Lanceheim (29 page)

I
t began in north Lanceheim and at the same time in the central neighborhoods of Amberville. Emerald green Haspelgasse and pink Gruba Street had this in common, that neither of them had been mentioned before in a historical context. I, and many with me, devoted far too much time to discussing and trying to determine how these streets had actually been chosen, or if it was only the finger of chance that had pointed at them. Personally I promoted the latter thesis. It became one of the most unpleasant nights in the history of Mollisan Town, and therefore I understand the need to find a guilty party.

I do not know who threw the first stone, but I know that it either broke the window to the Glen Vulture family bakery on Haspelgasse or Sloth McArthur's watchmaker's shop on Gruba Street. If I may once again make a middling attempt at depicting a course of events, I choose to concentrate on Glen Vulture and his family, and will thereby—in advance—beg pardon of the McArthur family. This was a narrative consideration, not a political stance.

 

Glen Vulture and his
family—a wife and three cubs all under the age of ten—were sleeping on the upper floor when the sound of broken glass woke them. The weather was calm, the moon half, and the hour late.

“What was that?” asked Mrs. Vulture, who always slept lightly and woke at the slightest sound.

“It wasn't here,” mumbled Mr. Vulture, who wanted to go back to sleep.

But in the following moment the three cubs came into their parents' bedroom, and their worried voices forced Glen Vulture unwillingly out of his lovely, warm bed. He sat drowsily on the edge of the mattress and promised to go down and see what had happened. He pulled on a worn terry-cloth bathrobe, stuck his claws in a pair of old felt slippers, and left the bedroom with a heavy sigh.

The cluster of stuffed animals outside the bakery froze when the light came on inside. It was impossible to imagine that this enraged mob was made up of the greater part of a cricket team in Amberville, but that was the case. Ordinary, simple stuffed animals, changed beyond recognition by their own terror. Soon scattered cries and threats were again heard from the group.

“Renounce him!” screamed a young hen.

“Right-winger!” screamed an elderly horse.

A chimpanzee crouching on the sidewalk managed to pry an emerald green cobblestone loose, which he heaved toward the part of the shop window that was still intact. It was purely a stroke of luck; the glass crashed loudly, and the rabble on the street cheered spontaneously.

When the next stone flew in through the window, Glen Vulture could no longer stand passively watching. He ran down into the bakery and up to the window. Outside, Haspelgasse was dark and quiet as usual. The street was
short and narrow, there were no other shops, and only one of the five streetlights worked. Vulture had consciously opened his bakery on a side street; those who appreciated good bread nonetheless found their way there. Now he wondered why none of the families who lived across the street turned on their lights and came out; didn't they have cubs too who were afraid?

“Reactionary!” shouted the mob when they caught sight of him.

“Right-winger!” the horse screamed again.

Glen Vulture assumed that this was a misunderstanding. How or why he did not know. He took a few more steps up toward his broken shop windows, which the mob perceived as a provocation. Several shouts and screams were heard, among them one that finally mentioned the name.

Maximilian.

“Your false Maximilian can't protect you against this!” screamed the chimpanzee, and a third emerald green cobblestone flew through the air and struck Glen Vulture in the head so that he fell down and remained prostrate.

The mob cheered and screamed, perhaps to lessen their shame and their anxiety, and quickly moved on.

This was how it began, on Haspelgasse in Lanceheim.

 

How do you start
an insurrection? I can only guess. By innuendo. A whisper in a long ear. Gratuitous dementia. Keeping track of who, on every block and in every house, is most afraid, and then strengthening that fear. Acting without being seen. Contributing to an organization, and making sure the money is used for something else. Patience, of course. The insight that a seed that is planted must get nourishment and time to grow. Resources are required. Motivation and persistence are required.

What happened that night was well orchestrated, but
behind the years of planning and consistent spreading of rumors that preceded the event itself there was a master of intrigue. For a long time he had made sure that the threat from false saviors was whispered in ears faithful to the Proclamations. For many years the city's reactionary circles had heard about a liberal apostle of love. For just as long liberal stuffed animals had been supplied with news of a fundamentalist prophet who was constantly winning new adherents.

Once again: How do you start an insurrection? Who has those kinds of resources? Who has the motivation, and what aims are being served? These questions lead to one and the same answer. I have no evidence, at least not enough for a court of law. Not because that would lead anywhere. Justice is part of the state. And I write this: In all ages, governments have known the art of manipulating the citizenry. Someone who has been in power as long as a certain tortoise must have learned how things were done. I'm not saying anything else.

When the moon became full, they met on Marktplatz. Various eyewitness accounts state that there were anywhere from a thousand animals to tens of thousands. According to the police, as many as thirty-five thousand stuffed animals were involved, but this figure may have political overtones, as the police always describe themselves as understaffed.

They came from all parts of the city, even if the majority came from Lanceheim. On the way there they had broken shop windows and sprayed graffiti on facades; the bravest—or the most cowardly—had entered buildings and apartments and vandalized and beaten. When every small group had joined the overwhelming mass of animals that was waiting on Marktplatz, the excitement increased further. That there were so many of them! What they had dared until now was nothing compared to what they would dare during the hours that followed.

It was the Night of the Flood; the night when the city
would be rinsed clean. The concept had probably been coined at the ministry, but that would never be explained. The Night of the Flood: a night of cleansing, when mighty forces, natural forces, would be let loose to crush the unnatural and re-create harmony in our city.

Why just this night? Why just this week, this month, this year? I do not know. No one has been able to explain it to me. But judging by the results, the instigators chose the right night, week, month, and year.

 

When small groups were
no longer joining up with the great mass on Marktplatz, the departure began. It took time; it took almost twenty minutes from the first ones starting to go until the last ones set off. They chose the broadest street heading east, mixed-gray Bardowicker Strasse; they took up both sidewalks and both driving lanes. Individual stuffed animals who encountered them fled into the cross streets. It could be seen in the eyes of the mob: If you weren't with them, you were against them.

There was no talking among the agitated animals. Instead they screamed out their terror and their hatred. One by one, without caring whether anyone listened, or in groups, they shouted disgusting rhymes that someone must have created in advance. I do not remember them all; a few I am never going to forget. I will not reproduce them, I do not want to contribute to their distribution, but the message was basically the same: Maximilian and his Retinues must be crushed once and for all.

I have never confirmed this, but lists with names and addresses must have been circulated. The authorities must have registered us over a long period, taken pictures of stuffed animals who took part in Adam's, Dennis's, and Maria's lectures, and then identified them in some way. Found out where they lived.

Homes were destroyed that night. It is possible that this affected more than members of the Retinues, but this was never talked about. With an unfailing scent the mob made their way into the right entryways, doors were kicked in and cut apart, homes were wrecked, and the families who lived there severely shocked. Nothing was stolen—this was obviously important; they were vandalized and destroyed, but no one could be accused of theft.

Boutiques whose owners had longingly listened to Adam Chaffinch's words about faith had their store windows broken and window displays trampled, fathers who had seriously heard Dennis Coral talk about unquenchable hope were forced out of their night sleep while the fired-up mob tore the sheets from their beds and locked their children and wives in the bathroom drying cabinets. Elderly stuffed animals with hardly any sight or hearing left, but who could still be moved to tears by Maria Mink's words about love, saw their memories in the form of photographs hanging on the walls in halls and dining rooms brutally crushed against parquet and stone floors.

And like the mighty flood that they wanted to resemble, the drive continued indefatigably eastward, toward the goal that had been selected long ago: Maria's House on Damm Weg.

 

For my part, the
phone rang in the middle of the night, and someone screamed and cried at the same time. I still do not know who it was who called. I misunderstood the message in parts, but it was nonetheless clear to me that it was about Maximilian, and that he was in danger. I quickly put on my clothes and ran down to Damm Weg, where the others already were assembled. I must have come there about the same time as the masses of stuffed animals up at Marktplatz started moving, but so far it was silent and dark and quiet in east Lanceheim.

Via the telephone in Beetle Box's room we got reports, each more unbelievable than the next. The networks that Box had used to spread information were now used to tell us what was happening. The descriptions made us weep. When we thought we understood what was brewing—something we of course did not fathom and the magnitude of which not even I, who had fantasized about conspiracies for a long time, could understand—we tried to forestall it. We quickly prepared a list of animals that we ought to call and warn, and then went to various rooms in the building and phoned.

We realized that they were on their way toward us.

And none of us woke Maximilian, who was sleeping on the top floor, ignorant of what was on its way.

Or possibly he wasn't?

 

The first thing we
heard were the screams. I imagine that we all heard them at the same time; at least it did not take long before we were all standing in the hall. Someone opened the doors out toward the street. Maria's House was the last building on a dead end, which meant that we now stood looking out toward long, narrow Damm Weg, which in only a short while would be transformed into a chaotic, howling sea of variously colored stuffed animals whose fears were turned into energy and whose hatred was aimed in one direction.

We did not say anything to each other.

Once again: No one ran up to waken Maximilian.

We stood as if frozen into ice, staring out toward the empty, dark street even as we heard the ululating screams coming ever closer, becoming clearer and clearer. It was Adam, Dennis, Maria, Beetle, and I plus five or six other stuffed animals.

I was afraid. I was more afraid than ever before. And
when they came—first far away, like a movement in the night, then filling the narrow street to the brim, first ten, twenty identifiable individuals, then as an anonymous collective—it was as if everything happened in slow motion. I had time to think about every consequence, every possibility, and yet I did nothing, like in nightmares, where your body refuses to obey your brain's orders.

They came closer and closer, and yet it never ended: The line at the crest of Damm Weg remained constant. I have no idea how many there were. A thousand or ten thousand, it was all the same. We who were standing on the stairway outside Maria's House could see them from slightly above; the five stair steps were enough to make the terrifying picture clear to us.

There was a back door. If we had wanted, we could have run into the house, through the hall, past the Planning Room, and out the back.

I'll stay here as long as Adam stays here, I thought. The others must have thought the same.

We stood there, like an honor guard without weapons or discipline, and watched our fate come toward us. We had no defense against clenched paws, drawn-up shoulders, claws that pointed, and eyes that burned.

They stopped only when there were ten or so meters remaining to the stairs. It was a careless, rowdy, unrehearsed stop. The first animals did not want to come closer, as if they were afraid of a deadly infection. For a few short moments they jostled a few meters ahead of the line, which did not understand that there was a halt, but then everything became calm. The screams stopped. I do not maintain that it became silent, but it was considerably quieter.

At that moment Maximilian came out of the door.

He raised his arms.

He had on his white dressing gown and a solid-colored light blue headcloth that he had worn the past month, of
which he was especially fond. None of us on the stairs had seen or heard him arrive; we had been paralyzed by the mass of animals surging along Damm Weg.

“Go in,” I heard Adam Chaffinch hiss at him.

Adam was standing on Maximilian's other side, and I can imagine the look Maximilian gave him.

“Go in,” repeated Adam.

“It is for my sake they have come,” replied Maximilian.

He misunderstood the situation. He thought that these stuffed animals were his followers, that they had come to seek his help or ask for his advice. And before any of us realized what he was thinking, he started to go down the steps toward the unruly mob.