Amberville (25 page)

The few animals who were outside in the lukewarm Evening Storm in Yok’s run-down blocks were careful not to turn around or stare at Eric as he ran past. A running animal meant bad news.

On Eastern Avenue, Eric Bear reduced his pace, although his stride remained long. When he saw the cathedral’s hedgehog-like silhouette against the cloud-draped sky, he was still so focused on arriving in time that he forgot to feel nervous.

Yesterday morning, when Hyena Bataille had told him about the clothes that were delivered to the Garbage Dump, Eric Bear understood for the first time that he had neither been the first nor the last confirmand chosen to lead a small league of clothing stealers. And it was then as well that he’d understood that it was the archdeacon himself, and no other, who was behind the Death List. It was that simple.
That was why it could go on, year after year, with ever-new groups of children taken in hand by Penguin Odenrick.

The wind was milder as Eric went up the stairs to the cathedral’s massive portal and opened the rather modest door that led into the church. He passed through the great halls, across the inner courtyard, and along the colonnade. He continued through the dark corridors with torches along the walls, and only when he came up to the door that led into the archdeacon’s office did he stop. For a moment he was once again fourteen years old. He knew that he had one full hour, no more.

Then he pulled himself together, quickly knocked, and pushed open the door without waiting for an answer.

E
mma Rabbit was the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen.

But Archdeacon Odenrick saw her first.

Odenrick stepped into the narthex where Emma and her mother were waiting. He had explained the procedure to us in advance. He wanted to say a few words to the bride and bridegroom before the ceremony itself. Emma and I had chosen the shorter variation.

To me, religion remained a two-edged weapon.

It was a matter of daring to believe in the unbelievable, which in all other contexts was described as stupidity. I’d devoted my life to pure goodness, and I sensed a double standard in the kind of goodness advocated by the church. It focused on good actions, while the soul and the self were allowed doubt and uncertainty. The church in Mollisan Town was a proselytizing church. If for no other reason, the church’s religion was simplified and systematized. Its greatest advantage was that it lessened our fear of death.

Emma and I met Archdeacon Odenrick in one of the meeting rooms at Lakestead House. It was just the three of us.

“And you, Emma?” said Odenrick. “Do you also think
that the primary contribution of religion is to lessen the fear of death?”

“I’m not afraid to die,” said Emma.

Archdeacon Odenrick smiled victoriously in my direction.

“I’m not a believer, either,” Emma added.

The archdeacon’s smile disappeared.

We were sitting one flight up. Outside the windows it was already dark. The lighthouse out on the promontory swept its light over us at regular intervals. There was a smell of coffee from the kitchen.

“But you’re in agreement about marrying in the church?” the archdeacon asked with some skepticism in his voice.

“If you’re going to get married, then you should,” said Emma.

“Many times Magnus’s sense of morality coincides with mine,” I said. “In the remaining cases I’m prepared to forgive.”

“To forgive is divine,” replied the archdeacon.

All three of us nodded.

It was going to be a beautiful wedding.

“Emma Rabbit,” said Archdeacon Odenrick as he stood outside in the small narthex only minutes before the ceremony, “you are a very, very beautiful bride.”

“Thank you, Archdeacon,” said Emma.

When the choir began singing I shed tears.

We had come in contact with the Red Bird Singers through Father. Despite the fact that they seldom performed at private events, they had agreed. When the eight, pale-red birds stood on the platform and the distinctive harmony caused the church’s hollow timbers to quiver with hope and melancholy, I knew that it had been worth the trouble.

However much Father had paid, it was worth it.

Before the second verse the door to the narthex was
opened and Emma Rabbit and her mother appeared. Emma was a revelation. The guests sitting in the pews were listening to the exquisitely beautiful singing and for the time being didn’t see the bride. The church was almost full. A few hundred stuffed animals. Most of them were friends of Mother and Father. There were seventy-eight animals invited to the dinner afterward.

The Red Bird Singers concluded the introductory hymn and the singers sat down. The procession with Odenrick, Emma, and Emma’s mother began its short but symbolic course along the middle aisle of the church. Mother and Father sat in the first row. They didn’t turn around. Mother was already crying and didn’t want to show it. Father sat next to her, straight-backed.

A murmur went through the church. A collective inhalation that spread in time with Emma’s measured progress.

I’ve already written it.

I’ll write it again.

She was so beautiful.

The bridegroom stood at the altar, waiting. He looked terrified.

The guests didn’t see his sweaty paws or his shaking knees. However, he couldn’t conceal anything from my critical gaze.

The bear was fingering a small etui that he had in his trouser pocket. It was an inappropriate gesture that expressed nervousness and uncertainty. When he assured himself that he hadn’t forgotten the rings, he took out his paw. He nodded toward the congregation, toward Emma and toward Mother, but he didn’t appear relieved.

In the bear’s eye was the expectation and happiness shared by everyone in the church. But for the bear at the altar, that feeling was diluted with anxiety. It wasn’t obvious, a sharp gaze was required to notice it.

I saw it.

It was my twin who was standing up at the altar. He couldn’t conceal anything from me.

He had taken my place.

We had an agreement.

I myself was concealed inside the sacristy, peeking out through a crack in the door. Neither Emma Rabbit, Archdeacon Odenrick, Mother, Father, nor anyone else in the church was aware of what was about to happen.

Emma Rabbit was getting married to the wrong twin.

I didn’t promise anything that I couldn’t keep. Eric promised without caring about it.

I sat hidden behind my door and saw my brother get married to the she I loved with all my deplorable heart.

The tears I shed were not from melancholy or sorrow.

I was weeping for joy.

One morning in December, Wolle Hare threw open the door to my office and shouted, “Now you can’t hide yourself anymore!”

Then he laughed his snorting sales-laugh that he’d been practicing for many years. It wasn’t particularly contagious. On the other hand, it induced thoughtlessness and made it feel less dramatic to make a decision. Let’s make the deal, the customer who heard Wolle Hare’s laugh would think. Let’s make the deal, life isn’t so terribly serious.

I wasn’t affected by his laugh. For me, life was serious.

“Hide myself?” I repeated.

“We need you,” shouted Wolle Hare, “you and no one else.”

“You have for a long time,” I answered quietly.

I had worked at the advertising agency for almost eighteen months and knew my position. I didn’t need to be flattered by either Wolle or Wolle.

After the first six months I realized how things stood. Everyone in the agency wanted to be in the spotlight. The ani
mals competed in proving themselves smart, smarter than each other. Those who weren’t part of the competition that day sat on an invisible jury and judged the others. It was a matter of being creative or successful. Certain ones strove to be both. Everything could be measured in money.

No points were awarded for administrative tasks. No points to the one who saw to it that the rent was paid on time, that the pension allocations were taken care of, or to the one who had the welcome mats changed when they got dirty. No points to the one who took care that the green plants stayed green.

When I started working at Wolle & Wolle we had stretched our suppliers’ patience, and credit limits, to the breaking point. The authorities awaited an opportunity to sic the sheriff on the gentlemen Wolle and Wolle.

I became the firm’s rescuer in distress.

It didn’t happen overnight. Slowly I won the confidence of our external suppliers. I convinced them. The hedgehog who came with new doormats relied on the fact that from then on he would be paid within twenty days. An eagle at the tax office knew that I was always available to take his questions. The animals who worked at the agency became used to the office-supply storeroom being inventoried and replenished.

After a year of assiduous labor, my exertions produced results. Thanks to my exactitude and my absolute conception of right and wrong, Wolle & Wolle had become a model of business practices in the industry.

Naturally there was no one in the agency who saw what I’d accomplished. For these self-centered designers with colorful clothes and flexible consciences I remained a gray mouse without apparent purpose.

Good.

In contrast to them I had no need of winning their ironic competition. I knew my value.

It was greater than theirs.

Considerably greater.

“Come,” said Wolle Hare, “then I’ll tell you.”

I showed no enthusiasm. In one leap, Wolle was over at my desk, taking me by the arm. He pulled me up out of the chair. Brutally he shoved me out of the office. I felt secure inside my office. My binders and document files controlled my professional life, set its limits and gave it meaning. Out in the office landscape that was the advertising agency itself, a different order prevailed.

A lack of order.

My status made me invisible, but this morning as I was shoved across the floor by Wolle Hare, I received numerous glances. Some wondered who I was. Others wondered enviously why Wolle Hare was devoting attention to me in particular.

I shared that wonder.

Wolle Hare and Wolle Toad had furnished a joint office in a corner room that extended into a conference room overlooking Place Great Hoch. Toad was waiting for us at his desk when we came in. A small group of designers who were called in for especially significant pitches was sitting at the conference table. I knew them all by name.

“Here he is!” the hare cried out triumphantly and pointed at me. “Didn’t I say that he would help out?”

The exhilaration in Wolle Hare’s voice was not met by any reaction. The group at the conference table looked skeptical.

“Who is that?” someone asked.

“No idea,” answered someone else.

“Are you volunteering, Teddy?” asked Wolle Toad.

I didn’t know what this was about. I shrugged my shoulders.

“They want to use you in an ad,” said the toad, making a gesture over toward the creative group at the table, and toward the hare. “It’s about banking services.”

“Me?”

No one in the room could take my question as being coquettish.

The toad nodded.

“It’s about building trustworthiness,” he said in order to explain why the choice had fallen on me.

I was completely unprepared. Before I had time to collect myself, Wolle Hare placed an arm around my neck and led me away from the toad’s desk.

“This is a chance for you, Teddy,” he explained in a low voice. “You can’t be an administrative assistant at an advertising agency your whole life.”

“I’m very comfortable with…”

We had stopped halfway between the creative group at the conference table and the toad at the desk.

“I don’t mean that you have a career as a model ahead of you,” Wolle Hare clarified. “But if you volunteer for this type of thing, it’s not inconceivable that we’ll have you in mind the next time a management job comes up.”

“Is it the head of accounting’s job that you…?”

Our accounting head was an old blue jay who was going to retire at the end of the year. So far I hadn’t heard about a successor.

“There’s no reason to be that specific,” the hare interrupted me. “And this is of course not a punishment we’re talking about, appearing in a commercial for the Savings Banks’ Bank.”

We were standing in front of a large whiteboard. I looked over at the designers, but they didn’t seem to care about us anymore.

“The Savings Banks’ Bank?” I repeated. “But we use Banque Mollisan. I don’t know anyone at the Savings Banks’ Bank.”

“We’ll make an attempt, then,” Wolle said smoothly without having heard my objection.

“I don’t even know if I…”

“So the job is yours, shall we say that?” said Wolle. “Head of accounting, you said? That’s not so bad, is it? Shall we say so?”

“I don’t know if I…”

“Good,” he called out, patting me on the back in confirmation.

The designers looked in our direction. I thought I glimpsed a smile or two. Perhaps it was only because Wolle sounded happy.

“Teddy’s on board,” shouted Wolle Hare.

The hare went over to the others to discuss the consequences of the good news. I remained standing by the whiteboard. No one seemed to notice me. The designers and the hare talked, the toad sat at his desk and wrote. Should I leave? Before I had time to make up my mind, a cat detached himself from the group of designers. I knew who he was. He’d gotten a prize for a campaign for light beer.

“Cool,” he said, shaking my paw. “Not a difficult thing. Just you, in your normal clothes.”

The cat inspected me up and down and nodded in approval.

“We drive in the studio. Backdrop. It’s raining,” he said. “You’re just standing there, like. Straight up and down. But you smile.”

“Smiling in the rain?” I asked.

“A bank for us who are tired of being run over,” the cat said. “That’s what it’s about. That’s the message.”

“Am I the one who’s been run over?” I asked.

The cat shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re the one who’s tired of being run over.”

“But I’m the one who’s been run over?”

“Bear,” said the cat, smiling amiably, “it’s possible that you’re a steamroller. But in the picture you’ll represent
the one who’s tired of being run over and chooses Savings Banks’ Bank instead.”

“Banque Mollisan is better,” I said.

“I have no opinions whatsoever about that,” the cat said and went over to the others.

Assuming a role and expressing an idea in a certain question has nothing to do with evil or good. I wasn’t naïve. A photo model who depicted a bad character was not a bad animal. Investigating your dark sides was necessary if the object was to live a good life.

I don’t intend to go into that.

The point is: placing yourself in front of a camera in order to swear that the Savings Banks’ Bank was the city’s best bank had nothing to do with evil or good.

On the other hand, the consequences were impossible to accept.

Suppose someone who saw the advertisement actually believed the message. And changed to the Savings Banks’ Bank.

Making an ad, said Wolle Hare and Wolle Toad, was a job. We did our job. Those who saw the ad had to take responsibility for their own lives. To influence was neither to betray nor mislead. There were no hidden intentions. Recommending one bank before another was not a crime.

The argumentation was impeccable.

But I knew that the Savings Banks’ Bank wasn’t the best. I knew that anyone who changed banks due to the ad would not get better banking services. It was not about the photography. It was about taking responsibility for the chain of consequences that every action unleashes.