Jennie

by Douglas Preston

  So we huddled by the fire, and the roof leaked more than ever, and Sandy said a few words and we left. That was what, seventeen years ago? And we’ve never been back to Hermit Island. I don’t imagine there’s much left of the cabin, after all those winter storms. The roof was already on its last legs. It isn’t that we avoided the island, it was just that we never seemed to get around to it. We always talked about going back. Now with Hugo gone, I don’t suppose I’ll ever get back there. The boat was sold, Sandy’s in Arizona, Sarah’s in New York. I’m just a useless old lady now.

  I still go to Maine, and Sarah visits every August with the grandchildren. Sometimes when I’m in the farmhouse, and the fog rolls in, I listen to the Monhegan foghorn, blowing, just blowing, and I think of the day we buried Jennie. And I think of Jennie’s cold little jar there in the hermit’s cabin in that secret place.

  You know, I’m not a religious person, but sometimes I think I can hear Jennie hooting and laughing from a great distance when the waves are crashing on the shore. Of course it’s bosh, just my imagination, but it always gives me a start. Yes indeed it does. And who knows, maybe she is out there somewhere in that big old strange universe of ours. Maybe when I die she’ll be there waiting for me with open arms and a big halo around her head. Now wouldn’t that be something?

  [FROM an interview with Alexander (“Sandy”) Archibald.]

  It snowed last night. Did you hear the wind all night long? When it blows like that, it just sucks the heat right out of this place. Out the smoke hole. We’ll go for another ride today. The desert in the snow is the most beautiful sight in the world. That coffee should be ready in a few minutes. Tortillas and beans for breakfast? Good, because that’s all I’ve got. Unless you brought the bagels and smoked salmon from Zabars. [Laughs.]

  We slept late. I’m usually up long before the sun. Throw open that door, let’s see what happened. Ahhhh! Look at the snow! Stretching all the way to the mountains like a blanket of white. A blanket of forgiveness. Snow heals the earth. The Navajos, see, they believe that a living being named Hak’az asdzdáá, or Cold Woman, brings the snow. They worship her, because without snow the land would burn up and the springs would go dry.

  Pile some more coal on that fire and let’s warm this joint up.

  Where were we? Will you look at this, he’s already got that damn tape recorder going. Sorry about last night. I still have a few things to work out. Ahhhh, well.

  Anyway, they told me in the hospital that Jennie was dead. I wasn’t a bit surprised. I knew it already. I knew it the morning I woke up in the nature preserve that I was going to see Jennie for the last time. It was like a death already, to see Jennie in that cage.

  You know, they’re gonna tell you it was an accident. That’s what they all decided. She fell and hit her head. That’s what they decided. Right. Let me tell you: they just couldn’t face the truth. Oh, they believe it all right, but I know better. She didn’t fall. I saw the autopsy report. I saw her body. But what really matters is that I knew her. Goddamnit, I knew Jennie, and I know exactly what happened that night. When I first went in that building, I saw what she was doing to herself in that cage, pounding with all her might on her own head with her fists. I saw where she’d pulled her hair out. I saw her run at the bars of the cage. I saw that she’d reached the end of the line. The morning after, when I woke up in the hospital, there were these huge bruises on my side. I was wondering just where those came from, when I realized. It was from Jennie gripping me, holding me for all she was worth. That’s how desperate she was. That’s how much she loved me.

  That injury wasn’t caused by a fall. Bullshit! There were two parallel fractures in her skull. What happened was, she woke up in the dark, all alone, silent. And she saw that she was still in the cage. She saw that even I, her friend and protector, couldn’t save her. I was gone, dragged away kicking and screaming, and that must have scared the shit out of her, to see me dragged away like that. She thought I was God and when she saw me dragged away by Gabriel and his men she knew it was all over. I was her last hope and when she saw that she knew it was over. And so she ran full tilt at the bars of her cage with her head. Broke her skull, just shattered it. Deliberately. She killed herself. She wanted to die, and she killed herself. She was going to live free or she was going to die. There was no middle ground.

  Jennie was capable of understanding the meaning of death. That crazy old minister, Palliser, taught her all about death. I mean, the poor guy thought he was teaching her about Christianity, but all he did was scare her shitless about death. Jennie and I talked about it, about death. Like about her dead cat. Man, she remembered that cat of hers for the rest of her life. She couldn’t understand just what the hell death was, how someone could just disappear. The whole concept was a mystery. The fact that it could happen was what scared her. And then when Palliser’s wife died, I remember she came back from across the street, and she was following me around, asking over and over again Sandy dead? See, she said dead but what she meant was “Are you going to die?” So she went around signing Sandy dead? Sandy dead? Whimpering and dragging herself around behind me, afraid to let me out of her sight. She was just as scared of death as any human being. But scared not for herself, but for me. Think about that.

  That old Epstein, he thinks he knows everything. He keeps saying nobody did anything wrong, that it was an unforseeable accident. Okay, let me just say one thing. There was guilt here, of sorts. My father never should’ve been collecting dead primates in the first place. Jennie’s mother never would’ve been killed. And Jennie’d probably be alive right now. It’s that simple. That’s where the whole thing started. There’s something really wrong with looking at the world that way, trying to divorce science from everything else.

