Brazzaville Beach

by William Boyd

  “Everyone’s getting divorced,” he said wryly. He paused. “They’re funny people, mathematicians,” he said. “You should have married a physicist. We’re not quite so crazy.”

  THE CALCULUS

  The calculus is the most subtle subject in the whole field of mathematics. It is concerned, I read, with the rates of change of functions with respect to alterations in the independent variable. It is the foundation of all mathematical analysis.

  I’m lost. But I’m still attracted by this idea of its subtlety and importance. I like the fact that we apply the definite article to it. The calculus.

  A simpler definition tells me that the calculus is the study of continuous change, that it deals with growth and decay, and I begin to understand why it is such a crucial tool. Growth, change and decay…that applies to all of us.

  But its key defect, it seems to me, is that it cannot cope with abrupt change, that other common feature of our lives and the world. Not everything moves by degree, not everything ascends and descends like lines on a graph. The calculus requires continuity. The mathematical term for abrupt change is “discontinuity.” And here the calculus is no use at all. We need something to help us deal with that.

  The rains threatened, but still they never came. João and I kept up our watch on the Danube but saw no further incursions. Meanwhile, Alda logged the movements of the other members of the southern group as best he could alone.

  After several days sitting in my hide overlooking the river ravine, hot and sticky and pestered with flies, I decided further vigilance was fruitless. As a result of the attack on Mr. Jeb, I assumed, Clovis had led the southern group farther south almost to the edge of the escarpment. Their core area was now a good two miles from the Danube; any patrolling northerners would have to cover a vast area of the forest in order to find them.

  I was away from the camp most days from dawn to sunset. I often arrived at the canteen late, as the others were finishing their meals, and in this way managed to keep my social contacts to a minimum. After abandoning our surveillance at the river I spent a morning going over the data of Alda’s follows, trying to plot the extent to which the core area of the southern group had moved and how confined it now was. It was clear at once that they were wandering about far less, spending much more time together as a group and rarely venturing off on their own or in twos. Except for Lena.

  Alda had done two follows on Lena. She had left the group one day and had gone off foraging on her own. At the end of the day she had constructed a sleeping nest about half a mile from the others. She had returned to the group the next morning and then, two days later, had wandered off again. Alda had last seen her at four o’clock one afternoon high in a dalbergia tree. Since then she had not been seen. When I superimposed Lena’s movements on a map of the others’ it was obvious she was ranging as widely as she had ever done, oblivious, it seemed, to any risk.

  The three of us spent the next two days with the southern group. There was still no sign of Lena. The other chimps seemed quite relaxed; there was no evidence of excessive caution or fear. The only significant change since I had last seen them was that Rita-Lu was now fully in estrus. We saw Clovis and Conrad copulate with her, Clovis many times, but Conrad only once. Even then Rita-Lu jumped away from him after three or four thrusts and Conrad ejaculated into midair. Rita-Lu still presented to Conrad but he seemed subdued and quiet. It was as if, with Mr. Jeb gone, Conrad had lost his natural desire. Even Muffin showed some interest in Rita-Lu but she would chase him away.

  Clovis ministered to her most often. Rita-Lu’s swollen, shiny rump infallibly aroused him and he would break off his feeding or grooming whenever she presented to him and squat down, thighs spread, his testicles—big as tennis balls—resting on the ground, like hairy tubers at the root of some thin, lilac-stemmed flower drilling upward toward the sun.

  One morning when I met João and Alda they told me that a man from a village south of Sangui had informed them that he had heard the sound of chimpanzees fighting in the bush. I took out a map and they showed me where the village was. I plotted the most direct route there.

  We walked south through the forest for over three hours. We were now near the edge of the lush vegetation that marked the southernmost precincts of the national park. The escarpment here took a ninety-degree turn east. Due south was a wide, flat rift valley of featureless orchard bush and small villages, scattered miles apart. The province we were in was very underpopulated and those people who lived on the fringe of the park had no necessity, as yet, to move up the green slopes of the escarpment in search of better pasture or more arable land. A few fields of maize and cassava had encroached here and there, a certain amount of timber was felled for firewood, but the human population posed little threat to the habitat of the chimpanzees.

