I made an exceptional botanical discovery. But there will bemany who disbelieve the following episode. Still, I give it to younow because it's part of the story and it happened to me.
I was on my side. It was an hour or two past noon on aday of quiet sunshine and gentle breeze. I had slept a shortwhile, a diluted sleep that had brought no rest and no dreams.
I turned over to my other side, expending as little energy aspossible in doing so. I opened my eyes.
In the near distance I saw trees. I did not react. I wascertain it was an illusion that a few blinks would makedisappear.
The trees remained. In fact, they grew to be a forest. Theywere part of a low-lying island. I pushed myself up. I continuedto disbelieve my eyes. But it was a thrill to be deluded in sucha high-quality way. The trees were beautiful. They were likenone I had ever seen before. They had a pale bark, andequally distributed branches that carried an amazing profusionof leaves. These leaves were brilliantly green, a green so brightand emerald that, next to it, vegetation during the monsoonswas drab olive.
I blinked deliberately, expecting my eyelids to act likelumberjacks. But the trees would not fall.
I looked down. I was both satisfied and disappointed withwhat I saw. The island had no soil. Not that the trees stood inwater. Rather, they stood in what appeared to be a densemass of vegetation, as sparkling green as the leaves. Who hadever heard of land with no soil? With trees growing out ofpure vegetation? I felt satisfaction because such a geologyconfirmed that I was right, that this island was a chimera, aplay of the mind. By the same token I felt disappointmentbecause an island, any island, however strange, would havebeen very good to come upon.
Since the trees continued to stand, I continued to look. Totake in green, after so much blue, was like music to my eyes.
Green is a lovely colour. It is the colour of Islam. It is myfavourite colour.
The current gently pushed the lifeboat closer to the illusion.
Its shore could not be called a beach, there being neither sandnor pebbles, and there was no pounding of surf either, sincethe waves that fell upon the island simply vanished into itsporosity. From a ridge some three hundred yards inland, theisland sloped to the sea and, forty or so yards into it, fell offprecipitously, disappearing from sight into the depths of thePacific, surely the smallest continental shelf on record.
I was getting used to the mental delusion. To make it last Irefrained from putting a strain on it; when the lifeboat nudgedthe island, I did not move, only continued to dream. The fabricof the island seemed to be an intricate, tightly webbed mass oftube-shaped seaweed, in diameter a little thicker than twofingers. What a fanciful island, I thought.
After some minutes I crept up to the side of the boat.
"Look for green," said the survival manual. Well, this wasgreen. In fact, it was chlorophyll heaven. A green to outshinefood colouring and flashing neon lights. A green to get drunkon. "Ultimately, a foot is the only good judge of land," pursuedthe manual. The island was within reach of a foot. To judge –and be disappointed – or not to judge, that was the question.
I decided to judge. I looked about to see if there weresharks. There were none. I turned on my stomach, andholding on to the tarpaulin, I slowly brought a leg down. Myfoot entered the sea. It was pleasingly cool. The island lay justa little further down, shimmering in the water. I stretched. Iexpected the bubble of illusion to burst at any second.
It did not. My foot sank into clear water and met therubbery resistance of something flexible but solid. I put moreweight down. The illusion would not give. I put my full weighton my foot. Still I did not sink. Still I did not believe.
Finally, it was my nose that was the judge of land. It cameto my olfactory sense, full and fresh, overwhelming: the smell ofvegetation. I gasped. After months of nothing butsalt-water-bleached smells, this reek of vegetable organic matterwas intoxicating. It was then that I believed, and the only thingthat sank was my mind; my thought process becamedisjointed. My leg began to shake.
"My God! My God!" I whimpered.
I fell overboard.
The combined shock of solid land and cool water gave methe strength to pull myself forward onto the island. I babbledincoherent thanks to God and collapsed.
But I could not stay still. I was too excited. I attempted toget to my feet. Blood rushed away from my head. The groundshook violently. A dizzying blindness overcame me. I thought Iwould faint. I steadied myself. All I seemed able to do waspant. I managed to sit up.
"Richard Parker! Land! Land! We are saved!" I shouted.
The smell of vegetation was extraordinarily strong. As for thegreenness, it was so fresh and soothing that strength andcomfort seemed to be physically pouring into my systemthrough my eyes.
What was this strange, tubular seaweed, so intricatelyentangled? Was it edible? It seemed to be a variety of marinealgae, but quite rigid, far more so than normal algae. The feelof it in the hand was wet and as of something crunchy. Ipulled at it. Strands of it broke off without too much effort. Incross-section it consisted of two concentric walls: the wet,slightly rough outer wall, so vibrantly green, and an inner wallmidway between the outer wall and the core of the algae. Thedivision in the two tubes that resulted was very plain: thecentre tube was white in colour, while the tube that surroundedit was decreas-ingly green as it approached the inner wall. Ibrought a piece of the algae to my nose. Beyond the agreeablefragrance of the vegetable, it had a neutral smell. I licked it.
My pulse quickened. The algae was wet with fresh water.
I bit into it. My chops were in for a shock. The inner tubewas bitterly salty – but the outer was not only edible, it wasdelicious. My tongue began to tremble as if it were a fingerflipping through a dictionary, trying to find a long-forgottenword. It found it, and my eyes closed with pleasure at hearingit: sweet. Not as in good, but as in sugary. Turtles and fishare many things, but they are never, ever sugary. The algaehad a light sweetness that outdid in delight even the sap ofour maple trees here in Canada. In consistency, the closest Ican compare it to is water chestnuts.
Saliva forcefully oozed through the dry pastiness of mymouth. Making loud noises of pleasure, I tore at the algaearound me. The inner and outer tubes separated cleanly andeasily. I began stuffing the sweet outer into my mouth. I wentat it with both hands, force-feeding my mouth and setting it towork harder and faster than it had in a very long time. I atetill there was a regular moat around me.
A solitary tree stood about two hundred feet away. It wasthe only tree downhill from the ridge, which seemed a verylong way off. I say ridge; the word perhaps gives an incorrectimpression of how steep the rise from the shore was. Theisland was low-lying, as I've said. The rise was gentle, to aheight of perhaps fifty or sixty feet. But in the state I was in,that height loomed like a mountain. The tree was more inviting.
I noticed its patch of shade. I tried to stand again. I managedto get to a squatting position but as soon as I made to rise,my head spun and I couldn't keep my balance. And even if Ihadn't fallen over, my legs had no strength left in them. Butmy will was strong. I was determined to move forward. Icrawled, dragged myself, weakly leapfrogged to the tree.
I know I will never know a joy so vast as I experiencedwhen I entered that tree's dappled, shimmering shade andheard the dry, crisp sound of the wind rustling its leaves. Thetree was not as large or as tall as the ones inland, and forbeing on the wrong side of the ridge, more exposed to theelements, it was a little scraggly and not so uniformly developedas its mates. But it was a tree, and a tree is a blessedly goodthing to behold when you've been lost at sea for a long, longtime. I sang that tree's glory, its solid, unhurried purity, its slowbeauty. Oh, that I could be like it, rooted to the ground butwith my every hand raised up to God in praise! I wept.
As my heart exalted Allah, my mind began to take ininformation about Allah's works. The tree did indeed grow rightout of the algae, as I had seen from the lifeboat. There wasnot the least trace of soil. Either there was soil deeper down,or this species of tree was a remarkable instance of acommensal or a parasite. The trunk was about the width of aman's chest. The bark was greyish green in colour, thin andsmooth, and soft enough that I could mark it with myfingernail. The cordate leaves were large and broad, and endedin a single point. The head of the tree had the lovely fullroundness of a mango tree, but it was not a mango. I thoughtit smelled somewhat like a lote tree, but it wasn't a lote either.
Nor a mangrove. Nor any other tree I had ever seen. All Iknow was that it was beautiful and green and lush with leaves.
I heard a growl. I turned. Richard Parker was observing mefrom the lifeboat. He was looking at the island, too. He seemedto want to come ashore but was afraid. Finally, after muchsnarling and pacing, he leapt from the boat. I brought theorange whistle to my mouth. But he didn't have aggression onhis mind. Simple balance was enough of a challenge; he was aswobbly on his feet as I was. When he advanced, he crawledclose to the ground and with trembling limbs, like a newborncub. Giving me a wide berth, he made for the ridge anddisappeared into the interior of the island.
I passed the day eating, resting, attempting to stand and, ina general way, bathing in bliss. I felt nauseous when I exertedmyself too much. And I kept feeling that the ground wasshifting beneath me and that I was going to fall over, evenwhen I was sitting still.
I started worrying about Richard Parker in the lateafternoon. Now that the setting, the territory, had changed, Iwasn't sure how he would take to me if he came upon me.
Reluctantly, strictly for safety's sake, I crawled back to thelifeboat. However Richard Parker took possession of the island,the bow and the tarpaulin remained my territory. I searchedfor something to moor the lifeboat to. Evidently the algaecovered the shore thickly, for it was all I could find. Finally, Iresolved the problem by driving an oar, handle first, deep intothe algae and tethering the boat to it.
I crawled onto the tarpaulin. I was exhausted. My body wasspent from taking in so much food, and there was the nervoustension arising from my sudden change of fortunes. As the dayended, I hazily remember hearing Richard Parker roaring in thedistance, but sleep overcame me.
I awoke in the night with a strange, uncomfortable feeling inmy lower belly. I thought it was a cramp, that perhaps I hadpoisoned myself with the algae. I heard a noise. I looked.
Richard Parker was aboard. He had returned while I wassleeping. He was meowing and licking the pads of his feet. Ifound his return puzzling but thought no further about it – thecramp was quickly getting worse. I was doubled over with pain,shaking with it, when a process, normal for most but longforgotten by me, set itself into motion: defecation. It was verypainful, but afterwards I fell into the deepest, most refreshingsleep I had had since the night before the Tsimtsum sank.
When I woke up in the morning I felt much stronger. Icrawled to the solitary tree in a vigorous way. My eyes feastedonce more upon it, as did my stomach on the algae. I hadsuch a plentiful breakfast that I dug a big hole.
Richard Parker once again hesitated for hours beforejumping off the boat. When he did, mid-morning, as soon ashe landed on the shore he jumped back and half fell in thewater and seemed very tense. He hissed and clawed the airwith a paw. It was curious. I had no idea what he was doing.
His anxiety passed, and noticeably surer-footed than theprevious day, he disappeared another time over the ridge.
That day, leaning against the tree, I stood. I felt dizzy Theonly way I could make the ground stop moving was to closemy eyes and grip the tree. I pushed off and tried to walk. Ifell instantly. The ground rushed up to me before I couldmove a foot. No harm done. The island, coated with suchtightly woven, rubbery vegetation, was an ideal place to relearnhow to walk. I could fall any which way, it was impossible tohurt myself.
