Yok (13 page)

We work in five teams at six different stations and the idea is that we will rotate monthly; it's a schedule that has been set with regard to ergonomics and the environment, they say, both social and physical. But I've been working down in the basement at the wood-fired ovens for almost two years now, which is prohibited according to the regulation that no one cares about, so I don't know how much the other regulations are followed either. Some of the rats (who have always scared me because they carry knives and are seldom completely sober, not even in the morning, and a few of them lack ears and tails and the stench from their street clothes in the dressing room is almost unbearable, even though we're working at a brewery) have even said they think I should be part of another team, but when the polecat comes and points and carries on, no one dares say a thing, least of all me. Because if I don't want the job there's always someone else standing in line, so I go down to my ovens in the underworld, usually so early in the morning that the sun hasn't even come up, and stay there the whole day apart from the time it takes to fetch the lunchbox I set in my locker in the dressing room when I arrive; the less daylight you see, the easier it is to be down in the darkness.

Today I'm leaving the brewery even before the Afternoon Rain, which I never would have gotten permission to do if I hadn't told the polecat what was going on, that it was my brother Rasmus Panther who needed help, and the polecat knows my brother (Rasmus was a year ahead of the polecat in school, which establishes their mutual relationship), and he doesn't dare say no, even though I see he's thinking of doing it anyway. The dressing room is empty as I take off my work clothes, the day shift won't be over for a few hours yet, the night shift doesn't come in before they have to, and I take the opportunity to clean my locker a little when I have the time and when the rats aren't looking over my shoulder in search of something worth eating or stealing. At home I sleep on the couch in the living room (Leopold and Rasmus have always lived in the large bedrooms on the top floor), without any place for more personal, or shall I say private, things (I make the bed with a bottom sheet and duvet cover and my pillows every night and fold up the bedding and place it on the shelf under the TV during the day), and for that reason I have a number of things in the locker in the dressing room that the rats would surely grab if they knew about it; for example, a silver snuffbox I inherited from my father (I found it under the loose plank in the bedroom when the police . . . when Dad left), a deck of cards with circus motifs that I won at poker once many years ago, and a cricket ball from the final match when the Yok Giants won after a seventh and decisive match against the Lanceheim Lancers; the ball is signed, even if I can't decipher the signature.

The Afternoon Breeze is sweeping across the gravel area outside the breweries as I cross it on my way to the bus stop, and I know that the black clouds that the chimneys force out of their tall necks stink, but the odor doesn't bother me, not even as I sit on the bus right behind the driver and know that the smell of my clothes marks me as one of the workers at the brewery, because I'm proud of my job, an honorable job in this dishonorable part of Mollisan Town, and I'm proud of being part of the structure of society . . . I'm proud of being a part.

I
admit that at first I didn't understand why Rasmus wanted me to go along to the TV building, but I didn't care in the least, it was so long since I'd been out walking with my brothers that I felt swelling pride at simply being close to the handsome black panther on Carrer de Carrera's honey yellow sidewalk, walking over to bus number 17 that would take us up to Tourquai. Rasmus had put on the narrow-cut, light red suit I made for him last autumn, and the white shirt with a breast pocket that I finished last Monday, while the pink bow tie that was the crown of the work he had stolen himself last week in one of the stores on Glöckleinsgasse. What I am wearing is less interesting. I wasn't the one who would be test-filming as a program host, apart from the fact that I don't have the prerequisites to show off clothes the same way as my two brothers, which I'm secretly rather content with when I see the time and frustration that their vanity demands of them.

