* * *

“Come View the Aardvark,” Downing writes to museums, to reporters, “with the ears of a rabbit and a snout like a pig’s, a kangaroo tail, and one can hardly believe it exists! The specimen, I believe, is large for its genus, weighs as much as a small human woman, and possesses a unique esprit that can only be believed when seen.”

The day of the Viewing is scheduled for Saturday next, Titus Downing’s forty-first birthday, and although he never can tell how a Viewing will go, although the aardvark is neither as tall as the giraffe nor anywhere near as impressive-looking, he believes that when the Viewers catch one glimpse of its stance, its personality, they will see what he sees: a peculiar, melancholic kind of beauty, and it is because of this belief—coupled with Walter Potter’s immense popularity, which now demands from Downing a bare minimum of publicity, what he calls “The Debasement”—that over the course of the next week, on top of the personal letters to museums, reporters, all the paid advertisements he writes, the taxidermist will hire a small theater troupe for the day of the Viewing to, while wearing homemade aardvark costumes, mimic the actions of the aardvark. And he, Downing, will stiffly show the actors himself, with his own crooked body, how the creature might amble the plains of the Karoo beds in southern Africa, backed by distant mountains. How it might, as it ambles, quickly tamp its odd, piggy snout into dirt, and the boys will all practice crawling around, tossing their heads, and they will make for themselves from drawings created in Downing’s own hand papier-mâché snouts for their noses, long ears for their heads, spoony claws for their hands, and, for the backs of their trousers, heavy kangaroo tails.

The only thing Downing does not advertise is the eyes, for he knows they will be the surprise, the real spectacle, because he has done something which no taxidermist has ever before done, and everyone will look into the aardvark’s eyes and feel what he feels (love), but they will not be able to put their finger on why, or what it is that makes them feel so—and as Downing completes the mannequin and polishes for the last time the aardvark’s heavy wooden mount, quite pleased with his choice of Leadwood, the finest Combretum imberbe imported from the aardvark’s natural habitat, he regards the blue eyes of the aardvark and recalls the last time he and Richard Ostlet saw one another, just one week before Richard departed for Africa.

There was nothing particularly different that day. Seeing Richard was exactly like it always was: as though no time had passed between that moment and two and a half decades ago in the custodial closet at the Great Exhibition. Except Ostlet wasn’t well.

“Nerves,” he had said, but there was something more. Downing had looked into Ostlet’s big round eyes—Rebecca was not joking about the bulge and slippage of Ostlet’s bright blue oculi—and he remembers now how Richard confessed that he was having trouble sleeping; that his eyes would stay open, all on their own, and if he weren’t so tired all the time he would maybe mind slightly less, but along with the fatigue and the headaches was the truth about his imminent blindness, his vision had been failing for some time now, and in England it was one thing, but he was worried about what it might mean in Africa.