Enter the Aardvark

by Jessica Anthony

  You turn on your 75-inch Samsung widescreen 4K Q9F Series UHD TV with HDR ($3999) in your bedroom and watch as the middle-aged brunette in a marigold pantsuit, hair cut short and sprayed into a brown carapace, barks into a microphone:

  “I am not interested in discussing Alex Wilson’s personal life. That’s discourse beneath my campaign. But we all know Congressman Wilson is known for his extravagant taste, and if he wishes to furnish his extravagant home with taxidermy, it is his choice, as an American, to do so. In the end, it is the voters who will decide whether or not they want to keep in office a congressman who himself keeps an endangered species as a decorative ornament.”

  You immediately google is aardvark endangered? and learn that there’s actually such a thing as an Endangerment Rating and the aardvark has a risk of endangerment of “Least Concern,” and the sturdy-ass mammal has fucking trucked around Earth for a fucking infinity before human beings, its origins are fucking Mesozoic, it never evolved, and it is actually one of the least endangered mammals on the planet!

  Human beings will all kill each other and die off, and millions of other creatures will each in their own way and time die off, but the aardvark will probably never die off, and knowing this makes you furious—not because it awakens within you some humble cognizance of your own pointless, mortal frailty (which it does) but because Nancy Fucking Beavers has so obviously planted this little lie to goad you, put you on the defensive, to make you talk about the aardvark, and the very last thing you want to do right now is talk about the aardvark.

  “Just get rid of it,” Toby says, and blinks bigly. “Dump it in the Potomac. Say that you lost it.”

  Toby’s trying to look smart but she just looks pretty, and she hasn’t even brushed her teeth but she smells pretty, you think, unlike Greg Tampico, who always woke up smelling warm and weird, like undercooked beef, and as you are quietly admitting to yourself that you so preferred Greg Tampico’s meat-scent to Toby Castle’s perfume, the way out of this mess beautifully horizons across your frontal lobe:

  You and Toby Castle will get dressed in something clean. Relaxed-looking. Like you’ve been away somewhere beachy. For the weekend. You will open the green door downstairs and hold each other, waving to the reporters, and grinning, you will kiss each other and wave some more. And then you will announce your engagement.

  The aardvark, you will publicly share, was an ill-conceived engagement gift, nothing more, one which you have been advised to return, but one which you’re considering keeping because you—unlike Mrs. Beavers, you will say—you are actually In Office; you would rather your time be spent working for The People of the Great State of Virginia, and you are, right at this moment, working on Jobs—and you want to give The People the chance to seek out and buy their own healthcare coverage because dignity, because Ronald Reagan was right when he said, “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives,” and look what happens when we get things for free, haha!

  Then you’ll deliver a strangled chiasmus which is nonsense but sounds good, a line your staffers were saving for your next debate: “After all, no one can help what is given to them, but they can give help to others,” and then, in a sugary voice, “Toby reminds me of this every day,” you’ll say and beam, and in that moment, your reelection campaign will officially launch.

  You have climbed up onto your knees. Your naked body is wrapped all Grecian-like in your beautiful bedsheets, and you have grabbed Toby’s hands, which are light as croissants. “Marry me,” you say, and your eyebrows lift in a playful manner you mastered at prep school, no woman can ever resist it, and it got you through English and Calculus, several truancies, a graffiti incident, and once even a student integrity panel in which a boy accused you of assaulting him, but you got off because he was a fat kid and it was the Nineties.

  There are no exclamations of joy.

  Toby looks startled maybe but not in the least bit surprised. She looks at you like you’re crazy at first, but it’s just an act; she knows perfectly well what you’re up to because as soon as she gets it, she smiles and starts laughing, which is why you totally, hands-down adore Toby Castle.

  “Even better!” she shouts, and jumps out of bed.

  Toby tells you to hurry. Get dressed. She’ll be downstairs in a minute, she says, she only needs to borrow some khakis, one of your white button-downs, and she can accessorize with the earrings she wore last night, she says, and yeah, it will be really cute if she looks boyish, tousled, “like Jackie O fresh off a yacht or something,” she says, and you put yourself completely in her hands when you toss her the clothes. Except for the khakis.

