The Apes of Wrath

by Richard Klaw

  Don’t misunderstand what I mean by “escape.” I use the word in its most common and general sense. I am deliberately not talking about freedom: I don’t mean the perception of open space; as an ape, perhaps I have experienced that feeling, and I have known men who yearned to experience it. But, as far as I am concerned, neither then nor now did I ever aspire to freedom. Incidentally: too often freedom is a way of deceiving men. Since freedom is deemed one of the noblest sentiments, the illusion of freedom is considered noble, too. Several times, before going on stage, I happened to see a pair of acrobats twirl up to the ceiling, leaping, swinging, doing jumps, flying into each other’s arms, one suspending the other by the hair with his teeth. “This, too,” I thought, “men call freedom: mastery of movement.” What a mockery of sacred nature! The laughter of the simian race, seeing this spectacle, would be likely to bring down the most solid building.

  No, I did not want freedom. I only wanted escape: to the right, to the left, anywhere. I aspired to nothing else, and if escape was illusion, my need being small, the illusion would have been small, too. Moving, walking: it was all I wanted; not to be forced to keep my arms raised, not to be glued to the wall of a crate.

  Today I realize that, without the greatest inner calm, I would never have been able to escape my condition of prisoner. And, perhaps, all that I have since become I owe to the calm that penetrated me after the first few days on the ship. That calm, in turn, I owe to the crew.

  They were good people, despite everything. I still remember the heavy clang of their footsteps echoing through my slumber. They were accustomed to doing everything very slowly: if one wanted to rub his eyes, he lifted one hand like a counterweight. Their jokes were coarse but jovial, and their laughter always mingled with a cough that sounded threatening but meant nothing. They always kept something in their mouth to spit, and they spat just about anywhere. They complained that they got fleas from me, but in reality they harbored no bitterness; knowing that my fur was a feast for fleas, and fleas jump, they were patient. When they were off duty, sometimes they sat in a circle around my cage and, lounging on the crates, they grunted to each other instead of talking, and smoked their pipes. Whenever I shifted position, they slapped their knees, and invariably someone grabbed a stick and tickled my favorite spots. If I were invited to make a journey on that ship today, I would certainly decline, but it is equally certain that my memories of life below deck, are not all painful.

  The serenity I gained in the company of those men prevented me from trying to escape. Looking back now, I believe I had a dim presentiment that I would need a way out if I wanted to live, yet that I could not find that way through escape. I am not certain, but I expect that fleeing would have been possible for an ape. With the human teeth I have now, I must be careful even when cracking a nut, but back then surely I would have been able, with time, to chew my way through the lock. But I did not. What would I have accomplished by doing so? No sooner would I have stuck my head out, than I would have been captured again, and locked in an even worse cage. Or I could have snuck away to hide among other wild animals, such as the boa constrictors opposite, and breathed my last in their embrace. Or maybe I could have been able to run up to the deck and throw myself overboard: I would have floated on the waves briefly, then sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Desperate acts, all of them. I did not reason like a man, but, under the influence of the environment, I behaved as if I were able to ponder my choices.

  I did not think things through, but I watched quietly. I saw men go back and forth, always the same faces, the same movements. Sometimes I thought there was only a single man. Those men, or man, went about unrestrained! Then a grand idea struck me. No one had promised me that, if I became like them, my cage would be opened. No one makes promises about seeming impossibilities. But when these impossibilities are achieved, then the absent promises appear, and in the very place where we had first tried to find them. I found nothing particularly attractive in these men. If I had yearned for the freedom mentioned above, I would certainly have preferred the ocean to the kind of escape I could perceive in their dull eyes. Nevertheless, I watched them for a long time before obtaining this insight; indeed, it was my observations which first inspired it.

  Imitating men was easy enough. I learned to spit on the first day, and we would spit in each other’s face—the only difference being that I licked my face clean while they did not. Soon I could smoke a pipe like an old hand, and if I pressed my thumb down the bowl, the whole deck rang with laughter, only because for a long time I did not understand the difference between an empty and a full, lit pipe.

