Not that it matters. In the most recent part of the memoir that he gave me to read, he writes that escaping from the pavilion was easier to dream about than to do. He bided his time and worked, as we used to say, to improve his mind. I have to confess that I am both moved and amazed by this creature’s courage, tenacity, and ingenuity. His story would do any human hero proud.
I taught myself to read quite by happenstance. Like many of my brethren, I had taken part in the farce conducted by Damon Drex in which we picked at keyboards in an attempt to prove, for no good reason, that, with a finite number of monkeys (or at least of chimpanzees) and with a finite amount of time, you could produce one line of the literary canon and through that, by extrapolation, all of the world’s great literature.
But that was during a part of my life I call pre-procedure. Like the others I was chiefly interested in the M&M’s with which they rewarded us. More than the others, I think I had an inkling of what was going on. I had noticed people reading magazines and the prevalence of the little markings called letters on books, signs, and, of course, the computer screen.
Upon gaining sapience, I began to think of these little markings as a kind of code, though I had no word for it. And I might not have gotten very far if I hadn’t come across a child’s alphabet book that someone had left behind just outside my cage.
I pretended not to know what it was for. I treated it like a kind of security blanket and if any human was around, I would look at it upside down. Because if anyone had figured out what I was doing, they would apply for a grant, put me in a cage of my own, and bore me speechless with exercises designed to show results they could publish in a paper.
The alphabet book had large letters and simple words. It didn’t take me long to understand that G for GIRL could be combined with A for ANT, O for OSTRICH, and T for TREE to make the word GOAT. It took me a while to comprehend that the number of combinations was essentially endless.
I had difficulty grasping that words not only stood for things, but for actions, descriptions, and things other than things. There were simple sentences in another child’s book someone left behind and, after a while, I had learned them by heart. It took me some effort to understand the words a and the. They occurred so often, I thought they must be greatly important and that I was missing something essential.
But once I mastered the basic skill of reading, I tried to read everything I could get my hands on, which wasn’t much, but people do leave stuff around. Bus schedules. Pamphlets of various sorts. Even a pornographic magazine, which I took for one of those how-to manuals. I would pretend to look at the pictures in regular magazines, all the while trying to learn words from their context.
At the same time, I failed to link the complicated noises people make with their mouths to the words and sentences I was learning. Then, one day in the rec room Damon Drex had provided for his “writers,” I happened to be watching a television news program. One of my fellow chimps got hold of the remote and pressed the MUTE button. Words began to scroll beneath the person who had continued to talk, but soundlessly.
The significance struck me like a bad fall out of a tree: The words on paper, these combinations of letters, matched the vocalizations people were producing in their mouths. My own species communicate with sounds and gestures, of course, but nothing like this. I realized that people live in a sea of language, in a verbal medium that is the equivalent of air or water.
I was thrown again into one of those despairs provoked by an agitation of hope, expectation, and fear of failure. Because I knew I could never imitate the human range of sound with my own vocal equipment, I scarcely knew how to go about learning to understand what was being said.
And again, I had to proceed carefully lest some graduate student or postdoc hear what I was doing and start some infernal “research” project. I still had my alphabet book with its big letters and simple words. I decided to find someone I could trust to help me. Through bad luck, I chose Yvette, a sweet, smiling Haitian woman on the cleaning crew. She had always been kind to us and especially to me.
She laughed when I showed her the black-and-white animal under the word cow and pointed to her lips. “Vache,” she said finally, still giggling. Then “chien.” Then “arbre.”
Luckily for my purposes, a different company took over the cleaning work, otherwise I would have been utterly muddled, not knowing that there is more than one human language. Luckily, too, Dr. Simone happened to witness this exchange with Yvette while reviewing one of the monitor tapes. Imagine my relief when, instead of some dumb researcher, she assigned herself and several others to teach me to understand words. It became a kind of game. I knew some research worked its way into our sessions, especially when they tested me, usually with pictures of things I would point to when they said the corresponding word, but I didn’t mind.
