Amberville

Chapter 20

They lifted Eric out of the ravine.

Down from the sky came a chair in slow motion. It was an absurd experience, because they could neither see the arm of the crane nor the wires, only a large armchair slowly gliding down out of the gray-black night sky. They caught sight of it at roughly the same time. Soundlessly it landed a few meters from them.
“The bear will sit down,” said a gruff voice that echoed down to the bottom of the ravine.
Eric looked from one friend to the other, and they nodded. They had confidence in him. Even Snake looked hopeful.
“You’ll manage this,” said Tom-Tom, giving Eric a pat on the shoulder. “Damn it.”
Sam nodded in agreement, and Eric took the few steps over to the armchair and sat down. Immediately the chair began to be hoisted up, and with a tense hold on the arm of the chair Eric Bear vanished into the night.
His friends down on Left-hand Road could hear the tumult that broke out above them when the armchair finally became visible to those who were waiting. The snake, the crow, and the gazelle stood completely still, listening to the sounds from the Garbage Dump’s animals as they departed with Eric. Then it became silent again.
Unpleasantly silent.
Sam looked at Snake, who slowly let the green tip of his tail sway back and forth.
“I’m not saying anything,” he said. “I’m not saying anything.”
Sam took a hoof-full of light-blue pills out of his pants pocket, generously offering some to his friends. The snake and the crow declined, the one with contempt and the other courteously and amiably, whereupon the gazelle—not without a certain amount of difficulty—swallowed the pills himself.


They carried Eric on the armchair to the Garbage Town. His plan was to try to commit the route to memory so as to be able to make his way back on his own, and this demanded concentration. They carried him through tunnels and over a bridge. Back and forth, it felt like, across these mountains of refuse in a dark world which stank of putrefaction and where none of the contours were comprehensible to him.
Four stuffed animals carried the armchair on their shoulders. Eric perceived their strong odors and guessed that they were horses of various types, perhaps dromedaries or donkeys. Around them a dozen shadowy figures were moving in the night, and after a few minutes Eric identified Hyena Bataille as the group’s commander. He had heard about Bataille. Up to now the bear had succeeded in maintaining a certain composure, but now the feeling of displeasure became much too strong. He abandoned his ambition of memorizing the many right and left turns, and instead closed his eyes. Images of Teddy and Emma filled him. But despite the fact that he exerted himself to refrain, again and again his thoughts slipped over to Bataille. Could everything he’d heard be true?
After perhaps a quarter of an hour, the surrounding sounds became louder and louder. Eric opened his eyes and understood that he was on the outskirts of the Garbage Town he’d heard talk of but never seen. In the moonlight—there surely remained a half hour before the full moon would become half again—hovels formed of refuse were outlined. Walls and roofs leaned at odd angles, or else the constructions were on their way to sinking down into the dump’s clay blanket of refuse. But the more compact the settlement became, Eric observed, the higher the walls rose.
When he saw Rat Ruth’s residence he realized that he had reached the center point of the Garbage Town. The queen’s residence consisted of a mass of free-standing, multi-angled hovels connected to each other by a network of winter garden–like passageways. Shards of glass of various colors had been pieced together in the passageways, and in the moonlight the mosaic sparkled to great effect.
The animals who led Eric to the residence handed him over to two bats. They led him along the multicolored glass corridors. The impression was kaleidoscopic; up was down and down was up, and several times the bear involuntarily stumbled where he was walking. It stank of muck and anxiety. The hyena had thankfully stayed outside, and from the howling crowd of animals that met Eric in the open area in front of the residence—and which reminded him of the angry mobs he’d read about in history books many years ago—not a sound was heard.
They passed through buildings that seemed to be empty and suspended in oblivion. In the glass corridors Eric was blinded by light; in the pitch-black hovels between them he couldn’t even see where he was setting his paws. The floor was uneven and sometimes crunched when he stepped on something. Here and there he believed he heard stuffed animals whispering as he passed by, animals concealed by the solid darkness but who had become accustomed to it and therefore could see him without him seeing them.
