Chapter 21
They say that a stuffed animal can get used to anything, but each time he returned, Eric Bear found Yiala’s Arch just as repugnant. It had as much to do with the narrow alley, reeking of urine, as with Sam Gazelle’s claustrophobic apartment. Despite all that was at stake, Eric was forced to overcome the most intense revulsion each time he returned to Yok after having carried out an errand somewhere else in the city. When he passed Eastern Avenue and continued south, it was as though he were crossing a border. His identity was wiped out in a single stroke. In the rest of the city there was a surrounding world which reflected him as the sum of his actions. There animals understood how to interpret his ironic humility. In Yok he was nobody.
It was terrible.
And with heavy steps he turned into the grass-green alley and with bowed head went over to the entry to number 15. Eric Bear was so filled up with his dejection that he didn’t sense trouble. All his concentration was directed inward. Perhaps otherwise he would have noticed that someone had knocked over the large cactus—the one that bloomed with small red flowers—that stood in a cement planter right inside the entryway.
Slowly Eric walked up the stairs. The memory of Snake Marek’s helpless cries caused him to stop on the first stairway landing.
Eric, Sam, and Tom-Tom had sneaked away across the Garbage Dump. Hyena Bataille had promised not to let himself down into the ravine before the three were out of sight and earshot. He had broken his promise. The memory of Snake’s desperate cries echoed in Eric’s head.
He sighed heavily and continued up the stairs. He was so occupied with his own pain that he didn’t perceive the smell of a cigar, or think about the fact that the door to Sam’s apartment was ajar.
After the night at the Garbage Dump Eric Bear had devoted Friday morning to a stop by his office. He didn’t recall when he’d last slept, but fatigue had become a constant condition which no longer worried him. At Wolle & Wolle people came and went more or less as they pleased. You were often working on projects, and right before the appointed deadline it was not unusual that you practically lived at the office. And the other way around: after the assignment was delivered, you gladly took a few days’ well-earned vacation. Over the years, a work environment had been created where no one bothered keeping track of anyone else’s working hours, and therefore no one made a big deal of the fact that Eric hadn’t set his foot at Place Great Hoch in almost three weeks.
A massive pile of documents and folders that he was expected to sign and authorize were waiting on his desk; there were so many papers, he didn’t even try to understand what he was signing. When after a little more than half an hour he was finished with the authorizations, his calendar awaited. In the neglected calendar that he and his secretary helped each other to update, the past weeks’ rescheduling and cancellations had created a chaos which the coming weeks’ rescheduling and cancellations would worsen. There was nothing, it appeared, that couldn’t be delayed or that someone else couldn’t take care of. Nevertheless, sooner or later most things seemed to return to his desk. In comparison to what he was up against, all these meetings were as paltry as the problems they aimed to solve. Yet he knew it was important to maintain the idea that life would go on as usual. Nothing was more valuable than hope; nothing else could give him the same strength.
One of Nicholas Dove’s two gorillas took hold of Eric Bear at the same moment as the bear stepped over the threshold to Sam’s apartment. The gorilla placed his massive hand on just that place that the bats some ten hours earlier had so carelessly mistreated, and Eric moaned with pain.
“Finally,” said Nicholas Dove, getting up from the chair and putting down his cigar right on the kitchen table’s laminated top, where it continued to glow.
The cigar would leave a large, black mark on the tabletop before the dove’s visit was over.
“We were just talking about you, and wondered if you were intending to come back or not,” said Dove.
Eric didn’t hear him. In the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Sam Gazelle, thrown onto one of the mattresses on the floor by the terrace door. In the kitchen, with his back against the kitchen sink, sat Tom-Tom Crow on one of the wobbly kitchen chairs. He was tied with black insulation tape that had been wound around his wings and legs. They had even taped his beak. On the floor around the chair were piles of black feathers.
They had plucked him. The crow’s belly shone white. And on the diaphanous white cloth there were three or four burn marks that Eric immediately understood came from Dove’s cigar.
Tom-Tom’s gaze turned toward Eric. The humiliated entreaty, the pain and terror that shone in the crow’s otherwise friendly, peering eyes caused the bear to completely lose his head. With a growl he tore himself loose from the red gorilla that had been holding him and rushed across the room. At that moment he had the power to take on anyone whatsoever. He threw himself against the gorilla alongside Tom-Tom. The gorilla stumbled backwards a few steps, but his large ape body was caught by the sink, which kept him from falling. Then everything happened very quickly.
Eric managed to hit and roar and bellow a few more seconds. Then a massive gorilla hand took a firm grip on his neck and lifted him up into the air. Eric had forgotten the red ape on the other side of the room. Eric Bear was thrown through the air, over the kitchen table, striking against the hard metal of the refrigerator. He pulled himself up, dazed but not yet defeated. The gorilla who had thrown him was on him again before he regained his balance. He lifted him up again by the neck, then slammed him against the kitchen table. The table fell apart with a crash. One of the splinters was forced into the back side of the bear’s thigh and came out the front side.
The pain waited a few seconds before it reached his awareness.
Somewhere in the tumult Dove’s clear voice was heard, but Eric couldn’t make out any words. With a certain effort he got up, the adrenaline muting the pain in his thigh for the time being, and picked up a long, rough splinter of wood that he found on the floor. He staggered forward toward the nearest gorilla. The idea was to mercilessly drive the splinter right through the ape’s eye, but Eric was neither quick nor strong enough. The ape easily warded off the attack, and with the back of his hand struck Eric across the face so that the bear fell backwards down onto the floor and finally came to rest.
When Eric Bear awoke, he saw Nicholas Dove’s worried face looking down at him.
“Have you…” said Dove, but the bear heard no more before he disappeared back down into unconsciousness.
In the following moment—which wasn’t the following moment at all but rather a few minutes later—the dove’s head was replaced by a gorilla face that was grinning happily.
“He’s alive now,” said the ape.
After that the bear was out.