Once they were reunited with their families, the Pygmies were ready to head back to the forest, which they never meant to leave again. Beyé-Dokou donned his yellow T-shirt, picked up his spear, and went over to Alexander to return the fossil he believed had saved him from being ground to mush by Mbembelé. The other hunters also said their emotional good-byes, knowing they would not see this wonderful friend with the spirit of a great cat again. Alexander stopped them. They couldn’t go quite yet, he told them. He explained that they wouldn’t be safe, even in the deepest heart of the jungle where no other human could survive. Running wasn’t the solution, since sooner or later the world would catch up with them or they would need that contact. They had to deliver the last blow to slavery and to reestablish the friendly relations they once had with the people of Ngoubé, which meant they had to rob Mbembelé of his power and chase him and his soldiers from the region forever.
As for Kosongo’s wives, who had been kept prisoner in his harem from the age of fourteen or fifteen, they had mutinied, and for the first time were enjoying being young. Oblivious to much more serious matters worrying the rest of the population, they had organized their own carnival: They were playing the drums, singing and dancing. They tore the gold ornaments from their arms, throats, and ears and tossed them into the air, wild with their new freedom.
That was the state of events in the village—everyone still in the square but each group absorbed in its own concerns—when Sombe made his spectacular appearance, summoned by occult forces to impose order, punishment, and terror.
A rain of sparks like fireworks announced the arrival of the formidable sorcerer. The dreaded entrance was welcomed with a single outcry. Sombe had not materialized in many months, and some had harbored the hope that he had gone to the world of the demons for all time. But there he was, the messenger from all that is evil, more impressive and filled with fury than ever. People backed away, horrified, as he took the center of the square.
Sombe’s fame had spread beyond the region, and village by village it had traveled across much of Africa. It was said that he could kill with his thoughts, cure with a breath, divine the future, manipulate nature, alter dreams, sink mortals into a sleep of no return, and communicate with the gods. It was also told that he was invincible and immortal, that he could turn himself into any creature of sea, sky, or earth, and that he entered the bodies of his enemies and devoured them from within. He drank their blood, turned their bones to powder, and left nothing but skin, which he then filled with ashes. That was how he created zombies, the living dead whose horrendous fate was to serve him as slaves.
The sorcerer was gigantic, and his incredible attire seemed to double his stature. His face was covered with a leopard mask and, in place of a hat, he wore a large-horned buffalo skull crowned in turn with a leafy branch, as if a tree were sprouting from his head. His arms and legs were adorned with the teeth and claws of wild beasts, and he had a necklace of human fingers. Around his waist a string of fetishes and gourds held magic potions. Various animal hides stiff with dried blood cloaked his body.
Sombe arrived with the attitude of a vengeful devil who had determined to impose his personal form of injustice. The Bantu population, the Pygmies, even Mbembelé’s soldiers, submitted without a trace of resistance. They shrank back, trying to disappear, resigned to doing Sombe’s will. The foreigners, stunned with surprise, witnessed how his presence destroyed the fragile harmony they had begun to achieve in Ngoubé.
The sorcerer, crouching like a gorilla, roaring, and supporting himself on his hands, began to whirl, faster and faster. Suddenly he would stop and point a finger, and the person he singled out would fall to the ground in a deep trance, shaking with seizures. Some lay rigid, like marble statues, and others began to bleed through the nose, mouth, and ears. Sombe would again spin like a top, stop, and annihilate someone with the power of a gesture. Within a brief time, a dozen men and women were flailing about on the ground, while the rest of the villagers were on their knees, shrieking, eating dirt, begging forgiveness, and swearing obedience.
About them an unexplainable wind blew through the village like a typhoon and, with one blast, lifted the straw from the huts, the food from the banquet table, the drums, the palm arches, and half the hens. The night was bright with a lightning storm, and from the forest came a horrible chorus of moans. Hundreds of rats scurried through the square like a plague and immediately disappeared, leaving a lethal stench in their wake.
