Read Online Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online Page A

Alexander, and they went after the monkey.
    â€œDon’t go far, children,” Kate warned.
    â€œWe’ll be right back,” her grandson replied.
    Without a moment’s hesitation, Borobá led them through the trees. As he jumped lightly from branch to branch, Nadia and Alexander fought their way forward, beating a path through thick ferns and praying they wouldn’t step on a snake or come face-to-face with a leopard.
    Alexander and Nadia plunged through the vegetation, never losing sight of Borobá. It seemed to them that they were following a faint path through the forest, maybe a very old trail that had filled in with plants but was still used by animals going to the river to drink. The pair was covered with bugs from head to foot; faced with the impossibility of getting rid of the pests, they had no choice but to resign themselves to them. They tried not to think of the number of illnesses transmitted by insects, from malaria to the lethal sleep induced by the tsetse fly, whose victims sank into a deep lethargy in which they languished until they died, trapped in the labyrinth of their nightmares. In places, they had to sweep aside enormous spiderwebs before they could continue, and from time to time they sank up to their calves in gluey mud.
    Suddenly through the unrelenting sounds of the forest they could hear something similar to a human lament, shocking enough to make them stop and listen. Borobá began jumping up and down nervously, indicating that they needed to keep going. Some yards farther on, they saw what was disturbing him. Alexander, who was in the lead, came within a few feet of falling into a pit yawning at his feet, a kind of deep trench. The cry was originating from a dark form that at first sight they took to be a large dog.
    â€œWhat is it?” murmured Alexander, stepping back and not daring to raise his voice.
    Borobá’s screeches grew louder; the creature in the hole moved, and then they could see it was some kind of simian. It was tangled in a net that hadcompletely immobilized it. The animal looked up and when it saw them began to roar and bare its teeth.
    â€œIt’s a gorilla,” said Nadia. “It can’t get out.”
    â€œIt looks like it’s in a trap.”
    â€œWe have to get it out,” Nadia said.
    â€œHow? It might bite us. . . .”
    Nadia leaned down toward the trapped animal and began to talk to it as she did with Borobá.
    â€œWhat is it saying?” Alexander asked her.
    â€œI don’t know whether it understands me. Not all apes speak the same language, Jaguar. On the safari I could communicate with the chimpanzees, but not the mandrills.”
    â€œThose mandrills were scoundrels, Eagle. They wouldn’t have listened to you even if they did understand you.”
    â€œI don’t know the language of these gorillas, but I suppose it must be something like that of other apes.”
    â€œTell it to stay quiet, and we’ll see if we can free it from the net.”
    Little by little, Nadia’s voice calmed the imprisoned animal, but when they tried to come closer, it bared its teeth again and growled.
    â€œIt has a baby!” Alexander cried.
    The gorilla’s offspring was tiny—it couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old—and it was clinging desperately to its mother’s shaggy coat.
    â€œWe need to go get help. We’re going to have to cut the net,” Nadia decided.
    They hurried back to the river as quickly as the terrain allowed and told the rest of the party what they had found.
    â€œThat animal could attack us,” Brother Fernando warned. “Gorillas are peaceful, but females with young are always dangerous.”
    Nadia, however, had already laid her hands on a knife and started back, so everyone followed her. Joel could scarcely believe his good fortune: He was going to photograph a gorilla after all. Brother Fernando armed himself with his