Children of the Dusk (17 page)

That was the difference between the guards and the Jews, he decided. The former were paid not to think; the latter never stopped, as they had proven in the camps by staying alive.

Aristida bunch grass had grown in the long, unbroken vertical line of rock that indicated a door in the crypt; the tomb had not been opened for a very long time. It occurred to Erich that that was a good thing, though he was uncertain why. Perhaps because he too liked his history inviolate, he thought.

The grumble of the Panzer interrupted his reverie. The tank came crashing through the underbrush, bending and then snapping saplings. Resolutely Erich stalked toward the machine and signaled for a halt. The tank stopped. Bruqah poked up his head.

"Were you not told to leave this machine where it was?" Erich demanded. "You complained about the ruination of the hillside artifacts, yet you endanger the tall ones here."

Bruqah shrugged. "Damage already done," he said. "I forgive you." He climbed down and put a hand on Erich's shoulder.

Erich shrugged it off. "Where did you leave Miriam and the boy?"

"Misha awoke. They walk a bit to here." Bruqah disappeared down the turret and shut off the tank, which stopped idling with an angry huff. The Malagasy walked over to where the entrance was being uncovered.

Bruqah pulled up a lump of grass and, holding it by its knot of dirt and roots, ran his fingers through the coarse strands as if through a head of hair. "The dead inside tomb dream of daylight," he said.

"Are you attempting to provoke me?" Erich asked in a low voice. "You said the tomb was empty."

"Except for longing." The Malagasy placed his hand upon the stones, a wistful look creeping his eyes. "To be buried away from home is to be lost. When body cannot come to family burial grounds, stone is raised beside highway or main path so soul can find way home." He stopped and scratched his head, as though searching for words to match complex thoughts. "For common man is enough," he went on, "but for Vazimba...." He stopped again. "People given untruth after Ravalona die. Servant said Princess soul enter Count. People bow at him. French soldiers come--"

"I know the rest," Erich said. Benyowsky was by then without power. Learning the truth, the people fled from him and he was killed by his friends the French--and did not rise from the dead three days later as he'd promised.

"Crypt was built in hope that queen come home," Bruqah said. "She come soon."

"She died a hundred and fifty years ago," Erich said.

"As you measure time."

The guards, fingers crammed into crevices and backs bent in effort, were attempting to open the stone entrance. Waving his arms for work to cease, Bruqah approached them. The guards moved aside tensely and suspiciously.

"He'll claim you have to know magic words," one of them mocked.

Bruqah gave him a patronizing smile. From somewhere beneath the
lamba--
a pocket, Erich supposed--he pulled out a piece of gristle. "Witness,
Zanahary
," he said to the sky, "this offering from a tender and well-raised zebu killed only yesterday."

Closing his eyes, he tossed the meat high into the air. It came down among a group of Jews, who dodged it. The guards broke into nervous laughter.

Bruqah took out a second piece of meat and held it up in his palm. He swung his hand to and fro, as if toward the corners of the earth, saying, "Witness, O Ancestors. Though we cannot mention you all by name, yet all are included in this prayer! Do not make yourselves spirits without homes. Save your children from witchcraft! Bless we all!"

He cast the meat at the feet of the nearest guard, who backed up apprehensively.

"Witness, O Earth. We give to you because you give to we."

The calling of the birds and insects and the breathing of the other men pulsed in Erich's ears, and in that instant he was transported home. Father Dahns genuflected before the altar, bronze figures of Mary and Joseph looked down from their niches at a little boy standing wide-eyed between his parents while they likewise genuflected, he gripping their hands and wondering about the Holy Mother and her carpenter husband.

"Damn you," Erich said under his breath as the Vazimba sat down on his haunches, head bowed, arms limply hanging.

"What? No more mumbo jumbo?" a guard asked, leaning against the stone work. A boa constrictor slithered out between his legs, its back reticulated with red and orange, and the young soldier cried out, dancing aside as though trying to stamp out a fire. He shivered as he watched the animal sidewind into the taller grass.

"
Dô
snake," Bruqah said. Crossing quickly through the grass, he cut off the snake's departure. Finding feet in front of itself, the serpent lifted its head, burrowed forward, and coiled once around an ankle. The Malagasy looked at Erich and, teeth clamped together, grinned widely as he lifted the leg, the snake dangling. "They vessels of the souls of the dead," he announced.

"I thought you said this crypt was empty," Erich said again, and immediately felt the guards' angry glares.

"I am not
always
right, Mister Germantownman." Bruqah pulled the snake off his leg and, after holding it out at arms' length to appraise it, shucked it, curling, off his arm and dropped it unceremoniously amid the weeds. "Open it, we find out."

The guards quickly jumped to and pried at the door with all their strength. The stone moved easily, surprising the men and throwing them off balance.

He's nothing more than a poor man's magician, Erich thought, less able than the syphilitic but probably also less evil. He stared down the guards and strode toward the tomb. They looked away to avoid his eyes.

Moving sideways through the narrow door, he entered the crypt. Cool darkness swathed him, bringing a sense of relief after so much humidity. For a moment he stayed still, drinking in the calm and feeling wonderfully separated from the world outside, with all its heat and tempers.

"Bring me a flashlight," he ordered finally, half-expecting that, when he flicked it on, he would see Solomon peering up from the musty blackness, arms cradling a terrier in the sewer hideout of their youth.

Instead, the light revealed a molding corpse in a soldier's uniform, reclining in a raffia and mahogany chair suspended by frazzled ropes from the ceiling. Erich could see that the body was rotted. Gray flesh mottled with age had given way to brown bone along the cheeks and nose. The eye sockets were empty except for dark pulp at the bottom of the round. The lips were gone, the teeth uneven.

