The Cannibal (11 page)

The final blot against absolution, depriving her of sacrifice and
intelligent suffering, was Gerta’s unpleasant love. When the sores first came and she fell
with dizzy spells, the old fool of a nurse put her to bed, and far too old for such
exertion, climbed the immense bare stairway with trays for the invalid. Gerta told her
stories, sat by the bedside, excited with the drama, with something to do, and with Nordic
bravery, plunged majestically into the soiled linen. And worst of all, the nurse told
hundreds of stories of ladies and their lovers, treating Jutta all the time as if she were a
girl, and worse, as if she were a child. On the final rainy day, when the child could hardly
walk, Gerta insisted upon dressing her meticulously and heavily, and tied, grunting, one of
the mother’s huge old bonnets on her head to shield her, unhappily, from the storm. It was
Gerta’s care, the coughing attachment and unforgiveable
pity, that made
the nation’s born leader forlorn in the nunnery. How the old fool petted and fawned even
before the sisters, who, though not so outwardly comforting, were more, finally, difficult
and grasping, feeding on their wards.

The stately steps grew closer; confessions mumbled nearer at hand.

Standing together like obedient black birds at the bottom of the stairway,
their heads bent in silent unmeditating respect, the sisters waited until Superior
disappeared upwards and out of sight, painfully slow and belligerently in communion. Never,
never could she whip these girls into shape, she deplored the ragamuffins, the misplaced
childish females. She did not like girls. Superior caught her breath, drew herself up, and
made headway through the common lot of problems and despairs, passing unscathed from cell to
cell.

The world was growing dimmer for Jutta, the crisis was at hand, her hold on
her knees was precarious and sharp. Whether or not she was responsible, she had her
weakness, physical and perhaps beyond control, and it made her guilty of disease while the
calcium continued to dribble away from the cold, well-bred bones. And despite her
praiseworthy nature, her determination, she did fear Superior. Behind all her plotted good
intentions, behind her adoration of the East and worship of people in the abstract, the fear
always remained, fear of mother, fear of being nursed, fear of Superior. The light was
flowing out of the
bunker
, there was nothing more to do except wait for the final
unadmitted illusion to disappear, nothing to think of, no one to dislike, no one she needed
to love. The little stone-like bumps
were hard and rough under her
fingers, the hair was straight into her eyes.

“I didn’t really want to do it, Superior,” the voices were drawing closer
with short unpleasant sobs, “I never really wanted to, it was all a mistake, I’m sorry,
truly sorry, sorry,” and Jutta heard them falling in terror into the slovenly captivity of
forgiveness, heard the voices folding into submission. Superior would cross each name, that
night, off from the human list. What was it? Yes, she scorned the heroes on
die
Heldenstrasse
, they were forgiven, blessed and posed. She would not put on her Sunday
shoes to walk that street. But she could not see Superior, she could not, and surely the
grey waters of hell would drown her for that treachery, that fear.

The shadows were cold, her hands were unfeeling with numbness. The
Oberleutnant
, warm and restless, tossed off the covers, thought of silken hair
and fiery eyes.

Suddenly the light vanished, faster than the moon could be covered with
clouds, and the dark angel stood in the doorway cutting off the candlelight from the outside
world. The waters opened at the feet of the girl, Superior opened her warm heart, ready to
receive the remnants of another mortal. The throat tightened, pulled, and at that moment she
heard the General calling, calling from the great room of feasting, “Where is the railroad
station, the railroad station?” and he was laughing.

“Child,” the woman stayed in the doorway, half in the hall, half inside,
“are you ready to open your heart to the Heavenly Father? Are you ready to be insured of
safe flight from the pit of everlasting day and weariness? Now is the time to atone.”
Superior’s voice was loud, was always the same whether she was
talking
to the well or ill, was always clear and harsh. “Now is the time to abandon the wicked man
of your soul, now you may come to my arms.” She remained rigidly blocking the light. “Child,
have you prepared your confession?”

Surely if she lived she would end up a civil official after all, entrusted
and forced to take down, patiently, Superior’s documents of condemnation. She felt a small,
cold throbbing under her arm.

