Yok (28 page)

W
hen the haze settled over the city after lunch, Mike Chimpanzee was done. The silence was so sudden that the genie, who was observing a feather duster clean the thousands of decorative objects in the glass display case, lost his concentration, and the duster knocked over a porcelain dolphin.

“Done,” said Mike.

“Done?”

“Sincerely, Genie, even you have to admit that this turned out to be something really special. Something sensational.”

The genie had not been listening. He thought that all Mike's clinking and gaping was borderline unbearable.

“Sensational, Mr. Ape,” he confirmed. “Sublime, but not difficult. Captivating without being ingratiating.”

“You think so?”

“I really think so,” answered the genie, who in his spirit vows had never promised not to lie. “Now of course I can't tell one song from another on the radio. I get more enjoyment from . . . hearing a third wish?”

But Mike had stopped listening. He was already on his way out to the street, with his guitar in hand and the black notebook stuck into his coat pocket. He ran north out onto Calle Gran Via in the hope of finding a taxi on ash gray Carrer de la Marquesa, the street that divided Yok into a northern and a southern half. Mike felt that he was flying along, just like the genie; never before had he moved so easily. He left Nikki Lee's guitar pick on the desk; he didn't need any more help to play the song, and he didn't dare risk losing the guitar pick somewhere in the city. In his head the chorus that he had just created out of his undistilled desire was still playing:

Over and over and over again
, he sang to himself.
Over and over and over again.

How he made his way up to Tourquai and Brown Brothers he didn't remember. During his crazy year after
40 degrees
, he had been high on everything there was to be high on, but none of the kicks were even close to what he experienced today. He imagined that it was he, not the elevator, who climbed the thirty-six stories up through the building. When he stepped into Gavin Toad's office with the marvelous view of Tourquai's spiny skyline, he began by explaining that he refused to play until Lancelot Lemur was there.

“You refuse to play?” Toad exclaimed in surprise, sitting behind his shiny desk puffing on a fat cigar. “As if I would want to hear you play? What the hell have you been taking today?”

But Mike Chimpanzee strutted around inside the toad's office, with his guitar in hand and such consummate rock-and-roll attitude that at last Toad could only shake his head, pick up the phone, and call Lemur. During the twenty minutes it took for the demon producer to get there, Chimpanzee did not sit still for more than a few seconds at a time. He threw himself onto the toad's elegant visitor's couch, sat in every one of the armchairs, and exercised his fingers with scales on the guitar. Toad eventually had enough and left the office to wait for Lancelot by the elevators. Mike twirled twenty turns in each direction in Toad's office chair.

The whole time Mike was singing the chorus to himself. Listened and smiled at the thought of the clever transition to the verse, felt the bold riff vibrate in his fingertips. He could not hold back a laugh when in his imagination he saw the toad's and the lemur's surprised faces.

Over and over and over again
, he sang.
Over and over and over again.

“Okay,” said Gavin Toad brusquely, plopping down on the outer edge of the couch. “I really don't have time for these pranks. And you don't either, Mike, because expensive studio time is ticking.”

“I have all the time in the world,” Lemur explained, falling down on one of the deep armchairs that looked even more comfortable when Lemur was swimming in it. “All the time in the world. Because you're the one who's paying for it, Toad.”

Lemur was smiling, but it was hard to say whether the smile was ironic or obsequious or if he was simply thinking about something else. He absentmindedly rattled the skulls on his armband.

“I'm calling it ‘Over and Over Again, '” Mike said.

He sat in the visitor's chair. He had placed the notebook with the lyrics on the desk because he hadn't had time to memorize it all. He struck a chord, cleared his throat quietly, and then he was off.

The energy from last night and this morning carried him over verses and bridges. There was a sense of triumph in his voice that made it clearer and sharper than ever before; the chorus was so great that he felt he could repeat it as many times as he wanted:

Over and over and over again
, he sang proudly.
Over and over and over again.