  You see, my father was a scientist. He didn’t see the human dimension of what he was doing, bringing Jennie into our family. This wasn’t an experiment with one animal. This was an experiment that involved all of us, his wife and kids. Me. A very dangerous experiment.

  Aside from Jennie, Dad was hurt the most by this. He was changed. You know when he had that operation, the one that killed him? When he went under that anesthetic, there was something buried in his mind. Something that just didn’t want to wake up again. And so he didn’t.

  I think it’s very ironic. With all those experiments, they were almost able to erase the distinction between man and animal. The one thing they didn’t look at was Jennie’s ability to understand death. The knowledge of good and evil. Now isn’t it ironic that with her final act, her suicide, she obliterated this last distinction?

  We buried her on Hermit Island. I gave the ceremony. I chose a passage from A Farewell to Arms. It was one of my favorite books when I was a teenager, and I memorized the paragraph. It’s a book about death. Like your book will be. I’m not quite so thrilled with Hemingway now as I once was, but I still like the passage. My mother didn’t like it at all, she said it wasn’t a very happy eulogy, but I read it anyway. It goes like this: “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those who will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”

  That was Jennie. Good, gentle, and above all brave. [Sandy began to weep quietly at this point.] She was going to be a free human being or nothing. No compromise. I say human being because that’s what she was and I mean that with total seriousness. She was never going to accept being an animal, living in a cage or some ape’s mate on a grubby little island. Her death was noble and beautiful. And it taught me a lesson: I’m not going to let the world break me. The world can’t touch me here. And when I leave this place, I’ll have learned to carry my freedom in my heart—Jennie’s kind of freedom. Wildness. If you’re truly free, truly wild, the world can’t kill you, it can’t break you, it can’t even touch you. When you’re free, you’re invincible.

>   After I read the Hemingway, I wrote Jennie’s epitaph in chalk on the mantelpiece:

  JENNIE ARCHIBALD, 1965–1974

  VERY GOOD, VERY GENTLE, VERY BRAVE

  [SCENES from an eight-mm silent movie, filmed by Dr. Hugo Archibald on Easter Day, 1974.]

  Jennie is running across the lawn. She is dressed in overalls, saddle shoes, and a white blouse. She climbs the crab apple tree. In a crook of a limb she finds a banana, waves it over her head laughing and screaming with delight. The scene cuts to Jennie heaping fruits in a large pile, while someone offscreen hands her more fruits. She sits down next to the stack and peels a banana and crams it into her mouth, and then she sucks on the banana skin before throwing it offscreen. Then she turns and grins at the camera and signs: Me Jennie! Me Jennie!

  The scene cuts to Jennie scooting over to Reverend Palliser, who is in his wheelchair. She climbs into his lap and starts kissing him on the lips. Palliser is laughing and crying, and clapping his hands like a child. An unknown woman, apparently his nurse, stands behind him with a nervous smile, clasping her hands. Jennie suddenly notices his tears and, looking concerned, starts touching and patting them away with her hands.

  Another scene. We see Jennie from the back. Jennie is sitting on her heels on the grass, eating something. She looks back at the camera, turns around, and lunges forward, stealing a barbecued rib from a paper plate in someone’s lap. She runs away with her mouth open, carrying the rib and laughing, and then she throws the rib over the hedge. She runs back toward the camera, signing Tickle-chase Jennie! The camera follows Jennie as she runs across the lawn, pursued by several people. Jennie is caught by Pam Prentiss, and she rolls over and is tickled by several people at once. The camera is jostled around and we see Jennie laughing and fending them off with her feet. Then she jumps up and starts whirling around, her pink mouth open, her jug ears sticking out from the sides of her head. She hops up and down, somersaults, and races off camera, with several people in pursuit.

  Another scene. The camera is out of focus, giving the scene a dreamlike feeling. It is hard to make out what is going on at first. Jennie is waving good-bye, waving and waving, hopping up and down, waving again with both hands. She is suddenly in focus and then out of focus again. She rolls over on her back and waves good-bye with her feet, somersaults, and grins and claps her hands over her eyes. The camera pans to a blurry crowd of people waving good-bye. Everyone is waving good-bye. Good-bye, Jennie. Everyone is waving good-bye. Everyone wave good-bye to Jennie. Wave good-bye for the camera. Good-bye, Jennie. Good-bye. Good-bye.

  author’s note

  Jennie is a novel, but a novel based on real science. The language experiments recorded in this book, the cognitive experiments, the genetic affinities between humans and chimpanzees, and Jennie’s signing abilities are all based on actual research and experimental work done with chimpanzees and gorillas. The anecdotes regarding Jennie’s ability to imagine and create, her insistent identification of herself as a human being, her understanding and manipulation of human psychology, her sexual attraction to human males, and her caring and affectionate nature are all based on actual events in the lives of home-raised chimpanzees. The clear dividing line between humans and chimpanzees has indeed been erased in the past few decades.

