Amberville (19 page)

It was then that the animals understood.

And in the following moment, when they saw the yellow-red flame of the lighter, someone started to scream. A scream that immediately became polyphonic. During the seconds that followed, as the hyena mercilessly brought the lighter toward the rooster’s beak, almost all of them screamed. Some fled headlong from the place.

The hyena had filled the rooster to the brim with alcohol. When the flame of the lighter came in contact with the alcohol, the rooster’s beak flared up and in the following moment a kind of inner explosion was heard, but by then all of them had turned their gaze from the just-ignited animal, and only the stench of burning insides told of the rooster’s agony.

When the Queen of the Garbage Dump heard talk of what had happened later that afternoon, she immediately had Hyena Bataille called to her and asked if he might consider becoming one of the Cleaners.

Bataille accepted immediately, and it wasn’t long before he was one of the Garbage Dump’s foremen.

T
hat’s enough now.”

Snake Marek slithered up a drainpipe and over to the lid of one of several trash barrels that stood outside the entryway to Yiala’s Arch. In this way he was almost level with Eric Bear, and they stared angrily at each other. Twilight had fallen a few hours earlier, Tom-Tom and Sam had gone in the car in advance, and there was no longer any time to lose. They had tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, then the Chauffeurs would pick up Dove and Teddy. The last thing Eric Bear had a desire to do was to stand jawing in this narrow, green alley that stank of urine.

He said so, too.

“We don’t have time to shoot the shit now. I’ll listen to your objections on the way there.”

“We’re not going there. And absolutely not at this time of day.”

“Like I said, we’ll talk about this in the car.”

“The reason that you wanted me to be part of this was?” asked Snake, his gaze not wavering a bit. “Do you remember why you thought it was important that I should take part?”

Eric considered his reply. There were a number of sarcastic remarks that appeared enticing, but he wouldn’t gain anything by arguing. The original reason was that he assumed he needed Snake’s brain, his analytic ability. But the memory of Snake’s talents appeared to be embellished. What had Snake Marek actually contributed, apart from this constant complaining?

“Do you recall?” nagged Snake. “You forced me along because I understand things that you don’t get. This is one of those things.”

Eric threw out his paws. He didn’t know what he should say; he lacked arguments.

“We have no choice,” he said.

“We can choose to let things be,” said Snake. “And we ought to choose to let things be.”

It was of course possible to let Snake stay at home, but at the same time Eric sensed that this was exactly what the sly reptile was after. And he wasn’t going to get off that easy. No one liked making their way to the Garbage Dump in the middle of the night; not Eric, either. But if they were going, all four of them were going. It was an irrational decision, but for Eric this was not negotiable.

“Now we’re going,” said Eric firmly. “I’ve heard what you’re saying, and now I hope you’ll hear what I’m saying.”

“This is idiocy,” said Snake.

“There are no alternatives.”

“And if the camel was lying?”

“Neither you nor I believe that,” said Eric.

Sam Gazelle had been
exhilarated when he came home late in the afternoon. Snake was down at Springergaast buying cigarettes, Tom-Tom and Eric sat reading the evening papers and had just put on a pot of coffee.

“Now you’ll hear,” said Sam, clapping his hooves with delight.

He was bubbling with giggles, little bells sounding through the room. Eric set aside the newspaper and inquisitively observed the exhilarated gazelle, who sat down at the kitchen table.

“Noah remembered me,” said Sam proudly. “I knew he would remember me.”

“Noah remembered you,” repeated Tom-Tom, who was infected by Sam’s exhilaration and giggled obligingly at his own amusement, “but Magnus knows if that was good or bad.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll say this: he opened the door,” declared Sam.

“The question is, will he open it next time?” asked Tom-Tom.

Sam giggled knowingly.

“But he’ll no doubt remember you again?”

“He will,” promised Sam. “Absolutely for sure he will.”

“I don’t want to know,” said Eric.

“For once, darling,” answered Sam, “I think you’re right.”

“I want to know,” objected Tom-Tom with a sneer.

“Reconsider,” said Sam.

They laughed as if they’d heard a funny story. Eric became impatient.

“And?” he said, getting up and going over to the coffee-maker to pour a cup of strong, black coffee for himself.

