Yok (3 page)

But that was a piece of advice Fox could not
follow. Overwhelmed by what he had seen, he did not care about the damper that
had settled over the mood at the table when he returned. Furthermore, he did not
notice that the previously so agreeable Rex Pug bid a hasty good-bye out on
saffron yellow Puerta de Alcalà without a word about the future. In Fox Antonio
Ortega's heart there was only room for the image of Beatrice, and as if in a
trance he staggered home through the dangerous streets of Sors with an
infatuated smile on his lips.

H
e
returned to Puerta de Alcalà the following evening. This was not something he
consciously decided, he just did it. He was drawn back, he explained to me. He
stood in the shadows on the other side of the street for several hours, hoping
to catch a glimpse of her in a window. When he felt the cool foreboding of the
Evening Storm in his fur, he crossed the street and entered the restaurant,
ordered a glass of milk in the bar, and ignored the bartender's look. He went to
the restroom several times during the evening, and each time lingered outside
the round window in the door to the kitchen, but she wasn't there. When he went
home his disappointment was as great as his determination. He had to see her
again.

For four evenings Fox Antonio Ortega repeated the
procedure, but on the fifth evening he was turned away at the door. A hyena in a
pinstriped suit stopped him on his way in.

“Unfortunately,” said Luciano, “this evening we're
only letting in dinner guests.”

“Then I'll order something to eat,” Fox
replied.

“Dinner guests with a reservation,” said Luciano,
closing the door right in the fox's long nose.

Crestfallen, the beautiful Antonio Ortega remained
standing outside the closed door. At last he shrugged his shoulders and was
about to return to his place on the opposite sidewalk when a small package fell
on his head.

“Ouch.”

It hurt, and it was only when he bent down to pick
up the package that he saw the lovely red silk ribbon. What he had thought was a
stone appeared to be a small present. He looked up at the facade, but no windows
were open. He picked up the package, taking in its aroma. It was feminine,
subtle but enticing at the same time, and involuntarily Fox inhaled deeply. As
he carefully unwrapped the paper he released even more perfume, and without
being certain, he knew it was Beatrice Cockatoo who had thrown the package out
to him.

Inside was a yellow piece of paper on which was
written in neat handwriting: “Greenhouse. Gazebo.” Even though Fox understood
that the message was for him, he did not understand there was more to it than
that. He was filled with the heady perfume, with the possibility that the piece
of paper had been wrapped and thrown out the window by the beautiful Beatrice,
and as he walked home through the empty streets it was not with the feeling that
he had missed something.

The next day Fox worked at a photo shoot, and he
casually told one of the photographers about the note.

“Did you find the greenhouse?” the photographer
asked.

“Find it?”

When it occurred to Fox Antonio Ortega that of
course he ought to have looked for a greenhouse, he rushed out of the photo
shoot and down to the bus. He rode to grass green Yiala's Arch, and ran three
kilometers to Puerta de Alcalà.

Behind La Cueva there was a well-tended courtyard,
and at the back was the lovely greenhouse the message had referred to. If Fox
realized he was snooping around in a gangster boss's backyard, he might have
been more careful. Now he went into the greenhouse and looked around. Pots of
herbs stood on tables in long rows, and the aroma of basil and mint was so
overwhelming he had a hard time thinking. He searched for a “gazebo,” the other
word on the piece of paper. As he did not know what sort of thing that was, he
doubted he would find it. Not far from the herbs was a gooseberry bush, and
Antonio Ortega took a berry. As he chewed—the berry was perfect, not sour or
overripe—his glance fell on a slate standing on a dusty table next to a cracked
mirror. Fox also saw that there was a piece of chalk next to the slate, and he
could not refrain. He swallowed the gooseberry, went up to the slate, and drew a
sun. With his paw he rubbed it out, and wrote “gazebo.” It was just an impulse,
and when a space opened in the ground under the table, he recoiled in fear. The
dark hole led down to an underground tunnel. He thought he recognized the same
marvelous perfume from the package wafting out of the hole, and that gave him
courage. He climbed down a narrow ladder and began walking in the darkness,
below the ground, in the direction back toward the house. The darkness was soon
so dense he could not see his own paws, and for that reason he walked right into
a door. Instinctively he fumbled ahead, found the handle, and opened it. On the
other side was a modest room where the glow of a table lamp emitted enough light
that he could see a worn armchair where, exhausted, he sank down.

At the next moment the door on the opposite side
opened, and Beatrice Cockatoo made an entrance. She staggered, panting. “You
came!” she exclaimed.

And the next moment the happiness that shone in her
eyes changed to terror.

“You must never come here again. He'll rub you out.
My dad can make bad things happen. Really bad things.”

She ran over to the armchair, and he got up. She
gave him a quick, fleeting hug, took a step back, and looked him in the eyes.
Then she repeated her warning, and asked him to go.

“But . . . I have to see you again,” he
said.

“Of course,” she answered.

“My name is Fox Antonio Ortega,” he said. “You are
the most beautiful stuffed animal I have ever seen.”

She giggled. “You are the most beautiful stuffed
animal
I've
ever seen,” she answered. “Now
leave.”

“If I haven't heard from you by tomorrow evening,
I'll come back,” he said.

“Go now,” she repeated with a smile.

Unwillingly he left her, going back the same way
he'd come.

B
eatrice Cockatoo is not the protagonist of this story, and her
significance for me, and the story, only has to do with her significance for Fox
Antonio Ortega. But because she was already the center of Fox's life, I want to
devote some time to her.

