People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy
Page 20
“Lenin,” Bronstein said, as firmly as he could. “The dragons are ready.”
“Truly?” Lenin asked, not looking back. “Yes, Comrade.”
Lenin waited just a beat, nothing more, then said, “Then let them fly.”
Bronstein nodded to Lenin’s back and practically leaped toward the dragons. “Fly!” he shouted. “Let them fly!”
The command was repeated down the line. Talon boys dashed bravely beneath broad, scaly chests to cut the webbings that held the dragons’ claws together.
“Fly!” Bronstein shouted, and the handlers let slip the rings that held the pronged collars tight to the dragons’ necks before scurrying back, as the beasts were now free to gnash and nip with teeth the size of scythe blades.
“Fly!” the lashers shouted as they cracked their long whips over the dragons’ heads. But the dragons needed no encouragement. They were made for this. For the night sky, the cool air, the fire from above.
“Fly,” Bronstein said softly, as giant wings enveloped the moon, and the Red Terror took to the skies.
Fifty yards away, Lenin turned to Koba. “Release your men to do their duty, as well.” And Koba laughed in answer, waving his hand.
Bronstein saw Koba’s men scurry away and knew for certain that Russia was lost. Releasing the dragons was a mistake; releasing Koba’s men a disaster. Borutsch had been right all along.
It will be years before we struggle free from these twin terrors from land and sky. What I wanted was a clean start. But this is not it.
He shivered in the cold.
I need warmth, he thought suddenly. By that he did not mean a stove in a tunnel, a cup of tea, schnapps. I want palm trees. Soft music. Women with smiling faces. I want to live a long and merry life, with a zaftik wife. He thought of Greece, southern Italy, Mexico. The dragon wings were but a murmur by then. And the shouts of men.
In the blackness before dawn, the mad monk’s left index finger moved. It scraped across the ice and the slight scritching sound it made echoed loud and triumphant in his ears.
He’d lain unmoving for three days.
A peasant child had thrown rocks at him on the second day, trying to ascertain whether the drunk on the ice was alive or dead. The mad monk was surprised when the child didn’t come out on the ice and loot his body. But then he realized why.
The ice was melting.
The days had grown warmer, and the ice was melting. Soon, the mighty Neva would break winter’s grip and flow freely to the Baltic Sea once more. Icy water was already pooling in his best boots and soaking his black velvet trousers. It splashed in his left ear, the one that lay against the ice, and he thought that he could feel it seeping through his skin to freeze his very bones.
Terror crept in with the cold as he realized that his attempted murderers would not need to kill him. The river would do their work for them. Drown him, as his sister had drowned, or cause him to waste away in fever, like his brother. He would have shivered with fear or cold, but he could not move.
Night fell, and, for the first time, Father Grigori felt the terror of the mortals he’d ministered to. Through the night, he felt like Jesus on the cross, his iron faith wavering. Why hast thou forsaken me?
The night brought no answer, just more cold water in his boots.
But then, before dawn, the finger moved.
If one finger can move, the rest can move as well.
And putting thought to deed, he moved the index finger on his other hand. Moved it as if he’d never been hurt, tapping it on the ice, once, twice, a third time. His spirits soared as the sun broke the horizon, and, with a great effort, he bent up at the waist, levering himself to a sitting position. He was sore. He was cold. Every bit of his body ached. But he was alive.
And moving!
However, he was also very tired, and he decided not to try to stand quite yet. Facing the rising sun, he waited for the heat to reach him.
“When I am warmed straight through,” he said, his voice calm despite the creaking and popping of his stiff limbs, “I shall go ashore and deal with Felix and the others.”
Watching the sun rise and turn from red to gold, he saw a flock of birds pass before it. A big flock of birds, not just in size, but in number, hundreds of them, casting long shadows across the ice.
What are those? he thought. Egrets leaving their roost? But it was winter. There were no egrets here.
And the birds were too big. Even from far away, he could tell that they were huge. Suddenly, he knew that he was too late. He’d lain on the ice too long, and Lenin had come to loose the Red Terror on the land.
Now staring in horror, he watched the flock move closer, revealing red scales and leathery wings, smoke curling from their nostrils. He made a small cry, like a rabbit in extremis, and struggled to stand. But the movement that had come so easily just moments ago was a trial now. His limbs cried in protest and refused to budge. Despite straining and sweating, he’d only achieved an ungainly half crouch when the dragons were upon him. The lead dragon swooped in low and swatted him aside with its forefoot. He went skittering across the ice, feeling his ribs shatter. Crawling for the shore, he dragged himself along far too slowly, and his fingernails broke on the ice. Finally—finally—he was able to shiver. But this was in fear. He no longer felt cold. Terror rushed hot in his blood.
A shadow enveloped him, and he looked up into the black eyes of a hovering dragon. Before he could react, the dragon’s talons shot toward him, and one long claw pierced him through the chest, pinning him to the ice. It looked as if it were laughing at him, its teeth filling its horrible great mouth. He tried to scream, but suddenly he had no breath. Lungs pierced, he could only stare stupidly as the dragon’s wing beats slowed and it landed on the ice beside him, as gently as any songbird.
But the dragon was no songbird, and the ice shattered under its weight. Water splashed the beast’s belly, and it roared its displeasure, flapping madly, trying to get aloft. Then it belched out a lash of fire, which further melted the ice around itself and the ice below Rasputin. When the dragon managed to lift out of the water, it slowly shook itself free of water and prey at the same time. The wind from the dragon’s wings was so strong that it pushed Father Grigori Rasputin over the melting edge of ice and down into the dark water.
We have put a rope through the nose of Leviathan, he thought as the leaves closed over his head. He could still see the dragons, distorted by the water, hovering over the hole in the ice like terns. But he is king over all lithe sons of pride.
And then, like his sister, Maria, so many years before, Father Grigori drowned.
I did not wake Ninotchka. All was falling apart. She would need her sleep.
Prying open the old desk where I keep my treasures—the key was long lost—I filled my pockets with gold coinage, my real certificate of birth, my other papers, several strands of rare pearls, my mother’s diamonds, my father’s gold watch and fob. I would leave my wife with what paltry jewels she had. She would need them. Alas, the Tsar would not look kindly on me and mine once the story of the mad monk’s death came out. And come out it would. Servants can be forced to tell what their masters will not. Better that I leave Ninotchka to what fate her beauty could buy her.
As for me, I would cross the line, find the men who held the new reins of terror. Who knows if the Tsar will even last through this time? The wheel turns and turns again. Revolution is a messy business. Yet, there is always a need for a good functionary, a secretary, a man of purpose. I’d always known I was the first two, and now I know I can be hard, too. I can kill. My hand can wield a knife. Yes, I am someone who has much to offer, to muzhik or Tsar. And I will let it be known—I work equally well with men and with dragons.
Going East
Elana Gomel
July 17, 1941
I’m going east. I may be excused for feeling slightly nervous. A strange phrase is haunting me: “A poisonous wind from the east that blows no good”. The phrase is trailing a billowing, yell
ow cloud.
July 20, 1941
The smell of ashes is in the air. This place is a shambles. There was a dead cat in the street, emaciated, with patchy ginger fur falling out in clumps. Laura used to work on a crappy wall hanging of two kittens playing with a ball; not in the best of tastes, but she never finished it anyway.
Cats have no loyalty and no race: they are all the same. Unlike dogs and people.
August 3, 1941.
Yesterday I went over the draft of my research paper. Not bad at all! Overly ambitious perhaps but all advances in science begin with impossible dreams. If I can prove, scientifically prove, that races are indeed different species, what a boost this will give to our enterprise! (Not to mention my own career taking off!) I know I’m right. All I need is a tangible proof.
August 5, 1941
The weather is horrible; wind and lashing rain. Kremer tells me that the best way of overcoming the nausea that seizes me when I see corpses is to keep looking. Then it becomes a habit.
August 10, 1941
I have torn up Father’s letter. It’s a miracle that it passed the censor. What was the old fool thinking?
“You are destroying everything I have dedicated my life to studying and understanding,” he writes. “How can you do it? You grew up with medieval Hebrew manuscripts and rare Yiddish chapbooks. Have you forgotten it all? Do you remember what happened when you were six, when I received my Jewish Studies appointment at Leipzig? Your mother baked cookies with Hebrew letters on them to celebrate. You ate the letter ‘Aleph’ straight from the oven and burned your mouth.
. . . Now you burn books. How soon will you begin to burn people?”
Sooner than you know, Father. But this is what you have never understood, will never understand: they are not people.
Yes, I remember the cookie. And I remember how you locked yourself in your study and pored over those spidery alien letters while we survived on potato peel and ersatz coffee. Your family starved but you had money for your books!
Well, no matter. My parents have bequeathed me the only inheritance that matters: the purity of my blood. Blood is everything; letters—nothing.
October 20, 1941.
A limited action today. The Jews have to be sorted out. The chaos can no longer be endured.
The Jews were ordered to gather in the market square. Lists had been made of the skilled workers and their families. Those were separated from the rest, the unproductive population. Of course, it all degenerated into a complete mess. Cries, screaming, stench . . . Finally, Kremer had a bright idea and told everybody to lie face down on the ground.
The site was in the woods, some distance away. The people marched in surprising quiet. Their screeching stopped once they started moving. We drove past them but suddenly I told my driver to stop.
On the edge of the column walked a young woman who, all my anthropological instincts told me, was a pure Aryan. Disregarding the grumbling of the policemen, I pulled her aside and examined her. Slender, long-legged, dolichocephalic, light gray eyes, almost white hair, straight narrow nose. I did not want to remove her clothing in the presence of the jeering policemen but I had no doubt that I would find all the markers of Nordic femininity: small upright breasts, clear division between the thorax and the pelvis, long firm thighs.
“What are you doing here?” I said indignantly. “You don’t belong with them!”
She replied in Viennese German.
“I do.”
And she thrust her documents at me. According to them, she was Lila Sara Schwartz, originally from Vienna, relocated to the General Government of Poland in 1940. Her second name was a giveaway: according to the law of 1938 it was added to the names of all female Jews.
Documents may be forged but the body does not lie!
“Get into the car!” I commanded.
The local policemen snickered but I paid no attention. How can sub-humans like them understand a scientist’s dedication?
The woman, Lila, obeyed and we drove on until we came to the place. The ground was covered with what seemed to be drifts of snow. In fact it was shredded documents and paper money; the Jews were tearing them up, God knows why. There was a smell of pine resin in the air. Everything seemed to be peaceful and orderly compared to the mess at the gathering point.
Kremer staggered away from the ditch and was sick.
Some people prayed but not many. An old man stood before me, his stomach flabby, grizzled hair covering his chest. He said: “What do you want from me? I’m only a composer.”
October 21, 1941.
I did the anthropometric measurements of Lila. Beautiful, she is very beautiful.
I gave her some food, which she ate daintily despite her malnutrition. Seeing this only confirmed my belief that she is human.
I sat her in front of me and demanded to know why she pretended to be a Jew. To put her at ease, I added (perhaps incautiously):
“You can be open with me. I know how one can be beguiled by them. My own father, pure Aryan that he is, is . . . was a Hebraist.”
She knew what it meant, which supported my theory that she is an educated woman, somehow ensnared by their alien wiles. But her reaction was disconcerting. She laughed.
“A Hebraist?” she repeated. “So you must be a real authority on Jews.”
“I know some things,” I replied huffily. “Enough to see that you’re not one of them.”
“So who am I? One of you?”
