Great Apes

by Will Self

  ‘No, Peter, if I can’t have you, or Simon, I don’t think I’ll be mating anyone else for the rest of this oestrus. And certainly not a chimp whose courtship display consists of beating himself around the head with a copy of PC User. ’

  They hugged again. The train pulled in. Sarah leapt on and squatted at a seat in the window with the lap pony comfortably ensconced on top of her. The last thing she saw as the train pulled out was the elderly priest sitting on a bench, teasing some of her drying vaginal mucus out his groin fur, with a wistful, almost spiritual expression on his greying muzzle.

  But while she may have been defiant to her parents, and direct with the Reverend – who was after all the Peasenhulmes’ beta and had been for many years – alone once more Sarah continued to brood on her consort’s breakdown, and consider whether or not it might be time they fissioned.

  In the few days that Sarah had been away, a voluminous and unusual correspondence had built up between the occupant of the secure room on Gough, and the senior registrar. Dr Bowen continued to ask her troublesome, if talented patient what it was that ailed him, and continued to receive remarks which substantiated a picture of such clinical oddity that at times she wondered whether or not it was she who was suffering from the delusion rather than Dykes.

  ‘When you say you are ‘human’, what do you delineate by this?’

  ‘I am a member of the human race. The Latin name is Homo erectus or Homo sapiens, something like that. Why are you asking me these questions, aren’t you human?’

  ‘No. I am a chimpanzee, as are you. You are not human. Humans are brute animals only found in the wild in equatorial regions of Africa. There are some humans in captivity in Europe, although they are mostly used for experimental purposes. Humans cannot sign, or effectively vocalise, let alone write. Which is why I know you aren’t a human. Humans are also largely hairless. You have a fine coat – if I, as your doctor, may sign so. Why do you think you are human?’

  ‘I am human because I was born human. Christ! I can’t believe I’m writing this. You know I think all of this is a part of my madness, these notes I scrawl in response to your insane questions. Where is Sarah? Why won’t you send her in to see me? Or get hold of George Levinson, my dealer. They’re both as human as I am.’

  ‘BothSarah and Georgehavebeenintosee you. They, like everyone else who is fully sentient in this world, are chimpanzees. I understand your fear, Simon, and your confusion, but you must recognise that something is profoundly wrong with you. I believe you may well have incurred some organic damage to your brain. If you will allow me, together with my colleagues, to do some neurological tests and assessments on you, we will be able to ascertain whether or not this is true and try and devise some way of helping you.’

  And so it went on. But every time this unusual epistolary relationship looked like it was getting somewhere and Simon signalled that he would be prepared to allow Dr Bowen to enter his room and gesticulate with him muzzle-to-muzzle, he would relapse into the state of bestial fear and catatonia in which he had been admitted to the hospital.

  “HoooGraa,” Jane would vocalise as gently as possible, sidling in through the door. The bent figure of the chimp with his back to her was pathetic, slope-shouldered, the evidence of his Parkinsonian weakness written into every lineament. The smell of despair in the secure room was palpable to the psychiatrist’s questing lip and flared nostrils.

  “H’hooo?” he would vocalise, showing perfect awareness that it was she he was recalling – Jane would then sidle quietly up to him and inpart as gently as possible on his back, sniffing and grooming him the while. ‘Don’t worry, Simon, I’m here to help you, to psychically preen you.’

  Each time this happened, the artist would allow it to go on just that little bit longer before turning his head to catch sight of her – then: ‘ “Wraaaa”! Get away from me! Get away, get away, get away!’ He would back mewling and bellowing into the corner, his hands barely able to shape the signs.

  Initially Bowen kept to the instructions she had laid down for the staff. She refrained from administering the reassuring blows, followed by the even more reassuring grooming that she would have given any other disturbed chimp in the circumstances. But as the days went by and his response remained just as aberrant and uncooperative, she did resort to cuffing him lightly around the muzzle as he backed away from her. However, this didn’t pay any dividend either, save for nonsensical accusations of ill-treatment when they resumed their contact via letter.

  “HoooGraaa!” Bowen drummed on the door of Whatley’s office and entered at a bound, throwing handfuls of Dykes’s correspondence at her boss. She continued the display for two or three minutes, plucking books from the consultant’s shelves and hurling them in the general direction of the desk.

