by Will Self
Perhaps, Sarah had thought as she dressed, Simon will be able to look at me, and maybe the sight of the swelling-protector will – she couldn’t exactly manipulate the thought, although her fingers shaped the signs in the act of fastening the eyelets at either hip, and below – perhaps he’ll fancy me. Perhaps his lust will bring him round, bring him out of this.
‘Nice swelling-protector,’ Jane Bowen signed. ‘Selena Blow, is it “h’huu”?’
‘Y-yes, I got it in the sale last year. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.’
‘So, Simon isn’t in the habit of buying you other clothes then? Clothes, sign, for the nestroom?’
‘Why do you ask “huu”?’
‘Well, my dear, you musn’t be shocked. ’ Jane Bowen moved closer and began to groom Sarah, smoothing the fur on the younger female’s neck first one way and then the other, loosening grains of talcum powder. ‘But as part of this “chup-chupp” human delusion your consort has … Well, he finds the sight of legs covered with fur disturbing. I gather “gru-nn” that in the “human world” – as Simon describes it – the animals’ bare legs are covered –’
‘With trousers “huu”?’
‘And skirts.’
‘And skirts “huu”?’
‘Quite so.’
Sarah was blushing, hardly aware of the older female’s fingers in her fur. “‘Hoo-chup-chupp” I don’t know, well … yes, he has bought me some skirts. Nothing really kinky, you understand. No tweed or wool, but I do have some simple cotton skirts. I dunno – I’d feel awfully strange wearing them here.’
‘Well, don’t worry about that for now “grnnn”, Dr Busner did suggesture that Simon rest – but all the same let’s just see how he responds to you in your nice swelling-protector.’
Simon was curled up in nest, forcing himself to sleep, when the ‘phone began ringing once again. Fucking hell! He jerked upright. Fucking hell! The ‘phone brought with it the world of his madness, the world of his disgrace. Won’t they fucking well leave me alone!
He sprang from the nest in a jumble of arms and legs, hurling himself on to the floor. Amazingly, he landed on all fours, knuckles either side of the instrument. He plucked up the receiver and pressed it to his ear. The screen resolved itself into a monkey’s muzzle. ‘ “Clak-clak-clak” whaddya’ want monkey “wraff” muzzle?’ Simon signed and snarled, his big teeth clacking.
‘It’s Jane Bowen, Simon, your doctor, I have another chimp here who’d like to sign with you.’
‘Who is it “huu”? “Wraaa!” I thought that old ape signed that I should be left in peace “hnnn”?’
‘Dr Busner, you mean “huu”?’
Simon was taken aback – and fell back on to his arse. ‘Busner – you mean the Quantity Theory chimp “huu”?’
‘He was involved with it, yes, together with other chimps. ’ Jane Bowen was intrigued. Could this – Simon’s recognition of Busner, a chimp he didn’t know personally – be some vitiation of his agnosia, some pinion between his delusory world and the real world?
‘I’ve seen of him – and heard him. He used to go on stupid game shows in the seventies, didn’t he “huu”? Bit of a charlatan, I always thought –’
‘ “Wraaaf”! What the hell d’you think you’re signing “h’huu”? Zack Busner is an extremely eminent chimpanzee – a great ape, in fact!’
Simon was stilled by the outburst, although he would have liked to continue taunting the monkey. Indeed, the act of taunting had made him feel more alive, more lucid, more embodied than he had since arriving at the hospital. But he feared the monkey. Feared she would come in. Feared she would touch him. ‘ “Hoooo.” I’m sorry, Your Medical Eminence,’ the madchimp cowered ‘I didn’t mean to disrespect your colleague. ’ And without knowing why he did so, Simon found himself presenting his arse to the ‘phone.
‘That’s all right, Simonkins, I quite understand,’ Jane Bowen countersigned, and asign to Sarah, ‘he’s comparatively lucid, I’ll get him to gesticulate with you.’
‘Simon, Sarah is here, she wants to sign to you, I’ll put her in front.’
