Baboons and Protea Flowers

Content Type: Fiction, Shorts Subject Matter: Africa, contemporary

I hunched over in the white ash, my long, thin tail twitching behind me. My knobby fingers dug through the dust, searching at the roots of a twisted plant. The wind brought the scent of more burning, and a quick glance across the mountain showed that the men were herding flame again. When I was young, I had feared the fire and the humans who controlled it, but having only narrowly avoided the ravages of a natural bushfire, I had learned a healthy appreciation for this strange activity. Besides keeping the mountain from burning up in one fell swoop, their fires created a steady and predictable supply of my favorite treat:

Burnt protea flowers.

When in bloom, protea are flat, fat blooms, with a large pollen center surrounded by spiky petals. When baked in a bushfire oven, they are black and hard and lovely.

I fished several from the dirt and began to gnaw on them, enjoying the cracking of breaking, charcoaled petals. There was nothing quite like a hot protea flower.

Thoughtfully gnawing away, I watched the clouds cast shadows over the mountain. That mountain could well have been its own country, flat-topped as it was and being so large. Below it sprawled the city, cast in a large swoop around the ocean. I had never bothered to go down to the water; I preferred staying in the brush. And besides, the city had too many distractions to let me get that far.

The rumble of a jeep climbed the worn track, and my ears twitched. Tourists. I could hear the guide prattling on about the burning. I considered leaving, but there were more proteas buried nearby. Aah, protea, my love- you will be my undoing!

The car lurched into view, full with a passel of the most peculiar people I had ever seen. I fisted another flower and stuck it between my jaws, chewing while I studied them- just as they studied me.

Muffled behind glass and metal, the guide spoke. “You can see one, there.”

“What is it eating?”

“Protea. They love to come out after the burning and eat them.”

A middle-aged woman in the backseat said something in the most obscure language I had ever heard. I kept expecting her to open her eyes more fully, but they remained half-closed. Beside her, a small girl with similar features pressed her face to the glass.

“Will it come talk to us?”

“Bah-nie!” exclaimed her mother in harsh English. “They dangerous!”

The guide looked over his shoulder to speak to the girl apologetically, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin. He was almost as dark as the burnt proteas. “I’m afraid they are very dangerous. They’re very strong. Do you see his long arms?”

I stopped listening. It was the same babble all the time. The child seemed equally disappointed. She twisted around, trying to see me better. This afforded me a good look at her, and I stared right back. Her skin was unlike that of other humans. She was not burned flowers or brown like the bark, or pale like milk. Rather, her kin was like cream- but mixed with straw. The yellow of grass that must be burned before it catches fire on its own. I wondered if she would be dry like that grass. Her hair was glossy, and perfectly straight- and she had those same small eyes. No matter how wide she opened them to look at me, they remained… closed? I can think of no words to describe it. As the jeep began again to move, I wondered if she were ill.

“Bah-nie! Sit down!”

“But I want to stay and watch the monkey!”

And I wanted to watch her. With a regretful last look at my patch of flowers, I scooped a few into my gangly hand and followed them.

Only the child noticed. She wisely kept silent, allowing the guide to lecture her parents in blissful ignorance. They took the track back toward the city. I began to worry that they would leave my pack’s territory, but to my relief they stopped at one of several human homes on the mountain itself. I had seen it before; most of the humans living there only did so for a short time. The old man who remained kept fruit trees in the back, and I hid myself in these now.

The black man drove away, and the family stayed. I sampled a pear, listening as the woman babbled to her daughter in that strange tongue. Her husband replied, and soon they shooed the girl into the back yard to play. I set my snack aside and leaned down to watch her.

Her sleek black head gleamed in the African sun as she toddled across the grass. She examined the plants, fingering the leaves with stubby, pale hands. My own were dark and lithe. I had never been able to understand the height or proportion of humans. This girl child was probably of a height with me, but she was, comparatively, no more an adult than my niece, who still suckled at my sister’s teat. Yet I knew from experience that she was weaker than a lion cub, which at least had some claw and tooth. This babe had nothing to defend herself with, and she fascinated me.

Dragging her feet from boredom, she made a circuit of the garden, until her attention was caught and held by the pears. She licked her plump lips and came to the base of my very tree! Startled, we blinked at one another, she shining in the sun, and I hidden amongst the leaves. Delight and then fear crossed her smooth features. I could see everything she thought in her dark, dark eyes. She was afraid to scream, or run for help… and yet, she was enchanted by me, and her curiosity provoked this little speech.

“Hello. …are you a Bab-boon?” She paused, waiting for me to reply. Slowly, I munched on my pear. “Will you hurt me? Mum says you will. Will you?” This didn’t appear to bother her, that she might get hurt. “My name is Bonnie Song. We’re on vacation here from New Zealand. There aren’t any monkeys like you there.” I blinked in reply, fingering the sticky fruit. She was fascinating, all dauntless and round-eyed in my primal presence. For a moment I flexed, and knew again how easily it would be for me to tear her apart if I wanted to. “Mrs. McCoo, that’s my teacher- my last year’s teacher- she says we distended from monkeys. Is that true?” Her odd, fleshy little face tilted to one side. “You don’t look like anyone in my family. Your nose is too fat. And so- sticky-outted.” She scratched at her own nose, barely a bump on the slope of her skull.

A dog barked somewhere down the street, and I became aware of the time. I had been away too long, really. The pack might move on. I was not prepared to leave and join another; I liked this pack, with my sister and her children to keep company with.

The wind changed and I caught the small girl’s scent: salivating. I looked closer, and indeed her lips were wet and her eyes hungry. How foolish, I scolded myself. The child had come here for a snack, not to stare at some old baboon with a sagging bottom. Without hesitation, I reached far above our heads to pull down a branch laden with pears, and neatly plucked one. She squeaked at the abrupt snap upward when I released it, and quickly backed away when I offered her the new fruit. She blinked at me, surprised, and then carefully reached for it, hesitating. I moved it closer, and she took it, cradling it in honey-colored hands. At first I thought she was- bizarrely- challenging me- but then I saw the happiness in her eyes, and realized she was not baring her teeth at me.

She was doing what humans call smiling.

“Bah-nie! We leaving now! Come!”

“In a minute, Mum!” Her shoulders were tense as she glanced up at me again. Then joy lit her face once more, and she ran out from beneath the tree. Puzzled, I remained in the tree, mulling this over. Humans were such strange creatures. Everything about them seemed out of balance. Off-kilter somehow. Like not using their arms when they moved, or not having tails.

And then Bonnie appeared at my feet again, stretching up on her toes with something clutched in her soft, harmless fist. I stared, uncomprehending.

The fat pink blossom stared back at me, its spiky leaves touched with purple. “Isn’t this what you like? Proteas? You eat them, right? Right?”

“Bah-nie!”

“The guide said you like them…” Her little smile began to falter, and it pulled at something within me like the death of my nephew in the last drought. With great solemnity, I accepted it, and bowed, as I had seen other humans do. I did not fully understand the motion, but I knew it meant deference. Respect.

I swear, I could see nearly all her tiny teeth when she smiled. With another yell from her mother, she was off, across the lawn and back to another car for another trip to another tourist attraction.

Feeling some sense of accomplishment, I turned the fresh protea over in my hand. I would find out where the next burn was to be, and hide this flower where no other baboon would find it. And when I ate it later, I would think of this cheerful child and wonder again what it meant to be human.