Lanceheim (8 page)

T
hrough the windows of the barn, to the north, south, and east, the cubs saw kilometer upon kilometer of fields, nothing else, just tall wheat that swayed invitingly in the gentle breeze. To the west a blue streak could be made out on the horizon, the sea, and Hillevie, the stuffed animals' vacation spot near Mollisan Town. Between the city and the sea was agriculture, the fruit farms, where an old-fashioned rural life lived on. The small number of farmers who worked the soil lived in isolation, here and there a sporadic settlement, but nothing that with the best intentions in the world could be called a village.

Together with seventeen confirmation students of the same age, Maximilian was sitting in the renovated barn, looking now and then out the window. A few hours ago All-deacon Chiradello, a light yellow seal pup with bushy eyebrows and a hint of acne, had told the story of Magnus and Noah Whale. Chiradello was young and could therefore be traditional without being accused of conservatism. He stood up at the lectern, which in turn stood on a little rise at the farther short wall. Through the window behind him the
confirmands could rest their gazes on the swaying wheat, a kind of meditative view that, according to the all-deacon himself, deepened concentration and understanding.

The barn was exactly 143 square meters in size, and it was seven meters up to the exposed ends of the roof. Besides the large window behind the lectern, there were four windows on the side walls, but they were small and narrow.

Chiradello had set out eighteen chairs in a half-moon on the floor, and there sat the confirmands. They felt exposed, unprotected, and that was the point. Magnus had created an immense universe for us; we stuffed animals were only pitiful trifles in that context. There was a faint odor of dampness in the room, despite the fact that a pair of electrical space heaters stood humming in the corners. Out here on the plain the ground never really got dry.

“Does anyone know the name of the first stuffed animal whom Magnus appeared to?” asked the all-deacon.

He looked around. His lidless gaze wandered curiously from one to the other. The few but rigid whiskers pointed straight out in the air. He had a light voice and a tone that was equally chiseled and precise; he spoke with a studied precision.

An albatross raised his wing. The all-deacon nodded.

“Noah,” he answered.

“That's right,” Chiradello called out with exaggerated enthusiasm. “And does anyone know when that was?”

The seal pup was not standing behind the lectern; he knew that created a barrier between him and the cubs. He stood up on the podium, and instead of the long, black robe that the animals of the church usually wore, he had put on a tweed jacket and a pair of jeans for the day. It was about creating trust.

A farm cat cleared her throat.

“Yes?” said Chiradello, smiling amiably.

“A thousand years ago?” said the cat.

“A thousand years ago.” Chiradello nodded encouragingly. “That's what we always say. A thousand years ago. But that doesn't mean that it was exactly one thousand years ago, does it? When I was confirmed, the answer to that question was also a thousand years. And in ten years we will probably continue to say the same thing. It's part of the tradition. ‘A thousand years ago' means a long, long time ago.”

There was nodding around the room.

“And why?” asked Chiradello. “Why did Magnus show himself to Noah Whale?”

It became silent in the barn. The all-deacon made a little victory lap up on the podium. He liked this: going from religious generalities straight into the darkest holes of metaphysics with simple questions.

“No,” he said when he thought the stage pause was long enough, “it's not equally obvious. And at the same time, that is what we will focus on during the coming—”

“Excuse me, Schoolmaster?”

The all-deacon fell silent. He saw that it was the cat who had interrupted him, and with concealed irritation he said amiably, “Yes?”

“Him over there, with the scarf on his head, wants to say something,” said the cat and pointed.

And that was correct. When All-deacon Chiradello looked, the strange animal who had a kind of scarf wrapped around his head, the one who was sitting at the far end of the row, was holding up his arm.

“Was there something in particular you were thinking about?” he asked.

He hoped that he still sounded nice.

At every camp there's an oddball, Chiradello had learned; someone the others would laugh at if you didn't ward off the situation. In this group the oddball was the animal with the scarf on his head. Chiradello had decided to do his best not to let him be picked on by the others.

