Gerald Durrell (23 page)

And so it
proved. For months afterwards our baggage was full of bottles of potassium
iodide. We couldn’t get rid of the stuff. It hung about and seized every
opportunity of upsetting itself on our clean shirts, or cunningly mixing itself
with the bicarbonate of soda. But it checked the mycosis, and that was the main
thing.

By this time I
had almost forgotten about the hunter I had sent the message to about N’da Ali,
and I was quite surprised when a messenger appeared one morning from
Fineschang. The hunter, I learned, would be very pleased to lead me on a day
reconnaissance of the mountain, at any time that would suit me. I decided on a
day and sent a message back to say that I would be at Fineschang on that
morning. I also sent a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of beer, in case the
ju-ju
should think that I had overlooked it.

“Ah!” said John,
when he heard the news, “so you are going on Thursday. Do you think you are
going to be able to get up to the top and back in one day?”

We both looked
at the almost sheer cliffs of N’da All gleaming pinkly in the evening sun.

“I think so,” I
replied, “at any rate, I’m going to have a damn good try.”

CHAPTER
NINE

ARCTOCEBUS AHOY!

THE day
appointed for my mountaineering arrived and dawned bright and clear. N’da Ali
was invisible behind a wall of mist; everywhere the forest smoked and steamed,
and small hills would appear suddenly out of the mist, like misshapen ships in
a fog. What could be seen of the forest was gleaming golden-green in the pale
morning sunlight.

I had gaily
agreed to be at Fineschang at eleven o’clock. It had not occurred to me until
the night before that I had no means of getting to my destination except by
walking, and as Fineschang was ten miles away along a hot and dusty road, this
idea was uninteresting. Frantic last-minute conferences with the staff had
disclosed the fact that a district messenger was staying in the village, and he
had with him a shiny new bicycle. The messenger was most helpful, and agreed to
lend me his machine; so in the morning sun the great, heavy bicycle was
solemnly wheeled up to our hut, and I prepared to depart. I had decided to take
Daniel with me, as he was the smallest and lightest of the animal staff, and so
could be accommodated on the crossbar. Apart from this passenger I had a large
bag of collecting gear, and another one full of sandwiches and beer to sustain
me on the journey. As I was tying these on the bicycle John appeared on the
scene.

“Why are you
taking all that beer?” he inquired.

“Well, to begin
with, it’s going to be thirsty work shinning up that mountain, and apart from
that I’ve found that beer has a very soothing effect on
ju-jus
and their
owners.”

Daniel
approached and eyed me nervously. It was obvious that he had very little faith
in my cycling abilities.

“Where I go sit,
sah?” he asked.

“Here on the
crossbar,” I said.

I leant forward
and hauled him up. He clutched wildly at the handlebars and twisted them round,
and we fell to the ground in a tangled heap, amid the clanking of beer bottles.

“This does not
look to me like the start of a scientific expedition,” said John gravely, “it
looks more like an elopement.”

I righted the
machine and hauled Daniel aboard, this time without mishap. We wobbled off down
the path.

“Bye-bye, old
boy,” called John earnestly.

“ ’Bye. . .” I
yelled, steering cautiously round the potholes.

“See you
to-night,” called John, with complete lack of conviction.

We sped down the
hill and shot out on to the high road like a drunken snipe. Here I found the
going easier, but my chief difficulty was to get Daniel to loosen his vice-like
grip on the handlebars so that I could steer with greater accuracy. Cycling
along a Cameroon road is an unforgettable experience: the rich, silky red dust
spreads upwards in great clouds enveloping you and your machine; pot-holes of
great depth and jagged edges loom suddenly under your front wheel, making you
swerve wildly back and forth across the road; every hundred yards or so you
come suddenly upon an area which has been liberally sprinkled with rocks of
various sizes, and riding across these you feel that a fractured pelvis is the
least you can hope to sustain. Every half-mile you crossed a bridge: these
consisted of two thick beams laid from bank to bank, with planks laid crossways
or, in some cases, length-ways. It was one of the latter type I was silly
enough to try and ride over quite early in the trip. My front tyre slid
delightedly into the groove between the two planks and stuck there and Daniel,
the beer, and I, fell to the ground. By now the sun had come out from the mist
and the heat on the open road was terrific. By the time we had reached the
half-way mark I was pouring with sweat, and my mouth and eyes were clogged with
dust. We swept down a hill, and at the bottom was the inevitable bridge,
spanning a wide, shallow stream, with snow-white sandbanks and tall trees
grouped round it casting deep shadows. I weakened.

“We go stop here
small time, Daniel,” I said hoarsely, “sometime there go be beef for this small
water.”

