Lanceheim (3 page)

 

Many years later I
can imagine that my first, earthshaking passion must have taken nourishment from the mysterious shimmer that surrounded Eva Whippoorwill at that time. She was different from the other females in Das Vorschutz, and there were several reasons. She had a dialect that placed her in Mollisan Town's southwest sections, somewhere in south Amberville, and the manner in which she pronounced the soft vowels had always fascinated me. She dressed in a more modern—and youthful—style than anyone else, and it even happened that she wore lipstick. But above all, in contrast to Buzzard's, Weasel's, and my own mother, Eva Whippoorwill was not anyone's mom.

The maturity and knowledge that experience grants to us stuffed animals with the years unfortunately replaces the razor-sharp intuition with which we are equipped when little. Without really understanding how or why, I had—despite my mere ten years—noticed the tragic aura that surrounded Eva
Whippoorwill. I perceived the melancholy that was concealed in the corners of her eyes and heard the echoing desolation of her words, so unlike my own mother's satisfied voice.

Just as clear but unexpressed was how differently Eva Whippoorwill and her husband, Sven Beaver, lived compared to the other couples in Das Vorschutz. This had to do with the way in which they communicated, low and intensively, as if they held each other's secrets close by and protected them. Jealousy burned in my chest. The other grown-ups in the forest always spoke about Eva and Sven in a special tone of voice. There was no envy, but perhaps a kind of reserved consideration that I could not properly interpret, despite the fact that I heard it.

 

I was too little
to understand that all this had to do with Eva Whippoorwill and Sven Beaver's cublessness. In solidarity, the other forest guard families had supported Eva and Sven's more and more resigned struggle against the authorities. Testimonials had been sent and references given, meetings had been arranged and Jonas Beaver had even been up at the Environmental Ministry—the authority that was responsible for the Cub List—to discuss the matter with the official in charge. But nothing sufficed.

In time the rumors were born. That the ministry denied Eva Whippoorwill a cub, certain parties in the forest glade reasoned, must be due to something. What did we really know about Eva? Spiteful slander, of course, but I could even hear my own mother hint at how dark secrets from the female neighbor's past had something to do with the matter.

For a young, newly in love whippersnapper the thought of Eva Whippoorwill's doubtful past was naturally a kind of icing on the cake. These fantasies occupied me while I waited for hours to catch a glimpse of her through the windows opposite. During the weeks that followed, I learned
things about myself that would prove to be just as true twenty, thirty, and forty years later. I understand that the reader who is inclined in a more rational direction may think this confession a bit woeful. I am just as certain that the individual romantics who read me are nodding in concurrence. Besides, if I was not so fixated on Eva Whippoorwill, if I had not sought every occasion to see her and talk with her, I would never have stumbled across the preludes to the event that would come to change my life forever.

 

Heimat, the large lake
in Das Vorschutz, was ten minutes northeast of the forest glade where we lived. Every morning my Eva Whippoorwill made her way there.

Eva was an animal of habit; after a few weeks of reconnaissance I could affirm that she had constructed an entire life of routines. This suited me fine. I learned when I should slip up to Mother and Father's bedroom to be able to see Eva sit down with a cup of tea and a book in her living room in the house opposite. I knew when she jogged in the evenings, and what route she took. And if I climbed up in one of the aspens behind the house where Buzzard Jones lived, I could see her fixing dinner in the kitchen.

In the mornings I got up earlier than I ever had, dressed quickly, and, by the time it was getting cloudy, sneaked down the stairs and ran the whole way to Heimat. I made myself comfortable behind a large stone and awaited my beloved. Alongside the stone was an overturned majestic tree; judging by the moss, it must have fallen many years ago. The roots of the tree were perfect for spying through without being seen. I was ten years old, and neither understood nor cared about what drove me to this.

Eva came walking on one of the larger paths. She walked almost the entire way up to the lake, but turned off right before the shoreline. For a few moments she disappeared out
of my sight, then I saw how she was climbing up into the old willow tree. The branches extended longingly out over the glassy water of the lake, and when Eva had reached the forked branch where she would sit, she started to sing. Every morning for twenty-three days she followed the same routine, and at a distance of about fifty meters I lay listening to her. I could not hear what she sang, but it was the same song every morning. I have never in my adult life heard it again.

With a cub's intuition I realized, as I lay quivering with excitement and nervousness behind my root, that Eva's song had a religious significance. The falling tones sounded like a kind of lamentation. It was so beautiful, and at the same time infinitely mournful. She sat quite still and executed precise movements in fast-forward with her wings. The first time I thought she was in a trance, that the movements were unconscious, but soon I discovered that she was following a well-rehearsed pattern. It was a matter of turning her wings at angles against one another and against her body in a long series of positions that probably had significance beyond my comprehension. I have not seen these types of movements since either, although my life by now has been both long and eventful.

If I had already been enchanted by Eva Whippoorwill before, these mornings deepened my feelings, and they were etched in my memory for all time—the forest that stood densely around the bottomless lake, the dew that still lingered in the spiderwebs that had been spun over the tree roots during the night, and the whispering reeds only a few meters from my hiding place. And on the branch of the willow tree, this apparition, my love, who executed her mysterious and complicated ritual.

 

The twenty-fourth day was
different.

I lay as usual peering between the roots. High above us the dark clouds were forming in the sky, but there was still
more than half an hour remaining until the rain. About halfway through the song Eva Whippoorwill fell silent. It happened suddenly, without warning.

I realized immediately that something was wrong. She sat completely still on the branch, and I feared for a few seconds that she had discovered me. She turned her beak up in the air, drew her wings next to her body. It was as if she was holding her breath, or else it was just me who was doing so.

Then everything happened very quickly. Without my even seeing how it happened, she was out of the tree and down on the ground in seconds, and had started running up toward the forest glade.

Confused, I remained in my hiding place for a few short moments, but then curiosity got the upper hand. As fast as I could, I followed Eva Whippoorwill back up toward the forest glade.

I heard the commotion at a distance. The forest guards were usually soft-spoken; they were a taciturn breed. Now their voices were heard through the forest at a great distance.

When I came up, I saw all of our small population gathered on the circular lawn between the five houses of the forest guards. Mother discovered me as soon as I came out of the edge of the forest, and she ran up and took hold of me.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

But she did not wait for a reply; she was not interested. Instead she dragged me with her into a circle of stuffed animals on the lawn. I immediately joined up with Weasel and Buzzard, who stood next to their older siblings a little apart from the others.

“What's happening?” I asked.

“It's Sven,” Buzzard began. “He—”

“He found something in the forest,” Weasel filled in.

“Rolled up in a sheet. It was in a magpie's nest that had fallen down out of a tree.”

“It was pure luck.”

“It's something that's alive,” said Buzzard.

Round about us I heard the grown-ups talk about Sven Beaver and what he had found, but here and there I perceived an agitated tone of voice, even an individual angry word; there seemed to be differences of opinion on the lawn.

“Something that's alive?” I asked Buzzard.

“They don't know what it is,” said Weasel.

“Not a stuffed animal,” said Buzzard.

“But not a forest animal either,” said Weasel.

“Shut up now!” Buzzard's big brother roared at us, and we fell silent.

But not only us. The silence settled in a dignified manner over everyone on the lawn, just as darkness settles over the treetops in the evening, and our glances were turned toward Sven and Eva's house.

I too turned around, and saw Eva Whippoorwill come out on the stoop. She was carrying a peculiar bundle in her wings. I understood immediately that this was what everyone was talking about, what Sven Beaver had found in the forest. Eva looked down at the bundle in her arms, and then turned toward us.

“His name is Maximilian,” she said loudly. “And he is Sven's and my cub. Be happy for us.”

Her voice was tense, hollow, and the words were astounding. I think we all perceived her as stark raving mad at that moment. But at the same time she made us all embarrassed; her pride was unshakable, and her will so powerful that no one dared utter a word. We were staring at her. She stared back at us from up on the porch. Sven Beaver was not to be seen. When the silence had just about become unbearable, she turned around and went back into the house with the bundle in her arms.

Immediately the whispering started again.

“But what kind of thing is it?” Buzzard wondered in a low voice.

It was the question we were all asking ourselves, but no one could answer. When the first raindrops fell, everyone disappeared into their houses. Mother again took hold of my arm and pulled me away, but I heard Hans Beaver whisper to the forest guards to meet him for a deliberation as soon as the rain dispersed.

 

The forest guards' deliberation
was held at the home of Jonas Beaver. A few years earlier, Buzzard and Weasel and I had discovered that in the closet in the guestroom on the upper floor at Jonas and Magpie Tagashawa's, one of the floor planks could be loosened. The closet was situated above the room where the deliberation was held, and without the floor plank it was almost like sitting at the table. It was always exciting to eavesdrop on the grown-ups, even if it was seldom that anything secret was said.

Raccoon Olsen—Jonas and Magpie's oldest son—had been our partner in crime from the start, but then grew away from us. He was a well-behaved sort who had begun his studies in economics in the city and would soon move from Das Vorschutz. The morning when the deliberation about Maximilian was held, however, Raccoon Olsen was standing with us inside the darkness of the closet, smelling the odor of mothballs and laundry soap and listening to the forest guards' harsh voices one floor below.

The prelude was cautious.

The beavers talked about the day ahead, about the week that had passed, about a spring they had discovered a few months earlier that could still not be traced to the Dondau, the river that ran inside the mountains and was only visible for a few kilometers inside Lanceheim.

Up in the closet we were getting impatient, and Weasel Tukovsky—who always had a hard time standing still—began drumming nervously against the floor with his paw. I silenced him with a sharp glance, and then we finally heard Jonas Beaver clear his throat down at the table and address the question of the day.

“Well, then,” he said, “we all realize what this is really about, don't we?”

“She can't keep it,” I heard my own father declare in his gruff way.

His voice always had a different ring when he was talking with his colleagues, at the same time gentler and more definite.

“Of course not,” Anders, Weasel's dad, concurred. “On that point the regulations are crystal clear. Things that are found in the forest, which can be assumed to possess a certain value, must be turned in to the ministry, without exception.”

“I'm sorry, Sven,” said Jonas.

It became silent, and the silence went on for a time. As if to soften the significance of his regret, Jonas said at last, “But tell us, where did you find…Maximilian?”

Sven Beaver had been sitting silently until then, but now he began to speak.

“I was on my way home,” he said.

His voice was flat. It was as though he was exerting himself not to betray any feelings.

“I'd been out since the day before yesterday. To the north. I'd been told that there was a fox, a forest animal, with an injured paw. I found the tracks, but never found the animal, and finally I was forced to give up. Yesterday evening, after the storm, I was on my way toward a Sleeping Place. I think it was you, Anders, who showed it to me. That was a long time ago. Where the mountain slopes in toward the bog, west of the spruce forest?”

“I know which one you mean,” said Anders.

Several concurring hums were heard.

“Right before I got there, I heard the scream,” Sven continued. “It was a call that I had never heard before, and I readily admit that it…made me worried. I can't say that I was scared, the call was…too little…for you to get scared. But I seldom hear a sound in the forest that I don't recognize. I waited awhile, and then I heard it again. This time more like a wailing. It was coming only a few meters from where I stood, and he wasn't hard to find. He was wrapped up in a blanket, which in turn was carefully placed on top of the ferns. When I picked him up…I knew that he was the one we had waited for. The one Eva and I had waited for.”