireside party.

“Yes, we done go
for bush,” said Elias importantly, and then broke into a torrent of Bayangi,
gesturing into the dark forest to show the way we had gone.

There was a
surprised chorus of “Eh . .. aehh’s” and more questioning. Elias turned to me,
his buck teeth gleaming:

“I tell dis man,
Masa, dat Masa savvay walk too much. Masa get plenty power . . .” he said,
obviously thinking that I deserved flattery.

I smiled as
modestly as I could.

“I tell him you
get power pass black man, sah,” he continued, and then jokingly, “Masa like to
go for bush?”

“I like too
much,” I said firmly. Everyone laughed delightedly at the idea of a white man
liking to go to the bush.

“Masa like to go
again to bush to-night?” asked Elias, his eyes bright with laughter.

“Yes, I fit go
for bush to-night,” I retorted. “I be hunter man, I no be woman.”

A great joke
this, and greeted with a roar of laughter.

“Na true, na
true,” said Elias. “Masa speak true.”

“Masa be proper
man,” said Andraia, simpering at me. I passed the cigarettes round, and we
squatted about the crackling fire, puffing contentedly, discussing this beef
and that, until the dew started to fall heavily. Then we said good night and
picked our way down the village street, redolent with the smell of palm oil,
plantain and cassava — the night meal. Fires glimmered in the interiors of the
huts, and at the doorways sat their owners, calling a soft greeting to us:

“Masa, you done
come?”

“Welcome, Masa,
welcome . . .”

“Good night,
sah!”

I felt that it
was good to be alive.

CHAPTER
TWO

SMOKE AND SMALL BEEF

BEFORE the news
of my arrival spread through the outlying villages, and every able-bodied man
went to bush to catch animals for this madman who was buying them, and the
trickle of arrivals swelled into a flood that overwhelmed me, I was able to
make a number of trips into the deep forest. The object of most of these trips
was not to catch animals but to find suitable spots for traps, mark hollow
trees for smoking, and generally get a good idea of the surrounding forest.
Unless you get to know the country you are operating in you find it almost
impossible to get the animals you want, for each species has its own little
section of forest, and unless you can discover where this is you stand little
chance of getting specimens. Sometimes, of course, we were lucky enough to
catch animals when we went on one of these expeditions:

one such
occasion stands out in my memory, a day when I went out accompanied only by
Elias.

Andraia, I had
learned, was a hypochondriac of the first order: the slightest pain or fever
would drive him into the dark interior of his hut, to lie there moaning and writhing,
driving his three wives into a panic lest their lord should die. This
particular day he was very bad, and so Elias had promised to come by himself to
accompany me to the bush. I was beginning to wish that I had not arranged to go
out at all, for the afternoon heat seemed more intense than usual. There was no
sound from the collection: the birds sat on their perches, their eyes half
closed, the rats and porcupines sprawled asleep in their banana-leaf beds; even
the energetic monkeys were drowsy and quiet. The boys’ house vibrated with the
combined snores of the staff, and I felt very tempted to join them in slumber.
There was no breeze, the leaves hanging motionless on the trees. The heat had a
dazzling, numbing quality that made you stupid and heavy. Even if you sat quite
still in the shade you could still feel the sweat trickling in streams down
your back and neck. Even if you sprawled in a chair you would soon find that
you were sitting in a damp pool, that your shirt was black with moisture and stuck
to your back and under your arms. With this heat came a heavy brooding silence:
no bird songs, only the faint whisper of the cicada in the trees.

With an effort I
bestirred myself to make the necessary preparations: one haversack was filled
with such things as nets, cloth bags for birds or snakes, cigarettes and
matches. Another smaller bag contained cartridges, a spare box of matches, the
torch, and various test-tubes and jars for the smaller captures such as
spiders, scorpions and their tribe. I had just finished cleaning the gun when
Elias materialized outside the tent. His grinning face was beaded with sweat,
in spite of the fact that he only wore a tiny scrap of dirty cloth twisted
round his loins. He was carrying a short spear and the inevitable cutlass.

“Masa, I come,”
he greeted me. “Masa ready?”

“Yes, Elias,
let’s go. It’s hot today, isn’t it?”

“Sun too much,”
he agreed, hoisting the bags on his back. Down the narrow red path, across the
stream, ankle deep in the cool waters, pushing through the undergrowth, and
then you were in the great, dim, aromatic interior of the forest, wending your
way between the great trunks. After the heat of camp this was a blessed
coolness that dried the sweat on your body, and the gloom allowed you to open
your eyes fully, not continuously screwing them up against the sun. Elias
flitted effortlessly ahead along the almost invisible path, his large feet
making no sound on the leafy floor. Occasionally the forest would echo to the
“chunk” of his cutlass, as he lopped off a branch that hung too low over the
path for comfort. I found one difficulty in walking in the forest: there was so
much to see on every side that my eyes were everywhere but on the path I was
following. The gleam of a flower in the head foliage of a tree would make me
peer upwards, craning my neck, or a fallen tree covered with tiny coloured
toadstools, lying at the side of the path, would engage my attention, and so I
would go tripping and stumbling in my efforts to see everything at once.
However, this day we were going nowhere very special, so we turned aside from
the path to investigate every hole, every hollow log was turned over in case it
harboured scorpions or frogs, or even some larger beast in its hollow interior.
So, with these deviations from the path, our progress was slow.

Some two miles
from the camp we came out on to the banks of the inevitable small stream. It
foamed its way through a jumble of great rocks, the tops of which were covered
with thick wigs of vivid green moss and feathery ferns. In every crack that
offered a foothold, a species of wild begonia grew, spreading its dark green,
plate-shaped leaves against grey rock, the delicate sprays of waxy yellow
flowers drooping down towards the rushing waters beneath. For an hour or so Elias
and I grubbed happily around among these rocks, capturing the smaller fry:
there were mottled toads, and grey tree frogs with monstrous amber eyes and
long tapering fingers, and great beetles that chirruped when you picked them
up. In the lush vegetation along the banks there were numbers of giant land
snails, as big and as heavy as a large apple, assiduously laying their delicate
pearl-like eggs in the leaf-mould. Then I discovered a beautiful green and
canary-yellow frog under a small stone, and this set us both off turning over
every movable stone along the bank in hopes of getting another. Elias, who was
a little ahead of me, turned over a large rock and, as it rolled down the
slope, he jumped back with a cry of fear.

“Masa, na snake
. . . na bad beef. . . .”

I dropped
everything and leapt up the slope to him. There, in the moist depression left
by the boulder, lay a most remarkable snake. At first glance it appeared to
have no head, being much the same circumference along its whole two feet. It was
a glossy black, with a scattering of vivid red and yellow scales over different
parts of its body. By staring hard I eventually located the head at one end of
the body, and then I noticed that the head was only a matter of inches from a
round hole that went deep into the earth. I was determined not to lose this
spectacular addition to the collection, so, with the aid of a stick, I gently
rolled a small stone inch by inch nearer until it covered the mouth of the
hole. Elias stood discreetly in the background and moaned: