Different Seasons by Stephen King (1982, The Viking Press)
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" the novella is as comfortable and reassuring as the movie, which is as comforting and reassuring as an old shoe. In the cloud-cuckoo land of popular fiction, the hero is always wrongly convicted and entitled to escape. (It is only after finishing it and starting "Apt Pupil" that we find out Andy Dufresne handled Arthur Denker's investments before Dufresne's arrest).
For several decades I assumed "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" was actually called "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption." I had not read the novella before this week, so only this week I realized my misreading.
"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is an efficient and strong work of wish-fulfillment.
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Apt Pupil
Todd Bowden finds an objective correlative for the evil he senses metastasizing inside him: Dussander. Eventually these two dark and complementary stars travel parallel tracks: one murdering homeless men in situ, the other luring them home. History catches up with Dussander; a final madness catches up with Todd. Harrowing material rescued from risk of bad taste by King's probity.
"What shall we talk about today?" Dussander enquired, tossing off the last shot. "I give you the day off from studying, how's that? Uh? Uh?" When he drank, his accent became thicker. It was an accent Todd had come to hate. Now he felt okay about the accent; he felt okay about everything. He felt very cool all over. He looked at his hands, the hands which would give the push, and they looked just as they always did. They were not trembling; they were cool.
"I don't care," he said. "Anything you want."
"Shall I tell you about the special soap we made? Our experiments with enforced homosexuality? Or perhaps you would like to hear how I escaped Berlin after I had been foolish enough to go back. That was a close one, I can tell you." He pantomimed shaving one stubbly cheek and. laughed.
"Anything," Todd said. "really." He watched Dussander examine the empty bottle and then get up with it in one hand. Dussander took it to the wastebasket and dropped it in.
"No, none of those, I think," Dussander said. "You don't seem to be in the mood." He stood reflectively by the wastebasket for a moment and then crossed the kitchen to the cellar door. His wool socks whispered on the hilly linoleum. "I think today I will instead tell you the story of an old man who was afraid."
Dussander opened the cellar door. His back was now to the table. Todd stood up quietly.
"He was afraid," Dussander went on, "of a certain young boy who was, in a queer way, his friend. A smart boy. His mother called this boy "apt pupil", and the old man had already discovered he was an apt pupil . . . although perhaps not in the way his mother thought"
Dussander fumbled with the old-fashioned electrical switch on the wall, trying to turn it with his bunched and clumsy fingers. Todd walked—almost glided—across the linoleum, not stepping in any of the places where it squeaked or creaked. He knew this kitchen as well as his own, now. Maybe better.
"At first, the boy was not the old man's friend," Dussander said. He managed to turn the switch at last. He descended the first step with a veteran drunk's care. "At first the old man disliked the boy a great deal. Then he grew to . . . to enjoy his company, although there was still a strong element of dislike there." He was looking at the shelf now but still holding the railing. Todd, cool—no, now he was cold—stepped behind him and calculated the chances of one strong push dislodging Dussander's hold on the railing. He decided to wait until Dussander leaned forward.
"Part of the old man's enjoyment came from a feeling of equality," Dussander went on thoughtfully. "You see, the boy and the old man had each other in mutual deathgrips. Each knew something the other wanted kept secret. And then . . . ah, then it became apparent to the old man that things were changing. Yes. He was losing his hold—some of it or all of it, depending on how desperate the boy might be, and how clever. It occurred to this old man on one long and sleepless night that it might be well for him to acquire a new hold on the boy. For his own safety."
Now Dussander let go of the railing and leaned out over the steep cellar stairs, but Todd remained perfectly still. The bone-deep cold was melting out of him, being replaced by a rosy flush of anger and confusion. As Dussander grasped his fresh bottle, Todd thought viciously that the old man had the stinkiest cellar in town, oil or no oil. It smelled as if something had died down there.
"So the old man got out of his bed right then. What is sleep to an old man? Very little. And he sat at his small desk, thinking about how cleverly he had enmeshed the boy in the very crimes the boy was holding over his own head. He sat thinking about how hard the boy had worked, how very hard, to bring his school marks back up. And how, when they were back up, he would have no further need for the old man alive. And if the old man were dead, the boy could be free."
He turned around now, holding the fresh bottle of Ancient Age by the neck.
"I heard you, you know," he said, almost gently. "From the moment you pushed your chair back and stood up. You are not as quiet as you imagine, boy. At least not yet."
Todd said nothing.
"So!" Dussander exclaimed, stepping back into the kitchen and closing the cellar door firmly behind him. "The old man wrote everything down, nicht wahr! From first word to last he wrote it down. When he was finally finished it was almost dawn and his hand was singing from the arthritis—the verdammt arthritis—but he felt good for the first time in weeks. He felt safe,He got back into his bed and slept until mid-afternoon. In fact, if he had slept any longer, he would have missed his favourite—General Hospital."
He had regained his rocker now. He sat down, produced a worn jackknife with a yellow ivory handle, and began to cut painstakingly around the seal covering the top of the bourbon bottle.
"On the following day the old man dressed in his best suit and went down to the bank where he kept his little checking and savings accounts. He spoke to one of the bank officers, who was able to answer all the old man's questions most satisfactorily. He rented a safety deposit box. The bank officer explained to the old man that he would have a key and the bank would have a key. To open the box, both keys would be needed. No one but the old man could use the old man's key without a signed, notarized letter of permission from the old man himself. With one exception."
Dussander smiled toothlessly into Todd Bowden's white, set face.
"That exception is made in event of the box-holder's death," he said. Still looking at Todd, still smiling, Dussander put his jackknife back into the pocket of his robe, unscrewed the cap of the bourbon bottle, and poured a fresh jolt into his cup. "What happens then?" Todd asked hoarsely. "Then the box is opened in the presence of a bank official and a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. The contents of the box are inventoried. In this case they will find only a twelve-page document. Non-taxable . . . but highly interesting."
The fingers of Todd's hands crept towards each other and locked tightly. "You can't do that," he said in a stunned and unbelieving voice. It was the voice of a person who observes another person walking on the ceiling. "You can't . . . can't do that."
"My boy," Dussander said kindly, "I have." "But . . . I . . . you . . ." His voice suddenly rose to an agonized howl. "You're old! Don't you know that you're old? You could die! You could die anytime!"
Dussander got up. He went to one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a small glass. This glass had once held jelly. Cartoon characters danced around the rim. Todd recognized them all—Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble, Pebbles and Bam-Bam. He had grown up with them. He watched as Dussander wiped this jelly-glass almost ceremonially with a dishtowel. He watched as Dussander set it in front of him. He watched as Dussander poured a finger of bourbon into it.
"What's that for?" Todd muttered. "I don't drink. Drinking's for cheap stewbums like you."
"Lift your glass, boy. It is a special occasion. Today you drink."
Todd looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the glass. Dussander clicked his cheap ceramic cup smartly against it.
"I make a toast, boy—long life! Long life to both of us! Prosit!" He tossed his bourbon off at a gulp and then began to Herocked back and forth, stockinged feet hitting the and Todd thought he had never looked vulture, a vulture in a bathrobe, a noisome beast of carrion.
"I hate you," he whispered, and then Dussander began to choke on his own laughter. His face turned a dull brick colour; it sounded as if he were coughing, laughing, and strangling, all at the same time. Todd, scared, got up quickly and clapped him on the back until the coughing fit had passed.
"Danke schon," he said. "drink your drink. It will do you good."
Todd drank it. It tasted like very bad cold-medicine and lit a fire in his gut.
"I can't believe you drink this shit all day," he said, putting the glass back on the table and shuddering. "You ought to quit it. Quit drinking and smoking."
"Your concern for my health is touching," Dussander said....
❖
The Body
Beyond the soap opera trivialities King mixes together to form his protagonists, there is a fine delineation of human interaction with nature.
.....We went another mile and then decided to camp for the night. There was still some daylight left, but nobody really wanted to use it. We were pooped from the scene at the dump and from our scare on the train trestle, but it was more than that. We were in Harlow now, in the woods. Somewhere up ahead was a dead kid, probably mangled and covered with flies. Maggots, too, by this time. Nobody wanted to get too close to him with the night coming on. I had read somewhere-in an Algernon Blackwood story, I think-that a guy's ghost hangs out around his dead body until that body is given a decent Christian burial, and there was no way I wanted to wake up in the night and confront the glowing, disembodied ghost of Ray Brower, moaning and gibbering and floating among the dark and rustling pines. By stopping here we figured there had to be at least ten miles between us and him, and of course all four of us knew there were no such things as ghosts, but ten miles seemed just about far enough in case what everybody knew was wrong....
....I came awake in the middle of the night, disoriented, wondering why it was so chilly in my bedroom and who had left the windows open. Denny, maybe. I had been dreaming of Denny, something about body-surfing at Harrison State Park. But it had been four years ago that we had done that.
This wasn't my room; this was someplace else. Somebody was holding me in a mighty bearhug, somebody else was pressed against my back, and a shadowy third was crouched beside me, head cocked in a listening attitude.
"What the fuck?" I asked in honest puzzlement.
A long-drawn-out groan in answer. It sounded like Vern.
That brought things into focus, and I remembered where I was . . . but what was everybody doing awake in the middle of the night? Or had I only been asleep for seconds? No, that couldn't be, because a thin sliver of moon was floating dead center in an inky sky.
"Don't let it get me!" Vern gibbered. "I swear I'll be a good boy, I won't do nothin bad, I'll put the ring up before I take a piss, I'll . . . I'll . . ." With some astonishment I realized that I was listening to a prayer—or at least the Vern Tessio equivalent of a prayer.
I sat bolt upright, scared. "Chris?"
"Shut up, Vern," Chris said. He was the one crouching and listening. "It's nothing."
"Oh, yes it is," Teddy said ominously. "It's something."
"What is?" I asked. I was still sleepy and disoriented, unstrung from my place in space and time. It scared me that I had come in late on whatever had developed—too late to defend myself properly, maybe.
Then, as if to answer my question, a long and hollow scream rose languidly from the woods—it was the sort of scream you might expect from a woman dying in extreme agony and extreme fear.
"Oh-dear-to-Jesus!" Vern whimpered, his voice high and filled with tears. He re-applied the bearhug that had awakened me, making it hard for me to breathe and adding to my own terror. I threw him loose with an effort but he scrambled right back beside me like a puppy which can't think of anyplace else to go.
"It's that Brower kid," Teddy whispered hoarsely. "His ghost's out walkin in the woods."
"Oh God!" Vern screamed, apparently not crazy about that idea at all. "I promise I won't hawk no more dirty books out of Dahlie's Market! I promise I won't give my carrots to the dog no more! I . . . I . . . I . . ." He floundered there, wanting to bribe God with everything but unable to think of anything really good in the extremity of his fear. "I won't smoke no more unfiltered cigarettes! I won't say no bad swears! I won't put my Bazooka in the offerin plate! I won't—"
"Shut up, Vern," Chris said, and beneath his usual authoritative toughness I could hear the hollow boom of awe. I wondered if his arms and back and belly were as stiff with gooseflesh as my own were, and if the hair on the nape of his neck was trying to stand up in hackles, as mine was.
Vern's voice dropped to a whisper as he continued to expand the reforms he planned to institute if God would only let him live through this night.
"It's a bird, isn't it?" I asked Chris.
"No. At least, I don't think so. I think it's a wildcat. My dad says they scream bloody murder when they're getting ready to mate. Sounds like a woman, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," I said. My voice hitched in the middle of the word and two ice-cubes broke off in the gap.
"But no woman could scream that loud," Chris said . . . and then added helplessly: "Could she, Gordie?"
"It's his ghost," Teddy whispered again. His eyeglasses reflected the moonlight in weak, somehow dreamy smears. "I'm gonna go look for it."
I don't think he was serious, but we took no chances. When he started to get up, Chris and I hauled him back down. Perhaps we were too rough with him, but our muscles had been turned to cables with fear....
❖
The Breathing Method
249 East 35th Street is the kind of club where the previous Different Seasons stories would be told around the fire. Not all of them would be told on Christmas Eve with the other uncanny stories. "The Breathing Method" certainly would be: it is a gruesome shaggy dog story inside a serious take about secrets and belonging.
....'More war stories?' Ellen asked me that night She was in bed with Philip Marlowe, the only lover she has ever taken.
"There was a war story or two,' I said, hanging up my overcoat. 'Mostly I sat and read a book.'
'When you weren't oinking.'
'Yes, that's right. When I wasn't oinking.'
'Listen to this: "The first time I ever laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Stiver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers,"' Ellen read.' "He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a place that exists for that purpose and for no other." Nice, huh? It's -'
'The Long Goodbye' I said, taking off my shoes. 'You read me that same passage once every three years. It's part of your life-cycle.'
She wrinkled her nose at me. 'Oink-oink.'
'Thank you,' I said.
She went back to her book. I went out into the kitchen to get a bottle of Beck's. When I came back, she had laid The Long Goodbye open on the counterpane and was looking at me closely. 'David, are you going to join this club?'
'I suppose I might if I'm asked.' I felt uncomfortable. I had perhaps told her another lie. If there was such a thing as membership at 249 East 35 th, I already was a member. 'I'm glad,' she said. 'You've needed something for a long time now. I don't think you even know it, but you have. I've got the Relief Committee and the Commission on Women's Rights and the Theatre Society. But you've needed something. Some people to grow old with, I think.'
I went to the bed and sat beside her and picked up The Long Goodbye. It was a bright, new-minted paperback. I could remember buying the original hardback edition as a birthday present for Ellen. In 1953. 'Are we old?' I asked her.
'I suspect we are,' she said, and smiled brilliantly at me.
I put the book down and touched her breast. 'Too old for this?'
She turned the covers back with ladylike decorum and then, giggling, kicked them onto the floor with her feet. 'Beat me, daddy,' Ellen said, 'eight to the bar.'
'Oink, oink,' I said, and then we were both laughing.
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Jay
1 July 2020
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