Uniforms, right.
"Never mind," he whispered to himself. "That'll hold them. That'll hold them, all right."
One night late in the month, sometime after two o'clock, Kurt Dussander awoke struggling with the bedclothes, gasping and moaning, into a darkness that seemed close and terrifying. He felt half-suffocated, paralyzed with fear. It was as if a heavy stone lay on his chest, and he wondered if he could be having a heart attack. He clawed in the darkness for the bedside lamp and almost knocked it off the nightstand turning it on.
I'm in my own room, he thought, my own bedroom, here in Santo Donato, here in California, here in America. See, the same brown drapes pulled across the same window, the same bookshelves filled with dime paperbacks from the bookshop on Soren Street, same gray rug, same blue wallpaper. No heart attack. No jungle. No eyes.
But the terror still clung to him like a stinking pelt, and his heart went on racing. The dream had come back. He had known that it would, sooner or later, if the boy kept on. The cursed boy. He thought the boy's letter of protection was only a bluff, and not a very good one at that; something he had picked up from the TV detective programs. What friend would the boy trust not to open such a momentous letter? No friend, that was who. Or so he thought. If he could be sure-His hands closed with an arthritic, painful snap and then opened slowly.
He took the packet of cigarettes from the table and lit one, scratching the wooden match on the bedpost. The clock's hands stood at 2:41. There would be no more sleep for him this night. He inhaled smoke and then coughed it out in a series of racking spasms. No more sleep unless he wanted to go downstairs and have a drink or two. Or three. And there had been altogether too much drinking over the last six weeks or so. He was no longer a young man who could toss them off one after the other, the way he had when he had been an officer on leave in Berlin in '39, when the scent of victory had been in the air and everywhere you heard the Fuehrer's voice, saw his blazing, commanding eyes--
The boy . . . the cursed boy!
"Be honest," he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice in the quiet room made him jump a little. He was not in the habit of talking to himself, but neither was it the first time he had ever done so. He remembered doing it off and on during the last few weeks at Patin, when everything had come down around their ears and in the east the sound of Russian thunder grew louder first every day and then every hour. It had been natural enough to talk to himself then. He had been under stress, and people under stress often do strange things--cup their testicles through the pockets of their pants, click their teeth together . . . Wolff had been a great teeth-clicker. He grinned as he did it. Huffmann had been a finger-snapper and a thigh-patter, creating fast, intricate rhythms that he seemed utterly unaware of. He, Kurt Dussander, had sometimes talked to himself. But now--
"You are under stress again," he said aloud. He was aware that he had spoken in German this time. He hadn't spoken German in many years, but the language now seemed warm and comfortable. It lulled him, eased him. It was sweet and dark.
"Yes. You are under stress. Because of the boy. But be honest with yourself. It is too early in the morning to tell lies. You have not entirely regretted talking. At first you were terrified that the boy could not or would not keep his secret. He would have to tell a friend, who would tell another friend, and that friend would tell two. But if he has kept it this long, he will keep it longer. If I am taken away, he loses his . . . his talking book. Is that what I am to him? I think so."
He fell silent, but his thoughts went on. He had been lonely--no one would ever know just how lonely. There had been times when he thought almost seriously of suicide. He made a bad hermit. The voices he heard came from the radio. The only people who visited were on the other side of a dirty glass square. He was an old man, and although he was afraid of death, he was more afraid of being an old man who is alone.
His bladder sometimes tricked him. He would be halfway to the bathroom when a dark stain spread on his pants. In wet weather his joints would first throb and then begin to cry out, and there had been days when he had chewed an entire tin of Arthritis Pain Formula between sunrise and sunset . . . and still the aspirin only subdued the aches. Even such acts as taking a book from the shelf or switching the TV channel became an essay in pain. His eyes were bad; sometimes he knocked things over, barked his shins, bumped his head. He lived in fear of breaking a bone and not being able to get to the telephone, and he lived in fear of getting there and having some doctor uncover his real past as he became suspicious of Mr. Denker's nonexistent medical history.
