In Adam’s fantasies of a moment earlier Madelene’s lovers had been members of the royal family, or godlike figures; her infidelity had been upwardly mobile, thus acting as an indirect social leg up for himself. Now, in this fickle light, he saw a male figure dredged from the sewers of London.
He stood there, rooted to the spot, a quarter of an hour elapsing before he was once more capable of thought, half an hour going by before he could come to a decision. He would go straight to Madelene’s room, kick the door in and lay this lover low. And then, with a screaming Madelene kneeling at his feet, he would consider his next move.
He was on the point of turning away when the last act of the evening’s drama passed in front of his windows.
In the lead came the hunchback. Behind him, closely entwined, came Madelene and a new male character.
Adam had never seen the ape walking on two legs and he had, of course, never seen it wearing a long coat and a trilby. So he had not the faintest notion of the humanizing effect clothes and an upright gait can have on an animal. Nevertheless, had he been in possession of just some of his senses, his thoughts would have turned to Erasmus. But all his senses had deserted him, he was completely cut off from the realities of everyday life, he was off somewhere where the ape did not exist. Dwelling in the fiendish realms of jealousy. What his eyes beheld was his wife and her two lovers, two creatures radiating a total want of finesse, and through his mind paraded the vast number of sexual degradations made possible by this new, third person.
Not wanting to see any more, he took two steps back into the room. And so he did not see Erasmus, Madelene and Johnny exit from the grounds through the door in the wall, saw nothing at all, in fact, outside of himself. All his attention was driven inward and there he found that the Adam Burden he thought he knew had been given his marching orders. Over him and through him and out into the night thundered herds of runaway elephants and enchanted swine. He was incapable of moving a muscle, and not until day began to break, and his inward bellowing died down to be replaced by a kind of lethargy, was he able to drag himself across the floor and lift the telephone receiver.
fourteen
The Danish Society in London is located in Knightsbridge, backing onto Hyde Park. It was here, at eleven in the morning, that Madelene presented herself, and she was not alone. In front of her she pushed a wheelchair in which sat an elderly lady enveloped in a voluminous traveling blanket, her head shielded from the sun by a black hat complete with veil.
Madelene’s presence here of all places had come about in the following manner: That same morning, early, after a night spent in Johnny’s mobile home in a parking lot in the far-flung suburb of Hemel Hempstead, northwest of London, Madelene had heard herself being reported as missing on the radio.
Not one of the truck’s four passengers had slept a wink that night. With not a word being said, not a move made—apart from Johnny getting up twice to make tea—in silence they had felt the night float by, for all the world as though they were a crew and the van a ship steaming across the ocean, sure of making landfall by dawn. At sunrise, as on every other morning, Johnny had tuned his receiver in to the police wave band. The minute he heard Madelene’s name mentioned he had curled up into a ball in a corner of the bed like a game bird sensing the approach of the beaters.
Madelene, on the other hand, showed no sign of surprise or alarm. The all-points bulletin was broadcast just as she was shaving the hair off Erasmus’ face and she kept at this task while her description was being read out. She was, this morning, brimming with confidence.
She was not putting her trust in any overt form of justice—since she had never been able to ascertain that such a thing existed—but on something better. Madelene had her hopes pinned on the law of the jungle. Those environments in which Madelene had grown up, her family, her schools, her marriage, had all been controlled by a social order which, far from being one big, bloody free-for-all—any more than the biological jungle law was—involved a subtle pecking order that kept the individual in his or her place with a minimum of outward conflict. Social legislation was an integral part of this structure and the Washington Convention an integral part of this legislation, and Madelene’s plan was quite simply to get a vet to testify that the ape was covered by this convention. Then she would take this attestation to Inspector Smailes, whereupon the convention would come into play and the old order restored.
She had no idea what would happen to her personally thereafter. But she harbored no illusions. She had lived a pigeonhole existence—biologically speaking, a highly specialized life, a state of being fitted to a life of wedded idleness, life as a decorative appendage. As with all specialists, in the animal world as in the human, this way of life was extremely sensitive to change. Her confidence in the early hours of this morning was for her companions. As far as she herself was concerned she held out no hopes. Impassively she heard the bulletin out. Then she reached for the telephone.
* * *
The veterinary odontologist did not announce himself. He merely grunted into the telephone and from that sound alone Madelene could tell something was up.
“I have the ape here,” she said.
“There’s a hunt on for you.”
“You’re the only one who can do it…”
“There are twenty vets in London who could do it. Almost as well.”
“At the Meat Market they’re always talking about how brave you are.”
There was silence at the other end. When the doctor did reply his voice was so faint that Madelene thought for a moment she was speaking to someone else.
“It’s my job that’s on the line here.”
Madelene had been brought up to take no for an answer. Only a few weeks ago she would have bade him a pleasant good day and acknowledged defeat, then gone over and curled up beside Johnny and left the inevitable and disastrous chain of events to run their course. Or rather: A couple of weeks ago this conversation would never have taken place. But the Madelene who was now on the phone no longer had any clear memory of that time, and the thought of giving up never crossed her mind.
“You’ve only got one year to go anyway,” she said.
