Great Apes (33 page)

‘But what about dogs? What's happened to dogs “huuu”? I suppose “clak-clak-clak” you're going to tell me that
they've
got larger!'

‘That's right, Simon, they've got larger. The wild dog only stood about five hands at the shoulder. In fact, recent research shows that the ancestor of all modern canines must have been about the same size as the modern wolf. Well, obviously an animal of this stature would be impractical as a beast of burden. So, over the centuries chimps have selectively bred dogs for size. If you're interested I can take you to some kennels locally and show you dogs that are sixteen hands high.'

Simon met this intelligence in signlence. This reversal of domesticated species was like some surreal drogue, adding a further half-twist of weirdness to the reversal of the natural order he was already having to endure. He thought –
inevitably – of Sarah, her canines bared in ecstasis as he plunged into her that final time, and he thought as well of Gracie, Sarah's retriever, and how that last morning she had worried at the door to the bedroom, snuffling and snarling to get in. Then he remembered the diminutive horse that was racketing around when he awoke in this no-fun house world of hirsute persecutors. How many more such role reversals could the world encompass? Flying rabbits? Viviparous fish? He curled his limbs around him on the garden chair and began rocking back and forth on his scut, like a caged primate, or an autistic child.

Busner caught the shift in Simon's mood. Better to keep him distracted, he thought, push on with my programme of integration, of psychically outward-bound activities. ‘ “Grnnn” Simon.'

‘Yes, what is it “huu”?'

‘I thought we might carry on with your reinduction to the world today. Keep – as it were – the pressure up.'

‘What did you have in mind exactly “huu”?'

‘Why, a trip to the zoo – naturally.'

Gambol pant-hooted through the window of the Volvo as he pulled up by the kerb outside the Busner house. Then he sat and waited. As if on cue, Simon Dykes emerged from the passageway that ran down the side of the house. He was, Gambol noted, still walking upright with a bonobo-like, stiff-legged gait. And like a bonobo, the posture pushed into prominence his pink penis. Gambol blanched; there was an offensive as well as an unsettling quality about Dykes. He held himself too still, he didn't fidget like a chimp – and those guttural vocalisations, that warped
signing. Still, he was Gambol's meal ticket and the epsilon male knew it.

He vaulted through the open window of the car and met Dykes halfway up the garden path. ‘ “HoooH'Graa” good morning, Mr Dykes, how are you today “huu”?' Simon squinted down at the chimpanzee who addressed him. He was beginning to notice subtle differences by which he could distinguish the animals. This one's ears were unusually small and neat. Its muzzle was almost hairless and its skin whiter than that of Busner or Bowen – let alone the apes who inhabited the hospital, most of whom had been much slimmer, with blacker muzzles and pinker lips.

‘ “Hooo” yeah “HooGraaa”. ' Without understanding why, Simon found himself drumming on the trunk of a nearby tree and whooshing air through his parted teeth. Then he advanced down the path with the small chimp walking backwards in front of him. Simon was struck by the ease with which the ape moved in this fashion, never hesitating as it placed one heel behind the other. When it reached the gate, it unlatched it with sure, unobserved hands and slid – still backwards – through the gap. Then it knelt down, swivelled and pushed its scraggy rump in Simon's direction.

Simon had seen so many animals do this to Busner that he knew what was required. He bent down and pressed his hand on the proffered arse. As ever he was struck by quite how human the feel of the thing's body was, once the awful furriness was factored out. ‘ “Grnnn” there-there “chup-chupp”, it's Gambol, isn't it “huu”?'

‘That's right. I admire your delusion, I revere your looniness –'

‘All right, all right Gambol, there-there “chup-chupp. ' Simon bestowed a few more patronal pats.

Busner joined them, carrying his briefcase and with a couple of squealing infants dangling around his neck. There was also a bunch of sub-adult males trailing him in a sinuous coiling of grooming hands and smarming arms. The first of these was at Busner's neck fur, the next in the fur of the first, and so on. They all bristled, they all growled. It was quite a procession of excitable chimp-flesh, and accordingly Simon was intimidated. He shrank back against the hedge. Busner rounded on the sub-adults. ‘ “Wraaaf” no patrol for you lot today, I don't want you annoying Mr Dykes … and as for
you
“wraaa”!' He unceremoniously pulled the infants from his neck and dropped them, squealing, in a flowerbed.

