Jennie by Douglas Preston Page B

directed mainly at people with the IQ of a pongid.
    [F ROM an interview with Lea Archibald.]
    In a twinkling, Jennie changed our lives. If you think having a baby changes things, you ought to get a chimp. She had so many tricks up her sleeve. During dinner, she’d get under the table and untie all our shoelaces. Thank goodness she never learned how to tie knots, or we’d all have been tied together. And then there was that vulgar sound she made, that Bronx cheer. A razzing of the lips. Well! Hugo tried to tell me this was a natural sound they make in the jungle, but I happen to know he taught it to her. In secret. Hugo had a mischievous streak a mile wide. And those lips of hers! Hugo used to make this demonstration in front of guests. He would hold a piece of candy right in front of Jennie’s mouth, and her lips would pucker to a point, right where the candy was. Then he would move the candy from side to side, and the little puckered point of her lips would travel from one side of her mouth to the other! It was the funniest looking thing!
    Jennie imitated
everything
we did. When Hugo was finished with the paper in the morning, Jennie would pick it off the table and take it to the floor. It was so dear. She would go through all the motions of reading the paper, unfolding it, staring intently at it, turning the pages, and clacking her teeth. Occasionally she would stop to sniff a picture. Pretty soon the paper would start to fall apart. A page would drop out, or the top would collapse on her head. And she would start to get mad, and whack the paper. Well! That just made things worse. And she would shake it angrily, and paper would fly out, and pretty soon she’d be sitting in a heap of crumpled papers, screeching in frustration.
    She watched me put on makeup. Just fascinated. As soon as my back was turned, white powder would be flying everywhere and there she was, looking just awful, like the creature from the black lagoon, her little black eyes blinking out of this horrid white face! Oh my goodness. She used to drag Hugo’s briefcase around. Clomping around looking very important and officious. If Hugo leftit unlocked, she’d reach inside and then the papers would be all over! Or she’d dump it out and stir up the papers to make a nest. Served Hugo right. He always had that briefcase. I’d come down when we were going to Maine for a weekend, and there it was sitting by the door. And he’d say that he just had a little bit of work to do. Then he’d work all weekend and we’d only see him at dinner! How I hated that horrid briefcase!
    There, you see. I’m off the subject again.
    [F ROM an interview with Harold Epstein]
    Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis!
Write that down. That should be the motto of our book. “How like us is the ape, vilest of beasts, and how noble!” Cicero, I think. . . . Anyway, how true it was. Jennie displayed the worst and the best of all the human qualities. It was a revelation to watch her. I can’t begin to tell you. It made me question our species’ claim to some kind of special status.
    During that first year and a half, Hugo brought Jennie into the museum several days a week. The museum has very long straight corridors. Jennie learned to ride a tricycle and she went wheeling down the halls, chattering and hooting, and making a hairy menace of herself. It used to startle visiting scientists. [Laughs.]
    While Hugo worked, Jennie made the rounds. She stopped at office doors and knocked. This was no polite tap, mind you, but a pounding and kicking that threatened to separate the door from its hinges. She was an unruly child, like that bad girl in the children’s books, Eloise. When she came swaggering into your office, man alive, you had better batten down the hatches, for anything loose was going to get broken, eaten, or stolen.
    You may wonder why we all put up with her. The answer is simple: everyone adored her. I take that