The Sun Is God (26 page)

“They were trying to escape. I was a guard. They were starving. That's all. Hungry. Watching their children starve.”

“You were the guard of a prison camp?”

“A
concentration
camp. A guard. They gave me a medal. For killing them. For killing them all.”

“I'm sure you did what you thought was best. You had no choice.”

“We all have a choice. The law does not allow . . . does not allow . . .”

“What?”

“The law does not allow duress as an excuse for murder.”

“You were at war, Herr Prior.”

“War . . . yes.”

Engelhardt's bony hand on his forehead. “It's all right, Will, it's all right.”

He chanted a blessing.
Om shanti om.
Om shanti om. Om shanti, shanti
.
The peace that passeth all understanding.

“Join us, Will. Leave your troubles back in the dead world.”

“I can't join you.”

“Consider it, Will. That world is dying. That world is dead. “Cunning is the water and the rock. On that black coast there is no walker and no voice.” They are all doomed. Only we shall live. Consider it.”

Will looked at him.

Ink-stained beard. Gaunt cheeks. But his eyes were gentle, kind, sincere. The sun was down behind the coconut grove and from the east the sky was a darkening purple.

“No. I won't do it.”

Engelhardt sighed. “Think on it.”

“No!”

“I must tell you that you can expect no help from your navy pilot. We flew the quarantine flag and he understood and scampered back on board his ship.”

“More lies!”

“The truth. Here, Will, drink this.”

“What is it?”

“It is for your own good. It will help you sleep,” Engelhardt said and left.

The sun sinking into the plantations

The sun under the Earth's curve. Dusk. Night.

Will riding into the dark on the broom of a night witch.

“Out there, Will, God has abandoned man,” Fräulein Schwab said.

“But here see him along the backbone of the sky,” Harry said. “We read his numbers in the quipu of the Inca, in the Parikarma of the Jain. A paper in the new
Annalen der Physik
: ‘Ist die Tragheit eines Korpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhangig?'
”

“Now that we have uncovered God's secret,
we
may become gods.”

“Energy and matter are one.”

Harry gave Will rainwater from a coconut husk. “Do you see, Will? We can live on the sun alone. We have always known it. We have merely forgotten how.”

“The navy will come for me.”

“No one is going to come for you. The Malagan watches out for us. Protects us. Gives us eternal life. We have been poor devotees. She cannot have been content with the blood of mere animals . . .”

“It is no use, Anna, he's a fool. I saw it from the moment he stepped onto our beach.”

Night.

The yellow moon.

Stars.

Orion, crazily inverted.

Must stay awake. Concentrate.

A conversation on the far side of the piazza.

“Miss Pullen-Burry, you are either with us or you are against us.”

“You must do as you see fit, it is not my affair,” Miss Pullen-Burry said.

Miss Pullen-Burry!
Will thought, suddenly remembering her.

Only one eye would open. He struggled against the rope but he was still tied fast to the Malagan.

Jürgen and Miss Pullen-Burry were standing next to one another, holding hands like bride and bridegroom. Schreckengost said something to her in a whisper. She nodded and stroked his arm affectionately.

“You will help us?” Engelhardt asked in a murmur.

“I am content to watch, sir. Ceremonies of these kinds have always been fascinating to me. I saw something similar in Jamaica, long ago,” she said, and then for emphasis she raised a finger, “but I will take no part in violence. That is not my way.”

Bradtke looked at Engelhardt but that, apparently, was good enough for him.

They would make her play her part when the time came. All must be complicit here.

“Miss Pullen-Burry! You can't let them kill us!” Will yelled at her.

Everyone turned to look at him. Miss Pullen-Burry shook her head. “This is not my concern, Mr. Prior. I am a guest here on Kabakon and as such I respect their ways and local customs.”

“They will never let you go! You will have to stay here forever!” Will said desperately.

“Why would I want to go, Mr. Prior? Why would I want to go when I found here everything that I have been looking for in all my travels?”

Jürgen smiled and put his arm about her.

“No! Go get help!” Will croaked.

Miss Pullen-Burry walked over to him. Her face was pitiless. “You have got yourself into this pickle, Mr. Prior. It is not for me to get you out. You will have to bear the consequences. You have abused your position as a guest on this island. Abused it most severely. I am sorry for you. But there is nothing that I can do or indeed would do to help you.”

She shook her head and walked out of his eyeline.

“You've all gone mad! Eventually the authorities will come. Are you going to kill the whole German navy?” he said.

“They will believe what we tell them,” Harry said.

“They're going to kill you, Miss Pullen-Burry! They're going to kill you too!”

“Be quiet, you have caused enough trouble! Silence him!”

They hit Will with bamboo canes until he was cowed into silence.

The voices were fading.

He was fading.

His body ached. His forehead burned with fever.

Rain. Terrible rain.

Will looked in the puddle. He sobbed in its mirror. He went through the mirror to the other side.

“Siwa!” he sobbed. “Siwa! I need you!”

He and Kessler were dragged into a hut.

There were drums.

Will opened his one uninjured eye.

“Someone please help us! Get the militia, get the police!” he croaked, but the nearest German police officer was in distant Samoa, two thousand sea miles to the east, and as he sobbed into the darkness, he knew that there was no help coming.

21

SOUTH BY THE SICKLE MOON

L
emon sea. Golden sea. Sleepwalkers come! Quickly now. Between the acts. We will go on the sweet waters. We will ride the black waves. We will escape the shadow and the copper knives.

Star fish, chiagra spider shells, wet, volcanic sand between your toes.

Twenty quick steps and finally the surf. Surf like a drummer, like a highland drummer proudly leading the Argyles into some surrendered frontier town.

The tide reaching its apogee. Sea around your ankles.

A thrill of early memory—the bathing huts at Brighton: the big ungainly girl swimming beyond the boldest men, free in the Channel, free for the first time.

The outrigger and the paddle are where you left them and beginning to lift.

You look out. New Britain is not far. Nine or ten miles.

The lights twinkling in the distance may even be Queen Emma's house.

Now is the time. Now or never. You take a breath. The smell of sea birds. Rotting fish. Now is the time. But you are afraid. Afraid for your life. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Spencer have convinced all right thinking people that there will be no reward for virtue; both just and unjust will be extinguished for all eternity by cruel death. And these men will surely kill you if you attempt to thwart them. Just as they killed Lutzow and Bethman and who knows how many other Kanak and Europeans.

You're trembling. You feel tears. You bite your lip.

The memories come unbidden. Stifling schoolrooms. Miss Thackeray beating the lesson into you with the willow cane.

England expects every man to do his duty . . .
And woman too.

You shove the canoe over the sandbar. It moves more easily than you were expecting. Of course it will be heavier with you and a passenger, but by then the tide will be at its maximum.

You turn and walk briskly back over the sand and lava rock.

You have a momentary doubt. Perhaps you should just save yourself. Now.

No. No, you can do all of it. You have power. The island has made you strong. It has given you the combination to your embryonic lock. You must at least save Prior, an Englishman, a fellow subject of the King.

You walk into the settlement of the immortals. The Augustburg.

The moon in its first quarter peers between the clouds. Your body, covered in clothes and clay and black soil, is invisible in the dark, but you wait anyway for the satellite to hide herself.

Drums, real now, and a fiddle. In the huts people preparing for the ad hoc ceremony. Daubing themselves with paint, drinking arak, sharpening knives.

There has been blood spilled and there will be more.

Two figures (Helena? Fräulein Schwab?) near the altar in the midst of frenzied copulation. You ignore them and walk to the hut you now share with Jürgen.

He is lying on the bed, exhausted from his work harvesting coconuts with Denfer, and from the heroin he consumed at dinner.

You lie next to him.

