Children of the Dusk Read online

  As for Hempel's opinion of her, she thought, seeing the major walk into view, that could doubtless fill a book. He was flanked by Captain Dau from the Altmark on one side and by Misha on the other. Slapping his billy club against his palm, he ambled across the compound. Immediately, some of the guards formed behind him. They were Totenkopfverbände--members of the Death's Head Unit--and the ugly looks on their faces showed they wished to live up to their name.

  "Disgraceful," Hempel said. "I have never seen such behavior in an officer. Babying Jews. Pandering to their every demand. A religious service! What next?"

  "Alois told me, 'A holy Jew is a happy Jew,' whatever that's supposed to mean," the ship's captain replied. "Well, I've washed my hands of it. I've no authority here over how he trains his animals, two or four-legged, but it won't go unnoticed in my report, I can assure you of that. I tell you, it borders on treason!"

  "He crossed that line a long time ago," Hempel said stiffly.

  Almost involuntarily, Miriam linked her arm through Tyrolt's and put her head against his shoulder. She needed someone strong to keep her from lashing out at Hempel. Yet she could not help but continue to wonder what motive really lay behind Erich's orders that the Jews be treated humanely--as long as the work progressed on or ahead of schedule. She wanted to credit him with compassion, but she could not quite convince herself that he hadn't long since shed whatever modicum of it he might once have had. Could he think it possible that she would give her heart to him if he demonstrated some newfound ability to love?...or had he transcended that particular need and replaced it with some new conceit?

  Maybe it was much simpler than that. Perhaps he had become afraid enough of the wrath of his God that he was willing to go to any lengths to obtain forgiveness, even if it meant infuriating Hempel into killing them all. Or could that be his purpose? To make certain that Hempel killed all of them?

  "I can't stand this a minute longer," Miriam said. "I want to join Sol and the others."

  "You can't, my dear, and you know it," Tyrolt whispered to her, looking down at her seriously. "No matter how much you'd like to." Casting a furtive glance in Dau's direction, he added, "Forgive me for saying so, but of late your feelings have become transparent."

  He was right of course. She could no more join the other Jews than Erich could renounce the Party. For Sol's safety, the child's, her own, she must remain in Erich's custody for...how many more months--or years?

  Hempel and Dau strode past them. Tyrolt left Miriam's side and faced the two officers, causing them to pause.

  "You should not judge Herr Oberst Alois too harshly." Tyrolt lifted a brow, as if to indicate to the two officers that he wished his words to be given careful consideration. "People with the hope of freedom outwork slaves at a ratio of something like five to one."

  Dau looked at him blankly. "Is this a medical opinion? If not, keep your heretical ideas to yourself, Herr Doktor." He turned to Hempel. "I shall take my farewells, Herr Sturmbannführer. I look forward to hearing that you have the encampment running and a good water supply secured. No doubt I will be one of the first to know, since once you have fulfilled the initial part of the plan I'll be ordered back here with new supplies and," he laughed, "old Jews. Funny, isn't it, how they all look old to me."

  Hempel flipped his half-smoked cigarette toward Tyrolt's shoe and, advancing, glared as he ground it out with the toe of his boot.

  "Rottenführer Pleshdimer!" he yelled.

  The Kapo hurried from the kennel area. "Heil Hitler!"

  "The Oberst said the Jews would be allowed their filthy rites provided each day's work is completed up to then, is that not correct?"

  The Kapo smirked. "Ja, Sturmbannführer!"

  "The area was not properly policed." With the toe of his jackboot Hempel pointed toward the cigarette butt.

  The Kapo saluted and lumbered off toward the Jews. The men took no notice, but from the gloom of the rain forest, a dozen eyes reflected the waning light. Probably lemurs, Miriam thought, her heart pounding with anger at Hempel. If the forest creatures weren't careful, their curiosity would earn them the stewpot.

  Absently she scratched a mosquito bite on her arm. When she stopped, there was blood under her nail. "These damn bugs," she said. "No matter how I arrange the netting, they find a way inside. If you are still worried about my iron count.... And they'd better keep that fat Latvian Pleshdimer away from me," she said irritably. "I can't stand the sight of him. Last night I heard him outside the tent, mumbling about Kalanaro coming. God knows how long he stood there, staring at me. He and that hideous Zana-Malata."

  She wanted to add, but did not, that Pleshdimer reminded her of Hitler's personal physician, that revolting Doctor Morrel who had performed the conception-date tests. Even Eva Braun, who doted on the Führer's every word about who and what were excellent, had told Miriam she found Morrel dirty and disgusting.

  "Let's go over to the medical tent," Tyrolt said. "I want to give you a thorough examination. Tomorrow...." He paused. "I have duties that will keep me aboard the Altmark for a while."

  "I overheard you," Miriam told him. She took a deep breath to quell her rage and the threat of tears, and wondered why God could not keep Tyrolt on the island for a few more days.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "I examined Miriam as thoroughly as I could under the circumstances," Tyrolt said, speaking quietly to Erich as they headed toward the compound gate. "She should be able to manage. Physically. Just keep Pleshdimer and that syphilitic away from her, or she's likely to have a nervous breakdown." He hesitated. "And be sensitive to her condition when you see what she's done to her hair."

  "Her hair?"

  "She chopped it off. I can't say that I blame her, in this heat."

  "What about Taurus?" Erich asked, almost as if he hadn't been listening. He had sat with his dog during Tyrolt's examination of Miriam.

  "I am not a veterinarian, Herr Oberst. I have told you that before. You know the animal has dysplasia. You also know that there's little help in such cases. I could try a shot of morphine, but the results would be temporary, at best...."

  They had reached the compound gate. Tyrolt put out his hand. "I almost forgot," he said. "Captain Dau sends his greetings."

  "And I mine." Erich shook the man's hand. "Heil Hitler!"

  "Zieg Heil!" The doctor smiled wryly.

  Erich watched the physician head down the broad path that wended to the beach. Not a veterinarian. Then what good was he?

  He caught sight of Pleshdimer strolling toward the mess tent. "Rottenführer!" he called out.

  The corporal glanced anxiously toward the medical tent, and Erich saw the Zana-Malata scuttle like a beetle toward the concertina-wire fence. Maybe Tyrolt was right. He'd have to keep a closer eye on those two, and on Hempel as well. Worried about Taurus, he'd neglected a primary rule: In the chess game of life, stay at least six steps ahead of an adversary. He had already allowed Hempel too many moves since the wolfhound's death.

  He increased his pace to catch up with Pleshdimer. "I could use a cup of good German coffee," he said as pleasantly as he could, falling into step with the corporal.

  "Shall I bring you one--sir?" Pleshdimer avoided his eyes.

  They reached the opening to the mess tent. Erich watched the men toss tin plates and army-issue cutlery into a large cast-aluminum tub. The clang of metal against metal was the only sound in the mess; gone was the usual raucous laughter of camaraderie between guards and crewmen. The guards stood in line on one side of the tent, the trainers at the other, each group glaring. "I'm sorry to have missed the farewell dinner for the Altmark," Erich said in a slightly too-loud voice, trying to relieve the tension. Pretending to ignore the men's antagonism toward one another, he used a hot-pad glove to lift the lid of the largest pot. "So that's how zebu smells. Gamier than a cow, but still beef."

  "Shall I dish some up for you, sir?" the cook asked.

  "I'm not hungry," Erich answered. "Whatever is left is to be split be
tween the dogs and the Jews."

  Hempel's men stiffened and a few of the trainers smiled.

  "Do you have a problem with that?" he asked the guard closest to him. The man stared stonily ahead. "Good. And while you're about it, make sure the Jews' netting is in place. We have no need to deal with a mass outbreak of malaria."

  "The Sturmbannführer will object, sir," Fermi said.

  "To what, the food or the netting? I will inform him of my orders myself. I suppose I will find him with his new friend--"

  "Eating the leftovers of the wolfhound, which he seems to prefer to this," the cook said.

  He obviously bore no fondness for Hempel, Erich thought, before the meaning of the words took shape.

  "He ate Boris? Are you saying the man ate his dog? If this is a joke--" He remembered Hempel emerging from the Zana-Malata's hut chewing, recalled the cartilage he had pulled from his mouth. Erich had assumed it was lemur, or some other local animal.

  "As you say, it was his dog...sir," one of the guards said.

  Without a further word, Erich strode out of the tent toward the Zana-Malata's hut. He found Hempel seated alone at an open fire. Probably the same spot where he roasted his wolfhound on a spit, Erich thought, with a feeling of sick disbelief. He wondered at which point in his grief the major had conceived of the idea to consume the animal.

  Grief?

  Erich thought about Taurus and the sympathetic pain that seized him whenever he visited her.

  The campfire sputtered, sending sparks among the stars, then another figure appeared. At first he thought it was Misha or Pleshdimer, but with a sense of nervous anger, he realized it was the Zana-Malata. The major continued sitting with his head down.

  Staying out of sight, Erich observed the black man. Tertiary stage syphilis, he guessed. Bruqah as usual had been enigmatic when mined for information, with that infuriating habit of speaking in riddles and losing his syntax as it pleased him. However, a picture had emerged of the Zana-Malata tribe, if one could call it that. Mulatto outcasts, ostracized because of the congenital syphilis nearly all of them carried. The disease was a legacy from their European-pirate forefathers, William Kidd among them, who had made Northern Madagascar a base of operations.

  The gnawed mouth with its pink, frilly flesh; the rheumy eyes; the black skin taut over cheekbones or so loose it hung like fruit-bat flesh from toothpick arms...the effect made Erich's skin crawl. How could lovemaking lead to such horror?

  Hempel's knife glinted and he handed the Malagasy a strip of meat.

  Erich felt his breath catch in his throat. He knew that something more than a dining scrap was being passed between the two silhouettes, something that demanded more than courtesy or congeniality. Given to a subhuman, no less...Erich fought the urge to wrench a Mauser from one of the guards and put a bullet in each of the figures before the fire.

  Time enough for that, he decided. When and if matters were set right, or perhaps went very wrong, he would not hesitate to kill. Especially someone like Hempel.

  "Herr Sturmbannführer," he called out.

  Hempel looked up.

  "The following is not a request. It is an order. I have instructed your men to give the Jews mosquito netting at once. I have also ordered the cook to split the leftover zebu meat between the Jews and the dogs--"

  "You ordered my men--" Hempel rose to his feet. "How dare you. I control them. I--"

  Erich turned and stalked back to the HQ tent. He chased the young fool Johann away from the radio for the night, pulled a bottle of schnapps from the crate in the corner, and sat down.

  Drunks like his father disgusted Erich. He himself could handle alcohol, and at that moment he needed a drink. Just a shot, to settle his nerves. Maybe two.

  CHAPTER TEN

  "Heave!" Pleshdimer bellowed.

  Sol drove his shoulder into the narrow, green-barked log he was using as a lever. Just a few more centimeters, he thought, as the generator moved, almost into place.

  Helping to maneuver it up the road from the ocean had been like toting his own prison up the hill. Everyone sweating and swearing--insects bombarding them in the barely breathable air beneath the forest canopy. The tank had done the pulling at that point, Sol and the other men on the detail scurrying to keep thin logs under the generator as it moved. Pleshdimer, like a minor god Hempel had deified, was up on the back of the tank cajoling, complaining, threatening.

  Now that they were so close to finishing, the tank had been removed and they had only the strong backs of himself and his fellow Jews to emplace the machine.

  "Again!" Pleshdimer bellowed. "Push, you scum!"

  Half a dozen men grunted and metal groaned, and at last the generator stood square. The Kapo came forward, brushing dirt from his hands. He was grinning. "We hook her up tonight!"

  Electricity was essential, Sol thought. Erich had said so.

  Of course, he had no plans to electrify the fence around the Jewish sleeping area. He had assured Miriam of that, and she in turn had told Sol.

  He eyed the fences with angry resignation. It was as though reality had been born with the rise of the moon, and the barbed wire coils on the fence seemed thick and formidable.

  There were too many other uses for the power. In the morning, the Altmark would sail, and communications would need to be established with German operatives in Italian-held Ethiopia, who would relay messages to and from Berlin. Water had to be pumped from the spring into the encampment's water tank. The camp would need lights--particularly searchlights. But the fences would only be electrified if it became necessary to keep out intruders.

  "Or to keep us in," Sol said under his breath.

  "What'd you say?" Pleshdimer growled.

  "Not a thing, mein Kapo."