The odontologist’s silence was fraught with uncertainty. Madelene could sense that he was teetering on the brink. She moved in and gave him one last nudge.
“And then there’s your reputation as a scientist,” she said.
“What about it?”
“When word gets out about this conversation. How you refused to help. After seeing that dental chart. I don’t know what the Institute will have to say. But at the Meat Market they’ll be dining out on it for years to come.”
“You don’t work at the Meat Market. You’re Burden’s wife.”
Madelene said nothing. She knew she had penetrated, she had won through.
“Mrs. Burden,” said the doctor, “strictly between ourselves, are you never scared?”
“Always.”
“You do realize that your husband has had you reported missing?”
“A misunderstanding. Happens to the best of families. And please call me Madelene.”
“Thank you,” said the doctor. “My name is Firkin. Where’s it to be?”
Prior to this, London had always struck Madelene as being as barren and bereft of possibilities as a desert. Now that she had forfeited her usual routine and her rights, now that she no longer had any place in the day-to-day life of the city, it seemed to abound in chaotic eventualities. She shut her eyes and tilted her face upward, opened up her mind to those veins of inspiration that are always there for those who seek and a moment later she caught the scent of water.
“You know the Danish Society,” she said, “in Knightsbridge…”
fifteen
To Danes abroad the thought of Denmark changing in their absence is not to be borne. On our return we want to find that country not merely as we left it but as it ought to have been. The desire to meet this wish led, in London, to the setting up of the
Danish Society—an institution which, on its founding at the beginning of this century by a group of Danish diplomats and businessmen, was already more retroactively sentimental than Denmark had ever been. Since then, true to the law which says that time, in patriotic societies of any description, will always run backward, things had gone from bad to worse.
Madelene had been there once, dispatched by Adam to enroll them both as members, and she had never been back. On that one visit she had been filled—instantly, the minute she crossed the threshold, and before that even, on seeing the building from the outside—with terror, and what had frightened her was her own acquiescent fascination: She loved the lions in the Danish coat of arms on the door. She loved the animal painter Philipsen’s red-and-white cows in the sunset. She loved the elephant on the Order of the Elephant around the neck of absolute monarch Christian VII’s English-born wife, Caroline Matilda. She loved the seagulls on the dinner service in the library and the stylized plum-tree branches on the plates in the restaurant. She loved the porcelain polar bears on the mantelpiece, the poster of city traffic being held up to let a mother duck and her ugly ducklings cross the road and the photos of the lifelong feathered pairing of a stork couple in Ribe. She loved the bearskins on the heads of Guards changing the guard before the statue of Frederick V on horseback on the square at Amalienborg Palace. She loved the pictures of black grouse on moors that were no more. Faced with this whole image of Denmark as a social and zoological paradise which she knew had never existed, she had been irretrievably lost.
Had it been possible, had there been even the slightest chance of getting away with it, back then, on that first visit, Madelene would have scrambled up into the case containing Denmark’s best-known butterflies and taken her place among the most unassuming of these—the cabbage white, for instance, and the small tortoiseshell—and mounted herself there with a pin through her chest and, lastly—prior to her full and final surrender—at her feet in her best copperplate she would have written: “Madelene Burden, née Mortensen. Widespread and quite, quite common.”
Sadly, she knew that such a venture was doomed to failure, because she had already had a go at it, long before. She had tried to be a good daughter, a good pupil and a breathtaking young girl but all of these attempts had miscarried. She seemed to have been born not to flutter elegantly hither and thither but to cause trouble. Her first conscious memory was of the leaden, yet crisp sound of shattering faience overlaid by the word “clumsy” uttered coolly and dispassionately in an adult voice which might have been her mother’s, or perhaps the Queen’s, or God’s.
But she had never given up hope altogether. Even though she had bowed her head and tiptoed away from her family and into marriage and out of Denmark, deep down she had always felt that maybe one day, in spite of everything, a reconciliation would be reached, and now, as she pushed the wheelchair toward the front steps of the Society and the front door opened and two men came hurrying out to greet her, her past seemed suddenly to stretch out a hand and give her another chance.
The two men who had come down to meet her were the Society’s doorman and its manager. The latter grasped her hand, shook it, then looked at the lady in the wheelchair with an expression that did not so much ask for as expect an explanation.
“My grandmother,” said Madelene. “Mrs. Mortensen.”
The manager tried to peek under the brim of the hat but could make out nothing behind the veil other than the outline of a large, dark face.
“We are honored,” he said.
The two men took hold of the wheelchair, one on each side and heaved.
Nothing happened.
Smiling still, not batting an eyelid, the manager took a look around the back of the chair to see whether it might have got caught between the paving stones, or was perhaps electrically operated and hence weighed down by both a motor and batteries. This, however, was not the case. It was a flimsy, collapsible model. The two men heaved again. And succeeded in lifting the chair four inches off the ground. Then they eased it down again.
It was hard to comment on such a state of affairs and so Madelene kept her mouth shut. But she was seized by a number of urges, strong among them the temptation to do what she usually did, what she had done so often before, to run away. Nonetheless, she stayed put. She could not leave the wheelchair. Added to which, several times during the past week or two she had found herself in painful situations and she was starting to discover that, if one bided one’s time, something usually turned up.
