The Cannibal (16 page)

“What a strange little girl,” I thought. Something stirred below, more like
the sound of night than
human, perhaps the mechanical movement of the
trees against the house.

“I saw a man with a light, racing along where no one ever goes any
more.”

Surely this was not the spy, the lean shadow I had seen for a moment. But
she must know the traitor, perhaps was taken in his bob-cat steps and walked by his
side.

“What was he doing?” I spoke quietly with a special voice for children,
carried over from the days before the Allied crimes and war.

“He didn’t do anything. Somebody put something in the road and he was
killed. His light was smashed.”

“How did you go to see the man? Did someone take you for a walk?”

Suddenly she was afraid. She recognized my voice perhaps.

“The moon did it. The moon’s a terrible thing in the sky and will be angry
if I tell you anything. He’d kill me too.”

“You go to bed, go to sleep,” said Jutta, and the child ran into the next
room. But she didn’t sleep, she waited, awake in the dark, to see what would happen.

The honest man is the traitor to the State. The man with the voice only for
those above him, not for citizens, tells all and spreads evil. His honesty is a hopeless
misgiving. He makes the way intangible and petty, he hampers determination.

Stintz, barely back in his room, stood by the window and raised the sash.
Peering with excited eyes, he looked at the turning in the darkness where he had first seen
the light of the victim and tense with anticipation he slowly looked across the dark
town-site, to the spot, what a joy, where the victim fell.

What a pleasure it had been, he knew I was up to something, and the child,
this was the perfect touch, to make her follow the father and murderer through the darkness!
Oh, he knew it was I all right, animal-devil, who took the blood tonight, but his thrill was
in the justice, not the crime, no one would accuse except himself. Soon he would hear the
footsteps, soon he would be the judge and all the knowledge would come to bear, in the rope,
on the father of the child. The sky, for Stintz, was clearing; he hoped, in the morning, to
inform.

Her face was so flushed, overjoyed with night, that I disliked leaving.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said, and she turned the other way to go to sleep. I
heard the rustling again in the room below.

Stintz expected the knock on the door and said, “Come,” almost before he
heard it.

“Zizendorf,” he said without turning, “come here.”

The tuba lay on the floor between the visitor and host, instrument of the
doleful anthem, puckered to the school-teacher’s thin lips, battered and dull with long,
tremulous, midnight sobs. Stintz still looked out of the window, as if to look all night and
talk in the morning, alive and gaping over the streets he could never help to smooth and
make prosperous, laughing and useless, watching the scenes of other people’s accidents and
deeds.

“What do you see?” I picked up the tuba and stood by the black-frocked
teacher’s side. I hated the braying sounds of the horn.

“Look. It’s out again. The moon’s out from behind the cloud. Look at him, he
sees everything,
Zizendorf. He watches the lonely travelers, he hangs
heavy over demons, terrible and powerful. The just man.”

The edges showed white and distant for a moment and then the moon was gone.
So faint, just a patch of grey in an unpleasant sky, that most people would not have looked
at it a second time. Only the pious, with an inward craving for communion, would bother to
crane their necks and strain their souls. I noticed that Stintz’s neck jutted far out of the
window, the bony face held rigidly upwards. The musty smell of textbooks lingered on the
black coat, his arms were paralyzed on the sill.

The moon, the moon who knows everything, seemed to me like the bell of the
tuba, thick and dull, awkward in my hands.

“You like the moon, don’t you, Stintz? It seems frail to me, weak and
uncolorful, tonight. I wouldn’t put my faith in it.”

His room should have been filled with clammy little desks, with silent
unpleasant children to make faces.

“See here, I don’t think I like your tone, you yourself may not be out of
its reach, you know. There’s retribution for everyone in this country now, justice, and it
doesn’t roll along a road where it can be trapped. Someone always
knows
, you really
can’t get away with anything …”

I swung the tuba short. I should have preferred to have some distance and be
able to swing it like a golf club. But even as it was, Stintz fell, and half-sitting against
the wall, he still moved for a moment.

