RIMA,the Monkey's Child

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the Monkey's Child

HARRY LEE LITTLEwith illustrations by H. G. Glyde

The University of Alberta Press

First published by

The University of Alberta Press450 Athabasca HallEdmonton, AlbertaCanada T6G 2E8

Copyright © The University of Alberta Press 1983Illustrations copyright © H. G. Glyde 1983ISBN 0-88864-040-4

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Little, Harry Lee, 1916-1980.Rima, the monkey's child

ISBN 0-88864-040-4

1. Rima (Spider monkey) 2. Spidermonkeys - Biography. I. Title.QL795.M7L58 599.8'2'0924 C83-091051-4

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without priorpermission of the copyright owner.

Typesetting by The Typeworks, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Printed by John Deyell Company, Willowdale, Ontario, Canada.

To the children of thewild, especially theprimate children

Acknowledgments

The publisher would like to thank Dr. George E. Ball, Chairman of theDepartment of Entomology of The University of Alberta, who broughtthe manuscript of Rima from the jungle of Brazil to western Canada to bepublished, and who acted as literary agent for Harry and Jan Little, towhom he had become "a younger brother."

Special thanks are also due to Dr. H. G. Glyde, former Professor of Artat The University of Alberta, for his sensitive illustrations of Rima, themonkey's child. The map on the endpapers was drawn by the careful handof Geoff Lester.

Contents

Introduction by Jan Little viii

Prologue xv

1 The Orphan 12 Dual Parent Family 73 Monkey Baby Games 154 The Child Learns to Walk 225 Visitors to the Homestead 286 The Terrestrial Monkey 357 Juvenile Mischief 438 The Outside World Interferes 519 Rima Flourishes 61

10 Preparing to Leave 6811 The Trek to Agua Zarca 7612 Refugees to Civilization 8413 The Confined Monkey Child 9514 "Ausente"—The Absent One 110

Epilogue 123

Introduction

Many people who touched our homestead life seemed asastonished as the first Europeans in the New World must havebeen when they saw salmon leaping upriver. The question inboth instances was, why would they leave sure security forsuch a difficult venture against the current? The answer isunderstandable in the case of the salmon when it is knownthat an effort is being made to return to the spawning area.For us it was the same thing, in a way. We needed to return tothe wilderness, the tropical wilderness, and live in an an age-old peasant homestead.

Harry was born in the one corner of America that still hada peasant culture, if such a term exists in American speech.His birthplace was a hill farm in Washington County inVermont during World War I. His people could trace theestablishment of the family farm back to a drummer boy inthe War of 1812. That would suggest a secure heritage forHarry, but that is not the story. A railroad spur line hadtaken the best field several years before; the farm had beensold, and the grandfather and his four sons had then moved toFlorida.

Harry's father returned to Vermont with his Florida-bornwife a few months before Harry's birth. They were in timefor the maple sugar harvest, hiring themselves out as farm ser-vants. By Harry's fourth birthday, his father had his ownfarm, with a mortgage, adjacent to his brother and father whohad also returned from Florida. The sheriff-owner foreclosedtwo years later, a usual practice for him, and the Little family

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moved back to Florida where the father earned enough capi-tal selling milk in booming Miami to return to Vermont, andbuy another farm. That farm failed from tragedy: Harry'smother died of cancer the same week the farm burned.

Only a few months before, she had helped Harry preparefor a public function in the village. He wore long pants for thefirst time, and in recognition of this new status, she gave himsome advice for the years to come: "Never, never take awoman unless you are willing to marry her," and "Never be asoldier; a soldier is a murderer." She had not been a consciousChristian nor did anyone know her as a pacifist. She was, how-ever, a southern woman, whose parents had been born duringthe American Civil War within the hundred-mile path ofSherman's "March to the Sea"—and she had a Yankee son.

High school for Harry was the best of all possible worlds. Hewon the high school's prize for public speaking in his fresh-man year, he stayed high on the honors list, was rebutter onthe debating team, and graduated as valedictorian.

He became engaged to his beautiful high school sweet-heart, but it was 1934. He was without a scholarship to col-lege, he had no funds, nor a job, and the town had just gonethrough a bitter quarry workers' strike with the NationalGuard patrolling the streets.

After reading law for a year, during which he earned hiscash by haying for the judge, he went to the University ofVermont on a scholarship that paid for tuition and books;eating was left to his own resources. College was a disappoint-ment. He was required to take five hours a week of math, withlittle to compensate. "I was willing to starve to learn theanswers, but nobody was asking the questions." He heardToyohiko Kagawa, the Japanese pacifist trade unionist speak,twice, in arranged lectures to the college, and he became afriend of his English professor who asked him at the end ofthe year: "Are you coming back?" Harry replied he didn'tthink so. "Why don't you go to England?" He meant toManchester, to the College of the Co-operative Union. It wasa simple question and Harry did not answer then, but he

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knew within a few minutes that was just what he would do.Professor Hall arranged for a scholarship, and Harry earned

enough during the summer to pay his passage on the last runof a grain freighter out of Montreal. He had lost his girlfriendthe year before, probably because he did not have a car andhis rivals had. On the boat he met E., six years his senior,with a master's degree from McGill and a desire to emulateKatherine Mansfield. At the end of his school year they cycl-ed the English countryside on a tour of her literary favorites,then went to Denmark to study the rural cooperatives. Warwas coming to Europe; they saw it. They were young, seekingto encapsulate in their own lives what William Blake,Tolstoy, John Middleton Murry, and the Danish peasantshad suggested. They returned to the United States, to Wash-ington, D.C. to settle down to married life.

Their son was born there, and his arrival spurred their deci-sion to become vegetarians, to quit smoking, and, eventually,to resettle on an abandoned farm in Vermont. They were fix-ing up the old farmhouse for the winter when Harry was re-quired to register for the draft. He registered, but when itcame to filling out the papers, he put the unfinished formsback in the mail box. He served a first imprisonment of threemonths in near solitary confinement, being released in theearly spring to a state of ecstatic illumination. He was now aconfirmed pacifist, and prison, not church, had confirmedhim as a Christian. He spent an additional two years in jail atLewisburg, but was released at the end of the war.

By 1945 Vermont was no longer a homesteader's haven.Out-of-state summer people were moving in and causing in-creases in the tax rates. Village schools were bussing inchildren from the one-roomers in the hills, the wood supplywas running out, and the 110-day growing season was tooshort for a vegetarian year. Harry considered Cuba and de-cided to go there to see what the prospects were. Once there,he headed for the Sierra Maestra, in full beard and long hair,wearing overalls as he would have on the homestead. Thecane-field workers thought him one of Castro's band, sought

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him out, sometimes mobbing him. The blue-coated policehad the same notion about him and saw to it he left town,with an escort. Harry was quite willing. Cuba was off his listfor a future homestead: "It looks like there's going to be arevolution."

Harry and E. were interested in the Society of Brothers,founded after the First World War in Germany to reachieveprimitive Christianity as practiced by the first followers ofJesus Christ. From England, where the German membersfaced internment even though they were refugees from Hit-ler, they had gone to Paraguay, which is where Harry visitedthem as escort to three Union Theological students. E. andtheir son kept the homestead going in Sky Cottage aboveTumbridge. There was much about the Society of Brothersthat Harry enjoyed, though the theocratic structure was notsuited to his urge for independent living. He doubted that heor E. could be content with the absence of "the garden life,"so he left, heading homeward over the Andes for the Peruvianport of Callao.

He had been told by the doctor making the then requiredphysical examination for his passport: "You can go, but youhave a heart murmur. No more hard work for you." As hecrossed Lake Titicaca at night and journeyed into La Paz hesuffered increasing pain, becoming nearly immobilized untilhe crawled into a snow water shower. Thenceforward he livedwith his vulnerability to a serious heart condition.

He continued the search for a new homestead location witha trip to the Marquesas Islands and on to Tahiti. He had readall the books on boats and sailing in the prison library. Hisfirst sailing experience came on a shakedown sail from theGolden Gate to the Farallon Islands, after he had put in morethan eight months refurbishing and outfitting the eight-meter double-ended Collins Archer lifeboat, owned by hispartner Prebin Kauffman, a Danish engineer. Their chief dis-appointment in Tahiti was the refusal of the French colonialadministration to allow any visitors—hence, settlers—ontothe island of Rapa, the coolest of all the islands in French

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Oceania, an important consideration for Harry and E., bothsubarctic-bred. Added to that was Harry's antipathy to Frenchcolonial rule, and the lack of freshwater streams on thesmaller, less inhabited islands.

From Tahiti, Prebin took his boat, alone, to the Tongaswhere he traded it to the royal family for an island of his own.Harry headed for Vermont but stopped off in Costa Rica tovisit the Hicksite Quakers in the mountains, where they hadestablished themselves as dairy farmers after leaving theUnited States. Here all conditions for homesteading near theQuakers seemed favorable. Harry returned home ready torelocate the family.

E. 's parents did not want her nor their only grandchildto leave the United States. Her father sent money for adivorce and an ultimatum. She returned the money butthroughout the selling of the homestead and preparations fordeparture, E. wavered. Settling in the tropics had originallybeen her idea, but now, a child of the Canadian prairies, shefeared the sun. It was hard for her to uproot herself from theten or more years of Vermont homesteading for an alienworld and a pioneering start. One afternoon, at the edge ofthe United States border, she disappeared with the child, leav-ing a farewell note and twenty dollars from their travelingfunds. Harry never saw E. nor his son again. A divorce waseventually finalized by her family.

After a short stay with a cooperative community in Georgia,which was to integrate, at a later date, with the Quaker-sponsored Society of Brothers in three settlements in north-eastern America, Harry began a pattern of half-year pioneer-ing, which lasted until he married me, Jan, six years later.

He needed to work part of the year to earn enough moneyto maintain himself for the rest of it. Costa Rica was too farfor such commuting. He chose the Lacandon rain forest ofsouthern Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, on theeastern side. Here in a tropical wilderness of more than56,000 square kilometers lived the remnant of the Lacandonprimitive Mayas, considered to be the descendants of farmers

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who stayed behind when the Maya civilization began its cres-cent line move to Yucatan a thousand years ago. The Lacan-don forest was the northernmost spur of Amazonian flora,luxuriant on a fertile limestone soil, and with Amazonianfauna.

It took three years of annual expeditions before Harryfound a place acceptable to him and the claimholders to themahogany or other forest resources. A Lacandon family help-ed him build his thatched-roof hut—no walls—and begin hisfirst banana grove. It was here he brought me, his Americanwife, and my small daughter, Rebecca, to live as home-steaders.

We had met through mutual friends in the highland townof San Cristobal de Las Casas, where I had come to live a fewmonths before. I had grown up in the Sacramento Valley,near the American River. At age five I barely survived pneu-monia, but my hearing was impaired and later my eyesightalso suffered. The condition was diagnosed as retinitispigmentosa and I was early legally blind, though well able toread. Left alone with a little girl to raise, I had sought a wayout of transportation restrictions and high income needs bygoing to Mexico, "to homestead," I insisted. My restrictedvisual field was not much of a handicap, but loss of visualacuity a decade later was. By then, Rebecca was assumingmore of the household tasks.

Homesteading was more than a living for us. It rooted usdeeply in the nourishing earth and made us feel at one with alllife. It was to this family, devoted, erratic, wondering, happy,and hard-pressed, that Rima came.

Sacramento, California JAN LITTLEDecember 1982

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Prologue

On our first night in the virgin tropical rain forest where wewould be building our second homestead, Jan and Becca bed-ded down inside the little Royce tent. I stayed outside in myold jungle hammock. I lay listening to the rustlings in thetreetops high above me. The soft sounds grew louder, thentwigs began to fall, small at first, then a big one, and thenanother, bouncing off the tent.

"What's that?" Becca asked. She was nine years old then, andhad already spent five years in the jungle.

I got down from the hammock to poke up a blaze in thecamp fire. The shadows were too deep in the thick foliage todiscern anything; now the rain of leaves and twigs fell heavier.

"Monkeys," I answered. "The Spider monkeys.""Why are they doing that?" Becca demanded."Curious as to who we are—or what we are doing—they

want to know.""But they never came to us down at the old place.""No, we were too far from the mountains down

there—now we have moved in close to their home. They aremountaineers."

"But they'll make holes in the tent!" she protested."No—the twigs are small—and they'll go away in a little

while back up on the mountain."In the morning we saw them watching, looking down on

us. They were sitting in plain view, chattering at us."See," I pointed them out to Becca. "See how interested

they are in having us for neighbors.""I wonder what they think of us?" she said, smiling."I wonder?" I repeated after her.

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The Orphan

The first time we saw Rima she was clutching Ramon'sforearm, a black hairy tarantula-like creature, so small heswung his arm freely as if she were nothing at all. And with hisusual bravado he pretended to ignore her, giving his right arma little extra swing, if anything, as he came at his usual rapidstride up the path to our jungle hut.

"What's he got on his arm?" Becca asked. She was nownearly seventeen, as old as Ramon.

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"A baby monkey," I said in a low voice. "Best ignore it."I spoke in this way because I had once had a baby monkey,

and I knew a little of how having a baby monkey is not assimple a thing as it may seem to one who does not have, ornever has had, a baby monkey.

Ramon, a Mexico City youth, had come to our jungle tofind freedom from drugs and other things, but especiallyfrom drugs. He was enjoying his freedom, especially hisassociation with the local remnant of the Lacandon Indians.He was returning from two days and nights with them.Obviously they had been on a monkey hunt, and clinging tohis arm was the not unusual orphan of such a hunt, an infantwhose mother had been shot without serious injury to herbaby. But I saw at a glance there were in fact two unusualaspects to this orphan; it was extremely young and it had notail.

Ramon sat down and forcibly detached the little clinginghairy creature from his sleeve. He tried to make it sit up on hislap but it insisted on clinging to his shirt sleeve. Jan and Beccaexamined it closely. I looked away.

"It's awfully small," Jan said."Only a month or so old, the Indians say," he explained."Is it a boy or girl?" Becca asked."A female," Ramon replied."It has almost no tail," Jan exclaimed. "Shouldn't it have

a tail? Harry?""Of course—a long prehensile tail if it is a Spider—as it ap-

parently is.""Yes, it's a Spider," Ramon said. "The mother had a big

tail, but the Lacandons said she was sick. She was very thin.""Can she eat?" Becca asked. "How long has she been away

from her mother? She must be hungry."As if she understood a little, the tiny monkey, scarcely a

handful of actual torso, began to watch us while still clutchingat Ramon's shirt. She now turned upon us her wizened littleface with its buff-colored "spectacles" around her darkpupilless eyes, and buff-colored mouth, cheeks, and chin.

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Her chest was a light color, too, in strange contrast to theshaggy black of the rest of her.

"She is hungry, I can tell," Becca exclaimed. "Will shedrink milk? I'll mix her some milk." She stirred powderedmilk into a cup of warm water and handed it with the spoon toRamon.

"She hasn't really learned to drink yet," he said, takingher jaws in his fingers so as to hold her mouth open while hepoured the milk down her throat. The milk went down, onespoonful, then another, but it did not stay. It all came backup spilling down the soft gray chest and onto his pants.

"She doesn't know how to drink—" Becca began."Too young; she must have been still nursing," Jan said."Yes," Ramon said. "She was still taking milk from her

mother."All were silent. At last he set the cup on the table. I kept my

gaze averted until he had gone off to his own hut."What will happen to it now?" Becca asked."It's much too young, "Jan repeated as if to herself. "It will

have to nurse for weeks.""No concern of ours," I said. "It all goes with the hunting

and eating of monkeys."I don't recall just when Rima became Rima, but from this

point on she must have had her name. W.H. Hudson makesit clear that he had in mind the Spider monkeys when heconceived his nature girl Rima in his classic novel GreenMansions* We were soon to observe how well justified hewas, for the month-old Spider monkey, motherless and tail-less, was heard pleading and scolding all the rest of the day injust such birdlike speech as Hudson made his bird girl use.Ramon's hut was only a three minutes' walk from ours,though not visible. He had gone off and left her tied by oneleg to a hut post and with an old blanket to sleep on, or soBecca reported. I could hear her alternate sweet pleadings

First published in London in 1904, it has since appeared in many editions onboth sides of the Atlantic.

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and guttural scoldings well enough, but I refused to go nearher.

"Can you hear her?" Becca asked her mother."Yes, I can hear her." Jan answered."She must be hungry," Becca added. "What will he do if

she doesn't learn to drink?""Never mind! I tell you," I half-scolded. "It is none of our

affair."So we tried to ignore her. All day she pleaded and scolded

tirelessly. We were expecting important visitors by plane onthe morrow. Becca and Ramon and the downcreek neighbors'children planned an early departure for the airstrip. By day'send the little orphan monkey was somewhat forgotten. Bynight's fall she was silent.

"What has happened to her?" I overheard Jan asking Becca."He wrapped her up in the old blanket and she must have

gone to sleep."Early next morning Becca and Ramon with several others

were off to meet the plane and our visitors, a young familywith two children who were smaller than Becca would havewished, but still very exciting to one who had grown up in ajungle without playmates.

They were not gone long when Jan and I heard the orphanbegin her pleadings again with no noticeable weakening—ex-cept possibly there was a little more pleading and less scoldingthan yesterday. After an hour or so I looked out in the back-yard to see Jan standing hesitantly on the path to the house,and in her arms was the little hairy black monkey. Rima hadone long skinny arm reaching up into Jan's hair. She lookedmore like a huge tarantula than a Spider, but she was silent,content, small dark eyes studying all about her. I got up fromthe hammock and hurried out.

"You don't realize what you are getting us into, Jan." Iprotested, albeit weakly.

"I couldn't stand it any longer, Harry. She so wants tolive."

"I know. I tell you, I went through it all with one once. Big-

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ger by quite a bit than this—" I hesitated. "This one is eventoo small to drink, and we gave away the last nursing bottle.Oh well, bring her in." A skinny arm, all bone and hair,reached out to me and a sweet melodious half-whistle, half-chirp followed out of the wide, thin-lipped, but firm littlemouth.

"All right! All right, you imp!" I exclaimed, taking thehand of four skinny fingers, each with its perfect black nail, inmine. "Let me have her. We have absorbent cotton, mix somemilk in warm water, and I think maybe I can teach her todrink."

Jan smiled. Rima climbed up on my arm and grasped myhair firmly.

"How tiny she is!" Jan said, "yet how eager to live. Shemust be starving."

"And thirsting. Hurry up with the milk!"I shaped the cotton to fit her little mouth, soaked the tip in

the warm milk, and held it to her lips. She sucked eagerly. Asfast as I could dip it she sucked it dry, resting on my arm withher head back, long skinny hairy legs dangling, one handfirmly in my hair, the other grasping the arm in which I heldher. For a moment our eyes met, and I saw the eyes of an in-fant full of love and gratitude. For a moment I saw nothing ofthe hairy little body with its long, all too skinny arms and legs.I saw only the soul, as if of a human baby.

"Look," I said to Jan "you wanted a baby?""Yes, that is why I had to heed her pleadings."Rima drank and drank, or rather sucked and sucked, for it

was some days before she mastered drinking."She must have been thirty-six or more hours without any-

thing." Jan said."Maybe longer, depending on when they went hunting," I

added.The new family arrived from the airstrip toward noon, to-

gether with many Indians from the village carrying theircargo. In the excitement and confusion I looked up to seeRima climbing up the other end of my hammock. Before I

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could stop her she had reached where it was tied to a housepost and, in attempting to climb off onto the barkless post,she fell two meters or more on to the hardwood puncheonfloor. I jumped out of the hammock to rescue her but ourvisitors' five-year old boy had picked her up. When shesquawked, he tossed her down the steps. By the time I reachedher she was lying on her back, kicking and loudly protesting. Ipicked her up and tried to soothe her. In a few moments shewas quiet, nestling on my arm, hand tight up in my hair,none the worse for either the fall or the tossing.

"You are a tough little sprite," I said. She looked at me andchirped in her birdlike voice. I explained to the children howas yet she was too small to play with. They would have to becontent just to watch her.

To Ramon I explained how Jan had been moved to bringher down to try to feed her.

"Maybe we could keep her until she learns to drink?" I sug-gested.

"Good idea," he said, but in my heart I alreadyknew—and Rima already knew—she was ours forever.

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Dual Parent Family

According to Becca, Ramon had taken care of Rima's sleepingarrangements by simply wrapping her up in an old blanket.That is, he rolled her up in it so she had trouble fighting freeof it in the morning. But at least she had kept warm. Wedecided to bed her down in a basket, a spacious round basketwith plenty of woolen scraps and rags, including Becca'schildhood sweater. Rima didn't like the basket and had to bevery sleepy before she would remain in it, but for the first few

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nights it seemed to serve. Then came a cold spell in Marchwith unusually cool nights for the time of year.

'' Maybe the hot water bottle under her would help ?" I sug-gested. So we put her to bed on a very cosy pile of woolenswith the hot water bottle under it all. Rima slept hard allnight, so hard she failed to wake up at our breakfast time. I ex-amined her and she seemed all right. We left her another houror so. Then suddenly I realized she couldn't wake up—she had become chilled sometime after the hot water bottlecooled, and was in a torpor. I hastily but gently lifted her outof the basket, talking to her, begging her to wake up. Jan hur-riedly prepared warm milk.

' Tut some honey in it!" I called. "She is half dead!'' I stretch-ed her across my stomach, patting her, and calling to her torouse. At last, as Jan arrived with the milk, she half openedher eyes and reached for it. She sucked feebly but adequatelyfor a few minutes, then collapsed.

' 'The hot water bottle!'' I cried. ' 'It acted as a trap in the nightbut now it may save her!'' We placed her, chest down, on thehot water bottle, patting and talking to her. At last, slowly,very slowly, the warm milk and honey and the hot water bot-tle brought back her normal circulation. She roused and wassoon chirping and chattering and running about the ham-mock as usual. I tied some strong cords to various handypoints adjacent to the hammock so she could have play room.She soon learned to use the cords to make her way from me toJan's easy chair alongside the foot of the hammock and facingme.

"How can we solve it?" I asked. "The sleeping problem?""I think I know what to do," Jan answered slowly."Yes?""She can sleep with me.""She's so small, you could easily smother her."' 'No, Becca slept with me sometimes from tiniest infancy. I

won't hurt her, you'll see."And that night, Rima was delighted to join Jan, her soft

gray little belly gently against Jan's warm neck. Thus began

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Rima's experience of a dual parent family. In nature shewould have known only one parent, her mother. Now, withme feeding her and Jan sleeping with her, she had to learn tolook two ways. Up until and including the last moments ofher life she insisted on keeping as close as possible to both ofus. The time came when, after prayers (which she alwaysfound annoying simply because she felt left out), as I bentdown to kiss Jan goodnight on her bed on a mat beside myhammock, Rima would try to pull me down to sleep withthem. And how she delighted in making their bed, firstunrolling the mats, then the sleeping bag ' 'mattresses,'' until atlast the blankets and sheets were spread. She loved to let theblankets and sheets fall on her and then fight her way outfrom under—but I anticipate too much, for Rima was still aninfant in human terms. Allowing a human life to be four orfive times as long as a monkey's, Rima was now about theequivalent of a five-to-six-month-old child.

From this time on she always went to bed with Jan, butthere came a time when she would rouse and join me in one ofmy night-time snacks of a hot drink and bananas.

We were aware from the beginning that powdered milk,even though in a rich whole form, was not enough for Rima.She would need some source of vitamin C. What? We hadtwo fruits in abundance, bananas and limes, but Rima wasnot ready for solid food. She could not even eat mashedbananas, which later confirmed the fact that she was less thansix weeks old when we adopted her, the age when infantmonkeys begin to eat solids. I tried giving her diluted andhoney-sweetened lime juice, but this quickly upset herbowels, and I hastened to put her back on straight milk.

