西班牙男子憶“狼人”童年生活
Stories abound of humans brought up by wild animals, but often they are pure fiction. It's rare to find someone who re-entered society after living in the company of animals and is able to talk cogently about his experiences - including, apparently, sharing food with a family of wolves.
The first time Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja sat in front of a bowl of soup, he didn't know what to do. He looked carefully, cupped his hand and plunged it into the bowl. The contact with the boiling liquid made him jump and the plate ended up in little pieces on the floor.
It was 1965 and he was 19, but he hadn't sat down at a table to eat since he was a small child. He had been living for up to 12 years alone in the mountains with only wolves, goats, snakes and other animals for company.
When he was little - about six or seven, he estimates - his father sold him to a farmer, who took him to the Sierra Morena mountains, to help out an ageing goatherd.
Soon the old man died and Marcos was left alone.
Having suffered years of beatings from his stepmother, he preferred the solitude of the mountains to the thought of human company, and made no attempt to leave.
What little the goatherd had taught him before he died was enough for him not to go hungry. He learned to hunt rabbits and partridges with traps made of sticks and leaves.
"The animals guided me as to what to eat. Whatever they ate, I ate," he says. "The wild boars ate tubers buried under the soil. They found them because they smelled them. When they were digging the soil looking for them, I threw a stone at them - they would run away and then I would steal the tubers."
Marcos says he established a special bond with some animals. Many will find it hard to believe this story, about his relationship with a family of wolves:
"One day I went into a cave and started to play with wolf cubs that lived there and I fell asleep. Later, the mother brought food for them and I woke up.
"She saw me and looked fiercely at me. The wolf started to rip the meat apart. A cub got close to me and I tried to steal his food, because I was hungry as well. The mother pawed at me. I backed off.
"After feeding her pups she threw me a piece of meat. I didn't want to touch it because I thought she was going to attack me, but she was pushing the meat with her nose. I took it, ate it, and thought she was going to bite me, but she put her tongue out, and started to lick me. After that, I was one of the family."
Marcos also says he had a snake as a companion.
"She lived with me in a cave that was part of an abandoned mine. I made a nest for her and gave her milk from the goats. She followed me everywhere and protected me," he says.
These relationships kept loneliness at bay, Marcos says. He was only lonely when he could not hear animals - and in such cases he would imitate their call. He can still reproduce the sound of the deer, the fox, the aguililla (booted eagle) and other animals.
"Once they answered, I would be able to sleep because I knew they hadn't abandoned me," he says.
Bit by bit, sounds and growls replaced words. Marcos stopped speaking - until, one day, he was found by the Guardia Civil, and taken by force to the small village of Fuencaliente, at the foot of the mountains.
His father was brought to identify him.
"I felt nothing when I saw him," Marcos says.
"He only asked me one thing: 'Where is your jacket?' As if I would still be wearing the jacket I had when I left!"
Marcos is a great talker, a storyteller who knows exactly when to pause, when to make a noise, or hiss, to increase the dramatic tension of his tale.
But how true is it? Can men and wolves actually be "friends" or snakes "faithful guardians"?
"What happens is that Marcos does not tell us what happened, but what he believes happened," says Gabriel Janer Manila, Spanish writer and anthropologist at the University of the Balearic Islands, who wrote his thesis on Marcos's case, and 30 years later published a novel about his life.
"But that's what we all do - to present our take on the facts," he says.
"When Marcos sees a snake and gives her milk, and then the snake comes back, he says she's his friend. The snake is not his 'friend'. She is following him because he gives her milk. He says, 'She protects me' because that is what he believes has happened."
This way of interpreting the facts, his imagination and intelligence was what enabled him to survive in the solitude of the mountains, says Janer Manila.
It was thanks to Janer Manila that Marcos's story became widely known.
He listened to Marcos and filmed him 10 years after he had returned from the mountains.
"My first impression was one of amazement. He was a nice young man wanting to communicate with people, despite his limitations," Janer Manila recalls.
"But at first, when I heard it, I did not believe him. I thought, 'It cannot be.' But the story was so consistent and so well told, and also, every time I asked him about it he would tell me the story using the same words. So I said to myself, I will have to check all this."
Janer Manila travelled to the places he had named and talked to the people he had mentioned.
Some people corroborated parts of the story.
"I talked to people who had engaged with him when he was found, with people who welcomed him in their homes, with the employee who bathed him for the first time, with a seminarian who took care of him... All these people highlighted his wild character, his ignorance of the social world and his inability to follow the rules of a game. The account matched what Marcos had told me," says Janer Manila.
"And when I saw him telling his story later," he says in reference to the interviews Marcos gave after the 2010 premiere of a film in inspired by his life, "it hadn't changed."
