Drums Along the Congo Read online

  “Aarrgh!” the man shouts, kicking me in the throat the moment my hand touches his wound. The cotton and antiseptic fly through the air. The Pygmies howl and whoop, and one of them starts pumping his spear, aiming at my head. I raise my hands and slowly rise from my knees. The man drops the spear tip to the ground, and the others huddle and begin talking quietly. The headman gestures at the honey guide and then flicks his hand at me.

  “Kerrar,” the singer trills, and his companions nod.

  The man with the harmonica plays a sour note, but his friend with the cocked crossbow grabs his wrist and motions toward the bird. The harmonica disappears inside a quiver. The headman declares something and, curiously, all the Pygmies show their backs and start walking away. After they’ve gone three steps toward the honey guide, I bolt the other way, weaving through the underbrush, and run as fast as I can all the way to the pirogue.

  Back at camp, Ange berates me for staying out all night. “Where did you sleep, white fool?” he scolds.

  “Near the shore, close to Bompale Stream,” I lie, not wanting him to know I was anywhere near Taboo Lake.

  When the others go hunting, Innocent confides that Ange was more worried than mad. “But Ange would never admit that, so he yelled at you instead.”

  I tell him about the gorilla, the night in the jungle, and the Pygmies.

  “You touched his foot! Mon Dieu,” Innocent exclaims, throwing his hands over his head. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “You almost got yourself killed. Forest Pygmies don’t know about medicine. He probably believes you caused the wound… No one would touch a wound unless they had put the curse on and were trying to make it worse.”

  The fact that I’m still alive proves one of two things to Innocent: either I’m blessed with luck or I’m being watched over by the wind god, as the witch doctor predicted. At the moment, he doesn’t care which it is as long as I’m still alive. “If you die, I’ll be swamped in paperwork. Do you realize the number of reports and forms I would have to fill out? It would be hell for me.”

  “It would be hell for both of us,” I interject, and promise to be more careful.

  CHAPTER 27

  “TODAY WE CATCH grandfather lizards,” Raymond announces, standing in the bow of the pirogue, one hand shielding his eyes and the other under his nose. “That way!” He points to the northeastern shore. “I can smell them.”

  Yet again the wind gods have nothing to say to us mortals. Gumball-shaped clouds linger in the sky, waiting for a breeze. Smooth as porcelain, Lake Télé steams in the morning sunshine. The humidity is 100 percent and the temperature, as usual, is 90 degrees in the shade.

  Two large cormorants, each a meter long, dry their wings on a partially submerged log. The color of wet licorice, with long flexible necks, they slip into the water as we approach. One of them never surfaces, at least not within view, and its mate moves away with only its neck and head above water, forming the first question mark of the day.

  Signaling for me to steer to starboard, Raymond cocks his arm and launches a spear, cursing when it hits a cycad. Something jumps through the bush.

  “Golden cat,” Innocent says. “It was beautiful. You should have seen it.”

  “Shh,” Raymond hushes, his eyes skyward.

  A crowned hawk eagle tucks its broad wings and dives. A few dozen feet from the treetops, the raptor unfurls its wings, corrects the angle of attack, and flashes its talons. Monkeys howl, but the hawk eagle snatches one aloft. It flails for several seconds before going limp, looking distressingly like a child as the bird carries it east and out of sight.

  We cut across the lake, leaving plenty of room between ourselves and the birds congregating on the northern shore. A flock of egrets pose like figures on a Japanese screen, while ducks waddle clumsily along the shore. As we near the western beach, Raymond orders us to reverse course and head back the way we came.

  “It doesn’t smell right over here.”

  We cruise the opposite shore for an hour, sighting nothing unusual, when suddenly Raymond’s eyes open wide. He ships his spear and leans outboard. A turtle is just below the surface about fifteen yards away. “Bare hands,” Raymond promises. As we come alongside, he bends over the rail and deftly scoops it into the bilge. The turtle pulls in its yellow-streaked head and retracts its flippers and tail, but Raymond nonchalantly plunges a knife into the head opening, working the blade like a reamer.

