I ran from the bathroom, slammed the door shut behind me, and leaned against it, breathing hard. Though the room in the fading, evening light was half in darkness, I could now see cockroaches there, too — whole legions of them marching across the cot and pillow where minutes earlier I had lain my head. Why hadn’t I seen them before? Had I been that disoriented, that distracted by fatigue and the noise of the chimpanzees? The insects swarmed over my duffel, scattered from clusters on the kitchen counter, and regrouped on the hot plate. They raced across the dusty surface of the small dresser in the corner. They were everywhere, spreading over the formica-topped table as if spilled from a pail and shuddering over the floor and across the threadbare braided rug — hundreds of cockroaches, thousands, fleeing from my sight into pockets of darkness between walls, behind and beneath furniture, plates, and utensils, as if I had unexpectedly caught them doing a forbidden thing, a black mass or an obscene sexual act.
I held my breath and didn’t move. The cockroaches seemed to do the same, as if watching, waiting for me to attack them or run. I began to tremble, from my hands up my arms to my body and onto my face. I felt my lips purse involuntarily, and my right cheek started to twitch, as if with neuralgia. What is wrong with me? I wondered. Even though alone, I felt embarrassed. But this is the way things are in Africa, I reminded myself. It’s the tropics, for heaven’s sake! What did I expect in a house that’s been empty for weeks or months? I’d had to displace cockroaches and rats before, in my apartment in Accra and before that in dozens of rented rooms and filthy apartments and so-called safe houses in the States, and had disinfected my living quarters, set traps, put out poisons, washed floors with lye and scrubbed counters down with ammonia water. And though the chimps were louder and more raucous than I might have expected, I’d heard laboratory animals before — monkeys and bonobos yelling to be fed at this time of day — and had not been frightened by them, only worried that someone might not be there to feed them on time and clean their cages and change their water.
Slowly, carefully, as if walking on loose sheets of paper, I crossed the room and stepped onto the small open porch. The dirt yard needs sweeping, I noticed. I’ll buy some candles and mosquito coils at the little corner shop we passed coming in, and tonight when I sleep I’ll burn them near the bed. With relief, I saw a bundle of mosquito netting tied to a ceiling hook above the bed. Tomorrow I’ll scrub down the cottage and put out traps and poison. Tomorrow I’ll dispossess these tenants and take over the place, make it my own. I’ll meet the people who are supposed to care for the chimps, and I’ll learn their schedules and tasks, so that I can fill in for them when they’re late or for some reason can’t come in to work. And, in fact, right now I’ll see if I can figure out how to calm the chimps myself somehow. Perhaps all they need is fresh water, and maybe what and how to feed them will be obvious to me. As soon as I can, possibly this very evening, I’ll present myself to the woman who Mr. Sundiata said runs the lab and the man who feeds the chimps and cleans their cages, and they’ll tell me what sort of work I am to do here. I’ll work hard, very hard, and they will quickly find me irreplaceable. I’ll find good friends here, men and women. Liberians speak English, after all, and they’re said to like and admire Americans. It will be easy and enjoyable. I may call myself Dawn Carrington, or I may say I am Hannah Musgrave, and I’ll make a useful, satisfying, aboveground life for myself here in Liberia. And someday I’ll return to the United States, and at last I’ll see my mother and father again.
These were my thoughts as I crossed the compound and approached the door of the Quonset hut. I neared the windowless building, and the screams of the chimpanzees rose in volume and intensity, as if the animals could somehow see and hear me coming. The door was padlocked, like the doors to the cottages. I took from my skirt pocket the ring of keys that Satterthwaite had given me and tried the keys at random until one of them snapped the lock open. Removing it, I swung back the heavy door and faced a black wall of impenetrable darkness.
A vegetative stench gushed from the interior and washed over me. It was oily, hot, and dense, like composted fruit mixed with fresh barnyard manure, but cut with an ingredient that I had never smelled before, something acidic and glandular and starkly repellent, like the brain chemicals of a psychopath. The howls and screeches of the chimpanzees and their compulsive, arrhythmic banging against their cages had merged and become a congealed and hardened quantity of sound, as if it were an object, a quarried thing, a room-size block of stone. My eyes grew slightly used to the darkness, enough to make out a light switch on the wall just inside the door. I reached in and flipped it, and the building filled with cold fluorescent light. Then I stepped across the iron threshold and entered.
The barred cages, racked in two layers from the front of the Quonset hut to the rear, were actually not as small as I’d pictured, not as small as the cages they’d used in the lab in Accra. These were the size and dimensions of a large kitchen appliance, a stove or dishwasher. At first I couldn’t see the creatures inside the cages, and for a second I wondered if the cages were empty and all the noise were just a tape-recording being played at high volume, some kind of special effect, as if a bizarre fraud were being carried off here. I looked around the large chamber, half expecting to see a wizard of Oz playing a diabolical noisemaker in the corner. Then I saw the chimpanzees — saw their wild eyes and pink lips and flared, flat nostrils, their almost human faces, their thickly knuckled hands wrapped around the bars, their hunched bodies — and I thought, Oh, my God, they’re much too large for their cages, they’re huge, much bigger than I’d ever imagined. They’re the size of human beings!
There were some who were children, looking stunned and almost comatose, lying in the corners of their cages. Others, with barely enough room to pace a few short, angry steps, back and forth, back and forth, were evidently adolescents. A half-dozen more, full-grown adults — females, I could tell from their huge genitalia — were forced to stand bent over, nearly filling the cages with their bulk. Farther down, I saw four or five even larger adults shaking the bars with terrible force — clearly males, with surprisingly small penises, although I didn’t know why I was surprised and was embarrassed for having noticed at all. The big males spat at me and threw garbage and chunks of their feces in my direction, glowered, and showed me their cavernous, wide-open, nearly toothless mouths. I couldn’t understand. Why were they toothless? Their teeth, their powerful canine teeth, must have been removed, yanked out with pliers. The chimpanzees’ shoulders and chests were scabbed, and they had pulled out patches of hair all over, the young as well as the old. And, good Lord, what a stench of brutality filled that place! The animals were in more physical and emotional pain than I was capable of imagining. Why is this happening? Who has done this?