The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [250]
L
The relevant parts of my tale are all told. It is a pleasing accident that this last chapter happens to be the fiftieth, the only other chapter in this volume except for the first (and, less elegantly, the fifth and tenth) to receive the honor of being headed with a bold and simple single capital letter. I began this narrative, as is natural, with an I: standing for the ego, the fount of the first-person voice. And I end it with an L. Does that L stand for light? For Lydia? For her given, and my self-given, surname? For locksmiths? For the commuter rail system of my home city? L is for laughter. L is for literature. L is for love. L is for life. L is for language.
It would serve as a useless and uninteresting dénouement to the story I have told you if I were to dig my long purple fingers too deep into the dirty details of my willing arrest, my confession, the trial, and the shock and scandal that surrounded it all—if I were to speak too much of the public reaction, how they remembered me from my previous scandals. Scandal erupts behind me everywhere I go. Scandal blooms in my footsteps like the flowers of discord. I confessed. I confessed all.
The evidence of Haywood Finch’s coerced confession was thrown out. He was freed, and his name cleared. That was my only objective in coming forward to correct their faulty justice, and that much I achieved.
A few interesting points concerning the unusual particularity of my case arose on the legal agenda, especially in regard to the question of whether I should be tried as a man or as an animal. For one thing, I am not and have never been regarded as a legal citizen of this or any nation—even though I have never lived in any other—for no clear precedent or protocol exists concerning whether citizenship should or can be awarded to animals, be they mute or articulate, or what to do with talking animals if and when they transgress the laws of man. If I were to have been tried as an animal, then I would surely have been euthanized—destroyed, as any animal that harms a man must be. I, Bruno, however, was saved—and I leave it to my readers to ponder whether or not there is poetic irony in this—by science. ’Twas beauty killed the beast. ’Twas science resurrected him.
Scientists came forward to argue that I was too valuable and unique a specimen to be destroyed—that instead, I must be studied. Had I been exterminated—exterminated!—God, what fascistically clinical language!—then they would have lost much opportunity to study me. After all, I am interesting. Mine is an unusual case. There’s that Aesop’s fable, Gwen, about the farmer and his wife who had a goose that laid golden eggs. They thought maybe if they killed the animal it would be made of solid gold inside, so they cut it open and found it to be made of regular old goose-meat. Even if it had been made of gold it was poor economic reasoning to kill it anyway, but that aside—that’s me: I lay the human race golden eggs, and they decided I’m more use to them alive than dead. Oh, I’m sure the studying won’t stop with my death. They’ll probably put my brain in a jar for the scrutiny of future generations, slice it up and test the thisness or the thatness of it. And I am sure their scrutiny will reveal nothing. Just regular old chimp meat inside. There will be some scientist a hundred years from now who will hold up my skull to show the classroom, like Yorick: look here, kids, behold the braincase of the long-dead jester—light, hollow, unfleshed by time, polished smooth as a gemstone. Notice the simian slope of the browridge, the jutting jaw. Would you believe that the monster who owned this once sang the world a song of pride and passion and love and joy and fear and darkness? No, they won’t believe it. Because that’s not how humans like to think of their