Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,15

a serious subject. Many have immersed themselves in it. Yet one of the greatest problems is the definition itself.

Being a good bear demands that you know what evil looks like.

I know what evil looks like.

My forty-eighth summer of life is approaching. It is not without experience that I look back on my life. I don’t want to call it a happy life. It was never a question of making a happy life for myself. But I feel satisfied; there is a certain calm. It occurred to me yesterday. Few grains of sand from the past chafed in my soul as I walked along the shore in the pouring rain of the Afternoon Weather.

Involuntarily my mood darkened.

And in my armchair before dinner, my childhood was waiting for me.

The day my twin brother and I were delivered to our parents I already knew everything about a mother’s and a father’s love for their cubs. I knew that my brother would come to experience that kind of love. And I knew that I wouldn’t. It was not an insight expressed in words; I was two days old. And yet the certainty of it was in my heart. It marked my upbringing. I loved Mother and Father. They loved me back. But never like they loved Eric.

Never.

We came direct from the factory, a troupe of parentless cubs being driven out to their future homes by the Deliverymen in their green Volga pickup. Stuffed animals out taking a walk that morning stopped to look at the truck. The males clasped their females closer to them. The females tipped their heads to one side and smiled tenderly.

I can imagine how it was.

I myself have been walking on a sidewalk like that and seen the green pickup driving by. A truckbed full of cubs who will long for love their whole lives. A longing that is going to lead them astray, and destroy them.

Almost nothing is more difficult than keeping the longing for love free from demands.

It is a struggle.

I struggle every day.

Mother liked to say that the Saturday when Eric and I came to flame-yellow Hillville Road, nature appeared in sparkling garb. The sky was light blue and the pleasantly warm sun put the cascades of red, yellow, and green foliage in light and shadow by turns.

The Deliverymen drove across the Star—the golden square that was the absolute midpoint of the city—and continued along mint-green East Avenue. The carillon in the highest of Sagrada Bastante’s thirteen towers struck its cheerful melody.

There’s no symbolism to be found in those thirteen towers.

The four rectilinear avenues toward east, west, south, and north were the skeleton of our city. During the week these were heavily traversed thoroughfares. On the weekends, the east and west avenues were transformed into walking streets. In the middle, between three lanes to one side and three lanes to the other, grew massive oaks and maples. They formed a long avenue on either side of a wide gravel walkway.

The trees provided shelter from the rain that passed over the city twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon.

In the fall thousands and thousands more lamps were set up in the foliage. The first of November every year the lamps were lit just before the Evening Weather, and the two avenues pierced the city like sabers of light.

You shouldn’t look for any symbolism in that either.

The Deliverymen drove Eric and me to Amberville, the district whose boundaries are formed by East Avenue and the beautifully sky-blue South Avenue. Here the two-story buildings stand wall to wall in seemingly endless rows. Up the street and down the street, most in shades of green or blue, with more or less identical buildings. White woodwork against dark-red or dark-brown plaster. Sloping roofs shingled with black mosaic tile. Two garrets with transom windows on each attic. Narrow ribbons of smoke rise from the chimneys in the twilight. Red and pink geraniums spiral from the flowerboxes.

Details set the houses apart. Growing up in Amberville, we often knocked on the wrong door.

“We’ve got two units to number 14,” said one of the Deliverymen to the other.

With the point of a pencil he checked off Eric’s and my names on his list.

“Two units?” the Deliveryman commented behind the steering wheel.

“Twin bears. Don’t see that often.”

We were a sensation even when we were made. Two identical stuffed animals. Indistinguishable.

The green pickup swung onto the sidewalk outside 14 Hillville Road. The Deliveryman who was sitting on the passenger side jumped out and went around