Lanceheim (25 page)

R
euben Walrus counted backward from the fifteenth of April, when the concert hall would be filled with the cultural elite of Mollisan Town. He imagined them before him, stuffed animals with superior smiles flocking into the foyer, airing their expectations, dressed in tuxedos and glittering sequin gowns, with champagne glasses offered by the Music Academy. In his head Reuben heard snippets of conversation that had not yet played out. Someone would remark, “They say that this simply doesn't add up.” Someone else would whisper, “The walrus should have quit when he was on top.” And perhaps the most wounding, “This makes you wonder about his earlier works. Were they really that ingenious?”

The orchestra would need at least two days of intensive rehearsal to prepare the final movement. This meant that Reuben must have a finished symphony sitting on his desk on the evening of the twelfth of April for copying the following morning. Which in turn meant that there were no more than four days remaining.

He twisted and turned in bed. He had been awake since
midnight, staring furtively at the cold moonlight trickling in through the curtains. After a few hours of cold sweat and anxiety, he got up. There was no use. He pulled on his heavy terry-cloth robe that smelled of cigar and honey, and went to the grand piano.

In the darkness the open lid resembled a mouth laughing out loud. Reuben sat down on the uncomfortable piano stool, but he let the silence in the room remain undisturbed. He stared down at the keys, but was thinking about Fox von Duisburg's telephone call last evening.

“You can't be serious” had been her first words, without even saying hello or identifying herself.

He didn't understand what she was talking about.

“Hi, honey,” he had said.

“During all those years,” she said, “I still believed, deep inside, that when it really came to the point…that beneath the attitude, beneath that instinct to always look for the easiest way, always try to do things as painlessly as possible, you were—”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Reuben, “but what are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about?”

“What'd you say?”

All the phones at home had been reset, but he still had difficulty hearing what Fox said. Yet there was no mistaking the weary disappointment in her voice, and he could scarcely recall having heard her sound so dejected before.

“Did you ask what I was talking about?” she repeated.

“Yes. I don't know what you…”

Reuben did not finish the sentence, but she remained silent on the other end.

“Hello?” he said. “Did you say something?”

“Reuben, I…,” she began, not knowing how she would continue. “You rejected Josephine.”

“Is that why you're calling?” he asked.

“The decision was yours, and you didn't let her start at the school?”

“For one thing,” he began, “the decision was not mine at all, and you know that. Besides, this is not a school, the Music Academy is—”

“She's crushed,” interrupted Fox. “I don't think I've ever seen her like this. Not even when she was little. She's locked herself in her room, won't open the door, she's unplugged the phone.”

“Time will—” Reuben began.

“This is not about the fact that she didn't get into the school,” said Fox. “This is about the fact that her father did not give her the acknowledgment she's been waiting for her whole life.”

There was a whirring in his ears. It sounded like when the top is popped off a soft drink bottle, with the difference being that the sound was constant.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” she confirmed.

But there was no force in her voice, not the usual energy.

“My life,” said Reuben, feeling a tear forcing its way out of the corner of his eye, “is numbered. There is less than a week until Drexler's syndrome has put an end to my auditory nerves, and then I'll be deaf. For the rest of my life. If I have much life left, that is. My professional life is over in any event, my calling is—”

“You crushed her, Reuben,” she said and hung up.

 

The pain in his
chest.

He lifted his fin and played in the darkness, a few passages from an early work, a string quintet in G minor, a tragic story. Outside the windows he stared toward the building facade opposite, illuminated by the streetlights. It looked scuffed and gray and sad.

He was a worthless stuffed animal, he thought. He always had been. A worthless husband and an equally worthless father. He was a dishonest, unscrupulous specimen. And for that Magnus had punished him with Drexler's syndrome.

All attempts to compose were fruitless. He was too tired. He lacked talent. And he was far too panic-stricken.

 

After sitting on the
hard stool, staring at the keys for almost an hour, Reuben was about to fall asleep. Could he carry this fatigue with him into the bedroom? Perhaps it was possible if he walked slowly and didn't waken his body through unnecessary movements. He slid off the stool and shuffled across the floor. His eyes were half closed, he breathed slowly, and he exerted himself to empty his brain of thoughts. Possibly this would have succeeded if he had not happened to twist his head to the right as he passed by the narrow corridor out to the hall.

He stopped.

Inside the door, on the floor, was a white envelope. Reuben was certain that it had not been there when he turned off the lights last night. Fatigue was instantly replaced by curiosity and—even if he dared not admit it—hope. Could it have been Josephine who had left a message? All he could expect was her anger and disappointment, but he could defend himself against that. He wanted to defend himself against that.

On his way out to the hall, he no longer remembered that he intended to go back to bed. He leaned over to take a look. His name was on the outside, but nothing else. No postmark or stamp.

The envelope was of normal letter size and sealed shut. He held it up, twisting and turning it as if he could figure out what it contained. Then he placed it under his fin and went into the bedroom, where he sat down at the little desk
and turned on the lamp. Painstakingly he slit open the mysterious envelope and took out a piece of paper with typewritten text. He read the short message twice:

It was still early
in the morning, but as the clouds drew together and colored the sky gray-black, Reuben Walrus dialed the number of private detective Philip Mouse.

“I got a letter,” said Reuben.

“Sooner or later this happens to all of us.” Mouse yawned from his side of Lanceheim.

“From Coral. He suggests that we meet. This evening.”

“Okay. Don't do anything,” Mouse ordered, suddenly wide awake. “I'll come over in twenty minutes.”

“Good.”

 

Philip Mouse knew about
Charlie's Bowling, and was therefore not surprised that Walrus had never heard of the place.

On flax yellow Piazza di Bormio was a shabby Monomart alongside an unassuming storefront that sold fishing poles, and which had been closed as long as anyone could recall. The outdated fishing tackle was still in the shop window. Otherwise the buildings on the piazza were not noticeably
different from the average gloomy and half-dilapidated buildings in the depressing district of Yok. Appearances, however, were deceiving.

Charles Gull had embarked on a military career early in life, but the day he turned forty and had still not attained the rank of lieutenant, he could no longer overlook the truth. The military was holding him back. He left the army and used all of his severance pay to make the down payment on a bowling alley of a seldom-seen type. It would be in the middle of Yok and exceed everything that had hitherto been seen. Charles was a visionary and a skilled orator, and he convinced the banks to contribute capital, despite the fact that the stuffed animals in Yok were not a sought-after clientele.

The largest building by far built on Piazza di Bormio was meant to be an old people's home, but that never happened. The old people's home was instead relocated to south Yok, and the building stood empty a few years and was then rented out for a time to the Ministry of Finance, just as the Lucretzia hospital was undergoing extensive renovation work.

When Charles Gull bought the building, however, it had stood empty for almost ten years, and calculated per square meter he got it ridiculously cheap. The bowling alleys constructed in the basement became the base of the operation, but Charles's plans were more extensive than that. He saw before him a building where divisions were bridged, where there was both a haven for the poor and a luxury hotel for the wealthy on the same floor; he dreamed of seven-star restaurants alongside soup kitchens; he intended to let the prosperous stuffed animals in other parts of the city share their excess with the poor residents of Yok under one roof. For Charles, the bowling alleys were the symbol of brotherhood; here rich and poor could meet on equal terms.

Now Charles Gull was only able to realize half of this
amazing business concept. The stuffed animals from Yok came, but after initial interest—and not even that was markedly great—customers from Lanceheim, Amberville, and Tourquai stayed away. The homeless who sought shelter with Charlie were soon staying in the hotel suites as well, and after a few months the white tablecloths from the exclusive restaurant were used as bibs in the soup kitchens. The entire massive building was transformed into a kind of refuge for homeless stuffed animals and those who did not have the energy or desire to go home. They wandered around in the corridors and large halls for months, and at regular intervals Charles encountered animals who had not been outside the building for several years.

The only part of the operation that actually worked was, ironically enough, the bowling alley itself, and the associated blue bar.

 

Philip Mouse parked on
the piazza. Cars were parked every which way in Yok, and as long as they looked worn-out and cheap, most often they were secure. Mouse's car was both worn-out and cheap.

“I'll follow you,” he said to Walrus. “You don't need to be worried. Even if you don't see me, I'll see you. We'll do as we decided this morning.”

“What'd you say?”

“Don't worry, I'll be watching you the whole time,” Mouse repeated patiently.

“Why should I be worried?” asked Walrus. “I was the one who wanted to meet Coral, wasn't I? On the other hand, I don't understand why you're here. He wrote—”

“It's not Coral we're looking for,” Mouse reminded him again.

“Keep at a distance,” Reuben answered.

He did not know what he was most worried about, that
the private detective's presence would sabotage the meeting with Coral or that Mouse's absence would mean that they did not take the next step toward Maximilian.

“Keep at a distance,” repeated Reuben.

He got out of the car and quickly headed toward the modest entryway that Philip Mouse had pointed out a few minutes before. The square was filthy and deserted, and the building that Mouse had described that morning looked insignificant. Reuben came up to the entry, and there stood a small copper sign that had acquired a greenish patina over the years.

It read “Charlie Bowling,” as if this were a first and last name.

The door was open, and Reuben stepped into an ordinary but worn stairwell. It smelled faintly of mold, and the ceiling light did not work. He glimpsed someone climbing up the stairs, but knew that he was to go one floor down. And there, behind an iron cellar door, he entered a world that he never would have suspected.

Not even Reuben Walrus's ears, with their few remaining auditory hair cells, could be immune to the thunder from the forty-five parallel bowling lanes, all occupied by playing stuffed animals. The size of this underground hall was immense, as was the number of animals who were there.

“Thousands,” thought Reuben Walrus to himself. “There must be thousands of animals here.”

He would never meet any of them again.

These were the stuffed animals of Yok, and it was only after a few minutes that Reuben realized why he thought the atmosphere was unique. No one was looking at him. No one recognized him. It had been many years since this had happened in a public place in any of the other parts of the city.

Reuben wandered around for a while in a chaos of sound and light, colliding with stuffed animals going one way or
another, or the sort who were not on their way anywhere, instead standing apathetically behind the waist-high barrier, observing the bowlers on the other side. Successful throws resulted in scattered applause and shouts, but with so many playing there was screaming and applause the whole time. Philip Mouse was nowhere to be seen, just as he had promised, but Reuben felt reluctantly happy that the private detective was in the vicinity.

After a while he noticed the staircases. They were wide as six bowling lanes—the comparison was unavoidable—and were roughly in the middle of the hall, with stairs from three different directions. The stairs ran together after twenty or so steps in a massive landing with room for at least ten tables, where animals were sitting and drinking and eating. Then you could continue approximately twenty more steps to the upper story.

Reuben noticed a blue neon sign that told him the way to the bar was up. He nodded to himself.

Now it was time.

 

The bar stool was
more comfortable than Reuben expected. He was sitting on a thick, bright blue leather cushion attached to a strong metal pole that in turn was bolted to the floor. Four stools away sat Philip Mouse. Reuben had ordered a Strike—this proved to be a gin and tonic in which ten thin pieces of carrot cut like bowling pins were swimming. He sat sipping the alcohol and tried not to look for the snake. His gaze had locked on the private detective instead when it happened.