Sarah? Simon dared to squint a little more closely at the screen, dared to imagine that he would see her adored features on its pitiful plasticity, the diamond visage, the widow’s peak. But instead, one monkey muzzle was replaced by another. ‘Simon, darling,’ Sarah signed. ‘ “Grnnn” it’s me, it’s Sarah, how are you, my love “huuu”? How are you?’ His muzzle was so gaunt, his fur so lustreless and lank, but he was still her male. She pulled back from the ‘phone camera as much as the confined space of the nurses’ station would allow, so that Simon could see her swelling-protector and imagine the delights it contained.
But what Simon saw was a chimpanzee wearing a blue T-shirt, and some sort of legless underpants, fastened by straps to the animal’s legs and furnished with a voluminous gusset; this had a great many ruffles and pleats that formed a whorl, like the petals of a rose, in the approximate region of the animal’s genitals. The sight was both comic – and disturbing. ‘ “Hooo” whassthis “huuu”?’
‘Simon,’ she resigned, ‘it’s me, Sarah.’
‘ “Hoooo” whatever you are, I can’t –’ His free hand was up by his eyebrow ridges, shielding the sight, and yet he still signed, ‘I can’t look at you.’
‘ “Hoo” Simon, “hoo” Simon, my poor love, I came to show you –’
‘What! “Hoooo” show me what, you – you absurdity!’
‘Show you that George is going ahead with the opening.’
‘The opening “huu”?’
‘Your opening. He’s had all the canvases stretched and framed himself. He’s opening your new show tonight.’
Sarah stared at her consort’s features. He seemed to be digesting the news, had she been right to tell him? Would this bring him back him into shore, back into her, or push him out further on to the turbulent, dark lake of his derangement? “Hooo’Graa”! he suddenly cried and then terminated the pant-hoot.
Chapter Eleven
Tony Figes had been squatting in Brown’s Hotel all that hot afternoon. He often went into Brown’s on dead midsummer afternoons such as these, when he had no copy to file, or no young male to range after. He liked the blend of chi-chi and old world about the hotel’s décor, and he liked to watch the American chimps come and go, tugging their little suitcases behind them as they arrived, then tugging the same suitcases, engorged by purchasing, when they left.
The Americans were often obese – even the bonobos. Tony, who imagined himself – quite rightly – to be ugly, got a rush of corporeal schadenfreude every time he saw one of them, knuckle-waddling along in a bell tent of Burberry, or a garish, Hawaiian shirt. And fat bonobos! – there was progress. To have gone, in barely over a hundred years, from slavery on the plantation, to obesity in a classy London hotel. Well, if that didn’t show the reality of the American Dream, what did?
He rustled and plumped his copy of the Evening Standard into a rough oblong, then dropped it on the coffee-table. Not much of a read for a newspaper, Tony thought, but then – It’s Not a Newspaper! The advertising slogan tripped off his mental fingertips so easily, and so irritatingly. In the last few months the ubiquitous Evening Standard vans, with their rapido design of red and white chevrons, had begun to sport the slogan, as had billboards and hoardings all over the city. The Evening Standard – It’s Not a Newspaper! That this had become the paper’s unique selling point was, thought Tony, a peculiar kind of justice.
As he knuckle-walked through the lobby, Tony Figes absent-mindedly plumped the side pockets of his rough silk, tunic-style jacket, checking for another oblong, the invitation to Simon Dykes’s private view. Tony had pant-hooted George Levinson at second-lunch time, suggestur-ing that he arrive early at the gallery, so that they could twine around tactics. Tony liked Simon well enough – but his real loyalty was to Sarah. He didn’t want Sarah upset by the press – or the punters.
As Tony scampered up Dove
r Street and round the corner into Grafton he tried to picture what lay ahead of him. George Levinson had embargoed any reproductions of Dykes’s new paintings, and now Simon was hospitalised with this terrible breakdown, there had been no possibility of the artist himself doing advance publicity. All that had arrived with the invitation was a detail of one. This was printed with the technique used for novelty 3-D postcards, and showed an infant in free-fall towards the viewer, its fur fringed with flame. Turn the postcard this way and that, and the fringe of fire around the hurtling body would flare.
