The Four Fingers of Death

by Rick Moody

  “Morton, both Larry and Noelle are reporting that there have been some unusual changes in your demeanor. They are reporting that you are able, in fact, to speak. This is exciting news not only for me, but for the research we are undertaking, and for medical research generally, and I’m therefore wondering if you’d be able to demonstrate your new skill for me.”

  Morton cowered over by the shackles.

  Koo said, “I understand if you might be feeling a little reticent at the moment, perhaps a bit shy. And I know that you and I have had our difficulties in the past, and it’s possible that you don’t really want to speak to me, based on some of our prior interactions, but I’m wondering if you would just consider talking for the sake of science. If for no other reason. It may not seem to someone with your background that this is such an estimable accomplishment, to speak for the sake of science, but consider what is at stake. You are now, despite international regulations on stem cell implantation, the world’s first talking chimpanzee. Isn’t that something that would interest you? You are, without having even set foot out of this cell, a celebrity, a scientific miracle. Would you be willing to speak to all of this? To the broader implications of your case?”

  Larry, who’d been keeping his distance behind the other two, muttered something Morton could barely make out:

  “… pretty talkative when he was getting ready to tear me to shreds. He had a lot to say then.”

  “Maybe I can motivate him,” Noelle said. And thus Morton’s beloved came forward, supplicatory, offering to him her shapely hand. Morton had, he learned all at once, given insufficient attention to the specifics of the human hand. The latticework of its gracefully engineered anatomical parts. Hers was long and slender—perhaps it was the kind of hand that made for a good piano player—and it had a number of silver rings encircling its digits. And he noticed there was a ring on her thumb, and Morton had to admit that he was momentarily offended by the thumb ring. The humans really lorded it over the rest of the world with their big restless hands, and yet they had to decorate them too? Still, he was willing to forgive her almost anything, and the pink, hairless, almost fetal quality of Noelle’s hands, likewise the painted fingernails, slightly chipped, these seemed exotic. The color of her nails was the color of the sky, some desert sky blue, a color that was not entirely out of phase with Noelle’s eyes, but here he was looking at her hand, and though he wanted to maintain a vigilant silence, a dignified silence, the presence of this hand, and the longing he associated with it, with its mound of Venus, these made it nearly impossible not to do what Noelle asked of him. He melted at her gentle touch.

  “Morton,” Noelle said, “Dr. Koo just wants to get to know you; that’s what he’s here for. We all want to get to know you. Don’t keep yourself from us. We are so proud of you, and we care about you, and our concern, above even your value as a scientific accomplishment, is for Morton, the friend to our research. Please feel like it’s okay to tell us a little bit about yourself. Let us help.”

  With a sigh, he began. If the world could have shifted on its axis, it might have.

  “Well,” he began, “that subject you were remarking on before, about how I’m a celebrity in the outside world. Let’s go back to that point for a second, if we could. Because you know it’s true I have never really been outside, not in any sustained way, and if I’m such a big celebrity, according to what you have said, then why the heck can’t you let me get to see a little of the outside? A celebrity, I mean, in my humble opinion, that’s somebody with an entourage, with a parade of vehicles. I have no such celebrity, insofar as I can evaluate these things.”

  “It’s for your protection, really,” Dr. Koo remarked. “We find that most of the animals are more peaceful for not having to undergo the kind of stimulation that they would have to endure in, for example, a zoo environment.”

  “Boy, I’ve heard that one before,” Morton rejoined. “The old ‘it’s for your protection’ line. That’s a classic. Why don’t you try allowing me to make some decisions about the danger and whether or not I’m in danger? Would that be so difficult for you? To allow me to make my own informed decisions? Maybe that would be an important part of your experimental protocols.”

  Koo chuckled at this response, which only piqued Morton further. And yet the doctor, in recognition of a changed landscape, did offer the following:

  “If you are willing to let me ask you a few questions for my own records, then perhaps we could take a quick trip outside, as long as this voyage is carefully supervised. Additionally, you would have to agree to refrain from talking in public, at least for the time being. And you would have to travel in areas that we believe are safe, so that you aren’t exposed to any harm. So that you aren’t somehow lost. There has been, for example, a rash of kidnappings taking place in Rio Blanco at present. Drug related, I believe. But we could take you for a little drive, if you agree to our requirements, as I have outlined them. It would be much easier for us if we could continue this arrangement in a way that is consensual; I’m sure you agree that it would be good for the team.”

  “Consensual. That’s a word that I’m honestly grateful to hear, because it’s my understanding that not very much has been consensual around here. For example, what would you hear if you could get that lemur down the hall to open up about some of his experiences? I’m betting that consensual is not the word he’d use. I’ve heard him moaning in pain all the day long—”

  “He’s not in your very unique position, Morton, and most of the experiments done on the lemur are not covered under our grant. I’m not in a position to vouch for his treatment. Nor should I apologize for his mistreatment if I were. I can, however, put you in touch with the relevant parties later, if that is your wish.”