Then came sentences. Short and simple at first. I began to appreciate the level at which humans operate. I noticed how people used words to give each other commands, to explain things, to make jokes, to vent anger, to be nice. It helped that I could sense emotions very acutely. I noticed that people often say one thing while feeling another.
How I wanted to join the conversation! How I wanted to express my … my chimpness, my situation, and my yearning, above all, to be free. I went in and out of despair. Exulted one moment at what I was learning, morbid the next at the thought I could not speak. The dark song of suicide sang in me as never before. But how to do it? I knew I wouldn’t have the self-discipline to hang myself, as we creatures of the trees have long powerful arms with which to reach above us and keep from strangling in a noose. I would be like a fish trying to drown itself. Nor did they allow any sharp objects with which I might sever an artery. No poison pills, either.
So I determined once again to escape even if I had nowhere to escape to. There are no tropical forests at these latitudes. There are no chimp halfway houses. It didn’t matter. If I had to die trying, I was bent on escaping. Not that any of this signified: There was no way of escaping.
Until the afternoon when Jacobus, a very old chimp with a bad heart, suffered either a stroke or cardiac arrest. Alarms went off and before long a couple of guys in medic-like uniforms arrived with a stretcher, put Jacobus on it, fitted an oxygen mask to his face, covered him with a blanket up to his neck, and took him away.
I heard someone say they were taking him to the hospital at the Middling County Zoo. I heard someone use the word euthanize, which took me a minute to figure out. Hell, I thought, I’d settle for that.
I went about my plans with all the cunning of the desperate. I pretended not to be hungry. I kept myself awake at night and easily feigned listlessness during the day. I knew I was succeeding from the comments of the staff about me. “Looks like Alphus isn’t himself today.” “Yeah, he hasn’t been feeling so hot lately.” “Hell I’d get like that if they kept me cooped up in that place.”
A few days later, in the presence of some of my more excitable brethren and a couple of human beings, I fell from a low bar and clutched at my chest, faking a heart attack. I struggled to get up, but fell back again. With predictable panic, my cell mates screeched and hooted. I heard someone say, “Oh, God, it’s Alphus. Get Doctor Simone.”
Right on cue, the medics arrived. I, too, was given an oxygen mask and blood pressure monitor. But, critically, no restraints were put on me as I was loaded onto the stretcher and borne out to the waiting ambulance.
One of the EMTs drove while the other one, a burly fellow with a red face, tended to me. “Don’t worry, pal,” he said, “We’ll get you there.” Then, to the driver. “I don’t see why they don’t just give them the old needle right there.”
“Yeah. But it ain’t as much fun.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hell, Frank didn’t use a needle on the last one we brought over. You know, the old one.”
“Really.”
“Nah. He fed him to the leopards. I don’t think it was even dead. He said the
big cats went crazy.”
My heart felt like it had stopped. And then began to thump painfully. I cannot even look at a picture of one of those beasts without suffering a deep, atavistic terror. Dying is one thing. Being killed and eaten by leopards quite another.
The burly guy said, “Boy, this guy’s pulse just jumped off the chart. And, you know, his blood pressure’s been normal. If he wasn’t some kind of ape, I’d say he was faking it.”
Through the slits of my eyes, I could see, up through the windows in the double back doors of the vehicle, that we had entered some kind of forest. With one abrupt movement, I ripped off my oxygen mask and pulled off the blood pressure cuff.
“Hey,” my startled attendant cried, and reached to restrain me. But even strong men are weaklings compared with chimpanzees. I quickly overpowered him. The vehicle slewed to a sudden stop. I opened the door and fled on all fours to a glorious haven in the upper branches of towering, well-leafed maples.
I put it down. I felt humbled and exalted. This animal, this beast, this fellow being had confirmed the pieties of civilization in which so many of us humans put our faith. We will, regardless of circumstances, rise toward the light. We will, at whatever cost, choose freedom when we have a chance.