Hardly had this vitamin C quest failed when she camedown with a cold virus. It appeared she had caught it fromRamon. Happily it was not a feverish type, but still herbreathing was soon badly hampered. We sat up by turn keep-ing her as warm and as comfortable as possible with the hotwater bottle. Our visiting friends had vitamin C tablets, andsuggested we crush one in her milk. But before midnight she

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was too ill to nurse, and her breathing became short and chok-ing. Still, those dark little human eyes were alive and plead-ing. We talked to her and prayed over her until it was clearthat she understood how much we loved her and that wewanted her to live. She kept her eyes fixed on our faces, or oureyes. For in this first severe illness we saw, not for the firsttime, how spiritual our little monkey was. Shortly after mid-night she passed through another severe choking spasm. Itseemed her life was over, but we kept her face close to ours,her eyes did not close, and suddenly the crisis was over. Shebegan to breathe freely, relaxed under our stroking, and soonfell fast asleep.

"I told you what it would be like," I protested limply."It's all right," Jan said. "We need something to love.""Now I guess she knows how much we love her, all right.""That is why she survived the crisis.""There will be others," I said, still protesting."Maybe, and we shall grow in love.""Yet, she is only a baby monkey.""Maybe all babies. . . ?" Jan began."And all mothers. . ." I added."It's where love was invented."The next morning Rima was fully recovered. She nursed

eagerly from the absorbent cotton teats I fashioned and dip-ped in the warm whole powdered milk with vitamin C added.The experience had brought us closer; she was more com-municative from this point on, chirping and chattering inways I found hard to imitate, but she seemed happy with myefforts and would call me back if I tried to leave the housewithout her; or, if I slipped out while she slept, would scoldme upon my return.

Rima was now very much the center of attraction for all whocame to our house. Children were enchanted and adults like-wise, depending on how childlike their natures had re-mained. We greatly enjoyed her popularity, but were wary ofpeople with virus infections. We were by no means satisfiedwith the vitamin tablets, and besides, the supply was limited.

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We tried and tried to think of some natural home solution,and at last Becca saw the way—sugar cane juice, if we couldfind a way to press it from the hard pith. For children withteeth, only the hard outer skin had to be removed, then thesoft juice-filled pulp was easily crushed, but Rima was tooyoung for this work. We would have to find a device. I triedthe potato masher our visitors had brought for us. No good.Then Becca again found inspiration. The pliers, the old or-dinary pincers. In five minutes she had all the fresh, sweetvitamin-rich cane juice Rima could hold. And how she lovedit! Her gratitude came shining forth in her smiling eyes and inthe sweet birdlike chirpings that, in moments of excitement,told us how much monkeys have to say to each other that issweet and lovely. Certainly Hudson was justified in findinginspiration for his Rima among the Spider monkeys. It ap-pears that other naturalists have noted how the so-calledSpiders excel in spirituality, that is, in their gentle, affection-ate, responsive natures.

And during all her life with me it was (Becca first used thethree adjectives) her "carefree, affectionate, and fun-loving"nature that won all hearts. I say all—there was only one personwho rejected her consistently, and he was ailing in both mindand body.

FROM THIS POINT ON RIMA DEVELOPED RAPIDLY. BEFOREmany days she was drinking her milk and her cane juice from aspoon. Then Jan taught her to take small pieces of bananafrom her fingers. Having learned to eat banana, she was eagerto try everything on my plate. Thus she discovered black beansoup, and peanut butter and honey. Peanut butter came byway of an oily drop falling on her nose. She looked forward tomeals and joined in eagerly, passing by way of the hammockand her trapeze cords from my plate in my lap to Jan'sshoulder and so down to her plate. She was meanwhile work-ing out her relationship to Becca, and perfectly understoodthat Becca was merely another child—albeit older—of the

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family. She would accept food and attention from her butnever on a parental basis. She did, however, eagerly accept heras a playmate.

It was at about this time that we tried putting her indiapers. The problem of her wastes daily became more seri-ous. Her own instincts were good enough for the treetops,but for a house and especially for sleeping in a bed, they wereinadequate, to say the least. Her inner guidance was to climbup on a trapeze cord and let go. I met this with pieces ofplastic which could be easily wiped off, on all surfaces near myhammock where she and I spent most of our days, but at nighther system failed her. She could not rouse enough to climb upoff Jan's pillow to her trapeze. Jan's pillow suffered and sodid her hair. We put rags and papers on Rima's end of the pil-low, which helped, but Jan finally suggested we try diapers.

I agreed, but found, as I suspected, she would not acceptany form of clothing. She simply fought every device I tried tofasten on her as a diaper until it came off. When one night Isucceeded in getting her off to bed with a thick absorbentdiaper, it nearly killed her. I awoke to find that in the chill ofthe night she had fallen away from the warmth of Jan's pillowand was lying soaked and chilled on the floor. I roused Jan,removed the diaper, and for an hour we once again struggledfor Rima's life with hot milk and the hot water bottle. Partly,no doubt, because of our previous experience with the virus,we at last brought her around. But that was the end of diaper-ing our little orphan of the treetops. And Rima, as so often,seemed to understand.

At least she now seldom missed waking enough to climb upwith me at some time during the night, usually when I washaving a hot drink. She would share my snack and relieve her-self on the trapeze before rejoining Jan. Sometimes, as shegrew bigger and Jan's pillow grew smaller, Rima would strad-dle my thigh and fall asleep, her little head resting against myabdomen. Some nights I would fail to rouse when she joinedme and I would awake to find her fast asleep, her little four-fingered hands firmly gripping my shirt. (Rima had only

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vestigial thumbs, tiny bones just under the skin.)As she now began to play more and more on the trapeze

strings and use them as a pathway from my hammock to Jan'seasy chair at the foot, I looked about for toys to hang from thetrapeze—an oversize button or an empty can—but best of allin Rima's eyes was a rubber sink stopper, a leftover item fromJan's apartment house days. Rima's teeth had begun to de-velop very rapidly and efficiently, and she had begun to usethem both in play and to get her way. I tied the sink stopper sothat it hung beside Jan's shoulder as she sat in her chair, andRima soon made it her favorite toy. In fact, the first morningshe discovered it, as I came in from outdoors, she proudlyshowed me all the things she could do with it, from biting andchewing on it to using it as a swing. She chirped at me in herdelight—so delighted was she that I arranged another realswing from the trapeze cords alongside the hammock, andforever after—throughout the rest of our days on thehomestead, that is—I would often feel a little tap on my armand looking down would see Rima asking to be swung. Howshe loved it—but if I became too boisterous, swinging toohigh and too far, she would leap free into the hammock ordown onto the bookshelf directly under her trapeze. It wasprobably her instinct against any action or overaction thatcould lead to a fall.

Sometimes in her high excitement she would defecate onthe plastic, so I decided to try to teach her to climb out intosome bushes that nearly touched the house. She would havenone of this, and when one day after such a training session asnake one and a half meters long suddenly appeared on theroof just above our heads, I understood the grounds of her ob-jections.

As her play urges grew, we learned quite by accident thatshe loved to be tossed and tickled. And one morning, whenwe had become extraordinarily boisterous, I was astonished tohear what could only be monkey laughter right in my ear. Sheloved to be wrapped around my neck and tickled in the ribs atthe same time—and now the laughter in my ear. Jan later

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described it as troll-like. Certainly, it was a fairy sound. I puther through the same play maneuvers again and each time Iheard a true human laugh, only elfin in its very sweetness andlightness. I began now to call her "Sprite" or "Spritely" as anickname, and from across the room she would answer with asweet chirp or soft scolding chuckle if she felt I was planningto leave the house without her.

With Jan she also began to laugh, especially when Jan bub-bled her, that is, made noises blowing with her lips andmouth against Rima's soft gray sweet-smelling belly. Rima inher delight would then laugh and bounce her own little faceagainst Jan's cheeks. Meanwhile she was working out othergames with Becca, tugging at Becca's skirt, begging to beswung around by her long skinny arms, and at last left rollingover and over on the floor.

Then there came a time when Rima decided both the dogand the cat should be included in the fun, but the results ofher attempts to bridge the primate, canine, and feline worldswere mixed and must await another chapter for the telling.

14

Monkey Baby Games

As the dry season, which is also the hot season, came on therearose the problem of what to do with Rima. My retreat was thebeach. This rather grand name I had given to a spot where theever cool creek, in making a sharp bend, had left a generousand inviting little strand of coarse brown sand and colorfulquartz pebbles. Here I could swing a hammock just above thecool, briskly flowing crystal water and ignore the 34°C(95°F)heat of the midday hours. But that meant Rima being left

15

with Jan and Becca. She loudly protested my going, but Icouldn't see any way to look after her up there in the forestswinging low over the swift-flowing, though not deep, creek.Jan and Becca tried taking Rima up in the loft to share theirsiesta, but Rima did not have any inclination or instinct abouthaving a siesta. She sometimes enjoyed short naps, but not byany schedule. Siesta to her meant playtime up in a fascinatingnew environment—fascinating because it included some rareopportunities for playing with the tomcat.

Rima, as has been shown, possessed a deep sense of person-ality. Every new individual, be it man, woman, child, oranimal, meant a great new potential relationship to her. Upuntil now, both our dog and cat had managed for the mostpart to avoid her. Nor had Rima been active enough on therather rough puncheon floor to pursue either of them for newplaymates. But up in the loft she found the big, furry, orangetabby tomcat well within reach. She reached, and held onfirmly in her simian style. Goldie, who had been sprawled outin his usual perfect siesta relaxation, leapt to free himself ofwhat might, for all he knew, be the return of the giant boa,which had nearly carried him off as a kitten. He headed forthe ladder, dragging Rima with him, and disdaining a slowerdescent, leapt out of the house completely, landing well outof doors. "Monkey Baby," as I now sometimes called her,simply let go at the top of the ladder and made her own half-falling, half-scrambling descent to the floor.

Becca rescued her, but the next day we worked out a differ-ent system. I took her up to the creek for the first half of thesiesta, then Jan came up for her and took her back down to thehouse. Rima, to my surprise and pleasure, fitted in very wellat the beach. She at once settled in to the hammock with me;her original "home" since coming to live with us had beenwith me in the hammock. Now all that had changed was thelocation. Here we were still in a hammock together but out inthe tall green sun-shot jungle, swinging over cool flowingwater. What would the little Spider monkey, now about threemonths old, make of it?

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She made much of it, so much that I had to put my bookdown just to watch her. I had noticed only a day or so beforehow her observation powers were growing. On the cover of anature book of Becca's there was a design of the sun in eclipse.I saw Rima stop and stare, then bend her head low over thedark disc. I thought she was going to try to eat it, but insteadshe carefully placed a long slender finger (each finger had itsperfect black nail) upon the dark sphere, and rubbed it.When nothing happened she turned away from it as abruptlyas she had turned toward it.

Now with me, for the first time out in the forest and up atthe beach, she studied everything in the relaxed meditativemood I had just begun to observe as being a basic part of hernature. At first she lay back on my arm looking up into thetreetops, twenty—twenty-five—thirty meters above us. Allwas still and leafy up there, a world filled with green goldlight, with patches of pale blue sky clearly showing whereverthe branches opened up a little. As I watched her face forsome record of her emotion upon her first opportunity toobserve closely what would have been her normal environ-ment, I was surprised to see unmistakable awe—no pleasureor hint of longing to be up there in the treetops—only a greatwonder colored slightly by what I can only call fear. Or was itsimply my failure to read what was her sense of separation andloss? I shall never know, but her response was deep and real.And never again did I catch her gazing upward into her truedwelling place.

With only a stub of a tail, which is to the normal Spidermonkey a fifth arm and hand combined, she would have beenseverely handicapped in the treetops, but bright as she wasshe could not know this. Later on, when in a few weeks shebegan to walk upright with a great gracefulness and ballerina-like balance, I saw that God had been merciful and had of-fered her much compensation for the loss of her treetop life.With a long clumsy tail, she would never have become ourdelightful childlike playmate, with a wonderful capacity forwalking and running upright.

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Rima's attention meanwhile had been diverted from thegreen and lofty world above us to that directly beneath uswhere the creek was flowing so transparently that every peb-ble, nearly every grain of sand, was clearly visible. At first I didnot grasp what was holding Rima's attention as she watchedintently, looking down first over one side of the hammock,then over the other. There was no fish or other animal move-ment on or in the water, but only the clear, swift, ripplingflow of the water itself. And as I studied her abruptly shiftinggaze, from one side to the other, it became clear enough thatit was the motion of the water itself that had fascinated her.

By arrangement Jan came up for her in an hour or so. Rimawas content in the hammock, though still obviously subduedby such a full exposure to the jungle. She had grown up thusfar as a little house monkey, and the jungle seemed as vast andstrange and awesome to her, it appeared, as it would have toany human child.

As always she was happy to go to Jan, and back at the houseJan simply occupied my place in the hammock, providingRima with her familiar play surroundings until I returnedwith the cooler temperature as the sun dropped behind "Jan'sMountain." Rima learned to enjoy the new afternoon rou-tine, and would not let me go up to the beach without her.When I returned she would be hanging in the upper strings ofthe hammock to welcome me. She loved us, trusted us, ac-cepting us as her parents without question, but as she wasrapidly becoming a monkey juvenile, and no longer a mereclinging, suckling infant, her demands upon us were increas-ing, especially in the direction of play.

At first we did not understand the sudden use of her sharplittle teeth, but my natural response to being bitten providedthe clues. Juvenile monkeys play roughly, and sharp littlebites are merely invitations to more roughhousing. At first,not understanding, we tried to stop Rima's biting by slappingher on the mouth. Of course, this was abnormal response onour part and bewildering to her, but so powerful were her playinstincts that she refused to accept our repulses. As later,

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when under similar conditions she undertook to teach mon-key play to the dog, she had her bottom bitten. But she per-sisted and won her own way. So we all learned to play monkeystyle, as did even the dog, and all enjoyed it.

I saw what she wanted when my own natural response to herbiting included seizing her hand and biting her fingers—howshe squawked in protest for, of course, holding was not fair.But when immediately I released her, she would give me asharp nip and flee up the hammock. It was all monkey play.Once, as she fled, I grabbed her five centimeters of stubby tailand gave it a hard pinch. This delighted her. She squawkedand squirmed, and fled with amazing speed and agility wellbeyond my reach up on to the highest parts of her trapezethere to scold and challenge while I continued to chide andthreaten.

At last, thoroughly weary she would come down quietly tomy lap and perhaps ask for food or, on rare and sweet occa-sions, climb up to nibble my earlobes in the supreme gestureof monkey affection. Very rarely she went so far as to exploremy chest, but seeing how utterly dry my nipples were she paidno more attention. With her mother, she would have beenprobably still nursing.

Sleeping with Jan and eating mainly with me, that is, livingwith two parents, where in nature she would have had onlyone, troubled her but little, and that little only at night.Usually she would rouse toward midnight for a feeding and aurination. If I were not already awake, she would make herway up from Jan's bed on the floor into the hammock, androuse me with her short but sharp alarm cry. I came to wonderif her rousing me was not the mercy of God, for at this time Iwas recovering from a severe heart attack that had made longnaps after midnight dangerous. Rima's cry probably express-ed her confusion at awakening hungry, only to discover herfood "mother" was not with her. She would settle down in mylap to her snack of warm milk and honey and often a smallbanana, then swing about on her trapeze a few minutes be-fore relieving herself. At last, and with no further concern for

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me, she returned to Jan's pillow, curled up beside Jan's headwith one hand anchored firmly in her hair, and so back tosleep until morning.

At bedtime she always warned anyone who left the house togo out into the dark. Her warning whistle was sharp and clearin portent. "Night has fallen," it signaled. "This is our sleeptree. Only the fool wanders off into the dark, stay together. "And if it chanced I had to go to the privy after dark—somefew minutes' walk—I had no choice but to take her or listen toher loud, unbroken scolding until I returned.

Making Jan's bed on the floor, as has been described, was aspecial playtime for Rima, and bed unmaking in the morningwas equally so. She delighted in hiding under the sheets,romping over the sleeping bag and blankets, and finallymounting the high pile only to roll tumbling off to escape mytail-pinching grasp.

ALONG WITH RIMA'S DEVELOPING JUVENILE PLAY ANDits show of independence came our first strong persistent at-tempt toward toilet training. Diapers having proved a near-fatal failure, we returned to our first practice, which had atfirst seemed successful. I would hold her at arm's length in acomfortable position or simply place her in the fork of a smalltree and indicate by example we were at the time and place.At first Rima was often open to suggestion, but now as a bud-ding juvenile she rebelled. "What a lot of nonsense!" sud-denly became her attitude. "Do I have to be taught to do suchthings as all monkeys do when and where they feel like it?"And suddenly Rima never "felt like it" when we did. Shesimply leapt about if we placed her in the "pee-pee tree" orloudly squawked if we tried to hold her out at arm's length.Finally, becoming annoyed by such stubbornness in such asmall creature, I one day walked off and left her in the tree.She then set such a dreadfully high level of scolding andsquawking that I had to hurry back before all the hidden

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monkey-flesh lovers, from snake to eagle, "answered" hercalls of distress.

Indeed, in Rima I saw each day more clearly how of all themammals, we primates stand out not so much in mere brain-power as in pure willpower. There is, even in an infant mon-key, an absolutely bottomless supply of this old fashionedstubbornness. And there is one other trait that sets all pri-mates apart, one that our infant had already revealed, name-ly, a power for quiet meditation that in high human develop-ment emerges as religious mysticism. More than at any otherlevel, Rima, the orphan Spider monkey of not quite fourmonths, now began to share in both our human willpower andour human meditative power. The former was largely con-centrated in the thin but long firm line of her mouth. A closeexamination revealed, in the lines of her mouth and lips andchin, a remarkable strength of will, which, of course, hadalready been amply displayed upon her arrival at four to sixweeks of age, when she had refused to accept life's harshestterms and had demanded something better with every re-maining breath. The second power, of meditation or mysticalreflection, she also displayed early and this was naturallyseated in her eyes.

Rima's eyes were deceptive. They looked as though theywere merely overlarge for the face, all black, rather lively andgleaming animal eyes, with no show of pupil or iris. Then oneday by chance I discovered Rima's eyes staring up at me frombehind a large magnifying glass I was using to study a map. Iwas looking into the eyes of a human child, complete withblack pupils and dark brownish irises. The eyeball itself beingblack, the pupil and iris were not apparent until seen underslight magnification. From that moment until our last mo-ments together in the flesh, Rima became for me more hu-man child than monkey child. And only perhaps because Iknew she would never use human words, I felt that expansionof tenderness toward her that a loving human parent feels fora so-called defective human child. Our relationship now grewdeeper each day and more tenderly filled with love and trustand joy in each other.

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The Child Learns to Walk

About this time I began taking Rima with me on my weeklytree-gluing trips. I made a cloth sling such as the Indianwomen use to carry their babies, which passes under the rightarm and is tied over the left shoulder. I varied it so Rima couldride on my chest—on my ribs, rather—instead of Indian-style, half around on the hip. Rima wanted to be where shecould see everything, especially everything I was doing andeverywhere we were going. Tree gluing consisted of keeping a

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narrow band of very sticky Tanglefoot glue fresh and effectivearound the trunk of each of our several dozen fruit trees togive protection against the leaf cutter ants. I did half the or-chard one week and the other half the following week. Thismeant two to three hours for one morning each week. Besidesthe actual application of the glue, I usually had to removewith a machete (a meter-long bush knife) whatever grass,weeds, and vines had sprung up around or over the tree sincemy last visit.

Sometimes this machete work became rather vigorous,especially when an unusually heavy broken or fallen branchhad to be removed. But little Rima simply curled up in hersling with one and sometimes two of her hands clutching myhair and never complained. She accepted all my movements,including the machete work, with all the interested com-posure she would have shown had she been leaping throughthe treetops with her monkey mother. Indeed she so lovedthese work jaunts that it was soon impossible for me to leavethe house for any reason without her crying out to be allowedto leap into her sling and accompany me. I wore the sling mostof the time so as to be ready, for it was impossible to leave herbehind unless I wanted to listen all during my absence to herloud scolding guttural protests alternating with sweet, plain-tive, birdlike, baby pleadings. I always took her, and we wereas happy a pair of primates as could be found anywhere in thejungle.

Perhaps it was this expanding daytime companionship thatled to Rima's preference to sleep with me instead of with Jan.We thought that it was perhaps partly owing to her ratherrapid growth, making Jan's pillow too small for both Jan'srather big head and Rima's body. Whatever the reason was,Rima now often started the night with me and finished it withJan. With me she slept in her usual place astride my thigh, herhead and stomach against my stomach, her hands grippingmy shirt.

There had always been a small difficulty over going to bed.Monkeys—that is, sensible monkeys—went to bed at dusk,

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Rima kept insisting. Consequently, she early came to detestour foolish delays. By human standards, even in the forest, wewere early-to-bedders, but not as early as the monkeys, whoapparently go to bed with the parrots. We did eat while it wasstill light, but there were certain delays after eating. One of usmight even commit the extreme folly, already mentioned, ofwalking out into the darkness—which never failed to evoke aspecially sharp protest.

At first Rima would fight hard to stay awake while disheswere cleared. Bible read and the "Lord's Prayer" repeatedand finally Jan's bed made, she would chirp and chatter andtry to resume playing, then end up yawning and whimperingby herself in the hammock, peering with heavy, half-shut eyesover the edge. The prayer, when we held hands, fascinatedher. She obviously felt this was a family activity from whichshe was being excluded, but if I tried to hold her hand, shequickly pulled it away, half-embarrassed, and simply watchedand listened intently until we had finished. Perhaps she sawin it something familiar, yet improperly performed as was somuch of what we did.

She eventually learned to eat, then fall asleep on my lap un-til bedmaking time—this she would not miss. She rousedherself from her nap and joined in the fun, but as soon as thebed was ready, she was waiting to join Jan on the pillow withher own generous heaps of little woolen blankets and pillows.At this point she could not bear delay. Once a youthful visitoreager for talk tried to keep us up in spite of everything beingobviously ready for our retirement. Rima, quickly sensing hisinconsideration, began scolding so relentlessly even hebecame aware of his mistake, and said goodnight.

RIMA'S RELATIONSHIP WITH BECCA GREW EACH DAYmore sisterly, albeit big sisterly. Becca's first remark when shesaw her mother and me taking on a full parental relationshipto the hairy little orphan was: "She'll never be anything but amonkey—remember!" I was jolted by this edge of bitterness

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almost never heard from jungle-reared Rebecca. For a mo-ment it seemed she might even be caught up in jealousy, butwe never heard her speak of Rima in that tone again, and soonthey were great playmates.

It seems probable that it was from her play with Becca thatRima learned early to walk upright, for she had been runningabout on all fours for some time. She and Becca began withthe simple peek-a-boo game. Rima would hide down insidethe hammock, Becca would call to her, and then Rima wouldleap up into view with a grimace and a chuckle or chortle.From this they went on to games outside the hammock, in-cluding swinging Rima on a rope hanging from her trapeze.She loved this as long as it was kept within definite limits. Ifthere was too much, too fast, and too far swinging, she pro-tested loudly and tried to grab her way to a stable surface. Buther love of swinging led to other versions of the game, whereshe swung from Becca's skirt or simply held on to Becca'shand while Becca swung her around in a complete circle.

Out of this she learned to stand upright, holding on to Bec-ca by one hand, and so at last to walk upright. One day I look-ed up to see her walking all by herself, her long arms heldgracefully above her head with forearms bending inward in aperfect ballerina position. I shouted encouragement as shecame rather rapidly toward me, and then I reached down andpicked her up by her two hands, lifting her into the hammockand so into my lap. She was delighted, as always, with praiseand gaiety; her whole nature was fun-loving, and ever after Icalled her my "beautiful gibbon" when she walked, or moreoften ran, upright. When for a period she left off walking andwent about on all fours, we derided her playfully, calling her"Baboon!" The truth was, of course, that walking upright didnot come easily to her. It was fun, that is, exciting, but it wasnot natural, because Rima's feet were actually her hands. Onher feet she had perfect thumbs. Her hands, as mentioned,had only four long skinny, though powerful, fingers. But, as aperson may learn to walk fairly well on their hands, so did ourRima. The gibbon is said to walk in a true plantigrade fashion

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and Rima's walk, and run, were very gibbonlike. She certainlylooked like a gibbon, and later when I read that, of all themonkeys, the Spiders most resemble the gibbons in theirmode of travel in the treetops, I understood how the resem-blance carried over into walking upright. Having masteredwalking upright, Rima often used it when visitors were pre-sent, though I never was sure if it was done in a show-offspirit. Regardless, it fascinated persons of all ages, sexes, edu-cation, and culture. So far as we could discern, the effect wasmuch the same in quantity and quality whether the visitor wasa very primitive Lacandon Indian or a professor of Englishliterature from a university.

