The Bell Tolls for No One (20 page)

O
utside of La Paz, about an hour and a half, there is this jungle and it's a strange jungle; there are no reptiles or animals, just birds, very odd birds, all beaks or all tail, and they lived off the fruits of the trees and shit all the time—as did the natives. The natives lived almost forever, especially the men, they'd walk by brown and bent and thin and with these rags around their waists but the rags did very little good (I thought) because their balls and cocks flopped out and hung down, and the men looked at you and knew that they would still be there—in that jungle—long after you were gone. The women seemed to sit more, doing things with their hands—masturbating—but for it all, they looked sadder and died earlier, which is a complete reversal, say, of a city like Santa Monica, Calif. Anyhow, I was with the Peace Corps teaching rehabilitated alcoholic paraplegic once-thieves the rudiments of geometry and algebra. The Peace Corps people kept coming back from that place with gooney-bird eyes and so they finally sent me to try to bring it together, me and my wife, Angela.

Angela and I were rifting, it was definitely winding down, but like many other people we wanted to make sure we knew it was finally finished because it's quite an overload on the wires to go out and search a replacement that might end up in the same fix. So we were in a state of slowly falling away from each other. There was an inflexible grimness to it all, and yet we had to pass through the grimness, we needed it, somehow, like we had once needed the love.

So there we were in the jungle—falling apart—among a people who seemed able to endure without either grimness or love, and the birds wandered and half-flew about and shit and shit. Help was needed. There was an old white guy called Jamproof Albert. I don't know what he was doing there, but he ran errands between the jungle and the city, and so I told him, “Jam, here's some scratch. I need relief. The numbers here don't balance and the silence . . . well, bring me something, let's see, yes, bring me back a monkey.”

Jamproof was gone two or three days and when he came back he had this monkey and he handed it to me and said, “Here, take this fucking thing!” And then he was gone. I looked at the monkey and he looked just like a guy who had once wanted to run for president and had gotten lucky and died, so I called him “Dewey.” Or maybe he had run for president and died.

I tried to pet Dewey and he bit my finger. Then he leaped off my lap and while looking at me he took his hose and pissed all over himself and then he took his hands and rubbed the piss into his fur. The problem with pets in that country was that people didn't look at them as possessions, but as forms of direct competition for food and lodging. So most of the people beat their pets instead of petting them. Also, Dewey was a full-grown monkey and his habits were ingrown. Dewey also had a lot of penis for his size and it always seemed to be in some state of turmoil, a very red part poking out, it looked like a bright red pencil, only it was wet and it seemed to drip. I was sitting noticing this when Angela walked up. She looked at Dewey and smiled for the first time in weeks.

“Glad to see you're feeling better,” I told her.

“Fuck off,” she said and walked into the hut. Dewey followed her in. When I walked in he was sitting in her lap.

“That's my monkey,” I said.

“You don't understand animals or women,” she said, “fuck off.”

“I'm going to give that bastard a bath,” I said, “he's pissed himself.”

“What his name?”

“Dewey.”

Angela looked down at the monkey: “Oh, Dewey, Bluey, Youee, Youee . . . ”

The monkey looked up at her and ran his tongue rapidly in and out of his mouth.

“Give me that bastard,” I said. I reached for him and grabbed him. As I did he got one of my fingers in his teeth and wouldn't let go. The pain was incisive. He hung from my finger in midair and with my free hand I got him about the throat and began to strangle him.

“You fiend,” screamed Angela, “you're hurting little Dewey!”

“I sure as shit hope so!”

I kept the pressure on. Suddenly the teeth on my finger loosened. Blood spurted. Dewey fell to the floor and was motionless.

“You
killed
him! You KILLED him, just as surely as you killed everything that was ever decent within me!” screamed Angela.

