Amberville

Chapter 16

May I go home now?”

Snake Marek sounded hopeful.
Eric Bear was sitting on a barstool at a minimal bar counter; Snake found himself on the same counter. All the Springergaast boutiques nowadays boasted this kind of bar, situated in the midst of an explosion of colorful boutique furnishings and advertising posters which some advertising-agency genius—perhaps employed at Wolle & Wolle—maintained stimulated sales. The bear and the snake had each ordered a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. Around them packages of cookies and chips, bulk candies, soda pop labels, and even fresh fruit competed for attention. There was an aroma of fresh-ground coffee and baked croissants. Eric had chosen to move the meeting to Springergaast on Carrer Admiral Pedro, a few blocks from Yiala’s Arch, because he wanted to be alone with Snake. And few customers came to this boutique.
“Lay off,” he said.
“I didn’t think so,” sighed Snake with disappointment.
Yesterday evening all their plans had been upset. When Eric saw Teddy’s name on the Death List it was no longer a question of simply saving Emma.
His first reaction was shock. But intuitively Eric realized that he couldn’t show any weak spots with Snake in the room, and therefore he was forced to act as if nothing over and above what was expected was on the list. If Snake hadn’t been there, if Eric had given his feelings free rein? Then he would have fallen apart.
“Have you thought about my request?” asked the bear.
“Which one?”
“Saving someone from a soon-to-be dead man’s death sentence.”
“If you think I’m smart enough to figure out something like that, surely you must realize I’m smart enough to understand what this is all about,” Snake answered with irritation.
Eric shrugged his shoulders.
“Presumably,” he said.
“Dove has threatened your sweet Rabbit. If the Chauffeurs get Dove, his gorillas fetch the rabbit.”
Eric shrugged his shoulders again. This was an acknowledgment.
“And?” he asked. “What do I do?”
“I have no idea,” answered Snake, sounding so uninterested that Eric had a hard time not letting himself be provoked, despite the fact that he understood that this had been the reptile’s intent.
“You could bribe the gorillas, couldn’t you?” suggested the long-tongued Marek.
“Bribe the gorillas?”
“Yes, what the hell do I know?”
“You’ve worked at Casino Monokowski, you’ve worked for Nicholas Dove, and you’re suggesting that I should bribe the gorillas?”
“Honorably stated and with all due respect, I don’t give a damn about either,” said Snake.
Eric sat silently. There must be a reason, he thought, for it was apparent that Snake was looking for a reaction. Perhaps, he thought further, it had to do with the Death List? Perhaps Snake, who was sensitive to the weaknesses of animals, understood that something had happened in the Order Room, something that had worsened the bear’s situation? And perhaps Snake was out to reveal this through his provocations? Both of them knew that you could never have too much information when power was concerned.
They each took a bite of blueberry muffin and pondered the next move.
“Do you think Tom-Tom can do anything?” asked Eric.
“What would that be?”
“He’s a crazy bastard,” stated Eric, “deep down inside. Perhaps he’d be able to make them see reason?”
“If you toss in the gazelle too, it’s not impossible,” said Snake.
They each took another bite; it was a suitably doughy yet flavorful muffin.
The gorillas had reason to fear a berserk crow. But even if Tom-Tom and Sam together might frighten away many gorillas on the way, they could never frighten them all off.
“If I know the dove rightly,” said Snake, “he has in addition promised an enormous reward to the one who proves that he took care of your Rabbit. An accountant in some shabby office somewhere in town is just waiting, with an authorization in his desk drawer, for someone to come in with proof. And that means it’s not just the crazy gorillas you have to take care of, but the bounty hunters as well.”
Eric sighed. That’s how it was of course, he’d realized it too.
“And the chance of successfully completing our assignment?” asked Eric.
“You mean removing Dove from the list?”
Eric nodded. Actually he wanted nothing better than to tell about Teddy, but nothing positive would come out of such a confession. So he nodded again.
“I don’t know,” said Snake. “We’ve proved that there is a list. I didn’t think we’d succeed in that.”
“I knew there was a list,” said Eric.
“You didn’t know that at all,” said Snake.
“But removing someone, pardoning someone…?”
“Among all the legends about the Death List,” answered Snake, “there are a few that speak of something like that. And I’m not just thinking of that story about the archdeacon.”
While the coffee cooled and Eric ate up both his and Snake’s blueberry muffin, Snake told the story of Horse Carl and Admiral Pedro.
Horse Carl was the hero who, more than two hundred years ago, united the four parts of the city after almost a century of civil war, temporary alliances, and betrayed promises. Today all schoolchildren read about Horse Carl, but not many knew, said Snake in a tone of utter contempt, that as a reward for his efforts Horse was awarded the opportunity to pardon one animal each year from the Death List.
“No, wait,” protested Eric, “I’ve never heard anything about that…”
“As I said,” snapped Snake Marek, irritated by the interruption, “this is about legends, myths. There’s nothing that’s true or false. But I can understand if the authorities try to keep this type of story from being retold. I have a hard time seeing which department would benefit from the story of Horse Carl…”
And then he continued:
Horse Carl soon understood that the possibility of pardoning someone could be used in the power play that had arisen among the leading animals in the four parts of the city. Carl established a new tradition. A small selection of judges, generals, highly placed politicians, and one or two truly significant landowners would get to vote each year for one of the animals on the Death List. The animal who counted up the most votes would be removed, and all those involved could enjoy the feeling of power: power over life and death even greater than what they’d had before the city’s unification.
Everything functioned according to Horse Carl’s plan up until the year when both David Owl and Admiral Pedro were on the Death List. For many years the admiral had been in command of the rather insignificant fleet in Hillevie, but he was still young, and that his name showed up on the list came as a complete surprise, both to him and to everyone else. Pedro was seized by panic, applied for and was granted discharge from the fleet, and then devoted all his time toward attempting to influence the animals who would be voting to cast their votes for him. When the day for the announcement of the pardon came, it proved, however, that Judge David Owl had nevertheless received more votes than the former admiral Pedro.
Pedro was furious. He demanded to meet Horse Carl. Carl granted the audience and expressed regret at the decision, but explained that he could do nothing about it. The judgment had fallen, the person who would be pardoned was David Owl, that’s how it was decided. Why couldn’t Carl pardon both of them, asked Pedro.
Horse Carl sighed heavily. It was impossible.
“Why was it impossible?” asked Eric Bear in much too loud a voice.
“It was just impossible,” repeated Snake Marek, once again irritated at having been interrupted.
Well.
Former admiral Pedro made the most logical decision of which he was capable, under the circumstances. He went with a military stride directly from the audience with Horse Carl to David Owl and cut off the judge’s head with a saber. Then he took the head into the forest and buried it. In this way, thought Pedro, they should pardon the one who had received the next most votes.
But there former admiral Pedro was mistaken. Instead, the possibility of pardoning animals was taken away from Horse Carl with immediate effect.
“Taken away by who?” asked Eric.
“The story doesn’t say,” said Snake.
The Death List was classified as secret, no one knew in advance who was on it (and after a hundred years we didn’t even know if the list itself existed), and the routine with the Coachmen, later the Chauffeurs, was introduced.
Snake Marek fell silent. After a long while Eric said, “This indicates at least that someone decides, and therefore there must be a possibility of influence.”
“Perhaps one might see it that way,” nodded Snake.
“Now we’ll go home and decide how we proceed from here,” said Eric.
Snake nodded, and they slid down from barstool and counter and left Springergaast.


The night of the eighteenth of May became another night of alcohol, cards, and bizarre notions in the kitchen at Yiala’s Arch. Just in time for the Evening Storm, the bottles were uncorked. Crow showed signs of dexterity as he shuffled the cards with his longest finger feathers, Snake wriggled up onto the kitchen table and made himself ready for the first deal while Sam stole into the bathroom to make himself a cocktail of pills before it was time to play. Eric lit the tea lights and poured drinks for everyone.
Tom-Tom Crow only pretended to get drunk. When the others weren’t looking, he stole away to the kitchen sink, pouring out the vodka and replacing it with water. Then he cawed loudly and drunkenly for the sake of appearances. He couldn’t bring himself to drink; the last few days he’d felt strange, sensitive in a way he didn’t like; tonight he’d been awakened by tears running down his beak. He knew what was causing it, but he struggled to force the memories back into the deep ravines of forgetting.
Eric Bear, on the other hand, got drunk as a sailor. Drunker than he’d ever been. He’d intended to hold back, intended to guide his intoxicated companions through the night and direct them back up onto navigable paths of association when they slipped down into the ditch.
That’s not how it turned out.
When alcohol got the upper hand and Eric could no longer defend himself against his feelings, the bear disappeared first down into deep resignation, where he felt very comfortable because resignation excused him. What could he really do, asked resignation. He was fighting against death, and no mortal was victorious over death. Despite the fact that they’d gotten hold of a Death List, it felt just as unlikely as it had a few weeks ago that they would succeed in rescuing Nicholas Dove back to life. The only thing they had acquired was information about the Chauffeurs and the list that was mortally dangerous. It was of utmost importance that no one said anything, Eric observed anxiously. It was of utmost importance that these idiots for companions in Sam Gazelle’s kitchen could keep their mouths shut.
“Airybody,” attempted Eric Bear, “gotchto choosed. Now!”
But no one cared to try to interpret his slurring, and it was just as well. The two animals Eric loved most were at risk of dying, and he had only three days to do something about it. He felt inexplicably sorry for himself, and he thought he had the right to immerse himself in self-pity.
But the more he drank, the harder it was to hold on to this almost apathetic sorrow. The vodka heated him up. It was so unfair, he thought. It was as though a higher power was playing a joke on him, as if someone truly wanted to see him suffer and therefore let him discover his brother’s name on the list. Dove can go to hell, the bear thought crossly, and the anger chased away the loneliness and caused him to feel strong. Dove can go to hell, he thought again, and fate can go to hell, too.
Eric got up from the table. His chair fell over and the crash caused the others to fall silent and look up. He had absolutely nothing to say. He looked at them, one after the other, and was filled with a powerful love. They were sitting here for his sake; they were loyal. His bear heart was transformed into a cleaning sponge, soggy with alcohol and sentimentality, and tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. His friends. His confidants.
“Eric,” asked Tom-Tom, “what the hell are we doing now, actually?”
Eric Bear turned slowly toward Tom-Tom and tried in vain to focus his gaze.
“Yes, then,” repeated the crow, “I don’t get what the hell we should do.”
That swine, thought Eric, perplexed, and all his beautiful feelings evaporated. Does the big crow doubt my ability?
“I think we put Noah Camel up against the wall,” said Sam from over by the dish rack.
The gazelle was doing dishes? Eric squinted in order to make Sam out better. Indeed, he was standing there doing dishes. Wasn’t that overly zealous?
“Noah Camel?” asked Snake.
“He must have gotten the list from someone,” Sam defended himself, assuming that Snake thought badly of the idea.
“Was that camel bastard at the ministry?” asked Tom-Tom.
“You know who he is?” said Snake.
All of these retorts flying back and forth through the room confused Eric Bear. He understood that something was about to happen, something important, but he didn’t know what it was. Noah Camel?
“Noah and I…know each other,” said Sam, adding hesitantly, “you might say…”
“And you’re just saying that now?” Snake Marek almost screamed.
His irritation knew no limits.
“But this is good, isn’t it?” asked Tom-Tom.
Three days might be enough, thought Eric.






NOAH CAMEL

can’t understand it can’t understand it can’t understand how someone can want to cause such pain such pain such pain and tears don’t help because I’m freezing ’cause it’s cold, it’s always cold cold but I’m not freezing because it’s cold, I’m freezing from fear, I’m freezing down to the marrow and stuffing and this cold hurts so bad it hurts so bad



saw Sam Gazelle coming, saw him coming from the window in the hall, saw him coming from the window in the hall and it made me a little happy even because even if I knew he was dangerous we were friends he and I we were friends he and I for we’d met once long ago and I knew he was dangerous for I knew who he was and what he liked to do but I thought that was just talk because there’s so much talk and there’s too much talk and I opened the door when he rang the bell and asked him to come into the kitchen and sit down and maybe have coffee or a beer for you’re supposed to be nice to your friends


he took a fork and poked it through my leg, through cloth and cotton, the metal teeth of the fork right through my leg from one side to the other so I was stuck to the table and I can’t describe how much it hurt how horribly painful it was but still I almost didn’t feel the pain because I got so scared, so scared that my whole body started shaking but I didn’t scream even if I should have screamed but I wept silently and looked at Sam Gazelle who I thought was my friend and I didn’t understand I didn’t understand I didn’t understand a thing


he questioned me and threatened me and said that if I didn’t talk he would burn me, just like that he said that he would burn me and I saw in his eyes that he wanted to burn me whatever the hell I said and by then I was almost happy because I understood why he’d stuck the fork through my leg, he was after something, he wanted to know what I knew and that’s the kind of thing that happens all the time, it was understandable and I didn’t give a damn who killed who so I told him, told him everything I knew about where I’d gone before and where I went after I’d been up to the ministry and then everything was as it should be, then he’d gotten what he wanted and then he could go away again, leave again and I never wanted to see him again


but he didn’t go


he did things with me I can’t talk about ’cause they’re much too terrible to say with words, things that are so horrible you can’t even mention them and when I think about everything he did I go completely dark inside for I don’t want to tell what he did with me, Sam Gazelle, but he did it over and over again and he never got enough and I screamed and I cried and I fainted and dreamed and woke up and he was still there and said that he’d come up with something new that he wanted to try and sometimes he laughed and sometimes he was serious and I don’t know if he saw me at all and the pain was…the pain was so enormous that I almost couldn’t feel it despite the fact that it was so great that it caused me to faint


but it wasn’t the pain that was the worst it wasn’t when he did what he did that was the most terrible but rather it was just before he was going to do it just before in the breath before he said that he wanted to try something new


can’t understand it can’t understand it can’t understand how you can want to cause such pain such pain such pain and tears don’t help because I’m freezing because it’s cold, it’s always cold cold down to the marrow and stuffing and it’s burning, the cold, it’s burning and it’s on fire and it hurts so bad it hurts so bad


and I screamed and screamed that I would tell everything he wanted to know and there was nothing that I wouldn’t tell if he only asked me to and I cried and screamed that I’ll do everything you want and I’ll tell everything you want if you just stop stop stop I’ll tell tell tell but he told me to shut up he told me to go to hell he didn’t give a damn what I had to tell, he said, and my desperation was greater than…
and I screamed and I screamed
and I told and I told
and I fainted and woke up and fainted and woke up
and finally I fainted again
can’t understand it can’t understand it can’t understand how it hurt so bad so bad so bad and tears don’t help because I’m freezing because it’s cold, life is always cold and life will always remain that way until the fire catches up with me and ignites me and consumes me and eradicates me and only then will I stop freezing, perhaps I’ll stop freezing then perhaps






TEDDY BEAR, 3

I move about freely. I am living a free life.

Eleven paintings in narrow, white wooden frames hang in the corridor on my floor. Abstract art. Painted with a lot of water and a knife’s edge of pastel paint. I don’t like them. I never would have chosen them myself. But in that case, would I have made things too easy for myself?
These paintings, in particular the two hanging before my door, counting from the stairwell, irritate me. Irritation stimulates reflection. Reflection develops me.
With paintings that I appreciated I would have stagnated.


My room is my universe. My bedroom and my bathroom.
I take my meals with the others in the dining hall one floor down.
Every week I go into the city. I take long city walks. I keep myself up-to-date. I know they’re performing a comedy by Bergdorff Lizard at the Zern Theater. It’s a tragic piece that must be carried by the individual efforts of the actors. Every other week I visit Mother and Father. I call them in advance and tell them I’m coming. I don’t want to surprise them at an unsuitable moment. I know that Father thinks my visits can be trying. I wish he himself would choose to see me.
As it is, he chooses not to.
Eric comes out to my place to visit.
Mother and Father never do.
What is more absurd than the life I’m living today is how defensive I get when I have to describe the life I’m living today.
That says something about society.
I shouldn’t need to defend myself.
On the other hand, I might agree that it’s peculiar that I’m married and responsible for the city’s leading advertising agency at the same time as I’m living this life in my own universe.


The mayor appointed our mother as head of the Environmental Ministry the same week that I completed my academic degree.
Mother has worked at the Environmental Ministry her entire life. At the transportation and energy offices, she had been in charge of recycling issues and responsible for the city’s road maintenance.
Nonetheless, her appointment came as a shock to those of us who were close to Mother.
There were many of us who were close to her.
I was the closest to her.
Her double identities were so well separated that I had a hard time seeing her in a role as a department head. To me her list of qualifications consisted of slow-cooking and roll-baking. For Mother herself this political success was expected. The animals in the city as well felt that the choice of Rhinoceros Edda was a good one. Mayor Lion knew what she was doing. Her most important mission was to appoint popular department heads. If she made popular decisions, the Mayor’s chances of reelection increased.
We celebrated Mother’s appointment in the evening. It was a Thursday in the beginning of June. There was me, my brother, and Mother and Father. We sat in the kitchen, and Father had bought a bottle of champagne after work. The news about Mother had been in the newspaper and Father got a discount on the champagne.
I don’t recall what we ate.
I smiled dutifully, raised my glass, and toasted.
I was deeply downhearted.
I had applied for an internship at the Environmental Ministry. For several years Mother had been in charge of the Planning Division, which dealt with issues of city planning and resource allotment. Her office was in Lanceheim. I had applied for a job at the Energy Unit in Tourquai. I believed that my future was in advanced energy research.
Now that was impossible.
With Mother as head of the Environmental Ministry my application papers would be questioned. My competency would be closely scrutinized. Even if I were deemed qualified, there would always be a measure of doubt.
I sipped the champagne, feeling confused.
What would I do now?
Time would help me answer that question, but that evening I felt the weight of an unobliging fate. For several years I had set my heart on a career in the Environmental Ministry, a place of employment big enough to hold both me and Mother.
Father gave a little speech.
“In order to gain something you have to give up something else,” he said.
His eyes glistened. I had never before seen him cry. Now a tear of pride was rolling down his cheek.
“But what you have given up, I don’t know,” he continued. “It’s not your family, in any case. Not your friends, either. Or your cooking ability. Perhaps it’s the other way around, because you’ve refused to give up, that you have gained?”
He’d intended to say something else, but Mother stood up and silenced him with a hug.
Eric applauded.
I applauded too. This took the edge off my brother’s irony. My smile, however, was still strained.
Then I recall a cozy evening in the kitchen. I recall that I set my disappointment aside to be happy with Mother. I recall that Eric and Father for once found something around which to unite. We showered Mother with congratulations and prophesied success for her in things both great and small. Not until I turned off the lamp on my nightstand did I again recall the situation that Mother had unknowingly put me in. I brooded a while, but soon fell asleep.
I was no longer the lost bear I’d been before.
I had become aware of myself.
These words from my late teens still apply. This was the way I saw, and still see, myself:
I am a stuffed animal who cannot commit an evil action. I am an animal who is driven to always, as far as is possible, do right.
With that it was said.
Not so remarkable.
Nonetheless, unusual.
This insight about how things stood grew during my secondary school years, but it was in the final grade that these intuitions blossomed into certainty.
When I understood, it was impossible to understand that I hadn’t already understood.
I’d always been the same, but when I was little I was not in command of my actions. Someone else—my parents or teachers or other grown-ups—decided in my place. Besides, I could still not determine what was right and wrong. I was brought up to believe that there was a kind of unwritten rule book in ethics to fall back on in difficult cases, and that you weren’t allowed to read that book before you were an adult.
I imagined to myself that I could disregard my intuitive sense of what was right and wrong, and that the anxiety created by the conflicts between my own conviction and the norms of society was just part of being a teenager.
That I would grow into myself.
That it was a matter of maturity.
Poor wretch.
Let me give examples:
I don’t walk against red lights.
I don’t tell “white lies.”
I redid one of my last examinations after I’d accidentally caught a glimpse of the answers my neighbor had filled in and then couldn’t figure out what I’d happened to see and which answers were my own. Despite the fact that the likelihood that I was influenced was very, very small. Despite the fact that he’d never done better than me on any test.
I’m not some kind of compulsive truth-sayer who can’t keep his thoughts to himself. I don’t run over to strange animals and accuse them of living in sin. But I suffer—and I don’t hesitate to use the word “suffer”—from an effort to be good and truthful in a way that restricts my life.
When I look back, I realize that it’s always been like that.


