Amberville (27 page)

E
verything looks flipping alike,” swore Tom-Tom Crow.

He shook his head, trying to see what was on the street sign. Amberville’s endless blocks of mute townhouses made him ill at ease, and he drove slowly.

“This violet one here is Seamore Mews,” Sam Gazelle read on the sign. “It’s the next one, the turquoise.”

In his lap he had a torn-out page from the telephone directory where, to be on the safe side, he’d circled Owl Dorothy’s address. Number 24 Fried Street.

The car smelled of cheese doodles. When Sam forced the crow to stop at a Springergaast on Balderton Street to try to find a map in a telephone directory after far too many random right and left turns, Tom-Tom had taken the opportunity to buy a few bags of snacks. Now the acid odor had taken over the car, the crow was orange around the beak, and Sam was feeling carsick.

“There,” said Sam, pointing at the next sign that sat at the exact same height on an identical façade. “The turquoise one, like I said. Fried Street.”

Tom-Tom turned off.

“Now, let’s see…number 56. Go on a little, then we’re there.”

Tom-Tom drove slowly, passing building after identical brick building before he turned gently and noiselessly in and parked. The dark-red rows of buildings extended both north and south through a gently rolling landscape. Two stories high, black roofs, white windowsills, just as well cared for as everything else in Amberville.

Tom-Tom stepped out onto the sidewalk, Sam went around the car, and together they hurried up the ten steps to number 24 Fried Street. Sam rang the doorbell. They waited a minute or two, hearing footsteps en route down the stairs to the hall, and then the outside door was opened by Owl Dorothy.

The storm had just abated, but the sky was still covered with clouds.

Dorothy was a threadbare owl, a very old bird who pensively let her peering eyes wander from the gazelle to the crow and back again. They had awakened her, it was obvious; she had her ears in a kind of nightcap and had wrapped a dressing gown around her thin body. She concealed a yawn behind her wing.

“Good evening, beautiful queen,” said Sam in an attempt at lightheartedness, “my name is Sam. I beg your pardon that we’re disturbing you at this time of the evening, but Eric Bear asked us to come out and say hello.”

“Eric Bear?” Dorothy repeated.

The gazelle and the crow nodded.

For a moment Dorothy seemed to be considering how likely this statement was. Then she made her decision and took a step to one side, such that the strangers outside her door were transformed into guests. Sam stepped in, and Tom-Tom followed behind. The old owl guided them with vigorous steps to the kitchen, where she invited them to sit down at a small, round kitchen table while she herself put the teakettle on the stove.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Eric,” she said. “Is he well?”

“He’s lovelier than ever,” answered Sam.

“Superfine,” affirmed Tom-Tom.

“Anything else would have surprised me,” nodded Dorothy. “Do you take milk or sugar in your tea?”

“Just milk, thanks,” Sam replied.

“I’m okay,” said Tom-Tom. “Tea is not…”

“Would you like something else instead?”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

Tom-Tom felt troubled by the fact that the old lady, whom they would quite soon be forced to shout at and frighten, was treating them so politely. If he hadn’t accepted anything to drink, it would be easier to threaten her a little later, he reasoned.

Dorothy served Sam a cup of tea and placed a glass of water in front of Tom-Tom. Then she sat down across from them at the kitchen table.

“I don’t know how I should say it,” began Sam Gazelle.

“Just say it,” suggested Dorothy. “Things are the way they are.”

“Yes, but this is special,” said Sam. “And it sounds strange if you just say it.”

“Say it,” repeated Dorothy. “I’m old, I’ve heard most things.”

“Yes, but not this. This is the kind of thing you don’t talk about willingly. And it feels a little strange to just say it.”

“Say it,” said Dorothy for the third time. “It’s not going to get easier in a few minutes.”

“Say it,” agreed Tom-Tom irritatedly. “Otherwise I’ll say it.”

Sam held up a hoof. He would say it. Rather than let the stupid crow start talking.

“Sweet little auntie, we need the archdeacon’s manuscripts for the Death Lists,” he said.

So it was said. Owl Dorothy reacted neither with sur
prise nor with consternation. She appeared completely uncomprehending.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Now I think that I don’t understand.”

“The Death Lists,” repeated Sam. “We know how it’s arranged. Everything the archdeacon writes out by hand, you type up on a typewriter.”