  Sol stepped from beneath the tarp and waited in the shadows cast by the tent for one of the guards to escort him to the supply tent for a toolbox. He found the ritual of getting needed supplies to be one of the compound's more interesting ironies. The guards rarely retrieved things themselves, even if they were the ones who intended to use them. Since no Jew could be trusted with tools, getting something as simple as a screwdriver required at least two men--one with a finger on a trigger.

  "Can't you work without making a racket!" Erich slapped the inside corner of the tent.

  Pleshdimer saluted the canvas. "Heil Hitler!"

  "The hell with that! Just keep it quiet!"

  "But we're..." the confused Kapo looked at the guards, who were smirking, and lowered his arm, "providing power, Herr Oberst."

  "What you're providing me with is one hell of a headache. Who's out there, anyway?"

  "Pleshdimer, mein Oberst." He added, a pride-filled smile breaking across his face, "Rottenführer Pleshdimer!"

  Solomon noted with surly amusement how the Kapo had adopted the rank Hempel had given him even though no pay or uniform or induction had been effected. A corporal in the SS menagerie? Hah!

  "You take your garble, Rottenführer, and drown it."

  "Ja, mein Oberst," the Kapo quietly replied.

  "Now!"

  With a morose flip of his hand, Pleshdimer dismissed the men. Solomon walked to the sleeping area with a triumphant jounce to his step. After saluting the guard at the gate and being frisked, he sprawled across the matted grass and listened to the birds and lemurs, his face washed with sun. He did not even mind when a cobalt-blue haze enveloped him----

  ----As if in a fog, he sees Miriam lying naked and in labor, legs spread and knees up, on what appears to be a stone slab with carefully hollowed depressions for shoulders, buttocks, heels.

  Candlelight reveals cobwebs above her. Beyond her feet, a skeleton in an army officer's uniform slumps in an oval wicker chair suspended from a chain.

  The candles gutter. A breeze from beyond a rough-hewn doorway swirls the fog within the stone chamber. She squints against the candlelight, trying to raise up off the stone and prevented from doing so by the straps at her ankles and wrists.

  H
e can see through the doorway, now. Beyond lies a gentle, grassy slope bordered by thicket. At its top, tall stones seem to be reaching for the moon. There are posts among them, carved totems topped with what look like buffalo horns.

  Papa? Help me, Papa!

  A girl is tied, naked and struggling, to one of the totems. He can see the face clearly, etched with anguish, her hair hanging in tangles down past her nose. She blows at the hair and renews her struggle with her bonds.

  Three figures, man-shaped but hunched, wearing animal skins, stalk laterally across the slope, knives at the ready, moving toward the girl.

  Papa!----

  As swiftly as it had come, the cobalt-blue haze dissipated. Refusing to dwell on the prophetic meanings of the vision, Sol closed his eyes and strove to keep his mind blank but for the trill of the rain forest. With Bruqah's help, he had learned to distinguish the calls of the white-headed Tretreky--a vanga--from the warbling Poretika and the omnipresent starlings, but there was no way to pin down the birds' German names without begging Erich for books, something he was loathe to do. Bruqah's facility with German did not extend to winged creatures.

  Except for Spatz.

  In Berlin, the Malagasy had seen people feed the sparrows and had been amused that food would be wasted on an animal that people did not eat. His amusement was compounded by learning that Sol had fed them so regularly that Erich had--much to Sol's dismay--nicknamed him Spatz.

  As if awakened by birdsong, a nocturnal lemur, not yet settled after its night of roaming, took up the melody of the rain forest. Its voice sounded shrill and lonely--though Sol was sure his perception was colored by Bruqah's explanation that nocturnal lemurs tended to be solitary animals, while those that prowled by daylight were social and sounded quite different from their night brothers.

  Far to the left, another lemur answered, its caw piercing the drone of the cicadas. There followed the tinkle of a music box playing "Glowworm."

  "Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen, Glimmre, Glimmre," Sol sang quietly. No matter what else happened in his life, he would never be able to hear that music without replaying the first time he had seen Miriam. The first time Erich had seen her. The night they had both fallen in love with the beautiful and charming fifteen-year-old niece of Walther Rathenau as she performed at KAVERNE, the nightclub her wealthy, socialite grandmother opened next door to the Freund-Weisser tobacco shop.