Todd lifted his milk to his lips and then hesitated. His smile shone out again… an admiring smile. He extended the gas-station premium glass to Dussander.
’ You have some of it,’ he said slyly.
Dussander stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, and then rolled his bloodshot eyes. ‘Gruss Gott!’ He took the glass, swallowed twice, and handed it back. ‘No gasping for breath. No clawing at the throat. No smell of bitter almonds. It is milk, boy. Milk. From the Dairylea Farms. On the carton is a picture of a smiling cow.’
Todd watched him warily for a moment, then took a small sip. Yes, it tasted like milk, sure did, but somehow he didn’t feel very thirsty anymore. He put the glass down. Dussander shrugged, raised his own glass — it contained a large knock of whiskey — and took a swallow. He smacked his lips over it.
‘Schnapps?’ Todd asked.
‘Bourbon. Ancient Age. Very nice. And cheap.’
Todd fiddled his fingers along the seams of his jeans.
‘So,’ Dussander said, ‘if you have decided to have a "flier" of your own, you should be aware that you have picked a worthless stock.’
‘Huh?’
‘Blackmail,’ Dussander said. ‘Isn’t that what they call it on Mannix and Hawaii Five-O and Barnaby Jones? Extortion. If that was what—’
But Todd was laughing — hearty, boyish laughter. He shook his head, tried to speak, could not, and went on laughing.
‘No,’ Dussander said, and suddenly he looked grey and more frightened than he had since he and Todd had begun to speak. He took another large swallow of his drink, grimaced, and shuddered ‘I see that is not it… at least, not the extortion of money. But, though you laugh, I smell extortion in it somewhere. What is it? Why do you come here and disturb an old man! Perhaps, as you say, I was once a Nazi. Gestapo, even. Now I am only old, and to have a bowel movement I have to use a suppository. So what do you want?’
Todd had sobered again. He stared at Dussander with an open and appealing frankness. ‘Why… I want to hear about it. That’s all. That’s all I want. Really.’
‘Hear about it?’ Dussander echoed. He looked utterly perplexed.
Todd leaned forward, tanned elbows on bluejeaned knees. ‘Sure. The firing squads. The gas chambers. The ovens. The guys who had to dig their own graves and then stand on the ends so they’d fall into them. The…’ His tongue came out and wetted his lips. ‘The examinations. The experiments. Everything. All the gooshy stuff.’
Dussander stared at him with a certain amazed detachment, the way a veterinarian might stare at a cat who was giving birth to a succession of two-headed kittens. ‘You are a monster,’ he said softly.
Todd sniffed. ‘According to the books I read for my report, you’re the monster, Mr Dussander. Not me. You sent them to the ovens, not me. Two thousand a day at Patin before you came, three thousand after, thirty-five-hundred before the Russians came and made you stop. Himmler called you an efficiency expert and gave you a medal. So you call me a monster. Oh boy.’
‘All of that is a filthy American lie,’ Dussander said, stung. He set his glass down with a bang, slopping bourbon onto his hands and the table. The problem was not of my making, nor was the solution. I was given orders and directives, which I followed.’
Todd’s smile widened; it was now almost a smirk.
‘Oh, I know how the Americans have distorted that,’ Dussander muttered. ‘But your own politicians make our Dr Goebbels look like a child playing with picture books in a kindergarten. They speak of morality while they douse screaming children and old women in burning napalm. Your draft-resisters are called cowards and "peaceniks". For refusing to follow orders they are either put in jails or scourged from the country. Those who demonstrate against this country’s unfortunate Asian adventure are clubbed down in the streets. The GI soldiers who kill the innocent are decorated by Presidents, welcomed home from the bayoneting of children and the burning of hospitals with parades and bunting. They are given dinners, Keys to the City, free tickets to pro football games.’ He toasted his glass in Todd’s direction. ‘Only those who lose are tried as war criminals for following orders and directives.’ He drank and then had a coughing fit that brought thin colour to his cheeks.
Through most of this Todd fidgeted the way he did when his parents discussed whatever had been on the news that night — good old Walter Klondike, his dad called him. He didn’t care about Dussander’s politics any more than he cared about Dussander’s stocks. His idea was that people made up politics so they could do things. Like when he wanted to feel around under Sharon Ackerman’s dress last year. Sharon said it was bad for him to want to do that, even though he could tell from her tone of voice that the idea sort of excited her. So he told her he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up and then she let him. That was politics. He wanted to hear about German doctors trying to mate women with dogs, putting identical twins into refrigerators to see whether they would die at the same time or if one of them would last longer, and electroshock therapy, and operations without anaesthetic, and German soldiers raping all the women they wanted. The rest was just so much tired bullshit to cover up the gooshy stuff after someone came along and put a stop to it ‘If I hadn’t followed orders, I would have been dead.’ Dussander was breathing hard, his upper body rocking back and forth in the chair, making the springs squeak. A little cloud of liquor-smell hung around him. "There was always the Russian front, nicht wahr! Our leaders were madmen, granted, but does one argue with madmen… especially when the maddest of them all has the luck of Satan? He escaped a brilliant assassination attempt by inches. Those who conspired were strangled with piano-wire, strangled slowly. Their death-agonies were filmed for the edification of the elite—’
‘Yeah! Neat!’ Todd cried impulsively. ‘Did you see that movie?’
‘Yes. I saw. We all saw what happened to those unwilling or unable to run before the wind and wait for the storm to end. What we did then was the right thing. For that time and that place, it was the right thing. I would do it again. But…’
His eyes dropped to his glass. It was empty.
‘… but I don’t wish to speak of it, or even think of it. What we did was motivated only by survival, and nothing about survival is pretty. I had dreams…’He slowly took a cigarette from the box on the TV. ‘Yes. For years I had them. Blackness, and sounds in the blackness. Tractor engines. Bulldozer engines. Gunbutts thudding against what might have been frozen earth, or human skulls. Whistles, sirens, pistol-shots, screams. The doors of cattle-cars rumbling open on cold winter afternoons.
Then, in my dreams, all sounds would stop — and eyes would open in the dark, gleaming like the eyes of animals in a rainforest For many years I lived on the edge of the jungle, and I suppose that is why it is always the jungle I smelled and felt in those dreams. When I woke from them I would be drenched with sweat, my heart thundering in my chest, my hand stuffed into my mouth to stifle the screams. And I would think: the dream is the truth. Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba… those places are the dream. In the reality I am still at Patin. The Russians are closer today than yesterday. Some of them are remembering that in 1943 they had to eat frozen German corpses to stay alive. Now they long to drink hot German blood. There were rumours, boy, that some of them did just that when they crossed into Germany: cut the throats of some prisoners and drank their blood out of a boot. I would wake up and think: The work must go on, if only so there is no evidence of what we did here, or so little that the world, which doesn’t want to believe it, won’t have to. I would think: The work must go on if we are to survive.’
Unlike what had gone before, Todd listened to this with close attention and great interest This was pretty good, but he was sure there would be better stuff in the days ahead. All Dussander needed was a little prodding. Heck, he was lucky. Lots of men his age were senile.