‘Oh!’ said Lee. ‘Aren’t they adorable?’
Indeed they were. Holding them was like holding four tiny, sun-warmed cobbles, beautifully fretted and sculpted by wind and waves. Lee crooned over them, admiring the brightness of their tiny eyes embedded like chips of onyx in their intelligent faces, their sharp, manicured claws like minute golden half-moons, and their sturdy little legs encased in meticulously carved scales like fossilized leaves from a pygmy tree. No matter how comprehensive the reports of the man on the ground are, there is nothing like seeing and holding the fruits of your labours. Taking these almost circular, still-soft fragments of wriggling life in our hands made all the struggles and begging for money, all the persuasion of bureaucracy, all the months of toil and planning fade away. Cupped in our hands, these funny little piecrust babies represented the future of their race. Guarded from harm, we knew that, ultimately, they would grow into those ponderous adults that, heavy and clumsy as knights in armour, would joust each season for their ladies, so that these extraordinary antediluvian creatures could breed and go lumbering on into new centuries to remind us how the world began and to delight us with their unique shape and habits. Certainly Lee, Don and Germain had an achievement of which to be proud.
‘Come on,’ I said to Lee, ‘you’ve crooned over those babies long enough. You’ll spoil them if you go on dripping tears all over them.’ Reluctantly she returned the babies to their fortress and we went and sat in the cool, dark shade of the teak trees to drink the babies’ health in lukewarm whisky out of cracked glasses and chipped mugs.
Behind the cluster of forestry huts Don had made an attempt at a garden where he was trying to grow various foodstuffs for his charges. It was surrounded by a makeshift fence of branches in an attempt to deter the gourmet enthusiasm of any passing zebu. As I poured out a refill for everyone and gave the toast, ‘Tortoises of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your shells’, I saw something white move there out of the corner of my eye.
Looking around, I saw to my delight that we were about to be invaded by one of the Malagasy lemurs I love most: the enchanting, beautiful acrobats of the woods, the Cocquerel’s sifaka. They have a creamy-white, thick pelt marked in chocolate along the shoulders and thighs, and the fur on the tops of their heads is a rich chestnut that makes them look as if they are wearing little skull caps. Their round golden eyes have a wide-eyed stare which makes them appear slightly demented. But it is the supple agility of their movements which is so extraordinary. As we watched the group, which consisted of six adults, some of the females carrying their tiny, goblin-like babies, they assembled in the trees at the end of the fence. Some were quietly grooming, others sitting in the light of the setting sun, heads back, arms outstretched to gain the maximum benefit from the health-giving rays. After a time, one who was bolder than the rest appeared to volunteer as a scout. He made his way down the tree backwards in human fashion and then dropped on to the fence. Here he sat for a moment, wide-eyed, gazing around him for danger. Then, in a series of bouncing hops that any kangaroo would have envied, he progressed along the whole top rail. Each of these bouncing leaps carried him about six feet and he soon reached the other end of the fence and hurled himself into the safety of the trees, a prodigious leap of about twenty feet. The rest of the troupe, having seen that their compatriot had not been torn to shreds by us or any other lurking predator, made their way onto the fence and bounded along it and leapt into the trees. They moved along through the branches until they were directly above us, and here we were treated to the most spectacular ballet. They leapt through the trees covering thirty feet or more and then simply threw themselves at the branch above us without taking any apparent aim or judging distance. Yet they achieved their target with amazing accuracy They played around in the trees above us for a few minutes, giving acrobatic displays of such brilliance that they would have had any circus proprietor reaching for his cheque book and contract form. Then, suddenly, they all decided that this particular piece of their habitat had lost its charm and with one accord they went trampolining away through the forest like a white tornado.
Heaving a deep sigh of satisfaction, I turned to Don.
‘That was one of the best ballet-cum-acrobatic displays I have ever seen,’ I said. ‘Their abilities would make even the Russians think twice. Thank you for organizing it just at drinks time.’
‘Not at all,’ said Don, modestly. ‘We men of the forest live as one with the animals and they obey our every command.’
‘Less of the bull,’ I said severely. ‘Where’s this swim you promised me?’
