Amberville

by Tim Davys

  Once I worked as a nurse. That was long ago, and I kept at it less than a year. But I’ve never had any other job that lasted as long, at least not a real job. Besides, that year was the longest of my life. It was Papa’s idea, I’m not pretending anything else. He came up with the suggestion one day when he got angry because he thought I’d been shopping too much. He always thinks I shop too much. I have several girlfriends who are a lot worse than me, but he doesn’t care about that. You might say that the thing about becoming a nurse wasn’t a suggestion at first, it was more like a threat. Yet another threat. But something caused him to keep it in mind, and later in the evening, when he’d calmed down, he picked up the thread again. It could be useful for me, he maintained, to have a regular job. And in health care besides. I don’t know if he used the phrase “character building,” but I assume that’s how he was thinking. My life had been too easy, and it was time for a little resistance. This was one of the few things Mama and Papa agreed on, that my life had been too easy. Much easier than either of theirs. I had a hard time understanding how that could be my fault, but now I would be punished. Mama was ecstatic. Papa arranged a position for me the very next day, and we drove off to meet the director of the hospital. Perhaps I don’t need to say that I was against the whole thing. I was dating a chaffinch who thought a nurse’s uniform might be pretty, but that was the only amusing thing about the proposal. I believed, in my stupidity, that Papa would think better of it when he realized what all this would entail. I thought it was still mostly a threat, and if I promised to stop shopping I could get out of it. The director of the hospital, a doctor whose name I forgot the moment we left, went over the work duties. As I understood it, it was at least as much about being some sort of maid as it was about taking care of patients, and in the car on the way home I tried to get Papa to change his mind. That this was, as it were, beneath our dignity. But he thought exactly the opposite, and he truly enjoyed the thought of all the scrubbing and cleaning and laundering and dusting and carrying and toiling it involved. Then I started to smell a rat. Then I started to get that this was really going to happen. That I would start working. I protested wildly the whole week. Stopped talking, stopped eating, and screamed what idiots they were, but nothing helped. I think this was the only time Mama and Papa were actually on the same side. Then…

  Waiting.

  Now, perhaps?

  Yes, now it’s finally my turn.

  It was still a waiting room. Inside the door, where I believed Dr. Sharm would be found, there was a smaller room, still with the same green wallpaper, but now with a single couch suite.

  In here two nurses sit behind a low reception counter, and there are only two of us animals who are waiting. It’s me and the lion, who is still pretending not to see me. It must be lovely to live so completely in your own little bubble. To be like her, filled up with herself to such a degree that she doesn’t need to concern herself about anyone else. I really wonder what she’s doing here. Perhaps it’s a real disease? But Dr. Sharm doesn’t see the sick, only us: the vain. The lion knows that I’m looking at her, she must feel it, but she twists her head a little to the right and looks out through the window. That profile…I know her! I recognize her from somewhere, but I can’t think of where it is. It will come to me. All good things come to those who wait, but it comes faster if you do something about it, as Papa always says. The two nurses in reception are shuffling papers. One is an ostrich, the other might be a hyena or a dog or possibly some kind of bear. I’m not good at types of animals, I never have been.

  There are some newspapers on the coffee table. I pick one up and leaf through it. This is waiting. I hate waiting. A large painting is hanging on the wall behind the nurse in reception. Expressionism, or whatever it might be. Brushstrokes in an explosion of color. I’ve never liked art. I don’t know how I came up with the studio. A little white lie that led to another and then, presto, I was an artist with a studio. It was just perfect. I avoided making up pretend friends, I avoided coming up with false explanations about real friends who might have revealed me afterward. I’m not the housewife type, never have been, and when the studio was really there I realized that it was exactly what I needed. I was free. I could come and go as I wished. I avoided a lot of demands, always had a valid excuse if Papa wanted to see me or if I wanted to see someone. Life with Eric Bear was, and is, perhaps not the world’s most exciting, and the fabrication of being an artist gave, and gives, me every possibility.

