Will Self - Great Apes

Busner could only recognise one individual, his youngest infant Alexander. Spunky kid, he thought, for Alexander, although only two, had managed to get hold of the light fixture which dangled over the two trembling bodies, and was hanging from it by one arm, his tiny frame gyrating while he kicked David in the muzzle.

Busner took in the rest of the room with a glance, infants chucking second-breakfast bowls of sloes and custard apples about, sub-adults moodily and sulkily grooming each other in the corners, a couple of young mothers suckling, a couple of others up in the eating area preparing more second-breakfast bowls. The whole scene was well lit by the sunlight streaming in from the open french windows that let on to the garden, and through which a pair of the ubiquitous Busner lap ponies now trotted, tossing their heads and neighing reedily.

“HoooH’Graa’!” Busner pant-hooted, and drummed a little on the doorjamb, as befitted his status. He signed to Paula, one of his younger daughters, that she should prepare his second breakfast, then swaggered over to the mating pair, his fur half-erect.

On his arrival in the doorway the other adult males of the Busner group had all pant-hooted, saving David who was squealing his way towards climax. As the patriarch traversed the room all the members of his group, old, young, male, female, presented to him, and upon each of them he bestowed a touch of tenderness and hortatory greeting, here a kiss, there a caress.

There was a loose queue of males trailing down from the cooking area, more or less in correct dominance order, Henry behind David, Paul behind Henry. Busner wondered idly why David had been allowed first crack at Charlotte, but then as he rounded the breakfast bar at the top of the short flight of stairs, he saw that Dr Kenzaburo Yamuta, the distal-zeta male, was vigorously mating his daughter Cressida by the dishwasher, while Colin Weeks and Gambol awaited their turn.

‘Morning “chup-chupp”, Zack,’ Kenzaburo signed, withdrawing from Cressida. ‘Fancy a “huh-huh” fuckhere?’

‘No, no,’ Busner signed in the process of delivering an affectionately brutal cuff to David, ‘I’ll just — “huh-huh-huh”’ — he broke into a satisfied pant as he smoothly entered Charlotte, who pushed herself backwards to ease him into her still further — ‘give the old “chup-chupp” dear one first.’ Busner juddered and shuddered, panting, squealing and then loudly tooth-clacking with satisfaction as he felt the soft, damp cushion of Charlotte’s sexual swelling mush against his groin. But it took him almost a minute of thrusting before he achieved climax, one of Alexander’s feet banging into his forehead the whole while, and a couple of the older infants leaping up and down on his broad back, their little hands entwined in his scruff.

Not like the old days, he reflected ruefully, withdrawing from Charlotte and wiping himself with a cloth that Frances, the epsilon female, had thoughtfully handed him. I remember mating Charlotte for the first time, I must have shot-off in less than ten seconds! Hoo how exquisite it was; truly youth is wasted on the young. He signed his gratitude to Frances and remained resting by Charlotte for a few minutes, grooming the fine auburn fur around her ears, while Henry mated her, his big yellow teeth chattering.

He looked up to see that Cressida had finished with Kenzaburo and was presenting to him, a half-smile of encouragement on her gentle, liver-spotted muzzle. Busner laughed, panted, smacked his lips, and mated her in under thirty seconds, the pair of them squealing with delight. Cressida had always been his favourite daughter — although he couldn’t have pointed out quite why. She certainly didn’t have a swelling to match Betty or Isabel’s, but there was something deeply affecting about her joyful submissiveness and overprotective mothering. Busner, although by no means a crass male chauvinist, was nonetheless fond of signing to his colleagues on the infrequent occasions that he went to the Flask with them for a drink after work, ‘She’s the one of my seventeen offspring that I feel most tender towards… the seventeen “h’hee-hee” I know about, that is!’

Busner was aware of Gambol signing to him under his right arm as he was mating Cressida, but he didn’t pay it much attention. Now, however, as he was wiping himself down again with a fresh cloth provided by another female, he did fully register Gambol’s enquiring pant-hoot.

“H’huu,” Gambol called, then signed, ‘Something’s come up, Zack, something that sounds very interesting—’

‘“Euch-euch” can’t it wait, Gambol, I haven’t even had my second breakfast yet,’ Busner countersigned, leaping clear over the breakfast bar out of a mixture of post-coital high spirits and irritation. He settled himself on one of the chairs surrounding the big circular pine-topped table that dominated the eating area, and indicated for Isabel, the delta, to approach with the two laden bowls of custard apples and sloes.

Busner picked up a copy of the Guardian that was lying on the table and began to leaf through the foreign news section, idly scanning the headlines: ‘More Bonobo Massacres in Rwanda’, ‘President Clinton Urges Ceasefire in Bosnia’, ‘Accusations of Bonobism in O. J. Simpson Jury Selection’. Misery, misery, all is misery and aggression, Busner hooed to himself as he read. Perhaps it is as Lorenz suggestures, and the current woeful condition of chimpunity is a maladaptive response to overcrowding, to the loss of our natural lifestyles?

‘Boss.’ Gambol had wormed his scrawny body under the kitchen table and was fingering Busner’s dangling left foot. ‘This really is something “gru-nn” exciting, something I feel we should ges—’ Busner cut him short by jerking his foot away. With an agility and strength that immediately accounted for his long reign over the group, he pushed himself back in the chair and directed an accurate and forceful cuff to the back of Gambol’s head. This blow temporarily stunned the hapless research assistant and he sprawled full-length on the sea-grass matting. Busner then followed up the lightning attack by vaulting off his chair and planting both his large feet full in the small of Gambol’s back.

“Wraaf!” barked the eminent psychiatrist, and then bending down and grabbing him by the scruff he signed on the muzzle of the epsilon male with his left foot, ‘Shut the fuck down, Gambol, you little piece of shit. When I want you muscling in on my second breakfast, you miserable subordinate creep, I’ll ask you to, but for now just shut the fuck down! “Waaa”!’

‘I’m sorry, boss, I’m sorry,’ Gambol flourished frantically, his darting hands emerging from the pod of his crouching body. ‘I didn’t mean “eek-eek” to annoy you so much, please don’t beat up on me, please.’ He half squatted and presented to Busner, his scut quivering.

‘That’s all right, honey-bunny, I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, wassums,’ Busner gestured, grunting softly. ‘You’re still my favourite itty-bitty research assistant.’ He reached out a hand, still roaring with pain after the blow he had inflicted, and tenderly stroked Gambol’s ruffled back fur. For a while Busner groomed Gambol, removing some particles of what looked like solidified correction fluid from the thick fur between the epsilon’s shoulder blades.

Typical young intellectual on the make, Busner thought as he opened up parting after parting in Gambol’s fur. Doesn’t groom enough, doesn’t mate enough. Why, without his position as my factotum I don’t think he’d have any designation in the hierarchy, let alone epsilon. He finished off this purely formal groom of reassurance with a tweak of Gambol’s nape hair.

Gambol moved away from the table, still presenting, his hands flickering from behind his back. ‘Thank you, Zack, thank you, I acknowledge your suzerainty. I admire your eminence, I revere your reign over the group, your anal scrag enfolds us all “grnnn”.’