The Cannibal (14 page)

It snowed for nights on end, but every morning the monkeys appeared
uncovered, exactly the same as the day they were tossed into the yard, wiry, misshapen,
clutching in their hands and feet the dead rats. When vigilance became more and more
impractical, all poisons, orange crystals of cyanide and colorless acids, were thrown into
the incinerator, and with despondent precaution all sharp instruments were destroyed. They
were disturbed; several unrecognized, unwashed doctors wandered without memory in the pack
of patients and one young dietician thought she was the common-law wife of
a fifty-nine-year-old hebephrenic. On the night before the uprising, thieves tore down
the wooden sign inscribed with the haven word “asylum,” burned it during the coldest dawn
recorded, and the institution was no longer a retreat.

Before dawn on the morning of the riot, Madame Snow stood alone by
candlelight in a back room where cordwood had been piled, holding a stolen chicken
struggling lightly beneath her fingers. She did not see the four stone walls or the narrow
open window, and standing in a faded gown with the uneven hem that was once for balls, the
untied soiled kimono flapping against her legs, she looked into the frightful eyes of the
chicken and did not feel the cold. Her bare feet were white, the toes covered with grains of
sawdust. The door behind her was locked, tallow dripped from the gilt holder and the bird
fluttered, tried to shake its wings from the firm grasp. The old woman’s pulse beat slowly,
more slowly, but steadily, and the narrow unseen window began to turn grey. The feathers,
bitten with mange, trembled and breathed fearfully. The soft broken claws kicked at her
wrist. For a moment the Kaiser’s face, thin, depressed, stared in at the cell window, and
then was gone, feeling his way over a land that was now strange to his touch. The old woman
watched the fowl twisting its head, blinking the pink-lidded eyes, and carefully she
straddled the convulsing neck with two fingers, tightened them across the mud-caked chest,
and with the other hand seized the head that felt as if it were all bone and moving bits of
scale. The pale yellow feet paddled silently backwards and forwards, slits breathed against
her palm. Madame Snow clenched her fists and quickly flung them apart so that the fowl’s
head spurted across
the room, hit the wall and fell into a heap of
shavings, its beak clicking open and shut, eyes staring upwards at the growing light. She
dropped the body with its torn neck and squeezed with fingermarks into a bucket of water,
and stooping in the grey light, squinted, and plucked the feathers from the front of her
kimono.

A few moments later the messenger, angry, half-asleep, pounded on the window
of the front room and shouted, “Riot, riot up at the madhouse,” and clattered off, banging
on more doors, calling to startled women, distracted, wheezing.

By the time Stella reached the Mayor’s, still in the kimono, hair flying,
she found a great quarreling crowd of women already gathered. The Mayor, before taking
control of the villagers asked to send aid, had girdled the red sash around his nightgowned
stomach, and distrait but strong, he stood on the ice-covered steps passing out equipment
and words of encouragement to the already violent hags.

“Ah, Madame Snow, Madame Snow,” he called, “you will take command on the
march and in the attack. I leave it all up to you.” Outstretched hands clamored in his
face.

“Did you hear?” he shouted.

“Yes, I heard.”

When all of the women had shouldered the barrel-staves which he had
distributed, and fastened the black puttees about their bare legs, they started off, Stella
in the lead and running as fast as she could. Jutta was tickling the Census-Taker at the
time and only heard of the trouble afterwards. Madame Snow’s hands were still covered with
the blood of the chicken, and back in the small room its beak was clamped open. When they
reached the iron
fence and the gates were thrown open, the women stopped
short, silent, moved closer together, brandished the staves, and looked at the band of
inmates huddled together on the other side of the heap of monkeys. One of the monkeys seemed
to have grown, and frozen, was sitting upright on the bodies of the smaller beasts, tail
coiled about his neck, dead eyes staring out through the gates, through the light of early
morning as dim and calm as the moon. “Dark is life, dark, dark is death,” he suddenly
screamed as the women charged across the snow.

