A Beautiful Truth (23 page)

After all those years of nursing, Mama is pink again.

Jonathan watches her closely.

The World is surprised by her Apriling body, how a pale honeyed light can warm this air so sad. She quickly yearns for touch and a space beyond her daughter and no one knows what race or desolation exists on the other side of the blue.

They have all had glimpses of others in the Hard, and heard sounds from distant corridors at night. From trees they have looked over the wall and seen different fields and people.

Mama feels no choice but to turn to Jonathan. Who else can offer safety.

New flowers bloom among dry husks and the seasons mock each other.

Burke swings a heavy stick in front of Jonathan’s face and Jonathan moves backwards. He grooms Burke and it seems that Burke is in the ascendant but Jonathan later runs and bluffs over him. They sit together and groom.

Mama and Fifi watch and wonder which of these pretenders will offer oa.

Where is stability.

When can we all play again.

Jonathan pins Magda, and Burke is disgusted. Bedoulerek fistpips and vulnerable noises.

Jonathan sees Mr. Ghoul trying to move towards Mama and Fifi. Burke doesn’t notice. Jonathan grunts at Burke and nods towards the angling Mr. Ghoul. Burke seals the coalition with Jonathan again. He mounts him, and then walks to Mr. Ghoul. He carries a stone behind his back.

Mr. Ghoul turns in time and feels the stone come down in front of his face. His lips feel numb as he runs and now that the World no longer has mirrors he is the only one who doesn’t know that his face has changed forever.

He runs to anyone, Bootie, for comfort, and Burke now chases Bootie. Mama and Fifi scream and run at Burke for bullying the younger one, and Burke is frightened for a moment. But instead of running, instead of going to Jonathan, he turns and attacks the women.

He is not as big as Jonathan but he is younger and quicker and fists will seldom catch him. Mama and Fifi scatter.

They tremble later as they bow to Burke and the past is silenced and supplanted by the present. They feel closer to Jonathan, but are frightened into paying equal respect to Burke.

As the new one walks, something stirs in Jonathan. He looks at the other women and rises above the World.

Jonathan gathers Fifi by the hips and finds oblivion. Magda is also pink and he goes to her soon after. Magda eats lettuce while Jonathan troubles her rear end.

There is sugar on the wind. Jonathan can’t get enough. He pins rare Mama and his vision is sweetly blurred.

He no longer thinks of Podo. He sleeps and wakes and pins someone else and subsides into the ground like it’s a cake. When he walks he is weak.

He keeps an eye out for trouble, for movements and suspicious connections, and when he sees them he sends out Burke. He is able to notice manoeuvres more keenly and quickly than Burke, and Burke is the better to stop them. They rule together.

They gather much of the food to themselves and the others grow beholden.

Mr. Ghoul eats leaves through the day. No one can touch his breakfast in his bedroom, but he doesn’t feel like eating it.

Mr. Ghoul whispers salaams to Jonathan’s back as Jonathan regularly walks away.

Mama and Fifi have wanted to sit with Mr. Ghoul but they are
always prevented. They can no longer bear the trouble. Fifi grooms Burke. Mama and Magda bow to him in fear.

Mr. Ghoul tries to find company with the children. Mama worries that the new one will be hurt by Burke. She is happier seeing her daughter running away with Bootie than playing near lonely Mr. Ghoul.

Burke can’t stand this village of weak mothers. He turns his back whenever Jonathan pins a woman. When Fifi walks away from Jonathan, Burke chases her sometimes. He hits Magda on the back. Jonathan beats Burke for doing so.

Burke sits coiled and ready to pounce. Loathsome scarlet drops drip lightly down the legs of moody women. Jonathan sleeps and drools and sits unabashedly erect. There is nowhere for Burke to turn but to the pleasures of pounding the vulnerable and weak.

Jonathan keeps trouble in view, and the trouble is coming increasingly from Burke.

They are all sore for different reasons and the World rests trapped beneath that sky.

A season passes and Jonathan awakes in the itchy bed of an estrus garden.

