by Wilbur Smith
Amelia’s shirt, rolled and pressed against Innocent’s terrible wound, was already sodden with blood. I couldn’t press hard enough to staunch the flow. He flopped sideways against me. He was trembling and whispering, ‘No, I’m sorry, no, no …’ Marcel’s response, in French, was high-pitched, borderline hysterical, and Patience was crying now too, echoing her father’s ‘Non, non, non.’ Between us we did our best to lever Innocent back onto all fours, but as he weakened he grew heavier, and though in that moment he seemed so young and frail in my arms, he was also becoming a dead weight.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ I whispered again, but as I spoke Innocent lost consciousness and crumpled completely. I struggled to keep pressure on the wound but couldn’t. He was too heavy for me. Everywhere was wet and sticky with blood. He slumped lower between me and Marcel, and for a moment my hand came away and another gout of blood pulsed hideously down the poor guide’s neck.
Patience’s whimpering turned into a moan of terror.
Amelia pulled the girl close, but couldn’t help saying, ‘It’s bright red, meaning it’s oxygenated, not venous. Cutting a vein is bad enough, but I think he’s severed his carotid artery, meaning –’
‘Shhh,’ I said.
‘Mon dieu non,’ murmured Marcel.
The same bewildering numbness that I’d felt at the roadside with Mark overtook me now. Innocent was half in my lap, half stretched out on the trampled ferns and leaves. I didn’t know what to do. I just hugged him, keeping pressure on the wound, looking helplessly from his poor daughter Patience to Marcel to Amelia to Innocent again. None of us could speak.
Caleb was now crouched next to Xander.
‘Mate, I hope you’re not hurt. Just a sprain, right?’
‘I’ll be all right,’ Xander hissed through gritted teeth.
‘The speed of that thing, eh. The size of it. If they’re as unpredictable as that, I’m surprised these visits are even allowed.’
‘Sure, whatever.’ Xander tried to adjust his position on the ground, winced and clutched his leg again. ‘I think it’s broken,’ he said to me.
‘No way,’ said Caleb. ‘Can’t be. The pain will fade. Either way, I’m sorry, but this wasn’t my fault. They should have …’
He dried up.
His fault? Did it matter? I couldn’t focus, stared wildly around me. Some of the gorillas had already disappeared into the greenery. The wounded baby was nowhere to be seen, nor was the silverback, Spenser. Others were moving off, disappearing into the jungle in an unhurried, methodical procession. With clumsy fingers Marcel was trying to wind the crepe bandage over the top of the blood-soaked pad of Amelia’s shirt, but that quickly darkened with blood as well. So much blood. It didn’t seem possible that a person could lose it, and it wasn’t. Poor Innocent’s breathing, which had been laboured and broken, became shallower and shallower until he wasn’t breathing at all.
‘Non, non, non,’ Marcel whispered. The tears were running down his cheeks now. ‘Non!’
Patience broke free of Amelia and pressed her face into her father’s blood-soaked chest. ‘Non, non, non!’ she wailed.
No.
No.
No.
The word made me suddenly furious.
Denying a fact doesn’t change it.
Wounded by the charging silverback, our guide Innocent, now a still shape beside me on the blood-soaked jungle floor, was dead.
24.
An awful stillness descended. The gorillas had gone. Marcel, with his head bowed and eyes shut, was a statue beside me. Amelia stepped away and dropped to her knees next to Xander. Despite his own injury, Xander was in tune enough to know from the look on her face that the worst had happened. He fell back against the leaves and lay there staring up into the clotted treetops. I was still cradling the dead guide’s head; with my free hand I shut his eyes and stroked his daughter’s shoulder. She wouldn’t let go of her father. I laid the two of them down together, easing myself out from beneath them. What was going through Patience’s mind? I couldn’t bear to think of it, backed a step or two away from them both, giving the girl some space. My trousers were sodden with his blood. I couldn’t have cared less. Innocent looked even younger in death. That wispy beard, the relaxed line of his mouth. Marcel tried to comfort Patience now, taking hold of her wordlessly, lifting her away, the pair of them weeping silently together. I’m sure I was imagining it, but even the jungle seemed quieter, as if someone had turned its incessant pulsing soundtrack down a notch.
