Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Vladamir P. Štefanec
to its former glory. The museum collection, the richest in the
world, has also undergone renovation. The contents of the
collection were for the most part the gifts of French researchers
and explorers of the last two centuries. The most famous
specimens are a unicorn, a mammoth, two rhinoceroses and
the skeleton of a whale.
My attention was attracted above all by the mention of the unicorn,
that ancient symbol of power and purity, which in my own mythology
occupied a special and honored place. At first the whole thing seemed
highly improbable, and I suspected it had to do with a mammal of the
same name that belonged in the whale species and whose forehead was
adorned with a long, spiral horn. But the scruples that my reason produced
also allowed in a small glimmer of enthusiasm, which grew to the
extent that I soon accepted the alluring possibility that the specimen in
the museum was none other that of the mythical horned horse.
After this, of course, a whole debate unfolded around the insignificant
notice: why would the name of the unicorn, if it was only a specimen
from the still-living species of the whale, be written first in the series
before the long extinct mammoth and the colossal rhinoceros, and not in
the penultimate place, before the whale skeleton, where it should fall according
to its importance? There needn’t be any special reason for it, and
yet, on the other hand, I suspected that for such a specimen to raise so
much dust it would have to be a new find, presented for the first time at
the opening of the renovated museum in order to arouse the interest of
the public. On the other hand, who really cared about unicorns? I did, but
there probably weren’t many of us around anymore.
———
I had been thinking of the unicorn from the first instant that I had
stepped from the gray streets of the town of Sena toward the Museum of
Natural History in Paris, and yet since I arrived I had not dared to set foot
near the place. I had delayed the visit as long as I possibly could. I had
saved the visit as one saved dessert, as the final sweet moment, and as the
compensation for all the unpleasantness and disappointments I had been
served in Paris. Let it be the period at the end of my Parisian sentence, the
striking of the final hour of my stay there, the long postponement of expectation
extended beyond all rational borders. Yet doubts still gnawed
at me. Even when I finally appeared before the doors of the Museum, my
steps came to a dead halt, not once but many times, in the face of a paralyzing
wave of uncertainty. All the same, I had finally managed to reach
my goal. Actually, not the goal itself, but somewhere in the near vicinity: a
very pleasant little cafe upon which I had quite luckily stumbled as it offered
me both shelter and a much-needed restorative tonic.
There I ruminated on what I might perceive through the glass of the
magnificent structure of the museum. I wondered if it might be better to
leave a trump card as powerful as the unicorn face down, to save it as one
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