Great Apes

by Will Self

The two senior Busners went on grooming each other for a long time. Through the open windows of the bedroom came floating the faint valedictory pant-hoots of chimps departing from the bars and restaurants of Hampstead. The night air cooled, the house around them quietened. Eventually Charlotte began to snuffle and then when her snores oddly harmonised with those of her sleeping subordinates, Zack Busner was left alone with his thoughts.

  As was Simon in the sub-adult males’ room. It was true, he did find its ambience more comforting that the chintzy, emphatically spare room. But at the same time, the doubly scaled-down pine bunknests with their brightly patterned duvet covers; the posters of pop stars and football players stuck to the walls; the model aeroplanes dangling from threads pinned to the ceiling; and the pygmy bookcases overflowing with picture books – all of it dragged the memories of the Brown House, the memories of his infants, the memories of humanity, screaming back to him.

  “Daddy”. Nothing. “Daddy”. Nothing. “Da-ddy!”. Nothing. “Daddy-Daddy-Daddy!”. “What? What is it?”. “Daddy, you’re pooh-pooh.”

  Lots of giggling about this. Three blond heads knocking together like nuts; and the squirrely fingers digging into his thighs.

  ““Daddy”. Nothing. ““Daddy”. Nothing. ““Da-ddy!”.

  “What? What is it now?” “Da-da, Magnus is the sky and I’m the world. And the sky is more biggest than the world, isn’t it?” “Bigger, darling, it’s bigger than the world …”

  He had thought his love for them was more biggest than the world, but perhaps it had been nothing of the sort. He had thought that the intense physical sympathy he felt for his infants would keep him anchored to that world, but he’d been wrong. How could this have been so? As he lay in nest, in Hampstead, in a world dominated by the physical, the bodily, Simon stared at the dark wall, stared at a poster tacked there that showed a chimpanzee with a pronounced eyebrow ridge screaming into a microphone. Underneath the muzzle was the legend ‘Liam Gallagher, Oasis’. Some oasis, Simon mused, more like a mirage. A mirage that should dissolve.

  Every scab, every graze, every knock and blow. The time the hernia swelled, hour-by-hour, in Magnus’s little groin, until it was the size of a goose’s egg and he and Jean cried with anxiety while Anthony Bohm probed it with certain fingers.

  The time Henry ended up on the children’s ward, at Charing Cross Hospital. His little muzzle trapped by the plastic mask of the nebuliser. The awful “ker-choof, ker-choof” as it pumped the gas into his failing lungs, puffed the life into his labouring body. And in the plastic-curtained booth next to him, Simon had watched as a well-fingered young doctor delineated carefully to uncomprehending Somali parents, that their little infant’s colon would have to be removed. That her life would be, from this day on, a veritable crock of shit.

  And the time Simon junior, the middle infant, the sensitive one, had been bullied at school. Come home crying, his snub-nasal bridge red, biffed about. And Simon had marched into the prissy head teacher’s office; marched in with Simon in his arms, and while the infant male’s body shivered against his, berated the woman, berated the school, berated the more biggest world that could harm his offspring.

  Simon struggled round in the cramped nest to muzzle the wall. He pulled the diminutive duvet tightly around him, feeling the cotton prickle against his hairy shoulder. He tucked his head into the crook of his arm and willed himself to sleep. To sleep was to dream of a world where you weren’t touched unbidden, where the tedium of gussets reigned, where his infants slickly snuggled against him. Simon willed the Valium Busner had administered to work, to drag him away from this ravening reality. He wanted to dig into the nest, to submerge himself in its familiar cotton confines. He yanked the duvet up, so that it covered his fluffy head with its bright pattern of dancing little humans.

  Morning arrived like it always did at the Busner house – with pandemonium. The night-ranging, sub-adult males were back and racketing around in the kitchen. The older females were preparing first breakfasts for everyone who had to get off to work. Cressida was still in oestrus after three whole weeks, a fact that caused her pride and discomfort in equal measure, but mating activity was relatively subdued.

  Taking one look at the large room with its leaping, bouncing, gyrating and overwhelmingly chimp inhabitants, Busner decided that it was too soon to subject Simon Dykes to the full force of normal life. “HooooGra!” he pant-hooted loudly and tom-tommed the top of a freestanding plastic bin. The noise died away. ‘Right! “HooGrnn” you lot. I showed you that I would be having another patient staying with us, but I just want to drum this home a bit more …’ He drummed on the bin some more. ‘This poor chimp Simon Dykes has a genuine malaise that has afflicted him with the delusion that he’s human –’ Some of the younger Busners began giggling and tooth-clacking. ‘ “Wraaaf! Can it, you lot, or you’ll feel the clamp of my jaws on your miserable muzzles. “Waaaa”!’ The giggling spluttered to a halt. ‘Now, I want a reasonable amount of quiet and decorum in here. I’m going to take Simon out to the summer house to have his first breakfast – I think he may find the company of the lap ponies a little easier to bear than yours. “HooGraaa”!’

  Busner leapt back out of the room and bounded up the stairs. He hesitated on the threshold of the sub-adult males’ room and grunted interrogatively a few times before swinging in. Simon was just levering himself up, rubbing his eye sockets. Busner was intrigued that he’d chosen to sleep on the bottom one of the bunknests. This was undoubtedly, he mused, another ramification of the human delusion. Human-like, Simon sought shelter wherever he could. ‘ “HooGraa” good morning, Simon. Did you sleep well “huuu”?’

  Simon could barely focus on the digitations. He massaged his head. For some seconds he knew where he was, he knew who he was signing with, but he couldn’t have said which species he belonged to. Then the fug of sleep cleared and the former artist confronted the hell of another day among the apes. “HooGra,” he vocalised feebly, then signed ‘Good morning, Dr Busner. I’m sorry, Your Radiant Arseholiness, I was dreaming … dreaming … of being human –’

  ‘And you’re human on awaking “huu”?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘You have no fur “huu”? Your limbs are straight, the arms shorter than the legs “huu”?’ ‘Yes “hooo” yes! Of course –’

  ‘Your buttocks are as rounded and smooth as two salad bowls “huuu”?’

  ‘ “Clak-clak-clak” well, if you sign so! Although it’s not exactly the image I would have chosen!’

  With this distinctly good-humoured outburst, the ape man grabbed the bottom of the top nest and swung himself out of the bunk. He swaggered around the room, ignoring Busner’s presence, and picking up articles of clothing. He put on one of the T-shirts from the plastic bag Tony Figes had provided, and a denim jacket.

  Simon refused to attempt the climb down the outside of the house, so the maverick anxiolytic drug researcher led him down the stairs and out the back door. Simon was still forcing himself to walk upright on the level – and he ignored the handholds.

  Simon hung back as they traversed the terrace, and laughed on peering through the french windows. He’d yet to see so many chimps of different ages in a domestic setting, and the sight recalled parody; the films he’d seen as an infant of chimps’ tea parties at the zoo. They all seemed to cram as much fruit or bread in their mouths as possible, and they all grabbed at the food in each other’s mouths. They swung around the place using the very ordinary furniture – a set of pine chairs and matching table, a Welsh dresser and the formica-topped breakfast bar – as a species of jungle gym. Observing Simon’s amusement, Busner merely fluttered something about ‘Family, too noisy, bit much for your first day. Daughter still in oestrus …’ and led him on to the octagonal gazebo at the end of the garden, which he’d ordered from a catalogue in a moment of bucolic aspiration.

  Here Simon sat and chomped his way through a bowl of sloes – remarking that they were unpleasantly bitter, and
a bowl of custard apples – remarking that they were nauseatingly sweet. Busner tried to interest him in a slice of durian, signing, ‘Best there is. My gamma female gets them from some Sumatran deli in Belsize Park,’ but the smell alone put Simon right off.

  The things that seemed to calm Simon most and distract him from the more problematic aspects of his new home were the Busner lap ponies. As usual three or four of them were trotting around the garden, neighing reedily and depositing their small, hay-encrusted droppings neatly among the rose bushes. Simon found them captivating. ‘They’re so small,’ he signed wonderingly to Busner, who was deep in the Guardian. ‘Why are they so small “huuu”?’

  ‘Small “huu”? Yes, they are. Of course, the original wild horse was considerably larger, but over the millennia that chimpanzees and horses have lived together they’ve been bred for size until the modern, domesticated horse has achieved this convenient stature – just right for fertilising gardens and crops without damaging them “chup-chupp”. ’ Busner hoisted one of the little beasts aloft by its bridle and petted its caramel mane.

