Great Apes (40 page)

She must, Busner concluded, have accepted the first suitor when she reached the tube, and having presented her delicous pink bowl for an initial stirring, she was now receiving other cooks that had arrived at the kitchen. There was now a loose line of these males, all with erect, slimy cocks poking from their erect, slimy fur, ranging up the stairs. While further down on a half-landing, two males who had already coupled were licking and picking sperm and mucus from each other's groins.

‘Actually, Simon,' Busner inparted Simon's leg fur, ‘this is far from being a particularly libidinous spectacle – certainly by London standards. You wait until you see some of the mating chains there are in town when chimps get out from work and begin drinking. You may have a young female in full oestrus, trailing a line of twenty males as she scampers through a gauntlet of chimps who are lounging outside the pub.

‘And if one of those males launches a successful suit on
another
female, while he's still importuning the first, you can
get a cross chain of mating. I've seen the whole of Oxford Circus positively garlanded with these conga-lines of buggery. Sometimes the police have to cordon areas of the city off and give the rutting chimps there a dousing from a water cannon before they come to their senses. So, as you can see, this isn't much of a show. But one information sign, Simon –'

‘ “Huu” what's that?'

‘Please be discreet when remarking upon mating practices. While it is in no sense taboo to observe, to comment can be regarded as distinctly rude “wraaa”! Watch out, Simon, that one's coming for us!'

It was true. The male who had just, with a hissed squeal, pulled himself from the oozing swelling of the bank worker was swaggering up the stairs towards them, horripilating and uttering a series of loud waa-barks. He was a big specimen, and the spectacle of his exposed canines, still encrusted with some wheaten breakfast food, and his exiguous tumescence, which metronomically beat from side to side, counterpointing his advance, would for Simon have been comic, were it not at the same time incredibly frightening.

Simon felt the fur at the nape of his neck stiffen and bristle – a sensation which he had never consciously experienced before. He too began to utter a series of aggressive barks, while drawing himself up to his full height. The angry male continued to mount the stairs, picking up handfuls of leaves, discarded tickets and other detritus as he came, and hurling these in the direction of the renowned anti-psychiatrist and his patient.

For a few, tumultuous moments it looked as if they
would be able to intimidate the big male. But then the two other, post-coital males – who meanwhile had been leaping up and down, yammering, and slapping their attaché cases against the tile walls of the staircase – decided that they would like to get involved. With this shift in the odds, Busner decided it was time to leave. He grabbed Simon by the scruff. ‘ “Waaaa”! Come on, they'll be on us in a second!'

Simon behaved most peculiarly in response to this impulsion. Without waiting to be further galvanised, he dropped to his hands and moved away on all fours at speed – Busner followed on behind. As he gained the edge of the arboreal precinct, the former artist leapt for the lowest bough of the first plane tree, grabbed it, swung himself aloft, and continued, brachiating as a chimp to the canopy born.

Busner didn't have time to be taken aback by this; he could almost feel on the back of his neck the Ready Brek breath of the big chimp chasing him. He gained the tree some seconds after his protégé, and dragged himself painfully aloft, arthritis sparking in his fingers like neural electricity.

The pursuing chimps didn't even bother to ascend. Instead they halted at the base of the first tree, uttered some final, furious waa-barks, then disappeared back in the direction of the tube. Presumably, Busner thought, observing their pin-stripe-suited backs, off to work in some estate agency or insurance office.

It transpired that for Simon the whole episode had been a revelation of chimpunity. ‘I just “chup-chupp” swarmed up into these trees. I didn't stop to think. It was astonishing
the sense of fluidity, of ease – and of power. I haven't climbed a tree “h'h'h'hee-hee” since I was a sub-adult!' Simon's whole sense of embodiment was affected. He hung casually by one arm from an insecure bough, whilst prinking his therapist's lower belly fur.

Busner wondered – although not visibly – whether the transformation might be due to the rush of adrenalin Simon had experienced during the mock attack. That, and the fact that flight response would make use of the more primitive, more truly essential parts of his patient's brain. Confirmation came soon enough, for, as Simon's horripilation subsided, and his fur drooped to its accustomed lankness, he found himself unable to get down from the tree, or to continue above ground. He was also scared of falling. Busner had to disembark, go and find the janitor in the library, and return with him and a disabled chimps' ladder. Only then could Simon be coaxed down.

