The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (8 page)

But as dawn broke each day and the sun showed its face, my confidence rose along with it. During daylight hours, I would now spend the majority of my time in the canopy. And like the monkeys, I would often have a siesta up there, away from the cloying humidity down below, enjoying the caress of the cooling breeze instead.

It was afternoon – the sun was burning low in the sky – and I had just woken up from one such dreamless slumber when, looking down, I saw something glinting up at me. The forest floor was way, way below me, the air full of dewy mist, as ever, but whatever it was, it was brilliant enough to cut through this and catch my eye. The jungle had just been through a period of heavy rain that morning, so my first thought was that whatever it was down below me was simply glistening as a consequence of its drenching, but as I continued to look I could see that this wasn’t the case – it shone far brighter than anything else I could see.

I was still drowsy, but whatever it was had sufficiently caught my interest to prompt me to make my way back down to the undergrowth to investigate. I climbed down carefully, keeping my eyes fixed on the spot where I’d seen the diamond shimmer of brightness, and, once back on the ground, I set off to investigate. What I found when I reached it was unfamiliar. It was a wedge-shaped piece of some hard, shiny material, the like of which I didn’t think I’d ever seen before. It was sharp at its apex and curved at the other end, and was tiny enough to fit easily into the palm of my hand.

I played with it for a moment, inspecting it carefully, intrigued by the way it seemed to flash and glimmer in the sunshine, how its edges felt rough but its surface was so smooth. One side was dark, while the other, though scratched, seemed (at least to me) almost to be made of light itself.

I drew it closer, to better see how this light effect worked, and it was then that I got the shock of my young life. Two eyes were staring back at me – the eyes of some wild animal? I dropped the thing in terror and stared ahead of me again. The eyes had vanished. What was there? What had been looking at me? And where was it now?

But there was nothing, and, eventually, though I still felt quite frightened, I crawled across to where I’d thrown my treasure, rummaged around till I found it, and, heart racing with anticipation, picked it up again. This time I drew it more slowly to my eye line, and once again I saw two eyes staring back at me. It was then that some long-buried memory must have surfaced, because I realised what I was staring at wasn’t a vision of a wild animal. I was looking into a mirror that was reflecting a face.

I was transfixed. In all this time I had never once seen my reflection. Perhaps I might have, had my fear of water not been so profound. Perhaps, had it occurred to me to seek out my reflection, I might have made a point of investigating it every time my little pond re-filled with rain. But I had never done so.

It was barely bigger than a thumbprint, but my little mirror enthralled me. I could see so little, but enough that I could tell it was me. Though I didn’t know my face, I could immediately see the relationship between what I made it do and what happened in the mirror. I blinked my eyes, I moved my mouth – the shard of mirror obligingly did likewise. I changed my expression and the face in the mirror changed hers too.

Shocked and thrilled, I remember I let out a hoot of great excitement and bounced around, looking for someone who could share in my discovery. I can’t really describe just how it felt to have made it. My best attempt would be to say that it was both scary and exciting. To discover you have a face – it felt amazing! But at the same time I was frightened to see myself in it, because I had begun to believe that I looked just like the monkeys. I knew my body was a little different, but for some complicated reason – perhaps a human need to belong? – I felt my face would be exactly the same as theirs.

I was astonished to find that this wasn’t the case, and I clutched the tiny piece of glass to me as if I’d found something magical. And as I carried it around, looking for a safe place in which to keep it, I wondered quite how it had found its way into the jungle, because it was like nothing I had ever seen in there before.

