I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sit. Trying to work my muscles defeated me. But through my dizziness I felt a grim certainty form inside me. I had eaten delicious tamarind’s deadly twin. If there was one thing I’d learned from my time with the monkeys, I thought wretchedly, it was that things can look almost identical in every detail, but just a couple of tiny differences could have a seriously large impact – the difference, perhaps, between life and death.
But as I writhed, I saw that sympathy, if nothing else, might be at hand. Though my vision swam, I could just about see Grandpa monkey. I’d called him that simply because that’s what he looked like. He was older than the others, moved differently from the young ones and had the same sprinklings of white fur that triggered a clear if distant memory of the few old people I’d encountered in my former life. I recalled one clearly – not someone related, so perhaps a neighbour or friend. A white-haired woman who had no front teeth. Grandpa monkey had lots of teeth, but he was similarly white-haired in places and grey in others, especially on his face. He also walked slowly, just as the old woman in my mind’s eye had done, and had an old injury to his arm or shoulder, I thought, because he didn’t range around the treetops like the others.
Grandpa monkey had kept a very close eye on me from a very early stage. But I didn’t think it was because he was concerned about my welfare. There had never been any warmth in the way he behaved when he was around me, so I decided it must be because he was very protective of his family. Perhaps he hadn’t quite decided if he liked me or not.
I watched him jump down from the tree he most liked to sit in and then approach me. What was he about to do? I had no idea but couldn’t care less, in any case. I was much too busy crying from the horrible gripping pain.
Grandpa monkey drew level, squeezed my arm firmly, then began shaking me slightly, shoving me, as if determined to herd me somewhere else.
He was purposeful and determined, and I wasn’t about to resist him. Scrabbling to get a purchase, I half-crawled, half-stumbled into the foliage, in the direction his repeated shovings seemed to suggest he wanted me to go.
It was out of the question to disobey, but I was still very fearful as I edged my way deeper into a patch of thorny bushes. And once in them, at least I had the pain of repeated stings and scratches to divert my mind from the pain inside me. Where we were going, however, I didn’t have a clue.
It was mere seconds before I found out. One minute I’d been scrabbling through a tangle of branches, now I was falling – tumbling over and over down a mossy, rocky bank, which was running with cool water and which eventually deposited me into a little basin below.
I looked around, panting as I tried to catch my breath. The basin was around eight feet wide, surrounded by rock and earth and tree roots, and looked almost like an open-topped cave.
A tight collection of black rocks had created a lip to one side, over which a steady stream of water formed a waterfall. The water I had landed in wasn’t deep, not enough to submerge me, but right away I could see that Grandpa monkey had come too. Was he going to take advantage of my weakened state and try to drown me?
It seemed I had my answer, for almost immediately he began shoving me again, trying to direct me towards the stream of water. I sobbed. All the worst things that could happen to me seemed to be happening all at once. I was terrified and in agony, and I hated the water – it was something I’d been afraid of all my life. Apart from drinking small quantities and being hammered by rainfall, I’d not seen water – water that could drown you – for a long time, and I hated to see it again now.
But Grandpa monkey was relentless and, though we were of similar size, he was also very strong. He seemed intent on putting my head under, keeping a tight grip on my hair. Was he trying to drown me? Or was he trying to make me drink the water? Or maybe he knew I was going to die anyway and was just trying to help me on my way.
Whatever his intentions, I struggled, heaving myself away from him and slapping the surface of the pool, splashing him, and as I did so he yanked my face up and looked me straight in the eyes.
As I looked back at him, I could see something I hadn’t before. His expression was completely calm. It wasn’t angry, or agitated, or hostile. Perhaps I’d been wrong, I thought, as I coughed and spluttered and tried to catch my breath again. Perhaps he was trying to tell me something.
I didn’t know what it was, but in that instant I trusted him. The look in his eyes and the calmness in his movements made me realise he was trying to help me. Accordingly, this time I did as he seemed to want. I went under and drank in great mouthfuls of muddy water, swallowing as much as I could and feeling it force its way up my nose.
