The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men

by Georges T. Dodds

  While he did not find what he wanted, for the naturalist only undertook custom work—he discovered something better. The famous wild animal fair was in town. He went wandering through. Around the auction block, the avenues were lined with the sheds, tents and caravans of the menagerie owners, come to renew or complete their personnel, before winding their way through Europe. All the curses of Babel, dominated by the “goddamns” of the great British circuses, coalesced into a single argument startlingly accompanied by all of the creatures’ voices, from the ill-tempered gibberish of the parrots to the roars of the wild beasts. The ebony gavel’s short sharp strikes seemed to fracture and split apart the enormous mass of noise into thousands of smaller echoes, whose last vibrations fell into silence. A huge African elephant, brought out unfettered, shifted heavily, a back resembling granite rounded and scored by diluvial pebbles, its motionless eyes seemingly maintaining over the crowd it dwarfed, the soft pensive gaze of a patriarch who has seen the worst and overcome it. At the door of the Zoological Gardens, where the parade of buyers and their purchases did not end, was the exit, far from Ararat, of a new Noah’s Ark. Jan, after mature consideration, brought back a cockatoo and some monkeys: living forms of nature, no longer the dead remains which narrow minds of no synthetic capacity continue to manipulate.

  The cockatoo belonged to the small Philippine species, with a white body, wings and tail, and a red crest. Attaching him to a bronze perch by way of a silvery chain around his leg, Jan did not bother with him, except to maintain a supply of seeds and water. His studious contemplations were immediately taken up by the monkeys.

  He had four of them, in three cages: one langur, one Alouatta howler-monkey, and two marmosets. Lining them up on a trestle between the office window and his desk, he would only take his eyes off them to flip through stories about them in travelogues, where nothing would surprise him, his imagination far outstripping the most bizarre descriptions. The squirrel-like marmosets, agile and restless, perched on the crossbars at the top of the cage, their tail, longer than their body, twisted around their neck like a woman’s boa, were of little interest to him, even often annoyed him with their high-pitched squalling when they argued over a sowbug or a spider. But the langur, old and morose, crouching with his feet in his hands, his black, hooded face and stiff dirty-white beard lowered, closed his eyes as if remembering the splendor of the Brahman temples where he had leapt about free and venerated. His dreaming took him to the land of the huge Buddhas, of the Sun splitting the bark of the guava trees, beneath which the fakirs let the nails of their clenched fists grow through their flesh for 50 years. The Alouatta, while rather sick, huddled in a corner like the langur, silent, almost inert, the goitrous sac of his laryngeal pouch hanging loosely, thought he heard the frightening cries with which these monkeys nightly terrify the American forests.

  Reading those works of popular science where good folk tire themselves out debunking ideas which scientists have never themselves had, he threw himself into tearing down the latter and coming to the rescue of the former, easily addressing, here as elsewhere, the toughest questions. He, who placed oysters with fish, and eels with snakes, would then, with an ineffable degree of ignorance, make categorical statements regarding the field of heredity and the hypotheses of the fixity of species and evolution. Thus, would he say, do alleged scholars place monkeys amongst their ancestors? This vile creature, which spends its days delousing itself in front of me would be among my ancestors! Bah! To the answer so often cited from the French naturalist Edouard Claparède, who assured a bishop that he would rather be an improved monkey than a degenerate Adam.5 Such opinions struck Jan as insulting, and he mulled over them continuously.

  Worse off yet, one night, as he was just about to blow out the light, he discovered a chapter in a zoology text that described the great cynocephalic apes as having a sexual interest in black women.6 He was haunted with nightmares. In the middle of the night he woke, terrified, feeling—feeling in an indubitable manner—the bastard born of such an unholy alliance tugging on his hair, puckering up to kiss him like a human would, while strangling him with a triple wrapping of its long prehensile tail. Wishing to wipe a sweat born of fear from his brow, he met with a furry hand and almost fainted. It was one of the marmosets, which had managed to spread apart the arched wires of their aviary-like cage. They had taken refuge in the warmest part of the room, and Jan found them curled up under the corners of his pillow. He let them stay, petted them, laughed at his fears, but nonetheless dared not go back to sleep, but rather began to smoke.

