Short-Story
Panda
artwork by amina
She sat back on her haunches and seemed to be scratching herself. The scientists, who had her under surveillance, were worried about her, for, though she was in cub, she was thin and disinclined to eat. Now, spurning a small clump of fresh bamboo, she sniffed the air. As if scenting something disagreeable, she lumbered off into the densest part of the undergrowth. At midnight the moon rose, revealing that the bamboo forest was little more than a large grove in a dying landscape. But the night's brightness seemed to reanimate the panda. Hungrily she tore at a few leaves, then, after a moment, unable to swallow her mouthful or sickened by it, she retched and spat out a green wad of half-digested matter. Hours passed. In their homemade lair, scientists set up equipment to try to record the panda's nocturnal habits. A cry of pure savagery - the snarl of an ounce - came from the craggy mountains behind the forest. The men shivered. But the panda only lifted her head. In the pied light of the moon, her eyes were bruised with melancholy. One of the scientists scribbled in his notebook, trying to express a notion which had come to him that her clown's colours made the panda's solitude more unbearable than ever. But he cancelled the sentence because the idea seemed fanciful. Unseen, the panda headed out of the forest. When she reached the snowline she appeared to double in size and then to split, and it became evident that somewhere along the way she had been joined by a male. Together, the two animals made tracks through the snow, their flanks and their ringed eyes dark against the surrounding whiteness. Around dawn, they came out onto a narrow ridge. Ahead of them, the mountains reared in a wild jumble of peaks and precipices. For some moments the two animals stood outlined against a greyish-mauve sky, then vanished into the landscape. Nearby, a team of photographers and their guides were searching for the pandas. Each day they picked up the trail and followed it until nightfall. Each night, the pandas woke and marched until dawn. As yet, the team had not come in sight of the animals. The guides were afraid. They knew that the female panda had eaten her latest cub and that the two adults were making for a cave high in the mountains, where they would die. Nothing could be done about this; it was the way of pandas. In the cave, angry at being followed to their secret place, they would turn back into demons. Then they would disguise themselves as pandas and come down the mountain and terrorise the village. Everyone knew, including the demons, that it was against the law to kill pandas. The animals would maraud without fear. "The pandas are starving," the woman photographer said to the guides. "They are going to die. That's why they are making for the cave." "Yes," the chief guide said. "They will die but they will be reborn. It is the destiny of pandas." "Pandas do not molest man or cattle," the woman said. "They eat only bamboo. The bamboo is dying. The bamboo always dies. It may be that it is too late to save any pandas, but with our photographs we must try." The guide saw that these photographers could not tell the difference between pandas and demons. He fell silent. "Take us to the cave," the head photographer said. "Then the two of you can go down and join the rest of the party at the snowline. If we are not back in four days, you must come up and look for us." One of the guides pointed to a dark smudge on a rock face and said it was the pandas" cave. Once, caught out in a storm, he had sheltered there. The cave was full of panda bones. The photographers thanked the guides. They left, dropping out of sight behind the steep angle of the mountain. The next day, the photographers climbed towards where the guide had pointed and set up a tent. Then they entered the dark cave. The team leader, a tall thin man, shone a torch, muffling its beam with his fingers. "Look at that," gasped the other man, a short-ish fellow with a beard. The others followed his pointed finger. In the depths of the cave a magnificent heap of white and black-brown fur lay motionless. Two pairs of eyes gleamed in the darkness. "God, aren't they beautiful," the woman breathed. "I can't bear to think of them lying there until they die." "Couldn't we feed them?" the bearded man asked. The tall man shook his head. "They wouldn't eat. And even if they don't die now they'll soon starve anyway." The three fell silent. After a while, the bearded man said, "How long do they have?" "About a week," the woman said. "Then wolves will get them." "So it could be any day?" The woman nodded. "They're very weak or they would never have let us get so near." Slowly, the bearded man advanced into the cave. The pandas watched him. He crept forward. Stretching out a hand, he touched the flank of the male animal. The female twitched an ear. "She's still alive," the woman whispered. "Come on, let's get started." At the mouth of the cave, the tall man and the woman busied themselves with their cameras. From time to time, the bearded man put his gloved hand to his face as if he could not bear to see the dying animals. All morning the woman and the thin man moved about, shooting from every angle. In the afternoon, outside, they took shots of the scenery. When the weather began to close in, the three made their way down to their tent under a sky purple with snow. Inside, the tall man heated water over a stove and dropped bouillon cubes into three tin mugs. Filling the mugs, he handed them round. "We shall have to stay put," he said and, rummaging in a bag, he pulled out some sausages. "We've got enough food for about five days. The storm can't last that long." The other two sipped their soup. "I can't bear it," the woman said after a while. "Those superb animals." "I don't understand why they came up here," the tall man said. "The guide thought there was enough food in the forest for one pair but that these two, the only ones left, seemed to have given up." "If an animal were starving, wouldn't it eat whatever it could get hold of?" the bearded man asked. "I don't think so," the tall man said. "It wouldn't know it was food." "This reminds me of that time in the Kalahari when we came across the old Bushman couple," the woman said. The tall man's face clouded over. "They knew what was going to happen to them. It was their custom. This is not at all the same thing." "What was going to happen?" the bearded man asked. "They were too frail to keep up with the tribe," the woman told him. "So the others built them a shelter and gave them an ostrich eggshell full of water. The old people just lay there. They knew lions would soon get them." The wind had been rising steadily, and the woman had to shout. The bearded man raised his voice. "What did you do?" "We offered them food, but they didn't seem to notice. It was as if, because the tribal custom said they had to die, death was the only thing they could see. We put them in the truck and headed for the nearest town." "So what happened to them?" "They died on the way." "Then you never got your picture." "What picture?" "The one of them being torn apart by lions." This time the silence was jagged. The thin man began to fry the sausages. "You're in this too," he said. "These pandas are going to die, and we're just here to record the event." The bearded man did not listen. He was pulling string after string of sausages out of the bag. Struggling into his snowsuit, he stuffed the sausages down inside the jacket. Then he fastened his hood and plunged out into the snowstorm. "For God's sake!" The thin man threw himself after his friend. "Don't be a fool," the woman said, pulling the thin man back inside. As she spoke, a gust struck the tent, almost tearing it apart. The wind racked itself up another notch, and a desolate shriek came whistling down the mountains.
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