I talked with Mother and Father and Eric about the matter. They reacted in different ways.
I spoke with Father one morning when he had time and was sitting, enjoying the newspaper with a cooling cup of coffee. That was the way he liked his coffee best. Cold. I did my best to express what I was feeling. Father’s sense of justice was almost paralyzing. It was one of the most distinguishing features of his character, and I thought he would understand.
He didn’t understand.
He looked at me as if I were crazy. He muttered that life didn’t let itself be tamed. That principles were a way of surviving. That terms like “good” and “evil” always had to be put into context. After that he lost interest in his line of reasoning and returned to his newspaper and his cold coffee.


Mother didn’t understand, either.
We were on our way to the market hall in Amberville one Sunday the month after I’d finished my degree.
“I had a plan for the future,” I explained. “But then it didn’t work out. It doesn’t matter. My mission is more important than anything else.”
“What mission, darling?” asked Mother.
I told her. About being good, and what that entailed. About the illusory simplicity of the promise. How it was a matter of a full-time occupation and that perhaps I would have a hard time managing much more than that.
Mother didn’t understand.
I tried to explain three times, three times she changed the subject and instead talked about the red beets that we were on our way to buy.


Eric understood everything. This was no surprise. We were each other’s antitheses; if he hadn’t understood, it would have been strange.
Eric understood everything, but didn’t agree with anything.
Getting Eric interested in goodness was like getting a reptile interested in doing laundry.


After the summer, I applied for a job at an advertising agency.
It was by pure chance. A good friend of Father’s had told about a job as an assistant. The pay was better than for an established energy researcher. I sent in my application papers without any expectations. I will never understand why they decided to call me in for an interview. Two days after the interview they called and offered me the job. Father’s friend had exaggerated the pay, but only marginally. I arranged to start at the advertising agency Wolle & Wolle the first of October.
Wolle Hare and Wolle Toad had located their office in the Lanceheim district. Of the city’s four districts, Lanceheim is the largest. In Lanceheim there are both hectic office districts and broad, illuminated shopping blocks. In Lanceheim there are large, green areas of single-family homes in the north and crowded apartment blocks of high-rises and underground garages in the west. The advertising agency Wolle & Wolle was on plum-violet Place Great Hoch, just over a block from the Star and walking distance from the advertising school where the hare and the toad had once met.
The position I took was as assistant to Wolle Toad, the stingy, bean-counting Wolle in the successful duo.
I didn’t think it would mean anything.
I thought my mission in life had to do with goodness. That the job was something I could go to in the morning and go home from in the evening. Nothing more.
It didn’t turn out that way. Not at all.


I met Emma Rabbit on the outskirts of my universe.
In a neighboring galaxy.
She was an angel. If I close my eyes, I see her before me clad in white. How she floats up the stairway.
Can it have been at Wolle & Wolle? In that case, Emma must have felt as uncomfortable there as I did.
That was why we sought each other out. We were both in the wrong place at the same time. Forced to be in the wrong place, for different reasons.
Deep down, Emma Rabbit didn’t want to work at an advertising agency at all. She despised the advertising industry. It was for art that she lived and about art that she dreamed. It was in her studio apartment in Tourquai that she showed me the minimalist canvases where she, with the finest pony-hair brush and watercolors, created enchanted forests and meadows and fields and mountains.
After that evening my fascination turned to veneration.
In Emma Rabbit’s imagination lived primeval forests and wide-branching, richly fragrant deltas.
No one listened like she did.
With her head to one side and those big eyes that followed every thought. From its source to its outlet. I had never been able to talk with anyone that way.
It made me happy.
It made me unhappy. How many years had passed without my having a friend like her?


