Lanceheim Read online

  “Are you spending the night?” Mother asked.

  “Probably,” I replied.

  Weasel and I had each moved into our own studio apartment in south Lanceheim, while Buzzard was living at home with his parents again for the time being. Naturally we teased him about this, but often we too—with bags of dirty laundry and growling stomachs—sought out our compassionate mothers.

  “We’re having lasagna,” said Mother to further convince me, and after that she shooed her two schoolchildren out to the taxi that would drive all three of them to the cathedral.

  I watched Maximilian as he was leaving. He had continued to grow, and was on his way to being the tallest stuffed animal ever. His appearance seemed to be in constant change, but it was still impossible to see what he resembled. Mother had been nervous about the reactions he would arouse in the other children, but with baggy clothes on his thin body and a cap pulled down over the strange ears, he looked less striking.

  “’Bye now,” I called after them.

  I spent the day in the living room with my abstracts and legal cases. After high school, I had applied to and been accepted in the law program at the university in Tourquai, and I can’t say that I felt at home there, but neither could I complain of discomfort. I had been doing schoolwork for so many years that it seemed obvious to keep going, and I liked the idea of constantly trying to separate right from wrong, evil from good.

  Mother came home right before the Afternoon Rain, but she slipped right into the kitchen. Soon the aroma of garlic-sprinkled broccoli and full-bodied cheese sauce spread through the house. I found it more and more difficult to concentrate, and was relieved when there was a knock at the front door.

  Outside stood Eva Whippoorwill.

  “Is your mother at home?” she asked.

  I nodded and asked her to step in. She looked angry and afraid. She was wearing a dark blue dress with pleated skirt and polo collar, and even if the memory of youthful infatuation had faded, I still thought she was beautiful.

  I followed her into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Maximilian?” Eva asked as soon as she caught sight of Mother.

  “Maximilian?”

  “Where is he? You should have come back before the Breeze. Musk Ox is already home; I just spoke with Bluebird. Where is Maximilian?”

  With rapid, definite movements Mother set aside the grater and cheese on the counter, untied her apron, and quickly stepped past Eva Whippoorwill out into the hall where the telephone was. Eva followed nervously.

  “Carolyn, what has happened?” she asked.

  Mother did not reply. She dialed a telephone number and waited with the receiver pressed against her ear. She looked resolute. When Theophile Falcon answered, she got right to the point.

  “Theophile, this is Carolyn. I’m calling about Maximilian. Was there anything that…?”

  Mother fell silent, listened, nodded to herself, and replied with a brief yes or no at regular intervals, all while Eva Whippoorwill and I anxiously watched her.

  “Good,” she said at last on the phone. “We’ll come there.”

  She hung up, turned around, and said to me, “Eva and I will borrow Sven’s car. Tell Father that we’ll be back later. Maximilian is apparently still in Sagrada Bastante, and we have to bring him home.”

  And with no further delay or explanation, Mother and Eva Whippoorwill left.

  They did not return until long after the Evening Storm, and Father and I were extremely curious by that time. We had prepared tea and sandwiches—Mother had not eaten anything since lunch—and while she stilled her hunger at the kitchen table, she told us about what had happened.

  A quarter of an hour after the guided tour had begun that morning, Musk Ox Pivot got sick to his stomach. Mother was compelled, not without a certain irritation, to sit with the patient on one of the benches in the inner courtyard, while Maximilian followed along with the other sixth-grade classes under Theophile Falcon’s supervision.

  Carolyn thought the nausea would pass, but on the contrary it got worse. After sitting on the bench a while, Musk Ox became seriously ill, and threw up in one of the cathedral’s many exquisite rose beds. The fact that some of it got on his clothes did not make things any better. Carolyn asked poor Pivot to wait where he was sitting, and then ran to catch up with Falcon and the other cubs. She had to return to Das Vorschutz with the sick musk ox; could Falcon take charge of Maximilian and see to it that he got home later?

