CHIMPWIG'S GIFT

An ambassador for peace goes forth...

There wasn’t so much a war as a shouting match across a clearing in part of the forest that neither party knew all that well, and when it was over as a consequence of sore throats both parties retired to their own territory, satisfied that if anyone had actually won the match it was them.

Of Chimpson’s monkeys, though, at least one was unhappy.

Chimpwig it had been who had been overheard reacting against the first of the Bossmonk’s call for war as he stood before a crowd willing to be swayed by whatever rhetoric their leader could muster, as he stood furious before them, drenched in urine and angrier than an aardvark caught in a forest fire on its birthday. Back then he had maintained that Chimpson was a bully, and he hadn’t changed his mind one jot since then.

“Once a bully, always a bully,” had been his motto.

Chimpwig was so called because he had more than the usual array of facial hair, and the thatch that sprouted on top of his head was the envy of every monkey b***h everywhere.

“All he got when he tried to pinch my sister’s bottom was a black eye,” he told folks “and that was from me, for my sins. I don't believe in violence, but he had it coming to him.”

“What are sins?” asked those close enough to overhear him.

He didn’t know, so he didn’t answer.

It took several days for the tribal fighters, if fighters they were, to regain their voices and lose the last traces of their sore throats. And during that period (it would have been called a week had their been a work for seven days, which there wasn’t} Chimpwig took himself, secretly and unknown to all, even to the b***h he deflowered with such a regularity that she was always pregnant, to the enemy camp, if enemy it was.

It was a fair journey, the ways untrodden by any but a motley band of various rodents who did their best to keep clear of monkey habitation for fear of becoming some chimp’s dinner. On his way, when he paused for the periods of darkness that bracketed the days, Chimpwig occupied his mind by chewing at a stump of wood that he carried with him, and thus moulding it into something artistic. He often did this sort of thing because he was quite a creative monkey. He wasn’t quite sure what it looked like when he decided he’d finished, but the wood was smooth and it felt comforting in his hand and he was proud of his abstract handiwork.

Expectations are usually the offspring of imagination, and so it was with the squint-eyed red-heads in their own village, which he found by using his intelligence and sense of smell. Village might be a bit of an exaggeration when it comes to describing the odd assortment of nests hidden from the extremes of poor weather under clumps of well-nigh inhospitable thorns and briars, or deep in the shadows of mighty trees. It reminded him very much of home. And there was the usual assortment of discreet monkey life going on, the squawking of nippers fresh from the womb, the cheeky hollering of older nippers ready to be pushed deep into the forest and taught how to forage, the gasping of b*****s as they were being thoroughly deflowered by randy males, all the normal things he expected to find in a monkey settlement.

He was accosted by an extremely ancient red-headed, squint eyed, broad-shouldered individual that he took as their version of a bossmonk. He decided immediately that this male was used to being obeyed, that most likely his every word was considered to be a command by someone or other because he didn’t look the sort to waste any words.

When it came to language, he was in a dark world of having to guess by none-linguistic clues what the other meant when he spoke. The range of clicking, squeaking and growling was so different to what he was used to that there was barely a syllable that he understood. Therefore what follows is his interpretation of the conversation rather than an exact copy of what was intended by either Chimpwig or the ginger giant, who introduced himself as Scarly by using simple gesticulations and a drawn out enunciation of the two syllables.

“Good to meet you, Scarly,” grunted Chimpwig, and his own pronunciation of the alien name was truly impressive. Even Scarly thought so, for he grinned and spat his congratulations before offering his visitor a daughter to deflower. Chimpwig shook his head gratefully, and the expression on the chosen daughter’s face told of the kind of disappointment that was almost painful.

“Your lot were fighting us,” gesticulated Scarly. It wasn’t a question, but a statement, which left Chimpwig flummoxed.

“It wasn’t so much fighting as shouting,” he ventured after a moment or two of very deep thought.

“You can say that again,” grinned Scarly, and had Chimpwig understood the exact nature of the quip he might have repeated it. But he didn’t. He just contrived to look crestfallen.

“It was none of my doing,” he confessed, “I’m not happy with such squabbling.” This last statement involved a great deal of mock thumping and punching in order for him to get the message over, and Scarly looked alarmed to start with, and then the message’s true meaning sank in and he smiled broadly, showing a remarkable range of rather lovely teeth.

“Me neither,” nodded Scarly, and he pulled his daughter, who was still there, towards him. “Here, as a token of peace and love between our tribes, you can have her,” and he bowed before adding” I’ve get plenty more where she came from,” and he chuckled.

“Good,” squeaked the b***h, a lovely piece of femininity, thought Chimpwig, and with a magnificent chest. But our hero could see that there might be something almost wrong about accepting the b***h as a symbolic gift, because he had nothing to offer in return.

Then he remembered his chewed wood carving. It was something personal to him, an object that he had created out of nothing more valuable than scrap wood, and with pride and skill had manipulated its grain with his teeth and saliva. He planned to give it to his b***h back in the nest, but now he had a better idea. He was getting on so well with the leader of this pack he knew he ought to offer a gift and then, maybe, he could accept the gift that had been offered to him. So he held it out to Scarly and smiled.

“For you,” he said, his voice almost trembling with emotion.

Scarly took the gift and smiled broadly, nodding his head in acceptance.

“You friend,” he said, and then he almost ceremoniously handed the gift to his daughter.

“Dil-do,” he pronounced.

© Peter Rogerson 05.11.19.