Enter the Aardvark

by Jessica Anthony

  He said that he was sorry, he just remembered an important appointment he was already late for and assured Titus that he would call upon him next week, before leaving, and as Downing watched his lover hastily dress in the moonlight, he understood at once that he had lost him.

  Downing already knew about the woman, the former student, the pretty, young botanist living in London, and as he heard Ostlet hurry out the door and down the stairs, through his taxidermy shop, as the front door jingled merrily as Ostlet let himself out, Titus Downing spread his lithe, naked body over the warm place on his bed where Ostlet had been and smelled for the last time his scent on the sheets, and it’s why the taxidermist has been, in the months ever since, afflicted: the melancholy of the sudden departure of his lover has been almost unbearable; without Richard Ostlet, Titus Downing had left in his life only a lost brother working unceremoniously in the Outer Hebrides. A poor mother and poor father running their farm in Northumberland, who were themselves at death’s door—he was alone.

  Downing, who had never before been presented with the opportunity to grieve for love, wept for Ostlet that night as though for all mankind, and he could not have known that for all his weeping, weeks later, a large aardvark in Africa would send her tongue, long as rope, into a tunnel, licking up termites, feeling them pepper her thick whiskers, which protected her eyes, nose and mouth like small quills; that she would walk daintily, but not unsteadily, on the extremities of her digits, head inclined, snout brushing the sweet dirt on the ground; and that she would embark thusly, alone—for aardvarks always travel alone—upon a miles-long journey into the dark African night, looking for more food, stopping only to listen for occasional threats until she found herself facing a handsome and clever African hunter that she had not, despite her long ears, heard coming.

  For if the aardvark had heard the lightest rustle, she would have easily thrown herself into a tunnel or quickly dug for herself a hiding place, a defensive burrow, but the hunter was already in the bush, lance at the ready, and the gigantic aardvark, ears slung back, tail heavy as a sack, felt the shock of pain as the lance entered her side, tore through her heart, lungs and stomach, and only then did she dive deep into a tunnel, bleeding obscenely.

  The aardvark thrust her spoony claws into the ground like two anchors, forcing the hunter to enter the tunnel in darkness, groping, swiping termites off his arms, crying out from their bites, sneezing them out of his nose until at last he heard her grunting in pain and somehow grasped her thick tail, and it was hours of pulling the wounded aardvark out from her habitat, a kind of pulling not at all unlike a fisherman working a big fish from the sea, and when the hunter at last succeeded it was not for any talent on his part; the aardvark had lost too much blood. She was weak, her grip on the earth had become loose, untenable, and when the hunter yanked her tail with his full strength and the aardvark finally emerged from the hole in the ground, she was long past afraid and half-conscious.

  Overnight, she was carried in a canvas hammocked between two hunters’ shoulders, cradled on her back, her front legs—plantigrade—hanging over the sides, her hind legs—digitigrade—sticking up toward the sky, and though he couldn’t have imagined it then, Downing imagined it now: how the aardvark was presented this way to Ostlet.

  He imagined Richard fussing with his glasses, trying in vain to see as much of the aardvark as possible but relying, in the end, on the eyes of his young assistant, a student of his in the Department of Naturalism at Edinburgh who, the following evening, after the aardvark was respectfully slaughtered, her carcass hung, after her bones were boiled and all was wrapped up in a brown paper package and prepared for Titus Downing, rebuffed the advances of a man fifty years old and nearly blind.

  Perhaps, Downing guessed, it was regret at his decision not to bring Titus with him after all that Richard, blind and alone, took his own life, and so preoccupied is he with the thought as he completes the aardvark and turns off the gaslight, as he walks upstairs and puts himself to bed, that he does not tend to the strange, dark figure which, in the minutes since, has appeared outside his shopwindow, pacing to and fro underneath the twelve buck heads.

  * * *

  After you and Toby agreed to bail on dinner, you paid the check, went to your Tahoe, climbed up into the two front seats, and started making out. You both went crazy, groping at each other’s faces, and though you knew reporters would be looking for you, you have no idea how they could have found you so quickly, that they would have been hiding around the corner of the Brown, Lake & Peterson Company, but they are here, a huge buzzing number of newspaper reporters, assorted paparazzi, and when they start shouting, when their lights start flashing, Toby screams and you panic, throw the Tahoe into gear and take off down the street.

