Skip the sun, get a glow the healthy way 6 глава

I arrived at the cloud forest in Ecuador ten days ago. I was one of a group of twelve volunteers that wanted to save the rainforest. My reasons for going on this trip were twofold: firstly, I wanted to collect and bring back alive some of the fascinating animals, birds and reptiles that inhabit this region; secondly, I had long cherished a dream to see South America: not the inhabited South America with its macadam roads, its cocktail bars, its express trains roaring through a landscape denuded of its flora and fauna by the beneficial influences of civilization. I wanted to see one of those few remaining parts of the continent that had escaped this fate and remained more or less as it was when America was first discovered: I wanted to see its rainforests, its vast lands of untouched, pure, natural wildlife. We were working together with local people and scientists and we were learning and seeing new things every day. Our lodge was comfortable, had breathtaking views and was in the middle of the rainforest. It was a two-hour walk from the nearest road, and it was even further to the nearest village.

The rainforest is truly an astonishing place. There are thousands of species of plants here and more than 700 species of birds. There are millions of insects and scientists think there may be around forty mammal species that haven’t even been discovered. But what I was really amazed at how everything depends on everything else for survival.

Every tree in the rainforest is covered in a species of another kind. The black wasp uses the tarantula as a nest for its eggs, plants need monkeys for seed dispersal, and the clouds are necessary for the survival of the whole rainforest. This is because they provide moisture. The problem is, climate change is causing the clouds to rise by 1-2 meters every year. What will happen to the plants that need this moisture? What will happen to the animals that need those plants?

Our job was to watch this changing ecosystem. One of my favourite projects was the bird survey. Every day a group of us set out at around five o’clock with a local scientist. At this time of the morning the air was filled with the sound of bird song. We had to identify the birds we hear and see and write down our findings. Later, we entered all our information into a computer at the lodge.

We also set up cameras to record pumas, spectacled bears and other large mammals. It was always exciting to see pumas because it meant there were other animals around that they would normally hunt. We fixed the cameras to trees around the reserve, and every day a team of volunteers collected the cameras memory cards.

There was a lot to do in the rainforest, but at least I felt like we were making a difference.

However, soon I started collecting some animals and insects. I realized that as soon as the hunting got under way and the collection increased, most of my time would be taken up in looking after the animals, and I should not be able to wander far from camp. So I was eager to get into the forest while I had the chance.

Nevertheless, I should mention the fact that without the help of the natives you would stand little chance of catching the animals you want, for they know the forest, having been born in it. Once the animal is caught, however, it is your job to keep it alive and well. If you left this part of it to the natives you would get precious little back alive.

Lily and I had planned a movie marathon weekend. I was exhausted from work and she was stressed out from her classes, so we’d promised to spend the whole weekend parked on her couch and subsist solely on pizza and crisps. No healthy food. No diet Coke. And absolutely no strict, official clothes. Even though we talked all the time, we hadn’t spent any real time together since I’d moved to the city.

We’d been friends since the eighth grade, when I first saw Lily crying alone at a cafeteria table. She’d just moved in with her grandmother and started at our school in Avon, after it became clear that her parents weren’t coming home any time soon. The day I found her crying alone in the cafeteria was the day her grandmother had forced her to chop off her dirty dreadlocks and wear a dress, and Lily was not very happy about it. Something about the way she talked, the way she said, “That’s so nice of you,” and “Let’s just forget about it”, charmed me, and we immediately became friends. We’d been inseparable through the rest of high school, and lived in the same room for all four years at Brown College. Lily hadn’t yet decided whether she preferred girlish dresses or rough leather jackets, but we complemented each other well. And I missed her. Because with her first year as a graduate student and my exhausting work, we hadn’t seen a whole lot of each other lately.

Lily was studying for her Ph.D. in Russian Literature at Columbia University and working odd jobs every free second she wasn’t studying. Her grandmother barely had enough money to support herself, and Lily had to pay for the studies on her own. However, she seemed to be fond of such a way of life. She loved Russian culture ever since her eighth-grade teacher told her that Lily looked how he had always pictured Lolita, with her round face and curly black hair. She went directly home and read Nabokov’s “Lolita”, and then read everything else Nabokov wrote. And Tolstoy. And Gogol. And Chekhov. By the time we finished school, she was applying to Brown College to work with a specific professor who had a degree in Russian Literature. On interviewing a seventeen-year-old Lily the professor declared her one of the most well-read and passionate students of Russian literature he’d ever met. She still loved it, still studied Russian grammar and could read anything in its original.

I couldn’t wait for the weekend. My fourteen-hour workdays were registering in my feet, my upper arms, and my lower back. Glasses had replaced the contacts I’d worn for a decade because my eyes were too dry and tired to accept them anymore. I’d begun losing weight already as I never had time to eat properly, although I was drinking an enormous amount of coffee. I’d already weathered a flue infection and had paled significantly, and it had been only four weeks. I was only twenty-three years old. And my boss hadn’t even been in the office yet. I knew I deserved a weekend.

Saturday afternoon found us particularly motivated, and we managed to saunter round the city center for a few hours. We each bought some new clothes for the upcoming New Year’s party and had a mug of hot chocolate from a sidewalk café. By the time we made it back to her apartment, we were exhausted and happy and spent the rest of the night watching old movies and eating pizza.