  Saskia’s son, a great big child, now five months old, was out to nurse some leagues away, near a small fishing village served, during the bathing season which was now just beginning, by a number of train lines from the city. He decided to go and give the child a hug, and the better to stretch his legs and refresh his mind, he left on foot in the wee hours of the morning.

  CHAPTER IV

  The beach, rising in a series of imperceptible undulations, formed at its top a hog-backed dune followed by a much steeper one. Nestled against the second, a score of homes made up the hamlet, all built askew, miserable, sinking, cracked, their ends almost spanning the narrow vale, their doors consequently only on the sides, these homes seemed to have slid down from the top of the slopes, settled there, resigned to their fate, and already half buried beneath the sands that surrounded them. There were a few gardens plots sheltered between a home and the black limbs of a dried up Tamarix hedge, where onions and lettuce grew thinly and did not thrive, even with constant watering. Even the most rustic of plants could take root in this shifting aridity. When the great winds powdered the flat roofs, were it not for the thin wisps of smoke that, in the rapidly quelled air, quickly resettled into a heavy inert layer within the funnel-like vale, rising straight up, as if a motionless column, to swell, waver and dissipate at the elevation where the breezes blew, one might think each house to be a gigantic mole-hill rising from the ground.

  The men, all fishermen, spent their days outside this hole, on the sea, where their hard, rough work stretched their lungs. The children, if they managed to get out of the cradle, climbed on all fours to the crest of the slope, then they too would run down the seaward side, in the salubrious air that allowed their growth. But the women and the elderly, remaining indoors, their eyesight eroded by the glittering reflection of the Sun on the white sand, dragged themselves about with withered limbs, worn out with anemia, their chests shaken by endless bouts of coughing, the sand having insinuated itself into the narrowest ramifications of their bronchi and choked them, as it did the sandstone miners, whose watches, notwithstanding boxes double-stuffed with cotton and suet, constantly stopped.

  The families succeed one another in lesser and lesser numbers, though the mothers spewed babies from their flaccid bellies like doe-rabbits their litters, and no adults ever permanently left this miserable hovel, all permeated by a strange love of the land which depressed and made them languish and even die under more favorable climates. In this they resembled the Inuit taken from the cold, the hunger and the stark bareness of the Pole, or a colony of madrepores taken from the reef it was born on. The good season was horribly stifling, without a breath of fresh air; the winter one long night under a low cloud ceiling. The only resource, the sea, was close, but miserly with its bounty, always difficult, too frequently in a fury. Calmly it beat against the dune at ebb-tide like a great howling pack; at high-tide the barkers smelled carnage and threw themselves at it in angry but futile assaults; during storms, men feared the creatures’ victory, the dune at risk of collapsing, a great rumble rolling over their heads, combining with the chaos of the skies from which the great off-shore birds, lost and injured, dropped.

  A few hundred meters away, visible from the vale’s wasteland, whose dismal aspect it increased by its startling contrast, was a green paradise, enclosed in flagstone walls and a quickset hedge spread across a hillside which was nothing more than the end of the abundant pastures of the mainla
nd. The trees were, under the influence of the sea-winds, gnarled on the crest, twisted and bare towards the flats, becoming, as they penetrated further and further into the vale, smoother and thinner, their foliage in softly rustling tufts. Long ago, the homes arranged there formed a leper-colony; nowadays vegetable growers lived there in the quiet routine of a simple and profitable existence. They had cattle, pigs, bees, vegetables, fruit, and the rabbits expanded their warrens and multiplied in this ancient dune whose soil had become resistant, yet easy to till.

