The Cannibal

TONIGHT

All during the day the villagers had been burning out the pits of excrement, burning the fresh trenches of latrines where wads of wet newspapers were scattered, burning the dark round holes in the back stone huts where moisture traveled upwards and stained the privy seats, where pools of water became foul with waste that was as ugly as the aged squatter. These earthen pots were still breathing off their odor of burned flesh and hair and biddy, and this strange odor of gas and black cheese was wafted across the roads, over the fields, and collected on the damp leaves and in the bare night fog along the embankment of the Autobahn. This smell not only rested over the mud, but moved, and with every small breath of air, the gas of mustard, soft goat pellets and human liquid became more intimate, more strong and visible in reddening piles. One’s own odor could always be sifted out and recognized, a disturbingly fresh stream in the turning ash, a personal mark that could be sniffed and known after midnight, sometimes as if the tongue were poking in the incinerator and the warm air curling about the hewn seat.

The three of us waited by the side of the road, stockingless feet burning and itching in our unlaced shoes, plucking at nostrils, listening to a wasted mongrel paw the leaves, hearing an occasional tile slide from a roof and fall to the mud with the swishing of a tail. The flats turned away before us, unpeopled, dark, an occasional shell-case filling with seepage, the fingers of a lost glove curling with dew. Behind us the ghosts left the stalled tank and filed downward toward the canal.

“He’s late,” said Fegelein.

“Yes.”

“No sleep for us then.”

“Wait, have patience,” I answered.

We crowded invisibly together with the road high overhead that extended far beyond this edge of town, and there were no precision transits or plumb lines to point the kilometers of travel or show the curve on the map where the blank spot of this town would be. We never ventured away, though we still wore the grey shirts and had signed our way to the outside world.

“It’s a good machine he’s riding,” said Fegelein.

“Don’t worry. I won’t shoot at it.”

“Good.”

“Remember, no talking. Stintz would be sure to say something when the next rider comes through in a month looking for this one.” I constantly had to give commands.

“In a month we’ll be ready.”

“Yes.”

“And the motorbike will be useful.”

“Yes.” I had to humor them.

In every town there are a few who, though they don’t remember how it came about, or how they returned, or when they went away, or what the enemy expects, gather together in the night to rise again, despite the obstacle of their own people or the swarming invader. Behind us the town grew smaller; the sleepers were cold and numberless.

“No one will see?”

“No,” I answered.

“I don’t want to go forward tonight; you mustn’t make me …”

“Stop that. You know there isn’t any forward.”

“I’m sorry.”

The cold night air quickened my hunger, and I put the thought out of mind, concentrated on the hunched man in goggles and helmet. Once the old horse clattered by above our ears and then moved off as if he smelled nothing, neither fresh grass nor humans nearby.

Jutta’s child watched in the window, her sharp eyes darting this way and that among the shadows, hands folded in her lap, knees drawn together, small and wide awake as children who follow the night very long after the usual time to sleep, quickened and tense with the unexpected hours, wretched small keepers. But she did not see her brother, the fairy, nor any forms crawling along the street among the ends of broken pipe. She watched for a light, a swinging lantern, or any recognizable animal or man in the bare branches and felt that she must wait and watch, for she knew that all were not asleep. She waited for Jutta as a child would, and saying nothing she called her mother home. What was the hour? No one could know because there were no clocks. She knew the time by intuition, this dark time, as a thing that ended only with sleep. She knew that one could never see the morning come, and only by turning away, by hiding, would the night leave. For a long while it had been quiet below, from the time Herr Stintz stopped playing his horn until now, and by a few unnatural sounds, the rustling of cloth, the dropping of a shoe, she knew he was no longer asleep. He was fetching his stick. Jutta didn’t like him either, because he could commit no crime nor act strongly, but could only bring harm. The child heard the splash of water and then waited, hearing him walk the length of his cage and unlock the door.

The fairy, out of sight, was running for his life. She was afraid to look at him and barely made a gesture as if to touch the window, thinking to strike up a light.

“It’s very late for a little girl to be out of bed, away from the covers, the nice warm quilt.”

“I’m waiting for my brother.”

“But you should sleep, because the moon doesn’t like little girls to look into his bed. The moon sleeps in the world, a very strong man, and God has given him no covers.”

“He’s not sleeping tonight.”

Mr. Stintz could only bring harm; she knew he carried the stick, but knew that little girls were safe because they were the ones who waited and never moved. If she moved, the paw would break off her wing and catch her by the leg.

“Oh,” she said, “there’s my mother.”

“Why don’t you,” he said, “why don’t we look for the moon quickly?”

She heard the door shut gently. Death is in the breaking of a lock, a cut in the skin, it comes with a cough and leaves before the plaster is dry on the chest. Stintz drove the boys in the rain and made the girls repeat and repeat their lessons in the old schoolroom, and no one spoke to him in the streets. “Madame Snow told me to die …” Then she saw something more wonderful than mother, something unknown but unmistakable. A light flashed in the distance, and as she watched, it drew closer, a thin quavering beam that seemed to be searching its way out of the darkness. This was what she had waited for and now she no longer watched for her brother but crept off under the covers. It was as if she had just visited the empty apartment on the second floor.

“Good night,” she heard her mother say.

The three of us leaning against the clay bank were all that remained of the shadows of sentries, were primal, unordered, unposted sentries, lounging against the earth without password, rifles or relief. The sharp foreign voice had disappeared from the dark road and unlighted doorway, the rolls of wire, the angry tones, the organized guards were gone. Though unmistakable signs remained, a trampled package of woodbines, a tossed-off canteen, a piece of white webbing, these scraps still littered the floors of sheds or hung in the room corners where white women lay. The keepers, who had asked for papers, swore only with one word, lighted the night with red, and confiscated bicycles, and had moved on to the hunting ground of rodents. And we, the three shadows who remained, gaunt for the great land, dependent on the enemy’s tin cans to squat in, waiting in our black unbuttoned coats and peaked caps, were sentries of the civilians, unemployed during the day, plotting for the greatest good by night.

The American on the motorcycle knew no more of the country that his eagle-colonels scourged, than did his free-eyed sergeants, roving in their green work clothes. He traveled along hypothetical lines of communication that chased miles beyond the end of the war and he had beer at each stopover. Desperation was not for this plains-rider, bouncing over once endless roads with his sack filled with unintelligible military scrawl, columns of figures, personal resentments, not for this oblivious traveler whose only communication was silence to the dark countrymen and “hi-ya, Mac” to his listless fellows. From the littered fields and overhanging branches, from the town library charred and unpurged, from the punctured rubber rafts plugging the canal, to the hanging mouths, to the enemy colors, to the unexploded traps, to the drunk official and black pox, it was an unrecognized, unadmitted, unnamed desperation that persisted beyond the tied prostitute and enemy news, beyond the cadaverous houses and American outposts, to give strength to us, the hovering sentries, to bring words to the lolling historians. Poison their camps, if only in a quip or solitary act.

I thought of it during each day in the newspaper office and thought of it against the mud-bank; life is not the remarkable, the precious, or necessary thing we think it is. The naked dark pawing of that eternal old horse who lingered on through no fault of his own, bereaved and unquiet in the night, told me that. And with the hoarded, secret sailor’s black rum running through my mind, heaped about by past years’ correspondence, dead letters, by fragments of broken type, I knew that the tenant was the law. For the final judgment the tenant must build the house and keep it from sliding into the pool, keep it from the Jew’s claw or the idealist’s pillaging.

You can ask no man to give up his civilization, which is his nation. The old must go, stagger over the failing drawbridge, fall down before the last coat of arms. I thought Madame Snow too old to understand, I thought she should wither away and die, with her long, false, flaxen hair, because I thought she would run rattle-tattle through the night for preservation. Here I was wrong, since she was the very hangman, the eater, the greatest leader of us all. Death is as unimportant as life; but the struggle, the piling of bricks, the desperate attempts of the tenant; that is the man of youth, the old woman of calm, the nation of certainty.

I brushed the hair away from my ears, relaxed against the earthen wall, smelled the flowering manure.

“Soon?” Even old Stumpfegel was impatient.

“Certainly. Have patience.”

The child was not yet asleep, the drains were running foul to the basement, the Mayor dreamed, heaping one on another all the atrocities his old heart could dig up, so that they rolled in a paroxysm in his throat. The windows were shut, but he could not guard against the tottering dreams — for honoring the dead he must die. An attempt to stir himself with his own hand, since his wife was long gone, was, like the ventures of foraging children, like their touch to the self, a breath of suicide. Long after he was disturbed by the noise under the window, the dream returned and forced its way, lifelike, before his eyes as if he were awake. Dream after dream the voices and horses were the same, though they wore many figures, the Priest mixed up with the Officer, his own dead wife firing the rifle, a peculiar child pronouncing verdict as the Judge, the onlooking crowd all dressed as the condemned man. But the voices were distinct, and waking he would forget that they had calmly passed sentence, enemies and friends — guilty in the eyes of his own State.

He had betrayed the country only through his conscience …

Madame Snow held Balamir’s hand.

The child could not sleep and listened to the mother’s breathing.

Dancers wearied and each time the record stopped, the silence made them anxious.

The wind struggled and sighed and could go no farther than the edge of the canal.

A cow with its eyes shut clawed at the empty board walls of a barn with teeth like a hare but found no straw.

The boy had gotten himself lost in underworld tunnels, caught between hanging floors and rolls of wire, and he caught his pants on a bent thick nail.

The Duke followed closely in his step, cane raised sharply in the darkness, feeling his way carefully into the blind hole, and it began to rain. The tall man followed the boy through the gaping plaster wall and found himself in the theater. Madame Snow’s one-legged son and noiseless wife were somewhere overhead near the projection room. The boy traveled in circles among the thousands of molding seats while rain trickled down the sloping floor and a field telephone covered with dust looked like an enormous trap on a chain. The theater grew darker. Carefully the Duke followed the shadows, slid like an elder actor to the ticket-seller’s booth and doffing his hat stepped through the door and waited, surrounded with black glass, rolls of wet tickets, a red handkerchief. A rotted playbill masked his face. He saw something walk across the stage in false breasts and tights, heard the boy drawing fitfully near.

