Children of the Dusk

by Berliner, Janet

  "Control what you call spiritual realm, Sollyman. Zana-Malata want child to live and major to succeed. He believe they help him kill those who ostra...ostra--"

  "Ostracized," Sol said.

  Again Bruqah nodded. "He believe child vessel for soul of Ravalona."

  The man is afraid, Sol thought, disquieted. But of what exactly? Or perhaps it was more simple, a question of competition from someone who sought equal power.

  Erich seized Bruqah by his lamba. "If anyone, or anything, attempts to interfere with me, I'll consider it sabotage...an act of war. Understand one thing: Sturmbannführer Hempel and I are not all that different. Except I do not torture my enemies. I execute them."

  He released Bruqah roughly. With a look of disgust, the Malagasy stepped back into the shadows of the tanghin.

  "Just how many people have you killed, Herr Oberst?" Sol asked as he watched the Malagasy disappear into darkness.

  Erich swiveled and jammed the barrel of the gun against Sol's cheek. Sol readjusted his hold on the stretcher, but otherwise did not move.

  "Two," Erich said at last. "Both of them boys. The sons of fools who ran a cigar shop on Friedrich Ebert Strasse."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The hut was sweltering. Eucalyptus branches glowed in a brazier, crackling and pouring off an oily smoke so thick it shellacked Erich's skin and smothered his forehead and cheeks with sweat. This is insanity, he thought, waiting for his burning eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  He was almost sorry when they did. Chin against chest, shoulders sagged and arms hanging limply, the Zana-Malata sat behind the fire. He was staring lifelessly at the flames. Smoke seemed to curl from his peppercorn hair. He looked for all the world like a corpse that had died sitting upright. The two fossas crouched fearfully beside him, mewling and worming their noses against his shriveled legs.

  He did not move.

  Behind him a crudely woven raffia chair, hanging from the ceiling by a plaited rope, swung slowly back and forth. Firelight glinted off three blackened cooking pans and several zebu halters along the back wall. The flames of small, fat candles guttered in the empty sockets of a water buffalo skull that adorned an upper corner, its forehead painted with a swastika.

  The fossas lifted their heads to survey the intruders. The fire popped, sparks cascading across the syphilitic's shoulders. Still he remained slumped. Filled with disgust and reluctance, Erich motioned with his pistol for Solomon and Pleshdimer to place the dog near the brazier and then go outside and wait. The fossas backed up, hackles raised; then, appearing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, they hunkered down, watching suspiciously.

  "What do you plan to do about the dysplasia?" Erich said, unable to control the ire in his voice as he crossed to the Zana-Malata.

  Through glassy eyes the syphilitic continued peering into the flames.

  Anguished that anyone could sit so mesmerized while Taurus lay so feebly, Erich put the gun close to the man's head. "Acknowledge me!" Erich fought to control his trembling. As if through someone else's eyes he watched the gun pull toward the syphilitic's head, like metal to a magnet.

  "I said acknowledge me!"

  When there was no response, a pressure that had been building inside him for a very long time erupted.

  His finger squeezed.

  Click.

  The Zana-Malata sat impassive and unharmed. My God, Erich thought, ashamed at having actually pulled the trigger. He tried to holster the gun, but instinctively jerked the trigger again. This time, the gun was pointed at the floor.

  Click.

  Stupefied, Erich stared at the pistol.

  The Zana-Malata toppled onto his side and lay with his head near a shelf constructed of a mahogany plank placed across two rocks. On the plank sat three empty white bowls, cracked and stained and obviously very old, each painted with the scene of a clipper ship sailing through an Eden of leaves. Where, Erich wondered, had he seen those bowls before? He couldn't concentrate. All he could focus on was the syphilitic's arm, outstretched on the lashed-sapling floor, the biceps baggy with diseased skin, the fist without fingernails.

  Blood drooled from the Zana-Malata's mouth.

  "The gun didn't fire." Erich backed up. Filled with turmoil, he felt like retching. "I didn't shoot you." He turned toward Solomon, whose face, obscured by the haze, looked expressionless. "I didn't shoot any---."

  Except it was not Solomon. He had ordered Solomon to stay outside. Hadn't he?

  The fire snapped, and a curl of smoke rose from the brazier. The heat forced Erich to shield his eyes. When his vision returned, Pleshdimer was licking the blood from the saplings.

