Norman Invasions (46 page)

It was a hunter's nightmare!

“Where is the photograph?” I cried, my Norwegian barely sufficing to enunciate this question.

“There,” said the bear, in Norwegian, gesturing with the muzzle of the weapon.

My heart sank, for the muzzle of that lethal device indicated a small pile of ash. “Fiend!” I cried, in English, for I did not know the Norwegian for this word, or had not time to recollect it.

“Do you think you will leave this cabin alive?” asked the bear.

“Your Norwegian is not very good,” I said, suddenly. The accent was clearly Berlitz.

“I have twenty-seven words of Norwegian,” said the bear, huffily.

“Berlitz?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I have forty-one,” I said.

“Berlitz?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Obviously,” said the bear, “you are more fluent than I. Would you care to speak in some other language, English, perhaps?”

“If you wish,” I said. It made little difference to me.

“Do you expect to leave this room alive?” asked the bear, in English.

“Yes,” I said.

Actually I do not remember exactly what my response was, but, as I am now writing this, I conjecture that my response must have been something along those lines.

The muzzle of that frightful, dangerous artifact was again trained on my heart.

“Your accent,” I said, “is of Queens, New York, perhaps Forest Hills, perhaps Rego Park.”

He seemed suddenly shaken.

“I do not think you are actually a polar bear,” I said.

The muzzle wavered.

I had him now.

“You are not going to pull that trigger,” I said.

At this point we have lost many an investigative reporter.

The bullet blazed past my left ear and knocked a board loose behind me.

“You are not going to pull the trigger again,” I informed him.

This time the bullet ripped through the collar of my Linkblott parka, and a panel of the door behind me exploded down the hill.

“You see,” I said, “you have missed me twice. Freud has an explanation for this. It is called motivated missing.”

I saw that this shook the bear considerably.

“You are not truly a bear,” I said, “but a human being disguised as a bear. I would not be surprised if you had a zipper in the back.”

I thought I heard a gasp emerge between the fangs in that cavernous maw, and perhaps a choked sob.

“You are living a lie,” I informed him, cruelly. Sometimes an investigative reporter must be cruel. We are not trained to pull punches, except in cases where we might thereby annoy our adversary, and risk being pummeled.

“Yes,” he said, suddenly, and staggered back, and then sat back on a chair, wearily, behind the table in the room, the rifle lowered, placed on the table, not pointing any longer at me. He put his head in his paws.

“Yes,” he said, agonized. “I am not truly a polar bear. I have been living a lie.”

“You are clearly suffering from cognitive dissonance,” I said, “and are riven with self-conflict.” It helps for an investigative reporter to have some awareness of psychology.

The massive, shaggy body shook with dry, throaty sobs. I was touched. My appeal, of course, had been a moral one. Morality is a formidable weapon when applied to the moral. With the immoral it does not work as well.

Suddenly, with his paws, he removed the massive headpiece, which so cunningly resembled the head of one of the Arctic's most fearsome predators.

“You!” I cried.

I beheld the visage of our obtrusive waiter, the large, strong, broad-shouldered youth with the mop of shaggy blond hair, he who looked as though he might easily command the floor of a Norwegian disco.

I suspect he had been chosen in part because of his uncanny resemblance to a large, strong, broad-shouldered, shaggy-haired Norwegian youth, of the sort which might arouse not suspicion, but admiration, in a Norwegian disco. I wondered if he had won the hearts of several of the lusciously gyrating maids of the land of the Midnight Sun. He had but twenty-seven words of Norwegian, but I suspected he could have made them go a long way. Too, Norwegian maids are used to taciturn men, strong silent types who, particularly in the rural areas, are likely to limit themselves to six or seven words a day, most of which have to do with weather and the condition of the stock, but the others commonly expressive of tenderness, regard, and sensitivity.

Norwegian marriages tend to be long-lasting and loving, perhaps in part because harsh words, rather like other words, are seldom spoken.

“My name is Irving, Irving Himmelfarb,” he said. “As you suspected, I am from Queens, New York and, indeed, from Forest Hills. I attended Forest Hills High School there, and patronized the Bagel Nosh.”

