Jane (25 page)

Now movement began in earnest all over the nesting place, which I had silently named the “Great Bower.” Males came out of hiding, their arms filled with foodstuffs they had just gathered, and, climbing carefully to the ground, set it all at Kerchak’s feet. Two females with groveling posture crept up behind the tyrant and began to groom his fur.

I could see the one Tarzan called his sister, Jai, just sitting on a bough, watching almost impassively the strange, animalistic drama playing out below.
But is it altogether of the animal world?
I wondered. The aging King Henry VIII was brought to mind by this spectacle of pathetic cringing and cowering of his courtiers.

I turned with a dozen questions to Tarzan but found that he had retreated to the ledge where we had slept, his back against the inner wall of the trunk, his knees pulled close to his chest. The morning light was filtering down from above, and I thought then that I had never seen a sight so heart-rending. Tarzan, bold and courageous in all things, was now much diminished. But when I went and sat beside him, I was at once disabused of any thought that my friend was abashed or humbled by the might of Kerchak. In fact, he was seething with so terrible a rage that his crouched, removed pose was an attempt to control an uncontrollable infuriation. I felt waves of violent heat pulsing from his skin. His face was hidden, but I was certain that if I could see them, his features would be disfigured with hatred. I therefore hesitated speaking and sat quietly beside him. Then I remembered to what great lengths Tarzan had gone to bring me here. He wanted me to see this. Wished me to understand.

“Tell me of Kerchak.”

It took some time for Tarzan to compose himself.

“Tarzan
ee Boi-ee lu har
Kerchak.” He whipped the Bowie knife from its sheath and sliced the air with it again and again, describing
lu har,
a fierce battle. “Tarzan
yuto yat
Kerchak.”

I knew that
yat
meant “eye.” So the young boy had been the one who had taken out Kerchak’s eye.

“Kerchak
yuto-gash
Tarzan.” He bit into his own arm. Raked his fingernails across his neck and chest. “Kerchak
aro
Tarzan Mangani.” He pointed away to the east with a look of despondency. “Tarzan no here Mangani.”

It was indeed a dreadful story. For daring to defy Kerchak, Tarzan had been badly mauled and sent away from his family and tribe with the memory of his abuse simmering like hot oil in his veins.

He stood and returned to the blind, both hands clutching the sides of the hole in a white-knuckled grasp. I became alarmed. I wondered if a brutal confrontation was inevitable. I had to prevent that. If something were to happen to my protector, I would surely die in the forest. My death would be tragic for my mother, but more important, news of the
P.a.e.
find would be lost to the world, perhaps forever.

These were selfish thoughts, I knew, but gazing at Tarzan—so heartsick and so murderously inclined—I realized how deeply I had come to feel for him. For his own good, I needed to put distance between him and the malevolent Kerchak. Was my influence strong enough to move him? I was not certain, but at the very least I must try.

Zu-dak-lul

All along our westward imperative, riding the Ogowe Mbele above- and belowground, I knew that our final destination must be the Atlantic. Yet my first sight of it as we emerged from the brackish mangrove swamp stunned my senses. In all the time I’d lived under the deep forest canopy I had felt no claustrophobia or even longing for the light that had largely gone from my existence. But here on the wide beach of fine-grained, blinding white sand lined with a pretty fringe of coconut palms (here was where Tarzan had harvested the coconut shells!), I felt a great rush of joy tinged with something akin to homesickness. There was a great dome of stark blue sky, gentle green waves rolling landward, and the equatorial sun that began in an instant to burn my skin (I heard Cecily admonishing me to put on a hat). Certainly the happiness was borne of the light and freedom, the diving seabirds, and the fresh breeze whipping my hair. It was, I decided, the sight of the sea that had made me nostalgic.
This is
my
ocean,
I mused.
The water here may once have touched the coast of England. It is the same in which I swam with my father as a little girl. This ocean bore his body home.

