The Economy of Light

by Jack Dann

  “What’s all this?” I asked Genaro, but he just shook his head and nodded in the direction of the dreamer who was rubbing the points together. He pressed against my shoulder, which meant that I should squat down on the ground. I relieved myself of my pack and sat down before the dreamer.

  “He’s making you a gift,” Genaro said as he squatted beside me. “Um outro mundo. He’s giving you another world. Dreams you can remember.”

  “What is that stuff,” I asked nervously.

  “They call it washaharua. When they shoot a bird or an animal with it, it makes the animal relax and fall down.”

  It must contain something like tryptamine, I thought. I’d heard of that, but never of using the stuff as a hallucinogen. “I’m not taking anything,” I said.

  “Not a good idea to refuse.”

  “Why?”

  “They would kill both of us,” Genaro said matter-of-factly.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Are you going to participate in whatever they’ve cooked up?”

  “The gift is for you, Meester. I had the gifts of dreams last night. You did not, that’s what you said.”

  The dreamer expertly cut the pile in half with his fingernail, which was over an inch long, and he pushed each pile to opposite sides of the leaf. Then he inhaled the stuff into each nostril and offered the leaf and the remaining pile of the drug to me. I hesitated, but I had no choice.

  I inhaled the powder.

  Once I did so the group broke up. The dreamer walked to the other side of the clearing, sat down against a tree, and watched me.

  I sat where I was. My nostrils burned, and I felt as if my sinuses were contracting. I fought nausea, which stopped after a few minutes, and waited for the drug to take effect. The dreamer was still staring at me, and I noticed that his eyes had taken on a brilliant cast; unlike the other men, his eyes glittered with a feral intensity, like the eyes of animals reflected by a fire at night. And then his head lolled, and he fell asleep, closing off the gem-like fire burning inside his head, for at that moment I was certain that his eyes were like openings or grates in a furnace. I looked around. No one was moving. I was inside time, although I heard a humming inside my head, a beautiful minor melody, and then realized that I was hearing myself moaning. I felt weightless, as if I could leave the pain and constraints of my body, which I did. I found myself looking down at my body, which seemed to be decomposing as I watched. Everything around me looked preternaturally brilliant; every leaf and root and tree and creature exuded its own separate hue; together, everything and everyone in the forest radiated brilliant white light. Each one of us, every creature and tree and insect were streams of refracted light.

  And I walked away from myself...walked toward the dreamer, who was waiting for me. We walked out of the clearing through the forest, which was blazing in its component hues, as if my eyes were prisms separating the frozen light.

  “You think you did not dream last night,” the dreamer said.

  “How do you know English?” I asked, and then realized that his mouth hadn’t moved. This was a dream. But was I dreaming when I first saw him? Was he a dream?

  I was drugged, stoned.

  Nothing to do but go with it.

  “What do you think you dreamed?” the dreamer asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I can’t remember dreaming anything.”

  “This is what you dreamed.”

  “What?”

  “What you’re doing now,” he said. “We saw your dream. Only you did not see it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where are we going?”

  The dreamer made a sound like “hnrung, hnrung,” which I presumed was laughter. “It’s your dream. We gave it to you to see what happens.”

  “Is that why you look the way you do?” I asked him. “Because it’s my dream.”

  He made the “hnrung, hnrung” sound again and said, “No, I look the way I do because of my dream. You give yourself too much importance, Meester. Now why are you in this place?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. The dreamer had found a narrow trail, which was probably the way to his village. The trees, grass, and leaves still seemed frozen, and perfect; and although I walked over mulch and leaf, it was more like I was passing over, for this was a place I could not really enter. I was here, yet somehow contiguous to everything, not a part of anything.

  “Who?”

  “A man,” I said. “His name is Mengele.”

  “And for what do you want him for.”

  “To kill him.” I suddenly felt a rush of anger, which was like syrup freezing inside me. The drug, I said to myself, yet I genuinely couldn’t wake up, couldn’t find myself other than here in this frozen forest with the dreamer who had dreamed himself into an old man...or into a young man.

  “That’s all?” he asked.

  “To free myself,” I said.

  “And you care for nothing else but his death?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps to live?”

  “Perhaps....”

  “Then go there.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  The dreamer was favoring his young side and seemed to be using his old side merely for balance. He pointed toward the trail we had been walking on, which widened ahead. I turned away from him and began to walk.

  That’s when I felt the thud of a blunt object across the back of my head.

  Perhaps it was the drug.

  I saw radiant whiteness

  Which faded into blinding pain.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MIRRORS OF THE PAST

  I awakened in a four-poster bed curtained with white clouds of mosquito netting. Beside me was a high window that overlooked a large English-style garden. My first impression of the hedges and shrubs outside was that they were part of some kind of circular maze. It was near dusk. The room was filled with a gray, western light, and the netting added even more to the effect of twilight softness. But I felt as if the light had mass and was pressing against me. I could feel the weight of the room as if it were a great sadness, my own grief given space to expand. I could smell it, see it, and hear it....

  I heard the creaking of floorboards and saw a phantom shape enter the room, and suddenly the curtains were pulled away and I was looking up wide-eyed at the Indian who had given me the drug and entered my hallucinatory dream. He was wearing a white shirt closed at the neck and khaki pants, perfectly cut. As he stood over me, offering me a robe, I could see that, indeed, half of his face was that of an old man and the other half was that of a young man. His appearance had not been a dream. I also noticed a black mole on the young side of his face, just under his right eye. But the brilliant luster of his eyes had dimmed. I could no longer peer into the furnace of his mind through a dream induced by his rust-colored drug, only gaze at what were now dead embers, black and flecked with gold, as if perhaps they could catch fire again.

  I sat up and took the robe, and he said, “The Doutor is waiting for you. I will help you dress and take you to him.”

  “Who is this...Doutor?” I asked, but he just looked at me uncomprehending, as if I had asked the unaskable. I asked him where I was and how I had gotten here, but he just shook his head and ordered me to wash in the adjoining bathroom. “And where is my friend Genaro?” I asked.

  He said, “Your friend is very fine, but you find out everything from the Doutor,” and he helped, or rather forced me to the bathroom. I was weak and woozy, most likely still under the effect of the drug, and he was surprisingly strong; I could not pull away from him, nor could I take him off balance. “Please, do not fight me, Meester,” he said. “I have seen you in your dream. You wanted to be in this place. I saw that.”

  I mumbled something back to him, but a wave of nausea passed over me. I remembered dreaming, hallucinating, but I could only remember bits and pieces of what I had dreamed, impressions that had the same ‘feel’ as childhood memories which had been embroidered by the ye
ars into almost surrealistic, numinal images. I remember the Indian, the dreamer, a nightmarish Janus pointing out the way to this place, standing in a forest that seemed frozen, crystalline, his arm raised toward some destination outside of the dream.

  He left me alone in the tiled bathroom and closed the door with a click. Most likely locked it, I thought.

  I leaned on the sink and looked into the mirror. I smelled of illness, of unhealthy sweat. My stomach felt numb; I surmised that to be one of the effects of the drug, for I wasn’t in pain, yet I could think clearly, or so it seemed to me. I could see that my pemphigus was drying up a bit. But my face looked old and tired; my eyes had rings under them from fatigue. I could only stare at my reflection, at the shock of gray hair, the blue eyes and high cheekbones, the unequally clefted chin, the wrinkles, the ugly masses of drying, postulant lesions, and I felt as if I was looking at a death’s-head.

  I got into the hot, steaming shower, which seemed to help clear my head. And as it did, I felt afraid. If Mengele was actually here, then I had given myself over to him. I had gone back to him to die, giving him the satisfaction.

  I had wanted to find Mengele to vindicate my life.

  I had wanted to kill him.

  That had been the purpose of my life.

  But instead I had become a prisoner again...sick and weak, and in no position to kill anyone.

  I didn’t even know where I was, or how long I had been here. If this room was any example, I was in a house the size of a castle.

  How could such a place exist unknown in the jungle?

  Was I even in the jungle?

  Or was I still in the clearing, drugged-out and dreaming...?

  * * * *

  I dressed quickly in the fresh clothes that the Indian laid out for me. Everything fit well: the trousers, shirt, and jacket, all of which felt to be silk. I was even provided with a tie, which was dark blue and flecked with red.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the Indian.

  “Gata,” he said. “You are feeling well?”

  I nodded. Surprisingly, I did feel well. “Where is this place?”

  “You will come with me and the Doutor will talk to you.”

  “Why can’t you talk to me?”

  “The Doutor will explain everything,” and then he made an odd hnrung, hnrung noise. I couldn’t determine if he was laughing or clearing his throat.

  Before we left the room, he looked around, as if he might have forgotten something; and then walked over to an eight-legged ebony pietre dure chest that looked to be seventeenth century Italian, and opened one of the drawers, which was inlaid with light wood. “This is yours,” he said and handed me my pistol. I was dumbfounded, but I checked it: it was loaded.

  “Why are you giving me this?” I asked.

  “It is yours, is it not? You told me you wanted to kill the Doutor. You don’t seem strong enough to kill him with your hands.”

  “Do you want me to kill him?” I asked, incredulous, but he ignored my question. I laid the pistol down on a side table; but he picked it up, handed it back to me, and then motioned me to leave the room, which let out into a wide, dark hallway.

  I shook my head, tucked the pistol into my belt, and buttoned my jacket. We walked quickly down the hallway, Gata keeping a tight grip on my arm, our feet padding on the carpet. I could hear the soft whoosh of air and feel a thrumming, which was probably air-conditioning, for without it, the plush carpets we were walking on would be wet with mould.

  “You must tell me what is going on. Where are we going?” I asked again. I followed him down a flight of stairs. “Well...? I asked, but he ignored me. It seemed we were in another wing of the house, but there were no windows in the halls. The carpet was all the same color: a gray so dark it was almost black. He stopped beside a door that was partially open, but all I could see of the room were dark paneled walls and bookshelves. Then I turned to ask Gata a question, but he was gone, as if he had vanished. It was a cheap stunt and I was frustrated and suddenly angry, especially since I knew that I would have noticed him walking away. He had virtually disappeared.

  He must have stepped into the doorway behind me.

  I was debating whether I should try to find my way out of here and look for Genaro when a white haired man appeared at the doorway and gestured me inside. He walked across a parquet floor of inlaid circles and triangles and sat down behind what looked to be an early eighteenth century partner’s desk. It was ebony and bare, except for some papers, an ashtray, and a computer monitor. I followed him into the room, slowly, my heart pounding in my throat, my hands shaking, and I could feel myself sweating. Although I had just bathed, my illness seemed to be working like an engine again, pushing sweat out of my pores. In those first seconds, I seemed to be seeing everything at once, hundreds of details, and, as if in a dream, everything took on equal weight: primitive bronze sculptures in the window bays; a folio stand filled with etchings, the topmost a Goya grotesque; a large crystal chandelier that was brightly lit, as if in a cloud of soft yellow; a breakfront bookcase with leather-bound volumes; an expanse of library shelves on the wall opposite the desk, all available space filled with paperbacks and hardcovers, stacked every which way, and between them, grotesque curiosities: gray plaster casts of arms with clenched fists, legs, and various animal limbs, and brightly colored marquetry boxes and crystal cones and spheres; another shelf was lined with carved wooden heads, one of which I recognized: Mengele, the young Mengele I had known; and the old man himself, staring at me from behind his desk, the shadow of a smile caught on his face, and those were the same blue eyes I had looked into forty years ago; I could see the space between his front teeth—the wrinkles and walrus mustache and shadows under his deeply set eyes couldn’t hide him.

  It was indeed Mengele. It could have been any gentle looking old man, but I knew it wasn’t. And as if he had remembered me, impossible though it might be, he spoke to me in a soft voice; he spoke to me in German. “Sit down,” he said, indicating the caned armchair before his desk. He lit a cigarette, blowing out the smoke without inhaling it.

  “You are Mengele,” I said, standing before him.

  “Yes.”

  And as I stood there, having found him after all the years of searching, I couldn’t say a word. I looked into his eyes and remembered the death’s head held up by the coroner at the cemetery in Embu, I remembered faces I had not thought about since I’d left the camps, and they appeared before my eyes in succession, flashing past me, my friends and acquaintances that Mengele had killed, and once again I felt the presence of my mother, just as I had with the whore in Manaus; I felt as if her atoms were floating in the air, yellowish motes of skin and bone, light as hair, emanating from the chandelier above. The room seemed to be getting smaller. I felt dizzy and was overwhelmed by a deep oceanic sadness. It was as if the room was filled with it, as if Mengele, this old man who had outwitted the world, exuded it.

  He had murdered my mother; for him it was a small thing of no consequence, a nod of his head. Hadn’t he gassed six hundred women so he could disinfect their barracks for typhus; it was more effectual to kill them than move them.

  And I remembered my dream of David, my brother, remembered asking Mengele to electrocute him instead of me.

  But he had killed David.

  Just as he had killed me.

  I found my voice and trembling with anger, I said, “I watched them exhume your grave.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I read about that.”

  “Are you saying you knew nothing about it?”

  “No, of course not. I set it up. The Bosserts and most of the other people involved knew nothing, though; they, too, thought I had really died. The search for Mengele is over.” He looked at me, his gaze steady, unnerving, but I returned it in kind. My bones would have to shatter before he would have the best of me again. His gaze gave me strength, for in it I rediscovered my hatred of him, for his eyes were like mirrors of the past, my past. In them I saw my mother an
d brother, trapped in death without vindication.

  In them I saw myself.

  “I know who you are,” Mengele said. “I saw that in your dream when you took the drug.”

  “And how did you do that?” I asked, and I opened my jacket and took out the pistol Gata had given me. I had lived out my life for this assassination. First him, then me. Only I would give myself up to the rot of my disease; not to Mengele. At least there would be that.

  If I was going to kill him, it had to be now, before he answered my questions, before something or someone interfered, before he could talk me into letting him live. I aimed the gun at his face, and as I did so, I felt cold and numb, my thoughts bits of ice, and I was a machine once again. As in childhood, I was a mechanical thing, a motor that propelled itself around the camps with little or no fuel, a dead thing of flesh and bone that had only the gift of motion, whose emotions and thoughts were cold and glacial, never to completely thaw.

  “Thank you,” he said, smiling benignly. “Thank you, but it won’t work.”

  I pulled the trigger, squeezing it, and felt a slight shock to my arm. The noise didn’t startle me. It was as if I was deaf, as if this whole event was taking place in slow motion.

  Mengele continued to stare at me, even as the bullet tore through his forehead, a neat hole immediately pouring blood down his nose and cheeks, a wash of bright red. It was as if he was looking into me, as the death’s-head skull had at Embu, looking into my memories, my failure, my being.

  I fired again and again, turning his face and neck into blood, bone, and butcher’s meat. But not in defense. Not this time. This time I was the storm and the thunder. This time I was the dispatcher, God, taking and giving life, the needle and the knife.