Yok (30 page)

“What a nobody,” Vincent mumbled.

“I'll help you home,” said Zebra. “Do you still live on Calle de Serrano?”

Vincent nodded. Zebra placed Hare's arm around his neck and helped him to his feet. They had no money for a taxi, and crossed the street to the bus stop. The fatigue made Vincent dizzy, the emptiness made him light. He had not eaten since yesterday morning. He discovered that his jacket was torn. One sleeve was missing and the lining torn out. But Vincent made his own clothes, and the jacket could be fixed. When the night bus finally arrived, Casino Biscaya was already a memory, a peculiar dream. Vincent sat down heavily on the seat, leaned against the window, and fell asleep. When he woke up fifteen minutes later, they were back in Yok.

“What were you up to, really?” asked Zebra. “You were completely crazy. You know you didn't have a chance. You weren't even trying.”

“No,” Vincent agreed. “I don't fight.”

“What were you trying to prove?”

“Nothing,” Vincent answered.

The bus lurched as it drove over one of the many holes in the asphalt—no one maintained the streets in Yok—and Vincent moaned in pain.

“You can't say you like taking so many beatings?”

“No,” answered Vincent, holding his head.

Zebra peered out at the dark blocks, and pressed the button on the strip under the window for the next stop.

“So why were you provoking him?”

“Because it has no meaning,” Vincent answered. “That's just the point. It's all the same. Get it?”

Zebra did not understand, but chose not to say anything. The bus glided toward the sidewalk and stopped. The two companions rose and got off.

There were a couple of blocks to walk from the stop. When they came up to the entryway of the hare's apartment complex, the sky was colored pink by the first light of day. A shimmer fell over the roofs of the buildings, and it made them calm.

“Come on in and have a cup of coffee,” Vincent suggested.

Zebra had a vague memory that Hare's parents were no longer alive. The mother had not been in the picture for many years, and the father was gone, too. But that was later, in high school. Hare seemed to be living in the same apartment, however.

“Okay,” Zebra answered, because the night was used up and the day already disturbed.

The apartment proved to be considerably larger than Zebra remembered. A narrow, dark corridor cluttered with moving boxes connected the bedroom, a kitchen and a large bathroom with a studio-like living room at the other end. There were half-finished oil paintings stacked along the walls. On an easel in front of the window was a canvas that Hare apparently was working on right now. Zebra would describe it as abstract expressionism, a furious explosion of color that was impossible not to be drawn into. Zebra remained standing before it, captivated.

Vincent was not interested in talking about or explaining the strikingly large number of paintings in the room. He had taken a couple of pills that he said were pain relievers. He was semi-inclined on the large couch in the middle of the floor, where by turns he slept and for short periods woke up and had some of the coffee he'd made. Zebra walked around looking at the pictures.

“Now I get it,” said Zebra, mainly to himself.

Zebra was proud at having been accepted to the College of Architecture. He was an industrious student who would get his degree in the stipulated time of four years, and with distinction. Hare was his opposite. So far Hare's time at school had been sporadic and unsuccessful. He could not add two and three, and without a talent for mathematics it was tough to study architecture. The fact that the college accepted Hare was a mystery to Zebra, but now there was an explanation. The longer Zebra walked around, picking up the various paintings all over the room, the more clearly he realized that Hare not only had talent, he was already a great artist.

“Have you contacted a gallery owner?” Zebra asked at last. “Have you tried to sell anything?”

“Thieves, the whole lot of them,” Vincent answered thickly from the couch. “Had an exhibition, got mentally ripped off, I'll never do that again.”

“You must do it again! These are amazing,” Zebra said.

But Vincent was pretending to sleep, and as soon as Zebra left he sat up, took his gray notebook out of the inside pocket of the torn jacket, and wrote:

1. Meaning of Life: Two steps back. No step forward.

2. Knowledge Account: There is no wisdom in pain. Meaninglessness is destructive by nature. It is impossible to see your own reflection successfully.