“Darling,” said Sam, trying to collect himself, “forgive me. It was like this. The camel told me where he got the list.”

“Just like that?” panted Tom-Tom, giggling like a little she.

“Just like that,” Sam confirmed, giving the crow a roguish smile that caused Tom-Tom once again to break into a loud laugh.

“And?” shouted Eric in order to drown out the crow.

“Excuse me,” Sam asked again, pulling himself together. “Noah got it from the Garbage Dump. The camel goes out to the Garbage Dump and picks up the envelope with the lists.”

“Ruth?” said Eric.

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Darling, have you heard of anything coming from the Garbage Dump that doesn’t come from Ruth?”

“Ruth,” repeated Eric to himself. “Obviously.”

Eric Bear had met
Rat Ruth on a few occasions in his life.

Together with Tom-Tom Crow, Eric had been assigned to escort a terrified ermine from Casino Monokowski out to the Garbage Dump early one morning just over twenty years earlier. He had no idea what was behind the break between the ermine and the casino. At that time, Eric was popping almost as many pills as Sam Gazelle, and even connections that were explained to him often remained unclear.

Tom-Tom carried the quivering ermine out to the car where Eric was waiting. They sat in the backseat. Eric drove as fast as he could up toward the Star, then continued out on Eastern Avenue and without touching the brakes was at the dump’s wooden gate just under twenty minutes later. There he tooted the horn three times, according to instructions. The black Volga limousine from Casino Monokowski was an often-seen vehicle at the dump—just like black limousines from other establishments—and the gates were opened at once. At the fork in the road immediately after the entrance stood a duck in black sunglasses (despite the fact that the sun had not yet come up) who waved him forward. Eric drove along the Middle Road, a ravine through refuse and scrap, eerily narrow and deep. Onward, onward
he followed the road until he was suddenly forced to put on the brakes because a rat was standing in front of him.

The ermine and the crow in the backseat were thrown forward, but Tom-Tom pulled himself up quickly and burst out, terror-stricken, “It’s Ruth.”

Eric knew who Ruth was, even if he’d never seen the young Queen of the Garbage Dump. Dove always talked about her with equal amounts of respect and irritation.

“What the hell is she doing here, in the middle of the road?” whispered Tom-Tom with a hoarse anxiety that infected Eric. “You just about ran her over.”

The last statement was an anxious declaration which in the car’s mute compartment sounded like an accusation.

“Throw him out,” said Eric.

“What?”

“Throw him out!” repeated Eric.

And Tom-Tom understood, opened the back door, and heaved out the ermine. Whereupon Eric shifted gears and started to back up. He backed up as fast as he could for more than a kilometer before the ravine opened into a passage wide enough to turn in, and then they drove in silence toward the wooden gate that they both feared would be closed when they got there. But it was open, and on the way back along Eastern Avenue the sun came up on the horizon and they laughed at their adventure and for several months talked about that morning when Eric almost ran Rat Ruth down.

The second time Eric
Bear met the Queen of the Garbage Dump was more than fifteen years later, at a large, polished conference table inside Sagrada Bastante.

Eric counted the telephone call that had preceded this meeting as one of the high points of his life, proof that he
had not only succeeded in a general, superficial, and material sense, but that he’d truly forced himself into the innermost core of contemporary history.

He and Emma had been having a late dinner in the kitchen on Uxbridge Street when the telephone rang. Emma shrugged her shoulders inquiringly and shook her head. Eric got up from the table and took the phone in the serving corridor.

“Eric,” an authoritative voice was heard, “I beg your pardon for calling so late, but…oh, forgive me. This is Archdeacon Odenrick.”

“I recognized your voice, Archdeacon,” said Eric. “It’s been a long time.”

“It really has been,” said Odenrick, “but I have nevertheless had the benefit of following your career at a distance.”

“You can’t believe everything you read,” replied Eric with feigned humility.

“Don’t say that to your mother,” said Odenrick jokingly. “She’s insanely proud of you.”

“No danger. She reads and hears what she wants to read and hear. Selectivity is one of her greatest talents.”

“I think you’re underestimating her,” answered Penguin Odenrick, not without a certain degree of merriment.

“I’m sure I’m not,” said Eric. “What’s the occasion for this late call?”

Odenrick was a straightforward penguin, an animal who set high value on his time, and he appreciated Eric’s direct question.

