by Will Self
Once safely inside, Busner lit the gas lamp and without any preamble they engaged in a speedy round of mating. It might have been the tense atmosphere during the meal, or the still tenser atmosphere that prevailed generally at Camp Rauhschutz, but whatever the cause Janet had within the last couple of hours begun to show – even if only very slightly, and she was more than willing to be covered by the males. Simon, thrusting, tooth-clacking and coming in a matter of seconds, was just as speedily calmed. After the crazy antics of the anthropologist, and the still acquiescence of the Dutch animal rights fanatics, it was beautifully reassuring and soporific to lie in the disordered embrace of a post-coital grooming session. It was all they could manage to find their own nests and crawl under the mosquito nets before sleep enfolded them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Simon awoke, as was the diktat of the camp commandant, at dawn. Before he was aware of whether it was light or not, he heard the sounds of the forest, the yammering of baboons, the chattering of parakeets, ibises and other birds, the guttural cries of humans – close by, and mingled with them the excited vocalisations of chimpanzees.
Flipping back the mosquito net, Simon leapt from the nest and pulled on his safari jacket. His horny feet clipping the concrete, he swaggered across the hut and, seeing that his allies were already up, swung open the door and plunged into the harsh grey day.
The scene that met his still encrusted eyes was at first difficult to take in. The compound was full of figures, the scampering setiform bodies of chimpanzees and the taller, more exiguous forms of their closest living relatives.
It was morning feeding time for the rehabilitated humans of Camp Rauhschutz. Over by the veranda of the main hut a feeding bin was set up. Two of Rauhschutz’s bonobos were managing this resource. The humans, moving with their characteristic zombie-like bipedal gait, slowly emerged from the surrounding tree cover. They ambled across the compound and over to the bin in small knots of two or three adults and as many sub-adults or infants.
The bonobos, using long poles, then prodded them towards the bin. If any of the humans showed any indication of trying to get more than its fair share of the bananas, bread and figs on offer, the bonobos would cut them out from the rest of their group and poke them away from the bin, using quite vicious thrusts of the poles, or so Simon thought.
Those humans that had secured their share of the food were standing in disordered ranks at the very edge of the compound. There must have been at least fifty or sixty of the animals, although Simon couldn’t be certain as the greyness of their skins made them difficult to pick out as individuals in the crepuscular light. There was that, and there was also the sight of their lumpen bodies and the languor of their movement. For a chimpanzee, used to observing fast-moving fingers and scampering limbs, the humans required a constant kind of double-take, to check that they were still there, still standing, knock-kneed, slack-jawed, arms akimbo, eyes glazed.
In amongst this throng of ghosts were moving some of the Dutch chimps. They rubbed up against the humans, and attempted to groom them. They uttered vocalisations that they presumably hoped the humans would understand in some way; low guttural cries that approximated to those of the animals. To Simon’s eye it seemed that the humans were totally unresponsive to these efforts. As he knuckle-walked closer to the scene his furled ears began to pick out the vocalisations of one species from those of the other. The Dutch chimps were grunting and pant-hooting, lip-smacking and panting, trying as best they could to impress upon the humans the joy they were experiencing at being in touch with them. While the humans, on the other hand, were merely garbling incoherently in their swinish way, “Fuckoff-fuckoff-fuckoff-fuckoff,’ ” over and over and over.
Simon didn’t have long to absorb this spectacle, for a familiar hand grasped his scruff and inparted, ‘ “HooGraa” morning, Simon, up early as Madam dictated!’ Simon turned to see his alpha.
Busner seemed positively buoyed up by the ambience at Camp Rauhschutz, his muzzle creased with lines of intrigue and speculation. ‘Come,’ he ran on, ‘ “grnnn” Madam awaits us on the main veranda, together with some of her “huh-huh” closer allies!’
They knuckle-walked back across the compound and swung on to the main veranda. Rauhschutz was there, wearing another vile mumu, together with a small group of humans. Simon felt quite unsettled by the proximity of the bald animals. He skulked along the edge of the veranda keeping his muzzle out. Rauhschutz was indulging in a kind of tea ceremonial, pouring out foaming tin mugs from a large aluminium pot and pushing them into the outstretched, swishing hands of the humans.
