Jon Evans - Dark Places

Rescue came a little later, in the form of the monkey sanctuary's Land Rover followed by a gaggle of Nigerians on "machines", or motorcycle taxis. We decided to leave the truck where it was, guarded by Hallam and Steve and Nicole, and negotiated rides up the road with our saviours. Half of us got rides on the Land Rover. I got stuck on the back of a "machine." My driver was all of seventeen years old, and first he crossed the river on a bridge made of a single four-by-four, then revved the engine and attacked the steep, rutted, uneven, stony road at terrifying speed. For parts of the journey I had my eyes closed, but in the end we made it alive. And the monkey sanctuary, run by an American woman who had come to Nigeria on a ten-day visa fourteen years ago and had not yet left, was a fantastic place, verdant paradise beneath a deep canopy of rainforest, shockingly and wonderfully green after the crumbling gray concrete and smog of the rest of the country.

The next morning, after breakfast, I sat in the tent watching Laura pack her toothbrush away, and said: "I meant what I said yesterday."

"Which thing was that?" she asked without turning around.

"I want to leave the truck."

She stopped and turned around. "Paul. I know you were upset. But let it go."

"It wasn't yesterday's digging," I said. "I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of our lives revolving around food. I'm sick of being the circus everywhere we go. I'm sick of sleeping in tents, I'm sick of cooking for nineteen people every five days, I'm sick of having zero privacy, and I'm sick of having to keep going whenever we go someplace I want to stay and having to stay every time we go somewhere I want to leave. And yeah, I'm sick of digging that fucking truck out of the mud, too."

"I thought you wanted to cross the Congo. The truck's the only way."

"I don't think we'll make it. But even if we could…I'd love to cross the Congo, but not on this truck."

After a pause she said "Are you talking about leaving alone?"

"What?" I asked, shocked. "No! Definitely not. Together. I want us both to leave. We can fly to Zimbabwe and visit my aunt and uncle. Or to Kenya if you'd rather go there."

"I'm not going."

I hadn't expected so flat a rejection.

After a moment I asked "As simple as that?"

She looked at me defiantly. "These are our people. You know that. And I'm not leaving them. If you want to go, you can go on your own. But I'm staying. And if you want to stay with me, you're staying too."

"That's…that's…this is…" I spluttered.

"What?"

I didn't know what I was trying to say, so I just looked at her.

"Is it the lifestyle you hate?" she asked. "Or the people? I know you're not a people person. But I thought you liked everyone."

"I do," I said. "I know. I mean, you're right, I agree, these are our people. I just can't handle truck life any more."

"You're going to have to."

I finally worked out what I wanted to say. "I thought our being together was more important than staying with the people around us."

"They're just as important," she said, very seriously, looking me straight in the eyes. "I'm not saying you're unimportant. You're not. That should be obvious. You're the world to me, Paul. You know that. But these are our people. They matter just as much. To both of us. I just wish you could see that. But until you can I'm not going to let you make this mistake."

I wish I had listened to her, really listened to her, to what she was trying to say. But I was angry, and I was upset, and I was eager to wallow in self-pity, and what I heard instead was: they're more important to me than you are; and I know you won't leave me; and I'm going to use that to get my way and make you stay.

"Fuck this," I said. "I'm going for a walk."

I stalked out of the tent before she could stop me.

I was so upset, replaying our conversation over and over again in my mind, layering the worst connotations imaginable on everything Laura had said, that I walked for a good half-hour before looking up and realizing that I was completely lost. For awhile I had walked through a little community of farming huts that adjoined the sanctuary, neatly kept wooden huts alongside a stream and surrounded by fields of vegetables, fields where the locals had wisely retained a few big trees in order to protect themselves from the crippling midday sun. From there I had taken a wide dirt path into the forest. But the path had shrunk and forked and subdivided, and I wasn't sure where I stood could even be called part of a trail at all. I was, however, sure that I could not retrace my tracks.

"Shit," I muttered. I looked around. At least I could see. This was not like the dense mangrove jungles of the south; this was rainforest, where the trees rose a hundred feet into the sky before their branches jutted out, their canopy swallowing so much light that the underbrush was relatively thin. I could see a fair distance in most directions. But it all looked the same. Waist-high bushes, young trees, fallen branches, enormous vines coiled like snakes around mossy fallen tree trunks, all carpeted by golden petals of some flower that must grow high in the canopy.

"Shit," I said again. Lost in African rainforest. A glorious and wonderful place to be lost, but still embarrassingly stupid and potentially dangerous. The vines reminded me uncomfortably of the pythons that lived in the jungle. And there were leopards. I heard something rustle in the distance and twitched nervously before getting hold of myself. Carnivores were extremely rare and not likely to attack something as big as me. The only real danger was not being found. If I stayed where I was they would come and find me. Somehow. The people at the sanctuary would send out locals who would work their local magic and track me down.

I shook my head. Maybe Laura was right for an entirely different reason. Maybe I shouldn't leave the truck because on my own I was too stupid to live.

I decided to look around to see if I could find a more obvious trail. I didn't want to be like Robbie in the desert, walking when he should have stayed put, but ten minutes of casting around for landmarks couldn't hurt. I had a vague idea that I had been going east and downhill. The sun was too high for me to judge directions, so I just went uphill.

After five minutes of walking I paused to silently appreciate the rainforest's majesty and perceived, just barely, at the edge of my hearing, the welcome sound of burbling water. After a couple of false starts I worked out where it was coming from and found the stream that was its source. Some animal had been drinking at the stream but fled before I could see what it was. I wished I had, but it didn't matter. The important thing was I was no longer lost. Triumphant, feeling very intrepid indeed, I followed the water upstream until I found the village near the sanctuary.

I wasn't really relieved, because I had never really been nervous. The rainforest was too beautiful for me to be frightened. I was glad that I had been lost. How many chances would I ever get to know what it is like to be alone in the African rainforest? If I had been with anyone else I would have talked to them, would not have had the chance to understand how pure, how peaceful it was. I wished Laura had come. We could have sat quietly together and appreciated it. That would have been better than being alone. But anyone else would have spoiled it.

Which, in a nutshell, was my problem with the truck.

When I got back, our group was just saddling up for an expedition to visit the chimpanzees. It was an interesting place, I suppose. Laura and I maintained a cold silence. during the expedition. For once I wasn't annoyed by the presence of the usual crowd. It made it easy to keep my distance from her.

When we got back to the tent we shared she looked at me expectantly. I knew what she was waiting for. An apology and an admission that she was right.