Great Apes

by Will Self

  His hand had knocked against his erect cock, reminding him that he had one, reminding him of what it could be employed for. His other hand went to the folds and bulges of sheet. He ran fingertips over these, as if they were the ruches and pleats of her sex. Simon swallowed and tasted the guttural grimness of his mouth, a pannikin full of cold Camel leftovers. Could he commit the culinary crime of compelling her to taste this? In the pit of the bed his cock thwanged. He could.

  She woke as his fingertips made the final, fiddly assaults on her nipples, his palms having pitched camp in the col of her breasts. Sarah seemed to experience no discomfort, nor even momentary revulsion at the idea of this sodden, vodka-blanched body over-toppling hers. She turned on, turned on. Her small head rose up, the ruff of blonde split-ends giving it a clownish air. The thin lips parted, he caught a glimpse of white pointiness, and then she received him, the little slug of her tongue uncoiled in his mouth, swelled and died in his saltiness. Their upper bodies married. Simon tasted the crap of her gullet, smelt the shit on her breath – as she did his. Soon each cancelled out the other’s, as more and more saliva eroded the little seams of mucus, with their worthless veins of crap cocaine.

  It was hard and abrupt. A bout of love. One of his big hands went to her mons, tearing the bunched sheet away. The fingers of the other went to their sucking mouths, gathered wallow, deposited it in her juncture. His fingers plunged into her – she gasped, bit his lip. His other hand went below her back – her child’s back; his single hand could almost span it. He yanked her to him. Her small claws tore at his back, almost unable to gain purchase on the sweat that had sprung up on it. “Open your legs!” he barked into her mouth: “Open your legs!” He pushed his fingers further into her, widening her; a thumb circled over her clitoris. She bucked beneath him like a trapped animal. Bucked and bucked again. He removed his hand from her back, his mouth from hers. He put two fingers into her mouth, three. Felt the sharpness of her teeth, the taut skin of her gullet. He pulled the fingers out, smarmed them across her brow, and further – grasping a handful of her hair and pulling it down to her nape, stretching her body over the form of pillow so that all of her was exposed, laid doubly bare.

  Sarah’s hands had found his penis. Simon gasped, almost came from that one touch. Her fingers smoothed up and around, up and around. Then down, touching his balls, cradling them, then lower, into the sweat-filled runnel of him. She dabbed and palped his arsehole; dabbed and palped his arsehole.

  His fingers were hooked inside her, he could feel the whole shape of her pubic bone. Her eyes were rolled back so only the whites showed. He could sense the precise texture of this internal, membranous skin. He could almost taste through his fingers the salty gush of come that now spasmed out of her. His mouth was clamped on hers once more and it was into this cave that she shouted, so that the echoes reverberated in his head. He wouldn’t release her. He kept on kissing her, chewing on her. Then he slid down her, tasting her breasts, her hips, the twistle of lint her belly button. He placed the whole of his tongue against the wet openness of her, felt the seed of her clitoris wobble on the root of his tongue. Then he moved up again. Her hands were tugging on his cock, her hands were tugs guiding the great draught of his penile vessel, bringing it into harbour. There was such urgency in this, such will on both sides to couple – it could hardly be called desire.

  Outside in the narrow passageway, Gracie, the old retriever, whuffled and scratched, hearing the commotion within as a chase that she would wish to join. She heard the yelps and drummings as the paws of lapine quarry bursting from a sandy burrow. She grabbed the hem of a batik scarf dangling from a hook and worried at it with her slack lips, her meaty teeth.

  The shock of their marriage pushed Sarah backwards still further on the pillow so that it ended up beneath her buttocks. Her heels were on the small of Simon’s back, and he was fucking her as he had been in the dream, with great, whooshing, oiled strokes of machine regularity. She was coming ceaselessly, her vagina rippling along the length of him. Her mouth was agape, the cries torn from it with each implosion of him-into-her. Cry after cry after cry, until he, at last, with an internal wrench of his urinary tract, came as well, and realised that she was no longer uttering these cries, but simply crying. Crying and sobbing, with heaves that wracked her thin shoulders, ground her thin shoulder blades against his supporting hand.

