EarthChild
Page 13
Really. She felt an intense flash of dislike for this young man-as if, somehow, Silvio were threatened by him. Anxiously, she looked down at the child who smiled calmly back. Well, at least he didn't seem nervous. And why was she? She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile as they walked into the room. But somewhere deep inside, she felt a sharp, cold sliver of fear. She had no idea why.
The red-haired boy lying in the bed stared at them as they walked in. His eyes were fixed on Silvio.
Kurt switched on the recorder. "Sean, I want you to repeat what you told me a few minutes ago."
The boy blinked. "That's him. The one I told you about."
Margaret listened in growing horror at Sean's words. Horror-and outrage. She gripped Silvio's shoulders and tried to quell the cold feeling inside her. This was nonsense. Impossible nonsense. The idea that Silvio could do those things was completely unbelievable. It was ludicrous-a child as sweet, as innocent as Silvio?
Unbidden, the image of a scrawled picture came to her… Silvio dipping the wide brush into bright tempera, the page blooming with childish orange flames…
Impossible. It would mean he was a monster-a manipulating monster. Why, it was laughable. The idea that a baby could have fooled her. Totally absurd. Laughable.
But the laugh would not rise to her throat. Something caught it, held it. Something that felt like ice.
* * *
As Sean repeated his story to the recorder, Kurt watched Silvio closely. There was something elusive about the child's eyes-something sly that crept into them. The look was fleeting. He could catch it for only a second or two before it slid away to be replaced with the bland look of innocence.
The boy was incredibly calm. A lot calmer than his teacher. She wouldn't take her hands from his shoulders; her fingers kneaded and probed while a dozen different expressions flickered over her face.
When Sean finished, Kurt spoke to Silvio: "Were you in the room when Sean and Jorge, came in?"
The child shot a quick look at Sean and then said something in an inaudible voice.
"Talk louder, Silvio. Were you waiting in the room? The room with the guinea pig?"
The look again, quickly replaced by another-one a shade too wide-eyed, too innocent. "Yes."
"What did you have in your pocket, Silvio?"
"Nothing." A thumb glided into his mouth.
"Did you have matches in your pocket?"
"That's enough!" Margaret caught her lip between her teeth and narrowed her eyes at Kurt. "You've said enough. You're frightening him."
He looked at the bland-faced boy she clasped and wondered if it wasn't the teacher who was frightened. As quickly as her words came out, the child's lower lip began to tremble. Whimpering, Silvio turned toward her, hugging her, and buried his face against her body.
She held the boy close, glaring over his head toward Kurt. "You see? You've frightened him." Her. lips pinched shut, relaxed, pinched again. She thrust her chin toward Sean. "You ought to be ashamed. You ought to be ashamed to tell such lies. I'm not going to let you abuse him anymore."
With a final parting glare, she swept Silvio into the hall and slammed the door behind her.
Kurt watched in silence for a moment before he clicked off the recorder and turned to Sean. "I'm sorry I had to put you through this."
Sean held one hand with the other, pinching and stroking a fist so tight that the skin showed white over his knuckles. He stared at his hands intently as if there were nothing else in the room, as if there were nothing else in the world. His lace began to work, and ugly, hard sobs shook his body.
Kurt grasped the boy's shoulders and felt them shake under his grip. "What is it? What is it, little brother?" Calling him "little brother" was always good for a grin, but this time it didn't work. In dismay, Kurt held the boy against him until finally the harsh gasps slowed.
"It's my fault, Kurt"
"What is? What's your fault."
"Jorge. It's my fault."
He caught Sean's face in his two hands and turned it toward him. "Stop that," he said gently.
Sean wouldn't look at him. "It is. It's my fault. I told him to break the window and… I killed him. Jorge's dead…"
Not knowing what else to do, Kurt held Sean close and let him cry.
Chapter 6
Kurt stood before the door, hesitating for a moment before he raised his hand to knock. It always seemed so strange now when he went home, as if he had never lived there at all.
His mother opened the door. She stared at him for a second, then drew him inside. He kissed the cheek she turned toward him.
"Well," she said brightly, "I'm so glad you could come." She spoke as she would to an acquaintance invited for drinks. The lines that touched her face, the shadowy hollows that had come during Richard Kraus's last illness, had remained, never advancing, never retreating. It seemed to Kurt that she had been somehow captured in that time-aged, but not aging- drowning in his father's death like a fly in amber.
Carmen Kraus led him to a couch and busied herself in making him a drink. She thrust it into his hand and then retreated across the room to a narrow chair. "Well," she said again and raised her half-drained glass to her lips.
"Where's Eric?"
She smiled abstractly. "Sleeping. I wanted him to rest before the recital. When he gets up, we'll have something light. There'll be time for dinner after he plays."
Feeling acutely ill at ease, he nodded. She had never really forgiven him for not saying goodbye to his father, he thought. Not that she had pursued it. Instead, she had covered herself with a layer of something impenetrable, a sort of indifference, until he had become not her son, but someone else-someone to be nice to on his infrequent visits, nothing more. "Uh, what's he playing?"
He asked to make conversation; he knew from Eric's letter what was on the program: the Bach, the Prokofiev, Sniffen's new Suite for Piano. He stared at his mother as she told him; he tried to remember how things used to be-how they used to be when he had been her favorite, when she had pinned her bright hopes to him like a medal. "And, what's he going to do after graduation?" Again, a conversation ploy. He remembered their last talk-Eric telling him his plans: "I'm going to keep on with Dr. Rouk and send my tapes around until someone asks me to audition for a job. I never had my sights as high as you, you know. Ill be happy accompanying-if anybody wants me."
"Silberman is interested," she said. "And Eric seems so set on accompanying, although…" the sentence fluttered away to nothing.
Silberman-the flautist. He could have his pick of pianists. Why would he want Eric? Why would he want somebody still in school? Eric had improved tremendously over the past five years and yet… "I'm glad to hear that… about Silberman."
"He's kept the tape for months," she said defensively. "He wouldn't have kept it if he weren't interested. H
e would have sent it back."
He changed the subject. "How's Grandma?"
Eric swung into the room. "The same. She's always the same." He gave Kurt a grin. "I thought I heard you." Then quickly, "How is Sean?"
"Better now. Much better."
His mother leaned forward. "Did they catch the man who did it?"
"It wasn't a man."
"Oh?" Her eyebrows rose.
"Sean says it was one of the children. There'll be a full inquiry Monday morning. And then-" He was interrupted by the sound of someone at the door-his grandmother.
She seemed smaller to Kurt each time he saw her, a little gnome of a woman, with eyes still bright with love for him. He hugged her gently, because she had grown so tiny now.
She chided him for his growth each time she saw him; she did it now, telling him he had grown much too enormous to suit her. "You make me feel like a dwarf, Kurt." And he grinned at her and leaned over to plant a kiss on her forehead.
She stood, staring up at Kurt and Eric, spreading her shriveled little hands in mock horror. "Great-grandsons," she said, putting unmistakable emphasis on the word "great." Then to Carmen, "I suppose we'd better feed them before they turn on us. They'll need a lot of food just to keep them tame." Then with a smile that turned her face into a miracle of lines, she bustled Carmen Kraus away with her to the kitchen. When Eric and Kurt followed with offers to help, she shooed them out, declaring that she had no desire to be "trampled by behemoths" in the little kitchen.
Eric smiled and flopped back on the couch. "She'll make me drink a cup of tea."
"You can be sure of it," Kurt said with an answering grin. He felt much more at ease now that Eric and his grandmother were here, as if, for a time, he could believe things were as they used to be. "A cup of A.P.T." All-purpose tea. "Wakes you up in the morning; puts you to sleep at night."
"Calms the nerves and lifts the spirits," Eric echoed, and they both laughed.
Kurt glanced at the piano. "Need to warm up? Don't let me keep you from it."
"Not just yet. Time for that later. I want to visit for a while. It's not like we see you every day."
Kurt nodded. It had been over three months since he had been home. But the press of his activities, his classes, seemed to eat up the time.
Suddenly Eric leaned forward, serious now. "You haven't seen the university for a long time, have you?"
He shook his head.
"We're the last class, you know. When we graduate next week, most of it will be shut down. Just a couple of buildings left open for graduate students and Adult Ed." The late afternoon sun shone on Eric's face, lighting the planes and hollows of it; he turned more toward Kurt and a faint shadow crossed his gray eyes.
Kurt knew it was the last class-the class Eric had joined when he was sent home from MacDill. He had been one of the youngest placed in a high school senior class that convened at the university. Kurt tried to imagine the sprawling school shutting down, its nearly empty hallways echoing with the clatter of feet. In another week or so, even the echoes would be gone.
"It's an ending," Eric said. "It started me thinking and I-I started thinking about other endings, so I did something you may think is stupid." He paused, obviously embarrassed now.
"Well, what?"
Eric grinned self-consciously. "I-uh-bought an Ever-Vault in your name."
Kurt felt his eyes widen. An Ever-Vault. They had started springing up two or three years ago. Little safes-rows of them-that the mortals filled with vacuum-packed trinkets and mementos: little boxes of themselves, their heritage to their immortal children; a plea to those children not to forget them-a plea to those children… and to a brother.
"It's just a few things." Eric went on rapidly, "Just a few tapes and things. I was-uh-going to add a recording of the recital tonight." His eyes didn't quite meet Kurt's.
Kurt bridged the awkward moment with an outstretched hand reaching out to take Eric's-reaching, clasping quickly, then withdrawing to perch tentatively on his lap.
"I put a few things in there from Mom and Grandma too. They don't know about it." Erie stared at his hands, stretching and tenting the long fingers. "I guess you think it's stupid-"
"No. No, I don't." And he was thinking about thirty years- thirty years of training that would leave him physically unchanged. Eric would be fifty-one then. And his mother… His grandmother… He wanted to tell Eric then that he was going away, but instead, he said lightly, "I can guess what you put in for Grandma. A cookie and a tea bag embedded in Lucite."
"Not a bad idea."
And a moment later, their grandmother called to them. "Come and get it. There's soup and I've made tea to go with it."
"And cookies for dessert," said Eric. They grinned at each other then, and their eyes seemed suddenly moist, suddenly brighter, in the lowering sunlight.
* * *
With a smile, a young woman handed them programs. They took seats near the front to the left-the traditional place for watching keyboard soloists. Kurt bent over the program, trying to read it in the dim light, when he felt a hand touch his shoulder. He looked up into the lean face of Dr. Theodore Rouk.
He jumped to his feet and reached out an eager hand. He hadn't seen his old teacher in years.
Although they were nearly the same height, Theo Rouk seemed taller. He was thin to the point of gauntness. He took Kurt's hand, clasping it with fingers only, the way he always taught his students. "You can't be too careful. The over-eager well-wisher can damage your hands." Nodding to the women, Rouk folded himself into the seat next to Kurt. "I might not have recognized you if I hadn't spotted your mother."
Kurt stared at his old teacher. The fierce gray eyes seemed paler now, nearly matching the kinky silver hair. When had he gone gray? He had never thought of Dr. Rouk as aging; he had always been a constant. All those years he had seemed the same; hawk eyes fierce above hawk nose; long, bony fingers swooping down to the keyboard, pinioning each note in a sure attack.
"You've kept up your work, of course," he said to Kurt. He meant the piano; to him it was the only work. Then quickly, "Or are you concentrating on oboe now?"
He was saved from answering when the house lights dimmed and Eric, an unfamiliar Eric in formal wear, stepped onto the stage.
Eric began with the Bach. The tic-tocking clockwork rhythms counterpointed the thoughts that played in Kurt's head. Eric was good-getting better every year-and yet something was missing. Intently, he watched Eric's fingers methodically moving over the keyboard. I always played better.
It was sudden, and shocking, that thought. Shocking not because of its sentiments, but because of its tense-its past tense. Although he had managed to find places to practice, although his mother had sent him reed supplies and had caused the MacDill computer to obligingly spit out copies of his music, he was letting it all slip away.
Well, what else could he do in a place like MacDill? Might as well make music in a pris
on, he thought. And yet, underneath lay the knowledge that other people had emerged from worse places with their music intact-places like the old concentration camps he had read about.
He tried to submerge the thoughts, tried to drown them in the Bach, but they popped up like corks to float in his consciousness. Gradually, he had grown less involved in his music. Less of himself was in it now. He was less willing to… sacrifice for it. He clenched his fists in the darkness as if to hold the shameful thoughts in check. But, what could he expect anyway… in a place like MacDill.
He had always had such a sense of urgency about his music, always a sense of time rushing by, always a need to catch up, get ahead. Well, what had he been in such a bloody hurry about? Plenty of time for that. All the time there was.
The thought was exceedingly comfortable. He held it up tentatively, then slipped into it and found that it fit quite well. He wasn't letting his music go at all. He was just putting it off. Just for a while-until his life was more settled. Then, later, he would take it up again, and when he did, there would be time to perfect it. Plenty of time. What did he expect anyway… in a place like MacDill?
* * *
After the recital, they went home to a late supper. Theo Rouk was invited along with Eric's voice teacher, Eva Dowdy. Her husband, the shadowy bassoonist, Bertram Dowdy, came too. He wore black trousers and a black jacket with silver buttons. He presented such a thin, cylindrical appearance that Kurt snorted with glee when his grandmother said wickedly, "Bertram, you're getting to look more like your bassoon every day."
"Don't heckle him, Grandma," he said with a grin.
She raised an eyebrow and, turning toward the kitchen, said, "I'd better help your mother. If I know Carmen, she's fluttering around like a wounded bird while the fruit turns brown." She bustled off, saying over her shoulder, "You stay and entertain our guests."