The Sun Is God (15 page)

The gazebo had obviously been made in Germany and shipped out here in sections like the huts, for it was carved from heavy pine and covered with a thick resin to protect it from the insects and the climate. It was richly ornamented with gargoyles, oak-leaf patterns, and odd occult symbols. Between one of the arches a plaque proclaimed in high Gothic: “
I have already told you that ye are Gods!” Psalm 82:6.

“Good evening!” Will said, trying to catch his breath.

Anna Schwab barely looked up at him before resuming her concentration on the game. Perhaps she hadn't actually noticed him and Will wondered if she was still in a laudanum trance.

“Good evening Fräulein Schwab,” he said, slightly louder.

“I heard you coming. Your shoes make an extraordinary amount of noise.”

“Yes, the seals . . . I mean to write to the Liverpool Rubber . . . they're not supposed to—”

“And besides, Herr Prior, I was expecting you,” Fräulein Schwab interrupted.

“Do you mind if I sit?” Will asked, already somewhat irritated by her manner.

“If you must,” Fräulein Schwab said in a tone that was only a degree removed from impertinence.

“Who are you playing?” Will asked.

“My sister.”

“Your sister is
here
?”

“She is in Baden Baden.”

“I see. I see . . . Er, you're black?”

“Obviously.”

Even Will could see that black was in serious trouble. White had taken black's queen, both bishops, and a knight, for a few pawns and a knight. She felt his gaze on her face and she looked up at him.

“How long have you been thinking about your move?”

“Two weeks. And the packet is not due to leave until next week.”

“You've got a little time to get yourself out of the difficulty then haven't you?” Will said.

Fräulein Schwab smiled. “Yes,” she replied.

Will felt encouraged by this. “So, if I may inquire, why were you expecting me?”

“You are a policeman. You have to come to Kabakon to spy on us. You are looking into Max's unfortunate death. I was with Max when he died; naturally you would wish to question me when I was alone.”

“You are mistaken on one point. I am an ex-policeman doing a favor for Governor Hahl in an unofficial capacity. I cannot compel you to answer my questions.”

Fräulein Schwab nodded. “Nevertheless, I will answer whatever it is you wish to know.”

“All right. Who killed Max Lutzow?”

Fräulein Schwab pursed her pretty pink lips together. “You should ask what killed him, not who.”

“What killed him?”

“A lack of faith.”

“A lack of faith?”

“Your hearing is excellent.”

“Perhaps you could explain what you mean,” Will said, starting to get quite annoyed now.

“Lutzow had doubts about our project here on Kabakon. He was weak. He was unable to renounce the world. He was unable to let go of his worldly attachments,” Fräulein Schwab said with a chilly sadness.

Even in German her accent was upper-crust and oddly intoxicating. And the delicacy of her features and the blue darkness of her eye would have marked her out as a beauty anywhere.

“So, you were with Lutzow until the end?” Will asked.

“Yes. I was. I held his hand. I knew of course that it was too late. He could not triumph over himself. The rot had set in.”

“This was on Saturday evening? Last Saturday?”

“Perhaps. We do not keep track of days here.”

“How long had he shown symptoms of malaria?”

“More or less since he arrived. All of us have had malaria. Most have conquered it as we have conquered all these weaknesses.”

“I take it that you do not believe that insects—mosquitoes—are the agents of malarial transmission?”

“Perhaps they are, but it is weakness in us if we succumb. Man is mightier than any insect that crawls upon the Earth or flits upon the air. On Kabakon we set ourselves the task of triumphing over the flesh.”

“When did you know that Herr Lutzow was not going to win the battle against the flesh?” Will asked a trifle sardonically.

“We had hopes until close to the very end.”

Was she lying? If so she also was good at it. Not an ounce of doubt in her expression. No tremble of the lip, no side glance of the eye, no hand to the mouth, no redness of the cheek.

“So you were with Herr Lutzow when he actually died? When he breathed his last breath?”

“Yes, I was with Max as he breathed his last breath,” she insisted.

Her lovely eyebrows knitted together almost in a single dark line. “Do you doubt my word, sir?”

“Not at all. Merely . . . I mean, how did you know that he was dead? Was there a death rattle, a moan?”

“I was holding Max's hand, talking to him, bathing his forehead with well water . . . and, as the evening progressed, his grip grew weaker and weaker. I felt the life force ebb from him. After a time I noticed that his hand was quite cold. I rose and went for August and he came and examined Max. We held Helena's hand mirror over his mouth and we saw that there was no breath. Bethman had been a doctor in Germany so August summoned him and he came and attempted to take Max's pulse.”

“Was there a pulse?”

“There was no pulse. Max was dead.”

“And then what happened?”

Fräulein Schwab looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“What did you do with the body?” Will asked.

“We did nothing.”

“You just left him in the bed?”

“Yes.”

“You must have had some plans to bury him?”

“We had not discussed it.”

“You hadn't discussed it? A man dies and you hadn't discussed what to do next?”

“We had not.”

“I don't believe that. A man dies and you just go on about your business?” Will asked.

“It was the middle of the night. Most of us were asleep and August did not think it worth waking everyone merely to break sad news.”

“So you decided to leave him in his bed.”

“All the actions we take here on Kabakon are unanimous. We could not have made any decision until the morning when everyone would be awake.”

“Who did know that Max had died that night?”

“I do not see why that is important.”

“It is important to me. Who knew?”

“August knew and Bethman knew and the countess knew. I think Harry was awake. Possibly some of the others, I do not know.”

“You told the others in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“And that's when you discussed what to do with the body?”

“We would have discussed it then, but of course Harry and Fräulein Herzen had met the Australian by then and we decided that it would perhaps be best that Max was buried in Simpsonhafen where he would be more comfortable.”

