Ape and Essence Read online

  Well, that was the nearest we ever got to Tallis in the flesh. In what follows the reader can discover the reflection of his mind. I print the text of "Ape and Essence" as I found it, without change and without comment.

  II

  The Script

  Titles, credits and finally, to the accompaniment of trumpets and a chorus of triumphant angels, the name of the PRODUCER.

  The music changes its character, and if Debussy were alive to write it, how delicate it would be, how aristocratic, how flawlessly pure of all Wagnerian lubricity and bumptiousness, all Straussian vulgarity! For here on the screen, in something better than Technicolour, it is the hour before sunrise. Night seems to linger in the darkness of an almost unruffled sea; but from the fringes of the sky a transparent pallor mounts from green through deepening blue to the zenith. In the east the morning star is still visible.

  NARRATOR

  Beauty inexpressible, peace beyond understanding. . .

  But, alas, on our screen

  This emblem of an emblem

  Will probably look like

  Mrs. Somebody's illustration

  To a poem by Ella

  Wheeler Wilcox.

  Out of the sublime in Nature

  Art all too often manufactures

  Only the ludicrous.

  But the risk must be run;

  For you there, you in the audience,

  Somehow and at any price,

  Wilcox or worse,

  Somehow you must be reminded

  Be induced to remember,

  Be implored to be willing to

  Understand what's What.

  As the Narrator speaks, we fade out of our emblem of an emblem of Eternity into the interior of a picture palace filled to capacity. The light grows a little less dim and suddenly we become aware that the audience is composed entirely of well-dressed baboons of both sexes and of all ages from first to second childhood.

  NARRATOR

  But man, proud man,

  Drest in a little brief authority --

  Most ignorant of what he is most assur'd.

  His glassy essence -- like an angry ape,

  Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

  As make the angels weep.

  Cut to the screen, at which the apes are so atten­tively gazing. In a setting such as only Semiramis or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer could have imagined we see a bosomy young female baboon, in a shell-pink evening gown, her mouth painted purple, her muzzle pow­dered mauve, her fiery red eyes ringed with mascara. Swaying as voluptuously as the shortness of her hind legs will permit her to do, she walks onto the brightly illuminated stage of a night club and, to the clapping of two or three hundred pairs of hairy hands, appreaches the Louis XV microphone. Behind her, on all fours and secured by a light steel chain attached to a dog collar, comes Michael Faraday.

  NARRATOR

  "Most ignorant of what he is most assur'd . . ." And I need hardly add that what we call knowledge is merely another form of Ignorance -- highly organised, of course, and eminently scientific, but for that very reason all the more complete, all the more productive of angry apes. When Ignorance was merely ignorance, we were the equivalents of lemurs, marmosets and howler monkeys. Today, thanks to that Higher Igno­rance which is our knowledge, man's stature has in­creased to such an extent that the least among us is now a baboon, the greatest an orangutan or even, if he takes rank as a Saviour of Society, a true Gorilla.

  Meanwhile the baboon-girl has reached the micro­phone. Turning her head, she catches sight of Faraday on his knees, in the act of straightening his bent and aching back.

  "Down, sir, down!"

  The tone is peremptory; she gives the old man a cut with her coral-headed riding switch. Faraday winces and obeys, the apes in the audience laugh delightedly. She blows them a kiss, then, drawing the microphone toward her, she bares her formidable teeth and starts to sing, in an expiring bedroom con­tralto, the latest popular success.

  Love, Love, Love --

  Love's the very essence

  Of everything I think, of everything I do.

  Give me, Give me, Give me,

  Give me detumescence.

  That means you.

  Close-up of Faraday's face, as it registers astonish­ment, disgust, indignation and, finally, such shame and anguish that tears begin to flow down the fur­rowed cheeks.

  Montage shots of the Folks in Radio Land, listen­ing in.

  A stout baboon housewife frying sausages, while the loudspeaker brings her the imaginary fulfilment and real exacerbation of her most unavowable wishes.

