Children of the Dusk (3 page)

"H'aye-aye have finger of death," Bruqah said.

The mouselemur on his shoulder squeaked and burrowed down, but the Malagasy did not appear to notice. He stood perfectly still, his usually placid features rigid with fear.

Commanding his wolfhound to stay, Hempel strode toward Bruqah. "Shut your mouth, or I'll kill you where you stand."

Something made Sol look back at the aye-aye. Its hand was still raised, its long bony finger extended toward the wolfhound, which had risen to its feet in defiance of Hempel's orders.

Back arched, snarling, Boris turned to face the trees.

Into the silence came a muffled roar, like the distant thunder of an approaching storm, followed by another. Clearer this time. Closer. Accompanied by the pounding of hooves through the underbrush and a blur of movement, a massive boar, head lowered, burst from the brush. In a lightning movement that defied the creature's lumbering bulk, it lifted the wolfhound high into the air and held it up there, a bloody trophy impaled upon one curved horn. Lowering its head once more, it shook off the dog's body, and raised its foot. A shot rang out. The boar looked up, snorted, shook itself, and trotted back into the forest.

Hempel walked over to his dog and nudged it with his boot. Like statuary imbued with life, the rest of the stunned watchers returned to movement. The shepherds, growling, tugged at their leashes, and the aye-aye, its business apparently finished, leapt back into the overstory.

"Dead?" Erich strode over to where Hempel stood, gun in hand, and looked down at the wolfhound. Even at a distance, Sol could see that it was a bloody heap of fur and flesh.

"Might as well be," Hempel said. "Fat lot of good he will be to me now."

"Shoot him."

Erich issued the order without raising his voice, yet loudly and firmly enough to be heard over the shepherds.

Hempel turned to face him. "Who the hell are you to order me to shoot my dog?"

"I am the commanding officer of this operation."

Hempel paused, raised his gun, and aimed down at the dog. "For now," he said.

If he could shoot Erich instead, he would, Sol thought, watching the unfolding tableau. Miriam had told him about Killi, the dog Hitler had ordered Erich to shoot during the Olympics party at Pfaueninsel--Berlin's Peacock Island. Sol wondered if Pfaueninsel torchlights flickered, now, within Erich's brain.

But Erich was not looking at the wolfhound, or at Hempel. He was staring at a bare-chested, sinewy black man who had stepped from the shack and into the clearing. He was clothed in a ragged clay-colored loincloth that matched the red that peppered his curly white hair. As he stood surveying the newcomers to his domain, two animals with red fur and feline faces joined him, muzzles twitching.

There's more lunacy here than
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
, Sol thought, as the shepherds again started up their insane barking.

"The dogs they care not for the fossas," Bruqah remarked.

Hempel swiveled and pointed the Mann at the newcomer. Judging from the look on his face, it would not take much to make him use it. Small wonder, Sol thought. Simply looking at the wiry black man was a challenge. There was a gaping pink hole where his nose and mouth should have been. The hand he held up to Erich in mock greeting was eaten away like the flesh of a leper. Dangling from his fingers like an offering was a large gray wriggling worm.

Seeing that he had Erich's attention, the man tilted his head. With some innate sense of drama, he waited just long enough to allow the horror around him to peak. Then his tongue emerged to envelope the worm and draw it down into his throat.

"Pisces, no!"

Pulling free from his trainer, who was apparently too caught up in the spectacle to hold firmly to the choke chain, one of the dogs bounded at the black man.

The fossas whirled around and darted into the underbrush. Reacting almost as fast, the black man leapt toward the hut and scrambled beneath it. The dog leapt after him, frenziedly digging his way under the structure.

Sol waited for the screams of pain which must come when a trained killer tears into the flesh of man. He turned his head to look at Erich, then at the faces of the other watchers. Their expressions held varying degrees of expectation and horror.

From underneath the hut, came a mewling conciliatory cry, and the faceless creature crawled out on his elbows. Swiveling on his stomach, the muscles on his lean back glistening with his sweat, he reached underneath the hut and drew out the dog by its chain.

