Chapter Thirteen
Josef put down the metal stick after doing something to make the flame disappear, and came closer to me. I was looking only at him and didn't notice at first that the garage was crammed with equipment and tools and shelves and boxes and books. Josef studied me too as he approached and when he was close enough he reached out and started touching me. First he pulled on my hair and then he squeezed my shoulders and then he pushed a little against my chest.
“It's a real ape,” he said, and Marta snatched his hand and pushed it away from me.
“Don't be rude,” she told him. “It's still new, not yet fully formed. We'll have some work to do. It's important you understand that he doesn't belong to us. He's paid for. Got it?”
“Okay, I won't mess with him,” Josef said with a sound of unmistakable disappointment.
“We'll talk more later,” Marta said. “Right now we have to figure out where to put him. There should be some room in here.”
“Why not in the spare room?” Josef asked. “Nobody's using it right now.”
Something went on between the two of them right then. They stood face to face and stared at each other in silence for a long moment. I didn't know anything about them, I realized.
“Right,” Josef said, backing away from his mother. “Stan.”
“How's it going with the bunny?” she asked him as he went over to some boxes and started moving them out of the way. I watched as he pulled out a thing with wooden poles and canvas and stretched it out until it looked like it was in the shape of a bed. That was where I would be “staying”, it turned out, “for now”.
“The bunny has issues,” Josef said. “It's not exactly jumping up and down.”
“Well,” Marta said, “at least it sort of looks like a rabbit.”
“Yeah, right,” he said. I sensed this was the kind of sarcasm his mother had been referring to earlier.
“Candles,” he said to me, “why don't you come over here and try the cot?”
“I walked over and sat down on the thing, then lay down when further instructed.
“If you're cold I can get blankets,” Josef said, “oh, and a pillow.”
“Thank you,” I said. We were going to be starting from scratch here. It seemed that Josef thought I was a complete and total nothing. I sat up and looked at Marta. I tried my best to put a frown on my face and give her the strong impression that I had something to say. She got the message.
“What is it, Candles?” she asked. “Do you want to say something?”
“I can only speak when spoken to,” I said, “and I can only answer what is asked of me. Can you loosen that part of the leash, please?”
She thought about it for a bit. Josef had gone back to his workbench and was now looking at us alternately.
“You can ask questions,” she finally determined, “but only to me and Josef, and only when there is no one else around. Do you understand?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “I have many questions.”
“And I have work to do,” she replied. “You will stay here with Josef for now. I'll be back soon,” she said to Josef.
“I'll need a transcript,” she added as she left the garage. I turned to Josef and was about to start asking him my many questions but he raised his hand to stop me and said,
“Not now, Candles. I'm busy.”
So I lay back down on the cot and stared up at the cold gray ceiling. I couldn't help but wonder if I had really gone anywhere at all.
Josef remained “busy” for quite some time, tinkering with a variety of tools while he loudly hummed an endless and tuneless tune and hunched over a grayish oozing mass which was lolling inside an aluminum tray. I eventually got up and began quietly exploring the garage.
My eyes led me first to a bookcase which housed many large and heavy texts on biology, physics, statistics and computers. Many of these were yellowing and dog-eared, and the ones I opened at random showed signs of being repeatedly marked with different colored ink. Most of the pages made no sense at all to me. They were littered with clumps of black markings. My brain understood that the markings were alphabet letters and the groupings formed words, but I did not know how to read, and I knew that I could never learn how to without being taught. This thought connected with another I had had earlier in the day, when I realized that although I knew about the points of the compass, and direction in general, that I had no ability whatever to orient myself. The sun might set in the west, over the ocean, but even facing it I could not form the certainty that I myself was also looking west. Other connections were beginning to reveal themselves. I knew, for example, that there were male and female in many species, but the purpose of that, the meaning of that, was as blank and opaque to my mind as the clumps of markings on the page. I not only did not know these things, but something about my brain was actively preventing my knowing them. Mother used to talk about boy things and girl things, but it occurred to me that she never actually told me what they were.
Could this be fixed? That was now the number one question in my mind, but warning lights surrounded it. I would have to be careful exactly who I asked exactly what. I don't know how I knew that but I felt it strongly. Just as I knew that Mother was not my friend, I was beginning to understand that Marta and Josef were not my buddies either.