Through a Window (28 page)

That consortship, like most others in Jomeo's life, was not
successful: two days later the little trio reappeared in the central part of the Kasekela range. And the following month Melissa went on a consortship with Satan—and conceived.

About two months before we reckoned that Satan's baby was due, Melissa became very sick indeed. Her symptoms—bad cough, heavy mucous discharge and high fever—suggested pneumonia, and we feared for her life. She was unable to climb trees for several days and, at her worst, could barely drag herself along the ground. She ate only a few mouthfuls of food, refusing offerings from the concerned field staff. Amazingly she re-covered, although her vocal chords were permanently impaired and her voice, for the rest of her life, came out as a hoarse croak. And, before she was properly better, her pregnancy ended with a miscarriage.

But then, three months later, Melissa once again travelled the hills flaunting the pink sex signal of the female chimpanzee. Almost at once she became pregnant—for the last time. How much better it would have been had she not. That last pregnancy sapped her strength and vitality and when little Groucho was born, Melissa looked frail and much older than her estimated thirty-five years. From the start Groucho was tiny and lethargic. When he was nine months old he occasionally made short forays from Melissa's side, began to eat solids and, occasionally, played gently with Gimble, but then his condition worsened. By the time he was one year old he was spending most of his time lying listlessly on his mother's lap. Gimble still tried occasionally to persuade this small brother to play, but Groucho, although he usually responded with a play-face, was too weak for the rough and tumble games typical of his age.

It was at this time, when I was almost expecting to hear that Groucho had died, that I received news—a telephone call from Kigoma—that Getty was missing. I shall never forget the sense of shock and outrage I felt when I arrived at Gombe a week later, and heard that his body, when it was eventually found in the forest, had been horribly mutilated—the head had been cut off and removed. We never discovered exactly what had happened, but we suspected witchcraft, for the old customs are deeply entrenched among the Waha people of the area. Nothing like this had happened before—nor has it happened since. It was a bitter blow for Getty had been the favourite youngster of us all. I feel quite sure, too, that among the chimps it was not only the members of his immediate family who missed him. Getty, with his adventurous and fun-loving nature, had captivated us all.

Gremlin was listless for weeks but eventually, two months after losing her son, she once more resumed her sexual cycles. Then she began spending more time with the males and less with her old mother. Gimble quite often left Melissa too. Goblin, however, now that his relationship with his old mother was back on course, travelled with her periodically, though never for long at a time. One day as I followed them through the forest we heard the pant-hoots of Satan and Evered across the valley. Despite his alpha rank, Goblin's relationship with the much heavier Satan was often tense. He stared towards the calls, his hair bristling, then turned to his old mother and, with a grin of fear on his face, stretched his hand towards her. She responded at once, reaching to touch his fingers and Goblin was calmed, just as he had been calmed throughout his infancy, by the contact with her. He turned and moved on to face whatever challenge lay ahead. Melissa followed for a while but soon she stopped to rest.

A few months later, as I was walking along the Kakombe Valley, I saw Gimble carrying something large into a tree. It was the dead body of little Groucho. As Melissa and Gremlin groomed each other on the ground, Gimble cradled the corpse on his lap, grooming it intently. When his family moved on Gimble climbed down and followed, the body slung over his shoulder. Presently it fell to the ground, and then he dragged it behind him by one arm. Later, when they stopped to rest again, Melissa gently took
the limp body from him and placed it over her own back. She carried the dead baby for two more days and then abandoned his corpse deep in the forest.

After the death of her infant, Melissa seemed to lose the will to live. She had been thin before, now she became emaciated for she ate almost nothing. Often she did not leave her nest until after ten in the morning and sometimes she went to bed as early as four o'clock. During the hours in between she made at least one day nest where she lay, often staring vacantly up through the leaves, for hours at a time. Sometimes Gimble was with her, but he became bored, as well as hungry, and spent more time than before with the big males. Nor was Gremlin there to provide comfort: protesting, she had been led off on a two-week consortship, by Satan, on the evening of the day Groucho died.

Ten days after losing her infant, Melissa, using the last of her strength, climbed high into a tall, leafy
mgwiza
tree and there, surrounded by clusters of purple, sloe-like fruits, she made a large nest—the last she would ever make. Throughout the following day she lay, scarcely moving, while other chimpanzees, attracted by the succulent fruits, arrived, fed for an hour or so, and left. Gimble was nearby for much of the day, and sometimes groomed his mother. But he moved away during the afternoon.

