The Taxidermist

by Enrique Laso

  Curiously, as days went by, I missed him more and more. It felt as though a part of my soul, of my innermost, fascinating thoughts had been torn away, and I could no longer lucubrate with any degree of ambition, or even dream, without the company of the man who had to show me the highest secrets of the trade I loved. I tried unsuccessfully to discover what had made me feel so overwhelmed by fear when I thought of him, and I finally decided to attribute it to a strange relationship between the dark corridor and himself. But he had had something to do with it: his mournful, sombre face, when he'd just turned his face coming down from the loft, showing anger or hate, or at least that's what I thought it was.

  One Thursday, I received a desperate call from Adela, almost begging me on the phone:

  "Please come and see him this Saturday. This week he has been injecting morphine every day, he's really upset. He calls your name in his sleep. I think he feels guilty, and your excuses are not enough anymore. I'll make a good lemonade, and I'll make sure he's in tiptop condition. Will you come?"

  "I will, Adela, of course I will," I answered. I had no choice.

  It was early May and that Saturday morning the day was chokingly hot and humid, weather more suited to the month of July. I gathered courage and went back to the taxidermist's house. He received me as if nothing had happened, as if I had not missed any of our Saturday meetings, or as if that snub was entirely unimportant. Or at least that's what it looked like to me.

  "Today, Adela has prepared a truly great lemonade. It's always good, but today's is just exceptional".

  José had recovered his aristocratic air. He was wearing a white, short sleeved polo shirt, finished off with the thinnest dark blue piping around the collar. He matched it with tan-coloured linen trousers and modern-looking leather sandals. If he'd always looked to me like an English tennis player, that day he seemed to me like an American, affluent ship captain, sitting on the prow of this luxurious vessel.

  "These past few days, I've been really busy with the end of year exams. I'm risking the whole year in a couple of months, and ..." I lied, despite nobody having requested any explanation.

  "That's ok, Enrique. I'll never reproach you anything. But I do have a question I'd like to ask you: do you still want to be a taxidermist?"

  The question caught me by surprise and I could not answer right away. Blood gathered quickly in my cheeks and I felt its uncomfortable heat, that which reveals we are in a pickle. There was only one idea in my mind: of course I still wanted to, it was my passion!

  "Do not doubt it for one minute," I declared.

  "I think I've probably been a bit slow to react, and I've bored you with my soporific, roundabout method. But today everything will change."

  "I don't follow you."

  "I thought the most adequate course for your training was to go slowly, getting into the most philosophical matters at first, to get to the heart of taxidermy and practical lessons towards the end, do you follow me now?"

  "Perfectly."

  "But I was wrong. It may have been a good method years ago, but young people today learn quickly, and you also need constant stimulation. I was dwelling on reflections that, for the time being, have no meaning for you."

  "Well, if you put it like that..."

  José shook his hands to stop me. Before continuing with his speech, he took a long, slow sip from his lemonade glass. The lemon juice, water and sugar mix glittered in the glass with a soft sparkle that reminded me of the river I used to bathe in when I was a kid. For a short time, I felt in deep communion with this man who was trying so hard to recover my attention.

  "Today I'll show you my library. There you may consult some interesting books, and I'll even lend you a few of them so you can study them at your own pace, at home. I'm sure you'll find them fascinating."

  I remembered that, in order to go to the library, I had to go back to the nightmarish corridor, the true reason for my missed appointments for two consecutive weeks.

  "Fantastic," I said, my voice quavering and dull.

  "Is anything the matter?" asked José, staring at me with his incredibly blue eyes.

  "No, nothing," I lied.

  "We've put a light bulb in the corridor. It's not bright, but at least we need not endure that gloomy darkness," he said, looking the other way as if he'd just said a little joke.

  Feeling rather relieved, I followed the taxidermist towards the inside of the house. We went in through the kitchen, where there was a small door that gave to the back of the house. When we got to the corridor, José pushed a light switch and a low-wattage bulb gave a soft, pleasant pastel light.

  "That's better," the taxidermist muttered without looking at me.

  "And the books? Won't they get damaged?"

  "No, not at all. This is a very suitable light, like the one I have inside to read."

  He opened one of the centre doors very carefully, as if it would crumble into ashes at any minute. He invited me inside with a contained gesture.

  "This room keeps the oldest books. I have some from the 17th century, in quite good state of conservation. The room opposite houses the newer ones.

  I went in and I could see, in the faint light given by a lamp with a vellum lampshade, a large room, about two hundred feet square, with its walls covered from top to bottom in beautiful, thick mahogany bookshelves. Every now and then there was a small sign with letters of what looked like gold leaf, and which identified the works in alphabetical order. I quickly reckoned that there must be about four thousand books, although the shelves were so full it was hard to make even a rough guess. Some specimens were bound in fine leather, with four or five bands across their spines, but others were more modest and looked somewhat worn.

  "Do you like it?" asked José, nervous as a child.

  "It's mind-boggling" I replied, in an equally naïve way.

