The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (16 page)

Which we all applauded and raised our glasses.

Alphus, who grows bossy under the sway of drink, insisted on playing over and over his favorite piece of music, which is Ravel’s
Bolero
. Again and again and again until, still echoing in my hurting head like an aural nightmare, I hear the repetition within the repetition within the repetition.

But I think I understood his fixation when he explained how it came about. He told us that after the procedure that allowed more blood flow to his brain,
Bolero
was the first piece of classical music that he experienced. “I thought my head
would explode. I thought my heart would collapse. My whole being resonated as it had never done before. It was the sound that led me out of my chimphood and into whatever it is I am now.”

The arrival of large amounts of Chinese food that I had ordered by phone while still relatively sober did little to slow our collective derangement. I had gotten Alphus his own paper boxes of the stuff as he has the annoying habit of fishing out the choice bits with his long hairy fingers and then dosing the rest with so much soy sauce as to render it inedible. I made a large pot of scented tea to go with the food, not that it did much to dent the momentum of our inebriation. I was still tasting that collation in sour eructations a day later.

Outwardly calm and even serene most of the time, Alphus, under the sway of alcohol, grows agitated with what might be called existential angst. For not the first time he apologized for killing and eating the poodle in the park. “You have to realize that to me, a small live dog is a delicacy. The flesh has a slight, musky edge to it and is surprisingly tender, especially if it has been a pampered pet. And, other than an occasional squirrel, and there’s not much flesh on those things, I hadn’t tasted meat in days.” He hesitated. “Okay, there was one or two cats.”

His hands, semaphores of articulation, moved gracefully, even enthusiastically, but I could tell he was starting into one of his philosophical funks.

“I sometimes wonder, Norman, if we drink, like Oscar Wilde said, to make other people more interesting.”

“Is that why you drink?” I managed, putting my own drink down.

“Not around you, certainly. But I do drink too much.” He gave his version of a laugh. “I wonder if there’s an AA group around that would have me?”

“Check at Sign House. Just because you can’t verbalize vocally
doesn’t mean you’re not susceptible to alcohol. Perhaps even more so. I mean alcoholism is another kind of …” I searched for a word and came up with “otherness.”

Alphus turned to Ridley with a scoffing look they share. “Otherness. I’ve been reading about otherness lately. Everybody claims it these days. But you know, they don’t know what otherness is. I mean real otherness. It isn’t just that people look down on me as an ape, an animal. But I am profoundly different. I am a different bloody species. Try that for otherness.”

Ridley, who had begun to slur his signing, said, “But you are one of us.”

I groped for some word that might bridge the gap. I realized it is one thing to be an ape and quite another to know it. I leaned forward. “Yes, Alphus, but your essential … beingness is as authentic as that of anyone else. We are all God’s creatures.”

He shook his head. “We are all winners or losers in the great lottery called evolution.”

“Yes, but Father O’Gould thinks it is through evolution that all beings share in the spark of divinity.”

“Easy for him to say. He’s not a five-foot hairy ape with bow legs and arms that reach to the floor.”

“Your arms don’t reach to the floor.”

“Just about. All I have to do is lean forward a little. Let’s face it, Norman, most people see me as little more than a big monkey. I’m not a real person. I’m a freak, a hairy, ridiculous freak.”

I sipped some of my drink and met his eyes. “Don’t ever, ever think that. Whatever you are, you are real.”

“A real freak.”

“Only in the sense that you are amazingly remarkable. Otherwise, I see you as a regular guy.”

That brought him up short and his expression began slowly to change. He spelled out
guy
with letters.

I nodded.

“Guy,” he signed to Ridley. “I am a guy. One of the guys.”

“One of the good guys.”

“You don’t have to be human to be a guy, do you?”

“Not in the least.”

“You know, Norman, you’re a good guy, too.”

The evening wore on, the snare drum booming faintly and then louder and louder, and then again. I was well into the pitcher of martinis I had mixed. The bottle of malt had suffered grievously at their hands. At which point, as I think I remember, I stood up and toasted Alphus and his remarkable life. Which I tried to sign, not quite achieving the word
remarkable
, which I spoke aloud. I added, “In fact, your life is so remarkable, you should write your memoirs.”

