Pathway to Japanese Literature

I When publishing this most gruesome diary amidst tumultuous public debate, I deemed it imperative first to convey to readers—with unmediated vividness—the visceral shock and terror we had experienced. To ensure readers might fully receive these emotions, I concluded that detailing both the circumstances of the diary’s discovery and its subsequent chain of events would prove most expedient. As you are aware, Portuguese West Africa Angola and Belgian Congo stood as colonies perpetually embroiled in border disputes. For neither nation possessed any exceptional aptitude for colonial governance; their homeland-dispatched officials wallowed in indolence to the point of administrative bedlam, with discipline wholly unenforced—and into this void, this region had become notorious as a hub for native smuggling. Most infamous was the free zone established under the Congo Basin Treaty along the route stretching from São Salvador north of Luanda—Angola’s capital—to Congo’s Matadi Port, an area that had drawn notoriety as the most rampant smuggling corridor. Yet ultimately, the borderlands coiled through great mountain ranges while vast jungles encroaching from southeastern Congo compounded the terrain—rendering any pretense of surveillance utterly beyond the reach of finite colonial authorities. When large-scale smuggling operations came to light, this border demarcation promptly threw both nations’ authorities into disarray—though as previously noted, this so-called border amounted to nothing beyond a line scribbled on maps in 1912 by commissioners from their respective homelands. In reality, it coursed through uninhabited wildernesses where lions prowled, pierced shrublands teeming with venomous serpents’ nests, and threaded between vast jungles and mountain ranges layered with cloud-piercing peaks—making practical surveying an utter impossibility.

Thus, though proposals to revise the border through actual surveys had frequently arisen between both nations’ authorities, the remoteness of this barbarous hinterland—far from Europe’s political centers, rife with tropical miasmas—meant demarcation would require not only considerable time and expense but also entail confronting grave perils. Consequently, even when debated, the excessive burden of implementation invariably left such plans abandoned—a perpetual testament to the home governments’ apathy and colonial officials’ indolence. And so it had dragged on until today—over sixteen or seventeen years marked by frequent shootings and bloodshed among border patrol units—when in 1934, a forceful proposal suddenly emerged from the Congo Governorate. Portuguese Angola acquiesced, dispatching a large-scale field survey team to conduct preliminary investigations for a bilateral border demarcation committee that would finalize boundaries five years later in Brussels. As this field survey team, those dispatched by the Angolan government comprised twenty-six engineers and three hundred eighty technicians and laborers below them. Fully supplied and prepared, divided into approximately eighteen groups, they were to engage in demarcating the fifteen-hundred-mile serpentine eastern-western border—using the sole indigenous town of Bissau at the central frontier as their base—over an anticipated span of one and a half years.

Though I was not originally Portuguese, I was then residing in the town of Benguela, having just returned from surveying the headwaters of Lake Bangbollo. As I wished to work a while longer to save money before returning to Europe, and as this survey team—despite its considerable dangers—offered rather favorable conditions, the hope that after one and a half years I might grasp a substantial sum and return to Europe led me to volunteer as this team’s surveying engineer. And I was successfully selected and came to be in charge as the leader of the twelfth team of a place called the Ojurano Highlands—located over nine hundred miles east of Bissau, between the survey sectors of the third and eighth teams.

This was my reason for having joined the Angola Border Survey Team—the very team through which I would later discover this extraordinary diary—but to belabor anew how our survey of this uninhabited tropical region had been fraught with hardship, or how often all twenty-three members faced mortal peril from beasts and venomous snakes, would be superfluous. Thus I shall omit all details of our activities unrelated to this diary. In any case, as our measurements of the vast jungle encircling the Ojurano Highlands neared completion—which is to say, as my volunteered service approached its planned one-and-a-half-year conclusion—the commissioners back home, who knew nothing of local realities yet laughed at their own past folly of blindly drawing lines on maps, were now hastening to compile their hard-worn survey charts. By then, we had already lost seven indigenous laborers to Black Death—that tropical scourge—three more to wild beasts, and six horses; most surviving crew now resembled mountain men with unkempt beards, their uniforms tattered by sweat, dust, and grime beyond resupply, their skin scorched indistinguishable from Angolan natives under over a year of relentless sun.

Had it not been government work—one might think such a complete survey chart could never have been produced—so severe were the hardships that they defied description. It was only because this was government work that there existed a supply team which—departing from the capital Luanda once every three months to provision all eighteen teams with food and deliver mail—barely sustained us, allowing our work to continue…

Now then, to shift to the events of that very day when the diary was discovered—it was when our team had relocated our camp to a basin approximately seventy miles deep within the Borama Mountain Range, one of the ridges encircling the Ojurano Highlands, and were conducting daily surveys of the surrounding seven or eight miles from this new headquarters. Once we completed surveying this vicinity—or more precisely, once we reached 19°3'E longitude and 8°4'S latitude—we would be able to join forces with the Eighth Team advancing from the east. The thought that only twenty more days of effort remained lightened our spirits, invigorating us to push harder toward completion. Yet on that very day, I had set out from camp at dawn with seven or eight laborers to survey two or three miles deeper into the jungle. Engrossed in our work, we lost track of time—it must have been around two or three in the afternoon by then. The indigenous laborer Nisutori—whom I had stationed earlier with a red-and-white target pole as our marker—grew agitated, making it impossible for me to align my observations through the theodolite. Since Nisutori was typically a diligent and serious indigenous laborer, I wondered if perhaps a Banta viper—said to be common in this area—had appeared at his feet. But while I was contemplating this, the target pole of Jandoro, the second marker’s indigenous laborer, began trembling violently.

“Hey! What’s wrong?!” “Nisutori!” “Was something there?!” The moment I shouted aloud, both Nisutori’s and Jandoro’s marker poles came crashing down, and the two men—like wild beasts bursting from the thicket—came flying toward me in a frenzy. They had turned deathly pale, drained of blood, trembling so violently in every limb they could barely speak.

“What happened here?!” “Jandoro!” “Even you?!”

Even as I spoke, Jandoro too wordlessly tugged at my sleeve, pointing frantically as though shouting "There! There!" without uttering a word. From the two men’s demeanor alone, I had intuitively sensed something gravely amiss had occurred. I immediately drew my pistol and followed after them with caution. The point where Nisutori had erected his target pole stood ninety yards from where I had positioned the theodolite, with Jandoro’s station another thirty or forty yards beyond that across steeply sloping terrain. When we reached the area, I found the surrounding jungle had thinned considerably—from Nisutori’s position to Jandoro’s further ahead, the ground lay so open one could clearly see one’s feet. But no wonder the indigenous laborers pointed with widened eyes: this was no natural clearing. Despite the windless tropical stillness, every great tree in the vicinity had been uprooted and felled by some unknown force. Massive oaks and walnuts thick enough to embrace, towering beeches, primeval mahoganies and rosewoods—trees that would have taken human crews days to fell—lay mowed down with splintered stumps still oozing sap, their woody scent heavy in the air. Moreover, all the tough undergrowth had been trampled into the soft earth, pressed deep as if some immensely powerful force had staged a titanic struggle here.

“It’s gorillas! Hamura, they’re gorillas!” The two indigenous laborers pointed while trembling violently. The term “Hamura” was an Angolan native language expression meaning “captain,” and “Pongō” was what they called gorillas in their local tongue, spoken with trembling fear.

“What? Gorillas?” “Hamura, you mustn’t go over there! It’s dangerous! Gorillas are terrifying.” As I was about to take a step forward, the indigenous laborers grabbed my sleeve—their faces nearly drained of color—and restrained me. The five or six other laborers who had been working nearby and happened to be present had just begun encircling us, but upon hearing “gorilla,” they all turned pale and shifted into a stance ready to flee. This area had already become part of the continuous primeval jungles demarcating southeastern Congo toward the Northern Rhodesian border, so naturally there was nothing unusual about gorillas roaming here. Yet realizing we had unwittingly pushed deeper into gorilla territory—a habitat whose terrors I’d only heard described but never actually witnessed—I felt a momentary chill that seemed to freeze my blood.

“Hamura! We’re done with work here! If there are gorillas here, there’s absolutely no way we can go any deeper into this place!” Jandoro said tremblingly. Whether they feared the gorilla’s grotesque visage or whether an ancestral tradition of abhorring gorillas had seeped into their very blood, the Angolan natives’ dread of these gorillas surpassed even their fear of lions, tigers, Banta vipers, or leopards. “What nonsense!” I barked. “How could we work in a place like this if we’re afraid of mere gorillas?!”

I barked, but even I—knowing those powerful gorillas lurked nearby—could not keep cold sweat from coursing down my spine. Though I felt my grip tightening on the pistol's trigger, I couldn't show weakness before the laborers. Feigning composure, I forced myself forward two or three paces—then froze mid-stride.

“Hamura… Hamura… Over there… Over there… A white woman’s leg is visible.”

For from beyond the thicket that Nisutori had pointed to in broken motions, I saw what was unmistakably a white woman’s leg… nay, the bare foot of a still-young woman, protruding from one thigh.

