The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag

Cavaliere knew) and began licking his marble curls. The Cavaliere laughed.
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    The Cavaliere in his study, finishing another letter to Charles. The monkey curled around the feet of a statue of Minerva, dozing or pretending to doze. Dressed in a sleeveless magenta jacket such as the natives wear, leaving bare his hairy rump and long thick tail—quite at home. The littlest citizen of the Cavaliere’s private kingdom. The Cavaliere has added a brief postscript about the arrival of the monkey: I have become quite inseparable from an East Indian monkey, a charming alert creature less than a year old who provides me with a new source of entertainment and observation.
    Connoisseurs of the natural in the Cavaliere’s era relished pointing out, avowing themselves struck by, the affinities between monkeys and human beings. But monkeys, even more than people, are social animals. One monkey can’t express a monkey’s nature. A single monkey is an exile—and fits of depression sharpen his innate cleverness. A single monkey is good at parodying the human.
    Jack, the Cavaliere is continuing his description to Charles, Jack, so I call him, has an intelligent very black face, set off by a light brown beard. On the subject of intelligence he was more explicit with correspondents whose intelligence he respected. He, Jack, is more intelligent than most of the people it is my lot to consort with here, wrote the Cavaliere in a letter to Walpole. And his movements are more genteel, his manners more fastidious.
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    The Cavaliere in the room where he takes breakfast. Nearby a table covered with cameos, intaglios, shards of lava and pumice harvested from the crater, a new vase he has just purchased. Jack is with him. In less than a month the monkey had become so tame and manageable that he would come at the Cavaliere’s call, seat himself in a chair by his side at the breakfast table, and help himself daintily to an egg or a piece of fish from the Cavaliere’s plate. His usual mode of taking liquids—he liked coffee, chocolate, tea, lemonade—was to dip his black hairy knuckles in the cup and lick them. But when especially thirsty he would grasp the cup with both hands and drink like his master. Of what the Cavaliere ate, he particularly liked oranges, figs, fish, and anything sweet. In the evening he was sometimes given a glass of Maraschino or the local Vesuvian wine. The Cavaliere, who hardly drank at all, enjoyed watching his guests watching Jack dip and lick, dip and lick. He became tipsy as a child does, this wizened child with a beard, a little rambunctious, and then suddenly, awkwardly, he fell asleep.
    In seashells, buttons, and flowers Jack found a rich hoard of objects to stare at and play with. He was astonishingly dexterous. He would meticulously peel a grape, put it down, look at it, and sigh, before popping it into his mouth. His sport was hunting insects. He probed in crevices of the masonry for spiders, and could catch flies with one hand. He watched the Cavaliere practicing the cello, his big, utterly round eyes fixed on the instrument, and the Cavaliere began seating him up front during the weekly musical assembly. But often when he listened to music—he clearly liked music—he bit his nails; perhaps music made him nervous too. He yawned, he masturbated, he searched for lice in his tail. Sometimes he just paced, or sat staring at the Cavaliere. Perhaps he was bored. The Cavaliere was never bored.
    The monkey had a most extraordinarily sweet, trusting disposition. He would take hold of the Cavaliere’s hand and walk with him, helping himself along at the same time with his other hand applied to the ground. The Cavaliere had to stoop slightly to accommodate the monkey’s need. He did not like changing his posture, and he did not want a substitute child. He began adding a tiny bit of teasing to his treatment of the monkey, a