It seemed I had my answer, for almost immediately he began shoving me again, trying to direct me towards the stream of water. I sobbed. All the worst things that could happen to me seemed to be happening all at once. I was terrified and in agony, and I hated the water – it was something I’d been afraid of all my life. Apart from drinking small quantities and being hammered by rainfall, I’d not seen water – water that could drown you – for a long time, and I hated to see it again now.
But Grandpa monkey was relentless and, though we were of similar size, he was also very strong. He seemed intent on putting my head under, keeping a tight grip on my hair. Was he trying to drown me? Or was he trying to make me drink the water? Or maybe he knew I was going to die anyway and was just trying to help me on my way.
Whatever his intentions, I struggled, heaving myself away from him and slapping the surface of the pool, splashing him, and as I did so he yanked my face up and looked me straight in the eyes.
As I looked back at him, I could see something I hadn’t before. His expression was completely calm. It wasn’t angry, or agitated, or hostile. Perhaps I’d been wrong, I thought, as I coughed and spluttered and tried to catch my breath again. Perhaps he was trying to tell me something.
I didn’t know what it was, but in that instant I trusted him. The look in his eyes and the calmness in his movements made me realise he was trying to help me. Accordingly, this time I did as he seemed to want. I went under and drank in great mouthfuls of muddy water, swallowing as much as I could and feeling it force its way up my nose.
At this point, Grandpa monkey let go of me. I wasted no time in scrambling out and up onto the rocky bank, where, completely spent, I just collapsed on the ground, face down.
I began coughing again and soon the coughing turned to vomiting – first the water and then behind it great heaving gouts of acid liquid that burned my throat and washed painfully over the skin of my scratched limbs.
But Grandpa monkey wasn’t done yet. No sooner had I stopped vomiting than he began chivvying me all over again to get back into the pool, this time to the other edge where the water was much shallower and where a second smaller waterfall dripped steadily.
I needed no urging. I drank from the waterfall thirstily and was happy to remain there, even as leeches clamoured to attach themselves to my legs, just to feel the flowing water cooling me and healing me, and the tortuous spasms inside me subside.
I have no idea how long I sat there, semi-conscious, trance-like, but at some point I felt restored enough to clamber back up again. Grandpa monkey had been sitting at the pool’s edge, immobile all this time, just watching and waiting. As I moved, so did he, rising up to his feet, then, seemingly satisfied with his efforts, turning and scuttling off ahead of me, back to his tree.
I will never know for sure what it was that had poisoned me, just as I’ll never know how Grandpa monkey knew how to save me. But he did. I am convinced of it.
And the encounter didn’t just teach me yet another survival lesson. It also marked a point when my life with the monkeys changed. Because, from that day on, Grandpa monkey’s attitude towards my continued presence changed completely. Where once he’d been indifferent and then obviously wary, he now felt like both my protector and my friend.
Now he seemed happy both to share food with me and groom me, and would often feast upon the wealth of bugs that lived in my mat of hair. And, bit by bit, my sense of loneliness and abandonment began to fade. Though there would still be nights when I’d be overcome by what I’d lost and weep for hours, these instances of grief were getting fewer. Curled up in my little ball, in my hollowed-out piece of tree trunk, with the comforting, familiar sound of the monkeys up above me, I was gradually turning into one of them.
7
The incident of my being poisoned and ‘saved’ by Grandpa monkey proved to be a turning point in how the monkeys responded to me. Taking their lead from their elder, more and more of them seemed happier to approach me and groom me. No longer was I just a tolerated outsider; it felt as if I was becoming a real part of the troop, which made the ache lodged in my heart that tiny bit more bearable.
Though I had by now become aware that my new family sometimes changed – some animals disappearing and returning with tiny babies, others disappearing and never being seen again – I began to get to know some of the monkeys quite well. There was Grandpa, of course, who was a constant during my time there. But also energetic Spot, gentle, loving Brownie and timid White-Tip, one of the little ones, who seemed to really love me and who would often jump onto my back, throw her arms around my neck and enjoy being carried wherever I went.
Of course, I hadn’t actually given any of the monkeys names at the time. By now I had no use for human speech at all – only my crude version of monkey language. I don’t think I even thought in human language any more. So I’d no longer consciously ‘think up’ something as abstract as a name. I had simply begun identifying each animal by some distinguishing attribute or physical characteristic. My life had become all about sounds and emotions. And ‘missions’. All of life was now broken into missions. Missions to find food. Missions to find company. Missions to find a safe place to hide if there was danger. I had only two concerns: to satisfy my basic needs and to satisfy my curiosity – the same simple life that the monkeys had.
*
Now I felt more accepted, I became even more determined to learn how to climb to the top of the canopy. I was beginning to hate that I had to spend such long solitary periods on the ground, from where I could hear the joyous whoops and shrieks of the games going on high above me but was not able to get up there and join in. Getting up there, from then on, became my new mission.
I had not stopped practising my climbing since my first failed attempt. It would be so wonderful to be able to escape the dampness of the forest floor and to feel the sun on my back – the whole might of the sun – instead of having to make do with the long shafts that angled down from between the branches, where I could only linger in the patchy spotlights they created. Despite the colours of the jungle, it sometimes seemed to me that I was living in a black and white world. Some parts of the undergrowth, even at the brightest part of the day, were so dark as to seem shrouded in perpetual night, pierced by arrows of light so white and blinding it hurt my eyes.
I was also desperate to have some respite from the heavy, stagnant air and the endless irritation of all the creepy crawlies. I was used to bugs, but never had I seen so many different kinds in one place. The jungle teemed with them: flying things, scuttling things, jumping things and biting things. There were flying beetles that looked like tiny machines – today I’d liken them to helicopters – which had whirring wings that made a special sound as they landed. There were blue bugs and green bugs, bugs that looked like sparkly treasure, and bugs that thrilled me because they would light up at night. There were big black beetles that seemed to have pairs of scissors on their noses, and any number of different squirmy, wormy, wibbly, wobbly grubs. It sometimes felt as if I saw something new every day.
There were also lots of different kinds of brightly coloured frogs, toads and lizards. They also made their homes in the shelter of the undergrowth, so the air would hum with all manner of buzzes, croaks and hisses. And it was a home that suited all of them. So rich with food, so hot and humid, it was a glorious earthly paradise for them all. But not so much for me! How I craved the chance to leave them to their baser insect pleasures – being stirred by stinking breezes, heavy with the stench of rotten plant life, and massing in excited clouds on any dead or dying thing.
Day after day, for what might well have been several months, I would try to climb the shorter, slimmer trees. I fell often – sometimes many times a day, and often far and painfully – but I didn’t let my failures deter me. I had already learned by now that the one thing I could be sure of in this spongy, tangled world, was that I’d be guaranteed a reasonably soft landing, even if I did amass lots of bruises, cuts and