It was only when they came into the queen’s hall that Eric could make out the contours around him. He was led in through an opening in the farther wall. Directly across, on the other side of the room, was Ruth’s throne. He sensed how a mass of movements occurred at the same moment as he came in, and he glimpsed tails and hind legs hurrying out through the door openings on the room’s opposite side.
Ruth was slumped on her throne, apparently bored, and hardly looked up as they approached. Eric, who had become accustomed to seeing her at the meetings of A Helping Hand, was shocked at how she suddenly seemed to fit in. From being a suspect rat who through her mere presence transformed the individuals around the conference table to normalcy, here she was in her right element. She radiated a power that Eric had never even suspected, and—this impression he had the moment he stepped into the hall, and it was reinforced during their conversation—she possessed a kind of passive goodness that took him completely by surprise. She was nonetheless the Queen of the Garbage Dump.
“Ruth,” he said, “I’m sorry to have to…”
He didn’t know how he should continue.
The rat was surprised by the direct address, and she sharpened her gaze. When she recognized him she seemed to be surprised, and she signaled to the bats to take a step to the side so that the bear wasn’t standing pressed in between them.
“Eric Bear?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry to have to look you up like this in the middle of the night,” he said, “but I have a matter which I must speak with you about. And it cannot wait.”
Above all else this seemed to amuse the rat. She sat up in her throne, signaled to Eric to come closer, and leaned forward a little, as one did to listen to a little cub. When Eric took a few steps forward, the bats followed along. The bear did his best to pretend not to notice this.
“It concerns a…” and he looked around again, into the darkness along the walls of the hall, “it concerns a list.”
The rat looked uninterested.
“A list?” she repeated.
“A list,” Eric confirmed.
But when he didn’t see even the hint of understanding in her gaze, he made himself clear in a whisper: “The Death List.”
The rat’s eyes narrowed. She leaned back, as if the cub she’d taken him for had shown himself to be more na?ve than she’d thought.
“Leave us alone,” she commanded.
Both of the bats turned around and disappeared before Eric even had time to react. Judging by all the commotion along the dark walls, there had been several animals in there. When the silence resumed, Ruth looked at him commandingly at the same time as she raised one eyebrow.
“And so?” she said, and in her small, dull, pearl eyes he saw nothing either confirming or denying.
There he stood, alone and defenseless, in the Garbage Town queen’s innermost hall. The rat reposed heavily in her overwhelming power where she sat, but still, Eric felt no fear. He remained tense, however, uncertain whether she was trying to lull him into a false sense of security.
“I know,” said Eric, “that you draw up the Death List.”
“How is that?”
The words fell with an indifference that caused Eric to tremble.
“It has come to my knowledge,” he repeated, “that it is you who are behind the Death List.”
Ruth continued staring at him, and then burst out in loud, surprising laughter. It sounded like a quick succession of snorts and contained no joy whatsoever, but it was still a laugh.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard,” snorted the queen. “Would Magnus allow me to decree over life and death?”
“It’s not the idea that you’re putting on airs,” said Eric in a voice which he hoped sounded convincing. “I know what I know.”
“Nonsense,” snorted the rat.
“Noah Camel,” said Eric.
The rat stiffened. “Who?”
“Your courier has been gossiping. And you don’t need to concern yourself about punishing him, he’s already gotten his punishment.”
“I’ve never heard talk of any camel,” said the rat, but there was a hesitation in her voice that hadn’t been there before.
“This is my story,” said Eric Bear.
Then he told everything that had happened. He told about Emma, and about the passion he’d experienced during their years of being in love, a passion which made him tremble with excitement and shake with jealousy. Love, said Eric Bear to Rat Ruth, had caused his heart to become heavier than an anchor from sorrow and dejection, and at the same time it had caused him to feel as exhilarated as a helium balloon. He told how passion deepened and turned into unselfish love, and then: the self-sacrificing, lavish love that made him courageous, invincible, and beautiful. Finally he told about love as the deep commonality that withstood trials and temptations by quite simply making him blind. How could he be lured by someone else, when he didn’t see anyone else, filled to the brim as he was by his soul’s one and only, Emma Rabbit.
Then Eric told about his twin brother Teddy, and about the life that Teddy was living which just as easily might have been Eric’s. And vice versa. And how the closeness and tenderness that ached in him became harder and harder to endure with every year since their teens. The same pain, Eric admitted to Rat Ruth, was in Teddy, the same closeness, although with other indications, and it had always been like that. They were each other’s fate, they could not be separated and therefore it must be so, that if Magnus took one of them, he must also take the other. If only one of them remained, an asymmetry would arise which wasn’t possible, like east without west.
At the start Rat Ruth shook her head at Eric Bear’s swarm of words, and she yawned to show how bored she was. More than once she raised her paw to silence him, but he didn’t let himself be silenced. And slowly but surely he won her interest. Word by word, sentence by sentence, and minute by minute he pulled her into his emotional life and stuck her solidly between love and desperation. He could see that what he was saying actually meant something to her, that deep within the rat’s soul was a little rat who recognized itself.
And when he fell silent after having for the first time dared to formulate all the pain he’d closed up inside himself since last Tuesday up at the Environmental Ministry, the rat sat silently for a long time on her throne, staring at him.
Then she made her decision.
She waved him up to the throne, and showed with a gesture that he could take a place on one of the stair steps right next to her right back leg. It was only then that Eric noticed that Rat lacked a right claw, and it demanded a real exertion of will not to stare at the clawless leg.
The bear sat where he’d been shown, and Ruth spoke to him in a kind of hissing sound that could not possibly be heard by anyone else.
“It’s not me,” said Rat Ruth. “I have it here, it’s true, and I send it on. With the camel or with someone else, and that’s true as well. But I’m not the one who makes the list.”
A confession.
Eric was amazed.
The confession came directly, without awkwardness or pride. It was too simple, thought the bear. Why did she confess? So thoughtlessly? How could she be sure that Noah Camel really had squealed; perhaps she’d already spoken with Noah in the evening and knew that the game was up? Had the Queen of the Garbage Dump been seriously moved by Eric Bear’s sentimental stories?
“I don’t know who does it, and even if I did know,” said Ruth, “I wouldn’t tell. And, believe me, there is nothing you or your friends can do to force me.”
She had to lie. The list must be hers. She was, after all, the Queen Over the Decay of Everything. Eric Bear refused to accept what he was hearing.
“Thereby,” said Ruth, “I believe that your business is—”
“It’s not over,” he interrupted.
“What?”
“After the Chauffeurs come. It’s not over, it’s just the beginning of something new.”
Rat shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m not getting involved in that,” she said.
“And everything you can do for me now,” he said, “will be counted in your favor then. In the next life.”
“You’re out of your mind,” hissed Ruth, but there was an amused look in her eyes. If nothing else he had lured her into extending the conversation.
“It’s not about wisdom,” he said.
“You’re a lunatic,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Just by the fact that you believe it’s possible to remove two names from the list.”
His pulse beat faster. Was he about to talk her into a new, and greater, admission?
“I’ve heard the stories too,” he said. “Many of them. It’s possible to remove one name…”
“Possible? I wouldn’t call removing a name from the Death List possible,” hissed Rat Ruth, still with a degree of exhilarated scorn in her voice.
“…but two names are impossible,” concluded Eric.
“Let me put it like this,” said Ruth, “and I’m not the one who thought of it, I’m only repeating something someone said to me a long time ago. ‘One removal is for the divine, more is for the unborn.’ I don’t know what that means, but it sounds as though you’re up against the impossible.”
It was Eric’s turn to shrug his shoulders.
“Madness,” repeated Ruth.
After that she raised her voice and shouted, “Guards!”
The bear got up with a jerk. He was standing only a few decimeters from the rat and realized that he was exactly the same height as she. But before he had time to consider his options, the bats were again at his side.
“Take him to his friends,” ordered Ruth. “And throw them out of here, all four of them. Their business is going to remain unfinished. Eric Bear, to find a treasure, the treasure has to be buried.”
And with that the bats took a rough hold of his shoulders and led him away.


At the same moment as he stepped back out into the cool night the stench struck him. Eric Bear had nearly forgotten about it inside with the rat. Certainly it smelled of mold and slime inside the residence as well, but it was nothing compared to the stench here at the top of the Garbage Dump. Instinct caused him to start breathing through his mouth, and thereby he released an involuntary sigh. The bats’ grip on his shoulders was achingly tight, and despite the fact that he obeyed their slightest suggestion of where and how fast he should walk, they held him just as hard the whole time. He shuddered at the thought of the long march back to the ravine where Sam, Tom-Tom, and Snake were waiting.
Then these words came as though out of nowhere: “Release him.”
The bats stopped in their tracks.
The deep voice that had spoken these words was accustomed to being obeyed. In the next second, Eric realized that they had already released him. From the frying pan right into the fire. Eric, too, had recognized the harsh voice.
Hyena Bataille.
“You can go,” said Bataille, now at an angle behind them, and the bats were gone without Eric seeing how it happened.
He stood dead still. Should he run? No one was holding him back, and the darkness might conceal him. If Bataille caught up with him? Strength, setting, and speed were in the hyena’s favor; all Eric could hope for was luck.
That would scarcely be enough.
“We have something to talk about,” said Bataille. “But not here.”
The bear remained motionless. He had no idea what the hyena meant, but he sensed that the words were intended to distract or possibly fool him.
Then Bataille was standing there, less than a meter away.
“Follow me,” he said.
He turned around and started walking.
It was now or never.
With a leap the bear would catch up with the hyena, onto him, over him. Possibly Eric could get his paws around his neck, around his throat…
Bataille turned around. “Are you coming?”
And when Eric saw the hyena’s face and it became clear to him that this truly was the legendary Hyena Bataille, not some little mole in the schoolyard, he also realized how ludicrous the thought had been. Flee? Overpower Bataille?
Eric nodded and followed.
Bataille led the bear away from the Garbage Town, back toward the ravine where his friends were prisoners. After a little more than five minutes they passed a windmill-like propeller that was fastened to a low tower. The hyena pointed.
“This way.”
Under the propeller was a hovel in which there was a three-legged table and two gray corduroy armchairs. Bataille made a gesture toward the bear, and Eric sat down.
“I don’t know what I should say,” sighed Bataille, “but Ruth can be difficult.”
Eric nodded.
He would agree with whatever Bataille said, and he would reply courteously to whatever question was asked. Keeping yourself alive was more important than anything else. Without him, who would rescue Emma and Teddy?
“I’ve known her for…I don’t know how many years,” said Bataille in his dark, harsh voice. “And yet…I don’t know.”
Eric nodded again, then shook his head. He hoped that these were movements that were in agreement with Bataille’s state of mind and insinuations.
“If I kill all four of you,” said Bataille, “then…I don’t know. Perhaps she won’t give a damn? But, then…you two sit on some board together?”
“A Helping Hand,” confirmed Eric.
The hyena nodded. Thought about it.
“I’m taking no risks. She gave me the task of bringing you to your friends and releasing all of you. But I can’t let the snake go now that he’s finally come. I want Marek.”
Eric stared. “Marek?”
“But that’s not what she ordered me to do. So I need your permission, Bear. I don’t intend to get in trouble with the rat.”
Hyena nodded. “Give me your blessing, say that you allowed me to take Marek. That will be enough for her, it’s you she’s interested in. Then you’ll get something from me.”
“But…I…”
“For I know who writes the Death List,” said Hyena Bataille.





TEDDY BEAR, 4

I always had time to have coffee at Nick’s on brick-red Uxbridge Street. If I didn’t do anything else when I went into the city, at least I did that. Nick steamed the milk scalding hot and baked his apple muffins with cardamom. He worked the register himself in front of shelves filled with bread loaves and baguettes. We’d gotten to know each other over the years. We said hello.

I sat in the first booth, by the window facing the street. It was always unoccupied. Other regulars preferred sitting in the booths farther in. The place was long and narrow and all the booths looked alike. A round table, fastened to the floor, with a white laminated surface. A red leather couch that encircled the table in a U shape. Tall backrests that created a sense of isolation. The regular customers came to Nick’s for isolation.
