Benjamin Hale - The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

“Fuck!” said Lydia, as we abandon the present tense. She slapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no — oh — I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

Her face was red, her eyes flickered with blinks. She sucked in a giant swallow of air and straightened herself. She straightened herself like you straighten a bent wire.

“Nobody step in it!” said Mr. Lawrence, always trying to be helpful.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lydia kept saying. Her muscles and nerves had been infused with an inexplicable sense of frenzy. “Let’s get out, Bruno. I think it’s time for bed.”

When she said this everyone clambered out of the tub as if a poisonous snake had just been dropped into the water. Lydia extended a hand to me to help me out. I shivered violently. I despised the cold shock of the air on my wet body. The water flattened my fur heavy against my skin. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence’s pink and dripping naked bodies fished around in the bubbling water for their sopping garments. Mr. Lawrence was covered with wiry white hair. Mrs. Lawrence was plump and jiggly. Her wet gelatinous breasts slapped around like fish. Mr. Lawrence’s semierect penis was crimson — bright crimson! — before he hurriedly stuffed it back into the genital pouch of his Speedo swimsuit. Lydia vigorously rubbed me down with her towel until all my fluffy fur crackled with static electricity, and then she vigorously rubbed herself half-dry with it before she began, in frantic whips and jerks, to put her clothes back on over her canary yellow swimsuit. Mr. Lawrence busied himself with the job of draining the hot tub — to safely get at the broken glass, I suppose. Regina Lawrence, her sleek body reminding one of a porpoise, approached Lydia.

“I’m sorry, darling, I—”

“No, no,” said Lydia, quickly. “Please, don’t be sorry. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

“I hope you’re not upset. Dudley and I thought maybe you would be open to—”

“I’m not upset at all. Just tired. Please don’t worry. We’re going to bed. It was a wonderful evening. Really.”

“If you like. But don’t leave us like that. Come on, now.”

Regina Lawrence opened her arms to her for a hug. She was again wearing both parts of her bipartite red swimsuit. Lydia, now fully clothed, placed herself into her embrace. The wet skin of Regina Lawrence’s body dampened Lydia’s clothes.

Now Lydia and I, holding hands as we walked along the narrow trail of gravel, headed back to our little house on the Lawrence Ranch, a half a mile away from the big house. The lights in the big house were still on behind us. Our feet crunched along the gravel path, and the crickets all chirped their cricket song in the grass.

And now, if you would, please imagine the hands of that symbolic clock that I promised you earlier, spinning themselves faster and faster into a symbolic radial blur. Time passes. After our extended stay at the Lawrence Ranch, Lydia and I moved back to Chicago. When we finally returned from our Ovid-like exile in the wilderness, I could speak, read, and write the English language and had received some of my sentimental education. In fact, it may not have been long after the memory I just related that Lydia and I left the Lawrence Ranch and returned to Chicago. I honestly don’t know why exactly we left the Lawrence Ranch when we did. I won’t pretend to know how much — if at all — our re-relocation to Chicago had to do with this curious incident that I found last night in my memory-box. But our move back may have had to do with many other factors as well. For one thing, I think Lydia missed the city, as did I. She missed its familiarity; she missed feeling her independence. She did not enjoy feeling like a perpetual houseguest. She missed the place she had called home for nearly ten years. We thanked the Lawrences for all their financial support, their kindness, their enduring, tireless, and outrageously generous hospitality. We tearfully said good-bye to Dudley and Regina Lawrence, and even more tearfully to Hilarious Lily, and to Sukie, the dog, to the memory of Hilarious Larry, and most tearfully of all to Clever Hands, who signed Good-bye! to us and kept on waving, even as Lydia’s car was tumbling over the washboards down the narrow dirt road. The sun may have been setting — or rising — painting the mountains behind us in majestic colors. And we left.

I apologize that it’s been so long since our last session, Gwen. You know I was extremely busy with Woyzeck , which you saw us perform last week. I honestly wasn’t thrilled with the way the performance turned out. We took our bows at the end of it, and our audience applauded when it was time to applaud. I have fallen so far from the zenith of my theatrical career, back when Leon and I put on our epic production of The Tempest . That was more than ten years ago now.

Don’t worry, Gwen, I’m not offended that stage fright prevented your acting in my play. I am afraid our production was amateurish at best. Chimps are very difficult to direct. I’m seriously considering learning the dark art of puppetry. Puppets would be more obedient actors.

I’m concerned about Leon. Leon is now over sixty. He has a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg and an increasing belly, every part about him blasted with antiquity. His gait is slow and uncertain, his flesh doesn’t have the sanguinity it used to. A man of great heart and courageous stomach, he’s been dragging his body through hell all his life. He looks much older than he really is. Leon is the best and the last great friend I have left in the world, and I’m afraid it may be sooner than I’d like that I’ll lose him, too. Freud observed that to love anyone is to give fate a hostage. These days, when I see Leon, I can almost see fate standing behind him with a knife pressed against his fat throat. I’m afraid for him. I will miss him when he’s gone. We have heard the chimes at midnight. That we have, that we have.

Our performance of Woyzeck , as I’m sure you observed, was marred by an irritating accident. There is a train track that passes right outside the grounds of the Zastrow National Primate Research Center, situated somewhere in rural Georgia, USA. Every once in a while — probably three or four times a day — a freight train thunders by the research center. It makes a deafening noise, usually accompanied by a long, low blast from its horn and an uncertain shuddering of the earth, during which everything in this place is set to slight wobbling. The apes — by which I mean the animal apes, the non-enculturated chimps, bonobos, and orangutans who live in this research center — they love it. They are so mystified and enchanted and terribly impressed with all the phenomena that occur every time a train passes. During these few minutes of rumbling, bellowing, and earth-shaking that happen several times daily, they all — down to an ape — commence to jump up and down, clap their hands, howl and pant-hoot and scream in wonder and irrepressible joy. And, as bad luck had it, at the absolute emotional climax of the play — the moment when Woyzeck murders his wife in a fit of jealous rage — what should happen, but that goddamn train decided to blast by outside the research center. As I staggered onstage with angst-haunted eyes and the retractable-bladed plastic toy knife in my hand, that stupid train chose that particular moment to blow its stupid horn and come rolling its stupid way along its stupid tracks, and at that moment, all the walls of our onstage narrative — fourth, third, second, first — instantly came crashing down, and not in a good way. All the chimps on the stage (except one) and all the chimps in the audience, when they heard that train roaring by, felt instantly compelled to start jumping up and down, clapping, hooting, howling, and screaming out in joyous rapture — completely ruining my play. All of my actors immediately forgot their roles, and were no longer characters in one of the greatest psychological dramas of early modern theatre, but were just chimps again, enthralled with a train.