Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,78
because they could neither see the arm of the crane nor the wires, only a large armchair slowly gliding down out of the gray-black night sky. They caught sight of it at roughly the same time. Soundlessly it landed a few meters from them.
“The bear will sit down,” said a gruff voice that echoed down to the bottom of the ravine.
Eric looked from one friend to the other, and they nodded. They had confidence in him. Even Snake looked hopeful.
“You’ll manage this,” said Tom-Tom, giving Eric a pat on the shoulder. “Damn it.”
Sam nodded in agreement, and Eric took the few steps over to the armchair and sat down. Immediately the chair began to be hoisted up, and with a tense hold on the arm of the chair Eric Bear vanished into the night.
His friends down on Left-hand Road could hear the tumult that broke out above them when the armchair finally became visible to those who were waiting. The snake, the crow, and the gazelle stood completely still, listening to the sounds from the Garbage Dump’s animals as they departed with Eric. Then it became silent again.
Unpleasantly silent.
Sam looked at Snake, who slowly let the green tip of his tail sway back and forth.
“I’m not saying anything,” he said. “I’m not saying anything.”
Sam took a hoof-full of light-blue pills out of his pants pocket, generously offering some to his friends. The snake and the crow declined, the one with contempt and the other courteously and amiably, whereupon the gazelle—not without a certain amount of difficulty—swallowed the pills himself.
They carried Eric on the armchair to the Garbage Town. His plan was to try to commit the route to memory so as to be able to make his way back on his own, and this demanded concentration. They carried him through tunnels and over a bridge. Back and forth, it felt like, across these mountains of refuse in a dark world which stank of putrefaction and where none of the contours were comprehensible to him.
Four stuffed animals carried the armchair on their shoulders. Eric perceived their strong odors and guessed that they were horses of various types, perhaps dromedaries or donkeys. Around them a dozen shadowy figures were moving in the night, and after a few minutes Eric identified Hyena Bataille as the group’s commander. He had heard about Bataille. Up to now the bear had succeeded in maintaining a certain composure, but now the feeling of displeasure became much too strong. He abandoned his ambition of memorizing the many right and left turns, and instead closed his eyes. Images of Teddy and Emma filled him. But despite the fact that he exerted himself to refrain, again and again his thoughts slipped over to Bataille. Could everything he’d heard be true?
After perhaps a quarter of an hour, the surrounding sounds became louder and louder. Eric opened his eyes and understood that he was on the outskirts of the Garbage Town he’d heard talk of but never seen. In the moonlight—there surely remained a half hour before the full moon would become half again—hovels formed of refuse were outlined. Walls and roofs leaned at odd angles, or else the constructions were on their way to sinking down into the dump’s clay blanket of refuse. But the more compact the settlement became, Eric observed, the higher the walls rose.
When he saw Rat Ruth’s residence he realized that he had reached the center point of the Garbage Town. The queen’s residence consisted of a mass of free-standing, multi-angled hovels connected to each other by a network of winter garden–like passageways. Shards of glass of various colors had been pieced together in the passageways, and in the moonlight the mosaic sparkled to great effect.
The animals who led Eric to the residence handed him over to two bats. They led him along the multicolored glass corridors. The impression was kaleidoscopic; up was down and down was up, and several times the bear involuntarily stumbled where he was walking. It stank of muck and anxiety. The hyena had thankfully stayed outside, and from the howling crowd of animals that met Eric in the open area in front of the residence—and which reminded him of the angry mobs he’d read about in history books many years ago—not a sound was heard.
They passed through buildings that seemed to be empty and suspended in oblivion. In the glass corridors Eric was blinded by light; in the pitch-black hovels between them he couldn’t even see where he was setting his paws.