It is man’s custom to keep the object of his love, if at all possible, caged. And a large cage was the habitual residence of the monkey; for greater security there was a sort of pectoral harness which was locked on his back, and attached to this a small chain whose other end was fastened inside the cage, giving him complete freedom of movement within it. The beast proved to be very restless; nor, though duly castrated and with his teeth filed down, did he seem to lose any of his natural turbulence. He often shrieked or chittered like a child, without a plausible reason; he complained, went into rages over nothing, threatened to leap at the faces of unfamiliar people, sometimes even at his mistresses, and at such times his extraordinarily mobile eyes lit up with terrifying hatred.
“But at bottom he’s so good!” the old maids would always say. And indeed it was often enough to give him, as a “diversion,” a walnut, which he cracked between his molars and diligently picked apart and ate with great concentration. When let out of the cage, he behaved much more reasonably—which is no cause for wonder; the old maids had therefore taken to giving him his freedom occasionally, of course, in a closed room. There he was free to climb on the furniture, which he did with great delicacy and without ever breaking anything, poking about to his heart’s content; and he would stop his unreasonable whimperings. However, even then he did not cease to manifest, by some small aspect of his behavior, a certain bossiness. Though a eunuch, he was after all the male of the house and spoiled to boot, despite the pitiable life he led. When he was free and had let off as much steam as he wished, his tiny eyes began to close like a child’s and he sought refuge on the lap of one of the two women, Lilla’s, usually; or better, if she was lying down, he would attach himself to her breasts, which he clutched with all four of his extremities in a pose of possession. The monkey began to develop these virile traits especially after the death of Donna Marietta: the bemustached and bearded old lady had filled him with a perplexed and perhaps envious sense of subjugation which bordered on terror. But at this point I realize that I have let myself slip into the above-deprecated misdemeanor, that of attributing human attitudes and feelings to a brute—and therefore I put a full stop.
Though far from being completely liberated from the nightmare which their mother had created for them, the two old maids were at least relieved of her presence and were beginning to enjoy a certain tranquillity, when suddenly the lightning struck. Let us try to recall everything which I have so laboriously set down until now and then draw our conclusions.
One fine morning the Mother Superior of the neighboring convent appeared at their door with a circumspect and mysterious air. The two old maids had a slight acquaintance with her, because they sometimes bestowed their leftovers on the convent’s poor. Led into the green drawing room, she said first of all that she knew from experience of their uncrushable faith and the God-fearing, exemplary sobriety of their way of life, which made the information she was about to impart all the more painful for her; finally, after many more preliminaries she explained that she could no longer keep quiet about what was taking place in the convent owing to the activities of an animal that belonged to them. The old maids were utterly astounded and anxiously pressed her for an explanation—which she at last gave.
The nun accused the monkey of having penetrated furtively at night into their chapel beneath the eucalyptus trees, and of having removed or eaten a certain number of consecrated hosts. Furthermore, he had drunk some wine which, if not consecrated, was nevertheless sacred. This sacrilegious theft, or sacrilegious ingestion, was not, she declared, a unique occurrence but had been going on for some time now and, just to cite the most recent incident, had taken place again the night before. There was, unfortunately, no longer any doubt as to the identity of the perpetrator, for if that had been the case she would not have taken it upon herself to, etc., etc.
Omitting the old maids’ “oh’s” and “ah’s” which were unleashed by this extraordinary affair, I will try as faithfully as possible to adhere to the bare account of the events that followed.
Of the two, Nena was the first to regain control of herself; while Lilla was still pouring forth apologies and, with unconscious blasphemy, offers of compensation, Nena demanded that the nun furnish some explanations and justify her suspicions. Not suspicions, the nun retorted, a trifle put out, but absolute certainty: some of the sisters, struck by the inexplicable loss of the sacred comestibles, had kept vigil, spied, remained on the lookout, till at last, the night before, they had caught sight of a small shadow which . . . and besides, for the past few months they had often seen the monkey—in its cage, that’s true—on the balcony overlooking the nunnery’s garden or next to the kitchen window, which faced in the same direction; and he seemed to be following with interest the movements of the nuns, and. . . .
“My goodness, all the things you’ve observed, my dear Mother Superior!” Nena broke in. “But beware of rash suspicions,” she added, smiling. “I’ll admit that our Tombo (which, originally spelled Tomboo, was the monkey’s name) is a bit unruly, but he’d never do a thing like that. Please be kind enough to come with me.”
And she led the Mother Superior straight into the kitchen. Nena was trying very hard to keep her temper, but she was deeply troubled and insulted, as though her honor were at stake if the monkey should prove to be guilty. The party in question, locked and tethered in his prison, was busy picking his fleas under a weak beam of sunlight which fell obliquely through the open window; when he saw the stranger, he threatened to pounce on her, as he usually did, but then immediately calmed down and set himself to observe with great attention this black personage surmounted by so enthralling a headdress.
“Just look, Mother,” Nena continued, pointing at the cage. “Certainly we didn’t let him out, and how could he have freed himself, I’d like to know? See for yourself if such a little beast could snap a chain like this and break down this kind of door! Anyway, the chain would be broken, isn’t that so? And what about the door, isn’t it locked from outside? Nothing’s been touched. . . . No, no, my dear Mother, there’s definitely been a mistake here.”
“And yet!” the Mother Superior insisted.
Just then a file of nuns began to cross the convent garden below, heading slowly for the chapel, the site of the presumed crime. The monkey who, bored with examining the Mother Superior, had turned to the window, on seeing the nuns gave signs of the liveliest interest; he cocked his head to one side, clutched the bars, hopped up and down, holding his feet together and slapping his knees, and frowned—and made other brusque and grotesque little gestures. He appeared to be greatly amused.
“There! You see what I mean?” the Mother Superior cried.
“But what’s that got to do with it, he always acts like this,” Lilla asserted incautiously.
“That’s just it!” the Mother Superior remarked mysteriously.
The nuns had disappeared.
“No, no,” Nena repeated peremptorily, in order to end the matter. “There’s no doubt you’ve made a mistake.”
Given these terms, the discussion could not proceed any further. The Mother Superior, in view of Nena’s resistance, changed her tone somewhat and assumed an air of unctuous commiseration, as though she sincerely pitied the old maids for having such a rascal in their house; she advised them to keep an eye on the animal, since it would be regrettable if in the house of Our Lord, etc., and the two women gladly promised to do just that. Then, though not without having accepted some small alms for the poor of the quarter, she withdrew, rather perplexed: she could only up to a certain point understand Nena’s obstinate desire to clear her monkey of all guilt.
After the nun had left, Nena’s attitude suddenly changed and her assurance became a kind of anxious dismay. She began pacing through the rooms, wringing her hands, and repeating: “Could it be possible? And yet . . . but how could he have done it?”—and similar phrases. Lilla, whom Nena’s attitude had to some extent roused from the foolish consternation which at first had gr
ipped her, now succumbed to it again; and both of them, together with the maid, who’d been quickly involved, began chattering frantically about this unbelievable affair. Nena did not really give too much credence to the possibility of such a deed on the part of the monkey, but just the thought that someone might even suspect their Tombo deeply humiliated her. The other two women had each her own opinion. The arguments, the conjectures, the advice given and received—while the three of them worked each other up, calmed each other down, and persuaded each other—lasted all that day and the next too, not to mention a good part of the nights. Also some of their visitors were informed of the affair, though under a vow of secrecy, and no doubt each of them volunteered an opinion on the subject.
Those were two terrible days for the old maids; but even worse were in store for them. Finally it was decided to regard the entire matter as trivial, at least for the time being, and the monkey, at first removed to the bedroom, just to be sure, was carried back to his place in the kitchen, since he stank at night and, furthermore, the storm having subsided somewhat, his innocence had been, so to speak, recognized. But the old maids still had their hearts in their mouths. Then on the morning of the third day, when the hornet’s nest was just about to stop buzzing, a wide-eyed nun came with a message from the Mother Superior, saying briefly that the theft of the sacred staples had been repeated that very night and that the monkey had nearly been caught in the act; and immediately she left without another word.
I omit the description of the women’s response to this announcement. It was decided to spy on the monkey, beginning that very night. The reasons for this procedure, which Nena demanded, perhaps will not be very clear to everyone. Why, one might ask, didn’t the old maids just lock the animal in a room, at least during the night? An exact answer would perhaps be neither easy nor very simple, and I will spare the reader. Let me simply point out here that for Nena it was probably not so much a matter of physically inhibiting the monkey as of making an adequate appraisal of his morality.
“You know,” she said gloomily to her sister, at a moment when they were alone in the evening, “you know how much I love Tombo; but if he really did what they say, I want to put him into his little coffin with my own hands!”
4
Two or three nights passed before the women, who took turns watching, were able to surprise the monkey in any serious infraction of the rules of the house—or, to put it bluntly, in the flagrant crimes of noctambulism or deviousness. They had agreed that throughout the night at least one of them would stay awake and silently take up a position, at the usual bedtime, on an armchair situated in a bedroom which looked out on the short hallway leading to the kitchen; through the two doors, which had been left ajar, the sentinel’s eye fell directly on the animal’s cage, which was sufficiently illuminated by the small electric candle burning day and night in the kitchen before an image of the Madonna. This night watchman must of course be careful not to make suspicious noises, so that the monkey would be led to believe that the ladies of the house were, as always, sound asleep, and would not notice any irregularity in their habits; and the sentinel should raise the alarm at the slightest movement worthy of note.
The first nights the beast slept placidly on his pallet of woolen rags in a corner of the cage, only waking up every hour or two to scratch himself furiously or to grumble, so it seemed, about something. Once or twice he even got up and pottered about for a quarter of an hour, as though he wanted to stretch his arms and legs—a restlessness which remained, however, without consequence. On the fourth night, Nena was on guard; she had become more and more convinced that Tombo was innocent and above all suspicion, and now she was almost dozing. When, all of a sudden, she had a blurred vision of the animal who, having as usual stood up, scratched himself, and moved up and down the cage, was now shaking the bars next to the small door with silent fury. This brought her fully awake and made her sharpen her eyes.
