Through a Window (13 page)

I think we all expected that Figan would lose his alpha position for good. Indeed, for about nine months there was no clear-cut alpha male at Gombe. Figan could—and did—hold his own when he encountered the other males on their own, or in pairs. But he ran from them, screaming, when they ganged up in groups of three or four. What was it about him, I still wonder, that prevented the other males from following up their advantage, on such occasions, and joining forces to actually attack Figan? They never did. And most of the dramatic confrontations, the bristling charges and wild swaying of vegetation and hurling of rocks, ended with all participants suddenly rushing together, screaming, and starting somewhat frenzied sessions of social grooming—during which all concerned gradually calmed down and, after a while, moved off together.

It was during this troubled period that the sexually popular female Pallas came into oestrus again after losing an infant. And, with no clear-cut alpha, this caused almost total chaos among the males. Figan no longer had the power to take sole possession of a hot number like Pallas—nor had any of his rivals. And so, almost every time one of the big males climbed her tree (for, probably in sheer self-defence, she spent most of her time above the ground), pandemonium broke out among the others. Either the daring suitor himself was chased up the tree and attacked by one or more of the other males, or, if he made it to his goal, the sight of the sexual act triggered aggressive outbursts among the spectators. And then there would be a brief spell of bedlam as males displayed with bristling hair and furious scowls, hurling rocks
and occasionally seizing and pounding some luckless female or adolescent who got in their way. Sometimes they engaged in brief but furious battles between themselves. Pallas herself was rarely a victim, but she must, nevertheless, have suffered through any number of almost unbearably tense moments.

Throughout this incredible ten-day period, Goblin—who, incidentally, continued to follow Figan faithfully, despite the temporary dethronement of his hero—stuck close to Pallas through thick and thin. Sometimes he was attacked for his audacity, but he got in many quick copulations while his elders fought each other for the privilege of access.

After nine months of tension and anxiety, Figan once again established himself as alpha—though his days of absolute social power were over for good. And just as Faben had benefited from his status as brother to the alpha male, so now did Humphrey from his position as "best friend." Hilali recorded one delightful example when Figan—who was Hilali's favourite chimp—caught two infant red colobus monkeys during the same hunt. He found the first one almost immediately, grabbing its mother, pulling the baby from her arms, and killing it with a quick bite into the skull. And then, instead of starting to feed, he just sat, holding the limp body of his prey in one hand, intently watching two of the other males who were still hunting. After a few moments Humphrey climbed rapidly towards Figan and sat close to him. Humphrey was not interested in the ongoing hunt—only in begging from the share of Figan's prey. All at once, to Hilali's amazement, Figan thrust the entire carcass into Humphrey's hands. Then, leaping from the tree, he raced to rejoin the hunt and, within a few minutes, had got hold of a second mother, seizing and killing her infant. This time he consumed his prey himself!

"
Nifundi, kweli!
"—he's truly an expert, said Hilali, chuckling. He stared into the fire for a moment and then, as though feeling the need to be absolutely fair, to give credit where credit
was due, he added: "
Na kumbuka Sherry, anapofanya hivyo
" —I remember Sherry doing the same. Indeed, Sherry had, in a way, gone one better: he had caught a second prey while still clutching the better part of his first kill. And he kept and consumed them both!

Throughout the early post-kidnap years Derek continued to help with the administration and organization of the research at Gombe, and as the months went by he seemed to get busier and busier. To all intents and purposes he had two constituencies, each with its own pressing needs and problems: the Kinondoni district of Dar es Salaam, whose inhabitants he had represented in government for nineteen years, and Tanzania's national parks, whose furred and feathered inmates were equally in need of his political skills and wisdom. The non-human occupants of Gombe National Park, safe in a highly protected environment, needed his help less then most others, so that it became increasingly difficult for him to justify more than an occasional and very brief visit to see the chimpanzees that he loved.

