“I’m Kermin,” he had whispered. “I’m not a person.” He had meant to say “bad person,” but the word bad had gotten lost somewhere in the space between his mind and his throat.
The bear seemed to hear this. It moved its head back and forth, as if attempting to listen to him from both ears, and then it yawned a slow, wild yawn, peeling back the wet skin around its teeth. Kermin remembered feeling not scared so much as deeply, profoundly amazed that the world could contain both him and the bear at the same time. He hoped then that if his father and the Chetniks ever came upon this bear, they would not shoot it with their guns, but would somehow realize that this bear was a peaceful bear who only wanted to lick his paws and eat some currants and look at the moon.
“Don’t shoot him, Tata,” he whispered to the bear. “He’s not the war.”
The bear nodded, turned, and, with one last mournful look in Kermin’s direction, disappeared into the forest.
Now, against the glow of that memory, Kermin looked at the bear standing in the middle of the darkened room. Were these two bears related? No. Impossible. They were thousands of kilometers from the Balkans. But. . did bears possess memories, too? Did that bear in Croatia carry with him the image of a child picking white currants? And what of this bear? Would he remember tonight? Would he remember what was about to happen?
He made a decision, then and there: he would fight the bear. It was clear to him now that he had come here for a reason. If he won the fight, then he would know he was on the right course. He would know his cause was just and that he must not sacrifice his son to satiate his wife’s despair.
And if he lost? If he lost, he was not sure what he would do.
“Give me this stick,” he said to Leif.
His host raised his eyebrows. “So you will do it?”
“If this bear kills me, I will really be pissed off,” he said.
Kermin approached the bear, holding the rapier taut by his side. He could see the yellows of the creature’s eyes, the glint of the pupils following him across the room. And still the bear did not move; it remained reared up on its haunches, waiting, its head gently moving back and forth. Kermin could see the pendant gleam red against its belly. A smell of oily fur and animal flesh hung thickly in the air.
Kermin cautiously approached. This bear was bigger and blacker than the one from his memory. It continued to stand rigid and unmoving in the middle of the room, undeterred by Kermin’s approach. At first wary, but then emboldened by the bear’s eerie stillness, Kermin inched closer and then closer still, until he was only four feet away from the creature. The bear towered above him; its massive head swaying lightly on the sill of its thickset shoulders. One swipe of the creature’s paw would send him careening across the room and most likely shatter his entire body. The bear stood, immobile, trembling just so. Kermin realized that, unlike in his encounter with the bear in the forest, he could not hear the creature’s breath. There was only the sound of his own breathing.
He looked back at his host, who gave him a gesture of encouragement. Maybe this was all a psychological trick. Maybe the bear would never move. He could end this with a single tap. A test of courage and faith. The bear was his konkurrent.
He took a deep breath and swung his rapier as fast as he could at the bear’s chest. He readied himself for the feeling of impact, but at the very last moment, the bear’s paw shot up and parried the blow, pushing the rapier’s path down and to the left so that Kermin’s momentum carried him forward and onto the floor, where he lay helpless at the bear’s feet. He expected the bear to pounce upon him, to tear him to pieces, yet the beast did not move from its upright position.
Kermin got up, burning with the heat of humiliation. He tried again. This time, anticipating the block, he was ready for a counterattack, but this, too, was easily deflected by the bear’s other paw. It could not be! The bear’s reaction time was uncanny. Kermin’s rapier zipped through the air, flicking this way and that, and yet every thrust was met with a perfectly equal and opposite block. The bear did not expend one ounce of extra energy; quickly and quietly, he adjusted to Kermin’s attacks and moved accordingly. And yet when Kermin made to thrust but did not, the bear would not even flinch.
Life shrank to the singular task of delivering the point of his rapier to its intended target. Everything depended upon this very small piece of physics. And yet he could not do it. He became frustrated, then resigned, then angry, then oddly exuberant. The bear blocked attack after attack, hypnotically countering each and every gesture he performed. The pendant gleamed, remaining untouched.
Finally, after he had lunged and was sent sprawling across the floor for the umpteenth time, Kermin lay on the ground, soaked in sweat. The muscles in his arms were shaking uncontrollably.
“That bear, that bear. .” he whispered. “Mamojebac.” He was crying from the pure effort of his defeat.
Leif approached, clapping his hands. “Amazing. We’ve been here for just over an hour. You possess such great resolve. Such self-belief. It is a rare quality these days.”
“This bear is unbelievable,” said Kermin.
“Not so unbelievable. I built him myself.”
Kermin slowly rose to his feet, his head pounding.
Leif carefully circumnavigated the bear and then approached from the rear, where he casually reached around the giant stomach, as if to hug the beast, before tapping the pendant with his finger. An alarm sounded and the bear froze stiff.
“Every problem must have a solution,” he said. “Come here, Kermin. Let me show you.”
Still breathing hard, Kermin joined Leif behind the bear. He had removed a part of the bear’s fur and was holding the flap open for Kermin to see inside. In the dim light, Kermin squinted and saw the glint of metal — hundreds of intricate gears and cables standing still inside the creature.
“What?” said Kermin.
Among the gears he could see the white stencil of the eye.
“Yes. You see?” said Leif. “Every move was preprogrammed. He knew what you would do before you did it.”
“How?” Kermin felt as if he were falling down a deep well.
“He’s a puppet. He’s a god.”
• • •
OUTSIDE, THE SUN was finally setting. The dusk, stretched and weightless. Everything smoldering white, yellow, pink. Not so much a sunset as a suspension of disbelief.
“The sun will rise as soon as she sets. Like a breath,” said Leif. “To really understand the mind-set up here, you must first understand the light. . In the summer, there is no night. We’re illuminated for twenty-four hours a day. Our skin becomes confused — you feel alive, like you might never die, as if anything is possible. People don’t realize this, but there are many more deaths in the summer than the winter, because people believe they’re invincible. In the winter you are much more of a realist. The daylight grows shorter until there is no day at all. But it is not completely dark. There is a wonderful depth to the sky in the winter — the light is almost blue. I feel most at peace then. In the summer I do not sleep, but in the winter — this is when I do my thinking.”
They walked. Kermin was still shaken by the image of the bear’s metallic innards. There was no life in there, only the click and pop of the mechanism. The promise of movement. The sum of all those gears had equaled his defeat.