by Richard Klaw
Another shot of Annie at the typewriter.
“If you think this is just monkey business, you’d better think again. Tolstoy, watch out!”
Depressed by the lightness, brevity, and the stupid “monkey business” remark, Douglas turned off the television.
He sat for a long time. Whenever Therese had gone to bed, she had left him silently. After half an hour of staring at the blank screen, he rewound his video-recorder and ran it soundlessly until Annie’s face appeared.
And then froze it. He could almost feel again the softness of her halo of red hair against his chin.
He couldn’t sleep.
Therese had rumpled her way out of the sheet and lay on her side, her back to him. He looked at the shape of her shoulder and back, downward to the dip of the waist, up the curve of her hip. Her buttocks were round ovals, one atop the other. Her skin was sleek and shiny in the filtered street light coming through the window. She smelled slightly of shampoo and even more slightly of female.
What he felt for her, when he thought of her generally, anyone could call love. And yet, he found himself helplessly angry with her most of the time. When he thought he could amuse her, it would end with her feelings being hurt for some obscure reason. He heard cruel words come barging out of an otherwise gentle mouth. She took everything seriously; mishaps and misunderstandings occurred beyond his control, beyond his repair.
Under this satiny skin, she was troubled and tense. A lot of sensitivity and fear. He had stopped trying to gain access to what had been the happier parts of her person, not understanding where they had gone. He had stopped wanting to love her, but he didn’t not want to love her, either. It just did not seem to matter.
Sometimes, he thought, it would be easier to have someone like Annie for a wife.
Annie.
He loved her furry face. He loved the unconditional joy in her face when she saw him. She was bright and warm and unafraid. She didn’t read things into what he said, but listened and talked with him. They were so natural together. Annie was so filled with vitality.
Douglas withdrew his hand from Therese, whose skin seemed a bare blister of dissatisfaction.
He lay on the floor of the apes’ playroom with the fan blowing across his chest. He held Annie’s report on Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers by diagonal corners to keep it from flapping.
Annie lazily swung from bars crisscrossing the ceiling.
“Paul wasn’t happy at work because the boss looked over his shoulder at his handwriting,” she had written. “But he was happy again later. His brother died and his mother was sad. Paul got sick. He was better and visited his friends again. His mother died and his friends didn’t tickle him any more.”
Douglas looked over the top of the paper at Annie. True, it was the first time she’d read an “adult” novel, but he had expected something better than this. He considered asking her if Vernon had written the report for her, but thought better of it.
“Annie,” he said, sitting up. “What do you think this book is really about?”
She swung down and landed on the sofa. “About man,” she said.
Douglas waited. There was no more. “But what about it? Why this man instead of another? What was special about him?”
Annie rubbed her hands together, answerless.
“What about his mother?”
“She help him,” Annie answered in a flurry of dark fingers. “Especially when he paint.”
Douglas frowned. He looked at the page again, disappointed.
“What I do?” Annie asked, worried.
He tried to brighten up. “You did just fine. It was a hard book.”
“Annie smart,” the orang signed. “Annie smart.”
Douglas nodded. “I know.”
Annie rose, then stood on her legs, looking like a two-story fuzzy building, teetering from side to side. “Annie smart. Writer. Smart,” she signed. “Write book. Bestseller.”
Douglas made a mistake. He laughed. Not as simple as a human laughing at another, this was an act of aggression. His bared teeth and uncontrolled guff-guff struck out at Annie. He tried to stop.
She made a gulping sound and galloped out of the room.
“Wait, Annie!” He chased after her.
By the time he got outside she was far ahead. He stopped running when his chest hurt and trotted slowly through the weeds toward her. She sat forlornly far away and watched him come.
When he was near, she signed “hug” three times.
Douglas collapsed, panting, his throat raw. “Annie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it.” He put his arms around her.
She held onto him.
“I love you, Annie. I love you so much I don’t want ever to hurt you. Ever, ever, ever. I want to be with you all the time. Yes, you’re smart and talented and good.” He kissed her tough face.
Whether forgotten or forgiven, the hurt of his laughter was gone from her eyes. She held him tighter, making a soft sound in her throat, a sound for him.
They lay together in the crackling yellow weeds, clinging. Douglas felt his love physically growing for her. More passionately than ever before in his life, he wanted to make love to her. He touched her. He felt that she understood what he wanted, that her breath on his neck was anticipation. A consummation as he’d never imagined, the joining of their species in language and body. Not dumb animal-banging but mutual love... He climbed over her and hugged her back.
Annie went rigid when he entered her.
Slowly, she rolled away from him, but he held onto her. “No.” A horrible grimace came across her face that raised the hairs on the back of Douglas’s neck. “Not you,” she said.
She’s going to kill me, he thought.
His passion declined; Annie disentangled herself and walked away.
He sat for a moment, stunned at what he’d done, at what had happened, wondering what he would do for the rest of his life with the memory of it. Then he zipped up his pants.
Staring at his dinner plate, he thought, it’s just the same as if I had been rejected by a woman.
