by Tim Davys
And in the same moment as he said that, he knew that it was true. He was not afraid. Here sat an idiotic penguin with the power to let his beloved wife and his biological twin live. And the power to force them to die. What did Eric have to be afraid of, what more was there to lose?
“I’m not afraid,” repeated Eric, “because I know who you are, and your power consists of your secrets.”
“You think you know what power is,” said the archdeacon, “but you know nothing.”
The penguin got up from his chair, and Eric was happy that the large desk stood between them.
“The worlds where you move, where the struggle for material advantages is carried on with more or less criminal methods,” said Archdeacon Odenrick with all of his breath support, “and here I include your fancy corporate directors; that’s only the lobby. You’re so occupied with comparing yourselves with each other that you don’t see it. That someone has granted you the arena in which you fight, and that as long as you restrict yourselves to it you’re left in peace. But if you start searching for doors that lead out of there, then comes the punishment. Hard and merciless. And that, my upright friend, is power. Which you’ll continue to experience, but never taste.”
The penguin remained standing behind the desk. He looked down at the bear, and his breathing was excited. Just then he was a demonic figure, but Eric Bear still felt no fear.
“Power,” repeated the bear, nodding to himself as if he’d understood something. “Of course. That is a motivating force.”
The penguin didn’t let himself be provoked. “It’s a matter of managing it. I’ve striven for it, I’ll gladly admit that. And the reason is that I want to make use of it. Otherwise it would be meaningless. And I’m good at making use of it. Because I understand that I am a temporary servant.”
“I know what you can do,” said Eric, nodding.
“You know nothing,” answered Odenrick slowly and with such contempt that it surprised Eric.
“You’re wrong there. I know a great deal. And I won’t hesitate to make use of it.”
“I certainly believe that,” replied Odenrick, sitting down in his chair again. “You’re good at that. That’s the way you got yourself a wife.”
That was a punch below the belt, and it was just as intentional as it was painful. Eric had intended to follow through his train of thought, but completely lost the thread. The past returned to the present with violent force, and Eric was unprepared. Despite the fact that the archdeacon’s provocation was completely obvious, he couldn’t refrain from reacting to it.
“That’s bullshit,” he said in a loud voice, “and you know it.”
“Oh,” the archdeacon smiled, “there seem to be several of us here who know a few things, and who should be able to make use of that.”
“Teddy knows,” said Eric. “He’s always known.”
“And your lovely wife?” asked Odenrick amiably. “What, exactly, does she know about how the whole thing happened those days before you got married?”
“She certainly recalls that the esteemed Archdeacon Odenrick conducted the ceremony,” said Eric. “I’m sure of that. And she recalls how the archdeacon spoke with us the day before. She can probably recall the entire conversation, she has a good memory.”
This didn’t make the archdeacon’s smile any less condescending.
“But does she know that it was your idea? Does she understand that Teddy—”
“Teddy was the one I was thinking about the whole time, and you know it!” screamed Eric.
“Do I know?” sneered Odenrick. “Do I know?”
“And I know that the clothes you send to the Garbage Dump are actually the Death List!” continued Eric in the same overexcited tone of voice.
He was still sitting on the very edge of the armchair. But the reason was not respect or humility. The bear was like a pumped-up muscle only waiting the chance to be used. By revealing that he knew how the Death List was sent to the dump, he had gotten the archdeacon to fall silent. Without himself being aware of it, Eric’s upper body slowly started to rock back and forth.
“I want you to remove two names from the list,” Eric said with suppressed rage. “That’s my purpose, that’s why I came this evening. I want you to remove two of the names.”
“You’re crazy,” said the archdeacon with his gaze aimed down at the desk. “You’re completely crazy. What you’re asking for is impossible.”
CHAPTER 26
Everything looks flipping alike,” swore Tom-Tom Crow.
He shook his head, trying to see what was on the street sign. Amberville’s endless blocks of mute townhouses made him ill at ease, and he drove slowly.
