Lanceheim (20 page)

It was nothing more than that. No other discussions, no room for consideration or objections. I would be lying if I maintained that Adam's order made me happy. I returned home to Missy Starling that evening, and instead of allowing myself to be drawn into her ongoing drama as usual, a performance without spectators that always ended in effusively heated emotions in some direction, I locked myself in the bathroom and sulked the whole night. I was not so naive that I didn't understand that I felt rejected and abandoned by Chaffinch, and that it was jealousy I felt toward Mink. It would take almost a month before I had an opportunity to have a talk with Maria, and see for myself what Chaffinch had understood immediately.

Her story was of course strange. When she had been standing there in the pouring rain outside the church in Kerkeling being harassed by the ox, she only had a few months left in her studies at the business college in Tourquai. Her grades were the most outstanding in her class; she was studying in parallel at the philosophy department at the University of Amberville, and there too she dumbfounded the professors with her ability to understand and draw conclusions. Her entire life, however, Maria had been plagued by a shyness that severely impeded her, and despite the fact that she was clearly a unique talent, hardly anyone knew the name of the mink who got everything correct on all the tests.

“No one saw me,” Maria related, “because I didn't dare see anyone.”

Like the other stuffed animals that Maximilian healed
during our sessions, Maria could describe little of what had happened up there at the altar in Kerkeling's church. But when she finally ran away from there, it was “as if a roof had been pushed aside.” That was how she described it. As if her feelings had been encapsulated in a narrow hovel, and Maximilian had pushed aside the roof and freed them.

“It was love that frightened me,” she said as the tears again ran from her eyes. “It was its strength, and at the same time the lack of it, which I suddenly saw everywhere, and that since then I am never going to be able to close my eyes to. That was what Maximilian showed me, what was already inside me, love was what frightened me.”

I did not really understand what she meant, but I preferred not to ask. I pointed to the tears that were falling.

“But you're crying?” I said.

“I happened to think about an ermine that was working the cash register at Monomart yesterday,” she replied. “I happened to think about her claws, the most well-manicured claws I had ever seen, red as blood. And it hurts me when I think about why her claws are so perfect, and then I cry. Forget about it, Diaz. I can't close off. It will soon pass. Before I happen to think about something else.”

“But…,” I said, “if this is what Maximilian did to you…?”

“He showed me love,” she answered.

“But love is happy,” I said, speaking from my own experience. “Love is happiness and strength, love is—”

“Happiness is wonderful.” She smiled. “Love is greater than that.”

 

None of us believed
that things would move as quickly as they did, or be so simple. Adam and Maria had originally proposed that we should have meetings with their Retinues
in the large kitchen on rue d'Oran, but this was a modesty that quickly proved futile. The rumor about Maximilian had had ten years in which to take root and grow, counting from the day when Maximilian and I started our work of healing the mortally ill and deformed stuffed animals in Lanceheim. And no marketing campaign in the world is more effective than word of mouth. When the searching souls in Mollisan Town now realized that Adam Chaffinch offered an outlet for their curiosity about Maximilian and their longing for a message of love and a gentle religion of forgiveness, they streamed in from near and far.

Everywhere the spaces were filled, in halls for a hundred or for five hundred visitors. I still cannot understand how the animals showed up, especially because we kept the place and time secret as long as we could.

Adam and I worked exclusively with the Retinues, while Maria Mink continued her civilian career in parallel. Her almost unbelievable capacity for empathy made her enormously successful in the business world, and she went from success to success, even though I realize that my limited knowledge of her world makes it difficult for me to really assess her efforts. She earned ever so much money, money she gave us and which we needed. Adam and I were living on gifts and contributions, and Maria was and remained the single greatest contributor.

 

Our common work had
been going on a few years and had almost begun to be routine the day the police came.

By then we had been housed for about a month at the Astor cinema on red-and-white-striped Bahnhofplatz. The auditorium held six hundred animals, and as long as we made sure to be ready before the Afternoon Rain, we could pay the rent with the modest collection we took in. The
demand, in combination with Adam's and Maria's high level of ambition, meant that we held lectures on four of the seven days of the week.

The police came one Thursday, during one of Adam's lectures.

Adam usually divided his lectures into three parts. First he spoke about one of the similes in the Book of Similes, then he led his Retinue in a kind of strange song, and finally he invited the animals up to the stage to “testify.” This might be about anything whatsoever: The purpose was not to reach any insights but rather simply to create intimacy and closeness between stage and Retinue. It was during this part of the sermon that the police stormed the cinema.

They came from all directions. Ten or so animals from the response force ran to either side of the auditorium up against the stage, and just as many rushed up to the sides of the screen. We had been completely unprepared. Adam's Retinue saw how Adam himself was brusquely taken into custody and led away, while one of the policemen shouted at us to “disperse.” The whole thing was over in only a few seconds.

Adam returned home the same evening.

He had not received any explanation. On the contrary we realized, when during the following days we could think through and analyze what had actually happened, that the scare tactics were in the incomprehensibility itself. No explanations, no accusations, only proof of who had the power, and how it could be used.

After this, Adam and Maria started holding their meetings at night and in places that we tried to keep considerably more secret than a cinema in the middle of the city.

T
he moon was whole. The breeze was blowing the chill of the night through his ample mustache. Reuben Walrus did not know where he was. Philip Mouse was standing a few steps in front of him; the mouse's silhouette was black and threatening.

“Stay completely still,” Mouse hissed.

“What'd you say?”

Mouse turned around. “Completely still,” he whispered.

Reuben stood as quietly as he could.

For a long time he thought he knew roughly where they were in Yok's labyrinthine alleys, but after twenty minutes of wandering, he had lost his orientation. They could be anywhere within a radius of a few kilometers. When at last they stopped, they were in front of an area, large as a cricket field, of half-demolished apartment buildings. Crushed facades, fallen-in ceilings, broken windows, and walls of once tolerable apartments stood like sculptures before piles of stone and debris. A landscape of decay and oblivion. Here and there in the ruins, small fires were burning, and Reuben could smell cigarette smoke. Perhaps it was from Mouse's
trench coat? Or were there stuffed animals there in the darkness, sitting around the sporadic fires?

“A little ways more,” hissed Mouse as he started to move.

Reuben followed without hearing what Mouse had said. They walked slowly down toward the landscape of ruins, moving carefully. After ten meters or so the private detective stopped abruptly and pulled Reuben roughly into a dark entryway. He nodded out toward the night, and Reuben turned around to discover what Mouse had already seen.

There was only one way through this area. It ran fifty-some meters from Reuben and Mouse's entryway, and was edged by debris and desolate buildings. There were still scattered streetlights here and there casting a dull glow over the asphalt. Along the way three figures came walking. Because the sidewalks were full of broken glass, waste, and large, foul-smelling pools of water, the three night wanderers were walking in the middle of the street. Seeing living stuffed animals moving through this dead landscape was fascinating. The three turned off the street after a while and followed a smaller asphalt path over toward a flat, massive building, in whose shadow they disappeared.

Reuben turned toward Mouse.

“That's where we're going,” Mouse confirmed with a nod. “And it's best if we hurry.”

He took a step out of the entryway, and Reuben followed. He did not know where they were going. When the telephone rang a few hours before, he had been sitting at home on Knobeldorfstrasse, hammering at the grand piano in pursuit of a harmony, or a discord, that might create additional tension in the third movement. Half panic-stricken by the fact that he was not getting anywhere and just as dejected by the fact that he was hearing so poorly, he picked up the receiver.

It had been Mouse.

“Your miracle animal is still out of reach,” said Mouse. “But I think I've got hold of someone who is almost
as valuable. I can pick you up. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.”

The private detective did not say more than that, and he came by in his old Volga half an hour later. In silence they drove down to Yok.

“Where are we going?” asked Walrus.

“If I tell you, it won't be a surprise,” said Mouse.

After the meeting with Giraffe, Mouse and Walrus had agreed on payment for an additional week. A lower cost per day, with a larger finder's fee when—or if—Maximilian could be located. Reuben's expectations were low. Mouse behaved strangely, as if he were playing the part of a private detective rather than being one.

When Mouse stopped a second time and pulled Reuben with him into the shadows, Reuben's pulse began to beat faster.

Yet another pair of creatures came walking along the road. Like the earlier group, they turned off onto the smaller path and went straight toward the large, flat building that was in darkness.

“What kind of place is it?” asked Reuben with a nod toward the building into which they all appeared to be going.

“It was once a bathhouse,” Mouse whispered back. “Not anymore.”

For the moment the street was empty, and Mouse and Walrus advanced quickly. When only a few meters remained, Mouse sneaked in behind an arch that appeared to be the remnant of a stairwell. The private detective was as usual wearing his long trench coat and a dark hat pulled down onto his forehead. Reuben shook his head. The clothes were hardly suitable for the occasion.

Away from civilization new stuffed animals came walking in the night, and the composer and his hired help waited while one group after another passed by.

When the interval between groups became shorter, Mouse finally emerged from the hiding place with Walrus close behind him. They fell into what more and more resembled a procession and ended up behind a pair of bears and a few steps ahead of some sort of bird and his wife. They were all en route to the abandoned bathhouse.

 

The first thing that
struck Reuben was the massive proportions.

The bathhouse was high enough for the large diving tower and wide enough for a swimming pool where the city championships had once taken place. Through a series of inexplicable holes in the facade high up in the far wall, the moonlight made its way in. The building was in miserable condition; insulation was hanging down from the inside ceiling, and there were treacherous holes in the floor.

Then there were all the wax candles. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Small yellow flames burned steadily from every corner and cranny. They were sitting right on the floor, they were sitting on tables and chairs. The chandeliers that hung from the ceiling were so discreet that the light seemed to hover freely in the air. They spread their warmth, and the night chill outside was suddenly distant. Mouse had taken off his hat.

Then Reuben realized that the bathhouse was empty. Not a glimpse could be seen of any of the stuffed animals he had watched go in. He walked beside Philip Mouse, after the bears, and looked discreetly around. But there was only one massive room without doors.

 

First it was heard
at a distance, and Reuben assumed that it was the customary buzz in his ears. But the sound became more and more evident. There was a roar in the room, the toneless murmur that arose when hundreds of stuffed ani
mals whispered to one another. In the next moment Reuben came far enough up to the empty swimming pool that he could see over the edge.

There they were. In the glow of the candlelight he saw how the stuffed animals who had gone into the bathhouse now filled the bottom of the drained pool. It was already crowded. The bears ahead of Walrus and Mouse went down the steps, and the uninvited guests followed. In the shallow end of the pool there was room, but Mouse cleared a way down the slope to the deeper end. Involuntarily Reuben directed his gaze down to the bottom of the pool. Fellowship lay like a thick fog over the assembled animals. Reuben was ashamed, without really understanding why.

“We'll stand here,” said Mouse.

They were somewhere in the middle of the deepest part. The murmur rolled along the smooth walls of the pool, drowning any conversations that were going on.

“What happens now?” whispered Walrus.

“No idea,” answered Mouse. “This is the first time for me too.”

The murmur changed character. It must have happened at some signal that Reuben and Philip had missed. The hundreds of stuffed animals in the pool were suddenly united in one key, and the chattering Retinue was transformed into a two-voiced chorus. The moment itself, from chaos to discipline, made a deep impression on Reuben. Multiplicity was transformed to accord.

The stuffed animals sang a simple melody. It was created by the two original voices executing a kind of braid pattern, changing between high and low in a way that was simultaneously ancient and ultramodern, a counterpoint disguised as a beat. Just when Reuben began to understand the structure of the piece, the choir transitioned to the conclusion through a short andante followed by a drawn-out fortissimo.

Then it was silent.

Dead silent.

And the silence dragged out in time.

When the voice from above resounded with its powerful pathos, Reuben gave a start. He had been unprepared, and he looked around in confusion. All gazes were aimed in one direction, and he twisted his neck. It was the first time he had noticed the diving tower. Highest up on the three-meter board stood a chaffinch in the beam of a white spotlight. The chaffinch had on a dark, ankle-length mantle. No microphone was visible, but the chaffinch's voice sounded strong and clear throughout the massive space.

“Tonight,” he said with a sound that connected to the key of the Retinue, “I will tell the story of Igor Salmon. I will tell about an animal who did what he thought was right, without thinking about himself a single time. An animal whose faith was stronger than his will to please, stronger than his need to live comfortably, a faith stronger than life itself.”

The chaffinch fell silent, and then asked humbly, “Do you want to hear this story?”

The Retinue replied in two voices.