“What was it you wanted?” he asked again.

“It's not what the puzzle depicts that is important,” said Maximilian, touching his headgear lightly, “it's how you solve it.”

 

Before I continue telling
about Maximilian's confirmation camp, I would like to address a few words directly to the skeptical reader. I intend to cite Dolores Deer. Straight out I admit that the reason I am going to cite Dolores is that I feel the need to justify myself. I am going to betray a confidence, and thereby make her my character witness. It is probably an unattractive thing to do, but it is important that you, readers of my assuredly flat but significant narrative, do not remain ignorant of what I have to put forward in my defense. Yet it is impossible to mention Dolores without devoting a few lines to her eyes.

Dolores's eyes were the most beautiful I have ever seen.

It was many years ago that by chance I ended up at an espresso bar I had not noticed before. It was hardly more than a hole in the wall, not far from Maria's House. Its furnishings consisted of a long bar counter and a couple of stools.

I ordered a double macchiato from the waitress at the espresso machine, and dug in my coat pocket for change while she ground the beans. I set the money on the counter at the same moment that she set out the cup, and it was then that I saw them: Dolores's eyes.

It was an explosive moment of absolute stillness. Her speckled blue irises shone like the sky above a sea, and the distinct black pupils widened like a personal invitation. I got weak in the knees, my mouth got dry, I could not get out a word. If I had fallen for females before, the fall had never been as dizzyingly long as when I looked into Dolores's eyes for the first time. They awakened a desire that made me
blush when I, mumbling, raised the cup of macchiato and attempted a smile. She had to be mine. If I did not get to look into Dolores's eyes again, life as I knew it would lose a dimension.

I don't intend to go into details. It worked out. A few weeks later, over a small restaurant table in north Tourquai, Dolores leaned over and said, “Wolf Diaz, you are the most intuitive stuffed animal I have ever encountered. I am sure you would be able to recount my entire childhood without even knowing about it. Your imagination and your empathy are like a crystal ball where you can see both the past and what is to come.”

In principle that is what Dolores Deer said.

By this I do not mean to say that this depiction of Maximilian's confirmation camp is correct or complete. I do not want to boast or make commitments that I cannot live up to. But when the critical reader questions how I have the gall to put words in Maximilian's mouth or dress All-deacon Chiradello in a certain facial expression, I will only remind you of Dolores's words, and assure you that I also remain humble and choose an open interpretation to the extent I feel the least bit uncertain about how things actually happened.

 

It was during the
weeks at confirmation camp that the stuffed animals realized that Maximilian was good.

“Good” is not a grand character trait. On the contrary, if anything it seems a bit lame, and the semantic problem of the word is, as I see it, one of the concept's fundamental concerns. From a subjective perspective we are all good, aren't we? That is to say, we regard ourselves as basically good. With any amount of objectivity, however, we can observe and evaluate our actions, and understand that they do not all spring from goodness. But we are quick to excuse
ourselves; you do what you do, deep down we can always distinguish right from wrong.

May I suggest a brief exercise for the soul-searching reader?

Shut your eyes.

Peel off coquetry and ironic winking.

Penetrate within your intellectual defenses and place yourself all the way inside your innermost core.

Answer this question: Are you good?

The answer is: “Yes.”

And open your eyes again, and confess: It's not true. No more than in parts, sometimes, if the conditions are right, not to say perfect.

With Maximilian it was, and is, different. Maximilian is good. Without reservation, without weakness. Perhaps he is even Goodness itself?

It was All-deacon Chiradello who formulated it. It was he who spoke about “good” in connection with Maximilian for the first time, instead of calling his radiance “integrity” or “talent.”

