Yok Page 3

  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.

  Stavros Panther was waiting for me in the dry storage room—a big, windowless room at the back of the kitchen, and you go there to fetch flour, sugar, salt, spices, coffee; well, everything that needs to stay dry in a restaurant kitchen. I was going to get flour, and he almost scared the life out of me.

  “Shh,” he hissed. “It’s me, Stavros Panther.”

  Because it was dark in the storeroom and the panther was completely black, I could see nothing but his eyes glistening in the pale light from the kitchen. The fear ran out of me. The bad speller, I thought.

  “I’m taking a big risk,” he said. “But it’s worth it.”

  “And you’re exposing me to great danger,” I answered. “You’re like all other males, only thinking about yourself.”

  Stavros became desperate.

  “I promise,” he swore solemnly, “that you, Beatrice Cockatoo, the darling of my heart, will never be disappointed in me again. If you want I will get out of your life from this moment, you only need to ask for it.”

  “Get out,” I answered coldheartedly, but also to tease him.

  I saw him blink in desperation, as if what I’d said was impossible, and he immediately broke the promise he had ju
st made.

  “But . . . you must give me a chance!”

  Obviously I gave him a chance. I’m not mean. I can’t keep from feeling a little sorry for all these pining males who are fascinated by me in one way or another. Is it my white feathers? Or is it the yellow comb on my head? Presumably it’s neither-nor. Presumably it’s because I’m unapproachable. That my daddy is dangerous and I’m his finest trophy. That makes me, in some eyes, exciting. I believe that was the case with Stavros Panther.

  When I read this passage I could not keep from comparing it with Cockatoo’s first encounter with Fox Antonio Ortega, and the similarities were striking. Obviously she had made it a habit to entice and seduce males, and whether her intent was only to tease, or if her naiveté was born from the same murky well of understanding from which Ortega had drunk, I will leave unsaid. This is how the story of Beatrice and Stavros Panther ended; this note was penned a few days later.

  Stavros Panther got caught, of course. He wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last. The next time he was going to make his way into the dry storage room to meet me he hid in a barrel of flour and was secretly carried in there. If you’re a panther, it’s hard to shake off all the traces of flour when you’re in a hurry. Stavros was in a hurry. And Daddy found him out. I don’t even want to know what Daddy did with him. I said of course that I didn’t know who Stavros Panther was, and Daddy believed me. Maybe. But maybe not. That’s why he locks me in now in the evenings. In a few weeks Daddy will have forgotten Panther, and then I’ll ask him if the door can’t be unlocked again.

  Beatrice Cockatoo really did make contact with Fox Antonio Ortega the day after he sneaked into La Cueva through the greenhouse. She called his cell phone right after the Breeze picked up in the morning, and they spoke for less than a minute. Then she hung up in midsentence, and called back a couple of hours later during the rain to apologize. It was hard for her to talk because her daddy didn’t allow her to have her own phone in her room.

  Whether this inaccessibility, this obstacle in the path of young love, contributed to making Ortega’s longing even more intense shall remain unsaid. But during the weeks and months to come, every day became a struggle to outwit Dragon Aguado Molina, who kept his daughter under constant surveillance. The telephone calls were the loving couple’s primary means of communication. Beatrice could talk on the phone for hours if she wasn’t interrupted, and Fox could listen just as long. Neither of them cared what Beatrice said, love traveled freely through copper wires and radio waves and was greater than any single topic of conversation. On the few occasions they met in reality, they were struck mute by each other’s beauty, and hardly talked at all. Fox was an old-fashioned gentleman and would never have thought of touching the beautiful Cockatoo. Beatrice was, I assume, more experienced, but felt that it was not a female’s place to take physical initiative. His waiting aroused her respect and curiosity. He was different, and this incited her.

  I cannot refrain from quoting a section from Beatrice’s diary that describes the effort the lovers put into stealing a few short minutes in each other’s company during this period. It is not difficult to realize that the love they were experiencing grew and turned into something stronger and more powerful than any normal stuffed animal can understand.

  Beatrice tells it like this:

  It was Vasko Manatee who drove me. I knew it would be him because it’s Thursday. We have a black Volga Deluxe with tinted bulletproof windows and lead doors that are so superheavy I can’t open them myself. The interior was made especially for Daddy, with leather seats and a bar cabinet and a tinted glass window that can be raised between the backseat and the front so the driver doesn’t hear what’s being said.

