Bryan gave us a brief tour first thing in the morning. I suppose it was the names that had misled us. There were no gates – ‘north gate’ appeared to be a kind of euphemism – and the area certainly didn’t function as any kind of recognisable headquarters. I found it hard to believe that this, several years ago, when the park still generated a large income, had been the main entrance. All that remained was a clinic, a limited domestic space and one small office, the ‘administrative centre’ where Selina and Bryan worked. We met one ranger, Frank, and the medic, Dr Andrews. Bryan told us a team had recently left for the city, while the cleaning staff would be arriving later in the day.
The other guests in the dorm were construction workers, here to work on the small fence just in sight of the clinic. The fence had stretched for only five kilometres. It was an artifice, installed for tourists when they were still permitted to enter the park. No-one explained why they were only taking it down now. Frank was helping cut the posts; the wire was heaped in loose coils behind the dorms. Without the fence, there was no clear entrance to the park, rather a narrow gravel road that dissolved into shrub and then, a little further on, an area of scattered trees, gradually becoming denser as the hills rose and a light mist obscured the rest.
I went to the kitchen, heard voices raised through the door and found Alice lecturing Jane. She held a small plastic bin, and I saw on her arm something that looked like stitching peeling itself open. I stepped back instinctively from the ants. Jane – ceasing her stiff, trance-like walk – muttered weak apologies. Alice paced to the sink, tried to blast the ants off. She showed me the object responsible – a single black banana peel.
‘All food waste,’ she said, ‘goes in the freezer. Here. You can’t leave it out,’ she said. ‘How long has it been there?’
‘An hour,’ Jane said.
We took our cereals, fruit and coffee through to the adjoining room and sat at the table. Jane’s bowl was filled with milk, and she slouched forward on her chair, stirring the cereal round and round. Strands of her fringe fell over her face, almost dipping into the milk. Alice neatly cut up her fruit, appearing absorbed in the task. I was relieved, then, when Selina entered the room. She looked different from the previous evening, strained. There seemed a forced, almost manic element to her manner – I could all but hear her instructing herself to retain and hold focus.
‘How did you all sleep?’ she said, driving at a smile. ‘The mattresses aren’t the greatest, I know, but after a long drive you probably didn’t notice?’
She sat down by Alice, holding a mug in both hands, centring herself through it. ‘You must have a million questions. I almost don’t know where to start.’ The incident, she told us, had occurred two weeks ago; everything had been arranged in a great hurry. The rangers, on a routine tour of the upper west zone, discovered two adult bodies drying out in the heat, a cloud of flies around them. The bodies were laid on the ground with a black substance emerging from their mouths. No further superficial damage was discovered; the rumours were entirely fictitious. The bodies were brought out, examined first in the park clinic then transported to the capital. An alert was raised, and our team was quickly put together. ‘We sent out photographs and a provisional file. Don’t tell me you didn’t get it?’
‘You can get us copies now,’ I said. ‘And the clinic – can I talk to the examining medics? Toxicology reports? The more information we have, the better.’
‘Absolutely,’ she said, making several rapid nods of her head. ‘I’ll have the details brought over. You’re having your medicals this afternoon anyway.’
‘Great.’
‘Though that’s with Dr Andrews. Dr Andrews wasn’t involved in the autopsies. None of us here, actually, were privy to them. That was all taken care of by the team in the capital. You were supposed to meet with them. It was all in the file.’
‘But we haven’t seen anyone. We have to at least speak with them, ideally see them, before we go in.’
‘They told us,’ Alice said, lowering her voice, meeting Selina’s eyes, ‘we couldn’t see the bodies. They didn’t say anything about a meeting. Here,’ she scrolled through her phone, ‘I’ll bring up the email.’
