Bastante.
Eric counted the telephone call that had preceded this meeting as one of the high points of his life, proof that he had not only succeeded in a general, superficial, and material sense, but that he’d truly forced himself into the innermost core of contemporary history.
He and Emma had been having a late dinner in the kitchen on Uxbridge Street when the telephone rang. Emma shrugged her shoulders inquiringly and shook her head. Eric got up from the table and took the phone in the serving corridor.
“Eric,” an authoritative voice was heard, “I beg your pardon for calling so late, but…oh, forgive me. This is Archdeacon Odenrick.”
“I recognized your voice, Archdeacon,” said Eric. “It’s been a long time.”
“It really has been,” said Odenrick, “but I have nevertheless had the benefit of following your career at a distance.”
“You can’t believe everything you read,” replied Eric with feigned humility.
“Don’t say that to your mother,” said Odenrick jokingly. “She’s insanely proud of you.”
“No danger. She reads and hears what she wants to read and hear. Selectivity is one of her greatest talents.”
“I think you’re underestimating her,” answered Penguin Odenrick, not without a certain degree of merriment.
“I’m sure I’m not,” said Eric. “What’s the occasion for this late call?”
Odenrick was a straightforward penguin, an animal who set high value on his time, and he appreciated Eric’s direct question.
“I’m calling about A Helping Hand,” explained the archdeacon. “We have a vacant place on the board of directors—old Goldman became ill, actually last summer, but she wasn’t picked up until a few weeks ago. Very tragic nonetheless, of course, and when we were talking around the table about successors your name came up.”
“It did?” said Eric.
“You can believe that I felt very proud,” said Odenrick. “Having known you since you were a little cub.”
“Do you mean that…”
“We would be very happy to have you on the board, Eric.”
When Eric Bear returned to the kitchen to his waiting Emma Rabbit it was as though his paws didn’t touch the floor; he was flying a few centimeters above the parquet floor. Emma had only heard portions of the conversation, so Eric told her. Of all the city’s aid associations, there was none so influential or respected as A Helping Hand. For more than a hundred years the city’s archdeacon was chairman of the board. Only the upper crust of society sat on the board, the most irreproachable animals that could be found.
“And now, me,” said Eric Bear.
Emma Rabbit was most often moderately interested in Eric’s achievements; she defined herself in different arenas than her spouse. But a place on the board of A Helping Hand impressed even her.
The first board meeting followed a few months after the archdeacon’s telephone call, and it was with genuine reverence that Eric made his way along the long, dark corridors within Sagrada Bastante en route to the boardroom with its enormous oak table and the stern, tall, and hard chairs.
The first thing he saw when he came in was Rat Ruth.
None of the other animals held any surprises, it was more or less those he had expected. Mayor Sara Lion sat to the left side of the archdeacon. But Ruth? During the years that followed—the board met approximately every fourth month—Eric realized that Ruth was just as obviously anchored in society’s upper crust as the archdeacon or the mayor. She seldom took part in the discussions; she walked by herself during the breaks and always departed before the lunches, or the less-frequent dinners. But nonetheless. She was asked for advice with proper respect in all matters, and no one ever wrinkled their nose when Ruth or her operation were brought up.
Eric assumed that everyone on the many-headed board knew how Ruth supported the city’s gangster kings. Yet they let her sit in and revel in all the social patina that the board work entailed. Eric wasn’t naïve, nor was he a moralist, but in the circles around A Helping Hand both of those types were represented. When Eric, in time and very carefully, tried to raise the question about Ruth with individual board members, he got nowhere.
Eric realized that the board members, with their years of experience from the backside of life, had all been forced to become thick-skinned pragmatists. They appreciated the significance of garbage being gathered and knew that if Ruth didn’t carry out this bad-smelling work someone else would be forced to do it. But could that be the entire reason that they accepted her at the table? Eric