The Taxidermist

by Enrique Laso

  "Enrique, don't be such a cretin as to set your own barriers. Let your genius fly free of restraints. Reality will manage to set your limits, but don't you help it with its vile task from the start," he said, looking almost offended.

  Every Saturday, when I returned home, my parents would ask a million questions, mostly because they could not understand what I was doing, spending so many hours with an old man that wasn't my own grandfather.

  "He's teaching me taxidermy," I'd answer, honest but annoyed.

  "Taxidermy? When will you quit that stupid idea? I don't know any normal person in that business."

  "Dad, you don't know any taxidermists, normal or otherwise. None at all!" I exclaimed, deeply irritated by the conversation.

  "Do not speak to me like that, ok? Just tell me one thing: is this José you are so devoted to, a normal person, someone like any of our neighbours?" asked my father, becoming suddenly serious.

  The question threw me. José was quite obviously not someone like everybody else, and I had to admit that. My father was trying, with his best intentions, to protect me, and above all he was trying to lead my life towards a path with as few complications as possible. However, I found an answer that, despite not satisfying him entirely, at least got me off the hook for a few months.

  "That's the problem, dad. You must understand that I don't want to be like any of our neighbours at all. And José is helping me achieve that."

  The following Christmas I remember myself looking at everything with gobsmacked eyes, trying to capture the beauty that surrounded me and carry it with me forever, which is ultimately the final objective of any taxidermist: perpetuating the perfection of nature. In those days, however, I found beauty not just in the animals, but also in the street lights, in the shop windows crammed full of presents to give, in the people wearing their Sunday best on the sidewalks, and even in the cars with their filthy fumes. José had taught me to observe the world with new eyes, and I was forever attempting to unravel the -not always evident- beauty of every object, every gesture, every word said. As is the norm with a teenager, I carried my feelings close to the surface, therefore, once the beauty of any simple fact or thing had been unravelled, I often found myself on the verge of tears, my chest and lips trembling with emotion.

  "You're making good progress. Soon you'll be ready to face your first project," José used to tell me, simultaneously trying to cheer me up and calm me down.

  "It's just that I'm embarrassed. Sometimes I have to leave the cinema under any pretence, so my friends don't see me cry over a particular scene. They'd mock me till the cows came home!"

  "Enrique, unfortunately, we are taught from a very early age to repress our feelings. Now I must undo that education, because without sensibility, the artist becomes a mere hand worker. Pity your friends, because they'd mock you for two reasons: they are either so repressed that they envy your naturalness, or -in the worst of cases- they have so little ability left to feel that they'll only do it under the strongest stimuli. In which case they are condemned to apathy and to the darkest sadness, the one that cannot even acknowledge its own existence.

  These speeches only reinforced a trait of my personality that had always been inside me, and which I had stubbornly kept under lock and key, unable to manifest itself. Little by little, the taxidermist was helping me bring it out, because I would need it in my learning. It is only now that I understand what he was trying to do. Now I see clearly that, despite my persistence in wanting to start using the tools of the trade as soon as possible - I couldn't wait to work on a piece under such a distinguished guide - it was absolutely necessary to polish my soul first, since otherwise I would not be able to fully appreciate his classes.

  I grew further away from the reality around me with every passing day, or at least my world was reduced to three or four very restricted interests. I was still going to school, but I did so reluctantly, without expecting much of it. The teachers' voices reached me from some distant point, and they sounded dull, weak, their stimulus waning away. I'd find myself, from time to time, with my eyes fixed on the blackboard, which was actually green and it reminded me of the pine trees surrounding the little fountain, next to which I sat every Saturday to meditate with José. It was very difficult to tear myself away from these thoughts and the idea of wasting my time, injecting into my brain subjects and knowledge that had little or no relation to the development of my true calling, was unbearable. Despite all this, and thanks to a prodigious memory that I still have today, my marks did not reflect any of this and my parents didn't feel the need to move from pestering me to ridiculing my choice or, even worse, to forbid me from visiting José.

  The reader will see soon enough the reason for my indolence, if they have ever harboured a wild, sincere passion. How could I ever forget the tepid January morning when the taxidermist showed me - for the first time and brimming with pride - a preserved piece. He did it voluntarily and yet, he was timid like a child, displaying the same emotion as a tenor singing his favourite aria.

  "Enrique, I think we have enough mutual trust for me to show you something," said José, his face looking at the sky in an effort to catch the warmth of the winter sun.

  "The truth is that I have already trusted you with some important secrets," I replied, anxious to be initiated in any significant detail of the art of taxidermy - of which, much to my dismay, we hardly ever spoke.

  José stretched and slowly gave me a small book with worn-looking leather binding and gilded letters. He stared at me, with an enigmatic half-smile hanging from his pleasant face.

  "Beauty can last forever. We just need to lend it a helping hand.

  I read the book cover: White Nights, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The title rung a vague bell; it was obviously not one of the best works by this author. I tried to understand what the taxidermist's intentions were in giving me that work, so hard to place in the context of our relationship.

  "This is an excellent edition, very carefully curated," I started, thinking the beauty he had referred to was to be found in the little book he'd given me.