I planned to make a copy to send to Diantha. But, like a lot a people, she’ll probably think it a fraud. She hasn’t deigned to respond to any of my overtures. I have all but given up. There is something demeaning about calling and either leaving yet another message or hanging up, knowing that it’s known who called. I could swallow what little pride I have left and drive out there. And do what? Surprise her consorting with her paramour? No, I am a coward when it comes to scenes. I would rather suffer my worst imaginings in private, would rather let the green-eyed monster feed on my entrails than make a spectacle.
It doesn’t help that my time is running short. The Governing Board meets next week. I am still out on bail. I am still equivocating about Elgin Warwick’s proposal. I don’t know what to do except to go on trying to find out who murdered Heinie if only to prove that it wasn’t I.
Speaking of which, I have a call in to Merissa Bonne. She is a suspect and needs to undergo the Alphus test. She might also tell me what Diantha’s up to.
18
The heavy and heavily insured package came by courier service from George Simons of Park Street, Boston, directly to the top of my desk in the museum. I won’t say my fingers trembled as I scissored my way through the strong tape and opened the sturdy cardboard box, but I was full of eager foreboding.
The letter on top confirmed my suspicions.
“Dear Mr. de Ratour, I regret to inform you that the pairs of coins you have sent me match each other precisely. That is to say, the coins from the boat are forgeries as well as the ones that were gifted to your museum.
“Along with close-up photos in black and white, I have attached the results of various technical tests, including several on the metallurgy of the samples. In fact, they are among the best forgeries my staff has ever come across, not that that will be of much comfort to you.
“Also, it might interest you to know that they are in all likelihood not copies of each other, but copies from the originals, whether they be real or forgeries.
“Please call if you have any questions …”
I sat for a while trying to sort out the significance of Mr. Simons’s report, when Doreen followed her very enlarged midsection into my presence and told me that Lieutenant Tracy had just called and that I was to tune in Channel Five. She turned then and clicked on the small television set I keep handy.
Under a flashing banner stating BREAKING NEWS, a gentleman named Ken was telling an attractive woman named Baretta, no doubt his anchor team partner, something about “dramatic news regarding the Sterl case.”
Baretta turned full-on to the camera saying, “Seaboard police this morning announced a major development in the ongoing investigation into the suspicious death of businessman Martin Sterl.”
Then Ken again: “Our reporter Jack Cogger is covering the story at police headquarters. Jack, what have you got?”
The camera cut to a head-and-shoulders shot of young, crew-cut Jack Cogger in front of police headquarters out on the bypass. “Hi Ken, Hi Baretta. Indeed, Seaboard police lieutenant Richard Tracy announced that arrest warrants have been issued for Blanko Dragan and Andrijana Jakovich, aka Stella Fox, in the murder of Martin Sterl, whose apparent suicide in June has been regarded suspiciously from the start.”
There followed a head shot of Sterl, a quite ordinary mortal with glasses and toupee, as Mr. Cogger’s narration continued. “Tracy said the police were operating on leads supplied by Norman de Ratour, the director of Wainscott University’s [sic] Museum of Man.”
The video taken from the diorama monitors that I had secured for Lieutenant Tracy played as Mr. Cogger, voice over, said, “The tape of Dragan and Jakovich, shown here at an exhibit at the museum, was supplied by Ratour, who himself has been implicated in the recent murder of Heinrich Grümh.”
There was a file photo of me, not very flattering, just before the camera switched back and forth between the reporter in the field and the two anchorpersons thusly:
Jack: “Back to you, Ken and Baretta.”
Baretta: “Jack, are the police saying anything about a possible connection between the two murders?”
Jack: “Right now police are treating the murders as separate.”
Ken: “What does Ratour have to say about his role in the investigation?”
