The Apes of Wrath

by Richard Klaw

  “We have to begin all over with you,” said her father. “She tells me you were an intelligent man. There should be no problem. You’ll be able to write again, though you’ll never be able to talk. I regret that,” he said. Then quietly, “I regret that.”

  I opened my hands wide, held them out toward the scientist. And his daughter. Why? Why?

  Hudson was puzzled.

  Tuleg snorted and left the room. He still wore the stained undershirt he’d had on the first time I’d seen him.

  I made motions of writing. The gorilla body I wore was struggling with itself. I wanted to tell them, I wanted to ask them. What was wrong? Was my mind crippled in the wreck? Why couldn’t I speak? Why couldn’t I write?

  Blanche handed me a large pencil and a piece of paper the size of a tabloid. I wrote as best I could, taking up most of the sheet, slipping, straining to make myself understood.

  why me? why do this to me?

  Blanche read it and looked deep into my piggy anthropoid eyes.

  “Oh, Father!” she said, and turned to the Mad Scientist.

  He stared at me with his Einstein looks, his fringe of hair.

  “I did it to save your life! Don’t you understand? You would have died out there!” He began to shout. Lines of saliva hung inside his mouth as it opened and closed. “I have to teach you! I have to! You have lived so I could carry on my research! Yarr!” he screamed, and fell to the floor in a convulsion.

  I watched. Blanche screamed for Tuleg. Together, they got the madman up off the floor and out the doorway of the laboratory. After a while, Blanche came back.

  “You poor man, you,” she said. She came to the bars of the cage. She put her hand through and touched my hairy fingers.

  I jerked as if with the shock from the cattle prod.

  “No!” she said. “Don’t. I’ll help you all I can.”

  She leaned closer, still holding my hand.

  “My father is not well,” she said, staring at my eyes. “He is a sick man in many ways.”

  She kissed my fingers just above the nails, and licked the hair between the thumb and index finger.

  Mad. She, too, is mad.

  I sit in the corner of the cage, my back against the bars, my feet and legs sticking out before me. I look at my bent legs, at my knees, the flat pad where the bottoms of my feet begin.

  I think.

  First, there are the movies. I saw them all, in that other life. The gorilla is the image of terror, the anthropoid killer of men and children, the despoiler of women.

  (The penis of the male adult gorilla is only a couple of inches long. Ask me.)

  Gorilla at Large. White Pongo. Nabongo. Killer Gorilla. In Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” I was Old Man Pong, the orangutan. In the film, I was gorilla. Bela Lugosi. Poor, tired old Bela, shambling through role after role in which he had nothing to do but menace and laugh. The Ape. Return of the Ape Man. The Ape Girl. Captive Wild Woman. They put a horn on my head for Flash Gordon. Konga. Unknown Island. Mighty Joe Young.

  King Kong.

  I think of Blanche and I dream of Fay Wray. She does not look anything like her. I see Skull Island. I fight Tyrannosaurus for her. Through the dim eyes of the beast I pull the wings off the pterodactyl. I throw men from the log over the ravine to the waiting spiders. I roar my challenge from the Empire State Building.

  I fall to the streets below.

  Why does the gorilla always lust after the beautiful girl?

  Why?

  Why?

  Tuleg has hurt me again.

  Blanche found me quivering and shaking.

  She came into the cage with me, opening it with a key from the workbench. I lay moaning.

  “Oh, Roger, Roger,” she said, cradling my head in her lap. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him if he hurts you again! My father will get rid of him.”

  She washes away the scored and scorched places, soothes me, rubs my chest where the prod has not bitten.

  i didn’t fight, I write.

  “I know,” she says, rocking me, “I know. It’ll be all right.”

  But it is not all right. Tuleg comes into the room.

  He stops dead still when he sees her in the cage with me.

  “Get out of there!” he yells, and runs into the cage, pulling her away from me. He slams the door. The key falls to the floor and he kicks it away. I try to get up. I hurt too much. I struggle up.

