Dark Benediction

by Walter M. Miller

  "Now give me your hands again," she said, then, whispering: "No, please! Not there! Not there."

  The last thing would be vengeance and death, but the next to the last thing was something else. And it was clearly in violation of the captain's orders.

  It was the heating of the old man that aroused her fury. They dragged him out of the bunker being used by Major Kline for questionings, and they beat him about the head with a piece of hydraulic hose. "They" were immaculately tailored Blue Shirts of the Americanist Party, and "he" was an elderly Russian major of near retirement age. Two of them held his arms while the third kicked him to his knees and whipped him with the hose.

  "Just a little spanking, commie, to learn you how to recite for teacher, see?"

  "Whip the bejeezis out of him."

  "Fill him with gasoline and stick a wick in his mouth."

  "Give it to him!"

  They were very methodical about it, like men handling an unruly circus animal. Marya stood in line with a dozen other prisoners, waiting her turn to be interrogated. It was nine in the morning, and the sun was evaporating the last of the dew on the tents in the camp. The sergeant had gone into the bunker to report to Major Kline and present the articles her captors had taken from her per-son. He had been gone ten minutes. When he came out, the Blue Shirts were still, whipping the prisoner. The old man had fainted.

  "He's faking."

  "Wake him up with it, Mac. Teach him."

  The sergeant walked straight toward her but gave no sign of recognition. He did not look toward the whistle and slap of the hose, although his face seemed slightly pale. He drew his gun in approaching the prisoners and a guard stepped into his path.

  "Halt! You can't ..."

  "Major Kline's orders, Corporal. He'll see Marya Dmitriyevna Lisitsa next. Right now. I'm to show her in." The guard turned blankly to look at the prisoners. "That one," said the sergeant.

  "The girl? Okay, you! Shagom marsh!"

  She stepped out of line and went with the sergeant, who took her arm and hissed, "Make it easy on yourself," out of the corner of his mouth. Neither looked at the other.

  It was dark in the bunker, but she could make out a fat little major behind the desk. He had a poker expression and a small moustache. He kept drumming his fingers on the desk and spoke in comic grunts.

  "So this is the wench," he muttered at the sergeant. He stared at Marya for a moment, then thundered: "Attention! Hit a brace! Has nobody taught you how to salute?"

  Her fury congealed into a cold knot. She ignored the command and refused to answer in his own language. "Ya nye govoryu po Angliiskil" she snapped.

  "I thought you said she spoke English," he grunted at the sergeant. "I thought you said you'd talked to her."

  She felt the sergeant's fingers tighten on her arm. He hesitated. She heard him swallow. Then he said, "Yes sir, I did. Through an interpreter."

  Bless you, little sergeant! she thought, not daring to look her thanks at him.

  "Hoy, McCoy!" the major bellowed toward the door.

  The man who came in was not McCoy, but one of the Americanist Blue Shirts. He gave the major a cross-breasted Americanist salute and barked the slogan: "Ameh'ca F’ust!"

  "America First," echoed the major without vigor and without returning the political salute. "What is it now?"

  "I regrets to repoaht, suh, that the cuhnel is dead of a heaht condition, and can't answeh moa questions."

  "I told you to loosen him up, not kill him. Damn! Well, no help for it. Get him out. That's all, Purvis, that's all."

  "Ameh'ca Fust!"

  "Yeah."

  The Blue Shirt smacked his heels, whirled, and hiked out. The interpreter came in.

  "McCoy, I hate this job. Well, there she is. Take a gander. She's the one with the bacteriological memo and the snap of MacAmsward. I'm scared to touch it. They'll want this one higher up. Look at her. A fine piece, eh?"

  "Distinctly, sir," said McCoy, who looked legal and regal and private-school-polished.

  "Yes, well, let's begin. Sergeant, wait outside till we're through."

  She was suddenly standing alone with them, eyes bright with fury.

  "Why did you begin using bacteriological weapons?" Kline barked.