‘I can’t believe this,’ Selina said, almost under her breath. ‘I know how this looks, honestly, but I promise you, no-one here is trying to make things difficult. I probably shouldn’t say this, but … it’s incompetence. The problem here is there are too many departments, and no-one’s clear exactly who’s doing what. So things get missed. That’s why you didn’t get the file. It’s inexcusable, I know, I just want to reassure you it’s not malicious.’
‘Have there been further casualties?’ Jane said.
‘No. Not that we understand. The rangers weren’t able to make a full census, but they didn’t report anything else amiss.’
‘You do, at least,’ I said, ‘have the blood kits we need to do our work? We’ve heard nothing further on the doctor, so we have to assume his absence. And if we don’t have the kits …’
‘Yes, of course we have them – didn’t they tell you that either?’
‘I wasn’t sure, that’s all.’
‘The equipment is ready for you in the clinic. It’s all arranged. Not the new software, obviously, but everything else you’ll need. All samples will be analysed here after you come out. We’ll go over everything later just so we’re absolutely clear. We’ll replenish your food supplies after the third week, as discussed. Frank will arrange the drop-off and set it up by phone. But you have everything you need – food, gas, et cetera – for the first three weeks?’
Strict communications protocols were in place. Signal was scrambled inside the park, part of a wider effort to discourage poaching and trespassing. We’d still bring our phones – a legal requirement – and a two-way channel would be set up between us and the admin centre. Every second evening, we’d send a brief update on our progress, a summary of the latest work. Again, Selina seemed to make an apologetic expression, implying she knew conditions were awkward and unreasonable and that she was almost embarrassed at having to explain. I appreciated that she seemed, in this respect, relatable, but I found because of this I didn’t actually press her as hard on certain issues as I could have done.
I watched Jane sit on the canvas chair outside. She put herself down awkwardly, as if uncertain of the fixity of her environment. Her whole behaviour suggested someone so surprised to be there she thought she might still be about to wake up. I reminded myself of her lack of experience, that I should try to go easy on her, but I kept finding little things she did irritating. On the hammock she’d check the netting, back herself up in front of it, pull out the near edge and let herself go. Same on the leather sofas in the hotel lobby, dropping down with sudden acceleration. She hit it loudly; I wondered if she wanted us to say something, if she were doing it deliberately. If maybe she just wanted us to notice her.
It was obviously difficult for her, all this, and she was wary of how quick we might be to resent her. She’d said already, more than once, she had no idea why she was asked to come. Hopefully that would become clearer once we arrived inside. Alice told me in confidence Jane was by no means the first choice; several senior mycologists had turned the offer down. We should be grateful she was there. She would have to help us directly, especially now we were without the doctor; she would have to interact with the animals. She was still going over all the material we’d sent. Alice was instructing her on the basics, which seemed to be helping, but for the moment she was understandably having trouble adapting and finding it difficult to be herself. I often thought I saw her stepping back, removing herself, as if the only way she could get through this was by projecting a near future, a time when it would all be just a story, the most bizarre story, and she could share it with her friends and the other people in her life, and it would have its proper place.
The medics assessed us one by one through the late afternoon, general and comprehensive health checks with a particular emph
asis on finding viral agents. If we were infectious, if we were likely to become infectious, we could not enter. Obviously, there was interest in declaring us fit and well enough to spend up to six weeks in trying circumstances, with a limited and repetitive diet. The hike in, carrying our supplies and equipment, over two days through difficult, uneven terrain and at a steady incline, was the most demanding part, and we had to be physically capable of managing this. Bryan made it clear there was no emergency route out of the area we’d be camping in. At best, it would take three days for anyone to be retrieved.