At this point, Grandpa monkey let go of me. I wasted no time in scrambling out and up onto the rocky bank, where, completely spent, I just collapsed on the ground, face down.
I began coughing again and soon the coughing turned to vomiting – first the water and then behind it great heaving gouts of acid liquid that burned my throat and washed painfully over the skin of my scratched limbs.
But Grandpa monkey wasn’t done yet. No sooner had I stopped vomiting than he began chivvying me all over again to get back into the pool, this time to the other edge where the water was much shallower and where a second smaller waterfall dripped steadily.
I needed no urging. I drank from the waterfall thirstily and was happy to remain there, even as leeches clamoured to attach themselves to my legs, just to feel the flowing water cooling me and healing me, and the tortuous spasms inside me subside.
I have no idea how long I sat there, semi-conscious, trance-like, but at some point I felt restored enough to clamber back up again. Grandpa monkey had been sitting at the pool’s edge, immobile all this time, just watching and waiting. As I moved, so did he, rising up to his feet, then, seemingly satisfied with his efforts, turning and scuttling off ahead of me, back to his tree.
I will never know for sure what it was that had poisoned me, just as I’ll never know how Grandpa monkey knew how to save me. But he did. I am convinced of it.
And the encounter didn’t just teach me yet another survival lesson. It also marked a point when my life with the monkeys changed. Because, from that day on, Grandpa monkey’s attitude towards my continued presence changed completely. Where once he’d been indifferent and then obviously wary, he now felt like both my protector and my friend.
Now he seemed happy both to share food with me and groom me, and would often feast upon the wealth of bugs that lived in my mat of hair. And, bit by bit, my sense of loneliness and abandonment began to fade. Though there would still be nights when I’d be overcome by what I’d lost and weep for hours, these instances of grief were getting fewer. Curled up in my little ball, in my hollowed-out piece of tree trunk, with the comforting, familiar sound of the monkeys up above me, I was gradually turning into one of them.
7
The incident of my being poisoned and ‘saved’ by Grandpa monkey proved to be a turning point in how the monkeys responded to me. Taking their lead from their elder, more and more of them seemed happier to approach me and groom me. No longer was I just a tolerated outsider; it felt as if I was becoming a real part of the troop, which made the ache lodged in my heart that tiny bit more bearable.
Though I had by now become aware that my new family sometimes changed – some animals disappearing and returning with tiny babies, others disappearing and never being seen again – I began to get to know some of the monkeys quite well. There was Grandpa, of course, who was a constant during my time there. But also energetic Spot, gentle, loving Brownie and timid White-Tip, one of the little ones, who seemed to really love me and who would often jump onto my back, throw her arms around my neck and enjoy being carried wherever I went.
Of course, I hadn’t actually given any of the monkeys names at the time. By now I had no use for human speech at all – only my crude version of monkey language. I don’t think I even thought in human language any more. So I’d no longer
consciously ‘think up’ something as abstract as a name. I had simply begun identifying each animal by some distinguishing attribute or physical characteristic. My life had become all about sounds and emotions. And ‘missions’. All of life was now broken into missions. Missions to find food. Missions to find company. Missions to find a safe place to hide if there was danger. I had only two concerns: to satisfy my basic needs and to satisfy my curiosity – the same simple life that the monkeys had.
*
Now I felt more accepted, I became even more determined to learn how to climb to the top of the canopy. I was beginning to hate that I had to spend such long solitary periods on the ground, from where I could hear the joyous whoops and shrieks of the games going on high above me but was not able to get up there and join in. Getting up there, from then on, became my new mission.
I had not stopped practising my climbing since my first failed attempt. It would be so wonderful to be able to escape the dampness of the forest floor and to feel the sun on my back – the whole might of the sun – instead of having to make do with the long shafts that angled down from between the branches, where I could only linger in the patchy spotlights they created. Despite the colours of the jungle, it sometimes seemed to me that I was living in a black and white world. Some parts of the undergrowth, even at the brightest part of the day, were so dark as to seem shrouded in perpetual night, pierced by arrows of light so white and blinding it hurt my eyes.