There was, however, somewhat more to Rima's charm thanher upright walk, for with nine out of ten of our visitors shesimply walked over and crawled up on their knees and beganher gentle gracious gestures of making friends. I use advisedlyboth the adjectives "gentle" and "gracious" for unless a per-son through timidity or sheer boorishness proved quite in-capable of accepting her advances, she was as gentle with agrown man as she was with the smallest baby in a woman'sarms. She was, I repeat, a very sharp judge of character. Onlythe Lacandon monkey hunters were rejected as potentialfriends. She declined to approach them, but sat with me,studying them closely. With the rare noisy, harsh-spoken per-son she was also withdrawn, but all others she at once ap-proached in a friend-seeking spirit; and she was only repelledonce and that by a man whom I myself found difficult tounderstand. But Rima refused to give up even on him, andwould always make one more attempt to sit in his lapwhenever he sat down in our house, though he always remov-ed her. He had two small children of his own, toward whomhe seemed a very good father, yet for the little orphan monkeyhe had nothing to offer. Becca always thought that this wasbecause Rima had slightly soiled his pants on his first visit. Ifound this explanation difficult to accept of a father who hadhelped his two children through infancy while their mothertaught school part-time. His wife received Rima with almost

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as much affection and pleasure as did we three, and the twochildren accepted her as one of their own kind.

I suspect that the father sensed in her that stubborn willthat made her too much the rival of any willful person. Rimaalways treated everyone as an equal, except Jan and me. To usshe gave parental recognition, which included obedience, buteven toward Becca the relationship had to be one of equals.She would not accept commands or scoldings from Becca, butreacted with immediate defiance, giving scold for scold evento sharp bites of retaliation at the least threat of force.

There is a point at which mere stubbornness, which we alldeplore in others, suddenly becomes the same thing as thehighest courage. We were to watch this wonderful primatestubbornness in our beloved little monkey orphan—a littlegirl monkey orphan, be it remembered—carry her throughuntil at last all her stubbornness was transfigured into sublimecourage.

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Visitors to the Homestead

Around this time, hardly did one set of visitors from Civiliza-tion leave us before another arrived. We were not used to sucha social life, especially with the sophisticated, who made somany more demands in all ways than did our Indian neigh-bors. Still we welcomed each new face, especially when it wassuch an old friend's face as Trudi Blom's. She was the widowof Frans Blom, the last of the old-style Maya archaeological ex-plorers. Trudi, Swiss by birth, a cosmopolitan European, mis-

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tress of five languages, a Lacandon anthropologist, a painter,writer, and professional photographer, as well as an explorerand competent muleteer in her own right, now sat for the firsttime in our Lacandon rain forest hut. Though we had beenher guests many times in San Cristobal, she had never beenours.

Here was a woman who had been everywhere and seeneverything—everything except a seventeen-year-old girl and afour-month-old Spider monkey completely absorbed in play.Becca would hide at the foot of my hammock making softteasing sounds until Rima, unable to resist, would move withgreat hestitation slowly down the hammock toward her. Sud-denly Becca's head would pop up—"Boo!" and with bothhands she would grab for Rima. With a shriek, half-fearfulhalf-delighted, Rima would bound back up into my laptrembling and chirping with excited pleasure.

The game was almost too much for Rima once, when Beccaactually seized her leg. Rima, on getting loose, came up andin clearest terms of her speech and gestures, plus a solemnconcerned little countenance, asked if I was sure it was reallyjust all in play. Was Becca that trustworthy—was it all realmonkey play? She had some doubts. As a human, I reassuredher, and told Becca to proceed just a little less aggressively,and they went back to playing, while Trudi kept her worldly-wise gaze upon little Rima as uninterruptedly as any Indianchild would have done. For all her experience of both theworld and the jungle, Trudi Blom had never seen a babymonkey as an integral member of a human household.

Rima had not accepted our guest, mainly because Trudi,over the years, had more and more taken on the loud-speak-ing rough ways of the mule caravans she so much loved to be apart of. But Trudi did have her professional camera, andreadily agreed to take our first photographs of Rima. I askedher to leave me out, but she protested it would be an impossi-ble composition so Rima and I appeared together, Rima re-flecting so much of her suspicion concerning Trudi that hertrue nature scarcely showed at all. Still, the photographs

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Trudi took do reveal how small Rima was after some three anda half months with us. It is regrettable no one came with acamera during Rima's first month with her adoptive family.

I am not sure Rima gained enough confidence duringTrudi's twenty-four hours with us even to leave the hammockfor an upright walk. We soon were engaged for hours withTrudi in that loud argumentative kind of conversation Rimaespecially hated. She slept as much as possible through it, andbit me from time to time, whether pleading for play or merelyto express her annoyance with our vain disputations, I couldnot be sure. She loved fun-making and eating, and we weredoing neither. We were scolding, something monkeys, to besure, did occasionally, but only for a few seconds at a time—we went on and on. Rima curled up tight in the crook of myarm for another nap.

Our next visitors, and they followed Trudi rather closely,were also old friends, or rather the husband was, a professorspecializing in Mexican beetles. He had spent two days withus during our first year on the homestead. Now he had hiswife and a graduate student with him. All three were natu-ralists, and Rima appreciated the man and wife from the start.For some reason, Rima held the student at a full Spider mon-key arm's length, probably because he was too sure ofhimself—"All wild animals love me! In an hour she'll be allover me!" But Rima was not won by such self assurance. Peter,the student, never gained her confidence, but he did takesome color photographs of Rima and me in the hammock.And one day beetling upon the mountainside he came uponthe bodies of two murdered* adult male Spiders from oneof which he saved the skull. This skull when cleaned andwashed seemed to speak clearly for much that was remarkableabout Rima. The skull also confirms Bates's high estimate ofthe species; in his Naturalist on the Amazons* *, he ranks the

* I say "murdered" because usually they are killed for food.* * Bates, Henry W. Naturalist on the Amazons (Everyman Paperbacks), Dutton,New York.

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Spider monkeys at the top of primate evolution in the NewWorld.

But Rima's love of people exposed her nearly every day toall the worst human contagions, which all primates readilycatch from man. There was nothing to be done about it exceptas we did for ourselves: "To love God, and our neighbors,"and to trust in God's will, for both man and monkey. Thismeant that if a child with a bad cough came with a parent,and Rima, as usual, had to sit beside the child on the parent'sother knee, then we had to permit it. We had asked peoplenot to come or bring their children coughing and sneezing,but some did not understand or pretended not to understand,perhaps the same thing in the end. Clearly we could not ex-pect Rima to understand that she could play with some chil-dren, not with others.

Soon after our visitors left, Rima caught a deadly dysenterymicrobe. She became very ill, so ill that she soon stoppedeating. She began a fast that allowed only creek water andsleep. She was at the same time what I can only call ashamedbecause she hated as much as anyone being at the mercy of herbowels, which were completely out of control. She defecatedat random all over everything, beginning with me and thehammock and all her play places. I had recourse to sheets ofplastic for all the flat surfaces, plus rags for myself and thehammock, plus roll on roll of toilet paper for Rima herself.

It must have been at this time that she acquired her almostfetish contempt for toilet paper. At any rate, ever after shewould grasp every opportunity to reduce a roll of toilet paperto its highest common denominator, unrolling and shreddingwith a demon's glee she made no attempt to hide, even pre-tending to eat it. And all this ostensibly because she hatedhaving her behind wiped. It may have been in part out of asense of the challenging mystery she felt as to just what toiletpaper was. After all, our Indian neighbor girls had used it todecorate their hair.

Rima felt in a similar way the challenge in my recorder. Shedid not object specifically to the music, though I suspect high

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notes annoyed her. What bothered her was her incomprehen-sion. She knew it made sounds only when I put it in mymouth and so would always try to put it in her mouth. As itwas too big for her little mouth, she ended up biting it, andmy recorder bears today the marks of her sharp little teeth asclearly as ever all about the mouthpiece.

Becca's abacus challenged her in like manner for a while,but one day Rima's trapeze broke while she was toying withthe counters and, abacus and all, she fell at once down behindthe bookshelf. Thereafter, she paid little attention to theabacus.

I did not know at that time that baby monkeys have to betaught to climb by their mothers, and how serious even aslight fall must be. Later when Rima actually seemed to resentbeing placed up above head height in a tree crotch, we allwondered what was wrong and blamed it on the defective tail.But, later I read that baby monkeys are taught to climb treeseven as baby humans are taught to walk, and are sometimeseven spanked for slowness. As we have seen, Rima learnedwith very little training to walk, but she never learned toclimb with ease and pleasure.

But now she had dysentry and slowly she lost her wonderfulstrength and energy. She became listless and weak. Onceagain Jan and I prayed over her, making her understand howmuch we loved her, and I fed her cold creek water diluted withfreshly squeezed cane juice. In this way we kept her eyes shin-ing with all the will to live and she soon recovered.

And with each recovery from serious illness she becamemore dear to us, and we to her, for she reciprocated our love inmany little demonstrations as these I find noted in my jour-nal:

8 JUNERima flourishes into juvenilehood, tears corners off the dic-tionary pages as we type Jan's essay. I mend them with Scotchtape. I bite her toe-fingers—she bites my nose!

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9 JUNERima and Becca play tag, hide-and-seek, and peek-a-boo withdeep and mutual delight, shrieks, literally, of laughter fromboth. And in her excitement to escape, Rima runs brieflyupright with all the grace and agility of a gibbon.

18 JUNEEvidently hard thunder showers are a cause of alarm tomonkeys in the wild. Rima announced one by rushing to mewith her sharp, shrill warning cry. (For the rains, Nature pro-vided her with a heavy extra undercoat on her back.)

20 JUNELast night Jan went off to sleep without her, and Rima had togo to bed with me. For an hour, until Jan turned over on herback and so made room for her, she resented the situation,choosing to sit up on my shoulders and grind her new molars.When I tried to settle her cosily under my chin, her longfingers reached up and explored carefully the contours of myface protesting that she wanted Jan's face to sleep with. Shetries our patience at times to be sure, but rewards us in a hun-dred other ways with clear demonstrations of purest affectionas when, after prayers, we include her in the round of mutualgoodnight kisses, she comes closest to true human speech withsounds deep in her throat and chest.

And on another similar occasion:

Rima flourishes, even shows off, I supect. Becca plays moreand more with her. Tonight when Becca leaned over to kissher mother goodnight, from the nearby trapeze Rima turnedher little face up to Becca for her goodnight kiss.

4 JULYJan takes Smoky the dog in her lap to brush her. Rima laughsher throaty chuckle-laugh. Goldie jumps up to be petted whileRima is in my arms. Rima laughs and tries to touch him. Heflees.

A large troupe of Spider monkeys up at the cave "barking"(like terriers) loudly. Rima pays no attention to themwhatever.

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9 JULYRima and I harvest lemons in later afternoon just before thebig storm. She loves a walk and now learns to walk uprightoutdoors as well as inside. At first she ran with both armsabove her head ready to fall forward on to all fours. Now shewalks one arm raised akimbo, the other extended balletwise,but now walking instead of running with more mastery ofbalance. She longs to engage the cat in play. He protestswildly her hair-pulling as we force her to let him be, but he isnot hostile, nor even resentful, only wary. She wants to accepthim as another monkey, albeit a strangely reserved one.

Returning from the walk we met the dog trying to join us,tail wagging, head crouching, ashamed to have missed thewalk. Rima laughed at her. She now laughs more loudly andclearly, and more often, like a "talking" doll, but more realand human, incredible!

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The Terrestrial Monkey

All aspects of Nature, including the great rainy season'selectrical storms, found acceptance in Rima's life. If the stormwere extraordinarily violent, she would come and curl up inmy arms chirping and chattering, all in mingled admirationfor the storm and gratitude for having found such goodshelter together. I always used to wonder, especially on chillynights when a storm might go on for hours, just how themonkeys met it up on the mountains. Although they no

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longer visited us, we knew they were still up there becausefrom time to time we would hear them in an outburst of scold-ing, but hardly one-quarter of the great troupe had survived—the same troupe that had welcomed us, monkey-fashion, tothe virgin vale of the arroyo and cavern, so appropriatelycalled "Santa Maria." Our friend Tata Domingo explainedthat they crouched close to the trunk of a great tree and belowa huge limb, thus finding maximum shelter against the worststorms. This information, plus the daily lengthening andthickening of the hair on Rima's back, gave me comfort whenI thought of them, especially of the babies such as Rima hadbeen. So long as an infant clung to the mother's chest, as itdid for the first weeks, it probably kept dry even in the worststorms. All the mother had to do was to crouch forward, andher head and shoulders would shield her infant from the rain.

By the time the baby was big enough to take up its place onthe mother's back, its own pelt would be like Rima's, water-and cold-repellent, at least on the back and shoulders. I usedto enjoy combing Rima's fine, long, thick hair with her ownspecial comb. And no matter what she was doing she wouldstop for a grooming. She seemed to understand that, alongwith eating and playing, it was one of the three priorities ofmonkey life, and I enjoyed it especially because her back hairwas her only physically beautiful aspect unless, of course, youincluded her wonderfully alert, expressive eyes. Her long,skinny limbs with hands where feet ought to be, and hookswhere hands ought to be, and all covered only with stiff,sparse coarse hair, were certainly not beautiful. Likewise herhead and neck. Her head hair was sparse and concentrated inan uncombable rooster-tail, or cowlick, that nothing couldcause to lie flat. Her nose was flat with the nostrils openingoutward, and would have been downright ugly but for its be-ing so small and delicate and, as I have said, flat. Happily hermouth, together with her eyes, redeemed the entire head andface, for the Spider monkey's mouth is a marvellously firm,character-filled line, much more so than that of any even ofthe so-called great apes. Of the four anthropoid apes—the

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chimpanzee, the orangutan, the gorilla, and the gibbon—only the gibbon shows the same force of will in its mouth linesand jaw structure as does the Spider monkey (Ateles of variousraces). In fact, find a tailless Spider monkey, and in mostways, I suspect, especially in character, you will have agibbon.

If I may be allowed to carry this analogy a bit further (andadmittedly I am carrying it far because Nature did not providethe New World with a true anthropoid ape, only monkeys), ifthe New World Spider monkey is more or less a substitute fora gibbon, then the New World capuchin monkey may per-haps pass equally for a chimpanzee, the New World howlermonkey for a gorilla, and the uakaris monkey for an orangu-tan. The last-named actually has hardly any tail comparedwith the other New World monkeys.

23 JULYRainy Sunday, light, frequent showers, no thunder, mistsrising and falling along the mountains. At marimba timeRima screams her objections. Monkeys in their right mindsstick together—close together when it rains. I give in after ahalf-dozen pieces. Becca practices alone, with four sticks; bassis hardly necessary.

28 JULYNo-see-ums, tiny biting gnats, keep us up in the loft,"smoky heaven," for sleeping. Other years we merelywrapped ourselves up in sheets with only nostrils exposed, butRima will suffer no such wrapping up, and they drive her backand forth between Jan's bed on the floor and my hammock,all night. Up in the loft she sleeps all night against Jan's cheekas usual.

30 AUGUSTRima assumes she is a person or takes it for granted—veryaffectionate. She absorbs and reflects love.

LIVING IN A HOUSE SUITED RIMA VERY WELL EXCEPT WHENit came time for some major repair, to roof or floor or hearthor support posts. Anything that brought work crews and dig-

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ging or pounding or, especially, dismantling or tearing down,turned her into a frightened, peevish, complaining, impos-sible-to-live-with little imp. Why? We reasoned that it was allbecause she was psychically unequipped for destruction of herhabitat. In the forest a limb might break off and fall or muchmore rarely, an entire tree might crash, but that was Nature.Here "monkeys" were actively destroying their own shelter—it drove her insane in the simplest analysis. And wheneversuch work on the house went on for an hour or more, she sim-ply had to be taken for a long walk out in the jungle. Jan tookher, and said that once away from the house, she becamequiet and enjoyed the stroll along the forest path as usual.This would seem to indicate that most of what passes for neu-rosis in primates, including man, is traceable to artificial con-ditions being imposed upon the individual beyond his uniquepowers of endurance. In other words, primates are drivencrazy more easily by some circumstances than others, but theword driven is equally the key to all cases. And it is always theartificial, not the natural, that disorganizes the psyche to thepoint of madness. As noted, Rima accepted the most violentof the great electrical storms without neurotic reactions, seek-ing only extra physical security close in our arms, and chortlingher sense of comfort and safety in monkey speech.

In the midst of the rainy season when we had already hadone flood with water running under the floor from the over-flowing creek, we had our most refined and cultured visitorsever from the United States: a professor of literature and hisalmost equally educated wife. They plowed through the drip-ping jungle over the muddy three hours from the airstrip witha sturdy competence worthy of much younger people.

Hardly had they sat down to rest before Rima was in theirlaps. Edgar was a native of Massachusetts, Mary of Maine. AsI am a Vermonter, I joked that Rima apparently recognizedNew Englanders—it almost seemed that way. They hadheard about her—even read about her—so were, to a degree,prepared. Although Rima clutched their hair and danced upand down on their knees inviting play, both of them fully ac-

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cepted her without a gesture or even a word of rejection, andso it was for the happy week they spent with us.

It appeared that only the simplest, humblest Indian, or themost highly educated and cultured white could easily acceptRima for what she was. Perhaps neither education nor culturehave anything to do with it. Probably it all depends on an in-ner simplicity and humility. To the proud and fastidious,Rima's affectionate, natural simian simplicity was offensive.To an old Indian woman, or an Indian grandfather, her ap-proaches were natural—she was simply a child of a kindredspecies. (Later we would discover that the Hindus seemed tounderstand monkeys best.)

For Edgar and Mary, though their own reactions were nodoubt more complicated, Rima was still pretty much the sameas she was to the Indians, that is, she was obviously accorded achild's status in our home, and as an adopted child they bothcould accept her. Rima was especially fond of Mary, and wehad to assume that in a monkey troupe in Nature, a babyturns to almost any female adult with equal trust and is notdisappointed. Further, these visitors were parents of fourgrown-up children, so carried an aura as grandparental as anyof the Indians.

My own special reward in watching Rima with Edgar camein the realization that a doctorate in philosophy does not nec-essarily spoil a man's capacity to be humble. I only wonderedif these highly educated people could understand the one traitin particular about Rima that had deeply stirred us—her capa-city for giving as well as receiving love. Out of my doubts thisbook is in part being written, for it is impossible to believethat anyone, short of a maddened sadist, who is aware of whata monkey actually is, could ever abuse one for any purposewhatever. As it is with human beings, to torture a monkey orape is to torture God. On this basis the traffic in monkeys forany purpose whatever has to be prohibited.

Happily, it was not until after our quality visitors had leftthat Rima had begun a practice that quickly reduced me todesperation. Up until this point she had never ventured more

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than a step or two outside the house on her own. For somereason—her growing up, of course—she began running outalong the muddy approach paths all the way to the woodpileand laundry bench, which meant that she returned withmuddy feet and hands. Heedlessly she would leap into thehammock and into my lap and, when I shrieked, leap backout only to muddy everything else she touched in fleeing myannoyance. Here was a complication as hard in its way as theno-see-ums. With the no-see-ums we had finally learned toput Rima in the same sling I used for taking her out on or-chard work. The sling protected most of her body from theferocious biting gnats, and she was willing to fall asleepwith my shirt drawn more or less across her face; further to thegood, the gnats were no longer with us, after some threeweeks.

For the muddy feet there was no solution until it stoppedraining hard, that is, until December, and we were hardly in-to September. Meanwhile, I could only train her to let mewipe her feet and hands after each of her daily more frequentexcursions out along the ever muddy paths. I complainedaloud, scolded poor little Rima, and desperately cultivatedmy never-too-thriving garden of patience and endurance.When I arrived at the last measure of both, I turned to prayer,perhaps because I refused to let anything break the beautifultrust and affectionate relationship between us. I had broughther up as a terrestrial creature, and earth, unlike treetops, is aplace of mud. Therefore it was up to me to find the solution.Rima herself had absolutely nothing to tell her how to keepfrom tracking mud into a human habitation, yet every day herexpanding nature was urging her to explore her environment.She could not romp in the treetops, so she went romping inthe yard. This not only meant mud in the wet season, but toBecca's deep dismay, it also meant broken over and crushedplants, especially the huge and handsome taros, of which sev-eral flourishing clumps surrounded the two sides of the house.Rima soon had them looking as if a herd of elephants hadpassed through them. Shouting at her or even chasing her was

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of little use—she took both as forms of encouragement andmerely romped the more wildly. The truth was, and it cameout very clearly later on, the juvenile primate is gifted with anamount of sheer physical energy that has to be observed andfelt to be credited.

There seemed no way of saving any fragile vegetation nearthe house, but I did finally hit upon a fairly satisfactory solu-tion to the muddy feet problem. Once a week I cut enoughbig banana leaves to cover the worst of the muddy paths.Rima was just as happy to run and romp over the clear softbanana leaves as she was in the mud. My scolding and impa-tience with her stopped and, likewise, so did her unhappinessat being rudely wiped hand and foot every time she came tothe hammock from an outdoor play. We were happy and inperfect harmony again. And Rima was as relieved as I, for shenever failed to curl up on my lap and chortle in her throat herlittle half-song, half-chant of happiness in reconciliation aftera scolding or, very rarely, a shaking. A shaking was a veryserious chastisement, apparently used by monkey mothersonly in extreme cases. At least, that was always Rima'sresponse. "I hope you realize what a terribly harsh punish-ment you have inflicted upon me!" was her comment, butshe did obey more readily, at least for a time, after beingshaken.

As Rima became more active out of doors, so at the sametime she moved more freely inside. Although out-of-doorstree-climbing remained unattractive to her, she did mastergoing up the ladder into the loft all on her own. At first tryingonly the first two or three rungs, then swinging rather awk-wardly back down, she at last went rapidly up all the way. Thisconquest of the ladder was inspired by her real fondness forthe loft as a play area. Indeed, it must have been ideal for ayoung house-reared monkey. Besides many piles of boxes andbooks to climb over and explore, there were ropes, some withends even hanging within reach. At first taken up by Jan orBecca, she learned to go up and play there by herself, or evenfinally with the cat. She had eventually learned that he would

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play with her for a short time, if she played what was for hervery gently. Goldie would spar with her and even frolic a bit ifshe controlled herself enough not to seize his tail or soft fur.This was usually too great a demand for Rima. Sooner or latershe would pinch his tail or grab a handful of fur, and Goldiewould come fleeing down the ladder, but after the one badfall, she never made the mistake of hanging on and beingdragged down the ladder with him.

What she enjoyed most was to have Becca and Jan both upthere with her. Then, with two more "monkeys" to join in,she had the best play of her life. She never tired, as they bothdid; Jan once pretended falling asleep to try to stop the play,but Rima teased her by leaping on her mercilessly and whenthat did not suffice to "waken" her, Rima actually priedJan's eyes open, gently but successfully, with long skinny butdexterous fingers.

She did finally learn to come down the ladder alone, butalong the inside using only her arms, whereas in the ascent shewalked up human-style using all fours. Backing down hu-manwise was apparently not natural to her. She did quicklylearn to come down by way of my hammock tie rope, whichwas easily reachable from under the eaves. She would amuseherself by going up just past or just over my head, squeezingunder the eaves into the loft, and then coming back the sameroute. But as we watched her develop we could never forgetthat in many ways Rima was as much a terrestrial animal as wewere. Although evolution had built her a body for great easeand skill in the tree tops, her little mind and soul were stillquite terrestrial. She was ever conservative about climbingand heights. And in turn I can confess I have never watched amonkey troupe at home in the trees without a sizeable twingeof envy rippling across my soul. Undoubtedly, all the higherprimates share this psychic ambivalence with respect to life inthe trees and life on the ground.