Everyone is turning inwards. The women sit with Jonathan but each is lost in her own pictures. They are torpid in the afternoon heat. They lazily allow themselves to be taken by Jonathan whose klopsiks seem to heave a relentless flood. The more he has the more he wants. He looks in and looks out and sees nothing but pink and he rises and swoons above the slopes of delectation.

As if by edict they have followed his example and think only of themselves. They are united but only in solitude. They sit and dream together but their private pictures tell them they are not in the right place.

The only thing that breaks the torpor, and reminds them all that there is no oa, is the temper of Burke. His shadow is over their shoulders. He has run at the women so often that when Jonathan calls on them to support him in fights with Burke, they are too afraid to do so.

Jonathan is no longer strong enough to fight Burke on his own. He needs the help of the women or Mr. Ghoul. Or he must somehow keep Burke close.

There is an outbreak of chlamydia in the colony. It is a recurring phenomenon. It may have originated from the females in the breeding program.

Four of the apes are treated with tetracycline.

A widespread respiratory infection also requires antibiotics.

One researcher says to another that it started with a bad summer cold. My husband has it.

Another says it’s not really summer. It’s more like late spring.

For a while a heaviness lifts. Strange tastes in the mouth disappear and everyone breathes better. Jonathan’s cock no longer oozes and there are no more sneezes and sniffles.

Jonathan and Burke have naps on warm dirt and relax together when they wake.

Mama and Fifi sit quietly with the new one and Magda eats a peach.

The new one wanders.

Mr. Ghoul sits with the children. Bootie is half his size but his hugs feel good nonetheless.

Not long before Looee was moved from Congo, two adolescents escaped. They were housed together in one of the cages across from Looee. A labtech came to put one of them in a transfer box and the other kicked it away on its wheels and they both sprang out.

A high-powered hose was used to contain them in the corner and one of the labtechs fired tranquilizers at them. The entire wing was flooded by the hose and the day’s waste was soaked and sprayed all over the room. The wing had to be aired and cleaned, and for the first time in over a year a door at the end was opened. Congo was on the third floor of Girdish and the door was to a fire escape. A new light blew in with the breeze and smells of tarmac and oranges. Many of them pressed their faces to the front of their cages and a hoot arose in Looee which several of them echoed.

The water sprayed the nameplate on his cage and the chalk now read:

CH 447

Lonee.

Other names were washed away and there was administrative
confusion for a while. A new vet redrew Lonee’s chart and for the sake of economy he omitted most of Looee’s personal history.

They prepared him for transfer to the Chimpanzee Infectious Diseases Wing. CH 447. LONEE. He carried no known diseases.

The CID Wing is separate from the Girdish main building and sits on higher land. It’s a Biosafety Level 2 isolation facility, equipped with an air filtration system to control airborne viruses. Lonee was squeezed into a transfer box and anaesthetized. He was left for hours near the door while staff were distracted by the death of a chimp named Fred. Lonee was taken out of Congo, conscious, and wheeled to an elevator. Two labtechs talked about the Toyotas they both owned and the lift went silent when another man entered. Looee had a view through vertical bars if he twisted his head and looked to the side.

The labtechs wheeled his box down a corridor and Looee realized he was finally going home. He moaned once like a woman surprised by how good something feels.

They went outside, the first time Looee had been out for seventeen months. The wheels struck pebbles and made the box unsteady. At first the labtechs thought it was this alone that made the animal thump against the metal, but Looee was banging his head to ensure the fresh air was real. They felt the heavier banging and looked at each other.

They wheeled him through a parking lot and up the driveway that leads to CID. Looee was banging steadily now and screaming like chimps do in the wild when they have caught a colobus monkey and are about to taste its meat.

One of them rang the buzzer and said over the intercom that they had the transfer but they needed a rifle and drugs.

The process had been delayed because of the death of Fred and it was now approaching four o’clock and most of the staff had
gone home. One of the labtechs was sent back to retrieve a rifle and ketamine from the main building and Looee continued to scream.

The other stayed behind atop the hill, outside CID, and lit a cigarette. The transfer box was moving every time Lonee shifted. The labtech thought about money and friends and how his life lacked everything, and he smoked, and his thoughts were as full of feckless elbows as the chimp in the steel box. One bash from Lonee made the box roll away two feet, but the labtech reached and held the handle with his fingers.

