you would like to hear how I escaped Berlin after I had been foolish enough to go back. That was a close one, I can tell you.’ He pantomimed shaving one stubbly cheek and. laughed.
‘Anything,’ Todd said. ‘Really.’ He watched Dussander examine the empty bottle and then get up with it in one hand. Dussander took it to the wastebasket and dropped it in.
‘No, none of those, I think,’ Dussander said. ‘You don’t seem to be in the mood.’ He stood reflectively by the wastebasket for a moment and then crossed the kitchen to the cellar door. His wool socks whispered on the hilly linoleum. ‘I think today I will instead tell you the story of an old man who was afraid.’
Dussander opened the cellar door. His back was now to the table. Todd stood up quietly.
‘He was afraid,’ Dussander went on, ‘of a certain young boy who was, in a queer way, his friend. A smart boy. His mother called this boy 'apt pupil', and the old man had already discovered he was an apt pupil… although perhaps not in the way his mother thought’
Dussander fumbled with the old-fashioned electrical switch on the wall, trying to turn it with his bunched and clumsy fingers. Todd walked — almost glided — across the linoleum, not stepping in any of the places where it squeaked or creaked. He knew this kitchen as well as his own, now. Maybe better.
‘At first, the boy was not the old man’s friend,’ Dussander said. He managed to turn the switch at last. He descended the first step with a veteran drunk’s care. ‘At first the old man disliked the boy a great deal. Then he grew to… to enjoy his company, although there was still a strong element of dislike there.’ He was looking at the shelf now but still holding the railing. Todd, cool — no, now he was cold — stepped behind him and calculated the chances of one strong push dislodging Dussander’s hold on the railing. He decided to wait until Dussander leaned forward.
‘Part of the old man’s enjoyment came from a feeling of equality,’ Dussander went on thoughtfully. ‘You see, the boy and the old man had each other in mutual deathgrips. Each knew something the other wanted kept secret. And then… ah, then it became apparent to the old man that things were changing. Yes. He was losing his hold — some of it or all of it, depending on how desperate the boy might be, and how clever. It occurred to this old man on one long and sleepless night that it might be well for him to acquire a new hold on the boy. For his own safety.’
Now Dussander let go of the railing and leaned out over the steep cellar stairs, but Todd remained perfectly still. The bone-deep cold was melting out of him, being replaced by a rosy flush of anger and confusion. As Dussander grasped his fresh bottle, Todd thought viciously that the old man had the stinkiest cellar in town, oil or no oil. It smelled as if something had died down there.
‘So the old man got out of his bed right then. What is sleep to an old man? Very little. And he sat at his small desk, thinking about how cleverly he had enmeshed the boy in the very crimes the boy was holding over his own head. He sat thinking about how hard the boy had worked, how very hard, to bring his school marks back up. And how, when they were back up, he would have no further need for the old man alive. And if the old man were dead, the boy could be free.’
He turned around now, holding the fresh bottle of Ancient Age by the neck.
‘I heard you, you know,’ he said, almost gently. ‘From the moment you pushed your chair back and stood up. You are not as quiet as you imagine, boy. At least not yet.’
Todd said nothing.
‘So!’ Dussander exclaimed, stepping back into the kitchen and closing the cellar door firmly behind him. 'The old man wrote everything down, nicht wahr! From first word to last he wrote it down. When he was finally finished it was almost dawn and his hand was singing from the arthritis — the verdammt arthritis — but he felt good for the first time in weeks. He felt safe, He got back into his bed and slept until mid-afternoon. In fact, if he had slept any longer, he would have missed his favourite — General Hospital.’
He had regained his rocker now. He sat down, produced a worn jackknife with a yellow ivory handle, and began to cut painstakingly around the seal covering the top of the bourbon bottle.
