by Tim Davys
In silence they again began walking north on Krönkenhagen. The peddlers along the river observed them hopefully, and Reuben’s gaze roved involuntarily along the spines of the used books. The rain would be upon them soon, and the stands would close. Not because the goods were unprotected, but because the customers had disappeared.
“Won’t it be better if you take a taxi?” she asked.
He nodded. They placed themselves on the sidewalk and turned toward the cars driving from the south.
“Can’t you come along?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said firmly.
“I need you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’ve always needed you.”
“I know.”
“We were much too wise when we left each other,” said Reuben.
“Careful now,” she warned.
“No, it’s true,” he insisted. “We certainly did the right thing, but—”
Fox raised her paw and waved a taxi over to the sidewalk. She opened the back door, and unwillingly he got into the car. The rain was no more than a few minutes off.
“I never should have let you disappear from my life,” he said.
“I never disappeared.” She smiled gently, feeling endlessly tired. To the driver she added, “He’s going to the concert hall.”
Then she closed the car door on him, and walked quickly away.
They had been happy. They had lived in an equal, intense relationship; they had been so different, and yet she felt that they were very close. It had always been hard for her to show her feelings, let herself go, let someone else get inside the protective walls. With him she had given in. In the clarifying paleness of reflection she understood exactly how it had happened. Reuben Walrus was one of the most naive stuffed animals she had met; he showed his feelings spontaneously like a little cub, it was impossible to feel threatened. He was thirty-four years old when they married; it was his second marriage. She was a year younger, and she had no experience with relationships. That was one of her many excuses.
The early years of their marriage were hesitant. Then they found their routines, their roles, positions they were comfortable with, and they lived a few happy years together. As the von Duisburg conventions directed, they put themselves on the Cub List, and after Josephine was delivered…Reuben changed. Probably Fox changed too. It was not something that happened overnight, but their daughter took time away from them. Gave life a new meaning. She would have the exact same priorities if she could do it over again today. Besides, his temperament and character had nothing to do with either her or Josephine. Reuben Walrus’s reality—this she had always been aware of—orbited exclusively around Reuben Walrus.
Josephine had reached the age of six when it happened. It was by chance, which was obvious: Only chance can expose such things.
Hotel Grandville was on fire red Mount Row in Amberville. Fox von Duisburg knew of the hotel, but had never visited it. It was her brother who suggested they should meet there and have a cup of tea, but as usual he was late. The hotel was of the smaller variety, furnished like a private home from the turn of the century, and she went into the lounge and sat down on a couch that was right out of a fairy-tale book about princes and princesses. Embroidered pillows rested against the pink velvet on the seat and back. The room had a low ceiling, and on the walls hung solemnly framed oil paintings depicting the forest under dramatic skies. Chairs and tables stood close beside each other. She was the only guest. While waiting for her brother, she ordered a cup of coffee with hot milk. She felt stressed and irritated. The cubsitter had said firmly that she had to be back and pick up Josephine before the breeze died down for the evening.
When Fox von Duisburg heard the sound of the little bell on the outside door in the next room, she prepared herself to give her brother a proper telling-off. But it was not her brother. Into the lounge came a beautiful silver fox. The stranger sat down as far from Fox von Duisburg as possible, and they exchanged a hasty nod.
In the following moment the server, a suave sloth dressed in a waiter’s uniform, appeared and approached the silver fox.
“Madame is early today,” he said in a low voice.
“I went past Jean-Luc, but that was a waste,” the silver fox said.
“Really? Shall I bring in the tea?”
“Please,” she replied, taking a magazine out of her handbag.
Preoccupied, she began leafing through the periodical. The sloth left the lounge with the order, but nonetheless his words were clearly heard from reception:
“Madame von Duisburg will have her chamomile now.”
Time stopped.
Fox von Duisburg kept her eyes riveted on the silver fox on the couch. She did not look up from her magazine; she appeared completely undisturbed. It was impossible that her name was von Duisburg. The family was not so large that Fox did not know all its members. She had not said her name to the sloth, so it could not be a matter of a misunderstanding. Fox von Duisburg was dumbfounded.
The silver fox closed her magazine and got up.
“Alex,” she called to the sloth, “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll take tea up in the room instead.”
And without wasting any more time she left the lounge. Fox remained sitting. But she did not have time to pursue her thoughts in one direction or the other before the doorbell was heard again. The voice that greeted the reception clerk was familiar.
“Has Mrs. von Duisburg arrived?” asked Reuben Walrus.
Fox von Duisburg was in the lounge and could not see what was happening at the reception desk. Nor could Reuben Walrus see her.
“Madame went up to the room just a moment ago,” Fox heard the reception clerk report.
“Fine. I’ll keep her company. You can send up dinner in an hour.”
And then footsteps were heard on a stairway.
Fox von Duisburg could not breathe. It was Tuesday, and as usual Reuben was rehearsing with the Conservatory chamber orchestra the whole evening. As usual. On Tuesdays.
