Children of the Dusk

by Berliner, Janet

  "Chien...chien...beau."

  Müller made a fist and lifted it menacingly in front of the Zana-Malata's deformed face. "Go. Away." His fist shot out. The Zana-Malata caught it in his claw. Gaining superior leverage, he wrenched Ernst's arm to the right, forcing the trainer to his knees. Then he pushed Müller back and, stepping over him, went outside.

  Rubbing his arm, Müller returned to Aquarius, gently stroking the dog's ratty coat, mumbling to himself.

  Embarrassed by the man's grief, yet understanding it only too well, Erich went outside and watched the trainers move about the kennel, feeding and brushing their charges. He saw the Zana-Malata depart the compound and head toward his hut. Hempel's habit of spending every off-duty moment with that revolting syphilitic, listening to his babblings with the deference due a fellow officer--that would cease, Erich decided. The chain of command structure on Nosy Mangabéy would be strong, even if it meant cutting away certain links.

  Ernst exited the tent, returned with two more trainers, and exited again. Erich's hip was hurting him after being near Taurus so, satisfied that preparations were being made, he went to his tent for a breakfast pick-me-up. He told himself that he would review his maps, review in detail the logistics of moving to the mainland once Nosy Mangabéy was secured, but instead he sat with bottle in hand, staring into a corner.

  An hour later, as per his orders, rifle shots rang out--three trainers firing volleys atop the limestone knoll, at the back of the camp. The guard at that post leaned in undisguised rancor across his machine gun, as if to avoid the dog handlers who had invaded his territory.

  Erich barely made it there in time. He could see Miriam in the distance, picking orchids from the overhang of jungle against the fence. "For Aquarius," she had said, "I'll put them on his grave." He had not argued. The flowers befit a dog of such strength. After all, was not orchid Latin for testicle?

  Dogs and masters formed a gauntlet. Erich stood at the one end, reading a passage from Von Stephanitz that praised the breed's loyalty and intelligence. Müller, tears rolling down his cheeks, stood erect beside the dead dog. Nearer the spring, Pleshdimer stood at attention, holding a leash; from the corner of his eye, Erich could see Misha at the end of it. While part of him wished that he had ordered the boy to stay in the Jewish quarters, another part hoped that Misha would successfully rid all of them of the triumvirate.

  When the memorial service was over, Müller requested that he be allowed to bury his dog in private. Erich readily agreed. He had been thinking about what he could do to help assuage the grief of both the dogs and their trainers. The answer he had come up with would work better without Müller around, acting like a spare part.

  "Holten-Pflug!" he called out. The trainer ran forward. "It's been far too long since we properly exercised the dogs," Erich said. He was about to suggest that they practice the Zodiac, when his attention was drawn to a group of Kalanaro. They were moving around in the last shadows of the morning, which lay near the track leading to the beach.

  He pointed at the natives. "What do you say we bring in some of those black monkeys?"

  "Yes! Sir!"

  Holten-Pflug scurried to gather the other trainers and the dogs. Erich lit a cheroot, one of his last. He would have to ask Bruqah to provide him with whatever the island could supply in the way of a smoke. Liquor, too. Realizing that he had moved from sipping to solid drinking, he had counted bottles. There was no way that he had enough to last until Nosy Mangabéy was secured, the dock built at the Antabalana River, and the next major shipment of Jews arrived. At the rate at which he was emptying bottles, he would have to speed up the timetable--or build a still.

  "That a kill order, Sir?" one of the trainers asked, when they had all gathered together.

  "Not this time, I think," Erich said. He contemplated the request, remembering the night that Taurus drew blood from a whore's wrist on the streets of Berlin. He found the memory satisfying and that frightened him. "Search and seizure will do it," he said, looking toward the jungle. "I really just want to try to talk to one of them." Not that he had the slightest idea what language the little buggers understood. If the team succeeded, he would have to enlist Solomon's help. Or Bruqah's.

  He watched the nine dogs and trainers fan out. Then, on impulse, he raised his voice. "If you meet with resistance," he said, "you have my full permission to kill."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "Do not do this, Mister Germantownman," Bruqah said, stepping more hastily than usual out of the jungle.

  The trainers looked at him, then at Erich. There was a sadness in them and in the dogs, Bruqah thought, but like good and proper soldiers, they had put aside their grief and looked ready to begin whatever maneuver their commander ordered.

  "Search and seizure," Erich repeated confidently.

  Dogs and men moved toward the Kalanaro, who disappeared at once into the rain forest.

  Erich glared at Bruqah. "Don't you ever do that again," he said, his voice tense with anger.

  "Do what, Germantownman? I did not do anything. I merely advised. Is that not my job?"

  "Your job is to give advice when asked, not to interfere with my orders. Besides, I don't see the big problem. There seems to be an endless supply of the little bastards."

  "They be like rain forest. You cut, it come back more and stronger." Bruqah did not allow his voice to reveal how appalled he was by Erich's callousness. The full truth was that the chase itself would antagonize the Kalanaro, but they would not be captured. The dogs and men would thread their way down the hillside. Reaching the mangroves and the tiny strip of beach, they would erroneously conclude that their quarry had paddled to the mainland, and return here frustrated with the insects and the fruitlessness of the search. "Jungle sometime like alligator. She like to swallow men and dogs." He grinned, deliberately showing his teeth. "Swallow Kalanaro too, maybe."

  "We'll find them," Erich said.

  "Maybe. They be glowworms. Here, yet not here. Sometime you no-see-um. Other time they full of light." Bruqah remained placid, his smile in place. The Kalanaro were perfectly able to take care of themselves, and the thought of agitating the Germans charmed him. The trainers were a different matter. He thought of them as apart from the others, and could not revel in their frustration. He had seen too much futility for that: burning off the central highlands for planting, then watching the thin red soil wash to the sea; warning his people not to hunt the giant flightless birds and pygmy hippos, gone now from the face of the land; pain piercing his heart each time a Malagash slaughtered an aye-aye because he feared its power.

  "So you're telling me that we can't find them?" Erich's temper had cooled. He looked more amused than angry.

  "I saying you do not wish to find them, maybe."

  "Obviously what you are not telling me is more important than what you have said."

  "Ob--viously." Bruqah had trouble pronouncing the word.

  "I think that in future I should only ask you what I do not want to know." There was a hint of a smile in the colonel's eyes, as if the verbal sparring pleased him. "You will be surprised to hear that I believe you," he said. "But this time it does not matter if they find nothing. Sometimes it's the looking that's important. Sometimes, that is more than enough."

  With a wave of his hand, the colonel turned his back on Bruqah and walked toward the road that led to the beach. Watching him, the Malagash admitted to himself, albeit reluctantly, that there were things he liked, even admired, about the Germantownman. It was just a pity how rarely those things surfaced, for had they done so more often, Erich might have been worthy of saving.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "Herr Oberst."

  Erich awoke as Fermi entered the tent. The trainer looked worried.

  "Forgive me for disturbing your rest, sir, but we have seen no sign of Ernst since the burial. Some of us are worried about him, sir."

  "He is undoubtedly somewhere mourning the loss of his friend." Erich made no effort to hide the bottle tha
t lay on his cot. "Give him until tomorrow. If he hasn't returned, we'll search for him. Dismissed."

  Fermi did not move.

  "I said, dismissed."

  "Pardon me, sir, but we have already searched for him."

  "Did you look around the syphilitic's hut?"

  For the first time, Fermi hesitated. "The major and the black man seem to be celebrating something in there," he said.

  "I still say give him until morning." Erich sounded less convinced. "This is a small island, but there are any number of hiding places."

  Fermi saluted and left. Erich uncapped the bottle and took a swig. He tossed and turned for a while, but an uneasy sense of foreboding kept him awake and, finally, drove him outside and in the direction of the Zana-Malata's hut. If those sons-of-bitches were celebrating the dog's death....

  He was working himself up into a new round of hatred. He knew the fury that burned in him was not the cold bright anger that so often helped to clarify his thinking. Lately, he felt that clarity only sporadically. It came and went like the racing clouds that alternately obscured and exposed the orange tropical moon. The anger he was experiencing was reckless and dangerous, but he didn't care.

  Behind him, the dogs' baying became more insistent, as if the animals' display of grief had reached a new plateau. It unnerved him until he decided the sound symbolized what military life was all about. What his dogs possessed and some human soldiers too easily forgot.

  Devotion.

  Discipline.

  He gave a perfunctory salute as he went through the compound gate. The Kapo passed him with a gruff "Heil Hitler." Erich did not bother returning the salute, but watched in distaste as Pleshdimer headed toward the dog yard, head cocked to make room on his shoulder for his load. Probably more lemur meat, Erich guessed. The syphilitic seemed to take special delight in providing the dogs with the dietary change--as if there were a rivalry between him and that lemur-loving Bruqah.

  To hell with them both. Just so the dogs got fed and stayed healthy. He didn't want to go through another memorial for one of his shepherds. Ever.

  The sound of raucous laughter greeted him as he pulled aside the zebu-hide and entered the foul-smelling hut.

  "Why, Herr Oberst," Hempel said, as if he were addressing an honored guest. "Do join us. Come. Sit down."

  "I am here on official business," Erich said. "It has come to my attention that...what in God's name is that?"

  "This, Herr Oberst, despite its crust of dirt, is the egg of the elephant bird, the æpyornis, which dwarfed the ostrich. Didn't they teach you anything in your precious Reichsakademie? Think of it--the largest bird known to mankind, and the Malagasy hunted it to extinction without giving the matter a second thought." He paused as if for effect.

  Then he said, "We, the strong, must do the same to every Jew."

  He placed the egg lovingly on a plank next to three porcelain bowls whose sides depicted a blue ship sailing into a floral sea.

  "If we hold true to our vision," Hempel made a fist for emphasis, "there won't be a Jew left in the world. And, unlike with the bird, it won't be a shame."

  Hempel's eyes shone and his voice rose, all trace of inebriation gone. "We are the strong. It is our birthright that we use the weak to our advantage." He waited for a moment, as if expecting Erich to agree.

  When Erich did not react, Hempel gave a condescending smile and, with an usher's gesture, bade Erich to move closer. "Let us put aside our small differences, Herr Oberst, and break bread together." He drew open a palisade of strung bamboo Erich had thought was the left wall, but which he now realized was a curtain. "My mentor says we cannot partake of the truth of this great green land until we dine--in its depths, shall we say."

  The Zana-Malata laughed, kicking his legs and slapping his chest, as the curtain was swung open its final meter.

  Erich blanched.

  Misha was huddled in the corner, next to a shovel. He was stroking Aquarius' huge, furry head, its melancholy eyes open and staring. Part of the animal had been skinned, and one hind leg had been cut off.

  "If you dislike stew, I'll cut you a fillet," Hempel said. "Or some ribs, perhaps?" He drew a knife from a sheath on the wall. "Anything but the heart. The master says to eat the heart only at dawn, though for an honored guest such as yourself...." He eyed Erich with a mix of alarm and amusement and replaced the knife in its sheath. "You all right, Alois? The cooked meat has been bled and koshered. We wouldn't want to upset your Jewish playmates."

  Erich pushed the child aside and sank to his knees beside the mutilated animal.

  "Müller buried this dog." He looked at Hempel with unadulterated loathing. "You dug up the animal."

  "Perhaps the boy did, Herr Oberst. Have you considered that?"

  "And upon whose orders!"

  "Why feed worms if you can feed the human spirit?"

  "Take that shovel," Erich pointed toward the wall, "and re-bury the dog. Then burn this hut to the ground and report to my tent for summary court martial."

  As he enunciated the words, Erich glanced over at the soil-encrusted shovel. Bending, he examined the dead animal's fur. Except for splatterings of blood, the hide was clean.

  "This dog was never buried."

  Hempel chuckled. "I said perhaps the boy dug it up. I never said he actually did so."

  Standing, Erich drew his pistol. It felt extremely heavy, and he wondered, absurdly, if Hempel saw that he was shaking. "Where's Ernst Müller? I haven't seen him since...."

  Hempel took a cigar and a wooden match from his breast pocket and lit the match by scratching it across the pistol grip of his holstered Mann. Biting off the cigar end, he spat it between Erich's boots.

