My October

by Claire Holden Rothman

  Vlad buzzed him in, and seconds later they were grinning at each other in his front hall. For some reason, the lights were off. “Were you sleeping?” Hugo asked in English, squinting, but still unable to see.

  Vlad shook his head and wiggled his thumbs, miming a game controller. Then he reached an arm behind Hugo and turned on a light. “Whoa,” he said, noticing Hugo’s pants. “You’re back in?”

  Hugo reddened. He’d forgotten he was wearing his uniform.

  “As of today,” he said, looking at the floor, embarrassed, because Vlad hadn’t found a place yet that would take him.

  Vlad scratched his head, shaved commando-style like Hugo’s. His eyes were like a cat’s, half shut and sleepy even when he was alert. He motioned Hugo to drop his bag, and they went into the living room, where Grand Theft Auto was on Pause on an enormous flat plasma screen.

  “Take a seat,” said Vlad, grinning again and offering Hugo a controller before sitting down in an armchair whose shabbiness contrasted starkly with the sleek technological wonder in the centre of the room.

  Hugo sat on the sofa, which was as ancient as Vlad’s chair. He kept his jacket on, preferring to keep his school shirt covered. Not that Vlad seemed to mind anymore. His cat eyes didn’t waver from the screen.

  “Choose your weapon.” His voice sounded totally normal, no innuendo or even a hint of irony, but Hugo still felt the sting of it, remembering the last time he’d been here.

  It seemed like eons ago, although it had hardly been a month. The weather had been warm and humid, the air sour with smog. Vlad had brought him into his father’s den, the innermost sanctum of this palace of forbidden pleasures, and given him his first glimpse of the real thing.

  Mr. Petrofsky had been in the Russian army. He was a marksman, but now he only shot for sport. Vlad said he’d once clipped a cigarette out of someone’s mouth on a dare. And if you tossed a penny in the air, he could hit it easy at a distance of twenty-five metres.

  His guns were locked away in a cabinet, but Vlad knew the location of the key. His father didn’t mind if he took them out.

  He’d taught Vlad how to handle guns and how to shoot. On his days off, they went to the shooting range.

  “So?” Vlad said impatiently, eyes still on the screen. “What’s it going to be?”

  Hugo clicked his cursor on a bazooka.

  Vlad laughed. “Blast the hell out of ’em, eh, Stern?”

  Hugo nodded. Stern was his screen name, although Vlad knew it meant more than that. Vlad had taken to using it even when they weren’t playing.

  The cabinet had contained a dozen pistols laid out carefully on a series of trays. On the lowest tray, a gun with a particularly elegant thin black barrel caught Hugo’s eye.

  “That old thing?” Vlad had said when Hugo asked about it. “It’s a Luger.”

  Hugo had gotten down on his knees for a better look. He knew the word. He’d heard it first in grade six, and he’d looked it up in the encyclopedia. He never imagined he’d see a real one.

  “Pick it up,” Vlad said, laughing at his fascination. “Go on. Don’t be scared.”

  The grip had fit him perfectly, neither too wide nor too narrow, and the weight was just right. He stood up and held it out, excited, barely breathing, taking aim and pretending to fire.

  “My grandfather had one of these.”

  “The one who defends criminals?” asked Vlad, interested.

  “No,” Hugo had said. “The other one.”

  The frame on the screen changed, and suddenly they were in Los Angeles: bungalows, palm trees, a perfect cloudless sky that looked like a movie backdrop. The game began. Vlad’s body was so still he could have been sleeping. Only his thumbs moved, jerking periodically in the cool blue light of the screen.

  Hugo blasted at everything that moved. His heart was hammering. He regretted the bazooka, which kept bashing holes in the sides of buildings but couldn’t seem to hit a target. Within minutes, he lay dead and bleeding in the dirt.

  Vlad smirked. “You gotta chill, Stern.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled joint. He looked meaningfully at Hugo, nodding at the balcony door.

