by Tim Davys
This abyss that had opened between me and my twin brother.
I carried the heavy knowledge with me constantly that Eric was in some kind of trouble. I had even spoken with Archdeacon Odenrick, in a roundabout way, about lost souls. We had spoken about lost animals. Odenrick was a penguin of the church and refused to give up hope on anyone.
There is always salvation, said Odenrick. For one who feels remorse, there is always forgiveness.
I myself had nothing to regret, and my twin brother never asked for forgiveness.
What kept me awake at night was not so much the question of where Eric had gone as the fact that something—presumably a great many things—had been going on prior to this night. Without my having a clue about it. How many encounters and conversations had he withheld from me? Had it been difficult or easy, and was his other life—as I was already referring to it—present in some form, even when we did things together?
The feeling of being easily fooled and the shame at having been so stupid burned behind my eyelids. The sheets became damp with sweat. I fantasized about how Eric pushed aside the great stage set that was our mutual childhood in order to demonstrate that behind it there had always been an abyss of solitude.
Those are big words. Big feelings. But they aren’t enough to describe what I was feeling.
He came back at dawn.
I must have nodded off, for I was awakened by quick steps against the tiles on the roof. At the next moment Eric stuck his paw in through the still half-open window, heaving himself up over the edge and into the room. It was fascinating to notice how soundlessly he did it. How routinely he did it. It was, as I already suspected, not the first time.
I showered him with indignation. I attacked him with such a cascade of questions that he wouldn’t have had time to reply to them, even if he’d wanted to. I wept. I shook him in anger and hugged him with love. After a while I calmed down sufficiently to call him to account in a more lucid manner. Where had he been?
He refused to tell.
Finally he said, “Teddy, it’s best for both of us if you don’t know.”
He said that with tenderness in his voice.
I fell silent. I stared at him. He thought he knew what was best for me.
It was not even insulting.
It was stupid.
I said nothing more, but decided to find out as soon as possible what he was up to. Therefore on the nights that followed I lay awake, waiting for him to climb out of bed, put on his clothes, and climb out through the window. But that didn’t happen. It was a refined torture. Knowing that something was going on behind my back, but not knowing what it was. I was worried about him.
I wasn’t the only one.
Archdeacon Odenrick was worried, too. Even if he didn’t say anything to me. Or to anyone else.
We’d begun our confirmation classes that fall. On Tuesdays we went down to the parish building on Chapel Street after school and learned about Magnus, Magnus’s angels, and Magnus’s works from one of the deacons in Amberville. On Thursdays we went to Sagrada Bastante, where Archdeacon Odenrick himself waited to instruct us. Exactly what his title was at this time I don’t know; he became archdeacon a few years later. He was an excellent confirmation deacon. He dramatized religion so that all of us were drawn into the stories. At the same time he was careful. There was always room for doubt and uncertainty.
I doubted.
And I was uncertain.
I could accept that there was an all-powerful Magnus. Mollisan Town had not arisen out of an empty vacuum. The Deliverymen who transported the newly produced stuffed animals and the Chauffeurs who took care of those who were worn out were not the henchmen of chance. But in the end it wasn’t a matter of believing. It was a matter of wanting to believe. That Magnus forgave the penitent and let them into paradise was not something Odenrick tried to prove. Religion was logical in relationship to its own theses.
Except when it was a matter of evil.
Why did the good and all-powerful Magnus allow evil? Why had he created Malitte as his opposite?
One day I raised my hand and asked. Archdeacon Odenrick looked at me inscrutably, posing a counter question. “Teddy, what is evil?”
I was just about to answer the same way as my twin brother had once done. That evil was something that made you feel bad. There were almost twenty of us young animals gathered in one of Sagrada Bastante’s many halls. There was a solemn, serious atmosphere at our lessons. Every utterance was a challenge to peer pressure. That “evil makes you feel bad” sounded so childish in this context that I remained silent. I exchanged a glance with my twin brother and saw that he, too, remembered our conversation with Odenrick.
My question remained unanswered. As did Archdeacon Odenrick’s follow-up question. But I brooded intensely about the matter during the weeks that followed.
What was evil?
Every night I lay awake, waiting. Eric’s heavy, calm breathing mocked me as I lay there on tenterhooks without being able to fall asleep. I was listening for suspicious sounds from his bed. All I heard was a car or two driving along down in the street.
Time passed, and I couldn’t sleep.
But it was not only worry about Eric that kept me awake at night that fall. Unfortunately not. After only a few weeks of confirmation classes, something strange happened. As I was on my way into the classroom at Sagrada Bastante, Archdeacon Odenrick asked Eric to remain after the lesson. He did so in a low, discreet voice, but I heard it clearly.
Envy flared up in me as though I’d bitten into a hot pepper.
I had a hard time following along during the lesson. When it was over, Eric remained sitting at his desk while I was forced to go outside. It was one of the most trying moments in my life up to that point.
