Apt Pupil (Scribner Edition) Read online

  A great wail from Lydia, and although she had never even seen Morris’s daughters, she held the monkey’s paw high and wished for them to be returned to life. The room went dark. And suddenly, from outside, came the sound of dragging, lurching footfalls.

  Morris was down on his hands and knees in a darkness that suddenly stank of smoke and gas and death. He was searching for the paw. One wish left. If he could find the paw he could wish this dreadful dream away. He would spare himself the sight of his daughters, thin as scarecrows, their eyes deep wounded holes, their numbers burning on the scant flesh of their arms.

  Hammering on the door.

  In the nightmare, his search for the paw became ever more frenzied, but it bore no fruit. It seemed to go on for years. And then, behind him, the door crashed open. No, he thought. I won’t look. I’ll close my eyes. Rip them from my head if I have to, but I won’t look.

  But he did look. He had to look. In the dream it was as if huge hands had grasped his head and wrenched it around.

  It was not his daughters standing in the doorway; it was Denker. A much younger Denker, a Denker who wore a Nazi SS uniform, the cap with its death’s-head insignia cocked rakishly to one side. His buttons gleamed heartlessly, his boots were polished to a killing gloss.

  Clasped in his arms was a huge and slowly bubbling pot of lamb stew.

  And the dream-Denker, smiling his dark, suave smile, said: You must sit down and tell us all about it—as one friend to another, hein? We have heard that gold has been hidden. That tobacco has been hoarded. That it was not food-poisoning with Schneibel at all but powdered glass in his supper two nights ago. You must not insult our intelligence by pretending you know nothing. You knew EVERYTHING. So tell it all. Omit nothing.

  And in the dark, smelling the maddening aroma of the stew, he told them everything. His stomach, which had been a small gray rock, was now a ravening tiger. Words spilled helplessly from his lips. They spewed from him in the senseless sermon of a lunatic, truth and falsehood all mixed together.

  Brodin has his mother’s wedding ring taped below his scrotum!

  (“you must sit down”)

  Laslo and Herman Dorksy have talked about rushing guard tower number three!

  (“and tell us everything!”)

  Rachel Tannenbaum’s husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who comes on after Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is always picking his nose and then putting his fingers in his mouth. Tannenbaum, some of it to Booger-Eater so he wouldn’t take his wife’s pearl earrings!

  (“oh that makes no sense no sense at all you’ve mixed up two different stories I think but that’s all right quite all right we’d rather have you mix up two stories than omit one completely you must omit NOTHING!”)

  There is a man who has been calling out his dead son’s name in order to get double rations!

  (“tell us his name”)

  I don’t know it but I can point him out to you please yes I can show him to you I will I will I will I

  (“tell us everything you know”)

  will I will I will I will I will I will I will I

  Until he swam up into consciousness with a scream in his throat like fire.

  Trembling uncontrollably, he looked at the sleeping form in the other bed. He found himself staring particularly at the wrinkled, caved-in mouth. Old tiger with no teeth. Ancient and vicious rogue elephant with one tusk gone and the other rotted loose in its socket. Senile monster.

  “Oh my God,” Morris Heisel whispered. His voice was high and faint, inaudible to anyone but himself. Tears trickled down his cheeks toward his ears. “Oh dear God, the man who murdered my wife and my daughters is sleeping in the same room with me, my God, oh dear dear God, he is here with me now in this room.”

  The tears began to flow faster now—tears of rage and horror, hot, scalding.

  He trembled and waited for morning, and morning did not come for an age.

  21

  The next day, Monday, Todd was up at six o’clock in the morning and poking listlessly at a scrambled egg he had fixed for himself when his father came down still dressed in his monogrammed bathrobe and slippers.

  “Mumph,” he said to Todd, going past him to the refrigerator for orange juice.

  Todd grunted back without looking up from his book, one of the 87th Squad mysteries. He had been lucky enough to land a summer job with a landscaping outfit that operated out of Pasadena. That would have been much too far to commute ordinarily, even if one of his parents had been willing to loan him a car for the summer (neither was), but his father was working on-site not far from there, and he was able to drop Todd off at a bus stop on his way and pick him up at the same place on his way back. Todd was less than wild about the arrangement; he didn’t like riding home from work with his father and absolutely detested riding to work with him in the morning. It was in the mornings that he felt the most naked, when the wall between what he was and what he might be seemed the thinnest. It was worse after a night of bad dreams, but even if no dreams had come in the night, it was bad. One morning he realized with a fright so suddenly it was almost terror that he had been seriously considering reaching across his father’s briefcase, grabbing the wheel of the Porsche, and sending them corkscrewing into the two express lanes, cutting a swath of destruction through the morning commuters.

  “You want another egg, Todd-O?”

  “No thanks, Dad.” Dick Bowden ate them fried. How could anyone stand to eat a fried egg? On the grill of the Jenn-Air for two minutes, then over easy. What you got on your plate at the end looked like a giant dead eye with a cataract over it, an eye that would bleed orange when you poked it with your fork.

  He pushed his scrambled egg away. He had barely touched it.

  Outside, the morning paper slapped the step.

  His father finished cooking, turned off the grill, and came to the table. “Not hungry this morning, Todd-O?”

  You call me that one more time and I’m going to stick my knife right up your fucking nose . . . Dad-O.

  “Not much appetite, I guess.”

  Dick grinned affectionately at his son; there was still a tiny dab of shaving cream on the boy’s right ear. “Betty Trask stole your appetite. That’s my guess.”

  “Yeah, maybe that’s it.” He offered a wan smile that vanished as soon as his father went down the stairs from the breakfast nook to get the paper. Would it wake you up if I told you what a cunt she is, Dad-O? How about if I said, “Oh, by the way, did you know your good friend Ray Trask’s daughter is one of the biggest sluts in Santo Donato? She’d kiss her own twat if she was double-jointed, Dad-O. That’s how much she thinks of it. Just a stinking little slut. Two lines of coke and she’s yours for the night. And if you don’t happen to have any coke, she’s still yours for the night. She’d fuck a dog if she couldn’t get a man.” Think that’d wake you up, Dad-O? Get you a flying start on the day?

  He pushed the thoughts back away viciously, knowing they wouldn’t stay gone.

  His father came back with the paper. Todd glimpsed the headline: SPACE SHUTTLE WON’T FLY, EXPERT SAYS.

  Dick sat down. “Betty’s a fine-looking girl,” he said. “She reminds me of your mother when I first met her.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Pretty . . . young . . . fresh . . .” Dick Bowden’s eyes had gone vague. Now they came back, focusing almost anxiously on his son. “Not that your mother isn’t still a fine-looking woman. But at that age a girl has a certain . . . glow, I guess you’d say. It’s there for awhile, and then it’s gone.” He shrugged and opened the paper. “C’est la vie, I guess.”

  She’s a bitch in heat. Maybe that’s what makes her glow.

  “You’re treating her right, aren’t you, Todd-O?” His father was making his usual rapid trip through the paper toward the sports pages. “Not getting too fresh?”

  “Everything’s cool, Dad.”

  (if he doesn’t stop pretty soon I’ll I’ll do something, scream, throw h
is coffee in his face, something.)

  “Ray thinks you’re a fine boy,” Dick said absently. He had at last reached the sports. He became absorbed. There was blessed silence at the breakfast table.

  Betty Trask had been all over him the very first time they went out. He had taken her to the local lovers’ lane after the movie because he knew it would be expected of them; they could swap spits for half an hour or so and have all the right things to tell their respective friends the next day. She could roll her eyes and tell how she had fought off his advances—boys were so tiresome, really, and she never fucked on the first date, she wasn’t that kind of girl. Her friends would agree and then all of them would troop into the girls’ room and do whatever it was they did in there—put on fresh makeup, smoke Tampax, whatever.

  And for a guy . . . well, you had to make out. You had to get at least to second base and try for third. Because there were reputations and reputations. Todd couldn’t have cared less about having a stud reputation; he only wanted a reputation for being normal. And if you didn’t at least try, word got around. People started to wonder if you were all right.

  So he took them up on Jane’s Hill, kissed them, felt their tits, went a little further than that if they would allow it. And that was it. The girl would stop him, he would put up a little good-natured argument, and then take her home. No worries about what might be said in the girls’ room the next day. No worries that anyone was going to think Todd Bowden was anything but normal. Except—

  Except Betty Trask was the kind of girl who fucked on the first date. On every date. And in between dates.

  The first time had been a month or so before the goddam Nazi’s heart attack, and Todd thought he had done pretty well for a virgin . . . perhaps for the same reason a young pitcher will do well if he’s tapped to throw the biggest game of the year with no forewarning. There had been no time to worry, to get all strung up about it.

  Always before, Todd had been able to sense when a girl had made up her mind that on the next date she would just allow herself to be carried away. He was aware that he was personable and that both his looks and his prospects were good. The kind of boy their cunty mothers regarded as “a good catch.” And when he sensed that physical capitulation about to happen, he would start dating some other girl. And whatever it said about his personality, Todd was able to admit to himself that if he ever started dating a truly frigid girl, he would probably be happy to date her for years to come. Maybe even marry her.

  But the first time with Betty had gone fairly well—she was no virgin, even if he was. She had to help him get his cock into her, but she seemed to take that as a matter of course. And halfway through the act itself she had gurgled up from the blanket they were lying on: “I just love to fuck!” It was the tone of voice another girl might have used to express her love for strawberry whirl ice cream.

  Later encounters—there had been five of them (five and a half, he supposed, if you wanted to count last night)—hadn’t been so good. They had, in fact, gotten worse at what seemed an exponential rate . . . although he didn’t believe even now that Betty had been aware of that (at least not until last night). In fact, quite the opposite. Betty apparently believed she had found the battering-ram of her dreams.

  Todd hadn’t felt any of the things he was supposed to feel at a time like that. Kissing her lips was like kissing warm but uncooked liver. Having her tongue in his mouth only made him wonder what kind of germs she was carrying, and sometimes he thought he could smell her fillings—an unpleasant metallic odor, like chrome. Her breasts were bags of meat. No more.

  Todd had done it twice more with her before Dussander’s heart attack. Each time he had more trouble getting erect. In both cases he had finally succeeded by using a fantasy. She was stripped naked in front of all their friends. Crying. Todd was forcing her to walk up and down before them while he cried out: Show your tits! Let them see your snatch, you cheap slut! Spread your cheeks! That’s right, bend over and SPREAD them!

  Betty’s appreciation was not at all surprising. He was a good lover, not in spite of his problems but because of them. Getting hard was only the first step. Once you achieved erection, you had to have an orgasm. The fourth time they had done it—this was three days after Dussander’s heart attack—he had pounded away at her for over ten minutes. Betty Trask thought she had died and gone to heaven; she had three orgasms and was trying for a fourth when Todd recalled an old fantasy . . . what was, in fact, the First Fantasy. The girl on the table, clamped and helpless. The huge dildo. The rubber squeeze-bulb. Only now, desperate and sweaty and almost insane with his desire to come and get this horror over with, the face of the girl on the table became Betty’s face. That brought on a joyless, rubbery spasm that he supposed was, technically, at least, an orgasm. A moment later Betty was whispering in his ear, her breath warm and redolent of Juicy Fruit gum: “Lover, you do me any old time. Just call me.”

  Todd had nearly groaned aloud.

  The nub of his dilemma was this: Wouldn’t his reputation suffer if he broke off with a girl who obviously wanted to put out for him? Wouldn’t people wonder why? Part of him said they would not. He remembered walking down the hall behind two senior boys during his freshman year and hearing one of them tell the other he had broken off with his girlfriend. The other wanted to know why. “Fucked ’er out,” the first said, and both of them bellowed goatish laughter.

  If someone asks me why I dropped her, I’ll just say I fucked her out. But what if she says we only did it five times? Is that enough? What? . . . How much? . . . How many? . . . Who’ll talk? . . . What’ll they say?

  So his mind ran on, as restless as a hungry rat in an insoluble maze. He was vaguely aware that he was turning a minor problem into a big problem, and that this very inability to solve the problem had something to say about how shaky he had gotten. But knowing it brought him no fresh ability to change his behavior, and he sank into a black depression.

  College. College was the answer. College offered an excuse to break with Betty that no one could question. But September seemed so far away.

  The fifth time it had taken him almost twenty minutes to get hard, but Betty had proclaimed the experience well worth the wait. And then, last night, he hadn’t been able to perform at all.

  “What are you, anyway?” Betty had asked petulantly. After twenty minutes of manipulating his lax penis, she was dishevelled and out of patience. “Are you one of those AC/DC guys?”

  He very nearly strangled her on the spot. And if he’d had his .30-.30—

  “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun! Congratulations, son!”

  “Huh?” He looked up and out of his black study.

  “You made the Southern Cal High School All-Stars!” His father was grinning with pride and pleasure.

  “Is that so?” For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking about; he had to grope for the meaning of the words. “Say, yeah, Coach Haines mentioned something to me about that at the end of the year. Said he was putting me and Billy DeLyons up. I never expected anything to happen.”

  “Well Jesus, you don’t seem very excited about it!”

  “I’m still trying

  (who gives a ripe fuck?)

  to get used to the idea.” With a huge effort, he managed a grin. “Can I see the article?”

  His father handed the paper across the table to Todd and got to his feet. “I’m going to wake Monica up. She’s got to see this before we leave.”

  No, God—I can’t face both of them this morning.

  “Aw, don’t do that. You know she won’t be able to get back to sleep if you wake her up. We’ll leave it for her on the table.”

  “Yes, I suppose we could do that. You’re a damned thoughtful boy, Todd.” He clapped Todd on the back, and Todd squeezed his eyes closed. At the same time he shrugged his shoulders in an aw-shucks gesture that made his father laugh. Todd opened his eyes again and looked at the paper.

  4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS, the he
adline read. Beneath were pictures of them in their uniforms—the catcher and left-fielder from Fairview High, the harp southpaw from Mountford, and Todd to the far right, grinning openly out at the world from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He read the story and saw that Billy DeLyons had made the second squad. That, at least, was something to feel happy about. DeLyons could claim he was a Methodist until his tongue fell out, if it made him feel good, but he wasn’t fooling Todd. He knew perfectly well what Billy DeLyons was. Maybe he ought to introduce him to Betty Trask, she was another sheeny. He had wondered about that for a long time, and last night he had decided for sure. The Trasks were passing for white. One look at her nose and that olive complexion—her old man’s was even worse—and you knew. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to get it up. It was simple: his cock had known the difference before his brain. Who did they think they were kidding, calling themselves Trask?

  “Congratulations again, son.”

  He looked up and first saw his father’s hand stuck out, then his father’s foolishly grinning face.

  Your buddy Trask is a yid! he heard himself yelling into his father’s face. That’s why I was impotent with his slut of a daughter last night! That’s the reason! Then, on the heels of that, the cold voice that sometimes came at moments like this rose up from deep inside him, shutting off the rising flood of irrationality, as if

  (GET HOLD OF YOURSELF RIGHT NOW)

  behind steel gates.

  He took his father’s hand and shook it. Smiled guilelessly into his father’s proud face. Said: “Jeez, thanks, Dad.”

  They left that page of the newspaper folded back and a note for Monica, which Dick insisted Todd write and sign Your All-Star Son, Todd.

  22

  Ed French, aka “Pucker” French, aka Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man, also aka Rubber Ed French, was in the small and lovely seaside town of San Remo for a guidance counsellors’ convention. It was a waste of time if ever there had been one—all guidance counsellors could ever agree on was not to agree on anything—and he grew bored with the papers, seminars, and discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the second day, he discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives small, lovely, and seaside, the key adjective was probably small. Gorgeous views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn’t have a movie theater or a bowling alley, and Ed hadn’t wanted to go in the place’s only bar—it had a dirt parking lot filled with pickup trucks, and most of the pickups had Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and tailgates. He wasn’t afraid of being picked on, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an evening looking at men in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox.