BEBOP AND LULA

A long time ago, as the descendants of Adam and Eve were spreading all over the world and starting to build civilizations, God carefully contemplated His creation. With great anger, He discovered that humans had perverted all life on earth with selfishness, greed, lies... and it appeared to the Lord that every masterpiece needed a rough draft. He decided that this world had to be destroyed, however, His divine wisdom prompted Him to keep a model to set the bases of a new and purer creation.

Then God wondered how to erase life and the evil spirit rooted in each soul, but trampling on one's own precious work isn't that easy. He thought of the mighty fire, or the growling spasms of the earth but chose neither of them, water remaining the sweetest and the most poetic of the four elements. Thus, a deluge was to submerge the highest mounts, drown the steepest valleys, and lose the oceans into the clouds. This implied of course the building of an ark, of a shelter for the ancestors of a new mankind and the selected couples from each species. The choice was delicate, since all humans seemed weak and corrupt in God's eyes.

Noah was six hundred years old then and displayed just enough honesty and maturity to carry out the task properly. He was behaving as a good head of family, with strong religious values..."Alas!..." the Lord thought, "he's probably the last!" Still moved by this bitter remark and feeling lonely, He decided to talk it over with Noah, who was sitting under an olive tree when he perceived the signs of a divine presence. Tired but serene, he rested his old, respectable chin on the knob of his wooden walking-stick and calmly listened to God. Noah wisely accepted the mission, agreed about the universal lack of purity, and assented that --as everybody knows-- perfection is none of this world.

The echoes of the sacred voice were dying away in the infinite desert, but actually the patriarch was not alone to pay attention: two termites, Bebop and Lula, were not missing a single word of the conversation. After three days wandering in the desert without water or wood, they were starving to death when they caught sight of the trunk where Noah had sat. They were having lunch when they overheard the dialog.

"Hey, isn't that interesting?" his choppy voice sounded like quick chewing, "I don't want to be drowned! We'll have to get on board by any means possible, OK twiggy?" and he looked at her tenderly. While they were still living with the community, Bebop used to impress all the new-born lady termites by his strength and his charming look. But he had become too thin for his length and his carapace was almost empty, sad and dry. Lula was the opposite; short and not very strong physically, she was however smart and lucid.

"Sure!" she replied "but it's not going to be easy. Don't forget why we've been chucked out of the nest! I don't think we have any chance to get in by a regular way... but after all we're only parasites, right?"

Bebop and Lula had indeed been expelled from the termite community for insulting the queen... One day, stones were sweating in a static air and they had been at work since dawn, so they had both decided to go inside and have a rest. When they had arrived at the main entrance, they were stopped by a throng of bodyguards: Her Majesty wanted to sunbathe and had decided that no other place was suiting better. Lying on a couch of grass, fat and lazy, she wouldn't move for hours. Lula got irritated with her despotic manners and the vacuous smile constantly lingering on her thick face. She suddenly burst out and spoke her mind; she accused her Highness of spending her time laying while everybody was working hard. The queen didn't quite appreciate and casually waved her leg, ordering the guards to make those insolent subjects disappear from her sight.

Consequently were Bebop and Lula freed from the queen's abusive influence, and even though their peers started looking down on them and avoiding them with cold courtesy, they had never felt so eager to enjoy every moment. This might be irresponsibility, but they simply called it "life".

After Noah ended his conversation with God, they followed the patriarch to the edge of the desert where a few trees were drying up, their roots exhausted by a fierce fight against the hot, crackled earth. Noah stopped and watched the land doomed to vanish under water, whereas the parasites took advantage of his dreaming to cling to his walking-stick so they wouldn't have to get around by themselves! They were all three standing on a hill. Noah listened to the noises of wild animals, gazed at the village and his inhabitants down in the valley, and felt his heart wringing. Life was corrupt, but so familiar that he almost rebelled against the Lord's purpose and judged it way too cruel. He left the hill only two hours later, tormented by doubts, awfully sad, and headed south to find comfort into the sunny vineyard.

It was already dusk when the wise man laid down and went on with a deep and noisy sleep back in his tent, and the wrinkles caused by sincere concern had vanished from his florid face. Still, the morning drew the worries back. Noah woke up and remembered he had a duty to achieve; so he stood up, took a deep breathe and called his wife and his sons. By noon, the whole family was at work, sweating under the burning sky. Meanwhile, the termites, still gripping Noah's stick, were resting in the shade of a cedar. Ah! they were at last able to taste laziness... What a pleasure to sleep and eat while everybody else is starving and sunburnt! "THIS is happiness!" Bebop thought. Poor Lord! even termites' hearts gave in to evil.