‘On the following day the old man dressed in his best suit and went down to the bank where he kept his little checking and savings accounts. He spoke to one of the bank officers, who was able to answer all the old man’s questions most satisfactorily. He rented a safety deposit box. The bank officer explained to the old man that he would have a key and the bank would have a key. To open the box, both keys would be needed. No one but the old man could use the old man’s key without a signed, notarized letter of permission from the old man himself. With one exception.’
Dussander smiled toothlessly into Todd Bowden’s white, set face.
‘That exception is made in event of the box-holder’s death,’ he said. Still looking at Todd, still smiling, Dussander put his jackknife back into the pocket of his robe, unscrewed the cap of the bourbon bottle, and poured a fresh jolt into his cup. ‘What happens then?’ Todd asked hoarsely. ‘Then the box is opened in the presence of a bank official and a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. The contents of the box are inventoried. In this case they will find only a twelve-page document. Non-taxable… but highly interesting.’
The fingers of Todd’s hands crept towards each other and locked tightly. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said in a stunned and unbelieving voice. It was the voice of a person who observes another person walking on the ceiling. ‘You can’t… can’t do that.’
‘My boy,’ Dussander said kindly, ‘I have.’ ‘But… I… you…’ His voice suddenly rose to an agonized howl. ‘You’re old! Don’t you know that you’re old? You could die! You could die anytime!’
Dussander got up. He went to one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a small glass. This glass had once held jelly. Cartoon characters danced around the rim. Todd recognized them all — Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble, Pebbles and Bam-Bam. He had grown up with them. He watched as Dussander wiped this jelly-glass almost ceremonially with a dishtowel. He watched as Dussander set it in front of him. He watched as Dussander poured a finger of bourbon into it.
‘What’s that for?’ Todd muttered. ‘I don’t drink. Drinking’s for cheap stewbums like you.’
‘Lift your glass, boy. It is a special occasion. Today you drink.’
Todd looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the glass. Dussander clicked his cheap ceramic cup smartly against it.
‘I make a toast, boy — long life! Long life to both of us! Prosit!’ He tossed his bourbon off at a gulp and then began to He rocked back and forth, stockinged feet hitting the and Todd thought he had never looked vulture, a vulture in a bathrobe, a noisome beast of carrion.
‘I hate you,’ he whispered, and then Dussander began to choke on his own laughter. His face turned a dull brick colour; it sounded as if he were coughing, laughing, and strangling, all at the same time. Todd, scared, got up quickly and clapped him on the back until the coughing fit had passed.
‘Danke schon,’ he said. ‘Drink your drink. It will do you good.’
Todd drank it. It tasted like very bad cold-medicine and lit a fire in his gut.
‘I can’t believe you drink this shit all day,’ he said, putting the glass back on the table and shuddering. ‘You ought to quit it. Quit drinking and smoking.’
‘Your concern for my health is touching,’ Dussander said. He produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the same bathrobe pocket into which the jackknife had disappeared. ‘And I am equally solicitous of your own welfare, boy. Almost every day I read in the paper where a cyclist has been killed at a busy intersection. You should give it up. You should walk. Or ride the bus, like me.’
‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself?’ Todd burst out.
‘My boy,' Dussander said, pouring more bourbon and beginning to laugh again, ‘we are fucking each other — didn’t vou know that?’
One day about a week later, Todd was sitting on a disused mail platform down in the old trainyard. He chucked cinders out across the rusty, weed-infested tracks one at a time.
Why shouldn’t I kill him anyway?
Because he was a logical boy, the logical answer came first. No reason at all. Sooner or later Dussander was going to die, and given Dussander’s habits, it would probably be sooner. Whether he killed the old man or whether Dussander died of a heart attack in his bathtub, it was all going to come out. At least he could have the pleasure of wringing the old vulture’s neck.
Sooner or later — that phrase defied logic.
Maybe it’ll be later, Todd thought. Cigarettes or not, booze or not, he’s a tough old bastard. He’s lasted this long, so… so maybe it’ll be later.
