The Fourth Circle by Zoran Zivkovic, Mary Popović

the recurring insight that one male is much like the next gave me an idea. I found out recently that Sri has an emotional attachment to cartoon animations, in his closed, secretive way, of course. Would cartoons mean anything to the Little One, and how would he react to them? When he pressed a syntax key—the one with the comma and question mark—I showed him one of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, screenfuls of wild cat-and-mouse pursuits, full of impossible gags and comic reversals, but all in the same pattern: cunning little Jerry outsmarting big bad Tom.
    I was convinced that this division of roles would please the Little One, but I was wrong. It seems that one really never knows where one is with males. He stared unblinkingly at the screen for a short while and then suddenly jumped back, overturning the chair on which he had been crouching, covering his eyes with his hands (but continuing to peep between the fingers); he at first whined and then began to emit irate, wrathful sounds. When a few moments later, following Sri's bad example, he grabbed some books lying near the keyboard, obviously intending to throw them at the screen, I had no option but to hastily change the picture.
    Instead of the feverish pace of Tom and Jerry, I showed a far more restrained, if grotesque, ballet of ostriches and hippos set to the music of Amilcare Ponchielli, also from a Disney movie of the last century. The Little One's angry snarling diminished somewhat, but he continued holding on to two books, ready at any moment to hurl them at the screen. There was no point in irritating him any further, so I switched off the monitor entirely, the sign for him to go away. He continued to sit in front of the blank screen, however, as the anger slowly drained out of him. He never again pressed the key with the comma and question mark and even avoided those around it so as not to make a mistake. Finally I had to abandon any attempt to understand the nature of the male.
    In only one other case was the Little One's response to a display so stormy, although in a different way. On all other occasions he behaved fairly good-naturedly or with indifference, although I only rarely managed to foresee his reactions. I didn't succeed either when I rather nastily wanted to see how he would react to his own ugliness, having lost sight of the fact that monkeys in the jungle have no mirrors. I showed him his own face, but he only stared at it for a few moments without recognizing himself and then turned away from the monitor, uninterested.
    We assembled an assortment of pictorial signs, using almost all the keys, so that we were now beginning to communicate. For Sri, all this would have been enormously difficult, which would have put him in a bad mood, since he considered himself, in all modesty, a genius of communication science (and a lot of related areas as well—typical male moderation). Fortunately, jealousy spared him the trouble. After Sri's first outburst, I continued to work with the Little One—concealing this from Sri, but dropping enough hints from time to time for him to have misgivings. Interestingly, I had no qualms of conscience about this at all. It seems that women quickly get used to being unfaithful once they make a start. Only the first time is difficult.
    Sri, conveniently for us, was often away from the temple. The life of the jungle, so different from the aseptic environment of the University, fascinated him more and more; he spent a lot of time roaming about, protected by my constant surveillance. As soon as he stepped beyond the nearest trees, I would switch on the monitor, and the Little One would materialize in front of it, because he too had been lurking somewhere in the vicinity, like a patient lover waiting for Sri to leave.
Though our vocabulary was quite rich, allowing exchanges of some complexity, The Little One hadn't actually told me anything yet, which was odd, because I knew from my dream that this had to happen. Something