Tony had received the invitation at his home, the flat in the block on Knatchbull Road that he had shared with his mother since birth. He avoided the slobber of her ancient lap pony, and her query, ‘ “H’huu” what’ve you got in the mail “huuu”? To-ony!’, to escape down the corridor, with its depressing, old-female smells, to his room. The room was decidedly odd. One half was intact from his sub-adulthood; posters of glam-rock bands from the early seventies, Slade, T-Rex and the Sweet; a nestspread was patterned with Beatrix Potter animals; shelves lined with the Narnia books, old comics – mostly young female’s titles, Jackie, Bunty, and so forth – and a few figurines of ballet dancers spun from glass.
But the other side of the room was distinctly male; dominated by a large knee-hole desk, covered with books, papers and a lightbox. Above the desk were shelves crammed with high-quality books of reproductions. There was a metal ashtray on the desk, full of the mutilated butts of Bactrian Lights, and by its side a piece of glass, smeared with fragments of cocaine. The miniature desktop set was caught in the spotlight of an Anglepoise lamp.
Tony chucked himself into the swivel chair by his desk, limbs bundled round his torso, like an infant in the prelude to a weaning tantrum. With one thick fingernail he slit the thick yellow envelope, engraved on the back, ‘Levinson Gallery. Fine Art’, and the 3-D burning infant tumbled on to the desk.
How often – Tony thought to himself – it was the case that the infant was alpha to the male. This burning infant – what could it betoken? In the last few weeks before his breakdown, Simon had given strong hints that the new paintings dealt with themes of corporeality, of the basic physical integrity of chimpness. Whenever Simon dropped these hints, Tony countersigned, tried to draw him out. But it wasn’t until the burning mite dropped on to his desk that Tony began to realise quite how shocking Simon’s paintings might be.
Now Tony swung around a lamp post from Grafton into Cork Street, and hung there for a while, observing the marvellously pink and effulgent arsehole of a cycle courier who was powering himself, up on the pedals of his racer, down towards Piccadilly. Tony shook his head. His head fur was moulting already – although he was barely thirty-five. For events such as this opening he felt he had to wear a toupee. He was as small and lithe as a bonobo – but that was a mixed blessing. Worse than any of this was that he knew he carried with him the taint of his mother’s decay; that the smell of her despairing old age hung around him prematurely.
Tony Figes linked his sense of bodily disgust with what he had gleaned about Simon, and Simon’s work. How germane, he thought, that this should be preoccupying him too, perhaps to the extent of driving him mad. Maybe Simon has lost the ability to suspend disbelief in mating – just as I have. Although no doubt for different reasons.
Tony may have felt physically cowardly – but he was brave enough to apply pressure to these digitations and speculate that this failure was linked to how chimps now lived, cut off from the natural world – housed in an essentially de-natured environment. Was it any wonder that the newspapers and magazines were full of cartoons that primatomorphised?
The New Yorker, which Tony took mostly to catch the photographic portraits of Mapplethorpe – and latterly Richard Avedon – was always full of cartoons that primatomorphised and often in the most ridiculous way; signing dogs, wisecracking moose, speculative bison, philosophic humans. There seemed no self-consciousness about this – or at any rate Tony had never seen anyone remark on the obvious species neuroticism that he detected lying behind them. The compulsion that must be prodding these wits to expose our rift from the rest of creation.
Only the previous week, the New Yorker had carried a cartoon depicting a typical Madison Avenue advertising male in gesticulation with a squirrel who was attached to a tree in Central Park. The squirrel was signing, ‘Sure, he’s as guilty as hell, now can we gesticulate about something else “huu”?’, an obvious reference to the trial of O. J. Simpson, a media circus that was whipping up the poisonous hysteria of bonoboism all over the USA. The ironies of the cartoon went deeper though, far deeper, Tony reflected as he got bipedal and swaggered into the Levinson Gallery.
‘ “H’hoooo” I’m so glad you’re here, Tony,’ George Levinson pant-hooted as he came knuckle-walking from the back of the gallery. ‘I’m a bundle of nerves – a bundle of nerves “eek-eek-eek”!’
‘ “H’hoooo” now, George, really, do try and get a grip on yourself …’ Tony countersigned, his scar writhed with embarrassment, transforming his already puckered muzzle into something resembling a crushed football.
