Lanceheim (12 page)

At the same time Maximilian failed an examination for the first time. He fell behind in school. The work at night had taken its toll; Maximilian hardly found time to rest, and one day Adam Chaffinch came by and asked what we were up to.

Maximilian explained it in his own way, but I am not sure that Adam really understood. I realized that if Maximilian did not live up to academic expectations, they would throw him out of the school.

Therefore I was the one behind the idea of moving our activities to the church in Kerkeling. This solved several problems at the same time, and Maximilian had nothing against working during the sabbath.

“They are so many,” he confided in me, “and I can help them.”

At the same time I forced him to prioritize the lectures in school and not be truant. Therefore our sessions in the church became capricious in a way that I imagined was only good. Regularity would make it easier to uncover us.

 

When both the ox
and the grasshopper had left, I went and fetched Maria Mink. I did not scold her for leaving the dark waiting room, nor did I say anything about the fear I saw in her eyes. I had seen it before.

Maximilian was waiting up at the altar. He was wearing a thin white tunic, and around his head and ears he had wrapped the veil he used when he worked: white with embroidered red briars. Something otherworldly rested over his form; Maria Mink reacted just like all the others.

She was faced with something she had never experienced before.

With a gesture I showed her the way up to the altar. She met my gaze doubtfully; would she dare? But just as courage was deserting her—it was, after all, just a matter of walking up there—her right shoulder twinged in pain, and she stepped up onto the podium. Without a sound I went to one of the rows of pews and sat down on the hard wooden seat. The church pew sloped forward a little, which made it even more uncomfortable.

Together with the hundreds of angels on the ceiling painting, I observed the terrified mink on her way up to the altar. Her life would be different in a few minutes. Her
pains would disappear forever. I had seen it happen many times; I could see it as many times as I'd like.

“Come now, don't be afraid,” said Maximilian amiably.

Maria got down on her knees, just as she had seen the grasshopper do before her. I had never needed to instruct anyone; it happened by itself. Maximilian placed his hand on Maria Mink's head.

“Tell me,” he asked with his light voice.

She told about her pains. She stared shyly down at the floor, but told everything. How the pain came one day, and never left her after that. She told about visits to doctors and diagnoses, about the advice of good friends and how her mother had similar experiences when she was young. Maximilian listened patiently, and after a few minutes, when Maria paused for breath, he said, “And love?”

The mink fell silent and looked up in terror.

“What did you say?”

“A long time ago,” said Maximilian, “so long ago that you have almost forgotten it, you loved. Do you remember how it felt?”

“But…,” Maria Mink stammered, “I…this is about my pain? I'm in pain. I came to—”

“I know why you came,” replied Maximilian. “Tell about love. Have you experienced it?”

Maria stared at him. She was even more afraid now. She knew exactly what Maximilian was getting at. It was a secret that she had carried for many years without revealing it to a single stuffed animal. How could he know?

“One time,” she forced out, “one time I have known love. I don't want to think about it.”

“But that is exactly what you are doing,” asserted Maximilian. “You are thinking about it, because it frightens you. More than anything else, it frightens you.”

Maria Mink protested. “I want to talk about my aches!”

Maximilian nodded, closing his eyes but keeping his hand on the mink's head. Maria babbled on about rheumatism a while, and when she lost the thread, Maximilian asked again, “What do you remember about love?”

She shook her head.

Maria's confusion intensified, and I smiled to myself. This drama was always equally fascinating to see. Soon she would tell him what he wanted to hear; she had sought his help, and he intended to give it to her.

T
he Ministry of Culture's extravagant headquarters of glass, bamboo, and granite had been erected during the next to the last of the boom periods at the end of the previous century. The building was situated at Schwartauer Allee in east Lanceheim, four blocks north of Eastern Avenue. It was a modern temple, overwhelming in its ambition to impress. On the doors in the lobby was a picture of the medieval war when King Carl united the four parts of the city and created modern-day Mollisan Town. The animals of the ministry left it up to the visitors to interpret the symbolism.