The lighting isn’t worth mentioning.
With the spoon I poked a hole through the milk foam, watching warm vapors from the coffee rise up toward the ceiling. Like a thought.
Across from Nick’s is the building where my twin brother, Eric, and my wife, Emma Rabbit, live.
Number 32 Uxbridge Street. They live on the fourth floor. The windows that face the street are from the living room and dining room. From my booth in the café I might see them walking across the parquet floor.
The day I’m going to tell about, I couldn’t see them through the windows.
The day I’m going to tell about was twenty-two days ago.
The day I’m going to tell about, a powerful red gorilla came out of the entryway to number 32 Uxbridge Street. This occurred as I took a bite of my muffin, which included a large piece of apple. The gorilla held open the door, and out onto the street stepped a well-dressed dove. After the dove followed yet another gorilla. I was certain that this peculiar company did not live in the building, because I knew who lived there. The gorillas and the dove pointed across the street, directly at me where I was sitting on the seat by the window. They couldn’t see me. You couldn’t see in through the windows to Nick’s Café. This was due to the reflectivity of the glass.
It was the café itself the dove was pointing at, and all three of them crossed the street with rapid steps.
Before the situation became clear to me, the little troika was standing inside Nick’s, a few meters from my booth, ordering coffee and croissants.
I pulled myself all the way in against the wall and concealed my face behind a dessert menu that was always on the table. Hidden behind types of ice cream, various toppings and flavorings, I heard, to my terror, that the dove and the gorillas were taking a place in the booth next to mine.
“That ought to have scared the shit out of the bear bastard,” said a harsh voice that must have belonged to one of the gorillas.
“Firewood out of the table,” laughed a similar voice that must have been the other gorilla’s.
“Shut up!” hissed a high-pitched voice that with certainty belonged to the dove. “Eat your croissants and keep your mouths shut.”


I could not marry Emma Rabbit.
I loved her. I’d proposed to her. The date for the wedding was set. My parents and her mother were happy. Each in their own way.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t.
It was unavoidable that Father’s story had something to do with it.


I think best after dinner.
When I’ve had a cup of coffee after eating. For dessert I eat dried figs straight from the bag, up in my room. Across from me hangs an enormous painting depicting the sea. Emma painted it a few months after we’d met, but I had it framed a few weeks ago. The painting must be three by five meters. Apart from a lighthouse far to the left, the canvas is filled by the sea and foaming waves. Hundreds of dark-blue nuances have been painted with a brush, giving the impression of never having been lifted from the canvas. The artist seems never to have hesitated. The technique suggests an aggressive impatience. It must have been inside her. Somewhere.
You see what you’re looking for.
You see the sort of things that are within yourself.
I must have known that there was something about Father. Intuitively I already knew that there was something about Father when I was very small. I knew it during my school years. This knowledge was no more than a twitch in my eyelid. No more than the ripples on the surface of the bathwater. I carried the secret around in the same way you constantly carry around the decisive moments in life.
You know about them both before and after they have taken place.
I knew about my father’s secrets. I knew that life is not for all time. I knew that in the end you always stand alone. I knew that my free will was my greatest enemy. How did I know?
I can’t explain that.
Our father, Boxer Bloom, the wisest and most just animal in our city.
When the secret was on its way to reach conscious awareness, like the sand that inexorably runs out of the hourglass, I turned the glass upside down again. Then I did the same thing again and again and again. But with the years I didn’t have the strength to resist.
Was it maturity? Perhaps simply fatigue? It wasn’t courage.
I had learned to see through the underlying structures of society. On the other hand, the breeze in my fur in the twilight can go right by me. I don’t perceive the aroma of boxwood or the sun’s warmth against my nose.
Shame hides when we’re not searching for it.
Shame’s best hiding place is right in front of our eyes.
Father always worked late. This wasn’t strange. It was better to correct the pupils’ papers at the office than to drag everything home. There were conferences to prepare for and carry out. A series of social activities demanded his presence.