I lingered in the cathedral a while, but when Eric didn’t come I had no choice other than to go home alone. He kept me waiting a whole hour. At first he refused to say what Odenrick had wanted. Then it crept out of him that it was about some kind of special instruction which a few of the cubs would receive.
Eric was one of them.
And the envy almost burned a hole in my stomach. A small, black hole.
During the nights, I brooded about what this special instruction was about. Why was Eric chosen and not me? Then it struck me. As I was lying in my bed without being able to sleep, as I was lying, expecting that my twin brother would again betray our twin-ness by leaving me alone in our childhood room, then it struck me.
I wasn’t the only one who had seen what was dwelling in Eric.
For Archdeacon Odenrick there were no lost souls.
For Archdeacon Odenrick there were only wayward souls.
What he called “special instruction” was an attempt to rescue Eric from evil. But it was too late. Despite the fact that Eric was breathing softly and calmly in bed a few meters from my own bed, I knew that it was too late.
Unfortunately I had no plan. I didn’t know what I should do if he sneaked out through the window again. When it did finally happen, a few weeks after the first time, I didn’t do anything, either. During the entire fall and spring, as long as the confirmation instruction was going on, Eric disappeared through the window at night at regular intervals. I remained lying in bed. Paralyzed.
I realized that there was nothing I could do to rescue my twin brother from Malitte and evil.
That is to say, nothing that Archdeacon Odenrick wasn’t already doing.
And doing better.
I wake up in the morning, and my head is full of dream fragments.
It’s a split feeling.
I wake up at night from dreams that are pleasant. I forget them in a fraction of a second and fall back asleep. Dreams that are unpleasant I dream in the morning. They linger on. The most effective way to get them to dissipate and disappear is to consciously attempt to remember them.
When I’ve forgotten the nightmares, I get up to a new day.
With each day new risks ensue. In the evening, w
hen I turn out the bedlamp, I experience a feeling of triumph. It’s not something I’m proud of. Neither the feeling nor its origin. During the day which just passed I resisted the temptations and fought down the demons by choosing the difficult decisions ahead of the easy ones. I resisted the whole day.
What was my reward?
Sleep.
To what did I awaken the following day?
A new day of temptations and demons.
It’s not difficult to accept my split feelings about this.
It is with a blush of shame that I confess that in moments of weakness I’ve thought that the day the Chauffeurs come to fetch me from Lakestead House, the battle against evil is finally over. Then I’ve escaped.
Escaping life through death is like resisting the temptation to scratch yourself on the back by chopping off your paw.
Being good is more difficult than being bad.
My story is a story of suffering.
When I think about evil, I have developed three archetypes for the sake of clarity. They themselves are not evil. These three include all the clichés of evil that I’ve overheard around me. In newspapers, in books, and during conversations with Archdeacon Odenrick and other thinking individuals. The archetypes are symbols. They have no living stuffed animals as prototypes, nor have I tried to caricature any of them.
First up is the Dictator. He is evil in theory, never in practice. He is intellectual and driven by conceit and self-interest. The Dictator strives for power, sometimes even as a goal in itself. More often, however, power is a means to attain other purposes. It might be a matter of securing the most favorable parking place in the garage at work. Or filling a secret bank account to the bursting point. Large things as well as small. The Dictator archetype dwells in all too many of us. He might be the neighbor who has just been named department head. She might be our mayor who’s going to run for yet another term.
I’m not saying that it is like that. It might be like that.
The Dictator might very well have lived his entire life without a single evil intention. It is only at second or third hand that his decisions and actions result in evil.
The Dictator is the general in the army.
The Dictator is the theoretician behind the sect.
The Dictator is the philosopher behind the -ism.
The Dictator is the first tile in the game of dominoes.
The Dictator is the origin, not the intention.
The Dictator never lowers his gaze so low that he needs to see or take a position on the consequences of his self-justifying plans.
The second archetype that I’ve defined is the Sadist.
The Sadist is a stuffed animal who spiritually and intellectually knows that what he strives for is wrong. Yet he can’t resist. The actions of the Sadist have a single purpose. He is out to get satisfaction. He lives in, and for, his feelings.
The Sadist might be the bitter taxi driver who by accentuating his unsuccessful life—for example, by placing a diploma in sailing clearly visible up by the steering wheel—is out to implant guilt in his passengers.
The Sadist is the torturer in the wars of distant times.
The Sadist’s intention is not evil. Even if the Sadist has an emotional disturbance, he is intellectually and spiritually exactly like you and me.
The third and final archetype is the one which is most uncommon.
Yet he is the most-often referred to and feared.
I know why. What I call the Psychopath is the person who is seen as the most evil of the three. Nothing frightens us more than the kinds of things we don’t understand. No one knows the behavior of the Psychopath. There are theories, but no answers. The Psychopath suffers from a spiritual defect. He can be rational at times, but it’s impossible to say when or why. On one occasion he’s filled with empathy, the next time emotionally shut off. He is unpredictable.
The Psychopath is a kind grandmother who secretly captures and kills butterflies.
The Psychopath is the office rat who gnaws himself on the legs at night.
