Wild Spirit

by Henderson, Annette

  There was never any doubt about when and how often she needed the comfort of bodily contact. When Rodo was in the office, she would sit under his chair with both arms wrapped around one of his legs, and rest her head against him with her eyes closed. When I was in the office on my own, she would approach my chair obliquely or from behind, very slowly, without a sound. The first inkling I would have that she was there would be the feather-light touch of her hands closing around my leg, or one hand placed softly on my thigh as she paused in her climb halfway up the chair leg. Occasionally, she would climb in between my back and the back of the chair and curl up against me for as long as I sat there. But her favourite position was the lap embrace, where she sat facing me with her legs curled up and pressing into my stomach, her chest against mine, and her arms locked around my waist. That position gave her the maximum reassurance. She would remain there indefinitely without moving or taking any notice of what was happening in the room. She and I developed a regular routine: I would scratch her back lightly, she would relax her hold and drop off into a half-sleep. I could manage this quite easily while I sat at the desk operating the radio or writing.

  She only became agitated when I moved about the room and didn’t take her with me. If I left her on the chair, she would screech, climb down, and run after me. I learned that the best way to keep her calm was simply to let her cling to me all the time. When I stood up she simply clung tighter, as she would have in the wild. This allowed me to move about the room and still have both hands free.

  I wasn’t sure how she would cope when I took her in the Méhari for the first time on my routine deliveries to the cas de passage and the économat, and my trips up to the warehouse to work with M’Poko Lucien. But she took to it without a hiccup. When I drove, she sat perfectly still on my lap. When I walked around camp, she rode on my hip or sat with her bottom on my hand, clinging to my forearm. In that position she could see everything, and seemed to enjoy being swung. When I worked up in the warehouse, she sat quietly nearby and watched. With each day, my bond with her grew. Each morning I looked forward to the warm feeling of her body clinging to mine.

  After a week, her wound had healed well. All the stitches were intact, there was no sign of infection, and her daytime behaviour was placid and relaxed. On the Sunday morning, a burst of bright sunlight broke through the thick cloud, bringing the first warm temperatures we had had all week.

  Sundays were Win’s day to look after Josie, to give Rodo and me a break. They were also his only chance to relax and listen to classical music on the cassette player. Sundays had become even more precious for him since his work schedule had grown more demanding. He drove himself hard to meet all the project deadlines, and the fatigue showed on his face.

  But this Sunday he announced, ‘I’m going to give her a bath.’ Josie had adjusted so well that she was content just to sit and watch while Win assembled everything on the wooden table out in the sun – a bowl of warm water, soap, a sponge and a towel. He rolled her on her back and she lay perfectly still while he sponged her all over. I sat nearby, taking in every small detail, full of wonder at her trust in us. He rubbed her down and applied a coat of antiseptic cream along the line of stitches, then they sat together in the sun while her coat dried.

  When Josie was warm and dry, he picked her up and carried her into the flat. I watched as he chose a Tchaikovsky piano concerto and settled back to listen in a reclining chair with Josie face-down on his chest while he stroked her head and back.

  The sunshine gave me a perfect opportunity to tackle a week’s worth of dirty clothes. We still had no washing machine, so I lined up my usual row of plastic dishes and squeezed things by hand. The strains of Tchaikovsky reached me through the window of the flat, and because there was no work done on Sundays, the camp lay at peace, with just occasional bird calls echoing over the forest. I realised that the tumult of the first three months was now behind us, and I had begun to regain a sense of calm.

  I returned to the flat to find Win and Josie both fast asleep in the chair, the sweeping phrases of the music washing over them. My eyes filled with tears as I thought back to what Josie had gone through. Now she was safe, and she knew she was in a caring environment. She’d made a remarkable recovery. Her capacity for learning had astounded us, and her human-like responses filled us constantly with wonder.

