Jane (35 page)

When the commotion of our arrival had quieted somewhat, another grey parrot flew to the fig and perched quietly just inches away from Mr. Grey. On first observation the two looked identical, but the closer I looked, the more differences I saw—a slightly smaller, sleeker head, the coloring of the plumage lighter.

“Have you gotten yourself a wife?” I said to our friend. “Is this Mrs. Grey?”

He answered, uncannily, by reaching over and gently grooming his companion’s head feathers, a gesture she accepted by moving a bit closer to him and closing her eyes.

I saw Tarzan smiling. “They are mates,” he told me. “Now they will never part.”

*   *   *

I had come to expect Tarzan’s absence from the nest when I awoke in the morning. It had always been his habit to climb the fig before sunrise, and I had never questioned the ritual or begged to join him. But in the hour before dawn on the day after we had arrived home, Tarzan shook me awake. I was instantly alert, needing no time to rouse myself or rub the sleep from my eyes.

“Follow me,” Tarzan said. “Very careful where you step. Where you hold.”

It was strange climbing in the dark, though I saw at once that it was not pure dark. Here and there leaves glittered with moonlight like tiny lampposts showing us the way. Tarzan, who knew the route perfectly well in pitch-black, was most certainly moving upward through the branches with unaccustomed slowness and deliberation so I could safely follow.

The limbs and branches thinned out as we neared the top, and he demonstrated how to lay a foot upon a slender bough so as not to bend or break it with my weight. Finally he reached down and lifted me handily to the crown of the fig. I found to my delight that Tarzan had fashioned a second nest here which, though smaller than the one below, was adequate to bear the burden of two bodies sitting side by side. We sat facing east—a direction he called “Sumbula”—where the merest glow of light could be seen behind the mountain range. I saw a few stars still shining brilliantly in the dome of the sky. Few, as the moon was full and bright in the West, low on the horizon.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said.

His reply was a long silence during which he lay back, resting his head on his hands.

“
Kudu
will come soon,” he finally said. “The sun will rise,” he corrected himself. “When it comes, the black will turn to … purple. Then”—he was searching for the word—“the color of the hornbill’s cheeks.”

“Orange,” I said, and he nodded.

“From the mountains smoke will rise. Like smoke from Waziri fires, though
many
times greater. I think there is a tribe that lives in Sumbula that makes these fires.”

I was quiet, for he had never spoken so long or so eloquently.

“When the sun rises, the moon … it will still be in the sky.”

“Is that why you brought me here today?”

He affirmed that it was.

I was humbled by Tarzan’s broad knowledge of his surroundings. I knew little of astronomy but was aware that it was a rare occurrence in a year when a full moon and rising sun shared the same sky.

“You are a naturalist, Tarzan,” I said.

“What is that?”

“A kind of scientist who studies plants and animals, the earth and the sky.”

I saw him nodding in agreement to the title I had bestowed upon him, visibly pleased.

“Today I will begin the teaching, so you can grow strong and fast,” he said.

I resisted the urge to hug him, but thought,
You were my student, now I will become yours
.

“You will follow me. Do as I do. Go when I say go. Stop when I say stop. You will be silent. You will see and hear and smell
everything.
Or you will die.”

Suddenly despair overtook me.
How on earth could I learn everything expected of me in time to study the Mangani before the rains began?

Tarzan’s eyes were fixed on me. “You will learn quickly,” he said. “There will be time.”

Then the sun rose in all its violet-and-orange glory. Tarzan stood and gave me his hand, helping me up. Assuming a pose of reverence, he stretched his arms out before him, chin lifted. I did the same, feeling the first warm rays on my chest, envisioning the full moon at our backs. We inhaled the fragrance of the fig leaf bower, and I knew without words that here, standing at the top of the world, we were giving thanks that
kudu
had risen again to begin its travels through the arc of blue sky and another day had come. With the years of our diverse lives behind us, I could feel that something great lay ahead. Adventure. Discovery. Danger. We were joined together in a strange destiny … my wild man and me.

And I was ready. Ready as I would ever be.