The boy had alleviated some of those things. When the boy was here, he could call back the old days. His memory of those days was perversely clear; he spilled out a seemingly endless catalogue of names and events, even the weather of such and such a day. He remembered Private Henreid, who manned a machine-gun in the northeast tower and the wen Private Henreid had had between his eyes. Some of the men called him Three-Eyes, or Old Cyclops. He remembered Kessel, who had a picture of his girlfriend naked, lying on a sofa with her hands behind her head. Kessel charged the men to look at it. He remembered the names of the doctors and their experiments--thresholds of pain, the brainwaves of dying men and women, physiological retardation, effects of different sorts of radiation, dozens more. Hundreds more.
He supposed he talked to the boy as all old men talk, but he guessed he was luckier than most old men, who had impatience, disinterest, or outright rudeness for an audience. His audience was endlessly fascinated.
Were a few bad dreams too high a price to pay?
He crushed out his cigarette, lay looking at the ceiling for a moment, and then swung his feet out onto the floor. He and the boy were loathsome, he supposed, feeding off each other ... eating each other. If his own belly was sometimes sour with the dark but rich food they partook of in his afternoon kitchen, what was the boy's like? Did he sleep well? Perhaps not. Lately Dussander thought the boy looked rather pale, and thinner than when he had first come into Dussander's life.
He walked across the bedroom and opened the closet door. He brushed hangers to the right, reached into the shadows, and brought out the sham uniform. It hung from his hand like a vulture-skin. He touched it with his other hand. Touched it ... and then stroked it.
After a very long time he took it down and put it on, dressing slowly, not looking into the mirror until the uniform was completely buttoned and belted (and the sham fly zipped).
He looked at himself in the mirror, then, and nodded.
He went back to bed, lay down, and smoked another cigarette. When it was finished, he felt sleepy again. He turned off the bedlamp, not believing it, that it could be this easy. But he was asleep, five minutes later, and this time his sleep was dreamless.
8
February, 1975.
After dinner, Dick Bowden produced a cognac that Dussander privately thought dreadful. But of course he smiled broadly and complimented it extravagantly. Bowden's wife served the boy a chocolate malted. The boy had been unusually quiet all through the meal. Uneasy? Yes. For some reason the boy seemed very uneasy.
Dussander had charmed Dick and Monica Bowden from the moment he and the boy had arrived. The boy had told his parents that Mr. Denker's vision was much worse than it actually was (which made poor old Mr. Denker in need of a Seeing Eye Dog, Dussander thought dryly), because that explained all the reading the boy had supposedly been doing. Dussander had been very careful about that, and he thought there had been no slips.
He was dressed in his best suit, and although the evening was damp, his arthritis had been remarkably mellow--nothing but an occasional twinge. For some absurd reason the boy had wanted him to leave his umbrella home, but Dussander had insisted. All in all, he had had a pleasant and rather exciting evening. Dreadful cognac or no, he had not been out to dinner in nine years.
During the meal he had discussed the Essen Motor Works, the rebuilding of postwar Germany--Bowden had asked several intelligent questions about tha
t, and had seemed impressed by Dussander's answers--and German writers. Monica Bowden had asked him how he had happened to come to America so late in life and Dussander, adopting the proper expression of myopic sorrow, had explained about the death of his fictitious wife. Monica Bowden was meltingly sympathetic.
And now, over the absurd cognac, Dick Bowden said: "If this is too personal, Mr. Denker, please don't answer . . . but I couldn't help wondering what you did in the war."
The boy stiffened ever so slightly.
Dussander smiled and felt for his cigarettes. He could see them perfectly well, but it was important to make not the tiniest slip. Monica put them in his hand.
"Thank you, dear lady. The meal was superb. You are a fine cook. My own wife never did better."
Monica thanked him and looked flustered. Todd gave her an irritated look.
"Not personal at all," Dussander said, lighting his cigarette and turning to Bowden. "I was in the reserves from 1943 on, as were all able-bodied men too old to be in the active services. By then the handwriting was on the wall for the Third Reich, and for the madmen who created it. One madman in particular, of course."