  José stifled a humble smile and gestured with his hands for me to look inside the book.

  "The edition is not bad, but that's not what I want you to see. Be careful now..."

  I delicately leafed through the book, looking for... I didn't know what exactly. It could have been a note on the margin, an underlined phrase... I had no idea. And then, the book yielded and opened itself easily at the centre, lying flat. There was a tiny rosebud, dry, flattened, its colour had become a very dark, dull brown, and it held on tightly to its single-thorned stem. The petals were a bit deteriorated, a fine dust had gathered where the pages joined, the remains of what had once been the pistil. The flower was firmly adhered to one of the leaves, while the other had a purple imprint of it, like a negative.

  -

  "There you are, a real work of preservation art. Simple, yet beautiful. It's not mine, I have never worked with plants," the taxidermist elaborated, whose voice was getting gradually lower. "It's been there for nearly fifty years, and it's still as precious as it was when it was given to me. Can you see, Enrique? Can you...?"

  My hands were trembling with emotion as I held the small book, while my imagination provided content for the rose that seemed to sleep in its coffin of words. A knot had formed in my throat and was strangling it, and I could not undo it however hard I tried. Neither of us spoke again that morning. When I waved goodbye to José, he didn't look at me and I thought I could see in his eyes the dreaminess of a twenty year old youth.

  IV

  When Adela received me at the top of the stairs as usual, her face expressed deep worry. This was the first time I had seen her like this, since she was usually a cheerful, optimistic woman, with a weird sense of humour which I found particularly pleasant.

  "Is anything the matter?" I asked, anxiously.

  "It's nothing serious, but, you see... I phoned you as soon as I realised... This man has no conscience!" Adela ex
claimed, covering her face with her hands in desperation.

  "Excuse me Adela, but I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Of course, of course... You see, it's just that today... Don José... I'm so embarrassed I cannot tell you, do you understand?"

  I took a deep breath, because the poor woman was truly anguished and she could not distinguish what she was saying from what she was thinking. I took one of her hands to calm her down.

  "I'm here now, and I may be able to help."

  "Enrique, Don José is on drugs. He has been for years. He's drugged right now, and that's why I didn't want you to come today. I didn't want you to see him in this state..." she blurted, in a sudden effort to be strong and sincere.

  "He's on drugs, is he?" I asked, finding this hard to believe.

  "He is... at his age! He's a fool but... what can I do?"

  I was trying to assimilate the information Adela had just provided. I was utterly puzzled. I just could not picture, not just any man of his age taking drugs, but José in particular: it was completely unexpected.

  "Where is he?"

  "In the usual place, sitting in the sun beside the fountain..."

  "I'll go and see him," I decided.

  "Wait!" said Adela, holding my arm, "you can still climb down the hill, get on a bus and go back home. Next week everything will be back to normal. It's very strange that he injected morphine this morning. He never does it during the weekends, especially since you started coming to visit."

  I thought for a few seconds. In the woman's eyes there was a silent plea, and the hope that there was still a chance to avoid the disaster that, she imagined, would take place if I saw him. But the curiosity and thoughtlessness of youth got the better of me.

  "I'm sorry Adela, but I'd rather see him. I need him to explain to me why is he being this stupid," I sensibly declared.

  The woman let out a short lament, while her hands left my arm. She would not come with me and just crumbled on the stairs. Her usual mechanical-like movements had disappeared, and her body now looked like an inert, soft object, light and easily pliable. I could feel her deep sadness in my own veins, while I walked around the house to meet the taxidermist.

  That morning, the pine trees filtered the sunlight, breaking it into bright rays of light that drew curious shapes on the floor, on the pebbles and the bushes. José's image appeared before my eyes like that of a defeated man, lying on his seat, tired, locked inside an imaginary prison cell with luminous bars, dressed with the same clothes he had been wearing the day we met. The whiteness of his trousers was almost blinding me today. The vision was somewhat unreal, as if I had inadvertently crossed the barriers of wakefulness and had dived into a sweet dream. It was early March, I remember, one of those days when the winter mingles clumsily with the spring, and despite the warm weather, there was still the odd breeze, cold and damp, that came from the mountains and made me shiver to the bone.

  "José, are you asleep?" I asked stupidly, while I sat down beside him. On the wrought-iron table there was a hypodermic needle, a bowl with a clear, water-like liquid, a glass of lemonade and a packet that read 'Astramorph®'.

  "Enrique..." José whispered, trying to raise a hand He kept his eyes closed. I could see that he was trying to move, but it was too difficult for him. Slowly, he turned his torso towards me, until he reached a strange, sideways position in his chair.

  "Yes, it's me," I replied, with sadness.

  I kept silent for a few minutes more. I devoted myself to the careful observation of the taxidermist's face, who let out an occasional, soft moan, as if in a dream. His mouth was half-open, showing an exceptionally well looked-after, healthy set of teeth, considering his age. He had not shaven, and a couple of day's stubble ruined his usual English dandy looks. His eyes were screwed shut, and there were deep, majestic wrinkles going from them to his temples.

  "I don't understand how you can do this to yourself," I murmured, almost as if talking to myself.