Scarcely had we settled into the Strawberry-pink Villa before my mother decided that I was running wild, and that it was necessary for me to have some sort of education. As usual when a problem arose, the entire family flung itself with enthusiasm into the task of solving it. Each member had his or her own idea of what was best for me.

Sitting under the open window in the twilight, I had listened with interest, not unmixed with indignation, to the family discussion of my fate. Finally my mother decided that George would be a good teacher for me. Now it was settled, I wondered vaguely who George was, and why it was so necessary for me to have lessons. But the dusk was thick with flower-scents, and the olive-groves were dark, mysterious, and fascinating. I forgot about the imminent danger of being educated, and went off with Roger to hunt for glow-worms in the sprawling brambles.

Later I discovered that George was my brother’s friend and he had come to Corfu to write. There was nothing very unusual about this, for all Larry’s acquaintances in those days were either authors, poets, or painters.

My new teacher came over to the villa to discuss my education with Mother, and we were introduced. We regarded each other with suspicion. George was a very tall and extremely thin man with a brown beard and a pair of large spectacles. He had a deep, melancholy voice, a dry and sarcastic sense of humor. However, he was not upset by the fact that there were no school-books available on the island; he simply looked through his own library and appeared on the appointed day armed with his own selection of books. He patiently taught me Geography from the maps in the back of an ancient copy of Pears Encyclopedia, English from books that ranged from Wilde to Gibbon, French from the book called “Le Petit Larousse”, and mathematics from memory. From my point of view the most important thing was that we devoted some of our time to natural history, and George carefully taught me how to observe and how to note down observations in a diary. At once my enthusiastic interest in nature became focused, for I found that by writing things down I could learn and remember much more. The only morning that I was ever on time for my lessons were those which were given up to natural history.

Every morning at nine George would come into the little dining-room of the villa, sit at the table methodically arranging the books. He would droop over the exercise-book pensively, pulling at his beard. Then in his large, clear writing he would set the task for me to solve.

“If it took two caterpillars a week to eat eight leaves, how long would four caterpillars take to eat the same number? Now, apply yourself to that”.

While I was struggling with the apparently insoluble problem of the caterpillar appetites, George was practicing some dancing moves in the hall as at that time he was engaged in learning some of the local dances, for which he had a passion. Through all this I would be watching him, fascinated, the exercise-book lying forgotten in front of me. Mathematics was not one of our successful subjects.

In geography we made better progress, for George was able to give a more zoological tinge to the lesson. We drew giant maps and then filled in the various places of interest, together with drawings of the most exciting animals and birds to be found there.

Hazlitt’s Hotel

I took a cab to Hazlitt’s Hotel on Frith Street. I like Hazlitt’s because it’s intentionally obscure — it doesn’t have a sign or a plaque or anything at all to betray its purpose — which puts you in a rare position of strength with your cab driver. Let me say right now that London cab drivers are without question the finest in the world. They are trustworthy, safe and honest, generally friendly and always polite. They keep their vehicles spotless inside and out, and they will put themselves to the most extraordinary inconvenience to drop you at the front entrance of your destination. There are really only a couple of odd things about them. One is that they cannot drive more than two hundred feet in a straight line. I’ve never understood this, but no matter where you are or what the driving conditions, every two hundred feet a little bell goes off in their heads and they abruptly lunge down a side street. And when you get to your hotel or railway station or wherever it is you are going, they like to drive you all the way around it so that you can see it from all angles before alighting.

The other distinctive thing about them, and the reason I like to go to Hazlitt’s, is that they cannot bear to admit that they don’t know the location of something they feel they ought to know, like a hotel, which I think is rather sweet. To become a London cab driver you have to master something titled The Knowledge—in effect, learn every street, hospital, hotel, police station, cricket ground, cemetery and other notable landmarks in this amazingly vast and confusing city. It takes years and the cabbies are justifiably proud of their achievement. It would kill them to admit that there could exist in central London a hotel that they have never heard of. So what the cabbie does is probe. He drives in no particular direction for a block or two, then glances at you in the mirror and in an overcasual voice says, “Hazlitt’s —that’s the one on Curzon Street, innit, guv? Opposite the Blue Lion?” But the instant he sees a knowing smile of demurral forming on your lips, he hastily says, “No, hang on a minute, I’m thinking of the Hazelbury. Yeah, the Hazelbury. You want Hazlitt’s, right?” He’ll drive on a bit in a fairly random direction. “That’s this side of Shepherd’s Bush, innit?” he’ll suggest speculatively.

When you tell him that it’s on Frith Street, he says. “Yeah, that the one. Course it is. I know it – modern place, lots of glass”.

“Actually, it’s an eighteenth-century brick building.”

“Course it is. I know it.” And he immediately executes a dramatic U-turn, causing a passing cyclist to steer into a lamppost (but that’s all right because he has on cycle clips and one of those geeky slip stream helmets that all but invite you to knock him over). “Yeah, you had me thinking of the Hazelbury” the driver adds, chuckling as if to say it’s a lucky thing he sorted that one out for you, and then lunges down a little side street off the Strand called Running Sore Lane or Sphincter Passage, which, like so much else in London, you had never noticed was there before.