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Authors: Almost Everything Very Fast Christopher Kloeble

Almost Everything Very Fast (9 page)

BOOK: Almost Everything Very Fast
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His second “Freddie” had the same effect as the first, which is to say, none whatsoever. Tobi circled Fred, ran his hand across his freckled face, scratched his neck. The heat was getting to him. His feet writhed in their loafers as he stepped closer to Fred, clapped one hand to his pursed lips, and let out an ululation—
“U-U-U!”
—waited a moment, then repeated the whole operation:
“U-U-U!”

Albert knew it was time for him to step in, he ought to go over and send Tobi home, clearly, directly, no two ways about it. “Go sleep it off, fella,” something like that, and then, once Tobi had absented himself, Albert would take Fred by the hand, no, in his arms, and say he was sorry for leaving him alone so long and, most important, offer him some sort of reward for all the strain he’d suffered—for example, pancakes with raspberry jam.

And just at that moment, Fred raised his hand to his mouth, and went,
“U-U-U!”
Tobi nodded, his feet formed themselves into an arrow aimed in Fred’s direction, and he replied,
“U-U-U!”
Now they took turns, and Albert closed his eyes and clutched the makeup compact in his pocket. To Albert, Fred’s voice sounded euphoric, like that of a child who’s unexpectedly come across a playmate.

But Tobi’s strained laughter made Albert uneasy; he thought better of his impulse to rush over, for the time being. He was no match for Tobi.

Tobi slapped Fred in the face. Which didn’t immediately stop the
U-U-U
s. They merely slowed for a moment, then took up their previous tempo again, a few halftones higher, clearly in hopes that this new friend had intended something other than the obvious by the gesture—a nice pat on the cheek, maybe.
“U-U-U,”
went Fred, and Tobi’s feet pointed at him again, and then came the second slap, right to the middle of Fred’s face, and he fell silent. The Tyrolean hat sailed off his head. Fred’s lips trembled, he mumbled something Albert couldn’t make out, but which he supposed was an apology, because this last one had been, unmistakably, a slap, and anyone who gets hit in the face has clearly done something wrong, has been bad. Fred let his hands, his head, his shoulders sink, his whole body melt, and Tobi, whose feet were now merrily dancing, moving closer to each other with every step, slapped him again, this time with his left hand—pasted him so powerfully that Fred lurched sideways.

Ludwigstrasse was an unfrequented strip of tar in an isolated backwater. Where were the cars when you needed them? Albert was hoping Fred would resist, but he was also a little frightened of what would happen if he did. More than a little. Again he peeped around the corner of the Dumpster, and this time saw that Tobi, who had just swung for the fourth time, was waving his arm in the air like a schoolboy keen to give an answer. Tobi was looking straight at Albert. Just then Fred took a step toward Tobi, and stopped. The tip of Fred’s nose was nearly grazing the truck driver’s cheek, there was something almost conspiratorial about the way the two were standing. Fred whispered something that caused Tobi to lower his hand again. His feet had stopped moving. Relieved, Albert drew a deep breath, forced himself to let go of the makeup compact, and hoped Tobi would finally retreat.

“That’s your dad,” said Tobi to Albert, soberly.

To Albert, that
dad
sounded like
dead.

“That’s your dad,” Tobi repeated, “isn’t he?” Fred was half-hidden behind Tobi, whose loafers were pointing at Albert now.

Fred glanced back and forth at the two men, as if following the ball at a tennis match.

Though he didn’t need to clear his throat, Albert did so anyway. “Get lost,” he said. His injured hand throbbed in his pocket.

“It doesn’t hurt at all,” Fred said, and clutched his nose, which was dripping blood. He rubbed the red between his thumb and index finger, then displayed the hand, saying, “Look!”

Albert wanted to go to him.

Tobi stood in the way. “How long have you been squatting there?”

Albert could feel Fred’s gaze on him, and turned to Tobi: “Can we talk?”

Tobi’s feet were perking up again. “So why didn’t you do anything? I mean, he’s your dad. Hey, Freddie, this wonderful Albert of yours didn’t do a thing.” One of Tobi’s feet was pointed at Albert, the other at Fred. “He must not care, Freddie. Guess you don’t matter to him.”

“Of course I matter to Albert,” said Fred sorely, and that disturbed Albert, because he should have said so himself.

“You think so?”

“Come on.” Albert extended his hand to Fred. “Let’s go.”

Fred, whose blood was now running freely over his upper lip, didn’t move.

Albert didn’t know what to say.

“Albert?” Fred’s nose was gushing.

But now a midnight-blue tractor had appeared on the road, and was bearing down on the trio at a good clip. Its approach shook Albert from his stupor. At once he was wide awake. As they stepped aside to let the tractor pass, he moved closer to Tobi, waited for the cover of the engine’s noise, and then, once they were completely enveloped by it, spoke quickly but clearly and unmistakably, because he had only a couple of seconds. Fred, he said, was terminally ill, had no more than three months left, and if he, Tobias Gruber, the milk truck driver, wanted to be answerable for the premature death of Albert’s severely disabled father, then he should simply carry on as before.

As he pronounced his last syllables, the tractor passed with a boy hugging the steering wheel, dragging behind it a wind as hot as the foehn, and the roar of the engine and crunching of gravel subsided.

At a mute command, Tobi’s feet turned, and he walked away with the double-time pace of someone less than eager to display how much he wants to run.

“There’s a lot of blood,” said Fred, making a cup of his hand and holding it beneath his chin, without managing to catch even one drop.

“Lie down. On the grass.” Albert gave him a handkerchief. “Hold it under your nose.”

“Thank you, Albert.”

“No. Thank
you.

“Why?”

“Don’t you know why he ran away?”

“Because he was afraid of you.”

Albert moistened his shirtsleeve with saliva and began to wipe Fred’s face. The fabric went pale pink. “No, of you.”

“Of me?”

Albert nodded.

Fred smiled. “I am a hero after all.” He coughed, flinching a bit, spitting blood. Fred’s right eye was slightly swollen, his skin waxy.

“You have to lie down,” said Albert.

“I’m already lying down.”

“At home.”

Fred sat up again. “We have to go down into the pipes, Albert!” Fred was looking at him seriously. “I want to do it today!”

Albert knew it was a dumb idea, but how could he turn down a request from someone who had only three months to live? “All right. But you have to tell me if you aren’t feeling well. And if I want us to turn around, then we’re turning around.”

“Okay,” groaned Fred.

Albert set Fred’s Tyrolean hat back in place. “What did you say to him?”

“What did I say to him?”

“When Tobi hit you, you said something to him.”

They stood up, gathered the tote bag and backpack.

Fred buttoned his poncho up to his chin. “I told him that he had feet like Thumper.”

“Who?”

“Thumper, from
Bambi.

“You mean the rabbit? Who does this the whole time?” Albert stamped his foot a few times as fast as he could.

“Just like that!”

Albert laughed.

“Was that wrong?” Fred asked.

“No, Fred, it was right on the mark.” Albert adjusted his hat. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“That’s right,” said Fred, without making any effort not to sound reproachful.

“Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes,” said Albert, reaching for the crowbar, “sometimes I ask myself who you really are.”

Fred shrugged in an entirely Fredish way. “Me.”

“You don’t say,” said Albert, slipping the bar beneath the manhole cover, and wrenching it out of its slot.

A minute later, they were both beneath the street.

Damn It All

They stood at the foot of the metal ladder, and Fred looked bewildered. Albert knew this was no cause for alarm. This expression, mouth hanging open as if in disbelief beneath reddened eyes, simply meant that Fred was thinking. And thinking, as Albert very much hoped, about which direction they should take. Thin columns of light fell through the holes in the manhole cover above them. To Albert’s surprise, the sewer pipe had a rectangular shape. The humid air down there was difficult to breathe, a sort of oxygen porridge, and the story its stink told was highly unappetizing. Gleaming, glutinous water dripped and rippled down the walls, whose slick surfaces called to mind a reptilian skin. It emerged, this water, in a thin trickle out of the darkness behind them, vanishing again into the darkness before them.

“Well?” The reverb repeated Albert’s question, imitating the acoustics of the rambling corridors at Saint Helena.

Fred pulled a flashlight from his backpack and flipped it on. “There.”

They proceeded at a slog, because Fred was forever shining the flashlight up and down, back and forth, but scarcely ever in front of their feet.

“I think Tobi and his wife need to have a child,” said Fred.

“Sure. He’d be a model father,” Albert said.

“Klondi told me Tobi and his wife can’t make a child.”

“Since when do you talk with Klondi?”

“I talk with Gertrude, too.”

“Klondi told you the guy can’t have children?”

Fred paused. “Albert, do you think I can have children someday?”


You
want to have children?”

“Yes.”

“Real children?”

All of a sudden, from out of the blackness ahead of them, a menacing roar was approaching, shaking droplets of water from the ceiling, making the sewer pipe quake. Albert pushed Fred aside, grabbed the flashlight, and aimed its beam into the dark. Then the noise was upon them. And then, just as quickly, behind them.

“A car,” said Fred. “Sounded green.”

Albert tugged at his ear. “Let’s keep going.” He held on to the flashlight, and for a while they proceeded at a steady splish-splash pace, whose echoes swelled and redoubled, like the massed footfalls of a tour group. Albert tried to breathe only through his mouth, and followed Fred without complaint.

He hoped in vain for a “Here!” or a “Finally!” from Fred whenever they hit a fork or junction. Why the hell did a little town in the alpine uplands have such an extensive network of sewer tunnels, anyway? He couldn’t get used to that unsettling rumble of cars above them, any more than the irregular gurgling in the distance, the sound of fresh deliveries of that substance the word
sewer
always immediately calls to mind.

“Do you come down here often?” asked Albert.

“Yes.”

“And what do you do?”

Fred snatched the flashlight away, and shot Albert a look as if he’d already explained it thousands of times: “I look for my dad.”

“You know, he might not be down here,” Albert ventured.

Fred blinded him with the light. “He
is
here.”

Above them something ponderous set itself in motion, slowed down, then rolled on again. Albert thought, for some reason, of a wheel from the Stone Age.

“How do you know?”

Fred let the flashlight sink, and looked him in the eye. “Because the gold is his.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“So we’re going to see him? Right now?”

“Almost exactly.”

“What does that mean? Yes or no?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Damn it all—”

Albert’s foot hit something slick, and slid: the sewer tunnel spun counterclockwise, and he crashed down on his back. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze fell first on a bundle of tightly bound cables on the tunnel’s ceiling. Königsdorf’s veins, he thought. Fred sat beside him, supporting his head.

“Are you weak?”

“No.”

Fred raised his eyebrows, and Albert had to smile: “Okay, maybe a little.”

The sweat stains beneath the arms of his shirt had merged with those on his back and at his throat. The dull ache in his shoulders heralded soreness, though the tote bag weighed only a fraction of what Fred’s backpack weighed. Only a single drop of sweat pearled on Fred’s cheek, then vanished into his beard. He’d managed to last for sixty years; now there were only three months left, and he was still overbearingly fit.

“Rest a minute,” he said, almost fatherly. “I’ll look for the way.”

“Wait!”

“Don’t worry, Albert.” Fred smiled confidently. “I’m a hero after all.”

Before Albert could contradict him, Fred was off.

Righter

A banana peel lay beside Albert in a pool of stagnant water, to one side of the sewer pipe. Albert sat on Fred’s backpack, smoking while he waited. This was par for the course. Whether it was the next trip to Königsdorf, some sign of life from his mother, his graduation exams, Fred, or death, Albert was always waiting for something.

Sister Alfonsa called it “living in the future tense.” Fred, for his part, put it like this: “Albert, you always want something to start, and once something has started, you always want it to end.” And Violet, the only girl Albert had ever dated, had once claimed he was waiting because it was the “right thing.” Albert found this implausible. The underlying message of the numerous films that Violet recommended to him, and that he downloaded on the sly in the computer lab at Saint Helena, was simply: do something because it’s the “right thing” to do. Which Albert didn’t get. Naturally, nobody would do something because it was “wrong.” And even if you came to terms with the fact that many things were righter than others, what was the point? What was the point in searching for his past yet again? To bring Fred back home, or simply to remain squatting here, to throw away Fred’s medication, or mix it into the salad—what difference did it make? Ultimately, thought Albert, knocking his ash into the sluggish stream of water and watching it drift away into the darkness, ultimately, it all came to the same thing: Fred would die, and it didn’t matter if he ever grasped who Albert was, and what Albert himself might be to Fred, Fred would die whether or not Albert called him
Papaaa
, three more months and it would all be over, and it would be foolish to give any credence to the feel-good justification that Albert had done the “right thing” just because he’d set out with Fred on this wannabe odyssey.

BOOK: Almost Everything Very Fast
13.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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