Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [32]
I noticed too that when they were tired, or believed themselves to be alone, they would let themselves down on all fours and run about for a time like this. And they ran very fast and ably indeed, for this was how their bodies had been designed to move. But when an individual or a group behaved like this for too long, the others would begin to make irritable movements, and then would set up a chiding critical chattering, while the culprits looked defiant, then guilty, and sooner or later staggered back to the upright position.
When they were huddled together in their roofless rooms or on the stone of the square, at night when there was no moon, they sat like dogs or monkeys, squatting, their front limbs straight down in front of them for support, and they moved about on all fours much more in the dark. They seemed so very different in these two different conditions, their clumsy half-staggering on their hind legs, with their awkward jerky vision that gave them such a look of pomposity and self-importance, and the rapid running and scampering when on all fours, that they really seemed like two different species, and I suppose I was unconsciously thinking of them as such, for I do remember very clearly that at the first appearance of the apes, I did not at once react with alarm at a new invasion, but thought vaguely that perhaps the Rat-dogs were moving in yet a third way.
These apes were of a kind familiar to us humans. They were a variety of chimpanzee, but larger than the ones we keep to show off in zoos. They came swinging into the city through trees and along the walls, and when they saw the Rat-dogs their reaction was not one I could at once interpret. Although they stopped still and massed together, they did not seem particularly afraid, nor did they seem pleased. They conferred among themselves, on the North side of the city, till there were a couple of hundred or so massed there. Meanwhile, the Rat-dogs, turning their squinting eyes this way and that towards the newcomers, also massed together, and did not make any aggressive action as the monkeys came in further, and then scampered and swung all over the city finding out corners and rooms that were not inhabited. There was a great deal of sharp scolding and complaint as the newcomers tried to take places that were occupied, but it seemed as if both species recognised the right of the other to live in this place. More and more of the apes came trooping in. The city was crammed with animals. It seemed that the first kind, the Rat-dogs, saw the monkeys as inferior, and the monkeys agreed, or were prepared to appear to agree. They would do small services for the big staggering beasts, and tended to move out of their way. Yet to me, a man, the monkeys were altogether more likable and sympathetic, perhaps because I was familiar with them. I felt no strong antipathy, as I still did for the Rat-dogs, in spite of my growing compassion for them. And it seemed to me that the eyes of the monkeys showed sympathy for me, a comprehension, although they neither made attempts to approach me, nor molested me, ignoring me for the most part, as the others did. A monkey’s eyes, so sad, so knowledgeable, they are eyes that speak to the eyes of a human. We feel them to be human eyes. And what sort of self-flattery