Amberville (4 page)

B
ack 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.