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.I honestly do not know why she ever took the vow.Except—when he preached…My father was quite an orator, in his way, and my mother attended nearly every service he ever held.She did seem to enjoy that part of his life, strangely enough.”“And after you returned from Minnesota?”Dury shook his head bitterly.“After we returned from Minnesota things deteriorated completely.When my father lost his post he lost the only human connection he had to my mother.They rarely spoke in the years after that, and never touched, not that I can recall.” He looked up at the filthy window.“Except once…”He paused for several seconds, and to urge him on I murmured: “Japheth?”Dury nodded, slowly rousing himself from his sad reverie.“I’d taken to sleeping outdoors when it was warm enough.Near the mountains—the Shawangunks.My father had learned the sport of mountaineering in Switzerland from his own father, and the Shawangunks were an ideal spot to keep his hand in, as well as to pass the techniques on to me.Though I was never very good at it, I always went along with him, because they were happier times—away from the house and that woman.”If the words had been explosives I don’t think their concussion could have hit Kreizler and me any harder.Laszlo’s weak left arm shot out, and his hand grabbed my shoulder with surprising force.Dury saw none of it and, unaware of the effect his words were having on us, continued:“But during the coldest months there was no avoiding the indoors, not unless I wanted to die of exposure.And I remember one February night when my father…he may have been drinking, though he rarely did.But, sober or no, he began to finally rebel against my mother’s inhuman behavior.He spoke of the duties of a wife, and the needs of a husband, and he began to grab at her.Well…My mother screamed in protest, of course, and told him he was acting like the savages we’d left behind in Minnesota.But my father wouldn’t be stopped that night—and despite the cold I fled the house through a window, and slept in an old barn that belonged to a neighbor of ours.Even from that distance I could hear my mother’s cries and sobs.” Once again, Dury seemed to lose all awareness of his present surroundings and spoke in a detached, almost lifeless voice: “And I wish I could say that those sounds horrified me.But they didn’t.In fact, I distinctly remember urging my father on…” His presence of mind returned, and, somewhat embarrassed, he picked up his hammer and began pounding at the wheel once more.“No doubt I’ve shocked you, gentlemen.If so, I apologize.”“No, no,” I answered quickly.“You’re only giving us a better understanding of the background, we quite understand that.”Dury shot Laszlo another quick, skeptical look.“And you, Doctor? Do you quite understand, too? You haven’t had much to say.”Kreizler kept very cool under Dury’s scrutiny.There was, I knew, little chance that this man of the earth was going to make so seasoned a madhouse campaigner as Kreizler uneasy.“I have been too absorbed to comment,” Laszlo said.“If you’ll allow me to say so, Mr.Dury, you are very well-spoken.”Dury laughed once humorlessly.“For a farmer, you mean? Yes, that was my mother’s doing.She made us work at our school lessons for hours every night.I could both read and write before the age of five.”Kreizler cocked his head in appreciation.“Laudable.”“My knuckles didn’t think so,” Dury answered.“She used to come across them with a stick like—but once again, I’m off the subject.You wanted to know what became of my brother.”“Yes,” I answered.“But before that, tell us—what sort of a boy was he? You’ve said odd—odd in what way?”“Japheth?” Having secured the wheel to the manure spreader’s axle, Dury stood and laid hold of a large pole.“In what way was he not?…I suppose you couldn’t expect much more, from a child born out of anger and unwanted by both his parents.To my mother he was a symbol of my father’s savagery and lust, and to my father—to my father, much as he wanted more children, Japheth was always a symbol of his degradation, of that terrible night when desire made an animal of him
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