Jane (19 page)

“The fossil you showed us in Cambridge…”

Ral shook his head sadly. “Ah, D’Arnot. He’s such a spineless creature, isn’t he? You must know the leg fragment is genuine. There’s no way to prove it didn’t come from here. It’s my word against a drunken Frenchman’s.”

“And your Waziri gold?”

“Hell, I don’t even know if there is any, other than one damn native’s necklace. That’s what got me thinking to come out here in the first place. But the deal I cut with Leopold and the Belgians … that’s
easy
money, and a lot of it. Even if I found the so-called tribe, and even if there was a mine, I’d still have to haul the stuff out through hell.” Now he leered at me. “You know my only regret? Not plucking your sweet little cherry when you were hot for me. Though I did have a nice go at your mother. Ah, Samantha … I sure made her squeal.”

He took a step toward me, the barrel of my rifle only feet from his face. “Give me the gun, Janie.” He spoke in his smoothest, most cajoling tones.

“Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

“What are you going to do? Blow my head off? I never took you for the violent type, though you’ve got a wild streak in you a mile wide. That’s what always got me hard.” Suddenly he was done talking. Done smiling. “Give me the gun. Now.”

I saw the bearer emerge from the thicket into the clearing behind Ral’s back, forty degrees and twenty paces from his right shoulder. He was unarmed and oblivious of the turmoil into which he was about to enter.

He was similarly ignorant of the great spotted leopard crouched on a limb above him, poised to spring.

I saw I had a clear shot. It meant losing my perfect sight on Conrath, but there was no time for indecision. I swung the barrel from him and took aim at the beast. It was all the time Conrath needed. He dove, arms and head first at my legs, knocking me off my feet. The gun discharged, firing wildly.

I went down, and the cat leaped upon its prey. As my head struck a rock, I vaguely heard the bearer’s shrieks and felt the rifle being wrenched from my hands.

Quickly I stood, but I was dazed, wobbly on my feet. When my vision cleared, there was Ral, the gun pointed at my head. His look was mad, murderous. He didn’t speak. He just moved forward, forcing me backward, step by step by step. I could hear faint moaning behind me and, louder, the leopard chewing, sucking, and crunching human muscle, blood, and bone. He was eating the man alive!

Suddenly Conrath’s face broke into a smile. In that same moment the sound of the predator’s gory feasting ceased altogether. To my surprise and dawning horror, Ral Conrath lowered the rifle, gave me his jaunty fingers-to-the-forehead salute, and sauntered away down the newly cut path.

The force of the massive furred body crashing onto my back flattened me, driving my face into the ground. But it was the searing red pain of deeply pierced flesh that was the last sensation I felt before the green jungle world went blessedly black.

The Tribe

“I must find my father.”

Tarzan squatted on the forest floor beneath his nest, and I knelt before him holding both his hands, staring deeply into his eyes. I knew I spoke words he did not recognize, but I must make him understand.

I said again, more loudly, “I must find my father.” I rose to my feet and pounded my chest. “Jane find … find.” He watched as I moved to the undergrowth and made the motions of searching frantically for something on the ground. Then I bent and, putting my hand in the brush, came up with a red-and-yellow frog.

“Jane ‘find,’” I said.

Tarzan shook his head. “Jane
rok,
” he corrected me. Of course,
rok
meant “frog.” I was not being clear.

“No.” Again I made the exaggerated movements of searching, of reaching down and discovering the frog.

Tarzan nodded his head. “Jane find
rok.
”

“Yes, yes! Brilliant man!” I knelt before him and, taking his face in my hands, kissed him joyfully. His eyes gleamed at my sudden gesture. But there was no time to waste. I forced him to attend my words carefully.

“Jane find Father,” I said.

“Fah-thah?” Tarzan repeated and made the gesture we had agreed meant “explain.”