The next day, after another restful night on the ‘ boat – towhich, once again, Richard Parker had returned – I was ableto walk. Falling half a dozen times, I managed to reach thetree. I could feel my strength increasing by the hour. With thegaff I reached up and pulled down a branch from the tree. Iplucked off some leaves. They were soft and unwaxed, but theytasted bitter. Richard Parker was attached to his den on thelifeboat – that was my explanation for why he had returnedanother night.
I saw him coming back that evening, as the sun was setting.
I had retethered the lifeboat to the buried oar. I was at thebow, checking that the rope was properly secured to the stem.
He appeared all of a sudden. At first I didn't recognize him.
This magnificent animal bursting over the ridge at full gallopcouldn't possibly be the same listless, bedraggled tiger who wasmy companion in misfortune? But it was. It was RichardParker and he was coming my way at high speed. He lookedpurposeful. His powerful neck rose above his lowered head. Hiscoat and his muscles shook at every step. I could hear thedrumming of his heavy body against the ground.
I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trainedout of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpectednoise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapidand direct approach of a known killer.
I fumbled for the whistle. When he was twenty-five feet fromthe lifeboat I blew into the whistle with all my might. A piercingcry split the air.
It had the desired effect. Richard Parker braked. But heclearly wanted to move forward again. I blew a second time.
He started turning and hopping on the spot in a most peculiar,deer-like way, snarling fiercely. I blew a third time. Every hairon him was raised. His claws were full out. He was in a stateof extreme agitation. I feared that the defensive wall of mywhistle blows was about to crumble and that he would attackme.
Instead, Richard Parker did the most unexpected thing: hejumped into the sea. I was astounded. The very thing Ithought he would never do, he did, and with might andresolve. He energetically paddled his way to the stern of thelifeboat. I thought of blowing again, but instead opened thelocker lid and sat down, retreating to the inner sanctum of myterritory.
He surged onto the stern, quantities of water pouring offhim, making my end of the boat pitch up. He balanced on thegunnel and the stern bench for a moment, assessing me. Myheart grew faint. I did not think I would be able to blow intothe whistle again. I looked at him blankly. He flowed down tothe floor of the lifeboat and disappeared under the tarpaulin. Icould see parts of him from the edges of the locker lid. Ithrew myself upon the tarpaulin, out of his sight – but directlyabove him. I felt an overwhelming urge to sprout wings and flyoff.
I calmed down. I reminded myself forcefully that this hadbeen my situation for the last long while, to be living with alive tiger hot beneath me.
As my breathing slowed down, sleep came to me.
Sometime during the night I awoke and, my fear forgotten,looked over. He was dreaming: he was shaking and growlingin his sleep. He was loud enough about it to have woken meup.
In the morning, as usual, he went over the ridge.
I decided that as soon as I was strong enough I would goexploring the island. It seemed quite large,if the shoreline was any indication; left and right it stretchedon with only a slight curve, showing the island to have a fairgirth. I spent the day walking – and falling – from the shoreto the tree and back, in an attempt to restore my legs tohealth. At every fall I had a full meal of algae.
When Richard Parker returned as the day was ending, alittle earlier than the previous day, I was expecting him. I sattight and did not blow the whistle. He came to the water'sedge and in one mighty leap reached the side of the lifeboat.
He entered his territory without intruding into mine, onlycausing the boat to lurch to one side. His return to form wasquite terrifying.
The next morning, after giving Richard Parker plenty ofadvance, I set off to explore the island. I walked up to theridge. I reached it easily, proudly moving one foot ahead of theother in a gait that was spirited if still a little awkward. Hadmy legs been weaker, they would have given way beneath mewhen I saw what I saw beyond the ridge.
To start with details, I saw that the whole island wascovered with the algae, not just its edges. I saw a great greenplateau with a green forest in its centre. I saw all around thisforest hundreds of evenly scattered, identically sized ponds withtrees sparsely distributed in a uniform way between them, thewhole arrangement giving the unmistakable impression offollowing a design.
But it was the meerkats that impressed themselves mostindelibly on my mind. I saw in one look what I wouldconservatively estimate to be hundreds of thousands ofmeerkats. The landscape was covered in meerkats. And when Iappeared, it seemed that all of them turned to me, astonished,like chickens in a farmyard, and stood up.
We didn't have any meerkats in our zoo. But I had readabout them. They were in the books and in the literature. Ameerkat is a small South African mammal related to themongoose; in other words, a carnivorous burrower, a foot longand weighing two pounds when mature, slender and weasel-likein build, with a pointed snout, eyes sitting squarely at the frontof its face, short legs, paws with four toes and long,non-retractile claws, and an eight-inch tail. Its fur is light brownto grey in colour with black or brown bands on its back, whilethe tip of its tail, its ears and the characteristic circles aroundits eyes are black. It is an agile and keen-sighted creature,diurnal and social in habits, and feeding in its native range –the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa – on, among otherthings, scorpions, to whose venom it is completely immune.
When it is on the lookout, the meerkat has the peculiarity ofstanding perfectly upright on the tips of its back legs, balancingitself tripod-like with its tail. Often a group of meerkats will takethe stance collectively, standing in a huddle and gazing in thesame direction, looking like commuters waiting for a bus. Theearnest expression on their faces, and the way their front pawshang before them, make them look either like childrenself-consciously posing for a photographer or patients in adoctor's office stripped naked and demurely trying to covertheir genitals.
That is what I beheld in one glance, hundreds of thousandsof meerkats – more, a million – turning to me and standing atattention, as if saying, "Yes, sir?" Mind you, a standing meerkatreaches up eighteen inches at most, so it was not the height ofthese creatures that was so breathtaking as their unlimitedmultitude. I stood rooted to the spot, speechless. If I set amillion meerkats fleeing in terror, the chaos would beindescribable. But their interest in me was short-lived. After afew seconds, they went back to doing what they had beendoing before I appeared, which was either nibbling at the algaeor staring into the ponds. To see so many beings bendingdown at the same time reminded me of prayer time in amosque.
The creatures seemed to feel no fear. As I moved downfrom the ridge, none shied away or showed the least tension atmy presence. If I had wanted to, I could have touched one,even picked one up. I did nothing of the sort. I simply walkedinto what was surely the largest colony of meerkats in theworld, one of the strangest, most wonderful experiences of mylife. There was a ceaseless noise in the air. It was theirsqueaking, chirping, twittering and barking.
Such were their numbers and the vagaries of theirexcitement that the noise came and went like a flock of birds,at times very loud, swirling around me, then rapidly dying offas the closest meerkats fell silent while others, further off,started up.
Were they not afraid of me because I should be afraid ofthem? The question crossed my mind. But the answer – thatthey were harmless – was immediately apparent. To get closeto a pond, around which they were densely packed, I had tonudge them away with my feet so as not to step on one.
They took to my barging without any offence, making room forme like a good-natured crowd. I felt warm, furry bodies againstmy ankles as I looked into a pond.
All the ponds had the same round shape and were aboutthe same size – roughly forty feet in diameter. I expectedshallowness. I saw nothing but deep, clear water. The pondsseemed bottomless, in fact. And as far down as I could see,their sides consisted of green algae. Evidently the layer atop theisland was very substantial.
I could see nothing that accounted for the meerkats' fixedcuriosity, and I might have given up on solving the mysteryhad squeaking and barking not erupted at a pond nearby.
Meerkats were jumping up and down in a state of greatferment. Suddenly, by the hundreds, they began diving into thepond. There was much pushing and shoving as the meerkatsbehind vied to reach the pond's edge. The frenzy wascollective; even tiny meerkittens were making for the water,barely being held back by mothers and guardians. I stared indisbelief. These were not standard Kalahari Desert meerkats.
Standard Kalahari Desert meerkats do not behave like frogs.
These meerkats were most definitely a subspecies that hadspecialized in a fascinating and surprising way.
I made for the pond, bringing my feet down gingerly, intime to see meerkats swimming – actually swimming – andbringing to shore fish by the dozens, and not small fish either.
Some were dorados that would have been unqualified feasts onthe lifeboat. They dwarfed the meerkats. It wasincomprehensible to me how meerkats could catch such fish.
It was as the meerkats were hauling the fish out of thepond, displaying real feats of teamwork, that I noticedsomething curious: every fish, without exception, was alreadydead. Freshly dead. The meerkats were bringing ashore deadfish they had not killed.
I kneeled by the pond, pushing aside several excited, wetmeerkats. I touched the water. It was cooler than I'd expected.
There was a current that was bringing colder water frombelow. I cupped a little water in my hand and brought it tomy mouth. I took a sip.
It was fresh water. This explained how the fish had died –for, of course, place a saltwater fish in fresh water and it willquickly become bloated and die. But what were seafaring fishdoing in a freshwater pond? How had they got there?
I went to another pond, making my way through themeerkats. It too was fresh. Another pond; the same. And againwith a fourth pond.
They were all freshwater ponds. Where had such quantitiesof fresh water come from, I asked myself. The answer wasobvious: from the algae. The algae naturally and continuouslydesalinated sea water, which was why its core was salty whileits outer surface was wet with fresh water: it was oozing thefresh water out. I did not ask myself why the algae did this, orhow, or where the salt went. My mind stopped asking suchquestions. I simply laughed and jumped into a pond. I found ithard to stay at the surface of the water; I was still very weak,and I had little fat on me to help me float. I held on to theedge of the pond. The effect of bathing in pure, clean, salt-freewater was more than I can put into words. After such a longtime at sea, my skin was like a hide and my hair was long,malted and as silky as a fly-catching strip. I felt even my soulhad been corroded by salt. So, under the gaze of a thousandmeerkats, I soaked, allowing fresh water to dissolve every saltcrystal that had tainted me.
The meerkats looked away. They did it like one man, all ofthem turning in the same direction at exactly the same time. Ipulled myself out to see what it was. It was Richard Parker.
He confirmed what I had suspected, that these meerkats hadgone for so many generations without predators that anynotion of flight distance, of flight, of plain fear, had beengenetically weeded out of them. He was moving through them,blazing a trail of murder and mayhem, devouring one meerkatafter another, blood dripping from his mouth, and they, cheekto jowl with a tiger, were jumping up and down on the spot,as if crying, "My turn! My turn! My turn!" I would see thisscene time and again. Nothing distracted the meerkats fromtheir little lives of pond staring and algae nibbling. WhetherRichard Parker skulked up in masterly tiger fashion beforelanding upon them in a thunder of roaring, or slouched byindifferently, it was all the same to them. They were not to beruffled. Meekness ruled.
He killed beyond his need. He killed meerkats that he didnot eat. In animals, the urge to kill is separate from the urgeto eat. To go for so long without prey and suddenly to haveso many – his pent-up hunting instinct was lashing out with avengeance.
He was far away. There was no danger to me. At least forthe moment.
The next morning, after he had gone, I cleaned the lifeboat.
It needed it badly. I won't describe what the accumulation ofhuman and animal skeletons, mixed in with innumerable fishand turtle remains, looked like. The whole foul, disgusting messwent overboard. I didn't dare step onto the floor of the boatfor fear of leaving a tangible trace of my presence to RichardParker, so the job had to be done with the gaff from thetarpaulin or from the side of the boat, standing in the water.
