The Taxidermist

by Enrique Laso

  José turned around and looked at me for the first time. His eyes held an unspoken word, a thought that was going round his head, but which he was holding tight, so as to keep it within the safe limits of his mind. He kindly gave me a small basket full of ripe figs.

  "Months ago, I said that they'd be at their best in August. take one, they're great."

  I took one and ate it, more to be polite and not offend him than out of any desire to eat figs. I felt like Snow White in the fairytale, albeit in a sort of up-side-down, dyslexic version: José, who offered the fruit, was the good character, dressed up as an old man, while I, the witch, was hiding inside the body of a teenager who looked like he'd never hurt a fly.

  "They're delicious," I said sincerely, after the first bite.

  "I told you so," the taxidermist whispered, walking towards the back of the house, where our private assembly hall was.

  That morning we talked about things like the modern conservation techniques, which José did not think much of, but still he thought I should know about them. He personally preferred the traditional techniques, many of which had been used over a hundred years earlier, despite their inherent dangers due to their use of certain highly toxic elements. And so arsenic, sulphurs and cyanide gave way to borax, chrome salts or aluminium sulphate. After about an hour, once I had completely relaxed, and my senses were entirely devoted to the study of taxidermy, José stopped talking and looked me straight in the eye.

  "You know what? About three weeks ago somebody stole my Boitard manual from my library," he stated, frowning.

  "I can't believe it..." I managed to say, I'd been taken completely by surprise. "That's terrible... How did that happen?" I asked, with a cynicism that was bordering on insulting.

  The taxidermist kept his eyes fixed on mine, and I could not even blink. I could feel the blood slowly accumulating in my cheeks, and my pulse picking up speed, banging in my head in ever quicker waves. Despite all this, I think my external image did not reveal my guilt too much. That's how cold and calculating I had become.

  "I've no idea. I think it was the day I went to the city for a routine medical check up. That day, Adela was on her own, and maybe..."

  Thoughts were bunching up in my mind, and it was nearly impossible to force them into any order. After that supposition, I had to react quickly, be able to adjust to the situation like an innocent person would. The terrible thing is that a guilty brain never reacts like an innocent brain, and the criminal must hope for their audience's complicity, or at least with their lack of expertise. I was counting on José's lack of experience in the sphere of investigation, as the main tool I would use to save myself.

  "Yeah... I think that was the last time I came here, just before I went on holiday with my parents. It's true, you weren't here. I swam in the pool, I sunbathed for a bit and then I went home," I said, not sure whether Adela had told him about my visit.

  "And did anything out of the ordinary happen that day?"

  "What do you mean?" I answered, confused.

  "I don't know... did the doorbell ring, for instance? Did you see anyone going into the house?"

  "No! And, as I said, I barely spent one hour here. You weren't here, but since I'd come this far and I was so hot, I just freshened up a bit."

  Much to my relief, José stopped staring at me. He leaned back a bit on his chair, pulling his hair as he put his head back.

  "Somebody must've come in. From the kitchen, Adela can hardly hear the bell, and surely somebody took advantage of my absence to carry out the robbery. But still, it's so strange..."

  "Strange?"

  "Yes. Not many people know I have a library, much less that I have Boitard's manual. It is hardly a book with a resale value. However, for anyone who loves the art of mounting, it's nothing short of a jewel. Why would the thief take just that volume? There are some much more expensive ones... I think it must've been somebody in my circle, someone who wants to hurt me, or who admires that book as much as myself."

  The taxidermist kept on looking at the sky, which on that summer morning was an ethereal blue colour. He spoke as Poirot would have done, stating the details of a certain inquiry with his friend Hastings, that is, excluding me clearly and absolutely from the possible suspects. But I knew that this was an extremely intelligent man, and therefore, that apparent geniality could be a carefully planned strategy to unmask me.

  "In these cases, I think the best course of action is to make a list of the possible culprits, and then, start discarding them one by one," I reflected aloud.

  "You're right," José said, getting up and walking to where I was.

  "I've read a fair bit of Agatha Christie," I said, gripped by fear.

  The taxidermist stopped beside me, and tapped me lightly on the shoulder, as if considering something. Then he kept walking towards the back door of the house, the one that led to the kitchen.

  "But, you know what?" he asked, giving his back to me.

  "No," I answered, waiting for any possibility, yet fearing some of them in particular.

  "I will not do anything. I'm too old to go to too much trouble. I think I'll wait, and surely the book will come back to its place on the shelf, the same way it disappeared. Simple as that."

  I thought he was now actually speaking to me, that he was addressing me in a roundabout way that he knew I'd get right away. What's more, I was absolutely sure that those words only had one purpose: giving me the possibility to return what wasn't mine without having to go into any explanations or to face a humiliating scene.

  "But, most of the time, life's not that simple," I muttered, in the same line of cryptic messages.

  "I'm very tired, I think I'll have a rest. Come back next week and we'll continue with the classes. I think both of us have had enough for today," he said, before he went away.

