Beatrice and Virgil

by Yann Martel

  There are five steps in preparing an animal: skinning, curing the hide, preparing the mannequin, fitting the hide onto the mannequin, and finishing. Each step, if well done, is time-consuming. Fruitful patience is what separates the amateur from the professional taxidermist. Much time is spent on the ears, eyes and nose of a mammal so that they are balanced, the eyes not crossed, the nose not bent, the ears not standing unnaturally, the whole giving the animal a coherent expression. The body of the animal is then given a posture that reflects this expression.

  We do not use the word stuffed anymore since it is simply not true. The animal that meets a taxidermist is no longer stuffed like a bag with moss, spices, tobacco, or whatnot. Science has shed its practical light on us as it has on every discipline. The animal is rather "mounted" or "prepared," and the process is scientific.

  Fish are hardly done these days. That part of the business has died faster than the rest. The camera can preserve the prize catch quicker and cheaper than the taxidermist, and with the owner standing right next to it, for proof. The camera has been very bad for the business of taxidermy. As if the forgotten pages of a photo album were better than a wall holding up the real thing.

  We get animals as a result of attrition in zoological gardens. Hunters and trappers are an obvious source of animals; in this case, the supplier is also the customer. Some animals are found dead, killed by disease or as a result of an encounter with a predator. Others are roadkill. The by-products of food-making supply us with the skins and skeletons of swine, cattle, ostriches, and the like, or with stranger fare from more exotic parts of the world--my okapi, for example.

  Skinning an animal must be the taxidermist's first perfection. If it is not done well, there will be a price to pay later. It is like the gathering of evidence for the historian. Any flaw at this stage may be impossible to fix later on. If the subcutaneous ends of a bird's tail feathers are cut, for example, they will be much harder to set in a way that looks natural. Mind you, the animal might come to the taxidermist already damaged, whether when it was killed by a hunter or by another animal in a zoo or in a collision with a vehicle. Blood, dirt and other spoilage can be dealt with, and damaged skin or feathers can, within reason, be repaired, but there are limits to what we can do. The evidence can be so ruined as to prevent a proper interpretation of the event, to use the language of the historian.

  The mannequin, the form upon which the skin will be placed, must be built. Any number of frames and fillings can be used, and have been used, or better yet, a mannequin can be made from balsa wood. For more elaborate projects, a mannequin is made of clay on a wire armature, a mould is built around it, perhaps in several pieces, and then a cast of fibreglass or polyurethane resin is made, resulting in a mannequin that is light and strong.

  Sewing thread must match the colour of the fur. The stitching is done close and tight, with care being taken that the amount of skin taken from each side of the stitch line is the same so that the skin is not stretched unevenly. A figure-eight stitch is used because it brings the edges of the skin together without forming a ridge. Linen thread, which is strong and does not rot, is the best.

  The advantage of retaining the skull of an animal in its mounted version is that it can then be displayed open-mouthed, with its real teeth showing. Otherwise, on a mannequin head, the mouth must be sewn shut, or an elaborate mouth must be constructed, with artificial gums, teeth, and tongue. The tongue is the hardest animal part to get right. No matter the effort we put in, it always looks either too dull or too shiny. It's generally not a problem to keep the mouth shut--but what of the snarling tiger or the snapping crocodile, whose mouths are so expressive?

  The pose given to the animal, at least the mammal or the bird, is a crucial matter. Standing straight, skulking, leaping, tense, relaxed, lying on its side, wings out, wings tucked in, and so on--the decision must be made early on since it will affect the making of the mannequin and will play a crucial role in the expressiveness of the animal. The choice is usually between the theatrical or the neutral, between the animal in action or the animal at rest. Each choice conveys a different feel, the first of liveliness captured, the second of waiting. From that, we get two different taxidermic philosophies. In the first, the liveliness of the animal denies death, claims that time has merely stopped. In the second, the fact of death is accepted and the animal is simply waiting for time to end.

  The difference is immediately grasped between a stiff, glazed-eyed animal that is standing unnaturally and one that looks moist with life and seemingly ready to jump. Yet that contrast rests on the smallest, most particular details. The key to taxidermic success is subtle, the result obvious.

  The layout of animals in a habitat setting or diorama is as carefully thought-out as the blocking of actors on a stage. When done well, when professionals are at work, the effect is powerful, a true glimpse of nature as it was. Look at the crouch of the animal at the river's edge, look at the playfulness of the cubs in the grass, see how that gibbon hangs upside down--it's as if they were alive once again and nothing had happened.

  There is no excuse for bad work. To ruin an animal with shoddy taxidermy is to forfeit the only true canvas we have on which to represent it, and it condemns us to amnesia, ignorance and incomprehension.

  There was a time when every good family brightened up its living room with a mounted animal or a case of birds, some representative from the forest that remained in the home while the forest retreated. That business has all dried up, not only the collecting but the preserving. Now the living room is likely to be dull and the forest silent.

