Amberville (20 page)

T
hey were sitting in the conference room and couldn’t see when the sun sank down below the horizon. True, there was a row of windows looking out on the street, but he had drawn both the blinds and the heavy curtains so that you could see neither in nor out. He liked that the room was dark and gloomy, he liked this austerity: oak-paneled walls and black armless leather chairs around the large conference table, creating a solemn, quiet atmosphere. Under the table there was a sizable beige rug with the beautiful emblem. It protected the varnished parquet floor from the scraping feet of the chairs. Nowadays he had moved almost all his meetings to this room, whether they were large gatherings or, as this evening, it was a matter of speaking in confidence with an old friend. It felt too intimate to invite outsiders into his own office. It hadn’t always been like that, but now it was. His cramped, cluttered office was his secret command bridge, to which he didn’t dare risk taking someone who by mistake might catch sight of…of anything whatsoever that wasn’t intended for eyes other than his own.

He was standing with his back turned toward the conference table where Rat Ruth sat at the far end. He poured mineral water into two glasses. The sideboard contained two roomy refrigerators. The crystal glasses in the lower cupboard were always freshly washed. It’s in the details that laziness is most easily revealed and where arrogance resides; he saw to it that all the glasses, plates, and silverware in the sideboard were cleaned every day. It wasn’t for him, but out of consideration for his guests.

As far as Rat Ruth was concerned, the gesture was wasted.

Even from where she was sitting, five meters away, he smelled the stench from her clothes. At least he hoped it was her clothes. Her rough fur was covered with a layer of filth—he couldn’t call it anything else—and her nose sat crooked in a way which truly irritated him. Why couldn’t she just turn it a few millimeters, so that it was over and done with? Considering how maimed she’d been when she was manufactured, a nose that sat a few millimeters crooked was of course not something that worried Ruth.

“What do you want?” asked Ruth in an aggressive tone that didn’t surprise him.

He calmly filled both glasses, turned, and carried them over to the rat. He sat down as far from her as he reasonably could without appearing obviously impolite, and gave her an indulgent smile.

“We’re going to talk seriously,” he answered at last. “Sometimes you just have to do that.”

The rat shrugged her shoulders.

“You’re comfortable, aren’t you?” he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders again, but at the same time shook her head as if to declare that she didn’t understand what he was talking about.

“I know that you’re comfortable,” he continued, mostly to himself, “since you’re still around.”

The rat observed the glass of mineral water on the table in front of her. Her small, peering eyes were unfathomable. He could not possibly determine what was in her thoughts at this moment.

“And I’m happy to have you there,” he said. “It feels secure. Reliable. Self-interest is a predictable motivator. And I don’t have time to wonder.”

“Hmm,” answered Ruth.

He observed her morosely. She would not let herself be scared.

“I’m happy to have you there,” he repeated, “because you’re reliable.”

He felt frustrated by her indifference. He had a sudden desire to put her in her place, get her to react, show her who decided. But at the same time he realized that this desire was idiotic, an expression of a type of weakness that he was above. He got up from the table because he was forced to get rid of a little energy and strolled back and forth along the outside wall. The rat didn’t turn around, despite the fact that he was moving behind her back. He didn’t know if that was foolhardiness or confidence.

“You’ve met Eric Bear before, true?” he asked rhetorically.

“Nah,” she said.

“You certainly have,” he hissed with irritation, stopping a short distance away from her so as to be able to fasten his eyes on her. “He’s the bear that’s a member of A Helping Hand.”

“I don’t recall any bear,” she admitted.

“But, what the…” he went on, “are you weak in the head or what? He’s been a member for several years. He sits three chairs to the right of you.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Sometimes I wonder why you are part of that group at all…”

“Me too,” replied Ruth quickly.

“You’re a member because I want it that way!” he screamed.

“That’s it, yes,” said Ruth.

Was she toying with him? He suddenly became uncertain. He took a few deep breaths and calmed himself. Sat down again on the chair by her side.

“Eric Bear is coming to see you,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or the day after that. I don’t know exactly. But he’s coming, and rather soon at that.”

“So?”

“And I don’t know what kind of plan he thinks he has, what he intends to threaten you with…”

“He’s thinking about threatening me?”

For the first time during their conversation there was emotion in her voice. She sounded surprised.

“That I don’t know,” he cut her off. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I know what he’s going to ask. He wants to know about the Death List.”

The rat looked straight into his eyes. In her pupils there was only blackness.

“So?” she said.

“And whatever he has to say, whatever he maintains or threatens, whatever he pretends or demands, I know how you’re going to treat him.”

“So?”

“Yes, if he gets as far as the whole way up to you,” he said, “and not even that is for sure, you’ll listen to him and then send him on his way. Amiably and courteously. You and I know that there isn’t any Death List.”

The rat sat silently.

“The Death List doesn’t exist,” he said again.

He stood a while observing her. Then he grew tired. She would do what he said, she always did.

“You can go now,” he said.

There was only a moment’s hesitation, then she got up from the chair, leaving him alone in the conference room.

E
ric Bear drove in silence along the mint-green avenue.

Snake Marek sat in the passenger seat, keeping demonstrably silent. This particular night the others for once would have appreciated his prattle, but Snake’s pride was wounded, and he was punishing them with his silence. He sat stiff as a stick, staring down at the dirty rubber mat, where clay had dried and cracked. In his mind he tried to construct an iambic verse with a starting point in the patterns on the mat.

He got nowhere with that.

Tom-Tom was sitting behind Eric. It felt secure to sit in the car and see the city go by outside, thought the crow; considerably more secure than sitting in any of the buildings, watching the cars pass.

Sam was listening to his heartbeats. Since yesterday morning his heart had been beating double: thump, thump, thu-thump. He’d taken a whole fistful of the pink tablets he believed were good for his heart, but apart from the fact that he felt tired, nothing happened. Sam had never talked with Rat Ruth, but he had seen her several times. She gave him the creeps, she was one gigantic bad omen. Driving to
the Garbage Dump in the middle of the night, when the rat was awake, was a very bad idea.

Thu-thump, thu-thump, said his heart.

Eric’s plan was so
simple that it scarcely even deserved to be called a plan.

Eric intended to turn off Eastern Avenue a few cross streets before the Garbage Dump and take the road through the outskirts of Lanceheim up to the city limits. The wooden gate, the main entrance to the dump, was guarded at night. On the other hand, Ruth and her crew didn’t fear thieves who came on foot; no one could climb over the mountains of trash at night. True, the entire area was equipped with a fence, but that was because the animals in Lanceheim had demanded a clear boundary between themselves and the dump. In many places the fence had been torn down and never put back up again.

So, park on one of the cross streets north of the wooden gate. Find a hole in the fence and make their way in. Make an evasive movement toward the northeast and then make their way south, down to the Middle Road. After that, follow the road up to the Garbage Town and Rat Ruth’s residence. Eric had no illusions that they would be able to make it the whole way to the residence without being discovered. But if they only managed to get far enough they would surely be granted an audience with the Rat Queen. And, eye to eye with the rat, Eric Bear—this naïve advertising bear—was certain that he would be successful in making her see reason. Get her to realize that she had to remove both Teddy and Dove from her list.

How this would come about he hadn’t yet figured out.

And he himself knew how it sounded. Like pure nonsense. Therefore he hadn’t shared his plan with either Sam, Tom-Tom, or Snake.

The neighborhoods in northeast
Lanceheim consisted predominantly of single-family houses with small, poorly tended gardens. On the expansive hills that farther east changed to sparse pine forest were patched-up single-story houses with flaking paint. There were often wrecked cars in the yards, there were rusty bicycles and mysterious, sealed black garbage bags. These were houses you lived in while you were looking for something else.

In the glow of the streetlights Eric Bear drove slowly through the night. He was searching for a suitable parking place and didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention. Finally he found a place in front of a pair of apartment buildings unexpectedly ensconced in the middle of a low-lying precipice, and he positioned himself next to a red Volga GTI.

“From here we’ll go on foot,” he reported.

Eric turned off the engine before anyone had time to comment on this surprising information.

“On foot?” Snake finally spit out, but Eric had already gotten out of the car.

“On foot?” repeated Snake, now turned toward the backseat. “He must be joking!”

