Amberville (12 page)

S
nake Marek returned a few hours after Dove had taken off. He acted as if nothing special had happened. Eric was sitting, bandaged, at the kitchen table; Sam was fixing the dinner that Crow had bought.

“Snake,” said Crow, “you know what, I…”

But Eric silenced him. He invited Snake to take a seat at the table. All four ate in silence and, over coffee, began discussing how they should go from there. After an hour or two they were in agreement. Snake’s theory was simple. If the Chauffeurs didn’t operate arbitrarily, there must be some form of communication between them and their employer. Instead of searching for the list, which demonstrably didn’t exist, the snake, bear, gazelle, and crow should try to find out how this information reached Hotel Esplanade.

Sam had no difficulty arranging a wiretap. Technology was one of his foremost interests and in the cellar at Yiala’s Arch he had an entire workshop. Exactly how the gazelle made use of his tools and equipment in his “work” remained unclear. Without difficulty he located the telephone cables which led to Hotel Esplanade, and in a childishly simple
way he jury-rigged them so that calls to and from the hotel were routed to a tape recorder up in Sam’s apartment.

It seemed unlikely, however, that anyone gave the Chauffeurs orders over the telephone. The risk of misunderstandings and eavesdropping would be far too great. And because there was no longer any postal delivery in Yok, the stuffed animals felt the possibility that the list was delivered by a courier most likely. This led to a decision to intensify the surveillance of the hotel. If the precision of their approach had been a little slapdash before, Eric now created a schedule without gaps. No one was particularly happy about the increased guard duty, but they all understood that it was needed. During the lonely hours of the night, Sam Gazelle used pills in a way that took a heavy toll on his hiding places and supplies. Eric brooded and agonized, thinking about—longing for—Emma Rabbit. Snake devoted the time to intellectual nonsense and soul-searching; a soul-searching which in the aftermath of the night appeared even more nonsensical than the nonsense itself. Tom-Tom Crow was, however, the one who was most tormented by sitting hour after hour, staring at the hotel’s dark brick façade where nothing happened from the time the red pickup left the building a few minutes after sundown until it returned a few minutes before dawn.

Tom-Tom was a simple soul, but he didn’t like being alone. He didn’t like it at all.

Over the years he had learned to distract the loneliness through a series of empty rituals. He cooked, cleaned, even watched TV according to certain definite patterns. Patterns that demanded discipline. The ambitious handiwork projects were part of that. It was a matter of taming the silence and the loneliness. When evening was over, sleep came as quickly as a sharp right hook.

And he never needed to recall what had happened.

But in the gray Volga, he remembered. There was nothing else to do.

He recalled how cramped it was. How it rubbed against his wings, and how the light filtered down through the cracks in the floor.

He remembered the pain. The terror.

Tom-Tom stared intensely at the façade across the way, at Hotel Esplanade, trying to blot out the unpleasant thoughts by looking even more intensely.

But he was a simple soul.

He needed distractions.

And nothing was happening outside Hotel Esplanade.

He believed that the attacks were for real, all the way up to school age. It was only Papa who could hear the warning sirens, and certainly that was strange, but why should Papa lie? Papa was all Tom-Tom had. Mama had disappeared even before he was delivered. Tom-Tom was Papa’s only child.

They were coming from the forests, Papa said. They tortured stuffed animals. They could keep at it for days. When you finally died, said Papa, you could feel content. But Tom-Tom shouldn’t be afraid. Papa would never let anything happen to him. That was why they had to practice.

There were a couple of loose floor planks in the kitchen. When Papa heard the sirens, Tom-Tom should run into the kitchen and throw himself down into the hollow place under the floor. But because it was only Papa who heard the sirens, Tom-Tom never knew when it was time. No matter how hard the punishment Papa gave him, Tom-Tom never learned to hear the sirens. The sirens in Papa’s head.

It was cramped under the planks in the kitchen. There was hardly room for Tom-Tom. Perhaps that was just as well. The idea of the practice was that he was forced to lie silent as long as possible. If he let out a peep, the enemy would find him. Then the enemy would tear up the planks and torture him. It was for Tom-Tom’s own good.

He learned to lie silently for hours.

Tom-Tom Crow stared at Hotel Esplanade, trying to think about Snake, the bear, and the gazelle. He tried to take himself back to reality and the gray Volga and the terrible Chauffeurs on the other side of the street. But after a few minutes, he was down in the cramped space under the floor again.

The pain.

What if the enemy sensed something anyway?

What if the enemy sensed something anyway and started searching for a hiding place somewhere under the floor planks? What if the enemy, for example, poured boiling water over the floor, boiling water that ran down through the cracks? Would Tom-Tom still manage to keep silent? Boiling oil? Melted sugar? Tom-Tom’s papa was inventive at the stove. He was doing this for Tom-Tom’s own good.

The pain.

When dawn came and the first rays of the sun were climbing up over the horizon, the night of watching was over. Most often, the red pickup drove into the garage an hour or two before sunrise; sometimes the margin was narrower. The Chauffeurs would sleep through the day after completion of nightly duty, and that applied to Eric, Sam, Snake, and Tom-Tom as well. But no one found as great a relief in the hour of dawn as the crow.

During the shift that proved to be the last one outside Hotel Esplanade for the stuffed animals, Sam Gazelle overslept.

It wasn’t at all strange; chock-full of interacting and counteracting substances flowing around in his system, the chances of his remaining awake for an entire surveillance shift were generally nonexistent.

Instead of soundlessly opening the car door and nonchalantly strolling back to the beautifully grass-green Yiala’s Arch as dawn was breaking, Sam threw open his eyes in surprise and noticed that the day had begun. The Morning
Weather had turned cloudy, nothing more, but this would still demand an explanation. Eric would understand that Sam had fallen asleep, and Sam had no excuse.

He wriggled out of the car at the same time as he tried to gather his thoughts. The ghosts of his nightmares had not yet dissipated, and they made it hard for him to produce miserable white lies.

He shut the car door and took a deep breath. There were a few cigarette butts on the sidewalk right next to him, and only a year ago he would have leaned down and picked them up. Somewhere in the vicinity he heard the sound of an iron grate being rolled up as a shop owner came to work. And Sam was just on his way to begin the stroll homeward when the concealed garage door to Hotel Esplanade unexpectedly opened.

Despite the fact that the sun had gone up and the day had begun.

From out of the garage drove not a red, but a green pickup.

I
t sounds so frigging unbelievable,” said Tom-Tom, who was standing in the kitchen, searching for rusks in one of the cupboards over the counter.

“But I swear,” Sam Gazelle whined, wretched and irritated at the same time. “How wrong do you think a person can see?”

“It sounds unbelievable,” agreed Eric.

“I’m telling you, it was ChauffeurTiger,” Sam repeated for the third time.

The crow found the package of rusks and sat down next to Sam.

“Who had turned into some frigging DeliveryTiger?” said Tom-Tom skeptically, putting a rusk into his mouth.

Sam threw out his hands. That’s the way it was. Without a doubt. Without the dramatic hood that the Chauffeurs wore, and dressed instead in the Deliverymen’s typical green uniform, a bit reminiscent of the bus drivers’ jackets and peaked caps, it had been none other than ChauffeurTiger who had sat behind the wheel of a green pickup, with one of the two wolves beside him.

“Hmm,” said Snake Marek, for once markedly laconic.

They sat around the kitchen table, Sam on the edge, all staring incredulously at him. The Morning Weather was in the process of letting up and the rain would cease any minute now. It was Tuesday morning, just over two weeks since they’d started their surveillance of Hotel Esplanade, and Eric had almost forgotten how the apartment looked in daylight. The parquet floor shone with an oiled luster, and even the sticky ring marks from beer bottles on the kitchen table looked more pleasant during the day. Sam had emptied out a carton of breakfast cereal, honey-glazed rice puffs, and Tom-Tom sat down by mistake on the chair where the cereal had ended up. The crushed puffs now spread a sweetish smell through the apartment which was not at all unpleasant.

“You may believe what you want to,” said Sam bitterly.

“I believe you,” said Eric. “But it still sounds unbelievable.”

“It’s just that…oh, what the hell, you have seen things before…” said Tom-Tom, swallowing his third biscuit. “The kinds of things you’ve told us about. Hell’s dragons and colors and…you know…those sort of frigging…roller-coaster rides.”

Sam put on a wounded expression. The white and black rings that made his eyes seem bigger than they were reinforced his innocence, and the corners of his eyes glistened as though from tears. He put his head to one side and stroked his broken horn.

“I hadn’t taken anything for several hours. At least,” he whined. “That is really narrow-minded. Believe me, after all the years that I’ve used a little…extra stimulation…you learn to see the difference between reality and fantasy. It’s only in reality that my little energizers run out.”

“No, damn it,” Tom-Tom now tried to take back what he’d said, “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s clear as hell that I believe you. It’s just…no…damn it, then, I believe you.”

The crow’s words subsided in a silence that might be called reflective. Snake broke the silence.

“It’s not implausible,” he said, wriggling up onto the kitchen table.

They all looked at him with a certain surprise. Up till then Snake had sat silently, weighing arguments for and against. Finally he’d made his decision, and this despite his contempt for the gazelle, which he no longer concealed.

“Apart from the fact that there only remains a sliver of credibility in our little gazelle, who seems to do whatever it takes to get a little attention from our straight-backed lead bear,” Snake began with venomous irony, whereupon protests were heard around the table, “it’s not at all implausible. One might say that it’s actually just the opposite: rather obvious. Chauffeurs and Deliverymen are only different sides of the same coin. It’s so foolishly predictable that it’s amazing no one has uncovered them before. In addition, from the perspective of the authorities, it’s rational. One contract, one garage, one rent…”

“…and one transfer!” said Eric.

The thought struck him when he had his guard down. He got up from the chair with such force that it fell to the floor.

“The lists,” he said, without even noticing Snake’s irritation at being yet again interrupted in the midst of a lengthy statement. “I know how they handle the Cub List at the ministry. How the transfer itself takes place. Are you imagining that there really is a Death List, and that it’s delivered at the same time?”

Sam nodded enthusiastically.

“Darling, that doesn’t sound improbable at all,” he said.

“I don’t really flipping get it,” said Tom-Tom.

He was still hungry, but didn’t want to take more biscuits as there were only three left.

“But it’s…”

“What?” asked Snake.

“It’s today.”

Eric nodded without anyone understanding what he meant. Since the four of them had shut themselves up in the apartment at Yiala’s Arch, none of them had been concerned about what day it was. The nights had come, the days had passed, at a more and more ominous pace.

“It’s the sixteenth today,” said Eric. “And it’s on the sixteenth that the transfer takes place.”

He was so agitated he was shaking.

“That’s this evening!” he repeated.

“Is he talking about that frigging Cub List now?”

Tom-Tom put the question right out into the room.

“It’s about both lists,” said Sam. “I think.”

“But we don’t know that,” said Tom-Tom Crow, mostly to make the matter clear to himself. “Eric knows what they do with the Cub List, but if it’s the same frigging way with the Death List? We don’t know that, do we?”

“It’s this evening,” Eric repeated to himself.

“Finally we’re getting out of here,” said Snake.

W
hen the sun sank behind the horizon and the last breath of daylight colored the sky dark pink and dull red, when the Evening Storm was at hand and could be sensed in the bushes and the crowns of the trees, sometimes he felt ill at ease, reminded of forces that were beyond his control. Then he fled deep down under the ground, to the catacombs that had been constructed by long-forgotten generations, to which the light of day would never reach. There he might wander around and marvel at these endless passageways and crypts where secret societies had held their meetings, where business deals were struck, and where secrets were buried for all time. Deeper and deeper down under the earth he went along a route that wound through the very bedrock, lit up only by the torch he brought with him. The air became damper and damper, full of earth and stone dust; the chill caused him to shake and feel at home. When he’d walked for over a half hour he reduced his pace. It was getting hard to breathe, and he rationed his oxygen. The system of tunnels was several miles long; neither he nor anyone else knew its full extent; it had been built, extended,
and added onto for hundreds of years; there wasn’t just one but many architects, and a map would never be drawn. Everyone in the city knew about the tunnels, but there weren’t many who knew how to find an entrance. He himself knew of two, but it was maintained that there were ten of them. He’d investigated a few kilometers in each direction from his starting points, but he didn’t want to go farther than that. It wasn’t necessary, either.

A few meters after the tunnel had become so narrow that he was forced to crouch, it divided in three directions. He took the middle route, a broad but low passage which after ten or so meters came to an end in a small crypt. He extended the torch in front of him and lit up the wall. From out of the ground a cat’s head was sticking up.

“Boo,” he said.

The cat didn’t react. He extended the torch closer to the cat’s eyes, and the cat’s left eyelid seemed to jerk weakly.

Fascinating, he thought.

He’d buried the cat thirteen days earlier, and there was still life in it. He could of course have buried the cat’s head as well, but he was interested to see what would happen. Presumably the loose-tongued cat that had tattled to Dove would never die, but instead live down here in an eternity of eternities. He was not alone in wondering what really happened after the Chauffeurs fetched you.

Soon enough he would see, he thought drily.

He turned around and went back the same way he’d come. He still walked slowly. The chill caused him to move slowly, but it contributed to his thinking swiftly. It didn’t worry him that Eric Bear had succeeded in tracking the Chauffeurs to the hotel down in Yok. Without bothering in the least about the matter, he’d known for a long time that the Chauffeurs camped out at the Esplanade. On the other hand, it made him wary that Nicholas Dove had paid a visit to Sam Gazelle’s apartment the other day. The harder Dove
pressed, the greater the risk that the bear would be forced to become truly creative. And Dove was an opponent who couldn’t be defeated without the type of repeated, much-discussed confrontations that he especially disliked.

He stopped. Had he heard a neighing behind him? Was it the cat who had managed to pull itself together for a small sound? He stood dead quiet, listening. Then it was heard again, the growling from his own belly. He smiled. He was hungry.

When he came back up out of the catacombs, the sun had gone down and darkness had overtaken the sky. This was a relief. He felt starved, and decided to visit one of the cafés open in the evening which had spread across the city like weeds the last few years. He didn’t like to move about openly on the streets, he avoided that as often as possible. Before it hadn’t felt like that at all, but now he’d become furtive. There were occasions, however, like this evening, when he made exceptions to the rule.

He regretted it the moment he stepped into the café. He thought everyone was looking at him, and he quickly sank down into a booth far inside the place. He ordered pancakes, syrup, and coffee, knowing it was unhealthy, but hunger conquered good sense.

Thank heavens for Snake Marek, he thought. Services and counterservices. Manipulations and promises. With Marek on the scene as a mole quite near the bear, he in any case didn’t need to worry that something would happen that he wouldn’t find out about.

They would never get anywhere.

Then the pancakes came to the table and he lost interest in Eric Bear and the Death List.