The Sun Is God (17 page)

“Where's Klaus?” Will asked.

“He went off somewhere, I think,” Harry said.

“What time is it?” Will asked after another momentous yawn.

Christian and Harry looked at one another. They had no watches and no longer had much notion of the clock. “Perhaps two hours after sun rise?” Christian offered.

Will poured the crabs, ants, cockroaches, and spiders out of his trousers and pulled the trousers on with some difficulty.

“Your clothes are not necessary here,” Harry said.

“Refreshment, you say?” Will asked, ignoring this remark. He grabbed a loose fitting linen shirt to cover his torso.

“Come with us,” Christian said and Will allowed himself to be led outside to the long communal dining table. Christian brought him a flagon of well water and a bowl of what looked like pounded coconut meat.

“This is breakfast, is it?” Will asked, wondering if there was any sausage left in Kessler's trunk.

“Sometimes we take this, yes, we think you will like it,” Harry said.

Will ate the unctuous substance with mounting distaste. It had been flavored with local spices and sweetened with molasses. There was a hint of raw spirit about it too. After the third spoonful Will pushed back the bowl.

“Delicious,” he said. “But I find that I am not really that hungry today.”

“It is good, isn't it?” Harry said, finishing Will's bowl. “The natives call it
chanak
. A kind of coconut porridge.”

“
They
eat it with sucking pig, fattened on the milk from a woman's breast,” Christian said.

“You don't have any of that sucking pig do you?” Will asked hopefully.

“Of course not!” Christian said delightedly, as if Will had cracked the most wonderful joke.

Will prodded the bowl with his finger. “What's the smell?”

“It is fermented. We get it by the pot from Ulu,” Harry said. “The natives chew on the coconut and spit it into a bowl and allow it to ferment for up to three weeks. August thought of adding molasses and ‘heroin' to make it a breakfast treat,” Christian said.

“Ah yes, Miss Schwab spoke of heroin,” Will said.

“From Bayer. It is a kind of morphine, but without morphine's unfortunate addictive qualities. A remarkable medicine,” Christian went on.

Will frowned, wondering if the Sonnenorden were ever truly sober. “I thought it was opium dissolved in arak. A sort of homemade laudanum.”

“Opium!” Christian said. “Do you take us for Chinamen, sir?”

Will offered him a thin smile. The Chinamen he had come across actually worked for a living. No one around here apparently did much of anything. Except the blacks, of course.

“You were going to show me something,” Will said.

“Come, let us go before the heat of the day is truly upon us,” Harry said.

Will got up, stretched, and followed them into the plantations.

A dense layer of coconut trees surrounded the Augustburg but as they moved away from the settlement Will begin to see banana palms and a few rubber trees. It was a solid, mature plantation, at least twenty or thirty years old, and clearly established well before the Sonnenorden or even the Germans had come here.

“Impressive, no?” Christian said. “The forest provides us all our needs.”

“And the Kanaks do all the work, eh?”

“The island does the work,” Harry said. “All we must do is harvest the coconuts and bananas. These are strong trees resistant to fungi and the blight.”

Will nodded. His plantations weren't anywhere close to being this mature or developed. “How did you find this place?” he asked.

“August found it,” Christian said.

“He was looking for somewhere with coconut plantations in the German Reich. Africa was his first thought, but then he and Willy discovered that plantations such as these could be bought in Deutsch New Guinea,” Harry said.

“They must be thirty years old. Lovely trees,” Will said, impressed. Harry led them up a small path through even taller, more elegant palms.

“The eminent Doctor Parkinson suggested that we buy a portion of the Forsayth dominions in Neu Mecklenberg. Unfortunately, a planter was murdered there by the savages so August asked Doctor Parkinson to find us somewhere with few natives. The aboriginals here on Kabakon had all either died or emigrated or been taken to Queensland, and as the plantations were idle Doctor Parkinson offered August a fair price for the entire island.”

