Still the Same Man

by Jon Bilbao

  He could, however, imagine him wandering around Yucatán alongside his lady companion and his keeper. The two monkeys, each linked to their master by a chain. Walking ahead of the man, pulling him along if he was tired, looking out for any small morsel of food. And if they found something, no matter how hungry they were, the monkeys had to give it to their master, who would decide between eating it himself or leaving it to them. And they’d be wise to offer it to him first, because it didn’t take much of an imagination to guess that the man’s cane wasn’t just a prop but also served as an agonizing weapon to keep them in check.

  He imagined, too, the chimpanzees being forced to steal on behalf of their master, sneaking into houses through windows and making off with whatever they could. And he imagined them searching for larvae and worms under fallen tree trunks and rocks at night while their master slept, and poking sticks into anthills and putting whatever they caught in their mouths. And he also imagined them hugging one another for warmth and comfort, doing their best not to make a sound with the chains so their master wouldn’t wake up and start beating them.

  “Where are you from?” asked the professor. “Mississippi? Louisiana?”

  The man gave him a long, blank look.

  “Tuscaloosa, Alabama,” he answered, his accent suddenly twice as strong.

  “And how long have you lived in Mexico?”

  “A lifetime, my friend.”

  Letting a few seconds pass to show that he appreciated the weight of this answer, the professor continued his interrogation.

  “And you and your . . . colleagues usually work in this area?”

  “On the coast. Where the tourists are.”

  “In winter, too?”

  “There are always tourists here.”

  “I understand. Fewer during the hurricanes, isn’t that so?” said the professor, pointing to the boarded up windows, behind which the wind continued to rage. “Then the tourists leave. We leave. You might have already guessed.”

  “Guessed what?”

  “That we’re tourists.”

  “Yes. I’d guessed as much.”

  “Don’t you want to know why we’re here?”

  “None of my business.”

  The water in the pot had begun to boil, and the man poured in the instant soup. He pulled out a spoon from one of his pockets, rubbed it with the edge of his shirt, and stirred the mixture to dissolve the lumps. Then he took the pot with his bare hand without showing the slightest sign of pain, despite the fact that it must have been piping hot. He blew on the meager soup and took a sip. His wrinkles seemed to smoothen a little.

  “I suppose you’re also here because of the hurricane,” said the professor.

  The man eyed him over the pot, which he was slurping into noisily.

  “This is nothing but a little drizzle. Now Wilma, Wilma was a hurricane. Dean, too. This is . . .”

  He made a gesture with his hand, as if something unimportant were floating away into the air.

  “I understand,” said the professor. “But this little drizzle has put a stop to your search for your colleague.”

  The man assented as he stirred what remained of the soup with his spoon.

  “Where did it happen? Where did you lose her?”

  “In Tu lu m.”

  “Really, well, there’s a coincidence! We’ve come from around there, too. Our hotels,” said the professor, “were in Cancún.”

  He paused to let the information sink in. Then he added, “How long have you and the chimpanzees been together?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  The professor shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s the first time I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

  “A black man?”

  The expression on the professor’s face didn’t move an inch.

  “An ex–circus employee who’s traveling Mexico in the company of two chimpanzees.”

  The man finished off his soup. He placed the pot to one side, wiped the spoon again with his shirt, and put it back in his pocket.

  “A long time. Years.”

  “You must be very upset at the loss of your female companion.”

  The man wet his index finger and thumb with saliva and used them to remove the grill with a single, slick movement.

  “Of course we’re upset. Tomorrow we’re going back to the coast to look for her.”

  “Tomorrow? This little drizzle will have stopped by then?”

  “Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow . . . whenever we can, we’ll go back. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a little tired.”

  The others gave a consenting nod as the man got up. He picked up the pan and pushed the grill with his foot, leaving it next to his backpack. They all watched as he unrolled a rubber matt and laid out a patched up sleeping bag on top of it. Fully clothed, without taking off his boots or untying the chimpanzee’s chain, he laid down on top of the sleeping bag. Before going to sleep, he double-checked that all his belongings were within reach, especially his cane and the machete. His shuffling stirred the monkey.

  “Good night, Gagarin. Sleep well.”

  The professor leaned in toward Joanes.

  “Let’s talk,” he whispered. “In the other room.”

  “Just say whatever you have to say.”

  “It’s better if we do it in private.”

  “Just tell me what it is you want to say,” repeated Joanes.

  The professor looked at the stranger and the chimpanzee. He gestured toward them with his eyes.

  “Here? Are you sure?”

  A second later, Joanes picked up the flashlight.

  “Don’t be long,” said the wife.

  Joanes walked to the adjacent room, tailed by the professor. He opened the metal door, taking care that it creak as little as possible. Once they were both inside, he closed it again. They remained standing, one in front of the other, in the middle of the little room. Joanes held the flashlight down at his side; it cast shadows over both of their faces.

  “Well then?”

  “I understand that our situation hasn’t exactly improved over the last couple of hours. You need your telephone more than ever now, in case you need help getting out of this place.”

  “I thought I’d made myself clear.”

  “Perfectly clear. But I still need to know what’s happened to my son, urgently,” said the professor, who underscored his words with wild, hacking gesticulations. “You must understand. If there’s something about me that displeases you, if I’ve offended you in some way, or if you simply don’t like me, at least think of my wife. Try to imagine what she must be going through.”

  Joanes didn’t say a word but simply looked at him in disdain, and so the professor took a deep breath and went on.

  “It’s better if we resolve this by talking. Just the two of us. You and I. Much better.”

  “It’s already resolved. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “No,” said the professor firmly. “It is not resolved. Not by far. How could you possibly think it’s been resolved? I want that telephone. I need it, now,” he said, holding out his hand for Joanes to turn it over.

  Joanes let out a laugh.

  “I need it,” the professor insisted. “Something serious has happened to my son. I’ve got a terrible feeling about it.”

  “A feeling? repeated Joanes. “A feeling? That’s not like you. You, who are so pragmatic,” he said, tapping his temple with his index finger. “Pragmatism, that’s what you always drilled into us in class, remember? Of course you remember. ‘Pragmatism,’” said Joanes, putting on the professor’s voice. “Just like Alan Turing and his pragmatic mathematics. A good book. Very interesting. If a little biased in its contents, don’t you think? But nonetheless very revealing, there’s no doubt about it. Revealing in many ways. Not j
ust of poor Turing. You know what I’m talking about.”

  The professor listened with a stony face. When he answered, he did so as if Joanes’s words had gone in one ear and out the other, or as if he hadn’t heard them at all.

  “How do you think that man out there would react if he knew that you killed the monkey he’s looking for?”

  “Don’t involve him in this. This is between us.”

  “Between me and you?” said the professor, raising his voice. “Of course it isn’t! They are other people implicated here. For starters, the people sitting right there in the next room.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” repeated Joanes.

  “Give me the telephone. That black man out there could be dangerous. Didn’t you see his machete?”

  “Forget it.”

  The professor left the room, and Joanes stepped out after him.

  “Ah, my friend!” said the professor, approaching the man. “Are you awake?”

  The first one to react was the chimpanzee, who got straight to his feet and stood with his arms hanging by his sides and his legs bowed, like a gunslinger from the Wild West ready for a duel. The man opened his eyes and as a ref lex snatched the machete.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said.

  The professor stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Calm down, I wouldn’t dream of touching you. I just want to tell you something that might be of interest.”

  With his free hand, the man grabbed the chain that connected him to the monkey and pulled it taut to keep Gagarin under control. Without letting go, he sat up, leaning his back against the wall.

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “You see that man?” asked the professor, pointing to his former student. “You see him?”

  The man nodded. From her bed, the woman asked, “What’s going on? What’s going on?”

  “That man,” the professor went on, “was out driving the day before yesterday along the costal highway, the one that skirts Tulum. That’s where you lost your animal, the female. Is that correct? Good, well that man was right around Tulum when a monkey, a chimpanzee, jumped out onto the road. And he hit it with his car. He didn’t kill it in the act, but he left it badly hurt. And do you know what he did next? Or, to put it correctly, what he didn’t do? He didn’t ask anyone for help. No one! He stayed there watching as the poor animal breathed its last breath. And then he got in his car and carried on driving as if nothing had happened.”

  As the professor spoke, the man got to his feet, still holding on to the monkey and the machete.

  “Now, that’s not exactly what happened,” said Joanes, his voice tense. “I didn’t stay there watching while—”

  The professor interrupted him with a victorious guffaw.

  “You see? He himself admits it. He hit your monkey.”

  “It was an accident. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “But you admit it!”

  “I hit a monkey. We don’t know if it was this man’s monkey.”

  “How many lost chimpanzees could there possible have been that day in the area?” asked the professor.

  The stranger looked back and forth between the professor and Joanes. He pulled the chain tauter still, and Gagarin took a step backward. Having sensed the tension in the air, the monkey let out a screech and started to flex his legs over and over again and bare his teeth.

  “It was your monkey. What did you call it before? Lolita? He killed Lolita. There’s no doubt it was her. She was wearing a bracelet on her wrist. A plastic, beaded one. Did Lolita wear a bracelet like that?”

  The others anxiously awaited the answer.

  “Yes,” said the man. “A pink and blue bracelet. She liked it a lot.”

  Then he said, almost talking to himself now, “I gave it to her.”

  “That’s the one!” exclaimed the professor.

  “Hang on a minute,” said Joanes. “Let me explain. The monkey threw herself out onto the road. It all happened so quickly. I didn’t have time to—”

  “Quiet!” bellowed the man, and they all fell silent.

  Then, pointing at the professor with the machete, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

  The professor straightened up in a gesture of hurt pride.

