Will Self - Great Apes

With this challenging, if not abusive gesture, Rauhschutzgave a spontaneous pant-hoot of stentorian proportions, drummed on a water butt that was to hand, and knuckle-marched away. All of the bonobos save for one — clearly Joshua — followed in her scut. Simon was unnerved to see that two of them were carrying Kalashnikovs.

The sleeping quarters assigned to the English chimps were, of course, one of the huts. The floor was concrete and the corrugated iron walls stopped about a foot before meeting this foundation. When Simon gestured at this, Joshua merely signed, ‘Wa’ comes in, y’know — they’s got to “hooo” get out again.’ Simon considered pointing out to him that if the walls were better constructed nothing would get in, but seeing the bonobo’s bared canines and funnelled lips, he thought better of it.

At least they had their own mosquito nets and inflatable mattresses. The camp nests provided were the size of infant baths. There was plenty of invertebrate life in the hut already — mosquitoes whined about the shadows, huge moths batted against the hissing gas lamp Joshua had lit before leaving them. There were also more sinister, more vertebrate noises, scuttlings and clickings, unmistakably rodentine in origin. Janet Higson and Bob the gofer were so agitated by the hut’s atmosphere that they began mock-mating, even though she was weeks away from showing.

Zack Busner was the only one who wasn’t put out by their reception. He’d travelled extensively in the tropics as a young chimp, when doing research on the perverse, hysterical Malaysian condition known as latah , and the descent to the lakeside, the makeshift camp and the beauty of the surrounding forest had pushed him into a nostalgic reverie. Seeing the distress of his group, Busner crawled across to where the two television chimps were whimpering and panting, and took them both in both hands, inparting, ‘“Chup-chupp” come now! Madam Rauhschutz may be a bit strange, but I dare say we’ll rub along well enough. As for these quarters, I have a few tips I picked up as a young chimp that should make things a little “gru-nnn” more salubrious.’

He showed them all how to rig up the mosquito nets and how to stash their gear where the rats couldn’t get at it. He also produced a number of paper dishes, which he filled from a bottle of paraffin and set the feet of the camp nests in. ‘It’ll stop any six-legged friends we might have from getting too intimate “hee-hee”.’ Simon was most gratified to see this, because in the few days he’d been in Africa, despite rigorous applications of the plethora of repellents and unguents they’d brought with them, he was finding it difficult to keep all the tics, chiggers and worse that wanted to infest his coat from taking up residence.

It was this, as much as anything else, that was drawing Simon into a tighter relation to that preposterous concept — chimpunity. It was difficult, after all, to deny that you had fur, when mosquito bites were invisible beneath hanks of hair, but for all that damnably itchy.

The Busner–Dykes group groomed itself as best it could, then gingerly quit their hut. Gingerly, because night had fallen as it always does in the tropics, with a suddenness and totality that made it like the unconsciousness of Earth itself. The ancient forest sighed and groaned in the onshore wind. The clicking of bats and the humming of insects infiltrated the cooling air. In the mid-distance there was the noise of larger animals brushing and crashing through the undergrowth, but although he strained his capacious ears, Simon failed to register the distinctive guttural calls of the wild human.

A long trestle table had been set up for their repast on the open veranda of the largest hut. This muzzled out over the midnight blue of the lake and as they chomped their meal — which consisted largely of the dagaa they’d seen being landed earlier and copious amounts of fresh figs — they could, if they chose to, watch the lamps of the night fisherchimps flashing over the water.

If they chose to, or if they were able to, for first-and-last mess at Camp Rauhschutz turned out to be a stimulating affair. To begin with they discovered that they were not the sole visitors. As they vaulted over the railing and thumped on to the deck of the veranda, waiting there for them was another party of chimps. There were three males and five or possibly six females. They were all Caucasians — their pale muzzles bright in the lamplight — and they were all wearing the most absurd new tropical kit, all made from Gore-Tex and other synthetics, all in bright pastel shades, and all furnished with more Velcro tabs, poppers and straps than were remotely necessary.

It transpired with aching predictability that they were Dutch. “H’hooo,” Rauhschutz wheezily vocalised, levering herself up to join them, then signed, ‘I see you’ve met my current guests, the Van Grijn group from the Netherlands—’

‘We haven’t,’ Busner signed for them all, ‘but we are delighted to do so, their scuts are so marvellously surmounted by their brand-new, high-tech raiments.’ They all presented to one another. If Rauhschutz had seen the irony in Busner’s gestures, she made no mark about it.

The Dutch chimps presented to the English. Their alpha, a hard-muzzled male ascripted Oskar, indicated that they were there in their capacity as members of the Dutch arm of a pressure group denoted ‘The Human Project’, the aim of which was to secure limited chimpanzee rights for wild and captive humans. ‘We are coming to see Madam Rauhschutz,’ he signed with irritating little swoops of his fingers, ‘because she is, “huu” how you sign? She is the “hooo” most important female alive today—’

‘Because of her work rehabilitating captive humans “huu”?’ Busner chopped the air.

‘Of course “gru-nn”, but more that that, we think she is, you know, maybe a little bit better spiritually than other anthropologists. She is, like a very holy kind of chimp, but not religious.’

Busner remembered what Rauhschutz had written in Among the Humans and decided to hold his hands. However, the anthropologist herself was not so contained. From her position at the head of the table, which she had assumed with much shuffling pomp, she held forth to the assembled company while the bowls of figs made the rounds. ‘I am grateful “chup-chupp” to Oskar here for bringing up the issue of spirituality. For me the human is no mere, brute animal, far from it. Rather, when I commune with wild humans I feel they are teaching me in their stillness, in their untouchability, in their apparent isolation, more about what it means to be chimp than any chimpanzee could.’

As she conducted, Rauhschutz smoked a little black cheroot, which was clamped between her yellow fangs.

She also took periodic swigs from a tin mug on the table, a mug that was full of peach schnapps. Simon knew this, because whatever the other faults and drawbacks of Camp Rauhschutz, being dry — in any sense of the sign — was not one of them. The schnapps bottles had been produced shortly after they squatted down and throughout the meal they circled the table.

Simon, for the first time since his breakdown, felt relaxed enough to drink strong liquor. There was something about the maverick anthropologist that he found peculiarly reassuring. It was as if, confronted by a female chimpanzee who really believed in the sentience of humanity, Simon was able clearly to apprehend what it might be like for him to abandon such a conviction.

There was that, and there was the anachronistic ambience of Camp Rauhschutzas well. Despite her vaunted spirituality, Rauhschutzran the place along the lines of an old colonial district commissioner. The bonobos who waited on them at table made no signs to the white chimps save to ask if they were finished, or if they would like more. Otherwise they skulked in the shadows. When they addressed Rauhschutz, they denoted her ‘Baas’. When she addressed them, she used either their first names — as if they were sub-adults — or simply summoned them with a curt, imperious pant-hoot.