The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (25 page)

“My name is Abigail,” she said. “And you are?”

“Or
him
?” And now Natalia jerked her head toward me.

“Do not underestimate my friend Alfred Kropp,” Bennacio said. “There is more to him than meets the eye.”

“Then there is much indeed!” Cabiri said heartily, and he slapped me on the back. “For he is substantial!”

Mike came bounding down the stairs then, and jabbed his finger at Cabiri's nose.

“You are interfering with a matter of international security, mister!”

“Perhaps you should shoot me.”

“Enough!” Bennacio said, and everybody shut up and stared at him. “They should not have come, but they have and so we must make the best of it. When Mogart calls, Cabiri will stay here with my daughter. I will return for them both once we have the Sword.”

That ended the discussion. None of the OIPEP people seemed happy about it, but they couldn't come up with a good argument for sending Cabiri and Natalia away. There was some discussion of sleeping arrangements, since all the bedrooms were taken. Then Jeff volunteered to sleep on the sofa downstairs so Natalia could have his room. Cabiri decided he would bunk with me.

“For you and I are the only Friends here,” he told me. “It will be delightful, Alfred Kropp! Only I must warn you of my snoring and my flatulence.”

Bunking with Cabiri didn't turn out to be delightful. He had been telling the truth about his snoring and farting.

Natalia and Bennacio holed up in his room for hours, and I could hear their voices through the walls as they argued. Sometimes I could hear her crying.

When she wasn't in the bedroom, she would be in the great room, sitting in the rocker by the fireplace, staring at the flames, her knees drawn up to her chest, her dark eyes reflecting the firelight. Sometimes she passed close to me coming down the hall or in the kitchen at dinner, and each time she passed I smelled peaches and thought of being a little kid, turning the handle of the ice cream churn while Mom dropped fresh peaches into its belly.

Natalia barely spoke to me, but sometimes I would catch her staring at me and she would look away quickly.

Then one night Cabiri's flatulence chased me from the room (his farts seemed to gather underneath the covers and attack any time I rolled over, fluffing the blankets). I padded downstairs, thinking maybe I'd wake up Jeff for a game of poker or pool. But Jeff wasn't on the sofa; Natalia was, curled up under a blanket, wide-awake, staring at the dying embers in the fireplace.

I stood for a second at the bottom of the stairs. I thought about going into the kitchen for a snack, but that was like covering up for disturbing her and didn't seem cool at all.

“Hi,” I finally decided to say.

She didn't answer.

“I, um, I couldn't sleep. Cabiri won't stop farting.”

She still didn't say anything.

“Look,” I said, taking a step into the room. “About what happened in Halifax . . . it's okay.”

She slid her dark eyes in my direction. I felt like a bug on a pin when she looked at me.

“What is okay?” she asked.

“You know, the fact that you kneed me in the groin.”

“I should have stabbed you.”

“Sure, I understand that.” I eased myself into the rocker across from her.

She was looking at the fire again.

“Who are you?” she asked softly.

She whipped her head in my direction, her dark hair flying to her right shoulder.

“Who are you, that you have done this?”

“I was just a kid trying to help out his uncle.”

“You are a thief.”

“Yeah. As it turned out.”

“My father should have killed you when you took the sword.
I
would have killed you.”

“Don't you think life's funny that way?” I asked. She stared at me as if I were speaking a language she didn't understand. “I mean, I guess you've noticed, but there isn't a lot to do around here, and I'm not sure how long I've been here, but it seems like it's been a very long time, and all there is to do is eat and sleep and think. And I was thinking, look at how many things had to happen for me to end up here. You know, if only my dad hadn't run off on my mom. If only my mom hadn't died of cancer. If only Uncle Farrell hadn't volunteered to raise me. If only Mr. Samson had hired somebody else to be the night watchman at Samson Towers. Or if Uncle Farrell had just said no to Mogart like he should have. Or if I had said no to Uncle Farrell. I guess I could go on, but you probably get the point. Your father talks a lot about fate and doom, which is something I never really bought into, but now I'm thinking maybe something does guide us or use us for something bigger . . . What do you think?”

“What do I think?” she asked. “I think you are an idiot.”

“You wouldn't be the first,” I admitted.

“Your sympathy for my father disgusts me.”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn't be so hard on me, Natalia. I know how it feels.”

“You know how
what
feels?”

“Losing a parent.”

She looked at me for a long time. It was so long, I started to feel very uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than usual.

“And at least there's a chance he won't die,” I went on. “My mom didn't even have that.”

36

Things changed between Natalia and me after that night. I'm not saying they got much better, but it was like we'd reached some kind of understanding. I still caught her staring at me sometimes, and once or twice I think Mike noticed too. Once at dinner, I looked up from my plate and saw her looking, and then I looked over at Mike and he was looking at her looking at me, and he was smiling.

One morning, after I finished my shower, I passed Bennacio's door and heard Natalia's voice, followed by the low hum of Bennacio's. It sounded like a heated debate was going on; I figured it was about Natalia going with him to the rendezvous with Mogart. I went to my room and closed the door. After a while I heard a door slam and the light tread of Natalia going down the hall.

I went to Bennacio's room and knocked softly on the door. There was no answer. I tried the knob. It was unlocked.

I stepped inside. The light was off, but there was a glow in the room from two candles sitting on the small table pushed against the far wall. Propped up between the candles was a small painting in a gilded frame of a man in a white robe, kind of floating against a black background, with great white fluffy wings outstretched on either side, holding a sword in his right hand.

Kneeling in front of this picture was Bennacio. He didn't lift his head or move when I came in. I felt ashamed, almost as if I had walked in on him naked. The main thing that struck me, though, was how terribly small he seemed, kneeling there in front of that picture, how terribly small and alone.

“Yes, Kropp?” he asked without turning or getting up.

“You should take her with you,” I said.

He didn't move.

“Take her with you, Bennacio,” I said.

“You do not know what you are asking,” he said finally.

“Maybe I don't,” I said. “There's a lot I don't get. Most stuff I probably never will, but this one thing I'm pretty sure of, Bennacio.”

His shoulders dipped, his head fell to his chest, and when he stood up, for the first time he struck me as an old man, old enough to be a grandfather, even. He turned and looked hard at me.

“What are you so sure of, Kropp?”

“Look, Bennacio, when my mom got sick she would get on me all the time about coming to see her at the hospital. She was all worried about me missing school or sleep or meals, but she was dying. There was no hope for her. But I didn't care. I came every day anyway, for over a month, and I sat there for hours, even when she didn't know I was sitting there.” All the memories came rushing back then, of Mom shrunken to the size of a pygmy in that hospital bed, bald from all the chemo, big black circles around her eyes. Her teeth seemed huge against her hollow cheeks and thinned lips. And the way she would whimper,
Please, please, Alfred,
make it go away. Make the pain go away.

“Maybe it was useless my being there. Maybe there was nothing I could do, but where else was I supposed to be? You say you don't have a choice, but you think she does. Well, maybe she doesn't have any more choice than you do. It's kind of hypocritical, if you ask me, saying you don't have a choice but she does.”

I don't know if anything I was saying was making any sense. But he listened. He didn't say anything. He just stared at me, but he listened, I think.

“Okay,” I said. “That's it. That's about all I had.”

I walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me. Standing a couple of feet away was Natalia.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks and walked hurriedly past her, muttering as I passed, “There's no such thing as accidents.” I don't know why I said that.

37

I went to my room and after a while—I don't know how long, maybe a couple of hours—there was a knock on the door and Bennacio came in, still wearing that brown robe. He was carrying a long box. He sat beside me, setting the box down on the bed behind us.

“Kropp,” he said.

“Bennacio,” I said.