by David Nickle
“I wouldn’t be either,” said Norland, “I knew about this bug. What’d be the point?”
“God’s still there,” said LeFauvre. “Bug or no bug.”
Andrew said that might be so. “But one thing’s sure,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s definitely the bug. If I don’t pray, ever . . . the bug never has a chance to trick me.”
LeFauvre looked skeptical, and for a moment, Andrew felt awful, naked in his own flip cynicism. The train pulled faster through the night, and the silence between them stretched likewise.
“Well,” said Norland, finally, “good luck with that, Doc. Gonna bet you’re in Charlie’s prayers, if not your own.”
And that did it. They all laughed, even LeFauvre before he shook his head and picked up his Ben Hur and let it go. A minute or so after that, Andrew figured it was all right to go stretch his legs in their near-empty car.
They had to change trains in Stuttgart, and it would be a considerable wait; the Deutsche Reichsbahn train to Munich wasn’t due in the Hauptbahnhof for four hours after they arrived, at a quarter to eight. There weren’t many folk there given the hour, but there were some: maybe ten who’d come in on the train with them, and had other trains to catch rather than appointments in Stuttgart, spread out through the long hall and a couple of fellows in uniform that Andrew thought might be Polizei. A woman and a man, smoking and conversing quietly, sat on a bench next to a large wheeled trunk and a pair of smaller suitcases. By the stairs to the ticketing hall, nearly across the concourse, a group of five or six men sat and stood among a clutter of duffel bags in a way that made Andrew think of a group of soldiers.
The band unloaded their bags, and Ozzie’s trumpet and Charlie’s saxophone, Pete Norland’s elaborate drum kit, spread over three cases . . . and they took over a bench along the edge of the cavernous platform concourse. William Lewis and Dominic did not precisely join them, but they sat in easy sight. Ozzie tipped his hat to them, then settled back, his trumpet case next to him. It was quiet here in the small hours, a good time to sleep, he said.
“You won’t get much on the next leg. You know what they call the German rail cars? Thunder boxes. All metal, from wheel to seats.”
Andrew didn’t think he would sleep, but although what he felt like doing was walking, he knew enough not to. This was a big station, and here in the small hours of the morning it was all shadows, broken just by a few pools of electric light here and there . . . but mostly, shadowy places, where it’d be easy for a wandering Negro to find himself on the receiving end of a beating.
He did stray over to sit by Dominic and William. Dominic had brought a deck of cards, and they were playing hands of gin rummy, using William’s trunk as a sort of table between them. But they folded them up when Andrew sat down.
“Ozzie says we ought to sleep,” said Andrew.
“Bad idea,” said Dominic. “Don’t want to miss our train.”
“Did you have an easy time of it at the border?” asked Lewis.
It was, in fact, absurdly easy. The conductor had spent more time with the band members’ American passports than with Andrew’s French papers, and hadn’t even bothered to ask about their business in Germany. No one had troubled any of them when they got off the train and wrestled the luggage off the platform to the concourse—although neither had any porter lifted a hand to help them with the load. Andrew once more wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier just to travel up front, get a sleeper coach car with Dominic and Lewis, and use the time to discuss their plans once they got to Munich, and then Wallgau. Dominic tapped the side of the deck on the trunk that Lewis had brought, slid it back into its box then swapped it out for the package of cigarettes in his jacket pocket. He offered around, and Andrew and William both partook.
What the hell were they going to do, in Munich . . . in Wallgau? Three days ago, Ruth Harper had demanded to know, as they sat alone in her room at the sanatorium. Andrew laid it out for her as best he could.
“Kurtzweiller will have settled in. He’ll talk to people. Hopefully he’ll have more of an idea what the situation is in Wallgau. The farm’s owned by a family in Munich . . . the Vislers. He’s looking them up. They might know a bit more. And then . . . there’s the Nazis.”
“He’s not going to talk with the Nazis, surely . . . ?”
“Not directly, about Wallgau I mean. But why wouldn’t he? They’re running an election now I hear. People running elections do like to talk.”
“He’s a proper detective, is Dr. Kurtzweiller.”
“He speaks the language.”
Ruth stood up and went to the window, but only looked out an instant before she turned and leaned against the sill.
“How will you even keep your own wits about you?” she asked. “Any of you?”
“We’ll take precautions,” said Andrew.
“Really?” Ruth’s tone was withering. “What precautions? Did you ever manage to replicate that hill-people concoction that didn’t quite see you through the day in Eliada?”
“No,” said Andrew.
“Are you going to cut yourself? Some other methodology?” She pointed to her foot, into which twenty years ago Jason had discharged a pistol.
“Dr. Lewis is gathering equipment.”
“Equipment.” She laughed bitterly, and shook her head. “Andrew, I would have a better appreciation for the decision we made, that Albert and I stay hidden in this . . . this prison, and not join you to Wallgau . . . if you could make it clearer to me exactly how the Société’s plan is any better.”
Now, Andrew regarded the trunk that Dr. Lewis had packed. In it were various things: two new Leica cameras and more than a dozen rolls of 35-millimetre film, sterile jars of various sizes and a jug of formaldehyde, instruments for dissection, binoculars, electric lamps. And for protection: wartime gas masks, double-filtered with activated charcoal and a mechanical gas treated for chlorine, and oil-cloth coats and pants . . . rubber gloves . . . all roughly sized for Andrew, Dr. Lewis, Kurtzweiller, and Dominic.
Andrew had brought along in his own bag of supplies from Vire, such as nurses used when interacting with tubercular patients: gloves and masks and goggles . . . Andrew also packed a case of phials of extracted wasp venom, adrenaline and several hypodermic needles . . . these on the conjecture that adrenaline might be the agent of distraction that Jason and he had activated in Eliada with sheer, searing pain, to break the Juke’s spell. And if it didn’t . . . well, there was the wasp venom. The efficacy of which was a conjecture too.
That was the trouble: all of their measures were conjecture. Fact was fact. It had been twenty years since Andrew or anyone he knew had encountered a living Juke.
“Oh dear,” said Lewis, and when Andrew raised an eyebrow he nodded toward the band. Two of the men from the stairs had crossed the concourse, and were talking to them. Andrew tapped the ashes from his cigarette and straightened to listen. Dominic put a hand on his arm.
“Don’t show interest,” he said, and Andrew nodded and dragged on his cigarette.
They were speaking German, in pleasant tones. One—a short heavyset fellow with greasy blond hair—appeared to be asking about the drum kit. Was ist das, mein Herr? That kind of thing. Norland put his hand on the bass drum kit possessively—maybe too possessively—and the other fellow, who was a head taller than the first, he took issue with that, and said something else in German that the echo of the station rendered incoherent.
Andrew dropped his cigarette to the floor and, shaking Dominic’s hand off, stood. Two other men from that group were on their way over, walking at a brisk pace.
“I’m supposed to be with the band,” he said. “That’s how we get through.”
Dominic rose too. “You can’t help,” he hissed. “Sit back down.”
“No point now,” said Andrew. He’d caught the smaller man’s eye and, smiling, that fellow beckoned Andrew over, and Dominic too.
“Kommen sie her!”
As he’d been advised, Andrew feign
ed incomprehension, so the man repeated, more loudly, beckoned with his whole arm. “Kommen sie her!” Come!
Andrew nodded and walked over.
“Welches Instrument spielst du?” What instrument do you play?
“He does not understand what you are saying,” said Ozzie, interjecting. “Speaks no German.”
The man turned to Ozzie. “But he is with your orchestra?”
“He plays piano,” said Colbert, and mimed chords.
“Where is his piano?” asked the tall one.
“We can’t take a piano on the train,” said Ozzie. “He’ll make do with whatever they’ve got.”
“But you carry your other instruments.” The tall one bent down to look at the drum kit. He identified them one by one, by their cases: “A trumpeter. One who plays an alto saxophone. A drummer.” He pulled the leather cover off the front of it, and read the illustration—a silhouette of a man, legs akimbo in the middle of a dance move, and in cursive script the name: Le Noir Qui Danse.
“What does that say?”
“Der tanzende Neger.”
“Which of you Neger is the dancer?”
Ozzie smiled wide. “None of us dance.”
“Is that name meant to be a joke then?”
“We play music to which one can dance,” said Ozzie. “Who wants to watch a Neger dance?”
The other men had arrived, and gathered staring curiously at the band.
“Fellows!” said the tall one to the others. “We have a dance band here!”
“Can you play us a song?” asked the short one.
Ozzie indicated that they weren’t really set up for it, but one of the others—a wide-shouldered youth with too-long blonde hair—corrected that by snatching Ozzie’s trumpet case, opening it and, plucking out the mouthpiece, blew a raspberry into it. The cover from the bass drum was already off, and the shorter fellow fumbled with the trunk containing the snare. The band members shared a worried glance through wide, ingratiating smiles, and Ozzie finally nodded.
“We can play some music. But we have no piano,” he said again, and Andrew looked down. It had been quick thinking on Colbert’s part—it let Andrew sit this out with some grace—and if they got out of this—when they got out of this—he’d thank him for it.
Pete Norland managed to convince them not to unpack the whole drum kit—he could make do, he said, with the snare. Ozzie Hayward retrieved his mouthpiece, wiped it on his handkerchief and got his trumpet ready, and LeFauvre licked the reed of his saxophone and put it in place. The men drew back a respectful difference, and Ozzie nodded around once they were all ready.
Andrew didn’t recognize the song, but Dominic did—“Confessin’,” and he mentioned the title just before Colbert cut in with the lyrics, in English, confessing his love, and going from there. He did a pretty good job crooning, particularly for a piano player—and so did they all, playing without a piano. Ozzie led the band with noodling trumpet work, weaving in and out of Colbert’s vocals, which soon lost the lyric and fell into a kind of inspired gibberish that shouldn’t have worked but elevated the music and sent it off in another direction. Lewis made his way over beside Dominic, and when the song wound down, he tried to lead a round of applause, elbowing Dominic to do the same.
Would that the Germans had felt as good about the performance. The short one did clap, along with two others, but the thin one and the broad-shouldered blond man shared a glance and shook their heads.
“Do you know any German songs?” he asked, and before anyone could do anything but nod, the blond fellow asked: “‘In Einem Kleinen Strandkorb?’ What of that song?”
Ozzie wiped his handkerchief over his forehead. “‘In a Small Beach Basket?’ I think I’ve heard it, but—”
“I will remind you,” said the blond man. He stepped forward, and began to sing. He spoke no lyrics—just “Da da-da-da da dat daaa!” and “da-dataaa!” and so forth. But his voice was beautiful, high and clear, and he did not miss a note, or a beat. He stopped and looked at Ozzie, and said: “Why don’t you play that for us?”
“To be honest,” said Ozzie, “I don’t think we know that one. Sounds like it’s a foxtrot, though.”
“It is,” said the singer. “By Eric Harden. Do you know Eric Harden?”
“You must know Eric Harden,” said the short one.
“We can play you a foxtrot,” said Ozzie.
“We need to hear the Basket song.”
“We don’t know it,” said Ozzie, then quickly added, “but we can try.”
He indicated to Pete Norland, to lay down a foxtrot rhythm, then put his trumpet to his lips, and blew a few bars that more or less approximated the song that the big blond fellow had sung a moment ago. It was close, but not near enough for the German’s purposes—so he started singing again, and conducting, and as Ozzie followed more closely, LeFauvre came in on the saxophone.
This pleased the Germans more. The tall one swayed with the music, and put his hand on his smaller friend’s shoulder to indicate that he should too. The others who’d come round went further: one, a bearded man in a thick dark sweater, took hold of the man next to him and started to dance, to foxtrot.
Ozzie’s trumpet handed the melody off to LeFauvre’s saxophone entirely, and he held the trumpet to his breast, eyes closed as LeFauvre followed the singer and Pete Norland kept the tempo. Lyrics began to emerge in the singing, as though the music had spurred memory—and Colbert joined in, offering a contra-punctual harmony. Ozzie, head bobbing, put his trumpet back to his lips and stepped back in.
Others were gathering. Those others still here from the train from Paris had risen from their benches, and craned to hear. The couple who’d been keeping to themselves and smoking together, abandoned their trunk and luggage and crossed the hall to better hear. Ozzie, maybe sensing the attention, lifted the horn of his trumpet to the dark wooden rafters of the Hauptbahnhof, and eyes tight shut, cheeks blown out like a frog’s neck, breathed a string of notes that ascended to a sustained shriek so clear it made Andrew shiver and seemed to freeze everything in the moment: the men dancing, the couple walking . . . the song. It was as though they were all suspended in air at that terrible height, before gravity took hold.
But it was a trick. Norland picked up the beat, tapping his stick on the back of the bench like it was a wood block, and LeFauvre took over, and so did Colbert, picking up the melody with that gibberish lyric he seemed to favour—taking the song away from the German boy altogether . . . and bringing it to new level, the same time as it hauled them all back to Earth.
Andrew was watching the couple, standing at the edge of a circle of light, long shadows covering their faces. The woman stepped around in front of her husband, and rested a hand on his shoulder, enfolded her other hand in his—and he tilted his head, and stepped to the side . . . and they were dancing too, twirling across the station floor, into and out of the pools of light beneath the hanging lamps.
They weren’t the only ones. The men were all in motion now, two of them paired off—the others, swaying on their own—heads tossed back, eyes on those dark rafters.
Andrew felt a touch at his arm—and turned to say no thank you, but it wasn’t a dance.
It was Lewis. He’d opened the trunk, and pulled out a pair of gas masks. Back at the bench, kneeling in the trunk’s shadow, Dominic had already put his on.
“Come on back,” said Lewis. “You know what’s happening.”
Andrew took the gas mask from Lewis and followed him back to their bench, past it, into a darker corner. Lewis pulled the mask over his face, tightened the straps. Andrew waited a moment—looking back at the dance that seemed now to have overtaken the whole station, everyone who was here.
“No,” said Andrew. If he put on the mask, the same kind that Dominic and Lewis were wearing . . . any cover as a musician would be blown. They may as well head right back to Paris, assuming he could avoid arrest.
Andrew set the gas mask down on the bench.
H
e stepped away, back toward the music . . . the bacchanal that was going on before them. Someone else had taken up singing now—a woman, it sounded like, maybe that woman dancing with her husband—and it echoed joyfully through the great chamber.
Andrew looked around him. It was the train station—only a train station, imposing and vast as train stations are . . . but there was no vision here . . . nothing like he’d seen in Eliada, in the hills, when the Juke properly had its teeth in him.
That woman’s voice now . . . was that the voice of someone gone oracular? He didn’t think it was: she was singing well, in a way that projected and filled the hall . . . but she was laughing, and he could see her husband laughing too. They’d just had a moment of happiness. A moment of joy.
As for the young men? Now that was something else. Watching them gathered round the musicians, Andrew thought that they might be a little different. They were more like the men in Eliada who’d come to hang Andrew that night, dressing up like they were Klansmen . . .
At least they were when they approached, with that dangerous geniality . . . just wanting to hear a song, making it clear by their presence that if they didn’t hear a song—that song . . . that things might not be so genial. That there might just be a beating.
It hadn’t played out that way, though. Fact was, they weren’t hearing exactly the same tune that they’d sung . . . they couldn’t have, because Ozzie Hayward and Le Noir Qui Danse didn’t know it.
By all rights, that should have started the clock ticking again, on that beating. Andrew knew these types.
But it hadn’t. The music, imperfect though it was . . .
They were lapping it up. The pair who were dancing alone, now linked arms at the shoulder and were swaying fast, while the men dancing with one another had drawn closer, lost in the improvisations.
Andrew squinted at them. They were far away—farther than he thought they ought to be. He had wandered . . .
“Excuse me.”
Andrew stepped to the side, as the married couple—surely they were married—as they whirled past his shoulder. He stepped aside, and looked back to the band—now at the far end of the hall. He stood at the steps of the ticket hall, the duffel bags abandoned by the dancing men just a few feet off. Seated among them, squatting really, on his naked haunches . . . Doctor Giorgio Molinare grinned at Andrew, and stood, and waved a greeting.