Amberville

Chapter 3

Grand Divino was a paradise for anyone who thought they could afford to throw away money. Fashion, food, home decor, or culture, most everything was to be found at Grand Divino. An overabundance was offered for sale in a magnificent setting of marble, velvet, oak, and glass; a department store had been created which was at the same time welcoming and spacious. The building was salmon pink; the massive entryway stood open from the Forenoon Weather to the Evening Weather. When Eric Bear stepped into the perfume counters’ sea of glass and mirrors, he was one of the day’s first customers.

As usual, the aromas made him dizzy. Intoxicated by lavender and mint, musk and lily of the valley, he remained standing for a few extended moments of daydreams about Emma Rabbit. They were lying in the tall, green grass under a summer sky, embracing each other and saying the sort of things you only say to your beloved. It was as if he’d let himself be taken in by his own slogans. “Giselle—a scent of spring.” Or “Number 3 from Max Loya—dreams of love.” He liked perfumes and had worked with many of the major brands. He had even worked with products he didn’t like, but actually that didn’t make any great difference. What he liked most of all was success. He realized that this was not a charming feature of his character, and tried to gloss over it as much as possible.
But he wasn’t a good liar, and Emma had always been able to unmask him. She hadn’t believed what he’d said about the furniture yesterday evening. She had accepted all his inventions for the sake of household peace, but this morning she had gone on the attack: even a cub would realize that he’d been lying!
Eric responded to the best of his ability. Hard-pressed, he nonetheless decided not to tell the truth. The truth would not make anything better.
Eric Bear started breathing through his mouth. In that way he avoided the aromas of the seductive perfumes and regained his power to act. With decisive steps he walked over toward the escalators and went up to the fifth floor. There were elevators at Grand Divino as well, but he could never remember where they were. It was the escalators, constructed of glass, plastic, and Plexiglas, that were the backbone of the department store. Their complicated mechanisms were exposed in what looked like glass drawers on the underside, and like perpetual-motion machines they kept the urge to buy going from morning to evening. Being slowly lifted up toward Grand Divino’s sky roof, where small lamp-stars sparkled against a dark-blue background, gave a sense of divinity. After that it appeared small-minded to get cold feet if a pair of boots cost a few thousand.
On the fifth floor, to the right of the beds and linens, was the sewing notions department. And farthest in, alongside the knitting needles and yarn, the massive Tom-Tom Crow sat on a stool. He was a peculiar sight. He was sitting behind a long, white table, sorting sewing needles according to eye size. The crow’s black form was hunched over the table, and he used the long feathers farthest out on the fingerbones for this detail work. It was not least thanks to the red spot on the underside of his beak—apparently a manufacturing defect—that Eric recognized his old friend. The crow was so large that the table in front of him appeared to belong in a preschool.
There were two more clerks in the sewing notions department, a pair of sows getting on in years whom Eric didn’t notice at first. One of them was standing, unobtrusively folding flowery pieces of cloth not far from Tom-Tom; the other was over at the register, ironing aprons marked down twenty percent.
Complete calm prevailed in the department. Eric Bear placed himself at a safe distance, in the shelter of a bunk bed, and gathered courage. It seemed almost impossible that the slow needle-sorter was the same bird Eric had once known. Twenty years earlier the crow had been able to break two bricks between his wings. Back then Eric had laughed many times at the poor things who disturbed Tom-Tom by mistake when he sat absorbed in his thoughts; you couldn’t imagine a more meaningless way to have an arm torn off. Most often Tom-Tom Crow was nicer than most, but sometimes he exploded in a madness that he couldn’t control.
And now? Could the crow’s loyalty still be counted on?
Eric took a few cautious steps into the sewing notions department and carefully avoided landing in the ironing sow’s way. As Eric passed the embroideries, the crow looked up from his needles. For a fraction of a second a surprised worry was seen in his small, black eyes. Slowly he pushed the needles aside and got up from the stool.
“I’ll be damned!” he burst out.
The crow ran over, taking the bear in his arms and lifting him up from the floor in a mighty embrace that caused Eric to laugh. Above all in relief, but also because he realized how ridiculous this had to appear.
After the friends exchanged the phrases that two old friends exchange when they haven’t seen each other for a long time, Tom-Tom sat down on his stool and resumed his sorting. Eric leaned toward the table and watched for a while.
“And how the hell did you end up here?” he finally asked.
The swearword was a clumsy attempt to ingratiate himself. Nowadays Eric Bear swore so seldom that it rang falsely when he tried.
“What do you mean?” asked the crow.
“Yes…well,” said Eric, less cocksure, “how did you end up here…knitting and crocheting and…sows?”
“Josephine and Nadine,” said Tom-Tom, smiling, “are the flipping best. They help me with the embroideries. At home I’m working on a big frigging wall hanging. It’s for the bedroom. It’s going to be a fantasy landscape. Stay for lunch, then I can show you. I have the sketches here somewhere…”
Tom-Tom looked around with uncertainty. His sketches were somewhere.
“To be honest,” said Eric, “I was thinking about freeing you from lunch. For good.”
“There’s nothing wrong with lunch,” said Tom-Tom. “They have an employee lunchroom in the basement. Today there’s vegetable soup. Maybe it doesn’t sound so frigging cool, but it’s better than you might think.”
“I thought we could do a thing together,” said Eric. “You and me and Sam and Snake.”
“A thing?” repeated Tom-Tom.
Eric had a hard time reading the crow’s tone of voice. He nodded.
“All four of us?” asked Tom-Tom.
Eric nodded again.
“Snake is never going to join in,” objected the crow. “I ran into him a few years ago, here at the department store. He pretended not to recognize me. I thought it was a frigging joke, I thought…I called him a few times, but he never answered.”
“Snake will join in,” Eric assured him.
“You guarantee?”
“I guarantee.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Tom-Tom.
The crow became absorbed in thought.
“Economically you’ll be set for the rest of your life,” Eric interjected without having any idea of how he could fulfill that promise.
“You say so?”
“I say so.”
“And if it goes to hell?” asked Tom-Tom, wise from experience.
“Then it goes to hell,” confirmed Eric.
The crow nodded as though something profound had been said, and sank into reflection. When Eric started to doubt whether Tom-Tom even recalled what he was thinking about, the crow got up from the stool. It was a slow movement, not hesitant but not aggressive either.
“What the hell,” he said. “Let’s go, then.”
“Good,” answered Eric without sounding surprised.
Tom-Tom undid the apron which everyone in the sewing notions department was forced to wear. He folded it up neatly and placed it next to the needles.
“Nadine,” he called to the nearest sow. “Nadine, you’ll have to sort the needles. I’m quitting.”
Nadine looked confused. She must have quickly found herself, however, for as Eric and Tom-Tom reached the escalators on the fifth floor their way was obstructed by a stern walrus. It was the department head. He riveted his gray eyes on the crow and asked what was going on.
“I’m quitting now,” Tom-Tom answered amiably.
“I don’t think so,” the walrus hissed authoritatively. “You can’t just leave your job like that. There is something called notice. There is something called responsibility.”
This self-importance caused both Eric and Tom-Tom to break into a smile. The memories of youthful adventures returned to them both, of days that would never come back and that the Vaseline-coated lens of time had made infinitely lovely.
“Toss him,” said Eric.
“You think so?” asked Tom-Tom.
“I think so,” Eric nodded.
Whereupon Tom-Tom took a step forward, pressed his claws down into the parquet floor to get a solid stance, and then lifted the walrus from the floor and heaved him off into the bed department, where he landed on a pile of mattresses that fell over with a leisurely crash.
“Just like before, eh?” laughed Tom-Tom, proceeding calmly to the escalators.
Eric Bear didn’t dare admit even to himself how bubblingly, inappropriately happy he felt.
“Do we have time to swing by the employee lunchroom before we take off?” asked Tom-Tom. “It would be a shame to miss out on that frigging vegetable soup.”




TWILIGHT, 1

He stood in his tower, looking out over Mollisan Town in the twilight. Deep within his small, cold eyes there burned a fire, a white fire of unshakable will. He revealed this will to no one; he understood that it would frighten any stuffed animal who saw it. And he could keep it concealed, because he never lost control. If you couldn’t control yourself, it was impossible to control others. And from his perspective, control was equivalent to power. That was how he lived his life. He seized power, and he administered it. In the shimmering orb of his eye a smile glistened fleetingly, but this smile was impossible to see. It was the smile of power, self-satisfied and terrified at the same time.

He was standing in the darkness. Down below his lookout point the two rectilinear avenues divided the city into four districts. His city, a world of objects and desire. He stood completely still, observing how the cars skidded around like fox fire on ingeniously labyrinthine streets. Every street in the city had its own characteristic color. Every important building was painted, from foundation to roof—including doors and windowsills, roof tiles, and chimneys—one of the rainbow’s many shades. From his tower, Mollisan Town was an explosion of colors during the daytime, but after darkness set in, it was the neon lights instead that gave life and personality to asphalt, brick, and cement. He loved this city.
Mollisan Town was a few kilometers from the coast. To the west was the great sea and Hillevie, the resort town for the well-to-do. Otherwise they were surrounded by deep forests to the north as well as to the south and east. And the city was growing: at its edges trees and brush were being shoved aside to establish heavy industries. With each century the stuffed animals had conquered a few kilometers of the forest in every direction. Yet the forests were endless; no one had ever succeeded in exploring or mapping them in their insurveyable immensity, despite attempts being made.
The stuffed animals were curious by nature, he thought. That was their joy, and their misfortune.
The four districts of the city, distinct in their differences, competed at being the largest. In the past they had been independent villages, but they had grown together inexorably and been forced to share resources. Amberville’s bourgeois prosperity; Tourquai’s hectic urban life; Lanceheim, which remained a city within the city; and, finally, Yok, which with each year in the present century had grown to be a greater and greater problem for the city’s administration. Today in each of the city’s districts there lived more than a million stuffed animals, of all types and colors, dispositions and mentalities. Sometimes he saw himself as their puppet master; it was a matter of power and control. If he closed his eyes he could envision four million thin threads running from his brain, binding each and every animal in his city.
Pride, he thought. A mortal sin.


The cat who spilled the beans, the cat who had tattled to Nicholas Dove…the thought made him furious. Unconsciously his muscles tensed and he grabbed hold of the arm of the chair. The thought that such an insignificant animal, such a fool, had been able to upset a circle…that the almost perfect world he’d built—not for himself but for everyone—might crack apart so easily…that over the years he’d become so spoiled and lazy that he no longer worried…let himself be taken by surprise…surprised by something as obvious as…the spinelessness of stuffed animals.
He shook his head.
He breathed slowly.
He was forced to turn the argument around so as not to explode. Without insignificant errors like this thing with the cat, he thought, life would be all too easy. If chance didn’t remain his opponent, who would be able to challenge him? Standing here, cursing the cat, led nowhere. The time for action had come.