The Taxidermist

by Enrique Laso

  "Normally we'd work inside rather than outside. I have a room set apart for this in the house, but I thought it'd be nicer to do it out here today. What do you think?" he asked, winking with complicity.

  "Great," I answered, suspecting José knew more about my fears than he let on.

  "Well then, let's cut the talk," he finished, giving me a pair of rubber gloves while he put on his own ones.

  In a monastic silence, he finished setting his tools out on the table. Then he put the small bird on the marble slab and made a long, perpendicular cut along its abdomen. After this, he stopped, as if he'd just realised he'd done an irreparable stupidity.

  "How silly of me! I'm so used to this... and yet..."

  "What happened?" I asked, realising I had missed something.

  I haven't worked for a long time. In fact, a long time ago I decided not to do it anymore.. until you phoned me. I've forgotten to mention the preliminary stages, which I did myself yesterday. This quail hasn't been hunted: it was killed twenty-four hours ago by wringing its neck. However, when you receive a bird, you must clean it carefully with a piece of cotton wool dipped in ammonia," he took a bit of cotton and slid it delicately on the bird's plumage. If there were any blood stains, you must clean that thoroughly, nobody wants a piece that looks just recently dead instead of alive!"

  "I wouldn't like that either," I said, shuddering at the idea.

  "Then you dry it out, using talcum powder. You must remove it quickly, preventing any lumps, with a fine-hair brush. Then comes the crucial stage of taking the pieces' measurements. You can use a measuring tape, or you can trace the silhouette on a piece of paper. Taking a few pictures is always a good idea. After this, you wrap it in newspaper and put it in a plastic bag, then you put it in the fridge. This way you will have two or three days to start the job."

  José went back to the piece. He spoke with confidence, but respecting my attention and my desire to learn, like no other teacher had ever done before in my life. He left enough space for me to comfortably appreciate his movements, even though that meant he had to make an extra effort.

  "An artist must act with confidence and assurance. Follow the next few steps I'm going to do with the utmost attention. You must be diligent: this type of skin dries out and becomes stiff very quickly once it's been flayed.

  "I see," I said, entranced.

  The taxidermist used the initial cut to delicately separate the skin from the rest of the bird's body, with the help of a scalpel and a small pair of slanted scissors. He made little cuts here and there, pulling the skin a bit, leaving the horrible view of the poor animal's skinned torso. I couldn't stop myself making a small distressed moan.

  "You'll get used to it, " José said, still working. "It's hard at first, and the bigger the piece, the worse it can be. The good thing is that they don't bleed, because their hearts have stopped beating. In any case, I agree with you that this is the part of our trade I like the least ."

  He kept on removing the skin, taking extraordinary care at all times not to damage the quail's fragile plumage. When he got to the head, the skinning process became really disgusting. It was difficult to separate the skin from the skull, and he had to empty it, cutting the beak, removing the eyes... Occasionally I had to look away, and still I felt terribly nauseous.

  "Now pay close attention. There are other, less toxic preservatives, but they're not as good," he pointed out, taking a little jar from his toolbox, and thrusting it forward for me to see. This is arsenical soap, and as its name states, it contains arsenic, therefore you must always be extremely cautious when handling it. Here, in the open air, it is less dangerous."

  I watched him open the jar and, using a fine brush, spread the ointment on the inside of the bird's skin, with an extra layer on the legs and head.

  "This soap prevents nature from following its normal course. Without it, in a few days, all we'd have would be a handful of horrendous worms, instead of the immortal little bird we want to work on," declared José, while he calmly continued to rub the balm on to every centimetre of skin.

  "But, this soap, where can I get it?"

  The taxidermist smiled enigmatically to no one in particular, then he looked at me, his hands on his hips.

  "I will teach you how to make your own materials. Each formula hides a big secret, since each animal, each skin demands different elements. Don't think that you can just walk into a supermarket and ask for them. Our trade is somewhat enigmatic, mysterious, and it is mostly due to these concoctions. The other guilty part... you know already what it is," he finished, while moving the brush in the air.

  "I'm sorry, but I don't quite get you... What do you mean?" I asked, quite intrigued.

  "I mean, death, of course. We work with corpses. Don't you think it's dark enough, sinister enough? People imagine we are freaks, truly weird beings... and maybe, deep down, they're not so mistaken there."

  The images that haunted me in my dreams came to mind. They might just be that, a representation of the absurd fear common mortals had of this profession. An atavistic dread related to that last event that awaits us all and about which we never want to talk much, or not at all, just in case we're tempting fate.

  "I've told you already that death is a subject I don't like either."

  "I know. We don't work with death, quite the opposite! Our mission is to defeat it, to defeat it with our art. We must we able to outwit it to the point that it accepts its defeat. That's why you must never set any limits to yourself, because only life should satisfy us in our work," José said, visibly moved.

  "But... it is impossible to give life back..." I insisted, sensibly, and getting into a tirade that seemed to me absolutely nonsensical.

  "It's impossible to paint a crystal glass, it's impossible to get to the moon, it's impossible to win this game," replied the taxidermist in a tired, mocking tone. Then he paused for effect, for a few seconds. "Or, clearer and closer: it's impossible to pass this exam, or to get an A... Who do you want to be?"

