The Cannibal: Novel

by Hawkes, John

  “Hurry, wake up now, the country’s almost free.”

  After more pushing and cajoling, the old official was dragged to his feet, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Come with me.”

  “I’m too tired to sleep with that woman any more tonight.”

  I looked at him sharply. “We’re not going to. Come along.” I could not allow myself to be offended.

  “I don’t go on duty until eight o’clock.”

  I held my temper, for the old man was drunk and couldn’t know what he was saying.

  Together we climbed one more flight of stairs to Stintz’s room, and pushing the tuba, with its little patch of dried blood, out of the way, we picked up the crouching body and started off with it.

  “Nothing but water,” said the Census-Taker struggling with the feet, “nothing but tuba and water and hot air out of his fat horn. Another pea in the fire of hell.”

  “Don’t drop him.”

  “Don’t drop him? I’d just as soon push him out of a window and let him get to the street by himself.”

  “We’ll carry him, and you be careful.”

  The old man mumbled and pulled at the feet. “I won’t even bother to take him off the roster.”

  Out in the street we propped the body against the stoop where the moon shone down on the upturned eyes and a hard hand lay against the cold stone.

  “Go back to the paper, you know what to do. I’ll meet you in front of the house.” The Census-Taker, vice-ruler of the State, shuffled into the darkness and I went back to the shed to find the cart.

  The Chancellery was still as cold as it was in its unresurrected days, and even at this hour the Chancellor, boarder of the second floor, was out. Madame Snow drew the curtains and found that it was still night, the smashed wall across the street was vague and covered with mist. Her loose hair hung in uneven lengths, where she had cut it, down her back, her face was white and old, pressed to the window. “If old Stintz wants to sit out there like a fool, well, let him. I’ll make my imbecile some broth,” she thought, and tried to stir up the stove but found it impossible. “You’ll have to go without,” she said to Balamir, and he started and grinned at the Queen Mother’s words. Balamir knew that the village was like an abandoned honeycomb because somebody in airplanes had blown many of the roofs from the houses. But the Queen Mother should not look at the bleak night, it was his job and his alone to rebuild the town and make his subjects happy. He tried to attract her attention, but she was looking at the stove. Madame Snow herself wanted some broth, but collecting stove fuel from the basement was simply too great a task and she knew the fool, poor man, could never learn to do it. “Stintz is as bad as you,” she said and crawled about the honeycomb chuckling to herself, tiara fallen to one side, grown loose.

  Four flights up in my new rooms, the child got out of bed and once more stood by the window, beginning her vigil over the ageless, sexless night. The little girl, Selvaggia, was careful to keep her face in the shadow of the curtain, lest the undressed man in the sky look down and see. As much as she disliked Herr Stintz, she thought that someone should go and tell him to come back into the house. But she knew enough not to disturb her mother.

  Jutta pulled the covers back over her shoulder. Now that I was gone, there was no need to expose herself to the cold, and even the Census-Taker was no longer interested in seeing. But she couldn’t sleep. The peculiar thump of drunken feet, the droning of an engine, the footsteps of dead men echoed through the room, the branches scraped and whispered outside the window. She remembered the day that Stella went to be married and left her alone. Now Stella, the Madame, was old, only an old sterile tramp, and couldn’t even keep the house quiet at night. Jutta drew her knee up, smoothed the sheets, and lay wide awake. She wished that I would hurry home. Men were so stupid about their affairs, running around with pistols, little short rods and worried brows. “Come to bed,” she thought, “or one of these days I’ll throw you out, Leader or not.”

  It was no use, there was no more sleep. She got out of bed and went to the three drawers under the washbowl stand and searched through her clothes. She found the letter under her week-day dress and it was covered with official seals and the censor’s stamp. The letter from her husband before he was lost in Russia, imprisoned among Mongolians, was the only personal possession she had left. She held the paper up to the moonlight.

