Lanceheim (22 page)

“Wait, don't tell me. It's Philip Mouse, isn't it?” he said.

All of Brother Tom's arms and legs were gesticulating wildly at the same time as he tried to draw Mouse away from there.

“We're in a hurry, Philip,” he said.

“Philip Mouse,” repeated the deacon. “You are a stuffed animal of normal intelligence, aren't you? You don't need a clearer warning, do you?”

For once the flabbergasted mouse was speechless. The deacon, a large eagle, looked at the mouse for a moment as if he were prey, and then left.

“Who was that?” asked Philip.

“You don't want to know,” answered Tom. “But get out of here now, Mouse. I think you've already stayed much too long as it is.”

T
he day Eva Whippoorwill climbed down from her tree and ran up to Das Vorschutz to receive Maximilian had been the thirteenth of October.

While Maximilian was growing up, therefore, the thirteenth was celebrated as his birthday, and we maintained the tradition during the years he was in prison. We invited Sven Beaver and Eva Whippoorwill and tried to make something special out of the day, tried to remember and celebrate Maximilian the individual, Maximilian the stuffed animal, rather than Maximilian the Savior. Most often this happened in more intimate gatherings, and the two Retinues were left out for practical reasons. But this year, the eighth after the unjust conviction of Maximilian, Maria Mink had conceived a larger event. During the fall she had hinted at this several times for her Retinue, which by this time was truly curious. For that reason we had booked one of our largest meeting places long before, a library that was above one of the retirement homes in Yok and which we had used on a few prior occasions. Changing places often, not starting the meetings before midnight, and not revealing the
time or place more than a few days in advance were routines we no longer thought about; they were obvious. We did not have any further incidents with the authorities, but I did sometimes feel watched, and I know that the church made sure to remind Adam at regular intervals—sometimes not very subtly—that they were still following his life and activities.

“Cake isn't vulgar, it's just rewarding,” said Maria with a certain degree of irritation.

“And good,” I pointed out quietly.

We were discussing the birthday celebration, and Adam Chaffinch had expressed his hesitation about serving cream cake during the break. Seldom if ever did they get involved in each other's arrangements. Adam performed his sermons in a rather traditional manner; Maria saw to it that her meetings had a warmer setting. Between them, however, there was always mutual respect. Adam had thought about taking part in Maria's Retinue on the night of the thirteenth, and so Maria wanted to hear what he thought about the cake.

“I don't know if cream and Maximilian go together,” said Chaffinch in an attempt to conclude the discussion.

He knew that Maria would do as she wanted in any event, and he regretted even opening his beak.

We were sitting in one of the rooms on the lower floor in what I and many others called “Maria's House.” Through transactions the details of which I do not know, Maria Mink purchased an entire apartment building in east Lanceheim, and for tax purposes donated it to a foundation run by herself. After that, she had turned the house over to us without restrictions, and it was now in Maria's House that I spent most of my time during the day. But more about that later.

“Cream goes with most things,” Maria smiled.

“Do you want me to make a note of that?” I asked jokingly.

Maria gave her consent and said that such pearls of wisdom should not only be written down, they should be embroidered besides.

This too I noted, and in the corner of my eye I saw that even Adam had a hint of a smile.

The atmosphere was jovial, and when we left the place half an hour later we all had the feeling that the evening's meeting would be unusually exciting and vigorous.

I escorted Maria; we took her car to drive over to the bakery on mustard yellow Krönkenhagen, where she had already ordered her cream cakes. On the way we continued the discussion about how the evening would take shape.

“Do you know how many are coming?” she asked.

Maria was always convinced that no one would show up at her lectures, and when the meeting place was filled time and again to the last seat, she was always equally overwhelmed.

“It will be a full house, Maria,” I answered. “As usual.”

“But are you sure?”

I nodded.

Tears were running from her eyes as she turned right onto Eastern Avenue, but nowadays I did not even think about that. Everyone who associated with Maria was used to this constant weeping, and even if it might sometimes be perceived as disruptive—or downright provocative—it was a natural aspect of who she was. The first months I had curiously asked her each time what she was thinking about, but after getting answers that varied from “a limping chimpanzee on the crosswalk over there” to the discussion of our generation's debt to our parents' generation, I stopped asking.

“I was thinking about talking about unrequited love, Wolf. Do you think I can do that?”

