Yok (20 page)

 

2.

M
ike's head was bursting. Laboriously, his awareness crawled up out of the colorful fragments of an abstract dream. There wasn't anything wrong with the cloud's weed, it was only Mike who had overdone it. He wanted to test if it was true. And unbelievably enough, despite all he'd smoked, there was just as much left on the table in the display window at dawn. The consequences of the experiment were now aching between his temples.

The daylight barely reached the sofa bed but would still poke like two darning needles if he opened his eyes. Mike put the pillow over his head. It felt cool. He tried to recall if he had to be anywhere at a certain time. Tonight he was supposed to have dinner at the Rozenblatts, he remembered. He moaned loudly. He was not looking forward to that.

After having failed at a serious attempt to go back to sleep, Mike pulled off the covers in a sweeping motion. He sat up carefully before he finally opened his eyes, and got a shock.

“Good morning, sir,” said the cloud, making the word “sir” quiver with irony. “The weather has passed lunchtime. Are you ready for your second and third wishes?”

The genie was sitting on the desk. The desk lamp was sticking up through his thigh. He was dressed the same as yesterday, but seemed more compact today, as if he had practiced holding his diffuse body together during the night.

Mike fell back down on the bed. He closed his eyes again. This cloud in trousers, this figment of his imagination who possibly originated from some past bad drug trip, had apparently come to stay. But the joints that were inexplicably on the table yesterday had been good weed. Instead of questioning, Mike was forced to accept that. For a fraction of a second he regretted having only asked for a month's worth when he could have asked for a lifetime supply. Then he dismissed the thought. He had bigger problems to worry about.

“In line with your first, ingenious wish,” Fredrik the genie continued in what Mike was learning was his customary, ironic way, “perhaps your second wish could be a croissant and coffee in bed?”

The genie let out an unnatural giggle that was presumably meant to provoke.

Mike sat up again, and was about to give the annoying cloud a piece of his mind when the door to the antique store opened with a bang. In the daylight that fell along the floor a familiar, terrifying silhouette was outlined.

“Mom?”

“My little cotton troll!”

Ilja Crocodile stormed into the store. It was her natural way to make an entrance; she marched in wherever she went. She was at his sofa bed in a few seconds, and embraced Chimpanzee before he could defend himself.

“My little cotton troll,” she repeated lovingly.

“Mom, don't call me ‘cotton troll,'” Mike pleaded, but it was impossible to hear because she was holding his head pressed against her voluminous bosom.

She had on her tall hat and the thick, dark red coat with fur trim that she bought for herself as a present on her fiftieth birthday. She reeked of perfume.

This really wasn't what he meant when he had complained in the past that she was suffocating him.

“But . . . you're not dressed yet?” she exclaimed. “We don't have much time! We have to go to the tailor's. Oh, I'm so happy. For your sake.”

Finally she released him, and panting he caught his breath.

“And I'm so happy for my sake,” she added.

“That's nice, Mom,” he said, getting up on weak legs.

“Now Mrs. Rosenthal won't know what to say,” Ilja Crocodile declared. “I know what she said last summer about my little darling. But this will shut her up now.”

“That's nice, Mom,” he repeated.

He slept in his underwear, and now he took a detour around the sofa to find the jeans that must be lying somewhere on the floor.

“She was so stuck-up about her rat, who's become a looooy-yer and is so fiiiine. But it's not her rat who's going to get married in May. No, it's my own little apesie-papesie-sweetie.”

For some reason that he didn't remember, he had hung the jeans on a pewter statue that represented a marten. He took them down and pulled them on.

“Mom, it's not a competition,” he objected.

“My sweet cotton troll, it sure enough is!” Ilja exclaimed. “Come along, the tailor won't wait all day.”

T
he dining room was small, the walls dark green. Heavy, brown velvet curtains hung from ceiling to floor alongside the windows, oil portraits of stuffed animals stared gloomily down from inside their broad frames. Candles were lit in the chandelier, light blue carnations dominated the flower arrangement on the table, which was covered in a white linen tablecloth. There were eight padded, clearly rococo-inspired chairs around the table, but only four stuffed animals were having dinner.

“But I still don't understand,” said Mrs. Rozenblatt. “Why does he have holes in his trousers?”

“They aren't big holes,” Mr. Rozenblatt pointed out.

