Great Apes

by Will Self

  “HoooGraa!” she called, then gestured grandly, ‘Welcome to my humble camp, Dr Busner. I have watched all day for the burst of light that would mean your radiant, refulgent scrag was drawing near. I have longed for many “gru-nn” years to get my fingers in your eminent fur, and to grope over with you the sorry state of chimpunity. ’ As was his way, Busner was not in the least put out by this nauseating display of sycophancy. He leapt from the Landcruiser, as fleet of hand as a sub-adult out hunting and presented low to the fat female, signing as he did, ‘ “H’hooo” I am honoured, madam, to make your acquaintance. The entire scientific community is in awe of your ischial pleat – the scientific community that matters, that is – and I too reverence your dangly bits. I would accord it an honour if you would kiss my arse.’

  Simon, watching this exchange, wondered whether Rauhschutz would suspect Busner of any irony when he flicked the customary honorifics, but her flat muzzle betrayed no suspicion of anger as she bestowed the required kiss, then requested an arse lick from Busner in turn.

  The rest of the English chimps swung out of the Landcruiser and knuckle-walked over, pant-hooting. They were joined by the bonobos, and for some minutes there was a round of presenting, counter-presenting and group grooming. As the hispid huddle began to fission slightly, Busner put the finger on Simon and tweaked him in Rauhschutz’s direction. ‘ “H’hoo” Madam Rauhschutz, may I present the main reason for our visit, this is “chup-chupp” Simon Dykes the artist.

  Simon presented low, pressing his muzzle into the mud; his scut trembled under the hortatory pat of the anthropologist. He looked up into eye sockets of an uncommon depth, and irises of uncompromising verticality. If he expected to see any trace of humanity in those eyes, engendered by the female’s lunatic creed, then he was cruelly disappointed. For Rauhschutz’s expression was chimpanzee through and through, acquisitive, curious, nakedly intent.

  ‘ “Hooo” Mr Dykes,’ the alpha female signed, her fingers jagged, her styling heavily accented, ‘Dr Busner wrote to me concerning your “hooo” disturbing complaint. Forgive me,’ she crouched down again to run her fingers over Simon’s ischial pleat, and tweaked his scrotum for good measure, ‘but apart from a certain stiffness in your gait, I see nothing that is inchimp about you – let alone human “grnnn”.’

  ‘Madam Rauhschutz, your swelling is the tropical verdancy that surrounds us, your pleat is as the Rift Valley itself – a fount of speciation. It’s true that I don’t “gru-nnn” appear to be human, and it’s also true that since my “euch-euch” devastating breakdown, with the assistance of Dr Busner here, I have manged to “hooo” come to terms with aspects of my chimpunity, but there’s still one thing that troubles me. The thing that’s brought us –’

  ‘I know. ’ The maverick German anthropologist waved him down; her plump fingers scrabbled his rump as she inparted, ‘Dr Busner told me of your interest in Biggles –’

  ‘Biggles “huuu”?!’ It was Simon’s turn to chop the air.

  ‘ “Hooo” I suppose you know him by some other ascription, but I’ve denoted this infant human Biggles – you’ll see why when you meet him. But now, I’m neglecting my duties as host, Joshua here will show you to your sleeping quarters. ’ She turned to conduct the whole group, ‘We first – and last – mess together in an hour’s time, at dusk. You’ll find that we’ve adapted ourselves pretty much to a human diurnal pattern here, lady and gentle chimps. We rise at dawn, and get to nest an hour after dusk. If it doesn’t suit you, I can cordially sign – cunt off!’

  With this challenging, if not abusive gesture, Rauhschutzgave a spontaneous pant-hoot of stentorian proportions, drummed on a water butt that was to hand, and knuckle-marched away. All of the bonobos save for one – clearly Joshua – followed in her scut. Simon was unnerved to see that two of them were carrying Kalashnikovs.

  The sleeping quarters assigned to the English chimps were, of course, one of the huts. The floor was concrete and the corrugated iron walls stopped about a foot before meeting this foundation. When Simon gestured at this, Joshua merely signed, ‘Wa’ comes in, y’know – they’s got to “hooo” get out again. ’ Simon considered pointing out to him that if the walls were better constructed nothing would get in, but seeing the bonobo’s bared canines and funnelled lips, he thought better of it.

