by Will Self
‘That, Dr Whatley, is a relatively simple question to answer. I’ve given the best years of my life to Cryborg Pharmaceuticals – nearly fifteen of them in all. Last year I was diagnosed with a terminal illness – I won’t trouble you with the details. The Personnel Department has informed me that I am not eligible for either the company medical plan, nor my full pension, unless I manage to keep working for another year. This, I’m afraid, will not be possible. I “waaaa”! gave everything to Cryborg – now I’d like to take away as much as possible with me when I leave.
‘As for Busner, well, I’ve nothing personal against him, but I find his latest reincarnation as psychic pundit nothing short of nauseating, given the zig-zag progress of his career, his showchimpship, his posturing. For me he is the absolute incarnation of hypocrisy, of hubris. The idea that he is currently being groomed for a position in the pantheon of great apes is fist-clenching. I have resolved to bring Cryborg down – if Busner is torn from the tree as well, then so be it. I won’t “h’hooo” whimper about it.’
Whatley and Gambol stared at the impassioned dying research chemist for some time in signlence and novocal. Then Gambol, tentatively, asked him if he would like the salt.
Simon Dykes and Zack Busner were squatting in their shared study, perusing a copy of the Essay of the Learned Martin Scriblerus, Concerning the Origin of Sciences. This, one of the earliest satires to use the human as a ‘motionless philosopher’, was composed in all probability by Pope and Arbuthnot – among others. Drawing heavily on Tyson’s work of comparative anatomy, the Essay was the precursor of the grand line of eighteenth-century satires, pitting evolved humans against primitive apes. A line that culminated in Swift’s Yahoos.
Anti-psychiatrist and patient read in signlence and novocal, their mutual concentration broken only by the occasional rasp of horny fingertip against ischial pleat, the occasional grunt and attendant belch.
Busner was enjoying the research. He had never imagined the relationship between the chimpanzee and the human to have so many submerged implications. Western civilization, it was true, had projected itself towards divinity on the up-escalator of the Chain of Being. And, like Disraeli, everyone had wanted to be on the side of the angels. For white-muzzled chimpanzees to be approaching perfection, bogeychimps were needed, distressed versions of the other. It was easy to see how the bonobo, with its disturbing grace and upright gait, had fulfilled this role; but Busner now realised that in the shadow of the bonobo was a more unsettling, more bestial ‘other’ – the human.
Busner’s seeming-human broke in on his thoughts at just this juncture: “H’hooo!” he vocalised, then signed ‘Dr Busner, I want to see my infants now – really, I want to see them. I miss them “u-h’-u-h”’ so much. Can’t I – can’t I see them, please “huuu”?’
Busner looked up at his patient. Simon’s brown, bouffant head fur was lank, sweat-smeared – as usual – on his eyebrow ridge. His protuberant, grey-green eyes were dulled and unfocused. It was only when gesticulating those matters related to the content of his delusion that Simon achieved anything like full affect. For the rest of the time he was torpid, yet easily moved to weird and irrational outbursts.
Busner got up on the desk and stretched an arm out to grasp Simon by the shoulder. He now knew certain ways of touching his patient that produced the desired results. Simon had to be braced before his fur could be directly signed into, otherwise he complained about ticklishness, or even lashed out. Busner vocalised, “Chup-chupp,” and inparted the matted dampness, ‘Simon, I appreciate your feelings, but you have to consider theirs as well.’
‘Meaning “euch-euch” what, “huu” exactly?’
‘Meaning that it might not be such a good idea for them to see you in this state – to see what you demarcate of your inner life.’
‘About being human, you mean “huu”?’
‘That’s “chup-chupp” right, my little patient.’
‘If I’m your little patient I’m “euch-euch” mad, right?’
‘I never signed that Simon, I don’t like to gesture in such terms.’
‘I want my world back. I want my “hoooo” smooth body back. I want my infants’ bodies back. I want them “hoooo”!’
Busner, still grasping Simon’s arm, came right across the desk. He knew exactly when the mounting rhythm of Simon’s hysteria was about to twist into the parabola of abandon. The important thing was to contain him – as one might an autistic infant. Only using the full language of the body could any gesticulation really be achieved. “Huh-huh-huh,” Busner soothed and then inparted the chimp’s lower back, ‘Do you miss them, Simon “huuu”?’
‘ “Er-herr-er” you know I do! I want to see them all, Henry, little Magnus and Simon –’
‘But Simon “chup-chupp”, had you considered “huuu” what they might be like?’
‘What do you mean “huuu”?’
‘Well, they’ll look like chimpanzees to you – do you think you could stand that? Your children looking like animals. What if you were to react to them the way you do to other chimps “huuu”?’
Simon relaxed in the older chimp’s arms. He sniffed in the odour of Busner, its lanate tang oddly comforting. He pictured his infants again, but concretely this time, not simply as outgrowths of his own misery, but as they would appear fixed, fixated, imprisoned behind the plastic sides of a photographic cube, on a coffee-table at their mother’s house. Could he stand it? To see instead of blond heads, brown fur? To see sharp canines in place of crumbling milk teeth? To hear the squeak, chirrup, growl and jabber of infant apes, rather than the piping chatter he remembered?
But perhaps, Simon thought, feeling Busner’s fingers soothe his back fur this way and that. Perhaps this vision of the boys I’m holding on to is not sanity, not memory, but the absolute keystone of my breakdown. Yank it out and sanity would reerect itself, like a film of a demolition played backwards. ‘No,’ he signed into Busner’s thick scruff, ‘no, I have to see them – will you try to arrange it with my exalpha – she’ll watch what you sign. Please “huuu”?’
Sarah Peasenhulme was absolutely doing her best to remember Simon, and to arrange to see him, but the sad fact of the matter was that her memories of him were already becoming indistinct and blurred. In the days immediately following the artist’s breakdown her recollections of his digging, coked-up penetrations of her were fresh and unsullied. She was still tangled up in his belly fur, blazoned with his nest gestures. But since the reassuring covering by Ken Braithwaite, Simon’s body was wavering in her memory, and mirage-like dissolving.
Since seeing him for herself and witnessing his madness, psychosis, delusion – whatever it was – persist, Sarah had begun to lose faith that he would return, come back to her. Confronted with the madchimp in the hospital, his scattered fingering, his nonsensical screeching, had run back into her recollections of the Simon she had known. Hadn’t he always been scattered? And much of what he signed also nonsensical. He might have been the fastest lover she had ever had, but perhaps his speed was a little pimp-like, a little controlling, a little inchimp.
Sarah had had hopes. Simon was still young – barely thirty. He was successful. He earned some money. Was it too much to imagine that he might have begun another group with her? On the one hand the thought of having an infant’s greedy little fingers twined in her fur, an infant’s ravenous mouth pulling on her nipple, was awful, stultifying, disempowering. But on the other hand there was the lure of fixity, of status, of the way that having infants made it impossible to wish you were anyone other than who you were. Made your life determined – rather than contingent. There was that – and the good, solid mating you got when there were at least four healthy males sharing your nest.
So Sarah went back to work. Went back to flipping through portfolios with her toes, while tossing slides on to the light box with her hands. She shuffled the imagery of the artists she represented, and in so doing attempted to cut the pack, placing Simon’s joker countenanc
e near the bottom.
Nights she still found herself knuckle-walking from her office in Woburn Square, into Soho, in order to meet the glossy happy chimps at the Sealink for drinks and drugs and fulfilling hugs.
In the week immediately following the opening of Simon Dykes’ show at the Levinson Gallery there had been a certain amount of kerfuffle. Fiddle columnists panthooting at work and home. On a couple of occasions Sarah had even been doorknuckled – but this died down as well. From time to time, at the club, or elsewhere, Sarah turned abruptly, conscious of someone signing behind her back, and saw fingers flick the fact that there was that artist’s ex-consort. But she wouldn’t – or couldn’t – let it bother her.
One evening, about a week after Simon had left the hospital, Sarah met Tony Figes for a drink at the club. Figes was – along with the Reverend Peter Davis – the mainstay of Sarah’s emotional life. A cross between counsellor and helpmeet. When in gesticulation with him Sarah forgot about her swelling, forgot about her oestrus, forgot about the pink, penile spillikins that lingered in the pressed fur around the bar.
