Lydia Millet - Magnificence

“Susan! You down there drunk? All by yourself?”

Drunk yes, but not alone.

She turned and looked back to the rectangle of light, past which the corpses lay in state. If there were ghosts here they were the ghosts of men, not of the animals, men hovering over the artifacts of their prey. They had no interest in her, none at all. Rather it was for her to be interested in them. The ghosts of men, in this case the ghosts of killers, because that was part of the atmosphere of institutions. . a museum held, in its perfect, orderly, austere glass cases, not only the presence of the artifacts but the invisible presence of those who had hunted them, those who had dug them up or even stolen them. The unknown or the dead people — no, their desire, that was the presence that hovered there, their deep wanting, part of the sacred air.

When she was married and slept around she’d lived in the desire of men, in all that ambient wanting, where once she felt noticed. Now she lived in the aftermath of what they wanted, among the phantoms of men’s desire — not the same men, but men all the same. It was the feeling you had after a feast, the feeling that came after gluttony and was part regret over the fecklessness of the party — the wantonness, the excess. A memory of the white-draped tables, heaped high with many varieties of sugar and of flesh. The madness, the sumptuous feast.

The men gave their tragedy to everyone else — handed it out like a gift. They gave it to the mammals, the birds and the amphibians. They handed it to whole species of trees, to the oceans and the forests, where her daughter had gone; handed it to the far-flung people who had fewer possessions. Beside them, as they handed it out, stood the wives, hostesses at the gathering — arranging the tables, placing the silver and linen, the fruit and the soup tureens. So gracious, nodding and smiling. Smoothing it all.

Her little girl lived with animals now — the ones who were still alive, though the condition, of course, was fleeting. But she herself existed in a kind of permanent sculpture, a kind of monument. When it came to the animals’ bodies, or what remained of them in the mounts, you couldn’t exactly call them the dead — or at least, they were a version of the dead that had, in the end, almost nothing to do with who or what the animals once had been. She would tell Jim, though his interest in taxidermy was limited. To say the least. She would reach out to him. I love you, Jim. And I was a slut back then but I loved my husband too. Now he’s gone — gone into other molecules. The binding is released, the molecules have not held. The molecules let him go. Now I’m with you, but I’m also with him and I always will be. I’m staying with both of you. We are the memory of others, we are the memory of ourselves.

“No, no, not by myself at all,” she called, though her voice was a mumble.

Jim! The dead have sent their bodies down to be with us — the ones with fur, the ones with skin, the ones with scales and hides and feathers. Some of them even have skeletons. They’re more beautiful than we are — golden, orange, an iridescent green, scarlet, the blue of tropical water, the blue of skies, the blue of violets. Lions and peacocks, auks and bears. The deep brown of comfort and hibernation. White like the snow. Their faces are so different , as different from each other as the faces of people are. But they’re not people and they never were; the people tracked them and killed them, then flayed off the skins. I was here the whole time, forgetting everything beyond my field of view. On rare occasions I caught sight of them, but still I never moved.

Jim, listen. I’m so drunk, I’m so drunk. Once God glorified us and made us burst with love — but love of ourselves, in most cases, is all that it turned out to be. And then our human sacrifice. Our sacrifice of everything. But museums are capacious, they can contain both God and molecules, even our passion for ourselves that brought smallpox to baby Indians. I never knew the old man and I never knew his friends; all I knew was keys moving on a piano, a liver-spotted hand and maybe a croquet mallet. We’ll keep the stuffed animals, OK Jim? I know you don’t like them but indulge me. We’ll have them here with us, figures from history, figures that once roamed beyond Pasadena, beyond Palos Verdes, where your rich ex-wife lives whom you will always love. Beyond the inland empire. Both of us love the gone ones, you and I, we live with them still, we always will, but Jim I welcome it. And I don’t care who made all this, Jehovah or Darwin — Jim? I really don’t give a fuck. My point is, it’ll never come back again.

I’ll look at them every day, I’ll touch them with my hands, I’ll listen as they make no sounds, to the ringing stretch of their silence. I’ll look at their details for as long as I live — the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails. I even like their eyes, made out of colored glass to look like the real ones. I’ll walk through the rooms and you can come with me. Here’s our ticket; now let’s go in. Let’s walk along the velvet rope and never touch the specimens. Stay with me, Jim. There’s still some time. We’ll keep each other company. Stay in these rooms for years and years, live on forever in a glorious museum.