Apt Pupil

19

Todd graduated salutatorian of his class, just possibly because of his poor grade on the trig final he had been studying for the night Dussander had his heart attack. It dragged his final grade in the course down to 91, one point below A- average.

A week after graduation, the Bowdens went to visit Mr Denker at Santa Donate General. Todd fidgeted through fifteen minutes of banalities and thank-yous and how-do-you-feels and was grateful for the break when the man in the other bed asked him if he could come over for a minute.

‘You’ll pardon me,’ the other man said apologetically. He was in a huge body cast and was for some reason attached to an overhead system of pulleys and wires. ‘My name is Morris Heisel. I broke my back.’

"That’s too bad,’ Todd said gravely.

"That’s too bad, he says! This boy has the gift of understatement!’

Todd started to apologize, but Heisel raised his hand, smiling a little. His face was pale and tired, the face of any old man in the hospital facing a life full of sweeping changes just ahead — and surely few of them for the better. In that way, Todd thought, he and Dussander were alike.

‘No need,’ Morris said. ‘No need to answer a rude comment You are a stranger. Does a stranger need to be inflicted with my problems?’

’ "No man is an island, separate from the main -"’ Todd began, and Morris laughed.

‘Donne, he quotes at me! A smart kid! Your friend there, is he very bad off?’

‘Well, the doctors say he’s doing fine, considering his age. He’s seventy nine.’

‘That old!’ Morris exclaimed. ‘He doesn’t talk to me much, you know. But from what he does say, I’d guess he’s naturalized. Like me. I’m Polish, you know. Originally, I mean. From Raden.’

‘Oh?’ Todd said politely.

‘Yes. You know what they call an orange manhole cover in Radan?’

‘No,’ Todd said, smiling.

‘Howard Johnson’s,’ Morris said, and laughed. Todd laughed, too. Dussander glanced over at them, startled by the sound and frowning a little. Then Monica said something and he looked back at her again.

‘Is your friend naturalized?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Todd said. ‘He’s from Germany. Essen. Do you know that town?’

‘No,’ Morris said, ‘but I was only in Germany once. I wonder if he was in the war.’

‘I really couldn’t say.’ Todd’s eyes had gone distant./

‘No? Well, it doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago, the war. In another two years there will be people in this country constitutionally eligible to become President — President! -who weren’t even born until after the war was over. To them it must seem there is no difference between the Miracle of Dunkirk and Hannibal taking his elephants over the Alps.’

‘Were you in the war?’ Todd asked.

‘I suppose I was, in a manner of speaking. You’re a good boy to visit such an old man… two old men, counting me.’

Todd smiled modestly.

‘I’m tired now,’ Morris said. ‘Perhaps I’ll sleep.’

‘I hope you’ll feel better very soon,’ Todd said.

Morris nodded, smiled, and closed his eyes. Todd went back to Dussander’s bed, where his parents were just getting ready to leave — his dad kept glancing at his watch and exclaiming with bluff heartiness at how late it was getting. But Morris Heisel wasn’t asleep, and he didn’t sleep — not for a long time.

Two days later, Todd came back to the hospital alone. This time, Morris Heisel, immured in his body-cast, was deeply asleep in the other bed.

‘You did well,’ Dussander said quietly. ‘Did you go back to the house later?’

‘Yes. I put the box back and burned the damned letter. I don’t think anyone was too interested in that letter, and I was afraid… I don’t know.’ He shrugged, unable to tell Dussander he’d been almost superstitiously afraid about that letter — afraid that maybe someone would wander into the house who could read German, someone who would notice references in the letter that were ten, perhaps twenty years out of date.

‘Next time you come, smuggle me in something to drink,’ Dussander said. ‘I find I don’t miss the cigarettes, but—’

‘I won’t be back again,’ Todd said flatly. ‘Not ever. It’s the end. We’re quits.’

‘Quits.’ Dussander folded his hands on his chest and smiled. It was not a gentle smile… but it was perhaps as close as Dussander could come to such a thing. ‘I thought that was on the cards. They are going to let me out of this graveyard next week… or so they promise. The doctor says I may have a few years left in my skin yet. I ask him how many, and he just laughs. I suspect that means no more than three, and probably no more than two. Still, I may give him a surprise and see in Orwell’s year.’

Todd, who would have frowned suspiciously over such a reference two years ago, now only nodded.

‘But between you and me, boy, I have almost given up my hopes of seeing the century turn.’

‘I want to ask you about something,’ Todd said, looking at Dussander steadily. ‘That’s why I came in today. I want to ask you about something you said once.’

Todd glanced over his shoulder at the man in the other bed and then drew his chair closer to Dussander’s bed. He could smell Dussander’s smell, as dry as the Egyptian room in the museum.

‘So ask.’

‘That wino. You said something about me having experience. First-hand experience. What was that supposed to mean?’

Dussander’s smile widened a bit. ‘I read the newspapers, boy. Old men always read the newspapers, but not in the same way younger people do. Buzzards are known to gather at the ends of certain airport runways in South America when the crosswinds are treacherous, did you know that? That is how an old man reads the newspaper. A month ago there was a story in the Sunday paper. Not a front page story, no one cares enough about bums and alcoholics to put them on the front page, but it was the lead story in the feature section, IS SOMEONE STALKING SANTA DONATO’S DOWN-AND-OUTS? — that’s what it was called. Crude. Yellow journalism. You Americans are famous for it’

Todd’s hands were clenched into fists, hiding the butchered nails. He never read the Sunday papers, he had better things to do with his time. He had of course checked the papers every day for at least a week following each of his little adventures, and none of his stewbums had ever gotten beyond page three. The idea that someone had been making connections behind his back infuriated him.

‘The story mentioned several murders, extremely brutal murders. Stabbings, bludgeonings. "Subhuman brutality" was how the writer put it, but you know reporters. The writer of this lamentable piece admitted that there is a high death-rate among these unfortunates, and that Santa Donato has had more than its share of the indigent over the years. In any given year, not all of these men die naturally, or of their own bad habits. There are frequent murders. But in most cases the murderer is usually one of the deceased degenerate’s compatriots, the motive no more than an argument over a penny-ante card-game or a bottle of muscatel. The killer is usually happy to confess. He is filled with remorse.

‘But these recent killings have not been solved. Even more ominous, to this yellow journalist’s mind — or whatever passes for his mind — is the high disappearance rate over the last few years. Of course, he admits again, these men are not much more than modern-day hobos. They come and go. But some of these left without picking up welfare cheques or day-labour cheques from Spell O’ Work, which only pays on Fridays. Could some of these have been victims of this yellow journalist’s Wino Killer, he asks? Victims who haven’t been found? Pah!’

Dussander waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss such arrant irresponsibility.

‘Only titillation, of course. Give people a comfortable little scare on Sunday morning. He calls up old bogies, threadbare but still useful — the Cleveland Torso Murderer, Zodiac, the mysterious Mr X who killed the Black Dahlia, Springheel Jack. Such drivel. But it makes me think. What does an old man have to do but think when old friends don’t come to visit anymore?’

Todd shrugged.

‘I thought: "If I wished to help this odious yellow-dog journalist, which I certainly do not, I could explain some of the disappearances. Not the corpses found stabbed or bludgeoned, not them, God rest their besotted souls, but some of the disappearances. Because at least some of the bums who disappeared are in my cellar."’

‘How many down there?’ Todd asked in a low voice.

‘Five,’ Dussander said calmly. ‘Counting the one you helped me dispose of, just five.’

‘You’re really nutso,’ Todd said. The skin below his eyes had gone white and shiny. ‘At some point you just blew all your fucking wheels.’

‘"Blew my wheels." What a charming idiom! Perhaps you’re right! But then I said to myself: "This newspaper jackal would love to pin the murders and the disappearances on the same somebody — his hypothetical Wino Killer. But I think maybe that’s not what happened at all."

‘Then I say to myself: "Do I know anybody who might be doing such things? Somebody who has been under as much strain as I have during the last few years? Someone who has also been listening to old ghosts rattle their chains?" And the answer is yes. I know you, boy.’

‘I’ve never killed anyone.’

The image that came was not of the winos; they weren’t people, not really people at all. The image that came was of himself crouched behind the dead tree, peering through the telescopic sight of his .30-.30, the crosshairs fixed on the temple of the man with the scuzzy beard, the man driving the Brat pick-up.

‘Perhaps not,’ Dussander agreed, amicably enough. ‘Yet you took hold so well the other night. Your surprise was mostly anger at having been put in such a dangerous position by an old man’s infirmity, I think. Am I wrong?’

‘No, you’re not wrong,’ Todd said. ‘I was pissed off at you, and I still am. I covered it up for you because you’ve got something in a safety deposit box that could destroy my life.’

‘No. I do not’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘It was as much a bluff as your "letter left with a friend". You never wrote such a letter, there never was such a friend, and I have never written a single word about our… association, shall I call it? Now I lay my cards on the table. You saved my life. Never mind that you acted only to protect yourself; that does not change how speedily and efficiently you acted. I cannot hurt you, boy. I tell you that freely. I have looked death in the face and it frightens me, but not as badly as ! thought it would. There is no document. It is as you say: we are quits.’

Todd smiled: a weird upward corkscrewing of the lips. A strange, sardonic light danced and fluttered in his eyes.

