The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [124]
When I had begun to speak articulately enough that people other than Lydia could understand me, Lydia extracted a promise from me: that for the time being, I would not speak to any humans who did not already know my secret. If I was in the presence of her, or the other chimps, or Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, or Rita—all the people in the world who knew I could talk—then I could say all I liked, but around anyone else mum was the word. The reason for this moratorium on my speaking was that she wanted to keep me a secret from the world in order to give her as much time as possible to teach and study me in peace and without the winds of unwanted publicity and public outcry howling at the door. I complied with her request of my silence. I slipped up only once.
Clever and I would often take walks along the high metal fence that separated the vineyards from the free-range area of Mr. Lawrence’s property. It looked much like the tall chain-link fence that surrounds the research center where I live now. Clever and I enjoyed conversations together, of a certain sort. Linguistically speaking, they were all very one-sided. I did all the talking, and he just made gestures that I failed to understand. I liked his company though, and he liked mine: we were friends. We were walking along the fence, with Sukie, the dog, yapping and panting about ten feet up ahead of us. Clever and I walked side by side. My hands were clasped behind my back, and I was in the middle of pontificating aloud on some ponderous philosophical subject, while Clever mutely listened, dragging a stick against the fence to make it go clink-clink-clink-clink as we walked.
“… and indeed,” I was saying to Clever, “not even Augustine conceived of a God in terms of material imagination, yet for Kierkegaard—” I stopped cold, my thought truncated in midsentence. I had been so lost in my soliloquizing that I was startled by a small grubby-faced child standing just on the other side of the fence, looking out at us. Her star-kissed ink-black eyes were transfixed in an expression halfway between wonder and fear. She stood stock-still, silent. She had heard every word.
I looked past her. Up ahead, in the vineyard, in the aisle of dirt between two long fences covered in grape vines, was a group of vineyard workers. They were bent over their labor: picking the grapes and putting them in the big plastic buckets that hung from their fingers. They wore straw hats to keep off the October sun that glued their clothes to their skin with sweat. Some of them were barefoot; some of the men were shirtless. The little girl who had heard me speak ran off toward them. Clever and I stood there at the fence, trading nervous looks, unsure of what to do.
“Mamá, mamá!” said the girl. One of the grape-picking women looked up at her, put down her bucket and wiped about a gallon of sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. She visored her eyes with a hand and squinted at me and Clever, standing just beyond the fence at the edge of the vineyard.
“¡Oí que el mono habla!” said the little girl, pointing at me. “¡Aquel mono puede hablar! ¡El mono puede hablar!”
The men picking grapes all looked up at us and laughed. The little girl jumped up and down and shrieked in frustration.
“¡Es verdad! ¡Oí que el mono hablaba!”
The girl’s mother sighed heavily and shook her head.
“No estás tonta,” she muttered, and went back to work. “Imaginas cosas locas, Mercedes.”
The girl stamped her foot in frustration. She ran back to us at the fence.
“Speak, monkey!” she shouted at me in English. “Speak again!”
I did not like doing what I had to do next. I shook my head no, and turned away from her. She was a child, and would never be believed. My secret was safe. I looked back as we were leaving and saw her beginning to cry. My heart was heavy. I took my leave of Clever’s company and returned to the cabin, where I knew Lydia was. I wanted to be with the woman I loved, and to speak freely.
During our savage pilgrimage Lydia never ceased to feel uncomfortable