The dog lay passively where he left it, inert, defeated, head hanging limply.

Sol turned his attention back to Erich. A series of emotions played across his features: puzzlement; admiration; jealousy; and finally anger. Either the creature's empathic abilities with dogs far exceeded Erich's own or this was another demonstration of African magic at work.

The stranger stood up. The hole that had once been his mouth turned upward in a ghoulish imitation of a smile. Placing his hands on his hips, he bowed slightly as if acknowledging his victory. Sol heard Erich's dog, Taurus, whimpering softly from her stretcher; dysplasia--inflammation of the hip joint--had rendered her almost incapable of walking. Beside her, likewise bound to a stretcher, lay Aquarius, ill nearly to the point of death from the long journey.

One dog crippled, one near death from seasickness, one gored to death, one turned into a rag doll by some crazy Malagasy...and we've just arrived, Sol thought. Perhaps there is hope for escape after all.

"Bruqah!" Erich turned and shouted. "What the hell! Who--
what
--is that
thing
?"

"Zana-Malata."

"Leper?"

"Syphilitic." Bruqah gripped his crotch for emphasis.

"By the looks of him, that thing turns twigs into something less benign than chameleons," Miriam told Sol with an edge of fear.

Sol started to reassure her but stopped when he realized that he felt much the same way. Apparently sorcery was endemic to Africa. He was sure they would find out soon enough what that meant to them. For now they both had watch and learn.

"Let the dogs go!" Erich commanded. "Stop that bastard!"

Snarling, nine healthy shepherds leapt forward. From the encircling forest, varicolored birds lifted into startled flight. The screams of lemurs joined with the softly insistent shrill of an aye-aye hidden in the trees.

The dogs never reached their victim.

When they were close enough so he could surely feel their heated breath, the Zana-Malata crouched and patted the earth.

Sol watched in disbelief as the animals that comprised what was probably Germany's finest canine contingent stopped in their tracks and, in unison and panting heavily, crawled on their bellies to huddle like house pets around the man's feet.

Again, Sol witnessed Erich's struggle to understand the Zana-Malata's control over the dogs.

"How the devil--?" Erich asked Bruqah.

The Malagasy tapped his temple. "He like you with the dogs, Mister Germantownman."

Sol turned his attention back to the Zana-Malata. Ignoring the ruckus, the syphilitic made his way across the clearing toward Hempel. Either because he recognized the Zana-Malata as a potentially powerful ally, or perhaps because he, like the dogs, was an animal being controlled, the major moved toward him. Misha left what little protection and comfort the prisoners could offer and, knowing he would be beaten if he failed to stay close to the major, trailed behind, head down.

Motioning for Hempel to follow him, the Zana-Malata bent down and gathered the wolfhound in his arms. Seemingly without effort, he lifted the animal and carried it into the shack, leaving Sol to wonder if the heat had already affected his brain and caused him to imagine the whole thing.

Pistol in hand, Erich burst past the dogs. They rose to their feet and shook themselves, disoriented. He leapt the shack's steps and slapped past the zebu-hide door, only to re-emerge moments later. For a split second he went rigid. His hand shot out as if seeking support, and his head snapped up.

"M-must have g-gone out a b-back way."

He waved the gun, but it seemed to be a motion without purpose. Sol waited for him to order dogs and trainers, perhaps the guards as well, into the surrounding rain forest to search for the man. Instead, he stumbled down the steps. "F-forget him, f-for now," he stammered.

Sol had not heard Erich stammer in fifteen years. Had the lightning, petite mal seizure--finished almost the moment it occurred--had a greater effect on him than usual?

"W-we'll deal with him later," Erich told his troops. Confidence was returning to his face and voice, and his stammering was already less pronounced. "We have a military compound to build. W-we must always--
always
--keep our primary mission in mind."

Moving with an easy kind of grace despite the heat, the soggy earth, and the momentary physical lapse, he turned to look at the inhabitants of his new empire.

