Hymn (22 page)

Otto sipped a little schnapps; ran a thin tongue-tip across thinner lips. ‘He doesn't need a name.'

‘How can he live, without a name?' Helmwige protested. They had been through this same argument more times than Otto could count.

‘All he has to do is to live,' he retorted. ‘A name is unnecessary. A dog may understand English, but you don't buy books, even for the cleverest dog.'

Helmwige stroked the young man's buttocks, and the sides of his thighs. Then she said to him, quite matter-of-factly, ‘Turn over, you can be the cleverest dog.'

With a scraping and jangling of chains, the young man turned over until he was on all fours. He remained exquisitely handsome. His back beautifully curved, his thigh muscles taut. But he remained silent, too, and willing to obey.

‘Now, look at him,' grinned Helmwige. ‘Should I take him for a walk, on the end of a leash?'

‘He will probably kill you one day,' Otto remarked, draining his schnapps and immediately pouring himself another.

‘Oh, he won't kill me. He loves me. He adores me! I am the only one who treats him to what he likes!'

‘That's what you think,' Otto told her. ‘You humiliate him. Even a masochist has his pride, you know.' He patted his shorts, and said, ‘Where are my cigarettes?'

‘On the table,' Helmwige replied.

‘Those are Marlboro. You know that I smoke only Ernte 23.'

Helmwige laughed, without humour. ‘You smoke detectives, too, and all kinds of people!'

Otto snapped, ‘Leave that boy alone! Go and find my cigarettes!'

‘Oh, find your own cigarettes,' Helmwige replied. ‘Just look at this.'

She spread apart the young man's buttock with her long red fingernails. Then, with the kind of taunting smile in her eyes that she knew Otto would find infuriating, she licked her index finger, and plunged it without hesitation into the knotted muscular rose of the young man's bottom. He flinched, uttered a low gasp, but accepted her sharp-nailed finger without complaint.

‘I suppose you were worse at Ohrdruf,' Otto commented.

‘Everybody was worse at Ohrdruf. Guards, prisoners, everybody. The prisoners were as much to blame as we were. They brought it upon themselves. Have you ever experienced a race of people with such a death wish! How can a murderer be a murderer without a victim? In every murder, my dear Otto, the victim is an accomplice.'

Slowly, she withdrew her finger. Then she cupped the young man's testicles in her hand, and squeezed them, and massaged them, over and over, until they bulged between her fingers.

Otto looked away. ‘You are appalling, my dear. You always were. I suppose your only redeeming feature is your complete disregard for human life, including your own.'

‘Turn over,' Helmwige commanded the young man, and silently, he did so. Helmwige grasped the huge veined shaft of his penis in both hands, and rubbed it up and down, looking intently and questioningly into his eyes as she did so.

‘How does that feel, then?' she asked him. ‘Do you like it? Do you hate it? You don't really know, do you? What a vegetable!'

Now the head of his penis was gleaming and slick. Helmwige rubbed him harder and quicker. A faint flush of colour appeared on his perfect cheekbones; his stomach muscles tensed; and he closed his eyes. If possible, his penis appeared to grow even larger, and the opening gaped like a huge fish gasping for air.

‘Now,' ordered Helmwige, with unexpected softness, and bent her head forward. Her mouth enclosed the head of his penis just as he shuddered, and ejaculated. She waited with her braided head bent forward in his lap for almost half a minute, and before she finally sat up, she pulled back the foreskin as far as it would go, and gave his shining skin one last definitive lick.

She stood up, and approached Otto with shining lips. The young man remained where he was, his head still bowed, his penis shrinking.

‘Don't you know what a tribute I pay you, Otto?' Helmwige teased him. Otto flinched and turned away, his thin fingers tightening on his schnapps glass.

‘Otto—you are always the true master. Look what I have done for you! Mengele produced his so-called master race, and I have simply swallowed it!'

Otto refused to look at her. A few moments passed, the road outside was chaotic with sirens. Helmwige said, ‘What is death, Otto? Where does it begin, where does it end? Supposing your mother had swallowed your father's sperm, on the night when you were due to be conceived? She would have killed you! You would have died, and been digested, and floated out to the Baltic, the tiniest atom in a whole universe of atoms.'

‘Helmwige,' said Otto at last, still averting his face. ‘If you touch that young man again, I will burn him to death in front of you. And that is my warning.'

Helmwige smiled. ‘Why should I worry, Otto? You can frighten many, many people, but you can't frighten me. In any case, why should I care, when you plan to burn the whole world.'

