by Tim Davys
“How did it happen,” Mike asked his large friend, “that regardless of the circumstances, from the existential questions of youth, that unfathomable orgasm of acknowledgment after the previous album, to all the sudden changes of the last few days, the anxiety is still pretty much the same?”
“Damned if I know, Mike,” Tom-Tom answered. “Who knows? Do you mind if I knit a little?”
Crow had brought some knitting with him in a plastic bag. He was working on a white cardigan sweater that he intended to give to Sam as a Christmas present.
“No, no, go ahead and knit,” Mike said distractedly.
The chimpanzee was tired after the night’s session. In a frenzy he had stayed up past dawn, striking the strings of the guitar harder and harder with Nikki Lee’s pick. He had recorded his attempts after he was finished; he had listened and rejected them all. It didn’t work. It just wouldn’t work. Every melody line was predictable and uniform. There was no point.
Mike’s head fell down between the torn knees of his jeans and closed his eyes hard. Crow’s knitting needles clicked against each other. The scent of the rain forest’s dampness obstructed his nose. Melancholy seized him, tears welled up unexpectedly in his eyes, and the emptiness sucked the life out of his chest. He suddenly missed Cocker Spaniel Rozenblatt with a physical intensity that made him dizzy.
He had never loved her. He could never even say the words. On the contrary, it was her love that he had expected; it should have been enough for both of them. But it had proved to be fragile.
“We all have a right to be loved,” he said. “Don’t we?”
He made an exception to the overwhelming, collective love his fans gave him every day. True, it was unconditional and made no demands, but at the same time impossible to take in.
“I love you, Mike,” Tom-Tom Crow answered, without looking up from his knitting. “And Sam loves you to death. Although in a different way.”
Mike nodded. That’s how it was. Useless.
Why couldn’t anyone accept him for who he was? Why did his rock star status stand between him and the world? It was as if for every emotion he declared, every truth he delivered in lyrics or interviews, nobody heard what he said, they were all preoccupied with the way he said it.
Mike Chimpanzee thought he was screaming, but no one listened.
“And Mom, Mike,” Tom-Tom continued his own thought. “Your mom loves you, too, damn it.”
Mom. Presumably the root to what was bad was in cubhood, Mike thought bitterly, in Mom’s intense coddling, which would never end either.
The fatigue that he felt so acutely as he sat beside the large, knitting crow was born out of the feeling of never being sufficiently loved, never feeling sufficiently talented and appreciated and . . . everything else that Mom got him to believe over the years that he had a right to. It was Mom who, through her unexpressed expectations, her sky-high pedestals, created the needs that constantly pursued him; his striving to exceed every conceivable expectation. There wasn’t a psychotherapist out there who could settle accounts with Mike’s adolescence.
“Mike, I was going to stuff pilsner sausage this afternoon,” said Tom-Tom. “Do you want to help?”
“That’s nice, Tom-Tom,” answered Mike, who realized the crow was trying to cheer him up, “but I think I’ll pass. I didn’t sleep at all last night, and I have to get a few hours’ sleep before tonight.”
Mike got up from the bench, carrying the gloom on his shoulders. He walked back down the hill, leaving the crow behind. The overgrown flower beds on the side of the path rustled. Along with the damp fog that constantly rested over Plaza de Bueno, the day felt enchanted. Mike found himself looking for the genie, but Fredrik was not to be seen.
The idea grew during the walk home. With each block, Mike Chimpanzee’s pace quickened, and when he reached indigo blue Calle Gran Via there was no doubt remaining.
He opened the door to the antique store and called to the genie. Fredrik materialized instantly.
“Now I know,” said Mike. “I wish to be free.”
“Free?”
“I’m tired of never feeling like I measure up. Tired of the demands. I want to be free for real.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t really think that . . . whose demands are we talking about?” the genie asked.
“The demands!” Mike exclaimed in irritation. “Everyone’s demands. Stuffed animals in the city who stare and expect . . . something. Toad’s demands. Mom’s demands. The demands!”
The genie pretended to furrow his brow in deep folds, but of course that was wasted effort.
“And you want to be free?”
“Lose this damned stress and anxiety I wake up with in the morning and go to sleep with at night.” Mike nodded.
“That is your third and final wish?” the genie confirmed.
“I know that,” Mike replied. “And that’s what I want. Freedom.”
The genie nodded.
Before Mike Chimpanzee’s eyes, the transformation began. The cloud of diffuse outlines that Mike had become accustomed to seeing under the genie’s clothes successively took more solid form. The grayish white cloud yellowed and became furry. What had been air became a body. Out of the implied facial features a nose appeared; whiskers grew out, and the puffs of ears became thick and hairy.
Fredrik was a lion.
“At long last,” he whispered.
He stretched himself, stroked his belly and shoulders with his paws, let his tongue investigate his lips, and filled his lungs with air.
“At long last,” he repeated.