This was one of the lectures that was always most appreciated. Maria described unrequited love in a new way each
time, but her fundamental message of course remained the same. And at no time did her Retinue go home in the cool night across Mollisan Town as sorrowfully satisfied as after one of these lectures.

“Or have I done it once too often?” she asked while she passed a Volga truck from Springergaast. “Should I do something different?”

“Never,” I replied with certainty. “Never. Talk about unrequited love.”

She shook her right hand lightly so that the bracelet with little hanging silver pigs slipped down on her arm a little.

“Don't they get tired of it?”

If it had been anyone else, I would have maintained with certainty that this was coquetry, fishing for praise. But Maria was always honestly worried. It had to do with her level of ambition. She knew her value, but she always wanted to be better. Her reward was in the Retinue's appreciation.

“No,” I said. “It is never tiresome.”

 

It went as I
had predicted. In the twilight the library on the sixth floor of the Wrest retirement home was packed with stuffed animals. No new faces, only old familiar ones, but there was an unusual sense of exhilaration. The birthday celebration was something new. It was unusual that both Maria and Adam would be at the same place at the same occasion, and due to this, the assembly felt chosen and special.

Cream cakes were lined up on a side table, and Maria had decided that the event should start with the celebration itself, cake and coffee, before the more ordinary part of the night began. It was not possible for Eva Whippoorwill to come—it was something about her throat—but Maximilian's discoverer and father Sven Beaver stood conversing with Adam. Sven tried to disregard the many curious looks that were thrown in his direction, but I could see how hard
it was for him not to feel watched. I smiled to myself as I observed him, and knew how he would prefer to return home to the calm and silence of Das Vorschutz.

It happened just when we were about to take our places in the library and listen to Maria's sermon.

It began with the tall windows breaking, and thousands of small pieces of glass raining down over us.

It was unbelievable. No one understood what was happening, but the screaming contributed to the panic. The cold evening air streamed into the library, and there were voices outside that we still barely heard.

We had not seen the arrows.

Seconds later, when the next salvo was sent into the library through the windows that were still unbroken—closely followed by a hailstorm of glass—I understood what was going on. They were standing down on the lawn in front of the building with bows and shooting toward us. The assembled stuffed animals ran around like intoxicated bumblebees among the bookshelves, looking for shelter. The screams meant that no one noticed that no more arrows were coming, that there were no more windows to break.

It was right when the animals had calmed down somewhat that the door to the library was thrown open, and there they stood. Most turned around to see who they were, and the three animals with black nylon stockings over their heads gave rise to many terrified shouts. But only Mr. and Mrs. Kwai screamed in recognition: “Not you!”

“Let's see if your damn Maximilian can fix this!” the hoodlums yelled, throwing a burning bundle of straw right in the midst of us.

Perhaps it sounds ludicrous to state that this was dangerous. If the fire happened to brush against any of the stuffed animals in the library, if a spark traveled through the air and landed against nylon or rayon, against cotton or polyester, it would have been a catastrophe. Instead, with com
bined efforts, Adam Chaffinch and a few others poured all that was left of the juice and coffee over the flaming threat and extinguished the fire. Sven Beaver was already on his way toward the exit and the hoodlums, who of course were running away.

I went up and consoled Mrs. Kwai. Sobbing, she was sitting on a chair near her husband. She held her face buried in her paws and wept.

“We'll never escape them,” she sobbed. “And now we've drawn them here!”

“Who are you talking about, Mrs. Kwai?” I asked.

“The hoodlums. It's Bull's son, I think. We never should have come.”

“Bull's son?”

But her explanations were drowned in sobbing and tears, and I got no more out of her right then. The stuffed animals in the library were slowly calming down. Adam organized a small group that began to clean up the chaos, while Maria helped the elderly find their coats. There would be no sermon tonight; we would all remember this birthday for the wrong reason.

I found Mr. Kwai at the checkout desk, where he was standing together with three rats who were helping each other get rid of glass splinters in their fur.

“Mr. Kwai,” I said, “may I speak with you a moment?”

We moved to the side to talk.

“Mr. Kwai,” I said, “if I understood your wife correctly, you know who they were?”

He stared at me in surprise and shook his head.

“Did she say that?”

“She said that,” I confirmed.

He stood silently for a few moments, but soon made up his mind.

“It's true,” he said gloomily. “It's true. Oh, I'm so sorry. I beg your pardon. I should have realized—”

“Realized what, Mr. Kwai?”

