A Beautiful Truth: A Novel

A Beautiful Truth: A Novel

by Colin McAdam
A Beautiful Truth: A Novel

A Beautiful Truth: A Novel

by Colin McAdam

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Overview

This novel told from the perspectives of both humans and chimpanzees “packs a huge emotional punch” (The Gazette, Montreal).
 
Looee is a chimp raised by a well-meaning and compassionate human couple who cannot conceive a baby of their own. He is forever set apart—not human, but certainly not like other chimps. Then one night, after years at the family’s Vermont home, all their lives are changed forever.
 
At the Girdish Institute, a group of chimpanzees has been studied for decades. There is proof that chimps have memories and solve problems, that they can learn language and need friends. They are political and altruistic. They get angry, and forgive. Mr. Ghoul has been there from the beginning, and has grown up in a world of rivals, sex, and unpredictable loss.
 
Looee and Mr. Ghoul travel distant but parallel paths through childhood, adolescence, and early middle age. But ultimately their paths will cross at this Florida primate research facility, in this “strangely captivating [and] deeply moving” novel about the truths that transcend species, and the capacity for survival (Booklist).
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781616953164
Publisher: Soho Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 07/01/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 948,485
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Colin McAdam's novel Some Great Thing won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the United Kingdom. His second novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and awarded the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. He has written for Harper's and lives in Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

VERMONT

Judy and Walter Walt Ribke lived on twelve up-and-down acres, open to whatever God gave them, on the eastern boundary of Addison County, four feet deep in the years of rueful contentment. Judy was younger than Walt, her dreams had an urgent truth, and five years had passed since they removed a cyst from her womb that was larger than a melon. Her uterus collapsed and for a year she awoke to formaldehyde dawns feeling sick and lonely and hopeless, no more chance of a child.

Time passed and Walt stayed near. She held his hand when she sat or when she slept. They painted the house a lighter blue.

On various nights in various ways Judy said do I feel old Walter, and he said you're too young to be old. Come here.

Walt and his partners, Larry and Mike, had built or bought more than half of the commercial space in southeast and central Vermont. They provided the roofs, walls and drains around bakeries, cheese shops, notaries public and all the unimaginable businesses sprung from the minds of people who could not conceive of working for other people. Walt believed in doing your own thing, finding your own way. The rent came monthly, businesses closed and opened. Walt made other investments, he gave thanks and shared his wealth. Paint for the church, in perpetuity. Books and shelves for the beetle-eaten library.

There were wealthy couples you read about where the man worked and the woman shopped and other people mocked or reviled them. Walt was in love, and held close the fact that there is nothing more natural or right than buying the world for the woman of your dreams. Try to name the value of that smile to Walt and his life-worn heart.

And Judy wanted little. She did not spend her days buying furniture and curtains. When dresses and shoes appeared in her wardrobe they had usually been sought for and bought by Walt. Before the operation she had wanted one thing, and after the operation she tried to get used to not wanting. They said the desire for children would naturally dissipate, but a man who loses a leg does not stop wanting to dance or kick.

In her rational moments she allowed herself to want nothing more than spending time with a child. It didn't have to be her own, it didn't have to be beautiful or smart, it just had to be near for her to care about it and give her that taste of renewal and possibility that children represent. She was calm about her desire, but every now and then, alone, she yearned like a prisoner yearns for friends beyond the wall.

I need a purpose she said.

She volunteered to visit people who were dying.

I'll keep Mr. McKendrick company on Thursday nights. They say he has three months.

That'll be good for him said Walt.

I don't know.

And good for you.

It's a purpose.

Your beautiful face every Thursday. He'll be cured, Judy. He'll live forever.

I'm young said Judy.

You're beautiful.

I just want to make you proud she said.

They bought paintings and a car and a dog named Murphy, but with every purchase and passing Sunday was a feeling that life was a collection of gestures and habits and it was hard to find surprises when most surprises were planned.

That sad light in Judy's eyes was becoming a settled part of her, and maybe, Walt thought, that's life.