  “I love turtle meat, don’t you?” Raymond asks as blood and guts spill into the bilge. Innocent and I remain silent.

  We keep going, still looking for a grandfather lizard, finally giving up late in the afternoon to head back in for, yes, turtle soup.

  Waiting for me next to the tent, under a T-shirt that has fallen off a drying rack, is the ugliest beetle I’ve ever seen. It’s the size of a cough lozenge and the color of phlegm, rimmed in black. I carefully pack it in a special jar, and unable to find anything like it in the field guide, I print on the label “Sister Marie Bernadette.”

  Early the next morning I find a molombo vine with several fruits missing. There are no dinosaur footprints about, and I hurry on to check the two other molombos. Fruit is missing from the second vine as well. However, also in view is a blue plantain-eater, lustily devouring the fruit of the god-beast. As it noshes, the black crop atop the bird’s head flops from side to side.

  Back at camp, Innocent tells me that he dreamed about Mokele-Mbembe. “He spoke to me… Today is the day he appears… I’ve made two offerings already this morning.”

  That’s fine, I say, but I’m beginning to doubt that any dinosaur has passed this way in the last sixty-five million years. I suggest we break camp tomorrow and head west-northwest, along the edge of Pygmy territory. Ange checks the food locker and returns nodding his head; we have plenty of meat, and everyone but Innocent is ready to leave the lake. Theo, however, groans at the mention of a westward march. He wants to go back to Boha.

  “A week heading west means another week walking home,” Ange says. “That’s too long.” Theo beams at his hunting partner.

  We strike a compromise: tomorrow we’ll head into the uncharted jungle, angling for the headwaters of the Bai River. We figure it’s a two-day walk there and another three days back to Boha.

  Gabriel and Raymond decide to join Innocent and me for the last day of what Gabriel calls “boating.” Innocent and I sit amidships, listening to Captain Raymond bicker with Captain Gabriel while we cruise the shoreline for game. As we slip into the shadow of a meni oil tree, several leaves flutter into the bilge, and soon the air is filled with leaves. Within minutes, this 150-foot giant loses half its foliage. Leaf fall in the jungle is an irregular happening and depends on the tree’s internal rhythm, but Raymond insists that the gods have undressed the tree spirit for us.

  “We’ve been blessed. Some powerful god must be very close,” Gabriel agrees, rubbing his hand across his juju bag. Tree spirits, he reasons, want to keep their leaves, letting go of them only when commanded by a greater spirit.

  A herd of jungle elephants trumpet in the distance; Raymond and Gabriel reflexively ready their weapons, only to sit down and relax seconds later.

  “Too much trouble… Let the Pygmies eat them,” Gabriel sighs, and explains that the Pygmies inject poison into bananas, which they scatter in bunches for the elephants; when one dies from the toxin, they simply set up camp around the carcass. The only elephant Gabriel ever killed wasn’t worth the effort. “I shot it twice, but it kept walking and walking… Two days until it finally dropped to the ground.” The meat grew rancid by the time he lugged it back to Boha.

  “Ho-chor!” Gabriel wags a finger to starboard.

  All I can see is flat, calm water. “Crocodile?” I ask.

  “No… See it? Over there. Look, over there.”

  There’s something moving in the water near the far shore, probably a large bird of some type.

  “I see!… Yeee!”
Gabriel’s voice rises to a crescendo. He starts paddling for the closest land.

  “Ho-chor! I see him now,” Raymond begins poling double-time and speaking hurriedly with Gabriel in Lingala. The only word I catch is Mokele-Mbembe.

  I snatch up my binoculars and grab the camera and tele-photo lens from my bag. Raymond lays into his push pole, dripping sweat. Gabriel casts furtive glances about and starts yelling, “Faster… faster.”

  Thud. The pirogue rams the shore and Gabriel leaps out. Raymond cuffs me on the shoulder and orders me out of the boat. In my viewfinder, I’ve almost got something in focus, a dark, slender form.

  “Mundélé, move!”

  A hand clamps onto my shoulder blade. I look up and see Raymond with his fist clenched. I climb ashore and lift my camera again; now I can see clearly a black periscope shape in the water, about a kilometer away.