I smoothed out the dirt between us and, using a single pointed finger, made marks in it—a circle and a line coming down from that. Two lines poking out from the top and two at the bottom—a stick figure. He stared hard at it. Then I made more marks. Two circles on the line just under the head. Teats. Clearly a female. He nodded his understanding. Now I drew another figure next to the first, but this with crude male sexual organs between the two legs. A male. Seeing that he understood, I began again. The figure was much smaller this time.

“
Balu,
” Tarzan said.

“
Balu,
child. Yes. Yes, Tarzan.” Now I pointed to the small figure. “Jane is
balu,
” I said. Then I pointed to the male figure. “Jane’s father.” I took Tarzan’s hands again, pressing them tightly. “Jane find father.”

“Jane find fah-thah,” he repeated with triumphant understanding.

“Oh, my friend!”

“Tarzan see Jane fah-thah.” He spoke and signed this.

“What?” I stared hard at him.

“Tarzan see Jane fah-thah.” He swept his arms around him. “In
lul.” He’d seen my father in water?
“In…” Tarzan had no words for what he clearly wished to describe. Instead, he took his finger and made scratches in the sand—many simple huts in a circle around jagged lines—a campfire—and more human stick figures amid the huts.

“You were watching us!” I exclaimed.
He’d seen us when Father had come to me while I bathed in that pool. And in our camp
. “Where is Jane’s father?” I poked the male figure I had drawn in the sand with such ferocity that the image was broken. “Where is my father?!”

Tarzan shrugged helplessly and sadly shook his head. I slumped in defeat. Then I felt his hand on my arm. His face was lit with excitement.

“Jane, come see,” he said.

*   *   *

Even before I noticed the square golden pendants hanging about the necks of the native tribesmen and -women, I realized they must be Waziri.

Tarzan had carried me on his back through the canopy with great certitude in a single direction that, because of the blocked sky and sun, I could not discern, but within the hour I had spotted several sites below me that I recognized—the small pool where I had bathed (and where Tarzan had secretly watched me bathing), paths I had explored, and finally the clearing under the giant trees where the Porter Expedition had made its last encampment. Beyond that were the four volcanic peaks.

So,
I reckoned,
we had been traveling from west to east.

Then Tarzan turned sharply south. Within half an hour we had reached a long, towering black basalt ridge that looked to my untrained eye as flow upon flow of ancient lava—the Enduro Escarpment.
Damn thing!
I thought. It existed. Ral Conrath had been such a clever liar, constantly riddling truths with falsehood. How I hated him!

We did not take the escarpment head on, instead staying to the treetops and circling it. Finally Tarzan stopped and untied the vine harness, allowing me to find my footing in the crook of a tree that overlooked an astonishing scene.

At the base of the limestone cliffs we had just rounded stood a large, vibrant village. It was as different from the Mbele’s as day was from night. The square mud huts within the square-within-square layout of the great compound were tall and sturdy, their roofs laid down in intricate woven patterns. Though the thatch was fresh, the enclave looked as though it had stood in this place for eons, and the dappled afternoon light filtering through the heavy branches rescued the site from the unremitting shadow of the canopy. Brilliantly plumed sunbirds flitted in the branches above the main aisle, and bright blue dragonflies beating silent wings lent the place a paradisiacal air. The sound of women’s laughter and their clear, bold voices seemed to confirm it, and then I saw them, clustered in twos and threes around cook fires—handsome black-skinned women and girls, long legged, swaybacked, and supple—pot-stirring, jostling, and teasing with small pokes or the tug of an ear. Their hair was braided tightly around their heads and they wore, besides their gold pendants, thick gold bracelets on slender, muscular arms. Over their hips and legs they wore short wrapped skirts of red-and-gold-patterned fabric. Their bare bosoms were high and rounded unless the woman was very old. Many held infants on one hip while they cooked, and fed them at their milk-swollen breasts most unselfconsciously.