“That they would follow us here. We've had them on our heels for months. I know who they are. We have a bull that lives on our street. He's always been surly. He knows that we belong to Maria's Retinue, we've never made a secret of that. And he mocks us openly. Says terrible things about Maximilian. Bull's son was one of those hoodlums this evening.”

“But,” I said, “why…?”

“Why?” Mr. Kwai repeated my question. “Why? Look around you, Diaz. This is not just happening to us. I have to speak with Chaffinch.”

Mr. Kwai hurried off, and I stood like a question mark watching him go.

 

When we went home
that night—it took several hours to clean the room, and when we left the broken windows were still there with their spiky openings, screaming out what had happened—I realized for the first time something that everyone else already knew. Parts of our Retinues were being persecuted for their faith and conviction. Perhaps not as aggressively and dramatically as what I had just been a part of, but it came as a shock to me that many testified to similar experiences.

We passed through deserted Yok along deep blue Avinguda de Pedrables, en route to the bus stop. The street looked almost black at night, and in their conversations the animals described the same thing over and over again. It was about taunts and jeers; someone spoke about anonymous threats in the mail, and someone else maintained that he had lost a job because of the Retinue.

“You're living in a bubble, Wolf,” Chaffinch said irritably when I expressed my astonishment and alarm. “And maybe that's a good thing.”

I did not reply. I was sincerely moved.

Many times I have thought that Maximilian's birthday ought to have prepared me better for what was waiting further along on my life's path. Unfortunately that is not the way life works. Perhaps I ought to say, fortunately.

I had sensed the hatred that was all around us; one day I would be staring it right in the eyes.

T
he third time Maximilian met Dennis Coral, they had both been confined to King's Cross so long that they had lost track of days and weeks and months and years. Time seemed to go slower for anyone who ignored it. I do not know if time had ever meant anything to Maximilian. As a twelve-year-old he had been more aware than an adult, and as an adult, more innocent than a twelve-year-old.

Once a month I still went out to the jail to see him. Maximilian knew nothing about Adam Chaffinch or the Retinue we had created. I assumed that the guards routinely eavesdropped on all conversations between visitors and prisoners, and the less they knew, the better.

But Maximilian never asked about life outside the walls or about the time that passed. He listened when I babbled on about what I was doing; he observed me with his gentle indulgence when I continued to nag about Duck Johnson. Sometimes he said something that I made note of and later entered into the Book of Similes, but often we simply sat there, on each side of the glass, and with my own eyes I could see that the hope that burned within him was not
affected by the time that passed, or by the headaches that pounded behind his eyes, or by the monotony that sucked the life out of most of the others in there. It was hope, his stark, unshakable hope, that meant that he endured.

 

The third time Maximilian
encountered Dennis Coral was in the library. By then Maximilian had been in King's Cross for over nine years. The prisoners who conducted themselves especially well might enjoy certain privileges over the years. Visiting the library once every other month was one of these.

The library was a cramped barracks with a few thousand books piled helter-skelter on shelves that had previously been in the kitchen to hold jars of preserves. In the spartan checkout area were couches and armchairs that had been used in the personnel quarters until the feathers were gone or the fabric worn out. There the prisoners could spend a few hours sampling the books they had just taken down from the shelves, before they decided. You were only allowed to borrow one book at a time, so it was important to choose the right one.

As Maximilian was standing in the library barracks that day, Dennis Coral was deeply submerged in a light blue armchair that was halfway turned away from the entrance. He did not hear anyone coming; nothing could have disturbed his concentration. The book he was reading was
Fantasia
, Ben Puma's pioneering work of homosexual literature, and Coral followed the sentences across the pages with the tip of his tail, engrossed in the words. There was something moving about this scene, and Maximilian remained standing a few steps inside the door, observing him.

Few may be granted eyes in the back of their head, but we have all experienced the feeling of being observed. Sud
denly the snake realized that he was no longer alone, and he twisted his neck at lightning speed and discovered Maximilian. The following second he slammed the book shut and managed to poke it halfway down under the cushion. Shame broke out on his narrow cheeks like raspberry stains on a linen tablecloth, and he stammered something that was impossible to make out. Maximilian looked at him with a gaze that was at once understanding and penetrating. Dennis Coral lost his composure.

“You…uh…don't say it, what?” hissed Coral, and his appearance became so dark that the marbling over his face was hardly visible anymore. “Anything at all…mm…but you can't say it!”

Maximilian made no reply. He sat down across from Coral on a couch that had once been beige. Tears were now coming out of the unhappy snake's eyes.

“I…uh…do what you want,” Coral pleaded. “What you want, huh? But…mm…don't say it.”

Maximilian cast a glance at the book that lay beside the snake in the armchair. He understood that Coral's entreaty had something to do with the book, but he understood no more than that. He raised his eyebrow to indicate a question; Dennis perceived it as condemnation.

“No one knows,” whimpered Coral as he pressed the book farther under the cushion. “No one…uh…in the whole world knows. No one must know, huh? My mom would…mm…my dad…Damn, promise, huh? You have to!”

The panic in Coral's voice was heartbreaking. The tip of his tail lay placid and still on the couch instead of executing its usual amusing twists and turns. Maximilian, however, still did not understand what the snake was talking about. His gaze was gentle; he placed his hands in his lap and waited for an explanation.

“It's…uh…something with you, huh?” Dennis continued. “It…doesn't add up? I don't know, you've uncovered me, huh, and still I can't—”

“Uncovered?” asked Maximilian.

“Shit. I know who I am, huh? Mm…I've known it a long time,” Dennis admitted. “But it would crush Mom and Dad. They are simple…uh…they, I don't know how to say this, they would die.”

The tip of his tail came back to life, and after a brief circular motion it swept across the bookshelves behind Maximilian.

“Mom has never read a single page, huh? If they knew that I…uh…was…mm…that I didn't like females…that I…wouldn't get married…that I was, you know, the word. Homosexual, huh? They would freak out. It would…uh…be the end.”

“Homosexual?” Maximilian repeated.

He pronounced the word neutrally, almost without understanding.

“To ME…uh…it's a big deal!” said Coral, and after a short dance he let the tip of his tail point right at his own head. “Others may…others…mm…there are those who can write ‘GAY' on their forehead and go around and be…uh…proud, huh? But to ME it's not like that. And…uh…I DON'T know why!”

Maximilian did not reply.

Dennis Coral had been overcome by his own emotions, emotions he had never before let out; it was like opening a dam of terror and shame. In a low voice—quickly and yet in the special, halting manner that was typical of Dennis Coral—he told his story, accompanied by his lively tail. About school days and about high school, when he dated a female for almost a whole semester for the sake of appearances, and despite the fact that it tormented him. About the
period after that, professional life, years of adaptation and self-denial. And about nights of agony and anxiety, sometimes outside clubs in Yok, clubs for the similarly oriented, when he stood in dark entryways without ever daring to cross the street. And the shame afterward, which grew with every new fiasco.

Dennis Coral's confession began in early childhood and ended twenty minutes later with a depiction of life as a Slave in King's Cross. When he fell silent, tears were running from his narrow eyes and his body was still shaking with anxiety as he sat in the armchair with the book by Ben Puma literally beneath him.

Maximilian let the echo of the words that had fallen die away before he spoke.

“A kite playing in the sky,” he said calmly, “gets life from the wind, not from the hand that holds its string.”

Those were his exact words. Dennis Coral would repeat them many times. I readily admit that I do not really understand what Maximilian meant. Coral remained uncertain as well, and he asked the question.

“Huh?”

“On a cart on its way to market,” said Maximilian, “sat a donkey, counting the clouds floating along in the sky. He divided them into categories, soft and hard clouds, happy and sad clouds. The donkey was on his way to the Autumn Festival in Yok, and on the cart he had cartons full of candied apples and honey-dipped pears.

“There were mostly soft and sad clouds. This made the donkey sorrowful. Finally he stopped adding any sad clouds when he saw one, and instead searched across the sky for a happy cloud. He did the same with the soft clouds: Even if they were in the majority, he seemed to constantly be discovering hard clouds on the horizon. In this way he arrived at the market without feeling depressed.

“It took the donkey a few hours to sell all his sweets to the cubs who were running around between the stands, and soon he was again sitting on his cart on his way home. But then the sun had gone down, and the sky was black. So black that there were no longer any clouds visible.”

Maximilian fell silent, and looked at Dennis Coral. Tears were running from the snake's eyes, but they were tears of relief and joy. On the intellectual level, Dennis still understood nothing, but intuitively he seemed to have perceived a truth: an alleviating, liberating truth.

“You have never lusted after another male's female, have you?” said Maximilian.

Dennis shook his head.

“You have never buried anyone alive, have you?” said Maximilian.

Dennis shook his head.

