Children of the Dusk

by Berliner, Janet

  He needed her power, her unthinking desire for vengeance and for blood, and there was only one way to get it. He fell sideways, twitching, her name on his lips.

  As abruptly as it had begun, the seizure ended, and he was filled with a calm and a strength. His mind felt clear. He stood up slowly, feeling light yet strong, the air around him sweet and imbued with life. There had been a time, once, when he had believed that he and Taurus together could conquer the world. For a while, he had lost that conviction. It returned to him now, and he felt young again. He and Taurus, merged as one being, would be unstoppable except through the force of God. He remembered the many times that Bruqah had said that, in Africa, believing made it so. He could not believe more fervently than he did at that moment; all that was left was to make it so.

  "C-cut the l-leash," he said, handing the knife to Misha, who was peering up at him. "So n-no one can ev-ever u-use it again."

  Misha did as he was told, sawing earnestly at the leather. Then he held the knife to his side as the dog, freed not only from the tether but from the Zana-Malata's bonds, bounded toward her master.

  Erich knelt, opening his arms, exultant not only from the sense of well-being which inevitably followed a seizure, but also from Taurus' return. She reached him, sliding to a stop, head lifted like a long-throated bird as she licked his face.

  "M-my dearest l-love," he said.

  He took her muzzle in one hand. With the other he clenched a thick fold of her neck, and jerked with all of his might.

  The neck broke with an ease that surprised him.

  She toppled with her head across his lap, staring blankly across the water. Her tail slapped once at a wavelet that reached her hind paws, and her whole body spasmed before the last of the air in her lungs was gone.

  Misha dropped the knife and backed up so quickly that he bumped into the float and fell against the fuselage. He sat there in the sand, emitting tiny noises of disbelief.

  Erich lifted Taurus' head from his leg and set it down gently. A final quiver passed through her. He stroked her, feeling the need to speak but unable to think of the right words.

  When he rose, the dysplasia was gone. His hip sockets no longer ground in exquisite pain.

  He picked up the knife from where Misha, in his shock, had dropped it onto the sand, passed it across his pants to wipe off the saltwater, and returned to the dog. Almost dispassionately, he wondered if he would be able to tell, now that she was gone, if the disease had again invaded her.

  Turning her onto her back, he slit up from the soft, exposed belly to the rib cage, the skin so white in the sunlight it resembled purity itself. Truly the heritage of perfection, he told himself. Grace had mated with Harras, offspring of the German grand champion, Etzel von Oeringen. From her had come Achilles, whom Hitler had killed. From Achilles--Taurus, born during a blood-red May sunrise before the Nazis had come to power.

  He could not recall having felt so physically and emotionally strong. He, Erich Weisser Alois, would be the last of the line.

  He held the coat away from the flesh and finished slitting up to the throat and beneath the muzzle. Gripping with one hand and paring with the knife, he slid the dogskin backwards, the flesh and tissue white and pink and ropy with veins. He left the paws attached to the skin, sawing through the forelegs at the first joint. Finally he stood, put his foot against her neck, and pulled toward the tail. The dogskin slid free except at the hind legs, which he quickly released.

  For the first time since he had embarked on his course of action, remorse and compassion tugged at him as he held up the skin, the inside slick and gleaming. He fought the emotions, laid the skin across her body and pulled off his shirt and boots. Kneeling as if he were bowing before a lord, about to be knighted, he drew the skin over his back, shivering at the first touch of its moist warmth.

  He stood up. From the corner of his eye he saw Misha scramble behind the float and stare in fear. The reaction made him feel electric. The skin hung like a cape, with the head hanging down his back. He secured it to himself with his boot laces. He tied it at his shoulders and beneath his biceps through holes he cut in the coat, then fastened it to his waist with his belt. Charged with power, he thought how puny and pathetic were the ways of humans. His eyesight was no longer sharp, but his other senses were keener than he had ever imagined possible. He smelled more than heard the Zana-Malata attempting to command him. The syphilitic's voice, if indeed it could be called that, hung in the oppressive air, before it drifted away on a sea breeze that wafted against the nape of his neck.