Caleb was the last to realise what had happened. He’d wandered off muttering to himself and now stood at a distance, scratching his head in a daze. After nobody else had spoken for what seemed ages but was probably only a minute, he looked up and said, ‘What?’
None of us answered him.
‘But what?’ he repeated.
‘Il est mort,’ said Marcel.
Caleb came crashing back through the undergrowth. ‘What do you mean? Don’t be ridiculous!’ was all that he could say. In that moment I hated him with all my heart. He was the screech of tyres on tarmac; he was pointed shoes and a trimmed beard; he was a reflection rushing across windscreens; he was stupid classical music swelling above the fumes; he was schoolbags slipping from my mother’s shoulder as she ran; he was a low brick garden wall and a pool of blood. He was my fault, and a thing that could never be undone.
I’d jumped up to confront him, but when I saw the wild panic in his face something immediately shifted inside me. Across the clearing he’d been scratching his head in apparent confusion; now both hands were clawing at his crew cut, his cheeks, his throat. He jittered left and right in panicky circles, catching his feet, stumbling and swaying, and saying things like, ‘ridiculous, impossible, no,’ over and over again. A hole had opened up in me as Innocent bled out in my arms; the sight of Caleb’s distress now filled it. I realised he was as close to the person I’d been at the roadside as anyone I’d ever seen, and though it’s hard to explain why, my hatred for him morphed into a kind of guilt. Instead of punching him in the face, I tried to put an arm around him, but he flinched and lurched backwards.
I staggered after him, but my legs weren’t working properly and I hadn’t made it more than ten clumsy paces before I caught my foot on a vine and pitched headlong into a the tangled vegetation. Caleb stopped and turned to see what had happened. As I pushed myself upright my left hand closed over something that felt wrong. Luckily I didn’t grip it hard; if I had I might have cut myself. It was a machete. Caleb’s, definitely: the handle had the same military-rubberised effect, and the blade, where it wasn’t covered with mud, was that unmistakable newish blue. He must have dropped it as the gorilla charged. It was only as I held the knife up to Caleb that I saw the smear along its sharp edge wasn’t dirt, but blood.
We both noticed it and we both understood what it meant. Caleb had provoked the silverback to charge by disobeying Innocent. In doing so he’d created a danger from which our guide had tried to save him. Innocent had sacrificed himself. But the fatal injury he’d sustained hadn’t come from the silverback’s bared teeth. They would have caused a ragged slash. The deep clean cut to Innocent’s neck had come from the honed blade Caleb had been brandishing.
Caleb, his face still a circus of guilt-stricken disbelief, blinked from the bloody knife to me and back again. He was in front of me, with Marcel and Patience and Amelia and Xander behind us. I wanted to turn and spell out what had happened, shout it beyond the rainforest canopy and all the way through Goma to Kinshasa. But instead, in silence, I carefully wiped the blade clean on the leg of my trousers and handed the knife over to Caleb.
25.
After I gave Caleb back his machete he sat down in a heap with it, still a mess, and the sight of his fingers worrying at his buzz-cut made me want to deal with the horror of what had happened. Xander was hurt. Though he carried the first-aid kit, Marcel was trying to comfort a stricken Patience, so it was up to Amelia and me to fashion a splint and stretcher usi
ng the bandages in the kit, straight bamboo poles we cut from a nearby thicket and the roll of duct tape I’d brought: though I knew there was no end to what that stuff could fix, I’d never imagined I’d end up using it for this.
Droplets of sweat stood out on Xander’s brow as we taped the makeshift splint to his leg. We’d already given him as many painkillers as the box said it was OK for him to take, and he claimed they were working to dull the fierce ache in his leg, but when we rolled him onto the stretcher he couldn’t stop himself shrieking. Amelia stood back once we had him settled in place.
‘Caleb,’ she said.
He snapped out of his reverie. ‘Yes?’
‘A stretcher has four handles. We each need to take one.’
In the dappled light that filtered through the trees at that moment he looked less substantial. ‘Of course,’ he agreed meekly.
‘You’re feeling guilty. It’s understandable,’ she went on. ‘Yet this was an accident. You didn’t intend for it to happen. None of us did.’