By evening, Melissa was alone. One foot hung down from her nest and every so often her toes moved. I stayed there, sitting on the forest floor below the dying female. Occasionally I spoke. I don't know if she knew I was there or, if she did, whether it made any difference. But I wanted to be with her as night fell; I didn't want her to be completely alone. As I sat there the quick tropical dusk gave place to darkness. The stars increased in number and twinkled ever more brightly through the forest canopy. There was a distant pant-hoot far across the valley, but Melissa was silent. Never again would I hear her distinctive hoarse call. Never again would I wander with her from one patch of food to
the next, waiting, at one with the life of the forest, as she rested or groomed with one of her offspring. The stars were suddenly blurred and I wept for the passing of an old friend.

The next morning I watched as Melissa took her last, laboured breath: her body shuddered, then relaxed. All around, during those last hours, the branches had swayed and rustled as youngsters played while elders fed on the luscious fruits.
In the midst of life there is death.
This was an appropriate setting for Melissa's passing, allegorical in its portrayal of the inevitable cycles of nature. I was deeply moved, but my tears were over. Melissa had indeed known a hard life, with many misfortunes, but she had lived fully and, for much of the time, had clearly enjoyed living. She had attained a high rank. And, most importantly, she had left a solid succession; Gimble, small but very determined, Gremlin, strong and healthy who would have other infants to carry on her mother's genes, and Goblin, top-ranking male of his community.

G
IGI, UNLIKE MELISSA,
will leave no descendants. Yet it would be difficult to overstate the extent to which this large sterile female has influenced the lives of the Kasekela chimpanzees, particularly the males. Since 1965 when she became sexually mature she has produced a new pink swelling, more or less regularly, every thirty days or so. Thus for more than twenty years she has been almost continually available to the Kasekela males for the gratification of their sexual desires. During that time her over-worked sex skin has swelled and shrivelled no less than two hundred and fifty times. By contrast, Fifi swelled only thirty times during the twenty-year period following
her
first pinkness. As a result of this repeated and unnatural stretching Gigi's swelling today is huge when compared with those of other Gombe females.

Right from the start Gigi radiated sex appeal. Time and again she has been the nucleus of large and excited sexual gatherings, surrounded by most of the males of her community. And once the adult males have gathered together, drawn by the magnetic presence of a sexually popular female, they are far more likely to move out to peripheral areas of their territory to patrol the boundaries. Thus Gigi's magnificent swelling has, time and again, served as a banner to rally the Kasekela males, encouraging them to perform valiant deeds in the protection and expansion of their territory.

In one respect Gigi's sexual popularity is hard to understand, since she often pulls away from her male partners before the completion of the sexual act. And she has been doing this for twenty-odd years. I assume that the males find such behaviour irritating, as well as frustrating, but it has never seemed to dampen their ardour. There are times, too, when Gigi is extremely reluctant to comply with the sexual demands of a male and on these occasions her suitors are often remarkably patient. I remember once when Figan was trying to mate with her. Gigi, who was reclining on the ground, her provocative swelling very much in evidence, totally ignored her suitor's vigorous shaking of branches. After a few moments Figan, his hair (among other things) fully erect, stood upright and swayed branches wildly above her recumbent form. Gigi, barely glancing at him, rolled over and lay on her back, staring at the canopy above. Nonplussed, Figan sat down for a moment, occasionally shaking a small branch in a jerky, irritated sort of way as, presumably, he wondered what to do next. Gradually his branching got more violent, his hair (if it were possible) bristled even more, and there was a wild gleam in his eye that, I thought, boded ill for Gigi if she continued to ignore him much longer. Apparently Gigi got the same message, for she suddenly rose, approached Figan and crouch-presented before him. But no sooner had he begun to copulate than she pulled away, screaming, and rushed off.

She then lay down again about ten yards from Figan, who stayed where she had left him. Presently he lay down too, and all was quiet for an hour. Then he approached Gigi again—and once more she utterly ignored his courtship. Not until he repeated his wild, branch-shaking swagger around her did she finally get up and crouch for him—but yet again she almost immediately pulled away and ran off. This time, tight-lipped and scowling, Figan followed and his courtship was a clear-cut
threat. She responded quickly, but the outcome was the same. Except that Figan, thoroughly stimulated, finally completed the sexual act—into the air.

