Lanceheim Page 11

  “Wait here for your turn,” I said once again, and carefully closed the door on them.

  Then I ran off to see what had happened, and to help the grasshopper up on the podium where the altar was.

  The ox opened the door the same moment I had left.

  “We can’t stay here,” he mumbled, as much to himself as to Maria Mink. “There’s no damn danger. Come on, let’s go check it out.”

  But the ox did not dare step out of the waiting room alone. Instead he reached for the poor mink, and with a forceful tug he shoved her across the threshold.

  “Good,” he said sarcastically as he continued to push the resistant mink ahead of him, “now we’ll see what this is about.”

  In this manner the ox and mink made their way into the church. In the darkness the already terrifying sculptures and decorations were even more threatening; the stillness that prevailed was unnerving, not peaceful. From where the stuffed animals were standing they could, if they bent forward, see up toward the altar. I had, as usual, lit the fifteen tall candles that I carried with me in a bag every morning and evening, and which I placed in a half circle around the altar ring. The glow of the wax candles was the only light; outside the windows, as I already mentioned, the dark rain clouds prevailed in the sky.

  Maximilian and the lame grasshopper were standing in front of the altar, outside the altar ring, quietly conversing. In comparison with the stately shadows along the church’s massive vault, the animals there looked ridiculously small. In the ominous silence that prevailed, Maximilian’s voice was clearly audible. The mink and the ox sat down quietly at the far end of the nearest row of pews.

  Up at the altar the grasshopper was executing a kind of strange bow. The broken leg made this difficult. He crouched as well as he could, making his right leg look even more grotesque where it stuck out.

  Maximilian placed a hand on the grasshopper’s head, and asked him to tell what was the matter. It was difficult for the ox and Maria to catch what the grasshopper replied. Like many stuffed animals before him during the past months, the grasshopper was filled with a nervous humility caused by the church’s splendor and gravity, the long wait that had at last allowed him to stand before Maximilian, and finally the friendly address; the grasshopper did not venture more than a quiet and partly snuffling mumble.

  The ox soon tired of trying to listen to the conversation. At first the glow from the candles at the altar did not seem to suffice, but as his eyes adjusted, it allowed more light than the ox had thought, and he looked around. He had never set his hoof in the church before and was astonished by its size and splendor. This was not apparent on the outside. The parish had not always been poor. The entire inside ceiling—thousands of square meters—was decorated with a massive painting. The image had been taken from the Proclamation of Fox: It depicted the occasion when Magnus returned up to heaven from the forests. Several hundred angels hid themselves in the painstakingly painted crowns of trees, and they all seemed to look down at the ox where he sat. In the three large church windows on the short side behind the altar, the mosaic was subdued and beautiful. Here too, in colorful patterns, images from the Proclamations were incorporated, but they were harder to identify; the ox had not read the sacred texts since confirmation. To the left was the church organ with its hundreds of pipes, an instrument so monumental that the ox did not even realize what he was looking at when he turned his gaze toward it.

  “Stand up!” exclaimed Maximilian.

  The ox winced. He had been mesmerized by the church building itself, and for a few moments forgot the two at the altar. When he now directed his gaze there, he saw something that caused him to blanch. Before his eyes, in the mild light from the wax candles, the grasshopper’s broken leg slowly resumed a normal appearance.

  The ox gaped.

  The grasshopper up at the altar was also staring at the miracle that had occurred. He seemed just as surprised as the ox. He got up, gingerly put his weight on the suddenly healthy leg, and found that it held. He set aside his crutches and bowed again before his savior; this time he did it with no trouble.

  This was more than Ox could handle. Pale as a ghost and without a word, he got up from the pew, turned, and ran out of the church. He did not know what he had expected, but not this. He ran because what he had witnessed scared him, in the same way that we had frightened many others during the past months. Ox would tell about the demon that reigned in the church in Kerkeling for several years to come, and in my naïveté I did not understand that such stories had already spread all over Lanceheim.

  One morning, months before, Maximilian had woken up, sat up in bed, and exclaimed, “All this suffering. All this pain.”

  That was how it started.

  Everywhere, Maximilian encountered stuffed animals who were weighed down by the deepest anxiety and who time and again had been struck by the unpredictability of life: the handicapped and the accident-prone, the mortally ill and the abandoned. By talking with them, touching them, and understanding them, he could ease their afflictions, fix them, and heal them. For me this was no surprise; I already knew what he was capable of.

  The reason that we ended up in the church during the sabbath was practical. We needed a place to be, somewhere where the sick could find us, and we did not want to attract attention. In the beginning Maximilian received visitors at night at home on Leyergasse, but the neighbors soon complained about all the running on the stairway and slamming doors, and therefore we were forced to find someplace else.

  We found an unlocked trash room a few blocks away, approximately halfway between Maximilian’s apartment and Kerkeling High School, and continued our activity there. Throughout the night Maximilian received stuffed animals, while I tried to help to the best of my ability. I maintained order in the line and took care of the practical aspects. Sometimes the police came past; here too there were complaining neighbors, and the animals who stood and waited did not always know how to behave. We thought we could make the police listen to reason, but after a few weeks they brought us in for interrogation and gave us a proper warning.

