Beatrice and Virgil (8 page)

  "Are these part of your play?" Henry asked.

  "Yes. They're posters. I have a scene where they would be projected onto the back wall as Beatrice is talking."

  Henry read the posters again. "The monkey isn't popular, is he?" he asked.

  "No, not at all," replied the taxidermist. "Let me show you the scene."

  He started going through some papers on his desk. Without hesitation he had taken Henry's answer to be yes. Henry didn't mind. Beyond indulging the man out of politeness, he was intrigued.

  "Here it is."

  Henry extended his hand to take the papers. The taxidermist left Henry's hand hanging in the air and cleared his throat instead. Henry realized he was intending to read the   scene aloud to him. After looking at the text for a moment, the taxidermist started:

  Food again, thought Henry. First a pear, now a banana. The man is obsessed with food.

  The taxidermist broke off his reading. "That's when the projector would be turned on and the posters would appear side by side in big letters on the back wall."

  He returned to his play. He read in a steady, unaffected voice, laying out the words in an easy way. To each character he gave a different tone, so Beatrice the donkey spoke softly while Virgil the monkey expressed himself with greater animation. Henry found himself listening to them without being aware of listening to the taxidermist.

  The taxidermist stopped again and looked up at Henry. He seemed to hesitate. "Well, how would you describe Virgil? What does he look like to you?" He got up abruptly and went to one of the workbenches. He brought over a powerful lamp. "Here, I have a light," he said, with resolve. He set it on the desk and directed its beam at the monkey. Then he waited.

  It took Henry a moment to realize that the man was serious. He really did want him to describe the stuffed monkey. It dawned on Henry with amazement:
  this is the help he wants
  . It's not a matter of encouragement, or confession, or connections. The help he wants is with words. Had the taxidermist made the request to Henry ahead of time in his letter, he would have refused, as he had refused writing commissions of all kinds for years. But here, in this setting, next to the very characters, in the fire of the moment, something in Henry woke up and yearned to rise to the challenge.

  "What does he look like to me?" Henry said. The taxidermist nodded. Henry leaned close to the animal, to Virgil, since he had a name. He felt like a doctor about to examine a patient. He noticed that Virgil was not sitting on the donkey, on Beatrice, the way the peacock in the other room was set on the hippopotamus, as a convenience in the absence of a table. He had rather been mounted so that he sat naturally on Beatrice. His rump, two legs and an outstretched arm were laid out in a way that fitted the shape of her back perfectly, and his long tail, curled at its end, flowed so that it   rested snugly against her back and side, looking very much like a casually set anchor in case she made a sudden movement. His other arm was resting on a bent knee, hand open, palm up, in a relaxed pose. Virgil had his mouth open and Beatrice her head partly turned and one ear swivelled round. He was saying something and she was listening....

  Henry thought for a moment. Then he started. "Off the top of my head, without any preparation or much thought, I'd say Virgil has the pleasing dimensions of a smaller dog, neither too bulky nor too slight. I'd say he has a handsome head, with a short snout, luminous reddish-brown eyes, small black ears, and a clear black face--actually, it's not just black--a clear
  bluish-black
  face fringed with a full, elegant beard."

  "Very good," said the taxidermist. "Much better than what I have. Please continue." He had picked up a pen and was writing down what Henry had said.

  "I'd say," continued Henry, "that Virgil's body is robust and well built, served by long, attractive limbs, flexible and strong--they
  look
  flexible and strong--with a powerful hand or prehensile foot at the end of each. His narrow hands have long digits, as do the feet."

  "Oh, yes," the taxidermist interrupted. "Virgil plays the piano. He's a very good player. He can play on his own a Brahms 'Hungarian Dance' for piano four hands. As a final flourish, he curls up his tail and taps the last note with it, bringing down the house. And look at the patterns on his hands and feet."

  Henry looked. He went on. "I'd say the palms of his hands and feet are black and covered"--he paused and examined them from different angles to get the play of light--"are black and
  filigreed
  with loops and whorls that look like the finest silverwork."

  "That's absolutely right," said the taxidermist.

  "I'd say his long tail, longer than the rest of him, the pride and joy of him, is as dextrous as a hand, with a grip like a constrictor's coil."

  "But it also has fine motor control. He plays chess with it. Virgil--"

  Henry raised a hand to stop the taxidermist. "A tail with a grip like a constrictor's coil, yet with a deftness of touch that allows him to move a pawn on a chessboard with it."

