Dancing With Mr. Demerol

The Fentanyl had vanquished everything bad except the itch at the end of my nose. Fortunately, the Chinese man with the upside-down smile had stepped over to help. He was standing directly above and behind me. “That always happens about now,” he said, scratching enthusiastically with an antiseptic-scented index finger. It was a good thing he was willing, because my arms were restrained with black Velcro straps and my ticklish snout was driving me crazy. Not that it mattered much. I was on the way out just as the surgeon, Dr. Low, was coming in. Still, even though the room was starting to breathe with me and I felt as if I were floating on my back in a pool of hot cotton, there was time left for conversation. “Do you know what John Huston said when he was asked how he’d lived so long?”

“No,” the anesthesiologist said, cranking up the sodium pentothal. “What did he say?”

“Surgery.”

Dr. Low laughed and the room filled with black light.

At the time I was living in San Francisco, on Taylor Street near Jackson, a few doors down from the Golden Lion restaurant, around the corner from the cable car barn, and the Chinese Hospital was the only health facility I could get to without driving. I may have had a volcano in my viscera but I wasn’t about to give up my parking space. The two-and-a-half-block walk down the steep hill was excruciating, but for some reason heart attack and cancer (which usually pop into my mind at the first sign of odd pain) didn’t occur to me. Apart from the intense discomfort, it was an exquisite ache, centered perfectly in my chest, alternately burning like a fist of lava and throbbing in counterpoint to my heart. If it hadn’t hurt so much, its singular symmetry and rhythm would have been a pleasure. Anyway, it was being taken care of now. Dr. Low was cutting out the devil appendix while I did the backstroke in the underworld.

Moments later (so it seemed), I was eased into a bed next to a window that looked out on a wall. “Who’s he?” I asked the nurse, nodding toward the old man in the other bed. “He’s your roommate. He had an operation just before yours. He’s a Filipino. He’s not awake now.” I could see that, but he was groaning. Then again, so was I. He looked to be about sixty-five, a small, muscular man with big hands and most of his hair still black. We were in and out, the two of us. He’d mumble and I’d grunt, I’d sigh and he’d say something in Tagalog. It went like that into the evening until the sandman, a Mr. Demerol, sent us off to sleep in our stainless-steel canoes.

In the middle of the night, I awoke in an all-blue world. I was seeing the lights from the nurses’ station glowing through the curtains that enclosed the old man’s bed. A cape buffalo had one foot where my right hip pocket should have been. I pushed the button and a few minutes later a young nurse came in, gently rolled me over, and gave me another shot of Demerol, then rolled me back. She seemed embarrassed. “Thank you,” I said, and she patted my ankle as she left. She was a young soul with an old heart.

“Tell me the funniest thing,” the old man said slowly.

“What?” He seemed to be wide awake.

“Tell the funniest thing that ever happened to you,” he said, batting back the blue curtain so that he could see me.

It was a reasonable request. I thought for awhile. “I don’t know if this was the funniest,” I said, “but it’s a contender.” As the Demerol lifted the buffalo’s foot, I told him about my flight to Paris a few years before.

“My friend and I figured that we’d be up all night and that it’d be much cheaper to buy a bottle of liquor instead of buying single drinks.”

“True,” he said.

“So as soon as the plane left Dulles, I bought a big bottle of Remy Martin cognac at the onboard duty-free shop. Then, being that I’d made the purchase, I sent my friend to retrieve a couple of paper cups from the restroom. We had to be cagey pouring the stuff because you’re not supposed to open the duty-free liquor on the plane. But we got it poured and managed a quick toast before the cognac began dissolving the glue that held the cups together. I was wearing a baggy cotton sweater and about $6 worth of Remy Martin dribbled from the cup to my wrist and down my forearm, and collected into a big cognac reservoir in the sweater’s elbow. I spent the rest of the flight sucking a mouthful of soggy, intoxicating yarn and ignoring the quizzical looks from the stewardesses. I got pretty looped.”

After an awkward pause he said, “That’s almost funny.” I had a tough customer on my hands.

I don’t know what his habits were in the real world, but I’d later find that in the Chinese Hospital the man rarely slept unless he had visitors. At night he came alive. He favored conversation between the hours of two and five in the morning, though sometimes he’d perk up as early as midnight. We’ll call him Leon. I had little to do over the few days I was in the Chinese Hospital but chat with Leon when he was awake, write down our conversations when he wasn’t, and dance with Mr. Demerol as the spirit moved me.

Right after the cognac story he said this: “Okay, what’s the saddest thing?”

“The saddest thing that ever happened to me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll pass on that one,” I said.

“That’s right,” Leon said with a slight smile as if I’d solved a riddle. “You keep it always here,” he tapped his head, “and here,” he pointed to his heart, “but you never say it. The saddest thing you can’t say.” I nodded and there was a long silence.

I came to like him very much. I liked his mastery of the non sequitur (unpredictable changes in direction can be invigorating), his peculiar curiosity, and his screwy, invented expressions. (Once, when I made a claim he doubted, he declared it “about as likely as a luau in Lapland.”) Leon was part imp, part gangster, and something of a mystery. He seemed to be able to pass from consciousness to sleep almost instantly. He’d be lying as still as a statue and then suddenly say something like, “I grew up in Los Angeles.”

