• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2244 0

my father, Rotpeter. I set down my suitcase and let go momentarily of Céleste’s hand. I reached into the pocket of my coat and took out the pack of cigarettes. I unwound the band of cellophane from the top, cracked it open and removed the foil lining of the pack. I backed up, wound back my arm, took aim, and threw it over the wall. It sailed over the moat and landed successfully on the grassy shores of Monkey Island. The chimps immediately all scrambled over to it to investigate. One of the babies picked it up in idle curiosity. I watched Rotpeter lumber over and rudely snatch it from the child’s hands. His personality had not changed one bit. He was still as brutish, as violent, as selfish and unenlightened as when I had left him. His face brightened at once with a look of surprise and rapture as he realized what it was. I watched him sniff them, relishing the smell of tobacco he had long, long been deprived of. He bolted off at once to dig up his old cigarette lighter from the cache where it had sat unneeded for years.

Then I took Céleste’s hand again, and I led her inside the Primate House. I let go of her hand. I put down my suitcase. I embraced her. I hugged her tightly to my chest, and I kissed her forehead and her silent face. The hood of her sweatshirt flopped back behind her head, revealing her apeness. I picked up my suitcase and waved good-bye to her. Céleste went to the window. She was confused. She pressed her long purple hands flat against the glass and looked through the window at the chimp habitat. Our family stood gathered around her on the other side of the glass wall. My father, Rotpeter, already had a lit cigarette between his lips. All of them were hopping up and down, screaming, pant-hooting, ripping up fistfuls of straw and planting chips from the floor and throwing it in the air, bashing on the glass with their palms, displaying like mad—all of them probably wondering how in the world Céleste had come to be on the wrong side of the glass. Céleste pressed her hands to the glass and looked inside. She was happy to see them. She wanted to be with them. She wanted to be on the other side of the glass.

I left the Primate House. With my hat on my head and my suitcase in my hand, I slowly waddled away from it all. I made my way past the zebras, the kangaroos, the rhinos, the Bactrian camels, the giraffes, and the great cats, and out of the zoo. I walked out of the Lincoln Park Zoo for the last time in my life. I walked along the pedestrian footpath that encircled the park, past joggers clad tightly in shiny spandex outfits, past little dogs tugging on their leashes, past a baseball diamond, an equestrian statue and a big duck pond, where geese and swans drifted through the green water neon with algae. I said good-bye to the sky above my head. I said good-bye to Chicago. I said good-bye to my freedom to move at will through human society.

I saw what I wanted to see: I saw a mounted policeman reining his horse along the edge of the park. The giant sweaty brown animal clopped along at a leisurely pace. The policeman on the horse wore a dark blue coat, black riding boots in the stirrups, aviator sunglasses, and a sky-blue helmet with a visor. He seemed bored. He was watching the ducks in the pond. I waved to him and approached. The policeman snapped out of his duck-watching reverie as I came near. He tugged on the reins of his giant land-beast—like a hill of muscle—and clopped slowly toward me. We met on the pedestrian footpath, by the duck pond.

The policeman looked down at me, and I looked up at him. His horse snorted. The policeman raised his eyebrows and tipped up his sunglasses with a gloved finger to get a better look at this strange and tiny figure on the ground in front of him.

“Hello?” said the policeman. “Can I help you?”

I removed my hat.

“My name is Bruno Littlemore,” I said. “Bruno I was given, Littlemore I gave myself. I have committed a murder, and I have come forward to confess.”

The policeman peered down at me from on top of his horse with a look that suggested he was still searching