Lanodd might have been one of the richest orangutans in the jungle, but wasn’t content. He began thinking how much fun it would be if his power over the other orangutans was absolute, and began plotting how he could become the alpha-est of the Kinabatangan River Valley’s alpha males. He wasn’t very smart, though, so a few years went by without his coming up with a good idea. But then, when a number of Tapanuli orangutans started coming over to Borneo from northern Sumatra because their habitat was being destroyed, a blindingly bright lightbulb went on above his head. He began telling his fellow Borean orangutans that the Tapanulis were dirty and stupid and disease-ridden, and wanted to force themselves on the Bornean females. “They’re sending former prisoners and sickos to get our offspring addicted to dangerous primate tranquilizers.”
A lot of the Bornean orangutans felt that life had been unfair to them because they weren’t as rich as Lanodd, and their coats less lustrous, and eagerly accepted that it was all the Tapanulis’ fault. “I alone can solve the problem,” Lanodd told them, though he’d never actually solved a problem, while causing problems beyond counting, “but you’ll have to give me complete control of your lives and worship me like a god.” Those few of his prospective worshippers who weren’t happy to comply were arrested and sent to a penal colony on the semi-autonomous Indonesian province of Aceh, on the northwest tip of Sumatra, for “rehabilitation”.
Most of the creatures in Borneo,including the slow lorises — adorably big-eyed nocturnal primates on whose good side other creatures in the jungle strived to stay because they’re venomous — just ignored those disturbing developments. Right around the time Lanodd declared that any orangutan who didn’t address him as sir would be sold to a Saudi venomous primate collector, the slow lorises Tristan and Isolde (Zoldy to friends and family) struck up a penpalship on prime8.com, the primate social media. They became such close friends that they decided to be a romantic couple.
Robert Burns had famously observed, “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley.” Neither of the lorises understood the gang aft agley part. A giant saltwater crocodile friend of Tris’s named Puspawati, who’d read Scottish poetry at university, translated it for them: Often go awry. Tris was sad about Zoldy thinking they didn’t work as a romantic pair, but agreed that they could remain close friends.
Zoldy and Tris returned to their respective parts of the island, but remained in frequent contact. Tristan seemed intent on becoming chummy with all of Zoldy’s friends. At first that seemed endearing to Zoldy, but then a little worrying. Tris was especially curious about Zoldy’s male friends, inquiring even about whether she and particular ones had mated. Zoldy told him gently that such questions made her uncomfortable. Doing her best not to hurt his feelings, she reminded him that what they were friends, and not lovers. “Well, of course, that’s all we are!” Tris sputtered. How on earth could Zoldy have thought that he believed otherwise? It was absolutely laughable! Clearly embarrassed, he angrily claimed never to have heard anything more preposterous. Did Zoldy imagine he didn’t know that Zoldy’s interactions with her friends were absolutely none of his business? Ask him if he cared!
For a while, the subject didn’t come up. But then someone wrote something especially kind in response to a photo Zoldy had posted of her late grandmother on prime8.com. “I know it isn’t my business,” Tris said, “but who wrote that?” Zoldy’s telling him — truthfully — that she didn’t know infuriated him. “Oh, come on!” he sputtered. Zoldy told him again that she didn’t know and gently reminded him that even if she did know, it wasn’t Tris’s place to demand an answer, as she and Tris were friends, after all, and not lovers.
Tris couldn’t be convinced that Zoldy wasn’t lying to him. Did she imagine Tris couldn’t deduce that she was back with her former mate, Firash? At one point, hearing about an especially enjoyable evening Zoldy and Firash had had, Tris furiously sputtered, “That should be my life!”
What sort of a friendship was it, Zoldy asked herself, if she had to self-censor when it came to the good stuff? She told Tris that his jealousy was making her feel as though on the razor’s edge, forever in danger of hurting her dear friend. “That’s absolutely ridiculous!” Tris exasperated, exactly as Zoldy feared he might. Zoldy saw no recourse but to say she needed some time off from the friendship.
When she phoned him after returning from a week as a guest star at Kuala Lumpur’s Zoo Negara, Tris was hurt and furious. His tone, as he asked if Firash had flown to KL with Zoldy confirmed his umbrage. He told Zoldy in no uncertain terms how irresponsible it was to travel by jet in 2024. “Tell me,” he said, sounding as though about to burst into tears, ”did you give so much as a single thought to how much carbon dioxide your flight released? Well, did you?”
Zoldy sadly said she thought their taking another break might be a good idea. “That’s just fine with me!” Tris said with the vehemence he saved for when his feelings were hurt most.
Two days passed, and Zoldy still didn’t feel up to dealing with Tris’s suspiciousness and resentment. Two more days passed, and she felt the same. It was clear by now that Tris intended to make a career of being hurt by Zoldy. The four days turned into a week. Zoldy realised that, as much as she’d enjoyed and been buoyed by her and Tris’s friendship, she felt enormous relief no longer having to balance on the razor’s edge.
Her Horsfield’s flying squirrel friend Putih had seen something Tris had written online about Zoldy. She warned Zoldy that it was far from flattering, and that she might be better off not reading it. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but slow lorises aren’t feline, and Zoldy suffered only a non-fatal broken heart. Tris was now telling anyone who would listen that Zoldy had cruelly discarded him not because his implacable suspiciousness had made the friendship more painful than pleasurable, but because she suffered from the personality order that had become the flavor of the month among the jungle’s armchair psychoanalysts.
Zoldy was shocked to discover that Tris had managed to convince many of her old friends that Zoldy was heartless and had gaslighted him, as when she claimed not to know who had praised her photo of her grandmother. He was so persuasive that a male with whom Zoldy had mated many years before publicly expressed the hope that Zoldy die unloved and alone. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord — and that of poor serially gaslighted, lied-to Tris, who in fact had been gaslighted and lied to only in his paranoid fantasies.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice. After his honor guard of yellow-lipped sea krait snakes, the deadliest of Borneo’s 24 species of venomous serpents, deserted him, Lanodd was charged with and convicted of a succession of crimes, and sentenced to three years’ detention at Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, the greatest humiliation the Malaysian justice system had ever inflicted on an orangutan. Hundreds of times a day, a group of tourists would exhort him, in whatever language they happened to speak, “Tweet for us, little bird,” and then almost pee themselves laughing. He went on what proved to be a fatal hunger strike. After he was interred in an unmarked grave., there were as many opinions regarding its location as there were creatures who had hoped to defecate on his final resting place.
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Read some of my books, for God’s sake.