“Really,” I’d reply, “I thought maybe you’d grown up in the Philippines.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re Filipino.”

“I’m not Filipino,” Leon answered. “I’m half Mexican and half Scottish.”

“I thought I heard you speaking Filipino.”

“No, that was Latin.” It was definitely not Latin, but I didn’t quibble.

“How old do you think I am?” This was obviously a point of pride (and, after all, the man had just weathered surgery) so I trimmed a few years from my estimate.

“Sixty-two?” He smiled.

“I’m seventy-nine,” he informed me with the justifiable glee of a man who’d just had seventeen years added to his life. “I grew up on the east side of Los Angeles where they used to call it Edendale. I lived there until I was twelve and then we moved here. The Mack Sennett movie studio was in Edendale. You know who Mack Sennett was?” I did. Famous for the Keystone Kops movies, Sennett has given Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Buster Keaton their first film jobs. “Constance Talmadge, the actress, would come to our house,” Leon continued. “My mother owned a coat with a leopard collar that Constance Talmadge wanted – real leopard, very luxurious. I think my mother finally gave it to her.” Leon was getting drowsy. “They’d give me fifty cents a day,” he said slowly, “and Mr. Keaton would chase me around for the movie. I was just a child, but I liked being in the movie.” And he was asleep.

In the morning an elegantly dressed Chinese woman entered the room, walked over to Leon and kissed him. “This is Grace,” Leon said to me. Grace smiled. She appeared to be in her sixties. I assumed that she was Leon’s wife. “I just go by Hang Ah,” she said holding up a large bag and pulling out several pieces of dim sum. “You have some.” And she placed a pork bun, two potstickers and a piece of shui mai on a napkin next to my water pitcher. “Don’t believe anything Leon say!” she whispered, making sure Leon could hear, and they both laughed. Grace took off her coat – it had a leopardskin collar that looked like the real thing – and pulled a chair close to Leon’s bed.

I nibbled at the pork bun. The morning nurse had encouraged me to walk as soon as I thought I could. I was so sore I wasn’t sure I could even stand, but I wanted to give Grace and Leon some time alone so I drew my curtain and very, very slowly got to my feet. By the time I returned to the room ten minutes later, Grace was packing up the translucent bits of paper that had wrapped the dim sum and Leon was fast asleep, making a sound like a motor boat with water hyacinths tangled in its propeller going through muddy water. I thanked Grace for the food, we made small talk for a minute or two, and she left.

Late that night, about eleven-thirty, a noise in the hall woke me. The room was blue again; the nurses were laughing quietly outside. At Leon’s bedside were two well-dressed men in their late twenties, talking to him in whispers. He seemed to be angry with them about something. They left abruptly. Leon pushed back his curtain and looked over at me. “My sons,” he said without me asking.

“They like to visit late, huh?”

“They’re night owls.”

Leon told me dozens of stories about his early life while we shared that room. He reminded me of my own father at about the same age. In his last decade my father’s memory for the recent past was nonexistent, but he could recall the most minute details of his youth. Leon’s memory worked like that. We spent many late, blue-lit hours in the early decades of the century, the time Leon remembered best.

Being in the Chinese Hospital amplified the feeling of being healed in the past. Built in 1924, it has a time-out-of-time atmosphere that carries over to the doctors and staff. The hospital facilities are entirely modern. The only thing out of date is the attitude of the people who work there, which harks back to a less accelerated era when brusqueness was rarely encountered in such an environment. The hospital nutritionist stopped by to see if I wanted American or Chinese food (I chose Chinese), then visited me again to find out if the fare was to my liking. The amiable anesthesiologist came in one day – smiling right side up – to see how I was feeling, and stayed for nearly a half hour, discussing the weather, joking about my itchy nose, and telling me more about my appendix than I cared to hear – “It was all black and full of pus,” he said cheerfully. (Later, when I married a medical professional, I learned that that kind of talk is considered pleasant chit-chat in the health biz.) Dr. Low, too, paid me several leisurely visits. The nurses were kind and funny, and enjoyed telling me about their children. The Chinese Hospital was the perfect context in which to hear Leon’s tales of his life.

“This isn’t a funny thing and it’s not sad either,” he said to me one night. “It’s more of a secret thing, but it happened so long ago I guess it doesn’t matter. It was the late 1930s – ’38 or ’39 I think. I’ve never told anybody this except maybe Grace. Nobody knows this,” he whispered conspiratorially. “I’d moved down to Los Angeles from San Francisco. I was in my late twenties. A fellow I met one night told me about a job down in La Jolla. I didn’t have much money so I hitched down and called the number he’d given me from a diner. And the man hired me over the phone – never even met me. Guess who that was,” Leon asked me.

“I have no idea,” I replied.

“He was the writer. The detective writer, you know? Mr. Chandler.”

“Raymond Chandler?”

“Yes, that’s who.”

“Amazing. What did you do for him?”

“Well, I would do all sorts of things. Odd jobs, whatever needed being done. And I would drive him some nights when he went visiting.”

“I’ve heard he was sort of a solitary character.”

“That’s right,” Leon said. “You know his wife was older than he was and she was ill, she was an invalid and he took care of her. And he wrote his books and articles.”