  Meanwhile, Rodo grasped his first chance in a week to have some unbroken sleep. Before lunch, he joined us in the flat for drinks around the camping table. Josie, by then wide awake, sat on Win’s lap. She was content just to sit still while we talked, calmly watching everything we did. But the sight of Win pouring beer into a glass caught her attention. She focused hard on him as he put the glass to his lips, then she stood on tiptoe, balancing herself on his legs, and reached out for the glass. Wrapping both hands firmly around it, she pulled it carefully towards her mouth. I had difficulty remembering she was a great ape and not a human child as Win guided the glass to her lips and she took a sip. When she had swallowed, she settled back on her haunches and looked around at each of us in turn.

  Twice more in the hour that followed, she did the same thing. I thought back to what Eamon and Peter Telfair had told us – that Arthur the gorilla used to sit with them in the evenings and drink a glass of beer. When I had first heard it, I was convinced they were exaggerating.

  After lunch, Win took her by the hand and walked her slowly from the flat down the grassy embankment, behind the clothes line, and up the slope to the edge of the tree line. He was concerned that her diet of human food might be deficient and that she might need more exercise. Thick secondary growth had sprung up in the clearing since Mario had had the helicopter pad made: plants with bright pink fruits at their base grew among a jumble of greenery. We knew they were a type of ginger that gorillas loved to eat.

  Win let go of Josie’s hand and she sat for some minutes looking around and smelling the forest for the first time in a week. The sight and smell of growing things must have stirred some of her earlier memories. Dappled sunlight played on her skin, moist rotting leaves were soft under her feet, and the buzz of insects droned in the afternoon stillness. Win stood perfectly still, careful not to distract her. She looked back at him, checking he was still there, then slowly began to crawl around, stopping here and there to pick tiny shoots, which she delicately placed on her tongue and chewed thoroughly before swallowing. At intervals she turned around to confirm that Win was nearby. Eventually, she found the bright pink fruits. She made for them unhesitatingly, picked one, and carefully prised out the flesh and placed it in her mouth.

  She didn’t range far, but seemed totally absorbed in the forest world. When she had eaten enough, she sat down, drew her knees up to her chin, crossed her arms and looked up at Win as if to indicate, ‘Well, I’m finished. What now?’

  I watched them at the forest’s edge – Josie relaxed and calm, Win understanding her needs and giving her the chance to follow her instincts – and I marvelled at the miracle of their perfect communication. As the three of us walked hand in hand slowly back to the flat I felt like we were a family.

  In the weeks that followed, I took Josie everywhere with me. Although her cold lingered, she seemed otherwise healthy. When I had washing to hang out, she came with me to the line and sat nearby on the grass. Each time I went out in the Méhari, she sat quietly in my lap. I had become so accustomed to her snuggling into me as I sat at the desk that sometimes I almost forgot she was there.

  At first, I didn’t stop to seriously consider how long Rodo could sustain his stoical tolerance of Josie’s night behaviour. He rarely spoke about it. At midnight every night she would become playful and start cavorting around the bedroom; at dawn she would eventually tire. He lost more and more sleep, his bed linen and clothes were continually soaked with her urine, and he struggled to focus on work during the day. We all knew the situation could not continue indefinitely, but we pushed that thought to the back of our minds. There was no question of confining her
to a cage: that would have killed her as surely as a hunter’s bullet. In time, we came to the painful realisation that her long-term care required more resources than we had available.

  Two unrelated events brought things to a head. First, Doug made one of his regular visits to review progress on the building program and the clearing of survey tracks. He told us that a party of senior technical specialists would soon visit the camp for several days, and that the smell of gorilla urine in the guesthouse could not be allowed to remain. We needed to find another home for Josie before they arrived. That same week, Jacques’ family had finally arrived in Makokou and had moved into a large house. He knew the problems Rodo was having and offered a solution: his wife and three daughters had heard all about Josie and they wanted desperately to have her. She would find a loving home there with four people to share her care, he assured us.

  It was a prospect we could barely contemplate. We loved her, we were responsible for her, and she had bonded with the three of us. Another change of circumstances might prove too great an adjustment for her. Every few days, Jacques reminded us of his offer. Then one Friday the decision could no longer be postponed. Josie would go down with Jacques to Makokou on the pirogue that afternoon.