The two chimps sank to the floor by the reception desk and cradled each other’s genitals for a while, then began to groom in an idle way. Tony managed to free globules of glue from between George’s toes, bits that had been troubling the dealer from the day before. George’s grooming was far more desultory – just an inattentive preening of the younger chimp’s fur.
As they groomed Tony could hear the grunts of the receptionist on the ‘phone, who was putting off a number of would-be latecomers to the opening. ‘It’s been like this all day,’ George inparted Tony’s belly. ‘Yesterday as well “hoooo”. I’m very anxious about openings at the best of times, but I think this one may well finish me off! I’ll probably end up in that hideous hospital – along with poor Simon “hoooo”!’
‘ “Grun-nnn” now, George “chup-chupp” – George, please …’ Tony broke off and grasping the edge of the desk pulled himself upright. The receptionist, seeing who it was, and being an ambitious young gallery female on the make – half presented to him, without ceasing her flutterings to the pant-hooter on the other end of the ‘phone.
George got bipedal as well. He was wearing, Tony noted, one of those irritating faux swelling-protectors that some of the younger gay chimps were currently sporting. Tony thought the fashion frankly absurd, and on George Levinson a case of an old ram dressed as a lamb, but didn’t have the heart to point it out – given the state George was in.
Tony Figes had been to the Levinson Gallery many times before. He approved of it, generally – if not always of what was within it. While the traditional exterior – full plate-glass window, discreet engraved sign – implied a complementary interior of oak panelling and brass picture hooks, George Levinson had, in fact, done his best to create a pure, negatively capable exhibition space. The walls were covered with a fine light-beige fabric; the overhead lights were sunken pin-pricks, faint and sidereal; the carpeting was so neutral in both colour and weave, as to be barely there at all. Following George Levinson’s scut down the long room, Tony imagined his hands and feet were sinking into a comfy voidlet. But this was not what impinged – the canvases impinged.
The gallery space was some forty hands high, twice as many wide, and a full two hundred hands long. Ranged along either wall were Simon Dykes’s paintings of modern apocalypse. The booking hall of King’s Cross tube station at the exact moment that the fire of 1987 erupted was the first canvas to engage Tony’s attention. He zeroed in on the pitiful wraaaaing face of the infant who was hurtling to a painful death, recognising it as the original of the detail he had received along with the invitation. Tony stood upright in front of the painting. It was at least twenty hands square. The brushwork at the very centre, where the infant was suspended, was exact, nearly photoreal, but towards the edges it grew looser and looser, until near the frame there were thick layers of paint, worked into ridges and troughs.
/> ‘ “H’hooooo” my God, George,’ Tony signed. ‘ “Hoo” my God! I see what you m –’
‘You see what I mean “h’huu”?’
‘I do – I do. ’ Tony moved on to the next canvas, which Simon had entitled simply Aerial Chartres. This portrayed the interior of a Boeing 747 at – he instantly realised – the exact moment that its fuselage was being crumpled by impact. Whole rows of seating were being tossed together with their occupants, into a heavy salad of death. As with the previous canvas there was at the centre a photoreal depiction of an infant. This one was oblivious of its fate, still strapped into its seat; its toes and fingers were fully employed in manipulating the toggles of a Sony Gamemale. Clearly visible on the screen was the paradoxically miniature, humanoid figure of Donkey Kong.
‘My God!’ resigned Tony Figes, then vocalised, “Hoooo.”
‘They’re scary, aren’t they “huu”?’ George Levinson was gaining some sense of security from Tony’s distress. George had, after all, been living with the paintings for weeks. And because of Simon’s breakdown he had also been responsible for the stretching and framing – work the painter normally undertook himself. He continued gesturing. ‘To put it crudely – with Simon in hospital and apparently mad, the urge the critics always have to conflate life and work will become ineluctable, wouldn’t you sign “huu”?’
‘I would, George. Let’s go out back and have a drink and a line. I think we’re both going to need them.’
When the two chimps emerged from George’s office, some twenty minutes, two drinks, and three lines later, the gallery was already beginning to fill up. It was the usual sort of opening crowd – or at any rate the usual sort of crowd attracted to one of Simon Dykes’s openings. The group of younger conceptual artists who were currently dominating the scene in London were among the first to arrive.