  “Slow down, you’re just making it look worse,” Toby is yelling, and you’re yelling back, “Shut up, I know what I’m doing. Who’s in the public eye? Who?!”

  And that shuts up Toby Castle. At least until you reach Asher Place when more photographers, upon seeing your Tahoe, spill out of the children’s playground like termites from old wood. And it’s not even remotely like you have seen in old movies with guys in nice suits holding cameras with great popping bulbs; these guys are in fucking tracksuits—cheap-ass shiny tracksuits—holding cheap gym bags from Target, and all their money has gone into expensive digital shutter cameras, pepper spray in their bags, and Toby screams again when one of them jumps in front of your car and starts shouting, “Alex! Congressman Wilson!” and flashes away, and before you get inside the garage of 2486 Asher, they’re flashing up the back of the Tahoe.

  “The aardvark!” one shouts, like it’s Beyoncé or something, and you nearly run a guy down as you punch the garage door opener, press the gas pedal, and careen the Tahoe into its parking space. When you’re in, you punch the opener again like you hate it.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ!” shouts Toby.

  “I know,” you say. But you’re home now. “It’s over,” you say.

  You apologize to Toby for how crazy it is out there and swear that this will all pass soon, and you are really glad she is with you tonight, and as you say these things to the girl Toby Castle you realize that you are starting to believe them.

  “Not them,” Toby says. “You! What’s in the back, Alex? Is that the fucking aardvark?”

  Why yes, it is indeed the fucking aardvark, you explain, and the cops have allowed you to keep it until the permit business is cleared up, and what’s the big deal? It’s stuffed!

  You are lying. You understand more than she does that this is a big deal, that all Officer Anderson has to do now is find the FedEx man who delivered the aardvark to your house to get the name Gregory Tampico, and there is, let’s face it, a very solid chance that Anderson will find the name because he has already asked you to produce the FedEx number that came with the delivery, though he knows that you’re not about to give it up to him—Well golly, you appear to have lost it, you’ll say—and that’s when Officer Anderson will start making inquiries at the FedEx main office about routes, about certain glasses-wearing, beard-sporting delivery drivers, and as you lead Toby Castle up from the confines of the garage and into your townhouse, you suddenly feel desperately unsafe, like, it’s so not okay to leave the aardvark in the Tahoe because you haven’t had a chance to fully inspect it, and what if Greg Tampico had actually stuffed something inside the aardvark? What if one of the paparazzi breaks in and finds it?

  You are panicking. You know this.

  You know that you are panicking.

  You grab a flashlight off a shelf and tell Toby to go upstairs without you, you’ll be there in a minute, and you return to the garage, open the rear of the Tahoe, and turn on the flashlight.

  The aardvark’s pale fur glistens in bright light and covers a thick, yellow-pink hide. Its long ears are silky, smooth as copier paper, and the snout, although toughened with age, is still rubbery. You feel under its belly for a seam, or something unusual, but there is nothing unu
sual. Quite the opposite, as you stroke the aardvark, you admit that it feels quite pleasurable actually, and this surprises you, slightly unsettles you, and you begin to understand why Greg Tampico liked it so much: from a distance, the aardvark is horrible-looking, but up close it’s actually a pretty nice animal and it makes you feel weirdly good all of a sudden: the look on its face with its head all down-turned, askance, is not ugly at all, it’s coy—and you actually smile a little bit as you run your hands between its soft ears, over its forehead, and gaze into its eyes, but when you do this, your hands stop.

  You shine the light into the eyes of the aardvark, which are, you wonder—blue?

  They are. The eyes are definitely blue, and you have never heard of a blue-eyed aardvark before, nor with it felt the tremor of recognition that you feel now.

  It’s déjà vu, like you are seeing something emotionally familiar that is intellectually unfamiliar, and you wonder while standing there downstairs in your dark, hot garage with Toby Castle already disrobing in your bathroom upstairs, brushing her teeth, checking her underwear, her hair, scent and makeup, preening herself for intercourse—how this is possible when most mammals in nature, you recall from Ms. Sline, have brown eyes, so these blue eyes must be some kind of anomaly, but how they do make the aardvark look familiar, you think, as though bearing some kind of consciousness. But what kind?