  Simon withdrew, slumped out of her. He then took her lengthwise in his arms, one threading through her crotch, the other cradling her neck. She sobbed – he knew – not necessarily from emotion, for this happened often enough when they fucked. No, she sobbed almost as a purely physical reaction, the way that some women sweated profusely after coming. This is how he thought of her tears, as eye-born perspiration. She sobbed and sobbed and he said, “There-there, there-there, there-there.” Then they slept again. The digital alarm on her bedside table read 12.22 a.m.; and by the time it read 12.34 a.m. Simon was dreaming once more.

  The dream picked up at a point some short time before it had left off. The bower that was her bedroom, all wreathed around with a forest that both breached and formed its walls. The tall trunks and massy undergrowth fell away in a gentle slope on the garden side. Simon was as he had been: on heels of hands and heels of feet, propped up by his back-angled arms. And there was the little monkey, squatting on the branch of a tree some sixty feet away. Squatting easily, but with legs opened so that he could clearly see the pink effluvium of her; and running from without it the red rivulet of him.

  I can look at my cock, thought Simon, and then looked at his cock. I am lucid, he realised. I am in control of this dream. His cock wavered away from his groin, crossed the tangled sheet in a series of corkscrew curls. He could see some more of these corkscrews, pigtails on the forest floor, their gummy loops encrusted with leaf mould and twigs, before they vanished amidst the humped roots of the trees. Simon called out to Sarah, who was unconcernedly picking at the skin on her forearm.

  “Sarah! Sarah!”

  “Simon?” She looked up.

  “Sarah, pull me in now, pull me in! I want to be inside you now.” He gestured at the hanks of him ‘n’ her that linked them.

  “Simon?” She was glancing around, as if trying to search him out among the trees. She was looking everywhere but at the small clearing, with its fitted sheet, where he lay. “Simon? Simo …?”

  Her voice trailed off. She bent forward on the branch and plucked at something. Simon felt a twinge. It was him! She was plucking at him! Sarah brought the plait of vesicles up to her mouth. She held it in her hand as casually as if it had been a rope and she some arboreal campanologist. And then without preamble, she began to gnaw at it.

  Simon felt her small, sharp teeth bite into him. “Sarah!” he cried. “Don’t… Sarah, that’s me!” But she didn’t seem to hear him, she kept on gnawing, occasionally breaking off to pick a bit of their gristle from between her teeth. The thing that linked them – was it umbilicus or penis? He could not say – was now almost cut through, and still she gnawed, and still he shouted out, “Sarah! Stop it! Sarah – you’ll lose me, we’re in a forest!” But she paid no heed, just kept gnawing. Now only a single string of pink remained, glistening in her incisors. She bit down – and severed him altogether.

  I want to wake up, Simon thought. Wake up! he commanded his body, which lay coldly athwart his volition, a grave weight. Wake up! He struggled to shift it, some tiny part of it, any movement at all would be enough to release him from the dream, but he could engineer nothing. Nothing. He strained, and thought: I am here, I am lying in this nest with … Sarah. Sarah, he could feel the warmth of her above or below him. He swam up to where he could … feel it beneath his cheek. The warmth of her small breast with its fine covering of coarse blonde fur.

  Simon Dykes, the artist, awoke, his consort’s breast cushioning his cheek. He sighed, and nuzzled his muzzle down into the sweet animality of her.

  Chapter Six

  It was a beautiful, late-summer m
orning. Redington Road was lined with trees at their final, fructive stage. The smells of yeast and verdancy filled the air. Busner surveyed the solid red-brick villas flanking the road. Despite the mounting heat, the early mating had left him feeling zestful and before heading off down the garden path, he took a lip-funnelling breath then let out a great pant-hoot, full of joie de vivre. This was answered by a chorus of pant-hoots from his neighbours, some of whom he now noticed were crouched in the surrounding branches.

  “H’hooo!” they pant-hooted, then waved, ‘Morning, Busner.’

  “H’hooo!” he revocalised, cheerily saluting them with a wave of his briefcase. This initial exchange of greetings was echoed by chimps in the adjoining streets, who pant-hooted their welcomes to the suburb, and then echoed by still more chimps at a greater remove, and still more chimps at a still greater remove, their calls dying away in the direction of Belsize Park.