But my feelings of euphoria weren’t to last, because with the coming of the evening came a subtle change in me. Is it a necessary evil, I wonder, that, with the darkness, comes a shift in the way everything emotional feels? I have no idea, but what I do know was that as day turned into evening, my earlier ebullience was replaced by anxiety. The more I looked at my cracked image, the more obvious it became to me that I was mistaken in my belief about who and what I was. I wasn’t one of my monkey family, I was different – a different animal. One with wide eyes, smooth skin and a tangle of long, matted hair. And as soon as those thoughts had taken shape in my mind, it was as if a door had been forced open inside my head. It was a door that had been shut for as long as I could remember and which led me back to feelings I’d either forgotten or suppressed. I had been in denial – that had been my protection. But now, all at once, I felt horribly alone again. I was lost here, completely isolated from a world I could barely recall but which at the same time I now remembered I had been ripped from.

Once again I was a creature without an identity. I didn’t want that. It shook me and chilled me, made me feel hollow to the core. I had forgotten I was human and now I’d been reminded.

And very soon I’d receive an even stronger reminder.

My little shard of mirror was the first and only thing I ‘owned’ for the whole of my time in the jungle, and over the coming days, I guarded it carefully. Initially the monkeys were very inquisitive about it and would clamour to see what I had found that took up so much of my attention. They would fuss round me, anxious to get it off me, but once they had all worked out that, as I hadn’t eaten it, it probably wasn’t edible, they lost interest and stopped trying to pull it from my grasp.

I had a home for it, tucked safely beneath my soft, mossy bed, and would bring it out often and just carry it around with me, wanting only to keep it for ever.

And then one day, perhaps predictably, I lost it. I dropped it during a fall from a low-ish tree bough and it skittered away down into the undergrowth. The feeling of distress was a powerful one, as I had become obsessively attached to my treasure. I spent many, many hours trying to find it again and covered every single inch of ground in that area. I only gave up when it seemed that the mirror must have fallen into the depths of the pond, from where I knew I would never be able to retrieve it. And though I harboured hope that perhaps the water would one day dry up and I would see that magical glint once again, it never happened, and eventually I accepted its loss, even though it stayed on my mind.

I was bereft for a long time without my tiny talisman. It was like I’d lost a friend and, even more than that, a protector. Now the genie was out of the bottle and I could sense my difference from my loving family, having the fragment of mirror had made me feel less alone. It was almost as if someone was looking out for me, somehow. Just looking into it made me feel safer.

*

That there was a world beyond the boundary of what I now thought of as ‘our’ territory had never been in doubt. Not the world outside the jungle – I had long since ceased to be aware of that – but the world of other territories, other monkeys, other animals. I was reminded of this every time another troop of monkeys came to fight us, or when, while playing up high in the canopy, the breeze would carry strange, distant sounds. And as I grew in confidence and inquisitiveness to match my growing body, so I felt brave enough to explore further afield.

Initially, I didn’t wander far. I had come to realise that the jungle seemed to be divided into territories, each one home to different kinds of animals. And they didn’t tend to mix; each type of creature seemed to stay in its own region, which I realised was the reason there was always such a big fight when a different kind of monkey troop strayed into ours. There seemed to be any number of these territories. As well as our ‘monkey land’, and others nearby which were like it, there seemed to be a land mostly inhabited by toucans, another by parrots, and, I think, one ruled by big cats of some kind, though I had only once fleetingly seen a big, scary feline, as I was too frightened to venture further to find out.

There was also a river, I’d discovered since I’d managed to reach the canopy: a wide silver snake that coiled between the pillowy green forests, which I could only see from one part of our territory. I would sit high in my eyrie and watch it for long periods. I was scared of it yet also mesmerised, my fear of water accompanied by a compelling fascination for something so different from the enclosed emerald world I already knew.

The animals that seemed to rule the river-land were caimans. I didn’t know the name for them at the time, but I would crouch safely up in the canopy and watch them slithering off the riverbank, and instinctively knew that these were creatures I didn’t wish to meet. They would slip so silently into the water, had such a cold, unfriendly look to them, and, even at a distance of many, many feet, I could see just how many pointed teeth they had in their gaping mouths.

