The humans retreated a few hundred feet down the mountain so the gorillas could nap in peace. There, they ate their lunch and Yoko began to write up her notes from the morning, yawning, clearly needing a nap herself. Mutara leaned against a giant Hagenia trunk and closed his eyes. Max flipped rapidly through her plant encyclopedia, double-checking each of the plants she’d seen today. The vine Panoply had sent her to find was rolled in the mouth and then spat out, its bioactive properties too strong to ingest. By finding out what the gorillas chewed and swallowed, she was creating a list of what could not be the vine. By the time she finished her task, the others were asleep.
Although only a minor percentage of humans were diagnosed with Asperger’s, everyone was really “on the spectrum,” ranging from the most outgoing glad-handing salesperson to a hunched and rocking autistic. The lightest sprinkle and you got an unusual ability to focus and be introspective, to follow an idea to its logical conclusion. You got Picasso and Cassatt, Einstein and Curie.
A bit too much of a sprinkle and you got Max, unable to control her focus, to pull herself out of her work. Her condition might be the price paid so the species could have diversity in tasks and abilities.
Half an hour later, Yoko and Mutara woke up, and the three of them wandered slowly up the hill, listening for clues that the gorillas were done with their siesta. Hearing the snapping and crunching of foraging, they approached.
Titus rose onto all fours to look them over, then grunted and sat back down. This time, accepting Max’s presence that easily.
The other gorillas cast a few shy glances, then turned back to the business of eating. Max wandered slightly sideways to within twenty feet of them, then sat down, searching through the plant bits they’d dropped. Near them again, she was at peace. Flash-glancing at them, she felt she was finally communicating in something close to her own language.
Overwhelmed with the moment, she rumbled at them, “Ra-oom ra-oom,” grumbling the noise up from her belly.
Yoko and Mutara turned to her, eyes wide.
From the gorillas, there came a pause. A little surprised perhaps that she’d addressed them.
Then, lipping in a long string of hanging moss like an errant spaghetti strand, the mother of the baby gorilla agreed. “Ra-oom ra-oom.”
And one by one they chipped in their response.
Crossing the meadow that night to Pip’s cabin for dinner, belting out “Row, row, row your boat” and swinging the flashlight around—trying in every way she could think of to warn any nearby forest buff that she was walking by, don’t be alarmed—she heard a sound directly ahead of her. Her feet swiveled to run even as she pointed the flashlight toward the sound.
Yoko stood on Pip’s porch, laughing. “Hey Tombay, the buffs aren’t hard of hearing. You don’t have to be that loud.”
She waited while Max climbed the stairs. Through the door came the sound of voices arguing.
“What’s going on in there?” asked Max.
Yoko didn’t respond.
So Max walked in and Yoko unwillingly followed.
Pip was flipping through the Rwandan phonebook. “No, I tell you that’s it. The last straw.”
“Vous êtes trop émotionelle,” said Dubois. “Go to sleep. Tomorrow, you wake up. You see it is not so bad.”
There was the bitter smell of fear in the room.
“Look, do what you want with your life,” Pip said as she dialed. “I’m getting out of here.”
Max asked, “What’s bothering her?”
Yoko said, “The Kutu, what else?”
“Scientists. They’re offing scientists now,” said Pip, and then added, “Oh hullo, I’d like to book a flight.”
Dubois snorted. “She speaks English to them.”
“What happened?” Max asked, flash-glancing at them. Mutara was standing by the window looking out into the dark, away from all of them, rubbing the scar on his palm.
Yoko said, “Some geologists were killed by the Kutu. You don’t need to know the details.”
“I don’t agree,” said Pip.
Yoko’s torso turned toward Pip. “You talking on the phone or to us?”
“They put me on hold. Max has to hear the story.” Saying these words her voice was pitched lower than normal, serious.
“She doesn’t have experience here. She can’t judge how places like the Congo work, what’s dangerous and what’s not.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s her life.” Max stood still, not fidgeting, her body squared off toward them. If Pip talked this way normally, stood calm and certain, perhaps the others would listen to her more.
