by Tim Davys
One morning, five months to the day after Hare started back at Bombardelli, when he was 40 years, 55 days, 3 hours, and about 15 minutes old, a white, handwritten envelope was sitting on his desk. He immediately slit it open, and saw that he had been invited to dinner at the home of his boss, the great architect, the following Friday. To this point Vincent had successfully avoided Rattlesnake Bombardelli, and his instinct was also to decline the invitation. Later the same afternoon it became clear to him, however, that Daniela Fox had also received an invitation, and relieved, he realized it was not a private invitation but a kind of company event.
Apart from the phone call that resulted in the meeting with Daniela Fox at Plaza Costeau, Vincent had not spoken with Bombardelli since he’d been discharged from Lakestead House. With every day that passed he found it more and more difficult to imagine this conversation. Vincent had tried to calculate how much money Bombardelli had spent on his care, but the amounts were dizzying.
When Friday arrived, Vincent was very uncomfortable, and he was careful to make sure he was accompanied by Fox.
“You’re joking? You mean you’ve never been here before?” said Daniela on their way up the steps, and Vincent let out a hissing sound that could most easily be interpreted as disinterest.
The door was opened by a grasshopper dressed in livery whose feelers were the longest Vincent had seen, and it was obvious the servant must have had the feelers sewn on recently. With a light, almost feminine voice ill-suited to his theatrical dress, he asked them to come in.
The smell of incense was noticeable even in the hall, but it overwhelmed them as they stepped into the living room, a room that resembled the inside of a windowless silo. The walls were painted with black enamel paint, in contrast to the worn wooden floor. Bloodred leather furniture stood in three groups around a teak coffee table, Bombardelli was sitting at an elegant desk that Vincent thought he had seen before, at Lion Rosenlind’s house many years ago. He wondered if it was the same piece; had Bombardelli purchased it? The rattlesnake rose as they came in.
“Daniela, Vincent! Wonderful to have you here!”
He was wearing a black silk cape with red lining over a double-breasted suit, and as he swept the cape around him, the draft produced a small cloud of incense. The aroma was sweet, almost exotic, with a hint of musk and honey. Vincent coughed, Fox lit a cigarette in an attempt at counterfire, but Bombardelli pretended not to hear. The grasshopper with the feelers served champagne in glasses so tall and narrow they were hard to drink out of, and Bombardelli proudly told about various antique finds he had decorated the room with, but did not say a word about what had been, or give Vincent a look to suggest any special mutual understanding.
Dinner was served in the dining room, which proved to be located behind the heavy draperies along one wall of the room. The dimensions in there were different; a small room with a low ceiling and dark curtains on the windows. The dining room furniture was just as massive and terrifying as the desk. Candelabras stuck up under drifts of melted wax. Candles were the only illumination, and Vincent could not see what he was eating. On the wall above a display case hung the oil painting Bombardelli had purchased from his father’s friend so many years ago, but Vincent did not see the painting and the rattlesnake did not draw his attention to it. Bombardelli experienced a subtle sensation in finally having Vincent Hare in the room, without the artist even noticing his own work.
“Excuse me,” said Vincent, as the grasshopper set out plates with blintzes and caviar, “but it was dark when we arrived . . . what kind of building is this? I don’t live far from here, but I don’t think I’ve seen a tower from the outside?”
That Bombardelli also lived in Yok was a surprise. Vincent had imagined the rattlesnake in one of the prosperous suburbs of Amberville or Tourquai, and then it turned out that he lived only a couple of miles away.
Bombardelli laughed, snorting and ready to tell, and his answer lasted through the appetizer and partway through the entrée. In summary, thirty years ago he had a modernized form of treehouse built. Like many houses in Mindie, the building on rainbow-colored Calle de Tremp had been a ruin when he found it, but a ruin built of stone. Inside the stone building Bombardelli had partitioned a foundation, on which he had his home erected, coal-black so that it looked like it was burnt, and therefore fit into the environment.
“Soon it will be a ruin standing in a ruin. You don’t see it, with a little paint you can cover anything, but thirty years is a long time, my friends.”
While Bombardelli talked, the grasshopper served a heavy, almost undrinkable red wine.
“You’re wondering, of course, why I invited you here this evening?” the rattlesnake called out a while later when the main course was finished and another couple of bottles of red wine had been emptied.
He got up from the dinner table and went toward one of the draperies flanking the serving table. Apparently, Vincent noted, Bombardelli had replaced doors with draperies throughout.
The architect led them into an office room flooded with light. They had become accustomed to the darkness in the dining room, and were blinded by the strong lamps. On a table in the middle of the room was a white model of the same kind they used at work, but this was only topography, land without buildings.
“This is my lot,” Bombardelli explained. “I’ve bought it.”
He pointed to the model with his tail in a sweeping gesture, and Fox and Vincent placed themselves alongside.
“I want you to design the house that will be on it,” said Bombardelli. “The two of you are the best I have. The best this city has. I intend to retire, but not until you have designed my house for me.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Fox.
“One month,” Bombardelli answered. “As of today, but not a day longer. You will have to consider this your true examination.”
Already that evening it was clear to Vincent what he wanted to produce, and right after the dinner with Bombardelli he took Daniela Fox with him to a bar not far from Bombardelli’s house, and even closer to his own on Calle de Serrano. In Mindie there were no respectable bars, but there were a number of holes-in-the-wall where you were guaranteed not to meet anyone you knew and could therefore talk undisturbed.
Vincent ordered two glasses of red wine, and expanded on what he had in mind. Fox protested. She had a few ideas of her own about what Bombardelli might conceivably be looking for, but carefully Vincent took her out of one suggestion after another.
“Excuse me, Daniela, but Bombardelli will never be comfortable in a building that is not created out of passion,” said Vincent, and when he heard his own words he believed them. “We will never be able to speculate our way into what he wants. But I have a vision, Daniela. Call me ridiculous, but . . .”
And then he spoke uninterrupted for an hour about what he was visualizing, and the monument he wanted to create for Rattlesnake Bombardelli.
Exhausted and overwhelmed, Fox staggered out of the bar long after the chill of the night had taken possession of the city. In Mindie there were no taxis, and at this time of night she could not convince anyone to come down and get her. She hadn’t taken the bus since her teens, but Vincent took her to the stop and waited with her until the No. 6 arrived.
“Passion, Daniela,” was the last thing he said. “Now we’ll design the house we will never get to design again.”
He was so full of his own ideas that sleep was impossible. After sitting at the kitchen table doing a number of sketches, he found his gray notebook and wrote as he drank strong black coffee:
1. Meaning of Life: Work? Thoughtless, fulfilling, impassioned work? Moving society from one place to another, and giving the next generation something we didn’t have? Is hard, rewarding work the meaning?
2. Knowledge Account: All of us need a benefactor.
3. Bank Account: Feels less important.
They
gathered their team and started work the following day. They had four weeks. They set up their headquarters in Daniela’s office, and put cardboard over the windows of the office to isolate themselves from the others at the firm. Five of them would work full-time on the project, and put everything else aside.
If Vincent Hare before had created a professional role that charmed his colleagues with a kind of friendly nonchalance, this project—which they dubbed Casa Magnifica—was something quite different. After a hesitant start when Vincent found it frustrating and difficult in words as well as in sketches to express his grandiose intentions, the project took off during the second week, and by the middle of the third week Vincent brought a pillow and blanket from home to avoid leaving Fox’s office at all. His enthusiasm was contagious. Another two on the team kept Vincent company on the couches and on the floor, despite Fox’s mild protests. Meals were ordered in from pizzerias and bakeries in the neighborhood, and the scale model they built as they were drawing grew day by day.
“I’m going to need to disinfect this office afterward,” Fox sighed.
But she, too, had been seized by the magic around Vincent, and the trance into which he put himself and the others.
He got them to build a palace. A castle taken from fairy tales not yet written. Moats, drawbridges, towers, and spires. Ballrooms, atriums, and secret passageways. Gilded cupolas, arched stairwells, and optical illusions. Vincent’s ideas surpassed one another in wild excess. The contractors protested; Fox, who believed that budget limitations should be a parameter, put in her veto, but the force behind Vincent’s will conquered them all. With each day he ate and slept less and less. He allowed no one to rest, he allowed no objections, and when the fourth week reached its end all of them, including Fox, were sincerely tired of him, and glad it was over.
On the morning of the first of May, the appointed day for the presentation, Vincent Hare woke up with a peculiar feeling of not wanting to finish the project. He was 40 years, 86 days, and 1 hour old. During the night the hourglass of time had again turned in his head, and the sand was running indefatigably. There were thousands and more thousands of details to refine and develop on Casa Magnifica, and the mood he found himself in the past ten days had been an intoxication he already missed. For that reason, to the surprise of his teammates, he let out a heavy sigh when he opened the door to Fox’s office right before lunch, and together with the others carried the model out to get Bombardelli’s assessment.
Even as they crossed the threshold, something happened to the office. Silence spread, concentration electrified the air, and scattered whispers soon died out. Within a minute or two all the personnel at the firm gathered around Fox and Hare’s fairy-tale castle. Bombardelli did not delay. The rattlesnake came quickly slithering through the office area, and then circled mutely around the model to view it from all angles. No one said anything. The attentiveness was magical and strange all at once.
At last it was Diego Tortoise who broke the silence.
“This is unbelievable,” he said. “This is the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen.”
A hurricane of applause and cheers broke out. Bombardelli wrapped himself around Fox and Hare in turn. The great architect seemed speechless with emotion for a few moments.
“My friends!” he then exclaimed, getting everyone to fall silent. “This was better than I could dream of. I will retire to this house. Here you see Bombardelli’s new boss, and her new partner!”
It was like setting off a sound curtain. The applause and cheers never seemed to end. Daniela Fox would succeed Rattlesnake Bombardelli, Vincent Hare would be the firm’s new partner.