  I went about my work that morning weighed down with sadness. The wrench of having to part with her was almost too much to bear. She sat calmly on my hip while we moved about, unaware that her world would soon change completely. The three of us felt protective of her and afraid for her – letting her go felt like betrayal. We had no way of knowing whether she would adjust to the change, or be cared for as we had cared for her.

  Rodo, Win and I made the trip to the débarcadère in the Méhari, with Josie occupying her usual place on my lap. When we arrived, the pirogue was waiting. Jacques supervised the loading of some empty fuel drums and iceboxes. Rodo stood silently on the riverbank. Josie, still in her woollen singlet, clung tightly to his leg with her eyes shut, almost as if she knew something was wrong. When all was ready, Rodo gave Jacques some food and drink for her for the journey, then handed her into his arms.

  She clung tightly to him as he boarded the pirogue. The three of us stood together on the bank and watched as it moved slowly into the middle of the river. Then the outboard kicked in and the pirogue gathered speed. Her tiny form against Jacques’ chest grew smaller and smaller until they rounded the bend and disappeared from view.

  Each of us was too full of emotion to speak and we drove back to camp in silence. The parting had been inevitable, but that didn’t ease the pain. Josie’s time with us had been a journey of love, discovery and compassion, enriching us beyond anything we could have imagined. Now there was a void.

  I was impatient to get to the radio the next morning to hear how Josie had fared on the trip downriver, and how she had responded to her new environment. The pain of separation lay heavily on me, compounded by a sense of guilt that somehow we had let her down. She had trusted us, and in the end we could not continue to give her the care she needed. My body felt like lead as I walked across to the guesthouse and switched on the radio. I missed her warm body clinging to me, her soft touch on my leg, and the routines we had shared.

  ‘Makokou de Belinga, Makokou de Belinga! Jacques, do you receive me?’

  ‘Belinga de Makokou, Belinga de Makokou! Receiving you, Nettie.’

  ‘How is she, Jacques?’

  ‘She handled the river trip well, Nettie, and she’s doing fine.’

  ‘That’s great news, Jacques. Keep us posted, won’t you?’

  ‘Roger, Nettie, will do. Talk to you again at five.’

  It was Saturday and I had a lot to do. Although I welcomed the distraction of work, I kept looking at my watch, waiting for the five o’clock radio link. Josie’s first twenty-four hours in her new home would be crucial. At five I switched on the radio to find Jacques already calling me.

  ‘Belinga de Makokou, Nettie, are you there?’

  ‘Makokou de Belinga, receiving you loud and clear, Jacques. What’s the news?’

  ‘She still has a runny nose. I took her over to CNRS today so the vet could check her over. He said how well she had been cared for, and sends his congratulations to Win for the fine job he did on stitching her up. He said she’s made a good recovery, but he’s given her antibiotics for the respiratory infection.’ (CNRS was the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, a distinguished French research body with a laboratory for tropical ecology located at Makokou.)

  I felt myself relax: Josie was in good hands. ‘Great to hear, Jacques. Well done. I’ll pass on the message to Win – he’ll be thrilled. Talk to you tomorrow. Over and out.’

  For six days, all seemed to go well. Each morning, I asked after Josie at the radio. Jacques’ wife came on air several times to say that their daughters loved having her and that she was faring well.

  On the seventh day all that changed. Madame Poussain’s voice came over the airwaves agitated and angry. ‘She is behaving so badly, I’m thinking of sending her back to you!’

  The words chilled me. If Josie was being disruptive, it could only mean that her needs were not being met. She was clearly stressed, and I feared she was heading for a crisis, but there was nothing we could do. I tried talking to Jacques’ wife, but she was in no mood to listen.

  The news came on Sunday morning. Eamon greeted Win and me at the guesthouse door, sadness etched into his face. ‘I heard on the radio last night from Monsieur Poussain that the little gorilla died yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you straightaway. I knew how upset you folks would be.’ We stood there mute, absorbing the news like a physical blow.