  The first time Eric was going to come by and look there were a few hours of panic. First I was forced to acquire an apartment. Papa had several, all around the city, I don’t want to know why or what he used them for. But he let me have one of them, it was good enough to serve as an artists’ studio. Then I rushed around up in Lanceheim an entire morning, buying paintings in every single antiques store I could find. They thought I was crazy. I asked the antiques dealers to give me only the paintings themselves, the canvases that is, because I didn’t want the frame. A few refused, but most of them did as I asked, because I never tried to haggle over the price. Into a taxi and back to the newly acquired artist’s studio, it was down by Swarwick Park. There I set the canvases carefully around an easel I’d also found in an antiques store, and it looked rather nice. I breathed out and sat down on the couch that Papa had surely purchased, for it was leather and enormous and black just as he liked, and then I saw. Eric would ring the doorbell in exactly one half hour, and there were neither paints nor brushes in my so-called studio. I set off again into the city, and by pure chance discovered a store with artist’s materials as we went past light-blue Up Street. Into the store, make a real raid, and then back to the apartment again. I completed the image of a hardworking artist who was occupied with her new masterpiece by “spilling” a little paint on my slacks. At the very next moment Eric rang the doorbell. Fortunately, it was an old pair of slacks.

  I’ve never had anything against Eric Bear. It’s not about that. He’s a nice bear with social ambitions, and I provide him with extra credibility by pretending to be an artist. He is less superficial, thanks to me. He acquires a little depth and heft. I’ll gladly offer him that. He doesn’t bother me, he cooks on the evenings he eats at home, and when he cleans he puffs the cushions on the couch, something I hereby confess that I’ve never done.

  “Isabelle Lion,” says the dog or the hyena in the reception in a loud voice.

  Isabelle Lion. As she gets up and without a glance goes over to the door to the left of reception, I remember where I recognize her from. Her husband borrowed money from Papa a few years ago. There were some complications, I don’t remember exactly what they were, but it was in the process of ending badly. I’ve seen her and her he at Papa’s office, not just once but two times. Lion opens the door and goes in to Dr. Bee Sharm and ignores me completely. In other words, she recognizes me, too.

  I’ve never had anything against Eric Bear. He doesn’t scold me for shopping too much, even if I shop too much, and he doesn’t sniff at me to uncover the aftershave of other hes. He doesn’t bother me, and I can squander my life exactly as I wish. Because that’s what Mama says. You’re squandering your life, she says, because I can’t account for anything I’ve actually done during the day. But the days pass nevertheless. I go out in town, shop a little, meet girlfriends, and have lunch. Sometimes there’s a little flirtation to play with, sometimes not. Sometimes Mama and Papa want me to be involved in something, sometimes not. But Eric doesn’t demand much, other than that I am referred to as his wife. That much I can do.

  Now.

  Finally it’s my turn.

  Dr. Bee Sharm is, exactly as his name suggests, a very small stuffed animal, the smallest I’ve seen. He sits behind a large desk in his white coat, smiling broadly as I come in. Apart from the customary cot along the long side of the room, there isn’t much in here that’s reminiscent of a hospital. No anatomy charts or horrid stainless-steel tools that always scare me to death. I sit on the stool he is p
ointing at, and when he asks what I’m looking for, I tell him.

  “It’s my knees, doctor,” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” says the doctor amiably, jumping down from his chair.

  He disappears behind his desk, but comes strolling around the corner and he hardly even comes up to my knees. I can’t help it, I lean over so as to be able to see what the little fellow is doing down there. He’s supposed to be the best in the city. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

  “In my humble opinion,” says Dr. Sharm, “you have very beautiful knees, Mrs. Rabbit. And I doubt that it’s time to fill them in or shine them up.”

  “But, but…” I start to stammer, because I’m amazed at an animal who doesn’t seem to want my money when I’m fully prepared to give it away, or at least pay handsomely for a simple service.

  “There are artificial fibers,” Dr. Sharm interrupts me, “that are very true to life, and with which I can absolutely fill in the shallow parts of your knees. But I’m not sure that will be really successful because there’s really nothing like original hair-covering.”

  “Not successful?” I repeat, and I know I sound irritated, but I can’t help it. If this little doctor is supposed to be the best in the city, and he doesn’t know if the results will be good, who’s supposed to know? Not successful? What kind of foolishness is that?

  “Oh, ma’am,” says Dr. Sharm, “however much we might wish it, and despite all its advances, medical development still has most of its work ahead of it. We think we’re becoming wise, we research our way along a winding road, but even so we can’t know completely for sure.”

  I’m dumbfounded. At the same time I shouldn’t be surprised. My own experience of health care is exactly the same. At Lakestead House a gaggle of doctors in white coats ran around with furrowed brows looking sadly at you, so that you gained confidence in them and became a little afraid at the same time. The majority at Lakestead House had lived there their entire lives, and would continue living there until the red pickup came and got them. They were almost all there for psychiatric difficulties. The doctors were a threat to health. You never knew when they might come steaming in with a shot or an idea for a small intervention that might be of help. At first I was scared to death. I had such respect for them. But by the final months I knew that the doctors were loonier than the patients. And believe me, the patients were loony. Completely loony. I took care of three of them, an eagle who thought he could fly, a rose-colored badger who thought he was a general, and Teddy Bear, who carried on about how he was fighting against evil. I met Eric Bear when he was up to visit Teddy at Lakestead, so I got to know Teddy first. Compared to all the other crackpots, it was easy to like him. True, he belonged in the home, but if you just kept to the right topics of conversation he wasn’t strange at all. Not as strange as the others, in any case. And with that I’m including the personnel. I met Teddy at least three times a day. I gave him breakfast, I took him out on a walk in the afternoon, and I saw to it that he took his tablets before he went to bed. It was primarily during the walks that we talked. About everything imaginable, high and low. He told me a great deal about his family, of course—it was Teddy who got me interested in Eric. He sounded exciting. Dangerous. I liked dangerous males.

  “Twenty-five thousand,” says Dr. Bee Sharm. “But, as stated, I can’t guarantee that it will be especially successful. If I were you, I would wait a few years until the fur around the knee is a little less…lively.”

  But you’re not me, you little bee, I thought. Instead I said out loud, “Okay, but I’ve heard so many good things about you, Dr. Sharm, that nevertheless I’ll take the risk. Can I schedule a time for the procedure itself?”

  The doctor nodded and referred me back out to reception.

  Every weekend I was off and went home to Papa and Mama in Amberville. Coming into the city from Hillevie and Lakestead was such liberation that the trip back on Monday morning was sheer torture. I whined about wanting to quit. Every weekend I whined, but Papa was rock solid. Now he’d finally gotten me a job, he said, and now I had to show that I could endure. But once, out of all the times that I nagged him and tried to describe how indescribably miserable things were for me as a nurse, I happened to mention Teddy Bear’s name. And even who Teddy Bear’s mother was. That changed everything. From brushing me and my nagging aside as though I were a little fruit fly, Papa suddenly became extremely interested. At first I didn’t realize why, but later I understood. Rhinoceros Edda. A contact that led straight into Mollisan Town’s political network would open enormous opportunities for Papa. Now I would never get to quit. I cursed myself and wondered how I could have been so dense. Perhaps some of the idiots out at Lakestead were contagious? Papa drove me to the bus the following Monday himself, and he made it completely clear that I should take especially good care of Teddy.

  What happened then wasn’t my fault. I don’t really know how it came about. I’m not interested in politics, I’m not interested in clever plans and long, convoluted chains of thought. Sometimes I think that’s what gets my parents to remain a couple. Each of them, in their own way, seems immensely fascinated by keeping track of such things. Figuring out that if She does this, He is going to do that, which leads to She doing that while Her Cousin does this. That kind of endless speculation in people’s futures. I don’t give a damn about what everyone’s up to; personally they can do what they want, and where it concerns the Bear twins it simply turned out as it did. I couldn’t help that both of them fell in love with me.