As he spoke I imagined the Chandlers whiling away the warm La Jolla evenings together. I’d been to the town at night just once. I remembered the sea smell of the mist mixed with the scent of the night-blooming cactus, and how sensuous the curved trunks of the palm trees looked when illuminated by the warm yellow headlights of slow-moving Bentleys. “But they would go visiting?” I asked Leon.

“No, no. Mrs. Chandler was bedridden, but she wanted Mr. Chandler always around. So in the evenings he’d work or read to her. Then, when she went to sleep, he’d go visit his friend. But by then he’d be a little drunk. He never showed it, but he was a big drinker, you know.”

“I’ve heard that,” I said.

“So he’d call me to come drive him because it was quite a few miles north, up the coast to Encinitas.”

“Who did Chandler visit? Was he having an affair?”

“No, not at all. Mr. Chandler was very much in love with his wife. No, see, this is the part you’ll find surprising I think. He’d go on these late-night visits up to Encinitas to see the famous Indian. Those two had become acquainted, become friends some way. I don’t know how.”

“Who are you talking about” I asked Leon. I thought he was being overly mysterious considering that we were discussing events that took place a half century earlier.

“The yogi!” Leon said impatiently, as if I was fool not to have known. “Yogananda. Paramahansa Yogananda, the great yogi from India. I would drive Chandler up there to the house on the cliffs above the ocean. He told me they often talked about his stories.”

“No! You’re kidding. I can’t imagine they’d have had anything in common.”

“They were as different as butter and bone meal,” Leon said in a low, comical voice. “But I drove him up there dozens of times. I met Mr. Yogananda twice. Very nice man, though he could have used a haircut. Mr. Chandler would stay for a couple hours. I’d go for a walk and have a cigarette or two, or sit in the car and read the Daily Racing Form.”

The conversation put me in mind of my world-traveling raconteur uncle who once told me about a fellow he met in London who – every time my uncle finished a story – replied, “Interesting if true.” It’s a line I never would have used on Leon, but his Chandler and Yogananda revelation briefly tempted me. The Demerol was trying to drag me out of the dance floor of sleep and I was trying to stay awake long enough to ask Leon a few more questions about the unlikely alliance between Mr. Chandler and Mr. Yogananda. But suddenly he was snoring away, so I gave in and let Mr. Demerol lead.

When I woke up the next morning the nurse was pushing a wheelchair into the room. “I’m going home,” Leon explained. “Enjoyed talking to you.”

“Why don’t you write down your phone number,” I said, my writer’s brain sensing story potential.

“I don’t have a phone,” Leon said (I knew he was lying, everybody has a phone). “But I’m at Red’s Place – just down Jackson here at Beckett on the corner – every Thursday night from seven ‘til eleven or so. That’s my night out. Come by. I’ll tell you some more. It gets better. You can buy me a drink.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Thursday?”

“Every Thursday.” He nodded and the nurse helped him into the wheelchair and put a large paper bag on his lap.

The next day I checked myself out of the Chinese Hospital. They’d been so good to me, I actually wrote a fan letter to the nurses and Dr. Low.

The following Thursday at about seven-thirty I caught a cab at the corner of Pacific and Taylor and had it deliver me to Red’s Place. I stayed for nearly two hours, drinking J&B with water back and inhaling the other customer’s Camels. Leon never showed up. I did the same thing on the next Thursday, but I came later and stayed longer, until about midnight. I also described Leon as best I could to the bartender, but he couldn’t recall seeing anybody like that.

On the third Thursday after I came home from the Chinese Hospital I walked down to Red’s Place around 9:30 in the evening. It must have been late September, but it was still a warm night and there were a lot of children playing on the sidewalks in Chinatown. A fair number of young, backpacking tourists were wandering around with the same dazzled, fey demeanor they exude wherever in the world you come across them. As I walked, the aromas of seafood, car exhaust and stirfry wafted about, blending together into the singular, unmistakable Chinatown smell that I’ve had in my olfactory memory bank since I was a child. As I said, there were children all around, a few old men, a few backpackers and, as I arrived at the doorway to Red’s Place, Leon’s two well-dressed sons. They entered just ahead of me. I ordered a beer and stood there sucking up Camel smoke and trying to make eye contact with Leon’s sons. After ten minutes of watching them in deep conversation I walked over to where they were sitting. “Excuse me,” I said. “Is Leon your father?”

“Who are you?” the heavier one asked.

“I was in the hospital with your father. I saw you there one night visiting.”

“Leon’s not my father,” he said. “I just do some work for him sometimes.” And he smiled and checked his watch, and the two politely excused themselves and walked out.

After that, if I was in the neighborhood on a Thursday, I’d sometimes go by Red’s Place, but I never saw Leon and I never saw his “sons” again either. Over the next few months I pretty much forgot about all of them, including Chandler and Yogananda.

Generally, I don’t pray. I’ve never found it very effective. It could be my technique, or it could be my lack of faith. It’s foolish of me no doubt, because writers of all people need as much help as they can get – who wouldn’t find comfort in an alliance with a supreme being? In any case, though I didn’t pray for it – indeed, I’d stopped thinking about it – my prayers were answered. By sheer coincidence I came across the ending to Leon’s story in a basement restaurant on Pagoda Place.

