See No Evil

When they took her by the hand that morning and led her down the long white corridor with high windows on each side she did not scream or struggle, though something unusual was happening and she did not know why she was being taken away. She wanted to stay with the others, so she hung back and dragged her feet, turning to shout back, "It's me! It's me! It's me!" and all the others cheered and banged the metal. But she had known and trusted her two keepers for years and years, so she only made a show of trying to escape.

And when they pulled shut the heavy door on the strange cage and said goodbye in gentle voices she had no fear and no anger, though she did not know what they were saying. All her life gentleness and kindness had surrounded her.

"Poor Chiko," said one of the two keepers, "I guess you're just not smart enough for our game. You didn't make the grade, girl." He roughed her about the ears. "You're just going to have to wait to see what circus or zoo we can find to look after you. Maybe you'll get to like it, wherever you go." Then he turned to Austin, his colleague at the institute.

"She seems so clever in other ways. Maybe it's just the type of sign language we're using, or maybe she doesn't respond well to the type of exercises we use. Maybe if we try again she'll make better progress."

Austin shook his head. "I give up. Three months! Three months to learn how to ask for a cup of orange juice. I mean, even my cat can make it crystal clear when she wants a saucer of milk. I mean, I've seen frogs taught more advanced things than Chiko knows!" He went over to the cage and made an angry face at Chiko. "Three wasted months on you, you dumb gorilla," he said, and for the last time formed a few signs with his fingers. Chiko chattered at the new attention she was being given. She stood up straight and clapped a hand over each eye, then fell rigidly backwards on the boards with a hefty thud. "Yes, I know, I know. Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. You've done it a thousand times and you still can't do it in the right order."

Neil looked at her with pity. "I think the others bullied her. Now that she's on her own maybe she'll be able to learn. It's like she dropped out of the ball game and sat on the sidelines. She gave up too soon."

Chiko reached her hand through the bars to Neil and pressed the backs of her fingers against his cheek. "Chiko never wins the bananas," he said, which was just what Chiko was thinking.

A short while later Austin left to begin another intensive training session with the other primates. Lately his special chimps even spoke among themselves using the sign language he and Neil had developed. They had begun to ignore Chiko or push her away, though she was more than a match for any of them in strength.

Neil wrote up some long-neglected scientific papers in the room with Chiko, fortified by numerous cups of hot sweet tea. He decided to draw up a new program of training for her. His confidence and enthusiasm returned as he thought it through. Then he got into the cage with her, bringing a bag of fruit and nuts with him. He lobbed a cherry towards her, and she caught it expertly between finger and thumb. He formed the symbol for "cherry", held aloft a sweet glacé cherry, then formed the symbol again. He urged her on, "C'mon girl, 'cherry', make the sign." Chiko grinned and made a spider with her hand, a spider that crawled closer and closer to the bag of fruit. "It's not that kind of game," said Neil sharply, and the spider swiftly retreated. He threw another in the air, making the sign as he did so. "Come on girl, you learnt this before," he said, his voice beginning to rise. "You could do it last week. Cherry" Cherry! Cherry" Chiko hesitantly made the sign for banana. She remembered that this had once been a good trick, and made an expectant grab for the cherry. Neil pushed her away, controlling his temper, and made the cherry sign again. Chiko, frustrated that nothing she did seemed to please her master, felt like sweeping him aside with her strong hairy arms and grabbing the fruit. But she didn't. She stomped over to the corner and sat on her hunkers with her arms over her head, steadfastly refusing to see, hear or play, waiting for her anger to pass from her.

Neil quietly left the cage and locked it. He totted up numbers and drew some graphs for a few more minutes at his bench. He glanced over his shoulder at Chiko, who hadn't moved. After another twenty minutes he putt on his coat, dropped a couple of bananas into the cage, and left the room. As he was turning the key in the door he could see Chiko still squatting silently in a corner, and she sat for a long time after.

Next morning Austin was already at his bench studying journals when Neil arrived. "-Morning," they exchanged. "How's the work progressing?" asked Neil. "Very good," replied Austin briefly. This made Neil painfully aware of how slowly his own work was moving, and how much time he had already spent, or wasted as some might say, on experiments that hadn't worked; on playing with the chimps instead of studying them; and perhaps most of all on the thousands of cups of tea as he sat in his pyjamas listening to music all morning.

