Downing had laid his thin arm over Ostlet’s chest, roiled his chest hair around a long finger. “You need an assistant,” he said, and offered to join Ostlet on his trip, if he pleased. He suggested that the two might have a grand time in Africa, that he could assist Richard in any way he needed assisting, that he not only could take his dictation but he might help him, well, relax, and it was then that Ostlet inexplicably had jumped up from Downing’s bed.

He said that he was sorry, he just remembered an important appointment he was already late for and assured Titus that he would call upon him next week, before leaving, and as Downing watched his lover hastily dress in the moonlight, he understood at once that he had lost him.

Downing already knew about the woman, the former student, the pretty, young botanist living in London, and as he heard Ostlet hurry out the door and down the stairs, through his taxidermy shop, as the front door jingled merrily as Ostlet let himself out, Titus Downing spread his lithe, naked body over the warm place on his bed where Ostlet had been and smelled for the last time his scent on the sheets, and it’s why the taxidermist has been, in the months ever since, afflicted: the melancholy of the sudden departure of his lover has been almost unbearable; without Richard Ostlet, Titus Downing had left in his life only a lost brother working unceremoniously in the Outer Hebrides. A poor mother and poor father running their farm in Northumberland, who were themselves at death’s door—he was alone.

Downing, who had never before been presented with the opportunity to grieve for love, wept for Ostlet that night as though for all mankind, and he could not have known that for all his weeping, weeks later, a large aardvark in Africa would send her tongue, long as rope, into a tunnel, licking up termites, feeling them pepper her thick whiskers, which protected her eyes, nose and mouth like small quills; that she would walk daintily, but not unsteadily, on the extremities of her digits, head inclined, snout brushing the sweet dirt on the ground; and that she would embark thusly, alone—for aardvarks always travel alone—upon a miles-long journey into the dark African night, looking for more food, stopping only to listen for occasional threats until she found herself facing a handsome and clever African hunter that she had not, despite her long ears, heard coming.

For if the aardvark had heard the lightest rustle, she would have easily thrown herself into a tunnel or quickly dug for herself a hiding place, a defensive burrow, but the hunter was already in the bush, lance at the ready, and the gigantic aardvark, ears slung back, tail heavy as a sack, felt the shock of pain as the lance entered her side, tore through her heart, lungs and stomach, and only then did she dive deep into a tunnel, bleeding obscenely.