Yok (17 page)

I go into the dressing room, clock in, pull on my overalls, fiddle with the padlock, go out into the brewery, down into the cellar, and shovel chips. At lunch I go up and get my lunchbox, then back down to the cellar again where I eat two liver-sausage sandwiches (just like I always do, but today I forgot the cucumber, which is a trifle but completely exposes my inner chaos), and as I'm sitting on the bus on the way home—I have to stop and buy groceries and then this evening go out into the forest to hunt for wood—I'm still the only one who notices that I'm no longer the same.

But these days Rasmus isn't really Rasmus and Leopold isn't really Leopold, because all three of us are filled up with ourselves in a way that makes us even less attentive to each other than usual, which in my case is a blessing. For the first time in their lives my brothers are also fixated on the postal service and the letter carrier, a moose whose massive horns make the little postal service cap even sillier, and I am no longer entrusted with picking up the junk mail we usually get.

When I came home after my experience in the TV studio, Leopold—or Rasmus—had already thrown the day's mail (a wrinkled advertising flyer from Monomart) on the living room table and, probably in a fury, left the house, and today when I open the door both brothers are at home, which is unusual. I feel the atmosphere strike me in the hallway, dark and threatening, and I hear by the way my brothers are impatiently moving in the living room that I have to lie low, that this is serious now. I sneak up the stairs without the third, sixth, or twelfth step betraying me; it's a matter of millimeters, but if you know where to place your foot you can remain silent.

I hide on the top floor for half an hour, but then I have to go down and start making dinner, and I make myself as light as I can and go down again, without them hearing me even though the sixth step creaks faintly, and sneak into the kitchen. The letter carrier hasn't arrived; he isn't coming at all today, it's the sort of thing I know because I'm used to taking care of the mail, and I can only fantasize about my brothers' reaction when they realize they've been waiting for no reason. In the usual arrangement I prepare myself for them to take their anger out on me, we all need outlets and the least I can do is to help out. In return my brothers see to it that the house stays ours, because I don't know if I could live without the house on Carrer de Carrera.

After more than fifteen minutes, as the kitchen fills with the aroma of boiling cabbage heads and I've set the table as nicely as I'm able, a tremendous crash is heard from out in the living room, and I look down into the kettle and hope that it appears as if the cabbages aren't going to cook completely if I don't watch over them carefully. The next moment the door to the kitchen is thrown open, and Rasmus comes in, sees that I've set the table, takes hold of the tablecloth I've laid down and pulls it out, whereupon plates and glasses and the vase with a tulip falls to the floor, the sound of porcelain breaking against stone jangles in my ears, and he screams at me to pick it up.

But nothing else happens, and only a minute or two later both Leopold and Rasmus have left me alone in the house with the broken dishes and, as it turns out, a smashed coffee table out in the living room. I assume they're on the hunt for liquor, they intend to drink away the disappointment and frustration at still not having heard anything from
Now!
or
Good Morning Mollisan Town
.

I gather up the shards of porcelain from the floor, get the smallest pieces with the vacuum cleaner, fail to glue the vase together again (it was already glued together twice), and take the bedclothes out of the TV stand—sheets and pillowcase that are always going to remind me of my own great experience of
New Mornings
because the jacket in the cellar means that now I only have one pillow—and make the bed on the sofa; it's crucial to be asleep before my brothers are back. The smashed coffee table has helped me: It will serve as wood for two, three days, and so I don't need to go out to the forest this evening.

W
ednesday passes and Thursday passes and I become myself again, it's impossible to retain the feeling that everything is different when nothing is changed, when neither the rats nor the polecat ask a single question; I didn't clock in last Monday and I didn't clock out and I have no explanations, but no one asks why; I don't see a glimpse of the polecat during these days so I don't know who would comment on my absence.

Going to work, changing, and shoveling chips and at the end of the month having money put into the bank account is a system that works. I've never felt that I should question it, but who actually judges that what I do, I do better than anyone else? Sometimes months go by without me seeing the polecat, and when I think about it I realize that it's that way now, it's been months since I saw him, maybe he's not even still working here.

At home it's the same thing, everything goes on as usual with the exception of my brothers' fixation on the mail and the letter carrier, the poor moose who I believe got a visit last night when my brothers' frustration was uncontrollable and they had to talk with him (if I understand it right, they got him to promise to come by every day whether or not he has any mail for us).

It's impossible to feel different when the memory of what happened becomes vague, so distant and unclear that I remember details from my cubdom with greater clarity; I recall dreams better, and the memory of my beloved mom (whom I almost hardly saw and whom I idolize in my dreams so that I'm almost ashamed when I wake up) is more real than those moments before the TV camera. And I think that in only a week, in a few weeks, the program-host tryouts will be yet another piece of evidence that fatalism is my inheritance and my salvation, and that dreams and fantasies are not only vain, they're dangerous, because when they are crushed the life that remains is a little bit less valuable. Don't ask me why this is so, but it is.

On Friday there was more going on than on Wednesday and Thursday, but, you might say, nothing that hadn't happened before. At work I was pulled into a card game, it's during lunch and against my will, but the rats down by the ovens take hold of me and force me to sit with them, one of them is sick to his stomach and they're missing one player and they know that I can, so . . .

“I don't have any cash.

“But I'm not going to . . .

“A little while, then?”

I don't win. You can call me lots of things, but I'm not stupid—not like that, sitting with the rats during lunch and winning a card game would be stupid—so I play carelessly, just good enough, so that no one gets angry or happy and I can get up and leave when the lunch hour is over without anyone recalling that I was even there. But I'm afraid the whole time, though I'm usually not, I feel the heat from the ovens and I'm aware of the fire burning in there, and the memory of the rat that burned up last week haunts me. I carry that image with me in my daydreams, and it takes the whole afternoon for my pulse to calm down.

W
hen I come home my brothers are there, I've already gotten used to that, but something is different today and when I close the door I know what it is: I'm missing the sauntering steps, the loud, agitated voices, all I hear instead is silence. I remain standing a few moments with my coat on and just listen toward the living room, but I don't think anyone is there, and I take a few steps into the hall and try to listen upward. Even though it's completely silent I'm sure my brothers are up in their rooms, and I think that maybe the mail has arrived earlier today, maybe their expectation has already turned to dejection, because Rasmus and Leopold are hanging their heads now, they are resigned, it's worse than during all the years when we never heard a word from
New Mornings
, because then my brothers thought they had been unjustly screened out; now they've shown what they can do, and there's nothing to blame.

But there I'm wrong when I think about it, because I'm here, Erik Gecko, who wrote the news items that caused them to fail, so they can blame it on me. They're going to blame me anyway, and when I go into the living room I see an envelope with the familiar
Now!
logo lying wadded up and thrown on the floor in front of the stove, and I realize it's their results, for either both or one of them, because the silence doesn't suggest there's celebrating going on in this house, so I go over to pick up the envelope but just as I'm leaning down I hear steps on the stairs, and I turn around and see my big brother Leopold coming into the living room, and lightning bolts are shooting out of his eyes. I don't have time to say or do anything, I get a blow across the ear that immediately sends me to the floor, and he takes hold of my long tail and drags me toward the cellar stairs, and I can't say I'm surprised. He more or less heaves me down the stairs, and in order not to be kicked I voluntarily crawl into the storeroom so he only needs to slam the door, but I don't sense that it's going to be different this time. After hours long as years I fall into unconsciousness and I don't come out of it for a long, long time.

W
hen at last the door is opened and I am pulled out, I hardly notice it, a weak tugging on my legs, I feel the steps against my body as I'm being dragged up from the cellar, my head striking the threshold into the kitchen, and they set me with my back against the wall and ask me to drink, but I don't have strength enough to hold a glass or to put it to my mouth. So they help me, and then they help me eat, Leopold holds me while Rasmus forces bread in between my lips, it's unbearable but I realize I have to, it's an instinct that makes me chew and swallow, reflexes that have nothing to do with reason.

Slowly I come around, and my brothers are . . . I wouldn't describe them as remorseful, but never ever have they taken care of me the way they're doing right now, I have no emotional memory that anyone has held me like Leopold is holding me and I can see in their eyes that they want to revive me, they want me to live.

At last all three of us are rewarded as my strength returns, slowly I'm filled with life, literally, but the fatigue that comes over me is numbing, and when it's clear that my brothers expect me to leave for work I almost start to cry, I can't help it, I don't see how I'll manage. But I pull myself together and thanks to Leopold I get on my feet, even if I stagger and sway even more than usual and it takes me almost five minutes to go from the kitchen out to the hall. Then when I'm sitting on the bus I'm so groggy I have a hard time sorting out my thoughts: recently in the storeroom, now on the bus, recently barely alive, soon at work, and every time the bus turns it makes me almost fall off my seat, every stop means that I have to parry with my hands, but at last I arrive, get off, and drag myself across the industrial area over to Carlsweis brewery, where a surprise awaits.

In the dressing room the polecat is standing to meet me. He's in bad shape, his short arm is hanging in a sling and he's missing one of his ears, which seems to have been recently torn off, you can see the stuffing in the hole, but I pretend not to see either him or the hole but instead hurry over and open my locker as usual. He follows, places himself really close and speaks in a low voice, so that no one else can hear because we're not alone in the dressing room . . .

“Yes?

“I understand.

“Tuesday? Is it Tuesday? But . . .

“I don't know anything about that.

“I understand.

“No, this was the last time.

“Yes, I'll pass that on.

“I understand, but what do you mean this is Tuesday?”

He goes away, he's furious and wants nothing better than to take it out on me, but he doesn't dare, it's Rasmus or Leopold or both of them who tore off his ear, who tore off his arm—even if the doctors have already sewn it back on—and the polecat can't fire me or bawl me out, because then something even worse would happen to him. But he lets it be known to my brothers that the next time he'll turn the matter over to his boss, and then he can't save my job again.

I don't care about any of that, the only thing I hear is that it's Tuesday today, and while I'm changing it grinds in my head, that Leopold locked me in the storeroom on Friday, which means that I was locked up for at least three days (which has never happened before), but the thought I can't get rid of is a different one: Today is a Tuesday, but in what week?

I
t's during dinner that my brothers make a joint decision, I'm standing over in my corner by the stove stirring a leek stew so it will stay hot without burning at the bottom, and they are sitting at the table talking with each other and assuming I hear everything they say (the way it works is that if Leopold thinks there's not enough salt in the stew, he tells Rasmus, but expects that I'll come running with the saltshaker, and if Rasmus says to Leopold that he thinks the radiator on the top floor smells disgusting, he expects me to fix it as soon as I've done the dishes).

Now they're saying that
New Mornings
is a goddamned worthless program, and that only jerks are program hosts on TV, cowardly, unsuccessful idiots who sit there and smile ingratiatingly and read some bullshit that the weather is going to change when everyone knows that's bullshit, and the only ones who look at
Good Morning Mollisan Town
are retirees who stare at the TV day and night; damned good luck that no one knows they sent in applications to
Now!
every year, and what were they really thinking, did their drinking kill too many brain cells?

Then they laugh out loud at their own stupidity and explain that they will never, ever look at
New Mornings
or
Good Morning Mollisan Town
again, that in this house those TV programs are banned, and I realize that this applies to me, too, that I won't be watching anymore either, and I know that during the time I was in the storeroom in the cellar they both must have been turned down by the tryouts, even if I only saw one of the envelopes . . .