Jane (9 page)

Father was quiet, his eyes closed in contemplation. I saw the jaw begin to clench. I did not dare look at Ral Conrath.

“There’s something else,” our visitor said. “I’m loath to say it, as it’ll probably get me kicked out of your house.”

Father nodded for Ral to go on.

“Miss Porter here needs to go on the expedition with you. This is a dense jungle, and the dig site will be large. You’ll need another set of eyes, another mind—one that thinks the way you do—if you want to make the most of the months we have between the two rainy seasons. You’ll have me watching both your backs every minute of every day. It’s a dangerous undertaking, all right, but there’s nobody better than me to get you both home in one piece. There, I’ve said it.” He gave Archie a crooked grin. “You going to kick me out?”

Father looked at me. “My girl, you look like a sleeping dog who’s just been pecked in the ass by an angry goose. Say something.”

I was so stunned and breathless it was hard to get the brief sentence out. “May I go, Father?”

“Well, if I can convince your mother you won’t be sold off into white slavery or eaten by cannibals, it’s all right by me.”

“Let me talk to your mother,” Conrath said. “I’ll remind her of Hilda Petrie.” He clapped Father on the shoulder. “You leave Mrs. Porter to me. In no time at all we’re going to be seeing eye to eye. Trust me.”

I took Father’s arm. “Will you promise to do everything in your power to make this happen?”

“Scout’s honor.”

I loved it when my father said that. It was so American. And it reminded me of what Archimedes Porter must have been like as a young boy.

I was absolutely sure we would have been the best of friends.

The Nest

I looked up to see the scarlet-tailed grey parrot waddle in a comical pigeon-toed gait down the fig limb. He hung upside down like an acrobat from a smaller branch to take a drink from the coconut shell, then resumed his course till reaching a limb above my feet. Here he stopped and watched me silently for a long moment before ripping off a piece of bark and holding it in the grip of his claws. He began nibbling daintily, letting pieces fall on my toes. This was not the first time the hookbill had come visiting. Tarzan had said the bird’s name was
Lu-lu
, but I saw the creature not as a French cancan dancer but as a distinguished professorial gentleman in a frock coat, and had taken to calling him “Mr. Grey.”

I had known such a bird in Cambridge, as my neighbor, Mrs. Rys Willis, had kept one as a pet, mentioning endlessly that Henry VIII had had one like it. It had bitten my finger once, drawing blood, and as I had recently been so misused by a wild animal, I was not eager to tangle with Mr. Grey, no matter how small or how sweet and docile he appeared.

It was clear that my new protector, Tarzan, had entrusted my care to his avian friend. There were times when the young man had had to leave the nest to gather food. Every morning before first light he would climb straight up the fig and mysteriously disappear into its thick branches. Whenever Tarzan was gone, Mr. Grey would come to stand sentinel, calling out in a shrill two-part whistle if anything more threatening or untoward than a lizard came near my still largely immobile person. If the whistle sounded, Tarzan would be at my side in an instant. I could only imagine with what strength and agility he had climbed the tree to arrive at such short notice. I marveled at the bird’s power of discernment. Other birds or small monkeys coming to call elicited no alarms, nor did a snorting wild pig at the base of the trunk, but an immense red-and-black spider
had.
And a small viper slithering toward me had sent Mr. Grey into a frenzy of whistling and the shouting of a word that sounded much like “hister!” Tarzan had returned posthaste with blood in his eye and hacked the head from the snake in a display both horrifying and deeply appreciated.

While I had heard the bird speak to Tarzan in words unintelligible to me as yet, Mr. Grey had not deigned to converse directly to me, as though he had found me an unworthy partner in conversation. True, I had said very little to him, finding myself more shy with the parrot even than the man.

And the man was shy with me.