  We emerged from the treeline, tired and a little footsore, and surveyed the view spread below us. To our left the forested hills of the escarpment swung east for twenty miles and then rolled southward once more. The gray clouds of the ever-impending rains hung above the distant hilltops, but above us the sky was blue, badged with round, white, stationary clouds. The piebald, dusty bush stretched out for miles before us. At our feet lay the small nameless village with its irregular fields cut haphazardly from the bush, the green maize plantations almost indecently fresh-looking in the midst of so much dusty aridity. In the far distance a band of darker vegetation crossed the plain, the riverine trees of a tributary of the massive Cabule.

  We ate our lunch. Alda pointed to the river in the distance, where it emerged from a valley cut in the hazy hills, and said, “There is FIDE. And beyond. And there”—he gestured north behind our backs—“there is UNAMO.”

  “Look,” João said. “Airplane.”

  He pointed. I saw, coming from the west, high up, making contrails like spilled salt, two jet fighters. Migs, I supposed. I had never seen them in our skies. Usman told me they rarely flew missions in the north. They passed above us and disappeared into the haze. Seconds later we heard the rumble of their engines.

  We went down to the village. Round mud huts, thatched with straw, the matting walls of compounds. João spoke to one of the old men lounging beneath a shade tree and a small boy was deputed to lead us to the approximate scene of the chimpanzee fight.

  We crossed a patch of even waste ground. At one end a soccer goal stood, a few shreds of net still hanging from it.

  “For the missionaries,” João said. “They were here before the war.”

  Men and women working in the fields looked at me curiously as we walked by. Then the ground started to rise and the bush closed in on us once more. The small boy pointed to a clump of cotton trees on the edge of the ridge above us. The noise came from there, he said, and left.

  It took us another half hour of further climbing to reach the cotton trees. We spread out and began to search through the grass and bushes beneath them. I found many discarded seeds of the fruit. They were nutty flat discs about an inch across, like small mango seeds, surrounded by a pale yellow, fibrous flesh in a fuzzy, suedelike casing. From the amount of seeds on the ground I would have thought that the entire southern group had been feeding here. There were many torn leaves and broken twigs on the ground as well but nothing that indicated anything more than the usual careless and untidy feeding of a group of hungry chimpanzees.

  Then João called out. I ran over to him.

  Just beneath the lowest branches of a large bush was a severed arm, the right arm of a young chimpanzee that seemed to have been crudely torn off at the shoulder. I looked at it: it could only be Muffin’s. Alda was peering under the bush. He reached in with a stick, hooked it onto something and tugged. At once there was a great noise of buzzing and the bush came alive with thousands of blowflies, hard and shiny. It was as if handfuls of gravel were being flung at the leaves. The bush shivered and vibrated as the flies fought to escape. I backed away while Alda pulled his shirt over his head and plunged in to haul out the body.

 
; It was Muffin. Something had been eating him recently, something small and carnivorous, a bush rat perhaps, and his stomach had been opened to expose his viscera, slimy and swollen. His face was battered and cut, just as Mr. Jeb’s had been, and his left foot and leg below the knee was missing. The bloody, congealed socket of his right arm was filled with swarming ants. There was no stink but, as Alda heaved him out, some of his guts fell from the hole in his stomach with a moist slither.

  I gagged and felt saliva swirl into my mouth. I felt faint and shocked. Muffin: neurotic Muffin who hated to leave his mother. I turned away and spat and took a deep breath. I opened my bag and removed my camera.

