Posted by Menagerie on September 18, 2004 at 20:18:56:
A COMMON THREAD
Sometimes, you just get tired of the same old faces.
They become stale. Once you’ve sorted them by characteristics and habitat, there isn’t much left to do, other than look at them. Certainly, you can compare and contrast the shadings of coloration, the physical features, or simply their size and bulk; write reasoned treatises on the conditions which could have contributed to the phenomena. Still, once they’re here, they’re here and unchanging; fresh specimens must be collected if new data is to be extracted.
And so, I anxiously awaited a fresh shipment. Hands clasped behind my back, nervously pacing, occasionally looking up at the vast span of fauna past and present entrusted to my care. I’d received numerous accolades for my taxonomic skills; the exhibit was considered a model, each species neatly displayed in ascending arrays, so that even the lay observer could truly see how Nature had selected for survival and dominance.
My reverie was interrupted by Mr. Thorvaldsen, grunting as he pushed his laden dolly through the dark aisles of the museum. A large crate was perched on the hand truck; markings indicated it had come from America. Mr. Thorvaldsen had truly been a find; hired as a custodian, I learned enough about him to realize he could be the key to developing my collection beyond the rather heterogeneous confines of Norway. I’d persuaded the doltish brute he was furthering the cause of science, and had him reclassified as my assistant, to travel the world in search of exotic items for the ever-growing collection.
I had, embarrassingly enough, been forced to relocate my specimens outside of my work area. Although there was vast storage area beneath the main floor, it was typically used for exhibits temporarily removed from display or being prepared for future demonstration. I relocated many of those with my peers, but even so found myself running short of space. Finally, in desperation, I closed off a single room that had been occasionally used for private functions, pronounced it in need of renovation, and kept it locked, its contents shielded from view. Other than myself, the collection has only been viewed by certain of my colleagues who’ve grown to appreciate the extent of my ability to categorize minutiae. And, of course, Mr. Thorvaldsen.
“Another successful trip overseas. I venture, Jan?” I asked the big man as he lowered his load to the floor with a thump, then reached for a handkerchief and mopped his brow, huffing and puffing.
“Yah, sure, Doctor,” he finally wheezed out. “I catch this one in a place called Nevada. I never seen anything like it; put up a pretty good fight, but here you go.” And with that, he produced a crowbar and jimmied the side of the crate open, and the contents spilled out.
The young woman within was trussed and gagged. She seemed to be attired as a large bird, silvery plumage elevated from her head and posterior, glittering shoes to match. At the same time, her coverings were rather minimal, barely concealing her breasts and crotch. She glared up at me; I looked down, surely wearing an expression of puzzlement. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one like her, either, Jan,” I agreed. “Please help me transport her to my studio, so I can proceed, there’s a good fellow.”
The Birdwoman kicked a bit, but Mr. Thorvaldsen had little trouble wrapping up her feet, and I took her by the shoulders as we carried her through the unmarked door to my work area. Everything was already laid out—carefully honed scalpels, spools of thread, a collection of snap-together plastic rods, which when assembled loosely resemble the human frame. I’d laid in a new supply of the chemicals I use for drying pelts; eyeing the Birdwoman, I figured her for a two day job. Three, tops.
When her gag was removed, a torrent of words emerged. My English is respectable; she was demanding to know where she was, why she had been brought her. She wanted to talk to a policeman right away. These peculiar clothes, I asked her; you were attending a masquerade? No, she told me, she was a "showgirl”; she had been displaying herself, dressed in what passed in Nevada as finery, for the entertainment of paying guests. Fascinating; I’d not previously collected one of those, and I nodded to Mr. Thorvaldsen, who removed the peculiarly metallic shoes before hanging the young woman upside down from the clamps that descend from the preparation area. As he began the task of removing her garments, I explained my use for her.
“My dear Miss—” Her name was B., she blurted out from her upside-down position, so I started anew. “My dear Miss B., I am______” I’ve learned that few outside my particular scientific circle are familiar with my work, so I went on to explain I was a founding member of the International Society of Modern Anthropological Study, and a world-renowned curator of post-H. sapiens exhibits. On a trip to sub-Saharan Africa a dozen years before, I’d contracted a raging jungle fever, and hovered near death for many nights. The infection cleared almost miraculously, and at the same time left me with a sudden, shining vision of what my life’s work was to be.
By this time, Mr. Thorvaldsen had fully disrobed my subject; it had, in fact, been difficult to describe my current pursuits over her protests and screams. That was all right; I always welcome the opportunity to show my exhibits to the public. Although Miss B. was quite a large specimen—180 cm, with well toned, firm muscles—she was surely no match for the hulking Mr. Thorvaldsen, who had once been described by a judge as a “gorilla in human form”. After retying her hands and feet, he lowered her from the clamps and cuddled her in his arms like a baby, trudging behind me as I unlocked the door to the collection room and threw the lights.
It always gave me a peculiar thrill to again set eyes on them. Now numbering nearly one hundred, the naked female forms stretched in rows across the room, each with her own lighting and plaque, each posed as if performing actions common to her type. The peasant woman from South America appeared to be hanging a load of laundry, a single fragment of clothesline before her. Her brown skin, wide hips and pendulous breasts contrasted sharply with the thin-bodied, pale blonde, one from my earlier collection, who was inserting a coin plucked from a purse in a parking meter, on her way to shop. The Asian teenager rushed to school, her body frozen in mid-stride, books pressed against her chest, spectacles framing the shining glass eyes. A plump, dark haired woman stood at a blackboard, eternally gesturing behind her as she delivered a lesson to a phantom class of schoolchildren.
Other than the great clock ticking overhead, the only other sound in the room was the gasps of Miss B. behind me, still in the arms of Mr. Thorvaldsen. Finally, she asked if they were all statues. I turned to face her, and smiled.
“That would be cheating, Miss B.” I informed her. “These were all taken from their native environs, much as lesser creatures are plucked from their habitats by my more timid colleagues. What you see are genuine women, from all over the world, all walks of life, presented as they had been behaving at the moment of their capture.” Mr. Thorvaldsen’s face creased in a broad smile; he would, I reflected, have to tell me exactly what Miss B. had been doing in that demented costume.
Oh…my…she said; I believe she was weeping. It would probably not be difficult, I reflected as I examined her inert form, to “hide” her. Younger than my typical specimens, her derma could be removed in large swatches. On the other hand, she was certainly larger, vertically speaking, than most of my exhibits, and I may need to custom-design a framework for her. I nodded to Mr. Thorvaldsen, and we exited the display area and returned to my work station.
Again fastened to the clamps, the naked young woman swayed and shook violently; her screams had become wrenching sobs. I positioned a container beneath her, selected a Number 6 scalpel, and set to work. Often, as I begin this process, my subjects demand to know why they must remain conscious. It all comes back to my vision in Africa. It is so easy to approach the science of taxonomy impassively, as coldly as the long dead samples behind glass in the exhibit. But this is the study of life in its many forms, and I prefer to assign that categorization based on the traits I observe in vivi.
The day of my recovery, and those that followed, remain vivid in my memory. A certain Dr. Mkebele, an occasional correspondent of mine, had come to my bedside from the Central African Republic. He had made a career’s study of the musculo-skeletal growth pattern of the human female, and during his recovery was keen to share with me the comparative sketchings he’d produced from cadavers. In my recovery, I was able to see in a new light the step-by-step development as portrayed in the drawings of dissected women, and their importance to our field.
As it happened, Mkebele had also been the personal physician of the dictator Bokassa, and had shared in the deposed Emperor’s strange gustatory habits. And so, when I was sufficiently fit to depart Hospital, I accompanied my friend back to his homeland, where he was prepared to demonstrate for me both his craft and his acquired taste. Through his station, he was able to direct that a young woman be brought to his laboratory. She was sacrificed, so that Mkebele was able to make evident to my newly eager eyes the growth in the arthroskeletal regions as was shown in his sketches. Then, his kitchen staff prepared one such joint from the young woman’s body for our evening repast. It was an extraordinary sharing of cultures and research, and it left me determined to make a similar impact on my own chosen field.
And so, I set my attention to Miss B. With Mr. Thorvaldsen steadying her, I drew a long incision along her backbone from buttocks to scapulae; blood trailed down her neck and collected in her hair before trickling, a drop at a time, into the container. She shrieked and tried to buck, but Mr. Thorvaldsen held her firmly; two more cuts, above the buttocks, and the skin peeled away, exposing pink, spongy meat beneath.
Mr. Thorvaldsen was watching my work with some interest; perhaps, even with approval. As I’ve noted, his history was checkered. After a woman with whom he’d been living as common-law husband and wife disappeared, portions of her body surfaced in various locations in the slums of Oslo. A good attorney and our comparatively progressive legal system afforded Mr. Thorvaldsen the opportunity to plead guilty to a relatively minor charge. It was fortuitous, I sometimes reflected, that he’d learned a trade that I could put to good use. Miss B. would later be his. But for now, I had work to do.
I knew, from experience, that Miss B. would gradually become weaker from blood loss; she was still trying to fight the blades as they sunk an inch deep into her body, scoring her skin for removal. I had been right about her firm body tone; her skin came off easily, and I pinned each section to a large board and attached a note describing its anatomical location. The semi-globes of her breasts yielded inverted cups, a swipe of the blade separating nipples from ducts. Her pubic region, the natural hair growth of which she’d recently removed, came off in a single flap once the opening to the vaginal canal was cut through. Each expanse of skin, when stripped away, revealed throbbing muscle, bluish veins, patches of fat where the female human often deposits such added shading.
Hiding a hundred woman had made me deft, and within an hour Miss B. was denuded of skin but for her head, hands and feet. Those extremities can be time consuming, and are removed at the end of the process for the sake of ease. Though she had ceased fighting, or in fact all movement, she continued to breathe, each gasp for air producing a ripple effect on the exposed musculature, the normally hidden flesh wavering in brick red and translucent ivory. I sighed and, complimenting Miss B. on the quality of her physique, I gripped her blood-matted hair, pulled on it and placed the edge of a surgeon’s saw against her neck. A few moments later, I placed her head upon my work table.
My other lessons from Bangui were also well learned. The exploits which had earned Mr. Thorvaldsen seven years in the penitentiary were put to good use; allowed to remove Miss B’s remains from the premises, he subsequently presented me with several packages of boned meat, which I prepared in a stew with garden vegetables. The nourishment provided a welcome respite to the tedious labor of reassembling the pelt of Miss B. over a custom framework. Based on a photograph I’d found on the Internet, she would appear to be gaily prancing, one long, limber leg lifted with knee bent, smiling sunnily at an imaginary audience. In a facsimile of her natural habitat, accompanied with a plaque detailing traits characteristic to such behavior. The feathered headdress and girdle would be on display nearby. I do hope none of my colleagues are allergic.