In fact, over the next two hours, as the line of people begins to form outside underneath the twelve heads of stuffed deer buck, Downing’s mind, it is elsewhere: upstairs, with his blind lover who waits for him naked on the bed, lying face-down because it feels good on his eyes, slowly wrapping a fresh bandage around his eye sockets, which he had agreed to show Downing last night.
Downing had lit a candle and held it up to Ostlet’s face, which otherwise looked the same: there was his boxy hunter’s jaw, his nubby boy’s nose, his cheeks fat and round as ladies’ pincushions, but above which, in the flickering light, sat two new ghoulish vacancies, shocking in both size and color and reminding Downing at once of a moss-coated cave he used to explore as a child in Northumberland.
The cave, wet and dark, was in Pauperhaugh, found only by traveling the length of the riverbank away from his farm, into the woods, and resembled a boulder with its middle scooped out. Late one afternoon, after his chores were finished, the boy Titus had decided to hide there, as was his wont, with a book until dinner. He cleared moss from the mouth and crawled inside, but as he, candlelit, began reading, he sensed that he was not alone, he heard breathing, and the boy could not see it but suspected it was Animal as it smelled muddy-sweet, and when he lifted his light and peered into the darkness, the outline of a small girl appeared, mud-covered and squatting.
She was naked, her legs wrapped up in her arms, and she grinned strangely at Titus, as though she had never done it before. Then she blew out his light!
The last thing he saw was her hair, which looked like a bird’s nest had been glued to her head.
Titus, himself no dandy in his farm clothes, his little work boots, felt afraid in the darkness. Cold air chilled his legs. When he reached out a hand to make for the exit, the girl leaned forward, opened her wide, blackened maw, and she bit him. She got his right hand and did not let go, and it was a very deep bite between knuckles that drew blood—the uneven scar remains, though pale, on the taxidermist’s hand even today—and after she tasted blood she began to whimper, a whimper which set her off into a long, inhuman howl, and young Downing had never heard such a thing, like an animal trapped in human skin, and as he fled the cave, never to return, the boy’s ears rang, he felt a new, ripping pain in his hand, and it was one he would feel, on occasion, for years:
When he would finally leave Northumberland for Oxford; when he would awake at Oxford, finals looming, screaming out to Harold Skinner in the night; when he attended the Great Exhibition at Hyde Park, listening to Mr. Darwin explain the new art called “taxidermy,” a term, Darwin explained, for a beast’s “arrangement of skin.”
Once Downing set up his own taxidermy shop in Leamington Spa and arranged the twelve heads of adult deer buck outside his front door, he felt safer. He believed he had forgotten about the girl, but at the same time he did not really forget; she had simply moved from his hand to his heart, and if there is a secret to the talent of Titus Downing, it must be this: the girl is with him whenever he supplicates himself to his craft, looking for the raw, Animal feeling that will help him to re-create the jiva. She lives in him, and as he stared into Richard’s dark, carcass-colored eye sockets last night, Downing surprised himself when they resembled two great, gaping mouths and the girl returned to him once more—her black, open mouth, the cave’s moss-scent, the wet air chilling his legs—the old pain seized his right hand and so she, too, must be partly to blame for why the taxidermist cares so little about the drunk boys in the theater troupe who are, at this moment, belting out a tune they’ve just invented called “Cocks and Fox.”
“Get to work, aardvarks!” he shouts as more people arrive, and the boys start to prance in a frenzy, crouching down on all fours, throwing their snouts about on the cobblestones, looking nothing like aardvarks as the crowd bifurcates, forming two long lines, each beginning at the front door of 24 Victoria Terrace, at the intersection of Bath Street and the Terrace Leam.
* * *
It’s begun, which means that it’s over. Upstairs, the TV is shouting something about a photograph that’s just been procured, and CONGRESSMAN ALEXANDER PAINE WILSON OWNS A NAZI AARDVARK, and you don’t have to look at the television to know that Hermann Göring’s hunting lodge photo, the one with the aardvark, is everywhere, so you look at your phone where there are now 5063 unread text messages and 8292 unread emails, and you do not need to look further to know your Favorability Rating’s kaput.
