The Sacred Beasts (8 page)

“Then it is a life well lived: to become what one has always
loved,” Sylvie finally said.

“To
become
?” I asked.

“It occurs to me that you are becoming
un
monstre
sacré
yourself.”

This made me laugh very deeply, laughter we shared. “Well, we do
look monstrous when we create. I have just learned that today, and you are my
teacher.” I am only protecting myself by calling her a child, I thought. She is
undeniably an acutely perceptive, intelligent, cosmopolitan woman.

“Why did you leave America?” she suddenly asked. This I welcomed.
It shot clear of my heart. Let’s lose ourselves in history and remove this
dangerous present, I thought.

“The country knowingly re-elected a warlord who had appointed a
cabinet of war criminals. He treated the economy and the environment, not
surprisingly, as the spoils of war for his administration and his wealthy
supporters. I was not in the States to see the Great Depression and FDR, but I
saw the birth of the sixties, feminism, the civil rights movement, gay rights.
The country was not always such a menace and an embarrassment.”

“It is well-known throughout Europe,” she concurred. “He only
wants absolute power and historical fame and does not actually want to solve
problems or lead at all.”

“Bush? Oh yes, and he will be famous, won’t he? He will have so
mismanaged the country for eight years that it will never recover in the
economic race with China and India. Historians will see the rise of Bush and
the Evangelicals as the beginning of the decline of America and the rise of
China as the world’s most powerful nation. We have only to carve his face
upside-down on Mt. Rushmore.”

“It is not terrible to think of. Life will go on,” Sylvie said.

“Whatever life survives. Not my beasts, unfortunately, only the
animals that can live in warm water and close proximity to humans, along with
some capacity to use garbage for nutrients. Not one of these beauties on my
wall will live through it. Perhaps they will have that hollow, haunted look in
their eyes, like the Onas and the Yaghans. Perhaps we will all have that look
on our own faces.”

“You like to look full in the face. I do, too. But you surely do
not believe that our species will become extinct?”

“Most zoologists believe we are on the cusp of
the earth’s sixth and worst mass extinction. I doubt we will last the length of
the Neanderthals. We’ve only been here a third the length of their time on
earth. To even imagine us continuing on this planet for another five hundred
years is a great leap of faith, I think. With our cleverness in manipulating
the environment and our fellow creatures has come greed, political oppression,
enshrined injustice, violence and destructiveness on a planetary scale and that
odd shortsightedness, our strange inability to feel the consequences of our
acts.

“All of the present computer models showing the rate of global
warming depend on certain temperature-related events failing to occur—the
melting of the Greenland ice sheath, for example, or the release of methane
from the oceans into the atmosphere. But, we are doing absolutely nothing to
halt global warming and have no reason not to expect the worst outcome: it is a
25 degree Fahrenheit increase in surface temperature almost overnight, not
centuries into the future. This will cause unspeakable devastation and ruin of
all planetary ecosystems. The issue of whether America, China or India will be
the top global economic power in the twenty-first century—the primary concern
of government at present—will then be completely trivial. We could easily have
a global catastrophe lasting centuries, perhaps millennia, and life returning
to barbarism if at all.

“To avert the worst-case scenario will take truly intelligent
political leaders, something Americans seem to repudiate, as well as government
investment in scientific solutions equal in magnitude to the Manhattan Project
that developed the first atomic weapons. Scientists have already offered a
plethora of ingenious ideas—a ladder of light and heat deflectors as high as
the moon, for example. But, Americans will have to give up their fondness for
mediocrity, greed, short-range thinking, and the least intelligent political
candidates.”

“These are very pessimistic views,” Sylvie said, “But I must say,
I have had great fears concerning global warming and know many who have.”

“But we are at the end of the world down
here. The edges are in the air.”

“I have seen a truck parked outside. If you are concerned with
global warming, are you not a hypocrite for using it?”

“Touch
é! Point well taken. It is a Toyota and gets good mileage. I have
always needed it to haul my scientific equipment. I assumed I would continue my
studies in retirement, but if not, I will make a sculpture of it on the lawn. I
envision a completely black truck with red horns added on top and a red tail at
the rear, along with a smaller sculpture of a dying animal half-stuffed into
the gas tank.”

“
Une
merveille
!” she said and laughed. “There is
something else I wonder. You are a zoologist. Don’t you have your own theories
concerning violence and greed and how to control them, perhaps even your own
theories about your sexual preference?”

Bull’s
-
eye
! I thought we were in the airy realms of intellectual
speculation, and now I am back with the fact of this woman’s beauty and
forthrightness, right in my living room and ready for anything. “Now I am going
to ask
you
a question,” I countered. “It is one I ask all of my zoology
students when we cover primatology. I guarantee you will learn something about
the world and yourself. It is a kind of secret.”

“I love secrets! Interrogate me!” She laughed.

Ready for anything, aren’t you? We will see about that. “There are
two chimpanzee species that are closest to us genetically or in terms of
evolution. One is patriarchal, heterosexual and much more violent, the males
also much larger than the females. The other is matriarchal. In its sexual
behavior, it is profligate, X-rated and bisexual. It is also much less violent,
the males and females similar in size. Now, I will give you two additional
facts: one species is more intelligent than the other and closer to us
genetically. Think of everything you know about human beings, their history and
culture, all you know and all you suspect. Which species is the one that is
both more intelligent and closer to us genetically?”

Her face reflected astonishment and agitation. “That is a very
compelling question! I don’t know what to answer.” Then a sly, growing smile
began to form on her face. Who is playing with whom here? “I suppose I want it
to be the matriarchal, X-rated, less violent species . . . but I am afraid it
is the other.”