Epilogue
The next morning Vincent Hare woke up as the second of two partners in Bombardelli & Partners. He had been hired at the architectural office 13 years, 49 days, and about 3 hours earlier, and even before getting the job he had challenged Diego Tortoise to a race.
He pulled on his bathrobe and went into the kitchen. On the way he passed the hall, where the morning newspaper waited below the mail slot. In the kitchen he measured out water and coffee and turned on the coffeemaker. While the hot water ran through the ground coffee, he squeezed three oranges and then put two pieces of ice in the glass. As the ice melted he poured coffee into a dark green cup, and finally sat down at the kitchen table with coffee, orange juice, and the newspaper. But it took several minutes before he realized he wasn’t reading; he hadn’t even glanced at the headlines on the front page.
He had won.
The idea distracted him. What was surprising was that this not only pleased him; it fulfilled him. He felt a kind of satisfaction he had not felt since . . . He did not recall that he had ever felt that way. It wasn’t right. Life once again showed its banal side. A partnership was worldly and worth nothing in relation to the great questions of life. He played with the idea of excusing the feeling by giving himself a different explanation. Perhaps it was passion that made him the winner? Perhaps the moral of the story was that he had abandoned himself completely, and thereby won? Something to write up on the Knowledge Account? But he was the first to dismiss that sort of stereotypical connection in every other case. It was the partnership itself, which he had jokingly talked about and pretended to strive for so many years, that made him happy.
Think if Mom had known, thought Vincent. And his next thought was spontaneously about Maria Goat. Of course she would hear about his new partnership in time, but could this perhaps be an excuse to call her even today?
Vincent Hare was musing in this way when there was an unexpected knock at the door. Because it still had not clouded over outside, Vincent knew it was early in the morning. It was with tense expectation that he went out in the hall and opened the door. The idea that someone had already sent flowers or a telegram both pleased and surprised him.
He opened the door, and stared right into a pair of yellow eyes that had seen most everything. Within the course of a second, everything changed. From the experience that the future lay open, it was all over.
Under the cowl Chauffeur Tiger’s face was enormous, his fur gray and battered, his eyes hard and cold. In the background out in the stairwell Chauffeur Tiger’s colleague was visible; they always came in twos.
“You don’t need to bring anything with you,” said Chauffeur Tiger.
His voice was deep and raspy. His large coat smelled bad.
“You don’t need to lock up, just come along,” he said. “You don’t need any shoes, the car is right outside.”
The sand running.
Vincent heard it as a rumble that drowned out the fear.
Then it became silent.
This was the moment he had waited for. Like all stuffed animals in Mollisan Town, he knew that when the Chauffeurs came in their red pickup, it was over. The upper part of the hourglass was empty. But even though he had always known this would happen, he was seized with terror and panic.
“I can’t go,” he protested. “I have . . . the coffeemaker is on. And I have a meeting after the Morning Rain I have to be at. If I don’t go to that meeting, the project won’t go ahead.”
Chauffeur Tiger grimaced.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“But I have to get my notebook,” said Vincent. “I’ve got to have it.”
Chauffeur Tiger placed his large paw on the hare’s shoulder and forced the stuffed animal across the threshold and out onto the stairs. The Chauffeur shoved Vincent ahead of him down toward the doorway, and even though he came up with a number of important, irrefutable arguments for why he could not already be fetched (one of them naturally had to do with his age), he knew that nothing he said would influence the Chauffeurs.
In the red pickup waiting down on the street, there were already three stuffed animals. Two wept quietly. The third, a wirehaired dachshund, began arguing the moment the Chauffeurs got in the truck and started the engine. Many of the dachshun
d’s arguments Vincent himself could have used.
The pickup drove out on South Avenue, and the stuffed animals fell silent. Slowly the insight sank into all four of them. Life was over.
We are only stuffed animals,” said Vincent as the pickup drove out of the city and into the forest. “We know nothing besides this, besides Mollisan Town. Where are we going now? Where are you taking us?”
“What kind of question is that?” snarled Chauffeur Tiger, who sat behind the wheel.
“Where are we going?”
“Did you hear what the hare is asking?” Chauffeur Tiger growled to his associate. “He’s wondering where we’re taking him.”
His associate grunted, but it was hard to interpret the meaning of the grunt.
“But what happens after life in Mollisan Town?” asked Vincent.
“What do you mean?”
“The life after this one? There must have been a reason for everything that has happened up to now? What’s in the forest? Beyond the forest?”
“Nothing,” Chauffeur Tiger answered. “There’s nothing besides this.”
He shifted down to second as the asphalt road ended and they drove onto a narrow gravel path.
“But there must be something else,” said Vincent, realizing that he never had thought about that before, not like this: for real. “There must be some idea with placing all the stuffed animals in the city? The factories that manufacture us, who owns them? Who runs them?”
“What does that matter?” asked Chauffeur Tiger.
Vincent thought. He did not know whether it mattered. While the pickup drove deeper into the forest, his despair increased.
“But there must be someone behind all this. Is it Magnus? What is his plan?”