Antipode – Chapter 13

Vigilance

Antipode was originally published in 2001. Here is where we started—with the Introduction. And here are all of the chapters posted thus far.

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Time passes on this rich green island, this soft distant island, this verdant tropical island afloat in expectation and history, this big blue island, this nosy mangabe. Days slide past, identical in their schedule, subtly varying in detail, and there is no future to imagine but more like these. I wake in my tent, faintest hint of pink in the air through the gossamer walls, and lie still, listening. Night frog song ceding to day frog song, nocturnal mouse lemurs nesting, brown lemurs rising. They do not worry if today is like yesterday, nor even if somehow today were indeed yesterday.

Time continues to pass, and I become wary, convinced in my less lucid moments that my personal vigilance is all that keeps time moving forward here in this forgotten world. I must be fully aware that today is Tuesday, for if I do not keep track, tomorrow may also be Tuesday, and I will be forever here, cycling through endless Tuesdays. Even the smallest cues can remind us of what day it is. In Maroantsetra, the market bustles more on Wednesday, the doors of the church are open on Sunday. In the west, Monday has a palpable reluctance, Friday an exuberance, and Sunday drags its heels. On Nosy Mangabe, these names identify nothing—lemurs and lizards have no concept of a week, every day like the last, sleeping, eating, waiting.

Sometimes, thankfully, I lapse in my vigilance, and pass a moment, even hours, without pondering the passage of time. But then I am reminded, and wonder if the time I live now might come back to be lived again, erasing the first life? Or perhaps that mirror-time will compound the first life, reminding me of time already spent, but ruthlessly demanding that I relive moments, rather than giving me new ones. So many of my thoughts are the same, daily, that I might not know if I went through an entire day with exactly the same complement of synapses firing in my head.

March arrives, and the countdown continues: nine more weeks in the field. Nine more weeks of ethereal sky. The moon veiled by a faint mist, its border soft and imprecise. Tiny slivers of pale yellow slip through the thick clouds, crowning the mountains. The sky overhead is a middling blue that has no name, not sky and not midnight, as those names evoke noon, and night. There is no color called dusk, for dusk changes with the season and the climate and the number of people dwelling in your midst. This dusk is a steel blue with no end, gray clouds wisping at the edge, as if there are margins. But dusk has no borders, it goes far, continues out of the atmosphere into dark, and once there, dusk is gone, and you cannot name the place where it first began to disappear.

In Jamaica, one of Bret's friends asked him, “Is our Jamaican moon the same moon that you see in America?” Just think, if every place on this Earth had a different sky, if we could not link ourselves with the constellations and moon phases and the rising and setting of the sun. We are already so small and insignificant. How much more so if we were in smaller boxes yet, and could not see out of them into other peoples' skies.

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As in all lives, food provided a regular diversion from thoughts of eternity and echoed days. Meals broke up our days at noon and at six, plates piled high with rice. Jessica was writing to her parents one day, intense, focused, when under her breath she muttered, “I meant to write bread, but I wrote rice...that says it all, doesn’t it?”

Our diet is rice. Rice with beans, sometimes. Rice with potatoes and carrots if we’ve just been to town and there were vegetables to buy, and if they haven’t rotted yet. Rice with ramen noodles. Rice with fish broth. Rice with more rice, finished off with a glassful of ranon’ ampàngo, essence of rice.

Some mornings I find evidence of rats in the lab. There is no way to keep them out. They gnawed through the bindings of some of my books, beginning with a theoretical book on sexual selection, then moving on to Updike. They left a few rolls of flagging tape strewn around the lab like party streamers. I asked Lebon if it were possible to buy rat poison in town. He looked dismayed.

“If you poison the rats, the things they leave in the rice will also be poisoned.”

“What do they leave in…?” I began, then caught up, a bit too slow for Lebon’s generous interpretation of rat droppings.