What I could not clean up with the gaff – the smells and thesmears – I rinsed with buckets of water.
That night he entered his new, clean den without comment.
In his jaws were a number of dead meerkats, which he ateduring the night.
I spent the following days eating and drinking and bathingand observing the meerkats and walking and running andresting and growing stronger. My running became smooth andunselfconscious, a source of euphoria. My skin healed. Mypains and aches left me. Put simply, I returned to life.
I explored the island. I tried to walk around it but gave up.
I estimate that it was about six or seven miles in diameter,which means a circumference of about twenty miles. What Isaw seemed to indicate that the shore was unvarying in itsfeatures. The same blinding greenness throughout, the sameridge, the same incline from ridge to water, the same break inthe monotony: a scraggly tree here and there. Exploring theshore revealed one extraordinary thing: the algae, and thereforethe island itself, varied in height and density depending on theweather. On very hot days, the algae's weave became tight anddense, and the island increased in height; the climb to theridge became steeper and the ridge higher. It was not a quickprocess. Only a hot spell lasting several days triggered it. But itwas unmistakable. I believe it had to do with waterconservation, with exposing less of the algae's surface to thesun's rays.
The converse phenomenon – the loosening of the island –was faster, more dramatic, and the reasons for it more evident.
At such times the ridge came down, and the continental shelf,so to speak, stretched out, and the algae along the shorebecame so slack that I tended to catch my feet in it. Thisloosening was brought on by overcast weather and, faster still,by heavy seas.
I lived through a major storm while on the island, and afterthe experience, I would have trusted staying on it during theworst hurricane. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle to sit in atree and see giant waves charging the island, seeminglypreparing to ride up the ridge and unleash bedlam and chaos– only to see each one melt away as if it had come uponquicksand. In this respect, the island was Gandhian: it resistedby not resisting. Every wave vanished into the island without aclash, with only a little frothing and foaming. A tremor shakingthe ground and ripples wrinkling the surface of the ponds werethe only indications that some great force was passing through.
And pass through it did: in the lee of the island, considerablydiminished, waves emerged and went on their way. It was thestrangest sight, that, to see waves leaving a shoreline. Thestorm, and the resulting minor earthquakes, did not perturb themeerkats in the least. They went about their business as if theelements did not exist.
Harder to understand was the island's complete desolation. Inever saw such a stripped-down ecology. The air of the placecarried no flies, no butterflies, no bees, no insects of any kind..
The trees sheltered no birds. The plains hid no rodents, nogrubs, no worms, no snakes, no scorpions; they gave rise tono other trees, no shrubs, no grasses, no flowers. The pondsharboured no freshwater fish. The seashore teemed with noweeds, no crabs, no crayfish, no coral, no pebbles, no rocks.
With the single, notable exception of the meerkats, there wasnot the least foreign matter on the island, organic or inorganic.
It was nothing but shining green algae and shining green trees.
The trees were not parasites. I discovered this one daywhen I ate so much algae at the base of a small tree that Iexposed its roots. I saw that the roots did not go their ownindependent way into the algae, but rather joined it, became it.
Which meant that these trees either lived in a symbioticrelationship with the algae, in a giving-and-taking that was totheir mutual advantage, or, simpler still, were an integral part ofthe algae. I would guess that the latter was the case becausethe trees did not seem to bear flowers or fruit. I doubt that anindependent organism, however intimate the symbiosis it hasentered upon, would give up on so essential a part of life asreproduction. The leaves' appetite for the sun, as testified bytheir abundance, their breadth and their super-chlorophyllgreenness, made me suspect that the trees had primarily anenergy-gathering function. But this is conjecture.
There is one last observation I would like to make. It isbased on intuition rather than hard evidence. It is this: that theisland was not an island in the conventional sense of the term– that is, a small landmass rooted to the floor of the ocean –but was rather a free-floating organism, a ball of algae ofleviathan proportions. And it is my hunch that the pondsreached down to the sides of this huge, buoyant mass andopened onto the ocean, which explained the otherwiseinexplicable presence in them of dorados and other fish of theopen seas.
It would all bear much further study, but unfortunately I lostthe algae that I took away.
Just as I returned to life, so did Richard Parker. By dint ofstuffing himself with meerkats, his weight went up, his furbegan to glisten again, and he returned to his healthy look ofold. He kept up his habit of returning to the lifeboat at theend of every day. I always made sure I was there before him,copiously marking my territory with urine so that he didn'tforget who was who and what was whose. But he left at firstlight and roamed further afield than I did; the island being thesame all over, I generally stayed within one area. I saw verylittle of him during the day. And I grew nervous. I saw howhe raked the trees with his forepaws – great deep gouges inthe trunks, they were. And I began to hear his hoarse roaring,that aaonh cry as rich as gold or honey and as spine-chillingas the depths of an unsafe mine or a thousand angry bees.
That he was searching for a female was not in itself whattroubled me; it was that it meant he was comfortable enoughon the island to be thinking about producing young. I worriedthat in this new condition he might not tolerate another malein his territory, his night territory in particular, especially if hisinsistent cries went unanswered, as surely they would.
One day I was on a walk in the forest. I was walkingvigorously, caught up in my own thoughts. I passed a tree –and practically ran into Richard Parker. Both of us werestartled. He hissed and reared up on his hind legs, toweringover me, his great paws ready to swat me down. I stoodfrozen to the spot, paralyzed with fear and shock. He droppedback on all fours and moved away. When he had gone three,four paces, he turned and reared up again, growling this time.
I continued to stand like a statue. He went another few pacesand repeated the threat a third time. Satisfied that I was not amenace, he ambled off. As soon as I had caught my breathand stopped trembling, I brought the whistle to my mouth andstarted running after him. He had already gone a gooddistance, but he was still within sight. My running waspowerful. He turned, saw me, crouched – and then bolted. Iblew into the whistle as hard as I could, wishing that its soundwould travel as far and wide as the cry of a lonely tiger.
That night, as he was resting two feet beneath me, I cameto the conclusion that I had to step into the circus ring again.
The major difficulty in training animals is that they operateeither by instinct or by rote. The shortcut of intelligence tomake new associations that are not instinctive is minimallyavailable. Therefore, imprinting in an animal's mind the artificialconnection that if it does a certain action, say, roll over, it willget a treat can be achieved only by mind-numbing repetition. Itis a slow process that depends as much on luck as on hardwork, all the more so when the animal is an adult. I blew intothe whistle till my lungs hurt. I pounded my chest till it wascovered with bruises. I shouted "Hep! Hep! Hep!" – mytiger-language command to say "Do!" – thousands of times. Itossed hundreds of meerkat morsels at him that I would gladlyhave eaten myself. The training of tigers is no easy feat. Theyare considerably less flexible in their mental make-up than otheranimals that are commonly trained in circuses and zoos – sealions and chimpanzees, for example. But I don't want to taketoo much credit for what I managed to do with RichardParker. My good fortune, the fortune that saved my life, wasthat he was not only a young adult but a pliable young adult,an omega animal. I was afraid that conditions on the islandmight play against me, that with such an abundance of foodand water and so much space he might become relaxed andconfident, less open to my influence. But he remained tense. Iknew him well enough to sense it. At night in the lifeboat hewas unsettled and noisy. I assigned this tension to the newenvironment of the island; any change, even positive, will makean animal tense. Whatever the cause, the strain he was undermeant that he continued to show a readiness to oblige; more,that he felt a need to oblige.
I trained him to jump through a hoop I made with thinbranches. It was a simple routine of four jumps. Each oneearned him part of a meerkat. As he lumbered towards me, Ifirst held the hoop at the end of my left arm, some three feetoff the ground. When he had leapt through it, and as hefinished his run, I took hold of the hoop with my right handand, my back to him, commanded him to return and leapthrough it again. For the third jump I knelt on the groundand held the hoop over my head. It was a nerve-rackingexperience to see him come my way. I never lost the fear thathe would not jump but attack me. Thankfully, he jumped everytime. After which I got up and tossed the hoop so that itrolled like a wheel. Richard Parker was supposed to follow itand go through it one last time before it fell over. He wasnever very good at this last part of the act, either because Ifailed to throw the hoop properly or because he clumsily raninto it. But at least he followed it, which meant he got awayfrom me. He was always filled with amazement when the hoopfell over. He would look at it intently, as if it were some greatfellow animal he had been running with that had collapsedunexpectedly. He would stay next to it, sniffing it. I wouldthrow him his last treat and move away.
Eventually I quit the boat. It seemed absurd to spend mynights in such cramped quarters with an animal who wasbecoming roomy in his needs, when I could have an entireisland. I decided the safe thing to do would be to sleep in atree. Richard Parker's nocturnal practice of sleeping in thelifeboat was never a law in my mind. It would not be a goodidea for me to be outside my territory, sleeping and defencelesson the ground, the one time he decided to go for a midnightstroll.
So one day I left the boat with the net, a rope and someblankets. I sought out a handsome tree on the edge of theforest and threw the rope over the lowest branch. My fitnesswas such that I had no problem pulling myself up by my armsand climbing the tree. I found two solid branches that werelevel and close together, and I tied the net to them. I returnedat the end of the day.
I had just finished folding the blankets to make my mattresswhen I detected a commotion among the meerkats. I looked. Ipushed aside branches to see better. I looked in every directionand as far as the horizon. It was unmistakable. The meerkatswere abandoning the ponds – indeed, the whole plain – andrapidly making for the forest. An entire nation of meerkats wason the move, their backs arched and their feet a blur. I waswondering what further surprise these animals held in store forme when I noticed with consternation that the ones from thepond closest to me had surrounded my tree and were climbingup the trunk. The trunk was disappearing under a wave ofdetermined meerkats. I thought they were coming to attack me,that here was the reason why Richard Parker slept in thelifeboat: during the day the meerkats were docile and harmless,but at night, under their collective weight, they crushed theirenemies ruthlessly. I was both afraid and indignant. To survivefor so long in a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger only todie up a tree at the hands of two-pound meerkats struck meas a tragedy too unfair and too ridiculous to bear.
They meant me no harm. They climbed up to me, over me,about me – and past me. They settled upon every branch inthe tree. It became laden with them. They even took over mybed. And the same as far as the eye could see. They wereclimbing every tree in sight. The entire forest was turningbrown, an autumn that came in a few minutes. Collectively, asthey scampered by in droves to claim empty trees deeper intothe forest, they made more noise than a stampeding herd ofelephants.
The plain, meanwhile, was becoming bare and depopulated.
From a bunk bed with a tiger to an overcrowded dormitorywith meerkats – will I be believed when I say that life cantake the most surprising turns? I jostled with meerkats so thatI could have a place in my own bed. They snuggled up to me.
Not a square inch of space was left free.
They settled down and stopped squeaking and chirping.
Silence came to the tree. We fell asleep.
I woke up at dawn covered from head to toe in a living farblanket. Some meerkittens had discovered the warmer parts ofmy body. I had a tight, sweaty collar of them around my neck– and it must have been their mother who had settled herselfso contentedly on the side of my head – while others hadwedged themselves in my groin area.
