Children of the Dusk

by Berliner, Janet

  "Gefreiter!" Hempel screamed. Pushing aside a curious Kalanaro, he jammed his Mann against Erich's neck. "Have you my permission to speak to the Jew? You are to stay away from them." He glared with newfound savagery toward the medical tent. "And from the woman."

  Erich glared at his attacker. "She's my wife and will soon be in labor!"

  "The Jews are all in labor, Gefreiter." The major's mocking tone made it clear that Erich's next word of insubordination would be his last. "Some are merely more productive than others. Now brush these goddamn grasshoppers off of my boots."

  Hempel released the safety on his pistol. It made a resounding click in the quiet that had descended upon the camp.

  "I said brush me off!"

  Heart thudding, Sol watched as Erich backstepped, shaking his head in refusal, and Hempel stiffened his arm. Despite all that Erich had done to him, and to Miriam, Sol could neither sit in judgment nor wish upon him so undignified an end.

  "Ready!"

  "For God's sake do whatever he asks, Erich!" Sol shouted.

  Erich just stood there, as if he had no will at all: neither defiant nor compliant.

  Sol sought desperately for any diversion, however temporary. He set his body to launch forward in a run toward the gate.

  "Whaaa?" He felt a burning sensation in his throat and was jerked back, the front of his collar cutting off his windpipe.

  He tried to sputter his rage. The one thing that remained within his control, the option of suicide, had for the second time in his life been wrested away.

  "Look!" Max's voice bellowed in his ear. For an instant, Sol was too disoriented and the aperture of his vision too limited for him to understand.

  "There!"

  A second person held onto him, yelling in his other ear.

  Goldman.

  The farmer forced Sol's head around. For a moment Solomon relived another terrible time. Rathenau's assassination; Jacob Freund wrenching his son's head forward to see the death of the statesman they so admired and respected. He heard again his father's hoarse, whispered words, spoken through the ages in times of the death of a loved one: "I wish you long life."

  The memory passed, and in its place Solomon saw what Goldman was pointing at.

  The Zana-Malata was kneeling before one of Hempel's legs, picking grasshoppers off the major and stuffing them into his vertical mouth-slit, craning his neck and swallowing them like a long-throated bird.

  At the other leg, Erich was brushing bugs from the trousers...the pistol still against his skull. His hands moved mechanically, as though connected to arms he did not control.

  Hempel was grinning. An orgiastic, satiated face--tightened and twisted with pleasure. In the searchlight, even his hair appeared to shine with the intensity of his emotion, the silver the sheen of alpenglow.

  "Now you." Hempel shoved the barrel of the pistol between Erich's eyes. "Just like the Zana-Malata. Eat!Mihinana, Gefreiter--or I'll turn woman and child over to the Kalanaro. Worse yet, to Wasj here."

  He waved the pistol and began to laugh.

  Erich remained poised for a moment above the trouser crease. Then he snatched at the grasshoppers, stuck them in his mouth, and began to chew.

  The syphilitic drew back, chortling and whistling, as he watched Erich glean the major for his supper. Then, with hands that resembled claws, he pushed down Erich's head toward the major's boots.

  Erich did not resist. His head remained bowed. As though peering into his own grave, Solomon thought.

  What was it that had so separated them, he wondered. A uniform? Religion? Were they really so very different? Did they not love the same woman, and would they not soon earn a similar place in this island's ground, leaving behind...what?

  Miriam and the child.

  He glanced at his forearm.

  37704.

  Hölle....Hell.

  Hempel had deliberately sought him out at Sachsenhausen. He had chosen the number with care--not because Sol was Jewish, but because of Sol's old friendship with Erich. Hempel's hatred of Erich Weisser Alois went back a long time, to the days when Erich was perhaps the only boy who had refused to go along with the former Freikorps-Youth leader's perversions--the same perversions that had caused Hempel to be drummed out of the army before the end of the Great War. Even then, he had been driven to prey on young boys.

  He stared again at the number on his forearm: 37704.

  Miriam carried his child, the first-born in this new Jewish homeland. With Erich and Solomon dead, would Hempel brand the child?

  In a flash of ugly intuition, Solomon saw:

  The number 1.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The climb up the western hill proved after all too difficult for Miriam to manage alone. Her pregnancy seemed to bear her down much more than its actual weight and she did not resist when Bruqah dropped behind her and propelled her upward, hands flat on the small of her back.

  Driven by his strength, she was able to take some note of her surroundings. A variety of growths rose in a dark gauntlet that brushed against her and appeared to block her way, only to open slightly as the two of them rounded each curve. For a while, the foliage almost enclosed the track, then the plant life abruptly gave way to a small, inclined meadow dotted with skinny totems. At its northern end, where the forest fell away, what looked like the ruins of a flat-roofed stone house cut into the grassy incline and stood sentry over the night. Far below lay the glistening sea.

  Close to exhaustion, Miriam concentrated on the forward motion of her limbs. She did not look up again until she was parallel to the crypt site. With trepidation she moved toward the edifice, one hand supporting her abdomen. She wondered briefly why on earth Bruqah had brought her here to give birth, here to a place built for death.

  "You be safe here," Bruqah said, answering her unspoken question. He smiled down at her as they halted before the stone face of the crypt.

  A cold shiver traversed Miriam's spine, like a finger of frozen moonbeam. She glanced back and up over her shoulder.

  "Nothing there, Lady Miri," Bruqah said. He pushed open the great stone door with his free hand and, the motion completed, rocked back on his heels. Seeing his tightened features she realized that opening the tomb was at least as troubling to him as it was to her.

  The open crypt at once begged and forbade her entry. She drew back from the damp, stale air. She wanted to tell Bruqah that, regardless of the danger that Hempel represented, she would not hide within that place unless all traces of the body some of the men had said had been in there had been removed. If indeed it had been real, and not some trick to scare away intruders. Even with it gone, she was uncertain that she could sequester herself in a death chamber to await the birth of the child.

  "It's gone, isn't it?" she asked.

  Bruqah craned forward as if listening to the darkness. "It? You mean--?"

  "Whatever it is, whoever it is...." She held out a hand. "Tell me it is no longer there. That it is gone." She tried without success to keep her voice level.

  Smiling, Bruqah shook his head. "She spirit will never be gone, Lady Miri," he said. "Not from our hearts...or hopes, anyhow." His eyes took on a distant, determined look. "But rest easy. Body, that be gone. For now."

  He started forward, then turned and, hands on her shoulders, eyed her soberly before stepping inside the tomb.

  She could hear him rustle around, talking quietly to himself. There was a scratching noise, and a match flared. Through slanting shadows she saw him tilt the glass of a kerosene lamp and light the wick. Almost instantaneously, lazy black smoke curled upward and the tomb was revealed. It reminded her of the tobacco-shop cellar, and she half expected to see a wall lined with shelves holding boxes of cigars and accoutrements, a rust-red seep from between the stones, a sewer grate recessed into the floor. But except for a stone bench, upon which Bruqah placed the lamp, the low ceiling, and the floor of black, tamped earth, the only thing of note in the room were two large eyehooks from which dangled the
ends of ragged hemp. The ropes appeared to have been cut.

  That, she supposed from the description she had heard, had been where Benyowsky's chair had hung. A corpse a hundred and fifty years old, greeting those intruding upon his grave.

  Bruqah wiped the bench with his hand, as if to prepare it for Miriam's arrival. Despite her trepidation, she smiled at the housekeeping gesture. Suddenly mindful of the weight she carried, she walked inside the crypt and allowed Bruqah to help her sit. At first she sat up demurely, feet together and toes pointed, then with the Malagasy's help she lay back, steeling her muscles for the shock of cold stone.

  The bench was surprisingly comfortable. There were indentations which seemed to fit her form perfectly. Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath and tried to relax. She had reason to be grateful, she thought.

  The baby was alive and she was, for the moment, safe from Pleshdimer and Hempel and the Zana-Malata.

  Why then did she feel the sense of a corpse within her womb? Why the need to reach for the comfort of Bruqah's hand?

