“Oh?”
“There’s a colony of carnivorous leather beetles inside that skull and they’ll eat it clean before I begin work.”
Bob stared at the cranium. He listened.
“Oh no,” Lunde said with a laugh, “you can’t hear them.”
“Okay. But isn’t there a simpler way?”
“Oh sure, I could have freeze-dried the whole animal so the customer would get the complete thing.”
“Then why not do that?”
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 withfeeling.” 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’rewatchingyou, 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 thefather 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 feltmovedby the exhibits. Do you see? Hancock raised taxidermy to the level of art.”
“You think a stuffed animal is a work of art?”