That was it,
I realized.
They are altogether unselfconscious, immersed in natural movement and female conversation, unencumbered with the suffocating rules and manners and protocol of civilization.
But was it presumptuous of me to think so? They would have their own manners and protocols. They were different. That was all.

Men squatted together in small groups talking or milling about a hut several times larger than the rest. They were beautifully proportioned, with sharp-cut musculature and proud posture. But if they were as handsome as their women, it was not easily discernible, for their expressions were so fierce as to be frightening. They looked to be fearsome warriors.
Were they cannibals as well?
I wondered with a sudden chill.

At my side, Tarzan had, too, been observing the village in silence. Then, as was his way, he departed without a word to me, untying a thick vine wrapped twice around a tree limb, and with a loud undulating cry I had never before heard—one I suspected was his announcement of arrival—he swooped in an arc over the village and dropped down, landing with almost balletic grace in the central clearing.

The Waziri responded with moderate surprise. There was a somewhat more admiring welcome from the women, but that so sudden an appearance had provoked no alarm from the bellicose-looking men demonstrated that Tarzan could not be a stranger to them, or a threat.

In that moment I realized that my protector must of course be the legendary “Wild Ape-Man of the Forest.”
How could I have not recognized such a thing before now?
But Paul D’Arnot had claimed to have seen the creature at the scene of the elephant kill. Heard him “roaring like a lion.” No one had taken Paul seriously. But if it was true, that would mean that Tarzan had been following the expedition from Mbele territory onward. What an extraordinary and unnerving thought!

I watched as Tarzan strode past the women’s cook fires, exchanging smiles with them. A small boy came up and hung on his leg as he walked. After a few steps, Tarzan lifted him and, to the child’s squealing delight, threw him up in the air and caught him. He put the boy down, and as he continued along the main aisle of the village, all the small groups of males stood and gathered around him as he approached the clutch of villagers standing at the front of the large central hut.

And now two men emerged from it. I could see by the tribesmen’s deferential gestures as the pair came forth that they were important men—perhaps the chief and the tribe’s charm doctor.

I was too distant to hear the voices, but aside from talking, there were many gesticulations, signaling that Tarzan’s grasp of the Waziri tongue might be no greater than it was of English. Clearly he was not unknown to the tribe, and was respected, but he appeared to be an infrequent visitor. The women, who had not left the fires, were straining to see and hear the congress between their men and the ape-man.

Finally the mass of tribesmen parted and out strode Tarzan. He made his way back through the village at the edge of the clearing, and with a running start he leaped with stunning strength and dexterity up into the trees. A few moments later he was by my side.

“Come, Jane,” he said, gesturing down to the village.

It was a strange collection of emotions that assailed me. Excitement. Fear. Curiosity. I thought perhaps my recent injuries and invalidism might have sapped a bit of the natural fearlessness I had always possessed, and then I remembered my reticence at climbing on Tarzan’s back the first time he had offered it.
Pull yourself together, woman!
I scolded myself. I must be done with all fear and reluctance. This was an adventure that exceeded my dreams and rivaled—no,
outstripped
—Mary Kingsley’s expedition up the Ogowe. And besides, if Tarzan had brought me here, then the tribe must know something of my father’s whereabouts.

I inhaled and straightened my back, then nodded my agreement to go down and meet the Waziri.

Tarzan and I walked through the village side by side. I had not been scrutinized with such bald-faced stares by so many men since my first day in the Cambridge dissection hall. Up close I could see the raised scarification on their bare shoulders—that same square-within-a-square pattern of the village itself.

Midway to the large hut, Tarzan stopped by one of the cook fires and with the women now coming to gather around said to me, “Jane here.” But of course. As much as I wished to be party to any conversation pertinent to myself, I was merely a female in this place. I wondered if this was a tribe that held women as inferior, the way Ral Conrath had spoken of all native peoples. In any case, custom must certainly forbid mixing of the sexes in important palavers. I must simply be patient.