Then he took a few steps over to the glass display case and found the small blue glass bottle where he had lived for so many years. He pulled the cork out, and at the same moment Mike Chimpanzee felt something happening to him. It was not pain, more like a kind of ache. It started in his feet and quickly rose up through his body. It dematerialized body part after body part and left behind a lovely vacuum; he leaned his head forward and discovered that his feet no longer were feet, only clouds.
The insight was momentary.
“I’m becoming you,” Mike panted.
“You’re free, Mike.”
Fredrik held the blue glass bottle up in front of him, and in only a few seconds Mike had been sucked in through the opening. The former genie put the cork back in the bottle, and placed it back on the shelf where it had previously stood along with other antique writing implements. Then he left the antique store without looking back.
Mindie
Part One
Name?”
“Vincent Hare.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-two years, 150 days, 4 hours, and about 20 minutes.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“It is our cursed duty to keep track of how much time has passed,” the hare answered without a trace of irony.
Vincent Hare was a light yellow stuffed animal with a crocheted nose. The inside of his long ears was covered with warm pink silk. He went on.
“At the moment the Deliverymen bring us, it’s like a great devil’s paw turns over the hourglass, and the countdown has begun. I hear the sand running every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed. Shh! Do you hear it?”
Vincent pricked his long ears.
Falcon Ècu wrinkled his well-polished nose, dissatisfied with the answer. A few months before he had been reassigned to this police station in Mindie in Yok and, while not happy, was trying to make the best of the situation.
“Address?” asked Ècu.
“Calle de Serrano, 25.”
“Occupation?”
“Philosopher.”
“Philosopher?”
“Or,” said Vincent, “forget philosophy. Just say ‘artist.’ ”
“I’ll write ‘student,’” Ècu said.
“If that’s easier for you to spell.” Vincent nodded, shrugging his shoulders. “And that’s not necessarily wrong. I study myself and life. The sand runs, time passes, and we have an obligation in life to try to understand why we’re here. Do you understand?”
“Do I understand why we’re here?”
Vincent nodded.
“We are here,” said Ècu, “because you have to answer my questions.”
The room was big enough to accommodate two chairs on either side of the white table. White walls. A badly worn wood floor. Behind the police falcon there was a wide mirror along the short wall. The light of the ceiling lamp was sharp and cold. Ècu was not a friend of typewriters, and it was slow going to peck out “student.”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” Vincent said.
Ècu looked up from the typewriter, shaking his head and leaning back. The motion released an aroma of soap and fabric softener.
“No, I don’t think so,” said the police officer. “You don’t seem to get what this is about. You’ve been brought in for interrogation. You’re going to stay here until we’re done.”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” Vincent repeated impatiently. “Because my life is running out—yours and mine—and the day the Chauffeurs arrive, neither of us is going to remember this meeting, these minutes in this room. Because of that, this conversation is wasted, and we’re both in a hurry. This is not how we find out what we really should be doing.”
Vincent threw out his arms, indicating the cramped room. The knot of his tie was small and hard, the polyester of his light blue shirt shimmered and the lapels on his jacket were narrow. For being an impoverished student from Mindie he was remarkably well-dressed, Ècu noted.
“Listen up!” said Ècu, raising his voice. “Now I think you should—”
“Wait!” Vincent shouted, raising his paw. “Do you hear it?”
Ècu listened, but heard nothing.
“It’s the sand running,” said Vincent. “It’s time that’s passing, Falcon. While you sit here tapping on that machine, time passes, and you don’t seem to be running, Falcon. You seem to sit still. But I have to run. You have to catch up with yourself before it’s time for the finish, Falcon. We’re in a hurry, it’s a race.”
Falcon Ècu tiredly observed the vain hare.
“You’re twenty-two,” Ècu pointed out. “And you’re acting like you’re twelve. Now shut up, and just answer my questions.”
“Ask them quickly,” said Vincent.
“We know you were outside the loading dock at St. Andrews Hospital at twilight two days ago,” said the police officer. “We know you were serving as a lookout. We’re prepared to let you go if you tell us who was in the car and where you were taking the stuff.”
The police in Mollisan Town were organized in three divisions. At WE, crimes committed in wrath or envy were handled, that is, the majority of violent crimes. GL took care of criminality due to gluttony and lust, primarily sexual offenses. Vincent Hare had been brought into the third division, PAS, which was the largest, because it was assigned pride, avarice, and sloth, and investigated all the robberies, thefts, and swindles in the city.
“I’m not sure,” answered Vincent, “whether you already know you’ve made a blunder, or you’re taking a chance, or whether you’re mixing me up with someone else. But, no, I haven’t been at any hospital.”
“We know you were there,” said the falcon, sighing. “There’s no point in denying it. Who was driving? Whose idea was it?”
Vincent snorted, adjusting his cuffs.
“This is turning into a pretty boring conversation,” he said, getting up. “Can I leave now?”
“Sit,” Ècu ordered.
But Vincent remained standing, and demonstratively placed one paw on the door handle.
“Listen now, cop,” he said. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done or why you’ve brought me here, but if this is about a hospital I can’t help you. Sorry. I’m leaving now. Vanishing back into the haystack.”
