Cayo

Meaning and the Monkey Island

This short story is composed of true accounts from Cayo Santiago, a research field station in Humacao, Puerto Rico, and home to approximately 1000 free-ranging rhesus macaques. The research station was founded in 1938 by an American primatologist, C. Ray Carpenter, who, mentored by Robert Yerkes, one of the most esteemed primatologists of the twentieth century, worried that the start of the second world war would interfere with the import of primates from South Asia for biomedical research. He wanted to start a breeding colony of rhesus monkeys in the Americas, so that American research could continue self-sustained. These accounts are from the summer I spent doing behavioral research on Cayo Santiago in 2022.

The image begins in my mind with the Old Man, sitting, legs crossed, eyes shut and his head bowed to his chest. The way he sat most mornings (and how he could be found most other times of the day).

Then, I see the Children playing around him. They leap, twirl and strut about. Occasionally there would be a scuffle and they would erupt in shrieks and screams, and one of their Mothers would drag them away or cuff them on the back of their head.

It was not too long ago that the island had numbered 500 inhabitants: 100 mothers with infants, 15 old Men, more than 200 young Girls, 150 Children, and about 50 Men. A man from the United States deposited them there, after he had kidnapped them from India and put them out at sea. They were the second shipment of People. (The first 500 died on the open ocean, of starvation, heatstroke, and disease, at the hands of the incompetent nephew of a famous U.S. neurosurgeon.) When they arrived, they were malnourished, sick with tuberculosis. Held down, they were given tattoos that splayed across their chests and down their thighs. Once they’d recovered from the illness that assaulted them within, they became the subjects of experiments, and their bodies were violated from the outside, ministrations so horrible they are better left unsaid.

The Island is not one but deceptively two, connected by an isthmus that, when the water is high, sinks below its surface, and when the water is low, surfaces its way to a narrow foot bridge that walks between them. On one side of the isthmus, the western side, is a big, branching tree. Some days, the local adolescent Boys make it theirs. Beneath and around, they scramble, brawling at its roots and scaling its naked branches. Or, sometimes, they sit in silence, one dozing as the other pokes around at something in front of him. Most days, and more and more frequently, the albino Boy is found there, often alone. He sits at its base or, out on one outstretched limb, his face quiet and contemplative, his manners reserved.

When the 400 were initially placed there, their captor, having not thought about the food they would eat, left them with nothing but the fruit on Island trees, and the vegetation dotting its corners. Many died in those first months. He, aloof, and flighty, delighted at every chance to relieve himself of any thought—never mind responsibility!—of the People, and rarely visited the Island. It took him six months to realize the dying state they were in. Having realized his mistake, he ordered bags of animal food—fox pellet, to be precise—to be imported in large barrels from the mainland—who knows from what sort of operation?—the one item he could think that would not perish on its way across the great sea. Even today, it is still pellets that are given to the People. They are “complete,” unlike the fruit, providing every nutritional component, macronutrient, vitamin or mineral! Twice a day they are left, blasphemous, rubbery things, in piles that are swarmed to. They are squabbled over, and fights break out, People fleeing with armfuls under their arms and in their hands, other People at their backs.

In the early days, some tried to escape. They would swim out a kilometer, into the open ocean, before someone would notice their heads bobbing and drag them back to shore. The one to catch them, at that time, was a Russian man, fleeing the Bolsheviks with his wife, wide and strong, with a mustache and a grin to match it. Every morning he swam, in the rough dark water, back and forth between the Island and the mainland, training for the job that was given to him. These early attempts were the last at escape, or so the stories say. Never again has someone been seen swimming their way towards freedom.

When it rains heavily, pools of water form beneath the mangled mangrove trees at the Island’s center. If there’s enough rain, the pools become deep enough to swim, and on hot days, Children flock to them, dipping their toes and holding their breath before taking a running jump. Last Fourth of July, sounds of music and laughter traveled from the mainland, as families lined the beach, setting up their chairs, and leaning back to the beats from their speakers or to watch their children running along the sand. On the Island, the Children were having fun of their own. They would swing, soaring in the air, and from the ends of the mangrove’s branches, releasing themselves at just the last moment, making a loud splash! as they hit the water. Their Grandfathers would wade to the deepest parts of the pool, where they would float or touch their feet to the ground, their muscles and joints relaxing. Mothers and their babies joined them, the babies clutching to their mothers’ chests, as they swam them confidently, with long sure strokes. The drum of happy leisure could be heard from both sides of the water on those days.

