A Beautiful Truth (32 page)

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.

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.