II

“Hamura, please stop! Stop! If you go near it, something terrible will happen. There’s no telling what horrors the gorillas might inflict upon us!” I silenced the indigenous laborers clamoring around me and stepped closer for a better look. The instant my eyes fell upon it, I gasped involuntarily and clapped a hand over my mouth. There lay the corpse of a young white woman. Slightly prone with her right side pressed against the earth, eyes closed beneath disheveled golden curls that cascaded across the ground like waves, her right arm had been torn clean from the shoulder. Her left leg too appeared wrenched away, fresh blood staining the surrounding grasses a dull blackish hue where it clung thickly to every leaf and blade. Yet even under the tropical sun’s scorching glare—her skin mottled with livid patches of decay—the delicate arch of her closed eyelids and the faint pout of her lips retained such vivid beauty that she might have been moments away from breaking into a coy smile.

“Hamura, this is terrifying.” “It’s all the gorillas’ doing!” “It must be the doing of the gorillas.” Even these callous indigenous laborers seemed unable to endure such brutality; they all averted their faces while clamoring in unison. Of course—even without their warnings—what creature but a gorilla could have wrought such cruel slaughter? From how the corpse lay untouched, from the sharp claw marks upon it, from the savagely sadistic manner of killing—I became profoundly convinced this woman’s assailant was no mere carnivore like a lion or tiger, but a gorilla: that being closest to humankind. Yet how could such a beautiful white woman have appeared in this uninhabited wasteland—this untrodden realm where even the nearest native village lay beyond nine hundred miles of layered jungle and jagged peaks, with only distant Bissau at its edge?

Portuguese Angola was the region with the fewest white people; even in the coastal urban areas of Luanda and Benguela, those of European descent numbered no more than a few thousand at most. To speak of white women was to speak of desolation—their presence sparse beyond measure. How much more so this woman whose beauty put flowers to shame! And to my limited knowledge, during my tenure in Benguela, I had never heard of any instance where a white woman had gone missing. Moreover, considered as a traveler’s case, the absence of companions perplexed me—and the complete lack of scattered provisions like horses or foodstuffs remained an utterly inscrutable mystery however one pondered it.

As if sketching a phantom in broad daylight, I remained standing there blankly—just at that very moment.

“Hamura!” “Hamura!” “We found something like this lying here…”

As one of the indigenous laborers who was surveying the area picked up something resembling a ledger and brought it over. Was this perhaps something the woman had refused to relinquish even in her final moments? The notebook’s sheepskin cover was thickly caked with dull blackish blood, measuring roughly six inches by four inches in size, but its binding threads had snapped and its pages were scattered. Evidently a diary the woman had kept during her lifetime, its pages were densely filled beneath each date with something meticulously written in English. The state of this woman’s corpse made it immediately apparent that she had been a British woman, but there was no time to investigate how many pages had been scattered or what had been written in English within them,

“Hamura! We found this too.” Then another indigenous laborer came forward holding out a strange object. They were two boards of African oak that could only belong to the woman—no matter how one looked at them, they appeared to be oil painting sketchboards roughly No. 3 in size. Yet what was depicted there hovered ambiguously between art and mere lines. Depending on perspective, they might resemble tentative strokes attempting form or simply charcoal smeared haphazardly to prepare boards for future sketches—two panels bearing patterns so bizarre they defied categorization.

I stared fixedly at these mysterious boards, but with only a diary missing unsigned pages and these sketchboards alone, there was nothing that could serve as a clue to uncover this corpse’s identity. From earlier I had ordered the indigenous laborers—who trembled while keeping their distance in a nervous circle, dividing their gaze equally between my face and this ghastly corpse—to conduct as thorough a search as possible of the entire vicinity. Yet beyond these items, nothing else lay scattered about. The sole additional discovery from that search became clear: approximately twelve or thirteen yards east of the woman’s corpse lay several trees violently snapped at their trunks, weeds twisted down into crushed spirals, and splattered bloodstains clinging to leaves—all bearing witness to some horrific struggle that had transpired there. Moreover, standing in this desolate borderland devoid of human presence—gazing upon both corpse and signs of savage combat—the tropical sun blazed resplendently overhead while white clouds floated dazzlingly within their luminous expanse; yet despite this radiance, the jungle cast uncanny shifting shadows that rendered even daylight strangely dimmed. Once more I felt hairs rise along my spine.

However, given that there was a corpse before us—though its identity remained unknown—the immediate problem was how to dispose of it. I thought about digging a hole and burying her here, but that seemed utterly unbearable. Thus I resolved to halt that day’s surveying on the spot, cut down nearby trees to hastily assemble a makeshift stretcher, transport the corpse to camp, and then consult with the other technicians—but unexpectedly, the indigenous laborers abruptly began voicing vehement opposition. This was how things stood according to their accounts and observations.

The two gorillas had fought over this woman here, engaging in a fierce struggle. And of those two gorillas, one had prevailed and killed her; moreover, that victorious gorilla had by no means abandoned her corpse and departed—even as a corpse, it would surely return to this place come nightfall, determined to claim her as its own. In that case, they argued, if we were to remove her body from this spot, that gorilla would undoubtedly become enraged and attack our camp.

“Nonsense!” “What absurd nonsense is this!” “In the first place, where does this speculation about two gorillas fighting over this woman even come from?!” I gave a wry smile, but,

“Hamura!

“Such violent snapping of trees and mowing down of grass could only be the work of gorillas fighting!”

The indigenous laborers pointed at the traces of struggle there with grave expressions on their faces. I could well imagine that no creature other than a gorilla was capable of such violent behavior—yet even seeing these marks of combat, I found myself utterly unable to conceive of two gorillas having fought over this woman. If enraged, even a single gorilla could easily wreak such devastation. “No, Hamura. A gorilla would never kill such a beautiful human woman.” “It would cherish and care for her tenderly.” “But gorillas are creatures of fierce jealousy.” “It must have grown angry and slain her.”

The minds of the indigenous laborers were simple. What they said was their conviction, and to violate that conviction would at times provoke their terrible wrath—this I knew all too well. “If you all insist so vehemently…”

In the end, I too lost my resolve. "Since you all know more about gorillas than I do, I’ve no grounds to forcibly oppose you if that’s your claim…"

I fell silent. But at that moment, such logic meant nothing to me. To abandon this white woman’s pitiful corpse before my eyes and retreat to camp—this I found utterly insufferable to my conscience. “Biska, what do you think? We’ve got firepower and rifles. “Taking down one gorilla would be simple enough if it attacks—but they claim it’s too perilous.” “Biska, I’ll heed your counsel!” “What say you?”

I shifted my gaze to Biska’s face—he who served as leader among the indigenous laborers. Biska was not merely the eldest of their group but also possessed some command of English and Portuguese. Having earned the trust of both his people and us white men, he managed all affairs as a mediator—in essence, the intellectual among his people. Naturally, I had assumed Biska alone would adhere to my will and help assuage the others’ fears through persuasion. Yet to my astonishment, this very Biska—his wrinkled, sunken eyes fixed intently upon me—now quietly signaled dissent, shaking his head in opposition to my proposal.

“Fine! Biska, I give up—I’ll follow your lead! We’ll leave it here tonight. If nothing’s changed by morning when we come back, I’ll haul this corpse back to camp myself!”

I said this with a damn infuriating feeling, trying to regain my lost dignity.

And that very night—how their hearts must have raced with curiosity as they passed a sleepless night together within the camp where lights flickered. Around the three camps, they lit as many bonfires as they could burn and stationed three indigenous night watchmen armed with guns. And so the entire group lay down gripping their rifles and revolvers so they could spring up immediately if called to night watch duty, though of course none could sleep. They spent that strange African hinterland night—a night so desolate it seemed to slice through one’s very being—discussing nothing but the mysterious corpse of the beautiful woman, their hearts pounding at every rustle of falling leaves, as heaven and earth sank deeper into the pitch-black basin of uninhabited jungle. Yet when sunlight streamed brightly through the treetops and leaves, revealing only towering ashes from the bonfires and no sign of disturbance near camp, the tension they had harbored made yesterday’s events feel like a dream even to themselves.

However, just for today, we stopped dispatching teams to various areas. Half-driven by curiosity, our entire group carried guns instead of surveying instruments, berated the cowering indigenous laborers who kept shrinking from their duties, and trudged four miles back to yesterday's location—only to be met with astonishment! Though ignorant and uncivilized—products of this wilderness raised on gorilla lore—the indigenous men's words had not deceived me. Yet no matter how wide I stared until my eyes ached, yesterday's female corpse had vanished without trace. At the spot where her body had lain—apparently worthless even to gorillas now—only that blood-caked diary and two sketchboards remained, left exposed beneath the night's dew.

The irrefutable evidence that the gorilla had indeed returned last night and carried off the corpse lay before us! Of the two sketchboards I had left beside the body, the one closest to it must have been stepped on by the gorilla when lifting the woman—the entire surface caked in mud, and when I picked it up, astonishingly, this sturdy African oak plank two centimeters thick had snapped cleanly in two at its center. The group wordlessly surrounded me as I examined the sketchboard and scanned the diary—then Biska, their aged indigenous leader, quietly whispered these words.