  Feeling the need for ritual before he completed whatever transformation still lay in store for him, he sheathed the knife and, stooping, burrowed his hands into Taurus' body cavity. Pulling out the heart, the size of two melded fists, he tore it free. He turned to the breeze and lifted the heart to the sun, but said no words; he could think of no God worthy of prayer.

  He lowered his hands to his chest and looked down at the heart, remembering Taurus running alongside him as he bicycled. Consciously, he put the nostalgia behind him and tore off a chunk of the heart with his teeth.

  He did not bother chewing.

  The meat slid thick and rich down his throat.

  Screaming--exultant, emboldened--he pitched the heart two-handed into the sea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Misha huddled behind the float, comforted by the feel of the warm water of the lagoon moving around him. He stared in disbelief at Herr Alois, who appeared to have completely lost his mind. The thought occurred to him that he might be next; that in his feeding frenzy, the colonel would decide he had a hunger for consuming the flesh of young boys.

  To his relief, Herr Alois, or Taurus, or whoever he thought he was, hardly gave him a second glance before he took off at a run in the direction of the encampment.

  It was not until he was out of sight that Misha remembered the Kapo. Warily, he moved out of the water and across the sand, in the direction of the dead man.

  "Help me. Please, help me."

  Misha stopped in his tracks. At that moment, all he wanted to do was scream that this could not be possible. The Kapo was dead. He had to be dead.

  Pleshdimer moaned and opened his eyes. "A drink, Misha. A little water." He tried to move, cried out in pain, and covered his wound with his enormous hands.

  Automatically, Misha took a step toward him. Then he stopped again. "No!" he shouted. "I want you to die!"

  Half-crawling, passing out briefly at irregular intervals, Pleshdimer pulled himself around in the direction of the trail to the Zana-Malata's hut. Keeping some distance between them, Misha followed the Kapo and his trail of blood. Every now and again, when Pleshdimer came across some means of leverage, he attempted to get to his feet. A few times, he even managed to stagger forward for a step or two before falling to the ground.

  Finally he tripped, tumbled, and lay still beneath the underbrush.

  Misha waited, expecting to hear the Kapo call out or to see him emerge from cover like some lumbering boar. When what seemed like forever had passed in silence, he tiptoed closer. All he could see was the bottom half of the man's inert body.

  He felt a surge of happiness, not entirely untainted by guilt at celebrating death--even this man's. Then he took off as fast as he could in the direction of the Zana-Malata's hut, keeping to the jungle so as not to be seen. He did not stop running until he was only a few feet away. He could smell the burning coals from the brazier inside.

  Unsure whether or not the Zana-Malata was in the hut, he sat down on the grass and stared at the sunset. Soon it would be dark; soon it would be Yom Kippur.

  He sat there unmoving until the onset of dusk. When he heard Herr Goldman's voice singing Kol Nidre he listened, recalling, dry-eyed, the last Yom Kippur he had spent with his mama and papa.

  "Good Yomtov, Papa," he said softly. "Good Yomtov, Ma--"

  He stopped, interrupted by gunshot and the insane barking of dogs. Even on Yom Kippur, he thought, as a plan formed
in his mind. He would go inside and steal the Zana-Malata's magic. If he had that, he would never need to be afraid again. He ran up to the zebu-hide-covered doorway, stood still for a second to listen to the silence inside, and entered the hut.

  The brazier burned, even in the Zana-Malata's absence. By its light, he looked around the room. Since he had last seen it, it had been emptied of much of its clutter. He felt a transient hope that the syphilitic had moved away for good, but though much was gone, too much still remained.

  Tentatively, remembering his plan, he groped for the stack of tanghin pits that the syphilitic kept inside the buffalo skull on the shelf in the corner of the room. The skull was too high for him to reach, so he climbed into the suspended raffia chair and, balancing precariously, grasped one of the pits.

  He opened his hand to look at his booty, and cried out as a flame burst into the air. The suddenness frightened him, but he felt no heat from the fire which quickly went out when he dropped the pit. He examined his hand, expecting to see burn marks, but it was fine. He dug into the skull for a second pit and, holding it clenched in his fist, climbed off the chair.

