Lost Worlds by David Yeadon Page A

guides, who strolled barefoot across the soft surface, barely making a sound.
    Two lines from Baudelaire that Paul had shown me on the boat seemed to capture both the magic and the mystery of the forest:

     
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words.
Man approaches it through a forest of symbols which observe him with familiar glances.

     
    (I particularly like the “familiar glances.” Sometimes I sense that.)
    It was evening when we arrived in a slight hollow on the forest floor. The cicadas were off again, making their ritual, ear-scratching racket. Fires were burning in the soft half-light and I could see five domed huts in an arc around a larger fire. Shadows flickered across the hollow and on the bushes and tree trunks. Figures moved about—children, young girls with faces painted in red and black lines, and older women, all naked except for loincloths made from a thin bark.
    My three companions were greeted with broad smiles and laughter. Some of the women began singing quiet simple songs, more like mantras, as they pounded manioc with heavy wooden pestles.
    We all sat down by the large fire and a boy, thin and coyly shy, carried a three-foot-long tube of bamboo and placed it in the hands of one of the men. It was a communal pipe with a small bowl already filled with compressed bangi leaves. The man reached out to the fire, scooped up a few glowing embers, placed them on top of the bangi, and inhaled deeply. Blue smoke rose again in those now-familiar curlicues. I decided not to stare at the ever-changing shapes in fear of starting up the whole hallucinatory process again. And, as politely as I could, I declined to participate as the pipe was passed around the circle. I needed no stimulants that night. It was enough just to be here, deep in the forest with its night cries and curious sighing sounds. (Breezes in the canopy? Or the soft breathing of the forest gods that the pygmies revered and their Bantu cousins feared?) I was happy to listen to the sleepy chirps and coos of invisible flycatchers, warblers, sunbirds, and pigeons high in the canopy; I was content just to be here with these friendly people, the last authentic hunter-gatherers on earth, who seemed to accept me so openly, without undue curiosity or the banter of bad-English questions that had bombarded me elsewhere in Zaire.
    Other men joined us by the big fire. The women, still humming softly, sat with their pots by the fires preparing food or weaving intricate nets of liana rope, which, I learned later, the pygmies used for hunting duikers and other species of miniature antelope.
    The pipe was refilled and continued its way, mouth to mouth, around the main fire. One of the men began a low, guttural chant, his chest reverberating like a taught drumskin. Others joined in, imitating the sounds of forest birds. They swayed together to the slow rhythm in a haze of bangi smoke.
    Someone—another young boy—began a delicate dance in the flickering shadows beyond the fire, stirring up little clouds of dust. He seemed to be playing two roles, first as a hunter in the forest, carefully stalking on tiptoe; then he became the prey, possibly a small antelope, low to the ground, moving, then pausing, sniffing the air, then moving on again. The men turned to watch, emitting the long sad cries of an antelope. The boy hesitated, depicting the confusion of the animal. The cries continued. The boy imitated the long, leaping run of the antelope, darting in and out of the shadows. The men began to clap quietly—the antelope became more alarmed, leaping harder and faster, whirling through the dust clouds. The clapping increased—the antelope ran—the clapping got louder—the boy suddenly did a somersault and thrashed his legs and arms about, depicting the animal’s entanglement presumably in one of the hunting nets the women were weaving by the huts. The men suddenly leapt up from the fire, surrounded the boy captured in the imaginary