A Beautiful Truth (7 page)

I guess you know the place pretty well.

He watched Looee look for things in the fridge. Whenever he wanted something he looked up at Mr. Wiley as though he were asking.

You want the sour cream. Go ahead. I like it on baked potatoes, but you’ll. Yeah. You’d need a baked potato with that to like it.

Looee grabbed a beer and Mr. Wiley said how old are you and reached for one himself.

Looee pulled on Mr. Wiley’s belt and persuaded him to sit on the floor.

That creature is neither wild nor owned, he said to his wife the next day.

That beer is for sipping now, sip it. Sip it.

He had driven past Walt and Judy often and seen their little pet, but now that he was sitting across from him he was thinking that right there is not a pet. He was feeling just the right mixture of fear, curiosity and confusion required to make meeting a stranger memorable. I want to get to know that little fella more than I ever wanted to know a cat or even my brother-in-law James.

He watched Looee get restless, and when he settled again Mr. Wiley touched himself on the chest and said Joseph.

Joseph.

Looee stared.

Looee and the Wileys became good friends. Their fridge was a memory that stayed with him.

When Walt and Judy were awakened in the middle of the night and found Mr. Wiley on the porch with Looee they were angry and embarrassed. Looee was very affectionate with Judy.

They found the spare key in his diaper.

He can come over any time said Mr. Wiley. Just maybe not alone and not in the middle of the night.

Only Looee and Mr. Wiley knew what it was like to walk through those woods hand in hand.

He’s a nice … it’s an … he’s an unusual situation, was all Mr. Wiley could offer.

Judy felt the urge to close the door on the outside world.

Walt was just plain mad.

Goddamnit Looee, you can’t walk out like that.

To Judy, in bed, he said we’ve got to make him understand.

They both felt surprisingly betrayed—that he would want to run away, that he would be curious about another home, that he always hid things from them.

He’s always wanting what other people have said Walt.

He’s only little said Judy.

He’s gotta learn.

I agree.

Daylight offered some clarity.

I’m gonna think about what to do said Walt.

He went out that day to buy the same tractor Larry had bought last month. It was better on gas and was blue, kind of handsome and unusual.

Please be my friend Podo.

Please come down Dr. David.

Please machine make movie.

Money name-of that.

Dog name-of that.

You have that. Ghoul has this.

Money buys dogs.

Money buys friends.

Yellow colour-of dog.

Money is bowing without bowing.

Podo watches Jonathan stand and sees his pink needle. Mouths are wet and chests are aching. Podo is alert to the wants of others today. Fifi feels good on his lap. A wind creamed with birds and clouds blows over the belly of Fifi and she is heavily fond of everyone.

Fifi is pink, and men delay their breakfast.

Burke is confused and needs to be alone.

They left their bedrooms this morning and Fifi was the last to leave and when they were out in the World they saw why: rosé
behind her as large as a goon, splendid as a picnic of plums and cherries and soft as a person’s neck. Podo was the first to run to her but she did not fall forward right away. He touched her rosé with his finger, put his eyes close to her heat, and when she sat he felt the breathless give-and-take of being protector and abuser together.

They rested in the shade while the others grew to realize that this would be a day of permissions, of careful walking and making up tasks that kept them away from Podo.

Fifi lay on her side and Podo sat with his hip to her back and they contemplated the sky (pink), the flowers (pink), the sun soaking trees, and the heat from skin to ground to skin, limpening hair and engorging everything else.

Podo made a noise. Fifi looked at him. Podo opened his legs and flicked his wakening cock. Here. Fifi made a noise that was appealing. She rolled and leaned forward, pushed her rosé up to the sky and felt the counter-push that balanced the world and the quick hard dance of very serious laughter.

Magda’s back was turned and she sat in different shade.

Mr. Ghoul sat close to Mama, thinking thoughts that were like the movies of fish, so quick and incomprehensible.

And if the growth of every seed and leaf, every pump of hungry wing, could be amplified to sound the unremembering surge of life, it would find its equal orchestra in the core of Jonathan’s body as he squeezed his erection between his legs and wondered what to do. He had seen her rosé as she painted a line from her bedroom. He could taste her smell and could eat no fruit and he rested his chin on the ground.

No good would come from whimpering or complaining but the whimpering came nonetheless. He put his hand across his mouth to hide his smile of fear. He walks away and sits. He lies down and tries to rest but all he can think of is Podo’s broad back
between him and what he wants. He thinks about ways to please Podo, things to offer his great black protector to secure his benediction and pin fat Fifi with impunity.

He barks without thinking, hoots before he thinks of why he barked, and is suddenly aware that he is making a great noise. Podo turns, Magda gets up to join Jonathan, movement is created. Nothing comes of it, except a small good feeling.

He thinks again of Fifi. He thinks of her bent over, her plump and muscled flower.

He lies down again.

Jonathan will never get what he wants unless Podo wants to let him.

He stands and looks at Magda.

Jonathan is looming, stubborn black cloud, bedoulerek radish pointing hot and urgent from under his belly.

Magda runs away and Podo watches.

Mr. Ghoul walks to Podo, a supplicant. He holds out his hand, which Podo touches. Mr. Ghoul grooms Podo and they are both now aware that Mr. Ghoul, at some point, might stick it to Fifi but probably not today.

Mr. Ghoul knows that the new one has a mother. Mama.

Mother.

When Mama came out from the Hard she had an eety little new one and she fed her from her chest. So did Magda, and Fifi fed Burke from the bottle.

