The Cannibal (13 page)

The robed men muttered together at the far end of the room behind the table, and we three, the witnesses, waited while a thin soot from the burning can settled over the floor, the walls, collected on the Colonel’s two musette bags and on the neat small row of cracking army boots. The maps, freshly tacked to the wall, grew darker and the chill in the air grew worse with the promise of snow, soot speckled the grease on the Colonel’s mess tins tied to the bedroll. Once one of the corporals turned, “No talking there,” and we did not understand, for only the Colonel spoke German. Then, after a short silence, the Colonel seemed to remember. “My God, Corporal, get my pistol—and you might bring my pipe.” The young man, holding the black hem above
his boots, scowled once at us, the witnesses, and searched in one of the small dirty bags. Then a pause while they fumbled under his gown to arm him and he lit the pipe, his black cassock skirt and tough hands stiff with cold. The motorcycle rider’s white helmet moved back and forth across the window, scattered flakes of snow dropped on his jacket.

“Mayor,” the corporal called, and the frightened old man stepped into the dock, tensed for a dangerous question.

The Colonel took his place and spoke:

“How old are you?”

“Eh, what’s that?”

“Your age, age.”

“I’m sixty-one.” His paper collar wilted, the official sash sagged on his waist, and he was afraid.

“Where were you born?”

“Right here, here in this very place.”

“I understand you keep some sort of civil records?”

“I did, quite true, very fine writing. But they’re gone, burned up, shells hit my house, zip, zip, and in the fallen glass the flames spread, so my papers are all gone.”

“Well, I want to know something about,” the Colonel looked at his notes, “a man named Miller.”

“I’ve known him for years, his wife, children.”

“Now, is it true he was a pastor?”

“Pastor? Ah, yes, pastor.”

“But now he no longer is?”

“No longer? Well, not actively, the war, I don’t think there were many people to listen …”

“Did he
want
to stop being a pastor?”

“Well, there was a good deal of trouble in this town, we suffered …”

I called from the corner, “He
is
a pastor.”

“Silence, keep quiet, there.”

Then Herr Stintz came forward, a primer under his arm, smiling, and he edged himself in front of the Mayor.

“If you’ll permit me,” he said.

“Well, what is it?”

Stintz stepped closer, glasses pinching over his nose. “Herr Colonel, I think perhaps you should take into account that there was, you know, a new gospel, the war made a change in what a man might want to preach to the dumb people—other ears heard, the new gospel was a very strong thing, even his wife could do nothing with Miller.”

The Colonel looked for a long moment at the Mayor.

“Is this true? Was there a change in Miller?”

“Well, everyone, the war was a hard thing but,” the old man found himself staring at the eagle on the Colonel’s chest, and it seemed to glow with a phosphorescent sheen, “but I’m alone, I don’t know him that well, he was away …” The eagle grew bright and the old man wiped his chin, tried to fasten the sash tighter, “but I think, maybe, he did change …”

“He did not,” I said.

“He’s a tough one,” whispered the officer to the corporal, pointing at me, and the judges retired. The snow fell harder, the rider covered his bike with a gunnysack. “I think,” said the Colonel, “that the case is closed, but we better be just, it will be excellent to impress them with our thoroughness.” So for the rest of the afternoon, while the snow became thick and we waited in the corner, while one of the corporals took notes and the can ran out of fuel, a long line of civilians was formed and one by one
each citizen of the town passed into the dark room, was questioned, and was returned to the raw cold evening. At last the entire population had come and gone, steel slats had been driven across the cellar window where Miller waited, and the Colonel undid his bedroll and lay down in the deep rich fur to sleep out the night. Long afterwards the Mayor blamed everything on the shining eagle, “It had frightful curled claws and a sharp hooked nose with red terrifying eyes. That’s what it did to me.”

