So they worked in the forest and cut the wood, hollowing out the shaved area that was allowed to be taken. They loaded the train and when they were exhausted slept in the carriage or back at the slave house. The days turned into months and nothing ever changed. Except that one or two of them, those that had handled the fleyber, had begun to dream. Not the vast epic stories and rolling landscapes of men. Nor the simple straight roads of food and fucking that other animals slept with. But a quarter-dimensional vapour that smelt of hope. An idea that hadn’t ever been known among the entire collective. Hope had a shape. It was small, far off, out of focus, entirely black, and seemed to be shimmering in a constant haze. It was the only image of salvation they had ever known.
The dream had come after twenty-six of them had died of heat exhaustion during the hottest summer ever known to those who gauged such things. New workers were brought in and quickly joined the ranks of the bleached Limboia, who of course had no idea who was new and who was ancient. Only the herald, who collected the fleyber and had had the most sightings of the dream, kept a whimper of time in his worn-out mind. He also knew that the quality of fleyber had varied greatly, he being the first to touch them. The first was good, but later they became toxic and shrill. He would not even touch the second and let it fall out of the hands of the furious overseer, who’d had him beaten. The next one was equally sick and it too fell onto the squashing concrete floor. After that beating all the Limboia could not work again. The fourth fleyber offered was vivid and clean and accepted thankfully. After that the quality stayed the same. Not that they remembered, of course.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Hector slept badly that night, even though he kept all the lights on in his flat and bolted every lock. Even though he had been told that one of Solli’s boys was staying the night below in Mrs. Fishburn’s rooms. He tossed and turned and tried not to see blurs or shadows that moved independently. He again read Mayhew, which had always been a solace and an entertainment when he had been unwell. But tonight it seemed hopelessly remote, even though he sat in the very heart of its subject matter. He pottered about making tea with gin, but nothing worked. Only at dawn’s first feeble rays when the city stoked up did he get a little troubled sleep. An hour later he turned off the gaslights and dragged himself to his ablutions. He washed with the strange-smelling soap that he had accidentally bought and pondered again why the British liked such things. In Germany, soaps were always tinted with flowers or citrus, the bite of lime or the tang of lemons, but here? He looked at the heavy lump again and was totally perplexed as to why a nation would want to smell of coal and tar.
Eventually he began the morning ritual of twisting and folding his few strands of hair into their hirsute camouflage of many. He first combed down the nightly tangle, ready for weaving. In the mirror this normally made him look like an egg wearing a battered and irregular cobweb that flopped about his ears, but this morning it was different. There appeared to be a bushiness about it and stubble shadowing the worried-looking egg. It looked like new growth. But that was impossible. He turned this way and that, eventually unhooking the little brass chain that held the modest mirror on its bent nail, hanging over the sink. He took it to the window to bounce more light off his weird new head. There it was, hair. Hair sprouting this way and that, an abundance of shoots. A childish joy seized him and he heard a polka humming up from inside. He jigged about to it, holding the mirror away as if it were some kind of remote dancing partner.
“This is madness,” he said out loud, between the splutters of giggles that even surprised the hums. It took him a long time to become dressed this morning, seeking out things he had never worn or had not remembered he owned. He bubbled and played, trying on different combinations of garments, utterly forgetting the grave purpose of the day.
There was a weighty knock on his front door and he pulled himself together to let the boys in. He swung it open, ready to bounce mischievously with His Nibs. The square hillock of Rabbi Weiss stood unflinchingly in his path. He was still wearing the old homburg and the black shiny suit of many years. But now around his shoulders he wore a long black-and-white prayer shawl with many tassels. In his arm he preciously carried a dark, polished wooden box.
“Are you ready, Professor?” he said with grave earnest.
Hector said “Yes” and retrieved the closest coat. But Weiss was still blocking his way, frowning and looking him up and down. Suddenly Hector became horribly aware that in his previous high spirits he had dressed frivolously. Without thinking about anything else, he had put on things that he had bought on a whim (spending Himmelstrup’s money with abandon) and also the garments that he had been given by Mrs. Fishburn and Christmas presents from some of the inmates of Bethlem. What he was wearing was never meant to seen outside the privacy of his own moment of playful celebration.
“Oh, I think that I should change.”
“No, you are needed now, bring the key. We must begin.”