  Grand Divino is on the other side of mint green East Avenue, up in Lanceheim. I’m not particularly well traveled, it’s like there’s no reason to bounce around in the city, I think. Most everything is in the vicinity of our saffron yellow Puerta de Alcalà, but Grand Divino is an exception. I confess that I love this department store. I love it much, much more than shopping. Sometimes I come home without buying anything, even though I’ve spent hours in all the departments. Above all, the ground floor, with the perfumes, is completely unbelievably awesome. What I really want to say is that I KNOW Grand Divino: every floor, every dressing room, every box room.

  Vasko Manatee drove into the parking garage. Daddy has a spot on the fifth floor, close to the elevators. Vasko opened my car door and then followed me to the elevators. I was used to that. I didn’t think about it anymore; not even when I was looking at underwear and Vasko—or someone else—made everyone in the department feel uncomfortable.

  I led Vasko through the store up to the third floor. I took it easy—not as easy as I usually do, but much easier than I really wanted. I went between different designers and picked up a garment here and there. Two dresses. A coat. A jumper. A pair of shoes. A hat. A pair of stockings. Two sweaters. And the whole time I was on my way to the fitting rooms that were almost at the rear of the department, between Missonno and lingerie. Without a glance at Vasko Manatee, even though I REALLY wanted to see whether he realized what I was up to, I vanished with my mountain of clothes behind the curtains, where males are not allowed. Vasko and I had been here many times before. He knew the rules. With a heavy sigh he sat down in the armchair placed outside the curtains, where he always waited.

  I quickly went into the next cubicle and changed. New dress, new shoes, new coat, but above all: new hat. And it was this amazing hat that gave me the courage. I had seen it a few days before in an ad. It had a veil that completely covered my beak.

  Without hesitating, I came out of the dressing room. I had practiced a style of walking that was different from my usual gait, with swaying hips, and I walked much more slowly than usual. And now the question was, would Vasko Manatee recognize me?

  Of course I thought about what the punishment might be. IF Manatee exposed me. IF Daddy saw through me. IF I was caught red-handed. Of course that scared me. Daddy would never hurt me. I know that, I’m sure of it. But he usually locked the door to my room at night, and there was a room down in the cellar that . . . I didn’t like. I knew that he took stuffed animals down there sometimes. I suspected what he did to them. He would never do anything to me, but he might make me SIT there. A pretty long time. Maybe.

  So I was swaying my hips, and slowly I pulled the curtains to the side. I turned directly toward Vasko. I stared at him through my veil. I NEVER would have done that if I was me. Then I walked slowly away through the department, without looking around. Was he following? So far it wouldn’t matter; I could simply start picking out clothes and return to the fitting room.

  When I came to the escalators I finally turned around. And when I discovered that there was no stupid manatee behind me, my heart started to race. Until now it had mostly been a game. Until now I could have changed my mind. But IF I got onto the escalator there was no way back.

  I forced myself to stand completely still on the way up between the third and fourth floors, but when I got up to the fifth floor I more or less ran.

  The tea salon L’Express was arranged like a train. I had never liked it: ceiling too low, colors too dark, too claustrophobic. Along the wall small compartments had been set up. With doors and curtains and everything. Just like on the train to Hillevie. And in the third compartment counting from the headwaiter�
�s station he sat, Fox Antonio Ortega, the most beautiful stuffed animal I’ve seen in my whole life.

  Hearing what he said, thinking of something reasonable to say myself . . . was impossible. But I know that he said that he LOVED me. No one else has said that. Well, that is, not like that. Not like Fox Antonio Ortega said it. THAT I remember. I don’t know how long we sat there, I was nervous the whole time. I could barely listen, I could barely talk, and at last I had to leave. I think I left in the middle of a sentence. I don’t know if it was one of his or one of mine.

  I ran through the fifth floor to the escalators. I had the hat on. I ran down the escalators. And then I walked in my pretend way over toward the fitting rooms. I have NEVER been so afraid in my whole life.

  When I saw Vasko Manatee I almost started to laugh. The dumb cow was still in the chair, and when I got a little closer I saw that he had fallen asleep.

  I sneaked in behind the curtain, into the fitting cubicle, and quickly changed, put on my own clothes. Only then did I realize what I had experienced.

  True Love.

  In brief, stolen moments the love between Fox Antonio Ortega and Beatrice Cockatoo grew to the bursting point, and I hereby intend to leave her and her diary in peace. The point was to show how well the cockatoo suited the beautiful but less intelligent fox, and I am certain this has now become clear.

  Back to the moment when Fox was courting. The whole thing was absurd. Crazy. Picture it, and you can’t help but smile. The dragon sitting with his wineglass after having judged an innocent nightingale and an equally innocent vole to indescribable pain, the bodyguard Vasko Manatee standing next to him with the wine bottle ready to refill, and before them the dumb Fox Antonio Ortega, asking for Beatrice’s claw.