Part 4 — Thirty-two Years Later I Met the Gorilla for the First Time, but at the Sight of His Step the Caretaker Suddenly Held His Breath

The investigator was already on the way, but Haley still tried to return everything to the way it had been.

“Nino, put the folder on the table,” he said.

“I cannot.”

“This is my reserve.”

“Not anymore in the form you think.”

Haley took out his phone and called someone.

“Contact the lawyer. Now. Tell him that a former employee is spreading false accusations.”

The answer came in a few seconds. Haley moved the phone away from his ear and put it back.

“No, you cannot tell me that you are withdrawing from the case. You have been my representative for twenty-five years.”

Levan stood by the door. He held a radio in his hand, but was no longer listening to it. Kito was sitting in front of me and slowly following the wooden railing with his fingers.

Two knocks.

A pause.

Two knocks.

Haley looked toward him.

“He is an animal,” he said, as if convincing himself. “You have all been carried away by emotions.”

“Then why are you afraid?” I asked.

He did not answer.

The investigators came ten minutes later. Among them was a woman named Salome, who held a blue folder under her arm. She read Haley a court order.

“For the temporary seizure of the archive, financial records, and private transfer contracts.”

“This is a misunderstanding,” Haley said.

“That is precisely why we will check everything.”

Salome asked for the old voice recorder. Nino handed it over. Haley took it from her hand.

“This is private material.”

“No,” Salome replied. “This is evidence of a possible crime.”

Then they played the recording again.

My young voice sounded in the room. I did not recognize it myself. It was faster, clearer, and more hopeful.

“Two knocks mean that I am here. Two fingers mean that you can reach me.”

The child’s breathing sounded in the recording, then my quiet laughter.

“Go to sleep, little boy. Tomorrow you will see the forest.”

I lowered my eyes.

Kito looked toward the device. As soon as the recording ended, he knocked twice.

Salome looked at Haley.

“You said that this gorilla was already in another center that day.”

Haley pressed his lips together.

“That is how I remember it.”

“But the recording was made that same night, in the quarantine room.”

“The date may have been changed.”

Nino took out the second document.

“This is a private sale contract. Kito was to be transferred abroad. The buyer’s name is ‘Northern Biological Foundation.’ The contract is signed by Richard Haley and the reserve’s owner at that time, Archil Vardosanidze.”

I knew this name. Archil had been Haley’s partner, but his son, Dato Vardosanidze, managed the reserve now.

“Did Dato know?” I asked.

Nino showed me her phone. A letter sent by Elene Mari said that Dato, then fifteen years old, had accidentally witnessed Kito’s nighttime transfer and had kept a copy hidden from his father for years.

That was why I found his signature on the archive’s new statement. He himself had sent the documents to the investigator that morning.

Haley closed his eyes.

“Dato is my son.”

“And still he sent the truth,” Salome said.

At that moment Dato entered. His face was pale, and he held a folded paper in his hand.

“Father, enough.”

Haley looked at him.

“You do not understand anything.”

“I understand everything. When I was a child, I thought they were releasing that gorilla into the forest. Then I found this copy. You told me that if I revealed it, the reserve would collapse.”

“I saved the reserve.”

“No,” Dato said. “You saved your own name.”

Haley looked at me.

“Michael, if you had received the letter then, you would have lost your job too. Selling Kito served to save him.”

“He may have survived,” I said. “But I lost him. And you wanted me to think all my life that he had forgotten me.”

Salome placed Haley’s hands in front of him.

“You must come with us for questioning.”

Haley offered no further resistance. He only looked at Kito. The gorilla did not even turn toward him.

When the door closed, a silence appeared in the room for the first time that no longer resembled fear.

Levan slowly exhaled.

“He knows you,” he told me.

“And all my life I thought he did not remember me.”

Kito knocked twice again.

I raised two fingers.

This time I did not place my hand on the wooden barrier. It was no longer necessary.

Then everything happened quickly. An investigation began against Haley, the old contract was sent to court, and Dato refused to manage the reserve until all the accounts had been fully checked. The money they were supposed to receive from Kito’s sale never reached the buyer. Other cases of missing animals were also found in the archive.

I went to court several times. I did not loudly demand that anyone be punished. I only wanted the truth, the kind they could no longer hide.

Haley once asked me to meet him. It happened in a small waiting room in the courthouse, at five in the evening. A clock hanging on the wall ticked loudly every second.

“You got what you wanted anyway,” he told me. “Kito recognized you.”

“I did not want to get anything.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because love sometimes still demands that the truth be told even after years.”

Haley lowered his head.

“I can no longer bear my own words.”

“Which words?”

Salome turned on the voice recording. Haley’s voice from thirty-two years earlier could be heard there, when he was telling someone: “Michael will get used to it soon. People forget animals.”

Haley listened to the recording. He hid his face in his hands.

“Did I say this?”

“Yes,” I replied. “You did.”

I was not happy. I did not want to see him anymore.

Several days later the old quarantine room was emptied. A small iron bed stood against the wall, with rust-colored stains. In the place where Kito had slept, only a circle of dust remained.

A copy of my old photograph was taken down from the wooden shelf. In the photograph I was young, with little Kito clinging to my chest. The corner of the photograph was folded, but the faces could still be seen clearly.

I ran my hand over the photograph and left it behind.

I no longer needed to carry the past in my pocket.

Six weeks later I was working again at a small animal treatment center by the coast, far from the city. In the mornings I drank hot tea, stood by the window, and cleaned the cages of newly arrived birds.

On the wall of my room hung one photograph sent by Nino. Kito was sitting on the grass and looking at the wooden railing.

Below it was written: “Today he knocked twice when we read your letter to him.”

I sent letters every week. I knew that Kito could not read my words like a human. But Nino read them aloud to him, and Kito always listened to the end.

One evening my niece, little Elene, visited me. She held a sheet of paper in her hand.

“Uncle, did you draw this?” she asked.

On the paper there was an enormous gorilla, and beside him a small man with two raised fingers.

“No, you drew it.”

“Is Kito your friend?”

“He is more than a friend. He is part of my past that finally returned to its place.”

Elene thought.

“Will you see him again?”

“If he wants it and the caretakers allow me.”

“Even if you want to?”

“Desire is never permission to cross another person’s boundary.”

She thought about these words for a long time, then drew a small wooden barrier beside the gorilla.

Three months later I went to see Kito again. The first snow of winter was falling. Boots left white flakes on the reserve path. Nino told me that Kito had been restless since morning.

“He may be waiting for you,” she said.

I stood at the barrier and took the copper whistle from my pocket. For the first time in thirty-two years I looked at it under the sun. A small scratch could still be seen on it.

I did not begin to blow it.

I only knocked twice on the wooden railing.

Kito came out of the bushes. He moved more slowly, but his eyes were still the same. He came, sat down, and struck the ground twice.

I raised two fingers.

They were still separated by the thickness of the wood, but this distance no longer hurt me.

Nino said quietly:

“This may not be your last meeting.”

“Perhaps,” I replied. “But today is enough.”

That same evening I received a message from Haley. The court decision had already been issued. He wanted to speak with me, apologize, and explain the past.

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote:

“I have already heard your truth. Now it is time for my peace.”

And I deleted the number.

Outside, snow was falling quietly in the yard. I placed the copper whistle on the table. In the corner lay Elene’s drawing, and beside the gorilla she had drawn two small fingers.

I looked at the white street through the window.

Then I knocked twice on the table.

This time I was no longer waiting for an answer.

But somewhere far away, in the wet forest, Kito knocked twice as well.