Yok (21 page)

“Sir, I'm sorry to have to point this out, but for being a creative monkey you seem to lack ideas,” the genie commented.

Fredrik the genie was still wearing his long trench coat. He had been nagging Mike about his second wish from the moment Mike woke up that morning.

“I don't want to be so presumptuous as to criticize you,” the genie explained while freshly washed cars rolled past on Boulevard de la Vilette. “But now you've had a whole day and night to think about it, and you must have come up with some inkling of an idea? Mr. Ape?”

It had been the ache in his chest that woke the monkey. First he thought it had to do with the genie's weed; for the second night in a row he had once again overindulged on marijuana. Then he felt the customary anxiety and the feeling of barely being able to breathe. This had gone on for several weeks now, since the recording sessions started. He remained lying down and tried to meditate out of the black hole, but it hadn't worked.

When he finally got up, the antique store smelled of soap and cleanser. The genie had been visibly pleased.

“It looked disgusting, sir. I'm sorry to say it. I'm afraid you're not living a healthy life, Mr. Ape. I took the opportunity to tidy up a little while you were sleeping. A small shovelful in a gigantic manure pile, you may object. But someone has to take the first shovelful, don't they?”

It was during the morning that Mike decided to show up unannounced to Gavin Toad's office. The idea had been floating around his mind, but possibly it was Fredrik who indirectly helped him make the desperate decision. The genie's uncommon insistence could drive anyone mad. So now he was standing on the street outside Brown Brothers.

“If it's not too much to ask—and it's not—I'm begging you to give me something to work with. A hint? A suggestion?”

Mike ignored the irritating cloud. Pretending like it wasn't there was the only strategy that remained after the morning's many attempts to free himself from the nagging.

“Give me something, just a little something?”

They both turned and looked over toward the dark glass doors in front of the lobby.

Mike did not recall exactly when he had been here last, but it must have been more than a year ago. That time the shame had followed him down in the elevator. Defeat had tripped him up as he stumbled past the café in the lobby, where the decision makers at Brown Brothers relaxed with gossip and croissants between launch decisions and discussions about recording budgets. In the record company building rumors spread in no time, and they had probably already heard that Gavin Toad had just mocked Mike because the new songs, once again, were too deep and too long for the general public.

At least according to Gavin Toad.

Now, more than a year and a lifetime later, Mike and the musicians got to hang out in the studio a few blocks away. He usually met with Toad in the city or at the antique store, never up at Brown Brothers' main office.

Mike Chimpanzee closed his eyes, took a deep breath and hummed to himself:

Do you believe what they're saying?

(Every life its outer limit)

Do you believe what they're saying?

(Do you know how it feels?)

'Cause freedom is / freedom is / freedom isn't here.

And with the successful chorus echoing in his head, he let the glass doors glide open and stepped resolutely into the lobby, taking firm hold of the neck of the guitar and making a silent promise not to give in, whatever happened.

He waved to the security guards far off in reception. They recognized him and waved back. Involuntarily Mike looked around, but the trench coat–draped genie remained out of sight.

Mike stationed himself to wait by the elevators that went to the thirtieth floor and higher. Gavin Toad's office and Brown Brothers' department for contemporary R&B were on the thirty-seventh floor, and the whole way up he continued humming his chorus; it gave him strength.

The first animal he ran into when the elevator doors opened was Barbara Ladybug.

“Mike?”

“Hi, Barbara.”

She looked like he remembered, with a pair of tight blue jeans; a worn but expensive T-shirt; and around her neck she had wrapped at least ten necklaces, all of which were large, colorful, and rattled when she moved.

“Where did you go, Mike? You promised to come by the morning after?”

“Barbara, I swear I tried. I wanted to. But life doesn't always give us the right to—”

But before Chimpanzee had time to wrap himself up in an explanation that probably wouldn't have fooled anyone, he was interrupted by a young donkey looking out from one of the dozens of cramped cubicles where stuffed animals sat and worked; the worn moss green office landscape was not as glamorous as it should have been.

“Did you bring your guitar, Mike?” asked the donkey. “Are you thinking about playing?”

And the question created a murmur that spread across the workplace with an inexplicable speed, and suddenly a buzz, vibrating with expectation, hovered over the exhausted office workers.

I
n his large office at the southeast corner of the thirty-seventh floor, Gavin Toad heard that something was happening out in the cubicle area. He was in the middle of an important phone call—there was no other kind—but slammed down the receiver and got up from the desk to find out what the frenzy was about. Under the lines of framed gold records on the wall was a large mirror, and he took a quick glance in it. In the breast pocket of his gray suit jacket a pink handkerchief fluttered. It matched his socks. He was at once strict, elegant, and a little crazy. He nodded to himself and tore open the door. Toad was the first to admit his unnatural need for control, but everyone had to live with his defects, and in Toad's department at Brown Brothers he was the one in charge.

As soon as he came out of the office he heard Mike's voice. Chimpanzee may never have had the ability to write songs, thought Toad, but there was nothing wrong with his voice. The record executive advanced quickly along the narrow passageway between the cubicles. Those who were still working fell in place behind him. Seeing the toad puff up always provided a momentary diversion.

Mike Chimpanzee was in the middle of the chorus of one of his old hits when Gavin Toad reached the improvised concert stage outside the elevators.

“Enough now!” he cried out. “Back to work, everyone! Mike, what kind of flipping antics are these? We have better things to do than listen to your semi-rotten songs. Royalties have to be calculated. Sales tax has to be paid. Invoices have to be drawn up. Taxes have to be avoided. This is an office, not a flipping rock club!”

It wasn't possible to keep singing when Toad screamed. Toad loved to harass his artists. The final proof of Brown Brothers' dominance in the music industry in Mollisan Town, and thereby evidence of Toad's own standing, was how mean and yet nonchalant he could be to performers like Mike. As it turned out, the worse he behaved, the stronger he tied the rockers to the company. If he acted like they needed him more than the other way around, the poor souls believed it.

Chimpanzee stopped playing, the small audience scattered and Mike followed the wildly gesticulating Toad back to his grandiose corner office.

“Easily entertained idiots,” the toad scolded loudly. “A silly little rock star, and you immediately forget your duties. What if I was to do the same? Around the twenty-fifth of every month?”

Toad held open the door for the chimpanzee, simply to be able to slam it behind him with a loud bang.

G
avin Toad sat behind his large desk, and Mike sat down in the visitor's chair opposite. Behind the toad's back Mike could look out through the floor-to-ceiling windows over all of north Tourquai, from the financial district up to the forest. It was a magnificent, terrifying view for someone who lived in a dingy antique store in Yok, even if it was located in Corbod, the tidiest district of the most miserable part of town.

“There are bad vibes in the studio, Mike,” Toad began. “Bad vibes mean drawn-out sessions, and drawn-out sessions mean money burned. And I really don't like burned money.”

Mike fumbled in his inside pocket, and got hold of one of the genie's joints. He took it out and set it on the desk while he searched in his jeans pockets for the lighter.

“Grass?” Toad exclaimed. “You intend to sit in my office and smoke? Are you completely flipping crazy?”

Mike mumbled an apology, put the joint back in the inside pocket, and instead found a cigarette in a crumpled pack that had been with the lighter in his pants.

“I'm cooperating, Gavin,” Mike mumbled as he got the cigarette going, “and I don't mean to complain, but Lancelot is not exactly—”

Toad got up so suddenly that the chair almost tipped over behind him. He aimed a long, green finger at the ape.

“Idiot! You're acting like a little cub. Do you think I don't know what's going on? If you don't straighten up he's going to get tired of you, don't you get that?”

“Sure, sure”—Mike tried to calm the record company executive—“but you have to admit that—”

“I'm not admitting anything,” Toad declared, going around the desk to have room enough to deliver his reprimand. “I never admit anything. It's a matter of principle. Now you listen carefully to me, Mike.”

And for the tenth time in as many days, Gavin Toad explained why Lancelot Lemur was Mike Chimpanzee's salvation from a life as a has-been.

