by Peter Høeg
Only Madelene did not laugh.
“You let me down,” she told the ape.
There is nothing as annoying as a spoilsport, sabotaging everyone else’s fun, and Andrea Burden did try to stop her.
“Get out of the way,” said Madelene.
The other woman moved aside. Madelene advanced on the ape.
“You used us,” she said, “me and the others, like decoys you used us.”
“I’m afraid there was no other way,” said the ape.
“Through those roadblocks, in front of the cameras, surrounded by hundreds of people. All because we thought we could help you.”
“I had to have help to get in,” said the ape. “People watch television. We wanted to say what we had to say on television.”
Andrea and Adam Burden had moved back against the wall; Bally and Johnny had their backs pressed up against the door. The floor had been cleared for the first confrontation between Madelene and Erasmus the ape.
“You told me nothing. You left me to do all the worrying, all the agonizing alone,” Madelene said.
“Among my people we say the plans that are carried through are the plans you keep to yourself.”
The ape looked down from on high with an air of statuesque self-importance. But Madelene was close enough to discern the escalating panic behind the animal’s half-shut eyelids.
“You’ve forgotten who you’re talking to,” she said. “Take a good look at me. Do you know who I am? I’m the woman you love.”
The ape looked at her.
“I never regret anything,” it said. “Where I come from we cannot have regrets. But if I had been capable of it I would have said I was sorry.”
Erasmus could not edge away, since, had he done so, he would have tumbled backward out of the window. But he was now squeezed up against the window sash.
“I don’t want an apology,” said Madelene. “You don’t have to say anything. What you have to do is to shut up. Keep your mouth shut for two minutes. So I know you’ve gotten the message. And if you don’t, I’m the one who’ll be heading off home to the forests. And you’ll never see me again.”
There was silence; for one minute, for two, for three, there was dead silence. Then Andrea Burden shifted, fidgeting, like someone trying to get comfortable on a baking-hot sauna bench.
“The last pieces,” she said, “the last pieces of the sky.”
* * *
It was a small room. Once it had been a maid’s room; now it served as a built-in strong room, ten by ten feet with ample headroom. The walls could not be seen on account of the yellow files arranged on green enameled shelves stretching from floor to ceiling.
“These are interesting times we live in,” said Andrea Burden. “Human beings are forming closer attachments to animals than ever before. Dogs and cats sleep in people’s beds, get kissed on the mouth, stroked between the legs. The media are overrun with animals. Children’s rooms are crammed with them. It’s extremely interesting.”
There were only three of them in the strong room: Madelene, Erasmus and Andrea Burden. Bally and Johnny and Adam had remained in the doorway.
“Everywhere you turn there are animals. When people die, when others inherit, coming between adults and children, for protection, in the garden, in the house, at sports events, in children’s bedrooms, in nursing homes, close by the people there are always animals, closer than ever before. And deep within human beings, in their minds, on the fringes of their consciences, their outlook on life, their angst and passion, animals abound. So they come to me. Researchers, politicians, the rich—they come to me because they are all animal lovers. They come to me because I manage foundation funds, veterinary hospitals, homes for dogs. With an open mind I’ve managed them, taking no political sides, challenging no one’s conscience. To them I am public servant, lawyer, psychoanalyst, priest and the lady who holds the purse strings. And above all else I am an animal lover, from their own class. It’s to me they confide the story of the secret mistress’s cat, the divorced husband’s gundog, the children’s pets, the pets with which they bribed the children, the snake he had her perform with for him, the watchdog he could no longer control, the animal that was witness to rape, breakdown, forgery, abuse. In a way, when they are sitting across from me I become that animal, I take on its characteristics, its devotion, its dependence, while at the same time I am understanding and I listen, like a human being. And so they start to talk, they talk and talk, they cannot stop, it comes pouring out of them, for twenty years it has been pouring out of them. And afterward, once they have gone, I take notes.”
She slid her fingers over the files on the shelves.
“Five thousand cases. Five thousand sketches of the true anatomy of Britain’s upper classes. The decisive factor, without which the New London Regent’s Park Zoological Garden would never have become a reality. Without any pressure being brought to bear. I have not pressured a single person. I have, however, given them a hint, provided them with a glimpse of what they themselves, or their mother, or their cousin once happened to tell me. I’ve left them with a vague notion that a room such as this might exist. I’ve dropped the odd remark. With the investors. In Whitehall. How else do you think we managed to have the area exempted from the standard planning regulations, by bringing it under a development corporation? Getting that sort of planning permission would normally set you back millions of pounds. But this way they’ve met me halfway. And then I and others have been able to fit the last pieces into place.”
