Amberville

by Tim Davys

  I still don’t know how it happened that Teddy proposed to me two days after Eric. True, they were twins, so perhaps it was a coincidence. Or else Teddy heard what had happened and didn’t want to be worse than his brother. If there is anything I regret…or perhaps don’t regret, but if there is something I’m not terribly content with, it’s the entire charade with Teddy. It felt completely wrong to pretend. But all the doctors told me to do it, and Eric told me to do it, and, of course: Papa threatened all sorts of things if I didn’t see to it to wind up in the church with one of Rhinoceros’s cubs. The deacon wanted it, too. We fooled Teddy. Penguin Odenrick play-acted. He had a serious talk with Teddy and me for several hours, as though he was really going to marry us. And later the same day the whole procedure was repeated, but then with Eric and me. It was weird. Especially because the twins were more or less identical in appearance. Odenrick mostly seemed to think it was funny. Eric, I believe, did it for Teddy’s sake. I did it mostly for my own, and a little for Papa’s sake. I got married to Eric, I avoided working at Lakestead House, and Eric never found out that he’d married the cub of a gangster king.

  I never believed that our marriage would last as long as it has. I saw it mostly as a way of getting out of being a nurse. Can it be that it hasn’t fallen apart because I’ve never really cared about it? Sometimes when I’m talking with my friends, I think that might be so. All the others seem so filled up with their love. They take betrayal so hard—both their own and their spouse’s. Personally I could care less about either.

  My life works well. And with a freshening up of my knees, there’s nothing to complain about.

  CHAPTER 27

  Through the window opening in Archdeacon Odenrick’s office, Eric Bear could see that the clouds in the sky were about to break up, and he knew he had to hurry. Soon Sam and Tom-Tom would arrive.

  Archdeacon Odenrick stood leaning against the door, but he had no intention of leaving. For the past few minutes he’d been wandering restlessly back and forth on the small floor area between the door and the desk, to the right of the armchair where Eric was sitting. The penguin had let so much pent-up frustration run out into his legs that he was getting out of breath as a result. Now he was leaning against the door to gather strength. He was breathing with an open mouth; the odor of old mustard and parsley spread around the room. Eric Bear’s provocations had gone on for almost twenty minutes, and if it weren’t for Eric’s close relationship to the archdeacon, and the archdeacon’s close relationship to Eric and his family, the attacks would perhaps have been possible to shake off. But slowly the bear found ways through the pious defenses.

  “This is meaningless,” hissed the penguin. “You’re still not listening.”

  “It was you who taught me to let be,” Eric smiled. “But I’m making myself important, right? Isn’t the reason that you, Archdeacon, don’t need to listen to criticism is that you and Magnus are so terribly close to each other? I’m not. I ought to be humble. Between the archdeacon and Magnus there is…yes, there’s hardly any difference at all.”

  Eric remained seated on the edge of the armchair before the desk; it no longer felt quite so uncomfortable. The conversation had been rancorous, but nevertheless it moved forward with an implacable logic. The archdeacon was driven by a lust for power that he would be ashamed of when it was exposed. But like all stuffed animals, he basically wanted to be loved, and if that wasn’t possible, then he at least demanded to be understood. That was his weak point.

  The penguin fixed his eyes on the bear.

  “What do you want? Really?”

  “Remove one name from the list,” the bear answered simply. “To start with.”

  He had revised his request; he had to start somewhere.

  “I stole clothes that I packed as a young confirmand,” Eric repeated. “Rat Ruth checks off the names on the clothing lists. But you don’t need to be a master detective to understand how it fits together.”

  The archdeacon was breathing heavily, and finally he let a hissing whisper grow into a shout. “Yes, of course it’s me!”

  Now it had been said, once and for all.

  “Of course you’re right, Bear. I’m the one who makes the list.”

  And Archdeacon Odenrick laughed. This was the first time Eric had heard the archdeacon laugh. The sound was jerky and dry; it came from the penguin’s throat.

  “This has nothing to do with me, you stupid bear,” hissed Odenrick. “You sit there and look like it was something I thought up. Stupidities. This is a task that goes along with the office. The archdeacon of Mollisan Town has always made the lists. That is our function, we are Magnus’s implement. Justly measuring out the lives of animals can’t be turned over to anyone else.”

  These were words that had waited to be spoken. The syllables followed one another, dominoes set up long ago that finally fell into place. Odenrick sat down, relieved and at the same time agitated. Eric remained silent. He knew that he’d broken a logjam. He sneaked a peek out through the opening behind the archdeacon. The clouds had still not broken up. But there couldn’t be many minutes remaining now.

  Archdeacon Odenrick’s forehead creased, and smoothed out, like the waves on the sea; under them thoughts were wandering back and forth. When he finally decided to speak, he did it with a calm and measured voice which was gradually filled with greater and greater passion. He spoke as much to himself as to Eric Bear.

  Odenrick told how the tradition of the lists had been inherited through the centuries. From having once been a secondary occupation for the archdeacon, over time the Death Lists had come to be the very heart of the office. And what Eric had heard was true, that every year one chosen animal was pardoned. It was the archdeacon’s responsibility and duty to do so, a reminder of the Great Mercy.