  Hugo hesitated only a second. Hannah could always tell when he smoked, even if he took a single hit. It was bizarre. As if she had some sixth sense. He gritted his teeth, telling himself he didn’t care.

  They were five storeys above Fort Street. The first stars had just come out. Sounds of evening traffic were drifting up from de Maisonneuve Boulevard and Sainte-Catherine Street. There was only one chair, a chaise longue with a filthy, torn cushion. Vlad threw the cushion on the floor and they sat down on it, side by side. He lit a match, cupped it, and held the flame under the joint. The tip flared and turned a hypnotizing orange as he sucked in the first smoke. He looked at Hugo and held the joint out solemnly. Hugo took it.

  Above them, stars blinked. The balcony floor vibrated with the passing cars. Hugo may have fallen asleep, although there wasn’t always much difference between stoned and asleep. He forgot where he was. Forgot that Vlad was beside him.

  When he next became conscious, the sky was black. Only gradually did he make out the shapes of clouds swirling and mutating above him, the pricks of starlight shining through. Vlad wasn’t beside him anymore. He got to his feet, shivering, and crept back into the apartment. Vlad seemed to have vanished. He tried to check the time, but his cell phone had died. He grabbed his schoolbag and left, hoping not to meet Vlad’s marksman dad, who might mistake him for a thief.

  Down on the street, rush hour had ended. At the Guy-Concordia metro station, he went straight to a pay phone and lifted the receiver. The digital display said 20:05. His mother would be frantic with worry.

  For the two stops to Lionel-Groulx station, he rode the train standing right by the doors. The minute they slid open, he jumped out, ran along the empty platform, and up the first flight of stairs. After that, he got on the escalator, dropping his knapsack at his feet. He was shaky with hunger, although what he craved most at that moment was a glass of water.

  Two figures came into view above him on the descending escalator. The station was empty now, and Hugo watched them idly, two stick figures, black outlines at the top of his visual field. But there was something about the posture of one of them that caught his eye. It was a man. A big man. And he was leaning over the woman beside him, almost engulfing her while he spoke. Hugo could hear him now, his words and laughter ricocheting off the walls in the long, deep stairwell.

  He knew that voice. He knew the way the man leaned. He had seen him leaning the same way a thousand times. Only every other time, the woman he was leaning over had been Hugo’s mother.

  Hugo half turned. It wasn’t that far to the bottom of the escalator. He could scramble back down, but he’d have to do it right now, no hesitation. Below him, stairs kept appearing, one after the other, like waves on a beach. Watching them made him dizzy. As each new one appeared, he rose higher, a step nearer to his dad. He glanced up again. His father and the woman were descending fast. It was already too late. He couldn’t turn and start running down the escalator now, could he? He cursed his half-stoned brain, which seemed to be processing in slow motion. If he did make a run for it, where could he go? There was no place to hide in a metro.

  He turned and faced them. His father hadn’t noticed him yet. He was caught up in saying something to the woman— something he clearly thought was witty. They were close enough now that Hugo could see how young the woman was. Her coat, tightly belted, was the colour of a stop sign. Who was she, and what was she doing with his dad, who was practically groping her on the escalator in the Lionel-Groulx metro station? He shrank into himself.

  They were level with him now, so close he could have reached across the shiny metal divide and touched their sleeves. His father finally looked up, and for a second they stared at each other, eyes locking.

  There was a cry of surprise. After they passed each other, his father called o
ut his name. Loud, false-friendly, but Hugo ignored it. He felt like he might throw up, except there was nothing in his stomach. He swung the knapsack onto his shoulder, bashing his ribs with the sharp corner of Vien’s book, and hurried upward. The mechanical stairs vanished into a crack at his feet, and an instant later he was pushing the heavy glass door at the exit, fighting his way through a deafening wind into the cold, disorienting night.

  12

  Hannah had prepared a stroganoff. Hugo’s favourite, her way of showing that she cared. She knew he must have had a difficult day. Everyone at school would have heard by now. And he would probably be tarred by the suspension—set apart. Kids had a sixth sense for things like that. There would be lots of catching up to do, not just in his school work.

  In the cast-iron frying pan her mother had given her twenty years ago, the little strips of beef were shrivelled and grey. The mushrooms had turned grey too, and the noodles she’d boiled two hours ago were a gluey ball.

  She removed the telephone from its stand on the kitchen counter and dialled. Five rings, followed by a generic message. “L’abonné que vous désirez rejoindre n’est pas disponible actuellement.” The taped voice told her to hang up.

  She slammed the receiver down. The table was set for two. She’d picked marigolds from the garden, the last of the season, to add colour. She didn’t even like red meat. She was reaching for the phone again when it rang.

  “Hugo?” she said, bringing it to her face so fast she banged a cheekbone.

  There was a pause and a man’s voice answered. Unfamiliar, in English. “No. Sorry. Is this Hannah? Hannah Stern?”

  “Lévesque,” she said quickly. The voice was low and extremely nasal.

  “Yes. Lévesque. Of course. I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It’s Manny … Manny Mandelbaum?”

  “Oh!” she said, relieved. He didn’t sound anything like the guy in the lumberjack shirt from yesterday. “Your voice is lower than when we met.”

  He laughed. “I woke up with a cold. It’s made a man of me.”

  She frowned, feeling guilty about their encounter, the stress they’d obviously inflicted. She was formulating an apology when he pre-empted her.

  “I’m a Stern too, you see. Well, not me, actually, but my mother. Stern was her maiden name.”

  What was he going on about? How did he even know her former name?

  “She was from Vienna.”

  Static crackled faintly in Hannah’s ear. “My father too.”

  “Thought so,” the nasal voice continued affably. “I figured it was either that or Berlin. You never know. We could be cousins.”

  Kissing cousins, thought Hannah, and then she blushed. “I don’t think so,” she said quickly. She shifted the phone from her sore cheek.

  “Same name,” observed Mandelbaum. “Same city of origin. It’s possible.”

  Possible maybe, but not very likely. “My father was the only one in his family to leave Austria,” she explained. “Summer of thirty-nine, just before the borders closed.”

  It had been after the Anschluss. After the Austrian government had capitulated, after German troops had poured over the border into the capital, home of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and, for several generations, home also of her father’s family of prosperous, assimilated Jewish merchants and scholars. Alfred Stern had told this story the year her brother turned thirteen. Nineteen sixty-eight. Hannah had been ten.

  The Sterns had refused to believe what was happening. By the time they opened their eyes, it was too late for everyone but Alfred. On July 25, 1939, barely a month before war was declared, he found himself on a Kindertransport bound for England.

  Alfred, who almost never spoke German, had used that term. Kindertransport. As though what he had endured was so singular it could not be expressed in any other language.

  Static buzzed again in Hannah’s ear.

  “I just got your message,” Mandelbaum said. “I didn’t make it in to the office today. Figured I ought to stay home.”

  His voice really did sound scratchy. Hannah pictured the talking stick passing from hand to hand. They’d probably all catch it now.

  “You need an assessment, is that it?” Mandelbaum continued.

  Hannah had to make an effort to marshal her thoughts and recall what Manny Mandelbaum was talking about. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. The school telephoned this morning requesting it. Hugo’s back in class, but with conditions. They told me there’s a test you can administer.”

  The scratchy voice did not answer her directly. “Did they actually use the term psychopathology?”

  “Yes,” said Hannah, collapsing into her chair and staring at the marigolds she’d cut from Lyse’s garden. The blooms were a little bedraggled, but their smell was still pungent and earthy. An orange ladybug was crouching, camouflaged, on the biggest one. “In French, of course. Psychopathologie.”

  “Well,” said Mandelbaum. “I can’t assess for that, per se. We use another term these days. Anti-social personality disorder. There’s a checklist of symptoms put together by the World Health Organization. We could take a look at that, if you wish.”

  Besides being scratchy, Manny Mandelbaum’s voice was calm and reasonable. He could have been offering to clean her carpets rather than investigate whether her only son was a menace to the civilized world.

  “Anti-social personality disorder,” she repeated slowly.

  “It’s an umbrella term describing people who show a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the general rules of society. There are usually signs in childhood and early adolescence.”

  The ladybug was crawling now, trying to hide among the folds of the marigold blossom.

  “What kinds of signs?”

  “Can you hang on for a moment?” Manny asked.

  Hannah heard his chair creak and a muffled sound as he put down the receiver. She watched the ladybug, whose efforts to hide had been futile. It crouched at the flower’s centre, totally exposed.

  “I’m back,” said Manny Mandelbaum, who must have run to a bookshelf. “Here’s the list of symptoms. ‘Callous unconcern for the feelings of others,’” he read. “‘Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms. Low tolerance for frustration. Low threshold for aggression. Inability to feel guilt for one’s actions. Markedly prone to blame others or to rationalize one’s behaviour.’”

  Almost every symptom was familiar.

  “Hannah?” said Mandelbaum after a few seconds of silence. “Look, Hannah, this portrait can sound like any of us on a bad day. Especially any teenager interacting with an authority figure. Psychology is a terrible field, full of arbitrary, limiting labels. Personally, I don’t put much stock in them. They tend to hurt more often than they help.”

  “But he does show callous unconcern for feelings,” said Hannah softly. “And he has been irresponsible. Grossly irresponsible.”

  “Is he there now?” asked Mandelbaum.

  “No.”

  “Good. Because he must never hear you say anything like that. Words have a huge impact, Hannah. That’s the problem with labels like these. We slap them on someone, and suddenly they become solid and real. Promise me you won’t get hung up on any of this. If the school wants it, we can do it. But you have got to get a grip on this. Hugo’s a kid. Things like this can make you think you know who’s in front of you. They can replace the person standing there, you know what I mean? They can shut you down. Close your eyes and ears.”

  “When can we see you?” said Hannah, only half listening.

  “When’s good for you?”

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “If you’re okay. Not too sick, I mean. He has to meet with a supervisor after school as part of his punishment. We could be at your office around five. Is that too late?”

  He said it would be fine. She said goodbye in a regular voice, but when she got off the phone, her hand was trembling. Her son was a complete and utter mystery to her. He had not given the slightes
t hint of what he was thinking or why he’d bought the gun. She had asked him directly. So had his father. More than once. But so far there’d been no answer. Just his opaque and dull-eyed stare.

  Maybe it wasn’t just a phase. Maybe something was deeply and dangerously wrong with him. Hannah grabbed the rag hanging over the kitchen sink and began scrubbing the countertops. Frantically. There seemed to be spots everywhere. How had she not noticed them when she was cooking? A grease stain here, black smears there where she had sliced the mushroom caps.

  Hannah’s hand slowed. On the counter was the book Manny Mandelbaum had given her. It had been sitting there all day where she’d deposited it after returning from his office. Nonviolent Communication. She picked it up and opened it.

  The foreword, she saw with surprise, was written by a man called Gandhi. His first name was Arun. The grandson of Mohandas. Hannah skimmed the first paragraph, then leaned against the counter to read more.

  Arun Gandhi had grown up in the 1940s in apartheid South Africa, a profoundly violent time and place, especially for a boy of colour, as he called himself. At the age of thirteen, after being beaten by white youths for being too black, and by black ones for being too white, Arun Gandhi himself had begun to turn violent. His worried parents sent him to India, to the household of his grandfather, who just happened to be the world’s most famous proponent of peace.

  One of the many things he learned from his grandfather, he wrote years later, when he himself had grown old, was how pervasive violence was, and how everyone committed violent acts pretty much every day. What was needed was not a quantitative shift in human attitudes to violence, but a qualitative one.

  Hannah had to reread this section to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood. Everyone was violent. She read on.

  His thesis was that people failed to acknowledge their own violence largely through ignorance. They thought they weren’t violent because they didn’t kill, or make war, or beat other people up. Their definition of violence was limited to the grossest acts of physical aggression.