Yok (14 page)

It strikes me, as I'm telling about the storeroom in the cellar, that it was long ago that I stopped obsessing about why I end up there; even when I was little I realized it was a punishment, but at that time I tried to put things I'd done or said in connection with their grabbing hold of me and dragging me down the stairs to the cellar, tried to figure out a reason, and sometimes I think I succeeded and then I was happy, almost overjoyed—not only because I'd understood something, but above all because a little spark of hope was lit about being able to avoid the storeroom the next time, if I just kept from doing what I'd done (or saying what I'd said). But that's not how it works, and to be honest I will say there were times during my teens when I thought I would go completely crazy; they dragged me down there without any reason at all, and I was lying in the darkness and going over the hours and days that had just passed and could not find a single miserable little reason to be punished, not a single little stain on their shirts after the laundry, not a single little scrap of food left on the plate after doing the dishes, not a single little sigh when I was scrubbing the toilet, not a single little crease when I made their beds; then I was about to go crazy, and it took several years before I stopped searching for reasons and accepted things for what they were; that's called maturity.

F
our days after Rasmus and I had been in the TV building another envelope arrived from
Now!
, this time with Leopold Leopard's name on it, and I didn't know what to think, how was this possible? The letter, unassuming and a little dirty, was on the floor in the hall when I came home from work, and I crouched down and twisted and turned it and could hardly believe my eyes. Leopold Leopard! Not for a moment did I think that something had gone wrong or that the computers had made a mistake and sent one letter too many to us—my oldest brother had also been called to the program-host tryouts! After all these years I'd watched Rasmus and Leopold wait for a confirmation that never came, for evidence that they were special, that they were different from everyone else in the neighborhood and that they would actually get out of here, out of Yok and a life on the dark side; that there was a higher meaning—a purpose for Rasmus Panther's and Leopold Leopard's existence that fate and life had concealed for so long, not from them but from everyone else, and that it was finally revealed and their self-image was in alignment with what really happened. All these years of wearing a mask, of secrecy, of frustrated fury, and finally fate smiled its most beautiful smile, not only at Rasmus but also at Leopold!

It was amazing. At last I could use that word in the way it was meant—amazing. I ran into the living room and placed the letter on the coffee table. A few minutes later I removed the envelope, carried the paper upstairs and put it on Leopold's bed, but then I changed my mind again and took it back down to the kitchen and put it on the kitchen table. There I got worried that water or coffee or something else would spill on it, and so I ran with it into the hall again and put it on the third step of the stairs, so that it would be the first thing Leopold saw when he came home. I kept changing my mind like that back and forth for at least an hour until I realized how ridiculous I was making myself, and then I sank down into one of the armchairs in the living room and put the letter back on the coffee table where I had put it to start with. I spent the rest of the late afternoon trying to fix and caulk the molding around the windows in the kitchen, which isn't exactly easy. I'm not naturally good with tools; I saw and build and grind and paint but it takes twice as long for me as, for example, Leopold, who always hits the nail with the hammer, who always understands three-dimensional constructions, and who never puts too much paint on the brush; how that works, someone like me will never understand.

R
asmus Panther came home before Leopold. Late afternoon had turned to evening and the sun was on its leisurely way toward the horizon. Don't ask me where my brothers keep themselves during the day or what they do, I have no idea. I think they sleep until lunch, but they're not usually there when I get home from work in the afternoon. Then they show up for dinner and leave again when they're done, and the only thing that distinguishes weekend from weekday is that on the weekend I have no job to go to and I can take care of the odd jobs here at home that I haven't had time for during the week.

I was in the kitchen cooking beans when I heard Rasmus shout from the living room. He had caught sight of the letter with Leopold's name. Maybe he had been mistaken and thought it was for him, that it was the results of his tryout, and then, just before he tore it open with his sharp claw, he read the name on the envelope a second time and realized that it was for his big brother.