“This violet one here is Seamore Mews,” Sam Gazelle read on the sign. “It’s the next one, the turquoise.”
In his lap he had a torn-out page from the telephone directory where, to be on the safe side, he’d circled Owl Dorothy’s address. Number 24 Fried Street.
The car smelled of cheese doodles. When Sam forced the crow to stop at a Springergaast on Balderton Street to try to find a map in a telephone directory after far too many random right and left turns, Tom-Tom had taken the opportunity to buy a few bags of snacks. Now the acid odor had taken over the car, the crow was orange around the beak, and Sam was feeling carsick.
“There,” said Sam, pointing at the next sign that sat at the exact same height on an identical façade. “The turquoise one, like I said. Fried Street.”
Tom-Tom turned off.
“Now, let’s see…number 56. Go on a little, then we’re there.”
Tom-Tom drove slowly, passing building after identical brick building before he turned gently and noiselessly in and parked. The dark-red rows of buildings extended both north and south through a gently rolling landscape. Two stories high, black roofs, white windowsills, just as well cared for as everything else in Amberville.
Tom-Tom stepped out onto the sidewalk, Sam went around the car, and together they hurried up the ten steps to number 24 Fried Street. Sam rang the doorbell. They waited a minute or two, hearing footsteps en route down the stairs to the hall, and then the outside door was opened by Owl Dorothy.
The storm had just abated, but the sky was still covered with clouds.
Dorothy was a threadbare owl, a very old bird who pensively let her peering eyes wander from the gazelle to the crow and back again. They had awakened her, it was obvious; she had her ears in a kind of nightcap and had wrapped a dressing gown around her thin body. She concealed a yawn behind her wing.
“Good evening, beautiful queen,” said Sam in an attempt at lightheartedness, “my name is Sam. I beg your pardon that we’re disturbing you at this time of the evening, but Eric Bear asked us to come out and say hello.”
“Eric Bear?” Dorothy repeated.
The gazelle and the crow nodded.
For a moment Dorothy seemed to be considering how likely this statement was. Then she made her decision and took a step to one side, such that the strangers outside her door were transformed into guests. Sam stepped in, and Tom-Tom followed behind. The old owl guided them with vigorous steps to the kitchen, where she invited them to sit down at a small, round kitchen table while she herself put the teakettle on the stove.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Eric,” she said. “Is he well?”
“He’s lovelier than ever,” answered Sam.
“Superfine,” affirmed Tom-Tom.
“Anything else would have surprised me,” nodded Dorothy. “Do you take milk or sugar in your tea?”
“Just milk, thanks,” Sam replied.
“I’m okay,” said Tom-Tom. “Tea is not…”
“Would you like something else instead?”
“No, no, I’m fine.”
Tom-Tom felt troubled by the fact that the old lady, whom they would quite soon be forced to shout at and frighten, was treating them so politely. If he hadn’t accepted anything to drink, it would be easier to threaten her a little later, he reasoned
.
Dorothy served Sam a cup of tea and placed a glass of water in front of Tom-Tom. Then she sat down across from them at the kitchen table.
“I don’t know how I should say it,” began Sam Gazelle.
“Just say it,” suggested Dorothy. “Things are the way they are.”
“Yes, but this is special,” said Sam. “And it sounds strange if you just say it.”
“Say it,” repeated Dorothy. “I’m old, I’ve heard most things.”
“Yes, but not this. This is the kind of thing you don’t talk about willingly. And it feels a little strange to just say it.”
“Say it,” said Dorothy for the third time. “It’s not going to get easier in a few minutes.”
“Say it,” agreed Tom-Tom irritatedly. “Otherwise I’ll say it.”
Sam held up a hoof. He would say it. Rather than let the stupid crow start talking.
“Sweet little auntie, we need the archdeacon’s manuscripts for the Death Lists,” he said.
So it was said. Owl Dorothy reacted neither with surprise nor with consternation. She appeared completely uncomprehending.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Now I think that I don’t understand.”
“The Death Lists,” repeated Sam. “We know how it’s arranged. Everything the archdeacon writes out by hand, you type up on a typewriter.”