Two things were wrong; there was the lack of room and I had misjudged the
instrument itself.
Somehow thinking of the tuba as squat, fat, thinking
of it as a mallet I had expected it to behave like a mallet; to strike thoroughly and dull,
to hit hard and flat. Instead it was the rim of the bell that caught the back of Stintz’s
head, and the power in my arms was misdirected, peculiarly unspent. I struck again and the
mouthpiece flew from the neck and sang across the room. I was unnerved only for a moment and
when finally out in the hall, thought I would have preferred a stout club. Stintz no longer
moved.

Stumpfegle and Fegelein were already encamped in the chicken coop, in the
shed where the Colonel’s jeep had been. I could hear them working as I walked across the
yard behind the boarding house, their slight scuffle barely audible above the trickling of
the canal. The pink pants and the plank that served as workbench had been tossed out into
the darkness, and the shed was almost ready for the composition and the printing of the
word. However, the cart was still loaded. I was disturbed to think that the press was not
yet set up.

It was a heavy job to clear away the coating of chicken debris. The walls
were thickly covered with the white plaster-like formations, hard and brittle, the effort of
so many hens, less and less as the grain became scarce, finally water, with nothing left but
the envied heaps of better days. Here and there a pale feather was half sealed in the
encrustation. It would wave slightly, without hope of flight, embedded in the fowl-coral
reefs of the wooden walls. The odor of the birds was in the wood, not in their mess;
secretly in the earthen floor, not in the feathers. It was strong and un-removable. Fegelein
hacked with a rusty spike, Stumpfegle slowly with the dull
edge of a
hoe, their dark suits becoming slowly speckled with calcium white.

I stood in the open door, trying not to breathe, allergic to the must-filled
air, brushing the feathers and white powder from my jacket. I remembered the white women and
darkness of Paris.

“I got rid of the traitor.”

“But, Leader, that’s magnificent.” The foreign arm of justice, with its
conundrums, lynchings and impeccable homes, lifted from Fegelein’s brow, and the hard
chicken foam gave with greater ease.

“It’s one less fool to worry about, at least. And by tomorrow, we will have
our public, proclaimed and pledged, every single one of them incorporated by a mere word, a
true effort, into a movement to save them. Put into the open, the fools are helpless.”

“Ah, yes,” said Fegelein.

Stumpfegle hated the shed so much that he had no time for our talk. The odor
of the flown birds, the stench, seemed like the country to him, and he was meant for the
city, the shop with machines. “Birds piddle so,” he thought, “it’s unhealthly and unreal
except for the smell.”

“Success is almost ours.”

Finally the shed was almost clean, with only a few globs left, and after
quickly whitewashing the walls, they brought in the press, the stapler, the rollers and the
reams of cheap paper. The three of us were spattered with the wash, became luminous and
tired. Stumpfegle stood by the delivery table, Fegelein by the feed table, while I, the
Leader, the compositor, put the characters, the words of the new voice, into the stick. I
wrote my message as I went, putting the letters into place with the tweezers,
preparing my first message, creating on a stick the new word. The print
fell into place, the engine sputtered, filling the shed with the fumes of stolen gasoline. I
wrote, while my men waited by the press, and my message flared from the begrimed black
type:

I put down the tweezers. Without a word, but quivering with excitement,
Fegelein locked the stick in place and the press murmured louder. Stumpfegle watched unmoved
as the sheets, hardly legible, began to fall, like feathers, on the delivery table.
Actually, I had never seen Berlin.

Madame Snow heard the animals rummaging in the shed, heard the foreign
clatter disturbing the night.

“Ah, poor creature,” she said, looking at the sleeping Kaiser’s son,
“they’ve come for you again.” But Balamir did not understand.

