The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men

by Georges T. Dodds

  One night, Alix was keeping watch over Gulluliou. The suite was quiet, enveloped in a sleepy calm, stagnant with the smell of stale medications. It was 9 p.m. Alix was waiting for Murlich to relieve her of her watch for the evening. Sitting near the bed, she daydreamed in the subdued glow of veiled light. Gulluliou had had a bad bout of delirium, and had just fallen asleep, short-winded, his emaciated body stretched out under the covers.

  The young woman dreamed of vague things. In one corner the great palm leaf fluttered under invisible currents.

  Suddenly, Gulluliou awoke and rose up on his elbow. With his disease-sunken eyes he stared at Alix. He remained this way for a moment. In the shadowy half-light, a worrisome fire rose in the depth of his stare: Alix recognized the same little flame of stifled brutality, coming to the surface. She had seen it once before, this shifty flame, and again she was afraid. Had she had any doubt of Gulluliou’s enamored state, the ill-intentioned glow was back, reminding her.

  In the white nightshirt, the white of the sheets and pillow, in all the white of this child’s bed, the gray sunken-eyed face with its pouting lips took on an expression of hate. Man and beast, still fighting it out behind those shifting pupils.

  The ape stirred. Words slipped from his mouth.

  “Alix, you beautiful!”

  She got up. His heart beat in anguish over this woman. Alone with Gulluliou, just like the other time! She forced herself to speak, softly:

  “Come on Gulluliou, get some sleep!”

  “No…you beautiful!”

  “Are you thirsty? Do you want something to drink?”

  “No, Alix…Love you!”

  He drew himself up more. He was sitting now. He repeated: “Love you!” grinding his teeth. His face became haggard, as on the brink of a bout of fever-induced delirium. The beast was winning, a burst of energy was rising from the darkness of his primitive soul, from the vast forests of his native land, from the sap spurting from the torn vegetation.

  He took one of his black legs out from under the sheets.

  Alix did not want to cry out. She feared that such a cry would only further irritate the beast, and precipitate that which threatened her. No, she would defend herself if it came to that! Her virginity became tinged with virile courage.

  A Malayan dagger was hanging on the wall, near the window.

  “Love you, Alix, love you!”

  Gulluliou had gotten down out of bed, standing, his arms extended, tottering for a few seconds. Then, he began to move towards her. Hideous, pitiful and terrifying, emaciated and hairy, his head wavering atop his bony frame, his coat the brown of an empty gourd. He kept going; he was now in the middle of the room, uttering the same words, with the same monomaniacal insistence:

  “You beautiful, Alix! Love you! Love you! You beautiful.”

  Sometimes his voice took on a coaxing tone, at times full of sweet nothings, then it would screech, like a tight rope on a rusted pulley. His red eyelids blinked, drool hung in thin threads from the long hairs on his chin; with his fingers, he drew things out in air in crooked motions. From time to time, his chest hammered out deep coughs.

  Previously screened from her by his nightshirt, what the light revealed for but a moment was so monstrous, so clearly detailed, that Alix no longer hesitated. She took a step, and extended her hand to the knife.

  Gulluliou, wild with lust was going to reach her. With his own dark, frantic virginity he leapt forward to conquer this womanly virginity. In such a manner would his brothers, deep in a jungle awash in the vigor of the tropical flora, consummate their matings.

  In disgust and terror, the memory of the creature’s kiss kept coming back to her like a hiccup; had she not wiped it from her mouth as she had wiped it from her memory? Were those lips, those horrid lips of a wild beast, of a disease-riddled creature, once again going to assault hers, to drink afresh from the fruit she had kept from any further outrage?

  It was a beast after all, and since the beast was not laying down his weapons, why spare him?

  She drew the knife from its sheath and held it tightly in her hand.

  But suddenly, before she moved any further, Gulluliou stopped and staggered, his hands searching across his chest. His joints collapsing he dropped into an armchair behind him. He was taken by a fit, blood issuing from his mouth stood out in beads, staining his clothes. He moaned in pain.

  Before this blood and this collapse, Alix was unable to hold back a cry, a single cry, issuing from her tight throat. And moved only by pity, she stayed the patient’s collapse, forgetting both the danger she had been exposed to and her anger.

