Karen Joy Fowler - What I Didn't See

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What I Didn't See

by Karen Joy Fowler

I saw Archibald Murray's obituary in the Tribune a couple of days ago. It was a long notice, because of all

those furbelows he had after his name, and dredged up that old business of ours, which can't have pleased

his children. I, myself, have never spoken up before, as I've always felt that nothing I saw sheds any light, but

now I'm the last of us. Even Wilmet is gone, though I always picture him such a boy. And there is something

to be said for having the last word, which I am surely having.

I still go to the jungle sometimes when I sleep. The sound of the clock turns to a million insects all chewing

at once, water dripping onto leaves, the hum inside your head when you run a fever. Sooner or later Eddie

comes, in his silly hat and boots up to his knees. He puts his arms around me in the way he did when he

meant business and I wake up too hot, too old, and all alone.

You're never alone in the jungle. You can't see through the twist of roots and leaves and vines, the streakish,

tricky light, but you've always got a sense of being seen. You make too much noise when you walk.

At the same time, you understand that you don't matter. You're small and stuck on the ground. The ghosts of

paths weren't made for you. If you get bitten by a snake, it's your own damn fault, not the snake's, and if

someone doesn't drag you out you'll turn to mulch just like anything else would and show up next as mold or

moss, ferns, leeches, ants, millipedes, butterflies, beetles. The jungle is a jammed-alive place, which means

that something is always dying there.

Eddie had this idea once that defects of character could be treated with doses of landscape: the ocean for

the histrionic, mountains for the domineering, and so forth. I forget the desert, but the jungle was the place to

send the self-centered.

We seven went into the jungle with guns in our hands and love in our hearts. I say so now when there is no

one left to contradict me.

· · · · ·

Archer organized us. He was working at the time for the Louisville Museum of Natural History and he had a

stipend from Collections for skins and bones. The rest of us were amateur enthusiasts and paid our own way

just for the adventure. Archer asked Eddie (arachnids) to go along and Russell MacNamara (chimps), and

Trenton Cox (butterflies), who couldn't or wouldn't, and Wilmet Siebert (big game), and Merion Cowper

(tropical medicine), and also Merion's wife, only he turned out to be between wives by the time we left, so he

was the one who brought Beverly Kriss.

I came with Eddie to help with his nets, pooters, and kill jars. I was never the sort to scream over bugs, but if

I had been, twenty-eight years of marriage to Eddie would have cured me. The more legs a creature had, the

better Eddie thought of it. Up to point. Up to eight.

In fact Archer was anxious there be some women and had specially invited me, though Eddie didn't tell me

so. This was smart; I would have suspected I was along to do the dishes (though of course there were the

natives for this) and for nursing the sick, which we did end up at a bit, Beverly and I, when the matter was too

small or too nasty for Merion. I might not have come at all if I'd known I was wanted. As it was, I learned to

bake a passable bread on campfire coals with a native beer for yeast, but it was my own choice to do so and

I ate as much of the bread myself as I wished.

I pass over the various boats on which we sailed, though these trips were not without incident. Wilmet turned

out to have a nervous stomach; it started to trouble him on the ocean and then stuck around when we hit dry

land again. Russell was a drinker, and not the good sort, unlucky and suspicious, a man who thought he

loved a game of cards, but should have never been allowed to play. Beverly was a modern girl in 1928 and

could chew gum, smoke, and wipe the lipstick off her mouth and onto yours all at the same time. She and

Merion were frisky for Archer's taste and he tried to shift this off onto me, saying I was being made

uncomfortable, when I didn't care one way or the other. I worried that it would be a pattern and every time one

of the men was tired on the trail they'd say we had to stop on my account. I told Eddie right away I wouldn't

like it if this was to happen. So by the time we were geared up and walking in, we already thought we knew

each other pretty well and we didn't entirely like what we knew. Still, I guessed we'd get along fine when there

was more to occupy us. Even during those long days it took to reach the mountains—the endless trains,

motor cars, donkeys, mules, and finally our very own feet—things went smoothly enough.

By the time we reached the Lulenga Mission, we'd seen a fair bit of Africa—low and high, hot and cold, black

and white. I've learned some things in the years since, so there's a strong temptation now to pretend that I felt

the things I should have felt, knew the things I might have known. The truth is otherwise. My attitudes toward

the natives, in particular, were not what they might have been. The men who helped us interested me little

and impressed me not at all. Many of them had their teeth filed and were only ten years or so from

cannibalism, or so we were informed. No one, ourselves included, was clean, but Beverly and I would have

tried, only we couldn't bathe without the nuisance of being spied on. Whether this was to see if we looked

good or only good to eat, I did not wish to know.

The fathers at the mission told us that slaves used to be led through the villages in ropes so that people could

draw on their bodies the cuts of meat they were buying before the slaves were butchered, and with that my

mind was set. I never did acknowledge any beauty or kindness in the people we met, though Eddie saw

much of both.

We spent three nights in Lulenga, which gave us each a bed, good food, and a chance to wash our hair and

clothes in some privacy. Beverly and I shared a room, there not being sufficient number for her to have her

own. She was quarreling with Merion at the time though I forget about what. They were a tempest, those two,

always shouting, sulking, and then turning on the heat again. A tiresome sport for spectators, but surely

invigorating for the players. So Eddie was bunked up with Russell, which put me out, because I liked to wake

up with him.

We were joined at dinner the first night by a Belgian administrator who treated us to real wine and whose

name I no longer remember though I can picture him yet—a bald, hefty man in his sixties with a white beard.

I recall how he joked that his hair had migrated from his head to his chin and then settled in where the food

was plentiful.

Eddie was in high spirits and talking more than usual. The spiders in Africa are exhilaratingly aggressive.

Many of them have fangs and nocturnal habits. We'd already shipped home dozens of button spiders with red

hourglasses on their backs, and some beautiful golden violin spiders with long delicate legs and dark

chevrons underneath. But that evening Eddie was most excited about a small jumping spider, which seemed

not to spin her own web, but to lurk instead in the web of another. She had no beautiful markings; when he'd

first seen one, he'd thought she was a bit of dirt blown into the silken strands. Then she grew legs and, as we

watched, stalked and killed the web's owner and all with a startling cunning.

"Working together, a thousand spiders can tie up a lion," the Belgian told us. Apparently it was a local

saying. "But then they don't work together, do they? The blacks haven't noticed. Science is observation and

Africa produces no scientists."

In those days all gorilla hunts began at Lulenga, so it took no great discernment to guess that the rest of our

party was not after spiders. The Belgian told us that only six weeks past, a troupe of gorilla males had

attacked a tribal village. The food stores had been broken into and a woman carried off. Her bracelets were

found the next day, but she'd not yet returned and the Belgian feared she never would. It was such a

sustained siege that the whole village had to be abandoned.

"The seizure of the woman I dismiss as superstition and exaggeration," Archer said. He had a formal way of

speaking; you'd never guess he was from Kentucky. Not so grand to look at—inch-thick glasses that made

his eyes pop, unkempt hair, filthy shirt cuffs. He poured more of the Belgian's wine around, and I recall his

being especially generous to his own glass. Isn't it funny, the things you remember? "But the rest of your

story interests me. If any gorilla was taken I'd pay for the skin, assuming it wasn't spoiled in the peeling."

The Belgian said he would inquire. And then he persisted with his main point, very serious and deliberate. "As

to the woman, I've heard these tales too often to discard them so quickly as you. I've heard of native women

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摘要：

WhatIDidn'tSeebyKarenJoyFowlerIsawArchibaldMurray'sobituaryintheTribuneacoupleofdaysago.Itwasalongnotice,becauseofallthosefurbelowshehadafterhisname,anddredgedupthatoldbusinessofours,whichcan'thavepleasedhischildren.I,myself,haveneverspokenupbefore,asI'vealwaysfeltthatnothingIsawshedsanylight,butnow...

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