  The following days I hardly had time to think about anything other than my academic future. I had to chose one of the courses I disliked the least and register myself in the relevant university. Most people will find this unbearably frivolous, but this was the most plausible method I could come up with at the time: I decided my future by throwing a six-faced dice. Three courses had been assigned a couple of numbers each: architecture, law and economics. The latter was the one fate chose for me, and I adjusted myself to its design accordingly.

  "It's a great decision," my father said as soon as I told him the news.

  "Well..." I replied without much enthusiasm.

  "Don't be modest. We'll go out and celebrate with your mother. Choose a good restaurant, any one you like. I can tell you have considered this carefully," my father proudly declared.

  I still remember José's disillusioned, sulky expression when I let him know the decision I had made. At that point time became shapeless, elastic, and the seconds stretched until they became almost minutes. I was able to slowly analyse any movement around me.

  "At your age, every decision counts, and I think you are mature enough to weigh things up for yourself, without any need for external help," said the taxidermist, his voice dull and tired.

  "You don't like this, do you?"

  "I don't know. Only time will tell, you know? To be honest, I am upset today but it's pure selfishness, a sort of stupid, negative selfishness that has always been with me. So you shouldn't pay too much attention to me."

  September arrived, and with it, the rain and the damp, cold Levant breeze. The days got shorter and it looked as if one of those end-of-summer storms was threatening, not just the city, but me specifically, my whole future existence. Instead of enjoying my last free hours before assuming the challenge of beginning the university course, I stayed indoors and watched, from my bedroom window, the dying summer and the first faltering steps of the young autumn. Occasionally, I would cry, unable to hold fast enough on to the moorings of that boat where my dreams would sail, dragged out by the tide into the ocean, but without me.

  "I am not an example for anyone, Enrique. But at least, I can say that I did not
let myself be dragged, you know? Letting yourself be carried away by life is as natural as breathing. You need to be very much aware of who you are and what you want in order to prevent it," José said to me, while sitting on the edge of a grave, one cloudy afternoon at the end of September.

  "I understand," I muttered, resignedly.

  "That's what I'm not so sure about. I don't think you really do understand, and that you may take a few years to do so. And that's a shame..."

  The taxidermist had finally taken me to the cemetery. I had had to vanquish my fears first, and the truth is, once in the graveyard, they suddenly vanished. The two of us were there, alone, in the little cemetery of a small town located about six miles from a mid-sized city. Autumn had come and dark clouds gathered threateningly over our heads.

  "I still can rectify things. Four years is nothing, I'm very young. There's time to be wrong," I said, self-importantly, and being aware that José was reproaching me for going to the School of Economics, leaving the art of taxidermy for later.

  "This one here, he thought the same as you," José said, slapping his hand on the marble sepulchre he was sitting on. I was standing; I thought it was disrespectful for the dead to even touch their graves. "He probably thought that to his last breath. Only then he understood."

  The taxidermist spoke with difficulty, heavily and, as on other occasions, he seemed to find it hard to look at me. The wind. which was picking up, heralding rain, rustled his white hair.

  "I need to have a degree to have some security. When I've obtained it, I can do whatever I want," I explained, and I thought I recognised my parents' voice in mine.

  "I know them all by heart, but I suggest you take a look around here," he said, pointing his finger around, "and devote a few minutes to read the gravestones attentively. If you do, you'll discover hundreds of broken dreams. Enrique, it would be easy for me to encourage you to study, but I wouldn't be doing the right thing. You are so young, and so full of possibilities. I've wanted to recognise myself in you with fifty years less..."

  "And you haven't managed to," I finished, getting irritated.

  "Don't get mad. I think that, if you start postponing your desires, it will be very difficult for you to reach them one day. Dreams don't wait for us. We have to pursue them, from the beginning. Later, it may be too late, and you may regret it."

  I could feel how an incandescent stone, made of the rage and anxiety I felt towards my immediate future, grew inside me. José was simply putting me in front of a mirror and showing me, honestly, bluntly, my own cowardice, my surrender and, finally, my defeat. I was beginning to hate him for that.

  "What a dream!" I exclaimed furiously. "Do you really think I want to be like you? Has it ever crossed your mind that I might like to study economics? Have you thought that, maybe, taxidermy is for me no more than a hobby I can always find a couple of hours for?"

  The taxidermist didn't reply. He slowly stood up and looked up to the sky while he brushed his trousers with his hands.

  "We better go back. It's going to start pouring at any second.

  "Yes," I said, laconically, while I also looked up at the sky.

  On the way back to the house I felt a deep relief. I wanted to apologise to José for being so emphatic and furious, but I couldn't find the right moment. I wanted to explain to him that it wasn't so easy to tell my parents that I didn't want to go to university to do any course, economics or otherwise, and that what I really wanted, with all my heart and all my soul, was to devote myself to mounting animals. I never did.

  When we arrived, Adela was waiting for us at the door, nervous and a little angry. We both realised that she must have spent at least half an hour there, waiting for us to return.

  "Are you mad, Don José?! What an idea, in this weather! And your health..."

  "Please, Adela, don't treat me like a naughty boy," said the taxidermist with a whisper of a voice.

