Amberville (5 page)

I
n a way my twin brother Eric and I are married to the same she.

But she doesn’t know it.

It’s a complicated situation.

But love is a world unto itself.

The crooked path that led me to love: How did it happen? Emma Rabbit was an angel, I an ordinary bear. She both was and is worthy of someone better. And yet she chose me. The ways of love are unfathomable.

Love is lethal for a bear who has consecrated his life to goodness. Love is the victory of feeling over reason. Is that why my thoughts become cloudy when I think about Emma and what led up to our wedding?

Is Emma good? Could I be married to someone who isn’t good? Could I be married to someone who doesn’t strive for the same goodness as I myself do?

I’m no missionary. I’m no hypocrite, either. But I was in love with Emma even before I met her. Paradoxically enough, the fact that Eric had my job at the advertising agency Wolle & Wolle made the decision easier.

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

Around her head, where the fur was combed so it looked like the softest lamb’s wool, rested a garland of fresh dandelion leaves and pink roses. I had braided the garland for her that same morning, according to tradition. A sheer bridal veil of silk brocade fell across her slender back and drew attention to her sweet face where her nose glistened moistly and her cheeks were glowing with expectation, anxiety, and happiness. But it was her gaze that bewitched me. The solitude in her large peppercorn eyes that had enticed me to tenderness and affection was temporarily gone, replaced by conviction.

She was strong and beautiful.

Emma was standing in one of the narthexes of the church along with her mother. Her mother was nervous. I had never met her. Or perhaps I had met her. She was not angry, only worried about all the hundreds of details that might go wrong. She was worried about whether her cub had chosen the right mate or not. I’m not criticizing her. I was not an unequivocal match. Despite my successful parents, I probably made an unstable impression at times.

Outside the narthex Emma’s girlfriends stood waiting. They spoke loudly and shrilly with one another. They were nervous, too.

Neither the nervousness of her mother or her girlfriends could, however, compare to Emma Rabbit’s own. She had awakened with a lurch when the half-moon was still high in the sky. She sat up in bed and called out, “The ring!” with such panic that I threw off the blanket and leapt up.

“The ring? Is it gone?”

The ring was in secure keeping in the blue case that I had set on the nightstand. Yet Emma did not go back to sleep. Her anxiety kept us awake until dawn. Then we fell asleep for a few hours until it was time for me to go gather flowers for the garland.

They grew in the flowerbeds outside Lakestead House.

“You’re completely sure now, aren’t you?” asked Emma.

She was waiting for me in the corridor. She was driving her wagon.

I went up and looked her deep in the eyes. I nodded.

“I’m sure,” I answered without the least hint of doubt.

“Why?”

There was anxiety in her eyes and her nostrils flared involuntarily. A moment later they narrowed again.

“Because I love you,” I replied.

“But you were so hesitant,” she said, exactly as I knew she would, “you were occupied with your evil and good. You said that making promises you know you can’t keep is lying. And the more you cared about someone, the bigger the lie. You said that marriage was the worst kind of lie. Because even if you wanted to be faithful…even if you wanted to love for your whole life…even if you wanted…”

“Darling,” I interrupted, “I know what I said.”

“Even if you wanted all that…” Emma continued without paying attention to my objection. “You said that the rest of your life was too long a time to foresee. You said that things always happen that you can’t control. You said that, knowing all that with certainty, an animal with good intentions, an animal with a thoroughly good heart, ought never to get married.”

“Dear,” I interrupted a second time, “I know that I…”

“But everything you said,” said Emma, looking at me at the same time as her nose carried out the same sort of unregulated expansions and contractions as before, “doesn’t that mean anything anymore?”

I sighed and tried to calm her.

I didn’t want to take back what I’d said.

I couldn’t take it back; I stood by every word.

But to profess my love to her, to describe her as I saw her, with her secure self-confidence, her creative talent,
and last but not least her remarkable beauty, wouldn’t be telling lies.

“Many struggle their whole lives to find the empathy which is completely natural for you,” I said. “It makes you sensitive and strong. If you find yourself in a difficult situation some day, your empathy will help you through the sorrow.”

“What difficult situation?” asked Emma.

“I mean,” I replied, reining in my irritation so that it was impossible to hear, “that you can rely on yourself, darling. You don’t need me, or anyone else, either. You are your own happiness. If you can’t see that yourself, which in a way is part of your charm, you’re going to find out what I mean the day you need to.”

I don’t know if she understood what I was saying.

She leaned forward and hugged me hard. When at last she released her hold, I went down the stairs and gathered my flowers.

I hadn’t lied.

I hadn’t held back the truth.

Yet it was with a heavy heart that I cut pink roses from the bushes growing in the backyard.

A good bear.

That’s what I want to be.

That’s not a humble desire.

In the afternoons, after reading and before I go down to dinner, I sit in the armchair and think about everything that separates good from evil. Some days I sit for a quarter of an hour. Other days I don’t get out of there for two or three hours. They are punctual at Lakestead House, and it’s unfortunate when this drags on.

Evil is a serious subject. Many have immersed themselves in it. Yet one of the greatest problems is the definition itself.

Being a good bear demands that you know what evil looks like.

I know what evil looks like.

My forty-eighth summer of life is approaching. It is not without experience that I look back on my life. I don’t want to call it a happy life. It was never a question of making a happy life for myself. But I feel satisfied; there is a certain calm. It occurred to me yesterday. Few grains of sand from the past chafed in my soul as I walked along the shore in the pouring rain of the Afternoon Weather.

Involuntarily my mood darkened.

And in my armchair before dinner, my childhood was waiting for me.

The day my twin brother and I were delivered to our parents I already knew everything about a mother’s and a father’s love for their cubs. I knew that my brother would come to experience that kind of love. And I knew that I wouldn’t. It was not an insight expressed in words; I was two days old. And yet the certainty of it was in my heart. It marked my upbringing. I loved Mother and Father. They loved me back. But never like they loved Eric.

Never.

We came direct from the factory, a troupe of parentless cubs being driven out to their future homes by the Deliverymen in their green Volga pickup. Stuffed animals out taking a walk that morning stopped to look at the truck. The males clasped their females closer to them. The females tipped their heads to one side and smiled tenderly.

I can imagine how it was.

I myself have been walking on a sidewalk like that and seen the green pickup driving by. A truckbed full of cubs who will long for love their whole lives. A longing that is going to lead them astray, and destroy them.

Almost nothing is more difficult than keeping the longing for love free from demands.

It is a struggle.

I struggle every day.

Mother liked to say that the Saturday when Eric and I came to flame-yellow Hillville Road, nature appeared in sparkling garb. The sky was light blue and the pleasantly warm sun put the cascades of red, yellow, and green foliage in light and shadow by turns.

The Deliverymen drove across the Star—the golden square that was the absolute midpoint of the city—and continued along mint-green East Avenue. The carillon in the highest of Sagrada Bastante’s thirteen towers struck its cheerful melody.

There’s no symbolism to be found in those thirteen towers.

The four rectilinear avenues toward east, west, south, and north were the skeleton of our city. During the week these were heavily traversed thoroughfares. On the weekends, the east and west avenues were transformed into walking streets. In the middle, between three lanes to one side and three lanes to the other, grew massive oaks and maples. They formed a long avenue on either side of a wide gravel walkway.

The trees provided shelter from the rain that passed over the city twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon.

In the fall thousands and thousands more lamps were set up in the foliage. The first of November every year the lamps were lit just before the Evening Weather, and the two avenues pierced the city like sabers of light.

You shouldn’t look for any symbolism in that either.

The Deliverymen drove Eric and me to Amberville, the district whose boundaries are formed by East Avenue and the beautifully sky-blue South Avenue. Here the two-story buildings stand wall to wall in seemingly endless rows. Up the street and down the street, most in shades of green or
blue, with more or less identical buildings. White woodwork against dark-red or dark-brown plaster. Sloping roofs shingled with black mosaic tile. Two garrets with transom windows on each attic. Narrow ribbons of smoke rise from the chimneys in the twilight. Red and pink geraniums spiral from the flowerboxes.

Details set the houses apart. Growing up in Amberville, we often knocked on the wrong door.

“We’ve got two units to number 14,” said one of the Deliverymen to the other.

With the point of a pencil he checked off Eric’s and my names on his list.

“Two units?” the Deliveryman commented behind the steering wheel.

“Twin bears. Don’t see that often.”

We were a sensation even when we were made. Two identical stuffed animals. Indistinguishable.

The green pickup swung onto the sidewalk outside 14 Hillville Road. The Deliveryman who was sitting on the passenger side jumped out and went around and opened the back door.

There we sat. We were neither shorter nor taller than we are today. We were less worn around the knees and elbows. That was the main difference.

But we couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t walk. The Deliveryman took us, one under each arm, and carried us up to the house which was to be our parental home.

Mother and Father stood waiting at the door. Our father, Boxer Bloom, was wearing his best white shirt, and a bow tie besides. Our mother, Rhinoceros Edda, had on a dress that was as big as a tent.

“Finally!” said Mother.

“Now it begins,” said Father.

I have few memories of my own of early childhood. But Mother told us stories when we got older. Funny stories about how Eric or I said something silly before we understood what the words meant. Dramatic stories of illnesses and escapes. Mother liked to tell stories as she was preparing food. She stood at the old, wood-fired stove in our narrow kitchen. Eric and I sat at the kitchen table and listened.

She told about when we drove the car out to the lake in the summer and when we ate our picnics in Swarwick Park in autumn. In Mother’s stories Eric was the initiator and I was the follower. Eric was the star and I was the audience.

I was a cub, and needed no explanations for why things were that way. It was natural that Eric was promoted at my expense.

We loved him.

I have never felt, and never will feel, envy in relation to my brother. Bitterness, it is said, is an inborn talent. Roughly in the same way as music. I’ve never been able to hold a tune. My anxiety is of a different type.

The memory of Mother’s tale changed in time to a memory of the event itself. There have been times in my life when I believed that these implanted memories might replace the real ones. That’s not the case. What Mother told and retold were situations that were especially meaningful to her. Not especially meaningful to me or to Eric. If you think about it, you might more than suspect that Mother’s stories were keys to her inner life.

The keys to my life were kept in a different drawer.

There was a time when I tried to force it open.

Then I understood that that was meaningless. Being a good bear is a constantly ongoing project in the present tense.

Eric and I shared a room. It was the highest up, on the fourth floor with the sloping roof over our beds. That early time was dizzying for our new parents. They had lived for
each other, now Eric and I made our demands. There was a lot we needed to learn. Simple things like walking down the stairs to the kitchen. Or expressing the simple feelings that filled us. We were cold. We got hungry. And sleepy. One time we ate too many cookies and got a stomachache.

At this time our mother had not made a name for herself at the ministry. Like hundreds of other paper-pushers she plodded along, and her coworkers hardly sensed that she would become one of our time’s most talked-about politicians. It was both obvious and easy for Mother to go to half-time, and she continued to work half-time until Eric and I had learned the most necessary skills.

It was different with Father.

Our father, Boxer Bloom, was rector of Amberville’s Secondary Grammar School. The school building was a chalk-white fairy-tale castle, adorned with towers and pinnacles. The building was designed by Toad Hendersen, who had also renovated the city’s massive cathedral. The school’s main entry faced toward moss-green All Saints Road, but from the hill in the schoolyard at the back the forest could be glimpsed beyond the city limits.

For Father the job was a calling. Between the present day and the future there were some animals who made a difference, and he counted himself among them. He was bringing up the coming generations. If he succeeded, the city we’d known until now would be a pale prototype of that which was to come. Father was careful about describing his visions concretely, but I sensed that what he especially disliked about his own time was its lack of order.