I brooded.
The job as assistant to Wolle Toad offered independence. I was creating routines on the basis of a responsibility that I myself had defined. This suited me well. My time was required, not my thoughts. This meant that I could devote myself to significant questions.
I was worried.
I was almost alone in putting value on that goodness that ought to be desirable for everyone.
I believe, I explained to Emma as we sat across from each other and her large eyes were locked with mine, that all animals are delivered good. But from the first day outside the factory we are exposed to temptations.
To expose the good to temptations is the challenge and driving force of evil. Evil derives its nourishment by luring the good stuffed animal to commit mistakes.
What worried me was how unequal the battle was. I drew up a number of maxims in order to make clear the relationship between good and evil.
Evil had a clear advantage.
Like this:
Evil is impossible without goodness. Evil seeks balance, it seeks symmetry. Evil is social, because it only exists in an opposing relationship. Goodness is self-sufficient. It needs no one, nothing. I can be good on my own. But to manifest evil requires a counterpart.
Evil is restless, goodness passive. Evil constantly seeks ways to reach its goal. If one temptation isn’t enticing, evil tries another. Goodness seeks nothing, because it knows in advance how it should be good. If evil is dynamic, changeable, and intellectually stimulating, goodness is, to put it bluntly, boring. Goodness doesn’t have much to put up in defense in the battle against all the temptations of evil. Evil is incomprehensible and absurd. Goodness lacks a short-term force of attraction.
Against the background of these suppositions, I asked Emma Rabbit, is it possible for an intelligent animal to remain good? Or, in reality, is goodness only possible for fools?
Emma Rabbit shook her tender head and wrinkled her plastic nose.
She didn’t have the answer. But in her eyes a possibility glistened.
I showered her with questions.
Are good actions without genuinely good intentions pointless? Are good intentions which result in misery disguised evil? If goodness is a matter of faith, is goodness impossible for the agnostic or atheist? Is there a clear connection between goodness and spiritual harmony? Is there a connection between evil and anxiety? If there isn’t such a connection, how will goodness find its adherents?
Emma Rabbit looked into my eyes. She had no answers, but together with her I dared to formulate the questions.
There were no answers, and together with Emma I was secure enough to dare to admit that.


The first time Emma met Mother, we were treated to mushroom risotto with boiled viper’s grass and béarnaise sauce in the kitchen in Amberville. With it was served the pickled pumpkin preserve that was Mother’s specialty. That same afternoon Mother had baked a rich carrot bread and had time to season the fresh cheese with dill. Mother had exerted herself.
Father thought that the vanilla sauce with lime and confectioner’s sugar was a tad bitter when it was served with the rhubarb pie.
Emma thought there was a lot of food.
Eric was, as usual, not at home.
Many times I’ve tried to recall the conversation we carried on in the kitchen that evening, but I don’t recall a single word.
I recall that Emma was tense.
In her eyes it wasn’t my mother who, with an apron around her voluminous trunk, stirred the risotto, it was the legendary department head Rhinoceros Edda.
Several months later Emma hinted that she had expected something else. I can only speculate about what she meant. Perhaps candelabras and crystal chandeliers, servants and a political discussion. Politics had never been discussed in the little kitchen on Hillville Road. There we talked about cooking, sports, and everyday things.
Emma was not interested in politics. From that it followed that she was politically unaware. Did Emma say something foolish about politics that evening? Something Mother and Father found inappropriate? Was I ashamed in such a case? I hope that I wasn’t ashamed. The shame of being ashamed is heavy to bear.
I loved Emma Rabbit. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your beloved.
Love had come stealthily. Love had waited, lain in wait and attacked when I least suspected it.
I’d been defenseless.
The first days I didn’t dare say anything. We attended to our roles as usual. She asked how the night had been, I answered that it had been good. She asked if I wanted to have the window open or closed. I answered closed.
But I answered with a joy that I couldn’t rein in. Love made me strong and exhilarated. It didn’t take very long before I told her how I felt.
I was afraid of how she would react.
In the kitchen with Mother and Father, she was the one who was afraid. Why didn’t she let her eyes sparkle and reveal all their warmth and joy? When Mother asked about her ambitions and mentioned that I’d told her about her paintings, why didn’t she say anything?


At ten o’clock Emma went home.
It was as if she’d never been there.
Mother and I sat down in the living room. We heard Father upstairs. Often he would sit at the desk in their bedroom and work until far into the night. I needed times to talk alone with Mother. It was a need she’d implanted in me, just as physical as my need for food or sleep. The spiritual closeness I felt toward her was coupled with these conversations.
As usual, we’d each opened a bottle of mineral water and placed them in front of us on the coffee table.
“Teddy, she’s marvelous,” said Mother as we heard Father’s footsteps from upstairs.
Then an insight struck me. When I heard Mother praise Emma Rabbit, common sense forced its way up through my amatory intoxication. For a moment I saw my beloved objectively. As Mother saw her.
I shut my eyes.
But a feeling of uncertainty remained. I understood that there was another way of looking at Emma Rabbit, in a different light than love’s rosy shimmer. I understood that the essence of my love was a loss of distance. This sort of absorption in one’s self and one’s own feelings was one of evil’s many temptations. Without distance, I felt myself pleasantly free from responsibility.
This made me afraid.
I consoled myself that this insight about the danger made it harmless. (Later I understood that this thought, too, was an attempt by evil to overthrow my mission in life.)
I tried to restrain myself. In the morning when Emma Rabbit came in I kept my eyes shut.
But it’s your deepest emotions that are the most difficult to conceal.
Emma Rabbit was like a drug. I could not refrain from the delight mixed with terror she infused into my heart.
One day we took a long walk on the shore in Hillevie. Emma had come to get me without advance notice.
We have something to celebrate, she said.
She didn’t say what it was. The daytime breeze picked up as we came down to the sea. Her ears bumped against her cheeks. She held on to me so as not to fall down. I held on to her. There was a scent of salty damp from the sea and of damp yarn around Emma. In a little more than a quarter of an hour the Afternoon Rain would be over Mollisan Town, while we were walking securely out here in Hillevie, watching the dark clouds passing over our heads.
“Teddy,” she said, “I’ve given notice.”
She was beaming with happiness. With happiness.
I was struck with panic. If she hadn’t been holding me under the arms I would have fallen flat onto the cold sand.
“Emma Rabbit,” I said, “will you marry me?”
I had thought about asking earlier. I had abstained. I’d been wise and strategic. I was through with so-called wisdom now. A seagull was screeching out over the sea.
“Emma Rabbit,” I repeated, “will you marry me?”
Later she would tease me about that. It was my need for control that caused me to get to the point, she would say. When I realized that I wouldn’t get to see her at work anymore.
She was so lovely on the shore at Hillevie. Happy as a cub at having finally made her decision and chosen art.
I put a damper on the mood with my proposal. I couldn’t let be.
“Emma Rabbit,” I said for a third time, “will you marry me?”
Her broad smile became even broader. She nodded and whispered, “Yes, thanks.” It was enchanting.
In the very next moment I knew that I could never carry out the marriage.


