Duel

by Richard Matheson

  When the front door opened and shut at 6:10, Les stood up so quickly, he knocked over an empty glass.

  “Les, don’t,” Terry said suddenly and he knew, immediately, that she was right. His father wouldn’t like him to come rushing from the kitchen with questions.

  He slumped down on the chair again and stared at his barely touched food, his heart throbbing. As he picked up his fork with tight fingers, he heard the old man cross the dining room rug and start up the stairs. He glanced at Terry and her throat moved.

  He couldn’t eat. He sat there breathing heavily, and picking at the food. Upstairs, he heard the door to his father’s room close.

  It was when Terry was putting the pie on the table that Les excused himself quickly and got up.

  He was at the foot of the stairs when the kitchen door was pushed open. “Les,” he heard her say, urgently.

  He stood there silently as she came up to him.

  “Isn’t it better we leave him alone?” she asked.

  “But, honey, I—”

  “Les, if he’d passed the test, he would have come into the kitchen and told us.”

  “Honey, he wouldn’t know if—”

  “He’d know if he passed, you know that. He told us about it the last two times. If he’d passed, he’d have—”

  Her voice broke off and she shuddered at the way he was looking at her. In the heavy silence, she heard a sudden splattering of rain on the windows.

  They looked at each other a long moment. Then Les said, “I’m going up.”

  “Les,” she murmured.

  “I won’t say anything to upset him,” he said. “I’ll …”

  A moment longer they stared at each other. Then he turned away and trudged up the steps. Terry watched him go with a bleak, hopeless look on her face.

  Les stood before the closed door a minute, bracing himself. I won’t upset him, he told himself; I won’t.

  He knocked softly, wondering, in that second, if he were making a mistake. Maybe he should have left the old man alone, he thought unhappily.

  In the bedroom, he heard a rustling movement on the bed, then the sound of his father’s feet touching the floor.

  “Who is it?” he heard Tom ask.

  Les caught his breath. “It’s me, Dad,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “May I see you?”

  Silence inside. “Well …” he heard his father say then and his voice stopped. Les heard him get up and heard the sound of his footsteps on the floor. Then there was the sound of paper rattling and a bureau drawer being carefully shut.

  Finally the door opened.

  Tom was wearing his old red bathrobe over his clothes and he’d taken off his shoes and put his slippers on.

  “May I come in, Dad?” Les asked quietly.

  His father hesitated a moment. Then he said, “Come in,” but it wasn’t an invitation. It was more as if he’d said, This is your house, I can’t keep you from this room.

  Les was going to tell his father that he didn’t want to disturb him but he couldn’t. He went in and stood in the middle of the throw rug, waiting.

  “Sit down,” his father said and Les sat down on the upright chair that Tom hung his clothes on at night. His father waited until Les was seated and then sank down on the bed with a grunt.

  For a long time they looked at each other without speaking, like total strangers, each waiting for the other one to speak. How did the test go? Les heard the words repeated in his mind. How did the test go, how did the test go? He couldn’t speak the words. How did the—

  “I suppose you want to know what … happened,” his father said then, controlling himself visibly.

  “Yes,” Les said. “I …” He caught himself. “Yes,” he repeated and waited.

  Old Tom looked down at the floor for a moment. Then, suddenly, he raised his head and looked defiantly at his son.

  “I didn’t go,” he said.

  Les felt as if all his strength had suddenly been sucked into the floor. He sat there, motionless, staring at his father.

  “Had no intention of going,” his father hurried on. “No intention of going through all that foolishness. Physical tests, m-mental tests, putting b-b-blocks in a board and … Lord knows what all! Had no intention of going.”

  He stopped and stared at his son with angry eyes as if he were daring Les to say he had done wrong.

  But Les couldn’t say anything.

  A long time passed. Les swallowed and managed to summon the words. “What are you … going to do?”

  “Never mind that, never mind,” his father said, almost as if he were grateful for the question. “Don’t you worry about your Dad. Your Dad knows how to take care of himself.”

  And suddenly Les heard the bureau drawer shutting again, the rustling of a paper bag. He almost looked around at the bureau to see if the bag were still there. His head twitched as he fought down the impulse.

  “W-ell,” he faltered, not realizing how stricken and lost his expres-sion was.

  “Just never mind now,” his father said again, quietly, almost gently. “It’s not your problem to worry about. Not your problem at all.”

  But it is! Les heard the words cried out in his mind. But he didn’t speak them. Something in the old man stopped him; a sort of fierce strength, a taut dignity he knew he mustn’t touch.

  “I’d like to rest now,” he heard Tom say then and he felt as if he’d been struck violently in the stomach. I’d like to rest now, to rest now—the words echoed down long tunnels of the mind as he stood. Rest now, rest now …

  He found himself being ushered to the door where he turned and looked at his father. Good-bye. The word stuck in him.

  Then his father smiled and said, “Good night, Leslie.”

  “Dad.”

  He felt the old man’s hand in his own, stronger than his, more steady; calming him, reassuring him. He felt his father’s left hand grip his shoulder.

  “Good night, son,” his father said and, in the moment they stood close together Les saw, over the old man’s shoulder, the crumpled drugstore bag lying in the corner of the room as though it had been thrown there so as not to be seen.

  Then he was standing in wordless terror in the hall, listening to the latch clicking shut and knowing that, although his father wasn’t locking the door, he couldn’t go into his father’s room.

  For a long time he stood staring at the closed door, shivering without control. Then he turned away.

  Terry was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, her face drained of color. She asked the question with her eyes as he came down to her.

  “He … didn’t go,” was all he said.

  She made a tiny, startled sound in her throat. “But—”

  “He’s been to the drugstore,” Les said. “I … saw the bag in the corner of the room. He threw it away so I wouldn’t see it but I … saw it.”

  For a moment, it seemed as if she were starting for the stairs but it was only a momentary straining of her body.

  “He must have shown the druggist the letter about the test,” Les said. “The … druggist must have given him … pills. Like they all do.”

  They stood silently in the dining room while rain drummed against the windows.

  “What shall we do?” she asked, almost inaudibly.

  “Nothing,” he murmured. His throat moved convulsively and breath shuddered through him. “Nothing.”

  Then he was walking numbly back to the kitchen and he could feel her arm tight around him as if she were trying to press her love to him because she could not speak of love.

  All evening, they sat there in the kitchen. After she put the boys to bed, she came back and they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking in quiet, lonely voices.

  Near midnight, they left the kitchen and just before they went upstairs, Les stopped by the dining room table and found the watch with a shiny new crystal on it. He couldn’t even touch it.

  They went upstairs a
nd walked past the door of Tom’s bedroom. There was no sound inside. They got undressed and got in bed together and Terry set the clock the way she set it every night. In a few hours they both managed to fall asleep.

  And all night there was silence in the old man’s room. And the next day, silence.

  ONE FOR THE BOOKS

  WHEN HE WOKE UP THAT MORNING, HE COULD talk French.

  There was no warning. At six-fifteen, the alarm went off as usual and he and his wife stirred. Fred reached out a sleep-deadened hand and shut off the bell. The room was still for a moment.

  Then Eva pushed back the covers on her side and he pushed back the covers on his side. His vein-gnarled legs dropped over the side of the bed. He said, “Bon matin, Eva.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “Wha’?” she asked.

  “Je dis bon matin,” he said.

  There was a rustle of nightgown as she twisted around to squint at him. “What’d you say?”

  “All I said was good—”

  Fred Elderman stared back at his wife.

  “What did I say?” he asked in a whisper.

  “You said ‘bone mattin’ or—”

  “Je dis bon matin. C‘est un bon matin, n’est-ce pas?”

  The sound of his hand being clapped across his mouth was like that of a fast ball thumping in a catcher’s mitt. Above the knuckle-ridged gag, his eyes were shocked.

  “Fred, what is it?”

  Slowly, the hand drew down from his lips.

  “I dunno, Eva,” he said, awed. Unconsciously, the hand reached up. one finger of it rubbing at his hair-ringed bald spot. “It sounds like some—some kind of foreign talk.”

  “But you don’t know no foreign talk, Fred,” she told him.

  “That’s just it.”

  They sat there looking at each other blankly. Fred glanced over at the clock.

  “We better get dressed,” he said.

  While he was in the bathroom, she heard him singing, “Elle fit un. fromage, du lait de ses moutons, ron, ron, du lait de ses moutons,” but she didn’t dare call it to his attention while he was shaving.

  Over breakfast coffee, he muttered something.

  “What?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “Je dis que veut dire ceci?”

  He heard the coffee go down her gulping throat.

  “I mean,” he said, looking dazed, “what does this mean?”

  “Yes, what does it? You never talked no foreign language before.”

  “I know it,” he said, toast suspended halfway to his open mouth. “What—what kind of language is it?”

  “S-sounds t’me like French.”

  “French? I don’t know no French.”

  She swallowed more coffee. “You do now,” she said weakly.

  He stared at the tablecloth.

  “Le diable s’en méle,” he muttered.

  Her voice rose. “Fred, what?”

  His eyes were confused. “I said the devil has something to do with it.”

  “Fred, you’re—”

  She straightened up in the chair and took a deep breath. “Now,” she said, “let’s not profane, Fred. There has to be a good reason for this.” No reply. “Well, doesn’t there, Fred?”

  “Sure, Eva. Sure. But—”

  “No buts about it,” she declared, plunging ahead as if she were afraid to stop. “Now is there any reason in this world why you should know how to talk French”—she snapped her thin fingers—“just like that?”

  He shook his head vaguely.

  “Well,” she went on, wondering what to say next, “let’s see then.” They looked at each other in silence. “Say something,” she decided. “Let’s—’ She groped for words. “Let’s see what we … have here.” Her voice died off.

  “Say somethin’?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Go on.”

  “Un gémissement se fit entendre. Les dogues se mettent à aboyer. Ces gants me vont bien. Il va sur les quinze ans—”

  “Fred?”

  “Il fit fabriquer une exacte représentation du monstre.”

  “Fred, hold on!” she cried, looking scared.

  His voice broke off and he looked at her, blinking.

  “What … what did you say this time, Fred?” she asked.

  “I said—a moan was heard. His mastiffs began to bark. These gloves fit me. He will soon be fifteen years old and—”

  “What?”

  “And he had an exact copy of the monster made. Sans même l’entamer.”

  “Fred?”

  He looked ill. “Without even scratchin’,” he said.

  At that hour of the morning, the campus was quiet. The only classes that early were the two seven-thirty Economics lectures and they were held on the White Campus. Here on the Red there was no sound. In an hour the walks would be filled with chatting, laughing, loaferclicking student hordes, but for now there was peace.

  In far less than peace, Fred Elderman shuffled along the east side of the campus, headed for the administration building. Having left a confused Eva at home, he’d been trying to figure it out as he went to work.

  What was it? When had it begun? C’est une heure, said his mind.

  He shook his head angrily. This was terrible. He tried desperately to think of what could have happened, but he couldn’t. It just didn’t make sense. He was fifty-nine, a janitor at the university with no education to speak of, living a quiet, ordinary life. Then he woke up one morning speaking articulate French.

  French.

  He stopped a moment and stood in the frosty October wind, staring at the cupola of Jeramy Hall. He’d cleaned out the French office the night before. Could that have anything to do with—

  No, that was ridiculous. He started off again, muttering under his breath—unconsciously. “Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes—”

  At eight-ten, he entered the History Department office to repair a sink in the washroom. He worked on it for an hour and seven minutes, then put the tools back in the bag and walked out into the office.

  “Mornin’,” he said to the professor sitting at a desk.

  “Good morning, Fred,” said the professor.

  Fred Elderman walked out into the hall thinking how remarkable it was that the income of Louis XVI, from the same type of taxes, exceeded that of Louis XV by 130 million livres and that the exports which had been 106 million in 1720 were 192 million in 1746 and

  He stopped in the hall, a stunned look on his lean face.

  That morning, he had occasion to be in the offices of the Physics, the Chemistry, the English and the Art Departments.

  The Windmill was a little tavern near Main Street. Fred went there Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings to nurse a couple of draught beers and chat with his two friends—Harry Bullard, manager of Hogan’s Bowling Alley, and Lou Peacock, postal worker and amateur gardener.

  Stepping into the doorway of the dim-lit saloon that evening, Fred was heard—by an exiting patron—to murmur, “Je connais tous ces braves gens,” then look around with a guilty twitch of cheek. “I mean …” he muttered, but didn’t finish.

  Harry Bullard saw him first in the mirror. Twisting his head around on its fat column of neck, he said, “C’mon in, Fred, the whiskey’s fine,” then, to the bartender, “Draw one for the elder man,” and chuckled.

  Fred walked to the bar with the first smile he’d managed to summon that day. Peacock and Bullard greeted him and the bartender set down a brimming stein.

  “What’s new, Fred?” Harry asked.

  Fred pressed his mustache between two foam-removing fingers.

  “Not much,” he said, still too uncertain to discuss it. Dinner with Eva had been a painful meal during which he’d eaten not only food but an endless and detailed running commentary on the Thirty Years War, the Magna Charta and boudoir information about Catherine the Great. He had been glad to retire from the house at seven-thirty, murmuring an unmanageable, “Bon nuit, ma
chère.”

  “What’s new with you?” he asked Harry Bullard now.

  “Well,” Harry answered, “we been paintin’ down at the alleys. You know, redecoratin’.”

  “That right?” Fred said. “When painting with colored beeswax was inconvenient, Greek and Roman easel painters used tempera—that is, colors fixed upon a wood or stucco base by means of such a medium as—

  He stopped. There was a bulging silence.

  “Hanh?” Harry Bullard asked.

  Fred swallowed nervously. “Nothing,” he said hastily. “I was just—” He stared down into the tan depths of his beer. “Nothing,” he repeated.

  Bullard glanced at Peacock, who shrugged back.

  “How are your hothouse flowers coming, Lou?” Fred inquired, to change the subject.

  The small man nodded. “Fine. They’re just fine.”

  “Good,” said Fred, nodding, too. “Vi sono pui di cinquante bastimenti in porto.” He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

  “What’s that?” Lou asked, cupping one ear.

  Fred coughed on his hastily swallowed beer. “Nothing,” he said.

  “No, what did ya say?” Harry persisted, the half-smile on his broad face indicating that he was ready to hear a good joke.

  “I—I said there are more than fifty ships in the harbor,” explained Fred morosely.

  The smile faded. Harry looked blank.

  “What harbor?” he asked.

  Fred tried to sound casual. “I—it’s just a joke I heard today. But I forgot the last line.”

  “Oh.” Harry stared at Fred, then returned to his drink. “Yeah.”

  They were quiet a moment. Then Lou asked Fred, “Through for the day?”

  “No. I have to clean up the Math office later.”

  Lou nodded. “That’s too bad.”

  Fred squeezed more foam from his mustache. “Tell me something,” he said, taking the plunge impulsively. “What would you think if you woke up one morning talking French?”

  “Who did that?” asked Harry, squinting.

  “Nobody,” Fred said hurriedly. “Just … supposing, I mean. Supposing a man was to—well, to know things he never learned. You know what I mean? Just know them. As if they were always in his mind and he was seeing them for the first time.”