I was also desperate to have some respite from the heavy, stagnant air and the endless irritation of all the creepy crawlies. I was used to bugs, but never had I seen so many different kinds in one place. The jungle teemed with them: flying things, scuttling things, jumping things and biting things. There were flying beetles that looked like tiny machines – today I’d liken them to helicopters – which had whirring wings that made a special sound as they landed. There were blue bugs and green bugs, bugs that looked like sparkly treasure, and bugs that thrilled me because they would light up at night. There were big black beetles that seemed to have pairs of scissors on their noses, and any number of different squirmy, wormy, wibbly, wobbly grubs. It sometimes felt as if I saw something new every day.
There were also lots of different kinds of brightly coloured frogs, toads and lizards. They also made their homes in the shelter of the undergrowth, so the air would hum with all manner of buzzes, croaks and hisses. And it was a home that suited all of them. So rich with food, so hot and humid, it was a glorious earthly paradise for them all. But not so much for me! How I craved the chance to leave them to their baser insect pleasures – being stirred by stinking breezes, heavy with the stench of rotten plant life, and massing in excited clouds on any dead or dying thing.
Day after day, for what might well have been several months, I would try to climb the shorter, slimmer trees. I fell often – sometimes many times a day, and often far and painfully – but I didn’t let my failures deter me. I had already learned by now that the one thing I could be sure of in this spongy, tangled world, was that I’d be guaranteed a reasonably soft landing, even if I did amass lots of bruises, cuts and scratches along the way.
I didn’t just climb randomly, either. I didn’t have the advantages the monkeys had – their incredibly long, springy limbs, their sense of balance, their usefully curling tails – but I laboured hard to find the best technique. With so little in the way of hand- and footholds on the masters of the canopy – the majestic Brazil nut trees – they were still beyond me. The only way I could make upward progress from the forest floor was if I happened to be locked in the embrace of strangling vines. But with the slimmer trees, the most efficient way turned out to be one in which I employed my whole body, using my knees and elbows to grip the trunks. Then, while using my outwardly turned feet to push, I could employ my upper body strength and hands to pull me upwards.
After a time, my body seemed to adapt to this new form of daily exercise. I grew stronger, the muscles in my arms and legs developing and becoming sinewy, while the skin on my hands and feet, elbows, knees and ankles grew progressively more dry and leathery and so was better able to grip the bark.
There was also another plus. Dry skin was always flaking, and picking at the flakes was one of my favourite things to do. I would sit and worry away at it for hours.
And I needed my rest, too, because strength, of course, was vital. With the first boughs of the Brazil nut trees being so high up, I needed to be strong enough to cling on vertically for some considerable time, with only meagre hand- and footholds, which was extremely tiring. Some trees were a little easier to manage than others, because they’d acquired a thick covering of the stringy, strangling vines. But these trees were always dying, so their usefulness would be temporary. Not long after, they’d be nothing but hollow dead shells and would sink back down into the soil from which they’d sprung.
Coming down was much quicker and a great deal more straightforward. Once my palms and the soles of my feet had become sufficiently hard and leathery, it was simply a question of letting them do the work, allowing me to slide back down to a soft landing on the composty floor. After which, of course, I’d often climb straight back up again. For up was where I wanted to be.
*
The day I reached the canopy will be another of those days that I will remember for the rest of my life. You might find it simple to imagine what sort of sight greeted me, but then, as a very young child, I had never seen anything quite like it. I had no store of television images to prepare me, no past experience to compare. I was seeing what I was seeing for the very first time, and I couldn’t quite believe the evidence of my eyes.