It had to do with Father.
Eric and I grew up with a powerful father figure. Boxer Bloom served not only as our role model; he was a role model for many. The stories about him were legion. The one I personally placed foremost, and which moved me most deeply, dealt with pride, dignity, and respect. It dealt with a stuffed animal’s attitude toward his place of employment.
When I started at Wolle & Wolle, it was unavoidable that I compared myself to my father.
Father had been trained as a schoolteacher. Immediately after his education, he started to work at the elementary school in Amberville, where he later remained. He taught chemistry and physics and made himself known for his unusually just treatment of the pupils. He became the school system’s living model, who proved that it was possible to treat everyone alike: cats and chimpanzees, foxes and badgers.
Therefore it was peculiar that Rector Owl called on Father in that particular affair that would transform their lives.
This was at the time when Eric and I were not yet in school, because we were too little. One evening as Father sat correcting papers in his office, there was an unexpected knock at the door. Father stopped what he was doing and looked out through the window. The storm had swept in over the city. Father often worked late, because he could be in peace in the evenings. Now he asked the person who was knocking to come in. To Father’s astonishment, Bo Owl was standing outside the door.
“Bloom,” said Rector Owl, “do you have a minute?”
Of course Father had a minute for the venerable rector. Owl had already been serving at Amberville when Father had been a pupil at the school. Father pushed his papers aside and prepared to listen. It was the first time Owl had called on him after school hours.
“You do have Nathan in your physics class, don’t you?” said Bo Owl.
Nathan was Bo Owl’s cub, a beaver who’d been delivered to the rector and his wife late in life. Now Owl’s cub was in one of Father’s final-year classes, and he had major problems with physics.
Father nodded thoughtfully, and said, “With your help, Bo, I’m certain that Nathan is going to pass his examination.”
“Unfortunately that’s not good enough, Bloom,” sighed the owl. “Nathan wants to continue his studies at the art academy. So he has to have the highest grades in all of his subjects, even in physics. Just passing isn’t good enough.”
“Then he’s really going to have to work at it,” declared Father.
That Beaver Nathan would receive the highest grades in physics, Father considered to be more or less impossible. Nathan had neither aptitude for nor understanding of the subject.
“We’re planning to work at it,” the rector assured him. “You can be quite certain that I as well as Nathan are going to do everything in our power to succeed.”
Father nodded.
“But what I would really appreciate,” continued the rector, “were if you, Bloom, also did everything you could.”
Father said that he always did his best. According to his opinion, most of the pupils responded well.
Father misunderstood the rector’s intentions. The idea of giving Beaver a grade that had nothing to do with his efforts was so preposterous that it didn’t occur to Father.
Rector Owl was forced to become explicit to the point of vulgarity. The conversation ended with Owl openly threatening Father. If Beaver Nathan wasn’t guaranteed the highest grade in physics, Father would lose his job.
Father left school that evening crushed. When he came home, at first he didn’t want to tell Mother what had happened. That an animal he had long admired could behave in this way made him deeply distressed.
He did not consider giving in to the threat.
Toward midnight he told how things stood. Mother’s reaction was practical.
“But we’ll never be able to afford living here,” she said.
Mother understood immediately that Father didn’t intend to accommodate Owl. He would thereby lose his job. The monthly payments for the mortgage on the house in Amberville were still high and Mother’s career had not yet taken off.
“No, no, there’s no danger,” said our na?ve father. “It’s clear that Rector Owl is going to come to his senses.”
Father was convinced that the rector would feel regret.
Father was convinced that the rector would call on him the very next day and apologize. The apology would be accepted, Boxer explained to Mother that night; we all react instinctively sometimes.