  I had the most trouble when I tried to tackle the bottle of aquavit. The smell was torture. I forced myself as much as possible, but it took weeks before I could overcome my revulsion. Strange to say, my inner struggles produced more impression on the men than any other efforts I would display. I cannot distinguish individuals in my memory, but I know there was one who watched me, alone or with others, at all times of day or night. He would stand with the bottle in front of my cage and give me lessons. He didn’t understand me, and strove to figure out my nature. He would slowly uncork the bottle, and then stare at me, to make sure I had understood. I always watched him, I must admit, with a morbid, anxious attention, and no human teacher in the world could find a better student of human nature than myself. Having uncorked the bottle, he would raise it to his mouth. My eye followed the liquid right down his throat, so to speak. Here he was: winking at me, he brought the bottle to his lips, and I, excited by the gradual illumination, squealed and scratched myself all over. He, happy, curled his lips around the bottle’s mouth and took a swallow. My impatience to imitate him peaked, and I defecated, making a mess of myself and my cage, and this filled him with satisfaction, and then he held the bottle at arm’s length, swung it back to his mouth and gulped it down in one go, throwing his head backwards in an exaggerated movement meant to illustrate the procedure. I, exhausted by the intensity of my frenzy, I could no longer keep up with him and I weakly clung to the bars, as he finished the theoretical demonstration by rubbing his belly and grinning beatifically.

  At this point would begin the practical exercise. Didn’t the theoretical part already exhaust me? Yes, certainly, but this was my fate. So I caught the proffered bottle, uncorked it, trembling with joy because I could do it, and, encouraged, I felt my strength building up again, little by little. I lifted the bottle, with a gesture that seemed to me only slightly different from the example. I brought it to my mouth...and hurled it onto the floor, disgusted—even if it was empty and contained no more than the stench of alcohol. I hurled the horrible thing onto the floor, much to my teacher’s dismay. I was sad, too, and my next gesture, which I have not forgotten, would console neither myself nor the teacher; still, I rubbed my belly, and offered the most perfect grin.

  All too often the lesson ended this way. And to my teacher’s credit—he was not mad at me. Well, sometimes, indeed, he’d hold his lit pipe against my fur and set it alight some place I could barely reach, but then he’d quickly extinguish the flames with his kind big hand; he was not angry with me, he understood that we were fighting together against my simian nature, and that in that fight I had the more difficult part.

  Thus it was a great triumph, for him and for me, when one evening, in front of a crowd of onlookers—there must have been a party, for a gramophone was playing, and an officer was chatting with the men—when on this evening, I was saying, at a moment when nobody was watching, I grabbed a bottle of aquavit accidentally placed in front of my cage, uncorked it, as I’d been taught, and amid the rising attention, I brought it unhesitantly to my lips, without grimacing, instead rolling my eyes like a seasoned drinker, and drained it to the last drop! Then I tossed the bottle aside, not in despair, but with the precise gesture of an artist. I forgot, it is true, to rub my belly, but on the other hand, impelled by an irresistible force, all my senses roaring, I could not help uttering a clear and articulate “Hello,” thus b
reaking into human speech. With that cry I sprang into the human community, and the cry that echoed mine: “Listen! It’s talking,” felt like a kiss on my entire sweat-soaked body.

  I shall say it again: I didn’t enjoy imitating men. I imitated them because I was trying to escape my condition—I did it for no other reason. Moreover, even this victory did not yield great results: I immediately lost my voice and did not regain it for several months. My distaste for the bottle returned stronger than ever. Yet, despite everything, now I knew in which direction I had to move.

  When I was handed over to my first instructor in Hamburg, I quickly recognized the two opportunities open to me: the zoo or the music hall. I did not hesitate a second. Put all your energy, I said to myself, into training for the music hall. It is the way out. The zoo is just another cage. If you end up there, you’re lost.

  And I learned, gentlemen. When necessary, when you must find a way out, you study, let me tell you, you study frantically. You monitor yourself with a whip, you flay yourself bloody at the smallest obstacle. The simian nature rushed out of me head over heels and abandoned me, so that my first instructor became almost an ape in the process of training me. He gave up training and had to be carried off to a mental institution. Luckily for him, he was soon released.