“… It is you who will die,” said the Priest to the Mayor. That had been the day when the motorcycle rider and the rest of the Allies had first passed through Spitzen-on-the-Dein. The convoy crept up the long bright highway through the snow, through the handful of silent watchers, down the main street like a centipede with the motorcycle first, followed by the jeep, ending with proud band of four riflemen. An American colonel and two corporals rode in the jeep, an automatic rifle propped in the back seat, their canteens filled with rum, and the dispatch-rider in the lead wobbled from side to side and waved the children off, flurries of snow shooting up behind him.

“So this is Germany,” said the Colonel, and leaning out from behind the cold wheel he blew his whistle and the convoy stopped. Before the eyes of the crowd he got out and fastened a slender wire-cutter to the smoking radiator, then with a final quick word to the motorcycle man they made their way to the center of town, pulling on their mufflers, eyes frozen ahead. On the floor of the jeep beneath the jutting rifle, they carried their black robes and a few sealed envelopes. The foot-soldiers alternately ran and walked to keep warm.

By the middle of the afternoon they had stripped Madame Snow’s apartment and established a headquarters, of three maps, a table and chair, temporary seat of American representation in the evil zone. The jeep was under a tarpaulin in the rear garden in the shed, the four troops billeted in the hall, and the dispatch rider was standing guard over his still warm machine. Through the uncurtained window, glancing for a moment from the red envelopes, the Colonel saw the sky darken for snow, and worried, he peered at his highly secret route through the nation, studied the undecipherable diagram and code. Satisfied, he signaled the corporal who quickly brought forth the three robes. The Colonel, short, heavyset, graduate of a technical institute, a brilliant engineer, thought in dotted parabolas, considered in fine red lines, and while lonely, overworked, and short in the knees, directed the spreading occupation. Except for the silver eagle sewn above the pocket of his black robe, he might have been the foreman of a jury pointed out to speak before the supreme law. Once more he carefully read the letter of instruction, tapped his pen on the bare wood, then dropped the paper into the heater in the corner, an open can of flaming petrol. The Mayor, Herr Stintz and myself stood in a comer, as there was no anteroom, watching these preparations, while out in the cold alone, walking up and down, waited Miller, the prisoner, thinking of the sweet children and his fair wife.

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.

LEADER

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.

It snowed for nights on end, but every morning the monkeys appeared uncovered, exactly the same as the day they were tossed into the yard, wiry, misshapen, clutching in their hands and feet the dead rats. When vigilance became more and more impractical, all poisons, orange crystals of cyanide and colorless acids, were thrown into the incinerator, and with despondent precaution all sharp instruments were destroyed. They were disturbed; several unrecognized, unwashed doctors wandered without memory in the pack of patients and one young dietician thought she was the common-law wife of a fifty-nine-year-old hebephrenic. On the night before the uprising, thieves tore down the wooden sign inscribed with the haven word “asylum,” burned it during the coldest dawn recorded, and the institution was no longer a retreat.

Before dawn on the morning of the riot, Madame Snow stood alone by candlelight in a back room where cordwood had been piled, holding a stolen chicken struggling lightly beneath her fingers. She did not see the four stone walls or the narrow open window, and standing in a faded gown with the uneven hem that was once for balls, the untied soiled kimono flapping against her legs, she looked into the frightful eyes of the chicken and did not feel the cold. Her bare feet were white, the toes covered with grains of sawdust. The door behind her was locked, tallow dripped from the gilt holder and the bird fluttered, tried to shake its wings from the firm grasp. The old woman’s pulse beat slowly, more slowly, but steadily, and the narrow unseen window began to turn grey. The feathers, bitten with mange, trembled and breathed fearfully. The soft broken claws kicked at her wrist. For a moment the Kaiser’s face, thin, depressed, stared in at the cell window, and then was gone, feeling his way over a land that was now strange to his touch. The old woman watched the fowl twisting its head, blinking the pink-lidded eyes, and carefully she straddled the convulsing neck with two fingers, tightened them across the mud-caked chest, and with the other hand seized the head that felt as if it were all bone and moving bits of scale. The pale yellow feet paddled silently backwards and forwards, slits breathed against her palm. Madame Snow clenched her fists and quickly flung them apart so that the fowl’s head spurted across the room, hit the wall and fell into a heap of shavings, its beak clicking open and shut, eyes staring upwards at the growing light. She dropped the body with its torn neck and squeezed with fingermarks into a bucket of water, and stooping in the grey light, squinted, and plucked the feathers from the front of her kimono.

A few moments later the messenger, angry, half-asleep, pounded on the window of the front room and shouted, “Riot, riot up at the madhouse,” and clattered off, banging on more doors, calling to startled women, distracted, wheezing.

By the time Stella reached the Mayor’s, still in the kimono, hair flying, she found a great quarreling crowd of women already gathered. The Mayor, before taking control of the villagers asked to send aid, had girdled the red sash around his nightgowned stomach, and distrait but strong, he stood on the ice-covered steps passing out equipment and words of encouragement to the already violent hags.

“Ah, Madame Snow, Madame Snow,” he called, “you will take command on the march and in the attack. I leave it all up to you.” Outstretched hands clamored in his face.

“Did you hear?” he shouted.

“Yes, I heard.”

When all of the women had shouldered the barrel-staves which he had distributed, and fastened the black puttees about their bare legs, they started off, Stella in the lead and running as fast as she could. Jutta was tickling the Census-Taker at the time and only heard of the trouble afterwards. Madame Snow’s hands were still covered with the blood of the chicken, and back in the small room its beak was clamped open. When they reached the iron fence and the gates were thrown open, the women stopped short, silent, moved closer together, brandished the staves, and looked at the band of inmates huddled together on the other side of the heap of monkeys. One of the monkeys seemed to have grown, and frozen, was sitting upright on the bodies of the smaller beasts, tail coiled about his neck, dead eyes staring out through the gates, through the light of early morning as dim and calm as the moon. “Dark is life, dark, dark is death,” he suddenly screamed as the women charged across the snow.

All was hushed that morning, and in a dark wing of building 41, Balamir lay waiting among his unsleeping brothers and wished that someone would let in the cat. The male nurse who had been on duty three days and nights sat dozing in the stiff-backed chair and Balamir could see the white lifeless watch with its hanging arms. Along the length of the corridor were the rows of small empty rooms, and the signal lights over the swinging doors were burned out. An old cleaning woman, stooped and bent with the hem of her grey skirt hiding her feet, shuffled from the upper end to the lower of the monastic hall, dragging a mop over the outstretched legs, mumbling to herself, “Now it’s quite all right, you’ll all be well soon, yes, you’d be surprised at all I’ve seen come and go.” The feathers of the mop were dry and frozen.

From the windows of building 41 one could see the irregular white fields stretching off to patched acres of sparse forest land, the game field with its bars and benches heaped with snow. Sometimes dimly through the grillwork of adjacent buildings, an unrecognizable single figure passed back into the shadows. The cleaning woman fumbled with the key ring fastened by a thin brass chain around her waist and went through the smooth metal door and down the deserted stairs. Suddenly a little wiry man with small fragile hands and feet and a clay pipe clutched in his teeth, ran to the door and, facing it, trembled with anger.

“Don’t you ever say such a thing to me again, don’t you dare say that, if I hear it again, if you dare speak to me I’ll break your back, I’ll break it and cripple you, so help me,” he screamed.

The nurse awoke with a start, reached for his smoldering cigarette. “Here, Dotz,” he called, “stop that yelling …” but quickly, before he could move, the whole hallway of men, stamping and crying, followed Dotz through the door and out into the fresh air. Once out, no one knew the way in, and already a few white coats were excited and gave chase.

From a fourth floor window the Director, wrapped in a camel’s hair coat, watched the struggle until he saw the women, led by Stella, rush the ridiculous inmates; he drew the blinds and returned to his enormous files.

During that hour the monkeys were so underfoot that the patients were saved from worse injury by the clumsiness of the women who shouted and tore and pelted everything in sight. As these women in the midst of changing years ran to and fro, beating, slashing, the stiff tails and hard outstretched arms and furry brittle paws smacked against black puttees and were trampled and broken in the onslaught. Several wooden shoes were left jammed in rows of teeth smashed open in distortion by the stamping feet. The barrel-staves broke on unfeeling shoulders, the rats’ bodies were driven deeper into the snow.

“Here, you,” suddenly cried the cleaning woman from the main doorway, “come back in here,” and the troop of men disappeared, kicking the stained snow in violent flurries. Suddenly the deputized women found themselves alone and standing on the mutilated carcasses of little men, and with a pained outcry, they fled from the grounds. “You won’t say it again?” said Dotz, but no one answered and they settled back to rest in silence. The sun came out high and bright at nine o’clock and lasted the whole day, striking from the tiles and bricks, melting the snow, and the Director finally issued an order for the burial of the animals.

Leevey was killed outright when his motorcycle crashed into the log. He was pitched forward and down into an empty stretch of concrete. The Stengun, helmet, and boots clattered a moment, canvas and cloth and leather tore and rubbed; then he lay quiet, goggles still over his eyes, pencil, pad, whistle and knife strewn ahead. The three of us quickly leaped upward over the embankment, crouched in the darkness a moment, and then eagerly went to work. I was the first to reach the motorcycle and I cut the ignition, guided it over the bank. We picked up Leevey and carried him down to his machine, lost none of his trinkets, then together rolled the log until it slid down the muddy slope and settled in silence in a shallow stream of silt.

“It’s not smashed badly,” said Fegelein and ran his fingers over the bent front rim, felt broken spokes brushing against his sleeve, felt that the tank was slightly caved-in and petrol covered his hand. “You’ll be riding it in a month.”