Ridley got up and danced a little jig. He put down his glass and signed, “To Alphus and his memoirs,” then picked up his glass and drank.

Alphus drank, but remained skeptical, at least from his expression. Finally, he signed, “No one wants to hear about the miserable life of an ape.”

Ridley, his gestures vehement, disagreed. “The world loves to hear about misery. Especially interesting misery. And your misery has been uniquely interesting.”

“I can’t type,” Alphus signed. “Only slowly.”

“You can dictate to me,” Ridley signed back. And turned to me for affirmation.

I nodded. “You just have to be sure to, well, you know, be honest.”

Alphus looked insulted. Ridley signed, “Alphus doesn’t lie.”

I shrugged. “Everyone lies from time to time. It’s only human.”

Alphus mimed a laugh.

Ridley, who is scarcely ever serious, grew emphatic in his signing.
“Alphus doesn’t lie, and he has an infallible knack for knowing when others are lying. He can beat any lie detector cold.”

We all drank from our drinks. I proposed a little test. I would make a series of statements and he would indicate with his thumb whether they were true or false.

“My mother loved chocolates,” I began.

Thumb down. Indeed my mother was allergic to chocolate.

“I like to listen to Broadway musicals.”

Thumb down again.

“My favorite color combination is black and orange.”

Thumb up. Something about the colors of Lord Baltimore touch me deeply.

“I don’t miss my wife and daughter.”

Thumb down. A bit of a softball, that one.

Ridley signed to me covertly. “Tell him you don’t want him to leave.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true. But it’s not false, either.”

“Try him.”

I did. Alphus pondered for a long moment. His thumb went up, went down, and then went sideways.

“Amazing,” I muttered to myself, half thinking that Alphus could be a very effective investigative tool.

The remainder of the evening is something of a blur. I vaguely remember the three of us holding hands in a circle and careering around the open parts of the room in a silly, sick-making dance. To that music. I like Ravel very much, but I will never be able to listen to
Bolero
without getting the equivalent of an auditory hangover.

I’m afraid the damage included a vase Diantha valued (it had belonged to her mother), a lamp of some antiquity, and stains on the carpet that look to be permanent.

I ended up drinking directly from the gin bottle while my
companions shared a fifth or two of what Alphus called “industrial whiskey.” I remember him urinating into the fireless fireplace. I remember Ridley telling us — his mask of gaiety momentarily askew — of a young woman who had left him for a burly guy with no brains and a deep voice. I remember finally the bliss of silence as my friends fell asleep, or lost consciousness. Ridley lay down on the sofa and Alphus curled in an armchair while I managed, just, to climb the stairs holding on to the banister and, fully clothed, fall into bed.

So I woke up with the mother of all hangovers. I moved slowly. I took off my clothes and dumped them on a chair. In robe and slippers, I made it to the bathroom where, after prodigious urination, I showered in warm and then, slowly, cold water, placating the Calvinist within. And feeling marginally the better for it.

Indeed, I remembered waking up in the middle of the night in the middle of my self-induced coma knowing where I had seen Stella Fox before she made the news. But now I couldn’t recall it. I could only hope that, like a piece of paper missing in the jumble of my desk, it would turn up.

Neither Ridley nor Alphus was where I had left them the night before. Ridley, I assumed, had gone home and Alphus up to his leopard-proof hammock. Still slowly, still hurting, I made coffee. I make enough for two of us as Alphus likes several cups, which he takes with milk and sugar, to start off his day. He also goes through a lot of bananas, which I bring home in large bunches.

Presently, I heard him upstairs in the same bathroom I use, as the more luxurious one doesn’t have a shower. Other than enough hair to clog the drains and a heady mist of deodorant, he leaves few traces of himself behind.

