by William Boyd
‘All right,’ she says, clears her throat and begins.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other …
Camp K 101
It’s ironic, Jurgen Kiel thought to himself – and then wondered if ‘ironic’ was the right word. It was ‘unusual’, certainly; ‘unforeseen’ definitely. Because when Jurgen Kiel joined the German army he never expected to be posted to Africa, far less the medium-sized provincial town of Min’Jalli in the Democratic People’s Republic of Douala. Yet here he was sitting in a watchtower five metres above the beaten-earth compound of Camp K 101, three clicks out of Min’Jalli, guarding, to the best of his ability, some 5,000 tonnes of rice, powdered milk, millet seeds and assorted other cereals. He sighed, took off his pale blue UN helmet, and rubbed his short hair vigorously. Of course he was not alone: the squad of UN German soldiers was supported by squads of UN Spanish and Pakistani soldiers. They took turns to guard the camp and provided armed escorts for the convoys of NGO lorries that went out to the food distribution centres in other parts of the DPR of Douala. They were well fed, the civil war was taking place many hundreds of kilometres away and the local population was more than pleased to have a UN base in their town. He was doing good, he supposed, in a vague kind of way, though guarding sacks of rice wasn’t exactly the main reason why he had joined the German army. Perhaps it was ironic, after all.
The African dusk was beginning its short but spectacular duration, the light becoming first a heavy, tarnished gold and then swiftly a muddy orange before the darkness arrived like a door slamming. Already the perimeter lights of Camp K were glowing brightly in the gloom and Jurgen stood and switched on the powerful searchlight in his watchtower overlooking the main gate and the road to Min’Jalli. The road ran alongside a small creek that also formed the boundary to the forest. Jurgen swung the beam across the creek and ran the white circle of light along the treeline. If anyone was coming to pilfer they would arrive from the forest. The creek was low – you could wade across it. Cut the barbed wire, slip into the camp, steal a sack or two of rice. It didn’t happen very often but as Colonel Kwame, the commandant of Camp K 101, regularly insisted it was the ‘ostentation of vigilance that is our best defence’. Hence the two watchtowers with the .50 calibre machine guns and powerful searchlights. Hence the randomly timed intra-perimeter patrols through the night. Sometimes they caught pilferers – a terrified boy from the bush, naked and starving; three women with their babies looking for powdered milk – but Camp K 101 was new, the barbed-wire fence was dense, taut, tall and well lit. It was very hard to get into.
Jurgen ran the searchlight beam back again. This banal vista of a little corner of African landscape had become as familiar to him as the view from his back bedroom in his mother’s house in Waldbach: there was the bamboo grove, there was the footbridge, there was the giant Mungu fig tree, then trees, more trees, more trees. He switched his light off and called up Stefan in the other watchtower at the other end of the camp on the walkie-talkie. ‘K2 all clear,’ he said. ‘Copy that,’ Stefan said. Jurgen could imagine him writing it down in the logbook for Colonel Kwame. Operation Ostentatious Vigilance was underway.
Two hours later, Jurgen climbed down from the watchtower, unslung his Koch-Noedler PMG and clicked off the safety, and wandered through the camp amongst the sack-mountains and the corrugated-iron warehouses. When he reached the fence he flipped down the night-vision device on his helmet and looked out at a world turned green. The open ground between the camp and the creek glowed a fuzzy pistachio, the creek was olive and the trees of the forest beyond were dark, shadowy emerald, shifting and pulsing as the branches moved in the night breezes. Jurgen switched on his walkie-talkie and reported in to Stefan. All clear.
Jurgen walked up the wire to the western corner of the camp – ostentatiously – and thumbed-up the cover of his PMG’s night-sight. Arms had to be carried visibly, practically flourished, Colonel Kwame had insisted. Yeah, yeah: flourish, brandish, waggle, show … Jurgen froze. Something was moving in the trees on the other side of the creek. He ran to the watchtower and climbed up. He had powerful night-vision binoculars there, mounted on a tripod. He swivelled the lenses, focussed. There, flitting amongst the pale lemon branches of the bamboo grove was a figure, crouched over, hesitant. Jurgen zoomed the lenses, and chuckled. A goddam monkey! Jesus!