  “Your father is dead,” says Tuleg. “He went crazy and died.”

  “Oh no,” she said, and ran up the stairs.

  Tuleg followed her.

  In a few moments, there is a scream, a woman’s scream, and then another and another.

  “No no!” yells Blanche as she falls through the door, her clothes torn from her. I hear Tuleg laughing outside, and he comes in the room, still holding part of her dress.

  I shamble to my feet and roar. I slam against the cage, Tuleg laughs, then grabs Blanche by the hair and pulls her backward behind the workbench.

  I mash my fist to paste against the door as I catch it between my shoulder and the bars. And still I push against it.

  And still.

  And still.

  I have to watch the murder. And then the rape.

  Then, only then, do I see the keys. I can’t reach them. I try. Tuleg is not through with Blanche, though Blanche is finished with everything.

  He is groaning.

  The ballpoint pen. I find it with my hand. I stick it through the bars. Tuleg surely hears the jingle as I spear the brass ring. But he is busy, and finishing up.

  I have the keys now, and I put them inside the cage lock.

  I turn the key. The lock grates. “No,” says Tuleg, as he looks up from behind the bench, his face twisted in release. He jerks from the body.

  He is going for the submachine gun.

  I am there first, cutting him off. He is half-naked. He bolts for the door. He slams it shut. His feet run up the stairs.

  The doors part for me like a curtain, flinders flying each way.

  It is a beautiful house, and Tuleg has made it to a phone. He is screaming an address into it. He turns, and his eyes go strange as he tries to stick a knife in me.

  I do not feel it. I grab him by the ankle and pull him down. I am four hundred pounds of muscle and sinew, and he is a paper doll. The phone smashes against the bannister; Tuleg tries to scream.

  I use him like a pogo stick, my foot and weight on his neck, while I hold to his kicking feet. One jump, two. Snap crunch snap I like the sound as his neck goes soft like a pair of socks. Then I smash his head, and use the knife like a hoe in his stomach.

  I carry the body of Blanche Hudson, and the air is filled with sirens, all coming toward us.

  I carry her into the garden, where there is a gazebo. It looks out over the rest of the Canyon, and above me, that must be where my car plunged over.

  I also carry the Thompson submachine gun in my hand.

  I place the body of Blanche on the floor of the grape arbor, and lay her dress over her as neatly possible. She is sweet in death, if you ignore the blood.

  The house is beginning to burn. Tuleg’s smoke will rise up to Hell forever, like the doctor said.

  Fire trucks, police cars, spectators drive around front.

  Ah.

  Two policemen run toward me, yelling.

  It is night, and they could not have seen me. One turns the corner of the garden house and sees Blanche’s body (the beautiful daughter of the Mad Scientist) and stops. His eyes go wide as I bite through his throat, my hand on his face in a grip like a vise.

  One banana, two banana, three banana, four.

  The second cop sees me and draws his pistol.

  I break his arm and knock in his head with the butt of the Thompson.

  There is a stinging on my cheek, and the sound of a bee going by. Bullets. Oh so many of them. Pop pop pop.

  I turn and say my name, but it must sound like a roar to them.

  I turn the s
elector switch on automatic and open fire.

  The Thompson says its name.

  (A: A gorilla with a submachine gun.)

  There is the sound of glass exploding and brick dust powdering wherever I point. Tinkle tinkle crash.

  Little points of light wink, and the air fills with whines and screams. I fire again, and run into the bushes where the yard ends.

  They are after me. I show them, they are afraid for what I am. I’ll show them how near they are to me. I show them my teeth, up close.

  Someone gets in the way and I kill him as I run.

  I have the machine gun. They will not take me alive. You have sent me after the Three Stooges. You have visited my nightmare form on Abbott and Costello. You have run me across a footbridge where I snarled at Laurel and Hardy.

  I am funny. Gorillas are funny.

  I will show you funny.

