Brazzaville Beach Read Online Free

change.
    There was a noise at the door.
    She turned. Nothing. No one. It swung mysteriously on its hinges, an inch or two, shifted by some nomadic breeze roaming the building.
    She laid the coat back on the chair. John Clearwater , she heard teasingly in her head, John Clearwater, where aaaaare you ? Her eyes flicked around the room looking for something—she wasn’t entirely sure what. She wasn’t entirely sure what weird motives were making her behave in this way.
    She picked up the mug of coffee and sipped it. Strong and sweet. Three spoonfuls of sugar, she would guess. She put it back down. The pink lipstick crescent of her lower lip was printed on the rim.
    She turned the mug so her trace was unmissable, and left.
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    There was another sighting, she thought. Again, she could not say why her instinct was so emphatic, but she was sure that this was her man. She deliberately did not seek him out, but she found that as she wandered through the precincts of the college, going about her business, she was evaluating, unconsciously, every strange male face she encountered. She had an absolute confidence that she would recognize him.
    Then, one evening, she was at an off-license buying a bottle of wine, en route to a friend’s dinner party. The place was busy and there was a queue at both tills. Her bottle was wrapped in tissue but when she presented her ten-pound note it was discovered that there wasn’t sufficient change. While the attendant burrowed in the adjacent till for a fresh supply of coins her attention was suddenly attracted by a man leaving the shop.
    He was at the door, on his way out, when she turned. He was bareheaded, dark-haired and wearing a biscuit-colored tweed jacket. From each pocket protruded a bottle of red wine. Under his right arm he carried an untidy bundle of books and papers. The weight of the bottles stretched the material of his jacket across his broad shoulders. She thought, first: that’s one way to ruin a jacket. And then, almost immediately: that’s John Clearwater. He left the shop and moved out of sight.
    The sales assistant laboriously counted out her change. By thetime Hope was outside there was no sign of him. She felt no frustration; she knew it had been him. And she felt quietly sure that she would meet him, eventually. There was time enough.
    And she was right. It took a little longer than she had calculated, but their respective trajectories finally touched at a faculty party. She saw him standing by the drinks table and knew at once it was him. She was almost drunk, but it was not alcohol that gave her the confidence to push through the room and introduce herself. The time had come, it was as simple as that.
    THE MOCKMAN
    Pan Troglodytes. Chimpanzee. The name was first used in 1738 in the London Magazine. “A most surprising creature was brought over that was taken in a wood in Guinea. She is the female of the creature which the Angolans call ‘Chimpanzee,’ or the Mockman .”
    The Mockman .
    Chimpanzees can, without encouragement, develop a taste for alcohol. When Washoe—a chimp reared with a human family and taught deaf-and-dumb sign language—was first introduced to live chimpanzees, and was asked what they were, he signed, “Black Bugs.” Chimpanzees use tools and can teach other chimpanzees how to use them. Chimpanzees have pined away and died from broken hearts… .
    Genetically, chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to human beings. When genetic matches were made of chimp and human DNA it was found that they differed only by a factor of 1 1/2 to 2 percent. In the world of taxonomy this means that chimpanzees and human beings are species siblings and, strictly speaking, the classification should really be changed. We belong to the same genus —Homo. Not Pan Troglodytes, then, but Homo Troglodytes and Homo Sapiens. The Mockmen .
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    I was eating my breakfast—a mug of milky tea and a drab slice of