“Hamura, as long as we’ve entered the gorilla forest, we must remain vigilant—but rest assured, yesterday’s gorilla is no longer in this area. By now, it’s already sixty miles ahead—swinging from tree to tree with yesterday’s woman’s corpse slung over its shoulder! Gorillas are fast as long as they have trees to swing through. They can easily cover sixty miles in a single night!”

Now, dear readers, this concludes the roughest outline of how, where, and when I came to possess this mysterious diary. Though I shall now open this bloodstained volume to reveal its contents, let me state clearly beforehand: what I have recounted thus far does not merely serve as a preamble, but rather forms an indispensable structural component of the report essential for properly contextualizing this diary.

III

May 6th.

What a pitiable thing this is. Father lives in a vast mansion, employs many servants, and people praise him as a great scholar of his time. Yet the anguish in Father’s heart has not vanished for a single day since I first became aware of such things. I try not to dwell on it; I try not to hear it. But while praised as a great scholar on one hand, Father’s back bears the eternal stigma of “the fraudulent scholar—the scholar who deceives the world.” What narrow-minded creatures these scholars must be. They live cozy, happy lives without undertaking any adventures or even losing their most beloved wives in savage lands—yet whenever a new theory they cannot comprehend emerges, they disparage and eradicate it. The cowardly scholars declare: “Dr. Geirekku is already a distinguished scholar through his research on gorilla anatomy and ecology in Africa alone! Why on earth must he pursue gorilla language as well?!”

How foolish these people are! To research even gorilla language—to demonstrate that in the distant Quaternary Glacial Period, humanity emerged from apes and evolved from gorillas to arrive at the theory of common ancestry between humans and apes—this was Father’s life’s work. Precisely for that conviction did Father send someone into the jungle wilderness that even people fear for six years, leave me in the care of Uncle Elliot, and undertake that painstaking research. Even after finally losing Mother to tropical disease, he had completed that monumental research.

And yet, people praise only Father’s numerous anatomical discoveries while dismissing his linguistic findings as false. Was it not Father who academically demonstrated that gorillas show negligible differences from the Masara Bushman tribe or Yamagoku Damara tribe in cranial capacity; that their teeth, cells, blood serum, and all internal organs—nay, even their sensory-perceptual systems encompassing delusions, concepts, memory, associations of ideas, reasoning, and imagination—bear no distinction whatsoever from humans? And society at large acknowledges the veracity of his research, recognizing its value through the physical specimens Father has provided. And yet, when those very scholars retroactively present new theories—specifically new findings in gorilla linguistics—they dismiss them as falsehoods and coldly criticize them for lacking living specimens to substantiate the claims.

While organizing Father’s study during his absence today, I happened to pick up his magnum opus—*The Mental Capacities of Anthropoid Apes*—into which he had poured his heart and soul, only for it to be buried under academia’s collective scorn. The agonizing memory of that day at the zoological society resurfaced vividly—Father returning home despondent when I was twelve or thirteen—and I choked back tears before I knew it.

I am Dr. Geirekku’s daughter! I am not like ordinary women. I will maintain a strong will and continue believing in the fruits of Father’s unrewarded research. And just as Father’s theory states, I will believe without doubt that a splendidly systematized language exists among gorillas—its roots identical to those ancient Semitic roots predating phonetic shifts, which we may reasonably conjecture were spoken by last-century anthropoids, primitive humans, and second upright apemen. That is the attitude expected of a suffering scholar’s daughter. Since Dr. Darwin’s daughter in the past must surely have been the same, I too must henceforth exert all my strength to assist Father in advancing his research, no matter what it takes… So I pondered these things. Even so—what has become of the new research method Father has been considering since last year? After that incident, there has been no word from Africa—has this too come to nothing?—and so I sit in the study with my cheek propped on my hand, my thoughts wandering aimlessly from one thing to another.

At three in the afternoon, Father returned from the university. As ever, his face was sullen and displeased!

The blood-soaked diary had already undergone changes in its hemoglobin due to the intense tropical sunlight, coagulating like glue; regrettably, even after attempting to wash it with clear water or dissolve it with glycerin, not a single character in the subsequent thirty or so pages could be deciphered. There was no help for it—I proceeded to read on.

September 29th.

At long last, the gorilla we had been waiting for arrived. Covered in coarse gray fur—its face ferocious even at a glance...

And suddenly, the diary had shifted to some uncivilized region. From the surrounding circumstances, I had surmised that this coagulated and illegible section must have recorded their departure from Britain to Angola, how they had acquired the gorilla, and their transition to camp life. In any case, interweaving conjecture to piece together the overall framework, I strained my eyes forward. ...and the towering gorilla, standing seven feet three inches tall, had fallen into a deep pit trap along the Mula River on the northwestern border of Bambadenga—it was said they finally captured it alive at the cost of fourteen or fifteen casualties.

The payment was three thousand pagostas, along with heaps of tobacco, alcoholic beverages, matches, and children’s toys loaded on horseback; these people departed joyfully. They were all said to be fearsome Vulture Tribesmen, but unlike the Angola natives, they appeared tall and robustly built—large in frame with pitch-black skin that made them seem perfectly suited to being inhabitants of the northwestern forests. Agami, the native interpreter, explained that the entire operation had required three to four hundred people, but only about fifty or sixty had actually been involved in transporting the gorilla.

Among them was a boy of fourteen or fifteen—his head crowned with the Vulture Tribesmen’s characteristic sharp curls stiffened with coconut oil, a poison arrow at his side—whose eyes struck me as endearing. When speaking of unblemished eyes belonging to simple folk raised in the jungle, one would surely mean these very pupils. Having chanced to carry a packet of sweets, I beckoned him over: “Come here! Come here!” I placed it in his palm. When the boy—uncomprehending—watched me laughingly unwrap the paraffin paper and pop it into my mouth, he mimicked me and did the same. Yet this civilized confection’s complex flavors must have proven utterly alien to one who gnawed raw meat unacquainted with cooked fare and knew only wild nuts’ natural taste. Startled, he suddenly spat it out with a disgusted “Ptui! Ptui!” and fled.

In any case, everyone was ecstatic and promptly bestowed upon this ferocious rare guest the name Mafuchazu—as Agami had taught them—from the Vulture Tribe. Mafuchazu, apparently, meant "friend from afar." They promptly reinforced the cage—the Vulture Tribe’s original being a sturdy triple-layered structure of zeda vines—but transferring the gorilla from this enclosure would have been perilously impossible. Thus, they constructed an iron-vaulted main cage around the existing vine framework. They installed it between the recording room and monitoring room—three ken from Father’s quarters—marking our imminent commencement of Father’s "natural-state" ecological recordings. Puckerson busied himself adjusting the interlock motor, preparing to boost the AC high-frequency generator to 3,750 rpm at 500 cycles and 100 volts. Wendell enthusiastically retrieved the disk Tobis machine. Humming as he worked, he diligently hung monk leather around the recording studio to extend the vibrating plate’s range to 2,000 cycles. The camp buzzed with newfound vitality. That evening, we all raised celebratory cups.

Regrettably, the diary broke off again here, with about seven or eight consecutive pages having been torn out. When read, these entries somehow hinted at an impending descent into strange existence and vividly evoked the jubilation within what seemed to be an academic expedition’s encampment; yet given this fragmentary state, concepts of location, the team’s objectives—everything—served only to provide meager hints for my imagination, until I found myself overcome by inexpressible disappointment. Moreover, speaking of the banks of the Mula River on the northwestern border of Bambadenga, it lies a rugged 1,800 miles away from here along the Irabiji River. As for this group of fierce Vulture Tribesmen who had apparently captured alive the gorilla mentioned in the text and brought it to their party—even considering that this indigenous tribe dwelled in dense forests 1,800 miles distant—there was no way to ascertain from what had been read thus far how far their current location was from that jungle region.

As a woman, this diary was naturally nothing more than a record kept for her own recollections or as memoranda; thus, there had been no need whatsoever to write in an explanatory manner for third parties. But what I now sought was, first, the location where she had lived; second, what sort of background this woman had; under what circumstances she had come to this borderland; and the sequence of events leading up to her being attacked by the gorilla.

However, at a loss and pausing for breath, when I absently flipped through the pages starting from around the next one, it seemed they had not been torn out much and continued uninterrupted for a considerable length. Wondering if I might yet find some lead, I cautiously avoided touching the eerie blood while washing and turning the pages.

IV

November 9th.

The rainy season has finally set in. What utter desolation this is. Day after day stretches this desolate wilderness beneath ceaselessly drizzling rain. A lethargic heat presses down until I feel every joint might dissolve. Today I tried counting on my fingers how long it has been since our arrival here. How swiftly time passes. Already a year and two months have slipped by. My London friends must be much changed now. Some will have married. Others become mothers. Yet when I think of myself alone here, an indescribable loneliness overcomes me. I play my violin to distract these thoughts. Noticing suddenly - there too presses Mafuchazu's face against cage bars, listening transfixed.

“Mafuchazu! You must be bored too. Why do beings like you exist in this world? It’s precisely because there are beings like you that Father throws his whole life away on this research, and why we can’t return to London—why we must waste our days in these mountains…”

When I approached the cage and let the music spill forth, Mafuchazu too seemed to be listening intently, pricking up his ears. From midday onward, I would sketch Mafuchazu and the like before his cage. Even had I wanted to paint in oils then, there was no canvas—the next supply shipment would not arrive for four months yet. ...The thought that charcoal alone would be my medium through all that time filled me with desolation. Yet this wilderness proved bountiful enough in charcoal. The burning of boxwood-like suaga trees—found by Rosachi among our indigenous laborers—yielded excellent charcoal. Parashi had crafted thick sketchboards from African oak—sturdy enough for Hercules himself—leaving me wanting nothing in this regard. That night saw Conrad and Jackson quarrel over some trifle and storm from dinner mid-meal. Those watching showed not the slightest concern. In this sweltering humidity and endless rain, our spirits grew stifled—all hearts turning feral as beasts'. Worse than beasts were these men—forever quarreling beyond their feral hearts...their eyes glinting sharply whenever they looked upon me.

Gorillas are repulsive! Yet repulsive though they may be, it is only when before the gorilla's cage—sketching or playing the violin—that my mind finds its greatest calm.

November 29th. For the first time in ages, my native maid Isukāki drew a bath for me. Though called a bath, there was no proper tub to speak of— merely a wooden box fashioned by Parashi. It resembled nothing so much as the manger in Bethlehem where Christ received his first ablution.

Yet even so, as I washed away the clammy sweat clinging to my body, I felt an indescribable sense of refreshment.

Whenever I bathed, I always had Isukāki stand guard at the entrance before entering, but today as I lay motionless in the hot water stretching my limbs, I detected footsteps treading earth behind the bath. How strange that these days—with my senses grown sharp as needles—I could instantly recognize that sound!

The instant I thought someone was prowling around again, my entire body burned with rage like a flame. “Isukāki!”

Before I could scream, the indigenous woman’s ears had already detected it. In an instant, she flew out, and there came a violent sound of grappling from behind. Isukāki’s rebuking voice reached me. I hurriedly threw on my kimono and climbed out. Illuminated by the dim kerosene lamp that Isukāki thrust forward, the figure slinking away was none other than Wendell, the recording technician. Moreover, in Wendell’s eyes—which I had fixed with a glare—there lingered neither regret nor shame. They were precisely like a wild beast’s eyes. Each of these incidents pricked at Alan—my fiancé’s—heart, driving him to press ever more obstinately for marriage.

And yet it was strange. Lately I found myself wanting only to say things that would dampen Alan’s ardor. Truly strange. Had this been London a year and a half ago, I might have welcomed Alan’s whispers with joy… Yet… everyone changes. In this sweltering humidity and desolation and endless rain, we all become utterly transformed.

November 30th.

This morning I heard from Isukāki that last night, Wendell the engineer and Alan had engaged in a fierce altercation. And it was said Alan had been badly wounded in his left shoulder by Wendell. Under normal circumstances—had I heard my fiancé Alan was injured—I should have rushed to his side in a frenzy. Yet even hearing this now stirs nothing within me. My heart lies parched and desolate—such sentimental feelings must have been utterly blown away from my mind. This tale of Alan’s injury from fighting Wendell must have reached Father’s ears. This morning, as I entered Father’s room—

“Hey!” Father glared at me with a terrifying countenance.

“Emira! You do know that anyone who interferes with my research becomes my sworn enemy—don’t you?” “…………”

I gazed up silently and intently at Father’s face. Though I had a mountain of things I wished to say, the part of my heart that refrained from disturbing the sanctity of Father’s research quickly rose to the surface—in those days, I found I could endure anything in an instant.

“Here now, everyone’s eyes glint like wild beasts—surely even you can see that! “Why would you bathe before those fools?! “No one ever died from skipping baths for two or three months! “Show some restraint! I thought how many more stages Father’s research would still require. ‘Once they’re accustomed, we’ll release the gorillas from their cages and keep them free-range like humans!’ ‘When that’s done, we’ll return that creature to the mountains—and you must go retrieve it!’ ‘At the very brink of my research’s completion—do you mean to ruin my work by scattering such worthless seeds?’”

And when our gazes met as I looked back with tears welling up, Father—as if thoroughly vexed—took up his writing brush again with intense focus. Is this how he treats his own daughter? Where I had glanced, Father now appeared to be grappling with the pronunciations of yoo-hw and nwah. This vocalization had long been Father’s established theory for expressing gorilla joy, but now that he had reached the most vexing chapter on manifestations of joy—and likely aggravated by that very frustration—I steeled myself and returned to my room, yet the moment I entered, tears suddenly cascaded down like a waterfall.

Though parent and child by blood, we’ve become like enemies—the child a slave to the father, the father wholly enslaved to his research. And that research! It’s research on gorilla language. If Father’s research reaches completion, as a secondary result of it, perhaps someday humans may become able to converse with gorillas. But even now, I myself have come to somewhat grasp the gorilla’s will regarding the oo-oh and ch-eu-y phonetic groups. Yet even if we could speak with gorillas that way—they possess no civilization—what possible contribution could such research bring to humanity?

I hate this! I hate this! Being a scholar’s daughter is utterly loathsome! One is never truly born to be a scholar’s daughter.

Six months ago, I wrote something similar to what Alan had said—perhaps some of Alan’s emotions had taken hold of me.

The night had grown unbearably lonely, and as I sat there with my cheek propped in my hand, lost in thought, Isukāki lumbered into the room.

“Young Mistress! Do come and see.” “I’ve built a sturdy fence behind the bathhouse—no fool will be climbing over this one now.” “You can rest easy now.”

she said with a comforting expression. You ignorant native woman! No matter how much you build up fences, they'll climb over such things in no time. I forced a bitter smile, but as I looked at Isukāki’s comforting face, a smile welled up through my tears for some unknowable reason, and before I knew it, I found myself pressing my cheek against Isukāki’s large black face. To me now, only the black native Isukāki felt like my one true friend in all heaven and earth. The rain continued falling without a moment’s respite until the ground before our house had become utterly swollen with water like a stream or marsh.

As I gazed at this swamp, the thought that I would spend tomorrow and the day after—even April and May until the dry season arrived—being scolded day in and day out by Father made my heart grow heavy with darkness. In this rain, all our hearts fester. Father’s heart festers too. Drip after relentless drip, we all sink deeper into rot within this bottomless swamp.

January 10.

In the evening, as I knitted before Mafuchazu’s cage, Wendell the recording technician entered the room with a face contorted in fury. Unaccustomed to unfamiliar visitors, Mafuchazu let out a low growl from his throat while bristling his fur, but Wendell stood blocking the doorway as though barely registering the cage’s existence, his movements lumbering and deliberate.

“What’s the matter, Wendell? Do you require something?”

As for why Wendell had come in, I already had a rough idea, so without pressing myself to engage him further, I continued knitting. “Miss...” Wendell called out hoarsely. Then his large frame suddenly seized me in a bear hug from behind. “Wendell! What are you doing?! “I won’t tolerate such insolence! “Release me this instant!” “Miss...I’d never harm you...It’s just...When facing you like this...I lose all power of speech! “Please listen—I beg you—hear what I must say...”

“If you have business with me, say it properly to my face! How dare you act so rudely!”

I writhed.

“Are you still not letting go?!” “I’ll call Father! Isukāki! Isukāki!” The moment Isukāki appeared in the doorway only to vanish in shock—though I, frantically thrashing to break free from Wendell’s grip, remained oblivious—Wendell’s hands suddenly slackened. Just as I thought my desperate writhing had finally worked, a ground-shaking thud reverberated as his body collapsed sideways onto the floor. There stood Alan’s pallid face, heaving with breathless urgency—he had just landed a vicious blow to Wendell’s temple.

“Look out! Look out!” “Emira, get back over there!” Alan groaned as he saw Wendell rise up, then immediately braced himself and leaped at him.

I was hugging Isukāki and taking shelter in a corner of the room when another ferocious struggle erupted there once more. Another enraged strike from Alan flew toward Wendell’s nose bridge, and in an instant, the area from his temple to his nostrils swelled into an ugly bruise. And then his forehead split open, blood from both his nose and mouth pattering ceaselessly onto the floor as it dripped down. Amidst that ferocious struggle, Mafuchazu—who had been pacing back and forth fiercely inside his cage—suddenly let out a fierce “ROOOAR!” and grabbed the cage bars, shaking them violently. The beast’s blood, upon seeing human blood, must have awakened a ferocious wildness within him.

I released myself from clinging tightly to Isukāki and looked around—only then did I notice that the entire area around the doorway had been filled all along with people jostling against each other to watch this ferocious struggle. And among them was Father’s face. When my gaze suddenly met Father’s, his eyes flashed with a harsh, accusatory glare before casually shifting back toward the two men.

“Now then! Each of you—get back to your own jobs!”

Urged by Father’s voice, everyone dispersed once more in their usual expressionless manner, trailing off in a disorderly line.

And only Mafuchazu remained, pacing relentlessly back and forth within his cage long after the fight had ended, his excitement unabated—now and then seizing the iron bars to let out thunderous roars. A world that remains expressionless no matter what occurs… And once that momentary irritation had passed, I neither felt glad that Alan had won nor any desire to know what had become of Wendell—I simply continued knitting before the cage, my own face as blank as the world around me. The sound of the rain alone keeps echoing strangely in my ears.