  This ape can think. It can pick locks and plant dynamite charges and use an M16. Oh, there will be deaths! Run, Kong, shamble away before they catch you.

  Careful, there. Almost crouched as I ran. Have to watch it.

  Not to go on all fours. That is the Law.

  THE APES AND

  THE TWO TRAVELERS

  Aesop

  From the father of the fable comes a tale of two men who encounter the Land of the Apes.

  Two men, one who always spoke the truth and the other who told nothing but lies, were traveling together and by chance came to the land of Apes. One of the Apes, who had raised himself to be king, commanded them to be seized and brought before him, that he might know what was said of him among men. He ordered at the same time that all the Apes be arranged in a long row on his right hand and on his left, and that a throne be placed for him, as was the custom among men. After these preparations he signified that the two men should be brought before him, and greeted them with this salutation: “What sort of a king do I seem to you to be, O strangers?” The Lying Traveler replied, “You seem to me a most mighty king.” “And what is your estimate of those you see around me?” “These,” he made answer, “are worthy companions of yourself, fit at least to be ambassadors and leaders of armies.” The Ape and all his court, gratified with the lie, commanded that a handsome present be given to the flatterer. On this the truthful Traveler thought to himself, “If so great a reward be given for a lie, with what gift may not I be rewarded, if, according to my custom, I tell the truth?” The Ape quickly turned to him. “And pray how do I and these my friends around me seem to you?’ “Thou art,” he said, “a most excellent Ape, and all these thy companions after thy example are excellent Apes too.” The King of the Apes, enraged at hearing these truths, gave him over to the teeth and claws of his companions.

  A REPORT TO AN ACADEMY

  Franz Kafka

  Translated by Gio Clairval

  An ape named Red Peter, who has learned to behave like a human, presents to an academy the story of how he effected his transformation. Often seen as satirization of Jews’ assimilation into Western culture and a metaphor for the Jewish Diaspora, Kafka’s powerful 1917 story of internal identity first appeared in the German Zionist magazine Der Jude.

  Esteemed Gentlemen of the Academy!

  You do me great honor by inviting me to report to your academy about my past life as an ape.

  Unfortunately, I cannot comply with your request as you have phrased it. Almost five years have passed since my simian existence: a period that, measured by the calendar, might seem brief to you, yet one that is infinitely long when spent gallopping here and there as I did, at times in the company of excellent people, advice, approval and orchestral music, yet fundamentally alone, as every accompaniment played in the background or, just to remain in the metaphor, away from the limelight.

  I would never have succeeded, had I stubbornly clung to my origins and the memories of my youth.

  The primary commandment I gave myself was to renounce all kind of obstinacy: I, free ape, accepted this yoke, but precisely for this reason I progressively closed the door to the world of memory.

  At first—had men allowed me—I could have freely gone back through the huge door the sky draws above the earth, but as I was whipped through my training, the door grew lower and narrower. Gradually, I felt more comfortable and adapted in the world of men; the hurricane that had roared behind me was abating: today it is no more than a breeze cooling my heels, and the distant breach on the horizon from which that breeze blows (and through which I myself once came) has become so small a hole that, even assuming that I had the strength and the willpower to return to it, I would scrape my hide off my bones if I attempted to cross back over.

  Playing an unambiguous tune—though for some topics, I prefer to use images rather than musical metaphors—speaking candidly, then, gentlemen, your own simian phase, inasmuch as there is something similar in your past, cannot be more distant to you than mine is to me. Yet anyone who walks the earth can feel that tickling on the heels, the little chimp as well as the great Achilles.

  To a lesser extent, however, I am able to answer your question and will do so happily. The first thing I learned was to shake hands. The handshake indicates frankness, and now that I am at the peak of my career, I hope that I may now add frank words to that initial gesture. My frankness will not bring anything substantially new to the academy, and will fall short of what you have asked me, considering that, despite my eagerness to please you, there are so many details I am unable to communicate. Still, my words will describe the process by which I, an erstwhile monkey, entered the human world, and settled therein. Nevertheless I would not even say what little I remember, if I were not completely sure of myself and if my reputation on music-hall stages throughout the civilized world were not already firmly established.

