Tourquai (23 page)

7.3

C
asino Biscaya in northwest Tourquai.

At the blackjack tables stands a dealer with wings crossed in front of his chest, waiting for the bouncers to do their job.

“Counting can’t be prohibited,” the young player at the table says. “Keeping track of the cards can’t be prohibited. This is a game of skill. It’s not roulette. You can’t accuse me of anything.”

The young animal does not understand that the owner of the casino can do whatever he wants. No evidence is required. Anyone who wins a suspiciously large amount during the evening is the object of extra attention. And if the player in question keeps winning, he gets thrown out. It’s no more complicated than that. But the naïve mouse doesn’t realize that.

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

In the mouse’s jacket sleeve are four aces of spades. Philip Mouse is twenty-five years younger than when he sits in the kitchen at Jasmine Squirrel’s and sees her taken away by the police; he is naïve, but not so naïve that he doesn’t understand that if the bouncer discovers the extra cards, it will no longer be a case of simply being thrown out. Philip stands at the center of the attention; the players around the table observe him tensely. It is impossible to get rid of the aces right now. It is impossible to explain that he needs the money he’s bet, and that he’s not going to use it for himself.

Casino Biscaya is not one of the larger gambling establishments. At Biscaya, drinking is just as important as betting, and the drinking is attended to with the same passion and consideration. Mouse has chosen this casino because he thought it would be easier to cheat at a place like this. It’s dark in the room. In the background is the gurgle of elevator-music arrangements of classics by the old masters. At the bar a couple of guests are arguing about who has made the all-time most free laps on the Lanceheim Lasers, and around Philip Mouse there is a vacuum. The dark, varnished wood on the edges of the blackjack tables is sticky with old liquor.

“I haven’t done anything,” he repeats. “And I don’t intend to leave. No farther than to the bar. You misunderstood.”

But the dealer is already tired of the player, and finally the bouncer shows up. He’s a big ape, as he should be, an orangutan with wild reddish hair sticking out in all directions. Without thinking, Philip raises his paw from the sticky table and puts it around his jacket sleeve. It is a guilt-laden gesture, and many of the surrounding players understand immediately what is about to happen.

The orangutan stops and stares. Not at Philip but at his jacket sleeve.

“Stand completely still,” says the ape. “Completely, completely still.”

Philip stands still while the orangutan slowly approaches.

When a yard or even less remains, something unexpected happens. Out of the clump of animals that has formed around Philip Mouse a squirrel separates herself. She is beautiful in a simple way and radiates a self-assurance that takes him by surprise. She places her paw behind his neck, draws his head next to hers, and kisses him right in front of all the stuffed animals.

“Darling,” she says. “We’re leaving now.”

And naturally he follows her, so close that he can hear her whisper to the orangutan, “He’s with me.”

Philip Mouse had Jasmine
Squirrel to thank for his life. Neither more nor less. They went home to her place that night so many years ago, and he realized in the dawn that he would never get a better answer to the question of “Why?” than what she had already given him.

He had looked so defenseless as he stood waiting to be unmasked. She had never experienced a stuffed animal so wide open to attack, so unaware of how he could fend off life.

That was her explanation. The words she used: fend off life.

That was something she herself was occupied with, day and night.

Back then Jasmine Squirrel lived in a two-room apartment: from the sidewalk you went down a short stairway to the outside door, and facing the courtyard you could open double doors onto a little garden. It was not unusual that basements were turned into apartments in the most densely built-up areas in south Lanceheim.

Jasmine Squirrel had so many pieces of furniture and colorful rugs and curtains and pillows that there was hardly room to move through the two rooms, but Philip was prepared to exchange his bachelor pad in a moment. He had celebrated his twentieth birthday with a big party a week earlier, and had still not cleaned up. Maybe that was why he didn’t go home after that first night; maybe it was due to something else altogether.

Not once during all the years he had known Jasmine Squirrel had he dared ask her how old she was. But she was much older than him, especially then, at Casino Biscaya. He worshipped her from the very first moment. She was no teacher, however; she had no such ambitions. She didn’t share her experiences, she didn’t tell him about life; he had to draw his own conclusions.

And when he did, she shrugged her shoulders.

The same thing at night. She was no adolescent fantasy, not an older, experienced lover who instructed young adepts. She concentrated on herself and her own enjoyment, and Philip often felt expendable. Yet there was an intensity in her manner, a force in her pleasure that he would never experience with anyone else.

Many times he wondered whether it was the lack of demands she offered by being so strong, so willful and self-sufficient. She did not need him during the day or at night, thus freeing him from responsibility. In his twenties this was a major liberation. Perhaps for the first time in his life he experienced that there were no expectations, no one critically observing his way of being or thinking.

Is this what it’s like to be an adult? he sometimes wondered at night.

And later, many years later, when he was an adult, he realized that it had never been about anything other than Jasmine Squirrel.

She became his first great love, from that first night in her two-room apartment.

After a few months she threw him out. It was a long time, for Jasmine Squirrel. Philip had not had any expectations; he was neither surprised nor bitter. He stuffed the few things he had smuggled into her apartment into a plastic bag and returned home to his own loathsome studio.

She gave him no reasons.

With a father who
abandoned the family early on and a mother who was an alcoholic, Philip Mouse was deprived of his final sense of security in his teens when his big brother was sent to King’s Cross after a failed postal robbery.

