by Lars Jerlach
From where I was sitting, it looked like there was a great variety of smaller mammals and snakes in the jars.
There were also several quite ordinary wooden pedestals in the room. A couple were empty, but most of them displayed a smallish grey sculpture of an animal.
An older man stood by the pedestal closest to me.
In all aspects he was quite ordinary looking. He was medium built with slightly arcuated shoulders.
His head was of normal size and his thinning grey hair was carefully combed over his balding crown. It glistened in the sunlight.
His face was neither elongated nor round and his small pointy ears lay flat against his head.
His deep-set bluish grey eyes sat somewhat close together under his unruly brow, and the salient bags underneath were puffy and perse.
His straight, not too protruding nose, sat central over a smallish mouth, that was pulled down on one side by a curved dark wood pipe.
Two distinct furrows were running down either side of his face, from the side of his nose to the small jowls by his sturdy chin.
He was wearing a white shirt and a thin black tie, stuck into his shirt between two buttons, to keep it out of the way. His shirt sleeves were rolled up over his elbows and his forearms looked fibrous and strong.
His dusty clay covered hands were wide and the fingers short but slim.
His brown tweed trousers sat high on his waist and were held in place by a thin black belt with a brass buckle. His dark brown leather shoes were in dire need of a polish and one of the shoelaces had come undone and was flattened on the floor like a dried up night-crawler on the sidewalk.
The man was working on an animal and his hands were in continuous motion, either adding or subtracting clay to or from the surface.
After a while he stopped working and took a couple of steps back.
He walked around the pedestal and slowly turned his head from side to side to survey his work.
It was a small sculpture of a water buffalo being attacked by a big cat. The buffalo’s tail was raised in alarm. The front of its body was turned and its head with its potent horns was low to the ground to fend off the big cat crouching by its flanks, ready to pounce.
It was an exquisite pose. Not only did it demonstrate the pure muscular power and dynamism of both animals, but it superbly conveyed the raw brutality of life.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” the man said to himself. His voice was higher than I expected and rather nasal. “What do you think?” he said and turned around to face me. “Not bad, eh?” He pushed out his lower lip when he talked. It sounded a bit like he chewed his words on their way out.
“What?” I said, baffled that he didn’t seem at all surprised by my presence.
“Not bad, I said.” he replied removing his pipe.
“No,” I said, “not bad at all. I admit that I am not familiar with the world of animal portraiture, but this is clearly incredible work.”
“Thank you,” he said, “that’s high praise indeed. Although I do believe I still have a bit to do on the reflex action on the lower part of the left hind leg by the insertion of the calf muscle. There’s something about it that isn’t quite right.” He pointed to a spot on the leg with the end of his pipe, which obscured my view. “However, I better give it a rest for a while. I find it often helps if I come back to a problem with fresh eyes.”
He picked up a small glass spray bottle from the base of the pedestal, walked around the sculpture and intermittently pressed a rubber bulb to release a fine mist, that fell like a watery haze on the clay. He rubbed his hands on a large dirtied cotton cloth, that he gently placed over the piece and sprayed with water.
He replaced the spray bottle on the floor and walked over to sit down on one end of an elegantly shaped mahogany couch, that stood in front of the middle window.
He leaned against the pink floral back, stretched his legs and kicked off his shoes. He let out a satisfying sigh as he wiggled his black socked toes in the air.
“That’s better,” he said, with his right hand rummaging his shirt pocket. It came up with a flat white package of matches that he put on the frayed upholstery beside him. He leant forward and picked up a small narrow red can of tobacco from the three legged, round mahogany coffee table. He casually emptied the content of his pipe into a large tin ashtray that sat in the center of the table, by dabbing the head of the pipe against the palm of his hand. It made a hollow popping sound when it connected.
When he was satisfied the pipe was empty, he began stuffing it with fresh tobacco.
He looked at me from across the room.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, putting the can back on the table and opening the match book.
He removed a match, lit it and moved the flame slowly over the pipe bowl. The flame disappeared between the strands of tobacco in harmony with his inhalation and appeared reborn with his exhalation. After a few puffs, the tobacco in the top of the pipe began to glow and he blew out a cloud of smoke, that swirled like a phantom in the air above him and spread a nutty sweet aroma in the room.
He waved his hand to extinguish the match and dropped it in the ashtray.
“Well?” he said.
“I really don’t know? I wasn’t planning this in advance,” I answered, totally caught off guard by the ease with which he accepted my appearance.
“No, I am aware of that,” he said looking amused. I thought I could see his eyes twinkling through the brume.
“You are not the first interlocutor in my studio you know.” He pointed to the wall behind me, on which a square beveled edged oak mount was placed about seven feet off the ground. The mount was about a foot and a half wide and a couple of inches deep and a stripped knurled oak branch was protruding about a foot horizontally into the air. A couple of inches below the branch a small rectangular brass plaque had been inserted into the wood.
