Jennie by Douglas Preston Read Free Book Online Page B

physical anthropologist, a collector of dead specimens. I am a cultural anthropologist—I study the living. His research was on the phylogeny of the primates. He spent years in Africa, Asia, and South America, collecting specimens.
    We are primates, you and I. Naked apes. His early work was brilliant. His idea, you see, was to look at human evolution from the phylogenetic viewpoint, rather than from the fossil record. He examined the morphology—the
shape
—of all the closest living relatives to man. Those would be the great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and so forth. He wanted to know: what are the relationships? Where does
Homo sapiens
fit in? In the end, Hugo put us in the same family as the great apes. He said we didn’t merit a family all by ourselves. I’m not sure I would go that far, but it’s an interesting thought. And an idea influenced, no doubt, by the existence of Jennie. In the end, you see, because of Jennie, he lost his objectivity.
    To do the work, Archibald needed skulls. He measured them, and quantified the differences in their shape. From there, using a technique known as phylogenetic or cladistic analysis, he drew a family tree—a drawing of the relationships among the species. Which characteristics were primitive, and which derived? One has to look at many skulls from each species to smooth out the natural variations in shape. Uncle Albert, you see, might have a strange lump on his head that is unnatural. You can only know that by looking at several skulls. Hence, Hugo made many collecting trips after ever more rare animals. His legacy is a collection of physical anthropology that is second to none, a great scientific resource.
    Hugo freed the study of human evolution from abject dependence on the fossil record.
    I’ve no doubt I’m boring you. Perhaps at my age I’m no longer making any sense at all. I am a very foolish fond old man. By all means, edit what I say, make it sound comprehensible and even intelligent—if such a thing is possible. If your publisher works as fast as mine, I’ll be dead by the time your book appears.
    What was Hugo like? Physically, you mean? During the Jennie years he was a lean, bony man. His hair was black and unfashionably long. He had dark eye sockets in which lived two restless black eyes. My, that sounds good. Maybe I should be writing this book. He looked like a British schoolboy, with his hair flopping down over his forehead. He had shifty eyes, not out of guilt, but out of curiosity. His mind was always clicking away while his eyes darted about. His posture was bad; his mother never taught him to stand up straight. That’s one advantage of a Jewish upbringing, you know, having good posture. My mother never would have let me get away with that slouch! Hugo’s breathing was distinctly audible. We’d be examining a specimen and I could hear him wheezing next to me like a set of bagpipes. He was missing the very top part of his left ear. He used to say it was a machete cut, and he had a marvelous story to go with it, but in fact it was a small birth defect. He had inherited many fierce prejudices from his father—what an eccentric man
that
was!—but he was far too innocent to understand his prejudices, let alone understand himself. His prejudices included a dislike of businessmen, movie actresses, policemen, people who drove Cadillacs, people who voted for Goldwater, and the annual Botolphstown Cotillion. He would become excited, raving about one thing or another. And then in the next moment he’d have forgotten all about it. He licked his plate after eating. He picked his nose when he thought no one was looking. He had a bit of the exhibitionist about him. In a quiet way. He did what he pleased and the hell with ’em. I mean the rest of the world. What was it Voltairesaid? “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead only truth.” I honor Hugo’s memory by