by Paul Merton
Some little sparrows, young sparrows they sounded, chirped on the window-ledge. Yeep–eyeep–yeep. But Josephine felt they were not sparrows, not on the window-ledge. It was inside her, that queer little crying noise. Yeep–eyeep–yeep. Ah, what was it crying, so weak and forlorn?
If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody for them to marry. There had been father’s Anglo-Indian friends before he quarrelled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a single man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they’d met them, how could they have got to know men well enough to be more than strangers? One read of people having adventures, being followed, and so on. But nobody had ever followed Constantia and her. Oh yes, there had been one year at Eastbourne a mysterious man at their boarding-house who had put a note on the jug of hot water outside their bedroom door! But by the time Connie had found it the steam had made the writing too faint to read; they couldn’t even make out to which of them it was addressed. And he had left next day. And that was all. The rest had been looking after father and at the same time keeping out of father’s way. But now? But now? The thieving sun touched Josephine gently. She lifted her face. She was drawn over to the window by gentle beams.
Until the barrel-organ stopped playing Constantia stayed before the Buddha, wondering, but not as usual, not vaguely. This time her wonder was like longing. She remembered the times she had come in here, crept out of bed in her nightgown when the moon was full, and lain on the floor with her arms outstretched, as though she was crucified. Why? The big, pale moon had made her do it. The horrible dancing figures on the carved screen had leered at her and she hadn’t minded. She remembered too how, whenever they were at the seaside, she had gone off by herself and got as close to the sea as she could, and sung something, something she had made up, while she gazed all over that restless water. There had been this other life, running out, bringing things home in bags, getting things on approval, discussing them with Jug, and taking them back to get more things on approval, and arranging father’s trays and trying not to annoy father. But it all seemed to have happened in a kind of tunnel. It wasn’t real. It was only when she came out of the tunnel into the moonlight or by the sea or into a thunderstorm that she really felt herself. What did it mean? What was it she was always wanting? What did it all lead to? Now? Now?
She turned away from the Buddha with one of her vague gestures. She went over to where Josephine was standing. She wanted to say something to Josephine, something frightfully important, about—about the future and what…
“Don’t you think perhaps—” she began.
But Josephine interrupted her. “I was wondering if now—” she murmured. They stopped; they waited for each other.
“Go on, Con,” said Josephine.
“No, no, Jug; after you,” said Constantia.
“No, say what you were going to say. You began,” said Josephine.
“I… I’d rather hear what you were going to say first,” said Constantia.
“Don’t be absurd, Con.”
“Really, Jug.”
“Connie!”
“Oh, Jug!”
A pause. Then Constantia said faintly, “I can’t say what I was going to say, Jug, because I’ve forgotten what it was… that I was going to say.”
Josephine was silent for a moment. She stared at a big cloud where the sun had been. Then she replied shortly, “I’ve forgotten too.”
THE 40-LITRE MONKEY
Adam Marek
Adam Marek (1974–) is an award-winning British short story writer. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in many magazines and anthologies, including Prospect and The Sunday Times Magazine, and The Penguin Book of the British Short Story. His short story collections The Stone Thrower and Instruction Manual for Swallowing are published by Comma Press.
I once met a man with a forty-litre monkey. He measured all his animals by volume. His Dalmatian was small, only eighteen litres, but his cat, a Prussian Blue, was huge — five litres, when most cats are three. He owned a pet shop just off Portobello Road. I needed a new pet for my girlfriend because our last two had just killed each other.
‘The ideal pet,’ the owner told me, ‘is twelve litres. That makes them easy enough to pick up, but substantial enough for romping without risk of injury. What did you have?’
‘A gecko,’ I replied. ‘I guess he was about half a pint.’
‘You use imperial?’ The man smirked and gestured towards a large vivarium in the corner. ‘Iguana,’ he said. ‘Six litres, and still growing.’
‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘I also had a cat. She must have been four litres, maybe more.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Was she a longhair, because they look big, but when you dunk them they’re small, like skinny rats.’
‘She was a short hair,’ I said.
‘How old?’
‘Four.’
‘That volume would have dropped anyway, unless you mixed tripe with her food. Did you do that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She ate tuna fish.’
‘No pet ever got voluminous eating tuna,’ he smiled, almost sympathetic.
‘What’s the biggest thing you’ve got?’ I asked.
‘That would have to be my forty-litre monkey,’ he smiled.
‘May I see it?’
‘You doubt my veracity?’
‘Not at all. Is it a secret monkey?’
‘No, he’s not a secret monkey. I’ve shown him in South America, Russia, and most of Western Europe.’
‘What sort of monkey is it?’
‘He is a baboon,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
‘A baboon? What do they usually scale in at?’
‘Twenty-three litres.’
‘How did yours get so big?’
‘I won’t tell you. Have you any idea how many thirty-litre monkeys I got through before I hit on the right combination?’