They left the tree as briskly and as unceremoniously as theyhad invaded it. It was the same with every tree around. Theplain grew thick with meerkats, and the noises of their daystarted filling the air. The tree looked empty. And I felt empty,a little. I had liked the experience of sleeping with themeerkats.
I began to sleep in the tree every night. I emptied thelifeboat of useful items and made myself a nice treetopbedroom. I got used to the unintentional scratches I receivedfrom meerkats climbing over me. My only complaint would bethat animals higher up occasionally relieved themselves on me.
One night the meerkats woke me up. They were chatteringand shaking. I sat up and looked in the direction they werelooking. The sky was cloudless and the moon full. The landwas robbed of its colour. Everything glowed strangely in shadesof black, grey and white. It was the pond. Silver shapes weremoving in it, emerging from below and breaking the blacksurface of the water.
Fish. Dead fish. They were floating up from deep down. Thepond – remember, forty feet across – was filling up with allkinds of dead fish until its surface was no longer black butsilver. And from the way the surface kept on being disturbed,it was evident that more dead fish were coming up.
By the time a dead shark quietly appeared, the meerkatswere in a fury of excitement, shrieking like tropical birds. Thehysteria spread to the neighbouring trees. It was deafening. Iwondered whether I was about to see the sight of fish beinghauled up trees.
Not a single meerkat went down to the pond. None evenmade the first motions of going down. They did no more thanloudly express their frustration.
I found the sight sinister. There was something disturbingabout all those dead fish.
I lay down again and fought to go back to sleep over themeerkats' racket. At first light I was stirred from my slumberby the hullabaloo they made trooping down the tree. Yawningand stretching, I looked down at the pond that had been thesource of such fire and fluster the previous night.
It was empty. Or nearly. But it wasn't the work of themeerkats. They were just now diving in to get what was left.
The fish had disappeared. I was confounded. Was I lookingat the wrong pond? No, for sure it was that one. Was Icertain it was not the meerkats that had emptied it? Absolutely.
I could hardly see them heaving an entire shark out of water,let alone carrying it on their backs and disappearing with it.
Could it be Richard Parker? Possibly in part, but not an entirepond in one night.
It was a complete mystery. No amount of staring into thepond and at its deep green walls could explain to me whathad happened to the fish. The next night I looked, but no newfish came into the pond.
The answer to the mystery came sometime later, from deepwithin the forest.
The trees were larger in the centre of the forest and closelyset. It remained clear below, there being no underbrush of anykind, but overhead the canopy was so dense that the sky wasquite blocked off, or, another way of putting it, the sky wassolidly green. The trees were so near one another that theirbranches grew into each other's spaces; they touched andtwisted around each other so that it was hard to tell whereone tree ended and the next began. I noted that they hadclean, smooth trunks, with none of the countless tiny marks ontheir bark made by climbing meerkats. I easily guessed thereason why: the meerkats could travel from one tree toanother without the need to climb up and down. I found, asproof of this, many trees on. the perimeter of the heart of theforest whose bark had been practically shredded. These treeswere without a doubt the gates into a meerkat arboreal citywith more bustle in it than Calcutta.
It was here that I found the tree. It wasn't the largest inthe forest, or in its dead centre, or remarkable in any otherway. It had good level branches, that's all. It would have madean excellent spot from which to see the sky or take in themeerkats' nightlife.
I can tell you exactly what day I came upon the tree: it wasthe day before I left the island.
I noticed the tree because it seemed to have fruit. Whereaselsewhere the forest canopy was uniformly green, these fruitstood out black against green. The branches holding them weretwisted in odd ways. I looked intently. An entire island coveredin barren trees – but for one. And not even all of one. Thefruit grew from only one small part of the tree. I thought thatperhaps I had come upon the forest equivalent of a queenbee, and I wondered whether this algae would ever cease toamaze me with its botanical strangeness.
I wanted to try the fruit, but the tree was too high. So Ireturned with a rope. If the algae was delicious, what would itsfruit be like?
I looped the rope around the lowest limb of the tree and,bough by bough, branch by branch, made my way to thesmall, precious orchard.
Up close the fruit were dull green. They were about the sizeand shape of oranges. Each was at the centre of a number oftwigs that were tightly curled around it – to protect it, Isupposed. As I got closer, I could see another purpose to thesecurled twigs: support. The fruit had not one stem, but dozens.
Their surfaces were studded with stems that connected them tothe surrounding twigs. These fruit must surely be heavy andjuicy, I thought. I got close.
I reached with a hand and took hold of one. I wasdisappointed at how light it felt. It weighed hardly anything. Ipulled at it, plucking it from all its stems.
I made myself comfortable on a sturdy branch, my back tothe trunk of the tree. Above me stood a shifting roof of greenleaves that let in shafts of sunlight. All round, for as far as Icould see, hanging in the air, were the twisting and turningroads of a great suspended city. A pleasant breeze ran throughthe trees. I was keenly curious. I examined the fruit.
Ah, how I wish that moment had never been! But for it Imight have lived for years – why, for the rest of my life – onthat island. Nothing, I thought, could ever push me to returnto the lifeboat and to the suffering and deprivation I hadendured on it – nothing! What reason could I have to leavethe island? Were my physical needs not met here? Was therenot more fresh water than I could drink in all my lifetime?
More algae than I could eat? And when I yearned for variety,more meerkats and fish than I could ever desire? If the islandfloated and moved, might it not move in the right direction?
Might it not turn out to be a vegetable ship that brought meto land? In the meantime, did I not have these delightfulmeerkats to keep me company? And wasn't Richard Parker stillin need of improving his fourth jump? The thought of leavingthe island had not crossed my mind once since I had arrived.
It had been many weeks now – I couldn't say how manyexactly – and they would stretch on. I was certain about that.
How wrong I was.
If that fruit had a seed, it was the seed of my departure.
The fruit was not a fruit. It was a dense accumulation ofleaves glued together in a ball. The dozens of stems weredozens of leaf stems. Each stem that I pulled caused a leaf topeel off.
After a few layers I came to leaves that had lost their stemsand were flatly glued to the ball. I used my fingernails to catchtheir edges and pull them off. Sheath after sheath of leaf lifted,like the skins off an onion. I could simply have ripped the"fruit" apart – I still call it that for lack of a better word – butI chose to satisfy my curiosity in a measured way.
It shrunk from the size of an orange to that of a mandarin.
My lap and the branches below were covered with thin, softleaf peelings.
It was now the size of a rambutan.
I still get shivers in my spine when I think of it.
The size of a cherry.
And then it came to light, an unspeakable pearl at the heartof a green oyster.
A human tooth.
A molar, to be exact. The surface stained green and finelypierced with holes.
The feeling of horror came slowly. I had time to pick at theother fruit.
Each contained a tooth.
One a canine.
Another a premolar.
Here an incisor.
There another molar.
Thirty-two teeth. A complete human set. Not one toothmissing.
Understanding dawned upon me.
I did not scream. I think only in movies is horror vocal. Isimply shuddered and left the tree.
I spent the day in turmoil, weighing my options. They wereall bad.
That night, in bed in my usual tree, I tested my conclusion.
I took hold of a meerkat and dropped it from the branch.
It squeaked as it fell through the air. When it touched theground, it instantly made for the tree.
With typical innocence it returned to the spot right next tome. There it began to lick its paws vigorously. It seemed muchdiscomforted. It panted heavily.
I could have left it at that. But I wanted to know for myself.
I climbed down and took hold of the rope. I had made knotsin it to make my climbing easier. When I was at the bottom ofthe tree, I brought my feet to within an inch of the ground. Ihesitated.
I let go.
At first I felt nothing. Suddenly a searing pain shot upthrough my feet. I shrieked. I thought I would fall over. Imanaged to take hold of the rope and pull myself off theground. I frantically rubbed the soles of my feet against thetree trunk. It helped, but not enough. I climbed back to mybranch. I soaked my feet in the bucket of water next to mybed. I wiped my feet with leaves. I took the knife and killedtwo meerkats and tried to soothe the pain with their blood andinnards. Still my feet burned. They burned all night. I couldn'tsleep for it, and from the anxiety.
The island was carnivorous. This explained the disappearanceof the fish in the pond. The island attracted saltwater fish intoits subterranean tunnels – how, I don't know; perhaps fish atethe algae as gluttonously as I did. They became trapped. Didthey lose their way? Did the openings onto the sea close off?
Did the water change salinity so subtly that it was too late bythe time the fish realized it? Whatever the case, they foundthemselves trapped in fresh water and died. Some floated up tothe surface of the ponds, the scraps that fed the meerkats. Atnight, by some chemical process unknown to me but obviouslyinhibited by sunlight, the predatory algae turned highly acidicand the ponds became vats of acid that digested the fish. Thiswas why Richard Parker returned to the boat every night. Thiswas why the meerkats slept in the trees. This was why I hadnever seen anything but algae on the island.
And this explained the teeth. Some poor lost soul hadarrived on these terrible shores before me. How much timehad he – or was it she? – spent here? Weeks? Months?
Years? How many forlorn hours in the arboreal city with onlymeerkats for company? How many dreams of a happy lifedashed? How much hope come to nothing? How muchstored-up conversation that died unsaid? How much lonelinessendured? How much hopelessness taken on? And after all that,what of it? What to show for it?
Nothing but some enamel, like small change in a pocket. Theperson must have died in the tree. Was it illness? Injury?
Depression? How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill abody that has food, water and shelter? The trees werecarnivorous too, but at a much lower level of acidity, safeenough to stay in for the night while the rest of the islandseethed. But once the person had died and stopped moving,the tree must have slowly wrapped itself around the body anddigested it, the very bones leached of nutrients until theyvanished. In time, even the teeth would have disappeared.
I looked around at the algae. Bitterness welled up in me.
The radiant promise it offered during the day was replaced inmy heart by all the treachery it delivered at night.
I muttered, "Nothing but teeth left! TEETH!"By the time morning came, my grim decision was taken. Ipreferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind thanto live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual deathon this murderous island. I filled my stores with fresh waterand I drank like a camel. I ate algae throughout the day untilmy stomach could take no more. I killed and skinned as manymeerkats as would fit in the locker and on the floor of thelifeboat. I reaped dead fish from the ponds. With the hatchet Ihacked off a large mass of algae and worked a rope throughit, which I tied to the boat.
I could not abandon Richard Parker. To leave him wouldmean to kill him. He would not survive the first night. Alone inmy lifeboat at sunset I would know that he was burning alive.
Or that he had thrown himself in the sea, where he woulddrown. I waited for his return. I knew he would not be late.
When he was aboard, I pushed us off. For a few hours thecurrents kept us near the island. The noises of the seabothered me. And I was no longer used to the rockingmotions of the boat. The night went by slowly.
In the morning the island was gone, as was the mass ofalgae we had been towing. As soon as night had fallen, thealgae had dissolved the rope with its acid.