  Falcon nodded; it was no big deal.

  It was only during the afternoon sabbath that Schoolmaster Falcon discovered that Maximilian had disappeared. Few stuffed animals observe the sabbath nowadays, but it is only necessary to go back a hundred years to find that all activity in Mollisan Town more or less halted during the hour in the morning and the half hour in the afternoon that the rain fell. In the church the sabbath was still holy, and so only then did Falcon get a chance to count all the cubs.

  Maximilian was gone.

  Falcon went off on a hunt through Sagrada Bastante, following his own tracks through the church, and it was not long before they found him. In a room inside one of the lecture halls in the oldest part of the building sat two all-deacons and a deacon at a round table, listening seriously to the twelve-year-old Maximilian. The room was dark except for a kerosene lamp, and Theophile Falcon got the feeling that he was interrupting something important.

  Maximilian fell silent when the door opened, and the all-deacons turned around.

  “Excuse me,” said Falcon, “but Maximilian…is part of my school class?”

  The all-deacons and deacon looked startled and doubtful. They exchanged quick glances of mutual understanding, and then asked amiably for leave to keep Maximilian a while longer.

  “I don’t know…,” Falcon replied. “I promised to take Maximilian home to Das Vorschutz this afternoon, and…pardon me for asking, but…what are you talking about?”

  “About evil and good,” said one of the young all-deacons.

  “About right and wrong,” replied the other.

  “We promise that young Maximilian will come home in a safe manner,” said the deacon. “No later than dinnertime.”

  Falcon nodded, perplexed. He did not understand what young Maximilian could tell the stuffed animals of the church about good and evil.

  “Are you sure?” he said. “Because I promised that—”

  Adam Chaffinch, the deacon who was the leader of the small circle, interrupted him and promised once again that Maximilian would be delivered home to Das Vorschutz, and Falcon was content with that.

  When Carolyn Nightingale and Eva Whippoorwill parked Sven Beaver’s old Volga Kombi in front of Sagrada Bastante, the sky was already dark. They ran into the church, asked for Adam Chaffinch, and soon found the room where Theophile Falcon had received his assurance many hours earlier.

  “Mother?” Maximilian exclaimed in surprise when he saw Eva in the doorway.

  Deacon Adam Chaffinch asked what the weather was, and then begged pardon of both females over and over again. They had completely forgotten the time. Would it be possible to keep Maximilian another hour? They were in the midst of an especially important train of thought.

  Eva Whippoorwill became furious.

  Deacon or not, you didn’t behave like that.

  Four minutes later Eva and Carolyn were again sitting in Sven’s car, this time with Maximilian in the backseat, en route home.

  “He’s a strange one, that Maximilian,” my mother asserted, eating up the last bite of her sandwich.

  Through the windows of the barn, to the north, south, and east, the cubs saw kilometer upon kilometer of fields, nothing else, just tall wheat that swayed invitingly in the gentle breeze. To the west a blue streak could be made out on the horizon, the sea, and Hillevie, the stuffed animals’ vacation spot near Mollisan Town. Between the city and the sea was agriculture, the fruit farms, where an old-fashioned rural life lived on. The small number of farmers who worked the soil lived in
isolation, here and there a sporadic settlement, but nothing that with the best intentions in the world could be called a village.

  Together with seventeen confirmation students of the same age, Maximilian was sitting in the renovated barn, looking now and then out the window. A few hours ago All-deacon Chiradello, a light yellow seal pup with bushy eyebrows and a hint of acne, had told the story of Magnus and Noah Whale. Chiradello was young and could therefore be traditional without being accused of conservatism. He stood up at the lectern, which in turn stood on a little rise at the farther short wall. Through the window behind him the confirmands could rest their gazes on the swaying wheat, a kind of meditative view that, according to the all-deacon himself, deepened concentration and understanding.