His hands could still remember the matted feel of her fur; tucked in his groin was the memory of being in an alien place. It had made him throw up out in the field that afternoon, and afterwards he’d come straight home. He hadn’t even said good night to the orangs.
“What’s the matter?” Therese asked.
He shrugged.
She half-rose out of her chair to kiss him on the temple. “You don’t have a fever, do you?”
“No.”
“Can I do something to make you feel better?” Her hand slid along his thigh.
He stood up. “Stop it.”
She sat still. “Are you in love with another woman?”
Why can’t she just leave me alone. “No. I have a lot on my mind.”
“It never was like this, even when you were working on your thesis.”
“Therese,” he said, with what he felt was undeserved patience, “just leave me alone. It doesn’t help with you at me all the time.”
“But I’m scared. I don’t know what to do. You act like you don’t want me around.”
“All you do is criticize me.” He stood and took his dishes to the sink.
Slowly, she trailed after him, carrying her plate. “I’m just trying to understand. It’s my life, too.”
He said nothing and she walked away as if someone had told her not to leave footsteps.
In the bathroom, he stripped and stood under the shower for a long time. He imagined that Annie’s smell clung to him. He felt that Therese could smell it on him.
What have I done, what have I done...?
And when he came out of the shower, Therese was gone.
He had considered calling in sick, but he knew that it would be just as miserable to stay around the house and think about Annie, think about Therese, and worse, to think about himself.
He dressed for work, but couldn’t eat breakfast. Realizing that his pain showed, he
straightened his shoulders, but found them drooping again as he got out of the car at work.
With some fear, he came through the office. The secretary greeted him with rolling eyes. “Someone’s given out our number again,” she said as the phone buzzed. Another line was on hold. “This morning there was a man standing at the window watching me until Gramps kicked him off the property.”
Douglas shook his head in sympathy with her and approached the orang’s door. He felt nauseated again.
Vernon sat at his typewriter, composing captions for his photo album. He didn’t get up to greet Douglas, but gave him an evaluative stare.
Douglas patted his shoulder. “Working?” he asked.
“Like dog,” Vernon said and returned to typing.
Annie sat outside on the back porch. Douglas opened the door and stood beside her. She looked up at him, but—like Vernon—made no move toward the customary hug. The morning was still cool, the shadow of the building still long in front of them. Douglas sat down.
“Annie,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again. You see, I felt...” He stopped. It wasn’t any easier than it had been to talk to Oona, or Wendy, or Shelley, or Therese... He realized then that he didn’t understand her any more than he’d understood them. Why had she rejected him? What was she thinking? What would happen from now on? Would they be friends again?
“Oh, hell,” he said. He stood. “It won’t happen again.”
Annie gazed away into the trees.
He felt strained all over, especially in his throat. He stood by her a long time.
“I don’t want write stories,” she signed.
Douglas stared at her. “Why?”
“Don’t want.” She seemed to shrug.
Douglas wondered what had happened to the confident ape who’d planned to write a bestseller the day before. “Is that because of me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Do you want to write it down for me? Could you explain it that way?”
“No,” she signed, “can’t explain. Don’t want.”
He continued. “What do you want?”
“Sit tree. Eat bananas, chocolate. Drink brandy.” She looked at him seriously. “Sit tree. Day, day, day, week, month, year.”
Christ almighty, he thought, she’s having a goddamned existential crisis. All the years of education. All the accomplishments. The hopes of an entire field of primatology. All shot to hell because of a moody ape. It can’t just be me. This would have happened sooner or later, maybe... He thought of all the effort he would have to make to repair their relationship. It made him tired.
“Annie, why don’t we just ease up a little on your work. You can rest today. You can go sit in the trees all of today and I’ll bring you a glass of wine.”
She shrugged again.
Oh, I’ve botched it, he thought. What an idiot. He felt a pain coming back, a pain like poison, with a focal point but shooting through his heart and hands, making him dizzy and short of breath.
At least she doesn’t hate me, he thought, squatting to touch her hand.
She bared her teeth.
Douglas froze. She slid away from him and headed for the trees.
He sat alone at home and watched the newscast. In a small Midwestern town they burned the issues of the magazine with Annie’s story in it.
A heavy woman in a windbreaker was interviewed with the bonfire in the background. “I don’t want my children reading things that weren’t even written by humans. I have human children and this godless ape is not going to tell its stories to them.”
A quick interview with Dr Morris, who looked even more tired and introverted than usual. “The story is a very innocent tale, told by an innocent personality. I really don’t think she has any ability or intention to corrupt...”
He turned the television off. He picked up the phone and dialed one of Therese’s friends. “Jan, have you heard from Therese yet?”
“No, sure haven’t.”
“Well, let me know, okay?”
“Sure.”
He thought vaguely about trying to catch her at work, but he left earlier in the morning and came home later in the evening than she did.
Looking at her pictures on the wall, he thought of when they had first met, first lived together. There had been a time when he had loved her so much, he’d been bursting with it. Now he felt empty. He didn’t want her to hate him, but he still didn’t know if he could talk to her about what had happened. The idea that she would sit and listen to him didn’t seem realistic.