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Juvenile Mischief

Marimba practice had been a part of the day's routine forBecca and me for the last three or four years. It began with asmall single keyboard instrument carried in on an Indian'sback twelve days over the trails from Guatemala. Havingslowly mastered the primitive Indian-manufactured instru-ment, we gave it away to the young men who had been ourteachers and bought a double keyboard and much larger in-strument from a regular factory near the state capital. This

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beautiful "baby grand" of rare fine woods and made by pro-fessionals demanded effort from us. At first we could find noone who knew how to play the double keyboard, but at lastthree youths turned up, one from the San Quintin, and then,two brothers from the Zapata ejido beyond the two rivers. Wewere soon making good progress and liked to practice undis-turbed for at least an hour every day. What to do with Rima?She would not hear of me going off anywhere outside withouther. And if I did, she climbed up as high on the hammockcords as possible where she could look out along the path andkept up her guttural scoldings and squawkings, varied onlywith infantile, broken-hearted pleadings. There was no ques-tion of music practice in the face of her protest.

Jan volunteered: "I'll take her for a walk while youpractice." Becca and I recognized the nobleness of this offerand seized upon it. But Rima was not easily deceived. Much asshe loved an outing with Jan, she much preferred it with me.Jan for a sleeping "mother," but I for a jaunting—andfeeding—"mother.'' She refused to go with Jan, so we had todevelop higher deceptions. I would pick her up and let herslip into the carrying, or as I called it, the "papoose" sling.Then Jan would join us in a walk down to the swimming holein the creek, only five minutes away. There I would pretend Iwas going to go in swimming. Rima understood as I wentdown and stood beside the water, and she would allow herselfto be passed to Jan, whereupon I slipped past and back up tothe marimba, which was kept in the greenhouse. Rima wouldsometimes resist this trick but eventually, when it had becomepart of a rather full routine of varied activity for her, shewould simply join Jan at the sound of marimba, that is, acceptmy music practice as her time to be with Jan.

First Jan would take her out into the jungle and along thecreek bank path up to the beach. On these quiet walks Rimaseems to have learned to love the silent shady forest, thoughshe kept some of her early awe of it. She taught Jan to explorefor edible leaves, but as neither of them knew what was what,Jan ended up by bringing her back to the greenhouse, where

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tender and crisp succulent leaves of purslane were aplenty,plus such interesting exotics as ramie leaves (a nettle relative).Munching eagerly on her treat, Rima would pass us musicianswith hardly more than a glance.

Having walked and snacked, Rima's next step was inde-pendent exploration. Between the main orchard path and thegreenhouse was an overgrown area bordering both sides of adrainage ditch. Among wild cannas and tame arums, taro,that is, grew a beautiful young Black zapote tree. This treebecame Rima's first learning-to-climb tree. At first she pre-ferred just to romp wildly and destructively, more or less,among and up and down and over the cannas and taro, in-evitably bending and breaking some of them. Why all thisromping about along the ground when there were perfectlysuitable low trees for climbing? Jan tried for some time tointerest her in climbing in this very inviting young Blackzapote, but Rima said "No." She couldn't understand whyJan insisted on placing her up on the lowest branches of thetree. She much preferred racing about in the low growingplants, swinging on them, and breaking, or at least bendingthem over. I finally tried, at a somewhat later date, to interesther in learning to climb a young breadfruit. I wanted verymuch to have a photo of her in it, but no, she was still quiteuninterested in becoming a tree climber.

Perhaps Rima was too young to be placed up in a treealone? After all, we stayed on the ground, and there was nodoubt that she identified completely with us. At this time sheactually kept close track of me at the marimba. She would, inher romping, pass close by and watch us playing. If she felttime was up, she would rush over and climb up on my should-ers. This annoyed Becca, especially if time was not up; wepracticed usually for about forty minutes. She would threatenRima with the marimba sticks, telling her to go play somemore. Rima might then voluntarily slide down and rush off toJan and some more play, or she might simply refuse and scoldBecca for threatening her. As noted, Rima looked upon seven-teen-year-old Becca as her equal and playmate and nothing

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more. She would not back down without a scolding or athreat, and in a tussle gave tit-for-tat with her very sharp littleteeth. Likewise, if a thoughtless or perverse visitor thoughtcovertly to tease or use force against her after accepting her onhis knee, she quickly revealed his meanness with a loudsquawk and a bite if at all merited.

Her biting we now understood—unless carelessly or wil-fully provoked by bad treatment—was a signal either of hun-ger or a desire to play. While lunch was being prepared shewould begin biting my toes. It quickly became a noisy game. Iwould try to pull my feet away, but in the hammock places toput them were limited. When she caught a toe and began bit-ing, I would cringe and squawk and shake my head from sideto side just as she did. She loved my joining in so heartily, andmy willingness, up to a point, to sacrifice my toes, but if Iseized her suddenly and bit a finger, she shrieked withmingled delight and protest. Holding was unfair—holdingher entire body, that is. So I would let her go, but not withoutgetting in a hearty squeeze of her five centimeter stub of tail asshe fled. But no doubt our uproar did assist in hurrying up anotherwise slow-to-appear meal from time to time.

She loved mealtimes. She would begin usually by eagerlytrying everything on my plate, but never rudely. She wouldalways sit decorously while we held hands in a silent grace,and wait as I offered her each item. If she liked some onething, I would give her as much as she wanted. She ate dainti-ly, and if by chance some difficult food fell on her chest shewaited to be wiped. Her mouth she would lift up voluntarilywhen it needed wiping or when she was finished eating. Like-wise she expected her slender fingers to be kept clean. If myplate did not satisfy her she would move over to Jan, and ex-amine her plate for any possible variety. Her greatest food dis-covery was corn on the cob, and this she made with Jan, as mydentition had for quite some years forced me to forego the de-lights that Rima now discovered, but never have I enjoyed eat-ing a cob of new, garden-fresh Golden Bantam corn morethan I enjoyed watching Rima, the little Spider monkey, eat-

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ing her first one. She watched Jan's method for only a mo-ment, then put her mouth down to the tender tip and began.Jan stopped eating and held it for her while Rima bit off rowon row of the tenderest kernels, stopping only for a glance upat Jan that said: "How am I doing? Sure is good, isn't it!"Becca and I laughed and laughed but for once Rima did notjoin in. She was too happy with her discovery even to laugh.

IT WAS NOT ALWAYS POSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND RIMA'Smotivations and I always hesitated to write off as sheer mis-chief some odd response which might, while appearing assuch, actually be something else. As we have observed, thebiting that we at first saw as rather unpleasant mischief wasmerely a juvenile monkey's invitation to play, and as juvenilemonkeys play rough, biting was the normal invitation.

For a brief period, coming upon some of her own dung thatI had not had an opportunity to remove, Rima would pop it inher mouth. I was properly disgusted, and scolded her. Shepromptly stopped and would merely stare at it, and avoid it. Ifinally decided that putting the dung into her mouth was aspontaneous response to a situation she would never have en-countered in nature. In the tree tops all her dung, and all thatof the others, would have fallen to the ground. She might wellhave lived her entire span of fifteen to twenty years and neverhave seen her own dung, or any monkey dung. Upon beingseverely scolded, she, as usual, came as if fleeing the uglinessof the situation, scrambling into my lap and curling up, chir-ping and chortling, in the hollow of my right arm. Peace re-established, she would resume her play, but the peace oncebroken had to be restored ere life could go on.

Her treatment of toilet paper was, apparently, another caseof pure mischief, yet mingled in her enjoyment of unrolling itand creating chaos with it, including biting and shredding. Icame to feel there might be a trace of pure hostility towardsomething she had learned to associate so intimately with allthe misery of dysentery. She was, in her own way, enjoyingsome revenge upon it.

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Her pulling the table cloth off, along with whatever dishesmight be set upon it, was somewhat more difficult to inter-pret as anything at all but mischief, pure and very simple. Thesituation tempted her because usually the "table'' was only apair of low benches set beside my hammock with an old innerbeehive cover for the top. Becca would place any one of severalof her embroidered covers upon it, and the game would beginwith Rima slipping in and jerking it all off on to the floor asshe fled. Everyone scolded her, which apparently only made itmore of a game, and if we did not divert her or actually holdher, she would end up with both dishes and food on the floor.But here again, to her it was all just more play, and if we choseto define it as mischief, then it was up to us to define alsowhere play ends and mischief begins.

It is certain that Rima knew no distinctions. Any activitythat led to romping and tussling, even at some cost of prop-erty or peace, was legal play to her. Even the tomcat graduallylearned how overriding was the play instinct in her, andthough his kittenhood was too far behind him for any whole-hearted sharing, he did at last learn to accept her overtures,returning a stiff paw poke when she became too rough, as shealways did for his taste. This was in part because all her play,except with the dog—was with adult "monkeys," and allthree of us were rough with her, and made no attempt torestrain her responses except for the biting. Becca would letRima seize her by her long hair and swing on a lock in front ofher face while only tickling her to make her let go, and bothlaughing the while. Goldie the tomcat might well insist thatsuch hair-pulling, which in his case included tail-pulling, wasnot legitimate kitten play. He would gallop off in mingleddisgust and bewilderment, but he never attacked her.

ONE MORNING RAMON TURNED UP WITH ANOTHER BABYmonkey, this time a howler. It was the first young of thehowlers I had ever seen—and how strange it was, how utterlydifferent from Rima.

As with Rima, Ramon was not feeding or caring for it pro-

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perly. He had no nursery bottle, and had simply tried to pourcorn gruel down its throat with a spoon. It spent its wholehour with us exploring for food and drink, whining in acurious high-pitched tone I had never heard from Rima, like aphonograph running down! Its face and head were so dif-ferent from hers it seemed hardly a monkey at all, but rathersome sphinxlike fairytale infant monster. The very long thicktail added force to this overall impression of unmonkeynessbecause we were so used to our tailless Rima. I realized with ashock how the tail made Ramon's little howler a mere animalwhereas our tailless Rima was a monkey person. This was evenmore shocking when it became apparent to me that the infanthowler's head and face showed an almost Caucasian sharpnessof profile to Rima's decidedly African facial angle. And thedistinction could even be pursued into the area of personalityand psyche: Rima, the carefree volatile African, and the littlehowler, the morose heavy-handed Caucasian.

Later I read how even the Indians who fill their huts with allspecies of monkeys as pets find the howlers the least re-sponsive and the shortest-lived, but one promptly forgetsthese shortcomings when on a moonlit jungle night theybegin their wonderful chorale. Certainly no other primatehymn to Nature and the God of Nature—including thehymns of man—expresses more basically and forcefully thecommon primate bond to the tropical forest.

A genial disposition is a great gift and brain power like-wise, but neither denotes genius. The howler, which perhapsshould be called the choral monkey, is a creature of genius.(Most naturalists have had negative responses to the how-ler—except for W. H. Hudson who, together with Ivan San-dersen, shares my high estimate of their choral genius.)

Rima would have nothing to do with the whining littlemonster. She kept with me in the hammock and pretended itwas not there. Perhaps this was in part due to her fear ofRamon. He was one of the few human beings she feared.When he came near she cringed and whimpered. Did sheassociate him with the murder of her mother, or merely with

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the string tied to her leg, the nights rolled up in the blanket,and the forced feeding? Perhaps she sensed the youth's terri-ble instability of soul (he had been on drugs from the age ofeleven), and shared with us at her own elemental level some ofour tensions in his presence.

Be that as it may, the little howler, after vainly searchingevery corner of our house, went out and sprawled on his bellyon the path.

"It is starving," I said."Impossible, it eats maize gruel," Ramon protested."No milk?""I have no milk.""Here, let me give you some powdered milk—it cannot

survive while a baby, you know, without milk." He acceptedthe milk and promised to begin at once feeding it to hismonkey.

"It knows how to drink," he reassured us.The next day it died. And Ramon was so graceless as to say

our gift of milk had killed it. (Later we learned that the localcurandero had told him this.)

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The Outside World Interferes

About this time in Rima's life, after she had been with ussome five and a half months, which made her over six monthsold, we were experiencing a mounting tension over our land-holding. Having "bought" it in the name of our Indianfriend in complete confidence, it was now, after some twoyears, being brought home to us with more pressure every daythat we might well be forced off. This led to more and more ofthose overlong intense discussions that Rima especially hated.

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She would retreat to her place of security curled up in my rightarm resting on my lap, to watch and listen. As the discussiongrew more heated she would become more restless. One dayshe ended up defecating on me, and in disgust I gave her toJan, who took her out for a walk along the creek path, whereshe soon quieted.

I hated to see her falling victim to our social frictions andtensions, but there seemed no avoiding what was now clearlyhappening. Ramon, whom she still recognized as the only en-emy she had ever had, began to play a larger role in the landstruggle, sometimes on our side, sometimes not. Rima trem-bled in my arms from the time he entered until he left, butshe now began to recognize the several brothers who were try-ing to force us off also as enemies. We tried to remove her as amatter of routine whenever any of them turned up, but thiswas not easy because Jan felt she needed to be present on suchoccasions. I felt especially sad because whenever we were leftalone and could live our old hermitlike life for a few peacefuldays, Rima expanded spiritually even as she was developingphysically. I once discovered that she had joined me in listen-ing to the exquisite yet piercing antiphonal singing of a pair ofwrens. She chuckled in her pleasure, and I suspect it was all ofher own, for she gave no sign that she was aware that I, too,was enchanted by the explosive bursts of bird melody. And ithad been the same when she laughed at the frogs croaking.

She did share my flute with me, but I doubt that she at allenjoyed it as music. She was, rather, fascinated by the mysteryof it and saw in it a challenge. That is, she recognized that itwas not a part of me, yet seemed to understand that I some-how caused the sound. Whatever it was that motivated hershe usually tried to interfere with my practice on it, biting itand even grasping it with both her hands and feet. I suppose,as with the dog, it may have "hurt her ears," as it is said. Yetshe did not seem so much to be trying to stop me from playingas attempting to make it give out sound herself. As I havenoted, her little teeth marks are still clearly visible on themouth piece and as they are the only daily physical reminders

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of her left, I shall never bother to remove them. They seem toshow that what she really wanted was to learn to play the re-corder!

Possibly the psychologists would write it down to mere pri-mate imitative curiosity as when she came upon some loosesalt and ate enough to cause her to vomit. She was alwaysready to try a new food, but the musical instrument seems tome to carry us onto higher levels of consciousness. With themarimba her response was simply to allow it as somethingBecca and I did every morning at a certain hour while she wentoff to walk and romp with Jan. In the instrument itself sheshowed not the slightest interest. At the end of about thirty toforty minutes, she would come running and climb up mypant leg onto my shoulder to tell us time was up. If we insistedshe was too early she would grant us another five or ten min-utes and then promptly reappear and we would stop.

She was certainly growing more independent every day, yetwas evidently even more trusting that we would keep all ourcommitments toward her. And we never failed her so long aswe were able to live in our jungle homestead.

It was in October, when she was at least eight months old,that she first showed a startled recognition of the presence ofher own kind. Late one afternoon the small group of Spidermonkeys remaining up the mountain suddenly burst out intoone of their loud barking contests, or mutual scoldings. Inever was able to decide just what was transpiring in thoseoutbursts. At any rate this group was very close to the edge ofthe clearing, and very loud and sudden in their outburst.Rima stopped her play, stared a moment, then clambered upinto my arms as at any other sudden strange noise. I could nottell whether or not she really recognized the source. None ofthe monkeys was visible, and as often all was quickly over.Perhaps Rima felt no special response any more than she hadwhen Ramon brought his little howler to visit. Rima certainlyshowed no recognition of the presence of a close relative, butthen Ramon was for her a serious problem, and no doubt de-flected her attention from his little monkey.

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Later I learned that next to the howlers the Spider monkeyshave the most highly developed larynx, which would explaintheir loud barking as well as Rima's considerable powers ofexpression from the sweetest of liquid birdlike calls to harshguttural scoldings.

We began to wonder at this time what was to be done withRima if, as seemed more and more likely, we had to abandonour homestead. We discussed the possibility of taking her upon the mountainside and leaving her to join the Spiders.

"But she's not a monkey," Becca was quick to point out,and that settled us; whatever happened, wherever we headed,Rima would have to go with us. And there did come the dayand the hour when we all saw clearly how right Becca hadbeen. Rima was a monkey only in her physical appearance; inher spiritual nature she had become near human.

I am aware that animal and child psychologists must beallowed their smile, or worse, over this "anthropomorphic"statement. I am aware that all young mammals to some extentreveal surprisingly close affinities with human beings. TheAdamsons' baby lions* have proved that such is true even ofthe great felines, but I must insist that with the infant mon-key, likewise the infant ape, there is a common ground that noother infant mammal enters. Perhaps an illustration will helpmy point. All infant mammals love play, and will play withhuman beings, but an infant monkey rises to beyond sharedplay to a realm describable only in such terms as trust andlove. And beyond all other mammals the infant anthropoidhas at its command ways of expressing its love and trust. Andit was on this foundation that spiritually, due in large measure,no doubt, to our careful response, Rima became so human.

This is not to say that had we had to receive another monkeyinto our home at this time, Rima would not have accepted itand worked out a relationship with it. It is to say that anothermonkey could not have become as close to her as we were.

Toward the end of October we finally received a high and

*Adamson, Joy, Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds, Pantheon, New York.

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official delegation, which made it clear we must give up allnotions of an Indian holding legal title to land in Chiapas,Mexico. We could keep our little corner (three to five acres) ofbotanical garden but our friend Tomas was to have nothing;the rancher descendants of the Conquistadores were to haveall he had legally applied for and been granted and more,some five hundred acres in all.

This came as a shock because only a week before in townthey had told him he was to have the land we had helped himto apply for and survey. It led to a lot of heated discussion,however, under more crowded conditions inside and outsideour house as well, than any of us had ever witnessed. When Irealized Tomas had been cruelly and unjustly deceived, I de-nounced the entire proceedings in the name of the variousMexican revolutions, but I did nothing to terminate the meet-ing. It was Rima who did that good office. All through thesteadily mounting voices she had become more and more rest-less until I feared she would leap from my lap. The house wasfar too crowded for her to escape, but apparently escape wasnot on her mind. She might easily have raced up the ham-mock cords and slipped under the eaves into the empty andquiet loft as she often did.

Instead she became furious and began biting my fingers. Inplay, as to hasten a meal, she had often nibbled my toes, butthis was an act of pure anger such as I had never before seen. Istood up and, passing the three chief officials, shook handswith the two of them nearest, saying "Goodbye, gentlemen, Ihave to be excused." [These men revealed to me for the firsttime in actual physical presence the nature of the unholy alli-ance of the whites (only one percent) and the Mestizos (seven-ty percent) that governs Mexico to the exclusion of the pureIndians (twenty-nine percent of the total).]

Rima had quieted. Immediately I stood up. I passed outinto the backyard, reassuring her with hand and voice. By thetime we were out of the house she was relaxed as if nothing atall had happened to disturb her. I heard the officials depart-ing. Jan said they stared at each other, then the chief an-

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nounced, "I guess we are finished here," and they left with-out saying goodbye to her; of course they would never knowthat the meeting had been terminated by an eight-month-oldtailless female Spider monkey who hated all forms of ugliness,especially noisy ones.

Back with the governor they reported I had "insulted"them. I thought about this strange accusation, for two of thethree had shaken my hand as I said, "Goodbye, Senores."Perhaps they felt Rima's participation without understandingit. At any rate I am sure Rima agreed with my only comment:"The truth is always insulting to those who seldom if ever hearit."

This visit forced us to make our long-debated decision to tryto find a new virgin rain forest. Where? The Guiana High-lands were still referred to as "one of earth's last frontiers."This was the land of W. H. Hudson's Rima. We would headfor one of the four countries that shared the vast virgin region.As Guyana was the only English-speaking one with a progres-sive, if unsteady, political life, we chose it. But after so manyyears of putting down roots, could we pull them up in amatter of days? Meanwhile, we would have to live under ten-sions we had slowly been helping to build up in the landrights struggle.

Then came the blessed Renner family. We had corre-sponded with them for many months and advised them of allour problems and uncertainties but they decided to come any-way, to see how a tropical subsistence homestead worked.And we assured them ours was working fine, or would be, ifno one drove us off it.

The Renners were rather young, she still in her twenties, hein his thirties, and with them were their twin children, a boyand a girl of eight or nine years. Rima and Becca were de-lighted with them. They had been living in a rather rural wayin recent years and felt at home on the jungle's edge. But theparents were both of deep urban origin and had little morethan a strong impulse toward rural and simple ways of life.She had taught biology in high schools whenever possible as a

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substitute. He had worked for years in an auto factory, part ofthe time to help her finish college. Apparently he had over-worked himself, especially as the twins had come along beforeeither had finished college. The hard hike from Agua Zarcaprostrated him, that is, he had collapsed when about three-quarters of the way to our house and had had to rest for half anhour. As it turned out, their visit appeared to be for the pur-pose of helping him to improve his health more than for any-thing else. He never showed any serious intention of home-steading in the tropics. They did not stay long.

We proposed that they join us for the Guiana Highlandstropical frontier, but it came out that their funds were mainlypromises from her well-to-do parents and applied only if Mex-ico proved suitable. When they saw we were faced with aban-doning our years of work, they confessed they had no fundsfor South America. This was a disappointment because tobegin over we would need at least one other family, and theywere very compatible, with their autoharp and songs, and shewas teaching her children to play the recorder.

They did provide a wonderful easing of tension for us,embattled as we were by people who had every reason to do usserious mischief in our helpless isolation. We had resisted tothe last three hundred or more years of tradition. We had, inshort, defied the Conquistadores by attempting to return asmall parcel of the conquered lands to the original occupants,a mistake no doubt. But with a second American family pres-ent, we would be unmolested.

When it came time for them to leave, the little girl, Ilse,cried at parting with Rima, and Rima watched her out ofsight. At least we had witnessed another child come to loveour little jungle orphan.

One day not long after their departure I noticed somethinglarge and gleaming white in Rima's mouth—holding hermouth open it proved to be her first permanent tooth.

At this time she also began going to a certain small palmtree close by the back corner of the house when she had to re-lieve herself, even to urinate. No doubt she begins to grow

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up, we thought. How to take her the thousands of miles to anew jungle on a new continent? And not only Rima, the mon-key's child, but Smoky the dog as well, plus Goldie the cat?How could we ever do what we must do if we were to keepfaith with our life in the tropical forest? God would have tolead and sustain us, else I, with a damaged heart that had keptme a semi-invalid for nine years, might not even get as far asAgua Zarca, the nearest village.

We went on working out of habit even though we knew inour hearts all was over. I took Rima gluing as usual, to protectthe young fruit trees from the leaf cutter ants. She even rodein her sling in perfect ease and trust one morning while I usedmy machete to cut out weeds from Jan's youngest African oilpalms. Rima had no fear of the vegetation falling right infront of us under the long swinging cuts of the sharp machete.She never murmured or whimpered, but clung tight, contentto be where Nature told her she belonged—clinging fast toher parent, regardless.

As we finished we cut several of the tall fat sugar cane stalksnearby, and took them home for squeezing on the new canepress. It was small and hand-operated but in fifteen minutesgave us two quarts of thick green and richly sweet, frothyjuice. Rima now drank it eagerly from a cup, the froth cling-ing to her light moustache and hairy chin.

We were asked by friends to take some souvenir photos ofour place now that it was clear we must abandon everything tothose whose only declared accusation against us was that wehad been so foolish as to plant our gardens on the site of theirstables! I pointed out to Jan how startlingly this odd state-ment smacked of the ancient conflict recorded at the roots ofZoroastrianism, the conflict between the peasant or horticul-turist, and the nomad-herder. The "People of Light" in Zoro-aster's teaching are identified with the former, and the"People of Darkness" with the latter. Man as centaur surelyhas little use or space for man as mere biped, and one maywonder whether or not the heliocopter-borne new "cavalry-man" actually feels the same sense of pure power as the old

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cavalryman mounted on a powerful and spirited horse.Rima was utterly uninterested in posing for her photo. I

wanted most of all some of her in a tree, but she refused, sim-ply leaping down and racing off over what she deemed propermonkey playground, that is anything not too obviously a tree.As a result, I wasted half a roll of film. We did succeed in get-ting some good pictures of the place, and later we had friendswho succeeded somewhat in capturing Rima on film, but notof her in the trees.

Rima had a remarkable face even as a baby, but now as sherapidly matured as a juvenile her face became stronger thanever, for Rima showed both chin and forehead. Of all the pri-mates, only the gibbon and orangutan—other than man—aresupposed to show marked development of the forehead. Tothis list should be added the Spider monkey. A study of thephoto of the skull of a mature monkey would reveal that theSpider monkey compares favorably with the skulls of bothgibbons and orangutans. Actually, it would be unfair not toadd that several other species of monkeys appear to share withman, orangutan, and gibbon the forehead thought to be theseat of the reflective and meditative powers. I limit my list tothe New World, and name the squirrel monkey, which is saidto have a larger brain in proportion to its body than man; thewoolly monkey with its strangely negroid human face; thecapuchin, claimed to be the chimpanzee of the monkeys forits imitative powers; and finally, the rare and little known go-eldis monkey which seems to share more than any of theothers Rima's firm mouth line. Indeed, from the one not verygood picture I have of the goeldi, also known as the "Calli-thrix," the entire face resembles the Spider monkey, althoughit is said to be placed in an I.Q. classification closest to thecapuchin.

It is the woolly monkey that is placed closest to the Spiders.Both the goeldi and the woolly do seem to share with theSpider the firm mouth and chin; however, there the resem-blance becomes less marked, as the Spider excels all others inits gentleness and affection. It is a curious fact that whereas

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specialists rank the Old World monkeys as surpassing the Newin intelligence, they do give credit for stronger affection anddevotion to humans to the New Worlders. With my limitedexperience, I would dispute only one statement in their over-all list of comparisons, and that is where they say that the NewWorld monkey as a whole is lacking not only intelligence butalso gaiety. Certainly no monkey anywhere could have sur-passed Rima in gaiety. Becca's chosen adjective, as noted, was"fun-loving." Perhaps there is an element of unconscious pre-judice in this owing to the Old World monkey being closeranatomically to man in dentition and nasal form. It is alsoamong the Old World forms that the predatory monkeys arefound that unhappily so much more resemble man both aspredators and as "organizers." New World monkeys have nospecies that come close to the baboons and macaques in eitherbrutal aggressiveness or tightly knit, hierarchial social life.And the carefree Spiders seem to be the most gentle anddemocratic of all the New World forms, even excelling inequality of the sexes.

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Rima Flourishes

30 OCTOBERRima grows up, frolics by herself, upstairs and down, indoorsand out.

3 NOVEMBERRima and I go tree gluing in morning. She helps Jantransplant in afternoon. When near the forest she now rompsin the lower vegetation—no tree climbing—only shrubs thatbend with her weight.

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13 NOVEMBERThe little girl (Ilse) and Becca and Rima make a cheerful trio.Rima with me in the hammock hears the chatting down at thecreek bathing pool and calls to them from high up in thehammock cords above my head. They can hear her throatychuckle-chortle and call up to her. Later she rushes out tomeet them as they move up toward the house and begs to bepicked up by Ilse. (Rima has no interest in bathing althoughmonkeys are supposed to swim when necessary.)

18 NOVEMBERWith people Rima is a great show-off, but meets most, noweven the Lacandons—with pure affection and trust. Proud,wicked people cannot, however, hide from her. With theproud she persists in demanding a come-down even thoughthey openly reject her advances, much as she persisted untilaccepted by the cat and dog. With the truly wicked andmalicious she keeps a good distance, not letting them touchher. She seems especially uncomfortable with the mentallyunstable.

29 NOVEMBERRima flourishes.

Two new foods now came into Rima's experience, one as adirect result of the last visitors. They had brought in a hugesack of unshelled peanuts, and were, of course, not interestedin taking it out with them. Rima was instantly fascinated andspent many happy times with them. As always she watchedcarefully to see how we handled the new food, then did like-wise, but she still lacked enough permanent teeth to crack oreat peanuts. Undaunted even by the discovery she could noteat them, she nevertheless persevered in learning to crackthem. It required much time and patience before she suc-ceeded with that first nut, but she rapidly discovered that byholding the nut in just one right position she did have teethenough to crack nine out of ten of them. When we saw thatafter all her patient effort the kernel was still beyond her, Janchewed it and let her take the mashed nut from her lips, adevice Rima had long since taught us with other too tough

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foods. But she always insisted on cracking her share of thenuts, and obviously as much for the simple pleasure of thework as for the food. If she found a stray nut she would alwaysstop and patiently crack it, then nibble on it in vain, andfinally carelessly abandon it.

Lettuce was her second food discovery about this time. Wehad tried to grow lettuce at all seasons and under many experi-mental conditions. Our successes had not averaged fifty per-cent, perhaps not even thirty percent, for lettuce is far fromhappy in any season in a tropical rain forest. But often whenwe made a crop it was a good one. Rima was now present forour first good lettuce crop since she joined us. Lettuce—thesheer leafy, green goodness of it—overwhelmed her. If thediscovery of peanuts had fascinated and engrossed her, lettucecharmed and delighted her. It was as if she found its crisp,tender goodness somehow unbelievable—as if it were in trutha miracle. She could not refuse another leaf no matter howmany she had eaten. The Spiders are said to be among themost frugivorous of monkeys, but Rima's response to lettuceseemed to indicate they must have a fine relish for tenderleaves as well. We knew already how fond she was of eatingflowers with certain tender, leafy petals, and during marimbapractice, Jan had taught her to munch purslane, but sherecognized instantly in lettuce a higher food than eitherflowers or purslane.

ALMOST ALWAYS NOW, WHENEVER THE LITTLE TROUPEof mountain monkeys came down close and broke out intotheir yelping barks, Rima would pause a moment and listen,but only for a moment, then go back to her play. Actually, shewould spend more time watching the swallows, when theyhappened to be feeding on the wing close to the house, thanshe ever did listening to monkeys. The graceful motions of theswallows pleased her deeply, though I never heard her com-ment on them as she would on frogs or birds singing. She ac-cepted the swallows' flight in silent admiration, much as she

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had her first awareness of the sun-bathed treetops when firstlying on her back on my lap in the hammock up at the creekbeach.

19 DECEMBERMonkeys heard up the mountain—Rima listens. Then resumesher play, leaping, jumping up and down—this a way of askingfor play; and then cavorting with Becca, clinging to her skirtwhile Becca whirls as would a three-or-four-year-old humanchild, which is about her relative age.

We now seemed forgotten for a time, which was strange be-cause as soon as people knew we were leaving they began tocome for things we might be giving away. We considered hav-ing an auction sale, which was the usual way in Vermont whena farm family had to go. But we soon realized that too few lo-cal people had ready money for such a course to be practical.Those very few with cash would buy up quickly and cheaplyour few valuables and the rest would have to be given away.We offered for sale the recently acquired sugar cane press butno one wanted to pay the price of a hand-operated all-ironmill. So we gave the cane juice mill to the children of AguaZarca who really didn't need it, as most of them were blessedwith jaws and teeth nearly as efficient as our little mechanicalmill.

The marimba we could have sold but decided instead togive it to Alex and Juan, the ejido brothers who had taught ussome of our best pieces. They had tried to find support forbuying one by forming a youth cooperative, but there was notenough interest or money. Then, at the last minute, the type-writer went to Jamie B. or "Baron" B. who, being of the old-est and original family of the local gentry, had quiteaccurately prophesied that we and our Indians would lose out,flatly stating: "Feudalism will win." This was in Chiapas,Mexico, in 1972 A.D., and we had held some reasonabledoubts that it could happen. "Baron" B. was proven correct,and for five hundred pesos took our very much usedtypewriter, pleased with his bargain.

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Probably Christmas and the pre-fiesta preparations keptpeople away. At any rate, we enjoyed the respite to collect ourwits and the forces needed to tear up the last roots of eightyears' intensive homesteading and to abandon the many near-to-bearing fruit trees.

We joked about how in another year the loft would havecollapsed on our heads just from the overload of books—better to abandon everything than succumb to such a fate.But Jan wept nonetheless— how hard she had labored at thehomestead.

We carefully sorted the books, each person being allowed afew dearest favorites, the rest going to the Bartholomew LasCasas Library founded by the Bloms in San Cristobal de LasCasas.

I doubt Rima sensed the coming break-up. Like the dog,she was perfectly content so long as she had us. Becca had justabout adjusted to the necessity of leaving Goldie, her gor-geous golden tabby tomcat, behind. As a cat he would be con-tent to remain with the house. The dog and the monkey mustgo with us. Leaving either behind became each day more un-thinkable.

Rima's participation in family activity now increased tosuch a pitch that she began to rise at 4:30 A.M., when Beccaand I breakfasted lightly and did school and literary workuntil dawn at about 6:30. Becca and I would be hardly seatedto our oatmeal and bananas when Rima would crawl outsleepily from Jan's pillow, stumble across the rough floor andclimb up into my lap, ready to share our pre-dawn breakfast.She never ate much but she almost never missed. Havingeaten, she promptly rejoined Jan in bed and went back tosleep until daybreak. Then she rose in time to tumble overJan's bedmaking, enjoying especially the climbing over themounting pile of blankets and half-rolling, half-leaping off.From this point on throughout the day, she would alternatelong play periods with short naps. Simple tag seemed to beher favorite game—and she objected not at all that my way ofplaying was to give a sharp pinch of her stubby tail—that was,

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in fact, hardly big enough to grasp.Part of her extra-intense play at this time was probably due

to the long spell of chilly overcast winter weather we had priorto Christmas. Rima's response to harsh weather now was tokeep super active. Extra activity, plus the wonderful growthof hair both on her back and front, kept her warm as long asthere was no wind. And in our sheltered hollow we felt thehardest highland blows as only a rare day, or night, of infre-quent gusts. Her winter fur now became a thick wooly coatbeneath, protected outside by long silky hairs made to shedwater. In direct sun her blackest hair showed a reddish bronzeshine and on the front darkened only slightly to a grayishbuff.

On coldest days her long skinny "toes" would feel very coldto the touch, and I would seize a foot and rub it vigorouslybetween my hands. Rima accepted this as an odd form ofplay, but after some mingled pleasure she would utter chor-tles of protest and flee. I doubt she was at all aware of the coldtoe-fingers. We gave her all the fresh pressed cane juice lacedwith lime juice she could drink, which was a great deal, andshe flourished.

About this time she became aware of the curiously highvalue we placed upon the little scraps of paper we so carefullyattached to letters. While I was engrossed in preparing a bigbatch of outgoing mail, she would snatch whatever stamps shecould reach and run away with them, forcing us to corner herin order to save them from destruction. She would tear themif given the opportunity. I wondered about this odd reactionuntil I remembered how if any extra big mail arrived that keptall three of us deeply involved in reading and discussing theletters, she would show annoyance. In other words, she reallydisliked being left out. She took revenge on the postagestamps, or so it seemed. I suppose it is possible that some suchsnatch-and-run game is known among juvenile monkeys inthe world, but Rima never "played" it with anything else, ex-cept, on rare occasions when it was available, paper money.

Her chilly weather activity finally led her into a shocking

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escapade with a pan of dirty dishwater. As she frolicked pastJan, she suddenly reached up and pulled the nearly full pandirectly down over herself. The entire pan tipped as it fell andRima came up dripping with the water. Happily, thoughdirty, the water was not hot. I picked Rima up and dried herwith towels on their way to the laundry, and Becca donatedsome ilang-ilang flowers (the kind used in perfumes) she hadjust gathered. I rubbed Rima with the mushy fragrant flowers,which she appreciated as she also liked to eat them. And forthe rest of the afternoon she was quiet even when our friendMartin C. and his wife Rosa and little boy, Enrique, camevisiting with their usual gift of eggs. He would have supervi-sion of the cane mill we were giving to the village children,and when we were ready to depart he would go out for aplane.

The little boy and Rima often played well together al-though she was somewhat his senior in most things. The lasttime she had frightened him, although he did not cry, by bit-ing his feet. Actually, as I pointed out, she was fascinated bythe little booties he wore that his clever mother had knittedfor him. Rima was curious, and also challenged by them and,as always, used her teeth to determine just what they mightbe. I noticed that very small children who were her compara-tive juniors were easily frightened by her advances. One littlegirl burst into tears when Rima touched her, but then oneyoung woman could not stop giggling when Rima climbed upon her lap.

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Preparing to Leave

18 JANUARYRima and Becca enjoyed a big play while sun-bathing, muchtickling and tussling, and mutual laughter—incredible!

The nineteenth of January we declared Rima's birthday, asshe had been born sometime about the middle of January.We had a birthday cake for her, which she fully appreciated asshe had long since made the happy acquaintance of cake. Thecandles were not new to her either, as she had once singed the

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hair on one elbow in the flame of a candle. But the rest of thefamily was deeply impressed that we had a one-year-oldSpider monkey as a member, and that close to eleven monthsof that year had been spent with us.

We had photos taken of the homestead, especially of theorchard. Several of the trees had turned out very beautifully,but I had not succeeded in capturing the bounding bouncingmonkey in a single attempt. Rima had not wanted her picturetaken and she had had her will.

She now had her will in a much more serious matter. Aftermuch discussion as to how one travels with a monkey, espe-cially on board ship, we decided Rima should have a harnessto which a strong but generously long cord could be attached.I patiently designed what seemed a comfortable, efficientharness, then even more patiently cut it out of strong clothand sewed it. But Rima refused to have anything to do with it;she even refused to let me try it on her. As we had never useddecisive force against her, I declined to begin.

"She'll fall overboard if we travel by ship," Becca warned."I haven't a doubt of it," I answered."And no captain is going to stop for a monkey," Jan

pointed out."Probably not," I agreed gloomily.

WE HAD AT LAST SET A DATE AND, AS WITH ALL DATES,once set it came galloping down upon us.

I tried to patch and waterproof the old tent we had used inthe move eight years (to the week) before. But Rima quicklysettled that attempt also. Every time she leaped upon thetent, a new hole was torn; she obviously saw a tent as a newand exciting playground.

"It's no use," I reported glumly. "She tears holes fasterthan I can patch the old ones."

"The tent must be rotten," Jan suggested."Yes. Guess we'll have to make a new one, something to do

if we have to wait in Las Margaritas."

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We had received a generous offer of an empty house in thevillage of that name in the highlands near a small city wherewe could quietly and unhurriedly make final preparations forleaving Mexico and seeking a new jungle home in SouthAmerica. I still had the original pattern for the Royce semi-pyramidal tent.

"O.K., I'll make a new extra-strong one," I said."And extra-waterproof!" Becca added. The old one had

not kept them dry during the nearly two months we had spentmaking a clearing and building the first hut.

"And Rima can help you!" Jan offered."No doubt!" I said.About this time we had some more visitors from the United

States, an artist couple from Iowa, but he by birth a Bulgar-ian. They were "doing" the Lacandon country, and had in-cluded us without realizing our days were numbered. Withthem was "Baron" B., our real enemy as far as the propertywas concerned, the feudal proprietor trying to claim an oldSpanish grant to many square kilometers of the Lacandonlands. Yet we had somehow managed to love him. Half Irish-American by a Virginia mother, he spoke English fluently,and while ousting us, fully respected us. He had assumed wewere Protestant missionaries and hoped soon to cleanse thearea with an image of the Mexican virgin up at the cave. Inexplaining our plight, I pointed at him, whereupon Rimasprang up and gave him a sharp bite on a finger. He winced,and laughed, as we all did. Rima had made a point; we werein fact Catholic missionaries in the original meaning.

Then a strange thing happened. Within an hour, twofriends of Ramon, unannounced and unknown, arrived. Thefirst, John by name, came limping in wearing a torn shirt andragged-edged shorts: he was barefoot and mudsplattered,handsome, white, young and blond, with hazel-green glitter-ing eyes that betrayed heavy drug addiction.

At once he announced that he was the reincarnation of acertain Maya warrior returned from death to defend the La-candons. I restudied his face, and realized with a feeling hard

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to describe to anyone who has not been face to face with amadman, that John was indeed insane.

I had faced such men before but never outside an institu-tion. What to do? I realized I must do as I had done success-fully inside the institutions; I must act toward him as if allwere well. First, I washed the dirty, infected gash he had onone foot with strong soap and bandaged it, listening the whileto his mad discourse about his being the returned Maya war-rior. He even had a Maya name to make it all more real. It wasthree to four days before he would reveal his own name. Bythen we had succeeded in persuading him that Maya arrowsand spears simply would not help the Lacandons to obtain jus-tice. Something more and quite different was called for.

But, not an hour after John's arrival came Miguel, an Aztecyouth from Mexico City. He was very tall, slender, and hand-some, with long black waving hair and very efficient highleather military boots. They knew each other and Miguel hadan immediately quieting effect upon John. Both were sur-prised to hear of our approaching departure. Ramon had nottold them.

WE WERE ALL WORKING HARD NOW TO MAKE FINALpersonal choices of books to take; the rest, several hundredvolumes, had to be packed for shipment out to Blom's li-brary, named in honor of Las Casas, the Spanish Dominican,who, like ourselves, had discovered how difficult it is to standup for the rights of the Indian. He had to learn, as we had tolearn, that the conquered have no rights and even more re-markable, that their children have no rights, nor their chil-dren's children, not in Mexico, at any rate. Surely of allknown ways to come into possession of lands, conquest is byfar the worst—unless, of course, you are able to exterminatethe dispossessed quickly and thoroughly.

We finally had the books ready to start their journey out.Agua Zarcans were now coming and going every day in hopesof gifts out of our humble possessions, especially the kitchen

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ware and tools. Among the women, the rather battered washtubs were probably the most coveted objects of all our house-hold items.

Some came who were interested in such plants as weretransportable, cacao trees especially, and Jan's little green-house was rapidly stripped.

Then, just when the last of the books were finally on theirway, the problem we all had refused to face until the last hourfinally had to be solved. What to do about the various bookmanuscripts? Many of them were mine, which had accumu-lated partly because of the long eight years of semi-invalidismin the hammock. Because sleep for me was dangerous aftermidnight, I often wrote to keep myself awake. There was anhistorical novel on the Dead Sea Scrolls filling in twenty-sixhandwritten tablets (it was in the form of a trilogy), and therewere other novels and three to four books of nonfiction."Better burn them," I said with conviction.

Both Jan and Becca said no. "Better try to ship them—boatfreight is cheap."

"But—" I protested."No burning manuscripts," Becca said."It'll take a plane just to get them out of here!" I went on."We'll have to have two planes, anyhow. There'll be

room," Jan said, which I realized was true.So we dug out the dusty, even moldy, manuscripts and

dusted and wiped and carefully packed them.Most people asked what we would do with the monkey.

Suddenly our beloved little monkey-child had become tothem a mere monkey, a problem.

"We'll take her," we told them, and they nodded, "Ofcourse."

The monkey and the dog would go with us—only the catwould stay, and he with whomever had the house. It looked asif the new occupant would be Don Ricardo, one of the Con-quistadores' peons—a strange peon, more than half-white—but a peon nonetheless in a world of the white conquerors'supremacy. He would have Becca's beautiful Goldie; cats be-

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long to houses. Everyone seemed to understand. We re-membered what had happened to Goldie's beautiful brother,whom we sold, because the two would quarrel at night, tosome other white supremacists. He had fled to escape theircountless dogs and hogs and had apparently perished in themountains.

In the midst of all the shadowy things that were happening,one very sunny incident occurred. Our spinning wheel had tobe given away and some girls from Agua Zarca wanted it, butwe had never got around to teaching any of them to spin. Onelovely, bright morning, Becca gave three of the girls a lesson.She soon had them spinning. And I had confirmed what I hadbefore suspected, that human life must always remain imper-fect where girls do not learn to spin.

Rima raced back and forth between the spinning lesson andme where I was at work putting a second coat of varnish on theold mule boxes we had used for years as clothes chests. Nowthey might just possibly serve again on jungle trails some-where in the Guiana Highlands of South America. I put twocoats of varnish on them while Rima, now catching somethingof the disturbed atmosphere, raced from one scene of unusualactivity to another. And I wondered how she would everadjust to a life of traveling, with its sometimes severe confine-ment and ever-present tension.

RAMON SUDDENLY SHOWED UP AND HIS TWO YOUNGfriends joined him. We never knew just where they werekeeping themselves or what they were doing. They came andwent sometimes together, sometimes individually. All be-haved well enough, except it was obvious that Ramon wasignoring our rule that no one use drugs on our premises. Theywere smoking cannabis up in our guest hut, so I told them itwas against our rules for guests. They would have to go else-where. An Agua Zarcan reported the next afternoon seeing along-haired person standing in the entrance to the cave. Uponhis approach the person had disappeared into the cave—

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"our" cave, where our wonderful pure water had its source—adrug den!

Then during the night I heard strangely muted voices,voices of persons talking inside the cave. It could not be any-where else. Because I had scolded them, they had actuallygone up to the cave. In "our" cavern, "la caverna SantaMaria," they had found an ideal retreat, because it was justoutside the surveyors' line, and so was still, as all the moun-tain above it, a part of the National Territory. We had beenaware that the surveyors had not included it, and when"Baron" B. had, a little slyly, inquired if we would object ifhe placed a statue of the Virgin of Guadaloupe, Mexico's ownpatron saint, inside, we had pointed out the cave was notinside the surveys. He had been much taken aback by this,and now it belonged to the drug addicts.

"Time to go," I told Jan and Becca as I explained what Ihad heard during the night. "It's not just the shadow of theold Conquistadores out of the Past; it's a new shadow verymuch out of the Present."

"Ramon brought them!" Becca was angry. "The cave andour creek are polluted!"

"He also bought us Rima, don't forget." I said. But sheturned away. "Headhunters in front of her, soul-killers be-hind," I thought.

22 JANUARY

We are all three happy the place will not be abandoned. Beccadecides to take her cat. Rima rebels violently at her travelharness.

And that was the last sentence of my last journal entry. Wedid not leave until the morning of the twenty-fourth. Beccachanged her mind once again about the cat. He stayed be-hind, but the little female Belgian police dog, Smoky, andRima, the year-old orphan Spider monkey, came with us,Rima cosy and content in her sling against my right side,Smoky on her own little feet close at Jan's heels.

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The actual departure had better be described as a rout—atthe last we were driven from the house by the crowds plun-dering the few odds and ends that had not as yet found anowner. The mob was mainly made up of the poorest and leastrestrained of the Agua Zarcan youth. In vain the peon of theranchers who was to be the new occupant tried to get the plun-derers out of "his" house. When he appealed to us, we hur-ried up our departure.

Several of Becca's best friends among the village girls car-ried the personal travel belongings, leaving us free to negoti-ate the unfamiliar new trail the Agua Zarcan youth hadopened during the last year to avoid conflicts with the ranch-ers whom they might meet on the old trail. And for me, ofcourse, it was the first trailing I had attempted in nearly tenyears. I carried only Rima.

The new trail passed close to the cave, and I could see howsomeone had felled a balsa near the entrance, half peeled itand left it. And there were other less obvious signs of tram-pling and blighting of the cavern entrance. While we hadheld onto our paradise orchard and gardens, apparently allaround us had fallen under the unmistakable advance of menwhose chief mission in life seemed to be to mar all the beauti-ful things of God. The virgin vale of the Santa Maria clearlywas no longer virgin. As we crossed the rocky ravine where thewater silently welled forth to form the creek, I turned my backwithout regret upon Beauty Spoiled. The last sounds from thevale were the sounds of the cottage being plundered and strip-ped even of its last few unclaimed broken pots and rags.

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The Trek to Agua Zarca

The new trail to Agua Zarca had been very cleverly searchedout. All the way it followed the spine of a long ridge, makingfor easy and, at frequent points, even scenic walking. Beccaand her girlfriends soon disappeared ahead rather thought-lessly, but the trail was well worn and easy to follow. And closebehind us were Chan Bor and Na Bora, the only two Lacan-dons to appear for the departure. Smiling as always and pro-tective as the Lacandons always became in pure jungle, they

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kept at a little distance so that they were nearly always in sight,but leaving Jan and me and Rima and Smoky to ourselves.

Rima was soon fast asleep, Smoky always close at Jan'sheels. Now began the test of the damaged heart. How muchwould it stand of such a challenging journey, from the Lacan-don rain forest of Chiapas, Mexico, to the Guiana or Amazon-ian rain forests of South America? "For Rima the journey willbe farthest and hardest," I had written in my journal. But Ihad included myself in the thought. Would we both reachour destination, and if one must fall by the way, would it notbe better if it be little Rima? Would it not be better that shenot be an orphan twice? For Jan and Becca she would at oncebecome an impossible burden. God would know best. Per-haps it would be better if we should both go. I could not bearthe thought of life without Rima, for she had taken me backinto a lost world of innocence and simple play, joy beyond thewildest dream of all the Utopians, the lost world of the pri-mates, the world lost to man in his mad plunge into what hecalls History, his own self-created world of the Seven DeadlySins. She had also served at night as a powerfully vital lifeforce for me, cuddled close to me in the hammock, sometimeseven rousing me, it seemed, when the heart was in difficulty.

In Rima's old world of the primates there are none of theseseven ugly lies that have turned man's world into Hell. WithRima I lived in the ancient Primate Heaven. If she were to die,best we die together. Or so I thought as she now slept in per-fect trust in her sling against my ribs on the right side whilethe heart, with a badly damaged and scarred left ventricle,beat steadily enough on the left. Our glue trips had perhapsprepared us for this.

THE TRAIL IN THE DRY SEASON WAS BLESSEDLY FREE OFmud.The only difficulty was an occasional rooty stretch wherethe trail passed too close to some forest giant whose surfacefeeder roots created a network of rough cables one had tothread one's way over as if it were a giant spider's web. Other-

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wise the trail was the easiest I had ever walked in all my yearsof jungle trailing. There were not even any steep places untilthe village was within hearing distance. I enjoyed it as I hadhardly expected to, stopping to rest whenever as happenedfrom time to time, the forest opened up little eastward vistas.Through these holes in the green wall we could look down onold overgrown corn fields of the villagers, abandoned now fora year or two, but in another year to be slashed and burnedand cropped again under the destructive neolithic system wehad preached against in vain over the years. I could see nowtwo conditions I had not been aware of: how very much junglelay between us and the village of Agua Zarca, and how closethey had come to us in felling it.

On the left side we could look down into a long, deep, verywild ravine with the main range of the Sierra de la Colmena(Beehive Hills) rising very steeply out of it, a wild, deep,jungly gorge buried in shadow, and home to no one knewwhat wonderful jungle wild life.

Rima slept on, as she loved to do when snug in her sling ona walk. Chan Bor and Na Bora came up closely only when westopped, and once when I spoke of thirst they stepped off thetrail and brought me clean, good, though warm, water.

"It is not far now?" I asked.And they both said, "No, not far." I knew they would say

so even though the village was still hours away, for it is the In-dians' careful manner to try to give you the answer you desire.

Jan and Becca, though they had never been over this newlyopened trail, both agreed it could not be far, and in a fewminutes we came upon our first hog wallow, the surest sign ofa village nearby. The first wallow was old and now dry, butsoon we came to another that had a bit of real mud in the bot-tom. Then a grunt in the bushes and, around a bend, the firsthogs.

Neither Rima nor I, it must be remembered, had ever beento Agua Zarca, and this though we knew most of the people—men, women, and children—who dwelt there. But I had, inmy pioneering days, entered many a pig village. They were all

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alike, the most wretched communities yet devised by fallenman, rural slums with all the degradation of the urban varietyplus a population of swine possibly three times or even up tofive times that of humans. Somehow I had succeeded in keep-ing myself from believing my Agua Zarcan friends and neigh-bors were inhabitants of such a familiar rural slum, in no waydifferent from the dozens I had passed through and even sleptin. But with the first wallows and the first hollows, I had toprepare myself for beholding all those faces of dear old friendsand beloved little children living in the midst of an old famil-iar pig village. This was difficult, like coming down to earth,for our virgin vale, be it remembered, had been a little para-dise we had planted. And now to discover one's angel friendsdwelling in a pigstye. . . !

Rima woke up. No doubt the sound and smell of the hogs,now everywhere in and alongside the trail, had roused her,plus the fact that the trail, abruptly descending, was much theworse for the hogs. Besides their wallows in the level moistspate, they had dug around the great trees, creating mazes ofspreading, twisting roots. Then, of course, there were theirdroppings to be avoided if possible. As Jan's sight, never sincethe age of five very adequate, had during the past year or sobegun to fail her more than ever, I had to lead her carefullyover and through this obstacle course. Thus slowly, painfully,we descended to the creek with glimpses of the village itself atlast appearing upon a little bare plateau beyond. As alwaysthe hogs had rendered the approach to the water a series ofmiry wallows. One by one we crawled around these mud holesand at the creek bank sat down to remove our boots and washthem.

Pedro, the village idiot, detached himself from the crowdof children and youths on the other side, and came across tohelp us. Pedro was the youngest of the three sons of TataDomingo, Rima's favorite "grandfather." Pedro was mute,that is, he was unable to form words, making only a garble ofsounds that at their best somewhat resembled Rima's chortlesand chuckles. Pedro had been described by his two very

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handsome superior brothers as unable to speak at all, so whenhe appeared as an obvious mental defective we had not beentaken aback. Pedro had come sometimes to work alongside hisfather with a machete, but he quickly tired, or lost interest,and we had discouraged his coming. But Pedro was able to bevery helpful at home as a burden carrier. He seemed to enjoybringing in massive loads of firewood or maize or bananas, allwith no more than a tump line and his broad back. Now hetook all we were carrying across, including our boots, andcame back to help us with an outstretched hand, for the creekwas wide and swift.

Pedro liked us and trusted us and probably did not evenunderstand we were leaving forever. We had not helped himwith his speech defect, but he always tried to talk to us in hisstrangely Rimalike way, and we had helped his mother toovercome much of her bitter shame over having borne him. Itwas she who had no doubt sent him thus thoughtfully to helpus across the swift-flowing creek and climb up the steep andbroken bank into the village.

Various men and youths had during the past few days car-ried over outgoing cargo for us. Now we asked that the thingsbe brought on down to the airstrip. The huts were not ascrowded together as in most pig villages, consequently theaspect, though utterly blighted by the swine, did not givequite so complete an impression of a grandiose pigstye. Eachhut was surrounded by a stockade that in most cases kept outthe hogs, if not the chickens and dogs. Thus it was possible forthe small children to escape the hogs, and for the women toplant a chili bush or two, should so much of their gardeninginstinct survive. All the main planting had, of course, to bedone an hour's walk away from the swine-infested village, andeven at so great a distance, the active ever-hungry animalswould hunt out the planted fields and destroy the crops.

We made short work of our passage through the village, notstopping at a single household. One of the elders, who wasalso the native preacher, escorted us through and on down tothe airstrip, explaining and protesting to all whom we en-

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countered, dogs, children, hogs, and horses, that we were"true Christians." This chief convert of the missionaries hadnever been very close to us, in part because he did not have tenwords of ready Spanish, but his two remarkably handsomeand intelligent sons had been very close indeed. The eldesthad even proposed we simply move in with the village, butneither he nor anyone else out of the over one hundred adultsand youths of the village ever really understood how anyonecould actually find it impossible to live with swine.

This was all new to Rima and me, and we both stared aboutus on all sides as we made our way over the rooty, hole-filledtrail on down to the Agua Zarca airstrip. I had heard thisfavorably, even enthusiastically, described by both Jan andBecca, and was pleased to find it quite worthy of their enthu-siasm. In the first place, at the cost of enormous labor, it hadbeen rail fenced its entire length along the village side. Of allmen, perhaps only pilots of aircraft detest hogs as deeply as Ido. The beasts could and did find their way out on to the overquarter-mile-long broad, smooth lawn that was the strip, butsmall boys for whom it was a heavenly playground, soonchased them off, their dogs cheerfully assisting.

We clambered over the stile and crossed to the little cornstorage hut, high upon its rat-proof stilts, the only accommo-dation for "waiters for the plane." A shade tree had beenspared by a miracle, and as the hour was approaching noonand we well heated by our three-hour hard hike, we collapsedbeneath it. Most of the adults of Agua Zarca not otherwiseoccupied, and all the children, had followed down from thevillage, and now at distances according to closeness of friend-ship over the years stood watching us. Meanwhile the chil-dren, all old acquaintances of Rima, pressed in much closer.

Having rested a few minutes in the shade and supervised thestorage of our mountain of cargo in the little hut, we debatedwhere we might spend the night. There seemed hardly roomin the hut, and it being now firm dry season, we decided tosleep out under the tree. An old partly fallen-over corral fenceoffered a back rest for me—there was no place to swing my

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hammock—and there was a little hollow for the camp fire, oneach side of which soft turf would serve very well for Jan andBecca. Rima could move back and forth between us duringthe night as was still her custom.

As soon as our audience saw we were preparing to settle in,most of the adults drifted away. It was understood that a planealmost never came on the first day it was expected, and ourswas hardly even as yet expected. Some of Rima's best friendsamong the children invited her to play but she seemed to besaying that she was not ready for normal relations under thesudden and profound change of conditions. She kept close tome, waiting to see in what direction we might be heading next,for this, our first really long excursion together, had not yetany promise of taking us back to familiar ground. And mon-keys do not normally leave their own familiar territory.

Soon some of our best friends appeared with generous andextra-tastefully prepared gifts of food. We ate and Rima wassomewhat reassured. We, meanwhile, were wondering justwhat might have happened to the promise of horses we hadhad from the Baron. At last, about an hour after our arrival,he appeared from the village with two extra mounts, Ramon onone of them. Apparently our rather hard-pressed departurehad taken place nearly an hour before the agreed time for thehorses. We apologized, explaining how hectic and unpleasantconditions had become. He joined us at our campsite, sayinghe would wait awhile in case a plane did make it—there wasone every hour coming in for chicle* now being shipped dailyout of San Quintin. They flew over but none landed.

Then Miguel, the Aztec, came hurrying up with a severetoothache. Might there be a chance of going out with us? Wepromised him that if a plane did come for us he could go outwith a load of cargo, and he and Ramon wandered off downthe airstrip.

Rima's friends began to return, and soon she was the

'Chicle is the milky juice of the balata or sapodilla or similar tree, and is the mainingredient of chewing gum.

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bouncing, frolicking center of a large group, most of themacting purely as spectators. This show ended up in fact withRima and the Baron as chief actors. He had an old all-strawsombrero that he tossed at Rima as she dodged about enticinghim. Often he succeeded in landing the big hat on top of her,which meant she all but disappeared beneath it. Her role wasto seize it and flee, whereupon some child entered the game,rescuing the hat and returning it to the Baron. All this wenton and on to shrieks of childrens' laughter and that of nearlyall the adults present as well. Even the Baron joined in thelaughter, presenting an image of feudal paternalism at itsbest.

And this was Rima at her carefree, fun-loving best. Wewould never see her again in such high spirits, and we wouldalways treasure this all too brief scene of the little simian fro-licking in a manner that must have reflected quite accuratelynormal juvenile monkey play with the adults looking on. Ihad never seen Rima take on quite so brilliantly the consciousrole of clown. There was no doubt she saw herself as very muchthe central actor, and was giving herself very fully to her role.Her use of the hat as a prop was worthy of Chaplin himself.Perhaps what we were watching was not altogether normalmonkey play, because our Rima, having been reared by hu-mans in a human abode surrounded with human props to liv-ing, was not a normal monkey. But she was no doubt normalfor a Spider monkey who had been so reared.

Watching the fascinated faces of the human children whomade up most of her audience might have led one to concludethat our Rima was much more than normal, that she was intruth some highly gifted comedienne of her race. We shallnever know for sure just what Rima was, but this much weshall never doubt, that she was sent by her Maker to teach menrespect, if not love, for all monkeys. That was her mission,and when it had been fulfilled, her richly endowed naturewas taken back into its Creator's eternal keeping.

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Refugees to Civilization

No plane came that first day. In late afternoon the Baron andRamon left us with hearty farewells, both of them sophisti-cated individuals, who, each in his fashion, had presented uswith more problems than any persons we had ever encoun-tered in our nearly fifteen years as pioneers and homesteadersin the Lacandon forest. Chan Bor and Na Bora had not fol-lowed us into the village. They must have turned back as we

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came down to the creek, and without a word of farewell, aswas always their way.

Our good friends of Agua Zarca brought us more gifts offood. We bathed down in the beautiful pale jade, milky flow-ing—very unusual for the season—Rio Jatate. It was only fiveminutes away down a brushy but not hog-spoiled trail. Notnearly so cool and refreshing as our beloved, and now lost for-ever mountain cave-born creek, it still tasted and felt as pureas the virgin jungle that still sheltered its banks for milesabove our bathing site. It would always be associated in mymemory with the Lacandons and their sturdy yet gracefuldugouts.

By sundown we were alone around our little camp fire. Thevast airstrip, vast in my eyes so long unaccustomed to any-thing more open and lawnlike than the few square metersabout our house and garden, was deserted. No plane hadlanded all day, though several had passed over. But peoplehad promenaded on it all day, and little boys had played upand down it some strange Indian boy version of Marbles.

We had introduced marbles to the local children and hadfound them fully as magical in winning them over as fishingtackle and sewing supplies had been for their fathers andmothers. We had even demonstrated how to use marbles inplay, but here on the grassy airstrip we discovered an alto-gether new game played with marbles. A group of marble-ageboys, armed with bows and arrows also appropriate to theirage, each took turns shooting down at close range whatproved to be a marble. The object of the game seemed to beno more than to cause the marble to jump, thus relating thegame somewhat to Tiddlywinks except there was no particulardirection or place designated for the marble to jump to. Yetin spite of this seeming pointlessness, these small groups ofboys would play this Indian boy version of Marbles for an hourat a time. Then they would abruptly break up, the boys run-ning off in pairs or alone to some other pastime. Neitherschool nor work appeared to have entered their lives at all seri-ously.

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With the little girls, life was much more serious. They didnot have any equivalent game, but some found free time tovisit Rima and Becca. And during the two and a half days wewaited for the plane, Rima, during the daytime hours, wasseldom without children to play with. We sometimes had tointervene—especially when her visitors included boys—butusually all went well for all parties. Rima's energy was bound-less. Never before had she had children in such large groups,and she made the most of it.

I SLEPT NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN EIGHT YEARS OUTof a hammock. I braced my back against what was firm of thedecaying corral, and with plenty of cushioning, slept wellenough sitting nearly upright. It was very pleasant to be underthe open sky again, and I vowed that what was left to me ofearthly nights should be spent wherever possible under thestars. Rima enjoyed rousing when I made coffee or cocoa andjoining me in a snack, even though she found my uprightposition difficult for sleeping in her usual position astride myright thigh.

Thus our time passed not unpleasantly except for Miguel'sabscessed tooth. But his Aztec stoicism kept him from com-plaining even when, as during the afternoon before, chicleplanes came and went right over our heads. Finally, when thesun had already gone down behind the long line of"beehives"—actually the hills did resemble a row of old-fashioned straw skeps—a small plane came in as usual, butthis time circled and landed. We quickly loaded it with cargo,and Miguel went on his way to a dentist. We never saw himagain. But on the plane was our friend Martin C., the same wehad sent out to bring a plane in for us. Hardly had he and hiswife stepped out of the plane than I saw that the woman wasweeping. Then Martin came over and gravely announced hislittle boy Enrique had died. He had come down with a vio-lent, feverish virus. At the clinic there had been the usual"shots"—and death.

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They had had only one girl and the boy. Martin did notweep, but found it hard to find suitable words. The little boyhad been one of Rima's first playmates, the one whose bootieshad so fascinated her, and he was named after me. I ended updenouncing the use of injections on very ill small children, adenunciation he had often heard me make. I then told himGod would send him another child, and when the child came,not to take it out to the towns where infections were muchmore violent than in the rural villages. This he already knew.

About 10:30 the next morning the same pilot came for usbut with an even smaller plane. We were packed in as tightlyas possible, and still one box of books had to be left behind.The pilot assured us it would be called for by the next plane.He knew I had been annoyed to find a passenger on the planewe were paying for the night before. To this moment I don'tknow how he managed to fit us all in among the bags andboxes. Rima and I and Smoky were somehow wedged in withJan and Becca perched heads against the roof right behind us.Smoky was pressed in between my legs and the pilot's. Evenso Rima accepted it all, all until the motor started.

She stiffened, looked up at me, and whimpered each timehe increased power. "Why this, Harry?"

I pressed her close where I could whisper into one ear: "It'sall right Rima—hang on tight." Her little hand sought myhair. "That's right, hang on, old lady, here we go!" And asthe plane lifted to the sky, I looked off to the west. There wasthe village slipping swiftly behind, the little thatched hutsmore like some sub-human, even some insect structure thanman-made. No boards, no metal, only poles and cane leafthatch and all dry and brown and gray, yet how many belovedfaces of rich-souled human beings were turned up to watchthe departure of their neighbors, neighbors who like them-selves had been born among the "strangers and the pilgrims."

Agua Zarca gone, now beneath us, close beneath, for theoverloaded little plane climbed but slowly, we could now be-hold it all.

"Twenty years of my life down there!" I nodded to the

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pilot. He shook his head in sympathy for he, like others formiles around, knew how we had been forced to withdraw oursupport after years of struggle in behalf of the Indians, firstthe abused and abandoned Lacandons, and finally the refu-gee Highland Mayas, or Tzeltales, to which the Agua Zarcansbelonged.

Beneath, it all lay perfectly clear. True, we could not see ourhouse tucked up at the foot of the mountains. We could notsee our house because it alone was still blanketed in greenery.We alone had never burned or even destroyed vegetation wedid not at once replace. But all the other houses stood re-vealed in all the barren nakedness caused by year after year ofburning, burning for grassland, burning for corn land. Neo-lithic agriculture in the twentieth century! All through theyears we had preached against it, but always had the sameresponse, "The grass won't grow without burning, the cornwon't grow without burning!" And already in the mere sevenor eight years of intensive burning, the entire aspect of theonce exquisitely green and wild savanna and lush jungle feetof the squat hills bore the bare, brown, and barren look of thevery highlands whence both these ranchers and Indians hadhad to flee in search of virgin territory. In another twenty totwenty-five years, their children will be also seeking newlands, but there will be none to find.

We were startled at what we saw, I, in particular, because inmy enforced hermitage, had forgotten what was taking placeon the savanna and all its jungle fringes, but in a matter ofminutes I was to suffer a yet greater shock.

The little plane lifted us slowly over the first range, ourSierra de la Colmena. He took us far down to southwardwhere the hills were much lower, then turned directly west forthe remaining twenty-five minutes to Comitan, capital of thisfrontier region (on the Guatemalan border) of Chiapas state.We would have to climb nearly 1,200 meters and that, as be-came at once apparent, straight in the face of a gusty butpowerful head wind.

Mercifully, Rima had fallen asleep and I could forget about

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her and study the once familiar terrain slowly—very slowly,unfolding directly beneath us. I say "directly" because, aswith most Mexican "bush" pilots, ours did not believe in alti-tude. "It wears out the motor." Or so I was once told. Wescraped along just above the many ridges, the same ridges Ihad so often measured in all seasons with my mules, or moreoften, my own stride. Only now, some twelve years since mylast trip over them either on foot or by air, I looked downupon continuous desolation. The forest had been for the mostpart destroyed over many square kilometers. The hills I hadtraveled through, or over, had all been covered either withpine or oak on the higher parts or evergreen forest in thelower; very little remained. Indians and ranchers had burnedand felled to the very ridge crests. Only far away to the southcould be discerned the low green wall where the untrammeledforest still endured. I pointed to it for Jan and Becca, but theycould not hear me. Clearly we had been surrounded and iso-lated by an enemy: twentieth-century neolithic man with anancient firebrand in his hands.

The discovery of fire was, perhaps, man's first real step inacquiring technology. Its use to destroy forests demands asmuch pondering as man's use of atomic energy to producebombs. Bombs only destroy cities, but fire, as an agriculturaltechnique, destroys the earth's fertility and creates deserts.

More clearly than ever we, and not the least poor littleRima, were all refugees. Even in our small, fairly shelteredcorner we had long since noted the annually increasing scar-city of the howler monkeys, and hunters from the other side ofthe range had all but destroyed our flourishing colony ofSpider monkeys. Burning the moutainsides, the monkeys'habitat, is wanton as the land is equally valueless for both pas-ture and agriculture. How long before both species, the onlytwo found in Mexico, would be extinct?

The little overloaded plane was now at the mercy of thestrong westerly head wind. We bounced and tossed, bumpingheads and elbows but the tightly packed cargo held firm, andmeter by meter we approached the airport. Cold air slowly in-

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vaded the plane, and I wrapped a wool scarf close around thestill napping little monkey. The closer we came in over thehighland plain that reaches Comitan on the south, the harderthe wind blew in our face and the more we were rolled andtossed by it. Now flying lower than ever I could see marks ofsheet erosion everywhere on this extensive plain; in earlieryears there had been no erosion at all. Fire and overgrazing forthe last twelve years had upset the ecological balance. Becausethere is much less highland rainfall than lowland rainfall,even more care should have been shown not to burn and over-graze.

With the first bounce on the same old bumpy runway,Rima awakened. She did not whimper. She sat up straight, allalert, all eager to see what was to happen next. She looked upat me, spoke in her usual sweet chirping chortle, "What now,Harry?"

"It's O.K. Rima," I reassured her. "We are landing. Nomore plane. Now a taxi." And there would never be anotherplane for Rima of the Lacandon rain forest.

We got down stiffly, Rima and I and Smoky first, thenBecca and Jan. The chill wind that had been buffeting thelittle plane now struck us full force. I kept Rima well wrappednot only in the big blue woolen scarf but buttoned up insidemy jacket as well with only her eyes and nose peering out. Theairport manager handed us a generous mail package of lettersand papers and at the same time asked just twice what weowed him for handling it. I recognized in the gleam in his eyethe petty Mexican official hoping to extract a "mordida," orbribe, literally a "bite." As this is common practice all the wayup the tall ladder of officialdom, we were familiar enoughwith it to refuse. He then backed away a little saying it was hissuperior's claim. And when I assured him I would talk withthe chief, he dropped it altogether.

We paid what we fairly owed for both mail and plane, andpiled our cargo and ourselves into the eager taxi. As we set outon to the Pan American highway for the three-to-five kilo-meter trip into the city, Rima whimpered questioningly once

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more: "Why this? Harry?" And it would always be the same,for little Rima, the monkey's child, had something inside herthat warned her that we were involving ourselves in a danger-ous activity. Understanding absolutely nothing else aboutmotor transportation, she was immediately aware of the oneaspect most important to understand, namely the ever-pres-ent element of physical danger that is built into it. She hadfeared and questioned the airplane, but it was soon apparentthat she feared automobiles more, a position whose validity isalways asserted by experienced pilots. Even though ourflight had been bumpy she had accepted it and gone to sleep;trips by car she never fully accepted, and always at the outsetwhimpered and lost control of her bowels.

I asked for the small inexpensive hotel on a quiet back streetwhere I had always stayed whenever I was "caught" in Comi-tan. It was after twelve years, not only still in business, but oneof the operators, an old lady, remembered me. This was good,for I had wondered how we would be received with both dogand monkey. She was so captivated by Rima that she scarcelynoticed the dog. And we were soon snugly at rest in a tightlittle room with two double beds, our cargo fitting miracu-lously for the most part underneath them.

We had lots to do: passports had to be acquired, beginningwith the photos; there was a trip up to San Cristobal (aboutseventy kilometers) to dispose of yet more books; rabies vac-cination for the dog, and other lesser arrangements, not theleast of which was to plan our ways and means of travel to theGuiana Highlands, the homeland of the original Rima.Somewhere I would need to build another tent, a strong,heavily waterproofed replica of the worn out Royce tent wehad had to abandon. I had cut it up to use as a pattern, ifsomewhere there was time and materials. And lastly there wassome money due that would help greatly to meet the expensesof such a long journey.

