"I see."
"He has another one that morning, while Beatrice is still sleeping. Virgil remembers how their miseries started. Started in his mind, that is, the moment when he realized what was happening to them. He acts it out. He's reading his morning paper at his favourite cafe and his eyes are drawn to one of the headlines. The headline announces a government edict concerning new categories of citizens-or rather, as the article makes clear, a category of citizens and a new category of non -citizens. Virgil reads with increasing astonishment as he realizes that he-he himself personally, in all his specific details, this monkey sitting in a cafe reading a paper, such an ordinary thing-is the exact and intended target."
Henry took mental note: a government edict excluding Virgil. He didn't want to interrupt the taxidermist, who was becoming quite animated. A customer or two glanced over casually. But it was the waiter returning to their table that had an effect on the taxidermist. He brought his hands into his lap and looked down.
"Do you need any help?" the waiter asked Henry. He corrected himself: "Can I get you anything else?"
"No, I'm fine, thank you. Would you like a refill?"
The taxidermist said nothing, only shook his head slightly. He seemed to be pretending he wasn't there.
"I'll just have the bill, please."
"Yes, of course."
Henry had the sense the waiter was about to talk to the taxidermist, but changed his mind and walked away instead.
The taxidermist was bent on finishing his description of Virgil's cafe scene. He continued rapidly.
"It's the expulsion from Eden! The Fall! In an instant, the newspaper is transmogrified into a giant finger floating in the air, pointing at him. Virgil is filled with apprehension that other patrons at the cafe, many of them reading the same newspaper, will notice him. Why, over there and over there, didn't they just glance at him? That's how the events entered his life, he laments, as they had entered the lives of so many others, a vast and varied group that included him and Beatrice and others and others and others: with a single moment of realization. In that moment the world shattered like a pane of glass, so that everything looked exactly as it had earlier, and yet was different, now clear and newly sharp with menace. After that-"
The waiter reappeared with the bill. Remarkably quick of him, Henry thought. Was he wanting to get rid of us? He paid and they stood up. With the taxidermist being mid-story there was nothing to do but walk towards his store. Though so close, it felt like a different world. Hardly anyone was walking by and it was much quieter than the more commercial end of the street. Henry was disappointed to see black fabric hanging down each of the bay windows. The effect upon turning the corner, which he was looking forward to, was utterly different. In fact, with no okapi peeking out, there wasn't much of an effect at all. Just a fading jungle mural on a brick wall. The taxidermist noticed him looking at the black fabric.
"I don't want people lingering about when the shop is closed. You never know with people," he said, as he fished for keys in the pocket of his coat. He looked around as he said that, scanning the few people who were passing by-a middle-aged couple, a slouching teenager, a lone man.
"You don't like people, do you?" Henry said, which he meant lightly.
The taxidermist looked at the passersby for another moment, then turned his gaze onto Henry-and it was a pinpoint of concentration wholly focussed on him, animal-like in its intensity, exactly that, animal-like. As the taxidermist bore into him with his steady eyes, a single thought occurred to Henry: I am people.
Henry made an attempt at an apology. "What I meant is you're comfortable with animals. You know them. Whereas people, people are strange and unreliable. That's what I meant."
The taxidermist turned and unlocked the door of his store without saying a word. They entered. There in the gloom, hidden and quiet, anxiously awaiting his return, were all his animals. He flicked a few switches and the light seemed to bring them to life. The taxidermist was visibly relieved to be back in his store. He headed for the back room. Henry lingered as Erasmus settled on the floor next to the front counter. The dog seemed out of sorts, Henry noted in passing.
When Henry entered the workshop, the taxidermist was already at his desk. Henry took his usual place on the stool. The taxidermist was not to be put off finishing what he was saying. He said it more freely now.
"After the incident reading the paper in the cafe, Virgil bemoans how his feelings have shrivelled. He corrects himself: he says that one feeling has expanded-fear-while all the others have shrivelled. Intellectual thrill, aesthetic rejoicing, quiet appreciation, fond recollection, witty banter-these have all been crowded out by fear, leaving him dull-eyed and indifferent most of the time. Were it not for Beatrice being in his life, Virgil says, he would feel nothing at all. Everything, even fear, nearly, would be shrugged off. He would be a wandering corpse, a bundle of mindless functions, like a house without its inhabitants. He says that, and then he remembers the landscape of the previous evening, how moved he was by it. Considering his circumstances, this astounds him, that he was moved by a wind and a few fields. Like taking a moment in a museum on fire to appreciate a fine landscape painting."
Henry wondered if the taxidermist didn't live in his store, not above it or nearby, but actually in it. He looked at Virgil and Beatrice, nearly said hello to them. He was starting to know them well.
The taxidermist went on, uninterruptible.
"He's so elated at this unexpected burst of feeling that for nothing, for joy, he gets up and cartwheels himself onto his hands. He examines the landscape upside down. He leans to one side and holds himself up in the air on a single arm, which is easy for him. After a moment, he returns onto all fours and he does the same balancing act with his legs, first standing on both and then getting onto just one. That's a harder trick for a howler monkey. They're not normally bipedal. His two arms shake, his raised leg trembles, his tail jerks about in the air. And that's when Beatrice wakes up and asks him the key question of the play."
He searched on his desk. Henry couldn't see why the taxidermist's pages had to be so scattered. He was forever shuffling through them. Why didn't he have them in order? It was a play, after all, a sequence of scenes that should follow some narrative logic.
"Here, I found it," the taxidermist said. And he read-aloud, of course:
"That's the key question in the play, how they are going to talk about what happened to them. They come back to the question again and again."
"And to answer the question I asked you at the cafe," Henry broke in, "about what happens in the play, in effect what happens is they talk about talk."
"I think of it as talking about memory."
If Henry hadn't seen it earlier, he was starting to see now where the problem lay with the taxidermist's play, why he needed help. There seemed to be essentially no action and no plot in it. Just two characters by a tree talking. It had worked with Beckett and Diderot. Mind you, those two were crafty and they packed a lot of action into the apparent inaction. But inaction wasn't working for the author of A 20th-Century Shirt.
Henry wanted the taxidermist to explain his play, but he didn't want to be the first to invoke the Holocaust. He thought the taxidermist would be more forthcoming if he brought it up himself.