by Tim Davys
They hadn’t eaten the entire day, because no one had felt hungry. But finally Sam got tired of Tom-Tom’s growling belly and found a few long-forgotten sausages in the freezer. The gazelle seldom ate dinner. If his vanity didn’t forbid it, his pills caused him to lose his appetite.
Eric didn’t feel especially hungry for the fat sausages either, but didn’t want to risk an out-of-balance crow and therefore pretended to be hungry. They sat down at the table, unfolded the peacock napkins that had just been finished, and served up the sausages. The crow ate three, Eric and Sam shared the one that was left.
“It’s Penguin Odenrick,” said Eric at the same time as Tom-Tom was spraying ketchup over his sausages as if he intended to drown them. “Only Odenrick can remove Nicholas Dove from the list.”
Sam stared at the bear. The crow stuffed a substantial piece of sausage into his beak, trying to look interested at the same time.
“How long have you known?” asked the gazelle.
“Since yesterday morning,” said Eric.
Sam nodded. That fit together with the ravine, with the rat and the snake.
“And now?”
“I have to confront him,” said Eric. “I have to get him to admit what I already know, and then force him to remove the dove from the list.”
“You don’t have a lot of time.”
The gazelle looked out through the window.
“The sun is just going down. Tomorrow morning it will be too late.”
“This evening will do,” said Eric with certainty.
“What the hell are you thinking?” asked the crow while he carefully chewed what he had in his beak. “What the hell do we do?”
The bear didn’t respond to this. He stared ahead of him, as if the question had put him into a trance of some kind. Tom-Tom continued chewing and Sam looked down at his plate, where his half of the sausage sat, sad and untouched. By the time Eric finally had an answer, the crow had already forgotten what he’d asked.
“I want you to go to Owl Dorothy,” said the bear.
“Who?” asked Tom-Tom.
“Is she alive?” asked Sam.
“She’s alive. She’s been working for the archdeacon her entire life. I believe she was his governess when he was little. Then she became his secretary. Took care of his appointment calendar, his correspondence, all the daily chores that popped up.”
“And what the hell is a governess?” asked Tom-Tom, who wasn’t familiar with the concept.
“Dorothy lives in Amberville,” said Eric. “I’ll write down the address. On Fried Street. She’s lived there as long as I remember, she was living there when I was small. If you mention my name she’ll ask you to come in. She enjoys serving cakes.”
Eric smiled. The memory of the massive cake plate with its cakes sometimes too old for words put him in a better mood for a moment. Tom-Tom, whose hunger was stimulated by the sausages, waited with interest for the bear to say something more about the cakes, but that didn’t happen.
“Then,” Eric continued, “we’ll meet up at Sagrada Bastante. When the clouds disperse and you see the half-moon. You should take the back way; I’ll write down the address, too. And ‘when you see the half-moon’ means just that, not a minute before or later.”
“Finally there’s a plan?” said Sam.
It was a kind of statement, but his voice carried such clear hope that it even surprised Sam.
Eric got up.
“We have no time to go into details. But there are a few things before we go…. I’ll tell you what I want you to do at Dorothy’s….”
CHAPTER 24
There are occasions when the most direct route is made up of more detours than you could have believed in advance. The evening when Eric Bear strolled up toward Sagrada Bastante in the Evening Storm was such an occasion. Massive cloud formations moved rapidly across the sky, but all you could see were the edges of the clouds, cautiously colored by the sun’s lingering rays. Sam and Tom-Tom had taken the gray Volga so as to have time to drive to Amberville and back to the cathedral before the half-moon. Eric was thus faced with the decision to take the bus or walk. He chose to walk. Despite the urgency, he feared the moment when he would get there. Instead of walking up to Eastern Avenue and taking the direct route over to the Star, Eric walked westward through Yok’s rainbow-colored muddle of streets and in this way gave himself time to think.
Without an end to a stuffed animal’s life, he thought, the church would not exist.
Of course it was no more difficult than that.
All the rituals and writings, ceremonies and regulations that made up the world of the church and the world order, gained power from this simple fact: that life, as we knew it, came to an end. And that the life after this one, which for understandable reasons we would only come to know somewhat later, only existed in the form of faith and mild hope.
Long, long ago, thought Eric Bear, before the church—the church as he and his contemporaries knew it—got a hold in Mollisan Town, had animals been exchanged at all then? Had there even been a stuffed animal factory that kept the system going, or was the factory itself something the church was behind?
The thought was dizzying.
Eric stopped himself, remained standing a few moments keeping that thought alive. Then he saw the next connection in front of him, as though in letters of fire above the sidewalk. For even if the church’s entire existence rested on the idea of everything’s perishability, this idea also suited the power of the state extremely well. How else could all these millions of stuffed animals, thirsting for growth but at the same time pleasure-seeking, be kept in check?
