by David Nickle
They found themselves in a bright, warm front hall—opening on rooms to the left and the right, with a great staircase climbing to a first floor, and a passage to the back of the house alongside it, hung with antlers on high. A young woman waited there with towels, and handed them out to each of them.
“You should remove those clothes,” she said in English. “So wet.”
Andrew peeled off his overcoat and the others did the same, and towelled off.
“I’ll be fine,” said Dominic, and Kurtzweiller nodded gruffly.
“Upstairs,” said Gottlieb after they’d dried themselves.
“What is there?” asked Andrew, and Gottlieb only smiled and beckoned.
They climbed into a large room—it looked to Andrew almost like a gentleman’s club, with leather chairs and sofas . . . desks here and there . . . small side tables for drinks, and newspapers . . . and a broad row of windows, looking out over a wide field.
There would be mountains farther off—they were rendered invisible by the rains, but Andrew knew they would be there. This was a room very much as described by Zimmermann . . . the one that he had snuck into in the night to read mail . . . the one where he and Jason had met, before he left and Jason stayed behind.
There were four men in that room now, and they each regarded Andrew and the Société silently as they entered. One of them, Andrew did not recognize: one, slight, black-haired, with a high forehead, wearing a dark double-breasted suit, was standing by the window, hands at his hips and elbows held outward. A second one, Andrew thought he might know: square-jawed, older—maybe sixty—with a mop of white hair, and a look about him that was disconcertingly familiar . . . he thought that might be Johannes Bergstrom, long-dead Nils Bergstrom’s older brother. He sat in one of the chairs, legs and arms crossed as though he were holding something in.
The third, Andrew was fairly sure about. He stood more than a head taller than the first fellow. He was broad about the shoulders, narrower at the waist; he wore a pair of trousers with suspenders, and a workman’s shirt that fit too tightly over a lean and well-muscled torso. His hair was dark brown . . . and was crudely cut. He had a single dark eyebrow over eyes that seemed to burn.
He stood behind one of the chairs, his hands holding the back of it like a shield, and when he looked at Andrew, he grinned. Surely, thought Andrew, this was Orlok.
As to the fourth, sitting in the chair in front of the man likely to be Orlok? There was no question.
“Hello, Doctor Waggoner,” said Jason Thistledown. He smiled too. “You ought to get out of those wet clothes. Goin’ to catch yourself a death.”
“Sprechen sie bitte Deutsch,” said the stranger, and Jason obliged.
“Of course,” he said in German. Then he looked up to the giant looming behind him. “These are the ones,” he said.
“And you are Orlok,” said Andrew.
The giant—Orlok—reached down and patted Jason on the shoulder, and nodded his head.
“Call me that,” he said. “You are Waggoner then? The Neger physican. Yes.”
“I am Andrew Waggoner.”
Orlok lifted his hand from Jason and waved a finger at Andrew and the rest. “I will want to talk with you later. We have a thing in common . . . in what we have defeated. And I am most anxious to learn what you know of that.”
“I am anxious to talk also,” said Andrew.
The stranger looked Andrew up and down. “What is the worth of that?” he demanded, looking to Orlok. “This Neger is a distraction, Herr Orlok.”
At that, Orlok laughed—a surprisingly quiet chuckle, given his impressive size. Andrew would have thought his laughter the sort that would boom across the valley.
“Herr Goebbels,” said Orlok, addressing Andrew, “does not think highly of you Waggoner. Do you know why?”
“We have not met. I do not know why.”
“You are a degenerate,” said Orlok. “From Africa. That is why. He thinks you are sub-human.”
“You’ve been called worse things,” said Jason, and then glancing at the stranger—Goebbels—repeated himself, slowly, in German.
“But Herr Goebbels,” said Orlok, “should not toss around insults like that. Do you know that he can’t even climb the stairs? Not with ease. A bad foot. Born that way. Degenerate.”
Goebbels took his arms from his hips, crossed them and, put a fist to his chin.