It happened that I saw him sitting in the car on the school’s parking lot, conversing with one of the other teachers. Perhaps it was a female teacher? That wasn’t strange. A rector was no better than his teachers. A rector’s priorities must be respected.
On one occasion they got out of the car just as I was walking across the parking lot. I didn’t ask him why they’d been sitting in the car.
I never asked him.
It was my fault, and I am living with that.
There are philosophers who maintain that evil is passivity. In our secularized, transparent, and democratic city, passivity is the only kind of evil that remains. All others have been rooted out. Taken into custody. All other kinds of evil can be controlled and limited.
So it’s said.
Rhetoric. Empty rhetoric. Nothing is new under the sun.
The unwillingness to help a stranger has to do with laziness. It has to do with cowardice. The result of laziness and cowardice is passivity, but we can read about the reasons behind it in theology.
Laziness and cowardice.
I was not blind to my shortcomings. Nonetheless, I wasn’t able to confront Father. You speak of codependency with regard to substance abuse. Those who are close to the substance abuser make themselves a part of the behavior by not confronting it. That isn’t passivity, it’s guilt.
Father’s cowardice became my cowardice.
I hope that his guilt was as hard to bear as mine.
I have excuses. There are always excuses. I was forced to transform my amazing father, the unsurpassable Rector Bloom, into a cowardly wretch who didn’t dare admit that he was unfaithful. That was asking a lot. While I was growing up I had filled the image of my father with everything I respected in life. When I realized the truth, it was not just Father who fell from his pedestal.
It was my life that came crashing down.
Eric already knew. He didn’t care. He kept silent.
I did, too. Every morning my father met my mother in the kitchen with a big smile, a warm embrace, and a cup of coffee. It was my fault that her life became false and distorted in one stroke. My fault. Not because of what I did. Because of what I refrained from doing. My passivity.
My cowardice.
Never again.
I will never again be a part of such a tragedy.
I don’t intend to react. I act.
I couldn’t get married to Emma Rabbit.
There were a number of reasons.
This was just one of them.
I had become, and intended to devote my life to remaining, a good bear.


I didn’t hear what they were talking about. After the dove’s reprimand the gorillas lowered their voices. The murmuring from the next booth was impossible to make out.
I never eavesdrop.
Usually there’s nothing to hear.
It was different at Nick’s that day. If I’d had the opportunity, I would have committed their conversation to memory. But I drank my coffee, wiped the foam from my whiskers, and gave up on hearing what they were saying. Outside the window a car or two drove past. The Morning Weather was getting old and I considered leaving the place. Usually I went to Nick’s in the afternoons. Fate and an unexpected change in my routine out at Lakestead House had caused me to go into the city right after breakfast.
When she came walking up the street from Balderton Street I didn’t recognize her at first.
It was so unexpected.
She never left the studio before noon. She lived for her art and knew that the victories were in the obstacles. If the work felt empty and sluggish she understood not to give up and go away. It was a matter of suffering through it and persevering. On the other side of difficulties was the creativity that made her forgetful of time and space. Then she could work until far into the evenings. Sometimes into the night.
She never left the studio before noon, and yet Emma Rabbit was strolling nonchalantly on Balderton Street this morning. Astounded, I watched her direct her steps right toward Nick’s.
Wearing a long, thin coat with a fur collar. She had on high brown-leather boots with suns embroidered on the calf. She carried her head high, as she’d always done. Even though she seemed to be on her way to Nick’s I was sure I was imagining things. She would go home. It did happen that I imagined things. Now I was imagining that she was looking right into my eyes through the window toward the street that I knew was impossible to see through.
Instead of turning the corner on Uxbridge Street, she continued straight across the crosswalk at the intersection. For that reason she disappeared from my line of sight for a few moments. The following second the door to Nick’s opened, and there she stood.
Emma Rabbit.
Less than five meters away.
She could not be allowed to see me. Under no circumstances must she see me sitting here.
I improvised.
