The Four Fingers of Death (88 page)

“He’s not in your very unique position, Morton, and most of the experiments done on the lemur are not covered under our grant. I’m not in a position to vouch for his treatment. Nor should I apologize for his mistreatment if I were. I can, however, put you in touch with the relevant parties later, if that is your wish.”

“Just because he can’t
articulate
his consent doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know that his consent has been taken from him.”

“The point is highly debatable in the case of the lemur—”

“Listen to me,” Morton said, with growing discomfort at the three bobbling faces arrayed in front of him, three faces that he was not at all sure were not going to strap him down yet again. “I’m not really willing to engage with you about what my fellow citizens of the animal kingdom can and cannot understand. You’re here in your billion-dollar medical facility doing what’s good for you and for the biotech business sector, which is trying to make up ground against Chinese and Indian state-supported entities. You don’t take the time to think about the experimental subjects; this I know from firsthand experience. Having said that, to prove that I’m a reasonable fellow, I’m willing to answer some of your questions, and we can proceed from there, recognizing as I think we all do, anyhow, that things are going to be a little different from now on.”

Koo said, “Shall we have some lunch while we talk?”

“Fine,” Morton replied.

“Bananas?” Koo asked.

“The truth is that I much prefer mango, honeydew melon, grapefruit. Do you know what it’s like eating the same foods every day? Do you eat the same foods every day? And bringing bananas every day, that’s such prejudice. What I’d really like is a melon ball salad, if you think you are able to obtain one of those.”

“Larry?” Koo said. “We’ll need the small folding table and some chairs. And maybe you could go down to the cafeteria in the hospital and see if you can procure some sandwiches and some kind of—”

“Sure,” Larry said, as though happy to escape.

“Noelle, can you arrange a video camera for us? To document the luncheon?”

The beloved, with her slender hands, her chipped nail polish, busied herself as requested.

“Morton,” Koo said, as if to break the ice, and almost casually, “what do you remember of the time before you could talk?”

“Before I could talk?”

“You are nearly eighteen years old, according to our records. During a great portion of the time before today, you were unable to speak.”

“That was a period of time in which I was immature and didn’t yet know what a fully grown man knows.”

“And what do you remember of that childish part of your life?”

“I remember how things smelled. Lots of smells, in fact. I can tell you all about the smells of captivity. These smells consist chiefly of urine and fecal material, unwashed bodies, as well as the smells of institutional food. Oh, and disinfectant. No experimental subject, in telling the story of his life, would leave out the smell of antibacterial disinfectant. Does that disinfectant really do anything? Doesn’t it actually
empower
the bacteria?”

“You didn’t, in that time of rich smells, attach any words to anything?”

“I knew some words, but I chose not to participate in your club of ditherers, which was mainly a skill—dithering—that you used to separate yourselves from other animals. As though you were trying to pretend that you didn’t belong in the same evolutionary branch as the chimpanzee. This is not to say that it isn’t harder for us, because of the muscular skills required, to get the hang of your language. It just takes longer.”

“Have you forgotten the injection I gave you?”

Noelle was in charge of the video camera, and Morton could see that she was shooting his good profile. Very kind of her, really. He wanted to be sure to appear as a presentable and take-charge sort of individual.

“You’ve given me about three hundred injections. You and others like you. Sometimes I have trouble telling you apart, frankly. You all look similar. But I believe you personally have given me many injections. I have tried to keep track of these things. But do you think I wake up every morning and review last night’s injection? I try to
survive
. That is my brief. I don’t think back on what is least pleasant in my day, except insofar as I fear these things. I watch the brothers and sisters up and down the corridor getting carted out in body bags. With each injection, I say a little prayer that you will have the tables turned on you one day.”

“You attempted to micturate on me. That is my recollection of that night.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Do you associate that night and that injection with your ability to speak?”

“If you’re asking me if I am grateful to you, or for your input, as regards my language skills, I say, respectfully, that I am not grateful. Your language skills have enabled me to understand the injustice here, which has brought me anguish and a feeling of apartness from my fellow captives.”

It wasn’t a melon ball salad that Larry brought in. It was a chilled, tiered Jell-O-brand dessert, in bright green, which was not exactly what Morton had in mind. But it had some melon in it. Morton didn’t approve of refrigeration, and was not keen on flatware either, which caused in him, on this occasion, some social distress. It was as if Larry and Koo were making it obvious that he still had to eat the food with his hands. Larry set down the paper plates, the sandwiches, and the little bowl of Jell-O, and then he left the room, heading back to the other side of the looking glass.

Koo said, “I think I’m beginning to understand. I’m beginning to see us as you are seeing us. But help me to understand a little more. Do you have feelings about world events or contemporary politics that you’d like to share with us? So that we can get a better sense of your views?”

“I do.”

“Feel free.”

