A Beautiful Truth (19 page)

The next time they went to the woods Mr. Ghoul said

Ghoul put hat on tree.

Dave said what.

Ghoul tapped on the lexigrams again.

Ghoul put hat on tree.

David took off the Greek fisherman’s cap that Julie had bought him before she moved to Manchester.

Mr. Ghoul took the hat and walked with it to an ageing pecan tree that was standing apart from others. He ground the cap into the dirt as he walked, and stopped at the foot of the tree.

Mr. Ghoul was climbing a tree.

Mr. Ghoul had been born at Girdish to a mother who produced five chimpanzees for research. He was taken from her immediately and raised in the nursery, and came to David at the age of three and a half years, socialized to both chimpanzees and humans.

At a height of about twenty feet he began to shake and cry out for Dave.

David was thinking about the hat which Julie gave him and how their love had faded.

There were birds in the tree which Mr. Ghoul had never seen. One flew near his face.

Mr. Ghoul lost his grip and threw the hat which tumbled to the outer leaves of the tree and rested. He regained his grip and had no idea how to regain the hat.

He hugged the tree and slid down a few feet, scraping his belly and thighs.

Dave was looking at the hat caught in the leaves beyond his reach. The branch was too high for Dave to shake. He told Mr. Ghoul to shake the branch.

Mr. Ghoul wanted to get down.

He jumped and landed on all fours and wanted to do it again but didn’t.

They drove home in the van and David was unexpectedly melancholy, feeling an ache to meet someone new and angry with Ghoul for ageing.

Ever since they compared ape language to Clever Hans, the talking horse, language research had lost credibility. Apes are just mimics they said.

Funding was drying up. He had to broaden his experiments.

When they went back to the woods the third and final time, Mr. Ghoul went back to the pecan tree. He stared at it and didn’t climb.

He walked back to Dave and pointed at the keyboard.

? Where hat.

He continued with cognitive tests and realized that all they
were doing was testing by human standards. David said if you hang bananas and see if they’re smart enough to use tools to reach them, you’re only testing if they are smart in our terms. What if they’re not in the mood. What if they wonder why you aren’t giving them the bananas directly.

Their politics, the subtle emotional variables that are as important to cognition as logic. Those are the things to look at.

David had risen through his profession as a young man, as much through being good with colleagues as through conducting original research. We don’t like to see it this way, but a life is shaped less by talent than by handshakes and the right words. He was getting what he wanted by being liked around the table at funding committees.

That was the real essence of language. He was fed up with trying to prove that chimpanzees can communicate. Of course they can. Communication is a process of getting what you want, finding your way in a group. Politics is each individual’s struggle to get what he or she wants, in the face of what others want. Language is political.

We are not born with words and symbols, and words and symbols mean nothing without a social context. What linguists and so many of his colleagues don’t see is that they protect their fields of interest because they are territorial. David did it himself. It is an inescapable characteristic of apes.

Dave offered Ghoul his cigarette. Ghoul took the Zippo and lit the cigarette, even though it was already lit.

You can’t study a chimp the way you can drosophila or even something potentially charming like dolphins. There is more than charm; there is kinship, no matter how objective you remain. There were moments in David’s work when that kinship was amplified towards love, towards pure wonder. He knew there
was no human/animal divide, there was a continuum. He could never look at Ghoul without wondering what he was thinking, and the lexigrams offered the bliss of revelation. When Ghoul said Dave swing Ghoul, the physical bond of swinging was redoubled by the knowledge of mind.

He felt a need for change, a hunger for some sort of opening. He could look back later in life and say it’s what a man starts doing at the age of thirty-five.

He had set things in motion to change the structure of the field station. It was time to move away from language, and away from trials which set out to show how like us they might be.

He thought of Julie again. I don’t feel whole without you she said.

Perhaps his work boiled down to an attempt to redress the unspeakable loneliness of humans. Perhaps it was just a recognition that sometimes one ape needs another to show him who he is.

It was time to go, and David thought about the old game.