  Erich grabbed the corporal by the hair. "He has syphilis, you imbecile!"

  Pleshdimer grinned with reddened lips.

  Erich shoved the man aside. The Kapo fell against Taurus and settled down with his head across her back. "If the dog dies, we feast," he said.

  "Get up and out! You have five seconds!"

  Pleshdimer folded his hands across his paunch.

  "One!" Erich screamed.

  A memory of Miriam seized him, making his head pound. "Count!" he had commanded that night he had lost his temper and taken her by force. "Count!"

  "One...two...three..."

  "Slower!"

  "Four..."

  "Again! From the beginning!"

  "Five!" For an instant the face before him was Miriam's. He squeezed the trigger just as Sol's hand gripped his wrist.

  "Erich!"

  The explosion roared in his ears. A centimeter from Pleshdimer's jugular a black hole appeared in the floor, and a blue puff of smoke leapt up from the brazier.

  "You could have killed Taurus!" Solomon shouted.

  Erich blinked. Taurus? He twisted his hand from Sol's hold and watched the corporal lurch his bulk forward and cower in the corner. Too drained and displaced to aim again, he knelt beside the dog. He made no attempt to control his fierce trembling. "Mein schatz," he murmured. "My love."

  With a plook the Zana-Malata uncorked a crudely fashioned clay jug. The smell of chloroform pervaded the hut, and Solomon moved back toward the door and fresh air. Though the anesthetic made him dizzy and giddy, Erich remained near Taurus.

  Pouring chloroform onto a ragged cloth and handing the cloth to Erich, the Zana-Malata indicated for him to hold it against the dog's nose. Erich signaled for the black man to recork the jug, the contents of which were making him dizzy. The syphilitic shook his head vehemently, lifted his gnarled, grotesque fist close to Erich's chin and opened the fingers. An ember burned on the palm. Erich pulled back from its heat. The fingers shut around the ember, the hideous mask that was the syphilitic's face registered no pain.

  The hand reopened. In the palm lay what looked like a fruit pit. Propelled as if by a force not his own, Erich holstered the pistol and, taking the pit, stared at it stuporously, careful to keep his injured hand like a leaf-shaped paten below the other one, in case he dropped the thing.

  "It's a tanghin pit," Solomon whispered, reappearing and squatting beside him, blending with the smoke as if he had lost all physical definition. "Bruqah says eating it induces a trance state."

  The pit, fuzzed and creased, strangely fascinated Erich. "Tell him to get on with it."

  Solomon gently took hold of the Zana-Malata's shoulders and spoke to him in French.

  The Zana-Malata nodded, then crawled behind the dog and lifted her head. A small spasm rippled through the animal, and Erich shivered empathetically. He felt a vague sense of gratitude when the Zana-Malata directed him to cover Taurus' nose with the cloth. Trying to keep his head as far away from it as possible changed the angle of his vision and he saw Pleshdimer in the corner, face chalk-white and arms slack. The thought drifted away from him as he watched a fossa pad forward to lick Pleshdimer's palm.

  The smoke was no longer going up through the roof-hole. It had broken into blue crescents shaped like ferns and curled down around him. He blinked and looked toward Solomon for help,
but the hut was wreathed in thick tendrils of smoke and he could not see beyond his hand.

  Which still held the fruit pit.

  He set it down near the brazier.

  The pit was an eye, staring up at him. His lids felt weighted.

  The Zana-Malata chanted something unintelligible. He held a knife that spangled like a sword in sunlight. Erich knew he should disarm the man, but he was in too much of a torpor to move or even care. He raised his hand, but his arm fell--slowly. Everything seemed to move through glue.

  The syphilitic maneuvered the anesthetized dog onto her back, parted her hind legs, smeared something black and tarry onto the fur and shaved her thighs. After each stroke he ran the blade between his fingers to clean off the hair. Then he cleansed the skin with a rag that smelled of antiseptic and poised the knife above the left thigh.

  Must be going to sever the pectineus muscle, Erich groggily understood. It was potentially a lethal or crippling operation, but what other course had Fate accorded them? Where could a hermit on a remote island the size of a pfennig have acquired the necessary knowledge and surgical skills?

  In the smoky vertigo in which Erich floated, anything seemed possible.

  The Zana-Malata sliced open and peeled back the skin. Erich averted his eyes. The sight of Taurus' tissue, red as uncooked biergarten meat, made his heart thud with fear. He would give the black man anything--anything!--he promised himself, were the operation successful. Regardless of the outcome, he would assuage her agony, for her pain was his pain.

  Holding the chloroform-soaked rag, he searched the haze for some point of reference to help him keep his eyes open without having to watch the cutting. His gaze fastened on the bowls, and he remembered having associated them with Benyowsky.

  From...the...valavato, he told himself.

  The bowls were no longer empty. One contained dry-cooked rice; one, greasy morsels of what looked like uncooked chicken skin; one, a tiny, neat pile of brown-and-white gratings. The fourth, a calabash, held water. Solomon emerged from the smoke, picked up the third bowl, and said softly, "The grating's from two of the tanghin pits."

  Puzzled, Erich wiped a bead of sweat from the end of his nose and stared dully into the fire. "How do you know?"

  "Bruqah told me."

  "Oh. I see."

  Except he did not see. Smoke choked his mind; Solomon's voice sounded as distant and disjointed as an echo in an abandoned sewer. The world around Erich seemed as wrong as a hailstorm in Paradise, wrong as a zebu stretching its black-and-white neck to feast on the weeping willow beside which he had carried out Hitler's order to shoot Achilles.

  Solomon was bent over the mahogany plank, putting pinches from the first three bowls into the calabash. Turning, he offered Erich the concoction. "You must drink this."

  "What is it?" Erich drew back.

  "Justice," Hempel said as he pushed past the tanhide and entered the hut. "The tanghin tree's spirit will either kill you or protect you from the witchcraft the Zana-Malata must use to save Taurus." Apparently sensing Erich's confusion, he added, "The Malagasy assured me it's necessary. He tells me everything."

  Malagasy? Erich wondered. Which Malagasy! The Zana-Malata spoke no German, Hempel no French; and he doubted that Bruqah would speak to Hempel at all. Was there some other language that Hempel and the hermit understood?

  Placing the bowl in Erich's hands, Sol cupped Erich's fingers around it to make sure he would not spill the contents. "The Malagasy call the tanghin the 'ordeal tree.'" Solomon said.

  "I suppose the Malagasy told you that," Erich muttered, fighting for his bearings, unable even to stand.

  Solomon did not reply.

  "Swallow it if you want to save the dog," Hempel insisted.

  Shaking, Erich peered down at the bowl, stepping backwards with a cry of surprise as Solomon thrust one of the blackened cooking pans at him. Within it was what looked like gruel.

  "Flour paste." Solomon scooped up some with a finger and held it, dripping and steaming, in front of Erich's nose. "Try to concentrate," he whispered. "I'm going to stuff this down your throat after the poison takes effect. Don't resist me. If you vomit, chances are you'll survive."

  "You would save...me?" Try as he might, Erich was unable to speak without mumbling. A fog enveloped his will. He wondered why Solomon and Hempel, both of whom had reason to want him dead, would poison him and immediately administer an antidote. Then logic slipped away from him; he found himself mirrored in the ceramic bowl, and grinning.

  "Bruqah says to tell you that to save an animal, you must be willing to sacrifice your humanness," Solomon explained.

  Erich looked at Taurus. Beneath the Zana-Malata's knife the dog looked pitiful and hideous. Thighs parted and bloodied; a syphilitic surgeon; an operating room suffused with oil of eucalyptus. Erich wanted to howl at the absurdity.

  Instead he took a deep breath to steel his resolve and brought the bowl to his lips. He gagged on the hot, thick mixture, but managed to swallow.

  For a moment there was no sensation. He expected to feel pain or to be gripped by a seizure, but there was nothing. He seemed to be apart from himself in a world without feeling or sound, save for the booming of his own heartbeat in his ears. Then, clutching his belly, he sagged to his knees as his brain exploded in a shower of sparks. He was trembling so violently that he seemed to set the buffalo skull spinning, its swastika pinwheeling like fireworks above Berlin's Luna Park. The hut's pans rattled and the thatch riffled. Fire pierced his belly and bowels and arrowed through his limbs, his skull a burning coal.

  "Help me!" he begged. "Feed me the gruel!"