By chance—which I will return to—I gained access to
Cockatoo's diaries, and the best way to describe her character and the special
circumstances under which she lived at one time is to quote directly from her
diary. Here is an extract from a day a few months before she met Fox Antonio
Ortega for the first time:

Dear Diary,

Daddy said I may never
ever mention Stavros Panther again. I promised I will never ever do that.
Daddy is furious, but he's still pretty nice to me. He says it's not my
fault, it's all Panther's fault. I don't know if that's completely true, but
of course that doesn't matter. In a couple of weeks Daddy will have
forgotten everything, that's how it always is.

I LOVE my room. I have
two big windows facing saffron yellow Puerta de Alcalà. My curtains are
linen, they're yellow, too, but lighter than the street, and they hang on
white curtain rods with big knobs. I can pull down the shades if I want it
dark.

My room is on the third
floor, so I look over the roof of the building across the street, I can see
all the way over to the water tower by the old animals' home. I don't know
how far that is, but it must be several miles.

I have wallpaper that is
white with a pink pattern. I think of the pattern as branches, if you can
imagine branches growing in circles. I have a big white bed with a
canopy—like a small sky over my head—that always makes me feel safe. When
the real sky turns black it frightens me with its endlessness and its small,
distant stars.

Then I have a couch full
of pillows. All of them are different, some have crocheted covers, some are
linen. I have oblong and square pillows, a little pillow in the shape of a
heart, and a big one that looks like a sun. But they are all shades of red
and pink. They go with the wallpaper. The red heart pillow is the reddest of
them all. On one of the armchairs is a woolly blanket, which I can't get
anywhere near without sneezing.

My room is pretty big.
My desk is in front of one of the windows. That's where I sit and write in
my diary in the evening. In one of the secret compartments in the desk I
have hidden an extra key to my bedroom door, which no one knows I have.
Daddy sometimes has someone lock it from outside. I have never locked it
from the inside. But I could, if I wanted to.

I'm not judging anyone. Diary entries are personal
and not meant to be published. You should be able to write what you want in a
diary without thinking about style or significance. I don't want to serve as
some kind of filter either. I have chosen to publish Cockatoo's private thoughts
and feelings because I think it explains something about her, and by extension
about why she was so desirable to Fox Antonio Ortega. More from the same
entry:

When I'm forced to sit
locked up in the room, what I miss the most is not what I would guess that I
would miss the most. There you see how little we know ourselves. You might
think I ought to miss my girlfriends most of all. Going out into the city,
sitting and talking at some café, each with a large latte that I would NEVER
drink. Milk makes you fat. But it's NOT my girlfriends I miss the
most.

I miss working in the
kitchen.

That's totally
sick.

Daddy lets me work in the
kitchen in the evening. Not always, not every time I ask to, but pretty
often. It usually turns out to be a few days a week. Usually I'm at the cold
buffet. I like that the most. It's hard work, it's stressful, and Daddy
tolerates no mistakes. Not by me, and not by the others. The restaurant is
his pride, and only the best is good enough. But I think I'm good, and he
thinks so, too.

That's what I always miss
the most. Getting to chop cucumbers, whip cream, and sift powdered sugar
over the chocolate cakes. That IS crazy.

Daddy always has them do
the job the same way. Sometimes I tease him a little about that. Then he
answers that only an idiot gets tired of things that work. Mostly they hit
the post offices, but sometimes the regular businesses, too. Never banks. If
you hit a bank, you'll have the police on you.

Stavros Panther is the
Second Driver. The First Driver waits outside the post office and drives off
at a furious speed. This is the most critical stretch; here you have to be
quick and capable. The Second Driver waits at a distance. They throw the
money in his car, and while they continue with the First Driver, the Second
Driver takes off with the loot. After at least fifteen but no more than
thirty minutes he then turns it over to the Third Driver, who drives home to
us.

Stavros was the Second
Driver. He always said that he would soon be promoted to First Driver, but I
don't know if he said that just to boast.

I don't know why he fell
in love with me. It's the sort of thing that just happens, I guess. It
started with a letter he stuck under my door early one morning. I shouldn't
complain, a love letter is a love letter, even if it's poorly spelled. I
didn't know who he was, he signed it simply “Stavros.” It was page up and
page down about my beak and my comb. I was his lovebird, he wrote. I
couldn't keep from laughing at that. It sounded SO silly, especially when I
didn't know who wrote it.

The next morning a new
letter arrived. And then another. This went on for several weeks. Not every
day, but maybe every other, every third day. For a while I thought my secret
admirer was a doctor. He devoted so much time to describing my body
parts—not in a vulgar way—that I thought he was more interested in anatomy
than love.

Of course I could have
waited by the door and opened it when the letter came through the chink, but
I didn't want to know who my suitor was. It was more exciting this
way.

Daddy isn't mean. I
realize of course that he treats me like a little cub, and according to my
girlfriends I'm living more or less completely CONFINED, which they think is
a SCANDAL and TERRIBLE. But it's no scandal at all. For one thing I like
being at home, in my beloved room. And when I go out Daddy always makes sure
I have someone with me. That has to do with my SECURITY.

Daddy has never tried to
lie about what he does. I know that La Cueva, his beloved restaurant, loses
money. That's why it can afford to be so amazing. Yes, to be sure sometimes
he robs a post office, but above all he takes care of security in Sors. The
police aren't enough, not down here. So somebody has to take responsibility.
And I know there are those who say that the payment Daddy rakes in for
taking care of security is unreasonable, but I know just as many who think
it's good that someone makes sure that society functions. Even in Yok, where
society doesn't function.

For that reason Daddy has
enemies. Trying to get at him through me is not an unnatural thought. I'm
Daddy's jewel. I'm the finest thing he knows, the one he cares about most of
all. Injuring me would hurt him frightfully. Everyone knows that. It's not
strange that he sends a couple of bodyguards with me when I go out. It's not
strange that I don't get to drive a car.

It's no wonder, even if
my so-called girlfriends try to make it into something else.