The bear stumbled over a leek that was on the sidewalk, but managed to avoid tumbling and went on, in thought as well. In order to institute laws and rules and see to it that they were followed, it was of great help that our lives had a clear beginning and end. It was a matter of understanding stuffed animals’ inner motivations, and with a limited amount of time we were in a hurry to reach our goals. Who would long to have cubs at the age of thirty if life continued until you were more than two hundred years old? Who would get an education before the age of twenty-five, who would fight to be able to succeed the next generation in professional life before the age of forty?
Eric Bear turned right, onto a champagne-colored avenue lined with furniture stores closed for the evening. He had no distinct recollection of ever having set foot here before. It looked more like a street up in Tourquai. Deserted and silent, with no beggars or drunks and not a wrecked car as far as the eye could see.
This made him nervous; he didn’t have time to get lost.
The cycle of life, thought Eric at the same time as he increased his pace somewhat, led to us continually repeating ourselves; we became predictable, such that the authorities could more easily manage us. We were all delivered with the same instincts for the most part. Generations before and after us are going to react in the same way we do; that’s a given. Therefore the mayor could simply decide how education was allotted, fortunes distributed, and natural resources exploited. For despite all the advances in technology and medicine, despite the fact that the material conditions of life had been transformed so dramatically during the last two hundred years, a stuffed animal continued to be ruled by its love, its hate, its empathy and its jealousy, its greed and its laziness, completely uninfluenced by progressing civilization. Our instincts caused us to act as our forefathers did—thanks not least to the fact that in secrecy we all feared the day when the Chauffeurs would knock on our door—and thereby the powers that be could control us much more easily.
The bear continued down the champagne-colored avenue.
We were forced to live as intensely as we dared, he thought further, because our days were numbered. But at the same time we lived cautiously, because the life after this in some way seemed to be related to everything we did today.
At least that was what religion and the church maintained. And the state didn’t deny it.
Eric Bear randomly turned left and the aroma of melted cheese struck him like an open door.
A compromised, predictable, and spiritual existence of frustrated restraint for the good of the afterlife, this was how we consumed our lives.
On the basis of the Death List.
In his imagination Eric saw Penguin Odenrick sitting in the mysterious dimness of his office. How he was hunched over the desk, writing in one of his large notebooks with leather covers. The flames of the candles in the massive candelabra on his desk danced in the draft from the leaky stone walls. In his eagerness a fourteen-year-old Eric Bear had run along the entire colonnade, pulled open the door to the innermost regions of the cathedral where no unauthorized person was allowed, and continued in a more and more breathless run through the dark corridors where only wall-mounted torches lit up the stone-clad floors. Farthest in and farthest off in the massive cathedral building Eric arrived at the archdeacon’s office, and without knocking he opened the door.
Archdeacon Odenrick had as usual been sitting bowed over his writing. Surprised and angry at the interruption he looked up. When he caught sight of Eric Bear, his stern look softened.
“We’re finished now,” said Eric proudly.
“And what did it end up being?” asked the archdeacon.
“Thirteen overcoats, five pairs of pants, three pairs of boots, and a large blanket,” answered Eric.
“That’s wonderful!” said the archdeacon, nodding in approval.
“We went into that deserted lot that’s over by—”
Odenrick interrupted.
“Ah, ah, ah,” said the penguin, “no details. I don’t want to know.”
“But…”
“No. This is a part of the agreement. Keep the secrets to yourselves, the big ones as well as the small ones. That’s the hardest part. The equipment is easy, keeping secrets is hard.”
Eric nodded. When Penguin Odenrick spoke it was as though every word was carefully weighed. It had taken several days before Eric understood that what the archdeacon called “the equipment” was the used clothing.
Getting to listen to the archdeacon’s sermons was generally considered to be a privilege. It was hardly every Sunday that he himself gave the sermon in the cathedral, but when he did the church was always fully occupied. The same careful emphasis, the same seriousness and reflection that he made use of in the pulpit of the church, he used both with his confirmands and now, in his comparatively small office, one-to-one with Eric. The effect was lasting. Eric Bear would never be able to free himself from the feeling of being a chosen one created by these meetings with the archdeacon. Neither would he ever be able to lose the deep respect he felt for Odenrick, a feeling which originated in the bear’s need for affirmation. To be seen by this giant, if only for a few moments, was a triumph.
“No,” said the young bear, “I know.”
“And I’m counting on the fact that you’ve instructed the others.”
“I have,” said Eric, nodding feverishly. “No one’s going to say anything. Even if we have to yank our tongues out to keep from doing so.”
“I hope that won’t become necessary,” answered Odenrick without smiling, and Eric remained uncertain whether he was joking or not.
The bear remained standing a while in the dark room, unwilling to leave, until the archdeacon asked whether there was anything else. Then Eric was forced to admit that that wasn’t the case, and he slinked away. Slowly he returned to the packing rooms through the muffled corridors of the cathedral, and the feeling of pride caused him to smile to himself. When he once again saw his little band of workers—a crocodile and two cats who were both named Smythe—he exaggerated the archdeacon’s praise as much as he dared without risking credibility.
“He’s going to yank out our tongues if we ever breathe a word of this,” Eric Bear concluded.
The crocodile and the cats nodded. They were all fourteen years old, and they all felt equally, marvelously special.