  Quick steps on the stairs, voices in the hallway. The door opened, Murlich appeared along with Darembert who was coming for his nightly visit:

  “What’s going on? Did you fall?”

  Pale, she had risen to her feet: any resentment she had harbored was once again stricken from her proud and independent character. She indicated Gulluliou, collapsed, exhausted, moaning plaintively:

  “Doctor…a bout of delirium. He wanted to get up and I was unable to stop him…I only had time to stop him from going any further…He went and collapsed there, in that armchair. But I was afraid, that’s why I screamed!”

  “I understand, I understand,” replied the doctor. “Damn, such accidents are awfully annoying!...He has a serious case of haemoptysis…We’ll put him back to bed. Will you help me, Mr.Murlich?...I hope it won’t be too serious.”

  They put Gulluliou back in bed.

  Alix had remained stock-still, inside the ring of shadows cast by the light shade. He heart was still aflutter, striking the bars of her chest like a mad prisoner. She had not let go of the dagger.

  Then, unassumingly, she hung it back on the wall, without a word to anyone.

  CHAPTER X

  This savage blow sank Gulluliou into a new bout of misery. He was no longer delirious, but he remained bedridden for several days, unconscious and motionless. At least, during this period, he was spared the coughing and spitting up of blood, and Darembert congratulated himself on this improvement.

  Finally the ape regained consciousness. He could recognize those around his narrow bed: Darembert holding his wrist took his pulse, peering at the thermometer he drew from beneath the patient’s armpit; Murlich, a sad smile on his face, his beard iridescent, his glasses reflecting the virginal decor; Alix, who had immediately hastened to his side at the news that he was going through a lucid interval. The patient saw the three familiar figures. His eyes, which were half closed in the daylight, fluttered with quiet happiness, the words he sought were translated into a little gurgle in his throat. He was too weak. On the doctor’s instructions, the nurse who watched over him had had him drink something, a spoonful of a thirst-quenching wine. The patient coughed; they wiped his mouth.

  His temples were hollow, the flattening of his skull made his ears stick out, his sunken cheeks emphasized his jaw:

  “My little Gullu,” Murlich said in pongo as he leaned over him, “can you recognize your master?”

  The ape’s thick lips, raised at the corners for an instant, sank under their own weight, and, buried in the pillow, his head moved in an affirmative sign while he continued to gurgle in a weak attempt to speak.

  Alix in turn approached, her thin features tense with emotion, assuring herself of his conscious, fitful wakefulness.

  Alas! She judged herself irrational and stupid, powerless before this near-human creature. She felt confused and wondered how she could be so cold and self-assertive towards men, yet freely forgive the vagaries of an ape? She did not know, and preferred not to look too deeply into the question, for each time she returned to it, it was with heartfelt pity for the poor, mysterious Gulluliou. Far from hating him, she shared, in a vague manner, his suffering.

  Lucie, the chambermaid, knocked softly at the door, announcing that someone was still waiting downstairs to see Gulluliou: a journalist who wished to be invited in. Darembert shrugged his shoulders: “Shall they never leav
e the poor beast alone?” It had gone on this way since the notorious events at the Legislature, since it became known that Gulluliou was bedridden. The newspapers constantly sent out reporters to get the latest news. Even the general public showed up and were ruthlessly tossed out. The door had remained strictly closed; Murlich no longer went out; helplessly watching the rapid, cruel collapse of so many years of work, of his greatest hopes, of the one who was the greatest recipient of his affections. However, the situation was not desperate yet, but had Darembert himself not voiced his fears? Such an expert’s lack of certainty became almost a death warrant.

  It was the end of April. The spring was rising up everywhere in its pale greenery, gracile as fine gauze stretched over the trees. Countless buds had burst forth in the Auteuil gardens at the sun’s first caress. In front of the house the chestnuts were already covered in young leaves, in advance of the laburnum and birches, which were barely speckled with emerald. But this palette of greens extended to the shrubs along the grillwork of the fence to the privet, whose previous year’s foliage darkly speckled the otherwise pale green of the new growth, and to the laurels and euonymus splaying out like mirrors the varnished leaves which winter had been unable to wither. Inside the curves of the sandy walkways the lawn was refreshing the soil with it fresh blanket. A border of irises, near the porch, displayed the speckled purple of its calyces. At the back of the garden, against Murlich’s pavilion, a bed of pink hyacinths was beginning to flower, already giving off their lovely aroma. Along with these, a few tufts of violets and a bed of fire-red primrose accounted for the few flowers that were out.

