Читать книгу Hunter School - Sakinu Ahronglong - Страница 12

The Monkey King

When I was twelve years old, Father told me the story of the local monkeys who had to defend their land from foreign invaders.

“Son, see that big monkey in the tree?” my father asked, raising his rifle and clicking on the safety. “His name is Pula. He has a dozen years on you, and his clan has led all of the tribes of monkeys on this mountain for generations. His daddy died when your grandfather was a dozen years old. I hear he died gloriously. It took five hunters to bring him down. He died protecting his people.

“After he died, other alpha monkeys from other tribes wanted to be king, but they were beaten back by this one. At about the time when I was born, there was a battle on Gadu Mountain that every elder in the village can remember. In that battle, the monkeys under Pula fought for terrain and status with two foreign tribes. They say that you could hear them skirmishing and screaming every day at sunset.

“The native monkeys were beaten back deep into the mountains, and the new monkeys occupied the peaks closest to our village.”

Looking up at Pula in the tree, I was thinking that his daddy must have been revered by many monkeys just like him. I could tell why because he was something special. The other monkeys had seemed very uncomfortable and nervous from the moment we appeared. They were squealing and roaring. They were trying to intimidate us. But not him. Every move he made held my gaze. He was dignified, cool, and composed. He had the comportment of a king. He was every inch a leader.

The little monkeys were running around on Pula’s body. Now he looked like a loving father. Pula raised his tail high and looked at me and Father, red of face and big of eye. That freaked me out. When I hid behind my father, Pula leaped to a higher branch, a prestigious place on which only he had the right to stand. From there, he shook the trunk and screamed, baring the sharp teeth that only he had the right to show. He screamed so loud you must have been able to hear him far, far away. It seemed as if every monkey in the tribe understood this as a signal because they made no more sound. It was so, so quiet. None of the monkeys dared make a peep – they all lowered their tails and sat on the nearest branch. They all looked up at Pula.

“What’re they doing?” I asked.

And my father said, “Pula said, ‘Behold, our territory contains fruit to satisfy our hunger and water to slake our thirst. Remember ye this: we cannot eat the food that humans plant. We cannot endanger our lives because of our gluttony. Human beings will use things that make scary sounds. And they will shoot you down out of the tree without warning.’”

Father said, “Pula’s father was killed by the hunting gun, shot out of the tree protecting his monkeys. The Monkey King does not want his subjects to break the rules – the rules of survival, no, the rules of coexistence that keep the peace between the monkeys and the human race.”

Wooowoooooo. All of the monkeys suddenly started singing together. And they all shook the tree as hard as they were able. They shook the entire mountain valley, it seemed to me. Then I understood why father had not pulled the trigger. He respected the Monkey King the way he respected a village elder.

“Really?” I asked.

“Son, they are just the same as us Paiwan, they have their own social structure with different ranks in a hierarchy. Actually, they are just the same as human beings.

“Pula the Monkey King has three wives. In the past few days, his third wife has gone missing, so he has been kind of unhappy because he is worried. The king’s first wife is called Yiku. She is the queen and has a special job to do: delegate tasks to the younger monkeys. His second wife is called Paling, and she, too, has a special task: she is responsible for taking care of all the little infants and for their education. And the third wife is called Suya, and her job is diplomacy. She is the one who maintains friendly relations with other tribes of monkeys by going on peace-keeping missions. The three wives support one another, which is the main reason for his authority: they help consolidate his rule. Behind every great man is a good woman, in this case, three!”

Early the next morning, my father called me awake and told me to get ready to go up the mountain with him. But he did not tell me why. All I knew was that we had to walk a long way. When we got to where we were going, Father said, “This is not our hunting ground, and it is not the Monkey King’s territory, either. It belongs to another tribe.”

“What are we doing here, Dad?”

“Last night an old hunter of our village told me that on the way home he heard a monkey screaming. I was worried that the Monkey King’s wife might be caught in a hunter’s trap, so I have come to have a look.”