He watched it for a while as it searched the leaves under the Mungu fig. Too large for a monkey – this was a chimpanzee. A chimp with a limp, Jurgen said to himself, as he noticed that one leg was shorter than the other, minus a foot, in fact – no right foot, just a short stump under the knee. The chimp slung itself up into the fig looking for fruit. Jurgen thought about switching on the searchlight and frightening it away but, what the hell, he thought, if he can find any figs left in that tree, good luck to him.
He kept the binoculars on zoom and after a minute or two watched the chimp lower itself to the ground. He was a big shaggy beast, Jurgen saw, and the hair on his chin was lighter, as if it was grey. A grey goatee. Like Ludger, his mother’s fat boyfriend. So he christened the chimp ‘Ludger’, there and then. It made him smile – he’d look forward to telling Ludger this story when he went back home to Waldbach at Christmas on leave. Hey Ludger, I called a big old chimpanzee in Africa after you. Why? I wonder: perhaps something about him reminded me of you, fatso …
The next night, Jurgen watched as Ludger the chimp returned to the Mungu tree. There must be the odd fig remaining or fallen, Jurgen thought, to draw him back. Ludger spent hardly any time in the tree, he seemed to find a few figs or remains of figs in the leaf-fritter on the ground. Jurgen zoomed in on the leg stump. How did you lose your foot, Ludger? A snare? Maybe he stood on a mine? The rebels had laid the odd minefield around their forest camps when they held the territory here a couple of years ago. Jurgen noticed Ludger never put his weight on the stump – maybe it was still sore.
Two days later, when Jurgen knew the rota had come round again for him to be on guard all night in the watchtower, he took six bananas and an old enamel cooking pot and crossed the creek by the foot bridge, making for the Mungu tree. He put the bananas on the ground and upended the cooking pot on top of them, checking that he would have a clear sightline from his watchtower. Ludger was in for a treat, tonight.
And sure enough, an hour or so after dark, he saw Ludger limp out of the bamboo grove and head for the Mungu tree. He went straight for the cooking pot – the bananas must have smelt good – and threw it brusquely away. Jurgen zoomed in, watching him eat the bananas, skin and all. You’ll be back, Jurgen thought, now you know how to play the game.
And so it progressed, nightly for the next ten days, whether Jurgen was on watch or patrol or not: at some stage in the day he placed a cache of bananas under the cooking pot beneath the Mungu tree and each morning the bananas would be gone. Jurgen didn’t see Ludger retrieve his bounty every time he was on duty in the watchtower but each day’s return to the Mungu tree made it obvious that the nightly gift had been discovered.
And then on the eleventh day Jurgen lifted up the cooking pot and saw that last night’s bananas had been untouched. He frowned, added the new supply and moved the pot to a slightly more prominent position, kicking away the leaves around it so that it sat in a patch of clear ground. That night he was in the watchtower but saw nothing. The next morning he checked – the bananas had been untouched again. He left them there, just in case. He and some of the Spaniards had been assigned a two-day NGO run up to the northern provincial town of Kitali. Maybe Ludger was unwell – or had moved on. He found himself obscurely troubled, as if the relationship had been unwittingly compromised in some way. Maybe Ludger had become sick of bananas and had been hoping for some figs? …
All the way up to Kitali and bac
k he found himself wondering vaguely what could have happened, running through various uninformed scenarios. Was Ludger part of a nomadic tribe of chimpanzees? Had his injured leg made him a pariah figure? Had his leg become worse? … It was pointless speculating. The empty convoy stopped in Min’Jalli before returning to Camp K and the soldiers were allowed to go to the market. Jurgen was looking for some carvings or knick-knacks he could take home to his mother and his sister in Waldbach – souvenirs of his African tour of duty. The six UN soldiers, big in their packs and helmets, their PMGs slung across their fronts, wandered grandly through the market stalls handing out sweets and chewing gum to the hordes of kids who surrounded them. Their interpreter, Jean-François, swore at the children, spat in their faces, slapped and kicked them away, but the crowd never diminished, and the soldiers kept giving away sweets.
