Yok (10 page)

“You're making too big a deal out of this, Gary,”
he said.

“Too big a deal?” I screamed. “You pawned the whole
apartment! You thold Grandpa'th painting!”

That hit home. Dad fell silent and stared at me. He
was standing with a spatula in one paw and a saltshaker in the other.

“Yeth, I know!” I screamed in triumph.

“I only wanted to . . .” he said quietly,
“give us every opportunity.”

“
Uth?
” I exploded.

Then I screamed for almost a quarter of an hour
without catching my breath. There were new and old injustices that were just as
ridiculous as they were trivial. My dad had never done me harm, and I blush when
I think about all I spewed out of myself. At last I ran into my room and closed
the door. Not a single time that evening did Dad raise his voice or try to
defend himself against all the invented accusations.

I
never went to the tournament. The decision crowned my late, pathetic teenage
revolt. I had calculated that this would hurt him the most. I stayed away from
my first, and only, lottery-drawn match in the district boxing championship in
Sors. I sat at a snack bar a few blocks away and felt the anger bubbling in my
chest. I was feeling endlessly sorry for myself, I hated Dad for his dishonesty,
and for the way he had manipulated me. To think that I hadn't seen it earlier!
He used me to live out his own teenage dream. If he had seen me for who I really
was, I reasoned, he would never have signed me up for the district championship.
I had no talent at boxing but he refused to accept that. No, it would have to be
this way. Dad stood waiting at Fresco in my ring corner, and the tough Conny
Rooster won his match, not on a KO but on a WO, a Walk Over.

When I came home in the evening I expected a
scolding. That was the least I deserved. But Dad was waiting in the kitchen with
my favorite dish on the table, and even before I had hung up my jacket he said
that he understood, that I had done the right thing. You should never go into
the ring if it doesn't feel right. Boxing was not a sport you could fake, he
said.

“I understand you, Gary, and I feel like a bad
father for having driven you too hard. I hope you can forgive me.”

I should forgive him? There he stood, with an apron
over his belly, financially ruined after having paid Nick Rhinoceros to match
his good-for-nothing son, who didn't even have spine enough to show up at his
only match, even though I knew what it meant to him. And he was asking
me
for forgiveness?

It was suffocating. It was humiliating beyond the
bounds of reasonableness. I could not handle the shame that overwhelmed me, and
quickly I pulled on my jacket again and ran from home. The hatred I felt was so
intense, so steely, that I could have cut apart any reality whatsoever with it.
I had only myself to blame, and that made it even worse. I decided never to
return home again, and then my life fell apart. I think of it as being like
dominos that fell against each other, impossible to stop—and I'm still living in
their rumbling echo.

Domino 1: I run away
from home.

Domino 2: I move in with
Charlie.

Domino 3: I get a job as a
dishwasher at Zeke's, which turns my day upside down.

Domino 4: I discover the
nightlife that introduced me to stuffed animals who Dad would have warned me
about.

Domino 5: I move out from
Charlie, who only nags about Dad, and move in with a horse who
deals.

Domino 6: I drink too
much.

Domino 7: To get money for
liquor and to get away from the horse, who has fallen in love with me, I
start hanging out with Riccardo and the others.

Domino 8: I see Dad at
Piazza di Bormio.

I have described the nights in the darkness in the
trash rooms, when I lay awake hour after hour without settling down. At last I
realized how closely related hatred and love could be. Unfortunately it was too
late.

When early one morning I left my sleeping
companions and went home to Dad on mold green Rue d'Uzès, I was filled with my
own fantasies about how we would fall into each other's arms, crying and
laughing in turn. I could see it so clearly. I was sure that he would accept the
apologies. He was perhaps the best stuffed animal who ever existed in Sors.

When I came home—it was late in the afternoon—the
apartment was empty and quiet. I did not see the dust bunnies on the floor in
the kitchen. I ran straight to Fresco, because I assumed Dad was there, and
Charlie stared at me as if I were a ghost. I greeted him happily. It was as if
the air in the reception area stopped moving. The stuffed animals stiffened and
waited.

