Yann Martel - Beatrice and Virgil

I coughed and coughed whenever they let my head out, but before I could get a good breath in, they shoved my head back into the water. The more I struggled, the more they held me down. Quickly I breathed in water and I felt my body suddenly slacken. I thought, This is death, which is when they stopped, expertly. They pulled me out and dropped me to the floor. I coughed and vomited water and lay there. I thought my ordeal was over.

It had just begun. They untied my front legs. With slaps and kicks and pulling on my tail, they hauled me up. My back legs were still tied together. Grabbing me by the mane, they directed me to an adjacent room. I hopped along as best I could. I was placed in a stall of sorts and strapped into a harness that ran beneath my chest and held the front of my body up. My front feet stood on a makeshift floor made of rough wood, quite discoloured. One man locked his arm around my head and another kicked my left knee from behind and lifted the foot off the ground, as if he were a blacksmith about to examine my hoof. But he just held my foot in the air. Then the young man knelt down, crowding around my right leg, and he swiftly drove a long nail into the foot that was on the floor. He started just above the rim of the hoof, at an angle to go deep, and he went right through, solidly nailing my foot to the wooden floor. I can still see the hammer going up and down, the man's arm and the top of his head, the swirl of his crown. At every bang of the hammer, a tremor shook my entire body. A pool of blood expanded around my foot. The three men let go and disappeared behind me. They grabbed my tail. It made me shudder, to have six unfriendly hands taking hold of me like that. They began to pull my tail with all their might, starting a tug-of-war between my tail and my hoof.

I brayed and bucked and attempted to kick. But one front leg was nailed to the floor and my back legs were tied together, easily controlled. I had only one front leg free. They kept pulling and pulling. During those seconds of supreme pain, I tilted from being terrified of death to wanting it more than anything else. I wanted to scurry like a rat into darkness and have it over with. I lost consciousness.

It's so hard to talk about it. It hurt, it was painful-that's all there is to say about it, really. But to feel it! We recoil from the flame of a single match, and here I was in the middle of a blaze. And still it wasn't over. When I awoke I saw that my hoof had given out. It had torn off completely. I thought that my pain could go no further, that surely after what I had just endured there would be no more. There was. They twisted my head and poured boiling water into my right ear. They forced a cold iron bar into my rectum and left it there to chill my innards. They repeatedly kicked me in the stomach and genital area. This, over the course of some hours, taking regular cigarette breaks as I lay helpless in the harness, sometimes leaving me alone with the door onto the corridor left open, at other times standing near me but going on as if I weren't there. I lost consciousness a number of times.

They insulted me repeatedly, though I wouldn't say they were actually angry or worked up. They were just doing their job. When they got tired, they worked in silence.

It ended in the late afternoon, around five o'clock, I suppose, after a day's work was done. Home beckoned. They unstrapped me from the harness and threw me into a small cell. After two days and nights of solitary confinement, pain-ridden and foodless, I was released. They opened my cell door, stood me up, marched me out, and left me at the outside gate. Not a word was said. I didn't know where you were and you didn't know where I was. I limped away until I reached the riverbank, where I collapsed in a secluded spot and where you eventually found me.

The silence in the play continued out of it. The taxidermist didn't say anything more and Henry was speechless. It wasn't just the elaborate, institutional torturing of a donkey. It was something else that arrested him, a detail about the head torturer. Beatrice described him as "a tall, raw-boned man". The second adjective was unusual enough that for a moment Henry misunderstood it; a literal and gruesome image flitted through his mind. Then he remembered its proper meaning: lean, gaunt, an absence of fleshiness. Henry dwelt on the image. A tall, raw-boned man. He glanced at the taxidermist. Perhaps it was a coincidence.

"Well, that was disturbing," Henry finally said.

The taxidermist did not reply.

"Among the characters in the play, you mention a boy and his two friends. When do they appear?" Henry asked.

"At the very end of the play."

"There's this sudden intrusion of human characters in your animal allegory."

"That's right." The taxidermist said nothing more, only looked out blankly.

"What happens with the boy?"

The taxidermist picked up some papers.

"Virgil has just finished reading out the sewing kit as they have it so far. You remember the sewing kit?"

"I do."

He read:

"They recognize the boy," the taxidermist interrupted. "The day before, in the village where they were staying, this boy had been one of the main instigators in some terrible deeds."

"Go on," Henry said.

The taxidermist read:

The taxidermist fell silent. "And that's how the play ends?" Henry said. "That's how the play ends. After that, the curtain comes down."

The taxidermist got up and walked to one of the counters. After a moment Henry followed him. The taxidermist was looking at some pages he'd neatly spread out.

"What's this?" Henry asked.

"A scene I'm working on."

"What's it about?"

"Gustav."

"Who's Gustav?"

"He's a dead, naked body that's been lying near Virgil and Beatrice's tree the whole time."

"A human body? Another human?"

"Yes."

"Lying in the open?"

"No, in some bushes. Virgil discovers him."

"They don't smell his body before that?"

"Sometimes life stinks just as much as death. They don't."

"How do they know he's called Gustav?"

"They don't. Virgil calls him that to give him a name."

"Why is he naked?"

"They figure he was told to strip and was then shot. They think the red cloth was probably his. He might have been a peddler."

"Why do they stay? After finding a dead body, wouldn't the more natural reaction be to run away?"

"They think of it as a place already plundered and now safe."

"What do they do about Gustav? Do they bury him?"

"No, they play games."

"Games?"

"Yes. It's another way they find of talking about the Horrors. It's in the sewing kit."

That's right, Henry remembered: games for Gustav.

"Isn't that an odd thing to do, to play games when there's a dead body right next to you?" Henry said.

"They imagine that Gustav would enjoy them if he were still alive. Playing games is a way of celebrating life."

"What kind of games?"

"That was my question for you. I thought you might come up with a few. You seem like the playful sort."

"What, like hide-and-seek?"

"I was hoping for something more sophisticated."

"You mentioned some terrible deeds instigated by the boy who kills Beatrice and Virgil."

"Yes."

"Beatrice and Virgil saw these deeds?"

"Yes."

"What did they see?"