We made our way through the trees and down to the edge of the nearby lake, a wide, placid expanse of brown water, rimmed with forest like a green astrakhan collar. Its water was refreshing, even though it was as warm and soft as fresh milk, but of a completely different colour and composition.
‘What about crocs?’ I asked, as we floated gently in the coffee-coloured waters.
‘A few,’ said Don, ‘but you don’t often see them.’
‘Well, you and Germain swim ahead of us,’ I suggested, ‘and then if one of you disappears we’ll be warned and can swim for shore.’
‘Oh, they’re quite harmless,’ said Don. ‘If the truth be known they’re probably more frightened of us than we are of them.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ I replied. ‘The Reverend Sibree waxes eloquent on the subject of crocodiles.’
He had indeed waxed eloquent. In Sibree’s day – in the late nineteenth century – there were probably more of these reptiles than there are today, since many have now been killed to make shoes, bags and suitcases for the ladies and gentlemen of Europe, and he devotes some space to them.
These reptiles are so numerous in many parts as to be found a great pest; they often carry off sheep and cattle and not infrequently women and children who incautiously go into or even near the water.
Further on in his excellent book he says:
We soon made the acquaintance with crocodiles, for there was one basking in the sunshine on a sandbank just opposite our starting place. We saw a good many of them during the day, although not as many as other travellers have observed, perhaps twenty or thirty, and some of them quite near enough to be seen very distinctly. Most of them were light grey in colour but others slatey, and others again spotted with black. They varied in length from seven or eight to fourteen or fifteen feet. The head is small and the back and tail serrated like a great pit-saw. They were generally lying with the jaws wide open and sometimes near enough to be splashed by the paddles as we passed them.
Our swim, however, was tranquil and unmolested by the giant reptiles. We lolled about in the water, chatting about this and that.
‘The trouble with Germain is that he thinks Shakespeare is funny,’ said Don, pointing a toe at Germain’s grinning head.
‘He thinks who’s funny?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘Shakespeare. Every time I start reciting my favourite speeches out of Henry V or The Merchant of Venice, he laughs so much he nearly drowns.’
‘Can he understand any of it?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘Not a word,’ said Don, gloomily. ‘Imagine going through life without knowing the Bard.’
‘Terrible,’ I agreed, as Germain gave me a huge smile and sank beneath the waters in a cloud of bubbles.
Don had laid on a party that night to celebrate our visit. All the local villages within striking distance were agog with anticipation and each small community was going to attend en masse. A reasonably large flat space outside one of the forestry huts had been lit with candles and the ubiquitous and invaluable bushlight or so-called hurricane lamp.
Where, I wondered, would people in remote places be without this simple but invaluable invention? Its yellow glow, like a small fat crocus, welcomes everyone back to camp at the end of a hard day. I have watched women doing the most intricate embroidery and men carving beautiful figurines by it. I have watched fat toads gather round it in friendly, g
ulping conclave, waiting for the moth bounty it so generously provides with its gentle light. By this same illumination, I have done operations that would have made Harley Street shudder: taking fat and suppurating jiggers from village children’s feet; trying to pick, with the deftness of a pickpocket, ingrained earth and gravel from the woolly scalp of my washerwoman after she had fallen thirty feet onto her head on the banks of the river; trying to put tourniquets on a drunken man who had just amputated three of his fingers with his machete while suffering from a surfeit of palm wine. By its friendly illumination, I have crawled sleepily out of bed in the small hours to bottle-feed everything from duikers to bushbabies, from anteaters to armadillos. A statue ought to be created somewhere to the anonymous inventor of this invaluable aid to those who live in places where electricity exists only in the shape of lightning, and where the moon and the bushlight are the sole dependable source of steady light.
