Lanceheim (30 page)

They made room for him.

“My cubs,” said Maximilian as he stepped down onto the street and went right in among them, “my cubs, I love you all.”

It should have been impossible, but in some way they managed to create a path for him. They squeezed out along the edges, and they swallowed him up. Seconds later the shouts started up again.

The whole thing happened so quickly that it was barely comprehensible to me. The terror made me ice cold. I took a few rapid steps down the stairs.

“I love you all!” I heard Maximilian shout from inside the crowd of stuffed animals.

After that, only a breath later: “It is the Night of the Flood!”

A scream, a signal, and chaos broke out.

They stormed up toward us. I had been on my way down the stairs, and was forced to turn in midstep. There was no alternative. I hardly need to explain or prove my love for Maximilian, but with hundreds of stuffed animals who were more or less attacking, there was nothing else to do. I fled, I had no choice. I tried to see where the others were
going, but it was impossible to understand what was happening. There were stuffed animals everywhere, screaming and, in some way, exhilarated. The aggression that was let loose that night had long waited for release. It was disappointment over promises betrayed, unfulfilled careers, unrequited love, over the fact that the Chauffeurs carried off the near and dear and over life lies laid bare that could finally be screamed out of soul and heart.

I ran. Sometimes I thought I was running along with the animals of the mob; sometimes I knew that I was running ahead of them. I ran through Maria's House and straight toward the door at the back. I do not know for sure if anyone was pursuing me or if they mistook me for one of them. I did not care which. I ran until someone stopped me. But no one stopped me.

Out behind the building was a well-tended garden that I quickly passed. The next day, when we returned, our garden, like everything else, was completely massacred. There was a gate in the garden fence, and it was the first time I had used it when I threw it open and ran away from there. No one followed me, yet I continued to run for a good ten minutes. And it was only when my lungs hurt so badly that they almost burst that I sank down into a dark entryway and caught my breath. Then I realized that I had left Maximilian.

The silence was suddenly unbroken.

No one followed me, nothing was heard of the animals over on Damm Weg, and after a few minutes I was even uncertain whether what had happened had really happened. It had been so unreal and gone so quickly that now, afterward, it was like a dream. Yet I dared not return. As soon as I shut my eyes it all came back: the screams and the glowing eyes, the hatred, and the fear without end.

I knew that I ought to have made an attempt to return and search for Maximilian, but I also knew that it was
meaningless. My own terror slowly caught up with me. I could not go home; they knew where I lived. I could not go to Adam, Dennis, or Maria; I did not even know what had happened to them.

The only place I longed for, where security prevailed, was also where I imagined Maximilian would make his way, if he could.

I got up, and in the approaching hours of dawn began walking the long way home to Das Vorschutz.

 

I do not know
exactly how deep into the agitated mob of stuffed animals Maximilian managed to get before he realized what it was about. Perhaps—and on this point he himself is unclear—he knew exactly what it was about even from the start? He went at a brisk pace and doled out his blessings to right and left; he lightly touched the stuffed animals that he passed and explained that he loved them, that love was all. And the mass of stuffed animals closed around him where he had just proceeded.

Did they recognize him? Did they realize that this was the animal with the headcloth they had come to hate? But the way he behaved, they must have understood. They must have recognized him, they must have known that they were preparing a way for the one they hated and feared the most.

What caused them to draw aside and let him go ahead? This is one of those incomprehensible stuffed-animal phenomena that is difficult to explain. Perhaps it was just as much about Maximilian himself? I have mentioned the charisma that surrounded him many times, the integrity he possessed. Had this kept them at a distance?

Or else were his actions so surprising that they could not attack? He walked right in among his enemies to give them love.

When Maximilian had made it two or three cross streets
up along Damm Weg, the mood of the crowd of stuffed animals changed. Screams again began to ring out. But now they were screaming out their hatred right in Maximilian's face. And the louder they screamed, the braver they became.

He continued walking. He continued to touch them, to talk about love, but more and more often they pushed aside his contact. He looked into their terrified eyes, and he saw how they tried to make themselves blind to conceal who they were. They screamed that they hated him; he replied that he loved them.

The first blow meant nothing. It missed widely, it was no more than a caress across his shoulder. The second blow was decisive, because it was followed by a third and a fourth. Maximilian fell to the ground, and the crowd was over him in a few seconds. In the chaos that followed, other stuffed animals fell as well, and the kicks that were delivered struck Maximilian as well as the others on the ground.

