Great Apes

by Will Self

  The other noteworthy aspect of the books had been the dedication with which Busner had attached himself to his unusual patients. He had hit upon an observational and expository method that synthesised the objectivity and rationalism of his medical training at Edinburgh in the sixties, the imaginative flare and creative discipline imparted by his analytic training under the legendary Alkan4, and the existential phenomenology of his work at the Concept House he had run in Willesden during the seventies. His patients were thus both studied under clinical conditions and also taken out into the wider world by Busner himself.

  ‘The important thing,’ Busner would sign his students and acolytes, ‘is to achieve an inter-subjective “chup-chupp” approach, somehow to enter the “euch-euch” morbid consciousness of the patient and see the world with his eyes. It is no longer sufficient to adopt a hard physiological attitude to certain disorders, or to view them as motivationally based, and therefore solely within the purlieus of “hooo” psychiatry …’

  While this ‘inter-subjective approach’ had obvious and sound credentials, both intellectual and ethical, certain wags couldn’t help noticing, and remarking upon, the bowdlerising tendencies of the practice. Like morbidly ebullient chimpanzee interest stories, Busner’s case histories made great copy and highly entertaining television. In pursuit of his patients’ distorted phenomenologies Busner would go waterskiing with paraplegics, to the opera with chronic epileptics, to acid-house raves with hebephrenics. It had even become somewhat de rigeur in publishing circles to have Busner and one of his protégés present at parties.

  Thus chimps who barked involuntarily as they succumbed to the tics and spasms of Tourette’s syndrome, or Parkinsonian chimps whose arms and legs undulated weirdly from the effects of L-dopa, or brain-damaged chimps whose gesticulatory sallies were imprisoned within the tape loop ofacute amnesia, became a familiar social sight beside more conventionally behaved agents, authors and literary journalists, jostling for canapés and free drinks. ‘It is,’ Busner would sign to the little groups who congregated around him at such events, ‘a practical demonstration of the “gru-nn” chimpunity of my approach to these disorders. By bringing these chimps into such settings’ – and at this point he would usually have to break off and adminster some emergency grooming to the chimp in question – ‘I am “chup-chupp” actively deconstructing the ideological categories that surround our notions of disease.’

  Busner finished dressing and jumped up to pull the rearview mirror down on its retractable arm from the ceiling. Is my anus clean? he mused, sending one exploratory hand round his broad back to grope in its folds and pleats of yellow-pink ischial skin, then bringing it up to his flared nostrils and waggling lip. But despite the ghastly bout of the shits that had afflicted him when he got back from L’Escargot the previous evening, everything about his rear looked well sluiced. Gambol can go over it again on the way to the hospital, he decided, and straightening his jacket to ensure that the hem was above his magnificently effulgent arsehole, Busner snapped off the bathroom light, took a sprightly swing off the handhold at the side of the door, and bounded off down the corridor, his big balls swinging this way and that.

  Busner’s reappointment as Consultant at Heath Hospital had come midway through this popular renaissance in his career. And although he was still required to do some of the day-to-day grind of actually treating patients, it was more or less understood by the Trust that his presence there was as an elder stateschimp of the psychiatric fraternity, adding lustre to the hospital’s reputation. He was allowed Gambol as a researcher, could pick and choose which patients he decided to concentrate on, and further, was able to cruise the intakes of other hospitals in the area, seeking out the kind of cases that would make good copy for his books.

  Between projects at the moment, Busner was not looking forward to the day. A grindingly dull departmental meeting was scheduled for that morning, and in the late afternoon he was due to go into Univerity College to deliver the second of his public lectures on autism. This series, entitled ‘Chimpanzees Who Groom Alone’ was set to be immensely popular. Vaulting on to the podium to commence the first lecture, Busner was pleased to see that as well as the gaggle of– mostly bonobo – foreign students he had expected, there were a lot of lay chimps, as well as psychology and primatology students from the university faculty.

  Nonetheless the whole subject of autism had rather palled. He had expressed most of what he wanted to in his book A Primatologist Recounts, and the prospect of going over it all again, even to a large and receptive audience, was not particularly exciting. What I need, he reflected as he bounded down the stairs, alternating between the handholds at different levels, is some new case history, exhibiting a syndrome or symptomatology never before encountered in psychiatry or neurology. Something unprecedented that hints at broad reevaluations of the very nature of chimpunity!