I have a friend, Liz, who loves dim sum and I’m fond of it myself. About five months after my appendectomy we had a date on a Tuesday morning to meet at Hang Ah Tea Room. I like Hang Ah because the dim sum is quite good and the place is a charming dump, which means you don’t have to compete with a herd of people to get a table and you come away with that stomach satori that is the only thing any of us really wants (or perhaps one of two things). It’s the oldest dim sum dive in Chinatown and its cellar location gives it a tawdry appeal that the owners could probably cash in on if they wanted to, but thankfully have not.

On our way in Liz and I stopped in Hang Ah’s entryway to look at the Miss Chinatown photos. As we were standing there, out walked Grace, Leon’s wife. I might not have recognized her except for the leopardskin collar of her coat. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen like that. It made me think of Constance Talmadge and Edendale and Leon-the-child being chased by an as-yet-unknown Buster Keaton for fifty cents a day. It’s funny how everything can get all mixed together in a moment – it’s often like that in dreams, but you don’t expect it to happen in reality.

“Grace!” I said. I startled her. She didn’t recognize me. “I’m Doug,” I explained. “I was in the hospital with Leon.” She squinted and smiled.

“Oh yeah,” she said, taking my hand. “I remember. How are you doing now?”

“All better.” I patted the spot now occupied only by a phantom appendix and a faint hoofprint. “How’s Leon?”

Her smile wilted. “Leon’s gone,” she said sadly. “He passed on…one months. Just one month ago.” He’d been such a vital character. Even in the hospital he looked so healthy and fit that I’d figured he’d live another decade or two or three. I didn’t ask her what he’d died of. What’s it matter?

“Well, he was a great guy,” I said. Liz had drifted into the restaurant as I talked with Grace.

“Great guy!” Grace agreed. “We take him back to Manila for the burial. That’s what he want.”

“Manila?”

“Oh yeah, he come from there, you know. Grow up there.”

“Really? For some reason I thought he grew up in Los Angeles. I must have got it wrong. Did he spend a lot of time in L.A.?”

“No, I have a sister there. We visit her a couple times, but usually she come up here – better Chinatown,” Grace laughed.

Now Grace had me going. “I guess he was a big reader, huh?”

“Oh yeah, he drive me crazy reading and re-reading those detective books and all about the movies and the crazy religions, but he always make a good living,” and her eyes started to tear up as she thought about him and I wanted to stop talking to her because I never know what to do at such times.

“Grace, I’m so sorry, but I know you’re going to do fine.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she assured me in a motherly tone. “Nice to see you.” She smiled and squeezed my hand. As she walked down the alley toward the street, I noticed her black-and-gray hair made an oddly dramatic lacework over the leopardskin collar – there was something bittersweet about it, but I don’t think I can explain it. I then walked inside the restaurant where Liz had already ordered pork buns, potstickers, shui mai and shrimp dumplings, and I told her the whole story, starting with the anesthesiologist itching my nose and ending with Grace’s leopardskin collar partly covered by her black-and-gray hair.

A Conversation with Jane Goodall

The year 2000 will be the 40th consecutive year of Dr. Jane Goodall’s legendary study of chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Though her research, and her legend, were founded on her ability to sit still, observe and blend into the landscape, today her life is one of near constant movement — she lectures throughout the United States every fall and spring and is on the road as many as 300 days a year. And 1999 has been especially active for Goodall: Her new book, “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey,” was recently published, and a one-hour television portrait inspired by the book, “Jane Goodall: Reason for Hope,” airs on PBS stations Wednesday evening (check local listings for time).

“On my last USA lecture tour I rarely spent two nights in one place,” Goodall writes in an essay on her website. “There are lectures, new people to meet, receptions, press conferences. My grandmother’s favorite text was always, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ which has got me through everything terrible that’s ever happened to me. A day’s not too much to get through.”

Perhaps that text was what got her through last Friday in Manhattan, Kan. Before our late afternoon telephone conversation, Goodall, 65, had been “at the zoo with hundreds of kids, [then] there was a press conference, a talk to volunteers, a talk to zookeepers and there’s a donor dinner,” which she would attend that night. Nevertheless, she was unhurried, soft-spoken and enthusiastic, as always, in discussing her work, the natural world and the prospects for its future.

Your life has changed so much since those early days at Gombe, and your travel and speaking schedule sounds hectic. Do you miss that time, which I imagine was much more contemplative?

Those days were idyllic. It was paradise, actually. It was magic. But you know one has to pay back. I feel very strongly that I was so amazingly lucky to have that incredible opportunity. My job now is to save what I love. I seem to have a fairly strong voice and an ability to communicate with most people. And we have to get people’s hearts involved.

In those early days of your field study, when you’d sit for weeks and months trying to make contact with the chimpanzees, what kept you going and believing that what you were doing would, in fact, lead to something valuable and important?

It wasn’t so much that it would be valuable and important. My goal was to habituate the chimps and learn what they did. The first time I saw them using tools, I actually couldn’t believe it. It was just so amazing. So, it wasn’t that I hoped to make significant findings. It was that I had a job to do and the job was to get the chimps to stop being frightened of me so I could learn how they lived.