Later, he produced an old, rusty rat trap. We set it, and caught two giant rats over the next three nights. These aren’t fascinating rodents known only from Madagascar, but the same big rats humans have been transporting around the world in cargo ships for centuries.  After this effort, our rice was a bit cleaner, and my books suffered fewer bite-marks.

The previous year, when Bret and I were on Nosy Mangabe with Emile, he came to us one day and asked what we had in mind for dinner, though there is but one thing to eat.

"Rice?" we hazarded to guess. Emile was annoyed.

"Yes, rice, but what about the broth?" he persisted. Broth? Perhaps he was making soup?

"Broth...hmm, yes, well, we do have those bouillon cubes..."

"Jumbo cube for broth?" Emile repeated, invoking the name blocked in large letters on the wrappings of these cubes.

"Yes, jumbo cube." We agreed. He seemed satisfied, and left to attend to the making of the broth. Only as we sat down to our meal did his meaning become clear. We had the usual heaping plates of rice. And we had jumbo cube broth, to spoon over the rice.

"No beans?" I asked, quietly.

"You said you wanted jumbo cube for broth." Emile was peeved. If the vazaha had a normal, Malagasy understanding of food, none of this would have happened. Rice is a constant. If you choose to put something on top of your rice, that is okay. But it is secondary, usually trivial. There is rice. And there is broth.

By the time Jessica and I were being graciously fed by Lebon and Fortune, at least I understood this much. For broth, the conservation agents have a predilection for fish. Almost every day, our broth consists of a weak fish stock, fish heads swimming in pale red water, eyeballs viscous and staring. The fish, though caught every day, is not eaten fresh, but smoke-dried, then reconstituted to form broth. It is not good. Sometimes, as a treat, there are crabs on top of the fish heads, their asymmetrical claws dangling loosely outside of the bowl, their flat bodies stewing in the same pale red broth. Crabs that have sat in a fisherman's pirogue for two days, steaming dead in the sun.

"We can't eat this," we explain apologetically to Fortune as he insists, like a good mother, that we eat, eat.  "The vazaha, we have strange ways, and one of them is to avoid feasting on long dead crustaceans." He looks betrayed, saddened by our rejection of this special meal.

"More rice?" he asks, hopeful, plying us with fresh mounds of the sticky white morsels. We nod enthusiastically, for we are falling in line, slowly coming to require enormous quantities of rice in order to feel full. A smile spreads over Fortune's lethargic face. We have brought him some joy, by feasting on rice.

One day a package arrives from Ros, Jessica's mother. She has sent us a hunk of cheddar cheese, now slimy and molded from the trip. We are in ecstasy. I found real macaroni in town, and we ask Fortune to boil it for us. We spend our free afternoon cleaning off the cheddar, washing it in the stream, admiring it, anticipating its sharp bite atop pasta. At dinner we carry in, triumphantly, a bowl containing small hunks of cheddar cheese. Fortune is in agony as we drop cheese on top of macaroni, and swoon.

"More rice?" he asks, scared that tonight we might say no. And we do.

"Tonight we have pasta, Fortune. Do you want to try it?" He backs away from the table, terrified of our cheese.

"Lebon, would you like some? It's delicious." Lebon, though unconvinced by our palates, wants to be heroic in our eyes, so he bravely takes a bite. This is all he can manage. What is this cheese, this curdled milk product? And why won't the vazaha eat fish eyes when they are offered?

And so this life continues. I am, alternately, stunned by the beauty of this island, the serenity and odd twist on luxury that living in a rainforest affords; and bored, counting the days, eager for new diversions, craving foods, information, entertainment. The weather, even when it is reminiscent of past motifs, provides mystery, something on which to focus.

Rain falls in patches across the bay. At the farthest point, bright yellow lights the horizon, a thin cloud layer letting through the sun’s last pure rays before they color with their slant. So cool here, calm. The distant laughter of Lebon and Fortune, replete and satisfied after dinner, is the only human noise. Organic sounds of the night begin to emanate from the forest, frogs and insects mostly, clicking and pulsing with life energy. The bay laps the coarse sand beach. High tide, which can be rough, is tonight tranquil, the water barely undulating with the ripples that end on shore, surges of soft water on receptive sand. The large gnarled driftwood that usually rests underneath a tree overhanging the bay has been pulled out by the tide, freed by the water to do nothing in particular. I feel like that often, that my freedom here is laughable because there are so few options. It is such a feeling of endlessness.