As yet we had no clear lead even as to how best, or where, toleave Mexico. We had considered three possibilities: by way ofGuatemala, by way of the Mexican part of Vera Cruz, and per-

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haps best by way of Merida in Yucatan. If no ships were avail-able, and we hoped for a ship for the sake of my heart, friendshad suggested a jet flight. But I had never been aboard a jet—how would a damaged heart respond—and perhaps moreto the point, how would the airways people respond to a dogand a monkey? We indeed had lots to do and decide beforewe left Comitan, and Mexico.

RIMA HAD NEVER BEEN SO CLOSELY CONFINED AS SHEwas to be now for the two weeks we stayed in the little hotel.In the streets she attracted so much attention that I soon stop-ped taking her with us except when it was inescapable. And,besides, there was always the chilly winds of the temperatehighland plateau. I had forgotten how windy Comitan wasand how chilly was the wind. Whenever I had to take her out Iwrapped her up against the wind—and this she resented. Shewould stay wrapped up, but she scolded and squirmed—another good reason for staying off the streets.

Happily, as soon as the sun struck in the small very shel-tered patio of the hotel it became warm enough for her to goout. "Out," I say, but "out" where? For the first time as afamily, we were tossed into city life. Jan and I had knownmuch of it, of course, Becca a very little, none of which shecould well remember, however, and for poor little "MonkeyBaby" it was the first time ever. Consequently "out" to sunand play in the little hotel patio was, after the wide openspaces of the rain forest homestead, not very much "out." Itwas, though, compared with the cell-like bedroom, a greatdeal, and Rima appreciated it in spite of its cement floor andforbidden plants.

This latter prohibition was now to become a major discour-agement to the little primate's development, a grave stum-bling block, not only physically but spiritually. At the foresthomestead, we laid down no such prohibition although someplants suffered, especially our beautiful taro ("elephant ear"),a member of a very ornamental family, and our variety

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offered, besides its striking beauty, both edible roots andleaves as well. Becca complained and scolded at the way Rimaknocked down the stems and bruised the leaves, but there wasno attempt to restrict the area of her play. She had run andleapt and climbed and tumbled and frolicked everywherewithout restraint. Now suddenly she was a prisoner of cityconfinements as only children and dogs and, perhaps worst ofall, monkeys can be prisoners.

My old friend, the old lady who remembered me, hadmany rather well grown potted plants in the patio. They wereeverywhere and as some were in flower, Rima was at once at-tracted, for, no doubt, as we had learned in the forest, flowersare a common food of Spider monkeys. Rima broke off ahandsome amaryllis before we could stop her. I apologized,and took her on my lap to sun, but she, of course, wanted torun about. The old lady liked Rima so much and enjoyedwatching her so much she in part forgave her the broken ama-ryllis, and suggested it might help if she were allowed to climbin the dwarf mandarin orange tree. This proved to be a partialsolution. As described, Rima had not been enthusiastic aboutclimbing, but she liked the mandarin tree, perhaps even real-izing that it represented a freedom she now could no longerenjoy on the ground. And in the nearly two weeks we were tospend in the hotel, she enjoyed many happy times in the treewith me standing watch that she not come down among thepotted flowering plants with which it was nearly surrounded.

There were children who soon discovered Rima, some resi-dent in the hotel, but they were all a little too old to serve asreal playmates, which Rima understood rather sorrowfully.They would talk to her, and try to pet her, but lacked the keyto true monkey play. She enjoyed most their coming to theoutside of one of our room windows. She had never encoun-tered window glass before, and while puzzled by it, enjoyedhaving the childrens' faces so close to hers. At some cost to ourprivacy we let her entertain at the window where a small tableoffered her a standing place at just the right height. Here shespent many happy moments. Children would only have to tap

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on the window, and she would run over to welcome them,pushing aside the curtain and pressing her little face againstthe glass to the laughter and exclamations of the children.

Inside the room, I did my best to arrange suitable trapezeropes but there were almost no fixtures to tie ropes to, and Iended up with only one area with the big closet door as itscenter. She could, however, by leaping from bed to bed andthen seizing various vinelike hanging ropes that swung her toa chair and thence with a leap to her window table, make acomplete monkey trip around the room. She also learned topass time just romping in the middle of the large springybeds, furniture unknown in the rain forest.

At night she still managed to pass the usual hours dividedbetween sleeping on my thigh and on Jan's shoulder andneck. As I had to sleep sitting up with my back pillowedagainst the high back of the bed, her position on my thighhad to be more upright than in a hammock, but she acceptedit and as usual spent the first half of the night with me, thelast half with Jan and Becca.

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The Confined Monkey Child

Rima made two trips to San Cristobal, one with all of us, andone with me alone. San Cristobal de Las Casas, some sixty toeighty kilometers over the Pan American highway northward,is in the cold lands, which is to say at over 2,000 meters. It tookus into a new climate, meaning a second climate change fromthe jungle. For Jan and Becca this had no significance. Overthe years they had made annual buying/vacation trips up toSan Cristobal while I kept house down in the warm lands.

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They only had to take a few extra wraps and wear warmdresses, but for Rima and me it was somewhat serious, I withthe damaged weakened heart, and Rima with her hatred ofclothes and wraps.

None of us would have made the trip had it not been for acurious, probably Old Spanish, legal system which requiredthat our passport applications be notarized by a notary in SanCristobal. We were never quite sure of the legal explanation,but legal it was, for in spite of the plea that my heart was notcapable of functioning at such an altitude, the local notarywas firm—he could not notarize the passport applicationsbecause neither he nor any other local notary had the author-ity. We would all have to go to San Cristobal.

Very well, but if we left very early and came home very late,I would not have to sleep in San Cristobal, and sleep was theperennial heart problem. By day it now functioned with littlecomplaint, but after midnight, malfunctioning was common.I simply would have to be back down to 1,500 meters beforemidnight. So far the ascent from 220 meters (at the home-stead) to Comitan at nearly 1,500 meters had raised no extraheart problem, but on up to 2,000 meters I knew was a chal-lenge. As to Rima, she would have to submit to some kind ofwraps most of the time, even indoors unless there was somesunny patio. San Cristobal houses were ninety-eight percentunheated.

We hired a superior taxi, that is, an efficient courteousupper-class driver—in the Third World there are taxi driversfrom the upper classes—with a nearly new car to match. Weexplained all our problems and asked him to call for us at 4:30A.M. For this we were paying a hundred pesos, about twentypesos over ordinary prices.

He arrived at 5:00 A.M. Rima had fallen back to sleep aftersome loud protest at such an early rising and unacceptablebundling up, but as we entered the dreaded automobile, sheawoke. As we set out with sharp fast turns through the ancientempty but very narrow streets, more suited to donkeys than tocars and trucks, she whimpered her unanswerable pleas:

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"Why—why this, Harry?" and filled her "pants."By the time we were out on the open highway, merciful

sleep had overtaken her again, and she slept all the way, aboutan hour's journey. It was barely dawn as we arrived, and coldas only San Cris dawns can be with the mountain mists hang-ing low over the city. No notaries awake, of course, so we wenton up to see Trudi Blom. Trudi had worked hard to maintainthe extensive, and intensive, establishment she and her lateexplorer husband had founded together and built up over themany years they had been Chiapas's most distinguished for-eign residents. (Frans Blom received Mexican citizenship onhis deathbed.) A research center with the best private-publiclibrary south of Mexico City, it was also an inn operated ontraditional Swiss cleanliness and hospitality.

Trudi, we knew, would be up and her day well begun, andwe were not disappointed. But, as we had to expect, having inher eyes made ourselves a political hot potato, she was notoverjoyed to see us, although we had warned her we might yethave to appear in San Cristobal. She did help us to wash upand unwrap a little, and then she took us into a mixed Ameri-can-Chiapas breakfast. Rima, finding herself at a table,roused completely. Trudi, as always, had a few youthful vaga-bond semi-permanent semi-helpers, semi-guests. They madeas much of Rima as she would permit, considering how evenjuvenile monkeys know better than to try to mix play withmeals.

Trudi was one of those persons who insist they love animalsbut who end up being really close only to unmanageablemules and rowdy disobedient dogs. Such people do not havemuch time for monkeys. But Trudi, being a true-hearted sen-sible spirit when not involved with either mules or dogs, didrealize (after all she had not many weeks earlier seen Rima athome) that Rima's upbringing had made her somewhat morethan mere monkey. As any sensitive person could quickly dis-cern, Rima showed some unmistakable traits of a humanchild. And all that very long day, most of which Rima and Ispent in Trudi's sunny patio, she only objected to Rima when

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she broke off her huge flourishing geraniums. San Cristobal'sclimate, at least as modified by Trudi's spacious, high-walledpatio, appeared to suit geraniums to perfection. They grewmore as shrubbery than as potted plants, and Rima, as wehave seen, delighted in shrubbery. I could not keep her out ofthe geraniums, and being among the most brittle-stemed ofall flowers, she broke them off. Trudi railed at her in the samevoice she used on mules, and sometimes muleteers as well,but Rima paid her even less attention than they. I am not sureshe even understood Trudi's shouting was aimed at her. Fi-nally Trudi aimed it all at me:

"Why don't you stop her, can't you see she's ruining mygeraniums!"

"I can see Trudi, but I can't stop her any more than I canstop people from eating monkey mothers and making or-phans of their babies!"

This gave Trudi pause, for she had eaten monkey flesh inher jungle times as indeed most civilized persons have whenon safari and other flesh falls scarce. Even the great Englishnaturalist, Henry Walter Bates of the classic The Naturalist onthe River Amazons, * confessed—and his was worded as a con-fession—to having acquired a high appreciation of monkeyflesh. And he was also man enough to admit that the next stepis man's flesh.

Trudi finally rushed at Rima, but Rima saw it as an invita-tion to more play, and leapt higher among the giant but spin-dly and fragile geraniums. Some inevitably broke under herweight.

"Best not frighten her, Trudi. She'll only do moredamage," I told her, and Trudi had to retreat fuming over herbroken flowers.

"Geraniums root very easily—I'll root some of the brokenstems for you," I called. But poor Trudi had retired.

As usual in the afternoon, the place was filling up with the

* Bates, Henry W. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, University ofCalifornia Press, Berkeley.

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sight-seeing tourists. There was a Lacandon museum as well asthe library. Documentary films of Frans Blom's expeditionsinto the Maya jungles were sometimes shown in the evenings.Among the sightseers were some American youths of that self-made pariah class called "hippies." Thus far we had seen onlythe degraded type, drug degraded, that is, but now we sawsome of the wholesome, sweet, and gentle-souled type, whoseem to herald a bright tomorrow for the old blood-soaked,History-harried Earth. One of the girls of a party of this typesaw Rima. I had persuaded Rima to sit on my lap for somepeanut butter and bananas. She came over: "What a beauti-ful monkey you have!" she exclaimed, but in a sweet, friendlyvoice. She held out her hand, and Rima readily took it. "Howfriendly it is! What's your name, little one?"

"Rima," I said."Oh, how wonderful! Look! This is Rima, Paul," she ex-

claimed. She held out her arms, and Rima still munching pea-nut butter, clambered up.

"Oh, you darling monkey!" the girl cried out. "Look Paul,look, look at her ears, black crepe paper, even finer than paper—look—and just like a human baby—every fold!"

"Well, almost," her friend agreed.Rima had never received quite such deep-felt, openly ex-

pressed admiration. She gently pulled the girl's long blondhair, and chuckled and chortled her affection in return.

Jan and Becca appeared, and Rima reached for Jan, and hernew friends handed her over. "My wife and daughter," I ex-plained, "Rima's mother and sister." They laughed, shookhands and rejoined their group.

"We are invited down to Janet and Marcey's," Jan said."They have hot water in their bathroom. We can all enjoy ahot shower."

They were old friends, almost as "old" as Trudi, and muchmore stable: Janet, a photographer, Marcey, a painter, wereboth from New York City, but long-time, part-time residentsof San Cristobal. They had changed houses lately and nowhad a large American-style home in the suburbs. The bath-

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room was commodious but the shower was out of order. Wehad to use the tub. Rima insisted on going all the way in withme, something that had never happened before. At thejungle homestead we had used the threat of my going into theswimming hole in order to get Rima to go with Jan so that Icould practice marimba with Becca. She would give me up ra-ther than risk a wetting in the cold creek, but the bathtub didnot daunt her, and we both enjoyed a much needed warmbath. At least Rima, if not actually enjoying it, took part with-out protest, clinging tightly to me though soaking in hotsoapy water.

After a short visit and an explanation of our travel plans, wereturned to Trudi's to keep an appointment with an officialwho was close to the governor and in charge of Indian Affairs.He wished to hear our story at first hand with a view to beingable to help our Indian friend hold on to some of his land nowthat we were gone from it (a rather smoothly executed decep-tion, it proved to be). He took me over to his office and wereturned to Trudi's at dusk. Rima was annoyed as usual at anyfailure of the family to reunite at dusk. She scolded me, thensnuggled in my arms. It had grown very chill at sundown. Iwrapped her in her woolen scarf, which she now accepted asunavoidable.

Then we had to search out a notary, the original purpose ofthe trip. By the time we found one, Rima was fast asleepthough by the smell I knew she had filled her "pants" onentering the taxi. I decided to rouse her enough to clean herbefore we said goodbye to Trudi and started the nightjourney back to Comitan. She whimpered a little but was tootired and sleepy after an active day in the high thin, chilly SanCristobal air to stay awake. She slept all the way home.

Rima and I had to make one more brief trip up to San Cris-tobal at the request of the same Indian Affairs official. Iwould have left her with Jan, but the telephone call re-questing an immediate discussion of certain points with otherparties came abruptly when Jan and Becca were off shopping.The taxi cruised about the streets looking for them, Rima pro-

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testing all the while—she particularly hated the town traf-fic—but we could not find them. However, we were in SanCristobal in hardly an hour, and aside from the usual dirtied"pants," neither of us suffered. Yet it is doubtful if any of ourefforts helped out on the land situation for the Indians in thejungle. The Mexican Indian was a victim of "conquest," aword which Jan and I began to understand for the first time.The Spanish word "Conquistadores" has some of the prestigeof the American word "Pilgrim father," but they mean verydifferent things. The Mexican Indian, like the AmericanNegro, is too numerous to exterminate yet impossible to as-similate. The American Negro, although the descendant ofslaves, now fares better than the Mexican Indian, the descend-ant of the Conquered.

Perhaps the explanation in part lies in the attitude of"Baron" B., the good old feudalist rancher of old Spanishstock who, complaining against the Indians of Agua Zarca fornot having legal title to their lands, said: "They remain as in-vaders here!"

OUR GOOD FRIENDS WITH THE BEAUTIFUL UNOCCUPIEDhouse out in the village of Las Margaritas, "The Daisies," hadlearned we were in the little hotel in Comitan. Dona Socorro,the wife, called and insisted we move out to the village andlive in their home, if even for one week. We were all weary ofthe tight little hotel, so agreed, and in a day or two she camein a pick-up truck, and moved us out the 20 kilometers or soto Las Margaritas.

The trip out to Las Margaritas was for some reason acceptedby Rima without any of the usual protest. Jan and our friend'swife rode in the cab with the driver, Becca and Rima and I inback with the cargo. I fixed a trunk for a seat across the back sowe had the tail gate for a back rest. And I bundled Rima upextra well against the cold wind that, for the first time, wewould be facing in an open truck. Apparently one of Rima'schief objections to the planes and cars was being shut up in-

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side the vehicle. I had not thought of that aspect. At any rate,she accepted everything, even the extra bundling, calmly, ifnot with pleasure. I on the other hand felt almost like whimper-ing. I had forgotten how bare and barren the arid hills were,how depressing they might be after our green mansions of theLacandon rain forest. And clearly conditions had becomemore arid over the years. Where I could not ever rememberhaving seen cactus, it was a common roadside plant. Exceptfor a few starving, thirsting, stunted cattle there was no sign ofeconomic life. And the little clay and thatch Indian huts thathad once been common along the road hardly existed. Theroad itself had been much improved; straightened and widen-ed, it was now a highway. The dust and the washboard bumpshad kept it a third-class highway, but now it was all-weatherwith a raised bed whereas in former times it was really no-weather. We took only half a bumpy hour where twenty yearsago on my first trip over it we had been all of three hoursreaching the village.

The wind buffeted us but I was prepared for it with a thickblanket I could raise all around Rima so I looked down uponher almost as if she were at the bottom of a well. Nor did shefall asleep. She looked up at me contentedly enough as if tosay: "Well, Harry, it's a strange life but if you like it, I likeit." And the thing that pleased me as much as seeing Rimacontent with travel was the fact that all through my two tripsup to 2,000-meter San Cristobal, and now bumping out overthe dry hills to "The Daisies," my damaged heart had madeno complaint, and a damaged heart has its own very clearmodes of uttering its protests. I had dreaded having to leaveRima behind ever since that first look of sweet gratitude andtrust upon her discovering rich warm milk for the suckingfrom the cotton swab held in my fingertips. I had then beheldin Rima's little human eyes what every primate mother be-holds as her reward for the months of awkward, burdensomepregnancy. Rima had opened up to me, a mere human male,the world of depthless love and tender trust Nature opensbetween the primate, including the human, mother and her

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young. I had prayed ever since that Rima might not be or-phaned twice because of my crippled heart, and thus farunder severe testing, my prayers were being answered. How itwould be if I lost my monkey child, I had not paused toconsider.

Dona Socorro had not been prepared for our pet monkey,and as soon as my eyes fell on all the very beautiful expensiveflowering plants bordering the spacious patio of her palatialhome, I understood her coolness toward Rima. I hastened toreassure her: "We have trained her to respect flowers," I lied."She behaved very well at the hotel, and we'll keep her out ofyour flowers, be assured." Dona Socorro responded well withthe invariable courtesy of all classes of the Mexican, but insideI trembled for her flowers. There were saucer-sized tea roses,and plate-sized scarlet amaryllis, a favorite of Rima's, and agolden hibiscus of a richness I had never seen before.

"Maybe you could keep her tied?" she proposed."Just don't you worry," was all I could find for this grue-

some suggestion.Dona Socorro however, was soon introducing us to her won-

derful mother, Dona Maria, and her laughing sister DonaAngelica. Ah, me—the kind, warm-hearted, generousMexican villagers! "They will look after you, just tell themwhat you need, and they will get it," she said. And after ahurried lunch with us, Dona Socorro was off to catch the littlelocal plane to rejoin her husband at the distant hydroelectricsite where he worked. (We had met them when for a numberof years they were stationed near us in the forest.)

Her mother, Dona Maria, and the two sisters lived nearby,across and only a few houses down the street. When, after agood chat, they, too, left us, we were free to examine our new"hotel." At a glance it appeared nearly the size of the one wehad just left only this was all ours. The patio was actuallylarger than that at the hotel, larger but much less shelteredbecause on the windy side it was raised above the adjoininghouse and patio and so was very much exposed. At mid-after-noon, with the hot sun pouring in on the tiled floor it had

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been heating all day, this exposure was not so apparent.On two sides in high wide beds were all those beautiful

flowers. Even before Dona Maria left, Rima had leaped upon a bed for a bit of exploration. I ran over and picked her upmuch to her annoyance. But Dona Maria seemed reassuredthat we would control her, and we parted without furthermention of any problems over the monkey. I saw, however,that Rima and I were in for some strained relations, worsethan it had ever been at the hotel, because here there was notree such as the mandarin, only the hibiscus bush laden withits heavy golden flowers.

We had all our cargo piled up in a corner of the spaciousportico, or portales as I believe the Spanish call them. Offthese sheltered areas, one step up alongside the two sides ofthe patio that had no flower beds, the various rooms opened.All the rooms were very shut-in and quite unsuitable forswinging a hammock, whereas the portico posts were spacedjust right, so we decided to sleep in the most sheltered andprivate corner of the portico that opened into the kitchen anddining room. We had our sleeping bags and pillows, so withJan and Becca well padded on the floor and I in my hammockwe were, by nightfall, quite comfortable. As the air grew cool,that is, as the night wind invaded the patio, Rima was glad toforget about the inviting flower beds and settle down to herusual night routine, first half with me, last half with Jan.

The kitchen itself was adjacent, a small, cosy room with avery modern gas range and a very primitive cement sink with-out even a strainer. But this kitchen was always a snug retreatfrom the windy patio. We tried one meal out on the porticothen moved in to the kitchen for all future dining.

Early the next morning Dona Maria arrived, eager to findout how we had passed the night. She was taken aback that wewere sleeping out on the portico, but when I explained howfor reasons of my heart problem it was best for me to sleep in ahammock, she felt better, but was obviously disappointedthat our occupancy had taken on such a temporary aspect. Itwas not until some time later I realized she had at the begin-

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ning hoped we might rent the beautiful unused home andbegin Mexican village life. Her daughter, who had been ourguest in the forest, knew better, that is, understood we wereutterly serious in seeking a new home in some faraway virginjungle.

I had mentioned my desire to make a new tent, knowingDona Maria was a professional seamstress. Right away she waswilling to start, so I got out the pieces I had saved of the oldrotted tent for use as patterns. The spacious patio floor wasideal for the work except for the glare of direct sunlight uponthe white tiles. I borrowed Jan's sunglasses, and the workwent forward. When the gusty wind—it rarely dieddown—lifted the cloth, we weighted it down with stones fromthe backyard. Rima of course had to "help," scamperingabout, leaping up on to the forbidden flower beds, and whenscolded, insisting on riding in her sling against my ribs. Thiswhile stooping over the tent work was difficult, as she wellunderstood, but her attitude seemed to be, "If I cannot playin the flowers then I'll go on being a baby and you must carryme."

Dona Maria took note and threw Rima some disapprovingglances. I saw now that our monkey child in some good peo-ples' eyes was only another spoiled brat, always a shock to afond parent, and so a shock to me. Undoubtedly Dona Mariawondered why I did not tie Rima up, but she said nothing,and the tent work progressed each morning, she helping mecut, I helping her sew on her machine. She had bought twen-ty-five meters of the heaviest cotton muslin available, for Iintended this tent to absorb plenty of wax waterproofing forheavy duty in the Guiana rain forests. The machine sewingdid not permit waxing the thread, but with wax ironed into allseams with even more care than for the tent as a whole, allshould turn out well.

Meanwhile we settled into village life. The most difficultadjustment for me was to the night noises: dogs, donkeys,roosters, and every two or three hours, a huge logging truckright past the door with the motor racing to make the long,

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steep, rough street. The daytime noises were equally bad,especially those emanating from the nearby blacksmith'sshop. He made much use of a trip hammer in fashioning irontires for the still numerous ox carts that brought firewooddown from the near-naked hills. But by day the noises scarcelymattered, so absorbed had I become in the tent. Rima did notlike this absorption and became for the first time mischievousin a willful, unruly manner, even undertaking to interferewhen we were sewing by romping upon the folds of tent hang-ing from the machine to the floor. Dona Maria joined inscolding her for this and I felt guilty about my spoiled"child."

One afternoon, happily after Dona Maria had gone home,Rima sprang into the golden hibiscus and broke off one of themain branches. I railed at her and chased her across the patio,for I was angry. I saw suddenly by the look of fear on herlittle face just how angry I was. I stopped, I spoke softly to her,she came running to me and climbed up into my arms: "I'msorry, 'Monkey Baby,' but I guess we're trapped this time,and I just don't know what to do to escape."

I took string and scotch tape and repaired the broken hibis-cus in such a way the damage was not apparent. Dona Marianever noticed it as I carefully removed each blossom as itwilted. And as Becca joined me in chasing Rima every timeshe tried to climb into it, she finally accepted it as a game,with no hard feelings.

A far worse problem now developed for Rima and what forher had become a prison in the spacious patio. We were wellprotected from the street by a sturdy gate of open iron work,but it was not open enough for Rima's many child admirers tocome in and play with her. She could not understand that ifthey came in there would soon be no flowers left at all. Soevery day the many children passing by called Rima over tothe gates of her prison, but none of them came in to play withher. I noticed that this frustration every day became moreheavy for her to bear. I recalled the gay time at the airstripwhen she frolicked for hours with the Agua Zarcan children.