  The barn was exactly 143 square meters in size, and it was seven meters up to the exposed ends of the roof. Besides the large window behind the lectern, there were four windows on the side walls, but they were small and narrow.

  Chiradello had set out eighteen chairs in a half-moon on the floor, and there sat the confirmands. They felt exposed, unprotected, and that was the point. Magnus had created an immense universe for us; we stuffed animals were only pitiful trifles in that context. There was a faint odor of dampness in the room, despite the fact that a pair of electrical space heaters stood humming in the corners. Out here on the plain the ground never really got dry.

  “Does anyone know the name of the first stuffed animal whom Magnus appeared to?” asked the all-deacon.

  He looked around. His lidless gaze wandered curiously from one to the other. The few but rigid whiskers pointed straight out in the air. He had a light voice and a tone that was equally chiseled and precise; he spoke with a studied precision.

  An albatross raised his wing. The all-deacon nodded.

  “Noah,” he answered.

  “That’s right,” Chiradello called out with exaggerated enthusiasm. “And does anyone know when that was?”

  The seal pup was not standing behind the lectern; he knew that created a barrier between him and the cubs. He stood up on the podium, and instead of the long, black robe that the animals of the church usually wore, he had put on a tweed jacket and a pair of jeans for the day. It was about creating trust.

  A farm cat cleared her throat.

  “Yes?” said Chiradello, smiling amiably.

  “A thousand years ago?” said the cat.

  “A thousand years ago.” Chiradello nodded encouragingly. “That’s what we always say. A thousand years ago. But that doesn’t mean that it was exactly one thousand years ago, does it? When I was confirmed, the answer to that question was also a thousand years. And in ten years we will probably continue to say the same thing. It’s part of the tradition. ‘A thousand years ago’ means a long, long time ago.”

  There was nodding around the room.

  “And why?” asked Chiradello. “Why did Magnus show himself to Noah Whale?”

  It became silent in the barn. The all-deacon made a little victory lap up on the podium. He liked this: going from religious generalities straight into the darkest holes of metaphysics with simple questions.

  “No,” he said when he thought the stage pause was long enough, “it’s not equally obvious. And at the same time, that is what we will focus on during the coming—”

  “Excuse me, Schoolmaster?”

  The all-deacon fell silent. He saw that it was the cat who had interrupted him, and with concealed irritation he said amiably, “Yes?”

  “Him over there, with the scarf on his head, wants to say something,” said the cat and pointed.

  And that was correct. When All-deacon Chiradello looked, the strange animal who had a kind of scarf wrapped around his head, the one who was sitting at the far end of the row, was holding up his arm.

  “Was there something in particular you were thinking about?” he asked.

  He hoped that he still sounded nice.

  At every camp there’s an oddball, Chiradello had learned; someone the others would laugh at if you didn’t ward off the situation. In this group the oddball was the animal with the scarf on his head. Chiradello had decided to do his best not to let him be picked on by the others.

  “What was it you wanted?” he asked again.

  “It’s not what the puzzle depicts that is important,” said Maximilian, touching his headgear lightly, “it’s how you solve it.”

  Before I continue telling about Maximilian’s confirmation camp, I would like to address a few words directly to the skeptical reader. I intend to cite Dolores Deer. Straight out I admit that the reason I am going to cite Dolores is that I feel the need to justify myself. I am going to betray a confidence, and thereby make her my character witness. It is probably an unattractive thing to do, but it is important that you, readers of my assuredly flat but significant narrative, do not remain ignorant of what I have to put forward in my defense. Yet it is impossible to mention Dolores without devoting a few lines to her eyes.

  Dolores’s eyes were the most beautiful I have ever seen.

  It was many years ago that by chance I ended up at an espresso bar I had not noticed before. It was hardly more than a hole in the wall, not far from Maria’s House. Its furnishings consisted of a long bar counter and a couple of stools.

  I ordered a double macchiato from the waitress at the espresso machine, and dug in my coat pocket for change while she ground the beans. I set the money on the counter at the same moment that she set out the cup, and it was then that I saw them: Dolores’s eyes.

  It was an explosive moment of absolute stillness. Her speckled blue irises shone like the sky above a sea, and the distinct black pupils widened like a personal invitation. I got weak in the knees, my mouth got dry, I could not get out a word. If I had fallen for females before, the fall had never been as dizzyingly long as when I looked into Dolores’s eyes for the first time. They awakened a desire that made me blush when I, mumbling, raised the cup of macchiato and attempted a smile. She had to be mine. If I did not get to look into Dolores’s eyes again, life as I knew it would lose a dimension.

  I don’t intend to go into details. It worked out. A few weeks later, over a small restaurant table in north Tourquai, Dolores leaned over and said, “Wolf Diaz, you are the most intuitive stuffed animal I have ever encountered. I am sure you would be able to recount my entire childhood without even knowing about it. Your imagination and your empathy are like a crystal ball where you can see both the past and what is to come.”

  In principle that is what Dolores Deer said.

  By this I do not mean to say that this depiction of Maximilian’s confirmation camp is correct or complete. I do not want to boast or make commitments that I cannot live up to. But when the critical reader questions how I have the gall to put words in Maximilian’s mouth or dress All-deacon Chiradello in a certain facial expression, I will only remind you of Dolores’s words, and assure you that I also remain humble and choose an open interpretation to the extent I feel the least bit uncertain about how things actually happened.

  It was during the weeks at confirmation camp that the stuffed animals realized that Maximilian was good.

  “Good” is not a grand character trait. On the contrary, if anything it seems a bit lame, and the semantic problem of the word is, as I see it, one of the concept’s fundamental concerns. From a subjective perspective we are all good, aren’t we? That is to say, we regard ourselves as basically good. With any amount of objectivity, however, we can observe and evaluate our actions, and understand that they do not all spring from goodness. But we are quick to excuse ourselves; you do what you do, deep down we can always distinguish right from wrong.

  May I suggest a brief exercise for the soul-searching reader?

  Shut your eyes.

  Peel off coquetry and ironic winking.

  Penetrate within your intellectual defenses and place yourself all the way inside your innermost core.

  Answer this question: Are you good?

  The answer is: “Yes.”


  And open your eyes again, and confess: It’s not true. No more than in parts, sometimes, if the conditions are right, not to say perfect.

  With Maximilian it was, and is, different. Maximilian is good. Without reservation, without weakness. Perhaps he is even Goodness itself?

  It was All-deacon Chiradello who formulated it. It was he who spoke about “good” in connection with Maximilian for the first time, instead of calling his radiance “integrity” or “talent.”

  Once upon a time many thousands of years ago Magnus created the universe. One aspect of the creation was the creation’s own possibility to develop. Therefore Magnus appeared on the earth three times, and let himself be escorted through the world that he himself had initiated and watched over ever since. A thousand years ago, for three months, three weeks, and three days, Noah Whale had shown Magnus how the sea, the coast, and the land connected to the coast had developed. Many hundreds of years later, it was Jean-Jacques Fox who for two months, two weeks, and two days became Magnus’s cicerone in the forests.

  For the Forest Cubs from Das Vorschutz, the second part of the Proclamations, the one written by Fox, was the easiest to absorb. In Fox’s Proclamation there was everything that we Forest Cubs recognized: the trees and lakes, mountains and vegetation, forest animals and paths.

  All-deacon Chiradello devoted himself to the gospels of Jean-Jacques Fox during the second week of confirmation studies. Perhaps he believed—and surely hoped—that Maximilian could strengthen his position with the others when the forest came up for discussion. He gave great scope to Maximilian to answer questions and show himself to be knowledgeable, but to no effect. Maximilian was just as taciturn as before. Either he answered when addressed, directly and clearly but never with a word too many, or else he answered with the similes that fascinated Chiradello to an increasing degree.