  Gulluliou fully regained his lucidity. In his bed he appeared as intelligent and familiar as before, but his gestures and the rare things he would say were tinged with melancholy. From his long body all nervous energy was gone; as thin as they were, his arms seemed heavy, only rising very slowly, his awkward-fingered hands emerging brown and limp from his white sleeves. Gulluliou would from time to time take some sugared wine, some egg yolks, some milk. He altogether refused any meat. He was given a number of toys, small musical instruments, cardboard animals, and dolls. He would amuse himself for a few moments, soon stopping to cough. His cough came in starts, very weakly, but repeatedly, and one sensed that they tore apart this worn out machine.

  This went on for eight days. Darembert multiplied his visits, using all the resources in his arsenal to maintain in place the life-force which sought, at every moment, to desert Gulluliou. Meanwhile, the house remained gloomy, drowning in an atmosphere of expectancy and sadness. Murlich and Alix felt the vague hope they had so long entertained, vanish with every hour the decline in the poor creature’s condition progressed. Besides, the doctor one morning himself anticipated Murlich’s questions:

  “Yes indeed! It’s clear to me that it’s over,” said Darembert. “I was right, back in the month of January, the first time you called me, to warn you of the climate. They all wind up this way these poor creatures! They need to be in the Tropics.”

  “But,” the naturalist objected, drawn, in spite of himself, to reply by his habit for controversy, “others have managed to make monkeys from Borneo and Africa survive in our cold latitudes. I’ve witnessed some cases. If Gulluliou dies, it is fate, it is not through any lack of vigilance on my part. Certainly it would be no exaggeration, in one way or the other, to say that being overly protective would have been to preclude any chance the poor little one would have had to acclimatize. But perhaps he was too young, yes perhaps I should have waited. Ah! We learn from everything, regardless of one’s age!”

  And Murlich, his head bowed, led the doctor through the pavilion’s narrow hall, accompanied him across the spring garden awash in golden sunlight where the sparrows noisily chirped their happiness at the awakening of the light.

  CHAPTER XI

  One morning, towards eight, as Murlich still slept, tired from having stayed up long into the night, the nurse knocked on his door. Gulluliou wished to see him. She explained that the patient, having woken from a short sleep, had uttered a sentence in pongo in which Murlich’s name had repeatedly come up. The ape had looked about the bed for the presence of his old master. Murlich, with a sense of foreboding, sent someone to warn Alix, who then very busy with the new season’s fashions, was already up and in morning conference with her forewoman. She came quickly, finding her cousin already in the dying creature’s room.

  A half-daylight penetrated through poorly closed drapes, and the night-light still burned. Gulluliou had sat up in bed, his head held high and, smiling, he held the scientists’ hands in his own. When Alix entered, he turned towards her with a deep shudder, and looked at her without saying a word. The young woman drew closer, her eyes questioning Murlich, who with a despairing nod of his head confirmed the worst. The nurse returned, and put out the night-light.

  Gulluliou shifted his legs, his eyes on the window, and said in pongo:

  “I want to see the daylight…the Sun shining!”

  Murlich signaled that they open the drapes. Light flooded the room, bathing its white knick-knack-laden walls, the great palm leaf, balanced over the heating duct, continuing its endless, silent, rhythmic movement. Gulluliou surveyed all of this, his eyes dazzled for a moment. His hands painfully tore at his chest, he issued a soft plaintive moan, then whispered:

  “I want to breathe the wind coming through the trees.”

  “Look,” said Murlich, “how beautiful the trees are. Can you see the leaves?”

  “No…I want to see the leaves…I want to get up, I am strong!”

  “Get up! Oh! You mustn’t my little Gullu, as you well know the doctor has forbidden it!”