“Still,” said Orlok, “he comes from a very long way off. All the way from the City of Berlin! That is nearly as far as Paris, where you have come from. Maybe not quite as far. I should be more gracious. He brought a great store of food for us, a whole truckload. And we are always hungry here. But it is a peace offering—am I correct, Herr Goebbels?” He looked to Goebbels, who nodded. “And as such . . . it buys you consideration.”
Goebbels lowered his hand to the crook of his arm. “Herr Orlok, would you prefer to continue this conversation later?”
“No, Herr Goebbels. We were doing very well I thought.” Orlok grinned. “I am sorry, Waggoner. We should introduce ourselves. You have friends with you here.”
Andrew introduced the Société such as were present, and Orlok introduced the others properly. The man in the chair was indeed Johannes Bergstrom. He did not meet Andrew’s eye when he was introduced. Orlok continued.
“And Herr Joseph Goebbels. He is a politician. With Hitler and the Nazi Party. He has an election coming up next year and he would like very much to win it.”
“For my party, my Führer to prevail, yes.”
“So. That is what we are discussing.” Orlok stepped around the chair and approached Goebbels more directly. To the small man’s credit, he didn’t cringe as Orlok drew closer—he returned his fists to his hips, and stood straighter.
Orlok spoke to Goebbels. “Waggoner knows about the thing you brought here. The Juke. He knows what it does. He knows how it does it. Better than Bergstrom. Maybe better than me. We will talk about it now. And you will be respectful.”
Goebbels stepped back from Orlok. He shook his head.
“I did not bring the thing . . . this Juke here,” said Goebbels and gestured to Bergstrom. “That was you, Doctor. We only gave you money, and this place to do the work. And our youth . . . to bring the heart of Germany together as one. The experiment is something that I for one would never have supported.”
Bergstrom shook his head and started to speak, but Goebbels raised a finger and continued.
“There are other ways of convincing the people to support us in the vote, and well beyond that. We have our own science of persuasion and I for one trust it . . . newspapers, and rallies, and simple example. Propaganda. It is at the least, something that we can control.”
“And this,” said Orlok, “you cannot control.”
“I do not believe that you can control it either,” said Goebbels.
Orlok shrugged. “Believe what you like.”
“I believe it to be possible that we can exercise control,” said Goebbels. He held his hands forward, in upraised fists—as though he were grasping a rope, or the handles on a heavy trunk. “But together, Herr Orlok. Not opposed as we have been.”
Orlok turned to Andrew. “Do you see how well this discussion is going? How long do you think we have been talking, Herr Goebbels and I? Two days! Well, not all of that time. He went to sleep back in the town and then came back to talk again today. He is so determined. And as you might guess . . . I have not granted him his wish. And yet he persists.” He turned to Goebbels. “Why do you persist?”
“It is to our mutual advantage,” he said. “You are a great man, Orlok. We know how to reward great—”
“No.” Orlok said it quietly, but he stopped Goebbels as surely as if he had shouted. “I accept your offering, Herr Goebbels. Not your terms.”
“We can reward your loyalty,” said Goebbels.
Orlok shook his head.
“We can ensure your safety.”
Orlok laughed again, this time at a volume su
iting his frame.
“Talk to Waggoner,” he said. “Respectfully. Convince him of your party’s virtues. Perhaps over a meal, of the food that you brought for us. A meal with the degenerate Neger.”
Goebbels sighed, looked to the floor, then back up at Orlok.
“I will go now, I think,” he said. “Remember that I am offering both a reward, and a peace.”
“You,” said Orlok, “are begging for help. Now come. Beg at the Neger’s supper table.”
Goebbels flinched only a little. He was quiet for a moment, looking at his boots. Finally, he merely shrugged, and offered an icy smile.
“I think you may have overestimated my persistence at last. Leb wohl, Mein Herr,” he said, and started toward the stairs.
Orlok was right—the little Nazi did have a bad leg. He managed well enough for it, Andrew thought, as he made his way down the stairs and to the front door—only a little more slowly and awkwardly than dignity would allow.
“I expect we won’t see him again,” said Jason.
He got out of the chair as soon as they heard the front doors close below them, stretched, and ambled over to the windows. Had he lost weight? From the photograph that Zimmermann had of him, it looked to Andrew like he might have gained some. Andrew was wondering how the burns were on his neck when it occurred to him:
Here he was, in the farmhouse at Wallgau. There was Jason Thistledown, who he had spent nights wondering whether was alive or dead.
“You’re alive,” he said.
Jason turned and looked at him. “You’re a smart one.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Andrew. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Jason regarded him a moment. “Where’s Ruth? She here too?”
Andrew shook his head. “She’s safe.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“I know that for a fact.”
“Thank you.”
Jason rubbed his chin and crossed the room to Andrew, until he was right in front of him. He looked Andrew in the eye, and reached out with a hand. Andrew frowned, and took his hand, and Jason clasped that one with his other hand, and so did Andrew, and they shook.
“I’m sorry,” said Jason, and Andrew said, “I am too,” and although Andrew thought they might speak more of it later, that was as far as they got, that first day at the Wallgau farm.
There were not even apologies on that last day, at the Thorn farm.
In the pre-dawn before they were to depart, Andrew watched as Annie held onto Ruth, who was not weeping. She might have been . . . it would have been better if she were. She was sitting on the edge of her cot, staring at her hands that pinched at the fabric homespun skirt that had once belonged to Lawrence Thorn’s dead wife and now covered her. Her face was like a death mask. Her words came on the faintest wind, flat and cold.
“Jason won’t come,” she said. “He won’t even come to Cranbrook, to see us off. We are an abomination. No. That is not precisely what he said. I am an abomination. That.”
“No,” said Annie, and repeated it: “No, no, no,” and so on, nearly as softly.
“No,” said Andrew, in barely a whisper. Annie looked up at Andrew, and wordlessly—with the widening of her eyes, the raising of her brow—made her wishes clear.
Leave us be.
Andrew went off looking for Jason. He guessed that the two of them had just spoken, so thought he might find Jason lurking around outside the bunkhouse, or up at the pen tending swine, or just lingering by the Thorn house. It wasn’t so. Jason was abed, and it was Lawrence’s boy Tom that Andrew finally found, in the front of the farmhouse with a bucket of well water in each hand, hauling it up the steps to the kitchen. He stopped, set the buckets down, when he saw Andrew coming up. The sun was just coming up by then, just a little pink of it, and it lit his face. He was glaring.
“What you want, Nigger?”
“Doctor,” said Andrew, and when Tom said, “What?” Andrew repeated: “Doctor Waggoner. That’s my name, son. Don’t call me nigger.”
“Well you scat,” said Tom. “This is the house.”
“You seen Jason?”
“Sure,” said Tom.
“Can you fetch him?”
“What for? Jason’s got no need to talk to you,” said Tom, “not you nor your nigger-lovin’ friends. Father’ll take you to town later.”
Andrew took a step toward Tom.
“Son, I just need to see Jason. I can find him myse—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. As he grew closer, Tom set his mouth, reached down and picked up one of the buckets, and flung it in Andrew’s face. The water struck him first, in a freezing sheet—and then the bucket itself, heavy and steel, struck home in the worst place—his elbow, still in a sling.
“You get! You get!” shouted the boy, and probably Andrew should have done just that. It was, he would often reflect, an idiotic moment. Tom could not have been more than twelve years old. He was small for that. If he’d been in Andrew’s care, he would have examined him for worms, or kidney disorder.
He wouldn’t have hit him, with a half-made fist in the side of the head. He wouldn’t have brought that fist back—fully formed—in the other side of the face while the child was reeling with shock from that first hit. Tom fell to the steps, knocking the other bucket over and spilling the water all down his trousers, and he let out a keening wail.
The front door to the farmhouse swung open at that—and there he was.
Jason, half-dressed. With a shotgun in one hand.
“What in hell,” he said, and Tom looked back and then pointed at Andrew.
“Shoot him!” he screamed. “Shoot the dirty nigger! He tried t’ kill me!”
Andrew raised a hand to Jason, waving what he thought was calm. “Jason, it’s not—”
Jason held the gun at his waist. He didn’t point it, but he didn’t move to put it away either.
“Did you strike my brother?” he said quietly.
“It was a misunderst—”
“You did.”
The sun had finally topped the trees on the other side of the Kootenai, and rays of it struck Jason’s brow, for years afterward, that would be the memory that he carried of Jason Thistledown: a young man painted gold by the morning light, his eyes narrow with contempt and pity, as cold as the light was warm.
“Jason,” said Andrew, “please. Ruth—Miss Harper—you hurt her badly—”
“That’s about enough. Go back to the women. Mr. Thorn’ll take you to where you need to go.”
And then, in the golden dawn, Jason Thistledown raised the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed it just above Andrew’s head.
“Don’t ever hit my little brother,” he said.
“Jason—”
“Now get back.”
“Joseph Goebbels,” said Orlok, as they all sat down to feast hours later, “is a man that I would not ever fuck.”
Kurtzweiller and Lewis exchanged what they must have thought was a tiny glance at that, but it caught Orlok’s eye. He looked at Kurtzweiller, and then Lewis, then Dominic and finally over at Andrew, who was seated across from them at one of the long wooden tables in the farmhouse’s dining hall.
The room was long and narrow, and from Zimmermann’s tale, Andrew guessed this had been used as a barracks for the S.A. guard just a few months ago. It certainly showed signs of wear—there were ugly scratches in the dark wood framing doors and windows, and the bare board floor was scuffed with the dragging of furniture. At one end, a banner with a swastika hung crookedly off the wall. They all sat on low wooden benches at either end of the table.
Between them were heaped platters of food: potatoes, roasted in fat and salted, glistening hocks of pork, likely cooked in the same oven, and more platters filled with fruits—apples and oranges. Strewn among them were tins, half-opened, with meats and vegetables, pickled mushrooms. At the far end was a great bowl of carrots, badly peeled and boiled too long.
It was a feast, but one prepared by c
hildren. Starving, wild children who had spent too long on their own and barely knew how to operate a stove . . . and who had forgotten how to dress themselves.
There were perhaps two dozen of them, maybe more at times, in the dining hall along with Orlok and his entourage of Jason, Bergstrom, and Gottlieb. Some sat at the table, with plates of food that they cleaned with bare hands. Others hovered behind them, either waiting for a space to open up or simply shovelling food onto plates and eating standing. They were young . . . not really children, but youthful . . . adolescents, and very young men—and women . . . and they were for the most part naked.
“Goebbels thinks you are not human,” Orlok said to Andrew, and Andrew nodded.
“You were saying,” he said.
“Well, I would fuck you,” said Orlok, “before I fucked him. Why are you squirming?” He was looking at Dominic, who was indeed shifting, rubbing his arm.
“Bad arm,” said Dominic, and Orlok nodded.
“You all have bad arms,” he said. “You think you are tricking me.”
They did think that. Before they had come to dinner, Andrew had pulled each of them aside and administered a pinprick of wasp venom . . . barely a drop each, but more than a single sting would ever inject. The pain was enough to bring tears, and it lingered. Even through dinner, where Andrew noted a little sourly, there was not a drop of wine to blunt it.
“They are just keeping a clear head,” said Jason, who was seated beside Orlok. “Like I used to.”
Orlok nodded. “Burning cigarettes in their necks?”
“No,” said Jason, switching to English, “something else. Isn’t that right, Doc?”
Andrew sighed, and rubbed his arm so it hurt more. “Something else,” he said.
“You finally manage to get that hill-folk concoction right?”