The Aye-Aye and I by Gerald Durrell
That night, Lee fed Verity on a curious diet that we had evolved. Firstly, there were beetle larvae, some three inches long and weighing almost an ounce. They looked like some curious living eiderdown as they waddled about like fat old ladies in pale silk nightgowns and would, presumably, turn into the large beetles we had seen, each the size of a matchbox, gleaming black and brown as if newly polished and with huge rhinoceros-like horns on their heads. The larvae, I must confess, were rather revolting, like maggots viewed through a high-powered microscope, but Verity had no such artistic qualms and fell on them with all the enthusiasm of a child presented with an ice cream. He also ate bread balls made of raw egg and honey, which he loved. In addition, for we did not want his teeth to overgrow, he had sticks of sugar cane and the occasional coconut. On this diet, he thrived and within a few days was coming down to the wire to take food from Lee’s hand.
When we got back from organizing our campsite, Julian said he wanted to go off night hunting on his own to see if he could find any signs of our quarry around the Antanambaobe area. We let him go, hoping that he would return in the morning to tell us that we were pitching camp in the largest concentration of aye-aye known to science, but rather doubting it. The main trouble with aye-aye is the fact that they are like gypsies, forever moving on. They will find a suitable farm to plunder and, then, when they have eaten their fill, they will make a nest to sleep in. These are architecturally rather bulky edifices of leaves and vine, with soft bedding inside. In these bowers they would rest up during the day and sally forth at night, like pirates, seeking another farm to decimate. It was only by climbing up to these nests in the daytime that you stood any chance of a capture. The annoying thing was that the local rats built nests of somewhat similar size and design and you could not tell whose abode it was until you had climbed up to it. To have to climb fifty or sixty feet up a tree (a hazardous task in itself) only to find that the nest belonged to a rat was extremely irritating and time-wasting. It appeared – although we were not wholly certain of this – that the aye-aye built its nest, slept in it, and the next day moved on to build another nest for the following night. So even if you had, with extreme difficulty, climbed up to a nest, you might well find it empty. Another factor was that we had arrived in what was thought to be the middle of the breeding season and, because we know so little about the aye-aye, we do not know if the mother remains in the same nest after the baby is born, until it is old enough to follow her, or whether she continues her normal foraging and builds a new nest each night, transferring the helpless young to this nursery.
Our lack of knowledge of this incredible animal (as, indeed, most animals) is lamentable. However, there is hope. Some years ago, a few aye-aye were caught (at the time, they were thought to be the last ones in existence) and transferred to an island called Nosy Mangabe, which was a sanctuary. Here they flourished and to this island came a redoubtable lady called Eleanor Stirling. She has been studying these island aye-aye for two years now and, when she finally publishes her PhD on them, it is to be hoped that most of the animal’s secrets will be revealed.
The next morning Julian appeared, totally unconcerned, grinning happily, to report that his mission had been unsuccessful. Although we had expected it, this was still irritating news and so we set off for the campsite in a gloomy mood. Our spirits lifted, however, when we reached the riverbank to find that everything we had asked for had been done, a near miracle anywhere in the world. The giant bamboos, each the circumference of a saucer, green and old-ivory yellow, with black markings like paint strokes here and there, had been cut on the opposite side of the river and then floated across. Piled up, they looked like a collection of giant sticks of barley sugar. Bamboos are one of Nature’s most astonishingly useful varieties of plant life. Cut off one of their joints (each measuring perhaps three feet in length) and then remove one end and you have an almost unbreakable and elegant receptacle: a jug, a jar, a water carrier or a vase. Cut the whole joint in half, trim it, and you have two mugs; split it lengthways and you have a giant ashtray or a convenient, tray-like object for keeping such things as paperclips, pens and pencils in.
We had measured out the kitchen-living area and work commenced as soon as we arrived. It was fascinating to watch the building take shape. Firstly, the holes for the uprights were dug with spades. The only other tool to be used for construction was a coup-coup (known in different parts of the world as a machete, cutlass, parang, krisor yataghan). Shaped something like a young brother to a sabre and razor sharp, this invaluable tool becomes, in the hand of a skilled man, almost part of his body, a deadly and accurate elongation of his arm. A well-honed coup-coup can slice off a man’s arm, split his skull in two or delicately bisect a grass blade.
The speed and accuracy with which the villagers used these deadly weapons was incredible. As soon as the holes were ready, the bamboo lengths were shaved of any leaves or small branches. The bamboo was then lowered into the hole, so we could judge the height because we did not want a house built which, while eminently suitable for the Seven Dwarfs (or Malagasy), would have had us constantly banging our heads on the rafters, as if we were living in an Elizabethan cottage. Once the height of the building was established, the top end of the bamboo was cut into the shape of a V, planted in the hole and well tamped down. Meanwhile, one of the giant bamboos had been carefully skinned of its tough bark, which provided the necessary ‘rope’ to bind the cross-beams to the uprights. While this was being done, the roofing was being prepared. This consisted of palm fronds whose central rib had been sliced half through, so that the fronds on each side of the leaf could hang together, tent fashion. When the rafters of the house were in place and tied, this roofing of fronds was hauled up, placed along the beam and fastened in place.
By lunchtime, the basic structure was up and half the roof was on. The speed was incredible. By the time we returned from lunch, the structure was ready. By teatime, the tents were up, ours under a breadfruit tree, while the team preferred to erect their smart green ones in a regimented line. Frank insisted on perching his orange-and-white-striped tent up on a sandbank, which completely ruined the view from our tent. But who were we to argue with the director? Now only a few details were needed to complete the layout – latrines, a rubbish hole and so on. Our multifarious equipment was unloaded and stacked haphazardly in our newly erected house to be sorted. By this time, as far as the village was concerned, the circus had come to town.
While frenzied activity was taking place a little way up the hill, where the animal house was in the process of construction, what appeared to be the entire younger population of Antanambaobe descended on us and ringed us in a circle twelve deep around the house. They were very handsome, very quiet and orderly but, as the news of our eccentricities spread, more and more children arrived and the ring steadily got closer and closer. They were exceedingly well behaved, but the mere fact that they all sat around us prevented us from sorting out our goods and chattels and getting settled in. Apart from this, the temperature inside our living quarters rose by five degrees simply from the heat given off by the massed bodies.
Of course, as far as the kids were concerned, we were something out of this world. If we had arrived by flying saucer, we could not have made a greater impression. We were a combination of Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, the Lord Mayor’s Show and the Changing of the Guard, with several Walt Disney films thrown in. It was interesting to see their faces, wide-eyed, watching us with the avidity of telly addicts. Most of the gear we unpacked was as incomprehensible to them as the equipment 007 was always using in the Bond films. Only when we produced things they understood would their eyes widen and sibilant whispers of recognition would rustle among them; clothing, lambas, tins of sardines and corned beef, gleaming golden bottles of cooking oil, rice and tins of biscuits. Our every move was scrutinized as closely as if they were Scotland Yard on the scene of a crime. We did nothing that was not recorded by their shining mulberry eyes, no doubt to be divulged to their
‘I’ve no wish to be a spoilsport to these kids,’ I said to Lee. ‘This is obviously the biggest event that has ever occurred in their short lives. But if they would move further back so we are not suffocated, it would be a help. It would be an even greater help if they went away and came back tomorrow, if someone could persuade them that we are here for several weeks and will not vanish overnight. Can you go and track down Monsieur Jerome and see what he can do? Make sure that he knows we love the kids, but not at this precise juncture.’
We were in the process of drinking – with ill-concealed expressions of disgust – smoky, very bitter, stewed tea, laced with sweetened condensed milk, when Lee returned from her errand, giggling.
‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘Did you see Monsieur Jerome?’
‘Yes,’ said Lee, ‘and he quite understood, so he suggests we have visiting hours.’
‘We have what?’ enquired John, incredulously.
‘Visiting hours.’
‘You mean, like a zoo?’ I asked.
‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ said my wife.
‘The wheel has turned full circle,’ said Frank with relish. ‘I knew you’d end up in a zoo.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ I said.
‘We have certain hours when they can come and look at us,’ Lee explained. ‘I suggested between half-eleven and half-twelve. I thought we’d be eating then and so they wouldn’t get in the way so much.’
‘And?’
‘He said they’d be in school then. So finally we settled on four o’clock to five-thirty,’ said Lee. ‘It seemed the best all round.’
‘Yes, it’s almost a matinee,’ said Captain Bob, adding wistfully, ‘I used to go to a lot of matinees in my youth.’
‘What are we supposed to do for them?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Lee, ‘just behave naturally.’
‘We can’t do nothing with an audience eight hundred strong,’ I protested. ‘We must do something.’
‘Yes,’ said Mickey, his red hair coiling in all directions, his moustache bristling with enthusiasm. ‘We must. I can sing some old music-hall songs for them. You know, “Any Old Iron”, that sort of thing.’
‘I can accompany you with comb and paper, if I can find my comb,’ said Tim.
‘I can do the dagger scene out of Macbeth,’ I said. ‘I used to be a pretty fearsome Macbeth.’
‘You’re pretty fearsome without being Macbeth,’ Frank observed.
‘Lee can sing in French,’ I said, ignoring him. ‘She’s got a lovely voice.’
‘So can I,’ said John eagerly. ‘I can sing.’
‘No, you can’t,’ I said firmly. ‘Having known you for thirty years and having heard you doing what you call singing in a host of different places around the world, I can say, unequivocally, that you can’t sing. You can’t carry a tune and you can’t remember the words.’
‘Is that true?’ asked Graham, interested. ‘I can’t either. Perhaps we could do a duet?’
‘God forbid. You’ll frighten the lives out of the poor little things. In Sierra Leone they used to call John “Masa who get pain for belly”.’
Alas, our high hopes were in vain. At four o’clock, we looked out eagerly for our audience but no one arrived. We discovered later that the parents had given the children such a telling-off for their unseemly behaviour that the poor kids were frightened to come down. In addition, when we went up to where the cars were parked on the road, we found a large notice in rather uncertain capitals, nailed to a post. It said, in Malagasy: ‘The vazaha are our honoured guests. They must not be worried. They can be looked at in the evening by a few people at a time.’ It was obvious that the village was going to respect our privacy at the cost of our thespian ambitions.
In spite of this, our campsite was quite lively, for it lay betwixt two paths that led from the village to the river. One path went down to where a highly unseaworthy pirogue was moored to ferry people and their goods and chattels across the chocolate-coloured waters. The other path meandered down to the river’s edge where the ladies of the village made pilgrimages twice a day to get water and to do their washing-up. As, for the most part, I was crippled and confined to camp, these two paths, anthropologically speaking, provided me with a lot of pleasure and interest.
There was, for instance, the handsome young man who lived somewhere on the opposite bank. He possessed a fine, fat, chestnut-coloured zebu, a rich possession for so young a person and one of which his ancestors were undoubtedly proud. Twice a day, he would bring this handsome animal down for a bathe. At these times, should the ferryman be on our side of the water, he would unhitch his pirogue, paddle across and make fast to a large root on the other side. The zebu, now up to its shoulders, would be thoroughly scrubbed down by its owner with a handful of coarse grass and sometimes a flat stone, a process which the zebu revelled in. Whilst making sure that every inch of his prize was scrubbed meticulously to remove all fleas, ticks, leeches, dandruff and other things zebu are prone to, the incredulous zebu man would be regaled by the ferryman as to the latest goings on in the totally mad vazahas’ camp. The night we tested the generator and floodlit the camp with a fearsome light, the ferryman, in his efforts to describe it to the sceptical zebu man the next day, used such grandiloquent gestures that he overturned the pirogue and ended up, spluttering, in the river. The zebu, I was glad to see, viewed his new bathing companion benignly.
During these bovine washing sessions, the zebu man would get so engrossed in the ferryman’s graphic tales that he would cease operations on his charge. He eagerly questioned the ferryman and meanwhile the zebu would get bored. It would haul its glistening bulk out of the water and go wandering along the bank, trailing its tether behind it. Presently, it would disappear among the trees and in a minute or so uproar would break out as some farmer found it browsing placidly on his crops. The zebu man would then have to run after it, catch it, exchange a brisk volley of insults with the enraged farmer and hurry back to that bewitching fairytale teller, the ferryman.
Down the other path, the ladies would come, bright as parrots in their gay lambas, carrying piles of pots on their heads to wash. Some were tin bowls with most of the enamel worn off and some were plastic whose garishness had dimmed and whose surface had acquired a sort of fur. This deterioration was not to be wondered at when you saw the method employed to clean them, ingenious though it was. A pot would be plunged into the river and a generous handful of sand would then be placed in it. This would be carefully positioned by the feet. While one foot held it so that it was not swept away by the current and turned it round and round, the toes of the other foot were busy sanding down, as it were, the interior of the bowl. This, of course, left the hands free for gesticulation or for the purpose of aiding the mastication of fearsome lengths of sugar cane, ripping it to pieces with an ease that an aye-aye might have envied. Each time the ladies passed and repassed us they would peep at us shyly from under the leaning tower of Pisa of pots on their heads and greet us in gentle, soft voices, like the cooing of doves. They were enchanting and I deeply regretted not knowing Malagasy, for I would have loved to hobble down to the river’s edge and gossip with them as they dexterously twirled their pots with their toes, making a soothing, slushing noise like a Lilliputian steam engine, so much nicer than a washing machine.
There was a man whose behaviour puzzled us all. We had many arguments as to what the meaning of it was, but we were too cowardly to go and ask him. He would cross the river by the pirogue, and then make his way across the sand dunes to the washing-up path. He was minuscule and slender, carefully dressed in shorts and a clean shirt. On his head was perched the straw trilby so beloved of the Malagasy and he had a stick across his shoulder from which dangled a small straw bag, presumably containing his lunch. As he came opposite our living quarters he would stop, doff his headgear, duck his head in
Another character who became well known to us was the Girl with the Bucket. Plump but graceful, with a wide, glittering smile and sleepy provocative eyes, this young lady would come down to the river to fetch water twice a day. For this purpose she had an immense yellow plastic bucket. We would hear her singing to herself, rich and liquid as a blackbird, and then she would appear wearing the bucket over her head like a hat. As the bucket was so huge, it enveloped her head completely, so that all she could see were her feet, yet she made her way down the path, with all its rocks and roots, as sure-footedly as a chamois. The bucket, of course, acted like an amplifier, enhancing her song with an echoing quality. On her return, balancing the bucket of water the right way up on her head, she would give us her dazzling smile, bid us good day and continue up the hill, still singing happily. We used to greatly look forward to her all too brief serenades and her circus act with the bucket.