The Baboon Whose Buffoon Was Dead Title Story in a volume of the same name, 1950 by Sadeq Chubak trans. Peter Avery © 1952 Prepared for the Internet by Iraj Bashiri, 2002

It is certainly true to say that early morning sleep is the heaviest. This was decidedly so with the buffoon, Jahan. Oblivious to the noise of the passing lorries and the shouting charcoal burners on the plain, he lay slumped at dawn within the hollow of a withered, leafless oak tree where he and his baboon, Makhmal, had stopped for the night. Many caravans had paused there before him, and men had stripped fuel from the tree's bony, twisted branches and set fires in its hollow trunk, so that now the inner wall of the tomblike enclosure was prepared with glossy scales of charred wood.

Scattered on the ground in front of him were his opium and tobacco pipes--the vafur and chapuq--his begging bowl and sack, his tobacco pouch and the tin for the hashish, and some half-burnt, blackened sticks. His pock-marked face with its few bristles had dropped out from under his cloak; it looked like a mask wrapped in a shawl.

The baboon, Makhmal, was chained to a stake driven into the ground near by. He was awake and restless, and tired of waiting for his master to stir. His feet and hands hurt, his soft skin was sore and torn, and yesterday's dust still clung to his skin and fur. He sat with his arms hung between his haunches, his beady eyes fixed on the tree that held Jahan. Then, his impatience growing, he sprang to his feet and twisted himself this way and that about the chain. Still the buffoon was motionless. At last, in resignation, Makhmal sat again. He waited and watched, blinking his eyes in the dim light.

The sun's glare had not yet lit the plain, but a dull glint of sunlight now oozed through a cleft in the Mareh range. It began to trickle across the earth, merging with the columns of charcoal smoke that curled up into the still morning air. The surrounding hills slept on in the shadow, still untouched by the day. The plain itself was red, the color of Armenian clay, and it was split in two by a long ribbon of road over which the lorries rolled. Here and there large oaks grew, interspersed with stunted almond trees and linseed bushes.

The showman and his baboon had come over the Kutal-i-Dukhtar Pass and had reached Dasht-i-Barm by nightfall the day before. All the way the baboon had kept pace with his master, sometimes walking on his hind legs, sometimes on all fours, sometimes covering the ground in his own baboon-style leaps and bounds. At last they had left the road and made their way to the hollow oak.

Immediately Jahan had dropped Makhmal's chain and kindled a fire. He had taken the tea things, the hashish, the pipes and opium from his sack and laid them around the fire. Next he had taken out four roast sparrows wrapped in bread, and he had shared these with Makhmal. Supper scarcely over, the showman had lit his opium pipe and taken several quick draws. Makhmal had sat opposite, all agog, his nostrils quivering with the sensitivity of the antennae of an ant. But Jahan had kept the pipe to himself, absorbing all the smoke into his own lungs. He had taken not the slightest notice of Makhmal, though he knew the baboon's craving to be as great as his own.

But it was always this way. The clown's craving left him no decency at all. When they were in the towns and their show had been catching on, with the pennies coming in nicely one after another, Jahan, wanting to trick the spectators with a fast retreat, would use Makhmal's craving for drug as an excuse. Using the addict's whining tone, he would say to Makhmal: "Makhmal, Makhmal, my sweet, are you beginning to feel you want some?" and he'd say, "Oh, you wicked old Indian, you, you have got it bad, haven't you? do you want it now? All right, then. Cheer up. I'm taking you along this very moment. I'll give you your smoke, and then you'll be all right, won't you?" And later, seated by himself with his pipe, Jahan would take his fill of the poppy, and only send across to Makhmal at last a few short, thin whiffs, the essence of which he had first absorbed in his own lungs.

Here beside the oak tree it had been no different. When he had satisfied himself with opium, the showman had taken several rapid draws of the hashish, gulping it down deep. Makhmal had received no smoke worth mentioning at all. Then Jahan had retrieved Makhmal's chain from where it lay on the ground, and had crossed the small brook that now separated the baboon and his master. He had driven the stake deep into the earth under an almond bush. Then, dead tired, the man had fallen asleep in the tree hollow where now he lay.

Makhmal again got to his feet and gazed across the brook toward his master. The split nostrils of his long nose were quivering, and his eyebrows met in a puzzled scowl. There was something strange here. Once he thought his master had awakened, but it was not so; the skin of the buffoon's face remained perfectly still. The eyes were open, rolled upwards, showing their whites. The face was curiously stiff.