I was all at once overcome with the urgent need to immerse myself. I strode—how odd it felt to be able to stride, unhindered by roots and matted vines of the forest and jungle floor!—across the sand and without hesitation waded into the shallows. I was grateful for the gradual slope and the calm, waist-high waves, and plowed through them, using my arms to push myself forward. The water was warmer than I had ever felt it, and utterly delightful. All the grime of the mosquito-infested jungle and the stinking mud of the mangrove swamp were washed away in moments. When I was chest-high, I pushed off the sandy bottom and began to swim. It was only then that I remembered Tarzan, assuming he would be right behind me in the water.

But when I turned, I saw him standing, unaccountably, on the shore, watching me. From this distance I could not see his features, but his posture was odd. As if he was straining forward and restraining himself all at once. In any case, he was immobile. I called to him and waved him in. He shook his head.

Well, the water was too glorious to abandon, so I had a good strong swim down the coast a piece. Finally, with no need for watchful stepping or hair-raising rides upon raging rapids, in and out of eerie underground rivers, and slogging through snake- and insect-ridden jungles, I was able to revisit my find of
P.a.e.
When this portion of the adventure, whatever it was, was done, I would insist on Tarzan taking me back to the nesting grounds so I could begin memorizing every detail for the time there would be pen and paper to record it.

I swam back up the coast to where Tarzan stood and saw that he had not moved from the place I’d left him. Reluctantly, I regained the shore and stood dripping and refreshed before him.

“Why did you not swim?” I asked him.

“Here Zu-dak-lul,” he answered cryptically.

Large Water,
I silently translated. I could see his expression, but I could not read it.

“Tarzan no swim Zu-dak-lul.” This was spoken with such simple authority that, despite the mysteriousness of the pronouncement (he was a more than capable swimmer in Eden’s pools), I refrained from further questioning. There was so much I wished to ask. But I forced myself to be patient. All would be revealed in time if I practiced patience.

“Come,” he said and, turning north, began walking along the water’s edge. It was strange seeing Tarzan on foot in so spare and open a landscape, without the wall of trees, the lush carpet and upholstery of greenery. And yet he walked the beach with assurance, as though he owned it, every bit as much as he did the forest.

What was this up ahead?
Tucked into a monstrous baobab tree surrounded by a small forest of coconut palms was a man-made structure. As we approached, I could see it was jerry-built and weather-beaten, much of it the driftwood of some old shipwreck and the tattered remnants of a canvas sail. The thatch roofing had all but blown away, but there was a cleverness to its construction, a thoughtfulness and intention of purpose.

Now we stood below it and I could feel Tarzan immobile but agitated at my side, much as he had been standing at the Mangani blind. Here on this beach and above in the ramshackle hut must reside more puzzle pieces of my friend’s origins and history, as surely as a limestone cave would give up the fossils of a man dead for a million years.

Suddenly Tarzan sprang to a horizontal palm trunk and up onto the lowest limb of the baobab. He climbed through the many branches, approaching a wooden platform near what appeared to be the hut’s front door. A moment later, a frayed but still-sturdy rope ladder unfurled from above, and Tarzan jumped down to my side. I saw him hesitate before he put his foot on the first rung of the ladder. Hesitation was rare in this man, but here on the beach of Zu-dak-lul I had seen both refusal and hesitation in an otherwise fearless individual. Now he was climbing and turned to urge me to follow him. With the greatest eagerness, I did.

Tarzan gained the platform and held out his hand, pulling me up. What I saw then was a door made of several thicknesses of crate sides. Yet it was a proper door, with cleverly fashioned hinges and a latch. Tarzan opened the door and disappeared inside.

I followed.

What I saw then was so improbable, so mismatched a gathering of native and civilized cultures, that my mind fell briefly into confusion. Here were walls made of driftwood and crates, carefully sawed palm tree trunks, and a roof of the same. The palm leaf thatch had been an adjunct to the wooden construction, so that although the giant leaves had blown away from the roof, there was still a ceiling over our heads, and even though the boards beneath my feet squeaked, I felt the floor safe and sturdy. There was a porthole window to the side open to the sea, but I noticed the top half of a solid shutter, long ago broken off, that would have closed the window against the weather when necessary.

