John Hawkes: The Cannibal

Jutta dropped the letter back into the washstand. She wished that it were a chest of drawers, a chest as tall as she and carved, with layer after layer of gowns and silk, something precious for every moment of the night, with a golden key and a gilded mirror on the top.

Stintz sat straight up in the cart, knocking heavily against the wood to the rhythm of the stones and fractures in the street. His face was set and he slipped, then righted, like a child in a carriage that is too large. He looked like a legless man hauled through the streets in the days of trouble, he was a passenger tensed for the trip with only his head rolling above the sides of the cart.

There was no straw in the bottom, his hands were locked rigidly apart, and he jiggled heavily when the wheels rolled over the gravel. If anyone else had been riding with him, he would not have spoken. He was surly, he was helpless, and his whole body had the defiant, unpleasant appearance that the helpless have. The shafts were too wide for me, and I had a difficult time pulling the cart, for sometimes it seemed to gather a momentum of its own and pushed me along while the heels behind me kicked up and down on the floorboards in a frightening step.

We met on the appointed comer and the Census-Taker put the tins, cold and unwieldly, into the cart. They quickly slid back into Stintz’s lap, crowding him, pinning him down. He no longer slid with the movement of travel, he was no longer a passenger. The tins made the difference, they cut away his soul, filled the cart with the sloshing sound of liquid. His head was no longer a head, but a funnel in the top of a drum.

We stopped before the Mayor’s door and struggled to get the martyr and the fuel out of the wagon. We dropped him and caught our breath.

“Are you sure he won’t hear us?”

“He won’t hear. And if he does, he won’t do anything. I guarantee you he won’t make a sound. He knows no one would help him.”

With a great deal of effort, we dragged Stintz into the Mayor’s hall and propped him against a table. We emptied the tins of petrol, ten Pfennige a cup, throughout the downstairs of the house.

It took a long time for the fire to reach the roof since the tins were diluted with water and the house was damp to begin with. The Census-Taker was forced to make several trips back to the newspaper office for more fuel and his arms and shoulders were sore with the work.

The Mayor thought that the nurse was preparing cups of hot broth and the kettle boiled as she stirred it with a wooden spoon. Little white pieces of chicken, whose head she flung in the corner, floated midway in the water. The warm fumes filled the room.

“Here, Miller,” he said, “let’s sit down to the soup together. That woman’s an excellent cook and the bird’s from my own flock. I have hundreds, you know. Miller, let me give you this broth.” Tears were in the old man’s eyes, he reached for the cup. But Miller wouldn’t drink. The Mayor’s nose and mouth were bound in the red bandanna, it choked about his throat, and at the last minute, Miller knocked over the tureen.

“I think we can go,” I said. The fire was filling the street with a hot, small amount of ash.

The Mayor did not cry out, but died, I was very glad, without recompense or absolution.

The little girl had seen no fires since the Allied bombings, and in those days, she saw them only after they were well under way, after the walls had fallen and the houses did not look like houses at all. And the people crowding the streets after raids, running to and fro, giving orders, often made it hard to see.

Now, since the town had no fire apparatus, no whistles or trucks, and since there was no one in the streets, she could watch the fire as long as she wished; see it from her window undisturbed, alert. Firemen would certainly have destroyed the fire, their black ladders climbing all over the walls would have changed it, black slickers shining with water would have cried danger, covered with water they would have put it out.

The fire went well for a while, and then, because there was no wind to help it, no clothes or curtains to feed upon, it began to fade like an incendiary on the bare road, until only a few sparks and gusts of smoke trickled from the cracks of an upstairs shuttered window. The child soon tired of the flames that couldn’t even singe a cat, but was still glad the fire-bell had not rung. She crept back under the covers to keep warm while waiting.

The Duke, his arms loaded with the shopping bag, wearily climbed the stairs and unlocked the door.

Madame Snow, hearing the noises overhead, knew that the second floor boarder was back.

The Signalman dozed in his chair and forgot the boy and the man with the upraised cane.

Madame Snow did not see the dying embers.

With his free hand the Duke put a few copies of the Crooked Zeitung , old unreadable issues, on a chair before resting his bundle; the white legs that dangled over the seat were too short to reach the rungs. A stain spread over the newspapers. He moved quickly about the majestic apartment, fit only for the eyes of a Duke, and now in his vest with his sleeves rolled up, he put two lumps of coal in the stove, rinsed his hands, and finally put the pieces in the bucket to soak. He put a few bones that he had been able to carry away, uninspected and unstamped, before the shop closed, on a closet shelf. After throwing the small fox’s black jacket into a pile of salvaged clothes, he collected his pans and set to work. More newspapers over his knees, he gathered the pots about his feet and one by one he scoured, scoured until the papers were covered with a thick red dust, and the vessels gleamed, steel for the hearth. He scoured until his hands and arms were red.

The stove was crowded, for every pan and roaster that he owned was set to boil, lidded pots and baking tins, large and small, heavy and light, were all crammed together over the coals. The broth would last for weeks and months, his shelves would hold the bones for years. Through the shades a dull light began to fill the kitchen and at last, proudly, he was ready to go downstairs.

Madame Snow heard the footsteps, slow and even, stop before her door. She knew that something waited, that some slow-moving creature, large or thin, alive or dead, was just beyond, waiting to call. She heard the breathing, the interminable low sounds, the sounds so necessary to a nightmare, the rustling of cloth, perhaps a soft word mumbled to itself. If she turned on the light, he might disappear or she might not recognize him , she might never have seen that face, those eyes and hands, those rubber boots, and slicker drawn tightly up to the chin. It may swing an axe limply to and fro, large, ponderous, unknown. And if he did not speak but simply stood, hair wet over the eyes, face scarred, bandanna about the throat, and worse, if he did not move, never a step once inside the door with the white handkerchief, with the Christ by his head, with gauntlets and whistle that were never clutched, that never blew, on his belt, what would she do? She would not be able to speak, she would not recognize nor remember nor recall that peculiar way he stood, as if he held a gun, as if he had just climbed up from the canal with his slicker made of rubber rafts. She could hear him leaning closer against the door.

At last the knock came and cautiously and formally he entered.

“Ah, Herr Duke,” she said, “good evening. You’re visiting late, but it’s a pleasure to see you.”

He bowed, still in his vest, with arms red, and straightened stiffly.

“Madame Snow, I realize the hour, but,” he smiled slightly, “I have come on a most important mission.”

She clutched the robe, the Queen Mother’s before her, close to her chest.