Johnny Mad Dog

by Emmanuel Dongala

  While some of them began systematically chopping down the mango trees, safou trees, and orange trees, others trained their guns on the forest and started firing. I don’t know what miracle saved me from being blown to bits by the first salvo, for it landed less than three meters away, throwing up an enormous quantity of earth. Wisdom told me to stay hidden, flat on the ground, but instinct was stronger and I lost my head.

  I got to my feet, wild with fear, desperate to escape, and began running headlong into the forest. I stumbled over roots that tore open my sneakers; my legs got tangled in creepers that brought me crashing to the ground; thorns ripped my T-shirt and the supposedly rugged denim of my jeans; razorsharp leaves slashed my arms, hands, and face—and still I continued mechanically to put one foot in front of the other, movement born of the instinct for survival. I was no longer thinking of the snake that could bite me, of the scorpion that could sting me with its poisonous tail, of the gorilla I might encounter in this forest teeming with great apes, of the panther hunting for prey nearby. I had forgotten all about the carnivorous flowers with enormous blossoms that could swallow me up and absorb me. I have no idea how long I ran like that—hours, maybe. At last I noticed that the forest had become darker than usual, and the air unusually cool. I collapsed against the trunk of a tree, gasping for breath, a sharp pain in my side. I had no time to feel sorry for myself—a rumble of thunder shook the world around me. A gigantic bolt of lightning lit up the forest penumbra for an instant, despite the thick canopy, and the heralded event came immediately. A violent tropical storm broke over the woods.

  You really have to experience a storm in the rain forest to get an idea of the cataclysmic forces that, over the millennia, have shaped the surface of this planet. At first, you hear the thunder as a dull rumbling, like a drumroll echoing through the forest vault; then it suddenly explodes in a burst of sound and light. After a moment, you forget the celestial origin of the explosion, for the accompanying sounds—broken up by the forest’s multiple echo points, which send them ricocheting back and forth in a welter of frequencies—are transformed into earthly forces that set the very foundations of the huge forest vibrating. As for the lightning, it isn’t content just to expend its energy illuminating the forest twilight that even the sun can’t penetrate—it strikes the tops of giant trees that dared to challenge the heavens, and those trees, mortally wounded, utter agonized cracking sounds and then fall heavily to the ground with a horrendous crash, to be slowly consumed by the flames of the lightning bolts.

  I took shelter at the foot of a towering tree whose roots formed enormous buttresses near the ground. I huddled within the buttresses, curling up and making myself as small as possible to escape the fury of the elements. As I looked at those gigantic trees, and thought of the mastodons and scaly reptiles of prehistoric times, and witnessed the awesome force and incessant lightning of that storm, I felt as if I’d been transported back to the primeval age when the planet was being formed, millions of years before paltry Homo sapiens appeared on the scene—the age in which thunder and lightning, water and clay, nitrogen and oxygen all tumbled around in the primordial soup from which the first molecules of life ultimately emerged. I saw myself as small, insignificant, no bigger than a flea, a speck of atomic dust whose disappearance wouldn’t alter the total mass of the universe by even a single femtogram.

  And then I remembered that you should never take shelter under a tree during a thunderstorm. My fear returned. I got to my feet. The ground was a sodden mess of mud and dead leaves, and walking was difficult. I crossed a stand of bamboo, skirted tall thick prop roots that looked like stilts, and eventually found myself in a grove of wild banana trees. At least their broad leaves would provide some shelter from the rain, even if they occasionally sluiced water onto me and gave me a thorough drenching.

  It seemed as if I’d spent forty days and forty nights in that deluge, when at long last the claps of thunder faded into the distance and the lightning flashes subsided. But although the water ceased falling from the sky, in the forest it continued to flow. It was running everywhere—pouring from the leaves that tipped it onto the vegetation below like tiny spouts, streaming down the smooth or shaggy bark of trees, murmuring in countless ephemeral brooks that splashed down eroded slopes and tumbled into ravines.