But the tests weren’t about us, they weren’t for us: the priority was protecting the animals. Ideally, we’d never have the opportunity in our lives of seeing them. Every time we saw them we threatened them; every time we breathed, stood, spoke in an area they communicated with, we threatened them. Literally so, Alice said. Our pathogens may be communicated, in certain circumstances, through our eyes as well as through our mouths. The eyes become irritated, fingers rub at them and dig out contaminants. Polluted water runs from the tear ducts, infectious material expressed from a naked eye, watching. So seeing them was explicitly dangerous; speaking of them, describing them, was even more so. In close proximity it was advisable to wear masks, and even then to cup your hands and deflect the sound when you said anything. People on research trips look away from each other, and from the animals, when they are talking, often kneeling, head down, as if pushing their words into the ground, burying the indeterminate material of what they’re saying. People were always mishearing each other, whispering requests for repetition, and often the full extent of what was said was only picked up later, when the recordings were played back in the relatively neutral, safer environs of the camp. These masks – goggles, cotton white fabric pulled over the mouth – tended to surprise first-time researchers, being reminiscent of the emergency room or operating theatre. You saw, immediately, that you really shouldn’t be there, that it was wrong, you’d trespassed. Bonobos, just like the other great apes, were not equipped to live on the edge of us, their habitat destroyed at the same time as their immunity. That picture, of researchers trying to look away, to not directly intrude on the animals, afraid of the power of a glance, of what might be carried by their eyes as well as by their breath, breath that reached further through acoustic reinforcement (‘don’t speak, don’t say anything if it’s not absolutely necessary’), was like an emblem of our destructiveness. A series of researchers in masks and with our eyes shielded, standing in a forest apart from each other, cupping our hands and talking directly into the ground, backs craned as if in pain, vividly destroying an environment by standing in it, speaking at it, acknowledging the fact in the manner by which we did it. All of this was healthier – unutterably healthier – before words had been spoken.
Our provisional interpretation of what might have happened in the park was straightforward enough. Increased development changed the habitat as fewer species, plant and animal, were able to survive. The food available to the bonobos – largely herbivorous – changed. As the animal population fluctuated, the symbiotic networks many plants relied on for defence fell apart, and whole tracts of the forest collapsed. We believed the present moment was on the cusp of experimental animal behaviour. This was potentially dangerous; we made this clear to Jane. We didn’t know what might happen. The troop was trying different foods. The two mature animal bodies may have been among the first casualties of this new experimentalism. While Jane’s inclusion in the group was suggestive, it was unlikely a fungus alone had killed them, but rather that the particular combination of foods had reacted to allow the toxicity to breed inside the animals. Hopefully, Jane would be able to confirm this. We had to analyse their blood; we had to watch them – far enough away not to directly impede them, close enough that we could magnify a clear image of where they were going, what they were eating, what their daily patterns were. Were the deceased animals an anomaly, two foraging partners whose activity was unlikely to be repeated? Did one or more of the present troop carry greater instructive weight, their own experimental diets at risk of spreading through the group?
The clinic’s broad front windows looked down onto the park itself. From the early afternoon the thunder rolled across the sky. It seemed to drift in from several directions, splitting and charging the air above us. It was still dry, the density of the air high enough that the sun prematurely darkened, making the wide static flashes of the lightning starkly visible. I got distracted; on every flash I waited, tensed my back, leaned my head forward a little, counting the seconds, anticipating the sundering boom of it, communicating precisely where it was and how quickly it was moving.
I lay back as the blood was taken – Dr Andrews said something about the thunder, about it being a bad sign. He told me to press my hand firmly on the puncture mark on my left shoulder.