The Colonel shook himself awake before dawn, five o’clock by his wrist watch accurate as a micrometer, and in only his grey underwear donned a long sheepskin field coat and stumbled into the day’s work. Moving about in the dark hallway where his riflemen lay, he left a bright blank cartridge by each man and emptied each weapon of its live ammunition, inspecting each oiled chamber and silver whirling bore. Back in the long bare living room he filled the petrol tin and, hunched in the great curling coat, made himself a pot of black coffee, warming, the while, his hands over the small flame. The Mayor, Stintz and I slept together in the corner, the corporals were buried deep in their cots, and in the basement, trapped amid the piles of debris, Miller waited to see the morning through the narrow slats. The Colonel busied himself with a worn grammar, put his mess kit aside to be cleaned, and let his men sleep for another hour. Finally, ten minutes before six, he dug into his gear and pulled forth his best garrison cap, polished the badge with a rag, left it ready for the important hour and then padded out of doors. His were the first prints through the snow in the back yard; he was the first to break the air still heavy as with waiting flakes. The canal smelled
strongly of vermin and slapping rubber, a broken rake handle and emery wheel jutted up through the damp snow, no smoke came from the chimneys on the other bank. Plough handles, shafts of wood, caked earthenware, the jaws of a wooden vice, old scraps of leather filled the slanting shed where the jeep was garaged under the tarpaulin, and a spot of thick green oil spread over the dirt floor. Two planks, nailed along one thin wall that was once a work bench, were bare—for all pieces of metal, tools, iron wheels had been melted down for shells— bare except for a pair of faded pink pants left on one end, shriveled to the size of a fist. The door swung shut behind the Colonel, he rummaged about the shed, thought of the Fraulein who owned the pants, caught with long braids and bright smile, then he reached into the jeep and pulled out another rifle, bright and clean. The odor of chickens, old herbs, mold, mixed with the oil, and he heard the slapping of low water in the canal, trickling over layers and shreds of thin ice. He checked the tires, looked once more about the shed, then walked back to his headquarters across the unkempt white garden.

By six o’clock he had waked the men, decided that the roads were passable and had loaded the new rifle with a live cartridge.

“Here now, Leevey,” he called out the window to the still-walking dispatch rider, “you handle the prisoner this morning.” Then, while the three of us sat up and blinked, the Colonel shaved, peering into a mechanical mirror that had crooked collapsible legs. After he was dressed, one of the corporals brushed his uniform, helped him bundle back into the heavy coat, and handed him the cap with the bright badge.

By six-thirty the whole town had been raised and stood crammed together in the garden and the motorcycle rider fastened the red cloth about Miller’s eyes while, he, the prisoner, stood rigidly on the edge of the canal. The Colonel hurried out, followed by the Mayor, Stintz, and me, and his troop, hurried to see that Miller was placed correctly, checked the time. Though the sky was heavy, he was sure it would not snow, and if they got an early start should be able to cover two hundred miles at least. “Come,” he said turning to me, “I need another rifleman. You just take this gun and fall in line with my men.” He handed me the new weapon, the fifth, well greased, light, loaded, then arranged our squad in good order. “Mayor,” he called, “Mayor, come here.” The old man trembled and came forward, his nose grey with the cold, his chest hollow. The Colonel reached into a woollen pocket and brought forth a large white handkerchief, thrust it upon the shivering leader. “Now you hold this over your head, and when you see me nod, drop it.” All right, Leevey,” called the Colonel, “come away from the prisoner.” The water slid by in the canal. Stintz watched carefully, eager for justice, the Census-Taker, drunk, leaned on Madame Snow’s arm and held Jutta’s hand, watched the white cloth drooping in the dull morning.

“Leevey,” said the Colonel when they were abreast, speaking in a lowered voice, “you might see about loading the jeep, we have a long way to go today.”

The crowd grew restless, a thin sickly pink began to stain the clouds, the four men and myself raised our short barrels while the two bow ends of the Pastor’s red bandanna flapped in a light breeze.

His upraised arm began to pain, and the Mayor felt his legs knocking together, backwards and forwards, and he thought he would perish with the cold. Then he caught the glance from the man with the big eagle on his cap and his fingers opened. “It is you who will die,” called the Pastor, and the Mayor shut his eyes.