Madame Snow’s son eased himself laboriously back into bed, very much awake
and excited with the effort of climbing, one leg, part of a leg, straight ahead, pulling as
if it knew the way back up the stairs. The actress’s face, just as bright as an usherette’s,
sniffed and startled, a smile on her lips, in the darkness. He pulled
the covers up over his undershirt, leaned the canes against the bed. His wife did not
breathe heavily enough to disturb him. He remembered with fixed pleasure, that night in the
shed behind the boarding house and the girl from out of town with braids, who was pretty as
a picture. She lost her pants in the shed and left them when the old Madame called and they
had to run. In the late night he thought it was delightful, a skirt without the pants
beneath.

“I haven’t felt this way,” he thought, with the Duke and child in the back
of his mind, “since that ambulance ride four weeks after losing the leg. It was the bouncing
of the car then, the driver said. Tonight it must have been jumping up and down the
stairs.”

Leg or no leg she’d lose them again. The boy certainly deserved the
cane.

“Can’t you wake and talk?” His voice was high and unnatural.

Balamir awoke with the sound of the engine in his
ears and the arms of the Queen Mother holding him close. He wore his inevitable black
trousers and black boots, the uniform that made the crowd in the streets bow down before
their Kaiser’s son, the black dress of the first man of Germany. For a moment he thought he
was in the basement, in the sealed
bunker
, for the plaster of the walls was damp.
But the Queen’s hands, cooled with the mountain snow, touched his shoulder and the royal
room, he laughed to himself, could not be mistaken for the cellar where he was sheltered in
the first days. She had taken him from hiding, had evidently held his enemies at bay.
Tonight the cabinet was reformed, the royal house in state, and the crisis, for the nation,
passed. The Queen Mother herself had sent the telegrams, the car would be waiting, and the
Chancellor would arrive with reports of reconstruction.

Something kept Madame Snow awake and now the poor man himself, after his
peaceful sleep, looked up at her with those spiritless eyes and the impossible happy smile.
She felt that powerful forces were working in the night and despite the fact that his
presence was an extra obligation, she was thankful for him now. Perhaps he was like a dog
and would know if strangers were about, perhaps his condition would make him more
susceptible than
ordinary men to the odd noises of the night. Would he
whine if a thief were at the window? Madame Snow hoped, covering his shoulders more with the
robe, that he would make some sort of noise.