“That’s right,” said Dorothy, not without pride. “It has to do with the archdeacon’s handwriting. You understand, despite all the education and wisdom that the penguin possesses, it’s almost impossible to interpret his handwriting. It took me many years before I could clearly distinguish his ‘j’ from his ‘g.’ Not to mention the little pole that sets an ‘h’ apart from an ‘n.’ But in time you learn, and—”
“I’m sorry,” interrupted the gazelle, “this is certainly a lovely art. But we’re in kind of a hurry. The manuscript to the Death Lists?”
“The Death Lists?” repeated Dorothy. “That sounds gruesome. Do you mean this is something that Archdeacon Odenrick would be involved with? In what connection, then, if I may ask?”
“Auntie, you know what we’re talking about,” said Sam.
“I do beg your pardon,” said Dorothy, “but I cannot say that I—”
“Come on, then, dammit,” roared Tom-Tom. “We’re in a hurry. Now you bring out those damn lists, ma’am. Otherwise I’ll see to it that you…bring out those damn lists.”
“My,” said Dorothy, looking horrified.
“Exactly,” said Sam, without enthusiasm.
It was clear that the old owl was afraid. She stared in fright at Sam and nodded frantically, her short beak bobbing up and down like a float in the waves.
“Well?” said Sam.
But Owl Dorothy seemed to have gone into some kind of gridlock of fear and confusion, and beyond continuing to nod she didn’t react at all.
Sam looked at Tom-Tom, who shrugged his wings to show that he didn’t know what should be done.
“Do you have an office here, auntie?” asked Sam. “Show us where you usually hang out, where you work on the archdeacon’s things.”
The changed tone of voice worked, partly. Dorothy managed to take herself out of her temporary paralysis. She shook her head in confusion, mumbled a few words about her not knowing what they were talking about, then got up from the kitchen table and guided them into her small office, which was next to the kitchen. A pedantic orderliness prevailed there. Neat piles of correspondence, paperwork, and archived material were on the desk and on the shelves next to it.
“Exactly,” Tom-Tom burst out triumphantly when he saw all the handwritten papers with just that unreadable writing the owl had just described.
Sam sat down in the desk chair, Dorothy stood alongside and nervously tried to explain what the various piles contained at the same time as she watched with mounting terror how Sam rummaged through the papers without regard for order.
“Worthless,” he said after a while. “This is just worthless. Where are the lists of names?”
“But,” said Dorothy, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What lists of names? The only lists of names I have are the lists of confirmands and…wait, the guests who are invited to the home of the minister tomorrow evening. Is it the invitation list you want?”
“Could it be some damn code?” said Tom-Tom.
“Have to see what you have,” said Sam. “But you’re not fooling us.”
“I don’t want to fool anyone,” said Dorothy, leaning down to take out tomorrow’s invitation list from the hanging folder in one of the desk drawers.
The crow and the gazelle ran down the stairs, two steps at a time, over to the car. Dorothy stood in the doorway, watching them.
The bum was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the gray Volga. There weren’t many street people in Amberville, and it was quite unbelievable that one of them would get in Sam and Tom-Tom’s way this evening.
And yet it happened.
It was a llama. In the glow of the streetlights the car cast a shadow over his upper body, and they saw only the legs lying outstretched across the sidewalk. When they came closer they saw that the llama was long and hairy and dirty and seemed to be sleeping half upright against the Volga’s front tire.
Without a word Tom-Tom increased his speed and ran ahead of Sam. In a few seconds he was at the car, where he took hold of the llama’s shoulders and lifted him up. Perhaps the llama awoke, perhaps he never had time to come to his senses before Tom-Tom, with all the force of which he was capable, threw him down on the sidewalk headfirst.
It had been enough so that the llama would not awaken again that night.
When his soft skull struck against the stone of the sidewalk hardly a sound was heard, but when the crow took hold of the llama’s legs and swung the animal right into the side of the Volga, the distinct but hardly dramatic sound of a seam bursting could clearly be heard.