  At least they had their own mosquito nets and inflatable mattresses. The camp nests provided were the size of infant baths. There was plenty of invertebrate life in the hut already – mosquitoes whined about the shadows, huge moths batted against the hissing gas lamp Joshua had lit before leaving them. There were also more sinister, more vertebrate noises, scuttlings and clickings, unmistakably rodentine in origin. Janet Higson and Bob the gofer were so agitated by the hut’s atmosphere that they began mock-mating, even though she was weeks away from showing.

  Zack Busner was the only one who wasn’t put out by their reception. He’d travelled extensively in the tropics as a young chimp, when doing research on the perverse, hysterical Malaysian condition known as latah, and the descent to the lakeside, the makeshift camp and the beauty of the surrounding forest had pushed him into a nostalgic reverie. Seeing the distress of his group, Busner crawled across to where the two television chimps were whimpering and panting, and took them both in both hands, inparting, ‘ “Chup-chupp” come now! Madam Rauhschutz may be a bit strange, but I dare say we’ll rub along well enough. As for these quarters, I have a few tips I picked up as a young chimp that should make things a little “gru-nnn” more salubrious.’

  He showed them all how to rig up the mosquito nets and how to stash their gear where the rats couldn’t get at it. He also produced a number of paper dishes, which he filled from a bottle of paraffin and set the feet of the camp nests in. ‘It’ll stop any six-legged friends we might have from getting too intimate “hee-hee”. ’ Simon was most gratified to see this, because in the few days he’d been in Africa, despite rigorous applications of the plethora of repellents and unguents they’d brought with them, he was finding it difficult to keep all the tics, chiggers and worse that wanted to infest his coat from taking up residence.

  It was this, as much as anything else, that was drawing Simon into a tighter relation to that preposterous concept – chimpunity. It was difficult, after all, to deny that you had fur, when mosquito bites were invisible beneath hanks of hair, but for all that damnably itchy.

  The Busner–Dykes group groomed itself as best it could, then gingerly quit their hut. Gingerly, because night had fallen as it always does in the tropics, with a suddenness and totality that made it like the unconsciousness of Earth itself. The ancient forest sighed and groaned in the onshore wind. The clicking of bats and the humming of insects infiltrated the cooling air. In the mid-distance there was the noise of larger animals brushing and crashing through the undergrowth, but although he strained his capacious ears, Simon failed to register the distinctive guttural calls of the wild human.

  A long trestle table had been set up for their repast on the open veranda of the largest hut. This muzzled out over the midnight blue of the lake and as they chomped their meal – which consisted largely of the dagaa they’d seen being landed earlier and copious amounts of fresh figs – they could, if they chose to, watch the lamps of the night fisherchimps flashing over the water.

  If they chose to, or if they were able to, for first-and-last mess at Camp Rauhschutz turned out to be a stimulating affair. To begin with they discovered that they were not the sole visitors. As they vaulted over the railing and thumped on to the deck of the veranda, waiting there for them was another party of chimps. There were three males and five or possibly six females. They were all Caucasians – their pale muzzles bright in the lamplight – and they were all wearing the most absurd new tropical kit, all made from Gore-Tex and other synthetics, all in bright pastel shades, and all furnished with more Velcro tabs, poppers and straps than were remotely necessary.

  It transpired with aching predictability that they were Dutch.
“H’hooo,” Rauhschutz wheezily vocalised, levering herself up to join them, then signed, ‘I see you’ve met my current guests, the Van Grijn group from the Netherlands –’

  ‘We haven’t,’ Busner signed for them all, ‘but we are delighted to do so, their scuts are so marvellously surmounted by their brand-new, high-tech raiments. ’ They all presented to one another. If Rauhschutz had seen the irony in Busner’s gestures, she made no mark about it.

  The Dutch chimps presented to the English. Their alpha, a hard-muzzled male ascripted Oskar, indicated that they were there in their capacity as members of the Dutch arm of a pressure group denoted ‘The Human Project’, the aim of which was to secure limited chimpanzee rights for wild and captive humans. ‘We are coming to see Madam Rauhschutz,’ he signed with irritating little swoops of his fingers, ‘because she is, “huu” how you sign? She is the “hooo” most important female alive today –’

  ‘Because of her work rehabilitating captive humans “huu”?’ Busner chopped the air.