Not just Wendell. One wrong step, and Alan too—as well as those people who had been standing at the doorway watching—would become just like Wendell now. I worked my knitting needles late into the night while pondering inconsequential things.

January 13. Conrad, having taken Wendell’s place, was busily adjusting the attenuator in the recording studio.

“Where’s Wendell?”

When I asked, "Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since that day." "That’s why I’m filling in now!" He answered bluntly like an angry bear, all the while stealing furtive glances at people’s faces with an air of wanting to say something more.

“I see...” As I absently listened to the audio waves from the microphone being adjusted, I felt—perhaps it was my imagination—that here too lurked the eyes of a second Wendell. “The Professor’s always gorillas this, gorillas that—completely obsessed—and now even you’re stuck dealing with gorillas all day long.” “The only happy ones are the gorillas—that’s what everyone’s saying now, I tell ya!”

And in the end, it was this second Wendell’s lips that gave voice to it. Since nothing good came from lingering, I promptly left this room. “Even if what Wendell did wasn’t good, everyone says they understand how he felt!” “Things won’t settle down unless something kicks off soon, I tell ya!”

Conrad’s gruff voice came chasing after me from behind. I brushed it off and left the room just like that. What could possibly begin? Day after day, nothing but rain and heat—and this weariness! My heart grows parched and gray with each passing day! In such a world as this, what could possibly begin? Before this gorilla language is ever completed, won’t we all just rot away—sodden and blank-faced—dying off one by one?

V

February 2. Ever since that incident, Alan’s eyes when looking at me had taken on a strangely jealous, piercing sharpness. “That Alan hasn’t been doing any work at all lately—it’s a problem.” “I don’t know what he’s dawdling about—he can’t focus on his work as if his soul’s left him.” “Just yesterday—showing signs of neurasthenia—he came out with some foolish nonsense about letting just you and himself return to London.” “If you want to go back—then go back right away!” “In return—I will not be returning either—and when I said Emira too must live here for another four or five years—that fool Alan stared at me with resentful eyes—but for now—you mustn’t pay any mind to what such a creature says!” “I thought he was at least somewhat reliable—but seeing him like that makes your marriage something to reconsider.”

Father had also remarked. As usual, I had been listening to such talk with indifference, as if they concerned strangers—but in the end, Alan caught up to me. He had sneakily followed me into the archive as I was searching for something. “Why have you been avoiding me like this lately?” As his lumbering figure drew near, I could indeed see what Father had meant—there was something distinctly neurasthenic about him now.

“I haven’t been avoiding you at all! But all your proposals are ones I can’t accept right now—if that’s all you have to say, won’t it be the same no matter how many times you bring it up?” And so I too handled this fiancé with a hint of mockery.

“You’ve completely changed. “The you from before wasn’t such a heartless person. “You… you know, Emira, you must have fallen for Wendell!”

Alan clutched his head and paced around the area.

“Emira, tell me the truth.” “If you do that, I’ll definitely give up!” “If I sit here thinking about you any longer, I feel like I’ll go mad.” “Emira, if there’s even a shred of your former love left for me, I beg you!” “Please… to set my mind at ease… make me your steadfast protector.”

In the end, Alan knelt before me and began pleading tearfully. “...” “Do you understand now? Emira.” To me, the sight of a man—for all his masculinity—adopting this groveling posture before a woman, spinelessly abandoning his initial resolve to instead beg for marriage through these shouted words, struck me as utterly pitiful. “...But in our case, isn’t it already the same as being married?”

Yet, keeping my words gentle, I placed my hand on the kneeling Alan’s shoulder. “Now, stand up. For a man, you really shouldn’t demean yourself so much. After all, we’re going to end up married eventually—I don’t mind properly getting married here.”

“Then… then… Emira, will you consent?”

“But with Father over there desperately working like that, I couldn’t possibly bring up such a carefree matter from my own mouth.” “So please ask him yourself.” “If Father says it’s acceptable, then I certainly have no objections.”

“No good!” “No good!” “Are you still saying such things?!” “That’s no good at all!”

With that, Alan let the light fade from his eyes once more and hung his head in dejection. “If you’d just consider whether one could even say such things to the Professor in his current state—isn’t that obvious?” “I’ve lost all interest in this work the Professor pursues!” “Why did I ever throw myself into this research? I can’t fathom it anymore!” “What possible contribution to civilization could completing this gorilla language nonsense make?!”

I found it amusing inwardly that everyone was thinking the same sort of thing. "The only reason I remain trapped here now is because you alone drag me along." "And you—you propose impossible things solely to torment me!" "I beg you!" "Emira, flee with me!" "Look—we’re still young!" "To imagine our youth spent in this savage land, condemned to live among gorillas—the very thought plunges one into utter darkness!"

“That itself isn’t an impossible challenge! What purpose would running away serve? Aren’t we both proper fiancés approved by Father? We’ve absolutely no need to slink away like thieves!”

“You don’t understand! You don’t understand anything at all! Something terrible is about to happen to you—I’m so anxious I can’t bear it!” “No, there is nothing I do not understand! That is your illness! The fact that you’re being gripped by such improbable, bizarre fears is precisely what constitutes nervous exhaustion. I will ask Father myself—it would be best for you to take some time off from work.”

“No good! “You don’t understand! “You don’t understand anything at all! “If this is my current illness, then you—the only one who can cure it—are pushing me away like this! “If you’re going to say such heartless things, Emira, then I’ll never ask you for anything again!” With that, Alan, clawing at his head and glaring at me despairingly, left.

But never mind that—I merely spoke truthfully in accordance with my own feelings, so there’s nothing to be done if he took offense. Though I can certainly imagine a man’s sentiments, now that I’ve resolved to abandon myself entirely and dedicate everything to Father, what else could I possibly do but have Father speak those words for me? In such a situation, it is Alan—indulging in such a carefree attitude—who is truly being self-centered! Fine—if I leave things as they are, in time Alan will feel ashamed of what he proposed and come to regret it. If my way of speaking was too harsh, then apologizing at that time would suffice.

The rain remained as fierce as ever. In the rainy season of this savage land, I was thoroughly sick to death. It was a wonder I hadn’t fallen ill from all this—I found myself impressed by my own resilience.

January 20th.

Today, while tidying up by chance, I discovered a Bruven lipstick at the bottom of my bag. It must have been what remained from when I used it on the ship during our journey here. Feeling profoundly nostalgic, I couldn’t help but try applying it to my lips with my little finger. And as I gazed into the mirror, lost in thought, I realized it had already been one year and seven months since I’d last touched face powder, lipstick, perfume… all those things. The Bruven lipstick I discovered deep in Africa’s interior felt inexplicably nostalgic for times long past. Once when I traveled to Glasgow, I saw a play where an aged actress met her end in some back alley, garishly applying lipstick she had used in her youth. Now I found myself sensing a trace of similarity in my own circumstances, and I could not help but force a bitter smile. But never mind—as long as this lipstick remained, I would apply it little by little each day so Father wouldn’t notice. This alone was the Europe I still carried with me now.

VI

February 8th

A loud argument could be heard from Father’s room. One voice was Father’s; the other was Alan’s. I thought he must have brought up some foolish matter like before and was being scolded by Father, but since it didn’t particularly concern me, I resolved to feign ignorance. Yet the voices only grew sharper. And amidst the dispute,

“Young Mistress, Master requests that you come at once...”

With that, Isukāki came to summon me. “This is madness! Even if it’s your doing, Professor, it’s sheer insanity! I absolutely disagree!” “Presumptuous meddling! What right do you have to interfere with what I command my daughter?! Just keep quiet and watch—that’s all you need to do.”

“But how can I, as a fellow countryman, stand by and watch such a reckless scheme!” “You’re treating your own daughter like some gorilla spectacle!” “How can we stand by and witness this!” “What right have you to meddle in my affairs when I’ve made myself clear since earlier—do you still not comprehend?!” “Your recent attitude defies all understanding!” “Let this be known—you are but a mere assistant in my employ.” “You presume too freely of late in matters between father and daughter!”

“I may be your assistant where you’re concerned, Professor.” “But regarding your daughter, I cannot stay silent—I must speak from my position as her fiancé who is to become her future husband!” “Regrettably, I have revoked your status as her fiancé.” “True enough, there was a time when I officially recognized it.” “However, I somewhat misjudged you, and I regret the recklessness of having given voice to such matters.” “In any case, it is revoked!” “Since I had neglected to inform you earlier, I shall take this opportunity to state it plainly.”

Father declared bitterly. And I observed Alan biting his lip, his face pallid, his entire body trembling as he fell into silence.

In any case—seizing my chance when their argument had momentarily run its course—I stepped forward with: “You called for me…”

I stepped forward. “Emira! “Emira!” “How can you accept such madness!” “Such madness… How could you agree to this even if it’s the Professor’s orders?!” Alan exclaimed vehemently.

“You should just keep quiet!” “I will speak to my daughter myself.”