  “I don’t own any khakis,” you say.

  “Something else, then,” she says.

  You throw her some dark blue CK close-fitting silk-blend men’s trousers ($460).

  As for you, for this occasion, you also dress yourself in CK: the same trousers in brown, a pink gingham shirt ($210), a white leather belt ($184), and you deliberately don’t button the collar as you run downstairs in bare feet, excited, when the landline rings.

  You would not even have a landline if it were not for your mother. She is the only one who ever uses it, and she insists on you having a landline because she is old and does not trust cell phones.

  “Who’s that?” Toby shouts.

  “It’s my mother,” you shout back, and pick up the phone.

  It’s not your mother.

  “Wilson,” a voice says.

  “Who is this,” you say as Toby Castle starts working your hair dryer upstairs, a black and red MANGROOMER 1680XL-6 Professional Ionic Hair Dryer for Men ($179), which is weird, you think, because her hair is already dry.

  “Who is this,” you say again, and sit down on the canary-yellow velvet Victorian sofa, Images of Greatness still spread-eagled on the coffee table, opened to a photo of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in Miami, perched in these two really beautiful Arabian-looking fabric chairs—

  “Do me a favor,” the voice says, and it’s a man’s voice. “Is your internet working?”

  “It is,” you say.

  “I’m sending you something. Check your email.”

  You pick up your real phone, and there at the top of your now 4333 unread emails is an email from an undisclosed sender. All it says is Herero.

  “Are you Herero?” you say, and the voice only says to look at the picture, closely, so you look at the picture.

  It’s a vintage black-and-white photograph of some kind of big old hunting lodge with wide picnic tables. The lodge is literally the size of a movie theater, and there’s a big stone chimney that rises up between small windows of colored glass, and the glass, set in lead, glows over a vast amalgamation of furs, of objets d’art, of china, jewels, and silver tea settings, and it all looks pilfered, like some kind of booty, and also on the walls, covering the tables, a riot of taxidermy: stuffed geese and stuffed ducks, a sour-faced raccoon, a big open-mouthed leopard, a snarling baboon, numerous stoic elk heads, and there’s even an entire eagle, wide-winged, captured frozen in flight.

  Underneath the eagle, on the floor and toward the right side, a large stuffed aardvark is mounted on a sturdy block of wood. Its head is slightly lowered, its long ears alert, looking askance at the photographer with one of its claws gently raised, and at the very bottom of the photograph, handwritten, is the purported date and location: 1944, Reichsjägerhof Rominten.

  “The aardvark,” you say, and the man confirms that yes, that is the aardvark. But that is not all.

  “What then,” you say.

  “This is the hunting lodge of Hermann Göring.”

  “Göring,” you say, like it’s a nonsense word. “Göring. Göring like the Nazi Göring?”

  “Not like the Nazi,” the man says. “The aardvark belonged to Hermann Göring’s father, Heinrich. Heinrich Göring was the first governor-general of the German Protectorate of South West Africa. What is now known as Namibia.”

  “Namibia,” you sa
y.

  “He was the leader of the ‘Schutztruppe,’ the German troops who killed the Herero and the Namaqua people in what is broadly understood to be the century’s first genocide. Heinrich gave the aardvark to Hermann as a present when he graduated from a military academy in Lichterfelde—”

  My god, you are thinking as the man is speaking, Tampico’s aardvark’s a Nazi, and try to locate the man’s voice—you swear you’ve heard it before but cannot, for the life of you, place it! “Seriously,” you say, “who is this,” and that’s when Toby Castle swoops downstairs looking refreshed and adorable.

  She asks who you’re talking to, and the man, having heard her, hangs up.

  “What’s wrong,” Toby asks, fussing an earring.

  “Nothing,” you say, standing up from the sofa. You smile. You squeeze Toby’s hands, take her by the elbow, and together you open your green front door with the brass lion’s-head knocker and, waving to the horde of reporters, the entire American public, you make your announcement:

  “The cat’s out of the bag,” you say, grinning, waving. “The aardvark was an engagement gift, nothing more,” you explain, it was all a big misunderstanding, and everyone should calm down because everything’s fine, everything is going to be just fine, then you kiss Toby Castle’s cheek all sheepish, welcoming the simultaneous flash and shutter of a thousand small-format, weather-resistant, pro-digital Canons which are currently eclipsing the children’s playground, at the center of which, dangling precariously from his knees on the monkey bars, is the chubby black boy from yesterday who, unbeknownst to you, lingered on your stoop after you closed the door in his face, caught for himself a glimpse of the aardvark, and now knows exactly what he needs to do to see it.

  * * *

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, come View Titus Downing’s new masterpiece! The African Aardvark! For One Night Only! Available Only to Those Bold Enough to Participate!” the Evening Standard declares, and although Downing once re-created an entire giraffe, capturing its exact jiva, making everyone who saw the giraffe feel like a giraffe, feel the lanky swing of its neck, the long teeth reaching for acacia leaves, the stiff knuckle joints of its knees, that is nothing, the paper goes on to say, compared to what the people will feel when they at long last cast their eyes upon the aardvark.

  In the few days that have passed since Downing first heard the slow shuffle of what he imagined to be Sir Richard Ostlet under the antlers of deer buck, he has been hard at work readying his shop for the Viewing, which means:

  Rolling up the Bengal tiger skin into one huge, fat, furry scroll and storing it in an equally fat wooden barrel. Cleaning and oiling the battered pine workbenches, organizing scattered brushes, polishing all knives, scissors, even tweezers of various lengths and points. Then it’s wiping dust from glass bottles of fluids, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, washing all windows, and Downing does all of this himself before arranging in his main shopwindow the finest of his own personal collection, and these are four stuffed geese, three stuffed dogs, assorted stuffed fish and stuffed rabbits, and a collection of skittish-looking tods, reynards, in the center of which Downing places his personal favorite, a memento from the Hyde Park Exhibition: the shining taupe vixen with an elegant, upturned snout.

  The gathering of tods are arranged around the vixen so it appears they protect her—which Downing believes the women will enjoy—and when it’s ready, when all is complete, the taxidermist returns to his workshop to occupy himself for the day with a small commission from a local family.

  On the menu is an amiable coal-black Schipperke, a decade-old lapdog with a tail like a chimney brush and ears like a bat’s, and although Downing is usually bored by such commissions, little dead dogs have kept him in business these some twenty years, and he has stuffed more lapdogs than perhaps any other creature, so for him the friendly Schipperke is just the sort of mindless distraction he needs to avoid thinking about the Viewing tomorrow, about the hordes of reporters and collectors and smatterings of people who represent the General Public—or about the arrival of Rebecca Ostlet, who, Downing is now convinced, will traipse through his shop before Viewing the aardvark, talking about, sure, how fine and noble the creatures in the windows all look, but will, in time, under her breath whisper what all women whisper: “He’s still no Walter Potter!”—and the Schipperke helps Downing not worry about Walter Potter or how much money he makes, but most of all, the little black dog helps Downing avoid thinking about the undeniable fact that he has actually seen, in bright daylight, the body of Sir Richard Ostlet walking past his shop three times now, eyes bandaged, Wellingtons scha-lumping.

  Downing, the scientist, intellectually cannot bring himself to believe what his own eyes have seen, not even when lunchtime arrives and, as he is brushing the playful culottes of the Schipperke, his neck hairs start tingling. Not even when he senses that the Wellingtons are, once again, parked in front of the shop. Which they are.

  Outside, Sir Richard Ostlet’s bandaged face has arranged itself in the center of the taxidermist’s shopwindow, positioned right in front of the vixen, and Downing, still in his workshop bent over the dog, cannot bring himself to acknowledge even the remote possibility that the being out there is otherworldly. For although he, like any educated man, has read his Voltaire and agrees that “everything in nature is resurrection,” and has even entertained the likelihood that he has been here, as Goethe declared himself to be, “a thousand times before,” and Downing, if asked, could repeat on cue from Moore’s famous poem Lalla Rookh: “From frame to frame the unextinguish’d soul / Rapidly passes, till it reach the goal!”—he too, like any educated man, well knows that reincarnation is not magic, the boundaries are set, the jiva is either samsara (trapped) or moksha (liberated), and though most souls are doomed to repeat themselves endlessly to shed their heavy layers of karma, the jiva, the soul, the what-have-you, the eternal life-essence?—it is not bloody magic, and Downing has utterly no patience for people who believe in ghosts, apparitions, and instead he believes that what lives on this cold Earth is everything, there is nothing more until death, at which point life, it may just return again as it seems to in taxidermy, and to be frank, Downing is rather looking forward to the whole aardvark business ending if truth be told, so the aardvark will become another man’s problem, so this “essence” might follow the aardvark to another town, chasing his eyes across another land, and Downing himself might close his shop, retire to his father’s farm in Northumberland, leaving Royal Leamington Spa to become what, deep down, Downing has always known he was: a simple farmer.

  All of which is why Downing ignores the figure standing outside and sets his mind on tilling fields as he shapes the pink anus of the Schipperke, holding its tail, and it’s why, if he hears the sleigh bells jingle, he ignores them.

  It is why he ignores the figure as it enters the shop, walks slowly toward the back room, and opens the creaking door, ignores it even as it stands—as it is standing right now—so closely behind Titus Downing, leaning its chest upon his thin, bird-like shoulder blades, breathing a human man’s breath, warm and wet, onto the back of his neck.

  * * *

  You cannot know that Brian Castle, Toby’s tech-billionaire father, is watching CNN when he sees his only daughter holding your arm, grinning and waving at cameras. You cannot know that upon seeing this, the ticker flashing CONGRESSMAN ALEX WILSON AND BRIAN CASTLE’S DAUGHTER ENGAGED, the man sits up straight at his desk and goes, “Shit.” That he picks up his phone. That he has been reading the news and knows all about your arrest, your illegal possession of a taxidermied aardvark, and he has never liked you, has never liked politicians in general, of any makeup or breed, and so he is going to put an end to all this immediately. All he needs is some dirt on Wilson and he cannot imagine that it will be difficult to find, and it is not difficult to find.

  The news gave up the name of the arresting officer, Officer Ernest Quinlan Anderson, and how easy is it to learn that Officer Anderson works at the First District
Station, and Brian Castle can get ahold of pretty much anyone he wants to, and in less than four minutes he gets ahold of Officer Anderson.

  “Ernie Anderson,” says Officer Anderson, when he picks up the phone.

  Brian Castle, sixty-one and for ten long years a skin cancer survivor, is not a man who wastes time. He wants to speak about the aardvark, where Anderson thinks Wilson got it, but Anderson says he can’t say much other than what the papers have already reported: the aardvark was delivered to Congressman Wilson via FedEx, and he’s been on the phone all morning with FedEx.

  “I don’t suppose you can tell me if you found anything,” Brian Castle asks, and Anderson, axe for Wilson still grinding, confesses that he has found little so far because Wilson’s phone, it was totally locked, and all he knows is that the delivery was made to 2486 Asher Place yesterday morning, August 2nd. Although Wilson said it was FedEx, FedEx cannot seem to locate the driver, Anderson says. Nor can they even locate the twelve-digit FedEx number, which is strange—and the package might have been deposited in person at the night drop-off on Eisenhower Avenue in Alexandria, he says, the only FedEx shipping center which allows such large in-person deposits, but it is the shipping center with one of the lowest customer service rankings, and by god if Anderson hasn’t tried to get something, anything, out of the two twenty-two-year-old heroin addicts working the late shift the night before last, the ones who would’ve witnessed the drop-off.

  “I’m about to head down there in person,” Anderson says, if Brian Castle would like to come along, to which Brian Castle replies, yep, he sure does.