“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.