All was hushed that morning, and in a dark wing of building 41, Balamir lay
waiting among his unsleeping brothers and wished that someone would let in the cat. The male
nurse who had been on duty three days and nights sat dozing in the stiff-backed chair and
Balamir could see the white lifeless watch with its hanging arms. Along the length of the
corridor were the rows of small empty rooms, and the signal lights over the swinging doors
were burned out. An old cleaning woman, stooped and bent with the hem of her grey skirt
hiding her feet, shuffled from the upper end to the lower of the monastic hall, dragging a
mop over the outstretched legs, mumbling to herself, “Now it’s quite all right, you’ll all
be well soon, yes, you’d be surprised at all I’ve seen come and go.” The feathers of the mop
were dry and frozen.

From the windows of building 41 one could see the irregular white fields
stretching off to patched acres of sparse forest land, the game field with its bars and
benches heaped with snow. Sometimes dimly through the grillwork of adjacent buildings, an
unrecognizable single figure passed back into the shadows. The cleaning woman fumbled with
the key
ring fastened by a thin brass chain around her waist and went
through the smooth metal door and down the deserted stairs. Suddenly a little wiry man with
small fragile hands and feet and a clay pipe clutched in his teeth, ran to the door and,
facing it, trembled with anger.

“Don’t you ever say such a thing to me again, don’t you dare say that, if I
hear it again, if you dare speak to me I’ll break your back, I’ll break it and cripple you,
so help me,” he screamed.

The nurse awoke with a start, reached for his smoldering cigarette. “Here,
Dotz,” he called, “stop that yelling …” but quickly, before he could move, the whole hallway
of men, stamping and crying, followed Dotz through the door and out into the fresh air. Once
out, no one knew the way in, and already a few white coats were excited and gave chase.

From a fourth floor window the Director, wrapped in a camel’s hair coat,
watched the struggle until he saw the women, led by Stella, rush the ridiculous inmates; he
drew the blinds and returned to his enormous files.

During that hour the monkeys were so underfoot that the patients were saved
from worse injury by the clumsiness of the women who shouted and tore and pelted everything
in sight. As these women in the midst of changing years ran to and fro, beating, slashing,
the stiff tails and hard outstretched arms and furry brittle paws smacked against black
puttees and were trampled and broken in the onslaught. Several wooden shoes were left jammed
in rows of teeth smashed open in distortion by the stamping feet. The barrel-staves broke on
unfeeling shoulders, the rats’ bodies were driven deeper into the snow.

“Here, you,” suddenly cried the cleaning woman from the
main doorway, “come back in here,” and the troop of men disappeared, kicking the stained
snow in violent flurries. Suddenly the deputized women found themselves alone and standing
on the mutilated carcasses of little men, and with a pained outcry, they fled from the
grounds. “You won’t say it again?” said Dotz, but no one answered and they settled back to
rest in silence. The sun came out high and bright at nine o’clock and lasted the whole day,
striking from the tiles and bricks, melting the snow, and the Director finally issued an
order for the burial of the animals.

Leevey was killed outright when his motorcycle crashed into the log. He was
pitched forward and down into an empty stretch of concrete. The Stengun, helmet, and boots
clattered a moment, canvas and cloth and leather tore and rubbed; then he lay quiet, goggles
still over his eyes, pencil, pad, whistle and knife strewn ahead. The three of us quickly
leaped upward over the embankment, crouched in the darkness a moment, and then eagerly went
to work. I was the first to reach the motorcycle and I cut the ignition, guided it over the
bank. We picked up Leevey and carried him down to his machine, lost none of his trinkets,
then together rolled the log until it slid down the muddy slope and settled in silence in a
shallow stream of silt.

“It’s not smashed badly,” said Fegelein and ran his fingers over the bent
front rim, felt broken spokes brushing against his sleeve, felt that the tank was slightly
caved-in and petrol covered his hand. “You’ll be riding it in a month.”

I put my ear to the thin chest but could hear
nothing,
for Leevey had gone on to his native sons who sat by the thousands amid fields of gold,
nodding their black curly heads, and there, under a sunshine just for them, he would never
have to bear arms again. The night had reached its darkest and most silent hour, just before
dawn comes. Still there were no stars, the mist grew more dense overhead and even the dogs
no longer howled. My fingers brushed the stiffening wrist.

“Are you ready?” asked my comrade by the machine.

