The Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Worried

  I have been prepared all along to dismiss these communications as a kind of practical joke, but just this past week, Marge Littlefield informed me that for the last two fiscal years the Primate Pavilion has received large sums in its fees-for-service income account, mostly paid by checks from the Onoyoko Institute in the Genetics Lab. Now it is true that Damon Drex has received considerable support from the Ruddy and Phyllis Stein Foundation for his “research.” But perhaps income from the Genetics Lab really is the source of funding for the wholesale renovation of the pavilion.

  Not, I suppose, that it makes any difference regarding a possible connection to the Fessing case. But it does give Scrabbe and the powers that be at Wainscott one more pretext for seizing the museum. What I should do now is ask Dr. Commer to convene a meeting of the Board of Governors to deal with the situation. Whatever else Malachy Morin might have been, he was at least nominally in charge. Indeed, what I fear now is that I will, by default, have to decide and do more things myself, which means, I will not have the time to devote to the history of the MOM, which in any event appears to be coming to a bad end. I suppose I could always limit the time span, say, to just after World War II. But that might give the impression that the founding of the Primate Pavilion ushered in some bright new future when, in fact, it signaled, I think, the beginning of the decline. Well, maybe things will turn out better after this current mess is cleared up. Maybe that could be the happy ending. Happy ending. Another curious term when you think that every single one of us dies.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 25

  I have just survived a “literary” party of the kind I never want to experience again. The humiliation of it all! With that young man Snyders and some of the others nearly collapsing with laughter while Damon Drex extricated me from a situation at once too ludicrous, too frightening, and too embarrassing to describe. I can still feel the paws of the beast where it grabbed my person, and my hands, quite literally, are still shaking as I sit here trying to type while down below the noise and now, with this hot weather, the stink rises and …

  Perhaps I should start at the beginning. Late this afternoon, more on a whim than anything else, I joined Esther and Margery in making an appearance at Damon Drex’s “meet the authors” travesty in Pan House. I think we were all a little giddy with relief that Dean Fessing’s murderer had been arrested, even if it turned out to be Malachy Morin. We naturally took the reception as a kind of joke, and had to suppress our tittering as we went through the gleaming new quarters and out into the exercise yard. I was surprised to see gathered there quite a few of the “regulars,” the social core of the greater Wainscott community. Drinks in hand, they were chatting among themselves and mingling with the chimps. I waved to Thad Pilty and Corny Chard and said hello to Izzy and Lotte Landes, who reminded me (as though I needed it) that I was going to spend the weekend of the Fourth with them at their cottage on Mercy Island. A regular bar had been set up for the guests, and I ordered a gin and tonic while chatting to Pilty and Chard about how much relief we all felt that the Fessing case had been resolved even though it turned out in the end to be one of our own. Corny Chard allowed how the situation represented a unique research opportunity and how he had already petitioned the prison authorities for permission to hold a seminar with Malachy Morin for a few select graduate students.

  The whole thing was, as you can imagine, quite surreal. Drex and Snyders were off to one side with what apparently were some of their “stars.” A kind of receiving line was in effect, with some of the guests more or less lined up to meet the authors through their keepers. The venue certainly added to the fantastical scene. The gracious old courtyard, now enclosed on its open side by a high Cyclone fence topped with barbed wire, was lit with spotlights that threw everything into garish glare and black shadow. Thumpingly imbecilic music blasted from loudspeakers. And one had to step carefully around the liberal amounts of chimp scat of varying degrees of freshness, the sources of which were shuffling and scampering around with cans of beer in their paws from which they were drinking with great lip-smacking relish. One of them, its can empty, tried to take my drink and made a horrible hissing sound when I refused to give it to him.

  I hung on to my drink and my sangfroid, and a few minutes later I was “shaking” the long, hirsute appendages of Damon Drex’s pongid literati. Is this safe? I asked. “No problem,” said the young assistant, whom I thought I had just seen go back into the building. He seemed to nod his teeth at me. “Dr. Drex is absolute master of the chimps. If there is a Nietzsche among the group he has no doubt identified Damon as the ‘Superchimp.’ ” I must say the beasts bobbed and bowed around the man, Damon Drex, that is, as though he were the Messiah. F. Snyders did not try to hide his amusement as he made the introductions. It was he who gave the animals their whimsical noms de plume or, in this case, noms d’ordinateur. I met Royd, short for Hemmingroyd, “a pithy storyteller, a boozer, and a bully”; Impostor, “who likes to follow Royd around and imitate him”; Kupide, “our most accomplished stylist”; Ninny, “from the Paris Zoo, a femme fatale”; El Doc, “somewhat overrated, but not by himself”; Barleycorn, “who writes and writes and writes”; JH, “who writes and cooks with equal facility”; and Aych Aych, “a real character, ha, ha, with a fondness for fruit vert.” I mentioned to Izzy, who had wandered over, that I found it a bit unnerving to hear the authors described so frankly to their faces. At the few literary gatherings I have attended, I said, most people had had the politeness to disparage others behind their backs. Izzy was astounded, I think, beyond his usual bons mots.