  It was a long walk back home. I had wanted to bring Muffin’s body but it was too badly torn to carry for such a long distance. As we trudged homeward I had plenty of time to think. I wondered what to do. Mr. Jeb and Muffin were dead. Lena was missing but I was now convinced that she too had been attacked and probably killed. Let’s assume, I reasoned, that three of my southern chimps have been killed by the northerners. I had no doubt that Muffin was the latest victim. I had a vivid memory of Pulul sitting on Mr. Jeb’s back twisting his leg round and round until the ligaments and tendons gave and it broke. The thinner limbs of a small adolescent would be no problem for a mature adult. A full-grown male was incredibly strong: I had seen them snap branches as thick as an arm with almost casual ease. They could have torn apart Muffin as easily as you or I would wrench a drumstick from a roast chicken.

  Three chimps were gone; only five were left: Clovis, Conrad, Rita-Mae, Rita-Lu and baby Lester. There were seven mature males in the northern group and several enthusiastic adolescents. What chance did my depleted band have against them? And there was another problem, no less perplexing: what should I tell Mallabar? For the first time I began to regret so precipitately sending off my article to the magazine. Events had moved faster than I could ever have imagined. Suddenly, revenging myself on Mallabar no longer seemed my highest priority.

  “I don’t quite see what you’re saying,” Mallabar said, slowly.

  We were in his bungalow; it was about nine in the evening and we were sitting in his study. This room was a small shrine of self-importance. The walls were covered with framed citations, photographs, honorary degrees and diplomas, but the room’s furnishings were simple to the point of austerity: two metal filing cabinets, a square wooden table as a desk and a couple of canvas director’s chairs. Mallabar preempted all criticism of the egotistical decor by classifying it as his fund-raising room. Important sponsors could see what results their patronage had achieved, and the spartan facilities reassured them that nothing had been squandered.

  I sat in a canvas chair looking at several framed magazine covers featuring the man behind the desk opposite me. He had a faint smile on his face, but it was only a polite formality. His mood was not benign.

  I began again.

  “I want to take a female from the south and reinstate her in the northern group.”

  “Hope, Hope,” he said, leaning forward urgently. “You don’t understand. This is not a zoo. We can’t move animals from cage to cage, as it were. To do what you want would be…out of the question. This is a wild environment. What you’re proposing is an act of engineering.”

  I resisted the temptation to point out the engineering required to build and operate the Artificial Feeding Area.

  “I still think we should do it.”

  “But you haven’t told me why.”

  “To…to avert trouble.” I held up my hand to stop him interrupting. “Northern males are making regular patrols into the south and—”

  “I don’t like that word ‘patrols,’” he said.

  “That is what they are,” I said emphatically. “I’ve seen them, and…” I paused for a second, “there has been aggression.”

  He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Three of my chimpanzees have been killed. And two, for sure, have died as a result of violent attacks.”

  “That is a forest out there, my dear. Full of wild beasts.”

  I ignored his sarcasm. “I have a horrible feeling”—I was treading very carefully here—“that they have been attacked and killed by the northern chimps.”

  “Stop now!” he shouted. He stood up, very angry. “Don’t say another word. For your own sake.” He was shivering slightly, even though he had a tight pursed smile on his face. He put both hands on his desk and lowered his head for four or five seconds. When he looked at me again there were, I could swear, tears in his eyes. It was very impressive.

  I sat there and listened to him, knowing that I had gone as far as I could, and that to go further would mean the end of my career at Grosso Arvore. So I listened as Eugene Mallabar ran through his autobiography for me, sketched out his ambitions and dreams, and summarized the enormous efforts and sacrifices he had made over the last two and a half decades. All this, it transpired, was a mere preamble to what he had to address to me. He and Ginga, he reminded me, had not been blessed with children. As a consequence they were inclined to look on all those who worked at Grosso Arvore as members of their large, extended family. People came for a year or two, they lived and worked here, and eventually returned to America or France or Sweden or wherever. But they never forgot what they had shared, and they never forgot Grosso Arvore. (I was tiring rapidly now.) Everybody was admired and cherished, everyone was special, they were all working together in common purpose.

