Great Apes (43 page)

Simon, despite the reassuring tweaks the eminent natural philosopher – as he liked to style himself – was administering to his testicular fur, found these patronising directions more than difficult to take. Grebe was trying to mine his sense of conviction from within, collapsing the distinction between Simon's memories of humanity and this – hideously didactic – planet of the apes.

Clenched up inside of Simon was a hard ball of recollection. It constituted all the things he revered most about the human voice: the ineffable beauty of Jessye Norman singing Strauss's
Four Last Songs;
the richness and vitality of Shakespeare declaimed; the lowering coloratura of Mandelstam's poetry, rolled out in the Russian; or a scratchy recording of Bernard Shaw setting the world to rights. The sound of African tribespeople chanting up a storm came to Simon's inner ear; as did that of Aboriginal elders singing up their endless, oneiric country. What about Billie Holiday hitting a high note of pure sucrose; and the sweet burble of a infant – one of his infants? And there was more, much more; a lover's tender endearments, breath like a caress in his ear; or a lover's more strident exhortations – Sarah's exhortations to fuck me … fuck me … fuck me! All gone? All never have been?

The former artist, his perspective banished, looked up at the foreshortened prospect of the dangling ape above his
head. His eyes followed the furry runnel between ischial scrag and scrotal sack. Simon raised himself up, drummed on the seat of Grebe's chair. Busner, taken aback, noted that Simon's horripilation was entire, the fur bulging up from beneath the collar of the borrowed jacket, the head fur as spiky as that of a punk.

Then Simon let out the most astonishing vocalisation that either Grebe or Busner had ever heard before; an utterly convincing imitation of an enraged wild human, and yet suffused with a weirdly visible, essentially chimp meaningfulness. “You-fucking-shit-eating-monkey!” he screamed. “I-ought-to-tear-you-a-new-fucking-arsehole!” Next, having judged the philospoher's trajectory with a decidedly chimp accuracy, Simon leapt up, grabbed Grebe's testicles and ripped him from the ceiling.

The don fell to the floor with a heavy crash, knocking over the precious decanter on the way down, so that the vile contents browned the carpet. Allowing Grebe no quarter, Simon commenced to lay about the expert on psychosemiotics and human sign acquisition with great openhanded blows, the reports from which resounded around the study.

It was, quite simply, no kind of a contest; and within seconds Grebe's pale rump was aloft and his paler muzzle buried in the tipple tarnish. One hand was waving frantically, “Eeeek!” Grebe vocalised, and, “Aaaaargh!” whilst signing ‘Please, please, Mr Dykes – sir! I revere your artistic vision! I worship your “hooowraaa” ischial scrag! I bow before the magnificent effulgence of your arsehole! I acknowledge your suzerainty now – and “hooo” for ever!'

Simon, naturally, stopped hitting Grebe and administered
the necessary, reassuring groom beholden to a hierarchical superior. Although, in truth, he wouldn't have minded doing what he'd vocalised that he was going to – if only he could remember what that was.

Later, as Simon and Busner knuckle-walked through the covered market, Busner couldn't help but express his admiration for his patient's spunk with a spontaneous pant-hoot. ‘Did you,' he signed to Simon, who was lighting his ‘nth Bactrian of the day, ‘enjoy that display of dominance at all “huu”? I know you aren't so inchimp as to have been indifferent.'

Simon squinted at the maverick anxiolytic drug researcher through his nicotine miasma, and gestured with his four-for-a-pound disposable lighter, ‘I'll point out what's been troubling me, Dr Busner. If as Grebe there delineated – and the testimony of my own senses appears to confirm – we inhabit a world in which visual gesticulation is primary, and aural secondary, then surely the invention of a television must have preceded the invention of radio “huuu”?'

‘That's right,' Busner countersigned, eyebrow ridges creased, ‘it did. I don't believe there was radio much before the Second War. It was invented by a chimp called Logie Baird, you know – Scotschimp, I suppose “grnnn”.'

‘And how did he invent radio then “huu”?'

‘By accident, completely by accident. One day he went into his laboratory and his research assistant had left a television on inside a cupboard. All Baird did was shut the door. Shall we crawl on “huuu”?'