  He paused before the door to the kitchen and summoned himself for the fray of his group, before leaping up to grab the lintel and swinging in.

  The sight that met the distinguished doctor as he dropped to his feet and stood erect in the doorway was much as he expected. The Busners were a large group, and advancedly traditional as befitted their medical and academic bent. They were more subject to flux than most middle-class professional groups, with a core ofsome ten to fifteen members in residence at the Redington Road group home at any given time.

  Zack Busner put great emphasis on the virtues of patrolling in the young, and would often physically eject sub-adult male members of the group from the house, occasioning raised eyebrow ridges and enquiring pant-hoots from their lippy neighbours in the treelined environs of Hampstead. Sub-adult females could get into trouble as well – if their alpha thought they were wasting an oestrus solely on endogamous mating, he would go up to Hampstead and round up some suitors for them himself.

  But by the same token, as his reign as alpha male had extended, first to five, then to ten and now to almost fifteen years, so the fusion of the group had come to seem as important to him as its fission. At times, such as now, when two and possibly even three of the Busner females were in oestrus simultaneously, Zack accepted the influx of male group members with good grace. Even though he would find himself having to stump up for air fares for those of his adolescent wards who insisted on flying back to London from Bali, or the Côte d’Azur in order to mate endogamously.

  When this happened the house would be packed to the seams with chimps of all ages, perhaps thirty in all, squabbling, scrapping, grooming and copulating. But it all made for the kind of good-natured rambunctiousness that Busner associated with his group, and he took it in his stride – even early in the morning.

  The first chimp Busner noticed was Charlotte, the alpha Busner female, who was crouched on the flight of three stairs that separated the eating from the cooking area of the room, being mated by David, the gamma male, with his characteristic extreme nonchalance. David hadn’t even troubled to discard the morning paper before effecting penetration, and Busner saw that he had it folded open on the ledge of Charlotte’s back, and was scanning the leader page whilst thrusting. A gaggle of infants was trying to get in the way, leaping on David’s back and shoulders.

  Busner could only recognise one individual, his youngest infant Alexander. Spunky kid, he thought, for Alexander, although only two, had managed to get hold of the light fixture which dangled over the two trembling bodies, and was hanging from it by one arm, his tiny frame gyrating while he kicked David in the muzzle.

  Busner took in the rest of the room with a glance, infants chucking second-breakfast bowls of sloes and custard apples about, sub-adults moodily and sulkily grooming each other in the corners, a couple of young mothers suckling, a couple of others up in the eating area preparing more second-breakfast bowls. The whole scene was well lit by the sunlight streaming in from the open french windows that let on to the garden, and through which a pair of the ubiquitous Busner lap ponies now trotted, tossing their heads and ne
ighing reedily.

  “HoooH’Graa’!” Busner pant-hooted, and drummed a little on the doorjamb, as befitted his status. He signed to Paula, one of his younger daughters, that she should prepare his second breakfast, then swaggered over to the mating pair, his fur half-erect.

  On his arrival in the doorway the other adult males of the Busner group had all pant-hooted, saving David who was squealing his way towards climax. As the patriarch traversed the room all the members of his group, old, young, male, female, presented to him, and upon each of them he bestowed a touch of tenderness and hortatory greeting, here a kiss, there a caress.

  There was a loose queue of males trailing down from the cooking area, more or less in correct dominance order, Henry behind David, Paul behind Henry. Busner wondered idly why David had been allowed first crack at Charlotte, but then as he rounded the breakfast bar at the top of the short flight of stairs, he saw that Dr Kenzaburo Yamuta, the distal-zeta male, was vigorously mating his daughter Cressida by the dishwasher, while Colin Weeks and Gambol awaited their turn.

  ‘Morning “chup-chupp”, Zack,’ Kenzaburo signed, withdrawing from Cressida. ‘Fancy a “huh-huh” fuckhere?’