  I cannot leave this subject without mentioning the grave danger that chimpanzees, and all the great apes, face in the wild. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are all extremely endangered, in some cases on the verge of extinction. These are the animal species closest to us. Humans and chimpanzees share 98.5 percent of the same DNA. Recent work on the rare bonobo (once called the pigmy chimpanzee but now recognized as a separate species) has shown that they are even more humanlike than the chimpanzee.

  If more isn’t done to save the great apes, and done immediately, they will become extinct. This would be a terrible crime against nature and against our own biological family.

  I would ask the reader: What hope do we have as a species if we allow such a thing to occur?

  There are a number of organizations that are helping save the great apes in the wild. I will list a few of them here in the hope that the reader will be moved enough by this book to give these organizations the support they so desperately need.

  The Jane Goodall Institute

  P.O. Box 599

  Ridgefield, CT 06877

  203-431-2099

  or

  15 Clarendon Park

  Lymington,. Hants. S041 8AX

  U.K.

  Committee for Conservation and Care of Chimpanzees

  3819 48th Street NW

  Washington, DC 20016

  202-362-1993

  Bonobo Protection Fund

  Language Research Center

  Georgia State University

  University Plaza

  Atlanta, GA 30303-3083

  The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

  45 Inverness Drive

  Englewood, CO 80112

  303-790-2349

  or

  110 Gloucester

  Primrose Hill

  London NW1 8JA

  U.K.

  Friends of Washoe

  P.O. Box 728

  Ellensburg, WA 98926

  The Gorilla Foundation

  Box 620-530

  Woodside, CA 94062

  The Great Ape Project

  P.O. Box 1023

  Collingwood, Melbourne

  Victoria, Australia 3066

  The Orangutan Foundation International

  822 South Wellesley Avenue

  Los Angeles, CA 90049

  Projet de Protection des Gorilles

  Howletts & Port Lymphe Foundation

  Brazzaville BP 13977

  Republique du Congo

  or

  John Aspinall’s Wildlife Sanctuaries

  750 Lausanne Road

  Los Angeles, CA 90077

  Wildlife Conservation Society

  The Wildlife Conservation Park

  Bronx, NY 10460

  World Wide Fund for Nature

  World Wildlife Fund Switzerland

  Forrlibuckstrasse 66

  Postfach, 8037

  Zurich, Switzerland

  International Primate Protection League

  P.O. Box 766

  Summerville, SC 29484

  803-871-2280

  Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage

  P.O. Box 11190

  Chingola, Zambia

  or c/o The Jane Goodall Institute

  Many primatologists will recognize experiments, stories, and anecdotes in this book that were adapted from nonfiction accounts of raising chimpanzees in human families, observations of chimpanzees in the wild, and cognitive and linguistic studies of chimpanzees. I am obviously indebted to many works about chimpanzees, particularly the writings of Jane Goodall, Maurice Temerlin, Cathy Hayes, and Herbert S. Terrace. I would like to acknowledge my major sources here.

  Goodall, Jane. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.

  _______. In the Shadow of Man. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1988.

  _______. My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees. Washington, D.C.: The National Geographic Society, 1967.

  _______. Through a Window. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990.

  Hayes, C. The Ape in Our House. New York: Harper Brothers, 1951.

  Linden, Eugene. Silent Partners: The Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments. New York: Times Books, 1986.

  Montgomery, Sy. Walking with the Great Apes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1991.

  Nichols, Michael, with contributions by Jane Goodall, George B. Schaller, and Mary G. Smith. The Great Apes: Between Two Worlds. Washington, D.C.: The National Geographic Society, 1993.

  Premack, David, and Premack, Ann James. The Mind of an Ape. New York: Norton, 1983.

  Raven, Henry C. “Meshie: The Child of a Chimpanzee,” Natural History, vol. 32, 1932.

  _______. “
Further Adventures of Meshie,” Natural History, vol. 33, 1933.

  Rosen, S. I. Introduction to the Primates: Living and Fossil. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

  Temerlin. Maurice. Lucy: Growing Up Human. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1972.

  Terrace, Herbert S. Nim: A Chimpanzee Who Learned Sign Language. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

  Acknowledgments

  I owe a great debt to my agents, Tom Wallace and Matthew Snyder. I would like to thank my editor, Bob Wyatt, for his excellent work. I am deeply indebted to Mary G. Smith of the National Geographic Society for her enthusiastic support and excellent advice. I would particularly like to express my great appreciation to Dr. Douglas Schwartz, President of the School of American Research, for his support. I thank Stuart Woods and Lincoln Child for their helpful comments, and I am grateful for the editorial suggestions of the No Poets Society of Santa Fe. And I thank my father, Jerome Preston, Jr., for his very helpful advice, and my grandfather, Jerome Preston, Sr., for his great support.

  I would like to thank Nina Root, Chairwoman of the Department of Library Services at the American Museum of Natural History, for allowing me access to the Raven papers and films. I would also like to thank the late Dr. Harold Shapiro of the American Museum for sharing with me his vivid reminiscences of Henry Raven and the chimpanzee called Meshie.