 

Once upon a time
many thousands of years ago Magnus created the universe. One aspect of the creation was the creation's own possibility to develop. Therefore Magnus appeared on the earth three times, and let himself be escorted through the world that he himself had initiated and watched over ever since. A thousand years ago, for three months, three weeks, and three days, Noah Whale had shown Magnus how the sea, the coast, and the land connected to the coast had developed. Many hundreds of years later, it was Jean-Jacques Fox who for two months, two weeks, and two days became Magnus's cicerone in the forests.

For the Forest Cubs from Das Vorschutz, the second part of the Proclamations, the one written by Fox, was the easi
est to absorb. In Fox's Proclamation there was everything that we Forest Cubs recognized: the trees and lakes, mountains and vegetation, forest animals and paths.

All-deacon Chiradello devoted himself to the gospels of Jean-Jacques Fox during the second week of confirmation studies. Perhaps he believed—and surely hoped—that Maximilian could strengthen his position with the others when the forest came up for discussion. He gave great scope to Maximilian to answer questions and show himself to be knowledgeable, but to no effect. Maximilian was just as taciturn as before. Either he answered when addressed, directly and clearly but never with a word too many, or else he answered with the similes that fascinated Chiradello to an increasing degree.

The seal pup was soon brooding just as much about these similes as about the texts he had selected from the Proclamations for the sake of instruction. He could stand before his eighteen confirmands in the barn and talk about Jean-Jacques Fox's famous depiction of Magnus and the stumps, and at the same time wonder what Maximilian meant with his simile about the puzzle and how you solve it.

Slowly Seal Pup Chiradello realized that there was a connection between Maximilian's similes and the texts of the Proclamations. Chiradello could not account for how he arrived at this connection or exactly how it appeared, but he was nonetheless convinced of it.

 

The third week of
confirmation studies was devoted to the last part of the Proclamations and the stories of Rachel Siamese. For a month, a week, and a day Magnus walked around the streets and squares in the four cities that, much later, would merge together into Mollisan Town.

“It requires consideration,” said Chiradello, while as usual he let his large, dark eyes sweep across the row of con
firmands. “What must Magnus have experienced? How we consistently show that we reject His creation by re-creating what he has given us in every detail and changing it into something else. Water and sand become cement. Stone and ore, we make into metal and steel. Coal and copper become light, and light becomes energy. He gives, we receive and transform.”

The all-deacon fell silent and lowered his gaze, as if he personally had displeased Magnus the Almighty. Outside the barn the Afternoon Weather was reaching its end, the wheat fields stood untouched by the wind, and the heat was about to diminish. The sun had reached so far across the sky that its rays could make their way into the barn; the ripening yellow light settled like square panes in the laps of the confirmands. They all felt ill at ease, and at last someone said, “But the wrath of Magnus, is it…I mean, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” replied the all-deacon slowly. “That was a long time ago. But in the Proclamations it is not always what is written that is being referred to. And what is written is not always all that ought to be understood. You have to think for yourselves. This is, and remains, the challenge to you confirmands, even if it is the only thing you learn during these weeks. Think for yourselves. What makes Magnus angry? Is it that we devote our brief lives to re-creating what has already been given to us? Can Magnus have perceived it in such a way, that we transform His natural assets so they are in better accord with our own laziness and vanity, our insecure searching for acknowledgment, and our endless striving for simplification?”

“But,” an anxious voice was heard, “I haven't re-created anything.”

The all-deacon knew that the third part of the Proclamations was always experienced as unpleasant by the confirmands. He had never felt comfortable with frightening
anyone into belief, and he was about to answer when Maximilian unexpectedly got there first.

“I want to say this to you,” said Maximilian. “He who owns a dollhouse, seldom lacks a doll.”

The silence in the barn intensified. The cubs looked nervously at one another; no one knew anymore how they should handle Maximilian's comments. They had laughed and ridiculed them, they had sometimes tried to take them seriously. But nothing made them comprehensible, it seemed.

“Maximilian,” said the all-deacon from the lectern, “I do not think that—”