His first wife had been killed in their car near Binghamton, a truck driver slept at the wheel. A lake of grief still sat in his chest and it would never properly be plumbed, but the one thing he could think of, the one fact which he could find the fortitude to contemplate, was that the trucks would never stop. He found a lesson in that. Those goods that people want or think they need, hurtling across the country. You can stand still and scream at the trucks but they'll run you down; you can hop on and go where they go; you can find all sorts of ways to avoid them. You can adjust, instead of accepting, and you can make your own world.

Walt had wanted a baby with his first wife but she was taken away so young. With Judy he had never doubted it would happen, but it hadn't and now it wouldn't. He was more than happy with the thought of looking at Judy till he died, but as for what she had to look at: Walt was getting jowly from beer and his great love of cheese. When he thought about the idea of having a child, that modern human ability to choose to have a child, and when he thought about beauty and how things can change, he could see how, maybe for a man, a child might be a way to make these moments last — some way to prolong a beauty that can't be preserved. But he simply understood it as love. He wanted what she wanted, and was sad that he couldn't provide it.

They looked into adoption for a time, but the options were limited and waiting lists long. Walt said we'll figure it out.

One of the buildings they owned in the county was a bar called Viv's. Walt met Larry and some of the others there most Thursdays, especially once the season began. Viv's was in easy driving distance from Willamette Valley where white-tailed deer would rut. The bar was a place where Walt and his friends could relax or celebrate or pay inarticulate respect to the thrill and regret of hunting for meat.

Out of season they found other things to talk about, and Viv was always good at gathering newspapers and magazines. He encouraged the exchange of facts, he said, not opinions, because opinions are like sperm: there are way too many of them, most amount to nothing, and they're more fun to deliver than to receive.

Viv usually had some newfound knowledge to announce, and in February 1972 he passed a copy of Life magazine to Walt and said now the monkeys are talking.

Walt looked at the article and it changed his life with Judy.

"Conversations with a Chimp" it was called.

He saw a photo of a chimpanzee sitting on a carpeted floor, apparently in conversation with a man. Walt read the article and learned of a group of chimps in Oklahoma who had been taught to speak in sign language. They could talk about things they saw and things they wanted to eat. They spoke spontaneously.

One of the chimpanzees, a girl, was walking with the man in the picture one day and watched a plane fly overhead. She looked up at the man and signed YOU ME RIDE PLANE.

Walt found that amazing and read that part aloud.

There was a photo of a baby chimpanzee in a diaper, sitting on a woman's lap. And on the cover of the magazine was a picture of a beautiful woman who was involved with Howard Hughes. Walt measured all beauty against that of Judy and found the woman lovely, but wanting. There is no happier feeling.

As he drove home, the thoughts of Judy, the photo of the chimpanzee in the diaper, the beer and the bleakness of February all swam in his head in a lonely and protozoan soup, till lightning struck, an idea was born, and Walt began making inquiries into how he could acquire a chimpanzee.

He had no idea where to look, what to expect, what a chimp was or whether he could in fact buy one. He thought of zoos, wondered how zoos got their animals. He thought about all the people he knew in husbandry, the friends who traded livestock, the hundreds of acquaintances involved with animals in one way or another. Judy had been at Shelburne, buying Walt some cheese. He remembered she had watched some kids getting excited about the new llamas. That was about the most exotic animal he had heard of in Vermont.

Where do you see chimps he asked Viv, and Viv said you see them at a circus sometimes, don't you.

So Walt kept his eye out for circuses.

He had spent a few years now trying not to go near things or bring up topics that would make Judy think of children. He hadn't wanted to upset her.

He went alone to a circus in Burlington and there was indeed a chimpanzee who came out a few times with a clown. The clown juggled bananas and the chimp tried to jump and reach them without joy, so he pulled the clown's pants down, revealing pink bloomers, and the clown dropped all the bananas. The chimp looked like he was laughing and so did everyone else. It was pretty funny. And at the end of the show the chimp bowed and jumped into the arms of the clown and it was also pretty cute.

Walt waited till the crowd had left and asked a guy if he could speak to the clown or the fella who played the clown or whatever you call him, and the guy said he's out in the blue trailer. Walt went through to the street out back and knocked on the pale blue door.

