The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (13 page)

I nodded as though I understood.

Now all I had to do was explain to Diantha that we had a
fellow primate living with us. Despite our tearful departure, our telephonic relations had not gone as well as I had hoped. Long-distance reconciliation between a loving couple lacks the opportunities for those more convincing expressions of body language.

After stalling around, checking e-mails and other stuff, I finally called the cottage. No one answered to my great relief, as the possibility of a cold response made me timid. The relief proved short-lived.

“Norman!” she exclaimed in calling me back. “I was just thinking about you. We miss you. Elsie told me this morning she wants to go home however much she loves the lake. And Decker’s been asking about you.”

“Of course, darling,” I said. “But I’d like to come out there. For a weekend.”

“But that’s three whole days away.”

I hemmed and hawed. I played detective. Casually, as though it had just occurred to me, I said, “I don’t want to bring up a sore subject, but could you tell me exactly what Heinie said when he asked to borrow the revolver?”

Into her silence, I quickly added. “I think it’s important because, as you know, the coins in the collection he gave the museum have turned out to be fakes.”

“Well, let’s see. He did mention that he was using the boat to store some valuable things. I mean as well as sailing into dangerous waters. He said he couldn’t get a license for a gun. But you know that.”

“But he didn’t say what the valuables were?”

“No. Why?”

“I was just thinking. Perhaps that’s where the originals are.”

“What would it prove?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure this thing out myself. I’m wondering how it might tie in with a motive.”

When she fell silent again, I went on, “By the way, you saw the news about the apparent suicide of Martin Sterl?”

“I did.”

“Did you recognize his widow at all? Have we seen her anywhere?”

“No. Why do you ask?” Her voice had cooled. She knew me well enough to know I was delaying telling her about something important or unpleasant.

“Because I’ve seen her before and I can’t remember where.”

“You see lots of people, Norman. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people come into the museum every week.”

A tiny, muffled bell rang in my mind, but then I was distracted as Diantha sighed audibly and said, “Oh, Norman, are we going to be all right?”

“I hope so.”

“We want to come home. We miss you.”

It was my turn to sigh. I said, “I know. But there’s been another development here that you should know about.”

“I don’t care …”

“Well, it’s Alphus.”

“Alphus?”

“He’s the chimp that has been living at Sign House. You know, the one who got loose about year ago.”

“The one that killed and ate what’s-her-name’s dog?”

“Right. Well, it seems that the young woman, the deaf one, the one that took care of him, is getting married. And he really is a remarkable animal. I mean, there’s no way, really, we can put him back in the Pavilion …”

“What are you trying to say.”

“I’m saying that he may have to spend some time here.”

“In our house?”

“Yes.”

“For God’s sake …”

“Diantha, listen, he’s not …”

“You’re going to have that ape living in our house …?”

“It’s not …”

“Norman, did you see what he did to that little dog …”

“Yes, but …”

“You want to subject Elsie and me to that … that animal?”

“Diantha, I’m looking for an alternative situation. It will only be for a short time …”

“God, Norman, sometimes I think you’re just weird.” And hung up. Or punched off. Or whatever people do these days to disconnect.

That’s it
, I thought. I made my way up the stairs. I was going to let the poor creature know that he couldn’t stay. But there he was in his little room, sitting at the table on a chair I had provided for him, bent over his laptop and slowly, painfully, with one finger, tapping out a message to someone.

Over the next few days, I found living with Alphus to be both more challenging and more rewarding than I could have envisioned. To start with basics, I would like to report that he keeps himself very well groomed. He likes to shower and I’m sure the electric bill will reflect the amount of time he spends using the blow-dryer. He goes through a lot of shampoo and other toiletries. Not long after his arrival here, I found that a bottle of expensive cologne that I keep in the bathroom, a gift from Diantha, had been nearly depleted. Small wonder he has been shuffling around the house smelling like a royal pimp.

