out, and he rose from the bench. The following moment he fell down backwards again. With the panda on top of him.
“I have never touched any panda!” he shouted.
Then Eric knew that Wolle & Wolle would have Dot as a new account.
“I’M COMING!”
Eric threw off the blanket and sat up in bed. The bedroom was swaying. The noise from the door was getting louder.
He had a vague recollection that Emma had left the house almost an hour earlier. She rented a studio in the south end of Amberville, down toward Swarwick Park. There she worked as long as the sun was standing in the east, and she liked to get going early in the morning. Eric was slower. More precise, he said.
More vain, she said.
The bear stood up and pulled on the underwear and shirt that were lying on the floor beside the bed. Those were the clothes he’d had on yesterday. They stank of sweat, smoke, and stale booze. With a sigh he went slowly out through the dining room.
The blinds had been drawn in the bedroom, but the sun was sparkling happily from a blue sky through the windows in the living room. The nostrils of Eric’s cloth nose expanded and unconsciously his small, round ears moved forward. He dared not even guess who might be at the door; they seldom had uninvited guests. He furrowed his cross-stitched eyebrows and reached for his aching head. At the same time there was an amused curiosity in his small, black-button eyes.
Life often treated Eric Bear to pleasant surprises.
He came out into the hall just as the pounding resumed, and this time the animal on the other side had lost patience. The hinges rattled uneasily; the force behind the pounding could not be mistaken.
Eric hesitated.
He remained standing next to a small sofa upholstered in pink velvet which Emma Rabbit had purchased at auction at a high price a little more than a year earlier.
Perhaps it was best not to open. Eric suddenly had a feeling that he didn’t want to know who was on the other side of the door. With an inaudible sigh he sat down on the pink sofa.
It became silent outside.
After that the door came flying into the hall.
The blow was loud and distinct. It was followed by an unpleasant crunching sound, and from a cloud of wood chips and wall plaster Eric discerned the outline of a small bird, who carefully stepped over the debris on the floor.
Behind the bird two broad figures loomed on either side.
Nicholas Dove and his gorillas had come for a visit.
“Eric, my friend,” said Dove in his squeaky monotone as the dust settled. “I see I’m arriving at a very inconvenient time.”
And the dove made a gesture toward Eric’s bare legs. The bird himself wore an impeccable double-breasted jacket, with a pink silk scarf around his neck.
Eric had leaped up from the sofa as though standing to attention when the door was battered into the hallway, and now he looked down at his underwear. His heart was pounding hard in his chest, and he was much too shocked to be either afraid or angry.
“I…” he began.
“No problem,” Dove assured him, going past Eric without need of an invitation and on into the living room.
The two gorillas remained standing in the hall, in the space that had recently been a doorway. There was nowhere to escape. Eric vaguely recalled one of the gorillas, the one who was bright red, from the distant past. It was a very unusual color for an ape.
In the living room, the dove had already made himself comfortable in one of the armchairs. Eric sat down warily on the sofa next to it. Despite the fact that practically all the stuffed animals in Mollisan Town were the same size, some seemed daintier and others coarser. Dove fell into the first category, the gorillas in the latter.
“It’s been a long time…” said Eric. “Really…”
“Much too long,” replied Dove, “much too long, my friend. But that’s not on my account. You’ve always known where to find me.”
That was true.
Nicholas Dove’s nest had always been at Casino Monokowski. It was said that Dove seldom or never left his comfortable office, where through tinted windows he could survey the casino from above. Eric knew, however, that the painting to the left of the desk—a horse in battle gear—was actually the door to Dove’s private apartment. From there he made his visits to the outside world, a necessity in order to maintain the balance