We had come to where the old hunter had heard the scream. We searched for a long time. We did not hear the sound of a monkey. Right when I was about to give up, my father called my name. “Look, Sakinu, over there.”

Right there at a water source we found the Monkey King’s third wife, Suya. I asked my father how he knew that the lady monkey was the wife of Pula the Monkey King. “See the scar on her left leg? On her diplomatic missions she has to go on distant journeys. One time she fell into a trap set by a hunter along the way. I happened to be in the area. At the time she did not know me yet. She assumed that I was the one who had set the trap. So when I went to release the iron from her leg, she bit me with her sharp teeth. But I released the leg all the same and put on a salve made from essence of camphor oil. You know, the Little Nurse ointment we apply to your mosquito bites to ease the pain and reduce swelling. I ripped a strip from my shirt to bandage the wound for her. When she left, she looked at me – she was about half a metre away, and she took a good long look at me. She showed me her sharp teeth again, but this time she was smiling. She swatted her tail around a couple of times before jumping into a tree and swinging off.”

This time Suya had been caught in a trap for several days. She was hungry and weak. The part of her in the trap, her right hand, was badly infected, maybe even gangrenous. It was all red and swollen up, and you could see the bone. She was whimpering, which told my father: It hurts so much!

Father said, “I’m here, everything’s going to be alright.” Father patted her head several times. She was still whimpering. I was standing to the side, feeling very sorrowful. When he released her hand from the vice, she did not even move, as if she had some unspoken understanding with my father.

“Suya’s hand is so bad that it might never be well again…” he said.

She was licking her injury and whimpering from time to time, as if to tell my father something. She said a lot of things that I did not understand. Father said she was very homesick.

The next day at sundown, Father took Suya back home, to the place where Pula the Monkey King often appeared. Suya screamed with excitement to find herself back where she belonged.

“The Monkey King’ll be here soon.” But the sun was setting, and the light was growing dim. It was time to leave, but Pula had not appeared yet.

“Kama,” I asked, “where is he? Is Pula gone for good?”

My father did not speak, or at least he did not answer my question. “Son,” he said. “We will come back tomorrow.” And with that we took Suya home.

The next morning, we went to the same place we had waited the night before. It was quiet in the woods. All we heard was the wind in the leaves, until there was a different swish, the sound of Pula the Monkey King swinging through the forest. Woowoooo! Today his distinctive voice carried with particular clarity.

My father said that the Monkey King had been able to smell her from far away. Soon he appeared in the place where we had first seen him. He was jumping up and down. He strenuously shook the tree and screamed, joy in his face.

He wanted to see his wife. They had not been together for a long time. Father released the chain he had put around her neck and watched as she limped very, very slowly and started to climb with great difficulty up the tree to the place where only Pula the Monkey King could stand. She leaned against him and said to her man, “I missed you so much.” Then I saw the Monkey King climb onto her body and enjoy a pleasure he had not had in a long time. And judging from the demure expression on her face, she was enjoying the attention.

In the final scene to the happy reunion I was able to witness, Pula was licking her lame right hand before they disappeared together into the forest.

I saw the Monkey King and his monkeys and his three wives in the same place a few times after that. He got along well with all his wives, especially with Suya. But his first and second wives did not get jealous on that account.

One time I asked my father what Pula meant by some gesture or scream, but he answered otherwise. “Pula is so strong and supple! He travels like the wind, and his every motion is like a passing breeze. Son, do you know what animal has four hands and four feet?”

I thought about it for the longest time, but all I could come up with was a spider.

Father’s answer made me laugh. “When a monkey is in the tree, it has four hands working at the same time. And when a monkey is on the ground, it has four feet walking at the same time.”

“Dad, does that mean Suya has three hands and three legs?”

He just smiled.

Pula’s babies are getting bigger every day. Someday they will inherit the mountain domain over which their father rules, and hopefully they will rule as wisely as their father did. And when I have children of my own, I am going to tell them the story of the Monkey King.