  The interpreter repeated the question in Russian. The question was a silly beginning. No one had yet made official accusations of germ warfare. She answered with a crisp sentence, causing the interpreter to make a long face.

  "She says they are using such weapons because they dislike us, sir."

  The major coughed behind his hand. “Tell her what will happen to her if she does that again. Let's start over." He squinted at her. "Name?"

  "Imya?" echoed McCoy.

  "Marya Dmitriyevna."

  " Familiya?"

  "Lisitsa."

  "It means 'fox', sir. Possibly a lie."

  "Well, Marya Dmitriyevna Fox, what's your rank?" "V kakoin vy chinye?" snapped McCoy.

  "Starshii Lyeityenant," said the girl.

  "Senior lieutenant, sir."

  "You see, girl? It's all straight from Geneva. Name, rank, serial number, that's all. You can trust us.... Ask her if she's with Intelligence."

  "Razvye'dyvatyel naya sluzhba?"

  "Nyet!"

  "Nyet, eh? How many divisions are ready at the front?"

  "Skol'ko na frontye divizii?"

  "Ya nye pomnyu!"

  "She says she doesn't remember."

  "Who is your battalion commander, Lisitsa?"

  "Kto komandir va'shyevo baralyona?"

  "Ya nye pomnyu!"

  "She says she doesn't remember."

  "Doesn't, eh? Tell her I know she's a spy, and we'll shoot her at once."

  The interpreter repeated the threat in Russian. The girl folded her arms and stared contempt at the major. "You're to stand at attention!"

  "Smirno!"

  She kept her arms folded and stood as she had been standing. The major drew his forty-five and worked the slide.

  "Tell her that I am the sixteenth bastard grandson of Mickey Spillane and blowing holes in ladies' bellies is my heritage and my hobby."

  The interpreter repeated it. Marya snorted three words she had learned from a fisherman.

  "I think she called you a castrate, sir."

  The major lifted the automatic and took casual aim. Something in his manner caused the girl to go white. She closed her eyes and murmured something reverent in favor of the Fatherland.

  The gun jumped in Kline's hand. The crash brought a yell from the sergeant outside the bunker. The bullet hit concrete out the doorway and screamed off on a skyward ricochet. The girl bent over and grabbed at the front of her skirt. There was a bullet hole in front and in back where the slug had passed between her thighs. She cursed softly and fanned the skirt.

  "Tell her I am a terrible marksman, but will do better next time," chuckled Kline. "Good thing the light shows through that skirt, eh, McCoy—or I might have burned the 'tender demesnes.' There! Is she still cursing me?"

  "Fluently, sir."

  "I must have burned her little white hide. Give her a second to cool off, then ask what division she's from."

  "Kakovo vy polka?"

  "Ya nye pomnyu!"

  "She has a very poor memory, sir."

  The major sighed and inspected his nails. They were grubby. "Tell her," he muttered, "that I think I'll have her assigned to C company as its official prostitute after our psychosurgeons make her a nymphomaniac."

  McCoy translated. Marya spat. The major wrote.

  "Have you been in any battles, woman?" he grunted. "V kakikh srazhyeniyakh vy oochast'vovali?"

  "Ya nye pomnyul"

  "She says—"

  "Yeah, I know. It was a silly question." He handed the interpreter her file. '"Give these to the sergeant and have him take her up to Purvis. I haven't the heart to whip information out of a woman. Slim's queer; he loves it." He paused, looking her over. "I don't know whether to feel sorry for her, or for
Purvis. That's all, McCoy."

  The sergeant led her to the Blue Shirts' tent. "Listen," he whispered. "I'll sneak a call to the Red Cross." He appeared very worried in her behalf.

  The pain lasted for several hours. She lay on a cot somewhere while a nurse and a Red Cross girl took blood samples and smears. They kept giving each other grim little glances across the cot while they ministered to her.

  "We'll see that the ones who did it to you are tried," the Red Cross worker told her in bad Russian.