Erich accidentally nudged the chair as he moved closer to examine the body. The head nodded forward, chin against chest, what was left of the wig nearly slipping from the skull. Over a shirt of heavy muslin the corpse wore an embroidered dress coat, threadbare with age, wrist-length sleeves ending in cambric ruffle showing their tatter, the coat's once-gleaming metal buttons glinting dully in the light. Tiny buckles at the kneecaps embellished the black-velvet breeches. The bottoms of the legs, tucked beneath the rest of the body rather than dangling, were outfitted in close-fitting high boots and gaiters decorated with white, woven cloth.

"Benyowsky," Erich guessed in a low breath. His heart pounded with such excitement that his usual fear of the dead seemed to vanish.

The dank low-ceilinged room proved to be empty save for the near-skeleton and three small ceramic bowls, scrimshawed with blue ships upon a blue floral sea. The bowls sat upon a stone pallet which protruded from a side wall and was perhaps meant as a resting place for a body. The floor was also stone, though furred with a fine, wet moss. When he touched it, Erich made a face and brushed his hands clean against his trouser leg.

Bruqah entered.

"You know who that is," Erich said, sensing the Malagasy's lack of surprise.

Bruqah picked up a wrist as if checking for a pulse, and set the arm down again.

"I thought you said Benyowsky had been buried at the
far
end of the bay, near the mouth of the Antabalana River," Erich accused.

"
Entombed
," Bruqah corrected. "Not
buried
. And please to remember my people remove and re-shroud the dead whenever the
lambamena
needs replacing--or when living spirits feel the need."

"For Malagasy dead, yes, but for Europeans?"

Bruqah moved slowly around the corpse, scrutinizing it. "Was Count never Malagasy? Had he no roots in this our land?" He looked at Erich. "Was he never
Ampandzaka
-
be
?"

The words chilled Erich. Just the dankness of the tomb, he told himself. He drew his shoulders closer together, crossing his arms. "Someone brought the body here. Who would go to such trouble?"

"Zana-Malata awaits return of soul of Princess."

"And you?" Erich asked, as the guards peered in the doorway. Erich lanced his light toward them. "Out!"

Muttering, they withdrew.

"I, too," Bruqah said softly. "I, too." More loudly, he added, "Body faces east, where spirits of our ancestors rest. Legs are tucked. Forbidden to extend feet to east. Carefully done, all right."

"Someone went to a lot of trouble," Erich said, hesitant to divulge his suspect for fear Bruqah might disagree--and whatever small sense Erich had made of the matter would unravel.

"Count has waited long years for his woman to return. He yearns for her, I think. He knows she near, I think."

"You know too much," Erich said sternly. "Or at least you think you do."

Using the flashlight as if it were a lance or staff, he ushered Bruqah from the tomb. Glancing back, as the lamp passed the bowls, he thought he glimpsed rice and what looked like chicken fat within two of them, but subsequent sweeps revealed only that the bowls were empty. He emerged, squinting, into the light and heat of the day.

"We want to look," a guard said. "See for
ourselves
."

Erich gave him the light, and the two guards crowded toward the crack. "If I find you've touched him or searched his pockets, I'll court-martial both of you," he warned.

He sent the Jews packing, shovels over shoulders. When the guards exited the grave, he dismissed them as well, and told Bruqah to go and find Miriam and the boy. Alone at the site, the world, even this new world, seemed very far away.

Everything was going to work out fine, he thought. And if all else failed, there was always Plan B: the Storch that waited at the lagoon below. The problem there was that Hempel was the only person on hand who knew how to fly. Plus, the Storch was only built for three; he didn't know if a fourth passenger would be possible. Who would be the other passenger?

Miriam?

Could she ever be happy knowing they had left Sol behind?

Taurus?

From far below, an engine coughed and purred into life, as if responding to his thoughts. Erich stood up and looked down into the lagoon, where Hempel was conducting his daily check of the plane's engine. Sunlight sparkled off the Storch's fuselage. At this distance, the plane looked like a toy.

Erich wished he'd had the time and foresight to learn to fly. In Berlin, he had thought escape would mean boarding one of the rubber boats that, hooked together, would form the pontoon raft they would build to ship the Panzer and other heavy equipment to the mainland.

That was then.

He realized now that losing oneself among the jungles of northern Madagascar or among the human jungle at Antananarivo, the capital, would be insufficient. He would have to abandon his former existence altogether, which meant putting distance between himself and Mangabéy as quickly as possible. Ergo, an airplane.

This airplane.

He strode up the dirt mound and sat down on the crypt's grassy top. Obeying the admonition about not extending his feet, he kept his legs tucked. The hair of graves, he thought, recalling a poem he'd once read. He broke off a handful of blades, bent one in half and tried to make a whistle. Managing to squeak out a spluttery sound he looked around guiltily, fearing he'd been seen or heard, and tossed away the grass.

M
isha lay on the grass at Miss Miriam's feet, feeling outside of himself, seeing himself, happy that for a while there had been no pain except the heaviness in his chest that made him want to cough all of the time. He thought about what he would want to be when he grew up, that is if wishes were horses and he still lived in Berlin and still lived with his parents. It was a game he played when he wasn't thinking about how he could kill Hempel and Pleshdimer.

Today the answer was easy.

He'd be a magician, like Jean-Jacques Beguin. Papa had taken him to see Beguin, and afterward he, Misha, and Papa had talked about if Beguin could really read people's minds. His papa said there were only two kinds of magic, the real magic of God and the false magic of men. Misha wondered if his papa was right. Maybe there was also a third type: God's magic given to men.

"Mishele, what are you thinking?" Miriam asked.

He started to answer, but his words were cut short by renewed coughing.

"That's a nasty cough," Miriam said. "When we get back to the medical tent, Franz must give you medicine--"