Not once did he observe his audience, he was so filled by his own performance, and when he was done and the silence slowly settled over the room—like a newly laundered sheet falling down over a mattress—he finally looked up.

To his total surprise.

Toad was looking in a folder. Lemur appeared to have fallen asleep.

“What?” said Mike.

“Huh?” Lemur replied, looking up.

“Are you finished?” Toad asked.

Mike nodded.

“That was shit,” said Toad. “As usual. It sounds like something you shoved up your ass that you couldn't get out. Mike, forget about that now, and record the songs you have.”

“I wasn't listening that carefully, Ape,” said Lancelot, “but if you want I can run it through my hit machine. Maybe something really cool will come out on the other end?”

Things were getting dark in Chimpanzee's eyes. It was as if the air was being sucked out of him, as if he were becoming a compact package of cotton without heart or soul, and without listening to the toad and lemur's continued discussion he left the office, with guitar in hand and hope smashed into tiny fragments.

T
he genie walked beside him along the deserted sidewalks of Tourquai.

“You shouldn't worry about them,” said Fredrik. “Some like one thing and others like something else, isn't that right?”

It was not only for his own purposes that the genie was trying to console Mike. True, a deeply depressed chimpanzee would never manage to formulate one last wish, but the genie also felt sincerely sorry for Mike's sake. He if anyone knew how deep down the second wish had been, how much hope the chimpanzee had attached to the little piece of plastic, and the fiasco hurt even from a distance.

“Toad isn't exactly the most sophisticated judge of taste, is he?” said the genie.

But Mike wasn't listening.

It took him a few hours to walk home to the antique store from Brown Brothers' skyscraper in Tourquai. He could not recall ever walking so far before. If he'd had the idea that physical exhaustion would dampen the spiritual flattening, that came to naught. He was completely used up, but still just as depressed.

The month of free marijuana was over, but he found a few cold beers in the fridge. He sat down heavily on a Renaissance armchair and let his fingers caress the embroidered peacocks on the armrest. The genie continued trying to cheer him up, but Mike was not receptive. Toward twilight the ape fell asleep, and woke up a few hours later with drool running down his chin. He felt stiff and cold, and on his way over to the sofa bed and the soft, warm down comforter, he plugged the phone jack in again. It was more a reflex than a conscious action; he wasn't expecting any calls.

It rang just as he lay his head on the pillow.

He listened to five long rings without reacting, but when the phone kept ringing he forced himself up to answer. He expected his mom's angry voice. A lifetime was far from enough for her to forgive him for the cancelled wedding.

It was Gavin.

“Hey, you poor bastard,” said Toad. “Lancelot and I talked about it when you left. You looked like you intended to burn yourself up. Damn, Mike, if this is such a big deal . . . Lancelot said he'll include the song about freedom on the album. This latest thing was unbearable, but the freedom song had something. We'll take it.”

Pause.

“Mike? Did you hear? We'll include your freedom song.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, what the hell, Lancelot promises to make something good out of it.”

“I don't know what I should say,” said Mike.

“Write something nice about me in your memoirs,” said Gavin Toad, hanging up.

Mike stood with the telephone receiver against his ear, staring vacantly ahead. Word for word he went through the telephone conversation as he slowly hung up the phone. The genie was in front of him, quivering with curiosity.

“What just happened?” asked the genie, and a damp cloud of expectation emerged from his mouth. “What just happened? What did he say?”

“He's putting ‘Freedom' on the album,” said Mike.

“That's amazing, isn't it? Mike? Why do you look so glum?”

“He said he thought ‘Over and Over Again' was unbearable.”

“Yes . . . but . . . you'll get a song on the album? Isn't that what you wanted? A song on the album?”

“Unbearable,” Mike repeated. “The song that I wrote with Nikki Lee's guitar pick. He's out of his mind, that bastard.”

“But, Mike . . .” the genie began, but the chimpanzee had already picked up the guitar pick and fetched the guitar.

“I'll show him,” said Mike. “It's the verse that doesn't add up. I'll rewrite the verse, maybe fiddle with the riff a little . . . it's a good song, I know it.”