In london, a distinctly less helpful – if twistedly reverent – research assistant was convening an extraordinary meeting of the alliance against Busner. In attendance were his co-conspirators: Whatley, looking drawn and tired; and Phillips, who was obviously ill. Whatley had a pretty good idea now of what was wrong with Phillips – he could see the lesions of Karposi's Sarcoma beneath the chimp's scruff, despite the cravat he was wearing. The consultant psychiatrist wondered how Phillips had contracted CIV, but was uncharacteristically tactful enough not to ask.

‘So “grnnn” Gambol, an amusing choice of venue for our meeting “huuu”? Just as well since we were all in touch so recently. ' Phillips pointed at the walls of the restaurant, on which a mural had been executed. It was a garish jungle scene, done in the style of Le Douanier Rousseau. Emerging from between two broad tessellated leaves was the brutishly blunt muzzle of an adult male human. Deeper in the undergrowth were the equally bestial visages of females with infants on their backs. The bare teats of the human females bored out from this two-dimensional undergrowth like the barrels of lactifluous guns.

The human motif recurred
ad tedium
elsewhere. On the menus were line drawings of cavorting humans; on the
ceiling there was a large – and rare – photograph of humans rutting muzzle-to-muzzle, the female's hind legs grasped tightly around the male's waist, her senseless toes splayed. Even the waiters at Human Zoo – for that was the name of this themed restaurant – were dressed in human costumes made from a synthetic fabric, the weave of which approximated to the rubbery texture of the animals' skin.

Whatley indicated out one of these waiters. ‘Why's that one got black skin, Gambol “huuu”? I didn't know that humans had black skin.'

Gambol looked up from a sheet of paper he'd been scanning. ‘I'm sorry, did you sign something “huu”?'

‘The black human “euch-euch”,' Whatley repointed irritably.

‘No, no, they can be black. That waiter's meant to be a specimen of Western human, the Latin ascription is
Homo sapiens troglodytes verus
. There are also central and eastern sub-species –'

‘Like separate races “huuu”?' Whatley broke in. ‘As if this human were a bonobo “huu”?'

‘That sort of thing.'

‘Are the black humans different from other humans, the way that bonobos are different from Caucasian chimps “huu”?' This gesture came from Phillips, who was also fascinated by the waiter in his black body stocking.

‘I've no idea,' Gambol countersigned. ‘I'm a clinical psychologist – not an anthropologist “euch-euch”.'

Despite registering the jagged, angry nature of Gambol's signing, Phillips continued, ‘I mean to sign, are they good at dancing and entertaining like bonobos “huuu”? Good at sport – that sort of thing “huu”?'

“Wraaaf!” Gambol barked – with Phillips so ill he had no fear of him. ‘Why don't you shut down, Phillips, that waiter is coming to take our order and he
is
a bonobo. Remember, we're all the same under the fur.'

Of course, it was precisely because he didn't believe this that the Cryborg chimp had got himself into such deathly trouble. Bisexual and partial to a bit of bonobo rough, Phillips had been one of those Western European males who thought it amusing and stimulating to visit Central African countries and mate with the natives. The result was the disease which was killing him in front of his allies' eyes. All three were plangently aware of the irony that the bonobo who infected Phillips with CIV might possibly have contracted the virus from the bite of a wild human.

“HooGra',” the bonobo in black body stocking vocalised, then signed ‘Can I take your order, gentlechimps “huu”?'

‘ “Huu” what's this thing Just Bananas?' Gambol tapped at the menu. The bonobo waiter scratched his false crotch before countersigning, ‘It's a dish named after our other branch in Wardour Street – a crostini of squirrel brains on a bed of banana mush. It's very popular “grnnn'yum”.'

‘ “HooGra”' well, I'll have that then and the soup to start.'

The other chimps ordered, the waiter – despite his ridiculous and clumsy costume – noting their requests with great sinistrality. He then bounded away and the conspirators were left to wring their hands over the situation with Busner. “Euch-euch” Whatley coughed, then signed, ‘Well, I think it's time we took the leap of pointing out to the GMC Busner's gross misconduct. He's not only
patrolling this severely disturbed chimp around the place “euch-euch”, it's also virtually certain that Dykes's delusion, psychosis, whatever, is a function of Busner's own misguided involvement in an illegal drug trial “wraff”!'

‘I agree,' Phillips flicked. ‘Whatever the respect due to Busner for his achievements in the past – and even that's moot – his conduct now is “euch-euch” incontestably malpractice. We must do something!'