Marcos describes his return to society as the scariest moment in his life.
"I didn't know where to go; I just wanted to escape to the mountains," he says.
Everything was traumatic, from his first visit to the barbershop - when he thought the barber would cut his throat with his razor - to the fights he had with nuns in Madrid, who tried to make him sleep in a bed.
This habit took him a long time to acquire.
"Once he rented a small apartment and he showed it to me," says Janer Manila. "The bedroom had no bed or furniture, there were blankets all over the floor along with lots of wrinkled sheets of magazine and newspapers, as if there had been an animal there. When I saw that, I asked him if he wouldn't be better sleeping in a bed? And he said: 'No.'"
What most disturbed Marcos most of all was the noise and the hustle and bustle of human communities.
"I could not cope with so much noise… the cars… and people going back and forwards like ants. But at least ants all go in the same direction! People went everywhere! I was scared of crossing the road!" he says.
The nuns of Madrid taught him some lessons.
"They taught me to eat properly and they put a piece of wood in my back to help me walk straight because I was all crooked from walking in the mountains," he says. Also, he remembers, they put him in a wheelchair for a while, because he couldn't walk after they cut all the calluses on his feet.
What followed was a journey from one job to another, and a brief stint in the military.
People regularly took advantage of Marcos's naivety, and he ended up living in miserable conditions in Malaga, until a chance encounter with a retired police officer, who invited him to live in Rante, a small village near Orense in Spain's north-western region of Galicia.
Now in his late 60s, Marcos bears few grudges, but he does wonder why, after forcing him to come down from the mountains, the state didn't prepare him properly for life in society.
"When I got out of there, the first thing they should have done is send me to a school, teach me to talk and how to behave in the world," he says. "What was the point of making me first do communion and military service? So I could learn to shoot and kill people?" he asks, with a rare note of anger in his voice.
In Rante, where Marcos has been living for about 15 years, everyone knows him and treats him with respect.
His home is a small house, with slightly cave-like low ceilings, packed with memorabilia - photos of his moments of fame, drawings and a curious collection of cigarette lighters. The tiny patio is full of flowers and plants.
In the corner of the room there is a piano and a guitar. Marcos learned how to play them by ear and he doesn't play badly at all.
He tells me he had a few girlfriends in the past, but nowadays he is single. He has many friends, though, and people who love him and help him.