Suddenly Sombe leaped into one of the bonfires where meat had been roasting for the feast and began to dance on the burning coals, picking them up with his bare hands to throw into the frightened crowd. From the flames and smoke surged hundreds of demonic figures, legions of evil that accompanied the witch man in his sinister dance. From the buffalo-horned leopard’s head thundered a cavernous voice shouting the names of the deposed king and vanquished commandant. The people, hysterical, hypnotized, chorused in return: Kosongo, Mbembelé, Kosongo, Mbembelé, Kosongo, Mbembelé . . .
Then, just when the sorcerer had the entire village in the palm of his hand and was triumphantly emerging from the bonfire where flames had been licking his legs—miraculously without burning him—a large white bird appeared in the south and circled the square several times. Alexander shouted with relief as he recognized Nadia.
The eagle had convoked forces that streamed into Ngoubé from the four cardinal points. The gorillas of the jungle led the parade, black and magnificent, great bulls in the lead, followed by the females with their young. Then came Queen Nana-Asante, glorious in the rags barely covering her nakedness, her white hair standing up like a halo of silver. She was riding an enormous elephant as ancient as she, its ribs striped with spear scars. Tensing was there, the lama from the Himalayas who had answered Nadia’s call in his astral body, along with his band of fearsome Yetis in war attire. Walimai and the delicate spirit of his wife had brought thirteen fabled mythological beasts with them from the Amazon. Walimai had reverted to his youth, and was once again an impressive warrior arrayed in war paint and feather ornaments. And finally into the village trooped the vast shining throng of the jungle: the ancestors, and spirits of animals and plants, thousands and thousands of souls that lit up the village with the sun of midday and cooled the air with a clean, fresh breeze.
That fantastic light obliterated the evil legions of demons and the sorcerer was reduced to his true size. His bloody hides, his necklaces of human fingers, his fetishes, his claws and teeth, no longer seemed chilling, only a ridiculous disguise. The great elephant Queen Nana-Asante was riding swung its trunk at Sombe’s head, sending the buffalo-horned leopard mask flying: The sorcerer was revealed. Everyone recognized that face! Kosongo, Mbembelé, and Sombe were the same man: the three heads of the same ogre.
The reaction was as unexpected as everything else that happened that strange night. A long, hoarse roar resounded through the tightly packed crowd. Those who had been convulsing, those who had been turned to statues, those who were bleeding, emerged from their trances, and those who lay prostrate got up from the ground, and they all moved as one, with terrifying determination, upon the man who had tyrannized them. Kosongo-Mbembelé-Sombe retreated, but in less than a minute he was surrounded. A hundred hands grasped him, raised him high, and bore him off toward the well of the executions. A bone-tingling howl shook the jungle as the heavy body of the three-headed monster fell into the jaws of the crocodiles.
For Alexander it would be very difficult to remember the details of that night; he couldn’t write about them as easily as he had his earlier adventures. Did he dream everything? Was he caught up in the same hysteria that had entrapped all the villagers? Or had he seen with his own eyes the beings Nadia had assembled? He didn’t have an answer for those questions. Later, when he compared his version of events with Nadia’s, she listened quietly, then gave him a light kiss on the cheek and told him that each person has his own truth, and that all are valid.
Nadia’s words were prophetic
, because when he tried to get the true story from other members of the group, each one told him something different. For example, Brother Fernando remembered nothing but the gorillas and an elephant ridden by an ancient woman. Kate seemed to have perceived the glowing bodies in the air, among which she recognized the lama Tensing, although, she said, that was impossible. Joel said he would wait until he could develop his rolls of film before giving an opinion; if it didn’t show up in the photographs, it didn’t happen. The Pygmies and the Bantus described more or less what he had seen, from the witch man dancing amid the flames to the ancestors flying around Nana-Asante.
Angie captured much more than Alexander had: She saw angels with translucent wings and flocks of bright birds; she heard the music of drums; smelled the perfume of a rain of flowers; and witnessed a number of other miracles. And that was what she told Michael Mushaha when he arrived the next day in a motor launch, looking for them.
