After Johnson served breakfast, Koestler took a stroll around the compound, barking orders at everyone in sight. The Africans ducked their heads submissively in his presence. Good, he had them cowed. He would ride them hard for a few weeks to reestablish his absolute power. If he had given them their inch, he would get a yard back from them. When he stuck his head into the mission school for a minute, Brother Cole, who was demonstrating to the children how to write the letter “e” in cursive, took one look at the doctor and dropped his chalk. Koestler imagined that he saw the man’s knees buckle. No doubt Father Stuart, with all his carping, had blown Koestler up into a bogeyman. He rarely showed himself at the school. The children whipped their heads around, and when they caught sight of the “big boss,” their heads just as quickly whirled back. Koestler tersely barked, “Good morning, please continue. I’m just checking on things. Don’t mind me.” Ha! Feared by all.

By the time Koestler completed his Gestapo stroll, the compound was as quiet as a ghost town. He went into the clinic at nine, and with the help of the nurses completed over forty-five procedures by four-thirty. No record by any means, but a good day’s work.

Late that afternoon, Koestler took his dinner in the gazebo as usual and got drunk with Hartman and the two new young docs, who had spent the greater part of the day with the mission’s administrator. Both Americans were shocked by the heat, the long flight, and, no doubt, by the interminable introductions to the staff and the singsong ramblings of that repetitive bore Father Stuart, who delighted in giving visitors a guided tour of the compound. The doctors seemed happy to be knocking back high-proof alcohol, and when Koestler fixed the usual bowl of banana mash and Canadian Mist before bridge, a number of rhesus monkeys rushed in from the jungle to accept the magical paste and soon were drunk and rushing around the compound fighting and copulating. Babbitt, who had ditched his cervical collar, was having none of the paste. The baboon seemed chastened and wiser. Koestler noted this with satisfaction and felt completely reconciled with his pet.

One of the newbies, a wide-eyed young doctor from Hammond, Indiana, said, “I see that the whole fabric of the social structure breaks down when they drink. It’s like some grotesque parody of humans, but with none of the subtleties—just the elementals.”