  But I went through many teachers, indeed, even several teachers at once. As I grew more confident of my ability, and as the public began to follow my progress (bringing the prospect of a brighter future), I began to hire my own instructors, had them sit in five connecting rooms and studied with them all simultaneously, ceaselessly leaping from room to room.

  And such progress! Such wonderful effects of the rays of knowledge penetrating my brain from all sides! I do not deny that such feelings made me happy. But I should also point out that even then I did not overestimate it, even less so today. With an effort so far unparalleled on earth, I attained the education of an average European. It may seem an irrelevant fact in itself. It is something nevertheless, as it helped in getting me out of the cage, granting me this particular way out, this escape into humanity. There is a German expression: to take to the bush. That is what I did, I have gone into hiding. I had no other way, always assuming that I discarded the choice of freedom.

  If I survey my development and its goal up to this point, I neither rejoyce nor complain. Hands in my trouser pockets, a bottle of wine on the table, I half-lie, half-sit in my rocking chair and gaze out of the window. If visitors come, I welcome them appropriately. My manager is stationed in the anteroom. When I ring the bell, he rushes in and listens to my instructions. Almost every night I have a recital, and my success could not be greater. And when, late at night, upon returning from some banquet or scientific symposium, or pleasant social gathering, I find a little half-trained chimpanzee waiting for me at home and I delight in her company in simian fashion. By day I do not want to see her, for in her eyes there is the blurred madness of a tamed beast. Only I can recognize it, and I cannot bear it.

  All in all, I have achieved what I wished to achieve. I would not say the result was not worth the trouble, and, any way, I reject the judgment of men. I present my account merely intend to advance science. I am only reporting, and even to you, esteemed gentlemen of the Academy, I am only making a report.

  FADED ROSES

  Karen Joy Fowler

  Anders introduces a class of sixth graders to some famous apes. The acclaimed Fowler’s bittersweet tour surprises with some sobering reality checks.

  Thirty-two sixth graders from Holmes Elementary lined the rails that protected the glass of the Gorilla Room from fingerprints. Two of them were eating their lunches. Sixteen had removed some item from their lunch bags and were throwing them instead of eating them: their teacher paid no attention. Five were whispering about a sixth who fiddled with the locked knob on the workroom as if she didn’t hear. Five were discussing the fabulous Michael K’s eighty-two-point game last night, and three were looking at the gorillas. Anders approached one of these three. It was part of his job. He was better at the other parts.

  “We have a mixture of lowland and mountain gorillas,” he told the boy in the baseball cap. The boy did not respond. That suited Anders fine. “I know which is which,” he continued, “because they’re my gorillas. Now, some experts argue the noses are different or the mountain gorilla’s hair is longer; but I’ve studied the matter and never seen that.”

  There were thirteen gorillas inside the exhibit. Five sat on rocks at the back. One baby played with a tire swing, batting it with her feet and turning an occasional somersault through the center. One stared in contemplative concentration at nothing. Four alternated through a variety of grooming arrangements. One nibbled on the peeled end of a stick. One surveyed all the others. It was a dignified scene. Sullen. Reserved. Moody. Shy. These were some of the words commonly applied over the years to gorillas. They had none of the joie de vivre of chimps. Gorillas were not clowns. It took a dignified, reserved person to appreciate them. Perhaps it took a little loneliness. And Anders had that.

  The boy pointed over the rail. “That one looks really mean.” Anders did not have to follow the finger to know which gorilla the boy meant.

  A lowland gorilla. Gargantua the Great. “Paul du Chaillu was probably the first white man to see gorillas,” Anders told the boy. “He tracked them and shot them and came back to France and told stories about their ferocity. Made him look brave. Made his books sell. Barnum did the same thing with his circus gorillas. He knew people would pay more to be scared than to be moved.” Beyond the glass, Gargantua swiveled his huge head. The teeth were permanently exposed, but the eyes, directed obliquely left, said something else. Anders was proud of those eyes.