I shrugged my shoulders. The man rubbed his brow between his thumb and forefinger, as if wondering why he was even talking to me, the owner of a dead half-pint gecko. I was getting claustrophobic and started to leave, when he grabbed my arm and said, ‘Would you like to see my monkey?’
I nodded that I would. He locked the front door and led me up a narrow staircase. Names were written on every step, and alongside, a volume: Edgar 29 litres; Wallace 32 litres; Merian 34 litres. Also on every step were paper bags of feed, books and files, stacked up against the wall, so that I had to put each foot directly in front of the other to walk up, and I kept catching my ankle with the edge of my heel.
‘So how did your pets die, anyway?’ the man asked.
‘The cat managed to slide the door of the gecko’s tank open. She tried to eat him whole, and he stuck in her throat.’
‘Hmph,’ the man laughed.
The man took me to a door, which was covered in stickers of various animal organisations I’d never heard of: Big Possums of Australasia, American Tiny Titans. The door had a keypad, which he shielded with one hand as he punched the code with the other. A pungent stench of meat and straw and bleach poured out of the room, and I heard a soft sucking noise, like air drawn into a broken vacuum, but I may have imagined this.
Being in the room felt like being suffocated in an armpit. Something was shuffling about in a cage in the corner, grunting softly. The perimeter of the room was like the staircase, with books, files and bags of dried foodstuffs piled up the walls. The floor was covered in black linoleum, and the section in front of the door was rough with thousands of scratches. Opposite the door was an archway, which led into a bright bathroom. He had a huge glass tank in there with units of measurement running up the sides and extra marks and comments written in marker pen.
‘He’s over there,’ the man said. ‘Stay here, and I’ll let him out.’
&nb
sp; ‘Does he bite?’ I asked.
‘Not any more.’
The man took a key from his back pocket, which was attached to a chain and belt loop. The lock undid with a satisfying click. He opened the cage door a little and crouched in front. He whispered something to the baboon, but I couldn’t hear what he said. He nodded his head, as if receiving a response from the monkey, then moved back, staying in his crouched position.
The bad air in the room was making me feel sick.
‘Why is it so dark in here?’ I asked.
‘Light makes him too active. He burns off all that volume when the light’s on,’ he replied.
The man stayed crouched down, and began to bob his backside up and down, as if he were rubbing an itch up against a tree. He patted the floor with his hands, staring all the while into the cage.
A shape shuffled out. I’d never seen a regular-size baboon, so had no point of reference for his size, but he was big, big and greasy.
‘Why is his fur all slicked down like that?’ I asked. ‘Vaseline,’ the man replied. ‘Baboon hair is slightly absorbent. If he soaks up water that makes less volume.’
‘So you grease him up to make him waterproof?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that legal?’
The man looked at me like I was an idiot.
The baboon came further out of the cage. The man put something in his own mouth. The baboon shifted back nervously at first, but then skipped in and took the food from his lips. He looked at me while he ate. His face seemed to be saying, ‘I know I look ridiculous, but if you say anything, I’ll pull your arm off.’
‘What’s his name?’ I asked.
‘Don’t speak so loudly,’ he whisper-spat. ‘He’s called Cooper.’
‘So what’s next,’ I asked. ‘A fifty-litre monkey?’
‘You can’t get a baboon that size. Not without steroids.’
‘Do they make monkey steroids?’
‘Are you mocking me?’ The man stood up. The baboon raised his arms and hooted. The man squatted down again and bowed his head, looking back at me and suggesting I do the same.
I squatted down. The smell became worse. It hung near the floor like a fog.
‘Do many people do this, grow big monkeys, I mean?’
‘Not many. In this country anyway.’
‘How many would you say there are around the world?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ the man said. ‘Not everyone competes, but there are about sixty regulars I guess.’
‘And is this a record monkey?’
‘By half a litre.’
‘So have you got like an arch rival? An enemy monkey grower?’ I couldn’t help smiling when I said this. The man seemed to be having a crisis. He didn’t know whether to be angry, or to be excited. I think this must have been the first time anyone had wanted to see his monkey.
‘There’s a guy from Thailand. He claimed he had a forty-three-litre monkey, but he’d put putty in its armpits and stuffed golfballs up its bum.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘It’s quite common. They’re a lot stricter about it now though.’
The baboon settled close to the man and allowed him to stroke its greasy head.
‘Who’s they?’ I asked. ‘Is there some kind of governing body?’
‘Yes, the BMG.’
‘What’s that stand for, the Big Monkey Group?’ I laughed.
‘Yes. They’re a part of the Big Animal Group. People compete with almost every animal you could think of. I specialise in baboons, but I dabble in cats and guinea pigs too. They’re cheaper to transport long distance, and they take less time to grow.’
I was glad that it was dark because my eyes were watering.
‘Do you want me to measure him?’ the man asked.
‘What, now? In the tank?’
The man nodded.
‘No, don’t worry. You’re okay. I wouldn’t want to get Cooper all wet for nothing.’