“You have the voice. You have the charisma. But you have flipping poor judgment, Mike. Your songs are shit. Lancelot's songs reek of money.”

“But there's a song missing,” said Mike. “We agree on that. The album needs one more song before we're done. And Lancelot has no obvious candidate. I'm working on a song. About freedom. I think it can be nasty. I don't have the verse quite right yet, but it's on its way. The chorus is amazing. I'll—”

Mike picked up the guitar and started playing before the toad could protest.
Freedom is, freedom is, freedom isn't here
, sang the chimpanzee, all while Toad waved more and more intensely.

“Now stop, for crying out loud!” the executive screamed, almost running around the desk to be able to aim his long finger right between Mike's eyes. “I don't intend to listen to any more of your miserable songs. Get it?”

“It's not done,” Mike defended himself. “It's more like a foundation, a base to build the house on. I'll be working on it more, don't you understand?”

Mike Chimpanzee's album
40 degrees
had been one of the best-selling debut albums released in Mollisan Town. After an initial lukewarm reception from the critics, Gavin Toad convinced the producer of the popular TV show
Menus of the Stars
to let Mike play before dessert. That was all that was needed. The next morning, success was a fact, and the first pressing of the album sold out over the weekend.

Mike had been eighteen and unprepared for the breakthrough; unprepared in the sense that for several years he had fantasized about everything that was now happening for real. But it had never been fame he was after, only confirmation.

The record came out after a few months of intensive songwriting, mostly at night, and during that time hardly anyone knew what he was up to. True, Toad had turned down his songs, but gave him ten new melodies to write “profound” lyrics to. A turbulent month in the recording studio, as studio musicians came and went without Mike understanding which songs the various tracks belonged to. There were saxophones and choirs and transverse flutes that he never would have dreamed of. As if out of charity he got to listen to the daily takes, but if he expressed an opinion no one listened to it. Somehow the lyrics managed to survive the harsh treatment, mainly because no one seemed to care about them. In Gavin's world, these lyrics, over which Mike had agonized during intoxicated, angst-ridden nights, were only syllables to sing in the chorus. For Mike it was the soul of the song.

Toad returned to his desk chair. He leaned back and set his expensive, black patent-leather shoes on the desk.

“It worked last time, Mike,” the executive reminded him. “Thanks to me. And it's going to work again. Thanks to me. And Lancelot. You don't touch the songs, and he won't touch the lyrics. That was the agreement, Mike.”

“But I—”

“No. No buts. Just that.”

Mike took a few quick puffs on his cigarette. With the perspective that time provides, he could later state that he had been unable to be sufficiently present during the year that passed after
Menus of the Stars
. He would end up appearing on TV sixteen times, he did twenty-three concerts in the course of thirteen months, and seven of a total of eleven songs on the album became singles and reached the top of the charts.

The number of parties? He didn't remember. The number of new friends? They vanished just as quickly as they came. The number of females? He didn't want to think about that. The drugs? Wherever he turned. The money? He still didn't know whether there had ever been any.

Life became incomprehensible.

Before the breakthrough he had struggled with his identity, like all other teenagers, and by way of betrayed ideals, existential crises, and bleeding hearts, he had created an image of who he was. In the eyes of the fans and the media he became someone completely different in one stroke. And it wasn't worth it to protest, it didn't sink in. Gradually he was transformed into the one they wanted, and then he became more than that. As he stood on the stage there was just rhyming strings of words left of the lyrics that had meant so much. The audience cheered. He did not deserve a tenth of the love they gave him. There was not a chance in hell that he would dare turn himself in for detox.

The dream ended with a crash. He had as little recollection of it as of anything else that year. He woke up in a display window, with glass all over his fur, cotton sticking out through large tears in his belly and across his legs, and around him hundreds of flowers. Blue carnations, white lilies, dahlias in all the colors of the rainbow. Had someone thrown him into the flower shop? Had he thrown himself through the window? It would never be determined. The pain came later, in the ambulance en route to St. Andrews. It was only in the hospital emergency room that the doctors discovered that his nose was loose; a considerably more serious condition than the tears in his body.