He blew out his match and looked solemn.
"There was great relief when the tide turned against Hitler. Great relief. Of course," and here he looked at Bowden disarmingly, as man to man, "one was careful not to express such a sentiment. Not aloud."
"I suppose not," Dick Bowden said respectfully.
"No," Dussander said gravely. "Not aloud. I remember one evening when four or five of us, all friends, stopped at a local Ratskeller after work for a drink--by then there was not always Schnaps. or even beer, but it so happened that night there were both. We had all known each other for upwards of twenty years. One of our number, Hans Hassler, mentioned in passing that perhaps the Fuehrer had been ill-advised to open a second front against the Russians. I said, 'Hans, God in Heaven, watch what you say!' Poor Hans went pale and changed the subject entirely. Yet three days later he was gone. I never saw him again, nor, as far as I know, did anyone else who was sitting at our table that night."
"How awful!" Monica said breathlessly. "More cognac, Mr. Denker?"
"No thank you." He smiled at her. "My wife had a saying from her mother: 'One must never overdo the sublime.' "
Todd's small, troubled frown deepened slightly.
"Do you think he was sent to one of the camps?" Dick asked. "Your friend Hessler?"
"Hassler, Dussander corrected gently. He grew grave. "Many were. The camps . . . they will be the shame of the German people for a thousand years to come. They are Hitler's real legacy."
"Oh, I think that's too harsh," Bowden said, lighting his pipe and puffing out a choking cloud of Cherry Blend. "According to what I've read, the majority of the German people had no idea of what was going on. The locals around Auschwitz thought it was a sausage plant."
"Ugh, how terrible," Monica said, and pulled a grimacing that's-enough-of-that expression at her husband. Then she turned to Dussander and smiled. "I just love the smell of a pipe, Mr. Denker, don't you?"
"Indeed I do, madam," Dussander said. He had just gotten an almost insurmountable urge to sneeze under control.
Bowden suddenly reached across the table and clapped his son on the shoulder. Todd jumped. "You're awfully quiet tonight, son. Feeling all right?"
Todd offered a peculiar smile that seemed divided between his father and Dussander. "I feel okay. I've heard most of these stories before, remember."
"Todd!" Monica said. "That's hardly--"
"The boy is only being honest," Dussander said. "A privilege of boys which men often have to give up. Yes, Mr. Bowden?"
Dick laughed and nodded.
"Perhaps I could get Todd to walk back to mine house with me now," Dussander said. "I'm sure he has his studies."
"Todd is a very apt pupil," Monica said, but she spoke almost automatically, looking at Todd in a puzzled sort of way. "All A's and B's, usually. He got a C this last quarter, but he's promised to bring his French up to snuff on his March report. Right, Todd-baby?"
Todd offered the peculiar smile again and nodded.
"No need for you to walk," Dick said. "I'll be glad to run you back to your place."
"I walk for the air and the exercise," Dussander said. "Really, I must insist ... unless Todd prefers not to."
"Oh, no, I'd like a walk," Todd said, and his mother and father beamed at him.
They were almost to Dussander's corner when Dussander broke the silence. It was drizzling, and he hoisted his umbrella over both of them. And yet still his arthritis lay quiet, dozing. It was amazing.
"You are like my arthritis," he said.
Todd's head came up. "Huh?"
"Neither of you have had much to say tonight. What's got your tongue, boy? Cat or cormorant?"
"Nothing," Todd muttered. They turned down Dussander's street.
"Perhaps I could guess," Dussander said, not without a touch of malice. "When you came to get me, you were afraid I might make a slip ... 'let the cat out of the bag,' you say here. Yet you were determined to go through with the dinner because you had run out of excuses to put your parents off. Now you are disconcerted that all went well. Is that not the truth?"
"Who cares?" Todd said, and shrugged sullenly.