The humans did at least seem to be enjoying their tea. They knocked back the steaming fluid, their blunt muzzles pointing up to the corrugated-iron roof, heedless of the hot splashes that fell on their exposed teats. ‘Tea,’ Busner gently inparted Simon’s wrist. ‘Best drink of the day!’
Although the humans on the veranda were as diffident as their fellows across the compound, there was one who had some spunk. A short male with a red thatch of fur between his teats, and an equally revolting patch between his tuberous legs, took advantage of the brief matitudinal presenting that was going on between Busner and Rauhschutzto grab the battered bowl of sugar from the table and upend its contents into his tight, pink-lipped mouth. This male then executed what passed for a turn of speed among humankind, by swaggering off the veranda. ‘ “Hooo” he’s got the sugar!’ Rauhschutzflourished, and all the chimps followed after the rogue male.
The sugar-stealer got an instant hit from his booty. This much Simon could tell by the way he began to stagger around in small circles, mewling and bellowing, “Fuckoff-fuckoff-fuckoff.” Busner, still at Simon’s side, inparted, ‘I think his blood-sugar level will peak fairly soon – these creatures have surprisingly fast metabolisms. They are unused to any kind of stimulus. “Grnnn” coffee and sugar can have quite dramatic effects on them.’
Simon didn’t know about dramatic – but they were certainly plain to see. The sugar-stealer now fetched up by the wall of the main hut; this he proceeded to muzzle and then rhythmically bash with his hydrocephalic brow, butting the resounding metal, “Bash-bash-bash”, as some giant tetrapod – an ox or a warthog – might butt a tree. Coming up beside them, the maverick anthropologist regarded the notionally rehabilitated human with an expression betokening nothing but frank admiration, before remarking, ‘ “Hooo” see, the force and accuracy with which he butts the wall. I think it fair to sign that he seems to have a profound comprehension of the laws of physics.’
Together with Rauhschutz was Joshua, her head bonobo assistant. The rest of the Busner–Dykes group knuckle-walked up as well. They’d been down at the lake having a morning scrape. Seeing they were all assembled Rauhschutzconducted them, ‘ “HoooGrann” you have been welcomed here, and I’m sure you,’ she picked out Alex Knight, whose camcorder was, of course, already whirring, ‘will give a sympathetic portrayal of the work we are doing “euch-euch”. But for now you had better get going. The human infant you are interested in tends to range a few hours south of here. If you wish to make contact with him and get back before nightfall you had better “hooo” get going. Joshua here will act as your guide.’
They knuckle-walked and brachiated all morning. Towards noon they descended the last, steep green hillside, under the hammering sun and came to a small bay. Huddled there was a forlorn group of six or seven adult humans and a couple of infants. Joshua, who had been ranging ahead of the rest of the patrol, broke from cover with a series of loud waa-barks, and scampering this way and that, like some simian sheep pony, managed to carve one of the human infants out from the rest and herd him towards where the chimpanzee patrol was bipedal, watching.
The poor infant ambled this way and that. He really was a most sorry specimen, Simon thought, as were most of the other rehabilitated humans he’d seen in the vicinity of Camp Rauhschutz. His pitiful naked skin was scratched and grazed by the tooth-edged grass, his muzzle stippled with insect bites, hi
s head fur was tangled and matted. When Joshua had brought the human infant to within five metres of the chimpanzees he gestured, ‘Mr Dykes, this is the human that you wanted to see. The one that come to us from London. The one the boss denotes Biggles.’
Simon, squinting in the noonday equatorial glare, stared for a long time into the brutish muzzle of the human infant, who stared back at him, his white-pigmented eyes glazed and turned in on themselves. Simon took in the bare little visage, the undershot jaw and slightly goofy teeth, then he turned on all four of his heels, vocalised “H’hooo,” and gestured to the rest of the patrol, ‘Well, that’s that then,’ and they headed back towards the camp.