I’d been sent back from another park at a similar stage ten years ago, about to begin a short placement arranged by the university. I was distraught. I had a simple common cold, and I had had to return home. When signs of an infection were discovered, however trivial they might have seemed, and regardless of the importance of whatever work was planned or however much money was invested in it, there was nothing you could do. You had to apply all over again, a process that could take months. So I returned to the university, feeling I might have to recalibrate my life, that I had just lost the opportunity to make a career. My flatmate dragged me to a house party and that night I met John. It was a tired joke: the susceptibility of the chimpanzee immune system to deception, the open defencelessness of the chimpanzee structure next to a human, was indirectly responsible for our lives. All our past together – John and I – all our hopes, all of it was contingent on the threat I posed, as a person, a human, to chimpanzees and other primates. We should be thankful, I thought, we should be grateful that this other species cannot stomach us. When I picture late at night the brightest impressions from my life – the wide beach, first memories stirring in rock pools, bedding in plants with Ivan and Catherine in the garden, this enormous light; enough, in even this beginning, my first few recollections of life, to last forever, an inexhaustible source of pleasure, pure happiness – I thought I should be praying to these adjacent species and parallel lives for giving me this, giving me the opportunity to have this, to be alive and to know that I’m alive and to be able to treasure it, to realise how rare it is. I should give my thanks to almost the whole of creation – to all that isn’t human – for allowing me, and my kind, to feed off it and to kill it.
III
Propped up in bed, two upright pillows behind him. Something was altered; something was strange. Going to turn, he was blinded by an internal light, a whiteness surging in his head. He reeled back, closing his eyes. His head was swollen, with an alien consistency; it wasn’t all his own. It rolled, dipped, moving as if by itself, putting undue pressure on his neck. His shoulders ached, the nerves lining his limbs tingling. He had to move. He peeled the bedsheet away, watching the industry of his fingers, the independent scuttling motion as they clutched at the material. Adjusting to the darkness, he looked around him. He didn’t recognise the room. A cabinet by the bed; past this, in the far corner, a chest of drawers. A bare, unused room, a room awaiting a guest. He watched his hands again – dull, swollen, insensate. Digging into the mattress, he heaved up onto the floor.
He tried to think of his most recent memory, the last thing he could recall before waking, but the pain immediately seized him and he backed away. Where was he? What had happened?
Planting one hand against the wall, he lurched forward in slow, collapsing steps. At the end of the room he pressed the door handle, turned and pulled. He came out onto a dim corridor. As the wood panels creaked beneath him, he experienced a rush of nausea, a revelation of unmeasured space, limitless distances opening up beneath him. It wasn’t safe here. He grasped the wall with both hands. Ahead were three closed doors and a landing, a staircase. He needed to be back on ground level, a firmer sur
face, somewhere he could trust.
He inched forward to the first door, pushed it open: a bathroom. The second room was unfurnished, the third room empty except for curtains and an undressed bed. The rooms and the corridor were dark, gloomy; the light would hurt his eyes – he couldn’t bear to press the switch. He approached the stairs, one hand against the white banister and the other holding his head to limit the jarring while it rolled. A pain burned between his jaw and ears, his teeth felt loose, something trickled down his neck. He went to call but his throat was rough, spitting up a bitter taste. Slowly, eyes trained on the stairs, some distant impulse keeping him moving, he descended.
Downstairs was pale wood, an open kitchen, a table, two chairs, a sofa. He covered his ears, waited for the nausea to ease, the imbalance to settle. He couldn’t think. Constructions were remote and impossible. He was relentlessly quiet, hiding from the greater pain, the warning image of a thought searing across the cortex. He looked around, trying to find a familiar object, something meaningful that might let him know where he was, what had happened. He went to the window and moved the curtain aside. Thick grey fog; impossible to see anything. Again he had the impulse to call out, but his tongue was heavy, hard to shift. He went to the sink, turned the metal lever and clamped his mouth to the flowing water. He coughed, water spilled onto the floor. He tried again, lapping, gulping it back, sucking it in. The cool water flowed through him, branching out, filling his extended body.
He went past the stairs and found another door, pulled the cord automatically and the room lit up. He blinked, startled, his eyes fizzing from the pain. A larger bathroom. A sink, a mirror, white tiles, a shower. A torn white shirt, a bloodied neck, thick matted hair, an unfamiliar face. He stretched his mouth and the hole widened in the mirror. His arms moved to the top of his head, went to touch. He felt further across the hair until he found a depression at the centre.
Gathering Evidence Page 5