John Hawkes - The Cannibal

No one could dislike Jutta, though she was as nervously strong in her adult years as Stella was in her turning girlhood; she was as kind as a maternal spirit with a patriarchal plain nature, and whatever wisdom she may have felt lay restless, lost beneath the sheets. To me she lay in beauty, and into the Census-Taker she breathed a tense laughter, still trying to complete in her middle year some joyless cycle. And to the others, the cold white ravenous men and trunks of women, without age, without passion, she was the younger sister of Madame Snow, half-warm, half-friendly. She persisted in believing that both her children were her own, could not admit their creation with any man, and believed that they both loved her with the clarity of children who have not yet reached the size of youth. She breathed closer into my ear, traced the smooth canals, followed those old repeating dreams and murmured words. I was a counterfeit, a transformer for several delicate whims and exasperating needs, was an image for the moment made from past respectable devices. I rolled up on my side as if awake, and I saw in her body something that was not there, something that graced, I thought, the nibbling lips of the goat.

The Census-Taker, feeling the unnoticeable height of his own small passion, moving with stealth and awe as a child before the hanging sock, moving as if he held it in his hands and would not fracture it, slid from the bed and walked tiptoe to the corner chair, hung for a second, then turned to see. The most sensitive pulsations trembled at the corners of his eyes, and leaning slightly forward, verdant under the yellow light, he watched. His pleasure broke for a moment remembering a week the Americans had occupied the town and he had been forced to watch, deadly drunk, eyes red, while the Mayor, wretched and awkward, looked the other way and dropped the handkerchief that ended Pastor Miller’s life at the stake. He concentrated and the steady movement returned, broken with the intricate strokes of pleasure. His memories were not as frequent or particular as my own. But I, Zizendorf, had now forgotten all under my undramatic and specialized dark guise, and I looked into the white of the sheets.

“What are you doing?”

“Why, I don’t remember. Does it matter?”

“No.”

A haunch rose above the white, then receded like an iceberg drawn just below the surface, the springs making hardly any noise, interest waiting for the chance to disappear. Night after night we waited for this summoning of flagged energy, hands cold, eyes closed, while in other beds and lofts the sleepers could not awake, could not breathe. My need to recreate, with amazing frequency, some sort of pastime similar to my comrades’ habits, a cyclic affection that had finally, in Paris, become fatal to their health, led me to the quite real bargain of Jutta on the top floor. I, the Editor, did not recognize the head in the hay or fathom the posed deep slumber of the houses I passed on my nightly journey. And somehow the Census-Taker was my relic-brother, whose actions and despairs, whose humorous awkward positions and dry attempts were similar to mine. The Census-Taker, who had stature only through responsibilities that had gone, was muddled and lopsided as the badge of his marine cap, was unable to count or to repeat the names. He sought the appearance of love in the lives of his friends, retaining out of his official experience a disgust only of death. He lived the smallest chip of illusion, bearing along his drunk path a recognition of the way, a small dropsy formula that might in the end lead him out, beyond the overt sorrow of his partially thrilled, sitting figure.

My first days in Paris had been difficult. “Dear Sister,” I wrote, “I’m having a bad time and cannot seem to get started in enjoying myself. I find the women very hard to get — the release here has broken down all our official routine and rank, and in consequence I do not seem to have anything with which to gain their respect …” Now with Jutta it was different, more like the second part of my Paris trip when I’d somehow found my nerve and hence perfume and boudoir parties. I enjoyed the Census-Taker watching us from the chair.

A low repressed rumble from the cold radiator sounded like the beating of crickets’ wings, his increased breathing slowly died down while our activity on the bed at his feet remained at a constant low level, consistent and unvaried without end. Gradually he sank back in the chair, his knees spread, belt pulled in, while he brushed with one hand at the image of Miller.

The Duke, shortening the pace, picked his way carefully by the cliff of fallen walls and poked with his cane into the dark crevices, hoping to stick the crouched body of his prey, to light upon the thin fox. He came legitimately by his title, and when he had commanded three tanks in the second war, was known as a fearless man. A father much older than himself still stalked far away in Berlin where I had never been, and as his father would have done, he recognized with taste and profound respect the clear high and stable character of Madame Snow. The night was so black that the red lights from the hatches of his tanks would have reflected against the clouds and brought death. Free of the debris he again approached in the path of the child, not quite able to visualize the kill.

Jutta did not know the Duke, did not like him, and immediate instinct told her to beware the second floor, for she feared his clean standing, feared his aristocratic caliber which she, through her own fault, had not grasped from her family. She spoke of most intimate life with her daughter, tried to instill in her son ideas of manhood, and spent a certain part of the day sweeping dust into a little bin and rubbing with a damp cloth. She left her apartment very seldom, but even the Duke, in his most precise manner, had noticed her gentle convolvulaceous long legs. Large and perfect in every detail but not a woman, sensible and sometimes calm but not a man, she failed to understand the German life, failed as a mother, at least for her son. She had never been quite able to allow a love for her country to intrude within her four walls, had never been loyal, and though she gave herself like segments of a fruit, she never envisioned the loyalty due her State. Tears sometimes appeared on her cheeks after our long embrace which I was never able to recognize. Thirty years is not enough time to measure the complete crystallization of a nation, though partially lost; to measure the greatest advance of communal men, though partially destroyed, and Jutta, far removed from the rise, fall, and eventual rise, was far from being within the thirty years, far from being successful or adored.

“Again?” She spoke under my arm. “Perhaps you are right. You certainly are, here …” There was hardly a break as the wheel turned, sustaining the light ardor. No movement could be carried long enough to last over to the first minute after, beneath the yellow globe.

Tonight she seemed lovely, now propped against the pillows, resting a knee against my side, her eyes passing once over the sleeping Census-Taker, then towards the door of the other room, robe-top arrested and wrinkled below her waist, lovely, but far from the majesty of Madame Snow, who looked very old. She was never able to tell when I would come, but at a moment she would find me. Now she relaxed while I touched her arm with the flat of my cheek.

Yesterday she had gone for a walk, down the steep loose stairs of the boarding house, grey shawl over the bent shoulders, bringing with love and kindness her daughter Selvaggia, who followed behind. She reached back for the long hand to guide the child in the darkness, pushed open the door with her foot, and outside they found that the town was partially destroyed, that a cold spring sun was cut through by a rough steel shoulder, that cold ruts of mud were beginning to thaw. Her face had no color under the sunlight, mother and daughter walked in the same slow stride, feeling their way forward in a place they did not know, and the child spoke now and then in a friendly way. Jutta drew the shawl closer, tried to keep her black shoes free of the mud.