The Duke, standing alone on the hillside in the hour before dawn, drew his
sword with a flourish. The bottoms of his trousers were wet and ripped with thorns. He had
lost his hat. His legs ached with the weariness of the chase, the silk handkerchief was gone
from his sleeve, he stumbled in the ruts as he went to work. It was a difficult task and for
a moment he looked for the moon as he cut the brush from the fox and found he had cut it in
half. Looking up, lips white and cold, he could barely see the top of the hill. Over the top
and through the barbed-wire was the rough path home. He hacked and missed the joints, he
made incisions and they were wrong as the point of the blade struck a button. The fox kicked
back and he was horrified. He hated his clumsiness, detested himself for overlooking the
bones. Men should be precise either in being humane and splinting the dog’s leg or in being
practical and cutting it off. He would have preferred to have a light and a glass-topped
table, to follow the whole thing out on a chart, knowing which muscles to cut and which to
tie. Even in the field they had maps and colored pins, ways were marked and methods
approved. The blade slipped and stuck in the mud, while his fingers, growing thin and old,
fumbled for a grip, and his ruffled cuffs and slender wrists became soiled and stained. He
should have had a rubber apron like a photographer or chemist, he should have had short
sharp blades instead of the impractical old sword cane. The
whole
business bothered him, now after three or four hours of running about the town in the
darkness. For the Duke was an orderly man, not given to passion and since there was a ‘von’
in his name, he expected things to go by plan. But the odds of nature were against him, he
began to dislike the slippery carcass. It took all his ingenuity to find, in the mess, the
ears to take as trophy, to decide which were the parts with dietician’s names and which to
throw away. At one moment, concentrating his energies, he thought he was at the top of it,
then found he was at the bottom, thought he had the heart in his hand, and the thing burst,
evaporating from his fingers. He should have preferred to have his glasses, but they were at
home—another mistake. It was necessary to struggle, first holding the pieces on his lap,
then crouching above the pile, he had to pull, to poke, and he resented the dullness of the
blade. The very fact that it was not a deer or a possum made the thing hard to skin, the
fact that it was not a rabbit made it hard to dissect; its infernal humanness carried over
even into death and made the carcass just as difficult as the human being had itself been.
Every time a bone broke his prize became mangled, every piece that was lost in the mud made
the whole thing defective, more imperfect in death., It annoyed the Duke to think that
because of his lack of neatness the beast was purposely losing its value, determined to
become useless instead of falling into quarters and parts with a definite fore and hind. It
lost all semblance to meat or fowl, the paw seemed like the foot, the glove the same as the
shoe, hock and wrist alike, bone or jelly, muscle or fat, cartilage or tongue, what could he
do? He threw them all together,
discarding what he thought to be bad,
but never sure, angry with his lack of knowledge. He should have studied the thing out
beforehand, he cursed himself for not having a phial for the blood, some sort of thermos or
wine bottle perhaps. He set something aside in a clump of grass and went back to work. But
before he could lift the blade, he dropped it in indecision and searched through the grass.
The piece he found was larger, more ragged. Perhaps the other was valuable and sweet, this
was not. Tufts of the red fur stuck to his palm, a part of the shirtsleeve caught on his
fingers. He wished for a light, a violent white globe in a polished steel shade, but this
was the darkest part of the night. The task was interminable and not for a layman, and the
English, he realized, never bothered to cut their foxes up. They at least didn’t know as
much as he. He sliced, for the last time, at a slender stripped tendon. It gave and slapped
back, like elastic, against his hand. It would be pleasant, he thought, to pack these
tidbits, be done with them, on ice. Someday, he told himself, he’d have to go through a
manual and see exactly how the thing should have been done. The Duke put the blade back in
its sheath and making a cane, he hooked the handle over his arm. The organs and mutilated
pieces gathered up in the small black fox’s jacket, he tied the ends together, used his cane
as a staff, and trudged up the hill, his long Hapsburg legs working with excitement. Behind
him he left a puddle of waste as if a cat had trapped a lost foraging crow. But the bones
were not picked clean and a swarm of small cream-colored bugs trooped out from the ferns to
settle over the kill.

I left Stumpfegle and Fegelein to distribute the
leaflets. The sound of the press died out as I walked from the shed across the littered yard
to the boarding house, the murmur of the canal grew louder with the rain from the hills that
flowed, no crops to water, down into its contaminated channel. Somewhere near the end of the
canal the body of Miller, caught under the axle of a submerged scout car, began to thaw and
bloat.

Once more I climbed the dark stairs, deciding as I went, that in the weeks
to come I’d turn the place into the National Headquarters. I’d use Stintz’s rooms as the
stenographic bureau, the secretaries would have to be young and blonde. I reached the third
floor and a gust of cold wind, that only a few hours before had swept over the morning
already broken in the conquered north, made me shiver and cough. My boots thumped on the
wooden floor, my sharp face was determined, strained. It was a good idea, I thought, to make
this old house the Headquarters, for I could keep Jutta right on the premises. Of course,
the children would have to go. I’d fill the place with light and cut in a few new windows.
That aristocrat on the second floor, the Duke, would perhaps make a good Chancellor, and of
course, the Census-Taker could be Secretary of State. This town was due prosperity, perhaps
I could build an open-air pavilion on the hill for the children. Of course I’d put the old
horse statue back on its feet. Young couples would make love beneath it on summer nights. It
might be better to mount it on blocks of stone, so that visitors drawing near the city could
say, “Look, there’s the statue of Germany, given by the new Leader to his country.”

I pushed open the Census-Taker’s door and by rough
unfriendly shaking, roused my comrade out of a dead stupor.

“All the plans have been carried out. But there’s something you must
do.”

I rubbed the man’s cheeks, pushed the blue cap on more tightly and buttoned
the grey shirt. I smiled with warmth on the unseeing half-shut eyes.

“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.