It didn't make much sense to him when the tip of the tea maker popped up and the kettle blew its noisy whistle. His body shot to the floor, scared that one of the guns that gone off. He waited for the rustles of the leaves where the shot had gone into, but all he heard was the exuberant laughter of the professor as he rushed forwards to get the cup of coffee he had been waiting for.

"Goodness gracious, what a ghastly noise that confounded contraption makes!" Dr. Porter rushed to catch the maddened kettle as it bobbled up in the air and jumped this way and that, busting with the hot liquid. "I can never make it stop this crazy behaviour." He grabbed the arm of the kettle, but dropped it quickly as it burned his fingers.

From where he crouched in the floor, still looking for the source of the noise, but coming to understand slowly that the source was the professor, Tarzan looked at the old man. He narrowed his eyes as he saw the old man dance from left to right and make funny noises as he tried to stop the kettle from spilling his tea. The young man straightened his back but turned his head sideways, finding the ritual very amusing but painful.

"Blast it, Doctor!" Cecil Clayton exited from his tent with a towel still around his head. He glared at the old man, rolling his eyes. "Can't we ever start a new day in this confounded jungle without noise and some weird event?" He finished towelling his head, rolling his eyes as the old man burned his fingers yet again as he tried to get the tea.

"Oh, ho, so sorry Cecil! Good morning!"

Tarzan gasped as the kettle jumped off the table and was just about to hit the floor. The old man's brows flew immediately, but he wasn't fast enough. He reached forward wanting to catch the pot, but it bounced out of his hands, and he tripped with a hammock in the way. He gasped as he watched as Tarzan moved quickly and caught the pot in his hands. The young man winced as he felt the heat travel through his hands, but he bit his lips.

"Good show!" Dr. Porter yelled. He reached down to take the kettle, this time with a rag in his hands. "Good catch, m' boy, and a good morning to you too!"

Tarzan smiled at the old man and allowed him to take the kettle with safety. He watched as his hands became reddened from the heat. He drew them close to his face, worried whether the colour would stay there forever. He was tempted to put them into his mouth, but he was watching Clayton from the side of his eye. The hunter was looking at him, expecting him to act in such a way. people didn't put their hands in their mouths at all, so instead he bit hard on his tongue and smiled wider at Dr. Porter, and hope he responded good morning.

"Good thing you're so quick, boy," Clayton said and he pulled a seat for himself. "That thing will burn you one of these days, doctor."

Tarzan tried to straighten his back as much as he could, watching the way that Clayton sat in his seat, and tried as much as to imitate what the man was doing. But, he kept an eye on him so he wouldn't catch him doing so. He wanted to reach out and pull a seat for himself as well, but he didn't want to seat by him. Instead, he looked out for Jane who would not doubt appear from her own tent any time soon towelling herself as well as they usually did, and join them in their morning breakfast.

"I say, doctor," Clayton said. "All that racket would've woken up Jane no doubt." The old man blushed, but he ran a hand over his head and laughed.

"Yes, that it'd would," he said. "But I'm afraid she's been awake far before us. Since dawn, I believe. She's gone off to draw, I think."

Tarzan could feel his face drop. He would've wished for the girl to come bouncing through the tent flaps and inquire about breakfast and the silly noisy pot. He could feel his body shrink into itself. He frowned, feeling hungry.

"That girl," Clayton said. "She'll get herself into trouble one of these days. Who knows what dangerous animals roam out there in the jungle. She should tell me when she wants to go out."

Tarzan frowned. Clayton acted sometimes as if Jane was some sort of thing he owned, like the many guns he kept in his tent or the canteen he carried in his waist. He didn't much like that, but he didn't pay much attention to his thinking. Jane had wondered out into the jungle even the rest of them had not woken up, into his world. He turned away from the group, ready to go back into the trees.

"Leaving us, old boy?"

He didn't look back at Clayton. The man leaned forwards into the table before him. Somehow, that man didn't strike him too much, no matter how concerned he sounded towards Jane. His voice sounded strange. Nodding at the professor as his excuse to leave, Tarzan headed away from the camp and towards the trees.