  “Mokele-Mbembe?” I ask.

  “Oui, Mokele-Mbembe… Mokele-Mbembe,” Raymond and Gabriel shout, bowing their heads as they speak the name.

  Innocent sights through the binoculars as I click off some pictures, unsatisfied with what I see through the lens: the elongated black form that curves in on itself is only a vague image. It might have a spoon-shaped head, but I can’t tell for sure. Indeed, from this distance, it’s impossible to judge its size or accurately discern its features. I ask Gabriel and Raymond to paddle me closer to the animal in the lake.

  “No. We stay here and pray.” Raymond falls to his knees, and Gabriel joins him.

  “I’ll pay you.”

  Raymond angrily slaps the ground and tells me to kneel.

  “Ten thousand francs.”

  No one responds.

  “Fifteen thousand.”

  Still no response. Both men have grabbed their juju bags and shut their eyes. The creature is moving on a steady course that won’t bring it close to us. I throw down my wallet. “It’s all yours if we go.” Raymond and Gabriel mutter in Lingala.

  “They’re cursing you,” Innocent warns. “You go. I’ll take care of them.”

  I sprint for the pirogue, shove off, and jump aboard. I dig in the paddle, and the boat surges forward, faster and faster, as if I’ve entered a magnetic field drawing me to its center. I hear angry voices behind me, calling my name, and there’s a lot of splashing in the water, but I keep my eyes straight ahead. Though still a silhouette, the black form is a bit clearer now, looking like a splendid French curve, thick at the base and tapering to a hooked tip, where it flattens and gets thick again. I keep paddling, hoping to identify a face presumed lost in fossilized rocks millions of years ago.

  “Arrêtez!… Arrêtez!” Innocent shrieks.

  I turn and see Raymond and Gabriel running in the shallows. Raymond has his spear at the ready, his forearm tensed behind his head; Gabriel has the shotgun trained on me. I drop the paddle.

  “Retournez! Retournez!” Innocent pleads, standing at the water’s edge and waving me in.

  Turning my back to the creature of the lake, I pick up the paddle and head to shore. When my feet touch land, Gabriel clicks on the safety and pulls a shell from the chamber of the shotgun.

  Innocent helps me beach the pirogue, his hands shaking. Gabriel and Raymond return to their prayers. The form continues southward until it suddenly disappears, submerging a half-mile away. Innocent and I study the lake, but all remains calm; nothing breaks the water’s mirrored surface. In all, the creature stayed in view for seven minutes and thirty-two seconds, moving through water seven to eight feet deep. I estimate its speed at two knots; Innocent thinks it was moving twice as fast.

  “Fool,” Raymond shouts, rising from his knees and storming my way. “The god can approach man, but man NEVER approaches the god. He would have killed us all.” He spins toward Gabriel, and they whisper to each other. Gabriel slaps his friend on the shoulder and either laughs or snorts, I can’t tell which.

  We paddle back to camp without further incident, and Innocent and I sit by the lake watching a shoal of butterflies devour my last sock. I take out my notebook and write down the day’s observations, starting on a new page under the headline GOD-BEAST SURFACES. My selective account seems to gain credibility with each sentence and soon acquires a remarkable similarity to unvarnished fact.

  Innocent points down the western trail; Ange and Theo are returning from their day of hunting. Theo carries a green monkey by its tail. The men from Boha talk, and we tell Theo about the sighting. Ange is surprisingly calm. If anyone suffers, he says almost sweetly, it will be me; if Mokele-Mbembe has been angered, I will pay the price.

  “If you awake in the morning, we leave Télé as planned; if you die, we bury you here. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  We start cleaning up the camp and collecting our equipment. Theo stands next to me, watching each piece of gear go into a bag and asking if he can have it when I die.

  “Hey, are you alive?” Innocent shakes me awake. “It’s dawn, well, almost dawn.”

  Today is the first morning that we’re all up at the same early hour. We drink coffee spiked with the last of the scotch, and Innocent and Theo talk about the creature of the lake. Remarkably, Theo’s description is the liveliest.