Charlie told me.

Two days earlier the Chauffeurs had unexpectedly
come and fetched my dad, Harry S. Bulldog, in the middle of the day as he stood
on the cricket field instructing his pupils at the school. Dad had not even
turned sixty-five, and yet the red pickup came and took him, the way they make
old and torn animals make way for new and young ones.

I loved my father. I was the greatest
disappointment of his life. But I was also the greatest love of his life. He
never had an opportunity to tell me that. And I never had an opportunity to say
that he didn't need to say it; I knew it anyway.

 

The Arm,
continued

I
f I didn't
want to see Fox Antonio Ortega burn up, be thrown out the window, or cut into
pieces and sent back to Dragon Aguado Molina in a couple of crumpled envelopes,
it was time for me to intervene. I took a few rapid steps forward to the
gangster boss, bowed, and whispered in his ear.

“I know who he ith. The fathteth runner I've theen
on the track. Out of hith mind, but fatht. Pleath, let me have him. Jutht a
week? Pleath, pleath?”

Octopus Callemaro slowly twisted his head and
looked me in the eyes.

“Fast, you say?”

“The fathteth I've theen,” I affirmed.

This made Octopus smile. Perhaps because he was
amused by my pronunciation of “fast,” or else because he liked the idea of
letting Dragon's emissary work for us.

“Gary Vole thinks he can convert you,” Octopus said
to Ortega. “What kind of animal are you under all those clothes?”

“My name is Fox Antonio Ortega,” the fox
replied.

“Vole thinks he can use you, Fox.” Callemaro
nodded. “Vole, you have a few days. At the same time, the rest of us can think
of other possibilities for our failed suitor.”

Once again loud laughter came from the stuffed
animals standing and sitting around the octopus, and I nudged the fox hard so
that he understood he should leave while there was still time.

Y
ou're theriouth?” I asked.

I had shoved Ortega to the outer rooms, and now we
were sitting on the floor close together in front of one of the windows facing
west. We spoke quietly, so that no one could hear. Mollisan Town was sparkling
and glistening below us; the city seemed to continue all the way to the horizon.
It was a view before which you could not tell a lie.

“Beatrice is the most beautiful stuffed animal I've
ever seen,” Fox answered, looking me deep in the eyes. “I must have her. Can you
help me?”

“You're crazy,” I said. “Did you think that
Octoputh would give you an arm? Jutht like that?”

“I don't know what I thought,” he admitted. “But if
you don't ask, you'll never know.”

I shook my head. His naiveté was so overwhelming I
didn't know whether I should be furious or teary-eyed.

But I hadn't lied to Octopus, I knew that Ortega
could be of use, and the next evening we took him out with us: me, the tuna, and
the ape. The plan was not born until later in the week, but perhaps my
subconscious was a step ahead? Competing for an invitation to Octopus's
innermost room was part of our daily life, something we all strove for, just as
obviously as we ate when we were hungry and slept when we were tired.

The tuna and the ape complained, of course. We were
used to one another, and it was seldom fortunate to expand a trio to a quartet.
At the same time I knew something they didn't.

We specialized in armored-car transports. The
vehicles had alarms and guards, but in many places in Sors it was impossible to
drive up to the depository. The streets were torn up, the alleys narrow, trash
and car bodies were in the way. We attacked when the courier was on his way from
the depot back to the vehicle on foot. We had our routine, and it wasn't
particularly sophisticated. The tuna got down on the ground somewhere along the
path of the guards, as if he were one of the many down-and-out homeless animals,
while the ape and I sneaked up from behind. We shoved the guard, who turned
toward us, giving the tuna free rein from the other direction. If we were able
to overcome the guard, it was the ape's task to grab the loot and run away, as
neither the tuna nor I was a runner. Three times out of four we failed, either
because the security company used two or more guards on foot, which kept us from
attacking, or else because the ape got caught when he tried to get away. Then
the only thing to do was to let go of the loot and save yourself. But one out of
four attempts was good enough to keep us alive and satisfy Callemaro.

