Jane (47 page)

It was with the greatest trepidation that I allowed myself to be conveyed to the dock, continuing to peer down every street and alley searching for any sight of Tarzan.

There was frantic activity at the ship with the last of the coffee bean cargo being carried aboard. I accosted every man I saw, trying to ask if they had seen my companion, but I spoke neither French nor Bantu and could not make myself understood. Finally I spied the captain and pressed him for news of John Clayton, but he had not seen my “husband,” a word he uttered with a dubious smirk. He told me that I should board quickly, as departure was imminent. Perhaps I might check our cabin. Mr. Clayton might have slipped aboard without having been noticed.

At this I felt tears burning my eyes, for I could not imagine him boarding without me. But the captain had become impatient and was calling,
“Vite! Vite!”
to the dockhands, hurrying on the last of the coffee sacks. I boarded reluctantly and rushed below to our tiny quarters.

There was no sign of Tarzan. I grew bereft. After all we had endured together, he had deserted me. No promises of adventure, title, fortune, or a life lived with me could replace the man’s imperative for freedom. The wedding ring had been not his pledge of undying love but the only good-bye of which he was capable.

Oh, what a fool I’d been!

I felt suddenly ill, queasy and unable to catch my breath. I stumbled through the narrow passageway halls upstairs to the deck where I saw the crew pulling aboard the gangplank and felt the rumbling of the engine under my feet. The last vestige of hope dissolved then along with my composure, and I wept the bitter tears of the abandoned.

The ship lurched as it began to move and I was knocked off balance, dropping the bone bags. But in fact as my hands clutched the rail, I felt emerging within me a state of absolute equilibrium. My mind cleared and I saw the rest of my life spreading out before me. A grim life of work and loneliness without the man I desired above all other men.
The man I have fallen desperately in love with!
And he loved me—I knew he did—in whatever mad configuration of animal lust, possession, guardianship, and romantic rapture his singular mind could conceive. Yes, he had deserted me, but had I—since the moment he’d for an instant considered the Mangani’s offer of leadership—been faithful in all
my
thoughts of our future together? Perhaps he’d fallen victim to his fears about surviving in the stultifying prison of society. Who could blame him? But here was the thing: I had learned to survive in
his
world. What I now saw with perfect clarity was that I could not live without him. I
would
not live without him! The dock was receding and I knew I must act.

“Captain!” I shouted. “Captain, stop the ship!” I was beating the rails with my fists, shrieking like a fishwife. “I have to get off! Now! Now!”

Chicago, April 1912

“Miss Porter I … I…” Edgar was slack-jawed and mortified at his stuttering, as though his organs of speech had been impaired. He briefly wondered if a person could die of astonishment.

“I … I am beyond words.”

“Oh, I think you will find all the words you need, Mr. Burroughs.”

He noticed for the first time that morning sun was streaming in through the windows.

“Forgive me, but I’m confused … about so many things. If you’re so worried about the Mangani being found, then why have you been presenting the
Pithecanthropus aporterensus erectus
skeleton to the academic world? And why have you told me this story today?”

The flush of her cheeks that had risen with the emotional climax of her story had now receded. She looked him squarely in the eye. “It took eighteen months to mount a second expedition—a hand-picked team, very secretive. Yabi leading. Timed to the dry season, we journeyed up the Ogowe and down its tributary. We found the Waziri intact. Ulu now led the tribe with the deceased chief’s eldest son, also known as Chief Waziri. It had occurred to me that after the destruction of Sumbula they might have picked themselves up and followed the ancient map outside the Great Chamber doors to the lost city of Opar. But they were content to live their lives in the forest south of the Enduro Escarpment. They spoke with no great emotion about more white-skins who had come up from the south into their territory. When I asked what had become of them, Ulu and the young chief led me into a hut off the central clearing to view the tribe’s proudest acquisitions. In the dim light of a
walla
made all of volcanic stone, I was startled to see a Gatling gun mounted on its tripod. And there behind it”—Jane Porter smiled remembering—“was one of King Leopold’s Belgian engineers from Libreville—a grinning smoked mummy wreathed in gold medallions. Their railroad must have made it as far west as Waziriland. Had a bit of bad luck with the ‘cannibals.’”

“Just brilliant!” Edgar’s imagination was running rampant with wild, colorful images. “But what happened to the Mangani?”

“Yes, well…” She grew very stiff, and for the first time since they had met seemed lost for words. She sighed not once but three times before speaking again. “We found the new Great Bower with no difficulty. But all of them—every male, female, and young one—were dead. Nothing but fur and bones was left. I could only surmise that disease had taken them—some organism wafting up from the bowels of the earth to the surface after the great quake. Or perhaps they, too, had made contact with the Belgians and contracted a deadly microbe. What kept me awake at nights, though, was the possibility that, with all my good intentions,
I
had been their Grim Reaper.” She looked at Edgar with the most forlorn expression.

“For all intents and purposes, the Mangani are an extinct species. Nothing can harm them now. There’s not a single respected paleoanthropologist who believes
P.a.e.
’s bones are authentic. And as I said, today’s was my last presentation. I may be stubborn, but I’m not a martyr.” Then she added, “The good news, I suppose, is that Leopold’s road through Gabon was never completed, and then of course the murderous old thug died.”