Don went off in a borrowed van to fetch people from outlying villages while the accoutrements of the party were laid out, whisky for us, the local rum (that lights up your stomach and twitches your feet dancewards) and the inevitable Coca-Cola for those who like their rum diluted and for the diminutive guests who were not old enough to be able to cope with the electrifying qualities of the rum. Slowly, the local villagers started to arrive. There was the sibilant whisper of bare feet in the warm dust and brown faces started to surround our pool of light, white teeth flashed, there was the sudden glow of a multicoloured lamba, a low murmuration like a hive of sleepy bees, a general air of excitement like children waiting for Father Christmas to arrive. Gradually, as Don ferried to and fro, the crowd grew and so did the noise. Glasses clinked, there were giggles and chatter and, occasionally, a few bars strummed on a valiha, that instrument without which no Malagasy party can begin. Related in a distant way to a host of stringed instruments – the zither, the balalaika, the ukulele, the banjo, the guitar – the valiha consists of a length of giant bamboo some three or four feet long, which acts as the sounding board. The ‘strings’ are strips of the thick outer skin of the bamboo, cut with great care and then lifted onto a bridge of wood. Both ends of the strings are still attached to the bamboo itself. When the fingers are run over them, they produce a melodious yet curiously mournful trickle of sound that is delightful and is heard everywhere. A valiha is a product of the forest that has been turned into a musical instrument of great purity and so, with the aid of a bamboo and a knife, anyone can own a Stradivarius.
Now, the inhabitants of four tiny villages were around us and the party started to warm up. Four valihas, a drum and several flutes started to play a repetitive but sweet harmony. The rum we had brought circulated freely and people started to dance. Soon our little dance floor was crowded and, with the host of colourful lambas worn by both men and women, it was like looking at a moving flowerbed through a kaleidoscope.
The party was a great success, everyone joining in the revelry with high spirits, singing and dancing as the music got louder and faster. At two o’clock in the morning, Lee and I opted for bed but the villagers looked as fresh and eager as the moment they arrived. We left them and went to bed and lay listening to the chatter of happy voices, the plaintive music of the orchestra, the clinking of bottles and the shuffle and thump of dancing feet.
Over our breakfast of sweet black coffee, biscuits and finger-length bananas with a delicate fragrance, we surveyed the wreckage that was Don.
‘And what time did you go to bed?’ asked Lee.
‘I haven’t been to bed,’ said Don and took a gulp of coffee and shuddered.
‘You mean to say you stayed until the bitter end?’ I asked in amazement.
‘I had to,’ said Don, ‘otherwise how were half of these people going to get home?’
‘Yes, of course, I’d forgotten you were the taxi service,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t have minded that,’ said Don, ‘but what I didn’t realise was that I’d take ten back to their village and five would stay on board because they liked the ride. I was making twice as many journeys as I had to, until I realised what they were up to. I’d have been ferrying them to and fro until dawn if I hadn’t discovered what they were doing.’
‘Never mind,’ I said consolingly, ‘come and visit the crocodiles. I’m told a sharp bit of judo with a crocodile is the best cure for a hangover in the world.’
So we went down to the brown lake’s smooth waters. The forest was a million shades of green and dew-drenched. In its depths the coucals were singing seductively to the new day, a lovely cry like their name that ended in a bubbling glissade of notes that made the forest ring, a song as pure and throaty and seductive as a cuckoo’s call.
Cooled and refreshed by our swim, we made our way back to the project’s headquarters and Lee paid final homage to her strange antediluvian hassocks as they lumbered around their pens looking like clockwork toys.
‘So we’ve bred thirty-one so far?’ I asked Don, gently squeezing one between finger and thumb, feeling the softness of his shell, like damp blotting paper. He wriggled indignantly at this insulting action and when I put him down he sped off at top speed and hid under a leaf.
‘I think we’ve got the hang of what they need now,’ said Don, ‘so we should do even better in the future.’
‘Then we’ll be knee-deep in yniphora,’ said Lee, happily kissing one of the babies on his nose, to his immense astonishment and annoyance.
Chapter Four
Jumping Rats and Kapidolo
Getting out of the plane at Morandava was like being plunged into a red-hot sponge. After the pleasant Mediterranean climate of Tana, it was a shock to the system. Lungs protested as they tried to draw in the damp, fiery air and immediately our bodies became drenched in sweat. The sun glowered down on us from a sky that had faded to pale blue. There was not a single shade-giving cloud to be seen, nor was there the slightest breeze to cool us. The baked earth was hot enough to fry a pancake on, and each footstep became a laboured, sweat-provoking chore. It was a day for dreaming about fans revolving like windmills above you, of green, cool water in a river, of the gentle squeak and tinkle of ice in a tall, mist-enshrouded glass, a day in fact for dreaming about all the cooling things we most urgently needed and knew we were probably not going to obtain in the foreseeable future.