  ‘ “Hooo-Hooo-Hooo” what’s all this in aid of, Jane?

  Trying to mount some kind of coup d’état, or what “h’huu”?’ Whatley waved at her, the signs percussively emphasised as he deflected the squall of printed matter.

  ‘ “HoooGraaa”! What this is in aid of, Whatley, is that we aren’t getting anywhere. I’ve been sending you daily reports on this chimp Dykes, and as far as I can see you’ve been doing nothing.’

  ‘Well, what can I do “huu”? You don’t seem to be able to help him. You don’t even seem able to diagnose him. All we have now that we didn’t have a week ago is a lot of balderdash from him about being human and humans roaming the earth; and a lot of balderdash in response from you, telling him the way things are in fact. It hardly seems like “euch-euch” psychiatry to me at all.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s the point.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Maybe we need to consider a different approach to Dykes. We must do something, Whatley.’

  Whatley got up from behind his desk, where he’d taken shelter from the hail of books, and crawled round to where Bowen squatted. ‘“HoooGraaa” now, Jane, I don’thonestly think we can prevent the chimp if he insists. You haven’t got any fresh ideas despite having demarcated the extent of his “hee-hee-hee” , now have you “huuu”?’

  Whatley was suprised at this stage to feel Dr Bowen’s hands teasingly grooming the fur in his groin area, and even more suprised when she began, albeit with enormous, ironic playfulness, to mock mate him. ‘There is one possible course of action left to us “chup-chupp”, Whatley,’ she inparted somewhere in his lower belly.

  ‘ “Hee-hee-hee-h’eugh”. Now what’s that then, Jane Jane! Really!’

  ‘Busner.’

  ‘ “H’huuuu” what?’

  ‘Busner. Let’s ask Zack Busner to take a look at Dykes. He might have some images.’

  Chapter Ten

  The long blue Seven Series Volvo pulled off the Talgarth Road and bucketed along under the Hammersmith Flyover. Inside the car the Busner patrol was exhibiting its usual behaviours, compounded in equal parts of uproariousness and pedagogy. The sub-adults in the back were gigglingly grooming each other, footling around with the car’s interior decoration, and squealing as they shucked out of the way of their alpha’s blows; which were aimed with equal ferocity and inaccuracy.

  ‘ “Wraff”! Now lads,’ signed the eminent natural philosopher – as he liked to style himself, ‘we are nearing the hospital where this poor chimp is incarcerated. ’ Gambol waltzed the car through a chicane; limp chip wrappers furled in the Volvo’s wake. ‘Observe the white latticework of poles that compasses the hospital blocks.’

  The sub-adults did as they were shown, tipping their heads back so that three sets of eyes were aimed up through the sun roof, and three ruffs of fur fluffed up over the collars of their T-shirts. ‘D’you see them “huu”?’

  ‘Ye-es’, Alph,’ chorused the young males.

  ‘The architect that designed this “euch-euch” place doubtless imagined that he was conforming in some way to the functionalism of the Bauhaus, the brutalism of Le Corbusier, yet all he has really done is what “huu”?’ There was si
gnlence in the back seat. ‘ “Huu” well?’

  Erskine twitched a finger. ‘ “H’huu” yes, Erskine?’

  ‘ “HooGraa” put bars on it, Alph “huu”?’

  ‘Very good, very good, you are a good lad, c’mere. ’ Busner squeezed his head between the seats and gave Erskine a sloppy kiss on the muzzle. ‘That’s “chup-chupp” right. Those aren’t poles – they’re bars. Perhaps only decorative, but for all that a potent symbol that the chimpanzees in these thirteen storeys are cut off from the group, denied either territory or the opportunity to range freely.

  ‘Now,’ Busner went on conducting, ‘as you lads are doubtless aware it has taken many millennia for chimpunity to conquer its instinctive dread and revulsion for any form of injury or disease – yet I sometimes wonder if in fact we have conquered it at all. These vertical holdingbays,’ he gestured, letting the signs fall like confetti from his upflung hand ‘are towers of moaning rather than signlence, in which the redundant bodies of our conspecifics are systematically stripped of their dignity – like state-subsidised carrion – by vultures in white coats …’ He paused, just long enough for Gambol to interject.