  “Because it seemed you ought to know. Ever since he killed your monkey, he’s been going around telling everybody, boasting about it, bragging. As if it were something to be—”

  Without even letting the professor finish his sentence, the man pointed at Joanes with the machete and said something that nobody understood—a single word, or something like a word, a series of clicks from his tongue. He let go of the chain, and Gagarin launched himself at Joanes.

  Joanes barely had time to throw his arms up to protect his face. The chimpanzee pounded him with his arms and legs, all at once. Within a second, man and beast had transformed into a mass of limbs that collapsed onto the floor with a groan and the whistle of air being squeezed out of a pair of lungs. Gagarin climbed on top of Joanes’s stomach. Punches like hammer blows rained down on Joanes’s face.

  The professor’s wife began to shriek. She begged them to break it up. She begged everyone. Her husband had to hold her to stop her from falling off the bed. She looked like she was about to get up and drag herself into some corner or another for refuge. While he struggled to restrain her, the professor, equally horrified by the monkey’s outburst, watched the struggle between his former student and the beast.

  The monkey plunged his fist into Joanes’s nose, and they all heard a crack like a branch snapping in two. Joanes retaliated, swinging a huge punch. More out of luck than anything else, the blow struck the monkey right in the stomach. The animal doubled up in pain, but the respite barely lasted a second. The chimpanzee then began jumping up and down on Joanes’s testicles.

  The stranger was also watching the fight, his eyes bulging, astounded by the animal’s wrath. He hadn’t expected him to react like this. The hand holding the chain was trembling. It was as if the chimpanzee was letting out years of accumulated anger.

  “Stop it!” cried the professor. “Make it stop! Can’t you see it’s going to kill him?”

  The man, who seemed paralyzed, didn’t respond.

  “Stop it!” repeated the professor. “That’s enough! Are you mad?”

  Between kicks and punches, Joanes managed to get the monkey off him. The animal took a starting run and jumped right back on him. This time he didn’t hit him but rather sank his fangs into Joanes’s left hand and shook his head as if trying to wrench it off.

  “Please, please!” begged the woman. “Make it stop! We’ll give you whatever you want! But get it off him!”

  “Control this damn beast!” added the professor.

  “Stop, Gagarin!”

  But the monkey was out of his mind and didn’t obey the order.

  “Stop, Gagarin!” repeated the man, his voice quaking.

  The chimpanzee didn’t pay him any attention, so the man was forced to tuck the machete into the rope he used as a belt and pull the chain with both hands to separate him from Joanes.

  Gagarin resisted but finally began to back off, still clutching Joanes’s hand with his teeth. Joanes screamed. His hand and the monkey’s mouth were attached by something resembling strings of chewing gum. Afterward, the monkey separated himself fully from Joanes, two fingers remaining clenched between his jaws.

  “Come here, come here!” said the man, clearly shocked, as he pulled to gather up the chain.

  Backing away, the chimpanzee dropped one of the fingers, the pinky. The man reproached him, threatening him with his fist, and the monkey glanced at him and sat down at his feet, gnawing the other finger, the ring finger, as if it were a candy bar. He was soon as calm as he’d been when he entered the cabin, as if all his rage, having claimed its due, had simply disappeared. Or
as if the whole thing had been nothing more than a brief show, just to let them know what he was capable of. Now he showed an almost vainglorious indifference toward them, even his master.

  On the floor, Joanes was holding his hand to his chest. Both his hand and his nose, which was broken and bent at a strange angle, were bleeding profusely. His eyes were rolling back into his head as if he were going to faint.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” the woman repeated.

  The man continued to scold the monkey. With his back bent, supplicant, he approached Joanes to ask his forgiveness and explain that he didn’t mean for this to happen, that he’d only wanted to scare him a little, just a little, that he was so sorry, that he didn’t know why Gagarin had reacted that way. He was so shocked, he looked on the verge of tears. Then he begged the woman’s forgiveness and said that Gagarin wasn’t like that, that he didn’t hurt people.

  He didn’t get the chance to finish what he was saying. The professor, who in the meantime had picked up the cane, went up to him and thwacked him on the head.

  “Shut up, old man!”

  The man fell to his knees. Without knowing what had happened, he made to protect his head with his hand. He looked at the chimpanzee, but Gagarin was in his own world, impassive. The professor hit him again and the man collapsed, motionless.

  Both Joanes and the professor’s wife watched the scene, paralyzed.

  “What did you do that for?” she asked her husband. “He was apologizing.”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  Still holding on to Joanes’s finger, the chimpanzee contemplated his now unconscious master. Without letting go of the cane, the professor turned toward the animal, who simply scratched his armpit, moved as far away as the chain would permit, and went on chewing the finger.

  The professor crouched down next to the man to take the machete off him. Next he opened his backpack and, with a look of disgust on his face, rummaged through its contents until he found a shirt. He tore it in two and used one of the strips to tie the man’s hands behind his back. With the other he gagged him, but not before tying a double knot in it, so that it would stay snug between the man’s teeth.