  ‘Does Rodo know?’ I managed.

  Eamon nodded.

  ‘What happened – do you know?’

  ‘She just turned blue and stopped breathing,’ he said. I pictured her tiny body, fighting to the last against huge odds. Her life with us flashed before my mind, the image of her face, the touch of her hand. What had she suffered in those last days? Had they cared for her properly? I recalled the look on Eamon’s face the night Josie had arrived, a look that seemed to say ‘beware of caring too much’. He’d seen it all before, only much worse, but he hadn’t had the heart to tell us.

  Win and I walked back to the flat arm in arm and sat staring out over the forest until the tumult inside us had subsided. Our grief was too deep even for tears. Rodo buried his grief like the stoic he was. When we saw him later that day he was outwardly calm, but, like us, subdued and thoughtful. There was nothing to say. It was all over. In the morning, Madame Poussain came to the radio, her voice breaking as she told us, ‘She died in my arms. We buried her in the river, with flowers.’

  It was only months later that we heard something indirectly that made sense of her rapid decline. Apparently she had been kept outside at nights by herself, and had spent the hours of darkness fretful and agitated, trying to get in the door. We knew that warm body contact had been essential for her wellbeing, and that the stress and trauma of this deprivation would have hastened her death. But recriminations would have been futile. We kept our thoughts to ourselves, aware that few people could have matched Rodo’s heroic self-sacrifice in letting her sleep in his bed. I remembered what Jacques had told us – that gorillas sometimes died of grief when separated from their long-term carers. It seemed the odds had been against Josie from the start.

  Weeks went by before I could banish the endless cycle of these thoughts churning in my mind. Josie had become part of our lives – nothing could take that away. I was determined that somehow, sometime, I would do something to make her life and death count.

  chapter twelve

  ELEPHANT TALES AND A VILLAGE DANCE

  I threw myself into work. The whole project was gathering such pace that all of us struggled to keep up with the daily demands. I shuttled between the guesthouse, the warehouse, the cas de passage and the économat delivering supplies and keeping track of stocks. In between, I dropped in wherever Win was working, in case he needed me to
interpret or translate. But he rarely did: his French had progressed quickly. He knew no formal grammar, but his men had taught him the vocabulary he needed for building. One word at a time, he learned the names of tools, types of timber and building tasks. As construction was underway at several sites, he drove between them in the Kombi.

  A special friendship had developed between Win and his head carpenter. Mehendje Bruno was quietly spoken, thoughtful and gifted. I often observed the instinctive rapport they had with each other – the language barrier barely mattered, as they seemed to know each other’s thoughts.

  The combinée had streamlined construction work dramatically. It could handle planing, spindle-moulding, and trimming rough timber to required thicknesses. The two smaller machines Win had ordered at the same time – a circular saw for breaking down the bulky 400 © 400 millimetre timber baulks from the sawmills, and a drop saw mounted on a bench for cutting sections of timber to required lengths – enabled the prefabrication of frames for all the new buildings.

  Win thrived on the challenge of planning the entire building program, designing all the buildings, including the electrical, plumbing and septic systems, and supervising construction. Determined to avoid accidents, he trained the men in the safe use of the machines, and enjoyed the growing relationship with his team. It was the most demanding role of his life and called on all his skill and experience. And there was enough work to keep him going for a year, so when Doug offered us both a further six-month contract starting in the new year, we didn’t think twice.

  Our first issue of the National Geographic magazine arrived in November – the October 1975 issue. We had eagerly awaited its arrival, as we received no newspapers and had few books with us. I tore off the wrapping to find the image of Biruté Galdikas on the cover, walking in the forest of Borneo with a baby orangutan clinging to her left shoulder and an older juvenile on the ground, reaching up to take her hand. She was my age, and we even looked a bit alike, with long brown hair. She was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater, just like I wore on the coldest days.