Any comparison between this baboon, Gilda, and my first three wives might seem in bad taste. And yet when I think of them now, I remember them as three witches, always after money, things, words, diversions. Tired of staying in, but then immediately tired of being out for a walk, or at the cinema, or in a café, or by the sea. With sudden pains in their feet, or with headaches, snivelling for no reason. Lazy. And very stingy, when they weren’t being spendthrift. Sometimes badly washed, and maybe churlish towards friends of mine who came to the house for a chat, a drink, a Sunday poker game.

Gilda doesn’t have even one of these defects. She’s limited, that much is true, but she’s no burden, she doesn’t make claims, she doesn’t answer back, she doesn’t argue, she couldn’t concoct the smallest whim. Home and a little love are absolutely everything to her. And that’s reassuring for a mature man like me, it makes him tougher, more solid, it doesn’t disturb the equilibrium of his days, or his work.

Of course, there are a few bones of contention between Gilda and me, but they’re more a matter of nature than of conflicts of character.

For example: Gilda is under the illusion, I don’t know how or why, that she can grow, that she can become at least as tall as me. She’s always thinking about it. Every now and again she takes me by the hand and drags me over to the mirror. She looks at our images standing side by side, me tall and strapping in my shirtsleeves, she in her little petticoat, barely coming up to my waist, and she shakes her head and her eyes grow dim with tears. Or else she takes the rolled-up tape measure from her workbasket and hands it to me, and I have to measure her against the wall as you do with children. But the mark on the wall is where it always was, it hasn’t got any higher in three years, and Gilda stares at it, studies it, then wipes away a tear.

To console her at such times, but in a clearly playful tone, so that she won’t get the wrong idea, I say, ‘Bee-ba?’ And she shakes her head, I don’t know if it’s because of her despair at not having grown yet or because she has understood that in saying ‘Bee-ba’ I am only playing a game.

For some time now, before going to bed at night, I’ve had to give her a mild sleeping pill. Since I suffer a little from insomnia, she gets nervous and worried, and would be quite capable of spending the night sitting watching me until I fall asleep. To avoid this needless complication, I give her the pill and take two of them myself, even though I know they have almost no effect on me these days, and then lie there for hours hearing her sleeping next to me.

She doesn’t snore, although every now and again she lets out a long sigh. I have no idea if she dreams or not. They say dogs have the ability to dream, so why not creatures as evolved as baboons?