The noise of the rifles sounded small and muffled, padded in the heavy air, and his fingers still felt as if they held the cloth. Miller fell back, dropped through the film of ice and floated jerkily down over the shoals, catching against rocks, dragging over pieces of wood, bumping the flabby rafts, the red cloth flashing for a moment.

“You’re a good shot,” the Colonel said to me, “that’s the gun that did it.” The Census-Taker had to be carried back to the house.

A half-hour later the convoy rolled out onto the highway, jeep coughing, the Colonel carefully driving, leaving behind the several posters and proclamations that the motorcycle-rider had pasted up to the peeling walls: “The Government of the United States …” For the most part, they were unreadable.

The Mayor thought they were watching him. The sheets were soiled, the Pastor, holding the book, tapped at the shutters, the bird picked at his toes and he took sick because they talked under his window and his conscience was soft, soft as the pink pants …

“My God, he’s not coming at all!” said Fegelein.

“Don’t be a fool, it’s almost time.” Sometimes I had to be harsh.

“You don’t think he’ll see the log and stop?”

“Of course not.”

I myself began to wich that the
Schmutz
on the little motorcycle would hurry up, morning would soon come and the newspaper office would be waiting, the old women with their bright eyes would be out watching in the streets, the dumb children would be snooping. The land is important, not the
Geist;
the bronx-mongolians, the fat men, the orators, must be struck down. The three of us, the sentries, drew closer together in the low fog.

Herr Stintz, alone in the dark, stood by the open window and listened, looked up at the starless sky, pointed his snout towards the apartment above, straining his muzzle. He, feeling the small girl so close, hearing her breath, felt some of her apprehension, and wide awake did not think of the cold bare walls behind him, or of the pieces of cracked furniture, but concentrated on the heavens, and spied, waiting to see what would happen. And thinking how small and white she was, he tried to divine her secret, thrust his head farther out of the casement, a head that was white, high and narrow, that leaned around corners to hear, and crinkled about the pale eyes with spying. Stintz was hostile to the cold April night air, peered back and forth across the lowering sky, held the birch stick under his arm. He heard Jutta’s footsteps overhead as she readied for sleep and pretended to himself that the mother would take the child into her own bed. The nighty was soft and covered with tender prints and only came to the thin knees, the little neckline was flat against the chest.

Madame Snow, erect, frail, wrapped a quilt about Balamir’s shoulders where he kneeled on the floor, and by the light of the candle studied the poor creature’s face. She found herself listening for footsteps
of the second floor roomer, for she knew that the apartment was empty and dark.

The Mayor awoke, wept momentarily, and reached under the bed for a round receptacle. He wanted to know if morning was close but was afraid to open the shutter.

The theater was vast, the audience dead ratters, forgotten bits of paper left on the seats, wet, loose, covered with growth. The drizzle had ceased and a slight wind swept down the aisles, stirring fragments of celluloid, springs, and old playbills. The Duke waited.

“Would you like to buy a ticket?” And his voice still echoing and booming from the cage to the proscenium in unfamiliar strained tones as he stepped from behind the glass and faced the crouched boy.

With winter almost gone, the coagulated underground pipes began to loosen and a thin dark stream of drained seepage flowed, connected every low basement, and trickled about, encircled all the dog-used walls.

Then Herr Stintz heard a voice, small and calm, soft under the covers, “Mother, I saw a light!” And quickly the thin snapping man glanced down over the village, watched the trees, strained his ears upwards, but could hear nothing except a peculiar puttering. Then he saw it, feeble as a flashlight, weak as an old woman’s lantern used behind the house, swaying blindly as a bat’s eye, gone out behind a sagging barn, free again over the bushes, lost behind a high gate, and then at last it was clear and unbroken, and Stintz, greedy, pop-mouthed, watched it circle slowly along the great curve of, he realized, the
Autobahn
.

At the same time we three heard the sound of the isolated engine as the bastard on the motor approached.

“I’ll get him in the behind—
behind,”
I whispered.

The light flared once and went out.