Funny. Funny spider line pictures, that's what she makes. One line here and another there with an exaggerated movement of her arm, making it reach way up in the air almost as if it were flapping like a bird. Another line, with a pull from the pencil, only she bites down on her tongue this time and looks so furious. Leaning against the tree so that he could not be seen, Tarzan could not help but narrow his eyes and look down at her closer. Jane seemed like an ant from up where he was, but he could see what she was doing perfectly, even though he couldn't see what she was drawing. He crouched down on the branch, leaning very close to the bark so he could get a better look. She moved very quickly and drew the pages back and over the flat surface she was using as if in a rush, but she was smiling. He could tell, her grin could be seen even when he was looking at the back of her head.

Jane sighed and folded her arms before her and breathed out an exasperated rush of air. She wasn't getting what she wanted, he could tell. She changed her drawing stick with one of the various she placed handy by base of the branch. She ran a hand over her head and he wondered what it felt like to wear the thing on her head, that hat. It felt uncomfortable to him. He could feel the sweat mounted on her brow; even this early in the morning the jungle was smouldering hot, and the hat wasn't helping to keep it away. She shifted in the dead tree branch she was using as a seat and stood up after a while, walking forwards toward the tree in front of her. Bending down a few times, she raised the pencil on her hand near the bush at the base of the trunk. The stalky, thin stem plants shifted as she brushed against them, but she brought them back to the way they were and placed the pencil against them a few times. Tarzan frowned as she laughed for no reason and reached back to her pencils and paper and bent over them excitedly, making her arms flap faster and faster.

"Oh?"

Tarzan lifted his head, watching as her distraction was interrupted. From between the stalk plants, a small animal appeared, it head shifting from side to side as he looked up and down at Jane, not knowing what to make of her. She had never much seen one of them, only read about them in books and seen an occasional drawing made by some anthropologist who'd ventured into the jungle. Most of those books had pictures not much worth while, since most of the researchers never much drew the animals when they saw them. It was later on that artists created figures from the accounts the scientists gave them, making the animal appear, most of time, nothing quite like what it really was. Jane brushed the sweat from her brow again, lifting her hat, and looked at the small creature silently. He could feel her mouth take on a smile and saw bring out a new sheet of paper and begin to sketch, every now and then looking at the animal, who in turn looked at her. Tarzan lowered himself closer to the branch as the young woman rose from the ground, her paper still under her arm. The creature had turned away from her and darted out, but rushed into the bamboo trees.

"No, wait!"

Jane didn't think about it twice. Still clutching the new sheet with her left hand and the pencil with her right, she wondered after the small animal, hoping that she'd get a chance to catch up with it. She left the rest of her drawings and pencils and materials where they lay by the branch. She knew no one could possibly take them and she couldn't miss the chance of making sure that a decent rendition of the animal was finally drawn for all those stuffy books. Tarzan sat, watching as she scrambled after the tiny animal. He was about to jump to another branch so he could follow her, but he stopped. Jane had left the sheets of paper she had already used with her pencils by the branch where she had been sitting. The young man lifted and eyebrow, wondering what the lines and circles she drew looked like up close. He looked at the bamboo where Jane had disappeared into to, but he crouched on the branch again. He had never seen one of her drawings from up close before, not really. He'd only seen her flap and laugh and bite her tongue and he though she looked silly, but never understood why she did those things. Narrowing his eyes as if he were hunting, the young man crawled down from the tree.

Funny darts of black and white, that's what she made. He'd seen them before, perched up by the huge flat boards in the camp next to tons of paper and other things he knew nothing about. She'd be up until late at night for hours drawing and writing and on the next day he'd find new papers pinned on the boards, and Dr. Porter would talk about the lines and smile. But Tarzan would still not know why she did them and had not dared to go near them.

Lying on its side, a few papers sticking out from the folders, Jane's fieldwork notebook looked like a dead animal. It seemed out of place between the green grass and the brown, moss covered branches on the ground. A small tin pot with a long neck lay beside it with a whole array of sharp pencil sticks, some large and thin, other small and thick. Among the colourful pencils stood one with a snarled, chewed-on end, one Jane had a fancy to grind between her teeth when she couldn't get the right line. He'd seen her do such things sometimes. Tarzan crouched closer to the materials, every now and then glancing towards the bamboo to make sure Jane was not coming back. He could hear her laboured breathing as she marched after the animal trying to silent.

