John Hawkes - The Cannibal

Jutta could not reach the cot, but slowly her anger and childish pain brought her back from the fleece-lined pit, and at that moment, she heard the bell in the tower ring three, heard Superior, who had rung it, padding back, feelings still hurt, to sit by the window. With a sudden lucky gesture, Jutta turned her head upwards, and in the dim light stared at the uncovered masculine chest of the Oberleutnant as he bent down, watching her on the floor.

Then, that night, she passed the crisis, and breath by breath, though scrutinized and unloved, she assumed more of life, still alone, more silent, colder than ever.

A few months after the death of Ernst, Stella gave birth to her fragile son, and while she was still on the bearing bed, Gerta and Herman took the child from her, carried it and kept it, down in the first-floor dark pleasure room where they had failed together that first night. Food became more scarce, and Stella never forgave the old woman for the stolen son. Hearing the dogs howling around the station at the port of entry to the grave, she thought, once more, of singing. The Christ carving had disappeared.

All during the day the villagers had been burning out the pits of excrement, burning the fresh trenches of latrines where wads of wet newspapers were scattered, burning the dark round holes in the back stone huts where moisture traveled upwards and stained the privy seats, where pools of water became foul with waste that was as ugly as the aged squatter. These earthen pots were still breathing off their odor of burned flesh and hair and biddy, and this strange odor of gas and black cheese was wafted across the roads, over the fields, and collected on the damp leaves and in the bare night fog along the embankment of the Autobahn . This smell not only rested over the mud, but moved, and with every small breath of air, the gas of mustard, soft goat pellets and human liquid became more intimate, more strong and visible in reddening piles. One’s own odor could always be sifted out and recognized, a disturbingly fresh stream in the turning ash, a personal mark that could be sniffed and known after midnight, sometimes as if the tongue were poking in the incinerator and the warm air curling about the hewn seat.

The three of us waited by the side of the road, stockingless feet burning and itching in our unlaced shoes, plucking at nostrils, listening to a wasted mongrel paw the leaves, hearing an occasional tile slide from a roof and fall to the mud with the swishing of a tail. The flats turned away before us, unpeopled, dark, an occasional shell-case filling with seepage, the fingers of a lost glove curling with dew. Behind us the ghosts left the stalled tank and filed downward toward the canal.

“He’s late,” said Fegelein.

“Yes.”

“No sleep for us then.”

“Wait, have patience,” I answered.

We crowded invisibly together with the road high overhead that extended far beyond this edge of town, and there were no precision transits or plumb lines to point the kilometers of travel or show the curve on the map where the blank spot of this town would be. We never ventured away, though we still wore the grey shirts and had signed our way to the outside world.

“It’s a good machine he’s riding,” said Fegelein.

“Don’t worry. I won’t shoot at it.”

“Good.”

“Remember, no talking. Stintz would be sure to say something when the next rider comes through in a month looking for this one.” I constantly had to give commands.

“In a month we’ll be ready.”

“Yes.”

“And the motorbike will be useful.”

“Yes.” I had to humor them.

In every town there are a few who, though they don’t remember how it came about, or how they returned, or when they went away, or what the enemy expects, gather together in the night to rise again, despite the obstacle of their own people or the swarming invader. Behind us the town grew smaller; the sleepers were cold and numberless.

“No one will see?”

“No,” I answered.

“I don’t want to go forward tonight; you mustn’t make me …”

“Stop that. You know there isn’t any forward.”

“I’m sorry.”

The cold night air quickened my hunger, and I put the thought out of mind, concentrated on the hunched man in goggles and helmet. Once the old horse clattered by above our ears and then moved off as if he smelled nothing, neither fresh grass nor humans nearby.

Jutta’s child watched in the window, her sharp eyes darting this way and that among the shadows, hands folded in her lap, knees drawn together, small and wide awake as children who follow the night very long after the usual time to sleep, quickened and tense with the unexpected hours, wretched small keepers. But she did not see her brother, the fairy, nor any forms crawling along the street among the ends of broken pipe. She watched for a light, a swinging lantern, or any recognizable animal or man in the bare branches and felt that she must wait and watch, for she knew that all were not asleep. She waited for Jutta as a child would, and saying nothing she called her mother home. What was the hour? No one could know because there were no clocks. She knew the time by intuition, this dark time, as a thing that ended only with sleep. She knew that one could never see the morning come, and only by turning away, by hiding, would the night leave. For a long while it had been quiet below, from the time Herr Stintz stopped playing his horn until now, and by a few unnatural sounds, the rustling of cloth, the dropping of a shoe, she knew he was no longer asleep. He was fetching his stick. Jutta didn’t like him either, because he could commit no crime nor act strongly, but could only bring harm. The child heard the splash of water and then waited, hearing him walk the length of his cage and unlock the door.

The fairy, out of sight, was running for his life. She was afraid to look at him and barely made a gesture as if to touch the window, thinking to strike up a light.

“It’s very late for a little girl to be out of bed, away from the covers, the nice warm quilt.”

“I’m waiting for my brother.”

“But you should sleep, because the moon doesn’t like little girls to look into his bed. The moon sleeps in the world, a very strong man, and God has given him no covers.”

“He’s not sleeping tonight.”

Mr. Stintz could only bring harm; she knew he carried the stick, but knew that little girls were safe because they were the ones who waited and never moved. If she moved, the paw would break off her wing and catch her by the leg.

“Oh,” she said, “there’s my mother.”

“Why don’t you,” he said, “why don’t we look for the moon quickly?”

She heard the door shut gently. Death is in the breaking of a lock, a cut in the skin, it comes with a cough and leaves before the plaster is dry on the chest. Stintz drove the boys in the rain and made the girls repeat and repeat their lessons in the old schoolroom, and no one spoke to him in the streets. “Madame Snow told me to die …” Then she saw something more wonderful than mother, something unknown but unmistakable. A light flashed in the distance, and as she watched, it drew closer, a thin quavering beam that seemed to be searching its way out of the darkness. This was what she had waited for and now she no longer watched for her brother but crept off under the covers. It was as if she had just visited the empty apartment on the second floor.

“Good night,” she heard her mother say.

The three of us leaning against the clay bank were all that remained of the shadows of sentries, were primal, unordered, unposted sentries, lounging against the earth without password, rifles or relief. The sharp foreign voice had disappeared from the dark road and unlighted doorway, the rolls of wire, the angry tones, the organized guards were gone. Though unmistakable signs remained, a trampled package of woodbines, a tossed-off canteen, a piece of white webbing, these scraps still littered the floors of sheds or hung in the room corners where white women lay. The keepers, who had asked for papers, swore only with one word, lighted the night with red, and confiscated bicycles, and had moved on to the hunting ground of rodents. And we, the three shadows who remained, gaunt for the great land, dependent on the enemy’s tin cans to squat in, waiting in our black unbuttoned coats and peaked caps, were sentries of the civilians, unemployed during the day, plotting for the greatest good by night.