Children of the Dusk (37 page)

Almost at once, a shadow fell across the congregation.

"
Manome
!" Hempel shouted, a word he had apparently practiced for the occasion. "
Sacrifice
! You want to pray? I'll give you a reason for prayer!"

Goldman continued to sing. Hempel unholstered his Mann and pointed it at the farmer.

"Leave him alone," Sol said. "This was my doing. You want me, so here I am."

Goldman tugged urgently at Solomon's arm. "Please, Rabbi."

Sol shook his head. "I can't let you die for me."

"Idiots! Now they're fighting to die." Hempel laughed. "You'll both get it eventually.
Ve-la
!" he shouted. "Punishment."

"May the Lord comfort you, together with all who mourn--" Goldman said, as the shot reached its mark.

Dying, he fell to the ground and finished the ancient litany of mourning, "--and bring you peace." With enormous effort, he lifted his head and, gazing at Sol, said, "
L'shanah habaa b'Yerushalayim,
my friend."
Next year in Jerusalem
.

He shut his eyes, shuddered, and lay still.

Hot tears ran down Solomon's face. Looking directly at Hempel, he said, "
May God never forgive you
."

Laughing, Hempel instructed two of the Jews to carry Goldman's body to one of the pandanus palms, its canopy a luxuriant umbrella in the bright light of the combined searchlights. There, the corpse was stripped naked. His hands were tied together with a length of concertina wire and he was hanged by them from one of the branches.

This can't be happening, Sol thought, looking around at the circle of Jews who had been led out of the ghetto to watch. He wanted to shriek aloud, to protest that he, and not his friend, should be the victim of this barbarism. It was only then that he noticed the continued absence of the Zana-Malata. The trainers had joined the spectacle, along with their dogs, which jumped and yelped around the body, tearing at their leashes and leaving Sol neither the time nor the stomach to speculate about the syphilitic's whereabouts.

"Release the dogs," Hempel commanded, from his favorite haunt beneath the tanghin tree,

The animals bounded forward. In a feeding frenzy, they tore at the bleeding body with savage intensity. Nothing was sacrosanct--head, hands, arms. In minutes, what was left of the legs was bloody and raw. One foot was gone, the other missing toes.

The guards shifted closer to the action, applauding and laughing whenever an animal made a particularly high leap. The trainers stood at the edge of the crowd, eyes expressionless and faces plaster-white in the glow of the moon and the searchlights, apparently unwilling to push past Hempel's men and attempt to control the shepherds.

The killings would go on and on, Sol thought, until the good Sturmbannführer denuded the island of Jews and all blacks except the Zana-Malata and the Kalanaro. Then the bloodlust would turn on itself, like a rabid dog chewing its own leg to the bone. In the end, Erich and the trainers would probably be impaled on sharpened poles, and Hempel would return to Goebbels to report how he had saved the Madagascar experiment from traitors, Jew-mongers, and dog-fuckers.

A dog pirouetted high in the air, tearing off a chunk of thigh as the guards roared their approval. Bright-eyed with self-satisfaction, the animal lifted its head and trotted off into the darkness, wolfing down the prize.

Chortling, a group of Kalanaro appeared. They danced around the body, kicking up clouds of dust and mimicking the shepherds. The dogs backed away, whimpering but persistent--hyenas hungry for a lion to finish with the kill.

"He who consumes his enemy, consumes power." Hempel meandered along the line of guards, smiling amiably. They parted as he came forward. The dogs padded to various points in their Zodiac circle, lay down, and peered up at Goldman.

"So as our friend would say," he put an arm across Johann's shoulders, and pointed toward the Zana-Malata's hut. "
Mihinana!
...Eat!"

Nobody moved to accept the invitation.

"That the strong must cull the weak is a necessary evil." Hempel's familiar, paternal smile had returned. "It is a natural law which our modern society tries to circumvent--to their ultimate dissolution. Darwin and our Führer have shown us a better way. The rules of the animal world, where life is its most pristine, are pure and immutable. Humanity must renew and espouse its beginnings if it hopes to survive."