As they knuckle-walked on towards Regent's Park they encountered several more mating rounds, and each time Simon fell back to observe, although he didn't make the mistake again of wringing his hands over it. By the electronic gates of a large villa, an attractive young female with blonde head fur was dangling halfway out of a large black BMW. Her head thwacked the inside of the door and her copulation squeals were accompanied by the flashing of the headlights. Inside, artfully taking her from the driver's seat, was a wiry bonobo, his teeth tearing at the back of her dress.

By some garages recessed from the road, Simon paused to gawp while a tough-looking party of sub-adults, obviously down on patrol from somewhere up north, took
a dark-muzzled female almost as big as they were, with quite blinding speed. None of them needing more than fifteen seconds from the first screeching penetration, to the final tooth-clack, pant and withdrawal.

When they reached the park, and plunged across the Outer Circle, they came through the fringe of trees and on to a broad expanse of grass where just the kind of congaline of copulation Busner had described was in full swing. Busner, practised at disentangling such scenes, grasped at once what had happened; some culturally marauding phalanx of Benelux language students and attendant teachers had become mixed up with three distinct groups of patrolling cockney males. The resulting queues and counter-queues of displaying males and accepting – or rejecting – sub-adult females now formed interlocking and quite intricate arrangements of runtish buttocks and receptive swellings. The sub-adults had colonised the trees as well. From where Busner and Dykes squatted they could make out brown bodies swirling about in the branches, some even turning full circles while dangling by their arms, like gymnasts. The ragged symphony of vocalisations echoed over the park.

‘Delineate for me more about all of this, Dr Busner – please. ' Simon signed, his fingers tense, but his tempo even enough. He reached into the side pocket of his black jacket and pulled out a pack of unfiltered Bactrians, lit one and relaxed on to his haunches.

“Grnn,” Busner grunted, then signed, ‘Well, what you see here is the absolute core – some might point out – of chimpunity itself. Throughout the ages artists have depicted such mass matings. In the early Renaissance these
reels of rutting would have been set amongst flora and fauna, framed by proscenium hills. Titian painted great aerial mating scenes, in which angelic chimps copulated amidst swirls and garlands of cloud –'

‘But, Dr Busner, I don't understand it. Surely the connotation of such sexual practices is a fearful “uh-uh”, unloving world, in which mating is anonymous and meaningless “huuu”?'

Busner regarded his patient quizzically, eyebrow ridges raised, bifocals lowered. Simon Dykes was, he thought, reaching towards an elegance of gesture. It made the artist peculiarly likeable. Busner nuzzled Simon's muzzle and inparted, ‘Well, indicate for me once more what it's like in
your
world. Humans are, of course, monogamous “huuu”?'

‘Well, no, not exactly. It's the prevailing cultural norm in most Western and Western-influenced societies, but elsewhere polyandry and polygamy are still practised –'

‘I see. So do Western humans view such sexual arrangements as – in some sense – more primitive “huu”?

‘That's right.'

Busner, observing the way the smoke from Simon's Bactrian curled and snagged in his neck fur, reflected wryly on the elegant reversals and mirrorings of this persistent delusion. Monogamy as an end rather than a beginning, a state of rarefied intimacy, rather than a crude, animal pairing. Which is, of course, what it was.

‘But, Simon “gru-unnn”, do all human consortships last a lifetime “huu”?

‘By no means, no, no. Humans will bond with one another for all sorts of periods of time. There are unions
that may last many years and consortships which are over in days or weeks.'

‘And the organising principle of these couples remains “huh-huh” fidelity “huuu”? Exclusive mating rights?”

‘Yes.'

‘And is it adhered to “huu”?'

‘Not exactly.'

“Huuu?”

‘Well, obviously both males and females find themselves mating outside the relationship … it happens all the time.'

‘And these exogamous matings – are they all intentional “huu”?'

