Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,11
a little less than twenty years.
Eric was invited to sit on a narrow Windsor-style chair at the short end of the desk, the only piece of furniture in the office for visitors. There was an antipathy in Snake’s voice that was not even concealed. (On the phone with the receptionist Snake had maintained that he wasn’t in, but when he realized that Eric was calling from down in the lobby he changed his mind and unwillingly gave his old friend permission to come up.)
After neutral, friendly exchanges about health, Eric got to the point. Could Snake help out? Take a leave of absence for a week or two. It wouldn’t need to be longer than that, and then he was back to his routines again. At this point the bear made a vague gesture toward the small cubicle that was already feeling claustrophobic to him.
Snake replied at length. He didn’t say either yes or no, and Eric realized that what he was listening to was a prelude to refusal. Snake talked and talked, and finally the bear lost patience.
“Do you think,” said Eric sharply, “that I’m sitting here for the fun of it? If you think I’d be looking you up for the first time in twenty years if it wasn’t a matter of life or death, literally, then you’re not in your right mind.”
Snake Marek changed tactics. He ignored Eric’s questions, and spoke instead of the past. Precisely and at great length he pulled out old injustices and long-forgotten conflicts. It was no secret that Snake had always harbored an envy, to a certain degree justified, of Eric.
Eric tried to interrupt, tried to correct him, but to no avail.
After ten minutes Eric rose from the chair, held his paws over his head, and admitted defeat. This didn’t get Snake to quit talking. Eric backed slowly out of the small office cubicle. Harried by complicated sentence constructions filled with ironic poison arrows, the bear hurried along the dark-blue corridor back out into reality.
He needed a new strategy.
Snake Marek was an animal with a calling.
Even at a very young age Snake’s brain could be compared to a generator working dangerously near the limits of its operating capacity. Apart from a few hours of quiet at night, it glowed, sparked, and hummed from early dawn until long after sundown. When Marek reached his teens, his need to communicate all of these thoughts, ideas, feelings, melodies, and visions was as physically tangible as his need for food and sleep. The surrounding world must find out. The surrounding world must hear, observe, and confirm.
So thought the young Snake.
He wrote poems that he hid in his desk drawer, because he knew that posterity would one day discover them there. He wrote editorials for the school newspaper under a pseudonym, but signed his arts columns with his own name. He started a pop band as a twelve-year-old, and compelled some schoolmates who were several years older to accompany him when he performed his profound lyrics. His first exhibition as an artist took place two days after his sixteenth birthday. What he exhibited were predominantly charcoal drawings; the forests around the city were his still life.
Snake Marek’s artistic production knew no limits. From his thirteenth to his eighteenth year he poured forth no less than seventeen collections of poetry and five novels. In addition he made daily contributions to the newspaper. To begin with, he wrote in Amberville’s school newspaper, but later he did double duty as a reporter for The Daily News as well. During the same period he wrote more than a hundred songs, none with fewer than four verses, and produced twice that number of paintings, if you only counted oils and watercolors. Thanks to his manic disposition, Snake Marek managed to suffer, ponder, and produce in a feverish, un-ceasing cycle. He, however, didn’t have time to notice the surrounding world’s complete lack of interest in him.
The summer he turned eighteen everything fell apart. Burning yourself out was of course a kind of merit badge for a hard-pressed artist, and therefore he felt rather satisfied with the entire course of the illness.
The triggering factor was his fourth art exhibition, which, exactly like the earlier ones, was met with haughty silence. This was the final drop that caused the goblet to overflow. Two days after the exhibition Snake Marek made a large pyre on the street outside his entryway. All the handwritten poems and manuscripts of novels, all the demo tapes and paintings, framed or