  He clamped one arm around Solomon's ankles and with his free hand gripped Hempel's boot, but when he peered up to implore, their faces were lost behind a smokescreen that pulsed with laughter. He was going to die; Solomon and Hempel had, after all, conspired to kill him. Taurus' so-called operation was a ruse for Jew and jailer to trick him into taking poison.

  Air. He needed air. If only he could crawl to the door, all would be well, but he could not get his knees under himself. The hut pitched and yawed, and Solomon's and Hempel's legs blocked the way. Bamboo legs.

  He reached between the bars.

  "Miriam!"

  Taurus, not Miriam, emerged through the fog to face him. She poked an enormous head between the bars, dark eyes drinking him in. Thankfully he reached for her, knowing her warmth and compassion would quiet the pain....

  She backed away.

  Taurus?

  Rolling onto her back and lifting her forepaws, she panted happily as the syphilitic sliced between her thighs.

  "All those dog shows, Erich," he heard Solomon say. "All the Strongheart films. Rin Tin Tin a dozen times. Why do you spend so much time at the Marmorhaus?"

  And echoing around the hut:

  "Chi...en...beau. Chi...en...beau."

  Erich covered his ears and put his forehead against the floor, but the words kept thrumming inside his skull. Sensing a presence before him, he looked up to find himself staring at the syphilitic's gleaming eyes. Smoke poured from the face-hole, smothering him in the stink of eucalyptus.

  Stop! Erich shouted, but no sound came. He was a mute pleading for help in a world of the blind and the deaf. Only the fossas heard. They ambled forward curiously, garnet eyes shining in the firelight. Next to them, Achilles, dead three years, lay watching him while Taurus opened her jaws.

  With the apathy of one about to be executed, Erich lowered his head and waited for her teeth to fasten around his neck.

  I'm sorry, he wanted to say. Forgive me.

  The blackened pan of gruel was shoved before him. He did not resist when hands forced down his head. As if the bitter paste were a last meal, he slurped and lapped. Taurus snarled and turned her muzzle sideways to bite, and darkness engulfed him....

  "How do you feel?" Solomon asked.

  Leaning against an outside wall of the shack, Erich retched. When the vomiting was over and he had stopped shaking, he wat
ched the splay of searchlights sweeping across the camp and tried to remember what had happened inside the hut. The only thing he could clearly recall was holding a chloroform-soaked cloth over Taurus' nose. The rest was blurred and dim, as if he--instead of Taurus--had been anesthetized.

  "She's all right?" he asked anxiously, trying to wave away a spotlight that zeroed in on them. In a low breath he swore at the effort it took to push himself from the shack's support.

  "Seems to be fine," Solomon answered. "He was suturing her when I went in and brought you out here."

  "You shouldn't have left her!" Erich started to move through grass, but winced as pain pierced his hip. Limping, he re-entered the shack.

  And stopped.

  The fossas were gone. Lounging on the far side of the smoldering brazier were two puny, bald Kalanaro, asleep with their heads pillowed against the Zana-Malata's legs.

  Taurus, too, was sleeping peacefully.

  The syphilitic's eyes smiled. He rubbed each man's head as if for luck. They continued to snore softly as he shifted out from beneath them and checked Taurus' hind legs. They were bandaged with palm fronds covered with mud and smelled of overripe bananas.

  Erich clung to the door frame for support as a wave of intense pain attacked his hip and ran down the length of his legs, tearing at his nerves and muscles.

  The syphilitic's eyes brightened. "Chien...beau," he said, this time pointing at Erich.

  "Bruqah says to tell you that to save an animal, you must be willing to sacrifice your humanness."

  The words came back to Erich on a renewed wave of pain. He gritted his teeth, waited for it to pass, and limped toward the outdoors.

  In the morning, after a bottle of brandy, he would examine the price he had paid for Taurus' life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Most of the time, Miriam was grateful for the mosquito netting that was draped around her cot. At this moment, it felt like a shroud. If this is spring, she thought, just how bad is the full heat of summer going to be. She could tell by the movement of the netting that there was a breeze, but the same fabric that kept out small bugs also kept most of what little breeze there was from getting to her. This was compounded by the fact that there was little, if any, ventilation. Light shone through the tent opening, enhancing the contrast between the milky netting and the grasshoppers, moths, and crickets that perched on the outside of the gauzy fabric. There was even a stray butterfly, black with brilliant gold striations and four times as big as any she had seen in Berlin.