  José froze, pointing at me with an accusing, latex covered finger. The image was almost comical, but I felt no inclination towards laughter at the time. I knew that my expected answer would be an existential positioning that would stay with me forever.

  "A taxidermist..."

  "In that case, you don't need me. Anyone will do," he said, and began picking up his utensils, surely finishing not just the class but the entire training.

  "Wait. I want to be more than that. I want to get further, I don't just want to be any taxidermist. I want to be a genius, a master in this art. That's why I dared to call you. Because to achieve that, I need to learn from the best," I said, with all my conviction, although my words sounded stuttering.

  José picked up the quail again and finished separating the skin from the body. Then he removed the latex gloves and put an arm around my neck, like a buddy would do at the pub.

  "Now we need to rest for a while. Let's leave the soap to work its way in before we continue," he said, forgetting the tension of just a few seconds earlier.

  We sat down by the swimming pool, which looked worse than ever. The water was very muddy, on its surface there were dead insects floating, flower petals, dry leaves, some of them already rotting. The bottom was very green, and there were little algae which had grown freely, with nothing to stop their development.

  "When will you clean the swimming pool?" I asked. I remembered Adela telling me, on my first visit, that this was the way he liked it.

  "You don't like it..." he stated in a whisper.

  "Well, it is in quite a sorry state."

  "Maybe, if you saw a picture of it on the cover of a fashionable magazine, in black and white, you would even find it beautiful, don't you think?"

  I made an effort and tried to place the image José had described in my mind. When I managed it, I had to admit that it gave me a strange, pleasant feeling. And yes, it did look very attractive.

  "Put that way... it's true, but actually..." I said, p
ointing at the filth that floated on the water.

  "Have you read Oscar Wilde?"

  "That name rings a bell," I replied without much interest.

  "You must know, even if only by name, one of his works, actually his only novel: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'," he pompously declared.

  "Yes, I think it has been mentioned in the literature class. But don't take my word for it; they usually just speak about Spanish writers."

  The taxidermist hung his head low, looking downcast, and let out a short puff. When he raised his head again, he had recovered his good mood.

  "In that novel, Wilde tells us about a very handsome man who has his portrait painted. It turned out that, after that, the man stopped ageing, and instead the picture did the ageing. A few years later, he still had a young, beautiful face, while the picture, which he kept hidden, revealed the face of a foul looking, wrinkled person, a monstrosity deformed by time, but also by the wickedness that nestled inside the model," said José, changing his voice to a gloomy growl, in an effort to make me shiver.

  "But, what on earth has that novel to do with the filth in the swimming pool?" I inquired, rather irritated and regretting having got myself into such a jam for no reason.

  "Enrique, we all have our own sort of 'picture'. Some, like Dorian Gray, in a painting; others, in a memory, in an object, in a junk room or... like me... in a swimming pool."

  I could not help, although I tried, thinking about the loft. Once again, the sound of my nightmares returned: those enigmatic footsteps on the floorboards. I thought to myself that his picture wasn't the swimming pool, but the loft.

  "I think you're just trying to scare me, that's all."

  The taxidermist then let out a long, clean laugh, like a child's. He sat up and gave me a couple of friendly pats on my shoulder.

  "You are quite right. Do not heed this poor old man's foolish words. Just follow my advice regarding the art of taxidermy, because regarding everything else in life, I have been good for absolutely nothing," he said with sincere sadness.

  We went back to the work table. Seeing the skinned body again unsettled me. There it was, abandoned and unprotected, tiny, huddled as if during our absence it had been able to curl up in the cold caused by the soft mountain breeze. There it was, dead and truly naked, missing its recently lost skin, which had been put down a few inches away.

  "It's so sad to see the quail's body now," I said without thinking.

  José looked at the little bird distractedly, as if trying to see what I meant. He took the body and brought it back inside the house. Then he came back with a slight smile on his face.

  "That's it. Now we need to think about giving life back to what was recently just a corpse. Here is where the show really begins, the most delicate, crucial phase in our work for today."

  The taxidermist took a few small pieces of wood and wrapped them in string until he got a rounded shape of a size similar, yet smaller, to that of the bird's body. Then he stuck several pieces of wire of different thicknesses in to it, which I could see would be the head, legs and wings. He shaped the wires and then he inserted this form of spartan mannequin into the quail's skin.

  "Enrique, now we need to work the wires until we get the desired size and position, as natural as possible," he said, passing me some pieces of paper with measurements and some photographs of quails in the wild. In these notes we have the animal's proportions, and some samples of its companions, alive and free. These are your guide to try and solve this puzzle. I can do it almost without thinking."

  "I see," I said, taking a quick look at the photographs and thinking that it was entirely impossible that this hide thrown on to the cold marble slab could ever look remotely like the quails in the pictures.