The sudden bustle in the building site gathered an eclectic crowd of animals, soon joined by hundredths of others. Their number was increasing every minute. They were attracted to this spot as by a kind of sixth sense warning them something odd was occurring. The parrot was one of the first to come, and caused the start of an argument between the wonderful couple: whereas Bebop truly admired the bird for his elegant beak and his flashy feathers, Lula found them "showy" and "vulgar". "Anyway, what are you always complaining for? Can you imagine wearing feathers? You'd be so ridiculous!"

After a short fight, Bebop realized trying to flex a mind as stubborn as Lula's was uselessly ambitious, like trying to eat a whole tree overnight. "Don't you think I'm r..." she went on, but could not conclude her sentence for her mate startled her at this very moment. The strong worker had caught a fugitive glimpse of the one inspiring to all termites a freezing terror: the tapir. The dreadful predator had been prowling around the meeting place for three hours and his ominous tongue, hanging and gluey, signalled lunch time had rung. This sight made Bebop quail but Lula, who was not feeling more secure, calmed down at the thought that hidden behind the stick they were out of sight. Still, as she intended to share this reassuring idea with Bebop, she couldn't find him anywhere she turned to look. She eventually saw him on the trunk joking with a brown and frail little spider, suspended in the air by an invisible thread. Bebop seemed to have completely forgotten about the obvious danger preying on him and Lula went mad with panic. Irritation quickly took over anxiety when she encountered the spider's look. Lula knew Bebop's innate proclivity to seducing any member of the opposite gender, but, without the least jealousy, she was convinced it would be right to take him back "home". She first whistled softly-- no result. Then she called him loudly by his name: "BEBOP! you're not being careful!"-- no answer, and he bluntly turned his back on her. The spider was ordinary and "middle-class", with no other business but spin her web around old branches of the dead tree. Watching her making the same moves over and over again all day long, Bebop suddenly felt tired of his unsteady life with Lula and started to doubt his willingness to get on the ark: "It might be dangerous, what if it sank?" After all, the trunk had become a little bit like a new home, "wood can float on water, even stormy. So why leaving?" Bebop was wondering. After swearing in the most unfeminine way, Lula understood the only solution was to get on the tree and grab him by the neck. His weight was too heavy for her strength, but the violent shaking was enough to wake the irresponsible termite from his foolish fascination.

Night fell on the warm land. everybody went to sleep after this rough day, including Noah and his walking stick. A pervasive feeling of expectation was in the air, and the stench of sweat after a rough day of work was filling the tent.

Curled up in a corner, Bebop and Lula could see the sky through a rip in the cloth. Heavy clouds were massively rolling and a hot wind was flapping against the sides of the tent. Lula had noticed Bebop's apprehensions and considered that quiet moment as appropriate to convince him of the need of risky adventures in life.

"I could see you had fun today... I was surprised when I found you out in the open with a tapir around" Bebop hated those conversations " You didn't look scared at all" she added insinuatingly. "Are you jealous?" he replied, yawning. "No", she was furious," she's an insignificant creature, but she was trying to hypnotize you with her hundred eyes." "Well, she doesn't spend her life stuck on a walking stick." Lula wouldn't listen to him "She drove me mad with her languorous looks and her way of playing with her legs! Didn't you notice she was walking like a crab, slightly moving one leg at once... What a hypocritical approach!" Bebop was half asleep "She has a home...She has at least a place of her own." he kept repeating to himself, while Lula began to pompously expound her view of life. "What? A sedentary life is so monotonous! How can you wish for such a waste of opportunities? Danger and adventure!... Can't you see what's really worthwhile? Maybe we don't have anywhere to settle down, but we are free and we want to live Bebop!" Lula had gotten terribly excited and was restlessly jumping and shouting. but her audience was loudly snoring. "Bebop?" she gave up talking and closed her eyes.

A few hours later, a damp heat dragged Bebop out of his uneasy sleep. The words "first day, first day, first day" were obsessing him, so he turned around and gently shook Lula. She remembered it was the first day of the deluge and they both hurried to grasp Noah's stick. Followed by an impressive crowd of animals, he was making for the ark. His gait was calm, and this apparent serenity under the rumbling sky was giving him an air of majesty.

