A Beautiful Truth Read online

  Henry met the crate.

  Walt told Judy he had bought a baby chimp, and Judy looked at the painting above the mantel, oil of the lake in summer. It was night but she felt the warm breath of the sun through her dress and thought life isn’t what you see it’s what you think.

  They slept with their bodies close that night, their minds going miles down separate roads which they never dreamt were separate.

  Judy had seen enough hours and days to know that when things are truly strange their strangeness doesn’t appear until after the strangeness has passed. She thought of this when she was sitting on the living room floor looking into the eyes of Looee, who was holding her fingers on the bottle with hands that had grown so much in just a few months.

  The deal between Walt and Henry had been that Henry would find an appropriate place to present the chimp to him and Judy. That seemed the hardest part to Henry. He had done this a few times now. He knew to buy a small cage, rent a pickup, drive to Newark, slip cash to the right people. The laws about exotics didn’t exist in those days and quarantine was a matter of money. He knew exactly what he would do with the chimp but he couldn’t think of how to present it back in Vermont. He got his shoes shined at the airport in Newark by a really nice guy named Louis. He told Louis with the right sort of wink that he was staying at the Radisson and Louis recommended a girl who gave Henry a ten-dollar handjob that he would have paid double for. He wanted to kiss her but when he leaned forward she recoiled. He drove back to Vermont and thought there’s that jungle gym in the park for the kids, I’ll arrange that we all meet there.

  two

  FLORIDA

  The World needs fruit. The World needs sleep. The World needs touch and the quick pink heat.

  Podo rules the World. Podo chooses his moments.

  He limps and others limp to be like him. He eats his breakfast with loaded hands, and alms drop and scatter like seeds from a shaken tree. He greets his friends and assesses the day and the day bows down to black Podo. He takes Fifi by the hips while she sucks on an orange.

  He will play with children and pin their mothers.

  Podo runs to the greybald tree and swings around it once and twice and does something else without thinking what it was, and it is always something to behold, fast Podo.

  Outside are grass and dirt and swollen birds, high summer, there is concrete and society. Armpit heat and guilty meat, and friends who come and go.

  Look to Podo if the food is taken from your mouths.

  Look to him if you think all food can be yours.

  He wants Fanta.

  He will pound the eyes of detractors.

  Show him your rosé.

  A bird flies over the World.

  Fifi watches Mr. Ghoul.

  Mama likes Fifi.

  Fifi likes Mama.

  Magda slaps Bootie.

  Bootie likes Burke and hitting Magda, his mother.

  Podo is pinning Magda and neither really wants it.

  Bootie and the new one are jumping all over Magda and Podo.

  Bootie slaps Podo on the leg.

  Podo is busy, sharp Podo.

  Bootie and the new one want to understand.

  They want it to stop, continue.

  The new one is looking at Magda’s rosé getting pin, pin, pinned by Podo, and Bootie is thinking about slapping or biting the swinging balls of Podo.

  Podo thinks a thought that he can taste and the World swells hot and dark.

  He has finished.

  Magda walks away without looking over her shoulder.

  Bootie and the new one are bewildered.

  Podo feels the oa, grateful Podo. Magda feels safe.

  He is huge, black Podo, and he walks with black hair raised, and daylight blue and slick on his body, and his shoulders are widening, legs surprising, he coils and uncoils with prowess and venerable grace.

  There is oa in the ground and oa in the wind and everyone knuckles and bows, how-do.

  Mr. Ghoul spends the morning eating onions.

  three

  Looee reached for Judy before conversation began. The little guy in the diaper and red shirt. As soon as she was near he reached out with both hands, apparently not caring if he fell from Henry’s neck. Henry introduced his burden by name as he was losing it. L-o-o-e-e he added, spelling it thus because he reckoned the woman would find that cute.

  All the way to Burlington her anxiety had grown.

  What will he eat she said.

  I don’t know. I don’t know all that much Walt said.

  She tried to calm herself by not thinking deeply. Walt had said they seemed so human. She sang and ignored the cramps in her belly.

  At that moment of meeting, Looee lunged and nuzzled and squirmed and settled. He and Judy made unwritten noises and he looked at her with eyes of eagerness and purity, and she understood his hunger.

  Walter she said.

  Henry looked around the park, at the jungle gym and concrete.

  Looee was not a conventionally cute little baby, but there was something about the fact that he had hands that made Walt and Judy feel right away that he was more than a hairy beast. And the way he moved in Judy’s arms made Walt say that’s a cute little guy right there.

  Henry said just give him plain old milk and you’ll find soon enough that they’ll eat just about anything, too much if you let em. He looks good and healthy to me.

  Judy carried him away like she was determined to take him somewhere better.

  It was April and snow sat on the mountains.

  Judy held Looee in the backseat while Walt drove to various stores after Judy said there’s all kinds of stuff we need. Looee stayed still in her arms like a newborn baby, alternately dimming and shining his eyes.

  At Kmart a woman said how cute, when he was wrapped up, and screamed when she saw his face.

  When they all arrived home Looee seemed awfully hot. Judy got a thermometer under his tongue and his temperature was 103.

  That might be normal said Walt.