  ‘HooGraa lovely image, Boss, lovely image.’

  ‘ “Grnn” thank you, Gambol, you may kiss my arse. ’ Gambol did as he was bidden.

  Having let the Busner patrol out under the portico of the hospital, Gambol went off to park the Volvo. His mind was – quite naturally – full of anger, full of aggression, full of the Will to Power. An alliance, he thought to himself, all I need is an alliance and I can begin to put my plan into action. I’m fed up with kissing Busner’s arse, no matter what his past achievements are. This absurd case is the one I’ve been waiting for. If I believed in providence, or some opportunistic deity, whose aggressive image we had been made in, I might imagine Dykes had been given to me by destiny. But as it is, it’s merely the most stupendous, cachinnating coincidence of my career. An alliance – an alliance – Whatley could well prove sympathetic, and the old male doesn’t think I know about his arthritis, but I do, yes indeed and much else besides.

  The Busner sub-adults were, despite themselves, impressed by the number of chimps who presented to their alpha as he swaggered through the ground floor of the hospital. They’d been with him on patrol to Heath Hospital many times, but had never quite believed the deference shown to him was anything but reflex, a hangover from the past. But as doctor after nurse dropped what they were doing, rushed over and backed towards Busner, arses and noses twitching with humility, the sub-adults felt a new respect for him.

  The patrol took the lift up to the psychiatric department.

  ‘ “HooGraa” now stick close, you lot,’ Busner signed as they whooshed upwards. ‘The chimp who runs this department is not well disposed towards me. It’s a situation that may well call for some forthright action, and therefore an opportunity for you to learn something.’

  Whatley was there to meet them when the lift doors opened – someone must have given advance pant-hoot. Together with him was Dr Bowen. So quickly it could barely be seen by the eye, Busner flicked fingers at Bowen, then drummed loudly on the clanking lift door, while vocalising with tremendous ferocity, “Wraaaaaaff!” Bowen gave voice as well and the two of them charged towards Whatley, who dropped the clipboard he was holding, scampered backwards, tripped, fell and was overwhelmed by his colleagues, who jumped clean over his prone body then went racketing off down the corridor.

  ‘ “Hooo” I see your alpha hasn’t changed much,’ Whatley signed to the Busner sub-adults who were huddled by the wall. ‘Still likes to get his displays in hard and fast “hooo”! Here they come again –’ Whatley rolled over to the other side of the corridor, with considerable agility for a chimp of his age, just in time to avoid the windmilling arms and stomping feet of the senior registrar and her ally, who were kicking a miscellany of objects in front of them, cardboard boxes, a washing-up bowl, some empty blood and saline bags – while they advanced, fully horripilated and barking with exceptional violence. Busner’s penis was erect – a pink spike in his groin. Both he and Bowen were spraying urine and saliva.

  Chimps – both staff and patients – had gathered in small knots at both ends of the corridor and were gesturing on the finer points of the display. Up and down Busner and Bowen stamped, ramped and sprayed. A drugs trolley got mixed up in the incident and before the participants could collect themselves, a hail of pills peppered the walls and floor. Sharps, both used and unused, flew through the air closely followed by flights of ampoules. It was at this point that Whatley, wisely, called a halt. Next time the two aggressors made their run, they found his angular, tufted rump, its ischial pleat effulgent, stuck up like a sleeping policemale in the path of their four-limb drives.

  Busner stopped short, shaking. ‘ “Wraaaa”! What’s this, Whatley “huu”?’

  ‘ “H’Grnnn” it’s my arse, “hoo” Mighty One.’

  ‘So it is “h’huuu”? What do you think, Jane “huu”?’

  ‘Looks like he’s prepared to capitulate,’ waved the slim female, smoothing down her own ruffled fur.

  ‘Is that right, Whatley “huu”?’

  ‘Yes, esteemed inheritor of the mantle of eminence – bearer of the most tattered and dangly scrag in London.’

  ‘ “Gru-nnn” good, good, you’re not a bad chimp really. In fact I quite like you. Come on, let’s adjourn to your office for a groom and a fiddle. Your subordinates and my patrol can clean this lot up.’

