Children of the Dusk (26 page)

"Get the stretcher," Erich instructed Pleshdimer. "We'll do whatever must be done to see her through this."

Together, Sol and the Kapo loaded the dog onto the stretcher and followed Erich across the compound. A small crowd of guards pressed forward to see what was being carried.

Hempel joined them. "Seems your brightest star has fallen from the zodiac, Herr Oberst." Lighting a cigarette, he nodded toward Taurus. "But don't worry, she'll be fine as long as
he
cares for her."

With his cigarette he pointed toward the hut. A sparking curl spiraled from the hole in the thatch. "Don't go blaming yourself for your dog's condition, Herr Oberst. Don't blame yourself for anything that goes wrong. It's just that caring and
caring for
are different entities."

"As are the ranks of Oberst and Sturmbannführer," Erich said. "Keep that in mind the next time you think about going near that boy."

Hempel touched his cap as if to acknowledge Erich's transient victory. "My men and I find the little animal--
entertaining
."
 
His eyes gleamed. "So versatile. It's a rare pet, after all, that can spit-shine boots. But," he lifted his palm in compliance, "I shall procure a mascot more to your liking. You may have that one put to sleep."

"This isn't Sachsenhausen," Erich replied.

"Nor is it some Berlin suburb. Manicured lawns and delicate sensibilities have no place in the wild, Herr Oberst."

He saluted, did an about-face, and strode toward the mess, leaving Erich to glower, a hand on the grip of his pistol.

"Let's go," Erich said darkly, under his breath.

At the gate, the guard saluted listlessly. With Erich in the lead, they hurried toward the hut. Grasshoppers sprayed out before them and crunched beneath their feet, and Sol could hear the rattle of Pleshdimer's breath as the fat man struggled to keep up. They moved along jerkily, Sol pulling at the front end of the stretcher and the Kapo yanking back, as if to slow their progress.

A searchlight illuminated the hut, and Sol witnessed a black arm reach around the tanhide door, urging them onward.

Taurus' breathing began to saw. "Faster!" Erich panted.

"No, Mister Germantownman."

The voice seem to hang disembodied in air. Erich crouched, pistol ready. In the glare of the searchlight his face took on a look of irritated relief as Bruqah stepped from the shadows of the tanghin tree next to the hut.

"Help them with the stretcher," Erich ordered.

Bruqah shook his head. "This hut," with a knuckle he tapped the mud-and-wattle exterior, "no place for white men now human air has touched Benyowsky." He seemed to be struggling to translate his thoughts into words. "Kalanaro in there sometime do bad magic. They what you call cap...cap--"

"Capricious," Sol guessed, helping him out.

Bruqah nodded his thanks. "They happy to help Zana-Malata."

"Help him do what?" Sol asked.

"Control what you call spiritual realm, Sollyman. Zana-Malata want child to live and major to succeed. He believe they help him kill those who ostra...ostra--"

"Ostracized," Sol said.

Again Bruqah nodded. "He believe child vessel for soul of Ravalona."

The man is afraid, Sol thought, disquieted. But of what exactly? Or perhaps it was more simple, a question of competition from someone who sought equal power.

Erich seized Bruqah by his
lamba
. "If anyone, or any
thing
, attempts to interfere with me, I'll consider it sabotage...an act of war. Understand one thing: Sturmbannführer Hempel and I are not all that different. Except I do not torture my enemies. I execute them."

He released Bruqah roughly. With a look of disgust, the Malagasy stepped back into the shadows of the tanghin.

"Just how many people
have
you killed, Herr Oberst?" Sol asked as he watched the Malagasy disappear into darkness.

Erich swiveled and jammed the barrel of the gun against Sol's cheek. Sol readjusted his hold on the stretcher, but otherwise did not move.

"Two," Erich said at last. "Both of them boys. The sons of fools who ran a cigar shop on Friedrich Ebert Strasse."

