It was obvious from the first that the marriage of the gorillas was going to be a success. Although they were so different in character, they quite plainly adored one another. N’Pongo was the great giggling clown of the pair, while Nandy was much quieter, more introspective and watchful. N’Pongo’s bullying and teasing of her was all done without any malice and out of a pure sense of fun, and Nandy seemed to realize this. Occasionally, however, his good-humoured teasing would drive her to distraction: it must have been rather like being married to a professional practical joker. When she reached the limit of her endurance she would lose her temper, and with flashing eyes and open mouth would chase him round the cage while he ran before her, giggling hysterically. If she caught him, she would belabour him with her fists while N’Pongo lay on the ground curled up in a ball. Nandy might as well have tried to hurt a lump of cement—in spite of her strength—for he would just He there, laughing to himself, his eyes shining with good humour. As soon as she tired of trying to make some impression on his muscular body, Nandy would stalk off to the other end of the cage, and N’Pongo would sit up, brush the sawdust from himself, and beat a rapid tattoo of triumph on his breast or stomach. Then he would sit with his arms folded, his eyes glittering, working out some other trick to annoy his wife.
To have acquired such a pair of rare and valuable animals was, I considered, something of an achievement, but now, I discovered, we were to live in a constant state of anxiety over their health and well-being; every time one of them got sawdust up his nose and sneezed, we viewed this with alarm and despondency—was this a prelude to pneumonia or something worse? The functioning of their bowels became a daily topic of conversation. I had had installed a magnificent communication apparatus in the zoo, for, small though it was, it could take a considerable length of time to locate the person required at the moment you wanted him. So at various salient points throughout the grounds, small black boxes were screwed to the walls, through which the staff could speak with the main office and vice versa. One of these boxes was also installed in our flat, so that I could be apprised of what was going on and be warned should any crisis arise. The occasion when I had doubts as to the wisdom of this system was the day when we were entertaining some people we did not know very well. In the middle of one of those erudite and futile conversations one has to indulge in, the black box on the bookcase gave a warning crackle, and before I could leap up to switch it off a sepulchral and disembodied voice said, “Mr Durrell, the gorillas have got diarrhoea again.” I know of no equal to this remark for putting a blight on a party. However, N’Pongo and Nandy grew apace, and to our relief developed none of the diseases that we feared they might contract.
Then came N’Pongo’s first real illness. I had just arranged to spend three weeks in the south of France, which was to be a sort of working holiday, for we were to be accompanied by a BBC producer whom I hoped to convince of the necessity for making a film about life in the Camargue. Hotels had been booked, numbers of people, ranging from bullfighters to ornithologists, had been alerted for our coming, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. Then four days before we were due to depart, N’Pongo started to look off colour. Gone was his giggling exuberance; he lay on the floor or on the shelf, his arms wrapped round himself, staring into space, and taking only enough food and milk to keep himself alive. The only symptom was acute diarrhoea. Tests were hurriedly made and the advice of both the vet and medical profession acted upon, but what he was suffering from remained a mystery. As with all apes, he lost weight with horrifying rapidity. On the second day he stopped eating altogether and even refused to drink his milk, so this meant we could administer no antibiotic. Almost as we watched, his face seemed to shrink and shrivel and his powerful body grow gaunt. What had once been a proudly rotund paunch now became a ghastly declivity where his ribs forked. Now his diarrhoea was quite heavily tinged with blood, and at this symptom I think most of us gave up hope. We felt that if he would only eat something, it might at least give him some stamina to withstand whatever disease he was suffering from, as well as rouse him out of the terrible melancholia into which he was slipping, as most of the anthropoids do when they are ill.
Jacquie and I went down to the market in St Helier and walked among the multicoloured stalls that surround the charming Victoria fountain with its plaster cherubim, its palms and maidenhair fern, and its household cavalry—the plump scarlet goldfish. It was difficult to know what to choose for N’Pongo that would tempt his appetite, for he had such a variety of food in his normal diet. So we brought out of season delicacies that cost us a small fortune. Then, when we were loaded down with exotic fruits and vegetables, I suddenly noticed on a stall that we were passing an immense green and white watermelon. Watermelon is not to everyone’s taste, but I personally prefer it to ordinary melon. It occurred to me that the bright, pink-coloured, scrunchy, watery interior with its glossy black seeds might be something that would appeal to N’Pongo, for, as far as I knew, he had never sampled it before. We added the gigantic melon to our loads and drove back to the zoo.
By now, through lack of food and drink, N’Pongo was in a very bad way. Jeremy had managed to persuade him to drink a little skimmed milk by the subterfuge of rubbing a Disprin on his gums. The Disprin, of course, dissolved rapidly and, the taste not being to his liking, N’Pongo was only too happy to take a couple of gulps of the milk to wash out his mouth. One by one we presented him with the things we had obtained in the market, and one by one he viewed them with an apathetic glance; he refused the hothouse grapes, the avocado pears, and other delicacies. Then we cut him a slice of watermelon, and for the first time he displayed signs of interest. He prodded the slice with his finger and leaned forward to smell it carefully. The next minute he had the slice in his hands, and to our great delight started to eat. But we did not become too jubilant, for we knew that the watermelon contained practically no nutriment, but at least it had aroused his interest in food again. The next thing was to try to administer an antibiotic, as by now the expert consensus was that he was suffering from a form of colitis. Since he still refused to take any quantity of liquid in which we could mix medicines, there was only one way to get the antibiotic into him, and that was by injection.
We enticed N’Pongo out of his cage and kept Nandy shut up; he would be sufficiently difficult to deal with, in spite of his emaciated condition, without having any assistance from his by now extremely powerful wife. He squatted on the floor of the mammal house, staring about with dull, sunken eyes. Jeremy squatted on one side of him, with a supply of watermelon to try to maintain his interest, while I on the other side hastily prepared the syringe for the injection. N’Pongo watched my preparations with a mild interest and once put out his hand gently to try to touch the syringe. When I was ready, Jeremy endeavoured to distract his attention with pieces of melon, and as soon as his head was turned away from me I pushed the needle into his thigh and pressed the plunger home. N’Pongo gave no sign of having even noticed this. He followed us obediently back into his cage and, with a small piece of watermelon, retired to his shelf where he curled up on his side, his arms folded, and stared at the wall. The following morning he showed very slight signs of improvement, and using the same subterfuge we managed to give him another injection. For the rest of the day there seemed no change in him, and although he ate some of the melon and drank a little skimmed milk he did not show any radical signs of progress.