Rasmus has been bragging a good deal about how it went at the test. He said that in the studio, when he read my made-up news item, the camera loved him and the stuffed animals who were running the recording applauded him and said he was much better than all the others, so now all three of us—me, Leopold, and Rasmus, that is—are waiting for
Good Morning Mollisan Town
to call and say that Rasmus has been selected as one of the participants on
New Mornings
.

But now he swore, a long litany that was stronger than anything I could have imagined, and I pictured him throwing down the letter as if it had burned him. Then a few minutes went by when I don't know what happened, now I was frying sausages that my brothers had rejected and thrown out yesterday but which I'd rolled into balls and seasoned with rosemary today, which means they won't recognize them, and then suddenly the door to the kitchen opened and Rasmus stormed in.

“Hi, have you . . . ?”

But he didn't intend to talk with me. He took hold of my tail and yanked; I tumbled backward, struck my head on the stove, and must have fainted, because when I came back to life again we were already on our way down the cellar stairs and I knew that nothing I said or did would appease him, and I didn't ask myself why he opened the door to the little storeroom or why he threw me in and slipped the rubber shackle around my ankle. That was just the sort of thing he did.

I
don't want to exaggerate because there is no reason to exaggerate. Melancholy is just a stop on the way to the burning anxiety in my heart, the flame that never dies down, that has burned a black hole in my soul. And out of that hole green slime gushes, which are the confessions that rotted long ago and decomposed and were transformed into a stinking pile of gooey truths that don't lead anywhere or to anything. I'm an ugly, disgusting little stuffed animal who never finished school, never fulfilled a single one of my intentions, and who therefore never needed to fail, never needed to challenge my self-image, and who could creep back down in my make-believe world where I was so wise and splendid and hardy and forgiving that it disgusted me, and where I live alone and bitter and scared to death. There are no excuses for not daring to look at yourself, there are no excuses for not daring to live, I deserve my burning anxiety, I deserve nothing but.

O
n the corner at ash gray Carrer de la Marquesa, barely fifty feet from the doorway to our house, is Sarah Mammoth's tobacco shop, and because my brothers smoke like chimneys I visited Sarah once or twice a day, which I had nothing against, it was really easy to feel comfortable in her cramped store. There was a stool in the corner with newspapers where I would sit and soak up the atmosphere of her smoking paradise: nicotine and caffeine, of course, but also the enticing odor of ink from the colorful magazines lining the walls, and the seductive aromas from the chocolate that seemed to bubble up out of the counter behind which Sarah sat in state, her hairy head sticking up behind the cash register in front of the coffee machine, always with a freshly filled pipe and always in a good mood.

No store gave as much credit as Sarah, and there was no one I was more faithful to than her, so as soon as I had money it went to pay off the debt for tobacco first (even if I sometimes had to work it off by helping her with inventory; doing tax forms; or cleaning the groaning, moaning, and at least hundred-pound stainless steel coffee machine with which she made the neighborhood's best espresso).

Sarah was on my side without making a big deal about it, she was on my side by letting me tell her things without asking, by letting me complain without feeling sorry for me, and by sympathizing without acting. I couldn't recall a time when I didn't feel an inexpressible coziness when I stepped into her little store (if there was another customer there I waited outside, it was that cramped), but unfortunately I could seldom stay longer than a couple of minutes, because then my brothers wondered where I'd gone, and they were right to, of course, as my chores were so many and so heavy that I didn't have time to sit and gossip with a friendly old mammoth.

I'm talking about Sarah because through her eyes I could see my brothers as they appeared in everyone else's eyes, how they had formed a team against the rest of the world, a team that maybe didn't win all its matches, but seldom lost. This image in turn had to do with the fact that most animals—if they were wise—kept a proper distance from Rasmus and Leopold, a distance that made them seem extremely alike, while I of course lived so close to them that I knew just how different they were.

