by Tim Davys
What neither the art dealer nor Duck’s aunt knew was that inside each and every one of the twenty-three planets was a handwritten confession of the twenty-three sins Duck counted as his worst. On the other hand, the art dealer would not have cared; he knew he had a bargain. His prosperous clientele was made up of collectors whose taste he knew well, and by the following week he had already sold two of the planets at impressive prices.
On Thursday evening, when his poker-playing friends had gathered in the gallery right before the Evening Storm, the art dealer cockily displayed his treasures. It was thereby natural that when, with a full house in his hand during the last deal long after midnight, he raised Judge Hawk Pius—the table’s leading bluffer—and took one of the planets down from the shelf and put it in the pot.
Judge Pius was holding a straight. He smiled his cunning smile, put the planet in his pocket and the money in his wallet, and went home shortly thereafter as the biggest winner of the evening. Tomorrow would be a good day in Pius’s court, but something even more astounding was to happen.
The judge always slept uneasily, and this short night was no exception. He had set his trophy on the night table, and woke up when, in his sleep, his wing happened to strike his newly won planet, knocking it to the ground. With a distinct crash it split in two, and from inside fell Duck Johnson’s confession.
Hawk Pius was one of the strictest judges in Mollisan Town, but he had always prided himself on being just. The morning he read Duck Johnson’s confession of how he had lured Maximilian to the break-in at the National Bank, it took him less than a few hours to decree what Maximilian’s sentence should have been, provided that the whole truth had been known at the time of the trial. By then Maximilian had been at King’s Cross for nine years and ten months, and the last four months he had been in solitary. Regardless of the fact that Maximilian’s punishment had been increased over time due to complicity to flight—something Judge Pius felt was questionable in any event when he read the account of the circumstances—the prisoner had more than paid for the crime he had committed against the state. Pius and his animal officials filled out the required forms, stamped and sent the certified letters that were demanded, and when the red tape was done, a date for Maximilian’s release was agreed on: Thursday the twenty-seventh of December. On that day Maximilian would have been deprived of freedom for nine years, eleven months, and three days.
The decision didn’t raise any eyebrows among the prison administration. True, it was good to be rid of the troublesome prisoner—he made use of valuable resources—but in general the prison had no opinions on the work of the courts.
In accordance with procedure, the prison administrators sent a concise memorandum to the Police Authority and Ministry of Finance. This was done before every release: It was a matter of seeing to it that the individual in question returned to society’s customary orbit, not least in terms of tax registration.
The next day, when the Ministry of Finance databases had been updated by cross-tabulation against the registries of the other departments, Maximilian’s name also showed up at the Ministry of Culture. An unpaid student loan meant that the Ministry of Culture was automatically informed of the release, so that they could once again demand the long-outstanding payment.
As chance would have it, Maximilian’s name was not unknown to the official who administered this procedure. This official, an insignificant individual in our context—I have never even cared to search out his correct name—put in motion a series of conversations at the ministry. By late afternoon the information had made it all the way up to Vincent Tortoise.
Vincent Tortoise, head of the Ministry of Culture, sat in a swivel-type leather armchair at the end of the table. In front of him were piles and bundles of papers, in envelopes and plastic folders, handwritten or typed, all asking for his attention. The sun was shining through the windows, the clouds had just dispersed after the Afternoon Rain, and the polished surface of the black walnut table sparkled with satisfaction.
Armand Owl was sitting on one of the chairs on the long side of the conference table. Only the two of them were in the room. Owl’s back was straight, the knot of his tie small and hard, and he had hung his jacket over the back of the leather armchair so that it wouldn’t wrinkle. His short beak opened only when required, and this was the case now.
“Bullshit!” he said.
“I am still not certain that this is even a bad thing,” Tortoise continued sarcastically. “I don’t suppose you could say that you’ve managed to keep a lid on things as long as he’s been in prison?”
“That is certified bullshit,” repeated Owl. “What we see now is only a whisper of what would have been the case if we had remained passive.”
“Whisper…or hissing,” answered Tortoise. “Or growling?”
“Whatever…” Armand sighed. “Whatever—”
“In any event, he is being released on the twenty-seventh. There is not much we can do about that. What do you propose?”
“They have already started planning,” said Armand Owl, worriedly wrinkling his eyebrows. “Chaffinch and the others. They intend some type of public demonstration.”
“We don’t want that,” declared Tortoise.
“No, we don’t. So my specific proposal is—and I have already talked with all the parties—that we release him two days earlier.”
Tortoise nodded, thought about the matter awhile, and smiled when he understood.
“Cancel their party?”
Owl nodded.
“And you haven’t…,” Tortoise began with a familiar worry in his voice.
“There are no connections to the Ministry of Culture,” Owl hurried to assure him. “I have a few…friends…who owe me some favors. This is not a big deal, if we don’t make it a big deal. He’ll be released two days earlier, it’s no more than that.”
“Good,” said Tortoise.
He picked up some papers that were in a bundle to the right and set them aside to the left, to indicate that the matter was finished.
(I realize now that the attentive reader will not be content without an explanation of how it came to be that Dennis Coral could join our group and start a Retinue without the police authorities arresting him. From a legal perspective he had without a doubt escaped from King’s Cross, and he had a long prison sentence still to serve. My original idea was to remain somewhat unclear about what happened after the “escape,” but of course that generates more questions. The explanation is not complicated. When he was growing up, and as a prisoner at King’s Cross, Dennis Coral had a different name. He was a different type of snake as well. The red, yellow, and black bands that I described previously he still wears today. The embroidery was Adam’s idea, and afterward there was no doubt: Dennis had been transformed into a coral snake. That’s the story, and more than that I do not, for understandable reasons, intend to tell.)
REUBEN WALRUS 9
Reuben Walrus counted backward from the fifteenth of April, when the concert hall would be filled with the cultural elite of Mollisan Town. He imagined them before him, stuffed animals with superior smiles flocking into the foyer, airing their expectations, dressed in tuxedos and glittering sequin gowns, with champagne glasses offered by the Music Academy. In his head Reuben heard snippets of conversation that had not yet played out. Someone would remark, “They say that this simply doesn’t add up.” Someone else would whisper, “The walrus should have quit when he was on top.” And perhaps the most wounding, “This makes you wonder about his earlier works. Were they really that ingenious?”
The orchestra would need at least two days of intensive rehearsal to prepare the final movement. This meant that Reuben must have a finished symphony sitting on his desk on the evening of the twelfth of April for copying the following morning. Which in turn meant that there were no more than four days remaining.
He twisted and turned in bed. He had been awake since midnight, staring furtively at the cold moonlight trickling in through the curtains.
After a few hours of cold sweat and anxiety, he got up. There was no use. He pulled on his heavy terry-cloth robe that smelled of cigar and honey, and went to the grand piano.
In the darkness the open lid resembled a mouth laughing out loud. Reuben sat down on the uncomfortable piano stool, but he let the silence in the room remain undisturbed. He stared down at the keys, but was thinking about Fox von Duisburg’s telephone call last evening.
“You can’t be serious” had been her first words, without even saying hello or identifying herself.
He didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“Hi, honey,” he had said.
“During all those years,” she said, “I still believed, deep inside, that when it really came to the point…that beneath the attitude, beneath that instinct to always look for the easiest way, always try to do things as painlessly as possible, you were—”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Reuben, “but what are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about?”
“What’d you say?”
All the phones at home had been reset, but he still had difficulty hearing what Fox said. Yet there was no mistaking the weary disappointment in her voice, and he could scarcely recall having heard her sound so dejected before.
“Did you ask what I was talking about?” she repeated.
“Yes. I don’t know what you…”
Reuben did not finish the sentence, but she remained silent on the other end.
“Hello?” he said. “Did you say something?”
“Reuben, I…,” she began, not knowing how she would continue. “You rejected Josephine.”
“Is that why you’re calling?” he asked.
“The decision was yours, and you didn’t let her start at the school?”
“For one thing,” he began, “the decision was not mine at all, and you know that. Besides, this is not a school, the Music Academy is—”
“She’s crushed,” interrupted Fox. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like this. Not even when she was little. She’s locked herself in her room, won’t open the door, she’s unplugged the phone.”
“Time will—” Reuben began.
“This is not about the fact that she didn’t get into the school,” said Fox. “This is about the fact that her father did not give her the acknowledgment she’s been waiting for her whole life.”
There was a whirring in his ears. It sounded like when the top is popped off a soft drink bottle, with the difference being that the sound was constant.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hello,” she confirmed.
But there was no force in her voice, not the usual energy.
“My life,” said Reuben, feeling a tear forcing its way out of the corner of his eye, “is numbered. There is less than a week until Drexler’s syndrome has put an end to my auditory nerves, and then I’ll be deaf. For the rest of my life. If I have much life left, that is. My professional life is over in any event, my calling is—”
“You crushed her, Reuben,” she said and hung up.
The pain in his chest.
He lifted his fin and played in the darkness, a few passages from an early work, a string quintet in G minor, a tragic story. Outside the windows he stared toward the building facade opposite, illuminated by the streetlights. It looked scuffed and gray and sad.
He was a worthless stuffed animal, he thought. He always had been. A worthless husband and an equally worthless father. He was a dishonest, unscrupulous specimen. And for that Magnus had punished him with Drexler’s syndrome.
All attempts to compose were fruitless. He was too tired. He lacked talent. And he was far too panic-stricken.
After sitting on the hard stool, staring at the keys for almost an hour, Reuben was about to fall asleep. Could he carry this fatigue with him into the bedroom? Perhaps it was possible if he walked slowly and didn’t waken his body through unnecessary movements. He slid off the stool and shuffled across the floor. His eyes were half closed, he breathed slowly, and he exerted himself to empty his brain of thoughts. Possibly this would have succeeded if he had not happened to twist his head to the right as he passed by the narrow corridor out to the hall.