Ghoul what colour Dave’s eyes.

He looked at Ghoul and saw an old-looking, wise-looking, restless but composed hairy teenager, a perpetual but time-worn child, so much bigger than the child in the lab, so familiar but different from the pup he began as.

David pointed at the lexigram for friend.

Mr. Ghoul thought Dave had pointed at the picture for milk, and waited.

Looee bit the tip of Walt’s finger off once when Walt reached for a piece of chocolate that Looee thought was his own.

He punched Larry in the eye one evening for no good reason and would only calm down when Larry gave him another beer and showed him his blood on a hanky.

He lunged at a black woman in Kmart when he was little, having never seen a black person before. On TV he had something to say to anyone who wasn’t obviously white.

He scratched and kicked and pissed and bit.

He learned to share but usually didn’t.

When older, his blackened face and greying frown, his increasingly beastly and hunched-over figure, made him look like a despicable bully.

When he sat on a chair, a chimpanzee on a chair, and looked jerkily around a room, he was everything we have collectively turned from, every gene and culture we have shed across millennia. He looked foreign, hairy, retarded. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t
remember enough, couldn’t plan far ahead, couldn’t control his temper or his jealousy.

This home video of him hammering a nail while wearing a Hawaiian shirt shows a figure to be pitied.

He was a wild animal, is how he was summed up in the Burlington Free Press.

More than thirteen winters had passed since Looee arrived in Vermont and with all the necessity of being indoors he was more sedentary than he would have been elsewhere. He climbed when he had bursts of energy but he was just as happy to climb in his house as he was outside. When there’s no need to forage and no enemy to flee from, we might as well stay still until we’re bored.

Walt took note of Looee’s pleasure in staying on the ground and built a fence around the back half-acre—trusting that he would not climb over. In the summer they had barbecues and parties out there. He was still gentle with children, and Dr. Worsley liked bringing his grandkids over to see Looee. Dr. Worsley could no longer treat Looee at his clinic so he paid visits when needed. Looee didn’t trust the doctor, his soft hands and tools, but he loved the grandkids and played tickle-chase with them.

Judy invited Susan over, who had coloured and cut her hair in the manner of Princess Diana. Looee caught a glimpse of her from across the garden and hooted from the basso profundo of his great black balls to the glistening brass of his lips. He ran towards her and she asked Judy, as calmly as she could, if they could go inside to the kitchen.

Looee picked up his pace when he saw her moving away. He was shirtless. He stopped short of the back porch and stood upright and threw a tantrum like he hadn’t for several years. Larry and Mr. Wiley were individually unsettled by his shamelessness. He was
rolling and pounding on the ground with high-pitched screams and teeth exposed.

Walt waited awhile and said let’s go toss the ball and get a hot dog, and Looee calmed down. All of his tantrums and flare-ups passed quickly. But the mood often took a long time to change. As he played catch, Susan was in his mind like a wasp in a tiny room.

He watched her in the kitchen through the window. Instead of catching the football as Walt had taught him, he attacked it. He took it in both hands and brought it down on a flat rock and it popped like a dull balloon.

Christ said Larry, realizing how strong Looee was.

Walt scolded Looee and Looee sulked like an athlete who says fuck this and leaves the team. He ran towards his house and plotted holocausts and flayings, and walked back with his hand held out and Walt said that’s okay, sweet boy.

They sat on the lawn and the fullness of the day brought thunder. Instead of rushing in they stayed beneath the warm downpour and laughed at the strength of it. Looee did a ritual dance and pounded the ground as though the rain could be beaten into submission. They were soaked when the rain had passed, and happy, and they were spontaneously silent for a moment. The only sound was the dripping.

Parties faded and Looee watched the trees change. December arrived. Snow was curling into people’s collars and the onset of Christmas was reddening the blanch. Everyone was looking for a friend.

Larry carried a bottle of rye from his car to Walt’s front door and rang the bell, shaking the snow from his jacket. Judy greeted him and took the whiskey with a hug.

Walt’s not here yet, he might be caught in the weather.