We were met by John Hartley, his wife Sylvia, who had recently joined our jaunt, and Quentin Bloxam, bathed in sweat but looking – as always – grimly determined.
‘What’s it like?’ I asked, as we packed ourselves into the Toyota. ‘Any luck?’
‘We’ve got two rats and some kapidolo,’ said Quentin, triumphantly.
‘Excellent,’ I said, enthusiastically ‘I can’t wait to see them.’
‘What’s the camp like?’ asked Lee.
‘Hot,’ said John, succinctly. ‘Very hot.’
‘Very hot with flies,’ said Sylvia. With her pert good looks, immaculate hair and big blue eyes, she did not look as if she had come from a fly-ridden camp in the backwoods, but more as if she had just enjoyed a shopping trip in Bond Street.
‘It’s the fly capital of the world,’ said Quentin, with conviction. ‘It can’t be worse than Australia, surely?’ I protested. They say in Australia that if you see someone walking along constantly waving their hands, it’s not because they know everyone in town but because they’re ploughing their way through flies.
‘Wait and see,’ said Sylvia, darkly.
‘We’ve decided, before heading back to fly metropolis to treat ourselves to a bit of civilization,’ said John. ‘You like prawns, don’t you?’
‘If suddenly confronted with a well-cooked prawn, I should consider it my duty, out of politeness, to eat it,’ I said, judiciously.
‘Good,’ said John. ‘Well, we’re taking you to a small hotel along here where the dining room’s on the beach, so you always get a breeze. They do the most fantastic prawns.’
‘Really stupendous,’ said Sylvia.
‘Like elephan
ts,’ said Quentin, reminiscently.
We drove down the potholed road and presently came to the hotel, where we made our way through the garden full of huge cloaks of bougainvillaea and copses of hibiscus. The dining room was a large wooden structure, open on three sides and overlooking a wide, sandy beach where small, white-topped waves broke on the shore with a soothing noise. The dining room was shady and the constant cool breeze from the sea soon dried our perspiring bodies. The maîtresse d’hôtel was a large brown Malagasy lady with a broad, handsome face and a searchlight smile. She soon had a battalion of bottles of beer, misty from the fridge, marching across the table and this was followed by platters of gigantic prawns, sunset-red, fat and succulent, accompanied by a gargantuan bowl of rice with an entourage of strange and delicious Malagasy side dishes which included, to my joy, a plate of what I called – for want of a more scientific name – underground peanuts. They are round, smooth, brown or fawn seeds, each about the size of a hazelnut kernel. Cooked in a hot chilli sauce of tomatoes and onions, the vonja bory, to give them their Malagasy name, are deliciously nutty and firm and taste something like starchy dumplings. They are a meal in themselves, so by the time we had done justice to the prawns, rice and the vonja bory we were as replete as we could be, cool, well fed, lulled by the sound of the sea, ready to face the world with all its challenges and stupidities. On the other hand, as Quentin pointed out, a long siesta followed by a swim would be just as welcome but, reluctantly, we decided that duty called and we must not tarry too long among the delights of Morandava.
The place where they had set up camp was some thirty miles outside Morandava in the Kirindy forest, which the Swiss have leased from the government. The experiments they were carrying out were interesting and, if successful, could be of great importance to all Malagasy forests. The conventional wisdom in forestry is to practise ‘selective logging’, which means that only trees of a certain size are felled and dragged out. But this method, however carefully done, affects the ecology of the forest. The tree, as it falls, creates a false clearing by crushing numerous saplings. Then, it is dragged through the forest, creating still further havoc. To simplify the removal of the trees the forest is divided up like a chessboard by wide pathways or rides as they are called in England. The whole process is of itself disruptive and detrimental to a delicate ecosystem and when you add to it the fact that, generally speaking, no small trees are planted to replace the giants felled, it is hardly ‘rational’ use of a renewable resource.