As ever there was logic in what Amelia was saying, but also as ever she was kind of missing the point: accidents happen when people are careless, stupid or so fixed on one outcome that they ignore other possible consequences of their actions. I know because I’ve had enough of them myself. Remembering that was possibly why I didn’t press the point then.
Caleb’s guilt, Xander’s injury, none of it mattered, set against Innocent’s death, and even that was somehow already history, thrown into relief by the horror of Patience’s grief. She’d been so calm throughout the trip, gliding effortlessly through the jungle as we struggled to keep up. Now she was a jittery, distraught mess. Amelia tried to comfort her but Patience shrugged her off and wandered away and slumped to her knees. Then she stretched herself out flat on the earth next to her father’s body, face down, moaning. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but she seemed to be begging the ground to swallow her up.
Marcel radioed base camp. Amelia summed up the conversation: he’d called for more men to retrieve Innocent’s body, it being impossible for us to carry it back to camp as well as poor Xander. Marcel now covered the body with a foil blanket from the first-aid kit and attempted to lever Patience from the ground beside it. She wouldn’t come. Though she was only a skinny ten-year-old girl, Marcel couldn’t prise her away from her dead father. The thought of leaving her there alone was unbearable, but Xander needed medical attention. Marcel pleaded with Patience to come with us. So did Amelia. But she refused. She wanted to guard her father’s body until the rangers arrived. The three of us stood together with her for a moment beside the covered form. I was mesmerised by the sight of the foil glittering in the gloom. Marcel took hold of poor Patience, hugged her wordlessly and kissed her forehead. My throat was a knot watching him. Once he’d finished this silent act of consolation and moved away I laid Innocent’s machete, which I’d used to cut the branches for the stretcher, on the blood-soaked earth beside him. If and when the pathologist examined the body he might conclude Innocent was cut by his own knife when the gorilla charged. Why I wanted to protect Caleb in this way I cannot say.
Amelia, Marcel, Caleb and I each took a corner of the stretcher. I could not bring myself to look back at Patience as we left, and I hated myself for it. The weight of Xander split four ways wasn’t too bad at first, but the awkwardness of manhandling a stretcher through the forest meant that the going was slow. Every time one of us missed our footing or had to adjust quickly, jerking the stretcher, Xander flinched with fear and pain. The thought of dropping him made me concentrate very hard indeed. Everyone else did too: other than Marcel murmuring to Xander every now and then in French (I’ve no idea what he was saying but his tone was soothing) we barely spoke. During one of our many pauses Marcel cut some stems from a nearby tree and suggested Xander bite down on one against the pain. He told me afterwards that the wood tasted of aniseed and – whether it was just the distraction or some chemical property of the particular tree – that the chewing worked better than the pills we’d given him.
We fought our way back to a discernible path, but although the going got easier underfoot, by the time we reached it, Xander seemed to have trebled in weight. Amelia couldn’t stop herself groaning with the effort every few steps, and I was forced to call a halt more than once to gather my strength. Caleb, stony-faced, wouldn’t – or couldn’t – stoop to admit such weakness, but he shut his eyes and shook out his arms in relief every time we put the stretcher down. Only Marcel seemed to take the ordeal in his stride. In fact, noticing Amelia groaning, he offered to take her handle as well as his. She refused.
‘Might as well,’ said Caleb. Turning to me, he added, ‘If Marcel carries one end, I can take the other – give you a rest?’
‘Guys, I’m so sorry about this,’ muttered Xander.
‘You should be. Your leg may be broken, but my arms are about to fall off.’
Xander’s quick grin didn’t show in his eyes.
‘Wasn’t your fault,’ Caleb said, without looking at him.
‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault,’ said Amelia. ‘Not even Spenser’s. Especially not his, in fact. Let’s make sure the rangers know that. It was a freak accident.’
Caleb looked at her and sighed. His shoulders fell. When he spoke it was gently. ‘Come on, Jack. We’re both tired. Let’s try taking it in turns. I’ll start.’
With this Marcel lifted up both handles at the head end of the stretcher, and Caleb moved to pick up those at the feet. Since something about him in that moment seemed less about proving a point and more about actual kindness, I let him do it.
