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The orang stared at him. The curved lips moved. A sequence of guttural grunts: “Ooh stomm dwaas, varlaat leanme.”
One of the tourists said, “Is he making those sounds?”
“Yes,” Hagar said.
“Is he…talking?”
“Apes can’t talk,” another tourist said. “Orangs are silent. It says so in the book.”
Several snapped flash pictures of the hanging ape. The juvenile male showed no surprise. But the lips moved: “Geen lichten dwaas.”
“Does he have a cold?” a woman asked nervously. “Sounds like he’s coughing?”
“He’s not coughing,” another voice said.
Hagar glanced over his shoulder. A heavyset man at the back, a man who had struggled to keep up, red-faced and puffing, now held a tape recorder in his hand, pointing it toward the orang. He had a determined look on his face. He said to Hagar, “Is this some kind of trick you play?”
“No,” Hagar said.
The man pointed to the orang. “That’s Dutch,” he said. “Sumatra used to be a Dutch colony. That’s Dutch.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hagar said.
“I would. The animal said, ‘Stupid, leave me alone.’ And then it said, ‘No lights.’ When the camera flashes went off.”
“I don’t know what those sounds were,” Hagar said.
“But you were recording them.”
“Just out of curiosity—”
“You had your microphone out long before the sounds began. You knew that animal would speak.”
“Orangs can’t speak,” Hagar said.
“That one can.”
They all stared at the orangutan, still swinging from one arm. It scratched itself with the free arm. It was silent.
The heavyset man said loudly, “Geen lichten.”
The ape just stared, blinked slowly.
“Geen lichten!”
The orang gave no sign of comprehension. After a moment, he swung to a nearby branch, and began to climb into the air, moving easily, arm on arm.
“Geen lichten!”
The ape kept climbing. The woman in the big straw hat said, “I think it was just coughing or something.”
“Hey,” the heavyset man yelled. “M’sieu! Comment ça va?”
The ape continued up through the branches, swinging in an easy rhythm with its long arms. It did not look down.
“I thought maybe it speaks French,” the man said. He shrugged. “Guess not.”
A light rain began to drip from the canopy. The other tourists put their cameras away. One shrugged on a light, transparent raincoat. Hagar wiped the sweat from his forehead. Up ahead, three young orangs were scampering around a tray of papayas on the ground. The tourists turned their attention to them.
From high in the canopy came a growling sound: “Espèce de con.” The phrase came to them clearly, surprisingly distinct in the still air.
The heavyset man spun around. “What?”
Everyone turned to look upward.
“That was a swear word,” the teenager said. “In French. I know it was a swear word. In French.”
“Hush,” his mother said.
The group stared up at the canopy, searching the dense mass of dark leaves. They could not see the ape up there.
The heavyset man yelled, “Qu’est-ce que tu dis?”
There was no answer. Just the crash of an animal moving through branches, and the distant cry of a hornbill.
CHEEKY CHIMP CHEWS OFF TOURISTS
(News of the World)
AFFE SPRICHT IM DSCHUNGEL, FLÜCHE GEORGE BUSH
(Der Spiegel)
ORANG PARLE FRANÇAIS?!!
(Paris Match, beneath a picture of Jacques Derrida)
MUSLIM MONKEY BERATES WESTERNERS
(Weekly Standard)
MONKEY MOUTHS OFF, WITNESSES AGAPE
(National Enquirer)
TALKING CHIMPANZEE REPORTED IN JAVA
(New York Times, subsequent correction printed)
POLYGLOT PRIMATES SIGHTED IN SUMATRA
(Los Angeles Times)
“And, finally, a group of tourists in Indonesia swear they were abused by an orangutan in the jungles of Borneo. According to the tourists, the ape swore at them in Dutch and French, which means it was probably a lot smarter than they were. But no recordings of the cursing chimp have turned up, leading us to conclude that if you believe this story, we have a job for you in the current administration. Plenty of talking apes there!”
(Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC News, no correction)
CH005
Get this,” Charlie Huggins said, looking at the television in the kitchen of his house in San Diego. The sound was turned off, but he was reading the crawl beneath. “It says, ‘Talking Ape Cited in Sumatra.’”
“You mean it got a speeding ticket?” his wife said, glancing at the screen. She was making breakfast.
“No,” Huggins said. “They must mean the ape was ‘sighted.’ With an ‘s.’”
“The ape was sighted? Meaning the ape could see?” His wife was a high school English teacher. She liked these jokes.
“No, honey. The story says…some people in Sumatra encountered an ape in the jungle that talked.”
“I thought apes can’t talk,” his wife said.
“Well, that’s what the story says.”
“So it has to be a lie.”
“You think? Uh, now…Britney Spears is not getting divorced. I’m relieved. She may be pregnant again. From the pictures it looks like it. And Posh Spice wore a nice green dress to a gala. And Sting says he can have sex for eight hours without stopping.”
“Scrambled or over easy?” his wife said.
“Tantric, apparently.”
“I mean your eggs.”
“Scrambled.”
“Call the kids, will you?” she said. “Everything’s almost ready.”
“Okay.” Charlie got up from the table and headed for the stairs. When he got to the living room, the phone rang. It was the lab.
In the laboratories of Radial Genomics Inc., in the eucalyptus groves of the University of California at San Diego, Henry Kendall drummed his fingers on the countertop while he waited for Charlie to pick up. The phone rang three times. Where the fuck was he? Finally, Charlie’s voice: “Hello?”
“Charlie,” Henry said. “Did you hear the news?”
“What news?”
“The ape in Sumatra, for Christ’s sake.”
“That has to be bullshit,” Charlie said.
“Why?”
“Come on, Henry. You know it’s bullshit.”
“They said the ape spoke Dutch.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“It might have been Uttenbroek’s team,” Kendall said.
“Nah. The ape was big, two or three years old.”
“So? Uttenbroek could have done it a few years ago. His team’s advanced enough. Besides, those guys from Utrecht are all liars.”
Charlie Huggins sighed. “It’s illegal in the Netherlands to do that research.”
“Right. Which is why they would go to Sumatra to do it.”
“Henry, the technology’s much too difficult. We’re years away from making a transgenic ape. You know that.”
“I don’t know that. You hear what Utrecht announced yesterday? They harvested bull stem cells and cultured them in mouse testicles. I would say that is difficult. I would say that is fucking cutting edge.”
“Especially for the bulls.”
“I don’t see anything funny here.”
“Can’t you imagine the poor mice, dragging around giant purple bulls’ balls?”
“Still not laughing…”
“Henry,” Charlie said. “Are you telling me you see one report on television about a talking ape, and you actually believe it?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“Henry.” Charlie sounded exasperated. “It’s television. This story’s right up there with the two-headed snake. Pull yourself together.”
“The two-headed snake was real.”
“I have to get the kids to school. I’ll talk to you later.” And Charlie hung up.
Fucker. His wife always took the kids to school.
He’s avoiding me.
Henry Kendall walked around the lab, stared out the window, paced some more. He took a deep breath. Of course he knew Charlie was right. It had to be a fake story.
But…what if it wasn’t?
It was true that Henry Kendall had a tendency to be high-strung; his hands sometimes shook when he spoke, especially when he was excited. And he was a bit of a klutz, always stumbling, banging into things at the lab. He had a nervous stomach. He was a worrier.
