Yok (38 page)

“Oh boy,” said the bear.

“We would like to appreciate all this,” said Vincent, indicating the lawn and the sea beyond the shore with his paw.

“Hmm,” said the bear.

“If the nurse pushes me over there to the pine tree,” said Vincent, pointing, “will you come join me? And talk a little? Or perhaps just listen a little?”

“Sure, I can do that.” Teddy nodded good-naturedly, and the little troop crossed the lawn toward the tree.

In this way a conversation and a friendship began which, during Vincent's third year at Lakestead House, would grow each day. It turned out that Teddy Bear lived in the room above Vincent's, in a corridor where eleven primitive paintings with maritime motifs were hanging. Already the first day, when Teddy Bear found a knotty root to lean against and sat on a couple of stones in a makeshift chair, he dismissed Vincent's suicidal fantasies as foolishness.

“Escaping from life through death is like resisting the temptation to scratch yourself on the back by cutting off your paw,” said Teddy Bear seriously. “I don't want to maintain that the thought has never attracted me. Because it has. Especially after a good day, when you sense it can only get worse. But running away can't be the idea, can it? Isn't that too easy?”

The Breeze brought with it the dampness and salt of the sea, which matted the bear's fur. Patients from the building walked meditatively along the shore, and far to the south they glimpsed the piers—Hillevie's large marina—like dark stripes out into the sea.

“This is what I think,” said Vincent. “Year after year I repeat myself. And I don't notice it, at least not until much later. It's a kind of substance abuse behavior. I find something: a stuffed animal, an interest; and then I push it too far. It starts well, healthy and considered, but soon I'm manic, exaggerated, and it always ends the same way: with a crash landing. Burned bridges. I use things up, but I don't develop anything.”

“Hmm,” said Bear.

The nurse who was standing behind Vincent's wheelchair stared out over the sea and did not hear a word of the conversation between the hare and Bear. It had been a long time since she was interested in the conversations of lunatics.

“But then I realized,” Vincent continued, “that it wasn't just me. That it applies to all of us. We don't develop. We go in circles. We repeat ourselves endlessly. We are delivered, we grow up, we love, we grieve, and when it's time for the Chauffeurs to pick us up, we are not the least bit wiser than when we arrived. We haven't managed to teach our cubs anything. We get richer. More comfortable. More modern. But spiritually we circle around the same futility we always have.”

“Hmm,” said Bear.

“And that is what I wanted to ask you,” said Vincent. “It seems like we are all assigned our specific fate. As a species, we have been stuck in our own limitations for decades and centuries. But even personally I'm stuck. I have to be manic in my relationships. From the time I was delivered, my fate was staked out. Every time I think I've torn myself loose, every time I think I'm doing something new and different, I realize over time that in reality I only managed to fool myself. But I'm not fooling my fate. And it's obvious that in the end it's hopeless. Everything becomes meaningless. Whatever I do, I don't control my predestined role. Is that the way it is, Teddy? Does it have to be that way? But as a stuffed animal, don't you have to try to make yourself free?”

Bear nodded. It was easy for him to understand what Vincent was talking about.

“Do you have to?” asked Bear.

“Yes, but how?” asked Vincent. “And will it work?”

The dinner bell rang. They both looked up at the sky, and realized that the Breeze had died down without them noticing it.

When the nurse rolled Vincent back across the lawn, he could smell smoke. But Bear said something about someone burning leaves at the back side of the building, and then Vincent smiled involuntarily. That smell was no longer coming from him.

“Personally I fought against evil,” Bear explained as they returned to the house. “And of course there are many who do. But I have devoted my life out here to fighting for goodness, too, and no one else does that. I'm not talking about religion, but about goodness. They are different. But don't worry; I'm not the missionary type. I mean, you can do as you wish, Vincent. I have a hard enough time keeping myself in line.”

Vincent laughed, and adjusted the blanket on his lap.

“Perhaps I could have dinner in the dining room today?” he said, mostly to himself.

“Do that,” said Bear. “It would be nice to have someone to sit with.”

V
incent Hare did not want to admit the doctors were right—it had become a matter of principle—but the counseling, physical therapy, and medication showed results shortly after Vincent met Bear. True, his legs had gradually gotten steadier and Vincent's ability to use them had increased, but it was at the start of the third year that his physical recovery picked up speed. On some subconscious level Vincent realized at last that the foreign limbs were actually his own.

Every other hour with Seinstein was exchanged for an extra hour with the physical therapist, a meddlesome heifer for whom Vincent had little use. He did not doubt her professional competency, but as a stuffed animal she was not much, he thought.

The discussions with Teddy Bear deepened with time. Vincent had consciously avoided telling Seinstein about the sand of life that he started hearing again at night as it ran through the narrow waist of the hourglass. Lakestead House existed beyond time and space; that was the feeling the institution doctors consciously tried to convey to the patients, and they were successful. For that reason Vincent panicked when the sound of the sand returned, as a reminder of the life he had lived and must continue to live, and for the longest time he refused to admit even to himself that it had happened. When he was finally forced to tell someone, he chose Bear instead of Seinstein: he needed sympathy, not analysis.

Bear proved in many ways to be a wise, thoughtful stuffed animal. His trains of thought were long, logical, and consistent, he possessed self-insight and education, and Vincent wondered why the bear had chosen to live at Lakestead House. Sometimes his twin brother came to see him, and then they gladly talked about their mother, Rhinoceros Edda, who had made a brilliant political career.

“That would suit you,” said Vincent. “A life in politics!”

His brother, Eric Bear, agreed politely, but Teddy did not want to talk about it. Fantasizing about a life outside Lakestead House only made him feel anxious.

When they got to know each other even better, Vincent experienced nights when he realized how impossible the thought of an existence outside Lakestead was for Bear. Bear essentially suffered from the same lack of moderation as Vincent. He was obsessed by his theories and thoughts about evil and good, which in turn led to a long series of idées fixes that made a normal life impossible.

T
eddy Bear read in the afternoons: thick tomes, accessible popular science, and a bit of poetry. Vincent Hare would stumble his way up the stairs right after the rain (something his physical therapist warmly recommended even if Vincent used canes) and knock on Bear's door about the time he was done and ready to tell about what he had read.

Poetry made him melancholy.

“Love,” said Bear, one afternoon almost a year after they had met for the first time down on the lawn, “is a feeling so strong I hardly dare think about it.”

“Do you miss Emma?” Vincent asked kindly.

Emma Rabbit was the love of Bear's life. She had betrayed the bear in some way Vincent did not understand. He had forgiven her, but even so she did not return.

“I miss her. Even though she's here,” he said, pointing to his chest. “And here.” He pointed to his head. He sighed deeply, and then looked worriedly at his friend.

“And you, Vincent, do you miss anyone? Because I think you do.”

To that point during his three years at Lakestead House Vincent had refrained from mentioning Maria Goat by name. Now he said, “I miss someone, too.”

The moment he admitted this, he experienced how the loss overwhelmed him. Outside the afternoon was getting late, the blue of the sky deepened, and the Breeze died down.

“I miss someone,” he repeated. “More than I dare think about.”

“Tell me about her,” Bear suggested. “It sounds like you'd like to.”

The bear's plainness was disarming.

“Sure,” said Vincent. “If I only knew how.”

But he didn't.

Even though three years had passed since he last saw Maria, he thought about her every day. It was easy to bring up mental images, sharp and colorful: Maria on a park bench under a willow tree, or Maria raising a glass of red wine in the glow of a candle. Vincent had hundreds of images in storage, but he could never keep them alive for more than a few seconds. Then he was overwhelmed with pain. He could not put it into words. It was loss, it was regret, and anger, of course. He wanted to forget; that had been his strategy, refusing to mention her name and letting the images die away, but it was impossible. All the hours with Seinstein were suddenly of no use, all the intellectual bullshit stood out as empty and threadbare.

