Young Tarzan Ponders


An unreleased manuscript fragment by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Hand written and partially typed by Mr. Burroughs.
October 28, 1930
Shared by Danton Burroughs and Transcribed for Web viewing by Bill Hillman (2005)

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Kudu, the sun, rode high in the cloudless heavens above an African jungle lying mysterious beneath the concealing canopy of its foliage; hiding its secrets from even the all-seeing eye of Kudu, the ever curious, moving slowly over the world, striving to penetrate the quietly billowing waves of verdure that hid the jungle from him; only occasionally vouchsafing a fleeting glimpse of the myriad life that moved constantly among the eternal shadows.

To the likeness of Sheeta, the leopard, Kudu mottled the bronzed skin of a naked youth sitting at the foot of the bole of a hoary patriarch of the forest -- a sylvan demi-god beneath a shock of tousled black hair, sitting with chin in cupped palms, a personification of melancholy.

Tarzan of the apes was depressed -- a state of mind that constituted a new experience in his brief life for youth and health, coupled with a vast curiosity and an unflagging interest in life and all its multifarious jungle activities, had heretofore maintained his ebullient spirits remote from any suggestion of dejection.

He was lonely. And yet all about him was the great apes of the tribe of Kerchak. These were his people.

Kala, his foster mother, was there, peeling the bark from a nearby tree in search of luscious grubs; Teeka, sleek and young and beautiful, whom he liked almost as much as he liked Kala, though with a difference that sometimes puzzled him when he took the time to think about it, was there; there, too, were Taug and Bo-lat, play fellows of those childhood days that, though he did not realize it, were already gone, for Tarzan was no longer a child, no longer the little Balu fierce Kala had nursed and protected during the years of his weakness.

Long since had Taug and Bo-lat laid aside childish things. Now they were fierce, hairy bulls, already bulking larger even in the presence of Kerchak the king, or that other mighty mangani, Terkoz, who, looking with jealous eyes upon Kerchak, would be king.

In the meager language of the mangani there were no words to describe the sadness weighing so heavily upon the heart of the foster son of Kala or its cause, but the truth was that Tarzan was the victim of an acute inferiority complex. Too often had he looked in the still waters of the pool; too much had he brooded upon what they had revealed -- the white, hairless skin, the grey pupils rimmed with white, the puny nose and that totally inadequate mouth armed with utterly futile teeth that transformed a snarl into nothing more than a provocation to derision. How might a bull impress an antagonist with teeth like his!

Tarzan cast envious glances at Taug and Bo-lat. How beautiful those beetling brows and deep-sunk eyes, the generous noses of them -- especially Bo-lat's! It spread almost across his face. It was his choicest possession and that the tribe felt a certain communal pride in it was evidenced by the seal of their approval in the name they had conferred upon him -- Bo-lat -- which means Flat-nose in the primitive language of the mangani, the great apes.

Disconsolate, Tarzan moved closer to Kala and squatted down beside her. "Why am I not like Taug and Bo-lat?" he demanded presently. "Why is Tarzan so hideous?"

"You cannot help it," relied Kala, "your father was a Tarmangani."

"Did he have a white skin and a pinched nose and a little mouth?" demanded Tarzan. "Were his eyes white rimmed and hideous?"

"Yes," replied Kala, "he was a great white ape."

"Where is he?" asked Tarzan. "Where is the Tarmangani who is my father?"

"Kerchak killed him, when you were a little balu, in the lair by the wide water where you go so often."

"Are there other Tarmangani?" asked Tarzan, for with the growing consciousness that he differed from his fellows of the tribe of Kerchak came the first stirrings of an urge to find others of his own kind.

"I have seen only one," replied Kala, "but there are the Gomangani."

"What are they?"

"They, too, are hairless like the Tarmangani, your father, but their skins are black."

"Where are they?"

"Once Kerchak led us far from the hunting grounds of our people. It was a hungry year when there were no cabbage palms, nor gray plums, and the pisaugs? and scunatimes? withered in the bud. We were compelled to hunt in a strange country. Then, for the first time, I saw the Gomangani." Kala growled and bared her great fighting fangs and Tarzan knew that the Gomangani were enemies of the tribe of Kerchak.

"But you saw no mangani like Tarzan?" he insisted.

"I saw none," replied Kala, "but Tublat, going close to the strange lairs of the Gomangani one night when Goro was fat in the sky and cast her full light upon the jungle, said that he saw a she Tarmangani -- a young she with skin like the skin of Tarzan and hair upon her head that was like the light of Kudu bursting through the dark clouds that bring usha, the wind, and ara, the lightning.

"A young she who looks like Tarzan," mused the youth. He glanced at Teeka and his brows knit in a frown of speculation as he sought to visualize a she as hideous as himself.

Yet the thought of her stimulated his imagination and aroused within him a desire to investigate and perhaps as well an instinctive biological urge that attracted him to one of his own kind.

For some time he sat in silent meditation pondering the matter; then he sought out Tublat, his foster father. Between Tublat and Tarzan was an enmity as old as the youth.

From the time that his own father had been killed as he sat mourning her death beside the body of his young wife, and Kala had snatched him from his cradle, Tublat had hated him with a savage jealousy that had increased with the passing years during which Kala had been forced to devote all her attention to the puny, helpless man-thing instead of bringing sturdy young apes into the world.

During the intervening years Tublat had sought on numerous occasions to destroy the man-child. At first Kala had thwarted him, and gradually Tarzan had developed such strength, agility, and cunning that of late Tublat had learned to fear that in an encounter he might prove the victim rather than the victor; but all this only added to his hatred which was in no way lessened by the tricks with which Tarzan was constantly annoying him.

So when Tarzan approached him now and asked where lay the lairs of the Gomangani in which he had seen the golden haired she-tarmangani, Tublat only bared his fighting fangs and growled. 

End of ERB's unfinished manuscript