“Toby,” you say. “Toby, listen.”
“How do you know Greg Tampico,” she demands again, and you almost tell her, but don’t—
Because you still don’t know if Vicky actually saw Greg Tampico yesterday morning in the FedEx truck, if it was actually Tampico putting on a disguise, and frankly, it just doesn’t sound like him because Tampico was seriously, like, so insanely bad at keeping the lid on surprises. Like, this one time he planned to surprise you on your birthday with jet-skiing on the Potomac but couldn’t hold it past breakfast, so if it was actually Tampico delivering the aardvark, you think, he would have been quick, at least quicker than this, to laugh at the joke, he would have at least texted or something by now, he would have sought out and downloaded a stupid aardvark emoji, which is why as you start mumbling banalities at Toby to let your memory function, returning to the hot, front stoop of 2486 Asher Place yesterday morning when nothing was working, you remain unconvinced, recalling only that the deliveryman’s beard was certainly odd-looking, the eyeglasses were certainly thick, and the general physique of the deliveryman could only maybe pass for Greg Tampico’s, but who knows, you can’t say for certain, and you do not worry what it says about you either if you did or did not recognize him.
You have no idea why Toby’s father, Brian Castle, would send Toby the picture of Greg Tampico, you explain. All you can say is you know the guy from some fundraiser, and yeah, you guess clumsily, the aardvark could be from him but you don’t know for sure, and this you, like, totally swear as Vicky’s mother, slender and pretty, arrives at the door.
Vicky’s mother does not knock when she enters. Nor does she look at you, let alone thank you. She looks at Olioke and thanks him—for what, you have no idea—and the way Vicky’s pretty mother ignores you and goes right for Olioke makes you feel, in some despicable way, on the defensive. And Toby Castle is saying, “This isn’t right,” and, “Something’s not right,” but Olioke, God Bless Olioke, he has said zilch so far to Toby about the Herero, about what he knows of Greg Tampico, so while he’s dealing with Vicky’s mother you shoot Olioke some gratitude, like, thanks, bruh, but he just stares at you. Blank. Behind the blank look is a glimmer of innocence. It’s willful, like the man is deliberately hiding something about which he needs to appear innocent, and that’s when it comes at you, in a slither:
Olioke is leaking pictures to the media. He could have done the last one just moments ago, walking up behind you, from the garage. Because who else other than Olioke knows about the hunting lodge? Who else knows the aardvark’s whole history, would have known all about that fucking photo of Tampico being gifted the aardvark in Namibia—but why, why would Olioke throw you under the bus like this, you wonder, and tell Toby to wait, just fucking wait, you’ll explain about Greg Tampico if she’ll wait, but she doesn’t believe you. She’s through.
“This is over,” she says, and, “I hope everything works out for you, Alex.”
Toby stands up straight, and her posture is perfect, like she’s already forgotten about you and is ready to meet Someone New.
Exit Toby Castle, striding out the front door with no thought of you or your clothes that she’s wearing, and she is closely followed by Vicky and his pretty mother, yanking him down the front steps, Vicky howling the entire way out, “The aardvark, I want to see the aardvark!” until the front door closes and the sound of a thousand flicking shutters explodes from the cameras of the reporters, the paparazzi, who now, it appears, occupy the whole block.
You turn around and face Olioke. “Did you le
ak that goddamned Nazi photograph?” you ask him.
Olioke says nothing. He goes into your kitchen and takes out the peanut butter. He starts looking around for his rust-dotted paring knife.
“Where is my knife?” he says.
“Fuck your knife,” you say, and stomp upstairs to your bedroom in a manner you haven’t re-created since you were thirteen.
You sit down on your mattress.
Your mattress is a ten-layered, California King–sized Kluft Palais Royale ($32878) made with ten pounds of cashmere, of mohair, silk and wool, and pressing both hands flat upon it, you steel yourself, then grab the remote and turn on your Samsung to watch the charges which have been leveled against you:
You have probably broken the Lacey Act. You are probably a Nazi sympathizer. You are (or were) engaged to Toby Castle whose father, Brian Castle, got rich by inventing a business to help tech companies hemorrhage U.S. jobs overseas.
A photograph of Vicky from just, like, seven minutes ago in your living room appears on the screen.
It is not your purported kindness toward Vicky that anyone cares about; they only care about the canary-yellow velvet Victorian sofa upon which the young Vicky lies. For apparently, although you paid only $1900 for it, it’s worth well over twelve thousand, and what junior congressman, Nancy Fucking Beavers is asking right now on MSNBC, can afford such a luxury?
So despite the fact that in your three years in Congress you passed more legislation than any other Republican freshman, secured $55 million in funding for Virginia, have been called a “hard worker,” a “rising star” by the House Speaker, and despite the fact that you’ve appeared on Fallon to talk about your workout regime, even found yourself on a list of “Hottest Congressmen” on BuzzFeed, add another charge to the pile: an investigation’s begun. A watchdog group has been formed to dig into your finances, and when they dig deep enough, which they most certainly will, they will unearth a veritable buffet of improprieties, all of which true: you did sell your parents’ house, the house you grew up in, to a major Republican donor for much more than it was worth to buy a fancy-ass Victorian townhouse in Foggy Bottom, and you have charged an unpardonable several hundreds of thousands on private flights, on lavish oak furniture for office and home, to the taxpayer, and it’s hard to explain why but you just feel somehow owed, like you are just taking money from America like a child would a parent who gave them no love, and Tampico’s aardvark will fade into the background as, in the coming weeks, a congressional committee will form, the IRS will seize your accounts, and a group of men dressed in, like, black jumpsuits or something will arrive at 2486 Asher Place holding several cardboard boxes far bigger than the aardvark’s box, march upstairs to your closet, and pack up and haul away your entire collection of clothes just like the clothes Ronald Reagan was wearing in Images of Greatness.
Sitting alone on your Kluft Palais Royale, the scent of Toby Castle’s vagina still mushrooming your bedsheets, it hardly matters now how accomplished you’ve been. What you’ve done. There will be no airports. And although the name “Alexander Paine Wilson” will be forever etched somewhere in the backed-up anus of history, there will be no legacy of yours at all except this media blip, which, six months from now, no one will recall because everything happened before anything happened.
You look at your phone, where you have 9491 unread text messages and 12722 unread emails. You enter aardvark into the search function.
It appears over ten thousand times.
You enter tampico.
There is nothing from Greg Tampico. All that comes up is a news article sent to you early yesterday morning from your assistant, Barb Newberg.
Barb Newberg knows you like Ronald Reagan and, out of kindness or boredom, has sent you an article about Reagan’s birthplace, which is a modest two-bedroom apartment in a modest two-story brick building currently housing a First National Bank, sandwiched between an insurance company and a funeral parlor in the tiny village of Tampico, Illinois.
Thought you would enjoy this—Barb , she wrote.
It is not the bizarre coincidence of the two Tampicos which interests you, nor is it the building itself. It’s the unassuming funeral parlor next door which reminds you that today, Monday, is the funeral.
Murphy & Milliken’s Funeral Home in Alexandria, you remember, at two o’clock sharp, and the place is on Prince Street, which is not far at all from Greg Tampico’s walk-up on King Street—and you will go to the funeral because you still could be wrong; if the boy Vicky indeed saw the man as he says he did, then Tampico is alive, just being unusually withholding, just pissed off about the last time you saw each other and is, like, just totally fucking with you—and if that is true, you are wondering, then what on God’s Green Earth, as your mother would say, will be in the coffin?
3.
Enter twelve Gentlemen in gray and black broadcloth, their silk neckties flash with color. Enter the lawyers and bankers and schoolteachers, the civil engineers and physicians; enter the journalists, newspapermen in their bowler hats like the kind street monkeys wear until enter Walter Potter, Downing’s chief competitor, and Walter Potter is ginger-blond, bow-tied and mutton-chopped, and there can be no doubt that it’s Potter because a few people have spotted him, asked for his autograph, and the newspapermen are writing everything down, interviewing Potter on the street outside Downing’s Viewing, the taxidermist peevishly notices, until Potter tells them he’s there because, like everyone else, he’s curious to see the African Aardvark and he’s been a longtime admirer of Downing’s, and he promises them that this will indeed be a Big Viewing, and it turns out, to start, that Walter Potter is right:
The event is free. As the minutes tick by and all Gentlemen have arrived, enter the men from the unskilled professions, these miners, textile mill workers, railway porters all sporting rolled trousers, country tweeds, their boots filthy with coal, and from there, in ratty cotton jackets with badly stitched seams, enter the costermongers, appearing for once in public without their rickety vegetable carts; enter the butty-gangs of sewer men, the stench of the toshers and ratcatchers until enter the coal-faced sweepers of both street and chimney, and the men mingle harmoniously, each finding his own kind, the sun is out, it is a very hot day, it is August, and everyone’s watching the gay-drunk boys in the theater troupe tossing their fake snouts, scratching the cobblestones with their fake claws, pointing, laughing, as the peaked wooden doors of the All Saints Church across the street bust open and out spill the fat clergymen, rosy-hot in their cassocks—they are leaving the cool vestibule of the church to come View the aardvark—and Downing can sense that it is, at last, finally Time.
“Enter,” he says, and that is all as the first Viewers walk into the shop, see the aardvark, and gasp.
From here on out, Downing will step aside. Because Downing, he never stays for his Viewings. He always leaves the shop and goes to a pub, The Green Otter, for a pint while the critics evaluate the work he’s accomplished, and this is because he already knows what he’s done, he knows that it’s all he could do, and this afternoon is no different as Downing nods soberly to Harold Skinner, who, just one year ago, took bids on the African giraffe, selling it for a very high price to the New Walk Museum—this afternoon, leaving his shop, Downing happily gives Skinner the proverbial reins and walks without consternation or care past All Saints.
He strolls down Bath Street, hangs a left onto Clarence Street and takes the curved side alley which leads to The Green Otter, where he will spoil himself and Richard tonight with dinner in a takeaway basket. And the taxidermist does not hold back when offered the orange duck and sweet peas or the beans with fried bacon, he orders both, as the hunger which appeared the night before has not abated, and when he orders two full bottles of a decent French Malbec, he samples it slowly, like nothing else is going on in the world, and only then, for himself, now, does he get his pint.
Downing always orders one single pint, tall and frothy, to celebrate the completion of any stuffed
beast, and this afternoon, sun melting off the pub’s little round windows all made from crown glass, he sits alone in a corner, sipping, the sweet hops coats his tongue, slides down his throat in a warm, pleasing tickle, and as he drinks, his mind utterly clears: he is thinking about nothing. He longs for nothing.
His soul is neither attached to the past nor diverted to the future, and he’s not thinking about Richard, nor the aardvark, nor is he thinking of the people in or not in attendance at the Viewing, and he is not even thinking of the arrival of the young Rebecca Ostlet, nor the cost of this extravagant dinner—all of which he might have behooved to think about had he known what was about to take place in his absence.
* * *
You hate going to funerals, always have. You don’t like to think about dead things, or even sick things, and for the better part of your education at UVA, the professors all seemed to push death and relativity and history at you, and you preferred then, and still prefer now, to think about life and certainty, you prefer to forget the past to embrace the future, but no one ever talked about those things, and you often wonder why everyone in college was always trying to be so admirably pessimistic when you’re so admirably optimistic, and it’s this sort of optimistic thought, the one that Greg Tampico might be alive, consequences be damned, that propels you off your mattress, out of your bedroom, downstairs, away from the kitchen where Olioke sits eating his fucking sandwich (you, like, seriously flat-out hate Olioke)—and once more into the garage, into the Tahoe, where your departure from 2486 Asher Place is remarkably swift.
Your departure is swift because no one expects it. The photographers are stunned when the garage doors lift and the Tahoe is suddenly borne out into sunlight. They barely have time to turn on their cameras, rush their white vans, before you’re off, and now all of America’s watching your Tahoe on TV, OJ-like, as you hurtle toward Alexandria.
Enter the Aardvark Page 10