John Hawkes - The Cannibal

“Wait a minute, I’ll be right up, Kinder,” called Herr Stintz to the upper window. He caught one last glimpse of the slim light with its tail of angry short tongues of fire like a comet, and flinging on a thin coat he bolted for the stairs. He made noise, hurried, was neither meek nor ineffectual, for he felt at last he had the right, the obligation, and his tattling could be open, commanding; for he had seen the light, the unexpected journeyman, the foreign arrival, a fire in the night that no one knew about but he, and now he moved without caution, tripping and whispering, to take possession. Again he opened the door to the top floor apartment, hurried through the first room past the unwaking Jutta where her high breast gleamed from under the sheet, past the full basin and into the smaller, cold lair. “Quickly,” he said, “we must hurry. It’s up to you and me.” She made no protest but watched him with sharp appraising eyes, holding her breath. Stintz picked the little girl from the bundle of clothes, wrapped her in a shortened quilt, tied it with string around her waist, fastened the thick stockings on her feet. He knew exactly what he was about as he dressed the child, considered no question, gave no thought to the sleeping mother. Never before had he been so close; he tied the quilt high about her throat, smoothed the hair once quickly with his hand.

“The moon will see,” she murmured, as his good eye swept over her.

“No, no, there isn’t any moon at all. Come along.”

They walked past the woman, hand in hand, into the bitter hallway and he carried her down the stairs, slipped, caught himself, in the hurry. They left the front door ajar and began their walk over the streets smelling of smoke.

The ghosts raised their heads in unison by the canal and sniffed the night air.

I, Zizendorf, my gun drawn, crouching on my knees with my comrades who were tensed like sprinters or swimmers, heard above gusts of wind the approaching light machine. The uprising must be successful, inspired, ruthless.

The Duke carefully reached out his hand and the boy fairy did not move, while the marquee banged to and fro, the projector steamed, and the invisible lost audience stamped booted feet and rummaged in box lunches.

Unconscious, drowned cold in acid, the Census-Taker lay on the third floor, dressed, uncovered, where Jutta had dropped him.

The Mayor, at this hour, groaned, awoke, and found himself pained by a small black-pebble cluster of hemorrhoids, felt it blister upwards over his spine.

The ghosts returned to their cupped hands and sipped the green water, while soft faecal corbans rolled below their faces through the cluttered waves in tribute to Leevey.

Madame Snow thought for a moment that she heard Herr Stintz’s voice yelling somewhere up above through the darkest part of the night and drew the robe closer about the kneeling man. Balamir trembled with being awake, frowned and grinned at the old woman, shook as if he was starving on these sleepless hours, tried to speak of the mob of risers, the strength, fear, out in the night, but could not. Stella wondered what they were doing, this anonymous nation, and felt, such an old woman, that she would never sleep again. The candle swayed, her powdered hands fluttered and moved, and then she heard Stintz’s sharp footfall and the padding of the girl, and when they left, a breath of air from the front door ajar swept across the floor and stirred the draped figure of her kneeling charge.

Neither could sleep, and somehow the hard yellow eyes of their brethren had told them men were moving, the night was not still. Madame Snow did not find the rooms changed by this darkness or added cold, simply the cups eluded her fingers, slipped more easily, the tea was like black powder and too much escaped, the pot assumed enormous proportions. But waking, she found the same day and night except that in the darkness it was more clear, the air smelled more heavily of the sewer in the canal, the carpets smelled more of dust.

On the fifth floor Jutta awoke and feeling less tired, began to wash a blouse in the hand-basin.

The tea was so near the chipped brim that it spilled over his robe when he peered closely at the cup and twisted it about. Stella drew the curtains but could see nothing, from the front windows neither street nor light, from the rear windows neither the line of the canal nor the shed. At first when the main pipes were destroyed she boiled the water that had to be taken from the canal, but for months the fire did not last long enough, the effort to prod the dull coals was too great, and tonight the tea tasted more sour than usual. In unlocking the basement door she had noticed that the smell of the canal was becoming stronger, the water seeping from its imperfect bed, and she decided that she must find a new place to keep the harmless unmoving man. The old woman, hair thin about her scalp but falling thickly to her waist, ankles frail without stockings in the high unbuttoned shoes, sipping tea through her thin once bowed lips, hated nothing, did not actually despise the gross invader or the struggling mistaken English, but would have been pleased to see them whipped. She knew the strength of women, and sometimes vaguely hoped that a time would come again when they could attack flesh with their husband’s sickles, and the few husbands themselves could take the belts from their trousers to flay the enemy. It was the women who really fought. The uprising must be sure, and the place to strike with the tip of the whip’s tail was between the legs. The candle went out and the brilliant old woman and crazed man sat in the darkness for a long while.

They had waited weeks for the riot to come at the institution and when it finally did descend like a mule to its haunches it lasted barely an hour. During those weeks disorder accumulated, both inside and outside the high walls. The German army was suffering unreasonable blows, the town was bereft of all men, the food trucks were overtaken by hordes of frenzied children, the staff itself worked in the gardens and nurses spent part of their duty in the bakery. Switchboard connections were crossed; Supply sent barrels of molasses but no meat; the cold came in dreadful waves. All reading material went to the furnaces; several cases of insulin went bad; and the board of directors learned of the deaths of their next of kin. Bedpans were left unemptied in the hallways; and for days on end the high bright gates of iron were never opened. Finally they burned linen for fuel and a thick smudge poured from the smokestack, the snow rose higher against the walls, and they served only one meal a day. One of the oldest night nurses died and her body was smuggled from the institution under cover of darkness. Reports crept out on the tongues of frightened help, of unshaven men, quarreling women, of patients who slept night after night fully dressed, of men who had hair so long that it hung on their shoulders. And those inside the walls heard that greater numbers of the more fit women were being taken to war, that there wasn’t a single man left in the town, that Allied parachute rapists were to be sent on the village, that pregnant women went out of doors at night to freeze themselves to death.

The patients would no longer go to their rooms but crowded together in the long once immaculate corridors and baited each other or lay in sullen heaps, white with the cold. They had to be prodded into going out to the garden, white, filled with frozen thistle, and threatened, pushed, forced to retreat back to the buildings. Fearing more than ever erratic outbursts or startled, snarling attacks, the nurses quickly used up the last row of bottled sedatives, and old ferocious men lay only half-subdued, angrily awake through the long nights. One of these nurses, short, man-like, tense, lost the only set of keys that locked the windows shut, so for the last few days and nights, the horrible cold swept in and out of the long guarded wings. Underneath the ordered town-like group of brick buildings, there were magnificent tile and steel tunnels connecting them to underground laboratories, laundries, kitchens, and ventilated rooms that housed monkeys and rats for experimentation. Through these tunnels ran thin lines of gleaming rails where hand-carts of refuse, linen, chemicals, and food were pushed and the carts were guided by a meticulous system of red and yellow lights. During these bad days the carts were pushed too fast, knocked each other from the tracks, the system of lights smashed, the upturned carts blocked the corridors, and broken bottles and soiled linen filled the passages. The lighting system short-circuited and orderlies, now trying to carry the supplies in their arms, stumbled through the narrow darkness, through the odor of ferment, and shouted warning signals.