A Beautiful Truth

by Colin McAdam

  No one predicted it.

  Magda gradually resented the new one. She had seen Jonathan’s interest and did not want a new woman to complicate the World. She had attacked the new one through the plekter at night, scratching her face and pulling on her arm. She fought with many the next day and learned how things were changing.

  The new one no longer slept near Magda’s side of her night cage. She was afraid and wanted friends.

  Burke made sucking sounds and lured her in the dark. He pushed his mouth through the bars. He dangled both of his arms into her room and she did not trust him, but she couldn’t resist. Her fear made his invitation more compelling.

  She turned submissively and he touched her. She sat nearby and he chewed some fruit. He offered her the chewed wad of fruit from his mouth as if he were her mother. She stood to take it with her mouth and his hands trapped her hard against the bars. He opened his mouth and sucked, salt fruit and bone. He held the back of her head and ate her face.

  The staff heard alarm calls in the morning. They came down before opening the cages and saw several of them jumping hysterically and pacing. The girl was lying in a pool of blood. Her jaw was hanging by a tendon and what was left of her tongue drooped unsupported to her neck.

  One of the staff went into her cage and picked her up. Magda made threatening gestures at him.

  He walked through the vestibule carrying the eleven-year-old girl against his chest. David watched him come into the study area covered in blood. She was still alive but sounded like she was drowning.

  Looee and Mr. Ghoul, at the far end of the chamber, didn’t know what was going on. They were kept in their cages all day, food brought out on trolleys.

  Mr. Ghoul could tell that something was wrong with Mama. She was keening and screaming and leaping at the side of her cage.

  He paced and made desperate noises and intently touched and groomed the yek. His fingers told stories of need.

  Fifi was in the night cage next to Magda’s. She was Mama’s informant. She touched Mama and screamed pointedly at Burke. Mama learned that Magda had not been involved.

  They were kept in their cages and fed for three days. The staff naively hoped that things might settle down. What little Mama ate she choked on.

  The locks buzz open. Mama pushes her door and runs along the catwalk and stops above Burke. She screams and tries to break the iron, and diarrhea sprays down over Burke. He will kill her when he comes out.

  By the time he does, Mama has touched or been touched by everyone but Magda. Burke runs straight for Mama, and Jonathan is the first to knock him down.

  It is the most vicious and prolonged beating they have on record. David feels sick but he is the best at identifying the actors and actions. Even he needs to review the footage closely. When fists stop rising it eventually looks like a group of wild dogs busily feeding on a carcass. There is jostling, and side fights, and some of them come and go. Mama walks away from Burke and throws something into the moat. Fifi is notably on the fringe of the attack.

  He finds the gradual lack of emotion on their faces to be the most unsettling, the way they eventually walk away and seem to go about their business. He is trained to read subtleties and knows there is more than meets the eye, but he is acculturated to expect keening, remorse, articulate shock and grief.

  When they are locked in at dinner the staff retrieve Burke’s testicles from the moat and take his body to the main site. Some organs may still be of use.

  David feels a strange need when he goes home to come clean about every lie he has ever told, and to tell his wife that he loves her and knows what is important.

  For weeks there is a bruised and chilly calm, an air like the early northern spring, weak promise amidst bad memories. Among all of them is a fragile mood of mutual respect. The staff agonize over the condition of Mama. She wastes in her grief.

  Fifi too is grieving. At first they assume she is grieving for the girl, but the extent does not make sense.

  Despite her hatred of what Burke did, he was hers.

  It is proof to some that adoption was complete, that apes can call anyone a son. Her interaction with the group is uneasy.

  The girl’s jaw was reattached in the hospital at the main site. She has been fed by tubes. There was extensive plastic surgery and she is kept in clinic for two months. She won’t be able to function without human help while she recovers.

  So while the staff rejoice on the one hand, they wish they could somehow put Mama at ease.

  Looee grooms Mama, as roughly as he can.

  The new one is released from the introduction room. She wears a helmet and jaw-brace and her sounds, forever altered, combust against her palate.

  Mama runs and throws her arms up repeatedly, and vomits from shock and joy. As the news spreads over the acres, all arms go up as if a war has ended.

  They gather around the new one, and poke and smell her helmet.

  She gets special meals that she drinks through straws, and Magda and Bootie are jealous.

  The radio says it is ninety-eight degrees.

  Looee steps out onto the grass.

