by Colin McAdam
He responds to the name Looee but sometimes wonders whom people are calling. He remembers Looee, who lived in a house.
They no longer introduce the apes by name. The female born in the colony to Mama was never named, though the staff call her Beanie. David points out, obviously, that names don’t exist in the wild. I wouldn’t be David if my grandmother hadn’t been Welsh.
Looee walks tentatively out into the sun.
Jonathan runs and throws a handful of shit at him.
Looee retreats inside and they make the iron door slide down.
He goes to the corner and tries to sleep.
A system of tunnels is controlled from within.
During power struggles and times of uncertainty, fights can escalate to the point of fatality. Individuals and groups are carefully monitored. As much as the staff try to keep their hands off, they don’t want them to die.
Looee is anaesthetized and moved to the sleeping quarters. He wakes up in a very large cage with a concrete floor. It is nine feet tall with an elevated platform. There is room to nest on the floor or on the platform.
The iron grids are broadly spaced and there are large high windows and skylights in the room. A catwalk traverses the cages and leads to the various tunnels. The cages are opened or closed with electric locks. The chimps amble at will along the catwalk and find their own cages.
When Looee wakes up he finds new blankets and a GI Joe doll.
His cage is where Podo last slept.
He is excited by the prospect of sunshine but is nervous about being naked outside. He knows that even on warm days the mountains share their chill with the valleys and campfires are needed in the woods.
He finds his way nervously through a tunnel, touches the dirt and feels grass and sun. Hot sun and summer smells.
Jonathan and Magda see the yek emerge and they raise the alarm. Magda screams and throws her hands in the air and runs to the women and Bootie.
Looee sees a dogperson running at him and it looks like he won’t stop. It’s the crazy one who lost the tooth. He gets hit and is scared despite feeling that he shouldn’t be afraid of these animals. He cowers while he is hit, and then runs.
Jonathan runs after him but not to catch him. Jonathan makes sure that others are backing him. He watches the yek stop running at the bank of the pokol-fear.
Looee looks at all of them screaming and bustling. He is weak and sweating. He scoops water from the moat into his hands and drinks. He quickly plunges his head underwater like Walt taught him when they went fishing.
They watch him emerge from doing what no one has done and they scream and Magda hugs Jonathan. He jumps and screams and runs to others for a touch of hands.
Looee looks at a nearby eucalypt, the likes of which he has never seen. He pulls his broken body up the branches.
Jonathan hools and drums the base of the greybald tree and knows he can climb but doesn’t. He runs through the rest of them and hits Mr. Ghoul and shows the World who truly sits atop it. His violent run stirs many and Mama is in ¡harag!
She hates the men’s constant abuse of Mr. Ghoul, and the presence of the yek is a brief new perspective, a momentary catalyst for correcting the state of the World. Soon there is a fight involving six of them.
Above the noise, no violence worse than that of his adult life, Looee sways on a naked branch, a fruit reclaimed by the sun. As the fight plays out and some uneasiness flares about this strange new space below, he feels the heat on his face and smells fresh air. He sees fields and buildings and cars and people. No one can see his face.
He sways at the top and the tree nods and dips like an absurd and sage old dancer. The long melancholy sound like wind through wide pipes is Looee’s nervous song of joy, too soft for anyone to hear.
Mr. Ghoul’s bedroom is next to the yek’s. He wants to show him that you can fold back the upper platform and have more space.
Everyone has underestimated Burke. He has grown faster, cannier and stronger by the year. They redraw the hierarchy and sociograms and wonder how the introduction of Looee will affect the colony.
Burke and Jonathan corner the yek at the wall of the Hard and they beat him, fists like axes to wood.
There is a dedicated infirmary to deal with illness and injury. Both are carefully monitored but selectively treated. The chimps help each other and have learned to indicate when other help is needed. Some of them are able to apply ointment on themselves or others.
