It was a beautiful day when we set out in our launch, and the sun burnished the sea in swathes of palest cornflower-blue from which, at intervals, flying fish burst like rockets to shoot through the air, ruling a straight line with their drooping tails along the surface of the sea. After some two hours we could see the humpback of Nosy Komba appearing, furry with rain forest picked out in a dozen shades of green and russet. We rounded a headland and made towards a long golden beach lined with palm trees, among which we could make out the huts of the village. The launch’s engine stammered to a halt, and in the silence we drifted shoreward until pulled up short by the anchor. We unloaded the food we had brought into the dinghy, for you never arrive at small remote islands and become a liability to their limited commissariat. As we neared the beach the drums started, and as the bows of the dinghy scrunched softly into the sand and we stepped out into the lukewarm sea, the entire village clad in multicoloured robes, playing drums and twanging valihas, poured out of the trees and down to the beach to greet us. It was like being engulfed by a moving flower-bed, so colorful and brilliant were the costumes. The oldest lady in the village, who must have been getting on to eighty, singled me out, presuming by my grey hairs and corpulence that I must be the leader of the party, and we were soon dancing our impromptu hula by the beach together. Lee and John were similarly treated by young village blood and a buxom maiden and so within a very short time, we literally danced our way into the village, surrounded by grinning, clapping, dancing people. It was one of the warmest and friendliest greetings I have had anywhere in the world, and my dancing could not have been greeted with more reverence and delight if I had been Fred Astaire.
While the villagers set about the preparation of the food we had brought, we made our way to the edge of the village, armed with a gift of bananas, to visit the sacred lemurs. These are the black lemurs, or Macaco lemurs, and their history is curious. Legend has it that hundreds of years ago a Malagasy king came to Nosy Komba and made it his kingdom. Among the many goods and chattels he brought with him were several black lemurs as pets for his children. Naturally, as the royal offspring’s animals, they were accorded sacred status, and could in no way be molested. Under this benign regime the lemurs flourished, and their wants were attended to by a special lemur keeper who made sure that the animals lacked for nothing. Gradually, the royal family died out but the cult of the sacred lemurs remained, as did the post of lemur keeper, which is still handed down from father to son or daughter. In this instance, the keeper of the lemurs was a handsome, shy girl of about twenty, holding a fat brown interested baby in her arms. We gave her the small prescribed amount which you paid towards their upkeep, and she led us into the forest at the edge of the village. In the shade of the great trees she paused and called, but this was really unnecessary, for the bright-eyed lemurs had already seen us, and the trees were full of them, parading along the branches towards us, uttering loud purring grunts, tails aloft. At first glance one would be pardoned for thinking that they represented two species, so different were the sexes in appearance. The males were satanic black from head to tail, and against the dark fur their yellow eyes showed up like dandelions on a pool of pitch. The females were mainly biscuit-brown, with paler silvery-beige overtones here and there. In both sexes the fur round their faces grew into a long, tattered Elizabethan ruff, which gave them an unkempt and slightly raffish look.
They welcomed us into their kingdom with great benevolence and lack of condescension. They simply poured out of the trees and surrounded us, uttering their loud purring grunts, standing on their hind legs to pull at our trouser legs or hands, beseeching us for bananas. As this bounty was distributed, they grew more excited and even bolder, climbing up our arms to sit on our shoulders or on our heads and bickering among each other over the fruit. One large male, black as a thunder-cloud, decided that the best vantage point was on top of the cine camera, so he shinned up the tripod and sat on top of the apparatus, his thick bell-rope tail hanging down over the lens, making photography impossible.
After a while, when the largesse of bananas ran out, the royal lemurs grew bored with us and retreated to the great shady trees at the edge of the forest, where they paraded up and down swinging their tails, or else lay spread-eagled on the branches, their arms and legs dangling. Some went to sleep while others assiduously groomed them. Seeing them lying there in the dappled shade, relaxed and unafraid, and knowing they could enter and parade through the village without harm was a wonderful thing. Here on this idyllic island, man and animal had come to live together without rancour and animosity. One wished that lemurs all over Madagascar were accorded this right.