Left alone, the three apes swung into the Volvo. Gambol started the engine and pulled away fast, changing up through six gears in as many seconds. The big saloon bucketed down the steep incline towards Frognal, turned right and disappeared in the direction of Primrose Hill.

London may have appeared comparatively breezy, clear and spacious to those occupants of the car who could acknowledge their chimpunity, but for Simon Dykes it was a cramped, dismal place. From the red-brick detached houses at the crest of Hampstead, down past the long chipped terraces of Belsize Park, to the sandwich-stacked ones around Primrose Hill, everywhere Simon directed his gaze he saw a cityscape cluttered by its own jumble; a lumber room of the ages with buildings dumped against one another like so many discarded chattels, wreathed in cobwebs, dusted with smut. Never had London been as
claustrophobic, as dwarfish as this. And everywhere he saw the gnome-like, unshaven inhabitants, their hard toes snapping against the pavement, their hard hands grasping and grappling, ceaselessly in motion.

Simon hunched in the back, feeling like Alice in Apathyland, half wanting to ask the ape denoted Gambol to open the sun roof so that he could poke his giraffe neck through it. To diminish as far as possible the disjunction between his sense of his own body and his apprehension of the world it inhabited Simon spent the journey with his eyes, once more, pressed against the window, and one hand loosely cradling his cock and balls. Funny how being halfnaked doesn't seem to discomfit me, he thought, or perhaps only thought he thought.

The Volvo pulled into Regent's Park and accelerated towards the zoo. Then, as they drew level with the main gates, Gambol swung the car into a wide arc, whilst expertly changing down through eight or so gears. He brought the vehicle to a halt right next to a chimpanzee clutching a great bunch of helium-filled novelty balloons.

Busner piled out the front door and gathered Simon from the back. Simon found Busner's touch much easier to cope with since he himself had picked dry shit from the radical psychoanalyst's fur. Busner's body had acquired an odd penumbra of acceptability, somewhere between that enjoyed by one's own arsehole – by virtue of being touchable while most others are not – and a familiar, if stinky, old dog – like Sarah's Gracie.

Busner paused by the balloon seller, and signed ‘You must have been here with your infants, Simon “huu”?'

‘Yes, that's right, many times. Magnus, the eldest, is
particularly keen on animals, wildlife, that sort of thing. The others would tag along …' Simon's fingers fluttered to a halt. He was staring at the metallic painted surfaces of the novelty balloons jostling overhead. In amongst the Mickeys, Minnies and Mr Blobbys, were other, stranger caricatures, pale-muzzled, with exaggeratedly large proboscises.

Busner, seeing what had transfixed Simon, exchanged signs and coins with the hawker, gained possession of one and thrust the string into Simon's hand signing, ‘It's a human, Simon, the infants love them …' He drew Simon on by the arm, towards the gift shop. ‘And look here “grnnn”. ' Together with the Lifewatch mugs, the pennants and stickers, were a number of plastic masks affixed to a pegboard, lions, giraffes, tigers, and also paler muzzles, more Fagin proboscises. ‘See! Human masks.'

The two apes moved on. Simon trailed behind, keeping his muzzle level with Busner's scrag, observing closely the way the eminent psychiatrist's grey-skinned testicles swung lazily this way and that; first appearing, then disappearing, beneath the hem of his tweed jacket.

Busner bought the tickets from a bonobo in a booth, they knuckle-walked down a curving ramp and into the zoo. It was all as Simon remembered it from the last trip he'd taken there with the infants. When would that have been? It was now – or so Busner had shown him – nearly a month since his breakdown; and what with the preparations for the show and the long nights at the Sealink, Simon hadn't seen the infants in the month before that. But the last time they had taken any kind of excursion together, it was here, to the zoo.

The furry animals, in their farcical, bum-freezing half-garb; knuckle-walking here, swaggering there, hauling hand-over-hand up there – all wavered, then dissolved into a Kodachrome vision of pink-to-red-to-orange, inhumanly human flesh tones. His infants, with their fair hair and blue eyes, the irises so round – like boiled sweets: suckable humanity. The three of them licking on ice-cream cones as they scampered hand in hand in hand, towards the gorilla enclosure.