The fella appeared, half clown half man, and said yeah with lipstick lips.

Walt introduced himself and said he had a question, and the clown said I charge a hundred for a birthday and the kids can't touch the monkey cause he bites.

Walt explained that he was interested in the chimpanzee and wanted to know where he could find one.

Are you a clown.

No.

Wait right there for a second.

Walt heard a terrifying noise which soon became part of his daily life. He was invited in, and there in a cage on the floor in the corner was the chimpanzee from the show.

Settle down there buddy settle down.

The chimp looked simultaneously bigger and smaller somehow, and the second wave of noises was less of a shock to Walt. The chimp was in a pink dress.

The clown said she doesn't like people coming into the house. She's in a mood.

She's a girl.

Past few months or so she gets all moody.

Walt felt a strange combination of embarrassment and curiosity. He wanted to look closer, but felt he should look away.

What's her name.

I call her Buddy. They're all different. Buddy here is a good one.

Walt said hey Buddy, somewhere between the way he would talk to a horse and the way he would talk to a unicorn.

I can't rent her out or anything. But I can get you one for twelve grand.

Christ.

Sometimes as low as ten. I don't have that kind of money myself and if I did I wouldn't be a clown. You know. This is a chimpanzee. It's not a racehorse but it's not a dog. I can't tell you where I can get one, but it's not a simple thing.

Walt stared at his lipstick.

They're not born here, you see. It costs me. They travel. I travel.

The chimpanzee was looking at Walt and looking at the clown and she put her hand through a gap between the bars.

She wants to touch you.

She seemed small again. Her face wasn't as pale as others Walt had seen in photos. He looked at her fingers and something stirred in him. They seemed long and you could almost imagine them on a grandmother.

She's pretty goddamn strong. You might not want to touch her.

Walt saw no threat and softly repeated hey Buddy. He was low on his worsening knees and reached towards the cage and gently put the back of his own finger against the back of the chimp's and held it there. Buddy.

She moved her finger slightly to manipulate Walt's and the clown said be nice to the man, he's a friend, be nice, and she looked at Walt with whiteless eyes and scratched a little mole on the side of his finger.

She's cleaning you. It's a thing they do.

Walt looked at her and her eyes looked at his finger. Walt looked down at his finger and while he was smiling inside and thinking this animal's cleaning me with a woman's finger, she gathered some spit and Walt felt the splash on his face.

The clown said hey be nice now dammit.

Walt looked at her and she laughed like she laughed in the show.

I'll be.

Buddy stood up and made a gesture and the clown said okay, come out, but be nice.

She slipped the dress over her head and revealed a homemade diaper.

I keep a bat or a stick around, but I'm guessing if you're not in the trade you won't be teaching so many tricks. I put her in the cage when there's visitors or when she goes to bed and whatnot. She calls it her bedroom.

She talks.

I talk. I call it her bedroom.

I read about one who knew sign language.

Yeah, she knows signs. Tell daddy to fuck off.

She raised her finger.

Doesn't mean they're ready for high school.

Buddy walked over to the couch with her arms up like she was walking through waist-deep water. She got up on the couch and sat just like a person would sit and Walt looked at her feet. They looked like hands.

The clown went to the fridge and grabbed a can of beer which he tossed across the room to her. She made a sort of coughing noise and opened the can with her teeth.

I'd offer you one but there's only one left.

He opened it and chugged it and so did she.

When she neared the end she caught the last drops with prehensile lips, looked at Walt like she was telling him a joke and didn't care what he thought of it, got up from the couch and went to the fridge where the clown said there's no more.

She looked at him like she was making sure she understood properly. Walt watched her flip through a magazine while the clown talked business. It seemed like everything she did was either funny or impossible.

While driving home, Walt reflected on his day and acknowledged that it was always going to be slightly odd to talk to a clown about a chimpanzee. But his mind was trying to catch up to greater things — the feeling of confusion had less to do with negotiating with a clown and more to do with the simple vision of that hairy little girl sitting on the couch across from him. Was she a person or a pet. The longer Walt drove, the more he realized that what he predominantly felt was excitement. This was an opening. She had seemed so energetic, so full of stories somehow. Were they all like that. Were girls and boys different. She was eight and the clown said that was different from an eight-year-old girl, but maybe not so different except for the menses and some peculiarities, he reckoned. He didn't actually know exactly what age she was.