  In the fuzzy tradition of Loch Ness sightings, Mokele-Mbembe has left us to argue the fine details about its black form. The water hid its body and swallowed any tracks. Maybe, as Innocent suggests, it was just a vulcanodon, a midget-sized brontosaurus, standing about seven feet at the shoulder, with the signature long neck of a sauropod. Even the experts who review my photographs later in New York aren’t sure what has been captured, and none of them will go on record one way or the other.

  “You got what you came for, eh, my friend?” Gabriel asks me.

  “Sure he did,” Theo interjects. “The dinosaur was bigger than any of us imagined. I mean it was huge…”

  Gabriel winks at Raymond, who smiles and nudges Ange, who nods at me as he counts the money I’ve just handed him for use of the pirogues, one of many fees not mentioned in Boha. “Bring rich friends next time,” Gabriel says.

  “Tokay,” Ange shouts, pocketing the cash and pouring water on the campfire. A great cloud of steam rises into the middle canopy.

  We shoulder our bags packed with gear and salted meat, flies and bees buzzing around us. We each pluck a leaf from a sapling and stow it safely in a pocket. Once we reach Boha, we’ll breathe into the leaves and give thanks as we place them at the base of another sapling. Falling in line behind Ange, we set off down the western trail, aiming for the upper Bai and Sangha rivers, where others have reported sightings of twenty-ton dinosaurs.

  It’s not long, though, before Ange drops his pack and detours back to the lake. The six of us walk out on a fallen tree jutting over the water. On our left the lake surface reflects our images, and off to the right our shadows float in the water. Ange recites a short prayer of thanksgiving to Mokele-Mbembe and then faces his shadow. We follow his example.

  “Say good-bye,” Innocent advises. “I doubt we’ll see our shadow spirits again for days.”

  When we return to the trail, the men from Boha hunch over a pool of mud and use their forefingers to draw three concentric circles. They quickly move on, but I linger, staring at their design as it dissolves in the watery mud. Perhaps, as Bantu myth recommends, the line of life is an ever-tightening circle, a python that greedily grabs its tail at birth and keeps on swallowing, never realizing what’s nourishing it until it’s too late.

  “Hurry up,” Ange calls. “We have a long way to go.”

  EPILOGUE

  ACROSS THE AISLE of the plane, a woman brushes her hands across her lap as if she’s whisking off cigarette ash. I stare at her, which only makes her hands move faster.

  “She thinks someone has cursed her, so she’s trying to sweep the curse your way. The evil spirit has to go somewhere,” Innocent says, glad he took the window seat.

  The witch doctor in Boha reclaimed the protective spirits he had loaned me, and according t
o Innocent, my bumble in the jungle has exhausted the power of my juju bag.

  “Madame, s’il vous plaît, autre part. Okay?”

  “Pardon, monsieur,” she says, redirecting the curse toward the man sitting in front of me.

  The commandant and Theo wave to us as the Air Congo plane sputters to life, its left engine misfiring and belching smoke before settling into a steady thunder. The postmaster sits on his moped in the middle of the crowd and salutes while the plane taxis to the end of the airstrip. He’s wearing his jacket, pants, and official blue cap, but no shirt. Off to one side by themselves are the six paddlers from Boha who brought us to Epena in record time, eleven hours and twenty-six minutes, enabling us to catch this flight to Brazzaville. They’re drink ing whiskey and wearing new clothes bought, no doubt, with the money they charged for the trip. Most everyone in Epena has turned out to watch the plane lift off; it’s the last flight before the airport officially closes for the rainy season.

  “There they are!” Innocent points out the window at three men on the terminal roof. It’s Marc, Caspar, and Alain. Drumsticks in hand, they’re pounding the metal roof panels.

  Back in Brazzaville, Robert, glad to have his poker partner back, moves someone out of my old room and hands me the familiar key to number seven. He’s delighted with the crossbow I present him and hangs it on the wall in the lobby. Before leaving, I catch him stalking a pied crow with it in the hotel garden. My collection of flora and fauna goes to the university. The administrator handling my donation assures me each item will be studied, identified, and catalogued, and hands me a receipt saying, “Accepted with thanks, three plastic garbage bags.”