"How's Chiko this morning?" asked Neil, directing the question at Chiko, but it was Austin who answered.

"She was looking quite sad earlier. I told her a couple of jokes but that didn't seem to work. She seems to have cheered up a little now." He shuffled his papers together and prepared to go to his own chimps. "I'm going soon," he said, "And you? What work will you begin?"

"Well actually, I'm going to start a new course of lessons with Chiko. She deserves a second chance - she had a rough time with the others," he awkwardly explained. Austin shrugged. It was obvious what he thought of the idea.

"Make learning fun," said Neil to himself, "that's the way to do it." He climbed into the cage with a great big bag of fruit, pulling the door shut after him. Chiko danced around him by way of greeting, turning somersaults and standing on her head.

"Whoah girl, take it easy. How as your first night alone? Did you have any bad dreams?" He gave her a couple of walnuts to crack.

"Let's play a game Chiko. A new game", and he made the symbol for 'game'. This was one of the few signs which Chiko knew well, so she became even more excited, and seemed almost to run upside down along the ceiling, so madly did she caper.

"Here, catch this." He tossed her a shelled walnut. She caught it easily in her right hand and flicked it into her mouth. Neil pointed to her left hand and tossed a second nut. This time Chiko caught it neatly in her left hand. Then followed the right foot and the left foot, no problem for her as her feet were just as agile as her hands.

She opened her mouth wide and pointed in. Neil lobbed a walnut in a high arc across the cage. Chiko kept her eye on it as it fell, and caught it between her teeth.

"Not bad Chiko. Now let's see what else you can do." He contorted his fingers to make a symbol and pointed to a walnut. "Just make this symbol for me," he said, as he opened his hand and formed the symbol anew. Chiko stared at him blankly.

"C'mon girl, you can do it!" He made the symbol under her nose and she backed away, suspicous of this new turn in the game. Then she had an idea. She turned her back to Neil, bent over backwards and opened her mouth. She had invented a new way to catch a nut!

"Don't turn your back to me. Look at what I'm doing. What's gotten into you?"

Chiko was puzzled. Why didn't her keeper like her new trick? It seemed very clever to her, and well worth another walnut.

"Chiko stop that. Why are you acting so silly?" shouted Neil, his voice rising despite himself. "Chiko!!"

Austin strolled over to see what the fuss was about. "Take a break," he advised, "Don't get upset with her - it's not her fault. Maybe she just has no talent for sign language."

"You're right Austin. Both she and me need a break. It's just I feel she's clever in some way I can't understand. Who knows what kind of thoughts she has? Look into her eyes - don't you feel sure she knows what we're thinking?" Austin laughed good-naturedly.

"No. But I can guess what she's thinking about - big bags of bananas and walnuts."

"There must be something she's good at," said Neil, "but I'm beginning to agree with you that it isn't sign language."

"She likes the company of people - maybe it's the circus." Neil didn't like to hear this.

"The circus is no life for a chimp. She would be locked in a cage all day, rarely meeting other chimps, eating only what humans eat. At least here they have real trees and can play most of the day with each other. They actually look forward to their lessons with us."

Chiko had been born in a room with humans and had lived all her life with people. She could never be released in the wild because she had never learned how to catch food. And even if she had, you can't just let a chimp out in the middle of a jungle and expect it to survive. They need to live in a group, and the other chimps already living there might not be very friendly to him or her.

Neil got out of the cage and shut the door. "I'll do some writing for a change. Then maybe later I'll do some some pattern recognition exercise with the Brachyteles Arachnoides from Brazil. No-one has ever studied this species before. I could make some interesting discoveries and be published in Nature; it would be nice to see my name in a journal," he said, though without enthusiasm.

Austin heartily agreed. "It's good to see you taking an interest in the reputation of the lab. We're becoming quite famous for our clever primates. But I'm afraid circus tricks are not accepted as proof of reasoning in animals." Neil sighed and reluctantly turned away from Chiko and sat down to his work.

The next morning Neil tried his best to arrive early, drinking only three cups of tea at breakfast. He arrived in breathless and sleepy-eyed, yet still Austin was in before him, sitting calmly at his bench working.

