Yok

by Tim Davys

  “Literally?”

  “Literally. He never talked with me.”

  “And your mom?”

  “He didn’t talk with her either,” said Vincent, and the bitterness came out in his voice. “But she disappeared when I was five. Then it was just him and me.”

  “When you were five? I got the impression that . . . you have many memories of her anyway?”

  “Do I? Maybe I have. I don’t know. She was strong. In her way.”

  “She was a camel?”

  “A donkey,” he said.

  Silence settled over the room. Seinstein’s patience was endless as she waited for his reaction. But now Vincent did not know what he was expected to say or feel.

  “It seems,” said the panda at last, “as if you grew up without parents. Emotionally without parents.”

  He thought before he answered.

  “Maybe?”

  “What do you think that has meant to you?”

  He thought again. He had carried the memory of his mother through his entire cubdom. It was painful, a bitter memory, and in the longing from which he never could free himself, hope had finally abandoned him. He had been forced to realize that she would never come back. For that he hated her. He needed her.

  Dad was no use. Vincent had learned to keep to himself. That way he came to no harm. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was big enough to disappear from home for several days at a time. When the Chauffeurs picked up Dad, life got easier, but basically nothing changed.

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

  “You never felt safe, did you, Vincent?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “Do you think anything would have been different if you had?”

  He sat quietly. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Probably.”

  That night Vincent woke up right after midnight. He was suddenly aware that he was 38 years, 9 days, 16 hours, and about 10 or 20 minutes old. In the dream he had tried to scream, but only got out a muffled sound, which woke him for real. He sat up in bed, looked around the little room, and remembered where he was. Without waiting for waking reflection, he put on his light blue bathrobe, crept into his felt slippers, and with a crutch under one arm, he limped through the corridor, up the stairs, and to Bear’s door. He knocked and waited a few moments until the sleepy stuffed animal opened.

  “I love her, Teddy,” he said. “That’s the problem. I love her, but I’m never going to be able to live with her.”

  Bear took a step to the side, so that Vincent could enter.

  “I know how it feels,” said Bear. “At least, I know how the same thing feels to me.”

  Before Vincent came to Lakestead House he had never cried, and afterward he would never cry again. The tears he had, he shed there. He stumbled up to Bear’s bed, sat on the edge, let his head sink heavily down in his paws, and sobbed quietly. He, who had never let himself be overcome by emotions, could suddenly not think clearly. The sorrow reached a depth he was not aware of. He longed for Maria so that his body was shaking, and he fell back on Bear’s bed, twisted to one side and drew his knees up toward his chin. He would never get to hold her again. When after all the years he finally dared lose himself in someone, he had lost.

  Despite Bear’s attempts to get Vincent to calm down, tears were all the hare was capable of.

  “Come,” said Bear at last. “Let’s go down to Buffalo.”

  Bear led the weeping hare from the room, and in the darkness they slipped through the corridor, back down the stairs, and over to the west wing, where they knocked on a door that soon opened.

  “Buffalo Bill,” Bear introduced. “Buffalo, this is Vincent Hare. He is very sad tonight. May he stay with you?”

  Bill nodded, and at the same moment Bear slipped away. In his three years at Lakestead, Vincent had never seen the buffalo who was standing in the doorway.

  “You can take my chair,” Bill offered the devastated hare, showing him a white bamboo chair identical to the one in Vincent’s room.

  Vincent sat down and his tears returned. He found himself in a state between sleep and wakefulness; he was desperate and confused. The image of Maria had been replaced by the feeling of her.

  “I said I loved her,” he explained to Buffalo Bill. “But I said it so many times, I didn’t hear when I finally meant it.”

  Vincent felt ridiculous, like a lovesick little cub, but Bill did not seem uncomfortable. The buffalo wore a threadbare light blue bathrobe. He lay down on top of the made bed and stared worriedly up at the ceiling. The lamp on the nightstand was on and spread a pleasant, yellowish glow.

  “You should be careful about what you say,” said Buffalo. “Images of what you’ve said can stay hanging in the air for days and months, and you don’t always want to be reminded of old things, do you?”

  Vincent made an effort to pull himself together.

  “Love can’t be a projection, can it?” he said, trying to regain his old, intellectual self between tears. “Could Maria have been anyone at all, and when I say that we will never stay together that’s just a defense? Maria can’t be just anyone, can she?”

  “Everything is a projection, my friend,” said Bill. “That’s how you get sight of yourself. The only way. You look at the projections. Like at a movie. You don’t have eyes on the inside, do you?”

  Vincent stayed in Bill’s room until after dawn. When the night’s desperate sorrow turned into melancholy, it felt easy to share the feeling with the buffalo, who did not ask about details but nevertheless seemed to understand the whole. Vincent must have fallen asleep in the chair, because he was awakened by a nurse who came in with breakfast.

  “It’s time for you to go now,” explained the buffalo, who took all his meals in his room and ate alone.

  Vincent nodded and got up.

  “But you’re welcome to come back.”

