When Luke has left, she retrieves Frida.
Earlier today, she asked Annie to move her into the isolation chamber. Frida is her favorite monkey, but Frida is bad PR – Frida of the broad, flat brow, her golden eyes rimmed in black as if by kohl. As a baby, her ears were overlarge, her fingers long and pink. She arrived in California one week after Varya herself. That morning, Annie had received a shipment of new monkeys, but there was one held up due to a snowstorm, a baby who had been bred at a research center in Georgia. Annie had to leave, so Varya stayed. At nine thirty p.m. an unmarked white van trundled up the hill and stopped outside of the primate lab. Out climbed an unshaven boy who couldn’t have been more than twenty and who had Varya sign a receipt, as if for a pizza. He seemed to have no interest in his cargo, or perhaps he had grown sick of it: when he retrieved the cage, which was covered by a blanket, it emitted such horrible screeching that Varya instinctively backed away.
But the animal was her responsibility now. She wore full protective clothing, though this did nothing to dim the sounds that came from the cage as the driver handed it over. He wiped his face with relief and jogged back to the van. Then he drove down the hill far faster than he had driven up, leaving Varya and the screaming cage alone.
The cage was the size of a microwave. They would not introduce Frida to the other animals until tomorrow, so Varya brought the cage to an isolated room the size of a janitor’s closet, and set it down. Her arms were already aching and her heartbeat flapped with terror. Why had she ever agreed to this? She had not even done the hardest part, which was the physical transition from old cage to new, and which required Varya to touch the animal inside.
The cage was still covered by what Varya now saw was a baby blanket, patterned with yellow rattles. She peeled back a corner of the blanket, and the animal’s cries grew louder. Varya sat back on her heels. Her anxiety was ballooning – she knew she had to do the transition now or she would not be able to do it at all – so she hefted the small transport cage until its opening aligned with the door of the lab cage. Inhaling she removed the blanket. The carrier was barely bigger than the monkey itself, but the animal began to revolve, turning circles while grasping the bars. Varya reached for the lock as Annie had shown her, but her hands shook – the monkey’s confusion and fear were unbearable – and before she could steady herself, the carrier slid to one side.
Out shot the baby, as if from a cannon. It did not land in the larger cage but on Varya’s chest. She could not help it: she screamed, too, and fell back from her knees to her rear. She thought the monkey meant to hurt her, but it wrapped its slender arms around her back and clung, pressing its face to her breast.
Who was more terrified? Varya had images of amebiasis and hepatitis B, all the diseases of which she dreamed nightly and feared she would die, all the reasons she had not wanted to take this job in the first place. But pressing back against that fear was another living creature. The baby’s body was heavy, so much denser than a human baby’s that it made the latter seem hollow. She did not know how long they stayed that way, Varya rocking back on her heels as the monkey cried. It was three weeks old. Varya knew it had been taken from its mother at two weeks, that it was the mother’s first child, and that the mother, whose name was Songlin – she had been transported from a breeding center in Guangxi, China – had been so distressed that she was tranquilized in the midst of that process.
At one point she looked up and saw their reflection in the mirror mounted to the outside of the cage. What came to her then was Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Monkey. Varya did not look like Kahlo – she was not as strong, she was not as defiant – and the lab, with its beige concrete walls, could not be further from Kahlo’s yucca and large, glossy leaves. But there was the monkey in Varya’s arms, her eyes dark and enormous as blackberries; there were the two of them, equally fearful, equally alone, staring into the mirror together.
31.
Three and a half years ago, when Varya arrived in Kingston after Daniel’s death, Mira brought her into the guest room and shut the door.
‘There’s something I need to show you,’ she said.
Mira sat on the edge of the bed, a laptop on her thighs. With her legs taut and her toes grasping the carpet, she showed Varya a series of cached webpages: Google searches about the Rom, a screenshot of Bruna Costello on the FBI’s Most Wanted site. Varya recognized the woman immediately. At once, she felt a head rush: dizzying, silver confetti. She nearly slid to the floor.
‘This is the woman Daniel decided to pursue. He took our gun from the shed and drove to West Milton, where she was living. And I called the agent who shot him,’ said Mira; her voice bent like a reed. ‘Why, Varya? Why did Daniel do it?’
So Varya told Mira the story of the woman. Her voice was raspy, the words flaking like rust, but she forced them until they ran faster, clearer. She was desperate to help Mira understand. When she finished, though, Mira looked even more bewildered.
‘But that was so long ago,’ she said. ‘So deep in the past.’
‘It wasn’t, for him.’ Varya’s tears ran freely; she wiped her cheeks with her fingers.
‘But it should have been. It should be.’ Mira’s eyes were bloodshot, her throat scarlet. ‘Goddammit, Varya. My God! If only he had let it go.’
They strategized about what to tell Gertie. Varya wanted to say that Daniel had become fixated on a local woman’s crimes after his suspension – that the notion of justice gave him something to work for, to believe in. Mira wanted to be honest.
‘What does it matter whether we tell her the truth?’ she asked. ‘The story isn’t going to bring Daniel back. It won’t change how he died.’