The Ministry of Culture was closer to the Garbage Dump than to the Star, Vincent Tortoise had joked when, as a young clerk, he had taken a position at the agency.

No one had laughed. Then as now an atmosphere of seriousness prevailed at the Ministry of Culture. It was the same at the Ministry of Finance and the Environmental Ministry. It was as if these workplaces demanded affirmation by an excess of seriousness. Unending care was devoted to things that were demonstrably unimportant, or at least decidedly less important. Nothing was allowed to stand
out as more or less significant at the ministry. This was a principle of solidarity: here everyone and everything were equally important.

Was this simply stupidity? Over the years Vincent Tortoise had asked himself that question many times. Was it all the same? All the resources and energy that were applied to cultural manifestations, to the media, to education, was it unnecessary? Would those animals who were inclined toward the humanities—the seekers and thinkers—produce the same things for the most part even without the solicitude of the ministry? And the others, the uneducable and the uninterested: Could they be disregarded?

Vincent Tortoise was doubtful. Doubt he had never been able to get rid of. He counted this doubt as his greatest asset.

 

The morning that I
have chosen to introduce my careful reader to Vincent Tortoise, the newly appointed head of the ministry parked his car in the garage without granting the injustices within the agency a thought. The tortoise drove a mint green Volga Mini. Each promotion had slowly but surely brought him closer to the most desirable parking place in the garage, the one right next to the elevators. As democratic as the agency wanted to appear aboveground, the structure was mercilessly hierarchical under the surface.

He was brooding, and encountered his mirror image in the elevator on the way up without recognizing it. In recent years he had aged more rapidly than could be attributed to time alone. On the surface he looked as he had when he was delivered from the factory, a green and wrinkled tortoise with a small, grudging nose and a velvet shell that was as soft as whipped cream. But in his eyes was a fatigue that was not there before, and any day now it would overpower him.

Outside the elevators on the fifth floor in the ministry building was a reception counter, and alongside it a narrow
couch where visitors could sit and wait. There were not many, however, who came to visit the fifth floor; it was mainly employees at the ministry who moved about up there.

This morning Armand Owl was sitting on the couch, waiting for Tortoise. Vincent nodded as he went past, but continued without stopping. He assumed that Owl would follow.

Tortoise had been assigned a cubicle, which, in the spirit of democracy, was just the same size and equipped in the same way as those for all the other official animals at the ministry, but he was seldom there. Instead he had more or less annexed the adjacent conference room. There was a door between the rooms, and it was always open. Eighteen stuffed animals could sit at the conference table, and to start with it had felt a trifle large to use as a desk.

In time, however, Tortoise got used to it.

Constance worked in the cubicle next to his own. She was not his secretary; she was his assistant.

“Good morning,” she said when Vincent tried to sneak past. “You already have a visitor.”

Tortoise stopped unwillingly. With a glance over his shell, he verified that Armand Owl really had followed him.

“I assume that it is too late to ask him to wait in the reception area?”

“I think so,” Constance confirmed with a smile. “Good morning, Armand.”

“Constance.” Armand Owl nodded.

She thought the owl was stylish. Always dressed in well-tailored clothes of the latest cut, he accentuated his beautiful figure and his white-flecked head, from which a sharp little black plastic beak looked out. There was something gruff about him, but at the same time exciting. Constance lowered her gaze to her desk.

Vincent felt irritated. His mood this morning was miser
able, because he had trouble with the garbage pickup, and on top of it all he would now be forced to put up with Armand Owl. They passed the tortoise's cramped office, hung their coats up on the hangers in the conference room, and sat in leather-clad rocking chairs at the beautiful conference table.

“There's something special, I presume?” said Tortoise.

“Yes, the hell if I'd have my morning java with you voluntarily,” replied Owl.

Vincent sighed audibly. The hard-boiled jargon that Owl used agreed neither with his appearance nor his background. One time long ago Vincent Tortoise had hired Armand Owl, who until then was the best researcher Vincent had come upon. After a few years in the archives, Armand showed an interest in work in the field, and Vincent accommodated him. A few weeks on the streets was enough, and then he took on the role of the experienced, superior agent. But he played it in an inferior manner, Vincent felt.

The head of the ministry stole a glance at his in-box and the piles of paper that waited, and nodded.

“Let's hear it,” he said.

“I think we have a problem,” said Armand. “I don't know for sure, but I think that we may have a hell of a problem. Not now, but in a couple of years. But that's just what I believe.”

“In a couple of years?” repeated Tortoise.

“If we don't do anything about it,” Armand confirmed.

“You come here unannounced before breakfast because we may have a problem in a couple of years?” Tortoise asked. “But how would it be if we took care of the problem when it arose, in a couple of years?”

“Did I mention that imaginary animal in east Lanceheim?” Armand replied, without taking notice of Tortoise's sarcasm. “I think that it could potentially be a hell of a problem. There is something about that…I heard talk about it
even a few months ago. They say that he is a demon, that he has been sent by the lord of the underworld, Malitte, that he is gathering souls, that he takes them in payment for healing the sick and deformed.”

“Souls?”

“That's what they say. The stuffed animals in east Lanceheim are superstitious fools. But last Monday they were arrested by the police—Maximilian and his companion, a wolf. I got hold of the record of the hearing. It made me uneasy.”

Armand took a plastic folder out of his briefcase and gave it to Tortoise. While the head of the ministry read, Armand offered his own analysis.

“You see what the problem is?” asked the owl, and continued as Tortoise read on. “He's not a swindler. He is possibly crazy; in principle I don't get a bit of what he says, those ridiculous parables about rocking horses are damned pathetic. But that's not the point. The point is that if he were a cheat, he would have made himself comprehensible. He would have answers to the questions. Now he appears…as if he is actually not guilty.”

“Hmm,” said Vincent Tortoise, setting aside the police protocol.

 

Excuse me if I
interject a brief reflection that I nonetheless consider to be in its place right here and now. I have been on this subject previously, and take the opportunity to remind the interested reader that I am simply a dutiful clerk.

Did Armand Owl already understand at this meeting what this was about? The question is open, and—I believe—relevant.

What Maximilian was occupied with, was to reveal the fears of stuffed animals and thereby free them from the clutches of terror. This was of course not all that he was
doing—there were dimensions of his healing that I will never understand—but expelling terror was one of the main issues. He himself revealed this to me. And if you were to compare Maximilian's faith with the church's, and his undertakings with the gospel of the Proclamations, it was the same way. What Maximilian offered us stuffed animals was a faith without fears. I may happily expand on this point later on in the text, but to get right to the point: From the perspective of the government, this was extremely dangerous.

Did Armand Owl understand this even then?

Did Vincent Tortoise understand it?

“Are they operating in the church? During the sabbath?” asked Tortoise that morning, as Armand Owl continued to tell what Maximilian and I were up to.

“But, what the hell, aren't you listening to what I'm saying?” said Armand.

“Sure, sure…,” Tortoise replied absentmindedly. “I wonder if I shouldn't make a call to Eagle Rothman anyway….”

 

Do you, dear reader,
recall where we were? Maximilian was standing up at the altar, and on her knees before him was Maria Mink. His hand was still on her head, and they had just stopped talking. Maria took a deep breath. The air in the church was still. The subsiding Afternoon Rain fell against the roof and was heard as a distant murmur. I experienced a light dizziness, as I sometimes do when I haven't had enough to eat for lunch. Once again Maximilian had coaxed the truth out of a stuffed animal, once again he had—by understanding and expelling her innermost terror—transformed pain into a memory. I was the only living being who had seen it happen, and at the same time I had company. Mute, the angels on the ceiling witnessed what was going on. Farmers, fishermen, and city
dwellers who appeared out of the glass mosaic in the high church windows behind Maximilian's back had been there the whole time.

“Maria Mink,” said Maximilian in his gentle voice, “you have—”

Then it happened.

The doors of the church were opened.

A bang was heard, and I winced, turned around, and felt my heart stop and my pulse rush at one and the same time. Up at the altar Maria Mink reacted the same way. She had been sitting on her haunches, but the surprise caused her to wobble and fall sideways.

Maximilian on the other hand turned calmly toward the gray daylight that suddenly ran along the middle aisle like an uninvited guest. The odor of rain and dampness filled the building. The noise from the stuffed animals that suddenly made their entry was earsplitting in contrast to the dense silence that the church had contained seconds before.

First came Eagle Rothman, the prodeacon in Lanceheim. I had never seen him before and therefore did not recognize him. His high-handed posture and the rapid, long steps he took up to the altar demanded respect. There was no doubt of the fact that this was power approaching on foot.

After Rothman, a small flock of stuffed animals came running. I recognized several of the all-deacons in Kerkeling, and there of course was Adam Chaffinch too. Following after them were mammals that I had never seen before, dressed in more official-looking clothing. All of them tried to keep pace with the prodeacon, which meant that a few were forced to jog. Adam kept to the side of the lot, but like all the others he was staring intently up toward Maximilian. There was no surprise in the deacon's gaze, but there was deep disappointment.

Shame besieged my heart and overpowered the terror. I still didn't have a close relationship with Adam Chaffinch,
but Maximilian and Adam met regularly, and it was thanks to Chaffinch that all of this had been possible. He was without a doubt Maximilian's patron.

“So it's true!” shouted Eagle Rothman.

He raised his massive wing dramatically and pointed with the tip toward Maximilian up at the altar.

“Heretic!” Prodeacon Rothman spit out; the word was tensed like a bow in the eagle's throat and shot away like an arrow.

No one paid any attention to me, despite the fact that they all saw me. Maximilian was their prey; he was the one who was the danger. The procession stopped a few meters in front of the foremost row of pews, on the threshold to the podium where the altar stood.

“What was it I said?” asked Rothman triumphantly.

The words were aimed at Adam Chaffinch. It was Chaffinch who would bear the responsibility for this: It was in his parish, in his church, that witches' arts were being carried out during the sabbath. The all-deacons and animal officials lined up at the prodeacon's side and formed a kind of semicircle, a wall through which Maximilian would not be able to flee. Adam Chaffinch stepped up on the podium a few meters from Maximilian.

Poor Maria Mink did not know where she should go. She stood on all fours, staring terror-stricken at the stuffed animals, all of whom looked past her. Carefully, she began to creep across the podium, and when she realized that no one was paying any attention to her, she increased her pace. She disappeared out of sight, and it would be many years before I saw her again.

“We know what's going on,” Rothman cried out in his powerful preaching voice. “You play the part of a healer, but you are a charlatan! Do you dare deny it?”

The whole time he had the tip of his wing aimed at Maximilian's chest.

“Animals are in pain,” Maximilian replied simply. “I help them.”

I observed Adam Chaffinch, and his facial expression caused the hair on my neck to rise. Chaffinch was a strong, unyielding leader, uninfluenced by his surroundings, it seemed to me. But all of his being signaled danger when Rothman was speaking, and it would take a lot to make Chaffinch nervous.

“You don't deny it?” Rothman asked again.

Maximilian did not reply, but his gaze was steady.

“You confess?” said Rothman.

I saw how Adam Chaffinch indicated a negative twisting of his neck; it was probably unconscious, but it was a signal that Maximilian should have paid attention to. He did not. He met the eagle's gaze, unafraid, perhaps even surprised.