  ‘Of course “gru-nn”, but more that that, we think she is, you know, maybe a little bit better spiritually than other anthropologists. She is, like a very holy kind of chimp, but not religious.’

  Busner remembered what Rauhschutz had written in Among the Humans and decided to hold his hands. However, the anthropologist herself was not so contained. From her position at the head of the table, which she had assumed with much shuffling pomp, she held forth to the assembled company while the bowls of figs made the rounds. ‘I am grateful “chup-chupp” to Oskar here for bringing up the issue of spirituality. For me the human is no mere, brute animal, far from it. Rather, when I commune with wild humans I feel they are teaching me in their stillness, in their untouchability, in their apparent isolation, more about what it means to be chimp than any chimpanzee could.’

  As she conducted, Rauhschutz smoked a little black cheroot, which was clamped between her yellow fangs.

  She also took periodic swigs from a tin mug on the table, a mug that was full of peach schnapps. Simon knew this, because whatever the other faults and drawbacks of Camp Rauhschutz, being dry – in any sense of the sign – was not one of them. The schnapps bottles had been produced shortly after they squatted down and throughout the meal they circled the table.

  Simon, for the first time since his breakdown, felt relaxed enough to drink strong liquor. There was something about the maverick anthropologist that he found peculiarly reassuring. It was as if, confronted by a female chimpanzee who really believed in the sentience of humanity, Simon was able clearly to apprehend what it might be like for him to abandon such a conviction.

  There was that, and there was the anachronistic ambience of Camp Rauhschutzas well. Despite her vaunted spirituality, Rauhschutzran the place along the lines of an old colonial district commissioner. The bonobos who waited on them at table made no signs to the white chimps save to ask if they were finished, or if they would like more. Otherwise they skulked in the shadows. When they addressed Rauhschutz, they denoted her ‘Baas’. When she addressed them, she used either their first names – as if they were sub-adults – or simply summoned them with a curt, imperious pant-hoot.

  ‘We are on the cusp,’ she went on conducting as they worked their way through the fish, ‘of a catastrophe of enormous dimensions, a catastrophe that we, as chimpanzees, will live to regret fervently –’

  ‘And that is “h’huu”?’ Simon couldn’t prevent himself from snapping.

  ‘That is, my “grnn” human friend, the extinction of your psychic conspecifics in the wild. Yes “HoooGraa” within fifty years there will almost certainly be no humans left in the wild, and gone with them will be our chances of redeeming ourselves spiritually. We would do well to remember what Schumacher gestured: If chimpunity wins the battle against nature – we will find ourselves on the losing side!’

  As Rauhschutzfingered, it became apparent to all the English chimps that she didn’t altogether mind the prospect of chimpunity being on the losing side, that she had gone so far in her drive to identify with the mind of the human that she had lost sight of some of the more basic chimpanzee virtues. Apart from the requisite cursory grooming session on their arrival, Simon noticed that Rauhschutz hardly touched at all. Her signing was all airy-fairy, none of it truly inparted. More than that, despite the automatic rifles her camp bonobos ported and the refugees scuttling down the road from Nyarabanda they were intended to fend off, the hideous massacres that were going on to the north were of no concern to her.

  If she put the finger on them at all, it was only to mark some irritating fall-out from the apocalypse, in the shape of shortages of supplies, or inconvenience of travel, or – and this really exercised her – danger to her rehabilitated and wild human groups. Even Simon found this callous disregard for the lives of millions of her fellow chimpanzees hard to stomach, but worse was to come; because there was a caste conflict underway that did really upset Rauhschutz, a conflict that she thought more important and vital than any other, and that was the one between her and the international anthropological hierarchy.

  ‘They “hooo” denote me an ugly dyke,’ she stabbed at them. ‘They imply that I have sexual relations with my humans “euch-euch”. Isn’t this just typical. Isn’t this always the way that they ignore and debase females in our society “h’huuu”? I care too much about animals – therefore I must be mating with them, because, being female, my desire for sex is everything “wraaa”! So, at one fell stroke, they discredit me – and they condemn my humans, my beautiful humans, to an ultimate wilderness – a wilderness of extinction “wraaaf”!’