The view was breathtaking – literally. The rush of cool air up there was such a shock to me that it made me gasp. And in my disbelief and awe, I think I probably did forget to breathe. There was just so much sky above the green giants that had formed the ceiling of my world for so long that I found it difficult to adjust to the fierce light. And when I did manage to open my eyes fully, I still couldn’t take it in. It seemed there were only trees and clear sky for as far as I could see. And I could see for what looked like many miles.
I had no idea how high up I was. A hundred feet? Two hundred? I have no idea. Just so high up in the sky that I felt dizzy looking down, particularly when the trees began swaying. So high that it was as if I was in a strange and different world now; one where nothing existed but the colours and shapes I was squinting at – the dazzling blue of the sky up above me, the lush green of the broccoli treetops below. There was nothing else to see whatsoever.
The monkey troop, of course, was indifferent. The monkeys seemed to be going about their usual business with no apparent interest in the fact that I was suddenly up here with them. But I couldn’t have been more excited. So here was where they most liked to be, I thought, as I tentatively began to explore this new territory. And I could see why. What a wonderful place it seemed to be. All around me, the pillowy surface of the canopy rose and fell as it faded into the far and hazy distance, the treetops undulating and in some cases rising in steps: cushiony emerald terraces that looked so soft and beguiling compared to the thorny tangled mass of vegetation below.
Sufficiently confident that the vast web of branches below would support me, I began to clamber across the springy boughs, with little White-Tip close behind me, and could see that the canopy in the near distance seemed more yellow-green than green. I wondered if the trees were all covered in flowers, tilting their happy faces to the unbroken sky. It was a bright, intense yellow that seemed to reflect the sunshine and made everything seem even more dazzling.
It was no less hot up here, but drier – the breeze a constant welcome friend, as if it had hurried along specifically to counteract the relentless rays of the sun. And the monkeys clearly loved it, for they had even set up little homes here with what looked like beds, or seating areas – some of the troop were certainly sitting in them – where they could bask and groom each other far from the damp and steamy forest floor. Clos
er inspection revealed that they seemed to have made these by collecting bits of branches they’d snapped off while playing ‘look who’s the strongest’ (which was something they did often) and had brought up to the canopy to use. These had then been laid crosswise over bigger branches that were still attached to the trees.
For softness, Mother Nature had helped them out, it seemed, because the ‘nests’ would naturally collect any fallen or drifting leaves. They had also added strips of bark – something that was always in plentiful supply, because one of their favourite things to do was to pull off long strips of tree bark in order to get to the tastiest, juiciest bugs.
I sat and watched my monkey family for some time, contentedly taking in the excitement of it all. Compared to what was below, it just felt like such a lovely place to be. And I soon realised that they didn’t just use the structures they’d made for sitting and sleeping on. They also seemed to use them as places to play: jumping up and down on them, whooping and shrieking, making a great deal of noise and giving off bursts of an intense odour, the air becoming even more hazy than it usually did with the sharp, acrid smell of their excrement.
Not that I minded. By now I was immune to such odours. I was just so happy to be up there and joining in. It felt as if I’d at last escaped my prison and properly become one of them, which, physically, was happening, even though I probably wasn’t consciously aware of it. I was growing a new, muscular body, strong in ways a child’s body normally isn’t. I had harder heels and palms, and an appetite for strange jungle foods. I was also beginning to move around like a monkey, and one of the reasons, perhaps, that I wasn’t aware of how I was growing, was that I almost always walked on all fours now. There was just the one skill I lacked and that I’d struggled to master – flying. How I longed now to sail through the treetops as they did, via their expressway, à la Tarzan, on the vines.
As the vines were thick and plentiful, especially high in the treetops, it seemed that it was yet another skill I could master if I tried. So, after the first few days of being able to climb to the canopy, I would spend time trying to do what my monkey family did: get from tree to tree, bough to bough, by means of these stringy curtains, feeling the euphoria and wind-rush, the giddy sensation of being airborne, and then landing – in my case, mostly messily and indecorously – on whichever bed of branches had been my goal.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys Page 5