Ed thanked him, said goodbye, and hung up. He sat on the end of the bed, staring thoughtfully at the telephone. After a while he got up and took a pack of Phillies Cheroots from the sport coat hanging on the back of the desk chair. He ought to go; there was a workshop, and if he wasn’t there, he would be missed. He lit his Cheroot with a Holiday Inn match and dropped the burnt stub into a Holiday Inn ashtray. He went to the Holiday Inn window and looked blankly out into the Holiday Inn courtyard.
It doesn’t matter much now, he had told Bowden, but it mattered to him. He wasn’t used to being sold a bill of goods by one of his kids and this unexpected news upset him. Technically he supposed it could still turn out to be a case of an old man’s senility, but Victor Bowden hadn’t sounded as if he was drooling in his beard yet And, damn it, he didn’t sound the same.
Had Todd Bowden jobbed him He decided it could have been done. Theoretically, at least. Especially by a bright boy like Todd. He could have jobbed everyone, not just Ed French. He could have forged his mother or father’s name to the Flunk Cards he had been issued during his bad patch. Lots of kids discovered a latent forging ability when they got Flunk Cards. He could have used ink eradicator on his second and third quarter reports, changing the grades up for his parents and then back down again so that his home room teacher wouldn’t notice anything weird if he or she glanced at his card. The double application of eradicator would be visible to someone who was really looking, but home room teachers carried an average of sixty students each. They were lucky if they could get the entire roll called before the first bell, let alone spot-checking returned cards for tampering.
As for Todd’s final class standing, it would have dipped perhaps no more than three points overall — two bad marking periods out of a total of twelve. His other grades had been lopsidedly good enough to make up most of the difference. And how many parents drop by the school to look at the student records kept by the California Department of Education? Especially the parents of a bright student like Todd Bowden?
Frown lines appeared on Ed French’s normally smooth forehead.
It doesn’t matter much now. That was nothing but the truth. Todd’s high school work had been exemplary; there was no way in the world you could fake a 94 average. The boy was going on to Berkeley, the newspaper article had said, and Ed supposed his folks were damned proud — as they had every right to be. More and more it seemed to Ed that there was a vicious downside to American life, a greased skid of opportunism, cut corners, easy drugs, easy sex, a morality that grew cloudier each year. When your kid got through in standout style, parents had a right to be proud.
It doesn’t matter now… but who was his frigging grandfather?
That kept sticking into him. Who, indeed? Had Todd Bowden gone to the local branch office of the Screen Actors’ Guild and hung a notice on the bulletin board? YOUNG MAN IN GRADES TROUBLE NEEDS OLDER MAN, PREF. 70-80 YRS, TO GIVE BOFFO PERFORMANCE AS GRANDFATHER, WILL PAY UNION SCALE? Uh-uh. No way, Jose. And just what sort of adult would have fallen in with such a crazy conspiracy, and for what reason?
Ed French, aka Pucker, aka Rubber Ed, just didn’t know. And because it didn’t really matter, he stubbed out his Cheroot and went to his workshop. But his attention kept wandering.
The next day he drove over to Ridge Lane and had a long talk with Victor Bowden. They discussed grapes; they discussed the retail grocery business and how the big chain stores were pushing the little guys out; they discussed the hostage situation in Iran (that summer everyone discussed the hostage situation in Iran); they discussed the political climate in southern California. Mr Bowden offered Ed a glass of wine. Ed accepted with pleasure. He felt that he needed a glass of wine, even if it was only 10:40 in the morning. Victor Bowden looked as much like Peter Wimsey as a machine gun looks like a shillelagh. Victor Bowden had no trace of the faint accent Ed remembered, and he was quite fat The man who had purported to be Todd’s grandfather had been whip-thin.
Before leaving, Ed told him: ‘I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention any of this to Mr or Mrs Bowden. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of it… and even if there isn’t, it’s all in the past.’
‘Sometimes,’ Bowden said, holding his glass of wine up to the sun and admiring its rich dark colour, ‘the past don’t rest so easy. Why else do people study history?’
Ed smiled uneasily and said nothing.
‘But don’t you worry. I never meddle in Richard’s affairs. And Todd is a good boy. Salutatorian of his class… he must be a good boy. Am I right?’
‘As rain,’ Ed French said heartily, and then asked for another glass of wine.
23
Dussander’s sleep was uneasy; he lay in a trench of bad dreams.
They were breaking down the fence. Thousands, perhaps millions of them. They ran out of the Jungle and threw themselves against the electrified barbed wire and now it was beginning to lean ominously inward. Some of the strands had given way and now coiled uneasily on the packed earth of the parade ground, squirting blue sparks. And still there was no end to them, no end. The Fuehrer was as mad as Rommel had claimed If he thought now -jf he had ever thought -there could be a final solution to this problem. There were billions of them; they filled the universe; and they were all qfter him.
‘Old man. Wake up, old man. Dussander. Wake up, old man, wake up.’
At first he thought this was the voice of the dream.
Spoken in German; it had to be part of the dream. That was why the voice was so terrifying, of course. If he awoke he would escape it, so he swam upwards…
The man was sitting by his bed on a chair that had been turned around backwards ~ a real man. ‘Wake up, old man,’ this visitor was saying. He was young — no more than thirty. His eyes were dark and studious behind plain steel-framed glasses. His brown hair was longish, collar-length, and for a confused moment Dussander thought it was the boy in a disguise. But this was not the boy, wearing a rather old-fashioned blue suit much too hot for the California climate. There was a small silver pin on one lapel of the suit. Silver, the metal you used to kill vampires and werewolves. It was a Jewish star.
‘Are you speaking to me?’ Dussander asked in German.
‘Who else? Your roommate is gone.’
‘Heisel? Yes. He went home yesterday.’
‘Are you awake now?’
‘Of course. But you’ve apparently mistaken me for someone else. My name is Arthur Denker. Perhaps you have the wrong room.’
‘My name is Weiskopf. And yours is Kurt Dussander.’
Dussander wanted to lick his lips but didn’t Just possibly this was still all part of the dream — a new phase, no more. Bring me a wino and a steak-knife, Mr Jewish Star in the Lapel, and I’ll blow you away like smoke, ‘I know no Dussander,’ he told the young man. ‘I don’t understand you. Shall I ring for the nurse?’
‘You understand,’ Weiskopf said. He shifted position slightly and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. The prosiness of this gesture dispelled Dussander’s last hope.
‘Heisel,’ Weiskopf said, and pointed at the empty bed.
‘Heisel, Dussander, Weiskopf… none of these names mean anything to me.’
‘Heisei fell off a ladder while he was nailing a new gutter onto the side of his house,’ Weiskopf said. ‘He broke his back. He may never walk again. Unfortunate. But that was not the only tragedy of his life. He was an inmate of Patin, where he lost his wife and daughters. Patin, which you commanded.’
‘I think you are insane,’ Dussander said. ‘My name is Arthur Denker. I came to this country when my wife died. Before that I was—’
‘Spare me your tale,’ Weiskopf said, raising a hand. ‘He has not forgotten your face. This face.’
Weiskopf flicked a photograph into Dussander’s face like a magician doing a trick. It was one of the two the boy had shown him years ago. A young Dussander in a jauntily cocked SS cap, swagger stick held firmly under one arm.
Dussander spoke slowly, in English now, enunciating carefully.
‘During the war I was a factory machinist My job was to oversee the manufacture of drive-columns and power-trains for armoured cars and trucks. Later I helped to build Tiger tanks. My reserve unit was called up during the battle of Berlin and I fought honourably, if briefly. After the war I worked in the Essen Motor Works until—’