  “Just because he can’t articulate his consent doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know that his consent has been taken from him.”

  “The point is highly debatable in the case of the lemur—”

  “Listen to me,” Morton said, with growing discomfort at the three bobbling faces arrayed in front of him, three faces that he was not at all sure were not going to strap him down yet again. “I’m not really willing to engage with you about what my fellow citizens of the animal kingdom can and cannot understand. You’re here in your billion-dollar medical facility doing what’s good for you and for the biotech business sector, which is trying to make up ground against Chinese and Indian state-supported entities. You don’t take the time to think about the experimental subjects; this I know from firsthand experience. Having said that, to prove that I’m a reasonable fellow, I’m willing to answer some of your questions, and we can proceed from there, recognizing as I think we all do, anyhow, that things are going to be a little different from now on.”

  Koo said, “Shall we have some lunch while we talk?”

  “Fine,” Morton replied.

  “Bananas?” Koo asked.

  “The truth is that I much prefer mango, honeydew melon, grapefruit. Do you know what it’s like eating the same foods every day? Do you eat the same foods every day? And bringing bananas every day, that’s such prejudice. What I’d really like is a melon ball salad, if you think you are able to obtain one of those.”

  “Larry?” Koo said. “We’ll need the small folding table and some chairs. And maybe you could go down to the cafeteria in the hospital and see if you can procure some sandwiches and some kind of—”

  “Sure,” Larry said, as though happy to escape.

  “Noelle, can you arrange a video camera for us? To document the luncheon?”

  The beloved, with her slender hands, her chipped nail polish, busied herself as requested.

  “Morton,” Koo said, as if to break the ice, and almost casually, “what do you remember of the time before you could talk?”

  “Before I could talk?”

  “You are nearly eighteen years old, according to our records. During a great portion of the time before today, you were unable to speak.”

  “That wa
s a period of time in which I was immature and didn’t yet know what a fully grown man knows.”

  “And what do you remember of that childish part of your life?”

  “I remember how things smelled. Lots of smells, in fact. I can tell you all about the smells of captivity. These smells consist chiefly of urine and fecal material, unwashed bodies, as well as the smells of institutional food. Oh, and disinfectant. No experimental subject, in telling the story of his life, would leave out the smell of antibacterial disinfectant. Does that disinfectant really do anything? Doesn’t it actually empower the bacteria?”

  “You didn’t, in that time of rich smells, attach any words to anything?”

  “I knew some words, but I chose not to participate in your club of ditherers, which was mainly a skill—dithering—that you used to separate yourselves from other animals. As though you were trying to pretend that you didn’t belong in the same evolutionary branch as the chimpanzee. This is not to say that it isn’t harder for us, because of the muscular skills required, to get the hang of your language. It just takes longer.”

  “Have you forgotten the injection I gave you?”

  Noelle was in charge of the video camera, and Morton could see that she was shooting his good profile. Very kind of her, really. He wanted to be sure to appear as a presentable and take-charge sort of individual.

  “You’ve given me about three hundred injections. You and others like you. Sometimes I have trouble telling you apart, frankly. You all look similar. But I believe you personally have given me many injections. I have tried to keep track of these things. But do you think I wake up every morning and review last night’s injection? I try to survive. That is my brief. I don’t think back on what is least pleasant in my day, except insofar as I fear these things. I watch the brothers and sisters up and down the corridor getting carted out in body bags. With each injection, I say a little prayer that you will have the tables turned on you one day.”

  “You attempted to micturate on me. That is my recollection of that night.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Do you associate that night and that injection with your ability to speak?”

  “If you’re asking me if I am grateful to you, or for your input, as regards my language skills, I say, respectfully, that I am not grateful. Your language skills have enabled me to understand the injustice here, which has brought me anguish and a feeling of apartness from my fellow captives.”

  It wasn’t a melon ball salad that Larry brought in. It was a chilled, tiered Jell-O-brand dessert, in bright green, which was not exactly what Morton had in mind. But it had some melon in it. Morton didn’t approve of refrigeration, and was not keen on flatware either, which caused in him, on this occasion, some social distress. It was as if Larry and Koo were making it obvious that he still had to eat the food with his hands. Larry set down the paper plates, the sandwiches, and the little bowl of Jell-O, and then he left the room, heading back to the other side of the looking glass.

  Koo said, “I think I’m beginning to understand. I’m beginning to see us as you are seeing us. But help me to understand a little more. Do you have feelings about world events or contemporary politics that you’d like to share with us? So that we can get a better sense of your views?”

  “I do.”

  “Feel free.”