  Night had fallen. I was soaked to the skin, and cold and hungry. Now I was sorry I hadn’t immediately accepted the breakfast that Asjha and her mother had offered. What should I do? I couldn’t risk walking around in the dark trying to find wild berries. If only my wandering steps would take me to where the Pygmies lived! With the confidence born of our superior stature (though we were Lilliputian next to a gorilla), we looked down on them as primitives, labeled them “forest dwellers.” This now struck me as the rankest stupidity and arrogance, for what I wanted more than anything in the world right now was to be a little Pygmy woman gliding through the forest like a fish through water, as elusive as an eel, slithering among the leaves and vines like a serpent, endowed with night vision like an owl, turning to advantage all the tricks and snares of the forest.

  I spotted another tree with huge spurs at its base and concealed myself there as best I could, fervently hoping I’d found a shelter for the night that would protect me from predators and, above all, from snakes.

  Judging from the birdsong and the gentle light that suffused the undergrowth, I could tell that a new day had dawned and that it was time to get moving if I didn’t want to die of stiffness. Adrift in that ocean of green, that trackless, featureless forest in which all directions seemed to offer the same risks and opportunities, I yielded to an atavistic instinct that human beings share with plants: I chose to head toward the sun, toward the light. I knew that the entire life of plants was nothing but a perpetual striving toward the light. So I looked at the leaves on the climbing vines and noted which way they were facing, and I decided to use them as a sort of compass. I set off toward what I reckoned was the east. I walked for a long time, squelching through the muck of dead and decaying leaves, slipping, sliding, falling. My sneakers were nothing but soles held on with laces—the canvas had been completely torn away. I was hungry. I had to eat, I had to survive. The Pygmies managed quite well in the forest. Why couldn’t I? Okay, they were familiar with edible fruits I’d never heard of. For instance, that guava-colored berry over there, so plump and juicy. I reached toward it. But watch out! Poisonous plants, just like predators, often disguise themselves in attractive colors to lure their victims. You mustn’t yield to temptation. I kept going.

  Suddenly I emerged into a clearing. How could there be a clearing in the middle of the rain forest? Then I noticed the enormous stump of a mahogany tree sticking up like a headless neck, and I understood right away: I was in a forestmanagement area. I had no idea that logging operations extended so deep into our forests. The bright sunlight in the clearing dazzled me for a moment. I walked forward. In the hollow of a fallen tree was a little pool of rainwater, surprisingly clear. I knelt down, put my lips to the surface, and drank and drank. Then I sat with my back against the trunk. Hunger was gnawing at me. I wouldn’t be able to go on if I didn’t eat something soon. But what?

  I heard gruntings and snufflings. A gorilla? Quickly I crouched down behind the fallen log. Not far away was a wild pig. At first I thought it was a boar, but it was obviously a female because three young ones were with her, now rooting around in the dirt with their snouts, now raising their heads and squealing. They were feasting on a large bunch of bananas. Bananas! Food perhaps fallen from heaven, like manna, but certainly fallen from a banana tree during the storm. I had to get hold of it!

  I picked up a rock and walked toward the pig. I’d thought that since she was a wild animal with no knowledge of humans, she would scamper off and leave the rest of the bananas to this strange two-legged creature that had appeared out of nowhere. Not at all! She stood there and looked at me. We looked at each other. She still didn’t move, and I got the impression she was challenging
me. Maybe the poor thing didn’t know that we were the superior species on this planet and that everything on it belonged to us. So what if she was the one who’d found the bananas? So what if she’d gone through all sorts of difficulties to obtain them? They were mine now—I had made that decision. But the animal didn’t see it this way. I wanted the bananas for myself, while she, like any mother, wanted them for her little ones.