By that time, however, it was considered safe for me to go to Gombe on my own. When Grub (who had, for a while, continued "school" in Dar es Salaam, doing his lessons in a little room next to my office) went off to a prep school in England, I was able to spend more and more time there. It seemed strange at first, with just the Tanzanians and myself—more like the early days when I had spent months at a time with Hassan, Dominic and Rashidi for company. I missed the students—for a while, indeed, I felt that it would be impossible to keep Gombe going without them. But as the months went by I gradually adjusted to the new state of affairs and I found that the pattern of my life—living in Dar es Salaam with visits to Gombe as frequent as I could make them—had some decided benefits. When I was at Dar es Salaam I could concentrate on analysing and writing. I set up a breezy office where the data could be stored, and where I could work at my desk and gaze out over the bougainvillea—an exotic riot of
colour, purple and pink, crimson and orange-yellow, white and green—to the deep blue of the Indian Ocean. And when I was at Gombe I could throw myself into working with the chimpanzees, following them through the forests, immersing myself in their lives.

Even during the days when I was away from Gombe, Derek and I maintained close contact with all that was going on there, speaking to the men daily by two-way radio. It was over the radio that we heard, one morning, that Gilka had given birth. I was delighted, for her first baby had mysteriously disappeared when he was just under a month old. But my joy was short-lived: three weeks later another radio message about Gilka, distorted and indistinct, brought horrifying news from seven hundred miles away. Indeed, Derek and I found it hard to believe: "
Passion amemwua na amemla mtoto wa Gilka
"—Passion has killed and eaten Gilka's infant. Derek turned off the radio and looked at me.

"It can't be true. It can't," I said. And yet I knew it must be. No one could invent such a horrifying incident. "Oh!" I burst out, "why, why, why did it have to happen to
Gilka?
"

T
HE CAREFREE DAYS
of Gilka's life ended when she was about four years old. As a small infant Gilka did not lack for companionship: her elder brother Evered was usually around, and her mother, Olly, spent much time with Flo and her family. But Evered was eight years older than Gilka—presumably Olly had lost at least one infant between the two of them—and he began to leave his family for extended periods when his sister was only five years old. At about the same time Olly began to avoid Flo because Figan, entering adolescence, not infrequently challenged his mother's friend with blustering displays. And so Gilka spent hours, sometimes days at a time with only her timid mother for company. How happy for her we were when her infant brother was born. Soon he would be old enough to play with her and her days of loneliness would be over. But then came the grim days of the 1966 polio epidemic when Olly's month-old infant became sick and died, and Gilka herself was particularly paralysed in one wrist and hand. Then, as though all this was not enough, two years later Gilka developed a bizarre fungus infection which, by the time she was eleven years old, had hideously disfigured her once elf-like, heart-shaped face. The grotesque swellings on her nose and brow ridge spread to her eyelids so that she could barely open her eyes.

Once we had diagnosed the disease we were able to control
the symptoms with medication. But when Gilka transferred, temporarily, to the community in the south we were not on hand to lace her bananas with medicine and she returned after six months all but blind. (She may have been pregnant, too, but if so she lost the baby.) Once again we were able to bring the swelling under control and soon, to the obvious satisfaction of the adult males, she resumed her interrupted periods of sexual swelling. Gilka, like the majority of adolescent females, enjoyed sexual interactions but she often had difficulty in keeping up with groups of fast-moving males because her bout with polio had wasted the muscles of her left arm. Although I suspected that she was somewhat relieved whenever her exhausting pink days were over for a while, she was, nevertheless, a lonely chimp in between periods of sexual activity—her mother, old Olly, had died by this time and although her relationship with Evered was still excellent, he was not often around to keep her company.

Then, in 1974, things seemed to change for the better. Gilka appeared one day with a tiny infant. We named him Gandalf, and hoped that his mother's days of loneliness would now be over—for once a female chimpanzee starts a family she seldom spends any time alone for the rest of her life. Moreover, the birth of a female's first baby often seems to induce an added respect for its mother among the other members of a community, male and female alike. It was wonderful to see Gilka, who had so often sat on the outskirts of any grooming or resting group, at last taking a more active part in community life. The arrival of this baby did one more thing for Gilka: after his birth we had decided to discontinue the medication for his mother's fungus infection, fearful that it might harm her baby. The swelling, rather than worsening, as we had feared, was instead noticeably reduced. After a while Gilka was left simply with an enlarged nose that was almost comic.