The other ambled up the hill with a pistol and rifle. He fired the pistol through the gap in the cage and waited for someone to come out of CID.

Looee felt the familiar dislocation once the ketamine took effect. He was limp and his screams dissipated to a wheeze. He couldn’t feel the eight hands on his limbs and the sky was green and sweet.

The four men held his wrists and ankles and carried him face upwards, a comrade, a carpet, a grinning deplorable truth that each of them had to ignore.

Looee smelled Judy’s perfume and looked forward to his bed. He looked at the chin of the stranger who held his right wrist and reached to squeeze that pimple and his hand extended to the top of a tree and he hung there and sucked a strawberry.

The four men put Lonee on a scale and confirmed his weight at 171 pounds, thirty pounds lighter than when he arrived at Congo. They lifted him onto a table and the vet shone a light in his eyes and checked his teeth.

They dressed out in Tyvek and face masks and couldn’t think of small talk.

Looee saw the top of the anteroom doors push open and heard the panic of other chimpanzees. He knew wolves had found the
carcass of a fawn. Judy was in his bedroom when the four men lifted him into it. She was wearing her apron and said come on sweet boy put your feet up.

She sat on the floor and filed his toenails and he sang and she said tell me everything.

Looee sang a dirge and chuckled and spat through every confusion and showed her how his hands had swelled from banging daily on the grid that had kept them apart. She forgave him for hurting her hand and face, and she opened a sluice, and a cageful of poison poured over the floor and dawn descended from the top of the room, it was brighter here, and she held his head and neither could believe it. His body submitted to peace.

Judy held his head and they drove through a carwash and she told him to stop screaming, it was nothing to be afraid of. He was calm but all he could hear now was screaming.

Eight other chimpanzees had been pounding and hooting since the stranger was slung into his cage.

The vet of CID was usually a calming influence, but the other three men, now gone, had raised the alarm and it was hard to change the mood of that room some days.

The vet, Dr. Meijer, wrote Lonee’s name and number on the blank metal nameplate with a felt-tip pen. He kept an eye on him as the ketamine peaked and subsided. Lonee was lying on his side and twitching, a visionary mute and inglorious, and his bottom lip hung low and made him look like a picture of stupidity. Dr. Meijer’s depression was young but gaining strength.

Looee was looking for the key to get out of his bedroom and Judy was laughing like a dogperson.

Dr. Meijer made a round of the room, touching the backs of the fingers of those who wanted to be touched and wondering which of them he should worry about through the night.

Dr. Meijer lives in a new apartment building and has never talked to the people across the hall. Spud didn’t like the look of Lonee. Rosie groomed Dr. Meijer’s Tyvek suit. She was scared of what was in store and had barely noticed her new neighbour. Dr. Meijer drinks in bed every night till he is numb behind the eyes, and wonders if nature is our handmaiden.

The chimpanzees on the CID Wing were involved in several studies at once, studies involving several institutions and companies. All of the research was HIV related and most had to do with finding a vaccine to prevent the spread of the virus in humans. One of the greatest and recognized challenges was the fact that HIV had so many different strains, making a single vaccine elusive. Other challenges emerged over time.

Lonee’s body was leased by Pastora, based in Paris. They also leased Dusty’s, Rosie’s, Nathan’s and Spud’s. Mac was leased by Pfintzer, and Pepper intermittently by Pfintzer, Marck and Quest. All of the chimps had various lessors over the years, all pharmaceutical companies or laboratories associated with them.

Dr. Meijer was responsible for looking after the animals’ general health and administering the protocols dictated by the various institutions involved. Aside from whatever a study demanded, he would ensure that each chimpanzee was weighed every week, its teeth and nails checked, that it was fed and watered when appropriate. His team of labtechs and caregivers did much of this, but he was the one who was ultimately turned to by everyone on CID.

There were politics involved in his relationship with the researchers. Only occasionally did his name appear in the papers they published, usually in the first footnote in association with the Girdish Institute. But none of the studies would have proceeded without him—the authors knew that, and usually had to defer to
him. He and the animals were the reality check to the ambitions of the researchers, many of whom never met the chimpanzees.