Father restrained Alan and turned toward me. “Emira! “Father has a request for you.” “As you well know, Father’s research has completed the nwah phase of elation and now stands on the very brink of success!” “If Father’s work could reach its conclusion with just one final push—if that could be resolved through your single exertion—surely you would not refuse Father’s request.” “That’s what this man has been going on about since earlier—”

Father looked up at me piercingly. “Yes, if it is something I can do, I will do anything!” For at that moment, I too had never even dreamed that Father’s request would be such a reckless thing.

“I intend to release that gorilla from his cage before long! As you well know, he has grown completely accustomed to you by now! From the progression of my research, we must release him from his cage as soon as possible and have him—with you as a medium—become accustomed to us. And the main focus of my current endeavor lies in releasing this gorilla into the forest to study and record its natural ecology! Therefore, what I now wish to ask of you is this: before releasing him from the cage, I want to record this gorilla’s loudest cry at the very moment of its greatest joy! This will be the climactic point of the current yoo-hw phase! So I’ve been researching that method—here’s what I want you to do: take off your coat and dance provocatively before his cage! The reactions we capture will surely yield new discoveries or corroborate our research! What do you say, Emira? For Father’s work—would you do this just once?”

I looked between their faces. Alan writhed as if in agony, signaling me with every possible expression his eyes could muster. Never before had I found my fiancé Alan so detestable as in that moment. Father’s attitude was of course far from commendable. The way he dismissed my will entirely—as if sacrificing a mere daughter to his research were no great matter—stirred faint resentment and discomfort within me. Yet Father was a scholar ignorant of worldly matters. For Father himself, that sufficed. At the very least, compared to Alan’s anxious, neurotic cowardice—spinelessly unable to act on his own convictions—yet standing behind Father with eyes glinting as though presuming himself my husband or some such thing, one could scarcely imagine how refreshingly masculine it felt. If he would grow so agitated over something as trivial as removing my coat to dance, then all the more reason to outmaneuver this groveling weakling—I resolved to accept Father’s request.

“So it’s just that matter then? There’s nothing else beyond this?”

Father nodded. Alan’s eyes gleamed.

"I don’t mind… If that’s all there is to it. In exchange, if you promise the recording will absolutely not be done in that room—that it will be conducted in the adjacent room—then I shall do exactly as you say, Father." I said this deliberately without so much as glancing toward Alan. "Such recklessness… How could anyone even consider—whether it’s possible or not! Emira, think! You’ll surely come to regret this!" "I will never regret such a thing! If there are daughters who would drink poison for their parents’ research, then settling for something like this is truly nothing special at all."

“How about that! My daughter requires none of your concern—see how she doesn’t defy my words!” As if declaring precisely that, Father raised his eyes piercingly to look at Alan’s face. And then, “Very well! That concludes our business.”

Having declared this, he turned briskly back toward his desk and was done.

Taking that opportunity, I too returned to my room— “Emira… Emira!” Still, Alan relentlessly pursued me from behind. Feigning ignorance, I returned to my room.

February 10th. Since yesterday, they had been clattering away in the adjacent room with many workers installing the recording equipment. Yet Mafuchazu remained utterly indifferent, silently staring in my direction the entire time. “Emira, you will surely regret this!” That was what Alan had said then. Yet no feelings of regret arose within my heart. Though I felt no remorse, an indescribable melancholy came over me when I considered it. To dance like some performer before Mafuchazu’s cage… Yet since my audience wasn’t human, there remained some small relief in that—if only just.

Father had approved a plan where we would simply set out the microphone, then double-enclose all walls of the monitoring room with boards over its existing soundproofing—without a single gap. And with that intention—Father himself was overseeing the work—but since I could not feel at ease, today I resolved to conduct my own inspection.

This should be safe enough, I suppose. I’ve had more than enough of being peeked at since that incident with Wendell!

February 12th.

Today Wendell’s corpse was brought in. How many days had that large man wandered through the rain—his cheeks sunken, body emaciated beneath an unkempt beard, his entire form bloated into a wretched sight?

Because the men disposed of the corpse—burying it deep into the jungle past the back shed—I didn’t get a proper look at it. Later, the native Furago quietly informed me that he had found this clutched in its hand. They must have considered posthumous matters—even the pockets throughout his entire body were soaked through. He had apparently torn a page from his notebook, scribbled on it in pencil, folded it small, and clutched it tightly in his hand.

I am a foolish man. My feelings were not so, yet I acted against my heart. Why I did this—even I don’t understand. Were I alive, I would likely do something again. That is why I choose to die. This is how it must be!

It was just such an absurd thing. "What a foolish man!"

I clicked my tongue.

If he were going to die, there was no need to write such things. I thought he should have just died quietly. And then, "Get rid of it!" I ordered Isukāki. Wendell's suicide note was being beaten by the rain beneath the window.

Here, everyone is beaten by the rain. Human lives are beaten too! And that's all there is to it!

Seven

February 15th.

It’s finally today!

“Father… you will be standing guard at this entrance…”

“There’s no need for concern about such things!” “I’ll keep proper watch over it!” “Listen!”

I tune out Father’s words and enter the chamber. From inside comes a click! I lock it.

Mafuchazu remained crouched motionless in the corner, his gaze fixed on me. I took off my blouse and, striking as alluring a pose as I could manage, began to dance. Yet despite having checked everything so thoroughly beforehand, I found myself worrying only about whether someone might be peeking—about the boarded-up windows and surrounding walls—without Mafuchazu’s expression registering in my eyes at all. Eventually I calmed somewhat. I paced back and forth before the cage, dancing from right to left and left to right. Mafuchazu abruptly rose up and seized the iron bars. He stared intently at me.

Mafuchazu roared loudly! Mafuchazu’s roars grew steadily louder—to me, they sounded like nothing but “Woo!” Grrraaah! All I could hear was that roar. Father declared it a triumph. But was this truly a cry of triumph? To me, it seemed nothing short of rage. Mafuchazu, with ferocious intensity, roared while slamming his body against the cage with such force that it seemed ready to burst—thud after thud—as he gripped the iron bars and shook them violently. And over and over, as if trying to catch me, a giant palm flashed between the iron bars.

At last unable to endure the terror, trembling, I quickly threw on my blouse and—after fumbling the key into the lock several times—finally managed to open the door, collapsing into Father’s arms that had been waiting there all along. And I gulped down the cold coffee Isukāki had brought without pausing for breath—finally freed from the beast’s stench, the suffocating heat of that sealed chamber, and the soul-freezing terror—yet all the while, something cold kept trickling revoltingly down from my armpits.

Yet my dance was a resounding success. Father hurried off to the recording room next door and soon returned with his face brimming with joy—his voice so high-pitched and elated as he patted my shoulder that he seemed ready to leap up.

“You’ve done well! “You’ve done well! “Emira! “A resounding success! “There, you see! “You may not comprehend this, but my theories and deductions have been splendidly corroborated.”

The scream that had reached the peak of joy was I-ecgk Whoo-w! “Aii” is joy! It changes to “ch-in” at the end, just as I predicted!

Finally, he was groaning with deep, rumbling growls—over and over. “This one’s fawning over you—now dance even more!” He was telling me this! “You’ve worked hard!” “You’ve worked hard!” “With this, the first phase of research has finally come to an end!” “No matter what that brat Alan says, with such success achieved, there’s not a single thing to complain about!” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart!” “Now, now, take your time and rest!”

When I heard that, all my present terror vanished, and feeling sufficiently rewarded, I couldn’t help but smile faintly.

February 18th.

Today too, that roaring and commotion continued all day long! Exactly three full days had passed since that day, and that commotion had persisted all this time. Now, at this late hour, I marveled at the ferocity of the gorilla’s joy. Over the past two or three days, when others brought his meals, he grabbed them and hurled them away. Baring his teeth in anger, he wouldn’t let anyone near. And when I brought it, he pressed his body against the edge of the cage and charmed me—he must have wanted to see my dance once more.

There had been signs of this behavior before, but I hadn’t expected it to manifest this clearly. Father must be pleased. Once he had grown sufficiently obedient to my commands, Father had said he would release him from the cage and let him roam free—he must surely be rejoicing at these signs that the day was drawing near.

Regrettably, at this point the diary had once again been torn away. As it was a thick notebook of about two centimeters in total, it was unclear exactly how much had been torn out, but it seemed a considerable thickness had been ripped away. Moreover, that was certainly not something the heroine herself had torn out. It must have either been lost somewhere while being carried around or torn to shreds during a struggle. In any case, it is an exceedingly regrettable matter, but there is nothing to be done.

With no other choice, the diary proceeded to the next page that appeared to have skipped a considerable portion.

April 25th. When he was first released from the cage, I had truly felt terrified. Its grotesqueness, its terror—I felt as though my very soul might leave my body. However, once I grew accustomed to it, even being with this creature ceased to feel like such visceral terror. “Give me your hand.” When I said that, he would place his hand into my palm. “No, the other hand.” When I said that, he would switch hands and present it again. “Please fetch that braided stick!” When I said that, he would walk over and bring it to me. And whenever someone entered, he would momentarily grow cautious, but—

“It’s all right! This person is someone who cares for you. There’s nothing at all you need to be cautious about.”