Tarzan and I had continued a sort of rudimentary communication. I’d begun enunciating body parts and the objects around me that I recognized, and he had dutifully—no, enthusiastically—repeated and quickly learned them in his lovely deep voice. He was, as my father called his best anatomy students, “a quick study.” Less adept was I at the strange language Tarzan employed (from what tribe could it have come?), for it was spoken with gruff, grating undertones. Speaking his words for “eye” and ear”—
yat
and
yad
—had made me feel as though I was clearing my throat of a great wad of phlegm.
Sheeta
was “leopard” and
neeta
was “bird.” I had learned that
tar-zan
literally meant “white-skin,” and thus our earlier miscommunication had been explained. Really, he was very clever. He had even learned that one word might have two meanings: “here” and “hear.”

A sign language had developed as well. This was helpful for verbs—“come,” “go,” “eat,” “hear”—and emotions—“sad,” “happy,” “angry.” This was as far as we’d gotten, but it amazed me that I was understanding the wild man as well as I did, and he me. And that we should even be communicating our simplest feelings.

Most other ideas were yet beyond our capabilities. I had not known how to explain what “father” meant, though whenever I spoke the word, Tarzan flinched. I guessed that this resulted from me hearing it from Tarzan’s lips when I had first awoken, and in my unstable condition, “Fah-thah” had provoked an alarming fit of tears and moaning.

Many times I wondered at the great decorum and reserve of the man. Here we were, a man and a woman, living half naked in close quarters, and never had I felt the smallest hint of fear that he might molest me.

It was the simplest of all lives and, without a doubt, the strangest.

“Hello, Mr. Grey,” I said for perhaps the fiftieth time, hoping the bird would mimic me.

He said nothing, just dropped the remaining bit of bark in his claw onto my foot and reached for a fig, snapping it off the branch. He held it in one foot while standing with perfect balance on the other and began gnawing at it with gusto, depositing almost as much of the ripe fruit on his beak as in his stomach, a sack just under his throat that quickly began to bulge with the meal.

“You’re a little piggy,” I said.

“Piggy,” the bird repeated, startling me.

Why that word, and no other?
I wondered. Perhaps he liked the sound of it.

“Piggy,” said Mr. Grey again and dropped the remainder of the devoured fruit on my foot.

I laughed. “Yes indeed. Now I’m a piggy, too.”

Tarzan suddenly appeared at the lip of the nest. That was his way. There was never a warning of his comings or goings. It was strange, that. In my society, one was very clear about one’s intentions. There were cards given and received so that one knew ahead of time of a friend’s or neighbor’s visit. “That will be all” would signal a servant’s exit, or “I’ll be going now” the departure of a guest.

Tarzan simply disappeared and materialized at will. I might be in midsentence, explaining something I desired, and suddenly he would be gone. The strange thing was, he always returned with the very object for which I had not had time to fully ask.

The plantain leaf packet was bulging. I wondered what would be contained within it this time. The past several days it had held sulfurous mud that Tarzan had packed onto my still-sore back, and the pain had lessened considerably. Other times he had returned with strange fruits, tender shoots, and tiny curled-up ferns that were sweet and delicious.

When he spread the packet now, looking very proud indeed, I saw to my horror that it was filled with chunks of bloody meat.

I looked at Tarzan and shook my head no. He cocked his head curiously, then nodded yes.

“Dako-za,”
he said.

“
Dako-za
 … meat,” I replied, learning his word for the first time and teaching him mine.

“Meat,” he repeated instantly, then added with a gesture to his mouth, “
Popo
meat.”

Eat meat, he was commanding me.

I shook my head again and, frowning, pointed to the blood.

Tarzan smiled.
“Galul,”
he said. This must be the word for “blood.” He dipped his fingers in the pile of meat and brought them to his mouth, licking the gore off with great relish.

I winced.
“Galul,”
I said and started to utter the word of Tarzan’s language I had learned meant “bad”—
sord.
But I stopped myself. I did not wish him to think that I believed blood was bad. Or meat.
How to say what I meant?

“Dako-za,”
I said and smiled.
“Galul.”
I smiled again and nodded my head. “Jane
popo dako-za galul.
” I frowned and shook my head no. I saw a spark behind his eyes as he came to understanding.

He thought hard, then said, “Tarzan
popo dako-za galul.
”

I smiled triumphantly. “Yes, Tarzan eats bloody meat. Not Jane.” It was the most complex conversation we had yet had. He was pleased as well, and to prove it he took a piece of the meat and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing exuberantly.

I watched in silence, revolted and delighted all at once.

“Piggy!” cried Mr. Grey.

I barked a laugh. I wondered then if I might, in fact, still be delirious and dreaming all this, for it was almost beyond my comprehension.

In any case, it was quite an education.

*   *   *

It was an important day, the day that I would first leave Tarzan’s nest. This had been decided between us with various words and signals. I was, of course, terrified at the prospect, for I had peered over its lip and seen the floor of the forest through the branches more than fifty feet below. While I was healed of my injuries and fevers, I was weak from inactivity and had lost a considerable amount of weight. I felt light as a hollow-boned bird.

He stood before me now, very close, a habit I found initially unnerving. Civilized people—a term I was finding mildly ridiculous these days—held greater space between themselves. Physical contact was minimal. Men shook hands or nodded their heads in greeting. An embrace between ladies was the merest brushing of lips on cheek. And proper distance was kept when two people spoke face-to-face.

Here Tarzan stood but a foot from me. He was quite tall, and so I was forced to look up to meet his eye.

And of course he had handled me. Intimately.

The thought of this had at first made me blush with shame. But the unselfconsciousness with which he had nursed me, washed me, held my head when I vomited, had been so natural that I’d forgotten many of my inhibitions. How Tarzan had dealt with my toilet functions while I had been unconscious I’d never asked, but the simple knowledge that he had, had made moot any further pretense of modesty. At my request, he had fashioned a latrine of sorts, and I took the opportunity when he disappeared up the fig before dawn to do my business. I washed with water from my pith helmet, its ventilation holes now plugged with resin by the endlessly resourceful Tarzan. It always amused me to see the hat lined up side by side with his two coconut shell halves, his usual water supply.

Now I stood there in the garments he’d cleverly fashioned for me when I’d been able to sit up and finally stand. With slender vines, Tarzan had jerry-rigged together my rent-at-the-seams clothing, tying them around my torso, arms, and legs. It was, all in all, an ensemble my mother would have been appalled to see her daughter wearing.

Unaccountably, it pleased me very much.

Take me down?
I signaled to him. Sometimes the silent language we had devised was easier than juggling words in two foreign tongues. In fact, I quite liked such communication.

The English drowned in words,
I thought,
so many of them unnecessary.

Tarzan nodded a simple yes, then turned his back on me, reaching to pat it with his hands. He meant to
carry
me down!

“Oh no, I couldn’t. Uh, I’m afraid. Uh…” We had never had cause to use any words that denoted fear. And here was something I had no way to express. While Tarzan had touched me intimately, I had never laid my hands on him. Now he was indicating that I should climb upon his back. Lay my torso, breasts, and female parts on his skin and, I reckoned, wrap my legs around his waist.

When it was clear I had not complied with his order, Tarzan turned back to me with that inquiring expression he assumed when he could make neither heads nor tails of my actions.

He gestured the question—
Did I not trust the strength of my arms to hold onto him?
I shook my head.
I was strong enough,
I signed in response. With that, he gave me his back again, this time squatting so that mounting him would be easier.

Mounting him.
I thought I was through with blushing, but here I was, heat rising from chest to throat to cheeks. But I was, if nothing else, determined. I had ridden horses since the age of six, taken countless dangerous jumps. At least, I thought, smiling, I would not have to ride Tarzan sidesaddle. And here was the thing that mattered above all: I trusted him. This raw, naked savage.