11
For Todd, that Friday in the middle of the month was the longest of his life. He sat in class after class, hearing nothing, waiting only for the last five minutes, when the instructor a would take out his or her small pile of Flunk Cards and distribute them. Each time an instructor approached Todd’s desk with that pile of cards, he grew cold. Each time he or she passed him without stopping, he felt waves of dizziness and a semi-hysteria.
Algebra was the worst. Storrman approached… hesitated… and just as Todd became convinced he was going to pass on, he laid a Flunk Card face-down on Todd’s desk. Todd looked at it coldly, with no feelings at all. Now that it had happened, he was only cold. Well, that’s it, he thought. Point, game, set, and match. Unless Dussander can think of something else. And I have my doubts.
Without much interest, he turned the Flunk Card over to see by how much he had missed his C. It must have been dose, but trust old Stony Storrman not to give anyone a He saw that the grade-spaces were utterly blank — the letter-grade space and the numerical-grade space. Written in the COMMENTS section was this message: I’m sure glad I don’t have to give you one of these for real! Chas. Storrman.
The dizziness came again, more savagely this time, roaring through his head, making it feel like a balloon filled with helium. He gripped the sides of his desk as hard as he could, holding one thought with total obsessive tightness: You will not faint, not faint, not faint. Little by little the waves of dizziness passed, and then he had to control an urge to run up the aisle after Storrman, turn him around, and poke his eyes out with the freshly sharpened pencil he held in his hand. And through it all his face remained carefully blank. The only sign that anything at all was going inside was a mild tic in one eyelid.
School let out for the week fifteen minutes later. Todd walked slowly around the building to the bike-racks, his head down, his hands shoved into his pockets, his books tucked into the crook of his right arm, oblivious of the running, shouting students. He tossed the books into his bike-basket, unlocked the Schwinn, and pedalled away. Towards Dussander’s house.
Today, he thought Today is your day, old man.
‘And so,’ Dussander said, pouring bourbon -into his cup as Todd entered the kitchen, ‘the accused returns from the dock. How said they, prisoner?’ He was wearing his bathrobe and a pair of hairy wool socks that climbed halfway up his shins. Socks like that, Todd thought, would be easy to slip in. He glanced at the bottle of Ancient Age Dussander was currently working. It was down to the last three fingers.
‘No Ds, no Fs, no Flunk Cards,’ Todd said. I’ll still have to change some of my grades in June, but maybe just the averages. I’ll be getting all As and Bs this quarter if I keep up my work.’
‘Oh, you’ll keep it up, all right,’ Dussander said. ‘We will see to it.’ He drank and then tipped more bourbon into his cup. This calls for a celebration.’ His speech was slightly blurred — hardly enough to be noticeable, but Todd knew the old fuck was as drunk as he ever got. Yes, today. It would have to be today.
But he was cool.
‘Celebrate pigshit,’ he told Dussander.
‘I’m afraid the delivery boy hasn’t arrived with the beluga and the truffles yet,’ Dussander said, ignoring him. ‘Help is so unreliable these days. What about a few Ritz crackers and some Velveeta while we wait?’
‘Okay,’ Todd said. ‘What the hell.’
Dussander stood up (one knee banged the table, making him wince) and crossed to the refrigerator. He got out the cheese, took a knife from the drawer and a plate from the cupboard, and a box of Ritz crackers from the breadbox.
‘All carefully injected with prussic acid,’ he told Todd as he set the cheese and crackers down on the table. He grinned, and Todd saw that he had left out his false teeth again today. Nevertheless, Todd smiled back.
‘So quiet today!’ Dussander exclaimed. ‘I would have expected you to turn handsprings all the way up the hall.’ He emptied the last of the bourbon into his cup, sipped, smacked his lips.
‘I guess I’m still numb,’ Todd said. He bit into a cracker. He had stopped refusing Dussander’s food a long time ago. Dussander thought there was a letter with one of Todd’s friends — there was not, of course; he had friends, but none he trusted that much. He supposed Dussander had guessed that long ago, but he knew Dussander didn’t quite dare put his guess to such an extreme test as murder.
‘What shall we talk about today?’ Dussander enquired, tossing off the last shot. ‘I give you the day off from studying, how’s that? Uh? Uh?’ When he drank, his accent became thicker. It was an accent Todd had come to hate. Now he felt okay about the accent; he felt okay about everything. He felt very cool all over. He looked at his hands, the hands which would give the push, and they looked just as they always did. They were not trembling; they were cool.
‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Anything you want.’
‘Shall I tell you about the special soap we made? Our experiments with enforced homosexuality? Or perhaps 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.’