  A baboon baby standing up in its cot, reaching over to the portable on the commode and dialling the promise of detumescence.

  A middle-aged baboon financier, interrupting his reading of the stock market news to listen, with closed eyes and a smile of ecstasy. Give me, give me, give me, give me.

  Two baboon teen-agers, fumbling to music in a parked car. "That mean you -- ou." Close-up of mouths and paws.

  Cut back to Faraday's tears. The singer turns, catches sight of his agonised face, utters a cry of rage and starts to beat him, blow after savage blow, while the audience applauds tumultuously. The gold and jasper walls of the night club evaporate and for a moment we see the figures of the ape and her captive intellect silhouetted against the dawning twilight of our first sequence. Then these too fade out, and there is only the emblem of an emblem of Eternity.

  NARRATOR

  The sea, the bright planet, the boundless crystal of the sky -- surely you remember them! Surely! Or can it be that you have forgotten, that you have never even discovered what lies beyond the mental Zoo and the inner Asylum and all that Broadway of imaginary theatres, in which the only name in lights is always your own?

  The Camera moves across the sky, and now the black serrated shape of a rocky island breaks the line of the horizon. Sailing past the island is a large, four-masted schooner. We approach, we see that tie ship flies the flag of New Zealand and is named the Canterbury. Her captain and a group of passengers are at the rail, staring intently toward the east. We look through their binoculars and discover a line of barren coast. Then, almost suddenly, the sun comes up behind the silhouette of distant mountains.

  NARRATOR

  This new bright day is the twentieth of February, 2108, and these men and women are members of the New Zealand Rediscovery Expedition to North Amer­ica. Spared by the belligerents of the Third World War -- not, I need hardly say, for any humanitarian reason, but simply because, like Equatorial Africa, it was too remote to be worth anybody's while to obli­terate -- New Zealand survived and even modestly flourished in an isolation which, because of the dan­gerously radioactive condition of the rest of the world, remained for more than a century almost absolute. Now that the danger is over, here come its first ex­plorers, rediscovering America from the West. And meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the black men have been working their way down the Nile and across the Mediterranean. What splendid tribal dances in the bat-infested halls of the Mother of Parliaments! And the labyrinth of the Vatican -- what a capital place in which to celebrate the lingering and complex rites of female circumcision! We all get precisely what we ask for.

  The scene darkens; there is a noise of gunfire. When the lights come up again, there squats Dr. Albert Einstein, on a leash, behind a group of baboons in uniform.

  The Camera moves across a narrow no-man's land of rubble, broken trees and corpses, and comes to rest on a second group of animals, wearing different decor­ations and under another flag, but with the same Dr. Albert Einstein, on an exactly similar string, squatting at the heels of their jack boots. Under the tousled aureole of hair, the good, innocent face wears an expression of pained bewilderment. The Camera travels back and forth from Einstein to Einstein. Close shots of the two identical faces, staring wistfully at each other between the polished leather boots of their respective masters.

  On the
sound track, the voice, the saxophones and cellos continue to yearn for detumescence.

  "Is that you, Albert?" one of the Einsteins hesi­tantly enquires.

  The other slowly nods his head.

  "Albert, I'm afraid it is."

  Overhead the flags of the opposing armies suddenly begin to stir in the freshening breeze. The coloured patterns open out, then fold in again upon themselves, are revealed and once more hidden.

  NARRATOR

  Vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, noughts and crosses, eagles and hammers. Mere arbitrary signs. But every reality to which a sign has been attached is thereby made subject to its sign. Goswami and Ali used to live at peace. But I got a flag, you got a flag, all Baboon-God's children got flags. So even Ali and Goswami got flags; and because of the flags it im­mediately became right and proper for the one with the foreskin to disembowel the one without a foreskin, and for the circumcised to shoot the uncircumcised, rape his wife and roast his children over slow fires.

