Free Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel Page B

to buy pears and bananas and to make photocopies."
      "I guess he likes pears and bananas and he doesn't have a photocopier."
      "I guess so. I'm amazed his business survives. Is there really a market for stuffed aardvarks?"
      Henry didn't mention the expensive monkey's skull that was in the bag he had gingerly placed on the floor. Skull and glass dome had been packed so that they would arrive safe and sound at their destination. There was also the wolf, the   still one, not the leaping one, that had interested Henry, but he had managed to check his impulse.
      The man looked at what he had placed on the counter.
      "Now there's a vintage piece of technology. Haven't seen a cassette player like that since I was a kid," he said.
      "Old and reliable," Henry replied, picking up his precious cargo and heading for the door. "Thank you for the water."
      In the taxi home, Erasmus collapsed on the floor and fell asleep right away. Henry thought about the taxidermist. He was not conventionally attractive, fell on the unhandsome side of ordinary, with an inexpressive face that did not project what it was thinking or feeling. Yet those dark staring eyes! His presence had a suffocating quality, but at the same time he radiated a certain magnetism. Or did that appeal come from all the glass-eyed animals surrounding him? Strange that someone so involved with animals should react so little--in fact, not at all--to a live one right in front of him. The taxidermist hadn't even glanced at Erasmus.
      Henry thought of him again as a man with a mask. But he'd given the taxidermist a task, to write something about his trade. That should start to make him less of a sphinx. Henry reflected on his day. He had started it meaning only to drop off a card, and now he was loaded down with goods from Okapi Taxidermy and committed to returning.
      As soon as he got home, he told Sarah.
      "I met the most amazing man," he told her. "This old taxidermist. A shop like you wouldn't believe. All of creation stuffed into one large room. His name's Henry, as it   happens. An odd fish. I couldn't place him at all. He's written a play and he wants my help."
      "What kind of help?" she asked.
      "Help writing it, I think."
      "What's it about?"
      "I'm not sure. There are two characters, a monkey and a donkey. They're quite focussed on food."
      "Is it for children?"
      "I don't think so. In fact, it reminded me of..." but Henry let his voice trail off. He didn't want to mention what the play reminded him of. "The monkey isn't popular," he said instead.
      Sarah nodded her head. "So you've been roped into becoming a collaborator without even knowing what the story's about?"
      "I guess so."
      "Well, you seem excited. That's nice to see," said Sarah.
      She was right. Henry's mind was racing.
    The next day Henry went to the main public library to do research on howler monkeys. He discovered odds and ends about the species, that they live in matrilineal groups, for example, and that they keep no fixed territory but over time roam the forest, searching for food and avoiding threats. That evening, after locking Erasmus in the farthest room, he set the cassette player next to the computer and listened to the howl again. He tried to describe it from Beatrice's   perspective. If he remembered correctly, she was talking to an imaginary person while she was waiting for Virgil to come back from foraging for food:

             A howl, a roar, a howling roar, a deafening roar--these barely hint at the reality. To compare it to other animals' cries becomes a kind of zoological one-upmanship that addresses only the aspect of volume. A howler monkey's roar exceeds in volume the cry of a peafowl, of a jaguar, of a lion, of a gorilla, of an elephant--at which point the inflating of hulk stops, at least on land. In the ocean, the blue whale, which can weigh well over one hundred and fifty tons, the largest animal ever to grace this planet, can put out