What is the political situation in Tanzania now? Does it prevent you from spending as much time as you’d like at Gombe?

The political situation in Tanzania has always been wonderful for us. The political situation, however, in Congo-Brazzaville, where we have our biggest chimpanzee sanctuary, is horrendous — it’s a civil war. There have been times when our amazingly brave project manager there has said it would be better that no one else comes [to the sanctuary] as it would draw attention to what’s going on there. And it would be an extra burden of worry for her.

What’s known as the “bush meat” trade — the killing and butchering for sale of Africa’s wild animals, some of which are rare and endangered — is perceived by many people as being a result of human desperation for food.

That’s completely and utterly wrong. The bush meat trade is commercial hunting — hunters going from the city to the end of the logging trails, shooting everything, loading it on trucks and taking it to the city, where it fetches more money than domestic animal meat. Bush meat is a cultural preference, a delicacy. It’s not used to feed starving people — absolutely not.

What’s the likelihood of being able to bring an end to the bush meat business?

The only hope is if we can mount a very high-powered government effort to end it, on the one hand, and then, on the ground [among the people], pursue a grassroots education program. But we don’t now have the money to do that very well and we haven’t yet succeeded at getting high enough political support.

What about in the United States? I’d think you would be able to gain access to fairly high-level political figures here.

I can, and I feel really badly about this. If only all the conservation groups could somehow get together and work out very, very clearly, step by step, what this initiative would actually be, what it would look like, then I could approach these people. But as yet there is no clear understanding of what to ask them to do.

You see, it’s an incredibly complex situation. It isn’t just the hunters going out and shooting. Even the presidents of some of these countries actually send soldiers into national parks to shoot wild animals for their feasts. There’s a lot of corruption and huge sums of money are involved; I didn’t realize that until quite recently. People are making enormous amounts of money from the bush meat trade. And there’s even chimpanzee meat being sold as a delicacy at Congolese restaurants in Europe.

In “Reason for Hope,” you write, “Anyone who tries to improve the lives of animals invariably comes in for criticism from those who believe such efforts are misplaced in a world of suffering humanity.” You must come up against that point of view quite frequently. How do you respond?

I hear it constantly. And, of course, there are various responses depending on the situation. One response is that once we’re prepared to admit that animals have feelings and suffer, then if we’re cruel to them — for whatever reason — it’s demeaning and degrading to us as human beings. And we should share our compassion among feeling beings.

Also, there are so many people involved with the needs of suffering people, including us. I mean, we’re not just worrying about the chimpanzees, we’re also working with the local people and trying to improve the quality of their lives. And trying to explain to people — in Africa, at least — that if the wildlife and the habitat disappears, that will lead to [the place becoming a] desert and then the people will suffer a hundred-fold more than they are already.

Also in “Reason for Hope,” in a chapter titled “The Roots of Evil,” you tell in great detail of making the unpleasant discovery in the 1970s that the idea of the noble ape was as mythical as that of the noble savage. Chimps, like humans, you found, are capable of some rather ugly behavior — including intercommunity attacks and even isolated instances of cannibalism. That must have been a tough realization to come to grips with.

It was a nightmare time in my life. The chimps [at Gombe] had become such familiar personalities. They weren’t exactly friends, but it was close to that. And to suddenly find that these mostly gentle beings were capable of such horrendous brutality was a shock, a real shock. We accept that humans can be like that even though we don’t like it. The sad part was to suddenly realize that the chimpanzees were more like us than I used to think.

Given the press of civilization and urban expansion, will large animals living in the wild become a thing of the past in the next century?

It depends. We have a window of opportunity to make change for the future, which I think we owe our children and grandchildren and their children. I feel terrible when I think of the world into which I was born 65 years ago and how we’ve damaged it in those 65 years.

If we can’t find a way of leveling off human population — and I think that’s happening, I really do — and if we can’t find a way of lessening the over-consumption of the affluent societies — and, again, I believe as our young people today grow up, that will happen, too — then the horrifying question is: Do we have enough time or are we headed for disaster? A lot of people think we’re headed for disaster and that’s why I’m concentrating so much on developing this program for young people. They’re the ones who are the hope for the future.

You’re referring to the Roots and Shoots program?

Yes, it started in 1991 in Tanzania, came over to America at the end of 1993. In January of 1994 there were 11 registered groups in North America. Now there are well over 1,000 [in 50 countries]. And it’s spreading so fast — because I’ve finally got staff and a little money behind it and dedicated, enthusiastic teachers. It’s suddenly taking off. It’s very inspiring.

We just had our second summit for college and university students. And it was just so amazing to see these young people get together to tackle the question: How do we get the message out, to make the world around us a better place for animals, people and the environment? How do we get that message to our communities? And the ideas they came up with and their passion! That’s what I see when I travel around like this.

One would assume, given that you and your work are so widely known at this point, that money must just flow into the Jane Goodall Institute.

False. It should. I don’t know what we’ve done wrong. But we are about to start an endowment drive to keep our work going, especially the Africa program, and I’m sure it’s going to be successful.

You mentioned the chimpanzee sanctuary in Congo and then there’s the facility at Gombe in Tanzania. What’s actually taking place at those two locations now?