  “Take yourself, Hope. You are, and I make no secret of it, a very special member of our family. The exceptional circumstances of your arrival, at a time when our fortunes were particularly low, was very, very important to us. You answered our call at our time of need. You came to us…”

  He paused for effect. I had a ghastly premonition of what he was going to say next and he did not disappoint me.

  “Ginga and I think of you with great fondness. It…it would not be going too far to say that I myself like to think of you as my daughter…. There’s something about you, Hope, that stimulates my, our, parental love. So—” He paused again, turning his head to one side as if to hide a tear from me. “So I hope you will take what I am about to say in the spirit of a father talking to a much-loved, but young and inexperienced daughter.”

  He looked at me for approval. I kept my face rigidly neutral.

  “I have been studying chimpanzees for twenty-five years,” he said. “Now you arrive here and you see certain things, certain occurrences which are unfamiliar to you, and you make an interpretation. Too fast. Too eager. You count your chickens before you leap.” He came round his desk and leaned back against it. He linked hands and pointed his joined fists at me.

  “These…these allegations you’ve made are pure speculation. You are jumping to conclusions based on the patchiest data. Bad. Bad science, Hope. Whatever you may think is happening is wrong. You are wrong, Hope. I’m sorry. I know, you see. I know more about chimpanzees than any living person, more than any person in the history of mankind. Think about it.” He smiled incredulously.

  “And yet you are challenging me.” He spread his hands. “That’s why I get angry. You’re too bold. The advancement of understanding goes A B C D E F G. You go A B and then you jump to M N O. It can’t be done, it can’t be done.”

  He came toward me and put both hands on my shoulders. He pushed his dark face close to mine.

  “Don’t torment yourself with these wild speculations, my dear. Observe and note. Observe and note. Leave the interpretation to me.”

  He leaned forward and pressed his dry lips to my forehead. I felt the sharp prickle of his neat beard on my nose and cheeks. I said nothing.

  He led me to the door, smiling fondly at me. I realized he had enjoyed himself enormously.

  “Thank you, Eugene,” I said flatly. “I understand now.”

  “Bless you.” He squeezed my arm. “We shall do great work here, Hope. You and I.”

  I walked out into the moist warm darkness of the African night with a ne
w sense of purpose.

  Two days later, I was returning to camp from a long follow of the surviving members of the southern group. Clovis and Rita-Lu had moved away from the others, leaving them feeding on date palms. I left João and Alda and followed Clovis and Rita-Lu. They traveled north for about half an hour. Then they stopped. Rita-Lu presented and Clovis copulated with her. Then they rested in the shade, Clovis idly grooming Rita-Lu.

  With the transfer of the core area farther south, much more of our working day was given over to traveling than before. I carried on observing until about four in the afternoon before I decided it was time to head back to camp. I called up João on the walkie-talkie, gave my location and told him I was going home and that he and Alda should do the same.

  Ten minutes after leaving the two chimpanzees, I came to an area of the forest that I called the glade. It was a place where the character of the forest changed dramatically. Here there were huge stands of bamboo, with diameters at their base of twenty to thirty feet. Their mass was such that they blotted out so much of the sun that the vegetation beneath their spreading crowns was untypically sparse. The only trees that seemed to flourish in this perpetual twilight were thin spindly thorns—locally called rat thorns because the bark on their trunks was curiously incised, rather like a rat’s tail. In this shade the rat-thorn trees grew relatively straight, up to a height of twenty feet. The trunks, branchless for two thirds of the way, were studded with soft, warty brown thorns. At the top, their crown of branches and leaves was insubstantial and undernourished-looking. Because of the absence of ground cover this was the only area of the reserve that looked as if it might have been planted out. The rat-thorn trees did not crowd together, and with their clean, branchless trunks they resembled poles hammered into the ground. The glade looked, I thought, like a surreal orchard, planted to produce some as yet unheard-of fruit.