Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,43

strange, but why should Papa lie? Papa was all Tom-Tom had. Mama had disappeared even before he was delivered. Tom-Tom was Papa’s only child.

They were coming from the forests, Papa said. They tortured stuffed animals. They could keep at it for days. When you finally died, said Papa, you could feel content. But Tom-Tom shouldn’t be afraid. Papa would never let anything happen to him. That was why they had to practice.

There were a couple of loose floor planks in the kitchen. When Papa heard the sirens, Tom-Tom should run into the kitchen and throw himself down into the hollow place under the floor. But because it was only Papa who heard the sirens, Tom-Tom never knew when it was time. No matter how hard the punishment Papa gave him, Tom-Tom never learned to hear the sirens. The sirens in Papa’s head.

It was cramped under the planks in the kitchen. There was hardly room for Tom-Tom. Perhaps that was just as well. The idea of the practice was that he was forced to lie silent as long as possible. If he let out a peep, the enemy would find him. Then the enemy would tear up the planks and torture him. It was for Tom-Tom’s own good.

He learned to lie silently for hours.

Tom-Tom Crow stared at Hotel Esplanade, trying to think about Snake, the bear, and the gazelle. He tried to take himself back to reality and the gray Volga and the terrible Chauffeurs on the other side of the street. But after a few minutes, he was down in the cramped space under the floor again.

The pain.

What if the enemy sensed something anyway?

What if the enemy sensed something anyway and started searching for a hiding place somewhere under the floor planks? What if the enemy, for example, poured boiling water over the floor, boiling water that ran down through the cracks? Would Tom-Tom still manage to keep silent? Boiling oil? Melted sugar? Tom-Tom’s papa was inventive at the stove. He was doing this for Tom-Tom’s own good.

The pain.

When dawn came and the first rays of the sun were climbing up over the horizon, the night of watching was over. Most often, the red pickup drove into the garage an hour or two before sunrise; sometimes the margin was narrower. The Chauffeurs would sleep through the day after completion of nightly duty, and that applied to Eric, Sam, Snake, and Tom-Tom as well. But no one found as great a relief in the hour of dawn as the crow.

During the shift that proved to be the last one outside Hotel Esplanade for the stuffed animals, Sam Gazelle overslept.

It wasn’t at all strange; chock-full of interacting and counteracting substances flowing around in his system, the chances of his remaining awake for an entire surveillance shift were generally nonexistent.

Instead of soundlessly opening the car door and nonchalantly strolling back to the beautifully grass-green Yiala’s Arch as dawn was breaking, Sam threw open his eyes in surprise and noticed that the day had begun. The Morning Weather had turned cloudy, nothing more, but this would still demand an explanation. Eric would understand that Sam had fallen asleep, and Sam had no excuse.

He wriggled out of the car at the same time as he tried to gather his thoughts. The ghosts of his nightmares had not yet dissipated, and they made it hard for him to produce miserable white lies.

He shut the car door and took a deep breath. There were a few cigarette butts on the sidewalk right next to him, and only a year ago he would have leaned down and picked them up. Somewhere in the vicinity he heard the sound of an iron grate being rolled up as a shop owner came to work. And Sam was just on his way to begin the stroll homeward when the concealed garage door to Hotel Esplanade unexpectedly opened.

Despite the fact that the sun had gone up and the day had begun.

From out of the garage drove not a red, but a green pickup.

CHAPTER 13

It sounds so frigging unbelievable,” said Tom-Tom, who was standing in the kitchen, searching for rusks in one of the cupboards over the counter.

“But I swear,” Sam Gazelle whined, wretched and irritated at the same time. “How wrong do you think a person can see?”

“It sounds unbelievable,” agreed Eric.

“I’m telling you, it was ChauffeurTiger,” Sam repeated for the third time.

The crow found the package of rusks and sat down next to Sam.

“Who had turned into some frigging DeliveryTiger?” said