“The prince frowned and said, ‘There was a horse like that in my father’s stable when I was a boy. Then there was a disastrous fire, and it disappeared along with several others.’
“ ‘Will you open the gate, then, and let me lodge the horse in your stable?’
“ ‘I don’t understand why I should do that,’ the prince replied. ‘Forgive me if I’m blunt, but how would I benefit from doing this favor for you?’
“ ‘I thought you understood, Your Highness,’ the stranger said. ‘This is the very horse that disappeared from your father’s stable when you were a boy. I’m only bringing back something that shouldn’t have left here in the first place.’ ”
Nkemi smiled and gave me a nod that seemed to say, “Carry on.”
“We’re not asking you to look after something that belongs to us,” I told him. “We’re trying to restore something that belongs to you.”
Nkemi nodded, still smiling. “You see? I could have discovered this benefit for myself with a little thought. But it was your obligation to show it to me, not mine to discover it. By expecting me to find whatever benefit I could in your proposal, you were being quite disrespectful to me—though I understand perfectly that you personally meant no such disrespect.”
“I understand,” I said, “and I agree completely.”
“I will of course be glad to cooperate with you in this odd little venture. Mr. Owona will see to all the arrangements that must be made at this end.”
With that, he stood up and extended his hand to me to say farewell.
Eight hours later I was in the air headed back to Zurich.
Feats of Timing
After a long, boring layover in Atlanta, I was home before midnight on Friday—home but virtually comatose. Mother shoveled me into bed. I wasn’t too friendly when she woke me at eight the next morning to say that Mr. Owens was on his way to pick me up. I could have used another six hours of unconsciousness, but I got up, got showered, got dressed, and got fed in time to be out on the street to meet him so that he didn’t have to come in and make polite talk with my mother. We would have about a ninety-minute drive to get to the carnival, which had moved two towns northward by this time.
After giving him a fairly blow-by-blow account of my African adventure, I asked him what was up.
“Two things have happened since you left,” he said. “One is that Ishmael has caught a terrible cold that I’m afraid may turn into pneumonia. There aren’t many vets who’re capable of treating a gorilla or set up to treat a gorilla, but I’ve located one, and an ambulance is on its way to the carnival grounds right now.”
All I wanted to say about this was: “He’ll be all right, won’t he?” But I knew Art well enough to know that if he had any reassurance to give me, he would already have given it. He didn’t look terribly worried, and I had to make do with that.
“What’s the second thing?”
He gave a brief, bitter laugh. “The second thing is that Alan Lomax has tracked us down.”
“Listen,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me what this thing with Alan is all about. I know Ishmael doesn’t want to talk about it, but that shouldn’t stop you from talking about it.”
Art drove for a while as he gave the problem some thought. Finally he said, “Every once in a while Ishmael will encounter a pupil who just won’t let go. Who gets … possessive. This just scares Ishmael to death—for good reason, actually.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Think about it. Once you own an animal, well, let’s face it, you control it absolutely.”
“Yes, but Alan doesn’t own Ishmael.”
“The point is, Alan wants to own him. Day before yesterday, he offered me a thousand dollars for him.”
“Oh, Christ Almighty,” I groaned. I wanted to scream. I wanted to bite hunks out of the dashboard. “What did you tell him?”
Art grinned. “That I might take twenty-five hundred.”
“Why did you do that?” I inquired indignantly.
“What would you have me do? I had to preserve the fiction that, as far as I’m concerned, Ishmael’s just another animal in my collection.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You have to keep in mind that, from Alan’s point of view, he’s doing something completely admirable. He’s trying to rescue Ishmael from a desperate situation.”