At night, when I am trying to sleep, the rain is a gift, it secludes, gives privacy, and I cannot hear the muted conversation of Lebon and Fortune, rising softly, now falling, as they sit on the steps of their cabin. I have with me my headlamp, my only remaining source of electric light. All others having succumbed to the persistent wet. The only thing that wakes me, so often, throughout the night, is the need to pee, that urge brought on by the anti-malarials.

One dark, drizzly night, I get up around one in the morning, the third time that evening, feeling the pressure from my bladder. I grope around for my headlamp and, having secured it to my head, leave my tent. There is so much rain here, and the soil so sandy, that I do not need to go far, for the smell of urine is gone almost as soon it is made. I squat at the edge of my tent platform, holding on to one of the wooden poles that holds the thatched roof on. My head falls slowly forward as I near sleep again. Before I wake and snap it back, my headlamp is sliding forward off of my head. It falls off, directly into my stream, and goes out.

I am left in complete darkness. For a few moments I remain there, squatting, considering the situation. I will certainly need the headlamp in the future. Hopefully it will dry enough to work again. I have no other working light sources—candles aren’t useful in the forest, or in a tent. Since there are no poisonous snakes in Madagascar, rooting around in the dark for a urine-soaked headlamp won’t be particularly dangerous. So I do just that.

The weather is on my side, and it is hot and dry the next day. Before I leave for the field I rinse the headlamp off, and leave it in the sun to dry. When I come back from the morning’s work, the headlamp works, and if anything I am pleased to have had the distraction. Small things break up the coming and going of dawn, of rain, of moons new  and full.

Periodically, a strange, cyclic weather pattern emerges, in which clear, cloudless skies in the early morning yield to high clouds and hot, oh so humid late mornings and early afternoons. By mid-afternoon, a variation in the cloud pattern acts, rumbling constantly in the distance, moving a single patch of blue around the sky, thunderclouds moving gustily against thick wispy gray. It begins to rain, the thunder increasing in volume, and I feel that this will be a great storm, a storm that, if it were possible, would warrant staying indoors, positioning myself in comfort to hear and watch the storm, but not be in it. But this is not a great storm, it is only a few strong gusts, some brief downpours, and before the sun has gone very far toward the horizon, the rain has stopped, and the clouds are thinning. The thunder, too, recedes. Alas, I cry, the storm that wasn’t. By dinnertime, however, it is brewing again, and as we sit in the little cabin and eat it begins to rain again, lightly at first. Then, suddenly, the sky opens up, and swallows the island we are on in its entirety, lightning breaking the sky with jagged cuts, thunder by turns simultaneous with the light and almost minutes from it. The winds come again and tear at trees, dead wood falling, the lemurs hanging on, whimpering softly in the rain. And then, sometime deep in the night, calm returns. The rains stop, the winds die, and though the sky does not clear enough to bring moonlight back, not until very early morning, it is almost as if there was never any storm.

But the animals know. When I go out to watch frogs at 5:30 in the morning after such weather, under a bluing sky showing no clouds, they are exuberant, singing to the world. The males call for mates and to taunt their competition, because an important resource has just fallen on them in abundance, equally on all, and it is now up to them to define who can best take advantage of this windfall.

There is a coup in the works, a hostile takeover of the territory of the alpha frog, whom I call Frank. He is a successful frog, if perhaps greedy, defending five of the seven viable wells in the entire bamboo stand. This leaves most of the other males with no chance to reproduce. I have given these principal players names only for ease of reference, because their marks are various and inconsistent, so one would be “left anterior two scar, right posterior one scar,” another “pink orange green waistband.”