*   *   *

So it began. We climbed trees endlessly, he instructing me in the art of finding hand- and footholds—some obvious, some mere toe- and fingerholds. I had to learn to trust that these would support me, and my courage grew as the size of the nubs by which I perilously hung over the forest floor diminished. I became adept at gathering fruits and nuts and ferns, and more than once caught myself literally “going out on a limb” to secure the ripest cluster of berries or the pinkest figs, a feat I would have blanched at watching Tarzan do just months before.

The mature liana of the great forest afforded us our “campus.” On the broad branches I felt confident almost at once, using my outstretched arms as a circus tightrope walker would do. But I was leery of narrower limbs, and Tarzan patiently educated me in which of them were sturdy enough to hold my weight, which looked large enough but were made of brittle wood and might crack beneath my feet. And soon I knew the crisscrossing of pathways in the canopy as a network of roads—one that led to the warm pool or the pawpaw tree with the ripest fruit, or to the Enduro Escarpment and the Waziri village.

Above our heads, a tangle of branches, air roots, and vines provided a perfect environment for brachiation. I admit I found it daunting at first. I was not a petite girl, nor was I small boned, and though years of riding had strengthened my legs, I regarded the musculature in my hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders as inadequate for the task of swinging from one branch to another.

But Tarzan was a clever and patient teacher. At first he guided me to webworks close to the ground so that fear of falling was all but eliminated, and my feet touched the forest floor as much as they dangled above it. To begin, he chose a liana of small hardwood branches around which my fingers could curl completely. His body behind, his hands over mine, he placed them for me (in the same ways I had “danced” with Father as a little girl, standing with my feet on his shoes). This allowed my grip to be firm and complete before Tarzan released his. Thus we worked, arm over arm, he instructing which branches or vines might be crawling with biting red ants and those that were slippery or poisonous and to be avoided at all costs.

My strength and dexterity increased daily. I grew calluses on my soles and palms. I knew my progress to be good, for Tarzan acted the proud parent when I leaped across the ever-widening gaps between branches. Soon I was surprising myself with prodigious feats of brachiation, exploding with most unladylike whoops of triumph.

Tarzan insisted I learn the use of the Bowie to kill prey. I could not yet hunt, but he would subdue an animal with his sheer strength or dexterity and insist I deal the deathblow. I was of course horrified to be taking the lives of animals, even for food, but learning even the most gruesome of the forest arts was the price I was forced to pay if there was to be any chance of my returning to the Mangani bower.

*   *   *

I enthusiastically applied myself to the tasks of daily living and so determined to broaden our diet, in particular to encourage Tarzan to eat cooked meat. I was still very thin and my limbs wiry. I wondered if it was the loss of weight that had caused the cessation of my menses—a circumstance that although worrisome made matters in the wild far less complicated. I recalled the frenzy when my female hounds came into their season. The last thing I wished to be out here in the forest was a “bitch in heat.” And of course without ovulation there was no chance of pregnancy. But whether for health, appetite, or vanity’s sake, I contrived to put some meat not only in my stomach but on my bones as well.

To this end I had Tarzan take me back to the Waziri village, where we were given a warm welcome and, and at my request, lessons in the art of fire making. We were shown how to hammer one piece of split bamboo into the ground and use another, held horizontally and stroked up and down, to produce a spark. It was hard work to raise the wood’s temperature high enough to ignite, and we learned to take turns rubbing and blowing on the coal. Too, the tribeswomen seemed delighted to teach the “ape-man’s mate” how to prepare certain of their delicacies. Grubs raw disgusted me. Grubs roasted were quite delicious. And the once-shocking lizard on a stick touted by the women as one of their favorite hors d’oeuvres became eatable.

Tarzan, who had relied solely on the Bowie knife for his infrequent meals of flesh, was given the gift of a spear and then taught by the men how to use it. In no time we were enjoying meals that satisfied my palate, though Tarzan was slow to appreciate cooked flesh. One afternoon he speared a fish in the nearby watering hole. The taste of it when it was baked in banana leaves in our fire was a cause of delirious lip-smacking celebration for me, and finally Tarzan admitted to enjoying it, in particular the oily-crisp skin.