The sea was heavy, the sky grey.
I was on my side. It was an hour or two past noon on aday of quiet sunshine and gentle breeze. I had slept a shortwhile, a diluted sleep that had brought no rest and no dreams.
I turned over to my other side, expending as little energy aspossible in doing so. I opened my eyes.
In the near distance I saw trees. I did not react. I wascertain it was an illusion that a few blinks would makedisappear.
The trees remained. In fact, they grew to be a forest. Theywere part of a low-lying island. I pushed myself up. I continuedto disbelieve my eyes. But it was a thrill to be deluded in sucha high-quality way. The trees were beautiful. They were likenone I had ever seen before. They had a pale bark, andequally distributed branches that carried an amazing profusionof leaves. These leaves were brilliantly green, a green so brightand emerald that, next to it, vegetation during the monsoonswas drab olive.
I blinked deliberately, expecting my eyelids to act likelumberjacks. But the trees would not fall.
I looked down. I was both satisfied and disappointed withwhat I saw. The island had no soil. Not that the trees stood inwater. Rather, they stood in what appeared to be a densemass of vegetation, as sparkling green as the leaves. Who hadever heard of land with no soil? With trees growing out ofpure vegetation? I felt satisfaction because such a geologyconfirmed that I was right, that this island was a chimera, aplay of the mind. By the same token I felt disappointmentbecause an island, any island, however strange, would havebeen very good to come upon.
Since the trees continued to stand, I continued to look. Totake in green, after so much blue, was like music to my eyes.
Green is a lovely colour. It is the colour of Islam. It is myfavourite colour.
The current gently pushed the lifeboat closer to the illusion.
Its shore could not be called a beach, there being neither sandnor pebbles, and there was no pounding of surf either, sincethe waves that fell upon the island simply vanished into itsporosity. From a ridge some three hundred yards inland, theisland sloped to the sea and, forty or so yards into it, fell offprecipitously, disappearing from sight into the depths of thePacific, surely the smallest continental shelf on record.
I was getting used to the mental delusion. To make it last Irefrained from putting a strain on it; when the lifeboat nudgedthe island, I did not move, only continued to dream. The fabricof the island seemed to be an intricate, tightly webbed mass oftube-shaped seaweed, in diameter a little thicker than twofingers. What a fanciful island, I thought.
After some minutes I crept up to the side of the boat.
"Look for green," said the survival manual. Well, this wasgreen. In fact, it was chlorophyll heaven. A green to outshinefood colouring and flashing neon lights. A green to get drunkon. "Ultimately, a foot is the only good judge of land," pursuedthe manual. The island was within reach of a foot. To judge –and be disappointed – or not to judge, that was the question.
I decided to judge. I looked about to see if there weresharks. There were none. I turned on my stomach, andholding on to the tarpaulin, I slowly brought a leg down. Myfoot entered the sea. It was pleasingly cool. The island lay justa little further down, shimmering in the water. I stretched. Iexpected the bubble of illusion to burst at any second.
It did not. My foot sank into clear water and met therubbery resistance of something flexible but solid. I put moreweight down. The illusion would not give. I put my full weighton my foot. Still I did not sink. Still I did not believe.
Finally, it was my nose that was the judge of land. It cameto my olfactory sense, full and fresh, overwhelming: the smell ofvegetation. I gasped. After months of nothing butsalt-water-bleached smells, this reek of vegetable organic matterwas intoxicating. It was then that I believed, and the only thingthat sank was my mind; my thought process becamedisjointed. My leg began to shake.
"My God! My God!" I whimpered.
I fell overboard.
The combined shock of solid land and cool water gave methe strength to pull myself forward onto the island. I babbledincoherent thanks to God and collapsed.
But I could not stay still. I was too excited. I attempted toget to my feet. Blood rushed away from my head. The groundshook violently. A dizzying blindness overcame me. I thought Iwould faint. I steadied myself. All I seemed able to do waspant. I managed to sit up.
"Richard Parker! Land! Land! We are saved!" I shouted.
The smell of vegetation was extraordinarily strong. As for thegreenness, it was so fresh and soothing that strength andcomfort seemed to be physically pouring into my systemthrough my eyes.
What was this strange, tubular seaweed, so intricatelyentangled? Was it edible? It seemed to be a variety of marinealgae, but quite rigid, far more so than normal algae. The feelof it in the hand was wet and as of something crunchy. Ipulled at it. Strands of it broke off without too much effort. Incross-section it consisted of two concentric walls: the wet,slightly rough outer wall, so vibrantly green, and an inner wallmidway between the outer wall and the core of the algae. Thedivision in the two tubes that resulted was very plain: thecentre tube was white in colour, while the tube that surroundedit was decreas-ingly green as it approached the inner wall. Ibrought a piece of the algae to my nose. Beyond the agreeablefragrance of the vegetable, it had a neutral smell. I licked it.
My pulse quickened. The algae was wet with fresh water.
I bit into it. My chops were in for a shock. The inner tubewas bitterly salty – but the outer was not only edible, it wasdelicious. My tongue began to tremble as if it were a fingerflipping through a dictionary, trying to find a long-forgottenword. It found it, and my eyes closed with pleasure at hearingit: sweet. Not as in good, but as in sugary. Turtles and fishare many things, but they are never, ever sugary. The algaehad a light sweetness that outdid in delight even the sap ofour maple trees here in Canada. In consistency, the closest Ican compare it to is water chestnuts.
Saliva forcefully oozed through the dry pastiness of mymouth. Making loud noises of pleasure, I tore at the algaearound me. The inner and outer tubes separated cleanly andeasily. I began stuffing the sweet outer into my mouth. I wentat it with both hands, force-feeding my mouth and setting it towork harder and faster than it had in a very long time. I atetill there was a regular moat around me.
A solitary tree stood about two hundred feet away. It wasthe only tree downhill from the ridge, which seemed a verylong way off. I say ridge; the word perhaps gives an incorrectimpression of how steep the rise from the shore was. Theisland was low-lying, as I've said. The rise was gentle, to aheight of perhaps fifty or sixty feet. But in the state I was in,that height loomed like a mountain. The tree was more inviting.
I noticed its patch of shade. I tried to stand again. I managedto get to a squatting position but as soon as I made to rise,my head spun and I couldn't keep my balance. And even if Ihadn't fallen over, my legs had no strength left in them. Butmy will was strong. I was determined to move forward. Icrawled, dragged myself, weakly leapfrogged to the tree.
I know I will never know a joy so vast as I experiencedwhen I entered that tree's dappled, shimmering shade andheard the dry, crisp sound of the wind rustling its leaves. Thetree was not as large or as tall as the ones inland, and forbeing on the wrong side of the ridge, more exposed to theelements, it was a little scraggly and not so uniformly developedas its mates. But it was a tree, and a tree is a blessedly goodthing to behold when you've been lost at sea for a long, longtime. I sang that tree's glory, its solid, unhurried purity, its slowbeauty. Oh, that I could be like it, rooted to the ground butwith my every hand raised up to God in praise! I wept.
As my heart exalted Allah, my mind began to take ininformation about Allah's works. The tree did indeed grow rightout of the algae, as I had seen from the lifeboat. There wasnot the least trace of soil. Either there was soil deeper down,or this species of tree was a remarkable instance of acommensal or a parasite. The trunk was about the width of aman's chest. The bark was greyish green in colour, thin andsmooth, and soft enough that I could mark it with myfingernail. The cordate leaves were large and broad, and endedin a single point. The head of the tree had the lovely fullroundness of a mango tree, but it was not a mango. I thoughtit smelled somewhat like a lote tree, but it wasn't a lote either.
Nor a mangrove. Nor any other tree I had ever seen. All Iknow was that it was beautiful and green and lush with leaves.
I heard a growl. I turned. Richard Parker was observing mefrom the lifeboat. He was looking at the island, too. He seemedto want to come ashore but was afraid. Finally, after muchsnarling and pacing, he leapt from the boat. I brought theorange whistle to my mouth. But he didn't have aggression onhis mind. Simple balance was enough of a challenge; he was aswobbly on his feet as I was. When he advanced, he crawledclose to the ground and with trembling limbs, like a newborncub. Giving me a wide berth, he made for the ridge anddisappeared into the interior of the island.
I passed the day eating, resting, attempting to stand and, ina general way, bathing in bliss. I felt nauseous when I exertedmyself too much. And I kept feeling that the ground wasshifting beneath me and that I was going to fall over, evenwhen I was sitting still.
I started worrying about Richard Parker in the lateafternoon. Now that the setting, the territory, had changed, Iwasn't sure how he would take to me if he came upon me.
Reluctantly, strictly for safety's sake, I crawled back to thelifeboat. However Richard Parker took possession of the island,the bow and the tarpaulin remained my territory. I searchedfor something to moor the lifeboat to. Evidently the algaecovered the shore thickly, for it was all I could find. Finally, Iresolved the problem by driving an oar, handle first, deep intothe algae and tethering the boat to it.
I crawled onto the tarpaulin. I was exhausted. My body wasspent from taking in so much food, and there was the nervoustension arising from my sudden change of fortunes. As the dayended, I hazily remember hearing Richard Parker roaring in thedistance, but sleep overcame me.
I awoke in the night with a strange, uncomfortable feeling inmy lower belly. I thought it was a cramp, that perhaps I hadpoisoned myself with the algae. I heard a noise. I looked.
Richard Parker was aboard. He had returned while I wassleeping. He was meowing and licking the pads of his feet. Ifound his return puzzling but thought no further about it – thecramp was quickly getting worse. I was doubled over with pain,shaking with it, when a process, normal for most but longforgotten by me, set itself into motion: defecation. It was verypainful, but afterwards I fell into the deepest, most refreshingsleep I had had since the night before the Tsimtsum sank.
When I woke up in the morning I felt much stronger. Icrawled to the solitary tree in a vigorous way. My eyes feastedonce more upon it, as did my stomach on the algae. I hadsuch a plentiful breakfast that I dug a big hole.
Richard Parker once again hesitated for hours beforejumping off the boat. When he did, mid-morning, as soon ashe landed on the shore he jumped back and half fell in thewater and seemed very tense. He hissed and clawed the airwith a paw. It was curious. I had no idea what he was doing.
His anxiety passed, and noticeably surer-footed than theprevious day, he disappeared another time over the ridge.
That day, leaning against the tree, I stood. I felt dizzy Theonly way I could make the ground stop moving was to closemy eyes and grip the tree. I pushed off and tried to walk. Ifell instantly. The ground rushed up to me before I couldmove a foot. No harm done. The island, coated with suchtightly woven, rubbery vegetation, was an ideal place to relearnhow to walk. I could fall any which way, it was impossible tohurt myself.
The next day, after another restful night on the ‘ boat – towhich, once again, Richard Parker had returned – I was ableto walk. Falling half a dozen times, I managed to reach thetree. I could feel my strength increasing by the hour. With thegaff I reached up and pulled down a branch from the tree. Iplucked off some leaves. They were soft and unwaxed, but theytasted bitter. Richard Parker was attached to his den on thelifeboat – that was my explanation for why he had returnedanother night.
