Duel (42 page)

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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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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 and 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.
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.”
“What kind o' things, Fred?” asked Lou.
“Oh … history. Different … languages. Things about … books and painting and … and atoms and—chemicals.” His shrug was jerky and obvious. “Things like that.”
“Don't get ya, buddy,” Harry said, having given up any hopes that a joke was forthcoming.
“You mean he knows things he never learned?” Lou asked. “That it?”
There was something in both their voices—a doubting incredulity, a holding back, as if they feared to commit themselves, a suspicious reticence.
Fred sloughed it off. “I was just supposing. Forget it. It's not worth talking about.”
He had only one beer that night, leaving early with the excuse that he had to clean the Mathematics office. And, all through the silent minutes that he swept and mopped and dusted, he kept trying to figure out what was happening to him.
He walked home in the chill of night to find Eva waiting for him in the kitchen.
“Coffee, Fred?” she offered.
“I'd like that,” he said, nodding. She started to get up. “No,
s'accomadi, la prego
,” he blurted.
She looked at him, grim-faced.
“I mean,” he translated, “sit down, Eva. I can get it.”
They sat there drinking coffee while he told her about his experiences.
“It's more than I can figure, Eva,” he said. “It's … scary, in a way. I know so many things I never knew. I have no idea where they come from. Not the least idea.” His lips pressed together. “But I
know
them,” he said, “I certainly know them.”

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