“Ah, Bessie, my own dear Bessie,” he says and kisses you.

There is no easy way to bring it up, but bring it up you must.

“Jürgen, I've been meaning to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“Lutzow.”

“Yes?”

“It was Bethman wasn't it?”

“Bethman what?”

“It was Bethman who killed Lutzow. You helped didn't you? You and Misha, but it was Bethman's plan. You wouldn't do something like that of your own volition would you?”

“Of course not, Bessie! All we did was turn him over and hold him down while Bethman forced his head into the bucket of water. It was over very quickly. He was dying anyway. It was a mercy.”

“But people have been known to recover from malaria haven't they? Bethman couldn't risk that could he?”

“No.”

“Why not? Because Lutzow was threatening to go back to Germany and write bad things about the Sonnenorden?”

“Bethman was worried for himself not us. As usual!”

“Why? Some scandal in his past?”

“It doesn't matter, Bessie.”

“Something about his doctoring?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Was he . . . ?”

You suddenly remember Bethman's conversation at breakfast that morning. The look on his face when he talked about Malthus.

“He was an abortion doctor wasn't he? Did he flee some scandal in Germany and feared that Lutzow would bring the authorities down on his head?”

“It was something like that, but it—”

“More than a scandal! A crime! A woman who died after Doctor Bethman's ministrations?”

“Abortions! Crimes! What does it matter if that whole world is aborted, or if a million Lutzows die? We have left that world behind, Bessie!”

“It wasn't Bethman's original plan though was it? He wanted to inject Lutzow with heroin didn't he? But Engelhardt kept the heroin in his hut and
he
did not believe in euthanasia.”

“Why do we talk of these sad events? It is the past! It has gone!” he says brusquely.

“You're quite right, Jürgen,” you say, slipping under his arm and getting out of the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“Just a brief walk. The night is so lovely. I shall be back presently.”

You run to the hut next to the forge.

You find Will, naked, half asleep on the floor. His eyes are yellow, his lips blue. There are cuts and bite marks on his arms and back. They have bound his hands behind his back with hemp rope.

You examine the knot. It is not one of those your father taught in his periods of lucidity. You pull at it but it is tight and secure.

The only solution is Alexandrian.

“A knife,” you mutter to yourself.

Will wakes, whimpers a little, but does not recognize you.

You look around the hut, but with Teutonic efficiency they have removed anything that can be used to cut bonds.

He looks at you. His eyes are like those of an intelligent dog who senses something is not quite right.

“It's all going to be all right,” you tell him. You stroke his hair. He starts to cry. “There, there,” you say and kiss his forehead.

You lay his head gently on the floor and look for anything sharp at all.

You hear voices coming this way. What would the Germans do if they found you in here? There would be every chance that they would see through your pretense. They would have no choice but to add you to the sacrifice.

The voices are coming closer. Engelhardt and two others.

There is nowhere to hide in here. You look out through the doorway. Three of them, yes. Engelhardt, Harry, and one other. Perhaps you could make a dash for the trees, circle back around the camp through the jungle, and run for the beach.

There is no point wasting your strength thinking about that.

There is only Captain Kessler's Deutsches Heer bed up against the wall. In a libretto by Mr. Gilbert that is where you would hide yourself. Heart pounding, you run for the wall and crawl under the bed. It is utterly absurd. It doesn't cover your arms or your feet and if they look directly at you all is lost . . .

The men enter. “He has moved,” Harry says.

“Or someone has moved him,” Engelhardt says suspiciously.

“Get back over here,” Engelhardt mutters and you hear Will being dragged away from the door.

“He does not look well,” Harry says.

“I will remain here with him,” the other man says. Christian?

“If you wish,” Engelhardt says. “Come Harry.”

Engelhardt and Harry leave the cabin. The third man sits on the edge of the bed and begins humming to himself. You lie underneath him. Waiting.

He yawns and drapes himself on the bed, his head inches from your own. You can feel his weight on you.