September 10, 2005

I wrote a story about monkeys. Because it still needs work, I’d appreciate your feedback, especially if your name is Dave Alexander (if your name is not Dave Alexander, you can always pretend).

I first saw them, the boy and his monkey, while strolling by the seashore on a windy evening, the waves caressing my feet. Strangely, I didn’t notice the monkey at first. When I looked up from the pattern of the waves on the sand I was confronted by the saddest, darkest, most liquid pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. I was startled for a moment, but the boy just lowered his eyes and kept walking down the beach, now and again kicking sand in the wind. I kept looking after him and was startled again when I saw the monkey that was softly clinging to his shoulder. They were both windswept and beautiful. I was ready to run after him, to ask him where he got it, when I remembered that the circus had just rolled into town the day before.

Every year a thousand clowns, elephants, and acrobats seem to descend at once on our little village and the townspeople all gather in the streets to give them a slack-jawed welcome. The bright tents that go up overnight smell like animals and summer, and I usually try to keep as far away from the spectacle as possible.

But it was impossible to do so this year. As soon as I got back into town I was clutched, stopped, bothered by an agitated crowd. My landlady, whom I always thought was a reasonable woman, grabbed my arm. “Did you hear?” she shrieked. “The fire? The whole circus went up in flames. Oh goodness, that big tent lit up the sky like a giant Roman Candle.”

“Certainly went out with a bang, they did,” said the burly man next to her with a certain delight in his voice.

For days to come the whole village was gripped by the news of the fatal fire. Details were repeated again and again: of how the nine people died in the flames, of how the animals panicked and broke their chains, and of how our townspeople struggled and failed to put out the fire that engulfed the main tent.

To get away from all the urgent gossip about the fire, for the next week I retreated to the seaside with my book early each morning and remained away from the village until after sunset. And each day the boy and the monkey would show up, his eyes still indescribably sad, like pools of standing water.

Whenever they came, I would watch them walk on the beach in the warm sun, the monkey following the boy on a leash, now and again snarling at children. The boy’s lithe body would tense then slightly, and the monkey sensing his disapproval would quickly climb up to his shoulder again.

They would stop occasionally so the monkey could do some tricks - nothing complicated or even amusing, just passing around a hat so the little ones could drop in a coin or two. It didn’t take much to delight the children gathered on the beach - most of them had never seen a monkey and they were invariably drawn to the baboon. They stared at it stupidly, even if it did not feel like performing anything, secretly afraid of its sharp teeth and temper.

Throughout the day, the boy maintained a sphinx-like silence: eager kids would run up to ask him where they could get a monkey of their own and eager girls ran up to flutter their hair and ask his name; each time he just smiled a sad smile and shrugged his shoulders. The townsfolk thought he was mute, but that didn’t stop them from barraging him with questions.

The mystery around him grew until that day when everything unraveled. That morning, he showed up on the beach earlier than usual. The seashore was nearly empty and he seemed to appreciate the silence. For a while he just watched the waves, his back turned to me, with the baboon on his shoulder. The monkey seemed as pensive as he was; I stopped reading my book to look at his small, tanned body bound by the wide horizon only. Good god, he seemed more happy in his lonesomeness than I was.

He must have sensed my gaze, because he turned suddenly and his eyes seemed to penetrate mine. He no longer lowered his gaze as he did that first day I saw him. He approached me slowly and I hid my eyes in my book until his shadow hovered over me.

“Would you mind watching Bobo for a few minutes?” His voice was so soft and I was so struck that I just grabbed the leash he offered me without even making a reply. All I could do was nod, and as soon as I did he spun around on his heals and ran into the waves, his arms flailing and covered in glimmers of sunlight. I watched him throw himself against the huge, frothy waves, amazed that he could talk and swim like other boys.

He came back later, his body dark and wet, and sat down in the sand near Bobo and I. He was slightly out of breath and smiling, not at me but at that blue, blue sea before us.

“So his name is Bobo?” I asked, unsure if he could still speak.

“Yeah, Bobo the baboon,” he said. “I wasn’t the one who named him.”

“And you are?” I suddenly wanted to know his name.