The llama remained lying next to the car, and Tom-Tom positioned himself with one leg on either side of the unconscious body. Sam screamed.
“Crow! We have to leave!”
But Sam’s words only sounded like a weak sigh in the ears of the crow, like a breeze in a tree. With his foot Tom-Tom shoved the lifeless body so that the llama rolled around onto its back, exposing the tear under its right arm.
Tom-Tom fell down on his knees and pressed his wing feathers into the opening. He dug in as far as he was able and tore the stuffing out of the llama with a frenzy that caused Sam to turn his head and look in a different direction. This pulling and tearing of the llama’s insides went on until almost all the cotton was lying in piles alongside the animal on the sidewalk.
Then Tom-Tom’s strength ran out, and slowly he rose and got into the car. Sam hopped in on the passenger side, and they drove away in silence.
The sky was far from starry, but here and there they could still see the moonlight between breaks in the cloud cover.
They were in a hurry.
EMMA RABBIT
Magnus, I’m tired of waiting. I know this is a waiting room and I know that this is where you wait, but that doesn’t matter, I’m still tired of waiting. Besides, there’s a pitiful assortment of animals in here; it was like that the time before in Dr. Sharm’s waiting room and it’s like that here, too. On the couch by the aquarium, in the armchairs by the ugly coffee table, old hags all over the place who refuse to accept that time passes, that they’re no longer young, that their fur has seen better days. I’m not much better myself, I’m not saying that. But it’s still somewhat different, I haven’t even turned forty, and apart from my knees I don’t look so bad. You might take me for thirty. Perhaps even twenty-five, some evening when I’m made up. The old lady who’s staring at the guppy can’t possibly be under sixty-five, and what does she think? That she looks like she did in her fifties? It’s tragic. When I turn fifty I hope I’ve aged with dignity. I’ll keep my head high, dress like a lady, and try not to cling to my youth as though I wasn’t finished
with it. As if youth wasn’t already lived and completely, thoroughly explored. I’m not a stuffed animal who looks back. What has been, has been, and will never come back. I can’t understand those who go over and over all their old injustices, bitter about things that have happened, things that you can’t do anything about anyway.
Waiting.
No, it wasn’t my turn. It was the stuck-up lion who was just inside the door. Wonder what she’s doing here? Perhaps she’s acquainted with the doctor? She could use a new tip for her tail, but I doubt if she’s noticed that. If you close your eyes to shit, you don’t see it. One of Papa’s words of wisdom. He throws thousands of such proverbs around, that he’s thought up himself and that sound like true wisdom but aren’t wise at all. I learned them all, and Mama went crazy every time I repeated them out loud. They were never a happy combination, Mama and Papa. She is too ordinary for him. Still, it’s easier for me to understand that he put up with her than that it was the other way around. Why has she let it go on, year after year? I would never have been able to stand it. I would have put my foot down. But it’s clear, deep down inside she must be afraid. Who isn’t? He isn’t much to look at, but appearances are deceptive. Perhaps he’s threatened her? Said that if she leaves him he’s going to…well, something unpleasant. Sometimes I’ve heard him when he doesn’t know it. When he’s at the office and I’m just on my way in but have stopped outside the door because I hear that he isn’t alone inside. The first time when I was really little. I’ve always known. Long before Mama knew that I knew. Papa is good at making threats. It is, so to speak, a part of his job.
Waiting.
Now?
No. Not now, either. Every time that nurse comes out to call someone in, everyone sitting in the waiting room thinks it’s their turn. But we have to wait. I hate waiting. I’ve already thought that too many times today. I hate waiting. The wallpaper in the waiting room is green, with thin, white stripes. The ceiling is rather low. There are two small windows facing the street. The closed door into the doctor’s receiving room remains closed. It resists our gaze. When the door out to the stairway opens and a new patient comes in, we all stare angrily at her. We want to have the doctor’s undivided attention for ourselves. We don’t want to share. At least I don’t want to. I’ve always had an eye for doctors.