  José kept on working, ignoring the look of incredulity that surely had appeared on my face. With the help of the wires, he shaped the little bird, filling this new body with cotton wool. He was pinning things here and there, and he used the string to tie the wings and the feathers. He also filled the head with cotton wool and put clay in the eye sockets, before adding the artificial eyes. He worked with incredible skill. Even with this small piece, I felt, for the first time, that I was watching a genius at work, attending the miracle of creation by an artist who could make this piece with the same ease as I could eat an ice cream.

  "Now all we need to do is attach it to a base and wait for it to dry. Once dry, we can remove all the pins and the string, and it will stay fixed in that position," said the taxidermist, who had taken a small wooden base from the toolbox.

  "You make it look so easy..." I stated, trying to flatter him.

  José smiled briefly by way of an answer and went on about his business. I could hardly see what he was doing. He was bent double over the piece, trying to attach it properly to the base. Now he was moving slowly, unhurriedly. It was all very quiet, all that could be heard was the muffled sound of the breeze rustling the pine trees. In that peaceful moment, I smelled the scents of the fruit trees, in particular the orange trees spreading the light perfume of their blossom. I forgot all my fears and felt proud to be there, beside the man I admired and who was spending his time trying to teach me the talent he'd accumulated over years in the trade. I watched him long and hard, his silver hair, falling on his forehead, and his stylised, agile arms that belied his age and moved as if following the rhythm of an invisible orchestra. He seemed to have forgotten his old age, to have banished his nightmares, it also seemed like morphine did not belong at all in his daily life. When he moved away to let me admire the quail, an electrifying sensation run through my body, from my limbs up to my brain, finally blowing my mind: there was the little bird, firm, stretched, its wings folded by its sides, the head slightly up and turned, the thin legs looked consistent, as if they'd kept their original strength, and the lively, glinting eyes looked alert, watchful like a sparrow's. Despite the string and the pins, before me there was the pure image of a little bird as awake and bright as myself.

  "Well, what do you think?" asked the taxidermist simply, with no hint of vanity.

  "José... it's incredible, really incredible," I replied, stunned.

  "Oh, no need to exaggerate. I hadn't worked for a long time and it shows."

  I walked over to the quail and stroked its feathers, light and silky. That bird reminded me why I wanted to be a taxidermist, what had pushed me, since childhood, to develop that passion that practically no-one, including my parents, shared or even understood. I noticed my eyes watering, and the hand that was barely brushing the feathers started trembling involuntarily.

  "Thank you, thank you so much, José," I managed to say while I repressed my sobs.

  The taxidermist came over and lifted my face with the palm of his hand. He observed me like a life-long mate would, he did it as if he was the only person in the world who could understand what was going through my mind in that magic instant, what emotions were violently roaming and shaking my gut.

  "Don't worry, Enrique. Remember that you can cry with me, no need to repress yourself. Remember, too, that one day you'll be able to do this... One day you will be able to do much more, I am sure of that. And that day, wherever I am, I'll be the happiest man in the universe."

  VIII

  With June came the exams and the end of the school year. In theory, I was risking a lot, since those exams would be the base for the final grade that would allow me to access one university course or other. Although I knew very well at the time what I wanted to be, I didn't want to upset my parents too much, and I didn't mind at all spending another four years studying one of those so-called normal professions, those that everyone thinks that will let you make a living, without many joys but without many worries either. That was the reason why, in the whole month, I only visited the taxidermist on one Saturday.

  I missed him constantly: his advice, his ability to encourage me to follow my dreams, his mastery in the art of mounting... I also missed - on the hottest, most humid afternoons - while I was trying to sti
ck mathematical formulae or philosophical quotes into my head, Adela's cheer and her fabulous lemonade.

  José had taught me the correct way to mount birds, insects and small mammals, such as rabbits, squirrels or foxes. His classes, which were mostly practical, were incredibly entertaining and far from the boring, long-winded speeches of my teachers at school. Every now and then, he would spice up his explanations with theoretical details, of which I took due note. I felt that mounting animals was almost always the same, and that there was little difference between a quail and a guinea pig. But the taxidermist would always get a bit frustrated and blurt out: "If you tackle all pieces in the same way, you are always doomed to fail. Each one has its peculiarities, much more so when they belong to different species. Birds and rodents are only similar in their mechanics, nothing else. Imagine if I'd tried to preserve a squirrel using the same techniques that I use for a butterfly".

  I still had to face the greatest challenge: a large mammal. I dreamed of the day that would happen, although it did involve several relevant difficulties. The first and most important: to get the piece. I had to be ready, too, because such an enterprise would require solid training on my part. "Next autumn we can give it a go, not before that. Meanwhile, you have to keep learning".

  José would occasionally lend me a book on taxidermy, or his notes and black and white photographs of him, working in his study. That made me very emotional, seeing him so young, his eyes full of life, working on pieces that I knew were now in some of the best natural history museums in the world. There he was, sometimes tanning skins, in other pictures, using a mixture, or working with plaster or wood for the mannequin inside the larger animals. Those static images, devoid of colour, showed all the magic involved very well, all the art he was able to infuse into his works, all the greatness this gaunt, simple man could give to the rest of mankind. Each one of these pictures seemed to have intended to stop time, as if they'd been an impossible, two-dimensional mounting exercise to catch the genius while carrying out his creative labour. And they had succeeded at it.