At Gombe, the longest study of wild animal behavior in the world is continuing: monitoring the behavior of these individual chimpanzees that are so well-known and so well-studied, and bringing in a few people to do specialized studies of certain aspects of their behavior. A lot of the research is done by Tanzanians from surrounding villages, which is why we’ve had no poaching, because they’re involved in the project. We study baboons there as well. We also have a big program to try to improve the lives of the people living in the villages around this tiny park, an island of forest surrounded by a huge [cleared] area. And that’s working; they understand that we care about them as well as the chimpanzees.

That was an effort that you started almost at the beginning. Shortly after you arrived in Gombe four decades ago, your mother, who accompanied you, started a medical program for the local villagers.

That’s right. She set up a little clinic. And we’ve always employed as many of the local people as we could and we’ve always tried to involve them with the chimps, and it’s worked.

Now in Congo-Brazzaville we have a sanctuary built by the Conoco Oil Co. for about 25 chimps. We were very happy with Conoco because they had far and away the better environmental ethic than any of the other big oil companies who were exploring. And, amazingly, even after Conoco pulled out of Congo [after determining its oil operation was not going to be commercially viable] they left a team behind to complete the sanctuary. They did the right thing.

But that sanctuary, because of various situations around Congo, now has 71 chimps, which is just a nightmare. We can’t release them because of the war, which has been simmering on and off for over three years. And it’s much too crowded in the facility. We can’t put them back in the wild; we’ve got wild chimps coming around. We can’t get cement — prices go up because the whole infrastructure of the country’s been destroyed. We have to build new enclosures — we must, it’s dangerous now. So that’s our nightmare program.

Then we have two sanctuaries which are more or less self-supporting: one in Uganda and one in Kenya. And we’re starting one in South Africa.

Were you close at all with Dian Fossey when she was alive? I know you both knew Louis Leakey well. [In 1967, Fossey established a research camp in Rwanda, where three years later she made the first friendly gorilla-to-human contact ever recorded. Her subsequent book on the plight of the world's largest primates, "Gorillas in the Mist," was made into a motion picture starring Sigourney Weaver. Fossey was murdered in her cabin at her Rwanda camp on Dec. 26, 1985. The crime has never been solved.]

Louis sent Dian Fossey to Gombe for a little while, to see how it was done. She resented that enormously. She just felt she knew how to do it on her own. Anyway, that was nothing to do with me, that was Louis. I saw her on and off over the years, quite often. We would discuss things. I tried so hard to persuade Dian to involve the local people in her project and she wouldn’t.

And an adversarial situation developed between her and the local people in the area where she was studying the mountain gorillas?

Yes, that’s why she died, I’m sure. She felt that if the Africans got close to the gorillas the way she was, the gorillas would then be more vulnerable to poachers. And I would say to her, “Our chimps know the difference between my field staff and strangers. I’m sure your gorillas would.” Anyway, the poachers at that time were poaching for money. So, if she gave them jobs and they got to know what the gorillas were like, they’d love them, just like the Gombe field staff do with the chimps.

How have your relationships with chimps and other animals, and your understanding of them, affected your relationships with people?

I’m not sure I can answer that. What I know from working with animals is that we should show more respect for the amazing beings with which we share the planet. How working with them has affected my relationships with people … I’m not sure that it has. How were you meaning?

I was just curious if the long time you’ve spent studying animals, and your insights into their behavior, have had any effect you can discern on your interactions with your family and friends?

What it may have done is that I do watch people; I like to watch body language and that kind of thing.

Do we share a certain amount of body language with chimps?

Oh, so much! I love to look for chimplike behavior in people just like I enjoy looking for humanlike behavior in chimps.

Your son lives in Tanzania. Is he involved in any of the activities at Gombe?

No, not a bit. He just doesn’t like it.

That’s just like a kid.

Yes, that’s the way they are. But it’s interesting. He’s got two children now, my grandchildren; and his son, who’s 7 — I think it jumps a generation — this little boy is passionate about animals. He’s a fantastic boy.

Where will you be spending New Year’s Eve?

I’ll be at home, in England. I call it home because I grew up there and my mother still lives there. I couldn’t be anywhere except with her.

What’s a good resolution for humanity as the new millennium approaches?

The most important thing we have to realize, if we really do want to save the planet for our great-grandchildren — with a quality of life not too different from what we have today — is that we’ve got to stop leaving the decisions up to the decision makers. We’ve got to become the decision makers. We’ve got to realize that what we do each day really does impact the world. For example, we can make ethical choices as to what we buy and don’t buy. We can change business quicker than any kind of legislation. In a consumer-driven society, businesses aren’t going to make things that people don’t buy.

We’ve got to somehow stop thinking that because there are 6 billion people in the world, what we do can’t make any difference. As education progresses around the world, which it really is, people are understanding what’s dangerous to the environment. They understand what they should and shouldn’t do. But we still have people thinking, “It doesn’t matter what I do, it’s just me.” If we can change that thinking around, it will have an enormous impact.

Me Tarzan, You Jane Goodall

"Doctor!" he cried, "I've just had a message from a cousin of mine ... They have heard of you, and beg you to come to Africa ..." 
-- Chee-Chee, the monkey, reading a message delivered by a sparrow from "The Story of Doctor Dolittle," by Hugh Lofting (1920)

By the time I was 10 or 11, I had read all of the Doctor Dolittle books, and watched most of the old black-and-white Tarzan movies several times over. During those years I also carefully perused National Geographic each month for the same reason as every other boy my age: half-dressed native women. The photos of naked natives were a thrill, but it was the pictures of an ethereal-looking, fully clothed English woman surrounded by chimpanzees that ignited my first crush.

Unfortunately, things never really went anywhere with Jane Goodall and me. I wrote her a letter suggesting that I visit her (during which we'd presumably marry) just as soon as I finished fifth grade, but at the time the logistics of posting mail to the other side of the world were a bit more than I could manage. Now, decades later, it's a comfort to learn that we did share something: Our attraction to animals and life in the wild came from the same sources. "Even when I was very tiny," Goodall remembers, "I was absolutely fascinated by animals. I think I first began to dream of going to Africa after reading Tarzan and Doctor Dolittle."

Like Hugh Lofting's good doctor, Jane Goodall answered a calling, which she has continued to answer for nearly 40 years. In so doing she's led one of the 20th century's more remarkable lives, while becoming its most famous conservationist and the leading authority on chimpanzees, as well as the author of several books, including the classic "In the Shadow of Man." Stephen Jay Gould wrote that her research on chimps "represents one of the Western world's great scientific achievements." Yet her departures from conventional science have been as important as her contributions to it.

Her story is almost a legend. Born in London and raised in Bournemouth, England, Goodall financed her first trip to Africa in 1957 with money she earned working as a waitress. While there she arranged to meet Dr. Louis Leakey, the celebrated paleontologist and anthropologist. He was so impressed with Goodall's knowledge of African wildlife that he hired her on the spot as his assistant secretary. Soon after, during an expedition to Olduvai Gorge, they began discussing a study of the chimpanzees that lived near Lake Tanganyika, and the sort of person Leakey had in mind to undertake such research. "I want someone unbiased by academic learning," he said. "Someone with uncommon patience and dedication."

By 1960, Goodall was ready to establish a research camp at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe National Park) in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). In an autobiographical sketch on the Jane Goodall Institute website, she recalls her feelings at the time: "My childhood dream was as strong as ever ... to watch free, wild animals living their own, undisturbed lives. I wanted to learn things that no one else knew, uncover secrets through patient observation. I wanted to come as close to talking to animals as I could." And off she went.

Or so she thought. In fact, there was a hitch -- the first of many. The government authorities would not permit her to live in the remote area without a European companion. That was resolved, however, when another dauntless Goodall -- Jane's mother, Vanne -- offered to accompany her daughter for the first few months. The two then received news of a squabble among the local fishermen at Gombe and were asked to delay their arrival. No sooner were they cleared to proceed than they were again delayed, this time by an outbreak of violence in the Congo across Lake Tanganyika from the town of Kigoma. As daughter and mother waited in Kigoma for the rioting to subside in the Congo, the expense of a hotel depleted Jane's funds and they were forced to economize by camping on the grounds of the local prison. "Not as bad as it sounds," Goodall recalls, "since the grounds, which are beautifully kept, overlook the lake and at that time of year the citrus trees all around were groaning under the weight of sweet-smelling oranges and tangerines. The mosquitoes in the evening were terrible, though."

Maybe they were the same ones that brought the malaria to Jane and Vanne, or perhaps it was the mosquitoes at Gombe, which, after overcoming a host of other obstacles, they finally reached. In any case, the preceding doesn't begin to inventory the challenges Goodall faced before and after arriving at the reserve, but we do start to get a sense of just what an uncommon character she is: preternaturally optimistic, gently tenacious, a singular combination of toughness and tenderness, patience and perseverance, that has everything to do with what she was about to achieve.

Today, it's easy to see that Goodall belongs in the pantheon with other intrepid souls -- Louis Leakey, Albert Schweitzer, Mary Kingsley come to mind -- but at the time, well, imagine it: She was a 26-year-old English girl (as she refers to herself then), she'd completed a secretarial course, but had no other academic credentials (later she would be one of just eight people in the history of Cambridge University to receive a doctorate without first taking an undergraduate degree). She had a small grant that Leakey had arranged, but with the notable exceptions of her mother and Leakey, no confidence from any quarter that she had the least chance of success.

The locals were suspicious of her and the chimpanzees didn't exactly welcome her with open arms. And let's not even get started on the leopards wandering hither and thither, the cobras slithering around her feet (literally) and the recurring fevers. To make matters worse, the regional wildlife authorities, who believed that chimps were extremely dangerous creatures, insisted that she be joined by an escort on her forest walks, which doubled the chances of frightening off the shy primates she hoped to observe, increasing the likelihood of her failure. Needless to say, the smart money was not riding on Goodall making a go of it.

Nevertheless, into the wilds she went and there she sat and sat and sat, day in and day out, "trying to overcome the chimpanzees' inherent fear of me, the fear that made them vanish into the undergrowth whenever I approached ... That I did not fail was due in part to patience: I sat on open ridges, observing through binoculars, not trying to get too close, so that the chimpanzees gradually got used to seeing me."

Patience schmatience, let's face it, Goodall is cut from different cloth than the rest of us. You and I go to pieces when we run out of half-and-half and must use 2 percent milk in our morning mocha java; we come undone when the cellphone battery goes dead. 

Goodall typically started the day before sunrise with a slice of bread and a cup of coffee, and wouldn't eat again until returning to camp in the evening, a regimen that soon eliminated her escort. She then climbed her favorite peak, from which she could see the two valleys the group of chimps frequented. As she sat there all day long in the same spot in the African heat, wearing the same neutral colored clothing, the chimpanzees became used to the benign if odd creature that was now part of the Gombe landscape.

Gradually, Goodall moved closer to the group. But more than six months would pass before the boldest of the chimpanzees -- David Graybeard, to whom she dedicates "In the Shadow of Man," and his pal, Goliath -- finally let her get nearer than 1,500 feet. It happened by accident as she walked out from behind a fig tree: "Less than twenty yards away from me two male chimpanzees were sitting on the ground staring at me intently ... I waited for the sudden panic-stricken flight that normally followed a surprise encounter between myself and the chimpanzees at close quarters. But nothing of the sort happened ... Very slowly I sat down, and after a few more moments, the two calmly began to groom one another ... I could almost hear them breathing ... this was the proudest moment I had known. I had been accepted." Over the succeeding months and years, as the entire group let her move closer still, she followed them on their daily travels through the forest, and as she did she made one breakthrough discovery after another.

Many of Goodall's observations -- made widely available over the decades through her books, National Geographic articles and television documentaries -- are now more or less common knowledge, but before she went to Gombe almost nothing accurate was known of chimpanzees. It was Goodall who discovered that chimps make and use tools, fashioning twigs to lift termites out of their mounds. It was Goodall who saw them construct nests each night in the treetops where they slept (she sometimes curled up in the nests herself after the chimps had left). It was Goodall who found that, like Homo sapiens, with whom they share 98 percent of their genes, chimpanzees use weapons, hunt and are meat eaters, though their diet is largely vegetarian. She also was the first to document their complex family relationships and emotional attachments, and the meaning of their facial expressions and calls. Goodall discovered as well that chimps share mankind's darker traits: One group may attack another over a sustained period of time, and although it's rare, she witnessed instances of cannibalism.

Her achievements and the duration of the research, which has never really ended, would be remarkable regardless of Goodall's methods, yet her methods are what distinguish her. To the extent that it was feasible, she studied the chimpanzees of Gombe on their terms. She came as close to them as she could, interrupting their lives as little as possible, while participating as much as she was allowed. Indeed, in direct opposition to prevailing scientific practice, she developed an emotional relationship with them. She didn't number them, she named them. She virtually moved in with them, and once they'd accepted her, they were regular visitors to her camp. She aided them as best she could when a polio epidemic swept through the group, and has otherwise devoted her life to preserving theirs. Yet she never lost her scientific discipline and keen intellectual rigor.

More remarkable still, in the midst of it all, Jane Goodall has had a life of her own, with the ups and downs of any life. She's been married twice. First to wildlife photographer and filmmaker Baron Hugo van Lawick, with whom she has a son, also named Hugo, nicknamed "Grub" (he's now in his 30s). And then to Derek Bryceson, a member of the Tanzanian parliament and director of national parks, who died in 1980, just five years after their marriage. She is a prolific author and lecturer, and today travels almost constantly, speaking out on behalf of chimpanzees, conservation and kindness to animals. Much of her work is with children.

In writing about Jane Goodall it's nearly impossible not to produce a hagiography, so why try? Her life has been exemplary, to say the least, and continues to be. She is one of those extraordinary individuals who seems to have known almost since childhood what she wanted to do, and has pursued it relentlessly with intelligence, good humor and a degree of hope that approaches religious conviction. Her point, all along, has been a simple one: "Given the dramatic similarities in physiology between ourselves and chimpanzees," she writes in her most recent book, "Visions of Caliban," "particularly similarities in the brain and central nervous system, it seems absurd to suppose that the emotions underlying [our] similar behaviors are not themselves similar."

Chimpanzees and other animals, she suggests, are not dimly conscious demicreatures, but sentient beings whose emotional lives are highly complex and may resemble our own more than we care to admit. What we're beginning to grasp, however, thanks largely to Jane Goodall, is that the human drama is not the only significant one on the planet, and that our lives may be more inextricably, irrevocably, entwined with animals than we have ever acknowledged.

Late one night, not long ago, I happened to see one of the old Tarzan movies, one that I'd seen several times as a boy: "Tarzan and His Mate," made in 1934 with Maureen O'Sullivan in the role of Jane. And it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with that letter I wrote way back in the early '60s. I wonder if Goodall, wherever she was that night -- in an airport hotel in Dallas or Boston, or staying with friends in Los Angeles or Seattle -- might have also watched that movie? If so, this bit of dialogue, from a scene in which one of Jane's suitors and his friend are trying to convince her to return with them to England, may have amused her:

Harry: Don't you ever miss the fun you used to have?

Jane: I have fun.

Harry: Those June nights in England ...

Jane: Moonlight on the Thames.

Harry: Dance, glass of champagne, sitting with real people and listening to the music.

Jane: Real people? I wonder.

Arlington: Well, at least the men are civilized.

Jane: Does that make them any better?