“He’s not joking,” Sam answered laconically.

“A little fresh air will be nice, damn it,” said Tom-Tom encouragingly.

The crow got out, too, joining Eric at the parking spot.

“You know that this is idiocy,” Snake said to Sam.

They sat alone in the car.

“Sure, old man. In contrast to your normal, healthy life,” Sam answered.

“Strolling into a Garbage Dump in the middle of the night might be a way to cause our normal, healthy lives to come to an end,” Snake retorted. “If it’s life you’ve grown tired of.”

“All ways are good except the bad ones,” Sam asserted, he, too, getting out and onto the parking place.

Eric, Sam, and Tom-Tom started walking east. They heard the car door open and shut again, and soon all four of them were on their way toward the Garbage Dump. Just as silently as they’d recently been sitting in the car.

Hyena Bataille saw them
from a distance.

The animals at the dump had built a handful of lookout points. These were not regular towers. On the contrary, from a distance it was almost impossible to determine that there was anything special about these collections of scrap which here and there rose a few meters above the rest of the peculiar landscape of refuse.

Like many nights before, Bataille had been deeply embroiled in conversation with the hot-tempered Louise, a beige-brown terrier with deformed eyes who, based on some sort of principle, never agreed. For many months they had discussed the relationship between inherited instincts and inherited desires, but their quarrels were not particularly committed. They sat in a couple of deck chairs that were patched together with black tarp. Far away were the abandoned streets of Lanceheim, and for Bataille and Louise the four stuffed animals who made their way into the Garbage Dump were as obvious as an armada on the open sea. If not equally terror-inspiring. Bataille didn’t even stop talking.

“Do you think they’re on their way here?” asked the terrier, when the hyena paused at one point.

“Who?” asked Bataille.

Louise nodded toward Lanceheim.

“Anyone you recognize?”

Louise shook her head. “Not at this distance.”

“No,” said Bataille. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Louise giggled.

“Is this the plan?”
asked Snake.

Because no one answered, he continued in a tone of voice that was just as unnatural as it was indignant. “Are we just going straight into the Garbage Dump, look up the rat, and convince her to change the list? Is that the plan?”

Tom-Tom snorted.

“Damn, how ridiculous you are now, Marek,” said the crow. “It’s clear as hell that Eric has a plan.”

“Do tell, Eric,” Snake asked scornfully, “about this plan. Let’s hear it.”

Eric Bear was walking a few meters ahead of the others and finally discovered a hole in the fence, farther north than he’d thought, but here it was. He nodded.

“We go in here,” he said, pointing.

Sam took a few quick steps up to the bear and whispered, “You’re sure about this?”

But Eric didn’t answer, pretending not to hear; he was already on his way into the Garbage Dump. He climbed carefully up a mountain of trash where you had to keep your wits about you so as not to step on something that would give way and slide down. The lights from Lanceheim didn’t extend more than a few meters into the area, after which the moon would have to guide them where they slowly and with great care climbed alongside one another up the trash mountain. Each time someone stepped on an object that fell down, all four of them stopped until the sound died out. Only after having assured themselves of renewed silence did they continue to climb. They’d all heard what happened to animals who made their way uninvited into the Garbage Dump.

Higher and higher they climbed, and when after more than half an hour they stood atop the mountain and looked out over the threatening contours of the Garbage Dump,
which seemed to stretch into infinity in the moonlight, they were thoroughly out of breath.

Without uttering a word, Eric pointed out the direction, and they started walking south. He realized that they were forced to climb down onto the Left-hand Road and up onto the trash mountain again before they could make their way onto the Middle Road and begin the march toward the Garbage Town. Judging by the climbing they had just carried out, it would take them at least a few hours. But the night was long and there were no other alternatives. The despair which had been growing all day in his heart now burst out in full bloom, and the steps over the treacherous terrain felt heavy.

“We’re going right into a trap,” whispered Snake to Sam, who was walking beside him. “And you know it.”

Sam didn’t answer.

“What are they doing?”
asked Louise.

She was standing on a stool next to Hyena Bataille and thus could whisper the words right into the hyena’s ear. The hyena shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He was holding a telescope to his eyes, and slowly lowered it.