I knew perfectly
well that there would be no beef of importance in such a place, but I wanted to
soak in the clear glinting waters and get some of the dust off my body. We left
the cycle in the ditch and made our way down the slope to the water, where we
stripped and plunged in, and watched the red dust washed from our bodies like
swirls of blood in the clear waters. Half an hour later we were still sitting
in the shallows, relaxed and cool with the waters playing over us, when I
suddenly saw a strange thing, which immediately roused me out of my trance. A
long brown ribbon of water weed which was attached to the rock near me,
detached itself suddenly and swam away. I gazed after it in astonishment, then
floundered to my feet with a cry and started in pursuit. The weed swam quickly
upstream and went to earth under a small boulder. With Daniel’s aid I shifted
the stone and we captured this piece of aquatic flora. Cupped in my hands I
held the most extraordinary fish. It was long, narrow, thin, and brown, exactly
like a long ribbon of weed. Its face was pulled out into a little snout, and
its eyes were round and staring, but they seemed to have more intelligence in
them than any ordinary fish’s. I recognized it because I had spent many happy
hours hunting its relatives in the weed beds in the Southern Mediterranean. It
was a Pipe-fish. I was astonished, for I had not expected to find a freshwater
Pipe-fish pretending to be a bit of water weed in an African river. I fashioned
a small pool for it and placed it inside. It at once fastened itself to a small
rock and turned into a bit of weed, curving and shimmering with the current. I
pondered over it unhappily: I longed to know what its habits were, where it
laid its eggs and hatched its young, and a hundred other things about it, but I
realized mournfully, and not for the first time, that when you are collecting
for a living you cannot spend your time unravelling the life history of an
obscure fish. Reluctantly, annoyed at the harshness of life, I released the
Pipe-fish and watched it swim off into deep water. But the capture of the fish
had roused me out of my dream-like trance.

We left the
river and returned to the road, and remounted the bicycle which, by now, I was
beginning to dislike intensely. I pounded miserably onwards, feeling the dust
settling once more on my body and clothes.

Half an hour
later we were free-wheeling down a long gentle incline, when I saw a figure in
the distance marching towards us. As we drew closer I saw that the man was
carrying a small basket fashioned out of green palm leaves, a sure sign that he
was bringing an animal to sell.

“Dat man get
beef; Daniel?” I asked, putting on the brakes.

“I tink so,
sah.”

The man came
padding along the dusty road, and as he drew closer he doffed his cap and
grinned, and I recognized him as an Eshobi hunter.

“Welcome,” I
called. “You done come?”

“Morning, sah!”
he answered, holding out his green basket. “I done bring beef for Masa.”

“Well, I hope
it’s good beef,” I said, as I took it, “or else you’ve walked a long way for
nothing.”

Daniel and the
hunter shook hands and chattered away in Banyangi while I undid the mouth of
the basket and peered inside.

I don’t know
what I expected to see: a Pouched rat, or possibly a squirrel, certainly
nothing very unusual. But there, blinking up at me out of great golden eyes
from the bottom of the basket, was an Angwantibo!

There are
certain exquisite moments in life which should be enjoyed to the full, for,
unfortunately, they are rare. I certainly made the most of this one, for both
Daniel and the hunter thought I had gone mad. I executed a war dance in the
middle of the road, I whooped so loudly in my excitement that I sent all the
hornbills for miles around honking into the forest. I slapped the hunter on the
back, I slapped Daniel on the back, and I would, if I could have managed it,
have slapped myself on the back. After all those months of searching and
failure I held a real live Angwantibo in my hands, and delight at the thought
went to my head like wine.

“Which day you
done catch this beef?” I asked, as soon as my excitement had died down
somewhat.

“Yesterday, sah,
for night-time.”

That meant that
the precious creature had been without food and water for twenty-four hours. It
was imperative that I got it back to Bakebe immediately and gave it something
to eat and drink.

“Daniel, I go
ride quickly-quickly to Bakebe to give dis beef some chop. You go follow with
dis hunter-man, you hear?”

“Yes, sah.”

I loaded him
down with the collecting gear and the beer, and then I hung the basket
containing the Angwantibo round my neck and set off along the road to Bakebe. I
sped along like a swallow, taking dust, pot-holes, and bridges in my stride and
not even noticing them. My one desire was to get the priceless little beast now
hanging round my neck into a decent cage, with an adequate supply of fruit and
milk. Bakebe was reached at last, and leaving the cycle in the village I panted
up the hill towards our hut. Half-way up a dreadful thought occurred to me:
maybe my identification had been too rapid, maybe it wasn’t an Angwantibo after
all, but merely a young Potto, an animal very similar in appearance. With a
sinking heart I opened the basket and peered at the animal again. Quickly I
checked identification of various parts of its furry anatomy: shape and number
of fingers on its hands, size of ears, lack of tail. No, it really was an
Angwantibo. Heaving a sigh of relief I continued on my way.

As I came within
sight of the hut I could see John moving along the row of cages, feeding his
birds; bursting with pride and excitement I bellowed out the good news to him,
waving my hat furiously and breaking into a run:

“John, I’ve got
one . . . an Angwantibo . . . alive and kicking. . . . AN ANGWANTIBO, d’you
hear?”

At this all the
staff, both animal and household, dashed out to meet me and see this beef that
I had talked about incessantly for so long, and for which I had offered such a
fantastic price. They all grinned and jabbered at my obvious delight and
excitement. John, on the other hand, displayed complete lack of interest in the
earth-shaking event; he merely glanced over his shoulder and said, “Good show,
old boy,” and continued to feed his birds. I could have quite cheerfully kicked
him had not my pleasure been so great.