Two other contenders to Frank’s throne are making him fight to retain his preeminence. George came in from the east, Caesar from the north, both courting females, and looking as if they intended to mate in Frank’s defended wells. Frank attacked both of the males, and the five of them scrambled around, jumping on each other and fighting. Whenever one of the females tried to leave, Frank jumped on her and thrust at her in agitated amplexus, until she succumbed and sat still, ready to be trampled in the fray again. In the end, Frank lost everything, as both Caesar and George ended up mating with females in wells that were in Frank’s territory. He sat in the middle, mute and still.

But even in defeat, Frank is not vanquished. All is not lost, as Caesar’s hard work may have gone only to provide lunch for Frank’s child. Previously I’ve observed that these tadpoles rely for their nutrition on the eggs of their own species. Sometimes tadpoles get fed by their mothers, and often tadpoles cannibalize eggs not meant for them. The well in which Caesar was mating already had Frank’s tadpole in it, so any eggs Caesar pried from a receptive female might promptly get eaten by Frank’s offspring. Caesar, the worthy competitor, would have his efforts parasitized after a long battle. While Frank, the male who looks to the horizon, who defends wells at all costs—he may be the one who wins.

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Every two and a half weeks we go into town to replenish our provisions, to get a decent meal, to reset the clock and establish a baseline vigilance again. Once we go specifically to buy a chicken. Jessica and I no longer stay at the Coco Beach, as Clarice allows us to sleep in a room on the second floor of Projet Masoala. It is free, and central, if a step down from the Coco Beach in cleanliness and charm. It has two rank foam mattresses on which are draped single sheets, and holes in the wall called windows that look out on the streets of Maroantsetra. The mosquitoes are thick, the bathroom foul. But across the dirt road, under the thatched roof of the open air market, a young Malagasy man sits and strums his guitar, two friends by his side. The music lilts, smooth and light. This scene lingers, seeming to hang in time whenever I come to town, the men no older, the music no less enchanting.

The restaurant that we frequent, now that we are away from the Coco Beach, is across the street from an establishment advertising wine and rum, the prices scrawled on the outside wall. At the tables in front, a beautiful, slinky young Malagasy woman is arrayed in tight-fitting clothes and a fashionable purse, ready to take off at any moment on a scooter parked in front. Also, an odious white man: a dwarf with a serious stoop, no neck, and a Napoleon complex. He chats with a Chinese man, eyes the woman, and speeds off on his scooter, only to return shortly and resume the cycle. We imagine that there is a rental agency in town, one that loans out scooters and lush young women, perhaps both, for the price of one.

This woman who works across the street from us is stunning, bearing curvy hips on long legs, and an angular jaw with pronounced cheekbones. She holds herself with what appears to be confidence and self-admiration. Has she really kept her pride, when she is being bought by grotesque men for a few dollars? Perhaps she has managed to retain those human emotions even as she necessarily turned off the physical responses of her body, sliding only partway into an automated existence.

We leave town quickly, as always, after getting our fill of poulet au coco and views of the village prostitute's life, and after acquiring a chicken. Arriving at Nosy Mangabe with this bird, Lebon and Fortune grow excited, ready for a good meal. But this is an experimental chicken.

Mantella laevigata, my frogs, are brightly colored and toxic. They probably get the building blocks for their poisons from something in their diet, as it dissipates when they’re kept in captivity. Lacking both teeth and bad attitudes, they don’t use their poisons offensively, only as defense. They are fine examples of aposematic, or warning, coloration, which is also found in coral snakes, monarch butterflies, and many species of caterpillars. Being toxic is very well and good, but if your predator has already eaten you before he realizes you're poisonous, your personal toxicity does you no good at all. Best if you can warn the predator before he takes a bite out of you. Bright coloration is one way to warn predators, but for the unfortunate fact that many potential predators don't see color. Some lizards and snakes do. All birds do. But among mammals, only primates and a few scant others see color.