  They gave him milk and bananas but through the night he grew weaker and hotter and Judy could swear he stopped breathing sometimes. She was sure he had a fever.

  At dawn when things seemed worst Walt said do we take him to a doctor or a vet.

  Judy said doctor without hesitation.

  What on earth have you got there said Dr. Worsley, and Walt said that’s a baby chimpanzee.

  The situation was inadequately explained, and Dr. Worsley said I’m just not sure you shouldn’t take him to a vet but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, Walter.

  He had a look at weary Looee and thought his private thoughts about bodies and death and how he and his medical brethren found thrills in life and love despite their knowledge of flesh and its banal truths.

  He took his temperature but frankly wasn’t sure what was normal for chimpanzees.

  His lungs sound congested, so as far as I can tell it’s a respiratory illness. I’ll do some reading about it.

  Looee coughed a lot at home like a baby and Walt and Judy ran the shower in the bathroom and hugged him in a way his body remembered. The steam did him good and drenched them all in sweat. When Judy dried him with a towel in the bedroom on the bed, it seemed for a moment that he might be ticklish under his arms.

  I think he’s smiling, Walter.

  That second night felt longer than the first. When Looee slept and his chest stopped moving Judy would panic and wake him up and think what on earth have we done, who is this. He developed diarrhea and made a terrible mess of the bed.

  He truly seemed pale under his hair and Walt thought that maybe they should have taken him to the vet but Walt was in a jungle of sleeplessness and confusion.

  They waited, like they waited with each other when they were sick, ultimately relying on the instinct of the body to live and find its own solutions. Eventually his fever broke and his limbs regathered their twitches and kicks. The three of them slept.

  four

&nbs
p; Mr. Ghoul was there from the beginning, before Podo, before anyone but Mama. No one remembers as well as Mr. Ghoul that the World was once white and square.

  He pulled the lever marked GO and the World grew piece by piece.

  He remembers Mama who was not much bigger than her cat.

  Everything that Mr. Ghoul wanted and learned began with the lever and the machine.

  David was his friend.

  ? Machine make Dave tickle Ghoul

  They used to smoke together.

  Some of the people used sticks in those days and there were rules and customs which he can’t find anymore.

  When he got things right, the machine gave him pieces of apple.

  One of the pokol-people who smelled like vodka would come in the morning and rattle Ghoul’s bedroom with a stick, gangalang. And Ghoul would not want to go so the man would hit him with the stick. Sometimes the people were good and he would walk with them down the hall and hold their hand.

  Dave would pick him up and put him on the desk and show him how the pictures on the machine lit up. Dave took his finger and they pressed each picture together and different things would happen.

  The machine made milk. A small white room and a machine with lights and colours. None of it remains.

  He spent his days in that small space, the Hardest of the Hard. Sometimes they put Mama in there with him. Also, for a while, they put the gentle idiot Orang in there with him. Ghoul had little interest in the machine when Orang was there for company.

  Mr. Ghoul used to think of Orang.

  The machine was the means by which the people taught them words. There were no words on the machine, but there were pictures which were pictures of words but not pictures of the things that the words were meant to picture.

  This is an apple: Ж.

  At first if he wanted an apple he learned to press that picture and the machine would give him a piece of apple. It soon became more complex. The picture for apple was in a different place on the machine one day, and the next was in yet another. Ghoul had to find the picture. And later he had to make sentences, which are the longest routes to getting what you want.

  Dave would say put it in a sentence.

  Please machine give apple.

  Dave was in another room with a window and would communicate in the big Dave voice and then through the machine. He made Ghoul’s machine light up from the other side of the wall and Ghoul could see the pictures inside Dave.

  Dave was full of questions.

  ? What does Ghoul want.

  ? What is name-of this which-is black.

  And Ghoul had to answer in a certain way or Dave would not understand.

  Banana give Ghoul which-is black.

  That is not right.

  Please machine give Ghoul banana which-is black.

  He grew very tired. He tried to stay out of ¡harag! but it was sometimes much too hard. The machine was very strong and Ghoul could never smash it. He banged his goon on the wall sometimes and for a while his favourite thing was to throw Coke at the machine and listen to the fizz.

  The machine was turned on by the lever marked GO. Ghoul pulled the lever and conversed with Dave and sometimes other people. They would punish him if he made a mess or if he played when they didn’t want him to play. They locked the lever so he couldn’t move it, and without the machine he could neither eat nor drink nor get tall Dave to come into the room for a tickle or a swing.

  Mr. Ghoul jumped around the room, wanting chomp and not understanding a sentence. Mama wasn’t good at the machine but she knew everything Mr. Ghoul wanted. She tried to pull the machine off the wall, and nothing ever happened unless they made a dirty sentence.

  Please machine put dirty cabbage outside.

  Mama was a friend he wanted in those days, but they took her out of the room like Orang because he didn’t use the machine as much when she was there.

  He liked Dave very much.

  ? What does Ghoul want.

  Make Dave into room.

  ? Ghoul wants Dave in room.

  Dave tickle Ghoul.

  They would do what each other wanted, as long as Ghoul found the sentence.

  The World is not the World.