  "Tell Solomon that I'm here," she begged in a whisper. She pushed back a sweat-dampened strand of hair from her forehead. "He needs to know. I need him to know that I'm...," she glanced around the crypt, "that I'm safe, for the time being." The words emerged with less certainty than she had intended.

  "I do not think I should leave you here alone."

  "Please, Bruqah. Go, now. Go to come back, as you say. Tell him I'm here and that...and that I love him."

  Bruqah brought his lips to her fingers. Rising, he backed from the tomb. She heard him pad several steps across the grass, then the call of a night bird pierced the sound of insects outside and the strangeness of her situation pressed down upon her like a huge hand covering her mouth, trying to smother her. She tried to remember the good times. She with Sol at the shop, in the flat, in his arms.

  The contractions began again, the "...pretend labor" as Bruqah had called it. A tightness twisted her body, lengthened it, forced her hips upward and her shoulders off her stone couch. Each wave of pain dissipated the memories she was attempting to hold onto so dearly, and she concentrated on making sure she did not crack her skull open when the contraction passed and her head became too heavy for her to hold up any longer.

  She took in air hungrily, raggedly.

  A form slipped through the entrance. At first she thought Bruqah had returned and, supporting herself with her elbows, she rose up, anxious for assurance that he had spoken to Solomon.

  "Bru--"

  "Pour la petite enfant," the Zana-Malata said, peering at her from the shadows. For the infant.

  To her astonishment, Miriam felt little fear. Perhaps, she thought, it was because the Zana-Malata had spoken the longest and most comprehensible phrase she had heard him utter. Or maybe, and far more likely, she was simply too tired to care. Even when she saw that, of all things possible, he held the Torah in his arms, she felt only a detached curiosity.

  A huge raffia bag hung over his right shoulder. Over his left elbow was what looked like a sawhorse-crib.

  He lowered himself to his knees and eased down the Torah until one end of the scroll touched the ground. "Enfant...beau."

  Happily, Miriam's pains had dissipated, and more happily still, the Zana-Malata appeared to have no intention of harming her. She watched as he lifted the Torah and laid it in the sawhorse, unrolling part of the scroll and patting down the paper. She sensed a reverence in his handling of the scroll and felt no affront at his touching it.

  "Enfant...beau," he repeated, rocking his arms as if they held a baby.

  It was only then that she understood that he had built a crib for the child.

  From the raffia bag, he drew out a blood-red lamba. With a grand flourish--an upsweep of his arms--he unfurled the cloth and laid it on the dark, earthen floor.

  He straightened out the corners with a toe.

  Next he withdrew a small human-like skull, a lemur, Miriam figured, after an initial gasp of shock. Smoke spiraled from its eye sockets and filled the tomb with the smell of eucalyptus. She did not find the smell unpleasant.

  He set the skull down on the lamba's southwest corner. Additional entries to the collection on the cloth followed: a hoof from the slaughtered zebu claimed the northeast corner; on the northwest, a clump of bristly savoka; what appeared to be a dried fruit-pit on the southeast.

  At last, the Zana-Malata settled himself onto the dirt in a cross-legged position, smiled his vertical smile, and blew a narrow stream of smoke toward the ceiling. He was acting for all the world, Miriam thought, like an expectant father.

  "Lady Miri?" a voice called from outside the tomb.

  "Bruqah!" Miriam answered. "I am glad you're back."

  For what seemed like a long time there was no answer except for the call of the cicadas and the Zana-Malata's raspy breathing. Then Bruqah said in a hesitant voice. "I cannot enter. Do you not see the Kalanaro guarding the door?"

  Miriam lugged herself from the bench and tottered to the entrance. Holding onto the lip of the rock, she strained outward into the starlit night.

  She could see Bruqah near the edge of the clearing, a black figure before the dark indigo canvas of sea and sky. Around him, the trees and totems stood like mute, ebony sentinels. But no matter how carefully she squinted toward the brush, she could see nothing more than those and the dark and a covey of fireflies, hovering like guardians at the doorway to the crypt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Bruqah pointed toward the Kalanaro who guarded the entrance to the crypt and watched Miriam crane toward the left and right.