“Take my hand,” said Maximilian, getting up.

Dennis Coral got up, took Maximilian's hand, and let himself be led out from the small barracks that served as the prison library.

“Now I want you to close your eyes,” said Maximilian, “and let me take you out of here.”

Dennis Coral closed his eyes. His trust lacked limits. They walked next to each other for an hour, and Dennis felt no unease. He was still bewildered by his own confession, finally having said it.

When they stopped, Dennis had no idea where they were, but he guessed it was somewhere near the exercise yard.

“I am leaving you here,” said Maximilian. “You can open your eyes now. Take good care of yourself.”

Dennis looked up, and the light was so strong that he was forced to squint. He looked around. He was standing in the middle of Mollisan Town, in—it would prove to be—the heart of Yok, but before he really dared believe it, Maximilian was gone.

 

The excitement when Maximilian
returned to King's Cross lacks a counterpart in the prison's modern history. Enough prisoners and guards had seen Maximilian and Dennis Coral walking hand in hand through the walls for the entire prison to know about it little more than an hour later. They discussed the supernatural phenomenon; this was unavoidable: the power of thought and the fifth dimension. Others giggled contemptuously at such ideas and instead emphasized the possibilities of technology, hidden doors, and projected holograms. A third group maintained that both versions were baseless legends: Maximilian had dug a tunnel, and now the prison administration was trying to cover up its shortcomings by spreading preposterous stories. The prison administration, for its part, formed an investigation in utmost secrecy to immediately look for the answer to the question of what had really happened. Regardless of theory and tone of voice, everyone was talking about it, and when a prison guard crow en route to going off his shift passed Maximilian's cell and saw the headcloth-adorned prisoner calmly and quietly sitting on his bed as if nothing had happened, he immediately sounded the alarm.

And a tumult broke out.

A few minutes later a troop of guards appeared, tore Maximilian from the cell, and dragged him away. The prison warden himself caught up to the procession en route to Section G, where the isolation cells were located the past few years, and could conduct a short interrogation of the returned prisoner en route.

They crossed the cricket field and passed through the corridors in Sections L and F, which, if the matter had been handled with greater forethought, it would have been wise to avoid. But the situation was unique, and emotions had been stirred up. The prison warden came back again and
again to his two main questions: How had Maximilian succeeded in escaping, and why had he come back? The prisoner repeated his answer just as many times: He had not escaped, he had helped the innocent Dennis Coral out of the prison, and he came back because he was serving a sentence that society had rendered on good grounds.

This answer, the warden explained with as much desperation as anger, was not satisfactory.

At King's Cross there were no more than about fifty solitary confinement cells. They were notorious and feared, and awareness of them maintained reasonable order and discipline in the prison. The claustrophobic cells lacked windows, the ceiling height made it impossible for a normal stuffed animal to stand upright, and with the exception of the distilled daylight that made its way through the cracks in the cell door, it was coal black inside, night and day. An internee could be in solitary confinement for seven days at the most, and during this time seven meals were served. The capriciousness of when the food was placed in the cell was carefully calculated: One meal might follow only a few minutes after the previous one, while two full days might then pass without even a glass of water. The cells were punishment for the already penalized, and no mercy was shown.

Maximilian was literally thrown into cell 22, and there he would be for twelve days. I tried to visit him. It was a few days later that I drove out to King's Cross, knowing nothing about what had happened. This was my usual monthly visit. The personnel let me stand on one side of a closed wooden door and call out to Maximilian, whom they maintained was on the other side—I still do not know whether that was true—and then I had to leave.

“Tell them about Duck!” I called in despair. “Don't do this to yourself, tell them about Duck!”

This was futile, of course.

 

There are several eyewitness
accounts of what happened after the twelve days in solitary. Many tell about how extremely drawn and worn Maximilian looked when they hauled him back to his regular cell. It sounds paradoxical, but more than one eyewitness states that Maximilian's fabric had turned pale in the darkness and was almost white. The certified energy that he usually radiated was reduced to a thin mist, and not once on the way back from Section G did he raise his gaze from the ground. The guards threw him on the floor in his old cell and left him there, like a remnant of a stuffed animal, a spirit conquered at last.

Fifteen minutes later the chaos was a fact.

During the twelve days that had passed since Maximilian left, and came back to, King's Cross, the knowledge of what had happened deepened to an insight: There was a stuffed animal in the prison who could help anyone whatsoever get out.