Weiss turned, beckoning him to follow, and Hector scuffled behind him, still forcing one arm into the new coat, the key gripped tightly in his other hand. As they went down, he tightened the braces of his plus fours that were beginning to sag. On the second landing he stopped. Below him was a pulsating mass of black-clad men. They were dressed identically and were equally impatient. He and the original prototype slowed and stopped a few steps above them. They all looked up at Hector and Weiss…The rabbi addressed them in Hebrew and then introduced the learned academic from the great University of Heidelberg. Some stared at his hair, which was trapped loose and hanging under a jaunty cloth cap. Some stared at his tartan socks and the gap where they attempted to join the cuffs of the plus fours. Others stared at his pinstriped coat, worn over the Fair Isle pullover—well, at least that was what he thought Mrs. Fishburn had called it. He had hastily grabbed the coat on his exit and desperately wished he was now wearing the rest of the three-piece suit. He looked down at them through their distaste into their purpose. One was carrying a thick scroll wound around ornamental wooden staves. Others held smaller, partially hidden things under their thin shiny topcoats. The one standing next to the door held the horn of a sheep, a ceremonial instrument ready to blow.
“Hector, the key, please,” said Weiss.
He put it into the square hand of the old rabbi, who stared at the long piece of bent metal, then quickly passed it down to the seventh bearded man who stood next to the horn carrier at the door. The swollen mob shuffled forward as the skeleton key was put into the lock.
“Oyfhern,” said a voice from below.
All the bearded heads spun round.
“Stop it. It is verboten.”
Weiss, who was still three steps above them, twisted his head into the stairwell to see who dared. Solli stood ten steps below him. The old man exploded, his face turning purple.
“How dare you, how dare you speak to us like this. What do you mean by this outrage?”
Solli did not even flinch. He held his ground, steely and resolute. Behind him were three of his khevre who looked pale and jittery.
“You must not enter, you are forbidden to perform this ceremony,” he said in a demanding tone.
Weiss was beside himself in speechless outrage, his skin becoming a dangerous lurid white. He suddenly held out his hands before him and pushed his way down the stairs towards the impudent, blasphemous young man. Hector fell back in his shock, his new two-tone white-and-tan brogues slipping on the stone. Weiss bustled past the others and gained the head of the stair just above Solli, who also started moving. Nobody said a word as they watched the rabbi and the thug confront each other. It started with shouting, turned into concealed asides, then into head-to-head, face-to-face violent whispers. The audience leaned forward, trying to hear what was going on. Solli’s quick hand was suddenly at the back of the old man’s head, pushing his ear closer to his continually moving lips. The homburg slumped askew against the imp
ertinent violation. After being held ridged there for a moment, the solid square of the old man shrank and folded away, his astonished eyes never leaving the black intensity of the younger, slighter man. Weiss faltered, grabbing the metal balustrade, and then looked up at Hector with a countenance that was unreadable. No man had ever looked at him like that before. He had never witnessed such an alarming expression. Weiss moved like a scolded sleepwalker, past Solli and down towards the street. The rabbi’s lost companions looked at one another and started to shuffle down behind him. After a few minutes only Hector and Solli remained on the stair, Solli’s men having been told to retrieve the key and wait in Mrs. Fishburn’s apartment.
His Nibs slowly walked up the faltering empty flights. This was not the walk of the fleet-footed panther that Hector had known from before. As he passed, Solli said, “You still got some of that kosher brandy left, Prof?”
“Yes,” said Hector, grabbing the young man’s arm as he lurched and plodded upwards.
* * *
—
Hector brought them both large tumblers of brandy to the seats by the fire. Solli said nothing: his concentration in the flames, his nose in the glass.
“What did you say to him?” said Hector cautiously.
“I told him to stop.” Solli’s voice was distant and impassive.
“Yes, I know that, but how?”
“I told him it was verboten.”
“Verboten…” repeated Hector. “You told him in German.”
Solli gradually came out of his stupor and stared at Hector.
“I don’t speak German,” he said, barely moving his mouth, like a bad ventriloquist.
Hector got up to retrieve the bottle, while the young man tried to strangle sense out of his memory.
“What else did I say, Prof?”
“I don’t know, you were fiercely whispering in the old man’s ear.”
More brandy was poured as they struggled to find meaning in the strange event.
“Who told you to say this?” asked Hector.
“Uncle Hymie and your creepy friend.”
“My…” said Hector, for a moment not understanding.
“Nicholas,” said Solli. The name sounded distorted and looked as if it tasted like bile on the sunken panther’s lips. “He wants to see you.”
“Oh, when?” said Hector, trying to sound casual, trying to tether the conversation to some kind of normality.
“In a week or two, when the weather gets better. He said at St. Paul’s.”
“St. Paul’s Cathedral?”
“That’s the one, he’ll tell you when,” said Solli, losing interest now that his task was completed.
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Solli, shrugging.