By the time we had finished our audience with the lemurs, the villagers had prepared the feast. As we had been admiring the lemurs, in the background we had been aware of a faint noise, steady as a heartbeat. This had been three young girls gathered round a huge wooden mortar, wielding wooden pestles to husk the rice we had brought. Rhythmic as a dance, their heavy pestles rose and fell, and as each pestle was of a different size and weight so each gave out a different sound as it struck, as church bells do. So our food was prepared to the rhythmic, three note chimes of the pestle and mortar. And what a delicious meal it was with fish, chicken and zebu served on great mountains of rice which, fortunately, had never seen the inside of a packet or a super-market. Grey as smoke and with a lovely nutty flavour it clung, glutinous and delicious, to your teeth. Then there were bananas yellow as saffron, mangoes golden and juicy, and slabs of fresh coconut as white as snow. To wash down this gargantuan repast were beer, various soft drinks and palm wine. The last of these looked and tasted not unlike slightly acid barley water and was deceptively mild but had a kick like a mule. After such a meal what else could one do but sing and dance? So the band started up and the rhythmic clapping formed the percussion. Numerous elegant dances were performed and then my eighty-year-old girlfriend took the floor, and in spite of the food and the palm wine (or maybe because of it) I took the floor as well. I am not sure what the dance was called, but it was a dance of seduction and left little if anything to the imagination. At the climax my sarong (which I donned for the feast) fell gracefully to my ankles, thus putting the finishing touches to a dance that would, I am sure, have had Freud fascinated and added much to his knowledge of human behaviour.
The next dance was a much more vigorous and difficult one, called the crocodile dance. It was also a rather sad dance when you realised that the last crocodiles in this area had been exterminated some hundred and fifty years ago, so the dance represented (and very graphically) the movements of a creature that none of the villagers could have seen.
First a sarong or cloth was laid in the centre of the circle of villagers, the ballroom as it were. Then the two people who were to do the dance (both men) lay down flat on their stomachs opposite each other. They raised their bodies off the ground on the palms of their hands and their toes. In this awkward ‘press-up’ position they proceeded to jerk themselves across the grass in a series of little jumps. Finally one of them reached the cloth and, seizing it in his teeth, proceeded in this jerky way, backwards, dragging the cloth. The other ‘crocodile’ went in hot pursuit and seized the other end of the cloth. Then a tug of war ensued until one crocodile, exhausted, fell flat on his face. John, whose lack of knowledge of the art of dancing is second only to my own, decided that, as a herpetologist, the crocodile dance was for him; and so, to the delight of the assembled company, he lowered his lanky length to the ground and challenged the winning ‘crocodile’. The result had everyone in paroxysms of mirth, for John started in great style and even seized the cloth, but then his hands and toes kept giving out and, as an additional hazard, his glasses kept misting over or actually falling off so he could not see where his protagonist was. But after half an hour of this, when John gave up exhausted, the villagers gave us to understand that he was, as far as they were concerned, the best crocodile of all.
The sun was
going down in a great cluster of delicate feathery pink clouds, and the sea was as smooth as blue cream. Reluctantly we had to leave Nosy Komba, with its charming people and its entrancing lordly lemurs. The whole village, playing instruments, clapping and singing, accompanied us down to the beach and pushed the dinghy off. We reached the launch, the engine roared into life and we slid over the smooth waters. Behind us the multicoloured crowd of villagers stood at the sea’s edge waving, and above the noise of the engine we could hear their singing and clapping. It was a magical experience to be so privileged as to meet people and animals in such a setting.
7. Lament of the Rain Forest
Our time in Madagascar was drawing to a close and we were most anxious to see and film two more things, a piece of the island’s wonderful tropical forest and the indri, largest and most spectacular of all the lemurs. Luckily for us the tropical forest we wanted to see was the indri’s home, and so we set out from Antananarivo to drive across to Perinet, the little forest reserve in which the indri lived.