Eric Bear suddenly found himself in a dead-end alley. He had turned off from the champagne-colored alley onto a violet-green street that was now cordoned off by a three-meter-tall iron grating with no openings. The buildings that lined the sidewalk were the same run-down apartment buildings that he had been seeing the last ten minutes. They appeared to be deserted, but in their moldy insides lives were passing that in one way were closely related to his: one day they would all cease.
Eric stopped a few meters in front of the grating and looked around. It wouldn’t be impossible to force it open, but he still didn’t know where he was. Perhaps it would be quicker to turn around and make his way toward the avenue along some other street?
Eric suddenly discovered that the storm was in decline. He was seized with panic. He didn’t have time to carry on like this. When he realized that it must have been his subconscious playing a trick on him and that he hadn’t gotten lost from negligence or carelessness, he started to sweat. Tomorrow morning was much too late. And here he was wandering around the streets in Yok.
He turned around and started to trot. Uncertain whether he was on his way west the last fifteen minutes, he ran all the faster without knowing in what direction. There was no one to ask either; the streets in Yok were empty. He turned to the right toward what he guessed was north, but he was unsure. He’d never been an outdoor enthusiast; he recognized the Milky Way but no more than that. And with a pulse that continued to race faster, he ran on through anonymous blocks of run-down buildings where hardly more than a third of the streetlights were functioning, and it felt as though he were running a race with time itself.
Why Penguin Odenrick had chosen him in particular remained a mystery through the years. The natural choice ought to have been Teddy. And at first Eric believed that the archdeacon had actually made a mistake. Up to that day Odenrick had joked many times about what a hard time he had telling one twin from the other when he was at their house for dinner with his parents on Hillville Road.
But it was Eric he’d summoned during the first weeks of confirmation instruction, and it was Eric he’d intended. Odenrick had from the start already made it clear that Eric was not allowed to tell about his new assignment, not even to his twin brother. And Eric didn’t question this, because the special position the archdeacon had all of a sudden granted him caused the bear’s young heart to swell with satisfaction and pride, just as the archdeacon had intended.
Those first weeks, however, the secretiveness remained incomprehensible. Once a week, Eric, along with the crocodile and the two cats, had the task of gathering in used clothing that kind citizens had donated to poor animals through the church. Eric and one of the cats folded the clothes while the crocodile and the other cat wrapped them in brown wrapping paper. Outside the churches in Amberville, Lanceheim, and Yok were collection stations to which Eric and his new friends took the bus. It took several hours to make their way around the whole city, but the youngsters were so filled up with the gravity of the moment that the time passed quickly. The remaining confirmands believed that the four received special instruction from the archdeacon when they were actually collecting clothes. There was a packing room in Sagrada Bastante where they could hang out. The cubs were ordered to tell the story about special instruction, even if someone from the church asked where they were going. The first four weeks, there were clothes at one of the collection stations at least; the fifth week it became apparent why the archdeacon demanded such secrecy.
Empty-handed, they returned to Sagrada Bastante, but instead of going to the packing room Eric Bear went to see the archdeacon in his office. The cats and the crocodile waited outside.
“We have to send out at least one small package every month,” said the archdeacon. “That’s the least we can do for the unfortunate in society.”
“But there are no clothes,” Eric explained again. “There’s nothing.”
“But we don’t need much. We actually only need something, whatever. Perhaps you can find that something somewhere else
?”
“Somewhere else?” repeated Eric without understanding.
“Wherever,” the archdeacon clarified.
Eric remained uncomprehending, and a few additional questions were required, and answers equally evasive and encouraging, before the bear understood that the archdeacon was actually suggesting that they should steal clothes. Still, when Eric left the room he was afraid he’d misunderstood the matter.
“What should we do?” asked the cats at the same time as Eric closed the archdeacon’s door behind him.
“We’re going to see to it that we make a package of clothes,” replied Eric. “Because nothing is as important as that a package of clothes is sent away from here once a month. That’s exactly what he said. And sometimes, he said, you have to do something a little less good in order that something else, something more good, is able to happen.”
“Huh?”
The crocodile hadn’t understood a word, and he dared to show it.
“Should we steal the clothes?” asked one of the cats who, on the other hand, could follow that kind of circumlocution.
“Yep,” answered Eric. “Neither more nor less.”
With his heart in his throat, Eric Bear ran straight out onto Carrer de la Marquesa, the ash-gray street, and finally he knew where he was. The wind was still blowing briskly; it wasn’t too late. He continued running up toward the intersection to dark-blue Avinguda de Pedralbes, from where it was no more than a few minutes up to Eastern Avenue. If he could keep up the pace, he would be at the Star and the cathedral before the storm died out.
The few animals who were outside in the lukewarm Evening Storm in Yok’s run-down blocks were careful not to turn around or stare at Eric as he ran past. A running animal meant bad news.
On Eastern Avenue, Eric Bear reduced his pace, although his stride remained long. When he saw the cathedral’s hedgehog-like silhouette against the cloud-draped sky, he was still so focused on arriving in time that he forgot to feel nervous.