“Undoubtedly. Science is infallible.”
“But scientists aren’t. What if I am a half-breed?”
“A Mischling? Still, since your Aryan blood obviously predominates, you’re entitled to life. Perhaps you can be sterilized . . . ”
She laughed again, showing those perfectly even, sugar-white teeth. The only flaw in that beautiful face is its color, or rather the lack of it: her skin, her eyebrows and lashes, even her eyes, seem to be bleached. But suddenly her transparent irises sparked with icy, diamond lights and I felt a strange slow shiver go through me. I did not immediately realize what it was.
“Sterilize me?” she said mockingly. “Well, that would be quite a feat! Do you know how many children I’ve already borne?”
She must be mad; that explains it all. But I was not at this moment concerned with her mental state for I knew what was happening to me, my body presenting me with an irrefutable proof, no matter how horrified and disgusted my mind was.
I snatched up my gun, pushing it under her chin. But as my finger tightened on the trigger, a liquid instability washed over her face and for a moment I saw Laura’s blue eyes look into mine, and her soft pink lips go white with fear. I dropped the gun.
“Go away!” I screamed.
For a moment everything went black and when I came to my senses, she was gone. I questioned my orderly: he claims he had not seen anybody.
[Later that night]
I’ve given most of my schnapps to Kremer but I have one emergency bottle left. A man is entitled to oblivion after such a dream.
There was a red steaming sea in it, languidly lapping at the pinkish shore.
There was a woman coming out of the sea, her body diamond-shiny, diamond-sharp.
She bent down, so that her white hair covered her face, and pulled a baby from between her thighs. She lifted it into the air. It didn’t cry; it smiled, and she dropped it into the red sea and it floated peacefully on its viscous swell. And with every step she was bringing forth more and more babies.
My orderly came in when he heard my shriek, stupid idiot! I told him it was a nightmare. A childhood nightmare. An SS officer has to be civil, even to his underlings.
The worst thing is that if it becomes known, the comrades will think the strain of the action is to blame. They will see me as a weakling, a crybaby.
I did not lie. It is indeed a childhood dream. I first had it after Father had received his appointment in Leipzig. I was too small to realize the shame of his profession. But big enough to be frightened by thos
e poisonous Talmudic tales he told me, the tales of Lilith, a vampire succubus, Adam’s first wife, who does not share in the curse of the exile from Eden.
They say she gives birth to a hundred babies each day. Enough to fill the world with her litter, imitation people. To make them, she steals men’s sperm. She is so beautiful no man can resist her.
How could he do it? Poisoning my mind with this Jewish trash . . .
March 15, 1942
Laura and I are married.
November 21, 1942
I woke up with a terrible hangover. Never again!
Yesterday I had to assist the police forces of the town named Talnoe. They wanted a racial expert to examine the children of mixed marriages.
The Russian and Ukrainian women with their offspring were locked up in three rooms of the local school when I arrived. There were about a hundred people. Even a cursory examination of the children (ages 0-15) confirmed my theory. I pointed out the specimens I wanted to add to my collection and the commandant—unfortunately, I forgot his name—immediately agreed to ship them to my headquarters after processing.
A woman was sitting quietly in the corner, holding a sleeping toddler. A typical Ukrainian peasant, large, raw-boned, with puffed-up weepy eyes. I diagnosed trachoma.
“Is this your child?” I asked through the translator.
“No,” she replied unexpectedly in decent German but with a harsh, grating accent. “I’m his nurse.”
The child woke up when I took him but did not cry. He was relatively plump but his coordination was deficient. Nevertheless, his expression seemed almost adult and he looked at me as if he understood who I was.
“I want him too,” I said to the commandant and then told the nurse she could go home.
“You are taking them to the local slaughterhouse,” the nurse said. I did not know where the designated site was but the translator nodded. She smiled. Her teeth were sugar-white, perfect, and horrible in that dusky seamed face.