"Though I...I'm a man of action rather than words," he began, "I feel I should inform you of why you are here and what our plans are for you." He started a slow pacing in front of the men, who gathered together despite the animosity between the guards, sailors, and dog trainers. The prisoners likewise clustered, though apart from the Nazis.

"Four hundred years ago," Erich continued, "this tiny island, here in the middle of Antongil Bay, was the site of the hospital of a colony began by one Augustus de Benyowsky, a Hungarian-Polish Count who attempted to civilize the local tribes...and wrote Madagascar's first constitution. Two hundred years after that, the island served as a base for British pirates. Later, it belonged to the French. Now"--he made a fist, showing his resolve--"it is the F-Fatherland's turn. What we create here on Mangabéy is only a beginning. Eventually, we will also p-penetrate the mainland." He turned his attention toward the prisoners. "Shiploads of Jews will follow you here. This is your new homeland." He looked at Sol. "Your Jerusalem--"

Sol stopped listening. Erich's desire for a benign dictatorship was pathetic. Even if he meant what he said, Hempel would never allow it. The Jews' hope for survival lay in Sol's recovering his wits and strength. He recalled the voices of his mentors, voices from visions he had experienced for seventeen years as the result of the dybbuk, the wandering soul, that had possessed him since that terrible day when he had witnessed the assassination of Germany's Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, a Jew, and Miriam's uncle.

Eyes closed, Solomon recalled the words of Beadle Cohen, his mentor:
sometimes souls seek refuge in the bodies of living persons, causing instability, speaking foreign words through their mouths.
Such lost souls, the beadle had maintained, were unable to transmigrate to a higher world because they had sinned against humanity.

You must live
his dybbuk's voices had told him.
You have not yet fulfilled your destiny.

Survival, Solomon! Therein lies your duty! There are things to be done that only you can do. Only God has the right to order the universe
.

God and not Hitler! he told himself bitterly. That madman and his insane designs on Madagascar had to be stopped. Hitler did not intend to make the island a homeland for Jews, a haven safe from a Europe that would like to obliterate them. It would not be a sanctuary but the world's largest prison camp. A place where Hitler could pen up Jewish assets and abilities and use them for his own evil ends. He remembered a joke Bruqah told him on the
Altmark
, which was no more funny now. Referring to a British pirate village that had once existed on the far side of Madagascar, he'd said, "This be the other side of Hell-ville."

How, Sol wondered desperately, are we to stop this insanity and escape at the same time?

"That awful man...the Zana-Malata!" Miriam whispered, slipping a hand up into Sol's and clutching her belly with the other as she rocked back and forth. "This place! I can't make it, Sol. I hurt. I...I hurt, Sol."

Stooping beside her, Bruqah put his hand on her stomach and tilted his head as if he were listening to something or someone. "Your baby will come soon, Lady Miri," he said. "You must rest."

Sol sat down on the grass, and placed his hands atop Miriam's, on her belly. How many days before the baby arrived? "We will escape this somehow," he said. "But we need to learn the terrain first, and gain strength."

"You speak wisely," Bruqah said, standing up. "When time comes, I help."

"What will you call the...our...child?" Sol asked Miriam, seeking more than anything to distract her.

She looked into his eyes, and he could see her love for him through her pain. "Erich, if it's a boy," she answered. "I must. I am his wife, by Hitler's law. If it's a girl? Erich doesn't want a girl--"

"What name would you choose for our daughter?"

"She will be...Deborah."

The three syllables seemed to tumble from her lips and hang in the hot, wet air.

"Deborah," Solomon repeated dreamily. Then his body tensed and a cobalt-blue light engulfed the space around him.

A girl of about eight fights against thin ropes that bind her, naked, to a carved wooden post almost twice her height. She runs her fingers along its chipped designs. Perhaps thirty other intricately carved posts are grouped behind her, each topped with the skull of an ox. In the background, beyond a flickering fire, stand monoliths and menhirs that evoke Stonehenge. Then, as though a sound machine were turned on, her voice breaks through into Sol's consciousness as she twists in terror against the ropes. "Help me, Papa. Help me!" she cries out. "I am Deborah. Why do you not know me!"