Chapter Fourteen

Later, in her pink boudoir among my new inanimate friends, we lounged. On her phome, which was a kind of box of light, we watched various patterns repeat themselves in rhythm to Inga’s fingertaps, and mine when she let me, but she didn’t let me much, apparently jealous of the sensations it brought her, and something about my scramching it.

“I’ll have to cut your nails,” she said.

No comprendo, friend-o!

Something I touched made the phome cry out in obvious distress. What sort of life was this?

“Inga, I heard that,” her mother called.

“I’m doing sigh-ence,” Inga called back.

Now one of the patterns resolved itself in a way that nearly made me shriek: it was a you-men male made of light and talking in a deep voice, incomprehensible, and slowly I saw that the patterns when he disappeared (his voice still going) were objects, and that he was naming these. One of these, a tall roarbirdish caught in a vertical cage, was a rogget, and the rogget smoked, shuddered, suddenly crawled into the sky letting go of the ground in some way, escaped, then went faster, long white tail like any roarbird, then not like any. Next a round blue object in blackness, and the rogget flying into and out of view in front of it.

Okay, sigh-ence.

Later, waiting for Inga to be back from her dinner with scraps for mine, my eyes fell on the sphere she kept on her writing tavle. It was blue, somewhat green, none of the white swirls, but it was clearly the same object the rogget had escaped. The man talking in the light had been on the ground like any you-men. The rogget had plainly started there. The rogget had taken to the sky, you see. And then flown away, shown us its view. And the rogget’s view was us, I realized, something bigger than monkey world. Our collective world. And our collective world once you flew above the canopy of the canopy was curvaceous—that much I’d noted from the the windows of the roarbird that had delivered us here. But, if you went higher, it seemed (and sensibly) that curving aspect resolved into a sphere, a sphere like the moon, a sphere like the sun. And this was not only our shared home but our smoking mountain, do you see?

The object on Inga’s tavle was our home in simulacrum.

It spun at my slightest touch. I put my face close to it, moved slowly away playing rogget. I was still spinning the thing, my thoughts also spinning, still trying to absorb the hard lesson, when Inga returned. She had something called beetza. Beetza’s provenance was very mysterious, though there was animal involved, and the general echo of samweedge and prezzel. The thing called zzalad was more familiar. Zzalad was leaves, ripped up as if for an infant. Upon the zzalad I focused my attention.

“You’re looking at the glope?” Inga said, but to some degree truly moodled, such that I understood. “Let me show you where we are.” She turned the thing slowly-slowly, put her broad fingernail on a spot at the edge of the blue. “We are on this island,” she said. “It’s called Madhattan. It’s in the citty of Nyork, all of this.” Poke, poke. And then she traced a line right along a blue edge. “Florrriba,” she said. “Florrriba is where we changed playnz, although, dear monkey, you were sound asleep.”

Playnz were the meddle roarbirds.

“See? It’s not hard.” Her pink finger with its profound nail continued across a smudge of blue. Water, I suddenly understood. And continued till it hit the green. “Mezzico,” she said. Her finger followed the bulge of the glope, landed on a narrow strip of green. “Cozza Rica,” she said.

I, Beep, had heard that phrase before, often spoken by goers back home, often reported by old uncles with theories. That it was you-men for monkey world, for example, preposterous. Because a monkey couldn’t even make that sound. But I tried vocalizing, a piteous shriek.

“Chee-chee, monkey,” Inga said, poking the glope. “Cozza Rica. Your home, silly.”

“Nyork,” I said, understandingishly. “You roam, zilly.”

Quizzical Inga—she’d felt me mood, shivered with it. “You understand,” she said. And pointed again, more aggressively, colored spots on her glope, saying these words: Nyork, Cozza Rica. Did I really understand? I did not. I was lost, not home at all. I’d never felt lost before, even when I was truly lost—that time following a spotted deer all day back home in the forest—because when I’d been truly lost I’d been lost among monkey things in monkey world, and here there were no monkey things, and no monkeys, unless you counted the Japanese troupe, who were prizzoners, deeply depressed, and yet for whom prizzon had become home, had become ancestral even: ask that happy young fellow among them.

The dar popped opened and Momma appeared, pushed it open wider, luckily backing into the space to accommodate baby Willie, who all but dangled from her hands, blubbering. I froze, but Momma was oblivious, carried a disc of blue crystal covered in apple slices smeared with the brownish samweedge goop.

“Back to ssscoola tomorrow,” she said brightly. “Spring break is done! What excitement! Do you need anything washed?”

Inga rose, flung her wrapping over me, too warm. “Ugh and uck,” Inga said. “Ssscoola!”

“Do you want me to lay out cloze for you?”

Inga was moody: “I will do it myself. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“Oh, Sweedie, I know. So ancient! You’re eleven! And so I know you’ll also take a bath and wash your harr!”