  I come from the Gold Coast. How was I captured? On this point, I must rely on the reports of strangers. One evening one of the Hagenbeck firm’s hunting expedition—with whose leader I have since drained several bottles of an excellent red wine—was hiding in the bushes by the riverbank when, with a group of other apes, I came down for a drink. The hunters fired shotguns, and I was the only one struck: I received two hits.

  The first bullet struck me in the cheek: nothing serious, but it left a large and perfectly hairless red scar, which earned me the horrible nickname Red Peter—a revolting name, entirely undeserved, and a name that, oddly enough, was invented by another ape, as if that scar on my cheek were the only difference between myself and the trained ape named Peter, who had died recently after enjoying a certain notoriety. But I digress.

  The second shot struck me below the hip. That was a more serious wound, and it is the reason I limp slightly even now.

  Recently, I read in an article written by one of those ten thousand muckrackers who mock me in the newspapers that my ape nature is not yet entirely repressed; the best proof is that I take off my pants so easily in front of the visitors, to show the mark left by that shot.

  I would love to watch while someone shoots all the fingers off that writer’s little hand. As for me, I have the right to pull down my pants in front of whomever I like. All anyone will see is well-groomed fur and the scar from—let’s pick the appropriate word for this particular purpose, so as to avoid any misunderstanding—the scar from a wicked shot. Everything is perfectly visible; nothing is hidden. When it is a question of truth, great minds disdain polite pretentions. Now, if the gentleman that wrote that article were to take off his pants whenever he gets visitors, his action would certainly produce a different spectacle and the fellow’s reluctance to disclose what lurks under his trousers seems perfectly reasonable to me. But he will kindly keep his delicate sensibilities to himself!

  After those wounds I woke up (and here my own memories begin to emerge) locked in a cage below the Hagenbeck steamship’s deck. It was not a four-sided iron cage. They had contented themselves with fitting bars to three of the sides of a crate, so that the fourth wall was made of solid wooden boards. The cage was too low for me to stand
upright and too narrow for me to sit properly: so I had to squat, my bent knees constantly trembling. Initially, I probably did not wish to see anyone, preferring to remain in the dark; therefore I turned towards the crate wall, causing the bars to cut into the flesh on my back. This method of confining wild beasts after capture is considered effective, and based on my experience I cannot deny that, from the human point of view, indeed it is.

  But at that time I did not think about that. For the first time in my life I had no way to escape, or if such a way out existed, it was not in front of me. In front of me was the crate wall, wooden boards closely fitted together. True, a crack ran through the boards, and when I discovered it, I howled with illogical happiness, but the crack wasn’t even large enough to stick my tail through, and despite all my apish strength I could not widen it.

  Later I was told that I was extraordinarily quiet, from which my captors deduced that, I would either quickly die, or, if I managed to survive this initial critical period, I would be particularly suited to training. I survived. Muffled sobs, painful flea-hunts, half-hearted licking at a coconut, banging my head against the case and pulling my tongue at those who approached: these were the first occupations of my new life. Above everything else, a constant feeling: I had no escape. What I felt then as an ape I cannot properly describe, for human words necessarily misrepresent the experience. Still, though I cannot recapture that old simian truth, I have no doubts it lies along those lines.

  Up until then so many ways had opened before me: and now nothing! I was trapped. Had I been nailed down, my freedom would have been no less. How so? Scratch yourself between your toes, until they bleed or press your ass against the bars until it’s almost sliced in two: you will not find the answer. I had no way out, but I had to find one. I could not live without an escape. Crushed in that coffin, I would surely die. But because an ape in the Hagenbeck company is supposed to squat, facing a crate, then I would cease being an ape. Somehow, this clear and obvious deduction must have brewed inside my belly, since apes think with their belly.