At meals he sits at the table and dines with a knife and fork. He likes his steak rare, but is perfectly happy with pasta and the house tomato sauce with lots of cheese on top. He is capable of
making himself a respectable sandwich, which he eats carefully, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. But it will be awhile before I let him use the stove unattended.

Alphus is a voracious and eclectic reader, and he often has the television on with the sound off while dipping in and out of a book. Yesterday I came home to find him watching something called the Jerry Springer show while perusing Nietzsche’s
The Birth of Tragedy
. He was quite taken by the antics of Mr. Springer’s guests, two obese white women fighting over an equally obese black man. “Look, look!” he gesticulated. “They’re worse than chimpanzees!”

He spends a lot of time listening to classical music when he doesn’t have the television on. He is particularly taken with Schubert, especially his chamber music. The String Quartet in D can move him to tears, or his equivalent thereof. He has one of those pod devices barely larger than a deck of cards into which he has packed hours of music, which he plays through a set of small but powerful speakers. At the same time it is unnerving to see him bend over and lope along on all fours.

He certainly has a mind of his own. For one thing, he is not nearly as tolerant as one might expect. He has a low opinion of dogs — “fawning curs” he spelled out for me on his laptop. And he is downright bigoted about gorillas. “They have no class. They are the primate equivalent of bovids. What have they ever contributed to the world? All they do is sit around eating vegetation and shitting. Koko gets all that attention, but she’s nothing special.”

When I gently suggested that people might say the same thing about chimpanzees, he grew visibly indignant. “You must be joking. Chimps played a leading role in the American space program. Not only that, but we have made our mark in Hollywood and in other forms of entertainment. The advance
of modern medicine is impossible to imagine without our participation. After elephants, we are the most visited exhibit in many great zoos. No less an authority than Jared Diamond has suggested that chimps and humans be classed in the same genus. We didn’t just come down out of the trees. And what have gorillas contributed? King Kong?”

Contributed to what?
I wondered but did not ask.

Like all of us, Alphus is tormented from time to time by the larger questions of existence. Why are we here? Where are we going? One evening, over snifters of single-malt for him and a decent brandy for me, he asked me, “What exactly is the soul?”

I held my cognac up to the light and stared into its pale depths. “The soul,” I said, trying for a
bon mot
, “is something we may or may not have but can definitely lose.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Okay, call it our inner essence, our moral core. Christians, a lot of Christians, believe it survives death and lives forever.”

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

“Sounds hellish.”

So that, by degrees, we got onto the subject of religion. “I don’t know about God or any of that,” he said without preamble, “but I do sense wonder all around me. I remember feeling that all life is sacred even before the procedure that opened my mind to real thoughts.”

I nodded in agreement. “I’ve often thought in agreement with Father O’Gould, whom you should meet, that there are degrees of divinity in everything, even inert matter.”

Alphus nodded dubiously. “I’ve been reading up on the ‘great’ religions,” he signed with a world-weary tone to his movements. It was then that he stated why Islam didn’t interest him. For that declaration he had to teach me the signing for “Islam.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s too total. Too intense. And I’m not interested in virgins.”

I didn’t respond as I could tell he was on the point of another observation. Instead, he asked me, “Why are you a Christian?”

“I was brought up to be one,” I said, knowing that wouldn’t satisfy him. “Why? Have you thought of it yourself?”

He sipped his malt and put it down. He nodded. “I have thought a lot about it. Christianity has many marvelous things about it. The music alone …” He spelled out Bach, Handel, Rutter.

“Rutter?” I questioned.

“He’s contemporary. Someone played his Christmas music at Sign House. Then there’s the art and the architecture. I would love very much to see Hagia Sophia. To think it was built in the sixth century.” He paused and looked at me with that face of his.

“But,” I provided.

“But I’m not particularly reassured by a creed one of the central metaphors of which is that of a shepherd and his flock.”

“Really?”

“Not when you consider what happens to most sheep.”

“Hmmm,” I hummed, unable to think of a telling rebuttal. “It certainly puts Bach’s
Sheep May Safely Graze
in a new perspective.” I sipped from my own drink and came up with the predictable, “Have you considered Buddhism?”