  He ate well. Each time he made a sentence he got a raisin or an M&M, a Coke, a coffee, a thing he can’t remember the name for. Lettuce.

  He learned to love Twizzlers and vodka and smokes.

  The machine did more and more.

  Please machine make music.

  Please Dave dance with Ghoul.

  He wanted the machine to make music while he and Dave made sentences but in the earliest days the dirty machine could not. There were simple things that the words, the machine and Dave could never understand. Things in Ghoul that were part of the World.

  A sentence is not a sentence without a period

  Please machine make vodka sentence.

  ? What does Ghoul want.

  Make vodka. Dave. Make sentence.

  ? Ghoul wants sentence or Ghoul wants vodka.

  Vodka sentence

  That is not right.

  Please Dave vodka sentence Dave.

  Dave does not understand.

  ?

  ? Ghoul wants vodka.

  No.

  ? Ghoul not make sentence.

  No. No No No No No

  ? Mr. Ghoul wants a raisin.

  The machine learned more and more and Dave and Mr. Ghoul understood many things and the machine got bigger.

  Sometimes he could see Dave through Dave’s window and sometimes he could not.

  A man would wake him up with his stick and walk down the hall and he wouldn’t let Ghoul take his hand. Ghoul learned the sounds of pokol-people, the filthy dogsmell cunt, and on those mornings when he was led into the Hardest and could not see Dave in the window it was lonely. He pulled the lever marked GO, the machine lit up, and even though he knew that someone was behind the machine he was alone.

  Please machine put dirty radish behind-the-room.

  He liked saying that because Dave would have to come into the room and open the drawer on the machine with the radish in it and take it out, and when Dave came in they would laugh because they both hated radish and Dave would touch him and hug. He could only do that once a day, and then Dave stopped putting radish in the machine because he no longer enjoyed the game.

  When he walked by Mama’s bedroom at night they touched fingers through the plekter, if the people let them. Their bedrooms were smaller then. There weren’t many soft things, except the yellow duck, the small grey boy.

  But there was music.

  Smoke on the water.

  And movies.

  Ghoul would get tired from all the questions and so full of raisins and coffee that he filled the room with urulek and the Fool would hit him with the stick. And sometimes as he grew tired and full there was nothing he liked more than a movie.

  Please machine make movie.

  Movies were like being swung very gently by hands you cannot feel. When he learned what a movie was, and that it was called a movie, he wanted to share it. Every now and then he got up and typed on the machine:

  Movie name-of this.

  He wanted to remark how special it was.

  He liked the movie about fish.

  And the machine made things called slides as well, which were a feast of apples.

  ? Ghoul what is name-of this.

  Horse name-of this.

  Out came a piece of apple.

  When Dave was in the room in the morning, Ghoul was very happy. Dave taught him to wave hello and goodbye, how to give him five, play peek-a-boo, which he never tired of. Ghoul liked Dave’s smile, and learned to make one. He smiled with people whenever he could.

  And the World was not the World.

  Sleep after sleep and some of it grew less frightening. They put a new window in the Hardest, which looked into another room, behind-the-room, and another window behind-the-room looked out into the open, and Ghoul kept learning
that the World was not the World.

  They put a new phrase in a picture, , which meant open-the-window. The blind over the window rolled up when he put that picture in a sentence, and Ghoul could see into the other room and outside.

  He and Dave developed a beautiful game together. Ghoul would say

  Please Dave go behind-the-room.

  And Dave would say

  ? Ghoul wants Dave behind-the-room.

  And Ghoul would say

  Yes.

  So Dave would stare through Dave’s window and smile and he would disappear. But he would knock on the other side of the walls, and Ghoul would follow the sounds around the room feeling heegly, and then Dave would knock on the new closed window.

  So Ghoul would then go back to the machine and say

  Please machine make open-the-window.

  And the blind would roll up and there was Dave and he was always doing something funny. Once he tied his long thick hair back on his goon so it looked like the ass of a horse. And once he wasn’t there and then he sprang up from below and poured Fanta over himself. And the one Ghoul liked the most was when Dave was there on the other side of the window with a smoke, and with his yalamak and lips he made shapes with the smoke that came out. Beautiful shapes like circles.

  He can taste that game.

  Mr. Ghoul can make smoke rings.

  five

  What do you see when you look at me.

  The Girdish Institute had its origins in the 1920s, when William Girdish made a trip to Buenos Aires. He had heard of a large private zoo owned by a wealthy woman in that city, and it was there that he saw his first chimpanzees. He was beguiled by them and endeavoured to learn as much as he could about their nature and habitat. He heard stories from the staff and zookeeper and witnessed their obvious empathy and charming curiosity, and he bonded with one in particular.

  At dinners in the US he would tell stories from this place, like the one about the chimp who developed an attraction to one of the pretty cooks of the household. This chimp would watch her in the kitchen from his cage with obvious desire, and over time she grew unsettled by his attention. She asked one of the staff to erect a barrier to his view, and boards were nailed to the outside of his cage. The man with the boards who took away the sight of his beloved was attacked a year later. The chimpanzee had harboured a grudge all that time, and found an opportunity when the man was doing repairs to the door of his cage.