There we sat. We were neither shorter nor taller than we are today. We were less worn around the knees and elbows. That was the main difference.
But we couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t walk. The Deliveryman took us, one under each arm, and carried us up to the house which was to be our parental home.
Mother and Father stood waiting at the door. Our father, Boxer Bloom, was wearing his best white shirt, and a bow tie besides. Our mother, Rhinoceros Edda, had on a dress that was as big as a tent.
“Finally!” said Mother.
“Now it begins,” said Father.
I have few memories of my own of early childhood. But Mother told us stories when we got older. Funny stories about how Eric or I said something silly before we understood what the words meant. Dramatic stories of illnesses and escapes. Mother liked to tell stories as she was preparing food. She stood at the old, wood-fired stove in our narrow kitchen. Eric and I sat at the kitchen table and listened.
She told about when we drove the car out to the lake in the summer and when we ate our picnics in Swarwick Park in autumn. In Mother’s stories Eric was the initiator and I was the follower. Eric was the star and I was the audience.
I was a cub, and needed no explanations for why things were that way. It was natural that Eric was promoted at my expense.
We loved him.
I have never felt, and never will feel, envy in relation to my brother. Bitterness, it is said, is an inborn talent. Roughly in the same way as music. I’ve never been able to hold a tune. My anxiety is of a different type.
The memory of Mother’s tale changed in time to a memory of the event itself. There have been times in my life when I believed that these implanted memories might replace the real ones. That’s not the case. What Mother told and retold were situations that were especially meaningful to her. Not especially meaningful to me or to Eric. If you think about it, you might more than suspect that Mother’s stories were keys to her inner life.
The keys to my life were kept in a different drawer.
There was a time when I tried to force it open.
Then I understood that that was meaningless. Being a good bear is a constantly ongoing project in the present tense.
Eric and I shared a room. It was the highest up, on the fourth floor with the sloping roof over our beds. That early time was dizzying for our new parents. They had lived for each other, now Eric and I made our demands. There was a lot we needed to learn. Simple things like walking down the stairs to the kitchen. Or expressing the simple feelings that filled us. We were cold. We got hungry. And sleepy. One time we ate too many cookies and got a stomachache.
At this time our mother had not made a name for herself at the ministry. Like hundreds of other paper-pushers she plodded along, and her coworkers hardly sensed that she would become one of our time’s most talked-about politicians. It was both obvious and easy for Mother to go to half-time, and she continued to work half-time until Eric and I had learned the most necessary skills.
It was different with Father.
Our father, Boxer Bloom, was rector of Amberville’s Secondary Grammar School. The school building was a chalk-white fairy-tale castle, adorned with towers and pinnacles. The building was designed by Toad Hendersen, who had also renovated the city’s massive cathedral. The school’s main entry faced toward moss-green All Saints Road, but from the hill in the schoolyard at the back the forest could be glimpsed beyond the city limits.
For Father the job was a calling. Between the present day and the future there were some animals who made a difference, and he counted himself among them. He was bringing up the coming generations. If he succeeded, the city we’d known until now would be a pale prototype of that which was to come. Father was careful about describing his visions concretely, but I sensed that what he especially disliked about his own time was its lack of order.
He wanted to sort things out.
The barbarous by themselves, and the civilized by themselves.
The reliable here, and the unreliable there.
The heart knew which was which, even if the brain confused the issue with doubts.