As it happens, we’d only made it a hundred metres in this formation before we met the team of rangers deployed to pick up Innocent’s body. There were a lot of them. They met us in virtual silence. Two of the rangers checked Caleb’s splint with deft fingers. Since they left it as it was, I assume Amelia and I had done an OK job. While they were doing that, Marcel took the only member of the team with grey hair to one side. I watched them closely. Sure enough, though I couldn’t quite hear the French, much less understand it, Marcel shot a quick nod in Caleb’s direction before pursing his lips and dropping his chin. The older guard snorted and his mouth set hard and something flickered in my chest. I was worried for my cousin. There’d be repercussions, the guard’s face said. This wasn’t over for Caleb.
26.
Four of the rangers escorted us back to camp, carrying Xander on the stretcher. They weren’t big guys. One was smaller than me in fact, with skinny little legs, but we struggled to keep up with them, and while I arrived on the brink of collapse, those guys barely broke a sweat. They managed to carry Xander dead level the entire way too. We made it back to camp just as night fell. I don’t know whether Xander was exhausted by the pain, zonked by the pills or out of it because of those twigs he kept chewing, but he’d actually drifted off by the time we made it back. Amelia went with Marcel to give an account of what had happened to the head ranger. She had the French. I sat with Xander while he slept. On his return, Marcel made it clear we’d be setting off for Goma in the morning.
I slept badly and was awake before dawn. At first light I saw Caleb emerge from his tent in a rush and stagger away into the brush. Not quite out of sight, he bent double and threw up. The sound of him retching woke Xander.
‘Did he eat something dodgy?’ he muttered.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Perhaps it’s exhaustion.’
‘My money’s on something else.’
‘What?’
‘Guilt, I think.’
Another bout of heave-groaning reached us.
‘Possibly,’ said Xander.
‘I think it is,’ I said. ‘I reckon that’s the sound of things sinking in.’
Xander didn’t respond, just pushed himself up on his elbows, winced and looked forlornly at his immobilised leg.
‘We’ll get that sorted in no time,’ I said.
‘Course,’ he replied. ‘Ma
rcel said there’s a good little hospital in Goma.’ He was trying to sound offhand, but I knew he was worried. Who wouldn’t be? The state of the city – its poor roads and unfinished buildings – didn’t exactly inspire confidence that it would harbour cutting-edge medical care. We returned there in the back of the same pickup that had brought us out to the national park, driven by the same guy with the bloodshot eyes. But without Innocent or poor Patience. A sombre Marcel accompanied us instead. He sat up front with the driver while Amelia, Caleb and I tried to steady poor Xander and protect him from the worst of the bumps. We’d transferred him to a proper stretcher in camp. Though it was padded and had aluminium poles, it still had to sit on the pickup’s unforgiving metal tray. We jacked it up on our backpacks to try and soften the juddering of the road. When I noticed that Caleb had wedged his legs under the stretcher too, using them to help absorb some of the jarring potholes, I did the same, but it didn’t really help beyond giving us a share of Xander’s discomfort. We’d not been going long when the pickup hit a particularly unforgiving rut which bounced all four of us into the air. Xander yelped at the blow.
Caleb banged hard on the cab window and shouted, ‘Drive more carefully, will you?’
‘Why wouldn’t he drive as carefully as he can?’ asked Amelia.
‘I don’t know,’ muttered Caleb.
Amelia’s question was genuine, and maybe Caleb really couldn’t guess why the guy might not have been doing his best to drive steadily, but I thought I knew better. Catching sight of those red eyes in the mirror as we ploughed on, I saw them narrow with hostility. Marcel would have explained what had happened to Innocent. Was it any wonder that this driver might be at best indifferent to us feeling a bit of pain on the way back to Goma?
Amelia and I took Xander to the hospital with Marcel. I could tell Caleb wanted to come, too, but when Xander sighed that he didn’t need an entourage my cousin’s ‘It’s your call’ was gentle. He’d mind our stuff, he said. Before we set off I overheard him tell Marcel to mention his father’s name if he thought it would help. Though I bristled at the self-importance of this, I think he was genuine.