And they were teeth I saw them use to good effect. I soon realised that when any animals ventured to the riverbank to drink, the action – which, frustratingly, I couldn’t always see – seemed to be done in groups, with much splashing. I also noticed how the caimans would lie and watch what was going on, sometimes slipping into the water and causing even more noise, as the animals would splash around in terror.

It was a big bird, however, that I first saw killed by a caiman. A big, ugly grey bird, which I suspect might have been a vulture and which took its last drink oblivious of the silent devil that watched it from beneath the surface. I had never seen anything so dreadful or so bloody. The bird was gobbled up in three enormous bites.

But although I was sensible enough to keep away from the river, my curiosity about the world beyond our territory grew. It was to be rewarded by the discovery of a territory that belonged to a whole other species, one that I had never seen before in the jungle and perhaps the last that I would ever have expected.

Wishing to discover something exciting was a big part of my day. I was curious about the world and had an instinctive need to see and do new things. I was always looking for a new tree to climb, a new vista, or a chance to observe my surroundings from a different vantage point. Perhaps it might lead me to a new piece of treasure, to replace my last one, or perhaps to the discovery of an abundant patch of exotic fruit.

Sometimes I would turn back because the ground changed for the worse, the fallen leaves spikier. On other occasions I would simply run out of courage and run scared back to the safety of the territory I knew. But the pull of the new called to me, tempting me, always. So off I’d set in yet another direction.

On this day I had wandered for most of the morning, far enough to begin to explore places I’d not yet seen but not so far that I couldn’t hear the calls of my monkey family, and certainly not far enough that should I lose my bearings I would be unable to find my way home again.

Eventually I came to a new and enticing area, where one particular tree – proud and tall and bearing wide, inviting arms – seemed to call to me to climb it, so I did. It was a quick and easy climb, and in no time at all I had reached the topmost branches and had a clear view of the jungle below. I perched there for a moment, breathing in the cooler air, while, still and silent, I surveyed this new territory. Tropical birds circled, flashing blue and green and scarlet, and the wind played its whispering song on the swaying boughs.

I ranged around for a while, exploring different treetops and different vistas, before settling in the comfortable apex of two branches, happy to spend time just observing the activity around me – the birds and insects flying above me – and the land down below.

It was from up here, idly watching, that I was to make a discovery that was to change my life completely. Initially, however, I didn’t know it. All I knew was that the legs that I could see moving far below me were unlike the legs of any monkey I had ever seen before. They were long and straight, and they looked to be hairless, though, at this distance and with a mass of branches blocking my vision it was obviously difficult to be sure.

Intrigued, I changed position slightly so I could get a better view. The animal was walking, and now I could see it more clearly I could get a better appreciation of its size. It was a big animal, certainly much bigger than the monkeys – bigger, too, than the wild boar I would sometimes catch sight of and mostly took care to avoid. It also, I realised with something of a start, seemed to be walking on two legs.

I changed position again, feeling the strangest of sensations: that this creature reminded me of myself. I studied it, enthralled at our similarities. It had long, straight black hair, not so different from my own, and moved in a way that I knew my own legs could if being on all fours were not now so natural. It also seemed to be on a quest to find something. It kept stopping and peering into various bushes then, apparently dissatisfied, walking on again. It also looked tired, with a weariness about it that put me in mind of how Grandpa monkey often behaved. Though this creature, unlike Grandpa, didn’t look at all old.

It did look sick, though, I decided, and as if it was in pain. It had a strangely distended belly, which it clutched with one arm and seemed to find a great burden to carry around. Had it been poisoned as I had? Was it soon going to die?

I kept looking, transfixed now, keen to see what it would do. It was just such a strange sight. Terrifically exciting. But also one that left me unsettled. My eyes kept coming back to its odd gait, its weary manner, the cloth (though I barely registered the idea of clothes now) that hung from its middle, tied with what looked like vine. I was also confounded by what hung around its neck: a string of something that, from where I was, looked like berries.