"Why shouldn't it go well?" Dussander demanded. "I was dissembling before you were born. You keep a secret well enough, I give you that. I give it to you most graciously. But did you see me tonight? I charmed them. Charmed them!"
Todd suddenly burst out: "You didn't have to do that!" Dussander came to a complete stop, staring at Todd.
"Not do it? Not? I thought that was what you wanted, boy! Certainly they will offer no objections if you continue to come over and 'read' to me."
"You're sure taking a lot for granted!" Todd said hotly. "Maybe I've got all I want from you. Do you think there's anybody forcing me to come over to your scuzzy house and watch you slop up booze like those old wino pusbags that hang around the old trainyards? Is that what you think?" His voice had risen and taken on a thin, wavering, hysterical note. "Because there's nobody forcing me. If I want to come, I'll come, and if I don't, I won't "
"Lower your voice. People will hear."
"Who cares?" Todd said, but he began to walk again. This time he deliberately walked outside the umbrella's span.
"No, nobody forces you to come," Dussander said. And then he took a calculated shot in the dark: "In fact, you are welcome to stay away. Believe me, boy, I have no scruples about drinking alone. None at all."
Todd looked at him scornfully. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Dussander only smiled noncommittally.
"Well, don't count on it." They had reached the concrete walk leading up to Dussander's stoop. Dussander fumbled in his pocket for his latchkey. The arthritis flared a dim red in the joints of his fingers and then subsided, waiting. Now Dussander thought he understood what it was waiting for: for him to be alone again. Then it could come out.
"I'll tell you something," Todd said. He sounded oddly breathless. "If they knew what you were, if I ever told them, they'd spit on you and then kick you out on your skinny old ass."
Dussander looked at Todd closely in the drizzling dark. The boy's face was turned defiantly up to his, but the skin was pallid, the sockets under the eyes dark and slightly hollowed--the skin-tones of someone who has brooded long while others are asleep.
"I am sure they would have nothing but revulsion for me," Dussander said, although he privately thought that the elder Bowden might stay his revulsion long enough to ask many of the questions his son had asked already. "Nothing but revulsion. But what would they feel for you, boy, when I told them you had known about me for eight months . . . and said nothing?"
Todd stared at him wordlessly in the dark.
"Come and see me if you please," Dussander said indifferently, "and stay home if you don't. Goodnight, boy."
He went up the walk to his front door, leaving
Todd standing in the drizzle and looking after him with his mouth slightly ajar.
The next morning at breakfast, Monica said: "Your dad liked Mr. Denker a lot, Todd. He said he reminded him of your grandfather."
Todd muttered something unintelligible around his toast. Monica looked at her son and wondered if he had been sleeping well. He looked pale. And his grades had taken that inexplicable dip. Todd never got C's.
"You feeling okay these days, Todd?"
He looked at her blankly for a moment, and then that radiant smile spread over his face, charming her ... comforting her. There was a dab of strawberry preserves on his chin.
"Sure," he said. "Four-oh."
"Todd-baby," she said.
"Monica-baby," he responded, and they both started to laugh.
9
March, 1975.
"Kitty-kitty," Dussander said. "Heeere, kitty-kitty. Puss-puss? Puss-puss?"
He was sitting on his back stoop, a pink plastic bowl by his right foot. The bowl was full of milk. It was one-thirty in the afternoon; the day was hazy and hot. Brush-fires far to the west tinged the air with an autumnal smell that jagged oddly against the calendar. If the boy was coming, he would be here in another hour. But the boy didn't always come now. Instead of seven days a week he came sometimes only four times, or five. An intuition had grown in him, little by little, and his intuition told him that the boy was having troubles of his own.
"Kitty-kitty," Dussander coaxed. The stray cat was at the far end of the yard, sitting in the ragged verge of weeds by Dussander's fence. It was a tom, and every bit as ragged as the weeds it sat in. Every time he spoke, the cat's ears cocked forward. Its eyes never left the pink bowl filled with milk.
Perhaps, Dussander thought, the boy was having troubles with his studies. Or bad dreams. Or both.