It is impossible to clearly account for what happened next. Maximilian must have been scared and in great pain, even if he would never admit it. And if it was the kicks that moved him out toward the sidewalk after he found himself in the middle of the street, or if he himself had tried to make his way there by crawling, I do not know. But he maintains that he had gotten so far out toward the side that he saw the facade of one of the buildings when he took the last two kicks that made the world spin. A heavy boot struck, once across the mouth and once across the ear, and Maximilian collapsed on the asphalt.

Someone took hold of his arms. Although he was almost unconscious, he perceived how he was being dragged across the sidewalk. A mystical experience, because he did not understand how it was happening. The stuffed animals screamed, hit, and kicked, without him. A spark had been lit, and few cared any more about the fallen Messiah.

“Get up,” someone whispered in his ear.

An enormous exertion, and Maximilian managed to get up on one knee. The pain in his head, in his ribs, exploded like lightning behind his eyes, but still he managed to get up with the help of the animal that had dragged him out of the chaos.

“Here,” whispered the voice. “In here.”

And with one arm on his rescuer's neck, Maximilian let himself be dragged into an entryway. When the door closed and the silence and darkness suddenly encircled him, he began to weep.

“I have a car on the other side,” said the voice. “Can you drive?”

Maximilian nodded. He had never driven a car in his entire life, but still he nodded.

“Let's go there,” said the voice.

And by more or less carrying Maximilian through the dark entryway this still-unknown rescuer helped Maximilian escape the crowd of stuffed animals.

Only when they came out at the back of the building was Maximilian able to turn his gaze from the ground and see what his rescuer looked like.

“You?” was all he managed to say.

“Will you manage to drive yourself?”

“You have not done this in vain,” said Maximilian, nodding as if at the question.

“Nothing in my life is in vain,” answered Eagle Rothman.

Rothman dragged Maximilian in behind the steering wheel, started the car for him, and watched him drive away, slowly and bumpily.

 

It was after the
Night of the Flood that we realized that Mollisan Town was no place for Maximilian. Our mission was to spread his word, but also to protect his life. After the Night of the Flood we saw to it that no one who had not
first been approved either by Adam, Dennis, or Maria was allowed to meet Maximilian. The building on Damm Weg was closed up; Maria sold it later. That was almost twenty years ago now. The last I heard, the apartments were being turned into condominiums.

WOLF DIAZ

I
do not have a confessional nature, but this I confess to you, my reader: Without Maximilian, my own life would hardly have been worth anything. As his biographer, his permanent secretary and clerk, I have found meaning in an existence that otherwise would have remained a mystery to me. Therefore it is infinitely difficult to write these lines, presumably the last I am ever going to write.

As I cannot make what has happened comprehensible to myself, how am I going to make it comprehensible to my reader? No, I am going to betray you, because I have betrayed Maximilian. I know that when you—dare I call you my friend, my temporary companion?—have turned the final page in a little while and vacantly stare out into the emptiness that is sometimes called life, you are going to be both furious and frustrated. For this I beg your pardon. If life were as logical as a fairy tale, everything would be easier.

This is about expectations. We live in a reality where effects demand causes. You have followed my path through the years, I have recounted my actions, sometimes my feel
ings and thoughts, while I have told the story of Maximilian. This has led up to an image of who I am and how I act, an image that I have no doubt unintentionally idealized. No more about that now.

I have done what was not expected of me. Not least for this I ought to be punished, even if my crime is worse than that. Infinitely worse than that.

 

Today is the fourteenth
of April.

The first time Maximilian said it was four hundred thirty-two days ago.

The second time was the day before yesterday.

Maximilian and I are living in our cabin not far from Das Vorschutz, and life has been good to us. Today I would of course be able to tell exactly where the cabin is located, but after all these years I have secretiveness ingrained in me. We live where no one is going to find us.

After the Night of the Flood we lost our last innocence. We realized that Mollisan Town was no place for Maximilian, and we fled into the forest. We built him a little house, and at no time did anyone ask whether I was prepared to sacrifice everything and settle here, isolated from family and friends. It was taken for granted. In a way, it was a compliment. We built a house that no one could find, and there we have lived ever since.

Adam, Dennis, and Maria are the only ones who know the way here. They have supplied us with everything we needed over the years, and at some point every month they have brought along a strange stuffed animal for a visit. These visitors come blindfolded, let into our little library at the back of the house, and after a conversation with Maximilian, sometimes long but often brief, they leave the house with the blindfold on.

These visits amuse both of us, because our existence otherwise lacks variety and surprises.