Suddenly, with all the strength of his huge frame, Makhmal shook himself and leapt twice into the air, so high that his collar wrenched his neck and choked him back. All his attention was fixed on his clown, for now he understood.

The buffoon's face was completely altered, alien. Makhmal was seeing a man as he had never before seen him. In his lifetime, he had seen men only threatening or taunting or whining--he had never seen a dead man. And now a face whose every familiar movement had revealed to him his master's essential being was rigid and unmoving. Here was a face from which there was nothing to fear.

All at once an ache of loneliness seized his vitals as he realized that in all that wide, vacant plain he was entirely alone. Time after time he leapt this way and that way around the stake. Then he stopped dead in his tracks and gazed at the men moving up and down the plain as they tended their fires. He squatted where he stood and stared at the buffoon's face, remembering the man's threats and thrashings. then he turned frightened eyes up toward the dry, dust-soiled leaves of the almond bush beneath which he was tied. And again, as if he were expecting an order, he looked at his master.

What was he to do? Without his buffoon, he was not complete. It was as if half of his brain were paralyzed. Jahan had been his one link with the world of men. He understood nobody's speech as he understood his master's. For a lifetime he had been performing his tricks at the showman's commands--standing on his head, waddling about, waving his stick, thrusting his backside into the air--all for the crowd's amusement and the clown's profit.

In the brothels, in the coffee shops, in the squares, in garages, cemeteries and caravansaries, wherever his master chose to perform, Makhmal had been surrounded by all kinds of men. Yet his knowledge of men was only this--that they gathered around him to tease and taunt. It was they who pelted him with stones, rotted fruit, bits of wood, old bones, old boots, scraps of iron, pomegranate rind, turds.

He had become inured to their blows, and had paid little attention, alert only to the buffoon's bell and the twitch of the chain, so that he could faithfully perform whatever was required of him. Sometimes, to encourage his most popular trick, the men would waggle their buttocks at him, and the clown would give a slight pull on the chain. "Makhmal, where do we put our enemies?" he would say in his most winning tone. The baboon would then turn his back on them and expose the shining backside which was attached to him just a little below his tuft of a tail and which looked like a huge tumor. He would clutch it with both hands, with a gesture as much as to say, "Sorry, but there's nothing else for it," while from his throat issued a rough, ominous noise,, "Ooom, oom, oom."

"Enemy" was a word of known shape to his ear. Whenever it reached his hearing, he knew the moment had come to put his head to the ground and his hands to his backside. This was the mainstay of their act; this was his job; it was for this that he had been born.

Yet the experience of enmity brought only fear and submission from him. He was forever anticipating the raps of his master's cane on his head, the cruel pull of the collar around his neck, the kick in the belly. A glance from his maser paralyzed him with fright, for he was more afraid of Jahan than of anyone. His life was one of continual state of terror, and his terror was matched only by the loathing and disgust he felt for all mankind and for his master in particular.

But he must continually submit. He had no choice. Whatever he did, he was forced to do; whatever he witnessed, he was forced to witness; whatever he suffered, he had no alternative but to suffer it. He was attached to a chain, and its other end was gripped by a man who could drag him here or there as whim decreed. The man and the chain had replaced his will--he had none of his own.

Squatting now, gazing at the clown in the oak tree, Makhmal scratched his head. Then he took two or three turns around himself, wondering what to do. his eyes fell upon the chain then, and never before had he looked at it with such astonishment and loathing. He drew it up to his neck. It was rough, heavy, stained with rust. For a lifetime, riveted about his neck, it had held him fast to his master or to his master's stake. From it had come nothing but injury and weariness.

He put a hand to his throat, where the chain joined the collar. He shook it and clumsily fiddled about with it: yes, it had always been like that--he knew this chain like the fingers of his own hand.

Slowly, wonderingly, he groped his way down the chain, hand-over-hand, toward the stake. At last he reached the other end, the end that was not a part of himself, but another, a hostile world.

The buffoon had always driven the stake to which Makhmal's chain was attached as far into the ground as it would go, because, as he used to say, "There isn't a bigger bastard of an animal in the world than a baboon, and one of these days, you'll see. As soon as a man's back is turned for a second, they can tear him to pieces."