I wanted to determine if potential predators are actually discriminating between the aposematically colored Mantella, and non-toxic, probably tasty, but cryptic (drab, camouflaged, brown) frogs. So we got ourselves a color-seeing chicken. We also caught a slew of zonosaurs, since we had seen one of these lizards eating a Mantella. Then we rounded up three species of frogs: some Mantella laevigata (bright and toxic), Mantella betsileo (drab and toxic), and Mantidactylus betsileanus (drab and edible). Meanwhile the chicken is becoming acclimated to forest life, where it wanders on a long leash, picking seeds off the forest floor. We use tarps to turn the unused tent platform into a large arena. Using homemade collars and leashes on both the chicken and lizards, we tie them inside the arena, drop in the various species of frogs, and wait for predation to happen.

All of the frogs hunker down in one corner of the arena. The chicken takes one flying leap and escapes from its walls. We return her, but she is intent on perfecting that leap. The lizards make repeated run-ups to the slick sides, always falling backwards into the arena at the last moment, before attempting their getaway again. Nobody eats anyone else. Lebon and Fortune huddle in the far corner of camp, frightened by our newest game, occasionally shooting wistful glances at the persistently escaping chicken.

Finally we unleash the zonosaurs, return the frogs to their homes, tear down the arena, and convey the chicken to the still trembling conservation agents.

"Here," we say, disgusted with the chicken's behavior, "we have no more use for it. Why don't you make a nice broth?" Our experimental forest chicken proves extremely tasty.

The southern summer is ending. On the fall equinox in northeastern Madagascar, the days will soon begin growing slightly more perceptibly shorter. So close to the equator, day length never fluctuates widely. There are not the wide swings of long lazy summer evenings, warm with light, ceding to short winter days that darken before five. Back home, in the northern temperate zone, the same moment is the spring equinox. On this day the sun passes over the equator to bring more rays, longer days and stronger light, to a northern hemisphere now tilted toward the sun. There the days grow, not shrink, in length. Here, I spin into a mild tropical autumn.

When, as now, it has not rained for almost a week, tadpoles and eggs dry up, the frogs hide, and none of them are interested in sex or fights. I am left to ponder the shimmering bay, until a change in weather reinvigorates the frogs. It is impossible to tell if I am working too hard, or not hard enough. There is no gauge. There is nothing to compare to, only mounting boredom or panic at moments when I’m not working.

Jessica keeps me on track, keeps me sane. She has begun to hypothesize about what she is seeing, which is wonderful, for two brains are more likely to arrive at truth than one. She goes out to watch frogs even in ridiculous weather, always eager to help carry gear, to talk about what we are seeing. One stormy morning, when I had not gone out because of the weather, and assumed she was still asleep, she bounded into the lab, dripping wet, full of frog stories to recount and interpret. Between her enthusiasm, and the various projects I have going now—daily focal observations, taking data on well inhabitants throughout the forest, experiments underway to assess female choice and population limitation—I should be confident that all is well. But how does one know for sure, when there is no authority nodding approval from a comfortable chair?

A comfortable chair. This becomes one of my most persistent cravings. We sit on wooden stools in camp, three-legged pack stools when observing frogs, and rocks and leaf litter in the forest. Our backs become twisted, sore and tight, from never being able to recline except in sleep. How much I would give for a bit of comfort in this forest paradise.

Four days of solid rain, four days boxed in by a cement bunker while outside it pours down, mocking my scientific intentions. Four days is an eternity. I take a long wet walk, slipping down trails, up hills, across the forest, sighting lemurs huddled miserable in the trees, the flash of a tail as a snake slides out of sight. I reflect on this non-linear forest-world where one hour is the next hour is tomorrow's hour. Again I worry, concerned that time will begin to cycle, and I will relive this day endlessly, never being any closer to an end, or a reprieve.

Finally I realize that the vigilance is not necessary, that paying heed to passing time or no, it will indeed pass, and will not return. I sit, mindless, waiting for a new today.

Next week: Chapter 14 – The New Hotel