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 caretaker took me by the arm and told me that the gorilla might not remember me at all.

“Mr. Michael, please be prepared for any reaction,” he quietly warned me at ten in the morning, beside the wooden barrier of the riverside reserve. “Kito is no longer a small animal weighing forty-nine kilograms. He is an almost two-hundred-kilogram silverback male.”

I nodded, but my hands were trembling so much that the old copper whistle in my pocket struck against itself and made a thin sound. I had carried this whistle with me for thirty-two years. I had never blown it for Kito. I only placed it in his palm when he was afraid at night.

The smell of grass, wet earth, and the sound of water coming from far away became familiar to me all at once. The forest breathed that way then too, when Kito slept curled up on my chest and held my index finger with his fingers.

Now that gorilla sat in the shade on the other side of the enclosure. He had an enormous back. Silver fur shone on his shoulders. When I saw him for the first time, I thought that I had carried the face of that little creature in my heart for thirty-two years for nothing.

“If he does not come closer, do not take it as a personal insult,” caretaker Nino told me. “Some animals do not recognize people from their past.”

“I did not come to ask him for anything,” I replied. “I simply want to see him at least once.”

Nino looked at me. The small iron lock in her hand was trembling.

“Did you raise him?”

“I saved him.”

I said these words aloud, but immediately regretted them inside. Kito had never been my property. He had only been my responsibility once, for a very short time.

Thirty-two years earlier, when I worked at a wildlife rescue center, a small orphaned gorilla was found after a forest fire. He was so light that I carried him with one hand. For three nights he approached no one. Then I knocked twice on the wooden sleeping box and held out two fingers.

Kito held out his hand to me.

From then on, this became our secret sign. Two knocks meant: I am here. Two fingers meant: you can reach me.

Then came the day when the specialists said that Kito’s dependence on me had to end. I cried, but I let him go. When the truck door closed at the end, he pressed his small fist against the glass. And I was holding the same whistle in my hand that I now carried in my pocket.

“Kito,” I called at ten minutes past ten in the morning.

He did not raise his head.

I knocked twice on the wooden barrier.

The noise of the birds in the forest seemed to disappear in one second.

Kito stopped. Nino squeezed my arm.

The gorilla slowly lowered his head, looked at the ground, and then glanced toward me. His eyes were calmer than I had imagined.

“One more time,” Nino whispered.

I knocked again.

Kito struck the ground twice as well.

Someone quietly exhaled behind us.

I raised two fingers. Kito tilted his head slightly, then turned his whole body toward me. He took three steps and stopped.

“Little boy,” I said to him, as I had said then.

Kito’s shoulders changed. He slowly stood up, turned toward the barrier, and came straight toward me. Nino suddenly took a folded folder from her pocket and told me:

“Before he comes to you, you must see this…”

Her fingers reached the folder’s clasp, but at that very moment Kito stopped at the barrier, raised his enormous hand, and reached toward the wooden railing…

Nino’s fingers stopped on the folder’s clasp, and I held my breath. Kito’s hand hung over the wooden railing. His fingers stopped several centimeters from my hand.

“Do not move,” head of security Levan said sternly from behind. “One quick movement and the meeting is over.”

“I will not move,” I replied.

But inside, everything in me was running. I wanted to touch his hand, I wanted to call to him, I wanted to erase thirty-two years in one second.

Kito studied my hand. First he looked at my fingernails, then at the white scar left on my wrist. I got this scar when little Kito broke a bamboo food bowl and it struck my hand.

“Could you remember?” I asked quietly.

Nino shook her head.

“Human memory is not that simple. Animals may remember smell, voice, and movement, but that still proves nothing.”

I knocked twice on the wooden surface.

Kito struck the ground twice.

Levan turned his face away. His eyes were already wet.

“Did he know this sign?” he asked.

“Only the two of us.”

“It is not written in the records.”

“Because then nobody cared how the caretaker put a baby gorilla to sleep.”

Kito leaned closer. Warm air from his nose touched the barrier. I raised my fingers. This time he lowered his hand beneath the railing and placed his fingers on the wooden floor.

“Place your hand there, but do not touch him,” Nino told me.

I obeyed. My palm was above the wood. Kito’s palm was on the other side.

For several seconds we stood like that. Then he straightened two fingers and matched them exactly to my two fingers, despite the thickness of the wood.