Larry felt immediately warm and said you’ve sure made it cozy in here, did you make all those.

The living room was beribboned and wreathed.

It’s my favourite time of year said Judy.

She poured them drinks and they talked themselves out of any awkwardness, Larry and Judy alone. He watched her light candles in the dining room and Larry said they’re talking about a season like no other on the mountains.

They heard a hoot from Looee’s house, who’d seen Larry’s headlights coming along the drive.

I bet he’ll want to see you she said.

They opened the door in the dining room which led to Looee’s corridor. Judy had even hung wreaths in the passage and there was cedar in the air.

Larry smiled to himself as he always did, hearing Looee’s impassioned calls. By now, like Walt and Judy, he had relinquished all pretense in himself of being much more than a talking animal. He was open to error and confusion and had called his elderly brother and said I forgive you, having spoken of it with no one for more than thirty years.

When Judy said we’re coming and pushed the bolted door, Looee jumped back and hopped a small hop, two hundred pounds and barefoot on concrete. Larry and Looee clasped hands and men’s thick thumbs, and Looee smelled the fresh whiskey on their breath.

Judy said it stinks in here and she wedged the door wide open.

We’re having some people over for a Christmas party Looee, remember I told you yesterday. You’ve got to stay in your house and we’ll have our real Christmas in a week.

Looee looked over their shoulders and saw the unusual light in the dining room.

I lit candles said Judy. It’s nothing to be afraid of.

There was the warmth of alcohol on their breaths, the warmth of the distant light—and Looee felt immediately removed from both. Concrete at his feet and at his back. Larry and Judy had gathered affection as they had walked to Looee’s door, and Looee mistakenly sensed it as affection for each other rather than for him. Judy didn’t notice when he made his quizzical noise.

I shouldn’t leave the candles burning she said. She touched Larry’s arm and said will you come and help me for a second.

Looee watched them leave and pull the steel door behind them. He didn’t trust their movements tonight and didn’t understand why Larry wasn’t staying longer. He stared at the door and listened. He couldn’t hear them walking away or talking and thought they were just outside his door. Hiding and whispering secrets. He banged on the door but they wouldn’t open it. He banged again and got angry.

Larry helped Judy open a jar of pickled onions in the kitchen. I think I’m getting arthritis she said.

Larry poured himself a drink and Judy said Walt should be here soon. I’ll keep an eye on things here. You go bring a beer to Looee if you want and I’ll send Walt out. Everyone’s coming at seven.

As Larry approached Looee’s door he heard screams and felt Looee hit the door.

I’m coming in buddy. It’s me. I’m coming in.

Looee was still screaming and Larry tentatively opened the door. He looked in and Looee was in full display. His hair was all on end. He looked gigantic. From side to side he swayed and he pushed his TV on its casters around the room and into the wall beside Larry.

Calm down buddy. Did I scare you. I brought you a beer. Look. Everything’s all right.

Looee screamed and walked away and sat with his back to the wall without looking at him.

Larry figured he had probably felt neglected. I was just helping her open a jar he said. Here.

He wedged the door wide open as he had seen Judy do.

Looee saw the hallway and dining room again. His anger seemed to be subsiding and Larry gave him his beer. They sat with their backs to the wall and looked down the hall at the candlelight and gold and silver stars, a spangled and flickering drama beyond his reach or ken.

It’s a time of peace said Larry. No sense screaming and breaking your TV.

Larry explained that guests were coming over and they were going to have drinks and dinner. Looee heard Susan’s name among them.

He found everything strange tonight.

They drank. Looee wasn’t looking at Larry, and Larry wasn’t comfortable sitting close to him. There was a prickliness to Looee, and it felt like they were staring forward like rivals at a bar.

Looee was trying to understand why the door was still open. He thought Susan might come in.

They heard kitchen cupboards closing and they both listened for cars.

Looee finished his beer and made a noise. He crushed the can and got up and looked down the hallway and back over his shoulder at Larry to see if he was watching. Looee sat and would only glance at him.