warm and comfortable. It lulled him, eased him. It was sweet and dark.
‘Yes. You are under stress. Because of the boy. But be honest with yourself. It is too
early in the morning to tell lies. You have not entirely regretted talking. At first you were
terrified that the boy could not or would not keep his secret. He would have to tell a
friend, who would tell another friend, and that friend would tell two. But if he has kept it
this long, he will keep it longer. If I am taken away, he loses his … his talking book. Is
that what I am to him? I think so.’
He fell silent, but his thoughts went on. He had been lonely -no one would ever
know just how lonely. There had been times when he thought almost seriously of
suicide. He made a bad hermit. The voices he heard came from the radio. The only
people who visited were on the other side of a dirty glass square. He was an old man,
and although he was afraid of death, he was more afraid of being an old man who is
alone.
His bladder sometimes tricked him. He would be halfway to the bathroom when a
dark stain spread on his pants. In wet weather his joints would first throb and then begin
to cry out, and there had been days when he had chewed an entire tin of Arthritis Pain
Formula between sunrise and sunset… and still the aspirin only subdued the aches, and
even such acts as taking a book from the shelf or switching the TV channel became an
essay in pain. His eyes were bad; sometimes he knocked things over, barked his shins,
bumped his head. He lived in fear of breaking a bone and not being able to get to the
telephone, and he lived in fear of getting there and having some doctor uncover his real
past as he became suspicious of Mr Denker’s nonexistent medical history.
The boy had alleviated some of those things. When the boy was here, he could call
back the old days. His memory of those days was perversely clear; he spilled out a
seemingly endless catalogue of names and events, even the weather of such and such a
day. He remembered Private Henreid, who manned a machine-gun in the north-east
tower and the wen Private Henreid had had between his eyes. Some of the men called
him Three-Eyes, or Old Cyclops. He remembered Kessel, who had a picture of his
girlfriend naked, lying on a sofa with her hands behind her head. Kessel charged the men
to look at it. He remembered the names of the doctors and their experiments – thresholds
of pain, the brainwaves of dying men and women, physiological retardation, effects of different sorts of radiation, dozens more. Hundreds more.
He supposed he talked to the boy as all old men talk, but he guessed he was luckier
than most old men, who had impatience, disinterest, or outright rudeness for an audience.
His audience was endlessly fascinated.
Were a few bad dreams too high a price to pay?
He crushed out his cigarette, lay looking at the ceiling for a moment, and then swung
his feet out onto the floor. He and the boy were loathesome, he supposed, feeding off
each other … eating each other. If his own belly was sometimes sour with the dark but
rich food they partook of in his afternoon kitchen, what was the boy’s like? Did he sleep well? Perhaps not. Lately Dussander thought the boy looked rather pale, and thinner than
when he had first come into Dussander’s life.
He walked across the bedroom and opened the closet door. He brushed hangers to the
right, reached into the shadows, and brought out the sham uniform. It hung from his hand
like a vulture-skin. He touched it with his other hand. Touched it … and then stroked it.
After a very long time he took it down and put it on, dressing slowly, not looking into
the mirror until the uniform was completely buttoned and belted (and the sham fly
zipped).
He looked at himself in the mirror, then, and nodded.
He went back to bed, lay down, and smoked another cigarette. When it was finished,
he felt sleepy again. He turned off the bedlamp, not believing it, that it could be this easy.
But he was asleep five minutes later, and this time his sleep was dreamless.
8
February, 1975.
After dinner, Dick Bowden produced a cognac that Dussander privately thought
dreadful. But of course he smiled broadly and complimented it extravagantly. Bowden’s
wife served the boy a chocolate malted. The boy had been unusually quiet all through the
meal. Uneasy? Yes. For some reason the boy seemed very uneasy.
Dussander had charmed Dick and Monica Bowden from the moment he and the boy
had arrived. The boy had told his parents that Mr Denker’s vision was much worse than it
actually was (which made poor old Mr Denker in need of a seeing-eye dog, Dussander
thought dryly), because that explained all the reading the boy had supposedly been doing.
Dussander had been very careful about that, and he thought there had been no slips.
He was dressed in his best suit, and although the evening was damp, his arthritis had
been remarkably mellow -nothing but an occasional twinge. For some absurd reason the
boy had wanted him to leave his umbrella home, but Dussander had insisted. All in all, he
had had a pleasant and rather exciting evening. Dreadful cognac or no, he had not been
out to dinner in nine years.
During the meal he had discussed the Essen Motor Works, the rebuilding of postwar
Germany – Bowden had asked several intelligent questions about that, and had seemed
impressed by Dussander’s answers – and German writers. Monica Bowden had asked him
how he had happened to come to America so late in life and Dussander, adopting the
proper expression of myopic sorrow, had explained about the death of his fictitious wife.
Monica Bowden was meltingly sympathetic.
And now, over the absurd cognac, Dick Bowden said: ‘If this is too personal, Mr
Denker, please don’t answer … but I couldn’t help wondering what you did in the war.’
The boy stiffened ever so slightly.
Dussander smiled and felt for his cigarettes. He could see them perfectly well, but it
was important to make not the tiniest slip. Monica put them in his hand.
Thank you, dear lady. The meal was superb. You are a fine cook. My own wife never
did better.’
Monica thanked him and looked flustered. Todd gave her an irritated look.
‘Not personal at all,’ Dussander said, lighting his cigarette and turning to Bowden. ‘I
was in the reserves from 1943 on, as were all able-bodied men too old to be in the active
services. By then the handwriting was on the wall for the Third Reich, and for the
madmen who created it. One madman in particular, of course.’
He blew out his match and looked solemn.
‘There was great relief when the tide turned against Hitler. Great relief. Of course,’ and
here he looked at Bowden disarmingly, as man to man, ‘one was careful not to express
such a sentiment. Not aloud.’
‘I suppose not,’ Dick Bowden said respectfully.
‘No,’ Dussander said gravely. ‘Not aloud. I remember one evening when four or five of
us, all friends, stopped at a local ratskeller after work for a drink – by then there was not always schnapps, or even beer, but it so happened that night there were both. We had all known each other for upwards of twenty years. One of our number, Hans Hassler,
mentioned in passing that perhaps the Fuehrer had been ill-advised to open a second front
against the Russians. I said, “Hans, God in Heaven, watch what you say!” Poor Hans went pale and changed the subject entirely. Yet three days later he was gone. I never saw him
again, nor, as far as I know, did anyone else who was sitting at our table that night.’
‘How awful!’ Monica said breathlessly. ‘More cognac, Mr Denker?’
‘No thank you,’ he smiled at her. ‘My wife had a saying from her mother: “One must
never overdo the sublime.”‘
Todd’s small, troubled frown deepened slightly.
‘Do you think he was sent to one of the camps?’ Dick asked. ‘Your friend Hessler?’
‘Hassler,’ Dussander corrected gently. He grew grave. ‘Many were. The camps … they
will be the shame of the German people for a thousand years to come. They are Hitler’s
real legacy.’
‘Oh, I think that’s too harsh,’ Bowden said, lighting his pipe and puffing out a choking
cloud of Cherry Blend. ‘According to what I’ve read, the majority of the German people
had no idea of what was going on. The locals around Auschwitz thought it was a sausage
plant.’
‘Ugh, how terrible,’ Monica said, and pulled a grimacing that’s-enough-of-that