 

I am not complaining.
No one forced me into this, and if I were able to live my life over, I would have made the same choice. Nonetheless life has at times been monotonous. We get up in the morning and go to bed at night. I have devoted a few hours every day to my notes, to what has been my life's work: reproducing Maximilian's words and actions. In solitude and concentration under these mighty trees I have found new connections and been able to set some to rights; I have arranged the text for the generations to come, long after we have disappeared, and I have realized that I have an amazing opportunity.

If and when I have been uncertain about interpretations—something that has happened more than once—I have been able to ask Maximilian. Very seldom have I gotten any unambiguous answers, but I have been granted additional images. One day, I am sure of it, these too will be interpreted by stuffed animals more talented and learned than I am.

So life has passed, and I hardly dare think about how long we have lived here together. I have written and thought, cleaned and laundered, prepared food and kept an eye on myself and my life companion, the unparalleled Maximilian. Not once has he expressed that he lacked anything, either physically or spiritually. This I ask you, my reader, to keep in mind. Not once in almost twenty years have I disappointed him.

 

It happened four hundred
thirty-two days ago, in the morning, without my having asked or even brought up the sub
ject. Maximilian raised his eyes from the daily paper he always read when he got it, a few days after the day of publication, and said, “I am weeping inside, about those who do not understand that the love between a he and a she is a promise for life. For each and every one of you stuffed animals, there is one other. Woe to the one who does not understand this.”

This is exactly what he said.

I was doing the dishes, he was sitting at the kitchen table. As usual I sensed that he was about to say something, right before he said it, and I immediately turned off the running dishwater. It was unusual for Maximilian to speak without being addressed, and over the years we had both gotten older and thereby less prone to believe we had anything new and urgent on our minds. His way of expressing himself had become more and more old-fashioned; my way of listening had become more sensitive.

Thus I turned off the running water, grasped the pen that I always had at hand in case just this should happen—the opportunity to write down what Maximilian said.

I wrote on the roll of paper towels; it was the only paper I could find at that moment. The words that I read destroyed everything. It erased my future, it betrayed everything that had been.

(Does this sound melodramatic? Does it sound absurd? Does it sound ridiculous? Drop it. I realized immediately, intuitively, that what he had said was as irrevocable as it was destructive. Still I did not want to understand, I wanted to struggle against it.)

There and then, at the kitchen sink, I reasoned with myself. Had Maximilian changed his conception? What was the meaning? The story of the miller and his daughters, the parable that I had made one of the main features of
the Book of Similes, possibly because it was so close to my own conceptions and my own life, I had always interpreted opposite to what Maximilian had just expressed.

Was there something in the newspaper that caused him to react, was there a context I did not understand?

“The love between he and she,” I asked, surprising myself by the disappointment that was in my voice, “should not be lavished? Shouldn't it be given to as many as possible?”

“Only a fool believes that,” replied Maximilian, returning to his newspaper.

“But the story about the miller and his daughters…?”

Maximilian did not answer. Seldom or never did he recall his own parables, and when I read them to him afterward he was always unwilling to comment on them. Most often he did exactly as he did four hundred thirty-two days ago: He pretended that he hadn't heard the question.

When I got no answer, I set aside the pen and paper towels and left the kitchen without another word. To maintain that I was shocked would be putting it mildly. The emotion that filled me made its way slowly to my reason. I was crushed.

 

I wandered around in
the forest for several hours that day, asking myself the same question again and again. Had Maximilian aimed his words directly at me? Was it my life he was condemning?

I had lived with many females. I had lavished my love on first the one, then the other. I was so inclined, and I believed that was how Maximilian wanted it.

When I finally returned home to the cottage, I could not understand it in any way other than that I had lived with a
lifelong misunderstanding, a life-lie. The message was crystal clear.

“For each and every one of you stuffed animals, there is one other. Woe to the one who does not understand this,” Maximilian had said.

It was those like me he was complaining about and judging.

When I stepped inside the door, the Afternoon Rain was already gathering, and Maximilian had as usual lain down in the bedroom one flight up to sleep. Perhaps he prayed, like the deacons in the church during the afternoon sabbath? But I think he was sleeping. I went out to the kitchen as if in a trance and stared down at the paper towel that lay wrinkled and damp next to the dishes as I had left it. The words written there reduced all of my life, my being, to something Maximilian obviously condemned and despised.

It was naturally my own fault. It was suddenly completely clear. How I had seized on the story of the miller and his daughters and made it into something it had never been. How I had distorted it to suit my own purposes.

