Children of the Dusk

by Berliner, Janet

  The soldier nodded fearfully as he hurried to shut and lock the gate.

  "Consider that a command directly from the Führer!" Erich said over his shoulder as he stalked toward his tent.

  The man snapped his heels together and his arm shot up.

  That was the way to treat the Totenkopfverbände, Erich told himself: ferocity plus patriotism. Hadn't Hitler similarly summoned the devotion of millions? Now, before Hempel's arrest, was the time to re-establish command dominance.

  For that, he had some magic of his own: eleven dark dogs and the barrel of his gun.

  Johann yanked off his headphones and, looking confused, jumped to attention. He was trembling: eyes sunken, forehead wet with sweat. Malaria? Erich wondered.

  "We just received a transmission, sir," Johann said. "The Russians have joined the Reich in freeing Poland. May I have the honor of informing the Sturmbannführer and the men of this glorious news?"

  Fighting to control his own trembling, Erich poured brandy into his canteen cup and, gulping it down, slammed down the metal cup against the table. "First I have a message for Berlin." The sweet, burning liquor almost took his breath away. "To Gauleiter Josef Goebbels."

  It was the camp's first outgoing transmission--radio silence was to be maintained until the Antongil region was secured. The ill, excited youth virtually panted as he transcribed the heading.

  Erich downed another brandy. The alcohol settled him enough so that his mind burned with a clean, cunning wrath; the words flowed effortlessly as he paced. "Your worst fears confirmed. Stop. Officer in question indeed involved--make that intimately involved--with racial inferiors and guilty of murdering a soldier of the Reich. Stop. Treason no longer matter of conjecture. Stop. Possible sabotage attempt imminent. Stop. Will proceed per former instructions."

  After several moments the youth set down his pencil, his sallow complexion dark with anxiety. "Is that all, sir?" he asked in a quivery voice.

  "Isn't that enough?" Erich replied contemptuously.

  His trembling now even more evident, the youth thumbed through The German Dog in Word and Picture for the page that corresponded with the date--figuring the numbers of the days of the year in reverse. He laboriously matched up the dictated words with those in the innocuous book Erich had chosen as his code book, each word having an in-text counterpart in a complex system based on the date and page, and tapped the coded message over the wireless to German contacts in Italian-held Ethiopia.

  Laughing inwardly, Erich signed off with "Sachsenhausen" rather than with his own code name, Hawk. If the relayed transmission got through British jamming at Malta, Goebbels would hopefully believe the message had come from the major.

  Meanwhile, the guards were sure to assume Hempel was the officer in question. Any loyalty to the major would be severely strained if not severed. For once, Erich was glad the man liked being surrounded by the young and the stupid--and had recruited accordingly.

  "See the corpsman about those chills." Erich sat down at the table. "Take the rest of the night off and get some sleep. I'll tend the wireless."

  "Yes...sir!"

  After Johann exited, Erich took a cheroot from the humidor Miriam had given him. He had to grasp one hand with the other to steady the match, but at last got the cigar lit and leaned back, sucking in the smoke deeply to calm himself. Well, he thought, the thing was done; the military shoring-up he would need to justify shooting a major would soon be firmly emplaced. HQ activities were top secret unless stipulated otherwise, but secrecy was the prerogative of old men and misers, not boys pretending to be soldiers. In an hour everyone in camp would know of the message. With luck, he would have little difficulty bringing the guards' always-simmering prejudices to a boil--against Hempel.

  He reached into his foot locker for his MP 38 submachine gun and placed it across his lap. The metal with its light coating of oil felt comforting as he ran his hand from the barrel to the metal brace that served as a stock. He pictured himself squeezing off a round into Hempel's forehead. A powder-darkened hole between the eyes, the back of the skull burst open, a roar of approval from the men as he signaled for them to riddle the others. He would smile as the Zana-Malata screeched and Pleshdimer twitched and jerked, corpulent pig that he was. Blood would redden that eerily pulsing, whitish mud those shithole Kalanaro had smeared....

  Glowing mud?

  Something about that triggered a memory and sent him scavenging among his manuals. There had to be something about the Kalanaro in the military literature or the supplemental guides that he had missed before.