I bent over him, felt his pulse. There was none. I listened for a heartbeat. There was none. I walked over and poured a drink. “Sorry, Angela, we'll have to give him a decent funeral. Catholic priest, sticks of incense, all . . . ”

“You've always been so full of this HATE,” said Angela. “Of all the men on earth I had to come across a shit like you . . . ”

Dewey leaped up and ran toward the door. “Hey, fucker!” I screamed and ran after him. I never expected to catch him. Old Dewey, for a monkey, just wasn't very fast. Maybe it was all that hose he carried. Anyway, it delighted me that I could outrun him. I caught him after a 25-yard run. I took him to the tin washtub we all bathed in. I pumped the water in and dropped in the soap chips. Then I dropped Dewey in. It was probably his first meeting with water—outside—and his first introduction to soap. It was better than any fight since Dempsey-Firpo. I got him good, though. I even cleaned out his bunghole. Then as I began to wash him behind the ears he became very quiet. It worried me. I pulled him out and took himself and placed him on the floor. He had kept his mouth open during the washing and had swallowed mouthfuls of soapwater. His belly was immensely bloated. Angela just looked at me.

“I can't even hate you anymore. You're just something like a centipede, like a roach . . . like a tick . . . like a snail . . . like bugshit . . . You're a disgusting imbecilic slug . . . ”

“I'm sorry, Angela . . . I think he's dying . . . poor little cocksucker . . . he swallowed all that soapwater . . . I repent . . . fuck . . . I'm shit . . . ”

Then Dewey moaned. He turned his head and puked up two coffeepots worth of soapwater. Then he got to his feet and held himself upright against a bedpost. Then he turned and slowly walked toward the doorway. I let him go.

“He's free,” I said.

“He's more a man than you'll ever be,” said Angela.

“It was my parental upbringing,” I said, “it's insurmountable . . . ”

He was not to be seen for days. I feared him dead. But we had this compound, shaped somewhat like the observatory in the hills behind Los Angeles and in it the natives had stored supplies of grains and foodstuffs that the U.S. government had sent down there for them to eat but the natives after a bite or two had gone back to the more natural things that grew up in the air and out of the ground, but they had stored these packs of foodstuffs into the compound and Dewey had gone into there and holed-up and found a sustaining rebound within the darkness and the U.S. dollar war against the Red Menace. Meanwhile, I had broken my leg . . .

The first day I saw Dewey out of the compound he noticed the cast on my leg but he didn't quite know what it meant. I had always been able to catch him and he knew it. As I moved toward him he made his usual futile effort to run, looking back. Then he noticed that I wasn't gaining. He stopped and let me get near him and then ran off. Somehow it came to him that I could no longer catch him. He ran up close, screamed something at me, then ran off. He did it again. “You bastard,” I said, “I'll get you, I'll outthink you!”

Dewey stood there and looked at me. Then he pissed all over himself and rubbed it into the fur. Then he ran off bogging his bunghole up and down at me . . .

I knew he slept in the compound and I got up that night to get him. The moon was full and even the shit-birds slept. I crept into the compound. Dewey was asleep on a shelf near a small window at the back of the compound. He was bloated with U.S. foodstuffs. I moved toward him. He snored a most nasty snore. I stood two feet from him and moved out one hand. He did a double movement: one bound to his feet and the next bound out the window . . .

That noon while Dewey was in the house with my wife I went in and boarded up the little window in the compound. That night I again crept into the compound. Dewey was asleep on the shelf, the snore nastier than ever. I got nearer. I was right over him. “The white American male,” I whispered to him, “rules the universe.” He made the first bound to his feet, then noticed the boarded window for the first time. His little hands beat upon it and I had him. I carried him back into the house and sat on a chair and pulled his ears and blew cigarette smoke into his eyes. He didn't resist. He just looked at me like a monkey looking at a man. Then Angela awakened. “You just let Dewey go! He's mine!” When he heard her voice his red pencil came out.

“The
hell
he's yours. I paid 40 American dollars for him.”

“I tell you, he's mine! There are things money can't buy!”

“Like what?”

“Just let him go or I'll kill you.”

“Ta, ta. Now I mean, baby, just what's been going on between you two?”

“You're so suspicious, you're so jealous . . . even of a
monkey!
” You're the most jealous man I ever met. You know what that means?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It means a basic insecurity, a lack of faith in yourself, a lack of faith in the one you love.”