  "When I was younger, I used to spend long hours in second hand bookshops all over the world: Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome, Boston... I often had to travel to visit a museum or a client, or to attend a congress, and I always managed to find time to go and find an interesting specimen. Here is the result of all those years of searches..."

  The taxidermist looked among the books and gave me one, in rather good condition. There was nothing written on it, only the spine was engraved in golden letters: “Manuel du Naturaliste Préparateur”, Pierre Boitard.

  "This is considered the first manual on taxidermy," said José, proudly. "It's from 1825, it's the original, in French. Take a look at it. I have another edition, in Spanish, translated by Santiago Alvarado y de la Peña, from 1833."

  I slowly leafed through it, gripped by a strange emotion. This proved that nearly two hundred years earlier, there were already men in this world who had shared my own passion. I found it comforting. I thoroughly studied the curious, detailed illustrations of the book, which were quite explicit.

  "It's unbelievable..." I sighed.

  "What is?"

  "That nearly two centuries ago someone would write about the preservation of animals and plants."

  "Well, actually, it isn't. Herodotus already tells us about embalming, over two thousand years ago, and what could we say about the Egyptians, whose mummies are famous worldwide for having resisted with dignity the passing of three millennia."

  Deep down, I did not really consider the Egyptians as taxidermists. Mummies, however a sensational exercise in conservation they may be, had little or nothing to do with the art I had such an extreme devotion to. I felt closer to any bear, deer or fox exhibited in any natural history museum than to those hardened remains in which you could hardly guess there was a human being.

  "It's quite sensational," I said, returning the book to José, who in turn placed it again on its shelf.

  "Books are also works of conservation. In the past, they were made from noble materials, such as quality leather or parchment, materials that could survive for centuries in perfect condition. And yet, any book you can get these days at a bookshop would ha
rdly last a hundred years without disintegrating."

  The taxidermist was passing his stylised hands over the spines of the books in his library as he spoke. He was doing it deliberately, as if stroking the delicate back of a beautiful wild animal I could feel in the tips of my fingers the deferred tactile sensation that went through José's senses.

  "Are all the books about taxidermy or stuffing?" I asked.

  "Not at all. Many of them, yes, but by no means all. There's a bit of everything: encyclopaedias, poetry, novels, short stories, many studies on a number of matters, various manuals... Anything I've ever been interested in throughout my life."

  José fixed his eyes on an undefined place. His eyes glazed over, becoming nearly clear, still fixed, their pupils greatly dilated. Suddenly, his muscles went limp and he fainted, although he did not lose consciousness entirely.

  "José!" I exclaimed, scared.

  The taxidermist slowly recovered his composure, while I helped him to get up He put his right hand on his temple and gently rubbed his skin, trying to recover the blood flow by massaging the area.

  "Thank you very much," he muttered.

  "What happened?"

  "I don't know, it was all so strange..."

  "You must stop injecting morphine," I blurted with righteous severity, remembering the information Adela had relayed about the taxidermist.

  "I have not injected myself with anything today. Nothing..." he mused, in a faint voice that was fading away.

  "We'd better go outside and get some fresh air."

  José leaned on me, putting his arm around my neck. In this fashion we left the library and went outside. We sat by the swimming pool. Little by little he caught his breath again.

  "Do not tell Adela anything, I don't want to scare her. You shouldn't worry either. It was just a sort of flashback. I was suddenly in another place, at your age, looking at a library not unlike my own one."

  "You half scared me to death..."

  "It was nothing, really. This happens to me every now and then. It's just memories, fragments of my life that haunt me unexpectedly. No more than that. Although today..." he whispered, and his pupils dilated again, despite us being outside now, and the springtime sun was shining enthusiastically.

  "José!" I yelled, trying to prevent a new fainting fit.

  The taxidermist looked at me with astonished eyes, and softly caressed my face, in a way only my mother did. I felt his cold hand and a shiver run down my body.

  "Don't worry, Enrique. It's just that... I feel so weak, there are so many things I could have done..."

  "I'm calling Adela," I replied decidedly.

  "No, I beg you. Go now, but don't forget to come back next Saturday. Now I just want to sleep for a bit. That's what I need, a rest."

  Reluctantly, I left him, as he'd requested, but first I waited to see him relax. Then I went to the kitchen to warn Adela that I was leaving, and that José was sleeping by the swimming pool.

  "I think it was your visit. He'd been very excited all morning. He wanted everything to go well and yet..." said the poor woman, shaking her head sadly.

  "No, no, everything went well. I'll be back next week, I promise."

  "Thank you very much, Enrique. You are now his only incentive. I wouldn't want you to feel under any obligation, do you understand?"

  "For me, it is an honour to come to this house."

  Adela held me tight against her chubby body, smelling of wild flowers and orange blossom water.

  "You are special, and Don José knows it. I think you remind him of himself when he was young."

  The word 'special' had a positive connotation that in no way I associated with myself. I would have used the adjective 'different', without any more specification, which left the field open to speculation as to what the differences from the general rule really were, and whether those differences would end up being advantageous or, on the contrary, negative.

  "Thanks a lot, Adela, but I don't really think it's such a big deal. See you on Saturday."

