John Hawkes - The Cannibal

She rummaged through the flabby thing, like a peddler’s sack, and there, beneath the newspapers and photographs, sure enough, under the soiled shirt, near the bottom on a pair of black shoes, it lay, wrapped in old Christmas tissue.

“Here.” He patted the pillow near his cheek, “Here,” he said in bliss.

She put the carving of Christ, almost as large as his head, on the pillow. She waited as if for something to happen. How peculiar, the wooden man and fleshless God, they kept good company. Then she remembered: on the mountain she too lay by Christ, and it was a mistake!

Suddenly he coughed and the little statue rolled over, its arms and legs thrown wide in fear.

“Here,” she said, “now drink this, drink it.” For a moment it looked as if he would recover. Then, no, no, he smiled again and all was lost. Stella crossed her soft dark knees.

The guard did not bother to open the door for Gerta and Herr Snow, but whistled and wondered at the old woman’s return, while the soldier and his girl pushed alone into the darkness of the wide downstairs hall. For a moment, Gerta stood uncertainly in the middle of the vacant foyer, listening for the sounds of the dead, with Herman leaning, drugged, on her arm. She could hear the guard, the last guard, behind her shuffling about on the other side of the door. Herman breathed heavily in the darkness, his weight sagged, she could see nothing. Then she heard them, those dead two, master and mistress, and far overhead she saw a line of light and heard the tinkle of glass, ghosts in their cups.

She wanted to shut the soldier, shirt off, shoes off, into her room with all night, every night for no telling how long, before her. But she began to lead him toward the light. Mistake, mistake to bring such a tender man, so close to popping, within the realm of unwanted, unexpected guests — to let the steam off the wrong end, the end of white, flat apprehension. And she too, by walking up the stairs, was holding off. As they neared the top, he tripped once, twice, and Gerta began to cross the line from love to nurse, from grand-sharer to assistant.

It was Fraulein Stella’s room. They waited before the door.

The trains were still arriving. Under cover of darkness, small and squat, they emptied themselves of soldiers home on leave. In the dark the girls milling on the platform could not tell whether the trains were full of passengers, perhaps men, or empty. Signals crossed, whistles argued out of the stops of tangled rail, “Train from 31, train from 9, let me pass, I’m carrying wounded.” “Wait, you’ll have to wait, 31, there are dogs in front.”

Gerta could hear the whistles far out in the night. They were long and old-fashioned and far away.

“Do you hear the dogs?” Ernst spoke, hands picking at the covers.

“Of course, dear husband.”

He could hear them barking among the boat whistles in the middle of the night.

Stella mixed the potions and wondered about the hour, what could she do when the hour stopped? All about her the phials, the wads of cotton, the handbook of medical instruction, were out of reach, too slow. There was nothing she could do against it, she lost her place in the handbook. All the soft embrace of the mountain was gone, all the humor of his saber wounds was healed; he was stitched and shrouded in that impertinent, unthinking smile. He grew thinner, and staring her full in the face with his three fingers twitching helplessly on the cover, he gagged.

They heard the scratching at the door and at first they thought it was the wind, only the comforting night air.

“Now, what’s she doing here,” thought Gerta as she stepped into the patient’s room with her lover behind.

The red-bearded devil leaned across the bed, staring at the man with a toothache. Herman looked from his son to Stella, the lovely girl, from the colored bottles to the boarded window, and back to the majestic bed.

“He’s not sick!” and the devil roared with laughter, his desire for Gerta flickering out in spasms of recognition of his foe, the bedded influenza.

He had horns. Terrible, agonizing, deformed short stubs protruding from the wrinkled crown, and the pipes he held in his fiery hands were the pipes of sin. All of the calm of Heaven evaporated and at the last moment, not knowing what it was all about, Ernst recognized Old Snow. And in that moment of defense, of hating the devilish return of boisterous heroic Herman, Ernst died without even realizing the long-awaited event; in that last view of smallness, that last appearance of the intruder, Ernst, with his mouth twisted into dislike, died, and was reprieved from saintliness. The old man still laughed, “Feigning, he’s only feigning!” Stella was irritated with his ignorance, at least this father could rise to the dignity of the occasion by admitting the fact of death. But no, he chuckled and looked stupid.

Herman paid for his mirth, for it had stolen his son and his stamina. He slept uncomfortably with Gerta in the room which she felt was much too small for the rest of the night.

The guard, Stella found, managed in the morning to fulfill her final obligation to the dead. The disbelief and anger were still on the fencer’s face as he was carried from the house, saved by the grace of his own ill-luck and ill-will.

Jutta awoke with the vision of spectacles and hood still in the abbey room and out of the weak unending dream, she heard the tinkle of the goodnight bell, while the pain in her arms and legs was numbed by her victory; for Superior was gone.

“Jutta, Jutta, go to bed,” but she discounted that voice. The last authority was gone. Superior, rebuffed, sat at her desk down the hall, unable to write, so angry, the cowl that covered her fierce shaved head tossed aside on a chair. The waiting woman stared in concern at the nun turned monk.

Jutta tried to move, but could not, and stayed for a moment, her face turned to the floor, rising from the squeamish pit of the too-easy psalm and too-easy dying bone. She opened her eyes. “There are enemies even within our own State,” she remembered and wondered why the Oberleutnant didn’t stop Superior, and she was glad to know, being allowed to wake once more, that life was not miraculous but clear, not right but undeniable. How narrow and small was the suffocating Superior with part of each day spent bartering with the miraculous medal salesman. Jutta felt, being once more back in the cell where Gerta put her, uncomfortably sick and very tired. She would try to reach the cot.

The nunnery, high and safe within the meek heart, far from the blockade at sea, rested confident and chaste in the middle of the night, spreading its asylum walls outwards over a few bare feet of uninhabited dry earth. Safe, within the Allied querulous dragnet, because a taste of faith was all the inmates knew, because over the years, the hearts grew large and the stomachs naturally small, safe, with the cyclical event of mother, girl, and vanity thrown out. The old white barn rocked gently in the cloudy night. The moss had grown thin, turned brown, and died on the mud walls, water no longer trickled and grew thick in the well, the sand could hardly lift itself through the halls at night on the wind’s back, but still in the morning and evening, bells faithfully chimed out the remote and tedious day. “Father, save me,” thinking of the girls, “from these merciless infidels,” said Superior, and leaning forward, she shrouded herself in darkness and sat for a long while with her pains and troubles by the window.

An oyster shell on the beach far away was shrouded in oil, coming in off the treacherous tide. The dogs barked.

“Perhaps I should call a doctor,” thought the Oberleutnant bending over the sick girl, but at that moment she stirred, and besides, he remembered, the old horse that used to be in the stables and could have made the journey to the surgeon’s house, was dead.