I'll bet he did, the old goat
, Will thought.
And if he could get them back for nothing because of a breach of contract

They had walked clean across Kabakon to a beach on the north shore. The day was clear and Will was impressed by the view of Ulu and Kerawara Island and the long line of clouds above New Ireland in the distance. There were no boats on the water although there was a large outrigger canoe sitting on the black volcanic sand.

“Your canoe?” Will asked.

Harry nodded. “Like Cortez, August and Bradtke literally burned their boat when they came here, but the canoe was a gift from the chieftain in Ulu and we have found it useful.”

“Those less competent in the art of swimming use it to go to Sol Island,” Christian said.

“It is a fine looking craft,” Will said, with some admiration. It was a Polynesian ocean-going vessel, very different from the sad local dugouts you saw in New Guinea.

“Well I must say, you've got a nice spot, lads. I don't know if I'd want to ‘wait out the century' here, as you put it, but it's a nice place.”

“I was expecting much worse,” Christian sniffed. “After having seen something of the highlands in New Britain . . .”

“You don't have any trouble then with the natives around here?” Will asked. “New Ireland and Ulu are not that far off.”

“We have good relations with the Papuans,” Christian said.

“I suppose they're nervy about the Kaiserliche Marine gunboats, eh?” Will asked.

Harry and Christian shook their heads. “The navy never comes here,” Harry said.

“How then?”

“August has reached an accommodation with the chieftain on Ulu. We pay him fifty marks after every new moon and he keeps the other natives away from us and provides us with servants and supplies when we need them. Of course the blacks are always running off,” Harry said.

“It's probably the beatings. Your New Guinean cannot abide a beating. They won't have it,” Will said.

“We never beat them!” Christian replied, shocked. “It is nothing to do with beating. They are afraid. As the most southerly of the Duke of York Islands, Kabakon is the stepping stone between New Britain and New Ireland; this is the place where the Night Witches launch themselves into the firmament.”

Will said nothing and all three men walked along the black sand in silence for a time.

“So how long have you been here?” Will asked to get the disturbing images from his deam out of his mind.

“Almost a year,” Harry said.

“Nearly three months,” Christian replied.

“Neither of you came out with Engelhardt?” Will asked.

“No. Bradtke, Engelhardt, and Bethman were the original pathfinders,” Harry explained. “When I arrived they were still living in tents and the huts were not yet completed.”

Harry then told Will the story of how they had put the prefabricated huts together with help from a Chinese work crew. Will was listening, but paying close attention to Christian. The man seemed ill at ease, nervous.

“The ladies could not possibly have come until the accommodation was finished,” Harry concluded.

“Ah, yes, the ladies. We were surprised to see ladies, here. Klaus was under the impression that you were an all-male order,” Will said.

Harry grinned. “Perhaps that was August's initial intent, and certainly he and Bradtke spoke often about the importance of transcending bodily desires. However, his, er, methods proved too radical for the rest of the us. And besides we needed the countess's . . .”

“Money?” Will suggested.

“Support,” Harry agreed. “August has no money. His father was a civil servant and Bradtke is even poorer. He was an engineer.”

“Bethman?” Will asked, remembering the thin, aristocratic-looking man from yesterday.

“Bethman has money but his family will not release it; they have tangled him in legal snares,” Harry said.

“Because of his coming here?”

“I believe so.”

“So it's all down to the Countess Höhenzollern?”

“This project would have remained a purely Platonic notion had it not been for the interest of the countess,” Harry said, pushing his blue glasses up his nose.

“And Engelhardt could not refuse her retinue,” Will suggested.

“Indeed,” Christian said.

“But women were never . . . Ah, perhaps I should not say,” Harry began and trailed off, embarrassed.

“Yes?” Will inquired.

“Doubtless he will notice eventually,” Christian said.

“Doubtless I will,” Will insisted.

“Well . . . so committed were August and Bradtke to the idea of transcending our Earthly desires . . .”

“Yes?”

“They had themselves castrated in Hong Kong.”