  I went back via the swimming pool and I could see that José was already asleep, helped by the overwhelming midday heat. His body was lying on the hammock in a funny way, one leg bent in an impossible position and one arm crossed over the chest. I went closer to try and put him in a better position. I thought that was the least I could do for him before I went, but then the taxidermist wriggled in his seat as if aware of my presence in his sleep, and he mumbled a woman's name:

  "Elena..."

  VII

  That following week I was feeling restless. I had a recurring nightmare that constantly replayed in my head: I was in the corridor at the taxidermist's and I could hear his footsteps above my head, in the loft. Incredibly enough, I gathered courage and opened the door in the corridor that I knew led to the loft. The door gave on to a small wooden staircase that climbed in to the deep darkness of the top floor. I went up the stairs, terrified but full of the relentless determination of a detective. I could feel my shaky, unsteady legs doubting at every step, while my mind cruelly forced my musculoskeletal system to submit it to its designs. When I finally reached the loft, I could not see anything in the total darkness, and I had to wait for my eyes to get used to it. I noticed José's soft footsteps just a couple of yards away from my body. Eventually, I began to see a bit, with the help of the faint light that the skylight - the one I'd seen from outside when I was looking at the façade - shed on the loft. Right in front of me was the taxidermist, who had not noticed my presence, leaning over one of his pieces, maybe working on it. I moved towards him as stealthily as I could. I felt my wet, sweaty hands; I felt the wild beating of blood in my temples, in my neck. A thin ray of light revealed thousands of particles suspended in the stuffy air of the attic. Suddenly, I tripped noisily over something that was on the floor, some metal tool, startling me. The José turned around unexpectedly and I woke up screaming, terrified.

  The nightmare finished in the same way, always the same. I could never quite see the taxidermist's face, nor what I had tripped over, or what other things there were in the loft or the piece he was working on. It took me a few hours to recover, and I needed to turn on the light to check that I was really in my own room.

  "Why this dreadful fear? Am I still behaving like a child?", I wondered, after the initial fright.

  I admired my mentor beyond any shadow of a doubt, but I also felt an irrational fear, for which I had no explanation. It was something bordering on the paranormal, like my mind had the ability to peep into a dark recess of José's soul that the rest of my senses could not perceive.

  I never told anyone about my nightmares, much less about my sense of foreboding regarding the taxidermist. Not even my parents. I was afraid that, if I did, they'd have the ideal excuse to drag me away from him for good, and that was even worse than the bad dreams that harassed me. I preferred to guard them in silence, and to wait, in the hope that one day, in the same way they had arrived, they would disappear.

  On Friday afternoon I skived off and spent the time at the cinema, alone, watching a film. I was uneasy about visiting José the next day, and at the same time, anxious to see him again, now that he seemed set on moving into action, on finally showing me his secrets regarding the art of taxidermy. That night I went to bed feeling calm and had no dreams at all, something unusual for me. When I woke up, all my fears had melted away and I just wanted to get to the taxidermist's as soon as possible.

  Adela had gone out to get something that morning, so José opened the door for me. He was very excited.

  "I've prepared everything for our first practical lesson," he said, enthusiastically.

  I followed him to the back of the house. He had set up a folding table, on which he'd put a marble slab to work and a variety of tools: several scalpels, scissors, pliers, wires of various thicknesses, two pairs of tiny eyes, files, cotton wool, a rubber hammer, punches... On the ground there was an open box with more tools. Everything was in perfect order, as if it was an open-air oper
ating theatre. I felt very emotional.

  "Thanks, José, thank you so, so much."

  "Not at all, man, don't be childish. You've learned to wait, you've been infinitely patient with me, and I think you are now ready to really start the training. Although you should never forget any of what I've told you so far," he declared, putting a lot of emphasis in the last phrase.

  "I won't."

  The taxidermist became pensive for a while, looking at the table with an absent air, as if he was searching for something in particular. Then he fixed me a look with his piercingly sharp, blue eyes.

  "Remember we only have one chance at everything in life. Our existence is long, but each moment, each instant is unique, unrepeatable. Always keep that in mind."

  I nodded, but I could not understand what he was telling me. He seemed to be talking to himself, to be reciting aloud a lesson it had taken him seventy years to learn. It may have been that he deeply wished that I didn't have to go through the same.

  "We'll start with a relatively easy piece," he said, taking an object wrapped in newspaper out of a plastic bag. "It's from yesterday, so it's in perfect condition to begin the stuffing process," he added, as he removed the paper and, little by little, he revealed the body of a medium-sized quail.

  "Well, it's not as if I wanted to start with a bear," I replied, good-naturedly.

  "Even in the smallest things we need to put all our effort, all our heart, all our concentration. This quail - if we do our job correctly- will survive us and will leave proof of our work and of this day forever," he said, shaking the bird in his hands.

  The taxidermist was speaking with the tone of a Philosophy professor, and his diction was exceptionally correct that morning. He modulated his voice masterfully, keeping my attention and seducing me with his various tones. He moved with his characteristic elegance, which today was a touch more distinguished, if that was possible. It was apparent that he felt in his element among his equipment.