“If she gets scared off because of this, her company will stop paying the park guards. Without guards, hunters will climb the mountains looking for bushmeat.” Yoko turned to Dubois and said, “Hellooo. We’re talking about your beloved gorillas here.”
Dubois’ hands were stuffed into her pockets, her fingers nervously fiddling with change or an old house key. “I know. I know. But I think I have agreement with Pip.”
Yoko’s torso turned toward Max. “Look, have you ever lived outside the US or even Maine?”
“No.”
She hesitated. “Excuse me for saying this, but you have Asperger’s. You’re not going to be good at judging violent interpersonal conflict between groups of people. Making decisions about what to do will not be one of your strengths.”
“You’re right.”
There was a pause from all of them.
Nodding down at the floor, Max added, “But there are lots of things that I am not especially good at that I still have to do as best I can. Just as there are tasks in your life I could accomplish better than you, but you get to do them.”
There was silence from the others.
She said, “I promise I will ask for your advice before I make any decisions. Tell me what happened.”
Dubois cleared her throat. “Yesterday three men from a mining camp in the Congo drive near Kirumba to look for coltan.”
“Coltan?”
Yoko said, “It’s the material that cell phones need in order to work. The area of the Congo on the other side of these mountains is one of the few places in the world that has it. Worth boodles per ounce.”
“Greedy idjuts,” said Pip.
Yoko interrupted, “Yo, some of them are dead. Let’s not call them names. And if she’s going to hear the story, at least let me tell it. I’ll stick to the facts. You’ll put in crap just to scare her so you won’t feel like a coward when you leave here.”
“That was mean,” said Pip. When she spoke again it was in her lower serious voice. “I have a child. I can’t risk my life for your gorillas.”
“Please,” said Mutara, almost in a whisper. He didn’t turn away from the window. “Please do not fight. There is enough fighting out there.”
There was a rustle of cloth as the others looked at him.
After a moment, Yoko spoke in a quieter voice. “Coltan, gold, and diamonds are what pays for all the guns the warlords have around here. Part of the reason the Congo’s so screwed is cause it’s got resources. Everyone wants to control it. Geologists, they don’t bring a lot of good to the area.”
“Kirumba is more south than the Kutu tend to go,” added Dubois. “These geologists, yesterday, must believe it is safe.”
“Safe,” snorted Pip.
While they talked, Max turned her head further away from them, watching their reflection in the window that Mutara stood looking out of. Their faces there in the candlelight didn’t overwhelm her, hazy circles transposed on dark glass. Although Mutara was the closest to the window, because of the color of his skin, he was the hardest to see.
“The survivor—what was his name? Patson? Patterson?” Yoko asked. “He said he and the two other geologists were still setting up their equipment when some kids with Kalashnikovs stepped out of the bushes. Ten, maybe twelve years old. They seemed pretty jumpy.”
“Qat,” Max said, remembering.
Yoko nodded. “Yeh, they were high from chewing qat. The Kutu pushed the geologists back into their jeep and drove them to a spot where there were at least eighty other Kutu milling through the trees, a few cooking fires burning. The geologists were told to kneel on the ground and lace their fingers together on top of their heads. Some of the kids hung out near them, playing a game with shells. A few stood guard. Others lay down and slept.”
“At one point,” Pip interrupted and Yoko snorted irritated, but didn’t stop her, “one of the kids got up to get some food. Walking by, he touched the barrel of his rifle to the back of Patterson’s neck. Left it there for a tic, then walked on.”
Max remembered sitting under the willow tree with her Grampie’s gun in her mouth. She imagined how different it would be if the gun were pointed at her against her will, if it was an assault rifle and a child’s finger was on the trigger.
Yoko continued, “Patterson didn’t know how long they knelt there, but the kids finished several games and his hands had been laced on top of his head for so long his shoulders were trembling.”