When I said this, he rumbled in his throat and relaxed, looking up at the person. Nowadays, I too felt completely at ease! There was no one in the world who had won a gorilla’s heart as thoroughly as this. And most thankfully of all—because we let Mafuchazu out during the day, and because this colossal creature had grown attached to me—he now served like my guard dog, and the men had completely stopped giving me those lecherous glances! No, they still cast lecherous looks, but they no longer dared to commit such insolent acts as Wendell once had.

Father was delighted by that! And he was delighted that the day would soon come when this Mafuchazu would go to the forests and plains to guide his own kind, and that the research was finally entering its full-fledged third phase toward completion!

April 30th. Father was utterly delighted, declaring it a rare treasure. Mafuchazu had drawn a picture! Whether they were dots or lines—I couldn’t tell. Yesterday, while I was sketching beside him and he seemed eager for something, I gave him a sketchboard and charcoal as I drew his face—but facing me, Mafuchazu must have intended to draw my portrait. He looked at my face and drew something... what a strange image! The only one in the world—a picture drawn by a gorilla!

And Mafuchazu seemed rather fond of drawing something! I resolved to give him more sketchboards and charcoal. Yet lately—if I so much as stepped outside—he would instantly bristle his fur and sulk until my return; an exasperating development indeed! He appeared thoroughly spoiled by now.

May 8th.

What had become strikingly clear to me was that gorillas possess an overwhelming capacity for jealousy. He seemed to despise it whenever I spoke with any man from outside. “It’s Father! “Mafuchazu! “You’ve been allowed out by Father! “Then why must you look at me like that?”

When I scolded him, he would look down as if he’d done something wrong, but a low growl persisted deep in his throat. I knew well—this was the gorilla’s clearest sign of displeasure.

“Really now—it’s troublesome how he sulks whenever I come. “Emira, you should be the one to talk some sense into him.” It was fine that Father merely chuckled and left immediately, but he found the men outside—particularly Alan, who had lately taken to entering my room—most disagreeable. As for Alan, having lost all interest in his work, he likely cared nothing for such a gorilla anymore. He had never once uttered a kind word to him and behaved as though he didn’t exist at all. I resolved to caution Alan about adjusting his attitude somewhat.

8

May 15th. Just when I thought they had been lying low for a while, today again since morning Father and Alan were engaged in a fierce argument. To think Alan would torment Father so—Father, who had grown so old and toiled so tirelessly on his research—I found myself loathing Alan with every fiber of my being. Even were Father to order me again to marry, I found myself wanting to be the one to reject Alan. Even without education or refinement, the dead Wendell had far more manliness—a man like Alan was nothing but scum among men!

If I were to spend the rest of my life here in Africa as things are, I would rather choose Wendell. At the time, I thought him a reckless man. I felt anger too. Yet Wendell never meant to be violent toward me. He must have acted thus because only through such behavior could he speak to me.

I couldn’t tell what they had been arguing about, but Father came into my room huffing with anger.

“I thought he wasn’t that sort of man, but I was utterly mistaken.” “Since he kept insisting I let him return, I told him: if you think you can make it through this rain, then go!” “I intend to have him escorted to Luanda with two horses and two native laborers!” “It seems that fool intends to somehow take you back with him, but I have officially dissolved the engagement as of today, so you should be prepared to do the same.” “Given his behavior today, he didn’t seem likely to resort to violence, but if he attempts anything foolish, call Father immediately!”

“Father said.”

Of course, I now shared exactly the same resolve! If he dared show his face before me again, this time I would personally declare the dissolution.

Before long, Alan entered my room drenched. He demanded I return with him.

“I refuse!” “I have no affection whatsoever for someone like you who won’t help Father!” “Even as a woman, I will remain here and assist Father to the very end!” “I will formally dissolve our engagement from my side.”

I also stated clearly.

“So you and your father have been deceiving me all along! I’ll make you pay for this grudge—mark my words!”

He left for somewhere while glaring with a terrifying expression. Does that spineless man even possess the fortitude to act on such threats?!

The diary had reached this point while leaving vast blank spaces when its characters suddenly swelled to monstrous proportions. And now it showed horrific disarray. No date! Nothing! At that instant—with a gasp—I found myself tracing the lines as though magnetized. Look!

A horrific incident had occurred within this camp.

Disaster! Disaster! Alan was killed. Father was killed.

Everyone had fled into the rain. This evening at seven o'clock—the moment Mafuchazu was put into his cage—Alan rushed at me; but as the lock hadn't been secured yet, Mafuchazu suddenly leaped out and struck him down.

“Father!”

At the sound of my scream, Father also grabbed his rifle, “Emira! It’s dangerous!” “Run!” After uttering this, he immediately fired at Mafuchazu, but Mafuchazu struck Father down. The gun barrel was shattered. Pakkāsun was also killed. The indigenous people all fled. There was no one left.

Mafuchazu does not take his eyes off me for even an instant. I cannot even escape. What will become of me? Mafuchazu is now beside me, next to the corpses, drawing something on his sketchpad.

Again skipping five or six lines, written in characters even larger than before—each one nearly filling a notebook page with their fiercely trembling strokes— I escaped, but Mafuchazu caught me again. There was no one. Desolation sliced through me—despair! The corpses of Father, Alan, and Pakkāsun emitted a putrid stench. Mafuchazu was drawing something nearby... That same Mafuchazu who had been so familiar now sensed my attempt to flee and erupted in rage. I might be killed.

And though this diary ended here in disarray, the heroine’s fate—her journey to death—coursed through its lines and between its characters, striking my heart with piercing sorrow. A diary so ghastly, so horrific as to defy all description—this must surely be what such a diary refers to.

Having finished reading，I was left utterly stunned by its sheer extremity. Yet more vexing was this—as I had previously noted—that this diary，likely maintained with daily meticulousness by Emira，the heroine，originally meant to preserve memories for her return to Britain，contained no signature，no indication of where the incident had occurred，nor even her father’s or fiancé’s surname；not one tangible clue remained anywhere.

I resolved to bring [the diary] back to Britain in due course, intending to perform solemn memorial rites not only for this unfortunate heroine but also for all others involved; then, after offering a silent prayer and wiping away my tears, I closed the volume of this diary.

Nine

After those two or three weeks—having completed the necessary tasks and braved considerable difficulties to return to the capital Luanda—I soon resigned from this now-disbanded survey team and withdrew to my hometown of Oban City in Scotland; thus came the matter of this diary. As I had just stated, I did consider it a diary of unparalleled misfortune and strangeness—truly a most mysterious one—but that was all. With neither crucial names known nor surrounding context grasped, there remained little reason for me to take much interest in it. Moreover, whenever I recalled those ghastly corpses, I found myself struck by grim, indescribably unpleasant memories; thus I strove to cast such unnecessary matters beyond memory’s reach. Accordingly, I had stored this diary along with that peculiar sketchpad even deeper within the trunk’s recesses—until one day when I was spending a restful period in my hometown of Oban City, indulging at last in Loan Bay’s tranquil scenery after so long an absence.

It was around that time when I chanced upon reports from a Luanda special dispatch in Angola that had been enlivening the society sections of newspapers such as the London Times, Manchester Guardian, Delhi Telegraph, and Chronicle. While varying slightly across publications, summarizing them yielded an article essentially as follows.

As had been repeatedly reported, Professor Emmet Stevens’ team dispatched by the University of London to Portuguese Angola’s Fiara hinterlands in search of the eminent animal histology authority—former Cambridge University professor Dr. Wilder Geirekku’s party—had arrived on-site as previously reported; however, despite the expedition team’s meticulous on-site investigations, no trace whatsoever of Dr. Geirekku’s party could be found. Moreover, as the said hinterland region had now fully entered the rainy season with all rivers and lakes completely flooded—making any further efforts utterly futile—it was decided that the said expeditionary research team would shortly terminate their search and temporarily return to London, with notification to all relevant parties being received from the site today.

This was the special dispatch from the Reuter correspondent stationed in Luanda. And with just this, of course I could not even grasp what it concerned—let alone its meaning—for these repeated reports were likely from before I had returned to Britain, making them nothing more than an uninteresting foreign dispatch to a recent returnee like myself. But then, what startled me so profoundly that I nearly leapt from my seat was the newspaper’s annotation appended as a reference to this dispatch.

The names of Dr. Wilder Geirekku’s party—deemed hopeless due to the expedition team’s withdrawal from the site—are as follows: The names and brief biographies of those who had accompanied the expedition were published with lavish portraits. Dr. Wilder Geirekku (58 years old), former professor at Cambridge University and eminent authority in animal histology, engaged in research on primate dissection and language together with his wife in the Samazanka region of Portuguese and Dutch Angola from 1919 to 1925. Later, through his renowned work *The Mental Capacities of Anthropoids*, he presented gorilla language research to academia, where it met with both acclaim and censure. At that time, his wife had contracted a tropical disease in the region and succumbed. It is said that the Professor’s current endeavor was solely for the revision and completion of his previous work. The Professor’s unknown fate—whether one was his academic rival or not—has become a matter of profound lamentation across the entire academic community, and it is reported that the blow dealt to British academia by the passing of such an eminent scholar is immense.