One of Angie’s radio transmissions had been picked up in his camp, and Michael had immediately set wheels in motion to come after them. He couldn’t find a pilot brave enough to fly into the swampy forest in which his friends had been lost; he’d had to take a commercial flight to the capital, rent a launch, and come upriver looking for them with nothing but instinct as a guide. He was accompanied by an official of the national government and four police officers who had been charged with investigating the illegal trade in ivory, diamonds, and slaves.
No one had questioned Nana-Asante’s authority, and within a few hours she had restored order to the village. She began by effecting reconciliation between the Bantu population and the Pygmies and reminding them of the importance of cooperation. The Bantus needed the meat the hunters provided, and the little people couldn’t live without the products they obtained in Ngoubé. That would force the Bantus to respect their former slaves and be reason for the Pygmies to forgive the mistreatment they had suffered.
“How will you teach them to live in peace?” Kate asked Nana-Asante.
“I will begin with the women,” the queen replied. “They have more goodness within them.”
Inevitably, the moment had come for them to leave. The friends were exhausted; they had slept very little, and all of them except Nadia and Borobá were sick to their stomachs. Joel, in addition, had been bitten by mosquitoes from head to foot; the bites had swelled, he had a fever, and he was raw from scratching. Discreetly, avoiding any show of pride or boasting, Beyé-Dokou offered him some of the powder from the sacred amulet. In only a couple of hours, the photographer was back to normal. He was very impressed, and asked for a pinch to cure his friend Timothy Bruce’s mandrill bite, but Mushaha informed him that Bruce was totally recovered and waiting for the rest of the team in Nairobi. The Pygmies then applied the same treatment to Adrien and Nzé, who improved right before their eyes. When he witnessed the powers of that mysterious product, Alexander worked up the nerve to ask for a little to take to his mother. According to her physicians, Lisa Cold had conquered her cancer, but her son felt that a few grams of the miraculous green powder from Ipemba-Afua would guarantee her a long life.
Angie Ninderera decided to try to rid herself of her fear of crocodiles by negotiating. She and Nadia peered over the wood-and-vine fence around the well and offered a deal to the monstrous reptiles. Nadia translated to the best of her ability, though her familiarity with saurian tongues was minimal. Angie explained to them that she could shoot and kill them if she wished. Instead, she would lead them to the river where they would be set free. In exchange, she demanded respect for her life. Nadia wasn’t sure the creatures had understood—or that they would keep their word or be able to convey the terms of the deal to all the rest of Africa’s crocodiles. She chose, however, to tell Angie that from that moment forward she had nothing to fear. She would not die in those big jaws, and with a little luck she would get her wish to die in a plane accident, she assured her.
Kosongo’s wives, now happy widows, wanted to give their gold ornaments to Angie, but Brother Fernando intervened. He spread a blanket on the ground and asked the women to put their jewels in it. Then he tied up the four corners and dragged the bundle to Queen Nana-Asante.
“This gold and a pair of elephant tusks is all the wealth we have here in Ngoubé. You will know how to use it,” he explained.
“What Kosongo gave me is mine!” Angie protested, clutching her bracelets.
Brother Fernando demolished her with one of his apocalyptic glances, and held out his hands. Grumbling, Angie removed the bracelets and handed over the ones she already wore. He made her promise in addition that she would leave him the radio in her plane, so they could communicate, and that she would make a flight every two weeks, at her expense, to supply the village with essentials. In the beginning she would have to drop them from the air, until they could clear a bit of jungle for a landing field. Given the terrain, that would not be easy.
Nana-Asante agreed that Brother Fernando could stay in Ngoubé and set up his mission and his school, as long as they agreed on one premise. Just as people had to learn to live in peace, so, too, the gods. There was no reason why different gods and spirits could not share space in the human heart.