“I’m calling about A Helping Hand,” explained the archdeacon. “We have a vacant place on the board of directors—old Goldman became ill, actually last summer, but she wasn’t picked up until a few weeks ago. Very tragic nonetheless, of course, and when we were talking around the table about successors your name came up.”

“It did?” said Eric.

“You can believe that I felt very proud,” said Odenrick. “Having known you since you were a little cub.”

“Do you mean that…”

“We would be very happy to have you on the board, Eric.”

When Eric Bear returned to the kitchen to his waiting Emma Rabbit it was as though his paws didn’t touch the floor; he was flying a few centimeters above the parquet floor. Emma had only heard portions of the conversation, so Eric told her. Of all the city’s aid associations, there was none so influential or respected as A Helping Hand. For more than a hundred years the city’s archdeacon was chairman of the board. Only the upper crust of society sat on the board, the most irreproachable animals that could be found.

“And now, me,” said Eric Bear.

Emma Rabbit was most often moderately interested in Eric’s achievements; she defined herself in different arenas than her spouse. But a place on the board of A Helping Hand impressed even her.

The first board meeting followed a few months after the archdeacon’s telephone call, and it was with genuine reverence that Eric made his way along the long, dark corridors within Sagrada Bastante en route to the boardroom with its enormous oak table and the stern, tall, and hard chairs.

The first thing he saw when he came in was Rat Ruth.

None of the other animals held any surprises, it was more or less those he had expected. Mayor Sara Lion sat to the left side of the archdeacon. But Ruth? During the years that followed—the board met approximately every fourth month—Eric realized that Ruth was just as obviously anchored in society’s upper crust as the archdeacon or the mayor. She seldom took part in the discussions; she walked
by herself during the breaks and always departed before the lunches, or the less-frequent dinners. But nonetheless. She was asked for advice with proper respect in all matters, and no one ever wrinkled their nose when Ruth or her operation were brought up.

Eric assumed that everyone on the many-headed board knew how Ruth supported the city’s gangster kings. Yet they let her sit in and revel in all the social patina that the board work entailed. Eric wasn’t naïve, nor was he a moralist, but in the circles around A Helping Hand both of those types were represented. When Eric, in time and very carefully, tried to raise the question about Ruth with individual board members, he got nowhere.

Eric realized that the board members, with their years of experience from the backside of life, had all been forced to become thick-skinned pragmatists. They appreciated the significance of garbage being gathered and knew that if Ruth didn’t carry out this bad-smelling work someone else would be forced to do it. But could that be the entire reason that they accepted her at the table? Eric was doubtful.

And now, from a completely different direction, he was presented with a possible explanation.

Noah Camel ran errands for Rat Ruth.

Rat Ruth was not only the queen of organic and industrial waste, she was also life’s own waste composter. Rat Ruth was the one who drew up the Death List. The reason for the esteemed board members’ respect was purely and simply that they were scared to death.

And they had every reason to be.

The snake and the
bear stood silently across from each other in the narrow alley. It was already so late that it was getting cold, there was a smell of hairspray from one of the open
windows, and on the lid of the trash barrel where Snake was standing someone had stuck a wad of chewed-up, pink bubble gum.

The animals scrutinized each other.

Snake understood that love for Emma Rabbit was Eric Bear’s weak point. True, Snake had never experienced love, but he was an artist: he had written mystery novels based on crimes of passion, written poem cycles with a starting point in lust, and made hundreds of nude studies in charcoal. Taking love with such seriousness as Eric Bear did, however, was simply ludicrous.

“Perhaps it’s time,” said Snake Marek, “to put things in their proper perspective? This whole business with Dove is…there were certainly good reasons to call together the old gang and remind us all where we’ve ended up in life, but now it concerns our security. Emma Rabbit, with all due respect, but a bear of your position can quite certainly find…alternatives…and I think for my part that—”

“That’s enough,” said Eric, holding up a paw, whereupon Snake actually fell silent. “That’s enough. We have to go now. Someday, perhaps, we’ll sit down and talk this out, you and I. But not today. We don’t have time. After you.”

And Eric waited patiently while Snake Marek extremely unwillingly wriggled down from the trash barrel and headed off toward the car, where the gazelle and the crow had been sitting a long time.