I saw him coming back that evening, as the sun was setting.
I had retethered the lifeboat to the buried oar. I was at thebow, checking that the rope was properly secured to the stem.
He appeared all of a sudden. At first I didn't recognize him.
This magnificent animal bursting over the ridge at full gallopcouldn't possibly be the same listless, bedraggled tiger who wasmy companion in misfortune? But it was. It was RichardParker and he was coming my way at high speed. He lookedpurposeful. His powerful neck rose above his lowered head. Hiscoat and his muscles shook at every step. I could hear thedrumming of his heavy body against the ground.
I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trainedout of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpectednoise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapidand direct approach of a known killer.
I fumbled for the whistle. When he was twenty-five feet fromthe lifeboat I blew into the whistle with all my might. A piercingcry split the air.
It had the desired effect. Richard Parker braked. But heclearly wanted to move forward again. I blew a second time.
He started turning and hopping on the spot in a most peculiar,deer-like way, snarling fiercely. I blew a third time. Every hairon him was raised. His claws were full out. He was in a stateof extreme agitation. I feared that the defensive wall of mywhistle blows was about to crumble and that he would attackme.
Instead, Richard Parker did the most unexpected thing: hejumped into the sea. I was astounded. The very thing Ithought he would never do, he did, and with might andresolve. He energetically paddled his way to the stern of thelifeboat. I thought of blowing again, but instead opened thelocker lid and sat down, retreating to the inner sanctum of myterritory.
He surged onto the stern, quantities of water pouring offhim, making my end of the boat pitch up. He balanced on thegunnel and the stern bench for a moment, assessing me. Myheart grew faint. I did not think I would be able to blow intothe whistle again. I looked at him blankly. He flowed down tothe floor of the lifeboat and disappeared under the tarpaulin. Icould see parts of him from the edges of the locker lid. Ithrew myself upon the tarpaulin, out of his sight – but directlyabove him. I felt an overwhelming urge to sprout wings and flyoff.
I calmed down. I reminded myself forcefully that this hadbeen my situation for the last long while, to be living with alive tiger hot beneath me.
As my breathing slowed down, sleep came to me.
Sometime during the night I awoke and, my fear forgotten,looked over. He was dreaming: he was shaking and growlingin his sleep. He was loud enough about it to have woken meup.
In the morning, as usual, he went over the ridge.
I decided that as soon as I was strong enough I would goexploring the island. It seemed quite large,if the shoreline was any indication; left and right it stretchedon with only a slight curve, showing the island to have a fairgirth. I spent the day walking – and falling – from the shoreto the tree and back, in an attempt to restore my legs tohealth. At every fall I had a full meal of algae.
When Richard Parker returned as the day was ending, alittle earlier than the previous day, I was expecting him. I sattight and did not blow the whistle. He came to the water'sedge and in one mighty leap reached the side of the lifeboat.
He entered his territory without intruding into mine, onlycausing the boat to lurch to one side. His return to form wasquite terrifying.
The next morning, after giving Richard Parker plenty ofadvance, I set off to explore the island. I walked up to theridge. I reached it easily, proudly moving one foot ahead of theother in a gait that was spirited if still a little awkward. Hadmy legs been weaker, they would have given way beneath mewhen I saw what I saw beyond the ridge.
To start with details, I saw that the whole island wascovered with the algae, not just its edges. I saw a great greenplateau with a green forest in its centre. I saw all around thisforest hundreds of evenly scattered, identically sized ponds withtrees sparsely distributed in a uniform way between them, thewhole arrangement giving the unmistakable impression offollowing a design.
But it was the meerkats that impressed themselves mostindelibly on my mind. I saw in one look what I wouldconservatively estimate to be hundreds of thousands ofmeerkats. The landscape was covered in meerkats. And when Iappeared, it seemed that all of them turned to me, astonished,like chickens in a farmyard, and stood up.
We didn't have any meerkats in our zoo. But I had readabout them. They were in the books and in the literature. Ameerkat is a small South African mammal related to themongoose; in other words, a carnivorous burrower, a foot longand weighing two pounds when mature, slender and weasel-likein build, with a pointed snout, eyes sitting squarely at the frontof its face, short legs, paws with four toes and long,non-retractile claws, and an eight-inch tail. Its fur is light brownto grey in colour with black or brown bands on its back, whilethe tip of its tail, its ears and the characteristic circles aroundits eyes are black. It is an agile and keen-sighted creature,diurnal and social in habits, and feeding in its native range –the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa – on, among otherthings, scorpions, to whose venom it is completely immune.
When it is on the lookout, the meerkat has the peculiarity ofstanding perfectly upright on the tips of its back legs, balancingitself tripod-like with its tail. Often a group of meerkats will takethe stance collectively, standing in a huddle and gazing in thesame direction, looking like commuters waiting for a bus. Theearnest expression on their faces, and the way their front pawshang before them, make them look either like childrenself-consciously posing for a photographer or patients in adoctor's office stripped naked and demurely trying to covertheir genitals.
That is what I beheld in one glance, hundreds of thousandsof meerkats – more, a million – turning to me and standing atattention, as if saying, "Yes, sir?" Mind you, a standing meerkatreaches up eighteen inches at most, so it was not the height ofthese creatures that was so breathtaking as their unlimitedmultitude. I stood rooted to the spot, speechless. If I set amillion meerkats fleeing in terror, the chaos would beindescribable. But their interest in me was short-lived. After afew seconds, they went back to doing what they had beendoing before I appeared, which was either nibbling at the algaeor staring into the ponds. To see so many beings bendingdown at the same time reminded me of prayer time in amosque.
The creatures seemed to feel no fear. As I moved downfrom the ridge, none shied away or showed the least tension atmy presence. If I had wanted to, I could have touched one,even picked one up. I did nothing of the sort. I simply walkedinto what was surely the largest colony of meerkats in theworld, one of the strangest, most wonderful experiences of mylife. There was a ceaseless noise in the air. It was theirsqueaking, chirping, twittering and barking.
Such were their numbers and the vagaries of theirexcitement that the noise came and went like a flock of birds,at times very loud, swirling around me, then rapidly dying offas the closest meerkats fell silent while others, further off,started up.
Were they not afraid of me because I should be afraid ofthem? The question crossed my mind. But the answer – thatthey were harmless – was immediately apparent. To get closeto a pond, around which they were densely packed, I had tonudge them away with my feet so as not to step on one.
They took to my barging without any offence, making room forme like a good-natured crowd. I felt warm, furry bodies againstmy ankles as I looked into a pond.
All the ponds had the same round shape and were aboutthe same size – roughly forty feet in diameter. I expectedshallowness. I saw nothing but deep, clear water. The pondsseemed bottomless, in fact. And as far down as I could see,their sides consisted of green algae. Evidently the layer atop theisland was very substantial.
I could see nothing that accounted for the meerkats' fixedcuriosity, and I might have given up on solving the mysteryhad squeaking and barking not erupted at a pond nearby.
Meerkats were jumping up and down in a state of greatferment. Suddenly, by the hundreds, they began diving into thepond. There was much pushing and shoving as the meerkatsbehind vied to reach the pond's edge. The frenzy wascollective; even tiny meerkittens were making for the water,barely being held back by mothers and guardians. I stared indisbelief. These were not standard Kalahari Desert meerkats.
Standard Kalahari Desert meerkats do not behave like frogs.
These meerkats were most definitely a subspecies that hadspecialized in a fascinating and surprising way.
I made for the pond, bringing my feet down gingerly, intime to see meerkats swimming – actually swimming – andbringing to shore fish by the dozens, and not small fish either.
Some were dorados that would have been unqualified feasts onthe lifeboat. They dwarfed the meerkats. It wasincomprehensible to me how meerkats could catch such fish.
It was as the meerkats were hauling the fish out of thepond, displaying real feats of teamwork, that I noticedsomething curious: every fish, without exception, was alreadydead. Freshly dead. The meerkats were bringing ashore deadfish they had not killed.
I kneeled by the pond, pushing aside several excited, wetmeerkats. I touched the water. It was cooler than I'd expected.
There was a current that was bringing colder water frombelow. I cupped a little water in my hand and brought it tomy mouth. I took a sip.
It was fresh water. This explained how the fish had died –for, of course, place a saltwater fish in fresh water and it willquickly become bloated and die. But what were seafaring fishdoing in a freshwater pond? How had they got there?
I went to another pond, making my way through themeerkats. It too was fresh. Another pond; the same. And againwith a fourth pond.
They were all freshwater ponds. Where had such quantitiesof fresh water come from, I asked myself. The answer wasobvious: from the algae. The algae naturally and continuouslydesalinated sea water, which was why its core was salty whileits outer surface was wet with fresh water: it was oozing thefresh water out. I did not ask myself why the algae did this, orhow, or where the salt went. My mind stopped asking suchquestions. I simply laughed and jumped into a pond. I found ithard to stay at the surface of the water; I was still very weak,and I had little fat on me to help me float. I held on to theedge of the pond. The effect of bathing in pure, clean, salt-freewater was more than I can put into words. After such a longtime at sea, my skin was like a hide and my hair was long,malted and as silky as a fly-catching strip. I felt even my soulhad been corroded by salt. So, under the gaze of a thousandmeerkats, I soaked, allowing fresh water to dissolve every saltcrystal that had tainted me.
The meerkats looked away. They did it like one man, all ofthem turning in the same direction at exactly the same time. Ipulled myself out to see what it was. It was Richard Parker.
He confirmed what I had suspected, that these meerkats hadgone for so many generations without predators that anynotion of flight distance, of flight, of plain fear, had beengenetically weeded out of them. He was moving through them,blazing a trail of murder and mayhem, devouring one meerkatafter another, blood dripping from his mouth, and they, cheekto jowl with a tiger, were jumping up and down on the spot,as if crying, "My turn! My turn! My turn!" I would see thisscene time and again. Nothing distracted the meerkats fromtheir little lives of pond staring and algae nibbling. WhetherRichard Parker skulked up in masterly tiger fashion beforelanding upon them in a thunder of roaring, or slouched byindifferently, it was all the same to them. They were not to beruffled. Meekness ruled.
He killed beyond his need. He killed meerkats that he didnot eat. In animals, the urge to kill is separate from the urgeto eat. To go for so long without prey and suddenly to haveso many – his pent-up hunting instinct was lashing out with avengeance.
He was far away. There was no danger to me. At least forthe moment.
The next morning, after he had gone, I cleaned the lifeboat.
It needed it badly. I won't describe what the accumulation ofhuman and animal skeletons, mixed in with innumerable fishand turtle remains, looked like. The whole foul, disgusting messwent overboard. I didn't dare step onto the floor of the boatfor fear of leaving a tangible trace of my presence to RichardParker, so the job had to be done with the gaff from thetarpaulin or from the side of the boat, standing in the water.
