Amberville

Chapter 5

Back then the four of them had never been inseparable musketeers. Sam Gazelle was most often so drugged up he had a hard time telling one musketeer from another, and Snake Marek was only loyal to a single animal: himself. Eric Bear never counted; everyone knew he was only passing through the underworld.

On those occasions when Nicholas Dove commissioned them to work together it had always been a matter of chance, but each time they were surprised by how well they functioned together. No one encroached on the other’s territory. Eric was the energy; he was the ignition key while Tom-Tom was the motor, the force. Sam was the one who supplied courage and irreverence and found paths that no one else dared to tread. Snake Marek was the uncrowned king of intrigue who anticipated their opponents’ responses and removed obstacles before anyone even had time to set them up.
Snake was the first in the foursome to make himself independent from Nicholas Dove and move out of Casino Monokowski. That was a great, difficult decision, and no one criticized him for not keeping in touch. It was all or nothing, and that’s how it had to be.
Snake found a small apartment up in north Lanceheim and, after a few lost years in the finance business, landed in the environment for which he was intended. He applied for, and got, a job as administrative assistant at the Environmental Ministry. He understood very quickly that his particular talent for persuasion suited public administration. He was not a social snake, seldom evoked sympathy among his closest associates, and didn’t have a favorable appearance. He was a pale-green reptile with yellowish eyes, and despite the fact that he slinked upright through life, he needed something to stand on—a bench or a table or a box—so as not to feel inferior. Nevertheless, he made a career. When Eric Bear found him—roughly the same time as Tom-Tom and Sam came to life on Friday morning in the newly established headquarters at Yiala’s Arch—Snake Marek had held the position as head of the Office of Grants within the Ministry of Culture for many years.
Marek’s office was at the end of a long corridor of linoleum floors and dark-blue walls where posters advertising obscure cultural events were taped up. The office was a narrow cubicle with a rectangular window which the sun never reached. There was no smell whatsoever, neither in the office nor out in the corridor, and no other animals were to be seen.
“I only have ten minutes” was the first thing Snake Marek said to Eric Bear after a little less than twenty years.
Eric was invited to sit on a narrow Windsor-style chair at the short end of the desk, the only piece of furniture in the office for visitors. There was an antipathy in Snake’s voice that was not even concealed. (On the phone with the receptionist Snake had maintained that he wasn’t in, but when he realized that Eric was calling from down in the lobby he changed his mind and unwillingly gave his old friend permission to come up.)
After neutral, friendly exchanges about health, Eric got to the point. Could Snake help out? Take a leave of absence for a week or two. It wouldn’t need to be longer than that, and then he was back to his routines again. At this point the bear made a vague gesture toward the small cubicle that was already feeling claustrophobic to him.
Snake replied at length. He didn’t say either yes or no, and Eric realized that what he was listening to was a prelude to refusal. Snake talked and talked, and finally the bear lost patience.
“Do you think,” said Eric sharply, “that I’m sitting here for the fun of it? If you think I’d be looking you up for the first time in twenty years if it wasn’t a matter of life or death, literally, then you’re not in your right mind.”
Snake Marek changed tactics. He ignored Eric’s questions, and spoke instead of the past. Precisely and at great length he pulled out old injustices and long-forgotten conflicts. It was no secret that Snake had always harbored an envy, to a certain degree justified, of Eric.
Eric tried to interrupt, tried to correct him, but to no avail.
After ten minutes Eric rose from the chair, held his paws over his head, and admitted defeat. This didn’t get Snake to quit talking. Eric backed slowly out of the small office cubicle. Harried by complicated sentence constructions filled with ironic poison arrows, the bear hurried along the dark-blue corridor back out into reality.
He needed a new strategy.


Snake Marek was an animal with a calling.
Even at a very young age Snake’s brain could be compared to a generator working dangerously near the limits of its operating capacity. Apart from a few hours of quiet at night, it glowed, sparked, and hummed from early dawn until long after sundown. When Marek reached his teens, his need to communicate all of these thoughts, ideas, feelings, melodies, and visions was as physically tangible as his need for food and sleep. The surrounding world must find out. The surrounding world must hear, observe, and confirm.
So thought the young Snake.
He wrote poems that he hid in his desk drawer, because he knew that posterity would one day discover them there. He wrote editorials for the school newspaper under a pseudonym, but signed his arts columns with his own name. He started a pop band as a twelve-year-old, and compelled some schoolmates who were several years older to accompany him when he performed his profound lyrics. His first exhibition as an artist took place two days after his sixteenth birthday. What he exhibited were predominantly charcoal drawings; the forests around the city were his still life.
Snake Marek’s artistic production knew no limits. From his thirteenth to his eighteenth year he poured forth no less than seventeen collections of poetry and five novels. In addition he made daily contributions to the newspaper. To begin with, he wrote in Amberville’s school newspaper, but later he did double duty as a reporter for The Daily News as well. During the same period he wrote more than a hundred songs, none with fewer than four verses, and produced twice that number of paintings, if you only counted oils and watercolors. Thanks to his manic disposition, Snake Marek managed to suffer, ponder, and produce in a feverish, un-ceasing cycle. He, however, didn’t have time to notice the surrounding world’s complete lack of interest in him.
The summer he turned eighteen everything fell apart. Burning yourself out was of course a kind of merit badge for a hard-pressed artist, and therefore he felt rather satisfied with the entire course of the illness.
The triggering factor was his fourth art exhibition, which, exactly like the earlier ones, was met with haughty silence. This was the final drop that caused the goblet to overflow. Two days after the exhibition Snake Marek made a large pyre on the street outside his entryway. All the handwritten poems and manuscripts of novels, all the demo tapes and paintings, framed or not, soon formed a neat pile on the sidewalk, albeit considerably smaller than Snake had wished for and imagined. Before anyone was able to stop him he lit it, and when the flames were leaping high the neighbors called the police. Sirens were soon heard at a distance, and Snake—who hadn’t foreseen this—went into a panic. He fled from the scene, and ended up—after a cold night in a foul-smelling trash room—at Casino Monokowski.
The years he then spent along with Eric, Tom-Tom, and the others, Snake chose to conceal deep down in the archives of his memory when he took over the position as administrative assistant at the Environmental Ministry.
For Snake Marek had a Plan.


During his time at Casino Monokowski his artistic endeavors weren’t given up, but the surrounding world was no longer allowed to share in the development that Snake Marek underwent as a poet, prose writer, musician, and artist. The insight had smoldered the whole time in his subconscious. His talent was depicting Reality. Cut the symbolism, skip the subtexts, and weed severely in the poetry. He would become a Realist.
And the time at Casino Monokowski gave him, if nothing else, stories enough to tell for the rest of his life.
So with great and somewhat unexpected patience he set to work. Day after day, well-formulated and then corrected and edited manuscript pages were added to the others; notes were joined with care to notes; colors blended with a careful, sensitive brush, without anyone on the job knowing of it. It didn’t go quickly, it was an artist’s life as far from the romantic myths of impassioned creation as you could go. Nonetheless, Snake Marek found a deep satisfaction in his methodical mission. By day he lived like a normal office rat at the ministry, evenings and nights and dawns he returned to being an all-around artist in the small apartment he’d purchased on Knaackstrasse in northwest Lanceheim.


Even if Snake Marek began his career in the public sector in the Environmental Ministry, from the first he already had his sights set on the Ministry of Culture. And when the possibility of changing departments arose, he seized the opportunity. So many signs, he felt, indicated that the grandiose—not to say fantastic—Plan he had put together in orgasmic haze was completely plausible.
For three long years he was forced to carry out idiotic office tasks at Culture before the next move became possible. But only a few days after he had taken the position at the Office of Grants, the years of waiting proved to have been worth the trouble.
He became one of five processing assistants to the department’s then boss. Snake was responsible for poetry and related cultural manifestations, that is to say sung, improvised, and dramatic poetry, and no one questioned the proposals for nominations that he sifted out from the applications. As long as there were candidates to give grants to, everyone seemed to be in a good mood.
But in the energy that he showed, Snake was alone in the Office of Grants. The other administrative assistants were older culture workers who capped unsuccessful careers with jobs in the department, and in that respect Snake stood out as an obvious candidate when, a few years later, a successor to the boss’s position was discussed. No one put as much effort into preparatory work as he did, no one showed as much interest in the individuals behind the applications as he.
One fine spring day a little less than five years after Snake Marek had changed departments, he was named head of the Office of Grants in the Ministry of Culture, and the distinction was celebrated at a run-down tavern right next to the office in east Lanceheim. Snake was a happy, contented, newly named boss; it was striking with what ease he took on his new role. In his imagination he’d had it for a long time.
His first decision was to refrain from replacing himself with a new administrative assistant. When another one of the assistants took retirement six months later, this position as well remained unfilled. Snake himself took on these duties. In the ministry this unwillingness to recruit personnel was seen as positive. Reality beset the Ministry of Culture’s finances, and having a manager who was not too refined to do some of the heavy work was unusual.
Four years after Snake Marek had become head of the Office of Grants, only he and a secretary were still working in the department. During the same period the combined appropriations for grants had been reduced by a six-figure amount. Snake had made himself known as a reflective authority, cautious with the taxpayers’ money.
All, of course, in accord with The Plan.
Only extremely deserving poets, prose writers, musicians, and artists were awarded grants nowadays. The ones whom the reviewers in the daily papers scarcely dared judge. The ones who were introverted and self-referential and impossible to have in a furnished room. Snake knew their secrets. They were all drug-abusers, psychopaths, and obsessive-compulsives.
And this, all while Snake Marek’s own artistic production of easily accessible books, songs, and paintings simply grew and grew at home in his dark apartment.
It had been a long time since a young, promising novelist had the economic opportunity to grow into a great body of work. No popular poetry was being created, because the poets were forced to work as dishwashers and language teachers and were completely spent in the evenings when they came home. The authorities seemed only to encourage navel-gazing and experimentation, and soon there was nothing else.
But all this would be transformed.
Soon the city’s yearning cultural consumers would have their fill of Snake Marek’s collected works. In one stroke he would then become the leader in every art form.