  “You have systematically undervalued the states of the African continent, where my species comes from and is most populous, to the extent that it exists in the wild. Those are the economies that are really starting to thrive. Your North American century, that century is over. That’s what I think. NAFTA is a second-rate global player. Maybe not even second rate.”

  “This is a very popular point of view.”

  “I try to keep up with current events.”

  “Do you have any strongly held philosophical positions, leaving aside these rather traditional animal rights types of positions that you have articulated so far?”

  “You bet I do. I don’t think they’re philosophical positions that you’re going to want to hear exactly, but I’m happy to share them with you. I believe in the dignity of the common man and woman, the working family, that’s one position. Not the captains of industry, not the Chinese or Bollywood celebutantes, but the guy who delivers the fuel oil for your HVAC machinery here in the URB lab. I see him out the window sometimes. Seems like a good guy. I believe in the little animals, flycatchers, dragonflies, the animals that no one thinks contribute to biodiversity. I believe in basic human rights for all prisoners, whether political, criminal, or animal. I believe in a world court that seeks to protect the rights of prisoners. I believe in the European tradition of philosophy, if you are curious. I believe in philosophy that opposes empiricism and rigid, unfeeling scientific thought. Man needs to rise above markets and to understand himself as a participant in an ongoing saga of evolution, which is not about markets but is about shedding the logic of the food chain. And I believe that if I contradict myself, as others have said, why then I contradict myself.”

  “Your philosophy sounds somewhat French. Do you have an interest in French or francophone cultures?”

  “You kidding me? They were the colonizers of many African countries, and they enabled a lot of wholesale slaughter of my fellows. In the Congo, for example. They thought they were better than the people they conquered because they ate unpasteurized cheese. French culture, you kidding? You look at the great French thinkers, a lot of them weren’t even French, like what’s his name, the Algerian guy. He was a Sephardic Jew who did most of his best work in the United States. France always wants it both ways, marriage and mistress, Fascist government and French Revolution. Still, the French thinkers of the twenty-first century, at least from what I’ve read, they’re all in exile, because of the French policy toward its Muslim population. The French are star-crossed, they are destroying themselves, they have forgotten what was good about being French, the values of the revolution, the nouvelle vague, Rabelais, that kind of thing.”

  Morton noticed that Koo seemed to take umbrage at some of this speech. His scientific detachment was failing. But he didn’t really know how to stop now. Upon opening his mouth, he couldn’t stop. It didn’t occur to him that not all the things that could be said needed to be said. Koo, who had wound himself into a position in his chair—arms folded, legs crossed over each other—that didn’t look comfortable, whispered one more question, and if Morton didn’t know any better, he would almost have said that Koo was going to weep as he uttered it.

  “What are your feelings on institutionalized religion?”

  Morton sensed a layer of inquiry whose purpose was not apparent to him, and rather than leap into it with his true feelings, which were that all the religious people should be rooted out of the general population and sent to an isolated countryside encampment where they wouldn’t be able to harm anyone, he sensed that it might be worth trying to moderate his argument just a little bit.

  “As I have said, and even written in some of my notes,” Morton began, popping a last green grape, swathed in green Jell-O chunks, into his mouth and ruminating, “God is someone who has yet to introduce himself to me. And if he has yet to introduce himself to me, how is it that I am meant to prepare myself for his advent? Is his kingdom really at hand, based on the experiences of my life? Additionally, as a so-called animal, I’m concerned that the religions don’t address themselves sufficiently to the needs of nonhumans like me. That said”—and here Morton believed he was attempting to toss a bone to the Korean medical researcher—“what you see rapidly being wiped out in the current century, in the lawless and totalitarian Sino-Indian Economic Compact, is gentleness in the world. Humankind has held up gentleness as one of its highest aims, and yet it has systematically wiped out gentleness wherever it has appeared, in Tibet, in the Amazon, in the wildlife refuges of the African continent. The religions you speak of seem to be the one place where remedial gentleness can be taught, and yet. I would like some lessons in that gentleness, if y
ou are able to provide them. Maybe you can have some divinity student in here a couple days a week to explain to me what he believes in. I’m especially interested in Saint Francis of Assisi, around whom the animals gathered. When everything has been destroyed by government and institutional religion, there will probably be one guy wearing a cloak and carrying a book, and whether or not I believe in religion, that will be the guy I want to talk to, at least for an afternoon or so.”

  Koo had already risen from his seat as Morton was pronouncing the last of his speech, and he could be seen delicately wiping at one eye as the chimpanzee spoke, though for what reason was unclear. And at that point it became evident the interview, abruptly, was over. Morton realized, that is, that he had somehow provided unhelpful answers to many of the questions, though what the right answers were was a mystery to him. As swiftly as the conversation was ended, when Koo told Noelle that she could shut off the camera, so was begun the arrangement of the afternoon drive, which Koo agreed to, as a man of his word.