  At times I thought the chimps did understand what was being said. They do have the most soulful expressions, and I could not look at them for very long without recalling Damon Drex’s awful remark about God being a chimpanzee. Still, the animals gazed back with such an unnervingly predatory relish that I thought, given the opportunity, they would tear us apart and eat us.

  The actual interspecies literary chat was minimal, although Mr. Drex did carry on some convincing ape talk using various hoots and pants rendered with indrawn breath. (There’s been some rather vicious gossip over the years about Drex and some of his female charges, but really, it’s too squalid for retailing here except to say that when Eva, one of the—) [On the advice of counsel this portion of the Log has been excised — Ed. note]

  I have no idea what Mr. Drex and his simian friends were saying to each other, and no translation was offered. He appeared to be in the middle of a regular conversation with Royd, the “alpha male” of the troop, when his assistant, who seemed to be in several places at once, directed my attention to quite a different scene in another corner of the yard. There, in the full glare of a spotlight, Kupide was showing his slender, pink, and quite erect member to Ninny, who, judging from her inflamed hindquarters, was in heat. In any event, she seemed quite impressed by the display and turned her back end to the gallant Kupide. This exhibition of troglodyte passion had drawn an appreciative audience of young and old alike, the yaps and squeals of which, reaching Royd, sent him into an instant tantrum. His hair stood right on end, he threw down his can of beer, discharged a foul stream of excrement, and went in a determined rush at the mating lovers followed by ’Postor. But too late. Chimp lovemaking, apparently, takes only seconds, and by the time Royd got there, Ninny was already crying out her pleasure.

  “Happens all the time,” said the assistant. “But we have to make allowances for writers and artists, for the creative geniuses among us who live their urgent, passionate lives without the restraint of ordinary mortals.” Then he laughed.

  Poor Royd, I felt sorry for him right then, the way with nearly human dejection he slouched back toward us, picked up his empty can, and, with affecting pathos, begged for another beer. All the while Aych Aych was displaying his turgid apehood to and taking liberties with a young unattended female. What horrifies me in retrospect was the way, after a while, that it all seemed perfectly normal, as though the apes were a species of h
umans and the humans a species of apes.

  With a mock earnestness lost on Damon Drex, his assistant told us the group was much like most creative writing workshops, in terms of social interaction and the quality of literary effort. However, the pongs, as he called them, were much less critical of one another’s work than is usually the case in undergraduate or graduate writing programs. “But surely,” Izzy Landes said, “the animals can’t read.” “That’s true,” he replied, “but you would be surprised at how many people who want to write these days can’t read either.”

  I glanced at my watch and made motions to leave. I smiled and shook hands with Drex and his assistant. They didn’t want me to go. Just then another fracas broke out among the beasts — Royd was cuffing and verbally upbraiding Ninny, who screamed and whimpered in a most distressful way. I hadn’t realized there was so much violence among them. Young Snyders was talking at me all the time, something about achieving their original objective and starting a new program, Chimprite II, he called it. “It’s a revolutionary way of teaching nonhumans what words mean.”

  I said I was sure it was nothing less than wonderful and glanced at my watch again. But with the prodding of Mr. Drex, the young man was not to be deterred. “When one of the writers types one of the five thousand or so words in the visual memory, bells go off and a visual representation of the word appears on the screen above the keyboard, with the word spelled out in big letters underneath it.”

  “And many candies,” Drex added.

  “Especially if they type the word over. Kupide already knows boy, girl, and fuck.”

  “We know you help us, Norman, when time ripens,” said Drex.

  I murmured something noncommittal and was again consulting my watch and making those polite noises that signal imminent departure when Ninny, that Parisian provocateuse, came ambling up followed by Royd, her cuckolded swain. She looked me over with a none too subtle come-hither leer, which I might have found comical had she not, with unequivocable and unmistakable intent, without the least warning and to my intense mortification, turned and presented her livid rump directly to me. I stood there, helpless with embarrassment, not knowing in the least how to respond. Some lout in the group of onlookers yelled, “Go for it, Norm.” Well, when Royd saw this new display of infidelity, he lunged directly at me, grabbing me by the thigh, and no doubt would have sunk his bared canines into my privates had not Drex barked a sharp command and struck the animal smartly upside the head. Still, it took them a moment to free me from the clutches of the beast, and I tore this perfectly good pair of new trousers in the struggle.