  They had, among other things, managed to transform the bottom of the valley, where there converged, into a concave mirror, the least ray of sunlight, into a true natural greenhouse, and the hiker on the high trails, leaning over the gulf carpeted in vegetation like an oversized bowl, was intoxicated with warm breaths, delicately blending colors, and suave aromas.

  It goes without saying that as good neighbors the fishermen and the farmers were close enemies. The adults were content in their rare meetings to glare suspiciously and mutter curses under their breath; the children, more up front, disdained the appearance of a false peace. On the shore, their games were separate; frequent fights tore the clean clothes of the little gardeners, left in tatters those of the little cabin-boys, flattened the noses and blackened the eyes of both. Lucky were they when the parents, drawn by their cries or the tales of the beaten, did not take things into their own hands for one side or the other, and finish the fight between themselves, with more serious cuffs.

  Enmity had long reigned, but a serious incident broke the camel’s back. The women took in nursing infants, the farmers to increase their prosperity, the fishermen from below to lessen their misery. The former asked for more pay and never bargained; the lovely location of their bright little homes, and their placid and gay disposition provided them a good reputation. Their work at hand, near the hedges, under the shade of the trees, they helped their spouses, wandered about the vegetable beds in the garden, without ceasing to keep an eye on the sleepers in the cradles, so as to be able to rush over at the slightest call from the charming and avid lips. The caring, patience and genuine mothering of one, kept alive a rachitic premature birth, not deemed viable by the obstetrician. Upon arrival, its body was wrinkled and had the appearance of being macerated, looking, amidst the lacy frills, like a museum fetus specimen drawn from its vat of alcohol; it had since become the wildest little demon, laughing, rolling and splashing about in the puddles along the shoreline. The father, a rich textile-manufacturer, was ecstatic. No ingrate, he showered the good woman with gifts which, should she have wanted to, would have allowed her to wait out her old age in well-deserved retirement. Furthermore, he took steps to see that she received a large sized gold medal from the Haarlem Medical Board.

  The honor of this deserved reward was reflected on her companions, the most tender, upper class women of the city giving birth to poor, weak little creatures, preferred, notwithstanding their distance away, to have them raised by the farmers’ wives, than by the best wet-nurses they might have had at home. They were hotly sought-after, hired eight months in advance. It became fashionable to put new-borns in their hands, even the healthiest of them. Stout-hearted, they knew, while remaining worthy of the fad, how to profit by this; always suckling, they demanded, after each weaning, more love from their husbands, and more money from their customers.

  Their competitors, the fishermen’s wives, vexed at not being able to present such credentials, decided to do the same anyway, kept their prices where they were, and took on two, sometimes even three infants at once. Of course, they were not able to keep them satisfied, and so, took to bottle-feeding them. It was quicker to fill a bottle than a woman’s breast and the milk was just as good, they would affirm; it was better, they should have said, than that which the poor little creatures were forced to draw, drop by drop, from their withered breasts. Soon their trade became rather shady. Factory workers, serving-wenches at country fairs, homeless itinerants, all now stuffed themselves with men, fearless of the consequences, running off to rendezvous without fear of what had at one time held them back a little, coming back with four ears rather than two. They quietly gave birth, brought their bastards to the fishermen’s wives, paid three months in advance at a set price, and were immediately relieved of any future worries. Within the first fortnight the child was tossed in a corner, given a bottle never rinsed out and almost always with air at the nipple. Wetting and left stinking in its diaper, it soon looked upon this world with distrust, seemingly knowing that the best thing to do was to leave it, and simply died. The courts, with their habit of sticking their noses where there was a bad smell, soon managed to nose out these more than once-reported charnel-houses of the innocents. The investigation was simple, the evidence was abundant. The most capable of these angel-makers was imprisoned, and all were condemned to end their activities.