  But, meanwhile, above the bunting float the huge shapes of clouds, and beyond the clouds is that blue void which is an emblem of our glassy Essence, and at the foot of the flagstaff grows the wheat and the emerald green rice and the millet. Bread for the body and bread for the spirit. Our choice is between bread and bunting. And bunting, I need hardly add, is what we have almost unanimously chosen.

  The Camera drops from the flags to the Einsteins and passes from the Einsteins to the much-decorated General Staffs in the background. All at once and simultaneously the two Field Marshalissimos shout an order. Immediately, from either side, appear baboon technicians, with fully motorised equipment for re­leasing aerosols. On the pressure tanks of one army are painted the words, super-tularemia, on those of their opponents, improved glanders, guaranteed 99.44% pure. Each group of technicians is accom­panied by its mascot, Louis Pasteur, on a chain. On the Soundtrack there is a reminiscence of the baboon-girl. Give me, give me, give me, give me detumes­cence. . . . Then these voluptuous strains modulate into "Land of Hope and Glory," played by massed brass bands, and sung by a choir of fourteen thousand voices.

  NARRATOR

  What land, you ask? And I answer,

  Any old land.

  And the Glory, of course, is the Ape-King's,

  As for the Hope --

  Bless your little heart, there is no hope,

  Only the almost infinite probability

  Of consummating suddenly,

  Or else by agonising inches,

  The ultimate and irremediable

  Detumescence.

  Close shot of paws at the stopcocks; then the Camera draws back. Out of the pressure tanks two streams of yellow fog start to roll toward one an­other, sluggishly, across no-man's land.

  NARRATOR

  Glanders, my friends, Glanders -- a disease of horses, not common among humans. But, never fear, Science can easily make it universal. And these are its symp­toms. Violent pains in all the joints. Pustules over the whole body. Below the skin hard swellings, which finally burst and turn into sloughing ulcers. Mean­while the mucous membrane of the nose becomes inflamed and exudes a copious discharge of stinking pus. Ulcers rapidly form within the nostrils and eat away the surrounding bone and cartilage. From the nose the infection passes to the eyes, mouth, throat and bronchial passages. Within three weeks most of the patients are dead. To see that all shall die has been the task of some of those brilliant young D.Sc's now in the employ of your government. And not of your government only: of all the other elected or self-appointed organisers of the world's collective schizo­phrenia. Biologists, pathologists, physiologists -- here they are, after a hard day at the lab, coming home to their families. A hug from the sweet little wife. A romp with the children. A quiet dinner with friends, followed by an evening of chamber music or intelli­gent conversation about politics or philosophy. Then bed at eleven and the familiar ecstasies of married love. And in the morning, after orange juice and Grapenuts, off they go again to their job of discover­ing how yet greater numbers of families precisely like their own can be infected with a yet deadlier strain of bacillus mallei.

  There is another yelp of command from the Marshalissimos. Among the booted apes in charge of either army's supply of Genius there is a violent cracking of whips, a tugging of leashes.

  Close shot of the Einsteins as they try to resist.

  "No, no. . . I can't."

  "I tell you I can't."

  "Disloyal!"

  "Unpatriotic!"

  "Filthy Communist!"

  "Stinking bourgeois-Fascist!"

  "Red Imperialist!"

  "Capitalist-Monopolist!"

  "Take that!"

  "Take that!"

  Kicked, whipped, half throttled, each of the Ein­steins is finally dragged toward a kind of sentry box. Inside these boxes are instrument boards with dials, knobs and switches.

  NARRATOR

  Surely it's obvious.

  Doesn't every schoolboy know it?

  Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man's.

  Papio's procurer, bursar to baboons,

  Reason comes running, eager to ratify;

  Comes, a catch-fart, with Philosophy, truckling to tyrants;

  Comes, a pimp for Prussia, with Hegel's Patent His­tory;

  Comes with Medicine to administer the Ape-King's aphrodisiac;

  Comes, rhyming and with Pihetoric, to write his ora­tions;

  Comes with the Calculus to aim his rockets

  Accurately at the orphanage across the ocean;

  Comes, having aimed, with incense to impetrate

  Our Lady devoutly for a direct hit.

