Bat Monkey

The camp was alive with cricket song when I arrived. It was dark and the air was heavy, as though it wouldn’t hold back the rain for long. Kahindo, the local conservationist, greeted me with an energetic handshake and a big smile, ‘Welcome Mister Miles, Welcome.’ Then one of the porters led me down the muddy track to my hut. I pulled the clothes from my backpack, damp and musty from crossing the swamp and hung them on the chair; all except the shirts Ama had snuck into my bag. They reminded me too much of how she’d cried when I said I had to join the others, of how she’d retreated into silence. 

After sponging memories of the journey off my skin and exchanging sweat-soaked clothes for a damp shirt and trousers, I went to meet Kahindo and the rest of the team. Priti was younger than I’d expected, with a pixie cut, long lashes and a bat tattooed just above her left breast. When she smiled, dimples appeared on her cinnamon cheeks. Chase was loud and angular, with tousled hair and strategic stubble, obviously going for the rugged look. Kahindo was softly spoken, tall and thin, with an understated gravitas. Over fufu and vegetable stew, Kahindo thanked us for choosing his research station. He said they were honoured to have us, how our project would help them to continue their conservation work and pay for the guards that protected the centre and wildlife. Chase sat back in his chair with one arm resting on the top of it and smiled as though he were king. 

‘The first time I saw a flying monkey we were tracking bonobos,’ Kahindo said. ‘Didn’t see it for long, but I told the others, ‘There’s something here.’ The last time we saw one, I shot this.’ He showed us grainy footage on his phone. The film was not much more than a blur. It could have been a bat or a bird. 

‘If it really is a flying primate–’ Priti said.

‘We’ll be the first to prove that flight evolved twice,’ Chase said. 

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ I frowned. ‘First we need to find them.’

While Chase told Priti why he’d chosen her for the team and listed the attributes that made her ‘invaluable’, I talked to Kahindo.

‘So, Mister Miles–’ he said. 

‘Just Miles.’ 

‘Where are you from?’ 

‘London.’

‘And before that?’

Normally that question really irks me, but it was different coming from him, so I said, ‘My parents are from Nigeria.’

‘That I already knew. It’s a big country…’ 

‘We come from Lagos.’ 

He smiled. ‘It’s good to have you here. Didn’t think you’d make it.’

None of them did. In my place they’d have stayed home. 

‘Wouldn’t be anywhere else.’ 

I didn’t recognise Ama any more. The prospect of a lifetime together was beginning to turn my stomach.

When we said goodnight, Kahindo went off in the direction of his office and we headed back to our huts. As we approached Chase’s, he said, ‘Want to have a beer?’ He was looking at Priti. ‘You’re welcome too, of course.’ He glanced at me, stretching his lips into a smile.

‘I’m good, thanks.’ I continued on my way, but I heard Priti say, ‘I’m really tired, another time?’ before she caught up with me. 

We walked along the path that cut through the thick curtains of vegetation, passing the pit latrines and one of the camp guards. Someone had lit the oil lamp outside Priti’s hut and mosquitoes and moths flitted about, mesmerised by the light. 

‘I just want to take it all in,’ Priti said, sitting on the rock out front. ‘There’s nothing quite like the rainforest at night.’

She looked up at me and shifted so I could sit beside her. We listened to the whine of mosquitos accompanied by a chorus of crickets, owls and bats. After a while, Priti went into her hut and emerged with bottles of Primus, handing one to me. 

‘You ever feel closer to the animals than to the people back home?’ Priti said. 

I nodded. ‘Animals don’t overcomplicate things.’

She laughed and swigged her beer. ‘All our supposed progress, it doesn’t make us any happier… and then you come here…’ She put her hands up to the sky.

We continued listening, drinking and talking. I was just about to turn in when she said, ‘Come look at this,’ taking my hand and leading me inside. She handed me a little wooden sculpture of a creature with wings. ‘One of the women at the port carved it and gave it to me. Isn’t it beautiful?’ 

I turned it over in my hand. It was.

‘You should keep it,’ she said.

I smiled but shook my head.

‘It’s yours.’ She folded my fingers around it. I held her gaze; there was a playful intensity in her eyes. I couldn’t look away. When she leant towards me I kissed her and we kept kissing under the warm glow of the oil lamp. 

I woke in Priti’s bed. It was just before dawn. I slunk back to my hut, the birds gossiping among themselves, past the forest, choking with ferns and trees with vines strung between them, like a giant spider’s web. I thought of Ama, fast asleep, hugging my pillow like she told me she does when I’m not home, and my throat tightened. 

I couldn’t face Priti, so I skipped breakfast. When we gathered around Kahindo for our introductory briefing, I focused intently on him. 

‘The monkeys are this colour,’ Kahindo said, stripping a piece of bark from a tree. ‘Instead of tails, they have wings. Adult males are about so high.’ He held up his middle finger. ‘If we come across any poachers, leave it to us. It’s safer that way.’ 