  Now what? he asked himself. Figuring he would go back outside and think while he listened for the sounds of the Shofar from the compound, he stepped over the brazier and headed for the doorway. From outside he heard the renewed barking of the dogs. He stood with his back to the zebu-hide covering, wondering if there was anything else he should take. A knife glinted in the corner of the room.

  He took a step forward--

  Bloody fingers encircled his ankle from behind.

  Groaning, using his elbows, the Kapo pulled himself into the hut.

  "I want you to die!" Misha screamed like he had at the lagoon, lashing out with his foot.

  Weakened by the loss of blood, Pleshdimer loosened his hold on the boy. Misha backed up against the far wall and watched as, impossibly, inch by inch, the Kapo crawled toward him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  An hour or so before sundown, with the workday almost over, Sol saw Lucius Goldman take off for the spring. The farmer returned with his leather shoes knotted together and strung around his neck.

  "I have prepared for Yom Kippur," Goldman told him.

  The Hasid, Sol knew, was referring to the ritual cleansing, and to the fact that it was forbidden to wear leather shoes on the Day of Atonement.

  "Walking on bare feet is a foolishness on a tropical island where such creatures as centipedes proliferate," Sol said.

  Goldman laughed mirthlessly. "If they bite me, it will save the Sturmbannführer a bullet."

  Sol avoided the man's eyes, for fear of seeing a mirror image of hopelessness. Instead, he looked at the horizon where the sun was about to be swallowed by the oncoming night.

  As he had arranged with them, Sol's fellow prisoners did everything possible to create the illusion that tonight was no different than yesterday.

  All except Goldman.

  Apparently unable to live with the irreverence of praying with a bare head, he reached into his pocket and extracted a banyan leaf which he placed on the crown of his skull. The gesture brought back memories for Sol--his father, donning his silk tallit, touching the Torah reverently with the prayer shawl's tzitzit, the soft fringes his mother had attached to the corners with blue thread, bending his head to recite the Shema.

  "Shema yisrael, adonai elohainu adonai echad," Sol began in a whisper. "Hear O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One."

  Unable to contain himself, Goldman's voice rang out. The first stanza of Kol Nidre coincided with his people's declaration of faith, their affirmation of God's unity.

  Almost at once, a shadow fell across the congregation.

  "Manome!" Hempel shouted, a word he had apparently practiced for the occasion. "Sacrifice! You want to pray? I'll give you a reason for prayer!"

  Goldman continued to sing. Hempel unholstered his Mann and pointed it at the farmer.

  "Leave him alone," Sol said. "This was my doing. You want me, so here I am."

  Goldman tugged urgently at Solomon's arm. "Please, Rabbi."

  Sol shook his head. "I can't let you die for me."

  "Idiots! Now they're fighting to die." Hempel laughed. "You'll both get it eventually. Ve-la!" he shouted. "Punishment."

  "May the Lord comfort you, together with all who mourn--" Goldman said, as the shot reached its mark.

  Dying, he fell to the ground and finished the ancient litany of mourning, "--and bring you peace." With enormous effort, he lifted his head and, gazing at Sol, said, "L'shanah habaa b'Yerushalayim, my friend." Next year in Jerusalem.

  He shut his eyes, shuddered, and lay still.

  Hot tears ran down Solomon's face. Looking directly at Hempel, he said, "May God never forgive you."

  Laughing, Hempel instructed two of the Jews to carry Goldman's body to one of the pandanus palms, its canopy a luxuriant umbrella in the bright light of the combined searchlights. There, the corpse was stripped naked. His hands were tied together with a length of concertina wire and he was hanged by them from one of the branches.

  This can't be happening, Sol thought, looking around at the circle of Jews who had been led out of the ghetto to watch. He wanted to shriek aloud, to protest that he, and not his friend, should be the victim of this barbarism. It was only then that he noticed the continued absence of the Zana-Malata. The trainers had joined the spectacle, along with their dogs, which jumped and yelped around the body, tearing at their leashes and leaving Sol neither the time nor the stomach to speculate about the syphilitic's whereabouts.