And what was this? Were those ragged remnants of lace curtains at the window? The single room was appointed with pieces of furniture, some of them rough-hewn, like the table—two broad planks of a ship’s deck carefully nailed together—and benches on both sides, of the same construction. But near the window was a beautifully made rocking chair, looking very much like the one in the Edlington-Porter nursery. And there was a child’s desk and chair. And a bookshelf … filled with books written in English!

Drawn to the most unlikely of objects in such a place, I took a step toward the bookshelf and felt something crunch underfoot. Shock at the sight of civilized trappings in that rude hut on a remote, palm-lined beach in Gabon was nothing compared to the horror of having crushed beneath me the bones of a human hand!

Recoiling, I saw that the hand was part of a complete skeleton, albeit in several large pieces scattered on the floorboards—an arm here, the rib cage, spine, pelvis, and one leg there. The skull sat a distance away from the rest. It had to have been, I thought, shuddering, the most violent of deaths.

I looked to Tarzan, who had, with quiet indifference, stepped around the bones on the floor and squeezed himself into the child’s chair behind the little desk and had pulled a book from the shelf. He was turning the pages slowly, but too quickly to be reading.

As I walked farther into the hut, my eyes fell on a bed tucked into a corner. There, sprawled on the once-fine yellow silk coverlet, now in moldy shreds, was another bony corpse, this one smaller and, by the look of the wide pelvis, a female. Although it was intact, its posture—with limbs splayed and the mandible open in the shape of a scream—indicated that the woman’s death had come at the end of an appalling struggle. Most gut-wrenching of all was the sight of a gold wedding band on the skeletal finger of her left hand.

Looking back at the door through which we’d entered, I saw quite clearly all the signs of a forced entry—three trunks that had been piled in front of it pushed aside, splintered boards nailed over the opening that now hung from a single nail.

Once more my gaze found Tarzan, but he was fully engrossed in his book, not in the least concerned with the carnage around him.
What on earth could be going on in his mind?

Now my eyes fell on the floor beside the bed. There was a third skeleton, though this one was tiny—perhaps the size of a year-old child. I knelt beside the piteous remains of a short-lived life. But when I reached out to touch the bones, I was jolted with a further shock, something unexpected in this den of unnatural and macabre surprises.

The infant skeleton was not human. Most obvious was the shape of the skull—clearly apelike. The leg bones were straight and the fingers overlong. The big toe bone stood at right angles to the foot.

This was a Mangani child!

I glanced again at Tarzan, who was still entirely engrossed with his book, thus allowing me to continue this astonishing investigation.

Behind the open door I found a proper mahogany writing table, its elegant matching chair overturned. A dried-up inkpot, pen, and blotter were askew on its top. At my feet was a large journal of faded claret leather that had fallen to the floor, splayed open, facedown in an attitude that to my eye appeared obscene in its violence.

I hesitated before lifting it up from where it lay, as I foresaw the weight and profundity of its contents. I was certain that what was written within would change forever the life of the nearly naked savage squeezed now into the child’s desk, paging placidly through a book he could not read.

I lifted the journal with reverence, keeping it spread to the page where it had fallen open, turned it, and placed it on the writing table. Even in the stuffy heat of the room, I shivered, knowing at once that the faded brown blotches that overlay the careful script were bloodstains, surely those of the man who lay in pieces on the hut’s floor. With growing dread I righted the chair and placed it before the table, then sat myself down. I thought then how odd it felt to be sitting upright in a proper chair and not squatting in a moss nest or on the limb of a tree. To have in my sight the trappings, however few, of a familiar society. I closed the diary, squaring it before me. Then steeling myself for what was to come, I opened the front cover. On its title page in bold masculine lettering was centered: