Vincent Crabbe
Hallo! I’m Vincent Crabbe. I come from Norway. Notice that I didn’t say that I am Norwegian. I’m just – from Norway. To be Norwegian you need to know the Norwegian culture. You need to have your ancestral home here. But most importantly, You need to have a family.
I don’t have family here. I may have at some time, but not now. I have been raised by Aunt Astra since as long as I can remember. That may seem like family, but trust me, it’s not. Aunt Astra trusts me as far as she can throw me. And she doesn’t love me.
She loves me just as a matter of principle. Because it is her duty to. That isn’t really love. She loves Cadrinca. Her own daughter.
I do too. Cadrinca is the nicest girl that ever lived. She loves me. I know it for a fact. We have had so much fun together. Boating on summer afternoons by sneaking out of the house. Sledding at top speed down hills where we weren’t supposed to be. Skating together on the ice on the way to school. She is a true sister.
When I am at home, Aunt sets me to work. Homework first, then housework. Polishing silverware, dusting the mantelpiece. Things like that. She works me hard so that I don’t have time to talk to Cadrinca. But Cadrinca also has to do housework. We do it together. Timing our duties such that we are near each other while we work.
We’re hard up for money and can’t afford help. Aunt is the only bread earner in the family. So, Cadrinca and I have to do our bit in the house. Aunt doesn’t make me work because she doesn’t like me. It’s just that we’re not too well off. I’m alright with that.
It upsets me sometimes to see the other boys going off to play ball while I have to go home and chop wood. Cadrinca makes it worthwhile though. She always grins and is cheerful. She will make jokes and chat so merrily that it is hard not to be infected by her enthusiasm.
One day, at the end of class, I was confronted by Svlad, the peon. No one else was there. I had been assigned the duty of cleaning up the hammers and screws after hardware class.
Svlad smirked, his cigarette dangling from his lips, “Who do we have here?”
“I’m Vincent Crabbe.”
“Oh look, it’s that charity boy again. The one that stays with Cadrinca. What makes you think you have the right to talk to her so much? Listen brother, you will not be seeing Cadrinca again.”
I didn’t have time to even blink when he slammed the classroom door. I could do nothing but stare for a few minutes. I listened to the sound of retreating footsteps on the wood paneled floors.
Svlad had always had a grudge against me. I did not know why, though I suspected that he was jealous of my closeness with Cadrinca.
I smelled smoke all of a sudden. I turned to see that Svlad had dropped his cigarette on a pile of wood which had begun to burn. I had no time to muse whether this was intentional or not. I needed to escape before the room began burning.
The door needed a key, which I knew was in a safe in the cupboard. This safe had been placed here for the janitor. He knew the code and would lock the doors of the school every afternoon after the children left. I opened the cupboard and studied the safe.
I was a lover of mechanics. Cadrinca knew that, so, whenever she went to the library, she got me a book about it. I focused on the problem at hand.
There was an extra handle on the safe. I pushed the handle while I turned the combination wheel. Things were unequal. The notches were unequal. The handle tried to push the bolt down into the notches. This force was more held up by one disc rather than a different one. It became smoother where the notch on the disc came under the bolt. (The friction decreased.) I didn’t know which number it was in the combination, but I figured that out because I only had to turn the dial once to hear the click again.
I was able to open the safe just in time, for it was becoming difficult to breathe. I grabbed the key and crawled across the room to the door. I stuck the key in the lock and turned it. Choking and gasping, I struggled with the door for a while, when it finally opened.
I stumbled outside and was met face to face with a man in a black suit. He looked at me in astonishment for a moment. “Who are you?”
I couldn’t say anything, because the smoke had gotten into my nostrils and was making my head heavy. He lifted me and carried me outside the school. Outside, he repeated his question.
“I’m Vincent Crabbe ,” I said after a pause, during which I caught my breath.
“What are you doing here?”
I explained.
“Well, Mr. Crabbe, I am a spy. I came here because I heard a tip off from my superiors about a fire being started here. Seems to me that you have dealt with your situation with remarkable ingenuity. We need people like that on our team. You could join a school where they train children of your age to become spies. Your parents or guardians would only be informed of the fact that you wish to go to a boarding school. Do you agree?”
I could only nod. The man walked me home and arranged matters with Aunt Astra. I packed my bag and said goodbye to a tearful Cadrinca. The man handed me a train ticket and bid me adieu.