“Ugh and uck,” Inga repeated.

Mother was so understanding, so warm, that interloping infant crushed against her chest and yet so kindly: “Have you any homework?”

“Just that boog.”

“And what about your boog report?”

Daughter reached out to mother, embraced her awkwardly around the new infant. Half smothered, she said, “I finished it on our trip. It’s so interesting, Momma. And scary, too. Fozzil fuels, sea-level rise, melting everything! I want to be like her.”

“Greta is a hero, Sweedie. And it is scary. But not insurmountable. We all must do what we can.”

“There’s time to change, she says. And we kibs are the ones to make it happen. I’m supposed to let you know. There’s time to save the world.”

The world was the glope!

Momma was very warm: “I do believe she’s right. And I’m glad you’ve let me know. And I’m glad she’s visiting Nyork this week.”

“She travels by zailboat.”

Momma did not sound fully glad: “And you’ll get to see her speak! Still, Hunny, she’s a pribileged soul from a pribileged nation, and that should be taken into consiberation.”

Momma a poet!

“Okay, I will take a bath.”

“Yes, perfect. And don’t forget to wash your harr. And rinse the bathtup after. And then dinner. And then early to bed for all of us.”

Bath, dinner, reading time, Inga speaking it, half-mooding it—glopal warming, zailboat, fozzil fuels—so much for a monkey to absorb. Likely I’d need to understandish all of it to get across this vast crossing and complete my quest, perhaps even get myself back to the world of monkeys, which was part of a greater world, so it seemed.

The bathtup was a bigger tiny pond than the thing you-mens must piss in. It had given its name to the rooom though: bath. A bath, I already knew, was a cleaning in deepwater. Learning curve high, but not too high. Inga removed her coverings so easily—I’d thought it might be difficult (I’d seen a snake during the process, so arduous, so vulnerable throughout!), but it was just a matter of ducking out of each item, and there she stood naked. The only fur upon her was on her head, and it wasn’t fur at all. Saddest sight: the you-mens really were monkeys, just no fur, except for a male or two, and the horripilant flesh, Inga pale and pathetic as a plucked bird (another whose covering comes off hard, those stout feathers!). But seemingly unharmed, even cheerful, she tested the water with her cute you-men hand (so like a monkey’s) and, at last satisfied, climbed in, face shifting red.

“Come in, Snow Monkey,” she said, cheery little insult. “You can sit on my knees.”

And so I did, sat upon her knees, which she rather wryly lowered, first my legs dunking, then my trunk, the water warmer than the home forest after rain—warm as a floodpuddle heated by hours of sun—finally up to my shoulders. I settled in, set about imitating Inga’s nutty behavior, this perfectly clean sleek thing scrubbing like she’d come through battle, bubbles arising from a fragrant kind of shell or stone she rubbed upon herself, very slippery stuff. She rubbed me with it, raising me up on her knees, and soon I was a fragrant puff of foam. She dunked me lower, and the foam floated all around like islands, fun to sink.

“I’m sad about ssscoola,” she said, just a hint of unconscious submoodle, which helped me understand. “Becky is such a beach. We used to be such easy friends, but.”

Confiding in me!

Big sigh: “Now she only cares about crob tops and stubid bras and stubid, stubid things like, ugh.”

And suddenly hot tears ran down her face.

“Monkey,” I moodled softly. “Monkey, my little monkey.”

She blubbered: “Will I ever be happy again?”

“Happy is our natural state,” I said. “I’m happy in this bath, for example. And happy to be with you on this mission, so harrowing. Always there’s something to be happy about. A monkey dies, at least there’s food to be found. A friend is stubid, but at least there is another.”

“Oh, dear monkey. You’re making so much noise!”

And she laughed, and Becky was forgotten, this you-men kib growing up too slow and too fast at once, and she laughed some more, unraveled her braided tresses laboriously, then lathered them ferociously and dunked herself multiply and it became apparent this was harr, the color brighter red than on our monkey heads.

Honestly, to bathe was fun, my fur whipped again into foamy peaks by her busy hands, her knees comically collapsing under me then rising me up again from the drink, my face carefully wiped with a limply comforting kind of pink leaf rough as a tongue, everything pink as I have noted, and now her laughter, then big pink wraps called talzz and a lot of ruffling of my ears, a lot of you-men mirth-burbling, little clicking thing stuck atop my head to match the big harrclib atop her own: equal torments between friends. I adopted my warmest slow-blinking gaze, gave a garrulous peep or two. She wrapped her mane in one of the big talzz and spun harr and tal both into a miraculous kind of helmet, that bright face shining pink and polka-dot. She lifted me, a monkey wrapped in a tal, danced me into her rooom, spun us twice, bounced me hilariously on the sleeping platform, bounced down beside me. Her sadness over that big beach Becky had fled.