He couldn't tell what it was at first. His hands gripped the bunch of papers together at the same time and drew the notebook closer. But, as hard as he looked as he turned the unfinished drawing this way and that, he could still not make out what they were. Lines. Funny lines, stretching up to the corners and down to the bottom, and circles. He blinked and flipped the page. And drew in his breath. Staring back at him from the paper were the most brilliant eyes of a bird he'd ever seen. He'd seen that bird a few times, the red feathers and the yellow crown-head, and the eyes as they looked down at him from the trees. Drawing the notebook away from his face, he reached out with his finger to touch the small creature, almost as if he were really inside the paper.

He moved the paper carefully almost afraid to hurt the bird. A tiny lemur with its small arms wrapped around his head. A lean bird in his nest looking away from him. A tall gazelle with its antlers towards the ground. Funny looking cubical shapes with trees and scribbles around it. Water, and trees, and birds. A tiny worm. Long creatures unlike himself, like Jane. Bananas. A ball shaped palm tree with five sticks extending from it. Strange. The powerful neck of a giraffe eating grass. Jane.

He stopped, drawing the paper closer to his face, and touched the surface, running his fingers over the pencilled hair of the girl in the picture. Jane. He could tell, even if she was more of a caricature, with her hands on her sides as if she were exhausted from a long trip and her forehead full of sweat, and so beautiful. He couldn't read the words she had written next to herself, "All weather should be like Ghana's", but he found himself smiling. It was Jane. But, there was yet another picture. Still smiling at the joke Jane captured but he could not understand, he flipped to the last paper. The lines had become larger, the circles wider and connected savagely as they drew out a figure larger than the ones he'd seen before, beneath its body, curled circularly, its arms and legs. Fingers curled and thick, feet so large. And those eyes, they looked so lost. Almost sad. The creature's eyes looked so sad.

Lifting his hand slowly, he reached up to touch his face, running his fingers down the lines of his skin. It was him. The last drawing was him. He flipped the papers back and found that of Jane again. Jane, with small arms and a skinny set of lines that flowed from left to right in tender strokes. Him, with large circles and twisted and slanted lines and thick contours. He narrowed his eyes, running his finger down his own face. He'd seen himself in the river a thousand times. Jane looked so nice and funny; he looked so grotesque and ugly. Without even thinking about it, his hands had curled into themselves, twisting the paper. He wanted to rip the drawing.

"Oh, no! No, no, no! Please, stop!"

He dropped the notebook as quickly as the yell had come and darted away from it. Jane had rushed towards her drawings and kneeled down to pick up the papers that now lay semi-scattered in the ground. She didn't look at him as she frantically tried to collect the papers and shuffle them back into order, mumbling things he could not understand. He felt his legs drawing away from her, moving beneath him, guilty that he had been caught. He should go, climb up to the trees and disappear.

"These are so precious to me," Jane said when she had all of the sheets together at last, but she stopped and turned to look at him. He could feel her wondering about him. Wondering what he was thinking, as always. He wondered that himself, but he could not leave the spot where he had retreated to, a few inches away from her and the drawings.

"I'm... sorry," she said. She must have scared him. "Are you all right?" She bit her lip, and lowered her eyes. Of course he was not all right. She's yelled at him and scared the living daylights out of him when all he wanted was to see what she kept in her notebook. He crouched silently, still looking at her, but his eyes were shifting down to the papers on her hands.

"They're my drawings," she said weakly. She felt so silly. "Then again, you know that, probably." She chuckled nervously. "You want to see them?"

He blinked, not understanding her, but drew closer as she offered the notebook to him and extended her arms out. She was blushing again, and he wondered why. But he moved towards her.

"They're silly, really," she said and flipped a few sheets from of each other. "Mostly sketches I've done in the northern regions when father visited Kalahari. Rather silly bits and pieces of our journey as we trudged through the heat."

"Jane," he said. She had not flipped to the picture of herself, trying to avoid it on purpose. It was the silliest of all, she thought. Thank goodness her other notebook, the one with all the funny Clayton's, was still in her tent. But she fell silent as he spoke her name and reached out to point at the papers. "Jane."

