Chapter 6
They usually met at Zum Franziskaner on North Avenue, a lunch restaurant on the lemon-yellow avenue for those who would rather see than be seen. For many years Rhinoceros Edda had had the goal of seeing Eric at least once a week. They had an uncomplicated relationship, mother and cub, in contrast to Eric’s more contentious connection to his father. His mother dismissed his destructive teenage years at Casino Monokowski as a healthy and necessary rebellion; his father had been less understanding. And even if at first Eric loved his mother for her broad-mindedness and despised his father for his narrow-mindedness, over the years he’d acquired a more nuanced picture of the situation.
“You look tired,” remarked Edda. “Are you sleeping properly?”
Eric Bear said that he was sleeping properly. In addition he promised that he would stay inside during the Afternoon Rain, and if he did somehow get wet he would change into dry socks. He was forty-eight years old. His wife was living under a death threat. But in his mama’s eyes a good night’s sleep and clean underwear were the most important things. Perhaps that was the way you should live your life?
Sure, he said, he’d gone to see Teddy since they last met.
There was something liberating in sometimes being treated like a child.
As lunch progressed, Eric asked about the Cub List. He’d heard the story so many times that he practically knew it by heart; it was one of the few truly exciting routines there was to tell about in the otherwise ordinary, bureaucratic ministry. And Mother told it exactly as he remembered.
The Cub List was drawn up based on the applications that were submitted and registered. All incoming letters to the department were entered into a journal, and the order of priority followed the same chronology. A test of the applicants’ suitability was always carried out; this was a necessary routine which sometimes meant that the process was delayed. Only in exceptional cases was it necessary to dig deeply into the animals’ past. Most of those who applied for cubs had sense enough to see for themselves what the authorities demanded. A final Cub List was drawn up each month, where the names of the fortunate, but not yet notified, future parents were noted.
None of this was particularly startling, but then came the part of the story that, to the young Eric, was exciting.
When the list was ready, it was to be sent to the Deliverymen, the uniformed heroes who drove the green pickups. Now, the physical transport operation was not run from the Environmental Ministry’s head office on Avenue Gabriel, either. Therefore it was a question of how the list should be sent to the shipping agent. The list was considered a sensitive document, and there was risk of manipulation. Despite everything, every year the ministry rejected applicants, and it was understandable if this led to frustration. The risk could not be taken that one of those rejected might get hold of the Cub List and write their own name there, and therefore it seemed dangerous to simply put it in the mailbox.
Finally someone came up with the idea of the Order Room. The Cub List left the office on Rue de Cadix with an internal courier, who went through an underground tunnel to the headquarters on Avenue Gabriel. The courier took the elevator up to the ninth floor and left the list in a sealed envelope on the table in a room to which there were only two keys.
The Order Room.
After office hours that same evening—always the sixteenth of the month—the Deliverymen came. They unlocked the door with the other key, picked up the list and thereby all risks had been minimized.
“But are there only two keys?”
“Well,” answered his mother, “perhaps there’s one more.”
And the very young Eric understood that it was his mother who had the third and final key, which of course caused him to look through her key rings and finally find it. He made an impression in modeling clay and, along with Teddy, made a plaster key that they played with for a week or two. A not entirely scrupulous locksmith helped Eric make a real key a few years later—Eric had an idea about how he might use it in order to pay a gambling debt, which thank heavens he never put into effect.
Eric and Teddy had asked thousands of questions about the Cub List and the Order Room when they were smaller, questions which to a large extent had to do with the question all animals asked themselves at some point in their lives. Why was it just me who grew up with my parents? Was it by chance, or was there some intention? And the same questions appeared in the mind of the adult bear while he listened to his mother as she told the story again.
Was it really no more than that? An official who placed a list in a locked room, someone else who picked it up?
When they’d each had a cup of coffee and were getting up to leave, Eric finally asked the question that had been his whole reason for this lunch:
“And a corresponding Death List?” he said. “Does it exist?”
“There has never been a Death List,” sighed Edda. “But I understand that animals want to believe in it. That death should only be by chance feels somehow…unworthy.”
After Eric Bear said goodbye to his mother, he went straight home to Emma. She never stayed in the studio very long on Fridays; she was concerned about making her way home before the lines bottled up the avenues before the weekend. Eric found her in the living room, where she was absorbed in one of the many novels she read, the titles of which he didn’t even know.
“I’ve got to go to Teddy’s,” he said without sitting down. “I have to stay a few days, perhaps a whole week.”
The words just came; the lie wasn’t something he’d planned.
“A week?”
He felt false and treacherous, but nonetheless continued without a quiver in his voice. “I don’t know if it’s some kind of breakthrough or if it’s just routine. They phoned this afternoon and said that it was important that I be there.”
“Then it must be important,” Emma confirmed amiably.
“I’ll pack a suitcase with a change of clothes and toiletries. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything more.”
“Are you leaving right now?”
He cast a shy glance toward her and shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose it can wait until tomorrow,” he said.
“No, no. If they’ve said it’s important that you should come, then of course you should take off.”
Eric phoned the office before he left the house. It was right after the wind stopped blowing during the Afternoon Weather, but Wolle and Wolle almost never left the office before midnight. Eric told them the same story, that he had to spend the coming week with his twin brother, Teddy, and that therefore he couldn’t come in other than for exceptional reasons. There was a meeting on Wednesday afternoon he was thinking of, and one on Thursday morning, but more than that he couldn’t promise. Wolle and Wolle promised to cover for him. And thus Eric had freed himself from his marital as well as his professional duties. He departed toward Yok and Yiala’s Arch; it was time to find the Death List, even if it didn’t exist.