“Good God!” Will exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

“Quite serious.”

“But none of the other men . . .”

“No,” Harry said.

“Did you know about this before coming to Kabakon?”

“No. But August had written of this possibility in his pamphlets. It is a small price to pay for immortality.”

“If you say so.”

The path had led them back up the small incline between a stand of pristine rubber trees.

“And what, may I ask, brought you to the Indies, Mr. Prior?” Harry asked as Will was still digesting that wince-inducing piece of information.

“Me? Oh, I don't know. Adventure?”

“You were in the army?” Christian said. “Is that not an adventurous line of work?”

“No. It is mostly routine. Quite dull.”

“You were in the wars?”

“I never saw a battle.”

The palms were swaying in the trade winds, moisture droplets skimming off the fronds and prismatically capturing the intense sunlight before evaporating. Will was captivated by this strange spectacle and forgot his mosquito bites and wet shoes and even the two men standing in front of him for a moment.

“Herr Prior?” Harry asked.

Will snapped out of it and looked into Harry's good, honest face. “Fräulein Schwab, is she a trustworthy person?” Will asked.

“Of course! Why do you ask?”

“Fräulein Schwab says that she was with Lutzow until the moment he died. She says that she actually saw him die. And I am afraid to say that I do not believe her.”

“But why do you not believe her?” Harry asked.

At this stage of the investigation Will did not want to give them the information about the autopsy, but he knew he had to give them something. “I do not wish to cast aspersions on a lady, but something about her way did not give me confidence that she was telling the truth.”

Harry and Christian exchanged a look, and for a thrilling second Will wondered if they were about to set upon him with miraculously concealed blades or bunched-up fists.

“I do not think that Anna
was
with Max when he died,” Harry said, after a brief pause.

“Indeed not?” Will replied. “How intriguing.”

“It is not what you are thinking,” Harry said.

Will smiled benevolently. “What am I thinking?”

“It is nothing untoward,” Harry clarified.

Will looked at the young man and ran his finger along the line of his mustache. “Why don't you tell me what you know.”

“I know only what Harry and the others have told me, I was asleep that night,” Christian protested.

“I, however, was awake,” Harry admitted. “But why should I tell you anything?”

“My dear Herr von Cadolzburg, I know that you and your confederates have spent a considerable fortune buying this land and building this little community, but this is still Germany and the laws of Germany still apply here,” Will said in a tone which he hoped conveyed the impression that he was attempting to navigate between a joke and a threat.

“I do not think Anna
was
with Max for the entire night on which he died . . . I believe that she may have missed the moment of final crisis, although perhaps she has convinced herself otherwise,” Harry said ruefully.

“Please explain, sir.”

“Anna and Fräulein Herzen stayed with Lutzow all of that last day and when Fräulein Herzen grew tired, Anna sat with him alone. The final crisis came in the small hours of the morning when poor Lutzow began cursing Fräulein Schwab in the most outrageous manner. His language . . . He called her . . . He was using the language of the gutter. He had quite taken against her. Finally Anna could take no more of it and retired to her hut.”

“Why did he take against her?”

“The unfortunate Miss Schwab was the one who had convinced Max to come out here. Her sister had briefly been engaged to him and they had remained close. She had written to him explaining the nature of the Sonnenorden and describing our island Paradise.”

“So he blamed her at the end?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure that she left him alone that night?”

“I saw her go.”

“So who
was
with Lutzow when he actually died?” Will asked.

“That is the tragedy. No one, I think. The poor fellow must have died alone. Shortly after Anna left, he stopped yelling, and shortly after that I went to get a drink of water from the well. I saw August and we discussed Lutzow's case. August wondered if perhaps it would be better to send him to the hospital at Herbertshöhe. We were talking about the various possibilities and it was I who noticed that Lutzow had gone very quiet. We ran to his hut and the poor fellow was quite dead. I knew that Anna would not be asleep so I went for her while August woke Bethman, who, of course, was previously a doctor.”