Mariam and Wanda
Again, Wanda was sucked out of the reality of the hut, the strange smells and the uncanny presence of fish hand, back into her own memories and experiences. She was aware that it was a kind of trip she was experiencing, a strange recapitulation of all the horror. It was not as if she had completely repressed these memories, no, on the contrary. But this was unfiltered, raw and coarse-grained, and as she experienced under the influence of the herbal brew, her self-protection mechanisms were no longer able to easing the impact, take the edges off, make it less cruel, less real. The intensity of the memories, of the emotions she relived here, seemed exaggerated to her, almost overdriven, as if someone had turned all her emotion controls to ten. At the same time, however, she knew that this was not true. She had felt just as strong back then. It had been just as terrible then. It was about five weeks before the day that Shepard, in his righteous and at the same time somehow miserable anger, had brought death to the degenerate group. She, Mariam and Thomas had huddled together like a litter of puppies so that their naked bodies could give each other some warmth. Body odors haven’t bothered any of them for a long time. Somehow Wanda was clear from the beginning that this day would not be a day like most others so far. They did not spend the night in the open air or under the ridiculous bit of protection offered by the tents of pitted and unprocessed animal skins which the degenerates carried with them. This was mainly due to the fact that there had been a duel between two degenerates on the morning of this day. Between Andrin and Leon, to be precise. The fight was quickly over. Leon had chosen the timing of the duel well. The evening before Andrin had particularly raved at Wanda and some of the other enslaved women. He had poured so much looted liquor into himself that it had been easy for Leon to get him off his feet. From the point of view of the degenerates, he had to be something like a ‘liberal’, because he had renounced to kill Andrin, after he had beaten him before all eyes and according to all the rules of art. And now - contrary to the Cardinal’s commandments - he had led them into a kind of warehouse so that the loser could recover from the multitude of minor injuries he had suffered. The walls and the roof kept the icy wind away from them, and the two fires that the degenerates had lit in the hall and fed them with all they had found in the small office cabuffle - files, tables, wooden pallets, and shelves - raised the temperature of the hall to levels that were no longer latently life-threatening. Yet all the prisoners froze miserably. As always, the rations had been extremely meager. Nevertheless, Wanda had given half of her allotment to Mariam. It still wasn’t enough. A small edge of zwieback and some half raw rabbit meat. Wanda had asked Thomas to do the same. He had ignored her request. He had only replied: “I can’t give anything away if it’s not enough for myself, can I? In the long run, if I keep my strength up, I will be of more value to you and the girl.” As if to caricature his words, so it seemed to Wanda, he stroked Mariam tenderly over the head. Wanda didn’t like the way he did it, but his argument was not to dismiss completely. She herself was anything but in good shape. Somehow she realized she was starving to clear her conscience. Maybe even to punish herself. Not for something she had done, but for something she was. Weak. Powerless. For not having been able to save her parents from their terrible fate. Not her father. Not her mother. Not the countless other faceless dead that the slave caravan had left behind. But wasn’t Thomas right? Didn’t she, with her willingness to make sacrifices, in the end make sure that all this would happen again? Over and over again? That she would also in the future have to watch powerlessly how people came to harm? She couldn’t starve herself weak. Could she? She turned her eyes away from Thomas and towards the Degs. Andrin rolled around his sickbed on the floor and quietly sounded in pain. Three degenerates stood guard at the metal double door, which allowed access to the hall. Around one of the fires stood six of them and eight around the other one. Leon had withdrawn into a corner with two other men whom Wanda thought he had known for some time, perhaps even from before the war, and talked quietly to them. They were going through passages in Da Silva’s Bible, from what it looked like. The carts pulled by the prisoners had been used to additionally secure the entrance doors. Wanda knew that at least two or three of them were standing guard outside. Either directly in front of the gate, but it was more likely that they had taken up posts on the roof of the hall. She noticed that the supplies that made up most of the cart’s load had been partially unloaded. Did that mean they’d stay here for longer? The severity of Andrin’s injuries did not really justify this, as far as Wanda could remember the fight between the two men. No broken bones and no deep wounds had been seen on his hated body. Which of course didn’t mean he couldn’t have any internal injuries. But in that case, his chances were slim anyway. There had to be another reason Leon had them camped here. She was almost tempted to share her observation quietly whispered with Thomas so that she could at least talk to someone about it, but then her attention turned to something she had previously perceived only out of the corner of her eye. Like everyone else, Leni sat close to the wall, her knees pulled close to her naked body. When you sat on the wall, you could at least see what was coming. She wasn’t far from Wanda. Two meters, maybe. These two meters distance between them was mainly due to the fact that the other prisoners had not liked Thomas from the beginning. And the fact that he and Wanda formed a team, at least a kind of team, now also pushed her out of the collective of the suffering. Wanda had accepted this fact, just as she had accepted that Thomas was almost stuck to her. At least when he wasn’t busy kissing the Degs’ ass or offering his to them. At the thought of it, Wanda contemptuously distorted her face, but immediately switched to her instinctive disgust. He just wanted to survive. That’s what they all wanted. And Wanda had already done something similar to save Mariam from this fate. The only difference was that Thomas offered himself preventively and not only when there was no other way out. He seemed to do it well, though. She remembered his whispered words. “If I’m all right, I can help you, you know?” Wanda’s stomach growled loudly, as if he would say with Thomas´ voice: See what I mean? It’s not mine. You’re getting weaker and weaker. Make yourself strong. In fact, Thomas looked up at that moment and quietly turned to her: “You really should change your mind, you know?” Yeah, thought Wanda. Yeah, you’re right. I have to change my mind. Again her gaze slipped over to Leni. There was something between Leni’s bony, naked back and the wall, slightly above the buttocks. A package. Leni was hiding something. That’s what had occurred to Wanda earlier. Basically, it could only be food. Wanda took a quick look at the degenerates all around. None of them paid any attention to the prisoners. Soon the circle would begin, Wanda estimated. Forced sex and perverted prayers - that was their equivalent to the evening television of the past. Leni had gotten something from somewhere. She’d probably have to eat it tonight if everyone else was asleep. Tomorrow, when the carts had to be pulled again, she wouldn’t be able to hide it anywhere. Thomas was right. Wanda had to begin to survive, to survive really actively and not only to persevere and endure as long as she could. Her previous behavior had been short-sighted. She had done it wrong and done Mariam a disservice. What good was it to be able to keep the girl fed for a few more weeks by giving her what she withheld from her own body? If she had collapsed and the Degs had left her by the wayside so that she could finally die, there would be no one left to take care of Mariam. Thomas did it only to please her, Wanda knew that deep inside. He didn’t care much about Mariam herself. She had to learn to think like him if she wanted to stay in the game in the long run. And that’s what she wanted, she now noticed, despite the fact that her feet were scabbed. Notwithstanding the fact that her whole body was strewn with bruises and abrasions, notwithstanding the fact that it burned when she had to urinate, and notwithstanding the fact that Thomas just had a miserable tiny hard on while he was squeezing on her and Mariam. Despite the fact that her mother had been stabbed and her father gutted. Did the others help her? No. They didn’t. None of t
hem, apart from fucking Thomas, had done anything for her. Neither when the terrible things happened, nor after that. This food, which Leni had either saved from her mouth and picked up or stolen - Wanda wanted it. It was all blurred in front of Wanda’s eyes. The figures of the Degs deformed bizarrely, Leni’s face grew bigger and bigger until it was the only thing Wanda could see. Leni’s green eyes, at the same time disbelieving and horrified. The voice of the fish man behind her echoed into her memories. “So you stole her food, huh, little murderer? But that wasn’t all, was it? That wasn’t the hour of your birth, was it? More has happened. Have another sip. Then you’ll tell the story to the end!” Wanda felt herself drinking, swallowing the strange smelling brew, warming her throat and then spreading in her stomach. As the insects crawled through her veins again, so did she dive in again, but unlike the times before, she did not lose herself in her own memories this time. Her mind was divided into two parts at that moment. She was at the same time in the present reality of the hut with the liquid walls, at the table next to Mariam, who in the meantime had stopped swaying her head back and forth and looked at her attentively and now all of a sudden seemed to be listening very carefully, and she was also in a past, with all the horrors she had long wanted to leave behind. It made Wanda shiver, seeing Mariam’s gaze, seeing her eyes wide open. The drug´s influence on the girl seemed to have diminished. Of course, Mariam had noticed the following events at that time. But she hadn’t known anything about the train of thought that had driven Wanda to her actions. Mariam had only witnessed the fight that was the result of Wanda’s deeds. In retrospect, Wanda knew she should have waited until the degenerates had chosen a victim for the circle, she should have waited until no one had looked. But she hadn’t done that. Centimeter by centimeter she had moved closer to Leni. The Degs didn’t notice, but when it finally came to pass, and Wanda grabbed behind Leni’s back and wanted to take away the bundle she was hiding there from the eyes of the degenerates, Wanda was surprised to find that Leni seemed to have just been waiting for that moment. Like claws her dirty, sharp-edged fingernails drove into Wanda’s face and ripped her skin open. She had succeeded in suppressing a loud cry of pain. Then she hammered Leni’s head back against the wall and snatched the prey from her, which had been smashed into a mangy fur. But her timing had been bad. The noise, as low as it had been, had drawn the attention of the degenerates to her and Leni. Leon with his two bodyguards came over to them with measured, demonstratively confident steps. And not just him. They were both petrified, as if frozen, and soon a semicircle of degenerates had formed around the women. Thomas had moved away from her with Mariam in his arms, obeying his survival instincts. The package that Wanda had ripped out behind Leni’s back had fallen to the ground during the wrangling between them and now it seemed like a beacon yelling and screaming: I was stolen. Look! Look! Something’s wrong here! At least that’s how Leon interpreted it and he was absolutely right. Exaggeratedly slow he went to his knees in front of the bundle and clad it open. First he looked at Leni, then at Wanda. “Whose of you is this? No, I misspoke...” he grinned. “...I mean: Which one of you took it? I know it’s mine and nobody else’s. One of you is a thief. So, who?” Wanda was so horrified by the failure of her risky theft that it was Leni who answered first. “It was her! It was her! She took it. I’ve seen it! I’ve seen it! And I wanted to give it back. Yeah, really, I wanted to give it back. I know that it is not our right and ...” she began with a pleading voice. Finally Wanda could speak again. “No. She’s lying! The fucking bitch is the one lying! It was... it was the other way around. She hid it behind her back...” Leon interrupted them both. “Keep your filthy mouths shut. I don’t believe any of you. But one’s telling the truth. Only which one? That’s the question, isn’t it? Which one of you unworthy little cunts tried to steal from me? It’s not an easy matter, is it?” His two companions and a few of the bystanders expressed their approval with a grin on their faces. Leon went on: “All right, then. I guess we agree on that. Now the question arises how to find out which of the two bitches is telling the truth. Is this filthy piece of fuck meat lying? Or this one?” He took turns pointing at them like while a counting rhyme, and Wanda made a time leap in her memories for a fraction of a second, remembering what his originally handsome face had looked like after Shepard had put a bolt in the back of his head. But now, at that moment, it was still intact, and it grinned spitefully when he announced his decision: “I think the only thing that’ll help here is a judgment from God!” He rose from his kneeling position, carelessly pushing the bundle into the hands of one of the surrounding Deg women. “Back to our supplies with it. Put them in the circle!” Roughly Wanda was torn on the feet and pulled into the middle. Leni followed closely. She, however, made the mistake of resisting the raw treatment and insisting that it was only Wanda who had stolen a few lumpy slices of raw ham from the degenerates. Ham. Just some raw ham. At first she was still trying to get a reasonable, convincing tone, but the closer she got to the middle, the further she was dragged by one of the degenerates - Wanda remembered that her name had been Viola - by her hair across the hall into the area between the two small fires, the louder and shriller her voice became. She was now panic-stricken, dropped to her knees, but this only led to Viola tearing Leni’s hair even harder and pulling her across the floor. Wanda, on the other hand, was very, very calm at that moment for some reason. She realized what was going to happen next. They’d let them fight. To the death. God’s judgment he said. She knew that she had been lucky with Leon’s decision. In general, people believed the first and loudest one who cried out that he was right. And that had been Leni. Leni had no problem delivering Wanda to the knife. Why should Wanda feel sorry for her - even if the woman had never really done anything to her before? Wanda could remember how they had faced each other. Both naked, without any protection. About how they had put their primitive clubs in their hands and about how Leni looked, when she had finally accepted that they had no choice and one of them would lose their life today in the middle of the circle, with a fear distorted face, but at the same time determined to club Wanda dead. Wanda didn’t have any trouble fending off the first blow. Leni was too panicky, too uncoordinated, she went on in this way in her fear. Wanda didn’t know where this analytical cold in her came from all of a sudden. She was scared too, that’s for sure. Had the horror of a simple damage to her body, of the pain associated with it, been driven out of her by the degenerates? A sarcastic part of her thought: Maybe I should thank Andrin for that? The degenerates all around cheered as Wanda let Leni drive her back. She wanted Leni to let off steam. Wanda felt she had the upper hand. The feeling that she could play with Leni like a cat does with a mouse. Out of the cheering of the degenerate, Leon’s voice rose impatiently: “Come on, you stupid slimy sluts! I’m getting bored! Offer me something for my ham!” Leni, in her fear and panic tried to comply with the order and doubled her efforts. She managed to drive Wanda back, further and further, and Wanda remembered exactly what it had felt like when her supposed superiority, her self-confidence, had begun to crumble a little. Leni’s blows were short and fast, and loudly and wooden the clubs collided. Step by step Wanda had to go backwards and then something happened which she had not expected. She eventually put her back against the wall of the degenerates, and almost simultaneously some of them struck several blows against the upper body, which were to drive her back into the middle of the circle. One of them was so hard, she broke to her knees. Leni sensed her chance. From above, a two-handed blow raced down on Wanda. She barely managed to get her head out of the path of the club, so that the hard wood crashed heavily on her shoulder. Wanda couldn’t help but drop her weapon. My arm! My arm’s broken! Then again Thomas words. I can only help you if I’m well. She couldn’t let that happen any longer. She couldn’t let Leni make her unwell. It was this thought that loudly and garishly cut through her brain and suppressed her pain. Leni pulled her club up again with both hands, her legs wide apart and Wanda pushed her hea
d forward with all her might. Her forehead hit Leni over the filthy pubic bone. The hit didn’t do any damage, but it did cause Leni to break off her attack. Rather surprised than really badly hit, Wanda´s opponent took a few staggering steps back, one hand over the spot that Wanda had hit. Another flash of thought ate through Wanda’s brain. She’s protecting her stomach. Is she pregnant? Then the thought had passed, and even before Leni had found a firm footing again, Wanda let herself fall forward, grabbed one of Leni’s ankles and tore at it as hard as she could. Wanda’s desperate maneuver was a complete success. With a frightened outcry Leni went to the ground, and Wanda threw herself on her. Even before Leni again had a firm grip on the club that the degenerates had pressed into her hand, Wanda’s clawlike hands had closed around the woman’s neck and squeezed. Wanda knew she was yelling and screaming like an animal without really remembering the words. She squeezed until her arms hurt even more and Leni’s eyes were wide open and almost pouring out of their sockets. She felt the resistance slacken. Leni’s attempts to push her away from herself and escape her hands became weaker and weaker. And then, just before she completely lost consciousness, Wanda let go of her neck, grabbed her face from the sides with both hands, pulled her head towards herself, just to hit it down with all her might half a second later. Again. Again. Again. The sound had burned into Wanda’s memory. The bursting of bones. Terrible in itself. Now almost like music in Wanda’s ears. Almost like ... The smell of fish returned. And with him the voice. “So this was your first murder. A few slices of ham...” Wanda wanted to disagree. She wanted to rebel against the strange power the fish man had over her. Angrily, she roared back: “No! Not for a few slices of ham, you pig. Not for ham, but for learning to survive. For being here today. For Mariam being here today! For letting me be here now and let you fucking asshole drug me. You know what I’m gonna do? I’ll survive that, too. And when I get my hands on you, you will experience on your own body what I am still capable of”. He just laughed. Again, both realities merged into one in front of Wanda’s mental eye. Slowly the terrible sight of Leni’s shattered skull and the slowly spreading pool of blood on the dirty floor of the warehouse faded. The neighing and roaring of the degenerates and the laughter of Leon and Viola slowly became quieter, while the walls of the hut, which suddenly no longer seemed to be liquid, but slowly gained substance and suddenly looked almost normal again, were reduced to their original, real dimensions. Very, very quietly she now had the voice of the fish man in her ear when he said: “I look forward to our next meeting.” Then, after a few seconds, Wanda’s gaze fell on the flashlight lying on the table. And then she realized that she could move her hands, that they were no longer tied up, that she could use them to reach for the lamp. Mariam was still sitting on the chair next to her. She was still tied up. Shocked Wanda shot up, confusedly turned all around and tried to illuminate every corner of the hut at the same time. “Where’d he go? Where is the son of a bitch... where are you? Where are you miserable little piece of shit?” She was yelling now. Yelled out all her fear. But no one gave her an answer. She could see Mariam’s mouth moving behind the gag that the girl wanted to say something, and that was what finally allowed Wanda to calm down. If I’m so scared, what’s it like for Mariam? The girl had to be incredibly horrified. Wanda put the flashlight back on the table. There was nobody here but her and Mariam. He had left. He’d escaped. Had left the hut ... Whatever. It was an opportunity. As fast as she could, Wanda loosened Mariam’s shackles and removed the gag. Wanda suppressed the impulse to press the girl to herself and took her by the hand instead. Mariam let it happen. However, she did not seem relieved, did not respond to the pressure of Wanda’s fingers. Her face was pale, her features denied. Once more Wanda turned in a circle and tried to discover a trace of the fish man. There was nothing. The kettle standing on the table was cold when Wanda touched it, the cup from which he had forced her to drink was nowhere to be seen. The dried herbs no longer hung on the walls. Wanda pulled Mariam behind her and out of the hut. She didn’t want to think now, she couldn’t think at all. It was still dark outside when they went back to the camp. The forest still smells strange, Wanda thought. They weren’t as far away from the camp of the Motorized as Wanda’s memories would have make her believe, she noticed when she saw something glitter in the flashlight. Something metallic. They came closer, and as she bent down to see what it was, she realized it was her pistol. Wanda picked it up. Then she discovered something else. The carcass of an animal. A little dog. He must have been dead a long time ago, in terms of decomposition. But that can’t be true, can it? That’s impossible ... She remembered the beast that had chased her through the forest and that she shot in the end. She let the magazine slide out of the gun. It was full. No way! She smelled at the gun. It hadn’t been fired lately. Mariam asked quietly: “Wanda? Why did you do that?” It took Wanda a while to sort out her thoughts before she could answer the question. “That... I, so, Leni...” “No, I don’t mean that,” Mariam said. “Why did you tie me to the chair?” Wanda suddenly went cold.
Brenner: The Gospel of Madness (Book 5 of 6) Page 11