  I cannot express how absolutely degrading it all was. And I did not appreciate it in the least the way Drex’s bucktoothed assistant laughed and told me that I should feel honored, because “Ninny is quite fussy about bestowing her favors, especially when it comes to nonchimps.” Lotte Landes asked me if I was all right, and I assured her I was. But the humiliation of it all! Rubbing my leg and watching where I was stepping, I beat a quick retreat to the pavilion proper, accompanied by Snyders, who implored me to stay, saying he hoped this “small incident” had not lessened my appreciation of the important work he and his colleagues were doing. I finally shook him off and quite literally fled back here.

  I must say I found it reassuring to climb up through the collections. I nearly wanted to find Mort and have him open the case with the Grecian terra-cotta figurines, so I could hold one, just for a moment, in my hands. The experience, as you can well understand, has left me quite shaken. I feel as though I have been to hell, have had a glimpse of what we emerged from and to what, to judge from what I see and hear these days, we are returning as a species. I am now more convinced than ever that Damon Drex and his assistant are themselves bent on a hoax of stupendous proportions, and I mean to do everything in my power to thwart it.

  My goodness, it’s gotten late. I couldn’t have gone to the Club anyway in these torn trousers. Perhaps I’ll staple them up and stop by the Bon Vivant for a bite on the way home. The food’s not much, but there’s a waitress there who is always kind to me.

  MONDAY, JUNE 29

  I received in this morning’s mail a snapshot taken with one of those cheap little flash cameras at the very moment that awful chimpanzee “presented” herself to me. It is not an edifying spectacle, to say the least, and the ribald note accompanying the picture from one of Thad Pilty’s assistants is tasteless beyond words. The incident, in short, still rankles, and I am more determined than ever to see that the very existence of the Primate Pavilion be put on any agenda concerning the fate of the museum.

  Strange how I find myself these days, to change the subject completely, thinking more and more of Elsbeth and how, really, I should perhaps have been more forward in my relations, I mean my physical relations, with her. Perhaps it’s the time of the year; these languid summer nights recall other languid summer nights. Perhaps it’s the memory of that summer day, many years ago, when Elsbeth and I swam together in Lake Longing, where her parents owned a cottage. (Personally, I dislike those tepid, mosquito-ridden, squishy-bottomed, pine-fringed ponds left behind by the glaciers, but I frequented the place and even swam there to please Elsbeth.) We had, on that afternoon, emerged from the water and, as was our custom, sat on the little pier that jutted hopefully out into the small cove just down from the cottage. I distinctly remember how a certain agitation filled the air that day. It may have been Elsbeth’s playfulness in the water, which left us both rather breathless as we dripped on the warm wood and availed ourselves of bath towels. It may have been the impending thunderstorm building to a boil of blue-black clouds to the west. It may have been the mosquitoes, feasting on our blood and leaving inflamed welts on our pale skin.

  The mosquitoes and the coming storm finally drove us indoors. As we rose to walk up to the cottage, Elsbeth gave me the most enigmatic glance and held out her hand for me to take. She had undone the top strings of her swimsuit, and, really, I had to avert my eyes to avoid seeing the full extent of her considerable bosom. We had scarcely made the front porch, where her parents sat reading, when the first big drops of rain came plattering down and lightning licked and cracked at the far end of the pond. I remained below with the Merriman seniors to chat and watch the spectacular display of the storm while Elsbeth went upstairs to shower and change for dinner. A short time later, I went up the stairs myself, arriving at the landing just as Elsbeth came out of the bathroom with a towel so haphazardly draped over her that I could not avoid seeing her in a single flash, coincident, I remember, with a resounding near miss next to the cottage, quite, as they say, in the round. With a little squeal of shock or delight or both, she let the towel drop altogether as she swept down the hallway and into her room.

  Until that moment, which burned into my memory with searing voltage, I had allowed myself to imagine the felicities of the marital state with Elsbeth only as an aid to solitary release. (Even now, some thirty-five years later, I can still see the full-figured contours of her striding form and hear that squeal of alarmed delight.) I had not even permitted myself to consider “doing it” until we were in fact married, an eventuality I considered somewhat remote in terms of time. I always thought it wise and proper for two people to become a union of souls before effecting a more physical connection, and still do. But with that incident at the top of the stairs, with the storm flashing and crashing all around the cottage, I stood ready in an instant to jettison my principles. I was shocked and aroused and had no defenses left against my imagination, which ran riot as to the possibilities of sexual intimacies. Trembling in the vivid aftershock of seeing her that way, I realize now that I didn’t know what to do next. I thought of following her, of at least knocking quietly on her door. But what if she had let me in? What then? It is one thing to imagine something; it is quite another to do it. I retreated to my own room, where, pulling off my wet bathing suit, I found myself agitated into a quite palpable state of masculine readiness. I began to compose little homilies to speak to b
oth of us. I was going to tell her that it had been a great and stirring privilege to see her like that, but that we should be careful as to the liberties we took with each other, whether accidental or not, as we were not even engaged. I planned to tell her that her charms were such that only the most stalwart self-control on my part could prevent advances that she might not welcome or that, if she did, might compromise her irrevocably.