Lanceheim (6 page)

I
t was a matter of taking a deep breath, making yourself invulnerable, throwing open the doors to the large hall, and exceeding expectations. Be brilliant, humble, and empathic. Be eccentric, stately, and tragic.

At the same moment that Reuben Walrus heard the murmur, perceived the aromas, and saw the glow from the massive chandeliers, he regretted that he had let Denise Ant convince him. He took a firmer hold of one of her arms, as though he were clinging tight with his small fins, and she smiled encouragingly.

Denise Ant loved Reuben Walrus when he was miserable.

Every year Reuben led a course in free composition for the graduating class at the Music Academy. He maintained that it kept him young to meet, and be challenged by, the coming generations. In the office, the refined hens gossiped that he used his position to pursue young females at the school.

Denise Ant had been one of his pupils, the most critical of him in her class, and also the most yearning. So as not to feed the gossip, Reuben had been careful to avoid Denise the
whole semester, and he only phoned her six months after she had finished at the school. They met at a gloomy pizzeria that smelled of old oregano, located a stone's throw from Denise's apartment in Amberville. At the restaurant she gave him a good dressing-down. First she scolded him for not calling her. Then she scolded him because he had called her, thereby exploiting his position as her former teacher and model.

He had ordered a pizza with mushrooms and onions; she had chosen a vegetarian combo. When the food arrived, Reuben ate in silence while Denise dissected one of his symphonies and, stanza by stanza, showed where he had stolen the various sections. Over coffee it was his lack of talent as a lecturer that she tackled. He longed for the check and to be able to leave this angry ant to herself, but when he finally got up, she asked if he wouldn't like to accompany her home. In pure astonishment he answered yes, and then they cuddled the whole night.

Denise Ant did not move in with Reuben. She refused to give up her life, refused to give up her apartment, her pride, and identity. Reuben was careful not to agree too quickly; a single thoughtless nod might very well cause her to move in on Knobeldorfstrasse the same day.

She appeared indifferent to the outside world's contemptuous looks, which suggested that she was only one in a series of Reuben Walrus's young lovers. She was unruly but reasonably predictable in her fierce defiance, and she had an energy that he found irresistible. He missed her on those days that they didn't see each other, but got enough of her after only a few hours when they finally met. Hundreds of times he rehearsed in his imagination the quarrel that would finally put an end to the relationship, and just as many times he refrained from saying the words out loud.

He assumed that she was just as divided as he was.

And with that, the first year was added to the second, and Reuben and Denise remained a couple.

 

They were standing at
the top of the stairs in the entranceway of the music hall, and heads were turned in their direction from everywhere in the murmuring room. Reuben could see some he knew well, others he knew vaguely, and some he had never seen before; thirty-some stuffed animals who were sipping colorful drinks and who all felt they had a special, close relationship with him.

Slowly Reuben and Denise began to go down the stairs. A whisper passed through the assembly, an empathic silence spread. It was unbearable. How had it happened? Who had leaked it? Someone at the hospital laboratory, perhaps? The secretary outside Dr. Swan's office? It was of no importance. Yesterday he had received his sentence, today he was hung over, and everyone seemed to know what had happened. Flowers had been delivered to Knobeldorfstrasse all morning. As of now, he was the tragic genius, whose career and life were over.

When he and the ant reached the bottom step, the guests had grouped themselves along the sides and in this way left the field open for the host of the evening. Jack Elephant could greet the late-arriving guests in solitary majesty.

“Reuben,” the elephant rumbled, “that you manage, that you show up, it's incomparable!”

“Incomparable,” agreed Reuben.

“And Denise Ant,” continued Jack, “more beautiful than ever!”

Denise clicked her tongue lightly, as she always did when something irritated her, but the smile she had put on remained unmoved.

They exchanged a few more words with Jack, but moved in toward the hall and ended up beside Vincent Tortoise, the head of the Ministry of Culture.

“Reuben,” said Vincent in a voice vibrating with compassion, “I heard about what happened.”

“Anything else would have shocked me,” mumbled Walrus.

“This is not a topic of conversation for an evening like this,” said Vincent, and Reuben felt deep gratitude toward the politician, who continued, “I'll be in touch during the week, so we can talk a little, the two of us?”

Reuben nodded, and Vincent Tortoise was swallowed up by the crowd of animals, who closed ranks and turned up the volume. Walrus snatched a glass of champagne that was being carried past on a large tray, forcing himself to smile politely and listen to the complaints from Countess Dahl. She let all her chins quiver with annoyance as she recounted the ignominy she was subjected to when her chauffeur for the evening proved to be a snake.

Reuben nodded to the right and nodded to the left, feeling like all eyes were on him as he elbowed his way up toward the high windows where his ant had taken her station.

“We never should have come here,” he whispered. “Everyone knows! Everyone. How is it possible?”

But before Denise had time to reply, they were attacked by another wave of admirers or backbiters, it was impossible to decide which; everyone smiled equally ingratiatingly and tenderly, anxious to express their dismay and concern.

Jack Elephant had become a widower two years earlier, and these musical soirées were expensive pretexts to avoid spending evenings alone. Jack had been president of the Music Academy for many years, and Reuben Walrus did not dare say no to his invitations; he was not an enemy that Walrus could allow himself.

On his way through the elephant's sparsely furnished drawing room toward the grandiose dining room, Reuben walked close beside Denise. He had told her about Drexler's syndrome that morning over a cup of coffee—which did not relieve his headache—at Gino's. She was livid. How did he dare? To subject her to this? And when it was clear to her
how little he knew about the disease, how he had only accepted the doctor's diagnosis, she promptly got up from the table and left. After the rehearsals in the afternoon, they had met at his place, and then she refused to talk about the matter.

In some absurd manner this denial was pleasant; an angry look was preferable to a pitying one. Walrus refused to let himself be reduced to a victim, a poor thing. The sentence he had received was unmerciful, anxiety tore at his heart, but he still lived—and heard.

He walked a half step behind Denise, breathing in the aroma of her perfume, the smell of cloth surrounding her hard-packed body, and for a few seconds he closed his eyes and tried to feel happy about getting to be so close.

 

In honor of the
evening, Jack Elephant had placed Reuben Walrus at the short end of the table. He sat between a pianist he knew but whose name he could never remember, and a vivid green dog with red eyes from Amberville who lisped when she talked and introduced herself as Annette Afghan. The pianist was dressed in a tight-fitting black dress, which helped Reuben to recall her as a boring, honest, and ambitious stuffed animal. The dog was wearing something lownecked with ruffles.

Denise Ant was sitting far away, between a duck that Reuben did not know and Tom Whitefish, music director at Radio Mollisan Town, who many considered to be the real power in the city's musical life.

“Oh, so unexpected,” said Afghan as Reuben pulled out her chair and they sat down for dinner, “getting to sit next to a real TV star.”

“TV star?” said Reuben with a self-conscious smile. “I don't know if I—”

“Do tell,” continued the Afghan, “how you can read the
news and look right into the camera at the same time? I stumble even when I read silently from a book.”

“But I don't read the news on TV,” Reuben answered with surprise.

“You don't?”

“No.”

“But…I was sure that…,” stammered the clearly disappointed and shamefaced dog. “Excuse me, but I know that I recognize you from TV. Or somewhere.”

Reuben told who he was, the Afghan laughed with embarrassment and maintained that of course she knew about him and his work just like everyone else, that she had heard several of his…songs…and that she had only made a mistake because she felt a little tipsy from the champagne. Reuben smiled amiably and asked what kind of work she did.

“I work with stuffed animals,” she said, suddenly serious, and nodded her sweet head. “There are so many that are doing poorly these days, you know? So many who need someone to talk to. You have to believe in something, you know? There are so many who don't believe in anything.”

“And you yourself believe?” asked Reuben amiably.

The appetizers were served. Walrus saw from the corner of his eye how Denise was laughing at something Whitefish said, and he turned again toward Annette Afghan. The atmosphere was already lively around the table. The cook had blended mild mold-ripened cheese into the ground steak tartare, and white wine was being poured into the glasses.

“You have to believe,” answered Annette Afghan. “I believe in my inner power, and how I can develop it. Magnus is in all of us, you know? In you too.”

She riveted her eyes on him, as if what she said was a reprimand.

“Shall we see if Jack's white wine is just as good as the red usually is?” Reuben asked, raising his glass to his nose.

Afghan ignored his attempt to change the subject.

“Do you know,” she asked, letting him sip the wine alone, “how many there are who come into the store and ask for rainbow stones? Every day?”

This Reuben did not know. He had not even heard of rainbow stones.

“It's not one or two,” Afghan answered her own question. “It's considerably more. And shall I tell you what they really want? They want to believe. You know? But Magnus is already in them, it's a matter of discovering him. Or her,” added the Afghan, blushing.

Reuben took a piece of steak tartare on his fork. It was going to be a very long dinner, he thought unhappily. The Afghan was making sure to completely monopolize him, and he almost longed for the boring pianist on the other side.

“If Magnus lives in you,” Reuben interrupted at last, “then we can be sure in any event that he's a good listener.”

 

Despite Annette Afghan, it
was still the pianist who, right before dessert, disrupted the evening. At that point Reuben had still not given her more than friendly smiles. It was only when Annette Afghan got up to look for the restroom that he got a chance for courtesy. The pianist did not lose the opportunity.

“It's so terrible,” she said. “You must excuse me, but I don't know what I should say.”

Reuben had consumed a number of glasses of Jack Elephant's excellent white wine and then a few glasses of the red, but was still relatively sober.

“Say about what?” he asked.

“About…about…,” stammered the pianist, “about…the tragedy that has struck you. That has struck us all, indirectly. It's…terrible.”

With the babbling Afghan Reuben had temporarily forgotten his anxiety, Drexler's syndrome, and the fate that awaited him. He had partaken of the garlic gratin and the breaded flounder. Like an executioner's ax, melancholy now fell over him.

“Hmm,” he replied.

“We have worked together many times,” the pianist continued, “and I know what hearing means to you. I mean…for you in particular. Oh, I don't know…however I put it…it sounds so stupid…I…I don't know what I should say.”

In all honesty, Reuben Walrus didn't know either, and therefore it felt like a gift from above that Annette Afghan returned at the same moment. Reuben had an excuse to get up, pull out the Afghan's chair, and thereby puncture the unpleasant moment. But the pianist was not prepared to let go. She leaned past Reuben, drawing Annette into the conversation.

“We were just talking about the Tragedy,” she explained, nodding at Reuben as if the walrus were not present.

“The tragedy?”

“About Reuben's illness,” she explained. “Mollisan Town is grieving one of its greatest composers of all time.”

Annette Afghan turned with an uncomprehending look toward Reuben, who was absentmindedly pulling on his mustache. The pianist was more than willing to tell.

“But that's just terrible,” exclaimed Annette Afghan when the pianist was done.

“The worst is that he won't be able to compose anymore,” the pianist maintained.

“But isn't there anything you can do?” asked Annette. “Aren't there any medications, any…treatments?”

“Nothing,” said the pianist, shaking her head ominously.

“But…this is just terrible!”

“He got the diagnosis just a few days ago,” the pianist
explained, and added in a lower voice, “I don't know if he's understood it yet.”

“He has to go see Maximilian,” said Annette Afghan.

And she turned directly to Reuben, who had followed the conversation with distress without getting into it. Annette looked him sternly in the eyes.

“You have to go see Maximilian.”

 

Denise Ant wanted to
dance before they went home, and Reuben Walrus sat in Jack's library with a large glass of cognac and waited. He despised dancing and had never—besides the waltz at his own wedding—done it. He sat down on one of the elegantly worn leather armchairs and was immediately joined by first one animal and then another who wanted to complain and dramatize. It was as if they were talking about someone else, and soon Walrus also felt anguish: what this city was about to lose! Cigars were smoked and there was the smell of leather, and on the whole Reuben thought that the role of poor wretch could also have its special pleasure.