Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  The boat scraped to a halt against the rocky shore. Miriam put her head briefly on Sol's shoulder, and Bruqah leaned forward, shielding them both with his body.

  "During the storm, after Erich found out that I knew you were alive, he...he beat me." She was crying softly, her arms around Sol's neck in open defiance of what Pleshdimer or anyone else might do. "We came so close to a life together, you and I."

  "We will find it yet." Sol turned to the Malagasy. "Help her, Bruqah," he said, paraphrasing the words from his vision.

  "Yes. And you," Bruqah said. "I will help you, too."

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Nosy Mangabéy

  September 1939

  Sitting on the damp sand, Sol watched the lifeboats and launches travel back and forth from the Altmark to shore. Some brought only men; others carried equipment and supplies loaded by Jews, crew members, and the freighter's cranes. Knowing the German military, there was doubtless some order about the landing, but to Sol it seemed chaotic. He wondered cynically if Abwehr manuals contained explicit instructions for hacking a path through a rain forest.

  One of the first boats brought Hempel, who strode from the water with the wolfhound and Misha in tow, and his truncheon firmly in hand. Erich brought up the rear, stepping from his boat with the air of a conquistador, head uplifted and eyes surveying the surrounding jungle as if he half expected natives to come rushing out and throw themselves at his feet with offerings of gold. Behind him, two Jews carried Taurus, strapped on a hospital stretcher.

  "We're going to have to cut a path to the top of the hill," Erich announced. He looked at Hempel. "Bruqah is to be given a machete. After you've supplied your men, give the Jews the rest of the machetes."

  "The Jews?" Hempel asked. "Is that wise?"

  "Are you questioning my decision?" Erich's voice was dangerously quiet. "Take one squad and lead the way. Use Bruqah to guide you," he went on, having apparently decided to drop the matter of Hempel's subordination. "Freund, stay with them and take care of the woman. Pleshdimer, you and Taurus bring up the rear." He raised his voice. "We are going up that hill." He pointed toward the jungle. "There will be no relaxation of discipline. For the sake of every Jewish life here, I will say this once, and once only. You are to use the machetes for creating a path. Look as if you see them as weapons, make one movement that smells of an attempt to escape, and we will shoot half of you Jews and let the dogs finish the rest. Now move it!"

  Without so much as a glance at Miriam or Solomon, he turned his back to them and waited to be obeyed. Hempel, obviously furious, strode toward the ridge of trees, his ever-present companions trotting behind.

  Bruqah watched without comment or movement.

  "Do you not fear them?" Sol asked.

  "Pah!" Bruqah spat onto the wet earth.

  "Does anything frighten you?"

  Bruqah threw his head back and laughed uproariously. "You ask questions like a small child." He helped Miriam to her feet. "What Bruqah fears you cannot understand. Not yet."

  "Tell me."

  "Bruqah only fears things of man and not of man," he said softly, all trace of laughter gone. "Come, Solly."

  Sol caught himself smiling. No one had called him that since he left his mother in Amsterdam. Seeing his smile, Miriam returned it with one of her own. He saw a glimpse of the young girl he had once known and felt a transient stab of hope as they entered the jungle.

  Sunlight gave way to the dark and dankness of the rain forest. Sol's physical discomfort was increased tenfold by his inability to see more than a couple of meters ahead. A high-pitched chittering spoke of living creatures disturbed by the human intruders, and around him, pinpoints of lights flickered on and off, as if the forest were peopled by a million glowworms. Were it not for the water that hung in the air and covered him with a film of sweat, and the mold and moss that enveloped everything like a possessive lover, he might have been in the Black Forest.

  Abruptly, the chittering stopped. A raucous sawing began, then a series of deafening squeals which rose to a crescendo and shook the bamboo and ferns into responding. Leaves rustled and dripped and snapped back, ignoring his swinging machete. When he looked behind him, the forest seemed to have regenerated. He could hear the others, Jews and soldiers alike, fighting their way through the heavy undergrowth. The air was hot, damp, and heavy.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  Soft and shrill and mournful, the cry echoed through the forest, its sound so chilling it made Solomon's teeth ache.