  Is there a level of barbarism involved in taxidermy? I see none. Or only if one lives a life entirely sheltered from death in which one never looks into the back room of a butcher shop, or the operating room of a hospital, or the working room of a funeral parlour. Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born. To ignore death, then, is to ignore life. I no more mind the smell of an animal's carcass than I do the smell of a field; both are natural and each has its attaching particularity.

  And let me repeat: taxidermists do not create a demand. We merely preserve a result. I have never hunted in my life and have no interest in the pursuit. I would never harm an animal. They are my friends. When I work on an animal, I work in the knowledge that nothing I do can alter its life, which is past. What I am actually doing is extracting and refining memory from death. In that, I am no different from a historian, who parses through the material evidence of the past in an attempt to reconstruct it and then understand it. Every animal I have mounted has been an interpretation of the past. I am a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future. So you see, we are dealing here with matters so much weightier than what to do with a dusty stuffed duck inherited from an uncle.

  I should mention a development of the last few years, what has been called art taxidermy. Art taxidermists seek not to imitate nature but to create new, impossible species. They--that is, the artist directing the taxidermist--attach one part of an animal to another part of another, so the head of a sheep to the body of a dog, or the head of a rabbit to the body of a chicken, or the head of a bull to the body of an ostrich, and so on. The combinations are endless, often ghoulish, at times disturbing. I don't know what they mean to do. They are no longer exploring animal nature, that is clear. I think they are rather exploring human nature, often at its most tortured. I cannot say it is to my taste, it certainly goes against my training, but what of that? It continues a dialogue with animals, however odd, and must serve the purpose of some people.

  Insects are the eternal enemy of taxidermy and have to be exterminated at every stage. Our other enemies are dust and excessive sunlight. But the worst enemy of taxidermy, and also of animals, is indifference. The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has se
aled the fate of animals.

  I became a taxidermist because of the writer Gustave Flaubert. It was his story "The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator" that inspired me. My first animals were a mouse and then a pigeon, the same animals that Julian first kills. I wanted to see if something could be saved once the irreparable had been done. That is why I became a taxidermist: to bear witness.

  The taxidermist looked up at Henry from his papers. He said, "Then I have a list and brief descriptions of famous displays in various museums, from single animals to full dioramas."

  "Let's leave that for later," Henry said. "I'm thirsty. Could I have some water, please?"

  "There are glasses on the edge of the sink."

  Henry walked over. He rinsed a glass, filled it, and drank. The skeleton of a rabbit was soaking in a blue chemical solution in a plastic tub at the bottom of the sink. He drank several glassfuls of water. It was very dry in the store and his throat was parched. He was hungry too, for that matter.

  Henry thought about what the taxidermist had just read to him. To read on one's own and to be read to are two very different experiences. Not being in control of the words submitted to his attention, unable to establish his own pace but rather dangling along like a prisoner in a chain gang, he found that his level of attention and retention had varied. It had been interesting enough, this discourse on taxidermy, but not highly personal. He still knew nothing about the taxidermist himself.

  He remembered the advice of a friend who taught creative writing. "A story begins with three good words," she'd said. "That's where you start when reading a student's submission: find three good words." That wouldn't be hard. At school long ago, the taxidermist had clearly been taught and had learned well the essential elements of prose. And it helped in keeping the listener's attention, at least his, Henry thought, that the subject matter was the odd rather than the mundane, taxidermy rather than fiscal planning.

  The glass slipped through Henry's fingers. It shattered on the floor. "I'm sorry. It slipped from my hand."

  "Don't worry," responded the taxidermist, unconcerned.

  Henry looked around for a broom and a dustpan.

  "Leave it, leave it."

  Henry's guess was that, being a craftsman, the taxidermist was practical, and small accidents and their clean-ups did not trouble him. Henry walked back to the desk, shards of glass cracking under his shoes. He sat back down on the stool.

  "That's good, what you've written," he said to the taxidermist. Now, Henry wondered privately, was the man seeking nothing more than the reassurance of praise, or did he want proper criticism? "Perhaps a little repetitive and disjointed at times, but clear and informative."

  The taxidermist said nothing, just looked at Henry, deadpan.

  "I noticed how as you went along you started using the personal pronoun 'I' more often. That's good in a first-person narrative. You want to stay rooted in the experience of the individual and not lose yourself in generalities."

  Still nothing.

  "With that kind of a smooth flow to your writing, your play must be coming along nicely."

  "It's not."

  "Why's that?"

  "I'm stuck. It doesn't work."

  The taxidermist admitted to his creative block without any showy frustration.

  "Have you finished a first draft?"

  "Many times."

  "How long have you been working on your play?"

  "All my life."

  The man rose from his desk and walked to the sink. Crackle, crackle , went the glass under his feet. From a shelf under a counter, he produced a brush and a dustpan. He swept the floor clean. Then he picked up some rubber gloves and put them on. He bent over the sink. The silence did not weigh on him. Henry observed him and after a moment saw him in a different light. He was an old man. An old man stooped over a sink, working. Did he have a wife, children? His fingers were bare of rings, but that could be because of the nature of his work. A widower? Henry looked at the man's face in profile. What was beyond that blankness? Loneliness? Worry? Frustrated ambition?