3. Bank Account: Negative.

 

Falcon Ècu's Comments

W
hat was different about Vincent Hare? Is that really my business to interpret? No, I don't think so. I'm not going to pass judgment based on a few isolated occasions, mistakes I am certain that Hare regrets now. Or, it's not certain he regrets them, that I admit; he never gave an exactly humble impression.

There is a kind of stuffed animal, and I don't want to categorize or point to anyone in particular, but you learn over the years that arrogance is an attitude behind which scared stuffed animals hide themselves. Being a police officer is about experience. A professional attitude—that is what characterizes our corps. We have learned to tolerate provocations. Vincent Hare, when I brought him in for questioning the first time, was only twentysomething, and of course he was cocky. What alternative did he have? But should I have let someone of his sort provoke me? No, I don't think so. He was one of many. I can tell you exactly what his problem was: He thought he was something special.

Yes, he was at the station many times. No, I can't tell you why. Getting information from the police archive requires a court order. I know it's long ago, but that doesn't help. Yes, I remember. Because I knew you would ask, I've done some reading. I keep copies of all the reports I've written in my private safe. Yes, there have been quite a few. If I don't go into detail or reveal anything that may be grounds for any form of violation, of course I can give you an impression.

Vincent Hare was brought in on more than four occasions. I don't want to say more than that. Always in connection with Jack Dingo. But not always as a suspect. What do I mean? I mean that Vincent Hare also appears in our internal documents as a crime victim. No, I don't think that's strange at all. His sort is drawn to trouble. That's just how it is. They are all destructive. That's why they don't fit into society. They don't want to take part in building a better future. They want to tear things down. Hare was like that. He looked for violence, and he wasn't all that smart.

It was as if he wanted to punish himself. He went in search of the worst thugs, the most brutal assassins, and let them beat him black and blue. This happened more than once. I'm no psychologist, but I'm sure there's a label that fits that sort of thing. I don't have a fancy university degree, but I do understand stuffed animals. Vincent Hare thought he was special, and liked to show off. He tried to win respect indirectly by going after the biggest and most dangerous in the gang; stuffed animals have done that all through history. There are simply too many of Hare's sort, that's the whole problem.

No, I don't know what became of him. But I can guess. And it's a qualified guess, because there are many years of police experience behind it. Things didn't go well for him, that's my guess. Like it always does for those sorts of overly smart, superior snot-nosed cubs who don't know what's best for them. Excuse me. I didn't mean to single out Vincent Hare as an individual, I'm only talking about a type. And that is a type whose days in Mollisan Town finally end at King's Cross, at the Garbage Dump or in the sea. It was because of that type of stuffed animal that I became a police officer once upon a time.

 

J
ack Dingo made financial assessments of his customers; he never assessed them morally.

He shut the side door on the van and went around. It was dark in the garage, but he was used to that. The car was a Volga Van with black-tinted windows. An older model, just beat-up enough and with a couple of dents on the bumpers both front and back. He had extra headlights put on, but most four-wheel-drive pickups had them. He had swiped the license plates from a black Volga Van up at a junkyard in north Tourquai. Who Dingo's car was registered to, if the police were to check, he didn't know, but it wasn't him, and the car wasn't stolen.

He climbed up and got behind the wheel. Vincent Hare was waiting on the passenger seat. Vincent was 24 years, 77 days, and almost exactly 9 hours old, and in the darkness of the garage he closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the sand running in the hourglass. The garage door was opened with a remote control attached to the instrument panel above the radio. Slowly the entryway let in daylight. Dingo always delivered his goods in the middle of the day. Carrying sacks and boxes from a black car in the middle of the night aroused suspicion.

“Last night must have been a pretty rough one, Vincent. You look like you're going to die,” Dingo commented.

“There are reasons,” Vincent answered. “But I don't regret a thing.”

Dingo laughed. Hare was young and untested and not much help, but he was entertaining. Dingo had made it a matter of principle not to make deliveries alone; situations could easily arise where he needed an extra pair of paws. Today they belonged to Vincent Hare.

Dingo avoided the avenues, because statistically most accidents happened there, and instead chose narrow streets where red lights constantly stopped him. He was whistling. He was not musical, it was more a way of chasing away the silence without turning on the radio and having to listen to a lot of crappy music. He laughed again when he saw how painful the whistling was to the hungover Hare.

Their first stop was at Doctor Huangho on pinstriped Lennon Lane in south Amberville. In the Afternoon Rain Dingo drove the whole way up to the city line along Fasanenstrasse, which ran parallel to East Avenue. It was a beautiful weekday; he wasn't sure which one, but in residential Amberville the streets were as deserted as on a Sunday. When he turned left onto beige Cle Tortilla he almost ran into a group of preschoolers crossing the street in a long line. He hit the pedal, the brakes screeched, Vincent tumbled down on the floor, and the car glided ahead toward the crosswalk but stopped just in time. A furious preschool teacher shook her claws at them. The students passed, with their raincoats and umbrellas.

Dingo gulped. This was an ominous sign. Vincent swore and crawled up onto the seat, putting on his seat belt. Slowly and extremely attentively, Dingo drove on.

Huangho had been a customer for more than ten years, and in time Dingo had learned to know and respect the wild boar who specialized in eyes. In the basement of a neat town house in one of Amberville's least remarkable neighborhoods, the doctor performed operations without a license. He had no training, but the experience in his field he had acquired made him one of the foremost in the city. There was a whole army of illegal plastic surgeons in town, and Dingo did business with all of them.

Huangho bought pain relievers and eyes. Dingo manufactured the pain-relieving drugs in his own laboratory. The eyes he stole from hospitals or from one of the depots where the city stored stuffed animals who had lost their heads, hearts, or other organs, tragedies that put the animals out of order. As long as the Chauffeurs had not picked up the bodies, Mollisan Town could not declare these mutilated wretches dead, and Dingo had young stuffed animals like Vincent Hare steal body parts for him from the depots at regular intervals.

Dingo also arranged what he called Donation Dates to which society's unfortunate animals could come, get drunk, and have body parts removed by Dingo's minions in exchange for a little cash and drugs. The Donation Dates were unpleasant arrangements, which Dingo never attended himself. The instruments used were neither sharp nor clean. The anesthetic applied was either too strong or too weak. Accidents happened. Dingo's make-believe surgeons were as drugged out as the victims. Dealing with the consequences of these exercises often ate up the whole profit, but sometimes it was necessary to show the customers they could rely on him, even if the profit margin was small. He was building long-term business relationships.

W
hen they arrived at the address on Lennon Lane it was still raining, and they stayed in the car until the rain let up. This morning Dingo had decided to take part in the night's VolgaBet, but as he sat there staring at Lennon Lane he changed his mind. Every time he played—and lost—he promised himself never to go back.

At last the clouds dispersed and they got out of the car. Dingo took a position on the sidewalk. In Amberville you seldom saw anyone in the middle of the day. He asked Vincent to keep an eye out anyway, then opened the side doors of the pickup. He took out the black plastic bag, set it over his shoulder, and had Vincent open the gate up to the house. Delivering stuffed animal parts in Amberville was easier than in other parts of the city; here the notion of criminality was distant.

As usual, Dingo and Hare had a cup of coffee with Wild Boar Huangho in the vestibule and talked politics a while before they settled their business. Huangho was outraged about the new proposal for parental leave, and they talked about politicians who didn't understand reality. Hare seemed absent. He was not interested in politics, and his headache made any form of mental activity impossible.

“Do you have any porcelain today?” the wild boar asked.

“Three pairs of blue and three pairs of brown,” Dingo replied. “But then it's mostly plastic, unfortunately.”

“That works, too,” sighed the doctor.

They parted a few minutes later, and Dingo and Hare drove on. They had four deliveries to make before they were done, and when the pickup was full of stuffed-animal parts, Dingo never felt comfortable.