Chapter Twenty-Nine: Farewell, Theophilus!

Mack hardly appears in this tale—he speaks but a single line—but the story is absolutely true and somewhat amusing and so should be recorded. The second story is almost true, and while Mack wasn't a participant in that story either (though he would later claim that he was), he was deeply affected by the massacre at Manila Bay. Here's the first story.

When the Indrani docked in the harbor at Java, Mack went ashore with Captain Trotter, First Mate Baxter, Doctor Turner, and another fellow, Chief Engineer John Drew, to the villa of Dame Arabella, a potato dumpling of a woman in a lime green muu-muu. She had a Borneo bay cat named Minxie, a half-wild beast with chestnut fur, rounded ears, and eyes stretched in perpetual terror and rage. The Dame would try to coax Minxie onto her lap, but the cat fled behind the couch and made menacing mrows in the back of her throat. Dame Arabella operated a house of pleasure for the sailors, merchants, soldiers, and riffraff that overnighted in Borneo, and that night, her girls (long sapodilla legs and small breasts; cochineal lips; mocha nipples; bright, brown eyes) entertained the men of the Indrani.

Then up early the next morning with coffee, eggs, and toast in the courtyard and Theophilus packing his pipe and Dame Arabella chattering about the fecundity of the tropics while tall, milk chocolate men in perfectly white kurtas and loose cotton trousers presented bamboo trays of jams and chutneys and sausages to the party. All of a sudden, Dame Arabella sat upright and said, "I have something to show you, Theophilus. Bring your people."

"Now?" asked the captain as he looked at the eggs that would congeal in his absence.

"Yes!" she replied. "It must be now."

There was nothing for it but to obey, so the men abandoned their breakfasts and followed Dame Arabella behind the villa to a large pen, a makeshift affair constructed of chicken wire laced together with barbed wire and supported by sharpened stakes some fifteen feet high and nailed to logs laid along the base of the enclosure. In the middle of the pen was a small and ill-made hut of bamboo shafts and mud. The Lady Arabella called out, "Who-who-whoooo! Ben, come! Ben!"

Nothing.

"Whooo, Benjamin Binns! Voedsel! Food!"

Nothing.

"I will whip you if you do not come."

The hut shook for a moment, and then a small beast with a half-human, half-simian face stuck his head out of the door of the hut and shrieked.

Dame Arabella said to it, "Come, Ben, or these big men will whip you, too!"

So, the creature came out and stood upright on two legs. He was about three feet tall and covered with reddish-brown hair. His eyes were a shocking orange, and his mouth didn't protrude like that of an ape; rather, he had the thin lips and receding chin of an ugly little man. Of course, he was naked, and his genitalia were the part of him that looked most human (though he was, of course, uncircumcised).

Arabella turned to Captain Trotter and said, "Theophilus, say 'hello' to John Christopher Benjamin Binns! His name comes from a song very popular in England or so said the man who gave him to me. He is unique, no?"

Theophilus Trotter shifted his cap back on his head and blew smoke around the stem of the meerschaum mermaid. "What is it? A monkey?"

"No, Theophilus"—she found the fricatives of his name seductive and relished each syllable—"at least no monkey ever seen before, and I have been in Java twenty years." She lowered her voice. "I'll tell you what I think, Theophilus. I think he is the missing link between monkey and man. That makes him very special. Verrry special indeed."

Mack said, "He looks more monkey than man to me." (This was Mack's sole contribution to the conversation, and, indeed, to this entire episode.)

Alistair Baxter said, "I believe you are right, Dame Arabella. Perhaps this creature is destined to relieve humankind of all its silly creeds and superstitions."

Doctor Turner said, "He's good for a laugh anyhow."

And John Drew said, "Huh."

Theophilus Trotter removed the pipe with a click against his teeth and asked, "Tell me, Dame Arabella, might you be willing to, uh, sell the critter?"

Those were the very words Arabella had hoped to hear, so she said, "I don't see that I could. I have grown so very fond of Ben." Again, she lowered her voice. "You should know, Theophilus, he tries sometimes to talk to me in his eigen manier, his own way. And, I think he understands me, too."

"Really?" said the captain. "Could you make him talk to you now?"

"Who knows? He is as moody as a man and mostly wants to be left alone. But I will try." Dame Arabella walked to the pen and cooed, "Ben? Whooo! Ben, speak to mama?"

Ben showed his teeth and shook his head.

"Come, Ben. These nice men want to hear you speak."

Ben tilted his head back and shrieked again and ran back into the hut.

"I'm very sorry," said Dame Arabella. "As I say, he is moody."

