Jane (40 page)

The larger of the
tar-zans
(white-skins) raised a stick and pointed it at the Mangani, and suddenly came the sound of thunder, as if a terrible storm had descended upon them. There was no water coming down from above, or lightning either. But Baldor, who had come in curiosity to Kerchak’s side, lay bleeding from a hole in his chest. Then he stopped moving and lay still. Dead.

All the Mangani ran back to the mangrove swamp. Kerchak as well. Night was falling. No one wanted to stay with the crocodiles, but no one wanted to be near the strange bower where
tar-zans
with their thunder sticks could make Mangani fall down dead where they stood.

All of a sudden Kerchak was moving, splashing through the black water, back in the direction of the strange bower. And Kala, still dragging the dead baby behind, followed.

The Mangani shook and shivered in terror without either of their leaders—one hated, one beloved. They were alone with the sounds and the stench in the mangroves on the darkest of nights.

Finally came splashing, and there was Kerchak, covered in blood and crazed as they had never seen him before. But it was Kala who was most changed. She no longer carried the corpse of her Mangani infant. Now she held most protectively at her breast a small, hairless
tar-zan balu.
He was completely silent and clung to Kala with scrawny arms. Despite her strange acquisition, Kala was calm and happy. As the moon rose, they watched her offer the little one her teat. When he took it in his mouth, Kala closed her eyes and smiled.

No one understood why Kala would want the strange hairless creature. But finally Kerchak was ready to take them home, and none questioned it.

In the Great Bower again, Kala, with her
tar-zan
balu
, withdrew to her nest outside the clearing and kept even more to herself. This made Kerchak angrier than before, as did the puny white creature she had brought back with her from the Great Water. But Kerchak was powerless against Kala’s will. She had become strong again, and even her distance from the clearing did nothing to diminish it. Females would come and visit with her and little “Tarzan,” as she had named him. Even males would chance a visit with the beautiful Kala, and in time her belly again grew swollen. A female was born and was named “Jai,” which meant “brave.” Tarzan suckled on one teat and Jai on the other, and so the “Family of Kala” was complete.

*   *   *

So intent was I on transcribing every word into the journal that it was not until later that I had the time to pore over the legend. It was, I realized, a stunning bit of social and behavioral history told in the oldest spoken language on earth, and also the missing piece of the puzzle of Tarzan’s life.

But another revelation buried in the tales truly set my mind afire. Kala was a far more extraordinary creature than I had previously realized, for she clearly possessed an intelligence that surpassed that of every other Mangani in her tribe. Perhaps every other Mangani who had lived before her. Could it be that this individual was “the next step” in human evolution? And if this was the case, did her offspring, Jai, possess what Brother Mendel called the “dominant gene” for the trait of increased intelligence? Too, Kala seemed to have conceived outside the females’ seasonal “heat.”

My study of Tarzan’s “sister” took on an even greater intensity. I was frustrated by having no other
Pithecanthropi aporterensus erectus
to which I could compare her. Clearly Jai was intelligent and physically strong. But unlike her mother, she had fur, not the silky body hair that Kala had been described as having. That trait had not been passed down to Jai. Perhaps the gene for increased mental capacity had not either. Too, I spent endless hours pondering Kerchak. Was he the last vestige of an older
P.a.e.,
a species that was prone to brutishness and violence, or the first recorded hominid to display signs of madness?

As happily awash in mysteries as I was, two conundrums constantly haunted me. The first: Which aspect of Tarzan’s nature was dominant—the feral animal or the civilized man? As I watched him with Jai, his persistent apelike traits were obvious. Lying comfortably with her in the nest, he would groom her, picking the nits from her fur and sometimes (to my horror) popping them in his mouth. I believed that sixteen of his formative years living as a Mangani had so deeply imprinted on his mind their habits and culture that no amount of memory retrieval or retraining in the world into which he was born would ever fully “civilize” him.

Frequently he would speak of his desire to sail on an ocean liner and ride in an automobile, but moments later he would forget them, fully immersed in the task at hand—hunting, eating, playing. All of my conversations about the “future,” “present,” and “past” had proved outside his comprehension. There was simply no way to explain the “finer” (and more stultifying) aspects of civilized life to him, circumstances that would no doubt chafe at his wild nature. If John Clayton returned to England, would he be lost to me, swallowed up by the uproar that would invariably ensue, transformed by the responsibilities of his title and fortune?

Yet another worry had begun to intrude upon my thoughts. In the excitement of my discovery and research, I had given little or no thought to what the news of a “living missing link species” would bring down upon the heads of these precious creatures. The academic, scientific, and religious establishments in all their ravening exploitation. Comparative anatomists. Vivisectionists. Taxidermists. Theologians. Zookeepers. Adventurers like Ral Conrath who would sell “specimens” for freak shows to the highest bidder.

How could the modern mind ever appreciate the gentle humanity of the Mangani? The American Indians and the Congo blacks who were themselves
Homo sapiens
had been slaughtered like animals. What chance would the Mangani have once the world discovered them?

Where did my responsibility lie?

As the days passed and the air grew thick with moisture, I stifled my misgivings and made plans for the inevitable homecoming with Tarzan. There was so much he needed to learn simply to get by. On the forest floor twenty paces apart I had him come through an imaginary door to where I was standing erect. He practiced saying “How do you do?” hundreds of times until he had mastered the correct inflection, learned just how far he should bend at the waist, the correct nod of the head, and the difference between the force of the grip on the hand of a lady and a gentleman. I explained that other than a handshake, there should be no physical contact with
tar-zans
unless he knew them to be “friends.” Looking people in the eye when speaking to them was important. Otherwise they might consider him “devious” or “untrustworthy.”