Whatley, signing into Gambol's upper arm, applied further pressure. ‘Gambol, “huu” do you think Busner knows Dykes may be a victim of Inclusion, and that his human delusion is more than likely drug-induced?'

‘Gentlechimps, there seems little doubt that he must have a prinkling. He knows that Dykes's GP was Anthony Bohm. He knows that Bohm was the conduit for the illegal Inclusion trial. Whether or not he's delineated any of this for Dykes is anyone's guess –'

‘Well,' Phillips chopped in again, ‘surely the point is, kneads must – kneads do “huu”?'

‘Quite so, which is why I've prepared this letter to the GMC detailing Busner's misconduct. I've two copies here, perhaps you'd like to twine them around a bit; then, if fusion is achieved, we can push the thing forward “huuu”?'

Naturally, as Gambol suspected, the practitioner of the psycho-physical approach to mental pathologies and organic dysfunctions had more than a prinkling of his own potential involvement in his patient's drastic condition. But, Busner reasoned, such a liana of twisted causality hardly implied
blame
of any kind. He and Dykes had been thrown together – so be it. Dykes might well have actual
neurological damage – whether innate or acquired; or he might be in the grip of a more than believably baroque psychosis. Neither possibility cancelled out the validity of what they were doing. Every day Busner could see changes wrought in Simon. He was, the psychiatrist concluded, adapting to his peculiar phenomenological interface much the way that any severely perceptually impaired chimp would adapt, whether to blindness and signlence, or to deafness and novocal.

Busner was also aware that it couldn't be long before awkward questions would be asked about his relationship with Dykes. Gambol's absence from both domestic and occupational ranges betokened the fomenting of a new alliance. Well, Busner thought to himself as he followed Simon Dykes's scut through the crowded passageways and caterwauling cacophony of the covered market, if my entanglement with this poor chimp's psyche results in my being struck off as a medical practitioner – then so be it. My entire philosophy and career has been based on a repudiation of dry functionalist categories; this will be a fitting end to my reign as alpha.

But these digitations – felt and examined in Busner's habitual way, as if they were termites of thought being prised from a mound of cogitation – were abruptly curtailed as Busner's muzzle rammed into Simon's scut. “Chup-chupp,” the radical psychoanalyst's great rim of lip curled up appreciatively as he savoured the odours of Simon's ischial pleat.

“Huh-huh-huh,” Simon panted – then began to cough. He had stopped to light another of his interminable Bactrians. Busner made no objection to the smoking –
although a lack of dextrality meant Simon's chest fur was pitted and scoured with burns – but worried that it represented a return to a destructive cycle of intoxication.

This wasn't what was bothering Simon. He was squatting, puffing on the Bactrian and peering at the packet with eyebrow ridges creased. ‘These cigarettes,' he signed. ‘There's something not quite right about them.'

‘Too strong perhaps “huuu”?'

‘No, no, it's not that. It's just that the animal on the packet has two humps –'

‘That's because it's a Bactrian, Simon. ' Busner tweaked his protege's fur.

‘I know – I realise that. But in my memory' … an inexpressive flutter … ‘in my memory of being human I always smoked Camels.'

‘Camels “huuu”. You mean to sign that Bactrians are denoted camels on your “gru-nnn” planet of the humans?'

‘That's right “h'hee-hee-hee” how absurd and trivial a reversal – almost comic “huu”?'

‘There's nothing that “clak-clak” comic about the mess you're making of your chest fur with those Bactrians,' Busner countersigned, gently applying saliva to a particularly raw patch below Simon's left teat, ‘and now we must get on, Hamble will be waiting for us – I know what he's like.'

Indeed, Hamble, the second of Busner's delusional dissolutives
was
waiting for them as the cab – driven by an annoyingly fiddly bonobo – came skittering up the stony track from Eynsham and skidded to a halt in front of the house.

Hamble was on all fours, staring at the arrivals over the top of a hawthorn hedge that bordered his garden – but such was the size of his chest, and his ferocious shagginess, that to Simon he presented a most animalian aspect. All the more so because he wore nothing save for an old army camouflage jacket – which was unbuttoned. With his great shoulders and his vigorous breath smoking the autumnal air, Hamble looked all chimp. Looked – Simon thought, taking in the bucolic setting of Hamble's house, with its apple orchard to one side and rolling stubble fields to the other – exactly like a creature that's escaped from a zoo.