Lloyd was pouring himself another cup of Kathleen's espresso when he saw the Mercedes pull up outside. After a moment, Otto climbed out, closely followed by Helmwige, but by nobody else. They came up to the front door, and rang the bell. Tom said, ‘It's okay, I'll get it!'

Lloyd called, ‘No! Leave it! Don't answer it!'

Kathleen was halfway down the stairs. ‘What's the matter?' she asked. ‘What's wrong?'

Lloyd strode quickly to the stairs and took her arm. ‘It's them again. Otto and that woman.'

‘They've come back? What do you think they want?'

‘I don't know, but it might be better if you kept Lucy and Tom well out of the way.'

The doorbell rang again. They could see Otto's distorted shape through the window. Otto had already begun to inspire in Lloyd a kind of nagging dread, like waking up in the night with the fear that he might have cancer. Kathleen said, ‘All right, just to be safe. Tom . . . Auntie Lucy's upstairs, why don't you take her another cup of coffee?'

When Tom had carefully carried the cup upstairs, Lloyd went to the door and opened it. Otto was standing on the step in his old-fashioned grey suit and his wide-brimmed hat, smiling coldly in the sunshine, while Helmwige stood a short distance away, dressed in a black Spandex miniskirt and a leather jacket which looked as if it had once belonged to Judge Dredd.

‘What do you want now?' Lloyd asked Otto, tautly.

Otto peered into the house as if he were inspecting it for dry-rot. ‘You don't mind if we come in?'

‘Yes, I very much do mind if you come in. What do you want?'

Otto's roaming eyes settled on a crane fly that was trembling on the side of the doorway in the warm morning breeze. ‘You gave me your word, Mr Denman, that you would tell nobody about us.'

‘I've kept it.'

‘Oh? Then perhaps you can explain a visit we received this morning from three police officers, inquiring if we knew you. A very unpleasant visit, I might add. A visit that ended in a most regrettable tragedy.'

‘Tragedy?' queried Lloyd. He was aware that his left eyelid was involuntarily fluttering. He was exhausted, he was stressed, and most of all he was terrified of what Otto might take into his head to do to them.

‘There was a fire, and an automobile accident,' Otto explained, his eyes still fixed on the crane fly. ‘As I said, most regrettable. But we all know that police work has its risks.'

‘A fire? You burned Sergeant Houk?'

‘Was that his name? You shouldn't have told him where to find us, you know. That was a great mistake.'

‘I didn't tell him anything.'

Otto's eyes sloped toward Lloyd, and he gave him a thin lazy grin. ‘Oh, come now, Mr Denman. Do you take me for a Dummkopf?'

‘Christ, you're insane,' Lloyd breathed at him.

‘On the contrary,' Otto replied. ‘In all the world, I am probably the only man who is in a state of complete mental balance.'

‘What do you want?' Lloyd repeated.

‘I want you, Mr Denman, and I want Mrs Kerwin.'

‘I don't understand.' Lloyd hated him so much at that moment he could have seized him by the neck and throttled him. But as if she could sense the sudden surge in Lloyd's hostility, Helmwige stepped forward and stood close to Otto's shoulder, with an expression of threatening disinterest. Lloyd had seen the same expression on the faces of security guards at rock concerts. They'll break your back or they won't break your back, it's up to you. But they'll do it if necessary.

‘Mr Denman,' Otto explained, ‘the summer solstice is next Wednesday. Then our Transformation Ceremony will be complete. I will no longer have to worry if inquisitive people disrupt our preparations. But until that time, I must ask that you and Mrs Kerwin stay as my guests, in order not to spread undue alarm about us, amongst people who may not be friendly.'

‘You expect anybody to be friendly to you, the way you're acting?' Lloyd demanded.

‘I expect only to be left undisturbed,' Otto replied.

‘Well, if you think we're going to stay with you, you're crazy.'

Otto couldn't resist the crane fly. His hand passed over it, and cupped it, and discreetly he pressed it into his mouth. Lloyd grimaced in disgust.

‘You shouldn't rush to judgement, Mr Denman,' Otto told him. ‘There are other ways of life, apart from nouvelle cuisine and the pursuit of custom homes with real brick fireplaces.'

‘Don't you mock me, Herr Mander,' Lloyd cautioned him. ‘Now get the hell out of here, and don't come back.'

Otto raised his hand. ‘I've come to get you, Mr Denman, one way or another. If you don't agree to stay with me until the solstice, you and Mrs Kerwin, then believe me, you will burn, too.'

Lloyd said, ‘You're bluffing. Now take a powder, before I do something I might be sorry for.'

Otto stared at him. Almost immediately, Lloyd felt a sharp pain in the middle of his forehead, and heard the snap of burning skin. He shouted out, and lifted his hand to his forehead. Otto had burned a small circular mark on him.

‘You see that is “O” for Otto,' Otto smiled. ‘You are branded now, Mr Denman, like a dumb animal. You belong to me.'

Lloyd took a cautious step back. His forehead felt as if it were still on fire. ‘You want us to stay with you? At your house in Rancho Santa Fe?'

‘Until next Wednesday, for the sake of my peace of mind. You wouldn't want to disturb my peace of mind, would you, Mr Denman?'

‘I guess I wouldn't,' Lloyd replied. Helmwige laughed.

At that moment Kathleen appeared. Otto bowed, and clicked his heels together. ‘Guten Morgen, gnädige Frau.'

‘Lloyd?' asked Kathleen. ‘What's going on? What's the matter with your forehead?'

They were driven to Rancho Santa Fe with the sounds of Die Walküre on the Mercedes stereo. Inside the car, it was like a black leather icebox, so cold that Kathleen shivered. Helmwige drove, Otto sat neatly in the passenger-seat with his knees together and smoked a cigarette with an amber holder. The music was too loud for sensible conversation.

Kathleen's sister Lucy had been confused and worried by her sudden request to take Tom for a week, and she had obviously been suspicious of Otto and Helmwige. But Kathleen had explained that Otto was a grief counsellor with the psychiatry faculty at UCSD, and that she needed to spend a few days with him to help her get over Mike.

‘He's a good friend, too,' she had assured Lucy, as Helmwige had lifted their bags into the trunk.

‘You never mentioned him before,' Lucy had replied, ‘and he sure doesn't look like any kind of counsellor. Let alone anybody that you'd like.'

‘It takes all kinds,' Kathleen had told her, and kissed her cheek. ‘I'll be back Thursday morning. Take care of Tom for me.'

‘You know I will.'

They reached the house on Paseo Delicias and turned into the sloping drive, parking close to the Mercedes 380SL. Helmwige opened the door and they dutifully climbed out.

‘Helmwige will bring in your bags,' Otto told them. ‘Follow me . . . I will show you where you can stay.'

‘Where's Celia?' asked Lloyd, looking around. ‘Is she here someplace?'

Otto turned to him, his face as crumpled as white tissue. ‘I will explain everything to you in due course, Mr Denman. And in due course, I will show you your bride-to-be.'

‘You're sick,' Lloyd told him.

‘History will be the judge of that, not you,' smiled Otto.

‘How about that friend of yours?' asked Lloyd. ‘The guy in the chains?'

‘What about him?'

‘Is he still here? I'm not sure that he's exactly the kind of sight that Mrs Kerwin ought to be exposed to.'

‘He's nothing. He's not even a person.'

‘What do you mean, “he's not even a person”? What the hell is he, then—two orders of eggroll to go?'

Otto stopped on the verandah and fixed Lloyd with a look that could have set fire to a lake. ‘Don't joke with me, Mr Denman. Don't think that you have that privilege. You have voluntarily and unwisely involved yourself in a matter which is no concern of yours, and now you are paying the price for your inquisitiveness. I could have burned you many times. Be thankful that I didn't, but watch what you say. I can always change my mind.'

Lloyd said nothing. He could sense that he had pushed Otto way too far, and just because Otto didn't have a gun, that didn't mean that he wasn't capable of killing him with all the effectiveness of a gun, and a hundred times more painfully. He allowed Otto to lead him into the house, and Kathleen followed a little way behind.

Otto showed them into the living-room. Lloyd noticed that the chain-rings were still in the floor, although the young man was gone. Inside, the living-room looked even more like a period piece from the 1930s than it had from the outside. The wallpaper was dull brown, the furniture was mostly laminated plywood and chrome. On the walls were dozens of sepia photographs of Germany before World War Two. Pretty girls in fur stoles, smiling young men, balconies and snowy mountaintops.

An old-fashioned gramophone stood in one corner, with a stack of 78 records beside it. The top record was Die Wacht Am Rhein.

Lloyd looked up at the huge drawing of the lizard on the wall. ‘Our friend the crosslegged gecko,' he remarked.