“That’s blackmail,” said Madelene. “You’re a terrorist.”
Andrea Burden’s eyes narrowed.
“British slaughterhouses murder two hundred thousand animals a day. The last wild animal populations of any size are in the process of being exterminated. My conscience is snow white.”
She stretched out her hands to Madelene and Erasmus.
“Come over to us,” she said. “Right now. If the cataclysm doesn’t strike today, then it’ll hit us tomorrow. Prior to this we’ve been able to put the squeeze on a minority, an elite. But the elite count for nothing. Those in government do not wield power. I know, because I understand about power, it’s my stock-in-trade. They merely administer it. It’s not the rich who are destroying the world; they are too few and too insignificant for that. It is the common people who are devouring the earth. It’s petty greed, the greed of the little woman, the greed of the little children, Joe Blow’s piddling little car times sixty million in the United Kingdom, times two hundred and fifty million in the United States, times seven hundred and fifty million in Europe. That’s what we have to shout from the rooftops, that’s what we have to put a bomb under. The new zoo is the detonator, you two could help us prime the explosive. Come, and let’s start by fitting in the pieces of blue sky.”
Madelene shook her head. Andrea Burden looked at the ape.
“Where I come from,” said Erasmus, “we’re too … jumpy for anything that goes bang.”
“You and your race will be wiped out,” said Andrea Burden.
“I’ll take that as it comes,” said the ape.
It took Madelene’s hand and they backed away—through the room, past the glowing embers in the steel container.
“You can’t leave me,” said Andrea Burden. “Not after the trust I’ve put in you both. We need support.”
By her side stood Adam. Now with a rifle in his hands.
The ape stopped in its tracks and regarded the weapon.
“We have a saying,” it said. “We say that on coming upon an enemy the first thing you have to do is try to make peace. If that fails you should employ charm. And if that fails you should resort to magic.”
“And if that fails?” asked Andrea Burden.
“If that fails,” said the ape, “you annihilate.”
The room went quiet, very quiet, for one minute, for two, for three. Then Adam Burden put down his gun. Madelene and the ape retreated toward the door. Adam followed them, unarmed, awkward. He stopped
in front of the ape.
“I would like … to wish you good luck,” he said.
Then he turned to Madelene.
“I have come to the conclusion … now … here … that it is best this way. It was never going to work out between you and me. I … couldn’t have borne it. I need someone … sweeter.”
Madelene laid her hand on his shoulder, a tiny gesture but one imbued with great tenderness.
“And you will find her too,” she said.
twelve
The last morning was a scorcher. The sun shone down on London as if through a burning glass and the city and its inhabitants awoke to this disagreeable light as though waking to the morning after an attempt to drink themselves to death. Uncertain as to whether the real world still existed, they proceeded to crawl out of their houses, to find themselves—as one always does after an attack of delirium—faced with the painful choice of repeating those mistakes that would in the long run be the death of them or making an effort to stay sober.
Alongside Klein’s Wharf, Bally was taking in the Ark’s fenders. All that now bound him to London were two mooring lines, which would shortly be cast off and hauled aboard. A few minutes from now he would be leaving behind him the city and the traumatic events of the past two months. He would never be back and he would never give another thought to what had taken place there. In fact he had already given up thinking. Only when he heard the sound of a car engine somewhere among the warehouses on the deserted dock, and automatically stuck his hand through the hatch to release his shotgun and saw that it was bent like a horseshoe magnet did his mind cheat him and force him to think of the ape.
Johnny’s truck pulled up. Johnny, Madelene and Erasmus got out. Madelene and the ape shook Johnny’s hand, walked over to the quayside and the Ark and climbed on board.
Bally viewed his useless weapon. He felt a throbbing in the—still swollen—side of his face. He realized that, sadly, strong-arm tactics were not an option here and instead he toyed with the idea of calling the River Police over his shortwave radio, of citing the law of piracy. For the first time since his boyhood he contemplated appealing to someone’s better feelings.
Before he could make a move, while he was still standing there confused and quiescent, the ape reached out, took the crooked weapon from him, straightened it out—almost absentmindedly, it seemed—and threw it overboard.
