Wish

  He wasn’t deaf. It would have been far easier and quicker to speak the word, especially standing in the rain, but perhaps he wanted to prove something. I stepped closer, sharing the umbrella.

  His hands moved again. ‘Your name Sweet-Tooth?’

  The attempted familiarity irritated me, but his use of Sign irritated me more—an attempt to establish a professional intimacy which had not been earnt. There seemed a selfishness in it, a self-absorption. He had flown from Melbourne for Wish, but was more interested in impressing me with his grasp of Sign than asking how she was. I watched his hands, critically. He was self-taught, clearly, his signing cluttered with ingrained bad habits. The hint of a beginner’s course of Auslan, half-digested, could also be detected. His movements were slow, with too much emphasis on finger-spelling; there was no flow. The same mispronunciations and errors of grammar I had corrected in Wish some months before were evident even in those first greetings.

  ‘Let’s get out of the rain,’ I said aloud. ‘You take the brolly.’

  He waved it away. ‘No point in both of us getting wet.’

  He shouldered his rucksack and strode, lopsided, ahead of me across the mud and through the inner gate into the trees. His soaked shirt clung to his bony back; a rat-tail of long wet hair hung behind his head, stiff and shining, like a length of electric flex. When we reached the verandah he dumped his rucksack and shook himself in the manner of a wet dog.

  ‘Wish—how?’ he finally asked, in Sign.

  The choice of medium still seemed more important to him than the message.

  ‘I think she has a fever,’ I said aloud.

  Further sign-language seemed beyond him; he reverted to speech. ‘What does Stella think?’

  ‘She doesn’t think it’s serious.’

  Stella’s voice carried to us, vaguely, from upstairs, a book-reading monotone. We climbed the stairs to find the door open, and Stella sitting in a bedside chair, reading to Wish, reading at her back, trying without success to rouse her from her torpor.

  Terry walked to Stella’s side and squeezed her shoulder. He stared silently at Wish for some time, at her hacked head of hair and damaged back. He managed to hide any distress he felt. Water dripped from his hair; Stella rose and left the room, returning with a towel; he rubbed his wet head, gratefully, squeezing his rat-tail in a milking fashion.

  ‘You need to get out of those clothes, Terry.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  His first words in Wish’s hearing; she lifted her head slightly at the sound—then returned it to the pillow, still facing the wall, determined not to acknowledge our presence.

  Terry watched her intently. ‘If you don’t mind I’d like to be alone with her. It’s been a while, we need to get reacquainted.’

  Stella’s eyes met mine, I reluctantly followed her out. Terry closed the door behind us; excluded, we retreated downstairs. Stella uncorked a bottle of wine and we sat at the kitchen bench, sipping, saying little. Her three dogs flattened themselves against the floor at her feet, staring up, not taking their eyes from her face, alert to her unease. Rain fell steadily, cigarette butts accumulated, the big hand of the kitchen clock counted out the minutes, in small jerks, inexorably. Thirty, at least, had passed and Stella had uncorked a second bottle, before Terry descended with news.

  ‘She held my hand.’

  Stella’s relief was brief, subsumed by other concerns. ‘Did she sign to you? Did she say what’s troubling her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I think she just wants to be left alone.’

  He sank into an armchair; I joined Stella on the couch opposite, waiting for more information.

  ‘In retrospect I think it was a mistake for me to fly over.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Stella. What happened, after all? Wish tried to change her appearance—tried to make herself more human.’

  ‘She mutilated herself.’

  A smile fought its way out through his beard. ‘Hardly. Let’s keep it in perspective. The hair will grow back.’

  His low-key approach, eroding the mountain back into a molehill, had a calming effect on Stella; his professional assurances—as zoologist, primatologist—clearly carried more weight than mine. Her dogs, sensitive to human body language, also relaxed. Binky struggled to her feet, waddled to her water bowl and lapped, briefly.