  “… I’m now at the front in a big field and the familiar world of men is gone. Yesterday a group went by and I shot the leader off his horse with a bullet right through his head. The rain sings and the streamlets reproduce every hour. I thought about him all last night and his horse ran off across the field. Now, Jutta, if it is true that I get what he used to own, I will send you the necessary papers so you can go and take possession of his farm. There may be a great deal of work to do on it so you had better start. I kept wondering last night if his wife was automatically mine or not. I suppose she is, and frankly, that worries me and I’m sorry I shot the fellow for that. I think she probably has red hair and the officials will dismiss the whole thing—but I will send you money as soon as it comes and you simply will have to make the best of it and fight it out with her and the children. His farm might be several acres, who knows? I’ll send you maps, etc. plus the fellow’s name and I don’t think you’ll have trouble crossing the field. I cannot make out what his wife will think of me now that she is mine along with the land. It’s too bad for her that it had to be this way but perhaps there’s a horse in the barn to replace the one that got away. I couldn’t sleep at all because this field is in the open, which is most astounding, and I couldn’t decide how much money he actually had that I could send you. I don’t know how you feel about all this, perhaps you’ll think I did wrong, but I struck the best bargain I could, and the Corporal in the dugout made it very difficult. Maybe I’ll be able to end this slave rule and will certainly mend the roof on his farmhouse for you if you’ll just do your share. There may be a few dogs on his farm who will keep the poachers off—I hope so. It’s a terrible problem as you can see but if the Corporal comes on my side I think things will change. I hope the whole plan works out for you and the papers arrive safely through the rain, for at the same time I am doing nothing in the trenches and this excitement, over the wire and saddles, is disturbing my conscience …”

  Jutta dropped the letter back into the washstand. She wished that it were a chest of drawers, a chest as tall as she and carved, with layer after layer of gowns and silk, something precious for every moment of the night, with a golden key and a gilded mirror on the top.

  Stintz sat straight up in the cart, knocking heavily against the wood to the rhythm of the stones and fractures in the street. His face was set and he slipped, then righted, like a child in a carriage that is too large. He looked like a legless man hauled through the streets in the days of trouble, he was a passenger tensed for the trip with only his head rolling above the sides of the cart.

  There was no straw in the bottom, his hands were locked rigidly apart, and he jiggled heavily when the wheels rolled over the gravel. If anyone else had been riding with him, he would not have spoken. He was surly, he was helpless, and his whole body had the defiant, unpleasant appearance that the helpless have. The shafts were too wide for me, and I had a difficult time pulling the cart, for sometimes it seemed to gather a momentum of its own and pushed me along while the heels behind me kicked up and down on the floorboards in a frightening step.

  We met on the appointed comer and the Census-Taker put the tins, cold and unwieldly, into the cart. They quickly slid back into Stintz’s lap, crowding him, pinning him down. He no longer slid with the movement of travel, he was no longer a passenger. The tins made the difference, they cut away his soul, filled the cart with the sloshing sound of liquid. His head was no longer a head, but a funnel in the top of a drum.

  We stopped before the Mayor’s door and struggled to get the martyr and the fuel out of the wagon. We dropped him and caught our b
reath.

  “Are you sure he won’t hear us?”

  “He won’t hear. And if he does, he won’t do anything. I guarantee you he won’t make a sound. He knows no one would help him.”

  With a great deal of effort, we dragged Stintz into the Mayor’s hall and propped him against a table. We emptied the tins of petrol, ten Pfennige a cup, throughout the downstairs of the house.

  It took a long time for the fire to reach the roof since the tins were diluted with water and the house was damp to begin with. The Census-Taker was forced to make several trips back to the newspaper office for more fuel and his arms and shoulders were sore with the work.

  The Mayor thought that the nurse was preparing cups of hot broth and the kettle boiled as she stirred it with a wooden spoon. Little white pieces of chicken, whose head she flung in the corner, floated midway in the water. The warm fumes filled the room.

