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By Root 2318 0

of the keys. The rhythm of his walk was further eccentricized by a severe limp, due to one of his legs being shorter than the other. So the rhythm of his footsteps sounded like this: kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK…. Haywood Finch—whose name I did not yet know—was employed by the University of Chicago as a janitor, hence this outrageous and musical costume he wore. It was his duty to sweep the floors, mop the floors, wipe the windows, scrub the toilets, scour the sinks, sanitize the urinals, remove the trash, and to perform any other undesirable chore one could think of. I was also later informed that Haywood Finch was considered “slow”—he suffered from a degree of mental retardation coupled with autism, and these and other yet stranger neurological ailments prevented him from excelling in the social world of daytime employment, although he performed his duties as a night-shift janitor at the Erman Biology Center at the University of Chicago with unfailing rigor and aptitude, in solitude, and in the middle of the night. He liked the solitude, he liked the dark, he was comforted by the endless repetition of his work. But I did not know any of this yet. At the time I knew only this: on the one hand, I was no longer alone in the room, but on the other hand, I was no longer alone in the room.

I did know that this was the most frightening human being I had ever seen in my short life—big, bowlegged, walleyed, and twitchy, I sensed there was something deeply not right about the way he looked and walked and breathed and moved his body through space, as he now did, from the door to the lab right up to my cage in the corner of the room. As my eyes were still adjusting to the now partially lit laboratory, this man gradually and musically dragged his weight across the expanse of floor that separated us—kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK. He looked in at me through the bars of my cage, his breath whistling in through his nose and roaring out through his mouth like a pair of fireplace bellows and his bidirectional eyes bugging and blinking and goggling and boggling at me. And I looked at him through the bars of my cage. He didn’t say anything, but the demon of rage that had entered me was still in me, and so I was the first to speak.

I said—or rather, I screamed:

“Oo-oo-oo-oo ah-ah-ah heeaagh heeaagh hyeeeaaaaaghhhh!”

And then—what did he do, this mysterious lumpy man who stood now just outside my cage looking in, this stranger of the crazy eyes and the musical walk? He screamed back at me. He replied in answer:

“Oo-oo-oo-oo ah-ah-ah heeaagh heeaagh hyeeeaaaaaghhhh!”

That shut me up.

He mimicked the inarticulate chimp noise that I had just made. He copied it, beat for beat, tone for tone, note for note, and at the exact same pitch and volume. I was taken aback. He had mimicked my scream so perfectly that anyone secretly listening in would have assumed either that I had made the noise twice or else there was another chimp in the room. When I had somewhat collected my wits I said:

“Uha huppa huh?”

“Uha huppa huh,” he said, though without the rising inflection.

“Eeegt eegt eegt,” I replied.

“Eeegt eegt eegt.”

“Oop oop oop eeyaugh.”

“Eeyaugh, eeyaugh.”

“Oooooooooo oo-oo-oo eeyaugh.”

“Barga barga baraga barrragagaga!”

“Abbah abbah abb?”

“Barga barga oo-oo-oo-oo oooooook.”

“Eep-eep-eep eeyaugh eeyaugh.”

“Glrrrrrrrrrrrrrrargawargawarga!”

“Aat aat aat ananananananananaaaaaaaat!”

“Birrrroing zuboing zuboing zuboing zuboy!”

“Eeetoo eeteetoo amammmmmmnnnnn oot oot oot.”

“Havar voo voy!”

“Rannanakka rannakka oit oit oit!”

“BrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnGAAAHHH!”

“Uffa uffa uffa eeeeeeeeeeagghhht.”

“Yiikikikikikikikikiki eeeeeite eeeeeite!”

“Oo-woo oo-woo oooooo reagh reagh YEAAAAGGHHH!”

Then suddenly we were talking all at once! I don’t recall how the rest of the conversation went. We made such joyous noise!

This was perhaps the first completely reciprocal conversation I ever had with a human being. That first epic conversation with the great Haywood Finch, mildly retarded autistic