Amberville (7 page)

His companions were excited by his courage. They turned toward me with a kind of impatient energy that scared me.

“He’s going to give us the Ruby,” the polar bear explained.

“Otherwise he’s toast,” the elephant chimed in.

“But…I don’t have—” said Eric, and got yet another pig-kick in the stomach.

That was enough for me.

I rushed up toward the three perpetrators with my sights on the pig, and managed to push against him so hard that he stumbled over Eric and fell down to the ground. Eric took the opportunity to pull himself up on his knees at the same time as Samuel got back up on his hooves faster than I’d thought possible. With a howl he threw himself over me.

After that my memory of the fight is more diffuse.

I knew for sure that Eric got away.

I’m unsure whether that happened immediately after the pig tackled me or somewhat later, but I have the feeling that Eric got moving as soon as he had the chance.

The polar bear, the elephant, and the pig belted me green and blue. They didn’t stop before we heard the bells ringing us in. I was a threadbare teddy bear who with great effort dragged myself up the slope from the storage sheds back to the school.

As was her habit, Mother came and picked us up right after lunch. She greeted the preschool staff. She asked if we’d been good. She asked if we’d had a good day.

Then we left.

Without looking at us she directed her steps toward the market hall in Amberville. It was a few blocks from the school, and we followed in her wake. The market hall was a magical oasis of scents and colors, a temple of food
filled with loud-voiced hawkers and choosy customers. For several hours we wandered around in there, until we had almost forgotten the drama at the schoolyard.

It wasn’t until that evening that we had a chance to talk about what had happened. When Father turned off the lamp in our room and we heard him go down the stairs toward the living room, Eric whispered his thanks for the help.

“If Samuel played marbles a little better he wouldn’t be so angry all the time,” said Eric.

“He was angry,” I said in confirmation and felt how my body ached.

“It serves him right,” said Eric.

“What?”

Then Eric turned on the lamp above his bed, and in the light he held out the glittering marble: the Ruby.

“I nabbed it from that fat pig a long time ago. It serves him right.”

I looked at Eric and saw the expression on his face for a fraction of a second. Then he turned out the light.

It was that evening the abyss between us opened.

That evening defined us as each other’s opposite.

The cubs at the school had almost beaten me to death, for good reason. My twin brother was a thief.

My twin was the opposite of a good bear.

T
hey usually met at Zum Franziskaner on North Avenue, a lunch restaurant on the lemon-yellow avenue for those who would rather see than be seen. For many years Rhinoceros Edda had had the goal of seeing Eric at least once a week. They had an uncomplicated relationship, mother and cub, in contrast to Eric’s more contentious connection to his father. His mother dismissed his destructive teenage years at Casino Monokowski as a healthy and necessary rebellion; his father had been less understanding. And even if at first Eric loved his mother for her broad-mindedness and despised his father for his narrow-mindedness, over the years he’d acquired a more nuanced picture of the situation.

“You look tired,” remarked Edda. “Are you sleeping properly?”

Eric Bear said that he was sleeping properly. In addition he promised that he would stay inside during the Afternoon Rain, and if he did somehow get wet he would change into dry socks. He was forty-eight years old. His wife was living under a death threat. But in his mama’s eyes a good night’s sleep and clean underwear were the most important
things. Perhaps that was the way you should live your life?

Sure, he said, he’d gone to see Teddy since they last met.

There was something liberating in sometimes being treated like a child.

As lunch progressed, Eric asked about the Cub List. He’d heard the story so many times that he practically knew it by heart; it was one of the few truly exciting routines there was to tell about in the otherwise ordinary, bureaucratic ministry. And Mother told it exactly as he remembered.

The Cub List was drawn up based on the applications that were submitted and registered. All incoming letters to the department were entered into a journal, and the order of priority followed the same chronology. A test of the applicants’ suitability was always carried out; this was a necessary routine which sometimes meant that the process was delayed. Only in exceptional cases was it necessary to dig deeply into the animals’ past. Most of those who applied for cubs had sense enough to see for themselves what the authorities demanded. A final Cub List was drawn up each month, where the names of the fortunate, but not yet notified, future parents were noted.

