My name is Kongkong'er. My father pulled it out of an old book — a Tang tale: Kongkong'er of the Empty Hands, coming and going without a trace, so skilled even the story's hero couldn't touch him. Father hoped I'd amount to something. What I amounted to is — monkey business.
I do monkeys so well, the monkeys approve.
My squat is steadier than a monkey's. I climb four-limbed — the crooked pine by the bank, I topped at ten. And I speak monkey: seven or eight calls at least — begging, alarm, quarrel, crying for mother. When the troops down from Flower-Fruit Mountain pass the bank, I call once and they halt and stare at me a long while, then move on. They've filed me as an unusually large, rather slow monkey.
My father beats me: study your books, not beasts! I say: Father, monkeys aren't beasts. They have elders, sentries, brewers, teachers for their young — live with them a month and they're more human than half our town.
This plague year, the troops come down less and less. I miss them. So I go sit on the old stage-stone by the water and do my monkey act, hoping they'll pass and see — see something imitating them, and maybe learn that not everyone down here is bad.
A few days ago, one little monkey actually watched me from far off. A long time. I didn't dare move. Then it left — and on leaving, turned back and called at me once.
Whether that call was "begging" or "goodbye," I haven't learned yet.
When I have, I'm going up the mountain to find them.