  Terry’s voice murmured on, soothingly, a resonant bass, surprising in one so thin and flat-chested. ‘She just wants to fit in. I suppose you could even argue that it’s reassuring. She obviously thinks deeply about who she is, and where she belongs. I’ve seen similar behaviour in other orphan apes.’

  I was beginning, despite myself, to warm to him. His English was far more fluent, and less pretentious, than his Sign.

  Stella quibbled: ‘Even apes brought up in human families?’

  ‘Especially apes brought up in human families. And perhaps especially apes with enhanced intelligence.’

  I almost let this pass; said matter-of-factly, in that soothing tone of voice, it didn’t obtrude. Stella’s stifled half-glance in my direction alerted me.

  ‘I don’t follow. What do you mean, enhanced intelligence?’

  Terry glanced towards Stella, surprised. ‘He doesn’t know?’

  ‘Clive thought it best—given the legal situation. The illegal situation.’ She turned my way and placed her hand over her heart.

  ‘I’m sorry, J.J.—believe me, we were going to tell you. But you must have had an inkling. You’ve said yourself, Wish is much smarter than the Washoes and Kokoes of the world. And she looks different.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about why Wish is such a special—person.’

  I sat, suspended in ignorance, more curious than annoyed. The wine had loosened Stella’s tongue; even if Terry hadn’t leaked a hint, she would have told me sooner or later.

  ‘Wish is smarter than the average ape, J.J.’

  I watched her, uncomprehending. She added, realising that she hadn’t made herself clear: ‘She has been given a bigger brain.’

  The words were breathtaking, heart-stopping, the shock of a first plunge into a frigid sea. My startled hands moved in time with my mouth, saying the first thing that came into my head, a Claw Hand cauliflower-brain at the temple. ‘She hasn’t got a human brain?’

  Terry, mildly amused, shook his head. ‘We can’t transplant brains yet, John.’

  We? There was something boastful in his use of the first-person plural pronoun, arrogating the miracles of science to himself. I felt myself harden a little towards him again.

  They both watched me; it seemed I was required to keep guessing. ‘Genetic engineering?’

  ‘Something much simpler. We remove the embryonic adrenal glands, in utero.’

  ‘You operate on a gorilla foetus?’

  He nodded; I pressed on. ‘I don’t follow. How does that affect the brain?’

  ‘The theory is a little skimpy. It works—we’re not entirely sure why. You possibly know that the adrenal glands produce cortisone. Hormones. It would seem—I stress seem—that these hormones are involved in switching off the growth of the infant brain. The early work was done on rats—take out their adrenal glands, their brain cells proliferate.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, they can run a maze more quickly?’

  His eyes widened, surprised and impressed; perhaps I had shaded my sarcasm too subtly. ‘You’ve read the early work, J.J.? Rachel Yehuda, the University of Massachusetts?’

  Stella intervened: ‘I think J.J. was joking, Terry.’

  His tone turned cautious. ‘The laboratory rats did solve problems more easily. The rat cortex, at post-mortem, was found to have grown bigger, more dense with cells.’

  ‘It’s a big jump from rats to gorillas.’

  ‘We duplicated Yehuda’s work with smaller primates first. Rhesus macaques. We have some pretty smart monkeys in Melbourne.’


  Once again, there was an odd relish, or pride, in his tone. No vegetarian, this, surely. A protégé of Clive’s, perhaps, but no Animal Libber. So why exactly had he rescued Wish from the laboratory? He ploughed on, in lecture-mode, his resonant voice filling the room.

  ‘Human brains and gorilla brains are comparable in size in the embryonic stage. The difference is that a child’s brain keeps growing after birth, a gorilla’s stops. Remove the adrenal glands, it doesn’t. The brain continues to grow—much as a human child’s brain continues to grow through the first years of life.’

  Wish was temporarily forgotten; I found myself sidetracked by absurd particulars. ‘But if the brain continues to grow, how does it fit inside the skull?’

  ‘Increased density, in part. The skull capacity is there. The brain-cases of humans are often no bigger than the average gorilla.’

  Stella, calmer now, fortified by more wine, managed a weak joke. ‘It’s not how big it is, J.J.’