"I'll give you twenty pounds for it," said the Captain.

"Oh, I'm afraid that I couldn't sell poor Ben for so little."

"Twenty-five."

Dame Arabella seemed to lapse into a momentary consideration, but then she said, "Still too little, dear Theophilus, for a creature that might rid the world of every creed and superstition." She smiled at First Mate Baxter, who nodded gravely in return.

For his part, the Captain wasn't thinking of creeds or scientific advancement. In his mind, he saw a banner that read "The Missing Link of Java" and people lining up to pay six pence apiece for a look-see.

The Captain and Dame Arabella continued haggling until they struck on a figure agreeable to both. "My only request, Arabella," said Captain Theophilus, "is that you care for him until I return from Japan."

"Of course," said Dame Arabella. "For you I will keep him safe and sound."

That night, Captain Trotter, Mack, First Mate Baxter, Doctor Turner, and John Drew celebrated the purchase of Benjamin Binns with more strong drink and orgiastic indulgence. The next day, the Indrani was steaming northward through the China Sea while poor Ben peered through the wire at a papaya tree gleaming in the sun.

Three months later, the Indrani returned to Jakarta Bay. Captain Trotter, First Mate Baxter, Doctor Turner, and John Drew made their way once again to the Villa Plezier. Mack had remained in Japan where he was employed as a typesetter for an English speaking newspaper. (It was also during this time that he received instruction in book binding from a Chinese woman.) John Christopher Benjamin Binns was lying peacefully in his hut when the Captain paid Dame Arabella the agreed upon price and enlisted the aid of her men to claim his prize. Ben was dragged clawing and shrieking from the pen and packed into a large crate in the hull of the ship. A cabin boy of fifteen was charged with feeding Ben by inserting bananas through holes in the crate. Once the boy pressed his ear against one of the holes, and he heard Ben smacking. Suddenly, he felt something gooey thrust into his ear, and when the boy recoiled from the crate, he saw Ben's penis sticking through the hole. The boy never listened to Ben gumming bananas again.

The Indrani retraced her passage across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and around the Mediterranean where she once again docked briefly at Istanbul, the Piraeus, and Ostia. She passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, but this time the steamer churned due north for England. Captain Trotter ordered the cabin boy to shave the "man critter" and teach him a few manners, a harrowing undertaking that resulted in much shrieking, biting, and swearing—on the part of the lad, that is, for Ben remained inarticulate. A wound on the boy's left wrist became infected, and the ship's surgeon feared he would have to take the arm below the elbow. Youth, however, won out, and the boy kept his arm though it throbbed for the rest of his life when the wind blew cold.

When the Indrani harbored in Tilbury Port, Theophilus Trotter led the naked (and partially drugged) Ben by the hand through the wondering crowds of London and into the halls of the Royal Society where the most renowned and redoubtable anthropologists of the day promptly identified John Christopher Benjamin Binns as Darwin's missing link. Theophilus Trotter was thrilled at the all-too-easy triumph—scientists are as susceptible to fraud as anyone, perhaps more so because they have theories they long to prove—and London was all agog at the Captain's "comrade." Ben and Theophilus were even invited to visit Windsor Castle, where Ben was given a cup of tea and a chocolate eclair, both of which he enjoyed immensely. Unfortunately for Theophilus Trotter, the chocolate in the eclair stimulated Ben's androgens which thrust him into puberty which in turn resulted in the over stimulation of his integumentary system which made Ben's fur grow an inch overnight. In this newly hirsute and pubescent state, Ben appeared much more monkey than man. The fraud was confirmed when young Prince Leopold knocked on Ben's door to invite him on a carriage ride through the gardens. Hearing no response, Leopold opened the door and peeked in to see Ben plumped up on his pillows wearing nothing but his nightcap. His chest, shoulders, arms, and neck were covered with a downy mat of auburn hair. Even more disturbing was the fact that Ben was grinning and masturbating furiously. The young Prince cried out, "Good God, Mummy! We've an ape in the palace!" Two days later, Theophilus, Ben, and the Indrani were crossing the Atlantic to America where the Captain would exhibit Ben with even greater success.

And now to conclude the story of Theophilus Trotter: In 1901 he was sued for damaging a crate of gloves. The suit was brought by William Buckingham "to recover compensation from the defendant for loss sustained in consequence of certain goods imported from London by the Indramayo [sic] being delivered short and not in good order and condition," etc., etc. Sir William cared nought that the Indrani had been pitched about by a fierce storm that crashed over the gunnels and swept the decks clean. He wanted pristine gloves of white leather.

Nine years later Theophilus Trotter was dead.

No one knows what happened to the monkey.