It was therefore not strange that Snake Marek reacted coldly to Eric Bear’s proposal of a leave of absence; Marek had things to do.
In the afternoon after Eric Bear had met Snake at the Office of Grants, the bear went straight to his childhood home on Hillville Road. As always in the middle of the day the house on the peaceful light-flame-yellow street was empty. Father was at school, Mother was at the ministry.
In the secretaire in his parents’ joint office on the second floor, Rhinoceros Edda kept everything she needed to carry on her correspondence. Among other things, official Environmental Ministry stationery, watermarked with her own monogram. Eric Bear used this paper to write—in Rhinoceros Edda’s name—a brief message, addressed to Snake Marek.
At the Environmental Ministry, wrote Eric, a document was circulating at the present time that dealt with gambling and alcohol abuse. In one of the addenda, which discussed the problem from a historical perspective, Snake Marek was mentioned. It would be unfortunate, wrote Eric, if Snake’s past were to make his political future impossible. If Snake took an immediate leave of absence, then Rhinoceros Edda would see to it that the document in its present form would not be distributed.
Edda was doing this for the sake of her cub, wrote Eric, because she knew that Eric needed Snake’s immediate assistance.
After that, Eric signed with his mother’s signature, which he’d learned to copy in his early teens, and sent the letter by courier to the Office of Grants. It would reach Snake Marek before the end of the business day.




TEDDY BEAR, 1

In a way my twin brother Eric and I are married to the same she.

But she doesn’t know it.
It’s a complicated situation.
But love is a world unto itself.
The crooked path that led me to love: How did it happen? Emma Rabbit was an angel, I an ordinary bear. She both was and is worthy of someone better. And yet she chose me. The ways of love are unfathomable.
Love is lethal for a bear who has consecrated his life to goodness. Love is the victory of feeling over reason. Is that why my thoughts become cloudy when I think about Emma and what led up to our wedding?
Is Emma good? Could I be married to someone who isn’t good? Could I be married to someone who doesn’t strive for the same goodness as I myself do?
I’m no missionary. I’m no hypocrite, either. But I was in love with Emma even before I met her. Paradoxically enough, the fact that Eric had my job at the advertising agency Wolle & Wolle made the decision easier.
Emma Rabbit was the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen.
Around her head, where the fur was combed so it looked like the softest lamb’s wool, rested a garland of fresh dandelion leaves and pink roses. I had braided the garland for her that same morning, according to tradition. A sheer bridal veil of silk brocade fell across her slender back and drew attention to her sweet face where her nose glistened moistly and her cheeks were glowing with expectation, anxiety, and happiness. But it was her gaze that bewitched me. The solitude in her large peppercorn eyes that had enticed me to tenderness and affection was temporarily gone, replaced by conviction.
She was strong and beautiful.
Emma was standing in one of the narthexes of the church along with her mother. Her mother was nervous. I had never met her. Or perhaps I had met her. She was not angry, only worried about all the hundreds of details that might go wrong. She was worried about whether her cub had chosen the right mate or not. I’m not criticizing her. I was not an unequivocal match. Despite my successful parents, I probably made an unstable impression at times.
Outside the narthex Emma’s girlfriends stood waiting. They spoke loudly and shrilly with one another. They were nervous, too.
Neither the nervousness of her mother or her girlfriends could, however, compare to Emma Rabbit’s own. She had awakened with a lurch when the half-moon was still high in the sky. She sat up in bed and called out, “The ring!” with such panic that I threw off the blanket and leapt up.
“The ring? Is it gone?”
The ring was in secure keeping in the blue case that I had set on the nightstand. Yet Emma did not go back to sleep. Her anxiety kept us awake until dawn. Then we fell asleep for a few hours until it was time for me to go gather flowers for the garland.
They grew in the flowerbeds outside Lakestead House.
“You’re completely sure now, aren’t you?” asked Emma.
She was waiting for me in the corridor. She was driving her wagon.
I went up and looked her deep in the eyes. I nodded.
“I’m sure,” I answered without the least hint of doubt.
“Why?”
There was anxiety in her eyes and her nostrils flared involuntarily. A moment later they narrowed again.
“Because I love you,” I replied.
“But you were so hesitant,” she said, exactly as I knew she would, “you were occupied with your evil and good. You said that making promises you know you can’t keep is lying. And the more you cared about someone, the bigger the lie. You said that marriage was the worst kind of lie. Because even if you wanted to be faithful…even if you wanted to love for your whole life…even if you wanted…”
“Darling,” I interrupted, “I know what I said.”
“Even if you wanted all that…” Emma continued without paying attention to my objection. “You said that the rest of your life was too long a time to foresee. You said that things always happen that you can’t control. You said that, knowing all that with certainty, an animal with good intentions, an animal with a thoroughly good heart, ought never to get married.”
“Dear,” I interrupted a second time, “I know that I…”
“But everything you said,” said Emma, looking at me at the same time as her nose carried out the same sort of unregulated expansions and contractions as before, “doesn’t that mean anything anymore?”
I sighed and tried to calm her.
I didn’t want to take back what I’d said.
I couldn’t take it back; I stood by every word.
But to profess my love to her, to describe her as I saw her, with her secure self-confidence, her creative talent, and last but not least her remarkable beauty, wouldn’t be telling lies.
“Many struggle their whole lives to find the empathy which is completely natural for you,” I said. “It makes you sensitive and strong. If you find yourself in a difficult situation some day, your empathy will help you through the sorrow.”
“What difficult situation?” asked Emma.
“I mean,” I replied, reining in my irritation so that it was impossible to hear, “that you can rely on yourself, darling. You don’t need me, or anyone else, either. You are your own happiness. If you can’t see that yourself, which in a way is part of your charm, you’re going to find out what I mean the day you need to.”
I don’t know if she understood what I was saying.
She leaned forward and hugged me hard. When at last she released her hold, I went down the stairs and gathered my flowers.
I hadn’t lied.
I hadn’t held back the truth.
Yet it was with a heavy heart that I cut pink roses from the bushes growing in the backyard.


A good bear.
That’s what I want to be.
That’s not a humble desire.
In the afternoons, after reading and before I go down to dinner, I sit in the armchair and think about everything that separates good from evil. Some days I sit for a quarter of an hour. Other days I don’t get out of there for two or three hours. They are punctual at Lakestead House, and it’s unfortunate when this drags on.
Evil is a serious subject. Many have immersed themselves in it. Yet one of the greatest problems is the definition itself.
Being a good bear demands that you know what evil looks like.
I know what evil looks like.
My forty-eighth summer of life is approaching. It is not without experience that I look back on my life. I don’t want to call it a happy life. It was never a question of making a happy life for myself. But I feel satisfied; there is a certain calm. It occurred to me yesterday. Few grains of sand from the past chafed in my soul as I walked along the shore in the pouring rain of the Afternoon Weather.
Involuntarily my mood darkened.
And in my armchair before dinner, my childhood was waiting for me.
The day my twin brother and I were delivered to our parents I already knew everything about a mother’s and a father’s love for their cubs. I knew that my brother would come to experience that kind of love. And I knew that I wouldn’t. It was not an insight expressed in words; I was two days old. And yet the certainty of it was in my heart. It marked my upbringing. I loved Mother and Father. They loved me back. But never like they loved Eric.
Never.
We came direct from the factory, a troupe of parentless cubs being driven out to their future homes by the Deliverymen in their green Volga pickup. Stuffed animals out taking a walk that morning stopped to look at the truck. The males clasped their females closer to them. The females tipped their heads to one side and smiled tenderly.
I can imagine how it was.
I myself have been walking on a sidewalk like that and seen the green pickup driving by. A truckbed full of cubs who will long for love their whole lives. A longing that is going to lead them astray, and destroy them.
Almost nothing is more difficult than keeping the longing for love free from demands.
It is a struggle.
I struggle every day.
Mother liked to say that the Saturday when Eric and I came to flame-yellow Hillville Road, nature appeared in sparkling garb. The sky was light blue and the pleasantly warm sun put the cascades of red, yellow, and green foliage in light and shadow by turns.
The Deliverymen drove across the Star—the golden square that was the absolute midpoint of the city—and continued along mint-green East Avenue. The carillon in the highest of Sagrada Bastante’s thirteen towers struck its cheerful melody.
There’s no symbolism to be found in those thirteen towers.
The four rectilinear avenues toward east, west, south, and north were the skeleton of our city. During the week these were heavily traversed thoroughfares. On the weekends, the east and west avenues were transformed into walking streets. In the middle, between three lanes to one side and three lanes to the other, grew massive oaks and maples. They formed a long avenue on either side of a wide gravel walkway.
The trees provided shelter from the rain that passed over the city twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon.
In the fall thousands and thousands more lamps were set up in the foliage. The first of November every year the lamps were lit just before the Evening Weather, and the two avenues pierced the city like sabers of light.
You shouldn’t look for any symbolism in that either.