  Vincent could not explain why, but that made him extremely happy.

  Vincent Hare kept his courage up. He spent the mornings with Teddy Bear on the shore. After lunch, PT or therapy awaited, and then he went back up to Bear right before dinner. Their discussion was untiring and endless. Bear was comfortable in his intellectualization, but displays of emotion made him uncomfortable.

  So when his energy ran low and hopelessness took possession of Vincent, he sought out Buffalo. Because Bill hardly ever left his room and never seemed to sleep, he was a perfect after-hours friend. The buffalo and the hare’s conversations also went on for weeks and months, as neither of them exerted himself to understand exactly what the other one meant.

  Buffalo Bill was one of Mollisan Town’s greatest musical geniuses of all time; an unstable, willful, and sometimes violent individual who was interned at Lakestead House early on. The therapists agreed that Bill was best suited to his own company. In his younger days he had written and orchestrated symphonies without needing paper, pen, or instruments. For several decades he maintained that he could no longer hear music.

  “I’m getting nowhere,” Vincent admitted. “I talk and talk and think and think, but I get nowhere.”

  Bill was lying on his bed; it was dark outside.

  “Where do you want to go?” asked Bill.

  “Forward,” said Vincent. “Maybe I wanted it to go faster before, but I still want to get ahead.”

  “Then you can rest easy,” said Bill, “because you can never go in any other direction. And only as fast as it was ever intended. There is a picture that is more magnificent than any other. It is hanging at the National History Museum and depicts a meadow: thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of blades of grass. It explains everything. Vincent, my friend, you must study it.”

  Bill seldom said anything that made Vincent feel better. But the way the buffalo talked was consoling. Perhaps it was only about a tone of voice?

  Three month
s into Hare’s fourth year at Lakestead House the phone rang in his room. He had not been aware that he had a phone in the room. It took him a while to find it, hanging alongside one of the closets. Vincent moved smoothly now, and it was impossible to tell that he had been in a wheelchair eighteen months earlier.

  “Mr. Hare, you have a visitor waiting in reception,” stated a formal voice in the receiver.

  “A visitor?”

  “A Maria Goat. Will you come out here, or do you want me to bring her to your room?”

  Vincent stood at a loss with the phone in his paw, aware that he was 39 years, 87 days, 10 hours, and about 40 minutes old.

  “Mr. Hare?” repeated the voice, which belonged to a nurse in reception. “Which would you prefer?”

  “I’m coming,” Vincent said.

  Like in a dream he hung the receiver back in its cradle, and his first thought was: This is reality coming to visit.

  His second thought was: This is the reality I’m fleeing from, that’s why I’m here.

  For a moment his perspective shifted, and he sensed what Maria Goat and the rest of the city must think. The thought made him dizzy, the feeling overwhelmed him and he sat down on the bed.

  I’m hiding, he thought.

  He had not realized it until just now.

  On his way through the corridors of the wing to the main building and reception, it struck him that presumably there were only a few who knew he was admitted here. Bombardelli, who got an invoice every month from Lakestead House, had never been in touch or visited.

  Missed by no one, Vincent thought before he caught sight of Maria Goat on the couch in the lobby, where she was leafing through one of the institution brochures. He got a shock. The Maria who lived in his memory was someone else. The real version was even more beautiful, but above all looked different. There was something about her eyes as she read, the expression around her mouth, that radiated an ability to take action. He had forgotten this about her.

  When she saw him, she threw down the brochure and flew up from the couch. He noted that she did not even glance at his legs, which he found strange. Perhaps she didn’t know what had happened?

  The Breeze was still good and the sky blue, so he suggested a walk along the shore.

  Going down to the ocean, he did not know if he dared look at her, or if he would prefer to keep his memories. She talked about the trip on the train out to the coast, and he heard how nervous she was. He realized after a while that he wasn’t saying anything at all. It was not like him, and she must have gotten the impression that he had changed.

  He took her to a place where orange trees grew in the sand, and where two stones often served as chairs for him and Teddy Bear. The swells hissed on the edge of the shore and dry bunches of seaweed crunched beneath their shoes as they went and sat down.

  “I thought you would be in touch,” she said.

  He shook his head. He was ashamed. He did not think he had anything to say. After years in therapy, the years in exile in this house by the sea where he didn’t need to care about anyone other than himself, he had decided that her reaction had been the only sound one. She had been able to get herself out of the symbiosis he had tried to create, and his reaction—his suicide attempt—had nothing to do with sorrow, it was only an expression of defeat.

  Vincent could not say any of this. It would sound pejorative and self-centered.

  “I haven’t been feeling all that well,” he answered.

  She nodded. He was aware of her scent. At least the aroma he remembered. The dammed-up loss rose up in his chest and made him fall silent, and he swallowed a few times to get rid of it.

  In his silence she told about Bombardelli and the office. She talked passionately about the projects she was working on, and made him remember details about stuffed animals they had both worked with but whom he hadn’t thought about for a long time. Vincent thought it was as if she was talking about scenes from a movie he knew he had seen, but no longer remembered. The more she talked, the more engaged she got, and slowly her nervousness disappeared.