“We do hope we’re not putting you to any trouble,” it said. “We’ve brought our own food.”
Bally glanced up. From the sleeping quarters at the back of the van emerged one ape, two apes, three, then three from the cab and another two from the same sleeping quarters—seven apes, ten apes, eleven, all of them enormous, as big as Erasmus or bigger still, all wearing life jackets, oilskins and sou’westers and carrying boxes and duffel bags.
“Now let me help you cast off those moorings,” said Erasmus.
* * *
Even as Erasmus was coiling the mooring lines; as Bally, stiff as an automaton, put the vessel’s engine into gear and swung away from the quay; as the eleven other apes spread out to bring the Ark back onto an even keel—at that very moment Madelene waved to London and to Johnny. And just as she raised both arms into the air she detected a movement which first-time mothers-to-be are not usually able to identify, at least not that early on in the pregnancy, but which she instantly—quite definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt—knew to be their baby, her and Erasmus’ baby, rolling around, like a little fish still, in its ocean of amniotic fluid.
Erasmus came down from the foredeck and Madelene took his hand and gazed up at the sky.
“Those last pieces,” she said, “it’s not only blue sky. There’s an angel there too.”
“What is an angel?” asked the ape.
Madelene shook her head.
“That’s something I’ve never totally understood,” she said. “But for all we know, it’s one-third god, one-third animal and one-third human.”
Praise for The Woman and the Ape
“[A] cunning new suspense fantasy … The denouement is both biting and sweetly romantic.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Erasmus is a remarkable fictional achievement … Madelene is easily as engaging a heroine as Smilla and readers should look forward to following her.… An expertly executed entertainment.”
—The Boston Book Review
“Peter Høeg’s humor and scathing social commentary successfully dovetail.”
—Chicago Tribune
“This is a fable where we can’t wait to see what happens next.… Høeg’s book is sweet and thoughtful and passionate all at once.”
—Men’s Journal
“[A] swift-paced, lacerating new work … Thought-provoking … Too fresh in its writing and its perceptions to fall into the sentimentality one might expect … Don’t think King Kong, this is much subtler. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“An energetic fable about relations between the animal kingdom and its human exploiters … Høeg is an adventurous and intelligent writer whose future course seems, happily, impossible to predict. He has made himself, in a few short years, one of the essential contemporary novelists.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The reader will want to stop to prolong the pleasures of Høeg’s instructive, witty parable, which only flags for a few idyllic pages before leaping into its dramatic, shocking, humorous, and utterly unpredictable ending.… Høeg writes tautly and poetically.”
—The Hartford Courant
Also by Peter Høeg
Smilla’s Sense of Snow
Borderliners
The History of Danish Dreams
Tales of the Night
The Quiet Girl
Peter Høeg, born in 1957 in Denmark, followed various callings—dancer, actor, sailor, fencer, and mountaineer—before turning seriously to writing. He is the bestselling author of five novels and one short story collection. His work has been published in thirty-three countries.
THE WOMAN AND THE APE. Copyright © 1996 by the Lolwe Foundation and Munksgaard/Rosinante, Copenhagen. Translation copyright © 1996 by Barbara Haveland. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.picadorusa.com
Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Pan Books Limited.
For information on Picador Reading Group Guides, please contact Picador.
Phone: 646-307-5259
Fax: 212-253-9627
E-mail: [email protected]
All author royalties from the sale of this book go to the “Lolwe” Foundation, which provides aid to women and children in the Third World. “Lolwe” is the East African Luo tribe’s word for the infinite space seen in the west, across Lake Victoria, where the sky meets the water and beyond which lies the world of the gods. In Dho-luo, the language of the tribe, this word means an initiative which it is hoped will spread to the limits of the known world.
The “Lolwe” Foundation has been set up by the author himself.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Høeg, Peter.
[Kvinden og aben. English]
The woman and the ape / Peter Høeg ; translated by Barbara Haveland.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-42712-2
ISBN-10: 0-312-42712-3
I. Haveland, Barbara. II. Title.
PT8179.18.0335K8513 1997
839.8'1374—dc20
96-27289
CIP
Originally published in Denmark by Munksgaard/Rosinante, Copenhagen, as Kvinden og aben
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First Picador Edition: November
2007
eISBN 9781466850804
First eBook edition: July 2013
