Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel [43]
Henry wondered why the taxidermist had stopped telling him about his play. He was standing in front of a table, handling something. Had Henry been too hard on him? Insensitive to his struggles?
"Why don't you let me read your play, or what you have of it?"
The taxidermist didn't answer.
Was it the feeling that he would be revealing the treasure he'd been working on his whole life, and that once it was out, he'd be left empty, without secrets, bereft? Was he afraid of the exposure of his inner self? Of Henry's and other people's reactions? "Years of work and this is all you have to show for it?" Was he sensing the failure of his enterprise, for a reason he could not determine and with no solution he could imagine? Henry realized he couldn't answer any of these questions because he had no sense of the taxidermist's inner self. The man, despite the play and the conversations they'd had, remained a mystery to him. Worse: a void.
"I should..." Henry began to say, but he trailed off. At every visit, the taxidermist swallowed up so much of his time. He got up and moved to where the man was standing.
He was working on a red fox. It was lying on its back and he'd already made a cut along its stomach, from the lower ribs to the base of the tail. He began to lift the skin off the body, using his fingers and the knife. Henry watched him work with morbid fascination. He'd never seen a freshly dead animal so close up. The taxidermist pulled the skin away until he reached the base of the tail, which he cut from the inside with the knife. Then he worked on the legs until he reached the knee joints, which he cut through. There was little blood. Pale pink--muscle, Henry guessed--and streaks of white--fat--predominated, with only here and there spots and patches of deep purple. Henry thought the taxidermist would now continue upwards with the ventral cut, to the base of the neck, slicing the chest area open and doing there to the front legs what he had done lower down to the back ones. Instead the taxidermist started turning the animal's skin inside out, easing the body through the ventral cut, separating skin from body with the knife as he went along. The skin was coming off the animal like a pullover. When he reached the front legs, he severed the legs at the shoulders and continued peeling the animal's skin off the neck. At the head, he cut where the ears were attached to the skull. Two dark holes were left behind. The eyes were a weirder sight. Whereas the fox's ears, their outer structure, went with the skin, the eyes remained behind, staring out even more now for having their eyelids removed. The taxidermist artfully cut the only place in the eyes where skin and body were linked: the tear ducts. Then the mouth was released, the blade cutting through the skin next to the gums. Lastly, the nose, the final point of attachment, was dealt with, the black skin skinned off and the cartilage cut through. He returned the skin to its natural shape, inside in, and there they lay, side by side, the skin and the flayed carcass, like a baby that has been taken out of its red pyjamas, only a baby fiercely staring with the blackest eyes and displaying a full set of teeth.
"I've done this for you," the taxidermist said. "It's a head mount. All I need is the head."
He picked up a scalpel and made a small cut at the base of the fox skin's throat. Then, with a pair of small, sharp scissors, making sure not to cut through fur, but only through the skin at its base, he cut the fox's skull-less head off. He turned the head inside out again, including the ears. Picking with his fingers and scraping with the side of the knife, he cleaned flesh and fat off the skin.
"Need to treat it," he muttered. He walked over to a shelf of jars.
Henry stared at the