  Force. Use force. With my left hand I got a good grip on the rock I’d picked up, and mustering all my remaining strength I hurled it at the pig. This did not have the desired result. The blow failed to make the animal run away—on the contrary, it made her angry. She charged straight at me. I snatched up a large stick that was lying nearby and I waited, ready to bash her over the head with all the strength I had left. Unfortunately, my foot slipped just as I was about to deliver the blow. I fell. The animal butted me so hard with her snout that I went sprawling in the mud. Still, I was lucky enough to grab her by the nose, and I tried to smother her by squeezing her nostrils and throat. But my muddy hands couldn’t hold on for more than a few seconds—I was forced to wrap myself around the creature’s middle, the way you grab your opponent in a wrestling match. The two of us rolled around in the muck, and at one point I found myself pinned under the animal’s massive body. I thought all my ribs would break—I was suffocating to death. With the strength of desperation, I wrenched my body out from underneath and gave her a solid left uppercut to the eye. She squealed (from pain or anger?), raised her head, and—beaten at last—turned and ran toward her offspring, who were grunting with alarm.

  I staggered to my feet, winded, furious, and ashamed. I grabbed the stick and chased after that goddamn stupid cunt of a pig. I wanted to kill her for refusing to let me have those bananas, kill her for having humiliated me—but she was quick on her feet, despite her bulk, and had already disappeared into the forest with her little ones, who continued to lament the loss of their meal.

  I wiped my muddy hands on the inside of my T-shirt and pounced on the fruit like a wild animal. I tore off one banana, peeled it, and stuffed it into my mouth. Then a second one. Then a third. Barely stopping for breath, I ate them as fast as I could peel them. Full at last, perhaps too full, I got up to take another drink of rainwater from the hollow in the fallen tree. Since my hands were filthy, I plunged my mouth below the surface, just the way animals do. Once more on my feet, still dazed, I wanted to continue on my way—but despite my determination, I couldn’t go another step. An immense weariness and despair overwhelmed me. I sank to the ground, closed my eyes, and wept.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Laokolé

  I was strolling through a zoo. All of a sudden, horrible noises started coming from the cages. Two male gorillas were challenging each other over a female—they were beating their chests, grunting, and howling. One of them managed to tear down the bars of his cage and escaped. He ran to break down the cage of the female who’d been the cause of the dispute, and in a fit of rage the two gorillas began destroying all the cages in the zoo. The animals were wandering around loose: lions, panthers, snakes, zebras, elephants. And then there were all the animals that had ever lived: kangaroos, bears, woolly mammoths, dinosaurs, countless extinct species—the whole mass of them fleeing with a deafening, apocalyptic clamor, the ground trembling from the stampede. The sky abruptly grew dark and reverberated with claps of thunder and forks of lightning. It was impossible to tell the humans from the animals in that world riven by unbridled forces. The panic was so great that even the trees, after much twisting and turning, managed to wrest their roots from the soil and began to run. I started running, too, but lost my footing in the mud. Just as a warthog was about to gore me with his curving tusks, a rumbling in the sky drove the animal away. The noise persisted and woke me up. I opened my eyes. It wasn’t a dream—the noise was still there.

  Obviously the sound of an engine. It was droning above the forest, about a kilometer from where I lay. For an instant I thought it was a logger’s chain saw and my heart leaped with joy, for that meant I was saved. But when I listened intently to see if I could determine its location, I realized it was drawing closer—approaching so quickly that it was above the clearing before I even had a chance to get to my feet. A helicopter! It hovered in the air like a dragonfly, then began a slow, careful descent.

  This was so unexpected that I remained frozen in place for several seconds. How could the soldiers have spotted me, a tiny speck in that vast jungle? I didn’t come out of my cataleptic state until the moment the machine touched down and the change in the sound’s pitch indicated that the blades would soon stop. I ran and hid behind a large tree. The engine fell silent. Two armed men in uniform jumped to the ground. Then a white man came out. A mercenary? A second helicopter landed near the first. Two more people came out, one of them a white woman. The woman began to speak into a two-way radio. I could hear what she was saying, but I didn’t understand.

  “We’ve landed . . . Yes, in the clearing—everything according to plan . . . Half an hour? Fine . . . Two? Terrific! . . . The male? . . . Yes, very effective as a sedative. The team’s arriving. Okay. Over and out.”