EPILOGUE
Two Years Later
ALEXANDER COLD CAME TO THE door of his grandmother’s apartment in New York carrying a bottle of vodka for her and a bouquet of tulips for Nadia. She had told him that at her graduation she was not going to wear flowers on her wrist or bodice, like all the other girls. She thought corsages were tacky. A light breeze relieved the May heat slightly, but even so, the tulips were fainting. Alex thought he would never get used to the climate of this city, and was happy he didn’t have to. He was attending university in Berkeley and, if his plans worked out, he would get his medical degree in California. Nadia accused him of being a little too comfortable. “I don’t know how you’re going to practice medicine in the poorest corners of the earth if you don’t learn to get along without your mother’s spaghetti and your surfboard,” she teased him. Alexander had spent months convincing her of the advantages of having her study at his university, and finally had succeeded. In September she would be in California, and he wouldn’t have to cross the continent to see her.
Nadia opened the door, and Alexander just stood there with red ears and the drooping tulips, not knowing what to say. They hadn’t seen each other in six months, and the young woman who appeared in the doorway was a stranger. For a microsecond he wondered if he was at the wrong door, but his doubts dissipated when Borobá leaped on him to greet him with effusive hugs and nips. He heard his grandmother calling from the back of the apartment.
“It’s me, Kate,” he replied, still a little disoriented.
Then Nadia smiled, and she was again the girl of old, the girl he knew and loved, wild and golden. They embraced, the tulips dropped to the floor, and he put one arm around her waist and lifted her up with a shout of joy as with the other hand he struggled to free himself from the monkey’s grip. Kate Cold showed up at that moment, dragging her feet. She seized the bottle of vodka that he was about to drop and kicked the door shut.
“Have you seen how awful Nadia looks? You’d think she was the girlfriend of some mafioso,” said Kate.
Alexander burst out laughing. “Tell us what you really think, Grandma.”
“Do not call me that! She bought that dress behind my back. Without asking me!” she exclaimed.
“I didn’t know you were interested in fashion, Kate,” commented Alexander, eyeing the shapeless shorts and parrot design T-shirt that were his grandmother’s uniform.
Nadia was wearing high heels and a short, tightly fitting, strapless dress of black satin. It should be said in her favor that she did not appear to be in the least affected by Kate’s opinion. She did a slow turn to show off the dress to Alexander. She looked very different from the girl he remembered, the one in khaki shorts, with feathers in her hair. He would have to get used to the change, he thought, though he hoped it wasn’t permanent.
He liked the old Eagle a lot. He didn’t know how to behave before this new version of his friend.
“You’ll have to go through the torture of going to the graduation with that scarecrow, Alexander,” said his grandmother, waving toward Nadia. “Come in here; I want to show you something.”
She led the two young people to the tiny, dusty office where she wrote. As always, it was crammed with books and documents. The walls were papered with photographs she’d taken in recent years. Alexander recognized the Indians of the Amazon posing for the Diamond Foundation; Dil Bahadur, Pema, and their baby in the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon; Brother Fernando at his mission in Ngoubé; Angie Ninderera on an elephant with Michael Mushaha; and many others. Kate had framed a 2002 cover of International Geographic that had won an important prize. The photograph, taken by Joel in a market in Africa, showed him with Nadia and Borobá, confronting an irate ostrich.
“Look, Alex. Here are your three published books,” Kate said. “When I read your notes, I realized that you will never be a writer; you don’t have an eye for details. That may not be a drawback in the practice of medicine—the world is full of incompetent doctors—but in literature it’s deadly,” Kate assured him.
“I don’t have the eye, and I don’t have the patience, Kate. That’s why I gave you my notes. I knew you could write the books better than I could.”
“I can do almost everything better than you, Alexander.” She laughed, ruffling his hair.
Nadia and Alexander looked through the books, feeling a strange sadness because they contained everything that had happened to them during three marvelous years of travel and adventure. In the future they might never experience anything comparable to what they’d already lived, nothing as intense or as magical. At least it was a consolation to know that they, their stories, and the lessons they had learned would live on in those pages. Thanks to what Alex’s grandmother had written, they would never be forgotten. The memoirs of Eagle and Jaguar were there in City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and Forest of the Pygmies.