  Penguin Odenrick opened wide the door to his innermost self. And the satisfaction the archdeacon experienced as he now parted with these deep, chafing truths caused him to go deeper and deeper into the details around how the Death List functioned and how the power of the church finally came to rest on this list. How its function governed and maintained the norms of society, completely in line with what Eric Bear himself had been thinking an hour or so earlier, en route to the cathedral.

  Without the promise of a life to come, the church would lose its stature, said Odenrick in a loud, theatrical voice. Without the promise of a life to come, the laws that formed the basis of society would become incomprehensible.

  “Because the stuffed animals that you and I encounter every day are basically simple fools who are helplessly guided by their pathetic attempts to escape from time and death.”

  Only in one point, Eric realized as he sat silently and tried to keep from being disgusted by the condescension with which the archdeacon referred to his world, was what Odenrick said a surprise, and a disappointment.

  “There is an additional list.”

  Odenrick nodded with feigned reflection and pointed toward his head with the tip of his wing.

  “There is an additional list, which is even more significant than the one we’ve been talking about up to now. It’s the list of those who should be removed, the day their names end up on the Death List.”

  His tone of voice remained droning, as if he were speaking to a large audience.

  “But if you don’t want them to die, why do you write them up?” Eric asked with sincere astonishment.

  It was the first thing he’d said in almost ten minutes.

  “Because otherwise I couldn’t remove them,” the archdeacon laughed scornfully. “Otherwise Magnus would not be able to remind us of His mercy.”

  And his laughter sounded as though it hurt. This time he laughed so long that finally there didn’t seem to be any connection between the sound and what he’d said, and Eric felt sincerely sorry on the archdeacon’s account. A lunatic was sitting on the other side of the desk. The bear looked out again through the window opening. Sam and Tom-Tom ought to be here quite soon.

  “
And you,” Odenrick snorted between the convulsions that he tried to get past without succeeding, “you are never, ever getting at the list in my head.”

  And the thought of the opposite was apparently so ridiculous to the archdeacon that his desperate cheerfulness received fresh nourishment. He coughed forth another laugh, and the archdeacon was compelled to scream in order to make himself heard: “Because you’re completely insignificant!”

  Eric nodded to himself. Imagining that the archdeacon would insert some minor lies into the middle of this ejaculation of truth was completely unlikely. This was not the evening for circumlocutions. The archdeacon’s power included no more than a single reprieve per year. Eric would not be able to remove both of them, so he was forced to do the impossible.

  He was forced to choose between Teddy and Emma.

  “What you’ve told me makes me anything other than insignificant,” the bear replied quietly. “You’ve made me powerful. That’s worth more than even you can pay.”

  “You know nothing!” screamed Odenrick. “Everything you’ve heard are only fever dreams. You are only one of thousands of animals who’ve tried to reveal the origin of the Death List, one of tens of thousands of animals through the centuries who’ve tried to become immortal by removing their own or someone else’s name. You know nothing, for in the same moment that you leave here, this conversation has never taken place. If you ask me, you’ve never even been here.”

  Eric looked out through the window and seemed to perceive the sound of the engine of a gray Volga. Perhaps he was imagining things?

  “I think neither you nor I can fathom what would happen if this gets out,” Eric continued with a calm that stood in such contrast to the archdeacon’s theatrical gestures and outbursts that it seemed almost inappropriate. “If everything you’ve said about the list’s far-reaching significance holds up, what would happen if the animals in the city knew that it was you who arbitrarily wrote down their names on a piece of paper?”

  “You cannot challenge me,” screamed the archdeacon, sounding sincerely surprised. “You cannot challenge me. Haven’t you understood a thing? Next week I’ll sit down here and write the next list. Perhaps your name will be on it. You cannot challenge me.”

  The archdeacon’s laughter changed into a dry cough.

  “Of course I understand,” said Eric Bear implacably. “I already said that when I arrived. I understand more than you want to know. That’s my payment. Your list, the one you have in your head, of animals to pardon, you may postpone it one year. This year you have to remove the name I ask you to remove. Otherwise the animals in the city are going to find out what’s been going on.”

  “But this is…”

  “Ah,” said Eric, nodding toward one of the window openings, “here come Sam and Tom-Tom. I don’t know if you know them, they’re just as insignificant as I am.”

  At the same time as Sam Gazelle parked the gray Volga on one of the cathedral’s cross streets, the final clouds broke up and the half-moon was hanging up there, crystal clear, in the black sky. Through the window the penguin and the bear both saw Sam get out of the car, holding up a piece of paper.

  “Do you see?” asked Eric. “Those are your handwritten Death Lists. Sam and Tom-Tom have visited Dorothy, you know. And Dorothy, she has a sense of orderliness, she saves everything. Even your original manuscripts, before she redoes them into catalogues of used clothing.”

  The gazelle shut the car door after him but continued waving the paper the way he’d been told to. Along with Tom-Tom Crow he walked slowly toward the cathedral and the unobtrusive door that Eric had promised was there, even if it couldn’t be seen from a distance.