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My heart grew heavy with hers, but I saw no solution. Thechildren could not come in to romp in the patio; Rima couldnot go out into the street. "Poor little rich girl! Someday we'llget back to the jungle, old lady," I told her but that didnothing to explain why she could not play with the otherchildren today.

There was a small tree in the narrow shabby backyard, aloquat about the same size as the mandarin in the hotel patio. Itook Rima out and helped her up into its badly prunedbranches. She stared out over the wall into the street wherethe chickens and dogs and pigs and ox carts were sometimesvisible all at the same time. She stared into the rough, dustystreet and beyond at the village houses half hidden behindtheir walls and trees. She asked to come back down, and I real-ized that Rima's zest for life was no more. Where all had beeneager joy of living there was a deep frustration, and most of itno doubt from the lack of playmates and play space. I, who inthe hammock in the jungle had almost always been availablefor a swing or a rumpling, tousling tickling frolic, was nowdeeply absorbed by the tent, and I suspected the experiencewith the children at the Agua Zarca airport had given Rima aglimpse into the proper play world of the juvenile monkey, aworld for which even our old play world of the hammockcould not much longer have substituted. Then the weatherturned chillier than ever because for days on end we lost thebright warm tropical sun, but not the biting temperate winds.They continued to blow across the patio. I tried to keep Rimawarm by staying inside the cosy kitchen with her.

Dona Maria had to go on a visit to a sick relative, and workon the tent slowed down. I was able to spend more time withRima, but the hammock, our old play center, was out in thegusty, chilly patio tied between two portico posts. She couldnot keep properly out of the wind. Jan lay on her bed—DonaMaria had found a sturdy, comfortable mattress to put downon the cold hard tile floor—and listened to The Grapes ofWrath on her cassette for the blind from the Library of Con-gress. Rima resented our preoccupation with this device. She

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became mischievous, leaping on it when we were not expect-ing her. This meant scoldings and more frustration for the lit-tle monkey child we had been forced to remove from justabout every natural aspect of a monkey environment.

We humans could comfort ourselves and each other withthe realization that we were in fact refugees with the necessityof undergoing all the hardships and frustrations that comewith a refugee's life, but only man has the capacity for martyr-dom because only man has the gift of Hope. Our little mon-key child had only us, and we, for reasons she could not beginto grasp, were to all appearances failing her. We were failingto provide her with a path into life. We were, in short, jeopar-dizing her natural development. We were destroying herbody and soul, and that was the hardest of all the aspects tobear of our life as refugees.

We now tasted that bitterest of all cups, the inability to givelife to one's children. In all ages parents have had to watchtheir children fail and perish under the curses of famine andpestilence and war. We now had to watch our beloved littleRima wilt like a plant removed from its proper environment.She no longer tried to play among the flowers in the patiobeds. Dona Maria had noticed the damage, and had com-plained. I had suggested that we go some other place, and shesaid no, it was not necessary, but she plainly indicated she be-lieved we ought to be considerate enough to cage or tie up themonkey. As my Vermont hill farmer father had put it:"Never try to keep a dog in the city." I would add to that,"nor a monkey!"

ABOUT TWO WEEKS AFTER OUR FAMILY TRIP UP TO SANCristobal, Jan abruptly fell very ill. As always with her, symp-toms were very mixed and difficult. But even with junglemalaria I had never seen her so hard pressed by an illness. Thismight well be an attack of the San Cristobal grippe fromwhich our friends had been suffering. All had complainedabout its severity, but as all seemed to have recovered from it,

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we had not thought any more about it until Jan became ill.This meant that Rima had to give up her usual habit of

sleeping the last part of the night curled around Jan's neck.She loved this sleeping with Jan and had only rejoined mewhen she learned that I woke up for snacks, warm sweet drinks,that is. Having enjoyed with me at least one such snack she al-ways climbed down from the hammock and crawled up toJan's pillow and snuggled down with her, one slender handfirmly twisted in Jan's long, wavy hair. I loved to watch themboth soundly sleeping. Jan is a big woman, yet the little mon-key had not the slightest doubt she had a warm, protectivemother. The little primate child never seemed aware in theslightest degree that we were really giants. Rima seemed to"see" only our souls, which were not in any way differentenough from hers to matter.

Now, in case Jan had caught the violent San Cristobal virus,Rima could not be allowed to go on sleeping with her. I triedmy best to prevent it, but one morning I overslept. When Iawoke at 4:3 0 A. M. Rima was not asleep on my thigh. I flashedthe foco down on Jan's pillow, and there she was in herusual place cheek on cheek. I put out the light, and let themsleep on.

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"Ausente"—The Absent One

One day Dona Maria returned and we resumed work on thetent. I had turned my attention during her absence to havingsome sturdy boxes made, boxes for either mules or men tocarry goods in over jungle trails. When in reply to her ques-tions, I explained what they were for, I could see how disap-pointed she was that we were not going to rent her daughter'sbig house and live forever in Las Margaritas. Apparently shewas willing to accept Rima if only we would stay. Nor were her

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motives monetary entirely. Certainly, as she explained, shehated to see the somewhat grand new home go on year afteryear unoccupied. She sincerely liked us. When Jan's illnessdragged on she was genuinely distressed, and discoveringJan's only medicine was an incredible number of fresh pickedoranges every day, herself undertook to keep Jan in supply.

Rima could not understand Jan's sudden withdrawal, thatis, the way Jan kept her at a distance even in the daytime. Norwere mine and Becca's extra efforts to amuse and comfort hervery successful. She was lost and caged at the same time moreand more every day we spent in the labyrinthine house. Some-times we could still laugh at her, although Rima herself neverseemed to laugh any more. Doors always mystified and an-noyed her, especially the bathroom door. While I sat on thestool she would come and peer under the two-or three-inchspace at the bottom of the door, chattering, scolding, and try-ing in every way possible to crawl under the door. The spacewas too narrow but she always tried, twisting and reachingfirst an arm, then a leg, then her face, even her little bottomwould appear in the crack, meanwhile always the scolding,guttural complaint against being shut out. We laughed, butRima was serious—why must there exist all these barriers?Barriers and forbidden areas, for we had to be careful she didnot get shut in the dining room, where there was a cupboardfull of heirloom china—the first I had ever seen in Mexico—and if not yet genuine heirloom, then destined to become so.

About this time the numerous rose bushes in the patio bedshad all begun flowering at once. Becca loved them, and as noone cut them she kept a bouquet on the dining room table.To slip into the dining room unobserved and eat the rosesbecame one of Rima's jail house diversions. And when some-one discovered her she would dodge under the table or racewildly about the room until the one trying to drive her outusually had to call for help. She enjoyed this game, for so shesaw it, and I learned not to be too severe with her when shefound entrance into the forbidden room.

Our diet had become more and more dependent upon

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cooked foods, potatoes and vegetables and tortillas. Bananaswere scarce, and Rima's response to the unfamiliar diet was toask to be fed, mouth to mouth. "What is it?" she seemed toask, "Oh well, you feed it to me." We did have lettuce andtomato salads regularly, and she as always relished the lettuce,treating it as a real monkey soul food. There were also the ra-ther rich cup cakes little girls sold door to door from huge bas-kets carried on their heads. Rima seemed to deem these freshbaked cup cakes on a level with rose petals as food for monkeychildren, and would climb disobediently up on to the table toget them.

Jan now slowly regained strength, and once again we at-tacked the problem of how, by exactly what route, it was bestto leave Mexico. We still hoped to be able to travel all the wayby sea. None of us liked either the prospect of a long overlandjourney by bus, or a short swift jet flight. I, in particular,wanted nothing of the latter, and we all knew that bussingwith the animals even in a private rebuilt schoolbus, as somefriends in the United States were now proposing, would betrying even if the people were perfectly congenial. It would beout of the question, of course, if they were not. We discussedgoing all the way up to Vera Cruz, Mexico's greatest port.Surely there we would find ships sailing for South America?

Then early one morning, while everyone else was still soundasleep, I was once again going over all the information ontravel we had thus far been able to obtain, which was not verymuch, and thus far not very helpful. There was a letter from aNew York travel agency mentioning a freighter that carriedrather a large number of passengers on its monthly round tripfrom Jamaica to Trinidad. But how to reach Jamaica? I pickedup the folder from Mexican Airways once again, and for thenovelty tried reading it backwards. There were a number ofthose wonderously complicated tables of distance and faresand departures and arrivals. I had had several brushes withthese same tables, but for the first time I noticed the word"Kingston." This must be Jamaica. A closer study of this,the last table in the folder, revealed that once a week a Mexi-

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can jet flew from Merida, Yucatan, to Kingston, Jamaica.Here at last was our connection for the ship to Trinidad andthe virgin rain forests of the Guiana Highlands. If they al-lowed both dogs and monkeys, dare I board my first jet atfifty-seven years of age and with a history of three heart at-tacks? Well, what would Daniel Boone have done? He hadrecently become my model for action after learning how manytimes he pulled up stakes rather than settle down with the for-est-burners. He would have boarded the jet, of course. Andthe dog and the little orphan monkey? They would have totravel in God's hands with the rest of the family. "But couldyou leave Rima behind?" The simple question would not besilent. But there was an answer: "Wait and see what the air-line says."

Two weeks had passed since Jan became ill but now she waswell recovered. She had consumed dozens of Dona Maria'sdelicious oranges; she sunbathed in the patio every afternoon,an activity in which Rima joined, subject to interruptions suchas the arrival of a cup cake girl at the gate or a trip to the bath-room with me—as far as the door, that is. I would never allowher inside, and she never ceased protesting at being shut out.Doors were unfair, hateful, she scolded as she tried once againto force her way through the narrow space at the bottom of thedoor. But Rima seemed somewhat happier. She had beensleeping with Jan as usual, and romping between the ham-mock and the bed with me. I had some "vines" hanging fromabove the hammock, and we swung sometimes but sheseemed afraid of being swung too far out over the tile floor ofthe patio. I was surprised at how conservative she had become,and I blamed it on the prisonlike life we were all living. Ex-cept for shopping and post office trips every other day, noneof us went out of the house, and as Jan and Becca did theshopping, Rima and I never went out the patio gate. Smokyalways went on the shopping trips.

The tent was nearly done, only the tasks of making thegrommet at the peak and the corner stake tabs remained, plusof course, the final big waxing job. Dona Maria had an elec-

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trie iron and ordinary sealing wax could be bought by the kilo.Seven jungle cargo boxes were all lined up along the house

wall under the portico on the other side of the patio. Eachbox had a top on hinges with an iron strap and eye for a lock.Further, in big bright yellow letters each box said J-l, J-2,H-l, R-l , etc. The odd seventh box bore the letter K forKitchen.

We had even given in and purchased a marimba in Comi-tan, not quite as beautiful as the one left behind in the forest,nor nearly as expensive, yet almost as beautiful in tone. Wehad planned carefully how to pack it for its long journey,meanwhile practicing hard all our half-forgotten repertoire.

We had now decided to leave Mexico by way of Merida andthe jet—three and a half hours—to Jamaica. A friend wouldhaul our belongings from Las Margaritas to the Comitan air-port. I, with the animals and as much cargo as we could put ina small plane, would fly to Ocosingo—some one hundred andten kilometers north of Comitan. Jan and Becca would takethe bus there a day ahead by way of San Cristobal, and meetus at the airstrip. At Ocosingo we had an invitation from theDominican missionaries to rest over with them. From Ocos-ingo we could then fly in half an hour out to Palenque, wherethe railway passed on its way from Mexico City to Merida inYucatan.

TODAY IT IS DIFFICULT FOR ME TO REMEMBER THATRima was not with us on that little pick-up that did finallyhaul us and everything, including the marimba, out toComitan and the airport. It is hard to envisage Smoky and Ipacked tight with the cargo in the same little plane thatbrought us all out from the forest, and no Rima.

Almost exactly two weeks after the first night she slept withJan after Jan became ill, I noticed Rima in later afternooncrouched on the cement wall of the flower bed where it abut-ted the main house wall. There she sat as she sometimes didwhile children chatted with her through the grill of the high

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iron patio gate. I was in my hammock from where she pre-sented a side view only six meters away. As I watched her sheshivered noticeably. It was late, the wind chilly. I called herover. She came without her usual eagerness, wanting to re-main where she could at least see the children. I got up andwent to meet her. She put out her long, skinny arms to bepicked up, but I saw in her little face that she was ill. As I hadsuspected she was trembling, and I supposed with cold. I feltguilty that I had left her huddled on the cement wall so late inthe chill afternoon. I bundled her up with me in the ham-mock and tried to comfort her.

"Cheer up, old lady, we'11 get back to a nice warm, wet jun-gle again one of these days," but Rima did not respond withany of her cheerful chuckling, chortling monkey chat. Sheremained silent and even without protest at so much bun-dling. I concluded she had warmed up and fallen asleep. Thesun went down and supper was being prepared. I decided weshould move into the cosy little kitchen. It was then I realizedRima was too warm. I unwrapped her. She was drowsy andhot. I felt her all over carefully and took her into the kitchen.At supper she roused and ate but very little.

"Is Rima not well?" Becca asked."She has a fever," I answered.Rima's fever rose during the night. I gave her water and

orange juice. The water had such a flat, dead, tastelessnessafter the sparkling, delicious creek water of the jungle that wealmost never drank it without adding orange or lime juice.She took but little and complained in the little high-pitched,batlike squeaks the monkey baby uses to tell its mother when itis in pain or distress. Monkey infants apparently never cry—squall—that is, as do human babies. * The nearest Rima evercame to crying like a baby was when in trying to give her toilettraining we would set her up in the branches of a shrub at thecorner of the house and leave her. She could see us and felt thedeliberate abandonment—an abandonment probably un-

*Some species do—in tantrums even!

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known in the monkey world. She would come close to crying"like a baby" under such cruel unsimian treatment. And sureenough the predators would hear her. A snake came onceobviously to carry her off so we quickly dropped that methodof toilet training, which was not succeeding anyhow.

When in her mother's arms the monkey's child never cries.It squeaks, as I say, like a bat, or a mouse. Thus Rima told methe fever was burning up her little body, and that she neededextra care and love.

Jan's virus attack had not been noticeable for its fever so atfirst we did not relate Rima's illness to Jan's. But in the morn-ing just before dawn, Rima startled me as she never hadbefore. She cried out in a half-scream, half-squawk that wasmore desperate than anything we had ever heard from her.

I roused Jan. "Rima is very ill," I told her. "I think she maybe dying—I think she wants us all." Becca also woke up. Itwas nearly dawn, our usual time for rising. We all gatheredaround Rima and she asked to go to Jan. Jan took her into thekitchen. Rima was panting from the violence of the all-nightfever. I thought she was breathing her last but Jan was com-forting her with more truly maternal affection than I had everbeen able to offer her. She was also praying, as was I. Rimaquieted. Her breathing became more normal, and Becca and Iprepared breakfast. Rima ate nothing at all, only a little warmorange juice and honey. The fever had relented slightly. Afterbreakfast I took her back to the hammock. She slept most ofthe morning, but the fever did not leave her. When she wokeup I called Jan.

"She still has bad fever," I said. "What can it be?""Let's try to get her some fresh cane juice."Jan and Becca went shopping and to the post office as

usual. They asked everywhere for cane but came home withonly two small dried out sticks. Becca succeeded in pressingfrom them only a few teaspoons of grayish unsweet juice.Rima drank it but without enthusiasm for she was now ab-sorbed in a strange struggle with her body. It seemed to bemore a problem of tension than of pain. She would lie on her

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back on my lap cushioned with her blankets and press with allher might her feet against my hand. That is, she was actinglike a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis. I called Jan to helpby holding Rima's head in a way to brace her head and shoul-ders as I was bracing her feet.

This went on and on, varied only when I discovered half byaccident that it also helped if I pressed down on her abdomenwith the palm of my hand, applying pressure and abrupt re-lease as with artificial respiration. Once when I by chance tick-led her in the solar plexus she laughed.

"I'm sure that was a laugh.""I don't understand it either." Jan answered. "As long as

we are helping her, it does not matter. Obviously there isgreat tension."

Then Rima did a strange thing. The neighbor who hadbrought the poor-quality juiceless cane the day before re-turned in mid-afternoon to report that due to the extra dry,dry season he could not find any good juicy sugar cane. He wasconcerned that he could not help Rima overcome her feverand stayed to chat and watch her. He had made friends withher before her illness. While Jan and I were both divertedfrom her in talking with him, Rima suddenly sprang up frommy lap and fled into the narrow corridor that led to the bath-room and the backyard. As the back door was always shut sheapparently had no special intent to go outside. When Janwent for her, she found her sitting on top of the narrow ce-ment wall opposite the bathroom. Here a heavy wire meshreached from the top of the wall to the ceiling. Rima some-times stood on the narrow ledge where wall and mesh joinedand, with her fingers grasping the mesh, stared into the small,trashy, unexciting backyard.

Perhaps she found the half-dozen large trees shading theneighboring banana orchard of interest. We never knew, butsometimes we would find her alone there staring through thelarge squares of mesh—a cage—as was the rest of the house,but this corner more honestly so. Here Jan found her, andpicked her up and brought her back. As I looked up at her in

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Jan's arms Rima stared hard at me, and for the first time I sawthe eyes of an adult monkey. They were both hard and ques-tioning. I was startled beyond words and suddenly aware thatlive or die, God was telling us we had lost—or were soon tolose—our monkey baby. Our beloved infant had begun togrow up and, with her dawning adult consciousness, for aflashing moment Rima had doubted'me. I was too surprisedto say anything at the moment.

In a little while the visitor left, and Rima had meanwhilesettled on my lap again. Her tension seemed to have eased. Iplaced her on her stomach and patted her gently and she fellasleep.

"I think the fever may be easing up," I told Jan."Why did she spring up like that, do you suppose?" Jan

asked."I really don't know, but when you brought her back a

curious thing happened. She stared at me with such suspicionin her eyes that I can only describe as adult. It was as if for amoment she had suddenly grown up, and, well, doubted us."

"I suppose it could be. I have wondered what would hap-pen to our relationship if she did live to grow up, and what wewould do with her."

"Strange thing to say but I guess I never realized that shewould grow up." I said.

"How is the fever?""A little lower, I would guess."But during the night Rima's fever returned as hard as ever.

And she was very much the monkey's little child again—squeaking close to my face and asking me to help her with thetension in her stomach. We slept very little, if at all, and whenshe screamed again at the same pre-dawn hour, I hastilyroused Jan and Becca:

"Rima is calling for you two again," I told them, "pleaseget up and help me comfort her."

We gathered around her, I still holding her. Jan talked toher and Becca petted her gently. Rima was instantly com-forted. All she wanted was the presence of her family.

"And the fever?" Jan asked.

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"All night," I said "but it seems to be easing up now."By mid-morning the fever had completely gone as far as I

could tell, but Rima was very weak. She had taken no solidfood for two days, and now had no desire even to drink. Shelay in my arms in a semi-coma, thin and dry from the longbout of fever. I talked to her softly about getting back to thejungle, and from time to time walked her around and aroundthe patio. I knew, we all knew I suppose, that Rima was beingtaken from us.

By early afternoon I saw she was losing consciousness, si-lently, without making any of her little squeaks of protest.What to do? I had taken the little orphan monkey deep intomy heart—the parting was going to hurt and hurt deeply. Iprayed that somehow Rima and I might speak to each otherand know one another's love once more in this life, and camethe inspiration—what if she is dying of thirst?

I went for water and offered it to her in a small spoon, butshe showed no interest. I tried pouring a few drops into hermouth. It only dribbled down her neck and chest. I recalledtrying to pour milk down her throat.

"Rima," I said softly, "Rima, please drink a little." Sheopened her eyes ever so little. It must have been the plea oflove in my voice. Then I understood. I filled my mouth withwater, put my lips gently down upon hers and fed her thewater a few drops at a time. At first I had trouble controllingthe amount but quickly I learned to control it and give it toher only so fast as she could take it. And she was taking it.After three or four attempts she began to swallow as fast as Igave it to her. And in an hour I could see she was revivingfrom the coma.

By suppertime she was sitting upon my lap and drinking onher own in her normal way from a cup. Still she would not eat,but we all sighed in our relief that she had passed a crisis.

At bedtime an orchestra nearby struck up for a dance cele-brating a marriage that had taken place in the morning. Atfirst there was a marimba with it, but later it was swallowed upas usual by the other instruments. I was so absorbed in themusic I at first did not realize that Rima was squeaking, tell-

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ing me all was not as well as at suppertime. She indicated shewas in pain, or tension.

"We can't sleep, Harry—not tonight, Harry. Help me, Iam still in trouble, Harry."

I massaged her stomach holding her close to my cheek. Thefever had reduced her almost to the tiny orphan we had firstknown.

"We'll all get back to the jungle some day," I told her."Maybe you will go first, Rima, but we'll come to you, yes, Ipromise you."

About midnight she again asked for the family, but not soloud and desperately as before. Our love and tender care werehelping her overcome the biological fear of death.

The party was in full gaiety and some of the music verybeautiful, but it was mixed with some that was raucous jazz,bad as only badly played jazz can be.

Rima asked at once to go with Jan. We all retired to thekitchen and sat on the long bench against the wall oppositethe low table. Jan held her little shrunken body close to herthroat, Rima's favorite place as an infant. Soon she wasasleep, a short fitful sleep that was suddenly broken by theworst half-scream, half-squawk we had ever heard from her, asif she had been seized in the night by some beast of prey. Itook her.

"It's all right, Rima, it's only a dream, death is only adream, Monkey Baby. We love you, remember, Rima—remember one thing! We love you!"

I placed her on my chest, on the left side above my heart,her body against mine, her little head resting on my shoulder.I hurried her out on to the portico and sprinkled her face withcold water from the bucket kept full under the faucet. Then afew rapid turns around the patio under the cool, sweet stars—the party music was playing a haunting, and beautiful, mel-ody—a popular song apparently, for I recognized it as onethey had already played at least twice. *

*"Ausente" was the song—"The Absent One."

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Back in the kitchen I was grateful that Becca had lit the twocandles that had served at supper instead of turning on theelectric light.

Rima was still breathing and conscious. I placed her on herback across my lap. Jan bent down on her knees beside herspeaking words of love and comfort. Becca stroked her littlefuzzy gray stomach. I could see Rima's breathing was now inthe feeblest possible short pantings. Yet she chortled softly,sweetly at Becca's stroking her belly.

Then a tiny squeak. I picked her up, placed her gentlyagainst my shoulder, and went again out to walk her in thefresh air under the stars. Twice around and I knew that Rimawas no longer breathing. I took her little body into Jan andBecca and placed it gently in Jan's outstretched arms.

"Back to the jungle—Rima's gone on ahead of us," I said,and to let my tears flow freely went back out to the patio. Theband was playing the beautiful, rhythmical melody again. Itwas well after midnight. I walked and walked and wept.

Tired at last, I went back in. Jan was holding Rima's littlebody. I looked at the little monkey face, the lips were slightlyparted, the face relaxed as in sweetest slumber. I kissed Jan.Becca had gone back to bed. I went back to my hammock.

At dawn I found Jan sitting at the foot of their bed, Rima'sbody cradled in her arms.

"Maybe Dona Maria will let us bury her body in her orangeorchard," she said.

Jan and Becca buried Rima's fever-shrunken little monkeybody under a young mango tree in the orchard of DonaMaria, in the village of Las Margaritas, Mexico, on the morn-ing of 27 February 1973. She had been with us almost exactlyone year, so had reached an age of about one year and four tosix weeks, or about the age of four in human terms.

Thus died the monkey's child—one of the uncounted vic-tims of man's lack of love for those closest to him in all livingCreation.

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Epilogue

While the manuscript of this book was at the publisher'soffice and negotiations were underway for its eventual publi-cation, Becca and Harry Little died of a tropical disease con-tracted at their new jungle home, five days by canoe fromCucui, Amazonas, Brazil.

Jan, who was also very ill, recovered and, after many weekson her own, was eventually brought out of the jungle by thelocal Indians who had come in to deliver the mail. In the fallof 1980 friends brought her back to the United States, whereshe is now living with her parents in Sacramento, California.

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