Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,65

to tell Mother what had happened. That an animal he had long admired could behave in this way made him deeply distressed.

He did not consider giving in to the threat.

Toward midnight he told how things stood. Mother’s reaction was practical.

“But we’ll never be able to afford living here,” she said.

Mother understood immediately that Father didn’t intend to accommodate Owl. He would thereby lose his job. The monthly payments for the mortgage on the house in Amberville were still high and Mother’s career had not yet taken off.

“No, no, there’s no danger,” said our naïve father. “It’s clear that Rector Owl is going to come to his senses.”

Father was convinced that the rector would feel regret.

Father was convinced that the rector would call on him the very next day and apologize. The apology would be accepted, Boxer explained to Mother that night; we all react instinctively sometimes.

Naturally Bo Owl didn’t make an apology.

On the contrary.

When Owl realized that Boxer Bloom had no intention of doing what he wanted, Owl committed a serious mistake. What drove him to it? No one knows. Perhaps it was as Father believed, an overdeveloped protective instinct that went along with the fact that Owl got Nathan so late in life.

Bo Owl paid some baboons to threaten Father.

The baboons broke the windows at our house, wrote dirty words on our door, and subjected Father’s pupils to harassment. This treatment didn’t work. Father didn’t get scared. Instead Father’s empathy with Rector Owl deepened. For obvious reasons, this further provoked the rector.

Finally the apes threatened us.

They threatened Mother and me and Eric.

Then Father had had enough. Rage and terror caused him to make an unwise decision. He challenged the baboons to a duel. I don’t know how it went, how he managed to contact them, but so it was. Mother fled the field and took us cubs home to Grandmother.

When the apes came, there were more than twenty of them. I can see them walking abreast in two columns along Hillville Road. I can even imagine the lonely silhouette that stood in the middle of the street outside our house and waited for them. Desperate and furious. Broad and heavy, there he stands, watching them come.

When less than a hundred meters separates them, Father shouts, “Now it’s over! This is going to be the last thing you do!”

The apes slow their pace somewhat.

A sense of uncertainty appears in their ranks. There stands a single dog and seems convinced that he can get the better of them. This scene is one of the clearest memories my brother and I carry with us throughout life. Despite the fact that we weren’t even there.

The baboons suspect an ambush.

Amberville is not a district that they know, and one of them gets the idea that Bloom has mobilized the entire neighborhood. The rumor spreads in the ranks of the apes. Stuffed animals are sitting in the houses, waiting for Boxer’s signal. At any moment they’re going to come storming out onto the street and support him. Otherwise he would be crazy to challenge them alone.

When one of the apes in the forward rank stops, they all stop. The uncertainty increases. There is scarcely fifty meters between father and the baboons.

Father lets out a battle cry.

“Now I’m going to get you!”

With these words he starts running toward them.

The apes stand as though petrified. The scene is absurd; they can’t believe it. The most cowardly of them turns around and flees. Within a few seconds Father has the moral advantage. He increases his speed and screams at the top of his voice, “Now I’m coming to get you!”

Reality exceeds imagination. One by one the apes turn and follow close on the heels of the first deserter. Father imperceptibly reduces his speed so as not to catch up with the bravest.

The slowest.

He stops when he reaches the spot where the apes began their retreat. He looks far after them, knowing that they are never going to make problems for him again. The apes are going to feel ashamed. They are never going to tell the story as it was. Rector Owl is defeated and cub Nathan will get his rightful grade. Regardless of what that is and what it leads to.

“Now I’m going to get you, said Father.”

Eric and I made those words legendary. We told the story over and over again. We repeated it so many times that the reality became a fairy tale. A story of right and wrong. Of integrity and honor. Of decline