It was a small triumph, but one by which I was entirely delighted.

*   *   *

Some small creature had taken up housekeeping in the nest under my head, and after several nights of disturbed sleep I decided to evict it. Tarzan had gone to spear us a fish. It had amused me to see shining in his eyes the memory of and craving for a particular food, this craving that—for probably the first time in his life—moved him to secure for himself that same meal.

I had set about on my hands and knees picking apart the thick mattress of twigs, leaves, feathers, and moss and the soft fibrous tufts from the silk-cotton tree in the places I remembered hearing the scuffling about and chewing which, in the deep quiet of forest night so close to my head, had sounded like the downstairs maid cleaning out the hall closet.

Less than a foot down I came upon an object foreign in size and shape to the nesting material. With a bit more digging I uncovered an artifact that, once uncovered, literally set me back on my heels.

When Tarzan came swinging acrobatically through the curtain of vines near the fig—a sight that never failed to thrill me—I was sitting waiting for him. He dropped down feetfirst with immense grace just in front of me and his eyes fell immediately on my find. The expression I saw flitting across his face surprised me, for embarrassment was one emotion he had never once demonstrated.

“Why was a Waziri bow and arrow buried in our nest?” I inquired mildly.

He produced a blunt-nosed fish, holding it out for me to see. He was clearly unready to confront the issue of the hidden weapon, so I exclaimed brightly at his catch and climbed down the fig tree to the clearing to where we had taken to building our cook fire.

He followed shortly, having wrapped the now-gutted fish in a neat package of banana leaves tied with a length of fiber. I was nursing the first tiny flame with bits of dried twigs. Now he knelt down beside me and began feeding larger sticks into the crackling fire.

“Bow and arrow?” he asked, as though no time had elapsed since my question in the nest.

“Yes,” I said, “that is what the weapon is called. Did your mother never tell you the story of Robin Hood?”

Tarzan shook his head.

“Well, many, many years ago in England a man, not so different from you, lived in a forest much like this.”

“There are forests in England?”

“Not anymore, I’m afraid, but back then there were, and the man called Robin Hood was a good person who wanted to protect the forest and his friends from a very bad person called the Sheriff of Nottingham who was making trouble for everyone. So Robin gathered a small tribe around him—‘the Merry Men’—to fight the sheriff. And the weapon they used for hunting and fighting was the bow and arrow.”

Tarzan was wide-eyed. “In England they had Waziri weapons?”

“Something very similar and, strange as it may seem, these weapons are still used, though not for hunting meat to eat.”

“For what, then?”

“Sport.”

Tarzan shook his head uncomprehendingly.

“Sport is something people do for the pleasure of it, not of necessity.” I thought for a moment. “The way you dive from the cliff into the deep pool, that is sport.”

Now he was quiet.

“Why did you hide the bow and arrow, Tarzan? Why did you not use them to hunt?”

He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “I cannot.”

This was an odd statement. There was nothing physical that my friend was unable to do. Or so I had thought.

“Robin Hood loved a woman,” I said, surprised at how shy the statement made me. I saw Tarzan’s eyes brighten at the words, but he remained silent. “Her name was Maid Marian, and this woman was very good with a bow and arrow. As am I.”

“You?”

“Would you like me to teach you?”

“Yes!”

I smiled at his uninhibited enthusiasm. What “civilized” man would welcome instruction in so manly an art from a woman?

“Shall we begin today?”

“Yes,” he answered. “After the fish.”

*   *   *

Tarzan and I journeyed to the Waziri village for a second bow and quiver of arrows that would be needed for our endeavor. On the way he described how he had first come across the tribe and their weapons.

Once his injuries at Kerchak’s hands had healed, Tarzan had begun to climb the fig and greet the dawn. He’d felt strong again and swung through the branches with ease, moving in the direction of
kudu
’s rising and the mysterious smoky mountains. It was here he first became aware of creatures so far below the crush of leaves that he could hear but not see them. Their words and voices were somehow Mangani and somehow not. Then he recognized that the sounds and tones were more the kind that he—an inferior Mangani—made. This surprised him.