My half-eaten muffin was on the plate next to the coffee cup. With a quick movement I bumped against it. It bounced toward the seat and fell down onto the floor under the table. I produced a gesture of irritation—however, not the slightest sound—and followed the muffin down under the table. From there I saw how Emma wiggled the toe of her right boot in expectation that Nick would serve her. My muffin and I remained under the table as Emma ordered a cup of tea, paid Nick, and took her small tray and carried it past my booth.
She didn’t go far.
I heard her before I’d even managed to climb up and set myself on the couch again.
“So there you are!”
She was talking to the dove and the gorillas in the neighboring booth.


I went to see Eric. I went to see him in enemy territory. We of course had no place to meet.
The external circumstances of my life had been transformed. Right before I started at Wolle & Wolle I moved away from home. I moved out to the coast and Lakestead House. The move must have occurred before I started at the advertising agency, because when I met Emma Rabbit I was living out here.
Eric and I never saw each other at home with Mother and Father on Hillville Road. He maintained that he had regular contact with Mother. He despised Father like the plague. I saw our parents once or twice a week. We never talked about Eric. Father and I were not in agreement about everything, but we agreed on the fact that Eric hadn’t been able to hold his own against evil.
He had fallen.
Father didn’t forgive him.
I forgave him.
I went to see Eric at Casino Monokowski, despite the fact that I’d promised myself never to set my paw there again. I was desperate. I couldn’t get married to Emma Rabbit, despite the fact that I loved her.
Just like the first time, I was admitted by a doorman who mistook me for my brother. The Afternoon Weather was no more than approaching, but inside Casino Monokowski it might just as well have been midnight. I found Eric in a distant corner, at a small table that was hidden behind one of the many bar counters.
He was not surprised to see me.
“What time of day is it?” he asked.
“It’s the middle of the day,” I answered.
“Doesn’t feel like it,” he said. “I’ve got to have something to wake up.”
He called to the duck behind the bar and ordered black coffee and some type of alcohol. I presume. I shook my head, I didn’t want anything.
“Tell me how the Angels are doing,” Eric asked.
In last year’s finals the Yok Gigantes had defeated our Amberville Angels in the seventh and decisive final match. We hadn’t been that close to a victory in fourteen years. It was fourteen years ago that we’d last taken home the great goblet. Until now the season had alternated between heaven and hell.
“I’ve missed it all,” said Eric.
“It’s not impossible that it’ll happen this year,” I said. “It’s not impossible at all. Harry’s form is holding up. He’s made more goals than he did in the whole season last year. He’s on his way…”
“But defensively?” asked Eric, putting his finger on the sore spot. “Are we going to manage the defense?”
While I expanded on how I perceived this year’s team lineup, animals were circling around us. We were, and always had been, an attraction. Identical twins were unusual. The most curious were the employees of the casino. Eric’s workmates. Waiters and waitresses, croupiers and bartenders, guards and stewards. Eric didn’t pay any attention to them.
When I had exhausted the subject of the Amberville Angels as thoroughly as I could, silence fell between us. It was never uncomfortable.
“Is there something in particular?” he asked.
I nodded; there was.
“And if it had been something simple, you would have already spit it out,” said Eric.
I nodded again. We were twins, we understood each other. Eric called for more alcohol, I ordered a cup of coffee to have something to do. The attraction value of looking at twins receded. The table where we were sitting was isolated, and there was nothing to keep us from having a frank conversation.
I didn’t know where I should begin.
“There’s no difference between small crimes and great crimes,” I said. “It is said that you can overlook some but not others. But whose arbitrariness should apply?”
Eric shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and sipped his drink. I let my coffee cool in the cup.
“I refuse to compromise,” I said. “And, besides, that’s impossible. Walking against a red light and making a killer of a law-abiding driver can’t be less serious than stealing an orange at a Springergaast.”
Eric shrugged his shoulders.
“Is it so impossible to understand? It seems to be impossible to understand. They say I have to be reasonable. Even Mother thinks this is getting crazy. She says that I have to see the context. Making judgments is an art in itself, she says. I don’t need to make judgments. It’s a matter of courage. To have the strength to keep from compromising.”
“And you think I have problems,” said Eric.
“I’ve never said that,” I answered.