  The three senior psychiatrists picked their way through the wreckage wrought by the display, towards Whatley’s office. Outwardly Zack Busner was swaggering, puffed-up, his leg fur like swishing chaps, testosterone trousers, but internally he was raging with pain. His hands – particularly his left – burnt and fizzed, as if fireworks had been poked beneath the skin.

  Whatley waved at his secretary that he was not to be disturbed, they swung through the door of the office and arranged themselves in a companionable huddle, Whatley lying atop his desk, legs dangling over the edge, head cradled by his in-tray. Bowen sat on the floor at his feet, and used her thin fingers and still thinner tongue to probe the departmental head’s toes, searching for fragments of glass, pill dust and so forth. ‘ “H’h’hee-hee”,’ Whatley giggled. ‘Do be careful there, Jane, make sure you spit out the pill fragments, don’t want you “chup-chupp” tranked up for the rest of the day.’

  ‘ “Grnnn” don’t worry, sweetums “choo”!’

  Busner took a squat in Whatley’s Parker-Knoll recliner, and amused himself for a while playing with the innumerable little levers and knobs that altered the position and tensility of just about every part of the chair. Then he recovered and set to, running his fingers smoothly through the whitening fur that grew low on Whatley’s brow. As he did this he inparted ‘Good Whatley, kind Whatley, ethical Whatley …’ and Bowen was, of course, indicating much the same down below.

  This touchy-feely session went on for some time, before with a final tweak of Whatley’s ear Busner broke off grooming. Whatley squatted up on the desk and crossed his legs. Bowen went to the door of the office and panthooted Whatley’s secretary. ‘ “H’hooo” bring the file on Simon Dykes in please, Marcia,’ she gestured at the female.

  There was signless and novocal until the file arrived, and then signless while Busner read it, his eroded features betraying no emotion as he scanned the missives between Dykes and Bowen. Eventually he passed the file to Whatley – who dropped it on the desk top. Busner hunkered back still further in the recliner and began to roll and unroll his hank of mohair tie, using only the toes of one foot.

  “H’huuu,”, Busner vocalised, then signed, ‘Well, Whatley, if you’re amenable to my taking on the case I think I have an image of how we can get Dykes to do the tests. It’s clear that until we’ve done EEGs, scans and so forth, we’ll have no way of establishing if there’s any organic damage. By the same token, until we have muzzle-to-muzzle communication there’s no way of establishing
… how can I point to it …’ The great ape’s fingers faltered, he changed tack. ‘You know, sometimes I find English signage altogether inadequate to blazon some of the more complex images we work with –’

  ‘ “Grnn” I know what you mean. ’ Bowen flicked in.

  ‘It looks preposterous when you sign it, but I almost imagine that if there were some other form of signage, if gesture were the complement rather than the given, it might be possible to reach deeper into chimps’ souls … but I waver –’

  ‘ “H’hooo” no, no. ’ Bowen was keen for more, being in the presence of her old mentor was proving as exhilarating as she had hoped.

  ‘I waver, Jane,’ he cuffed her – Busner wanted no discipular sycophancy at this stage, ‘we need to gesticulate with Dykes, but he finds the presence of other chimpanzees disturbing. How about if we sign with him when we’re not present “huuu”.’

  ‘What do you mean, Busner “huu”?’ Whatley was entwined.

  ‘Well, why don’t we set up a ‘phone link? Perhaps he’ll find that less disturbing, worth a try “huuu”?’

  Simon was sitting in secure room six. Seven days of madness, seven days of terror. Like any prisoner he had attempted to mark the days of his confinement, but because of the drugs and the fights with his bestial keepers, he had often scored three scratches in the paint of the window frame where one would have served. Now he squatted and wiggled his toes. He had dispatched another of the mad communicados to Jane Bowen since awaking, and now he waited for a reply. But instead of the judas click he expected there was a scraping of key in lock. Simon eased himself off the nest and keeping his muzzle averted knuckle-walked to the far corner of the room. He could hear the shuffling of their hideous, naked paws, and almost smell the meat-extracting breath of his oppressors.