Tony had brought with him the cardboard tube he’d taken from Simon’s flat. As he came in the swing doors to the bar area, he banged against one of the walls with the thing, producing a “thwok-thwok-thwok” noise. “Hooo-Graa!” Tony pant-hooted and scampered across to where Sarah squatted, a bundle of blonde fur and black satin.
“HoooGraa!” she backbarked – then signed, ‘What’s that, Tony, something you’re working on “huuu”?’
‘Not exactly, my dear, come down to the car-deck room where we can have some privacy and I’ll show you.’
‘Have you got a Bactrian on you “huu”?’ Sarah asked as soon as they were squatting in the downstairs room.
‘Here,’ Tony proffered the familiar pack, ‘I’m afraid they’re Lights.’
‘No matter,’ Sarah countersigned, sparking the cigarette, ‘nowadays I like to keep things light.’
‘Sarah. ’ Tony eased out the sheaf of drawings. ‘I found these at Simon’s place when I went to get his things. They’re by no means light – in fact they’re distinctly heavy.’
Sarah took the loose bundle of thick art paper from Tony’s outstretched foot, and began to sort her way through them with practised, professional ease. She registered what the subject of the drawings was, examined the quality of line, the use of shading. She judged them as she might the work of an artist unknown to her, blocking out the instant emotional charge she had aways received when looking at her former consort’s work.
When she’d worked her way through all of them, she laid the drawings down on the carpet and stubbed out her Bactrian. ‘ “Hooo” well, they certainly aren’t light. Do you think Dr Busner should be shown about this “huuu”?’
‘I don’t know –’
‘Clearly this “hooo” delusion of Simon’s was more deepseated than we – or he – realised.’
‘It looks that way. Simon was obsessing about humans for longer than we knew. What do you imagine the human represents for him, Sarah “huuu”?’
‘I dunno. What it represents for the rest of us, I suppose, the dark side of our nature as chimpanzees “huu”? To be watered down by making the human a cute accessory, or expelled by making the human a brute, terrifying animal “huu”?’
‘But in these drawings the humans are inhabiting our world, aren’t they “huuu”?’
Sarah sighed heavily, levered herself up from her chair and swaggered over to the fake window. She leant her head against the pane, and felt pain. She remembered the last night she had been in this room – the night of Simon’s breakdown. She remembered the rasp of cocaine in her nostrils, and the rasp of his cock as he had taken her, pressing her head into the corner.
She turned to muzzle Tony. ‘Well, Tony “u’h-u’h-u’h” I think Simon was fucked up. Pure and simple. Fucked up. He was fucked up about mating. He used to sign that he’d lost his suspension of disbelief – in mating. That he could no longer believe in mating. He could “hoo” see the boom microphone pushing into the corner of the frame, like a bill dipping for intimate vocalisations. He could see the camerachimp leaping around behind the lights, trying to get us in hard focus. He could “hoo” –’
‘ “Gru-nnn” Sarah, my dear, calm yourself.’
Tony knuckle-walked over to her, took her in his skinny arms. Held her. She nuzzled her muzzle into his scruff. There was signlence for a while, and just the quiet lip-smacking of old allies in touch with one another. Then Tony inparted Sarah’s back, ‘I think you should keep these drawings, Sarah “chup-chupp”. You see, I don’t think Simon is going to be coming back to us. And –’
‘And what “huuu”?’
‘And you should have something to remember him by. Something of worth to you, and’ – the gay – in denotion only – chimp, pulled away from her, Sarah could see the scar writhing in his chin fur – ‘of potential worth to many others. Sarah, these may be the last drawings that Simon ever does. If he was still in his right mind I’m sure he would want you to have them, to make use of them as you see fit.’
At last Sarah grasped Figes’s fingering. He wanted her to use Simon’s drawings of distressed humans wandering a destructing cityscape as some kind of nest egg. To set herself up. To free herself. But while she kissed Tony warmly on his nasal bridge, she could only envision what the drawings might look like haloed with cold fire, for all she could visualise doing was burning the things.
Zack Busner pant-hooted Jean Dykes from the ‘phone in the hall. Simon was in his sedated slough upstairs, but Busner didn’t want to take the chance of the artist waking, coming on him unawares, seeing what was being gesticulated with his ex-alpha. “HoooGra’,” he vocalised and drummed on the ‘phone table, ‘Mrs Dykes, I’m Dr Zack Busner, I believe George Levinson may have signalled my involvement with your ex-alpha “huu”?’