At first we drove through the rolling uplands with paddy fields glittering in the sun, but then as we descended, these rolling eroded hills gave place to thicker and thicker forest. Here the great trees reared up, their branches made into miniature gardens by the epiphytes and orchids that grew along them in snakes’ nests of entwined lianas. Here and there the forest was broken by a stream which glittered and frothed round moss-wigged rocks, and here and there on the banks the tree-ferns clustered like bizarre and beautiful golden-green frozen fountains. It was here that you realised how fantastic and rich this country was. In Madagascar, every tree or bush you saw was probably unique to the island and formed a wonderful, intricate habitat, for the strange fauna. Here you could find the world’s largest and smallest chameleons side by side. Here were carnivorous plants that trapped insects, and cacti that climbed. Here was the famous orchid with so deep and complex a throat that a moth which had evolved a six-inch proboscis is the only insect that can pollinate it. To facilitate this process the delicate creamy star-like flowers gleam luminescently in the gloom of the forest to guide the insect to their fragrant hearts. Here you can find beetles and horned spiders of such bizarre shapes and colours that the works of Fabergè fade into insignificance. Here are butterflies and moths with wings bigger than your hand, marked and intricately coloured like fine tapestries, Persian carpets or the stained glass of a hundred cathedrals. Here are insects that look so like sticks you could be pardoned for starting a fire with them; and the larvae of other insects, trailing gossamer white filaments, which look so like flowers you could attempt to fill a vase with them. Here you have frogs in liveries that would make the servants at any royal court look drab, and the lethargic chameleon who changes colour slowly and delicately as if every tiny scale were an opal. Then the mammals, strange little carnivores like a cross between a weasel and a squirrel who call to each other in tuneful and beautiful whistles: lemurs of every shape and colour; hedgehog-like tenrecs decked out in bizarre spines and hair. Then in the trees with the lemurs a panoply of birds—pigeons with bare, scarlet faces and beetle-iridescent blue-green bodies; giant couas, cornflower-and ultramarine-blue like bits of errant sky in the forest gloom; birds with monstrous beaks and birds with ravishing song and birds of sunset colouring. All this treasure in the great rain forests of Madagascar, but rain forests that—if they continue to be destroyed—will vanish in forty years or less, taking all the treasure with them, altering climate, no longer able to combat erosion, leaving the land and the people destitute. To preserve his country, the most important single thing the Malagasy must do is to preserve the forests.
After travelling for several hours we stopped in one of the charming Malagasy villages for breakfast. Delicious smells wafted to us from the open-air stalls that lined the street, and in the cool morning air, with the newly arisen sun crisping every colour, we feasted royally on fried banana cakes and fried doughnuts and drank the milk of green coconuts which was as cold as if it had been in a fridge. Three hours later we bumped down a road thickly lined with bushes weighed down with their moon-white trumpet-shaped flowers, and came into the main square of Perinet, a cluster of very dilapidated buildings. Dominating this, grandiose in design and structure, was the station hotel, for Perinet was an important stop on the railway to the coast. The reason we had decided not to travel to Perinet by train—it was very tempting for train connoisseurs—was that the trains’ times suffered from all the vagaries of the English weather, and enchanting though such a lackadaisical and relaxed approach can be, we had not the time to spare. However, to stay at the railway hotel was the next best thing. We were captivated by the hotel the moment we saw it. Seedy was not the right word for it. It had a sort of decaying grandeur about it that was irresistible. ‘Here am I,’ it seemed to say, ‘an aristocrat, a Malagasy Gare du Nord, left here, abandoned with the forest invading me, my fabric falling apart, beset and bewildered by trains that arrive at the wrong times. Nevertheless, I welcome you to such as I have to offer.’ And this marvellous station hotel had a lot to offer. There was the gigantic dining room lined with windows, some of which looked out on to the sad square, and others out on to the main platform and the weed-grown track. It had a host of tables, a fumed oak bar with an imposing array of bottles, all empty, and massive fumed-oak beams overhead supporting art nouveau chandeliers beset with chains and cracked glass. The wall had once had brightly coloured murals depicting Malagasy life, but these were now dim, spider be-webbed and peeling. A broad and elegant staircase led to the upper floors where wide wooden corridors, bent and rheumatic with age, creaked and moaned protestingly at your weight. So what if the bedrooms had been painted as dark as a cave by dusty and dirty handmarks, the bed was as soft as any dried river bed, and the bath, which trickled brown water filled with mosquito larvae, looked as though it had been used as a dip for uncomplaining sheep? Outside in the mango trees mouse lemurs squeaked and trilled, giant moths like Chinese kites flew through your window and huge beetles like iridescent green leaves lurked beneath your bed. What ardent naturalist could complain, particularly when we had a handsome, beautifully mannered Malagasy manager who had the indefinable air of having been a head-waiter at the Ritz, who would get up at four in the morning to chop wood and light the kitchen fire so we could breakfast at five? Where in all the world could you find a hotel manager who would do that?