In our rush to leave Zu-dak-lul, it had not occurred to me to bring dinnerware from the beach hut, so I fashioned approximations of plates with rounds of bark, napkins with banana leaves, and silverware with slender sticks carved into forks, knives, and spoons. I had Tarzan build a simple table of appropriate height and, as we sat on stumps, I taught him how to properly eat a meal. For some reason, every time he uttered “Pass the salt, please,” I fell into a fit of giggles.

I tried to explain the clothes he would be expected to wear, garments even more stiff and confining than the bush suits he’d seen Father and D’Arnot and Ral Conrath wearing. For his questions of why a collar should be so tight about the neck and why someone would wear shoes, I struggled with answers. I dreaded his one day asking why a woman would strap herself in a whalebone corset.

I considered making an attempt to explain to Tarzan his true station in English life, but as the thought made me gloomy, I decided to wait until it was altogether necessary.

*   *   *

“
Kalan galul?”
I said, pointing between Jai’s legs. Females bleed? I had asked.

Jai nodded her head as Tarzan had taught her to do for the affirmative. A sideways shake meant “no.”

I was unsure how to proceed with the questioning about the Mangani estrus cycle, for they had no discernible sense of time. From what I gathered, the females appeared to go into an annual or biannual “heat,” as lower mammals did, but I needed to be sure. I scolded myself for failing to learn the correct wording for my query from Tarzan before he went off to hunt. Jai, bless her heart, was becoming fidgety and bored with the
tar-zan
female who, it must have seemed to the Mangani, talked incessantly.

Perhaps a simpler question.

“Zu
Mangani
balu galul?”
I said and with my hand showed increasing height, hoping Jai would understand. How old when a young Mangani menstruates?

Jai thought very hard and, grabbing my hand, took it to a height of four feet, then pointed to her own vulva.

“Brilliant!” I cried, delighted Jai had made sense of the question and pleased she continued to show signs of real intelligence. When Tarzan returned, I must ask him how old a four-foot Mangani female would be. I began scribbling the questions and answers in the journal, all the while fretting about the wording of the next query.

I heard rustling in the fig boughs below me and looked up to find Jai gone from her spot.
Unsurprising,
I thought.
I’m taking forever with this interview.
And it was true that the Mangani shared Tarzan’s propensity for coming and going with little or no fanfare. But by the time it registered that the fingers of the furred hand on the lip of the nest were too long and broad to be Jai’s, I was staring into the hideous one-eyed face of Kerchak.

The speed and silence with which he rose like a mountain over the nest’s edge and flew at me left no chance to cry out for help. I was vaguely aware of the panicked fluttering of grey feathers above me before the monster’s blow landed on my chin. Then dark night descended on me suddenly and completely.

It was all the better that it had.

The Beast

It was the stench of fetid breath on my face that woke me. I knew before I opened my eyes some approximation of what was before me and wondered, in growing panic, if my eyes remained closed would I stave off the inevitable. I heard short sniffs as Kerchak ranged over my body with his flattened nose, down into the pit of my arm and lower to the V of my thighs. This was more than I could stand, and through gritted teeth a moan escaped me. Steely fingers gripped my belly and I screamed, eyes springing open against my will. The face I dreaded to see—the appalling fanged visage—was leering down at me. I refused to meet his gaze. His immense furred body throbbed with a sickening heat that threatened to choke me.

Get hold of yourself,
I thought.
Do something,
anything,
but do not die without a fight.
I chanced a look at the Mangani, and with all thoughts vanished, I moved. My foot smashed into the bull ape’s testicles and, massive as he was, his soft parts proved vulnerable as any man’s. He cried out in shocked agony, falling to one side. I twisted away only to find myself a hundred feet off the forest floor in Kerchak’s nest.

He leaped at me, but I found footing on the thick limbs he used every day to descend. Now I could see the Great Bower and its Mangani in their nests peering up at the perplexing scene—a
tar-zan
female in Kerchak’s nest. Now I was running away from him. Running on light feet as he lumbered after me, clutching the fleshy sac between his legs, growling in fury.

“Hay-ee! Hay-ee!”
I cried, begging for help. “Tarzan, Tarzan! Jai-Kala, Jai-Kala!” The familiar names drew heads farther out of their nests. “Gamla!” I shouted, “Gamla,
hay-ee!
”

I saw the female spring out onto a branch in front of her nest and begin climbing toward me. Then another female. And another. I was closing the distance between us, using the narrowing limbs, down to the gathering of maddened females. Having failed to come to Kala’s aid years before, they were perhaps unwilling to allow their tormentor another murder right before their eyes.
Almost there, almost there …
I could see the warm brown eyes, the outstretched hands. And then he fell—the furred devil—as if out of the sky, heavily onto the branch between us. He stood with his back to me, a jagged club in his fingers, thrashing it in my rescuers’ direction. He snorted his displeasure with the mutiny, but forward they came, through with his tyranny, ready to die. The club arced high and with a sickening thud of wood on flesh and bone, Gamla fell bloodied to a lower limb. The others pressed in.
No, no! I will not allow it! My precious Mangani females …

“Kerchak,” I shouted. “Kerchak,
kin-ga
!”

He turned slowly and faced me, a ghastly cyclops with flecks of foam around his snarling red mouth. I turned and made for the nest, luring him behind me, cursing my mad, irrational ploy. I would reach the nest, and when he came near I would jump to my death, die of my own will and not be murdered by a loathsome beast.