The philosophy of the project, though altered over time, is to see how these apes behave when they are well fed, well housed and benefit from medical care, but the latter is only offered when injury or illness is grave.
Video footage shows Ghoul sitting by Looee’s inert body as he had with Podo.
Staff were alerted and Looee was taken to the infirmary. Three of his ribs were broken, a lung was punctured, and his face had several lacerations.
The facial injuries are left unstitched because such wounds are common and heal surprisingly quickly.
There is a television in the infirmary where they play Sesame Street and Gorillas in the Mist.
Looee is strapped to a bed at forty-five degrees. There is television and good food and when he is not sedated he spends much of the time in a tethered panic.
For these, his past, and most of the rest of his days, he does not know where he is. A diplomat’s son.
He is not Looee. He is not a number. He is not he without others to need and define him.
There is a truth in every corner of Girdish. Every ape has a home and leaves it; every ape is lost without other apes.
He wants to climb again in that warm sun to verify that all the mountains have truly disappeared.
When he is returned to his cage, his neighbour is repeatedly raising and lowering his platform bed, and pointing to a board with symbols on it.
Looee wearily pushes the platform bed against the cagewall and feels there is much more space. He makes a nest on the floor with his blankets.
Mr. Ghoul is lazily, autistically, pointing at the symbols for up and window and vodka, meaning that when the bed is up you can look through the windows at the moon.
Looee relaxes on his blankets despite the noises of others. Fourteen years of nightmares have made this warm and easy.
He nonetheless has nightmares. He wakes in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming and believing that labtechs are aiming at him with guns.
Mr. Ghoul and several others wake up and wish that Looee would be quiet.
In front of each of their cages is a trolley with a small supply of food. They reach out and take what they want. In the morning they go outside as they please. A large quantity of food is laid out for them in the vestibule and outside the tunnel doors, so they are usually motivated to leave the sleeping quarters.
Cameras film their behaviour during these communal feeding sessions. Who eats first, who shares with whom, what conflicts result and how are they resolved.
Looee’s liver and kidneys are damaged from the years of biomedical challenges and his appetite wavers. He is often nervous and nauseated and eats things selectively. He only eats the skin of apples. The clinical staff know that the skin is rich in quercetin and is good for the liver. They know that Looee doesn’t know this, of course, and they ask if all knowledge is truly seated in the brain.
For weeks he tries to avoid everyone. He feels simultaneously superior and nervous.
Several of them make threatening gestures at him whenever they can. He is frightened of Jonathan and Burke and knows they will attack him again. Yet he is also not frightened of them. He feels their fists and feet but they also don’t seem real.
They attack him again and he runs away. He has nowhere to turn. He runs up the electrified tree and feels warm while his memory and emotions are cleaned, reordered and toasted. The dogpeople are all screaming below him. He jumps down carrying a charge and he is insensitive to the fact that perceptions of him are changing.
Fifi wants him.
He runs and sits and doesn’t know how to fight.
The ache for oa is universal. The arrival of the yek has provided some diversion but there is also even more instability.
The women don’t support Jonathan because they can no longer bear the pointed reprisals of Burke. His vigilance is greater than Jonathan knows. Jonathan writhes on the ground having far too many tantrums and they are all unwilling or afraid to give him comfort.
They feel that they are always being watched. Every movement can meet with Burke’s or Jonathan’s disapproval. Nothing can be done without consideration. Fear is in the air, even for Jonathan now as he tries to keep the women in his fold. Burke stands big whenever Jonathan makes overtures to someone. He stands over Magda when she leans forward for Jonathan. He seems twice the size of both of them. She bows low and trembles and Jonathan aches while the union is thwarted.
It is to this increasingly sexless place that Looee has arrived. Some are sympathetic to the fear of others and some are vigilant of misdeeds—eager to report the errors of others to win favour from Jonathan or Burke. There is skulking and looking over shoulders and constant silent scheming. Nothing grows but fear—desire won’t take root.