“You have systematically undervalued the states of the African continent, where my species comes from and is most populous, to the extent that it exists in the wild. Those are the economies that are really starting to thrive. Your North American century, that century is over. That’s what I think. NAFTA is a second-rate global player. Maybe not even second rate.”

“This is a very popular point of view.”

“I try to keep up with current events.”

“Do you have any strongly held philosophical positions, leaving aside these rather traditional animal rights types of positions that you have articulated so far?”

“You bet I do. I don’t think they’re philosophical positions that you’re going to want to hear exactly, but I’m happy to share them with you. I believe in the dignity of the common man and woman, the working family, that’s one position. Not the captains of industry, not the Chinese or Bollywood celebutantes, but the guy who delivers the fuel oil for your HVAC machinery here in the URB lab. I see him out the window sometimes. Seems like a good guy. I believe in the little animals, flycatchers, dragonflies, the animals that no one thinks contribute to biodiversity. I believe in basic human rights for all prisoners, whether political, criminal, or animal. I believe in a world court that seeks to protect the rights of prisoners. I believe in the European tradition of philosophy, if you are curious. I believe in philosophy that opposes empiricism and rigid, unfeeling scientific thought. Man needs to rise above markets and to understand himself as a participant in an ongoing saga of evolution, which is not about markets but is about shedding the logic of the food chain. And I believe that if I contradict myself, as others have said, why then I contradict myself.”

“Your philosophy sounds somewhat
French
. Do you have an interest in French or francophone cultures?”

“You kidding me? They were the colonizers of many African countries, and they enabled a lot of wholesale slaughter of my fellows. In the Congo, for example. They thought they were better than the people they conquered because they ate unpasteurized cheese. French culture, you kidding? You look at the great French thinkers, a lot of them weren’t even French, like what’s his name, the Algerian guy. He was a Sephardic Jew who did most of his best work in the United States. France always wants it both ways, marriage
and
mistress, Fascist government
and
French Revolution. Still, the French thinkers of the twenty-first century, at least from what I’ve read, they’re all in exile, because of the French policy toward its Muslim population. The French are star-crossed, they are destroying themselves, they have forgotten what was good about being French, the values of the revolution, the nouvelle vague, Rabelais, that kind of thing.”

Morton noticed that Koo seemed to take umbrage at some of this speech. His scientific detachment was failing. But he didn’t really know how to stop now. Upon opening his mouth, he couldn’t stop. It didn’t occur to him that not all the things that could be said needed to be said. Koo, who had wound himself into a position in his chair—arms folded, legs crossed over each other—that didn’t look comfortable, whispered one more question, and if Morton didn’t know any better, he would almost have said that Koo was going to weep as he uttered it.

“What are your feelings on institutionalized religion?”

Morton sensed a layer of inquiry whose purpose was not apparent to him, and rather than leap into it with his true feelings, which were that all the religious people should be rooted out of the general population and sent to an isolated countryside encampment where they wouldn’t be able to harm anyone, he sensed that it might be worth trying to moderate his argument just a little bit.

“As I have said, and even written in some of my notes,” Morton began, popping a last green grape, swathed in green Jell-O chunks, into his mouth and ruminating, “God is someone who has yet to introduce himself to me. And if he has yet to introduce himself to me, how is it that I am meant to prepare myself for his advent? Is his kingdom really
at hand
, based on the experiences of my life? Additionally, as a so-called animal, I’m concerned that the religions don’t address themselves sufficiently to the needs of nonhumans like me. That said”—and here Morton believed he was attempting to
toss a bone
to the Korean medical researcher—“what you see rapidly being wiped out in the current century, in the lawless and totalitarian Sino-Indian Economic Compact, is
gentleness
in the world. Humankind has held up gentleness as one of its highest aims, and yet it has systematically wiped out gentleness wherever it has appeared, in Tibet, in the Amazon, in the wildlife refuges of the African continent. The religions you speak of seem to be the one place where remedial gentleness can be taught, and yet. I would like some lessons in that gentleness, if you are able to provide them. Maybe you can have some divinity student in here a couple days a week to explain to me what he believes in. I’m especially interested in Saint Francis of Assisi, around whom the animals gathered. When everything has been destroyed by government and institutional religion, there will probably be one guy wearing a cloak and carrying a book, and whether or not I believe in religion, that will be the guy I want to talk to, at least for an afternoon or so.”

Koo had already risen from his seat as Morton was pronouncing the last of his speech, and he could be seen delicately wiping at one eye as the chimpanzee spoke, though for what reason was unclear. And at that point it became evident the interview, abruptly, was over. Morton realized, that is, that he had somehow provided unhelpful answers to many of the questions, though what the right answers were was a mystery to him. As swiftly as the conversation was ended, when Koo told Noelle that she could shut off the camera, so was begun the arrangement of the afternoon
drive
, which Koo agreed to, as a man of his word.