Читать книгу Oliver Strange and the Ghosts of Madagascar - Dianne Hofmeyr - Страница 6

The Journey Out

“So, you’re looking for frogs,” Malingu had shouted over the rubbery swish of the windscreen wipers and the sharp backfiring snorts of the Nissan truck as he’d tried to negotiate through people, carts, beaten-up old cars and the oxen that were browsing at the side of the road.

It was a sort of a truck. Sort of a Nissan. But mostly more mon­­grel than Nissan. Each door was a different colour and look­ed bor­­rowed from something else. The bonnet was held closed with rope and the front fenders were so bent and rusted they were more like feelers on a very large, brightly coloured bug.

Ollie’s father nodded. “Not just any frogs – specifically the golden mantella.”

“Highly venomous!” Malingu smiled. He had a front tooth made completely of gold.

“Yes. So you know your stuff. But also highly endangered. On the Red List.”

Ollie gave his father a look. “Not as venomous as Phyllobates terribilis, the poison-dart frog in South America. Otherwise when they captured you in Botswana, they could’ve brought you straight here to Madagascar, instead of trying to take you to South America to collect frog toxins.”

His dad laughed. “Good job you’re here to protect me this time, Ollie.”

Rain had started pelting down as they’d left the sprawling shantytown edges of Antananarivo. The first drops fell fat and round like coins into the dust. Then it came down in white sheets like an avalanche and hammered on the roof and bonnet of the truck. Talking became impossible, even for someone who talked as loudly and as fast as Malingu. They bumped over potholes with spine-shuddering jolts and splashed through puddles the size of small lakes.

The journey had started at Heathrow airport in London four days ago – though it felt more like four weeks. They’d touched down first at O.R. Tambo airport in Johannesburg. Then they’d flown to Antananarivo in Madagascar, another town with an ‘A’ except this time a real capital ‘A’ as it was the capital of Madagascar.

Co-ordinates: 18.9386° S, 47.5214° E, Ollie had written in his notebook. Greenwich Mean Time +3.

Antananarivo, or Tananarivo, or Tana for short – he could guess why the name had been shortened – was a city as far from any kind of city he’d ever seen in England. It was a jumble of wooden houses and skyscraper buildings all mixed up between markets with blue awnings and purple jacaranda trees and steep steps going up to a cathedral and narrow streets jammed with ancient cars and carts pulled by humped oxen that were called zebu.

Inside the cab of the mongrel Nissan truck it was as steamy as a sauna. Ollie stared out through the downpour as the shapes of trees on either side of the road disappeared in a wet deluge.

He raised his voice. “Does it always rain so much?”

“This is Madagascar,” Malingu shouted back. “You must expect rain. Lots of it. It rains every day.”

He wound down the window a smidgen and sniffed. The air had a green, murky smell. “Every day?”

“How else do you think trees grow so tall? It’s a rainforest because it rains. Simple as that!”

They turned off the main road that went to the port of Toamasina, into a narrow road signposted Ambatondrazaka via Andilanotoby. Two more towns beginning with ‘A’. Ollie had lost count. He wished he’d started a list. He tried out the names in his head but there were too many parts to them. Ambatondrazaka. A name with five ‘A’s’ in it could be on a TV quiz show.

Finally the tarred road gave up and became a muddy track through the forest. They slewed in the mud from side to side as if each tyre had its own idea of where it wanted to go.

Malingu clutched the steering wheel fearlessly with one hand and gesticulated with the other as he gave a loud and fast gunshot commentary on just about everything. “Good weather for frogs,” he added as an afterthought.

“What about pirates?” Ollie asked.

Malingu laughed loudly so that his gold tooth flashed. “Good weather for pirates too. Pirates don’t care about rain.”

“No – I mean do you still get pirates here?”

“Yes. Plenty.” Malingu was grinning.

“Plenty?”

His father gave him a nudge. “Come on, Ollie, he’s having you on. The last pirate was probably seen here in the 1800s. Even the unfortunate Kidd, who spent time in Madagascar, was dead by 1701. He was hanged at Execution Dock on the Wapping waterfront but died hard.”