“But, Mike, didn't he say that—”

“He said he didn't like Nikki Lee's song,” Mike repeated. “He's out of his mind.”

 

12.

S
ometimes on weekends, when Mike Chimpanzee was a little cub, his dad would take him to Plaza de Bueno, the rain forest park. That was while his dad was still transforming into the pale shadow who, as Mike was growing up, would live a few steps behind Ilja Crocodile, at the periphery of the family's life, before finally disappearing without a trace.

The park was one of Yok's neglected treasures; most stuffed animals hated getting wet and avoided the artificially humid atmosphere. Mike and his dad would walk on the path between the mangrove trees up to the pond where the water lilies blossomed, sit down on a bench, take out the finely chopped leek and liver sausage sandwiches they brought with them, and eat in silence.

That was where Mike Chimpanzee made his way after Gavin finally yielded and accepted “Freedom” on the album. To escape the genie's nagging, Mike asked Tom-Tom Crow if he wanted to come along, and now they were sitting on a bench in the shadow of a massive magnolia, looking out over the quiet, still pond. The sun was high in the sky, the faint Breeze made the rain forest breathe carefully.

“How did it happen,” Mike asked his large friend, “that regardless of the circumstances, from the existential questions of youth, that unfathomable orgasm of acknowledgment after the previous album, to all the sudden changes of the last few days, the anxiety is still pretty much the same?”

“Damned if I know, Mike,” Tom-Tom answered. “Who knows? Do you mind if I knit a little?”

Crow had brought some knitting with him in a plastic bag. He was working on a white cardigan sweater that he intended to give to Sam as a Christmas present.

“No, no, go ahead and knit,” Mike said distractedly.

The chimpanzee was tired after the night's session. In a frenzy he had stayed up past dawn, striking the strings of the guitar harder and harder with Nikki Lee's pick. He had recorded his attempts after he was finished; he had listened and rejected them all. It didn't work. It just wouldn't work. Every melody line was predictable and uniform. There was no point.

Mike's head fell down between the torn knees of his jeans and closed his eyes hard. Crow's knitting needles clicked against each other. The scent of the rain forest's dampness obstructed his nose. Melancholy seized him, tears welled up unexpectedly in his eyes, and the emptiness sucked the life out of his chest. He suddenly missed Cocker Spaniel Rozenblatt with a physical intensity that made him dizzy.

He had never loved her. He could never even say the words. On the contrary, it was her love that he had expected; it should have been enough for both of them. But it had proved to be fragile.

“We all have a right to be loved,” he said. “Don't we?”

He made an exception to the overwhelming, collective love his fans gave him every day. True, it was unconditional and made no demands, but at the same time impossible to take in.

“I love you, Mike,” Tom-Tom Crow answered, without looking up from his knitting. “And Sam loves you to death. Although in a different way.”

Mike nodded. That's how it was. Useless.

Why couldn't anyone accept him for who he was? Why did his rock star status stand between him and the world? It was as if for every emotion he declared, every truth he delivered in lyrics or interviews, nobody heard what he said, they were all preoccupied with the way he said it.

Mike Chimpanzee thought he was screaming, but no one listened.

“And Mom, Mike,” Tom-Tom continued his own thought. “Your mom loves you, too, damn it.”

Mom. Presumably the root to what was bad was in cubhood, Mike thought bitterly, in Mom's intense coddling, which would never end either.

The fatigue that he felt so acutely as he sat beside the large, knitting crow was born out of the feeling of never being sufficiently loved, never feeling sufficiently talented and appreciated and . . . everything else that Mom got him to believe over the years that he had a right to. It was Mom who, through her unexpressed expectations, her sky-high pedestals, created the needs that constantly pursued him; his striving to exceed every conceivable expectation. There wasn't a psychotherapist out there who could settle accounts with Mike's adolescence.

“Mike, I was going to stuff pilsner sausage this afternoon,” said Tom-Tom. “Do you want to help?”