  “That gorilla there, well, an angry sailor poured nitric acid on him. The sailor’d lost his job and wanted to get even with the importer. The acid damaged the muscles on the gorilla’s face, so he always looks like he’s snarling. It’s the only expression he can make.”

  A storm of peanut shells hit the glass. Anders identified the culprit and took him by the arm. Anders did not raise his voice. “I was telling a story about the big gorilla in the corner,” he said to the second boy. “This will interest you. He was raised by Mrs. Lintz, an Englishwoman, and he lived in her house in Brooklyn until he got too big. He may look fierce, but he was always terrified of thunder. One night there was a thunderstorm. Mrs. Lintz woke up to find a four-hundred-pound gorilla huddled on the foot of her bed, sobbing.”

  There were perhaps six children paying attention to Anders now. Somewhere an elephant trumpeted. “They don’t look at us,” one boy complained, and a girl in a plaid shirt asked if they had names.

  “Actually we have three gorillas who were raised as pets by Englishwomen,” Anders said. “John Daniel. And Toto, too, the fat one there looking for fleas. And Gargantua, whose real name is Buddy. Gorillas don’t look at anyone directly and they don’t like to be stared at themselves. Very unsuited to zoo life. The first gorillas brought to this country died within weeks. The gorillas who lived in private homes with mothers instead of keepers did better.”

  Toto yawned. Her eyes closed as her mouth opened. She smacked her lips when the yawn was over. She was the newest of the gorillas. Anders had added her last year. It was harder to love Toto, but Anders did. Anders had learned everything he could about his gorillas and he knew that Toto was used to being loved. Spoiled and prone to five-hundred-pound tantrums, Toto had terrorized her way out of her first home. When her mother, a Mrs. Hoyt, saw that she could no longer control Toto, Toto was sold to a zoo, but Mrs. Hoyt came along also. “Toto was bought as a bride for Buddy,” Anders said. “She was raised in Cuba, where she had her own pet. A cat.”

  Anders had ten children listening now. Did any of them have cats? Anders doubted it. And there were other indulgences. “When Toto came to the U.S. she brought along a trousseau. Sweaters, dresses, and socks,” Anders said, “all with the name Totito in embroidery. The papers loved it. The future Mrs. Garg
antua. But Toto threw her bed at Buddy when they first met, and her attitude never softened.”

  The prospective mother-in-law had done much to sabotage the union. “She’s only a nine-year-old child,” Mrs. Hoyt had said. “What do you expect?”

  John Daniel moved along the back of the exhibit. His steps were slow and fluid; muscles rippled on his back. He was Anders’s favorite. “John Daniel was purchased from Harrod’s by Major Rupert Penny of the Royal Air Force as a present for his aunt. John Daniel had a variety of ailments, including rickets, but the aunt, a Mrs. Cunningham, fixed that. She raised him as she would have raised a small boy. A certain amount of indulgence. A certain amount of no nonsense. He ate at the table with them and was expected to get his own glass of water and to clear his own dishes. He was taught to use the toilet and, since he cried when he slept alone, was given a room next to the major’s. Mrs. Cunningham consulted no experts but used her own judgment in devising his diet, which included fruit, vegetables, and raw hamburger. And roses. He loved to eat roses, but only if they were fresh. He wouldn’t eat a faded rose.”

  When he became too big to keep, Mrs. Cunningham sold him to a private park she believed would be ideal. Tragically, he ended up in the circus instead. Anders had lost his own indulgent mother at the age of eight. He thought he had some insight into John Daniel. He knew what it was like to suddenly, inexplicably, exchange one home for another far less happy one. John Daniel’s expression was intelligent but bewildered and bereaved.

  Too subtle for sixth graders. Anders was down to an audience of four. “So interesting,” the teacher said brightly, although Anders did not think he had been listening. Probably he had been there with a different class last year and perhaps the year before that. Probably he had heard it before. Probably he had never listened. “Can you all thank Mr. Anders for showing us his gorillas?” the teacher suggested, and then, without pausing for thanks, “We won’t see the giraffes if we don’t press on.”