“How come?”

“They say the rope broke with his weight and he fell to the ground. Then he was hanged a second time, with another noose. Afterwards, his body was placed in chains and gibbeted and hung up for everyone to see.”

Ollie didn’t want to be distracted. “If so many pirates came to Madagascar, is there still pirate treasure here like gold and stuff?”

But before Malingu could reply, he swerved abruptly. They skidded onto a small mud track and bumped over a particularly deep pothole so that Ollie’s head hit the roof of the cab. “Phew! Nearly missed that turn-off!”

“Are we close to the camp?”

Malingu shook his head. “No. A few hours still.”

“A few hours?” he peered through the steamy window. The forest had closed in on them. They were in a tunnel of smudgy green. He wound down the window a little more and squinted upwards. No sign of sky through the thick mesh of canopy. But there was enough water gushing down to have Noah worried. They were practically driving in a river.

“At this rate, we’ll never get there.” But instantly he wished he could’ve swallowed his words. They were hardly out when the tyres of the truck went into a spin and a swirl of mud sprayed up against the windscreen. The truck came to a jolting halt that almost tossed them out through the front windscreen.

His father threw open the passenger door of the cab and jumped out into the downpour.

“What does it look like?” Malingu shouted from his side.

His father shook his head. His hair was plastered Napoleon-style against his forehead and his shirt was clinging to him. “Not good. Pretty bad in fact. Well and truly stuck.”

Malingu got out and kicked the tyre. “At least there’s no puncture.”

Ollie jumped down as well. His trainers disappeared into the mud. He had mud socks around his ankles. “What about a tow truck?”

Malingu laughed and shook his head.

His father sprung into action. “Okay. Have you got chains? No – I suppose not. We’ll need some branches and a shovel to dig around the wheel.”

Malingu scrabbled around in the back of the truck and stood up with two machetes and a shovel.

His father handed the shovel to Ollie. “Okay. Start digging, while we cut some branches.”

He opened his mouth to explain it was useless but with loud whacks his father and Malingu disappeared into the forest and the noise of them swishing through the undergrowth was swallowed by the sound of rain thudding against the thick leaves and the metal of the truck.

He started digging. Soon he was cursing not just the mongrel truck but also the mongrel tyre. The clay was heavy, squelchy and slippery. And he was sodden. He stood up and swiped his face with the back of his hand and glanced over to where he’d seen the forest swallow Malingu and his father. He wasn’t going in after them.

Then finally he heard voices and they were back. They packed some branches in under the tyre. Malingu got into the cab.

“Rev! Rev!” his father barked. “Turn the steering wheel. Turn!”

The tyre spun and sent up a spray of mud and shredded leaves and sticks, then settled even deeper. He took a look at his father and started to laugh. He was covered in mud and had leaves sticking up from his hair.

“You look like someone who’s just come out of the Vietnam­ese jungle.”

“You don’t look much better yourself.” His father let out a hefty sigh. “It’s no good. We’ll have to try rocking it out.” But with every shove the truck sunk in deeper. He gave the tyre a kick. “Looks flat to me. Like a slow puncture.”

Ollie opened his mouth to ask about a spare tyre. No. Of course not. Not even a mongrel spare.

“I’ll raise someone on the radio.” Malingu fiddled with an earpiece and pushed wires about into a black box. “Tana Tana … do you read me? Over and out.”

There was a hiss of static, then the sound of a faint, strange voice like someone speaking from Mars. Then nothing more but a few crackles.

Malingu pulled and pushed the wires again. “Lost him. It’s the rain. Reception’s never good when it’s coming down like this.”

Ollie bit his lip. “What now?”

His father shrugged. “We can’t sit around. We’ll walk back to the main road to get help.”

“We could push on,” Malingu offered.

“Push on?”

Malingu nodded. “Walk to the camp. If it’s a puncture, we’ll reach camp long before anyone from Tana gets here with another tyre.”

Ollie stared down the mud track they’d just come along, hoping he might make someone appear.

His father shrugged. “Sounds good to me. We’ll take some of the equipment. I don’t want to leave cameras and microscopes out in this downpour, even under the tarpaulin.”