‘It’s no trouble.’
‘No really. It’s fine,’ I said.
‘But how do you know I’m not lying to you?’
‘I trust you.’
‘Would you know a forty-litre monkey when you saw one?’
‘No, but at a guess, I’m sure that he’s about…’
‘Not about. Exactly. He’s exactly forty litres. I’ll show you.’
The man scooped Cooper up in his arms. The baboon wrapped his long arms around the man’s neck. His blue shirt became smeared with Vaseline.
‘It’s really okay. I believe you,’ I said.
The man ignored me and went into the bathroom. He pointed to the water level, which was exactly on the zero position, and then lowered the monkey in. I expected him to freak out, but instead, he went limp, as if dead.
‘How come he’s like that?’ I asked.
‘If he moved around, he might splash water out of the tank. Instant disqualification. Getting them to be still can be even harder than getting them large,’ he said.
Cooper grasped the man’s index fingers and remained still as the water covered his throat, his mouth, and then his whole head. When the water level cut a line across the baboon’s forearms, the man let him go. Cooper pulled his arms down below the surface. The water made a soft plopping sound. The man ducked down to look at the monkey through the tank. He clapped his hands twice, and Cooper stuck his arms out to either side, pressing against the glass and holding himself below the water.
His hair stayed flat against his body. Air bubbles clung to the corners of his eyes and to his nostrils. His black-ringed eyes darted around while his head stayed still, as if the monkey was just a suit, and there was something alive inside it, something that didn’t like water.
‘There, you see?’ the man said.
I looked at the water level. ‘It says thirty-nine,’ I said.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he snapped, but then he looked at the meniscus and gasped. It was a sound of pain, of betrayal. His intake of breath and the way he stared at the baboon were loaded with hurt.
The baboon stayed beneath the surface of the water. The man looked him up and down and around the tank, looking for a reason for the reading. He walked around the tank, looking for spilt water.
‘Is he waiting for some kind of signal to come up?’ I asked. Cooper’s eyes were frantic.
The man ignored me, still trying to see a reason why the reading would be low. He scrambled around the tank, his hands wrestling each other.
‘Should I clap or something?’ I asked.
The man looked at me, and then at the monkey, and clapped twice. The baboon let go of the sides of the tank and rose up. His head broke the surface and he wheezed for breath, panic over his face, as if he knew he was guilty of something awful.
The man grabbed his wrists and dragged him out. He was being much less delicate with Cooper than before he went in the tank.
‘What did you do?’ he snapped. ‘What did you do?’ The baboon shook some of the water off of his oiled skin. ‘Did you make yourself sick?’
‘Bastard monkey,’ he spat.
‘Surely it’s not his fault,’ I said.
‘Oh, you think?’ The man smiled, and then turned nasty. ‘What the hell do you know about monkeys, huh?’
I shrugged my shoulders, and the man turned his attention back to the monkey. He dropped Cooper to the ground, and the baboon bounded across the room. The man muttered to himself as he grabbed a paper sack from the floor. He poured something that looked like muesli into a bowl, and then squeezed a bright yellow liquid over it. He dumped the bowl on the floor while he used both hands to unscrew a large tub, out of which he scooped two spoonfuls of a gelatinous substance. He mixed this into the bowl, all the while muttering to himself. He took the bowl to a cabinet, which was full of droppers and bottles like a medicine cabinet. He put drops of this in and a sprinkling of that, and popped a capsule of something else in, then stirred it all up and slid it across the floor to the baboon.
; The baboon looked at the bowl, and then at the man. He turned away and slunk into the cage.
‘Oh, you’re not hungry,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’re happy being a thirty-nine litre monkey? Is that what you’re telling me? Why are you doing this?’
The man looked like he was caught between crying and bleeding from his ears.
‘I should probably go,’ I said. ‘Thanks for showing me your monkey.’
‘Is that some kind of joke?’ The man turned to me. ‘Thanks for showing me your thirty-nine-litre monkey? Is that what you’re trying to say?’ His fists were bunched.
‘I’m not trying to say anything. I think you’ve got a lovely monkey, whatever volume he is.’
I don’t know what I’d said to him, but he went crazy. His face flushed bright red and the tendons in his neck went taut. He actually reached his arms out towards me and stretched his fingers, as if he were going to strangle me. I backed away towards the door, preparing myself to sprint.
But then a cloud seemed to pass behind his eyes. He began tapping the side of his left palm and whispering to himself. And this had an immediate calming effect. He took a deep breath.
‘I apologise for displaying inappropriate emotion,’ he said.
‘That’s… okay,’ I said.
The man locked up Cooper’s cage, shoulders hunched, and his posture repentant. He spoke to Cooper in a soft voice. I could not hear the words, or see the baboon’s face, but the shuffling sounds in the cage calmed, giving me the impression that they were making their peace. ‘Let us sort out a new pet for your girlfriend,’ the man said as he stood up and ushered me to the door, huffing air through his nose.