None of this was particularly startling, but then came the part of the story that, to the young Eric, was exciting.

When the list was ready, it was to be sent to the Deliverymen, the uniformed heroes who drove the green pickups. Now, the physical transport operation was not run from the Environmental Ministry’s head office on Avenue Gabriel, either. Therefore it was a question of how the list should be sent to the shipping agent. The list was considered a sensitive document, and there was risk of manipulation. Despite everything, every year the ministry rejected applicants, and it was understandable if this led to frustration. The risk could not be taken that one of those rejected might get hold of the Cub List and write their own name there,
and therefore it seemed dangerous to simply put it in the mailbox.

Finally someone came up with the idea of the Order Room. The Cub List left the office on Rue de Cadix with an internal courier, who went through an underground tunnel to the headquarters on Avenue Gabriel. The courier took the elevator up to the ninth floor and left the list in a sealed envelope on the table in a room to which there were only two keys.

The Order Room.

After office hours that same evening—always the sixteenth of the month—the Deliverymen came. They unlocked the door with the other key, picked up the list and thereby all risks had been minimized.

“But are there only two keys?”

“Well,” answered his mother, “perhaps there’s one more.”

And the very young Eric understood that it was his mother who had the third and final key, which of course caused him to look through her key rings and finally find it. He made an impression in modeling clay and, along with Teddy, made a plaster key that they played with for a week or two. A not entirely scrupulous locksmith helped Eric make a real key a few years later—Eric had an idea about how he might use it in order to pay a gambling debt, which thank heavens he never put into effect.

Eric and Teddy had asked thousands of questions about the Cub List and the Order Room when they were smaller, questions which to a large extent had to do with the question all animals asked themselves at some point in their lives. Why was it just me who grew up with my parents? Was it by chance, or was there some intention? And the same questions appeared in the mind of the adult bear while he listened to his mother as she told the story again.

Was it really no more than that? An official who placed a list in a locked room, someone else who picked it up?

When they’d each had a cup of coffee and were getting up to leave, Eric finally asked the question that had been his whole reason for this lunch:

“And a corresponding Death List?” he said. “Does it exist?”

“There has never been a Death List,” sighed Edda. “But I understand that animals want to believe in it. That death should only be by chance feels somehow…unworthy.”

After Eric Bear said
goodbye to his mother, he went straight home to Emma. She never stayed in the studio very long on Fridays; she was concerned about making her way home before the lines bottled up the avenues before the weekend. Eric found her in the living room, where she was absorbed in one of the many novels she read, the titles of which he didn’t even know.

“I’ve got to go to Teddy’s,” he said without sitting down. “I have to stay a few days, perhaps a whole week.”

The words just came; the lie wasn’t something he’d planned.

“A week?”

He felt false and treacherous, but nonetheless continued without a quiver in his voice. “I don’t know if it’s some kind of breakthrough or if it’s just routine. They phoned this afternoon and said that it was important that I be there.”

“Then it must be important,” Emma confirmed amiably.

“I’ll pack a suitcase with a change of clothes and toiletries. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything more.”

“Are you leaving right now?”

He cast a shy glance toward her and shrugged his shoulders.

“I suppose it can wait until tomorrow,” he said.

“No, no. If they’ve said it’s important that you should come, then of course you should take off.”

Eric phoned the office before he left the house. It was right after the wind stopped blowing during the Afternoon Weather, but Wolle and Wolle almost never left the office before midnight. Eric told them the same story, that he had to spend the coming week with his twin brother, Teddy, and that therefore he couldn’t come in other than for exceptional reasons. There was a meeting on Wednesday afternoon he was thinking of, and one on Thursday morning, but more than that he couldn’t promise. Wolle and Wolle promised to cover for him. And thus Eric had freed himself from his marital as well as his professional duties. He departed toward Yok and Yiala’s Arch; it was time to find the Death List, even if it didn’t exist.