Otto stared at him coldly. ‘That, my friend, is a salamander. The symbol of our Transformation.'

Kathleen came in, and looked around. She gave Lloyd a meaningful glance, but both of them guessed that they would be safer if they remained quiet.

Helmwige showed them upstairs to their rooms. Both rooms were small, with sloping dormer ceilings, and in Lloyd's room the bed was no more than a mattress on the floor. He had a restricted view over the treetops, downhill toward the Fairbanks Ranch, but immediately he saw there was no prospect of escaping out of the window. Below the sill, there was a short slope of oak-shingled roof, and then a sheer drop down to the yard. He peered out and saw the young man who had been chained up in the living-room, digging in the yard with a shovel. The young man wore baggy shorts and a singlet, and the back of his singlet was dark with sweat. Lloyd wondered what he was doing gardening on such a blistering hot afternoon. At least he wasn't naked. But when Lloyd looked again, he saw that the young man was still restricted by a long chain around his right ankle. Very bizarre.

‘You are free to do anything except leave,' Helmwige told them. ‘You will be well taken care of. Otto is many things, but he is always a man of his word.'

‘Glad to hear it,' said Lloyd. ‘What time's lunch?'

Helmwige said, ‘He will tell you everything this evening. I know Otto. He talks about secrecy but he is so impatient to show the world what he has achieved. Your Celia is part of that achievement, Mr Denman. He won't be able to resist the temptation to boast.'

‘He burns people and then he boasts?'

Helmwige smiled, almost friendly. ‘You still don't get it, do you, Mr Denman? It is right in front of your eyes. You should try perhaps to see things for what they are, instead of what you would like them to be.'

She went back downstairs, and left them alone. Kathleen came up to Lloyd and held him close, without saying a word. Lloyd circled his arms around her and said, ‘Don't worry . . . really, don't worry. Everything's going to be fine. So long as we play it cool and easy, and don't lose our nerve.'

‘But what are they doing?' asked Kathleen. ‘Are they spies, or what? And if it's all such a big secret that we have to stay here, why does Otto want to boast about it so much?'

‘And what is it that's right in front of my eyes, that I don't see?'

Kathleen shook her head. ‘It's all so strange. I feel like I'm going to wake up any minute and Mike will be lying in bed next to me and none of this will ever have happened.'

Lunch didn't materialize, but by six o'clock they began to smell the strong aroma of cabbage throughout the house. Shortly after seven, the young man knocked at their doors, and asked them to come downstairs to eat. He was wearing the same shorts and singlet that he had been wearing in the yard, and he smelled of sweat.

Kathleen said to him, ‘You like gardening, huh? I just love it!'

The young man looked at her without expression.

‘We saw you in the yard,' Kathleen told him, trying to sound bright. ‘You were digging, yes? We saw you digging.'

Still the young man said nothing.

‘Looks like the lights are on, but there's nobody home,' Lloyd remarked.

‘You do comprenez anglais?' Kathleen asked the young man. ‘I mean, you asked us to come eat. Or was that just something that Otto taught you?'

‘Come on, Kathleen, forget it,' said Lloyd. ‘Let's just go eat.'

The young man led them downstairs, and showed them through to a small dining-room furnished in dark oak. Otto was already sitting at the head of the table, Helmwige on his left. Around the walls hung lurid amateurish paintings of Bavaria, purple mountains and black pine-trees and lime-green lakes, although pride of place was given to a framed photograph of a stern, rectangular-faced man with acne-scarred cheeks and long bushy side-whiskers.

‘Wagner,' said Lloyd, immediately. He had seen so many pictures of Wagner in Celia's treatises.

Otto nodded. ‘Yes, Wagner, to whom we owe so much.'

‘Isn't . . . he . . . eating with us?' asked Kathleen, nodding toward the young man.

‘No, no,' said Otto, quite surprised. ‘He doesn't eat with us.'

Helmwige lifted the lid from a huge blue-and-white china casserole dish. A strong aroma of pickled cabbage and ham filled the room. ‘Choucroute,' Helmwige announced. ‘I make it myself. Pickled cabbage with pork belly and liver dumplings.'

She heaped three plates high, and handed them to Kathleen, to Lloyd, and to herself. Otto ate nothing but a little dry bread, which he broke into tiny pieces. Too many bugs in between meals, thought Lloyd, but decided against saying it out loud. Helmwige's food was fatty and unappetising enough without thinking about Otto eating insects.