Different Seasons(71)
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 stubby 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 on 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.”