Fingers

by William Sleator

  “Ah!” He nodded merrily. “I understand. Whoo. AM. I.” He pointed at his chest and lifted his bushy eyebrows. He did have hands, after all. But he was so shrunken with age that they barely emerged from the sleeves of the threadbare black coat he wore, which was nipped in at the waist in turn of the century style. Underneath it he had on a heavy dull green workshirt. Stained brownish trousers bagged around his ankles and hung loose at his waist, supported by a pair of black suspenders. Matted white hair brushed against his shoulders as he continued to nod at me. “Yessss. Who. AM. I,” he repeated playfully. “You will be interest to know.”

  “I don’t have time for games now,” I said, made aggressive by fear. “My brother—and you know who he is—is lost He will be hurt. I must find him.” As I passed him on the way to the door, I noticed a familiar medicinal smell. I had the horrible sensation that I was letting the solution to everything slip through my fingers, yet how could I stop to interrogate him now? “Please, could you just wait here?” I said, turning back to him from the door. “There is so much I have to find out, but I just can’t right now. Wait here, please.”

  “No! Stop! Wait!” He held up his trembling clawlike hand and waved frantically at me. “You listen, pliz.”

  “But I just can’t!” I turned to go.

  “But you brother. He is … I got,” I heard him croak behind me. “I got brother. You see? I got.”

  “What?” I spun back into the room and grabbed his bony shoulders. “What do you mean, you got? Do you know where he is?”

  “Yeh, yeh, sure.” From this close I could see the crusty skull beneath his thin hair, and I perceived that he was not nodding, but that his head was merely quivering with palsy. And yet there was an alertness in his gray and yellow eyes that belied the outward appearances of senility. “I got brother, sure. He so … how you say? … So, tired, so tired. Yeh. He sleep now.”

  “But where?” I seemed to be shaking him. Did he really know what he was talking about? Could I take the risk of believing him? “How is he? Is he all right? Where did you leave him?”

  “Stop it! You hurting me.” He twitched his shoulders away from my hands, and his chin jutted out petulantly above the wattles on his neck. “Must be … sweet, or you break me. I helping. Is not sweet break me.” He was having some difficulty breathing. I must have been shaking him harder than I realized.

  “Oh, all right, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I whined at him like a fretful child. The situation had the stubborn unreality of a nightmare. I could find no firm footing, no basis for the safety of rationality. “I’m confused, I don’t know what …” Now my hands were shaking too. “Is Humphrey all right? Can you take me to him?”

  “Take you? Well, but of course it is, yes.” Good humored once more, he bowed at me, a gracious, formal gesture. “Of course I take. If you give me answers. Why you think I come? I got plenty questions ask.”

  I’ll bet you do, I thought, “Well, come on then, let’s go,” I said, more impatient than ever now. For it had struck me that at any moment Bridget or Luc might come back. I was in no mood to be locked up again. Later on, I would decide how much to tell the old man.

  I raced ahead of him down the hall and pounded on the elevator button. I continued pounding it pointlessly as the obtuse contraption paused for a leisurely sojourn on every floor—it was the only elevator in the hotel and usually crowded. Not until it was on its way from nine to ten did it occur to me that Bridget or Luc might be on it. As the doors shuddered and began to open, I pressed myself back against the wall. The old man looked at me curiously. “We go, yeh?” he said. No one emerged, so I pushed him gently ahead of me and stepped inside.

  There were five other people in the elevator, which was still on its way up. I discourteously pushed the lobby button, but the obstinate machine clung to its original course and creaked up to the twelfth floor. People got on and off. When we returned to the tenth floor, I hid behind them, in the unlikely event that Bridget or Luc had gone up the stairs and found the room empty. No one got on. Then the old man began to hum, and I forgot all about them.

  I listened carefully. It was “Yeller Gal,” there was no doubt about it. “What are you humming?” I asked him softy, so the others wouldn’t hear, as we stopped on three.

  He put his hand up to his ear. “Yeh? What you say?”