  "I have company," she said. "The Zana-Malata showed up, with a crib that he appears to have made for the child and all kinds of other things which I suppose make sense to him."

  Though he could still not enter the cave, Bruqah felt better. That which he understood rarely caused him fear, and he understood this. The Zana-Malata had left the Kalanaro to guard the entrance to the crypt. Lady Miri could not see them because she did not understand how they could be fossas and men and fireflies, metamorphosing as the whim took them. But he understood. Was he not able, in his own way, to do the same thing? Was he not a traveler's tree for some, capable of giving sustenance, while for others he was at best a man?

  Raising his voice but careful not to make his tone in any way threatening, he shouted at the Zana-Malata through the cave opening, asking to be allowed to enter. There were times, he thought, to forego anger. This was clearly one of those times.

  "Why is he here, Bruqah?" Miriam asked, making her way slowly toward him.

  "He waits for the child he thinks will be the vessel of the soul of Queen Ravalona."

  "My child? Oh come now." Miriam laughed. "I've been willing to accept a lot of things you have said, Bruqah, but this is ridiculous."

  "Do not laugh, Lady Miri. We must watch him very careful when the birthing time comes. He wishes to be there so that he can take the afterbirth."

  "And do what with it!"

  Bruqah hesitated before he answered her. He did not want to tell her too much, yet cared too much for her to tell her nothing. In the end, albeit an end that still lay in the far future, the child was what counted--to him, to the Zana-Malata, to Madagascar, and to whatever other future the child's life led her into.

  He looked up at the sky and guessed it to be around three or four in the morning. The pains Miriam had experienced were not the real thing. He had induced them to ensure her safety. The actual birth of the child would not happen until the sun had come up and gone down again at least once, which left plenty of time for talk and more than enough time to rid themselves of the Zana-Malata's presence. Soon much would happen to change life on the island. For now, there was little reason why he and his old adversary could not, for a short while at least, declare a tenuous peace.

  "I think that you had better answer me, Bruqah," Miriam said. Judging by her tone, curiosity and anxiety were becoming anger.

  "He believe," Bruqah
said, weighing his words carefully, "that if he eat the afterbirth he will gain power over the soul the child." Which, he thought but chose not to say, was the soul of Ravalona, the soul of Madagascar. He deliberated whether or not to continue. "He believe," he went on, having made the decision, "that same give him power over life and death."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Released by the nudge from Hempel's boot, Misha wandered around aimlessly for a while, simply enjoying his freedom. Usually when he was not at Hempel's side, he made sure that he stayed within view of the compound, and of the activity around the shack. This time, he played on the beach in the moonlight, built a sand castle, caught one of the tiny sandcrabs that peeked out at him from a pinprick of a hole near the water's edge. He even dared a swim until the proximity of a small barracuda drove him out of the water.

  Ultimately, he returned to the Storch to await Hempel, certain that the major would leash him to it like a guard dog. He had grown so accustomed to Hempel's sexual abuse and to Pleshdimer's cruelty, that he at first felt almost neglected. But as the hours passed, he began to enjoy his freedom from pain and to dread its return.

  Comforted by the night breeze, he fell asleep under the wing of the plane. When he awoke, dawn had begun to lighten the sky. He lay on the sand until the sun rose, lazily contemplating the recent past. Most of all, he thought about how much Otto Hempel had changed since his, Misha's, voluntary return to the collar and the leash, leaving the boy pretty much to his own devices. He hadn't done the thing to him for days, nor had he given Pleshdimer permission to hurt him. This despite the Kapo's constant request that he be allowed to "...beat the little shit."

  Rapidly, the sun heated up and crawled under the wing. Misha stood up and brushed himself off. Pretty soon, he figured, Hempel would come to the plane for his morning inspection. What better time than now to do what he had sworn to do, and kill the major? As far as Misha could tell, no one would miss Hempel, except maybe the Zana-Malata and Pleshdimer. Herr Alois would be happy, especially after yesterday. So would Miriam and Solomon. Maybe Bruqah would too, though it was hard to tell what he cared about.