Amberville

by Tim Davys

  They were a short distance away. They were simple structures where the preschool stored nets and rackets, balls and bicycles and other things that could be used for outdoor games. I knew that there were cubs who hung around behind the sheds. They could play there without the preschool staff seeing them. There were corners there where you could be in peace. But I didn’t know more than that; it was seldom that I had anything to do with cubs who had secrets.

  I heard the muffled screams long before I arrived at the sheds, and I heard who was screaming.

  Eric.

  I started to run. When I rounded the nearest storage building, I was out of breath. I will never forget the sight that met me.

  Eric was standing upright with his back against one of the sheds. In front of Eric stood Samuel Pig, and on either side of Samuel a polar bear and an elephant whose names I didn’t know. Samuel pressed Eric against the wall of the shed with a fat fist around my twin’s neck.

  “And one for Mama!” screamed the elephant who stood alongside, at the same time as he took out a marble, a little glass marble with all the colors of the rainbow, and pressed it against Eric’s lips.

  Eric already had something in his mouth. When the elephant continued to press the marble against Eric’s lips, it finally had the opposite effect. Eric opened his mouth and out sprayed all the marbles the cubs had already forced in.

  Samuel Pig let go of Eric so as not to get spit on his hand; Eric fell down on his knees and gasped for air like a fish. The pig showed no mercy. He kicked Eric in the stomach and screamed, “Take out the Ruby!”

  Eric whimpered and sniffled. He didn’t have the Ruby, he said. This led to more kicks.

  The entire course of events took no more than a few seconds. Eric was lying on the ground, crying, when I shouted, “Three against one! That’s brave.”

  The elephant and the polar bear gave a start.

  I’d scared them, and they took a step away from my brother. As if to deny that they’d had anything to do with him. The pig gave me a superior look.

  “Go away,” he said, turning toward Eric again. “You’ve got nothing to do with this.”

  “Help,” whimpered Eric.

  “Two against three is at least a little better,” I continued and took a few steps forward.

  I was not a champion fighter.

  Actually I’d never been in a fight. I would never ever fight again. But my twin was lying on the ground and I couldn’t do anything other than try to help him.

  “Go to hell,” hissed Samuel.

  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.

  CHAPTER 6

  They 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 se
nsitive 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.

  CHAPTER 7

  Snake 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.”