  "I speak English," Marya muttered, although she had never admitted it to her interrogators, not even to Purvis. "You'll be all right. But why don't you cry?"

  But she could only cry for Nikolai now, and even that would be over soon. She lay there for two days and waited.

  After that, there was General MacAmsward, and a politer form of questioning. The answers, though, were still the same.

  "Ya nye pomnyul"

  What quality or quantity can it be, laughably godlike, transubstantially apelike, that abides in the flesh of brutes and makes them men? For General MacAmsward was indeed a man, although he wished to be only a soldier.

  There are militarists who love the Fatherland, and militarists who love the Motherland, and the difference between them is as distinct as the difference between the drinkers of bourbon and the drinkers of rye. There are the neo-Prussian zombies in jackboots who stifle their souls to make themselves machines of the Fatherland, but MacAmsward was not one of them. MacAmsward was a Motherland man, and Mother was never much interested in machines. Mother raised babies into champions, and a champion is mightier than the State; never is he a tool of the State. So it was with Rufus MacAmsward, evil genius by sworn word of Porphiry Grigoryevich.

  Consider a towering vision of Michael the Archangel carrying a swagger stick. Fresh from the holy wars of Heaven he comes, striding past the rows of white gloved orderlies standing at saber salute, their haloes (M-1, official nimbus) studded with brass spikes. The archangel's headgear is a trifle rakish, crusted with gold laurel and dented by a dervish devil's bullet. He ignores the thrones and dominations, but smiles democratically at a lowly cherub and pauses to inquire after the health of his grandmother.

  Grandmother is greatly improved.

  Immensely reassured, General MacAmsward strides into his quarters and hangs up his hat. The room is in darkness except for the light from a metal wall lamp that casts its glare around the great chair and upon the girl who sits in the great chair at the far end of the room. The girl is toying with a goblet of wine, and her dark hair coils in thick masses about her silk-clad shoulders. The silk came by virtue of the negligence of the general's ex-wife in forgetting to pack. The great chair came as a prize of war, having been taken from a Soviet People's Court where it is no longer needed. It is massive as an episcopal throne—a fitting seat for an archangel—and it is placed on a low dais at the head of a long table flanked by lesser chairs. The room is used for staff conference, and none would dare to sit in the great chair except the general—or, of course, a lovely grief-stung maiden.

  The girl stares at him from out of two pools of shadow. Her head is slightly inclined and the downlight catches only the tip of her nose. The general pauses with his hand on his hat. He turns slowly away from the hat rack, brings himself slowly to attention, and gives her a solemn salute. It is a tribute to beauty. She acknowledges it with a nod. The general advances and sits in the simple chair at the far end of the long table. The general sighs with fervor, as if he had not breathed since entering the door. His eyes have not left her face. The girl puts down the glass.

  "I have come to kill you," she said. "I have come to nurse you to death with the milk of a murdered child."

  The general winced. She had said it three times before, once for each day she had resided in his house. And for the third time, the general ignored it.

  "I have seen to it, my child," he told her gravely. "Captain Purvis faces court martial in the morning. I have directed it. I have directed too that you be repatriated forthwith, if it is your wish, for this is only common justice after what that monster has done to you. Now however let me implore you to remain with us and quit the forces of godlessness until the war is won and you can return to your home in peace."

  Marya watched his shadowy figure at the far end of the table. He was like Raleigh at the court of Beth, at once mighty and humble. Again she felt the surge of exhilaration, as when she had crawled along the ridge at the river, ducking machine gun fire. It was the voice of Macbeth's wife whispering within her: Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief! It was the power of death in her bosom, where once had been the power of life.

  She arose slowly and leaned on the table to stare at him fiercely. "Murderer of my child!" she hissed.

  "May God in His mercy—"

  "Murderer of my child!"

  "Marya Dmitriyevna, it is my deepest sorrow." He sat watching her gravely and seemed to lose none of his lofty composure. "I can say nothing to comfort you. It is impossible. It is my deepest sorrow."

