Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud - A Life on Paper - Stories

I resolved to take Gus to the Scriblerus. He had two short poems on him, jotted in his big, loopy handwriting on endpages torn from valuable volumes of the Ballantrae Museum's library. Mr. Kingsheart read them and reread them with a greediness not unlike that with which I'd initially fallen on the meals his wife made. Tears rolled down his wrinkled cheeks. He pressed Gus to his heart. "My boy! My boy!" he gibbered. Dumbfounded, Gustin let himself be swept clumsily into an embrace. I found both of them fairly ridiculous. From that moment on, I knew I no longer mattered. Gus was the only important one. Of course, Mr. Curator knew how to treat his guests! He began bringing double servings of food, but Mrs. Kingsheart's rice pudding now stuck in my throat. No matter. I put it off for a bit, but eventually wound up following the dictates of my conscience. I didn't think there was anything left for me at the Scriblerus Museum.

It's Wednesday. Last night, Gus was killed. He slipped from the roof of the Robinson Museum, where he'd been hiding from the guards. I went up there with Guv'nor Paul and a few others this morning. I don't know really what we were thinking… a kind of pilgrimage, perhaps.

From above, we witnessed a scene I alone understood. Before a chalk outline traced on the ground the mayor stood stuffed into a camelhair coat. He seemed lost in a bleak reverie. Guards kept the tourists back. Mr. Kingsheart showed up. He walked right up to the mayor and, with all his strength, slapped him. Then he threw a sheaf of papers into his face.

Beside me, Guv'nor Paul's eyes widened. "What's all that about, then?"

"Tell you later."

He stared at me, then, taking closer notice than he had in a long time. "Indeed you will. Come to think of it: time you started writing, isn't it?"

"Yes-it's time."

Below, Mr. Kingsheart had turned on his heel. Leaving the mayor on his knees, busy gathering up the papers the wind threatened to scatter, he strode furiously toward his car.

Bures, February 1983

was walking down a quiet street around nightfall. It was fine weather. Even on the ground floor, locals had opened their windows to the warm night. Some had lit their lamps, but others preferred to let night flood the rooms where they sat as the tide floods a grotto. From these submerged chambers drifted snatches of conversation by turns ordinary, amusing, and mysterious. But what struck me at first was the sound of the voices: hushed or muffled, muted, inexplicably distant and musical.

I stopped before a taxidermist's storefront. The pieces on display were bathed in a warm glow confined to the middle of the window by a large parchment shade: a fox and a young boar, a few small weasels (marten, ferret, civet), but also various birds kestrel, swift, woodpecker, tawny owl). I thought I glimpsed, in the shapes I made out farther back from the light, other creatures, tightly wrapped in bandages, that had been mummified instead of stuffed. My face pressed to the glass, I scanned the depths of the store. There was a jackal, a hyena, then cats, a tall wading bird (stork or heron), and apes-one of which, for all I could see, could well have been a human being.

A brass wind chime gave out a tinkle. The door opened, and the proprietor appeared, an old man in loose brown overalls and a square black hat that lent him a judgelike air.

"Please, come inside! You can't see anything from out here. There's nothing to be afraid of. My creatures are all far less dangerous than any you could meet outside. They're beautiful and well-behaved and pretty as pictures.

I obeyed, mesmerized. He stepped aside to let me pass. "Look! Modern-day mummies! New mummies! You won't find these anywhere else. I'm the exclusive distributor."

"But," I ventured, "what about…I mean, that-"

I pointed at the human mummy, for indeed a young woman was on display between an ocelot and a baboon. Her mask lay on a table nearby.

"What about it? Oh, yes, quite. Rest assured, it's all perfectly legal, all the papers are in order. Really-no Joke!"

She gazed at me, the lamp from the window flickering in her glass eves.

"Is she for sale?" I asked.

"Everything you see is for sale, sir. Of course, she's my finest specimen, and her price, well…Take a closer look, and tell me if you've ever seen anything like it."

I turned back to the mummy.

"If I may, sir, her eyes! Look into her eyes."

The mummy's glass stare had such depth and humanity I found myself more flustered than if I'd been faced with a living person.

"Aha!" exclaimed the owner. He put his hand on my forearm then, a hand white as a stripped root. "You felt it too, then! Her stare is an enigma… or rather, a work of art! Have you ever heard of the glassmaker Leonello Guardicci?"

I said I hadn't.

"He created these wonders," the taxidermist continued, pointing at the mummy's right eye. It was so convincing I expected to see it flinch when the shopkeeper grazed it with his fingernail. Despite myself, I turned away.

"Don't do that. It makes me uncomfortable."

"You're too sensitive. It's only glass. A colored marble carefully inset-by a great artist, I'll give you that!"

"It's not just the color," I protested. "It's..

I fell silent. The shopkeeper nodded, as though I'd finished my thought.

"It's a very beautiful thing indeed. A very beautiful thing! A charming subject, consummate craftsmanship. Such skill is costly. The mummy, too, of course-and then those eves. I dare say, Leonello Guardicci's masterpiece!"

I gave the old man all the money I had on me as a deposit. Ever the professional, he made out a receipt and wrote my name on a tag he tucked into a bandage, right over the mummy's heart: she had been reserved.

I'll admit I was upset the next morning when I remembered my twilight stroll and what had happened. A mummy probably isn't the most essential thing you can buy these days. My apartment was cramped: three tiny rooms already crammed with books and musical instruments. After some thought, I decided to give up what now seemed an extravagance.

I could simply have never contacted the taxidermist again, but instead a trivial concern guided my steps back to his shop: I was willing to pay a penalty, but I didn't like the thought of losing my entire deposit.

I was expecting a niggling exchange. To my deep relief, the shopkeeper made no objection. So I'd changed my mind? It happened. And I wanted to recover part of my deposit? He retained such a tiny amount that I almost felt offended for his sake. It must've shown, for he smiled assuagingly.

"A piece like that isn't an easy sell, but I'm not worried," he said. "She'll be someone's, someday. Just not yours."

In such delicate transactions, a customer's most intimate sensibilities come into play and reveal themselves. Just what was this crude profiteer trying to say? That I was too crass a soul? What did he know? I thought myself worthy of owning such a singular object, at once macabre and sophisticated, almost immaterial. I wasn't merely making a bid on the semblance of a few fleshly remains, but on the glints and echoes of a life cut short. This mouth had laughed and sung, these lips whispered sweet nothings in a darkened bedroom, these hands drawn hopscotch courts, cradled dolls, set balls in flight… I was buying all that and more. I'd changed my mind again, this time once and for all. As the owner of that magical gaze for which the whole mummy was a reliquary, I'd be able to draw on its treasury of impressions and emotions whenever I wished from now on.