and later returned, on opposite sides of the Barcial, as the Grágidos and the Atánidas. That the Grágidos and the Atánidas had descended, on opposite sides, from the high valleys and their tributaries to arrive at the Barcial was a recognized fact; but that their previous origin had been a divergent emigration from the banks of the lower Barcial was the new—and, for me, the ludicrous—part of this theory. On the other hand, a different theory proposed the opposite, that is: that the Atabates came down from upper Barcial and were the only people to have gone around the Meseged to settle at the foot of the great waterfalls. But the truly inquisitive did not trust either of these ideas, since it has always been the jurists of Esteverna who have advocated this sort of hypothesis, using them to establish juridical theses, all of which provoke distrust among the rest of the people. The Barcial emerged from the waterfalls perpendicular to the Meseged and followed the path of the Atabates, but then it began meandering and curving to the west at an obtuse angle, and at the height of Gromba Feceria it more or less came parallel to the ramp of the Iscobascos, such that our road to the city was perpendicular to the spot in the Meseged where we had emerged.
However, we would face a strange and profound sadness before leaving that desert and bidding farewell to our escorts. It was Vandren who, riding on the back of my horse, suddenly pointed out, on the profile of one of the whitish dunes, dappled with small dark shrubs, about five hundred paces away, the dark silhouettes of a pack of animals that I was unable to identify just then, running diagonally in the direction of the path, as if aiming to cross it up ahead of us. I didn’t know how they’d spotted us or what imperative of their nature had made us their apparent object of interest. An erosion ditch hid them from our view for a few seconds, but soon they reappeared, closer and at the exact point where our eyes expected them; now everyone else was waiting for them too; I was able to identify them as a tribe of monkeys. There were no monkeys in our lands, and we did not suspect that they lived anywhere outside the remote jungles of the Barcial delta. Our guide noted our surprise and without waiting for our questions: “They are the begging baboons,” he said, “you’ll see when we get up to them.” We had just arrived at the point of convergence. Now their group stood motionless, about ten or fifteen paces from the path, all of them facing us; there must have been about forty of them, males, females, and infants, horribly ragged, hairy and covered with scabs and filth; the largest male had come six or seven paces out in front of the others and, as soon as we stopped our horses, he broke into a feverish speech, garrulous, whining, gesticulating, more distorted than inarticulate and more discontinuous than articulate, but recalling without a doubt the intonations and sounds and inflection of human speech, above all in his mode of emphasis and the profiles of his elocution; who knows what infinite resolve had put the need in those eyelids covered with the whitish dust of the desert and in that red snout twisting imploringly, denying all the proud power and ferocity of those long baboon fangs; who knows what incomplete destiny had transformed those long and dark hands, born for pure and immediate prehension, identical to the primal appropriation, into instruments not made for gesturing, but for the gesture of a gesture, for the supplicating search for or simulation of a gesture. We were quiet, entranced, listening to him, just like his quiet, expectant tribe behind him, when the solitary motion of our second escort dismounting from his horse put an immediate end to his speech. His stillness and that of the others was absolute. The Iscobasco untied a sack from the back of his horse and carried it over, leaving it two paces from the largest baboon who waited for the man to return to his horse and then quickly approached the sack, expertly untied it, now emitting only the soft grunts appropriate to his species, and then grabbed it by the bottom corners, and with a single motion, dumped all its contents on the ground. In that same instant, the whole tribe threw themselves on the crusts, chestnuts, carrots, beans, apples, and, with total desperation and speed, but in almost total silence, they devoured everything in a few seconds. Even before it was over, Nébride had already turned his back on the spectacle and started riding off, but he thought he heard Sorfos laughing behind him and he looked back to see. The guides too prompted us to continue on our way, but I felt Vandren’s hands on top of mine, as if he wanted to detain the horse for another moment; I couldn’t look at his face to find out if his emotion and his interest came from curiosity or trembling compassion. In the end, I brought my horse up next to the guide’s and asked him: “What was that?” “Those are the begging baboons,” he said, “animals who’ve suffered a long and sad history.” He told me that breed had previously only occupied the forests along the Barcial delta. When a group of Sesemnesces farmers tried to colonize one of those areas, the baboons had apparently ravaged their crops, which had been planted in an area the baboons considered part of their own territory. Having no experience hunting them and not feeling it right to start killing a breed of animal they had never killed, and seeing that they were not unfriendly nor fearful, the farmers opted—in their words—to make an agreement with them, to the extent that you can talk about an “agreement” between men and animals, and to teach them how to gather food in designated areas, showing them how to maintain crops and take advantage of them. And that was the beginning of their domesticity; they ended up moving into the villages and even became laborers, thanks to their intelligence, in some collection jobs, in the use of waterwheels, transporting loads, and in a great diversity of tasks, tasks more diverse and difficult than those any other domestic animal, or all of them combined, are capable of doing. But around nine years ago, a sudden flood washed away the villages and drowned the majority of their inhabitants, while the baboons, numbering close to one thousand, had almost all lived, because they slept in trees and had superior survival skills. The survivors searched for their village and could not find it, they called for their masters, they wept, they grew desperate and ended up scattering. But a small group of some fifty or sixty found the eleven humans who survived the flood: two families and two men who had lost their families and joined the others. There was nothing left for the people to do there; they were too few to start over, and they had no desire to stay in that horrible place. So they left in search of a new life, but the monkeys did not abandon them; they went and begged in Sea-bound towns, but the people did not want them coming near the village with the monkeys because they claimed they carried diseases. To abandon the monkeys was unthinkable; they couldn’t even fool one of those animals, how would they be able to fool forty or fifty of them? So they decided first to separate the women and children, one of them at a time, so that when they had gotten away they would reunite with their husbands, one at a time as well, so the baboons would not notice, assuming they would stay wherever the greatest number of humans stayed, wherever they thought the center was. But before putting this plan into practice, they discovered, by fortuitous circumstance, that for the baboons the center was one of the men, the oldest of the eleven, that it was to him they were fundamentally connected and they would not go anywhere unless he went as well. So his companions, the two families and the other man, parted ways with him amid many apologies. They showed him the great need they had—fearing for the children, condemned to a life of begging, expelled from everywhere—for him to stay with the monkeys, the pointlessness of sacrificing all of them, and a thousand other things, offering the final hope that he might manage to escape from the baboons too if he waited for the right moment, and with many blessings, they left in search of another life. The baboons remained impassive seeing them depart and gathered affectionately around their master and protector. It was this man who came to settle where the two paths leading to the ramp of the Iscobascos came together, hoping to beg, since the monkeys grew weaker every day—many had died already, although others had been born—and their appearance was totally repugnant, which would keep him from approaching any city or village with them, he feared too that they might go into the countryside and steal, and he would be the one captured and held responsible for any damage they caused and be beaten or pardoned for their thefts, since everyone knew the monkeys were with him. So, always accompanied by the monkeys, he approached travelers passing through the desert, and asked for alms for the monkeys and for himself, recounting his unfortunate story in words and with a voice more and more the same every day until he only told a single identical tale. And they said that he was totally deranged, because although what he said sounded clear and intelligible, he could not answer a single question posed to him; he seemed to be mute and deaf to everyone else. Because of this man the history of the begging baboons was known, but three years ago he had died of consumption and sickness. The baboons did not know how to leave that place and now they came out to the path on their own to beg, and the speech delivered by the oldest male of the tribe was nothing