‘Yes, George has, Dr Busner, how may I help you “huuu”?’
‘It’s about your infants, Mrs Dykes, sign me, has Simon had much involvement with them since you fissioned?’
Jean Dykes took her time in countersigning. So long, in fact, that Busner almost repeated the question. He had time to study the artist’s former alpha, and even to grasp at elements of their life together, from what he could make out on the screen. Could this dowdy, weightily serious female have been closely involved with Dykes, have nurtured infants with such a volatile, irreverent chimp? Judging by the worn beads of the rosary, which poked out from her signing fingers like subsidiary knuckles, this was a female who took belief seriously.
Jean Dykes took her time in countersigning. So long, in fact, that Busner almost repeated the question. He had time to study the artist’s former alpha, and even to grasp at elements of their life together, from what he could make out on the screen. Could this dowdy, weightily serious female have been closely involved with Dykes, have nurtured infants with such a volatile, irreverent chimp? Judging by the worn beads of the rosary, which poked out from her signing fingers like subsidiary knuckles, this was a female who took belief seriously.
Eventually she deigned to countersign, ‘Dr Busner. In our society males have – as you know – very little to do with their offspring. The so-called mating revolution of the sixties may have made it possible for males to indulge in more and more unsuitable copulations, but it hardly seems to have affected their sense of responsibility. Simon, however, has always been an attentive alpha, and he has made an effort to keep in touch with Henry and Magnus.’
‘And Simon “huuu”?’
‘Simon “huuu”?’
‘The middle infant – Simon. I suppose I should sign Simon junior.’
‘Dr Busner “hooo”, there is no Simon junior. There were only two infants in our natal group. Only two.’
Busner took a while to absorb this new information. Here was another peculiar twist to Dykes’s delusion, another kink in already warped reality. Eventually his fingers stirred. ‘Mrs Dykes, I realise this must be di
stressing for you – but have you any idea why Simon might think that he has three male infants, rather than two “huuu”?’
‘Dr Busner. ’ The fogeyish female pressed the hank of beads to her forehead. ‘I don’t “euch-euch” have a great deal of respect for your profession. If you are a soul doctor – you would do well to doctor my ex-principal’s soul, rather than heading down the blind alleys of his psyche.’
‘By which you “huuu” mean?’
‘I mean precisely this, that I’m not “euch-euch” really entwined by such digitations.’
The eminent natural philosopher – as he liked to style himself – took his time absorbing this rebuff. He picked abstractedly at some egg in the fur of his lower abdomen and stared out through the front door to where, in a patch of sunlight, two infants were mock-mating. So, Dykes’s delusory state was still more ramified than he had suspected. What conceivable organic dysfunction could account for such a quirk? All diseases – organic, or psychic – could be ebullient and productive; this Busner believed. But productive of an infant that didn’t really exist? Preposterous.
‘ “Gru-nnnn” Mrs Dykes, I had thought I would be pant-hooting you to manipulate the possibility of Simon seeing the infants –’
‘ “Hoo”, really “huuu”?’
‘That’s right – although in most cases it’s not a good idea for psychotics to have contact with those to whom they have close emotional ties.’
‘I would have no objection to Simon getting in touch with Magnus and Henry – if that’s what he wants.’
‘That’s very “gru-nnn” good of you, Mrs Dykes, but I don’t really think it’s a good idea at present, given this new development. If you’ll allow me to point out any improvement in his condition, for the moment we’ll leave things as they are.’
‘As you wish, Dr Busner. “HoooGraa”.’
“HoooGraa.”
* * *
Some hours later when Simon awoke, levered himself from nest, tripped upright to the study and found the soul doctor absorbed in his reading, he was muzzled with another gross singularity, another warp in the world. Busner looked up from his copy of Melincourt. “Gru-nnn,” he vocalised, then signed, ‘Simon, I trust you feel refreshed after your rest. I’ve been absorbed by the progress of your cousin Sir Oran Haut-ton. In Peacock’s novel he is tutored by a Mr Forrester, who believes that all great apes, including humans, are part of the chimpanzee family. Not something I’d agree with myself “grnnn”.’