  ‘Of course it’s not just density,’ Terry said. ‘As the brain grew, we found the skull also grew—responded to the pressure. Wish has got a bigger head. Higher brow.’

  ‘I thought it was just a juvenile head.’

  Terry shook his own head. ‘She has an IQ of 110 on the Stanford-Binet.’ He added, unnecessarily: ‘Well above the human average.’

  This was all too sudden to assimilate. I said: ‘There must be problems.’

  The faint pride in his voice vanished. I had reminded him of the seriousness of the issues, or perhaps reminded him of a different source of pride: that it was he who had stolen—rescued—Wish.

  ‘There are technical problems. The animals can’t survive without replacement medication. A daily dose of corticosteroids. They have sacrificed a lot of animals in Melbourne.’

  They? Could We so easily vanish, without responsibility, or apology?

  ‘Shit! With all the fuss I forgot her medication.’ Stella jerked up out of her seat and headed for the stairs.

  I was pleased to see her leave; I felt I could criticise Terry, a guest in her house, more easily behind her back.

  ‘What was it all for?’

  The question seemed painful; his tone of voice became less resonant. ‘Pure research, originally. But we live in the real world—a world of compromise. Money was needed.’

  By whom, I wanted to ask: You or They? Money was needed. Here was a third category of grammatical responsibility, a sentence free of human agency completely, the buck stopping nowhere, batted between transitive verbs and disappearing subjects.

  ‘The money came with strings attached. The goal was to produce primates that could perform a range of intelligent tasks.’

  I saw it, suddenly, through his fog of euphemisms. ‘Slaves for the assembly line! You bastards.’

  ‘Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, Sweet-Tooth. I’m on your side. What do you think I’m doing here?’

  We watched each other for a moment; he finally averted his eyes.

  ‘Sweet-Tooth is a family name,’ I told him coldly.

  The extended family of the Deaf, perhaps—but excluding him.

  He shrugged, taking the rebuke in stride. ‘There is an argument for such animals, John, even if it’s not a particularly good one. You can’t get humans to do certain jobs anymore. Domestic help, for instance. Look around you; we’ve educated ourselves out of the workforce.’

  He was speaking generally, intending no irony, but I couldn’t help glancing over the cluttered squalor of that living room; the books and papers heaped on the floor, the unwashed coffee mugs and wineglasses and dog-bowls, the discarded shoes.

  ‘We can’t all be brain surgeons and film directors, maybe, but we won’t spot-weld on an assembly line anymore. We think the world owes us a living—plus happiness, fulfilment, a career path…At least that’s the theory.’

  He tried once again to distance himself from the notion, but this part of it—the theory—obviously appealed to him. I wondered again when he had first turned against his own project.

  ‘What happened after Wish vanished? There must have been a witch-hunt.’

  ‘The shit hit the fan for a few weeks. But apparently I was a citizen above suspicion.’

  ‘Gee, I wonder why.’

  This time my sarcasm found its mark, too easily. His eyes slid away from mine again, he smiled, wistfully. ‘I stayed with the project. It seemed best to work on the inside. They managed to get hold of some gibbons. Siamangs. I can live with that—it’s a matter of damage control. A pragmatic decision. I’m only a small cog in the machine, John. I do some of the surgery. If I don’t do the work, someone else will.’

  Once again my hands moved with an urgency of their own, saying the same thing as my mouth. ‘That’s bullshit.’

  He looked me directly in the eye. ‘Maybe. I wouldn’t tell Stella this, let alone Clive, but half my life is bound up in this project. It’s asking too much to throw that away.’

  Logic had failed to convince me, now he was trying to woo me with intimacy. Sensing only hostility in return, he came back to more general arguments: ‘I still believe in it—it’s important work. Think of the implications for human intelligence. These issues are always more complex than they seem to outsiders.’

  All of which still didn’t explain his rescue of Wish. I took an inspired guess: ‘But you got emotionally attached to one animal?’