I put my ear to the thin chest but could hear nothing, for Leevey had gone on to his native sons who sat by the thousands amid fields of gold, nodding their black curly heads, and there, under a sunshine just for them, he would never have to bear arms again. The night had reached its darkest and most silent hour, just before dawn comes. Still there were no stars, the mist grew more dense overhead and even the dogs no longer howled. My fingers brushed the stiffening wrist.

“Are you ready?” asked my comrade by the machine.

I felt closer, more quickly, pulled away the cuff of the jacket, tore as quietly as possible at the cloth over the wrist.

“What’s the matter with you? What are you doing anyway?” The voice was close; Stumpfegle also drew closer to my side.

“Eh, what’s up?” The hoarse whispers were sharp.

I pulled at the strap, carefully, faster, and finally spoke, “He’s got a watch.” I leaned closer to the corpse.

“Well, give it here, you can’t keep it just like that …”

I brought the pistol dimly into sight again, shoved the watch into my pocket, “I’m the leader and don’t forget it. It’s only right that I have the watch. Take the sacks off the machine and leave them here. We’ll share what we can find, but not the watch.”

Fegelein was already back tinkering with the engine. I listened to the watch and heard its methodical beat and could see the intricate clean dials rotating in precise fractions. The tongue was now sucked firmly and definitely into the back of Leevey’s throat and his knees had cracked upwards and grown rigid. “We had better get him out of here.” We picked him up and with the motorman between us stepped into the shallow ooze of the stream and headed out beyond the wall of fog towards the center of the lowlands.

On the opposite side of the highway, hidden in the shadows of unoccupied low buildings and the high bare spire wet with dew, stood Herr Stintz fixing everything closely in his mind, holding the little girl tightly by the hand. The child crossed and uncrossed the cold white legs, watched the black shadows leaping about in the middle of the road. Then they were gone.

Jutta yawned, carried the damp blouse into the next room, and opening the rear window, hung it from a short piece of wire dangling from a rusty hook. For a moment she smelled the sour night air, heard the lapping of water, and then returned to the still warm bed to wait the morning.

The limping English ghosts made their way back to the tank and stood silently waiting for the light when they would have to climb again through the hatch and sit out the day in the inferno of the blackened Churchill.

The Duke, breathing heavily, slowly extended his arm, and as the boy moved, clamped the diamond ringed fingers over the light shoulder and breathed easier. Footsteps sounded in the upper part of the clay-smelling theater and the projector began to grind and hum, then stilled again.

Very cold, the Mayor crawled out of bed, went to his closet and taking an armful of coats and formal trousers, heaped them on the bed. But it was still cold.

Madame Snow lit the candle again and saw that the quilted man was sleeping, and hearing no sound, no one returning to the second floor apartment, she decided to get dressed and simply await the day. She began to tie up the long strands of white and gold hair, and reaching into a bulky wardrobe found herself a formless white chemise.

“My God, the fog is thick.”

“We’re almost there,” I replied.

“Which way?”

“A little to the right, I think.”

The formless white puddles of fog moved, shifted among the stunted trees, rose, fell, trailed away in the areas of sunken swampwood where once tense and cowed scouting parties had dared to walk into the bayonet on guard, or to walk on a trigger of a grenade that had blown up waist high. An axle of a gun carriage stuck up from the mud like a log, a British helmet, rusted, old, hung by a threadbare strap from a broken branch.

“He’s heavy.”

“They feed the Americans well, you know,” I answered.

“Well, he’s going where they all belong.”

Several times we stopped to rest, sitting the body upright in the silt that rose over his waist. A shred of cloth was caught about a dead trunk, the fog dampened our skin. Each time we stopped, the white air moved more than ever in and out of the low trees, bearing with it an overpowering odor, the odor of the ones who had eaten well. More of the trees were shattered and we, the pallbearers, stumbled with each step over half-buried pieces of steel.

“Let’s leave him here.”

“You know we cannot. Follow the plan.”

Past the next tree, past the next stone of a gun breech blasted open like a mushroom, we saw a boot, half a wall, and just beyond, the swamp was filled with bodies that slowly appeared one by one from the black foliage, from the mud, from behind a broken wheel. A slight skirmish had developed here and when the flare had risen over this precise spot, glowed red and died in the sky, some twenty or thirty dead men were left, and they never disappeared. The fog passed over them most thickly here, in relentless circles, and since it was easier to breathe closer to the mud, we stooped and dragged the body forward.

“You see, no one could ever find him among these. No one would ever look for him here.” My idea for disposing of the body was excellent.

After searching the body once more, we left it and found our way again to the roadside. We took the machine and its valuable saddlebags silently through the town to the newspaper office.

“It’s time we had our meeting,” I said, “I’ll be back.” Fegelein began to work on the engine; Stumpfegle broke the head from a bottle.

The slut slept alone in her own house.

LAND

Madame Stella Snow’s son, awakened by the barking of a dog, lay quiet, holding his breath like a child in the darkness. But it was not the dog that woke him, it was a theatrical sound, some slight effect, some trick of the playhouse itself, and he listened. Perhaps he had left the projector switch on, perhaps the lights were burning, or the spools of film unrolling. Whatever had happened, he did hear, in the intervals of distant howling, a woman’s voice, an argument in the floors below between the empty seats. The dampness of the auditorium swept through the building, warehouse of old scenes, and his own bedroom, once a storeroom and place where the usherettes changed from frocks to uniforms, was cold and dark. It still smelled faintly of powder, stacks of mildewed tickets, cans of film and tins of oil. The voice, high and aristocratic, sounded like his mother’s, changed, then seemed once more familiar. The girls had actually changed their clothes, changed into pants, in this room. The concrete walls, like a bunker, were damp and cold; light sockets, wire, and a few tools still littered the floor. The voices were still below, he thought he could hear someone weeping, the woman scolded, laughed, and talked on. His wife slept, her body shapeless and turned away under the quilt.

It took all of his effort to get out of the bed. First, with one hand, he reached to the side and clutched the pipe that ran, cold to his fingers, under the mattress. With the other hand, he threw off the covers, and with a quick odd motion tossed his stump over the other leg, twisted his torso, flung his arm out to add weight to the stump’s momentum, and precariously threw himself upright. It was even harder to get into the trousers; he succeeded by rocking forwards and backwards, pulling quickly with his hands, always with the good leg in the air keeping the balance. He smelled the perfume and old celluloid. Fixing his hands into the two aluminum canes, like shafts into a socket, ball bearings in oil, he made his way out into the hall, and since he couldn’t as yet manage the stairs, hooked the canes to his belt, sat down, and holding the stump out of the way, made his trip bouncing down the three flights.

He could no longer hear the voices or the dog, only his own thumping on the cold stairs and the rattle of the thin metal legs dragging behind him. He moved like a duck, propelled himself forward with his two arms in unison and landed on the next step on the end of his spine. Something compelled him to move faster and faster until he was numb and perspiring, dropped with only the edge of the wall against his shoulder to guide him, fell with his palms becoming red and sore. Using the canes as props and the wall against his back he rose, laboriously, at the bottom of his flight, and listened for the woman’s voice. But the voices had heard him coming, thumping, and were still. He waited, sensing them on the other side of the metal, fireproof door. He hesitated, then with an effort swung open the door and stepped into the rear of the auditorium, feeling in the dark many eyes turned upon his entrance. Slowly he hobbled forward, and seeing the large hat and magnificent cane, he laughed at himself and recognized the tall man.

“Ah, Herr Duke,” he said, “I thought I heard voices in my theater. But did not expect this pleasure.”

“You are right,” said the Duke. “I’ve come after my neighbor’s child, this boy here.”

Then he saw the boy crouching down in an aisle, no longer weeping, but watching the two men. What a peculiar voice the Duke had, certainly a strange one considering his size and bearing.

“Boy, you should be home in bed.”

“Yes,” said the Duke in now more normal tones, “I’m taking him home. Forgive us the disturbance.”

The child made no sound but allowed himself to be caught, in one quick swoop, about the wrist and pulled to his feet.

“Good night,” said the tall man and left with his prize.

“Ja, ja, Herr Duke.” The lame man watched the two go out into the still-wet streets, and turning himself, went back to the heavy door.

At the foot of the door his shoe was caught in a large poster, and looking down he saw an actress in a shining gown, wrinkled and scuffed about the breasts and hips.

“Good night, Herr Duke,” he said, and freeing his single shoe from the woman’s hold, he set out to climb back up the stairs. It was painful to his good leg going up, but even so he felt an uncommon pleasure in the visit of the Duke and the night’s events.

I had been gone from the newspaper office only a moment, when Stumpfegle, who was drinking from the broken bottle, and Fegelein, who was rummaging through the motorcycle saddlebags, heard my footsteps returning to the door, and became alert. Both men looked up as I, their leader, stepped back into the office. I was hurried, disturbed, absorbed in the underworld of the new movement, bearing alone the responsibilities of the last attempt. I looked at my confederates and was annoyed with the liquor trickling from one chin, the contents of the bags strewn over the floor from the other’s hands.

“Somebody saw us take care of the fellow on the motorbike.”

“But, my God, Leader, what can we do?” Fegelein dropped a packet of Leevey’s letters from him and looked up in fear.

“We’ll have to change things. Bring the machinery, the arms, and everything else, to Command Two.”

“Command Two?”

“Snow, idiot, behind Snow’s boarding house.”

Fegelein had the memory of a frog, a despicable blind green wart to whom all pads, all words, were the same.

“Bring the small press, the motor, bring all the materials for the pamphlets. Oh, yes, bring the whitewash.”

“Leader, the machine will be ready to ride tomorrow…”

“Stumpfegle, you might ride yourself into the canal with ten American bullets, fired by well-armed Jewish slugs, in your fat belly, you childish fat fool. Don’t think, do you understand, don’t think of the machine, think of nothing except what we must do now. The night’s not over, fat Stumpfegle, I don’t want you shot. There are many Anglo-Schmutzigs we’ve got to poison with our print tonight. So please, just do the work.” I nodded, forgot my temper, and slipped back into the darkness. Fegelein began to read the letters.

The oil flickered in the lamp, consumed and consuming, and as it burned, a few hoarded drops in the bottom of the tin, it shrouded the glass and beneath the film the flame was dimmed. After a considerable swig, the bottle, its neck jagged, filled and refilled, was put down on the floor, the dead man’s letters were cast aside, unfit for reading, and the scraps, bundles, clips and type were collected. The patriots, fool and tinker, got themselves to work for power. It was no drunken lark. A difficult hour they had of it at that time of night, the worst time of night for odds and ends and order, especially after killing a man and with sleep so near. The light bright, the shutters drawn, the secret hard for dull minds to keep, the arms scattered, the work small and heavy, the very hardest time of night; this was the hour to try the henchmen.

In an alley by the press was a heavy cart, and Fegelein, the quicker of the two, made hurried trips with spools of thread, staples, needles, small loads of paper, and old bottles of ink. He thought of the witness and the accusing finger, saw the jurystand and unpredictable black-robed judge. Each time he dropped his load, so light but necessary, into the bottom of the cart, he looked up at the sky and feared the exposing dawn. There was no one to trust. Inside the shop the cobwebs were thick between the presses, the bottles piled higher near the rolltop desk, and old broken headlines were scattered, mere metal words, about the floor.

Stumpfegle, fat and cold, carried the small press out to the cart and rested. He carried the stitching machine out to the cart and waited, back by the lamp, for his friend to finish. Stumpfegle, ex-orderly and seeking power, torturer and next in command, harbored, beneath his ruthless slowness, the memory and the valor of his near suicide. Months before, he had lost his chance, though a better man than Fegelein. Stumpfegle, forty-two, aggressive, a private, was captured by a soldier from New York cited for bravery, when he wandered, dazed, into an American Intelligence Headquarters set up for propaganda work. Recognizing the Reichsoldat, the American immediately took Stumpfegle into the doctor’s office, a room with a filing cabinet and fluoroscope. Quickly they put the big man under its watchful, scientific-research eye, and sure enough, imbedded far below his waist, between the sigmoid flexure and the end, they could see the silver object, the Reichgeist capsule, container of blissful death. An hour later, and while the soldier and the doctor watched, the purgative which they had given the bewildered prisoner worked, and Stumpfegle’s last hope was dashed, in a moment of agony, down the privy-drain. He survived, with a soft pain where it had been, and gained his freedom to return to the new life.

“I’m finished except for the paint. We should hurry.”

Stumpfegle slowly carried the can of whitewash to the cart, strapped himself between the heavy shafts, and with Fegelein wheeling the motorbike, they started down the dark street.

The Mayor fell asleep while vague white animals pranced and chattered through his dreams. Miller wished pain upon him, and kicked up his sharp heels and flew away, only to return with the Colonel on his back and a rifle under his belly to plague the poor mare, hot and sore with age. The white handkerchief was over his eyes, his legs were tied, and all those animals of youth and death, the historical beasts, danced about to watch. It was cold and the kitchen was empty.

The Duke and the boy were halfway down the hill towards the institution where a sack was hidden behind the town girls’ bush. The dance music ceased in the storehouse below, the only lights were out. The cane once more was raised and the child, spattered with mud, tried without success to break away. A sleeper cocked his legs behind the storehouse.

“We’re almost there. But let’s try to hurry, will you?” The faster Fegelein tried to go, the more trouble he had with the machine. Yet he urged and he slipped. The shadow of the spy crossed their path.

The ghosts by the canal all watched, their heads together in the turret of the tank, the spirit of Leevey crawling to meet them from the dark water. A gaunt bird settled on the throat of the headless horse statue in the center of the town and mist fell on the grey sideless spire near the Autobahn.

The new watch on my wrist showed three o’clock. It was almost over. Tomorrow the loyal would know and be thankful, the disloyal would be taken care of. By tomorrow this first murder of the invaders would be public news; it would be, rather than a resistance, a show of strength. My footsteps echoed behind me in the darkness, somewhere the traitor was about, and then with a new energy swept upon me, I reached the boarding house. This town had no particular significance, as I entered the hall, because all towns were towns of the land, villages where idleness breeds faith, and the invaders hatred. Yet I knew this town, and in the days of power would always return, for I knew each disappointment, each girl, each silent doorway. I began to climb the stairs and on the next landing, knew the second floor boarder was still out.

My order, the new campaign, was planned and begun. It was spreading, conception and detail, to the borders of the land, aimed at success. The initial blow was struck, the enemy unseated, and there remained only the message to be dealt with and the traitor in our midsts to be undone. I opened the door and saw her warm and girlish arms.

It seemed she had been sleeping for only a moment and the bed was still warm where I had been.

The Census-Taker mumbled in his sleep two floors below, his shirt out of his trousers, wringing wet. They danced on his toes, it was so warm.