With Fox Antonio Ortega on our team, the odds
changed. I will always remember the first time the tuna and ape realized what
the fox could do. Violet Calle Coleglada was long and winding, and went over
high hills and down below intersecting streets. It was bordered by derelict
apartment buildings from the sixties and seventies, with boarded-up windows and
caved-in roofs, sitting side by side with stone buildings from the previous turn
of the century, where far too many stuffed animals often lived in far too little
space. We knew exactly where the ambush should take place, and we took our
positions. Everything proceeded as usual; we overpowered the guard and tore the
bag away from him.

Then we gave it to Ortega.

At the same moment all four of us—the tuna, the
ape, and I, but also the overpowered guard—were transformed into an audience
that could do nothing but be impressed and amazed by something we had never seen
before. Fox Antonio Ortega's acceleration capacity exceeded our ability to
understand.

The ape and tuna stared in bewilderment.

“I'm on his team,” the tuna said at last.

I agreed. His was the only team you wanted to be
on.

Fox's reputation grew quickly in Octopus's house in
the radio tower, and after only a week or two he got to move in and sleep with
us in the inner rooms. There was no vacant bed, but the wall-to-wall carpets
were more comfortable and cleaner than the best mattresses out there.

By chance Fox chose a place by a window that
overlooked South Sors General Grammar School. There he neatly folded up his
sleeping blanket during the day, and spread it out over himself at night.

Every evening we stood looking out toward the
grammar school we both had attended. I don't know what Fox was thinking, but for
me it was a great experience to stand next to him by the window.

The last years I lived at home, Dad would talk for
hours about Fox Antonio Ortega, the pupil who would crush all existing school
records. I heard the love in Dad's voice, but I think there was also an
undercurrent of concealed envy. A longing to have had such a talent himself, or
at least see some of it in me.

Fox Antonio Ortega had been Dad's great joy during
the last years of his life. If there was a heaven from which Harry S. Bulldog
looked down at me, fate had given me a unique opportunity to restore some sort
of respect.

A
fter
three weeks out on the streets with Fox and the others, I knew how I could help
Ortega get his octopus arm. I was no strategist or psychologist, but Callemaro
was no complicated personality either. I had already made sure from the start
that Fox kept his big, ungainly coat on day and night, because I sensed that his
appearance would be our trump card. The Octopus's vanity was legendary: He was
obsessed by everything beautiful, and as long as Fox kept his cap pulled down
over his face we had a surprise waiting.

And as I suspected, Fox Antonio Ortega was the one
Callemaro invited to dinner in the innermost of the inner rooms in the month to
come. No one could compare with the successes Ortega had had.

T
he
evening before the dinner with Octopus Callemaro, I went through the plan with
Fox Antonio Ortega. At first he thought no plan was needed. When I succeeded in
convincing him of the opposite, it made him nervous. He asked over and over
again about the slightest details, and I answered with endless patience. Fox
Ortega had, as an attentive reader has already noticed, a limited learning
capacity, but I was betting on the power of repetition.

During the appetizer and entrée, I instructed, he
should simply listen. I knew what was expected, for even I had on a few
occasions been given the honor of dining with Octopus. The ebony-colored
gangster boss needed an audience, listeners, and he did not stop talking once he
got going. The well-known vanity took various expressions, but the need for
affirmation was constant and insatiable.

“Then it'th time,” I said to Ortega. “Do ath we
thaid, and you'll get your arm at latht.”

Fox nodded. The most fascinating thing, I think in
retrospect, is that he never, not once, questioned why I was helping him. He
took my courage and my loyalty for granted, as if his love for Beatrice Cockatoo
was everyone's concern.

F
ox
was shown into the innermost room and sat down to dinner as the Evening Storm
picked up. The mood, Ortega thought, was magical—the stillness, the darkness. A
table with a white cloth, heavy silverware, and candles whose flames danced
dramatically in the ornate candleholders. Outside the window, high up in the
black sky, the moon looked like a white, endless hole. Fox Antonio Ortega
nervously placed his napkin on his lap. His filthy coat stood out as even
filthier in contrast to the white linen. He kept his cap on, per my
instructions.