"Chiko looked even sadder this moring. She was really down in the dumps," was the first thing Austin said. "I gave her some strawberry juice, but I don't have the time to play with her. Besides, she'll have to get used to it here - she might be waiting six or seven weeks for a suitable home." Neil rushed over and got into the cage with Chiko, who immediately brightened up a little.

"I can't sit here all day with you Chiko. Don't be such a baby. You're going to be on your own a lot from now on." Chiko looked out through her calm brown eyes and pressed the back of her hand against his cheek. "Maybe it's drawing!" he said suddenly.

"Maybe what is drawing?" asked Neil bemused.

"What she's good at. Maybe it's recognising shapes and pictures. Even better, if I could get her to draw some matchstick men, that would be something new, wouldn't it?"

"It certainly would be. No-one has ever taught a chimp to draw anything more then rough lines and circles. They concluded that drawing requires a level of abstract thinking beyond language." Austin said authoritatively. But Neil was already out of the cage and rummaging frantically around the room. He opened presses, pulled out drawers, scattered sheets of paper and searched through boxes.

"You're wasting your time Neil. People have tried to teach chimps how to draw before. It's not even an interesting question any more," Austin called after him as he rushed around the room.

"Maybe nobody ever tried hard enough before." He found a thick black stump of a crayon and some sheets of stiff paper, and brought them into the cage.

"Look Chiko! Monkey see monkey do!" And he drew lines across the page. He gave her the crayon, which she grasped like a stone in her hairy fist. She struck at the page tearing a gash in it. But a short while later she was making long trailing black curves that curled around the page and eventually ran over the edge. She seemed to croon gently to herself and concentrate deeply, then every so often she would strike at the page as if the crayon was a hammer. Neil tried to get her to draw matchstick men, but she hardly even looked at what he drew for her, and then she continued absorbed in her own dark mess of lines. Neil was a little disappointed that she was only scribbling, but after all, he thought, it wasn't too bad for the first day. Besides, it seemed to make her happy or at least keep her occupied. He left her some bananas before he left, to show he was pleased.

"This is a good game, isn't it Chiko?" he said, which was just what Chiko was thinking.

It was Friday, the weekend. Only the lab assistants came in at the weekend, twice a day, to feed the chimps. Neil had to go down the country to his mother's, and worried about leaving Chiko for so long on her own. Even far away in the country, walking in the forest, he was worrying about her. Playing golf, shaving at a mirror, or lying in bed in the morning, his thoughts would fly away to that cage in a room in a building in a city ninety miles away. He could picture Chiko sitting there, squatting on her hunkers and swaying back and forth in her loneliness. A dog or cat can be left on their own and not feel how long it is. Cats don't get bored. Dogs do, but they just sleep through it. Maybe Chiko too was sleeping, but Neil always pictured her whimpering to herself in a dark room, even though it was well lit.

Sunday evening, late, he came back to the lab and went straight to the room where Chiko had her cage. When he turned on the light she did not scream or chatter as she usually did. Neil could see at once that she did not look well. He checked her temperature and heart beat, but they were normal. He couldn't find anything wrong with her, so there seemed no point in ringing the vet. After playing with her a while she cheered up. Neil fetched her the piece of crayon and some sheets of paper. She made a few slashing marks across the page and seemed contented with this. Neil stayed with her, trying to get her to hold the crayon lightly, and praising her rough attempts. When he left, late, she was still working silently, trying to control the wayward movements of the black lines that scrawled off the edges of the paper.

In the morning Austin was, as usual, already at his desk when Neil arrived.

"How's my hairy friend?" he asked Chiko.

"Not well. Not well at all," answered Austin. "I gave her some vitamins and fresh fruit. Perhaps she needs some extra calcium."

"What is it girl? Why are you so sad?" Neil asked her. Chiko reached forward and pushed one hairy brown paw through the bars, pressing gently against him.

"What's that in your hand?" he exclaimed, noticing a crumpled piece of paper. Austin came over, his curiosity aroused. He leaned over Neil's shoulder and let out a long low whistle. He took the piece of paper from Neil and examined it more closely.

"Parallel lines drawn by a chimp. That is interesting. You should write up this result and send it to Nature"

The precise shape and spacing of the lines was all too familiar to Neil. He had spent so many hours there. There could be no doubt about it.

"Not lines . . . They're bars," he said in a strange voice. "The bars of the cage."