  “Here, Miller,” he said, “let’s sit down to the soup together. That woman’s an excellent cook and the bird’s from my own flock. I have hundreds, you know. Miller, let me give you this broth.” Tears were in the old man’s eyes, he reached for the cup. But Miller wouldn’t drink. The Mayor’s nose and mouth were bound in the red bandanna, it choked about his throat, and at the last minute, Miller knocked over the tureen.

  “I think we can go,” I said. The fire was filling the street with a hot, small amount of ash.

  The Mayor did not cry out, but died, I was very glad, without recompense or absolution.

  The little girl had seen no fires since the Allied bombings, and in those days, she saw them only after they were well under way, after the walls had fallen and the houses did not look like houses at all. And the people crowding the streets after raids, running to and fro, giving orders, often made it hard to see.

  Now, since the town had no fire apparatus, no whistles or trucks, and since there was no one in the streets, she could watch the fire as long as she wished; see it from her window undisturbed, alert. Firemen would certainly have destroyed the fire, their black ladders climbing all over the walls would have changed it, black slickers shining with water would have cried danger, covered with water they would have put it out.

  The fire went well for a while, and then, because there was no wind to help it, no clothes or curtains to feed upon, it began to fade like an incendiary on the bare road, until only a few sparks and gusts of smoke trickled from the cracks of an upstairs shuttered window. The child soon tired of the flames that couldn’t even singe a cat, but was still glad the fire-bell had not rung. She crept back under the covers to keep warm while waiting.

  The Duke, his arms loaded with the shopping bag, wearily climbed the stairs and unlocked the door.

  Madame Snow, hearing the noises overhead, knew that the second floor boarder was back.

  The Signalman dozed in his chair and forgot the boy and the man with the upraised cane.

  Madame Snow did not see the dying embers.

  With his free hand the Duke put a few copies of the Crooked Zeitung, old unreadable issues, on a chair before resting his bundle; the white legs that dangled over the seat were too short to reach the rungs. A stain spread over the newspapers. He moved quickly about the majestic apartment, fit only for the eyes of a Duke, and now in his vest with his sleeves rolled up, he put two lumps of coal in the stove, rinsed his hands, and finally put the pieces in the bucket to soak. He put a few bones that he had been able to carry away, uninspected and unstamped, before the shop closed, on a closet shelf. After throwing the small fox’s black jacket into a pile of salvaged clothes, he collected his pans and set to work. More newspapers over his knees, he gathered the pots about his feet and one by one he scoured, scoured until the papers were covered with a thick red dust, and the vessels gleamed, steel for the hearth. He scoured until his hands and arms were red.

  The stove was crowded, for every pan and roaster that he owned was set to boil, lidded pots and baking tins, large and small, heavy and light, were all crammed together over the coals. The broth would last for weeks and months, his shelves would hold the bones for years. Through the shades a dull light began to fill the kitchen and at last, proudly, he was ready to go downstairs.

  Madame Snow heard the footsteps, slow and even, stop before her door. She knew that something waited, that some slow-moving creature, large or thin, alive or dead, was just beyond, waiting to call. She heard the breathing, the interminable low sounds, the sounds so necessary to a nightmare, the rustling of cloth, perhaps a soft word mumbled to itself. If she turned on the light, he might disappear or she might not recognize him, she might never have seen that face, those eyes and hands, those rubber boots, and slicker drawn tightly up to the chin. It may swing an axe limply to and fro, large, ponderous, unknown. And if he did not speak but simply stood, hair wet over the eyes, face scarred, bandanna about the throat, and worse, if he did not move, never a step once inside the door with the white handkerchief, with the Christ by his head, with gauntlets and whistle that were never clutched, that never blew, on his belt, what would she do? She would not be able to speak, she would not recognize nor remember nor recall that peculiar way he stood, as if he held a gun, as if he had just climbed up from the canal with his slicker made of rubber rafts. She could hear him leaning closer against the door.

  At last the knock came and cautiously and formally he entered.