Miss Emira Geirekku (25 years old), the professor’s daughter. After her mother’s passing, she assisted her father the professor by managing the household affairs and had long served as his sole assistant. She had been engaged to Alan Evans, Bachelor of Arts and her father Professor’s assistant, but postponed their marriage to accompany her father on this expedition, thereby meeting with disaster. The calamity that befell this young lady—renowned as a great beauty embodying gentleness, virtue, and chastity, a paragon of British womanhood—drew profound sympathy from all quarters. Upon receiving the official dispatch of this tragedy, Lord Tyson Hillmer, Secretary of State for Education, interrupted a cabinet meeting to urgently make his way to Cambridge University, where he was reported to have conveyed his deepest condolences to Dr. Clifton Elliot, Professor of Animal Ecology at said university and Professor Geirekku’s closest associate.

They were names of places in the central-eastern primeval forest region—the Fiara hinterlands and Samazanka district, both near the Northern Rhodesian border—of which I had never heard; but what suddenly struck me then were certain passages from the diary: "...Does Father think nothing matters except completing his primate research?... And... What possible contribution could studies of primate language make to civilization?" ……and so forth.

“Ah! It was the young lady! That was Dr. Geirekku’s daughter—Emira!” With that, I frantically pounded the desk. I could practically see the color draining from my own face. I felt that several events from that diary—which I had read at the time with such bewilderment—were now reviving in my mind, each one imbued with vivid clarity and meaning. I stared at the newspaper with eyes nearly bursting from their sockets, devouring every word.

Mr. Alan Evans (thirty-two years old) And indeed, in the next line appeared an article about that young man Alan Evans—well-known from the diary—who had pressed himself upon Lady Emira, grown resentful of the research, and ultimately provoked the ape’s wrath to be struck down and killed. Mr. Alan Evans (thirty-two years old), Dr. Wilder Geirekku’s loyal assistant, having long been under the professor’s tutelage. He had been scheduled to soon wed Lady Emira, but postponed the marriage due to this academic survey and joined the expedition. Precisely because he had been viewed as the successor to the university’s professors, this erudite young man’s suffering was profoundly mourned within that institution.

The notion that they had postponed their wedding for academia’s sake drew a wry smile from me, but the newspapers continued further by sequentially listing brief biographies of key expedition members—electrical engineer Perry Packersun, recording technician Bramley Wendell, and others. For me, who had finished reading in a frenzy, there was no longer any doubt that these people were the very individuals who appeared in Lady Emira’s diary. And the exquisite, radiant beauty of Lady Emira smiling in that newspaper!

I stood dazedly, so overwhelmed by the harrowing history of this diary’s author—which I had only just now come to know—that for a time, I failed to notice the smoldering cigarette burning my hand. Moreover, the newspapers had seared even more astonishing reports into my very eyes. Following the conclusion of these articles, moved by the academic martyrdom of the professor and his daughter, the renowned “Electric King” Mr. Hyde immediately pledged fifty thousand pounds and declared that should a rescue expedition be reorganized, he would contribute to it; simultaneously—though marked with a (?)—in a separate section, [there was mention of]...

Would the agitated Professor of Animal Ecology, Elliot, cast aside his university lectures and rush to Luanda to verify the safety of his dear friend Professor Geirekku and his daughter? When pressed about this matter, Professor Elliot wore an expression of solemn tragedy...

It was a hectic state of affairs that seemed to declare, “Behold how the world roars and seethes over this matter!” I set down the newspaper and, with a feeling akin to having been brushed by something fleeting, let my eyes dart toward the window—but now, having been utterly shocked to the core of my soul, nothing at all entered my eyes. All that came into view was the mangled corpse of Lady Emira, lying slightly prone to the right in that desolate, tropical, uninhabited borderland of Africa. And now, my mind was profoundly made to feel an inextricable bond between the memory of this unfortunate woman and all those connected to her through that diary—a bond that could never be severed. Yet still, I could not bring myself to publish this diary or announce to the world the death of the Lady that I had witnessed.

People may mock it as my shallow humanitarianism or sentimentality, but within the Lady’s diary, all individuals stand portrayed in their utterly naked truth. Therein, even the eminent scholar revered as his generation’s academic paragon appeared as nothing more than a species of academic obsessive—a true monomaniac devoid of paternal affection or any such sentiment. The young man who had postponed marriage to his beloved for academic devotion—who should have been the doctor’s loyal assistant—there in the jungle deluge pressed relentlessly upon the Lady without regard for propriety or reputation, until at last amidst that strife he was struck down and slain by the gorilla.

And so the recording technician perished in agony amidst the gloom and rain. Truly, the Lady’s diary stood as an unparalleled honest record of human life—one that could depict reality with such fidelity that it deserved commendation. Yet the question remained: was it right to convey such raw human truths when society already seethed with sympathy and lamentation? Because of this, I took no action whatsoever—not the next day, nor the day after that. Moreover, with each passing day, the outcry in every newspaper grew increasingly fierce. Now the newspapers had shifted their editorial stance, declaring that even if the professor and his daughter were dead, to withdraw the expedition team without ascertaining the fate of such a scholarly party would be a disgrace to Britain and a grave humanitarian issue—the nation must never permit the team’s withdrawal from the site; should they forcibly recall the expedition, they must instead immediately dispatch an even larger one posthaste—and so they began vehemently demanding.

And indeed, public opinion had reached such a boiling point that volunteers for a second expedition kept coming forth—some addressing Dr. Clifton Elliot directly, others sending their applications to various newspapers—while donations poured in unceasingly. When Dr. Elliot, no longer able to contain his apprehension, announced he would personally rush to Luanda, even my humanitarian principles and sentiment could no longer endure remaining silent any longer. If I continued keeping silent under these circumstances—when I alone in the entire world knew—then for these already deceased individuals, immense amounts of time and funds would be wasted, and many people in the tropics would have to persist in their futile search for another half year—nay, even a full year.

After four days of silent contemplation, I wordlessly retrieved Lady Emira's diary and those two mysterious sketching boards that had been stored deep at the bottom of my trunk. Then, after telephoning the Herald to confirm Professor Clifton Elliot's address, I had the car hastened to his residence on Mayer College Street in Cambridge.

I distinctly remember it being the morning of April 26th this year—the day before those unforgettable newspaper articles and special editions that sent shockwaves through society and astounded the world were published.

The residence of Dr. Elliot, veiled in profound melancholy, had been besieged day after day by all manner of rabble drawn to this affair—those countless curiosity-seekers and hangers-on who no doubt tormented the professor as he prepared for his journey amidst that very gloom. The servant who had come to attend to visitors too,

“I have come to discuss a matter of great importance regarding this affair.” The servant took my business card—that of survey technician Ashton Turner—to the inner chambers with an air that seemed to say “Not another one?”, and sure enough, “While we deeply appreciate your visit, we are currently too occupied to receive anyone.” Thus came the relayed message from Dr. Elliot. “Then I beg you let Dr. Elliot see just this notebook once! Should he read but a page or two, he will surely comprehend the grave importance of my errand today.”

Even this renewed entreaty of mine was rejected without the servant deigning to relay it to Dr. Elliot—as though swatting away a fly—but under my insistent pressure, he finally accepted the notebook with a grimace of reluctance and vanished into the dim entrance hall's depths.

I stood waiting at the desolate entrance of Dr. Elliot's residence—its walls cloaked in creeping ivy, ancient and deathly still—when what sounded like a hoarse voice emerged from deep within.

“Do not let that gentleman depart! Where is he? This bears Emira’s unmistakable hand! Beyrele! Oliver! Quickly—bring him to me at once!”

It was then that I beheld before me the white-haired, child-faced elderly professor, who had come rushing out himself to greet me while shouting to the servants with ecstatic delight. And now, without committing the folly of tediously appending any further account of this meeting’s proceedings, I trust that your understanding will be fully satisfied by what has already been published in various newspapers regarding subsequent events. Namely, on April 27th of this year, they were published in special headline type across all newspapers.

The Survival Status of Enigmatic Dr. Geirekku's Expedition Party and Lady Emira Revealed A Gruesome Demise at 8 Degrees 2 Minutes South Latitude Likely Not a Single Survivor Remains! Witness Emerges Bearing Detailed Diary! And Behold! Gorilla-Drawn Paintings Prove Primate Cognitive Abilities! A Colossal Shock to Academia! Those world-stunning newspaper articles derived from what I had recounted to journalists from various papers who swarmed in the following day under Dr. Elliot's supervision; and those portions we had previously withheld from publication—pledging eventual full disclosure to preserve Dr. Geirekku's party's honor—were now fully revealed here to dispel public doubts, constituting precisely the unaltered entirety of Lady Emira's diary presented within these pages.

After thorough deliberation with Dr. Elliot, I hereby submitted this manuscript under the condition of simultaneous publication in the London Times, Chronicle, Herald, and Guardian, accompanied by Dr. Elliot’s honor, my own honor, and his countersignature. And in lamenting the tragic demise of the ill-fated expedition members—particularly the unfortunate Dr. Geirekku and Lady Emira—and in offering profound condolences for their truly pitiable ends, I solemnly declared that I would be second to none in this regard, thereby bringing this announcement to a close.