“No,” Eric quickly agreed. “No, Teddy, that’s right. You’ve never accused me of anything.”
And he smiled at me and took my paw over the table.
Then I wept. I couldn’t help it.
“Eric,” I said, “I’m not here to ask you for a favor.”
His gaze was sharp despite the alcohol.
“I’ve come to propose a businesslike agreement to you. Between brothers. Without papers and signatures. But no less binding for that.”
“An agreement?” asked Eric.
I nodded. Now I knew what I should say. It didn’t make the words easier to get out of me.
“I get something, and you get something in exchange,” I said.
“What do I get?” he wanted to know.
There was expectation in the air.
“Money,” I answered at last.
“You intend to pay me?” asked Eric.
“Yes I do,” I confirmed. “You’ll get paid.”
“I get paid at Casino Monokowski, too,” he said.
“You’re going to get more from me,” I said. “Lots more.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear the rest…”
“I have problems. With my life, Eric. It’s hard being good.”
This sounded pathetic. I couldn’t continue. But Eric understood me. He had always understood me. He nodded. I swallowed, collected myself, and continued.
“Being good and at the same time living an everyday life…it’s…I’m forced into situations that…where all the alternatives are equally impossible. And I cannot…Eric, I’m serious, I…”
Then I whispered.
“Either I die, Eric. Die now. Quickly. Before I fall for the temptations. Before I’m seduced by the sort of things that others regard as bagatelles. Little things. That’s how evil tries to lure me. With the little things. Or else…we find a way out.”
He remained sitting silently. I dried my tears. I cleared my throat and did my best to focus. What I had to say demanded a certain degree of dignity.
“Eric, the agreement I am proposing…I want you to take my place. When life forces me to make a decision…when life forces me to do things…that are not compatible with goodness.”
He met my gaze, and I looked down at the table.
Now it was said.
The silence that followed became a long one.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Okay, we’ll do it. Shall we go?”
And with that I left Casino Monokowski for the second, and final, time.


I couldn’t stay under the table.
As long I could see her brown boots with the suns on the calf I didn’t dare risk anything, but when they disappeared out of sight I assumed that she’d sat down with the dove and the gorillas. With a certain difficulty I wriggled myself back up onto the red seat. I didn’t want to risk Nick coming over to my booth and asking what I was doing. It would have been difficult to explain.
A single thought echoed in my head. I ought not to have been this close to Emma Rabbit. Not at Nick’s Café, right across the street from number 32 Uxbridge Street, that sober, brick-red street.
She had just arrived. I had to go.
I had to get out of there.
I evaluated my chances. Could I make my way from my booth and over to the door without Emma seeing me? It was likely that she was sitting on the outside of the booth behind mine. If she were seated facing in, the possibilities of succeeding were reasonable. But if she were seated facing the exit…
And if I remained sitting?
They were carrying on a conversation which I still could not hear, but Emma’s soft, clear voice went right into my heart. It was painful.
So near.
After a few minutes I’d had enough. I had to do something. It was impossible to remain sitting. I moved carefully along the table. I held on to the menu in order to conceal my face if that should be required.
It was required.
Suddenly the tone from the neighboring booth changed. Departure. Farewells. I ducked down behind the dessert menu. A few seconds later Emma Rabbit was standing right next to me. She stood with her back turned toward me. The dove placed himself alongside her. I peeked over the edge of my dessert menu. The dove and Emma were embracing each other. They were hugging. Thank goodness the dove closed his eyes as he hugged her, otherwise he would have seen me. I ducked down behind the menu again.
“Bye-bye, Papa,” said Emma Rabbit.
“Bye-bye, honey,” said the dove.
“And, Papa,” said Emma, “if you forget my birthday again this year I’ll never forgive you.”
The dove laughed a high-pitched laugh, and I heard how Emma turned and left the place.
I don’t know what I did then.
I remained sitting behind my menu until long after the dove and his gorillas had left the café.
I had just seen the fatherless Emma Rabbit’s father.
It was a lie. She was a lie. Thoughts raced through my head, like balloons bursting.
My Emma. Who was she really?