“Hullo?” Pip said into the phone, “Yes, I’d like a ticket to Australia? Ticket?”
“And then this man comes by,” Dubois said.
Max noticed a strange eagerness in their voices in telling this story, the way their words rushed in one after another. She’d heard this tone before when people talked about car accidents, robberies or childbirth. The need to divulge details, the relief that came from describing trauma.
“We assume it’s François Kutu, the warlord, ’cause he’s the only adult there,” said Yoko. “Approaching, he didn’t seem especially scary. He was on the short side and had a sort of mincing walk, might have come from his outfit that was a little tight around the ankles. The outfit was so ripped and stained, Patterson couldn’t figure out what it was, thought maybe something ceremonial or a frilly bed sheet.”
“Hullo?” called Pip into the phone. “Hullo? Am I on hold? Anyone there?”
“François stands there. He says nothing,” said Dubois.
“Stop interrupting, alright? If anything, I’m telling more than I should,” said Yoko. “It seemed understandable he could control the kids. He was the only adult and he never seemed to blink. This was the point that Patterson noticed the beading on the outfit. It was a woman’s wedding dress, the train all ripped and dirty. He had the longest eyelashes Patterson had ever seen. François looked the prisoners over and then pointed at the geologist to the left of Patterson. A guy named Stan Mukowski.”
“Rat-a-tat goes the guard’s rifle,” said Pip. “That fast.”
“Hey, fuck off. I mean it.” Yoko said, “Three Kutu grabbed the body by the collar and dragged it away behind some trees. One of Stan’s shoes came off along the way and, later, a kid came back to pick it up. Patterson kept staring at the drag marks all afternoon.”
Max continued to watch them in the window. She examined their reflected gestures and stance. She could see her own body was very still. “How do you know all this?”
“Pip was schtupping a Reuters photographer.”
Dubois said, “You Americans are children about sex.”
“Reuters came here to do a story on us a few months ago. This photographer was with them. He didn’t end up taking so many photos.”
“When we heard the news, I rang him up,” Pip said. “He got the story straight from the fella who interviewed Patterson.” She was pacing back and forth as she waited on the phone, three steps one way, then three steps back.
Yoko said, “Patterson said the Kutu were mostly boys, some girls. All of them emaciated. There was no uniform. Some of the older soldiers wore weird stuff, seriously mis-sized: a man’s jacket, a woman’s shirt, or a girl’s dress. Like they were playing dress-up. He saw one boy had on a sequined prom dress, another had on a blond wig and carried a monogrammed purse. One dragged along a teddy bear. Everything was stained and ripped.
“When François came back, he was wearing the vest of the first geologist over his wedding dress. Again he stood in front of the remaining two men. Just as he’s raising his finger to point, Patterson saw his eyelashes weren’t real, but those fake glue-on ones. One edge of the eyelashes had come unstuck and was uncurling from his eyelid.”
“He points. Rat-a-tat,” said Pip. “The other geologist is dragged away.”
“Jesus,” said Max. In the glass she watched the women, noticing how the story affected them. Pip continued to pace, occasionally glancing at the door, as though expecting Kutu to come crashing in at any moment. Dubois sat there compact, like some tiny fierce dog, a Jack Russell terrier ready to spring into action.
Mutara stood in the same room with them, but he sat so still she nearly forgot about him, the hand with the scar on it resting in his other hand. He stared out the window into a distance she could not imagine. He must have been in his teens during the genocide here. She did not know which role he’d been born into: killer or killed.
Yoko stood still, straight and tight as a solider. When she spoke, her voice was flat. “François walks away. Patterson can smell lunch cooking, and some of the kids walk by eating from bowls. He’s left there alone for the longest time, with his fingers laced on top of his head, listening to his own breath and the sounds of the kids playing. François comes back a final time. Stands in front of him. And Patterson, he must have gone a little crazy. He can’t explain it other than that. He gets to his feet and with all his strength he screams his college-rugby attack-cry right in Francois’s face. ‘Yur-AWWWP.’
