‘Mmmmm,’ Dussander said.
‘My mom thinks the same way.’
‘Mmmmm.’ Dussander looked dazed, not quite sure where he was.
‘Anyhow,’ Todd said, ‘the library stuff was real good.
They must have had a hundred books with stuff in them about the Nazi concentration camps, just here in the Santa Donate library. A lot of people must like to read about that stuff. There weren’t as many pictures as in Foxy’s dad’s magazines, but the other stuff was real gooshy. Chairs with spikes sticking up through the seats. Pulling out gold teeth with pliers. Poison gas that came out of the showers.’ Todd shook his head. ‘You guys just went overboard, you know that? You really did.’
‘Gooshy,’ Dussander said heavily.
‘I really did do a research paper, and you know what I got on it? An A Plus. Of course I had to be careful. You have to write that stuff in a certain way. You got to be careful.’
‘Do you?’ Dussander asked. He took another cigarette with a hand that trembled.
‘Oh yeah. All those library books, they read a certain way. Like the guys who wrote them got puking sick over what they were writing about’ Todd was frowning, wrestling with the thought, trying to bring it out The fact that tone, as that word is applied to writing, wasn’t yet in his vocabulary, made it more difficult ‘They all write like they lost a lot of sleep over it How we’ve got to be careful so nothing like that ever happens again. I made my paper like that, and I guess the teacher gave me an A just ‘cause I read the source material without losing my lunch.’ Once more, Todd smiled winningly.
Dussander dragged heavily on his unfiltered Kool. The tip trembled slightly. As he feathered smoke out of his nostrils, he coughed an old man’s dank, hollow cough. ‘I can hardly believe this conversation is taking place,’ he said. He leaned forward and peered closely at Todd. ‘Boy, do you know the word “existentialism”?’
Todd ignored the question. ‘Did you ever meet Use Koch?’
‘Use Koch?’ Almost inaudibly, Dussander said: ‘Yes. I met her.’
‘Was she beautiful?’ Todd asked eagerly. ‘I mean…’ His hands described an hourglass in the air.
‘Surely you have seen her photograph?’ Dussander asked. ‘An aficionado such as yourself?’
‘What’s an af… aff…’
‘An aficionado,’ Dussander said, ‘is one who grooves. One who… gets off on something.’
‘Yeah? Cool.’ Todd’s grin, puzzled and weak for a moment, shone out triumphantly again. ‘Sure, I’ve seen her picture. But you know how they are in those books.’ He spoke as if Dussander had them all. ‘Black and white, fuzzy… just snapshots. None of those guys knew they were taking pictures for, you know, history. Was she really stacked?’
‘She was fat and dumpy and she had bad skin,’ Dussander said shortly. He crushed his cigarette out half-smoked in a Table Talk pie dish filled with dead butts.
‘Oh. Golly.’ Todd’s face fell.
‘Just luck,’ Dussander mused, looking at Todd. ‘You saw my picture in a war-adventures magazine and happened to ride next to me on the bus. Tcha!’ He brought a fist down on the arm of his easy chair, but without much force.
‘No sir, Mr Dussander. There was more to it than that. A lot’ Todd added earnestly, leaning forward.
‘Oh? Really?’ The bushy eyebrows rose, signalling polite disbelief.
‘Sure. I mean, the pictures of you in my scrapbook were all thirty years old, at least. I mean, it is 1974.’
‘You keep a… a scrapbook?’
‘Oh, yes, sir! It’s a good one. Hundreds of pictures. Ill show it to you sometime. You’ll go ape.’
Dussander’s face pulled into a revolted grimace, but he said nothing.
The first couple of times I saw you, I wasn’t sure at all. And then you got on the bus one day when it was raining, and you had this shiny black slicker on—’
‘That,’ Dussander breathed.
‘Sure. There was a picture of you in a coat like that in one of the magazines out in Foxy’s garage. Also, a photo of you in your SS greatcoat in one of the library books. And when I saw you that day, I just said to myself, “It’s for sure. That’s Kurt Dussander.” So I started to shadow you—’