  ‘No, no,’ Busner signed in the process of delivering an affectionately brutal cuff to David, ‘I’ll just – “huh-huh-huh” ‘ – he broke into a satisfied pant as he smoothly entered Charlotte, who pushed herself backwards to ease him into her still further – ‘give the old “chup-chupp” dear one first. ’ Busner juddered and shuddered, panting, squealing and then loudly tooth-clacking with satisfaction as he felt the soft, damp cushion of Charlotte’s sexual swelling mush against his groin. But it took him almost a minute of thrusting before he achieved climax, one of Alexander’s feet banging into his forehead the whole while, and a couple of the older infants leaping up and down on his broad back, their little hands entwined in his scruff.

  Not like the old days, he reflected ruefully, withdrawing from Charlotte and wiping himself with a cloth that Frances, the epsilon female, had thoughtfully handed him. I remember mating Charlotte for the first time, I must have shot-off in less than ten seconds! Hoo how exquisite it was; truly youth is wasted on the young. He signed his gratitude to Frances and remained resting by Charlotte for a few minutes, grooming the fine auburn fur around her ears, while Henry mated her, his big yellow teeth chattering.

  He looked up to see that Cressida had finished with Kenzaburo and was presenting to him, a half-smile of encouragement on her gentle, liver-spotted muzzle. Busner laughed, panted, smacked his lips, and mated her in under thirty seconds, the pair of them squealing with delight. Cressida had always been his favourite daughter – although he couldn’t have pointed out quite why. She certainly didn’t have a swelling to match Betty or Isabel’s, but there was something deeply affecting about her joyful submissiveness and overprotective mothering. Busner, although by no means a crass male chauvinist, was nonetheless fond of signing to his colleagues on the infrequent occasions that he went to the Flask with them for a drink after work, ‘She’s the one of my seventeen offspring that I feel most tender towards … the seventeen “h’hee-hee” I know about, that is!’

  Busner was aware of Gambol signing to him under his right arm as he was mating Cressida, but he didn’t pay it much attention. Now, however, as he was wiping himself down again with a fresh cloth provided by another female, he did fully register Gambol’s enquiring pant-hoot.

  “H’huu,” Gambol called, then signed, ‘Something’s come up, Zack, something that sounds very interesting –’

  ‘ “Euch-euch” can’t it wait, Gambol, I haven’t even had my second breakfast yet,’ Busner countersigned, leaping clear over the breakfast bar out of a mixture of post-coital high spirits and irritation. He settled himself on one of the chairs surrounding the big circular pine-topped table that dominated the eating area, and indicated for Isabel, the delta, to approach with the two laden bowls of custard apples and sloes.

  Busner picked up a copy of the Guardian that was lying on the table and began to leaf through the foreign news section, idly scanning the headlines: ‘More Bonobo Massacres in Rwanda’, ‘President Clinton Urges Ceasefire in Bosnia’, ‘Accusations of Bonobism in O. J. Simpson Jury Selection’. Misery, misery, all is misery and aggression, Busner hooed to himself as he read. Perhaps it is as Lorenz suggestures, and the current woeful condition of chimpunity is a maladaptive response to overcrowding, to the loss of our natural lifestyles?

  ‘Boss. ’ Gambol had wormed his scrawny body under the kitchen table and was fingering Busner’s dangling left foot. ‘This really is something “gru-nn” exciting, something I feel we should ges –’ Busner cut him short by jerking his foot away. With an agility and strength that immediately accounted for his long reign over the group, he pushed himself back in the chair and directed an accurate and forceful cuff to the back of Gambol’s head. This blow temporarily stunned the hapless research assistant and he sprawled full-length on the sea-grass matting. Busner then followed up the lightning attack by vaulting off his chair and planting both his large feet full in the small of Gambol’s back.

  “Wraaf!” barked the eminent psychiatrist, and then bending down and grabbing him by the scruff he signed on the muzzle of the epsilon male with his left foot, ‘Shut the fuck down, Gambol, you little piece of shit. When I want you muscling in on my second breakfast, you miserable subordinate creep, I’ll ask you to, but for now just shut the fuck down! “Waaa”!’

