Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel [38]
"I see."
"He has another one that morning, while Beatrice is still sleeping. Virgil remembers how their miseries started. Started in his mind, that is, the moment when he realized what was happening to them. He acts it out. He's reading his morning paper at his favourite cafe and his eyes are drawn to one of the headlines. The headline announces a government edict concerning new categories of citizens--or rather, as the article makes clear, a category of citizens and a new category of non -citizens. Virgil reads with increasing astonishment as he realizes that he--he himself personally, in all his specific details, this monkey sitting in a cafe reading a paper, such an ordinary thing--is the exact and intended target."
Henry took mental note: a government edict excluding Virgil. He didn't want to interrupt the taxidermist, who was becoming quite animated. A customer or two glanced over casually. But it was the waiter returning to their table that had an effect on the taxidermist. He brought his hands into his lap and looked down.
"Do you need any help?" the waiter asked Henry. He corrected himself: "Can I get you anything else?"
"No, I'm fine, thank you. Would you like a refill?"
The taxidermist said nothing, only shook his head slightly. He seemed to be pretending he wasn't there.
"I'll just have the bill, please."
"Yes, of course."
Henry had the sense the waiter was about to talk to the taxidermist, but changed his mind and walked away instead.
The taxidermist was bent on finishing his description of Virgil's cafe scene. He continued rapidly.
"It's the expulsion from Eden! The Fall! In an instant, the newspaper is transmogrified into a giant finger floating in the air, pointing at him. Virgil is filled with apprehension that other patrons at the cafe, many of them reading the same newspaper, will notice him. Why, over there and over there, didn't they just glance at him? That's how the events entered his life, he laments, as they had entered the lives of so many others, a vast and varied group that included him and Beatrice and others and others and others: with a single moment of realization. In that moment the world shattered like a pane of glass, so that everything looked exactly as it had earlier, and yet was different, now clear and newly sharp with menace. After that--"
The waiter reappeared with the bill. Remarkably quick of him, Henry thought. Was he wanting to get rid of us? He paid and they stood up. With the taxidermist being mid-story there was nothing to do but walk towards his store. Though so close, it felt like a different world. Hardly anyone was walking by and it was much quieter than the more commercial end of the street. Henry was disappointed to see black fabric hanging down each of the bay windows. The effect upon turning the corner, which he was looking forward to, was utterly different. In fact, with no okapi peeking out, there wasn't much of an effect at all. Just a fading jungle mural on a brick wall. The taxidermist noticed him looking at the black fabric.
"I don't want people lingering about when the shop is closed. You never know with people," he said, as he fished for keys in the pocket of his coat. He looked around as he said that, scanning the few people who were passing by--a middle-aged couple, a slouching teenager, a lone man.
"You don't like people, do you?" Henry said, which he meant lightly.
The taxidermist looked at the passersby for another moment, then turned his gaze onto Henry--and it was a pinpoint of concentration wholly focussed on him, animal-like in its intensity, exactly that, animal-like. As the taxidermist bore into him with his steady eyes, a single thought occurred to Henry: I am people .
Henry made an attempt at an apology. "What I meant is you're comfortable with animals. You know them. Whereas people, people are strange and unreliable. That's what I meant."
The taxidermist turned and unlocked the door of his store without saying a word. They entered. There in the gloom,