During the short walk—Rasmus was understandably nervous and walked faster than usual—to the bus stop on ash gray Carrer de la Marquesa, he rattled off the lines that I had written for him (and for Leopold) when they applied to the competition for the first time and were convinced that they would be called and selected immediately (and that the battle for first place would be between them). The first task, which you only see clips of in
New Mornings
because it's from the first round of judging, was to fabricate a news item of your own, write the copy, and read it in front of a TV camera. So many years later I thought it was a little embarrassing to hear Rasmus reciting, loudly and audibly so that everyone we met on the street could hear what I'd made up so long ago, words from my cubdom that came out of Rasmus's mouth as he walked a few steps ahead of me in his elegant suit; he had practiced the text year after year, a silly news item about a deluge that caused the Dondau to overflow and Lanceheim to be underwater, and normally he knew it all to the slightest detail, every emphasis and nuance, but now he stumbled along, stammering and forgetting and hesitating, and for his own sake I hoped he couldn't hear how he sounded, for that would have been devastating for his self-confidence, which according to the newspaper
Now!
should radiate from a contestant in order to succeed in the competition.

On the bus we sat at the very back, and as a sign of how nervous Rasmus was he didn't care that I was sitting next to him . . .

“Yes?

“I don't remember, but . . .

“Yes, now I know. A form! With name and address and a reason for why you are applying and why you qualify!

“Yes?

“But I don't really remember what I . . .

“No.

“Okay.”

And I pretended to be absorbed in thoughts because I knew that was what Rasmus expected, this is how you looked when you reflected: wrinkles in your brow and your gaze directed far away, out through the windows of the bus where the powerlessness of Yok passed by, at the same time as I let a claw contemplatively scratch under my chin and pick lightly across my temples.

I'm ashamed to admit it but I'd forgotten what my brother remembered: that everyone called was supposed to fill out a form at the TV building; it was a kind of registration form, which was then weighed along with the camera test itself. When nine years ago the brothers applied the very first time, all three of us had thoroughly read the competition rules and I had written both of the news items for them, and two short essays besides—which they learned by heart—about why they were applying and why they were qualified as program hosts, which they could write on the form. For some reason Rasmus got cold feet during the week as far as the essay was concerned, and this morning he decided he ought to have something different, and I should write it, which was not that strange because Rasmus had always had poor self-confidence where writing was concerned, and that was the explanation for why I was here on the bus: I was along to fill out his registration form at the TV building.

“No, no, it's obvious that I . . .

“Maybe it's the next one?”

T
he TV building is a massive, white cubist stone building with lots of small, square windows, twenty rows across and six rows up. I'd seen the building lots of times because the stuffed animals on TV liked showing pictures of their workplace, and I assumed that this was an expression of the same kind of pride I felt when I saw one of the Carlsweis beer bottles in a store or on an advertising pole.

Rasmus and I got off the bus; the stop was right outside a glass atrium that was the main entrance to the building, and it struck me that the district council had located the bus stop at the entrance, not the other way around, which made me smile without anyone seeing it. Sometimes it feels as if TV decides everything, not only where you place bus stops; that black glass screen must be one of the most powerful drugs ever discovered in Mollisan Town; everyone wanted to be part of it and everyone wanted to watch.

The expansive entry level had a low ceiling in relation to the square footage, in the middle of the hall were two reception counters of frosted glass shaped like half-moons, they faced each other and together they formed a round whole around which moved a large number of apparently worried stuffed animals. They let questions and statements hail down on the four receptionists in dark blue uniforms who answered as best they could. Despite the diversity of types of stuffed animals in all the colors of the rainbow, despite the screaming framed advertising posters for successes of times past along the walls, despite the glimpse of famous faces running by on their way to or from programs I would surely be seeing in the week ahead, and despite the nervous atmosphere that hung like heavy condensation in the air around us, Rasmus Panther stood out in his light red suit. Dignified yet nonchalant, he strolled up to the reception counters; he moved as if he were already a star, and without hesitation or fear he asked in a loud voice where the tryouts for
New Mornings
were taking place. He was really a good actor.

We got our answer and directions. We found a long corridor at the far right corner of the entry level, a dark tunnel that led underground and where there was a faint odor of mold and nothing hanging on the walls, perhaps so as not to distract the big stars who must have walked here en route to acclaimed and sometimes classic appearances in one of the TV building's big studios from which concerts and events were broadcast live, and to which the general public could buy tickets and come and watch. (There were often ads for that on TV.)

I assume that the stuffed animals we met in the tunnel's shadows were there for the same purpose as we were, and that they were either going to or had just done the test for
New Mornings
, and I could not keep from trying to see who they were and fantasize about whether they were better or worse than Rasmus . . .

“Yes?

“No, there's no one . . .

“Of course I'll have time, I meant to stop by Monomart on the way home anyway.”

The dark, silent corridor did nothing to prepare us for the activity going on in the room we entered, which was adjacent to the studio; we stepped right into an organized chaos, hundreds of stuffed animals running back and forth between the stations where the chosen applicants had to pass before it was time for the camera test; the registration, then the form that was my business to fill out, then makeup and costume (but when I saw the many racks of clothes and Rasmus's rivals who were trying on various garments in front of an oversized full-length mirror, I felt a cold shiver along my spine; what if they forced my brother to take off his light red jacket?), and then the final waiting on uncomfortable plastic chairs until a camel with a megaphone called out your number and it was time to go into the studio itself.

Rasmus forced his way up to the table where a pair of hard-working but disinterested officials were checking off the applicants, and my brother's attitude was still that everything had been arranged for his sake, he was the obvious winner and the
New Mornings
competition was only an excuse for TV and the tabloid to make use of Rasmus Panther's natural brilliance. I stayed in the background but admired him for his ability to seem relaxed when I knew how nervous he was, and the competition no longer looked harmless; there were several others like Rasmus in the room, who radiated the exact same sort of arrogance.

My brother and I went over to the table where the piles of registration forms were, and we each took a copy and sat down on the floor a short distance away from the clothes hangers to fill out the personal information and write our little essay. But to Rasmus's surprise, they had changed the questions—to be honest, we had not looked at this form in eight years. Instead of asking for a motivation for why we wanted to be program host, the survey consisted of alternative questions, the kind where you check off which TV program you prefer more than another, or what color of Volga you prefer, and to fill it out correctly Rasmus of course didn't need my help. He immediately told me to go to hell, which in this case meant he wanted me to leave, and he had already asked me to buy a bottle of gin on the way home, so after having wished him good luck I left, and the whole way to Monomart (I thought I would take the opportunity to shop for the whole week, since I had left work a little early anyway), I concentrated on thinking positive thoughts, for either that helped, or else it didn't help, but at the same time it couldn't hurt.

T
here is a space in the cellar in our house on Carrer de Carrera where my brothers sometimes lock me up; they attached a rubber shackle to the radiator and it's easy to slip onto my back foot and tighten, and then I'm not going anywhere (although I doubt that I would try to escape anyway, considering what a beating I would get when Rasmus and Leopold finally discovered I'd disappeared). The space is a little storeroom with no windows or ventilation, with just enough room for me if I pull in my tail and place it along my belly, and after a couple of hours it's hard to breathe because the air quickly gets bad when they close it up. There is a crack at the bottom of the door that I put my nose as close as possible to and then I breathe as slowly as possible, which is a good exercise in many ways, not least because it's easier to remain calm when your breathing is slow and regular. They haven't forgotten me down there too often, which is because neither of my brothers knows his way around the kitchen, they don't know how to get the stove going (first you have to turn the handle under the counter to open the flue) and they don't know that the honey is in the pantry while the vegetables are in the fridge—they think it's the other way around—so when they start to get hungry they always remember to let me out. There have also been times (assuming I keep my breathing even and light in the dense darkness) that I've been lying in that storeroom and they believe they've locked me in, while I've actually gotten away. They think they've gotten rid of me, while in reality I'm the one who's gotten rid of them. In the storeroom I'm in my own universe, where I'm hidden and inaccessible, independent and without any requirements other than to breathe calmly and focus my thoughts on oxygen.