by Matt Killeen
Sarah’s instinct was to recoil from the mud, the dirt, the apparent squalor and poverty of the brick and thatched villages, but it took her just a moment of thought to recognize the piled garbage, cockroaches, hunger, and grime of Berlin and Vienna as different parts of the same thing. This place, these people, were not the deficiency. It was just the sharp end of what society did to people everywhere.
She watched the people of l’Afrique Équatoriale Française, the subjects of the AEF, as they passed. They worked, they smiled, they talked, and the children played. For all the differences, except perhaps the decorative facial scarring, they could be anywhere in the world.
Something occurred to Sarah.
“There’s no war here?” she asked Claude.
“In a way. For these people, whether they’re part of Vichy France or Free France, it doesn’t matter. They won’t feel the benefits, only the deprivations. Until we round them up to fight for us one way or the other.”
“So there is a downside to being a French colony, then?” Sarah smirked.
“No, they’re lucky. They could be Belgian. Then they’d all be chained to a rubber tree until they rotted.”
Sarah looked at Clementine, who rolled her eyes, nodded in Claude’s direction, and made a curious waving motion with her fist. Sarah shook her head, not understanding.
“Congo Free State, he means,” Clementine interjected.
Sarah shook her head again. She didn’t like ignorance. It didn’t suit her. Clementine rummaged in her bag and pulled out a torn and creased book, Red Rubber.
“Read this, then I’ll tell you why he’s a branleur,” she swore into Sarah’s ear.
The Captain heard the word and snorted.
Sarah opened the book but quickly found that trying to read made her nauseous. The words shook into indecipherability as they ate the kilometers east.
They followed the path of the Chari River before turning south at Mondo, and away from its water the land became arid once more. But this time farms and plantations held on and slowly, steadily, the landscape grew greener, until they reached Moundou, where at last the grass replaced the sand.
Sarah’s on-the-road adventures with the Captain in Germany had been difficult. The tension of the drive to Rothenstadt school and the beginning of her mission there. The fury-saturated journey back to Berlin after Christmas at the Schäfer estate, with the sweating, agonized Captain recovering from his bullet wound, a journey that ended in the death of the SA officer—
Sarah recoiled from the memory.
But she understood now that there had been no small joy shared in his car. A pleasant buzz had accompanied the pair as they drove, engaging in covert devilment, jousting, and competing for points. She had felt . . . safe? Definitely capable of closing her eyes and resting, free of the dogs or ghosts.
This truck allowed none of that. Unable to be herself or speak her mind, she had a surprising and growing desire to climb into the Captain’s lap, to bury her head in his neck, to be held and reassured. This need was nothing to do with the prickly tactility, comfort, and absolution that she provided at the parties, or whatever else the men were contemplating.
Meeting Lady Sakura after all these years, receiving again the unconditional comfort and protection that she had once supplied, resting in those willowy arms . . . it seemed to have weakened Sarah somehow. It identified a need and dragged it into the world. Atsuko’s touch was like medicine that she needed over and over, leaving her weak and fragile in between.
She remembered the Mouse crawling into her bed, neither holding her nor flinching away. The warmth and closeness in that fragment was an illusion, she knew. The situation had been fraught, surrounded by peril, and the girl’s presence had in reality felt like an invasion . . . yet the sensation of comfort remained.
Sarah wanted to be held again, held by someone she could trust.
She looked at the Captain, weaker and more fragile in these days since the bullet that had nearly ended him. There was faith, conviction in his intentions, and no small measure of affection. But Sarah had to be one step ahead of what he was thinking for her own self-preservation.
Sarah did not trust him.
She watched the foulmouthed and prejudiced priest. She glanced at the snoring Clementine, her claws momentarily withdrawn. A liar and a spy, by her own admission, and not to be trusted.
Sarah was alone.
She closed her eyes and waited for the clean, smooth paper of her mind to stop moving, before she began to write.
Dear Mouse,
I wonder where the Ice Queen is now? Now she’s graduated and no longer the ruler of a school, how do you think she’s coping with being back in a world that sees her as a walking womb? Did she get to walk through the streets of Paris after all, when the army rolled in, just as she wanted? Or is she sitting at home, baking or something? I don’t think there’s a more fitting punishment for the things she did at the school than losing that control over her life.
Then again, if she hadn’t started der Werwolf, the secret society, and if Elsa hadn’t been part of it, would Elsa have had the strength to stand up to her father at last?
When I joined der Werwolf, I vowed that I’d drag all of them to hell before I was done. Is that what’s happened? Are Elsa and the Ice Queen in hell? Did I do that? The Jews . . . real Jews, believe that hell is in the here and now.
What about you? Are you in hell? Did I put you there, too?
I ask you a lot of questions. Do you have the answers?
Alles Liebe,
Ursula
FOURTEEN
September 17–22, 1940
SARAH DIDN’T OPEN the book as they passed out of Chad into Ubangi-Shari, or even as they entered the Congo Basin above Carnot. She found herself too dizzy on the move and too fatigued to read once they stopped. The movement became everything. Alien as it was, Sarah grew disinterested in the landscape, even as it slowly changed. There was just so much of it, so many trees, so many people, so many kilometers. Everything contracted to a slow green blur.
Jungle. Mud. Wood. Whitewashed stone. Mud. Jungle.
She saw no animals, except insects. The atmosphere grew ever more oppressive, more muggy, until it was like wearing a hot, soaking blanket over her face and even the wind through the truck windows became wet.
Jungle. Mud. Wood. Whitewashed stone. Mud. Jungle.
Their clothes became moist and uncomfortable, with every motion chafing and irritating.
Was this how people came to hate this place? Like the priest?
Jungle. Mud. Wood. Whitewashed stone. Mud. Jungle.
Then something caught Sarah’s eye, causing her to climb out of her little well of negativity.
The truck trundled past a line of men, several hundred strong, shuffling along by the side of the road, backs bent. At the head of this column and dotted alongside were a few armed men.
Sarah saw them—better clothed, better fed—for what they were. Guards.
“Are these prisoners?” Sarah asked Claude.
“No, just workers. Miners, I think,” he answered, distracted.
“Why are there guards?” Sarah continued.
“They don’t want any deserters.”
“Deserters? How can leaving a job be deserting?”
“They’re slaves, Nazi girl.” Clementine sighed.
“They’re not slaves, it’s a prestation,” Claude growled. “They probably can’t pay their taxes.”
“Why were they being taxed if they didn’t have money?” Sarah pressed the point.
“Slaves,” Clementine insisted.
“Shut your mouth, girl,” snapped Claude, becoming irritated.
“No, hang on,” Sarah shouted back over the engine noise. “They don’t have money, so they’re being made to work? Are they being paid?”
Claude w
as silent.
“Slaves,” Clementine restated.
“It might be an administrative punishment . . . And there’s a war on,” Claude said more quietly.
“There’s been a war for about two weeks . . . how long has this arrangement existed?”
“About five hundred years . . .” Clementine sneered.
“Girl,” Claude said, turning to Sarah, “they’re African. They’re natives. They’re lazy and uncooperative. If they wanted to work, they wouldn’t have to be pressed into it.”
“But—”
“They are one step up from animals,” Claude interrupted. “They need to be told what to do, looked after.”
Clementine laughed.
Claude reached over and slapped her face with the back of his hand. She jerked away, eyes wide.
“They need discipline, as you do,” he snarled coldly.
Sarah’s first instinct was to grab Claude, to drive her fingernails into his eyes . . . but he was still driving at speed, the line of miners still flashed past the window.
A hand appeared on her chest. Gentle but firm.
“Enough, Claude.” The Captain was awake now and sitting up. “You don’t touch my help, or my niece. Ever.”
“You’ve changed, mon ami,” sneered Claude.
“So have you,” stated the Captain dispassionately.
Sarah looked at Clementine. One tiny dribble ran from her nose. In the light the blood seemed almost black against her skin. She reached over with a handkerchief to clean her face, but Clementine swatted her arm away, with the eyes of both a terrified child and a warrior set to burn the world.
She had been too late to stop Sarah, though, who looked at the white cloth in her hands, stained bright red.
Sarah watched the tail of the column through the window, the bare backs, scarred by the whip, and felt a tingle in the rough skin of her own back, the permanent souvenir from her time at Rothenstadt.
* * *
The next stop couldn’t come soon enough. It was another shabby mission house on Claude’s list, each apparently built with the same aspirations, and the same shortcomings.
Clementine was bent over a trough behind the house, cleaning her nose.
“Are you all right?” Sarah asked.
“Go away,” Clementine grunted.
“Nope. You work for me,” Sarah insisted.
“Am I on the clock?”
“All the time now. Let’s face it, I can’t let you loose in this place, can I?”
“Are you looking after me then?”
“Like any good imperialist, it seems . . .” Sarah said, and watched her fingers twiddle in front of her, for somewhere to look. “I had no idea, not really.”
“Oh my God, we are in Huckleberry Finn. I am here to teach you a lesson . . .” Clementine put two fingers in her mouth and made a vomiting noise.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’d have got there on my own, and I wouldn’t have gotten a smack in the face doing it.”
“Only because you’re white,” muttered Clementine.
“Hey,” Sarah moaned.
“It isn’t my job to make you feel better.”
They stood, side by side, leaning against the trough. There was so much moisture in the air, Sarah wondered why they bothered with troughs at all.
Something occurred to her.
“Why are you out here?” Sarah asked.
“He won’t let me inside.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Sarah seized her hand and pulled her toward the door.
* * *
Inside, Claude and the Captain were sitting with two men. Their host, an elderly white missionary, sat back from the table, arms folded, but the other, a young African sitting sweating in his Sunday-best clothes, was in deep conversation with the newcomers. His French was incomplete, but his meaning was easy to follow.
Claude looked at Sarah and Clementine but didn’t want to interrupt the visitor. Sarah settled cross-legged on the floor next to him and, pulling Clementine with her, began a game of Backe, backe Kuchen, allowing them to eavesdrop more easily.
After the White Devil had gone, one villager grew sick. It started with one man, then his family, and then those who tended them. They grew fatigued, then feverish, then, confined to bed, they started to bleed, from their noses, mouths, ears, and eyes. Their friends and family withdrew in fear.
Then the German missionaries arrived. At first they were happy the Germans had come to help with doctors and European medicines, but soon everyone left in the village was sick, and one by one they started to die. They were not permitted to tend to their dead, and when the sickness spread, they feared . . .
The storyteller glanced nervously at the minister.
They feared that the ancestors were growing more angry and—
The minister tutted and glared at the young man. The Captain motioned him to continue.
And that was why the plague was threatening the area. The elders demanded that the missionaries leave, but they would not. To save the area, they said, they finally . . . erased the village—
The storyteller didn’t have a French word. He spoke at length with many hand gestures. The elderly minister squirmed uncomfortably before speaking.
“Un lance-flammes,” he murmured.
“What’s a lance-flammes?” Clementine asked Sarah quietly.
“A Flammenwerfer.”
Sarah had seen the gun and its jets of fire on the newsreels. She thought about the streaks of glowing silver from the screen and had a sudden, unbidden sensation of the fire in Schäfer’s lab, of the skin of her arms reddening and blistering and falling off—
They used the flamethrower on the villages and the surrounding bush. But it was too late. They discovered the sickness had spread to the next district, and the Germans went to help.
How many villages? How many people?
Two or three . . .
Hundred.
The Captain sat back and hid his face behind a teacup.
The elderly minister thanked the man for his testimony.
The same story was told to the other German.
Claude and the Captain exchanged looks and began talking at once.
Sarah concentrated on the rhyme and the pattern of handclaps.
Eier und Schmalz,
Zucker und Salz,
Milch und Mehl,
Safran macht den Kuchen gehl.
She had played with few children and was clumsy, but Clementine was having the same trouble coordinating her hands.
Schieb ihn den Ofen rein . . .
The German had come a few days ago.
Their hands collided, and they made themselves laugh before beginning again.
* * *
“How much longer do we have to travel with that lunatic?” Sarah complained as she paced beside the Captain’s bed.
“Well, unless you have a truck and an intimate knowledge of the missions between here and Gabon, then all the way to Libreville where we can get a boat.”
The Captain was, somehow, dressed in a silk robe while Sarah squeaked in her wet clothes. It annoyed Sarah in ways she couldn’t quite fathom. He was looking very relaxed, to the point of passing out. She wished he was more awake, more interested.
“He’s some friend of yours. Hitting women—”
“He hit a black servant.” He raised a hand to stop her protest. “This is where you are now. Getting wound up about it is a waste of effort.”
“These people, the French people, are supposed to be our allies, right? British allies, I mean,” Sarah clarified.
“Yes, please tell the whole mission that. In fact, a little louder would be great.”
“Our allies keep people as slaves. Call it what you will. Work for free that you can’t leave is slavery.”
“Do you think they were made sick on purpose?” Sarah couldn’t quite believe it. That level of malice, even from the stormtroopers, or the little monsters of Rothenstadt, seemed inconceivable. Then she thought about Poland. She thought briefly of Schäfer and his bomb—Sarah squirmed away from that memory but pushed through it. His bomb, powerful enough to flatten a city. A weapon ready to be used. She thought of Ishii, of Ningbo enjoying their bubonic plague, of children being given contaminated sweets.
“Even if it were natural, someone is out here studying it,” the Captain replied. “Maybe these German missionaries, maybe not. But don’t you wonder why missionaries have a flamethrower?”
“Hasse is here, too?”
“Seems so, and he got in front of us.”
“Are we going to look at these villages?”
“I’m afraid so.”
FIFTEEN
SARAH HAD LEFT her mother safe on the roof, despite her protestations. Sarah had someone else she needed to check on.
The moon was a day or two past being full, but Sarah didn’t need that light to navigate. Everything was bathed in a flickering red glow from the streets beneath. The smoke was tickling her throat and causing a pain in her chest as she danced from rooftop to rooftop, up the eaves, along the ridges, down the valleys and gables and hips. Bare feet on red tiles, hands propelling her from chimney stacks and flashings, until she was in the heart of the Jewish Quarter. Somewhere below, among the screams and smashing, was her friend the butcher.