“Well, let me be the first to inform you that nature and evolution
follow your wishes, not your fears in this case. It
is
the matriarchal,
bisexual, less violent and more intelligent bonobo chimpanzee that is our
closest evolutionary twin,
not
the more violent, exclusively
heterosexual, patriarchal species. Now look out at the world you live in and
think of the web of entrenched beliefs, customs, laws, oppressions and
deceptions that have been used to keep these innate biological urges invisible
to you so that you, a young person, perhaps as X-rated as you will ever be,
cannot even guess the correct answer.”

“
Mais
ce n’est
pas
vrai!
C’est
super!
”
Her breath expired in astonishment. “
What
do your students say when you
tell them this?”

“In the sixties, they cheered. In recent years, with the rise of
the Evangelicals, they often walk noisily out of the room and refuse to study
zoology. It is just as well. They’re only in school to make money, anyway.”

“It is known in Europe that most Americans now refuse to believe
in evolution.”

“A majority, yes, though the reasons go very deep. They cite
religious arguments, but it is really a refusal to accept human diversity. I
often suspect it is our genetic endowment from both chimp species at war: the
less intelligent, patriarchal, violent side calls the other evil and wants to
legislate against it, pretend it does not exist or, failing that, kill it off. That
can only be done by amassing more economic resources, and the needs of the rest
of the planet lie in the way.”

“But do other zoologists believe this?”

“As to our genetic endowment from the two chimp species,
absolutely, though the scientists are primatologists rather than zoologists. My
application to the present state of the American Evangelical right wing and its
environmental stewardship is my own dark suspicion. If I were to air it
publicly, I would be attacked not only for my application, but also for what is
presently well known and accepted in primatology. That is just what happened to
the biologist Rachel Carson in the 1950s, who first pointed out the dangers of
environmental contamination by industry. Mediocrity carries a sharp knife.”

“But haven’t we evolved away from this? We
are
another
species.”

“Of course, we have but not as much as we would like to believe.
In absence of a catastrophe, evolutionary change is relatively slow.”

“Is this what Freud believed, that we are all X-rated, that everything
is sex?”

“Freud saw a bit of the matter but none of the method. He was an
armchair theorist, not a scientist. Virtually everything he postulated is
intriguing but false, in my opinion, and his techniques for psychotherapy have
never been effective. Actual studies of it show a patient is better off
learning about life on his own.”

“Your application of primatology to politics is extreme, though,
don’t you think?”

“I am as you see me, sitting in my armchair speculating, just like
Freud, but without the cigar. Thus, it is not science. It is merely my dark
suspicion, but the notion is based on science and the facts do suggest a
relation. At this historical moment, too, politics is rife with dark
suspicions, most without science
or
fact.”

“Amazing! You must be notorious in America, too.” At this, we both
laughed.

“I suppose so. I have always been notorious to everyone but my
sacred beasts.”

“Une
provocatrice
aussi!
Yes, you are definitely
un
monstre
sacr
é. My intuition was correct.”

We continued laughing, yet I was strangely exhausted by this
encounter. She was fearless, lovely and simply the world, which would heal me
like nothing else. But I must beg to go away from her, I thought. Even a sacred
beast must be left to lick her wounds.

“Lately, I often wonder uselessly about what might have saved
Katia. Had we known we were sacred monsters, roaring away at the end of the
world, she might have stayed, at least to roar the loudest.”

She absorbed the implications of this. “It has been so fascinating
here with you, but I suppose I must leave you to grieve again,” she said with
reluctance.

“You must,” I said softly. “But there is tomorrow and all the
creation and destruction we can imagine.”

“Yes, it is always both. Goodnight, then. You are a dear, magical
monster,” she said spontaneously and kissed me on the cheek.

I was left to my oddity, now declared monstrous, perhaps becoming
loved for it. It was a sensation I could hardly bear. Mariska’s unspoken
exhortation,
don’t
go
there
, entered my mind in red letters,
then it sighed along with the night wind as I ate my dinner in grateful
solitude and went off to sleep, this time in my bed and not on the couch. I
took a last look at the balloons rolling all over my lawn in the moonlight,
cackled, and slept.

Then all humor and equanimity left me. The black, cold water
engulfed the room, and I was fighting for my life again. The vitreous horned
rock loomed up and with it the lonely, exquisite white face of the creature—the
one I love, cannot avoid loving, a beast so sacred it has no name. It is the
love of life, the great precondition, incarnate. I swim with the force of
nature, of an animal. I must save this beast: it is my destiny.

I reached the rock and grasped the animal’s huge, matted head; we
were both frigid and dripping wet. It looked at me and reared up to its full
length like a grizzly, towering above me on its back legs, and then I saw the
greatest horror of all: its torso was dripping blood. The rocks were too sharp
and its flesh was badly torn. It roared and leaped off the rock, swimming away
in the distance. I cried out but could only make animal sounds, something that
meant,
but
you
will
drown!
There
is
no
land
left
.
They’ve
taken
it
all!
You
will
die
from
your
wounds
in
this
frigid
,
black
water!
My voice rose into a roar of agony
like the animal’s voice, but it had already disappeared.

I awoke in the dawn with my whole body and spirit aching. I knew
what the dream meant: that I must lose them all, everything I have loved. My
body felt like a locked vessel containing nothing but agony. It seemed I had
made no progress, no healing, at all. I was as sick as I was when I found her
body on the shore. It looked like driftwood lodged in kelp at first. Only
slowly did I see the outline of a human shape, and still more slowly did I see
it was the one I never wanted to find like this. Slowly, too, did I now become
aware of my surroundings. The sky was clear and bright again; my body was warm
and whole. That must be enough, I thought. It is all that is left. The rest has
been taken from me, as it has from my dying dream beast. How incredible that I
am still alive!