by Tim Davys
I fell silent, astonished, because I never would have believed that I could, well, think of so much, the words just came out, I didn’t stop to think, just let them tumble out of my mouth, and perhaps it was a little strange, the part about an idea that starts burning, but the kind sparrow seemed to think I’d done something good, because she looked flabbergasted, in a positive way, and what she said took me completely by surprise.
I thought I’d heard wrong, but when I was about to ask if it was really true Leopold came out of the dark corridor, and I stood up, almost at attention, I was so excited, and—still without answering the sparrow—started going to meet my brother, because he expected me to escort him out to the bus. The sparrow called after me, repeating what she had already said, that she would hold a place for me at the tryouts on Monday, that she believed I had a good chance to be included on New Mornings, the program my brothers fought over to win with a longing greater than life itself . . .
“What? No, it must have been to someone else.”
This excuse of a life that I live, this masochism that I expose myself to daily, cuts into my soul, it may seem I accept it without thinking, as if I enjoy being bullied and held down, but inside I’m burning up, as if someone were vomiting into my open mouth, and I swallow and want more and more, and it’s inconceivable, of course, that every day I choose to continue and act as though I have no choice. Life is mysterious, and not a second goes by that I don’t despise myself for this self-imposed punishment that no one sees and no one promotes; however hard I work, however complete my humiliation is, I still can’t free myself from the tormenting awareness of my own spinelessness. I’m not just a wretch, I’m worse than that, I betray myself, and when you’ve betrayed yourself you can never, ever regain any dignity, and you can never look another stuffed animal in the eyes.
Life doesn’t always turn out like you expect, and I’m not the type who likes surprises. I resist when I notice that things are about to change, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not ashamed of wanting security; I don’t think I’m different from most, we are all creatures of habit even if some want to present themselves as more adventurous, we’re used to dreaming about something other than what we are and used to not daring to live that dream.
On the bus to work the next morning the encounter in the TV building with the sweet Sparrow Dahl was already removed to the stockpile of memories I save in the hindmost parts of my brain, where dreams and hopes remain. In part because the encounter had been so unreal: the garden in the courtyard, the sparrow’s proposal and my own behavior, but also because I didn’t want to admit what had actually happened and the proposal she shouted after me. I could imagine that my brothers would one day be sitting on TV reading the news, that was how it should be, but that I . . . no, I couldn’t even formulate the thought, it was so absurd, and the question of whether I would or would not go to the sparrow’s program-host test was not only hypothetical, it was worded wrong: I had nothing to do at that kind of test.
Together with hundreds of anonymous workers, I walked across the open fields of the industrial area on my way to the brewery, and the sky was dark as it usually was and the first raindrops struck against the barred windows as I stood in the dressing room and pulled on my work overalls in ten minutes, then I set my lunchbox in the locker and shut the metal door with a bang and quickly twisted the padlock so that none of the rats saw what I was doing or figured out the combination. And with steps that were neither especially heavy nor especially light I went out into the factory where the odors and sounds of the brewery surrounded me and protected me from the world outside. I passed the first of four cisterns and went down the steps between the foreman’s office and the spice room, and all during that time I did not think about anything at all. Last year’s austerity package meant that all the lightbulbs in the lower level were exchanged for a lower wattage, and the light down there was barely more than a night-light nowadays, which the union complained about, of course, to no avail. And I went over the trampled dirt floor (that rested in dark shadows) over to my oven, the fourth counting from the stairway, and when I got there no one turned around, no one welcomed me or took particular notice, and I took my place in the team and spent the day feeding the oven with chips at a pace that was as stingy as possible, but without risking that the heat went down.
The quarrel that started later that morning was nothing unusual, it was a couple of rats who started squabbling, most likely it was over money (the rats at the ovens made bets and wagered on everything they saw, so it was usually about gambling debts), and I kept at a distance as normal. There were hard words, swearwords being thrown in different directions, there seemed to be three of them who were mad at one another this time, and soon they started scuffling with their small, hard claws. It wasn’t long before the fistfight was in full swing. The foremen most often let the rats be, as there was no point in intervening, the internal pecking order was impossible for an outsider to figure out, and we workers who had nothing to do with the matter were forced to concentrate on the ovens because now a number of animals (the ones who were fighting and the ones who were watching) were neglecting to shovel chips into the openings.
What happened next happened frighteningly fast, but when I think about it, it feels like it went on for an eternity, I had only seen it at close range once before and it must have been ten years ago; I’d forgotten how repulsive it was.
The rats fought, and without thinking about it they rolled over to the ovens where I was standing. The circle of observers moved with the fighters, and the audience was so absorbed by the struggle (they yelled and hooted for their favorites) that they didn’t realize how close they were to danger. And the spark that flew away—we were working in protective clothing, the overalls were specially treated, on all the pillars in the cellar there were foam extinguishers, and there was an automatic sprinkler system along the low ceiling, no one underestimated the risks of fire or neglected trying to foresee them—landed on the shoulder of one of the rats watching the fight.