‘Herr Dussander,’ he said, ‘if only I could believe that’

In the evening Todd walked down to the slope overlooking the freeway, climbed down to the dead tree, and sat on it. It was just past twilight. The evening was warm. Car headlights cut through the dusk in long yellow daisy chains.

There is no document.

He hadn’t realized how completely irretrievable the entire situation was until the discussion that had followed. Dussander suggested Todd search the house for a safety deposit key, and when he didn’t find one, that would prove there was no safety deposit box and hence no document. But a key could be hidden anywhere — it could be put in. a Crisco can and then buried, it could be put in a Sucrets tin and slid behind a board that had been loosened and then replaced; he might even have ridden the bus to San Diego and put it behind one of the rocks in the decorative stone wall which surrounds the bears’ environmental area. For that matter, Todd went on, Dussander could even have thrown the key away. Why not? He had only needed it once, to put his written document in. If he died, someone else would take it out Dussander nodded reluctantly at this, but after a moment’s thought he made another suggestion. When he got well enough to go home, he would have the boy call every single bank in Santa Donato. He would tell each bank official he was calling for his grandfather. Poor grandfather, he would say, had grown lamentably senile over the last two years, and now he had misplaced the key to his safety deposit box. Even worse, he could no longer remember which bank the box was in. Could they just check their files for an Arthur Denker, no middle initial? And when Todd drew a blank at every bank in townTodd was already shaking his head again. First, a story like that was almost guaranteed to raise suspicions. It was too pat They would probably suspect a con-game and get in touch with the police. Even if every one of them bought the story, it would do no good. If none of the almost nine dozen banks in Santa Donato had a box in the Denker name, it didn’t mean that Dussander hadn’t rented one in San Diego, LA, or any town in between.

At last Dussander gave up.

‘You have all the answers, boy. All, at least, but one. What would I stand to gain by lying to you? I invented this story to protect myself from you — that is a motive. Now I am trying to uninvent it What possible gain do you see in that?’

Dussander got laboriously up on one elbow.

‘For that matter, why would I need a document at all, at this point? I could destroy your life from this hospital bed, if that was what I wanted. I could open my mouth to the first passing doctor, they are all Jews, they would all know who I am, or at least who I was. But why would I do this? You are a fine student You have a fine career ahead of you… unless you get careless with those winos of yours.’

Todd’s face froze. ‘I never told you—’

‘I know. You never heard of them, you never touched so much as a hair on their scaly, tick-ridden heads, all right, good, fine. I say no more about it Only tell me, boy: why should I lie about this? We are quits, you say. But I tell you we can only be quits if we can trust each other.’

Now, sitting behind the dead tree on the slope which ran down to the freeway, looking at all the anonymous headlights disappearing endlessly like slow tracer bullets, he knew well enough what he was afraid of.

Dussander talking about trust That made him afraid.

The idea that Dussander might be tending a small but perfect flame of hatred deep in his heart, that made him afraid, too.

A hatred of Todd Bowden, who was young, clean-featured, unwrinkled; Todd Bowden, who was an apt pupil with a whole bright life stretching ahead of him.

But what he feared most was Dussander’s refusal to use his name.

Todd. What was so hard about that, even for an old Kraut whose teeth were mostly false? Todd. One syllable. Easy to say. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth, drop your teeth a little, replace your tongue, and it was out. Yet Dussander had always called him ‘boy’. Only that. Contemptuous. Anonymous. Yes, that was it, anonymous. As anonymous as a concentration camp serial number.

Perhaps Dussander was telling the truth. No, not just perhaps; probably. But there were those fears… the worst of them being Dussander’s refusal to use his name.

And at the root of it all was his own inability to make a hard and final decision. At the root of it all was a rueful truth: even after four years of visiting Dussander, he still didn’t know what went on in the old man’s head. Perhaps he wasn’t such an apt pupil after all.

Cars and cars and cars. His fingers itched to hold his rifle. How many could he get? Three? Six? An even baker’s dozen? And how many miles to Babylon?

He stirred restlessly, uneasily.

Only Dussander’s death would tell the final truth, he supposed. Sometime during the next five years, maybe even sooner. Three to five… it sounded like a prison sentence. Todd Bowden, this court hereby sentences you to three to five for associating with a known war criminal. Three to five of bad dreams and cold sweats.

Sooner or later Dussander would simply drop dead. Then the waiting would begin. The knot in the stomach every time the phone or the doorbell rang.

He wasn’t sure he could stand that His fingers itched to hold the gun and Todd curled them into fists and drove both fists into his crotch. Sick pain swallowed his belly and he lay for some time afterwards in a writhing ball on the ground, his lips pulled back in a silent shriek. The pain was dreadful, but it blotted out the endless parade of thoughts.

At least for a while.