Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel [34]
"When will you come back?" the taxidermist asked.
He's so damn up-front and direct, with questions that are orders, Henry thought.
"Why don't we go to the zoo together? We have our choice." The city enjoyed the luxury of having two zoos and Henry liked zoos. It was where he'd started his career, in a way. "I'm sure you'd have a fascinating take on live animals. I spent weeks researching--"
"Zoos are bastard patches of wilderness," the taxidermist cut in as he put on his coat. "The animals there are degenerate. They shame me."
Henry was taken aback. "Well, zoos are a compromise, that's for certain, but so is nature. And if it weren't for zoos, most people would never see real--"
"I go only when I have to, for work, to see a live specimen."
Henry could hear in the taxidermist's voice the judge's gavel coming down again. The taxidermist was directing him out of the workshop with broad, imperative gestures.
I will get him to bend, thought Henry.
"I see zoos as embassies from the wild, each animal representing its species. In any case, let's meet at the cafe up the street. The weather is so nice now. How about this coming Sunday at two o'clock? That's what I have time for." Henry put a firm edge to his last words.
"All right. Sunday at two at the cafe," the taxidermist agreed tonelessly.
Henry was relieved. "I have a question," he followed up smoothly as they passed through the showroom. "It's been on my mind since I read the opening scene from your play: why this minute description of a common fruit? It seems an odd start."
"How did you put it?" replied the taxidermist. "'Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand spirits dancing in a field'?"
"Yes. I said 'sprites'."
"'But they're all we have.'"
"'But they're all we have,'" Henry repeated.
"Please," the taxidermist said, opening the front door of the store and ushering Henry out. "Reality escapes us. It's beyond description, even a simple pear. Time eats everything."
And with that, leaving Henry with the image of Time eating a pear into oblivion, the taxidermist practically slammed the door in Henry's face. He locked it, turned the cardboard sign hanging from its frame from open to closed, and disappeared back into his workshop. Henry took no offence at the lack of ceremony bordering on rudeness. He must behave like this with everyone, he guessed. It was nothing personal.
At least Erasmus was glad to see him. The dog was jumping up and down, yelping with joy.
Henry had meant to ask the taxidermist another question. On the Shirt, there wasn't only a monkey and a donkey and a tree and a country road and a picturesque landscape. There was also "a boy and his two friends". So there were people in the play too?
At home, Henry told Sarah about his second visit with the taxidermist.
"He's a real character. As surly as a badger. And his play, I can't figure it out. There are animal characters--a monkey and a donkey--and they live on this very large shirt. It's all quite fanciful, yet there are elements that remind me, well, that remind me of the Holocaust."
"The Holocaust? You see the Holocaust in everything."
"I knew you'd say that. Except in this case there's an emphatic reference to striped shirts, for example."
"So?"
"Well, during the Holocaust--"
"Yes, I know about striped shirts and the Holocaust. But Wall Street capitalists also wear striped shirts, for example, as do clowns. Everyone has a striped shirt in their closet."
"Perhaps you're right," Henry said.
He was irked. Sarah had long ago lost interest in the Holocaust, or at least in his creative involvement with it. And she was wrong. It wasn't that he saw the Holocaust in everything. It's that he saw everything in the Holocaust, not only camp victims, but also capitalists and many others, perhaps even clowns.
That Saturday, Henry and Sarah went shopping for the soon-to-come baby. Stroller, bassinet, a sling, the tiniest clothes--they bought these items with a smile stuck on their faces the whole time.
They weren't very far from the taxidermist's store. On an impulse Henry suggested