“I’m from the circus. Or rather, I used to be. I don’t think I’m going back there.”

“Oh, awful business that.”

“The fire was terrifying. I was in the cages, cleaning, when the smoke came. And all I remember was Bobo clinging to my shoulder and screeching, and I just ran faster and faster through that dark, chocking smoke. I didn’t see any flames, just that liquid, acrid smoke that got into my eyes until I was weeping with this goddamn screeching monkey digging into my flesh. I didn’t mean to cry, but the tears just wouldn’t stop coming.”

I looked at him and didn’t know what to say. I whistled just once and scratched some sand from my feet.

“And your parents? Are they all right?”

“I never knew my parents,” he said, darkness returning to his eyes. “And now there’s just Bobo and me. I prefer it this way.”

“Is that why you never speak when you’re on the beach?”

We stared at the waves, each of us lonely in our own way and as free as the waves. The beach was slowly filling with families: stolid fathers and assertive, buxom mothers held the hands of little boys and girls.

“I don’t want to go back there,” he said, taking Bobo’s leash. “Anyway, I’ve got to go earn my meal.” I opened my lunch box and gave him an apple — I didn’t know what else to offer him. He took the apple, but his smile was gone and his eyes once more looked like puddles of rain. He let Bobo hold on to that red, red apple as they made their way down the beach.

Soon a circle of little boys and girls gathered to watch Bobo, who was uncommonly pleased by his apple. He rolled it in his tiny paws, sometimes even cradling it to his breast.

“Make him eat it,” the butcher’s kid said, but my friend just shrugged his shoulders and smiled without saying anything. “Come on, stupid monkey,” the kid said. Everybody was expecting a performance.

For a moment nothing happened — Bobo kept pawing his apple and the kids kept watching him with heightened expectation. Then the butcher’s boy quickly extended his arm and grabbed that red, red apple. The monkey seemed dumbfounded for a moment before he started screeching.

The kids burst into laughter. “Stupid monkey,” they said. My young friend looked wild and ready to pounce, his face burning with indignation and his silence more stony than ever. The butcher boy gave back the apple, just to once more snatch it away. Laughter. Jeers. He did it once more — giving the apple just to snatch it back. But this time he didn’t just pull back the apple, but also the monkey. Bobo, who by now had grown tired of being tricked, leaped up after the apple, planted its paws in the boy’s hair and bit his face, just once above the eye.

The butcher’s boy wailed in surprise, and soon the 20 young kids were also weeping in fear. “That goddamn ape bit me,” the butcher’s boy yelped. “I’m blind. Mom!” Soon it wasn’t just the children who were shrieking, but the parents too. The butcher’s wife, a large unpleasant woman, broke into the circle of children, looked at her son’s superficial wound just once, and then directed her fury outwards.

“You’ll pay for this you little shit. You and your little ape too! Someone get the police. Help. Animals!”

She continued to scream and slap her hips as people gathered to watch the scene. I approached the crowd and tried to talk some sense.

“He was provoking the monkey.” The townspeople watched me with indescribable hatred. The kid’s mother continued to shout.

“Animals like that shouldn’t be allowed in a public space,” someone said. My little friend shaking slightly, trapped in the middle of the murderous, screaming crowd that seemed ready to bite off pieces of his face in retribution. I was relived for him when the town’s policeman came. Relieved, until I saw he was bringing in tow the circus manager, a man with cruel eyes and curled lips.

They broke into the circle of people, and the circus manager instantly grabbed my young friend by the scruff of his neck, his hands violent and calloused, and yanked him out of the crowd. I tried to say something, but I never felt so powerless in my life.

Enraged, he now and again smacked the boy across the head with his left hand as they made their way across the sand. The policeman marched behind holding Bobo the baboon on a leash, and a whole procession of irate mothers followed them towards the town. I remained behind on the nearly empty beach, trying to read but unable to decipher any of the words on the page. That same evening I packed my bags and said goodbye to my landlady on her front porch, before she had the chance to tell me the gossip of the day.

“They found the one who did it … who set the circus on fire,” she shouted after me, but I just lowered my head and hurried my pace towards the train station.

Posted by Tudor at 11:54 PM in Writing & the Media | TrackBack