  José seemed to wake up and moved very slowly, loosening up his muscles, which had been under a lot of strain in the previous position. He opened his eyes again, but then shut them again immediately, as if a strange force would damage his retina and he was forced to keep them shut.

  "Have you ever been in love?" he asked. His voice sounded raspy, distant, worn.

  "No, I don't think so," I answered, puzzled.

  "Surely not. You would know if you had..."

  "But what does that have to do with you being drugged?", I inquired, really angry now.

  "Actually... it has absolutely nothing to do with it. I just wanted to see to what extent you would be able to understand me. When somebody understands someone else, it's much more probable that they can forgive the other person, do you follow me?"

  He spoke deliberately, dragging his tongue and with a heavy vocalisation. His voice barely reached my ears: it got lost in the scarce two yards that separated us, mixed with the birds chirping or the soft rustling of the branches in the breeze. The taxidermist was wrapped in a melancholy torpor, becoming a grey, pensive man.

  "José, there's nothing to forgive. I'm just disappointed," I said, knowing that I could upset him and lose the possibility of being his student forever.

  "How did you know you wanted to be a taxidermist?"

  That change of subject, out of the blue, almost provocatively, made me utterly furious, but I thought I should stay with him, help him pass the trance of this morning, because then I would know him better and, maybe, help him give up the morphine.

  "I don't know, I think it was the dragonflies," I answered, with little interest.

  "Dragonflies... it's the most beautiful word ever, don't you think?"

  It wasn't easy to understand what he said. The sentences left his lips as soft murmurs and I had to strain my ears to understand what he was saying. He was also trying hard to stay awake and continue speaking, but he could barely manage it.

  "Yeah, maybe," I replied, tersely.

  "It's curious, Enrique. Most taxidermists share the common trait that our first love was towards insects. I suppose it has to do with their ubiquity and the irrepressible attraction of their beautiful colours..."

  "I used to spend my summers near a river. I used to go in the mornings to bathe, and the dragonflies would land on the riverbank to rest and drink water. There were hundreds of them: red, purple, green... and my favourite, the blue ones.

  Although I was still upset, the staggering conversation was, little by little, mollifying my temper. José was now letting his thoughts - which morphine surely made random and misty - drag him away, and he talked clumsily, his lips and tongue anesthetised, keeping his eyes tightly shut and searching the sun with his face like a desperate snail.

  "You'll probably think this is stupid, but I think I can see you. Yes... I see you.. I see the glistening water in the river, and the eucalyptus, growing free on the other bank, and dozens of dragonflies moving around you..."

  "Must be the morphine," I cut him off, brusquely.

  The taxidermist attempted again to open his eyes; this time he half-managed it, maintaining a minimum opening between his eyelids, which I guess didn't allow him to see much, but that let me see his intensely blue irises, where his pupils were tremendously compressed. I then understood that morphine was causing the intense myosis that wouldn't allow him to open his eyes without feeling completely blinded.

  "Don't be so hard on me, Enrique. It's easy to watch the behaviour of others and feel strict and inflexible towards them, but it is a lot harder to do the same with yourself. For our own actions, we always have a plausible explanation, a chain of events that justify them.. and we tend to be right, because most people don't do things on a whim, or without a cause, unless they've lost their minds. I'm just asking you to judge me with the same standards you use to judge yourself..."

  José seemed to be recovering his mental sharpness as we spoke. His reflections were not devoid of hefty arguments, but that morning I was not willi
ng to be manipulated, least of all if we consider the merciless radicalism of teenagers.

  "What you say is all very well, but I find it very hard to find a justification for your drug use. Also, it's not a good example to set," I added, thinking more of my father than of anything else. "I don't think that's something to be proud of."

  The taxidermist reflected a couple of minutes before replying. I was feeling quite smug because my words seemed to have hurt him, although not as much as it had hurt me finding him in such a decadent state.

  "How could I be satisfied? The morphine represents, mostly, my defeat, do you understand? This drug," he said, clumsily grabbing the Astramorph® pack - is a painkiller. Not just physical pain, it also works with mental pain. This fossilised body you see here hides wounds that only the memory can see, and it is my head that refuses to let them heal. I just beg you to forgive this misdemeanour, this senile sin that, in years to come, you may not seek to justify but you may come to understand".

  José looked so humiliated that I could not see a way out of the forgiveness he was so humbly requesting. I felt the anger subsiding inside me, and Adela's sadness, which had only increased it, slowly diluted into the beating current of my veins.

  "I just hope it doesn't happen again. I truly hope so, more for yourself than for me," I patronisingly declared.

  "I cannot promise you anything, because I don't feel in control of my actions. But I will try not to inject the drug on the days you come to see me. This has been a terrible lack of respect towards your person."

  "What about Adela?" I asked, emphatically.

  "Adela... I think she's used to this. She knows me very well, better than I know myself..."

  "Don't underestimate her feelings..."

  "Believe me, I don't."

  "That'll be enough, for the time being," I said, leaving open the possibility of new requests. Having a certain advantage or moral superiority over my trainer was a somewhat pleasant sensation, while still being his trainee.