  Gambol had got the car, a maroon Seven Series Volvo Estate, out of the garage and it now stood idling by the front gate. Busner could see three of his sub-adult males in the back seat. They were so entwined in mutual grooming that he couldn’t establish which, but he was pleased to note that Erskine and Charles were there; neither of them had been doing enough patrolling recently as far as their alpha was concerned.

  Busner threw his briefcase in the boot and got in on the passenger side. ‘Now then, Gambol,’ he signed as the subordinate chimp powered the car away from the kerb, his hands flying as he changed up through the first eight gears. ‘ “Euch-euch” what on earth is it that’s so important that it couldn’t have waited for me to finish my second breakfast, “huu”?’

  ‘I had a call from Jane Bowen at Charing Cross emergency psychiatric unit this morning,’ Gambol signed. ‘She’s now working for a chimp denoted Whatley – you remember Whatley, don’t you, Dr Busner “huuu”?’

  ‘Of course “wraaaf, he’s the twerp who made those ethical objections to our work at the British Psychological Association meeting last year in Bournemouth.’

  ‘The very same. Well, I think he’s going to be doing some grovelling now, because Jane Bowen signs he wants our help.’

  ‘ “Hoo” really –’ Busner flagged down and turned his attention to the thick layer of shag-pile carpet on the dashboard. ‘I sign, Gambol, have you had the car re-carpeted again?’

  ‘Last week, when it was in for its service – don’t you like it?’

  Busner hated to admit it but the new carpet Gambol had chosen for the dashboard was a distinct improvement. It had a bold pattern of lozenges and hexagons, in alternating purple and red – a delightful incitement to fingers or toes itching to groom. Busner found himself absent-mindedly parting and reparting the thick pile; which reminded him. ‘Here, Gambol,’ he signed, ‘see if you can get this bloody jam out of my neck fur, will you “huu”?’

  ‘I’ll do it, Alph!’ one of the sub-adults in the back seat signed – actually in the jammy patch. Busner wheeled around in his seat, grabbed the culprit – it was Erskine – by his ear, and bit him hard under the eye.

  “Wraaa!” Busner barked, and then flailed, ‘When you’re old enough to groom me in the morning, Erskine, I’ll let you know. Until then – dear Skinnikins – keep your darling little fingers to yourself.’

  ‘Sorry, Alph,’ Erskine signed, doing his best to appear contrite. Yet within a matter of seconds – despite the gash under his eye – he was mucking around with his brothers, the three of them heaving and whimpering with ill-concealed juvenile laughter. The two adult chimps ignored them.

  Gambol wetted the fingers of his left hand and began soothingly to tease the sticky twistles of fur under Busner’s jaw. Busner soft-grunted his appreciation, “Huh-huh-huh”, then signed, ‘So, what is it that Whatley wants “huu”?’

  ‘Well,’ Gambol inparted, ‘apparently about a week ago a seriously disturbed chimp was brought into Whatley’s unit –’

  ‘Self-referring, from a GP “huu”?’

  ‘No, it was an emergency. The chimp had had some kind of psychotic breakdown or outburst; they had to send a crash team. Restraints, tranquillisers, the lot.’

  ‘I see.’

  Gambol’s fingers fell from Busner’s scruff while he concentrated on the tricky turn into Hampstead Hill. The rush hour had thinned out, but there were still dense knots of traffic moving up and down the main road at speed. Gambol wound down the window, made hand signals and screamed loudly until a white BMW driven by a bonobo flashed for him to enter the traffic stream; then he resumed. ‘For the first couple of days they couldn’t get a thing out of the chimp – his name is Simon Dykes by the way, apparently he’s a fairly well-known artist.’

  ‘I should sign so,’ Busner cut in. ‘One of his photomontages is in the Tate modern collection. Big triptych, showing a lot of teddy bears working in a laboratory – you must have seen it.’

  ‘I don’t go to galleries much, Dr Busner, it’s not my thing.’

  ‘Well “euch-euch”, you ought to. As you know a great deal of our work relates closely to the kinds of intuition and lateral reasoning employed by artists. We aren’t looking for dry, linear or causal explanations – you should appreciate that by now, Gambol –’

  ‘Boss “huu”?’ Gambol gestured, hunching in the corner of his armchair, just in case his alpha decided to lash out at this impertinence.