When Looee was on the CID Wing, he spent so long trying to survive that his sexual desire has effectively disappeared. He has breathed an air of fear more concentrated than this.
There could be a release. He could feel an opening here. But the dogpeople are as unattractive to him as the mothers are to Burke. Something stirs when he is allowed a glimpse of the researchers. Nail polish. Bermuda shorts. Like Dusty, he has developed an attraction to rubber and he ejaculates when he thinks of smelling a boot.
Burke squirts white when he sleeps. Fists, teeth, dying screams from the daughters of loose mothers. He pounds on Bootie who himself has grown into this taboo World of a sister and men and frequent masturbation.
Mr. Ghoul has escaped with Fifi to the grove but the appointments grow more costly and less possible. Everyone is watching, wanting to join or wanting to report. Jonathan’s constant arousal has to be somehow hidden from Burke and there are times when he must use his hands to cover his urgent and telltale twig.
Looee has arrived in Berlin.
The new one shows an irrepressible interest in him.
He walks like a dog and is naked and he can’t believe the weather.
He is always the last to leave in the morning. He likes sleeping in and wants to avoid the communal breakfast, like anyone intelligent who stays at a B&B.
He craves the fresh air, and when he is outside he sits with his back to the wall of the building. The wall gets hotter in the sun as the day progresses, and he moves. He keeps his side or back to things whenever possible.
He has realized that Burke is the one to be afraid of. He knows that others are watching him and he tries not to make eye contact with anyone.
He isn’t able to distinguish them all yet. When he sees them alone he sometimes can’t remember who is who, but when some are together he can tell the difference.
Fifi is very fat. She seems to be gesturing for him to come over all the time, but she does it furtively and doesn’t look directly at him.
Burke is obvious because his hair is always on end and the others seem constantly aware of what he is doing.
Looee moves if any of them come close, and he moves especially quickly if Burke or Jonathan approaches. He makes the effort to climb a tree.
The view is endless and reassuring.
He watches people on the roof of the building and on the observation posts. They come and go and eat sandwiches. Occasionally they throw things down, watermelons and bundles of sticks, and they point a camera at the pandemonium below. Looee watches with an arrogant eye and they point the camera at him. He is tempted by the watermelon.
He looks down and watches the dogperson who sleeps in the cage next to his. Mr. Ghoul finds a piece of watermelon that nobody has noticed. He quickly buries it. When noise dies down he goes to the edge of a thick group of bushes and trees and raises an alarm. He looks into the dark and hollers and the others are all curious. Burke runs in with some others and while everyone is occupied with the fiction in the grove, the dogperson comes back to eat his buried fruit in peace.
Looee thinks this is smart. His neighbour looks up to him in the tree. He holds up a piece as if he is offering it to Looee or is acknowledging that he has been caught.
The only tangible legacy of language research at Girdish, besides published papers neglected by the academy, is the piece of cardboard printed with lexigrams which Mr. Ghoul keeps in his cage.
Mama is the only other who was conversant with those symbols but she has been too busy with motherhood and negotiating the weakness of men, and she was never as good with the language as Mr. Ghoul was.
He offers things to the yek through their shared wall. He points to the pictures for Visitor and friend and he lists various things that he has eaten today.
Looee sleeps as much as he can. He feels safest in his night cage, but can’t stop fearing the approach of men with guns.
The grids between the adjoining cages are much larger than those in the distant dark of Congo. Like Dusty, the dogperson next to Looee passes objects to him through the grid. He can also extend his hand into Looee’s cage.
Bootie is in the bedroom next to Mr. Ghoul and Mama is next to Bootie. Mama can see through to Mr. Ghoul and the yek but can’t reach them. She watches Mr. Ghoul moving around and muttering and tapping on pictures.
Mr. Ghoul’s hand is dangling in Looee’s cage, hanging and waving.
Come here.