  When they saw the mist drawing together on the horizon, they got up and walked slowly back toward the house. He had hardly said anything at all. He wanted to, but it hadn’t been possible. There was no way to tell an outsider about life at Lakestead House. But seeing her for real, hearing her talk, made the remembered Maria disappear. She was no more than a stuffed animal, just like him.

  “I’m glad I came,” she said when they again stood facing each other in reception.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he answered. “It’s obvious, it doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway. It wasn’t your fault. It was me. I learned a lesson, I think.”

  The tears welled up in her eyes; he had never seen it as literally as right then, but she held them in place.

  “I loved you, Vincent,” she said.

  Before he could answer, she turned and left.

  He remained standing and watched her. A few days later Vincent realized that he, too, was forced to return to reality. Almost five years had passed, and there was no reason to stay at Lakestead House. He called Bombardelli the day before he discharged himself, but only reached the rattlesnake’s answering machine. It was enough; all he wanted to say was that the invoices from Lakestead House would stop now. Then Vincent spent the evening with Bear.

  “Keep in mind,” said Teddy Bear before he let Vincent go, giving his friend a serious look, “it’s the experience that counts, not the intention.”

  Vincent nodded.

  Panda Seinstein’s Comments 2

  There is no such thing as done. And there is no point in trying to finish. That’s not how therapy works. I’ve been in therapy as long as I’ve been a therapist myself, even longer, all of us have . . . and no serious therapist would use the word “complete.” I see Vincent Hare as a patient, whether he comes once a year or every day.

  No, I don’t think so. No, I don’t agree with that. But as with all of us intellectual stuffed animals, Vincent’s intellectualism got in the way of his insights. Without violating a confidence, I can give an example with his relationship to his father. Vincent made no secret of the fact that he had had a tough cubdom. He realized, of course, what had happened to him, and understood that the lack of affirmation and love that marked his youth also impeded him as an adult. But like many affected cubs, he found explanations for his father’s behavior, lots of excuses, which was a defense mechanism; convincing himself that his father’s behavior was not because of him. In a way you might say that Vincent chose the easy way out; on unjust grounds he forgave, swallowed hard, and tried to forget. If, when I said something, he perceived a hint of criticism of his father, and it was hard to talk about him in a way that did not sound critical, he immediately went on counterattack. He had honed the arguments for defending indefensible behavior for so many years that it took a while before he himself heard how hollow they sounded. Listening with your heart is hard for most, and it is particularly ironic that it seems even harder for highly intelligent stuffed animals.

  No, I don’t think so. I don’t know why you want to make such a drama out of this. No, I’m not diminishing Vincent’s life, but it’s striking how stereotypical the fates of stuffed animals are, if we dare to see the similarities. I use the word “dare” because often we feel unique, even though we aren’t. Vincent himself had that idea, that most things are variations on the same basic themes. Vincent Hare may seem special, but if we look at the events that defined him, it’s not hard to recognize yourself in one or more of them:

  1. An absent parent (in Vincent’s case, a mother who disappears traumatically, which adds pain to the picture, but above all it is her absence that shapes him).

  2. A dictatorial father figure (in Vincent’s case this is not about one who hits or demands, but rather one who treats him like air, as if he didn’t exist, which may be worse)
.

  3. An uncomprehending school and/or adult world (in Vincent’s case, as in so many others, a system that is not capable of taking care of individuals, and which therefore represses individual talent instead of encouraging it).

  4. Devastating self-censorship (which is a natural consequence after the experiences of cubdom; instead of developing his artistic talent, Vincent himself became the first to diminish and criticize himself).

  5. Bad company (the need to find a context, security, is fundamental, and we are subject to group pressure: Even if we are forced to stretch our sense of morals, we are prepared to do so to fit in).

  6. A second chance (and that Vincent actually broke with Jack Dingo and started at the architectural firm is the only thing in Vincent’s life that surprised me, and I am still not clear how he had the strength and energy to do it).

  7. The desperate passion and the unhappy love (of which I believe we all have some experience, of one kind or another).

  8. The bottomless sorrow (and here I have no comment, and anyone who has experienced it knows what that entails).

  We are not unique. Not you, not me, and not Vincent Hare. Sometimes the hard thing is realizing that. Other times what’s difficult is accepting that insight.

  I’m really glad you got in touch,” said Lion Rosenlind for the second time, shaking Vincent’s paw. “Now that you’re . . . back . . . we’ll have to see about getting together more often. It’s really great that you got in touch.”

  Vincent didn’t know what to say. He was 39 years, 175 days, 7 hours, and about 30 minutes old. As of a few weeks ago he had been living on Calle de Serrano again. Every stuffed animal he met seemed to have aged or changed, both physically and mentally, and objects, streets, and buildings did not appear as he remembered them. He knew it was him and not the outside world that had changed, but it was impossible to grasp that thought when Lion Rosenlind was standing before him, acting this way.