  What other details would Beatrice notice? Henry wondered. He peered into Virgil's mouth.

  "And he has good teeth--why does no one ever mention that? Or the detail I notice every day without fail: his lovely dark nails, shiny and slightly bulbous, so that the tip of his every finger and toe glistens like a large dewdrop." Henry was pleased to be speaking in Beatrice's voice.

  "Excellent, excellent," muttered the taxidermist. He was writing as fast as he could.

  "And I have yet to describe his most eye-catching attribute, that which earns him half his species name: his fur." Henry lightly ran his hand over Virgil's back. "It's soft, thick and lustrous, the back brick-red in colour, while the   head and the limbs have more of a chestnut hue. In sunlight, when Virgil is in motion, climbing trees and jumping from one branch to another while I stand, four-footed and rooted to the ground, there is something of molten copper to his movements, a direct, unspoiled ease to even the simplest gesture, dazzling to watch."

  "That's Virgil to a letter," exclaimed the taxidermist.

  "Good." A conventional descriptive job, matching a concrete reality with its most obvious verbal counterparts, yet Henry too was pleased. It had been such a long time since he had made this kind of effort.

  "And his howl?"

  The taxidermist returned to the cassette player, rewound the tape and played it a second time. Erasmus immediately started up again in the next room. Henry and the taxidermist ignored him.

  "The sound quality isn't very good," Henry said.

  "No, it isn't. It was recorded more than forty years ago in the jungles of the upper Amazon."

  The howl had that quality, of something coming from far away long ago. It had survived--it was there, coming through all the crackling--but Henry was as much aware of the span of time and gulf of distance over which it had improbably bounded as he was of the howl itself.

  "I don't know. It's hard to put into words," he said.

  The taxidermist played the howl a third time. Erasmus was properly howling himself in the next room.

  Henry shook his head. "Nothing's coming to me at the moment," he said. "Sounds are hard to describe. And my dog is distracting me."

  The taxidermist stared at him blankly. Was he disappointed? Piqued?

  "I'll have to wait for the muse to whisper to me," Henry said. He felt a weight of weariness descending on him. "I have an idea. I'll think about the howl. In the meantime, in exchange, write something for me about taxidermy. Don't overthink it. Just dash some thoughts onto the page. That's always a good writing exercise."

  The taxidermist nodded, but Henry wasn't sure if it was in agreement.

  "And why don't you give me your play? I'll read it and tell you what I think."

  The taxidermist's reply was short: "I don't want to." Henry heard the definite tone. The full stop in his refusal had resounded like the pad of a judge's gavel being struck. There would be no appeal, or even any explanation, about why he didn't want Henry to read his play.

  "But take the cassette player with you. That way you can listen to the howl again while you're working on it."

  Henry had not bargained on that.

  "I noticed you were looking at the monkey skull mounted on the golden rod," the taxidermist continued.

  "Yes, I was. It's striking."

  "It's the skull of a howler monkey."

  "It is?" Henry felt a quiver of horror.

  "Yes."

  "But not Virgil's?"

  "No. Virgil's skull is inside Virgil's head."

Thirty minutes later Henry walked out of the store, an impatient Erasmus pulling at his leash. It was good to be out in the brisk air again. Henry was late for rehearsal but he entered the small grocery store anyway. He asked if he could have a dish of water for Erasmus. The man behind the counter kindly obliged.

  "That's quite the store around the corner," Henry said to him.

  "Yeah. It's been there since the dinosaurs went home."

  "What's he like, the man who runs it?"

  "Crazy old man. Gets into fights with the whole neighbourhood. Comes in here to do two things and only two things: to buy pears and bananas and to make photocopies."

  "I guess he likes pears and bananas and he doesn't have a photocopier."

  "I guess so. I'm amazed his business survives. Is there really a market for stuffed aardvarks?"

  Henry didn't mention the expensive monkey's skull that was in the bag he had gingerly placed on the floor. Skull and glass dome had been packed so that they would arrive safe and sound at their destination. There was also the wolf, the   still one, not the leaping one, that had interested Henry, but he had managed to check his impulse.

  The man looked at what he had placed on the counter.

  "Now there's a vintage piece of technology. Haven't seen a cassette player like that since I was a kid," he said.

  "Old and reliable," Henry replied, picking up his precious cargo and heading for the door. "Thank you for the water."