Tombo withdrew, but only to indulge in a series of frenetic quakings and contortions, like those of a dog when it tries to shake off water, or those of a cat when it wants to rid itself of some restraint or nuisance, yet whose purpose wasn’t too clear—and all this very, very silently. Before Nena could realize what was happening, the beast stood there, freed of his halter as well as his chain. So he had indeed found a way! This was certainly not the first time—the operation seemed to be a familiar one for him. Holding her breath, the old maid watched every move he made.
Tombo again approached the door of the cage and shook it with his particular cautious fury. When he saw that it did not give way, he changed his tactics. It must be mentioned that all around this door ran a band of sheet metal, which had purposely been put there so that the prisoner could not, if it ever came into his head, stretch his hand through the bars and open the door from the outside. However, the maker of the cage had reckoned only approximately with the natural intelligence of the animal it was meant to house. Now the monkey, clinging to the bars which ran alongside and over the metal strip, climbed up far enough to be above the obstacle, and from up there stretched his arm, which proved to be disproportionately long, toward the latch which locked the door from the outside. But even in this way he did not manage to reach it. One might have thought that so far he had simply transferred the difficulty to another place, and yet he had his reasons: he had become convinced that the latch could be maneuvered better from above than from the side. He descended again and now with great decisiveness made for a little trapeze which hung in the cage for his amusement, and skillfully plucked out the horizontal bar, which must already have been loosened. This operation, as well as another similar to it which we shall soon describe, he must surely have seen done before. Equipped with this tool, he returned to his place above the door and, again thrusting out his arm, whose length was now increased by that of the stick, after some fumbling about at last managed to Jiggle the latch and make it fall back: the cage was open.
At this juncture Nena wanted to give the alarm, but she could not do so without arousing the monkey’s suspicions. Yet Tombo did not seem in a hurry to take advantage of his conquered freedom, almost as though he had done everything for the fun of it or to test his dexterity; so the old maid began to feel hopeful again.
Tombo was now in a corner of the cage near his pallet, where he kept turning around and around with little snorts and puffs, bending his knees a bit, as though he were trying to find the most comfortable position in which to lie down—just as dogs do sometimes. Then he stopped moving and remained for some time motionless, half-seated and with his hands propped against the floor of the cage. At last he got to his feet and stretched, after which he gave a wide yawn, scratching his belly; he also emitted a barely audible chitter. Nena did not miss a single one of these movements and sounds. Now the animal seemed to be making up his mind to do something, and his entire body expressed this determination. He turned to right and left in his usual abrupt manner. His eyes sparkled. He remained immobile for another instant, as though listening, then he hopped toward the door. But he tripped on a tin cup which was there for his water; so he halted, moodily, to get it out of his way, or rather to beat it childishly, as if punishing it for its impudence. Again a long spell of immobility, caused either by distraction or by the fear that the slight fracas had awakened someone. This was followed by a new decision; and this time Tombo pushed at the door of the cage.
The cage was placed on a large, unpainted table. Clutching one of its legs, the monkey descended to the floor, which he crossed two or three times this way and that, seeming not very sure of the direction to take. To Nena, aside from her anguish, it was a shock to see him there on the floor, destined as he was to live aloft; but it wasn’t only this. The beast, who, of course, walked with the help of his hands, looked to her somehow unmentionable and disgusting in that dim, nocturnal light—like the Buprestis or the stag beetle when, threatened, they detach themselves from the ground against which they were flattened and, rising high on their long legs, dash aw
ay rapidly and furtively. Or, more simply, he resembled a monstrous spider. Now, at last, he definitely decided on his course: having climbed by the same route up onto the table next to the window, grasping first the bars of the cage, then the knob of the window, he lifted himself onto the window sill. (Why he preferred this roundabout method to a quick leap, it would be hard to say.) The shutters were pulled to, but not enough to prevent the passage of that tiny body between the sill and the frame. Having for a moment scrutinized the darkness outside and clinging with one hand to a slat, the monkey lowered himself into the gulf, then withdrew his hand, which must have found another grip, and so vanished from the old maid’s sight. Rushing silently to the window of a room next to the kitchen, she reached there in time to see him leap to the ground from the end of a rainspout which ran a few feet away from the shutters of the kitchen window. Helped by the air’s vague luminosity, she could follow, step by step, his swift yet circumspect gyrations; which led him in a few instants past the wire fence into the garden of the nunnery. But here the animal was engulfed by the shadow of the two eucalyptus trees and Nena inevitably lost sight of him. Nonetheless it seemed to her that he had climbed one of those trees; at any rate, he had not gone toward the chapel. Nena left the window—it can easily be imagined in what a state—and at last gave the alarm.
Gogol's Wife Page 6