  ‘But what about dogs? What’s happened to dogs “huuu”? I suppose “clak-clak-clak” you’re going to tell me that they’ve got larger!’

  ‘That’s right, Simon, they’ve got larger. The wild dog only stood about five hands at the shoulder. In fact, recent research shows that the ancestor of all modern canines must have been about the same size as the modern wolf. Well, obviously an animal of this stature would be impractical as a beast of burden. So, over the centuries chimps have selectively bred dogs for size. If you’re interested I can take you to some kennels locally and show you dogs that are sixteen hands high.’

  Simon met this intelligence in signlence. This reversal of domesticated species was like some surreal drogue, adding a further half-twist of weirdness to the reversal of the natural order he was already having to endure. He thought – inevitably – of Sarah, her canines bared in ecstasis as he plunged into her that final time, and he thought as well of Gracie, Sarah’s retriever, and how that last morning she had worried at the door to the bedroom, snuffling and snarling to get in. Then he remembered the diminutive horse that was racketing around when he awoke in this no-fun house world of hirsute persecutors. How many more such role reversals could the world encompass? Flying rabbits? Viviparous fish? He curled his limbs around him on the garden chair and began rocking back and forth on his scut, like a caged primate, or an autistic child.

  Busner caught the shift in Simon’s mood. Better to keep him distracted, he thought, push on with my programme of integration, of psychically outward-bound activities. ‘ “Grnnn” Simon.’

  ‘Yes, what is it “huu”?’

  ‘I thought we might carry on with your reinduction to the world today. Keep – as it were – the pressure up.’

  ‘What did you have in mind exactly “huu”?’

  ‘Why, a trip to the zoo – naturally.’

  Gambol pant-hooted through the window of the Volvo as he pulled up by the kerb outside the Busner house. Then he sat and waited. As if on cue, Simon Dykes emerged from the passageway that ran down the side of the house. He was, Gambol noted, still walking upright with a bonobo-like, stiff-legged gait. And like a bonobo, the posture pushed into prominence his pink penis. Gambol blanched; there was an offensive as well as an unsettling quality about Dykes. He held himself too still, he didn’t fidget like a chimp – and those guttural vocalisations, that warped signing. Still, he was Gambol’s meal ticket and the epsilon male knew it.

  He vaulted through the open window of the car and met Dykes halfway up the garden path. ‘ “HoooH’Graa” good morning, Mr Dykes, how are you today “huu”?’ Simon squinted down at the chimpanzee who addressed him. He was beginning to notice subtle differences by which he could distinguish the animals. This one’s ears were unusually small and neat. Its muzzle was almost hairless and its skin whiter than that of Busner or Bowen – let alone the apes who inhabited the hospital, most of whom had been much slimmer, with blacker muzzles and pinker lips.

  ‘ “Hooo” yeah “HooGraaa”. ’ Without understanding why, Simon found himself drumming on the trunk of a nearby tree and whooshing air through his parted teeth. Then he advanced down the path with the small chimp walking backwards in front of him. Simon was struck by the ease with which the ape moved in this fashion, never hesitating as it placed one heel behind the other. When it reached the gate, it unlatched it with sure, unobserved hands and slid – still backwards – through the gap. Then it knelt down, swivelled and pushed its scraggy rump in Simon’s direction.

  Simon had seen so many animals do this to Busner that he knew what was required. He bent down and pressed his hand on the proffered arse. As ever he was struck by quite how human the feel of the thing’s body was, once the awful furriness was factored out. ‘ “Grnnn” there-there “chup-chupp”, it’s Gambol, isn’t it “huu”?’

  ‘That’s right. I admire your delusion, I revere your looniness –’

  ‘All right, all right Gambol, there-there “chup-chupp. ’ Simon bestowed a few more patronal pats.

  Busner joined them, carrying his briefcase and with a couple of squealing infants dangling around his neck. There was also a bunch of sub-adult males trailing him in a sinuous coiling of grooming hands and smarming arms. The first of these was at Busner’s neck fur, the next in the fur of the first, and so on. They all bristled, they all growled. It was quite a procession of excitable chimp-flesh, and accordingly Simon was intimidated. He shrank back against the hedge. Busner rounded on the sub-adults. ‘ “Wraaaf” no patrol for you lot today, I don’t want you annoying Mr Dykes … and as for you “wraaa”!’ He unceremoniously pulled the infants from his neck and dropped them, squealing, in a flowerbed.