  They wear the same skin, no difference in temperature between Looee’s chest and the air that rests on the grass. They sit in the body of the World, and the earth, Looee, the leaves and that tower are equal and temporary facts.

  One of the researchers wants to show her new baby to Mama. She takes him out to the other tower and waits for Mama to look up. A few of them are curious. Mama comes closer, then looks for her own daughter. The woman hears Mama issue a telltale hoo whimper towards Beanie: come and let me feed you. But the new one is older and wants her own baby to play with.

  Looee naps on the grass under a threat-free sky. He hasn’t done this since he was a child. He awakes and sleeps again. Jonathan is sleeping nearby and neither minds the other. Two hairy men dreaming on the grass.

  Mr. Ghoul sits with Fifi and Mama and it feels like the three of them are sharing a secret smile. Warmth and wet arise in Mr. Ghoul and Fifi. She turns and manoeuvres and grips his curiosity. He holds her hips while his own roll and jerk. Mama turns her back and presses her backside against Mr. Ghoul’s while he is inside Fifi. This is a pact, a trusting sweet agreement. Fifi squeezing tight, Mama on his doojy.

  It is most enjoyable.

  He eats and thinks of Podo for a moment. He smells Fifi on his fingers and feels a dulchy sleep approaching.

  He sees Looee sleeping in the warmth. He sits nearby, flicks away a stick, and lies on his side. Their long arms are extended towards each other, their fingers almost touching.

  They sleep and twitch through dreams and Looee’s arm tingles under the pressure of his body. He moves and his fingers touch Mr. Ghoul’s. He is not fully awake and is frightened by the touch, but he relaxes when he sees Mr. Ghoul’s face.

  They both grumble and try to sleep but their fingers keep touching. Mr. Ghoul tickles Looee’s palm and Looee tries to ignore him. Mr. Ghoul leans over and puts his fingers in Looee’s armpits.

  Looee laughs and puts his feet in Mr. Ghoul’s face. He gets on top of him and they roll, and Mr. Ghoul nibbles Looee’s neck and his breath makes him giggle. Looee runs invitingly and when Mr. Ghoul follows he spins and tickles Mr. Ghoul’s ribs until he can’t bear it. Mr. Ghoul runs up a tree.

  Looee feels sick and delighted. He is no longer young.

  David wishes he could wear their skin.

  Listen to that sound.

  At dinnertime this is a cathedral of honesty. So many gigantic and short-lived confessions.

  Let me be inside that throat.

  That sound is Looee.

  He sits under these yellow lights. He sits on a blanket on concrete, a squat ape with a secret history, my cousin and a stranger.

  Listen to that sound he makes, richer than a howl and long. Chin up to the moon.

  Looee smells a blue plastic bowl and holds it up, above his head.

  He sings that note that wood and brass yearn for, grief
embodied and beaten.

  He moans and snaps and coughs and eats and speaks a language almost human. Pentecostal kitchen gossip. Brandy swoons and lonely comfort and orgasms baffled by swells of new delight.

  He is calling for someone.

  Laughing.

  He stops and hools that song from where beginnings and endings join.

  ¡Hooooooooooooooo!

  He’s eating spaghetti with meatsauce.

  ¡Whooo!

  Friends too far to hear him.

  acknowledgments

  I am grateful for the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

  This novel owes a debt to the research and stories of Frans de Waal, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Fouts, Herbert Terrace, Jane Goodall, Rachel Weiss, Maurice Temerlin, Vince Smith, as well as to the stories of many like Pepper and Billy Jo who neither wrote nor spoke.

  On the publishing front, my usual gratitude is to Doug Stewart. Thanks to Penguin Canada, especially Nicole Winstanley and Stephen Myers. And thanks to everyone at Soho Press, particularly Mark Doten and Paul Oliver, for energy and creativity.

  I would like to thank Dr. Jarrod Bailey and Dr. Theodora Capaldo at the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.

  My great thanks go to Nancy Megna for being generous with time and recollections. And the same to Gloria Grow and assistants at the Fauna Foundation, for showing me medical files and letting me meet your friends. It was a genuine honour to spend time with Sue Ellen, Rachel, Jethro, Regis, Spock, Binky, Chance, Yoko, Maya, Petra, and the noble, storied Tom (RIP). I mourn the loss of Pepper.

  And Suzanne, for everything. I’ll speak the words.