  Alan Brickmann. You were ten, Alan Brickmann was twelve, a neighbor of yours for only nine months before his family moved to some landlocked place called Grand Island, Nebraska. There was a high cotton hammock in his backyard, slung too high by his father so you had to climb the trunk of the tree in bare feet to get there, but once ensconced you were quiet, unseen, and Alan Brickmann, a constellation of zits on his forehead, pushed your toes with his toes. He said you should practice kissing, and as you began, he did not say anything else. Your hands touched his body, moving in circles over his clothes as you kissed like you knew what you were doing, but somehow you did, the knowledge was innate (it was not on TV), though it only lasted a moment before Alan unzipped himself and brought out his dick in his palm, and there, in the soft dusk-light, it looked like he was holding three marshmallows.

  You said no, that was gross, and got out of there, you ran home, and now in the darkness of your garage at 2486 Asher Place with paparazzi outside, Toby Castle upstairs, the sadness about Alan Brickmann which the aardvark’s expression has somehow evoked? It surprises you. It’s an old weight, one that you’ve carried for twenty-five years that you thought you’d forgotten about, yet now blooms in your chest like a newly sprung fungus, and all you can do with it is attempt to share it with someone, split it.

  But the only person with whom you might possibly split it, you think as you reluctantly close the rear doors of the Tahoe and lock it, is not even close to the person you wish.

  * * *

  It is five days before the Viewing. A hot August night. A round moon shines morosely over the River Leam, the body of water which glides from Northamptonshire to Warwickshire, lulling to sleep every night the near twenty thousand who still populate the sleepy in-between town of Royal Leamington Spa.

  Titus Downing, alone in his bedroom, can hear the river moving. He is not sleeping. He is brightly awake, lying on top of his bed in his underclothes, for it is much too hot to lie anywhere else, and Downing’s bed is a large four-post canopy over which he hung long aubergine velvet drapes the day it was bought. When he touches the drapes, they remind him that although he is not rich, he is not poor like his parents in Northumberland.

  Tonight, the drapes are wide open, and though he is feeling confident about the aardvark, about the events to come, nights before Viewings are always a torment to Downing. Every outside noise vexes the senses. Downing knows that he will not sleep and listens unhappily to the steady rush of water flowing from the weir of Jephson Gardens, the lone baroo of a hound, the steady clup of the horses on cobblestones, the sporadic profanities from drunks as they sing, swinging themselves around the stone columns of the Royal Pump Rooms and Baths, Leamington Spa’s old famous pools once filled with healing waters which, it turned out, did not heal anyone.

  Downing would perhaps be more at ease were it not for the letter he received two days ago from Rebecca Ostlet.

  Lady Ostlet read about the Viewing in the London papers, she has written, and given that she never got to thank Downing in person for assisting her at a time when she most needed assistance, and given that the beast, the Orycteropus afer, was the last procured by her husband—whose “essence” now has, by the by, at last departed from Gloucester Walk—she has decided that she would rather like to see the so-called “aardvark” for herself, and Downing should thus prepare for her coming, and postscript: might there be space for the Brontës?

  Downing changes position several times in his bed, worrying about Rebecca Ostlet, her three feathery dogs, and whatever else the woman might bring with her.

  Because although many women came to View Downing’s giraffe, the giraffe was obviously too big to be Viewed inside the shop, and so it was presented outside, and it occurs to Downing now, in his bed, that no woman has ever before actually crossed the threshold into his taxidermy shop, and any previous delight imagining women fainting in front of the aardvark is now replaced by the knowledge that they will be inside his shop to see it, and Downing decides that while he has rather less concern about the rest of them, he cannot shake the image of pretty, thin-waisted Mrs. Ostlet running her delicate woman fingers over his animal hides, picking up his glues or his brushes or calipers—and he imagines her handling his prized Currier knife, his glass bottles of lacquer, his Essence of Pearl, and by god, if it takes a while for Downing to return to an animal’s jiva when he is disturbed by a delivery boy, then heaven knows how long it will take for his shop to feel like his own again once the woman’s passed through it.