Fox von Duisburg was short of breath. She got up from the couch, happened to bump against the table, whereupon coffee splashed out of the cup and down onto the table and rug. She ran out to the reception desk, and at the same moment the little doorbell was heard for the third time, and in came her brother. She fell into his arms and wept bitter tears.
It was not only the flagrant infidelity that she had uncovered, it was the way in which he had done it. It would chafe like a sharp stone in her heart longer than she would ever admit. He had stolen her identity and given it to someone else.
It would be many years before Fox von Duisburg, also by chance but possibly a related one, met Reuben Walrus’s first wife Vanja Duck, and realized that Walrus had two lovers at that time who had both been ducks, both of whom for the sake of simplicity he called Vanja.
WOLF DIAZ 6
Whether they wanted to or not, the prisoners were forced to have two outdoor breaks a day, one before lunch and one before dinner. The break area consisted of a patch of woods whose pine trees were shorn of branches the first five meters; the lower part of the trunks looked embarrassingly naked. Some played ball, some did their exercise routines in small groups, but most sat or stood, carrying on quiet conversations, smoking or trying to figure out how they would survive one more day in this realm of monotony. The scene was beautiful, in a way; the prisoners all had on prison clothes, so that thousands of pieces of mauve cloth moved slowly around the stripped tree trunks.
King’s Cross was Mollisan Town’s only prison, a fact to which Mayor Sara Lion gladly called attention; thanks to her social welfare program, no more than one institution was needed to take care of the city’s criminals. At the same time an unceasing expansion of King’s Cross went on in silence; when Maximilian was brought in, the facilities housed almost four thousand prisoners. Wing was added to wing, square kilometers of forest were cleared, and new underground passages were constantly being added. Again and again the prisoners�
� previous exercise yards had been transformed into cells, dining halls, workshops, and space for personnel or modern maximum-security cells.
Security at King’s Cross was rigorous. The guards were well trained and armed. Their instructions were to attack rather than wait, and to assist them they had the most sophisticated electronic system imaginable. Surveillance cameras were built into the walls and thereby impossible to detect; there was at least one eavesdropping microphone per square meter, and infrared light doors and enclosures were used around the entire prison area. All information was recorded and analyzed in a computer center that was run by programmers and civil engineers who, with their experience at King’s Cross, could get any job whatsoever in the private sector. For every server there was at least one backup located at a secret address in the city; it goes without saying that no one had ever escaped from King’s Cross.
There were several firsthand accounts of how Maximilian passed his initial weeks at the prison, and they all testify to the same thing: Maximilian seemed to feel at home. At least he appeared unperturbed by his new situation. He ate, slept, and participated in therapy with an indifference that was reminiscent of acceptance. He prayed quietly in his cell and kept to himself. During breaks outside he would withdraw and sit on one of the stumps just beyond the provisional cricket field. Those who were there at the same time say he looked calm and collected, and most often would direct his gaze up to the sky.
That was how he was sitting when Dennis Coral sought him out the first time.
“Uh…sorry, but you’re new, aren’t you?”
Maximilian turned toward the snake and nodded. For reptiles there was a variation on the washed-out, mauve prison clothes with broad trousers and large shirt; a closer-fitting extended shirt without sleeves. In addition, Dennis had on a mauve cap that was the internees’ only free choice in the question of clothing. The mauve color contrasted beautifully against the red, yellow, and black bands so characteristic of coral snakes, embroidered with a coarse yarn in broad bands across his body, almost up to his eyes. Dennis’s black face almost looked marbled; he was a beautiful animal, but the way he wriggled back and forth, he could have been a mamba.
“And…mmm…sorry, but what’s this?” asked Dennis, making a movement with his head.
Maximilian understood the question because he’d gotten it many times in recent weeks. Under the cap he wore his usual cloth. One of the many doctors at the prison had given his approval. Since the first day under lock and key, Maximilian had suffered from a splitting headache. It would not go away as long as he was at King’s Cross.
Maximilian noted, however, that the pain diminished somewhat when Coral approached.
“For the headaches,” Maximilian answered amiably, as always.
“Mm,” nodded the snake.
As with all the stuffed animals who lived in Mollisan Town, there was anxiety deep inside the snake’s salt-and-pepper eyes, but despite Maximilian’s considerable experience at that point, he could not immediately interpret it.
“I’m Dennis,” the snake introduced himself, making a kind of pirouette with the tip of his tail, “and…uh…I know who you are. That’s why…uh, there are a few of us who shouldn’t be here, right? You, for example, I’m sure of that, you shouldn’t be here. And…uh…me. I shouldn’t be here. But nobody knows that. I mean, there’s probably not a soul in here who wouldn’t say that they’re innocent, right? But…mm…I don’t know. It’s all the same. We…uh…are where we are. And that wasn’t why…”
Coral fell silent and looked down at the ground. Maximilian said nothing.
“Watch out,” Dennis said at last, looking up again. “That’s all I was thinking, huh? Mm…watch out. You’re starting to get a reputation. That you don’t squeal or quarrel. That can be…uh…not so nice.”
Maximilian still did not reply, but he met the snake’s gaze and was again surprised that he could not decide what it was he saw in the mirrors that were the other animal’s eyes. The tip of the snake’s tail swayed back and forth in front of his face in warning.