“Go on,” I said.

Incidentally, I will now refer to him as Olaf, that in order to protect his true identity.

“Being a reckless youth,” he said, “and zealous to pursue adventures, I succumbed to the lure of exotic vistas and ready cash, a good deal of it.”

It was an old story, recklessness, a zeal for adventure, the lure of exotic vistas, and wealth.

“And so when the offer of becoming a polar bear impostor offered itself, I leapt at it, naturally”

“That is natural” I granted him, sympathetically.

“Forest Hills, Queens,” he said, “incidentally, is a major recruiting center for polar bear impostors.”

“I did not know that,” I said. I didn't know it at the time.

“Others,” he said, “are in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, San Diego, and Los Angeles.”

“Certainly the craft is an odd one,” I said, hoping to draw him out.

“It is more common than you might think,” he said, “that and certain similar or kindred occupations. You must understand, first, that rivalry amongst travel organizations is fierce. Competition for the customer's dollars, or dinars, or shells, or zarduks, is fierce. Economic natural selection, merciless and unforgiving, flourishes. Resources are limited. Economic arms races, so to speak, are rampant. Who will survive? Suppose then, that a travel company forced into exotic niches appealing only to unusual clienteles is on the brink of extinction. What if, for example, a jungle expedition advertising aardvark sightings fails to sight aardvarks?”

“Or a polar marine expedition polar bears,” I said, shrewdly

“Yes,” he said, “I think you can see that that option is not economically permissible. It would be an invitation to join the economic Dodo birds, Great Auks, and such. Companies will fight to survive, tooth and nail, and they intend to get on with business, if necessary, ‘red in tooth and claw.'”

“Naturally,” I said. I saw that Olaf was well read. At least he was familiar with Tennyson.

“I did not think of it as wrong, or criminal,” he said. “I am not even sure, now, that it is. Is it wrong to try to do what one can to help a brave, desperate, noble, struggling company to survive? Is it wrong to give pleasure to eager polar bear enthusiasts? Do we denounce and castigate actors for donning costumes and presenting plays? For example, we do not really think that Derek Jacoby is Hamlet, at least not most of us. We do not scorn actors for trying to make their living, do we?”

“Not lately,” I said. I knew something of the history of the theater.

“Yet fraud,” said he, “is clearly involved.”

“Yes,” I said.

I could almost hear the dark bells of cognitive dissonance clanging in Olaf's subconscious mind.

“The benefits are good,” said Olaf, “and one gets vacations twice a year.”

“How many polar bear impostors are there?” I asked.

“At any given time, counting days off, the fellows on vacation, and so on, twenty-eight.”

“I see,” I said.

“But there were things they didn't tell me about,” said Olaf, “the loneliness, the ice, the temperature of the water, the lousy raw fish one has to eat, the ridicule of seals who splat their flippers in our very faces, the insolent gulls, many of whom are afflicted with intestinal incontinence, and occasionally the curiosity of real polar bears.”

I recalled hearing that one of the earlier expeditions had sighted twenty-nine polar bears.

“That could be dangerous,” I said.

“They space themselves out,” said Olaf. “It's territorial. The danger is the mating season. It's good to have your vacation then.”

“It sounds risky to me,” I said.

“We have a shoulder holster inside the suit,” he said, patting a bulge near his left foreleg, “and plenty of tranquilizer darts, fifty cc's of fluid in each.”

“Still,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “it's dangerous.”

I shuddered.

“Why don't you quit?” I asked.

He smiled bitterly. “These guys are tough,” he said. “Do you think this is the sort of job you can just walk out on? Do you think they let you do that? Do you think they can afford to let you do that? They have too much invested. There's a lot at stake here.”

“It sounds like the Mafia,” I said.

“The Mafia won't touch these guys,” he said. “Too dangerous, too cold, too far from Sicily. Too, the Mafia guys are at least human. They like to eat pizza and spaghetti, and they have a profound respect for family values.”

