Chapter Ten

How to describe it. A broken world. I woke groggy like after the time cousin Tink and I crashed heads, he leaping this way under the assault of an eagle, I leaping that, meeting accidentally in the middle, head to head, waking to silence on the rain-forest floor, just a chachalaca kicking up the leaf litter around us after insects.

But here in this waking the world was all noise, goers galore it sounded, some kind of non-animal screaming and hooting, also aggressively non-Beep beeping, non-bird honking, also some displaced you-men pleading his case from a tee-bee.

“We’ll be right back,” he said giving up—but not forever.

When next I woke, it was to sumptuous luxury, I suppose, all sorts of hot you-men bedding smelling of bird. I felt I’d been transported back to the pink cubicle Inga had inhabited back in monkey world, but this chamber was doubly rooomy, quintuply filled with deceased stuffees, but here including pretend you-mens, as well, a couple of dozen girl creatures dressed well in wrappings of great variety, nonfunctional bodies, two small teeth showing in placid, slightly stubid smiles. I’d carried a coconut around when little and called it my baby, so no judgment!

And no Inga.

The stuffee-carrier was in a corner, and I could see that Whale was upside down, dead, Wolf smothered below him. Where was Inga?

Calm, monkey. You’ve lived.

I shoved off the heavy coverings, stood wobbly on the soft surface, tail to support me, legs aching, head pounding. I smelled water and knew its direction, leapt from the bed to an open darway, hung from the top edge of it, a wooden border. And swing, and I was inzide the water room, hanging onto a branch draped with pink wrappings, from there to the pretend sun hanging from the see-ling, a far taller see-ling than I’d found in Inga’s rain-forest home. Below me now were the expected grottoes, one the dry kind, the other a place to pee, if I had their customs right. And so I did pee, pictured the forehead of a querulous coatimundi to sharpen my aim, and heard in my heart all the subsequent coatimundi swearing, those cross animals, a happy splashing. From there if I swung I could pooop as well, and I did, I poooped, expelled a tight turd at the crucial moment of the arc, satisfying splash.

Thirsty, though, and I’d fouled the water source. The dry basin—how had that worked? I jumped down, slippery surfaces, monkeyed with the gleaming meddle outcroppings, and after a twist of the wrist (like freeing a mango from its branch), the waterfall commenced. Why not a bath? Well, because the water poured away down a perfect round leak in the basin, that’s why. On a shelf were some fragrant kind of cylinders the right size and I forced one into the hole, presto, pond. I do like to sit in water. The waterfall was brisk and wonderful till suddenly it was warm, then hot, then too hot, and leap out of there! Very pleasant sound of the water flowing, however, and continuing, wetting the floor, a glorious splashing.

Monkey bored!

Monkey hungry!

I’d smelled fruit in the bathrooom but none was real.

A conch shell, though, carried here from there, it seemed, and set carefully on a kind of ledge, sweet reminder of monkey world.

Inga rushed in. “Beepie!” she cried. “You’re up! I’m so sorry! I had to join the fam for breakfast!”

I moodled hard, trying the troupe mood, the affinity mood, the we.

“The sink!” my friend cried, and rushed to halt the waterfall.

“I took a bath,” I mooded.

“You poooped?” she said. “What a good monkey.”

“All monkeys are good,” I said. “And while what you say is true, what I’m trying to communicate is the bath.”

She threw the large cloth hangings on the floor, contained the water. Brought one small one out to me, rubbed me with it, why? She only said, “Hoo-hoo!” And then, “Naughty wet monkey!”

Ah, that was it: they were big on being dry. She petted my head, she patted my face. Her courage was great, no sign of fear at our captivity. That made me brave, too.

I concentrated very hard on her glimmer of consciousness, moodled my mood, formal: “I’d like to continue on past the monstrous trail. I fear it’s far wider than I surmised. I’m sure you’re anxious to get going, too.”

She only cooed and said, “I brought you a banana.”

“Monstrous trail?” I mooded. “Anxious to get going?”

But nothing. I took the banana, very real. As from the gardens of the growers, large, sweeter than plantain. I bit it in the middle, yanked off its covering, ate it all, big bites—but Inga was no cousin, no uncle, she didn’t make a single move to take it away. Soon I was fat with it.

My dear host pulled off her own wrappings, or some of them, replaced them with heavier ones, said, “It’s almost like spring out there! We can go to the pargh. Dabby just left for work. He’s a lie-yer. Mommy’s got a Zooom. She’s a judch, partial maternity leaf. I don’t have ssscoola till tomorrow! It’s still springbreagh. The howzz-kipper is with Willie.”

I understood many of her words, but not what she was saying. I said, “Do go on.”

And she did, she went on: “Will you be good? If I take you to the pargh? We can use my Bitty Twins strawler. Oh! And you can wear Bitty Twin cloze!”

She didn’t make sense, but she hadn’t forgotten the quest, good: we were on the move.

Shortly the boy Bitty Twin was stripped to his naked nonbody, and I was tucked into a smart pea-coad (she called it) and pamps. These went on your legs.

My subjugation was complete!