Lydia Millet - Love in Infant Monkeys

Something in his bearing was lighter. I understood that he was leaving. He wouldn’t need to lean on me again. He’d gotten what he came for.

And, sure enough, he would go on to a resurrection. He would rise from the ashes of a failed presidency to attain the stature of a well-respected elder statesman. It’s the job of men like me, behind the scenes, to shape and position; sometimes only a nudge is needed. Meanwhile, the public faces of our strength — our avatars, so to speak — are held up as heroes.

But we know what we do.

I took the presidential hand and held it.

Finally it was withdrawn.

“I appreciate you seeing me,” he said warmly. “You let me know if you ever need anything.”

With that he turned and stepped away. And did I whisper it, or did it only run silently through me? Out of its misery .

As he disappeared through the glass doors I stayed where I was, standing. The afternoon had been intense, and I couldn’t risk stumbling. It occurred to me he had a point, partly. I was the fall guy for doing what had to be done. I bore the weight of other men’s hesitation.

I saw the fullness of the three fingers then. Carter had left me with something.

THERE WAS REJOICING AMONG media watchers when prominent newspaperman Phil Bronstein, then the husband of actress Sharon Stone, was bitten on the foot by a Komodo dragon.

The attack occurred at the Los Angeles Zoo, where the celebrity couple was touring behind the scenes so that Bronstein, reportedly an admirer of fierce carnivores, could get a close view of the ten-foot Indonesian lizard. It happened with lightning speed: Just as Bronstein stepped near the giant reptile to pose for a photo, “Komo” the dragon bit him. Jaws clamped rigidly onto the editor’s foot had to be wrenched off; the bite severed tendons and necessitated the surgical reconstruction of his big toe. Still, it was widely regarded as comic, and tabloid reports of the incident belie a barely suppressed delight.

Had Bronstein not been married to Sharon Stone, his misfortune would surely have garnered more sympathy than derision, if far less press. As editor of the San Francisco Chronicle , he was successful but hardly a celebrity in his own right. But the joke was a clear one: The man-eating lizard was a perfect proxy for Stone herself.

Bronstein’s entry into the cage of the lizard was managed by zookeepers, who recommended the editor remove his shoes, lest Komo mistake them for the white rats that were a staple of his diet. And though the keepers’ judgment in allowing the lizard and the barefooted man into such close proximity might have seemed an invitation to litigation, publicly the couple was sanguine about the episode, with Bronstein taking responsibility for his decision to enter the exhibit and joking about the encounter. In television interviews Stone blamed neither the zoo nor the reptile.

In the wake of the media frenzy Komo became a highly popular attraction for zoo visitors. His noble brown head with its dignified throat wattle, his homely yet graceful body and his sleepy eyes endeared him to zoogoers, who fondly recalled his spirited nipping of the rich, assumedly virile Bronstein. In their native islands Komodos are top predators, fast-moving and heavy with a mouthful of deadly bacteria for killing prey. But as an individual, Komo was described by his keepers as “tractable” and “good with people,” in an internal zoo memo. He had been seized as evidence in a U.S. Customs case against an endangered species smuggler named Wong, and was residing at the zoo while Wong awaited trial.

Komo seems to have basked in the light of his newfound popularity. Keepers say he had previously lurked in the shadows of a fake log in his cage but now took up a position on a prominent rock, where he remained for hours a day in full view of the crowds, flicking his forked yellow tongue and posing.

There were no further incidents of aggression.

When after several months Komo’s popularity finally subsided, he was sent on short-term breeding loan to a zoo in Singapore. There for a while he fell ill and was moved to the zoo infirmary. Once he recovered and his stud duties were done — females with whom he mated produced more than 120 eggs — he was again moved, this time to a facility in Kuala Lumpur, where he was purchased for a private zoo by a flamboyant Indonesian billionaire named Tunku Rajaputra. This is where I entered the story, since I was fresh from Texas A&M and employed, at the time, as a large-animal veterinarian for Rajaputra, whose inherited fortune was based on clove cigarettes and natural rubber. He knew of the lizard’s checkered past and was, not incidentally, a diehard fan of Sharon Stone.

By this time Stone and Bronstein were divorced; the fortysomething movie star had suffered a brain hemorrhage and was appearing in the box-office and critical bomb Catwoman . Rajaputra, a short but handsome bisexual who exhibited many of the diagnostic characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder, apparently believed he stood a good chance with the actress — if only he could arrange for a meeting. He brought the lizard to a luxury habitat in his vacation home near Sekongkang, on the island of Sumbawa. Other denizens of the private bestiary included two orangutans, a land tortoise and a tiger shark in a half-million-gallon tank. All the animals were tended by qualified caretakers — I had several colleagues on the estate — and Rajaputra spared no expense.

Komo had been captured by Wong’s poachers around the age of five, when he was still a young lizard prancing around in circles and covered in fecal matter. (This was a ritual dance of appeasement aimed at older dragons, who might otherwise eat their offspring.) In captivity Komo had quickly become accustomed to his zoo diet of rodents, chicks and rabbits and now only rarely rolled in feces, with a halfhearted shrugging motion. But under Rajaputra’s regime he was fed live baby goats, which he was encouraged to hunt in a special outdoor yard connected to his indoor enclosure by means of an underground tunnel. He hunted in full view of Rajaputra and guests, who were delighted by the spectacle.

It took him some time to fell a kid, which he would typically not kill directly but mortally injure and leave to die. Businessmen standing at the fence would clap and smile when the bite was delivered and the baby goat sank to its knees, its long-lashed, dark eyes blinking closed tenderly as if for an endless dream. As the applause faded and the businessmen turned back to their cocktails and teenage prostitutes, Komo would retire to a corner to shore up his own strength. Goats could run well, even young ones, and he could summon only short bursts of speed. He was no longer in the first flush of youth, and clearly the goats exhausted him.

Finally he would go back to the moribund goat, tear a chunk of flesh from its exposed belly and feast.

There were pyroclastic rocks in his new enclosure and a shallow pond for swimming. Without knowing it, except by a reassuring familiar feeling, he may have recognized the vegetation of his home island of Flores. There were tamarinds, lontar palms and jujubi trees; in the dry dirt he was able to dig himself a burrow, where he slept during the high heat of the day after basking throughout the morning. He was not lonely, for Komodos are solitary by nature, coming together in groups only to eat carrion. Mating is a brief penetration of the female cloaca by the male hemipenis; couples do not stay close. After laying her eggs, the female usually forgets them.