“That’s right,” said Dorothy, not without pride. “It has to do with the archdeacon’s handwriting. You understand, despite all the education and wisdom that the penguin possesses, it’s almost impossible to interpret his handwriting. It took me many years before I could clearly distinguish his ‘j’ from his ‘g.’ Not to mention the little pole that sets an ‘h’ apart from an ‘n.’ But in time you learn, and—”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted the gazelle, “this is certainly a lovely art. But we’re in kind of a hurry. The manuscript to the Death Lists?”

“The Death Lists?” repeated Dorothy. “That sounds gruesome. Do you mean this is something that Archdeacon Odenrick would be involved with? In what connection, then, if I may ask?”

“Auntie, you know what we’re talking about,” said Sam.

“I do beg your pardon,” said Dorothy, “but I cannot say that I—”

“Come on, then, dammit,” roared Tom-Tom. “We’re in a hurry. Now you bring out those damn lists, ma’am. Otherwise I’ll see to it that you…bring out those damn lists.”

“My,” said Dorothy, looking horrified.

“Exactly,” said Sam, without enthusiasm.

It was clear that the old owl was afraid. She stared in fright at Sam and nodded frantically, her short beak bobbing up and down like a float in the waves.

“Well?” said Sam.

But Owl Dorothy seemed to have gone into some kind of
gridlock of fear and confusion, and beyond continuing to nod she didn’t react at all.

Sam looked at Tom-Tom, who shrugged his wings to show that he didn’t know what should be done.

“Do you have an office here, auntie?” asked Sam. “Show us where you usually hang out, where you work on the archdeacon’s things.”

The changed tone of voice worked, partly. Dorothy managed to take herself out of her temporary paralysis. She shook her head in confusion, mumbled a few words about her not knowing what they were talking about, then got up from the kitchen table and guided them into her small office, which was next to the kitchen. A pedantic orderliness prevailed there. Neat piles of correspondence, paperwork, and archived material were on the desk and on the shelves next to it.

“Exactly,” Tom-Tom burst out triumphantly when he saw all the handwritten papers with just that unreadable writing the owl had just described.

Sam sat down in the desk chair, Dorothy stood alongside and nervously tried to explain what the various piles contained at the same time as she watched with mounting terror how Sam rummaged through the papers without regard for order.

“Worthless,” he said after a while. “This is just worthless. Where are the lists of names?”

“But,” said Dorothy, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What lists of names? The only lists of names I have are the lists of confirmands and…wait, the guests who are invited to the home of the minister tomorrow evening. Is it the invitation list you want?”

“Could it be some damn code?” said Tom-Tom.

“Have to see what you have,” said Sam. “But you’re not fooling us.”

“I don’t want to fool anyone,” said Dorothy, leaning
down to take out tomorrow’s invitation list from the hanging folder in one of the desk drawers.

The crow and the
gazelle ran down the stairs, two steps at a time, over to the car. Dorothy stood in the doorway, watching them.

The bum was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the gray Volga. There weren’t many street people in Amberville, and it was quite unbelievable that one of them would get in Sam and Tom-Tom’s way this evening.

And yet it happened.

It was a llama. In the glow of the streetlights the car cast a shadow over his upper body, and they saw only the legs lying outstretched across the sidewalk. When they came closer they saw that the llama was long and hairy and dirty and seemed to be sleeping half upright against the Volga’s front tire.

Without a word Tom-Tom increased his speed and ran ahead of Sam. In a few seconds he was at the car, where he took hold of the llama’s shoulders and lifted him up. Perhaps the llama awoke, perhaps he never had time to come to his senses before Tom-Tom, with all the force of which he was capable, threw him down on the sidewalk headfirst.

It had been enough so that the llama would not awaken again that night.

When his soft skull struck against the stone of the sidewalk hardly a sound was heard, but when the crow took hold of the llama’s legs and swung the animal right into the side of the Volga, the distinct but hardly dramatic sound of a seam bursting could clearly be heard.

The llama remained lying next to the car, and Tom-Tom positioned himself with one leg on either side of the unconscious body. Sam screamed.

“Crow! We have to leave!”

But Sam’s words only sounded like a weak sigh in the ears of the crow, like a breeze in a tree. With his foot Tom-Tom shoved the lifeless body so that the llama rolled around onto its back, exposing the tear under its right arm.

Tom-Tom fell down on his knees and pressed his wing feathers into the opening. He dug in as far as he was able and tore the stuffing out of the llama with a frenzy that caused Sam to turn his head and look in a different direction. This pulling and tearing of the llama’s insides went on until almost all the cotton was lying in piles alongside the animal on the sidewalk.

