Stormfuhrer (20 page)

Farash stopped writing, looked at her, annoyed.

“Am I in the right room?  Is this E2003?” she asked.

“
Yes, it is.”  The students giggled.

“
I thought you needed a substitute.  You are Herr Schreiber?”

“
No madam.  I do not need a substitute and I am not Herr Schreiber.  Are you lost?”

“
Are you a substitute?” she asked in a high-pitched tone.

“
No.”

“
There must have been a room change.  Herr Schreiber needed a substitute for today with his wife giving birth and all.  That's why I'm here.  Are you sure this is E2003?”

Farash turned and looked at the students and then at the woman.  For the first time, he realized something he should have easily noticed before.

He began to panic.  “This is Herr Schreiber’s room, you say?” he asked.

“
According to the Principal's secretary.”

The students were silent.  One asked, “Aren’t you Herr Schreiber?”

Another whispered, “Ne! dumb-ass.  Look at his skin.  He’s a substitute or something.  Maybe he’s a janitor who wants to be a teacher.”

“
Actually.”  Farash was starting to panic.  He looked around for his things.  “Actually, I was just filling in until you got here.  And now that you are here, I will be going.”

The large, ruddy-faced woman smiled and nodded, clearly confused.  The students fell silent again.  A few murmured.  “I thought he was
the teacher.”

Farash picked up his bag and left.

Farash thought to look into Hayes’ classroom next door, not having seen the man all morning.  Someone else was teaching his class.  The boxes had been removed, as well as the computers.  It was a normal classroom, desks in rows, uncluttered waxed floors.  No cables along the floors.  Twelve or so students sat in the first three rows while a woman wearing a white blouse and a black skirt walked amongst them and spoke.  Students studied the handout she had been giving them.

As he looked into the room, he was seen by a smallish old man with a balding head.  The man wore a strange black suit covered in faint, graph-like squares.  “Can I help you, sir?” the man asked, smiling, walking towards him in the hall.  Farash asked him about his former colleague.  The man replied that Hayes had signed his contract but had simply vanished over the summer.  In essence, he was gone without a word to anyone.  Didn’t answer his phone or repeated knocks at his door.  The police had been informed, of course.  Since no one could reach him to verify his intentions to quit, Mrs. Pfand would would fill his slot until a permanent replacement could be found.  Had he heard anything about Herr Hayes?  Farash replied in the negative.  The assistant principal had taken him for a substitute teacher just getting off duty, or perhaps an interviewee. 

Mr. Farash walked weakly to the parking lot.  He quickly remembered that he had decided to walk to school that day.  He couldn'tremember the walk from that morning, as if he had done so in his sleep.

When he got to the outer door of the apartment, his key didn’t fit.  He tried the handle and, thankfully, it was unlocked.  He trudged upstairs, mulling over the story he would tell Amala, about the students, the smaller numbers, the new dress code, why he was home so early.

In the living room of their two-bedroom apartment, everything looked fairly normal.  There was a television—an old one that Farash didn’t recognize.  He also didn’t recognize the pair of bicycles leaning  against the wall behind the old sofa.  Having woken up late that morning, on the bed in the spare bedroom, he had rushed out without noticing.  He glanced into their small kitchen.  There was a hot-plate on a flimsy fold-out table where the four-burner stove should have been, crusted with char from countless meals.  From where he stood, the sofa was almost the same, though looking a bit more worn than he remembered, somewhat off-color.  The window treatments were the same—white and sparse.  The balcony overlooking the street was the same.

He walked into their bedroom.  Amala was sleeping on a full-sized bed, not a queen-size like he was sure they had owned.  She was somewhat smaller, had certainly lost a few kilos, no probably over a dozen kilos.  He clearly had not been paying enough attention to her.  Timidly, he let her sleep and walked back into the living room, dropping into the old, mostly-familiar couch.  Confused.  Shaking.  Wishing his character wasn’t wasting away in a cell under Gestapo Headquarters.  Farash got up and went to his corner in the spare bedroom, stopping short.  It was completely empty, save for a few small cardboard boxes filled with junk.  Its closet, however, was full of clothes.  Almost none were his.

Farash had been to Richard Hayes’ house a few times to play cards with several other instructors.  Farash was bad at cards and didn’t attend further games after some heavy losses made him rethink Texas Hold-'em as a pastime.  After a brief but unnerving rest on the sofa, Farash decided to drive to Richard’s house.  As he stood up, his wife of 12 years walked sleepily from the bedroom.

“Amala!”  He cried.  Finally someone he could trust to talk to with absolute candor, something absolutely solid in his life.  A surge of positive emotion swept through him.  She was certainly a little less solid these days from the look of her figure.  He was certainly not disappointed by this change, but disappointed in himself, yes, for neglecting her for so many months.  She looked at him curiously.