A hundred miles from
Spitzen-on-the-Dein
in
the early morning of the day when the killing occurred, the intended victim, Leevey, lay
wearied and injured beside a laughing slut who was covered with invisible red clap. All
through the darkness they had struggled, baring each other with the point of a knee, angry
and calling each other
schmuck
, and she had struck his face so that the eyes bled.
She raised her white legs above the sheets, then grimaced and threw him off, jabbing with
her fists as he fell against the wall. Over and over she said, “My house, you come to
my
house,” but Leevey was afraid that if he left the safety of his room she would
shellac him, cut with the scissors, and finally leave him dead with a pin through his neck.
For he had heard the stories, stories of murder in the empty lot, the special deaths, the
vaginae packed with deadly poison. He clung to her, “You stay here,” and her sharp wooden
sandals sliced at his shins and her unwashed hair fell over his aching shoulder. His white
helmet, goggles, and gauntlets lay beside the bunk, his tunic and trousers the girl used as
a pillow. “Candy,” she said, pinching and poking with her strong fingers. “Go to hell,” he
whined and the forearm crushed down on his nose and mouth, bruising and dull. Finally,
unsuccessful, Leevey tried to sleep, but she scratched and pushed, whistled in
his ear, squeezed, cried, jammed with her feet, and just as he dozed
would slap with all her strength.

The sun gradually brightened the grey walls, the girl’s white laughing eyes
never left his face, a quick pinch. The heavy tiredness and pain swept over him and he
wished he was back in the delicatessen, his long nose pushed among the cheeses.

When she reached the door she turned, leaned her shoulder against the jamb,
thrust out her hip and smiled at the feeble one, also filmed now with red invisible clap,
tousled and unprotesting, sick in the bunk:

“Auf Wiedersehen, Amerikaner,”
she said,
“Amerikaner!”

Leevey doused his face in the basin, slicked down his black hair. “That’s
life,” he said, “that’s life,” and as the sun rose clear and cold he slung the Sten-gun on
his back, polished his boots, fastened the gauntlets, climbed on his rusty motorcycle, and
began the tour of his district.

He traveled ninety miles with his palms shivering on the steerhorn
handlebars, the white cold air glazed endlessly ahead, his insides smacking against the
broad cowhide saddle. He stopped a few times beside an abandoned farm or mis-turned sign or
unburied Allied corpse to take a few notes, laying the machine on its side in the mud, and
he sweated over the smeared pad and stubby pencil. He was overseer for a sector of land that
was one-third of the nation and he frowned with the responsibility, sped along thinking of
the letters he would write home, traveled like a gnome behind a searchlight when the sun
finally set and the foreign shadows settled. He saw the bare spire rising less than a mile
beyond, and crouching down, spattered with grease,
he speeded up, to go
past
Spitzen-on-the-Dein
with a roar. The late night and crowded broken road
twisted around him, flames shot up from the exhaust.

“Wait a minute, I’ll be right up,
Kinder,”
called Herr Stintz to
the upper window. He caught one last glimpse of the slim light with its tail of angry short
tongues of fire like a comet, and flinging on a thin coat he bolted for the stairs. He made
noise, hurried, was neither meek nor ineffectual, for he felt at last he had the right, the
obligation, and his tattling could be open, commanding; for he had seen the light, the
unexpected journeyman, the foreign arrival, a fire in the night that no one knew about but
he, and now he moved without caution, tripping and whispering, to take possession. Again he
opened the door to the top floor apartment, hurried through the first room past the unwaking
Jutta where her high breast gleamed from under the sheet, past the full basin and into the
smaller, cold lair. “Quickly,” he said, “we must hurry. It’s up to you and me.” She made no
protest but watched him with sharp appraising eyes, holding her breath. Stintz picked the
little girl from the bundle of clothes, wrapped her in a shortened quilt, tied it with
string around her waist, fastened the thick stockings on her feet. He knew exactly what he
was about as he dressed the child, considered no question, gave no thought to the sleeping
mother. Never before had he been so close; he tied the quilt high about her throat, smoothed
the hair once quickly with his hand.

“The moon will see,” she murmured, as his good eye swept over her.

“No, no, there isn’t any moon at all. Come along.”

They walked past the woman, hand in hand, into the
bitter hallway and he carried her down the stairs, slipped, caught himself, in the hurry.
They left the front door ajar and began their walk over the streets smelling of smoke.

The ghosts raised their heads in unison by the canal and sniffed the night
air.

I, Zizendorf, my gun drawn, crouching on my knees with my comrades who were
tensed like sprinters or swimmers, heard above gusts of wind the approaching light machine.
The uprising must be successful, inspired, ruthless.

The Duke carefully reached out his hand and the boy fairy did not move,
while the marquee banged to and fro, the projector steamed, and the invisible lost audience
stamped booted feet and rummaged in box lunches.

Unconscious, drowned cold in acid, the Census-Taker lay on the third floor,
dressed, uncovered, where Jutta had dropped him.

The Mayor, at this hour, groaned, awoke, and found himself pained by a small
black-pebble cluster of hemorrhoids, felt it blister upwards over his spine.

The ghosts returned to their cupped hands and sipped the green water, while
soft faecal corbans rolled below their faces through the cluttered waves in tribute to
Leevey.

Madame Snow thought for a moment that she heard Herr Stintz’s voice yelling
somewhere up above through the darkest part of the night and drew the robe closer about the
kneeling man. Balamir trembled with being awake, frowned and grinned at the old woman, shook
as if he was starving on these sleepless hours, tried to speak of the
mob of risers, the strength, fear, out in the night, but could not. Stella wondered
what they were doing, this anonymous nation, and felt, such an old woman, that she would
never sleep again. The candle swayed, her powdered hands fluttered and moved, and then she
heard Stintz’s sharp footfall and the padding of the girl, and when they left, a breath of
air from the front door ajar swept across the floor and stirred the draped figure of her
kneeling charge.

Neither could sleep, and somehow the hard yellow eyes of their brethren had
told them men were moving, the night was not still. Madame Snow did not find the rooms
changed by this darkness or added cold, simply the cups eluded her fingers, slipped more
easily, the tea was like black powder and too much escaped, the pot assumed enormous
proportions. But waking, she found the same day and night except that in the darkness it was
more clear, the air smelled more heavily of the sewer in the canal, the carpets smelled more
of dust.

On the fifth floor Jutta awoke and feeling less tired, began to wash a
blouse in the hand-basin.

The tea was so near the chipped brim that it spilled over his robe when he
peered closely at the cup and twisted it about. Stella drew the curtains but could see
nothing, from the front windows neither street nor light, from the rear windows neither the
line of the canal nor the shed. At first when the main pipes were destroyed she boiled the
water that had to be taken from the canal, but for months the fire did not last long enough,
the effort to prod the dull coals was too great, and tonight the tea tasted more sour than
usual. In unlocking the basement door she had noticed that the smell of
the canal was becoming stronger, the water seeping from its imperfect bed, and she
decided that she must find a new place to keep the harmless unmoving man. The old woman,
hair thin about her scalp but falling thickly to her waist, ankles frail without stockings
in the high unbuttoned shoes, sipping tea through her thin once bowed lips, hated nothing,
did not actually despise the gross invader or the struggling mistaken English, but would
have been pleased to see them whipped. She knew the strength of women, and sometimes vaguely
hoped that a time would come again when they could attack flesh with their husband’s
sickles, and the few husbands themselves could take the belts from their trousers to flay
the enemy. It was the women who really fought. The uprising must be sure, and the place to
strike with the tip of the whip’s tail was between the legs. The candle went out and the
brilliant old woman and crazed man sat in the darkness for a long while.