A slight tremor in his wrist was betraying his obvious nervosity, but dignity helped him conceal it. Bebop and Lula happened to be privileged observer of his state of mind, since every time the patriarch stopped walking and howled a few ultimate orders, he used to violently hit the ground with the stick. Mid way from the ark, Bebop cast a last look at his beloved trunk with the frail spider still standing on it and still winking at him with all her eyes. But Lula was watching and harshly invited him to "Hang on 'cause the old man's gonna do it again!" Bebop was hesitating as to jump off or stay but Noah brutally shut the door and chose for him.

Arrived intact at their destination, the termites decided to stroll around and look for food. They were not the only ones because soon a bell rang and an army of hungry quadrupeds led by a fanatic sow almost squashed them, chanting: "time to eat! time to eat!" Noise in the ark was prodigious: quackings, squealings, grunts, barkings were mixed to give the impression of a total chaos.

Rain was falling profusely on the earth, adding to the constant buzz. Lost in the midst of this deafening activity, Bebop and Lula came to the conclusion that the roof was a safer shelter. Unfortunately, they were disappointed by the nasty taste of reed and had to go down to the wooden partitions separating the couples. The booth occupied by the donkey looked particularly tempting and they couldn't resist its deep-brown color. The owner of the place didn't notice anything at first, but the snake had been scrutinizing every detail. He had spotted the termites when they climbed to the roof, and the little holes they had left in the wood didn't escape his piercing yellow eyes. Nevertheless, the donkey was not blind and on the seventh day on board he came to meet the two stowaways.

One day, as he bent to chew some hay, he saw a grouped dozen of termites' holes right in front of him and two white heads sticking out. When Bebop and Lula felt a warm wind coming from above and faced the animal's enormous nostrils, they both screamed, terrified. The cause for their sudden fear didn't harm these helpless creatures but just stared at them and loudly asked what they were doing with the mammals, "To find the insects you have to go two flights up!"

Aware of their illegal situation, Bebop and Lula were frantically waving their legs in a desperate attempt to bring him to silence. Too late. The sow was the donkey's neighbor and a vixen renown for her gossips, always in search for reasons to fuss about anything. This unexpected sentence provided her with an excellent opportunity to spread a scandal and she rushed to tell Noah. She stood before him with her snout distorted by exhaustion, out-of-breathe and gesticulating hysterically. She was accompanied by the parrot, as if convinced that an echo was making her speech more persuasive.

"Stowaways! There are stowaways on board! I heard the donkey talking to his wall. I can prove it...no problem, cause he asked why "they" were not with the other insects, isn't that a proof? Do you realize they got in here whereas there was a quota! We must get rid of them!" After this scarcely audible and inconsistent flow of words, Noah smiled and knocked his stick on the floor (as he used to do to look important); then firmly replied that a couple of lost insects could not be very threatening and that anyway their fate had saved them. The sow felt humiliated by her failure and returned to her litter in a state of acute frustration with the parrot on her back still repeating absurd "STOwaways, STOwaways!"

At the sight of Bebop and Lula agitating their mandibles as if to speak, the donkey bent his head more and feebly heard what the termites were shouting. They explained about the queen, the wandering through the desert, and how they finally entered the ark. The donkey was a passionate listener, fascinated by the amazing account of their lives. Already in his teens, which is a quite respectable age for a donkey, he let an indulgent tenderness overflow him as he recalled his youth that had suddenly taken shape into the termites. He didn't show exterior signs of emotion though, and scolded them with this feeling of superiority age befitted him over these young reckless parasites.

"You rebelled once already, he said, but now you're on a boat and there's no way out, so you'd better be careful and hide. Everyone sticks together here, and the sow has a great influence... you know how bad females can get!" As he ended on this allusion, a violent clash startled them all: his hoof had carelessly hit the partition that was entirely gnawed inside and near to collapse with the slightest shock. Unfortunately for Bebop and Lula, the incident occured right next to the sow who was more excited than ever. A fat pinkish ball hurried across the ark in the twinkling of an eye, yelling at every living soul to follow. She used the parrot as a loudspeaker and managed to gather an important delegation. She was glowing, happy to seize the opportunity to both save her honor from the humiliation of her previous "defeat" and to become the center of the general attention for a while. The words "TERmites on board!" relentlessly repeated by the parrot to spread the message had the impact she was expecting.