  "Well, in that case, don't behave like one," the good woman ploughed on.

  As soon as we set foot in the house, it started raining hard. We found refuge in the large living room, where Adela had already lit the fire, and was waiting for the room to warm up.

  "You should call home and tell them you are staying for lunch. Do not think you're going anywhere in this weather," the woman said.

  I simply nodded, while I smiled to José with complicity. He had already sat down by the fire. Adela went to the kitchen, to get us a comforting cup of hot broth before lunch.

  "She's right. I shouldn't exert myself like this and you can't go home in this rain."

  "What was that about your health? You're as healthy as an oak."

  "That's not true. I'm dying, Enrique," said the taxidermist dryly, hypnotised by the dancing flames.

  I took a while to digest that information, blurted out so abruptly. I could not accept that the man I felt such deep admiration for was going to die. My recent anger was blown away.

  "But... that cannot be..."

  "Yes. I have cancer. They said I have a year to live, two at most. You must get away from me... I sincerely think I will begin to be a bad influence."

  There was no resentment or self-compassion in José's words. He had just arrived at a conclusion and he was telling me his bare reflections. What was terrible was that he did it so coldly that you had to wonder whether it was all a joke.

  "I'm not going to go away from you," I said, trying hard to hold the knot I felt in my throat, which threatened to break loose and release a hopeless, childish weeping.

  "You were going to do it anyway. Let's say I prefer to be seen as the guilty party. Allow me that," the taxidermist declared, in a tone that was half-way between begging and cynical.

  I went to his chair and took his arm softly. I felt his slow, dull pulse; the heat from the fire was burning my cheeks.

  "You know that's not true..."

  "Please, do not pity me, I beg you. We're talking here like two adults. Look at this decrepit body of mine. It's just a vague, false memory of what I used to be. It's only fair that I get to my final days, don't you think?"

  "No!!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, with all the rage accumulated in that fateful afternoon, with all the resentment towards my parents and all the pain brought by understanding that the man before me, whom I idolised, was going to die.

  I ran, I flew away like a bird of prey, and a second later I was on the poorly paved road. I went down the hill at the speed of light, feeling the rain on my face and the tears flooding my eyes. I wanted to disappear, to be blown away by the storm, and never have to face life ever again. One single word kept ringing in my head, over and over: no. No, no and again no. It was an infinite no, its meaning going beyond the denial of death, but covering almost everything surrounding my existence.

  I never saw the taxidermist again.

  XI

  I stayed in my room for days. I had no desire to speak about anything with anyone. My parents were worried, although I think they thought I was preparing myself to start university with a high degree of concentration and motivation. I tried to read but I couldn't stay focused for more than five minutes. My head was full of dozens of thoughts, but it was impossible to put them into any kind of order or, what's worse, to get rid of those that hurt me the most.

  I often stared at an old, battered piece of cork, about three feet by two, where twenty beautiful blue dragonflies were pinned. I had not caught any for years. They were all from the days when I used to do that, in my childhood. At one point, I'd had almost a hundred, but my mother had finally made me carry out a cruel selection, which was tremendously difficult to do. I only kept the blue ones. There they were, motionless, kept in an artificial flight without destination. They were still beautiful despite their being dead. At least, I had the possibility of looking at them. I had been able to defeat nature, who would have destroyed them forever, mixing them despicably with the soil and the plants.

  I only went out to go for short walks, moving heavily and dragging an uncertai
n pain that pulled me down and which, though invisible, took up all the space behind my back. I yearned to control my time like I had done with those dragonflies' time. Occasionally, the world around me would fade, and I saw myself walking along a long corridor. On either side there was an exhibition with hundreds of mounted pieces. They were the works I suspected I would never make, and which came to harass my imagination.

  In late October, when the academic year had already begun, I received Adela's phone call.

  "Enrique, will you never come again?"

  "Why do you say that?" I replied, with an impertinence that, even today, I cannot explain.

  "You haven't come in a long time, and the truth is we both miss you."

  The woman didn't want my pity, she was trying to speak to me without sentimentality, but it was obvious she found it very hard. I noticed my gut was as cold as steel, and I just wanted to be polite and stop hearing her voice.

  "I'm pretty tied up at the moment. I've just started university classes, and it's difficult," I lied.

  "Don José says you'll never come back, and that's how he wants it..."

  I heard a barely audible, muffled sob on the other side of the line. Right away there was a noise of throat clearing that intended to obliterate any interpretation I could have made of the previous sound.

  "Adela, I assure you that we will meet again," I declared.

  "We'll be here waiting for you," she replied, before she hung up.

  I stayed there, with the phone in my hand, listening to the tone. Confused by the repetitive squealing, I thought I still could hear Adela's brief lament. The steel that had gripped my gut slowly melted away and in its place appeared fear, compassion, affection. I didn't know why, but it was clear that I was becoming a monster. I witnessed this transformation like a spectator, as if there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

  Two weeks after that call, in a moment of melancholy and anger, I took the bus that left me at the foot of the hill leading to the taxidermist's house. The driver immediately recognised me.