Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [66]
When are you going to Mexico? I want you to go right away and I want you to go to the place where the girls put fireflies in their hair at night [so that you can] do some reconnoitering for me.
I think I am happier than I have been since I was a little boy. I have found the world a much nicer place in the last year than I have in a long time. I have felt more at home with my thoughts and conceptions in spite of the sharp and painful backlash of events.… I hope and believe that this will be my last year in analysis. Mittelman corroborates my feeling.…
Mother, it is your duty as a mother to write more frequently than you do. My correspondence has admittedly been lacking, but so has yours. This is about the longest letter I ever wrote. I wish you could see New England. Boy, oh boy! Its grace and tranquility are quiet and refreshing. It must be marvelous in the fall. We are staying in a place where George Washington passed water. The way these snobbish yokels glom on to the slightest … historic incidentals would make you laugh. That sentence is as stupid as I can make it. Let’s see—what have I left unsaid? Nothing, I guess—except to say I love you both.
Your little boy,
Bud
26
ONE DAY about this time my mother gave me a raccoon, which she named Russell. For as long as I can remember, the Brando family had pets. At different times throughout my life, I’ve had horses, cows, rabbits, uncountable cats, dogs and a goose named Mr. Levy that my mother once dressed up as Santa Claus, perhaps to distract from the skimpy presents that were under the tree. I’ve also had monkeys, white doves that had the freedom to fly around the house, snakes, rats, gerbils, an anteater named Chuck, margays and even three electric eels. Someday I am looking forward to getting a four-hundred-pound Yorkshire pig. Pig intelligence has been widely overlooked. They can be housebroken, and they’re clean animals by nature. I’ve always had the sense that animals are not fundamentally different from humans, and have treated them accordingly. It’s been my feeling that they have greater intelligence in some ways—as, of course, we are superior to them in other ways. The lines between intelligence get fuzzier every day with new claims about dolphins, whales and apes who can speak through computers or in sign language. Genetically there is less than 1 percent difference between ourselves and chimpanzees, and only a 2 percent difference that distinguishes us from mice.
When I was making The Wild One, in between camera setups one afternoon I was lying on the grass outside the sound stage when I noticed a man nearby, sitting with a chimpanzee.
“What’s its name?” I asked.
“Peggy.”
“How old is she?”
“Six.”
“Is it all right if I touch her?”
“Sure,” her keeper said, “she likes people.”
I sat down in front of Peggy and put my face a few inches from hers. I was close enough to kiss her. She didn’t move, except for her eyes, which roamed over my face. She stared back at me in the same way I was staring at her; I imagined that she was thinking, Who is this nut? What does he want? We sat this way for perhaps four minutes before she gently took hold of my motorcycle jacket and pulled me toward her. She inspected me thoroughly, then hooked one finger inside my T-shirt and took a gander at my chest. Next she looked into my eyes, and ever so gently reached up with one finger and removed some sleep crystals that were in the corner of one eye. She studied her find curiously for a moment or two, then put her nail in her mouth, licked the sandman