  “What should we do when he sees that this is a frigging invitation list you’re waving around?” asked Tom-Tom.

  “No idea,” answered Sam.

  “I should have killed the owl instead,” the crow said regretfully.

  “Sweetheart, that wouldn’t have helped, either,” said Sam. “Presumably this is still just a deadend.”

  “You swine,” hissed Penguin Odenrick.

  The archdeacon was standing with his back toward Eric, staring out through the window opening onto the street. He stood stiff as a block of salt. Even from faraway he could see that it was the church’s paper with his own characteristic handwriting the gazelle was holding in his hooves.

  “You don’t understand what you’re risking,” the penguin hissed warningly at the bear without turning around. “These are structures that have been built up through the centuries. This is a world order that knows no alternative.”

  “We’re risking nothing,” replied Eric, unimpressed by the big words. “You give me the list, I remove one name, you tell the rat, and then you’ll get your manuscripts back the day after tomorrow.”

  “That’s much too short notice,” whispered the archdeacon without taking his eyes from the gazelle and the crow, who slowly continued their walk toward the church. “I can’t do it.”

  “You’ll manage,” Eric promised.

  “How could I rely on you?” asked Odenrick, finally turning around.

  Something in the archdeacon’s eyes had gone out.

  “How could you not?” asked the bear.

  They remained standing like that for a few brief moments, before the penguin sat down heavily at the desk and in the same movement bent over to pull out one of the drawers. He took out a copy of the packing slip that had come with the latest weekly delivery of clothes to the Garbage Dump, set the paper on the table, turned in the bear’s direction, and pushed it over.

  “I’m tired,” he confessed. “I don’t have the energy to think.”

  Eric remained silent. He took one of the pens that was in the penholder on the desk and searched along the row of names.

  One whose life he rescued at the cost of the other. It was the most difficult moment in his life.

  “I never want to hear this mentioned again,” said the archdeacon while Eric found the name he was looking for, and drew a broad stroke through it.

  “Never again,” repeated the archdeacon.

  The bear pushed the packing slip back to Odenrick, set aside the pen, and got up from the armchair. Without another word he turned around and left the archdeacon’s office.

  Sam and Tom-Tom stood chatting in the street as Eric came out. He greeted them with a nod which perhaps was a kind of thanks, but he said nothing. With rapid steps he went over to the parked car. The gazelle and the crow were forced to jog to catch up.

  “How did it go?” asked Tom-Tom.

  But Eric Bear didn’t answer; he sat in the backseat of the car and shut the door.

  “Presumably not so good, huh?” said Tom-Tom to the gazelle before they opened the front doors and joined Eric.

  The gazelle shrugged his shoulders. Tom-Tom started the car.

  “Eric, dear, we didn’t get hold of any manuscript,” said Sam. “She maintained that she had no idea about Death Lists and gave us an invitation list instead.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Tom-Tom.

  “Now we’re going home,” said Eric Bear.

  EPILOGUE

  TO BE READ AS NEEDED

  Eric Bear sat on a ruined pier at the north end of the long beach in Hillevie, dangling his legs over the water. It was the morning of the twenty-second of May; yesterday he’d slept the entire day, got up at six in the evening, eaten a couple of sandwiches, and then gone back to sleep for the night. He’d slept quietly, a dreamless sleep, hard and heavy; it was his body’s way of healing a portion of the tension that had been a strain inside as well as outside in the recent weeks. His body ached with stiffness when he woke up early in the morning.

  As he opened his eyes he knew that he had to drive out to the sea. He took a cup of coffee with Tom-Tom at the kitchen table; there was nothing to eat, not in the fridge or in the pantry. The crow had been up since early that morning. During the previous day he’d swallowed his pride and phoned Grand Divino. The department store ma
nagement, in any case the head of the house and home department, had agreed to meet with him, and he would be going up to speak with him in a few hours.

  “Blame me,” whispered Eric.

  “I’ve already done that. What the hell do you think?” whispered Tom-Tom and smiled.

  Sam was sleeping; the crow and the bear were talking with lowered voices.

  At nine o’clock, Eric pulled on his clothes and left the apartment. The gray Volga Kombi was still parked within walking distance of Yiala’s Arch. Eric bought a croissant and a second cup of coffee to go from Springergaast and ate while he drove. On the end of the pier, with the sea before him, there was hope of finding some kind of calm, for a few hours anyway.

  And what would have happened if Teddy hadn’t phoned the day before yesterday? The thought was unthinkable; if Eric lingered on it more than a few seconds his world would fall apart.

  When Eric was telling Tom-Tom and Sam about his plan regarding Dorothy and the manuscript, the telephone rang unexpectedly. The sound was alien, Eric could scarcely recall a single telephone conversation during the more than three weeks he’d been staying at Yiala’s Arch. Even Sam had looked bewildered. They nodded to the gazelle to go and answer it, which he of course did. With an even more surprised expression on his face he listened a moment, nodded, and then extended the receiver to Eric.

  “It’s for you.”

  Eric took the few steps over to Sam, grasped the phone receiver, and just by the breathing on the other end of the line could hear that it was his twin brother.