What would Judy think.

Walt had finalized nothing. He and the clown had agreed that Walt would get in touch in a while and the clown would make some inquiries and try to line up the right chimp. The younger the more expensive he said.

Walt wanted to think for a while and not necessarily surprise Judy with a baby chimpanzee but maybe try to find the right way to tell her about the idea. She was waiting with a roast chicken when he returned and she was the picture of his idea of home and there was gratitude in his heart. Please don't take those eyes away from me or let them get any sadder.

A month or so later he met the clown at a diner in Burlington. He wore no makeup and his name was Henry Morris. He could line up a chimp, probably a boy, might even need bottle-feeding.

Walt was nervous, but resolved.

He talked Henry down to six thousand dollars, not knowing that Henry would pocket three of those six. Henry himself did not know that his connection in Sierra Leone, a German named Franz Singer, paid only thirty dollars for the chimps he sold for three thousand.

In Outamba-Kilimi a mother chimpanzee had been walking with her baby clinging to her chest and a shotgun blast sent bone through the back of her eyes. She was several meals for Liberians across the border, her punctured skull was ground into a paste which a man in Hong Kong bought to heal his broken arm, and her baby was put in a sack and delivered to Franz Singer's farm outside Freetown.

Nights of hunger and bony moons, steel and the rubber teat.

Singer's chimpanzees were renowned for being free of shotgun pellets, less work when they arrived. They flew in crates, Pan Am cargo, neither colonists nor slaves.

Henry met the crate.

Walt told Judy he had bought a baby chimp, and Judy looked at the painting above the mantel, oil of the lake in summer. It was night but she felt the warm breath of the sun through her dress and thought life isn't what you see it's what you think.

They slept with their bodies close that night, their minds going miles down separate roads which they never dreamt were separate.

Judy had seen enough hours and days to know that when things are truly strange their strangeness doesn't appear until after the strangeness has passed. She thought of this when she was sitting on the living room floor looking into the eyes of Looee, who was holding her fingers on the bottle with hands that had grown so much in just a few months.

The deal between Walt and Henry had been that Henry would find an appropriate place to present the chimp to him and Judy. That seemed the hardest part to Henry. He had done this a few times now. He knew to buy a small cage, rent a pickup, drive to Newark, slip cash to the right people. The laws about exotics didn't exist in those days and quarantine was a matter of money. He knew exactly what he would do with the chimp but he couldn't think of how to present it back in Vermont. He got his shoes shined at the airport in Newark by a really nice guy named Louis. He told Louis with the right sort of wink that he was staying at the Radisson and Louis recommended a girl who gave Henry a ten-dollar handjob that he would have paid double for. He wanted to kiss her but when he leaned forward she recoiled. He drove back to Vermont and thought there's that jungle gym in the park for the kids, I'll arrange that we all meet there.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "A Beautiful Truth"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Colin McAdam.
Excerpted by permission of Soho Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

PRAISE FOR COLIN McADAM

"This book tells a riveting story that breathlessly and beautifully swallows the reader, so there is the sensation of being in there and not just observing what happens. McAdam's style is perfect for his subject: the intensity of young love and the intensity of self-hatred. Reading it is a marvelous experience."—Elizabeth Strout, bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge

"Fierce, dark, and disturbing-Fall is a journey into obsession and desire. The characters are complicated, real, and passionate. I read this novel from cover to cover in a single sitting, then told everyone I know to do the same. A haunting, memorable book."—Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals

"There's a smattering of Lord of the Flies, more than a touch of A Separate Peace, and an undercurrent of Catcher in the Rye ... this coming of age story is easily on par with those classics ... [McAdam's] perspective on the human situation is incisive and innovative ... Heralded as one of Canada's most interesting new writers—despite the fact that he really is a citizen of the world."—The Globe and Mail

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