  At the same time Maximilian failed an examination for the first time. He fell behind in school. The work at night had taken its toll; Maximilian hardly found time to rest, and one day Adam Chaffinch came by and asked what we were up to.

  Maximilian explained it in his own way, but I am not sure that Adam really understood. I realized that if Maximilian did not live up to academic expectations, they would throw him out of the school.

  Therefore I was the one behind the idea of moving our activities to the church in Kerkeling. This solved several problems at the same time, and Maximilian had nothing against working during the sabbath.

  “They are so many,” he confided in me, “and I can help them.”

  At the same time I forced him to prioritize the lectures in school and not be truant. Therefore our sessions in the church became capricious in a way that I imagined was only good. Regularity would make it easier to uncover us.

  When both the ox and the grasshopper had left, I went and fetched Maria Mink. I did not scold her for leaving the dark waiting room, nor did I say anything about the fear I saw in her eyes. I had seen it before.

  Maximilian was waiting up at the altar. He was wearing a thin white tunic, and around his head and ears he had wrapped the veil he used when he worked: white with embroidered red briars. Something otherworldly rested over his form; Maria Mink reacted just like all the others.

  She was faced with something she had never experienced before.

  With a gesture I showed her the way up to the altar. She met my gaze doubtfully; would she dare? But just as courage was deserting her—it was, after all, just a matter of walking up there—her right shoulder twinged in pain, and she stepped up onto the podium. Without a sound I went to one of the rows of pews and sat down on the hard wooden seat. The church pew sloped forward a little, which made it even more uncomfortable.

  Together with the hundreds of angels on
the ceiling painting, I observed the terrified mink on her way up to the altar. Her life would be different in a few minutes. Her pains would disappear forever. I had seen it happen many times; I could see it as many times as I’d like.

  “Come now, don’t be afraid,” said Maximilian amiably.

  Maria got down on her knees, just as she had seen the grasshopper do before her. I had never needed to instruct anyone; it happened by itself. Maximilian placed his hand on Maria Mink’s head.

  “Tell me,” he asked with his light voice.

  She told about her pains. She stared shyly down at the floor, but told everything. How the pain came one day, and never left her after that. She told about visits to doctors and diagnoses, about the advice of good friends and how her mother had similar experiences when she was young. Maximilian listened patiently, and after a few minutes, when Maria paused for breath, he said, “And love?”

  The mink fell silent and looked up in terror.

  “What did you say?”

  “A long time ago,” said Maximilian, “so long ago that you have almost forgotten it, you loved. Do you remember how it felt?”

  “But…,” Maria Mink stammered, “I…this is about my pain? I’m in pain. I came to—”

  “I know why you came,” replied Maximilian. “Tell about love. Have you experienced it?”

  Maria stared at him. She was even more afraid now. She knew exactly what Maximilian was getting at. It was a secret that she had carried for many years without revealing it to a single stuffed animal. How could he know?

  “One time,” she forced out, “one time I have known love. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “But that is exactly what you are doing,” asserted Maximilian. “You are thinking about it, because it frightens you. More than anything else, it frightens you.”

  Maria Mink protested. “I want to talk about my aches!”

  Maximilian nodded, closing his eyes but keeping his hand on the mink’s head. Maria babbled on about rheumatism a while, and when she lost the thread, Maximilian asked again, “What do you remember about love?”

  She shook her head.

  Maria’s confusion intensified, and I smiled to myself. This drama was always equally fascinating to see. Soon she would tell him what he wanted to hear; she had sought his help, and he intended to give it to her.

  The Ministry of Culture’s extravagant headquarters of glass, bamboo, and granite had been erected during the next to the last of the boom periods at the end of the previous century. The building was situated at Schwartauer Allee in east Lanceheim, four blocks north of Eastern Avenue. It was a modern temple, overwhelming in its ambition to impress. On the doors in the lobby was a picture of the medieval war when King Carl united the four parts of the city and created modern-day Mollisan Town. The animals of the ministry left it up to the visitors to interpret the symbolism.

  The Ministry of Culture was closer to the Garbage Dump than to the Star, Vincent Tortoise had joked when, as a young clerk, he had taken a position at the agency.

  No one had laughed. Then as now an atmosphere of seriousness prevailed at the Ministry of Culture. It was the same at the Ministry of Finance and the Environmental Ministry. It was as if these workplaces demanded affirmation by an excess of seriousness. Unending care was devoted to things that were demonstrably unimportant, or at least decidedly less important. Nothing was allowed to stand out as more or less significant at the ministry. This was a principle of solidarity: here everyone and everything were equally important.

  Was this simply stupidity? Over the years Vincent Tortoise had asked himself that question many times. Was it all the same? All the resources and energy that were applied to cultural manifestations, to the media, to education, was it unnecessary? Would those animals who were inclined toward the humanities—the seekers and thinkers—produce the same things for the most part even without the solicitude of the ministry? And the others, the uneducable and the uninterested: Could they be disregarded?

  Vincent Tortoise was doubtful. Doubt he had never been able to get rid of. He counted this doubt as his greatest asset.

  The morning that I have chosen to introduce my careful reader to Vincent Tortoise, the newly appointed head of the ministry parked his car in the garage without granting the injustices within the agency a thought. The tortoise drove a mint green Volga Mini. Each promotion had slowly but surely brought him closer to the most desirable parking place in the garage, the one right next to the elevators. As democratic as the agency wanted to appear aboveground, the structure was mercilessly hierarchical under the surface.

  He was brooding, and encountered his mirror image in the elevator on the way up without recognizing it. In recent years he had aged more rapidly than could be attributed to time alone. On the surface he looked as he had when he was delivered from the factory, a green and wrinkled tortoise with a small, grudging nose and a velvet shell that was as soft as whipped cream. But in his eyes was a fatigue that was not there before, and any day now it would overpower him.

  Outside the elevators on the fifth floor in the ministry building was a reception counter, and alongside it a narrow couch where visitors could sit and wait. There were not many, however, who came to visit the fifth floor; it was mainly employees at the ministry who moved about up there.

  This morning Armand Owl was sitting on the couch, waiting for Tortoise. Vincent nodded as he went past, but continued without stopping. He assumed that Owl would follow.

  Tortoise had been assigned a cubicle, which, in the spirit of democracy, was just the same size and equipped in the same way as those for all the other official animals at the ministry, but he was seldom there. Instead he had more or less annexed the adjacent conference room. There was a door between the rooms, and it was always open. Eighteen stuffed animals could sit at the conference table, and to start with it had felt a trifle large to use as a desk.

  In time, however, Tortoise got used to it.

  Constance worked in the cubicle next to his own. She was not his secretary; she was his assistant.

  “Good morning,” she said when Vincent tried to sneak past. “You already have a visitor.”

  Tortoise stopped unwillingly. With a glance over his shell, he verified that Armand Owl really had followed him.

  “I assume that it is too late to ask him to wait in the reception area?”

  “I think so,” Constance confirmed with a smile. “Good morning, Armand.”

  “Constance.” Armand Owl nodded.

  She thought the owl was stylish. Always dressed in well-tailored clothes of the latest cut, he accentuated his beautiful figure and his white-flecked head, from which a sharp little black plastic beak looked out. There was something gruff about him, but at the same time exciting. Constance lowered her gaze to her desk.

  Vincent felt irritated. His mood this morning was miserable, because he had trouble with the garbage pickup, and on top of it all he would now be forced to put up with Armand Owl. They passed the tortoise’s cramped office, hung their coats up on the hangers in the conference room, and sat in leather-clad rocking chairs at the beautiful conference table.

  “There’s something special, I presume?” said Tortoise.

  “Yes, the hell if I’d have my morning java with you voluntarily,” replied Owl.

  Vincent sighed audibly. The hard-boiled jargon that Owl used agreed neither with his appearance nor his background. One time long ago Vincent Tortoise had hired Armand Owl, who until then was the best researcher Vincent had come upon. After a few years in the archives, Armand showed an interest in work in the field, and Vincent accommodated him. A few weeks on the streets was enough, and then he took on the role of the experienced, superior agent. But he played it in an inferior manner, Vincent felt.

  The head of the ministry stole a glance at his in-box and the piles of paper that waited, and nodded.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “I think we have a problem,” said Armand. “I don’t know for sure, b
ut I think that we may have a hell of a problem. Not now, but in a couple of years. But that’s just what I believe.”

  “In a couple of years?” repeated Tortoise.

  “If we don’t do anything about it,” Armand confirmed.

  “You come here unannounced before breakfast because we may have a problem in a couple of years?” Tortoise asked. “But how would it be if we took care of the problem when it arose, in a couple of years?”

  “Did I mention that imaginary animal in east Lanceheim?” Armand replied, without taking notice of Tortoise’s sarcasm. “I think that it could potentially be a hell of a problem. There is something about that…I heard talk about it even a few months ago. They say that he is a demon, that he has been sent by the lord of the underworld, Malitte, that he is gathering souls, that he takes them in payment for healing the sick and deformed.”

  “Souls?”

  “That’s what they say. The stuffed animals in east Lanceheim are superstitious fools. But last Monday they were arrested by the police—Maximilian and his companion, a wolf. I got hold of the record of the hearing. It made me uneasy.”

  Armand took a plastic folder out of his briefcase and gave it to Tortoise. While the head of the ministry read, Armand offered his own analysis.

  “You see what the problem is?” asked the owl, and continued as Tortoise read on. “He’s not a swindler. He is possibly crazy; in principle I don’t get a bit of what he says, those ridiculous parables about rocking horses are damned pathetic. But that’s not the point. The point is that if he were a cheat, he would have made himself comprehensible. He would have answers to the questions. Now he appears…as if he is actually not guilty.”

  “Hmm,” said Vincent Tortoise, setting aside the police protocol.