“You arrogant little shit,” said the falcon, but without energy. “Sit down and shut up. You mustn’t take that tone just because you dress like a rich kid. I know who you are and where you come from.”
Vincent opened the door. It wasn’t locked. Without hesitating he left the cramped interrogation room, turned left in the corridor, and headed toward the exit. Ècu did not follow. There were no grounds to hold Vincent.
At the café in the entryway to the police station, Vincent sat down at the counter, ordered an espresso, and took a gray notebook out of his inside pocket. He had not been lying to the police. He heard the sand running in the hourglass of life every morning when he woke up and every night as he fell asleep. It was a miracle, he thought, that he hadn’t gone crazy.
The gray notebook was a kind of existential account book. He imagined three accounts. Under the first account he tried to summarize the meaning of life in Mollisan Town. The second one he called the Knowledge Account, and here he gathered clues that might lead to answers in the first one. The third and final account was the Bank Account.
He sipped his espresso, and wrote:
1. Meaning of Life: Still no idea.
2. Knowledge Account: Won’t become a police officer.
3. Bank Account: Zero.
Casino Biscaya in northwest Tourquai was a place without ambition. Here you would never catch a glimpse of the rich and beautiful; instead, anonymous stuffed animals sat huddled in long rows, feeding one-armed bandits without looking up when the winnings occasionally clattered out of the machines. The money was used to buy more time; the alternative was to return home to solitude.
At the bar were those who made drinking the main event. They didn’t drink to get drunk, to forget or celebrate; they bought a place at the bar by paying for the next drink. They were all regulars who despised one another because they were the mirror images of one another.
The casino’s card-playing section was a half flight up, to the right of the financially shaky restaurant. There were six tables on a platform bordered by an elegant leather railing: two tall, half-moon-shaped blackjack tables and four round poker tables. At one of the poker tables there were six players, one of whom was Jack Dingo. The table felt was green; the liquor brownish; and the chips red, black, yellow, and blue. Thin layers of cigarette smoke curled in the feeble light from the ceiling, but the light did not reach beyond the circle of the green table.
Dingo had two pairs with tens high. He let his long, transparent glass claws drum impatiently against the table, decided his move, and threw in a pair of fifty markers to see the cockroach across from him. The cockroach folded and shrugged his wings. Dingo gathered up the pot.
“That’s enough for tonight,” he decided, leaving the table.
No one had any objections. Dingo had lost about as much as he won.
In the bar Vincent Hare and Gavin Zebra were waiting. Hare was 23 years, 234 days, 18 hours, and about 10 minutes old. He was dressed in a midnight blue suit, blue shirt, and cream white tie. Zebra was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“I’ll treat to a round,” said Dingo, as if he had won at the gaming table.
Hare and Zebra nodded. Neither of them was interested in gambling. They had gone to high school together, but never been close friends. In the last year of high school Gavin Zebra discovered the author Fernandez Armesto, and read Solitude four times in a row. It was one of Vincent’s favorite books, and for a few weeks he and Zebra had something to talk about. After his entrance exams Zebra’s passion for Armesto waned, but for Vincent, the trilogy, starting with Solitude and continuing with Exposure and Meaninglessness, remained one of the most important things that had happened to him. When Vincent and Zebra were later accepted at the College of Architecture, they resumed their superficial acquaintanceship, but never found any deeper kinship.
“Thought about he
ading up to Bois de Dalida this weekend,” Dingo reported as he paid for the mango drinks with vodka. “Anybody want to follow along?”
Jack Dingo spoke loudly to be heard over the music, making the stuffed animals at the bar twist their heads. He rustled his thick gold armband and acted like he owned the casino. He always hinted that he had connections all over. Neither Hare nor Zebra was sure this was true. Why, in such case, did Dingo hang around at a place like Casino Biscaya? Or with stuffed animals like Hare and Zebra?
“I’d like to,” said Zebra, “but I promised Jeanette—”
“Sure,” said Dingo, without hearing the excuse. “And you, Vincent?”
“Dalida? Sure. The forest? Who’s going?”
Dingo named a number of stuffed animals that Vincent didn’t know. Zebra lit a cigarette, Dingo ordered more drinks and told about a Volga Sport Delay being built in a limited edition of one hundred, and that he was in line to buy. Zebra showed some interest in the car model, which he’d read about, but Vincent stopped listening. He sipped his second mango drink and listened to the sound of the sand running through the hourglass.
“What the hell are you staring at?”
The words made all three react. A bald eagle in a worn leather jacket was pointing at Vincent. The eagle’s pupils were big as plates, his sharp claws only a few inches from Vincent’s nose, and on the chest pocket of the leather jacket was a monogram that read SS5.
Without meaning to, for the past few minutes Vincent had been staring at Eagle’s embroidered ears. His gaze just happened to settle there.
“Me?”
“Yes, you, you ugly ball of cotton. What the hell are you staring at?”
Everyone knew what SS5 was—the private security force used by the stuffed animals who controlled the organized prostitution in Tourquai, and notorious for their brutality.