  He lifted his machete. Behind him, he heard the unnerving, metallic snaps of safeties being flicked off as, again and again, the sound came, piercing through the branches overhead.

  A guard, panicked by the unfamiliar sound, opened fire.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  "Eeee-vil!" Arms raised, Bruqah followed the sounds with a shaking finger.

  "Probably a harmless monkey," Hempel said contemptuously. "Stop acting like a bunch of children."

  "There are no monkeys in Nosy Mangabéy," Bruqah said in a low voice, the veins pulsating in his neck as he strained to see up into the jungle canopy. "Not in all Madagascar."

  "What was it?" Solomon asked.

  "H'aye-h'aye." Bruqah turned away from them and moved through the tangle of ferns and vines, parting the foliage with his walking stick and his machete. In an instant he had disappeared.

  "Come back here!" Hempel shouted.

  Bruqah returned, clutching his head, wailing and spinning as if he were performing a ritual dance. Gripping his face, ogling the newcomers to the forest, was a red-and-gold striped iguana the length of his arm.

  "Do something, one of you!" Grabbing Sol's machete, Miriam chopped wildly at the bush ahead of her. She collapsed, crying, as Bruqah reeled toward her.

  "For Christ's sake!" Hempel shouldered past Solomon. He tore the giant lizard from Bruqah and, holding it upside-down and squirming, cracked its back and threw it to his wolfhound. Pleshdimer, crouched at the dog's side, looked up and grinned as the dog ripped the animal apart.

  "Whatever's amusing you," Hempel said, "you might remember that one of these days you'll be glad to dine on that same meat."

  "You all right, Bruqah?" Miriam asked in a small voice.

  "I'm all right, Lady Miri." Bruqah signaled Solomon to come closer. "That thing." He stepped aside for a moment to allow Hempel and his machete crew to work past them. "Liquaan, like you," he told Sol. "He eyes the future while he eyes the past."

  "How do you know...?" Sol stopped. He would examine the meaning of Bruqah's words later. Right now Miriam needed his attention. He helped her to her feet. She looked exhausted, he thought. He wanted to pick her up and carry her, but he was too debilitated; even with Bruqah's help it was all he could do to half-drag her along.

  The climb grew steeper, the forest more dense. Layers of branches crisscrossed overhead, creating the effect of several stories of latticework. Because of the humidity and the lack of sunlight, the accumulation of leaves underfoot was slick. Millipedes and beetles ran over their legs, stickers jabbed their arms, wet ferns, rough as a cat's tongue, stuck to the sides of their faces. Looking for ballast, they found themselves grabbing onto the yellow pitcher plants that seemed to flourish in the forest despite the weak light. When they did, a sticky syrupy substance erupted, bringing armies of flies and ants and mosquitoes against which there was no defense.

  Sol slapped at his neck and looked at his hand. On it lay a mosquito the size of an average fly. Well, he thought, at least it would feed with equal pleasure on Nazi and Jew. "Look at this thing," he said. "It's big enough to shoot. We'll probably all need quinine, which doubtless our Nazi friends have brought along. For the time being, we had better do what they say."

  The four of them resumed their climb. Eventually they found themselves in a boggy meadow, darkened by overstory. Only the lack of incline, the larger expanse of clear flat ground between trees, and the fact that those who had gone ahead of them were gathered together at the far end
of the clearing, gave them any sense that they had crested the hill and exited the forest. Near them, leaning against a tree, was Hempel. "Wait here," he told Pleshdimer. "Shoot anyone who gives you trouble. I'm going to see what's beyond those trees."

  Taking Misha and the wolfhound with him, he strode through the long grasses at the boundary of the jungle. A great sadness took hold of Sol. He must communicate with the boy, he thought, watching an animal wander into the clearing. It was followed by two more. They were ox-like creatures, humped and sporting enormous dewlaps, huge ears, and curved horns.

  "Zebu," Bruqah said as several dogs jumped up, growling.

  "Zebulun," Sol said aloud. "Jacob's tenth son. Father of the tribe of Israel. What might he have thought of this place?"

  Pleshdimer lifted his rifle.

  "No shoot," Bruqah called out. "Zebu are sacred."

  Pleshdimer hesitated, then swung the rifle across his back and took off in a waddling run toward the animals, waving his arms and yelling. He chased the zebu from the clearing.

  Unable to see anything peripheral to the center of his vision, Sol moved his head from side to side to examine his new environment. Judging by the charred snags partially sunken in the marsh and by the singularly large count of dead trees, there were times of the year when there was relief from the wetness that hovered around them like a living entity. At the far side, beneath a tanghin tree and standing on uneven stumps that elevated it a meter off the ground, he could see a lopsided, thatched shack made of mud and wattle and pandamus palm fronds.

  "Man who lives there carries storm in his heart," Bruqah said.

  Sol turned to look at him. "Is he one of your people?"

  Bruqah shook his head vehemently. "He is Zana-Malata. He can live only within his own self. Same for me. My people, Vazimba, are a tribe no longer. We are like the travelers' tree. We nourish those who need us."

  Miriam looked down the west side of the hill through a break in the foliage. She pointed toward the island's smaller hill. "This island can't be more than five kilometers square," she said to Sol. "One of Erich's books called it 'two hills and an apron of rain forest.'"

  Bruqah opened his arms as if to encompass the sun that had broken into the clearing. "Once before, this island drowned in blood. Bruqah died."

  "You mean your ancestors..."

  "I mean Bruqah," he said quietly. "You know little, Solly. But you will learn...next time the island drowns in blood."

  Sol watched a ground squirrel poke a berry into its mouth, masticating with absolute concentration. The human intruders were of no concern, the food its universe. A deep envy overwhelmed him. How dare it be wiser than he, to know such single-mindedness of purpose? He must learn survival from this animal, and from all of the others here.

  The trainers sat at the opposite side of the clearing, holding their dogs, which strained to investigate the new territory.

  Erich strode out of the undergrowth and stopped beside them. He let his gaze rest on the lopsided shack. "Will he come back?" he asked Bruqah of the absentee landlord.

  "In time, maybe. Days...years."

  The mouse lemur Bruqah had placed at the nape of his neck shifted position. It clung to his hair, its sad, dark eyes too large for so tiny a head.

  "Zana-Malata lives alone, like me." His lips turned up, teeth showing, in a hard smile. "Zana-Malata nourish no one. They have no friends. We Vazimba have also walked alone these many years."

  "The original Vazimba came from Java," Miriam offered. "They were Madagascar's first inhabitants."

  "And Zana-Malata--the last Malagasy race," Bruqah said. A hard look had risen into his eyes. "We are the beginning and the end, he and me."

  "You know him?" Erich asked.

  "For too long." As if to end the discussion, Bruqah reached to one side, plucked a fig from a tree, and handed it to Miriam along with a piece of wild ginger.

  "Atten-hut!" Pleshdimer snapped, stepping into the clearing. Everyone stiffened visibly.

  "Where's Hempel?" Erich asked, walking over to Pleshdimer, who shrugged.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  Like spectators at a stadium, heads turned in unison to look in the direction of the sound, Erich's among them.

  The cry came again, this time followed by the body of a creature that looked like a cross between a flying squirrel and the lemurs Sol had seen illustrated in the books about Madagascar. With the grace of a trapeze artist, the animal leapt from the overstory and landed on a beech branch entwined with liana the size of a man's arm. Slowly, almost insolently, the creature raised its plumed tail.

  As if he had carefully timed his reappearance for maximum dramatic effect, Hempel stepped from the trees into the clearing and lifted his Mann. Misha seized the opportunity and scuttled toward the closest group of people. The wolfhound hunkered down in the tall grasses and waited.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  The major smiled a tight-lipped smile and clicked off the safety catch.

  "H'aye-h'aye have finger of death," Bruqah said.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  Sol stared at the coppery fur-ball. Its enormous, sad-looking eyes seemed to stare back at him with human intelligence. Its tail was wrapped around the liana and its skeletal fingers gripped the branch.

  "Don't shoot," Erich ordered, apparently fascinated by the creature.