“But . . . his trousers are torn,” Mrs. Rozenblatt insisted. “Why is that?”

“He wants to be an artist,” said Mr. Rozenblatt. “Artists behave incomprehensibly sometimes. That's just how it is.”

The lovely Cocker Spaniel, a light brown dog with a pink silk nose and long, alluring eyelashes, was dressed for the evening in a white dress with a round neck and puff sleeves. She looked at Mike Chimpanzee, rolling her eyes theatrically at her parents.

Mr. Rozenblatt sat at the end of the table and his wife to his right. They talked casually about Mike as if he wasn't there. In Mollisan Town in general and in Yok in particular, it was very unusual for stuffed animals to take each other's surnames. Mike thought it was funny to think of an entire family as the “Rozenblatts”; something he had indiscreetly said at a previous dinner and was then punished with a lecture about the deteriorated family values of the day.

“Artist?” Mrs. Rozenblatt answered guardedly. “Plucking a little on a guitar? Besides, what does that have to do with trousers?”

“I don't have any others,” said Mike.

But they didn't hear him. In the Rozenblatt family, youngsters only spoke if they were spoken to.

The Rozenblatts lived in a town house in south Amberville that was smaller than they wanted to admit. On the way there Mike thought he had figured out how he could be rid of the nagging genie: Fredrik seemed to be a shy type.

When Mom stormed into the shop the genie had disappeared, and he'd stayed away the whole afternoon during the visit to the tailor and on the way there and back. He made himself known when Mike returned to the shop to change for the evening, but disappeared again on the bus on the way to Amberville. Then he was waiting at the bus stop where Mike got off. He had put on a long, beige coat that concealed his insubstantial body and made it less obvious that he was hovering a few centimeters above the sidewalk without standing on it. Together they walked the four blocks to the Rozenblatt house, and during that time the genie managed to offer more than ten suggestions for exotic travel destinations. Then Mike rang the Rozenblatts' doorbell, Cocker Spaniel opened, and sure enough, Fredrik had vanished without a trace the moment Mike entered.

“I see,” said Mr. Rozenblatt, who now thought it was high time to let “the artist” into the conversation. “And now, if I understand this correctly, is Reuben Walrus going to lose his position in the Academy? For the sake of a silly little skirt. It's bewildering, isn't it, Mike?”

“Walrus?”

Mike didn't know who Walrus was. Rozenblatt assumed that all musicians were interested in the Music Academy; personally he was extremely interested in the subject. Within the Academy there were scandals all the time, and in circles that Rozenblatt willingly acknowledged were among the better.

“She can't be more than twenty. And he's over sixty. To think that she would have him?” he continued with a certain degree of envy in his voice.

“Walrus's little skirt is the daughter of Director Carlsen at the Savings Banks Bank,” Mrs. Rozenblatt informed him.

“Carlsen? Was he the one who had cubs in sailing school along with our little darling?” Mr. Rozenblatt asked, taking the opportunity to give Cocker Spaniel a loving glance. “Carlsen?”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Rozenblatt nodded, also turning to her daughter. “Do you remember her, honey?”

“Of course she remembers. It's only three summers ago that we—”

“Excuse me, dearest,” Mrs. Rozenblatt objected, “but it's actually four summers ago. At the same time that Lily got her cub.”

“No, my dear,” protested Mr. Rozenblatt, who loathed being corrected. “I would have remembered that. It was three years ago, the same year your mama glued her beak shut.”

“The beak operation,” said Mrs. Rozenblatt, no longer able to conceal the irritation in her voice, “was only two years ago. Have you already forgotten that? Mama should hear about that.”

“She only hears what she wants to these days . . . ,” Mr. Rozenblatt muttered.

How could words become so inane, Mike asked himself. How could a conversation go on without anything being said? It filled him with both fear and longing. In a way, it was a sublime art form, this empty babble that concealed lifelong frustration, envy, and control. What was he doing here? He longed for one of the genie's narrow rolled cigarettes.

He sneaked a glance at Cocker Spaniel. She was attentively following her parents' conversation, and Mike was pretending to listen, but he soon started removing the prudish dog's clothes in his imagination. He let it happen slowly and sensually, and when he suddenly heard the silence around the table he had no idea how long they had been staring at him.