The sow looked at Noah straight into his eyes. "See! I was right, they're termites! I consulted the animal community and they all agree with me... Those parasites are eating the only convenience we have here: the partitions. It already stinks more than in hell, and the noise is unbearable, but we won't accept to sleep without the least intimacy left!" Impressed by the fierce tone in her voice, the crowd was roaring with approbation. Carried away by the brand-new power laying in her hands, she pushed even more into excesses :"Everybody knows the reproduction pace of those insects! (Steam was going up) It's not all, they will eat EVERYTHING: the roof... and rain will fall on our heads, the floors... and we'll all pile up in the bottom of the ark; everything, I said, everything! (Her reddish eyeballs were almost popping out) Nothing will remain! Their ferocious appetite will lead us to rot among fish and seaweed and only a few bones will be a lasting sign of our existence. (She was barking like a mad dog) Keeping them alive is a CRIME!" Terrified and infuriated by the sow's prediction, they were all swearing to crush dead the two termites. Noah felt the pressure put upon him by the mass and called for silence so he could make the best decision. The animals nervously obeyed, but even though trampings had stopped, whispers sounding like a drum roll could be heard in the still air. everyone held his or her breathe. Then the patriarch spoke and wild uproar set in the place. Noah forbade the hunt of the parasites in a firm refusal to sacrifice any divine creature. Since the ark already included a couple of termites, he remembered their iron box and suggested the stowaways join them. "This way, he added, you will be able to keep your intimacy and they will stay alive. I am personally going to look for them right now. Just tell me where they are."

In the mean time, the donkey had warned Bebop and Lula of the impending danger and told them to hide away. But the termites had short legs and couldn't run very fast, and an escape by digging into another partition was out of reach since they had just eaten: they were full. As the resounding of hooves was getting closer, they believed they were doomed to die under this tide of mad animals. Despite the risk of being lynched as a traitor, the donkey carried them to a remote spot that was empty and dark. When Noah came to the donkey's litter, he only found the termites' devoted protector in a critical state after his race. He apologized for his appearance due to "age and not enough sports", but when Noah admitted he could only see fragments of wood scattered here and there, some wicked minds spread suspicions about the donkey, supposed to be the last seen with the fugitives. The patriarch was tired and wearily concluded that even if they ate bits of wood, this didn't represent a real danger for the community.

The storm outside was violently tossing the boat on a black and powerful water. The animals were launched in every directions; sometimes a lurch stronger than others caused a great slide towards the left or the right, and the alternative move instantly stacking up the beasts in either side of the ark. From times to times, the sow's enormous butt went to crash against a snout or a back whose owner always let out a muffled cry of indignation.

When the wind eventually dropped, a council met to deliberate about a final decision. They were still anxious and resolute as to get rid of the intruders, so they solicited the tapir, also known as "the termites-eater". Considered as the best qualified to catch them with his long sticky tongue, his trump, the swiftness of his short body, and his peering eyes, he was the hunters' best advantage. Armed with this living weapon, they felt like they had already reached their goal and were searching the ark with a victorious satisfaction.

A breathtaking hunt had begun; each member of the community contributed to search in the smallest spaces between splinters, helped by the tapir who used to vacuum in anything less than three inches long. Bebop and Lula became the preys of a constant anxiety and thought of every breathing thing as a potential enemy. They were changing hiding places twice a day and twice a night, even scared of the familiar creakings of the boat. "This time, we've found it" often said Bebop when slipping into a new hole. Lula usually tried to believe him but it was no use because at that point a flapping of wings or a distant grunt was enough to make them flee. This lasted for days, weeks... a life of stress and danger was slowly exhausting the termites until the day the hunters lost their tracks... It was one of those days Bebop and Lula hated; in only two hours they had been near to be caught by a couple of sparrows, and two minutes later realized they had been quietly resting under the snake's belly. They hurried to find a safer place and discovered a huge piece of wood in the very bottom of the ark. Since that time, nobody was reported to have seen the termites. At first the animals were surprised but they soon forgot about it. Long weeks elapsed... Noah became eventually curious to know whether the waters had subsided, so he decided to release a dove. That day, the old man was feeling blue and was missing the desert and the mountains of his land. As a wise man, he had always considered foolish such a state of mind. Like the evening when the Lord told him about the deluge, a few gulps of his favorite drink helped him expel dark thoughts from his mind. Then, fully aware of his state, he didn't find it surprising to see two doves released instead of one. He had actually let two birds fly away.

"Hmm! I had never suspected such a piece of wood could exist, it's simply delicious!" Bebop exclaimed. The termites were standing in a hollow inside what seemed to be an exhaustible reserve of food, when the sound of wood creaking preceded the noise of water rushing in. Horrified, Lula remembered that the hull of the ark was held together by a keel, the very piece of wood they had been eating for weeks! "Oh my God! she cried out, what have we done? We're sinking!"

When God remembered about the ark and the deluge, He only found a deserted ocean covering the earth. This is why, dear reader, you descend from fish, or maybe from Noah's doves...