The People are always surveilled. Eyes find them everywhere, hidden behind alien-looking goggles and beneath wide-brim hats. When human eyes aren’t on them, the cameras’ eyes are. For almost 24 hours they’re watched. The people come in a boat in the morning, wearing modern hazmat suits so they leave nothing exposed, and follow them around for the day, clipboards in hand. They leave usually before the sun. They’re on edge, the people that come, looking shifty and paranoid, worried about violence from the subjects of their study, or sudden attacks from behind. But their eyes too glint with fascination, longing; they want to know what it is like to be more than just a visitor on the Island.

But the People don’t watch them back. They know they are there of course, but they have eyes only for each other. Walking around the perimeter of the small can be done in thirty minutes, and around the bigger, might take three times as long. The descendants of the original captives have, in the decades since they were placed there, organized into bands, tribes of sorts, 15 in total. One clan fought and won the small cay and live there in relative peace, with little incursion from the others. The other cay, however, is marked by war and conflict; violence flares with each migration a group makes, at any move that could be a threat, or plays at power. Frequently, the People on the small island climb to the western-most ridge and look out at what is happening across. Screams and roars of indignation sometimes travel the distance, and when it does, everyone stops and runs to witness the battle raging. They all keep one ear and one eye open for their distant brethren and the tribes they’ve found themselves in.

The Island now numbers well over a thousand. It’s too many for its small surface and constricted borders. The soil is dry and empty, left behind from plants uprooted, and trodden bushes. The People live on top of each other, their bodies scared and mangled from irritation, unhappiness, hierarchies and fights. When overpopulation first became a problem, their captors killed them clan by clan, entire peoples disappearing before the fall of night. The strategy shifted when it was found ineffective (the other clans simply, increasing in number, took their place), and infants, not yet of reproductive age, became the new one. Dozens of one- and two-year-olds died, their bodies carried away in red plastic bags. Eventually it was settled that it was Mothers who must go, and the Women were then killed, the babies they might have no longer a concern. Now, every year, a list is made and the names crossed off, the number on the Island lowering one by one. The Island has too many, even so.

A few weeks ago, a Very Old Man began to show up by the big tree near the isthmus. Sometimes he would be seen eating handfuls of chow in a shadowed corner, or behind a rock, his back to the outside. He had big round eyes, sad and doughy. He was painfully thin, his joints sticking out at odd angles, and his gait not quite straight. He was not from their tribe, an outcast of one on the eastern cay, and he crossed over silently, quietly, his eyes looking over his shoulders, and his shoulders slumped. Slowly he would limp to where leftovers had been forgotten, and eat, curled into himself. Other times, he sat in a ball, knees to his chest, on the very edge of the isthmus strip, trying to keep from falling to sleep. His eyes would close his head drift slowly before snapping back up and swiveling frantically.

The other day, a band of Teenage Boys caught him sneaking chow, and within seconds he was surrounded, the band leader strolling up to him, menace in his steps. The scream from the Very Old Man was the worst I had ever heard. He ran. Five steps in he fell, and the Boys were on him, grabbing at his body, scratching down his length. They bit his flesh, pulled his arms, and beat his head. The Man cried, bellowed and tried to crawl away. He ended up on his back. His stomach exposed, legs stretched, arms around his head, the lay displayed the perfect image of tragic resignation. At that moment two others came running. It was the Albino and his friend. They were strong Boys, larger than the others, more Men than children. They ripped the Teenagers off him, shoving them hard in the chest, their faces stone and grim. The Teenagers backed away, eyes wide and shaking, before turning to run. They stopped not far, and hid behind some bushes, to watch the Very Old Man, as hurriedly as he could, lift himself from the ground, pick up his things, and hobble away towards the narrow footpath. The Albino and his friend stood side-by-side as they watched him go, his back to them, a wall no one dare try to pass. When he was out of sight, they, with barely a glance between them, started in synch to the large tree, and sat sentry at its roots.

At the top of the mountain, on the small cay’s center, sits the son of the tribe’s leader. He can be found there often, alone with the mountain top, the wind and a view of the people that mill about. Sometimes, he can hear the sounds of an angry Mother or her screaming Child from below, or other times, murmurs of affection greet his ears. On happy days, the squeals of children or their hooting and rustling swell and bring the chirping of the birds or the lull of the ocean into the foreground. On other days, the Island feels silent and the People sad. They sit with each other unspeaking, resting a hand on their back, or passing chow between them.

The ocean is there always, all around them, to remind them constantly. But almost always, at almost any time, one Person can be found sitting, and looking out. And it is striking

That they look happy

And the world looks pretty

And they find meaning

And do good things

Even looking at the ocean.