Yet, in reality, only Makhmal's habitual fear had kept him from pulling it free in the past. Now he fingered the crown of the stake experimentally. Now he shook it with anger. Now he grasped it with his hands. The strength with which he uprooted it was far greater than was needed. In one good tug it was loosened and out of the ground.

What a marvelous feeling! Makhmal began to leap about, overjoyed at his liberation. Then he moved away from the almond bush, and the chain followed him. As he leapt, the chain leapt. As he bounded about with joy, the chain bounded. It, too, had been freed, but each was fastened to the other. He winced at the pull and the noise of it. His spirits sank. But there was nothing to be done.

He started over toward the buffoon's dead body. After jumping the stream, he stood erect a moment, looking doubtfully at his master before going any further. When he got a little closer, he again paused in doubt, and there, some distance away, he sat down opposite the body, still afraid to go closer without a sign.

The corpse still leaned against the oak tree, wrapped in the creased, crumpled cloak. In front of it, the contents of the sack still lay about the cold circle of cinders from last night's fire. It was as if the buffoon were appraising his inheritance as he sat there looking at these things.

Makhmal got to his feet and went closer. When he stood directly in front of his clown, he sat down. But the face said nothing to him. It did not say, "Go." It did not say, "Sit." It neither commanded him to fill the pipe, nor to tie a turban around his head, nor to stand on his hands. It did not ask, "Where do we put the enemies?" It did not tell him to close his eyes, nor did it say, "Bravo, hold up the stick! hold it up!" nor, "Ride it, ride it, there's a good jockey!" It did not cry out, "Sweets, oh, sweets, sweets, sweets, hot and sweet." It said nothing to him.

Yet the pattern of a lifetime was stubborn. The memory of thrashings, curses, kicks dealt out by his master in fits of depression could not be erased by Makhmal's recognition that his master now could have no effect on him. He knew that the clown no longer had anything to do with him, yet he remembered his power to inflict punishment. There had been times when Makhmal has been obstinate, playing the fool just as the show was going well, and he'd dig in his toes and pull hard on his chain, leaving the buffoon with no alternative but to coax him with generous supplies of raisins till he yielded. Later Jahan would tether him to a tree and beat him till his agony was such that he would roll in the dust groaning, his mouth lolling open like a sack while he chewed his tongue. But there was not one to come to his rescue. They only laughed. "Hajji Firooz, the monkey had a beating!"

And when Jahan's anger was at its worst, he would leave Makhmal for long periods without food and opium, chained to the stake. This was the cruelest punishment of all. If he had been unfettered, he could have gone and found a morsel to eat among the sweepings and refuse scattered on the ground; he could have sat in the coffee shops and enjoyed the smoke of men's pipes. But he was captive.

On a sudden impulse now, Makhmal put out his hand and cautiously pulled at the cloak that enveloped his master. The nightcap beneath was so saturated with sweat and dirt that its rim gleamed. The face looked as if it were molded in quicklime, ready to crumble to pieces at the first touch. Makhmal was suddenly filled with joy. It was as if the buffoon were now a vast distance away, across a wide gulf, completely beyond his grasp. Makhmal's blood tingled. Now, he felt he was the victor at last, and he stared hard at the face, and let out a short, dry cackle of glee, "Ghe, ghe, ghe!"

Then he grabbed a piece of bread and two roast sparrows from the sack and gobbled them up. He wolfed all the bread he could find. He was completely at his ease and superbly contented.

It was not long before the desire for opium moved him to take the vafur from beside the cold ashes and hold it under his nostrils. Several times he viciously twisted the opium pipe about in his greasy, black fingers. First he smelled it, then he sucked it in his mouth, and then began to chew it until he had chewed it to pieces. While the acrid flavor of the charred center of the pipe revolted him, it wormed its way into his nose and excited his craving.

When he had spat out the bits, he smashed the pipe's porcelain end to smithereens on a stone by the dead fire. Then he excitedly pulled at Jahan's cloak, as if he wanted to wake him. Finally, he rose and, turning his back on his clown, he took the road to the plain.

The plain was lighter now; the sunlight had spread itself over it and it was the color of hot copper. The noise of the lorries on the road echoed across it.

Makhmal had no idea where he was going. His clown had always walked along with him, his shadow, his inseparable companion. Now there was only the sound of his chain, sliding through the dust and clinking over the stones. It was heavier now, more bothersome, and its noise marred his solitude.