  ‘I’m sorry, boss, I’m sorry,’ Gambol flourished frantically, his darting hands emerging from the pod of his crouching body. ‘I didn’t mean “eek-eek” to annoy you so much, please don’t beat up on me, please. ’ He half squatted and presented to Busner, his scut quivering.

  ‘That’s all right, honey-bunny, I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, wassums,’ Busner gestured, grunting softly. ‘You’re still my favourite itty-bitty research assistant. ’ He reached out a hand, still roaring with pain after the blow he had inflicted, and tenderly stroked Gambol’s ruffled back fur. For a while Busner groomed Gambol, removing some particles of what looked like solidified correction fluid from the thick fur between the epsilon’s shoulder blades.

  Typical young intellectual on the make, Busner thought as he opened up parting after parting in Gambol’s fur. Doesn’t groom enough, doesn’t mate enough. Why, without his position as my factotum I don’t think he’d have any designation in the hierarchy, let alone epsilon. He finished off this purely formal groom of reassurance with a tweak of Gambol’s nape hair.

  Gambol moved away from the table, still presenting, his hands flickering from behind his back. ‘Thank you, Zack, thank you, I acknowledge your suzerainty. I admire your eminence, I revere your reign over the group, your anal scrag enfolds us all “grnnn”.’

  ‘Get the car out of the garage, Gambol,’ Busner snapped. ‘We’ll go to the hospital in about twenty minutes, as soon as I’ve finished my second breakfast. ’ Busner pulled himself back up on to his chair and resumed munching on some sloes, mashing the bitter juice of the berries through his strong molars, savouring it. He turned once more to the Guardian, and with an ease borne of long experience, shut his large and gnarled ears to the hubbub of the kitchen, the squeals of infants, pants of copulating adults and neighing of lap ponies.

  It took quite a lot longer than twenty minutes for Zack Busner to finish his second breakfast. The milkmale dropped that fortnight’s bill in, cause enough for another round of mating, as was the arrival home of Dave 2, another of Busner’s offspring, who worked for a bonobo community organisation in Hackney. By the time all the males present had covered Charlotte and Cressida again it was getting on for ten.

  ‘I’m off now, dear,’ Busner signed to Charlotte, who was still crouching on the stairs, her vagina bleeding a little. ‘Try not to overdo the mating, remember what happened last oestrus. “Grnnn” I shouldn’t be too late. In fact, I think I’ll come back after my lecture, I’d like to do some reading at home this afternoon. “H’huuu�
��?’ he enquired.

  ‘OK, Zack, but you know how hard it is to refuse them, and there’s so many sub-adult males in the house, what is one to d –’ She stopped wringing her hands. One of the sub-adult males in question, William, was waving a couple of tea towels around, trying to get Charlotte’s attention with this pathetic courtship display.

  Busner considered William. The young male was shaping up very nicely, sleek brown-black fur, fine eyebrow ridges, tidily recessed nasal bridge, pale muzzle – every inch the Busner. “HoooGrnn,” pant-grunted William, his vocalisation warbling up and down the scale, and then signed, ‘May I mate you, please, Auntie, please “huuu”?’

  Busner moved over to William and administered a few swingeing blows to his muzzle with his left – and not so arthritic – hand. “Wraaf! he barked, then signed, ‘Leave your poor aunt alone, can’t you see the state of her vagina. She’s got quite enough senior males to mate this oestrus, without worrying about you whippersnappers.’

  William retreated to the garden whimpering and signing, ‘Sorry, Alph, sorry, Auntie.’

  Busner turned to survey the room with its teaming horde of chimps. “HoooGraaa!” he pant-hooted, impressing on the gathering the force and potency of his valediction – and by extension himself. The senior male chimps broke off eating, mating and grooming to salute him, and he left the room.

  Marigold, one of the Busner infants, aged around four, came scuttling down the stairs with his briefcase. ‘Here you are, Uncle,’ she gestured, dragging it towards him. ‘Have a good day at the hospital. ’ Busner took the briefcase and bestowed a drooly kiss on the little female. He checked his arsehole once more in the hall mirror, then let himself out the front door.

  Chapter Four

  Simon barely acknowledged the receptionist at the Sealink Club, who, recognising him as a roller who got high and then acted it, was fulsome-ish.