Jack: “The Wainscott News Office told us that they had no knowledge of Ratour’s involvement. They referred us to the museum. We have a call in and a news crew on the way there now.”
Baretta: “Thanks, Jack. This is a story we’ll be keeping an eye on.”
A different voice off camera intoned, “This has been a Channel Five breaking news special report. We now return to our scheduled broadcasting.”
Just then my phone rang. It was Mort in Security. A news crew had indeed arrived and I was wanted in the Diorama of Paleolithic Life.
Well, I had asked for it, hadn’t I? The newsperson turned out to be a petite young woman of Chinese extraction who worked her hands up and down in front of her as she talked to the camera held by a technician whose polished skull reflected whitely in the overhead lights of the exhibit.
The newsperson asked me basic, sensible questions with the “Early Kitchen” display as a backdrop. What made me realize I had seen the suspects before? My knack for remembering things. In my opinion, why did the suspects pick the museum for their meetings? A mistaken sense of privacy. Did I think there was any connection between the Sterl and von Grümh murders? Perhaps mirror images of each other. Are you working with the Seaboard police on the von Grümh murder even though charged as an accessory? Not at liberty to say.
She thanked me graciously and, following the beacon of her cameraman’s skull, left.
Back in my office, I wondered if I should call Diantha to tell her I would be on the evening news. Hoping, of course, that she might see me in a different, more advantageous light. Or would it not be more impressive if I were to consider it something of a trifle, which, in fact, it was.
I got back to work. Amid the pile on my desk was a draft of a letter to Elgin Warwick. I had been gnawing at the thing for the past several days. I had run out of equivocations. Izzy’s words kept coming back to me. Don’t do something you will regret the rest of your life.
Following the rapid heartbeat of the pulser on my screen, I figuratively tore up the equivocating draft and wrote instead:
Dear Elgin:
I want first to thank you very much for your generous and original idea regarding the preservation of your remains here at the Museum of Man after you die. I have thought long and hard about it. Our chief counsel Felix Skinnerman has championed the idea. Indeed, he has suggested that, centered on your temple and tomb, we create a mortuary wing open to any and all who wish to join “the permanent collec
tion.” He foresees that it would become quite popular, with many subscribers, though few on the scale you envision.
That, alas, is the rub. The purpose of the museum is to find, preserve, and display the best that humanity has created through the millennia. Any enterprise that detracts from this essential mission strikes me as self-defeating.
You might argue that yours would be the only contemporary relics on the premises. But I fear there would ensue substantial and justified pressure from other benefactors to be afforded the same privileges. We might be quickly overrun and diverted from our primary responsibilities.
So I must, in all good conscience, decline your offer. We would, however, certainly welcome your outstanding collection of Egyptian art and artifacts that, with appropriate support, we would display in a temple worthy of its excellence and with suitable, eponymous tribute.
Sincerely,
Norman de Ratour
It is one thing to write a letter like that and feel noble about it. It is quite another to put it in an addressed envelope, stick on a stamp, and drop it into a mailbox. Which is precisely what I did, thereby canceling whatever small elation that the news of the Sterl case and my part in it had provided.
I wondered if I had, with a lick of the tongue, sealed my own professional doom. Perhaps. He would receive the letter just days before the meeting of the Governing Board. I could have waited. But I had acted instead. The thought gave me a kind of depressed peace of mind. I walked home in the warm gloaming of a summer evening, my integrity, if little else, intact.
Alphus, I could tell from a smell of burned food in the air when I arrived home, had been trying to cook again. He hasn’t gotten the idea of different degrees of heat under a frying pan. The hot dogs he had been trying to make for himself and Ridley were charred beyond recognition, and he had an abashed look on his face. I had told him cooking without my presence was strictly forbidden.
More to placate me than anything else, he produced a third installment of his memoirs and, under my direction, mixed me a medium-bore martini. I put the memoir aside and took some lean hamburger out of the refrigerator and some appropriate rolls out of the freezer.
The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man Page 22