I felt closer, more quickly, pulled away the cuff of the jacket, tore as
quietly as possible at the cloth over the wrist.

“What’s the matter with you? What are you doing anyway?” The voice was
close; Stumpfegle also drew closer to my side.

“Eh, what’s up?” The hoarse whispers were sharp.

I pulled at the strap, carefully, faster, and finally spoke, “He’s got a
watch.” I leaned closer to the corpse.

“Well, give it here, you can’t keep it just like that …”

I brought the pistol dimly into sight again, shoved the watch into my
pocket, “I’m the leader and don’t forget it. It’s only right that I have the watch. Take the
sacks off the machine and leave them here. We’ll share what we can find, but not the
watch.”

Fegelein was already back tinkering with the engine. I listened to the watch
and heard its methodical beat and could see the intricate clean dials rotating in precise
fractions. The tongue was now sucked firmly and definitely into the back of Leevey’s throat
and his knees had cracked upwards and grown rigid. “We had better get him out of here.” We
picked him
up and with the motorman between us stepped into the shallow
ooze of the stream and headed out beyond the wall of fog towards the center of the
lowlands.

On the opposite side of the highway, hidden in the shadows of unoccupied low
buildings and the high bare spire wet with dew, stood Herr Stintz fixing everything closely
in his mind, holding the little girl tightly by the hand. The child crossed and uncrossed
the cold white legs, watched the black shadows leaping about in the middle of the road. Then
they were gone.

Jutta yawned, carried the damp blouse into the next room, and opening the
rear window, hung it from a short piece of wire dangling from a rusty hook. For a moment she
smelled the sour night air, heard the lapping of water, and then returned to the still warm
bed to wait the morning.

The limping English ghosts made their way back to the tank and stood
silently waiting for the light when they would have to climb again through the hatch and sit
out the day in the inferno of the blackened Churchill.

The Duke, breathing heavily, slowly extended his arm, and as the boy moved,
clamped the diamond ringed fingers over the light shoulder and breathed easier. Footsteps
sounded in the upper part of the clay-smelling theater and the projector began to grind and
hum, then stilled again.

Very cold, the Mayor crawled out of bed, went to his closet and taking an
armful of coats and formal trousers, heaped them on the bed. But it was still cold.

Madame Snow lit the candle again and saw that the quilted man was sleeping,
and hearing no sound,
no one returning to the second floor apartment,
she decided to get dressed and simply await the day. She began to tie up the long strands of
white and gold hair, and reaching into a bulky wardrobe found herself a formless white
chemise.

“My God, the fog is thick.”

“We’re almost there,” I replied.

“Which way?”

“A little to the right, I think.”

The formless white puddles of fog moved, shifted among the stunted trees,
rose, fell, trailed away in the areas of sunken swampwood where once tense and cowed
scouting parties had dared to walk into the bayonet on guard, or to walk on a trigger of a
grenade that had blown up waist high. An axle of a gun carriage stuck up from the mud like a
log, a British helmet, rusted, old, hung by a threadbare strap from a broken branch.

“He’s heavy.”

“They feed the Americans well, you know,” I answered.

“Well, he’s going where they all belong.”

Several times we stopped to rest, sitting the body upright in the silt that
rose over his waist. A shred of cloth was caught about a dead trunk, the fog dampened our
skin. Each time we stopped, the white air moved more than ever in and out of the low trees,
bearing with it an overpowering odor, the odor of the ones who had eaten well. More of the
trees were shattered and we, the pallbearers, stumbled with each step over half-buried
pieces of steel.

“Let’s leave him here.”

“You know we cannot. Follow the plan.”

Past the next tree, past the next stone of a gun
breech
blasted open like a mushroom, we saw a boot, half a wall, and just beyond, the swamp was
filled with bodies that slowly appeared one by one from the black foliage, from the mud,
from behind a broken wheel. A slight skirmish had developed here and when the flare had
risen over this precise spot, glowed red and died in the sky, some twenty or thirty dead men
were left, and they never disappeared. The fog passed over them most thickly here, in
relentless circles, and since it was easier to breathe closer to the mud, we stooped and
dragged the body forward.