“Yeah, I worry.”

“You overreact.”

“Yeah.” I took Dewey's head and twisted it toward me. I blew a mouthful of cigarette smoke into both of his eyes. Angela leaped up. She screamed. Then she rushed at me with a Coleman lantern in one hand and a candlestick in the other. I let go of Dewey and I caught Angela coming in and got her with a left to the solar plexus. She dropped and Dewey ran out the door.

“Yes,” said Angela laying on the floor, “you'd hit a
woman
but you wouldn't hit a
man
, would you?”

“Hell, no, I wouldn't hit a man, you think I'm crazy? What the hell's that got to do with anything?”

“You're so disgusting,” she said, “you are so
utterly
disgusting!”

“That I know,” I told her. “Now how about a weather report?” . . .

Dewey stayed away from both of us after that. He knew that Angela and I were rifting but he didn't care to hang around for the broken coffee cups, the accusations and counter-accusations. He didn't report back to the compound and, of course, I still had the cast on my leg . . .

It was a week and a half later when I saw him for any length of time. I was sitting under a tree with a hangover while Angela was in the house ripping pictures and paintings from frames, tearing up photo albums, my shirts and underwear, my books, my love letters . . . Dewey was standing on the roof of the compound, the sun a little bit behind him, lighting him up like a miniature god. He caught my eye, screamed something at me, then pissed all over himself and rubbed it into his fur. A group of children passed. Children always passed in groups of 12, 14, 17, so forth, going somewhere . . . without adult guidance. Most of them had never seen a monkey except perhaps via photo or word. When they saw Dewey they began to scream, “MONO! MONO! MONO!” Dewey heard them and reacted. He was a show-off. He leaped from the compound and passed blithely through the air and caught his hands on a clothesline and swung back and forth. “MONO! MONO! MONO!” They stopped and watched him. Dewey dropped from the clothesline and ran along the ground. He made for one of the makeshift combos of boards and tree limbs nailed together that held up the wiring, the electric wiring, that came all the way from La Paz . . . in its fashion . . . we never got our electricity when it rained or in a windstorm, and sometimes it just stopped, seemingly, out of whim, but it always started up again when one had completely given up. Dewey made for our jungle phonepole. “MONO! MONO! MONO!”

The difference, though, between Los Angeles and where we were was that the wiring had no insulation—it was simply bare wiring. Dewey climbed up our phonepole toward the top. I couldn't speak. He neared the top. Then he hung there at the top and looked over at the wire. I knew what he was going to do. It was just another clothesline to him.

“DEWEY, DON'T DO IT!” I screamed.

“MONO! MONO! MONO!” screamed the children.

Dewey leaped out and grabbed the wire with both hands. He hung there and you could see the jolts bouncing his body. He couldn't let go. Sparks shot off of his fur. I could smell burnt hair and flesh. Then he was still and he hung in the air like a design. The children stood for two or three minutes ingesting and digesting the sight. Then, wise in the ways of the world, they marched off together.

The pole was too weak to climb, it wouldn't bear my weight. I went into the storage shed behind the house, unlocked the green tin container and got out the ax. I always kept those accessories a secret from Angela. I got out the ax. I came back and cracked down our jungle phonepole. It came down like a giraffe's neck shot in the belly. The problem was that the other poles only allowed the wire—where Dewey hung—to fall within five feet of the ground. Dewey hung there in front of me at about my chest. I walked back and sat down under the tree again and looked at him. He was only an ornament. And I knew nothing about women—or electricity. I got up from under the tree and walked up to Dewey. I took the fingers of one of his hands and one by one uncurled them from the wire. The hand let go. Then I did the same with the other hand and Dewey dropped to the ground.

Of course, then—running out of things to break and tear—Angela came out of the house.

“Oh, what have you done to him? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?” She crouched over Dewey and I didn't answer. A thin rain began to fall. Angela looked quite lovely. I almost forgave her for being a woman. She looked at me: “You beast, you stink, you stink-rot deadwood of soul! The devil could shit in hell and the stink of that would seem like five-dollar-an-ounce perfume compared to you!”