He no longer works. He gets a half-pension for an injury he sustained while working on a building site - but whenever he can, he lends a hand at Rante's only bar.
"Marcos is a very good person, a bit childish but a very nice guy. He is always here," says Maite, the owner.
Does he ever contemplate returning to the Sierra Morena?
"I thought about it many times. But I'm used to this life now and there are so many things that I didn't have there, like music for instance, or women. Women are one good reason to stay here," he says.
"Now I am accustomed to it, I'll remain where I am."動物哺育人類幼童的傳奇故事想必我們都耳熟能詳，但是在動物陪伴下長大的人類如何再度融入社會，想必瞭解的人少之又少。據英國廣播公司11月27日報道，西班牙男子馬科斯•羅德里格斯•潘託哈童年時被遺棄在深山老林，在狼、蛇等動物的陪伴守護下長大成人。他再度融入人類社會的歷程並非一帆風順，以至於一度想要重返山林，好在如今他已經在一個小村莊裏找到了安寧和歸屬。
***狼口奪食
大約六、七歲時，馬科斯被父親賣給了一個農夫，幾經輾轉被送到了塞拉利昂莫雷納山去幫助一個上了年紀的牧羊人。不久牧羊人過世，留下孤苦無依的馬科斯。他沒有嘗試離開，相比於忍受繼母的毆打虐待，幼小的馬科斯寧願孤獨地守着深山老林。
靠着老牧羊人過世前的言傳身教，馬科斯已經學會了覓食。“動物們引導着我，它們吃什麼，我就吃什麼，”他說，“野豬們吃埋在土裏的塊莖……它們刨到塊莖時，我就扔石塊嚇跑它們，然後我就將塊莖據爲己有。”
最不可思議的是，馬科斯還跟狼羣建立了特殊的聯繫。“有一天我走進一個洞穴跟裏面的狼崽玩耍，玩着玩着我就睡着了。後來母狼給幼崽帶回了食物，我也醒了，母狼兇狠地看着我。狼們開始分食生肉，我也飢腸轆轆，一隻狼崽靠近了我，我想偷它的食物。母狼用爪子抓我，我就放棄了。”
儘管第一次狼嘴“奪食”並不成功，但接下來卻發生了驚天逆轉。據馬科斯回憶：“喂完狼崽後，母狼給我扔了一塊肉。我不敢去接，擔心它會攻擊我，但是它用鼻子把肉推給我。我拿起肉吞了下去，有些忐忑，以爲它會咬我，但它只是伸出舌頭舔舔我。自那以後，我就成了這個家族的一員了。”
***以蛇爲伴
馬科斯還有一個不離不棄的蛇夥伴。“它跟我一起住在一個廢棄的礦井裏。我給它做了個巢，餵它一些山羊奶。它就到處跟着我、保護我。”
正是因爲有着這些動物小夥伴的陪伴，馬科斯的深山生活並不孤單。偶爾在聽不到動物的聲音時，他會很落寞，他就模仿動物們的聲音，“如果它們回答了，就證明我沒有被拋棄，那我就可以安然入睡了”。直到現在，馬科斯還會模仿鹿、狐狸、靴雕等動物的聲音。
***迴歸社會
19歲時，馬科斯被西班牙民防軍發現了，並被強行帶到山腳下的小村莊。馬科斯說，被迫再度融入社會的過程是他一生中最大的夢魘。
他見到了自己的父親，至親骨肉分別多年卻沒有上演抱頭痛哭的感人場景。“我看到他沒有特別的感覺。他只問了我一件事：‘你的外套呢？’就好像我現在還能穿着離家那天所穿的衣服。”
迴歸人類社會後第一次被帶到理髮店時，馬科斯以爲理髮師會用剪刀割斷他的喉嚨。看着面前的熱湯時，他不知道該做些什麼，傻乎乎地把手伸進碗裏，滾燙的湯水燙得他直跳腳。及至今天，他都不習慣睡在牀上。
最令馬科斯不安的是人類社會的噪音和擁擠。“我無法適應這麼多的噪音，比如汽車的聲音，我也無法理解人類像螞蟻一樣走動，螞蟻好歹是向同一方向走，人類卻是四面八方到處走。我很害怕過馬路，”馬科斯抱怨道。
馬德里的修女給了馬科斯一些幫助，教他吃飯、直立行走。
但是，馬科斯還是經歷很多挫折，工作換了一份又一份，甚至在軍隊裏服務過。在最艱難的時候，他千百次地閃現過重歸山林的念頭。馬科斯至今想不明白，爲什麼國家在逼迫他“出山”後卻不幫他適應塵世生活。
***單身晚年
馬科斯的厄運在遇到一位退休警察後結束了，在後者的邀請下，他在西班牙西北部的一個小村莊“安營紮寨”，過起了寧靜的小日子。
馬科斯在小村莊裏生活了15年，村裏的每個人都認識他、尊重他。他曾交過幾個女朋友，現在迴歸了單身，不過身邊仍有很多幫助他、愛護他的朋友。
馬科斯現在住的房屋很小，天花板很矮，有點像洞穴，裏面擺滿了紀念品，角落裏放着一架鋼琴和一把吉他。小天井裏長滿了鮮花和植物，很是溫馨。
他不再工作，靠着在建築工地落下傷病後獲得的退休金過活。不過他也沒有閒着，經常去當地酒吧裏搭把手。“馬科斯是個很好的人，有點幼稚，但不妨礙他的好，他一直在這裏，”酒吧主人邁特中肯地評價道。
馬科斯斷了迴歸山林的念頭。“我習慣了這裏的生活，這裏有很多是我在山上無法擁有的東西，比如音樂、比如女人。女人是我留下來的理由……我會繼續待在這裏。”
***是真是假？
西班牙作家、巴利阿里羣島大學人類學家加夫列爾•哈內爾•馬尼拉深入調查研究了馬科斯的故事，並以此爲題材出版了一本小說。他認爲馬科斯說的是真話，儘管其中有想象的成份。
“開始聽到這個故事時，我並不相信他。但是他的故事前後一致，每次我問他時他都能以同樣的話複述一遍，我就想去核實，”馬尼拉說，“我跟他被發現時與他有接觸的人、在家中歡迎他的人、第一次給他洗澡的人、照顧他的神學院學生進行了交談……大家都強調他狂野的性格、他對社會的無知、他對遵守遊戲規則的無能爲力，跟馬科斯告訴我的一樣。”甚至馬科斯在2010年再次複述這個故事時，跟幾十年前幾乎沒有差別。
馬尼拉相信馬科斯的經歷是真的，但他認爲其中有想象的成份。“馬科斯看到一條蛇，給它餵了奶，蛇後來又游回來了。他說蛇是他的朋友，其實不是這樣的，蛇跟着他是因爲他可以給它奶喝。他說，‘它保護着我’，那是他選擇去相信的事實。”或者正是這樣的想象力讓馬科斯熬過了長年與世隔絕的孤苦生活。
西班牙導演赫拉爾多•奧利瓦雷斯將馬科斯的故事拍成了紀錄片，並在2010年舉行了首映，預計將在明年公開上演。