  "Release the dogs," Hempel commanded, from his favorite haunt beneath the tanghin tree,

  The animals bounded forward. In a feeding frenzy, they tore at the bleeding body with savage intensity. Nothing was sacrosanct--head, hands, arms. In minutes, what was left of the legs was bloody and raw. One foot was gone, the other missing toes.

  The guards shifted closer to the action, applauding and laughing whenever an animal made a particularly high leap. The trainers stood at the edge of the crowd, eyes expressionless and faces plaster-white in the glow of the moon and the searchlights, apparently unwilling to push past Hempel's men and attempt to control the shepherds.

  The killings would go on and on, Sol thought, until the good Sturmbannführer denuded the island of Jews and all blacks except the Zana-Malata and the Kalanaro. Then the bloodlust would turn on itself, like a rabid dog chewing its own leg to the bone. In the end, Erich and the trainers would probably be impaled on sharpened poles, and Hempel would return to Goebbels to report how he had saved the Madagascar experiment from traitors, Jew-mongers, and dog-fuckers.

  A dog pirouetted high in the air, tearing off a chunk of thigh as the guards roared their approval. Bright-eyed with self-satisfaction, the animal lifted its head and trotted off into the darkness, wolfing down the prize.

  Chortling, a group of Kalanaro appeared. They danced around the body, kicking up clouds of dust and mimicking the shepherds. The dogs backed away, whimpering but persistent--hyenas hungry for a lion to finish with the kill.

  "He who consumes his enemy, consumes power." Hempel meandered along the line of guards, smiling amiably. They parted as he came forward. The dogs padded to various points in their Zodiac circle, lay down, and peered up at Goldman.

  "So as our friend would say," he put an arm across Johann's shoulders, and pointed toward the Zana-Malata's hut. "Mihinana!...Eat!"

  Nobody moved to accept the invitation.

  "That the strong must cull the weak is a necessary evil." Hempel's familiar, paternal smile had returned. "It is a natural law which our modern society tries to circumvent--to their ultimate dissolution. Darwin and our Führer have shown us a better way. The rules of the animal world, where life is its most pristine, are pure and immutable. Humanity must renew and espouse its beginnings if it hopes to survive."

  Sol averted his eyes from what was left of Lucius Goldman. He wanted to walk away, to mourn the Hasid in private
, but Hempel had started on one of his monologues, and there was to be no escape from it.

  "I am a self-educated man." Hempel waved his cigar and strode along the edge of the circle as he pontificated. "Unlike the effete intellectuals at the universities, I was wise enough to know that I could not read all the books, nor would I want to. I, therefore, thoroughly studied only those tomes beside which all other books pale by comparison. Mein Kampf, The German Military Arms Manual, The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes.

  "Thus I have been spared from the Bible. From what I've been told, that novel," this to snickering from Johann and the other guards, "is filled with lost tribes, lost innocents, paradise lost. Also lost minds, from the kind of people I've witnessed fooled by it.

  "One thing about it does intrigue me, the fiction about a barefooted runaway named Daniel who calms a den of lions.

  "So here we have a Daniel." With his cigar he indicated Solomon, whose heart immediately started to pound. "As a true believer he must know that, should we command the animals to tear Daniel apart, the beasts will be calmed by the power of prayer."

  The guards laughed heartily but the trainers, apparently with some sense of what was to come, blanched.

  "Like any good story, ours of this modern Daniel has a twist." He held out his hand and Johann placed in it a roll of paper similar to the one Hempel had read to Erich.

  "In the judgement of this impartial court," Hempel read, "convened this twenty-third day of September, nineteen hundred and thirty nine, on the German Isle of the Jews, we hereby condemn to death by dismemberment the subhuman known by the slave name Solomon Isaac Freund, prisoner three seven seven zero four. Dismemberment shall occur at the rate of one joint per hour, said body part to be fed to the canine unit while the prisoner watches. Signed, Sturmbannführer Jurgens Otto von Hempel, Commander-in-Chief of our master's and Führer's Southeast-African Felsennest Force, on behalf of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler."