Untitled (50 page)

  She came to another intersection, but again she could find no sign announcing the Sonnenfelsgasse. At this she grew even more worried. Mareen had said, "You will come to an intersection, then you must head left along the Sonnenfelsgasse . . ." If she was meant to pass straight through two intersections, why hadn't Mareen told her? Or had Kapuzine forgotten, her head filled so full of advice it had crowded out other facts?

  She looked all around her indecisively: should she go back the way she had come? Probably she should simply ask a passerby for information . . .

  And then the Wolf stepped out of hiding.

  Yet, seeing her approach, Kapuzine felt an instant of terror – true terror this time, for she knew what danger this woman represented. The Wolf smiled as she approached, and she spoke in a musical voice.

  "Hello there. You seem lost."

  What bright, well-kept teeth she had! No doubt the entirely vegetarian diet made up for the lack of proper dental-care equipment.

  Kapuzine forcibly banished all stray thoughts from her head. She looked demurely at her feet, then up at the woman, in a rehearsed gesture of innocent bashfulness, as she answered: "Well . . . Yes, ma'am, I am. At least I think I am. I'm looking for the Sonnenfelsgasse. Have I gone too far in?"

  "Where are you going on the Sonnenfelsgasse?" asked the Wolf.

  Was this really as wicked a creature as Mareen had said? Kapuzine felt so hopelessly lost she gave the real address, though she stuck to her cover story:

  "Number 263. I'm going to see my Grandma Kunigunde. I've never been there so I don't know if I'm going the right way."

  "Hmm. You're sure it's 263?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You came in by the Aspernbrücke, yes? In that case you've passed the intersection already. You should have turned left just after the big flame-tree."

  "Oh, thank you!" exclaimed Kapuzine, and turned to go.

  "No, don't leave yet, girl," said the Wolf in a caressing voice. "You don't have to walk back all that way. The Sonnenfelsgasse curves around, you see, and number 263 will in fact be fairly close to here. What you must do is keep on walking in the direction you were going, until you come to a big fountain. There's a side street to your immediate left, heading back north, more or less. If you follow that, you'll come onto the Sonnenfelsgasse around number 230, then you can go left and you'll get there faster. All right?"

  Restless and in a hurry to be on her way, Kapuzine was shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  "Yes," said the young girl, lulled by the Wolf's kindness and cheer, not thinking for a moment to question the woman's truthfulness. "Thank you very much!"

  "My pleasure. We live to serve."

  As she travelled even deeper within the Ring, the gloom thickened around Kapuzine, but her spirits had been lifted. Wending her way through the underbrush, the little girl came at last to the fountain, wondered idly at the moss-covered statuary, and then entered the side street that led to the Sonnenfelsgasse. For the first time, Kapuzine noticed songbirds warbling in the trees. There were flowers blooming here and there; as she bent down to peer at them she realized some were in fact quite pretty. This forest was not so hateful after all. Her heart beat happily as she walked, and she daydreamed about the taste of her first cigarette.

  Her eyes had grown attuned to the patterns of the greenery surrounding her. So, when she came to the next intersection, she realized that the tiny purple flowers of a clinging vine near the corner spelled out the name of the street. Sonnenfelsgasse! The street names had been there all along, but she had been looking for printed signs.
What a silly girl I am!
she thought. Mareen had forgotten to explain this trick of the Gardeners to her, but she should have understood right away.

  Now that she knew what she was looking for, she quickly spotted house numbers amid the ivy screening the facades down the Sonnenfelsgasse. They were limned by yellow blossoms, and she counted off the numbers as she walked, until she found Sonnenfelsgasse 263.

  The doorway, behind a curtain of hanging vines, was flanked by a metallic box she recognized with a thrill of pleasure: an intercom. So, the Gardeners hadn't yet expunged all signs of civilization from the City!

  She approached the door, glanced around guiltily, then murmured into the box: "It's me, grandmother. I am bringing cake and wine. Open the door."

  "Lift the latch," replied a scratchy, tinny voice. "I am too weak, and cannot get up."

  This made no sense, but it was the expected countersign, so Kapuzine trustingly waited for Mareen's contact to unlock the door. The lock clicked open and the muffled voice added:

  "Just come up the stairs to the first landing. I'll be there."

  Inside the stairwell, the air was dank and smoky, with brands picked from flame-trees burning slowly in the darkness. The wooden steps creaked as Kapuzine climbed swiftly. All her fears had left her – she was too young to know that to be unafraid is to blunder blindly into the walls of life.

  When little Kapuzine reached the first landing, she pushed open a half-closed door, discovering an empty room, rank with the smell of disuse. A scarred tree trunk filled the windowframe. What little light slipped around it only served to emphasize the room's squalor. Sitting on an overturned crate, a woman wrapped in a long cloak turned her head when Kapuzine came in.

  The young girl froze, surprised to feel so uneasy when she'd reached her goal at last. For a moment, she stood transfixed by the gaze of the woman's unnaturally wide eyes, almost owl-like in the flatness of their corneas.

  "Oh, grandmother, what big eyes you have," Kapuzine whispered.

  "The better to see you with, my dear," answered the woman affably.

  Somewhat reassured by the Woodcutter's tone and by the axe she could now see in the room's corner, Kapuzine sidled closer. But when the woman nodded approvingly, a strand of her hair parted and the young girl stopped moving, struck by the sudden glimpse.

  "Oh, grandma," she said disbelievingly, "what big ears you have . . ."

  "The better to hear you with, my child," replied the woman, who was no longer smiling.

  Kapuzine saw then the weapon lying on the crate beside the seated woman, and she backed away abruptly, until the back of her legs bumped against the large earth-filled bin from which the room's tree was growing.

  "Oh, what a big gun you have," she said, her voice tearing with despair.

  The young girl tightened her grip on the basket's handle, but it was too late. It had been too late when she had entered the room. The false Woodcutter rose to her feet, throwing back her cloak to show the black uniform beneath.

  "The better to arrest you with," the Wolf said coldly.

  The injustice of it all filled Kapuzine to bursting. "But I did everything the way I was supposed to!" she cried out.

  "Sometimes, that simply isn't enough," said the Wolf, as she levelled her gun upon the trembling girl in front of her. "You mentioned Sonnenfelsgasse 263 to my colleague. It so happens that only yesterday, we rooted out this particular nest of Woodcutting vermin. My colleague sent a Swallow by another route to warn me; he got here even faster than a Messenger Pigeon. We had already learned the countersigns . . . And here you are."

  The Wolf motioned with the gun, "Now, come with me."

  Kapuzine shook her head. Mareen's instructions had not covered such a turn of events. She no longer knew what to do.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked, not needing to fake the quaver in her voice.

  "To the Tiergarten."

  The little girl's determination crumbled. Her hand opened, and the basket rolled onto the grimy floor. The Wolf did not bother picking it up. Kapuzine knew then that, even if she was still far from the pits of the Tiergarten, still breathing free air, still dressed in the worn synthetic fabrics of the suburbs, she had in fact been gulped whole by a force too powerful too resist. Though she had not yet passed the gates of the Tiergarten, she had already entered the belly of the Wolf.

  Yet, though she may have thought herself forsaken by all, she was soon to join the legendary heroes we still sing today.

  A small pack of Wolves escorted Kapuzine inside the prison, the tall shapes of multiply modified men and women dwarfing the child in their midst. Once they had passed through the gates, guarded by lounging Bulls in their vests of human leather, the young girl blinked in surprise.

  Behind the leafy walls, the Tiergarten had been preserved exactly as it once had been. The grassy swards were kept cropped by freely roving goats. The sandy paths shone whitely in the sun, and soon the boots of the Wolves crunched along one of the winding lanes.

  They walked by some of the animal pits. Kapuzine thought of the gorilla that had come from here, pity and envy welling in her heart. The Wolves were no doubt endowed with a grim sense of irony, for the young girl saw naked concrete again for the first time since she'd entered the Ring. The cement enclosures and cages had been kept free from the taint of greenery. The only change brought about by the Gardeners was the presence of people inside them, while the former tenants were free to roam the leafy streets.

  The stench of manure, human or animal, rose above the maze of pits, moats, and fences, a fetor so thick it seemed to the young girl that it should be visible as a tangible cloud under the hot summer sun.

  At last, they came to the barracks housing the central den of the City's Wolves. Though she still held herself bravely, Kapuzine ached all over with fear, her muscles cramping so tightly she sometimes stumbled. Though she was terrified, she was intent on holding back her tears. Show no fear, Mareen had told her once. And she thought Mareen would not be afraid in her place, so she had to be brave, too.
Even if they slap me, I won't cry
, she promised herself.
Even if they . . . if they . . .
But her imagination failed to picture anything worse.

  One Wolf shoved her into cell IB4, making her lie down on a bed that had a mattress but no sheets. He knelt to manacle her wrists to the bunk's headboard.

  "What is going to happen to me?" she squeaked out, in spite of her resolve.

  The Wolf did not answer, leaving once he was done. Kapuzine closed her eyes, willed herself to sleep, but sunlight still entered through the barred window. It was too bright, and too early in the day, for her usual nap.

  Another Wolf came in. With a start, Kapuzine recognized the woman she had met in the City, the one who had directed her to the Sonnenfelsgasse. She had seemed so nice, and yet she had been so treacherous. What would she do to the little girl now in her power? Those questions and many others must have nearly choked Kapuzine as she waited.

  The Wolf turned to a man standing at the door, waving him inside. He also wore the black uniform of the Wolves, but he seemed as young as Mareen, his features still unmarred by the blemishes of adulthood. He waited, standing at attention, while the Wolf resumed looking at Kapuzine, her head slightly tilted to a side.

  "The dear girl . . ." she whispered, as her dark eyes sized the small figure stretched out on the bunk. "This is going to call for the utmost delicacy. Do you feel up to it, fellow Wolf?"

  "Yes, I do," barked the Wolfling.

  The Wolf surely thought to herself,
What a tender young crea
ture! What a nice plump morsel she would make!
But she was unwilling to risk killing Kapuzine during questioning, thereby displeasing her masters. She chose instead to leave the young girl in the care of her assistant, who would bear the penalty if he slipped up.

  Kapuzine understood nothing of this, for Mareen had told her little of the Tiergarten. Once a Woodcutter or a sympathizer entered the Tiergarten, there was nothing else to hope for than a quick death. The little girl had only grasped something of the prison's dreadful aura from the stories cut short when she had wandered in on Mareen and her friends, from the way Mareen's throat tightened when she spoke of the old zoo, from so many cues that were no less telling for being unspoken. She was sure of only one thing. She would say nothing, would never betray Mareen, would force her captors to let her go in the end.

  And when the Wolf she knew added, "Remember, be gentle with her," before she left, Kapuzine could only think it was a kindness. All her life in the suburbs, she had known nothing else. Perhaps it was a fatal weakness in her, but it is ever the mark of the civilized to be judged weak by the true savage.

Imagine, if you will, all that a human body can suffer without being brought past the brink of death. Imagine it, for you will not be told by this teller. Imagine a mind losing track of day and night, as it is slowly twisted further and further, until its sense of time crystallizes around the comings and goings of Wolflings, their sharp instruments and their blunt ones, their wild laughs of pleasure as they take their fun with an ever-compliant flesh poppet. Imagine the places a mind will go to forget what is happening to the rest of the body. Imagine trying to breathe without stirring the ribcage, to spare cracked ribs and bruises left by sand-filled socks. Imagine waiting (minutes? hours?) for a bowl of thin broth to cool because to sip it hot would bring agony to teeth snapped in half.