  The thought disturbs him so deeply that by twenty past ten, Downing can bear it no longer, leaps from his canopied bed and travels downstairs to the kitchen for a bit of food. He removes from his pantry a pouch of crackers, a tin of some potted meat, and while leaning against the pantry door, nauseously nibbling his victuals, he hears the slow shuffle of a drunk outside his front door.

  It is not the first time the drunks of Leamington have wandered away from the river. Grown men will, occasionally, sleep on his stoop under the buck heads, sometimes all the way through until morning, so Titus Downing listens, waiting for the sound of a man collapsing against his front door, the sound he’s heard often, but there is no such sound. The drunk man keeps walking. And the walking sounds odd, as though he is dragging something behind him, and a shiver travels through Titus Downing.

  He listens as the walker grows distant, waits for the man to disappear completely, for when he disappears completely Downing will return upstairs to bed—so it is to Downing’s great unease that the sound does not disappear, and instead, grows louder. The drunk man, he gathers, has turned back around. In no time, he is walking again in front of the shop, and then again: silence.

  What can Downing do in his little dark kitchen?

  When the sound picks up once more, and it is a very distinctive echo of heel-sole swiping stone, he knows at once that he has heard it before, that this is no drunk; that whenever his friend departed this flat late at night there was always the door’s jingle of sleigh bells followed by this same music, and he is certain that Richard Ostlet’s footsteps are the footsteps he hears now, sweeping the streets in his leather Wellington boots, which he wore day and night, uneven in rhythm for his uncertain steps—it’s the eyes, nyctalopia’s to blame—and Downing, who has not for a moment forgotten what Rebecca told him about seeing Richard walking to and fro in front of their home on Gloucester Walk, is now frozen stiff in the pantry, his head low, his hands pressed against the closed wooden doors, and he is waiting for the apparition to tire of its walking and move on, and Downing will stay there all night if he has to, because: fear! In a flood at his throat!
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br />   He cannot make himself move or walk to the front of the shop and stand in the shadows of his stuffed beasts and see with his own eyes the ghost that he knows is there, its ethereal hands pressed against the windowpanes, its bandaged face affixed toward the back workshop because the door has been left open, and where, upon a workbench, a big stuffed Orycteropus afer is clearly visible, herself frozen in the walking position, her right hoof-claw lifted, her head hung low, her long ears raised and alert as she shows off her new bright blue eyes, shellacked to a shine!

  Over the eyes hang the thick eyelids of the aardvark, the lashes of which Downing each positioned just this morning with small tweezers so as to make her look coy to her Viewers, flirtatious, and Downing has no choice but to wait in this manner for the moment when Ostlet—or whatever remains of Ostlet—at last moves on from the shop, his Wellingtons shuffling off this time for good.

  It is only then that Downing summons the courage to slip into the workshop. He procures from under his nightshirt the brass key which he wears at all times on a lanyard, to securely lock the workshop door, and, hands shaking, he locks it.

  * * *

  It is Monday morning. Congress is not back in session. You are not back in session. You are sitting up naked in bed with Toby Castle, and both of your laptops are open like great, glowing mouths, your legs still entwined underneath your 1200-thread-count Sferra Milos bone-colored sheets ($1695) as you pick up your phone.

  Although Fox shuttered the story, you have now 2345 unread text messages and 3509 unread emails as it appears Nancy Fucking Beavers has pounced:

  REPRESENTATIVE ALEXANDER P. WILSON (R) ARRESTED, the Washington Post declares, the New York Times declares, the Wall Street Journal declares, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, NBC, HuffPost and Google News and even BBC and The Guardian all declare, and you have four hashtags trending on Twitter, the cruelest of which is #cancelWilson. Fox and its minor sycophantic affiliates, thank god, are reporting on a rhesus monkey who flung shit on a Democrat from Wisconsin at the Sacramento Zoo—but other than that, pictures of the aardvark which the police took at the station, which the reporters took of the back of your Tahoe, they are everywhere, and then suddenly it’s pictures of the aardvark alternating with pictures of the front door of 2486 Asher Place—Ralph Lauren “British Racing Car” green with a Victorian brass lion’s-head knocker—which is your front door.