  “That music that you are humming,” I said more distinctly. “What is it?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Ah, but who know? I … how you say, hum? Hummmm?” He laughed. “I hummmmm many music. You know this music I am hummmm?” He laughed again. The word amused him.

  We were heading toward two now. “Yes, I do know,” I said. “It was one of Humphrey’s new Magyar pieces. The first one he played.”

  But he didn’t understand, and I had to repeat myself. He still didn’t understand. Finally I had to hum it, directly into his ear. The elevator was so packed with people now that no one paid much attention to us.

  We had almost reached the lobby. “Oh, that one!” he said. “Yeh, sure I know well.” He tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips. “Is sweet, yeh? Is a sweet one. Nice to hummmm.”

  “But how did you know …” I began. The doors opened. In the rude push to get out I didn’t have a chance to finish the question. Since the impatient people outside in the lobby didn’t have the decency to wait until the elevator was empty, quite a seething melee ensued as the two groups met at the threshold. Several people had wedged in between me and the old man, so I kept my eyes on him instead of my immediate vicinity as we inched forward. Then some obnoxious person getting on actually had the gall to elbow me hard in the ribs. I turned aside to see who it was and make a nasty remark.

  Bridget and I recognized each other at the same moment

  “Sam!” she cried shrilly. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  I flinched, feeling her power. “With … with him,” I said, pointing at the little old man.

  “Who the hell is he?” she demanded, taking a good look at him. Then she grabbed me. “Get in here!” The crowd kept moving, pushing us back into the elevator.

  I almost gave in. If I had been running away on my own, her command might well have drawn me back. But for once I wasn’t thinking of myself. Helping Humphrey was all that mattered. And Bridget didn’t want to help him; she wanted to make sure he didn’t miss his concert tomorrow. I had to get to him first—and the determination to do so gave me the strength to resist her.

  I didn’t even have to think. With both hands I shoved Bridget as hard as I could into the elevator. She staggered backwards, ricocheted against the back wall and started toward me. But the people on either side of me surged forward then and hemmed her in. I squeezed violently through them in the opposite direction, flailing my elbows, kicking out with my feet. In a moment the bottleneck was behind me.

  The old man had been watching. “But where she go?” he asked plaintively. “She no want come? We wait, yeh?”

  “No”! I grabbed his elbow and started for the main entrance. “We have to get away before she gets out of there.”

  “But … I no understand.” I was going more slowly than I wanted, but it was nevertheless a struggle for him to keep up with me. I continued to pull him relentlessly across the lobby. ‘Stop! I can no keep! We wait, I am give dicatate!”

  “No!” I glanced back quickly. The elevator doors were just beginning to move together at last I could see a struggle going on toward the back of the car, several people seemed to have fallen down and there were yelps of outrage, but the front line held and the doors slid shut before anyone spilled out It would be a while now before Bridget could battle her way out of there. I slowed down just a bit.

  The old man was gasping for breath now. “Stop! I give dicatate!” he pleaded.

  I pushed open the hotel door and dragged him past the lighted entrance and down the block to a shadowy alley. There I allowed him to lean against the wall and painfully catch his breath. It
was several minutes before he was able to speak.

  “Is trouble?” he said at last

  “You noticed,” I said. I was feeling a little better now, having escaped Bridget, but I was still impatient to get away from the hotel as fast as possible. “Can you take me to Humphrey now? Which way?”

  He pushed himself feebly away from the wall. “Well. Is direction,” he said, starting back toward the hotel entrance.

  “No, not that way! We must stay hidden, so they won’t see us. We must go another way.”

  It took a few more tries before I got the idea across to him. Then he shook his head irritably and muttered something, but he did start off down the alley. After a few steps we both looked at each other and started to speak at the same time.

  “Why Humpy is running?” he said.

  “How did you get those keys?” I said.

  “Pardon.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Why—”

  “How—”

  He stopped for a moment to chuckle. I glanced back down the alley, but so far no one was pursuing us. I still wasn’t sure I really believed that the old man knew where Humphrey was. Still, now that I had had a chance to think about it, I couldn’t see any reason not to go with him. My only alternative was to wander around aimlessly by myself, a pretty hopeless plan considering the size of Vienna. This path was as good as any random one I might take, and it had the added advantage that the old man might turn out to have Humphrey after all. Not to mention the fact that I had some questions to ask him.

  “Go on, you first,” I said graciously.

  “Why Humpy is running tonight?” he repeated, starting to walk again.

  “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later,” I said ungraciously. “But first, how did you find him, anyway?”

  “I am waiting for him, of course. I have many questions.

  “You were waiting for him?” We had reached the street at the other end of the alley. His face was visible again in the glow of a streetlight, and I could clearly see his complacent grin as he smugly met my eye. “How could you be waiting for him? You didn’t know he was going to run away.”

  “No, of course.” He shrugged. “But still I wait and hope to see. Very important talk, yeh?” He winked with arch significance, then hobbled off to the left.

  I followed. Now that the escape seemed to be behind us, and I had the opportunity to think, my previous dread of him began trickling back. I sugpressed the impulse to demand how much he knew about us. I wasn’t ready for that yet. “But what did you say to him? What happened?” I still wasn’t sure I should believe him. “How did you get him to go with you?”

  “I am in lobby waiting. I see him go vivace out of … how you say? … Ah, yeh, out of lift. He is too much speed for see me or listen to me or make stop. So …” He giggled. “So I go put myself direct in front and is collision, molto collision, and we both then on foor.”

  I was impressed by the physical recklessness of the old guy, casting himself in Humphrey’s path like a toreador confronting a colossal bull. “But what did you do then?” I asked him. “How did you keep Humphrey from just getting up again and running away?”

  “Ah, yeh, yeh. I see he not listen the courtesy, the ‘Pliz to wait.’ So right quick, pronto, I tell him whoo I am.”

  “Tell him what?” I demanded, feeling a delicate movement in the hairs on the back of my neck. I glanced over my shoulder again. The lone streetlight was far behind us now, the silent stone houses obscured by thick shadows. The street was absolutely deserted. I couldn’t even see a lighted window.

  “Only I tell him: Whoo. I. Am. Then, he listen, yeh.” He giggled again.

  I could feel prickling now over my entire back and arms. “Well?” I said thickly. “Go on. Who are you?”

  He turned to me with an arrogant toss of his scrawny little head. “I am only child of Laszlo Magyar, of course.”

  Oddly enough, my initial response to this revelation was a perverse disappointment. What kind of bizarre fantasy had I been expecting—Magyar’s ghost, if not the somehow miraculously preserved composer himself? Consciously, of course not. Yet this wretchedly frail and shabby descendant, in comparison to the romantic terrors inspired by the Magyar book, struck me as something of a letdown. A lot I knew.

  “Oh … that’s amazing,” I said, rather numbly. “Um, congratulations.”

  I didn’t sound very impressed, but that didn’t faze him a bit. “Yes, only child.” He couldn’t suppress a gentle cackle as he stared up at me. “Make Humpy think, I bet, yeh? Even if he no read book I write about father, he still look then, pay heed; he listen. I say I have plenty thing ask, tell, show. Want know about music he write. He come like babe, after. He come to home.” Then he frowned. “But I no understand, he so tired, so funny, almost not walk, not can answer. He go sleep. So I come back.” He grinned at me again. “You understand how I feel? I decide spill, ask. I need do it right away, subito. If not Humpy, then I go back, get other one spill … how you say? … Beans! I spill you beans.”

  “Wait a minute. You wrote the Magyar book?”

  “Yeh, sure, why not?” There was pride in the tilt of his shoulders as he hobbled along beside me. “I like very much, book.”

  “So did I.”

  “What? You read?” he demanded eagerly, scrabbling at my sleeve.

  “Of course I did. What do you expect?” I was finally beginning to react. All at once an army of vital questions began battling in my mind, as messily as the people pushing their way into the elevator. Chief among them: Did he know about the hoax? Did he possess information that could expose us? How did he personally feel, poor as he so obviously was, about the way we were making use of his father’s name to rake in the cash? What was his opinion of the drivel we were passing off as his father’s music? What were the beans he wanted to spill? Was he insane? What did he want to do with us? What could he do?

  There was also the question of Humphrey. How much damage had I done to him? What was his state of mind when they left the hotel? And how much had he told the old man before succumbing to the drug?

  Those were the really heavy ones, and I was trying to ready myself to deal with them. But there was still something that had to be swept out of the way first.

  “The book was great,” I said quite honestly. He beamed. “I have so many things to ask you,” I went on. “But first, there’s something I don’t understand.”

  “Yeh. Tell pliz.” He turned again, into a narrow unlit alley that curved to the right and descended steeply. I could not see where it led. He seemed quite familiar with the place, automatically stepping around the potholes in the slippery paving stones.

  “Well, uh, first of all,” I said, forced to pick my way carefully as I tried to think, “Um … oh, yes! How come it was you who came to let me out of the room? Where did you get your hands on those keys?”

  He shrugged. “Only that? Is nothing. I am wait in lobby. Then Fritz give me sign. Tell me—”

  “Hold on. Who’s Fritz?”

  “Ah, little Fritz! I know from baby. He student, I give piano teaching for many year. Is hopeless. No music inside.” He pushed his finger in his scaly ear and grimaced. “So brutal he play! But sweet boy. Now big man at hotel, big importance behind big desk. I come sometimes and see. He give me sign and tell me is … How you say? … Is some … Oh, yes! Some screwball lock self in room. All boys busy. Tell me go unlet from room screwball. I want say no, if go unlet screwball, maybe lose person I wait for to spill beans. Then I think to ask name of person stay in room. I am in fortune! Is room of family to spill beans. So I go. No big deal. Is nothing.”

  “Yeah, but if you knew what a nightmare it was to see you there, you wouldn’t say it was nothing.”

  “What you say? I no understand this word.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Uh, listen …” I began to be aware of a foul-smelling mist, slimy against my face. It reminded me of the stinking Venetian canals. Before I had a chance to stop it, one of
the questions I had been putting off until later popped out of my mouth. “That was you in Venice, wasn’t it? Bridget said it couldn’t be. But were you there, outside the stage door after Humphrey’s concert?”

  But he was too busy searching through his pockets to answer. We turned out of the alley, and I almost walked into the river, so narrow was the embankment. The water was hidden by mist, but I could feel the waves lapping thinly at the soles of my shoes, making limp sucking noises against the stone. “Home sweet home,” my companion crooned, fumbling at an old wooden door, its threshold only inches above the level of the water.

  “You live here?” I stepped back to get a better look at the house, and my foot was drenched. All I could tell from so close was that the building was incredibly narrow, only about ten feet wide, and four stories tall. On one side was the alley, and on the other, separated by a space of one foot, loomed a massive and featureless brick edifice that was probably a warehouse.

  “Sure I live here. Why not?” The old man grunted as he pushed the door open. “Is good fortune, have own house. Pliz to enter, yeh?” He bowed and gestured me in ahead of him. I took a tentative step into cold and complete darkness. It was like walking with my eyes closed. I stopped stupidly just inside the door. The old man had to push me out of the way in order to get past.

  I could hear him shuffling across the floor, bumping into things. “Is light, in moment,” he muttered. I waited where I was. Seeing nothing, I became more aware than usual of odors. There was a general moldy basement smell, and above that I detected rancid grease and onions and garbage and dust, and a pervasive reek of animal urine. I was also aware of a distant whiff of that curious medicinal redolence that always hovered around the old man himself. “You were in Venice,” I said suddenly. “That smell was in the train compartment. You must have put the book there yourself.”

  The light came on, a single dim bulb of about fifteen watts hanging from the center of the ceiling. “You see? Is modern, is convenience,” he said, rubbing his hands.