Wild Spirit (15 page)

Although I didn't yet know it, on that landmark birthday, I was poised for the greatest change of my life, and the three of us – Rodo, Win and I – would be bonded forever by events that would unfold in the weeks to come.

It was a Sunday evening early in October. Win and I had spent the day relaxing in the flat, relishing our new-found privacy and the space to spread out after living in the Kombi for six months. Win had listened to a Rachmaninov piano concerto while I wrote letters home to my family, trying to paint a picture for them of what our life in camp was like. I regularly wrote to all our friends back in Australia and England, determined to maintain the relationships despite our isolation. Letters from the outside world had assumed a great importance for us since we had arrived in camp: apart from the radio, they were all we had to connect us to everything we had known before. Back in Australia, Win had new grandchildren he had never seen. Each time the mail pouch arrived on the pirogues, we waited impatiently to see if there were any letters for us.

Rodo had driven down to Mayebut that afternoon for a few hours' respite from the demands of the camp. From our flat, we could see the final bend of the road that led up from the
débarcadère.
We had been watching for his return,
and when he hadn't arrived by six o'clock, we became concerned. Then we heard the crunch of the Toyota hitting second gear halfway up the hill. Instead of driving straight down to the
cas de passage
, he skirted the guesthouse and braked to a halt outside our front door. We heard the car door open and the sound of his boots running on the laterite outside. Something was wrong. We both felt it.

We threw open the door just as he reached it. His face was white with shock. He said nothing, but motioned us to follow him to the car. When he opened the door on the passenger side and stood back, we saw in the half-light what had brought him to this state. A tiny black figure sat hunched up on the seat, cowering. I took in the leathery texture of its face, the roundness of the head, and the way its legs and arms were drawn tightly up to its body as if to protect itself. Although we had never seen one before, the features were unmistakable. It was a baby gorilla – and it was in crisis. Its body was wracked with tremors, and its filthy, matted coat gave off the stench of infection.

For some moments, all we could do was stare. Thoughts tumbled through my mind. How did it come to be here? What do we do? Then Rodo leaned forward to pick it up. As he did, the infant looked up listlessly, then stretched out its arms to him in a gesture of inexpressible pathos. He gathered the baby to his chest, where it clung with a desperation that moved us close to tears.

‘What happened?' I managed to ask.

‘One of the Bakwélé men at Mayebut tried to sell it to me. They shot the mother three days ago for raiding their banana plantation, and they've kept the baby in a hut ever since, tied up around the groin with a rough liana.'

‘How could anybody bear to do this?' I thought. ‘Have they no compassion?'

Win stroked the infant's head gently and tried to comfort it with soft crooning sounds.

‘I didn't pay them,' Rodo said. ‘I told them we'd talk about that later. I just wanted to get it out of there.'

We stood in silence. The three of us had talked about gorillas so often, about how much we wanted to see one, but we had never imagined it would happen this way. In the face of the infant's trauma, I felt helpless. We had no equipment, facilities or expertise to deal with the situation.

‘We'd better check with Eamon to make sure he's happy for us to keep it,' Rodo said. ‘It's a big commitment, and it won't be easy.'

Eamon lay stretched out on his bed reading. We walked in and stood silently at his door. Normally he would have smiled and greeted us with some quirky comment, but when he looked up and saw what Rodo was nursing, he jerked bolt upright. We waited for him to speak. He looked hard at the infant and shook his head. ‘Oh my lord, where did it come from?' I saw the same sadness in his eyes I'd seen when he'd spoken about the gorilla deaths in the 1960s. He met Rodo's eyes and must have realised at once that he'd set his heart on caring for the infant. Eamon seemed on the point of saying something – I sensed he wanted to warn us to beware of caring too much. Instead, he nodded and simply said, ‘Make sure you keep it warm.'

Our little orphan was a female, about the size of a three-month-old human child. Rodo set her down on the long wooden table on the porch, where a single light bulb gave off a dingy glow. She sat hunched up, her arms locked
around her body, grinding her teeth. She had a tiny wizened face and a grip of iron. Her eyelids slowly opened and closed as though she was utterly exhausted. Win stroked her head and back, trying to reassure her.

‘I want to get a good look at her and see where the septic smell is coming from,' Win said. ‘I'll try rolling her over on her back, and if you two can keep her there, that'll help.' Our first attempt was not encouraging. When we laid her on her back she screamed, flailed her legs and arms, rolled herself back on to her belly and sat up.

‘I don't want to stress her more than she already is,' Win said, ‘but we've got to keep trying.' On the third attempt, Rodo held her arms against the table and I steadied her legs. She squirmed and struggled, registering her protests with a series of lusty screams. In spite of all she had been through, her spirit and strength seemed to be intact.

She was in a pitiful state. Her backside was smeared with dried excrement, and a deep wound, 8 centimetres long and 2.5 centimetres wide, ran the length of her left groin where she had chafed against her tether. The wound oozed pus and was matted with filth and twigs. Her skin and flesh had been sliced through to the hip joint.

‘I'd say she's been tied up for much longer than three days,' Win said. ‘It looks more like a week to me. And we don't know whether she has internal injuries either.' I had never been faced with an injured animal before. As we bent over her, the importance of our role in her life hit me. She wasn't just any animal, she was a great ape – so like us – and a member of a threatened species. Her survival probably depended on what we could do that night.

‘We've got to do something,' Win said. ‘If we wait to take her down to the vet in Makokou in the morning, it might
be too late.' He looked across at me. ‘Can you get our first-aid kit?'

It was almost seven o'clock, dinner time, but we had no thought of food. I arrived back with the first-aid kit to find Win peering at the wound. ‘That's not going to heal by itself. It's just too big. It should be stitched.' Our comprehensive kit included sutures and a curved surgical needle. Win stared fixedly out into the darkness for perhaps a minute, then murmured, ‘If you two can hold her still, I'll stitch her myself.'

The table on the porch became our operating theatre. We covered it with an old woollen blanket and put a pillow under her hips.

‘How're we going to keep her calm and still?' I said. ‘She's so strong, she's going to fight like hell.'

‘Good question. We need a sedative of some kind.' Around us the insects droned. Flying termites hit the light bulb and dropped onto our heads. The isolation of our situation pressed in even more than usual.

‘There is one possibility.' Win perked up. ‘We've got plenty of red wine. A cupful just might do it.'

Rodo fetched a bottle of Bordeaux and a plastic cup from the kitchen while Win rummaged around in the first-aid kit to find the eye-dropper. As she lay on her back with the two of us bracing her arms and legs against the table, Win squirted the wine into her mouth, a few drops at a time. She shook her head from side to side and struggled to break free. Several times, she almost succeeded in biting on the eye-dropper with her sharp teeth, but each time Win withdrew it just in time. An hour passed before she swallowed the last of the wine and grew drowsy.

I filled a bowl with warm water and set out disinfectant
and cotton wool, then Win set to work swabbing out the pus and debris. The wound was the size of a fat cigar, and so deep that the bone of her hip joint lay exposed.

Win stared at it in dismay. ‘I'm not even sure it's possible to stitch a wound this size without a clamp to hold the sides together.' The first step was to prepare the margins of the wound for stitching. I disinfected a pair of surgical scissors and Win trimmed away the thick black hair from the edges.

‘I'm going to fill the wound with antiseptic cream to try and combat the infection,' he said. ‘It's a bit unorthodox, but it's worth a try.' Then he threaded the curved needle with a suture and looked up at us both. ‘Are you ready? Just hang on to her tightly now – we don't know how she'll react to the pain.' Rodo and I held our breath as Win used all his strength to push the first stitch through her tough skin. She was still conscious and her eyes open, but to our amazement and relief, she didn't as much as flinch. However a moment later she jerked her bottom suddenly to one side, causing the stitch to cut through the flesh and give way.

‘That's okay,' Win said. ‘I know now that it was too close to the edges. I'll go further in with the next one.' Meanwhile, he had worked out a way around the problem of holding the sides together without a clamp. He would space out the first eight stitches widely, then put additional ones in between to finish off.