Then Tom-Tom’s strength ran out, and slowly he rose and got into the car. Sam hopped in on the passenger side, and they drove away in silence.

The sky was far from starry, but here and there they could still see the moonlight between breaks in the cloud cover.

They were in a hurry.

M
agnus, I’m tired of waiting. I know this is a waiting room and I know that this is where you wait, but that doesn’t matter, I’m still tired of waiting. Besides, there’s a pitiful assortment of animals in here; it was like that the time before in Dr. Sharm’s waiting room and it’s like that here, too. On the couch by the aquarium, in the armchairs by the ugly coffee table, old hags all over the place who refuse to accept that time passes, that they’re no longer young, that their fur has seen better days. I’m not much better myself, I’m not saying that. But it’s still somewhat different, I haven’t even turned forty, and apart from my knees I don’t look so bad. You might take me for thirty. Perhaps even twenty-five, some evening when I’m made up. The old lady who’s staring at the guppy can’t possibly be under sixty-five, and what does she think? That she looks like she did in her fifties? It’s tragic. When I turn fifty I hope I’ve aged with dignity. I’ll keep my head high, dress like a lady, and try not to cling to my youth as though I wasn’t finished with it. As if youth wasn’t already lived and completely, thoroughly explored. I’m not a stuffed animal who
looks back. What has been, has been, and will never come back. I can’t understand those who go over and over all their old injustices, bitter about things that have happened, things that you can’t do anything about anyway.

Waiting.

No, it wasn’t my turn. It was the stuck-up lion who was just inside the door. Wonder what she’s doing here? Perhaps she’s acquainted with the doctor? She could use a new tip for her tail, but I doubt if she’s noticed that. If you close your eyes to shit, you don’t see it. One of Papa’s words of wisdom. He throws thousands of such proverbs around, that he’s thought up himself and that sound like true wisdom but aren’t wise at all. I learned them all, and Mama went crazy every time I repeated them out loud. They were never a happy combination, Mama and Papa. She is too ordinary for him. Still, it’s easier for me to understand that he put up with her than that it was the other way around. Why has she let it go on, year after year? I would never have been able to stand it. I would have put my foot down. But it’s clear, deep down inside she must be afraid. Who isn’t? He isn’t much to look at, but appearances are deceptive. Perhaps he’s threatened her? Said that if she leaves him he’s going to…well, something unpleasant. Sometimes I’ve heard him when he doesn’t know it. When he’s at the office and I’m just on my way in but have stopped outside the door because I hear that he isn’t alone inside. The first time when I was really little. I’ve always known. Long before Mama knew that I knew. Papa is good at making threats. It is, so to speak, a part of his job.

Waiting.

Now?

No. Not now, either. Every time that nurse comes out to call someone in, everyone sitting in the waiting room thinks it’s their turn. But we have to wait. I hate waiting. I’ve already thought that too many times today. I hate wait
ing. The wallpaper in the waiting room is green, with thin, white stripes. The ceiling is rather low. There are two small windows facing the street. The closed door into the doctor’s receiving room remains closed. It resists our gaze. When the door out to the stairway opens and a new patient comes in, we all stare angrily at her. We want to have the doctor’s undivided attention for ourselves. We don’t want to share. At least I don’t want to. I’ve always had an eye for doctors.

Once I worked as a nurse. That was long ago, and I kept at it less than a year. But I’ve never had any other job that lasted as long, at least not a real job. Besides, that year was the longest of my life. It was Papa’s idea, I’m not pretending anything else. He came up with the suggestion one day when he got angry because he thought I’d been shopping too much. He always thinks I shop too much. I have several girlfriends who are a lot worse than me, but he doesn’t care about that. You might say that the thing about becoming a nurse wasn’t a suggestion at first, it was more like a threat. Yet another threat. But something caused him to keep it in mind, and later in the evening, when he’d calmed down, he picked up the thread again. It could be useful for me, he maintained, to have a regular job. And in health care besides. I don’t know if he used the phrase “character building,” but I assume that’s how he was thinking. My life had been too easy, and it was time for a little resistance. This was one of the few things Mama and Papa agreed on, that my life had been too easy. Much easier than either of theirs. I had a hard time understanding how that could be my fault, but now I would be punished. Mama was ecstatic. Papa arranged a position for me the very next day, and we drove off to meet the director of the hospital. Perhaps I don’t need to say that I was against the whole thing. I was dating a chaffinch who thought a nurse’s uniform might be pretty, but that was the only amusing thing about the proposal. I believed, in my stupidity, that Papa would think better of
it when he realized what all this would entail. I thought it was still mostly a threat, and if I promised to stop shopping I could get out of it. The director of the hospital, a doctor whose name I forgot the moment we left, went over the work duties. As I understood it, it was at least as much about being some sort of maid as it was about taking care of patients, and in the car on the way home I tried to get Papa to change his mind. That this was, as it were, beneath our dignity. But he thought exactly the opposite, and he truly enjoyed the thought of all the scrubbing and cleaning and laundering and dusting and carrying and toiling it involved. Then I started to smell a rat. Then I started to get that this was really going to happen. That I would start working. I protested wildly the whole week. Stopped talking, stopped eating, and screamed what idiots they were, but nothing helped. I think this was the only time Mama and Papa were actually on the same side. Then…

