he would stay inside during the Afternoon Rain, and if he did somehow get wet he would change into dry socks. He was forty-eight years old. His wife was living under a death threat. But in his mama’s eyes a good night’s sleep and clean underwear were the most important things. Perhaps that was the way you should live your life?
Sure, he said, he’d gone to see Teddy since they last met.
There was something liberating in sometimes being treated like a child.
As lunch progressed, Eric asked about the Cub List. He’d heard the story so many times that he practically knew it by heart; it was one of the few truly exciting routines there was to tell about in the otherwise ordinary, bureaucratic ministry. And Mother told it exactly as he remembered.
The Cub List was drawn up based on the applications that were submitted and registered. All incoming letters to the department were entered into a journal, and the order of priority followed the same chronology. A test of the applicants’ suitability was always carried out; this was a necessary routine which sometimes meant that the process was delayed. Only in exceptional cases was it necessary to dig deeply into the animals’ past. Most of those who applied for cubs had sense enough to see for themselves what the authorities demanded. A final Cub List was drawn up each month, where the names of the fortunate, but not yet notified, future parents were noted.
None of this was particularly startling, but then came the part of the story that, to the young Eric, was exciting.
When the list was ready, it was to be sent to the Deliverymen, the uniformed heroes who drove the green pickups. Now, the physical transport operation was not run from the Environmental Ministry’s head office on Avenue Gabriel, either. Therefore it was a question of how the list should be sent to the shipping agent. The list was considered a sensitive document, and there was risk of manipulation. Despite everything, every year the ministry rejected applicants, and it was understandable if this led to frustration. The risk could not be taken that one of those rejected might get hold of the Cub List and write their own name there, and therefore it seemed dangerous to simply put it in the mailbox.
Finally someone came up with the idea of the Order Room. The Cub List left the office on Rue de Cadix with an internal courier, who went through an underground tunnel to the headquarters on Avenue Gabriel. The courier took the elevator up to the ninth floor and left the list in a sealed envelope on the table in a room to which there were only two keys.
The Order Room.
After office hours that same evening—always the sixteenth of the month—the Deliverymen came. They unlocked the door with the other key, picked up the list and thereby all risks had been minimized.
“But are there only two keys?”
“Well,” answered his mother, “perhaps there’s one more.”
And the very young Eric understood that it was his mother who had the third and final key, which of course caused him to look through her key rings and finally find it. He made an impression in modeling clay and, along with Teddy, made a plaster key that they played with for a week or two. A not entirely scrupulous locksmith helped Eric make a real key a few years later—Eric had an idea about how he might use it in order to pay a gambling debt, which thank heavens he never put into effect.
Eric and Teddy had asked thousands of questions about the Cub List and the Order Room when they were smaller, questions which to a large extent had to do with the question all animals asked themselves at some point in their lives. Why was it just me who grew up with my parents? Was it by chance, or was there some intention? And the same questions appeared in the mind of the adult bear while he listened to his mother as she told the story again.
Was it really no more than that? An official who placed a list in a locked room, someone else who picked it up?
When they’d each had a cup of coffee and were getting up to leave, Eric finally asked the question that had been his whole reason for this lunch:
“And a corresponding Death List?” he said. “Does it exist?”
“There has never been a Death List,” sighed Edda. “But I understand that animals want to believe