  Hempel did not immediately lower the Mann. The aye-aye, with almost human understanding, lifted its left hand into the air and pointed at Hempel. It had a thumb and three fingers, the middle one of which extended beyond the other two--fleshless as the finger of a corpse long dead.

  "H'aye-h'aye finger show death," Bruqah said in hushed awe. The mouse lemur on his shoulder squeaked and burrowed down, but the Malagasy did not appear to notice. He stood perfectly still, his usually placid features rigid with fear.

  Commanding his wolfhound to stay, Hempel strode toward Bruqah. "Shut your mouth, or I'll gladly kill you instead."

  Something made Sol look back at the aye-aye. Its hand was still raised, its long bony finger extended toward the wolfhound, which had risen to its feet in defiance of Hempel's orders.

  Back arched, growling, the dog turned to face the trees.

  Into the silence there came a muffled roar, like the distant thunder of an approaching storm, followed by another. Clearer this time. Closer. Accompanied by the pounding of heavy hooves through the underbrush and a blur of movement, a massive boar, head lowered, burst from the bush. In a lightning movement that defied the creature's lumbering bulk, it lifted the wolfhound high into the air and held it up there, a bloody trophy impaled upon one curved horn. Lowering its head once more, it shook off the dog's body, and raised its foot. A shot rang out. The boar looked up, snorted, shook itself, and trotted back into the forest.

  Hempel walked over to his dog and nudged it with a boot. Like statuary imbued with life, the rest of the stunned watchers returned to movement. The shepherds, growling, tugged at their leashes, and the aye-aye, its business apparently finished, leapt back into the overstory.

  "Dead?" Erich strode over to where Hempel stood, gun in hand, and looked down at the wolfhound. Even at a distance, Sol could see that it was a bloody heap of fur and torn flesh.

  "Might as well be," Hempel said. "Fat lot of good he'll be to me now."

  "Shoot him."

  Erich issued the order without raising his voice, yet loudly and firmly enough to be heard over the shepherds.

  Hempel turned to face him. "Who the hell are you to order me to shoot my dog?"

  "I am the commanding officer of this operation."

  Hempel paused, raised his gun, and released the safety. "For now," he said.

  If he could have shot Erich instead, he would, Sol thought, watching the tableau. Miriam had told him about Achilles, whom Hitler had ordered Erich to shoot. He wondered if Pfaueninsel torchlights flickered, now, within Erich's brain.

  But Erich was not looking at the wolfhound, or at Hempel. He was staring at a bare-chested, sinew
y black man who had stepped from the shack into the clearing. The man was clothed in a ragged loincloth whose color matched the red that peppered his curly white hair. As he stood there, surveying the newcomers to his domain, two animals with red fur and feline faces joined him, their muzzles twitching.

  This puts the Theatre des Westens to shame, Sol thought, as the shepherds started up their insane barking again.

  "The dogs do not care for the fossas," Bruqah said quietly. "They will like them even less as time passes."

  Hempel swiveled around on the balls of his feet. He pointed the Mann at the newcomer. Judging by the look on his face, it would not take much to make him use it.

  Sol turned his attention to the black man. Simply looking at him was a challenge. Where his nose and mouth should have been, there was a gaping pink hole. The hand he held up to Erich in mock greeting was eaten away like the flesh of a leper. Dangling from his fingers like an offering was a large wriggling worm.

  Seeing that he had Erich's attention, the man tilted his head. With some innate sense of drama, he waited just long enough to allow Erich's horror to peak. Then his tongue emerged to envelope the worm and draw it down into his throat.

  "Pisces, no!"

  Pulling free of his master, who was apparently too caught up in the unfolding tableau to hold firmly to his leash, one of the dogs bounded at the black man.

  The fossas wasted no time. Whirling around, they darted into the underbrush. Reacting almost as fast, the man leapt toward his hut and scrambled beneath it. The dog leapt after him, frenziedly digging his way under the structure. From underneath the hut came a mewling conciliatory cry, and the faceless creature crawled out on his elbows. Swiveling on his stomach, the muscles on his lean back glistening with sweat, he reached underneath the structure and drew out the dog by the collar. The dog lay passively where he left it, inert, defeated, head hanging limply.