He led us into the heart of the rainforest, clearing a path with his machete. We followed behind him, fighting through vines, ducking beneath branches, and clambering over and under fallen trees. The air was warm and moist with an intense, earthy smell and above us the trees whispered. Maybe it was the beer from last night, but I felt my stomach stirring. 

As we set up, fixing camera traps to the trees, we heard a rustling in the ferns and glimpsed an elephant before it disappeared into the undergrowth.

‘Couldn’t you just live here?’ Priti said, smiling.

I looked down at the army of ants marching across dead leaves on the forest floor.

‘Not sure my wife would approve.’

Priti stared at me for a moment, then walked away, her head lower than before. I went to join Kahindo, who was filming chimpanzees chasing each other, high up in the trees. 

‘It’s a disgrace this area’s been off-limits for so long,’ Chase said. 

I looked up at the kaleidoscopic rays of light shining through the rainforest canopy.

‘It’s a shame, but sometimes things should be off-limits,’ Priti said, looking at me.

‘At least the fighting’s stopped now,’ Chase said, frowning slightly. ‘The destruction caused by the civil wars. Makes me so mad.’ He clenched his fists.

We spent the day searching for winged monkeys in a maze of green. Joseph, one of Kahindo’s trackers, flew a drone up beyond the rainforest canopy to capture footage of the habitat from above, the rest of us paired up to scan the foliage from the forest floor. Kahindo took me through a bog beneath a filigree of waxy leaves, down to a stream that spurted over the rocks; there’d been several sightings by water, he said. He pointed out the kiwi green Bushoho reed frog with its fine black spots and white highlights on its snout and sides, but the shining-blue kingfisher with its splendid indigo head and back and breast the colour of persimmons was the closest we got to flying monkeys. 

As darkness fell, we made our way back to the research station. Priti laughed too hard at Chase’s attempts at humour over dinner and afterwards, when he suggested drinks, she glanced in my direction before accepting. I went back to my hut and lay on the mattress trying to make out shapes in the dark. I forced myself to think of Ama. I pictured her standing in our conservatory, ankles swollen, arms wrapped around herself, demanding we buy things we didn’t need because everything had to be perfect. When I drifted off, I dreamt of Priti. In my dream we were naked in the shower when Ama appeared. All I could do was watch as her waters broke and streamed from her eyes. 

When I woke, finding the new species felt even more urgent. Instead of heading to breakfast I went to check the camera trap footage. Soon I was joined by Chase and the others. 

After hours and hours of trawling through everything we’d collected, we’d found birds, bats and okapis with their zebra legs, dark bodies and giraffe-like heads, but nothing like the creature Kahindo described. We widened the research area, took photos and made notes about everything from the discarded fruit skins and droppings in the carpet of copper leaves to the plants growing like parasites on trees that stretched into the skies. There was no sign of a single flying monkey. Even the phrase was beginning to sound far-fetched. 

‘Maybe it was just a bat,’ Priti said over dinner. ‘We all know what it’s like to think we’ve found something that didn’t turn out to be what we thought it was.’ She was staring at me. 

‘I know what I saw, and it wasn’t a bat.’ Kahindo’s voice was firm, but he seemed to shrink into himself, nonetheless.

‘Priti’s right, sometimes it’s easy to see what you want to see,’ I muttered. I could feel her eyes on me. 

‘We’ll give it a while longer. Didn’t come all this way to quit,’ Chase snapped.

‘Mister Chase is right,’ Kahindo said quickly. ‘You can’t go back yet.’

I watched him shift in his chair. 

We didn’t find anything when we checked the footage the next morning, nor the following day. By dinner that evening we were hardly speaking and not long after eating we retired to our huts. I didn’t even try to sleep. I spent hours writing a letter to Ama, then screwed it into a ball.

I got up at sunrise and went to check the footage again. It was more of the same. Until I spotted a sudden grainy blur: a couple of winged creatures the size of giant moths at 2.17am. They weren’t birds and didn’t look like bats.

I showed the footage to the others over breakfast. 

Chase and Priti started talking animatedly, but Kahindo frowned. ‘That’s not it,’ he said, shaking his head. He pulled out his phone and tried to show us his clip again, but we were focused on the new footage.

‘We need to trap one,’ Chase said.

‘We should study them in their natural habitat first,’ Priti said.

Kahindo kept saying that what we’d filmed was definitely not a flying monkey, but Chase ignored him. ‘If we catch one now, we can confirm it’s a new species and study them in the field at the same time.’

‘But if we understand them better first, we’ll get more out of studying them at the camp,’ Priti said, turning to glare at me. I didn’t say anything. 

‘It’s my grant! We’re going to catch one,’ Chase said.

Neither Priti nor Kahindo would help him string up the mist nets, so he turned to me. I ignored the tugging in the pit of my stomach and helped tie them to the trees. The sooner we caught a winged monkey, the sooner I could go home and make it up to Ama. 