  "There is something you can do."

  '"Then it is done. Tell me quickly."

  "Come here." She stepped from the table to the edge of the dais and beckoned. "Come to me here. I have secrets to whisper to the killer of my son. Come."

  He came and stood down from her so that their faces were at the same level. She could see now that there was real pain in his eyes. Good! Let it be. She must make him understand. Be must know perfectly well that she was going to kill him. And he must know how. The necessity of knowing was not by any command of Porphiry's; it was a must that she had created within herself. She was smiling now, and there was a new quickness in her gestures.

  "Look at me, high killer. I cannot show you the broken body of my son. I can show you no token or relic. It is all buried in a mass grave." Swiftly she opened the silk robe. "Look at me instead. See? How swollen I am again. Yes, here! A token after all. A single drop. Look, it is his, it is Nikolai's."

  MacAmsward went white. He stood like a man hypnotized.

  "See? To nourish life, but now to nourish death. Your death, high killer. But more! My son was conceived in love, and you have killed him, and now I come to you. You will give me another, you see. Now we shall conceive him in hate, you and I, and you'll die of the death in my bosom. Come, make hate to me, killer."

  His jaw trembled. He took her shoulders and ran his hands down her arms and closed them over hers.

  "Your hands are ice," he whispered, and leaned forward to kiss a bare spot just below her throat, and somehow she was certain that he understood. It was a preconscious understanding, but it was there. And still he bent over her.

  Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes ...

  Of course the general had been intellectually convinced that it was entirely a figure of speech.

  The toxin's work was quickly done. A bacterial toxin, swiftly lethal to the non-immunized, slowly lethal to Marya who could pass it out in her milk as it formed. The general slept for half an hour and woke up with a raging fever. She sat by the window and watched him die. He tried to shout, but his throat was constricted. He got out of bed, took two steps, and fell. He tried to crawl toward the door. He fell flat again. His face was crimson.

  The telephone rang.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  The ringing stopped and the knocking went away. She watched him breathe. He tried to speak, but she turned her back to him and looked out the window at the shell-pocked countryside. Russia, Nikolai, and even the Ami sergeant who had wanted to go home, it was for them that she listened to his gasping. She lit one of his American cigarets and found it very enjoyable. The phone was ringing furiously again. It kept on ringing.

  The gasping stopped. Someone was hammering on the door and shouting. She stood enjoying the cigaret and watching the crows fl
ocking in a newly planted field. The earth was rich and black here, the same soil she had tossed at the Ami sergeant. It belonged to her, this soil. Soon she would belong to it. With Nikolai, and maybe the Ami sergeant.

  The door crashed loose from its hinges. Three Blue Shirts burst in and stopped. They looked at the body on the floor. They looked at Marya.

  "What has happened here?"

  The Russian girl laughed. Their expressions were quite comical. One of them raised his gun. He pulled the trigger six times.

  "Come ... Nikki Andreyevich . . . come . . ."

  One of them went over and nudged her with his boot, but she was already dead. She had beaten them. She had beaten them all.

  The American newspapers printed the truth. They said that General MacAmsward had died of poisoned milk. But that was all they said. The whole truth was only sung in Russian legend for the next one thousand years.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, which proved a traumatic experience for him. Joe Haldeman reported that Miller "has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for 30 years before it had a name," and that Miller displayed a photograph he had taken of Ron Kovic prominently in his living room.

  After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism. He married Anna Louise Becker in 1945, and they had four children. He lived with science-fiction writer Judith Merril in 1953.

  Between 1951 and 1957, Miller published over three dozen science fiction short stories, winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story "The Darfsteller". He also wrote scripts for the television show Captain Video in 1953. Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955, 1956 and 1957. The novel, entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz, was published in 1959.

  A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic (post-holocaust) novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz and is considered a masterpiece of the genre. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is also a powerful meditation on the cycles of world history and Roman Catholicism as a force of stability during history's dark times.