What I could not clean up with the gaff – the smells and thesmears – I rinsed with buckets of water.
That night he entered his new, clean den without comment.
In his jaws were a number of dead meerkats, which he ateduring the night.
I spent the following days eating and drinking and bathingand observing the meerkats and walking and running andresting and growing stronger. My running became smooth andunselfconscious, a source of euphoria. My skin healed. Mypains and aches left me. Put simply, I returned to life.
I explored the island. I tried to walk around it but gave up.
I estimate that it was about six or seven miles in diameter,which means a circumference of about twenty miles. What Isaw seemed to indicate that the shore was unvarying in itsfeatures. The same blinding greenness throughout, the sameridge, the same incline from ridge to water, the same break inthe monotony: a scraggly tree here and there. Exploring theshore revealed one extraordinary thing: the algae, and thereforethe island itself, varied in height and density depending on theweather. On very hot days, the algae's weave became tight anddense, and the island increased in height; the climb to theridge became steeper and the ridge higher. It was not a quickprocess. Only a hot spell lasting several days triggered it. But itwas unmistakable. I believe it had to do with waterconservation, with exposing less of the algae's surface to thesun's rays.
The converse phenomenon – the loosening of the island –was faster, more dramatic, and the reasons for it more evident.
At such times the ridge came down, and the continental shelf,so to speak, stretched out, and the algae along the shorebecame so slack that I tended to catch my feet in it. Thisloosening was brought on by overcast weather and, faster still,by heavy seas.
I lived through a major storm while on the island, and afterthe experience, I would have trusted staying on it during theworst hurricane. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle to sit in atree and see giant waves charging the island, seeminglypreparing to ride up the ridge and unleash bedlam and chaos– only to see each one melt away as if it had come uponquicksand. In this respect, the island was Gandhian: it resistedby not resisting. Every wave vanished into the island without aclash, with only a little frothing and foaming. A tremor shakingthe ground and ripples wrinkling the surface of the ponds werethe only indications that some great force was passing through.
And pass through it did: in the lee of the island, considerablydiminished, waves emerged and went on their way. It was thestrangest sight, that, to see waves leaving a shoreline. Thestorm, and the resulting minor earthquakes, did not perturb themeerkats in the least. They went about their business as if theelements did not exist.
Harder to understand was the island's complete desolation. Inever saw such a stripped-down ecology. The air of the placecarried no flies, no butterflies, no bees, no insects of any kind..
The trees sheltered no birds. The plains hid no rodents, nogrubs, no worms, no snakes, no scorpions; they gave rise tono other trees, no shrubs, no grasses, no flowers. The pondsharboured no freshwater fish. The seashore teemed with noweeds, no crabs, no crayfish, no coral, no pebbles, no rocks.
With the single, notable exception of the meerkats, there wasnot the least foreign matter on the island, organic or inorganic.
It was nothing but shining green algae and shining green trees.
The trees were not parasites. I discovered this one daywhen I ate so much algae at the base of a small tree that Iexposed its roots. I saw that the roots did not go their ownindependent way into the algae, but rather joined it, became it.
Which meant that these trees either lived in a symbioticrelationship with the algae, in a giving-and-taking that was totheir mutual advantage, or, simpler still, were an integral part ofthe algae. I would guess that the latter was the case becausethe trees did not seem to bear flowers or fruit. I doubt that anindependent organism, however intimate the symbiosis it hasentered upon, would give up on so essential a part of life asreproduction. The leaves' appetite for the sun, as testified bytheir abundance, their breadth and their super-chlorophyllgreenness, made me suspect that the trees had primarily anenergy-gathering function. But this is conjecture.
There is one last observation I would like to make. It isbased on intuition rather than hard evidence. It is this: that theisland was not an island in the conventional sense of the term– that is, a small landmass rooted to the floor of the ocean –but was rather a free-floating organism, a ball of algae ofleviathan proportions. And it is my hunch that the pondsreached down to the sides of this huge, buoyant mass andopened onto the ocean, which explained the otherwiseinexplicable presence in them of dorados and other fish of theopen seas.
It would all bear much further study, but unfortunately I lostthe algae that I took away.
Just as I returned to life, so did Richard Parker. By dint ofstuffing himself with meerkats, his weight went up, his furbegan to glisten again, and he returned to his healthy look ofold. He kept up his habit of returning to the lifeboat at theend of every day. I always made sure I was there before him,copiously marking my territory with urine so that he didn'tforget who was who and what was whose. But he left at firstlight and roamed further afield than I did; the island being thesame all over, I generally stayed within one area. I saw verylittle of him during the day. And I grew nervous. I saw howhe raked the trees with his forepaws – great deep gouges inthe trunks, they were. And I began to hear his hoarse roaring,that aaonh cry as rich as gold or honey and as spine-chillingas the depths of an unsafe mine or a thousand angry bees.
That he was searching for a female was not in itself whattroubled me; it was that it meant he was comfortable enoughon the island to be thinking about producing young. I worriedthat in this new condition he might not tolerate another malein his territory, his night territory in particular, especially if hisinsistent cries went unanswered, as surely they would.
One day I was on a walk in the forest. I was walkingvigorously, caught up in my own thoughts. I passed a tree –and practically ran into Richard Parker. Both of us werestartled. He hissed and reared up on his hind legs, toweringover me, his great paws ready to swat me down. I stoodfrozen to the spot, paralyzed with fear and shock. He droppedback on all fours and moved away. When he had gone three,four paces, he turned and reared up again, growling this time.
I continued to stand like a statue. He went another few pacesand repeated the threat a third time. Satisfied that I was not amenace, he ambled off. As soon as I had caught my breathand stopped trembling, I brought the whistle to my mouth andstarted running after him. He had already gone a gooddistance, but he was still within sight. My running waspowerful. He turned, saw me, crouched – and then bolted. Iblew into the whistle as hard as I could, wishing that its soundwould travel as far and wide as the cry of a lonely tiger.
That night, as he was resting two feet beneath me, I cameto the conclusion that I had to step into the circus ring again.
The major difficulty in training animals is that they operateeither by instinct or by rote. The shortcut of intelligence tomake new associations that are not instinctive is minimallyavailable. Therefore, imprinting in an animal's mind the artificialconnection that if it does a certain action, say, roll over, it willget a treat can be achieved only by mind-numbing repetition. Itis a slow process that depends as much on luck as on hardwork, all the more so when the animal is an adult. I blew intothe whistle till my lungs hurt. I pounded my chest till it wascovered with bruises. I shouted "Hep! Hep! Hep!" – mytiger-language command to say "Do!" – thousands of times. Itossed hundreds of meerkat morsels at him that I would gladlyhave eaten myself. The training of tigers is no easy feat. Theyare considerably less flexible in their mental make-up than otheranimals that are commonly trained in circuses and zoos – sealions and chimpanzees, for example. But I don't want to taketoo much credit for what I managed to do with RichardParker. My good fortune, the fortune that saved my life, wasthat he was not only a young adult but a pliable young adult,an omega animal. I was afraid that conditions on the islandmight play against me, that with such an abundance of foodand water and so much space he might become relaxed andconfident, less open to my influence. But he remained tense. Iknew him well enough to sense it. At night in the lifeboat hewas unsettled and noisy. I assigned this tension to the newenvironment of the island; any change, even positive, will makean animal tense. Whatever the cause, the strain he was undermeant that he continued to show a readiness to oblige; more,that he felt a need to oblige.
I trained him to jump through a hoop I made with thinbranches. It was a simple routine of four jumps. Each oneearned him part of a meerkat. As he lumbered towards me, Ifirst held the hoop at the end of my left arm, some three feetoff the ground. When he had leapt through it, and as hefinished his run, I took hold of the hoop with my right handand, my back to him, commanded him to return and leapthrough it again. For the third jump I knelt on the groundand held the hoop over my head. It was a nerve-rackingexperience to see him come my way. I never lost the fear thathe would not jump but attack me. Thankfully, he jumped everytime. After which I got up and tossed the hoop so that itrolled like a wheel. Richard Parker was supposed to follow itand go through it one last time before it fell over. He wasnever very good at this last part of the act, either because Ifailed to throw the hoop properly or because he clumsily raninto it. But at least he followed it, which meant he got awayfrom me. He was always filled with amazement when the hoopfell over. He would look at it intently, as if it were some greatfellow animal he had been running with that had collapsedunexpectedly. He would stay next to it, sniffing it. I wouldthrow him his last treat and move away.
Eventually I quit the boat. It seemed absurd to spend mynights in such cramped quarters with an animal who wasbecoming roomy in his needs, when I could have an entireisland. I decided the safe thing to do would be to sleep in atree. Richard Parker's nocturnal practice of sleeping in thelifeboat was never a law in my mind. It would not be a goodidea for me to be outside my territory, sleeping and defencelesson the ground, the one time he decided to go for a midnightstroll.
So one day I left the boat with the net, a rope and someblankets. I sought out a handsome tree on the edge of theforest and threw the rope over the lowest branch. My fitnesswas such that I had no problem pulling myself up by my armsand climbing the tree. I found two solid branches that werelevel and close together, and I tied the net to them. I returnedat the end of the day.
I had just finished folding the blankets to make my mattresswhen I detected a commotion among the meerkats. I looked. Ipushed aside branches to see better. I looked in every directionand as far as the horizon. It was unmistakable. The meerkatswere abandoning the ponds – indeed, the whole plain – andrapidly making for the forest. An entire nation of meerkats wason the move, their backs arched and their feet a blur. I waswondering what further surprise these animals held in store forme when I noticed with consternation that the ones from thepond closest to me had surrounded my tree and were climbingup the trunk. The trunk was disappearing under a wave ofdetermined meerkats. I thought they were coming to attack me,that here was the reason why Richard Parker slept in thelifeboat: during the day the meerkats were docile and harmless,but at night, under their collective weight, they crushed theirenemies ruthlessly. I was both afraid and indignant. To survivefor so long in a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger only todie up a tree at the hands of two-pound meerkats struck meas a tragedy too unfair and too ridiculous to bear.
They meant me no harm. They climbed up to me, over me,about me – and past me. They settled upon every branch inthe tree. It became laden with them. They even took over mybed. And the same as far as the eye could see. They wereclimbing every tree in sight. The entire forest was turningbrown, an autumn that came in a few minutes. Collectively, asthey scampered by in droves to claim empty trees deeper intothe forest, they made more noise than a stampeding herd ofelephants.
The plain, meanwhile, was becoming bare and depopulated.
From a bunk bed with a tiger to an overcrowded dormitorywith meerkats – will I be believed when I say that life cantake the most surprising turns? I jostled with meerkats so thatI could have a place in my own bed. They snuggled up to me.
Not a square inch of space was left free.
They settled down and stopped squeaking and chirping.
Silence came to the tree. We fell asleep.
I woke up at dawn covered from head to toe in a living farblanket. Some meerkittens had discovered the warmer parts ofmy body. I had a tight, sweaty collar of them around my neck– and it must have been their mother who had settled herselfso contentedly on the side of my head – while others hadwedged themselves in my groin area.