Gilka was an attentive and careful mother, just as Olly had been, and Gandalf, by the time he was a month old, seemed a
healthy and well-developed infant. And then he vanished. We had no idea what might have happened—Gilka simply appeared one day without him. Once more, except during the days when she was pink, she began to wander about alone. And her fungus condition worsened.

It was almost exactly a year after Gandalf's disappearance that we received the radio message that Gilka had given birth again. The baby was a female, and we decided to call her Otta—planning to put an O back into the family names to keep alive Olly's memory. This was the infant who was killed by Passion.

When Derek and I got to Gombe we heard the horrific story in gruesome detail. Gilka, we were told, was sitting peacefully in the afternoon sun, cradling her tiny infant, when Passion suddenly appeared. She stood for a moment, looking at mother and child—then charged towards them, hair bristling. Gilka fled, screaming, but she was doubly handicapped—with an infant to support and a crippled wrist. In a flash she was overtaken. Passion leapt upon her and seized hold of little Otta. Gilka tried desperately to save her baby, but she had no chance and after the briefest of struggles Passion succeeded in snatching Otta away. Then, most macabre of all, she pressed the stolen baby to her breast, and Otta clung there desperately while Passion again leapt on Gilka. At this moment Pom, an adolescent at the time, rushed to join her mother, and Gilka, outnumbered, turned and fled with Passion in hot pursuit, Otta still clinging tightly to her belly. Confident in her victory, Passion sat on the ground, pulled the terrified infant from her breast, and bit deeply into the front of the little head: death was instantaneous. Slowly, with utmost caution, Gilka returned. When she was close enough to see the limp and bleeding corpse she gave a single loud, bark-like sound—of horror? despair?—then turned and left.

For the next five hours Passion fed on Gilka's baby, sharing the flesh with her family, Pom and juvenile Prof. Between them they consumed it all, every last scrap.

We were all dumbfounded. It was not the first example of cannibalism at Gombe—five years earlier a group of adult males had come upon a female from a neighbouring community, attacked her savagely, and during the fight had seized her baby, killed it, and eaten part of the little body. But that was different for the female was a stranger, an alien, who had aroused the hostility of the males. They had attacked her as part of their constant effort to protect their territory from intrusion by outsiders and her infant, it seemed, had been killed almost accidentally. Only a very small portion of the body had been eaten, and by only a couple of the males present. For the most part the aggressors had displayed with, poked at, and even groomed the corpse. By contrast, Passion's attack on Gilka seemed to have been directed to one end only—the capture of her baby. And the carcass was consumed in the way that normal prey is consumed, slowly and with relish, each mouthful of meat chewed up with a few green leaves. We began to suspect that Gilka's first baby, little Gandalf, might have met a similar fate.

The following year Gilka gave birth to a healthy son, Orion. By this time she was terrified of Passion. They met, for the first time, when the baby was a few days old. Fortunately there were two adult males nearby. Passion approached to within ten yards, then stood staring at the tiny infant. Gilka instantly began to scream loudly, looking back and forth from Passion to the big males. As though they understood what was going on, the males charged over and, one after the other, attacked Passion. On that occasion it was she who fled, screaming.

During the next two weeks Gilka seldom travelled out of Kakombe Valley, where camp is situated. She seemed to be trying, desperately, to stay near the protection of the big males. I followed once when she set off from camp with Figan. For about ten minutes she managed to keep up, but gradually she fell further and further behind, handicapped by her physical disability along with the need to give frequent support to her newborn in-fant. Finally Figan disappeared along the trail ahead and Gilka was left on her own. I stayed with her. She nursed Orion, then sat for a while, staring down at her little son. Presently she began to feed. About two hours after she had lost Figan she heard the pant-hoots of Humphrey, calling from camp. Immediately she set off, back the way she had come, and joined him. They groomed for a while and then, when Humphrey left camp, Gilka trailed after him. Just as before, Gilka gradually got further and further behind and, after about twenty minutes, was once more left on her own.