I was the one standing closest, I saw the spark fly out of the oven and I heard the terrified rat’s desperate scream. Loud and anxiety-ridden, it cut through the noise from the fight. I took a few steps toward him out of pure reflex, and then I backed up again in terror: He was in flames before I even realized what was happening. I ran over to the nearest fire extinguisher, no more than five or six steps from where I stood, but by the time I’d grabbed it down from the wall and pulled out the safety pin the rat was already past saving. I sprayed foam over him—over what remained of him—but I knew that it was no use, and I didn’t even notice that the fight had stopped and that everyone stood looking at me and the pile of cotton and fabric that was still burning on the floor in front of me, only now with smaller flames.
Together we all stood awhile and stared, then I dropped the extinguisher on the dirt floor, turned around, and went quickly through the dark underworld over to the stairway and then up into the brewery to the dressing room, where I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and just stared vacantly into the air in front of me. I don’t know how many fire drills we’ve had since I started at the brewery, I don’t know how many warnings I’ve gotten from older workers, and I can’t count all the times sparks landed on the ground next to my fireproof boots; small, dangerous, yellow flames that died in a few seconds and left a final puff of smoke behind them, a last breath, visible as a gray veil against the black dirt, and every time it had been possible to be wiped out within the course of a few seconds.
At last I got up, without anyone having come up after me from the cellar (I’m sure they were occupied with compensating for the reduced heat in the ovens during the fight), tore off my overalls, changed, and left the factory. I had to see the sky, had to breathe fresh air, had to be alone with my thoughts, and I let them run free in any direction they wanted; they surprised me by not being occupied with fear of death or existential questions. On the contrary I
knew there and then, and with an astonishing certainty, that I would do as the sparrow asked me, I would return to the TV building on Monday, but this time for my own sake. I would go through the tryout and be tested for New Mornings. It was obvious. Why had I been so hesitant?
I think about her often, but not as often as I thought about her before, she’s starting to fade in my memory, the outlines are fuzzy, it’s unforgivable, I don’t recall her voice any longer even if I recall her screams the night that formed me into who I am—this loathsome little stuffed animal who’s me and who is never even going to find a punishment harsh enough to atone for my crime. I was six years old that autumn, I’d started school, I had a mom and a dad to come home to in the afternoons, and even if she had often had too much wine, even if she often smelled bad (I thought it was the smell that made her ridiculous, pushy, and hard to understand), she was there and she was my mom. She smoked too much and I know we were in the living room together that evening, I don’t know where Dad was, I don’t know where Leopold was, I don’t know where Rasmus was, it was her and me and she was going to light a cigarette with a match and her paw was shaking like it always did when she’d been drinking, and I imagine that I can see it before me, the shaking paw with the lit match, but that’s probably something I’ve thought up afterward. How she raises the match to the cigarette she’s holding between her lips, but how the flame flutters and lights her whiskers, and it’s then that she starts to scream. Get water, get water, put out the fire, put out the fire, I’ve never heard her sound that way before. I’m only six years old and don’t understand that it’s distilled terror I’m hearing, fear of death. Frightened, I leap off the couch and run out to the kitchen and search in the cupboards for something to put water in. At last I find a large saucepan, I put it in the sink and turn the tap, and while the water runs into the saucepan I hear the screams from the living room, ghastly screams, I start screaming myself, I don’t know why but it’s my instinct to drown out Mom, and at last the saucepan is almost full. I lift it up, almost drop it because it’s far too heavy, and drag it out to the living room, where the screams have fallen silent, and when I see her on the couch there’s nothing left of her. I drop the water on the floor and then Leopold comes running, I don’t know where he’s coming from, but he sees that the couch is about to ignite, and he throws a blanket over the fire and suffocates it and screams at me to get more water, and this time I don’t fill the saucepan as much as before . . . if I’d realized that the first time . . . if I’d known about the blanket . . . if it had been someone other than me sitting across from her that evening . . . I killed her by sitting by . . . I let her die, and I have to live with that.
I can tell you how you rot from inside; you consistently refuse to show courage, you piss on yourself, swallow your own desires so many times that at last you suffocate and gasp for air, but the air is polluted by your own stinking resignation and so it’s not enough, there’s no oxygen left.
A vicious circle, and I’ve lived in it my whole life, it leads nowhere, not up and not down, not forward and not backward. It’s an eternal wandering in the shadow of a life that never became more than a promise, the bitterness tastes like a sour belch and I swallow and swallow but can never be rid of it. I’m a lowlife—the worst kind, because I have enough imagination to visualize a different life, I can’t even blame stupidity or narrow-mindedness, it’s simply cowardice that paralyzes me, it’s simply a need for security so overwhelming that it condemns me to live in degradation, rather than risk experiencing something that I don’t know in advance what it will be.
And the circle closes when self-contempt paralyzes and pacifies me and makes me even more afraid than I was before, which disgusts me so much that for a few dizzying moments I think the energy generated by the disgust will be enough to break the pattern, but in some inconceivable manner it doesn’t work that way. I know I have to stop cowering under this life, that I have to stop letting myself be exploited by my brothers; but when I think that nothing happens, my dishonesty becomes even clearer and I shake with anxiety before the pitiful wretch that’s me, Erik Gecko.
Today was Tuesday, so I only had five days left (two of them on the weekend, so the opportunity to prepare before Monday was limited because my chores at home were particularly numerous and difficult on the weekend), so in reality I was very short of time. Instead of going back into the factory I went out onto the street, waited for the bus, and went home to Carrer de Carrera, where I got off, passed our doorway, and went to Sarah Mammoth . . .
“Hi.
“Yeah, I know. But . . . today it’s not like that.
“No, not today.
“May I look at your magazines a little?
“Yes, maybe you could say that.
“If you don’t want to, then I can . . .
“Okay.”
Sometimes humor and irony are difficult and as usual I misunderstood the mammoth, who liked to joke. Actually, she had nothing at all against me browsing in the magazines, so I went about my work systematically, starting in the upper left-hand corner of the shelves, and five hours later (true, I got up every time a customer came in, waited on the sidewalk, and then resumed browsing where I’d been interrupted), I was done. By then I’d read about cars and houses, about rugs and yarn, about handbags and dogs, about celebrities and actors, and food and flowers but perhaps above all, I’d read a great deal about politics and business, I browsed through loads of theater magazines and literary journals and architectural magazines, and now my plan was to let all this information sink in during the evening and night, so that I could extract selected portions from my memory tomorrow and make a really, really good news item to read for Sparrow Dahl on Monday. Best of all was that I didn’t get home later than usual and so I had time to clean my brothers’ room and make their beds before it was time to start dinner. I had read the newspapers in the tobacco shop at the expense of my job, and I also decided to call in sick on Monday, which would be the fourth day in three weeks (because I had taken a “day off” with both Rasmus and Leopold), and to be honest I knew what was waiting, because no one is gone for four days in three weeks and gets to keep their job, least of all someone the polecat doesn’t even like to start with; with all due respect to Rasmus and Leopold, there were limits even to what they could accomplish and I assumed my job was lost.
I realize, as I’m writing this, that this sounds irresponsible, sacrificing a permanent job in this way, but that’s not true. I have no talent for melancholy or thoughtlessness, I’m a realist, I’m pragmatic, and while I was airing Rasmus’s blanket out the window of the top floor, I again realized the obvious: I’m going to lose my job, I’ll be forced to look for something new, and the only thing that worries me are my brothers, who are going to wonder and be worried and perhaps be mean to me, but at the same time they are going to be more worried about me being unemployed than about what I’ve done. And with my work ethic and seriousness and their ability to convince employers about my work ethic and seriousness, it will work out (because even if there aren’t many job openings in Yok, there aren’t many stuffed animals looking for jobs in Yok).
During dinner the brothers asked how my day went. They almost always ask that, and I told them that a rat burned up at my feet, and they laughed so that the tears ran and I did nothing to get them to understand that the event had been so unpleasant that I had made a life-changing decision afterward, in a way that was not at all typical for me.
The strangeness continued, because I can’t describe it any other way and when I look back on those days I don’t understand how I dared (because in most cases I don’t dare anything) or where I got the energy from (because after work and then with everything that has to be done at home in most cases I don’t have energy for anything), but down in the cellar, next to the storeroom where my brothers sometimes locked me in, was our linen closet of heavily patched and mended sheets, pillowcases, and towels, and on the way to the br
ewery the next morning I went past the linen closet and took one of my bottom sheets and one of my pillowcases, the blue-and-white-striped one, that I decided to turn into a jacket. That was what Leopold had said, and Rasmus, too, without saying it: If you wanted to be in the game and compete for a place on New Mornings, you had to dress for it, and I could sew, that was no problem, I had made almost all my brothers’ clothes.
When I got to work I changed as usual (being in the brewery without overalls was a sign that something was off), but I didn’t go down to the cellar because it was too dark to sew straight seams down there, and besides the odor of burning wood chips was so strong that the fabric would get all smoky. No, instead I sneaked into the large drying cabinet in the dressing room, which complied with a union demand that there should be a drying cabinet that size for the workers. I don’t know why, maybe working hours were different before?
The cabinet was so large that there was a ceiling lamp inside and a bench to sit on, and like all drying cabinets it was well-insulated, which meant that after I’d climbed in and closed it no one could see or hear me unless they opened the door. I remained in the drying cabinet all day Thursday and Friday instead of going down to my place by the oven, and because the time clock is in the dressing room I clocked in and clocked out and changed, so I admit that a hope was born that I might still be able to keep the job, because the question was whether anyone actually missed me on the team. At least, I had never felt that I was more than yet another shovel, yet another pair of arms among a number of shovels and arms.
The jacket turned out elegant, if I may say so myself, with the sheet as lining and the blue-striped pillowcase transverse in the sleeves and lapel, which gave a striking but not pretentious impression. For buttons I used bottle caps, which I realize sounds cheap, but at the brewery there was a whole room of bottle caps and by no means were all of them used on the bottles Carlsweis currently produced. It wasn’t hard to find a pair of small, white, nice-looking caps for the sleeves and another pair, blue and a little bigger, for buttoning.