Even Annie wouldn’t listen to him any more.
He was alone. He’d done a big, dumb, terrible thing. It would have been different if Annie had reciprocated, if somehow they could have become lovers. Then it would have been them against the world, a new kind of relationship.
But Annie didn’t seem any different than Therese when it really came down to it. She didn’t have any more interest in him than Dr Morris would have in Vernon. He’d imagined it.
He was alone. And without Annie’s consent, he was just a jerk who’d fucked an ape.
“I made a mistake,” he said aloud to Therese’s picture. “So let’s forget it.”
But he couldn’t forget.
“Dr Morris wants to see you,” the secretary said as he came in.
“Okay.” He changed course for the administrative office. He whistled. In the past few days, Annie had been cool, but he felt that everything would settle down eventually. He felt better. Wondering what horrors or marvels Dr Morris had to share with him, he knocked at her door and peered through the glass window. Probably another magazine burning, he thought.
She signaled him to come in. “Hello, Douglas.”
Annie, he thought, something’s happened.
He stood until she motioned him to sit down. She looked at his face for several seconds. “This is difficult for me,” she said.
She’s found out, he thought. But he put that aside, figuring it was paranoia that made him worry. There’s no way. No way. I have to calm down or I’ll show it.
She held up a photograph.
There it was—a dispassionate and cold document of that one moment in his life. She held it up to him like an accusation. It shocked him as if it hadn’t been himself.
Defiance forced him to stare at the picture instead of looking for compassion in Dr Morris’s eyes. He knew exactly where the picture had come from.
Vernon and his new telephoto lens.
He visualized the image of his act rising up in a tray of chemicals. Slowly, he looked away from it. Dr Morris could not know how he had changed since that moment. He could make no protest or denial.
“I have no choice,” Dr Morris said flatly. “I’d always thought that even if you weren’t good with people, at least you worked well with the apes. Thank God Henry, who does Vernon’s darkroom work, has promised not to say anything.”
Douglas was rising from his chair. He wanted to tear the picture out of her hands. He didn’t want her to see it. He wanted her to ask him if he had changed, let him reassure her that it would never happen again, that he understood he’d been wrong.
But her eyes were flat and shuttered against him. “We’ll send your things,” she said.
He paused at his car and saw two big red shapes—one coppery orange, one chocolate-red—sitting in the trees. Vernon bellowed out a groan that ended with an alien burbling. It was a wild sound full of the jungle and steaming rain.
Douglas watched Annie scratch herself and look toward some chimps walking the land beyond their boundary fence. As she started to turn her gaze in his direction, he ducked into his car.
I guess an ape wouldn’t understand me any more than a human, he thought, angrily trying to drive his shame away.
THE FOUR-COLOR APE
Scott A. Cupp
It was not a remarkable beginning. A simple cover on an inauspicious science fiction comic title with the name Strange Adventure
s in issue number 8 from 1951. The cover features a gorilla holding up a blackboard with the message: “Ruth...Please believe me! I am the victim of a terrible scientific experiment! Ralph.” A woman, obviously Ruth, seems taken aback by the message. The cover additionally proclaims: “Featuring ‘Evolution Plus!’ The incredible story of an ape with a human mind!”
The story was one of several in the issue which featured stories with a trick ending, standard on the anthology comics of the period. It is nothing remarkable. What was remarkable was the result of the issue on the sales stand. The issue sold much better than any previous issue. This did not go unnoticed. The next issue featured the origin of Captain Comet, a midlevel science fiction superhero, that did not sell particularly well. Later, another comic had an ape on the cover and sales took another spike upward.
The editors at DC Comics, which had published the Strange Adventures comic, began to take notice. Suddenly covers featuring apes in a variety of situations began to appear. Those individual issues began to sell as much as 20 percent more than a regular issue. The rush was on. Apes appeared on no less than sixteen issues of Strange Adventures during its run (though several were for reprint stories late in the series). The ape phenomenon got so out of hand at DC Comics that, according to the editor of DC’s science fiction titles, Julius Schwartz, in his autobiography Man of Two Worlds, “Irwin Donenfeld (Editorial Director at DC Comics) called me in and said we should try it again. Finally all the editors wanted to use gorilla covers, and he said no more than one a month.”
But what brought this about? Comics had featured apes prior to this time without the noted increases. As early as 1908 with the illustrated book The Mischievous Monks of Crocodile Island and later with Action Comics #6 (1938) with a beautiful cover by Leo O’Mealia, gorillas and other apes were the frequent menace of the heroes. And the superheroes of the day (including Superman) did not have their powers clearly defined and had some trouble battling a full grown gorilla. Not so the Superman of later years.
Before the discovery of the lowland gorilla in 1847, there were rumors of the wild creatures. With their discovery and subsequent exhibition, man began to recognize a distant cousin. Charles Darwin made his evolutionary researches known and suddenly apes of various sizes and skills began to appear everywhere.