The Deliverymen drove Eric and me to Amberville, the district whose boundaries are formed by East Avenue and the beautifully sky-blue South Avenue. Here the two-story buildings stand wall to wall in seemingly endless rows. Up the street and down the street, most in shades of green or blue, with more or less identical buildings. White woodwork against dark-red or dark-brown plaster. Sloping roofs shingled with black mosaic tile. Two garrets with transom windows on each attic. Narrow ribbons of smoke rise from the chimneys in the twilight. Red and pink geraniums spiral from the flowerboxes.
Details set the houses apart. Growing up in Amberville, we often knocked on the wrong door.
“We’ve got two units to number 14,” said one of the Deliverymen to the other.
With the point of a pencil he checked off Eric’s and my names on his list.
“Two units?” the Deliveryman commented behind the steering wheel.
“Twin bears. Don’t see that often.”
We were a sensation even when we were made. Two identical stuffed animals. Indistinguishable.
The green pickup swung onto the sidewalk outside 14 Hillville Road. The Deliveryman who was sitting on the passenger side jumped out and went around and opened the back door.
There we sat. We were neither shorter nor taller than we are today. We were less worn around the knees and elbows. That was the main difference.
But we couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t walk. The Deliveryman took us, one under each arm, and carried us up to the house which was to be our parental home.
Mother and Father stood waiting at the door. Our father, Boxer Bloom, was wearing his best white shirt, and a bow tie besides. Our mother, Rhinoceros Edda, had on a dress that was as big as a tent.
“Finally!” said Mother.
“Now it begins,” said Father.


I have few memories of my own of early childhood. But Mother told us stories when we got older. Funny stories about how Eric or I said something silly before we understood what the words meant. Dramatic stories of illnesses and escapes. Mother liked to tell stories as she was preparing food. She stood at the old, wood-fired stove in our narrow kitchen. Eric and I sat at the kitchen table and listened.
She told about when we drove the car out to the lake in the summer and when we ate our picnics in Swarwick Park in autumn. In Mother’s stories Eric was the initiator and I was the follower. Eric was the star and I was the audience.
I was a cub, and needed no explanations for why things were that way. It was natural that Eric was promoted at my expense.
We loved him.
I have never felt, and never will feel, envy in relation to my brother. Bitterness, it is said, is an inborn talent. Roughly in the same way as music. I’ve never been able to hold a tune. My anxiety is of a different type.
The memory of Mother’s tale changed in time to a memory of the event itself. There have been times in my life when I believed that these implanted memories might replace the real ones. That’s not the case. What Mother told and retold were situations that were especially meaningful to her. Not especially meaningful to me or to Eric. If you think about it, you might more than suspect that Mother’s stories were keys to her inner life.
The keys to my life were kept in a different drawer.
There was a time when I tried to force it open.
Then I understood that that was meaningless. Being a good bear is a constantly ongoing project in the present tense.


Eric and I shared a room. It was the highest up, on the fourth floor with the sloping roof over our beds. That early time was dizzying for our new parents. They had lived for each other, now Eric and I made our demands. There was a lot we needed to learn. Simple things like walking down the stairs to the kitchen. Or expressing the simple feelings that filled us. We were cold. We got hungry. And sleepy. One time we ate too many cookies and got a stomachache.
At this time our mother had not made a name for herself at the ministry. Like hundreds of other paper-pushers she plodded along, and her coworkers hardly sensed that she would become one of our time’s most talked-about politicians. It was both obvious and easy for Mother to go to half-time, and she continued to work half-time until Eric and I had learned the most necessary skills.
It was different with Father.
Our father, Boxer Bloom, was rector of Amberville’s Secondary Grammar School. The school building was a chalk-white fairy-tale castle, adorned with towers and pinnacles. The building was designed by Toad Hendersen, who had also renovated the city’s massive cathedral. The school’s main entry faced toward moss-green All Saints Road, but from the hill in the schoolyard at the back the forest could be glimpsed beyond the city limits.
For Father the job was a calling. Between the present day and the future there were some animals who made a difference, and he counted himself among them. He was bringing up the coming generations. If he succeeded, the city we’d known until now would be a pale prototype of that which was to come. Father was careful about describing his visions concretely, but I sensed that what he especially disliked about his own time was its lack of order.
He wanted to sort things out.
The barbarous by themselves, and the civilized by themselves.
The reliable here, and the unreliable there.
The heart knew which was which, even if the brain confused the issue with doubts.
Whatever happened, we could rely on Father keeping his promises. The ministry responsible for the Cub List had inquired as to whether our parents were really ready for a set of twins; wouldn’t it be difficult to treat the cubs alike?
Father guaranteed that on that point there was no danger. We cubs could always rely on a promise from Boxer Bloom. And by cubs, Boxer Bloom meant all the cubs that went to his school. Eric and I would start there eventually. In that respect we were no exception.
Eric’s and my room on the fourth floor was a perfect boys’ room. Our beds with their tall, white headboards, our nightstands with cute soccer lamps, and our little desks with their wheeled stools, were just about identical, exactly like us.
At first glance.
If you looked, there were differences. Small, hardly noticeable, but nonetheless undeniable differences.
I’m describing outward appearances.
Inside, an abyss was growing between us.