 

Philip Mouse was fascinated.
The private detective was not a religious animal. He had not been in church since he was a cub, and his fear of death was of the panic-stricken variety. He did not want to think about what would happen after the Chauffeurs had picked him up, neither on Sundays nor otherwise. But it was an essentially overwhelming experience to stand in an empty swimming pool in a massive bathhouse lit by wax candles in the middle of the night, and listen to the more and more frenetic Retinue's sung responses to the chaffinch's rhetorical questions.

Seeing the hope that was awakened and shone stronger
and stronger in Reuben Walrus's eyes was, thought Philip Mouse, tragic and beautiful at the same time.

It had proved to be simpler than he had thought to find the chaffinch. Everything around Maximilian was guarded and concealed, but as far as Adam Chaffinch was concerned, the situation was different. According to the phone book, Adam Chaffinch lived on orange yellow rue d'Oran in Tourquai, where Mouse did not need to wait more than an hour or two outside the entryway before the chaffinch himself came out—it was right after lunch—and let himself be followed. Mouse trailed him the following day as well.

The hope was that Chaffinch would lead him to Maximilian. Giraffe had seen the two together, and besides, Mouse had no other ideas. The results were, however, gloomy.

Chaffinch seemed to live a quiet life. From what Mouse understood when he asked around, Adam Chaffinch was an animal of habit who performed voluntary aid work at both the general library in Yok and the Lucretzia hospital. The chaffinch was taciturn and friendly, but there was not much more to say.

If Daisy had not made Philip aware that the chaffinch seemed to start up his imposing work only toward lunchtime, the idea probably never would have struck him. Such a righteous animal, with such late-morning habits? It was not in the daytime that Mouse should keep an eye on him, but at night.

Yesterday at midnight Mouse had been standing outside the bathhouse, peeking in through one of the holes in the far wall. Tonight he was standing in the middle of the empty swimming pool, letting himself be swallowed up by the atmosphere.

 

“The story of Igor
Salmon is a story about what faith can do,” said Adam Chaffinch in a reverent whisper.

The words of the chaffinch, every nuance and subtle
modulation, were heard just as clearly as if he had been right next to the walrus. Reuben was fascinated. He realized that it had to do with the sound system, but he had not heard anyone speak as clearly as this for several days. This was so fulfilling that he even forgot his otherwise skeptical attitude to preachers in general and this type of spectacle in particular. He listened devoutly.

“Igor Salmon was a wretch,” continued Adam Chaffinch in his forbidding voice. “But he was called many other things besides. It was said that he was the most easily fooled animal in the city. They laughed at him.

“He was born to a prosperous family. Their large mansion was in west Amberville; their beautiful orchard ended where the forest began. Igor's parents loved him. His childhood was not remarkable, his youth was like many others, so what actually happened with Igor Salmon?”

A two-voiced sigh of wonder passed through the Retinue.

“He was afflicted by his faith,” Chaffinch answered his own question. “Yes, I use the word ‘afflicted.' For that was what happened. Life was never the same again. Igor Salmon had a vision, an insight; he awoke one day and knew that the Savior would come.”

The two-voiced congregation let out a shout, a song, and Chaffinch waited until silence had again settled in the pool.

“Everything was different, although nothing had changed. In Igor Salmon's restless teenage breast faith had taken hold, and he understood that the grace he had been granted, the divine grace that faith entails, would not let him avoid trials. Igor's faith was such that it bordered on certainty that the Savior would come and that the Savior held his watchful hand over the city. This certainty gave him strength that not everyone possessed, and Igor realized that his duty was to use it well. The envy he encountered was unavoidable, the happiness he radiated aroused jealousy, sometimes anger, because what cannot be understood is frightening.
For Salmon himself jealousy was not possible, because he knew that all of us stood under the guardianship of the Savior and that He assigned us our roles. We must dare to believe that.

“Do you dare to believe?”

The Retinue obviously felt some uncertainty about what they were expected to answer. Adam Chaffinch continued inexorably.

“We are all doubters!” he cried out. “All of us, except Igor Salmon!

“One day one of Igor's neighbors knocked on his door. The neighbor maintained that Igor's dog had dug up his rhododendrons. The neighbor demanded compensation. It would cost at least a month's salary to plant new bushes. Igor let the neighbor wait at the door while he got his wallet and paid him the money. Without questioning the story. Without doubting his neighbor's goodwill.