  Their ancient jealousy toward the farmer’s wives grew even more inflamed. They refused the free vegetables which these women, unselfish as are common folk with their prosperity, offered them quite frequently. This help admittedly consisted of cabbage stumps, scraps of food, and useless morsels, for the farmers’ wives combined frugality with charity.

  It was then that the sickness which declared itself among the children changed the jealousy to hatred. The farmers thought that their children had contracted it from the fishermen’s children, dirty, atrophied by a slow hunger; the sickness from below, they called it. The sickness from above, clamored the fishermen’s wives, who, on this occasion were right.

  The affliction, very insidious, began with a light spotting on the chest and especially on the arms. Pink, only skin deep, hardly visible prior to rubbing, the one washing the first infant, stricken, accused herself of having made them appear by washing down the child too vigorously and using rough towels. They were so tender, these little lettuce-hearts, she wrote the mother, telling her of a simple effervescence of the blood caused no doubt by the summer heat.

  The mother, an actress from Amsterdam playing at the Kuursal in Ostende for the holidays, received the letter at the very moment she was locking up her suitcases. Even though she had left quickly, she stopped off to visit her son, surprised by the redness which would disappear only to reappear under the softest sponge. She recommended calling the doctor if things got worse, and made her way back to the railroad, the call of her blood relieved by the five minutes she had devoted to family matters. Until the end of the season she gave herself entirely to her art. An impassioned fan taking her away to Italy, she contented herself with sending off a six-month advance, and warning them that she would come by as soon as she returned, probably the next spring.

  At the same time that the wet-nurse found aphthae in the child’s mouth, she found others on her breasts. She believed them to be fissures as she had once had before, and neither she nor the child seemingly suffering from them, she attached no importance to them. One morning when she was working some distance away, a neighbor, to quieten down the wakeful and crying little one, suckled it in her place, a common courtesy they had among themselves. The neighbor’s areola also developed the same cracking, but she was not overly concerned about it. Many children thus transmitted these sores to one another, which moved from the lips, spread out, became raw, pallid, coppery.

  To all, these were milk-crusts, common little sores which they greased with the froth from stews, their universal recipe. They got used to it, and only began to worry when some of the youngest, no longer able to suckle, began to waste away.

  No one had yet notified the doctors. As the first to call them was liable for their traveling fee, everyone else was hanging back, waiting for someone else to pay. But an abundance of anonymous denunciations reached the district intendant, in which neighbors mutually accused each other of having brought scabies or tinea to the community. The district intendant referred the matter, according to the chain of command, to the provincial governor. The provincial governor, after mature reflection, promised to consult the hygiene c
ommittee which he presided over.

  However, it was on the eve of the elections for the Upper House. A rather unpleasant candidate threatened to win, which would have represented a horrible failure for the minister in power and his minions. The governor in particular saw his chances for advancement evaporating; so, ignoring everything else, he did his best to direct the spontaneity of the vote towards his best interests, providing the voters with good counsel from behind the scenes, in such a manner as not to arouse their doltish suspicions. He was successful. Leaving the opposition to fulminate, with a strong understanding of modern concepts of liberty, he recognized their right to criticize. He then laid siege to his superiors, striking while the iron was still hot, boasting of his victory, obtaining the posting he deserved. And, named to that post, he left, satisfied in leaving it in the hands of his successor and best friend, upon whom the opposition critics took their revenge by contesting his qualifications and affirming him to be far inferior to his predecessor. For the new governor, taking care of the many files which were in arrears, right from the start, would go a long way towards proving his abilities and diligence.

  On holiday, but anxious to get to work, the new titleholder moved into his government offices a week after his holiday was over. He received and made the necessary official visits, then those of convenience, changed the office’s personnel, and sent useful circulars to his representatives, asking them what improvements might be made in terms of the respective services they provided, but especially to enjoin them not to reform or modify the wise traditions heretofore enforced. Then, moving on to things of lesser interest, yet nonetheless requiring a solution, he convened the hygiene commission for the next fortnight.