  And so all at once, because why belabor the preparations in this account, Morton was outside! All at once: what was inside was not the totality of Morton’s life but was simply a characteristic of a former time in his life. All at once, there was an outside, and if outside was not what he imagined, if he did not have some memory lurking in him of what the outdoors should look like when he inhabited it (an idea that he got from his ancestral, mitochondrial self), if he did not have an idea of it from seeing it in films or through the reinforced windows of his cell, it was no less glorious and no less perfect in the beholding than in his imagination. In fact, the outdoors exceeded his imagination! They gave him a baseball cap, to shield him from the sun, and he attempted to wear Noelle’s sunglasses, though whether this was for him or for whatever humans he might encounter on his first drive through the city of Rio Blanco, he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. When the glasses fell into the foot well of the automobile in which he rode, there in the backseat, he didn’t care, because the window was rolled down, despite the temperatures, nearing one hundred and fifteen (he heard Dr. Koo say), and they sped through the stoplights of the thoroughfare, and what Morton noticed was how many things there were that caught his eye, how reliable was the velocity of contemporary life, and how sad it was. It was sad! There were all manner of wanderers in contemporary life, dressed in privation, come from other places and unable to return there, walking here and there, looking for what? Looking for what lost thing? For the notion of a life that wasn’t lost? They were going in and out of some beleaguered franchise restaurant, Morton thought, to eat some chemically enhanced carbohydrate, and then back out into the heat, to vomit, and then to go drink some more; all was decay, all was decline and fall, but rendered in the pale colors of the desert, which were orange and rose and bleached white and palest green, and everything was scorched by the glorious winds, which carried forth the flame that devoured the region but which also made it feel somehow romantic and perfect, especially when they arrived at last at the interstate, which no longer carried the great snarl of automobiles that it had in the last century (or so Morton was told), because no one could afford to field a fleet of cars anymore, and so when the laboratory sport utility vehicle, modeled on one that had been used by the troops in the Central Asian conflict, hit the interstate, there was nothing that Morton could think of but that movement was itself the source of romance, and freedom was velocity and movement, and freedom, therefore, made possible romance, and that animals in captivity could perhaps be sexual, could perform sexually, having few other activities, but they couldn’t feel desire, because desire was part of a spectrum of feelings, of kinds of self-knowledge that were associated with freedom, that took place among palm trees and rock formations and in the presence of mountain lions; he could feel the mountain lions out there, in their miles and miles of range, and he knew that he could feel them when the human animals no longer could; and yet chief among the possibilities of liberty, in this resplendent desert, with its great cloudless lid of brightest periwinkle, was failure, and that was what made desire possible, the failure implicit in freedom, and it was this that made him want to reach up to touch the shoulder of Noelle in the front passenger seat, the sense that he was going to fail, that his ugliness was unsurpassed, his ugliness, his total inability to understand the clothing and the cooked food, and the repression of glandular needs and wants, he was going to fail; he had come to this point, this plateau of human accomplishment where no experimental animal had ever come, where he could convince his jailers not only to release him but to understand that he was in some way something that they could never be, and this only meant that his failure was that much more undeniable, because he knew what he had to lose now, and that time when he was just another chimp, that was the one perfect time, because freedom was savage, cruel, and he reached up to the front seat, around the headrest, bested by the limitlessness of the desert, and he set his hand on the shoulder of Noelle, and she looked back at Morton, the chimpanzee, and she smiled, and he knew that that smile was intended for him and him alone, and he knew that that smile should have been enough, but it wasn’t enough, and he knew that Noelle wasn’t enough to save him now, and before him he saw the opportunities ahead of him, the dead-end jobs he would try to secure, going into the office to explain to the people in human resources, or whatever you called them and their department, that he wasn’t going to be able to type very fast, because his fingers were too big and clumsy, and then he was going to go to the fast-food restaurant, and he was going to have to point out that he wasn’t able to operate the cash register, which was the job you took when you were unable to perform any other job, the job where you handled the money, and he wasn’t going to be able to handle the money, because his hands were not well enough coordinated to press the buttons properly, and he couldn’t get hold of the small denominations of coinage, and so he would not be able to hold that job, and the public-relations job that involved selling legislators of the Southwest on tax credits for Chinese and Indian manufacturers that wanted to move here, he wasn’t going to be able to take that job, because he didn’t look like the legislators of the Southwest, who would be afraid, even terrified, at the recognition that the lobbyist who was approaching them was a chimpanzee, not a person at all, though he was able to talk like a person (sort of ), and so he wasn’t going to be able to take that job, and so unless they were going to be willing to hire him to do some kind of office work at the laboratory at the medical school of URB, there was no job that he was going to be fit for, but it was unlikely that the state apparatus was going to catch him in its tattered safety net, and so what was he going to do, was he going to love this woman? Was he going to content himself with love and give up on work?