  But the ape shook his head, rising on his two fists, trying to get his long legs out from the covers where a last bit of energy was manifest. And since anything which might now upset him would likely be worse than the thing itself, Murlich cautiously offered no further resistance. Overcome with pity, they watched Gulluliou, rise to his feet, totter. The expression on his face showed no weakness, but rather a great happiness.

  He moved like a drunkard as they covered him with a dressing-gown; the view of the trees from the bay-window was still hidden by the tulle drapes which the nurse now moved aside. Through the windows the view was awash with foliage, treetops. From among the large leaves of a nearby chestnut branch emerged fluffy pink and white cones about to flower. A long wisteria branch waved in the breeze, following the same rocking motion as the palm leaf in the corner of the room. Gulluliou dropped back into the armchair which had been pushed up behind him, remaining still a moment, his eyes wide. The cuckoo clock tolling the half-hour in the entrance hall downstairs surprised him a little. His teeth jutting out, he smiled weakly and said:

  “The trees!”

  Then, suddenly, he cried out unexpectedly:

  “I’m hungry!”

  Alix had sat down beside him. The ape drew his eyes from the garden to look at her, and it was the same worrisome look from the depths of his eyes, both piercing and soft, a look the young woman knew to be a silent avowal of his love. She was troubled, so overcome with sadness before this creature’s dying moments, that she had to hold back her tears. The fierce independence she had cultivated would come to this: crying over the death of an ape. Memories unconsciously came back to her, flashing past but distinct, of what had transpired in the theater-box, the night of The Triumph of Man, when Maximin had undoubtedly elicited by the leaven of jealousy the love which already smoldered in Gulluliou. Then came, brutal, the attempts at savage passion, this bestial aberration which the mysterious conquering superiority of man over beast had overcome. O! what influence, what effluvia could measure the distance, often imperceptible between the two species, attesting, regardless of physical makeup, to the dominance of one over the other? Perhaps Gulluliou was dying of having guessed, in his animal consciousness, of this yet insurmountable barrier.

  Murlich, having left for a moment, reentered with the chambermaid who was bringing in a smal
l tray, upon which Gulluliou, his vision still clear, recognized some bananas. He smiled again, more cheerfully, and extended his hand. He held the plate between his knees which were bent into an acute angle beneath his dressing-gown, and ate slowly, peeling the yellow fruit in a long-accustomed manner. The ape’s cadenced and labored breathing, while he enjoyed this small pleasure, was all that broke the silence. He had offered bananas to his two friends, who had declined. He ate them all up, with an appetite which belied his worn out body. He even drank a full glass of muscat, and began to repeat in pongo, with an increasing firmness which lit up the eyes in his ashen face:

  “I am strong now, I am strong. Look Alix! Look, master!”

  He was strong! With a nod of his head, Murlich now considered the decline of this individual on the threshold of adolescence, whose strength had no doubt exceeded that of an adult man, but who, now weaker than an old man, was in his death throes. For science would not be deceived, this seeming recovery was only a portent of an impending death, as if the grim reaper wished to first intoxicate those whom he would soon favor with the kiss of eternal sleep!

  9 a.m. tolled; Murlich knew the doctor would not be long in arriving, that he would arrive in time, although, clear signs of collapse were already apparent. The ape no longer spoke, but watched Alix and Murlich. This life’s end within the rebirth of spring was attended with a tragic yet gentle wait.

  For a moment, Gulluliou’s gurgling breath came with greater difficulty, and a series of coughs made him wince. He put his hand to his hollow chest, a pink froth rose to his lips, which the nurse immediately wiped away with a handkerchief. Murlich took the dying creature’s arm, felt for a pulse: a frightful temperature; a man with such a fever would have long ago passed out. The battle Gulluliou’s mortal frame kept up against the fatal incursion was no less than superhuman.

  Almost another hour passed; the room was plunged into silence. Curled up in the back of his armchair, the ape continued to die, visibly weakening. He frequently closed his eyelids for prolonged periods of time, as if asleep, his life seemingly reduced to his wheezy breathing. From time to time, they made him swallow a spoonful of medicine or tonic. Alix, moving about noiselessly, prepared the medicine, and helped the nurse make up the bed a bit. Finally Darembert’s arrival was announced; Murlich hurried down to meet him: