1990 - Brazzaville Beach

by William Boyd; Prefers to remain anonymous

  “You do look well,” Hauser said again. “No, really well. I mean, you’d never believe…”

  “I feel fine. I’m well rested. Nothing terribly dramatic happened.”

  We had been driving for over an hour. Hauser, to my surprise, had kissed me on both cheeks when we finally met up in the lobby of the hotel. He had looked pleased to see me and was full of compliments. We had conversed carefully at first, diplomatically avoiding contentious subjects, but I could sense the questions massing eagerly in his head. I decided to confront a few of them.

  “How’s Eugene?” I asked, disingenuously.

  “Ah,” Hauser began, his glee almost shamefully evident. He collected himself and made his face solemn. “Good point. Not very well. No, he hasn’t been well. Since you left. We’ve seen very little of him.” He glanced at me. “Ginga’s been more or less running things. I think Eugene,” he paused, choosing his words, “has had something of a, a nervous collapse. Nervous exhaustion, Ginga says.”

  “Well. That’s reasonable, I suppose.”

  “What happened?”

  “When?”

  “That day you left. What went on, Hope? Come on,” he smiled at me. “You can tell Anton, surely.”

  “Well…I’m not so sure.”

  “Everything’s changed. The book’s postponed. The feeding area’s been closed down. What did you do to him?”

  “We had an argument.”

  Hauser looked at me sceptically, and saw I was going to say nothing more for a while. He carried on talking.

  “Of course the whole place has been in uproar since you were…taken. Now that you’re safe, and Ian’s back, we’re almost back to normal. But it’s been odd.”

  “How’s Ian?”

  Hauser grimaced sympathetically. “He’s been trying not to show it but I think he was, you know, traumatized. Poor boy.” He glanced at me again. “I mean compared to you he definitely is traumatized.”

  “Appearances can be misleading.”

  Hauser laughed. His laugh was high and staccato. “No, no, Hope,” he said. “No, no. You’re made of sterner stuff.”

  His amusement was annoyingly contagious, and I found myself smiling back at him. Why had I disliked Hauser so, all these months? The tyranny of first impressions, I supposed. But then I thought back to the incident of the half-eaten baby chimp. I should be more cautious.

  “Why have they closed the feeding area?” I asked.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “What?”

  “They must have told you. The war. The chimpanzee wars they’re calling them. The northern chimps—they’ve been systematically killing the southerners.” He looked for my reaction. “You do know.”

  “I discovered it.”

  There was a long pause. Hauser ducked his head, as if apologizing.

  “Eugene discovered it,” he said.

  “No.”

  “That’s why the book is being rewritten.”

  “I discovered it. That’s why I had to leave.”

  “Look, we all know it was during those days he was out in the field with you. But,” he paused and then said slowly, “Eugene was the one who realized what was going on…”

  “I’d been telling him about it for weeks.”

  Hauser frowned. “That’s not the way—how can I tell you?—that events are being presented at the camp.”

  I felt a tightening in my head, as if a belt were being cinched around my skull. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I’ll be honest. Everyone assumes Eugene had made…made some sort of sexual advance to you.”

  “For God’s sake!”

  “We don’t know anything. We see you run off. Eugene effectively disappears. Ginga takes control. You know…”

  “Well, you assumed completely wrong.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m pleased to hear it.”

  “Ask Ian. He’ll tell you. I spotted this weeks ago. Mallabar wouldn’t listen.” I looked at Hauser. “Hasn’t Ian said anything?”

  “Well, no…He’s not really been working.”

  “Good old Ian.”

  I turned on Hauser with some of my old hostility.

  “Anyway, you should know, too. Incinerating that baby chimp.”

  “Baboon…No, Hope, I swear. It was a baboon. We were both wrong.”

  I looked out of the window at the passing scrubland. A nice irony. A sense of frustration was building inside me that was making my shoulders hunch and my scalp crawl.

  “Anyway,” Hauser said, his voice placatory, “it’ll be great to have you back. We’ve got two new researchers, but we still miss you, Hope. Really.”

  The last thing you learn about yourself is your effect. I turned to him. “Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be staying long, somehow.”

  It was unsettling to be back at Grosso Arvore: the place appeared to me simultaneously familiar and strange. We arrived at dusk. The blurry glow of the hurricane lamps shone from the canteen. We went straight in to eat, and Hauser introduced me to the two new researchers—young men, Americans, from Stanford University—who were living in my rebuilt tent-hut. I ate my meal quickly and then went to the census hut to pack up my few possessions. There had been no sign of Eugene and Ginga Mallabar, nor of Ian and Roberta Vail.

  I sat on my bed in the long gloomy room thinking about the low-key, not to say non-existent, welcome I had received. Only Hauser and Toshiro had seemed pleased to see me. More beds had been moved into the hut since I had last been here, and the framework of a partition had been erected that would eventually divide the room. Good times were returning to Grosso Arvore, that much was clear.

  I sat on my bed and allowed my swiftly alternating moods to dominate me, unchecked. I felt by turns apathetic, sullen, hard-done-by, bitter, frustrated, baffled, hurt and, finally, contemptuous and independent. Mallabar, ‘nervous exhaustion’ or no, was evidently trying to initiate some sort of damage limitation programme, to incorporate my discoveries about the chimpanzees into his magnum opus before it was too late. I began to regret my hasty note informing him of my own publishing plans.

  There was a quiet knock at my door. Ian Vail, I thought, as I went to answer it, and about time too. But it was Ginga. She embraced me, enquired about my health and state of mind and complimented me on my fresh and calm demeanour.

  She was wearing jeans and a dark blue cotton shirt. Her hair was held back from her seamed, sharp face by a velvet band. She looked fresh and calm herself, I thought.

  “How’s Eugene?” I asked.

  She paused before she answered, looking down at the floor.

  “He never told me what happened that day,” she said.

  “He tried to kill me.” I paused. “I think.”

  Ginga looked away, with an abrupt jerk. She put both hands to her forehead and smoothed it. “I can’t believe that,” she said.

  “He went mad, sort of. He hit me. Violently. If I hadn’t run away…”

  Now she was looking fiercely at me again, as if gathering reserves of energy and determination within her. Then she said, in a quiet voice, “You must understand what this has done to him, Hope, the killings. The attacks, you must try.”

  “Look, I told him. He didn’t want to hear about it. I wasn’t trying to…outsmart him, or anything.”

  “I know, I know. But that didn’t make it any less hard on him. And the fact that someone like you—I mean, a new arrival should…” She made a flicking gesture with one hand. “Should turn everything upside down.”

  “I suppose…” I checked my spontaneous British reasonableness. No lifelines were going to be offered here.

  “He’s not well,” Ginga went on. “Very depressed. It’s difficult.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Can I see him?”

  Ginga looked suddenly ashamed, all her poise and cool capability gone. I had never seen this emotion on her features before; it looked absurd, wholly out of character, like a false moustache or a clown’s red nose.

  “He won’t
see you,” she said. “He refuses.”

  “Oh, great…So where does that leave me?”

  Ginga’s composure had returned. “Well, you understand…It’s impossible to work on here, my dear.”

  I closed my eyes for a second or two, then stood up and wandered round the room, behaving as if I had some choice in the matter, as if this was a decision that had to be mulled over, thought through. Ginga waited with perfect patience.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s impossible. Under the circumstances.”

  “I thought you’d agree.”

  She took some papers out of her bag and laid them out on the desk.

  “It’s just a formal letter of release. If you could sign there…And I have a cheque,” she tapped an envelope, “for what is due you for the rest of your contracted period of employment.”

  “Very generous of you.”

  She responded sharply to my sarcasm. “This is nothing to do with me, you know, Hope. We’re friends, or so I like to think. But that doesn’t matter. I have to help Eugene. Grosso Arvore has to keep going. Without him…Well, you know how the place works.”

  I wondered seriously, for the first time, about the true extent of Mallabar’s nervous exhaustion.

  I signed. Ginga smiled at me, sadly, I thought.

  “There’s one more thing,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “What?”

  “This is your original contract.” She turned some pages of the document. “Do you remember this clause?”

  I read it. I had to smile. All publications, its gist ran, based on original research carried out at Grosso Arvore, were the copyright of the Grosso Arvore Foundation, unless alternative permission were given. All data gathered was similarly protected and had to be surrendered to the Foundation for its archives on termination of employment.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t do this. Forget it.”

  “You will get full acknowledgement in the book. Eugene promises. I promise.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. You can’t stop me.”

  Ginga rose swiftly to her feet. “Don’t say anything more, my dear. You’ll just regret it.” She spoke in her capable, maternal voice. “I’ll see you in the morning before you go. No, please, don’t speak. Martim will drive you back to town.” She smiled bravely at me and left.

  I went outside and smoked a cigarette. Moths bumped and skittered around the lantern that hung above the census hut’s doorway. Three pale, liver-spotted geckoes clung patiently, immobile, to the wooden wall waiting for insects to settle. The air was loud with stridulating crickets and the noise of a laughing argument carried across on the breeze from the kitchen compound.

  I felt an associated amusement—an oddly tearful, resigned amusement—shake my body in a weak chuckle. I paced around, smoking my cigarette ruthlessly, like a condemned man about to face a firing squad, wondering aimlessly what to do next, weighing up the few feeble options available to me. In a strange way I felt relieved, as anyone who finally acknowledges defeat does. At least one can stop struggling now, you say to yourself. At least this episode is over and a new one can start.

  I sighed, I shook my head, I bayed silently at the stars in the black sky. A phrase came into my head that John had learnt in America: screwed, blued and tattooed. Yes, I thought, that’s what’s happened to me, I’ve been screwed, blued and tattooed…

  Hauser had invited me over for a drink later, if I felt like it. I did, now, and wandered across Main Street towards his bungalow. The starshine threw the fractured shadow of the hagania tree across the dusty road. I was thinking: what should I do? Where shall I go? Who would go with me?

  Hauser opened his door, smiling.

  “Ah, Hope,” he said. “Got a surprise for you.”

  “No, please,” I said. “I’ve had enough surprises for one night.”

  I stepped over the threshold. Toshiro stood by the meat-safe opening a bottle of beer. Sitting at the table were Ian and Roberta Vail.

  It turned out fine, not bad, considering, not nearly as awkward or tense as I had imagined it might be. We talked for hours about the kidnap, about Amilcar and Atomique Boum, the mission school and the attack. I told them about the last days, about the elegant gun and its too small, lilac shells, of Amilcar’s stupid death and the puzzled courtesy of the Belgian mercenaries. And it was a strangely heartening, cheering conversation too, after my depressing encounter with Ginga Mallabar. There was a mild spirit of reunion in that room that night, which was encouraging. Hauser and Toshiro kept supplying us with beer, and the two new researchers—Milton and Brad, I think—were invited over to hear our war stories. Mauser’s radio was tuned to a mid-European, short-wave station playing fifties jazz. Roberta smoked two or three of her menthol cigarettes, unreproved by Ian.

  Ian himself looked thinner, and it surprised me for a moment to see his face clean-shaven again. He managed to maintain a convincing front of composure and self-confidence but I could sense his unease and insecurity massing edgily beneath it.

  He waited until the party broke up, which was after midnight. We all stood outside Hauser’s bungalow, chatting, reluctant to have the conviviality disperse abruptly. Seeing Roberta talking vivaciously to Brad or Milton, Ian chose his moment and drew me a few paces to one side.

  The lantern-light cast long shadows across his face. I could not see his eyes.

  “Listen, Hope,” he said quietly, his voice deep, half-strangled. “That night, when I ran.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was trying to divert them. I was trying to lead them away from you. I wasn’t—” he cleared his throat. “You mustn’t think I was running away. Leaving you. It was to lure them. Otherwise we’d—”

  “I know,” I said simply. “Don’t be stupid. You saved me.”