With that, Jane Porter closed and snapped shut the two cases of Kerchak’s bones.

Edgar felt a kind of desperation considering her departure. “Do you have to go?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m going to visit my parents before I go home.”

“Parents? I thought your father was…”

“So did I.” She smiled happily then. “Yabi was suspicious the day Ral Conrath came marching down the mountain with his story of my bloody demise. Father was in a very bad way, and Yabi insisted that the bearers carry him out of the jungle in a padded wooden crate. There was no arguing with him. Once in Libreville, the ‘newlyweds,’ Mr. and Mrs. Batty”—Jane looked decidedly pleased—“took up the shift and accompanied him to England. Archie Porter was more than half dead when he got home, but my mother nursed him herself. She simply refused to allow that ‘damn ticker of his’ to have the final say.”

“Where is home for you now?” Edgar asked, trying anything to keep the woman talking.

Jane Porter smiled up at him as she pulled on her suit jacket. “Africa, of course. Kenya. Though it’s really more of a home base. I travel quite extensively.”

There was a sharp rapping at the apartment door. Edgar cursed silently. It was probably the landlord coming by for the rent.

“Excuse me,” he said and went to open it.

Standing there was a man, decidedly not his landlord. It was, he was quite sure, the episcope operator from the Chicago Public Library. He was tall and broad shouldered, and even in his expensively tailored suit looked more vital and alive than any other human being Edgar had ever laid eyes on. His grey eyes flashed with good humor and his long, wild black hair was thick and wavy.

“John Clayton,” the man said genially and stuck out his hand. “I think you have my wife in here.”

Edgar shook it, then looked quizzically at Jane Porter.
Good Lord, this is Tarzan … in the flesh!
But the woman who had been so animated in her storytelling the whole night before was now utterly silent and still.

“Will you come in?” Edgar said to the man.

“I’m afraid we can’t stay. We have to catch the four-forty train to New York. We’ve booked a cabin on a ship taking us back to England on Wednesday.”

Edgar stared with what he was sure was rudeness into the man’s strikingly handsome face, imagining the taut, muscular body beneath the fine wool jacket and trousers and starched white shirt. What he might have looked like with that hair a mass of matted locks.

Jane Porter had come to stand beside John Clayton and looked up at him with a decidedly conspiratorial grin. He picked up the two bone cases and went to the door.

“Change, enlarge, and embellish upon what I’ve told you as you see fit,” the woman said to Edgar. We haven’t known each other long, but I somehow have great faith in your abilities.”

“But what
happened
?” Edgar said quietly, suddenly uncomfortable in front of the man about whose life he knew such intimate details. “Did you find Tarzan in Libreville, or did you have to go all the way back to Eden?” Edgar’s imagination took flight. “Or was he waiting for you there on the dock in his new suit of clothes?”

“You’re quite greedy, aren’t you?” The woman’s smile was an infuriating tease.

“You’re not really going to leave me hanging?” Edgar said. “What happened once he got back to England? He
must
have gone back to England eventually.” He stared down at Jane’s wedding ring. “Did you marry? In a church?”

“You’re talking to two avowed pagans, Mr. Burroughs.” She was moving to the door now.

“Wait, wait! Did Tarzan take up the Greystoke title? Did you ever…”

She moved to John Clayton’s side, and he smiled down at her with a look that bespoke unutterable adoration.

“That, my friend, is a long story for another day.”

Edgar’s mind was exploding with dozens of scenarios to keep the pair from going. But here was the blasted landlord coming down the hall for his rent! The Porters, or Claytons, or Greystokes, or whoever the hell they were, nodded a reserved good-bye and turned to go. Edgar kept them in his sight until they disappeared down the stairwell.

“Well, have you got it?” the landlord said, holding out his pale, sweating palm.

Edgar closed his eyes then and saw before him the lush canopy of Eden, the four hills of Sumbula, the Great Bower of the Mangani, and vast shining waters of Zu-dak-lul. His mind drifted and he wondered if his
All-Story
readers would cotton to an overeducated—and shameless—tomboy like Jane Porter. Wouldn’t they like somebody a bit more sweet and submissive? And what was the African jungle without a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals? The ape-people were a touch of genius. And Tarzan himself—now, there was a hero everybody could love.

“Burroughs!” he heard the landlord bark at him. “I said, have you got it?”

Edgar’s face twisted into a slow smile. “I do,” he said. “I have it. All of it.”

Then without another word, he slowly shut the door.

Mangani-English Glossary

abulu
   brother

amba
   fall

ang
   allow

aro
   forced to leave

balu
   child/children

ben
   great

ben gund
   great chief

b’nala
   head

Boi-ee
   Bowie knife

bolgani
   gorilla

bund
   dead

bundolo
   kill

busso
   flee

b’zan
   hair/fur

b’zeebo
   attack

dak-lul
   pool of water

dako-za
   meat, flesh

dan-do
   stop

dan-do amba
   stop fall

dan-sopo
   nut

ee
   and

el
   one

eta
   small, weak

galul
   blood/bleed