“You…uh…you’re in prison now, huh?” said Dennis. “If the others think that you’re…mm…weak…if they take you for the kind who goes along…who does what’s he’s told…”
Coral shuddered so that his thin body was shaking under the mauve shirt.
“Uh…watch out,” he said. “It’s called…uh…Slave. You don’t want to be that.”
“Why are you warning me?” asked Maximilian.
“Uh,” said Coral, but he couldn’t put what he felt into words, and wriggled away instead.
For me the prison was like a place taken right out of my nightmares. I had grown up in the forest; I was used to a sky that opened over my head and the feeling of infinity right around the corner. I would not describe myself as claustrophobic, but to be put in a cell…
Once a month I visited him; I did not dare go more often than that. I still did not know what had preceded Duck Johnson’s sudden appearance in our lives, and I did not make the connection with the Ministry of Culture; how could I have? I understood that forces were in motion, powerful forces, but I understood no more than that, and that made me slightly paranoid.
We sat on either side of a thick glass window, Maximilian and I, and talked to each other through telephone receivers. He never said much. I was forced to control myself so as not to say too much. He was pale, horridly dark around the eyes, and the pain that pounded inside his temples caused him to squint in daylight. I suffered when I saw him.
At the same time I could not keep myself away.
From what I understood about Maximilian, it was a matter of surviving. The prisoners struggled against the destructive monotony. Every day looked like the one before; after the first year at King’s Cross, Maximilian had woven a hundred and thirty-four baskets. He had grown tired of the three types of fish that were served at lunch and dinner: fish with rice and carrots, fish with potatoes and broccoli, and fish with pasta and ketchup. He knew the structure of the plaster on the wall of the cell in detail, and he knew exactly how the morning, noon, and evening scolding of the guards sounded; they constantly repeated the same invectives.
In addition, like all prisoners, he was living with a feeling of physical fear that overshadowed everything else. The days seemed to me, both when Maximilian described them and when I listened to conversations among former internees, like a sort of obstacle course where it was a matter of avoiding, to the greatest degree possible, those individuals and gangs who mistreated and degraded others to pass the time. It’s not possible to describe the anxiety that the majority experience at King’s Cross: Chance directs their fate, there is nowhere to flee, nothing to do to escape.
Despite a charisma that kept stuffed animals at a distance—this applied both outside as well as inside the walls—Maximilian sometimes had difficulties. For him everything changed the day when Conny Hippopotamus offered him protection—on his own initiative and without a promise of anything in return. It was something that happened; Maximilian hardly reacted anymore. With Hippopotamus as a bodyguard, life in prison became easier.
Every time I came to visit, I was reminded that he had exposed himself to a self-inflicted martyrdom. If he only spoke up about Duck Johnson’s involvement, his own punishment would be mitigated. This was not a matter of betrayal or informing, I explained patiently, it was only about telling the truth. And every time I tried to get him to listen to reason, Maximilian looked at me as if I didn’t understand a thing. In reality, of course, at the time I did not know with certainty that Duck was involved.
It would be almost ten months before Maximilian caught sight of Dennis Coral a second time. This happened during the lunch hour, when the prisoners were in the dining room. Conny Hippopotamus was sitting at Maximilian’s right side. Hippopotamus pointed over toward the food line and nodded.
“There’s the snake slave,” whispered the hippopotamus. “If you need help, you can always take him.”
Perhaps
this conversation was once again about headaches and the helplessness of the bewildered doctors? There were pain pills that relieved the pain for short periods, but distribution was not in proportion to need.
“Snake slave?”
“Dennis Coral,” whispered Hippopotamus. “His cell’s not far from mine. He’s in here for the rest of his life.”
The dining hall was as large as a hangar and lacked windows. There was room for a thousand prisoners to sit; meals were in four shifts, thirty-five minutes per sitting. If anyone got the idea of raising his voice, even to a normal conversational level, the animal in question was punished with a baton across the neck or back of the head. Discipline was absolute.
“Coral fell in love,” whispered the hippopotamus, just as a fly sat down to the left of Maximilian, poking at his lukewarm rice with distaste. “A real romance, great passion, but the husband found out about it. He followed one night when his wife went to the hotel where she used to meet Dennis Coral. He made his way into the hotel room; the snake had not yet arrived, and the husband’s anger knew no bounds. It ended with him cutting her up, emptying out her cotton, just as Dennis Coral came in the door to his appointed love meeting. How it happened I don’t know—if I understood correctly, the husband was some type of mammal—but the snake found his weak spot and beat him unconscious. Then Dennis Coral took his victim with him out to the forest and buried him alive. Disgusting story. Dennis Coral still maintains that he’s innocent.”
“He is a snake slave?” Maximilian repeated.
“Shh,” Hippopotamus hissed, because Maximilian always spoke in a normal conversational tone. “Coral is a Slave. He has lost his soul in here. You can do whatever you want with him, he can’t say anything. You can demand whatever you want from him, he can’t protest. He may be useful.”
“Leave Dennis Coral alone,” said Maximilian.