  “Ah, Herr Duke,” she said, “good evening. You’re visiting late, but it’s a pleasure to see you.”

  He bowed, still in his vest, with arms red, and straightened stiffly.

  “Madame Snow, I realize the hour, but,” he smiled slightly, “I have come on a most important mission.”

  She clutched the robe, the Queen Mother’s before her, close to her chest.

  “I would be most happy,” continued the tall man, “if you would give me the pleasure of dining with me, full courses and wine, at ten o’clock this morning that is to come. I have been most fortunate, and the meal is now being prepared.”

  “It is an honor, Herr Duke.”

  With one more bow, sleeves still rolled, the Chancellor climbed the stairs. He was the bearer of good tidings.

  Balamir was startled to see, only a few moments after the Chancellor took his leave, Madame Snow stoop to seize a piece of paper that had been thrust beneath the door. They heard the messenger, Fegelein, cantering off down the greying street, heard the slamming of several doors. Madame Snow squinted by the window, her long hair shaking with excitement. She read and disbelieved, then read again. This joy was too much to bear, too great, too proud. Tears of joy and long waiting ran down her cheeks, the pamphlet fluttered from her hands, she clutched at the sill. Suddenly, with the energy of her youth, she flung open the window and screamed towards the upper stories of the boarding house.

  “Sister, Sister, the news has come, the liberation has arrived. Sister, thank your countrymen, the land is free, free of want, free to re-build, Sister, the news, it’s truly here.” She wept as she had never wept when a girl.

  Only silence greeted her cries. Then the child called fearfully down, “Mother is asleep.” A bright excited day was beginning to dawn and a few harassed and jubilant cries, no more, echoed up and down the drying streets.

  Even though the print was smeared quite badly, and some of the pamphlets were unreadable, the decree spread quickly and most people, except the Station-Master who didn’t see the white paper, heard the news and whispered about it in the early morning light, trying to understand this new salvation, readjusting themselves to the strange day. The decree was carried, faithfully, by Stumpfegle and Fegelein who walked in ever widening circles about the countryside. They walked farther and farther, growing tired, until even the spire, struck with sunlight, was no longer visible.

  In Winter Death steals through the doorway searching for both young and old and plays for them in his court of law. But when Spring’s men are beating their fingers on the cold earth and bringing the news, Death travels away and becomes only a passer-by.
The two criers passed him on his way and were lost in an unbounded field.

  The Census-Taker slept by the bottles in the newspaper office, his hands and face still grey with soot.

  Madame Snow hummed while she tied up her hair.

  Her son finally slept.

  The hatches on the tank were closed.

  The decree worked, was carried remarkably well, and before the day had begun the Nation was restored, its great operations and institutions were once more in order, the sun was frozen and clear. At precisely ten o’clock, when the Queen Mother went to dine, the dark man with the papers walked down the street and stopped at the boarding house. As Balamir left the castle with the shabby man, he heard the faraway scraping of knives and forks. At the top of the hill he saw the long lines that were already filing back into the institution, revived already with the public spirit. They started down the slope and passed, without noticing, the pool of trodden thistles where the carrion lay.

  I was surprised to hear all the laughter on the second floor, but was too tired to stop and receive their gratitude. Beside the bed in Jutta’s room I stripped off my shirt and trousers and with an effort eased myself under the sheets. I lay still for a moment and then touched her gently, until she opened her eyes. The lips that had waited all evening for a second kiss touched my own, and from the open window the sharp sun cut across the bed, shining on the whiteness of her face who was waking and on the whiteness of my face who had returned to doze. We shut our eyes against the sun.

  Selvaggia opened the door and crept into the room. She looked more thin than ever in the light of day, wild-eyed from watching the night and the birth of the Nation.

  “What’s the matter, Mother? Has anything happened?”

  I answered instead of Jutta, without looking up, and my voice was vague and harsh; “Nothing. Draw those blinds and go back to sleep…”