When Mr. Ghoul looked at the new one he felt new confusions.

Mama feeds the new one.

She rides Mama’s back through the World.

Mr. Ghoul had a mother named Dave.

Mr. Ghoul and Mama learned the people’s culture for longer than some of the others.

Be nice.

Don’t bite.

What’s the name of this. Look at me. What’s the name of this.

You can’t always have what is yours.

There were sticks and electric sticks and the short woman Mary with thunder in her mouth. Mary taught them signs with their hands and when Mr. Ghoul or Mama wasn’t interested she would slap you in the snut or grab you hard under the mouth to make you look at what she was saying. Always moving her sharp bald hands.

They wanted Mama and Mr. Ghoul to talk to each other with their hands. They only did it sometimes when Mary was around so she wouldn’t hit them.

Then Mary disappeared, like Orang and the others.

Dave liked the dirty machine, and Ghoul liked Dave.

They made the Hardest bigger and brought new toys and paints and Mama made paintings and Ghoul liked watching her make them.

Dave taught them colours, and colours were the way you could describe the pictures that can’t be pictured.

Mama liked red.

Dave would talk through the machine and hold up the fire truck.

? Mama what colour-of fire truck.

Red colour-of that.

? Mama what colour-of lipstick.

Red.

And then Dave held up one of their favourite things, the whistle. Dave could put the whistle to his mouth and fling a twirl into the air that made your ears and hair and back stand up and
look for what no one could see. And Ghoul knew the whistle was black.

? Mama what colour-of whistle.

Red.

? Mama what colour-of whistle.

Red colour-of that.

No.

Dave held up a black pen.

? Mama what colour-of pen.

Black colour-of that.

And he held up the whistle again.

Red.

Red red red.

And she was happy.

She called magazines red, her blue hairbrush red, the blind uncovering the window red, and Dave grew excited. He gathered the other people to his window and he and some of them smiled because they knew that anything Mama really liked was red. When the Hardest grew softer and they saw the trees, Mama went to the machine and said

That red.

Dave liked it best when they shared like that, the pictures beyond the pictures. His face changed.

? Ghoul what colour Dave’s eyes.

Dave was at the window pointing to his eyes and neither smiling nor crying nor frowning. Dave’s soft face.

Please Dave swing Ghoul.

? Ghoul what colour Dave’s eyes.

? Tickle.

Later. ? Ghoul what colour Dave’s eyes.

Red Green Green Blue Black Green Blue.

We wanted to know what friends were, says David to a conference.

Girdish was a warren of different interests in those days and when he thinks of it he remembers a time of great excitement. From room to room there were studies of intelligence, memory, communication, breeding, all distinct and diverse but united by a sense that we were always on the verge of something. Staff would smoke pipes and pot and sit with the younger apes, and ideas were openly traded. Few people shaved, and some of the male and female researchers kissed and thought we might as well be honest.

David was young then, as was his profession. And when you’re young it sometimes seems like the world, no matter how old, is being shaped anew. It seemed like everyone was talking about primates. Journalists often visited, and some of the research was published in the popular press around the world. The Naked Ape was a bestseller. Konrad Lorenz had explained our warmongering and violence by looking at us as animals. It seemed like humans
were at least talking about kinship, if not actually acknowledging that they were apes.

There were reports from field studies in Africa, from Gombe and the Japanese groups. Much of it was anecdotal in the early days. Chimpanzees have culture. In Gombe the chimps were wiping ants off sticks with their hands and bringing the wad of ants to their mouths, but in the Taï Forest they were bringing the sticks directly to their mouths. This was behaviour that they had learned and passed down through observation and imitation. Strangers would be recognized by how they ate. At the time, most Americans were eating with their forks in their right hands, and being mocked by Europeans for doing so.

David used to envy the people doing the field studies. There was a growing rivalry between those who worked with apes in labs and those who observed them in the wild. Do we know them better when they interact with humans or do we only understand the traits we have in common. Isn’t it best to see them behave as chimps in the wild, or is every ape, humans included, always adapting to some sort of culture imposed by others.

From the field came reports of chimps doing dances or displaying whenever it rained. They were seen to marvel at waterfalls and to act unusually when they saw some wonder of nature. There were chimps in Kibale who used small sticks to clear their noses, and there were others who laid floors of branches across thorny ground to protect their feet.

David wanted to see these things in the wild, but he also had plenty of his own stories, his own examples of culture and of inventiveness. Much was made of the fact that the Ugandan chimps used a unique hand clasp when grooming—something that no other colonies were seen to do. At Girdish, when the field station grew and the population was stable, Podo clapped his
hands whenever he wanted to be groomed, a ritual Podo would not have seen anywhere else. All the others in the colony copied him. As new apes were introduced they either learned to clap or were shunned. Wherever they are, apes invent culture, and their culture is strengthened through the exclusion of others.

So while David heard field reports and felt excited by the broader world, he felt as though he had his own small country here. There were experiments that made him feel he was part of a family, and his memories of the early days are not just of youthful enthusiasm but of iconoclasm. Like all his younger colleagues, he wanted to demolish beliefs about what it meant to be human.

They wanted to see whether chimps were capable of doing favours for others without reward. Was the celebrated altruism of humans unique.

We devised trials with several of the chimps he says to the conference. We put them individually in their cells, and outside the cages I and another researcher would pretend to fight over a stick. The other researcher would win the fight and walk away, dropping the stick within reach of the chimp but beyond my reach.