He passed some boulders. Now he was further away than ever from his master, and going along on two legs. His huge frame moved forward with a stoop, dragging the chain after it. He was encumbered, but he was on his own. He had escaped from his master, and he was off to a new world.

He reached a pasture where a flock of sheep were grazing. All their heads were down as they busily nibbled the short grass, bumping against each other, completely absorbed. The boy watching over them had stretched out his legs on the grass and was playing his pipe. Makhmal sat down under one of the big dusty oak trees on the edge of the field and looked at the shepherd and the quiet sheep.

He felt at peace. His little journey, made on his own initiative, had cheered him. He liked the flock of sheep, but he couldn't help feeling that the boy sitting there was somehow more akin to him than the sheep, and he watched him with interest. He sat idly, pleasurably, sizing things up.

At this moment, a big blue-winged horsefly took it upon itself to be a nuisance. It flew into his face, tormentingly sitting in a corner of his eye. With the ease and patience of an expert, however, Makhmal caught it as it stung him and held it cunningly between his fingers, where he regarded it for a moment before consigning it, still alive, to his mouth.

All at once the shepherd saw Makhmal and got up and approached him, carrying his heavy stick across his shoulders. He gripped it from below with his hands in exactly the same way in which Makhmal had held his own stick for the showman's act. His master had taught him to grasp the stick when he commanded. "Barrikallah Chapani. Take the stick, shepherd," and Makhmal had always put it behind his neck, bringing his hands up to grip it just as the boy held his own now; then Makhmal had danced his jig.

Makhmal was pleased. He sat motionless, his hands between his haunches, watching the approach of the shepherd and his stick. As the boy drew closer, he hesitated, looking with astonishment at Makhmal. Till then, he had seen a baboon only once in the village, and at some distance. He stared at those ears, hands, feet, and face that were so like his own. Then, in an effort to make friends with this curiously kindred creature, he put his hand in his pocket and took out a piece of acorn bread. It was as dry and hard as a piece of plaster flaked from a wall. He threw it into Makhmal's lap, and stood and watched.

Makhmal doubtfully picked up and smelled the bread; then he disdainfully threw it away. He looked hard at the shepherd boy and the stick that lay across his shoulders, but he had no fear of him and anticipated no danger.

At this point, the boy lowered the knotted, boxwood stick and fingered it. Makhmal's suspicions rose. The shepherd was of the species, man. The meaning of the stick had changed.

The boy took a step forward. Makhmal remained where he was, his eyes moving with the boy's movements. Prompted by his own loneliness and self-consciousness, the boy wanted to find out what this animal was and what it would do. He suddenly raised his stick and lunged forward at Makhmal; his thrust, checked by his own apprehension, fell short of contact.

Makhmal's disenchantment was complete. He felt at once the soreness in the palms of his hands and feet, and his whole body ached so with craving that in his mind's eye he could see his master sitting before the brazier, smoking opium and giving him a puff. He twitched the split nostrils of his delicate nose and sniffed in longing. He was weary of the shepherd now and would have liked to get up and go. But the feeling that he had better not turn his back on the boy restrained him.

The boy's courage grew as the ape sat motionless before him. He raised his stick a second time and swiftly delivered a violent whack on Makhmal's head. Makhmal immediately gathered all his strength, grasped the boy's shoulders, and dug his teeth into his face. The terrified boy fell to the ground, the thick, red blood spurting from his cheek.

While the boy rolled about and bellowed, Makhmal bounded off and retraced his path at top speed, instinctively selecting the only route he knew. Except for the familiar boulders and bushes that marked his way, the vast expanse of plain was completely unknown to him. He had not the slightest inkling of what to do. He had no effective defense against the terrors of his surroundings, and he lacked the comfort of the food and opium that his body craved. Everything around him seemed an implacable and bloody adversary. As he traveled, he pricked up his ears; the sound of the smallest insect stirring in the undergrowth was enough to put him on the alert.

Weakened finally by fatigue and his ache for the drug, he slunk into the shelter of a boulder and squeezed himself into a cleft he discovered between two stones. He felt shaken and muddled, as if his senses could take no more. Peering out from his rocks, he saw the distant shapes of men who were felling trees with their axes. His loathing and terror engulfed him, and he shrank back in his hiding place.

