Chapter 20 #2
Lunde lifted the lid of the glass case and held an eye up against an eyehole.
“In the first place it’s expensive. Secondly, the animal has to be stored in a special freeze dryer for months.
And thirdly, as a rule the corpse will get eaten up by carpet beetles.
And anyway, there’s something about making these shapes, something to do with feeling.
” Lunde held up his long, slender hands.
“It’s as though the vision lies in the eyes and the fingertips, and without your even noticing it gets transferred to the work in question. ”
Bob noticed a row of trophies on a shelf and, above them, a photograph.
“Family?” Bob asked.
“Yes. Grandfather, father, me and my sister Emily. All taxidermists. My grandfather and father are dead, but my sister and I are still at it.”
“Using the original techniques?”
Lunde shrugged. “When we get the chance. There aren’t many of us left who still do it.” He chuckled. “Emily and I always say we should be stuffed ourselves, as examples of an endangered species.”
“You never…feel like you just want to give up?”
“Give up?” Lunde gave Bob a long, thoughtful stare. “No. There’s always a reason to go on.” He gestured toward the mannequin. “This here, for example. I have a feeling that this is going to be the best thing I’ve ever done. My masterpiece.”
Bob studied it. “Looks like a very fine wolf, Lunde.”
“Wolf?” An expression of pained sorrow crossed Lunde’s face. “Ah, I see I’ve failed already. This is supposed to be a Labrador retriever.”
“Your masterpiece is, eh…a dog?”
Lunde smiled. “Oh yes, I know what you’re thinking.
Why not a bear? Or a deer? But consider this: the demands posed by a Labrador are sky-high.
Everyone’s seen one, everyone has a clear idea of what a Labrador should look like.
The problem is, as usual, the eyes. These are samples from a manufacturer in Madrid.
” Lunde held up the glass eyes. “They aren’t bad. Just not very…lifelike.”
“Those owl eyes in the store are lifelike.”
“Yes, aren’t they?” Lunde was in the grip of an almost childlike enthusiasm. “I made them myself. They’re ceramic. You get the feeling they’re watching you, don’t you?”
Bob bent forward and studied two photographs lying next to the dog mannequin on the workbench. “Is this it?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it a little, er…fatter than the mannequin?”
“Oh definitely. The customer is a very wealthy family and I intend to give them the animal as they would remember it when it was young and slender. It’s called idealization. We beautify the portraits, in just the way Van Dyck, Rubens and da Vinci did. The art isn’t in the resemblance.”
“Then where does it lie?”
“In the creation of the story.” Lunde placed the eyes back into an envelope. “Ever heard of John Hancock? I don’t mean the one who signed the Declaration of Independence.”
“Can’t say I have.”
“No, he’s pretty much a forgotten figure.
Let’s call him the father of modern taxidermy.
He exhibited some birds at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and, of course, people were impressed by their anatomical accuracy.
But as one of the judges remarked, the surprising thing was that one felt moved by the exhibits.
Do you see? Hancock raised taxidermy to the level of art. ”
“You think a stuffed animal is a work of art?”
“Let me show you.”
Bob followed Mike Lunde back into the store, where he took down two large books from a shelf on which two hares acted as bookends.
“In Victorian England it was as common to have stuffed animals in the averagely affluent household as it was to have paintings,” said Lunde, opening one of the books.
“Things moved forward, and in the latter part of the nineteenth century Walter Potter developed so-called anthropomorphic taxidermy. He dressed the animals in clothes and posed them in comic situations, like humans.”
As Lunde turned the pages Bob studied the full-page photographs in the book.
One of rats in human clothing brawling round a poker table as another rat dressed in a policeman’s uniform comes storming in.
Another showed a classroom full of rabbits sitting neatly at their desks.
These montages had a certain cuteness, and at the same time a subtext Bob wasn’t immediately able to decode.
“Exhibitions by Potter and other taxidermists attracted larger audiences than popular theater performances or athletics meetings. And then taxidermists began including bizarre details, such as a two-headed lamb, or a chicken with four legs. From which there is a direct line to this…” Lunde indicated the second book.
“The contribution of our own city, Minneapolis.”
The title on the cover was Rogue Taxidermy. He thumbed through it. A stuffed polar bear atop a sinking refrigerator. A squirrel holding up something that looked like a small heart.
“I’m sorry,” said Bob, “but isn’t this just…creepy?”
Lunde chuckled. “I agree, it is creepy. But not just creepy. These are artistic expressions. They’re stories.”
“But…doesn’t it do something to you, spending so much time in the company of dead animals?”
Lunde thought about it. “I don’t know. I mean, chefs do the same thing. The difference is that we try to bring the dead back to life. It’s what you might call an existential challenge, and it probably does have some effect on you. All those hours, sitting alone, trying to put a mask on death.”
“Who did this?” asked Bob, pointing to one picture. It showed an eagle sitting on a branch. One wing was holding a revolver pointed at its own head.
“Ah, that’s by Anonymous,” said Lunde. “That’s to say, that’s what they’re known as in taxidermy circles.
He or she exhibits the work in some public space, most often at night, unsigned, and that’s all we know.
That eagle was exhibited in a tree right outside the picnic area in the Minnehaha Park.
Caused quite a stir, of course, because the bald eagle is a protected species. ”
Outside rain started falling. They both looked out into the street. The sounds changed. Car tires hissed against the wet pavement. Footsteps along the sidewalk sounded quicker. An animated conversation fell silent.
“When you and Gomez were talking about loneliness,” said Bob, “what did you discuss in particular?”
“Well, all sorts of things,” said Lunde as he replaced the books on the shelf.
“Why it is that loneliness is so troubling. None of our most basic physical needs require the presence of several or even one other human being. Breathe, eat, work, get food, get dressed, get sick and recover, shit, piss, sleep. From nature’s point of view, we are fully capable of living long, full and wholly satisfactory lives entirely on our own.
In many cases better lives than the ones we get when we enter into a union and voluntarily or involuntarily allow our lives to be guided by the needs of others.
And yet no one asks themselves whether the ending of Robinson Crusoe, when he gets rescued, is a happy ending or not.
Think about it. I mean, he’s managed to organize things pretty well on that island—what guarantee does he have that the life he will get when he goes back to living with other people will be as good?
He’s losing his freedom, his daily swims, a territory that’s all his own with limitless access to food, no working hours, no boss.
And for what? But we don’t even wonder about it, we just take it for granted that we’re willing to give up all this for just one thing: the company of other people. ”
“But if we don’t need others, then why is loneliness so intolerable?”
“What do you think?”
“Biology. If we all thought it was fine to be alone, we wouldn’t want to reproduce ourselves.”
Lunde raised a finger to point to a glass case full of butterflies hanging on the wall behind him. “Some species meet up for the purpose of reproduction only.”
“Economics, then. Cooperating with others gives everyone a better chance of survival.”
“You and your economics. Economics doesn’t drive people insane. But loneliness does. Am I right?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Loneliness is a fairly novel experience for you, Bob, isn’t it?”
Bob didn’t reply. Again Mike Lunde smiled that smile that Bob seemed to recognize from somewhere, some faint childhood memory he couldn’t quite pull to the surface. The store bell jangled.
A man walked in. He was wearing a suit that looked straight out of one of the Downtown West skyscrapers.
Bob waited as the customer explained that he wanted a hunting trophy stuffed—a black rhinoceros.
He’d heard that Lunde was the best in the business.
Lunde declined politely, explaining that he didn’t do rhinoceroses.
When the man insisted, and demanded an explanation, Mike Lunde said that he just didn’t work with threatened species.
The customer got a little heated. He pointed out that he’d had permission from the Namibian authorities, it was one of the five animals a year they allowed.
He added that he had an import license for the animal.
Lunde offered his congratulations, and it wasn’t easy for Bob to know if he was being ironic.
He said the black rhinoceros was on the taxidermists’ blacklist, no pun intended.
The man protested that it wasn’t illegal, he’d spent a quarter of a million dollars for the hunting rights at an auction in Dallas, that the money went toward the preservation of the black rhinoceros, and that he was prepared to pay well for a good taxidermist to do the job.
“I’m sorry,” said Lunde, gently but firmly. “But by all means, bring in another animal.”
The bell jingled angrily as the man left.
Mike Lunde sighed.
“Couldn’t you have taken that job?” asked Bob.
“Maybe,” said Lunde. “Ethical dilemmas always give me a headache. While I’ve got you here, would you mind helping me with the mother lynx?”
Together they maneuvered down a lynx mounted on a branch that was attached to the wall. Lunde sprayed the lynx’s coat with something from a bottle. Bob went over to the glass case with the butterflies.
“How old are these?”
“My father’s butterflies? Forty, forty-five.”
“It’s wonderful, the way the color is preserved.”
“My grandfather said that butterfly wings don’t fade like other dead bodies, that they’re like mementos of the dead. With each passing year the color gets stronger.”
Bob nodded. Continued to study the butterflies while Lunde dried off the lynx with a tissue. Hesitated a moment. Then asked: “What makes you think I’m lonely?”
Lunde carried on drying for a few moments before replying. “It’s in the eyes. Always the eyes. I saw it the moment you entered the store. Your eyes expressed the same thing as Tomás. Loss. Anger. Desperation. Loneliness.”
“Did you tell him that too? That you knew he was lonely?”
“Tomás? He said so himself.”
“What did he say about being lonely?”
“Lots. That it was slowly driving him crazy.”
“And is he crazy, do you think?”
Lunde shrugged. “It looks that way, don’t you think?
Normal people don’t kill other people. Although the same could be said of those that killed his family.
I don’t think your guy is any better or any worse than anyone else, he’s just been unlucky.
His world was shattered. He said that what tormented him most was that those idiots hadn’t killed him, the only one who could pose any threat to them. ”
“Yes,” said Bob. “I know what he means.”
“Give me a hand again here?”
After returning the lynx to its place they went back into the workshop and Lunde continued working.
Bob fell asleep with his head against the wall.
He dreamed. It was the same dream. He was holding a pistol and firing at a tiny head with a cotton candy halo of fair hair.
He was woken by the sound of Lunde talking on his cell phone:
“Yes, I’m just leaving now.” Bob heard the twittering of a female voice at the other end and saw the broad smile on Mike Lunde’s face. “Meatballs? Mm, that sounds good.”
He hung up.
“Sorry,” said Bob as he sat up in the chair and wiped the dribble from the corner of his mouth. “I had a bad night.”
“You were sound asleep. That’s good.”
“I heard meatballs. With brown sauce, potatoes and mushy peas?”
Lunde smiled. “Yes, as it happens. How about you?”
“Guess.”
Lunde leaned his head to one side and looked at Bob. “I’m guessing you’re going to eat alone, and you don’t give a damn where or what.”
“Bull’s-eye.”
Bob then noticed Lunde’s hesitancy. It was as though he was wondering whether to invite Bob home with him. Then perhaps he saw the warning signs in Bob’s eyes and let it drop.
“One more thing,” said Bob. “You said you didn’t know if Gomez has a phone, but he has your cell number, it’s printed on your business card. Given that he knows we’re looking for him, it could be he won’t take the chance of showing up here in person but he’ll call you instead.”
Lunde nodded. “You could be right there.”
“Can I borrow your phone for a few seconds?”
Lunde tapped in a code that opened it and handed it to Bob. Bob went online and downloaded an app.
“Using this app, with just one tap on the keyboard you can record conversations on your phone without the other person knowing. It’s unbelievable what sound technicians are able to get out of the voice and the background sounds on such a recording.”
“You don’t say?” said Lunde. He looked down skeptically at his phone.
“Anyway, the option is there, if you want it,” said Bob. “And thanks, thanks for letting me hang out here.”
It had stopped raining by the time Lunde locked the store door behind him, but heavy clouds the color of exhaust fumes still coated the sky.
The sidewalks were beginning to dry. Bob breathed in the air.
Remembered childhood, and how sharp every sensory impression was, how even the most insignificant of them could seem almost overwhelming, like the special smell, the humid taste of rain-wet pavement.
Now it smelled and tasted of nothing. He thought about eyes. How it’s the eyes that are the problem.