Late that night Simon Dykes and Zack Busner were indulging in a groom before nest on the small veranda outside their hut. The rest of the group were already asleep and their snuffles and gasps could be heard from inside the hut. The two males were squatting by a table on which a gas lantern was set, and the hissing this light made augmented the sounds of the night around them.
They were lazily passing a bottle of Scotch between them and picking over the events of the day. ‘This is a good drop,’ Simon signed. ‘ “Grnnn” Laphroaig, isn’t it “huuu”?’
‘That’s right,’ his alpha countersigned. ‘I managed to pick it up in Duty Free at Dar es Salaam – have another drop.’
When they’d taken another drink, Busner squatted upright and reached out to beard Simon, inparting his chin, ‘Well, old ally, so there was no hint of recognition as far as Biggles was concerned “huuu”?’
‘No, none at all, he looked just like any other human to me, nasty, brutish and long of leg “huh-huh”.’
‘And show me. ’ Busner leant forward. ‘Do you feel that with this “grnnn” revelation, your delusion has dissolved “huuu”?’
‘Yes, there’s that and there’s also this camp – that’s wrought a change in me as well, seeing the lengths that that female has gone to to deny her own chimpunity.’
‘You know, Simon. ’ Busner’s signing was subtle, the lightest perturbation of the air. ‘It’s occurred to me for some time now that your human delusion really was not at all an ordinary psychosis “chup-chupp”.’
‘Really “huu”?’
‘Yes, I mean to sign, your reality testing – as we psychologists like to ascript it – has, throughout all of this, been “hooo” different, rather than straightforwardly wrong. Given your preoccupation before your breakdown with the very essence of corporeality and its relation to our basic sense of chimpunity, it crossed my mind – and I hope you’ll “gru-nnn” forgive me for this speculation in advance if you cannot concur – that your conviction that you were human and that the evolutionarily successful primate was the human was more in the manner of a satirical trope “huu”?
Simon mused for some time before countersigning, then simply flicked, ‘It’s an image.’
For a long time afterwards, the two allies tenderly touched each other, and passed the Scotch back and forth, while all around them in the equatorial night, the humans yowled and yammered their near meaningless vocalisations, “Fuuuuuckoooofff-Fuuuuuuckooofff- Fuccckooooofff.”
Author’s Note
Hooogeaa! we chimpanzees are now living through an era in which our perceptions of the natural world are changing more rapidly than ever before. Furthermore, these same perceptions are being distorted by the ways we, as chimps, now live. Some thinkers describe our current way of life as ‘unnatural’ – but this is too simple, for chimpunity has often been defined as just this adaptive trait – the capacity for social evolution. Suffice to sign, these ‘unnatural’ ways of living do themselves impact on global ecology.
This is a bewildering state of affairs: our capacity for judging our own objectivity is circumscribed by itself. Is it any wonder that in such circumstances the chimps who have given the whole question of animal rights their fullest attention have dared to consider enlarging the franchise of chimpunity to admit subordinate species, such as humans?
It is worthwhile at this point representing the signs of Dr Louis Leakey, the pioneering archaeological palaeontologist. On learning from his protégé researcher, the celebrated anthropologist Dr Jane Goodall, that she had observed wild humans fashioning twigs and then using them to probe termite mounds, Dr Leakey remarked, ‘Now we must redefine tool, redefine chimpanzee– or accept humans as chimps!’ He referred of course to the traditional definition of chimpanzees as pongis habilis, the tool-making ape.
My intention in writing this novel has not been to make any simple-minded plea for human rights, or the welfare of humans. I personally believe that, despite the apparent inchimpunity of the way humans are employed for scientific purposes: held in large compounds, isolated, diseased, in pain, malnourished etc. etc., these experiments will continue to be necessary, particularly as regards CIV and AIDS.
The issue of CIV corrals us once more in the vicious moral circle. If humans are genetically close enough to us to be infected with CIV (and the most recent research suggests that humans share as much as 98% of our genetic material, and are closer to chimps than they are to gorillas), then surely they are worthy of some small measure of our sympathy?