‘ “H'hooo” Simon!' Busner was bipedal now, in lecturing, hectoring mode. ‘Now, as you are aware, in your therapy we intend to take a didactic and explanatory approach. We will confront you with the reality of your chimpunity, to try and dissolve the content of your delusion. Remember, if at any stage you find the sight of these beasts too disturbing, you simply have to pant-hoot and we'll beat a retreat.'

Simon goggled at the ape who stood in front of him with wiggling fingers. An ape half-dressed in tweed jacket, Viyella shirt, and hank-of-mohair tie; an ape who had bifocals hanging on a chain around his thick neck. He couldn't prevent himself from guffawing, clacking his big canines together. What could possibly be more disturbing than
this?

Sensing the see-sawing of Simon's mood between hilarity and horror, Busner decided to move him on. They rounded a raised bed full of suburban verdancy and came muzzle-to-muzzle with the large statue of Guy the gorilla, for many years the zoo's primary primate attraction. As ever, the larger-than-life-size bronze had its mini-mahouts in the form of chimpanzee infants clambering between the
blades of its broad back, cachinnating, chattering, and being wraaed at. Their parents showing them to stay still, keep novocal, so they could take the shot.

Busner drew Simon up to the privet fringe edging the safety barrier. Beyond this there was a two-foot gap and then the close steel bars that constituted the gorillas' enclosure. The enclosure – which was about forty by eighty hands and thirty high – was upholstered with great drifts of straw. An enormous, bottomless plastic dustbin lay on one side with a tuft of straw escaping from it. There was also a rope net set up between four thick posts, and half a bale of straw lay in this hessian depression, providing the means – or so Simon assumed – for the gorillas to make day nests.

Busner crooked one finger in the direction of a near-pyramidical thing covered in silvery-black fur that was crouched in the embankment of straw towards the middle of the enclosure. ‘ “H'hooo” look, Simon! There he is, a big silverback – your first, live human!'

If Busner had expected any particular reaction, laughter wasn't it, but laughter was what he got. Full-throated, high-pitched, gnashing, clacking laughter. Simon's fingers articulated his incredulity, while his cackling was loud enough to attract the attention of the chimps in the vicinity: ‘ “H'hee-hee-clak-clak” that's not a human! That's a gorilla!'

‘Yes, yes “chup-chupp” – please – it is a gorilla, but it belongs within the human family, along – I believe, although I'm no zoologist – with the orang-utan; all three species being tailless “huuu”?' And Busner grabbed Simon by the scruff at this point, so as to calm him down, because
the poor chimp was whimpering, his hilarity flooding with despair.

‘Of course, Dr Busner, of course, how stupid of me “u-h'-u-h'-u-h”' you see, naturally, that as far as
I
am concerned the gorilla, the chimpanzee and the orang-utan belong in the same family – the human being distinct, unique, imbued with both self-consciousness, and of course “u-h', u-h”' made in the image of his creator.'

It was Busner's turn to fall signless, as once more he apprehended the perfect symmetry of Dykes's delusion. Busner was aware that some radical philosophers and anthropologists were currently attempting to redraw the species boundaries; in the process dubbing chimpanzees as ‘the second human'. There must be, Busner reasoned, a part of Dykes's psyche that has absorbed this information and flipped it round, a comi-tragic reversal.

But no matter how deluded Dykes was, he responded well enough to being out of the hospital. His signing was becoming more fluent and articulate by the hour. And although he still tensed up whenever another chimp got too close to him – a reaction that left dismayed vocalisations in his wake – he no longer lapsed into uncontrollable hysteria. Busner judged that now was as good a time as any to force the pace. So, he took the still giggling chimp by his brown scruff and led him on, towards the humans' enclosure.

This was part of the same complex as the gorillas'. At its core were four internal rooms – two each for the humans and the gorillas. These were painted a serviceable orangey-yellow and equipped with niches and sleeping platforms. The gorillas' were far smaller, as the zoo only had the one
pair, whereas there was an entire party of humans. Both accommodations featured the adventure playground appurtenances deemed necessary for captive humans, thick hessian ropes, strategic arrangements of telegraph poles and handholds set at different heights.