They had waited weeks for the riot to come at the institution and when it
finally did descend like a mule to its haunches it lasted barely an hour. During those weeks
disorder accumulated, both inside and outside the high walls. The German army was suffering
unreasonable blows, the town was bereft of all men, the food trucks were overtaken by hordes
of frenzied children, the staff itself worked in the gardens and nurses spent part of their
duty in the bakery. Switchboard connections were crossed; Supply sent barrels of molasses
but no meat; the cold came in dreadful waves. All reading material went to the furnaces;
several cases of insulin went bad; and the board of directors learned of the deaths of
their next of kin. Bedpans were left unemptied in the hallways; and for
days on end the high bright gates of iron were never opened. Finally they burned linen for
fuel and a thick smudge poured from the smokestack, the snow rose higher against the walls,
and they served only one meal a day. One of the oldest night nurses died and her body was
smuggled from the institution under cover of darkness. Reports crept out on the tongues of
frightened help, of unshaven men, quarreling women, of patients who slept night after night
fully dressed, of men who had hair so long that it hung on their shoulders. And those inside
the walls heard that greater numbers of the more fit women were being taken to war, that
there wasn’t a single man left in the town, that Allied parachute rapists were to be sent on
the village, that pregnant women went out of doors at night to freeze themselves to
death.

The patients would no longer go to their rooms but crowded together in the
long once immaculate corridors and baited each other or lay in sullen heaps, white with the
cold. They had to be prodded into going out to the garden, white, filled with frozen
thistle, and threatened, pushed, forced to retreat back to the buildings. Fearing more than
ever erratic outbursts or startled, snarling attacks, the nurses quickly used up the last
row of bottled sedatives, and old ferocious men lay only half-subdued, angrily awake through
the long nights. One of these nurses, short, man-like, tense, lost the only set of keys that
locked the windows shut, so for the last few days and nights, the horrible cold swept in and
out of the long guarded wings. Underneath the ordered town-like group of brick buildings,
there were magnificent tile and steel tunnels connecting them to
underground laboratories, laundries, kitchens, and ventilated rooms that housed monkeys
and rats for experimentation. Through these tunnels ran thin lines of gleaming rails where
hand-carts of refuse, linen, chemicals, and food were pushed and the carts were guided by a
meticulous system of red and yellow lights. During these bad days the carts were pushed too
fast, knocked each other from the tracks, the system of lights smashed, the upturned carts
blocked the corridors, and broken bottles and soiled linen filled the passages. The lighting
system short-circuited and orderlies, now trying to carry the supplies in their arms,
stumbled through the narrow darkness, through the odor of ferment, and shouted warning
signals.

At last the rats and monkeys died. Their bodies were strewn over the main
grounds, and since they froze, they looked life-like, tangled together on the snow.

All attempts at cure ceased. The bearded, heartening groups of doctors on
rounds no longer appeared, nothing was written on charts. The tubs were left cold and dry,
and patients no longer came back to the wards red, unconscious, shocked. Not only was
treatment stopped, but all activity impossible. They no longer wove the useless rugs, no
longer ran uncertainly about the gymnasium, no longer argued over cards or shot the billiard
balls back and forth across the table. There were no showers, no baths, no interviews, no
belts to make and take apart and make; and the news from the outside was dangerous. They
could only be driven out to the garden and driven in.

Some insisted that the monkeys on the blanket of snow moved about during the
night, and in the day
it was difficult to keep the curious patients from
the heaps of small black corpses.

The village, as the days grew worse, became a dump for abandoned supplies,
long lines of petrol tins along the streets, heaps of soiled tom stretchers and cases of
defective prophylactics piled about doorways, thrown into cellars. Piles of worthless
cow-pod Teller mines blocked the roads in places and a few looted armored cars still smelled
of burned cloth and hair. Women nursed children as large as six years old, and infrequently
some hurrying official, fat, drunk with fear, would come into the village of women and bring
unreliable news of the dead. Wives did not know whether their husbands were dead, or simply
taken prisoner, did not know whether they had been whipped on capture or stood against a
wall and shot. Hatless children ran through the deepening snow and chased the few small
birds still clinging to the stricken trees. On the day before the riot an American deserter
was discovered in a barn and, untried, was burned to death. Several pockets of sewer gas
exploded in the afternoon.