TARZAN'S STORY
I believe if I should die, and you were to walk near my grave, from the very depths of the earth I would hear your footsteps.
Benito Perez Galdos
Tarzan and Betty in her cabin for a steak supper......
Tarzan’s tall frame stood in the kitchen area of Betty’s rented home, dwarfing it ever so slightly. He wore ragged cut offs with a frayed but clean cotton shirt. His feet were bare in his usual beach comber mode. He had brought with him a case of the locally brewed beer and set it on her counter, opening one with his teeth.
“I was going to offer you a Scotch,” she said nervously, checking out the potentially deadly canines that had so dandily pulled the cap off a beer bottle.
“Umm uh,” he answered. “Never touch that stuff.”
She poured herself a glass of wine from one of the bottles Ashley had brought.
“I know where they make a great local wine if you want some,” offered Tarzan taking a long and gulping swill from his beer.
“I have begun to acquire a taste for wine. I used to imbibe the more lethal booze. Now I need to concentrate on writing.”
“What do you write?” he asked with a peak of genuine interest.
“I am going to write about the Gombe chimps.”
“I thought Jane Goodall had those covered ad nauseam.”
“They are my relatives so I will adopt another slant.”
Tarzan reared back with a half smile. “Are you still sticking to that the tale that you’re an ape?”
“Yes, I am. It’s a long story, Tarzan, and could only have happened in today’s Kenya which you apparently eschew.”
He came closer for a more intense examination of her facial features. Then stood back and bit open his second beer - again with his teeth.
“You’re too damn hot looking for a monkey. I don’t buy a word of it.”
“It’s true and possible in the Kenya of today,” she insisted.
“Oh the Kenya of today,” he chanted in sing song fashion. “A once great country ruined by no less than a freaking lion president.”
“Who are you referring to?” she asked, instantly alert and on guard.
“The great Ralph Lyon, who cut out predation and made Kenya a sappy, dumbed down, totally depraved society where lions can't kill prey or take over prides, and animals can intermarry with other species. What a cluster fuck - a travesty on the natural order of the wild.”
“You act as if you knew our history in a personal way.”
“I was born there - near the Samburu reserve. When Ralph Lyon ended hunting and refused to let lions take over other prides, I got kicked out and came here. Every lion on earth should have the right to kill prey and taste its blood. It’s the most thrilling sensation on earth.”
“You’re scaring me,” she told him with a slight shudder.
“Oh pardon me. I thought that lion dude who waded out of the seaplane last week was your ex-husband. If you’ve ever been married to one you must be familiar with the fact that they bite down on the female’s neck in the heat of lust. With a scrawny one like yours, I’m surprised you weren’t decapitated in the throes of a male lion's idea of heady sex.”
“They were more restrained in those matters,” she bridled, feeling immensely offended.
“They?” he asked, quickly catching the plural.
“Slip of the tongue. You seem educated. Were you?”
“A degree in journalism from Nairobi U.”
“I am sure Tarzan is not your real name, is it?”
“No, my mum, a primordial old lioness who had lost an eye from being gored by a cape buffalo, simply called me Uuugh. Of course, when I attended school that name wasn’t sufficient so I dubbed myself Jack after the adventure writer, Jack London.”
Betty threw back her head and laughed heartily. “You said you had to leave Kenya, why was that?”
“Ralph Lyon had me arrested for attempting to take over a pride. He had me cuffed by that retarded lion cop of his and taken before him. He told me I could apply for the paper work to take over an old geezer’s pride but not commit any violence. I scoffed at that and refused to cooperate. He finally ordered me to get the hell out of Kenya. I gladly went.”
“Did you take over any prides or continue to hunt when you left Kenya?”
“Nah, I came here and started fishing for a living….go figure!”
He helped Betty grill the filets on an open beach fire. She drank wine, his continud choice was beer and they talked for a long while until the stars flared brightly in the black African night. Then he stood, stretched, thanked her and made his way down the beach. She realized she had found out nothing about his personal life aside from his beginnings in Kenya.
Shane Simba had just returned from Kitale with no Jane Leoparde to cover the trip. She had sent a young male baboon reporter who was not only a green horn at journalism, but entirely irritating and unctuous to boot. Shane was stepping out of the shower in his bush home and almost tripped over Johanna, tossing her cookies in the john.
“What’s wrong, Jo?” he asked with not much real concern in his voice.
“I have been nauseated every day since you left for Kitale. I don’t know what’s wrong,” she gasped, going to the bathroom sink and splashing her face with cold water.
When things didn’t settle down digestively with Johanna, a few days later Shane called for Dr. Ted Tigeres to come to the bush house, a perk of the presidency. After an hour, Ted announced that Johanna was with child. Shane, with poise, covered his astonishment and paid Ted, thanking him for coming.
“How can you be pregnant, Johanna, unless you’ve been banging behind my back?”
His light eyes were concentrated pools of major distrust. Johanna began to cry.
“Shane, I swear to God I have only made love to you in the last year. I gave up sleeping around until we reconnected, I swear it,” she sobbed.
“It’s not bloody possible for a lion to impregnate a human,” he roared.
Suddenly he took pity. She looked so genuinely bereft and so strikingly beautiful, silken hair strewn across the pillow, her lovely face ashen with distress. He sat on the side of the bed and stroked her arm.
“Jo, it’s just not possible,” he reiterated, more gently this time.
“Shane, I only know that I love you and have been completely faithful.”