  ‘What “huu”?’

  ‘Could I please just finish “huu”?’

  ‘Hoo … all right.’

  ‘As I was signing, when they brought Dykes in he was in a catatonic state. To begin with Bowen and Whatley couldn’t figure out if this was symptomatic, or if the crash team had been more than usually enthusiastic with the tranks –’

  “Wraaf!” Busner barked. He had a hatred of tranquillisers, and indeed of all psychopharmacology, all the more so since the débâcle surrounding the clandestine trialing of Inclusion by Cryborg Pharmaceuticals. A project Busner had foolhardily got entwined with, in the belief that the drug represented a sort of panacea for depressive conditions.

  Gambol went on, ‘When Dykes came round they couldn’t get near him. He kept signing about monkeys and beasts, vocalising like a human, and attacking the staff – albeit ineffectually. Whatley and Bowen then hit upon the notion that he found simian contact itself traumatic, so they isolated him and began to correspond –’

  ‘Correspond, what do you mean “huu”?’

  ‘Send Dykes notes along with his food tray, asking him what was the matter and so forth.’

  ‘And what exactly did Dykes write then, Gambol? Has he given a reason for his breakdown “huu”?’

  ‘He showed Bowen that he was human.’

  ‘I’m sorry “huu”?’

  ‘He wrote that he was a human, that the whole world was run by humans, that humans were the dominant primate species, that he had gone to sleep with his human lover and when he awoke the following morning she was a chimpanzee and so was everyone else in the world.’

  ‘Including him “huu”?’

  ‘Well, obviously he looks like a chimpanzee to us, but as far as he’s concerned he’s human. He feels human. He signs he has a human body. He believes that he has gone completely mad and that the world he now perceives is a psychotic delusion.’

  It had taken the Volvo all this time to inch down Hampstead Hill, but now they reached the traffic lights on the corner of Pond Street and Gambol made as if to turn left towards the hospital. ‘What are you doing chimp “huu”?’ Busner poked.

  ‘Sorry, Boss “huu”?’

  ‘Pant-hoot Whatley on the mobile ‘phone right away – this looks fascinating. Let’s drive down to Charing Cross and see if we can find out a bit more about this mysterious delusion. ’ Gambol gave a wide, playful grin. He’d anticipated this and was already dialling Whatley’s direct line with his hallux.

  Whatley’s rather mangy muzzle appeared on the dash-mounted screen. His eyes had an unpleasant white tint to the pupil that made him seem at once feral and weak. �
��HoooGraa’,” he pant-hooted, and Busner and Gambol pant-hooted in return; Busner even drummed the dash a little just to impress upon Whatley that he wasn’t going to be remotely deferential.

  ‘I suppose your epsilon has pointed out to you something about this chimp Dykes then, Busner “huu”?’ signed Whatley, his fingers, which were, Busner noted, rather on the warty side, wiggling around furtively in the very corner of the screen.

  ‘He’s given me a very brief outline. What do you make of it “huu”?’

  ‘I hardly grasp it, Busner. The chimp has been here for a week now. When they brought him in he appeared to be in a state of severe shock – although I now concede that it may have been some sort of manic interlude.’

  ‘What was his behaviour like “huu”?’ Busner hunched forward in his seat so that he could concentrate closely on what Whatley was signing.

  ‘He would move upright to the corner of his room if any of the staff appeared in the doorway. If they entered he would try to get under the nest, or even “hooo” attack –’

  ‘Attack “huu”?’

  ‘That’s right. The attacks were however incredibly ineffectual – he appears to have little or no physical strength, some kind of motor-functional inhibition, or possibly even partial atrophy. At any rate, even though he was clearly terrified he was unable to inflict any damage on the staff, so we haven’t even put restraints on, or given him more than a mild sedative, because he’s quite harmless.’

  A nurse appeared in the corner of the screen and handed Whatley a clipboard. ‘Excuse me,’ Whatley signed. He wrote something on it, and dismissed the nurse with a wave of his hand – not even a light cuff for the impertinence.