It happened late one evening when we were six months old; it became one of Mother’s most important memories. Mother and Father had invited some friends to dinner. It was later asserted that their many dinner parties were one of the reasons for Mother’s career. Thanks to her cooking skills, the dinner guests became eternally loyal to her. The network she created was wide-branching. Two or three evenings a week we had animals in our home. While others in the neighborhood were pottering in the garden, reading books, or being consumed by their careers, Mother prepared food for her dinner guests.
Eric and I grew up in the kitchen. In the heat from the oven that never cooled, in a throng of bubbling kettles, un-washed saucepans and bowls, recently used cutting boards and graters that smelled of garlic, parmesan, and horseradish left standing on benches and tables where we often discovered a lamb filet or a sliced eggplant when we picked up a plate or decided to rinse out a cup in order to fill it with hot chocolate. In the midst of this chaos stood our mother, Rhinoceros Edda, like a commander on her captain’s bridge, careful not to stir the béarnaise sauce with the wooden spoon she’d just fished out of the cauliflower pan.
Mother made no mistakes.
That evening baked cod was being served with puréed almond potatoes. The gravy was served in the gravy boat that we’d inherited from Grandmother. A silver gravy boat that was very valuable.
At the table, besides Mother and Father, sat their best friends, Mouse Weiss and her husband, Cat Jones. Penguin Odenrick was there—at that time still a deacon in the church on Hillville Road, unaware that he would soon be made a prodeacon—along with Jack Pig, whom Mother would later succeed as head of the Environmental Ministry.
It was Odenrick who heard it first.
“Excuse me,” he said in a loud voice, “but did I just hear a scream?”
Conversation ceased. Odenrick had been right. In the silence a screaming cub was heard. From up on the fourth floor a howl forced its way down to the dining room. Boxer Bloom got up. There was still explosive force in his legs after many years of soccer-playing in his younger days.
“It’s the cubs,” he said, his face pale.
He ran out of the room and up the stairs.
All of the guests, with Mother in the lead, followed.
When they came into the nursery, Father was already standing by my crib. I was the one who was screaming. I continued screaming, despite the fact that Father lifted me up and held me to him. It was silent from Eric’s bed. Nonetheless Mother took the few steps across the room in order to see to her other twin.
It was her instinct, to see to Eric first. But the suspicion that that’s the way it was—that she set one twin before the other—was, and is, the most shameful thing in Mother’s life.
Not even now will she admit it.
Nonetheless, all her friends from that time bear witness to that.
That time she relied on her intuition. Subconsciously she understood that her twins’ symbiosis was such that what one of them saw could be perceived by the other, and vice versa.
I was screaming because Eric was in danger.
Mother saw it.
“A moth!” she screamed.
Father more or less threw me down on the bed again, where I immediately fell silent. It’s unclear whether I fell silent due to Father’s brusque treatment or if I stopped screaming because I had done my duty.
With a tremendous leap Father threw himself across the room and killed the moth before anyone had time to react. With that the drama was over. It was only when the guests returned to the dining room and the cooling food that they realized what had happened.
I had saved Eric’s life.


Deacon Odenrick taught me to distinguish good from evil. The penguin was one of many deacons who worked in Amberville, but the only one with whom I came in contact.
The structure of our church is simple.
In every district of the city there are several parishes. In Amberville there are four. Working in the parishes are all-deacons, a kind of apprentice, who are paid by the church. Each parish has its own deacon who leads the organization and does most of the preaching. Among the deacons in the district, a prodeacon is chosen. In turn, the four prodeacons of Mollisan Town have a leader, the church’s highest representative: the archdeacon in the cathedral Sagrada Bastante. No one in my surroundings would have guessed that the hard-tested Odenrick would, in time, come to be the new archdeacon in Mollisan Town.
At that time, Odenrick was completely lacking in such ambitions.
Perhaps that was why he was chosen?
The pious penguin with his worn deacon’s vestment came to visit us on our light-flame-yellow street a few times each week. Every time he came by he took time to sit a while on the edge of my or Eric’s bed and say a bedtime prayer with us. This started when we were six years old. We lay on our backs with our heads on the pillow and paws on our stomachs and closed our eyes while Father Odenrick spoke with Magnus, the creator of all things, on our behalf.
“Deliver them from evil,” the penguin prayed tenderly.
“What is evil?” I asked.
“Things that make you feel bad,” said Eric precociously, without being asked.
“So the stone I fell down on yesterday is evil?” I asked, just as impudent and precocious as my twin.
Odenrick wrinkled his gray plastic beak and became absorbed in reflection. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, and in the glow from the lamp on the nightstand I could see how his large eyes became cloudy.
“Things that make you feel bad in your heart, Teddy,” he said at last, looking down at me. “The kind of things that cause pain in your heart, inside you, are evil. The one who wants these bad things makes you sad and unhappy, and the sadder you get, the more evil the one who wishes you to feel bad is.”
As soon as he finished the sentence Odenrick heard how frightening this must have sounded to a six-year-old’s ear, and he tried at once to cheer us up.
“But thank goodness,” he said, “there are also those of us who want what is good. The church wants what is good, all believers want what is good, and with good it’s exactly the opposite. You know that someone wants what is good for you when you feel satisfied inside. When you feel well.”
“But why doesn’t everyone want to feel good?” I asked. “Why does anyone want to do something bad?”
“Because otherwise you wouldn’t know when someone was good,” said my brother Eric slyly, but his voice was trembling.
“There you’re wrong,” Odenrick smiled tenderly in Eric’s direction. “There is evil in the world, cubs. Hopefully you’ll never have to encounter it, but you should know about it. For it is going to entice you when you get older, and then you must recognize it and resist it.”
Eric had turned toward the wall. Sniffling was heard coming from his bed. Deacon Odenrick sat silently and listened. I was so surprised I didn’t know what I should say.
“Eric?” said Odenrick at last. “Is there something you want to tell?”
I felt confused. Up until that evening I’d believed that Eric and I shared everything. Feelings as well as experiences. There and then I was forced to realize that that wasn’t the case. This was at the same time a relief and a disappointment.
Penguin Odenrick and I listened together to Eric.
“It’s Samuel Pig,” Eric sobbed. “He calls me a thief. He says that I’m bad. He’s says that I’ve stolen the Ruby.”
“The Ruby?” asked Odenrick.
“That’s his red marble,” Eric explained, sniffling. “He says that he’s going to whip me. With his friends. That they’re going to give me such a whipping that I’ll never be able to walk again.”
All the cubs at preschool played marbles. For most of them it was no game, but rather completely serious. We were cubs, but we were particularly superstitious where it concerned our marbles.
“Samuel Pig?” Odenrick repeated.
Eric nodded and tried to wipe away the tears from his cheeks.
“I know Samuel Pig’s parents,” said Odenrick. “I’ll talk with them.”
“No, no!” howled Eric, terrified. “You mustn’t say anything.”
“But Samuel can’t threaten you unpunished,” said Odenrick, and his voice was quivering with indignation. “I’ll speak with your principal.”
“No!” howled Eric again.
“But what—” Odenrick began.
“Nothing,” interrupted Eric. “It’s just that I’m scared. He’s mean, Samuel. He lies. And he fights. Promise not to say anything.”
“But I…”
“Promise?” nagged Eric.
“I promise,” said Odenrick. “We deacons have a duty to remain silent. You can count on me. I’m not going to say anything. But if Samuel so much as…”
The penguin didn’t finish his sentence. When we saw Odenrick’s threadbare appearance on the edge of my bed, we thought it was wise that he didn’t express any sort of threat.
He didn’t look as though he could live up to it.


The preschool was five blocks north. The pride of the school was the playground behind it. There we spent at least a few hours every day, most often during the Forenoon Weather.
Eric and I went to preschool because Mother wanted us to. We could have been at home, but Mother thought that the most important thing in life was to correctly understand how to manage your social environment. We went to preschool to learn to play with others, not just ourselves.
It happened less than a week after Eric’s confession. It was a Thursday. That I know. We sang on Thursday mornings, and I liked to sing. After singing we ate the fruit we’d brought with us from home, and then it was time to go outside. There were thirty of us cubs, and it quickly became chaotic in the hall when everyone was putting on their outdoor clothes at the same time.
Eric vanished out of sight. It was not unusual; we often kept a little distance from each other. Twins have different strategies at various periods of life. At the age of six Eric and I were careful about not choosing similar clothes and keeping ourselves a little apart from each other. I used to go down to the lawn by the great oak tree where there were always a few playing soccer. I was no star. I could just as happily play defense as be goalie. This made me popular. This particular Thursday, however, I was too late. I don’t know how it happened, but when I came over to the lawn a match between two teams was already in progress. I watched for a while, but soon lost interest.
That was why I walked over toward the storage sheds.
They were a short distance away. They were simple structures where the preschool stored nets and rackets, balls and bicycles and other things that could be used for outdoor games. I knew that there were cubs who hung around behind the sheds. They could play there without the preschool staff seeing them. There were corners there where you could be in peace. But I didn’t know more than that; it was seldom that I had anything to do with cubs who had secrets.
I heard the muffled screams long before I arrived at the sheds, and I heard who was screaming.
Eric.
I started to run. When I rounded the nearest storage building, I was out of breath. I will never forget the sight that met me.
Eric was standing upright with his back against one of the sheds. In front of Eric stood Samuel Pig, and on either side of Samuel a polar bear and an elephant whose names I didn’t know. Samuel pressed Eric against the wall of the shed with a fat fist around my twin’s neck.
“And one for Mama!” screamed the elephant who stood alongside, at the same time as he took out a marble, a little glass marble with all the colors of the rainbow, and pressed it against Eric’s lips.
Eric already had something in his mouth. When the elephant continued to press the marble against Eric’s lips, it finally had the opposite effect. Eric opened his mouth and out sprayed all the marbles the cubs had already forced in.
Samuel Pig let go of Eric so as not to get spit on his hand; Eric fell down on his knees and gasped for air like a fish. The pig showed no mercy. He kicked Eric in the stomach and screamed, “Take out the Ruby!”
Eric whimpered and sniffled. He didn’t have the Ruby, he said. This led to more kicks.
The entire course of events took no more than a few seconds. Eric was lying on the ground, crying, when I shouted, “Three against one! That’s brave.”
The elephant and the polar bear gave a start.
I’d scared them, and they took a step away from my brother. As if to deny that they’d had anything to do with him. The pig gave me a superior look.
“Go away,” he said, turning toward Eric again. “You’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“Help,” whimpered Eric.
“Two against three is at least a little better,” I continued and took a few steps forward.
I was not a champion fighter.
Actually I’d never been in a fight. I would never ever fight again. But my twin was lying on the ground and I couldn’t do anything other than try to help him.
“Go to hell,” hissed Samuel.
His companions were excited by his courage. They turned toward me with a kind of impatient energy that scared me.
“He’s going to give us the Ruby,” the polar bear explained.
“Otherwise he’s toast,” the elephant chimed in.
“But…I don’t have—” said Eric, and got yet another pig-kick in the stomach.
That was enough for me.
I rushed up toward the three perpetrators with my sights on the pig, and managed to push against him so hard that he stumbled over Eric and fell down to the ground. Eric took the opportunity to pull himself up on his knees at the same time as Samuel got back up on his hooves faster than I’d thought possible. With a howl he threw himself over me.
After that my memory of the fight is more diffuse.
I knew for sure that Eric got away.
I’m unsure whether that happened immediately after the pig tackled me or somewhat later, but I have the feeling that Eric got moving as soon as he had the chance.
The polar bear, the elephant, and the pig belted me green and blue. They didn’t stop before we heard the bells ringing us in. I was a threadbare teddy bear who with great effort dragged myself up the slope from the storage sheds back to the school.


As was her habit, Mother came and picked us up right after lunch. She greeted the preschool staff. She asked if we’d been good. She asked if we’d had a good day.
Then we left.
Without looking at us she directed her steps toward the market hall in Amberville. It was a few blocks from the school, and we followed in her wake. The market hall was a magical oasis of scents and colors, a temple of food filled with loud-voiced hawkers and choosy customers. For several hours we wandered around in there, until we had almost forgotten the drama at the schoolyard.
It wasn’t until that evening that we had a chance to talk about what had happened. When Father turned off the lamp in our room and we heard him go down the stairs toward the living room, Eric whispered his thanks for the help.
“If Samuel played marbles a little better he wouldn’t be so angry all the time,” said Eric.
“He was angry,” I said in confirmation and felt how my body ached.
“It serves him right,” said Eric.
“What?”
Then Eric turned on the lamp above his bed, and in the light he held out the glittering marble: the Ruby.
“I nabbed it from that fat pig a long time ago. It serves him right.”
I looked at Eric and saw the expression on his face for a fraction of a second. Then he turned out the light.
It was that evening the abyss between us opened.
That evening defined us as each other’s opposite.
The cubs at the school had almost beaten me to death, for good reason. My twin brother was a thief.
My twin was the opposite of a good bear.