Of Apes & Men

HACKENFELLER'S APE (177 pp.)--Brophy -- Random House ($2.75).

Well might sensitive Percy act apologetic, ashamed and guilty. He and Edwina seemed perfectly mated, but Percy refused to mate. He was in love with her yet left her unfulfilled. For weeks poor Edwina tried every device in her varied repertoire, but she could not heat the simmering Percy to an honest boil. Edwina iked. Percy brooded. It was an intolerable situation for an Anthropopithecus Hirsutus Africanus, or, in plain English an ape.

Percy, a Hackenfeller's Ape,* is the subject of British Author Brigid Brophy's first novel, but the theme of her crisp witty satire is Man--his birth in pain his absurdity in marriage, his glory in freedom. Her ape is no ordinary one; its kind is the closest thing to Homo sapiens that the animal kingdom has produced. For that reason, Percy and Edwina are the center of impassioned scientific interest.

Welcome Home. Professor Clement Darrelhyde, for example, is scarcely less frustrated than Edwina at Percy's gentle but unyielding reluctance to father her offspring. Every day the professor stands before their cage at the London Zoo to observe their mating habits. He anticipates a certain fame as the first white man to see and record what native reports suggest is "a ceremonial so poetic, so apparently conscious that, if it were true it must mark a stage between the highest beast and Man." When a government interloper tries to requisition Percy for a suicidal rocket project, the professor decides that nobody is going to make a guinea pig out of his monkey--or vice versa. By that time he knows what ails Percy. The unhappy ape, gazing "forlornly out of his cage, [yearns for] the freedom to make love to Edwina of his own choice, to persuade and implore her, to aspire and range." One night the professor releases Percy and, sure enough by dawn, "romantic and full of nostalgia " he is back. Gently, Percy lays his hand upon Edwina. "No questions disturbed her soul ... She welcomed him home." But the professor, unscientifically overcome by the sentiment that he is a friend of the family, modestly averts his eyes.

Smug Little Incubus. Author Brophy is Londoner of Irish descent. At 24 she writes clean, cool English prose, shows a perceptive grasp of her material and has turned out a pointed and amusing little satire. Her last chapter, entitled "Soliloquy of an Embryo," follows the brief career of Edwina's "snug, smug self-sufficient little incubus." It is the kind of fantastic literary device that only a very competent and very serene writer could bring off. Author Brophy manages it.

When Edwina's baby is finally born its howl of wrath is a trumpet call announcing that, despite the folly of ape or man life will go on and the species will survive.

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