Hymn (23 page)

Kathleen lifted up a huge slice of white vibrant pork fat on the end of her fork. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I can't eat this. I'm on the F-Plan diet.'

Plainly irritated, Helmwige took the fork and shook the fat on to her own plate. She cut it up and ate it with gusto, juice running down her chin. ‘I've seen people kill each other for such food,' she said.

Lloyd put down his fork. ‘I guess that must have been before the days of nouvelle cuisine,' he remarked. Actually, if he had been able to eat the kind of heavyweight food that sustains Alsatian farmworkers, he probably would have found Helmwige's cooking very good. He tried a little of the cabbage and it was strong and savoury and delicious.

Lloyd and Kathleen picked at their food in silence for a few minutes, while Helmwige noisily devoured fat and sausage and potatoes and pickled cabbage. Occasionally Otto fastidiously ate another small piece of bread, or sipped a glass of Alsace riesling, but most of the time he sat at the head of the table as if he were waiting for something, but didn't know what. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and sighed.

Kathleen said, ‘Who is that young man?'

Otto turned to stare at her. ‘Are you speaking to me?'

‘Yes. I wanted to know who that young man is. The one who called us down to supper.'

‘He isn't anybody,' Otto replied.

‘What do you mean? Everybody's somebody.'

‘Not him. He belongs to a genealogical line which should never have existed. He is . . . what do you call it? . . . a freak, a mistake.'

‘He looks all right to me,' said Kathleen.

‘Of course!' Otto smiled. ‘Physically he is flawless. But inside his mind . . . well, who knows what goes on inside his mind. When you ask him where he lives, he says that he lives inside of a black sack. You can't take him out at night, because he keeps throwing stones at the moon, trying to hit it.'

‘Well, that's terrible,' said Kathleen. ‘He's so good-looking.'

‘A master race is not made up of looks alone,' Otto told her.

It was then that Lloyd raised his eyes from his half-finished meal and saw the symbol of the salamander inside the circle, and understood at last what it was that had been right in front of his eyes, and which he had failed to see. Master race. The salamander's head was crooked, its feet were crooked. If he half closed his eyes, he found that he was looking at nothing less than a swastika.

‘Let me explain what we are doing,' said Otto. ‘It won't do any harm, since you will be staying here until the Transformation is over.'

Helmwige, with her mouth full, rolled her eyes up at Otto's predictability. She gestured with her fork at Kathleen's plate and said, ‘Mmm-hm, mm-hmm!'—encouraging her to eat up.

Otto said, ‘In 1936, as soon as he was appointed Chancellor, Hitler commissioned doctors from many different scientific disciplines to explore the possibility of creating a master race, based on the natural supremacy of the Aryan. Immediately these doctors set to work in their laboratories and their hospitals, trying to breed perfect little babies.'

He sat back in his seat, and interlaced his fingers. ‘Der Führer also asked me to contribute to this programme. I was very young in those days, a philosophy student in Basel, but already I had shown my interest in the National Socialist ideals, and come to the attention of Josef Goebbels. It was Goebbels who recommended me to Hitler.

‘I pursued other ideas, quite different from breeding babies. I was a thinker, not a farmer! Besides, I thought breeding was too slow, too uncontrollable! Der Führer wanted to change the racial characteristics of the world in a decade, not wait for the unpredictable results of several centuries!

‘How many generations does it take to produce children who are blond and beautiful and possess the required size of brainpan? And what guarantee would you ever have that these perfect creatures would grow up capable as well as beautiful?

‘No . . .' he said, smiling as he sipped his wine. ‘I was searching for a master race that was guaranteed not only to be beautiful and mentally brilliant, but also to be ready within a matter of years, perhaps months, perhaps even weeks! That meant selecting people who had already shown themselves to have these desirable characteristics. Not breeding babies, you see, but transforming adults.'

He scraped back his chair, and stood up. ‘I spent years and years at Salzburg University, looking for a way. I searched right back in history and legend, right back to the days of the Vikings, looking for any kind of clue. At last I began to come across references to a Transformation ceremony in Northern Jutland, in which the bravest and most intelligent people in several communities were burned alive in order that they might never die.

‘If the proper ritual was observed, the fire did not destroy them, but transfigured them, immortalized them. In other words, the Danes were burning alive their best people to preserve them for ever, and to make them the founding members of a pure and immortal race. They had tried to preserve people before, by pressing them into their peat-bogs, but without success. The answer was fire!'

Kathleen looked across the table at Lloyd, but the expression on her face was one of apprehension, not disbelief. They had both seen enough of Otto's abilities to know that at least some of what he was saying must be true.

‘In Salzburg I also came across previously unpublished diaries by Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century alchemist, who had proved to his own satisfaction that there is a direct physical and mystic connection between life and fire. Both life and fire fed on other lives, but if they were combined they created first a life that was fire, and then, at the moment of complete Transformation, a fire that was life.

‘This was my breakthrough! I searched libraries in Leipzig and Dresden and London, too, and time and time again I came across references to the life-giving properties of fire. I discovered that when a living human being is burned, there is a Norse ritual which ensures that the soul and the fire combine, to form a half-being which I call a Salamander, after the legendary lizard which hides itself in the hottest recesses of blacksmiths' forges.

‘Salamanders are highly volatile. They can be as cool as flesh or as hot as fire, according to their temperament. They are susceptible to spontaneous combustion, so they have to keep themselves masked from the air. Hence the scarves, and the coats, and the gloves. Too much oxygen, and they can burn like phosphorus. Like Walpurgis night!'

He paused, and cleared his throat. His snake-yellow eyes seemed to be focused not just on something else but on somewhere else. Another time, another place, when fires had burned at night, and black-and-red banners had flapped, and voices had roared like the sea.

Helmwige finished eating, and began noisily to clear away this dishes. Otto said, ‘The Transformation Ceremony must take place at the summer solstice, when the forces of the earth are at their strongest. I am not talking about magic here, or mysticism! These forces are gravitational and magnetic and psychokinetic—measurable forces, which have controlled the balance of the planet Earth for millions of years.

‘The ancient music must be played, and the ancient words must be sung. Then the Salamanders will become flesh. Not just flesh, but immortal flesh! And flesh that still has the power of fire!'

Lloyd nodded toward Helmwige. ‘Is she . . .?'

Otto nodded. ‘Immortal, and blessed with the power of fire. You felt her fingers on your wrist. But she is no use to me, as a propagator of the master race. She was a camp doctor of Ohrdruf during the war, and she caught some filthy Semitic disease which left her barren. It would have killed her, if she hadn't agreed to be burned.'

Lloyd swallowed, in an effort to control the revulsion that Otto aroused in him. ‘So when somebody's burned, with all the appropriate chants, they cheat whatever illness they have, and live for ever?'

Otto smiled. ‘Ach so, Mr Denman. You learn quickly. Because—until it has unequivocally been shown to be true—who could you convince to burn themselves alive but those who know that they are terminally ill?'

‘Like Marianna, with her breast cancer?' asked Lloyd.

Otto nodded. ‘And your husband, Mrs Kerwin. He was suffering from a brain tumour which would have killed him within six or seven months.'

‘So that was why he was so depressed after his medical,' said Kathleen, shocked.

‘Dr Kranz referred him directly to me,' said Otto. ‘In South California, there is a whole network of doctors of German background who refer their terminal patients directly to me. Because, what choice do these people have? To die a mundane death, having achieved nothing at all? Or to become immortal, and to change the whole course of human history? That is why they agree to burn themselves alive. That is why they agree to become Salamanders.'

‘But Celia wasn't sick,' Lloyd protested. ‘She never even caught a cold.'

Otto laughed. ‘They always say, don't they, that the husband is the last to find out! Or, in your case, the husband-to-be. Your beloved Celia was very sick, Mr Denman. The only thing was that she was desperate that you didn't find out. You would have insisted that she go for treatment. She would never have had the opportunity to do what she did. Where could she have found petrol and matches, in a clinic? Or at home, under your watchful eye?'

‘What was wrong with her?' asked Lloyd, his mouth as dry as a torn-open kapok mattress.

Otto turned away for a moment, as if he hadn't heard, but then he turned back and said, ‘Multiple sclerosis. Gradual wasting, gradual loss of muscular control, inevitable early death.'

‘I don't believe you. You killed her!'

‘Do you want to see Dr Warburg's records? I have them all in my files. You're not a doctor of course, but perhaps you noticed that when you stroked the soles of her feet, her great toe bent upwards, and her toes spread apart? That's the Babinski sign. In normal people, when you stroke the soles of their feet, the toes bend downwards.'

Otto couldn't have said anything more telling. Lloyd could clearly remember stroking her feet one night when they were making love, and noticing the way her toes spread out. ‘How do you do that?' he had asked her. ‘I can't do that!'

She had smiled and kissed him, and said, ‘I hope you never find out.'

Lloyd was shaken. ‘She had multiple sclerosis? And that was for sure?'

‘That was for sure,' Otto replied. ‘She could never have given you the children you wanted, she could never have been anything else but an invalid wife. Your married life together would have been a tragedy.'

‘So she burned herself? She turned herself into one of these—what do you call them—Salamanders?'

‘That is correct. That is what she is now. But when we hold our Transformation Ceremony at the summer solstice, she will become flesh, or flesh of a kind. Fire transformed into life. You will have her back, Mr Denman, never fear—and with the threat of illness erased for ever!'

Lloyd said, ‘All of those people on the bus? Were they sick, too?'

‘Every one of them. Some had years to live, some no more than weeks. But they had all decided that the way of the Salamander was the way for them, and they were prepared to suffer the pain of burning in the hope of the life everlasting.

‘They had faith, Mr Denman. They were like Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who defied King Nebuchadnezzar and stepped into the burning fiery furnace. In fact, there is historical evidence that the Babylonians in the sixth century before Christ had a ritual which was very similar to the Salamander ritual.'

Lloyd asked tautly, ‘Why did Celia burn herself alone, when everybody else was burned together on the bus?'

‘Celia was impulsive, Mr Denman. You know how impulsive she was. We were driving her back downtown after our last meeting when she suddenly said, “Now, let's do it now.”

‘I argued with her. I asked her if she was sure. But she insisted. She wanted to do it immediately.'

‘And you let her,' Lloyd said, his voice as dull as a ‘53 nickel.

Otto's hand was spread flat on the table. His fingernails were ridged and chalky. ‘I had no choice, Mr Denman. It takes so much for a person to build up the confidence to set fire to themselves. How do you express it? They have to be “on a high”. At that moment, driving along Rosecrans Avenue, Celia reached that peak. She had to burn herself then and there, or else she may never have done it. We stopped at the petrol station and bought a jerrycan and five gallons of petrol, and the rest you know.'

Lloyd didn't know what to say. Celia had summoned up the courage to burn, Celia had summoned up the courage to change her life, Celia had summoned up the courage to become immortal. But she hadn't confided in him, her husband-to-be. Hadn't said a word. He didn't know who had failed whom. Maybe he had failed Celia, because he hadn't recognized that she was sick. Maybe Celia had failed him, because she hadn't trusted him to help her.

He could have nursed her, he could have taken care of her. But maybe she hadn't wanted nursing. Maybe she hadn't wanted him to take care of her. Maybe she had wanted what she had always wanted. Independence, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness, no matter what.

Helmwige came into the room, bearing a huge cut-glass bowl filled with aggressively pink trifle.

‘Wait, wait,' Otto told her. ‘We can have that later. Let me show Mr Denman the Salamanders who are awaiting the solstice with the same impatience that he is.'

‘Your pride will be the death of you one day,' Helmwige replied.

‘And your insolence will see you burn!' Otto rapped back.

Helmwige bared her teeth at him. ‘Remember which one of us is immortal, Otto. I shan't be laying any flowers on your grave.'

Otto pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Come with me,' he told Lloyd and Kathleen, and led the way out of the dining-room. They hesitated for a moment, glancing at Helmwige, but Helmwige was already spooning a vast triangular cliff of bright pink trifle on to her plate, and she didn't seem to be interested in what they were doing at all.