  They headed for the trees at the edge of the clearing as if they knew exactly where they were going, and left the two soldiers to guard the helicopters. One of the men was walking straight toward the spot where I was hiding. It was all over—they’d seen me. Five meters, four meters, three . . . He came to a halt scarcely two meters in front of me. I didn’t dare breathe. I pressed myself to the tree the way lice cling to a scalp. He unbuttoned his fly, took out his penis, and began to urinate. I sighed with relief.

  The men who had gone into the forest didn’t stay there long. Three went in, and seven came out, struggling under the weight of two large motionless forms. When they drew nearer, I saw what they were carrying with such difficulty: two enormous gorillas!

  The men brought the animals, each bound in a net, close to the helicopter, and the woman examined them. She asked that they be injected with another dose of sedative. Suddenly I realized these people weren’t mercenaries but ecologists working to save endangered species. Well, by that point I considered myself an endangered species. If they could save animals, they could also save me.

  I came out of my hiding place, my hands in the air to avoid any misunderstanding, and began running toward them crying for help. They turned toward me in surprise. The soldiers, who were already aiming at me, lowered their weapons when they saw me with my hands up and perhaps also noticed the condition I was in—a filthy, two-legged wild animal emerging from the woods. I rushed toward the one woman in the group, thinking I could count on female solidarity. The soldiers held me back.

  “Please take me with you! I’ve been wandering in the forest, soldiers are chasing me, they’re trying to kill me, I’m terribly hungry!”

  They must have found my words incoherent—I couldn’t manage to tell my story in an orderly, logical way. The woman interrupted me.

  “Listen, we’ve got nothing to do with the war. We’re from the International Institute for the Protection of Gorillas and Chimpanzees. We’re here to evacuate as many of them as possible, because they’re being endangered by this stupid war. The factions are killing even animals—poor innocent animals!”

  “Why them and not me?” I pleaded.

  “Because the extinction of the apes would be a great loss for humanity.”

  “Why them and not me?” I repeated.

  “Because you’re not an ape!”

  “Yes, yes, I’m an ape!” I cried, and with legs bowed I began grunting and snorting, and mimicking the way a gorilla walks, and pretending to stuff my mouth with bananas. I was desperate.

  “It’s impossible to reason with her . . . She’s crazy. We’ve got to get out of here—there could be dozens like her who might start pouring out of the woods any minute.”

  The soldiers were alarmed and began looking at me strangely, as if I were some outlandish creature—a faun with horns
growing from my head and goat’s hooves instead of feet. Keeping a close eye on me, they joined the others, who were laboring to attach the bound and sleeping gorillas to the helicopters by affixing the nets to hooks in the baggage compartments.

  Since female solidarity hadn’t worked, I tried my luck with the man who was keeping his binoculars trained on the spot where I’d emerged. “Please don’t leave me here in the jungle! I’ll die! I’ll be devoured by panthers, strangled by boa constrictors, digested by giant carnivorous flowers, or simply shot by the soldiers who are destroying all the villages.”

  “Jane, what can we do for this poor thing?” he asked the woman, who must have been the leader of the expedition.

  “We’re not authorized to take passengers,” said the woman. “Our insurance covers only animals. All we can do is notify the authorities of her whereabouts.”

  He looked at me and shrugged as if to say there was nothing he could do. I think I continued to speak, and to move agitatedly about, until the moment they got back in the helicopters. Before closing the doors, the woman gave me one last look—and then, just as she no doubt often did with her chimps or her pet dogs, she tossed me a packet of biscuits. Enraged, I crushed it into the mud with my feet. The blades and then the rotors of the helicopters began to turn. The first machine lifted off slowly, hovered a short distance above the ground, and began winching up the first gorilla.

  When I saw that massive body disappear into the interior of the vehicle, I understood that I was truly being abandoned. But I could run to the second helicopter, cling to the gorilla, be drawn up with him . . . My fingers were unable to catch hold of the netting. The machine slowly lifted off, then began winching up the other animal . . . I made little jumps, trying to grab at the mesh, but in vain. Then the two helicopters were nothing but a droning noise that faded away in the distance.