Nkemi had a reception area with an actual receptionist in it. After being delivered there by my faithful Lobi (whose name, Glen claimed, was a Lingala word meaning both “yesterday” and “tomorrow”), I sat down for a ten-minute wait and then was shown into the presence. Nkemi’s office was suitably bigger and more elegant than Luk’s, but the real surprise for me was the man himself. For no good reason, I’d been expecting someone upright, short, and blocky—a generalissimo, in other words. On the contrary, Nkemi was a tall, lanky, slope-shouldered scholar in a dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He too wore glasses, but he took them off to wave me to a chair in front of his desk.
“Will you join me in some coffee?” he asked. Then, seeing my hesitation, he assured me that it would be made with purified water. I said that would be very nice, though to be honest I would rather have skipped it. He asked in even greater detail about the pleasantness of my journey and the satisfactoriness of my stay in Kinshasa. To these inquiries, he was able to add new ones about my quarters in the Compound and my dinner the previous night, which for some reason he called a reception. Soon there was the coffee and the drinking of coffee. Then at last there was the getting down to business. He explained that he was sorry to seem to hurry me, but he was expecting a phone call from Paris in a few minutes. I said I understood and didn’t mind at all. He said that Mr. Owona had outlined my project to him. He asked me to present it in detail.
It was show time at last.
The gorilla Ishmael, I explained, was a celebrity in America, much the way the gorilla Gargantua had been in a previous generation. Gargantua had eventually died in captivity, but many things had changed among American animal lovers since that time. There was a strong desire to see Ishmael released in the wild, and his owners were willing to cooperate in effecting this outcome—not only to give up an animal that was worth a lot of money but to expend a lot of money to return him to his homeland in the rain forest of central west Africa. All we needed was assistance in moving Ishmael from the point of his arrival in Kinshasa to the point of his release in the Republic of Mabili.
Nkemi demonstrated a polite interest by asking if I thought an animal that had spent its life in captivity would be able to survive in the wild. This was one of many questions on which I’d been coached.
“If he were a predator, no,” I replied. “A full-grown lion, kept in a cage all its life, would almost certainly not have the hunting skills to stay alive in the wild. But a foraging animal like a gorilla will have no difficulty surviving in an appropriate habitat. Even so, his handlers will stay with him in the bush until they’re certain he’s successfully established. If he fails to become established, they’ll have to choose between bringing him back or giving him a painless death.” I didn’t much like mentioning this last point, but it had to be there.
Nkemi next wanted to know if the venture was being sponsored or at least endorsed by some international wildlife protection group like the World Wildlife Fund. I scored one for Art, who had predicted that this question would be asked. What Nkemi was angling for was the possibility of winning some nice headlines for himself in the world press. I told him we hadn’t as yet asked for such sponsorship or endorsement but would be glad to do so if that were an issue.
Nkemi asked why a child had been sent on this mission. This, in my opinion, was one of the weak elements in our fiction, but my only choice was to rattle off what we’d worked out. A national competition had been held in the schools, to be won by the student who wrote the best essay advocating Ishmael’s return to his homeland. I was the winner, and the prize was this journey and this responsibility of asking the president of the Republic of Mabili for his help. Nkemi’s opinion of this feeble tale didn’t seem much higher than mine, but he let it pass without comment.
“Tell me this, Miss Gerchak,” he said after a bit. “What reason do you think I would have for obliging you in this matter?”
“I’d hope that the opportunity to do a good thing would be reason enough.”
He nodded his approval of this diplomatic reply, but that wasn’t the end of it. “But suppose,” he went on, “that the mere opportunity to do a good thing were not sufficient.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can suppose that. Please tell me what would be sufficient.”
He shook his head. “I’m not fishing for a bribe, Miss Gerchak. I want you to find something in this venture that will make it worth my doing, for, to be quite honest, I don’t as yet see it. To be completely blunt, what’s in it for me? Or if there’s nothing in it for me, what’s in it for Mabili—or for Africa? I’m not a terribly greedy man, but I certainly expect to be paid in some coin or other for my cooperation. You’re getting something you want. The owners of this animal are getting something they want—or they would not be doing it, I can assure you. And if what you tell me is true, then all the animal lovers of America will get something they want. Out of all these people, why should I be the only one who doesn’t get something he wants?”
This was without doubt one helluva point, and since I hadn’t a ghost of an idea how to answer it, I could see nothing ahead but the failure of my whole mission. I was in the clutch of pure terror, and my brain locked up. “The trouble is,” I said, “I don’t know what you do want.”
He shook his head again, exactly the same way—painfully, sorrowfully. “The things I want are not the issue, Miss Gerchak. If, hearing of your desire to resettle this animal, I had invited you to come here so I could persuade you to allow me to help you, then you’d certainly expect to hear me explain why I should be granted this opportunity—rather than someone else. You’d want to know how giving me the nod (rather than someone else) would benefit you. And I would tell you that, because I would have worked that out at the very beginning, before inviting you here.”