"...Yes..." She watched as he slowly flipped the sheets aside and found the drawing he had seen, her hair a mess and her face tired and full of heat. He drew the paper out almost with a childlike reverence for something he knows is treasured by his mother, and stared at the lines silently.

"Jane dry mouth," he said almost in a whisper. But, his eyes had taken on a smile, a childish joviality that seemed to take the squiggles and caricature into themselves. She could not help but smile as well.

"Yes," she said with a laugh. "Jane was very thirsty in Ghana. The heat was unbelievable and we'd left our cantinas with the bundles back in the camp, silly us. Ugly, ugly horrible heat."

But he was not looking at her anymore, nor at the picture. Narrowing his eyes, he reached out towards the papers again. Jane could not understand the sudden silence that came to those eyes. "Tarzan," he said. And he found the drawing he meant, its edges rumpled where he'd gripped it.

Jane frowned, watching how he held the sheet in his hands, staring at the lines she had drawn as if they could come out of the paper and hurt him. She didn't know what to say, wished she could hear his mind, what he was thinking. Her first attempt at drawing him had been incredibly hideous, less than her usual attention to detail and line contour. She had just tried to capture his figure, not really even knowing why, in quick sketches.

"Yes," she said, feeling her voice sound weak. "...Tarzan. It's... you..."

His eyes were staring at her. Questioning. He had lowered the paper to the ground and looked at her, as if demanding an explanation. But, he couldn't ask what he wanted to know. He didn't know how. How come the lines were so different, why did the spiders twisted and clambered on each other so hideously, why did he look so ugly. Why didn't he look like her. Jane felt her heart beat hard in her chest, could almost feel the unspoken hurt in those eyes. But, she didn't know. Didn't know what he wanted to hear.

"Looks so ugly," he said. Jane felt her body become still, her eyes narrowing slowly. He ran his fingers on the paper, not looking at her. Looking at the paper, at the lines that were supposed to be him. His eyes looked so sad. So lost. Looking at them, darting away from hers, she could feel herself lost as well.

"No, no," she said, forcing her words to sound louder, stronger. "This is a bad drawing." He looked at her hands as they reached down to take the piece of paper from him. The sound of her heart hurt on her temples, so loud. "See?" She pointed at the awkward shape of his shoulders where she'd tried to draw them "Bad drawing. Terrible sketch lines, no measurement and alignment in the figure, no proper shadow techniques. Really, quite ghastly work... by and amateur..."

He was looking at her again, his eyes silent and still. Questioning her. Asking her for an answer she was not sure she could give, and felt he did not understand.

"Bad drawing?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that's it. A bad drawing..." I could never capture you in paper. She knew her chest was heaving madly, her breath coming in shallow bursts, but she darted her hands behind her body and reached for the pot of pencils. A new sheet of paper, her hands working without knowing, moving like the fluttering of butterflies. Dark lines, dark circles, her eyes half closed, her lips pursed against each other. Frowning and furious, biting her tongue. Her eyes half closed.

"... you ..."

He looked at her again as she presented the new drawing. Her arms were shaking, but she was holding a smile on her lips. He looked at her harder, looking deep into those eyes, and reached down to the shaking sheet of paper and the hasty drawing. His hands moved slowly as he reached out to take a hold of it. His body was so still as he drew the paper close to his face. Lines, circles.

"Tarzan..." he whispered. She smiled.

"It's you..."

Lowering the picture, he looked at her again. Looked at her smile and her eyes. Looked at the drawing of Jane in Kalahari, her face sweaty and her arms thin and pretty. Looked at her smile and eyes. His fingers ran softly over the surface of Jane's drawing, over his eyes on the paper and his hair. He smiled. Lines, circles, sharp and twisted. Funny. Funny spider line pictures.

"It's you..." he said. "It's me."
 
 
 

Author's Note

June 15, 1999: Two days until we see the film and this is getting deliriously silly. I believe we shall destroy the tape where we've recorded E!'s Behind the Scenes and the Movie Surfers if we watch it any more. This story is yet another attempt at capturing my emotions and Tarzan's emotions, specially towards himself and Jane. My friend, Jane, is such a wonderful person. I based my story on her, like all the others, and I hope she doesn't hit me silly for that. After all, we haven't seen the film yet...
 

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