CHAPTER 004
Beneath the high canopy of trees, the jungle floor was dark and silent. No breeze stirred the giant ferns at shoulder height. Hagar wiped sweat from his forehead, glanced back at the others, and pushed on. The expedition moved deep into the jungles of central Sumatra. No one spoke, which was the way Hagar liked it.
The river was just ahead. A dugout canoe on the near bank, a rope stretched across the river at shoulder height. They crossed in two groups, Hagar standing up in the dugout, pulling them across on the rope, then going back for the others. It was silent except for the cry of a distant hornbill.
They continued on the opposite bank. The jungle trail grew narrower, and muddy in spots. The team didn’t like that; they made a lot of noise trying to scramble around the wet patches. Finally, one said, “How much farther is it?”
It was that kid. The whiny American teenager with spots on his face. He was looking to his mother, a largish matron in a broad straw hat.
“Are we almost there?” the kid whined.
Hagar put his finger to his lips. “Quiet!”
“My feet hurt.”
The other tourists were standing around, a cluster of bright-colored clothing. Staring at the kid.
“Look,” Hagar whispered, “if you make noise, you won’t see them.”
“I don’t see them anyhow.” The kid pouted, but he fell into line as the group moved on. Today they were mostly Americans. Hagar didn’t like Americans, but they weren’t the worst. The worst, he had to admit, were the-
“There!”
“Look there!”
The tourists were pointing ahead, excited, chattering. About fifty yards up the trail and off to the right, a juvenile male orangutan stood upright in the branches that swayed gently with his weight. Magnificent creature, reddish fur, roughly forty pounds, distinctive white streak in the fur above his ear. Hagar had not seen him in weeks.
Hagar gestured for the others to be quiet, and moved up the trail. The tourists were close behind him now, stumbling, banging into one another in their excitement.
“Ssssh!” he hissed.
“What’s the big deal?” one said. “I thought this was a sanctuary.”
“Ssssh!”
“But they’re protected here-”
“Ssssh!”
Hagar needed it quiet. He reached into his shirt pocket and pressed the Record button. He unclipped his lapel mike and held it in his hand.
They were now about thirty yards from the orang. They passed a sign along the trail that said BUKUT ALAM ORANGUTAN SANCTUARY. This was where orphaned orangs were nursed to health, and reintroduced into the wild. There was a veterinary facility, a research station, a team of researchers.
“If it’s a sanctuary, I don’t understand why-”
“George, you heard what he said. Be quiet.”
Twenty yards, now.
“Look, another one! Two! There!”
They were pointing off to the left. High in the canopy, a one-year-old, crashing through branches with an older juvenile. Swinging gracefully. Hagar didn’t care. He was focused on the first animal.
The white-streaked orang did not move away. Now he was hanging by one hand, swinging in the air, head cocked to one side as he looked at them. The younger animals in the canopy were gone. White-streak stayed where he was, and stared.
Ten yards. Hagar held his microphone out in front of him. The tourists were pulling out their cameras. The orang stared directly at Hagar and made an odd sound, like a cough.“Dwaas.”
Hagar repeated the sound back. “Dwaas.”
The orang stared at him. The curved lips moved. A sequence of guttural grunts:“Ooh stomm dwaas, varlaat leanme.”
One of the tourists said, “Is he making those sounds?”
“Yes,” Hagar said.
“Is he…talking?”
“Apes can’t talk,” another tourist said. “Orangs are silent. It says so in the book.”
Several snapped flash pictures of the hanging ape. The juvenile male showed no surprise. But the lips moved:“Geen lichten dwaas.”
“Does he have a cold?” a woman asked nervously. “Sounds like he’s coughing?”
“He’s not coughing,” another voice said.
Hagar glanced over his shoulder. A heavyset man at the back, a man who had struggled to keep up, red-faced and puffing, now held a tape recorder in his hand, pointing it toward the orang. He had a determined look on his face. He said to Hagar, “Is this some kind of trick you play?”
“No,” Hagar said.
The man pointed to the orang. “That’s Dutch,” he said. “Sumatra used to be a Dutch colony. That’s Dutch.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hagar said.
“I would. The animal said, ‘Stupid, leave me alone.’ And then it said, ‘No lights.’ When the camera flashes went off.”
“I don’t know what those sounds were,” Hagar said.
“But you were recording them.”
“Just out of curiosity-”
“You had your microphone out long before the sounds began. You knew that animal would speak.”
“Orangs can’t speak,” Hagar said.
“That one can.”
They all stared at the orangutan, still swinging from one arm. It scratched itself with the free arm. It was silent.
The heavyset man said loudly,“Geen lichten.”
The ape just stared, blinked slowly.
“Geen lichten!”
The orang gave no sign of comprehension. After a moment, he swung to a nearby branch, and began to climb into the air, moving easily, arm on arm.
“Geen lichten!”
The ape kept climbing. The woman in the big straw hat said, “I think it was just coughing or something.”
“Hey,” the heavyset man yelled.“M’sieu! Comment?a va?”
The ape continued up through the branches, swinging in an easy rhythm with its long arms. It did not look down.
“I thought maybe it speaks French,” the man said. He shrugged. “Guess not.”
A light rain began to drip from the canopy. The other tourists put their cameras away. One shrugged on a light, transparent raincoat. Hagar wiped the sweat from his forehead. Up ahead, three young orangs were scampering around a tray of papayas on the ground. The tourists turned their attention to them.
From high in the canopy came a growling sound:“Esp?ce de con.” The phrase came to them clearly, surprisingly distinct in the still air.
The heavyset man spun around.“What?”
Everyone turned to look upward.
“That was a swear word,” the teenager said. “In French. I know it was a swear word. In French.”
“Hush,” his mother said.
The group stared up at the canopy, searching the dense mass of dark leaves. They could not see the ape up there.
The heavyset man yelled,“Qu’est-ce que tu dis?”
There was no answer. Just the crash of an animal moving through branches, and the distant cry of a hornbill.
(News of the World)
(Der Spiegel)
(Paris Match,beneath a picture of Jacques Derrida)
(Weekly Standard)
(National Enquirer)
(New York Times, subsequent correction printed)
(Los Angeles Times)
“And, finally, a group of tourists in Indonesia swear they were abused by an orangutan in the jungles of Borneo. According to the tourists, the ape swore at them in Dutch and French, which means it was probably a lot smarter than they were. But no recordings of the cursing chimp have turned up, leading us to conclude that if you believe this story, we have a job for you in the current administration. Plenty of talking apes there!”
(Countdown with Keith Olbermann,MSNBC News, no correction)
CHAPTER 005
Get this,”Charlie Huggins said, looking at the television in the kitchen of his house in San Diego. The sound was turned off, but he was reading the crawl beneath. “It says, ‘Talking Ape Cited in Sumatra.’”