Rick Moody - The Four Fingers of Death

This would be the first argument, the argument from evolution, which might explain my enlightenment. I have a very substantial doubt about this argument, however, and it concerns the suddenness of onset. I am now able to know my own age, and to know that there were many years prior to this year (my eighteenth) in which I was unable to learn much about myself. In prior years, I couldn’t read English (I also now have a modicum of French), I couldn’t follow complex news stories about economics and international relations, I couldn’t banter about sports. By suddenly finding myself capable along these lines, I have to accept that either adolescence is very, very primitive as far as intellectual capacity goes, or I have to conclude that some outside agency caused my enlightenment .

It is also possible that I am made thus through some kind of accident. It’s possible for all primates, probably all mammals, to suffer severe personality change after head trauma. Maybe what I am experiencing now is post-traumatic awareness of some kind. And yet I’m quite as skeptical about this accidental theory. It’s just too easy .

You probably know as well as I that there is only one legitimate conclusion, and that conclusion is that my intellectual awareness has been arrived at through experimental regimen. True, the vast majority of experiments performed upon my brethren are cruel, degrading, and inhumane. And yet perhaps it is possible, on occasion, for an experiment to produce genuine results! Improvement in the lot of the chimpanzee! Perhaps I am the beneficiary! If so, I too now believe that the future of life on Earth involves the interfacing of organic life with technological innovation. It is simply ignorant to believe that all life has to be fashioned from organic compounds, or that anything that is conceived of in the brain is somehow less natural, simply because it was not fashioned from the elderflower or the lingonberry. Uranium is natural, and therefore the atomic bomb is natural, and if uranium is natural, how are the dangerous intermediate isotopes of uranium any different? If I am a chimpanzee who is the result of technological interfacing, then I am a happy chimpanzee, because I have something to offer my species that no other chimpanzee has ever had .

“Morton,” Noelle said, upon slowly and carefully entering his cage. “Did you have a good night?”

Her usual greeting. She had learned from the primatologists that the highest compliment afforded by a chimpanzee, upon greeting, was a casual glance, followed by nonrecognition of any sort. Still, she believed the music of her voice was welcome, and she applied it warmly, fervently, so that it was something reliable, continuous, soothing. She also believed in repetition, in habit. And so she tried to engage with Morton in nearly the same ways each morning. The chimp offered no response. But as she carried to him the plate of orange slices she’d brought for him this particular day, she did notice that he went immediately to grab the fruits, and then, in what was clearly a reversal, he instead made the decision to leave the plate where it was, at least for the time being.

“Is there anything you particularly want this morning, Morton? I suppose I could give you more of the paints, but I think you have used up most of the paints for now. Until we get more. Unless you are interested in chartreuse. Or mauve. We loaded some new alphabetical software on the computer, and you could work with that for a while. There’s also a copy of a personality index called the Myerson-Goldberg Multiple Choice Index. You could fill that out, and we could see if you have sociopathic qualities. Dr. Koo wants you to take the test at some point. But there’s not a lot of pressure there. Or I could just read to you a little bit from this book I’m reading about medieval diseases. Any of these things of interest?”

Morton looked at Noelle, looked down at his chimpanzee hands, as if to express chagrin at the shape of them, and then, unless she was mistaken, he looked right at her and sighed. How to describe the sigh? Some sighs have hundreds of years of history in them. Noelle was sure that Morton’s sigh was one of these, and she believed it had to do with his hands. It was true that she had not quite got over the “thumb broad” prank, and she still believed Larry was lying when he said that he hadn’t painted the word thumb over dumb on the pad. She realized that it was a not infrequent side effect of hallucinogens that regular life began to be corroded by the bizarre certainties of the drug theater. Maybe, again, she was believing that Morton was sighing in an expressive way because she had taken powerful hallucinogenic drugs the night before. And maybe Morton was leaning down and looking at her shoe, and was nonetheless attempting to tie her shoe for her, and maybe all of this had nothing to do with the hallucinogens or anything else. Maybe it was just part of life in the animal research laboratory. The big black fingers of the chimpanzee, imperfectly calibrated to the fine workmanship of shoe tying, pursued the intricacies of the butterfly knot, the loops and the inside and outside of negative space, in a way that truly must have had something in common with the famous typing monkeys, because Morton did exceedingly well with the butterfly knot at first, if slowly. While she, still bent forward at the waist like some sufferer of osteopetrosis, waited, the ape crouched at her sneakered foot (these sneakers were rainbow hued and had been purchased used), and she could smell his breath. Their breaths, their inhalations and exhalations, met and commingled as the ape labored with her shoe. Their breaths were one.

At last, however, Morton let go of the butterfly knot that he was struggling so badly to keep in his hand, sighed additionally, and he lumbered over to one wall of the cage instead, where there was a nasty, oily stain, probably a fecal smear from some primate who antedated Morton. He stood there, as if expectant. As if beckoning to her.

“Giving up on the laces so soon? Do you want to clean the wall? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Because you know, if you wanted to assume some of my maintenance responsibilities, I’d be only too happy to let you take up the slack.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, because all conversation with Morton, or virtually all conversation, was rhetorical. Instead, Noelle slipped out of the cage, went down the empty hall to the supply closet, and brought the mop, the bucket, and some sponges.

Pursuing the legal remedies that will grant me my freedom , Morton pondered, before the bucket arrived, will require that I reveal myself to the world, that I demonstrate my linguistic and reasoning skills, but that will bring down upon me a great deal of attention. Truly, one of the great blessings of modern life, especially now, is anonymity, and it’s a certainty that my anonymity, which is part of my life here in the laboratory, will be challenged by the kind of media circus that’s bound to ensue, once people know about my skills. Given that I cannot help but be a standard-bearer for my species, it may be that I simply have to accept this as part of my lot. However, there is one very high cost, as regards my becoming a well-known political thinker and statesman, and that cost relates to my growing feelings about this woman .

When I think back to the period before and the period now, there is only one constant that connects these two periods. Only one person was there before — this I know indisputably — and is here now. Her name, so as not to be rude about the whole business, is Noelle, which I think is a very beautiful name, a name that has a lot in common with the wintertime celebration of lights known as Christmas. That I remember her from before is perhaps part of why I cannot seem to overcome my surging ardor with respect to Noelle. Perhaps I am suffering with what I believe is called in human circles a “crush.” Of course, we have these in the chimpanzee world too, but they are temporary, and also potentially very dangerous. Should you unwisely elect to fall in love with a female who is already spoken for by one of the high-ranking chimpanzees of the group, you are liable to receive a serious, I believe the expression is known as smackdown.