Waiting.

Now, perhaps?

Yes, now it’s finally my turn.

It was still a waiting room. Inside the door, where I believed Dr. Sharm would be found, there was a smaller room, still with the same green wallpaper, but now with a single couch suite.

In here two nurses sit behind a low reception counter, and there are only two of us animals who are waiting. It’s me and the lion, who is still pretending not to see me. It must be lovely to live so completely in your own little bubble. To be like her, filled up with herself to such a degree that she doesn’t need to concern herself about anyone else. I really wonder what she’s doing here. Perhaps it’s a real disease? But Dr. Sharm doesn’t see the sick, only us: the vain. The lion knows that I’m looking at her, she must feel it, but she twists her head a little to the right and looks out through
the window. That profile…I know her! I recognize her from somewhere, but I can’t think of where it is. It will come to me. All good things come to those who wait, but it comes faster if you do something about it, as Papa always says. The two nurses in reception are shuffling papers. One is an ostrich, the other might be a hyena or a dog or possibly some kind of bear. I’m not good at types of animals, I never have been.

There are some newspapers on the coffee table. I pick one up and leaf through it. This is waiting. I hate waiting. A large painting is hanging on the wall behind the nurse in reception. Expressionism, or whatever it might be. Brushstrokes in an explosion of color. I’ve never liked art. I don’t know how I came up with the studio. A little white lie that led to another and then, presto, I was an artist with a studio. It was just perfect. I avoided making up pretend friends, I avoided coming up with false explanations about real friends who might have revealed me afterward. I’m not the housewife type, never have been, and when the studio was really there I realized that it was exactly what I needed. I was free. I could come and go as I wished. I avoided a lot of demands, always had a valid excuse if Papa wanted to see me or if I wanted to see someone. Life with Eric Bear was, and is, perhaps not the world’s most exciting, and the fabrication of being an artist gave, and gives, me every possibility.

The first time Eric was going to come by and look there were a few hours of panic. First I was forced to acquire an apartment. Papa had several, all around the city, I don’t want to know why or what he used them for. But he let me have one of them, it was good enough to serve as an artists’ studio. Then I rushed around up in Lanceheim an entire morning, buying paintings in every single antiques store I could find. They thought I was crazy. I asked the antiques dealers to give me only the paintings themselves, the canvases that is, because I didn’t want the frame. A few refused, but most
of them did as I asked, because I never tried to haggle over the price. Into a taxi and back to the newly acquired artist’s studio, it was down by Swarwick Park. There I set the canvases carefully around an easel I’d also found in an antiques store, and it looked rather nice. I breathed out and sat down on the couch that Papa had surely purchased, for it was leather and enormous and black just as he liked, and then I saw. Eric would ring the doorbell in exactly one half hour, and there were neither paints nor brushes in my so-called studio. I set off again into the city, and by pure chance discovered a store with artist’s materials as we went past light-blue Up Street. Into the store, make a real raid, and then back to the apartment again. I completed the image of a hardworking artist who was occupied with her new masterpiece by “spilling” a little paint on my slacks. At the very next moment Eric rang the doorbell. Fortunately, it was an old pair of slacks.

I’ve never had anything against Eric Bear. It’s not about that. He’s a nice bear with social ambitions, and I provide him with extra credibility by pretending to be an artist. He is less superficial, thanks to me. He acquires a little depth and heft. I’ll gladly offer him that. He doesn’t bother me, he cooks on the evenings he eats at home, and when he cleans he puffs the cushions on the couch, something I hereby confess that I’ve never done.

“Isabelle Lion,” says the dog or the hyena in the reception in a loud voice.

Isabelle Lion. As she gets up and without a glance goes over to the door to the left of reception, I remember where I recognize her from. Her husband borrowed money from Papa a few years ago. There were some complications, I don’t remember exactly what they were, but it was in the process of ending badly. I’ve seen her and her he at Papa’s office, not just once but two times. Lion opens the door and goes in to Dr. Bee Sharm and ignores me completely. In other words, she recognizes me, too.

I’ve never had anything against Eric Bear. He doesn’t scold me for shopping too much, even if I shop too much, and he doesn’t sniff at me to uncover the aftershave of other hes. He doesn’t bother me, and I can squander my life exactly as I wish. Because that’s what Mama says. You’re squandering your life, she says, because I can’t account for anything I’ve actually done during the day. But the days pass nevertheless. I go out in town, shop a little, meet girlfriends, and have lunch. Sometimes there’s a little flirtation to play with, sometimes not. Sometimes Mama and Papa want me to be involved in something, sometimes not. But Eric doesn’t demand much, other than that I am referred to as his wife. That much I can do.

Now.

Finally it’s my turn.

Dr. Bee Sharm is, exactly as his name suggests, a very small stuffed animal, the smallest I’ve seen. He sits behind a large desk in his white coat, smiling broadly as I come in. Apart from the customary cot along the long side of the room, there isn’t much in here that’s reminiscent of a hospital. No anatomy charts or horrid stainless-steel tools that always scare me to death. I sit on the stool he is pointing at, and when he asks what I’m looking for, I tell him.

“It’s my knees, doctor,” I say.

“Uh-huh,” says the doctor amiably, jumping down from his chair.

He disappears behind his desk, but comes strolling around the corner and he hardly even comes up to my knees. I can’t help it, I lean over so as to be able to see what the little fellow is doing down there. He’s supposed to be the best in the city. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

“In my humble opinion,” says Dr. Sharm, “you have very beautiful knees, Mrs. Rabbit. And I doubt that it’s time to fill them in or shine them up.”

“But, but…” I start to stammer, because I’m amazed at
an animal who doesn’t seem to want my money when I’m fully prepared to give it away, or at least pay handsomely for a simple service.

“There are artificial fibers,” Dr. Sharm interrupts me, “that are very true to life, and with which I can absolutely fill in the shallow parts of your knees. But I’m not sure that will be really successful because there’s really nothing like original hair-covering.”

“Not successful?” I repeat, and I know I sound irritated, but I can’t help it. If this little doctor is supposed to be the best in the city, and he doesn’t know if the results will be good, who’s supposed to know? Not successful? What kind of foolishness is that?

“Oh, ma’am,” says Dr. Sharm, “however much we might wish it, and despite all its advances, medical development still has most of its work ahead of it. We think we’re becoming wise, we research our way along a winding road, but even so we can’t know completely for sure.”

I’m dumbfounded. At the same time I shouldn’t be surprised. My own experience of health care is exactly the same. At Lakestead House a gaggle of doctors in white coats ran around with furrowed brows looking sadly at you, so that you gained confidence in them and became a little afraid at the same time. The majority at Lakestead House had lived there their entire lives, and would continue living there until the red pickup came and got them. They were almost all there for psychiatric difficulties. The doctors were a threat to health. You never knew when they might come steaming in with a shot or an idea for a small intervention that might be of help. At first I was scared to death. I had such respect for them. But by the final months I knew that the doctors were loonier than the patients. And believe me, the patients were loony. Completely loony. I took care of three of them, an eagle who thought he could fly, a rose-colored badger
who thought he was a general, and Teddy Bear, who carried on about how he was fighting against evil. I met Eric Bear when he was up to visit Teddy at Lakestead, so I got to know Teddy first. Compared to all the other crackpots, it was easy to like him. True, he belonged in the home, but if you just kept to the right topics of conversation he wasn’t strange at all. Not as strange as the others, in any case. And with that I’m including the personnel. I met Teddy at least three times a day. I gave him breakfast, I took him out on a walk in the afternoon, and I saw to it that he took his tablets before he went to bed. It was primarily during the walks that we talked. About everything imaginable, high and low. He told me a great deal about his family, of course—it was Teddy who got me interested in Eric. He sounded exciting. Dangerous. I liked dangerous males.