  It was less surprising that Teddy Bear should maintain that he loved me. That was part of his disease profile, the doctors said. I didn’t really know what to do when Teddy confessed his love, so I asked the doctors for advice. They smiled with embarrassment and gave each other conspiratorial glances and asked me to excuse them but I shouldn’t take Teddy’s tokens of love seriously. It was not me, Emma Rabbit, he loved, but more what he imagined that I stood for. He had designated me as some sort of object of goodness and tenderness, security and consolation; that was what the doctors said. The only thing to do, they advised me, was, as usual, to agree with the patient. This applied to everyone who was admitted to Lakestead House. Don’t end up in any conflicts, agree with or ignore their peculiarities. So I kept on working as usual. Made Teddy’s bed and cleaned his room in the morning. Saw to it that he took his tablets and ate his food. Listened to all of his thoughts and agreed with most of them. But not in some sad, passive way; on the contrary, I gladly took part in the conversation. Teddy had a sense of humor and was actually rather wise. But when he descended into strange arguments about evil and goodness, I tried to divert him. Often I succeeded. What I had the most difficulty overlooking was when he mixed up his own life with his twin brother’s. Then I really had to concentrate so as not to say something stupid. Eric Bear came to visit Teddy at some point every week, and often Eric talked about his job. I couldn’t help that I happened to hear their conversations, it wasn’t as though they were whispering or tried to be secretive. And when Eric left, Teddy might repeat Eric’s words later the same day as though they were his own. He quite simply borrowed Eric’s life. I knew exactly why that in particular made me so ill at ease. It was the clearest sign of how sick Teddy really was, and of course that made all my conversations with him become less interesting.

  Out in reception I set up a new time with the dog, who I am now rather sure is some sort of panda. This is not a return visit, but rather a time for the procedure itself. The panda and I agree on a date at the beginning of September. I don’t see a trace of the haughty lion. But I follow her example, and when I pass by those waiting in the outer waiting room I stick my nose up in the air. I don’t see the animals in the lounge suite or by the aquarium but rather stare straight toward the outside door. In a few seconds I’m out on the stairway and on my way down toward the street. I can’t maintain that it feels good to be mixed up with the old, worn-out wrecks sitting in Dr. Bee Sharm’s reception. It feels liberating to get out of ther
e.

  But I must complete this train of thought. It wasn’t particularly strange that Teddy Bear fell in love, nor was it something to take seriously. That Eric Bear also fell in love with me was more odd. Personally I’ve never been in love. Neither when I was little and went to school nor since. I don’t know why. There was a time when I was sorry that it was like that; I felt isolated and different in a bad way. But finally you have to accept yourself for who you are. For good and bad, as Teddy would have said. Since I’m not the romantic type, I haven’t incited especially many romantic feelings in the animals in my vicinity, either. Now and then, of course. I’m not ugly. But Eric’s courtship surprised me. We didn’t know each other, he’d only seen me when I was taking care of Teddy out at Lakestead, and I suspected that above all it was Teddy’s description of me that aroused Eric’s interest. We greeted each other, exchanged a few words when we met in the corridors up on the nursing unit, but no more than that. Nevertheless he asked if I wanted to go out with him, and when I didn’t answer immediately he flattered me so crudely that I was astonished. We were in the assembly hall one flight up, where the patients sometimes drank coffee in the afternoon. Only he and I were there. He was brazen and insistent, but at the same time rather cute, and he smelled nice. We went out a few times. It was no more than that, a way to pass the time in my monotonous, work-filled life that Papa refused to let me out of. However much I complained and swore, he sent me back to Lakestead every Monday.

  At last I figured it out. I don’t intend to maintain that it was my own ingenious plan, but when Eric Bear proposed to me after only a few months—which, to say the least, came as a surprise—I realized that this might actually be my salvation. If I said yes to the proposal, I would have to leave my job as a nurse. Papa would be jubilant, his only cub would marry into the ministry, and with that I had achieved more in my life than he had ever hoped for. Of course I couldn’t foresee all the secretiveness that would ensue. Papa was sure that Eric would call off the engagement if he found out who my papa was; I was sure of the opposite. But it turned out as Papa wished, as usual. I said that my papa was dead.