It was painstaking and slow work. Each stitch was separately tied off. After an hour, just ten were in place. But our fears about inflicting pain on her proved groundless. She appeared to feel nothing. About nine-thirty, Eamon came out to watch. It must have been a bizarre sight – a builder sewing up a gorilla by the dim light
of a sixty-watt bulb, showered with termites. Eamon's dry sense of humour was never far from the surface. In a quiet, deadpan voice, he quipped: ‘Well, I don't suppose there'd be many folks back in Brisbane sewing up a gorilla tonight!' Despite ourselves, we dissolved into helpless laughter. Eamon stood watching a little longer, then, suddenly serious, turned to Win. ‘I commend you for your compassion.' Then he went inside to bed.

By ten-thirty, the twentieth stitch was in place and the wound had been completely closed. Win had been bending over her for three hours. He straightened up, arched his back and massaged his aching muscles while Rodo and I released our hold on her arms and legs. We had no idea what to expect. Would she try to escape? Would she collapse from stress? As we watched, these fears melted away. She simply rolled over onto her belly, sat up sleepily, and wrapped her arms around her chest.

We had not eaten or drunk since lunch, and we'd been tending to her for almost four hours. Fatigue was beginning to take over, but our elation overrode it. Everything had gone far better than we had dared to hope. She hadn't gone into shock and there had been no bleeding. As Win stroked her head and back and talked softly to her, she relaxed and closed her eyes.

In those four intense hours we had bonded with her, and with each other even more strongly. If she made it through the night, we would try between us to give her whatever she needed to survive. Just before eleven, Rodo gathered her up in the woollen blanket and took her down to his bedroom.

I put my arm around Win's shoulders and kissed his cheek. ‘I'm so proud of you, sweetheart. That took real courage, compassion and skill.'

With his usual modesty, he made light of it. ‘Well, it remains to be seen whether she pulls through. Tomorrow should tell.'

 

Rodo carried our small patient up to the guesthouse in the morning in the bed he had created for her – a sturdy cardboard box lined with the red woollen blanket. Her eyes were bright and she seemed relaxed. I had just finished breakfast.

‘Well, how was it?' I asked.

‘You really want to know? I made up this bed for her and settled her into it. I thought she'd feel cosy and safe in it, but as soon as I turned out the light she got out and tried to climb into my bed. I put her back. We did this for about three hours, until she finally wore me down. As soon as I let her climb in beside me, she fell asleep. I woke up this morning to the find the sheets smelly and soaked with her urine.'

‘How're you going to keep this up?'

‘I don't know, Nettie. We'll just hope it gets better.'

He placed her in the box out on the porch, where the early morning sun gave some warmth. I pulled up a chair and sat beside her, marvelling at how much she had improved in just twelve hours. Already, word of her arrival had spread through the camp. All the surveyors came up to see her, then some of the carpenters and several labourers. I watched their faces light up with wonder when they saw her. She had an extraordinary effect on people.

Étienne and Bernard fussed over her like a new baby, and cut a small piece of sugar cane for her. She reached out and grasped it gently, turned it over and over, and explored
its texture and smell. When she was satisfied it might be good to eat, she put it to her mouth and started chewing on one end. Then she systematically pulled off the fibrous outer layer of the stalk with her sharp teeth to reach the sweetness inside.

Despite Rodo's lack of sleep, his whole attention was focused on her needs. He asked Étienne's advice about how best to give her milk: our milk supply was tins of evaporated milk mixed with water. Étienne, with his gift for nurturing, knew what to do at once. He found an empty plastic detergent bottle, soft to the touch and with a hole at the top. Together, they made up a batch of milk with warm water. She was resting in her box. Rodo held the bottle to her lips and squirted small amounts into her mouth at a time. She took it eagerly, licked her lips and reached for more.

‘She must have been severely dehydrated when you found her,' I said. ‘No wonder she's thirsty.' Rodo talked to her soothingly while she finished the whole bottle, as Étienne stood at the kitchen door and watched, his face lit with joy. Then Rodo fed her chunks of a banana that Étienne had cut up. She took each one carefully in her hand, put it in her mouth and chewed it slowly. I remembered what Jacques had said, that gorillas were unhurried and approached their food delicately. Like Rodo, I found it almost impossible to tear myself away from watching her. Each gesture and expression revealed a little more about her: I didn't want to miss a moment of it. I felt intoxicated by the privilege of having a great ape in our care.