“
What’s wrong?”

“
I am so sorry.  So, so sorry."

“
For what?”

“
For not giving you the attention you deserve all these many months.  Well, it’s done.  You deserve better and I’m going to give it to you.  My . . . research is done.  No more computers.  I am back for good, my sweet, sweet and beautiful Amala.”

She looked at him quizzically for a second time and then walked into the small kitchen to pour some hot tea, shaking her head.  “Would you like some tea, my husband?” she asked.

“What happened to the oven?  And the TV?  Did they break?  No matter.  I will buy you new ones . . .”

“
Oven?  I’m not sure what you mean, Farhat.  The TV still works, doesn’t it?”

“
Yes, I’m sure it does.  Never mind.”

She handed him a small cup of dark, steaming tea.  He took it and a saucer and sat at the small bar that separated the kitchen from the tiny living room.  He sipped the tea and flipped through a small stack of mail.  Nothing important.  Some insurance papers and a brochure ad for a department store that he had never heard of called “Wohl’s.” 

He hated junk mail, especially when the address reflected such a lack of regard for the recipient that the sender hadn't bothered to double-check the spelling of the person’s name. They had spelled her name “Amaia Farash.”

He ripped open the next piece of mail, one from the Renter’s Association, whatever that was.  The envelope just said “Mr. and Mrs. Farash” and gave the address.  There was a short, hand-written letter inside.

             
Dear Amaia,

             
We had intended on having the farewell party               for Juan and Esmer on Friday.  But it will have               to be postponed until Saturday.  The time               hasn’t changed.  We’d love to see Farhat as               well if he isn’t too busy with his lawn service on               that day.

             
              Tschüss!

             
              Lupita

“Amala . . .”

“
Why do you call me that?  It’s like you have a lisp today my husband.”

“
What should I call you?”

“
What you’ve always called me--Amaia.”

“
Did you change your name?”

“
What has gotten into you today?”

Farhat stared at the letters and then at his wife.  His eyes were bulging with confusion.  “I have to go.  I will be back by tonight.  Then we will go out, ok?”

“That’s fine but . . .”

“
We have a lot to talk about.”  He no longer wanted to mention the incident at school.  She would be soon asking why he was home so early and why he wasn’t going back.

“
But your tea . . .”

Farash was out the door and down the narrow, steep staircase before she could finish her sentence.  He pushed open the old door to the flats and ran into the bright sunlight, almost hitting an old man on a three-wheeled bicycle sporting an orange flag and a large, empty basket in front of the handlebars.  He reached for his keys.  There were no keys and he saw no car.

He fled back up the stairs, taking them two at a time.  “Where’s the car?”

“
Whose car?  Ours?  We’ve never . . .”

“
Ugh!  Sorry, I'm not myself today.”  He grabbed the bigger of the two bicycles from behind the sofa and made his way to the open front door.  He tried to make his voice sound as if his state of mind was as normal as it should be.  “I’m going to a colleague’s house.  I’ll be back tonight.  Let's go out!  I’m thinking seafood.  The Galley?”

“
Sure . . .”

CHAPTER 12

Farhat tried to recall the way to Richard’s place as he rode down the main street of the little town.  It was maybe 12 kilometers to Richard Hayes’ little cabin.  He noticed little going on around him as he rode, gradually taking to the shoulder when there was one.  He did, however take note of the circular sign bearing a black number 60 with a thick, red circle around it. 

Crossing a yellow bridge and walking his bike to the other side of the two-lane street, Farash remembered a short cut over a gravel road that would cut the time to Hayes’ cabin by a third.  The wheels of this bicycle were fat and knobby enough to take the punishment of the caliche.  He decided on the shortcut and did a quick u-turn.  Passing some dilapidated buildings that had once been stores, he made a left turn and then gradually another left and a quick right.  He followed this road some distance until he came to a cattle gate.

It had only been a year since he had been to Richard Hayes’ piece of land.  All this had been cactus and weeds with a few crooked mesquite trees littering the fields.  Now, beyond the gate to his far left, he saw two rows of makeshift dwellings, most of which looked more like open sheds with no discernible frame foundation, sitting practically on top of the other.  Most had tin corrugated roofs that were held up by rows of gray cinder blocks.  Tarps and thick cloths covered some of the openings.  Trails between some of the shacks were formed from beaten down earth.  Broken toys and other useless refuse littered their edges.  Dogs barked.  Half-naked children played here and there along a narrow dirt road that formed the main street between the two rows of dwellings.  To the right, almost covered with weeds and brush, a small, cubicle A-frame cabin sat dug in next to a dark resaca that was shaded over with weeds and more scrubby trees.  A nearly overgrown little double trail of tire-flattened brush weaved around and then finally ran parallel with the dark ravine, apparently leading to the little house.  A few hundred meters of weeds and stunted trees separated the house from the clumps of the small, sad dwellings.

It was early afternoon as Farhat pushed past the half-open gate and walked the bicycle along the right groove of the flattened brush that made up the parallel car tracks.  As he reached the part of the trail paralleling the resaca’s long and wide ditch, the fetid stench of a landfill wafted with a brush of warm air into his face from the makeshift hills beyond the other side of the resaca.  The putrid odor was so repulsive that he had veered away from its source and into the left track through the weeds without noticing that he had done so.  Farhat moved the bicycle as quickly as he could without falling, attempting at the same time to smother his mouth and nose into the looser parts of his front collar.  He finally came to the cabin and threw the bicycle into a patch of weeds.  He knocked quickly at the door.  No response.  He tried again, calling for Richard Hayes.  Still, there was no response or sound of movement from within.  A dog barked from within, echoing size and ferocity.

He tried the door quickly in effort to forgo the need to take another breath.  It was locked, but there was a large pet door that he knew he could just squeeze through.  He was a thin man, and, so long as his shoulders would fit, the rest of him would follow.  He crawled through, his shoulders diagonal in the rectangular, flapped aperture.  He brought in his feet last, letting the flap close behind him. 

He looked up and into the eyes of a large black dog, a Rottweiler.  The dog was growling only inches from his face.

“
Fraulein!” came a welcome voice though rough and coughing.  The dog sat down on the linoleum floor but the stare and the growling continued.  “Fraulein.  Kommst du hier!”  The dog turned and walked toward the couch from whence the voice had come.

Mr. Farash with breathless relief got to his feet.  He brushed grit off his knees and peered into the cabin.  He couldn’t see much and didn’t know where the voice had come from.

“Thank God!  I thought I was a dead man!  How have you been, Richard?”

There was a pause.  “I’m still here.  Farash?”

Mr. Farash walked through the dark, dusty, square room.  Despite the dust, the cabin was quite uncluttered, not so much from the tidiness of its inhabitant, but rather from having an inhabitant that didn’t seem to consume much.

He could barely see the man lying against the far corner of a couch.  He was staring at the black screen of a small, old television that was propped up on a wooden crate.

“Have you decided to quit the profession?” Farash, though still overwhelmed by the changes he continued to observe in his world, was a master of small talk and instinctively knew its value with regard to laying the groundwork for more important matters.

“
The profession?”

“
Teaching.”

“
Oh.  I suppose so.  Have classes started already?”  Hayes replied, distractedly.

“
Just today.  You know, I bet they’d let you back in.  They’re looking for your replacement, but if you gave them a good excuse, you’d be back in no time.”

“
I’m not going back.”

Farash was silent.  He smiled at the thought of never having to go back.  He couldn't even if he wanted to.  Finally, he nodded sympathetically.  “What do you plan to do?”

“Well, right now I’m lying here staring at this television set.  It’s not mine, you know.  Someone took my flat-screen and left this one, I guess, to make up for it.  I’ve been here for I don’t know how long trying to figure out why anyone would do that.  I mean, if you’re such a jerk to steal some guy’s television, why would you care if he had another one in its place?”

Farash remembered the flat-screen.  “Richard, what’s my name?”

“Your name.”

“
Yes, what is my full name.”

“
Well as far as I know it’s Farhat Farash.  Have you changed it?”

“
What is my wife’s name?”

“
Um.”  He had to think for a second, seemingly somewhat embarrassed that he didn’t know it right off.  “Give me a second.  I know this one. . . Amaia . . . no, Amala.”

“
Is that Amala with an L or Amaia with an I?”

“
I’m pretty sure it’s Amala, with an L.”  Hayes looked away from the old television set for the first time and to his former colleague now sitting at the end of the couch.  “Did I pass?”

“
Yes.  Thank you.  Thank you. 
Thank you
,
my friend!”  Farash was beaming through exhaustion.

“
For what?  Reminding you of your wife’s name?”

“
For reminding me that I’m not an insane man.”

“
Well, let’s not spring to conclusions . . .”  Hayes smiled vaguely.  “Want a beer?”

“
No, thank you.  Have you been playing the Game?”

Hayes was silent for a while.  “By game, I assume you mean Valkyrie?”

“Yes, if that’s what you call it.  I didn’t know it even had a title.  The kids just called it 'The Game.'”

“
I was playing it until recently.”

Farash paused.  “Richard, I have a confession to make.  I used your computers to play it.  I had for years though I have to admit that the first year wasn’t very eventful.  I even took one home.”

“Well.  That solves the mystery of the missing computer.  I figured it was one of the tech guys that forgot to bring it back after cleaning out the dust.  I know you play the game; I saw you once in my classroom.  It’s not a big deal.  Nothing’s a big deal, really, if you think about it.”  Hayes scratched his nearly bald head, frowning.  He hadn't meant to get philosophical.  “What is your character?”

“
A Swiss Astrologer named Karl Ernst Krafft.”

“
Hmm.”

“
What is yours, if you don’t mind me asking.”

Richard stared at the blank screen of the old TV.  He didn't appear to have heard the question.  After a while, “I was an SS guard at Dachau.  I met a girl.”  He looked down, shook his head.  “She was my life.”

Farhat was silent.

He had never considered a romantic possibility for himself in the game.  For him it had become a quest to gain as much political power as possible.  He looked around the room again.  The black dog was lying by the wall next to the television, his head lying against the milk crate upon which the TV sat.  No one spoke for a while.

The Indian history teacher stood up and looked around the room.  He remembered there being a computer nook behind the massive television set that Richard once had.  Now, there was nothing there but a table covered in cardboard boxes filled with papers, magazines, odds and ends.

“
Where’s your computer?”

“
They took that too.”

“
Who do you think took your things?”

“
I have no clue.  They didn’t even leave traces in the dust around the things they took.  The stuff just disappeared.  Gone.”  He thought a moment.  “They also left me with this dog.”

“
That’s not Fraulein?”

“
No.  Fraulein has been gone for quite some time.  I gave her to a farmer-friend of mine.  She was as German Shepherd.”

“
You called this dog Fraulein.”

“
She seems to answer to it.  Takes to me really well, for some reason.  I just woke up one afternoon, a few days ago actually, and I had a dog--scared the sh-t out of me at first.  And no computer, and no flat-screen, and a god-awful stench when I open the windows.  Do you smell it?”

“
So you were last logged on to . . . Valkyrie . . . a few days ago?

“
Just a few days.  I’m not sure really.  I’ve been sleeping a lot.  There were some weeks when I didn’t sleep at all, so I guess my body’s making up for it.”  I think I've slept most of the time since.  Hayes looked down at his filthy t-shirt.  “It’s over though.”

“
What?”

“
The Game.  For me anyway.  But don’t ask.  I’d rather not talk about it.”

“
Richard, I want you to see something.”

Richard Hayes looked questioningly at Farhat Farash as the latter stood up and held out his dark hand.  “I think I can get up on my own.  Hell, I’m not that far gone.”  Farash continued to hold out his hand, so Richard took the man's arm by the wrist and allowed himself to be pulled up heavily from the couch.  “Thanks.”

They walked around the old television set and into the corner where the table lay covered in the boxes and paper.  To the right was a window covered over by two layers of aluminum foil that had been taped to the glass.  On top of that was a set of horizontal blinds that were tilted to cover the aluminum.  Behind that was a thick window treatment of some layers.  Farash pushed this and the blinds aside as one bulk and ripped off the aluminum sheets.  Not much light was pouring in as day was starting to settle into night.  There was no sunset, only a gray, fading beam in the distance behind the trees overhanging a darkly foliated resaca.

There was another window on the other side of the corner.  Farash pushed back the window treatments and foil from this window as well, motioned for Hayes to look through the window.  Hayes saw a line of shacks through the weeds.  Gray smoke rose from some of the low shanties.  A baby was crying.

“Holy sh-t!  That’s my land!”  Hayes was starting to look much more awake.  Farash caught the fetid smell of the man who apparently hadn’t bathed in some time and backed away a few centimeters.  “It wasn’t there last month.”

“
No.  Or last week," Farash replied.

“
Looks like they’ve been there for a while though.”

“
Mr. Hayes, do you remember any discussion at school last year about a change in dress code?  Anything about switching to uniforms?”

Hayes was still overwhelmed by the change that had taken place overnight on his once untamed land.  He stared at corrugated roofs and walls formed by wooden pallets covered with colorful Mexican blankets.  “I.  Um, no.  We tried it several years back.  The kids wouldn’t have it.  Parents complained.”

“The kids at the school are in uniforms, Richard.  They don’t seem to mind.  They act like they've always had uniforms.”

“
What?  Oh.  Well, who the hell cares?  Look at my land!”

“
Richard, my friend.  It’s my fault.”

“
You invited those people here?”

“
I think I’ve screwed up far more than that.”

Hayes narrowed his eyes as he looked at Farash and dropped the thick layers of curtain to fall back against the window.  Darkness quickly filled the corner of the cabin.  Hayes sat on the floor, leaning back against the draperies.  Farash remained silent, trying to put words together.  Finally, Richard got up and walked to the refrigerator and found a liter of water.  There was nothing else in it.  The inside of the refrigerator was, in fact, dark.  He gulped down some of the tepid liquid and put the jug back, shutting the door.  Farash sat on the wooden chair by the desk, rubbing his hands nervously.  Hayes stood looking through his kitchen window a brown water that filled the resaca to just a meter below its edge.  It had never been that high.  “What the hell is going on, Farash?”