Ollie pulled out the map from inside his back pocket. It was wet through and beginning to come apart at the folds. He tried to hunch over it so it wouldn’t get even wetter. “How far away is the camp?”

“You need a proper map. Take this one.” Malingu tapped a place that seemed in the middle of nowhere. “We’re here. But we have to get there.” He used his thumb and forefinger as a protractor to measure. We’ll probably make it by the time it gets dark. We’ll take a short cut. I know a track.”

He gave Malingu a look. “A track through the forest at night?”

“If we hurry we’ll get there before dark.”

His father nodded. “We might even come across some golden mantella frogs along the way.”

He shot a look at the thick tangle of creepers, ferns and trees. “Or … we might get lost.”

Malingu laughed. “I’m a tracker. I grew up in the forest. I know the terrain.”

As if conjured up by wishful thinking, a truck loomed up out of the murkiness in front of them. It slid to a halt just in time. The driver clearly hadn’t been expecting anyone on the narrow road. He leaned out of the window and raised his hand, “Mbola tsara.”

“Salama,” Malingu replied, then spoke very fast in Malagasy and pointed at the tyre. Every now and again Ollie thought he heard a few words of French popping up. The man sitting next to the driver snapped something. It was hard to catch a proper glimpse of him through the misted windscreen.

When Malingu tried to introduce them, he lifted his hand in an impatient wave and mumbled something.

“They’re in a hurry,” Malingu smiled.

The man on the other side wound down his window on his side and poked his head out. His face was tanned and craggy. Even in the gloom, his eyes were the colour of aquamarines. His hair was wiry and straggly as a bird’s nest and his beard sprouted in all directions. He looked like some wild scientist who’d lived in the forest all his life. But Ollie saw that the arm he leant across the edge of the window was as muscled and hard as a Christmas ham. It was criss-crossed with tattoos.

“D’accord. We’ll send a message back to Tana,” he growled in a voice that sounded as if he woke with a cigarette in his mouth every morning. “Just keep off my land. I don’t want anyone tramping through my plantations.” He nodded curtly at the driver. “Allons-y!”

Malingu waved as their truck jolted past, barely managing to scrape between them and the forest. Ollie shrunk back as far as he could from the mud-churning wheels. Then it disappeared around a corner in the track and was swallowed by the forest and rain.

“He’s not your friendliest!” his father laughed.

“He’s a plantation owner. Jacques du Pré.” Malingu shrugged as if that explained everything.

Ollie wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?” It hung in the air. Sweet like custard or some sort of flower.

“Ylang-ylang.”

Ollie tried out the word. “Ylang-ylang.” It was like something you might say if a bee had stung your tongue.

Malingu nodded. “You say eelang-eelang but you write it with a ‘Y’. There was probably stuff under the tarpaulin on the back of the truck. They extract oil from the flowers for the perfume industry.”

His father gave a shrug. “What’s the bet he’s chopping down forest to grow ylang-ylang. It’s happening all over Madagascar. Huge tracts of forest just disappear. And if it’s not lost to ylang-ylang, it’ll be palm oil plantations supposedly grown for non-fossil fuel, or logging so they can trade in exotic wood. Golden mantellas can’t survive. The forest’s shrinking. They’re trapped in smaller and smaller patches between vast areas of destruction. It’s time the golden mantellas got back their forest back, so they won’t be wiped out and condemned to the dodo list. Never to be seen on this earth again.”

His father was onto his pet subject. Ollie looked up at the sky. The rain had stopped as abruptly as it had started. Just a few odd drops were still falling, as if the clouds had forgotten to wring everything out.

“What now, Dad? How are we going to get out of here?”

“Walk, of course!” His father had already hoisted up some equipment. “But there’s no way I’m leaving my Nikon D3X with its Garmin for tracking the GPS of each photograph and which …” a sudden guilty smile crept across his face.

“… cost you the price of a small car,” Ollie finished the sentence for him.

The sun was trying to come out and was filling the forest with a strange green glow. His father smiled at him. He had more equipment slung around him than a man arriving on the moon. “Come on. Let’s go. Allons-y!”