They left the tree as briskly and as unceremoniously as theyhad invaded it. It was the same with every tree around. Theplain grew thick with meerkats, and the noises of their daystarted filling the air. The tree looked empty. And I felt empty,a little. I had liked the experience of sleeping with themeerkats.
I began to sleep in the tree every night. I emptied thelifeboat of useful items and made myself a nice treetopbedroom. I got used to the unintentional scratches I receivedfrom meerkats climbing over me. My only complaint would bethat animals higher up occasionally relieved themselves on me.
One night the meerkats woke me up. They were chatteringand shaking. I sat up and looked in the direction they werelooking. The sky was cloudless and the moon full. The landwas robbed of its colour. Everything glowed strangely in shadesof black, grey and white. It was the pond. Silver shapes weremoving in it, emerging from below and breaking the blacksurface of the water.
Fish. Dead fish. They were floating up from deep down. Thepond – remember, forty feet across – was filling up with allkinds of dead fish until its surface was no longer black butsilver. And from the way the surface kept on being disturbed,it was evident that more dead fish were coming up.
By the time a dead shark quietly appeared, the meerkatswere in a fury of excitement, shrieking like tropical birds. Thehysteria spread to the neighbouring trees. It was deafening. Iwondered whether I was about to see the sight of fish beinghauled up trees.
Not a single meerkat went down to the pond. None evenmade the first motions of going down. They did no more thanloudly express their frustration.
I found the sight sinister. There was something disturbingabout all those dead fish.
I lay down again and fought to go back to sleep over themeerkats' racket. At first light I was stirred from my slumberby the hullabaloo they made trooping down the tree. Yawningand stretching, I looked down at the pond that had been thesource of such fire and fluster the previous night.
It was empty. Or nearly. But it wasn't the work of themeerkats. They were just now diving in to get what was left.
The fish had disappeared. I was confounded. Was I lookingat the wrong pond? No, for sure it was that one. Was Icertain it was not the meerkats that had emptied it? Absolutely.
I could hardly see them heaving an entire shark out of water,let alone carrying it on their backs and disappearing with it.
Could it be Richard Parker? Possibly in part, but not an entirepond in one night.
It was a complete mystery. No amount of staring into thepond and at its deep green walls could explain to me whathad happened to the fish. The next night I looked, but no newfish came into the pond.
The answer to the mystery came sometime later, from deepwithin the forest.
The trees were larger in the centre of the forest and closelyset. It remained clear below, there being no underbrush of anykind, but overhead the canopy was so dense that the sky wasquite blocked off, or, another way of putting it, the sky wassolidly green. The trees were so near one another that theirbranches grew into each other's spaces; they touched andtwisted around each other so that it was hard to tell whereone tree ended and the next began. I noted that they hadclean, smooth trunks, with none of the countless tiny marks ontheir bark made by climbing meerkats. I easily guessed thereason why: the meerkats could travel from one tree toanother without the need to climb up and down. I found, asproof of this, many trees on. the perimeter of the heart of theforest whose bark had been practically shredded. These treeswere without a doubt the gates into a meerkat arboreal citywith more bustle in it than Calcutta.
It was here that I found the tree. It wasn't the largest inthe forest, or in its dead centre, or remarkable in any otherway. It had good level branches, that's all. It would have madean excellent spot from which to see the sky or take in themeerkats' nightlife.
I can tell you exactly what day I came upon the tree: it wasthe day before I left the island.
I noticed the tree because it seemed to have fruit. Whereaselsewhere the forest canopy was uniformly green, these fruitstood out black against green. The branches holding them weretwisted in odd ways. I looked intently. An entire island coveredin barren trees – but for one. And not even all of one. Thefruit grew from only one small part of the tree. I thought thatperhaps I had come upon the forest equivalent of a queenbee, and I wondered whether this algae would ever cease toamaze me with its botanical strangeness.
I wanted to try the fruit, but the tree was too high. So Ireturned with a rope. If the algae was delicious, what would itsfruit be like?
I looped the rope around the lowest limb of the tree and,bough by bough, branch by branch, made my way to thesmall, precious orchard.
Up close the fruit were dull green. They were about the sizeand shape of oranges. Each was at the centre of a number oftwigs that were tightly curled around it – to protect it, Isupposed. As I got closer, I could see another purpose to thesecurled twigs: support. The fruit had not one stem, but dozens.
Their surfaces were studded with stems that connected them tothe surrounding twigs. These fruit must surely be heavy andjuicy, I thought. I got close.
I reached with a hand and took hold of one. I wasdisappointed at how light it felt. It weighed hardly anything. Ipulled at it, plucking it from all its stems.
I made myself comfortable on a sturdy branch, my back tothe trunk of the tree. Above me stood a shifting roof of greenleaves that let in shafts of sunlight. All round, for as far as Icould see, hanging in the air, were the twisting and turningroads of a great suspended city. A pleasant breeze ran throughthe trees. I was keenly curious. I examined the fruit.
Ah, how I wish that moment had never been! But for it Imight have lived for years – why, for the rest of my life – onthat island. Nothing, I thought, could ever push me to returnto the lifeboat and to the suffering and deprivation I hadendured on it – nothing! What reason could I have to leavethe island? Were my physical needs not met here? Was therenot more fresh water than I could drink in all my lifetime?
More algae than I could eat? And when I yearned for variety,more meerkats and fish than I could ever desire? If the islandfloated and moved, might it not move in the right direction?
Might it not turn out to be a vegetable ship that brought meto land? In the meantime, did I not have these delightfulmeerkats to keep me company? And wasn't Richard Parker stillin need of improving his fourth jump? The thought of leavingthe island had not crossed my mind once since I had arrived.
It had been many weeks now – I couldn't say how manyexactly – and they would stretch on. I was certain about that.
How wrong I was.
If that fruit had a seed, it was the seed of my departure.
The fruit was not a fruit. It was a dense accumulation ofleaves glued together in a ball. The dozens of stems weredozens of leaf stems. Each stem that I pulled caused a leaf topeel off.
After a few layers I came to leaves that had lost their stemsand were flatly glued to the ball. I used my fingernails to catchtheir edges and pull them off. Sheath after sheath of leaf lifted,like the skins off an onion. I could simply have ripped the"fruit" apart – I still call it that for lack of a better word – butI chose to satisfy my curiosity in a measured way.
It shrunk from the size of an orange to that of a mandarin.
My lap and the branches below were covered with thin, softleaf peelings.
It was now the size of a rambutan.
I still get shivers in my spine when I think of it.
The size of a cherry.
And then it came to light, an unspeakable pearl at the heartof a green oyster.
A human tooth.
A molar, to be exact. The surface stained green and finelypierced with holes.
The feeling of horror came slowly. I had time to pick at theother fruit.
Each contained a tooth.
One a canine.
Another a premolar.
Here an incisor.
There another molar.
Thirty-two teeth. A complete human set. Not one toothmissing.
Understanding dawned upon me.
I did not scream. I think only in movies is horror vocal. Isimply shuddered and left the tree.
I spent the day in turmoil, weighing my options. They wereall bad.
That night, in bed in my usual tree, I tested my conclusion.
I took hold of a meerkat and dropped it from the branch.
It squeaked as it fell through the air. When it touched theground, it instantly made for the tree.
With typical innocence it returned to the spot right next tome. There it began to lick its paws vigorously. It seemed muchdiscomforted. It panted heavily.
I could have left it at that. But I wanted to know for myself.
I climbed down and took hold of the rope. I had made knotsin it to make my climbing easier. When I was at the bottom ofthe tree, I brought my feet to within an inch of the ground. Ihesitated.
I let go.
At first I felt nothing. Suddenly a searing pain shot upthrough my feet. I shrieked. I thought I would fall over. Imanaged to take hold of the rope and pull myself off theground. I frantically rubbed the soles of my feet against thetree trunk. It helped, but not enough. I climbed back to mybranch. I soaked my feet in the bucket of water next to mybed. I wiped my feet with leaves. I took the knife and killedtwo meerkats and tried to soothe the pain with their blood andinnards. Still my feet burned. They burned all night. I couldn'tsleep for it, and from the anxiety.
The island was carnivorous. This explained the disappearanceof the fish in the pond. The island attracted saltwater fish intoits subterranean tunnels – how, I don't know; perhaps fish atethe algae as gluttonously as I did. They became trapped. Didthey lose their way? Did the openings onto the sea close off?
Did the water change salinity so subtly that it was too late bythe time the fish realized it? Whatever the case, they foundthemselves trapped in fresh water and died. Some floated up tothe surface of the ponds, the scraps that fed the meerkats. Atnight, by some chemical process unknown to me but obviouslyinhibited by sunlight, the predatory algae turned highly acidicand the ponds became vats of acid that digested the fish. Thiswas why Richard Parker returned to the boat every night. Thiswas why the meerkats slept in the trees. This was why I hadnever seen anything but algae on the island.
And this explained the teeth. Some poor lost soul hadarrived on these terrible shores before me. How much timehad he – or was it she? – spent here? Weeks? Months?
Years? How many forlorn hours in the arboreal city with onlymeerkats for company? How many dreams of a happy lifedashed? How much hope come to nothing? How muchstored-up conversation that died unsaid? How much lonelinessendured? How much hopelessness taken on? And after all that,what of it? What to show for it?
Nothing but some enamel, like small change in a pocket. Theperson must have died in the tree. Was it illness? Injury?
Depression? How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill abody that has food, water and shelter? The trees werecarnivorous too, but at a much lower level of acidity, safeenough to stay in for the night while the rest of the islandseethed. But once the person had died and stopped moving,the tree must have slowly wrapped itself around the body anddigested it, the very bones leached of nutrients until theyvanished. In time, even the teeth would have disappeared.
I looked around at the algae. Bitterness welled up in me.
The radiant promise it offered during the day was replaced inmy heart by all the treachery it delivered at night.
I muttered, "Nothing but teeth left! TEETH!"By the time morning came, my grim decision was taken. Ipreferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind thanto live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual deathon this murderous island. I filled my stores with fresh waterand I drank like a camel. I ate algae throughout the day untilmy stomach could take no more. I killed and skinned as manymeerkats as would fit in the locker and on the floor of thelifeboat. I reaped dead fish from the ponds. With the hatchet Ihacked off a large mass of algae and worked a rope throughit, which I tied to the boat.
I could not abandon Richard Parker. To leave him wouldmean to kill him. He would not survive the first night. Alone inmy lifeboat at sunset I would know that he was burning alive.
Or that he had thrown himself in the sea, where he woulddrown. I waited for his return. I knew he would not be late.
When he was aboard, I pushed us off. For a few hours thecurrents kept us near the island. The noises of the seabothered me. And I was no longer used to the rockingmotions of the boat. The night went by slowly.
In the morning the island was gone, as was the mass ofalgae we had been towing. As soon as night had fallen, thealgae had dissolved the rope with its acid.
The sea was heavy, the sky grey.