Hector took his statement literally and didn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The children of the fatherland’s military forces began to appear in Essenwald after the rainy season had finished. At first they were no more than over-clad strangers passing through with all the other itinerant drifters. Then they arrived in vehicles that nobody had ever seen before. Heavy loud monsters that became stuck and aggressively lodged in the potholes and ditches of the unmade roads, forcing their occupants to walk the rest of the distance into civilization, while the tyres shredded and caterpillar tracks squealed and sank into the dismal, unimpressed red mud. Only one such machine had ever been seen before, and it was rumoured that its occupants came from the lands of Napoleon and had been driven back there under a cursed punishment from the Vorrh.
Later, unfamiliar planes began to arrive at the aerodrome: dark birds without the red-and-white plumes that distinguished the company plane that occasionally nested there. The strangers began to settle and ask questions. On a brilliant Tuesday morning they demanded their first meeting with the Timber Guild. Their contact was Quentin Talbot, who introduced the two uniformed outlanders to the table of suspicious dignitaries. There was something different about him today. He stood more erect, was more agile, and seemed to be excited. He gleamed in their company, as did the new lapel pin in his sombre dark suit. It was the same insignia that adorned the now-requisitioned building across the cathedral square. Except there it was three overlarge flags that flapped in a heavy and out-of-place ownership. The black twisted sun wheel stamped in a rectangle of red. The military men were not impressed with Talbot and ignored his felicitations and wanted only to engage with the guild. The strangers bore distant memories to the men of the guild, reminiscences of their stern fathers and inflexible grandparents, the scent of authority worn in their tribal colours of black, grey, and silvered white, stiff in an old rigidity that had been wearing itself out here under the constant sun.
During the next three hours the importance of their city’s position and produce was explained to the guild. As was their need for total cooperation and loyalty in the oncoming conflict that was only months away from their unsuspecting gates. It was also suggested that their current status of independence was a thing of the past. Most of the guild understood the situation and accepted the words of domination, knowing that this was to be only a temporary inconvenience. An expedient necessity that would last a few months, maybe a year, before things returned to as they were before, only stronger and with more markets established throughout the world. They could accommodate such a pantomime of military ownership without any real hardship. True, there might be some backlash from the tribes and nomadic visitors, but they would be kept in check with gifts and demonstrations of martial supremacy. All was going well and the sound of grinding teeth was covered by the stern smiles of satisfaction. Even Krespka concealed his contempt for the upstart officers and their absolute ignorance of this region that he owned. It was going smoothly until the outsiders unfolded their map and placed it on the boardroom table, announcing that they intended to extend the train line through the Vorrh. To bisect the forest and make a direct connection to the Belgian Congo. There was absolute silence for a few moments. Only the sound of the crisp map settling was heard in the room. Then Krespka exploded.
“Idiots. You cannot pass through the Vorrh. You know nothing of this place.”
Talbot stepped in, trying to quieten the old man and deter the suggestion, which it was obvious he had never heard of before.
“Gentlemen, Vladimir, let me try to explain.”
Everyone waited. The officers had stiffened in their uniforms.
“There are serious problems about extending the track. Technical difficulties that would make such an operation impossible. However, it might be possible to build a spur that skirted the forest to the west. Let me show you on your map.” He moved towards the table.
“What difficulties?” demanded the tallest of the uniformed men. The word “difficulties” sounded like it tasted unpalatable in his thin mouth.
Talbot was lost for words and nobody in the room attempted to help him.
“We have no intention of building a ‘spur’ around the forest,” said the officer with the silver skull and crossbones winking on his lapel.
“It’s not possible,” roared Krespka, who was beginning to see the funny side of the present tableau. “You will fail miserably,” he added with a choking laugh.
“We will not fail because you will not let that happen,” retorted the third member of the party. “You and your workforce, your entire guild, will work with diligence to make this happen. We will extend your modest train and open up a causeway for our troops that will later extend your trade to new horizons.”
“None of that is possible,” continued Krespka.
“Buy why?” demanded the first officer.
“Because the Vorrh won’t let you.”
And there it was, finally spoken. Krespka had said it and it hung in the air like malice. Eventually the officer with the insignia, who recognised the relief of truth that was attach
ed to the impossible statement, turned and spoke directly to Talbot, while clenching his elbow in an insistent hand.
“What is this nonsense?”
Talbot adjusted his collar and turned his head and the attention of the questioner away from the others. They walked to one of the windows farther down the room.
“The Vorrh is impenetrable beyond the end of our tracks. It would be very difficult to cut deeper into it from there.” He paused for a deeper breath and then said in a whisper, “You should have told me about this plan, you said nothing about it before. If I had known I would have—”
“Difficult, but not impossible,” continued the officer, ignoring Talbot’s pleas. “With our engineers and equipment and an extended labour force we could make short work of a few trees.”
“Yes, but there are other problems,” added the now-deflated Talbot.
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