Simon took another pull on the Bactrian, pinched the glowing tip between his calloused fingers and jettisoned it. ‘I should “h'h'hee-hee” sign not. In many cases they're involuntary – driven even. The human impulse towards inconstancy seems as strong as the drive to consort.'

At this point a young female in full oestrus scampered past the two gesticulators. Her swelling – as big as a three-pint bowl – nearly coming into contact with Busner's muzzle. The great ape inhaled noisily, savouring the whiff of musk. ‘Look at that!' he flourished. ‘If we didn't have a train to catch I'd have a crack at her myself, she's delicious! Look at that pink flower dangling off her “h'hoooo”!

‘But, Simon,' the eminent natural philosopher continued as they resumed their knuckle-walk, ‘you sign of numerous consortships, and of consistent exogamous mating despite their existence. Mark me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me much the same as what chimpanzees get up to “huuu”?'

Simon looked at the grey testicles swinging in front of him, marking out procreative time like the pendulum of a biological clock. He had to admit it – the old ape did have a point.

Sniffing and snuffling, his muzzle pressed against the diamond-patterned mullions of his study, Dr David Grebe peered myopically down into the back quad of Exeter College. Cackfootedness made contact lenses a problem for Grebe; vanity – and a more than averagely deep recession in his nasal bridge – put spectacles out. Zack Busner and his latest pathological protégé should have been here by now – it was nearly time for third luncheon. Grebe hadn't bothered to make any particular arrangements for the repast – a restaurant reservation, whatever – and he had no image whether the ape man would be sufficiently held in Busner's captivity to be presentable in hall, let alone at high table.

He checked his watch again, pulling away the thick hanks of ankle fur that covered its face. Nearly one-thirty, where could they be? The Paddington train got in at five to one, surely they would have taken a cab from the station? Grebe scratched his ischial scrag meditatively. Would the ape man be worth it? That was the question. The notion of a delusion that played upon basic concepts of signage acquisition was – to a philosopher such as Grebe – an intriguing one. Busner had indicated on the ‘phone that Simon Dykes was sensitive, intelligent and – despite his ataxia – elegantly gestural. If this was the case, Grebe might learn something.

Learning things was what Grebe craved. A bent little Welsh chimp in his early thirties, yet with only a few grey hairs fringing his bald pate, Grebe had bounded up the steep stairs and the wide treads of the university hierarchy, grabbing easefully the awkward handholds of influence. He had obtained his fellowship at Exeter not through the conventional methods of alliance and intrigue; nor by currying favour with a clique of graduate students and junior academics, but simply through his dogged capacity for absorbing more and more information – and then manipulating it into credible theories.

From where he now crouched, atop a twenty-shelf escarpment of a bookcase, he could turn and take in with one sweep of his eyes five other repositories of the Sign – each as geologic. Grebe's study, which occupied the body of an arch over the back gate to the college, also had ample room for four filing cabinets, two large work tables and an impressive computer system to boot. This was in addition to the usual Oxfordian clutter of occasional tables, overstuffed tutorial armchairs, teetering piles of papers, journals and still more books.

For, while Grebe was an inveterate hoarder, holding fast to a single byte if he thought it might become useful, he was no anal retentive, amassing philosophical information with no regard for its dissemination. In fact – and this explains why Zack Busner had chosen him as an interjector for his perverse patient – Grebe was a theoretician of great flair.

It was Grebe who first proposed that signing developed as a means of gesticulation for chimpanzees directly from the practice of grooming. Grooming, Grebe posited, while
effective in the small groups chimpanzees must have originally lived in, when they – like humans – roamed the tropical zones of Central Africa, would have been insufficiently visible to allow for cohesion and progress in larger social units. Hence signing.

Hence also – and this explains why Grebe's name was known beyond the narrow precincts of academia – the magnificent efflorescence of the female chimpanzee's sexual swelling. However peculiar and repugnant it might seem to contemporary chimpunity, Grebe – in association with a primatologist colleague – firmly believed that the perineal regions of primitive female chimpanzees were in all probability small to the point of being discreet – not unlike those of modern human females.