Read Online The Eighth Dwarf by Ross Thomas - Free Book Online

funny fellow who had claimed to have once lived in Cleveland and had assured Bodden that the English he was being taught was the American kind. The Pole had had a lot of amusing theories. One of them was that Poles made the world’s best fighter pilots. That’s the problem with us Poles, he had once told Bodden. All our politicians should really have been fighter pilots.
    There wasn’t much left to his cigarette now. A few centimeters. Regretfully, Bodden took one last puff and ground it into the dirt with his shoe. He heard them then, the patrol. One of them was whistling. That was how it was supposed to be.
    Well, here goes nothing, he said to himself in English. That had been one of the Pole’s favorite phrases, which he had also guaranteed to be proper American usage. In fact, it was the last thing he had ever said to Bodden that April morning in 1944 when they had led the Pole away to be shot or hanged. Hanged probably, Bodden decided. They wouldn’t have wasted a bullet on a Pole. Gniadkiewicz. That had been the Pole’s name, Bodden remembered. Roman Gniadkiewicz. A very funny fellow.
    Bodden took a deep breath, scuttled out of the trees and across the path, and slipped into the canal with a small splash. Christ, it was cold! He heard the Russian patrol shout Halt. How the hell do you halt when you’re swimming? he wondered. They were supposed to shout it three times, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening—for the British especially; but a lot of the Russians were dumb bastards, farm boys who might not be able to count that high. So Bodden took a deep breath and dived underwater just as the first rifle cracked.
    When he came up, they were still shooting at him—well, almost at him. A bullet smacked into the water less than a meter away, far less, and Bodden dived under again. A show-off, he thought as he used a breaststroke to swim the last few meters. One of them had to be a show-off.
    When he came up again, he saw that he had come up right where he had wanted to—not far from the three German fishermen, who stared down at him as he treaded water, blowing and sputtering.
    â€œWell, what have we got here?” said one of the anglers, a man of about sixty.
    â€œA very wet fish,” Bodden said.
    â€œMaybe we ought to throw him back,” the old man said as he put down his pole. The other two men laughed. They were old too, Bodden saw; somewhere in their late sixties.
    The first old man came over to where Bodden still treaded water. He knelt down and stretched out his hand. He was a big, still-powerful old man, who barely grunted as he hauled Bodden up and onto the bank of the canal. “There you are, Herr Fish,” the old man said. “Nice and dry.”
    â€œThanks,” Bodden said. “Thanks very much.”
    The old man shrugged. “It was nothing,” he said, and went back and picked up his pole.
    Across the canal, the three Russian soldiers were yelling at Bodden. He grinned and yelled back at them in Russian.
    â€œWhat did you tell them, Herr Fish?” asked the old man who had dragged him out of the canal.
    â€œI told them what their mothers do with the pigs.”
    â€œYou speak Russian?”
    â€œJust enough to tell them that.”
    The old man nodded. “Somebody should.”
    Bodden looked around. There was no one in sight except the three old fishermen—and the Russians, of course, but they didn’t count. He took off his shoes first. Then he removed his knapsack and his wet shirt and squeezed the water out of the shirt. The three old men looked away politely while Bodden changed into the dry clothes.
    When dressed, Bodden went over and squatted down by the old man who had hauled him out of the canal. “How far into the center of town?”
    â€œA little over six kilometers—along that path there.” The old man gestured with his head.
    â€œThat fish you caught earlier—what was