“If it hurts, then say so,” Bear suggested.

He was now brooding over what he would have done differently, but he knew that nothing could have been different. There was sorrow in that. He could not imagine anything more tragic than starting over with Maria, because he was certain that everything would be exactly the same again.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Shortly thereafter the dinner bell rang, but the bear and the hare stayed in the room. The hare did not notice his tears running, but the pain in his chest made him unable to stand up.

C
an you tell me about your mom?” Dr. Seinstein asked, unconsciously rocking her paw so that Vincent was certain the slipper would fall off.

But the slipper did not fall off; it never did. Outside, the treetops hid the sun that otherwise would have been shining in their eyes. The doctor had set the pad and pen on the table. It was a way of getting ready, he had learned.

“About Mom?”

“You seldom talk about your parents, Vincent. Yet when you do, I get the sense that your mom was close to you, right?”

Vincent shrugged his shoulders. That was confirmation.

“And your dad?”

“He never really knew I existed,” answered Vincent. “Being a parent wasn't his thing.”

“What was his thing?”

“Don't know. I really don't know what he did. I think he drove a taxi for a while. Worked in construction a few years. But I don't know. He didn't see me. He never talked with me.”

“Literally?”

“Literally. He never talked with me.”

“And your mom?”

“He didn't talk with her either,” said Vincent, and the bitterness came out in his voice. “But she disappeared when I was five. Then it was just him and me.”

“When you were five? I got the impression that . . . you have many memories of her anyway?”

“Do I? Maybe I have. I don't know. She was strong. In her way.”

“She was a camel?”

“A donkey,” he said.

Silence settled over the room. Seinstein's patience was endless as she waited for his reaction. But now Vincent did not know what he was expected to say or feel.

“It seems,” said the panda at last, “as if you grew up without parents. Emotionally without parents.”

He thought before he answered.

“Maybe?”

“What do you think that has meant to you?”

He thought again. He had carried the memory of his mother through his entire cubdom. It was painful, a bitter memory, and in the longing from which he never could free himself, hope had finally abandoned him. He had been forced to realize that she would never come back. For that he hated her. He needed her.

Dad was no use. Vincent had learned to keep to himself. That way he came to no harm. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was big enough to disappear from home for several days at a time. When the Chauffeurs picked up Dad, life got easier, but basically nothing changed.

“I don't know,” he answered honestly.

“You never felt safe, did you, Vincent?”

“No,” he answered.

“Do you think anything would have been different if you had?”

He sat quietly. “I don't know,” he said at last. “Probably.”

T
hat night Vincent woke up right after midnight. He was suddenly aware that he was 38 years, 9 days, 16 hours, and about 10 or 20 minutes old. In the dream he had tried to scream, but only got out a muffled sound, which woke him for real. He sat up in bed, looked around the little room, and remembered where he was. Without waiting for waking reflection, he put on his light blue bathrobe, crept into his felt slippers, and with a crutch under one arm, he limped through the corridor, up the stairs, and to Bear's door. He knocked and waited a few moments until the sleepy stuffed animal opened.

“I love her, Teddy,” he said. “That's the problem. I love her, but I'm never going to be able to live with her.”

Bear took a step to the side, so that Vincent could enter.

“I know how it feels,” said Bear. “At least, I know how the same thing feels to me.”

Before Vincent came to Lakestead House he had never cried, and afterward he would never cry again. The tears he had, he shed there. He stumbled up to Bear's bed, sat on the edge, let his head sink heavily down in his paws, and sobbed quietly. He, who had never let himself be overcome by emotions, could suddenly not think clearly. The sorrow reached a depth he was not aware of. He longed for Maria so that his body was shaking, and he fell back on Bear's bed, twisted to one side and drew his knees up toward his chin. He would never get to hold her again. When after all the years he finally dared lose himself in someone, he had lost.