Gently pushing the covers back, she rolled slowly over, thinking of my warm brown chest.

Softly she spoke, “Come back to bed, Zizendorf.” She wanted to fall asleep again.

She seemed to have forgotten, this flush Jutta, where I had been, love without sense. I sat in the chair facing the bed.

Then, curling her hair in her fingertips, stretching her knees, she remembered.

“It’s done?”

“Of course. He fell as easy as a duck, that area-commander. He’s out in the swamp with his comrades now.”

“But how did you stop him?”

“The log.” I bent over and loosened my shoes. “The log stopped him. You’d think that when he hit it he’d fly, perhaps swoop over it in a pleasant arc or at least in a graceful curve. But that’s not true. He and the whole machine simply toppled over it, spokes and light and helmet flying every which way. Nothing grand about the commander’s end at all!”

“You’re safe? And now you can come and get warm.”

Jutta feared cold as once she had feared the Superior’s sun.

“The rest of the plan is still to be done.”

Stintz pushed the child ahead with loving hands and silently she crept up the stairs. “You mustn’t tell anyone what you saw, the moon will be angry,” and she was gone into the darkness.

“I’d like to stroke your lovely heart and your hair. But there’s still work.”

“And I suppose there’ll be even more when you reach success?” She yawned.

“Night should be mine, always.”

The child stole into the room, back with Mother, shivering in her thin gown for all the long tiring adventure. I, the Leader, smiled, and Jutta held out her hand across the hard pillows and cold top-cover.

“My darling child, where have you been?” Absently she touched the thin arm and it felt hard, frail.

“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:

INDICTMENT OF THE ALLIED ANTAGONISTS, AND PROCLAMATION OF THE GERMAN LIBERATION:

English-speaking Peoples: Where are the four liberties of the Atlantic Charter? Where is liberty and humanity for the sake of which your government has sent you into this war? All this is nothing as long as your government has the possibility of ruling the mob, of sabotaging Peace by means of intrigues, and of being fed with a constant supply from the increasingly despairing masses — America, who has fostered you upon a bereaved world, only turns her masses of industry against that world, the muzzles of her howitzers of insanity and greed against a continent that she herself contaminates.

While you have been haranguing and speculating in Democracy, while you have branded and crucified continental Europe with your ideologies, Germany has risen. We proclaim that in the midst of the rubble left in your path there exists an honorable national spirit, a spirit conducive to the unification of the world and poisonous to the capitalistic states. The rise of the German people and their reconstruction is no longer questionable — the land, the Teutonic land, gives birth to the strongest of races, the Teutonic race.

People of Germany: We joyfully announce that tonight the Third Allied Commander, overseer of Germany, was killed. The Allies are no longer in power, but you, the Teutons, are once more in control of your futures, your civilization will once more rise. The blood that is in your veins is inevitable and strong. The enemy is gone, and in this hour of extermination of our natural foe we give thanks to you, your national spirit that has flown, at long last, from Western slavery.

We pay tribute to the soul of Cromwell of the first war, who, realizing the power of the Goths and forsaking his weakened England, instigated the Germanic Technological Revolution. It is on his inspiration that the East looms gloriously ahead, and on his creed that the Teuton hills and forests will design their Native Son.

From the ruins of Athens rise the spires of Berlin.

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.

THREE

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.

“… I’m now at the front in a big field and the familiar world of men is gone. Yesterday a group went by and I shot the leader off his horse with a bullet right through his head. The rain sings and the streamlets reproduce every hour. I thought about him all last night and his horse ran off across the field. Now, Jutta, if it is true that I get what he used to own, I will send you the necessary papers so you can go and take possession of his farm. There may be a great deal of work to do on it so you had better start. I kept wondering last night if his wife was automatically mine or not. I suppose she is, and frankly, that worries me and I’m sorry I shot the fellow for that. I think she probably has red hair and the officials will dismiss the whole thing — but I will send you money as soon as it comes and you simply will have to make the best of it and fight it out with her and the children. His farm might be several acres, who knows? I’ll send you maps, etc. plus the fellow’s name and I don’t think you’ll have trouble crossing the field. I cannot make out what his wife will think of me now that she is mine along with the land. It’s too bad for her that it had to be this way but perhaps there’s a horse in the barn to replace the one that got away. I couldn’t sleep at all because this field is in the open, which is most astounding, and I couldn’t decide how much money he actually had that I could send you. I don’t know how you feel about all this, perhaps you’ll think I did wrong, but I struck the best bargain I could, and the Corporal in the dugout made it very difficult. Maybe I’ll be able to end this slave rule and will certainly mend the roof on his farmhouse for you if you’ll just do your share. There may be a few dogs on his farm who will keep the poachers off — I hope so. It’s a terrible problem as you can see but if the Corporal comes on my side I think things will change. I hope the whole plan works out for you and the papers arrive safely through the rain, for at the same time I am doing nothing in the trenches and this excitement, over the wire and saddles, is disturbing my conscience …”

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.