S
nake Marek knocked on the door to Sam’s apartment at grass-green Yiala’s Arch just as the breeze started blowing and the Evening Weather began. The friends didn’t make an event of the fact that he came. Tom-Tom Crow was standing in the kitchen, shaking an enormous cocktail shaker; Sam and Eric were out on the balcony, talking. The crow let the snake in, and after a guarded nod, Snake wriggled out through the balcony door. He made his way up onto a rusty table that had presumably been on the balcony when Sam moved in and wheedled his way into the conversation. When Tom-Tom joined the friends after a little while, Sam cleared his throat solemnly.

“It’s time to make a toast,” he said as the crow poured cocktails, “to a reunion. And to success, of course. And to time, which hasn’t made us uglier or older, simply wiser and”—Sam winked at Snake—“more cunning.”

And with his tinkling-bell giggle Sam raised his glass. The others did the same, and the cool alcohol warmed their frozen souls. As always, the evening was lovelier than it was warm.

“I’m extremely grateful,” said Eric, “that you’re willing to help. And I was thinking that we might devote the evening to trying to figure out how we should go about our task. You know what it’s about. The dove believes he’s on the Death List, and he wants us to remove his name. An impossible task, it might seem. But we’ve done the impossible before. So just let it flow. No suggestion is wrong, no associations too far-fetched…”

Sam giggled again.

“…except the indecent,” added Eric.

Everyone laughed, Snake with a contemptuous sneer.

“But, what the hell,” said Tom-Tom, stealing a glance at Sam as the laughter subsided, “is there really a Death List?”

“Darling, you’re so clever,” said Sam shrewdly. “Or what, Marek? The crow is sharp!”

Snake’s head swayed back and forth, indicating his ambivalence. He was much too gloomy to let himself be provoked. He had been forced to leave the ministry, but no one could force him to be happy about being at Yiala’s Arch.

But before anyone had time to comment on the Death List’s existence or lack thereof, the sound of a broken bottle was heard in the Dumpster down in the courtyard. Up on the balcony all four of them felt ashamed. Here they stood like rank amateurs, discussing secrets so that everyone could hear. Quietly they finished their glasses, went inside, and sat down around the deplorably moldy kitchen table.

“What do you say?” said Eric to Snake as Tom-Tom set vodka, juice, and ice out on the table. “Is there a Death List?”

“Rumors about the Death List have always flourished,” replied Snake. “You can find references to a Death List in poetic refrains written hundreds of years ago. It has been maintained that the list is depicted on each of the three frescoes of the Preachers on the ceiling of Sagrada Bastante, but
in actual size so that it is impossible to see it from the floor. It is said that the Twenty-Years War was really about control of the list. It is maintained that during the entire Prohibition period at the beginning of the century not a single animal was picked up. And it is maintained that during the sixties, the lists were made in the form of concealed messages on vinyl records by well-known artists. If you played the records backwards, the names on the current list were heard.”

“But how the hell can that be true?” said Tom-Tom.

“That doesn’t matter,” Snake hissed with irritation. “The essential point is, it’s not by chance. A myth can only survive for so long for two reasons. Either because those who are in control for some reason want the myth to survive. Or because…”

“Why, why?” repeated Sam with ominous exaggeration.

“Because it’s true,” said Eric.

“Yes, damn it. I’ve always thought it existed,” said Tom-Tom, looking defiantly at Sam, who shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention toward the bottle of vodka. “There’s nothing strange about a Death List, is there? Would the Chauffeurs drive around at night and pick us up at random? But of course it’s not random. You can almost always tell who’s on their way. It’s not the case that the Chauffeurs pick up some wretch who’s young or healthy or…you know…someone who’s good…”

“That’s happened, too,” Sam interjected.

“You know what I mean,” said Tom-Tom. “It’s less damn strange that the Chauffeurs have a list to go by than that they should drive around at random.”

“And who do you think makes that list, my friend?” asked Sam amiably. “The creator of all things, Magnus?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t believe in Magnus. Do you think I’m completely frigging stupid, or what?”

Wise animals had done Sam more ill than stupid ones. He felt at ease with Tom-Tom Crow.

“It is sometimes said,” said Sam. He looked at Snake Marek. “What do you say, old animal, that because the Cub List is drawn up by the Environmental Ministry, it’s not impossible that there is some shady section of the Environmental Ministry that makes the Death List, too?”

“Ask Eric,” hissed Marek. “Perhaps it’s his mother who personally draws up the Death List. At least she’s dictatorial enough. The Environmental Ministry deals with so many strange things that I can’t even count them all. No one can. But one thing I can say, and that is that we at Culture would never use government appropriations to purchase artworks for our conference rooms in the way that—”

“No Death List is made at the Environmental Ministry, that I can guarantee,” interrupted Eric.

He’d forgotten how much Snake talked, and how hard it was to get him to stop.

“I know you’re thinking that the Environmental Ministry takes care of transports, and thereby has ultimate responsibility for the Chauffeurs,” he continued. “But that takes place through a type of contract. Certain logistical matters are controlled from the ministry, but beyond that…nothing.”

Conversation ceased and a few fresh bottles of vodka were taken out while everyone thought about the Chauffeurs. It was almost impossible to mention these messengers of death without darkening everyone’s mood. No animals were so feared as the Chauffeurs. Even if few had seen them, all were aware that they drove the red pickup through the town at night, in pursuit of their victims. They did what they had to do, and picked up those animals whose lives were over. But where were the animals taken, and what happened to them? Was there a heaven, a life after this one? Every time you saw a red pickup or thought about the Chauffeurs, your faith was tested. Was it strong enough to chase away your fears?

The stuffed animals sipped the vodka in silence. The alcohol had its effect, and the conversation became less structured. For another half hour or so they succeeded in keeping on the subject. Snake talked, the others listened. He attacked the problem from a series of different points of view and after considerable anguish came to the conclusion that it was more probable that the Death List existed, in some form, than that it did not.

The weather was approaching midnight. Sam left his guests in the kitchen and went into the bathroom where, in one of the hollow feet of the bathtub, he stored the green tablets he usually took along with alcohol, and which provided a dreamless sleep. When he returned, Eric and Tom-Tom were no longer responsible for what they were saying.

“Death takes us all,” exclaimed Eric gloomily.

“Lanceheim LOSERS,” Tom-Tom cried out. “They ought to be called Lanceheim LOSERS and not Lasers.”

He was talking about the district cricket team. No one paid him any attention.

“You were always a sports nut, sweetheart,” said Sam sentimentally. “You always liked sports. I remember one time…one time…no…no…I don’t remember.”

Tom-Tom broke out in violent laughter.

“There’s no way out,” Eric continued on his introverted track. “Sooner or later it ends. That’s all we know.”

“And can you turn sooner into later, that is the question,” Snake interjected.

“A question many of my customers would gladly have an answer to,” Sam smiled hazily.

“You fucking creep,” snapped Snake.

“Listen up now,” said Tom-Tom threateningly. “You can be damn creepy yourself.”

Sam looked gratefully at the crow.

“Death,” said Eric, “is perhaps the start of the next life?”

“There’s a story,” said Snake, “of how a name was once removed from the Death List. That must be the one Dove’s heard.”

“I don’t know what story you’re thinking of,” said the bear, who if he’d been more sober would have noticed that Snake Marek—in contrast to the others—didn’t seem especially drunk.

“The one about Prodeacon…what was his name…Prodeacon Poodle?”

“I seem to think that I’ve heard it,” said Sam.

“I’ve never heard it,” said Eric firmly.

“If it’s something frigging dirty, I don’t want to hear it,” said Tom-Tom, who feared it was time to tell dirty stories. The crow had always felt uncomfortable where dirty stories were concerned.

“Prodeacon Trew Poodle lived just under one hundred years ago—he was prodeacon down here in Yok, and the story is about his goodness,” said Snake. “The three prodeacons in Amberville, Tourquai, and Lanceheim saw Trew as their spiritual leader, despite the fact that he was considerably younger and not at all as experienced as they. One night Trew called the other prodeacons to him and told them the unbelievable: all four of them were on the Death List. In just a week they would be picked up by the red wagons that were used at that time.”

“I’ve heard this story,” mumbled Sam.

“Prodeacon Trew could not let this happen,” Snake continued relentlessly.

This was Snake’s best routine, a long, morally instructive story; he’d used the story about Prodeacon Trew Poodle as a starting point in several novels over the years; it could symbolize just about anything.

“With a frenzy that astonished his three colleagues,” said Snake, “the prodeacon fell on his knees before the altar and started to pray. He prayed for their lives, he prayed to
Magnus to spare them, he implored Him to remove them from the list.”

“Now I know,” said Sam. “Now I remember this.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Tom-Tom hesitantly. “So it’s Magnus who writes the list?”

“Prodeacon Poodle prays and prays,” Snake continued without letting himself be distracted, “while the prodeacons from Tourquai, Lanceheim, and Amberville hurry back to their respective parishes and devote themselves to more practical details. Who should succeed them, who should inherit their possessions, who should write their obituaries.”

“Vanity,” interjected Eric, and added, mostly to himself: “Not the least bit important.”

“However that might be,” snorted Snake, “Prodeacon Poodle prays for a week at a time while the others are busy with worldly things, and the following Sunday they meet again in Sagrada Bastante. And while they are standing there, discussing practicalities, the doors of the church open and in come the Coachmen.”

“The Coachmen?” wondered Tom-Tom.

“The Chauffeurs of that time, sweetheart,” explained Sam.

“The Coachmen pick up the prodeacon from Amberville, the prodeacon from Lanceheim and the prodeacon from Tourquai,” continued Snake.

“And the point of the story is that Magnus doesn’t hear prayers?” said Eric with surprise.

“Prodeacon Trew Poodle was also on the list,” said Snake. “That was why he was praying for the others’ lives, so that all the city’s four prodeacons wouldn’t disappear at the same time. But thanks to his unselfish prayer, he was the one whose name was removed.”

“What the hell, couldn’t he save the others?” asked Tom-Tom.

“It is told,” said Snake, “that at that time only one animal could be removed from the list every fifth year.”

“At that time?”

Snake Marek would have shrugged his shoulders if he’d had any.

“It’s a morally instructive story, not historical truth.”

Snake fell silent and sipped his vodka without drinking it.

“Let’s hope that this is the fifth year, darling,” whispered Sam to Eric.

Sam finally went and
lay down. Tom-Tom moved over to the couch, taking with him a giant bag of cheese doodles.

Eric remained at the kitchen table, gloomily collapsed with a mug of vodka in his paws and with his thoughts far back in time. The memory of the years at Casino Monokowski were usually pleasant, but now the usual feeling refused to make an appearance. Instead of being happy at seeing his old companions again, he felt downhearted.

“I think the crow is right,” hissed Snake in his ear.

Eric winced. Snake was standing on the kitchen counter, right behind him.

“The Chauffeurs don’t drive around at random,” Snake continued. “It’s completely obvious, of course, but it takes a stupid crow to put it into words. Our best possibility to get on the trail of the list is through the Chauffeurs.”

Eric got up from the kitchen table, realized that he could hardly stand straight, and infinitely slowly and carefully he went over to the balcony door. Cold air, he thought, was what he needed in order to think clearly. Snake followed behind. Out on the balcony Eric noted that the breeze had not yet died down. He had thought that dawn was quite near. The chill worked its way into his fur and there was a faint odor of bacon in the air.

“There’s something to that,” said Eric after taking a few deep breaths. “We have to find the Chauffeurs. If there’s a list, someone must deliver it to them.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Snake.

“That’s why I asked you to come along,” said Eric. “To think. How do we go about this?”

“There are not an infinite number of ways to go about this.”

“I have a tougher nut to crack,” Eric added. “A problem worthy of you, I believe.”

They stood a while in the moonlight, looking into the lighted but deplorable apartments on the opposite side of the courtyard. Neither of them had mentioned a word about the letter Eric had written in his mother’s name and which had forced Snake to Yiala’s Arch.

“Let’s hear it,” said Snake without enthusiasm.

“Let us say,” said Eric, “that there was not only a reward offered if we succeed. Let us say that there is a punishment as well if we don’t succeed.”

Eric fell silent. Snake said nothing; the hypothesis spoke for itself.