Having had a zoological if not a very restful night, we descended, yawning, at five o’clock to the dining room and endeavoured to make ourselves feel human by the application of hot coffee and toast. Then we drove a few miles into the forest in the apple-green dawn light, amongst trees lashed together by spiders’ webs bigger than cart-wheels, each sequined with dew. We arrived at the little cluster of foresters’ huts and discussed with the men the possibility of seeing and filming indri. They were quite hopeful for they said a small troop of the big lemur had been seen three days running about two miles from the huts. While we set off into the forest to try our luck we asked the foresters and their children (for children are excellent at locating creatures) if they would collect some of the lesser denizens of the forest for us to film.
The path that led into the forest climbed a steep slope in which the foresters had cut steps and propped them with cut logs. At the top it flattened out and meandered off through the thick forest. Here again were the giant dew-spangled spiders’ webs, each with its fantastic occupant; these crab-shaped spiders, with bodies the size of a damson, were clad in crimson, gold, white and yellow, and on the ends of their abdomens had great, curved decorations like miniature zebu horns. The tops of the trees were still entwined with skeins of mist drawn out by the rising sun, and the leaves around us were full of the chorus of unseen birds.
We knew that that indris are the aristocrats of the lemurs, and, as befits those of noble lineage, they rarely get up much before ten o’clock when the mist has lifted and the forest is, so to speak, aired and warm. Then they move slowl
y round their territory in a series of prodigious kangaroo-like leaps from tree to tree, feeding on the fresh green leaves, flowers and shoots and pausing periodically to delineate their kingdom with the aid of their powerful and beautiful song. So we walked slowly and quietly through the forest, hoping to find the indris’ boudoir before they had arisen, and so be in a position to track their movements for the rest of the morning. But half past nine came and we still had had no success. We knew that unless we pinpointed the indris by ten o’clock they would be on the move, and we could wander haphazardly all over the forest all day without finding them.
But try as we would we could not locate our quarry, and at eleven o’clock we had to give up and make our way back to the foresters’ huts. Here we were slightly mollified by the smaller prizes that had been obtained for us. There were two species of chameleon, one a dragon-green monster as long as my forearm from wrist to elbow, with a fat tail coiled like a green Catherine wheel, parrot-like feet and wildly swiveling eyes. The other was smaller, banded in coffee-brown and pale putty, with a raised casque on his head resembling the armoured headgear of an ancient knight, and a serrated edge along his backbone. The foresters’ children had also captured a handsome olive-green and black Madagascar boa some six feet long. He proved to be a most tractable and charming snake and let us photograph him from every conceivable angle, climbing and wriggling about various parts of the forest. After an hour, however, he felt he had done sufficient acting and started to hiss at us in a peevish sort of way. We felt he had been most patient and deserved his freedom, and so we let him go and filmed him as he disappeared into the forest.