This something turned up at that very moment in the shape of a third person: Sir Toby, Madelene’s late father-in-law’s brother, joined the group.
On the surface Madelene gave nothing away; dutifully she put out her hand and had it kissed. But inside her an alarm bell rang, as yet faint and far-off, at the sight of Her Majesty’s Government’s consultant on veterinary matters.
The three men grabbed hold of the wheelchair and lugged it up the steps, through the doors and into the elevator—the door of which closed, whereupon it began to ascend.
The men were desperately gasping for breath. Madelene had the feeling that an explanation was in order.
“Comfort eating,” she whispered. “Ever since Granddad died. She weighs over three hundred pounds.”
The three men regarded the figure beneath the hat, the veil and the traveling blanket with sympathy and fascination. The manager alone still felt a faint twinge of unease. Each and every trade tends to develop a form of recall unique to its own field and after forty years of running the Danish Society this man had perfected a memory worthy of the most chauvinistic butler. In it he had filed away data cards on every Dane with whom he had ever come into contact in the United Kingdom. Right now his need to enter the old lady into this file outweighed his oxygen debt and so he leaned toward Madelene.
“Her feet,” he gasped.
Madelene looked down. The ape’s feet had crept out from beneath the blanket. Admittedly they were encased in a pair of Johnny’s woolen socks but in the tiny elevator, perched on the wheelchair footrest, they still seemed unduly large.
“Fluid,” she said, “fluid retention in her feet.”
The manager’s features exuded palpable sorrow.
“And her head?” he whispered.
In order to get Mrs. Clapham’s hat over Erasmus’ head it had been necessary for Madelene to take the scissors to it. This headgear had now slipped, and through the crown peeped the ape’s skull—brown, smooth-shaven and enormous.
“Fluid,” said Madelene. “In her head too.”
The elevator came to a halt; the door opened and Madelene pushed the chair out. And there, walking toward her from the far end of the corridor, was Susan.
It did not seem at all odd to Madelene that she should bump into her friend here. She knew that she had stepped into some sort of alembic. Not an open-necked Pyrex flask like the one in which she had mixed her drink, but a sealed laboratory alembic, a retort containing a goodly proportion of her essential elements. She was also aware that she had now lit the burner under this flask, and to this mixture, from the outside, she had added the ape and it was her dream that finally, at long last, if not gold then at least some sort of equilibrium would now manifest itself.
Susan was an intrinsic part of this alloy and Madelene greeted her with a warm smile. But deep inside her the peal of the alarm grew in intensity.
Susan had, so she thought, taken in the situation at a glance, but even though she saw things more clearly than the three men in the elevator, nevertheless—as always when people come up against the incomprehensible—first and foremost she was seeing herself.
“Madelene…!” she said.
“It’s not what you think,” said Madelene.
Susan licked her lips. Then her face took on a worried look.
“We’re having a meeting,” she said. “Of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals. We always have our lunchtime meetings here. Because of the cakes. Adam will be here any minute.”
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Madelene braced herself against the wheelchair. Susan took her by the arm.
“Let me help you two,” she said. “I keep a little flat. For just this sort of thing.”
Madelene shook her head. At Susan’s back a door opened. Dr. Firkin stuck out his head. Madelene drove the wheelchair forward.
Susan gave her arm a squeeze.
“Well, if nothing else I can keep him out on the patio,” she said. “Enjoy yourselves!”
* * *
Dr. Firkin was terrified. Not only was he clad in a broad-shouldered wool jacket, over this he also wore a bulky overcoat and a felt hat, and when he divested himself of the hat and coat it was plain to see that he was freezing, in spite of the summer heat. His eyes were trained on the floor and he kept them downcast as Madelene pushed the wheelchair into the room. Only after she had brought it to a standstill and removed the traveling blanket, the hat, the veil, the gloves and the socks did he lift his head to look at the figure in the chair. Slowly, never taking his eyes off the ape’s face, he walked over to it, gently stroked the hair on its arm, measured the length of its forearm with his outstretched palm, turned its hand back and forth several times, circled it, surveying its ears from all angles, ran his fingers over the smooth-shaven cranium, studied its epidermis at some length, delicately parted its lips to disclose its teeth. Finally he knelt down and took one of its feet in his hands, lifted it and gazed long and hard at the sole of the foot. And throughout all of this he kept up a soft, soothing stream of baby talk. When he was done, he stood up and plodded slowly back across to his coat.
“Is he drugged?” he asked.
Madelene shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do.”
He avoided looking directly at Madelene.
“It doesn’t belong to any known species. So it must be a crossbreed. There were a lot of those produced in the twenties and thirties. But it’s rare now. And strictly forbidden. There are one hundred and fifty species of ape. A hundred and eighty if we count the prosimians. I can’t say which species have been crossed here. I would suggest you take it along to the Veterinary School of London. They’ll prepare a detailed description of it there. And send tissue samples to the genetics laboratory at the Institute for Population Biology.”