  Glowing.

  A memory tormented him, but he couldn't seem to recall it exactly. His mind felt fogged, and he kept seeing white buttocks and porcelain bowls. What was it? Something from physics, the only class he had liked at Goethe besides military history and biology--cutting up that calico cat. But what! He knew physics, and this was schoolboy stuff!

  He remembered, and he uttered a triumphant chuckle as he leaned back and put his boots up on the locker.

  Pitchblende.

  Reports of Congolese crazies who smeared themselves with luminous tar in order to look like ferocious ghosts during battle had led to the discovery of the world's largest uranium deposit and, indirectly, to the physics of Einstein and Bohr. Now uranium was bound up in the incredible energy and wartime potential of Heisenberg's attempt to achieve critical mass. But there was a hitch: only three mining areas existed. The Czechoslovakian uranium mine was nearly exhausted; Canadian uranium was unavailable; and--for fear of aiding Hitler or angering him by selling to the Allies--the Belgians had shut down their huge mine at Shinkolobwe in the Congo to all buyers.

  Was that what Hempel had meant by the power of the Kalanaro? Was that why he had allied himself with the syphilitic?

  Eliminate Hempel, Erich thought as he poured more alcohol, and play Gestapo with the monkeys. He had learned persuasion from the masters, hadn't he? That conniving Goebbels may have paper-shuffled him off to Madagascar, but Daniel was about to emerge from the den.

  Find the pitchblende deposit, and he would be a force to be reckoned with. A man of means. Perhaps, given the war, a national hero. Like Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau had been, he told himself bitterly, and blew a stream of smoke.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  "Drink."

  Miriam lay in the nearly airless medical tent, so torporous that her limbs seemed without life. It was all she could do to open her eyes.

  Above her, grinning down with rotted teeth, hovered a fat, oily face.

  "Time for medicine," the Kapo said. Drool bubbled from his mouth and clung to his teeth like sea scum.

  "Get away from me." She thought she had screamed, but the words emerged as a whisper.

  "Drink," the Kapo said again. "Make the baby dream."

  With a dirty finger, he pressed what looked like a liquid-filled thimble against her lips. She did not resist, because she could not.

  Then he was gone, and she was staring at the knot where the netting gathered above her and thinking of Luna Park, where Solomon had won a music box for her. In the distance she could hear "Glowworm" playing, broken by the howling of dogs.

  The shadows began to spangle. Franz, her mind said. Franz.

  Slow fire suffused her veins as the liquid took effect. Perhaps though I die the baby will live, she thought as her body heated up. Her breathing was shallow, yet the sound roared in her ears. Each blink of her eyes required enormous effort until, with absolute clarity, she saw herself at the age of eleven. She was huddled on the back seat of a speeding convertible, the head of her sheepdog in her lap. "She'll be all right," Mama was saying from the front seat as Papa raced the car along the tree-lined road toward Zurich. "Don't worry, darling, she'll be fine, the vet's not far now." Miriam could not stop sobbing. What did Mama or Papa know, what did anyone except a vet or Heidi herself know about having puppies! Tires screeched. The car slid on the icy road and flipped upside down. She flew against a hillside and, landing ami
d rocks but without pain, watched the convertible flip again and land right-side up. As if she were seeing spinning pictures on a zoetrope, she saw a man, a woman, and a dog tossed from side to side like rag dolls inside the vehicle. The stench of gasoline permeated the air; even on the hillside Miriam could smell it. Then flames burst throughout the car like a flower suddenly in bloom, bright as a sun shining on...

  ...a sea, calm and sparkling with light. A porpoise surfaced as if through a mirror of liquid gold, flapping its fins and chittering at the Altmark. From the ship's rail, she saw people descend the rope rungs of the Jacob's ladder to dinghies manned by German seamen in white uniforms.

  It was all familiar to her. Then it changed and no longer grew from her experience----

  ----She sees Jews in black-striped pajamas, oars lifted, and other Jews, helping men, women, and children into the crafts.

  "Isn't it wonderful, Lise?" says a woman wearing a cloche. She is staring across the sun-burnished sea to the shore. "A homeland of our own. Just as the Führer promised."

  "But we had to give so much," says a woman in a white lab coat.

  "Our property, certainly," the first woman says. "But consider the alternative."

  The woman in the lab coat looks at her with expressionless eyes. "I not only considered the alternative, I gave it to him. That's why you're here."

  "I don't understand," says the woman in the hat.

  "You don't want to understand," the other woman says. "Believe me, you don't want to understand anything."

  The people on deck continue to press forward, and Miriam finds herself being pushed along with the crowd. She tries to extricate herself, but is so tightly wedged that she cannot move her arms. Immigrants keep moving relentlessly toward the rail and the Jacob's ladder. Their murmuring and quickened breathing rise in crescendo, and there is about them a smell that assails her senses. At first she thinks it the odor of people cramped in the hold during the long voyage. But it goes deeper than that.

  The smell of fear. The smell of death.

  "They have come to the island of lost souls to witness the birth of Deborah," Bruqah's voice says.

  Someone places fingers on Miriam's bare arm, a sensation that chills her to the bone. The people press forward, eyes bulging, cheeks sunken, lips tight with determination.

  "He kept his promise," someone says.

  They are entering the rain forest. Despite the sun, mists curl up from among the foliage. Fruit bats by the thousands hang upside down, undisturbed by the gulls and paradise flycatchers that wheel in and out of the tendriled mists. The sea has turned the color of rust. The color of dried blood----

  ----"Your shepherd bit you?" Franz' voice. "That looks like more than a mere bite. Sagi tried to take your elbow off."

  "Just bandage it."

  Miriam recognized the voice as that of Holten-Pflug, the trainer who was always showing people pictures of his wife and daughter, back home in Wiesbaden, sometimes showing the same people the same pictures over and over again.

  "You tell the Oberst about this, and there'll be more than an elbow that'll need attention."

  "Don't worry." The corpsman chuckled. "We'll get you fixed up--and the Oberst none the wiser."

  "It was an accident! Sagi didn't mean to hurt me."

  "I understand that. Just hold still, won't you?"

  "He's a good dog. Wouldn't hurt a fly except on command."

  "You trainers and your animals," the corpsman said in a light scoff that indicated affectionate respect. "Sometimes I think you believe the war was invented just so you could show off your pets. Like some others I know," he added, his voice low and irate, "who treat Jews the same way. Hold still, now. This is going to sting."

  A grunt, followed by the rip of adhesive tape.

  "There. That's it."

  Canvas slapped. A third figure emerged into the haze of Miriam's vision, breathing heavily.

  "Johann," the corpsman said. "Sounds as if you need some quinine."

  "It's not malaria, I tell you," a youthful voice panted. "I won't be quarantined." His gasping grew louder. "Nothing's keeping me from doing my duty. Especially not tonight. You hear me, corpsman? You confine me, and I'll..."

  "You'll do what?" Holten-Pflug taunted.

  "Leave him alone. He's delirious."

  "The hell I am!"

  The sounds of scuffling ensued. Something hit the tent wall and she could see murky figures move with the same jerky chaos as the shadows she had once witnessed on that experimental gadget called television, installed under the stands during the Berlin Games.

  From outside came a frenzied yapping and growling--a clamor that shook her as if Erich had seized her during one of his tantrums.

  Holten-Pflug uttered "Holy God!" and the showcased figures of the three men ceased moving.

  The barking that echoed in Miriam's ears made the hair along the back of her neck stand up. Groaning, she managed to roll onto her side, facing away from the tent opening. Something landed on her cheek. A grasshopper.

  "I have she, Lady Miri," Bruqah said.

  She had not heard him enter. She turned her head and watched him walk the grasshopper outside.

  "...it is the other one, the one called Bruqah of whom I speak."

  The voice echoed in Miriam's memory. I refuse to believe that he is anything but what he has shown himself to be, she thought.

  "Tell me again about Princess Ravalona," she said when he returned to her bedside like a child begging for a story. "What did she...does she have to do with you."