  "Where's Ernst!" Erich screamed.

  "He had...objections...to our decision." Lighting the cigar, Hempel inserted the lit end into the mouth of the Zana-Malata, who encompassed it and inhaled deeply, a look of pleasure entering his eyes.

  "You murdered Müller because he wouldn't let you eat his dog?"

  "Don't have a tantrum, Herr Oberst." Hempel smiled reassuringly. "The worms are dining well. The balance has been maintained."

  Erich aimed his Walther between Hempel's eyes and, leaning forward carefully, removed the major's weapon from its holster and tossed it toward the door. It hit the zebu hide with a thoop and fell outside. "I will give the free laborers an hour of prayer at sunset tonight and again tomorrow." A surge of power mixed with Erich's rage. "They'll thank God for delivering you into my hands."

  He released the safety.

  Hempel lifted an arm casually, as if to ease the pistol aside. "It is you who loves the Jews, Erich Weisser," he said sincerely, as if wondering why his commander could possibly be upset. "Unless you want your coming newborn similarly infected with Jewish contagion, I suggest that as soon as he is born you move mother and child here to the hut, where they can be safe." He opened his hands with the charismatic innocence of a salesman. "Once we obtain the power of the Kalanaro, we'll burn out the Jewish corruption. Until then...."

  A bullet's too clean a death for this monster, Erich thought, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  Puuh.

  The Zana-Malata made a short puffing sound, and Erich swung around to face him, pistol raised. A halo of lavender flame rose from the syphilitic's gaping mouth-hole. The smoke ring fastened around the barrel of the Mann and tightened around Erich's hand, burning into the flesh as it had done the last time with the cold heat of dry ice.

  Screaming, Erich got off one shot before he dropped the pistol. The bullet tore through the raffia a few centimeters from the Zana-Malata, who threw back his head and guffawed as Hempel stomped a jackboot down on the Walther.

  "Don't you ever learn? Forget it, Weisser." Hempel picked up the pistol, fastened the safety, and tucked the gun in his belt. Placing the lit tip of his cigar in his mouth, he inhaled as deeply as had his mentor. With a triumphant puuh, he released a similar circle of lavender fire toward the ceiling. "We each have our units t
o command." He smiled obsequiously. "There's no reason we can't work together."

  "We'll see about that!" Erich staggered through the doorway and, tripping on the steps, fell to his knees in the grass. Starting to rise, he reached for the Mann that lay at arms reach.

  A black foot stepped onto the pistol; a speartip touched his jugular.

  Above him stood two Kalanaro, eyes charcoal-rimmed, wiry bodies covered with mud dimly glowing an eerie white, hair streamed back and waxed and gleaming. He stared at the assegai, aware of a sickness starting up from his stomach.

  The Kalanaro laughed, then one picked up the pistol, and both went into the hut.

  Erich watched the whitewashed buttocks disappear behind the tanhide, his hatred and anger mingled with a fear that set his heart pounding. He felt as unsure of himself as an adolescent--unable to consciously steel himself against the world around him.

  But he knew he must.

  He pulled himself to his feet and, furiously brushing off his uniform, glared toward the door and fought to still his shaking. A Hamster...a man who pedaled his bicycle out into the countryside to buy produce from farmers, and pedaled back to Berlin to resell it. The boot and buttlickers of the earth. That's what his father had been, that was what Pleshdimer and the Kalanaro were.

  The parlor magic he had witnessed in the hut might earn the loyalty of an idiot like Pleshdimer, but all it would earn the syphilitic was a place beside the major, before a firing squad. And the Kalanaro? They would make it five executions.

  When Erich reached the compound gate, the guard was slow to salute. Erich grabbed him by the lapels. "When I so much as look at this gate, you get that arm up stiff as a cock in a whorehouse! Understand?"

  With a look of dark timidity, the soldier raised his arm.

  Erich knocked down the arm. "Don't waste the effort now, soldier! Just bolt the gate. No one is to come or go unless I say. That includes the Sturmbannführer. Got that? Anyone tries to force his way in, shoot to kill."