He stopped.
Inside the door, on the floor, was a white envelope. Reuben was certain that it had not been there when he turned off the lights last night. Fatigue was instantly replaced by curiosity and—even if he dared not admit it—hope. Could it have been Josephine who had left a message? All he could expect was her anger and disappointment, but he could defend himself against that. He wanted to defend himself against that.
On his way out to the hall, he no longer remembered that he intended to go back to bed. He leaned over to take a look. His name was on the outside, but nothing else. No postmark or stamp.
The envelope was of normal letter size and sealed shut. He held it up, twisting and turning it as if he could figure out what it contained. Then he placed it under his fin and went into the bedroom, where he sat down at the little desk and turned on the lamp. Painstakingly he slit open the mysterious envelope and took out a piece of paper with typewritten text. He read the short message twice:
Dear Reuben Walrus,
I understand that you are interested in meeting me, and I understand that the circumstances do not give us much time. Therefore it is my suggestion that we meet at Charlie’s Bowling this evening, at the commencement of the Evening Weather. If you take a seat at the upper blue bar and order a Strike, I will make contact. However, I must ask you to come alone.
Sincerely,
Dennis Coral
It was still early in the morning, but as the clouds drew together and colored the sky gray-black, Reuben Walrus dialed the number of private detective Philip Mouse.
“I got a letter,” said Reuben.
“Sooner or later this happens to all of us.” Mouse yawned from his side of Lanceheim.
“From Coral. He suggests that we meet. This evening.”
“Okay. Don’t do anything,” Mouse ordered, suddenly wide awake. “I’ll come over in twenty minutes.”
“Good.”
Philip Mouse knew about Charlie’s Bowling, and was therefore not surprised that Walrus had never heard of the place.
On flax yellow Piazza di Bormio was a shabby Monomart alongside an unassuming storefront that sold fishing poles, and which had been closed as long as anyone could recall. The outdated fishing tackle was still in the shop window. Otherwise the buildings on the piazza were not noticeably different from the average gloomy and half-dilapidated buildings in the depressing district of Yok. Appearances, however, were deceiving.
Charles Gull had embarked on a military career early in life, but the day he turned forty and had still not attained the rank of lieutenant, he could no longer overlook the truth. The military was holding him back. He left the army and used all of his severance pay to make the down payment on a bowling alley of a seldom-seen type. It would be in the middle of Yok and exceed everything that had hitherto been seen. Charles was a visionary and a skilled orator, and he convinced the banks to contribute capital, despite the fact that the stuffed animals in Yok were not a sought-after clientele.
The largest building by far built on Piazza di Bormio was meant to be an old people’s home, but that never happened. The old people’s home was instead relocated to south Yok, and the building stood empty a few years and was then rented out for a time to the Ministry of Finance, just as the Lucretzia hospital was undergoing extensive renovation work.
When Charles Gull bought the building, however, it had stood empty for almost ten years, and calculated per square meter he got it ridiculously cheap. The bowling alleys constructed in the basement became the base of the operation, but Charles’s plans were more extensive than that. He saw before him a building where divisions were bridged, where there was both a haven for the poor and a luxury hotel for the wealthy on the same floor; he dreamed of seven-star restaurants alongside soup kitchens; he intended to
let the prosperous stuffed animals in other parts of the city share their excess with the poor residents of Yok under one roof. For Charles, the bowling alleys were the symbol of brotherhood; here rich and poor could meet on equal terms.
Now Charles Gull was only able to realize half of this amazing business concept. The stuffed animals from Yok came, but after initial interest—and not even that was markedly great—customers from Lanceheim, Amberville, and Tourquai stayed away. The homeless who sought shelter with Charlie were soon staying in the hotel suites as well, and after a few months the white tablecloths from the exclusive restaurant were used as bibs in the soup kitchens. The entire massive building was transformed into a kind of refuge for homeless stuffed animals and those who did not have the energy or desire to go home. They wandered around in the corridors and large halls for months, and at regular intervals Charles encountered animals who had not been outside the building for several years.
The only part of the operation that actually worked was, ironically enough, the bowling alley itself, and the associated blue bar.
Philip Mouse parked on the piazza. Cars were parked every which way in Yok, and as long as they looked worn-out and cheap, most often they were secure. Mouse’s car was both worn-out and cheap.
“I’ll follow you,” he said to Walrus. “You don’t need to be worried. Even if you don’t see me, I’ll see you. We’ll do as we decided this morning.”
“What’d you say?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be watching you the whole time,” Mouse repeated patiently.
“Why should I be worried?” asked Walrus. “I was the one who wanted to meet Coral, wasn’t I? On the other hand, I don’t understand why you’re here. He wrote—”