It was an old aunt who needed the money he tried to get through trickery at Casino Biscaya, an operation on a nasty tear she couldn’t afford, and the young Philip had tried to help out. But there had been desperation in the act, as if the need to practice charity toward his aunt was a subconscious attempt to compensate for the whole family’s dysfunctional history.

Even after Jasmine threw him out, his love still remained. During the year that followed, Philip Mouse made a courageous but clumsy attempt to find his way back to the squirrel’s heart. It was doomed to fail. She was never cruel to him, she might even spend the occasional night with him, but she made it clear that it was no more than that.

He was so young.

When Philip Mouse started at the Police Academy, he realized it had to do with his upbringing, but he didn’t know whether the Academy was a protest or a confirmation. He didn’t care. Several years had passed since the night at Casino Biscaya, and his life was going nowhere. He was desperate, and the Police Academy seemed to provide a certain outlet for the fury he kept stored up inside himself.

Six months into training, he dropped out and decided to start working as a private detective instead. He pretended it had something to do with attracting females. Despite repeated attempts with Jasmine, he got nowhere. So he decided to forget her. He courted a number of young stuffed animals and was involved with several others. That was why he could state with such certainty that “private detective” had higher standing than “police officer,” at least in the eyes of females. At one of his regular haunts he met a young, beautiful shrew with the longest eyelashes he had ever seen. She summarized the general perception.

“It’s the uniform or the mystique,” she said. “And I prefer the mystique.”

Philip Mouse was not cut out to be a police officer. He didn’t share the reverence for rules and hierarchies, he wasn’t interested in power. The females were an excuse.

Along with his love relationships, Philip Mouse was slowly building a life for himself. It happened without his realizing it. He had luck with his assignments, soon he could provide references, and he could barely keep up with his intensive social life.

The years passed, and one day there were routines, and friends, and Daisy Hippopotamus. Daisy kept him on a short leash, and Philip came to feel a sense of responsibility for her, although it more likely appeared to be the other way around.

What built his reputation as a private detective was his ability to show discretion—to the border of disinterest—along with his well-developed contacts within the police. The insurance companies in Mollisan Town became repeat customers and were the main reason that, in time, Philip was able to move the office to baby blue Knackstrasse up in Lanceheim. He also was able to abandon his stuffy studio and buy a condo on Fischergrube, no more than ten minutes from the new office. The moving-in party coincided with his thirtieth birthday, and he could not refrain from inviting Jasmine Squirrel to the festivities. He hadn’t seen her in over four years but still had a hard time not thinking about her.

When she showed up, late at night after most of the other guests had already gone home, the sudden reunion was so emotional that the mouse was forced to crouch down for a moment. It was not joy he felt, it was pain. His eyes were filled with tears, and he embraced her long and hard.

“Happy to see me?” she whispered in his ear. “Or are you trying to kill me?”

He could not reply. As he stood with Jasmine close to him, as he felt her sweet scent and warm body, he realized that nothing was worth anything without her; her presence was equally painful and tangible.

Jasmine Squirrel gave no explanations. That night she moved into his new apartment and they stayed there together for two weeks. The outside world faded away, work had to wait. Daisy, who had to explain Philip’s absence to the clients, was furious of course, as was the current girlfriend, but by pulling out the phone jack, Philip elegantly resolved both conflicts in a single motion.

Days and nights flowed together into one moment. During those weeks she showed him her soul and her heart. And he showed her his.

One morning when he awoke she was sitting dressed on the edge of the bed. At the same moment he knew something was wrong. He was wide awake and sat up before she could say it.

“You can’t go,” he said.

She placed a finger against his lips. Her massive tail was standing straight up, swaying hypnotically behind her back.

“Shhh,” she said. “Don’t make a drama out of this. It’s not dramatic. We’re living in the same city. I’ll call you.”

She kept her finger there until she was sure he had understood. At the same moment she took it away, he repeated, “You can’t go.”

But she went. More surprisingly, she actually called the following week.

They met over dinner at a restaurant that was right next to Kleine Wallanlagen, and then went home separately. It was Jasmine’s way of starting over. Philip quickly adapted to the change, but he did not accept it. He would never be able to play down his feelings.

He proposed twice. Once when they were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of their first encounter with a magnificent candlelit oyster buffet at home on Fischergrube. He got down on his knees in the dining room.

Afterward he did not hear from her for six months.

Despite that, Philip tried again, less than two years later, when her absence struck him with a feeling of emptiness so draining that he was physically incapable of getting out of bed. He called, pretending to be mortally ill, and she came over immediately. When she realized what it was about, she gave him a forceful slap to remind him of her wishes.

This time, too, she went underground.

It was not the usual fear of relationships that caused her reaction. It was pure rage. Jasmine Squirrel became equally angry and disappointed when she realized how Philip Mouse wanted to express his love. Marriage? To more easily keep an eye on, control, manage, or bind her? What did that have to do with love?

“But I only wanted to . . . only . . . I didn’t want you to disappear from my life again,” the miserable private detective whimpered.

“And you think that has anything to do with love?” she asked.

Jasmine Squirrel had moved
to rue d’Oran a few months before Vulture’s death. It was not a permanent address; during certain periods she moved often, and Philip didn’t ask why. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t know what she did, how she supported herself, who she associated with. He sensed, but dismissed it. There were signs that indicated that sometimes she hid herself, fled; that her life was a tangle of secrets and lies. But who was he to judge? Her sort of uncompromising integrity would always guide her past shoals and reefs. The circumstances were, however, the least of his interests when they met.

He had called her yesterday evening, but it hadn’t gone well.