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She laughed when I showed her the black-and-white animal under the word cow and pointed to her lips. “Vache,” she said finally, still giggling. Then “chien.” Then “arbre.”

Luckily for my purposes, a different company took over the cleaning work, otherwise I would have been utterly muddled, not knowing that there is more than one human language. Luckily, too, Dr. Simone happened to witness this exchange with Yvette while reviewing one of the monitor tapes. Imagine my relief when, instead of some dumb researcher, she assigned herself and several others to teach me to understand words. It became a kind of game. I knew some research worked its way into our sessions, especially when they tested me, usually with pictures of things I would point to when they said the corresponding word, but I didn’t mind.

Then came sentences. Short and simple at first. I began to appreciate the level at which humans operate. I noticed how people used words to give each other commands, to explain things, to make jokes, to vent anger, to be nice. It helped that I could sense emotions very acutely. I noticed that people often say one thing while feeling another.

How I wanted to join the conversation! How I wanted to express my … my chimpness, my situation, and my yearning, above all, to be free. I went in and out of despair. Exulted one moment at what I was learning, morbid the next at the thought I could not speak. The dark song of suicide sang in me as never before. But how to do it? I knew I wouldn’t have the self-discipline to hang myself, as we creatures of the trees have long powerful arms with which to reach above us and keep from strangling in a noose. I would be like a fish trying to drown itself. Nor did they allow any sharp objects with which I might sever an artery. No poison pills, either.

So I determined once again to escape even if I had nowhere to escape to. There are no tropical forests at these latitudes. There are no chimp halfway houses. It didn’t matter. If I had to die trying, I was bent on escaping. Not that any of this signified: There was no way of escaping.

Until the afternoon when Jacobus, a very old chimp with a bad heart, suffered either a stroke or cardiac arrest. Alarms went off and before long a couple of guys in medic-like uniforms arrived with a stretcher, put Jacobus on it, fitted an oxygen mask to his face, covered him with a blanket up to his neck, and took him away.

I heard someone say they were taking him to the hospital at the Middling County Zoo. I heard someone use the word euthanize, which took me a minute to figure out. Hell, I thought, I’d settle for that.

I went about my plans with all the cunning of the desperate. I pretended not to be hungry. I kept myself awake at night and easily feigned listlessness during the day. I knew I was succeeding from the comments of the staff about me. “Looks like Alphus isn’t himself today.” “Yeah, he hasn’t been feeling so hot lately.” “Hell I’d get like that if they kept me cooped up in that place.”

A few days later, in the presence of some of my more excitable brethren and a couple of human beings, I fell from a low bar and clutched at my chest, faking a heart attack. I struggled to get up, but fell back again. With predictable panic, my cell mates screeched and hooted. I heard someone say, “Oh, God, it’s Alphus. Get Doctor Simone.”

Right on cue, the medics arrived. I, too, was given an oxygen mask and blood pressure monitor. But, critically, no restraints were put on me as I was loaded onto the stretcher and borne out to the waiting ambulance.

One of the EMTs drove while the other one, a burly fellow with a red face, tended to me. “Don’t worry, pal,” he said, “We’ll get you there.” Then, to the driver. “I don’t see why they don’t just give them the old needle right there.”

“Yeah. But it ain’t as much fun.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hell, Frank didn’t use a needle on the last one we brought over. You know, the old one.”

“Really.”

“Nah. He fed him to the leopards. I don’t think it was even dead. He said the big cats went crazy.”

My heart felt like it had