I saw his large fist contract. It looked like a child’s fist. The small fist that years earlier had held my index finger.

Nino hugged the folder to her chest.

“You must know this before we continue the meeting,” she said. “Yesterday I found your name in the archive.”

“My name should have been there. I signed his first documents.”

“No. It was an old document that had been kept in a closed fund until now.”

“What does ‘closed’ mean?”

Nino looked at Levan. Levan glanced toward the closed space.

“It means that one thing in Kito’s past does not match the official story,” he said.

My heart began beating with heavy blows.

“What does not match?”

Nino opened the clasp, but did not open the folder.

“Before you left, a record about Kito disappeared from the rescue center. The next day you received a letter saying that the animal had been transferred to another center.”

“I saw the vehicle myself,” I told her. “Kito was inside.”

“The vehicle definitely left. But Kito may not have been in that vehicle.”

My knees gave way. I placed a hand on the barrier so that I would not fall.

“What are you telling me?”

Nino opened the folder for the first time. Yellowed pages and a small folded paper note could be seen inside.

“There is still one more thing,” she said. “This note was left by the same person who watched you leave then.”

“Who?”

Nino did not answer. Kito suddenly raised his head and looked toward the door.

Heavy footsteps sounded outside.

Levan picked up the radio.

“The director is coming,” he said. “And he says the meeting must end immediately.”

Kito pressed his whole body against the barrier. Nino took out the paper. One name appeared on her lips, but she had not yet made a sound…

At last, one name came from Nino’s lips.

“Richard Haley.”

I had heard this name only once in thirty-two years. He was the administrator of the center that prepared Kito’s transfer documents. I was told that Haley had become ill and resigned soon afterward.

The door opened. At ten minutes past ten in the morning, a tall, white-haired man entered, holding a black cane.

“The meeting is over,” he said. “The guest must leave.”

“Richard Haley?” I asked.

The man looked at me. The color left his face when Kito struck the ground twice.

Nino spread the folder open in front of him.

“Do you recognize this sign?” she asked.

“The animal is repeating a noise. It has no meaning.”

“Then why did you stop?”

Haley struck the floor with his cane.

“Because you are breaking the rules.”

Nino placed the yellowed page on the table. It said that Kito had been seriously ill on the day of the transfer and unfit for transport. Below it was my name, although the signature did not resemble mine.

“I did not write this,” I said.

“We know,” Nino said. “While checking the archive, we found your work card from that time. That day you had not even left the center before the vehicle departed.”

Haley lowered his head.

“That is an old story.”

“Not for me,” I replied. “I thought my little boy had simply forgotten me.”

Nino opened the second paper. It was a short handwritten note, with a dried ink stain in the corner.

“This is a note from your former colleague, Elene Mari. She wrote: ‘Kito did not leave. The administrator hid him in the night quarantine room in order to hand him over to a private buyer. Michael should have known, but the letter must not reach him.’”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

“Why did you not publish this then?” I asked Haley.

“You could not have proved it. The animal was already elsewhere. And I was only protecting my job.”

“You took my life away.”

“No,” he said. “The animal survived.”

Kito roared toward the door. I felt the sound in my stomach. Nino quickly took out a small device.

“There is one more piece of evidence,” she said. “An old voice recorder was found in the quarantine room. The recording is damaged, but the last part can be heard.”

She pressed the button.

First there was static, then my voice from thirty-two years earlier:

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

At the end of the recording, little Kito’s quiet breathing could be heard.

Kito came closer to the barrier and at that same moment knocked twice.

I burst into tears.

Haley lowered his eyes.

“I remember him,” I said. “I remembered him all these years.”

Nino nodded.

“We handed this recording to the court investigator this morning.”

Haley gripped his cane so tightly that his fingers turned white.

“You do not know whom you are fighting.”

“Now I do,” I replied.

At that moment Nino’s phone rang. She looked at the screen and her face changed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Elene Mari is in the hospital. She sent the investigator one more thing.”

“What?”

Nino waited several seconds before answering.

“The contract for Kito’s sale. And Haley is not the only person who signed it. The second signature belongs to the person who still owns this reserve today…”

Haley looked at the phone, then at Kito, and for the first time all firmness disappeared from his face. The phone rang again. Nino heard the notification and quietly said:

“The investigator is already on the way…”