To this the answer must be a qualified ‘yes’. Humans should be preserved. The dying-out of the human species would be an incalculable loss, and it is one that seems more than likely as bonobos1 encroach further and further on their habitat2.
But don’t bonobos need our sympathy as well? Aren’t bonobos more important than humans? Yes, of course, but the utility of preserving humans goes further than the search for a cure for AIDS, or any other medical research. The humans have much to teach us about our own origins and nature. Chimpanzees and humans had a common ancestor who lived as recently as five to six million years ago, an eye blink in evolutionary terms.
Furthermore, if humans were to become extinct in the wild, what would be the fate of domesticated humans? If, as anthropologists like Dr Goodall suggest, humans do indeed have some form of culture, then this would be effectively wiped out. It may even transpire that the behaviours of domesticated humans which reinforce this theory are in fact dependent on some form of morphic, resonant association with wild populations. Wipe out the wild humans and even the domesticated ones who have learnt to sign (some humans have a lexicon of five hundred or more ES signs) may fall motionless. Gesticulation between our two species will be at an end.
But let not the above be taken as an attempt to primatomorphise humans. Humans are what they are because of their humanity. Humans in the wild are very very different from chimpanzees. Human social organisation may be impressively complex when viewed through the lens of scientific enquiry, but stripped of this the raw facts are brute. Humans often consort – and therefore mate – for life! Instead of resolving conflict in a simple manner concordant with dominance hierarchies, human society appears horribly anarchic; bands of humans gather together to propagate their own ‘ways of life’ (perhaps primitive forms of ideology) on their fellows.
And while humans may display as much regard for their offspring as chimpanzees do, their perverse adhesion to the organising principle of monogamy (perverse because it confers no apparent genetic advantage) means that the gulf between ‘group’ and community ties is a large one. Old humans are disregarded and neglected far more than old chimpanzees.
But perhaps most significant of all is the human attitude to touch. It is this that appears so acutely inchimp. Humans, because of their lack of a protective coat, have not evolved the complex rituals of grooming and touch that so define chimpanzee social organisation and gesticulation. Imagine not being groomed! It is almost unthinkable to a chimpanzee that a significant portion of the day should not be given over to this most cohering and sensual of activities. Undoubtedly it is this lack of grooming that renders human sexuality so bizarre to us.
Humans commonly seek privacy to mate. The male usually effects penetration by lying on top of the female (one possible anatomical explanation for the peculiar f
ormation of human buttocks); offspring are not encouraged to participate in mating. Females are mated whether or not they are in oestrus, although once again such behaviour clearly confers no adaptive advantage. Once a human infant has been born it is often passed around the community within days of its birth, and may be weaned as early as three months.
Is it too fantastical to imagine that it is these traits – which I stress are in no obvious way adaptive – that have contributed to the human evolutionary cul-de-sac? That humans may be afflicted with some kind of species neuroticism? Such speculations may not accord with the discipline of anthropology, nor with ethology in general; however, I am not a scientist but a novelist, unconfined by dry empirical considerations.
Like Dr Goodall, who, when she first went to the Gombe Stream area to observe humans in the wild, did not know enough to avoid the primatocentrism of giving humans names, I have gone against many of the tenets of dispassionate science. I do not mean to imply for a moment that I really believe wild humans to have consciousness of the kind I ascribe to Simon Dykes, rather I have tried to imagine what it might have been like ifhominids instead of pongids had been evolutionarily successful.
I am, of course, not original in this. Ever since the first description of the human reached Europe in 1699, humans have had a particular fascination for chimpanzees. Early theorists positioned the human midway between the chimpanzee and ‘brute creation’ in the Chain of Being. Latterly, in the wake of Darwin, some supposed that the human might prove to be the ‘missing link’. For others the existence of the human confirmed their desire to deny chimpunity to the bonobo. Many writers have seen in the human a paradigm for the gentler as well as the darker side of chimpanzee nature. From Melincourt to My Human Wife, from King Kong to the Planet of the Humans films, writers have flirted with the numinous dividing line between man and chimp.