We took it in turns to monitor the nets throughout the day, but we only caught a few birds and butterflies. Chase complained over dinner, saying ‘the locals’ should be doing more to help us. Kahindo apologised, said they were doing all they could, but I caught him raising his eyebrows at Joseph when Chase and Priti weren’t looking. 

‘I don’t get it, do you want us to fail?’ I asked.

Chase and Priti looked from him to me. Kahindo frowned and shook his head. ‘Your success would be a success for the entire camp, Mr Miles.’ When we’d finished eating, he got up from the table and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Can we speak?’

I nodded. 

‘Not here,’ he said.

I wanted to go back to my hut and shut out the world, but I followed him to a small clearing on the edge of the camp and we sat side by side on a rotting tree trunk. 

‘I don’t want you to fail. But…’ Kahindo pointed back in the direction of the huts where Priti would no doubt be drinking with Chase. ‘They know nothing about our people.’ He looked down at the floor and for a while neither of us spoke, then he said, ‘There are no flying monkeys.’

I glared at him. ‘So what the hell–’

‘We needed the money. Without guards and bribes, the poachers would destroy everything. I won’t let that happen,’ Kahindo said. 

‘So you made it all up? Is this some kind of joke to you?’

‘It’s not a joke, they fly, but they’re not monkeys,’ Kahindo said. 

I stared at him, waiting for him to continue. 

‘Our ancient ancestors…’

It sounded like the start of a tall tale. I couldn’t believe I’d been drawn in. I’d respected Kahindo – thought we shared an understanding – but all along he’d been peddling folklore. I rubbed at my temples, then got up and walked away.

‘Please, you mustn’t catch them,’ Kahindo’s voice faded into the night. 

The local team volunteered to camp out and monitor the nets that night. I said I’d stay out with them, more to witness the lack of flying primates so I could persuade Chase to leave, than anything else. But as soon as I volunteered, Chase insisted on camping out too. 

Joseph and Christian talked among themselves in Lingala, leaving me to suffer Chase, who talked about himself, the fieldtrips he’d led and the animals he’d studied. Just after 3am, heavy drops of rain hit the forest vegetation, reminding me of hands beating a djembe. We sheltered in our tent and through the downpour I caught a glimpse of a tiny, winged creature. I held my breath, watched it fly between the trees, straight into one of our nets. 

I rushed over. Entangled in the net was a hairless creature, barely the length of a baby’s fist. I reached in and freed it, gently holding it until Chase brought the cage over. As soon as I let go, it flew to the top of the cage and pushed at the metal bars with its tiny hands, flying in ever-smaller circles as it tried to free itself. It flew against the sides, banging against each one, before curling into a ball, its wings drooping. 

‘It’s only young. I think we should–’ I said.

‘Don’t get sentimental on me. This is life-changing,’ snapped Chase, picking up the cage and handing it to Christian.

As we neared the camp, Chase sent Joseph ahead to wake Priti and Kahindo. They were waiting for us when we arrived. Chase put the cage on the table, and we surrounded it, peering down at the little creature. It glanced up at us, then hid beneath its wings. 

‘We’re not going to harm you,’ Chase said, plucking it from the cage to measure, weigh and tag it. He continued talking to it, as though it could understand. 

Kahindo looked like he was at a funeral. He held himself stiffly, his face tense, offering the winged being water and fruit; it wouldn’t eat or drink. He glanced at me with reddened eyes; I could feel his guilt. 

Chase’s eyes gleamed, ‘God, guys. I think I’ve discovered the Chase Adams bat monkey.’ 

Priti pulled a face at Kahindo when Chase wasn’t looking.

In the early hours, long after the others had gone to bed, I went back to look at the creature in its small prison. One of the camp guards sat blocking the door. 

‘May I?’ I said. 

He nodded and moved his chair to the side. 

‘Thank God,’ Chase said when I entered the room. ‘I was too wired to sleep, so I came to check on my bat monkey and Kahindo was in here. He had the window and the cage door open.’

‘Something’s not right with him,’ I said. 

‘Clearly! I need to put my head down,’ Chase yawned. ‘Are you alright to guard it for a few hours? I don’t trust the locals.’

I nodded. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw the little thing’s mouth moving. I leant towards it and heard a faint noise. It wasn’t the chatter of a monkey or the call of a bat, but a murmur: the same two sounds again and again. It curled up, shivering. I thought about Ama, cradling our newborn without me. 

When Chase left, I opened the cage door and, with finger and thumb, lifted the little thing out and held it in my palm. It appeared female, skin the colour of mahogany, smooth and soft. She had a fine layer of black hair on top of an oval head and two legs, like a human child’s. Her tiny hands moved freely, but her arms were fused to batlike wings that sprouted from her waist and shoulders. I watched her chest rise and fall until she fell asleep on my thumb. 

Light had just begun to seep through the window when Priti came in. She sat next to me, watching the life in my hand. When the tiny being woke again I looked over at Priti. She gave me a half-smile.

‘Sorry,’ I said. 

Gently, I carried the little one to the window. I opened my palm, and we watched her fly away.

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