One day the whole story about Leopold Leopard and Rasmus Panther will surely be written, and I probably won't even be mentioned. I don't play in their league, I'm the afterthought that came to the family when Leopold and Rasmus had already made history in our neighborhood by burning down Olson's garage after Olson stole their ball just because it happened to roll under his old wreck of a car that couldn't even be driven. But it also would be about how they looked and behaved, Leopold had hats when the other cubs were still wearing overalls, Rasmus used brass knuckles when his classmates were still playing with blocks, Dragon Aguado Molina sent his torpedoes to rip out Rasmus's and Leopold's seams before they even turned fifteen, and a few years later they had both served their first sentences at King's Cross, giving them experience in cruelty, credibility, and networks. In Yok in the area around Carrer de Carrera a few trips out to the prison were nothing to brag about, and believe me when I say there were many in school who worked to survive growing up by making themselves tough and hard (it was either that or lie low, which was more my own secret weapon, try to make myself invisible and not stick out, dress in black and gray and laugh when you were supposed to laugh and look away if you were supposed to look away), so what was it that caused Leopold and Rasmus to be different from the rest? For one thing there were two of them, they were no more than a year apart but they repeated so many grades I don't think anyone in school was clear which of them was really the older and which the younger, they were just two felines the same age who were brothers, dangerous and loyal to each other beyond the bounds of reason; you couldn't be the enemy of one of them. Then there was the fact that they were extremely well-dressed, always in colorful clothes that weren't suitable for our neighborhood, suits and shiny shoes, hats, and shawls. They worked hard at deviating from the masses, and with their sharpened claws and an endless growing arsenal of weapons in the attic, they created a myth around themselves: they were a black and a spotted mirror image of ruthlessness.

To me it has always been obvious that Leopold is our big brother, and that the responsibility for the family rests on his shoulders (which he has perhaps not always been comfortable with but which he still, I think, lives up to), something that in turn gives Rasmus the possibility to revolt against things that Leopold has decided. I know it's harder for Leopold than for Rasmus to understand everything that happens in Mollisan Town, it's not as easy for him to quickly find a solution to a problem like his younger brother. And I know that Rasmus reacts too quickly for his own good, that his spontaneity often means he ends up in strange situations and then he relies on his big brother's caution and thoughtfulness; in short, they're extremely different, Rasmus and Leopold. You see that if you're close to them, but they complement each other in a marvelous way, the one's weaknesses are the other's strengths, and vice versa.

I
accompanied Leopold to the TV studio one morning, just as I had gone with Rasmus less than a week earlier. I called in sick; you can't do that more than a few times a year if you want to keep your job, but I relied on Leopold not taking any risks, all three of us (me and my brothers) lived on the money I earned at the brewery, and because Leopold also knew the polecat from school days I assumed he had assurances that it was okay for me to be absent.

Leopold had put on his light blue suit, perhaps because he knew that Rasmus had worn his red for his test, and while the suit made the similarities between them clear—giving a little free help, if it really had gone that well for Rasmus—it also underscored the differences; true, it was an identical suit (sewn by the same claw: yours truly), but a distinctly different color, and true, they were brothers, but one of them was older than the other. Basically during the whole bus ride Leopold talked about what clothes meant in these contexts.

“There are lots of clothes in the studio.

“No. No, I mean, clothes for the contestants. Many of the others . . .

“No. But I think there are lots of sizes?

“Yes.”

And Leopold, who in contrast to Rasmus always likes explaining things to me (surely because he has a hard time understanding them himself and uses me to practice), explained that only amateurs used the clothes in the studio, it was a classic beginner's error, putting yourself in front of the camera in borrowed feathers, in a jacket too tight or too wide, in a color that didn't go with your fabric, in stripes when checks suited you or vice versa. Being properly clothed, said Leopold, meant more than if you knew anything about journalism, if you stammered, TV was a medium of surfaces, it was good of course to deliver some kind of content, but only if you looked good, in a not too intrusive manner. The light blue suit jacket (mild baby blue, almost latticed white in places) was an infinitely better choice than the light red jacket that Rasmus had on and that verged on pink, Leopold explained, simply because the color didn't compete with the news or the news anchor, at the same time as it was far from indifferent.