T
he hut was sweltering. Eucalyptus branches glowed in a brazier, crackling and pouring off an oily smoke so thick it shellacked Erich's skin and smothered his forehead and cheeks with sweat. This is insanity, he thought, waiting for his burning eyes to adjust to the darkness.

He was almost sorry when they did. Chin against chest, shoulders sagged and arms hanging limply, the Zana-Malata sat behind the fire. He was staring lifelessly at the flames. Smoke seemed to curl from his peppercorn hair. He looked for all the world like a corpse that had died sitting upright. The two fossas crouched fearfully beside him, mewling and worming their noses against his shriveled legs.

He did not move.

Behind him a crudely woven raffia chair, hanging from the ceiling by a plaited rope, swung slowly back and forth. Firelight glinted off three blackened cooking pans and several zebu halters along the back wall. The flames of small, fat candles guttered in the empty sockets of a water buffalo skull that adorned an upper corner, its forehead painted with a swastika.

The fossas lifted their heads to survey the intruders. The fire popped, sparks cascading across the syphilitic's shoulders. Still he remained slumped.
 
Filled with disgust and reluctance, Erich motioned with his pistol for Solomon and Pleshdimer to place the dog near the brazier and then go outside and wait. The fossas backed up, hackles raised; then, appearing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, they hunkered down, watching suspiciously.

"What do you plan to do about the dysplasia?" Erich said, unable to control the ire in his voice as he crossed to the Zana-Malata.

Through glassy eyes the syphilitic continued peering into the flames.
 

Anguished that anyone could sit so mesmerized while Taurus lay so feebly, Erich put the gun close to the man's head. "Acknowledge me!"
 
Erich fought to control his trembling. As if through someone else's eyes he watched the gun pull toward the syphilitic's head, like metal to a magnet.

"I said acknowledge me!"

When there was no response, a pressure that had been building inside him for a very long time erupted.

His finger squeezed.

Click
.

The Zana-Malata sat impassive and unharmed. My God, Erich thought, ashamed at having actually pulled the trigger. He tried to holster the gun, but instinctively jerked the trigger again. This time, the gun was pointed at the floor.

Click
.

Stupefied, Erich stared at the pistol.

The Zana-Malata toppled onto his side and lay with his head near a shelf constructed of a mahogany plank placed across two rocks. On the plank sat three empty white bowls, cracked and stained and obviously very old, each painted with the scene of a clipper ship sailing through an Eden of leaves. Where, Erich wondered, had he seen those bowls before? He couldn't concentrate. All he could focus on was the syphilitic's arm, outstretched on the lashed-sapling floor, the biceps baggy with diseased skin, the fist without fingernails.

Blood drooled from the Zana-Malata's mouth.

"The gun didn't fire." Erich backed up. Filled with turmoil, he felt like retching. "I didn't shoot you."
 
He turned toward Solomon, whose face, obscured by the haze, looked expressionless. "I didn't shoot any---."

Except it was not Solomon. He had ordered Solomon to stay outside. Hadn't he?

The fire snapped, and a curl of smoke rose from the brazier. The heat forced Erich to shield his eyes. When his vision returned, Pleshdimer was licking the blood from the saplings.

Erich grabbed the corporal by the hair. "He has syphilis, you imbecile!"

Pleshdimer grinned with reddened lips.

Erich shoved the man aside.
 
The Kapo fell against Taurus and settled down with his head across her back. "If the dog dies, we feast," he said.

"Get up and out! You have five seconds!"

Pleshdimer folded his hands across his paunch.

"One!" Erich screamed.

A memory of Miriam seized him, making his head pound. "
Count
!" he had commanded that night he had lost his temper and taken her by force. "
Count
!"

"
One...two...three
..."

"
Slower
!"

"
Four
..."

"
Again! From the beginning
!"

"Five!" For an instant the face before him was Miriam's. He squeezed the trigger just as Sol's hand gripped his wrist.

"Erich!"

The explosion roared in his ears. A centimeter from Pleshdimer's jugular a black hole appeared in the floor, and a blue puff of smoke leapt up from the brazier.

"You could have killed Taurus!" Solomon shouted.

Erich blinked.
Taurus
?
 
He twisted his hand from Sol's hold and watched the corporal lurch his bulk forward and cower in the corner. Too drained and displaced to aim again, he knelt beside the dog. He made no attempt to control his fierce trembling.
 
"Mein
schatz
," he murmured. "My love."

With a
plook
the Zana-Malata uncorked a crudely fashioned clay jug. The smell of chloroform pervaded the hut, and Solomon moved back toward the door and fresh air. Though the anesthetic made him dizzy and giddy, Erich remained near Taurus.

Pouring chloroform onto a ragged cloth and handing the cloth to Erich, the Zana-Malata indicated for him to hold it against the dog's nose. Erich signaled for the black man to recork the jug, the contents of which were making him dizzy. The syphilitic shook his head vehemently, lifted his gnarled, grotesque fist close to Erich's chin and opened the fingers. An ember burned on the palm. Erich pulled back from its heat. The fingers shut around the ember, the hideous mask that was the syphilitic's face registered no pain.

The hand reopened. In the palm lay what looked like a fruit pit. Propelled as if by a force not his own, Erich holstered the pistol and, taking the pit, stared at it stuporously, careful to keep his injured hand like a leaf-shaped paten below the other one, in case he dropped the thing.

"It's a tanghin pit," Solomon whispered, reappearing and squatting beside him, blending with the smoke as if he had lost all physical definition. "Bruqah says eating it induces a trance state."

The pit, fuzzed and creased, strangely fascinated Erich. "Tell him to get on with it."

Solomon gently took hold of the Zana-Malata's shoulders and spoke to him in French.

The Zana-Malata nodded, then crawled behind the dog and lifted her head. A small spasm rippled through the animal, and Erich shivered empathetically. He felt a vague sense of gratitude when the Zana-Malata directed him to cover Taurus' nose with the cloth. Trying to keep his head as far away from it as possible changed the angle of his vision and he saw Pleshdimer in the corner, face chalk-white and arms slack. The thought drifted away from him as he watched a fossa pad forward to lick Pleshdimer's palm.

The smoke was no longer going up through the roof-hole. It had broken into blue crescents shaped like ferns and curled down around him. He blinked and looked toward Solomon for help, but the hut was wreathed in thick tendrils of smoke and he could not see beyond his hand.

Which still held the fruit pit.

He set it down near the brazier.

The pit was an eye, staring up at him. His lids felt weighted.

The Zana-Malata chanted something unintelligible. He held a knife that spangled like a sword in sunlight. Erich knew he should disarm the man, but he was in too much of a torpor to move or even care. He raised his hand, but his arm fell--slowly. Everything seemed to move through glue.

The syphilitic maneuvered the anesthetized dog onto her back, parted her hind legs, smeared something black and tarry onto the fur and shaved her thighs. After each stroke he ran the blade between his fingers to clean off the hair. Then he cleansed the skin with a rag that smelled of antiseptic and poised the knife above the left thigh.
 

Must be going to sever the pectineus muscle, Erich groggily understood. It was potentially a lethal or crippling operation, but what other course had Fate accorded them? Where could a hermit on a remote island the size of a pfennig have acquired the necessary knowledge and surgical skills?

In the smoky vertigo in which Erich floated, anything seemed possible.

The Zana-Malata sliced open and peeled back the skin. Erich averted his eyes. The sight of Taurus' tissue, red as uncooked biergarten meat, made his heart thud with fear. He would give the black man anything--
anything
!--he promised himself, were the operation successful. Regardless of the outcome, he would assuage her agony, for her pain was his pain.

Holding the chloroform-soaked rag, he searched the haze for some point of reference to help him keep his eyes open without having to watch the cutting. His gaze fastened on the bowls, and he remembered having associated them with Benyowsky.