The Temptation of Jack Orkney by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007396474
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2002-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

The Thoughts of a Near-Human

Some years ago I read a book of memoirs or travel about which 1 remember nothing except that somewhere in the then Soviet Caucasus there lived a creature more like a man than an ape, a ‘Yeti’ who came down from its home in the mountains to observe the lives of villagers. It sometimes helped them with their work in the fields, might spend a night in a hut, and ate their food. They regarded him as a friend. This was the Second World War. Soldiers came and in spite of the villagers’ protests killed the creature. Meanwhile rumours of the Yeti had reached civilization. Scientists came to the village, but no one could remember where the soldiers had buried the corpse. The scientists went away again.

Doris Lessing

Excerpts from an article in the Sunday Times, 29th March 1992 by Stuart Wavell:

Boom, boom, boom. These conversational tones of the elusive Alma, a species of retarded Neanderthal man, will reverberate around the world if a Franco-Russian expedition succeeds in its mission this summer to capture a cousin of the Yeti, Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot in the remote Caucasus mountains of Kazahkstan.

Leading the hunt is Marie-Jeanne Koffmann, a 73-year old doctor who has collected 500 eyewitness accounts of the mythical creature during her 20 years of traversing the sparsely populated wastes of Kabardin-Balkar by horse and jeep. Always one step behind her quarry, she has taken impressions of their huge footprints and studied their voluminous droppings. Her quest has been given fresh impetus by the claim of her colleague Gregori Patchenkoff that he observed an Alma in the same region for six minutes last August. ‘Its appearance corresponded exactly to that of other witnesses,’ Sylvain Pallix, organizer of the Alma ’92 Expedition, said last week. ‘It was a big primate, a biped that walked perfectly on two feet. It was 5 feet 8 inches – 6 feet 6 inches, covered with reddish hair about 6 inches long. Its face was a mixture of an ape’s and Neanderthal man’s … Patchenkoff found it in a sheepfold where horses were kept. Almas are attracted to horses because they love to make little braids in their manes …’ According to Dr Koffmann Almas are in the habit of raiding shepherds’ huts for food scraps and clothes, which they sometimes wear although well insulated with fur …

Its newborn young, according to one witness’s testimony were exactly like human babies, except that they were smaller. They had pink skin, like human infants, exactly the same head, the same arms and legs. Not hairy … It lives at heights of 8,000–12,000 feet, sometimes seeking refuge at much higher levels.

The £1m expedition will therefore be carrying a technological panoply which includes infra-red cameras, miniature helicopter ‘drones’ containing cameras, motorised hang-gliders, four-wheel vehicles and motorbikes. Their most important piece of equipment is a gun which fires hypodermic darts. ‘Our aim is to capture an Alma with the help of the local population. We want to take a

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