“Very seriously.
Mudras
—” He stopped to spell it out for me. “—are, after all a form of nonverbal communication.” He got off the sofa where he had been sitting and sat on the carpet with his legs folded in front of him, his posture erect, his right hand turned up on his lap, fingers together, and his left hand palm up with the fingers extended. “This is called the
Varada Mudra
. It symbolizes charity, compassion, and boon granting.”

I was impressed. “Then why not become a Buddhist?” I said
as he resumed his seat on the sofa and picked up his drink.

After a moment he freed his hands. “To be honest, I don’t like the kind of people Buddhism attracts. Mostly the kind of white people, that is.”

“Hinduism?”

“Too many deities.”

“Okay, then what about Judaism?” I asked, more or less to complete the catalog of major faiths.

He shook his head. “Jews worship themselves. And I am not a Jew.”

The tone of his gestures made me glance at him sharply. Did I have an anti-Semitic ape on my hands?

“You mean that they are devoted to their history, their traditions, their prophets, their laws …”

“No. I mean they worship themselves. But in that they are merely exemplary of humankind as a whole, humankind with its deep, unquestioned, and doting self-love.”

Food for thought does not always taste good, however nourishing it may prove. I chewed over Alphus’s observations, thinking I could come up with a different recipe (to work this trope into the ground), but found myself stymied. How to explain religion to a member of another species without sounding absurd or disingenuous?

“But,” I started.

He waved me aside. “Do you actually believe in any of this stuff?”

I am generally reluctant to talk about my personal beliefs in final things, mostly because I find it difficult to separate the eschatological from a species of the scatological, as used in a figurative sense. But in this case I thought it incumbent upon me to defend the Judeo-Christian legacy of which I consider myself a beneficiary.

Speaking slowly and deliberately, I said, “Unlike many of my contemporaries, Alphus, I do not have any difficulty in believing in God. Rather, I fear that God does not believe in us. If we are indeed made in the image and likeness of the Almighty, as the Good Book tells us, we may well be something of a disappointment. I wonder at times if we and the world, in the grand scheme of things, may be little more than a petri dish gone bad.”

Alphus nodded. “Certainly for the rest of life on the planet.” Then, “Yet still you pray?”

His incredulity, as expressed in the emphatic way he moved his hands, daunted me. I nodded as though admitting to some embarrassing personal habit.

“What do you pray for?”

I took a moment to cast back to the last time I had been in church. I had been half sitting, half kneeling toward the back of St. Cecilia’s on that Sunday. I go there for solace and to dwell on the larger imponderables of life and because I take pleasure in the restrained, High Church grandeur of the stained-glass windows that surmount and light the altar beneath the vaulting web of age-darkened beams.

On that occasion I’d had much to pray for. I asked the Lord to keep Diantha and Elsie safe, healthy, and happy.
Dear God
, I had prayed,
grant me the grace to forgive Heinie von Grümh whom I continue to despise, even in death. I know I should hate the sin and not the sinner, but I’m afraid I’ve gotten it backward. Please let me know with moral certainty that I did not murder that wretch, that poor excuse for … Forgive me. And help me forgive all who may have trespassed against me
.

I said to Alphus, “I prayed for the power of forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness,” he signed and shook his head. “That is too human for me.”

Little has changed at work, except for Feidhlimidh de Buitliér, who has begun to act like he’s about to take over. The man, always tireless in his committee work, especially on the Council of Curators, has just been elected the Executive Moderator of that body for a second term. I will admit he has the courage of his small ambitions. No peak is too insignificant for him to climb.

It’s an evolving situation. I exist in a fog of rumors, most of them about me, about the Board of Governors, about moves Wainscott might make. It’s true I’m still the boss. But you can tell, in a dozen subtle ways, who is for you and who against.

It was certainly that way at the meeting of the Oversight Committee, which I felt compelled to attend, if only to defend myself. Indeed there seemed to be surprise that I should deign to show up at all in my fallen state.