“They’re on their way south,” he said. “Toward the Left-hand Road.”

“Should we take them there?” asked Louise.

“You can bet your sweet ass on that,” said Bataille.

“Who are they?” asked Louise.

“Three strangers and an animal that I hate more than any other animal on this earth,” answered Bataille.

This surprising answer caused Louise Terrier to feel ill at ease. A Bataille in a bad mood was a danger to everyone.

When the four stuffed
animals came up to the precipice that led down to the Left-hand Road, they had been in the Gar
bage Dump for almost an hour. They had proceeded in silence, and their misgivings grew in step with their fatigue. The dump was silent and deserted, a fact that partially calmed them, but sometimes the stillness seemed unnaturally mute. At one point Sam thought he’d seen something moving far away, but he kept that observation to himself, afraid that Snake would use it against Eric.

But not even Snake was saying anything anymore.

“We’ll go down here,” whispered Eric, pointing toward the road.

The others nodded. It felt good that the bear seemed to know where they should go, seemed to know what he was doing. Carefully they started climbing down toward the Left-hand Road. It went easier now, not just because they’d become more used to balancing on the treacherous trash, but also because it was downhill.

When they’d made it all the way down, they discovered that the cliff that rose on the other side was much too steep to climb; it was a vertical wall that stood before them.

“We’ll try walking a bit,” whispered Eric to Tom-Tom, who stood closest, and the bear nodded eastward, in toward the dump.

The four started walking, happy to have solid ground under them again. The moonlight that had guided their way up on the mountain couldn’t reach into the narrow valley path that was the Left-hand Road, and they walked in a blackness that forced them to walk even more slowly. After a few hundred meters the precipice on the north side grew higher and higher, and they were now surrounded by steep, sheer walls of trash on both sides. Here and there objects were sticking out which they tried to avoid.

Then a voice was heard.

Thin and faraway but quite distinct. The four stuffed animals stopped in their tracks. Then the noise broke loose.

The sound which unexpectedly broke the silence in an
explosion caused the ground below them to shake. Tom-Tom fell down on his knees with his wings covering his head. Sam ran to the edge of the road, pressing his back against the trash wall while, not moving, he gazed in the direction of the explosion. The snake wriggled as fast as he could in the other direction, away from the boom that still continued. Eric stood completely still, trying to understand what was happening.

And despite the fact that he saw it with his own eyes he had a hard time understanding. A torrential stream of trash was sliding down the trash mountain’s south face. Metal and wood, plastic and plaster, twisted objects and forms that he couldn’t make out, all running in a single thick-flowing porridge down the mountain and quickly filling in the road behind them. And when the bear understood what was about to happen, he turned around. In front of them a similar avalanche of odds and ends and muck was flooding down onto the road. It was a trap. It had happened so quickly that not even Snake had time to wriggle out.

Then it became silent.

Eric could hear the sound of his own breathing, like a rushing rapids in a deserted landscape, but otherwise nothing. Snake was ten or so meters farther ahead, Tom-Tom stood right next to him, and Sam a few meters to the right.

“Now?” a clear voice was heard to say somewhere in the night.

Instinctively the four companions turned around. It was completely silent. Then the sound of a large number of paws and claws was heard, running on the south side of the ravine. Eric twirled around and stared up toward the southwest.

“We wish no one harm!” shouted the bear.

He tried to see some of those he’d just heard, but the mountain walls were too steep and too high.

“Hello!” he shouted.

Now there seemed to be stuffed animals moving everywhere up there. Snake as well as Sam had made their way in toward Eric and Tom-Tom in the middle of the road, and all of them were standing tightly together, staring up toward the night sky, where stars were shining.

“Hello!” Eric shouted again. “We have come to speak with your queen!”

The words produced no response. The stuffed animals running around on the sides of the ravine didn’t take any notice, they were still moving around, taking up positions. For what?

“Hello!” Eric shouted a third time. “I am Eric Bear. I have come to speak with Rat Ruth.”

Slowly silence descended over the ravine. Sam Gazelle stood quite close to Eric, and he whispered in the bear’s ear. “It’s over now, isn’t it? Are we going to die?”

Eric didn’t reply. He didn’t have the answer.