Naturally Bo Owl didn’t make an apology.
On the contrary.
When Owl realized that Boxer Bloom had no intention of doing what he wanted, Owl committed a serious mistake. What drove him to it? No one knows. Perhaps it was as Father believed, an overdeveloped protective instinct that went along with the fact that Owl got Nathan so late in life.
Bo Owl paid some baboons to threaten Father.
The baboons broke the windows at our house, wrote dirty words on our door, and subjected Father’s pupils to harassment. This treatment didn’t work. Father didn’t get scared. Instead Father’s empathy with Rector Owl deepened. For obvious reasons, this further provoked the rector.
Finally the apes threatened us.
They threatened Mother and me and Eric.
Then Father had had enough. Rage and terror caused him to make an unwise decision. He challenged the baboons to a duel. I don’t know how it went, how he managed to contact them, but so it was. Mother fled the field and took us cubs home to Grandmother.
When the apes came, there were more than twenty of them. I can see them walking abreast in two columns along Hillville Road. I can even imagine the lonely silhouette that stood in the middle of the street outside our house and waited for them. Desperate and furious. Broad and heavy, there he stands, watching them come.
When less than a hundred meters separates them, Father shouts, “Now it’s over! This is going to be the last thing you do!”
The apes slow their pace somewhat.
A sense of uncertainty appears in their ranks. There stands a single dog and seems convinced that he can get the better of them. This scene is one of the clearest memories my brother and I carry with us throughout life. Despite the fact that we weren’t even there.
The baboons suspect an ambush.
Amberville is not a district that they know, and one of them gets the idea that Bloom has mobilized the entire neighborhood. The rumor spreads in the ranks of the apes. Stuffed animals are sitting in the houses, waiting for Boxer’s signal. At any moment they’re going to come storming out onto the street and support him. Otherwise he would be crazy to challenge them alone.
When one of the apes in the forward rank stops, they all stop. The uncertainty increases. There is scarcely fifty meters between father and the baboons.
Father lets out a battle cry.
“Now I’m going to get you!”
With these words he starts running toward them.
The apes stand as though petrified. The scene is absurd; they can’t believe it. The most cowardly of them turns around and flees. Within a few seconds Father has the moral advantage. He increases his speed and screams at the top of his voice, “Now I’m coming to get you!”
Reality exceeds imagination. One by one the apes turn and follow close on the heels of the first deserter. Father imperceptibly reduces his speed so as not to catch up with the bravest.
The slowest.
He stops when he reaches the spot where the apes began their retreat. He looks far after them, knowing that they are never going to make problems for him again. The apes are going to feel ashamed. They are never going to tell the story as it was. Rector Owl is defeated and cub Nathan will get his rightful grade. Regardless of what that is and what it leads to.
“Now I’m going to get you, said Father.”
Eric and I made those words legendary. We told the story over and over again. We repeated it so many times that the reality became a fairy tale. A story of right and wrong. Of integrity and honor. Of decline and corruption.
A few days after Father had defeated the apes, Jason Horse phoned from the Ministry of Culture.
Father was offered Rector Owl’s position.
Father accepted.
The epilogue goes: Rector Owl disappeared and was not seen for several years. Later he was said to be at the university library in Lanceheim, where he was working in the archives. His cub, Nathan, is still driving bus number 6.


To summarize, in the autumn of age, a life consisting solely of good deeds is impossible. Apart from the fact that evil constantly tempts us, we are at some point placed in a situation of choice where goodness is not one of the alternatives.
My choice looked like this:
To injure the one I loved in order to remain true to myself. Or to rescue the beloved through false actions.
I could not marry Emma Rabbit.
I proposed to her in April. We set a date for the wedding at the end of August and thereby had time for the preparations. My love for Emma was stronger than ever.
The same applied to the insight that this marriage was insanity.
Both of our mothers were happy to excess about the upcoming wedding. They discussed what songs to sing, which guests to invite, and what flowers to order. Archdeacon Odenrick was spoken with, the band was booked, and dresses were sewn. Mother would prepare the food herself.
Father was more levelheaded and only intermittently took part in the planning. This worked out well, as Emma Rabbit was fatherless. It had always been painful for her to talk about her father, and therefore we let it be. But I understood that she was devoting a lot of thought to him during the wedding preparations.
I held myself at a proper distance from the planning.
I ought to have stopped the whole thing, but I couldn’t.
It wasn’t a matter of will.
I wanted to love Emma for better or for worse. I wanted to share the rest of my life with her in love and truth.
But that wouldn’t be possible.
We were no more than stuffed animals. Against our will we would come to injure one another, quarrel, and perhaps even be unfaithful to each other. Young and inexperienced, we gave our promises because we relied on love. But wherever I looked, in literature and in reality, lifelong pairing was only possible through mutual forgiveness or a similarly mutual lack of interest.
Neither the one nor the other was possible for the one who has chosen goodness.
To enter into this marriage with the knowledge that in five, ten, or twenty years I could betray my own youthful self was impossible.
I ought to have told Emma about my thoughts. But she was just as excited about the impending wedding as her mother. I couldn’t break her heart.


Three weeks before the wedding the thought came to me in my sleep. It arrived as easily as a bur in your fur. It was just as hard to get rid of.
Three weeks before the wedding. I didn’t know how I would get Mother to understand that I had to back out. I hadn’t paid any attention to Emma’s comments from the previous evening. She had said that it would be exciting to meet my brother Eric. She asked if he was older or younger.
I heard her ask the question.
I didn’t think any more about it.
But the idea came to me in my sleep.