“No.” She did not think, but answered dumbly, out of the deathbed. “No. I
have nothing to confess, absolutely nothing, nothing.” She was talking back to Gerta,
telling her brothers to leave her alone, for she was cold and tired. “Nothing to say to you,
Superior,” and relaxing her grasp, she slipped from the cot, a rude, black, invalidated
heap.

The
Oberleutnant
, disturbed by the voices, threw on his trousers
and trudged angrily upstairs. This sort of thing had to stop.

Ernie was so small now, propped helplessly in bed, fever and chill making
his face now comical, now cruel and saintlike. He was a puppet with two masks and it was up
to Stella, weary, to change them as he bid. He had become as bothersome and old as all
unhealthy people, but he loved, in the agonizing undramatic last moments of his life, to
swallow the thick medicine and make bitter faces. Stella heard from the sentry, who was
still posted at the door of the General’s empty estate, that the illness was spreading all
through the city. He told her rumors of deaths, widespread prostitution, and of imminent
victory. “At least,” she thought to herself, “dear Ernst is not the only one.” The valises
were still unpacked and lay crookedly, uncertainly, at the foot
of his
bed. “He looks,” thought Stella, “as if he had a toothache,” and indeed the patient’s cheeks
were swollen and inflamed at the sides of his thin white face. His coat collar was turned up
about his throat, it was better to put him straight to bed, even fully dressed. Everywhere
Stella moved, he still called, and though his face was turned away, the voice in the depths
of his chest, she felt him holding on to her with his last breath of grace. She hadn’t even
time to wash, the windows were still boarded up, the furniture, except the pile he lay upon,
was still in the basement. For the first time since her love on the mountain, she began to
realize that he was a fencer in the clouds, stuck through, finally, with a microscopic flu.
The room was dark and close as sickrooms are, but the evening chill and ageless year round
dampness made it more like an underground aid station. Holding her breath she leaned over
the averted face, pulled it to position, pushed the sugar-grimed spoon between the lips, and
straightened with a long sigh.

Stella didn’t know what she would do with him when he died. All at once the
problem was overwhelming, his remains would hang around for weeks. The idea of disposal
seemed so remote and impossible. Surely the man who took care of such things would be long
out of business, where could she turn? If only the body would fly away with the soul, but,
no, it would linger on, linger on here in this very room. “He doesn’t look at all,” she
thought, “like the man I married in the garden.” Where is the railroad station? She helped
him through each physical minute, becoming more impatient as he coughed and turned. Suddenly
it struck her that this was not old Herman’s son, and now she was nursing a stranger,
not even a ward of the State. “Dear Ernst,” she thought, “you look just
like Father.”

Every time he opened his eyes, he saw her there, warm, beautiful, efficient.
The very breath of the flowers on her shoulder brought new life. When she sat on the bed,
one soft dark knee upon the other, one thin elbow pushing gently against her bosom, holding
the lovely head, all lofty desire was his, he was in the presence of the white lady of the
other world. Ah, to die no longer with the fire but with the dove. The first stages of death
took energy, the last mere confidence. The closer she bent with the spoon in her hand, the
warmer he felt, the farther he flew.

“Stella?”

“Yes, Ernst?”

“Isn’t it time for the black pills?”

Immediately she brought the bottle.

“Herman, stay away,” he thought. “The old man must not come back, the
wonderful peace of being waited on must not be broken. The corrupter’s prime agent should
not be allowed out of the war, but should stay forever and ever in some black hole away from
the gracious light of Heaven. The maiden voyage of the star, all hands accounted for, safely
arrived into the sky. At last to be able to do something alone, without old Snow there to
beat the other fellow’s back.” The dreams arose more vividly, he forgot the star. “Those
were fearful times with the old man filled with wrath. Oh, no, that demon could not possibly
come back to plague my end, to expect to be welcomed home at such a precarious, serious
time.” Ernst channeled himself once more into the soft light, the medicine smelled as sweet
as the valorpetals,
without the demon’s horned masterful voice
intruding.

“He flicked his eyes open and shut once,” Stella later told the guard.

“Stella.” He called again, “Stella, in the carpetbag, he’s there, somewhere
near the bottom, get him, please.”

She rummaged through the flabby thing, like a peddler’s sack, and there,
beneath the newspapers and photographs, sure enough, under the soiled shirt, near the bottom
on a pair of black shoes, it lay, wrapped in old Christmas tissue.

“Here.” He patted the pillow near his cheek, “Here,” he said in bliss.

She put the carving of Christ, almost as large as his head, on the pillow.
She waited as if for something to happen. How peculiar, the wooden man and fleshless God,
they kept good company. Then she remembered: on the mountain she too lay by Christ, and it
was a mistake!

Suddenly he coughed and the little statue rolled over, its arms and legs
thrown wide in fear.

“Here,” she said, “now drink this, drink it.” For a moment it looked as if
he would recover. Then, no, no, he smiled again and all was lost. Stella crossed her soft
dark knees.

The guard did not bother to open the door for Gerta and Herr Snow, but
whistled and wondered at the old woman’s return, while the soldier and his girl pushed alone
into the darkness of the wide downstairs hall. For a moment, Gerta stood uncertainly in the
middle of the vacant foyer, listening for the sounds of the dead, with Herman leaning,
drugged, on her arm. She could hear the guard, the last guard,
behind
her shuffling about on the other side of the door. Herman breathed heavily in the darkness,
his weight sagged, she could see nothing. Then she heard them, those dead two, master and
mistress, and far overhead she saw a line of light and heard the tinkle of glass, ghosts in
their cups.

She wanted to shut the soldier, shirt off, shoes off, into her room with all
night, every night for no telling how long, before her. But she began to lead him toward the
light. Mistake, mistake to bring such a tender man, so close to popping, within the realm of
unwanted, unexpected guests—to let the steam off the wrong end, the end of white, flat
apprehension. And she too, by walking up the stairs, was holding off. As they neared the
top, he tripped once, twice, and Gerta began to cross the line from love to nurse, from
grand-sharer to assistant.

It was Fraulein Stella’s room. They waited before the door.

The trains were still arriving. Under cover of darkness, small and squat,
they emptied themselves of soldiers home on leave. In the dark the girls milling on the
platform could not tell whether the trains were full of passengers, perhaps men, or empty.
Signals crossed, whistles argued out of the stops of tangled rail, “Train from 31, train
from 9, let me pass, I’m carrying wounded.” “Wait, you’ll have to wait, 31, there are dogs
in front.”

Gerta could hear the whistles far out in the night. They were long and
old-fashioned and far away.

“Do you hear the dogs?” Ernst spoke, hands picking at the covers.

“Of course, dear husband.”

He could hear them barking among the boat whistles in the middle of the
night.

Stella mixed the potions and wondered about the hour,
what could she do when the hour stopped? All about her the phials, the wads of cotton, the
handbook of medical instruction, were out of reach, too slow. There was nothing she could do
against it, she lost her place in the handbook. All the soft embrace of the mountain was
gone, all the humor of his saber wounds was healed; he was stitched and shrouded in that
impertinent, unthinking smile. He grew thinner, and staring her full in the face with his
three fingers twitching helplessly on the cover, he gagged.

They heard the scratching at the door and at first they thought it was the
wind, only the comforting night air.

“Now, what’s she doing here,” thought Gerta as she stepped into the
patient’s room with her lover behind.

The red-bearded devil leaned across the bed, staring at the man with a
toothache. Herman looked from his son to Stella, the lovely girl, from the colored bottles
to the boarded window, and back to the majestic bed.

“He’s not sick!” and the devil roared with laughter, his desire for Gerta
flickering out in spasms of recognition of his foe, the bedded influenza.

He had horns. Terrible, agonizing, deformed short stubs protruding from the
wrinkled crown, and the pipes he held in his fiery hands were the pipes of sin. All of the
calm of Heaven evaporated and at the last moment, not knowing what it was all about, Ernst
recognized Old Snow. And in that moment of defense, of hating the devilish return of
boisterous heroic Herman, Ernst died without even realizing the long-awaited event; in that
last view of smallness, that last appearance of the intruder, Ernst, with his
mouth twisted into dislike, died, and was reprieved from saintliness. The
old man still laughed, “Feigning, he’s only feigning!” Stella was irritated with his
ignorance, at least this father could rise to the dignity of the occasion by admitting the
fact of death. But no, he chuckled and looked stupid.