Then Jurgen stopped. He was in the butchery area of the market. Hacked thin bony joints of meat hung from the rafters of low shacks. The butchers – all women – waved palm fronds to keep the flies off. Three kids in ragged shorts sat in front of some liana and cane cages containing small deer and in another cage was a large potto, blinking uncomprehendingly in the sunlight. Jurgen called Jean-François over. This was another problem. The lingua franca of the PDR of Douala was French – you had to speak English to Jean-François (nobody spoke German, let alone Spanish) then he would translate into French for the locals.
‘These boys, they go catching this animals?’ Jurgen said in his best English.
Jean-François asked the boys and they replied.
‘This bush-pig,’ Jean-François translated. ‘He tasting very good. Yum-yum. For you one dollar.’
An idea was forming in Jurgen’s mind.
‘They catch him?’
Yes, came the eventual reply. They were experts at catching wild animals. Very, very good hunters.
‘Tell them,’ Jurgen said, drawing Jean-François to the side. ‘They go catch me one chimpanzee. Bring him to Camp K.’ He pointed to the cage containing the potto. ‘Put him in cage like this.’
Jean-François explained. The boys all nodded eagerly. ‘Pas de problème, chef,’ one of them said, giving Jurgen two thumbs up.
‘I give them ten dollars,’ Jurgen added, and then explained about Ludger, the bamboo grove, the Mungu tree, the bananas and the nightly visits. Jurgen watched Jean-François relate the key details to the raggedy boys. He was thinking: there was a small zoo in Victoireville, Douala’s capital, a day’s journey away. He could ship Ludger down to the zoo on one of the NGO convoys, his wounded leg could be examined and treated and he could spend the rest of his days in captivity, true, but in comfort and safety. He conjured up to himself an image of the label set on the bars of Ludger’s capacious cage: ‘ “Ludger”. Male chimpanzee. Pan troglodytes. Gift of Mr Jurgen Kiel.’ He would have done something good, Jurgen reckoned, pleased with himself, pleased with his initiative – his three months in Africa would have amounted to more than just guarding sacks of rice.
Three days later he was shaving in the wash house when Severiano said that Jean-François was asking for him at the service gate. Jurgen sauntered over to the small gate on the west side where the camp-workers came and went. Jean-François had been charged by Jurgen to purchase him 4,000 American cigarettes on the Min’Jalli black market – twenty cartons of 200 cigarettes – the price was unbelievably low if you paid in American dollars. He was heading back home on leave in a week and he planned to hand out these cartons around Waldbach as Christmas gifts to his friends and acquaintances. Jean-François was standing by the checkpoint with his hands in his pockets. Jean-François gestured him over with a covert twitch of his chin. No cigarettes, obviously, Jurgen reasoned, displeased. He followed Jean-François a few yards down the path. Three kids stood there with a wheelbarrow, a coloured cloth thrown over the contents.
‘They get him for you,’ Jean-François said with a knowing smile.
Jurgen knew at once but he felt he had to pull the cloth back just the same. Ludger lay there on his back, dead, blood from the big gash on his brow had trickled down to stain one side of his grey goatee. Apart from that he looked calm, Jurgen thought – his eyes closed, as if he were taking a lengthier nap than usual. Jurgen swore under his breath and felt a wave of strange emotion wash through him. He exhaled and looked up at the sky, veiled with a thin nacreous sheen of cloud. He looked down again and noticed that Ludger’s stump was raw, alive with small beige maggots feeding. Ludger – lost in translation. Perhaps he’d done Ludger a favour – inadvertently saved him from a lingering gangrenous death … He would hold on to that thought – it would help.
‘I wanted him alive,’ Jurgen said emphatically, suddenly remembering the French word. ‘Vivant.’
‘You never say,’ Jean-François replied. ‘What you do with one big chimpanzee? You crazy man?’
One of the kids spoke.
‘He say very good to eat. Good food,’ Jean-François translated, rubbing his stomach. ‘Yum-yum.’
‘They can have him,’ Jurgen said. ‘I don’t want to eat him.’ He turned and began to walk back to the camp. Jean-François caught up with him, touched his elbow.
‘Jurgen, mon ami, you owe these boys ten dollars.’
Jurgen paid.
