Children of the Dusk

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Child of the Light (Book 1 of the Madagascar Manifesto)

Child of the Journey (Book 2 of the Madagascar Manifesto)

Sol’s Song

What You Remember I Did
(with Melanie Tem)

G
rasshoppers blackened the moon.

The Malagasy laughed delightedly and pointed what was left of his fist at the predawn sky. Abandoning his guardianship of the limestone crypt, he shrugged off his ragged, clay-colored loincloth. By the fading light of the stars, of glowworms, and of the last embers of the coconut husk fire, he began a sinuous dance of triumph. He moved around the moss- and ivy-covered totems that dotted the area, carelessly swatting at the mosquitoes and the rain flies that heralded a tropical downpour. When he tired of the dance, he removed a liana from one of the totems, wove it into a garland, and placed it on top of his grisly red and salt-and-pepper head like a crown.

He ran his misshapen fingers down the totem. Miniature zebu horns topped an arabesque of curling leaves. Carved lemurs balanced on one another's backs, looking outward with huge, whorled eyes.

The grasshoppers moved away from the huge egg-yolk moon, away from the Zana-Malata who grinned a toothless grin.
"Minihana!
" he shrieked. "Eat!" He opened the gaping pink hole where his nose and mouth should have been, pushed his tongue outward in the manner of an iguana, and drew a stream of glowworms into his throat.

He exhaled a burst of fire and chuckled at his own cleverness. Soon, he thought, it would be time for
lambda
, the dressing of the dead, and only he knew who waited inside the crypt. He and the tree frogs and the glowworms. Meanwhile, he could wait. Here, in isolation, time meant nothing to him--any more than it did to those who were buried in the
valavato
.

He moved around the totems that dotted the area. At his feet, a
dô
snake slithered away, carrying with it the soul of one of the dead who haunted the burial ground. Behind him, five short, black men, eyes painted with white and black tar circles, bodies pulsating with a luminous white mud, appeared out of the rim of trees, cavorted a moment, and disappeared.

As if it, too, knew that changes were imminent, the rainforest chorus stopped. When only the bats sang
a cappella
in the damp tropical air, the fox-lynxes raised their long faces to watch him. The aye-ayes and the larger lemurs fled; the zebu sauntered down the hill, bells clanking hollowly and dewlaps swaying beneath their chins.

The Zana-Malata stayed where he was, listening to the voices of the dead. Chief of all he surveyed, he stared down at the crescent coral reef three hundred feet below the burial ground. On the horizon, his keen eyes discerned the lights of a ship moving toward him. He glanced at the moon hanging over the horizon.

It was beginning. The ghosts were returning to Nosy Mangabéy, his island where the dead dreamed.

Nosy Mangabéy

10 September, 1939

S
itting on the damp sand, Solomon Freund watched as lifeboats and launches traveled back and forth from the
Altmark
to shore. Some brought only men; others carried equipment and supplies loaded by the freighter's cranes and his fellow Jews. A large, awkward-looking raft, made of wood strapped onto empty fuel drums, was being readied to carry the small tank from the ship to shore. Knowing the German military, there was doubtless some order about the landing, but to Sol it seemed chaotic. He wondered cynically if Abwehr manuals contained explicit instructions for hacking a path through a rain forest.

Limited by his tunnel-vision, Sol tracked the boat which brought Major Otto Hempel. The SS officer strode from the water, his wolfhound and nine-year-old Misha Czisça in tow. Reaching the beach, he looked out over the water with ill-disguised disgust. Sol turned back toward the ship and saw Erich Weisser Alois, Abwehr colonel, riding in the last boat. Erich.
 
Despite his hatred, Sol could not avoid thinking of his childhood friend in the familiar. Head uplifted, eyes surveying the surrounding jungle as if he half expected natives to come rushing out and throw themselves at his feet with offerings of gold, Colonel Alois stepped from the launch. Behind him, two Jews carried his beloved German shepherd, Taurus, strapped to a hospital stretcher.

"We're going to have to cut a path to the top of the hill," Erich said. He turned to Hempel. "Give the Malagasy a machete." He nodded toward Bruqah, their coffee-colored guide. "After you've supplied all of your men with machetes, give the Jews the rest."

"The Jews?" Hempel asked. "Is that wise?"

"Are you questioning my orders?" Erich's voice was dangerously quiet. "Take one squad and lead the way. Use Bruqah to guide you. I am sure you will at least agree with that, since it is his primary function here," he went on, having apparently decided to downplay the matter of Hempel's insubordination. "Freund, stay with them and take care of Mir...the woman. Pleshdimer, you and Taurus bring up the rear." He raised his voice. "We are going up that hill." He pointed toward the jungle. "There will be no relaxation of discipline. For the sake of every Jewish life here, I will say this once, and once only. You are to use the machetes for creating a path. Look as if you see them as weapons, make one movement that smells of an attempt to escape, and we will shoot half of you Jews and let the dogs finish the rest. Now move it!"

Without so much as a glance at his heavily pregnant wife Miriam or at Solomon, he turned his back to them and waited to be obeyed. Hempel, obviously furious, strode toward the ridge of trees, his omnipresent companions trotting behind.

Bruqah, ever the Malagasy aristocrat though he was for the moment a guide, watched without comment or movement.

"Do you not fear them?" Sol asked him.

"Pah!" Bruqah spat onto the wet earth.

"Does anything frighten you?"

Bruqah threw his head back and laughed uproariously. "You ask questions like a small child." He helped Miriam to her feet. "What Bruqah fears you cannot understand. Not yet."

"Tell me."

"Bruqah only fears things of man and not of man," he said softly, all trace of laughter gone.

"You are right, I do not understand." Sol was reminded of the days in the farmhouse outside Oranienburg where he had first met Bruqah. The Malagasy had been assigned to prepare them for their journey and sojourn here. He was apparently studying botany at the university in Berlin when he was offered the job in exchange for transportation home. The more he had come to know Bruqah, the more convinced he was that the events were less coincidental than they appeared.

"We of Africa accept she mystery," Bruqah went on. "It is for Europeans to need understanding. Belief be truth here." Bruqah pointed his walking stick at a twig. "What be this, Lady Miri?"

"A twig," Miriam said wearily.

He tapped the twig lightly with his cane. A chameleon skittered into the underbrush. Bruqah smiled. "Come, Lady Miri. Come, we go, Solly."

Sol caught himself grinning. No one had called him that since he left his mother in Amsterdam. Seeing his smile, Miriam returned it with one of her own. He saw a glimpse of the young girl he had once known and felt a transient stab of hope as they entered the jungle. All his life he learned through riddles. His father had said it was part of the Judaic tradition. Perhaps by solving the riddles of this new land, he would find answers to his old problems, as well.

Sunlight gave way to the dark and dankness of the rain forest. Sol's physical discomfort was increased tenfold by his inability to see more than a couple of meters ahead. A high-pitched chittering spoke of living creatures disturbed by the human intruders, and around him, pinpoints of light flickered on and off, as if the forest were peopled by a million glowworms. Were it not for the moisture that hung in the air and covered him with a film of sweat, and the mold and moss that enveloped everything like a possessive lover, he might have been in the Black Forest.

Abruptly, the chittering stopped. A raucous sawing began, followed by a series of deafening squeals which rose to a crescendo and shook the bamboo and ferns into responding. Leaves rustled and dripped and snapped back, ignoring his swinging machete. When he looked behind him, the forest seemed to have regenerated. He could hear the others, Jews and soldiers alike, fighting their way through the heavy undergrowth.

Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

Soft and shrill and mournful, the cry echoed through the forest, its sound so chilling it made Solomon's teeth ache.

He lifted his machete. Behind him, he heard the unnerving, metallic snaps of safeties being flicked off as, again and again, the sound came, piercing through the branches overhead.

A guard, panicked by the unfamiliar sound, opened fire.

Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

"Eeee-vil!" Arms raised, Bruqah followed the sounds with a shaking finger.

"Probably a harmless monkey," Hempel said contemptuously. "Stop acting like a bunch of children."

"There are no monkeys in Nosy Mangabéy," Bruqah said in a low voice, the veins pulsating in his neck as he strained to see up into the jungle canopy. "Not in all Madagascar."

"What was it?" Solomon asked.

"H'aye-aye
," Bruqah said, imitating the sound. He turned away from them and moved through the tangle of ferns and vines, parting the foliage with his walking stick and his machete. In an instant he had disappeared.

"Come back here!" Hempel shouted.

Bruqah returned, clutching his head, wailing and spinning as if he were performing a ritual dance. Gripping his face, ogling the newcomers to the forest, was a red-and-gold striped iguana the length of his arm.
 

"Do something, one of you!" Grabbing Sol's machete, Miriam chopped wildly at the bush ahead of her. She collapsed, crying, as Bruqah reeled toward her.

"For Christ's sake!" Hempel shouldered past Solomon. He tore the giant lizard from Bruqah and, holding it upside-down and squirming, cracked its back and threw it to his wolfhound, Boris. Pleshdimer, the Kapo who served as Hempel's man-servant, crouched at the dog's side and grinned as it tore the reptile to pieces.

"Whatever's amusing you," Hempel said, "you might remember that one of these days you'll be glad to dine on that same meat."

"Are you all right, Bruqah?" Miriam asked in a small voice.