Apt Pupil

4

Dussander had lost weight. They sat in the kitchen, the shopworn copy of Tom Jones between them on the oilcloth-covered table (Todd, who tried never to miss a trick, had purchased the Cliffs Notes on the book with part of his allowance and had carefully read the entire summary against the possibility that his mother or father might ask him questions about the plot). Todd was eating a Ring-Ding he had bought at the market. He had bought one for Dussander. but Dussander hadn’t touched it He only looked at it morosely from time to time as he drank his bourbon. Todd hated to see anything as tasty as Ring-Dings go to waste. If he didn’t eat it pretty quick, Todd was going to ask him if he could have it ‘So how did the stuff get to Patin?’ he asked Dussander.

‘In railroad cars,’ Dussander said. ‘In railroad cars labelled MEDICAL SUPPLIES. It came in long crates that looked like coffins. Fitting, I suppose. The inmates off-loaded the crates and stacked them in the infirmary. Later, our own men stacked them in the storage sheds. They did it at night. The storage sheds were behind the showers.’

‘Was it always Zyklon-B?’

‘No, from time to time we would be sent something else. Experimental gases. The High Command was always interested in improving efficiency. Once they sent us a gas code-named PEGASUS. A nerve-gas. Thank God they never sent it again. It -’ Dussander saw Todd lean forward, saw those eyes sharpen, and he suddenly stopped and gestured casually with his gas-station-premium glass. ‘It didn’t work very well,’ he said. ‘It was… quite boring.’

But Todd was not fooled, not in the least. ‘What did it do?’

‘It killed them — what do you think it did, made them walk on water? It killed them, that’s all.’

Tell me.’

‘No,’ Dussander said, now unable to hide the horror he felt. He hadn’t thought of PEGASUS in… how long? Ten years? Twenty? ‘I won’t tell you! I refuse!’

Tell me,’ Todd repeated, licking chocolate icing from his fingers. Tell me or you know what’

Yes, Dussander thought I know what. Indeed I do, you putrid little monster.

‘It made them dance,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Dance?’

‘Like the Zyklon-B, it came in through the shower-heads. And they… they began to vomit, and to… to defecate helplessly.’

‘Wow,’ Todd said. ‘Shit themselves, huh?’ He pointed at the Ring-Ding on Dussander’s plate. He had finished his own. ‘You going to eat that?’

Dussander didn’t reply. His eyes were hazed with memory. His face was far away and cold, like the dark side of a planet which does not rotate. Inside his mind he felt the queerest combination of revulsion and — could it be? — nostalgia!

‘They began to twitch all over and to make high, strange sounds in their throats. My men… they called PEGASUS the Yodeling Gas. At last they all collapsed and just lay there on the floor in their own filth, they lay there, yes, they lay there on the concrete, screaming and yodeling, with bloody noses. But I lied, boy. The gas didn’t kill them, either because it wasn’t strong enough or because we couldn’t bring ourselves to wait long enough. I suppose it was that. Men and women like that could not have lived long. Finally I sent in five men with rifles to end their agonies. It would have looked bad on my record if it had shown up, I’ve no doubt of that -it would have looked like a waste of cartridges at a time when the Fuehrer had declared every cartridge a national resource. But those five men I trusted. There were times, boy, when I thought I would never forget the sound they made. The yodeling sound. The laughing.’

‘Yeah, I bet,’ Todd said. He finished Dussander’s Ring-Ding in two bites. Waste not, want not, Todd’s mother said on the rare occasions when Todd complained about left-overs. ‘That was a good story, Mr Dussander. You always tell them good. Once I get you going.’

Todd smiled at him. And incredibly — certainly not because he wanted to — Dussander found himself smiling back.