“He wasn't comfortable on Kabakon?”

“No, as I say, Herr Prior, he did not fully embrace our project here.”

Will nodded. He leaned back in the gazebo seat, which he discovered was a kind of rocking chair. He was a little troubled. His critical faculties were not operating at full capacity because of two factors: the residual traces of the opium, and Fräulein Schwab's patrician good looks. Will had never been able to resist a pretty face, which was not a problem in the army, but here he needed to get over it.

He reflected upon her words. Her manner was businesslike and direct and she did not seem like a fantasist, but what she was telling him did not chime with the physical evidence. Could Doctor Bremmer and Fräulein Schwab both somehow be correct? Perhaps the fault lay with Clark, the Australian pilot? Was it possible that the body fell off the boat as he was bringing it across the Bismarck Sea?

Could sea water enter a dead man's lungs? Will had no idea. Or maybe water had gotten into Max's lungs while they were maneuvering him into Clark's vessel in the first place? How much sea water had Doctor Bremmer been talking about?

Now that he thought about it there were many possibilities. Those bruises, perhaps they
could
have been produced post mortem.

Will shook his head. No, it was not penetrating glances that were ruining his concentration and it wasn't the laudanum either: this was a genuine paradox.

“What are you thinking?” Fräulein Schwab asked.

“I have not distilled my thoughts into a form that is easy to communicate.”

“I would like to hear them, no matter how muddled.”

“It is often said to be otherwise, Fräulein Schwab, but men are less exigent than women. I need more time.”

“On Kabakon that is something which exists in abundance.”

“Who helped carry Lutzow to Clark's boat?” Will asked.

“I do not know. It was raining. Some of the bigger men, I assume,” she said, and looked away. Not, he saw, to disguise her guilt, but rather to conceal a yawn.

She was growing tired of him.

Will took his hat off and set it on the table. The rain had cooled the air to about 65 degrees. He almost felt cold. Thinking it made him shiver involuntarily. Could this whole trip have been a wild goose chase? Doctor Bremmer did not look like a fool, but the tropics did strange things to men; it turned competent men incompetent and incompetent men into hopeless dipsomaniacs.

He was about to ask another question when he saw Christian and Harry standing on the piazza performing some sort of ballet. Their hands and feet were moving together in listless gestures of the most extraordinary kind.

“What on Earth are they doing?” Will asked.

“
Tai chi chuan
.”

“What is that?”

“Some of us here practice it. Helena learned it from the Chinese traders. It is a form of exercise.”

“It does not look very efficacious.”

“They say it promotes longevity.”

“If you wish to join them, please be my guest.”

“I do not follow their particular school of thought. I believe that you must begin with the mind. The body is the slave of the mind, not the reverse.”

“You say Lutzow did not wholly embrace your philosophy. Would you mind explaining to an ingénue what that philosophy is?”

“Of course!” Fräulein Schwab said, her face lighting up. For the first time, she appeared more interested in the conversation than the chess board. “You have read Schopenhauer, Herr Prior?” she asked, her beautiful white teeth gleaming in the darkness.

“Schopenhauer? Er, not as much as I would like. Remind me of the uh, the basics.”

“We are lambs in a field disporting ourselves under the eye of the butcher, Herr Prior. Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take a break but always coming after us like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom.”

“I see,” Will said, baffled.

“Each man desires to reach old age where it is bad today and worse tomorrow until finally we reach the worst of all: death. All of life is striving without release. There is no such thing as the satisfaction of desire. Desire may be satisfied for a short time but it will always immediately be replaced by another desire. There is no progress, there is no rest, the desire is endless and meaningless. When we are satisfied boredom arrives almost instantly until the satisfaction of desire itself becomes painful.”

“I think I see what you're on about,” Will said.

Fräulein Schwab nodded excitedly and her tongue darted between her lips like a small serpent. “Life oscillates like a pendulum between desire and boredom. Whatever we achieve is just a drop of water in a sea of desire. The best we can hope for is to become aware of the striving, aware of the self, aware of consciousness itself.”

“That's very interesting. And where does God fit into all this?” he asked.

Fräulein Schwab snorted. “God? Mr. Darwin has removed our need for a God. And if there were such a being surely it is evident by now he is indifferent to us and our fate, or as some believe, he actively hates us. One need only look at the suffering everywhere in this world to see the truth of that. I see no evidence of a benevolent deity in our universe. Only when man attains his apotheosis will that vacuum in our universe be filled.”

“But, it's not all misery is it? What about music and love and—”

“Speak not of love. Love! Love is an illusion foisted upon us by Nature to get us to reproduce. You speak of lust and sexual congress not love.”

“Out here on Kabakon things are different, are they?” he asked.

“Things are very different here. Here, like the beasts of the field, we live in the present. We have no hypocrisy. Our goods are held in common.”

“And you are beyond the need for, uh, sexual congress?”

“When we have a desire we fulfill it knowing that it means nothing. Why do you ask? Do you desire sexual congress with me?”

Even in the darkness Will blushed and could not manage a response.

“Well?”

“Madam, how can you speak so?”

Fräulein Schwab frowned. “Of course. You have been here only one day. Your soul lies out there. Not here.”

“One does not, uh. . . . With gentle ladies one does not—”

“I pity you, Mr. Prior.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Over there,” she said vaguely pointing toward the beach, “you live within the hypocrisy of class and social distinction. You are imprisoned by your mores. Your life swings between hope and fear; here on Kabakon there is neither hope nor fear. We wake, we breathe, we bathe in the sun, we eat the fruit of the sun. We no longer strive, we are no longer driven by Time's whips. We live here and we are happy.”

“Frankly, you do not look that happy to me,” Will said, recovering himself.

“No? Do not take reserve for unhappiness, Mr. Prior. I am content.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”