“You can't quit then?” I said.

“I know too much,” he said, wearily.

“I see,” I said. Surely I had the makings of a great story here. A Pulitzer would be a cinch.

“And so, too, now, do you, Tiger Mouse,” said a voice, from behind me.

I spun about to see a middle-aged, pleasant-looking, well-dressed Asian gentleman. I would have thought little of this except that he had behind him several dacoits carrying small hatchets. All were wearing Linkblott parkas.

“I see, Olaf,” said the new arrival, “that you are losing your nerve.” Actually he used my new friend's name, but I am disguising that name, in order to protect his identity.

“No!” said Olaf, defensively, rising.

“Then perhaps your taste for raw fish?” asked the gentleman.

Olaf looked down, in a surly fashion.

“And you, Tiger Mouse,” said the Asian gentleman, pleasantly, “what shall we do with you?”

“How do you know my name?” I inquired.

He smiled.

“You are an agent of Wu Chang!” I cried. “Then his tentacles extend well beyond San Francisco, and Berkeley, even to Forest Hills and Longyearbyen, not to mention Los Angeles, San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland!”

“And many other places as well,” purred the gentleman, in melodious accents suitable for a villain of his particular ethnicity, “Chicago, Seattle, East Orange, New Brunswick, Burlington, Iowa, Bridgewater, South Dakota, and elsewhere.”

“Fiend!” I cried.

“It is all a matter of point of view,” he said. “Clearly you are not a subjectivist and moral relativist.”

“Fiend! Fiend!” I cried.

“Clearly,” he said.

“You are all washed up,” I said.

He looked at me, puzzled.

“Well lathered” I explained, “and cleansed.”

“I see,” he said, his eyes clouding.

“Tiger Mouse is prepared to pounce,” I informed him.

“You do not recognize me, do you?” he inquired.

“No,” I said.

“Perhaps we all look alike,” he speculated.

“Not at all!” I exclaimed. I would not fall into that trap! I was not unaware of the requirements of contemporary civility.

“Think hard,” he said.

I put my mind to scanning all Asian faces of my acquaintance. Embarrassingly, they did look much alike, all Asian. Fortunately, for my moral self-respect, I realized that to Asians folks like me also looked much alike, and, upon reflection, I supposed we did.

“I thought we were old friends,” he said.

“Wu Chang!” I cried.

“You put me out of the obsolete technology business,” he said. “Do we not, upon our birthdays, exchange small presents?”

“Yes!” I said. I recalled the small hatchet, with several notches carved into the handle.

“How you have fallen,” I cried, “to have become an agent of the notorious Wu Chang!”

Many Han names, as mentioned earlier, are similar.

“I am not an agent of the notorious Wu Chang,” he assured me.

“Thank heavens!” I cried.

“I am the notorious Wu Chang,” he assured me.

I was certain he was joking. At least the dacoits behind him seemed amused, to the extent permitted by an aspect of sinister severity.

“How else do you think I managed to afford, found, and extend a tentacle into a thousand retail outlets for technologically advanced gadgetry?”

I refrain from mentioning the name of the enterprise, as it would be altogether too familiar to the reader, and might produce disruption and guilt amongst several thousand of its honest, law-abiding, unwitting employees.

“Were it not for your earlier exposé, that brilliant set of articles proving that I could not be, despite seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the notorious Wu Chang of Tong fame my career might have been tragically terminated, or, at the least, slowed or stunted. The authorities had been closing in on me at the time. I thought that I was through. But thanks to your work, Tiger Mouse, I was saved to thrive in one of the economy's most favored and select niches, that reserved for blood-thirsty criminal masterminds.”

“I am pleased to have been of service,” I said, “I suppose.”

“Still,” he said, “you do represent something of an economic drain, birthday presents, and such.”

“I am not afraid of you, Wu Chang,” I said.

“What of my dacoits, and their hatchets?” he inquired.

“We are talking about you, Wu Chang,” I said. “Do not change the subject.”

“I admire your courage, Tiger Mouse,” said he. “That is certainly your most prominent virtue.”