Shane, who had been among the most reserved and composed of animals, began to have lapses. One late afternoon within his inner office, he roared within hearing of many: “I wish someone would give an inch and tell me where my bloody wife is hiding!”
Moments later, he emerged in the outer office, bidding a pleasant adieu to all present and left for the day. His main secretary who is totally besotted by him, crooned: “Oh the poor darling, he is such pain these days.”
“Seems that way,” I agreed, picking up my brief case and heading for my own residence.
In the interim, the dilemma of the bizarre pregnancy got explored in depth. Johanna lived, now, between the mansion and the presidential savanna retreat. Doctors from France came, secretly, to the Mara and worked in conjunction with Frank and Ted Tigeres to get to the matter of Johanna’s condition that she swore was a result of her sexual alliance with Shane Simba. She held to her story that her child was Shane’s. Amid the congregation of superb physicians there were lab tests upon other lab tests with Johanna bruised and sometimes weeping from the needles and sticks. Then there was a sudden breakthrough which was a potentially reproductive miracle but kept under wraps for the moment at the President of Kenya’s request. The French doctors, along with the brothers Tigeres and Sylly Cougar Lyon, gazed in amazement at the laboratory evidence that Johanna Delacroix was indeed pregnant with Shane Simba’s natural child. An international team of renowned physicians arrived in Kenya, almost under the cover of darkness, and agreed with the verdict. It remained confidential until Shane dictated otherwise.
Staci Simba had met Johanna on one occasion only. She had dined with her father and his lover in the bush house one evening. Staci, being a kind young female, had been polite and charming, covering her extreme boredom when Johanna described in extravagant and protracted terms the French film they had attended. Shane rolled his eyes but Staci remained polite and feigned interest. Staci still had childhood memories of her mother lying prostrate on her bed and grieving over Shane and a woman named Johanna. Still, Staci kept her inherent good manners, so like her maternal grandmother, and was friendly to the human who now occupied her father’s romantic life exclusively these days.
Staci, along with Shane and Solly, saw her oldest brother, Sean, off to boarding school in South Africa. It was preparatory for his first year of college and Shane hoped diligently that his eldest son would find some abiding interest in things beyond soccer or rugby. He didn’t really care what he studied as long as it was some subject other than the exterior of a large, leather bound orb.
Leah Lyon finally met with her husband Ashley Lyon. Among copious tears, the emotional Leah agreed to terms for a divorce from Ashley. They were in Sam Simba’s law office. His lover and law partner, Tawny Tigeres, kept sticking tissues in the door for her lion boyfriend’s weeping niece. Ashley, straining to keep an emotional distance and buoyed slightly by his renewed affair with Simone Serval, kept calm and didn’t break down until he was in his car and heading for Lyon Towers and Simone’s penthouse.
On an idyllic day with the birds singing in the tree tops, Caitlin Cougar married Homer Leo in a stately ceremony in William Leo’s elegant garden behind his mansion. Georgy Simba made a pretty but surly flower girl as she trailed her mother to the beaming groom’s side.
Chief Magistrate of Kenya, Judge Sefu Simba, alarmed at the divorce rate among the animals in the Mara and elsewhere, decreed an extended length of time between filing, agreement of terms and finalization. His decree went uncontested with the President signing it into law. Now one could get a divorce but there would be no finality or legal permission to remarry before ten months after the fact. Before the final papers were received, one could simply tell their attorney that they had a change of heart and all would be rendered null and void for a comparatively small fee.
Chief Magistrate of Kenya, Judge Sefu Simba....
Wilda Wildebeest paid her dear pal, Betty, a visit. On the first morning she looked to the beach and caught a glimpse of Tarzan.
“There’s a lion out there, Betts,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think Gombe had lions.”
“He’s from Kenya. He’s one of the local fishermen. I buy Grouper from him.”
“I’ve never seen a lion who fished for a profession. Why would he leave Kenya and do this for a living? Kenya is a paradise for animals.”
“He doesn’t think that way, Willie. He left when Ralph outlawed predation. He relishes the taste of prey blood,” ribbed Betty.
“Does this damn door have a lock?” asked the alarmed wildebeest, who had spent her youth in the realization that her species was the favored repast for lions..
The afternoon after Wilda had departed for the Mara, Tarzan pulled in front of her house in a jeep that was so much the worse for wear that Betty marveled at its ability to get from point A to point B. He beckoned to Betty who sat on the porch with her current read. She skipped down the stairs.
“Hop in,” he ordered. “I’m taking you to see the local wine maker.”
She got in the car, checking her pocket for her cigarettes and money.
“All set,” she announced as they pulled off in a wreath of oil fumes and smolder.
“I guess the wildebeest left, huh?” he asked with a surprisingly boyish expression on his scarred face.
“Yes, she’s my best friend from days on a Mara newspaper working together.”
“They’re ugly suckers but succulent as hell…..deee-licious,” he laughed as they chugged along with mounting front-end racket.
Betty laughed with delight at the amusing company and the breezes riffling her hair. She made a mental note that she was getting a bit more content with this life of rugged venture, despite the constantly recurring ache in her gut that was Shane Simba.
That night, having spent a superb afternoon at the native wine maker’s shop and purchasing two cases, she woke up at 2:00 am, drenched in perspiration. She lit a cigarette and rehashed one of her chronic dreams of moments before. Shane had crawled in bed next to her and made slow, sensual and tender love to her as he had in the past, whispering endearments in her ear. She cried noiselessly for a while before returning to a restive sleep.
In the country next door at the exact same hour, Shane lay next to the sleeping Johanna and wondered where the fuck Betty had got to.