I sat there gaping at him like a bumpkin.
“You’re a charming young person,” Nkemi went on, “and doubtless wrote a charming essay, but I’m afraid the organizers of this affair would have been wiser to send someone who actually knows how these things are done.”
“Many people will be disappointed,” I offered weakly.
“Making them happy is not my job.”
“But we’re asking for so little!” I bleated.
He shrugged. “If you only ask for a little, then of course you need only offer a little. But asking for little hardly justifies offering nothing.”
Luckily, it was at that moment that Nkemi’s secretary came in to tell him that his call to Paris had gone through. He asked if I’d mind waiting outside for a few minutes. Mind? I made for the door as if my shoes were on fire.
You’ll have some idea of my frame of mind if I tell you that I considered trying to reach Art by phone. I figured it was four-thirty in the morning where he was, so at least he’d be home. The trouble was, I didn’t know how long I had and I didn’t know how long it would take to get a call through. I decided the time would be better spent beating back my panic and coming up with some brilliant reply that was for the moment unimaginable to me.
Besides, I’d already heard what Art had to say on this subject. He was the author of the basic argument I’d just presented: We aren’t asking for very much, so why not give it to us? This argument had proved to be a washout. Ishmael had offered no argument on the point, but if he had, what would it be? Oddly enough, I didn’t know what argument he’d make, but I knew how he’d make it. He’d tell a story—a fable. A fable about a king and a foreign supplicant … About a king who is asked to assist in a restoration of some kind, but who somehow misses the point that this restoration is its own reward …
I’d seen Ishmael come up with a serviceable fable in a matter of minutes. It could be done. The problem was finding the right elements and getting them to work together.… I thought of a pearl. I thought of a gold coin. After getting warmed up on these, I ventured onward to the structure of the inner ear that controls equilibrium; if I’d known what the damn thing is called, I might have stuck with it. Final
ly I got an idea that I thought would be as good as any I was likely to get, and I went to work on it. After about five minutes I was ready for Nkemi, and Nkemi was ready for me.
“I’d like to tell you a story,” I said when I was again seated in his office. Nkemi gave me a little quirk of the head to indicate that this was an interesting and novel approach and that I should proceed.
“One day a prince was interrupted at court by a foreign visitor who had come to ask a favor. The prince drew the visitor into an inner chamber and asked what favor he wanted.
“ ‘I’d like you to open the gate of your castle so I can bring in a horse to lodge in your stable,’ the stranger said.
“ ‘What kind of horse?’ the prince asked.
“ ‘It’s a gray stallion, Your Highness, with a black star on its forehead.’
“The prince frowned and said, ‘There was a horse like that in my father’s stable when I was a boy. Then there was a disastrous fire, and it disappeared along with several others.’
“ ‘Will you open the gate, then, and let me lodge the horse in your stable?’
“ ‘I don’t understand why I should do that,’ the prince replied. ‘Forgive me if I’m blunt, but how would I benefit from doing this favor for you?’
“ ‘I thought you understood, Your Highness,’ the stranger said. ‘This is the very horse that disappeared from your father’s stable when you were a boy. I’m only bringing back something that shouldn’t have left here in the first place.’ ”
Nkemi smiled and gave me a nod that seemed to say, “Carry on.”
“We’re not asking you to look after something that belongs to us,” I told him. “We’re trying to restore something that belongs to you.”
Nkemi nodded, still smiling. “You see? I could have discovered this benefit for myself with a little thought. But it was your obligation to show it to me, not mine to discover it. By expecting me to find whatever benefit I could in your proposal, you were being quite disrespectful to me—though I understand perfectly that you personally meant no such disrespect.”
“I understand,” I said, “and I agree completely.”
“I will of course be glad to cooperate with you in this odd little venture. Mr. Owona will see to all the arrangements that must be made at this end.”
With that, he stood up and extended his hand to me to say farewell.
Eight hours later I was in the air headed back to Zurich.
Feats of Timing
After a long, boring layover in Atlanta, I was home before midnight on Friday—home but virtually comatose. Mother shoveled me into bed. I wasn’t too friendly when she woke me at eight the next morning to say that Mr. Owens was on his way to pick me up. I could have used another six hours of unconsciousness, but I got up, got showered, got dressed, and got fed in time to be out on the street to meet him so that he didn’t have to come in and make polite talk with my mother. We would have about a ninety-minute drive to get to the carnival, which had moved two towns northward by this time.
After giving him a fairly blow-by-blow account of my African adventure, I asked him what was up.
“Two things have happened since you left,” he said. “One is that Ishmael has caught a terrible cold that I’m afraid may turn into pneumonia. There aren’t many vets who’re capable of treating a gorilla or set up to treat a gorilla, but I’ve located one, and an ambulance is on its way to the carnival grounds right now.”
All I wanted to say about this was: “He’ll be all right, won’t he?” But I knew Art well enough to know that if he had any reassurance to give me, he would already have given it. He didn’t look terribly worried, and I had to make do with that.
“What’s the second thing?”
He gave a brief, bitter laugh. “The second thing is that Alan Lomax has tracked us down.”
“Listen,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me what this thing with Alan is all about. I know Ishmael doesn’t want to talk about it, but that shouldn’t stop you from talking about it.”
Art drove for a while as he gave the problem some thought. Finally he said, “Every once in a while Ishmael will encounter a pupil who just won’t let go. Who gets … possessive. This just scares Ishmael to death—for good reason, actually.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Think about it. Once you own an animal, well, let’s face it, you control it absolutely.”
“Yes, but Alan doesn’t own Ishmael.”
“The point is, Alan wants to own him. Day before yesterday, he offered me a thousand dollars for him.”
“Oh, Christ Almighty,” I groaned. I wanted to scream. I wanted to bite hunks out of the dashboard. “What did you tell him?”
Art grinned. “That I might take twenty-five hundred.”
“Why did you do that?” I inquired indignantly.
“What would you have me do? I had to preserve the fiction that, as far as I’m concerned, Ishmael’s just another animal in my collection.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You have to keep in mind that, from Alan’s point of view, he’s doing something completely admirable. He’s trying to rescue Ishmael from a desperate situation.”
“Hasn’t Ishmael told him he doesn’t need to be rescued?”
“I’m sure he has. But he doesn’t dare explain why he doesn’t need to be rescued.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it, Julie. You can work that out for yourself.”
I gave the problem some thought but didn’t get anywhere with it. I asked, “How does Alan think Ishmael got to the menagerie in the first place?”
“I have no idea.”
We rode in silence for a while. Finally I said, “What’ll he do next, do you think?”
“Alan? My guess is he’ll go home and try to raise as much money as he can. Once he’s able to flash the cash before my very eyes, greed will make me putty in his hands.”
“But Ishmael will be gone by then, won’t he?”
“Oh yes—unless Alan’s able to move very quickly. Ishmael will be gone in a few hours, and the carnival itself will be gone by this time on Monday.”
At that moment we came to a little town about halfway there, and damned if I didn’t catch sight of Alan Lomax himself pulled into a service station. He and a mechanic were poking around under the hood of a Plymouth that had been around since the Carter administration.
“Looks like engine trouble,” Art observed.
“Yeah.”
“Probably just a little grit in the radiator fan.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Well, it could be,” Art replied.
I looked at him curiously. “Will he need a new one?”
“Oh yes, eventually,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get parts out here in the boondocks, especially on a Saturday. If he takes it easy, he can probably limp home without a fan, but he’ll be too late to get it fixed today.”
“A bad break,” I noted.
Farewell, My Ishmael
Sitting in that goddamned cage, he looked terrible and he looked miserable, snuffling and groaning, his fur sticking up every which way, but he wasn’t prostrate, and he certainly showed no signs of fading away. In fact, he was thoroughly grumpy and bad-tempered, which he wouldn’t have been if he was ready to breathe his last.
After hearing all the details of my African adventure, he was irked that he and Art had misread Luk Owona and Mokonzi Nkemi so badly. “The rule has to be ‘Hope for the best, but plan for the worst,’ and we just hoped for the best,” he said. “A month away from my office, and I’m already losing my touch.”
On the other hand, he was clearly tickled by the fable of the gray horse that I’d made up for Nkemi. “You said something about an idea you worked on involving the inner ear. What on earth was that?”
“Well, you know, there’s this little gizmo floating around in the inner ear that helps you keep your balance. I was thinking … the wicked sorcerer sneaks it o
ut of the ear of the prince at his christening or something, so he grows up lurching—and all his children and grandchildren grow up lurching as well. Then one day the grandson of the sorcerer shows up at the castle and says to the then–reigning king, ‘Look, I’d like to turn this gizmo over to you.’ And the king says, ‘What would I want with such a thing? What’s in it for me to take this gizmo off your hands?’ Then the sorcerer’s grandson explains.”
“A bit … convoluted,” Ishmael said doubtfully.
“Exactly. That’s why I went with the horse.”
“You’ll be a good teacher,” Ishmael said, taking me by surprise.
“Is that what I should be?”
“I don’t mean a professional teacher,” he said. “All of you must be teachers, whether you’re lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, filmmakers, industrialists, world leaders, students, fry cooks, or street cleaners. Nothing less than a world of changed minds is going to save you—and changing minds is something every single one of you can do, no matter who you are or how you’re situated. I told Alan to reach a hundred, but to tell the truth I was getting a little impatient with him. Of course there’s nothing wrong with reaching a hundred, but if you can’t reach a hundred, then reach ten. And if you can’t reach ten, then reach one—because that one may reach a million.”
“I’ll reach a million,” I told him.
He gazed at me for a while and said, “I believe you will.”
“Will you try to teach in Africa?” I asked him.
“No, no, not at all. Perhaps someday I’ll write you a letter, but otherwise I won’t be involved in anything like that.”