  He smiled weakly, caught out. I felt a small surge of sympathy; for the first time I had a handle on his confusion. Sentimentality, not moral principle, was his guide.

  ‘They wanted frozen sections of her brain,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t possibly agree to that.’

  Other apes, yes, gibbons, rhesus macaques—but not his favourite. Stella returned before I could put the question. She seemed fraught.

  ‘She won’t take her cortisone. She threw it all against the wall.’

  Terry’s tone of voice was warm, buttery, calming. ‘That might be a good sign. She’s reacting again.’

  ‘She’s communicating,’ I said. ‘It’s a well-known Auslan sign.’

  He obligingly asked the obvious: ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means I don’t want to take my medicine.’

  He chuckled; even Stella managed a small smile.

  ‘I’d better go back up,’ Stella said.

  Terry shook his head. ‘I think you should give her time. She’s an adolescent—a teenager, in human years. She doesn’t want her mother prying in her room. She needs a little headspace.’

  ‘I’ll take her some food.’

  ‘Later. Relax, Stella.’

  ‘No, I’ll take it up now.’

  ‘If you must, but I suggest you merely knock, and leave the tray outside the door.’

  4

  Stella carried down the tray an hour later; Wish’s bowl was empty.

  ‘Sign for—I’m feeling a bit better,’ Terry joked.

  His boots were elastic-sided, he eased each off with the toe of the opposite foot, and settled himself lengthways on the sofa. Stella began fishing vegetables from the fridge, whatever came to hand; I joined her behind the bench, peeling and chopping as she heated oil in a wok. The problems of the present receded somewhat; I was keen to hear more of Wish’s early infancy. This made for problems of priority; Terry was as desperate for news of the previous months as I was for news of the previous years. A kind of tacit trade-off, or pattern of exchange, emerged. Tit-for-tat.

  ‘I’ve been in phone contact with Clive and Stella of course. They’ve told me of her progress. I have to congratulate you, John—it’s remarkable what you’ve achieved.’

  ‘She deserves the congratulations. I can’t recall a single human student of Sign with anything like her aptitude.’

  Stella tossed a handful of chopped fresh chillies and garlic into the hissing oil; a pungent, eye-stinging aroma instantly filled the room. The world outside was wet and cold, the downstairs rooms unheated, but the smell of her cooking warmed and comforted me, nourished me even before t
he food it promised had arrived. The wine also helped. I answered Terry’s questions freely and expansively, even set down my chopping knife to demonstrate a few of Wish’s own sign-inventions. Later, as we ate, it was my turn to ask the questions. The first received a blunt answer.

  ‘Her father was a test-tube of frozen sperm, John.’

  ‘And her mother?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Old age?’

  He shook his head. ‘Childbirth. They had to sacrifice the mother. Transverse arrest.’

  I looked from the primatologist to the vet, puzzled.

  ‘The head got stuck, J.J.,’ she said.

  ‘Couldn’t you have used forceps? Or done a caesarean?’

  Terry ignored the implications of ‘you’, a nuance I couldn’t resist. ‘Not my field of expertise. You have to understand, this was a new area for all of us.’

  ‘I assumed you’d been working with primates for years.’

  ‘Ordinary primates—yes. Not primates with extra neurones. The average gorilla neonate weighs a couple of kilos at most; they squeeze out with ease.’

  Another clue to digest. ‘Let me get this clear in my mind. The mother died because Wish’s head was too big to squeeze out?’

  ‘The price of intelligence, John. Man is the only species which experiences pain during childbirth.’

  Stella reached across and rested her hand lightly on his. ‘Woman,’ she corrected.

  There was something in that touch that alerted me; I began to watch for other signs of intimacy.

  Terry said: ‘A design fault, you might argue. Our brains have grown too big for our pelvic outlets.’

  ‘Sounds like some kind of moral fable.’

  Stella chimed in. ‘It’s already been written, J.J. It’s called the Book of Genesis. Eve’s punishment after eating from the tree of knowledge.’

  I looked at her blankly, she intoned: ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children…’