  As if responding to this impassioned cry, there now came an answering, but far deeper vocalisation from the darkness of the surrounding jungle. A cry, which to Simon was at once remote to the point of being alien, and hauntingly familiar. All the chimps fell signless and novocal, they turned in their seats to muzzle the approximate direction of the creature who had given voice. Busner signed for all of them, ‘Show me, Madam Rauhschutz, is that one of your humans now “huu”? We haven’t seen any since we arrived.’

  She took a long pull on her cheroot before replying, and when she signed, the accompanying vocalisations were in the form of dribbles and poots of grey smoke, that dangled from her rough chin fur like temporary beards. “‘Gru-nnn” yes, that will be the humans, Dr Busner, the poor humans. The wild ones here at Gombe range far and wide, but the ones I have “chup-chupp” personally rehabilitated tend to stay near to the camp. In the late afternoon they swagger several miles off to an isolated bay, for bathing activities. They are now returning to make their night shelters. If you “aaaa” listen carefully enough, you will hear the other members of the group responding.’

  The chimps squatted still novocal and signless, and listened as they had been bidden. Simon felt his hackles rise, and clutched his glass of schnapps tightly. He concentrated on the whirring of the night-time sounds, the pulse and chirrup of cicadas, the tiny whoosh of moths, then he heard it again, “Fuuuuuuckooooooffff-Fuuuuuuckoooooooffff.” It was so strange – Simon looked around the table at the other chimps. All of them were intent on the human’s calls, but did they – as he did – discern within those deep, harsh cries the anger and despair that he could. They showed no sign of it.

  “Fuuuuuuckoooooffff-Fuuuuuuuckooooofff,” a different human responded. Then another responded to this second animal, then a third, then a fourth, until the deep burbles of sound were coming crashing in like agglutinative waves.

  This went on for some minutes, then slowly died away. There was a last, slightly higher-pitched “Fuuuuckoooofff” then novocal. Rauhschutz, a great grin pasted across her muzzle, conducted the table, ‘ “Gru-nnn” the human night chorus, possibly one of the most awesome and profound noises there is in nature. Once heard – it is never forgotten. We are “chup-chupp” so privileged, my allies, to be able to witness this. Those humans were once confined in zoos, or experimental compounds. They have been infected with chimpanze
e diseases and abused by chimpanzee keepers – now a chimpanzee has got them their freedom “HoooGraaa”!’

  ‘ “H’huuu” please, Madam Rauhschutz,’ Busner flicked respectfully, ‘did that particular set of calls have any meaning?’

  Rauhschutzgrinned at this enquiry and countersigned, ‘Yes, it does, Dr Busner. That is the human nesting vocalisation. It’s a tender exhortation by the male humans to the females, saying that the night shelters are prepared and it is time for mating activity to begin. And, ladies and gentlechimps, it is “h’hoooo” time for nest for us too. Welcome once more to Camp Rauhschutz. Dr Busner, I will expect you and your “grnn” allies to be up at dawn. Biggles ranges some miles from here and you will need to make an early start. As for your contingent, Mr Van Grijn, I have a very thorough programme arranged for you too “HoooGraaa”!’

  With this final pant-hoot, the maverick anthropologist drummed on the table top, vaulted over the veranda railing and disappeared into the stygian night, two of her tough bonobos flanking her. There was the sound of rustling in the undergrowth and she was gone.

  Around the still novocal table, the members of the Busner–Dykes group exchanged meaningful looks with one another. The same thought scampering through all their low brows, brachiating in the cellular branches of their brain tissue. Could it be that Ludmilla Rauhschutz really did practise what she preached? That the male humans’ cries were a summons for her – as well as their own females? That Rauhschutz, even now, was engaged in a perverse act of interspecific mating?

  Busner, Dykes, Knight, Higson and Bob the gofer got bipedal, and presenting low to the Dutch chimps and the bonobos who were still lingering in the shadows, they picked their way back across the still warm expanse of muddy compound to their quarters.