At his feet he found a few blades of grass. He crumpled them in his fingers and sniffed at them. When he ate them, he found that their sharp, fresh taste refreshed him, so he ate some more. The thin, sleepy April sunlight gently tickled the hairs of his belly and chest, and he yawned. He leaned against the stone and gazed at the cornflowers and the fresh spring growth carpeting the ground. He stuck out his lower lip, and it twitched slightly as a gurgling, laugh-like sound came from his throat.

Then he huddled further into the gap where he squatted, pressing his back against the rock behind him to relieve his weariness. Now he was comfortable; his chain was forgotten, and his intolerable loneliness gave way to pure contentment.

He put his hand under his armpit and scratched, turning his head in an ecstasy of delight. Then he scratched his chest, and then, stretching himself voluptuously, he idly felt his belly, thighs, and crotch. He captured nits and lice, one by one, in the sharp pincers of his nails, and, putting them between his teeth, he crunched them to bits. The skin of his belly was silver, with blue veins coursing across it.

His body began to tingle as his hands moved over it, and he soon abandoned himself to its demands. The fatigue and aching were erased from his limbs as his blood heated. A delicious sense of power took possession of him. His memory and mind were completely empty. His eyes half-shut, his body quivering, he was in an oblivion of pleasure.

Suddenly a huge hawk, large enough to attack a sheep, shot out of the sky and swooped down toward him, its talons and beak ready for combat. The baboon leapt up, his diversions instantly abandoned. Taut with the sense of his danger, he dug his feet into the ground and bared his powerful teeth and claws. He held his arms above his head in a wild, defensive gesture--but the chain inhibited him, dragging at his neck, pulling him down.

The hawk in a swift wheel passed over his head and shot up into the heavens above him, leaving as quickly as it had come. Each feared the other, and the hawk flew on to less formidable prey. But Makhmal was left weary and sick and frightened, conscious again of the weight around his neck. His peace was utterly destroyed. There was nowhere he could stay. Everything was alien and menacing. To linger was out of the questions; the ground he trod burned his feet; there was nothing to do but run.

He took to his heels, again taking up the route back to the hollow oak. It was as if some force were compelling him to return. The buffoon was the only familiar being in his world, and although Makhmal was dragging the chain behind him, in reality the chain was dragging him. He felt incomplete without his master, and, with an abundant sense of yearning and submission, he went on toward his oldest enemy.

The clown's body lay just as he'd left it, untouched, lolling against the tree.

In his despair, Makhmal came up slowly and squatted by his master, staring into his face in wonder and dismay. He had been driven from every refuge, and now his body ached, his hands and feet pained him; escape for him had never existed. He did not know what to do, but he had come to be near his clown, and he did not want to leave him again.

And now, advancing toward Makhmal, the withered oak, the dead clown, came two charcoal burners. Two huge axes were slung over their shoulders.

Seeing them, Makhmal was terribly afraid. His body trembled and he looked pleadingly at the buffoon's body, making little gurgling noises in his throat. Existing as he did, somewhere halfway between the ape's world and the man's world, he knew men, and his instinct told him that these two men with axes meant his death.

He put out his hand and pulled at the cloak on the corpse. As the woodsmen came closer, his terror increased. They were a rough, hard pair who didn't care a damn. As they came along, they were laughing together, their axes glinting in the sun.

Makhmal rose in a panic, ready for flight from these horrors--this hated place, his master's corpse, the approaching woodsmen. But there was the chain, tugging at him, sapping his strength, rooting him to the spot as effectively as if the stake had been imbedded in rock. It seemed to him that there and then his master was hammering it in, that the stake would never, never be released. However much he wrenched at his chain with his hands, with his neck, he could not get free. The end of the stake was thrust into the fibrous root of the oak tree and would not budge.

He went wild then, refusing to yield. Madly he bent down and bit into the chain, gnawing at it in his fury. Its links clanked between his teeth. He rolled his eyes in rage, blood and bits of tooth and froth spurting from his mouth. Suddenly he jumped into the air and let out a yell that subsided into a harsh, ugly, painful grating in his throat.

All over the plain, columns of smoke were ascending, the fires below them invisible. Only the men who worked at the foot of these columns could be seen.

The woodsmen came nearer to the hollow oak tree. The blades of their axes flashed in the sunlight. They were roaring with laughter.