  The taxidermist straightened himself. The rabbit skeleton was in his giant hands. It was in one piece, each bone still connected to the next. It was very white and looked small and fragile. He turned it over, inspecting it cautiously. He might have been handling a tiny baby.

  A one-story man, a di Lampedusa struggling with his Leopard , thought Henry. Creative block is no laughing matter, or only to those sodden spirits who've never even tried to make their personal mark. It's not just a particular endeavour, a job, that is negated, it's your whole being. It's the dying of a small god within you, a part you thought might have immortality. When you're creatively blocked, you're left with--Henry looked around the workshop--you're left with dead skins.

  The taxidermist turned the tap on and rinsed the skeleton in a gentle stream of water. He shook the rabbit again and then placed it on the counter next to the sink.

  "Why a monkey and a donkey? You told me how you got these two here." Henry reached out and touched the donkey. He was surprised at how springy and woolly its coat was. "But why these particular animals for your story?"

  "Because monkeys are thought to be clever and nimble, and donkeys are thought to be stubborn and hardworking. Those are the characteristics that animals need to survive. It makes them flexible and resourceful, able to adapt to changing conditions."

  "I see. Tell me more about your play. What happens after the scene with the pear?"

  "I'll read it to you."

  He removed his gloves, wiped his hands on the apron around his waist, and returned to his desk. He fished through papers.

  "Here it is," he said. The taxidermist read aloud again, stage directions and everything:

  "That's the end of the opening scene," he said. "Beatrice hasn't ever eaten a pear in her life, or even seen one, and Virgil tries to describe one for her."

  "Yes, I remember."

  He continued:

  He stopped. That even, expressionless style he had of reading was really quite effective, Henry decided. He brought his hands up and quietly made the motion of clapping.

  "That's excellent," he said. "I like that analogy between the sun and faith."

  The taxidermist nodded slightly.

  "And when Virgil says that talk is better than silence, and there's a long silence that follows, broken by Beatrice saying, 'It is,' I can see that working well onstage."

  Again, no definite reaction. I should get used to it, Henry told himself. It was likely shyness.

  "This sudden darkness--with Beatrice bursting into tears--that's also a nice contrast in tone with the lighter first scene. By the way, where is the play set? I didn't get that."

  "It was on the first page."

  "Yes, I know, they're in some park or forest."

  "No, before that."

  "There wasn't anything before that."

  "I thought I had copied it," said the taxidermist.

  He gave Henry three pages. The first page contained the following information:

  A 20th-Century Shirt

  A Play in Two Acts

  The second page:

  Virgil, a red howler monkey

  Beatrice, a donkey

  A boy and his two friends

  And the third page:

  A country road. A tree.

  Late afternoon.

  The province of Lower Back,

  in a country called the Shirt,

  a country like any other,

  neighbour to, bigger than,

  smaller than, Hat, Gloves,

  Jacket, Coat, Trousers,

  Socks, Boots and so on.

  "The story is set on a shirt?" Henry asked, puzzled.

  "Yes, on the back of it."

  "Well, either Beatrice and Virgil are smaller than bread crumbs or it's a very big shirt."

  "It's a very big shirt."

  "On which two animals are moving about? And there's a tree and a country road?"

  "And more. It's
symbolic."

  Henry wished he had said that first. "Yes, clearly it's symbolic. But symbolic of what? The reader must recognize what the symbol stands for."

  "The United States of America, the United Clothes of Europe, the Union of African Shoes, the Association of Asian Hats--names are arbitrary. We parcel out the Earth, give names to landscapes, draw maps, and then we make ourselves at home."

  "Is this a play for children? Have I read it wrong?"

  "No, not at all. Is your story for children?"

  The taxidermist was looking at Henry directly, but he always did. Henry couldn't detect any irony in his voice.

  "No, it's not for children. I wrote my novels for adults," he replied.

  "The same with my play."

  "It's for adults despite the characters and the setting."

  "It's for adults because of the characters and the setting."

  "Point taken. But again, why a shirt? What's the symbolism there?"

  "Shirts are found in every country, among every people."

  "It's the universal resonance of it?"

  "Yes. Every day we put on shirts."

  "We all live on the Shirt, is that what you're saying?"

  "That's right. Coat, Shirt, Trousers, but it could have been Germany, Poland, Hungary."

  "I see." Henry thought for a moment. "Why did you choose those three countries?" he asked.

  "What--Coat, Shirt, Trousers?"

  "No. Germany, Poland, Hungary."

  "They were the first three countries to pop into my head," the taxidermist replied.

  Henry nodded. "So the Shirt--it's just the name of the country?"

  The taxidermist leaned forward and took his papers back. "That's what it says here," he said. "'A country like any other, neighbour to, bigger than, smaller than.'"

  Henry decided to try constructive criticism. "I'm wondering if maybe something isn't being lost here. One of the important concerns when telling a story is making sure that what is in your head finds its way onto the page. If you want your reader to see what you're seeing, you have to--"