The mount was empty.
From where I was sitting, I couldn’t read the text on the plaque, so I spread my wings and flew up. I landed on the branch and bent down to read the text on the plaque.
Corvus Corax (Albus) it said.
“What do you think?” he said. “I had it made after your last visit. Given the circumstances, I thought it was quite the appropriate solution.
If somebody comes knocking, you just fly up there and sit still for a while. Just choose your position with care, so you don’t have to struggle keeping it. Something simple will do.” He smiled and raised his free hand to wave me over.
I flew to where he was sitting and landed on the arm of the couch. The lacquered surface was smooth and slippery and I found it difficult to keep my balance, so I jumped down and sat on the couch instead.
“I have been here before?” I said. “That’s strange, I don’t remember that.”
“No, but you’ve been here quite a few times actually.” He waved at the smoke with his hand. “But why you come here is still a mystery. I originally thought that your appearance here was no different than the other apparitions, but when you began talking to me, I realized something out of the ordinary was happening.”
He turned his head to look at me.
“What do you mean by the other apparitions?” I asked, searching the room for anything unusual. “Wouldn’t you say that seeing ghosts is out of the
ordinary?”
“Perhaps your ordinary is different from my ordinary. In my experience, what is real are the things that are still there, even after you stop believing in them.”
He took a drag on his pipe and released another cloud of smoke into the air. “Besides, I shouldn’t have used the word apparition. Visitant is probably more descriptive.”
“But isn’t that technically the same as an apparition?” I asked.
“Perhaps it is to you,” he replied, “but to me it is not.” His tone wasn’t demonstrative or aggressive. He merely stated the facts.
“So what do they do, these visitants?” I asked. “Are they here now?” I
again looked around the room for evidence of the occult. Finding none, I looked back at the man.
He smiled at me and shook his head.
“No,” he said, “there’s nobody there right now. They’re sometimes here, when I work at bringing their bodies back, but only sometimes. It’s not like they’re hovering in the air above me either. Occasionally they just appear next to their physical form.” He removed the pipe from his mouth, leant forward in his seat and looked at his socked feet.
“As a rule they don’t seem interested in communicating with me. For the most part they just stand on the floor looking at themselves, or should I say; look at what they used to be. This is especially true for the larger mammals.
They also seem to linger for extended periods of time, but maybe that’s only because it takes a lot longer for me to bring them back.”
He leaned back in his seat.
“Although now and again, when I am close to finishing a job, some walk in and out of their physical manifest, as if they’re trying to fuse with their old self.”
He slowly shook his head and ran his hand across his chin.
“It’s a disparaging sight when the agglutination fails, and they move back and forth in their old form to get their contours to align.” He puffed on his pipe and looked at the drifting smoke in the sunlight.
“When they finally realize they can’t return to their physical form, most of them just disappear. However, others return from time to time, and whenever they do, their presence noticeably weakens, until I can barely see them at all.”
He looked around and gestured to the room at large.
“Perhaps I was wrong in saying that there’s nobody there.”
I looked at the conglomeration of dust particles dancing in the sun filled air and wondered if they were indeed ghostly remnants of the animals in the room.
“You know there’s really nothing there, when you look at them,” he said after a while.
He looked around from animal to animal.
“They’re essentially an assembly of objects, that happen to carry the characteristics of something living. However, most of us refuse to accept it.”
He paused and looked at the mounted water buffalo on the wall.
“Even in these animals’ eternal stasis, our mind urges them to be alive, because, without the utter destruction or removal of the physical body, we cannot possibly comprehend the concept of death. As long as there is a viable physical presence, we rebut death as a feasible option and cling to the hope of miraculous reanimation. We of course have the resurrection and the adherent believers to blame for this.”
He took a long drag on his pipe and without removing it, he let out a cloud of smoke from the side of his mouth.
“But are your visitants not in some way resurrected?” I asked, ruffling my back feathers. “They do come back from the dead, do they not?”
“If you believe that I liken my creations to the effigy of Christ, you are mistaken,” he said earnestly. “Coming back from the dead is an improbability. When the shadow of an animal visits, it is in no way coming back from the dead. Although it might be attempting to reconnect with its physical form, it’s still very much in a different realm.”
He looked at me intensely.
“Perhaps, because I am the only one who can see them, they’re real only to me.” He paused and looked at the white bull on the floor. Its ears were pointing downwards and its brown eyes were purposelessly gazing at the sandy ground.
“Do you find my words to be at odds with my profession?” he asked, but continued before I had a chance to respond.
“If you do, I can assure you that I don’t think my philosophy in any way interferes with my job. Rather, I believe it generally enhances my work, as I am basically trying to create the most believable scenario for the viewer. I want the viewer to think that whatever object they’re looking at, potentially could snarl, roar or charge at them, although I am completely aware of the futility involved in the exercise.”
He looked at me through the smoke.
“No,” I said, “ I don’t believe there’s anything wrong in wanting to make a display that is as realistic as possible.” I stretched one of my wings down over the edge of the couch.
“However, it’s not about realism,” he replied. “It’s much closer to a circus act. Even though our rational mind tells us it’s not possible for an elephant to vanish into thin air, our subconscious mind desperately entreats the elephant to do so. And when it does, we’re not asking pertinent questions about placement of mirrors, lighting or props. We just revel in the fact that the animal is no longer visible.”
He turned his head and looked at me.
“Do you understand what I am saying?”
“I believe so,” I replied.
“Death becomes a substitute for life,” he said unpretentiously, looking down at his hands that lay folded in his lap. “We eradicate the real and replace it, thousands of miles away, with a Lilliputian illusion. Nothing you see is real. In many ways, asking you to believe any of this as a representation of reality, it’s no different than asking you to follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole.”
He again gestured with his hand to the objects in the room.
“You know what my wife calls me?” He paused and looked at me. “She calls me the zoologist’s Dr. Frankenstein.”
As he smiled a collection of fine lines, like river beds in a dry landscape, appeared in the corner of his eyes.
“Her voice is always quite playful, but underneath I detect a lick of truth. She knows that there’s nothing I would rather do, than bring them all back to life.”
He ran his hand across his forehead and patted down a couple of strands of loose hairs on the top of his scalp.
“However, as that is an improbability, all that is left for me to do, is a feeble attempt to respectfully recondition the unequalled beauty of these creatures and in doing so, mourn their passing.” He drew on his pipe and let out another cloud of smoke.
“That sounds suspiciously antithetical to me,” I said. “Didn’t you say earlier that your work had nothing to do with resurrection?” I jumped around on the couch to face him. “Yet it sounds very much to me like you’re attempting to reanimate the dead.”
“I don’t believe I used the word resurrection,” he said solemnly. “But no matter what I said, I am afraid there’s no escaping my eternal impasse: The futility of breathing cursory life into something undeniably dead.”
He shook his head and looked up at me. There were tears in his eyes.
“I am forever deadlocked,” his voice intermingled with the smoke dissipating in the sunlight.
For a while neither of us spoke.
We were quietly looking at the drifting particles and swirling bands of smoke emitting from the pipe.
“Why do you continue to come here?” he asked, turning to face me. “When you first visited, I believed your visit was a forewarning or an
omen of some kind? Now, I’m not so sure what to believe. If you’re not an emissary or harbinger, why do you come here?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even know how I get here.”
I hopped up on the table, flapped my wings and accidently knocked over the tobacco can. It made a dull metallic sound as it fell.
As he reached for the can to stand it back up, I heard footsteps outside the door.
He had clearly heard them too.
He looked at me meaningfully and made a small movement with his head. I followed his eyes to the empty mount on the wall.
I took flight and landed on the branch. I sat completely still and looked towards the door.
The light from the doorway obliterated the striations from the window blinds, as it swept across the floor.
“......and this is where he used to do the majority of his work.”
It was the voice of a young man I heard, as the elements in the room dissolved.
The light permeated the space and I found my
self adrift.
I awoke sitting on the table in the watch room.
I was in the nude, but for a white bed sheet wrapped around my shoulders and hanging down by my arms. My legs were tucked together under my body and my toes were clutching at the edge of the table. The sunlight was blinding and as I opened my eyes it took a while before I could bring my surroundings into focus.
The smell of tobacco was hanging in the air and when I looked down, I saw my pipe lying on its side next to me on the table. It was emanating a faint wispy spiral of smoke. I almost fell off the table in my attempt to get down. My legs were bereft of life and it took me a considerable amount of time to get the blood circulating again.
Although It is impossible for me to fully understand these dreams, I realize that my latest dream is somehow connected to the other dreams. I thought I recognized the white bull on the floor from an earlier dream, but why it was there, I do not know. In fact I don’t even know if it was the same bull or just a bizarre coincidence.
Although I know it goes against everything I have described in this recent recollection, I have the strongest suspicion that the taxidermist was not really there when I visited, but that he himself was nothing but an aberration. I can’t comprehend why I would encounter him as phantasm in my dream. What is the reason that I did not visit him when he was still alive? Or was he alive when I visited him before, as he claimed I had?
Alas, I have no answers to the questions I am asking myself.
I promise you, that what I am recounting is a truthful account of the events. I am writing everything down as I recall it and though it is difficult to remember the exact details, I do try not to leave anything out.
He put the piece of paper down on the growing pile on the left. His hands were freezing and he could hardly feel himself releasing the sheet.
He put his hands in his pockets to search for the stones. When he found them, they were equally cold to the touch. He took off his gloves, brought his hands to his mouth and blew into the hollow he created between them. When he could feel the warm moist air in the palm of his hands, he rubbed them against each other until his fingers began prickling. He pulled his jacket together, wrapped the scarf around his neck and got up from the chair.