  I could sense rather than see his entire posture relax. This easing—of his soul, I suppose—seemed to emanate from him like a sigh. He was about to say something more when Roberta interrupted him with a called question about some dean or head of department they had known at Stanford. I touched Ian’s arm reassuringly and turned away. I said good-night to Hauser and Toshiro and the others, and walked back across Main Street to the census hut. I had told no one I was leaving the next morning.

  As she had promised, Ginga was there to see me go. Alone. She was firm but sweet to me, like a fond but wise headmistress obliged to expel her favourite pupil. Stay in touch…What will you do…? Let’s meet in London…We behaved in an exemplary, civilized, adult way. Ginga let her guard drop for a moment and that strange embarrassment reappeared when she hinted that, when Eugene was ‘well’, perhaps something could be worked out. I did not ask her to specify what that something might be.

  She held both my hands, kissed my cheeks and said, with almost Eugene-like sentiment, “Ah, Hope, Hope,” and then let me go.

  I decided to drive and Martim moved across to the passenger seat of the Land Rover. I wanted to experience to the full, and for the last time, that moment when we bumped on to the metalled road south at Sangui. I asked Ginga to make my farewells to the others, started the motor, waved and drove off.

  In Sangui I stopped outside Joao’s house. It was shuttered and closed.

  “Where is he?” I asked Martim.

  “They have moved him, Mam,” Martim said. “He doesn’t work for the project, so he can’t live for the house.”

  I looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Where does he live, then?”

  Martim led me down a rutted lane to an old mud hut with a matting compound on the edge of the village. Joao was there, sitting at the front door with a cloth wrapped around his waist, chewing on a stick of sugar cane. It was oddly upsetting to see him idle, and out of his khaki uniform. His thin chest was covered with a scribble of grey hairs. He looked suddenly ten years older.

  But he was pleased to see me and became genuinely angry when I told him I had been sacked also.

  “This bad time, Mam,” he said, darkly. “Very bad time.”

 
; “Yes, but why you, Joao?”

  “He say there is no job for me now. Now all the chimps are gone.”

  “All?” I was shocked. And ashamed. I realized I had given no thought to my surviving southerners.

  “Except Conrad,” he said, then shrugged. “Maybe.”

  He told me that Rita-Mae had gone missing shortly after I had left. At which point Rita-Lu had joined the northern group, now firmly, and apparently permanently, established in the southern core area. Joao himself had found Clevis’s body two days later, minus both legs, he said, and ‘very torn’. He had continued to spot Conrad periodically, up to about a week ago. But since Mallabar had sacked him he had not gone into the forest. Alda had left also, to try and find work in the city.

  I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to do. I went back to the Land Rover and told Martim to wait behind in the village for me. I told him only that I was going somewhere with Joao and would be back in two to three hours. He looked puzzled, but was perfectly happy to oblige. I made him promise not to return to the camp.

  Joao and I then drove to goalpost village. It was just beyond here, Joao said, that the final sightings of Conrad had been made. He seemed to be lurking around the southernmost slopes of the escarpment, not far from the village. Village boys had caught him once or twice in the maize fields, and had driven him away with stones.

  When we reached the village, Joao still refused to accompany me into the forest. Dr Mallabar had banned him from it, he insisted, and he did not wish to find himself in further trouble. When they built the new research station there might be a job for him there; it was not worth antagonizing the doctor.

  So I left him with the Land Rover and trekked off up the slopes of the escarpment to search the areas where Conrad had last been seen.

  I walked the bush paths that meandered through the trees above the village looking for suitable chimpanzee food sources. If Conrad was confining himself to this precise area there was a reasonable chance of finding him feeding. It was both pleasing and melancholic to be back in the forest looking for chimps for the last time. It was mid-morning by now and the sun was close to reaching its full strength. The paths were spattered with coins of sunlight and a faint breeze coming up from the valley floor made the dry leaves rattle in the tree-tops and the blonde, bleached grass sway with a parched, rustling sound. The rains were very late this year.