“Standing, he finds he’s a foot taller than everyone but this man. From his yell, some of his spit hits the man’s lips. François begins to smile, real wide. He has a bit of meat stuck between his front teeth.”
“He didn’t point,” said Pip.
Yoko spoke over her, “When nothing happened, Patterson stepped backwards, moving away. He didn’t mean to look brave, but his legs wouldn’t run, so he walked. François watched, grinning. The children didn’t raise their rifles. Once Patterson rounded the corner in the road he managed to shuffle forward into a half-jog. Before nightfall he’d hitched a ride out of the area.”
“See,” said Pip. “I told you . . . . Ah, hullo. Ticket? Airplane?”
Dubois shrugged a very French shrug, her whole body involved, her lips pursed as she blew a little air out. “Bof,” was the sound she made, accepting the full mystery of life.
“How long have you been in this country?” Max asked Dubois.
“Three years.”
In the background Pip was saying into the phone, “Australia? Perth?”
“And you?” she asked Yoko.
“Five months.”
“And Pip?”
“Ten weeks.”
Max tried to think of herself as the new assistant in the lab. Yoko and Dubois could tell her what not to touch, where the dangers lay. She lowered her voice to talk to them, while Pip spoke into the phone. “So I said I’d ask your advice. Do you want to leave?”
“Ahh,” said Dubois. “But no. This story is terrible. Terrible. The man is lucky to be alive. But this happens far away.”
“How far?”
“Almost thirty-five miles,” said Yoko. “That’s like being in Connecticut while a gang shooting happens in the Bronx. It doesn’t concern us.”
“The Kutu were fifty miles away before.”
“Yeh, they’re a little closer now. But they’re still on the other side of the mountains. They’re still across the border,” said Yoko. “Pip, she doesn’t understand. You should hear some of the crazy stuff that’s happened in South Africa or Somalia . . . ”
“In Sudan or Burundi,” added Dubois.
“Or here,” said Mutara. “Here in Rwanda.”
There was a silence after his words. Pip was the one to break it. She was repeating the words “Perth” and “Australia” with varying emphasis into the receiver.
Max asked, “Mutara, where were you during the genocide?”
&nb
sp; “Gisenyi. The town down there.” In the reflection in the window, she saw him gesture with his chin.
“So you’ve seen what can happen?”
He didn’t speak, but his head nodded once.
She thought this over. “At what point would you be alarmed by the Kutu? At what point would you leave?”
Mutara didn’t answer quickly, so Yoko spoke instead. “If they got closer than fifteen miles.”
“Oui,” agreed Dubois. “Otherwise, it is just a bad thing that happens somewhere else. Like a train accident or explosion in another country.”
“Think of all the people there are to murder and pillage between Kirumba and here,” said Yoko.
Not knowing the distance to Kirumba or how populated the countryside was, Max continued to await Mutara’s advice.
Into the silence, Mutara spoke, answering Max’s question. He said, almost to himself, “Where is there to go?”
Pip’s voice got louder. “Planes? Vroom, vroom?” She took the phone away from her ear to stare at it in amazement, then hung up. “The phone charge is gone.” Her voice was tight. “God, I hate this.”
“We charge the phone tonight. Wait for tomorrow. Call the airlines again. Ask Mutara to speak for you in Kinyarwanda.” Dubois spoke soothingly, stepping over to pull Pip close. “You must not worry. You will be with your daughter again. Tout va bien se passer.”
Pip pressed in against her, hiding her face.
Late that night, Max lay in bed, wondering what to do, thinking over the responses of the others. They were neurotypicals. She normally relied on them for what to do. Unfortunately they didn’t all agree on one course of action.
She imagined not going back up the mountains tomorrow, not seeing the gorillas again. Not finding the vine. She imagined returning to Maine now, to live back among the humans.
Yoko had the flattest, least emotional voice. A voice Max associated with being scientific and objective. A voice similar to her own.
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