The train to Waldbach from Straubing was cancelled, Jurgen saw from the noticeboard. The next one left in a couple of hours. Two hours in Straubing, Jurgen thought, wonderful, just what I was hoping for. His mood was bad because when he’d arrived in Munich he had telephoned his mother to let her know he was home from Africa. She said that she’d arranged for him to spend his leave at his sister’s house. Ludger was going to be staying with her. ‘It’ll be easier,’ his mother had said. ‘You know how you and Ludger don’t get on.’
Jurgen deposited his kit bag in the left-luggage office and walked into Straubing. He didn’t get on with Jochen, his sister’s husband, either. A jazz musician, Jochen played the trombone in a casino nightclub. An annoying, opinionated man, he practised on his trombone two hours a day, seven days a week.
The handsome, wide main street of Straubing had been transformed into a Christmas market, full of small wooden huts selling food and drink and articles of woolly clothing. There was some sort of funfair also, Jurgen saw, strolling through the crowds, moving through successive aural zones of competing styles of music, and feeling a little self-conscious in his uniform, aware of the curious glances coming his way.
He went into a bar and had a few beers, trying to raise his mood, rebuking himself for his irritation and selfishness. His sister would make him very welcome, he knew, and he could easily go out for a walk when Jochen practised his trombone. Then a young girl – seventeen or eighteen – a bit drunk, he could tell, came and stood by the bar next to him to buy a drink. ‘How many babies did you kill in Afghanistan?’ she said, and then swore at him. Jurgen sighed, wished her a Happy Christmas, and left the bar.
‘Welcome home,’ he said to himself bitterly, standing by a wooden stall that was selling some kind of powerful and warming glühwein. Here the music was traditional, folk songs and Christmas carols that Jurgen could remember from his schooldays. He drank another couple of glühweins, feeling marginally better. The drink was strong with some kind of aromatic schnapps in the mix. He flexed his shoulders, rolled his head: it was good to be back home, after all, one stupid drunk girl wasn’t going to ruin his leave.
He saw that the traditional music was coming from an elaborate barrel organ, brightly painted, encrusted with carved wooden figurines from folk tales – witches and wizards, bears and foxes, lost boys and girls and gingerbread houses. He ordered another glühwein and wandered over with it to hear the music better. He dropped a couple of euros in the felt hat that dangled from the front. The man turning the handle of the barrel organ smiled and said thank you.
Then Jurgen saw the monkey sitting on the top. It was small and grey-furred but it had a white wisp of goatee on its chin, like Ludger, only miniature. There was
a chain around its right leg attached to the barrel organ. What kind of monkey was it? What were they called? A macaque? A gibbon? Jurgen whistled softly at it and it turned its head, its big round black eyes staring at Jurgen and it made a plaintive staccato cheeping sound and bared its sharp yellow teeth.
‘What’s this monkey called?’ he asked the organ grinder.
‘Mo-Mo.’
‘Mo-Mo? What kind of name is that?’
‘You want a different name – get your own monkey.’
‘Okay,’ Jurgen said, thinking. ‘How much do you want for him?’ Jurgen turned and smiled at the man.
‘He’s not for sale.’
‘Everything’s for sale,’ Jurgen said. ‘Just depends on the price. I’ll give you a hundred euros.’
‘He’s not for sale, man,’ the organist said, his faint smile fading. ‘He’s part of the act.’
‘I’ll give you two hundred euros.’
‘Go and sober up somewhere, yeah? Leave me alone. Do me a favour.’
Jurgen emptied his pockets of money.
‘Three hundred and twenty-three euros,’ Jurgen said, showing the man the money in his hands. ‘You can buy six monkeys for that.’
‘You buy six monkeys, you stupid, big moron –’
‘I want this monkey. Only this monkey.’
‘Why?’
‘He reminds me of someone.’
‘He’s not for sale.’ The organist stopped turning the handle. He came closer, and lowered his voice. ‘If you don’t stop bugging me, you cretin, I’ll call the cops.’
For a second Jurgen thought about smashing the man in his self-satisfied face, of knocking him to the ground and kicking the shit out of him, but suddenly he had a better idea. He looked back at the little monkey, then back at the man.
‘You think about that three hundred euros when you count your takings tonight. Asshole,’ he said, and wandered off, casually.