  The brass bands give place to the most glutinous of Wurlitzers, "Land of Hope and Glory" to "On­ward, Christian Soldiers." Followed by his very Rev­erend Dean and Chapter, the Right Reverend, the Baboon-Bishop of the Bronx advances majestic, his crozier in his jewelled paw, to pronounce benediction upon the two Field Marshalissimos and their pa­triotic proceedings.

  NARRATOR

  Church and State

  Greed and Hate: --

  Two Baboon-Persons in one Supreme Gorilla.

  OMNES

  Amen, amen.

  THE BISHOP

  In nomine Babuini. . . .

  On the sound-track it is all vox humana and the angel voices of choristers.

  "With the (dim) Cross of (pp) Jesus, (ff) going on before."

  Huge paws hoist the Einsteins to their feet and, in a close-up, seize their wrists. Ape-guided, those fingers, which have written equations and played the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, close on the mas­ter switches and, with a horrified reluctance, slowly press them down. There is a little click, then a long silence which is broken at last by the voice of the Narrator.

  NARRATOR

  Even at supersonic speeds the missiles will take an appreciable time to reach their destination. So what do you say, boys, to a spot of breakfast while we're waiting for our Last Judgment!

  The apes open their haversacks, throw some bread, a few carrots and two or three lumps of sugar to the Einsteins, then fall to themselves on rum and Bologna sausage.

  We dissolve to the deck of the schooner, where the scientists of the Rediscovery Expedition are also breakfasting.

  NARRATOR

  And these are some of the survivors of that Judg­ment. Such nice people! And the civilization they represent -- that's nice too. Nothing very exciting or spectacular of course. No Parthenons or Sistine Chapels, no Newtons or Mozarts or Shakespeares; but also no Ezzelinos, no Napoleons or Hitlers or Jay Goulds, no Inquisitions or NKVD's, no purges, pogroms or lynchings. No heights or abysses, but plenty of milk for the kids, and a reasonably high average IQ, and everything, in a quiet provincial way, thoroughly cosy and sensible and humane.

  One of the men raises his binoculars and peers at the shore, now only a mile or two distant. Suddenly he utters an exclamation of delighted astonishment.

  "Lo
ok!" He hands the glasses to one of his com­panions. "On the crest of the hill."

  The other looks.

  Telescopic shot of low hills. On the highest point of the ridge, three oil derricks stand silhouetted against the sky, like the equipment of a modernised and more efficient Calvary.

  "Oil!" cries the second observer excitedly. "And the derricks are still standing."

  "Still standing?"

  There is general astonishment.

  "That means," says old Professor Craigie, the geolo­gist, "that there can't have been much of an explosion hereabouts."

  "But you don't have to have explosions," explains his colleague from the Department of Nuclear Physics. "Radioactive gases do the job just as effectively and over much wider areas."

  "You seem to forget the bacteria and the viruses," puts in Professor Grampian, the biologist. His tone is that of a man who feels that he has been slighted.

  His young wife, who is only an anthropologist and so has nothing to contribute to the argument, con­tents herself with glaring angrily at the physicist.

  Athletic in tweeds, but at the same time brightly intelligent behind her horn-rimmed glasses, Miss Ethel Hook, of the Department of Botany, reminds them that there was, almost certainly, a widespread em­ployment of plant diseases. She turns for confirmation of what she says to her colleague, Dr. Poole, who nods approvingly.

  "Diseases of food plants," he says in his professorial manner, "would have a long-range effect hardly less decisive than that produced by fissionable material or artificially induced pandemics. Consider, for ex­ample, the potato. . ."

  "But why bother about any of this fancy stuff?" bluffly booms the engineer of the party, Dr. Cudworth. "Cut the aqueducts, and it's all over in a week. No drinky, no livey." Delighted by his own joke, he laughs enormously.