  "This my island. What affect island affect me." Bruqah perched at the edge of her cot. "My people await return of soul of Ravalona. Bruqah first man on island. They believe Ravalona first woman. My people believe soul wanders unless bones brought to proper homeland burial place. Ravalona die on Mauritius and not brought home."

  He stood up and seemed to be deliberating whether or not he should continue.

  "Bruqah male soul of Madagascar. Bruqah's wife female soul. So long she wanders, Bruqah incomplete. Count named vessel of woman, but because he false vessel, blood ran. Many people they die here."

  "What does that have to do with me and with my child?" Miriam asked.

  Bruqah looked surprised, though whether it was at her knowledge or her honesty, she did not know.

  "If Zana-Malata wins--"

  He stopped.

  Miriam sat up with difficulty. "Are you saying that if your people mistake my child as the vessel that holds the soul of Ravalona, your island will run red with blood?"

  "Even Bruqah cannot change history," he said, and as silently as he had appeared, he was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The howling of the dogs made Solomon shiver despite the heat. Wrapped in his blanket to ward off the mosquitoes, he lay on the sleeping area's matted grass, experiencing a strange sense of compassion over the death of Aquarius.

  Plaintive as a bird grieving for a mate, the sound of Bruqah's valiha rose from the foliage. As usual of late, he played "Glowworm."

  Gradually the dogs quieted; a hush settled through the forest, as if the plinks of Bruqah's instrument had brought them a sense of calm. Sol found himself remembering and longing for the romance of Chopin, the sweet genius of Mozart, the order of Bach.

  Droning, a mosquito landed on Solomon's neck. He slapped at the insect. At least, he thought wryly, putting his head down and pulling up the coarse blanket, the insects weren't racists. They fed as happily on Nazi as they did on Jew. Still, when the malaria hit--Bruqah had intimated that northeastern Madagascar was the worst place for the disease in all Africa--it would be the Jews who would die first. The quinine was certain to be distributed unequally.

  He looked across the sleeping bodies, and cursed his pessimism. Hadn't they climbed out of Sachsenhausen and the Altmark's hold? Didn't they have a canvas canopy that afforded some protection from the elements? Minimal though sufficient food? Fresh water from the water tank and from the spring at the bottom of the s
entry-post hill that formed part of the compound?

  Yet the mainland beckoned beyond the compound's barbed wire perimeter, beyond the shark-infested bay.

  "You awake, Rabbi?" Goldman asked.

  Sol groaned and rolled over. Lucius was a good man, but--

  "I know this isn't a rest farm, but might I ask when you last slept?" Sol propped himself up on an elbow.

  "Haven't been sleeping much...but I shouldn't trouble you."

  Sol touched the back of the man's hand. "Tell me."

  "It will soon be Yom Kippur."

  "We're all aware of that," Sol said quietly.

  "I've spoken to some of the others. They want you to lead another Service."

  "They all want that?"

  Goldman hesitated. "Not all. Some say it would be too dangerous..."

  "They are right, my friend. I believe that the Oberst's self-control--and his control of this compound--are near the breaking point. To push the matter would be...most unwise."

  "If you won't help, I will lead a Service myself."

  Sol shook his head. "Perhaps next year it will be possible. This year we must ask God to hear the silent prayers in our hearts."

  "We will pray together this year. My father and mother are still alive. Our prayers must reach God's ears together."

  "God will understand, Lucius."

  A tear rolled down Goldman's left cheek. Sol held the bristly head, comforting Goldman as he might a child. He felt a longing for his own family. Were his mother and sister safe in Amsterdam? "I need to think," he said. "Meantime, try to get some sleep."

  Standing, Sol made his way across bodies lying tangled as lianas and, stepping out from beneath the canvas, walked over near the fence. He stared at the moon, wishing it could provide him with answers.

  That Major Hempel and Colonel Alois hated one another was obvious. The prisoners had engaged in many intense, whispered debates about whether they could--and should--try to deepen that hatred and broaden the division between the Abwehr trainers and Hempel's Totenkopfverbände. Solomon had begged a halt to the discussions, for fear Jewish unity was itself being divided.