“Yes?” he said cautiously, because it was obvious that he was expected to say something.

“But didn't we have an agreement?” said the lovely Cocker Spaniel.

“Sure, sure, but we still do, don't we?” Mike answered.

“You see!” Cocker Spaniel exclaimed, glowering furiously at her parents.

“I've never heard anything like it,” Mrs. Rozenblatt snorted.

“Champagne with the main course?” Mr. Rozenblatt agreed with his wife. “Is that really what you want?”

Mike Chimpanzee nodded firmly. Now he understood what the conversation was about. His intended had very strong opinions on the subject. The friends Mike had invited to the wedding—a carefully selected little group that was barely noticeable on the long invitation list—would gladly drink anything at all, as long as it was free. But Cocker Spaniel explained how glamorous it was to serve champagne throughout, and the future bridegroom had no opinions.

Even though he really loved her, he couldn't exactly remember why they had decided to get married. But it was too late to back out now, and Mike's mom, Ilja, was happy as a lark.

“Champagne is what we want,” Cocker Spaniel confirmed. “And that's what we've agreed on.”

“Will you excuse me a moment?” Mike asked, getting up from the table before anyone could protest.

He slipped out into the garden—in southeast Amberville, all town houses had a small garden in back—and consoled himself with genie-grass. In the shadow of a large apple tree he could observe the Rozenblatt family through the windows without them seeing him. Mr. Rozenblatt sat at the table making large, self-satisfied gestures. Mike knew he ought to despise the narrow-minded paterfamilias, but for some reason he couldn't.

“There's a champagne from the thirteenth century,” said Fredrik the genie.

Mike jumped. The genie sat perched in the tree, on one of the lowest branches. He was smiling.

“Priceless, of course. Sir, perhaps that would be something to give the bride before the wedding night? Or during the wedding night?”

But before Mike had time to answer, Cocker Spaniel appeared on the terrace, and the genie cloud dissolved and disappeared.

“Mike?!”

He took a step out of the shadows so that she could see him.

“Mike, what are you doing?”

He put out the cigarette in the grass, shivering at the same time. The Evening Weather was cool, and he only had a shirt on.

“This is really shit,” he answered. “Now we've known each other, I don't know, a long time. And your parents still can't respect me. What's wrong? What am I doing wrong?”

“You're not doing anything wrong.”

“Your dad . . . doesn't he get who I am? Why does he talk about the Music Academy all the time? Is that some kind of gibe? Does he think he's better than me just because he listens to string quartets?”

“He's just old-fashioned, Mike,” Cocker Spaniel answered. She went over and hugged him, holding him close to her.

“Something smells strange here, doesn't it?” she said.

“What do you mean, old-fashioned?” he asked, extracting from her embrace. “I've always behaved. I mean, he's boring and square and represents everything I despise. Still I come here and sit quietly and eat his disgusting food and listen to all the bullshit. The least I can ask for is respect.”

“He respects you, Mike. In his way.”

He heard that he was making her sad, and he regretted it.

“Sorry, sweetie,” he said. “Forgive me. It's been a bad day today. Mom and the tailor . . . it was a nightmare. Forgive me. Go in, I'll be in soon, I just need to be alone.”

She looked at him with her big eyes, nodded at last and went into the house. He intended to follow her, but the thought of returning to the heart of middle-class respectability was so repugnant he could not even try. He would have to call tomorrow and explain. Besides, he doubted the Rozenblatts would miss him; this wedding was being planned by forces much stronger than Mike Chimpanzee's will. Along with his genie, he sneaked out through the gate at the back.

 

3.

T
he next day Mike Chimpanzee, guitar in hand, hesitated on oil black Boulevard de la Vilette outside Brown Brothers' main office. The sun was high, the traffic dense, and the smell of diesel and garbage typical to Tourquai was impossible to ignore. Before him rose the S-shaped skyscraper paid for by performers' historic successes. The building was clad in black glass and red aluminum and the record company's rainbow-colored logo—synonymous with rock and roll in Mollisan Town—shone above the entry. In the large windows facing the street were posters of Johnny Badass & the Bleak Leeks; Mike had heard they would be going out on a club tour later in the spring. Someone said their new sound was more mature. Ominous, thought Mike; Johnny's only good point was his lack of maturity.