  Left alone, the three apes swung into the Volvo. Gambol started the engine and pulled away fast, changing up through six gears in as many seconds. The big saloon bucketed down the steep incline towards Frognal, turned right and disappeared in the direction of Primrose Hill.

  London may have appeared comparatively breezy, clear and spacious to those occupants of the car who could acknowledge their chimpunity, but for Simon Dykes it was a cramped, dismal place. From the red-brick detached houses at the crest of Hampstead, down past the long chipped terraces of Belsize Park, to the sandwich-stacked ones around Primrose Hill, everywhere Simon directed his gaze he saw a cityscape cluttered by its own jumble; a lumber room of the ages with buildings dumped against one another like so many discarded chattels, wreathed in cobwebs, dusted with smut. Never had London been as claustrophobic, as dwarfish as this. And everywhere he saw the gnome-like, unshaven inhabitants, their hard toes snapping against the pavement, their hard hands grasping and grappling, ceaselessly in motion.

  Simon hunched in the back, feeling like Alice in Apathyland, half wanting to ask the ape denoted Gambol to open the sun roof so that he could poke his giraffe neck through it. To diminish as far as possible the disjunction between his sense of his own body and his apprehension of the world it inhabited Simon spent the journey with his eyes, once more, pressed against the window, and one hand loosely cradling his cock and balls. Funny how being halfnaked doesn’t seem to discomfit me, he thought, or perhaps only thought he thought.

  The Volvo pulled into Regent’s Park and accelerated towards the zoo. Then, as they drew level with the main gates, Gambol swung the car into a wide arc, whilst expertly changing down through eight or so gears. He brought the vehicle to a halt right next to a chimpanzee clutching a great bunch of helium-filled novelty balloons.

  Busner piled out the front door and gathered Simon from the back. Simon found Busner’s touch much easier to cope with since he himself had picked dry shit from the radical psychoanalyst’s fur. Busner’s body had acquired an odd penumbra of acceptability, somewhere between that enjoyed by one’s own arsehole – by virtue of being touchable while most others are not – and a familiar, if stinky, old dog – like Sarah’s Gracie.

  Busner paus
ed by the balloon seller, and signed ‘You must have been here with your infants, Simon “huu”?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, many times. Magnus, the eldest, is particularly keen on animals, wildlife, that sort of thing. The others would tag along …’ Simon’s fingers fluttered to a halt. He was staring at the metallic painted surfaces of the novelty balloons jostling overhead. In amongst the Mickeys, Minnies and Mr Blobbys, were other, stranger caricatures, pale-muzzled, with exaggeratedly large proboscises.

  Busner, seeing what had transfixed Simon, exchanged signs and coins with the hawker, gained possession of one and thrust the string into Simon’s hand signing, ‘It’s a human, Simon, the infants love them …’ He drew Simon on by the arm, towards the gift shop. ‘And look here “grnnn”. ’ Together with the Lifewatch mugs, the pennants and stickers, were a number of plastic masks affixed to a pegboard, lions, giraffes, tigers, and also paler muzzles, more Fagin proboscises. ‘See! Human masks.’

  The two apes moved on. Simon trailed behind, keeping his muzzle level with Busner’s scrag, observing closely the way the eminent psychiatrist’s grey-skinned testicles swung lazily this way and that; first appearing, then disappearing, beneath the hem of his tweed jacket.

  Busner bought the tickets from a bonobo in a booth, they knuckle-walked down a curving ramp and into the zoo. It was all as Simon remembered it from the last trip he’d taken there with the infants. When would that have been? It was now – or so Busner had shown him – nearly a month since his breakdown; and what with the preparations for the show and the long nights at the Sealink, Simon hadn’t seen the infants in the month before that. But the last time they had taken any kind of excursion together, it was here, to the zoo.

  The furry animals, in their farcical, bum-freezing half-garb; knuckle-walking here, swaggering there, hauling hand-over-hand up there – all wavered, then dissolved into a Kodachrome vision of pink-to-red-to-orange, inhumanly human flesh tones. His infants, with their fair hair and blue eyes, the irises so round – like boiled sweets: suckable humanity. The three of them licking on ice-cream cones as they scampered hand in hand in hand, towards the gorilla enclosure.