The researchers note that some of the females are carrying their pink swellings around like yesterday’s luxury.
For Mama, hope still drifts and struggles like a butterfly in the wind. She looks for change and sees it in her daughter and she wonders about the yek.
When she is pink she feels vulnerable. She wants someone to sit with.
Mr. Ghoul feels a protective urge towards her but he can never get near her.
Mama sees his back in his bedroom and wonders what he is doing with the yek. She finds the yek more interesting the longer Mr. Ghoul has his back turned.
And Looee remembers Larry.
He remembers his friend trying to get in his way and lock him in his house when he wanted to see Susan. Larry so brittle and weak.
Looee barks and Mr. Ghoul wonders why he is barking.
Looee screams and tries not to think of Larry and he jumps and finds all memories confusing. He screams and jumps up at the dogperson. He does so repeatedly to get the memories out.
He wanted to get outside. He wanted to see Susan and was tired of mummy always being in the way.
Mr. Ghoul is frightened.
Mama and Bootie see the yek looking huge and scary and soon all bedrooms are screaming.
Mama wants to touch the yek.
Mr. Ghoul walks in circles and sits in the corner and taps dirty dirty Visitor dirty.
Looee doesn’t remember what he was doing.
He looks at Mr. Ghoul with the cardboard symbols and the lights go off.
He remembers doing puzzles with Walt.
He wants to do the dogperson’s puzzle with him.
In the morning there is no one else in the cages and the sun shines brightly through the skylights. Looee’s better health and less constant fear of pain have made more space in his days for remembering. When he shifts he sees dust rise in the sunlight. He taps his blanket and sends up more. He remembers sitting on the living room couch when sun came through the windows, the same puff and smell of dust.
There is the loneliness that feeds on itself and turns one inwards till there is nothing left, not even breath. And there is the loneliness that sends one out to dispel it.
He wants to bring the dogperson’s puzzle to him outside but he doesn’t know how to open his cage to get it. He walks along the catwalk, out into the sun.
Mr. Ghoul is sitting alone.
He sees the yek walking cautiously towards him. The yek keeps close to the pokol-fear and is oblivious to the movement of others.
Looee walks like some mythical god of boundaries, all rivals ignored as he claims his line. He sits near Mr. Ghoul.
They look at each other and Mr. Ghoul’s hand says come here.
They grunt and touch and each looks like a man who calmly sits with a struggling son and says okay let’s get this done.
They groom, assess, correct and reassure, two mirrors deeper than any made by hand.
Magda delays the serving of dinner by not coming inside. She wants attention. In the morning several of them beat her.
Looee learns the rules.
In the evening Mr. Ghoul puts his arm around Looee’s shoulders and encourages him inside.
Burke seems ever larger. His back is often turned, shoulders forward when he sits, and no one dares to go near him. He seems to be staring at some black domain that darkens the deeper he looks. But he is aware of what everyone does behind him.
In the evening he shoulders his way through the line towards dinner.
Looee feels a flash of heat behind one of his legs and he falls down.
Burke pushes through and the others find their way to their cages.
Looee is unable to put weight on his leg and he limps along the catwalk to the roof of his cage and climbs in.
His hamstring has been cut and partly severed by Burke’s teeth. It will be stitched in the morning. He can’t see it so he shows it to Mr. Ghoul. He lies on his side, pressed up against the partition, and Mr. Ghoul tries to push the wound together with his fingers. He licks it and eats his dinner and spits his flavoured saliva on the wound.
Looee is afraid and dreams of retribution.
thirty-one
When Dr. Heinz, now retired, tried to encourage people to send their pet chimpanzees to Girdish, he delivered a brochure with photos of the field station. The photo on the cover was taken from within the enclosed garden. It is a typically sunny day. A stylish white building is blurred in the background, behind several chimpanzees who are sitting pensively on the lawn. Mr. Ghoul and Podo sit side by side and the caption reads Much of Their Life Is Spent in Thought.