Forest of the Pygmies Read Online Free PDF

last days of the safari raced by very quickly amid the pleasure of the elephant excursions. They ran into the small nomadic tribe again and saw for themselves that the young boy was cured. At the same time, they learned by radio that Timothy was being kept in the hospital with a combination of malaria and an infected mandrill bite that was resistant to antibiotics.
    Three days after taking Timothy, Angie returned for them; she stayed that night in the camp so they could leave early the next morning. From the moment they met, she and Kate had struck up a strong friendship: Both were hearty drinkers—beer for Angie and vodka for Kate—and both had a well-stocked arsenal of rip-roaring stories to enthrall their audiences. That night when the group was sitting in a circle around abonfire, feasting on roast antelope and other delicacies the cooks had prepared, the two women held a verbal tourney to see who was the best at bedazzling listeners with her adventures. Even Borobá was listening to their tales with interest. The little monkey had been dividing his time between hanging around with the humans, whose company he was accustomed to, watching Kobi, and playing with a family of three pygmy chimpanzees Mushaha had adopted.
    “They’re twenty percent smaller and much more peaceful than normal chimps,” Mushaha explained. “The females take the lead in that society. Which means that the pygmy chimps have a better life; there’s less competition and more cooperation; they eat and sleep well in their community; and the babies are protected . . . In short, they live a carefree life. Not like other groups of monkeys, in which the males form gangs and do nothing but fight all the time.”
    “I wish that’s how it was with humans!” Kate sighed.
    “Those little creatures are a lot like us: We share most of our genetic material with them; even their brain is similar to ours. We obviously have a common ancestor,” said Mushaha.
    “Then there’s hope that someday we may evolve like them,” added Kate.
    Angie smoked cigarettes that according to her were her only luxury, and she took pride in the fact that her plane smelled of smoke. “Anyone who doesn’t like the odor of tobacco can walk,” she always told clients who complained. As a reformed smoker, Kate followed the hand of her new friend with avid eyes. She had stopped smoking over a year ago, but the desire was still there, and as she watched the cigarette moving back and forth to Angie’s lips, she wanted to weep. She pulled out her empty pipe, which she always had in her pocket for such desperate moments, and chewed on it sadly. She had to admit that the tubercular cough that had made it so hard for her to breathe had gone away. She attributed that to her vodka-spiked tea and the powders that Walimai, Nadia’s shaman friend in the Amazon, had given her. Her grandson, Alexander, gave credit for the miracle to an amulet of petrified dragon excrement that had been a gift from Dil Bahadur, who was now king of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon; he was convinced of its magical properties.
    Kate didn’t know what to think of her grandson, who once had been extremely rational but now was given to fantasies. His friendship with Nadia had changed him. Alex had such confidence in that fossil that he had finely ground a few grams to powder, dissolved that in rice liquor, and insisted that his mother drink the potion to fight her cancer. Lisa, his mother, also had worn what was left of the fossil around her neck for months, and now it was around Alexander’s, who didn’t take it off even to shower.
    “It can cure broken bones and lots of other things, Kate, and it wards off arrows, knives, and bullets,” her grandson had assured her.
    “In your place I wouldn’t have put it to the test,” she replied dryly, but she had allowed him to rub her chest and back with the artifact, growling all the time that they were both losing their minds.
    That last night around the