The old uncles say there are many kinds of wub and a new one befell me in that moment, suffused me: buddies.

Shortly Momma came in, baby Willie likely left on a safe branch somewhere with aunts. And Momma watched so fondly as Inga took the wrap off her head, threw it wholly over me, my one eye peeping out, helped her stroke that burnished harr into straight lines, so much harr, no more ropes, and then did lay out wrappings for the next day as, upon her command, Inga put on bajamazz, they were called, especially soft wrappings, pink again.

“Dinner is ready,” Momma said.

My tummy spoke.

Momma gave a sharp look my direction.

But Inga leapt on her, hugged her, kizzed her face, made her forget, and the two of them left the rooom.

Which was hotter than the home tree on a windless afternoon! I climbed free of the ferocious bedwrappings, waited, examining first the glope, then the images she’d hung on the wall behind it, squareish items with white borders in wooden cases, a certain glossy mediation that kept monkey fingers away, but you-mens flattened in there, lifeless incarnations, effigies. Momma, and Dabby, and of course the foolish baby. But there was Inga, too, in various sizes. How slowly the you-mees grew! I felt tenderness toward her and toward her tiny troupe. I studied the representations, the forced you-men grins, the awkward postures. How hard it must be to live in the middle of the crossing and pretend such happiness lest their gods find them ungrateful!

One case was face down on the floor. I righted it, focused till four of the magical images resolved. Small Inga with another young you-men female, arms about each other, faces painted bright colors, big smiles and laughter. And then the same girls a little bigger, sitting like monkeys in a small tree. And then bigger girls yet, holding up paber shapes in red, arms about each other, cheeks smashed together in jolly affection. The last was Inga, all right, but Becky (for I slowly then suddenly realized it was she), looked puffed, her chest distended in the manner of some of the grown you-men females, the great grin of friendship replaced with a scowl. I put it back face down on the floor: there’d been intention, and the wood had retained it.

Forever and Inga was back, that pink disk covered with fruits and what? Dead bird chunks! And lots of ripped leaves, once again, these greasy with strange flavors but satisfying. When I was done, Inga finished the animal bits I’d left, collected the disk, trotted back out. Then reappeared, the dar swinging wide open.

“I’ll tugg you in,” she said. And placed me delicately under her coverings, my head on a corner of billow, gave me kizzes, put Whale and Wolf strategically atop me, several other creatures all around. I tried not to sigh with happiness. But the mission was still intact. Nothing wrong with hiatus.

“Momma’s coming to read to us,” Inga said. “No burping!”

Ugh, to share my Inga!

Shortly Momma arrived. “The baby will not go down,” she said cryptically.

Momma and daughter mirth-burbled and ignored me, jealous red pang, the two of them paging through a boog, Mommy interpreting the mood it offered. Inga clutched a stuffee I hadn’t met, a stiff kind of bear thing, no animal spirit detectable.

Sounds of baby Willie crying, somewhere not distant.

At last, Momma put her lips to her first offspring’s forehead and said soft you-men blessings, dug among the other stuffees, found a tattered square of woven fabric in worn pink.

“Your blankie,” she said.

Inga took it, folded it a certain way, held it to her cheek.

“Night Sweedie,” Momma said.

“Nigh-nigh,” Inga told her.

And Momma was gone, leaving the boog to my girl, who held her blankie to her cheek and continued to page through the boog—I swear I heard some passages rising from the paber, the undermood unbidden.

I climbed out from among my colleagues, snuggled my you-men, who, gauging from the sighs, needed a friend. And was snuggled back. Who needed a snuggle. And my new buddy read from the boog, incomprehensible, but mooded so much wub and satisfaction and the occasional phrase of intuition that we were one mood.

Then, surprise, the grown male was there, Dabby, and bold as Momma he lay down beside Inga. She jammed me in among the stuffees, and I played inanimate, a tough game, while he read impatiently from the boog, very fast patter I could not grasp.

Inga snuggled him, surreptitiously put a pretend you-men child atop me, heavy. But soon Dabby was satisfied with the atmosphere he’d wrought and stood up out of the bed with much groaning and yawning, bent and placed his lips on Inga’s forehead as Momma had, affection, then slipped out through the dar. The wall sealed itself and my buddy and I were alone. I disentangled myself once more, tore Bear from Inga’s grip, tossed him shelfwards—comically, I hoped.

Inga tugged me in once more. I was so warm after the cold adventuring of the afternoon, too warm. Night had been in the sky outdoors a long time. My eyes drooped. My monkey thoughts went universal. All was well with the world, Becky be damned.

“Oh, Beep, how I wubboo,” Inga said. Then mooded it very clearly, perhaps unconsciously.

I’m not one for breath-words, but I imagine my own wub was felt all the way to the corner of the pargh where the Japanese snow monkeys were imprizzoned, and I felt they took their share.