John Hawkes - The Cannibal

Ernst began to look for Herman. He didn’t want to look for the old man, conscripted father, but felt, as a citizen, that the soldat should be met. He looked under the blankets, in the wagons, scrutinized the ranks, walked faster and faster but did not find Herr Snow.

“Ernst, my dear husband, wait, aren’t we going in the wrong direction?”

“Where would you expect to find him, except in this way? All soldiers come here and go in this direction.”

Every half-hour the trains slowed to a stop in the stockyards, tired brakemen swung to the ground while troops hurried from the cars; each half-hour the streets were more filled with tattered capes and swinging arms, and musette bags and boxes left forgotten on corners. All the soldiers appeared to think that someone was meeting them, and smoking their first cigarettes, hand grenades still in their belts, they appeared to enjoy searching, at least for a while. In any other place but das Grab they would not be so joyous. The musicians who had played at the Sportswelt were gathered about an upper window of an empty room and soldiers nearing from the distance heard the tune, caught it, sang it until they passed, and then forgot it. There was at that one place before the window some music. Ernst looked a long while for his father, leading Stella halfway around the city before they finally reached the house.

Beyond the outskirts of the grave, beyond the locked barns at the edge of town, beyond the open doorways and colored stock — out past those hundred miles of fields and cow sheds where old Herman had met his fill and lost his supper in the ditch — out past those last outposts and signal stations, far out to sea, the American Blockade turned first one way and then another in the fog. A few more crates and a barrel and orange or two sank away in the foam. There was no noise in this well-organized blockade field except the cold sound of the waves and the slapping of an oar, locks outward, against the blue tide.

Evidently Gerta was out and the house was empty. Stella, weary of the cold and the long march, glad to keep their voices, questions, and songs away from the day of homecoming, let the door sag-to past the sleeping sentry and, lantern in hand, helped her returning husband up the wide dark stairs. While the trench mortars out of town approached and stopped, then continued on, she felt his small burning cheek and, stooping, unbuttoned his fluttering shirt.

Gerta trudged with her thin legs cold among the boys, her wig tied on with a yellow ribbon, her skirt caught up at her black and blue hip, an old ungracious trollop, a soldier’s girl. She would have nothing to do with the blind ones, they frightened her. But she’d met a boy the day before and dried his dressing, sang to keep up her spirits while pushing another along in his red box. She was hurried along, talking in a loud voice, in the throng, now and then her hand falling on a damp shoulder or into a loose pocket. The red box rattled on its cart wheels, bandages turned grey with coal dust, whistles called from the tangled depot, and soaked oranges sank slowly through the ocean’s thick current. The pockets, she found, contained only the photographs of the deceased.

Two days after arrival, each trainload of men, smiles gone, hair long, found themselves foodless and the tin pans banged at their belts, the queues turned away. But as each group became hungry and camped on the doorsteps, a new load arrived, singing, watching, laughing, waiting to be met. The new laughers filtered through the despondent men; shops were empty but hung with new regimental flags, and as the laughers became, in turn, pale and confused, as last loaves were eaten and crusts lost, more laughers filtered in, singing, pushing, looking about das Grab for the first time. Gerta bumped from one to another, laughed, was carried up and down among the krank and lost, among the able but gaunt, among the young or bald. No one who walked these connected streets was old; the aged had been blown indoors. Suddenly the Sportswelt loomed ahead.

“Try this, try this, try this,” she cried, and rifle butts were pitted against the sealed door, a window broke like the breast of a glass doll. They entered the place, weak and shouting, while the blonde trollop found her way out back to catch her breath.

The corridor made by the rock walls down to the open latrine, was filled with wind-blown pieces of paper, and across the walls the tables were overturned, the lawns long and the valor-petals dry. Returning from the pea-green pit of stench, Gerta almost stumbled where the Merchant fell, cocoon in his mouth, beams on his chest, months before. Her wooden shoes clicked on the green stones, skirts swung from the sides of her sharp hips. Gerta took a cigarette from a tin box hidden in her blouse, the smoke trailed into the garden and over the dead leaves.

The family was all dead. The Father, the victor, with a cocked hat and pot, had long ago wished her well. The Mother lay in the cold bunker of the street, cinders falling over the rough chin. The Sons, no longer to be with Nanny, having no longer spurs to tinkle against their boots since spurs were always removed before the body was interred, had never been parted and both lay under the wet surface of the same western road. So now alone, she wore her skirts above her knees and her bright lopsided lips were red with the glistening static day of das Grab; for she had survived and hunted now with the pack.

The blonde, the old nursemaid, pinched her cigarette and went back to the hall. The vandals, with tunics itching on bare chests, with packs paining and eyes red, with rifles still riding strapped to packs, searched, pawed over the dust, sat leaning against the rafters and waited. They seemed to think the orchestra would pick up, the lights flare on; they waited for the singer. The chairs were not made to sit on, the tables were against the walls, and the dust, lately stirred and tossed in the cold light, settled on the darkening planks. A cat called from one of the upstairs empty bedrooms and disappeared. Several white shoes, chair legs, hands, scraped against grey puttees. These were not looters who carried swag on their shoulders and trinkets in their arms, they did not scrounge and run. They searched as if for something in particular, walked softly about the bare room. The girls were gone with the Schnapps . The soldiers crowded together, tossed a few periodicals and lists of the dead, to the middle of the stage, and walked up and down the green carpet while the wheels rolled against the snow. They were now taught methodically to meet the train with blistering paws, and iodine stained their green cuffs.

Gerta laughed as she leaned close to an old hatless soldier who dozed far back in the chair, head to one side, shoulders caught against the rungs. His red beard was clipped unevenly, his wedding ring, tight about a dirty finger, was green. His nails were chewed like those of a young girl. His discharge papers rose out of his upper pocket blue and torn, and the paper disks hanging near his throat turned from red to black in the changing light. She touched his knee.

“Captain, have you a match?”

The eyes opened, the lips were moistened, they shut.

“No.” The answer came in low bar-owner’s German. He folded his thick hands together and slept.

“Have you come home to be rude to a lady?”

A shawl was miraculously unearthed from a bare corner, the black beads hung over a soldier’s back. Cold air swept about the walls.

Slowly, eyes still shut, the big man’s hand moved towards a pocket, the weight shifted slightly, the hand went deeper, the face was unshaven, dark, still passive. With another movement, he emptied his pocket on the table, the hand dropped back to his side and did not swing, but hung straight and unmoving. Among the dull coins, the knife, the tube of ointment, the cerulean clipping, the bits of wire, Gerta found a match and flicking it beneath the table, cursed and broke its head for being damp.