The Psychopath is the mass murderer we read about in the newspapers and who pursues us in our nightmares.
The Psychopath isn’t evil, either.
The Psychopath is sick.
It took a while before I’d gathered enough courage to follow Eric when he sneaked out through the window. By then we’d finished our elementary school studies, begun our high school education, and turned sixteen.
I surprised even myself.
Like many nights before that night, I heard the rustling of Eric’s bedclothes and woke up. The weather was past midnight. Eric stole across the floor. I was lying dead quiet. As usual I was in agony. But inside me there was suddenly a courage that had never been there before.
I don’t know what caused it.
I waited until he’d gotten out of the window, until it was silent. Then it was my turn to throw off my blanket and pull on my clothes, which were folded over the desk chair.
Then I crept out after him onto the roof.
He wasn’t easy to follow. I ran across the roofs that were Amberville’s shield against the rain. The light breeze burnished the sky smooth and black, the moon’s glow was reflected in thousands of glistening black roof tiles.
I tried to run as quietly as I could.
Beyond the muddle of Amberville’s rooftops, on the other side of Western Avenue, I could see the lights from Tourquai. Some of the façades of the stately skyscrapers were illuminated. Along with the lights down in the street, that light was my salvation.
At regular intervals I caught sight of Eric farther ahead, a blur of motion behind a chimney. As he jumped between roofs, the glow of the streetlights reflected from his belt buckle. Each time he disappeared, he showed up again farther and farther away. I ran as fast as I dared. At last I lost sight of him. By then we had run more than twenty minutes and still the tall buildings in Tourquai seemed just as distant.
I had no idea where I was, other than I was still somewhere in Amberville. Still I went on. The faint breeze sounded like a panpipe. Sometimes an accelerating car engine was heard.
Otherwise it was silent.
Then suddenly a “plunk.”
I stopped. I looked in the direction of the sound and discovered Eric down on a red street. He disappeared around a street corner. Remaining on the sidewalk was the empty pop can he’d stumbled against by mistake.
I got down from the roof as quickly as I could. It sounds easy, but it was an adventure, a story of danger, drainpipes, woken-up neighbors who threatened to call the police. Once down on the street, I ran as fast as I could toward the place where Eric had vanished. I, too, rounded the street corner.
I found a granite-gray dead-end alley.
No brother, only this alley.
In front of me: a ten-meter-tall brick wall without windows or doors. The façades on both sides up to the wall were windowless except for a few openings sitting so high up that Eric never could have reached them.
Or?
There was a large container on the street. Perhaps you might be able to climb up on its edge and from there, with an agile leap, reach the lowest window opening to the left.
For me, such gymnastics were impossible. It shouldn’t have been possible for Eric, either. But I was no longer sure about Eric.
I remained standing. At a loss. I stood staring at the brick wall—presumably—for a few minutes. The way home would feel even longer with a task that was unfinished.
Then I heard.
“Psst.”
I readily admit that I jumped.
“But what the hell, Eric, didn’t you just get here?”
I looked around me in confusion.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“Come in, then,” said the voice.
With a metallic sound as if from a large metal spring, the short side of the Dumpster opened and I stepped in.
Casino Monokowski.
The container was a container on the outside.
On the inside it was the entrance to Casino Monokowski.
The gorillas in the door nodded to me in recognition. For them, I was my twin brother.
The container itself was nothing worth describing. It looked like a container on the inside as well. With the difference that on the long side there was an opening that led into the building against which the container stood. I went in through the opening and remained standing a few steps inside the place.
My mouth opened wide.
I had never seen anything like it. As large as the interior of Sagrada Bastante. Or like a gutted Grand Divino. Decorated with gilded draperies along the massive walls and dark-red wall-to-wall carpets on the floors. Filled with endless rows of clattering, flashing gambling machines and quantities of round poker tables, large roulette tables, and high, half-moon-shaped blackjack tables. Interspersed between tables and machines were long bars whose mirrors revealed all the tricks the poker players were up to.
A planned-out chaos.
Filled with stuffed animals.
Despite the enormous capacity of the place, it was the guests who dominated the impression of Casino Monokowski. Mammals and snakes, birds and fish. Felines and dogs, predators and imaginary animals. The noise level was deafening. The jingle of one-armed bandits, the clinking of glasses and bottles, the rustling of bills at the poker tables, and the murmur of suppressed expectation. The smells made me dizzy. Cigar and cigarette smoke. Perfume and sweat. Arrogance and nervousness.
I was inundated with impressions, but I resisted. Slowly I forced my way over to a bar and ordered a soft drink.
The bartender, who obviously also recognized me as my twin brother, smiled, amused but amiable.
Somewhere in here was Eric. What should I say if I found him? Of all the accusations I had formulated, which one bore being said out loud? Without humiliating myself more than the one I accused? Perhaps it was better to return to reality and leave Eric’s salvation to Odenrick and the church?
But he was my twin; our bonds were strong.
I took a swallow of my soft drink and was on the verge of exploding.