We also have a morning routine of sorts. None the worse for drink, he came downstairs, signed “hello” a bit sheepishly, and made a face that is his equivalent of a smile. Per usual, he turned
on National Public Radio, though, like myself, he prefers BBC when he can get it. He poured and doctored his own coffee, peeled a banana, unsheathed the
Bugle
, and checked the headlines.

With some excitement, he turned to show me the front page. There, above the fold, next to a not very flattering picture of myself, was the headline: “Museum Ponders Plans to Make Neanderthals White.”

The story read, “The Museum of Man is moving ahead with plans to make the models in its Diorama of Paleolithic Life light-skinned, sources within the museum told the
Bugle
. Currently a neutral hue, neither dark nor light, the figures represent an early form of mankind and are visited by people from all over the world.

“Despite criticism from experts on the need for diversity in role modeling, officials at the museum, according to the
Bugle’s
investigation, will be spending several hundred thousand dollars to replace the current models with what one source called ‘white-skinned, red-haired Caucasians.’

“The
Bugle
has also learned that Norman de Ratour, who is white, is proceeding with the changeover based on what some experts call ‘narrow, unsubstantiated, and preliminary research.’

“Repeated efforts last night to reach de Ratour, who has been charged with accessory in the murder of Heinrich von Grümh, a curator at the museum, were unsuccessful. Some reports indicate that de Ratour has gone into hiding as the management situation at the museum, never very stable, has deteriorated alarmingly in recent weeks, according to an informed source.”

In fact the phone had rung several times the night before. I vaguely remembered Amanda Feeney’s flat voice squawking at me on the speaker as she left a message for me to call her immediately.

Right then, still in pain, I wanted to throw in the towel. That is, type up and send in a letter of resignation, leave this house
to Alphus, Ridley, and chaos, and retreat to the country, to the bosom of my little family. And I might have done just that had I not, with sudden clarity, perhaps jolted by the story in the
Bugle
, recalled what it was I remembered in the middle of the night.

I had been in the Neanderthal diorama with Edwards experimenting with the lighting to see if we could do anything to make the skin tones of the models appear lighter than they were. I noticed Stella Fox not only because she is a striking woman in that small brunette way, but because she seemed out of place. The style of her couture, including black shiny high heels along with an extravagant choker of pearls, belonged more in Las Vegas than the Museum of Man. Not only that, but she paid scant attention to the elaborate display through which she walked. Because … because she was talking with a man who also looked like he had just flown in from Las Vegas. They were leaning in to each other talking quietly but emphatically. And I saw them there more than once. When my memory works, it really works.

I quickly went over Alphus’s schedule for the day to see who would be coming to visit. Any excursions that might be planned. I usually hang around until someone shows up, even if it’s Dolores, who comes in to clean up and tend to things in Di’s absence.

But this morning, still nursing my head, just barely able to hold coffee, I drove to the museum. I was anxious to get to the office. I called ahead and left a message with Mort in Security to have one of the surveillance technicians on hand when I arrived.

By ten o’clock, I was sitting in front of a screen looking at digitized footage from a camera that covers a particularly well-lighted tableau called “Early Kitchen.” It shows a group using primitive knives and scrapers to carve up the leg of a bison. Strange how even adults act when confronted with our distant ancestors. A lot of them laugh, but nervously.

I watched and watched and grew bored and annoyed. How fat, dull, and stupid our population appears to have grown. Whole families of fatties. Most of them scarcely glance at the informational placards or put on the available earphones to hear the recorded message. The kids fidget and whine. They waddle on. This is what has become of us. But then, I was still suffering from the night before.

I was about to arrange to have the feed transferred to the laptop on my desk when it occurred to me someone else could look for the sequence I was seeking. I asked the technician, a pleasant young man named Hank, if he knew of anyone on the staff willing to put in some overtime. He said he would do it himself. I explained what I was about and let him have the news photo and the news clip.

In my office, an imperious voice mail from Professor Brattle regarding the story in the
Bugle
about the Neanderthals awaited me along with a note from Felix that he would be dropping by. Chair Brattle informed me she was convening a special meeting of the Oversight Committee to discuss “this highly sensitive issue” and take “appropriate measures.” I let that one hang.