by Apt Pupil
‘All right, thank God for that Call an ambulance.’
‘I just did.’
‘222?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good boy. How bad is he, can you tell?’
(not fucking bad enough!)
‘I don’t know, dad. They said the ambulance would be here soon, but… I’m sorta scared. Can you come over and wait with me?’
‘You bet Give me four minutes.’
Todd could hear his mother saying something else as his father hung up, breaking the connection. Todd replaced the receiver on his end.
Four minutes.
Four minutes to do anything that had been left undone. Four minutes to remember whatever it was that had been forgotten. Or had he forgotten anything? Maybe it was just nerves. God, he wished he hadn’t had to call his father. But it was the natural thing to do, wasn’t it? Sure. Was there some natural thing that he hadn ’t done? Something -?
‘Oh, you shit-for-brains!’ he suddenly moaned, and bolted back into the kitchen. Dussander’s head lay on the table, his eyes half-open, sluggish.
‘Dussander!’ Todd cried. He shook Dussander roughly, and the old man groaned. ‘Wake up! Wake up, you stinking old bastard!’
‘What? Is it the ambulance?’
The letter! My father is coming over, he’ll be here in no time. Where’s the fucking letter?"
‘What… what letter?’
‘You told me to tell them you got an important letter. I said…’ His heart sank. ‘I said it came from overseas… from Germany. Christ!’ Todd ran his hands through his hair.
‘A letter.’ Dussander raised his head with slow difficulty. His seamed cheeks were an unhealthy yellowish-white, his lips blue. ‘From Willi, I think. Willi Frankel. Dear… dear Willi.’
Todd looked at his watch and saw that already two minutes had passed since he had hung up the phone. His father would not, could not make it from their house to Dussander’s in four minutes, but he could do it damn fast in the Porsche. Fast, that was it. Everything was moving too fast. And there was still something wrong here; he felt it. But there was no time to stop and hunt around for the loophole.
‘Yes, okay, I was reading it to you, and you got excited and had this heart attack. Good. Where is it?’
Dussander looked at him blankly.
‘The letter! Where is it?’
‘What letter?’ Dussander asked vacantly, and Todd’s lands itched to throttle the drunken old monster.
The one I was reading to you! The one from Willi What’s—his-face! Where is it?’
They both looked at the table, as if expecting to see the letter materialize there.
‘Upstairs,’ Dussander said finally. ‘Look in my dresser. The third drawer. There is a small wooden box in the bottom of that drawer. You will have to break it open. I lost the key a long time ago. There are some very old letters from a friend of mine. None signed. None dated. All in German. A page or — o will serve for window-fittings, as you would say. If you hurry—’
‘Are you crazy?’ Todd raged. ‘I don’t understand German! How could I read you a letter written in German, you numb fuck?’
‘Why would Willi write me in English?’ Dussander countered wearily. ‘If you read me the letter in German, / would understand it even if you did not. Of course your pronunciation would be butchery, but still, I could—’
Dussander was right — right again, and Todd didn’t wait to hear more. Even after a heart attack the old man was a step ahead. Todd raced down the hall to the stairs, pausing just long enough by the front door to make sure his father’s Porsche wasn’t pulling up even now. It wasn’t, but Todd’s watch told him just how tight things were getting; it had been five minutes now.
He took the stairs two at a time and burst into Dussander’s bedroom. He had never been up here before, hadn’t even been curious, and for a moment he only looked wildly around at the unfamiliar territory. Then he saw the dresser, a cheap item done in the style his father called Discount Store Modern. He fell on his knees in front of it and yanked at the third drawer. It came halfway out, then jigged sideways in its slot and stuck firmly.
‘Goddam you,’ he whispered at it. His face was dead pale except for the spots of dark, bloody colour flaring in each cheek and his blue eyes, which looked as dark as Atlantic storm-clouds. ‘Goddam you fucking thing come out!’
He yanked so hard that the entire dresser tottered forward and almost fell on him before deciding to settle back. The drawer shot all the way out and landed in Todd’s lap. Dussander’s socks and underwear and handkerchiefs spilled out all around him. He pawed through the stuff that was still in the drawer and came up with a wooden box about nine inches long and three inches deep. He tried to pull up the lid. Nothing happened. It was locked, just as Dussander had said. Nothing was free tonight.
He stuffed the spilled clothes back into the drawer and then rammed the drawer back into its oblong slot. It stuck again. Todd worked to free it, wiggling it back and forth, sweat running freely down his face. At last he was able to slam it shut He got up with the box. How much time had passed now?
Dussander’s bed was the type with posts at the foot and Todd brought the lock side of the box down on one of these posts as hard as he could, grinning at the shock of pain that vibrated in his hands and travelled all the way up to his elbows. He looked at the lock. The lock looked a bit dented, but it was intact. He brought it down on the post again, even harder this time, heedless of the pain. This time a chunk of wood flew off the bedpost, but the lock still didn’t give. Todd uttered a little shriek of laughter and took the box to the other end of the bed. He raised it high over his head this time and brought it down with all his strength. This time the lock splintered.
As he flipped the lid up, headlights splashed across Dussander’s window.
He pawed wildly through the box. Postcards. A locket. A much-folded picture of a woman wearing frilly black garters and nothing else. An old billfold. Several sets of ID. An empty leather passport folder. At the bottom, letters.
The lights grew brighter, and now he heard the distinctive neat of the Porsche’s engine. It grew louder… and then cut off.
Todd grabbed three sheets of airmail-type stationery, closely written in German on both sides of each sheet, and -an out of the room again. He had almost gotten to the stairs when he realized he had left the forced box lying on Dussander’s bed. He ran back, grabbed it, and opened the third dresser drawer.
It stuck again, this time with a firm shriek of wood against wood.
Out front, he heard the ratchet of the Porsche’s emergency brake, the opening of the driver’s side door, the slam shut.
Faintly, Todd could hear himself moaning. He put the box in the askew drawer, stood up, and lashed at it with his foot. The drawer closed neatly. He stood blinking at it for a moment and then fled back down the hall. He raced down the stairs. Halfway down them, he heard the rapid rattle of his father’s shoes on Dussander’s walk. Todd vaulted over the banister, landed lightly, and ran into the kitchen, the airmail pages fluttering from his hand.
A hammering on the door. Todd? Todd, it’s me!’
And he could hear an ambulance siren in the distance as well. Dussander had drifted away into semi-consciousness again.
‘Coming, dad!’ Todd shouted.
He put the airmail pages on the table, fanning them a little as if they had been dropped in a hurry, and then he went back down the hall and let his father in.
‘Where is he?’ Dick Bowden asked, shouldering past Todd.
‘In the kitchen.’
‘You did everything just right, Todd,’ his father said, and then hugged him in a rough, embarrassed way.
‘I just hope I remembered everything,’ Todd said modestly, and then followed his father down the hall and into the kitchen.
In the rush to get Dussander out of the house, the letter was almost completely ignored. Todd’s father picked it up briefly, then put it down when the medics came in with the
stretcher. Todd and his father followed the ambulance, and his explanation of what had happened was accepted without question by the doctor attending Dussander’s case. ‘Mr Denker’ was, after all, seventy-nine years old, and his habits were not the best The doctor also offered Todd a brusque commendation for his quick thinking and action. Todd thanked him wanly and then asked his father if they could go home.
As they rode back, Dick told him again how proud of him he was. Todd barely heard him. He was thinking about his .30-.30 again.
18
That was the same day Morris Heisel broke his back.
Morris had never intended to break his back; all he had intended to do was nail up the corner of the rain-gutter on the west side of his house. Breaking his back was the furthest thing from his mind, he had had enough grief in his life without that, thank you very much. His first wife had died at the age of twenty-five, and both of their daughters were also dead. His brother was dead, killed in a tragic car accident not far from Disneyland in 1971. Morris himself was Hearing sixty, and had a case of arthritis that was worsening early and fast. He also had warts on both hands, warts that seemed to grow back as fast as the doctor could burn them off. He was also prone to migraine headaches, and in the last couple of years, that potzer Rogan next door had taken to calling him ‘Morris the Cat’. Morris had wondered aloud to Lydia, his second wife, how Rogan would like it if Morris took up calling him ‘Rogan the haemorrhoid’.
‘Quit it, Morris,’ Lydia said on these occasions. ‘You can’t take a joke, you never could take a joke, sometimes I wonder how I could marry a man with absolutely no sense of humour. We go to Las Vegas,’ Lydia had said, addressing the empty kitchen as if an invisible horde of spectators which only she could see was standing there, ‘we see Buddy Hackett, and Morris doesn’t laugh once.’
Besides arthritis, warts, and migraines, Morris also had Lydia, who, God love her, had developed into something of a nag over the last five years or so… ever since her hysterectomy. So he had plenty of sorrows and plenty of problems without adding a broken back.
‘Morris!’ Lydia cried, coming to the back door and wiping suds from her hands with a dishtowel. ‘Morris, you come down off that ladder right now!’
‘What?’ He twisted his head so he could see her. He was on the second-highest step of his aluminium stepladder. There was a bright yellow sticker on this step which said: DANGER! BALANCE MAY SHIFT WITHOUT WARNING ABOVE THIS STEP! Morris was wearing his carpenter’s apron with the wide pockets, one of the pockets filled with nails and the other filled with heavy-duty staples. The ground under the stepladder’s feet was slightly uneven and the ladder rocked a little when he moved. His neck ached with the unlovely prelude to one of his migraines. He was out of temper. ‘What?’
‘Come down from there, I said, before you break your back.’
‘I’m almost finished.’
‘You’re rocking on that ladder like you were on a boat, Morris. Come down.’
‘I’ll come down when I’m done!’ he said angrily. ‘Leave me alone!’
‘You’ll break your back,’ she reiterated dolefully, and went into the house again.
Ten minutes later, as he was hammering the last nail into the rain-gutter, tipped back nearly to the point of overbalancing, he heard a feline yowl followed by fierce barking.
‘What in God’s name -?’
He looked around and the stepladder rocked alarmingly. At that same moment, their cat — it was named Lover Boy, not Morris — tore around the corner of the garage, its fur bushed out into hackles and its green eyes flaring. The Regans’ collie pup was in hot pursuit, its tongue hanging out and its leash dragging behind it Lover Boy, apparently not superstitious, ran under the stepladder. The collie pup followed.
‘Look out, look out, you dumb mutt!’ Morris shouted.
The ladder rocked. The pup bunted it with the side of its body. The ladder tipped over and Morris tipped with it, uttering a howl of dismay. Nails and staples flew out of his carpenter’s apron. He landed half on and half off the concrete driveway, and a gigantic agony flared in his back. He did not so much hear his spine snap as feel it happen. Then the world greyed out for awhile.
When things swam back into focus, he was still lying half on and half off the driveway in a litter of nails and staples. Lydia was kneeling over him, weeping. Rogan from next door was there, too, his face as white as a shroud.
‘I told you!’ Lydia babbled. ‘I told you to come down off that ladder! Now look! Now look at this!’
Morris found he had absolutely no desire to look. A suffocating, throbbing band of pain had cinched itself around his middle like a belt, and that was bad, but there was something much worse: he could feel nothing below that belt of pain — nothing at all.
‘Wail later,’ he said huskily. ‘Call the doctor now.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Rogan said, and ran back to his own house.
‘Lydia,’ Morris said. He wet his lips.
‘What? What, Morris?’ She bent over him and a tear splashed on his cheek. It was touching, he supposed, but it had made him flinch, and the flinch had made the pain worse.
‘Lydia, I also have one of my migraines.’
‘Oh, poor darling! Poor Morris! But I told you—’
‘I’ve got the headache because that potzer Rogan’s dog barked all night and kept me awake. Today the dog chases my cat and knocks over my ladder and I think my back is broken.’
Lydia shrieked. The sound made Morris’s head vibrate.
‘Lydia,’ he said, and wet his lips again.
‘What, darling?’
‘I have suspected something for many years. Now I am sure.’
‘My poor Morris! What?’
There is no God,’ Morris said, and fainted.
They took him to Santa Donate and his doctor told him, at about the same time that he would have ordinarily been sitting down to one of Lydia’s wretched suppers, that he would never walk again. By then they had put him in a body cast. Blood and urine samples had been taken. Dr Kemmelman had peered into his eyes and tapped his knees with a little rubber hammer — but no reflexive twitch of the foot answered the taps. And at every turn there was Lydia, the tears streaming from her eyes, as she used up one handkerchief after another. Lydia, a woman who would have been at home married to Job, went everywhere well supplied with little lace snotrags, just in case reason for an extended crying spell should occur. She had called her mother, and her mother would be here soon ("That’s nice, Lydia’ — although if there was anyone on earth Morris honestly loathed, it was Lydia’s mother). She had called the rabbi, he would be here soon, too (That’s nice, Lydia’ — although he hadn’t set foot inside the synagogue in five years and wasn’t sure what the rabbi’s name was). She had called his boss, and while he wouldn’t be here soon, he sent his greatest sympathies and condolences (That’s nice, Lydia’ — although if there was anyone in a class with Lydia’s mother, it was that cigar-chewing putz Frank Haskell). At last they gave Morris a Valium and took Lydia away. Shortly afterwards, Morris just drifted away — no worries, no migraine, no nothing. If they kept giving him little blue pills like that, went his last thought, he would go on up that stepladder and break his back again.
When he woke up — or regained consciousness, that was more like it — dawn was just breaking, and the hospital was as quiet as Morris supposed it ever got He felt very calm… almost serene. He had no pain; his body felt swaddled and weightless. His bed had been surrounded by some sort of contraption like a squirrel cage — a thing of stainless steel bars, guy wires, and pulleys. His legs were being held up by cables attached to this gadget. His back seemed to be bowed by something beneath, but it was hard to tell — he had only the angle of his vision to judge by.
Others have it worse, he thought. All over the world, others have it worse. In Israel, the Palestinians kill busloads of farmers who were committing the political crime of going into town to see a movie. The Israelis cope with this injustice by d
ropping bombs on the Palestinians and killing children along with whatever terrorists may be there. Others have it worse than me… which is not to say this is good, don’t get that idea, but others have it worse.
He lifted one hand with some effort — there was pain somewhere in his body, but it was very faint — and made a weak fist in front of his eyes. There. Nothing wrong with his hands. Nothing wrong with his arms, either. So he couldn’t feel anything below the waist, so what? There were people all over the world paralyzed from the neck down. There were people with leprosy. There were people dying of syphilis. Somewhere in the world right now, there might be people walking down the jetway and onto a plane that was going to crash. No, this wasn’t good, but there were worse things in the world.
And there had been, once upon a time, much worse things in the world.
He raised his left arm. It seemed to float, disembodied, before his eyes — a scrawny old man’s arm with the muscles deteriorating. He was in a hospital johnny but it had short sleeves and he could still read the number on the forearm, tattooed there in faded blue ink. A499965214. Worse things, yes, worse things than falling off a suburban stepladder and breaking your back and being taken to a clean and sterile metropolitan hospital and being given a Valium that was guaranteed to bubble your troubles away.
There were the showers, they were worse. His first wife, Heather, had died in one of their filthy showers. There were the trenches that became graves — he could close his eyes and still see the men lined up along the open maw of the trenches, could still hear the volley of rifle fire, could still remember the way they flopped backwards into the earth like badly made puppets. There were the crematoriums, they were worse, too, toe crematoriums that filled the air with the steady sweet smell of Jews burning like torches no one could see. The horror-struck faces of old friends and relatives… faces that melted away like gutturing candles, faces that seemed to melt away before your very eyes — thin, thinner, thinnest. Then one day they were gone. Where? Where does a torch-flame go when the cold wind has blown it out? Heaven? Hell? Lights in the darkness, candles in the wind. When Job finally broke down and questioned, God asked him: Where were you when I made the world? If Morris Heisel had been Job, he would have responded: Where were You when my Heather was dying, You potzer, You? Watching the Yankees and the Senators? If You can’t pay attention to Your business better than this, get out of my face.
