The Cannibal (17 page)

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 breath.

“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…”

She did as she was told.

By John Hawkes

THE BEETLE LEG

THE GOOSE ON THE GRAVE & THE OWL

THE LIME TWIG

THE OWL

SECOND SKIN

THE INNOCENT PARTY (plays)

LUNAR LANDSCAPES

THE BLOOD ORANGES

DEATH, SLEEP & THE TRAVELER

TRAVESTY

VIRGINIE: HER TWO LIVES

HUMORS OF BLOOD & SKIN: A JOHN HAWKES READER

Copyright © 1949, 1962

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 49-48130

First published as ND Paperbook No. 123

(eISBN: 978-0-8112-2267-2)

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper,
magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
Publisher.

Published simultaneously in Canada

by Penguin Books Canada Limited

Book design by Gilda Kuhlman

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation,

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011.