Up until that day I had been Maximilian's confidant, his Recorder, an animal who lived in goodness. As of that day I was…a sinner.

I am telling what there is, without circumlocutions.

I dried the dishes with the paper towel that carried the despicable words, and threw it into the garbage.

For the first time in more than forty years—for that was how long it had been since I had met the newly confirmed Maximilian and begun my life's mission—for the first time in forty years I denied the world, and posterity, his wisdom.

This is an action that over the days that have passed has been just as hard to live with as the idea that Maximilian expressed.

 

In this simple action—–throwing
away a paper towel—I had demonstrated an unparalleled power, and at the same time a misuse of that power. Concealing the truth was a passive way to manipulate Maximilian's message. But perhaps worse: It was an attempt to manipulate myself. In this I saw a pattern. It was not the first time. I had done similar things when, in the Book of Similes and during seminars and discussions, I guided the interpretation of the story of the miller and his daughters in the direction I wanted. I had used his words to justify my weaknesses.

These thoughts left me no peace. Existence in the forest was transformed. My patience broke down, time and again. During days that over the years had been devoted to meditation, I was now pursued by restlessness and doubt.

Living out here in the forest with him was one thing, but living here with myself…

And perhaps worst of all: I believed that I would get away with what I had done.

You now understand, disappointed reader, that my capacity for self-deception is greater than you could have believed. I thought I would get away with this, that when the paper towel was thrown away, I again had interpretive priority. I did away with the evidence to the contrary, and again my reflections about the lavishing of love were undisputed.

I have been a fool.

I am a fool.

 

Today is the fourteenth
of April.

The first time was four hundred thirty-two days ago.

The second time was the day before yesterday.

I did not write down the words; they were not identical
to those he had uttered a little more than a year ago, but the essence could not be missed. He was airing viewpoints that were as venerable as the city church itself. It was almost unpleasant to hear him. Marriage was sacred, fidelity fundamental…. I do not know where this new, reactionary vein comes from.

Was it age?

The question is justified. Maximilian had turned fifty-four, we have lived in isolation out in the forest the last twenty years, and ideas can petrify under less extreme conditions than that.

Is this conservatism—musty, without a doubt—possibly the result of something new, rather than an elucidation of something old? I mean, my interpretation of the story of the miller back then may still have been correct, and now, in old age, Maximilian may have changed his conception?

 

Just this thought—–this possibility,
I would say—I twisted and turned yesterday, and the conclusion makes me worried, to say the least. If it is true, if Maximilian has been influenced by time in his isolation, considerably more is at stake than the simile about the miller. If Maximilian, for reasons of which I am not aware, has backed up into a conventionalism…We've been together every day, year in and year out, and this type of change occurs so slowly that it is impossible to discover before it is…too late…

Can he take back what he once said?

The three Retinues—which still exist, but work under far more sophisticated forms than was the case during our early, tentative years—base their meetings on texts from the Book of Similes, and in the interpretations that we have agreed on after many hours of strenuous studies and, sometimes, quarrels.

Can Maximilian take back what he has said?

What would happen to all the stuffed animals who—like myself—got support and power from those words about faith, hope, and love that were Maximilian's? We who have not let ourselves be frightened by the church's threatening images of the judging Magnus and the enticing Malitte, we who therefore had become indifferent, until we heard Maximilian?

Or all the timid ones huddling under the dogmas and rituals of the church in expectation of the day when the Chauffeurs would come to get them, all those who, thanks to Maximilian, could finally straighten their backs and live in the present?

May Maximilian betray us?

 

So went my thoughts
yesterday, and during the evening and the whole night I continued in the same way. I lost myself in details, ever smaller and more irrelevant the more tired I became. I could not let it go. And however many questions I still came up with, there was only one answer. An answer I did not want to hear.

I am Nobody.

I am Maximilian's Recorder.

I have lived my life in relation to him.

He caused me to feel like a good animal.

 

When I heard Maria
come walking along the path, the weather was still only forenoon, but I had not slept the whole night—I had hardly slept the night before either—and I could not think clearly. My instinct was to run and hide, leave the house and go off into the forest and never return. But I did not run.

I went down and opened the door as always. Maria had a walrus with her. As usual I led the guest into the library before I took off the blindfold. After that I went out to the kitchen to arrange the customary tray with tea. I pretended that everything was as usual. That I was as usual. During the few seconds that I succeeded in making the illusion real, I felt an unparalleled relief. It is difficult to explain.