There can be no other Kasekela female who has been led off on so many consortships as Gigi. Time and again she has followed different males, usually reluctantly, to the various peripheral parts of the home range that they preferred. She has been, over the past twenty years, on forty-three such excursions that we know of: the figure is probably higher. In terms of evolutionary biology the males were "wasting their time" since no measure of reproductive success for either partner could possibly result. However, the males did not know this, so they competed for her favours in all good faith. Moreover, there is little doubt in my mind that even if they
had
understood they would still have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the continued presence of Gigi in their midst.

In one other way Gigi has served the males of her community: she has helped the infants and juveniles to learn the ins and outs of the sexual act. Male chimpanzees are sexually very precocious. From the time they can totter, they show great interest in pink swellings, and they "mate" pink females zealously throughout their childhood. Of course this is just practice—a male is unlikely to be able to father a child until he is between thirteen and fifteen years of age. But it sometimes seems that Gigi prefers the small sexual advances of infant and juvenile suitors to the more vigorous demands of the adult males. Often she crouches accommodatingly as soon as one of these youngsters starts to court her—approaching with his tiny erection and imperiously shaking a little twig. Indeed, she sometimes actively solicits the sexual attentions of youngsters. Once, for example, she suddenly went over to where Prof and Wilkie were playing a boisterous game, seized Prof by his elbow, pulled him from his playmate, and then, still maintaining her grip, crouched before him. Only when he complied with her wishes did she release him.

At other times she ignores these youngsters completely, however much they persist—and in such matters infants can be surprisingly single-minded for periods of half an hour or more. I remember one long journey when Gigi, fully swollen, was followed by three petulant juvenile suitors. Each of them was quietly whimpering to himself as he followed behind that tempting pink bottom. Each of them approached and shook branches every time she stopped. And each of them was utterly ignored by Gigi.

In 1976 Gigi, for some reason, began to cycle less regularly and, at the same time, became for a while much less popular with the adult males. This may have been due to some hormonal upheaval—they responded to her much as though she was a female showing cycles during pregnancy. And then, one day almost two years later, I happened to be with her when she passed a strange blob of bloody, jelly-like tissue. I preserved it (in whisky, which was the only spirit I had at the time) and sent it to a reproductive biologist. He identified it as a uterine cast such as may, occasionally, be shed (painfully) by human females. What this meant, in Gigi's case, is not known, but afterwards she became slightly more popular with the males—provided there was not too much competition from other females.

With the passing of the years Gigi has become increasingly irritable and unpredictable in her sexual interactions with the younger males. She still, for the most part, responds to their courtship overtures, but often she turns and hits or even attacks them once they start to mate her. There was one occasion when she turned on Prof as he copulated with her in a tree and pushed him so hard that he fell to the rocky ground some twenty feet below. After sitting motionless for a few moments, Prof threw a violent tantrum—to which no one, certainly not Gigi, paid the slightest attention. Incidents of this sort have become ever more frequent and it is scarcely surprising that the young males are less eager than before to mate with this irascible female. What makes
it so puzzling is that Gigi seems as keen as ever to
initiate
the sexual act. Again and again she will approach a youthful suitor and solicit copulation. If he avoids her, as is often the case, she usually follows him and tries again. Once, for example, Gigi, fully pink, joined infant Beethoven and his sister, Harmony, as they fed in a tree. Gigi immediately climbed towards Beethoven, but he avoided her. After a few moments she approached once more, but he jumped into another tree. She followed him through that tree and into a third. Then she stopped and began to feed and I thought she had given up. Not a bit of it. After ten minutes or so she climbed over to him yet again, and yet again he avoided her. Gigi pursued a short way, then began to feed once more—until the siblings climbed down and started a grooming session. Gigi followed them at once and hurried after Beethoven when he tried to hide on the far side of his sister. When he then climbed rapidly up a tall tree she sat below, occasionally gazing up at him—wistfully one presumes—for the next thirty minutes. The moment he climbed down she once again approached and crouched, offering him her swelling. And this time her persistence was rewarded—one hour and twenty-five minutes after her first solicitation. That was one time when Gigi neither hit nor threatened her partner!