Sol averted his eyes from what was left of Lucius Goldman. He wanted to walk away, to mourn the Hasid in private, but Hempel had started on one of his monologues, and there was to be no escape from it.

"I am a self-educated man." Hempel waved his cigar and strode along the edge of the circle as he pontificated. "Unlike the effete intellectuals at the universities, I was wise enough to know that I could not read all the books, nor would I want to. I, therefore, thoroughly studied only those tomes beside which all other books pale by comparison.
Mein Kampf
,
The German Military Arms Manual
,
The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes
.

"Thus I have been spared from the
Bible
. From what I've been told, that novel," this to snickering from Johann and the other guards, "is filled with lost tribes, lost innocents, paradise lost. Also lost minds, from the kind of people I've witnessed fooled by it.

"One thing about it does intrigue me, the fiction about a barefooted runaway named Daniel who calms a den of lions.

"So here we have a Daniel." With his cigar he indicated Solomon, whose heart immediately started to pound. "As a true believer he must know that, should we command the animals to tear Daniel apart, the beasts will be calmed by the power of prayer."

The guards laughed heartily but the trainers, apparently with some sense of what was to come, blanched.

"Like any good story, ours of this modern Daniel has a twist." He held out his hand and Johann placed in it a roll of paper similar to the one Hempel had read to Erich.

"In the judgement of this impartial court," Hempel read, "convened this twenty-third day of September, nineteen hundred and thirty nine, on the German Isle of the Jews, we hereby condemn to death by dismemberment the subhuman known by the slave name Solomon Isaac Freund, prisoner three seven seven zero four. Dismemberment shall occur at the rate of one joint per hour, said body part to be fed to the canine unit while the prisoner watches.
 
Signed, Sturmbannführer Jurgens Otto von Hempel, Commander-in-Chief of our master's and Führer's Southeast-African Felsennest Force, on behalf of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler."

There was another enthusiastic round of applause. Sol, who had shut his eyes, opened them a slit. He could see only watery blues and yellows, for tears of mourning had obscured what sight the disease had not affected.

"But first, a little sport," Hempel continued. "We work hard enough teaching the Jews to work that we certainly deserve a little play!"

He moved toward Sol. The dogs edged forward, sniffing at Sol's legs and growling. He forced himself to stand his ground and not to look at them.

"That's it, my shepherds." Hempel reached down to pat a dog on the head. "Get a good whiff of Jew stench. Remember it." He took hold of Sol's shoulders, and his lips broke into a fatherly grin. "What the dogs don't eat, my little Jew boy will," he said softly. "We're aware you've a soft spot for him, so we'll save him...."

He seized Sol's genitals, and tugged. Groaning from the pain, Sol lurched forward.

"This will be less satisfying than hanging your father was," Hempel said, letting go. "But then we must take our pleasure where and when we can."

Sol was so filled with hatred at the confirmation of what, in his heart, he had always known, that he felt no more physical pain. He rocked back on his heels.

"This one likes to run at the mouth!" Hempel looked over his shoulder toward the guards, and grinned broadly. "Well, let's see how fast the rest of him can run! Any bettors among you?"

Within moments, he outlined the rules of his game. Sol would have about a hundred-meter head start. Bets were placed according to how far the men thought he would get before the dogs brought him down. The edge of the forest various distances down the path, or the beach below. The
savoka
had the lowest odds at even money, the beach the highest at a-hundred-to-one. At the men's insistence, side bets were also placed according to how many hours they thought Sol would live once the dismemberment began.

Hempel turned his grin toward Solomon. "We'll take your ears and nose--but not your eyes--then carve you down to head and torso before we cut off your jewels and feed them to Misha. Perhaps that will serve to improve his performance."

If Sachsenhausen had taught Sol anything, it had given him the ability to distinguish between truth and idle threat where the Nazis were concerned. He had no doubt that the major fully intended to do exactly as he said. Only by refusing to fight his fear and letting his shoulders sag was he able to remain upright at all.

Hempel pushed his face close to Sol's, his breath hot and rank. "Ever been attacked by a dog?" he screamed.

The ferocity caught Sol by surprise. He started to shake his head and then managed, "No, Sturmbannführer."

"I can't hear you,
Hundescheiss
!" Hempel stabbed his index finger against Sol's voice box.

The attack knocked Sol back a step. Only power of will kept him from grabbing his throat and dropping to the ground. He tried to blurt back the answer, but retched. Hans Hannes had told him about how Hempel had arranged his own Olympics, on the Oranienburg grain fields. A hundred prisoners condemned to death for trivial offenses had been lined up single file while the major stood a quarter-kilometer away, pistol in hand. The men had been made to sprint, tearing off their clothes as they ran. Arriving at the "finish," the naked man would fall to his knees and kiss the major's boots as Hempel checked his stopwatch. The reward for a good run was that Hempel shot the man immediately. A poor time, or failure to treat the major's boots with proper respect, meant the flogging bull followed by death by slow-hanging.

"No, Sturmbannführer. I have never been attacked by a dog."

"How about by ten, then?" The major turned his head slightly and nodded to acknowledge the guards' roar of laughter. "No need to worry, though." He drew a pair of leather gloves from his hip pocket and began sliding them on, the rolled-up paper tucked in his left armpit. "If you fight well, I may even order the dogs away quickly. Lie there like the cowardly Jew you are and I may not be so humane." He touched Solomon's shoulder, almost tenderly. "Run well! Make the Fatherland and our odds-makers proud!"

Sol lifted his chin. If the Nazis expected him to plead or physically ready himself in some way, they were mistaken. He leaned forward slightly, one hand on his forward knee. Eyes keened, he peered into the darkness, his tunnel vision defining for him a running lane to the rain forest. Everything outside that avenue was insignificant. Dodging would waste precious steps and seconds, given the shepherds' ability to change direction instantly. His only hope was to gain enough lead before they were loosed. If he could make it into the water, he might have a chance.

If.

If sharks weren't present--or hungry. Or if the dogs did not elect to follow him into the sea.

"Prepare to release the dogs," Hempel said. Then to the animals, "
Mahlzeit
! Eat hearty! Now run, Jew. GO!"

Sol leapt forward, powered by desperation. For a time, all thought was gone. There was a dreamy quality to his running--an effortlessness despite the terror that squeezed at his diaphragm, draining him of oxygen. His legs pumped in fluid motion as he ran on feet made iron-hard by daily forty-kilometer agonies on the Sachsenhausen shoe-testing site. His breaths soughed from lungs strengthened and expanded by the
Altmark
's hellish heat. Though his awkwardness and Erich's jeers had kept him off the track team at Goethe, he was naturally blessed with a runner's lithe limbs.

On the wings of adrenaline, he headed for the jungle. Behind him, the dogs were barking, begging to be released, anxious for the chase and the kill. Once, he slowed just enough to glance over his shoulder. The guards and dogs were clustered together, within a blaze of searchlight. It surprised him somewhat that the searchlight was not attempting to track him, not that the dogs needed that kind of help. Other than his hope for the sea, he had no idea how to fool them or escape them, let alone defeat them.

With luck and a stick or stone, he might be able to fight off one or two, but eventually an animal would break through whatever makeshift defenses he might muster, and take him down. That would be the end of it, he thought, trying not to imagine what would come next.

If he only had time, a stone could be turned into a mace, a strip of branch a spear, a length of liana a garrote.

If...

He ran.

The jungle loomed, an upsurge of bamboo and palm trunks intertwined with lianas.

Then came the dogs. Their excited yelps hammered at him, spurring him, his running no longer smooth. He began to claw the air. His breathing raged like a bellows in his ears. When he glanced back over his shoulder, dark shapes with dark eyes bounded out of the light. Thorns tore at his calves and brambles ripped across his abdomen and chest as he raced onward, dodging sideways to skirt the larger, darker clumps, and using his arms to slash and bat away thinner shadows.